Thankfully, many of our guests have been released from prison, either before or after our coverage has been released, but others have not been so fortunate, including the man whose case we'd like to highlight again today, James King. Since our initial release of his story, the California Supreme Court, while providing no reasoning, denied James's habeas petition after sitting on it for a year. His attorney, Ian Graham assures us that he will not give up and is now
seeking clemency for the governor. Luckily, they've got a very good man in office, Gavin Newsom, who we hope will do what others have lacked the courage and conviction to do. Here is his story of how a man's freedom was literally stolen away by the provable lives of a child at the insistence of her criminally vindictive mother. While renting a room in Selinas, California, a woman named ruth Ann supported her drug habit and her thirteen year old daughter
Jamie with welfare and prostitution. James King previously rented a room in the same house else where he still received mail and maintained friendships, including with ruth Ann's boyfriend Eric Barton. And the landlord Doug do Bell. James would come by occasionally to pick up his mail and socialize, as he did on August first, nineteen ninety seven, for the Salinas Airshow. A few days later, while Landlord Dug do Bell was in Las Vegas, James intervened when he saw ruth Anne
trying to sell Doug's moped. Ruth Anne, who had already pawned Doug's TV, threatened James that she would get back at him if he ever told Doug. When Doug returned for Vegas on August eleventh, James found himself accused of stealing Doug's TV, which he firmly denied while reporting the
story about ruth Anne and the moped. When Eric Barton confirmed that ruth Anne was the culprit, James found himself accused once again, this time for the alleged August first sexual assault of thirteen year old Jamie, during which time he allegedly ejaculated on a tan carpet. When confronted with the carpet testing negative for seamen, the young girl said that her dog must have eaten it. She later changed the story to a blue carpet that Dobell confirmed did
not exist. Despite these glaring red flags that DA used Jamie's story and a medical experts testimony that has since been characterized as absurd to send James away from thirty five years to life. This is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today you're going to hear a story that is disturbing in so many ways. This story is the story of a man who's been in prison for a quarter century for a
crime that never happened. And it's got so many lies in it that you'll you may need a pen and paper to keep the lies. I mean, it's just absolutely breathtaking the web that was woven in order to not only convict but also keep this innocent man in prison for this long. The attorney is Ian Graham. He's a civil rights attorney with Cravis Graham and Zucker in California. Ian, Welcome to Rafel Conviction.
Thanks Jason. It's a real pleasure to be here.
And soon you'll be hearing the phone ring and we'll be hearing from the man himself. James King will be calling in from the California Men's Colony, which is a. I mean, it seems like sort of a benign name for a place that is no place for an innocent man to be. Oh, and here we go. We're going to our call right now.
This is Global telling you have a prepaid call from an inmate at the California Men's Colony, San Luis Obispo, California. This call and your telephone number will be monitored and recorded. To accept this call, say or dial five now. Thank you for using Global tail Link.
Hello James, Hi, how finally get to talk to you.
Well, I'm so glad you're here too, even though I really hate why you're here, or more to the point, where you are.
Thank you.
So tell us a bit about your life growing up.
Yeah, okay, I grew up in Actually I was born in Germany. My dad was in the army for twenty five years and we came back to the United States when I was like six years old, and then we moved to California, and I've been in California all my life.
So you grew up in a military family. And we've spoken with your mom, Lilyan, many times, and it sounds like you had a relatively normal life working in the moving business until you had a run in with the law for burglary. Now that's a serious crime, but when you hear the details of it, it was actually a bit more benign than it sounds.
Go only three hundred dollars. So I was mad and I shouldn't have done it, and I went in the house and took a VCR. When I took it, I even call her it, told her I took your VCR and she called the police call me. That's how that happened, and they got me for burglary. So I had to plead guilty to it. I got a year in prison for that. That was all it was to it. And I should never done that.
So, okay, you knew this person and they owed you money, and you obviously shouldn't have done that. You've acknowledged that that was a dumb thing to do. But now you've got one strike for burglary.
But I have no six grids in my life at all, man, not even allegations that I'd done anything right.
So this was a non sexual crime. So why did I even bring it up? You might be asking yourself. Well, at the time, with the newly minted nineteen ninety four Crime Bill, what this meant was that you had one strike against you, so a second offense would mean doubling any sentence. But for now you just got the one year sentence. So you get out, go back to the moving business doing odd jobs, and you're renting a room from a man named Doug Dobell and Selenas, California.
Yeah, I was living in duglam Bill's out for about seven months and I moved out and got my own place. It was a ninety seventh and I was leaving Alenas at the time. When I moved out. I still stay friends with Doug and I had to go over her and get my meal every day because I did not pann my meal switch. I just kept it there at Doug's.
House, all right. So you were also doing some odd jobs for Doug. You two guys had a mutual friend, Eric Barton, who was dating a woman who had just begun renting a room from Doug. And her name was Ruth Ann, a woman who threw her own admission, had suffered from manic depression, borderline multiple personality disordered drug addiction, all while struggling to support her drug habit and her thirteen year old daughter Jamie with the help of welfare
and prostitution. So now Ian this brings us to the summer of nineteen ninety seven at Doug Dobell's house.
So, in the summer of nineteen ninety seven, there were four or five people living there. In addition to Jamie and ruth Anne, there was a woman named Bonnie Roman, her husband and Bonnie's brother I believe named Eli Roman. So on August first, nineteen ninety seven, James goes by Dobell's house. I believe it was the day of the Salinas Air Show. So he was going over to see Dobell. And you know, he knew ruth Ann a little bit, and you know, have a few beers for the air show.
And so he goes into the house and Eric Barton is occupied in the bedroom with ruth Ann.
Ruthan wanted me to go to the store for her and get some beer for her. She didn't have a car, her car was broke down, so nice to me. When I was going to the store, Jamie asked me because she'd go and get a soda pop And I say, to ask your mother, and her mother sits sure.
So King goes and gets some beer and comes back to the house. Ruth Ann comes out and gets a beer out of the fridge, and King's there and Jamie's there, no issues, goes back into the bedroom with Barton, and you know, the day goes off without a hitch. Over the course of the next few days, while Doug Dobell was still out of town in Las Vegas, James sees ruth Anne trying to sell Dobell's mopead and intervenes and stops her and tells her she can't be selling Dobell's property.
Ruth Anne and James got into a verbal altercation when he prevented her from selling the moped.
I said, excuse me, sir, this is not ruth Dan's moulped. This is the owner's moped. And if you buy this, you're buying something that is stolen. And that's when ruth Dan turned to me, you bastard, if you tell Doug about this, she said, if we get if we're getting picked it out of here because of you, I will pay you back one hundred times over.
She had, also, by the way, pawned Dobell's television that week when he was out of town. So on August eleventh, Dobell returns from Las Vegas to his house and he notices that there's property damaged. His TV is missing, and James tells Dobell that ruth Anne had pawned the TV and tried to sell themed and this was later confirmed by Eric Barton, who had seen ruth Anner do this
stuff too. So Dobell and ruth Anne get into an argument about her conduct while she's staying at the house, and the next day, ruth Ann comes to Dobell with Jamie and tells Dobell that James King has molested and
tried to rape Jamie. Dobell, who was horrified and actually scared that he was going to be himself accused of this assault, immediately calls the police and Dobell drives Jamie and ruth Anne to the police station for Jamie to be interviewed, and on the way to the police station, ruth Ann is mad at Dobell because, as Dobell testified, he didn't give ruth Anne and Jamie time for them to get their stories straight.
Yeah, this is just the beginning, I mean yeah, And so she is now grasping at straws because she's angry that her scheme was sort of you know interrupted.
Yeah, well, but I guess maybe should give just a brief background. You know, Jamie's thirteen years old, and this is her mother who's working as a prostitute and has been a drug addict. And Jamie would later testify that she was raped when she was four, and she was raped when she was eight, and as you'll see, will
become relevant later the second time. She also said that there was a convenience store involved, and we have fairly good evidence that she was also being sexually assaulted at this time that we're talking about August of nineteen ninety seven, just not by James King. So I have a great deal of sympathy for Jamie and her situation. It doesn't change the facts that we're going to develop going forward, but that's just the circumstances that we're dealing with here.
So now this awful scenario is starting to grow legs, so to speak. Right, Dobell has driven them down to the police station. What happened at that interview.
Jamie was taken into a room separated from her mother and interviewed by detectives. She said that on that day of August first, when James King came over to the house, that he was going to go to the convenience store to buy beer, and that because there was no one else around, he knocked on the bedroom door, interrupted Barton and ruth Anne and asked ruth Anne whether he should take Jamie to the store with him or just leave her there, and ruth Anne said, yeah, why don't you
take her? So, she says, she and James drove to the liquor store, convenience store, whatever it is. He got beer, he bought Jamie a soda, and they're driving back and she said that on the way back he pretended to get lost and he began touching her thigh into her private areas. And then they get back to the house. Ruth Ann comes out of the bedroom, she gets a beer from the fridge, goes back into the bedroom. She
sees Jamie. Nothing going on, no problem at that point, according to Jamie, James takes her into the garage in the house and on top of a piece of carpet that's in the garage. Dobell by the ways in the carpet business, so there's a fairly large square of carpet that she says that he then forced her to orally copulate him and that he raped her, and that he ejaculated and the seamen went on the carpet. She was
actually very clear about that. The detectives asked her follow up questions to make sure because they would be able to then verify the story. So they asked her follow up questions and she says, yes, it was a brown or tan carpet. She told them where it was in the garage. I think initially at least one of them was slightly skeptical because for about a few things. Jamie had said that the attack had lasted for seventy five minutes, which seemed like an exceedingly long time, and there were
a few other details. So then they went over and they interviewed ruth Ann, and ruth Anne said that King had never come in and asks if he could take Jamie to the store. That had never happened, that when she came out of the bedroom, you know, she saw Jamie sitting there reading a book, no problem, nothing seemed out of order. Then she said that when Jamie told her about the incident, she said that King had tried to rape her, but not the story that she told
the police. The detectives then went back in with Jamie and said, your mom said that you know, she didn't see this and she didn't hear that, and that you told her that it was only James had tried something. And Jamie said, well, I don't know. I don't know why my mom would say that. So there's already a discrepancy there. And so then the detectives asked Jamie, well, did you tell anybody about what happened to you at the time that it happened or in the days afterwards.
Jamie says, the only person that I told the next day was my friend Erica. Erica then says, no, that didn't happen. Erica says that she does remember Jamie telling her that King had assaulted her, but that happened after Dobell had gotten home, So, in other words, it had happened sometime after August eleventh, more than ten days after the attack. So there were some flags in the story just from the beginning here.
There are a lot of flags, and the story really is just getting started, because when you hear what happens next and the way these lies start to unravel, it would be comical if it wasn't tragic.
So when the interview concludes, officer Hickman. He goes immediately to Dobell's house and Dobell takes him into the garage and there is a tan or brown carpet exactly in the place that Jamie described it. Dobell tells the officer it's been for at least a month, and it's the only one that's been in this garage for several months. So the officer takes that carpet and they have it laboratory tested for semen and it tests negative.
And just so.
They're sure, they take two other pieces of carpet, not even remotely where Jamie said they were or fitting description, but they just wanted to be thorough, so they grabbed two other pieces and they test those. They test negative. The detectives then went back asked again for Jamie to tell the story, and again Jamie tells a story, talks about King, he talks about how he ejaculated on the tan or brown carpet. So then the officer says, you know, we had that carpet tested and it didn't show that
there was any semen on it. It didn't come back, didn't test positive. There was none. And Jamie says, that's because my dog ate that part of the carpet.
That's because my dog ate that part of the.
Carpet, right, And you know, these are the things that a thirteen year old girl might say, which he's caught in a line. So the officer says, your dog ate it, and she says, well, also, I think my mom may have cut it up and maybe then also washed it. And the officer says, well, the carpet doesn't look like it's damaged in any way. And Jamie didn't have anything to say to that. So that is the state of the evidence that was turned over to the District Attorney's office.
This is where it should have ended, right, Yes, this was a moment right where the DA had that opportunity to say, you know what, none of this makes any fucking sense. Yeah, so, you know, unless you guys can bring me something, you know, some physical evidence. I witnessed testimony, some something other than a tangled web of lives from a poor child. I'm not going to prosecute this case. But that's not what happened.
Yeah, Well, they try to build some corroboration and on about August I think it was nineteenth or so, almost three weeks or so after this alleged attack by King. They have the prosecution's medical expert, doctor Valerie Barnes, examined Jamie and she says, oh, I saw a red spot on Jamie's mouth, and I saw redness in her vagina and a cleft on the hymen, and you know, a streaking here, and these are consistent with the sexual assault as she described it. That's just simply false. It's false.
And we know it's false because when James King's conviction was overturned for the first time, it was overturned because his lawyer had failed to call a medical expert to rebut that testimony from Valerie Barnes. And if they had called a medical expert to rebut that testimony, this is a federal judge talking, it would have demonstrated that it
wasn't true. And we know that because doctors Crawford and Coleman, and they are eminently qualified in child' saise sexual assault cases and typically testify for the prosecution, reviewed doctor Barnes's examination of Jamie and did their own examination of the same pictures and everything in Barnes looked at, and they concluded that Barnes' findings were medically absurd. To the point of showing bias. That none of the injuries or red spots that they saw were indicative of an assault that
happened on August first, or anytime around then. Acute sexual assault injuries like that heal within seventy two hours, maybe a week at most. They said that what Barnes saw were simply normal markings and that there was no cleft on a hymen. They could see it clearly. But those absurd findings had the benefit for the prosecution of corroborating Jamie's story because they said, these are consistent with the assault. So there's your corroboration.
Yeah, nice expert. And before we move on to inevitable in this trial, authorities had another opportunity to do the right thing here, but it too went completely ignored.
Shortly after the allegations came up and the investigation started going, Dobell found Jamie's diary in her room and he turned it over to the police. And in that diary, Jamie wrote about a man named Eli who she was in love with and who did stuff to her. And she would write things like do you really love me? Or do you just want to do those things to me?
And this would seem like is Eli Roman, who was living in the house and who was in his mid to late twenties at the time, And remarkably, she wrote about some sort of sexual interaction with Eli on the day or within a day of when she accused King. So in her diary there's something on August twelfth or thirteenth about you know, Eli and you know, doing stuff to her. So at trial she's asked about this and she denies it all and she says, no, no, I just write stuff in there, didn't have anything to do
with Eli. So you know, it's even a bit richer here where you actually have someone who is assaulting her who she professes to love in her diary, right.
Which just adds to the total absurdity of doctor Barnes examining Jamie nearly three weeks after this alleged August first incident, when acute injuries like that would heal within just over seventy two hours, and then testified about those findings at trial, attributing them to the alleged August first incident, when Jamie's diary clearly indicates that statutory rape happened within days of this examination. So, James, did you hire a lawyer, and what exactly did your lawyer do?
Well? At first I had a public defender that lawyer never got me an expert dispute all that right.
So, with no expert to refute and Jamie's testimony, this was basically a FATA complay. But there was still some hope in that there were so many holes in Jamie's story, especially about the carpet where she alleged that James deposited seamen, which came up negative every time despite many efforts. Then her ridiculous answer about the dog, you know, having eaten the carpet, like my dog ate my homework, literally, and then it gets even worse. The carpet in her story changed colors.
She switched from her statement about the carpet being tan or brown, which she'd said I think three or four times at this point leading up to trial, to the fact that the carpet was blue. In other words, no, Okay, my story before about the dog chewing it, maybe that doesn't seem reasonable. So let's just say it's a blue
carpet and it's a different carpet. Well, Dobell testified that there was no blue carpet in the garage, again, Doebell's in the carpet business, which is why we're talking about carpet in the garage and what he knows about it.
But he said that months earlier that there was a piece of blue carpet in the garage, but that it had been out of there for months prior to when this assault allegedly occurred, and that the only piece of carpet that even remotely matched the description that she's talking about, and that was that piece that was taken by the police, that the criminalists testified that was laboratory tested and negative for semen, and that it would have tested positive if
there had been any fluids on there. But a jury of twelve people, with all the flaws and biases that twelve people bring, seeing the testimony of a thirteen year old girl accusing this man who has a prior felony, non sexual felony on his record, is very compelling testimony. It is the testimony of a child talking about the abuse they've suffered. And James King is convicted and he is sentenced to thirty five years to life in prison.
It was devastating because I knew I was innocent, that I knew that this was all wrong. Man. I couldn't believe it. You feel like somebody hit me with the two x four right in the face. Man, twenty two years old. I never even had an allegation that I even touched a girl in a wrong way, and you would hap to do me.
This episode is underwritten by Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Porton and Garrison, a leading international law firm. Paul Weiss has long had an unwavering commitment to providing impactful, pro bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable members of our society and in support of the public interest, including extensive work in the criminal justice area.
Going to prison for a sex crime is very rough, as dagerous guys in prison don't like that. I have been jumped in prison. I have been beat down. See what happened. The guy that I was selling up with, he went through my vaperwork and found out what I was in there for, and he went out in the yard and told all the inmates what I was in there for. And that's when they jumped me beat me up. That happened to got to combate and I still got to deal with it. You got to watch yourself in here.
Twenty four years I've been in here for nothing. My mother, she's ninety years old, and I just don't want her to die. Why I'm in prison. It's going to carry me up then, you know, because I'm really close to my mom and I just wanted to be out there with her, and here I'm in here for nothing, you know, and it's really eat me up through a man.
I know, James. We've spoken to your mom several times, received many letters from her, and we promised her that we do all we possibly can to make a difference for you, which is one of the reasons why we're here right now talking about it, shining a light on this horrible injustice. So Ian tell us what happened in post conviction. His early appeals were repeatedly denied through nineteen ninety eight, ninety nine, all the way till two thousand
and nine, when finally he got to the federal habeas petition. Right.
Yes, and it is very hard to get even a federal court to hear you on the merits of your claim. It's even harder to win on the merits of your claim.
But his federal habeas petition made it through all of the procedural barriers and the federal district judge ended up granting his habeas petition on the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, basically saying his trial lawyer was ineffective for failing to call a medical expert who could have rebutted the testimony of doctor Valerie Barnes that Jamie had injuries
consistent with an assault by King. And she granted that because the two doctors, Crawford and Coleman, had provided not only a declarations, but witness testimony about what they saw
and about how wrong doctor Barnes was. So this judge grants the ineffective assistance a council, And in making that finding, this judge looked at Jamie's testimony and noted the serious gaps and contradictions in her testimony, the statement about the carpet and how it tested negative and then she said the dog ate it, and then she changed and said the carpet was blue. And all these things were noted by the federal judge overturning his conviction.
I mean, and this is so long ago. This was making me so sick. This is twelve long years ago, and it should have ended there, but the DA decided to retry mister King, charging him with three counts of aggravated sexual assaults on a child and lude conduct with a child, all of which he of course still pled not guilty. And prior to the retrial this is important, the prosecution offered him a deal, a plea.
He was presented with an option, will throw out the rape, will throw out the oral cop If you just plead to one count of lude conduct, you'll walk out a freeman time served, you are free to go. You can be back with your mother. And he turned it down. No guilty person offered the chance to walk out of prison or face retrial would say, fuck you, I'm innocent. Retry me.
And he did that, and Jamie informed the prosecution that she didn't object to the plea deal, but mister King, that's amazing, I mean, that's so. But mister King rejected it, maintaining his complete innocence.
And so they retried him. You know, the wrinkle here that really stands out to me is that leading up to the trial, some DA investigators did a few interviews with Jamie, and in these interviews, Jamie accused King of also sexually assaulting her in the living room in the house and the prosecutors started sort of following up on it, and then she admits, no, that's a lie. It was actually Eli Roman that made me do that. So she lying here again in twenty ten, so that was leading
up to the trial. So she goes into the courtroom again and she tells the story again, and doctor Barnes says, you know, does her thing again.
Her testimony remained consistent from the first trial, even though she'd been called out by these renowned esteemed doctors. Right, doctor James Crawford Jakubiak, who has received a Distinguished Service Award from the Sexual Assault Investigator Association with California two thousand and three. Since nineteen ninety four, had been listed on the Best Doctors in America ninety percent of the
cases he testified, and he pressified for the prosecution. And then there's doctor Lee Coleman, a psychiatrist with a specialty in sexual abuse cases, who also testified and agreed with doctor Carr. It's really is a mystery how he was able to be convicted wrongly a second time.
Just simply on the testimony of Jamie and doctor Barnes. Even though his conviction was overturned by a federal court. And even though the federal judge made all those findings about the holes and the evidence and the unbelievability of Jamie's story, James King got retried and he got sentenced again to thirty five years to life, and once again the appellate process gears start turning. He has his direct appeal in the California Court of Appeal habeas petitions and
those are denied once again. Actually, he filed a pro per which means without a lawyer, basically by himself. He chicken scratched out a federal habeas petition because he didn't have counsel at the time. And this time they denied it because the doctors testified at trial, and so even though they had serious doubts about Jamie's credibility, you know, the federal court said, we're not here to relitigate, you know, who we believe and who we don't believe. That's not
our role. That's a jury's role. So our hands are tied and we're going to deny your federal district habeas petition. And then in twenty seventeen, my firm was contacted by James and his mother, Lilian. You know, the first thing that we do is start reading, you know, we get the trial transcripts and we look at the direct appeal briefs and the habeas petitions and the court's rulings. This is one of those things where you feel your stomach turning.
It's hard to believe that this case has happened the way it's happened, and that James is once again in prison serving thirty five years to life based on the state of the evidence in this case. If you talk to any of the lawyers that have represented James throughout this saga, each one of them will tell you the same thing, that this is a man who is innocent, and they believe it as much as they've ever believed
any case they've ever had. When you're in this field, you see a lot of cases of a lot of people saying they didn't do it, and maybe some of them you agree with. Maybe some of them say, well, I'm not sure if they didn't do it, but their constitutional rights were violated at trial, and there are very few that you would bet your eyeballs that they're factually innocent. And this is a case that every lawyer who's touched it, aside from a prosecutor would tell you that, and I'd
tell you that. After we got involved in the case, what we saw was that the issue of false evidence had never been raised. And our view of the evidence and of the law is that the testimony that Jamie gave that the rug was now blue is false. It's demonstratively false, and the testimony of Valerie Barnes is false. To eminently qualified doctors have said it's false, and they've
said it's absurd. They've said that the things that doctor Barnes testified to but a cleft on the highmen and things of that nature simply were not there, did not exist. Her findings are absurd. So we file the habeas petition alleging false evidence introduced at trial and the ineffective assistance of his appellate counsel for failure to raise that issue. The Superior Court actually requested some informal briefing on the issue, and what the District Attorney's office came back with was, well,
we're just saying that there's a disagreement amongst experts. Doctor Barnes's testimony isn't false. She testified to what she saw. And then Crawford and Coleman testified to their findings and the jury made their determinations, so you can't say that that's false. And regarding the blue carpet, they said, well, Jamie was just mistaken about whether the carpet was blue or tan, and that explains everything. And we submitted a reply brief saying basically, all that's clearly bullshit. You know,
look at this, look at the transcripts. You know he's innocent. This evidence was false, and the Superior Court, not unsurprisingly unfortunately denied the habeas petition. We filed in the California Court of Appeal and it was denied, and so then we filed hayeyastetition in the California Supreme Court. This is our last forum here. And if this is denied, he's already filed a federal habeast petition pro per by himself, so we can't just go back to federal court and
knock on their door again. And I am deeply worried that if the California Supreme Court denies this habeas petition, that our only avenue at that point is to petition the governor's office for clemency or commutation, which is a difficult case to make when you have allegations like these.
Yeah, it's always a long shot, but it's also always worth to try. And the good news is that you have a great governor in California and his team, who I've gotten to know are really terrific people.
We are going to sort of change dot org petition that we would love for people who have heard about this case and who agree that James King should not spend any more time in prison than that he's an innocent man. Would go to the link and read more about the case and voice your support.
Once you see the evidence of se completely innocent of this crime. And I just thank you to please people, can you please sign my petition and.
We'll of course link to that in the bio, So please do go to the bio sign the petition. There will be other information as well. And now you know, we go to the part of the show that we call closing arguments. First of all, I thank you for being with us, and of course, James, you know what can I say except for the entire human race owes you an apology and so much more, and I hope that we're able to see you free in the not
too distant future. So and now closing arguments. I leave your microphones on, turn mine off, kick back in my chair with my headphones on, and just listen for anything you want to say. Let's start with you, Ian and save mister King. To close out the show.
James King is innocent. I think any fair minded person looking at the facts of this case and the history of this case would agree with there is an innocent man who has served twenty four years and he didn't do it. He's innocent. I don't fault Jamie. The circumstances of her life leading up to this were horrible. She was, in my view, being assaulted at that time, but by
somebody else, by somebody that she professed to love. When it came to accusing somebody, she was able to accuse James King of conduct that someone else had done to her. These cases require evidence. You cannot simply take the word of one person. They require corroboration, and when there's no physical evidence, When there's no corroboration, that should be a red flag. And then when the evidence comes back and it contradicts allegations, that should be an even bigger red flag.
And then when those contradictions are absurd, that the dog ate the evidence that the carpet magically switched colors, that James King did this stuff to me. Oh wait a minute, sorry, it was actually Eli Roman who did that stuff to me. That should be a stop sign. It shouldn't happen at that point. No one should have their life put in jeopardy. And let's not sugarcoated. I mean this is it's a death sentence. James King is going to die in prison
unless his conviction is overturned, his sentence is commuted. He's not going to get out. He's sixty six years old now, and he's not in great health. His mother's name is Lilian, she's in her mid eighties and she is in rapidly declining health. His one hope is to get out before she died, and her one hope is to see her son again outside of Prison's this is the kind of case that you know, makes you question what you're doing as a lawyer, if what you're doing has any value.
If we lose, if his conviction isn't overturned, have I failed? If we lose, James King dies in prison, his mother dies without ever seeing her son outside of prison again, and you know I will have failed.
James Now, over you.
God.
I'm just I'm just just just begging that somebody will please just help me. Just girl. Man, they hated me because I am the one who got to be victed. To see, they had nowhere to go. They were living on the streets. They hadn't made there, and I came along and I took it away from her. It was nothing, but we did refigiling, man, That's why they did this. I just pray that somebody will please. You can look at my patiency, the evidence that I'm totally innocent of
this crime. My mom, she thanks you so much what you're doing for me. She is so happy to hear this, what you guys are doing now for me. She's so happy. And I want you to know this that I want you to know one thing, this never happened. This never happened. Man.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Clibern, and Kevin Wartis. With research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time Oscar nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast and on Twitter at Wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
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