#280 Jason Flom with Eduardo Dumbrique and John Klene

gang was enough to get a conviction. While fifteen year old Duardo Dambrican eighteen year old John Clinny were affiliated with Lawn Del thirteen for the girls, parties and camaraderie, three older Lawn Del thirteen members, Santo Alvarez, Lester mom Laura, and Chad Landrum were in it for the drugs and violence. On June seven, Antonio aller Khan, a rival gang member, was killed in a drive by shooting. A few days later, to escape unrelated charges, Santo Alvarez used his knowledge of

that drive by to blame me, Duardo, and John. A few weeks later, Alvarez, mont Laure and Landrum committed another murder, and the police were happy to pin alvare As role on a woman who knew that deceased rather than their star witness against Eduardo and John. With Alvarez a statement and a corrupt identification process that was immediately recanted and protested by the witness the two boys were taken to trial. Chad Landrum was willing to confess to the drive by,

but his continued violence behind bars kept him unavailable. Despite both Alvarez and the witnesses less than willing participation to trial, the prosecutor and the detectives were able to harp on Eduardo and John's gang affiliation in order to send them away for life without parole. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome

back to wrongful conviction today, we're covering a case. It gives us a peek into the gang world of Los Angeles in the nine nineties and the way in w the l a p D and the Prosecutor's office dealt with that issue. We have two men that were affected by those policies when they were just boys. There's a third ronthly convicted person, Susan Mellen, from a related crime. She's not recording with us today, but they're amazing. Lawyer is one of the founders of Innocence Matters. Deirdre O'Connor,

Welcome to wrongful Conviction. Thank you for having me and now our guests of honor, the two men themselves. You know, I'm I always say this, but it's true. I'm sorry that you guys are here because of why you're here, but I'm really happy to have you on Wrongful Conviction today. So I'm going to introduce John Clinny First. John, thank you for being here with us today on wrongful Conviction. Thanks for having me, And of course Ed dambri Que,

thank you for joining us, Thanks for having me. Appreciate So you two guys grew up together. Can you give us a little background there. I've known Ed since I was about maybe fift We both grew up in Lawndale, California. Lawn Bells kind of typical middle class city in the South Bay. You know, it has its little areas that aren't so great, and it's some areas are are decent. So it's about ten minutes fifteen minutes from the beach. I think it's it's a nice city. It's got a

good high school. So growing up in Lawndale, there was a gang in your neighborhood called the Lawndale Thirteam. Well, we grew up there and we were part of that. So you two grew up in the gang culture of Los Angeles in the eighties and nineties and really came of age in the nineties. And I think it's news to some people that the word gang and gang culture in general is a bit more nuanced than most of

the country realized back then. You know, many of our listeners are old enough to remember seeing news reports of the violence associated with gangs, and that's pretty much all anyone outside of that culture knew about it at the time.

Only negative connotations, of course, So society reacted to that perception by electing quote unquote tough on crime politicians who implemented these kinds of ham fisted policing tactics, which of course had very real effects, as you can both attest to locking people up for the sake of doing it, but not the right people, and in too many cases it's wrong people like in yours. But gang culture was not just criminality and violence, right, It was much much

more nuanced than that. Would you say that's an accurate depiction, Yeah, for sure, even in a single gang it maybe, like you know, some people are just families, some people are just friends. Of course, you have a criminal element to it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is involved in crime.

The term gang is is not a good one. But it's like when you're young and growing up and and and you experienced the friendship and the camaraderie, and I mean that's kind of where you end up at, especially if you're growing up like in a neighborhood, you know where gangs are there. You know, not everybody is on the same page, not everybody gets along. We were having fun, you know, whether we're trying to get girls, trying to

have a good time the so what it was. But then you definitely had other guys that their version of fun or or you know, what they would do is drugs and violence. What I think is true for all gangs, right, is that there are little subsets inside the gangs where people gravitate towards certain activities, you know, chasing girls, maybe

scoring some weed, that kind of thing. And there was that kind of group, and then there were the people like Piasso, which is Santo Alvarez, or Ghosts Chad Landrum or Wicked Lester Monlare that were really wanting to make a name for themselves. They were getting high all the time and doing some real vicious stuff. And they were the ones out there doing the drive bys and the kind of gratuitous violence that everybody associates gangs with. Did you get along with these guys? We know them. Uh,

they're all significantly older than us. I knew Lester when I was growing up a little bit, like just as a as a younger kid it, but he kind of went the druggie kind of violent route, and I just was there for kind of like the camaraderie and the friendships and the fun I saw Santos on my block a lot here and there, and my neighbor that lived in the backhouse, I guess he got his radio stolen, you know, out of his car in my driveway, you know, and I always pretty much suspected Santos as being the

one that that stole it, you know. Okay, so so much for camaraderie. So this kind of accurately paints a picture of the divide that's at the crux of this story. And I mean by that the larger perception of gangs in the nineties, and then how the issue was dealt with, like I said, in a ham fisted kind of way by detectives like the ones in this case. There was Sergeant Riggs, but also Marcella Win in a related case Deirdre. Have either of them had any other wrongful convictions that

they've been tied to Win certainly does. She's uh, she real offender. There's at least five known people. Oh, b Anthony and Reggie Cole case, they were co defendants. Um, it was Win's first murder case at South Bay Homicide. Yeah, we covered that case here on Rathle conviction and we'll have it linked in to bio. Then she had these two guys and John and now she had a tangential role in that. But had she done the right thing,

these guys would not have been in custody. She also had the Susan Mellon case where she relied on a non reliable person obviously unreliable, there was no question about it. And then she had another case, the Michelle Puo's case, she relied on the same unreliable witnesses she used against

Susan Mellon. That is really disgusting tactic that we see over and over again revisiting and reusing the same useful liars like Mark Tabbans did in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan, and this kid Joey Morales who was a witness in six different murders and each time he was out getting

milk for his mom. And Danny Wrinkling, who he interviewed on this podcast, which is still in prison three decades later because of this fake witness, and of course Mark Tavn's it looks like when was cut from the same cloth, she was a terrible detective and didn't follow the rules

at all. Now, as far as Sergeant Riggs is concerned, you're gonna see what he does in this case in terms of the identification process, and one can only surmise that if he was so comfortable running rough shot over a witness who was protesting at the identification in the courtroom and in post conviction, Yeah, while at the identification, he's literally going, I can't see that far. I can't

do this identification for you because I can't see. So this guy tried to stand up and do the right thing and was overruled and overridden and bullied by these cops. So it's fair to say that this is something that this particular officer had done before. The one thing I would say Jason in these In these gang cases, you know, all bets are off with these detectives. They can do whatever they want because they know that nobody has any sympathy.

All they have to do is say the word gang member, and the prosecutors, adjurors, judges, everybody rallies around a conviction. So the rules are completely different in a gang case. And that's why you see detectives violate the rules as much as they do because they can get away with it, right. They violate the rules while lumping every gang member in under the umbrella of quote violent gang member, regardless of

what subset of the gang that individual identified with. And what happened in this case, as happens unfortunately all over the country tragically, is that you have a violent character like Santo Alvarez who conveniently trades false information for his own freedom and then he and they remain free, i mean, other people like him to commit more acts of violence

while getting innocent folks wrongfully convicted. And according to the fall this information that Alvarez eventually gave the police, this story began to unfold on the day before the incident in question, Jun won a few kids from around the lawn deal thirteen neighborhood who were not in any way affiliated, were the victims of a dry button. This was allegedly

perpetrated by members of the Little Watts game. Now none of this was ever investigated or substantiated, but this story from Santo Alvarez was used as the alleged motive or retaliatory drive by the following night. But did either of you guys even know the kids who were shot or shot at the night before, and particularly did you know nineteen year old Luis Madrono. I didn't know the guy. Those guys were not associates of Londel. They were not

friends of Londo that I know of. But somehow I guess to maybe create a motive for our case, they got brought into that as being a good way to say, oh, yeah, these guys are retaliating for this. And what happened the following night, June seven, was that a member of the Little Watts gang, year old Antonio Alercon, was that an auto body shop and while outside using the payphone next door, out of sight of those in the auto body shop, he was killed by a drive by shooter. Digital what

else can you tell us? Alercon had a truck that was being worked on over a period of time at the shop, and the shop owner, Daniel Curio, was at the shops that night with a couple of other people in the shop, and Alercon happened to stop by and while he was there, I think he got a page and he wanted to use the phone to call uh this woman who turned out to be his mistress. So he was offered to use the inside phone, but he declined and decided to go outside because he wanted privacy.

So he went out of the shop. There's an adjacent building and there's a pay phone outside of that, and he went to the payphone to speak with his mistress, and then suddenly a car pulled up. Somebody got out of the car and just unloaded multiple shots and he was killed really probably before he had any chance to react in any way. And then the shooter got back in the car and the car drove off, and as it drove off, it passed the opening of the body

shop garage door. So basically there's the storefront on the corner. Adjacent to it is the body shop, but the body shop sits in from the sidewalk so that there's parking in front of it. So when you're inside the body shop with the door open and looking out, you would not have a direct line to the phone booth because

the wall of the building would be blocking it. But once the car moved forward, they would be able to see the car pass by right, So no one actually got a good look at the shooter, including the shop owner, who told detectives that, but detectives cajoled him anyway into making an idea that he has never supported. Curiel even demonstrated later at trial that he can't reliably see twenty

feet in front of him. Can you talk a bit about his vantage point curios Working on a car with his back to the street, he hears the sound of the gunshots going off, but he thought it was fireworks, and because of the the echoing effect, he thought it was coming from the back. So he goes to the back and he looks out to see what's going on back there, and that's when he realizes it's coming from

the front. And by then the car is moving past the shop, so he would have been I think more than twenty feet away from the car at the time that he first observed it. So what he and others did see was that this was a black or darker in college to Dan, and that the front passenger had yelled some kind of gang epithetic alercon as they drove off.

So this shooting happened around eleven PM on June, And from looking into this case, I realized that this state has some other significance and most of our audience will remember this like I do, because early here that same night, Mike Tyson bit a Vander Holyfield's ear off during a heavyweight championship fight. So people remember that night very very clearly. In fact, you guys were friends. Ed was fifteen, John was eighteen, and you were hanging out to watch the

fight together. Is that right? Yes? Yeah, the day of barbecue invited me and it was actually a great night. You know, we've never seen something like that before, right, It was pretty memorable. There was multiple people there, you know, cooking, eating, drinking. It was it was a good night. Yeah, that was insane. I remember calling my friends and family just to check if they had seen it. Yeah, people called the house, a few people and they're like, what the hell happened?

Seeing it on the news, and you know, if they didn't watch the fight, you know, right, they knew you were watching and called to ask about it. You were seeing on the front lawn talking on your cordless phone by a neighbor as well, who got home aroundled. So not only the people at the party, but also those that called you and your neighbor, they all placed you at home at the time of the shooting, which was about an eight to twelve minute drive away from your home.

And this shooting was alleged to be in retaliation for the shooting of some kid you didn't even know. Now, this case was being investigated by Sergeant DORYL. Riggs. Several days go by and on July one, Santo Alvarez a Kasso got picked up for possession of a weapon and a hypodermic needle by Torrance p D. And this is when the story started. So basically, Santos Alvarez is in jail trying to find his way out of jail, starts telling the I believe it was a Torrance police department

where he was at. You know, hey, I know something about about a murder that happened, and they called the Sheriff's Homicide right, so Torrance p D called over to l A County Sheriff's Homicide department and Sergeant Riggs came to interview Santo Alvarez and they started asking about this dark colored car, maybe black, perhaps Queen, And while distancing himself from Lawndale gang activity, he said that the only person he can think of from Lawndale with a car

like that was a guy named Robert Caputo. And he said that he saw the two of you in Caputo's car on the day of the murder, among other things. By also, Santo Alvarez creates this story that he saw me the day of the murder and I was upset about that shooting from the prior day of Luis Madrono,

and that I wanted to retaliate. And then he said that he saw me like you know, a few days later or whatever, and and says that he overhears me talking to someone else saying that I shot someone or blasted that for something like along those lines is what he used. So with that, for my understanding, they let

him out. Then they go back to the witnesses. I feel they put pressure the most on probably Daniel curie El since he was a shop owner and showed him six packs and coerced him and who identifying us because of what Santos said. So you mentioned that Albert said that we were in Campoodle's car, right, but the computer had turned that car in or sold it. They could tell there that he was lying about that. That's a significant thing to lie about it. You said they were

in a car that the guy doesn't have exactly. Cappodo had sold it in February seven, about five or six months before the shooting. Yet, Riggs and his partner Garcia brought a six pack photo array over to Curio with the purpose of getting him to I D YouTube as if they couldn't spot that lie about Caputo's car right off the bat. This bogus photo lineup happened on July tenth, I believe, before Ed's arrest, and Curiel has always disputed this, but Riggs says that he identified Ed as the shooter

and John is the front passenger. He held a gang epithet. So what really happened here, Well, Riggs convinces him basically, look, you're never gonna have to go to court. We don't even need you. This is just to help our case a little bit. We already got these guys, but in reality he was their entire case. So he convinces Curiel to say, all right, I'll sign for you to day my arrest. July on my way to the gym with a friend, and he noticed that there was cock cars

behind us. Uh, and there was three of them, and then there was three coming in front of us. It had a bad feeling, like this is not a traffic ticket. They pulled us over, pull the guns out, drive us off the car. And one of my mom's friends happened to be driving by, and so she was across the street just observing. But I was trying to communicate with her to call my mom. Do I didn't want my mom not to know what happened to me either, you know.

So I was fifteen. They tried MS an adult, and they sent me to the county jail, and I found myself in in a very violent section of the other college job and that was my kind of introduction to the system. Three weeks after the aller Con shooting, Santo Alvarez, Luster Monler, and Chad Landrum were hanging out in this house that had been vacated that was referred to as the melon Patch because the family that owned it their last name was Melan. So they break in the back.

They're getting high homeless guy Richard Daily, who had prior connection with the woman who used to live there. Susan Mellon stops by their originally partying with him, and then all of a sudden, Chad Landrum viciously attacks daily Max's head multiple times with a hammer and kills him. And then with the help of Santo and Lester, they wrap up the body and bring it to an alley in San Pedro, where they set it on fire in hopes

of destroying any evidence. Said, well, enable the police to connect them, right, And you all didn't find out about this until post conviction, even though the person who prosecuted both Ed and John prosecuted this case as well, and we talked a bit about her before. But the Daily murder fell on Marcella Wind's desk, right, and all of these informants came to her saying it was Piasso ghost and wicked with the hammer right in the melon patch,

open and shut, right, But that's not what happened. This person, Susan Melon, ended up getting dragged into it in Piassa's stead right instead of him. How did that happen? Well, I think initially, when you know she takes the path of least resistance in all of her investigations, so when people were handing up to the three gang members, she was going to pursue that and go after them. She

even submitted an affidavit for restaurants for all three of them. However, she doesn't want to do any heavy lifting, so there wasn't enough evidence for the d A to pursue Piasso, and when didn't do the investigation, she needed to build a case against him. So at the same time that it was becoming clear that she'd have to work to get Piasso further implicated in it, this other tweaker, June Patty, came along and said, Hey, I got some information on Melon.

You can pursue her. And so Wind shifted gears and went after Melon. And while she was doing this, she was in communication with Riggs about Piasso's role as a witness as their star witness in that case. So in those conversations that were never documented, the substance of that was never documented. Clearly, these detectives made decisions that benefited both of them. So Riggs was allowed to use Piasso in the Alarcon shooting, and Win was free to pursue

Melan another innocent person for the daily murder. So ultimately Chad Lange, I mean, Lester Mon Laura were rightfully pursued, along with Susan Mellon, who was wrongfully pursued. They were all tried separately, and Landrum and Melon were both convicted. Man Laura was acquitted, so both Mon Laura and Alvarez got off scott free, ready willing and able to commit even more crimes. Jesus Christ. So now August fourteen rolls around and John, you were arrested for the Alercon drive

by as the front seat passenger. Yeah, that was a shocker, obviously, but for the first you know, six months of going to jail. When I got arrested, I thought the next court date they would realize this guy is not supposed to be here, We're gonna go ahead and release him. And you know, every court date turned into a next court date until I finally realized, like, these guys are serious, they really, you know, they're really trying to charge me

with this. So now October seven, curial was brought into view a live lineup, and on the advice of your lawyer, John, you tried to change your appearance. So even though you were innocent of this crime. This move made you look not so great. My lawyer drank to Jacomo. He tells me, you know, hey, this guy, he's already seen pictures of you. They've shown him your six pack or whatever. Let's kind of make it a little more difficult for him to pick you out. So, you know, grow your hair out,

shave your mustache. And I'm listening to the advice of my attorney, so I'd say, all right, you know, I grow my hair out, shave my mustache. I go to my lineup and then I'm waiting. They bring me off the stage from the lineup, and the deputy is like, who are you? And I'm like, what do you mean You're not John Clenny? Who are you? And I'm like, yes, I am. And he's like, no one recognizes you out there. Your your lawyer doesn't recognize you. The detective doesn't recognize you.

You did you switch wristbands? And I'm like, no, I didn't switch wristbands, Like it's me, you know, And I said, how did my lawyer not recognize me? He just saw me two weeks ago. He's the one that told me to change my appearance. Little did I know that was going to be used against me. They used that as

a sign of a consciousness of guilt. So later on Curiel and identifying you in the live lineup, he went on to testify that he had just recognized John from the photo race and in referring to Riggs quote, I already knew who he was looking for end quote. Now you two are on your way to be tried together, and Chad Landrum has already been convicted and sentence to life without the possibility of parole. Amazingly, Landrum reached out to Ed's family because he wanted to come clean about

the alercon drive by. He wanted to testify in the case, and my Lord did bring him down to our trial or it was maybe a pre trial most or something, and they never got his his statement. It didn't give him a chance to testify or confess. From what I've read, there's a reason why he didn't get that chance. He was actually brought down to the courthouse. What happened, Yeah, I guess he got into it or something with someone.

I think it was on the bus or I'm not too sure, but he ended up stabbing him in the courthouse tank and that was the end of that. So you're one shot at getting around the false testimony of Alvarez, and this protested identification just got dragged away for acting out violently again stabbing another guy. And then you go to trial in el A County Superior Court and no one brought up Landrum's involvement or went to get an Affidavid nothing. So Ed was represented by Walter Urban and

John by Frank te Jacomo. The prosecutors Valerie Cole. So the prosecutions theory was that Ed, John and a third long Dale thirteen gang member we're in the dark green car. John was in the front passenger seat, Ed was in the backseat, and Ed was the shooter. So they never caught up with this alleged driver, right, John allegedly shouted an epithet about the Little Watch gang. This was allegedly

retaliation for this other shooting. But of course this entire theory came from Santo Alvarez, who was deflecting the blame from his own crew. What was presented by the prosecution to support this wacky ass theory. The prosecution was entirely dependent on pre trial statements of Santo Alvarez and the pre trial identification of Curio. At the actual trial, Curio

did not identify either Ed or John. He specifically testified that the only reason he made the pre trial identification was because he was, you know, kind of pressured to and he gave the whole story about how the police pointed out the pictures and said, hey, this guy's bragging about it, this guy was in the front seat, this guy's a shooter, all that. So the jurors weren't basing their verdict on what the testimony in front of them. They were basing their verdict on the statements made outside

of their presence. Same thing with Piassa. When he gets into trial, he's like, I don't know, don't know, I don't know what I said, might have said whatever. So they used the tape recording of the statement that Piasso made to Riggs. And by the way, they rehearsed it before they did the official tape, right, they talked to him off record, and then they put the tape on and they talked to him, and so the jurors were told, hey,

look it, this is a gang case. Piasso doesn't want to come in here and write out his homies, so you can believe what he said to Riggs when he's trying to get out of custody, and Curio, poor Curio, he's being intimidated and threatened by all these gang members. So that's why he's not going to say it in front of you all. But he looked what he said to the to the cops. You know, he made this idea,

and that was the entirety of the prosecutor's case. And the other thing she did, without any legitimate basis for doing so, is she made every single one of the alibi witnesses look like liars and made it sound like the alibi was this last minute defense that defense lawyers put together at the very end, when John's mother had presented the lawyers with line by line, minute by minute timeline of where everybody was, who showed up, when, who left when, the names, the phone numbers and all of

that the day she hired John's lawyer. So the alibi was known right from the get go, but the jurors were misled into believing it was all some fabrication by the tricky defense lawyers. I mean, I can see how you could impeach alibi witnesses as friends and loved ones or as they did in this case fellow gang members and friends of lawnd Al thirteen, So the messages that everyone is gang related and therefore lying. But your lawyer

could have backed up the alibi with phone records. It's not that complicated it but even without that support though, from what I understand, the one witness that was used in this corrupt identification process, Curiel, was adamant that he did not stand by this identification. Did he really take off his glasses to demonstrate how bad his vision was, because that would have been pretty powerful. Does anyone remember that? Yeah? I remember that he took off his glasses in court

and couldn't see anything. I mean, you could tell he couldn't see anything. You know when when someone I can take off my glasses and you can tell I need them just by looking at me. So, I mean, it was amazing, man, it was. It was crazy. Another thing that I remember happening with the district attorney. She said that I gave him my thumbs up. Yeah. I read about that to Curio, like as if he was helping you out. And I'm curious now she's ever used that

tactic against other defendants. Because the whole court room focused on me and this is did you just give the guy a thumbs up an open quote room. Now mind, he wasn't doing me any favors, there was no reason, and I did not give him a thumbs up. I'm looking at the jury like I did not. But it was effective. It was that was dirty. It sounds like

they were just running the disgraceful play book. I mean, part of Curio's testimony was that the cops just convinced him that they had the right guys, and at that time, everyone believed the police right. And then all they had to do is say gang and gang member enough times and it's almost like Pavlov's dog and just almost a knee jerk reaction from the jury to say, okay, great, when do I get to vote guilty? The alibis and the witness protesting the identification just didn't seem to matter

at all, You got it? And then they throw that thumbs up in there. If I could jump in on that point. And in l A, they created this hardcore gang unit in the late eighties, I believe it was eight or eighty nine, and the whole purpose of that hardcore gang unit was like, damn, it's hard to prove these cases because everybody's a liar, and everybody has baggage, and and we don't have good witnesses. We got to

figure out a way. And basically what they did was they created this unit where they recruited all these over zealous prosecutors and say, hey, you get to be the shining star here, and you can make these cases that nobody else can may And then they gave them strategies

for how to do that. How do you what's the work around when you really can't prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt, Just say gang gang, gang, gang, gang, as many times as you can make everything be about scaring the hell out of the jurors and making them think that whoever sitting in the dependence seat is the worst person in the world just because they happen to have affiliated with a gang for whatever reason, and regardless of their level of involvement, let's get him off the street.

Evidence be damned. Even their use of the word homies, I mean, that's a racist dog whistle if I ever heard one. I saw the gang gang gang, pushed by the prosecutor, by the you know, by the detectives. You know, I saw my my lawyer not do a good job at all. The combination of all those things, I felt my life slipping away from me when they read the verdict. I remember her, you know, my family, my mom were willing. I remember looking up at the lights in the core

room trying to not you know, let no tears come out. Man, I think I probably did shed a couple of tears. You know, people talk about the worst moment in their life. That was for sure the worst moment right there. You know, I get to prison, I'm brand new. I don't know what to expect. I know that I'm surrounded by a bunch of guys that are violent, angry, confrontational, and so I'm navigating through that. You gotta walk on eggshows to

be sure. And I used to work out a lot because if I did end up having to get into a confrontation, I wanted to be able to defend myself, and so I used to work out for three hours a day in the beginning. I tell people this story all the time, like my kind of welcome to prison moment. I'm scared, but I'm also trying not to show fear.

You know, that's not a good idea in prison. I'm walking on the yard, some guys sitting down on a curb and as I'm walking, I'm I'm, you know, probably a foot or two away from him, and a guy comes up behind him. It just slices his whole face open, from like his lip to his ear. And just seeing that happen, like, you know, a foot away from me, it was like, where the funk am I? So, like

I said, it's just survival mode, that's it. As soon as I could, I started to read books and then I learned that, you know, the way the criminal fuel process works is your lawyer is gonna dump the case on you, and then it's gonna be on you to represent yourself. And that's when I started going to the library. I wouldn't go to the yard. I would go to the library instead, because you could go, we choose one

or the other. And started to learn the law. And then I found myself in solitary and I had to try to figure out way how am I going to get out of solitary was I started to study solitary confinement cases and I put together a memorandum of law on why lawyers should come to California and challenge long term solitary confinement, and in those efforts I managed to meet Professor Joe's Lobell from the University of Pittsburgh. It was through his student Brett Groat, who's who now the

director of the Abolitionist Law Center. They read my memorandum, they researched it, and they decided to come to California follow a class action, and that case settled in twenty And you know, I was partly responsible for getting guys that had been in there for thirty five years, twenty eight years, twenty seven years. Um Me myself, I was

there for thirteen years. It is one of the things that I've done in my life that I still feel the rewards of because today there's people that are outside and seeing the sky, seeing their family, and that is due to the work that I did. Obviously, I wasn't acted alone. I had there was a team of lawyers. But I put in the work and it paid off. Well. You should be very proud of that. And as part of that settlement, California can no longer put a prisoner

in solitary confinement for indeterminate periods. In Ed's case, it was thirteen years with no end in sight, simply based upon alleged gang membership. So now that you fought your way out of the prison. Within the prison, let's get to how you guys are here speaking with us today. So your initial appeals were denied. As far as I can see here, there's no real movement on this until Landrum once again reached out to Ed's family, saying that

he wanted to confess the murdering Aller con Right. We knew this already, but I guess he hadn't ever gone on the record about it and wasn't exactly easily reachable. He was also by this time in solitary doing life without parole. So John, take us through this. My friend told me when I got convicted, like, I'm gonna get you a lawyer. I don't care how long it takes, you know, once I can afford one, I'm gonna get

you one. So when this stuff came up with Landrum, that's when I talked to my best friend and I told him, you know, now is the time. You know, this guy's coming forward and confessing, Like, we need to get a lawyer, and thank god we got Dear Druft.

John's friend reached out to me in May of two thousand and twelve, and what had happened prior to that was Chad Landrum had written out a confession and provided it to Ed's family and then Ed used it to file his own habeas petition, but he didn't have any resources or a lawyer to help him, so it was just the paper that went in and the judge just

dismissed it without any thoughtful analysis at all. So when John's friend reached out to me, the first thing we did is we scheduled a trip to Pelican Bay to meet with Chad Landrum and at Dumbrici. Both of them were in the shoe unit and they had no ability

to communicate with one another. My sense of it was if there was merit to Chad Landrum's confession, we needed to do a lot more work to build it up, and so we asked all kinds of details, including who else would have known back in the day about Chad's

role in this killing and the details. He had not a single note in front of him reminding him about any of the details of the case, and he could give me specific information consistent with the police report, including the fact that he got out of the car and shot Alarcon. There were only two witnesses that saw that there were women across the street, and they were never used in the trial, so none of that was in

the trial record. All of the people from the auto body shop never saw anybody out of the car because the car doesn't come into their line of sight until after the shooting is done. He also knew that Alercon was shot with different types of bullets. That was a fact that, although it was contained in the records, would not be something that some random person would have known about. So there was a lot of key points in Chad Landrum's statements to me that made me think that he

probably was telling the truth. And so I asked him to tell me confirmation as to who else knew back then, and he told me his brother knew, and we followed up and talked to the brother, and the brother gave us all kinds of information. And I also asked Chad if he would take a polygraph, and he immediately agreed to, but the prison wouldn't allow us to go up there.

And so then you know, all of the places you would go logically in an investigation like this, including contact and Curiel stopped by his work out of the blue. He agrees to talk to us at an eyehop as soon as he gets off of work, and he lays it all out. He tells us consistent with his recantation, everything, and it's all on tape, so nobody, nobody can say

we put words in his mouth or anything. And then we did the same thing with all the alibi witnesses to find out, you know, was there more that could have been done to show that they were telling the truth, including the logical things like phone records and other people who could corroborate what they said. And it all fell into place, and it was like I remember talking to John, you know, we filed our brief and three months after investigation, and we felt like, this is a no brainer. He

should be out that year. I think that's how we all hope our system works, but unfortunately that's not how it usually goes, and this was no exception. So John's habeas was filed in October two thousand twelve. You presented all of this material, and like you said, it was a no brainer. In two thousand thirteen, Landrum made a formal confession on the record. Then Ed joined the Habeous

as well. So it seems like they're a lot of momentum, and in an effort to further support landrom confession, you reached out to his co defendant on the Richard Daily Murder, another wrongfully convicted person, Susan Mellon Right. So we went

and visited her. There was some delays along the way because she was being represented by someone else, but a year later I ended up representing her and in a lot of what I needed to prove her innocence overlapped with what I needed to prove for John and ultimately ed because there were so many witnesses in common, and representing Susan gave me access to witnesses that I didn't

have before that. So this is two thousand fourteen, Landrum and even alvare as one of the record confessing to their roles in the Daily Murder and clearing Susan of any responsibility. And after seventeen years in prison, seventeen long years, Susan's conviction was vacated, charges were dismissed and she went on to sue Marcella win and one twelve million. Good

for her. So we're obviously very happy for Susan. That seemed to be our system operating at the speed that it should, I mean, notwithstanding the seventeen long years wrongfully incarcerated. But for John and Ed there was a court order in November of two thousand twelve for the d A to respond to this habeas petition. What happened there was

one delay after another. There was transfers of district attorneys and all kinds of stuff that just a month turned into six month, turned into a year, turned into five years. And uh, it's hard. I can't even imagine, excuse me, what it's like for these guys, uh, to have to count on a lawyer on the outside saying, don't worry, I got you back. I'm gonna I'm gonna do this. You know, I'm gonna get it taken care of, when

they have been disappointed every step of the way. And I, you know, my experience of it is like, you know, the frustration I feel on my end can't even begin to compare to what these guys are going through. Right. Imagine having the keys to the prison gates staring you in the face for eight years before the district attorney or the courts even pretend to not ignore them. It wasn't until a judge finally made a ruling that amounts to basically a brain fart of a man in cognitive decline.

So tell us about this, Judge, Edmund Clark Jr. And how this thing finally turned around. So it was clear we weren't going to be able to force anybody's hand until we filed this supplemental brief. And I mean, this is this brief because of all of the evidence that was developed during Susan Mellon's case was even stronger than what we had, and we had a clear winner from from the beginning. But it lands in the hands of a judge who couldn't care less and in a heartbeat,

without any hearing or anything, he denies it. He characterizes it as a proceed proper petition. When I have my name all over it, it's clear I'm representing him, and I had already been on the record, and he completely distorted the history of it and made it sound like it was a brand new petition that was relitigating issues that had already been decided against John. So he dismissed it,

and then he retired soon after that. So I filed two motions, one for reconsideration and one for a ruling on the original petition and either way, we were prepared to go to the Court of appeal. That's where we

thought we were going to end up. But fortunately the judge who took the other judge's place really was concerned that this might be a case involving innocent people, and she told the d A, you're gonna need to commit get yourself on paper, tell me what your position is on this case, because if these are innocent people, we have to deal with it. And once they were forced to deal with it, then they submitted. Then they just

read the document and answered the document. Back in two thousand and twelve, it would have been the same answer they submitted. They said that based on the cumulative error in the case, that the conviction should be vacated and they were not going to pursue the charges. They were going to recommend that it be dismissed. They could have done that back in two thousand. I'm rarely at a loss for words, but this just really makes my stomach turn.

I mean, it's just so it makes me so angry, frustrated, and just I feel a sense of deep sadness. And this didn't even happen to me, but I just hate injustice. And this is such a grotesque example of this system at its worst. Um. We see it a lot on the show, but this one, this one's really leaving a bitter taste. But the silver lining, of course, is that you're out, even if it took so much longer than it should have. And never mind that it should have

never even happened in the first place. And John, I understand that despite it all, you have somehow managed to maintain a positive out luck. Every day is a blessing for sure, you know. And as each day goes by, it seems so much farther away from everything that happened. But it just feels great to be out and great to be free. And words can't express it or describe it. Really. Yeah, you know, I getting arrested at fifteen and sent off to prison. I, um, there's a lot of things in

normal society that I've never experienced. Um, you know, just this last year was the first time I took a plane ride, the first time I've been to a lake, to a river. But also like the first time I had to pay bills, Um, the first time I had to keep up with the appointments, responsibilities, bouncing school and work. What I'm finding is that it doesn't just fall in the place. It doesn't and I'm working through that. But there are times when I feel a little bit lost

out here. I really do, I really do. But I'm confident and optimistic that it's going to come together. And and I understand that you'd like to start a nonprofit. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing now. I applied for a job in Pittsburgh and a nonprofit abolitionist law center. I'm hopeful that I get the job. If I do, I'm headed out that way in order for me to work there, but also to learn about nonprofits and how it runs and m with

the goal of creating my own. I want to call it juvenile Justice for All, and the goal would be to have children treated equally and fairly, to have their their parents rights respected. A lot of times they just adopted out laws. The adult prison system doesn't help children at all. I looked to filing cases in court, but also working on policy changes, speaking to other nonprofits and

getting them to support some of these ideas. My goal is to have a uniform system in America treating children equally and fairly across the board well and you've already been able to accomplish so much from behind bars, So we're gonna be on the lookout for juvenile justice for all.

And we'll also link to Innocence Matters, the organization that Deirdre co founded, so please show them your support, and John's Instagram as well, where he'll keep you up to date on the continued fight for justice in this case. The courts are still trying to deny the factual innocence claim here, but after what we've heard here today, I

can't see any reason for it. And with that we're going to go to closing arguments, where first of all, I thank each of you from the bottom of my heart for joining us here, and then I'm gonna kick back in my chair, shut my microphone off, and leave my headphones on and just listen to anything else you feel is left to be said. Deirdre please start us off, and then we'll leave it to the guys to take

us off into the sunset. I think that it's essential for these stories to be told, and I'm so grateful that you guys give people like John and Ed the opportunity to tell the story said they lived through. I think it's important for the public to understand how fallible the system is, and I wish it was limited to the nineties, but I represent people who are charged today. It's the same fight, the same struggle, and we've got

to get it right the first time. We have to want to get it right the first time, because it doesn't serve anybody, even if all we care about collectively as a society is the money aspect of this. We're throwing money away. We're paying for people to be housed in prisons for crimes they didn't commit, and the real criminals are out there committing other crimes. So we need

to get it right. We need to want to get it right, and we need to applaud people like John and Ed who have gone through hell and back and we need to make their lives easier once they get out. We need to we need to help them in whatever way we can. Well. I um, I do appreciate this opportunity to speak about our case and what we went through to I know that there's a lot of other people out there that are in the same circumstances and

during the same struggle. UM So I do appreciate the work that you're doing, and I just I'm happy to be free. You know, I'm happy to be free. I'm looking forward to making a difference out here. I think it kind of for me would give my life meaning when I feel like I've lost so much of it already. UM, I'm hopeful that what's left of it I can actually make a difference and my experience will help other people. UM.

A couple of things. I'd just like to thank you Jason for what you do and Wrongful Conviction podcast Lava for Good. I follow all that stuff very closely. Keep it up because it's needed. I think it helps a lot, and even if it helps a little, a little is more than nothing. So for me, the one thing I would tell people is never to lose hope, never to give up. That's the key to everything, because I know in my case, I never gave up hope. I kept the fight, never got away from that. If you're innocent,

you better fight until you can't fight anymore. Hope is all you got, That's all that's gonna keep you going. Don't lose it. 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 and association with Signal Company Number one