#269 Jason Flom with Temujin Kensu

but it didn't return any results. Eventually, the victims alleged fiance, Crystal Merrill, pointed authorities in the direction of her ex Temogen Kinsu. Even though the fingerprints didn't match and credible alibi witnesses placed Temogen over four hundred miles away. Authorities put his photo in a very suggestive lineup, and again

Renny Gobain came to eight investigators with an identification. Temogen's rock solid alibi and the lack of any physical evidence connecting him to the crime was overcome by Renny Gobain's dubious identification. A character assassination campaign that should have been inadmissible.

The jury was made to believe that Timogen was a Satanic sex grazed 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, Timogen is still in prison, and the current Attorney General Data 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 Temwidgen Kinzue, is like a masterclass in the bailings of our criminal legal system and 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 cases 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 bought off to get Mr

Kenzo out of prison. And I'm talking, of course about m Ron Sayd, who is the co director of the Michigan Innistance Clinic and a professor at Michigan Law School. Em Ron, 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 Temogen Kanzu, Temidgen, thanks for calling in. Thank

you Jason, Thank you to all the listeners out there too. Now, Temigen, 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, uh kind of that story. You know, you're you're your father in every possible way, whether it was the good or the bad, and um, it became a very violent household,

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 want 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 Jin that wasn't always your name, and you were born Fred Freeman, but you later received the name Tellijen Kenzo 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 caught there, Yeah,

that's true. I was getting pounded a lot. As I said, I wasn't going to strike my mother, and um, I was at the drive in, but I was probably nine years old, nine or ten years old, and I saw a movie and I saw this personal orities 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, transplants 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. He didn't go to jail, but you were put on probation. Yes, I had written some bad checks. I de literally overdrafted my account when I was in Washington State between n three not just sort of one 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 had actually already begun to do some volunteer work for some of the businesses. Actually I paid off my entire balance while I've been in prison on this bit, about five thousand, six hundred dollars. So you made good on it. But 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're on probation in Washington.

Your daughter's mother decided to head back to Michigan, and you eventually lost custody. You had a few probasian violations that 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 tube connected, had a son, but you also had an open relationship. Now you live together in a cabinet 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 wrote a motorcycle where I left the 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. Um. It was a dream when I was young, in that horrible life at home, to to get out maybe for music.

And I don't think it will surprise anyone that a lead singer can be popular with the ladies right this long history. I think it's white people become lean singers sometimes. But anyway, there was one young lady in particularly named Crystal Meryll from the Uran 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 Merrill at a video store. So I was looking at some musical equipment the music store and I went to the video store and there was a girl and then that was Crystal Meryll, and she started hitting on me. And I was young, and I was

pretty susceptible of that kind of positive attention. And uh, 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 wanted hav in 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, stopped singing rock and roll. He just went on and on She's basically trying to sculpt me into the man that she wanted me to be. So she like, 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, pink and lime green with a little alligator or something like. I'm not wearing this. I've got on like an Iron Maiden T shirt and a letter 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 we're penny loafers, right, 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're like my clothes. You don't like anything about me, and 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 its hooks into you, you have to fly so straight, you have to thread such a needle and be like goody two shoes just

in order to stay at a prison. And you had already had another minor brush with the law and pleasant Ridge, Michigan. So the three of you packed up and moved to Escanabo, which is way the hell up in the Upper Fincila, 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 macklem 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 he got some kind of a car chase. All these things are happening to this guy. He he had a job in some kind of a men's clothing store, George and his men's wear, and there are multiple instances of these two guys coming into his workplace,

according to witnesses from the story. And I have the reports and anybody wants to see him, we'll share them with you, say and says he knew these guys on site, and there were two of them, and he 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 story

that 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, but he skipped his classes. But he was in the school with his gym bag, but he never went to Jim. We have his college records. He was he was skipping more and more and more of his classes and we know

now 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 us. So I want people 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 abou 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, when Scott had been at the community college curiously cut in 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 college

parking lot in Port Heron, Michigan. You know, he was kind of shot near his car. He's seen running out of the student center the way this was 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 tires 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 shell casing 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 gun shot 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 Renny Gobain, who said that he heard what sounded like a tire had alan now, 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 skicap 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 Ready, 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 Ready, 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 an aymous tip came in saying that the alleged sale it had just been spotted driving one. Curiously, again, that tip came in after a tempage it 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 Renny Gobain and Richard Krueger both viewed a very suggestive photo lineup, and the suggestion into both of these witnesses was to

pick television Kensue. 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 Gobain and Krueger, television 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. Mr Kensu initially becomes a suspect because in talking to the victims girlfriend that they find out that he was a former boyfriend of the victim's then girlfriend, Crystal Meryl, 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 and was very jealous of her and all of that stuff. So that gets police really interested

in Mr. 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 Temogens 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 Styre, 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. Tem Legend was then seen by folks all over town that very day, including at a dojo in Escanaba around noon. Importantly, not everyone at the dojo liked Temigen. He was a

cocky twentysomething year old guy. But despite any of that and their own animosity stories and they still corroborated his alibi. The evidence, even at the time of the investigation, was very clear that Mr 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 time frame 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 to fingerprint on the box of shells clearly excluded Temission, whose alibi was as good as

any we've ever seen. There's more of this to 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 Rnel 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 north. I'm trying to get this record deal and liveing Michelle in the Duffy 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 stalk Scott or anything again. Uh, 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

this detective work. You know, 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 know 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 noon. 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 Renny 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 biopy. They showed Gobain and Krueger a photo lineup in which they include Mr 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 Kensue. Much later, her Bilser 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 Mr Knsusan 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 like stuck out from all of the others, all of these elements that would have biased the witnesses and identifying Kensue. We're just not known at the time of trial. And we spoke with Herbwelser, who was a retired detective lieutenant from the Poion 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 well Sir.

I'm retired from the Port arm 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 Proctor and myself, along with Fred Freeman's wife, Amaco, were allowed into the Port arm 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 the

Port 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 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 is still a missing. So about two months later Jim called me and he said her, but I found the Exhibit twenty 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 Cleveland said to the sergeant Sergeant John Bounds, He said, are these the original photographs that you showed to the witnesses, and he testified, yes they are. At the time of trial, as far as the judge and the jury knew, the witnesses picked

Mr Kensu out of a fair lineup. We have these two witnesses who identified 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 if 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 to go being even remembered who to pick,

Krueger picked someone else entirely. Nonetheless. On November thirteenth, six just over a week after the murder, they arrested you to Mudgen 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 said, anybody even gonna 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 people saw him. He could 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 all guy.

They've been putting out lies to the press, and they had witnesses who saw the murder. The whole nine yards was all lies. Of course, they didn't have any of that. And then by then they had, you know, ready Golding 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 staying 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 are an indigent 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 courtA pointed 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. Here are on, but then get this, David Dean was also compromised through his own drug addiction. My lawyer was

a former prosecutor from St. 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 gast force in town, and he was undercover informant and he was doing drugs with the police. Now this is all a matter of record. He was eventually disbarred for lying to the bar about his drug use. And because he was observed going into

crack houses 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 fisial misconduct. It's so rampant that there would seemingly be no end of the potential civil litication 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 litication, 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 Mackleum. 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 of population early into my time in the jail, and play what was called L cell, which is an isolation cell in the back of the jail in the 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 below outside. It was blizzardy at that time, and they would freeze me out of the cell um. They turned the water off in the cell, so I literally had to drink water out of toilet. I wasn't

a lot of shower. It wasn't allowed to go to recreation that was loud, have any books. They took away my visits. I wasn't allowed any 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 they're planning to bring me.

It was part of the scheme they had going with my attorney where they were keep bringing me these deals and uh, of course I refused this. So you're sticking to your innocence. And at this point all they had was Renny Cobain's dubious identification. Now, remember Krueger didn't pick Temogen out of the live lineup just to 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 jailhouse informant supposedly hearing Kensue confess to committing this crime, and then apparently in this confession, Kensu also told them plus, I have this great a bye 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 informant 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. Kenser certainly didn't confess to him that informant's name was Philip Choplin, 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 felonies and probably fifty misdemeanors been in

out of prison. He was also a cast informant, and he'd been stitching for years at the Drug Task Force and to the police and on his other criminalcation is I'm never in the cell of other prisoners, so I know something's going on. This guy keeps asking about my case, and he's asking a lot of confidential questions some of my guard The entire time I tell my lawyer what's happening, He's like, oh, I wouldn't even worry about I said, no, no,

something's going on. My lawyer knew Philip Joplin wasn't informed and even been involved in some of his cases when he was a prosepetor that's our crooket 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 benefits 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

us done right away. Judge Cordon, your child judge, the same one overseeing your lawyer's cocaine. But as 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 television. 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 Nitche 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 everyone please give us a rent through of everything else

that happened at 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 a guy loitering in the bushes identified him as Kenzo, another who said I saw a guy driving away after the shooting and identified him as Kensu. Both got really fleeting looks at this person, and as I said already, both had identified Mr Kenseu 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 Mr Kinseu 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 times in 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 Cleland's entire story about this case was fabricated. It wasn't based on any evidence or any witnesses, it wasn't based on any experts or

any forensic 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 is largely filled in with completely prejudicial, irrelevant, inadvisible evidence. But you know, that's what the jury ended up believing. In response. You know, Kensey 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 come it. 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 Mr Kinzu, who at the time was integen, 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 Millinoa 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 bat

shit 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 Herbwells, he pointed out some things about this charter plane theory and the pilot Bob Evans, who testified a child to boast of this theory, and

somehow it gets even worse from here. I met with the detective that was under this starche and Detective 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, it's as a Herb, you know who the airplane pilot was do 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 test moment. You know, even having spoken about this case hundreds of times, I am still shocked at how

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 plane theory to support the one tiny bit

of evidence that mattered. The misidentification from Renny Cobain, 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 nitche testimony, along with a bunch of irrelevant bullshit like the testimony from Crystal Meryl, 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. Jar 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 the judge and said that there's no way you can believe that I did this, your honor. I said that it my sentencing too. There's no way you can

believe that I committed this crime. You watched this whole trial. There was no events I had anything to do with this. I've never even met this guy. MBoC policy required you had at least twenty seven years old to go to state prison Southern Michigan. I was twenty three um 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, Josephe McCallum and Jack But jack But was killed in front of me, by the way, in December seven, I believe it was nineties seven. It was insanely violent. I watched a man killed over 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 once called quarantine. I was able to defend myself. Fortunately, and after that I began it, just trained furiously. I thought I'm gonna die in this place, right, And you also learned a lot even when a couple of times pro say, which happens basically almost never. Yeah, I beat the ND you'll see like times now. And I just

settled some more cases. I settled 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 what I do is 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 in your own

legal filings. And I want to turn to IMRN here now we know, even with evidence of all of this misconduct, exculpatory evidence, etcetera, post conviction litigation is usually a long and winding road to nowhere to no relief and star contrast how easy it is to get wrongfully convicted, and even among a galaxy of other cases, telligence really stands out. Here we are thirty five years later. There are so many twists and turns, including a near turnaround moment in

two thousand ten. But even before that, there were times when what Kne did 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 Tensu through a bias lineup that essentially police framed Kinsue, 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 two thousand ten and and a couple of important things happened there. First, Kensu, working on his own without an attorney, fils a federal habeas corpus petition um.

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 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 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 Kenseu, but the professors who were leading our clinic at the time signed on to be Kenso'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 um. 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 the federal judge looked into the petition that Temgent 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 a Fields,

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 two thousand 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 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 uncropped photo lineup that showed for the first time that the witnesses had been biased by the police into selecting Mr Kensu. So we filed a

new state court filing based on that. We got a hearing on it around two thousand, thirteen fourteen. But unfortunately, the writings on the wall. Every time you go to St. Clair County and talk about the Kensu case, 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. We law 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 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 you know, 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 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 couldn't go around the procedural bars 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 needed an

appellate court. So now this is the Attorney General's see IU, not the Wayne County SEIU, which is widely regarded as one of the finest and most effective in the country. But this a g they in a nestle c IU has only successfully granted relief in three or four cases, and they came up with a reason to deny Temogen

as well, which was to require new evidence. So since Timodgen was already so thorough in this 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 timogence 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 Timidgen'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 Timagion's innocence. So that's where we're at now, you know, believing the kentsus 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 her Welser, 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 to 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 the 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 I keep saying. You'd start kicking ask now so you can you can go out there say look what I just did. I mean, this is what they campaigned on and we're elected to do. And

I understand that you phone bank for these people. Your your new wife, Paula, since Amaco, your previous wife had passed. Paula was literally out there knocking on doors, and then their in action 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 Litl and Loriie Montgomery and Valerie him In, the best the best mis State, great investigators, great attorneys, and nothing's coming out. And it's not because the investors and the attorneys. It's because something happened. I don't I don't know if people scared her. I don't know if they told her they thought I was

going to hurt her re election chances. How in the world can setting the innocent free be seen as anything other than a moral imperative. Everyone agrees the innocent shouldn't be in prison. This is a pretty bipartisan issue, so I'm sure our listeners would like to do whatever they

can to right this wrong. If you're a Missigan 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 Laive, as well as State Senators Stephanie Chang, who issued a joint statement after Demogen's denial in the c i U. I'm gonna 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 c i U and its review of the Kinzu

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 Kinzu could not have committed and did not, in fact commit, the crime for which the state is taking away the entire the 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, call herb Welser 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 Roun and Temision. 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 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 excuses you know, initially cancuse, a manipulative person or he's a 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 led out tomorrow, that would be thirty five years too late. There's really not a way to to give him back what 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 understand it. We say this all the time and it becomes cliche, but you know,

your voice really doesn't matter. You know, we had all these protests going on a little while ago, and you know, sadly some riots but changed with starting because of those protests, they put they create this great bills George Floyd Bill, and you know what, all the protesting stopped all the noise making stopped, the media coverage stopped, and the bill's gonna 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. It creates necessary protections. But we stopped making noise. And when we stopped making noise, they don't have to pay attention to us anymore, or only a few of us are just crickets chirping in the field at night. It's pleasant, it's not too irritating, and it can be easily ignored, and you to 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 could get me better until we stopped complaining about it. Some people want things to be better, but they feel like, you know, it's like my vote, it just doesn't matter. It's not going to change anything. It does matter, and 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 the story moves, you would all of you if you say, I don't ever want to see this happen to anybody ever again, not just Mr Kensue, Nobody call our governor, call our attorney general and demand that they

fixed this, and then demand legislation changes. If you make a deal with an informant, you have to put in a writing that there was a deal, and you have to disclose everything because there's no loss in They have to disclose anything they have to, you know, the Brady rule and disclosure. But it's so shame prosecutors have absolute immanity. Why they'll tell you they can't do their jobs without immunity.

That's insane. What if the doctor said, I can't do any surgery on you unless you waive all of your rights. I can read instruments behind you and cut the wrong leg off you. Cool of 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

Clyburne and Kevin Wardis, with research by Lila 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 flom Raleful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one