I'm Jason Flamm, you know. At Wrongful Conviction. We're so proud to be a part of the evergrowing landscape of true crime shows that revealed just how our criminal legal system works and just how often it fails, and how grotesquely in some cases it just collapses on people who are innocent. And this week I've invited a colleague from another podcast, a podcast that I really love, to bring their own unique style to our coverage of yet another insane wrongful conviction case.
Late at night on September seventeenth, two thousand and seven, five people on Detroit's East Side were at a house party watching a football game on TV. Without warning, two men burst into the house and shot the place up. They killed four of the five people, but one woman survived by hiding under a bed. One of the gunmen found her there and told her to play dead. A few blocks away, neighbors were gathering on the street, including
fourteen year old Davante Sandford. When police talked to DeVante, he told them that his aunt's boyfriend was a retired homicide cop. So police asked Davante to help them with the investigation, to tell them what he knew about the people in the neighborhood. But in the end police forced Davante to confess to this brutal quadruple homicide. He was tried and convicted, then sentenced to thirty seven to ninety
years in prison. And remember he was only fourteen. In this case, it would take a truly unexpected turn of events for DeVante's innocence to come to light. This is wrongful conviction. Hey guys, it's Laura and I writer and I'm honored to be guest hosting this episode of Wrongful Conviction. I'm the co director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions
at Northwestern Universe. And if my voice sounds familiar, it's because I've guest hosted other episodes of this podcast, and I co host another series on this feed called False Confessions. Today's episode is one of the most important and shocking cases of wrongful conviction that I know of, and I am so honored to tell you the story. I'm here with two very special guests, Meghan Crane and DeVante Sandford.
I'm Meghan Crane, I'm an attorney, and I'm the co director of the Missouri office of the MacArthur Justice Center.
We are so excited to have you, and there's no one in this world like DeVante Sandford. Davante, we are so happy to have you here. Do you mind introducing yourself to.
How you doing. My name is DeVante Sandford. I'm a zannerie, I'm a son, I'm a father, entrepreneur and.
All around amazing human being. We are so grateful to have you here, Davante. You know your case. When I think about all of the wrongful conviction cases that I've worked on, that people like Megan, who's one of my heroes, have worked on, that all of us in this entire space have worked on, yours is always the first one that comes to my mind as one of the most difficult examples of just sheer injustice. And it starts when you're a fourteen year old kid living in Detroit, Michigan,
on the East side of Detroit on Belin Street. What was life like for you back in the day?
Back in the day, it was it was kind of hard.
You know, I was going through a lot mentally, spiritually, emotionally, like the family dynamic was really wasn't there as far as like a lot of support, you know, my mother, like she was dealing with a drug abuse issue, So like I had like a lot going on.
Or Honesty, So you're living on Bilin Street. It's a tough life. You're there with your mom and siblings. There's drugs in the house. This is a in a tough block in a tough part of Detroit. When do you think back DeVante to yourself at fourteen, what did you think your future.
Was going to be growing up? Like, I didn't hear as often as I hear it now. I didn't hear the word opportunity. I didn't hear a word growth. I didn't hear a word future. I didn't I didn't hear those type of words. You know, somebody would have asked me what your future looked like when I was fourteen, I wouldn't have been able to even answer that.
I can answer it now, but not back then.
So you grew up not hearing words like future and opportunity. What words did you hear instead?
Get rich and die trying, you know, hustle and no luck. The East side of Detroit is like one of the worstest parts of Detroit. Or Honesty, like very high crime rate, very very high crime rate, very high poverty rate, very low rates when it comes to reading and education amongst like the youth.
And you know you're you're growing up at that and you had a couple of extra obstacles, one in particular that not every kid had grown up on the East side of Detroit. I want to ask you if it's okay about your site, because I know you've had some issues with your site. Can you tell us about that.
I'm partially blind in like one of my eyes. That happened when I was maybe fourth fifth grade, and I actually I had to scar corneal so I had to get like I used to have to get surgeries.
You know.
At the time, I just felt like it was just different things they was trying on me to see if someone was going to work.
You know. It caused me a lot of like trauma.
Just had the simple fact, you know, being in grade school, I then to go with where like eypatches, kids making like jokes and stuff for you and stuff like that. So like that was very like traumatizing.
I just got to ask you one other question about who you were before this case happened to you. How'd you spend your time when you want to have fun? What'd you do for fun?
I was too busy trying to like look for food to eat because I probably ain't eating like two days. You know, I didn't really know too much of like fun or enjoying myself or honestly outside and maybe going to like a neighborhood like basement party. But it's like looks coming dece even look at now, Like I didn't know about opportunity. I know everything about opportunity now, I didn't know about what a future looked like you asking me that question.
Now, my future is very bright.
Your future is bright, and I want to hear so much more about that. But first I want to talk about what you had to go through to get to that future, right, what you had to go through to get from being that fourteen year old kid on Beeland Street to the man you are.
Now.
This is where I'm going to bring in your lawyer, Meghan Crane. Megan, it's fantastic to have you here. Can you take us back to the night of September seventeenth, two thousand and seven, which is when something pretty horrible happened right around the corner from where Defonte lived at the time that set a whole chain of events into motion, almost unstoppably from the beginning.
So it's a Monday night, September seventeenth, two thousand and seven. It's around eleven thirty at night. I think it was a Monday night football night. So a football game had gone late and was wrapping up, and there are five people inside nineteen seven forty one Runyon Street watching the end of the game when two adult men multiple witnesses report they're around six feet tall skinny, approach the house
with two guns. They start firing a lot of bullets from the outside of the house into the front window, and then they bombard through the screen and front door of this house and just shoot up the living room. They shoot all five adults sitting in that room, killing four of them, including the owner of the house, Michael Robinson, a thirty three year old man who we now know to have been a local marijuana grower and dealer in
the community, and four of his friends. Three of his friends pass away, but one of them is shot a couple times but escapes to a back bedroom. In that back bedroom, Michael Robinson's seven year old son happens to be asleep at the time, and the surviving victim hides under his bed. She later reports that one of the shooters comes into the bedroom and actually says play dead, be quiet, and so she survives, maybe thanks to those
words of that shooter. And as she's hiding in that bedroom, she hears someone in the basement of the house moving around, rustling, a lot of activity down there, and then they say let's get out of here, and they both flee the scene. Multiple witnesses report only two people. One of those witnesses is a man named Jesse King who lived across the street.
He was a chaplain actually for the Detroit Police. He had firearms in his house, partially because of his professional position, and he fired back because he had heard the shots and he saw these shooters fleeing the scene, and he exchanges fire with the shooters. He definitively says these were two men, and he describes their physical build, their height in some detail, and the attire they were wearing. Meanwhile, as all this is going on, Davante lives just around
the corner from nineteen seventy forty one Runyon Street. As he said, on Beelin Street, Davante had heard the commotion. He heard that something was happening around the corner. So it's late at night, he's in his pajamas. He comes outside to see what's going on.
So I just want to be clear. So what you've got here is a horrific act of bloodshed, but it has witnesses and they all said the same thing, right, They said it was two adult men, which is a pretty good lead to go on. But the police goes somewhere a little different with this. They go around the corner to Beelin Street. How do the police get there and how does this go down? When they start talking to Davante.
My understand is the police were just canvassing the neighborhood. There are a couple different officers out going down different streets looking for anyone who has something to say, and so as part of that canvas, they're walking by DeVante's and they approach him to say, did you see anything? Do you know what's going on? But things quickly evolve from there and become much different than from that casual conversation.
Now, Davante, you are outside your house when this happens. You're in your pajama pants, right, You're a fourteen year old kid who heard the commotion, comes out like all the other neighbors did, to see what's going on, and the Detroit police approach you. What's going through your head as they start to.
Talk to you, not really like understanding what was going on. That whole little ordeal. It changed my life or honesty, I'll never forget it. And like they was asking me questions, where I live, where I'm from, did I hear anything, did I see anything? I believe I had told him I had just came from being with my auntie's boyfriend. He was a retired detective for the head of homicide. They actually knew him, so they hopped on the phone and they called them.
He was like, yeah, you know, he just came from being with me. I guess.
They explained to him what had like the case they was working on, the different things like that, and they handed me the phone and he was like, look, these is my guys, man, So if you know some helped them out. I don't know nothing, but I They proceeded to take me home and they had my grandmother signed a waiver. She signed a waiver. From there, they took me to back to the crime scene. But I'm not mistaken, and they gave me a gun shop ballistics test.
So Megan, I just want to make some sense of what's going on here. These police somehow come across the fourteen year old kid in the pajama pants right, who's just as confused as everybody else in the neighborhood, and ended up taking him into the police station for questioning what's going on here? How did they settle on DeVante?
I'll be honest, I find it pretty hard to explain even today, a decade more than a decade after this and after spend many years working on this case, is my best understanding of how this went down. I think the police officers were doing this canvas of the neighborhood. They come upon Davante, they're kind of just asking him the same general questions as anyone else. But when they realize this Bill Rice connection and they get Bill on the phone with Davante, and Bill encourages Davante to help
him out, cooperate, do what he can. That kind of is the first domino to go that sets this sets things in motion. At that point, they are looking for someone who can kind of like tell them what's up in the neighborhood, like who in this neighborhood has guns, who in this neighborhood's involved with drugs? Who do you think might be involved in this? And so Davante, because he's just been encouraged to cooperate, says, sure, I can kind of tell you who I know who has guns
or who's involved with trouble. You know, he was used to being picked on and someone that when he got positive attention it felt good and had a powerful effect like any fourteen year old kid. So it felt good to be needed by these police officers. And so they say, can you show us? Can you give us a tour? And so Davante gets in the car and kind of shows them the way around the neighborhood. Things transpire from there.
They take him to the high school. They sit in the parking lot in the high school for a while and try to get information out of Davante. They take Davante to get some fast food. Davante just told us sometimes he'd go two days without eating. They buy him a burger and fries to entice him to share more. Give us more, tell us anything you can, and the more juicy stuff, the more relevant information he can give about drugs, guns crimes, the better. Maybe the more burgers, the more fries you'll get.
Right, be a hero. This quadruple hamas, I just went down in your neighborhood, be a hero. But the thing is, you know, Davante, they took you around the area, they brought you the burger, they brought you back to the station. But at some point the tables turned right. They were no longer looking for information. They were looking for you to confess. Can you tell us how it came about that you ended up confessing to committing this quadruple homicide.
Honest answer. I wanted to go home. I was scared.
They can't promise me that if I was hurry up and get this over with, that's the quicker I can go home. I was at a point I just I wanted to be anywhere except for their.
I'm fourteen, barely like experienced anything for real.
And you know the promise was if I basically apply, and you know, I go through with this, you know my reward was going home.
Megan, Can you tell us a little bit more about the interrogation when you've looked at it real eyes? How long did it last? What kind of techniques were they using against somebody as young and vulnerable as Davante in order to get this confession?
Well, first, I think it's important to note that, I mean this starts in the middle of the night. So they have Davante, whether it's in the car, in the parking lot of high school, or in the police station, from one am through up until some point the next day eight to twelve hours for round one, and that's only round one of multiple rounds that are to come over the next twenty four to forty eight hours. In that first round, they are playing the friend. They're buying
him the burger, they're buying him the fries. He goes to the police station. He's playing on the computer. He's looking on social media to help them find people to show them pictures of the guns of the people in the neighborhood who might have done this. And that's making him feel important, and he has access to computer that he doesn't always have access to at home. And at the end of that, by the mid day the next day, when they bring Davante home, he has signed a handwritten
statement saying five kids from the neighborhood did this. He names them Tone Tone, Tone loose. They did it with five guns. He names those five guns a Mini fourteen, a handgun, a thirty eight caliber, an assault style weapon, and he tells a story that they met up at a fast food restaurant earlier that day Coney Island to talk about this. Davante was with them leading up to it,
but he freaked out and he didn't stick around. He went home and didn't go to this to run in street with them, but he knows what happened.
Do the police check out Davante's story.
They do check out some of it, some of it doesn't match, and they kind of proceed full steam ahead. Inexplicably. They have five perpetrators versus the witnesses that Tay Too h Okay, who cares ballistics from the scene, show definitively that this gun was an AK forty seven and a forty five pistol. There's no question about that. The ballistics are not from a Mini fourteen, they're not from a
thirty five caliber, They're not from a handgun. They go check out this fast food restaurant they supposedly met up at the Coney Island that Coney Island is closed for construction and has been for months. They check out the people Davante has named Tone Tone Loas they go pick up multiple of them, they question them that night. That morning, they're cleared by Alibis and they're let go, but it doesn't take their sites off Davante.
The story is by this point riddled with errors. Right, it's the wrong people, the wrong guns, the wrong place, at this Coney Island restaurant that's closed. Nothing there makes sense. But the police still have you in their sights, Davante. They come back and get you right, and they bring you back to the station, and that's when things start to get even worse.
Megan.
They question Davante again and tell us about the confession that results after the second round.
So they do take Davante home briefly. I think during that time they're picking up Tone Tone loas the other guys they're questioning them, and when they clear them and they realize, huh, this isn't making much sense, they decide we got to go get Davante again, so they go pick up Davante's mom is home at the time. They tell her, you know, we don't think your son's telling us the truth. We need to bring him back in
and talk to him about this homicide. His mom says okay, and she, as a mom, is you know, socialized to do that encourages Davante to tell the truth, to tell the police, and from what Davante has always told me, things were dramatically changed from there. They had been his friends, they'd been helpful, they'd been encouraging before that. As soon as he's back in the car, they are aggressive. They're confronting him, they're yelling at him, they're telling him, we
know you're lying. And at this point there is a very common tactic of lying to DeVante and using false evidence. They had taken his shoes earlier when they had him at the police station. They said, we tested your shoes. You have blood on your shoes, so we now know you were there. We know you did this, and we know you're lying to us. So we don't want to hear anything else. We just want to hear the truth. Tell us what happened.
Wow, So I mean, Devonte, I'm just picture the mental whirlwind that you must have been experiencing at this time. After being picked up off the street in the middle of the night, right after the shooting. What was it like to realize that all of a sudden, these officers who just a few hours earlier had been to your friends. What was it like to realize that they were coming for you.
It was hell. It was very stressful, very traumatizing. You feel hopeless in situations like that, right, because it's like, how did I get to this point?
Right?
I went from walking down the street to them showing me pictures of like the deceased people, people who was once.
Alive, not these people are deceased.
Right, And on top of that, like everything was just like happening so fast.
So it was you know.
It was stuff that we shouldn't expect even the most experienced adult to withstand, let alone a fourteen year old kid who's by himself and scared. You end up changing your story to try and please these guys, to try and get out of there, to try and go home, like you were saying. And the story that it becomes clear they want is a story where you were involved, where.
You did this.
Can you tell us, Megan, what the final story was? In DeVante's final confession.
The final story Davante tells isn't that much different than the original story he told that didn't make much sense and didn't match most of the facts, except that it now includes Davante as an active participant and as a shooter. So it has these four other people from the neighborhood who we now know. Some of those names were given to police by a witness that during that canvas that night.
It has these five guns that don't match the ballistics of the scene, but it has Davante going in, It has Davante doing the shooting, and then it has Davante running away on foot from this scene to his house, which also doesn't match the evidence. And DeVante told police he threw his Mini fourteen, which was the gun he fired at the scene, into a vacant field on AT and T property. Afterwards, police went and checked that field. They did not find any gun. And this usually is
like a real red flag of an unreliable confession. If a suspect gives you a new fact that police don't already know, and you conduct follow up investigation and you prove it true, well then that's the gold star standard of a reliable confession. But if you don't prove it true, that's a red flag and you need to question this confession and this suspect.
It's a perfect storm, right, It's an unfortunately perfect recipe for how to get a false confession. From the sleep
deprivation to the interrogation techniques that we used. You mentioned the lies about the evidence, right, the lack of council, lack of parent for somebody as young as Davante in that room, and once Davante gave that confession that they were driving for that they were coming to get during those thirty six hours of often on interrogation DeVante's church as an adult, and you get a lawyer DeVante whose name, unfortunately is pretty notorious in the world of wrongful conviction.
His name is Robert Slamica. Megan, can you educate us about just who Robert Slamica is.
Yeah, Robert Slamica was a private attorney in Detroit who I don't know if it was well known at that time, but at this point is now notorious for misconduct and doing essentially a really, a really bad job at being a defense attorney. He was reprimanded formally by bar association at least six times, including in one other exoneration case where he helped helped essentially get an innocent man convicted
and sent away for life. And since then, in more recent years, he has actually been disbarred for misconduct and criminal conduct. And I think we'll hear a bit more from Davante about what he did or didn't do for Devantee's case, But Davante essentially received no defense from this man.
So my whole time I and juvenile, I was in the juvenile detention facility for around eight months fighting four council first degree murder, four council felaity murder, on robbery sought with attentive murder and felaty firearm.
My attorney on he came and seen me what four times?
Wow?
If that what? Ten many visits?
It never brought any paperwork with him, no files, never, no nothing, no sense of come on, like, let's try to build a defense. He didn't try to put up no type of fight, no effort. No, I don't even think he even called the witness He didn't call any character witnesses, nothing like. He didn't try whatsoever you know for him. I felt as if like it was just
all about the money and like degreed. You know, he saw my family was a knee desperate need trying a best to like you know, be there and protect me and to try to help figure it out with me. He knew that he took advantage of that.
So is there charging your family money while he's only visiting you four times, you know, short visits each one, and providing you with essentially no help. So what goes down at trial, Megan with Slamica at the helm of this so called defense of this innocent kid.
Well, at first they just want to point out what goes down or doesn't go down before trial. Slamica, essentially, I mean not essentially, he does no investigation of this case. And as we've already discussed, from all of the glaring inconsistencies or latent differences between the facts of the crime and DeVante's confession, there was a lot to investigate. There was a lot to look into, a lot to disprove he did nothing. One thing that happens in between that
time nothing to do with Slamica. But there's a state ordered forensic psychological evaluation a couple months after the crime. In that DeVante recants his confession. He tells the psychologist exactly what happened in that interrogation room. He tells him this was false. He tells him he didn't do this, and he tells him why he falsely confessed. Slamica does nothing with that. He doesn't admit that at trial so what happens at trial? The state puts on a parade
of very compelling witnesses. They put on the detectives to talk about the horrific facts of this tragic crime. They put on the surviving victim to describe her experience of laying under this bed seeing her friend shot and killed, thinking she's gonna be killed. And then they have her have Davante stand up and say a couple words, and they say, does that sound like the voice you heard at the crime scene? And she says, sounds like it. We now know, we should have known then. But voice
comparisons are not a reliable form of evidence. It's meaningless. At that point, though, Slamica takes Davante's side and says, there's really nothing I can do here. You confessed this way, and it says your voice matches the shooter, so you're going to get convicted. I think you should plead guilty. And that's what happens.
This is unreal, right, I mean, what was it like, despite the fact that there could have been such a robust defense, to have your lawyer bring you into that backroom and tell you that you should plead guilty to a quadruple homicide.
It was, it was very it was.
It was a mess, you know at the time, Like I didn't even know how to like read and write write. So he got the plea deal from the prosecutor, brought the plea deal to me, like I didn't even understand what is a guideline score or what is gear three G And I didn't understand none of that. And he just handed me the paper and a pen and walked away from the table and was like sign this, went over and was doing something in court talking to somebody, came back and got it.
From unbelievable railroaded from beginning to what turned out to be the end of your trial. You entered those pleas of guilty barely knowing what it was you were doing. You signed a piece of paper in which you pled guilty to four homicides you didn't commit, and you were sentenced to thirty seven to ninety years in prison at age fifteen. This is a story that shocks the conscience.
It should shock anyone who hears it. But here's the thing, DeVante, even as you're being shipped off at age fifteen to start serving that thirty seven to ninety years, the story doesn't instead, it takes a twist. What is the twist that happens? Megan? Not long after DeVante enters that guilty plea, get sentenced, and goes off to start serving his time.
Exactly two weeks to the day from the day Davante is sentenced to that thirty seven to ninety year sentence as a fifteen year old kid. Exactly two weeks of that day, a man named Vincent's Smothers is arrested at his home for a series of unrelated shooting. The Detroit Police Department, say police department that had Davante, that interrogated him, that charged him, that convicted him. Brings mothers in and
they interrogate him about an unrelated shooting. Smothers because he's recently had an infant and has a family to protect, he does roll over and he admits some things. He admits a lot of things. He confesses to a series of twelve murders. Turns out Vincent's Smothers is an assassin, a hired hitman, and he works for local Detroit drug dealers. He confesses to these twelve murders in detail on video.
Unlike DeVante's interrogations, they video tape the entire course of Vincent's mother's interrogation and confessions for those twelve murders, well, for those twelve murders are the nineteen seven forty one Runyon murders. Smothers confesses to them in detail on video. And you know what, those details match the crime scene facts perfectly. He tells the accomplice he did it with. There are two men. There are an AK forty seven and a forty five caliber pistol, the two guns that
perfectly match the ballistics at the crime scene. He can describe the house, the layout of that living room where the bodies fell when they shot them, and he can describe the conversation that he himself had with that surviving victim in the back bedroom as she lay under the bed while a kid slept. That's not it. Smothers then tells them where they can find the gun he used. They go to that address, they get the gun and it is a match. It's a confirmed. It is the
gun that was used at this crime scene. So this is two weeks after they put Davante away for life, and yet nothing happens, nothing changes.
Please tell me that the second this serial hit man confesses in accurate detail to the run Yuan Street shootings. Please tell me that someone in the Detroit Police Department, or in the Prosecutor's office, or anyone who knew anything about this went to Davante or his family or his lawyer and said, oh my god, we got the wrong person. It's Smothers, not DeVante Sandford. It's the hit man, not the kid.
I'm appalled to tell you, Laura, that not a single one of those things happened. I would say the Detroit police did nothing about it, but actually they did something about it because the detective who took Smothers to the bathroom in the middle of his interrogation was one of the detects actives who interrogated Davante, and so he did
something about it. He told Smothers, you know what, we already got the guy who did those Runyan Street murders, and Smothers said, well, you've got the wrong guy then. And what they did was they hid it. They hid smothers confession.
Unbelievable, unbelievable. So Smothers confesses to twelve murders. They end up charging him with eight. Right, they don't charge him with the quadruple homicide. On Running Street that Dafante had just pled out to. They convicts mothers on those eight and it's like his confession to the Runyan Street homicides. They it's like it never happened.
And we later heard some information that he may have even been offered a sweeter plea deal premised on the fact that he would never mention or testify to the fact that he did the Runyan Street murders.
He was offered a plea deal not to come testify for me because at the time, like my lawyers was trying to get him to testify multiple times, and the prosecutor, because he was still fighting multiple murder cases as well, and the prosecutors reached out to him and basically I've tried to offer him a deal where he wouldn't come to court Inlandi's testimony and fight for my innocence.
Wow, it's one of the worst cover ups I have seen in fourteen years of doing wrongful conviction work. Who was it that actually exposed this unbelievable cover up?
It was media. The only reason this ever came to light was a reporter who heard that there was another person detained at the jail talking about that he actually did the Runyan Stream murders and talking about that he did the murders that this kid was in prison for. And at the time this is like, I think, a year after Davante's sentenced. So Davante has a host conviction attorney and she hears Thank goodness, a reporter reaches out there and says, hey, I've got something you need to know.
This comes to light. It's you're a year in Davante. What's prison life been like for you during that year. I can only say that if I were in that position at age fifteen, I'd be scared out of my mind.
I was. I was more than just scared. I was terrified. I was all in one. You know.
I never went through none of any of that before, So to have all that coming at me and all that coming at me at one time, it.
Was just Yeah, I'm trying to put myself in your position, trying to imagine the emotions that anyone would feel hearing that. Some mothers confessed, you know, I can imagine you went through anger, you went through sadness, you went through who is this guy?
I didn't even have no anger towards him.
I'm not I'm not into judging people because I hate when I get judged, you know, so I'm in like, I'm not into judging people. But where I am, I'm thankful for Vince's mothers. Vince's mother is the reason why I got these headphones on and I'm able to do this sit here in my home and talk to you guys.
You know, it took.
A quote unquote hitman to save my life, not the Detroit Police, not you know, Dwayne County prosecutor office, you know, essentially a hitman in a team of lawyers.
Smothers tried hard once he knew what the injustice that had been done to Davante, to right this wrong. He confessed to this crime at least eight to ten times that first time, to police, to his lawyer, to multiple rounds of DeVante's lawyer, to the media. He wanted to go to the court. He signed multiple sworn affidavits under the penalty of perjury. I think Vincent Smothers is kind of the portrait of that even the people who have done some of the worst things, some of the most
horrible thing things, still have humanity. And he was the only one at that point willing to fight to right that wrong.
How does DeVante's case and this crazy situation of the hitman trying to help the kid, how does this come to you, Megan?
As we had mentioned, when Smother's confession came to light, it was about a year after and he was in post conviction in Michigan State Court, represented by the Michigan State Public defender system. While you would think, Okay, we have the reliable, corroborated, confirmed, ballistically confirmed confession from the true perpetrator, we should be able to get this undone right, it proved true that No, that's not how the system works, not in Michigan and not in most states and court
systems across our country. So DeVante's case ended up working its way through the Michigan court system for another seven eight years, and that's how it came to us. He had a public defender for a while. It went all the way up to Michigan's court, but he lost, and he lost because of a technicality. It was all the evidence was there. Smothers was there. It was crystal clear
Smothers did this. DeVante Sanford did not do this. But the Michigan Supreme Court said, okay, we see your evidence, but it's in the wrong motion.
What does that mean? The wrong motion?
It the form of document that was filed in the court that presented this crystal clear evidence that a kid was wrongfully in prison for life. It had the wrong title on it. And instead of just saying, okay, we'll treat this as the right motion, or instead of letting you refile in our court and come back to us in a month, they said, you need to go back to the beginning, and at a minimum that's going to take years.
Meanwhile, Davante, you're a teenager, right, and you're going from You've gone from fourteen to fifteen already, you're going fifteen to sixteen, seventeen eighteen. These are some of the most important years of life. These are the years of growing up, of learning how to move as an adult, learning who you are and who you want to be as an
adult in this world. Right as you're watching your case wade through the morass of the Michigan court bureaucracy, what's it feel like to be sitting there as the minutes and the hours and the days tick by, when the proof is so clear that you're innocent.
It was like a roller coaster.
And not only was I like fighting for my freedom, like I was also in prison and like literally have to fight for my life at times. Seriously, you know, I was at war on like two fronts, right, and at times I felt as if, Okay, I'm not I'm not gonna win one of these, So which one? You know, which which one? This is the one worth losing? You get what I'm saying. So it was stressful. It was It was times where I had all the hope in
the world. Then it was times I'm like, man, I might fuck around and die in prison, you know, so uh, sorry for my language, but it was times I didn't see this, I couldn't picture this, but it happened. So I'm faver grateful and thankful for that.
Were there times that you let yourself hope when you were in prison?
Yeah?
Did that make it easier or harder to wait to have that hope?
Harder? Way? Harder, way harder?
You would do whatever it takes to get about that place. You didn't want to be there more than thirty minutes, let alone, you know, multiple years. You know, I'm fever grateful that I had the support. And my support wasn't just regular support. My support came with a lot of a lot of strength, a lot of like well grounded people, and that's what got me through. You know, times like I would be having conversations with my attorneys and I would be telling them like and I don't know how
to like how I keep doing this? Like I just feel like giving up. They had said about emotion or court day, or maybe we was waiting for a report. I remember one time we was waiting for like the Michigan State Police report. Man, that report took forever.
But I had them people around me. Man who who who?
They held my hand at times when I ain't want to even get up at that and probably ran twenty miles.
They come and come home. Get up. We gotta go to Fantee. We gotta you know, you gotta be on it. You know.
My legal team is the ones who like gave me like and my supporters the ones gave me like that hope, like you know, you're gonna make it up out of this.
You're gonna make it up out of this because you ain't. You ain't gotta worry about you. We got you. Just you know, keep your head up.
I don't know how anyone could to be expected to get through anything remotely like this without an army of people behind you. One of those people was you, Megan, a pretty important person. You took DeVante's case. It can be impossible so many times to ondo a wrongful conviction, but you made the impossible possible in this case. Tell me what you had to do, who you had to get involved ultimately to free DeVante Sandford.
Thankfully, we didn't have to wait the years that it would have taken for that motion to work its way through the court system again because an unusual thing happened. But a Michigan State Police officer, a law enforcement body in Michigan that had never previously been involved in DeVante's case, they read our motion and they called a member of our team and they said, this is one of the most shocking cases I've ever seen and one of the
most compelling packages of evidence we've ever seen. We want to look into this case because we think an injustice has been done. And thank God for that call. And we often talk about working with kind of odd beldfellows or finding partners in this work that you don't expect. We certainly didn't expect to kind of partner with the Michigan State Police, but they did they kicked off, and as Davante said, it took a long time, a year long reinvestigation of this case. It was a painful wait.
But it shows the lengths they were willing to go do because they put a multi officer team on this case and they reinterviewed everybody, and they turned up evidence that made it impossible for the state to keep turning a blind eye.
And is that what finally pushed Davante's case over the finish line?
It is the Michigan State Police pulls all this together into a lengthy final report and the judge, the trial judge on his case, vacates his conviction and thankfully orders Davante's immediate release from prison. And I'm smiling because I'm just picturing Davante walking out that day. And it's still surreal because after all that weight, this stuff happened pretty fast once that report was turned over, that order got signed, and he was walking out.
What was it like those first first few minutes and hours of freedom?
Hopeful? It's crazy.
I had to go through all that to get a future, but I came home with a future, you know, planing, aspirations, goals, visions, and to this day, you know, I tried my best, one day, one step at a time to accomplish everything you know that I start out to.
Do from in prison.
That future is your present day, it's your now, and you got a lot of future ahead of you too. So what's what's life like now?
I think for me, the most amazing part of my life it wasn't even getting out, Like the most amazing part of my life is my son. My son is like everything you know I wish I had the chance to be like, which was a kid, like that freedom of growing and yeah, just being a dad, you know, Spending quality tie with my son, my son, I'm supposed
to be here. My son is a blessing, So that's how I treat them as such, you know, Spending quality tie with him, working on my nonprofit, giving back to the community, doing my motivational speaking work, lending my ear, like not my ear, but my voice whenever like someone may need it, you know, when it comes to like criminal justice, reform, gain prevention, violence, adventure and inner cities.
I just want to give back and try to help as many people as I can, not having to go through some of the things I have gone through, and if they are facing some of the things that I'm facing, maybe getting some type of inspiration and you know too, don't give up, but don't give in.
You know, I'm curious if there's anything you want to say to Vincent's mothers.
Thank you that man saved my life. That man say like literally like say, I don't know too many people you know who.
Live those type of lifestyles and go through them type of things who will be willing to like stand up in a sept responsibility. You know, I got friends and I know people that's in prison for crimes they didn't commit. You know, only reason why they sitting in prison is because they're no snitching rule. I'm not gonna snitch. I know my cousin did this or I know my friend did this, but I'm not gonna say anything, right, and
I don't hold none against them people. You know, what you believe in is what you believe in, right, But like some of those people in prison are living in some of the worst conditions like possible, no no money, no food, no letters, no anything. You basically just sitting in prison for something you didn't do and because you didn't want to tell. Get what I'm saying it for that man to want to come and step up to the plate and take four responsible for his actions.
To me, that's the true definition of a man. You know, he didn't have to do that, but he did.
Megan, if you could change one thing about the system so that it does not happen again, what should we be doing, What reform should we be pushing right? What needs to be changed?
Davante was only convicted because of his confession, one that has a fourteen year old sleep deprived kid. It was inevitable. Youth as we have long known, need special protections in the interrogation room, and one that I know you're working on every day, Laura, but is banning deception and interrogations for kids. And it has now passed in multiple states. There's no reason that law can't be paid in every state. And that is what the turning point in DeVante's interrogation was.
When the police lied to him about the evidence and said we now know you did this because we found blood on your shoes. That was the turning point. That's what broke him down to that point of hopelessness where he would say anything to go home. And so if we can ban deception, I think that is a big starting point that can change how things are playing out for kids in the interrogation room.
As we get to the end of this conversation, I am sitting on Jason Floum's chair. I'm lucky to be here talking to you both today. He always ends this podcast with a segment he calls closing arguments, where he turns off his mic and sits back and let's the person in your position, Davante, talk about whatever it is you want to talk about. I'm going to stay quiet. I'm going to thank you both for being here and sharing your stories and your wisdom, and Davante, this is your closing argument.
I just think common sense need to be used in some of these cases, just basic common sense. I understand.
You know, people be having jobs to do, and those jobs comes a lot of stress. You gotta think a homicide, that's somebody that's lost their lives, someone is no longer with us. But at the end of the day, you know, people need to step back and look at the whole picture versus just looking at just one little box. You get what I'm saying, because like when you go back and you just speak on my case, even the average person with no type of law background, no type of anything,
scratch they head. How Like when I go out and I meet people, they you was fourteen?
How you know?
Like how so if they coming up with that conclusion, how come these professional, these detectives, people college degrees and different things like that can come up with that type of conclusion like hold on, wait, something is off here, you know, like it's we missing something instead of having aw gas no breaks, you know, if that makes any sense.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your guest host, Laura and I Writer. I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flumm and Kevin Wartis. The Senior producer for this episode is Jackie Polly, and our producers are Lila Robinson and Jeff Cliburn. Our editor is Lexandra Greedy. The music in this production is 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 follow me on Instagram and Twitter at Laura and I Writer. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one.
Next week, on the guest hosted episodes of Wrongful Conviction, Kembus Smith will talk with Joyce Watkins, a woman who has lit up the world with not only her story but her incredible spirit of perseverance. Joyce was imprisoned for twenty eight long years after her great niece died in her care, even though anyone looking even a little bit closer at the details would have and should have known
right away that Joyce deserved none of the blame. This is a Musslesten episode and it's going to be right here next Monday in the Wrongful Conviction podcast Feed