#296 Guest Host Chris Fabricant with Gilbert Poole

real life legal superheroes do every day. On June, joggers were out on a wooded trail in Pontiac, Michigan, when they discovered the body of thirty five year old Robert Mihia. He had been stabbed to death. Mahia was last seen at a bar a couple of nights before, and he left with a stranger. Witnesses described that person to police, who created a composite sketch and published in the local newspaper.

There were no other leads. Connie Cook lived in Pontiac back then, and when she saw the suspects sketch and heard about the reward money, she decided to turn and in her ex boyfriend, Gilbert Pool. She told police he'd confessed to a murder shortly before they moved together to North Carolina. Police went to North Carolina and rested Gilbert

and took him back to Michigan for trial. Among the other evidence that was presented, the state called forensic godontologist Dr Allen Warnick to explain the supposed bite mark found on the victim's body. Even at the time, there was a suspicion of this type of junk science, but Dr Warnick's testimony was presented to Gilbert's jury as scientific fact. Gilbert looked nothing like the suspects sketch and its blood type did not match any of the blood found near

the victim's body. But on June six, Gilbert Pool was convicted of murder sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. This is wrongful conviction. Hi'm Chris fabricat On, the director of stratetic Litigation at the Innocence Project in New York and author of the book Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System. Hello, my name is Gilbert Pool. I was recently exonerated through the Innocence Project and the

Conviction integrat Unit in the state of Michigan. Hi. I'm Marla Mitchell Cysian, and I'm the former director of the w m U Cooley Innocence Project and currently serving of counsel with the office. And Mr Pool tell us how you got involved in the criminal legal system and what led to your original conviction. I was briefly living in Michigan. I moved from Michigan back down in North Carolina and nineteen eight and Uh, I met a girl up here in Michigan, and she went with me back down in

North Carolina. Subsequently, we our relationship ended and UH we broke up. She came back to Michigan. Um, I'm been honest to me. She had went to the police down there and told them that I had committed a crime in Michigan. And this is out of nowhere. Did you had you been to Pontiac and um, and did you think that your girlfriend might say something like this about you? I was, I was twenty two years old and I was working as a plumber in North Carolina to him

plumbar repair work. I was briefly living in Michigan. I had moved up here from North Carolina, but I found it hard to maintain employment up here because I was not from the state, and as a Union state, you had to establish a five year residency in the state. Before you could join the union. So I decided this wasn't a place for me and I moved back to North Carolina. My girlfriend and I, Connie Cook. When we separated.

It wasn't a friendly separation, to put it lightly, and um, I didn't think it was beyond her to make up something, but I didn't think it was to this degree or this this here. After we had separated, I was out working and I came off from work one day and my door was open and everything in the mobile home was gone. And I thought, well, okay, she came back and stole everything I had. There was no note or anything,

but that's okay. If she needed that, that's fine. Moving on. Um. It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that the police came to my workplace and serve me with this warrant. And then uh everything made sense. Then okay, Uh she used me to uh basically get a ride back to Michigan and claim a reward that was open for a murder case that was unsolved in Michigan. She has me confessant to a murder six months before it actually happened. It's a problem. They took her in and I gave

her a polygraph test. So she worked with the polygraph examiner until they came up with a test that she could pass. Well, let's bring in Marla talk a little bit about the crime. The Mr Pool really had no idea what the details were. Marley, can you tell us a little bit about the crime that Mr Pool was ultimately charged with? Yes, So Mr Pool was convicted of murdering Um, a man in Pontiac, Michigan. And um. Mr Mieha was actually pretty well known in the Pontiac community

at that time. He had worked for Pontiac and he had worked for the county in a variety of government jobs. UM and he was he was actually pretty popular individual at the time. He was living um what would have been considered at that time sort of a double life, meaning he was a gay man in Pontiac, Michigan in n and he frequented a gay bar, which was the last place he was seen alive. So Miha had left with a stranger that evening. Um. That's ranger through the

narrative became Mr Pool. Gil became a suspect when his ex girlfriend Connie Cook said, I have information about a murder Um, which at that point in time when she came forward the murder. The case of gone cold for about seven or eight months, and that's when Mr Pool became the suspect. And so Mr Pool tell us about when you first learned that you weren't just going to be able to take care of this quick and go

back to work. What was the first moment where you recognize that you were beginning along slow slide into the criminal justice system. After I got back to Michigan, things yeah, really were setting annual Back in Oakland County jail. Um the investigator started taking samples from me, hair samples, blood samples, bite impressions, UM, dental mold. A dental mold will definitely get to the dental molds. They were They were starting

to cook up the junk science right away. Yeah. Yeah, And I hired an attorney in Michigan who contacted me once while I was introduced to the county jail. Uh, they had composite drawings ran in a newspaper that was not me. He showed me the newspaper, he said, look, this is the paper that they had. It doesn't even match you. It's not even close. And it was just a matter of a bengeful girlfriend and uh, started the process that we're just gonna have to take care of

but not to worry. He was seeing. He seemed to be kind of nonchalant about it. So it was kind of calming to me a little bit, but asked Tom moved on. Uh. In the months in the county jail crept up on me, and then Uh, it became a lot more serious. Martha. Let me bring you into talk a little bit about the investigation that was going on, where this composite sketch came from, and who the people were that saw the victim um on the night the

victim was murdered. Yes, so the victim was a regular at this bar and most of the patrons were individuals that were either his friends or knew him. And so obviously one of the first things that the police did to investigate this case is to interview everyone that was in the bar that evening, and they all provided descriptions and there were two composite drawings that came out in the local newspaper, the Oakland Press, and as Mr Pool stated,

they didn't look anything like Mr. Pool. Unfortunately, when Connie Cook served Mr Pool up on a silver platter, what the government did and what the police investigation did, is it? It focused then on Mr Pool. Um. This problem was compounded because instead of the composites that were published in the newspaper a week after or the murder, the government produced new drawings UM. We to this day do not

know where they came from. UM. And they proceeded to suggest to the witnesses and the jury that these were the drawings that were in the newspaper, and those drawings looked exactly like Mr Pool. In fact, to this day, I personally believe that they drew those drawings from photographs that they obtained through their investigation, So they took a new sketch and essentially painted a bull's eye around their

new target and got their identification that way. No, and we all know that eyewitness misidentification as a leading contributing factor to wrongful conviction. It's played a role in nearly seventy of all convictions that have in a return by DNA evidence. But usually those are honest mistakes by well intentioned actors that are using a suggestive lineup. It's usually not manipulating an image to gain an identification. Mr Pool. Were you aware that this was going on at the time? Absolutely,

I was poking. My lawyer in the in the side said listen, object to this, and he did a very poor job during trial of getting to the bottom of the composite drawing SWITCHERU that they that they came to um and I wanted to jump in when you said misidentification. This was not a misidentification. This was absolutely a fabrications. Missing identification. Uh suggests that somebody made a mistake. I don't think there were any mistakes made here. I think

this was l planned out and intentional. And if you look at it from that perspective, all the puzzles fit like they orchestrated this whole thing to get a conviction. Yeah. Absolutely, you know. I mean, and I didn't mean to suggest that there was some sort of mistake, you know. I just hadn't heard something like a new composite spets to match a suspect before. And I've been around the block, so that's a that's a new one for me, you know. And then we're going to bring in the junk science

in a minute. But I want to just go back Marley, if you could just talk a little bit about how the victim was discovered and some of the evidence that was alleged to have been found on the victim's body and ultimately associated with Mr Pool. Sure. The victim left the bar at closing time on a Sunday night Monday morning, and the next day he failed to show up for work and towards the end of that day this was very out of character for him. Um, he was considered

a missing person and UM. He was discovered on a running path by two runners who were out for an early morning run, and of course they called the police immediately. UM. They identified his body rather quickly and UM when they took him. When they arrived at the crime scene, there was a lot of blood because he had been stabbed to death, but there was also um less concentrated blood around the body. So they as a result, they collected some blood droplets from some stones and some grass near

the body. This is another actually extremely heartbreaking piece of this case in terms of having this information back in and how it was treated. So they used blood typing at the time, UM, which only allows us to put ourselves in a category of how dreds thousands sometimes millions of people. And they determined that the victim's blood was OH and that there was also a foreign blood type present be type blood, which, as we now know Mr Pool is a B. He was excluded from the evidence

before the trial. Right, that's what we're telling here, Right, So, Mr Pool, you have at this point you've given up all forcibly had blood samples taken from you, hair samples taken from you, a dental mold taken from you. You've been um an identification has been manufactured against you. Your girlfriend has falsely accused you of a crime. You're in jail and you're about to start trial. Tell us about

when the dentist came for your teeth. Well, uh, forensic otentologist, self proclaimed expert and bite marks came to the county jail and took bite markets in wax I say, I say he's a self proclaimed I guess he was certified by a Board of American Board of Odentologists. Photo junk scientists certified him. Right, But the certification comes in the form of certifying identification of remains that are unidentifiable otherwise.

So if you had a body that was burnt, and you could take the teeth from that body and compare them to dental records and identify that victim. But to take that science and stretch it to say, Okay, we're going to take a bruise. It's essentially what they found on the victim was a bruise, and I match it to somebody's teeth and say those teeth matched. A bruise is a far stretch, it's it's it's not a solid substrate like wax that they're taking my impressions from. UH

scan is fluid. It's it's movable, it's elastic, it's gonna stretch, and and so you're not going to have depth or angulation, registration, all these things that would come into play when you're identifying a corpse. Bite mark evidence is subject to speculation masquerading as scientific evidence. As Mr Pool just said, skin does move and it changes, and that makes it nearly impossible to say for sure which teeth may which marks. More fundamentally, these forensic dentists don't even know a bite

mark from any other type of injury. And beyond that, skin changes constantly in a decomposing body, and it changes constantly in a healing victim. So teeth that might match one day or even one hour might not match the next hour or the next day. The friends that go to inteologists in this case was Dr Alan Warnick, the only one practicing in Michigan at that time. Any good defense layer is supposed to question the expert its credentials in front of the jury in a process called varder.

So today, if we were listening to this case today, if a jury was hearing this case today, they would learn that this type of evidence that Dr Allen Warnick was about to convict Mr Pool with has been responsible for at least thirty five known wrongful convictions and indictments. The jury would also learn that the National Academy of Sciences calls forensic go to atology junk science and grows speculation, as has every other scientific entity that has ever examined

this fundamental junk science. I wrote an entire book on the subject to junk science, and I've been on another of our podcast Junk Science talking about the outrageous practice of byte mark identification and matching. But let's get back

to Mr Pool's case. Despite the fact that he and his lawyer both knew that this wasn't a credible witness, Dr Alan Warnick was nevertheless allowed to get up on the witness stand, raised his right hand, and testify as a so called expert practicing in a valid field of forensics. So when he when he gets on the stand and he, you know, with his little quiet lab coat on, and says, well, the odds of winning the lottery were better than it not be a Mr. Pool. That's exactly what he told.

The jury worked for word. So the jury, here's that which is a personal opinion, but they're they're instructed to regard it as a truth. How do I win? How do I come back that? So let's take us um from the moment of the opening statement and describe how you experienced your trial as this nightmare unfolded. I believe I'll seem attorney twice before the trial, both Tom's. It was less than ten minutes. He was a paid attorney at trial. He gave me a notepad and a piece

of paper. He's is here. If you want to make notes, just write it down and show it to me. And I was kind of keeping score. Well, well okay, well that didn't sound good for me. So you know that was one against me. Well, well that didn't sound good. There's another mark against me. While the marks kept adding up in the it doesn't look good column here, you know,

I'm getting very nervous as lack of preparation. I would say, uh was coming to light and it was not looking good for the home team, Okay for the audience with their own score seats at home. Evidence presented against Mr Pool was limited to this, the doctor composite sketch, his ex girlfriend's false testimony that he admitted to the crime,

and the junk science the bite mark evidence. A Michigan State Police scientists also conducted blood type testing at the crime scene and did not find any type A B blood that would have matched to Mr. Pool. Due to illness, this scientist did not testify, and instead of delaying the trial to get this crucial testimony in front of the jury, Mr Pool's lawyers just entered the paper report into evidence, which isn't close to us convincing. So yeah, it was

definitely not looking good for the home team. So at this point, Mr Pool, you decided to testify on your own behalf. Take us through that experience and how you were feeling at this time. Um so I am absolutely beside myself. I'm in a panic state. When the prosecutor ended his his presentation, the judge asked my attorney to put on his witnesses. My attorney says, yeah, no, we're good defense. Rest He put on no witnesses at all, whatsoever. Wait, wait a minute, wait a minute, you're not gonna put

on any witnesses at all. Somebody's got to go up in my defense. I'll testify, he said, Well, I wouldn't. Yes, you're getting on the stand. The prosecutor is really gonna I don't care. Somebody's got to stand up for me. So I demanded to be put on the stand, and I got up. So let me interrupt you here for a second. Your attorney had not talked to you about whether or not you're going to testify until that moment. You had no conversation about that. No, he didn't prep

you for any of this testimony. No, so you had no idea what you might say or might not say, and he just advised you not to do it, and that was it, right. But I said, I said, no, no, no no, no, I'm getting on the stand. Somebody's got to say I didn't do it. Somebody's got to see me, my reaction or whatever I mean, however plays out. I can't be convicted and just sit here and not say anything. If I'm gonna go down. I'm gonna go down kicking

and screaming. So I did my best. I got on the stand and against the prosecutors manipulations of wordying or his learned techniques of of interviewing somebody. Uh I did my best. But uh, I guess I didn't translate to the jury. It's very you know, I mean, anybody can be made to sound like a liar under those heightened circumstances. And so tell us about what was your family at the um there for the verdict in in your testimony, you know, due to my attorney's um initial response or

initial investigation, it was just a matter of routine. This is not you. The evidence says it's not you. Don't worry about it. You'll never be convicted. No, my family is in North Carolina. I wasn't gonna have them fly up to Michigan. So I had no family or friends or anybody. I had no support there in the court room at all. And so you walked into this believing that you know, a day or two later you'd be acquitted, go back to your life. I could see that this

was orchestrated for a conviction of an unsolved murder. Of a very important person, well loved by the community. We're satisfying a community need for a conviction. And and I was just a young two year old kid, so you know I was served up. Wow. I mean you were just you know, in a life raft on your own, cut from the shore. It sounded like, with no support, no family support, no lawyerly support, no scientific support, you get convicted and sentenced to life without parole. Is that right? Correct?

Tell us the role that Hank Clayton played in this trial. Hank Clayton was in this storyline as an individual who had spent a considerable amount of time with the victim leading up to the time of his disappearance. And it was basically uncontroverted that on the night of the murder, leading up to the murder, that Miha had left the bar at least once with Mr Clayton and returned with him. And in fact, there were witness statements and testimony at the pre limb that suggested that he in fact left

the bar with Hank Clayton. The police did question Mr Clayton, and they did search his truck. They did find a knife, they didn't find anything unusual, uh, in the back of his truck and they pretty much dropped him as a suspect and the victim was stabbed right, So there was no testing of this knife. There was testing and they they did not find any blood. We had an investigator look into his background and he was known to threaten people with knives and you know, behave in a jealous manner,

if you want to call it that. We we also spent many, many years trying to determine what Mr Clayton's blood type was. We were unsuccessful in trying to determine that, and we had to remind ourselves that we might not be able to solve the crime. And we had to step back and think through how are we going to exonerate Mr? Pool? So, Mr Pool, after your sentenced, UM, tell us about your life in prison before m Arlotte took on your case. What was your appeals like? What

was your prison life like? I started trying to educate myself as to how I got in there, the law, the statutes, well, what was required for a conviction? How do I appeal? A just started ordering books and reading case law. I formulated a list of I guess I could say demands. I was going to make sure I was in control of this of this journey here because I'm leaving it up to my attorney. Even look when

I had paid did turn out well. The court appointed lawyer, I got him on the phone maybe twice um throughout the whole Pillot process. I never want seen him. I don't know what it looks like to this day. Oh my god. And the lawyering you got, Mr Pool, it just outrages me. I see a lot of bad lawyering

in this job. But you know, here, you know, you have sech stark evidence of innocence before you even get indicted, and just go through a trial where they, you know, aren't being straightforward with the blood evidence, and they're using all this junk science and they're inventing sketches, you know. I mean, it's hard to believe that we're talking about the United States. I was absolutely side myself. I said that I'm not I want to lose the appeal too.

So I had to start out from basics. So in too much time, I got my g D. I went to an office occupation class to learn how to type so I could type my briefs. And then so I got me a typewriter and I started writing myself formulating my own supplemental briefs to put in on behalf of myself, and I put everything but the kitchen sinking there. Actually took my case all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, and every court got it wrong. Yeah.

I can only attribute that to UH just not giving me the time of day because I was a prisoner. Unlesson I've been I've been studying law for twenty five years. How could I not know what I'm talking about by this time. I have no doubt that you're appellate briefs are stronger than the briefs that are filed in these cases.

I want to get to um your decision to reach out to Marli's clinic, and how you came um when you began to learn about the power of DNA evidence, and how you decided to reach out to the instance project that Marlo runs. The whole time, I reached out to attorneys trying to get assistance because I needed a signature behind my briefs, behind my research. I need somebody to sign on and say yes, this is legit. I needed somebody. I needed a voice to stand behind me. Eventually,

the stars aligned. Marla came to my aid, and Marla has been working diligently on my case ever since. We Actually we're looking pretty closely at girl's case after he wrote us, because we could tell based on just his questionnaire that if half of this was true, he was wrongly convicted. Marla in her law students submitted hundreds of freedom of information request to reinvestigate the case and do

their own forensic DNA testing on the evidence that remained. Unfortunately, because Mr Poole had, as he said, put everything but the kitchen sink into trying to get himself out on his own, Marla and her students weren't allowed to submit everything they found to the appellate courts because it wasn't technically new evidence. But the turning point in this case finally comes when Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel launches the

first statewide conviction Integrity Unit in twy nineteen. And Marla, this is the same year you filed an application for Mr Pool's case. When we did his application, we went in full guns. We had the expert's opinion on the d NA, we had the expert's opinion on the identification, and then we had the full history of the role that Alan Warnick played in the case, along with his association with other wrongful convictions in the state of Michigan.

UM we didn't argue that the pipe mark evidence was new. We just argued that once you find this other stuff to be new, you're going to take a look at the whole case, and you're gonna want to take a really close look at this pipe mark. When they formulated the Conviction Integrity Unit, my case was one of them. They started initially considering they're going to make sure they got it right. And the detectives actually told me where either going to be your best friend or your worst enemy,

because we're not Polini punches here. We're gonna put it all out on the table. So I knew in my heart I was getting out, and I started bragg Hey, I'm gonna get out of here. I'm telling people around me I'm getting out of here, and regularly I'm getting updates from Marla. I got uh notified that I had a Zoom meeting the next day. I remember very specifically. We were in the midst of covid ill so we couldn't tell you in person. She says, it's going before

the judge next week. And there's nobody opposing you. Everybody is in agreement that you're innocent. And I am pretty sure I was crying before I probably got the words out. But it was one of that happiest days for me to say, your case, after working on it for almost twenty years, is finally turning the corner. And I was shaking up. I mean, I think I can remember crying

twice in my conviction. Once when the judge sentenced me and I had to make that phone call to my mother, And the other time was when Marla told me that that next day I had to hear and and uh, within hours, Marla and her team of attorneys, we're at the prison, welcome me out the door. I didn't even have a pair of shoes to put on. They brought me pants and shoes from the church, and I was met there by easily a hundred people. Everybody from the

Attorney General's office was there. There were tears and apologies all around, and uh, I guess that's when I was kind of reborn. I was able to start a new life, which was not easy. I'm not going to complain about it, but I'm going to tell you it was not easy and it's still difficult at times. I've been out for a year now and I'm just now getting the hang

of some of this technology. They didn't even have cell phones when I went to prison, So and there's been a lot, a big learning curve of how to act in society because this is a whole new world. It's not the end, because there's so many cases, so many cases that still have to be reviewed and vetted, and and that I wasn't the only one. So there's people I left behind, and I feel like obligated to kind of pay it forward here and help some others here.

So there's a lot of people that are caught up in a procedural morass that they can't dig out of, especially some people that are in there that are have less than a full education, or don't have the skills to navigate these waters, or don't have the support. I didn't have any support, but I fought a long time to the nail to get support. That that's just a testament to my tenacity. Some people just don't have that. There's no reason for somebody to be condemned to prison

because they don't have the fight in them. So I hear you're called action is for people to support the Cool Innocence Project or righteous Endeavor, no doubt. But Marlo, what can listeners do to help people like Mr Pool and your work. Well, certainly we would we would welcome your financial support, but also, UM, I would just say that there's a number of really promising policy issues going on in the state right now. We're working on amendments

to our Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act. We want to make sure that our clients are adequately compensated. If you care about criminal justice issues, it's a great time to just, UM touch base with your legislator and say that you'd like to support improvements to the criminal justice system. And you know I'm always available to answer questions about our office or about the policy work that's going on in Michigan right Let's put the justice in the criminal justice system.

I hear that. Thank you both so much for taking the time to share your incredible story UM with the listeners of Wrongful Conviction Podcast. We're at the point of the show called closing arguments. Do around Robin as to any final thoughts that you want to share with our audience, and UM will begin with you. Marla, I would just say that when you look back at Mr Pool's case, all of the heartbreaking errors and mistakes could have been

avoided and corrected. You know that that actually kind of makes me get up every day and and do the work. But I guess you know. My My final thought to those who are listening is just you know, a wrongful conviction can happen to anyone, and we all love someone, so that means it could happen to someone that we love. Everyone's entitled to an effective attorney at trial and on appeal. Everyone is entitled to a fair proceeding where things are not made up in their criminal trial. We have to

start looking at innocence cases differently. We can't treat them like typical appellate cases for sure, because years this When we look back, right, we see Gil's case and we're like, how did this take thirty two years? But yet Gil knows and Chris knows, and I know that even after thirty two years, it was a mirror call. Mr Pool,

what's your closing argument? If you ask anybody what's the best criminal justice system in the world, I don't think anybody's going to come up with anything better than what the United States has. But when you have human actors, and when you have human interaction, personalities getting the way, UH, bad choices getting the way and bad actors get in the way. A lot of that comes from uh no penalties for the bad actors. I think the takeaway is here, um, take a real deep look at the things that are

presented from different perspectives. If you look at things from a perspective that this was all fabricated, it all makes sense. It was not because I was guilty, It was because they had the ability to do it without any penalty. So I think that needs to be corrected. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our executive producers The Deadly dr Jason Flam and Kevin Wardis. The senior producer for this episode is Jackie Paulli, and

our producers are Lila Robinson and Jeff Cliborne. Our editor is Rock Sindra Guidi. The music in this production is 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 Twitter at Chris Underscore

Fabricant and on Instagram at Chris Underscore Fabricant. Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one m If you were riveted by the staircase, as I know I was, you're gonna want to tune in next week for the guest hosted episode of Wrongful Conviction because get this, the two incredible lawyers from the show, David Rudolphin Sonya Peiffer, are gonna talk to David's former client, Michael Peterson, and you know

that name about one of the most famous and infamous wrong for conviction stories in the history of America. You know about the case, but now you're gonna hear the real story behind it. Tune in listen next Monday in the wrong Ful Conviction podcast feed.