#271 Jason Flom with Howard Dudley

With the rise of dual income households throughout the eighties and nineties, an unprecedented number of families were relying on near strangers for childcare. Subsequently, a wave of child sex abuse hysteria began, in which any claim at all from a child was granted credence, no matter how outlandish or probably false they were. At this time, Howard Dudley and Diane Moore were jointly raising their daughter Amy, but were never married. Eventually, Howard found her a nude sense of faith,

Good morning, excited about being here this morning.

Well, listen, I'm excited to have you here. I'm sorry you're here because of what you went through with Howard. Today is a remarkable woman named Teresa Newman. Teresa is recently retired, but she was a clinical professor of law amereta at Duke Law. So this is a serious person. You don't get that title by not being tough and smart. And you also don't get Howard Dudley out of prison without those qualities and characteristics. So Teresa, thank.

You for being here, Thank you so much for having us.

And this story is outrageous. Stories like this have actually kept me up at night. And I mean again, this one is this is about as bad as it gets, but it isn't unique, and that's why I think it's all the more important that we tell it. But Howard, before we get into the story itself, let's talk about your youth. You grew up in a small town in North Carolina. Is that right?

That's correct, that's right, a little town called Institute. I grew up in a home mom and dad and nine siblings. And my dad had quick rules and he enforced the talk, the work they're out of trouble not to go out and disperse the family.

Name. Yeah, I guess with that many kids, you'd have to have some strict rules or it'd be pure chaos. But it sounds like your parents instilled some good values in you. And I also understand that you played guitar and still do, and eventually you grew up and that a woman named Diane Moore. You had a daughter together named Amy. But it appears that you never intend on marrying Diane and weren't ready to settle down.

I wasn't really a good boyfriend. I ad met to that right there. But we worked out between the court and myself and Amoy's mother that I could spend time with her. She spent weekends with me. We had a great relationship and we was on good.

Terms, I thought. And while you two tolerated each other for the good of your daughter, Diane ended up becoming infected with HIV and she was very ill for a while. So a relative named Lydia may Starkey began shouldering more of Diane's into the bargain. But nonetheless, you moved on with your life.

I met my wife and we got married. She would accept me as I was, and after marriage we had a son named Dennis who's a musician today, and the Adrian living a productive life. I would determine to make a good life for my children, and that was my endeavor. I worked, my wife went to college, and her last year in school she had a major squote, and so basically I was the provider for my family.

So at this time, you were provided for your family, living in a trailer while paying child support for Amy, who would join you on the weekends and during the week her relative, Lydia Mace Darkey would care for her as Diane's health continued to deteriorate.

The babysitter she called Howard mean because he had broken up with Diane Moore, who she later died of age she was ill, and then Howard, moving on with life, became born again. Christian got married, had these two kids.

So one could easily see how some really you know, hard hurt feelings could develop, making it easy for Lydia May to believe horrible things about you, and later on maybe even to cajole young Amy into making wild accusations that she would later recant. Amy, as I understand, was a bit more susceptible to suggestion, as she had some

Absolutely. And I wasn't a lawyer when these cases were sweeping the nation and frankly internationally, but I remember, just like you, Jason, reading it and thinking these were fantasy allegations. And people have different theories about what led to this period of near hysteria, but I think many believe it was a time of two parent families. Both parents were working, children were being taken care of by strangers or near strangers, and all it takes is rumor and innuendo that something

Is not a friend of mine named Gus Gussler. I don't know if he ever came across him, but he's a criminal defense lawyer for a long time in North Carolina and he defended one of these cases. He was actually representing a man who was a golf pro whose wife operated a day care facility, and just because he would go and pick her up from work once in a while, he got caught up in it as well. And I believe he got convicted because at the time it was just like everybody was just believing anything that

We represent one of the last surviving multi defendant, multi children cases from this period, and the man was convicted in nineteen eighty seven and it absolutely nothing happened. But he was a van driver for a daycare center with some cognitively impaired adults on the van as well, and two of those adults were boyfriend and girlfriend, and they were doing as the children said, the married people were doing married people things on the bus and that's how

There are still so many people suffering in prison, like Junior Chandler, James King, whose case we've covered on the show. And if you have the opportunity, please go back and list to that one. That one it hurts my heart and we'll have it linked in the bio. And then who knows, maybe you know something, maybe there's something you can do to help. And Howard, you haven't even been home that long. It was only two thy sixteen when you got out. Let's turn to the story at hand. Here.

Well, what's really important is that the babysitter was predisposed to believing that Howard was mean and would do anything right. So when Amy said my daddy is nasty, she went straight to sexual and said does he put his mess inside of you? So at that, given Amy's other characteristics, you know, she went with it. And she had been inappropriately watching adult TV. So she had seen the Sally Jesse Raphael show where they had talked about rape.

So with a head fall of adult content and being pressed for an explanation about her meaning of the word nasty by Miss Starkey with a suggestive line of questioning like does he put his mess inside you? I mean that's the first direction she went in talking about Amy's dad. Eventually, under this absurd and obscene pressure, nine year old Amy, who was even more impressionable than her contemporaries, allegedly said that Howard had quote humped her and quote had s

Diane and Miss Starkey, I think they noted certain things that they can run down into the polls with it and they gonna come back running with handcuffs and wants. I think they you that Auto tried the Little Rascal. They you that as an opportune time to vent her ang out at me.

Of course, in this incredibly fraud time period, with the Little Rascal case looming in the headlines, the Kingston Police and Leonora County DSS were primed to jump on a case like this one. But it soon should have been clear that these accusations of sexual activity on multiple occasions were totally false, because when they began to ask Amy to retell it happened. She told at least nine different stories to DSS nine, and the stories were both inconsistent

Which she said that time with the pajamas, she was wearing her pandies and pajamas, and yet she was vaginally penetrated by her father. Well, you can't do that through pajamas. Amy was the evidence, and blessed her heart, she is the faulty evidence in the case, and it's not her fault.

Remember she was a nine year old child with intellectual limitations and didn't know how things worked, including sex, and what would happen to her father with these false claims. And we know Amy immediately recanted after trial. She clearly feels guilt about that all these years later, But she was a child nine years old and the adults in her life, as well as the authorities, should have known better. And as it turned out, there was one person that

The guardian ed Lightem read everything you know. His job is to advocate for the best interests of the child and he concluded that it was an Amy's best interest not to let her testify falsely against her father, and he decided that not from the start of his investigation. He decided at the end of his investigation, he did a full investigation. He interviewed people who knew Amy, He went to her school. He understood Amy's pensions, her limitations,

So you mentioned an important word here, substantiation. The police were waiting for that to move forward with an indictment

You're not missing a thing. And they came to that conclusion after they had a team meeting how can you substantial the allegations, because if they believed them to be true, they never could have given visitation to the person who perpetrated those kinds of acts. That said, when we interviewed the lead social worker years later, I asked, do you sometimes just substantiate so you can get access to the family,

Right, this is a crime that not only didn't happen, you also have that there was no opportunity even for Howard to have done this or anyone to have done this in the space that they cohabitated. As you just said, so Howard turned it to you during this period of time time, where were you, were you being held, were you out on bond? And what was going on in your mind? You were a guy who had no previous interaction with the criminal justice system. You were a good young man, right.

That's right. I was sitting back in that count of jail. My lawyer, mister Harvey, he comes in. He started talking with me about a plea bargain. He told me said things ain't looking good for you. And I learned that the plea bargain basically saying that you were guilty, and that's all I need to hear.

Right there.

I said, oh no, I said, no plea bargain for me, and he got a little hystericause he said, muster dog. This is one thing that he told me was true. If you don't take the flea bog, you're gonna be gone for a long time. That's what he told me. And then it kind of hit me kind of hard. Think about my children here, wife here, how were they gonna survive? I begin to think about it. So I talked it over with my wife. She pointed at me, she said, you tell the truth, just like you've been doing.

I think it's easy to understand not being able to live with yourself if you had to say publicly not only something so disgusting, but also so patently untrue. Although some people are fine with things like that, I mean, consider our former president, but Howard is not like that. So you stuck to your innocence righteously and went to trial. Now, as Teresa mentioned earlier, Amy was the only evidence in this case, false evidence of course that she immediately recanted

Amy has some challenge, a psychological problem, stid then does now she has some cognitive limitations more suggestible than ninety nine percent of the population. So this was a little girl who at nine probably was much younger in her affect and her intellectual attainments. There's a real question about whether she was competent to stand trial, and I think everyone will be interested in learning how they assessed her competence.

I mean, this poor girl was just thrust into this situation answering questions about these vulgar, terrible ass of which she had no knowledge because at most she had heard about them from an episode of Sally Jesse, Raphael, her babysitter, or more likely the prosecutors. She should have just been in school, but instead she was in a courtroom walking through these inconsistent and implausible statements of lies let's call

When she testified, she was asked leading questions because she was a child. You usually can't ask leading questions or witnesses. There's a prohibition, But with a child you can ask leading questions if you request it and you're the stay. So, of course, as you might imagine, the testimony was bare bones, but also quite different from the previous tellings of the story by Amy.

So the prosecutor was allowed this sort of way of leading Amy through a coherent narrative. Meanwhile, I understand the DSS reports, which contained all of Amy's interviews. Now those reports were all with hell.

We've been talking about the different retellings by Amy, and the wild inconsistencies among the tellings and the outlandish details, So all of that was withheld. Howard didn't know about them at the time of trial, and his defense lawyer didn't know. Now this state new. The prosecutors knew because they had access to the DSS records, and certainly the

And he had not, and this was a guide I'll forget who had been practicing law for only about a year and had devoted only about thirty hours of this case, including the two day trial. He filed no pretrial motions, nor conducted any of the investigation, including it to Amy's competency or the story she had told. He could have also hired an independent medical expert, who knows how helpful could have been.

When children are believed to have been physically abused sexually abused, child medical evaluation report is completed in this case when was worn by DSS. I believe it was done three weeks later, which is a mistake. But they did three weeks later, and there was no physical evidence of abuse. Importantly, at trial, Howard's defense lawyer did not call an independent

I mean to have the medical examination conducted three weeks later. Our bodies are elastic, they heal. Of course, they weren't going to find anything three weeks later unless the damage was so severe, which I don't even want to imagine, and thankfully we don't have to in this case. There was no damage even three weeks earlier, so Amy's mother,

And one more thing, I heard that a jewis said that I was believable and Amy was believable, but they said at the end of the day they had to go with the daughter.

No, why not go with.

The ether dance?

Right? I mean, if you have two people telling completely different stories, now granted one of them as a nine year old child, go with the evidence.

The problem with these cases, particularly during that period of time, was that people were told they had to believe the children. His daughter is saying it right, Why would she say that it has to be true?

Ultimately, the jury went out. When they came back in, did you still have hope that finally the truth would come out and you could go back to your normal life.

When you was an innocent individual. Absolutely, you look for them to come back, get this over with, f I can go home, go back with my life. As I stood that, that's what I was looking to hear. And I watched twelve jurors come out and say guilty, guilty, guilty. I say, I can't believe this is happening. It's ridiculous. You know what society sometimes saying what people in philm say, you were found guilty. I liked to use the term I was made guilty, but they had absolutely nothing to

Relationship with God.

I kept it for the twenty four years in prison, prayer, read my Bible each and every day. That's something I did every day, repetition. That was my survival course.

I'm glad that you found a way through considering what prison in life can be like for someone found or actually made guilty of a crime like the one that never happened in this case. And it must have eased your burden in your mind a bit. When your daughter Amy came forward to recant immediately after trial, can you tell us about that? Did it surprise you? I knew my daughter.

It didn't surprise me. But what surprised me she did it so quickly. I knew my daughter. I knew she couldn't live with that because she and I were so close. It wouldn't have been so bad. We had a close relationship. I was a good day and I loved my daughter, still love her the day. That's why it affected her so bad when she had to live with what she had to live with, which was a lot. Right now today, she'll tell me right now today that I think I owe you an explanation I said, no, you don't owe

Yeah. And by the way, you don't get life in prison for being a bad boyfriend. Not even in this country did Diane ever come around.

Before Diane Amy's mother passed away, she was even trying to get me out of prison. We went to court and she made a statement. I didn't know Amy wood Lyne. I thought she was telling the truth. These are her words.

So with these two very powerful recantations, plus support from family and your church, they hired a lawyer to mount your post conviction campaign.

My family hired a seasoned lawyer in Kenston, James Perry. We thought that he would do the investigation that never occurred previously when we realized that the information that was needed to free me. He didn't get it. But he did come down to talk to me when I was in prison. But his conversation it was only about me taking a flea bark and get out of Frism. I wasn't about to say I committed a crime against my

So the reason the earlier lawyers, including mister Perry, failed is in part because they had a fundamental misunderstanding of what you needed to do to get relief in a recantation case. The recantation the case is when the principal witness or a material witness lies during the trial and then they admitted, like Amy did immediately after the trial, she was with a different babysitter. That babysitter was reading a Bible story about truth and Amy started crying and said,

Right? Not only was his trial lawyer wildly ineffective, but his seasoned appellat attorney neglected to do what was necessary in a recantation case as well, so as I understand it, Howard's friend a volunteer who would come into work in the prison chapel, a guy named Lewis Alexander May he rest in peace. He advocated for Howard with the Duke Wrongful Convisions Clinic, and that really put Howard on the radar and on the path of freedom.

A really important step along that path, though, was a series of articles written by a man of a journalist named Joseph Neff who's now with the Marshall Project. He worked for the Raleigh News and Observer and he wrote a series on Howard's case that really helped us, including he got an interview with the Guardian at Lightham who spoke out of turn. He realized he shouldn't have spoken to a journalist and called the journalist the next day, I believe and said, can I say now that that

We had a.

Remarkable expert, a woman named Sally Johnson, an MD psychiatrist, and she did testing of Howard and Amy and it was extremely helpful information. But it did take five years to file the motion for appropriate reliefs that collected all of the evidence. During that time, we were also talking to the district attorney, which is what we do in every case. We try to get the district attorney to agree with us and join us in seeking relief for our clients. But it didn't work in that case, actually

So now you Jamie Lao, who our listeners will of course remember from the Ronnie Long case, and another great lawyer of Spencer Paris, a friend of yours. Therese a tremendous trial lawyer who came out of retirement just for this case. The three of you prepared for this hearing in twenty sixteen.

We had seven claims. The very first claim which I was amused when I look back at it this morning. The very first claim is Howard Dudley is innocent, and then we lay out and make just an argument for his innocence. You can't win on innocence. There is no pre standing claim in North Carolina or nearly anywhere. But innocence is enough. But if you actually make a claim, a real claim of it, there's just a corresponding increased

The judge turned it toward Amy and he said, look at me. This ain't got nothing to do with Just between me and you. He said, did your daddy do anything to you? She said, no, sir, and that was all he needed.

So on March second, twenty sixteen, the Honorable Judge Parsons agreed that Amy's recantation was credible, that there was ineffective assistance of counsel, and that the prosecution failed to disclose both the Social Services report as well as the fact that the Guardian ad litem had concluded that Amy's claims were false. The prosecution would eventually dismiss all charges two

We sit there and caught miss Newman held my arm. She would look around at my family and would a smile on and I knew it was going in our favor, but I had had so many let down so I didn't know what to believe, you know, and so when things really like to knock me out. When that judge turned around and looked at me said most of Della, you're going home today, I said to myself, did I hear what I think I heard? And I didn't tell me Nan, I was more fainted. But that was a

My favorite story is, because I'm a lawyer and a rule follower, We're walking out and Howard's wearing his prison guard and he's just dropping it behind him on the ground, and I'm like, we've got to read Howard we have to return these. He looked at me like I was insane. I am not worried about returning.

Close.

We get outside and they're just throngs of his supporters and reporters and Joe Naffer of the series on News attended the whole hearing. He was writing more it was a truly joyous, joyous day.

It was great.

It was great when I walked out the door. Freedom, It was freedom. But it hit me that my wife wasn't there to see this. She worked so hard, My mama wasn't there to see this. That was a moment that called me to break down. They were hard at this pacificlar moment because they wasn't there. They worked so hard. One day my wife just fell digated my mama. I visit her the last time in Rex hospital. We sung together, we prayed together, we cried together, and I left that day.

Bittersweet, yeah, bittersweet. So then in April twenty eighteen, you followed the federal civil rights suit against the City of Kinston, seeking compensation. They eventually settled in July twenty twenty one. And you know, I mean nothing they could ever pay you with make up for.

What you lost, absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing.

And then you are granted a pardon of innocence from Governor Roy Cooper. So not only did the prosecution dismiss the charges, but then you've got it officially recognized, officially.

Yes, I got hanging on my wall. I'd like to say this right here, Jamie, most of special miss Newman, the Duke Law Team. I like to see it like this right here.

They saved my life.

They saved my life. I can't put it in no better words in that right there, all of them.

Well, we'll be sure to link up to the Duke Law School Wrongful Conviction Clinic, but check the link in the bio in the episode. And now I'll turn to closing arguments. You know, it starts off with me, of course, thanking both of you for joining us, Teresa Howard, and so now we're going to turn to closing arguments. This is the part of the show where I turn my microphone off and leave both of yours on and just listen to anything else you want to share with me

Every time Howard and I have an opportunity to talk about this case, whether it's publicly or in private, I learn something new about Howard. And what I learned today is that Howard sees himself as sort of every man or ordinary man, just a regular person trying to live his life, when in fact, I and the people who've gotten to know him through this long journey would say he's truly extraordinary in that he refused to do what I think so many of us would do to go

Well on my behalf, I might say that Teresa Jamie Muster, Spencer, mister Coleman, the Doke Law students like saying that they have helped to restore my integrity of the law.

Didn't think they were such thing after my situation as any lawyer that had a heart, I really didn't think that until they restored it. There is some good lawyers out there. There is some that got a heart. There is some that want to do the right thing. There is some that take their work serious. There is something that out there that really really care about what they are doing people life. Like I said earlier and I continue to say this, because they saved my life.

I was in a.

Situation that I didn't think I would never get.

Out of it.

I had so many nose I didn't think it was such things. Yes, when it come down to lawyers and this was the turn, I had no idea. But I can never say enough about what they had done on my behalf, restoring my freedom back and back with my family, and children, even though they have wrong now, but I hold.

It all to them. Well.

Family will family, real family.

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn and Kevin Wardis, with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow me on both