#271 Jason Flom with Howard Dudley

that his wife and had two sons. Even though Howard paid child support and maintained a presence in Amy's life, one can imagine that Howard's new willingness to settle down was not well received by the mother of his first child or her family, including Amy's babysitter, Lydia mas Darkey.

On October thirty one, Amy allegedly told missus Darkey that her father was quote nasty, already primed to believe the worst about Howard, and demanding an explanation, Starkey began a series of suggestive question and Amy allegedly claimed sexual abuse. To look out for Amy's best interest. During the social services investigation, she was aside a guardian Ed Lightham, who

determined that Amy's story was untrue. Nonetheless, the trend demanded that credence be granted to the child's claims, triggering Howard's arrest. The prosecution ignored and hit the guardian ed Lighthem's recommendation, and even though Amy recanted her allegations immediately after trial, Howard's been nearly twenty five years in prison as a child sex offender. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to

Wrongful Conviction. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to share this story because it's unique in terms of the almost three episodes we've we've done, but it's not unique because it was a common story at the time that it was happening. It's the story of a man named Howard Dudley who was convicted of a crime that never happened, and who spent almost three decades incarcerated because of a series of lies, superstitions, hysteria that sort of swept the nation.

So before I introduced the other distinguished guests who we have on here, I want to introduce Mr Dudley himself, Howard Dudley. Welcome to Raffle Conviction. 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 and Merida 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 today. 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 It's 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 the home mom, dad and nine siblings, and my dad had squat rules and he enforced talk the work. They out of trouble not to go out and disperse the family. Name. Yeah, I guess have any case, you'd have to have some strict rules or it would

be pure chaos. But it sounds like your parents and still had 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 unmarried 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 Amy's mother that I could

spend time with her. She spent weekends. Maybe we had a great relationship and that 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 into the bargain. But nonetheless you moved on with your life.

I met my wife, and uh we got married. She wouldn't sup me as I was, and after Mary, we had a son named Dennis, who was a musician today, and Adrian living a productive life. I was determined to make a good life for my children, and that was my in devil. I worked, my wife went to college, and her last year in school she had a major quote. And so basically I was a provider for my family.

So at this time, you were providing 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 makes 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 recaan't Amy. As I understand, it was a bit more susceptible to suggestion,

as she had some intellectual limitations. But even before we get into the specifics of your case, I think it's important to mention at this time period, the late eighties and early nineties, was the absolute height of a wave of child sex abuse hysteria, and cases were weeping across the country, one nonsensical case after the other, and I think probably the most widely known one was the McMartin preschool, but very close by to Howard and his family in

North Carolina was a Little Rascal's daycare center, where the accusations were beyond absurd, I mean just absolutely outlangeious things that a kid might conjure up on the spot. Now that's not to say that there perhaps weren't, you know, some real allegations among the false ones, but in that climate, social services, police and eventually juries were buying the allegations

credible or not. Absolutely. And I wasn't a lawyer when these cases were sweeping the nation and frankly internationally, um but I remember, just like you, Jason, reading it and thinking these sort of 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, so children were being taken care of by strangers, were near strangers, and all it takes is rumor and innuendo that something untoward is happening in these places. And the Little Rascals is a great example, and that's right here in North Carolina. The trial which was against every worker and owner at that day care center. That trial was occurring for the owner of the center just minutes away from where Howard

Dudley lived. The stories were in the New York Times, where in the international papers, were in every local newspaper, and in that one newborn babies were being tossed to sharks off the coast of North Carolina. There were pirate ship allegations, clearly the stories of children, But the the other important piece of this period of time was that no research had really been conducted on whether young children could fabricate such stories. So if they told you a

quote story, that story had to be true. Any listener who is a parent today knows that that's a crazy notion. Children makeup stories all the time. They lived in fantasy. But that was that period. Today it is known that children can lie that it's really important to conduct interviews of children in a certain way that the medical evidence that was believed to be dispositive abuse at the time

is not a friend of mine named Gus Gustler. 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 daycare 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 anybody said, and of course these were crimes that never even happened. We represent one of the last surviving multi defendant, multi children cases from this period, and the man was convicted

in seven and it absolutely nothing happened. But he was a van driver for a day care 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 that married people were doing married people things on the bus and That's how it started, and it ended up with our client, Junior Chandler in prison since seven and we'll be there for the rest of his life unless we can successfully petition the cord.

There's 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 of 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 it's something you can do to help me. And Howard, you haven't even been home that long. It was only two thousand sixteen when you got out. So let's turn to the story at hand. Here.

This was October, which was a Sunday. Amy had just been returned to her mother and Miss Darkey and I understand that over the weekend you had been firm with Amy about something, as parents often are when trying to raise their children, you know, the right way, and she had a complaint that you were quote nasty, And it was at this point that Ms Darkey began a series of leading questions, resulting in some very serious allegations and accusations.

Well What's really important is that the babysitter was predisposed to believing that Howard was me 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 full of adult content and being pressed for an explanation about her meaning of the word nasty by miss Darkey with a suggestive line of question 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 e X with her. So the accusation was reported to Diane and then the police. Diane and Miss Starkey, I think they noted certain things that they can run down into the pole sit and they're gonna come back running

with handcuffs and wants. I think that you that little trial, the little rascal that you that as an opportune time to vent her anger out at me. Of course, in this incredibly fraught time period, with a little Rascal case looming in the headlines, the Kinston Police and Lenore 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 what happened, she told at least nine different stories to d s S. Nine, and the stories were both inconsistent and wildly implausible, if not impossible. For example, she said that on one occasion she had been stabbed and then a neighbor came and

halted the alleged attack. There was no evidence, of course, that she had ever been stabbed, and no neighbor could corroborate the story. There was also a claim about him putting hot sauce on his privates and the hot sauce smelled like goats, And you know, it starts to go into really bizarre and obviously patently false territory. This was all supposed to be happening inside. Remember just a tiny trailer while Howard's wife was there nursing their newborn. Just

wholly unbelievable. I mean, there was also a claim in which she was supposed to have been raped while wearing pajamas and underwear, 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 bless 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 sacks 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 of 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 did so as his protocol in a case where the dispute between legal guardians and a minor's interest must be looked. After Amy was assigned a guardian d Lightham and this person also looked into the allegations. While Amy was being interviewed and the claims were being verified,

the Guardian ed Lightham 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. 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, for limitations, her characteristics,

the other actors. He read the reports. He did a full investigation, a fuller investigation, and really tried to stop the prosecution of Howard and to try to stop the substantiation of abuse by the Department Social Services. But he was unsuccessful. So you mentioned an important word here, substantiation. The police were waiting for that to move forward with an indictment. As unclear if the SS even knew that. So, even though the Guardian light Um could see the writing

on the wall. After the initial investigation and interviews, DSS inexplicably continued down this course towards substantiation, and on December they filed the petition in Lenore County Juvenile Court alleging abuse and neglect, and there was a hearing two weeks later in which Howard was ordered to seize contact with Amy and Diana, at which point the social workers also decided, despite the total lack of evidence to corroborate Amy's claims, that they would go with the mantra of that time

that credence must be given to the child story, thus substantiating the claim and triggering the police to act more aggressively. But something else happens here that makes absolutely no fucking sense. It's crazy, and it all goes to show that the social workers didn't really believe in they's claims. Now, get this, The social workers agreed to a plan in which Howard could potentially regain unsupervised visits upon completing some kind of counseling for an unspecified amount of time. I mean, am

I missing something here? You're not missing a thing. And they came to that conclusion after they had a team meeting. How can you substantial ate 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, In other words, do a deeper investigation, And she said yes, yes, yes, evidently without any appreciation about what substantiating the allegations would lead to,

and in fact did lead to in Howard's case. The police department then charged because the Department of Social Services was substantiating and they were substantially eating largely because they had to give queens to the child, which is in their report, and also because they wanted to figure out what was going on with this family, so they had to substantiate something to get DSS access to the family,

if that makes sense. Of course, couldn't have happened the way she described it, given the size of the trailer and where people were sleeping, and that Howard's wife was home with a newborn and waking up every hour throughout the night to take care of this newborn and had a two year old close by. It just didn't happen. And the guardian udelighted him, who was overridden by d S s and Kingston Police Department. He didn't succeed in

stopping the train that had already headed off the station. 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 this space that they cohabitated, as you just said, Teresa. So Howard, turning to you during this period of time, where were you, were you being held, were you out on bond? And what was going on? And you're you're a guy who had 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, Mr Harvy, he comes in. He thought talking with me about a police bargain. He told me, said things ain't looking good for you. And I learned that the police barging basically saying that you were guilty. And that's all I need to hear. Right down, I said, oh no, I said, no police bargain for me, And

he got a little hysterical. He said, Mr, this is one thing that he told me with true, and you don't take the police ball. 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 are they going to survive? I begin to think about it. So I talked to those with my wife. She pointed at me, she said, you tell the truth. It's like you've been doing. And so that's what helped me make my choice to stick

with it. I don't regret it. I don't regret it. I had to live with Howard I got. I got to coneper more and look at Howard in the mirror. If I would have gave them what they wanted to taken the police boggin. I don't think I've be seen here talking to y'all to day. I think he took me out. 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

after trial, But that's all there ever was. And I want to turn to Teresa here, because when you dove into this case many years after the wrongful conviction, you did what Howard's Lawn really everybody else should have done in the first place, was to appropriately assess Amy's mental state and competency to stay in trial. Now we alluded to this earlier, the fact that she had some intellectual limitations. Can you tell us what you learned Amy has some challenge?

Is a psychological problems? Did then? Does now? She has some cognitive limitations more suggestible than of the population. So this was a little girl who had 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. They asked her if she knew her colors, if she knew her letters, if she knew a number of things, and she answered yes to each of those without demonstrating that she in fact knew her colors, knew her letters. You could ask a one and a half year old, you know, yes or no questions, and

they likely answer guests. I mean, this poor girl was just thrust into this situation answering questions about these vulgar, terrible acts 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. But wise, let's call what they are that she had

made up. So how did they make her sound credible to the jury? When she testified, she was asked leading questions because she was a child. You usually can't ask leading questions and witnesses, um, there's a prohibition. But with a child you can ask leading questions if you requested, 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 prosecutors allowed this, 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 DSS chose a worker who led the investigation knew. Even when it's the era of one must give credence to the child, there was still one hopes it would have been a juror or two at least um who would say no, no, no, no, that's crazy talk,

and maybe would have hung the jury. I like to believe that the defense lawyer would have won of outright acquittal if he had had those documents and had done even a modicum of investigation of his own. And he had not. And this was a guy I don't 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 found no pre trial emotions, nor conducted any of own 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 it could have been. When children are believed to have been physically abused sexually abused, child medical evaluation report is completed. In this case, one was worried by d s S. 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 medical expert. He called that doctor, the one who conducted the child medical evaluation for the state, and he got that doctor to say, no, there wasn't any physical abuse. But that doctor also said, in a lot of cases of sex abuse, the exam is normal. So that was completely unhelpful. I mean to have the medical examination conducted three weeks later. Our bodies

are elastic, they heal. Of course, they were't gonna 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, Diane and Lydia May, the babysitter, also took the stand. Obviously, they weren't witnesses to anything, so I'm not sure what they had to offer.

And Howard You took the stand as well, denying the charges, saying that the comment about you being nasty, this all started with you disciplining Amy for poor behavior. Your wife also testified about the size of your mobile home and how she had never heard any screams or anything unusual during Amy's visits, as well as how she was up at all hours nursing a newborn, which rendered all these claims impossible. And one more thing I heard that Jrewish

said that I was believable and Amy was believable. But they say at the end of the day they had to go with the daughter. No, why not go with the other 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 a hope that finally the truth would come out? And you could go back to your normal life. When use an innocent individual, absolutely you look for them, come back, get this over with so I can go home, go back with my life. As I strew that, that's what I was looking to hear. And I watched twelve jurist come out and say guilty, guilty, guilty. I said, I can't

believe this is happening. It's ridiculous. H you know what society sometimes saying what people in feel say you were found guilty. I'd like to use the term I was made guilty because they had an absolutely nothing to prove

that I was guilty. And inside prison, that's a bad that's a terrible case to carry inside the prison because everybody is talking have their opinion about your case or what they've seen on the new I slung hard to my relationship with God, and I met other Christians that was in prison, Gods that had made some mistakes, bad choices, and we connected and sharing my story talking to them. That's what helped me to be in to deal with my situation at hand. And it got a little better

from there and people begin to believe in me. I never dropped my relationship with God. I kept it for the twenty four years in prison, prayer read my bottle each and every day, and that's something I did every They're repetitious. That was my survival. Of course, I'm glad that you found a way through considering what prison life can be like for someone founder or actually made guilty of a crime like the one that never happened in this case. And it must have eased your burden and

your mind a bit. When your daughter, Emmy came forward to recount immediately after trial, can you tell us about that? Did it surprised 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 cool. It would it wouldn't have been so bad if we had a close relationship. I was a good day, and I love

my daughter, still in love with the day. That's why it fits her so bad when she had to live with what she had to live with, which was a whole lot. Right now today, She'll tell me, right now today, Dad, I think I owe you explanation. I said, no, you don't owe mer explanation. I know I was a good day. I wasn't a perfect day. I definitely wasn't a perfect boyfriend. 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 and his mother passed away, she was even trying to get me out of prisone. We went to court and she made a statement. I didn't know amy with 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 amount your post conviction campaign. My family had a season lawyer in Kingston, James Perry.

We thought that he would do the investigation that never occurred previously. What we realized that the information that would needed to free me. He didn't get it, but he did come down and talk to me when I was in prison, but his conversation was only about me taking a policebar can get out of Frielson. I wasn't about to say I have committed a crime against my daughter

just to get out of Friels. And if I was gonna do that, I would never came to film because that door was open for me at the very beginning. So the reason the earlier lawyers, including Mr Perry, failed 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, I lied on my daddy. So that gives you an opportunity to go back into court on a recantation claim. But what they did was just put Amy on the stand, and Amy says, okay, I lied. But they don't give the judge anything else because then the judge has, well, she told story A at trial and now she's telling story B.

How do I decide which one is the truth. So when we got it, we said, how can we provide the judge the context to understand that Amy's recantation is true and her trial testimony is false? Right? Not only was his trial lawyer wildly ineffective, but his seasoned to Pelt attorney neglected to do what was necessary in a recantation case as well, so as I understand that Howard's friend of volunteer 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 Quanfi Convictions Clinic, and that really put Howard on the radar and on the path to 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 Newson Observer and he wrote series on Howard's case that really helped us, including he got an interview with the Guardian at lightem 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 was all you know off record? And the journalists said no, And so we had what the Guardian and Lightham thought about the case. We accepted Howard's case in two thousand

eight and we investigate fully. We had a remarkable expert, a woman named Sally Johnson of m D 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 lasted through that district attorney and another. We then had to go before the judge, Judge Paul Jones, who was the last person to deny relief to Howard. We had to convince him not to bar us procedurally which is a court mechanism, and to allow us to reopen the case in court, and we did. He allowed us to go forward with all of our claims and then he recused himself so

we had a different judge. So now you Jamie law who our listeners world question remember from the Ronney Long case, and another great lawyer of Spencer Paris, a friend of yours to Resa, tremendous travel layer who came out of retirement just for this case. The three of you prepared for this hearing in two thousand 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

make a 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 likelihood in the past cases. He looked at of relief, so I'm like, we're leading off with claim of inniscence. So but then the other

claims were all the context right. So it was that Amy was tested on suggestibility and she truly is more suggestible than ninety nine point nine percent of the general population.

And that was done by Dr Sally Johnson. That was a real forensic evaluation that Amy has a low i Q in the sixty eight range, which makes her less able in some ways to understand the ramifications of what was happening, that it arose in this period of mass hysteria, and we explained the context of the Little Rascal's trial

happening essentially next door. We had three claims and ineffective assistance of counsel that explained everything that the lawyer failed to do, including getting all the documents from the Department Social Services and from Paul Porter, the Guardian and light Um. So we put all of that together and that bolstered

Amy's recantation. One amazing thing that happened at that hearing, though, was that when Amy was on the stand and it's difficult for her as a nine year old, as a teenager again and then as a grown woman, but the judge asked if he could speak to her directly. The judge turned towards Amy and he said, look at me. This ain't got nothing to do with this between me and you. He said, your dad to do anything to you. She said no, sir, and that was all he needed.

So on March two, two thousand 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 light Um had concluded that Amy's claims were false. The prosecution would eventually dismiss all

charges two months later. But what was that moment like when the judge vacated confection and finally ordered you release from prison and we sit there and court Mrs Newman hill my arm. She would look around at my family and with a smile on and I knew was going in our favor him. But I had had so many that 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, looked at me, said most of you going home today, I said myself, Did I hear what I think I hear? And I didn't tell me knew, but I was more famous. But that was a great moment. My family, everybody started to a roar in the court room, and it was just a high moment. My favorite story is, because I'm a lawyer and a

rule followers. 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. He closed. Yeah, we get outside and they're just throngs of his supporters and reporters and Joe Naffer of the series on Us 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 that. 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 speciplo moment because they wasn't there. They worked so hard. One day my wife just failed. Dated my MoMA vihan her the last time in the Rex hospital. We sung together, we prayed together, we cried together, and I left that day.

I knew that would be the last time I would see her alive. And those emotions just came on me all at once when I was walking out, and it just overtook me. But very good day, you know, they're very difficult day. Bitter sweet, yeah, bi sweet. So then the April two eighteen, you fold the federal civil rights suit against the City of Kingston, seeking compensation. They eventually settled in July. 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 to officially recognize officially, yes, I got hanging on my wall. I'd like to say this right here, Jamie Most, the spensive, Miss Newman, the Dude Law Team. I'd like to see it like this right here. They saved my life. They saved my life. I can't put it in a better

words of that right there, all of them. Well, we'll be sure to you know, link up to the Duke Law School Wrongful Conviction Clinic to check the link in the bio of 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, Theresa Howard, and

so now we're going to turn to closing arguments. This is the part of the show where I turned my microphone off and leave both of yours on and just listen to anything else you want to share with me in our audience. So Theresa, why don't you go first? Then hand the mic off to Howard, and Howard, you can take us out into the sunset. Every time Howard and I have an opportunity to talk about this case, whether it's publicly or in private, I learned something new

about Howard. And what I learned today is that Howard sees himself as sort of everyman or ordinary man, just a regular person trying to live his life, when in fact, I and the people who have 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 home to be with

our families. He refused to take that early exit with the plea bargain before trial and layer when it looked like maybe it was going to be offered through the previous lawyers, and he refused to do that because he is a man of truly remarkable integrity, and as he says, I wanted to be able to look in the mirror and say, you know, I could not have taken that plea and admitted to doing the things that I did not do. In that that I have lived my life

in a different way from what they expect me to say. So, how are your truly extraordinary well on my behave? I would say, might just say that Teresa Jamie most expense, some must the Coleman, the Duke law students, Well, I say that they helped helped to restore my integrity of the law. I didn't think they were such things after my situation at any lawyers that had a heart. I really didn't think that until they restored it. There are some good lawyers out there. There's something that got a heart.

There is something that want to do the right thing. They'll something take their work serious. There is something that out there that really really care about what they are doing. People lives. 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. I had so many notes. I didn't think it was sa thing and yes's would it come down the lawyers and this was the turn. I had no idea.

But I could never say enough about what they have done on my behalf, restoring my freedom back and back with my family children, even though they are wrong now but old old at all to do well. Family Will Family, Real Family. 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 Rnful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one THO