#315 Jason Flom with Michael VonAllmen

composite sketch, which was circulated among the local bars. The following day, a man who closely resembled that sketch, Michael van Alman, walked into the very same bar from which the victim had been abducted. When Michael left, the bar, patrons followed him home, tipped off the police, and his picture was shown to the victim in a photo array. One would think that an uncanny resemblance to the composite sketch and a positive even the victim would mean that

the authorities got the right guy. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today we have a case that at the heart of it is a mesmerizing web of unfortunate coincidence that then kind of loops back around to become fortunate, and hearing it might make you question or might reaffirm your belief system. Sometimes our guests are victims of a direct evil actor or systemic injustice, but

this time in Louisville, Kentucky. Not to say there wasn't plenty of blame to go around, but well you'll see what I mean in a bit, and of course we're talking about what happened to Michael van Almond. So, Mike,

welcome to Wrongful Conviction. Thank you for inviting me and with my guess, Ted Shaus, a Louisville defense attorney, the former director by the way of the Kentucky Innisance Project, who Kentucky voters had the opportunity to elect to the bench as a Circuit Court judge in November twenty two, but they they missed. I'm gonna say they blew that opportunity, and I'm gonna say it right now, they would have been lucky to have him. So Ted, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. Now before we talk about this horrible crime and the odd and really unfortunate coincidence that led to your wrongful conviction. Mike, you had served in the military, which just feels to me like it makes it all seemed worse somehow. But before we get into any of that, what was your life like growing up? Did you grow up in the city of Louisville. Absolutely, Yeah, Louisville grew up close to Churchill Downs, so that was

certainly bred into me as well, so very loiville. My my father was a firefighter for the Louisville Fire Department. Working class, middle class. We lived in a neighborhood where the whole street was full of kids and you know, went to school, clam trees, played ball and what I thought was quite normal life. I mean, your story sounds so quintessentially American that I can actually smell apple pie while you're talking. And then, of course you went into

the Navy, and how was that experience. Well, the structure of of the military wasn't quite conducive to my personality, So yeah, I was. I was in rebellion the wholetel and uh, I was glad to get out of there. And so you came home, as I understand it, you um celebrated your sort of emancipation. Ever you want to call it from the military with um sort of living it up right, a lot of girlfriends and we're smoking weed.

No judgment here. I smoked enough of it when I was a kid to to sink a ship and drinking it's at her. But you were young, and no judgment here. But then you were blindsided by this crazy situation. I mean, this crime was an awful crime, make no mistake about it. This is something that happened. On October tenth, two year old woman was abduct at a gun point outside of

a tavern in Louisville, Kentucky. She was taken to a nearby park called Iroquois Park, where she was beaten, raped, and robbed, and the victim described her assailant as a guy about five ft eleven inches tall, weighing over two dred pounds, with blue eyes and curly, dark brown hair. First of all, Mike, did you fit the description of the perpetrator. They had a composite drawing that looked identical to me except for one very important feature. Mike has

brown eyes, not blue. And this is not the first time we've heard of a situation where our guests looked very similar to the actual assailant. We've also heard of the actual assailant, varying wildly from the victims initial description and ultimate misidentification. So we've heard and we've heard everything in between. But remember, our minds are not cameras. Some people like to think that they can remember things exactly, It's not the way the mind works, especially not with

visual images. Then, Jennifer Thompson does the best job of anyone I know talking about this. Remember she was called the perfect witness in a case where she herself was raped and for the entire horrible ordeal, which lasted almost a half hour, she studied her assailant because she was determined that if she lived, she was going to make sure that she identified person and that this would never

happen to anyone else. But ultimately she identified the wrong guy, Ronald Cotton, who looked almost identical to the actual assailant. As it turns out, DNA ultimately proved Ronald's actual innocence, But that wasn't the case here, and we'll get to that in a bit. However, a rape it was performed, and then a few hours later they worked with the victim on the composite sketch. She noticed this guy checking her out the whole night, so she really had a

good picture of who this guy was. So she brought together this composite drawing that was almost identical to the guy and unfortunately, almost identical to me. The police had circulated that picture to all the local bars that Saturday evening, and as it turned out, it was the Sunday evening the day after they got this composite drawing. I went into the very same bar that it happened, not having

a clue. As I'm sitting here ordering a cold beer, They're looking at this composite drawing and saying wow, crazy s So be done. Returned to the scene of the crap that mobilized everybody in that bar, and they followed me home and my blue voteswagon. But the initial description and composite sketch said that the assailant was driving a

green car. So again we have something here that should have been a big red flag and should have ended this before it began, because not only does Mike have brown eyes, not blue, but he has a blue car, not a green car. But I lived in this apartment complex, and as I pulled in the park, it was right next to my neighbor's green Chevrolet and they just added the two together, saying, there's the green car, there's the guy. They called the police with an anonymous tip of two

license plates that it could be. So, first of all, what a terrible string of coincidences? Would you going to this particular bar are at exactly the time that they had seen this composite sketch of an assailant that closely presembled you except for the eye coller, of course, but I don't think you can see that in a composite sketch, obviously, right. But what happens was this posse followed you home and in another crazy twist of fate, you happened to pull

in next to your neighbor's green car. Now there was a partial plate number from the actual assailants green car. The license plates were close enough similar enough that it might have been well, it clearly was persuasive to a jury, But it really was the composite sketch that did it. As you can see even today, Michael Scott frizzy hair. At the time he had a full head of curly hair, and so did the actual perpetrator. And it really was the composite sketch that was that was the driving force

behind this conviction. Again, what an awful coincidence, and it's about as remarkable as the coincident al turn of fate that proved your innocence. So did the victim identify you? When they had followed me home and and they got these two license numbers from that information, they got my name, and they took a photo of an olde arrest I'd had for some misdemeanor and probably drunk in the public place.

Through this photo into a photo pack. I think there was five, maybe six pictures, but there was only one big curly headed guy in that photo pack. So the victim was shown the photo pack and when she got to the big curly headed gas she said, well, kind of looks like him, but not for certain you know, certainly there wasn't any blue ass that she could identify and say, yeah, that's him. But about a week week and a half later, showed her the very same photo

pack and she made a positive identification. They had three felony warrants on me for rape, robbery, and s out of me. Right and in the lead up to your arrest, since you worked a lot, the police often missed you during the day. Right there, wud show at your house daylight hours, and you started hearing about this from your neighbors. I had come home from work one day and the owner of that green car, I met him at the mailbox and he asked me, said, hey, what are the

police looking for you for? I said, police, what you mean? He said, well, they've been been by here a couple of times this week, knocking on your door. I said, well, I don't know, but thanks, I'll find out what's going on. I can't believe that the guy who owned the green car that was mistaken for the assailant's car, that that was the guy who told you about the cops coming by. But soon you did find out what was going on, and you learned that these were some really serious charges.

So they had the partial plate number that compose a sketch and the them misidentification. Now, from what I understand, you spoke to an attorney and tried to arrange for bond with your parents. As I'm on the phone with my mother, the police officers pulled up in front of my house. I told my mother, and Mama talked to you. Later.

I ran outside to try to talk to him and to give me another hour to find get this bond situated, and we'd get be in we get this straightened out, and they looked at me like, yeah, give you an hour getting this car. So you were arrested. Did you end up bonding out or did you end up awaiting trial from jail as we saw often here. That was another miracle part of my story. One of the people that worked in the bond preparing system knew me, went to high school with me, and I knew this was

way out of character. So I don't know what maneuvers she had available, but she got this really low two thousand dollar bond set for me and it was posted right away, So it was I was out on bond for about sixteen months before I finally went to trial. All right, so you were available to fight the case from the outside. This left you in a better position than most ted did his lawyer take advantage of that to the extent that there's blame in this case, There's

plenty to go around. First of all, the police were second of all the prosecution, but the defense council also needs to own some blame here. DNA was not available at the time. But what's important to remember is that this was an old fashioned case that relied on old fashioned work ethic. Mike had an alibi. He was at a barbecue an outdoor party on the night that this occurred. I had four witnesses test I fan where I was, and I think the owner of the green car test

of fad that I never used this car. Those witnesses should have been adequately prepared to present a cogent defense for Mike, and they weren't. I've tried many many cases in Kentucky, and simply calling witnesses and putting around the witness stand that may seem like inappropriate way. Well, the witnesses were called, but if they're not properly prepared, and if a cogent and complete defense is not prepared before the trial begins, you're not really putting out of defense.

You're just throwing witnesses up there at that point, and that's not putting out of defense. Right. Unless there's a solid narrative created between the alibi witnesses and the corroborating physical evidence, a prosecutor can easily shred the credibility of that alibi simply by pointing out that these are Mike's

friends or relatives who might be willing to lie. The jury, though, did hear that her assailant's eyes were blue while Mike's were brown, which I think should have meant more to everyone, including the judge, the prosecutor, and I hate to say it, but the victim too. That physical evidence clearly corroborated the alibi, but the misidentification and the composite sketch that, just like Mike,

let's face it, they just outweighed everything. To be fair, In those days, the notion of misidentification was in its infancy. The notion that trauma and stress lead to misidentification was almost unheard of, and so the power of the composite sketch cannot be overstated. At this point, were you confident that people would see the truth. Certainly I had a blund belief that the American justin system would sort out the truth in this, especially with everyone testiphoned to where

I was and myself included. Take us to that moment, that which must have been the worst moment of your life, when they came in and got it exactly wrong. Total disbelief, my family and behind me my head, a sister who was eight and a half months pregnant, and behind me and she just began she when she started boiling, I just couldn't look back. And they just carried me off and took me away, and yeah, I couldn't look back at my family. We're gonna take a quick break and

we'll be right back. This episode is underwritten by A i G, a leading global insurance company. A i G is committed to corporate social responsibility and is making a positive difference in the lives of its employees and in

the communities where we work and live. In light of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of 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. I had been arrested plenty of times, but I never made it outside of the holding self for the little misdemeanors that I had, so I never actually

went beyond that. And so this was certainly a fearful time as far as my normal self going into where the mean boys are held up at and uh trying to adjust to what the jail house environment was like. Um, yeah, very fearful, I guess, very confusing and difficult time, and it led to a pretty quick transformation into Christianity, which was my mother's reason for all this happening. So it got me through about the first year of adjustment of

jail and prison. But eventually I've got to the point where I didn't believe God was really doing this and uh got back to my old character and adjusting to a prison life. You found religion and lost religion through this experience. It sounds like redefined it for sure. Yes. Yeah, we hear stories of you know, men and women have gone through similar experience to yours, and they've gone, you know,

one way or the other. I haven't actually heard the full circle version of that, but it's interesting to hear you tell it. And and I gonna have to say, is understandable. I mean, who who knows how anyone would react going through this most incredibly traumatic experience that you were subjected to. So since to thirty years you're um

at that point, how old were you? I was twenty five, right, So they're sending you to spend more time in prison by a significant margin than you had actually been alive on this planet. So I get the prison and of course right away trying to prove my innocence and start demanding some kind of lie detection, whatever method that they could come up with. My course, my lawyer is doing the direct appeal, and the direct appeal was affirmed fairly quickly.

So the next move was back to our trial court with the eleven forty two motion, and in an effort to arm myself as best as I could, I demanded from my new attorney, get me these polygraph tests, and let's get something in front of this judge before we go with this leven forty two. So he finally hires a polygraph operator on his own, a police officer. As I passed this test, it wasn't long afterwards that that same officer was indicted for an arson charge over his restaurant.

So that kind of nullified anything this guy had to say about anything. It's like you're on a downward spiral in a sea of legal quicksand driven by a string of unfortunate coincidences. So that blew up that effort and the timing of that appeal. So back to getting another

polygraph test. So as we're working to get this done, up jumps another possible suspect, not a big curly headed guy, but a big, wavy headed guy, and he had a string of sexual assaults that wasn't identical, didn't match up to the m O. But he was from the neighborhood, and everybody focused on him as the possible actual perpetrator, and I was hopeful that he was going to confess

to the crime I was accused of. And then my attorney was finally able to get a polygraph set up with the Louisville Police Department working with the Commonwealth Attorney's office, and when I passed that polygraph test, the police reopened my case with that other suspect that I just mentioned with him in mad But unfortunately, even though this serial rapist did confess to other crimes, he never actually confessed

the crime for which Mike served eleven years. Now, after losing in court twice and this reinvestigation running dry, you pivoted to petitioning the parole board for early consideration. And maybe that reopening of your case and a fresh look had something to do with your being considered for early parole. The consideration of early parole is almost unheard of in Kentucky, and so when Michael was granted early consideration, you know,

three times before he eventually got paroled. That's that's almost unheard of in Kentucky. Yeah, it sounds like there were probably some whispers in the halls of power there, there were some recognition that this was a miscarriage. But even with that potential recognition, Michael was denied and deferred three times, which is how he did eleven long years. And it seemed like every time he was up for parole, some other parolea would be in the news for having committed

some sort of other heinous crime. Even though we know it's a tiny fraction of the people who come home, those are the ones that make news. But this meant that any willingness of the parole board to give Michael the benefit of the doubt would just shrivel up. They'd give you some bs about you needing to take some courses a a sex offender rehab, etcetera, even though there was so much doubt in your case, and you did

pursue those avenues as well. Now before you were eventually paroled, there were two other avenues or storylines that we're building steam. As DNA testing evolved, he began to seek out the biological materials in your case. And then there was a girlfriend your neighborhood who ended up being instrumental in your freedom. Yeah, and in the neighborhood that I grew up in was a girl lived down the street. As we got to high school, she just kind of disappeared, and we had

heard that she was off with some crazy crowds. So I get convicted and my mother comes down here to visit me. When she is coming down here to visit somebody else in prison as well, but she knows my mother really well, and she says, she looks up and sees her and says, Wow, what are you doing here? And my mother says, well, I'm seeing Mike. Mike's here

for a rape charge. What are you doing here? She said, When I'm here seeing an old friend ten years goes by and the guy that she had come to visit that time, he's now getting ready to get out on parole. And during this ten years I have become really good friends with this guy. He sends a letter out to this girl. You know, he's looking for somebody to hook up with it when he gets out. So he writes

his letter and she writes him back. So though, yeah, you can call me when you get out and oh, by the way, any chance you know a guy named Mike von Almond I believe my ex is the one committed his crime. Well, like I said, we had been to good friends. This guy had been listening to me whining about my innocence for ten years now. When he got this letter, it all made sense to him, and he brought it straight to me and said, here, read this.

And as I'm reading and I get to that point Mike von Almond, I says, what did guy look like? And the guy says they currently had a guy. And then I go to reading back. I said, well, where's he at? He says he's dead, killed in a car wreck. So your big break still came with a big uphill battle. There you were, you must have felt like you'd been hit by lightning. But this evidence still needed to be developed.

So for now your best bet was still the parole board, and you had been taking classes, building up a positive appearance on paper for these people who usually demanded a mission of guilt which you were not fitting to give them. And finally the day came, that last parole hearing. I mean, it's etch in my memory forever. I wasn't going to go up there and talk to them any kind of

way about guilt or innocence. I just wanted to focus on what I had done in there was eleven years, uh, the sex offense class and all that kind of stuff. I completed my A A degree. I went in with my little spill and they said, oh, that's pretty good, pretty impressive, but let's hear about the story again. We want to hear it one more time. Are you guilty? And I just shrunk. I felt it was going to be the end of it. I thought I was going to get a servant on my sentence from there. But

I just shrunk and said numb. And I never saw that girl before in my life. I don't know her. And uh they said, okay, step out, and uh I come back in and they said, we're gonna give you the benefit of the down. Do not come back in front of us. We won't be as nice the next time. Here's your shot, buddy. I've been a criminal defense attorney for twenty three years. I was the directing attorney of

the Kentucky Innocence Project for two of those years. What you just heard is one of the gutsiest moves I've ever heard. Of criminal defendant. Make Mike stuck to his guns. He stuck to the truth. He told those people the truth. He took an incredible risk. Might have been easier to say what they wanted to hear and increase his chances of being released from prison, but he's stuck to his truth. He stuck to the truth. That is an incredibly gutsy move.

It is, it really is. And Michael can count himself amongst some rarefied company that we've had on the show, courageous men and women who have done a similar thing when they could have done and he could have done the practical thing it would seem like anyway and maybe seen a clear path to freedom, but he didn't and still was rewarded. So now he's been paroled, right, but his name was not cleared yet. Mike's case was hanging in this weird limbo at this time. Of course, he

was released for prison. At that point everyone said, oh, well, no harm, no foul. This was, of course, after Mike had spent eleven years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Yes, so this still needed to be made right. So you had already pursued DNA testing and were told that the evidence didn't exist, but who knows, they may have just been stonewalling you, as we've seen time and again on this program, where the evidence does exist, but

they just refused to hand it over. I made every move I could possibly make trying to find this biological evidence. About a year later or so, you know, I just gave up on trying to prove my innocence. I was out, get busy living, don't worry about the innocence. You know, this freedom thing is pretty damned nice, So just do whatever you gotta do to stay with that. And I did. I was still Mike Phone m and the very same guy that they locked up. I mean, that's an absolutely

remarkable way to make peace with a terrible injustice. But that's not the end of the story. How did Ted end up getting involved? Finally, sixteen years goes by, I make the coffee flop the newspaper down on the kitchen table, and they're right on the front page. Was Ted in this grant money to investigate wrong for convictions? And I read? That's still emotional too. I read this story, and the very first day I was so full of emotion I

couldn't call. But the second day I mustered up enough fortitude that I called down to Tid's office and I said, hey, that happened to me in the eighties. And he said, well, you're the person we're looking for. And I said, well, yeah, my name's Mike Bonhoman. Let's let's get going. I remember

that phone call vividly. I had just been hired as the directing attorney of the Innocence Project to oversee this grant from the United States Department of Justice to do research on a narrow group of sex offenses, and the thinking of the grant was that DNA would be how we would solve these cases. As part of that effort, I did a sort of a public relations outreach. There were articles in the newspaper. I went on the radio, I went on TV trying to reach people, and I

remember Mike's phone call very well. And retired Lovo Police Lieutenant Gary Simpkins, who was my investigator at the time, I sent him out to talk to Mike. And Gary was and still is a cops cop. He is a Vietnam veteran, a veteran of I believe twenty five years on the Lobo Police department and did everything you can do in those twenty five years from patrol officer to homicide detective. I believe Gary's last job was as what we call the public Integrity Unit. Most people would call

that internal affairs. So Gary came after interviewing Mike and said, I think this is a legitimate case. I went to the then serving Commonwealth attorney and said, we've received this grant. We'd like to see if there's any DNA evidence available. The then serving comalth attorney said, I have no interest in seeing an innocent person wrongfully convicted do it. This is where it gets interesting. I then went to see a judge to see about tracking down the DNA evidence.

And the judge who I went to see said about this case, who was the defense lawyer? And when I told him the defense lawyers name, he then said, who is the judge? And I told him the judge's name. Who is the prosecutor? And I told him the prosecutor's name, and this judge went, ah, what, oh God. So what we have here is a case that was a perfect storm.

I like to say that for criminal cases to work properly, there are three gears that have to turn prosecution defense, and the judge one of those gears can be wildly out of whack and the system can still work. But if two or all three of those gears are out of whack, the system will not work. So what we had here is this perfect storm of a bad identification, a bad police sketch, bad defense work, bad prosecution, and

bad judging all come together. So now you have the herculean task of not providing reasonable doubt but actually proving his actual innocence. The power dynamic, it's completely flipped in post conviction, and you've requested every document of the sun as well as physical evidence. And it turned out in this case that they were not stonewalling Mike after all,

but rather that the biological evidence had been destroyed. There was no DNA evidence in this case, so we had to do it the old fashioned way and persuade the court that an injustice had occurred here without the benefit of DNA evidence. And that brings us back to this woman from Mike's neighborhood who had recognized Mike's mother in the visiting room at prison and had been visiting a

friend of Mike's on the inside. This woman had previously been married to this man that she believed had committed the crime for which Mike served eleven years. Now she was available to be interviewed by your investigator, Gary Simpkins, even though her ex husband was not available as he had died in a car crash back in He was just killed in a car crash. He was killed while participating in a high speed chase driving the green car with the partial lives of plate that was given to

the police about Mike's case. The Louisville and Shyvy police departments were chasing him and we were able to find the police reports from the car crash. So because of the circumstances of the wreck, the police took a ton

of photos of that wreck. The car match the descriptions the license plate, his physical description, and the fact that he had committed a signature sexual assault, taking the victim of this other case to the same location in Iroquois Park, saying the same things to the victim in that case and doing the same things in that case. I mean, the signature was identical in that offense as the one that Mike was wrongfully convicted of. Wait, so what color

were this guy's eyes? Blue? Blue? That girl that grew up down the street from me, and it was his death that freed her and allowed her to go see this other guy and make for this chance meeting at the prison with my mother. Had he still been a yeah, that chance meeting never would have occurred. And we've still been looking for and we'll be right back after this. The interviews with the woman from the neighborhood who was also a victim of the real perpetrator in that signature crime.

Her interview was critical, the way in which she recounted what he had done to her, what his lifestyle was like at the time, the car, the license plate that can posit, all of that. But it was also given a great deal of credibility I want to point out by our investigator, who, as I say, was a retired Lovill Police Department lieutenant who had worked alongside some of the officers who investigated Mike's case and who knew the system intimate, Okay, and so he was able to bring

that experience to bear. And I also want to point out how unusual it is for a retired police lieutenant to go to work for the Kentucky Innocence Project, Okay. Had Gary come to me early in this case and said, I think it's a bum steer. I don't think there's anything here that might have been the end of it. That's not what happened. Gary came to me and said, I want you to meet this guy. I want you to meet this woman. I want you to take a look at this. I trusted him. I trusted his judgment.

I trusted his judgment as an investigator. This was sort of old fashioned shoe leather detective work and old fashioned shoe leather lawyer work. I remember the day I went to Mike's house and sat down in his kitchen and met him for the first time and was compelled. We met the woman from the neighborhood who gave us an affid David, a detailed sworn statement um, and we were able to put all the pieces together to say this is not right. This man did not do this, and

we know who did. So then we took that to court. There's a procedure, it's sort of a safety valve in the law that allows for you know, break glass and turn the knob here, and so that's how we went to court. The court vacated his sentence, and then the prosecutors chose not to pursue the prosecution any further. And

the man's name was Ronald Tackett. Not only had he victimized these young women in nineteen seventy eight and nine one and very much the same way, but also his own wife and who knows how many other women that just never spoke up. But luckily for so many others, he met his demise in nineteen eighty three before wrecking any more havoc. While Michael rotted in prison for eleven years, eleven long years and then serving how many years on parole?

After serves sixteen years on parole, probably about one year's worth of investigating. But Ted and Gary I met them at about fifteen years on parole. In sixteen years, I was exonerated. You laught fifteen was the final day. So what was that like? Can you take us there? Well, it was really a huge surprise because up until that point I was believing that they were going to retry me, and that on this particular day, I was just going

in to get another court date. So I wore my blue jeans and T shirt down there because I was just gonna sneak out and go back to work right away. So Ted starts shuffling around, and uh, he whispered I think it's over or something, you know, Really, Ted, I gotta say, that's that's a blank moment right in there, just just to hear that it's going to be dismissing over. It was just unbelievable moment that I've been asked what

it felt like and I couldn't describe it. The only way I could, I'm gonna show it to you now.

This is the only way I can describe it. If y'all can see that, and for our listening audience, since we werecording apply from this kind of like zoom, I can see Mike as we record this, and he's showing us a photo on the wall right behind him, and it's that iconic photo of the great Mohammad Ali, a Louisville native by the way, where Mohammed is standing over the body of Sunny Liston, who he's just knocked down in the ring. And you've probably seen the photo yourself.

It's one of the greatest sports images in history. That's what it felt like and does every day. Like I say, I was, I was ready to go back to work, but no, I took off the rest of the day. The yeah, I'm sure you didn't. I mean it must have been a glorious day, even better than the day of your parole. I'd imagine, absolutely, finally getting it off your back, finally the truth being understood by the world

still the day I was led out on parole. If there are two different events, but man, they right way way up here, I can only begin to imagine. And from what I understand, you two and your families really have like a insane connection from the past that you

only discovered on that faithful day. Is that right? We had a catastrophic tornado here in nineteen seventy four that did a tremendous amount of damage to the city, and it wasn't until I was finished representing Michael that I realized or we discovered that his father had actually done repair work on my parents house in nineteen seventy four when his dad, who was a firefighter, was also doing construction as a side gig, and Michael's dad had done work on the house I grew up in in nineteen

seventy four, and we would not meet each other for twenty five years later, and we discovered that in the courtroom when the court vacated Michael's conviction, I turned around and his dad gave me a hug and said, you look just like your dad. And I said, how would you know that? And he said, because I did work

on your house when you were a kid after the tornado. Well, that really puts a nice exclamation point on what was otherwise a great day anyway, a great day that we'd hope never would have had to come to pass, as it was brought on by the awful flaws in the criminal legal system and the flawed human beings who run it, which has brought you, Michael, to a cause that is so near and dear to me, abolishing the death penalty. Become a board member of the Coalition to Abolish the

Death Penalty. We had some momentum going on that issue. We started drawing some national attention, and we got some national grants to work on this issue. We have set a goal of abolishing the death penalty in Kentucky by the year k c a dp dot org. It's the Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty in Kentucky. All right, Well, we're gonna have that site linked in to bio along with other action steps, and that brings us two. I always called my favorite part of the show. Let's face.

It's the best part of the show. It's it's the part called closing arguments, and it's the part where has our listeners know. I turned my microphone off, kicked back in my chair with my headphones on, close my eyes, and just listen to anything else that you guys have to say. So, Ted, why don't you started off? And then Michael take us out into the sunset. Mike, you've become a friend, a real friend. Your why I became a lawyer, the opportunity to represent you, the opportunity to

fight for you, the opportunity to prove your innocence. Thanks a lot. It was a life changer, and I knew it was for you as well, but just as a lawyer. It's just And we've known each other now for what fifteen years? Twelve years? Thanks? So yeah, it's getting up right. Yeah. You came to the visitation when my dad died, and I came to the visitation when your dad died. You're my friend, Mike. I love you. You stopped at you stop You're going too far? All right? I love you too, man.

My closing thing would be, I guess that all of this is a human endeavor, and there are going to be mistakes made, allow for mistakes to be corrected, work some kind of way into the system that mistakes can be corrected. And, as Jesus may say, cast the first stone. If you're flawless and you think everything else is flawless, cast the first stone. Thank you for listening to ronfl Conviction.

I'd like to thank our part action team Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburne and Kevin Wordis 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.

Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one