#300 Guest Host Earlonne Woods with Caramad Conley

I'm Jason Flahman. I'm over the top excited because this is our three hundredth episode. Listen. I wish we never had to do any episodes at all, and I wish that these wrongful convictions weren't even a thing. But we're going to keep doing them for as long as we possibly can. Until my last breath, I'll be making these podcasts. But this is the three hundredth one, and we are honored and I'm humbled to have as a guest host for this episode my friend and personal hero, mister Erlon Woods.

Back in the nineteen eighties, Karam Conley was living in San Francisco, California, that was doing the crack era and police was doing everything they could to stump out gang activity. On April eight, nineteen eighty nine, there was a drive by shooting in Karamand's neighborhood. The bullets injury Levin and killed two Charles Hughes and Roshawn Johnson. Of the eight people who were allegedly involved in the crime, only one person,

Hello, everybody, what's up roline? Glad to be here. I'm excited about talking about the story. My name is Caramut Conley. I'm from originally Oakland, California, born and raised, raised between there in San Francisco, California.

So, Caramut, can you describe your life prior to being arrested.

I was born to a fan a nine I have five brothers, three sisters. Our neighborhood was predominantly African American working class families. Everybody in the neighborhood knew each other, you know, mothers, fathers, you know, it was a great environment to grow up in.

Cool And let me ask you this. You know you grew up in San Francisco. How was like law enforcement in your neighborhood? You know, did you have any prior run ins with them or any anything leading up to Nah?

And that's a great question, right. And it's interesting because my dad was in the military, so we had already kind of been in still with that kind of country duty, honor stuff. But my dream really was to be a swat officer when I was young, right back in those days, they were considered the good guys. And I've always seen police officers like that.

Did anything derail you from becoming a SWAT officer?

Yeah? Yeah, when I became a teenager. So you have to tie in what they call the crack era, right, the drug era that changed everything, That changed our whole community, That changed our perceptions of like the police. That changed everything. You started seeing people in our community, in our neighborhoods, like who started kind of indulging in the selling of it. So that's when you started seeing like, wow, look at that.

So the police are creating this narrative. But did you identify with any gangs Sunnydale or Bay Point or any of that.

No, because it wasn't that type of thing. Man, Like, the only ones that created that narrative that was trying to put us in that was police officers.

Okay, So I want to move into the story a little bit. In March nineteen eighty nine, you get into a fight with a friend from school named Jeff Franklin over some gossip going around. And then later on that same day, in an unrelated event, there's this other crime, a guy named Peter Lee is murdered. The police connect these two incidents, I guess because they happen on the same day or something. So tell me about your first

This is where I could introduce Earl Sanders and Napoleon Hendrix because they were their two African American veteran homicide detectives. And they were always wearing suits and these like for Dora Brims, and they came to my house. They never called me to come down there. They came to my house. And my father was always a straight shooter, and he's like, well, you know, my son, I know he doesn't have anything to hide, so he didn't mind them talking to me.

And then about a month later, on April eighth, nineteen eighty nine, there was a drive by shooting in Bayview in your neighborhood. Eleven people were injured and two people were killed, Charles Hughes and Rosehawn Johnson. And it's really a terrible crime. It's sad. But how did you get wrapped up in all of this?

There was a lot of pressure on the police to solve these crimes. You know, people in the community were coming out and they were like fed up with this stuff, and they were you know, now the police are really just going crazy, like okay, because now they're saying that this was retaliation for Peter Lee being killed. So now they come back to me again. So they now they come in with a different energy, like they're threatening me

So meanwhile, detective Saunders and Henders with their suits in there for door brims. They end up arresting a guy named Paul Green for the drive by shooting on April eighth and during Paul's trial in nineteen ninety two, you were called to testify.

Yet it wasn't around till ninety two when Paul Green's trial started that I get a subpoena to his court. So I get an outside lawyer, Donald Bergerson, who would later become my actual attorney, but I get him to represent me on this subpoena because I'm like, I don't have nothing to say to these people.

So Paul Green goes on trial, You get subpoena and hire Donald Bergerson to represent you, and then at some point you start to realize that there was more to this, that they were going to try to wrap you up in this same crime that April eight drive by shooting that killed two people. Do you remember remember how you first heard about that.

The rumblings started coming, Like my lawyers started talking to me about, hey, uh, you know, they're talking about this guy, like they have some evidence against you for this, and I'm like, what this is. When Clifford Polk enters the picture, he was probably four years younger than me, But Clifford Polk was a guy who was really friends with my younger brother that he was friends we met, he was

Clifford Pope, now he's a pretty important character in this story because it's ultimately his evidence that they used to convict you. What did he say to the police to tie you into the crime.

Polk brought in another mutual friend of ours named Batist Batiste Richardson. He said that Batist loaned me a weapon, and then when Batist went to retrieve the weapon back for me, like hey, let me get that back, Cliff said that I said to Batist, oh you don't want that man that got cheap Charlie name written all over.

It, and Chief Charlie, that's Charles Hughes, one of the people murdered on April eight.

Cliff just made up a lot of stuff. He just started making up stuff like I was selling guns out of my house and he was just making up stuff, right, And then they investigated Batist, of course to coroborate what Cliff said, and of course Batiste was like, what you know, this is bullshit, Like this did not happen. I don't

Okay, so now we're getting into the trial. The prosecution's main argument was the testimony of Clifford Pope. There was some back and forth between both sides as to whether Pope was being incentivized by the police to implicate you, but Pope said on stand that he wasn't in witness protection and he wasn't getting anything in return for his testimony, and this is really important and we'll get back to

So one of the primary reasons why I testify is because one, I didn't do it right, and I wasn't afraid to get up there, and I knew whatever the district Attorney was going to say about me, like I had already admitted to it, meaning like my prior saw it or whatever it was like, So I knew beyond that anything he tried to allege against me, he would be just making it up. And I felt like I wanted to I wanted to speak my peace, like I wanted to be able to say no, I didn't do this.

And getting up there, I mean, how did you feel about the try? How did you gauge the jury? Did you think they was? They was listening.

I just figured if they hear this information, they're gonna side with the truth. So the way that the DA spun it though he painted a very effective picture. All they see is what's on TV. And it's like, like what I want to start. Police are good? If you weren't bad, you wouldn't be coming from out of that holding tank in this orange like you would be coming from out here, Like it's all those dynamics where I play.

And going through that, going through that trial, you know, and I'm gonna speak from personal, but going through a trial, you don't know what's going on, you don't know the law, you don't you have no clue on whether it's up down whatever. You just sitting there. How long did your trial last? And when you was convicted? How did the words guilty hit you?

Okay, so my trial lasted, I would say, I wouldn't say it lasted longer than two weeks. They tried to offer me a deal. So my lawyer came in there and he's like, I know this is the part that you know, you don't we want to hear about, and you know, but I have to do this, you know, like I have to offer you this, and you know, jen Enny is talking about a deal here. And I said a deal like what they gonna let me go?

This episode is sponsored by the AIG pro Bono Program. AIG is a leading global insurance company, and the AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services, as well as other support to many nonprofit organizations as well as individuals who are most in need, and they recently announced that working to reform the criminal justice system will become a key pillar of the program's mission.

Once that happened, you know, it was just guilty on all these charges, right, So you also have your lawyer. When you hear your lawyer say your're want to put this in a record, to appeal this to do so, that means you have one last chance, which is you can go in front of the judge and then the judge can actually just do the right thing, you know, like I'm gonna ow, I don't believe that the burden of proof was met on the side of the prosecution, and that's what I was hoping for. And I really

So what was your What was your sentence?

So I ended up with twelve life sentences too without parole, plus twenty six years.

Damn how long? I mean? I know I might be joking, but shit, how long would it that took you to do all that time?

Well, and then I would have had to die once, come back, die again, come back, die ten more times, come back, and then do twenty six years. That's what it meant.

Like.

The shit didn't make no sense to me. It was surreal it did. I'm like, you could have just gave me one life sentence and it would have helped me, but it essentially was a death sentence. That's basically what it was.

Hey.

I used to clawn with one of my partners. He had two hundred and ten years to life and shit, onder the three strikes law, and we used to be like, man, So when you get out Okay, so you you on your way to prison from the county jail, and you know it's a trip. Man. You know, I've always wondered about, you know, innocent people in prison. You know, I was pretty much guilty for the my actions, you know what

Man, Look, I watched that movie before I ever went to prison, before like it was American me and I watched some other kind of penitential movies, and that shit

Know what I mean.

Your picture looked like you one of them. Alcatraz Island inmates. Like, so that's what I had. That was my experience. Like they did a special transfer because I was now like essentially a death penalty kind of case with them Alwops. So I didn't have to wait for the prison bus and load up. They literally got me out of there the next day, Like I didn't get a chance to say bye to nobody, Like as soon as I was convicted the next day, I was on that butt on that van on my way to Quinton.

And what was your mindset like going in with the alwop sentence, you know, life without the possibility of parole.

It did I didn't. It didn't compute because it didn't make sense to me, Like I didn't understand what that meant, Like this is my first time going through something like this, So I didn't understand that it meant you gonna die in prison, You ain't never going to the board. I

I have to ask man, like, like, what was what was like a bad day in prison for you?

Every day there's not a prison I went to I'm talking about. By the time I left prison, I had been to like ten different and all maximum security prisons because of my LWOP everywhere up north to down south by the Mexican border in between. Like I've been to all of that, and I tell you it was it was because of the type of sentence I had. It meant that I was only going to be around what they call the most violent kind of inmates, the most

It just just real quick. What happened.

Me and a friend of mine was just like walking the track and and uh it was like these five five guys, they were Nazi lowriders as they call them in LRS back then, and uh, they all had flat pieces of steel like and two of them came at my partner, like two of them, three of them came at me, and uh, thank God, like divine intervention in my fighting skills, because I did receive like some puncture wounds, Like I got about nine puncture wounds out of it

So so it's safe to say you've seen a lot of violence in those level four prisons.

Every day every day.

I was just like you. I looked at the Court of Appeals as a way to get out. How did it work out for you and in post litigation that you win your appeals denied?

I was denied all the way through around two thousand and one. Two other guys that I grew up with, John Tennyson and Anton Golf JJ and Sodapop, that's what their names were. So around two thousand and one, John's case started getting some traction in the news. A journalist by the name of A. C. Thompson who had worked for the Bay Guardian news at the time. So John Tennyson's brother Bruce always believed that his brother was falsely convicted.

Yeah, this is a crazy kind of story. The Northern California Innocent Project ends up taking your case and they bring it to Kecker and van Neess hoping they would have some more information that could help you out. They end up talking to this lawyer, a god named Daniel Purcell, who worked on John and Antoine's case.

And Daniel Purcell says to this day, he said, if it wasn't for your name, you would still be in prison. He said the name registered, and he said, like, where have I heard that name from. During the investigation of John and Anton's case, they sent an investigator. They had a motion for discovery, and I guess the city said you can go check this storage unit and these files and whatever, you know, and he had to go under, like he had to go under the debris and all

So ultimately came to light from all those boxes of suppressed evidence was that Clifford Pope not only lied when he named you, but he was actually paid to do it. In the trial, Clifford said that he wasn't in witness protection, but the evidence in those boxes proved that he was. He'd been paid a nice chunk of change to name you in this crime. And then in two thousand and five, ten years after you were sent to prison, cliff recannidate's testimony.

I never saw Cliff as anything other than like a victim. As like me. Cliff is a young kid, you know, and he's scared to death of these homicide They do the same, I assume, the same thing that they tried to do to me to him, But it worked on him.

And your lawyers from the Northern California Innocent Project ended up taking this suppressed evidence all the way to the California Supreme Court.

Yeah, by two thousand and nine, the California Supreme Court, which I think this happens less than seven percent of the time with ELWAK cases, but they granted me an

I believe it was so cararaa. As you know, I was commuted by Governor Brown. My life sentence was commuted gone. And I know what I felt like, I have to ask you this, how did you find out that you were getting out.

I was just in the celle like they had sent me back to prison, and I was doing what I do and one of my friends came up to me and he was like, man, you know you going home? Right? I was like what? He was like, Man, you going home? And he slid the newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle to me under my door and it had my article right there on the front page, Judge vacate's conviction. Right. So I'm looking at this and I'm like, oh shit. So then you really start feeling like get me out of

Yeah? Trust I know that feeling about let me out now. But the DA can hold you in there to see if the city wants to retry the case. But luckily for you, the dad's a time Kamala Harris the one that wants you to wait and see what happens with the city. She was leaving office to take a new job as the California Attorney General. She was being replaced by a new DA George Gascon.

The first major order of business he did was dismissed my case outright, like just straight up, just dismissed it, and and then I would be released January twelfth. January twelfth, two thousand and eleven.

To George Gascon.

Absolutely, that's a good thing right there.

And you you have to explain, man, like what was that day like when you first walked out, Like what did you do?

Of course, I was elated to be getting out, but now it's like fuck, like you know, I'm out of prison, now, what you know what I mean? Like I'm coming out of a controlled environment, extremely controlled environment to just basically be able to do what I want to do. So it was overwhelming, Like it was scary. It was I was happy about it, but it was it was just like I got to take this one day at a time.

And now that you're free, what are you doing?

Well? When I first came home, like I was, I was, I was always like going to different law schools, you know, and talking talking to the first and second year law students, and I was doing this like all over the state, Like I was just going everywhere anywhere I was invited. Like I love talking about this story because it feels like it almost feels like it's not me I'm talking about, you know. And I kind of always say I was already free mentally, spiritually, I was already free. They just

I was serving the life sentence and you came in and that's how I met you.

Yeah. So from that point it was all about, Okay, I know all these great stories and different people in prison, and I always say prison is one of the most untapped markets for creative So in twenty sixteen, I ultimately created a production company, Lifted Clouds, and the goal there was to just bring a lot of guys content books, you know, personal stories, you know, all of this to the public, you know, because it's some amazing it's some amazing people in there.

Caramel Connley, we thank you for definitely telling us your story of being I appreciate you convicted in California, man, and I'm glad you out here like doing your thing, man, and appreciate everything you're doing.

Yeah, I appreciate y'all having me on here.

So Karama, you know, I always wanted to be a lawyer. So now we're coming to what's called closing arguments. Do you have any final thoughts, any epiphanies, what would you like to share with the wrong full conviction listeners?

You know, I would just say that. You know, It's like there's this this kind of myth where people say, you know, everybody in prison say always say they're innocent, right, Everybody says they're innocent when they're in prison, And that's a myth, honestly. Like there are guys, most of the guys that I was in prison with, they said they did the crime, they just didn't believe they should have got the time that they got. Like I said, essentially

Know, so, do you still want to be a SWAT member?

I am a SWAT member, just in a different way. Yeah.

Also's and one thing I can say out this whole story, man, is uh, you got the best name because your name is what got you back into the game.

So no doubt.

Man.

I thank my father and my mom for that, because growing up it was hell having that name because nobody can pronounce it right, you know. Shout out to my mom and pops, you know, for that.

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your guest host, Erline Woods. I like to think of our executive producer Jason Flumm and Kevin Watis. The senior producer for this episode is Jackie Paul and our producers are Lila Robinson and Jeff Cleiburn. Our editor is Rook Sandra Guidy. The music in this production is by three time OSCAR nominated

On next week's guest hosted episode of Wrongful Conviction, my friend and personally hero ex Hoonery and musician Jimmy Dennis is going to interview Chester Holman the Third about their harrowing, tragic shared experiences of having been locked up in Philadelphia for crimes they didn't commit. Now, both men were put away by the notorious, infamous and even I'm going to say, evil prosecutor Roger King, who get this. He put more people on death row than anyone else in Pennsylvania history.