#305 Jason Flom with Raymond Allan Warren

On July tenth, nineteen ninety four, sixteen year old Raymond Allen Warren and two friends were walking down Kilmer Street in Dayton, Ohio. A car swerved up and the driver asked them for drugs, but they were not drug dealers. The trio continued on to one of the friend's houses to fix a flat tire on Raymond's motorized scooter. They

Okay, thank you for having me.

I want to thank everyone there at the ron Convissions the podcast.

You're very welcome and joining Raymond today is his fierce advocate that our listeners might remember from the Gunshot Residue episode of Wrongful Conviction Junk Science, in which they actually touched on Raymond's case while discussing the issue at large. We're going to have that episode linked in our bio. I implore you to go and check it out. It's an eye opener. She is the director of the Wrongful Conviction Project at the office of the Ohio Public Defender.

Thanks for having me.

You're welcome. All right. So, Raymond, you've been in prison going on well, Jesus, I hate to even say this, but you've been in prison for twelve years, longer now than you were a lot before all of this happened. That's just nuts. But can you tell us a bit about your first sixteen years of life before this tragedy.

As you said, it was sixteen years old.

I primarily grew up in Dayton, Ohio, back and forth from Kentucky as well. I have a lot of family down there, and we were poor, and I had a good childhood. I would say three younger brothers at the time. I have five younger brothers now.

Yeah, And I understand you were really into like working on cars and stuff like that.

I grew up basically tell you some part as a kid and the older I got.

I started working vehicles right before this incarceration. I maybe like a year year and a half. I had learned to paint.

Car, So that was something that I was doing on a regular basis. I didn't even started to make a little money at it, and I was probably considered probably the neighborhood handy. Anybody that needed something done to their car, I was there to do it, just a kid trying to figure stuff out.

So it sounds like you had a lot of stuff, you know, figured out go in the right direction anyway, and you had a talent and a passion for something that could have earned you a good living. So now we get to the faithful day of July tenth, nineteen ninety four, and there was a scooter you were working on. Was it your scooter or did it belong to one of your friends?

Well, the scooter belonged to me.

I had a flat tire. It was at my grandmother's house where I was staying. We had to take it to Antonio's house, where we basically kept all the Tuesday we'd accumulated.

Chante and Antonio had arrived that.

Evening to help me move it from my grandmother's house to Antonio's house.

Efficient Me and Schante were basically pushing the scooter. He was steering me, and I was looking.

Up the back of the scooter because as I had a flat you couldn't move it any other way. Antonio was riding alongside of the street when the car pulled up. Guying in the car asked us or someone in the car asked us we had these drugs, I said.

But nothing happened and we don't got nothing.

Antonio said something I don't remember exactly what, cursing.

Him out, and they kept going. We continued along our path to Antonio's house.

We arrived at the corner of Kilmer in Lakeview when we heard gunshots.

We immediately took off run up. We were pushing the scooter and I was looking up the backup at me and shot tey.

We're doing our best to bookie Alan to get to Antonio's house. And when we arrived Antonio's house, we basically dropped the scooter will after to realize was anybody shooting at us, and realized.

It was safe he started working on the scooter.

Right, and specifically you were fixing a flat tire.

The way that the scooter is made, you have to take the brakes and the wheel off before you can get to the action tire, as well as the muffler off of the wheel wheel.

It's not like tire like a car or something. It's a lot different. You have to really take all everything apart on the back of the scooter.

So yeah, we were absolutely working with the break opponents, a muffler, everything that was attached to that whill.

So at this point you have no idea what happened back there on Kilmer Street, but just that it was smart to not be anywhere around it and you were able to fix your flat. Now, before we get into the specific of the crime itself, I want to turn

Sure, So GSR tests don't actually test for a unique substance known as gunshot residue. What they're really testing for are elements that are known to be present in gunshot residue. And the test using Raymond's case was an atomic absorption test. It's not really used anymore because it has limited utility, but it was testing for two elements, barium and antimony,

Right, So, as Raymond just said and his friends confirmed, so it's undisputed that they had fixed a flat that night, handled the brake pads and other components. But we haven't even gotten to why all of this matters yet. So it turns out that this guy, Wendall Simpson was driving around Kilmer Street that night, and there may or may not have been a gold Buick either following him or

So there are two young men who are there at the scene as well, Andre Wright and Stanley Williams, and what they indicate to the police is that they saw Wendell Simpson's car crashed into the house on Kilmer Street, and so they pull their car up and park across

Now, we're not trying to implicate other potentially innocent people here, of course not. But that interaction is at the very least remarkable considering what happened to Raymond, who at this time had just fixed the flat tire, went to a nearby gas station and was heading back to grandma's house on Kilmer Street.

When I arrived at.

My grandmother's house, there was some kind of commotion at the top of the block, and there were police and fire trucks and all kinds of stuff out there. A detective approached me while I was putting the school on my grandmother's porch and asked me had I seen anything. I didn't really know what he was talking about. He asked me about the street. See what he was he was talking about. So I walked with him with the scooter up the street. He asked me if I had

I was with.

So I didn't mind, I don't care. So being that I do to help, I absolutely could. They handcuff me and placed me in a back or police card.

So, Okay, you were trying to help, right, and you had already explained where you had been. But maybe it was that you potentially had contact with this vehicle before the shooting. So at this point you didn't know that you had any reason to be scared. But the handcuff certainly could have been some kind of indication. So now they take you down to the station. How did that go? When you got there?

It took me to a room, It took the handcuffs off of me, and I was in there for quite some time. The light was turned off and I started to nod off on the table a little bit when a detective came in the room and started asking me questions. At first it was, you know, just ask me questions about who I was with, where I was.

Had I seen the vehicle?

And like I said, I wasn't for sure that I had seen that particular vehicle. But I told him about the vehicle that had approached, told him about my friends that I was with and Tony on shot today as well as he going to fish the scooter anything was wrong with it.

So scay his story. I told exactly where I was at and who I was with.

He voluntarily waives his rights, He agrees to give a statement, and he agrees to this gunshot residue test.

Why not, I haven't done anything wrong, had fired gun?

Yet?

Gave gun test right?

Since, after all, you hadn't fired a gun, you had every reason to be confident that you wouldn't test positive because nobody, I mean, let's not forget no one at the time understood that these tests could easily result in false positives. So that night, Raymond was released to his grandma and went home thinking, probably thinking he was safe.

So the gunshot residue test comes back and they detect antimony and bury him on the palm of Raymond's right hand. It's not on the back of his right hand. It's not anywhere on his left hand. It's just on the palm. Raymond is left handed, so it's on his non dominant hand that they find these two elements.

This is what's weird about this. So it was only on the palm, not on the backside, where you might expect it more likely to be. I mean, you can just hold your hand up and mimic a firing motion and you'll see what I'm talking about. And on the non dominant hand.

You would expect it to be on his dominant hand. And the fact that it's not, I think is indicative that it's contamination, either from the brake pads or potentially because he is handcuffed, he's in a police cruiser, he's taken down to the police station, he's in the interrogation room. Those are all surfaces that we know are contaminated with gunshot resdue.

So not only had he been working with brake pads that night, there was also a tremendous amount of opportunities for touch transfer, which is why it is widely accepted now that GSR testing or more specifically, the atomic absorption test that was used in this case is almost entirely meaningless. In fact, the only reasonable use it has is in the scenario where the suspect hasn't had the opportunity to

They believe that antimony and barium are very unique to gunshot residue, So if somebody tests positive for those elements, the belief is that it means they fired a weapon, they were a victim of a shooting, or the handled ammunition.

So those results were in and the police are like, WHOA, we've got our guy here. So you had mentioned Antonio and Chante and statement.

So the police go to Antonio's home a few weeks after the shooting, multiple police cards, multiple police officers, and they pull up on Antonio he's in his front yard and they say, we want to take you down to the police station to talk to you about this crime. He asks to go tell his parents they're in the house, and the police won't let him. So this fourteen year old boys being escorted to the police station. His parents don't know about it. He gets there, he asks to

As we was walking back going back home, this guy had pulled up Alan's right behind us.

Before he left Allen's house, he drank a pop.

So it appears that he's talked to them for a lengthy period of time, and then it was told, you know, to give this very short statement implicating Raymond.

Yeah, and no one really picked up on this flub. That illustrates that he was just repeating the story that they had developed. He had been coerced into doing so by the threat of his own wrongful prosecution. And Shante was faced with the same call it what it is, it's Sophie's choice.

Yeah, Shante. They come to his house one morning, it's six thirty in the morning. He's sleeping. He'd gone to bed late the night before, so he's not on much rest. They take him to the police station and they tell him the same thing where they'd say, you know, we're looking to talk to you about a murder we think you might have been involved in. And so ultimately what happens, is Schante. It's the police actually write out a statement, and that's the statement that Chante signs. He doesn't write

Signs, and essentially that statement corroborated Antonio's statement. Both were towing the line for this police narrative, which was that while this is the narrative they were putting forth, was that while on the way to Antonio's house, this encounter with the victim happened. He asked for drugs Antoni. When Chante kept walking, Raymond allegedly went into an alley with the victim, who tried to pay with the counterfeit role and Raymond allegedly shot him for it. Raymond allegedly then

August the Knife nineteen ninety four.

I was taken in juvenile custom and juvenile gusty.

You don't have a bond or anything.

Like that, which is backwards as hell, and.

Even once bound over to the adult courts on the bond that they gave me as I said we were still for and wasn't.

Able to pay it.

And it wasn't until these proceedings in which they magically decided that a sixteen year old was an adult. Right, That always blows my mind. Yeah, they just decided that its sixteen year old was an adult for the purpose of inflicting, you know, much more terrifying and harsh punishment. And that was when you, for the first time, you found out that your friends had even said these things.

Shante wasn't part of that process, but Antonio was.

He came to court and made.

Some statements that literally like only why are they telling these lies?

I didn't have opportunity to speak with him.

I'm sitting there life, like I say, on the balance of people making false statments, I really don't know.

What to do.

This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company. AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and is making a positive difference in the lives of its employees and in the communities where we work and live. In light of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice, reform. The AIG pro bono program provides free legal services and

The States case really was these three pieces of evidence, the alleged gunshot residue, Antonio's testimony, and Shante's testimony. What's interesting is Antonio and Shante actually didn't show up the day they were supposed to testify. They were supposed to come down to court. They were subpoena and they didn't come. So the next day the police actually go out and they arrest them, and they bring them down to the court and they hold them in jail. And so their

Signed, right, And it's hard to remember lies, especially when you weren't even the one that initially wrote them. So they have these statements from the two kids that would have and should have been his alibi witnesses. By the way, both of them have since recanted on the record, right, But that hasn't really done anything for Raymond thus far. He's still right where he is. But back at trial, the defense did present two witnesses that shed a lot of doubt on the state's case.

So there were two people who lived in the neighborhood nearby John and Patricia Morland, and the defense called them, and Patricia testified to she was kind of walking around the neighborhood at this time. She'd gone to her friend's house to get her hair done and then was coming home, and so she testified to seeing mister Simpson in his car kind of rolling around the block a few times.

Again, we're not saying that these individuals are guilty, but they were not ruled out by GSR testing. At the very least, they should have been more interesting to the authorities than Raymond was to the police at that time. Plus, the Morlands did not mention seeing Raymond come and go from the scene while they had watched these three men.

So the gunshot residue analyst testified that he found barriam and antimony on Raymond's non dominant hand and that it meant one of those three things that he either shot a firearm, was a victim of a shooting, or handled contaminated ammunition.

I mean, I was sitting there listening to this like Dudy's lyon, there's no way. At the same time, I don't have anything to come bad, is you know?

I like it?

Depending on as my lawyers at the time, they didn't.

Know what the break pass and working.

With vehicles and motor oil and other things like that be something that would cause these readings.

I mean, the jury is they're hearing from two children who are saying, my friend did this. They're hearing from this scientific evidence, you know, back in nineteen ninety five. This sounds like real science, and they're being told it could only be one of these three things, and two of those things are inculpatory, like the idea that he handled ammunition or fired a gun. Both of those things aren't good and certainly he wasn't a victim of a shooting. So the jury's left with very little to go on.

At that point, did you hold out any hope that the jury was going to get it right?

I thought that as jury would see the video tape Antonio did, and though, like I say that he's being forced to say certain things, I thought that.

The truth would come out.

I really didn't think like I would be sitting here now.

I didn't. Verdy did come back. I was dumb.

Fount two of the jury remembers cried and said certain things that it's like they were kind of bulling into the verdict themselves.

So I was I was still kind of dumb. Found during the whole process, Like for a couple of years. I literally said and waited like every time.

Like the door would open, like I was waiting on to come get it. Tell like they made a mistake.

Just as as as we discussed, I was a bound over as an adult, and back then they didn't.

Have a juvenile like blocks or anything like that for individuals who were under anything. So I was thrown right into the the jungles don't to speak.

At eleven nine Correctional Institution.

As a kid, I was prayed up on, you know, sexually harassed by both inmates and.

Guardens of life. Definitely was an updial battle.

And it still tings to be the battle, and it has not been easy. And in the very beginning it was.

Man, it was a fight for my life every day, like it was.

Really, like I said, just trying to maneuberant, stay out of harm's way. One of the things that I've tried to make sure that I've done is to educate myself and stay prepare for what.

These daughters do. I can require my degree, my.

Totorist certification, and I'm also in college now. I've trying to stay busy with education as well as physical activities, working out things like that, just staying busy with a job, as well as staying active in my own legal process, reading the documents and things like that that my legal team sends me make sure that I'm abreast of.

The things that are being done.

So Raymond is convicted in nineteen ninety five. He has a direct appeal that's unsuccessful, and from that point forward he's really on his own, and so he's making every effort he can to find an attorney to help him challenge his conviction, which is incredibly difficult. He has no money, he's incarcerated, and he's by that point seventeen years old. So he and his brothers scrape together a little money and are able to hire an attorney. And this is

Well, I was very fortunate enough to run into a guy who was going home who knew Antonio, and I was also in contact with the project and they were helping me as well. They were investigating my case. I related information to do how as this project, and they were able to attain an affidavit of truth from Antonio Johnson boss.

And he says the same thing, which is, I was a scared kid. My testimony was not true. I thought they were going to charge me with this murder and I didn't come forward sooner because I was scared I would be charged with perjury. So Raymond now has both of these affidavits, and it's really a series of mishaps at that point. He's got one organization that's working for him, but then they lose his file and sort of don't

It really does take a village. So he's had Chante's AFFI David since nineteen ninety nine, and almost ten years went by before he caught up with Antonio. The clock is ticking on all of this newly discovered evidence and all of these attorneys that Raymond simply doesn't have the means to maintain. This just screws him over even more than the system already has, which is hard to believe or even imagine. But is that accurate.

That's definitely the most accurate. And I have not been a that good at learning the law. I'm not an attorney, don't play one on TV.

Yeah, I hear that I'm not either, Raymond. A lot of people think I am, but I'm definitely not alert. I'm not even a college graduate. But anyway, it's not exactly like you had the benefit of having gone to law school. So the nightmare continued.

It was literally a nightmare at the time.

I really didn't know what to do with So it was just trying to understand the legal process and really put together something on my own and get it fouled myself, which I eventually did.

I fouled motion for trial.

So twenty thirteen, Raymond fouled his motion. At the time, there was actually an unwritten rule, but a rule that a lot of the courts had adopted that once a person discovers new evidence, they have an obligation to present it to the court within a reasonable period of time.

And the term unreasonable seems like a like a conveniently flexible term, but it seems like if a person's freedom is at stake and they're presenting the truth, I mean, any amount of time should be within reason.

That's right. There's really not at that time a lot of guidance on what is a reasonable period of time. So there's cases where five years is determined to be reasonable in cases where four months is determined to be unreasonable. So it's really hard to judge what will be deemed timely or untimely.

I mean, you have these guys Antonio and Chante coming forward to their own peril and detriment, admitting to perjury, which carries a five to ten year sentence in Ohio, I believe. And yet they're going to go ahead talk about the authorities and tell an innocent man, Yeah, but you know nothing to see here. Too bad for you. An unreasonable amount of time has passed. Now had he also supported those recantations with the evolving science on GSR?

When Raymond initially filed his pro se emotion, he doesn't know about the gunshot resid to evidence. He doesn't have an understanding of this evolving science, so his motion was

And again they ruled the delay in presenting this new evidence was unreasonable.

So at that point we appealed again, and the appellate court reversed again, and what they said was that the trial court should have had hearing on Raymond's motion. So we go back to the trial court. At that point, we have a multiple day evidentiary hearing, and the focus of this hearing is actually not on the new evidence. This hearing is entirely focused on whether Raymond filed this evidence within a reasonable period of time.

Right, seemingly based on an arbitrary opinion, not on any concrete metric. So never mind that all of this has to do with these lawyers and Raymond's inability to financially maintain counsel. That's not a good enough reason, so he's denied again.

At that point, we appealed again, and this time we lost the appeal. So we appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court and they declined to take jurisdiction over Raymond's case.

And that was that was in March of the this year. As we're recording twenty twenty two, and typical of our system, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they will not be reconsidering cases that have already been decided, even if only several months had passed since that ruling. You know, this reminds me of how they sometimes make laws or change laws, but don't change them retroactively to correct all the injustice that has come before, which would seem like a no brainer, right, They just

They let care about the evidence. That's something they care about.

They all care about, Like I said, the fact that's it's too long a file.

That's right. Due to these procedural barriers and the time limitations on filing motions, over these years, no court has ever spent the time to look at these affidavits, to look at the gunshot reside evidence and to actually determine

He needs really two brain cells to rub together, and you could see this, right, So where do we go from here?

What we're working on right now is we filed an application for DNA testing last year in the trial court and there was three shell casings found at the scene, two in mister Simpson's car, one just outside of the driver's side door, and so we asked for touch DNA

Yeah, And unfortunately, maddeningly, parole boards almost always demanded a mission of guilt, which Raymond of course has not done, even though he's been eligible now for almost ten years in twenty thirteen, and he has no plan of changing that. And as an innocent man, neither he nor any other innocent person should have this crazy condition right to admit guilt to a crime they didn't commit. Are there any other avenues other than where you've found denial so far?

The other notable thing right now in Ohio is that over the last couple of years, the Ohio Supreme Court convened a task forced to study wrongful convictions and post conviction review and they were looking at a lot of different factors. How do we prevent wrongful convictions? You know,

So we're glad that someone really has Raymond's back here as he continues his fight. Is there anything our audience can do to help?

Yeah, like, the audience support me as much as possible.

Anything that you see our website on the Free Ramdom and Modern website supporting our petitions side anything that they can do too to judge, to do the right thing, to let my case process through.

So I just let it sit because I missed the filing deadline. Actually, I proof of my innocence shouldn't be sitting here. That's what the world should be doing with support it.

Well, we're going to have the action steps LinkedIn the bio, So please, whatever you're doing right now, unless you're driving, stop and scroll down sign the petition, check out his site to stay up on developments in the case, and let's keep the pressure on. And that brings us now to my favorite part of the show, where first of all, I thank you all for joining us and Raymond for

Please, Well, thank you very much for having me and Raymond here and for telling his story. I think we're at a really critical moment where the public is really paying attention to wrongful conviction. You know, they're really aware that it happens, and I think motivated to do what they can to prevent them from occurring. And a lot of these conversations center around preventing wrongful convictions, which is absolutely critical. You know, how do we reform eyewitnessed identification procedures,

First off, I want to thank you Jake Fluff allowed me to do so interview. The second, I.

Want the world to know that I'm in here something I didn't do. This could happen to any of you or any of your children. Like I said, I was the child on It's happened, and not hearing my evidence and hearing the proof of my innocence does a.

Mister filing them a lot.

I need your help right now. The justice system has their knee on my name.

I'm dying. I needs weal something I didn't do. So anybody that's listening to this support me.

I like to sign up petitions, but showing up with those support roles and showing up the places I need your health. Anybody that does support me and get out the help. I want to thank you right now. I want this, you know, this nightmare to end. There's a lot of things in life, like I said, haven't got to experience it.

I mean here, like you said, I was sixteen years old. People here, in this room of all of it, Washington grew up. That sucks. God it sucks as well, does be over with it?

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cleiburn, and Kevin Wartis, with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms. You can also follow me on both