In the early morning hours of August eleven, nineteen seventy nine, a seventy four year old woman was asleep in her den when she awoke to find a black man had broken in through the window by the light of her television. He brutalized and raped her for over an hour. After stealing seventy dollars, The assailant pulled the telephone cord out of the wall and fled through the back door. When the victim finally was able to contact the police, she was taken to the hospital, but in her bloodied state,
they decided against performing a rape kit. However, other biological evidence was collected from the scene. The victim helped that Georgia Bureau of Investigation develop a composite sketch, and immediately one of the investigators said that it looked like a young man named John Jerome White, who was a person of interest in a string of burglaries. They arrested John and collected physical samples from him, as well as his
driver's lacens. Even though none of the physical evidence was a match for John, the victim might to find him at first in a photo array and then again at a live lineup, and after all that, how could anyone deny her gut wrenching courtroom identification? So they didn't this this wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful Conviction today. We have a unique story, but not rare, and it's just a tragic every time something like this happens when a
black man is misidentified by a white victim. So there's this double victimization that happens. And it was much easier for these things to happen before the dawn of DNA testing, not that they don't still happen today, because they do. But here to discuss the matter is the former executive director of the Georgia and Its Project. She's now with the Fulton County Conviction Integrity Unit. So Amy Maxwell, without for there do thank you for joining us here again
the wrongful conviction. Thank you for having me and now the man she represented, Mr John Jerome White. You know, I'm sorry for the reason why you're here joining us today, but we are really honored to have you. Thank you. You're very welcome. So John, as we like to do here, you know, it's sort of almost a tradition. Now, we'd like to spend some time getting to know you a bit like our audience get to know you a bit, So can you tell us a little bit about what
your life was like prior to all this insanity. Uh. Well, I'm from the small what we like to call the railroad town, uh and matt Chester, Georgia. That's in South Georgia. I'm the only boys, six girls. I was raised by my grandmother. It's a little do thing for my grandmother, you know, cut wood and working in gods and things of that night. You you know, growed up and got a chance to experience you know, what we we like to call cross Town as you know, that's city of
match House, you know. And I kind of got away from my grandmama's you know, hold long and you know, making sure I was doing the right thing thing. And during the time all this occur, you know, I had started to do a little mount of burgers and things of that nature here around match House, convenience stores and merchant stores like that. That I was going in the
wrong direction. They were going totally gift the way I was brought up, you know, I all have it to me, you know, and the way things happened, I feel like it was Gods way of putting that putting that roadblock in my path. Well, that sounds like one way of taking responsibility for the actual wrong that you've admitted to doing in the past. And I suppose thinking of your wrongful conviction like that is a way to make peace
with it. But I mean, sometimes on this show we speak with folks that are pulled completely out of obscurity to be tried for a crime said absolutely nothing to do with. But in your case, it just doesn't make it right by any means. But you were known entity the police because of those burglaries down in Manchester. But the crime in question wasn't burglary, was rape, and you had never exhibited any sort of violence and certainly no sexual violence before. So it's really a hell of a
label to get saddled with. Yeah, I couldn't believe it. You know, I always been the type that you know, I respected women. You know, are raised by my grandmother. You know I'm alive that, you know, that's all I've been around, you know, women, And it was kind of hard to believe that, you know, I would be in charge,
will you know, the whole type of crime. Nevertheless, the burglaries had you on the radar of the local police when this terrible crime occurred, and it was in the early morning hours of August eleven, nineteen seventy nine, when a man broke into the Manchester, Georgia home of a seventy four year old woman. Well, what we know is
that she was in the den. She was asleep on her couch, and she had her sheets on the couch, and she did have the light on in the kitchen, and she had her television on, so that was the only line available to her. She also were prescription glasses and she didn't have her glasses on and someone broke in through a window in the den. He attacked her, He raped her, He brutalized her for over an hour. Then he ripped out the telephone cords out of the wall and went out the back door. He also stole
seventy dollars in cash from her purse. Now, she eventually called the cops and was taken to the hospital. But do I have this right that no rape kit was collected. No rape kit was collected, They said because she was so damaged during the rape, The rape was so brutal and there was just so much blood. They made a
determination that they couldn't get any viable evidence. And you know, you've got to remember back then they were only able to do blood typing, So I think that their thought process may have been, there's so much of her blood, you know, his blood type is going to just get all mixed up in there. They may also have not wanted to get Remember this is a small town, right They might have been concerned that she was already so traumatized that they didn't want to do any more of
an examination. You know, she was seventy four years old, and I can't even imagine how how she was presenting to the doctors. Obviously they should have done a sexual assault kit, because they certainly would today, but they did not. And since there was no rape kit, there's no seminal evidence. But there was other blood and biological evidence at the scene, which will get into in a bit. But in nineteen seventy nine, as Amy mentioned, all we had was prology,
which had its own limitations. DNA testing, of course, was not available yet, and I can't imagine collecting a rape kit would have been an easy thing to do with this poor seventy four year old woman in the state that she was in. But the fact that she did somehow survived. She must have been some tough lady. So what happened next in this investigation, Well, I should point out that this is such a small town that their local police didn't do the investigation. They brought in the
state police, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. And when they were collecting evidence, they collected the bed sheet that was on the couch, and the bed sheet had hairs. Now, I will say that at trial they only thought there was one hair. Turned out there were several hairs on that bed sheet, and they preserved that. Now, I will say that at trial the hairs were discussed. To use the parlance at the time, they were nigroid hairs, and
that's pretty much all they could say about them. They did a microscopic examination of them, and they said that they looked almost exactly alike, that they were almost positive that they were from the same per son. Of course, what that is is a human eye is looking at two hairs and their pubic hair, so they're very small hairs, right, and saying oh, yeah, they look alike, you know. And and back then that was good evidence, right, Not so
much now, yeah, definitely not. We did the whole episode by the way of wrongful conviction junk science that Josh Steuben hosted about hair Mike croscopy, and we're gonna link to it in the episode Bio. But to think that someone could compare hairs from a suspect and a crime scene just by looking and match them to the exclusion by the way of all other potential suspects, everybody else, all other people on the whole planet, is absolutely bonkers. Now,
remember they used to do that all the damn time. Now, they mentioned that these hairs were from a black man, as the victim had already told them, But what about this piece of skin that I read about. Yes, so apparently when the man came in through the window, he cut himself on his hand and there was literally like a triangular piece of his palm that was also recovered from the scene. And it's unclear whether or not they
did zoological testing on that either. But we're going to come back to the piece of skin in a bit. But at this point they moved on to relying on cross racial identification. Now, study after study has shown these are studies of which they used a control group that has not seen the crime, that that control group tends to be more accurate than victims or witnesses. So get this. Cross racial identification has been proven to be less accurate
than guessing. So if you actually didn't even witness the crime and were shown a lineup, you'd have a better chance of picking the person just by guessing than someone who did its climate. It's an amazing thing, but it's true. Look it up. I encourage you. So they do a composite sketch of her attacker that she saw in the dark, the only light from the kitchen and the television while she's being traumatized. Right, So she does do a composite sketch, and there is a GPI agent. He was part of
the investigation. He says, hey, that looks a lot like John White. And then everything, of course is often running at that point. So John, this wasn't a big town, so I'm sure word traveled fast at that point. Had you heard about what had happened? We heard that, you know, the particularly the gut right, you know, I didn't think much of a I really didn't, you know, And uh, when all this occurred, they would suspect me for doing a little mount of burgers in around town, and come
to find out, that they were looking for me. So I decided to just up and leave Manchester, you know that the age nineteen then, and I went to a little small town and the cold where I had some people, you know, some cousin of the last stand. So this crime happened on August eleventh, and they finally caught up with you into court Georgia and drove you back to Merriweather County around September one. On the ride back, they kept on asking me questions about this hill jick little
crime and go out in the sevenites. I'm of the year old lady and uh I had a narrow z it called Gnarrea, and you know, being a little smaller at it like a whole that. You know, I didn't ask the question direct you know, when they kept on acting, I said, well, if I did it, she got Gnaria. They took that, and I like to say they ran with it. This episode is underwritten by A i G,
a leading global insurance company. A i G is committed to corporate social responsibility and it's 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 a i g s commitment to criminal and social justice reform. The a i G pro Bono Program provides free legal
services and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. When they got me back to the Canada, Ja, they took how snapples, being of friends, a lot of the Snapple blew it from me. They took my drama lives and sam the Social Security call an everything, and you know, they locked me up. So they took those samples in order to run tests and all the physical evidence that
they had tried to match the hair. Like we already mentioned, they probably did some seriological testing with the patch of skin in your blood. We don't know that for sure, but that would seem like it would have been the least thing they could have done, and had any of it matched you, they would have been shouting it from the rooftops. Now they already had this composite sketch that they thought looked like you. You know, they had to jump with you a few towns away and you were
being held for the burglaries. My Grandmo came to get me out the next day. Album you know, they had brought me back to me. It was a county, and that's when she wasn't on that I would be in charge. Will you know, Ray Row reaggibated thought in Burglary. Curiously, she got that news before they had even taken your driver's license to be viewed by the victim in an alleged photo array. I don't know if they took my
driving lives. They took many pitches. They say they took a photo array to her apartment, but I'm assuming they did took my drive lins. We don't know much about it because, of course, you know, they didn't record a lot of information. They certainly didn't record the photo array. And I don't believe we ever found that photo arrayed with John. I don't think we've ever seen those photos, so we don't know who else was in the photo
and how well they matched, either the composite or John. Now, maybe this composite sketch looked enough like you that You're likeness was already imprinted in her mind, so photo array or not, she had been primed to pick you with that composite in mind. And it's also possible that they only brought along your driver's license rather than a number of other photos that favored your features. We don't know, but now you have been chosen from this alleged photo array.
And things started going down how fast A few you know, weeks after they did all this year, they befor on the line up. It would just us on the room and me standing about can't beat from her, along with a few other guys, and I couldn't believe, you know, it would take with the gout. They brought another person up there, but place I had brought, and she didn't pick me out. But they brained old later and then
and she picked me out. Like I said, I'm quite sure they didn't take now one of them other guy pictures that was in the line up to her, and I'm knowing somebody that she had saying recently on a photo. Again, we're not sure what happened at that alleged photo lineup, as no documentation has ever been found. But I want our audience to note that I witness misidentification is a contributing factor in six of all known wrongful convictions, and
in this case we have a cross racial misidentification. So, as I mentioned earlier, in study after study, cross racial identifications are actually less accurate than guessing. But what about the robbery victim also white, and that would have been the correct identification. It's crazy, but okay, so cross racial or not, she had already been primed to pick you out of the lineup by seeing your driver's license, in addition potentially to a composite sketch that may have favored
you or you know, pointed towards you. I mean, seventies Georgia. You are already known to police. And then an old white lady who had been brutally attacked identified you. I hate to say it, but I think your fate was pretty much sealed. Did you have a court appointed or attorney? At first they gave me a quarter point attorney. But my mom and them, you know, they raised some money and they high you know, the sound pro bishop and he's now a US representative, right, he was a part
of the legislatior backs. You know, when I was going to trial, they took me to trial. You know, they picked a jer which was mainly all white. They presented the ether thence the fingerprint they said they collected at the thing of the crime. They said all of them was spunge to the point that they couldn't get no kind of identification off of them. They say the blood test came back negative. I don't know what they had tested. I don't know they tested the skin. I don't know
what it was. But the crowding in best case said the house hopper could be mine. I know they brought up the pigmentation of a black person's hair and they said it was all of it with someone, which really this technician was testifying that the hair was a black person's and you were also black, which is just not that probitive. And what was it that they tested your blood against. I don't really remember what it was they tested with the blood, have to be honest with you.
But also, you know we talked about the piece of skin, right that there was the cut, and when they picked John up five weeks later, he had a cut on his palm, and so that was another piece, right. But the item that they tested for blood, which the skin, was more than likely the item it excluded him. But I suppose none of this matters when you have the word of a seven year old white lady who was a victim of a brutal assault. The ex picked me
out in court. She would the problem with eyewitness identification is. It's unreliable, but it's incredibly powerful in court. You have a now seventy five year old woman who is so traumatized the e er didn't even want to do an examination of her. Get on the stand and say that's the man that did that to me. You know, the jury at that point is done right. If there's a few little things that they can put together, like oh, that hair might be the same or oh and he
had a cut too, that was enough. I mean, how do you combat that? Even pointing out that she wore glasses, that it was dark in there. It's debatable whether that helps or hurt your client. When you have an emotionally charged moment like that, how are you going to try to contradict her? The victim? John? At that point, did you have any hope that the jury might actually still get this right? You know, me knowing that I didn't do it, I didn't have no doubt in my mind,
and I was going on. I was that young, and I was so inexperienced that I thought I was going home. Can you take us back to that awful moment when they read the verdict that it broke down and started crime. You know, I was convicted of rape, robbery, aggravated it thought and two council burglary. And they asked me that I haven't dying to say. I just said I didn't do it. When they took me back of the hold and said I know, I broke down and started crying.
I was cards funding with a cluse of the mind. You know. He they told me, you know, you know, God got the reasons for everything. You know what I'm saying. And he said it was a reason mine and you know for me, you know, it was a reason behind. And I saw I just thought that reason behind and you know, I just it'sselfter that a god will and I moved forward. I couldn't go through that time, all the time that they gave me feeling some type of way, and I did had to learn how to how to survive.
And inside the contentions, I found what they called jail house attorney, and we tried, you know, by buying the Haber corpus against my lawyer that he didn't represent me right. We requested, you know, for my trans grew up in all the everything that will pertain into my tribe. But they you know the kinda mayor, well it didn't send me anything about the transfer. They said, theyn't have nothing else to send me, and we file themselves assistant accounting
and they denied that. So I pretty much lay down on it from that point on. So at that time, it was much easier to be granted parole, even with a sentence like yours, which was life plus sixty years. And usually, let's face it, they're not going to grant you parole without an admission of guilt and a show of remorse, even if you didn't permit the crime. That that's that's a detail. He gets washed away. But it
appears that they may have actually believed in your innocence. Yeah, I altough, I want to say allow the years I came up a parole, they told me, in order to make parole that I would have to do some type of sex upon a program. And I told the lady there, you know, I didn't do it. They must white. Unless you get in some sex, it's been a program, you
ain't gonna get out of jail. So they sent me to Metro up here in the Planta, Georgia where they had the programs there, and my mama came up and he said, go on, get in this program if they're gonna help you get out, even you had to tell a lie. And they told me to cry to you for getting in the sex offending program, which you had to describe what to play during the crime. And so I told him, Man, you know I can't do that. I say, I can't imagine what took play doing this
the crime. You know, I couldn't make that lie. So I basically just just gave it up again, you know. And uh So one day I came in from working the ward and called me to his officer and me he at, mean, why was it at an institution? And I told him that they had something there because fanning say, spirical program and that I couldn't you know, participate then because I couldn't describe a crime. So he sawing went
back to the dormitory and some strange things occurred. Then told me to pack my stuff up, that I was going to hospital line and Augusta, George, you're proud I had a stop a certainty in on my knee. So in May that was coming in were having to notice a piece of paper. They had all the transfers loan
and everything. And he told me that, say, John, you we wasn't going to Augusta Medical hospital, so you're going to persstantly on Hairway how and it it totally shot me that there I was been to get out of prison at the pro board cut you a break or was it the warden pointing some strings? I don't know, And no one told you, Okay, that's weird. So you got paroled, I guess. And now you were starting out
on a tough road to reacclimate into society. There are a lot of obstacles to employment and getting ideas and things like that, and those are some of the many reasons why residivism rates can be as high as as they are in some places. Not to mention that you turned to burglary in the past, and so where and how did you start that journey? When I first got out, I was up in the Atlanta in Hairwell. My proded out down to a room and how I got tired of the room and house and I moved to moved
to Manchels. Did you move back in with your mom or your grandma? My mom? My grandma had passed while I was in constrating, Sorry to hear that, but luckily you still had some family, right were your sisters around now, most of them they had married, they moved on, and that's me and my mom and my dad was still living at the time, and my niece. You know, John got the opportunity to come out on parole, but he came out as a sex offender, right who hires a
sex offender? You know, it was a struggle when he was out on parole. So what did you do for work? And I understand you eventually went back to prison when I would die back now and yeah, I were doing
odds and then work. And one day I was at McDonald's and seeing this guy and he pulled his wallet out and he had a lot of money in it, and me and another guy follow him and robbing of the guy got caught up some kind of way in he he told you know what that album And uh, I turned myself in again and I revoke my parole and m sent me back. I talked with the d A. He gave me ten years ran into what I already had, and that he wouldn't have no kind of negative recommendation
towards if I come up role again. Well, I can't say a lot of people are gonna have a ton of sympathy for you on that situation. But it's like you said earlier about how you made peace with your wrongful conviction, you kind of felt deserving of it because
of the wrong that you had done. And I want to point out that in having the wrong guy for that ultra violent rape and robbery all those years ago, this did a really terrible disservice the entire community, not least of which to the victim, because the real perpetrator was still free. So now it's you're back to serve out this new sentence and your old one. And it's not until about four years later when the amazing Amy Maxwell became the founding executive director of A Georgia and
This project. Um, can you run through how you all came upon John's case? The Georgia Inesis project started in two thousand and one. Obviously we got cases coming to us fairly quickly. But as we were working on the cases, I started thinking, well, what about all those people who don't know that we could look at the cases? What about those people who have not heard that we exist? So in two thousand four, first of all, we tried to go through the prison hierarchy and try to get
notices posted in prison, and they wouldn't do that. So what we did is we went through the Department of Corrections website and found everybody who was in prison for rape and sent them letter. We sent about twelve hundred letters and we got about a hundred and twenties, so we got about ten return on our our letter, and John was actually one of them. I didn't I really didn't even know what to write, but I wrote it won a week or thought. Later day we looked at
his evidence and the hair evidence. They only really talked about one hair that they compared, and so we were under the impression from the crime lab report and from the testimony that there was only the one hair. But most importantly, we were trying to find that piece of flesh. In fact, we called it the piece of flesh case right, because it was such an unusual piece of evidence. You know, this was a straight up If we could find this evidence,
we would know who the perpetrator was. So I had an intern that went down to Meriweather County looking for that piece of flesh. Right. We just could not find it. We couldn't fund it the gb I, we couldn't find it anywhere, and so we just just kept on and it's hard people tell you that the evidence doesn't exist or they just haven't looked at all because either they didn't care or they were instructed to ignore such request. Well,
there might be that. So finally we went in person to the clerk's office and what they ended up finding was not the piece of flesh, but there were several of their hairs from the crime scene. Now, let me just say that hairs are they're good evidence. If they're good evidence, right, if the hairs are pulled out from the root, then a DNA profile can be developed, right, if they can give us information. But there's also I mean,
there could be other reasons hairs were there. There was another Georgia case that involved hairs, and the theory was that she did her wash at the laundromat and she might have picked up some random hairs there, which, of course, these are pubic hairs, right, Why are you picking up pubic hairs at the laundry. So anyway, but we were we were concerned. You know, if these hairs didn't match John, that helped us, but it might not walk him out of prison. So we had to tell John, we've got
these hairs. We're going to test him. But so we sent those hairs for DNA testing and we find out that the hairs don't match John, and we all pile on the car to staff members and our intern, Cliff Williams. Cliff had been working on the case almost from the beginning. I can't paar where you John, I can't even remember where you were makeing state present. So it's like two
hours away. We get there and we're getting all we're putting all of our stuff in the trunk because you know, you can't take anything into the prison with you, and I get a call from the g b I and they tell me that there's been a code dis match and I'm standing in the parking lot going, oh my gosh. We were just going down to tell him we got the DNA but to hold on. And I thought, oh my god, we're going to get to go in and tell him he's coming home. And I said, who did
it match? He goes, it matched a man named James Parham. And at that point my intern goes, James Parham, I think he was a suspect in this case. So he pulls out the box, because we of course carry John's White's box all the way to the prison with us, you know, his his file, and he's going through the file and he pulls out the photo of the live lineup, turns it over and James Parham is actually in the lineup where she picks John White instead of James Parham.
So we don't even know what to do with all this, right, So we get to go in and tell John all of this information. And I'm like, John, I don't know how quickly you're coming home, but you're coming home. Yeah. I'm looking at the photo right now, and we're gonna link to it from the bio. I mean, oh my god, Like John is in the number three spot, of course because he was the target, and James Parham sure enough,
is right there in number five right. Uh. Actually you know student now there he mean there were roommates and I am a student. They wanted what Yeah, oh my god. I'm rarely at a loss for words, but that's insane. It was a screen thing. Helm throughout that my whole a journey, concerned that he was in the same ruin up with me, and I ended up with his Bible when I got out and had a name on it. I gave you back to its sister to get to him. But yeah, Amy came down and told me about I
was getting out. And when they did come to get me out, they came back. They rushed back, now because they didn't want the media down at the institution. They rushed and didn't want to know. It was ain'tybody to come get me. And they went downtown and bought me some clothes and maybe so I was dressed, and when my mama and dam came with to get me and they they show me your own way. They as quick as they can get me away from there. So, Amy, what were the machinations that you had to go through
to finish the job and get him home? Well, it was so quick. So you know, we get all the information, but so does the district's attorney. And so of course when the district's attorney, and at that time it was Pete Scandalacas, who was now the head of the prosecuting attorney's counsel here in Georgia, and uh, he saw what we saw. And of course I'm on the phone with him, and on the way back from the President, I'm like, Pete, they got a code dis match. What are you gonna do?
And he contacted the prison and honestly John John's family got the notice to come pick him up. But literally four days later he his folks are on the way down to Oglethorpe, Georgia to pick him up. So John was hum So John, what was your first meal? Where did you go? What did you what did you do? It was like a blur. It was like a blur. I can't remember too much of all day. I comembment of looking back. When we passed the preoson going out, I think I went to sleep. I think I went
to sleep because somebody we're happening. We went by some my sister house and then we went straight to it. Now but press conferences and saying of that nature, and uh, I had me some bragray tomato as some acre I have been worn, it's all. And I remember that night
that I got up and I walked. I walked up to a restaurant and this guy chance just look up at this guy, you know, and look at the stars and things and and just it's I could just sleep beyond that ul, you know, I could get a chance to see this s guy, you know, and the stalled in the moon. Some of you didn't very often you didn't get to see too much or while he was in the pen attention. So James Parham pled guilty since
the twenty years in prison on this rape. Right. And then in two thousand nine, the Georgia legislature authorized the payment of five thousand dollars in compensation to you. Now, no amount of money would ever be enough, and that's not even I mean, it's just it's that number is tiny compared to what it should be. Yeah, well, you know, Joe, just don't help a conversation law. And I got five hundred thousand dollars conversation with prescriptions that I gotta maintain
some type of employment. I got the submitted drug tests and ever so often I can't catch another fellow day though I'll lose my conversation. I believe they put those stipulations, and then because they don't want to get they didn't want to give any money anything. It was done for me to fail. You know, we asked for a million and something. They got it down to seven and fifty thousand, and passed one body about our legislature. Then it went to the other body about Legers station, and they they
rejected it. They revised it and they agreed to all these stipulations. Yeah, you know, it's just crazy me that anybody could look at someone in your shoes and not have an instinct to immediately want to help, but rather their first instinct is I'm gonna fight this. I'm gonna I'm gonna fight to not right this wrong, to keep this wrong as wrong as it could be. Is there anythink our audience can do for you, you know, right now, giving this opportunity to to say what I'm about to say,
I never you know, go vote. You know what I'm saying, get these unsempensated people that that's a part of our Lets later wait up there so we can't get some of the be a pass that would that a and us getting you know, the support we need not only me but other people dance and then you know some of the situations. Hell, you know, I you know, I'm gonna look out for me, but that's what we need. We need voters, We need the old people that's in office,
that that's that's voting against. This is a change to be removed. I hope our audience really takes those words to heart. And what about you, amy, any call to action for our audience. Well, I think folks can obviously follow the Georgia Innocence Project, particularly about the legislation, but there's also an exonary funds, So if folks wanted to donate to the Georgia Innocence Project, they could donate and
specify that it's for the EXONO refund That would be great. Okay, So we'll have those action steps linked in the bio, which brings us to my favorite part of the show. It's called, of course, closing arguments, and this is the part of the show where I thank you both for being here and just sharing this unbelievable, horrible story. And with that, UM, I'm gonna kick back in my chair, turn my microphone off, leave my headphones on, UM, and close my eyes and just listen for anything else you
want to share with me and our amazing audience. I would highly recommend people google the live lineup photo in John's case. When you get a chance to look at the live lineup, you're gonna see how different James param looked from everybody else in that lineup. And it just goes to show how in incredibly difficult it is to deal with eyewitness identification. I mean the actual perpetrator was there live in front of her, and she still picked
the wrong man. So I think that we all need to be very cautious because, as we said earlier, when the eyewitness takes the standard trial and says that's the person, it is incredibly powerful. But we need to be very careful. The other thing is how really hard it is to come out of prison. You know, even though he comes out of prison and innocent man, prison doesn't number on you. Present physically changes you you and mentally for sure changes you.
And there's really no support other than the people who rally around him. So you know, we've got to got to do better because people are going to come out of prison and we want them to be able to succeed or they're gonna What's gonna happen is their struggle and they end up committing a crime because they're struggling. I'm there, I'm thankful, I'm thankful, araming she know I love them and huh determination to start the inner project.
My experience being accostrated, it's it's like PGS Deep Soldiers. I don't have too much trust for nobody. I'm pretty much alone. I don't you know. I don't deal with a whole lot of people. It's hard. It's hard, and uh, I just want the government to step up to the plate and establish our social security benefits, our medical benefits and make these things are possible so we can you know, at least live, you know, when we do get sick or something like that, that we can go see a doctor.
Were constantly being denied even easier benefits because of we were wrongly convicted. We were giving an opportunity to be able to eat. You know, they have no kind of social security now benefits to build dun it were take them promise, so it should be giving back to us. That's what I want. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburne,
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 flom Ronvul Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one