#311 Jason Flom with Dennis and Lee Horton

never gave up on the Hortons. By the time we recorded this episode, Dennis and Lee were already hard at work campaigning for John on his center race. It was truly surreal to see Dennis and Lee reacting to the win on social media. What a turn of faith from wrongfully convicted to having a true friend in the United States Senate. We're rereleasing this episode to congratulate our great friends Dennis, Lee and John. On May thirty one, Dennis Horton went to his brother Lee's home for a Memorial

Day weekend cook out. Later in the day, they visited their father in North Philadelphia, as well as their childhood friend Robert Leaf. Unbeknownst to the Hortons, Robert Leaf had committed an armed robbery earlier that day, in which two women were injured and one man was fatally shot. The Hortons pulled up to their friend Robert Leaf on the street and made plans to watch a basketball game back at Leeds. Robert asked the brothers to meet him one block up, where he got into their car with a gun.

Police had been following Robert and immediately pulled them over, where all three men were arrested. The two injured women, who initially had said that there were only two armed robbers, gave a shaky idea of all three men, sending them to trial together. Robert Leaf's attorney used confusion amongst the witnesses over the identities of the three men to change the narrative from Robert Leef as the shooter to Dennis, delivering a lighter sentence to the actual culprit, while the

Hortons were sentenced to life without parole. Years later, a statement by Robert Leaf admitting his role and excluding the Horton brothers was unearthed, along with the fact that police had identified Robert Leef as the shooter from the very start. However, with this new evidence being ruled inadmissible on purely procedural grounds, it took the tireless advocacy of Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman to win a commutation and release for the brothers

after nearly three long decades in prison. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. My best advice tea right now is fasten your seatbelt because this is gonna be a crazy ride that you're about to go on. But before I introduced the two brothers who were wrongly convicted of the same crime together and ended up serving almost twenty seven years together in the same cell for the crime didn't commit. I just want to say that this

is Philadelphia in the nineties. You've heard stories on here before about Philadelphia in the nineties, and it was it was the time and place where a black man had a better chance of getting justice in Philadelphia, Mississippi than in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And this is another example of that. So, without further ado, let me introduce to you. I'm so excited to have these guys on the show today because there's such inspiring people. Lee and Dennis Horton the Brothers. Horton,

Welcome to Wrong for Conviction. Good afternoon. How's everybody doing out there. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for in brighting us on. So let's get right into it. First of all, I want to say the both of you guys that while I am obviously delighted to have you on the show, I'm sorry that you're here because of what you had to go through and it should have never happened. So let's go back to the beginning.

I'm talking about how was childhood for you guys growing up together while you moved to Philly and seventy seven, right, but give us a quick look at what your childhood was like. So when we was young, growing up, we lived uneventful but a wonderful life. You know. My mom and my father was married in the early sixties. Four of us four kids. We grew up in some of

the roughest places in the city. But our family, my mom, my grandmother, my father always instilled in us that you had to work for what you wanted in life, and so we started working at an early age. My mom and father, unfortunately they split up in nineteen seventy two. My mom, she was trying to take care four kids on home. We wind up moving to the projects, which was at the time East Falls Projects. I was around twelve years old. My brother was seven at the time.

So the projects was a rough project. You know, you had to prove the people up there that you was willing to fight in order for you to be able to stay, or they chased you out the projects. That's how it was. And so I had got into a fight with an individual and I wanted to fight. That was a blessing to some degree, but it was also accursed because now I was at eyes with a lot of guys my age twelve and thirteen year olds in

the projects. And one day I wound up on the wrong side of the projects when we was approached by a group of individuals and it was maybe about twenty something thirty guys, and they approached this and they wanted me to fight a guy. And you know that it was a bunch of guys that was about to jump us. And then these other guys came out of nowhere and came to our rescue. And it was only a few of them, but they were like the neighborhood tough guys

to some degree. One of these guys who would become a really good friend of mine was an individual named Robert Leaf. And so I fell in with these guys and we became good friends. He came to my house, stayed at my house, slept in my house, ate at my house. My mom to somebody, we became his mom. And then we moved out of projects. By that time, we kind of veered off a little bit, although I would go see my friends who were still living in the products and some living in North Philadelphia, from town

to town. And so now we move up towards the time of the actual crime, and I'm talking about Memorial Day weekend, May thirty first. So there was an arm robbery at Poldo's Bar. Now, initial descriptions say it was two men, but later it was changed to three. One man with a two caliber semi automatic rifle and another with a black pistol robbed the bar and its patrons. Samuel A Limo, six ft three and over two pounds, wrestled with the gunmen for the gun, but was overpowered

and was shot and killed. Lose our Cella and Lose Martinez were injured, but both recovered, and a witness described chasing after the pleaing assailants who saw them in a small blue car and supplied police with a partial license plate number. And again, remember this is Philadelphia in the nineties. So we'll get to the you know, myriad problems with the state story, but first let's hear your story. So

it's Memorial Day weekend. You had four kids, right, including a two week old baby, and at the time, Dennis, you were just recently engaged to be married, and had also recently been badly injured at work and we're recovering, right, so you were in absolutely no condition to be engaging in hand to hand combat wrestling right with a very large man, right, strong man. So can you take us through that day that that day that this armed robbery

and murder, this whole tragedy happened. So Lee and his wife invited me and fiance had it's over to his house.

So of course I went to Lee's house, had a cook out with him and his wife and his kids, and later on that evening we decided we was going to take a ride, you know, we've been in the house all day, stopped by my father's house see him, and then Lee was gonna stop by just to see a few guys that he knew, and we headed for North Philadelphia, when my father lived at the time, and we swung by his house, but his light was out so he would sleep. So Lee said, okay, let's stop

around Leaf's house. So, you know, we drove around Leaf's house. He was standing out on the corner with some other guys and Lee beat the horn and Leif came over to the car and him and le talked for a little bit. So Robert Leaf was supposed to come back to Leave's house. We're just gonna watch the basketball game. So Leif said, pull up a block and I'll be there, and I gotta just take care of something real quick.

And we pulled up to the block and Leif came maybe about ten fifteen minutes later, got in the car, and then we pulled off, and about a couple of blocks later, we saw sirens and we pulled over and the police jumped out of their bands and cars with guns drawn and told us to get out of the car. And we got out of the car and they handcuffed us and they put us into the Patty wagon and they took us to the hospital. When identification to take place, and all I remember is that the van doors opened up.

And next thing you know, I've seen i think two ladies point to rob relief and said, yeah, that's the guy right there. And then they said, well, what about these other guys and they said, yeah, them too, they were with them too, And then they shut the doors back and then that was it. And next thing you know, we were down the roundhouse where they charge you for a homicide. So okay, right away we see problems emerged

with what the witnesses are describing. Right the alleged number of individuals involved in the robbery went from went up fifty, right from two to three. And when you're there at the hospital and the police patty wagon right outside the hospital with the witnesses saying yeah them too. Also, one of the witnesses described a blue are and gave a partial plate number. So did that match your own vehicles? The only witness who claimed to see the car said it was a blue small car. It was supposed been

a Chevy Svette. He said the name of the car in his statement. Now, Lee's car is a Priest Classic, a four door large car, two tones, two different colors. But this witness, for some reason, we could never find him and never bring him to trial. The person the police put down is giving out this partial plate number. When we got the witness on the stand, she said,

right then there, I navi gave the police anything. I never saw a car, So how could I have ever given him Their name is on this paper though they said you gave it to him, She said, it's impossible. I didn't see a car. I didn't give him anything. And the thing about the officers who did this first thing, you got to give you a context who these officers are.

The first officer was somebody who had strangled a guy to death early on, and then later, right after he was arrested, he shot a guy unarmed in a car. The second officer, she was involved in internal fears investigation about a law as quantity of drugs being found in the police station and them suspecting it or connected it to her. As you start ap peeling the layers away, you start seeing that it's more to this than just the police picking up some guys, and they were involved.

So I have to ask, do you think that they knew from the beginning that you guys had nothing to do with us. That's a really good question, and our heart of hearts, we believe in the beginning maybe they wasn't sure, but as things begin to unfold, they had to be clear that we weren't involved, just didn't care. And the reason why we know is because the prosecuted them came to us with a deal. It was like five to ten years, and we were like, we're innocent,

We're not taking any deal. Why should we take any deal to go to jail for when we didn't do anything? And now it was sort of like, okay, you won't take the deal, all right, Well, the chip's gonna for what they meant, right, And it's very uncommon that in the crime as serious as this one armed robbery where someone was killed, right, that they're gonna offer someone two guys and this case five years. Right. You know, you don't have to be a legal scholar to figure this

one out. So now we get to the trial and all three of you, Lee, Dennis, and Robert Leaf are tried together, and they have three witnesses. Now I'm gonna put witnesses and quotation marks here. Three of them came to trial and they eventually identified Dennis as the shooter. But did they have any physical evidence at all? Any fingerprints, any security footage. There was no security footage. What they had was they actually had the gun they said with

the murdered weapon. They never actually could trace it to any bullets they got out of the body. They didn't match. But this is the gun that Leif had on him. He left the gun in the car. The cops retrieved it and when they checked it, it it had fingerprints. But we've been always trying to get these fingerprints checked because they could never trace him to any of us, and they took all of our fingerprints, they didn't fit any

of us. Now, the way that my brother got to become the shooter is a clear case of mistaken identific cation. Initially in the case, they all identified Robert Leave at the shooter. And this is where the cold case turns. If this don't ever happen, we probably would have walked The one witness would identify different person every hearing when

she identified Robert Leave. Robert Leave's attorney he would read in those testimony of her identifying my brother and to it got to the point where when the judge asked her, well, who are you saying did this? She said, I'm gonna say it's the one right there, and she was identified me and we had already told the court that they was identified as based where we were sitting there, so

we switched seats. So when we switched seats, she was identified based on who the witness before her told her to identify, and then she thought that the person was sitting in that seat, but it wound up being me Lee Horton. When she heard my name, she said, hold it, what's the name? And they just said, why do you want to know the name? Because, uh, Dennis did it. It's Dennis. He said Dennis, and then she said, yeah,

I heard him. They was calling Dennis. And then after that we were in the case and they knew that this woman just had made this up out of the sky, just right then and there. Everybody refused to pull back, and they could have corrected that right then and there and said, well, hold up the honor, she's wrong. Mr Leaf was wearing a red jacket. We know that for sure. That's a fact. They identified him as a shooter. That's

a fact. They didn't say any of that. They just let the witnesses go on and order or with these wrong identifications. And this woman had identified every last one of us as a shoot at one given time. This episode is underwritten by A i G, a leading global insurance company, and by Accenture, a global professional services company

with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Working to reform the criminal justice system is a key pillar of the A i G pro Bono Program, which provides free legal services and other support to men, nonprofit organizations, and individuals most in need as part of Accenture's commitment to racial and civil justice. Accenture's Legal Access Program provides pro bono legal services in partnership with more than forty organizations

bringing meaningful change to people and communities worldwide. Three weeks prior to our arrest, I had injured my leg on my job in such a fashion that I needed a c L repair. The holiday was on a Monday. I was supposed to go talk about the day that week I was going to have the surgery done. I just came off the crushes. So when we were arrested, it was impossible for me to be able to wrestle with this guy. I think they said he was like six four six three something like that. I was supposed that

overpowered him. Wrestled allway to the ground with this guy overpowered the gun out of his hand. And then after I was supposed that I I shot him, I was supposed to that ran away at as I could. There was no way I could run on that lade at all, and my medical records and all that would have shown that would approve that, and this would have disqualified me from even remotely possibly being the shooter. And the thing is they knew this, but nobody cared. So you both

had different lawyers. So two people who were supposed to be working on your behalf, what were they doing with all of this information? At trial, he made the mistake of a friend of my mom's told her that their son could be a good lawyer force that. We accepted that, but he wasn't a criminal defense attorney. He had not tried one criminal case, and he wound up being a person putting our defense together. My lawyer had been retired, and he was kind of older, and he was a

little out of step. We were just not prepared for a capital case. Now, the difference is Robert Leath was prepared. He knew the system and he knew how to work the system. We was naive. We thought that we were innocent and it was gonna be shown and it never was.

Like literally, if you put this in the movie, you say, well, one guy's represented by a friend of a friend who never tried a criminal case before this capital murder we're talking about, and the other guys tried by a guy that they literally pulled out a retirement and we ailed them into the courtroom. You guys didn't even know that you're doomed. You're thinking, hey, we go in and tell the truth. You were the only guys in the courtroom telling the truth. That's the only problem, right, and that

doesn't work. And that's the thing that you know, even now gets to me a little bit because I spent twenty seven years in prison when this could have been nipping it early on and I didn't have to never go to prison. Back to twenty seven years, you know, sometimes in your mind you think, well, you should have took there, But what would We just said, we didn't commit the crime. We didn't know anything about it. Took us twenty eight years to learn enough about this case

to be able to talk about it. With that we knew some of the facts that happened. We had to find in the police file. They went to court knowing that these witnesses was identifying my brother, but they had determined that Leaf was the shooter. The prosecutors new this, the detectives new this. But this is the problem with the system. Nobody cared about the truth. It was about

let's get the conviction at all costs. Okay. So they knew you weren't involved from the jump, but since you wouldn't please to lesser charges that you knew and I think they knew were false, they threw you into this kangaroo court situation, tied to Robert Leif who was the actual culprit here, and then let the chips fall where they may. That's how they put it, right. So then you were represented by people who had no business whatsoever really even being in this courtroom, right, I mean definitely

not as lawyers in a capital murder case. And you're literally on trial for your lives. So what was that like? I canna tell you what it was like. Robert Leaf's attorney communicated with our attorneys and they smothy at a joint defense, and right towards the time the jury was going out to deliberation, I remember my attorney looking back and saying, I don't think that his attorney was with us, and I said, you think like he was the one everything in its power to get his client the best

possible verdict he could get. He used the defense two paying a picture so that we would wind up with the most out of this and his client would, if not walk free, get the least. So the jury goes out, they come back in four or five hours later. Did you guys have hope that they were going to actually see the light that you were going to be vindicated. I mean it was just a blurd of a moment. Of course, you hold out hope that the system is

going to do the right thing. I mean, we were raised like everybody else, watching police shows and court shows, and from what they show on TV, it always seemed like the system does the right thing, that everything would turn out right, even though everything was looking wrong. We believe the system to the point where I had put an application to the police force, proud to being arrested. Like round the time when I got convicted, my wife received the letter saying that I was accepted to go

to the next phase. Jesus Christ, I mean, it's like you had this was like an alternate reality the life that should have been right, but Okay, so the jury comes back in and the verdict is guilty. I mean, can you tell us about that moment. It's I mean, it's obviously horrible for anyone who experiences it, but here it's worse because one brother had to hear the other brother being declared guilty, followed by being declared guilty himself.

I canna tell you. Being oldest, I'll probably with the weakest. When I heard the verdict, it was like I was in a state of shock, and my legs buckled, and I remember I felt like I was going down on to the floor, and I remember hearing my grandmom's voice in the back saying, stand up real loud, don't you fall on that ground. Stand up that part. I ain't

never going to forgive. When they rented di verdict, I felt like I was in the twilight zone, like this wasn't happening, Like somebody's gonna come in and say, we're just kidding. This is not how I was supposed to end for us. I mean, we played by the rules. You know. We were taught to work hard for whatever we get in life, and that's what we did. We were taught to mind the people in the neighborhood, the elders respect people. You know that this don't happen to

decent people. And it was crazy because he immediately says as a life without the possibility for rule immediately, And you know, when our family got a chance to speak on our behalves, each one of our family members got up there. They said that we didn't commit the crime. And the judge got bad at some point, but I think he told my sister that if you want to say that they didn't commit this crime, then I don't

need to get up here. Hadn't hurt enough of that, So I mean, we were described beyond words can describe it. I became angry, angry at the system, angry at myself for allowing myself to even be in that situation around a die like this. And as time went on, my grandmother came to see us. My grandmother my mother, and we would just complain and complain about everything that was going on. We was talking about how dark prison was, you know, how cold it always seems to be in there.

You know how these folks around here they don't care about anything. And I remember my grandmother said, you know, if it's cold, then heat it up. With love and if it's dark, then light it up with hope. And my brother and I we looked at each other and said, Grandma, how must have lost her mind? He was looking at each other like if this lady for real? Like did she realize that we in the prison for a crown?

We didn't commit she telling us to do what so the thing is didn't makes sense to us at that time. But as the years would go by and we would begetting the process us like reading you know, self help books, history books, psychology books, and we were beginning to taking the various programs that was available towards to educate ourselves.

And we would go to the Law Liberate at least five days a week and we were just being in four hours reading this law, trying to decipher this law, these cases and figure out ways how to argue and plead because at some point we had to take our own representation because the lawyers they were assigned and that

supposed to up to part. And through that process more we became educated, the anger got directed in different directions, and that anger all of a sudden started becoming more about helping men in prison that was wrongfully convicted as well men that got more time than they should have. The revenge was gonna be to try to send as many guys home as we could that would not come

back to prison. And he talks about the law library, and that law library, we had a couple of tables of men who are all home now we've all been exonary. All of us was at those tables in nineteen We're all sitting around a table. And as the years were about, more and more men came into the institution and they would sit at those tables, and at the end of the day it was two of us as left. At the time, nobody was going home. Years later, everybody started

trickling out. So eventually we would get transferred to another prison which was a treatment facility more so get towards programming and things like that. And so this prison, which was a c I Chester, was kind of telling maybe for men like Lee and I. And one of the first things that we do is become a certified pair

support specialists. That means we work with people who struggle with mental health issues, struggle with all kinds of issues, addiction, struggle with anger issues, people who just having a hard time adjusting the prison life. And we went to work and they started seeing how the assault on officers, rate on staff started to drop. They started seeing the rate on prisoner on prisoner assaults drop, write ups started to drop. Everything in the prison started getting better as a result

of the Certified Pair Support Specialist program. And from there we began to branch out into other areas. The warden, the superintendent, and the deputy superintendent allowed Lee and I to be able to facilitate many programs. You know. We facilitated programs like Thresholds, which was a six step decisional

making program. We taught men how to make better decisions in their lives so that they can also get through prison much better, but not only get through prison, but go home to their families and do better in society. We facilitated a health and wellness program and through this program, we founded that their responsibility in that particular institution. What we did was we created a play and the play would have areas and that we would talk about recidivism,

the impact of crime, dysfunction, trauma. I think it took us like fifty five fifty seven people to at this play on and it was like a full production. We put the roles out for men to sign up and they had to try out for the parts. It was so widely successful that the administration said, well, hey, listen,

why you guys didn't do this bigger. So we went on to do another three more plays within that institution, and we went from fifty seven people being involved in the year after that, a hundred of something people was involved. The following year. We put workshops on the right after the play, So not only did we do to play, but we also put together thy workshops where we would talk about these various things that were playing in our community.

And then those workshops we would invite people from the community, organizations, from the community that was involved in stopping violence like ceasefire, and universities to come in, students and professors, we would invite politicians to come in. So while you're doing this amazing work, you're also, of course, you know, simultaneously fighting

to overturn your own wrong for convictions. But so much of the information that you were discovering, exculpatory evidence right tons of it was time bard, which means it was held back, you know, or Bard from being introduced because of procedural bullshit. I mean, it was a lot of things that we came, like you know, the police officer

we found out about the internal fair investigation. They said that was public information that we should have known about it, even though we had no idea that she was going through this, so how would we even know to look for it? So that was time Bard. We had a witness individual we ran across who Robert Leaf had confessed to because he was also incarcerated. When we met him. They said that wasn't usable because he's a prisoner, so

of course he would help you. They used confessions against you, but you can't use one from somebody to get out of prison. But he said clearly what happened. Robert Leaf made a statement, and in his statement he identified the person he was with as somebody named Ay. And in the statement he said, clearly when they said that this man died and they believed he did it at the time because they took his jacket and they did paraffint tests on it, and they did nitrate tests on his

hands and all this kind of stuff like this. And he said, if the man died, it was his time to die. Then if I got to do the time for then I'll do the time for it. That's what he said in his statement, and he said something in the statement referring to us that put us not even with him. So everything that we would get would be time barner. So we spent twenty years pretty much fighting

to overcome procedural hurdles. When we was transferred to sci Chester, a staff member who was watching us at the time, he was a counselor, and he started talking to us in general conversation, and then Monday he called us and then and he asked what was be doing to get out of prison, and we told him about our fight in the courts and about our innocence and everything like this, and he said, you know, I believe y'all, and I

really believe everything you've been telling me. And he is the one that suggested to us that we filed for commutation, and at the time we told him that we were actually innocent and that wasn't the venue for commutation. And he spent months trying to convince us to file for commutation, and just to give in, just to agree with him.

We said okay, and he introduced us to a professor whose name is Kathleen Brown, who helped a lot of other guys with commutation applications, and she came to see us and we told her our story and she said, well, won't you follow actual innocence application. She said it would be the first one, but just right, and just tell him what you told me. And that's what we did. And the first time we went before the Board of

Parts and we was denied and we were distraught. And around that time, my mom was sick and she passed away not too long after that, and she was so supported. We didn't talk a lot about her, but she was the person that was fueling our fight for all those years. You know, my grandma's bird just kept bringing in our ears that keep fighting. And we had developed the philosophy of free men have freed themselves. So we went back to the courts and then we filed for reconsideration and

that was denied. And then we came back and filed for reconsideration again and they granted the reconsideration based on some other stuff. But right before that that, Lieutenant Governor John Federman started taking up our calls. He looked at the application, he's seen everything in it, and he just started doing what it was the right thing to do. He started fighting for us and the rest of his history.

I am a Lieutenant Governor John Federman of Pennsylvania, and I also chair of the Board of Pardons and Commutation here and I became acquainted with Dennis and Lee's case during one of their reapplications for commutation, and when I read through it, I was blown away that these men were ever in prison, let alone struggling to be sent home. It's their background is astonishing. In Pennsylvania, the Board of Pardons requires a unanimous vote of five members. It has

to be unanimous. If you don't get that threshold, that person is going to die in prison. And that, to me triggered campaign to make sure that Lee and Dennis would be able to return to their families, because this is a gross miscarriage of justice. Not only are they

profoundly deserving that they have always maintained their innocence. Everyone believes that these men, including the warden and the Department of Corrections, that they have no business being in prison, and I'm so grateful that they're out on so many levels. In fact, I actually hired them to work on our campaign. They are far better a person and stronger person than I could ever be. For what they went through to have emerged with the kind of humanity that they just

radiate is nothing short of remarkable. So paint a picture for me. It's February twelve, just two days before Valentine's Day. Governor Wolf signs of papers, and you're about to see your wife again. I would tell you honestly, it was extremely amazing and difficult at the same time. It was like a miracle. It brought a sense of anxiety, but

also it was a great feeling of hope. Prison For me, it was darkness I was in and when I walked out of seeing like everything was bright, everything was beautiful. I could see everything, Dennis, how about for you and for me? It was a bitter sweet at the same time because my mother was no longer there. She never gave up. Were fighting with us and to come home, and for her not to be here, I mean, it was just so painful, but it felt good to be free.

It was just unbelievable. I felt like I can breathe again. At the same time, I'm still like bewildered because some may not even get this chance, and I want to see others that are deserving of the same opportunity to get it. We found our sense of purpose while we were in prison, and that purpose was helping others, helping others to know that prison, you may be here, but this is not who you are, and this is not

who you have to be. And we did that by leading, by showing people we cared about them, and through that care and through that love, we begin to inspire men to be more hopeful about and more optimistic about their future. I mean, it's really just an amazing, amazing story of

perseverance and triumph over struggle and tragedy. And you know the fact it, you guys, with the inspiration and the support of your families and other people, were able to take this unimaginable burden and rise above it and turn it into something that enabled you to transform the lives of so many other people, and that you're still doing it today. It's nothing short. It's magical. Really, it's incredible.

And for the people who are listening right now, who are inspired and who are going to want to take action and make a difference because of what you guys have been able to accomplish. Is there anything you guys want to suggest? What I just would say my call action would be to pay attention to what's going on

in society, and to support criminal justice before. Every innocent man is not going to make it out of prison, and it's a lot left behind, so we need some sort of criminal justice before to make a way for others to be able to come out. Now we've come to the part of the show that's well, it's the closing of the show, but it's become my favorite part of the show. And of course it's called closing arguments.

And I want to say, first of all, I appreciate you guys tremendously just for being here and and sharing your story. You know, you guys are heroes to me and so many other people, and I'm excited to get this out there and get this story out in a way in the way that it should have been told

from the very beginning. And so closing arguments what we do here, how this works is I'm just gonna turn my microphone off and leave both of yours on, and I'm going to just sit back in my chair and listen to anything that you feel has been left unsaid. So Dennis, how about you go first, and then Lee you'll be bad and clean up. So, folks, first of all, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening to my brother and I we count our story. The thing is this, at the end of the day, the people

control the system. The system don't control you. But we've gotten to a place where we allowed the system to control us. This is supposed to be our system, and we're supposed to hold people accountable for the decisions they

make on our behalfs. So the only thing I would say is, please get involved and know with the prosecutors, know what the district attorney, know what the police are doing on your dime, because we pay the taxes that pay their salaries, and if this is how they're doing business, then we need to make sure we hold them accountable. My brother not with free, but there are countless others that are not sure. My grandma once told us that life gives you what life gives you, and it's up

to you to make something out of it. So when we went to prison, that wasn't the end of our story. That was just another leg in our journey. The next part of our journey, we hope, is spectacular. We want to do a lot of things out here in society.

We did a lot of positive working inside and we do a lot of positive work out here, and so what I would say is make sure you pay attention to what's going on, and when somebody say they've been wrongfully convicted, try to give them the benefit of the doubt. I think it would be just like us, two individuals who just took a ride and wind up being arrested and sent away and spent twenty eight years trying to come back home. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction.

I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Claver, 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 flop ravul Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts and Association, a Signal Company number one