Late in the morning on February sixth, nineteen ninety six, George Bryant and Oscar Bridges were at Bryan's Kansas City home. According to four year old Kayla Bryant, her father invited in three men dressed in black, whom she had seen at the house two days earlier. It's believed that they
were there for a drug deal. While the men were in the kitchen, Kayla hurt a gunshot, her father fell, and Oscar Bridges ran into the basement, where he was later discovered bound, gagged, and shot twice in the head. While the men searched the house, George tried to run, was shot and bled out in the snow. The three
men sped off in a white Oldsmobile. Police received anonymous tips naming ten men as suspects, including men who knew George Bryant, Gary Goodspeed Senior and Junior, Marcus Merrill, and Ricky Kidd, with an alibi that included a trip to the Sheriff's office and not being identified by Kayla. Ricky
was released after recording a video lineup. Weeks later, allience neighbor Richard Harris was arrested while on parole in exchange for leniency, he offered a description of the crime that was inconsistent with all other witnesses, along with an ever
growing confidence in his identification of Ricky Kidd. Despite evidence that mostly pointed toward Merrill and both Good Speeds, authorities decided to prosecute Ricky on the strength of an incentivized informant and against the protest of the four year old witness, sending Ricky away for life without parole. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful Conviction. Today. You are going to hear from a guy who I'm really actually in awe of.
I've heard him on the radio, on podcasts, I've heard him on different platforms. I've read about him. He's somebody that everyone in the innocence movement respects and admires. He carries himself in a way that I think is just inspiring. I don't know how else to say it. And I'm going to introduce the man right now, and so Ricky Kid, welcome to Rafel Conviction.
Thank you, Jason, appreciate it.
I'm so glad you're here. Of course, I'm sorry you're here because the reason you're here is the miserable nightmare you had to live through. But before we get into all of that, Ricky, let's go back like they do in the movies when it gets all foggy and it was time traveled back. What was your life like growing up? What do you call it? A happy childhood?
Unfortunately, like many of the individuals who find themselves on the wrong side of the law, wrongfully convicted, there was some poverty issues. I grew up smart. I was always two grades above and reading and math. I was innocent of the woes of the world, the eels, the injustices of the world at that time, and I was a mama's boy. My name is Ricky, my mother's name is Vicky, and my sister name is Nicki, so it was Nicky,
Ricky and Vicki. My father never showed up, Jason. He for one reason or another, he decided not to participate in my life. And then in nineteen eighty eight nineteen eighty nine, my mother fell into crack cocaine addiction, and my sister, who had different fathers, so she went and stayed with her father's family, and my mother went into her addiction in the streets, and I was left essentially homeless.
Well that's actually quite the opposite of a happy childhood. And it's my understanding of the situation you found yourself and led you to come to know both the eventual victims and the assailants in this case. In fact, you knew the good Speed so well that people confused you for family.
I grew up next door to Gary Goodspeed junior. We became friends and did start calling each other's cousins. As we got older. Then I would call his mother auntie. I will call his daddy uncle. Essentially, when my mother went a wall and went into her addiction, his family actually took me in. I had an ultimatum from the good Speech was you're gonna have to find a way
to pay your way. So at a young age, I was introduced to selling crack cocaine, and the older guys would give me one hundred dollars pack five twenty dollar rocks, and if I sold all one hundred of them, I could to keep twenty. The idea was, little Ricky, if you get caught, see you a juvenile, you can't get into any trouble. So it just made sense to me, with the cards that my life had dealt me at that time, to do so thirteen fourteen, fifteen sixteen, I
was still this, you know, small time drug dealer. As we became older and I began to find my own way in this world, our passways began to go in different directions. When it came to February sixth, nineteen ninety six, the good speech would not have been considered friends. They would not really have even been considered associates.
And earlier on, your connection to drugs put you in touch with the victim in this case, George Bryant, who was also involved in that same lifestyle. And while your path diverged from the good speeds, you had three children, Jasmine, Raven and Austin. Now you were supplementing your income still selling drugs, and eventually that put you on the radar of the local police.
Yeah. I would have been known to the police. So the idea that you can be a street guy, the hustler, it was good enough for them to say, you might as well be a murder. It's all the same to them. That's what you do, right, you sell drugs, you kill each other, you Robin, But that just wasn't the case. I wasn't violent at all. I had a drug conviction.
I was arrested in October of nineteen ninety five. Drugs was found in a rental car, and so I popped on the radar there just months before the commission of the homicide in February of nineteen ninety six.
Just in time, of course, for your mugshot to be available for a photo lineup. So let's talk about the crime itself. So, like you said, it's February sixth, nineteen ninety six. This happened just before noon, and from the account of George's daughter Kayla, who was watching TV and having a happy meal. Ironically, it looks like George had invited three men into the house. We believe to make some sort of a drug deal. Kayla had seen the men though two days before, when they had come by
the house. She described one as fat and another skinny. Now, on the day of the crime, the men had come through the garage. They were dressed in black, and now they were all in the kitchen with George and a guy named Oscar Bridges. Kayla heard a gun go off and her father fell to the ground. Then Oscar ran down to the basement. One of the men followed Oscar, whose body was later discovered bound, gagged and shot twice
in the head. The other two men searched George's pockets, and while they searched the rest of the house, George tried to run but was shot. He tragically bled out, laying in the snow outside like a horror scene. Kayla said the quote. Fat one came back in and told her it was going to be all right. Then the three men got into a white sedan and peeled off. Police arrived at eleven fifty am and found Kayla still
on the phone with the nine one one dispatcher. Police received various anonymous tips naming ten different suspects, including Marcus Merrill and then also Darry Goodspeed Senior and Junior, and then of course you, Ricky. So investigators put together a photo lineup for Kayla that included you, Meryll and good Speed Junior. And get this, Kayla only picked out Meryl. Now, like you said, you were no longer associated with these guys, but you were still listed with the police as known associates.
And so when the double homicide had taken place, unbenoath to my lawyers and I at the time that the real killers good Speed Senor Junior and Merrow had not only committed the crime and fled, but to buy them some time in some space. They called Chips hotline and said that Ricky Kidd had something to do with this homicide. And so that's how I ended up popping up on their radar in the first place. They picked me up on February fourteenth, nineteen ninety six, interrogated me for about
five or six hours. I participated in a photo lineup, a video lineup, and.
They arrested Monica, your girlfriend at that time, as well. They separated you and interrogated you both, and your stories matched perfectly correct and the stories are pretty compelling. They could have easily verified these stories right, Which was that on the morning of the crime, you had agreed to watch your nephew, right well, your sister was at work.
And then that same morning that this crime took place, you and Monica and the little guy DJ had gone to Nikki's office to pick up your car and then stopped at McDonald's and went to the Jackson County Sheriff's office.
Imagine that, I mean, how.
Good of an alibi do you need? And this is the Sheriff's office at Late Jakomo where you applied for a gun permit, so I mean it. That's it, right. No more investigation is necessary than to just do those very basic things and go check the videotape at McDonald's. Go check and see if in fact you were at the sheriff's office. They would have a record of that. Obviously, if you applied for a gun permit. Now you agreed to stand at a videotape lineup, allowed police to search
the car and belongings. And I got to go back to the fact that you and your and Monica, your story's matched exactly. Now, if you were lying since you were separated, there's no chance that those stories would.
Have matched none at all.
It seems like initially when they first arrested you, they basically acknowledged that you weren't the.
Guy and they had let me go. They said it at the time, it appeared that somebody was throwing my name in a hat, trying to shuffle things around, and they released me February fifteenth. In my mind, there was no frame of reference at that time, in nineteen ninety six for me to even understand that I was in trouble. Ay, I'm in it. You can clearly go verify that I'm in a set and might whereabouts at the time of the crime. And they did not pursue that.
Now they go and they decided they're going to test six pairs of your shoes, and they compared them to shoeprints that were found in the kitchen. There was one shoeprint that was found on a piece of bread, and the other one was in blood on linoleum. And your shoes as well as the shoes of the victims were excluded as the source of the prince. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes here, ladies and gentlemen, right. So they also, at the same time, though, began to investigate Meryl,
Goodspeed Junior, and Good Speed Senior. All of them, interestingly enough, lived in Georgia, where Meryll and Good Speed Junior shared
an apartment. Now get this. Airline records showed that the three men had flown from Atlanta to Kansas City a few days prior to the murders and stated that Adams Marcotel before returning to Georgia after the murders Alamo rent the car records showed the Good Speed Senior rented a You guess that a white Oldsmobile which fit the description, the real descriptions of the getaway car and good speed.
Senior's fingerprint was found on a Carmex lip bomb wrapper with a price tag from a good to ghost store, one of which was a block and a half from Brian's home. Again, these are clues that are starting to really add up. I mean, that would be a crazy set of coincidences could happen. But okay, So then on March eleventh, nineteen ninety six, Richard Harris, who lived near mister Bryant, was arrested on a parole violation. I want to take us through this part, Ricky.
Yeah, this individual you're talking about, Richard Harris, was an alleged witness to the commission of the crime and he had a parole violation. He was brought in and detectives had already received a call that he might have some information as it related to the double homicide. And so when he go into the police station for his parole violation, homicide brings him down. They began to enter it him and that's where they received their first cooperating or what
I like to call cohersed witness. And so the opportunity was ripe for him to receive some type of favor in exchange for information, even if it was inaccurate information, to get himself back out of the trouble that he found himself in. And so what detectives done to help facilitate that was they showed Richard Harris a single photo of me first, and Richard Harris said, I cannot say that was him. Then they showed him a five man photo spread and lo and behold, who's the fifth man?
And the five man photo spread the same guy he just saw on a single photo. So then he said, I think I think that's the guy. They said, but you can't be sure. He said, no, I can't be sure. So they said, okay, let's go into this other room where they show him the video lineup. All the faces changed except up for Ricky Kidd. So at this stage he went from the single polar warid, I'm not sure, the five man photo spread it maybe number five, to
the video lineup. He became two thousand and one percent sure that Ricky Kidd was the guy that he saw, despite describing everything contrary to what the police began to collect or report on the evidence. For example, all witnesses said that there was three men. They hopped in a white late model OS mobile. They backed down the street. That they all had on ski masks and black trench coats. Richard Harris described one of them without a coat on at all, one with a brown coat, and that they
didn't back up, they actually went forward. And they was not in a late model osmobile. They was in a Nissan Stanza. And so early on, he's getting key facts wrong.
This guy obviously didn't see it. But nonetheless, on May twenty second, nineteen ninety six, a few months after this awful crime, were arrested again.
They came and they pulled their guns as I was driving away from my apartment, made me stop the car. I was surrounded by squad and police and detectives. My girlfriend, Monica Gray at the time, she was with me, made us put our hands up and they slapped those cold handcuffs on us and took us down to the police station. And I'm thinking, in my mind, what didn't they understand the first time? It's gonna be yet another inconvenience because I'm moving, you're gonna make I'm just gonna be late.
I'm gonna be late. I'm not gonna go to prison. Innocent people don't go to prison. I'm just about to be hastled, let go, and they once again realized that they have the wrong person. I had no previous experience with our justice system.
You told Detective Jay Pruding that you were with Monica all day and that whoever identified you must have confused you with somebody else, quite possibly your uncle, Gary Goodspeed Senior. But nonetheless you and Merrill were charged with the murders. Take us to what happens over the next month. When you reached out to this detective, right.
I was letting them know through the whole time that I was in the county jail. I had no bond, that I was innocent. First, I did not know why they would think I would be guilty, so I had to wait for my discovery. Once I was able to receive the police reports, about six hundred pages, maybe one hundred and fifty of them was keeping everything that they
collected together. Maybe about fifty or sixty pages was related to me, but the rest of the six hundred pages were all related to the good Speed and those clues and the dots that connected them to being involved in the commission of this crime, and so as I received my discovery in the county jail, I was smart enough as a novus, as a regular citizen, to see that you are barking up the wrong tree, and how can you possibly not see this, as seasoned detectives unless you
are purposely trying to send the wrong person to prison. So I would reach out, my sister would reach out. I would get on the phone. My lawyers would tell me, might I advise you don't talk to the detectives? And I heard her. I was smart enough to understand the basis of that. But in my mind, I'm thinking an innocent man could never get itself in any trouble. He's innocent.
So I would not listen, and I would call the detectives and I would wrestle with them over the phone till they one day came and picked me up and brought me over to headquarters, and I had about twenty five thirty minutes to articulate their case back to them. And man, you are to seen they I wish that was recorded. You are have seen their faces. I mean, I was a young Perry Mason, if you will, and I'm kind of being funny but serious, I was really laying out like this is how you're making a mistake,
and answer why this and why that. Gary Goodspeed Junior was picked up by the detectives and asked what time did George Bryant die? And Gary Goodspeed Junior says, in this police report he died at eleven forty seven or eleven forty six. Who else would know that other than the killer? It was never reported in papers, It was never reported in the news, It was never reported anywhere else. In fact, the detective asked them, how do you know that, good Speed Junior, he said, my dad told me so.
He would have been better off saying I read it in the newspaper, and we could try to find that newspaper that did not exist. But the news at that time had not reported the time of death, so how would you know? So it was these things. It was these glaring facts that I was challenging the detectives with, and they got so frustrated. You know, usually they put us in a pigeon box to speak when they get us in there. But I had them in the pigeon
box so much so that they called it off. One of the leadings Sargeant said, get him out of here. And don't bring you back over here again.
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The prosecutor, Amy McGowan, wanted to talk to Gary Goodspeed Senior and wanted to talk to Gary Goodspeed Junior. I was making too much of a fuss that I was innocent and that they were guilty according to the evidence that they have in their possession. And so the prosecutor's office worked to get Gary Goodspeed Senior and Gary Goodspeed Junior too participate in sworn depositions. And by the way, Gary Goodspeed Senior and Gary Goodspeed Junior was Marcus Murrell's
alibi witness. Marcus Merrill and I were charged. Marcus Merrill is saying I was not with Ricky Kidd. I was with Gary Goodspeed Senior, and I was with Gary Goodspeed Junior. And Gary Goodspeed Senior and Junior is saying, yeah what Marcus Merrill said, We was with him and we were not with Ricky Kidd. And so they reported to Amy McGowan's office for a sworn deposition. Marcus Merrell Lawyers was there. Detectives were summons to be there to read them their
Miranda rights. Why would you be reading these law abiding citizens of them Miranda rights if you did not have an indication that these were your guilty men? And so everybody was there except for Ricky kidds representation Teresa Andison. Now, by law, since this was a joint trial, all parties must be summons together. You cannot take a deposition outside of the presence of the other parties of individuals that
was involved. We was unaware that good Speech Senior and Junior were being deposed of in Amy the Prosecutor's office. During the deposition, they swore under oath that they was not with Ricky Kidd, further proof that I was innocent, and that they were indeed with Marcus Merrill and with each other, And they further went to collaborate evidence that suggested they did it. So police already had this five hundred page of police reports that some of the spots
and dots were already there. And what these two individuals did in a sworn deposition in the prosecutor's office is basically connect themselves to those spots and dots. What happened was Amy McGowan. She would have had to realize that she, indeed, at this point emphatically is holding the wrong person in the Jackson County jail across the street, and the real killers is sitting in her office. What did she decide
to do? She'd said, escort these individuals out of here and let them go and proceed it knowing that she was sending the wrong person to prison. And just one more little caveat to add to that, not only did she not invite my legal team to the depositions, but she also hid the fact that it even existed in the first place. Those transcripts of those depositions were printed, were created, and they was buried, buried as if it
never exists. It was only years later that Professor Sean O'Brien in the Midwest Centistnce Project was able to find those hitting and buried depositions, and we was able to present them to a court and prove emphatically to the court that Amy McGowan with hell key evidence and she did it maliciously.
What the fuck is wrong with you people? You're absolute right. They should have put the cuffs on them right there. They should have assigned somebody to go across the street and say we're sorry, mister kidd. This was a big misunderstanding. We wish you well. At a minimum, that's what they should have done. Yeah, but they were like, Nah, let these guys go and hope they don't go and murder anybody else.
Imagine that.
That's a level of evil that I think is hard for most people with any sort of a conscience to understand. But it's real because you're here to tell this story, which is a miracle in itself. You know.
The National Registry of Exoneration have noted in their report that fifty four percent of wrongful convictions has a direct correlation with police and prosecutorial misconduct. Fifty four percent.
I believe.
One of the last studies I read was that about four percent ever have any inquiry period, no matter how egregious it is. Amy McGowan's behavior that we're talking about today was so egregious, so egregious that nobody has come to her defense except for her lawyer. It is actually before the Missouri Supreme Court is hardly ever gone this far.
This case is so serious, her behavior so serious that the Missouri Supreme Court, which is a very conservative court here in this region, said no, no, no, we're going to take this case up and we're going to decide what type of punishment she deserves for this Injustice Act that she participated in.
I wish I had more confidence that they're going to do the right thing. The right thing really would be to put her where you were for twenty three.
Years, correct, correct?
I mean, I'm not an eye for an eye person by any stretchy imagination, but you don't have to be to understand that in less and until there's real accountability, not just losing your law license, and that almost never happens either. There's only been five prosecutors in the history of this vast wrongful conviction universe that goes back now
hundreds of years in America. There's only been five prosecutors disbarred, and you know one was recent in on Huffington case in Maryland, but only five this barred, and only two have ever gone to jail. Only two the Duke Lacrosse
Mike Nifong, he went to jail for one day. And in the Michael Morton case in Texas, a guy named Anderson went to jail for three days after putting Michael in prison for twenty four years and seven months for a crime that it was proven he knew, he knew, just like they knew in your case, he didn't commit it. So here comes the trial Jackson County. So you went to trial with Merrill, Right, Mister Merrill and his attorneys pointed the finger at you and said that you committed
the crime with the good speeds. And of course your defense was that Meryll defense. Your defense was the truth, which was that Meryll committed the crime with the good speeds. But truth had no place in this proceeding or this courtroom. And of course we know how this plays out, but it still took another couple of twists and turns. I'm talking about little Kayla, right, who's now maybe five years
old at this point. Right, This poor little child, a baby who's been through an experience that she probably bless her heart, has probably never will recover from it, certainly had recovered from at this point. So she got on the witness stand, tell us about this. It must have been a surreal moment for you.
It was, and it was sad what happened. They showed her a five man photo spread and said, can you identify the individuals that you saw at your house that day? And she pointed to number three, Marcus Merrell, and they said, okay, okay, good job. Now, now can you point to the other person you said you saw in the house that day And she said, no, I only saw one. I told you I only saw one. And so they would ask the judge, can we approach she's she's tired, she's hungry,
she's this, that and the other. So they tried to go back over there and rehabilitate her or get her to look around the court and see if you can identify any of those individuals that you saw in your home that day, and she could not. When they further pressed her on the stand, she became even more frazzled and frustrated, and she said, I forgot, I forgot the story.
I forgot the whole story. Now, given that a five year old can miss speak as they're learning full of sentences, but as adults, when people use that type of language, story it's something that's made up, it's something that's told to them, and so we don't just say that loosely. There's other evidence that support that she was told a story. Her mother admits that she was told things, that she
told her daughter things. And so the idea that it's coming out in trial that they are trying to get this little girl to send an innocent person in prison based on what she was told, not based on what she actually may know, at least in full their case, rightfully so was weak and so they had to figure out, yannor can we take a quick break, And they had to figure out how do I shore up this case?
And so after they took a little ten minute break, some wise guy on the prosecutor side said, Hey, let's call the detectives who said that she said that to them and have them to say that to the jury. And that's what they did, Jason. They brought in the homicide detectives. Violated a hearsay rule where I had to write to confront my witness. But my witness had said what she said, so, they said, let's bring the detectives in.
They came in, about two or three of them took the stand and said, yeah, we know what she wasn't able to do today. But they looked to the jury, They looked to the court, They looked to the judge and said, but that's what she told us. They said that this is what happened at headquarters. She came in, We got her calm, we got her chill, and then
we began to proceed with the identification. Prop says that she couldn't identify him in the photo spread, but when we showed her the video, she started shaking real bad. She had to be consulted and controlled that. She began to cry and say, that's him, that guy right there, that's who killed my daddy, says the police. You have recordings, you have in fact transcribed these recordings, and nothing nowhere
near on paper suggests that she identified me at all. Furthermore, once police said that this is what she did and trial, they testified to that what happened at police headquarters, They said, well, then what did you do next? They said, well, we took her in the video recording room and we video recorded a statement from her. They played the video recorded statement. Not a question asked about Ricky kit. It's hard to believe. Not a question asked, not even a question looking don't
they didn't have to. Okay, maybe we didn't go into the weeds of it. You didn't even you have an opportunity to memorialize a sensitive interview of a four and a half or five year old child. You say in the other room, this is all that she said. But when you get a chance to video record and memorialize it, you don't do it. Why don't you do it? Because it didn't happen. That's why they didn't do it. But they took those police detectives' words as a credible.
So this little five year old, this brave, little fatherless child, tried to do the right thing, even though she probably desperately wanted to listen and had been influenced by these people who are trying everything they could, and she must have desperately wanted to help find and bring to justice the person who killed her daddy, and the other man in the house said day and even then, even under
all that pressure, she stood up. And their response is to go conspire, to put lies upon lies and it sounds a lot like hearsay as well, right, because they're coming in when going well no, but she said at a different time, I mean, this is how that's admissible. I you know, I'm at a loss. I mean, I don't even know why we have perjury laws if we're not going to hold these people to account for what is the most one of the most obvious cases of perjury
that anybody's ever seen. But like you said, it happens every day, all day and twice on Sunday. So then comes Richard Harris.
So when we talk about the state witness, Richard Harris let me context that there's no physical evidence connecting me to the crime. So all they had was Caleb Bryant, who we just talked about, and then what they had left was Richard Harris, this neighbor guy who was into trouble, who was looking to save his own soul. He testifies that he is two thousand and one percent sure that it was Ricky Kidd who he saw committing the crime on that day. To help bolster his memory, I don't
know if they worked with him on this. He called me the terminator. How do you know so much? Because he walked like a terminator. I guess I don't know, robot. I'm not quite sure, but I just think it was designed to boaster his identification that he was accurate. The problem was I didn't walk like no terminator. I didn't have any walk like a terrainator. But they didn't say, ricky, kid, you get up and you walk, can you demonstrate to
the jury? So on the surface, it sounds like he gotta be right because he was able to distinguish how this guy walks. It was designed to boaster a false testimony. He gives me a beard. I'm twenty two years of age at that time. I did not have a beerd he put a beard on me. My lawyer tried to impeach him there. She did a real terrible job doing that. All photos had shown that I was clean faced, like
I couldn't have had a beard. I think they had got a photo of me just weeks before the nd But this guy came in and testified that he was two thousand and one percent sure that I was the guy, despite getting everything else wrong about the commission of the crime. And listen to me, he didn't get one thing. Oh, I can see how he got a couple of things wrong,
but he got a couple of things right. This state witness Richard Harris, didn't get one thing right that all other independent neighbors were saying about what happened before and after the gunfire. But they found this guy credible.
He lied, and he had I mean, I'm not excusing it by any means, but he had a hell of
a choice, right. He had the choice of either going back to jail, which they were threatened to throw him back to jail on the parle violation, which he obviously didn't want to do, or saying nothing, in which case they would have put him back in jail, or implicating the actual killers and he knew exactly who they were and putting his own life in very real danger, or pinning it on an innocent guy and walking free and just having to live with his own conscience. And he
chose the easy way out, Ricky. This trial, unlike some other Rowful convictions that we've covered, where they didn't even bother or present halibi witnesses or anything like that, due to either the fact that they may not have been any because maybe the person was just home a sleep at the time, or the fact that the attorney was just incompetent or didn't care or whatever. But in your case, you had credible alibi witnesses to refute the ridiculous false
narrative that mister Harris was putting forward. So tell us a little about who testified in your defense.
Yeah, Jason, we had my stepfather testify that he came down early that morning and gave me a jumpstart. My sister testified that she stayed at my house, that she took my new core, that I came to her job to pick up that new car. Two of her co workers testified that I came to her job that day as well, that they was the one who greeted me and escorted me over to my sister to pick up the keys. My daughter, Jasmine, her mother Kelly, she testified
that I came out to her house as well. And then my girlfriend at the time, Monica Gray, testified to the fullness of all of that because she was with me all day, so she was the base of all of those added testimonies of where I was throughout the fullness of the day the gun permitted. I was at the Jackson County Sheriff's Department applying for a legal handgun at the time, but they brought in a sergeant in Buffalo.
He was a prosecutor's witness who did not handle the screening for that that was not his job, and he testified this, yeah, this could have been mailed in, faxed in, could have been brought in by somebody else, and so he cast serious doubt of the fact that I would have been at the Sheriff's department, when in fact he
was wrong. It couldn't have been brought in by someone else because they require ID, it couldn't have been faxed in because it would have had a fact number at the top, and it couldn't have been mailed in because the individual wouldn't know the accuracy of the mailing system to be able to get that done. We had to later find Susan Jordan, the lady who actually did process that application, and she later testified in my appeals that it indeed happened the way Ricky's legal team said it happened.
But back to the trial, this is the evidence that we was able to put on, and unfortunately the jury decided to side with the state.
And with the one guy who was far from credible against all these people who were credible and whose stories all matched up together. But okay, so now comes a moment where the jury goes out. How long would they out for?
I think an hour? Forty an hour?
Yeah? Wow, okay, so they come back after forty five minutes to an hour. Did you still hold out any hope?
I thought that I was going home still. I just did not believe, even through all what I was saying, I did not believe that innocent people go to prison. The judge told them to all rise. The verdict was read that it was guilty. It was guilty on all counts. Just imagine, because many of us have not lived through an earthquake. I have not, at least not the type of earthquake I'm talking about that's underneath the earth. But
it felt like an earthquake. It just I felt my knees buckling, I felt my body shaken, and everything slowed down. And when they started seeing life without the possibility, tears were so intense streaming down my face that I could not see. I fell to my seat and I sobbed. I sobbed so hard, it was so loud, my nose was rhyming. Every part of my fiber in my being
was devastated. So off the prison I went March twenty fourth, nineteen ninety seven, Potosi Correctional Center, Maximum level five prison here in the state of Missouri, where they housed death row inmates, and I remember getting off that bus, shackled to about half a dozen to a dozen of other individuals, and the officer greeting us with a salutation of gentlemen, welcome to hell. In hell, it was the cold stairs, the whistles, the stale environment. I did not know how
I was gonna survive. I did not have a friend, an uncle, a brother. I did not know a person in prison. And so these fifteen hundred men, most of them on the yard, it was recreation. I'm thinking, uh, I'm in trouble. So I had to think real fast. I know, I didn't have the muscle that these other individuals have. I didn't have the friends and the click that these other individuals would run with. I just had myself.
One of the first things I did was not play tough, as to not to invite trouble and to really use my head. When I saw lures and traps of you know, come over here, meet me over here, I would decide not to. I did meet a couple of friends early on. Our associates who seem to be good guys who made bad decisions, saw the goodness in me and pulled me up earlier and gave me the five or six seven pointers to avoid to make sure that I can have a successful bit that I could do this time with
as little amount of trouble as possible. I saw violence, I saw assaults, I saw stabbings. I mean, you name it, I saw it, and I just would use my head. I would often tell myself intelligence over emotion, so I would try not to respond emotionally, even when I was being punked. A couple of times, which they were call punk punked out of my seat, told to get up from having breakfast because this was they table, but they
were sitting at the table over the day before. They said well, we want this table today, and so you're forced to either confront that or get up and stand by the island where you get your trade from and eat at the island. I did that for a couple of days until a couple again be good friends came or associated came and said no, you could sit at our table. Overall through the twenty three years, it was my faith that I survived off of. It was the
idea that I was innocent that I survived of. It was the idea my family who I left behind, my kids, who I left behind. I wanted to commit suicide. I contemplated suicide on many occasions, but what halted those actions and behavior was seeing my family on the outside, still
needing me and wanting me to be there. There's less than a one percent chance ever been successful on appeal when you're fighting wrong for convictions and people will tell me to give it up, Ricky, it's a one percent chance, And I say, yeah, but you didn't say there was a no percent chance. So I did not want to understand as much how the ninety nine percent loss. I wanted to understand more of how did the one percent win?
And that's what I would be guided by for those twenty three years until we was successful in becoming among that one percent and winning.
Wow, there was absolutely no you had a much better than one percent chance of being killed while you're in prison. Yeah, it's a miracle that you never did decide to take your own life, as so many people do in those facilities, wrongfully convicted or even people who were not wrong, convicted, but you stood strong. Somehow or other, you found the will to live, to learn, and to fight, and fight you did, and fortunately you were able to get the attention of the people that could help you. And of
course now I'm talking about the Midwest Innocence Project. Oh yeah, because Tricia Bushnell. I mean google this, google her because if you, I think, if you look up, doesn't fuck around, you know, hers might be one of the first names that comes up. I mean, when she gets involved, this is when things can really turn. And I encourage people to join me in supporting the Midwest Innocence Project. They are one of the oh yeah, best in the country, best in class. Will put a link in the bio
of the episode where people want to donate. So Tricia bush down racial Western.
Oh yeah, I'm a professor. Sean O'Brien, who was also a great part of the legal team, often led the legal team.
Like the freaking Avengers came in right, and yeah it's a miracle that they did.
I lost eleven times before I won my very last appeal. Appeal after appeal after appeal, everyone is good as the next during the appeals process that whole twenty three years, my lawyer stayed on this guy, Richard Harris, and they was successful in being able to get this witness to expose his lies. I mean, riddle, riddle, every time they talked to him it was something different, and they said, Ricky,
we got him. He comes to court and any blind jurists a judge will be able to see that this guy is not credible and that the conviction should not stand, particularly since your conviction was solely based on this loan eyewitness testimony. And so my final appeal, that twelfth appeal, in April of twenty nineteen, this Richard Harris came to court.
So you're at this hearing, Richard Harris is getting ready to be torn to shreds by your well dream team, and then something totally unexpected happens.
We was prepared to just show all the inocuracies and straight out lives. We had a chart fifteen inconsistencies, eight straight out lies, and we had the chart to match on this page and this deposition, and he was toast. But before we can really even get to that, he had a conscious and he came clean. He testified that he lied and that it wasn't me. He testified that he knew it was the good Speeds and that he
picked me because there was no harm. But if he identified the good Speeds, they would come after him and get him. So he was willing to lie. When the state attorneys general tried to get up and rehabilitate his testimony, Richard Hare, it was in the movies.
It's like a movie.
He snapped, I'm sick of this. You're not scaring me. I'm not scared of you anymore. And he stood up to Hi, I'm doing the right thing today and I'm adding some words in, but it was it was a flare. Everybody in the courtroom was looking, including the judge. He's innocent and y'all should let him go now. I'm done
with this. And he began to break down and cry and he looked over at me and he said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sor and he got up and rate didn't even get dismissed from the witness box, and he just got up and ran out of the courtroom.
So wow, that is super dramatic. And by the way, it's hard not to think about the fact that this guy who led a hard life, I'm sure, and you know, had to stay alive that almost quarter century man or he finally came clean. If he would have died or man, you know, or something else happened to him, or become incapacitated somehow, or moved away where they couldn't find him, then you would be still in prison now and for the rest of your life. It all hung on that little thread, right, Yeah, it.
Is a very strong likelihood. Yeah, yeah, And I was always nervous about that. Fortunate for me in our legal team, that wasn't the case and we didn't have to suffer such a devastating blow.
And in the end, Judge Atkins ruled that the evidence, and this is a direct quote from the judge, established his innocence from multiple as end quote, Mike Drop. The evidence, he said, showed that you were not involved, that your alibi was truthful, and that the inescapable conclusion was exactly what was known from the very beginning, which was that Briant and Bridges were murdered by the good Speeds and by Merrill.
When I got the legal call, there was an indication that the judge was going to rule in our favor just by the questions he was asking both parties as he was preparing his ruling. The emails he would send them. He has to send it to both sides, and so we was reading the tea leaves. If he was going to say no, he wouldn't be asking us for this. If he was going to say yes, he would be asking us for this. He's asking us for this. But we never fully knew, and so I was working out
that day. On August fourteenth, twenty nineteen, they said, you have a legal call. I called my lawyers and Trisha and Rachel was on that phone. When two or more lawyers on the phone, it usually has been bad news. Only talked to one when it's just an update or some brief. So I did not know, oh, what's going here. And so they was like, hey, buddy, how's it going. And sometimes they'll do that too to prepare me for the shocking news or the bad news. And I said,
I'm doing five. I said, tell me what's going on? They said, well, hold on, let me get the rest of the lawyers on the phone as well. That made me kind of feel up beat. I said, the rest of the lawyers. She said, yeah, we're waiting for Cindy, Cindy Dodge and Sean O'Brien. I said, oh, this is good news in my mind. And so they all got on the call, all four of them, me and nobody wanted to lead, so I just I said, hey, somebody tell me please, what's going on? And Sean O'Brien said, Ricky,
you know what's going on? And Cindy Dodge broke out, You're free. You're a free the judge has ordered you to go free. You're free, Ricky, and I just started crying. I just started crying the whole twenty minutes. They was telling me everything that was gonna happen next and I didn't hear none of it. I didn't hear that of it. I was crying so hard. But it was a whole different type of crime, Jason, and that was the highlight.
That was the highlight of my twenty three year roll for conviction, knowing that that was the day that I was about to be Freekin, that's.
A beautiful, beautiful thing. What a beautiful description of an incredible moment, and what a profound experience for those lawyers and for lawyers who are listening. We had a lot of lawyers that listen to this show. Shout out to all of you and if any of you were thinking, hey, I've been thinking about taking a pro bono case, you know what, let's go because there's a lot of rickey kids out there, and I'm sure you know where some
of them are too ricky. And if people want to if people want to reach out to you, how can they contact you? If they do want to get in touch with you for it any number of reasons. You have an email or something else or Instagram I do.
I have a website Resiliencemode dot com, where they can find me there. I also have a link tree with a bunch of stuff that they can get a quick glance at who I am, what I've been up to.
We'll put a link into the episode bio of if.
I could just say I actually went from being a client of the Mid Innocence Project, I'm now in a colleague of Chrisia bush Nil. I love Tricia bush Neil. I am our community engagement manager. I've also been elevated through my work to serve on the Innocence Network Executive Board.
I'm on the District Attorney's Advisory Board here in Kansas City, and I just was recently assigned to the X Hoonery Policy Council up in New York with Rebecca Brown and Olivia Bournes, and so I went from being underneath the problem to trying to be a part of the solution. I speak all across the country sharing my cautionary tale.
I just started training prosecutors last year, last October. We're planning to take that and expand it even more where other prosecutors could learn the pitfalls of wrongful convictions and have some proximity to innocence. A lot of prosecutors do not have proximity to innocence, and we want them to have that experience with the idea that perhaps it would influence or change their opinion as to how they do business when it comes to these cases that come before them.
So I'm happy to be home, and I love collaborating, and you could just reach out and say hey, let's collab I'm always open to that. So I'm very passionate about this work.
Incredible. Well, I know I speak for everyone in our audience and our staff on our team here, Wrong for Conviction Podcasts and the whole Lava for Good team and everyone in the instance move. Just wishing you every blessing in the world. It is inspiring to see you doing what you're doing. So now we turn to our closing
of the show, which is appropriately called closing Arguments. This is the part where I turned my microphone off, kick back in my chair with my headphones on, turn the volume up a little bit, and just listen to anything else you want to share with me and our incredible audience.
Yeah, I appreciate that, Jason, First and foremost special shout out to the entire Like you said, the entire Roleful Conviction podcast team who's doing this work raising awareness about wrongful convictions is so important. We need this podcast. The world need this podcast one hundred percent because people are not aware enough about the issues surrounding roleful convictions. That has become my life work. Since I came home. I hit the ground running, raising my voice for those who
is voiceless to raise awareness about wrongful convictions. I've testified before policymakers twice again, participating in various councils, committees, executive boards, social media. I quickly learned how to use social media and began to create content that was designed to raise awareness. I've been to twenty fourth state since I've been home. In three years. As we travel across the country, what I'm constantly learning is people are not aware of wrongful convictions.
They have not heard enough about the issue. Anytime we get to get in this space actually educate ourselves about the different type of issues surrounding wrongful convictions, the different type of cases surrounding wrongful convictions, and any time we can leave, hopefully today the audience will leave feel un inspired, moved and motivated to do more, to get more involved than we're doing our job, and we get to do
it together. So that's what I would say to the audience, and once again, thank you Jason Connor the rest of the team for having this platform that we can come on here and then we get to educate and inspire together.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wardis. With research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good on
all three platforms. You can also follow me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason flam Ravel Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcast and association with Signal Company Number one