#301 Jason Flom with Willie Timmy Donald

some sort of scarring on his face. Instead of compiling a photo array of men fitting that description, investigators included the photo of Timmy Donald, a man who was six ft tall with no facial scarring, and, according to at least one victim, was the suggested choice of investigators. In fact, a search warrant had already been obtained for Timmy's home

before he had been misidentified. Three of the robbery victims, including one former Gary police officer, were separately shown the photo array and did not identify Timmy, but the other two of view the array together. A mixture of police and peer pressure produced two misidentifications during the live lineup.

According to one victim, when she said that Timmy was bigger than the aunt robber, she was assured that they had the right guy, even though it was proven that Timmy was at work at the exact time that the victim had spotted the actual attacker on the street and tried to report it. Tunnel vision had already set in

and that report was hidden from the defense. Despite no physical or forensic evidence, as well as a solid alibi and the protests of all the other victims, the misidentifications were enough to send Timmy Donald away for a sixty year sentence. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction.

Today's case is pretty much mind blowing. It was an insane crimes for me, but how they ended up convicting a man named Tim Donald and sending him to sixty years to life in prison on some of the shakiest eyewitness testimony I've ever heard, ignoring and covering up exculpatory evidence. And that's just the beginning. We're talking about an Indiana case that occurred in the early nineties in a time when police corruption. It would be comical if it wasn't

so sinister. And we have the man himself here today with us. So without further ado, Tim Donald, welcome to Raw for conviction. Thank you for having me. And you know, I always say I'm sorry you're here because of the reason why you're here, but I'm very grateful and honored to have you here on the show with us, and of course with you today. Is my friend and someone who a lot of us call a hero in this movement.

She's a professor of criminal justice who serves as the executive director of the Center for Justice and Post Exoneration Assistance at Purdue University Northwest. Dr Nikki Jackson, Welcome to Raw Conviction. Thanks Jason, Thanks for having me so Tim. It's been thirty years since this happened, but it must seem like yesterday in some ways to you. Let's go back in time two before this insanity, when you were just a young man with hopes and dreams like anybody else.

What was your life like growing up in Indiana back in the in the seventies, eighties and early nineties. I had four sisters, mother, stepdad, doing grade school, middle school, high school. I enjoyed playing sports baseball, basketball, and just hanging around my family in France. Were you good player? Good athlete? Pretty good? That I hear the underneath that sone. It sounds like he was probably really good. Sound some humility. Um, I had dreams of playing center fear for the Chicago Coast.

So you were good Yeah, let's not listen. I had dreams of being a pro ball player, but I also knew many dreams. Yeah, mine, there was no connection between those dreams and reality. So you grew up? And what did you have any run ins with the law before this insane series of events? Yeah? And uh, nineteen eighty nine, we wanted the bar my friends uncle Carr to go to the beach, and I know the net of the still in column was missing. That's usually associated with the

car being stolen. So I actually his uncle what was going on with that? He said? He said he lost the key and he was in the process of getting that a Nixon fixed. So we got stopped by the police and he noticed the initial and automatically he thought the car was stolen, so we was arrested. His uncle eventually came to the police station, brought the proper paperwork showing ownership of the car, and I was released and was not charged with a crime. Good thing he had that.

I got arrested for the lessant Carter. I was fingerprinted, and that's how my pictures got in the Gary police dep And I think that's an important point to touch on because I think it's why a lot of young men like yourselves, who come from various when over policing is occurring, end up in this system through no fault of your own in this case. So this crime, this is a crazy scenario. I'm talking about February seven two in Glenn Park, which was the neighborhood in Gary, Indiana.

There were five armed robberies, all within one hour of each other, and the fourth robbery resulted in the death. A man named Bernard him Menaz was arriving home with his wife, Kimberly Bolinsky and their three little daughters. A man had a handgut it. He grabbed a little girl, the biggest one to seven year old, and demanded money, and miss Belinsky said that her husband put the cash from his wallet, which was less than to dollars on the ground, told the robert to go into the house

and take whatever he wanted. The robber picked up the money, but was angry what he saw that was so little of it, threw it down the ground, yelled out, you don't value your family, and then he pointed his gun at the one year old's face. And this is a sick, sick guy than the victim. Mr Jimenez through a small wooden picnic table at the assailant. There was a struggle, and the struggle ended with the robber fatally shooting this young father and fleeing five minutes after Mr Hemnez was murdered.

The perpetrator then gets to another victim, robs her and her daughter. And she is a former Gary police officer. And I think that's really important as well, right, and since this is a case of my identification, Curiously, this former Gary police officer never identified you, and one would think that her judgment might hold more weight with the local police. I mean, she's a cop after all, but

it did not. And all of the robbery victims, as well as Mr Himenez his wife, Kimberly Blinski, described the assail in a similar way. Right blackmail about five six, black leather jacket, kangole hat with a red bandanna, really sleepy eyes. And they all said that he had really bad skin, like maybe acne scarring or something like that. So let's go to the first most obvious thing, Tim how tall are you? I'm six, So the victims described

the perpetrator who was five six or five seven. I mean, did you suddenly grow after you went to prison where you maybe five six, five seven. Back then you had a excellent makeup artist. Yeah, you didn't have anything wrong with your skin either, as all the victims had described the assailant. Right, it's a mystery as to how you could have even been considered a potential suspect. What did your skin like magically heal itself overnight or magically get

terrible over. I mean, it's it's also it's monstrously ridiculous. It's yet inexplicably the investigation still was sent in your direction. We still don't know, maybe we'll never know what the motivation was. But before they had even done this sort of shady identification procedure, Timmy was arrested on some kind of traffic violation. Just four days after this crime, I was arrested. More second, they came to his home with this arresta warrant for failure to say. Yeah, that sounds fishy.

But at this point you're probably still just thinking, Okay, I'll go take care of this and be on my way. I knew something's wrong. They came to the house. It was like they was picking up the president for the White House, with all the cars and things of this nature. So I knew it wasn't something more than a traffic I didn't know it was to this degree. Had you heard about this crime spree? I mean, was it no one in the area. I think my sister had read

about it in a newspaper. So after he was taken to the police station under this warrant for these you know, failure to appear in court, he was placed in a photo lineup. So Mr Donald's picture was put in the six pack in that photo lineup based on that arrest. Okay, so it was tossed in. Now, three of the victims, you'd line up separately, but that wasn't the case with

these other two kimber LYE. Blinsky and Ronda Williams. From my understanding, these two women were placed in the same room and identified Mr Donald, whereas all the other victims did not identify him. They all had said this is not the man. What happened was, these two women are in this room. It's once a Caucasian ones African American. The Caucasian female says, I'm not sure. At some point in the game, she changes her story and says, yes,

it's him, Yes, it's him. Later and we can talk about this because I think this is so important to Timmy's case is the recantation made by Ronda Williams. When Ronda says she was basically coerced to pick Mr Donald out of that photo lineup, Kimberly Bolinsky says, no, we got the right guy. So you have this element of cross racial identification, which study after study has proven to be actually less accurate than guessing. And yes, you heard

that right. It's less accurate than guessing, especially in cases where someone witnesses a violent crime up close. So at first Kimberly was not sure. Then she eventually comes around to that idea, and all the other people in the room leaning on Ronda. And what's really important to note is that all of the victims, every victim had reported that the assailant had really bad skin, had a different build than Mr Donald had. The man they described could

not have been Mr. Donald. Yet in a photo lineup, these two women together picked out Mr Donald. After the victims were shown the photo lineup, then there was a physical lineup. The land up was like it was suggestive everybody supposed to resemble one another. None of the guys resemble me. I was like the tallert the tallest one in the lineup, and the same two victims identified Mr Donald right. Well, we know that photo lineups can be done in a very suggestive manner, and they often are.

And then once the victim or even eyewitness sees that photo in the photo lineup and identifies that, now their mind starts to lock in on that image. And then they go to the live lineup, and you have a person who doesn't resemble the actual perpetrator, but resembles the person that they picked out when they were being suggestively shown the photos in the six pack. And of course you go, oh, that's yeah, because you're already that's the way our mind works. The next day they went and

conducted a search of his home. The kingle hat and a red bandanna were never discovered, and none of the victims for longess wasn't something my home. They found absolutely no evidence that linked Mr Donald to any of these robberies or the murderer of Mr Heminez. The thing they struck me as they had affid David for a search warrant sign by the judge hour before to line up was even conducted. But you need probable calls to get

the search want right, and they didn't have that. They made their minds up and they were going to make the evidence fit the narrative that they wanted instead of looking at the evidence and then analyzing it for what it was. It's very shocking to even know that this even got to trial. I mean, there was zero evidence, zero, yet you were charged with first degree murder and two counts of armed robbery. The trial took place in Lake

County Circuit Court in June of ninety two. Now, your older sister or Sheila, and her partner, Dan Hopkins both testified during the evening of the crimes, you were car shopping with them in a place called Merylville and Crown Point, Indiana. And the car salesman testified. Right, so someone could say, well, the relatively people say whatever they say about that. But the car sales were testified that the three of you were at their dealerships at the same time of day

as the crimes occurred. But for some reason, the dealership employees didn't verify that they were on the exact same day as the crime. What I don't understand, what what

was that all about? That keep being said. But my sister Brawn proof a business card that was dated and had car prices on it the same day that these class was committed, so I don't know what it was put out there, Like we visit the car dealership and one on the same day of the cross and the cameras in the auto dealership the footage had been erased.

So that's one of the issues. My trail attorney didn't get there in time and off and they had and since you didn't have the money to bond out, you were not able to develop the alibi evidence that your lawyer didn't seem to have the time or inclination. Let's call it what it is to develop now. Any absence of physical or forensic evidence was explained away just as

we were. Alibi evidence was as well, and even though three of the five victims never identified you, they still had Kimberly Bolinsky adamantly supporting her I D while Rhonda Williams was convinced to go through with her as a trial. Meanwhile, any of Rhonda's reservations at the live lineup and the fact that she had reported seeing the attacker proven to

not be you in the street. In the days following the robberies, all that critical information was hidden from your defense team, and so the jury found you guilty and you were sentenced to sixty years. After the verdict was really I've just looked back towards my family. They were sitting directly and back on me, and one of my sisters was trailing. At the time she discollapsed, I already know that I had death found guilt, and my man, my Mancas was the safety and welfare my sister at

the time. The Pacers Foundation is a proud supporter of this episode of rawul Conviction and of the Last Mile organization, which provides business and tech training to help incarcerated individuals successfully and permanently re enter the workforce. The Pacers Foundation is committed to improving the lives of Hoosiers across Indiana, supporting organizations that are dedicated primarily to helping young people

and students. For more information on the work of the Pacers Foundation or the Last Bile Program, visit Pacers Foundation dot org or the Last Mile dot org. The first time I want to yard and I looked at that forty ft wall and you can't see nothing. The only thing that you can see at this guy. And that's what really stuck in my head. Of course, with the prisoner user experience different type of emotions. You know, you

go through about a depression. I remember one time I was having a hard time sleeping and I remember this show I was watching. I forgot the name on the show. It was a guy on death row in Texas. He wrote a letter to an innocent project and eventually they helped him get off a death row and release for prison. And at that moment, I just sat down there. I brought the summary of my case. I got a directory of all the innocent projects in the United States, and I got a copy of the letter. I just sent

them out to all the innocent projects. Amazingly, things started to turn around. It was not that long after you went to prison, right that it was discovered that, not long after the crime, and before you had been arrested, one of the victims, victim named Williams, had called the police and reported that she saw the man who robbed her on the street. So Williams had been living with the fact that she felt like she had, you know, picked out the wrong man, and we now know that

she had called the police. I believe three days after she had been robbed. She said, I see the man. I think this is him who actually robbed me. So the police went her home, they spoke with her, and then they went to Mr Donald's workplace. They checked out his time card, they spoke to his supervisor, and they found that there was no way that Mr Donald could have been the man in front of her home when

he was at work. In fact, he had lunch with his supervisor at the time that she had phoned the police. So Rhonda Williams, prior to your formal charges, had spotted the actual assailant on the street and reported it, and the police looked into it, and it turned out that the person that she saw could not have been you because you had been at work provably so at the time that she had seen the attacker. I'm just pausing

for a second for emphasis. That seems like it should have mattered to the police, that's right, and yet nobody knows about this. The detectives did not inform anybody. This didn't come out till after he'd been incarcerated for many, many years. That was just the first time that they would tell evidence. In my case, If the attorney had had this information, this case would have pretty much been

a done deal. That information, as I understand. It became the basis for a post conviction motion to vacate Tim's conviction, but the motion, as well as the subsequent appeals were denied. They said the information had married, but it was a town known it and that's why they got to that. During that time, I was transitioning to another attorney, my

trial attorney. He was running for the mirror Geary, So at this time I didn't have an attorney, and I guess the time frame they supposed been found and over left. I mean, these technicalities make me crazy. I think most people would agree that justice is more important than the technical details, and furthermore, the finality, which seems to be

the opposite of the way our system functions. So now we passed forward to two thousand and six, when the McDill Innocence Project at Northwestern University's McDill School of Journalism and later the Chicago Innocence Center began reinvestigating your case to him, and they found evidence that showed that an eighteen year old street gang member, a guy named Lavelle Thompson, who had bacial acne and was about the right height, he had been murdered shortly after the robberies and the

murder of Mr jimnez Now in two thousand nine, so another three years go by. Williams provided us warned statement saying that at the time she viewed the photographic lineup, she was with Bolinsky. So Williams said, she pointed to your photo and Olinsky began to weep. However, a police officer noted in a report that Bolinsky was not completely

sure of her identification. Williams also said in the statement that when she viewed the live lineup, she told the detective that, Timmy, that you were bigger and taller than the robber, right, just like we keep its been saying this whole time, and as you had been saying probably the whole time. However, the detective assured her that you were in fact the guy, and that you had been

arrested across the street from Williams's home. Now, she said, the detective quote unquote, convinced me that I had picked the right guy end quote. Williams also said she never told prosecutors about her reservations or the detectives em successfully coercing her, and she said that she remained convinced that the man that she saw shortly after the robbery was the gunman who robbed her, which again would have mean

that it could not possibly have been you. And everybody knew that because they knew that you had been at work at that time. That was beyond any doubt. But she testified to her doubts and to the police detective's effort to persuade her during a sworn deposition that she gave in two thousand thirteen as part of the post conviction proceeding to vacate your conviction. So now things are

really gathering momentum about this time. That's when the notes was discovered That Roda and my trial prosecutor had a meeting. This was before trial, way back in ninety two. Head told the dean prosecutor was prosecuting my case that she wont certain that I was the individual. She said I was taller, she said my shoulders with wada, and that she wasn't sure. So he knew about these notes and he got her on stand knowing that she testified to

something that she ain't sure about. So these no stay hidden in this prosecuted foul for over twenty years before they were discovered. That's the second Brady valiation. I don't have any words for that, right, Nikki, What can you say about behavior? What can you say? Well, it's unacceptable. And I think people need to be held accountable. If prosecutors and or police didn't do what they should be doing,

they should be held accountable. I mean, at the end of the day, these folks are responsible for stealing this man's life. And if you and I stole somebody's life, we would be held accountable. It's hard to think of another profession where you have no accountability, right because they have this immunity, they're able to get away with these things. But I think once we start holding criminal justice actors responsible,

we will start to see change for the better. I thank god that he didn't put the nose to the thread. Yeah yeah, that's a miracle right there. And and that brings us to two thousand and sixteen, twenty four years and we end up on January thousand, sixteen in the Lake County Circuit Court right where the judge vacated your

convictions and granted a new trial. Now, the judge said that the prosecution contended that the same man had committed both crimes and had argued that the identifications were positive

and without any reservations. So the judge ruled that the prosecution's failure to disclose Miss Williams's reservations about her identification, as well as the detective's effort to persuade her successfully as it turned out, to identify you, rendered your trial unconstitutional, constitutionally unfair, as he called it, And so on January two days later, the Lake County States Attorney dismissed the charges and you were released. You went in as a

twenty three year old kid. Really, let's say, said you're more the kid and the man. Now you're a forty seven year old man. And so we talked about that terrible moment when you were convicted of a crime you had nothing to do with. What about this moment? I want to take you back a little bit, Jason, Like we prior to me finding out that the charges was a getting business, my mother had came to visit me and she told me it was like a three hundred and sixty dollar came to number the zact number power

ball and she says she's gonna play it. So the following Monday, I loosely called my mother and my auntie, and my mother told me we won. So I don't think when she said we won't think she's talking about the power Ball that I was elated here the truth family came out. What about the power Ball? They didn't didn't win that she probably was more excited for this week. I guarantee you he would have gave that power ball ticket winning ticket to get her son on There's no

question about it. So and keep in mind, Jason that while he had been exonerated in January, we all know he's innocent. The prosecutor has even stated that he is innocent. Listen, there is no statue of limitations for for homicide, so the state at any time can still come back and bring charges against Mr Donald. And I don't think people really understand how this haunts Mr Donald today tomorrow. I mean this, You know, they can come back even with

no evidence, nothing here in Indiana, and that's really problematic. Yeah, I mean, they can come back everywhere that I know of, and they can retry you. Normally they won't, but sometimes they try to extract the plea just in order for you to avoid the retrial. And after everything you've already been through, you know, who knows how somebody's going to react to that, they offered me a plea. Bog To thousand and thirteen. The prosecutor had reached out to his attorney.

They had offered him an Alfred plea to get out, and he refused because, Timmy, what you shared with me was that you would not agree to something that you did not do, and that they called your mama a liar, and for those reasons, he chose not to accept that Alfred plea, or he would have been out of prison in they called my sister a lawyer, my blood in law a lawyer, And I just couldn't accept taking a plea walk and I know I didn't have nothing to

do with it. So the prosecutor clearly knew in advance, three years earlier that they didn't have anything right. They knew, they knew. In fact, I called the prosecutor after I met Mr Donald and I said, Hey, is this guy really innocent? And he said he's a hundred percent innocent. We locked up the wrong guy. I mean, I will never forget that phone call. Yeah, but what does it say as well about this system and the people in

it that they come to you. Sure they knew you were innocent, and they're trying to They're trying to screw you again by getting you to sign a way, literally sign your life away in order to go home. I haven't figured out how people sleep at night, Jason. I'm not gonna lie to you. I really don't know how people can sleep at night knowing that an innocent person is sitting in prison and they have the power and

the authority to help release that individual. It's unbelievable, and instead they go the exact opposite way and try to make the situation worse, trying to double down because it's not enough that we kept this innocent man in prison for half of his life. Right now, I was going to make sure that he can't ever get justice by making him sign a piece of paper that we know is false. I mean, I don't know how they sleep

at night either. I think you're a great example for everyone of somebody who's been to hell and back and come out. You know, wanting to make a difference is making a difference in the lives of others, not sitting around. I mean, listen, if you were in the in the bar, drunk in the corner every day all day, nobody could judge you because of what you went through, but instead you're working hard with Dr Jackson, educating people, helping other exonrerees,

doing all kinds of incredible stuff. I think it's important to know what happened with Timmy's life like after like literally when he got out. So I equate leaving prison coming back into the society to being dropped in the foreign country and you don't know the language. Is all the customers. I want to stay with my sister, the science sister that I was with a fiance. Is they now married? They offered me wrong, great, the same sister and fiance that we're you're my witnesses. Yes, they offered

me a places and stay, and I gladly accepted. When I saw this picture of Mr Donald in a newspaper, I knew I had to meet him. My background is domestic violence, but when I met Mr Donald, what I observed was another victim, but a victim of a system. And when he got out of prison, you know, there were a lot of struggles and challenges, right, dental health issues, medical health, economic strife. I mean, he didn't have a job,

a driver's license for resume. You know, how do you craft a resume when there's twenty four years missing, So think about how hard that is. And so when we met and he shared those struggles, there was no question that things needed to change for exonrees here in Indiana. Well, you're being released people that actually committed a crime. They had more resources than people that being wrongly convicted. And

I don't got a problem with that. They need to receive this and Ray, you're so had, but they're steal accommodate lawful convicted individual. Also, through Timmy, I have learned so much about the flaws in the system and all of the re entry struggles. So I said it, Timmy, we've got to fix it. We got to fix it. We've got to address these issues. And that's what we've been doing. One of the first things that I promised Timmy was that we would get a compensation statute in

the state of Indiana. I fought very hard, and two years later, we we have a compensation statute, which is still a problem. Our axonorees have to choose between litigation or compensation the way it currently stands, and that's problematic because again we're revictimizing them. We're saying you can't pursue litigation if you want to receive the compensation. Again, we're holding them hostage. So you and I cross passed during

that fight to get the compensation bill passed. And like you may, this bill has its problems, but it's still a first victory in the longer battle for a just system. And you and I go into depth on how you got this done in our interview on my other podcast, Righteous Convictions, where I encourage our listeners please go check this out. Well, we'll have it linked in the bio

to make it easy for you. Now, you sat on two prison advisory boards were and you were able to use that position knowing a number of lawmakers, and you were able to rally support for this bill, as flawed as it is. So that is something you continue to work on from an organization that you found it in Timmy's name, which is beautiful actually back in the Willie T. Donald Exoneration Advisory Coalition. So what have you guys been

up to? And you know, we need some help for the folks here in Indiana in terms of post exoneration assistance. We have an amazing board of directors. We are very fortunate that we've got the Center for Justice and Post Exoneration Assistance established at the University per Due Northwest has been incredible supporter. They have helped fund this, as has Assignmon family. So we are looking at policy issues, you know, policy reform, post exoneration needs of exonore ees, and also

obviously claims of innocence. Mr Donald is paying it forward. And there's no better eyes, no better lens to look at a wrongful conviction than an exonoree. We have a long list of things that we are attempting to do. As you know, on average it takes about nine years to get somebody exonerated. I'm not a lawyer, so I am hoping to raise funds to get more money so we can hire an attorney or have attorney's work pro bono on the cases that Mr Donald and the students

are now reviewing. So some really great things have happened as a result of actually of our friendship, of our meeting. You know, some incredible things have happened. So if anybody is interested in learning more about the work at the Center for Justice and Post Exoneration Assistance is doing, they can email me at c J P A at p MW dot E d U. And if there's anybody who's

interested in in providing donorship sponsorships. We would be very excited to talk to you, you know, help you better understand what we're doing and why this is so important to all citizens of the state of Indiana and actually nationwide. We're going to have all of that linked in to bio in addition to a go fund me for Timmy. And now we're going to go to my favorite part of the show, which of course is called closing arguments. And closing Arguments is, of course the part of the

show where I kicked back in my chair. Thank both of you, of course profusely for being here. Turn my microphone off, leave my headphones on, and just listen to anything else you want to say. Thank you so much for having me here today. I really do hope that the viewers learned something regarding wrongful convictions, particularly in terms of mistake and witness identification, and that everybody understands that

this could happen to you. And one of the things that I end everything with when I'm talking about wrongful convictions is if you were ever placed in police custody, interrogation, whatever, make sure you ask for an attorney. I think that is one of the biggest mistakes that people make. And it makes sense when you're innocent, you have nothing to hide, so you think you don't need an attorney. And unfortunately we know thousands of people have been wrongly convicted and

that's just the tip of the iceberg. Right, So again, thank you for for having me. And I also want to say thank you to Mr Donald for allowing me to enter into his world. So thank you, Timmy for that. Thank you well. Wrongful incus would never happen. And if my hope that doing my joby says, I've been out bit. I then came across the lot of young people that's entering the law profession. Let it be a h attorney,

prosecutor and someone going into police work. And it's my host that learning about my case and other people cases about wrong conviction is my hope that once they entered in today land of work. Yeah, the old guard eventually a leave in the new way of coming in and the probably sign up right a light on this troubling issue. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Cheff Clyvern and Kevin Wardis,

with research by Lila Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason flam Raleval Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one h