On November fifth, nineteen eighty six, Scott Macklum, the son of the mayor of Croswell, Michigan, was fatally shot in the parking lot of Saint Clair County Community College. A fingerprint was pulled from a box of shells at the scene. Some students described a potential getaway car as a Redder Tan Sedan, but no one had gotten a good look at the shoot her. One student, Rennie Gobain, intent on involving himself, submitted to hypnotherapy in order to recall the
license plate number, but it didn't return any results. Eventually, the victims alleged fiance, Crystal Merrill, pointed authorities in the direction of her ex Temogen Kensu, even though the fingerprints didn't match and credible alibi witnesses placed Temagen over four hundred miles away. Authorities put his photo in a very suggestive lineup, and again Rennie Gobain came to eight investigators
with an identification. Temasien's rock solid alibi and the lack of any physical evidence connecting him to the crime was overcome by Rennie Gobain's dubious identification. A character assassination campaign
that should have been inadmissible. The jury was made to believe that Temigen was a Satanic sex raised ninja assassin, capable of mind control, and although deeply in debt, he was somehow still able to arrange an undocumented private round trip flight to commit a murder allegedly over a woman who he no longer cared to be within four hundred miles of The prosecutor, Robert Cleland is now a federal judge, Temogen is still in prison, and the current Attorney General,
Dana Nessel, who was elected in part to start a conviction integrity unit, refuses to end this well recognized injustice. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. I gotta say, I'm flabbergasted at what we're about to do today. It's just nuts. I mean, this case, the case of Temwijen Kenzu, is like a masterclass in the failings of our criminal legal system and our social system as well. By the way, but the criminal legal system is on
full display in all of its terrors. And this particular case is in Michigan, but to be fair, it could have been in any state. But here to help us tell this story is the man who's been working his butt off to get mister Kenzo out of prison. And I'm talking, of course about Amorn Sayed, who is the co director of the Michigan Innocence Clinic and a professor at Michigan Law School. Amorn, thanks so much for being here with us today.
Of course, thank you for having.
Me, and now I am we are honored to be joined from a Michigan prison by Temigen Kenzu. Temigen, thanks for calling in.
Thank you Jason, Thank you to all the listeners out there too.
Now, Temison, you've been in prison since before probably a lot of our listeners were even born, and it pains me to say that it's really insane. But when they hear about the maniacal developments in this case, which should have had nothing to do with you because you were over four hundred miles away at the time of the murder and provably so, I'm going to imagine that they will feel exactly the same way. But first, tell us about your life before all of this happened.
I was born in Flint, Michigan, as nineteen sixty three. My parents separated when I was very young, around three or four years old. From that point on, my mother became very resentful towards me, kind of that story. You know, you're your father in every possible way, whether it was the good or the bad. And it became a very violent household, a very abusive household. You know, I was not going to strike my mother back, so I basically got pounded a lot. It became physically apparent what was
going on. I ran away a couple of times, and eventually I wound up in the Reach foster program in Flint until I returned home for the last time at about fifteen. And by the time I was sixteen, I was gone for good and living with my grandmother and pretty much raising myself.
Now telling Jen that wasn't always your name. I mean, you were born Fred Freeman, but you later received the name Tamagen Kenzu from your Buddhist instructor, right, and later officially change it while you're in prison. But your fascination with Eastern philosophies and disciplines had roots in your formative years, mostly because of learning martial arts to block all of the attacks that have been coming your way.
You got that, Yeah, that's true. I was getting pounded a lot, and as I said, I wasn't going to strike my mother and I was at a drive in but I was probably nine years old, nine or ten years old, and I saw a movie and I saw this in crucial artis just blocking every blow that was thrown at him. I also lived in a very violent area, and I saw this way to defend myself. You know. I learned to learn to block and duck and you know, jump out of the way and all the magical things
we see in martial arts movies. And I said, I'm going to learn to do that.
And you really excelled at martial arts, from what I'm told, and so much so that you were invited to live and train in Korea. Wow, but your mother would not allow it. You also excelled academically and went into the military after high school. But despite excelling there as well, shin splints from your years of martial arts training kept you from moving up in ranks, and which of course kept you at the minimum pay three or four years there.
And that couple with some reckless spending as a young man, which again I can relate because I did it too, you started racking up some debt. Now you were honorably discharged and moved to Washington State, where you had a child with a woman named Galen. And then at some point you lost your job and out of desperation, wrote some overdraft checks to cover your debt's thinking that you just pay the fees and get the collectors off your back. But you ended up getting prosecuted for theft by the
check insurance company. You didn't go to jail, but you were put on probation.
Yes, I had written some bad checks. I deliberately overdrafted my account when I was in Washington State between nineteen eighty two and nineteen eighty three. Now, just so everyone understands, and I'm not defending what I did. I was charged with what they call first degree theft out there, and I was placed on probation, so no prison or anything like that. I didn't agree to pay everything back, and i'd actually already begun to do some volunteer work for
some of the businesses. Actually I paid off my entire balance while i'd been in prison on this bit, about five six hundred dollars.
So you made good on it. The point of bringing it up is to show that you were both struggling financially and now the system had its hooks into you. So you were on probation in Washington. Your daughter's mother decided to head back to Michigan, and you eventually lost custody. You had a few probation violations. They're almost impossible to avoid, but somehow Washington State agreed to let you go back to Michigan, where you looked up a high school sweetheart
named Michelle Woodworth. You two connected had a son, but you also had an open relationship. Now you live together in a cabin in ann Arbor along with your childhood friend Tom Ford. You were working studying martial arts and Buddhism, very much into health and nutrition at the time, you rode a motorcycle or a leather jacket. And to round out this picture, I also understand that you were the lead singer and a couple of bands back in the day.
You know, I don't want to brag, but I was a pretty good singer. It was a dream when I was young, in that horrible life at home, to get out maybe through music.
And I don't think it'll surprise anyone that a lead singer can be popular with the ladies right this long history. I think it's why people become lean singers sometimes. But anyway, there was one young lady in particularly named Crystal Merrill from the Boorjuron area, which is a short drive for man Arbor, and she became part of the reason why we're having this discussion today. But let's back up a
bit here. So you and Michelle Woodworth, as I mentioned, had an open relationship, so you were seeing other women. It wasn't a secret to her. And to put a fine point on how long ago this was, you met Crystal Merril at a video store.
So I was looking at some musical equipment in the music store and I went to the video store and there was a girl and then that was Crystal Meryl. She started hitting on me, and I was young, and I was pretty susceptible of that kind of positive attention. And she's like, Oh, let me take you out to dinner and I'll pay for everything, and blah blah blah. And you know, I went for it and I went out with her. We wound up having physical relations We
went out several times. She became obsessive. She was trying to change my clothing. She was trying to give me a change my hair, get rid of my motorcycle, stop wearing a leather jacket. Stop singing rock and roll. He just went on on. She's basically trying to sculp me into the man that she wanted me to be. So she liked, let's say six things about me, and didn't like ten things about me. One day she comes with
a bag full of Eyeside shirts. You know, this is the eighties, those pink and lime green with a little alligator. It's like, I'm not wearing this. I've got on like an Iron Maiden T shirt and a leather jacket and shredded jeans.
You know, right, you're a rock and roll guy. I mean you weren't trying to hang at the country club with Chad and Blake and were penny loafers, right.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh my god, I swear I used to say she wanted me to be Blake.
That's hilarious.
And I'm like, listen, you don't like anything about me, Okay, you don't like my hair, you like my clothes, you don't like anything about me. I don't want to be with you. She started stalking me and driving by.
And I understand there was a boiling point where she made some dramatic public spectacle at a party and your friend Tom became concerned about how Crystal's erratic behavior could be dangerous considering your probation status. Once the system gets it soaks into you, you have to fly so straight, you have to throw at such a needle and be like Goodie two shoes just in order to stay at a prison. And you had already had another minor brush
with the law in pleasant Ridge, Michigan. So the three of you packed up and moved to Escanaba, which is way the hell up in the Upper Peninsula, over four hundred miles from Port Huron, where Crystal was licking her wounds, and from what we understand, after you left, she got involved with some other men and got pregnant. Now, one of those men turned out to be the victim in this case, Scott macklum, and he was the son of
the mayor of Croswell, Michigan. And Crystal later claimed that they were engaged and that her unborn child was also his, But we're not even sure if that's true. And it was your previous fling with Crystal that became the basis for the States theory for your alleged motive. But what seems way more compelling, which is something that the police never investigated. Was some of Scott's entanglements in the lead up to November of eighty six.
Prior to his being killed. Supposed that he got in some kind of a car chase. All these things were happening to this guy. He had a job in some kind of a men's clothing store, George and his men's wear, and there are multiple instants of these two guys coming into his workplace, according to witnesses from the store. And I have the reports, and anybody wants to see him,
we'll share them with you. And says he knew these guys on site, and there were two of them, and it said the first time they came in the story, he had a confrontation with them that almost became violent, and it says he challenged them to fight. Says the second time they came in the store and he saw them, he was so scared he ran in the back of the store and he hid. So whatever happened from the first incident to the second, he was terrified at these guys.
The morning that he was murdered at the college, according to people there, he was in the college for some reason. Nobody knows why. Sub zero morning in November of nineteen eighty six, but he skipped his classes, but he was in the school with his gym bag, but he never went to gym. We have his college records. He was skipping more and more and more of his classes and we know announ it's because he had a drug problem. And he was also dealing drugs at the college. And
we found multiple dealers that have confirmed this. So I want people to know that I'm not just saying this whatever his family says. They knew he had a drug problem. We found dealers that knew his father, that his father was paying off his drug debts.
So Scott was in trouble. I mean, his wealthy father, the mayor, had tried to save him several times. And you can see how this could have been very embarrassing for a local politician like him, especially back in the eighties when attitudes about drug use were informed by the colossal public policy failure known as the War on Drugs. That same policy also created the environment at which violent
crimes like this one occurred. And that brings us to the morning of November fifth, nineteen eighty six, when Scott had been at the community college curiously cutting class while carrying a gym bag while not going to the gym. There were also reports that he appeared to be running from the student center to his car when this tragic incident occurred around nine am, Imron, can you tell us a little bit about this.
It's a tragedy, of course. A man was shot and killed in a community a college parking lot in Port Huron, Michigan. You know, he was kind of shot near his car.
He's seen running out of the student center. The witnesses said he was running from the student center to his vehicle and then was shot somewhere in front of his vehicle and made it to the front left tire's vehicle where he fell.
So the assailant fired a shotgun once at Scott Macklum, leaving him on the driver's side of the car. The key was still in the door. One shellcasing and a box of shells were found at the scene. A latent print was pulled from the box of shells, and the murder weapon was never recovered. So this is a busy, bustling community college parking lot, and you would think somebody would have seen something, right.
No one saw the actual shooting itself, at least no one has come forward that saw the actual shooting, so the case was built through the testimony of people that saw things that happened kind of a little bit before or right afterward. One of the witnesses said that he heard the gunshot and kind of as he was looking around, he saw a car driving away kind of fast, and you know, he had only got a fleeting look at the person.
Right. This was Rennie Gobain, who said that he heard what sounded like a tire had blown out, which caused him to notice a light, tan, foreign hatchback style car leaving a lot. There's no certainty about whether this car was even connected to the crime, but nonetheless he saw this alleged assailant through the windshield as he drove by, wearing a dark blue ski cap not covering his face, but according to Gobain, his head was tilted down the entire time, so Gobain didn't even get a good look
at this alleged assailant. Now, Renny Gobain wrote down a license plate number and reported it to police, but the number didn't turn up a match, so Gobain was then hypnotized by his psychology professor in order to try to better recall the plate number. I mean, this is just embarrassing, and the results were about as probative as one might think. Now, Renny Gobain also initially said that the car was a foreign hatchback, but later inexplicably and suspiciously, I would say,
changed his description to a Ford Escort station wagon. Now, this change curiously happened after a nineonymous tip came in saying that the alleged assailant had just been spotted driving one. Curiously, again, that tip came in after Timodgy had already been arrested. So why did Gobain change this initial description to a very specific and conflicting description that matched an anonymous tip.
And was that anonymous tip even real. We don't know the answers to either of those questions, but we can certainly speculate that Gobain had been fed more information by investigators. But anyway, back to the immediate aftermath. So there was also this other witness named Richard Krueger, who was even further removed from the scene and any meaningful information than even Gobain was.
Right, he had just seen a man that he deemed suspicious loitering nearby near some bushes in an adjoining parking lot, and that was about an hour before the shooting.
Right, so not so helpful at the time, until both Rennie Gobain and Richard Krueger both viewed a very suggestive photo lineup, and the suggestion into both of these witnesses was to pick Tamagin Kenzu. And we'll get into how it was suggestive in just a bit, But first, how does this photo even find its way into this lineup? Because early on in the investigation, before these eventual misidentifications from Gobin and Krueger, temision wasn't even on Port Huron
Police Department's radar. How did he even become a suspect living over four hundred miles away in the Upper Peninsula.
Mister Kensu initially becomes a suspect because in talking to the victim's girlfriend that they find out that he was a former boyfriend of the victims then girlfriend, Crystal Merrill, and she describes him as a curious person, let's say, someone who's into martial arts, someone who she said, was, you know, an aggressive type and was very jealous of her and all of that stuff. So that gets police
really interested in mister Kensu. They started investigating him. They find that he's living in Rock, Michigan near Escanaba in the Upper Peninsula, which is a whole different world from Port Huron, but they don't let that stop them. They start trying to figure out how he could have come down from Escanaba, committed the shooting and been back.
So they investigated Temigen's whereabouts to find a way to nail him, not knowing that they were just going to actually solidify his alibi. They found out that he was on a date until I believe around two am with a woman named Beth Styr, and his car had actually broke down and he got help and then he went home to Michelle Woodworth even later. Meanwhile, the shooting occurred at nine am, over four hundred miles away. Temwichen was then seen by folks all over town that very day,
including out a dojo in Escanaba around noon. Importantly, not everyone at the dojo liked Temagen. He was a cocky twenty seven year old guy. But despite any of that and their own animosity stores him, they still corroborated his alibi.
The evidence, even at the time of the investigation, was very clear that mister Kinsey was not at the scene of the crime, that he was in fact, at least four hundred miles away in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. At distance it would have taken him I think something like seven or eight hours to drive each way at the time.
So even the prosecution accepted that this round trip journey in that timeframe was not possible by car. And we'll talk later about how they came up with a preposterous travel theory involving a private plane of which there is no record, right, no aviation logs, nothing, just to make to try to make his guilt plausible for a jury,
not that they ever proved it at all. I mean, the only physical evidence, the fingerprint on the box of shells, clearly excluded Temagen, whose alibi was as good as any we've ever seen.
There's more of this two Jason. So remember there's no Scott when Crystal and I are together. So there's no reason to be jealous of this guy. I knew about an RNL Hope, I knew about a Mike Van Dyke, there was no Scott. Secondly, the Scott guy has done nothing to me. Third I've moved far away, I've got girlfriends up. Nor if I'm trying to get this record deal, I'm living with Michelle in this duppy little farmhouse, trying
to live my singing dream. I'm not going back down tom Ford confirmed that we never went back down there. We never stalked Crystal or stalked Scott or anything. Again. You know, a lot of the listeners right now are young, and they're used to the present technology. There was no Internet in my day. There were no cell phones in my day. He was killed at college, skipping class on a sub zero morning in poor here on How the hell could I have known this guy was going to college.
There's just there's no way I could have done all his detective work. You know, I was I was stone broke. Michelle was on welfare. I was even more poor by the time we were living up north. There's no way for me to gather all this data about Scott.
Right, You'd have to have known where Scott Macklin was going to be and when in order to pull this off and make your return flight to the Upper Peninsula to be seen by nude. It's not like you could have found out information about his class schedule online. There was no online at the time. So instead of seeing the writing on the wall that you were not the guy but rather run down some of the potentially embarrassing leads involving the shady characters connected to the victim, who
was the son of a wealthy local politician. They made you the fall guy Patsy for this murder, and in order to do so, they went back to Rennie Gobain and Richard Krueger with this super suggestive photo lineup. And we'll share this photo lineup on our socials along with what was then shown to you the judge and the jury to deliberately misrepresent that the lineup was not suggestive, we'll have it all linked in the bio.
They show Gobain and Krueger a photo lineup in which they include mister Kinsu's photo, and what isn't disclosed to the defense, the judge and the jury is there are a number of ways in which they clue the witnesses in that they want them to identify Kensu. Much later, Herb Weltzer discovered the photos as they were shown to the witnesses, and we found that there were a lot of differences between all the photos on one side, and mister Kensue was the only one who was looking in
the opposite direction in his profile view. He was the only one wearing a placard of a different city. He was the only one who had a striped background. His photo was the newest and clearly stuck out from all of the others. All of these elements that would have biased the witnesses and identifying Kensu were just not known at the time of trial.
And we spoke with Herb Welzer, who was a retired detective lieutenant from the poischow On Police Department, and after hearing local investigative reporter Bill Procter's coverage of this case, he felt compelled to get involved.
My name is Herb Welser. I'm retired from the Poor Earned Police Department and I was with the department for thirty one years and then I retired as detective lieutenant. I was there my final three years. I was in charge of the detective Bureau. In two thousand and seven, Bill Procter and myself, along with Fred Freeman's wife Amako, were allowed into the Poor Armed Police Department. This is after I retired. Lieutenant Jim Jones, who was a very
good man. He took over my position as detective lieutenant. Jim invited us to come in and look at the evidence. And one of the first things that we found is the five original photographs that were shown to the witnesses. There's like ten or eleven things that are different about Fred Freeman's picture from the pleasant Rich Police Department compared to the other four of the poor In Police Department.
And I thought to myself, the only way that they could have ever got this admitted into court is probably to crop everything out of the photograph other than the facial view of the person. And when this case went to trial, there was an Exhibit twenty six. It was a poster board that showed the pictures that were shown to the witnesses. For years and years, Fred Freeman and his supporters kept filing Foyer requests for Exhibit twenty six to see what it looked like, and they kept getting
responses is that this is no longer available. It's been destroyed. So in two thousand and seven, Exhibit twenty six is still and missing. So about two months later Jim called me and he said, hereby I found the Exhibit twenty six, and I was just so sad to see that they cropped out everything out of those original five photographs other than the facial view. And that's what they showed in
the courtroom, and it's in the testimony. Bob Cleland said to the sergeant Sergeant John Bounce, he said, are these the original photographs that you showed to the witnesses? And he testified yes they are.
Well. At the time of trial, as far as the judge and the jury knew, the witnesses picked mister Kensu out of a fair lineup. We have these two witnesses who identify Kensu through a very biased lineup, and really, you know, they didn't see the shooting.
Right, They hadn't seen the actual shooting, and Gobain got a fleeting glimpse at best of someone driving away with their head down, and we're not even sure that that was the actual shooter. So the biased lineup let them know who to pick. In fact, when shown live lineups later, only ready Gobin even remembered who to pick. Krueger picked someone else entirely. Nonetheless, On November thirteenth, thinty eighty six, just over a week after the murder, they arrested you
to Mujin and searched your house. Found zero incriminating evidence, no guns, no ammo. Of course, they eventually used all of your martial arts weapons as evidence against you at trial, even though the cause of death had nothing to do with martial arts. So when they took you in, did they try to coerce a confession as we often see.
I was never interviewed. I was never questioned. They literally arrested me and threw me into a cell, and I says, nonybody even going to talk to me. Well, what I was told was that road officers were like the whole way down, he was saying he didn't do it. He was telling us where he was that day that twenty people saw him. He can prove he was completely innocent. And I think they were terrified. Remember, they are decided
to make me the patsy. They decided to make me the They've been putting out lies to the press saying they had witnesses who saw the murder, the whole nine yards. It was all lies. Of course, they didn't have any of that. And then by then they had, you know, Ray Gobe already willing to set me up. They refused to sit down interview because they had to record the interview and there'd be a record and probably me talking
about my alibi and how I was innocent. So they went and told the prosecute he's been saying all the way down the car, he's innocent, he can prove it. And they put me back in the max section of the jail before they put me in the isolation area, and they refused to talk to me.
So no police even bothered to interview you. And you were an indigen defendant, so you weren't going to make bail no matter what number they said it that you had no money and you had this quota planet attorney, a former prosecutor named David Dean, who he later found out was not only get this a good friend and the attorney for the lead detective in this case, John Bounds, he was defending him in a criminal investigation for his
potential involvement with drugs and ports. But then get this, David Dean was also compromised through his own drug addiction.
My lawyer was a former prosecutor from Saint Clair County. By eighty four, he was severely addicted to crack cocaine. By eighty five, he had a cocaine conviction in Ohio and was on probation in Michigan overseen by my trial judge. He was under investigation by the drug Task Force in town, and he was undercover informant and he was doing drugs with the police. Now this is all a matter of records.
He was eventually disbarred for lying to the bar about his drug use and because he was observed going into crackhouses on nineteen separate occasions. They knew all of this about this guy. This is the lawyer they gave me.
The more I look into your case, it seems like the only reason why you're still in there is because the official misconduct. It's so rampant that there would seemingly be no end to the potential civil litigation if they freed you, as they should, and they've known this all along. I mean, I think if you waved your right to civil litigation, they might let you out tomorrow. That's just
my theory. I don't know, you know, while looking into your case, my research became more about investigating the state's wrongdoing than it ever was about what happened to Scott and macklum. So let's get back to their wrongdoing. First, they offered you plea deals, but you were already and always adamant about your innocence, so they tried another route to get you to submit to a play.
I was taking out a population early into my time in the jail and place, and what was called L cell, which is an isolation cell in the back of the jail in a hallway. The cell was a freezing cold in the winter. They would open the security window in front of the cell, so it's like twenty thirty below outside. There was a blizzard at that time, and they would freeze me out of the cell. They turned the water off in the cell, so I literally had to drink
water out of a toilet. I wasn't enough a shower. I wasn't allowed to go to recreation, that was allowed to have any books. They took away my visits. I wasn't allowed to be personal phone calls, and all my attorney calls were monitored, and you probably know that's illegal. And we actually had the logs showing where they listened to my attorney calls and what was discussed a few times that I was allowed to talk to my attorney, who was, as you know, in on all this and
a former prosecutor. So their plan to bring me was a part of the scheme they had going with my attorney where they would keep bringing me these deals, and of course I refuse.
This, so you're sticking to your innocence. And at this point all they had was Renny Gobain's dubious identification. Now remember Krueger didn't pick Tamagen out of the live lineup, just the suggestive photo lineup that they purposely misrepresented to you, the judge and the jury. Considering your alibi, it appears that they thought they needed some other nonsense to bolster their case. What else did they do.
The one other piece that we haven't addressed so far is the jail house informant supposedly hearing Kensu confess to committing this crime, and then apparently in this confession can Sue also told them, plus, I have this great out that involves many witnesses from the Upper Peninsula. This is clearly just either the informant, at his own initiative or at the direction of someone has you know, tried to take out two birds with one stone. He confessed to me,
and he confessed to fabricating an alibi. The Joe house infemant at the time said he was doing this just out of the goodness of his heart. Later on he would admit that he was doing it to obtain benefits in exchange. He admitted that in an affidavit. Later, he recanted in a videotape interview with an investigative reporter in the Detroit area, basically said he was just doing it to benefit himself and as far as he knew, Kensu hadn't done anything. Kens who certainly didn't confess to him.
That informant's name was Philip Joplin, who unfortunately has now passed away. But he did as I said, fully recant before he passed away.
Philip Choplin a long term time with about thirty selonies and probably fifty mystic meters been out of prison. He was also a past in foreman and he'd been stitching for years at the Drug Task Force into the police and on his other criminal case is I'm never in to cell with the other prisoners, so I know something's going on. This guy. He's asking about my case, and he's asking a lot of confidential questions. So on my guard the entire time. I tell my lawyer what's happening.
He's like, oh, I wouldn't even worry about it. I said, no, no, something's going on. My lawyer knew. Philip Joplin was an informantive and even been involved in some of his cases when he was a prosecutor. That's how crooked they are. Well, sure enough, here comes this long letter from Philip Joplin saying, I confess to everything in the holding cell.
And although it appears that your lawyer may have known what was going on but said nothing, of course, any benefit to Joplin was not made known to you or the jury, right.
No, of course not no. And what we also didn't know was a secret deal had already been made. Philip Joplin was facing what's called a habitual offender sentence or life in Michigan. The secret deal involved him basically having his charges dropped. The CEO was made with my judge. There's handwritten letters saying strong recommendation from Judge Cordon. He wants this done right away.
Judge Cordon, your trial judge, the same one overseeing your lawyer's cocaine. You know, it's so weird that your lawyer never brought up what he knew about Philip Joplin to you or the jury on cross examination. So let's get to the trial. It's about six months after the arrest Tevijen. You had endured this torture process in jail to get you to submit to a deal, which you courageously resisted.
We've just talked about the nonsense testimony that they presented, and you've got this literal joke of a public defender who's aware of this informant Joplin from other cases from when he was a prosecutor. It just gets worse and worse. So Imron, please give us a run through of everything else that happened a trial.
So we've already discussed most of the evidence that the prosecution presents, which is, you know, these two witnesses, one who says I saw guy loitering in the bushes identified him as Kensu, another who said I saw a guy driving away after the shooting and identified him as Kensue. Both got really fleeting looks at this person, and as I said already, both had identified mister Kinsu out of a very egregiously biased lineup, but the jury and judge.
Were not told that.
And then the other evidence that the prosecution presents, and the reason this trial is incredibly long, is they put in a whole bunch of character testimony that absolutely is inadmissible that courts later have agreed should have been inadmissible, but Kensu's lawyer didn't object, And so the most egregious is the testimony of his ex girlfriend, who describes a lot of things that make Kensu seem like a bad guy, but have absolutely nothing to do with this case or
with him shooting anyone ever. So that's the definition of, you know, unduly prejudicial evidence that our system endeavors to keep out of the courtroom because jurors, being human beings, were taking the risk they'll convict someone because they don't like him, as opposed to because there's evidence they committed
the crime. And in my mind, there's no doubt that the jury convicted mister Kinsu because they didn't like him, because there was all of this evidence brought in that he was, you know, abusive to people in his life, that he had committed largely petty of the past, and this whole narrative was painted of him as a manipulative, mind controlling person, which is obviously entirely irrelevant to whether
he shot a guy in a parking lot. But this whole narrative includes weapons being brought in that are supposedly the kind of weapons that a ninja warrior would use because they try to paint Kensu as a wanna be ninja master who can control people and all of that stuff. So there's throwing stars and nunchucks and all of those are just kind of brought in and put on a
table at the trial. They have absolutely nothing to do with a guy getting shot in a parking lot, right, but it's a distraction, and it's kind of just painting Kensu in the eyes of a jury as an outsider, as someone you wouldn't like if you met. And you know, unfortunately that ended up working because the actual evidence of guilt was very, very tiny.
Robert Cleveland's entire story about this case was fabricated. It wasn't based on any evidence or any witnesses, it wasn't based in any experts or any forensics. He just made it up. So when he made up the crazy story about wanting to recruit Crystal into my ninja organization, the media was actually beginning to mock him and say, this is stupid, this doesn't make any sense. Then he changed it to jealous boyfriend, so now I'm a jealous boyfriend.
You know, they didn't really use the word stalker as much back then, and of course we know that wasn't true too, and Crystal never even implied that.
So, you know, that's the masterful, supposedly case that the prosecution has built, which has very little weight and it's largely filled in with completely prejudicial, irrelevant, inadmissible evidence. But you know that's what the jury but ended up believing. In response. You know, Kensu presented several witnesses, none of
whom were his friends and family. They were people that were largely independent, people he associated with, you know, the owner of a store or a guy he met at a kmart when his car broke down that day, and so I think this alibi probably had a big impact.
Yeah, with all of these independent witnesses, his alibi was formidable. It was airtight. And this brings us to the ridiculous theory that they used to over.
So on Rebuttal. The prosecution comes up with this theory that theoretically he could have chartered a private plane, committed the crime, you know, flown back and forth and no one would know. There was never any record that any such flight took place. There was no showing that mister Kinsu, who at the time was indigen even had money to make this happen.
Yeah, I mean, poor people always fly private, right, Yeah? Can you imagine this scenario in real life? He somehow finds the private jet department at his local airport in the milanoare and then convinces this random pilot who's just hanging out to not make any record of the flight. Of course, it's all made plausible by his being a ninja who's capable of mind control. But let's just say that he's able to accomplish all of that, which is obviously batshit insane, he's still got to pay for it.
Up until this point, he would have had to have been hiding his vast wealth while drowning in debt and living in poverty. But even if he was secretly well healthy, he must have blown it all on the private jet because he certainly wasn't spending it on his defense attorney. So when we spoke to herb Welser, he pointed out some things about this charter plane theory and the pilot Bob Evans, who testified a trial to boast of this theory, and somehow it gets even worse from here.
I met with the detective that was under the searge and detected Harry Hudson, and I talked to Harry about three hours one night about this case. When we got to the airplane theory, Harry said to me, he says, well, herb, you know who the airplane pilot was, don't you. That is Bob Cleveland's personal airplane pilot. Bob Cleveland was running for attorney general here in the state of Michigan, and in fact had just lost the election the day before
this murder. He lost the election on Tuesday. On Wednesday morning was the murder, But he said, Bob Evans is the pilot who would take Bob Cleveland to his speaking engagements here in the state of Michigan while he was running for attorney general. And of course it didn't come out in the testimony.
You know, even having spoken about this case hundreds of times, I am still shocked at how how nonsensical all of this is.
So despite the fact that all the physical evidence was exculpatory and that your alibi was rock solid, they stacked up this character assassination campaign that should have been inadmissible and invented this ridiculous charter playing theory to support the one tiny bit of evidence that mattered. The misidentification from Rennie Gobain, who had caught this fleeting glimpse or said he did, of an alleged assailant with his head tilted downward in a car that we're not even sure was
the shooters. And then when presented with this unduly suggestive photo lineup, he chose your picture and said that you look like the driver of that car. Then the prosecution purposely misrepresented to you, the judge and the jury just
how suggested that lineup was. So Gobain's testimony, then the nonsense testimony, along with a bunch of irrelevant bullshit like the testimony from Crystal Merrill, your martial arts weapons collection, the mystery around you being some sort of a ninja, the fact that you had children by two different women and enjoyed an open relationship with Michelle Woodworth. Seeing all of that, it seems like the jury was more convinced that they just didn't like you, rather than that you
had committed this crime. So when the jury came back in take us back to that moment, that horrible, horrible moment when they convicted and sentenced you to life without parole.
Jaw hit the floor. I couldn't believe it. I literally almost fell over and I just I turned him so I didn't do this. And I turned to judge and said that there's no way you can believe that I did this, your honor. I said it my sentence too, There's no one you can believe that I committed this crime. You watched this whole trial. There was no evidence I had anything to do with this. I'd never even met
this guy. MBoC policy required you had to at least twenty seven years old to go to state prison Southern Michigan. I was twenty three. In violation that policy. Robert Cleland had made demands on the MDOC that they placed me in Jackson. Jackson, at that time was the world's largest wall prison, and it was also one of the most violent. Two corrections officers were killed the year that I came down,
Josephine McCallum and Jack Bud. Jack Budd was killed in front of me, by the way, in December twenty seventh, I believe it was in nineteen eighty seven. It was insanely violent. I watched a man killed over twenty five cent what we call a shot of coffee, a little tablespoon of coffee. I mean, it was crazy violent, and I was the ninja killer, and I had been in the press, so everybody had to try me. And so when I got to Jackson, I knew my life was in danger, and I was attacked while I was still
on what's called quarantine. I was able to defend myself, fortunately, and after that I began it just trained furiously.
I thought, I'm going to die in this place, right, And you also learned a law even when a couple of times pro se, which happens basically almost never.
Yeah, I beat the NBALLC like thirty forty times now, and I just settled some more cases. I settled to some diet cases and abuses for our digital content provider and some other things. So, but I do this for other prisoners.
You know.
I don't do this to get rich. I do this to help people. And what I do with my rule has always been I try to be the person for them that I needed for me when I was a young guy that was a mess and didn't have any help.
And while you help many others, it all started with learning how to help yourself and your own legal filings. And I want to turn to Amron here. Now we know, even with evidence of all of this misconduct, exculpatory evidence, et cetera. Post conviction litigation is usually a long and winding road to nowhere to no relief. In start contrast to how easy it is to get wrongfully convicted, and even among a galaxy of other cases, tellisions really stands out.
Here we are thirty five years later. There are so many twists and turns, including a near turnaround moment in twenty ten, but even before that, there were times when what needs to happen in this case was made painfully obvious to any objective observer.
There are, you know, probably five or six moments when this conviction could have been overturned because enough had been shown to be wrong with it, and unfortunately all of
those five or six opportunities were lost. So it starts on the direct appeal where his direct appeal attorney is trying to obtain the original photos because he wants to be able to show that these witnesses identified Kinsu through a bias lineup that essentially police framed Kinsu and he's not given the original photos, and then ultimately, if the transcript is correct, they essentially hand him some other photos from the case and say these are the ones, and
we know they're not the ones because they had different
people in them, so that direct appeal is unfortunately a failure. Then, in the mid nineties is when an investigative reporter starts digging into this stuff, a guy named Bill Procter, and he interviews jurors, and he interviews some of the alibi witnesses, and most significantly gets that videotaped recantation from the jailhouse informant, who by that time is admitting not only was he given incentives to testify against Kensu and those were not disclosed,
but also as admitting that it was entirely a fabrication. So that's another moment where you know, based on that, you could think this conviction should be reversed, but it wasn't. Then you pointed out, you know, slowly but surely, we get to twenty ten, and a couple of important things
happened there. First, Kensu, working on his own without an attorney, files a federal habeas corpus petition, and it's an absolutely massive filing because you know, as far as he realizes, he just wants to put everything he has into it. A lawyer might say, hey, let's edit this down. Let's only keep the most salient stuff. But you know, for Kensu, his life is on the line, and he puts it together,
this massive filing. And interestingly, that is right around the time when our Innocence Clinic at Michigan Law School opened and we had started to look at this case. And we were looking at this case because even by then Kensu had a lot of local supporters that were urging us to look at this case. We read the trial transcripts and found that this was an absolutely silly conviction, that he clearly hadn't committed this crime. So we signed on.
And you know, at the time, I was a law student, so I wasn't representing Kensu, but the professors who were leading their clinic at the time signed on to be
Kensu's attorneys in federal district court. You know, they intended to file amended habeas petition where they could you know, winnow the claims to what they believed was the most important But actually by then the judge had, as it turned out, already been reviewing Kensu's federal habeas and she ended up granting it pretty quickly after we had signed on, so clearly she hadn't really even read any new filings we made. She granted based on what Kensu had filed.
Wait, so a federal judge looked into the petition that Temagen filed pro say and it was granted. That's incredible. So then what happened? Why did this not lead to his release?
Unfortunately, the law is very very restrictive on this stuff, and so the state has a right to appeal that to our intermediate appellate court, the Sixth Circuit Court of and they unfortunately reversed and upheld the conviction again. They said all of this should have been brought before that they couldn't consider the merits of this evidence because it should have been presented earlier. So you know, Unfortunately, after
that loss, a couple of other things happened. In twenty ten, Kensu sought clemency from the governor for the first time. He succeeded in getting a hearing. Unfortunately, clemency was denied and there were a lot of underhanded tactics I feel that we used during that time again to just get at character assassination instead of focusing on the evidence. Clemency
was denied at that time. But herb Weltzer had discovered this uncrop photo lineup that showed for the first time that the witnesses had been biased by the police into selecting mister Kensu. So we filed a new state court filing based on that. We got a hearing on it around twenty thirteen, fourteen, But unfortunately the writings on the wall, every time you go to Saint Clair County and talk about the Kensu caset, no one's really going to give you the time of day. So we had a hearing.
It was a very very contentious hearing, and the judge ended up ruling against us. The appeals on that filed a federal habeas petition. Unfortunately that was denied as well. The interesting thing here, of course, one of many interesting things, is that the prosecutor who had tried Kensu's case subsequently was appointed a federal judge, and now it's still a federal judge in Detroit, that's Robert Cleland. That's created kind of a whole new level of conflict in this case.
When we filed his second federal habeas petition, all of the judges in the Eastern District of Michigan, which is the Federal court in Detroit, all of the judges recused themselves, and Kensu's case was actually decided by a senior status semi retired judge in Kentucky, which is an interesting situation and not one I've come across before.
Unfortunately, that was denied as well, and so since he has filed for clemency a few more times with subsequent Michigan governors. Now one would think that after a federal judge agreed with his actual innocence claim and an appellate court denied him only on procedural grounds, maybe that should have held some weight in the governor's mansion. But he's
been denied three times there as well. And then in twenty twenty, Dana Nessel ran for Attorney General, and all during that summer she was riding the wave of righteous indignation about the state of law enforcement and the criminal legal system in this country. She made promises, including that they'd start a conviction integrity unit. This, of course, is the kind of thing that can go around the procedural
bars that restrict relief throughout the court system. Right But unfortunately, after reviewing this case, get this, they didn't disagree that he was innocent, but rather they changed the rules after he filed and came up with some self imposed restriction about a need for new evidence, just like he'd needed an appellate court. So now this is the Attorney General's CiU, not the Wayne County CiU, which is widely regarded as one of the finest and most effective in the country.
But this age in a Nessl's CiU has only successfully granted relief in three or four cases, and they came up with a reason to deny Temagit as well, which was to require new evidence. So since Temigen was already so thorough in its federal habeas petition, there's no currently new evidence to present, and I'm just sitting here struggling to figure out why they did this. In addition, since closing their investigation into Temigen's case, they won't even release
the summary report as they've done in the past. So I can only guess, as I did earlier, that there's just such vast official misconduct in this case that admitting to the wrongdoing would be very expensive, not to mention, probably highly embarrassing for some people in positions of real power.
So this Conviction Integrity Unit is now totally ignoring Temigen's innocence and doing exactly what everyone else did, of course, except for that one federal judge, Judge Hood, who alone had the courage to recognize Temagin's innocence.
So that's where we're at now, you know, believing the Kenshu's one innocent. We're not going to give up on the case, but with each subsequent loss there are fewer and fewer options that are still on the table. Fortunately, I think we still do have a couple of pathways left to us, thanks to the work of Herb Weltzer,
who has done all this amazing work for him. But the craziest part of this case is he's a person who should never have been convicted a trial, and yet here we are, now thirty five years later, always trying to think of more and new evidence of innocence, when really all the evidence of innocence has existed in this case from the beginning.
Yeah, and it's not like this CiU has different evidence from what you've all heard here today. They've got it. So I hope that with an election looming they would take bold action.
That's what he's saying. You'd start kicking ass. Now you can go out there and say, look what I just did.
I mean, this is what they campaigned on and were elected to do. And I understand that you phone bank for these people, your new wife, Paula, since Amako, your previous wife had passed. Paula was literally out there knocking on doors. And then their inaction here is It's just it's made extra painful by that fact.
Right, And they made so many promises, and you know, Paula has been to so many rallies and listening to so many families who were weighing on that unit to do something. And they brought any amazing people like Robin Frankel and Patricia lil and Louring Montgomery and valorying him in the best, the best in this state, great investigators, great attorneys, and nothing's coming out. And it's not because the investigtors and the attorneys. It's because something happened. I
don't know if people scared her. I don't know if they told her they thought it was going to hurt her reelection chances.
How in the world can setting the innocent free be seen as anything other than a moral imperative.
Everyone agreed the innocent shouldn't be in prison. This is a pretty bipartison issue.
So I'm sure our listeners would like to do whatever they can to write this wrong. If you're a Michigan, I thought imagine that you're incredibly frustrated by everything you've heard on this podcast today, all this evidence. So please, we need all of you to sign a petition that's linked in the bio, and hopefully your support can help move this one over the line as it's done in
other cases. And so many people have already joined this fight, including US Representatives Andy Levin and Rashida Dlaib, as well as State Senator Stephanie Chang, who issued a joint statement after Temigen's denial in the CiU. I'm going to quote from that statement. They said, we were deeply disappointed. We have great respect for the Attorney General and the other attorneys involved in this case. However, the standard used by the CiU in its review of the Kenzu case predetermined
the outcome to us, the wrong outcome. Our point of view is not based on technical or procedural flaws in the case or discovery of an alibi witness who has never presented a trial. It's based on the fact that Kenzu could not have committed and did not in fact commit, the crime for which the state is taking away the entire rest of his life now thirty five years on, and the continued resistance to this fact of actual innocence by current and former law enforcement officials does nothing to
change the fact itself. Wow. So if you're as outraged as we all are, we'll have links to action steps in the bio, so please check those out and get involved Separately, if anyone has new information about this case, Carl Herbwelzer will be posting his contact info as well. And now we turn to closing arguments, where I thank both of you for joining us to share your story, and then I'll turn my microphone off, kick back in my chair and listen to whatever else you feel is
left to be said. We'll kick it off with them, Ron and Temagen, please take us off into the sunset.
This is one of those cases that really leaves you scratching your head because all of the evidence that he didn't commit this crime has existed from the beginning, and so now it's just a matter of kind of acknowledging that evidence and coming to grips with it, as opposed to looking for technicalities to skirt around the evidence, which is unfortunately what the past. You know, thirty years of appeals have been everyone looking for an excuse not to
consider the actual evidence of the case. Whether that excuse is you know, initially he consues a manipulative person, or he's a bad guy to women in his life, or that he you know, he's the type of person who would do this, and then later it turns into, oh, you have even more evidence of innocence, but you should have presented it earlier. I think we have to look past all of this stuff. This is simply a guy
who should never have been convicted. You know, if he was to be let out tomorrow, that would be thirty five years too late. There's really not a way to give him back what's happened. The only thing is that there should be an urgency to right this wrong. And I know that's the only thing he's ever wanted. So hopefully we're approaching a time though, where we can finally come to grips with the reality of his innocence.
I want everybody to understand it. We say this all the time and it becomes cliche, but you know, your voice really does matter. You know, we had all these protests going on a little while ago, and you know savvy, some riots. Change was starting. Because of those protests. They create this great bill as George Floyd Bill, And you know what, all the protesting stopped, all the noise making stop, the media coverage stopped, and the bill's going sit in limbo.
It's already done. They could pass that bill right now, that Policing Act. It's a great act. It's not unfair, and it creates necessary protections. But we stopped making noise. And when we stop making noise, they don't have to pay attention to us anymore, or only a few of us are just crickets chirping in a field at night. It's pleasant, it's not too irritating, and it can be
easily ignored and enjoy whatever you want to do. And I know people have their own lives, and they have their jobs, and they have their kids and all their responsibilities. But nothing is going to change until we demand change. Nothing's gonna get me better until we stop complaining about it. Some people want things to be better, but they feel like, you know, it's like my quote, it just doesn't matter. It's not going to change anything. It does matter, it
is going to change something. You don't have to be famous and don't have to be wealthy, and you don't have to be connected. You just have to want things to get Call your senators, call your congressman. If you're out there and you hear the story of this case, just for example, and it is one of the worst cases ever. So it's a great example. But I'm no better and no more important than anybody else who's suffering
in here. But if this story moves you at all, if you if you say, I don't ever want to see this happen to anybody ever again, not just mister Kensu, nobody, call our governor, call our attorney general and demand that they fix this, and then demand legislation changes. If you make a deal with an informant, you have to put in writing that there was a deal, and you have to disclose everything because there's no loss, and they have to disclose anything. They have the you know, the Brady
rule and disclosure. But it's so shape. Prosecutors have absolutely immunity. Why they'll tell you they can't do their jobs without immunity. That's insane. What if a doctor said, I can't do any surgery on you unless you wave all of your rights. I can leave instruments behind you and cut the wrong leg off. You're cool with that, but we do this with prosecutors and judges. They don't need immunity unless they're doing something wrong.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, 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 Raeful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcast and association with Signal Company Number one.