#316 Guest Host Laura Nirider with Vincent Ellerbe

New York. Nine different people called to report what they heard and what they saw. They reported seeing two men running up to a subway token booth on Kingston Avenue. They poured gasoline into the coin slot and threatened the attendant with a match. Almost immediately, the toll booth burst into flames. The attendant was a man named Harry Kaufman, and as the toll booth caught on fire, he did too. Harry was able to run up the street, where passers

by helped extinguish the flames on his body. More than eight percent of his body was badly burned. He died a few weeks later. The crime made headlines in New York and around the country. Prominent politicians like Senator Bob Dole and Mayor Rudy Giuliani mentioned the case in their tough on crime rhetoric. Pressure was mounting for the police to find the attackers. With little physical evidence and no clear suspects, Detective Louis Scarcella turned to one of his

favorite tactics, coercing witnesses. One of the nine one one callers, James Irons, was forced to give a false confession and to name two more accomplicits. Thomas Malik and Vincent Ellerbee, were both detained and interrogated, and both eventually gave false confessions under pressure. After an investigation and a trial riddled with lies and misconduct, Thomas Malie and Vincent Ellerby were convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to twenty five

years to life. This is Wrongful Conviction. Hi, everybody, it's Laura and I writer. I am so glad to be here guest hosting another episode of Wrongful Conviction. I'm the co director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, and you might also recognize my voice from another series I co hosted on this podcast, feed False Confessions. Today I'm here with a real fighter, a real survivor of false confessions, Vincent Ellerby Vince, you've endured more than any

human should be asked to endure. I am so honored to get a chance to talk to you today. Do you want to introduce yourself? Hi? My name vincenw four years, eleven months in days. Some had nothing to do it. I was forced to take the way for crime. I had nothing to do it. And I'm Ron Coopy. I was the lawyer for Vince's co defendant way back in the nineties, and they were tried together, although in front

of separate juries. Ron, We're so glad to have you here, and Vince, I am so glad you said every one of those days, because every one of those days, hours and minutes counts. But Ron, I'm going to start out by asking you what was New York City like in the ninety nineties in terms of crime and how people were talking about crime. Back then, we were pretty much in our tenth year of the crack epidemic, which saw a dramatic increase in crime and and a wildly dramatic

increase in punitive law enforcement. It was a time in which the super predator theory was gained and had gained tremendous currency in legal circles and sociological circles. It was coined by a sociologist who later attracted it, but the damage had been done. The theory was there was a whole generation of black youth growing up without fathers, living on the streets who were committing crimes. There was never

any consequence to their crimes. They would always get away with crime after crime after crime, and as a result, they would become super predators. These are people who were so feral and so conscious less they would go out and do anything to anybody without any empathy, compassion, or mercy. And we were in the process of creating a whole generation of these people, and the only thing that we could do about it as a society was to incarceraate

them forever. It's one of the most toxic theories out there, right, I mean, we know this is the theory that led to the wrongful conviction of the Central Park five, for example, now called the Exonerated five just to few years before this happened events and there are so many other cases around the country that were driven by the super predator myth. Right here in Chicago, the Dicksmore five, the Englewood four, the Marquette Park for the Uptown seven. These numbers just

keep mounting and mounting and mounting. And Vince's case in particular is a horrific example of these racist tropes being used to incarcerate black kids, Black male children in particular. So tell us how this toxic brew of racist myths showed up in this case. So on November, outside of a token booth in Brooklyn, two people, two people, not three, And this will become important later on in the story. Two people went to that token boothe One of them

was armed with a thirty caliber carbine a rifle. The other had a bottle with gasoline in it. They were trying to rob the token booths. The token booth clerk Harry Kaufman, and refused to give up the money, and he was behind bulletproof glass, and the perpetrators poured gasoline into the slot. According to the prosecution, they then set it on fire. The token booth exploded, It blew up the booth, it blew up the money, and it burned up Harry Kaufman, and he had third degree burns over

most of his body. And he lingered in the burn unit, agonizing day after agonizing day until I think December he died. It was one of those horrific crimes that still made the headlines in New York even though crime overall actually had had dropped as the crack epidemic wane. But it was still one of those incredibly high profile crimes that people used to illustrate why you can no longer live in New York City. Our mayor at the time, a guy better known to this audience in his latter incarnation

as a Trump apologist. Mayor Rudy Giuliani, for reasons still unclear, noted that the movie Money Trained had just come out, and he claimed utterly without evidence, that this particular robbery murder had been inspired by the movie Money Train. So it was a horrific crime, and everybody agreed. It was a horrific crime, of course, made more so by the the fableism of of our mayor. What evidence did investigators begin to look into? What leads do they have to

go on? The problem was they had no suspects, There were no fingerprints at the scene, the firearm couldn't be traced. This was before the days when there were cameras everywhere, and everybody had a cell phone. Uh, there were no cell phone towers. There was absolutely no evidence, uh that the cops had to give them a lead to anybody. So when nobody's a suspect, everybody becomes a suspect. Now that night, that night, nineteen people called to report an

explosion in the subway station. One of those people was a guy named James Irons and he was in his mom's apartment. He called up as well, and later his mom got on the phone. And this is noteworthy because James iron sounded normal on the phone. That is, obviously he was panic. Something horrible. It just happened, but but it just seemed like another nine one one caller. So I want to take a minute and just ask you to tell us a little bit about the cops who

ended up getting assigned to this investigation. They were out of the seventy ninth Precinct. Right. Stephen Camill of the Brooklyn North Homicide Squad was lead on this case, and he was assisted by Louis Scarcella, which is a name that listeners of this podcast will remember. Can you give us a little bit of background here, now, Disgrace Detective Louis Scarcella and his partner Stephen Camille were known as

Batman and Robin, and Scarcella was very much Batman. Whatever the lead was, whoever the lead detective was named, whether it was Camille or Murphy or O'Reilly or Derita or O'Toole um, it was Scarcella who was actually in charge. He led a homicide task force throughout Brooklyn that had a roving commission to stick their nose in any homicide

they wished. And the amazing thing about Detective Scarcella and the reason he received such adulation within the police department and the d a's office was he got witnesses, and he got confess sessions, even in cases where there appeared to be no witnesses, and even in cases where there appeared to be no suspects. He was known as the closer as well, because he will close this case. At this point, there's there's close to I think two dozen

wrongful conviction cases attributed to Scarcella. I think at this count, eighteen have been exonerated. There are still some cases in the pipeline that may or may not result in exonerations. Out of ninety trials, nine homicide trials that that that he works. It's unbelievable. It sounds like he's been responsible for so many lost centuries. It's mind blowing. He's been responsible for lost millennia of black life. If you add all those years together, it's not going to be in

the hundreds at this point. Pretty sure it's going to be in the thousands. And he didn't have any suspects either, So so when you have a case like this with no suspects, kind of everybody's a suspect. So what you do is you go out and you take every snitch, every informant, every person on the street that you know of, and you basically beat the crap out of them. So

they go back to the nine one one calls. I don't know the television theory the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime, and maybe one of the nine callers actually committed the crime, right, So so footnote here. You know, you're told if you see something, say something. The lesson of this case, if you see something and you say something, depending on who you are, you may end up getting convicted for what you saw and said.

Because one of those good Samaritans who called nine one one, who tried to help out was this kid, eighteen year old James Irons. But here's the thing, right, if if he did the crime and then called from his home, he would have to run really really fast in order to get home and call nine one one when their call lug say he did. He would have been out of breath on that nine one one call, and he wasn't.

That just doesn't make sense. So right there, right there, if you were paying attention, which nobody was, you would have had your doubts. Anyway, Scarce and Camille bring him in and he gives a confession. He gives a full confession. The confession itself is ruddled with things that are completely untrue, and he starts to name people that he was with.

He places himself as the look at. So the way this works in interrogations, right, is that when you've got a group of people that you want to turn into suspects, you bring one of them in and you accuse that person of being there. But you say, hey, I'm going to cut you a deal. You were probably the lookouts, You probably weren't an active participant, and things will go easier for you if you just tell us a story where you were the lookout, and you some other guys

do it. Right. You see this over and over and over again in all these cases around the country, involving multiple defendants, all of whom eventually falsely confessed to the same crime. Right, And so they get people to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I knew there was gonna be a robbery, but I don't know nothing about a murder. And the guy thinks he's getting Okay, I'll do time for the robbery. Lone Behold, he just confessed to fell any murder or yeah, you were just a lookout. H asked you to look out

while they went in and did something. Yeah, yeah, I was just like making sure nobody came down. I didn't have a weapon. Boom, you've just confessed again to acting in concert in a murder. Very very common, and it's one of the flashing yellow lights when you see it today, exactly. It's a hallmark of a false confession. So here you've got the idea that irons would just be a lookout.

The details of his story aren't matching up with the facts, right, the number of people, the gun, he's getting things wildly off. But he does put some names forward. He does he among other names he puts in our Vincent l RB and Thomas Mulwick. So, Vince Ron and I just spoke at length about your hometown, Brooklyn, New York, and the horrible crime that happened there in novemb Vince, I want to ask you, what was it like to realize all of a sudden, but you were caught up in this

case and you were facing these charges. When I went to Rackets Island behind, I didn't really have enough time to really sit back and dwell on the case, because you know, you're walking in the Rackets Island. You know you gotta worry about the phone, making sure that nobody taken one from you. So in my mind, I just blanked it. I just blocked it all out. I just put on my faith for my lawyer, because I said to myself, it's no way possible that they're gonna find

me guilty. It's impossible, no matter what, it's impossible, no matter the confessions. They're going to see everything. It's it's a lie. Is mathematically impossible for you not to see it a blind magazine. You were gonna like short term survival mode, right like this is gonna be over because they're gonna see I'm innocent. Yeah, so it's just out here they say this is a normal environment, but when you get it locked up, that's an abnormal environment. So

you gotta adjust to that. I had. I just put my faith for my lawyer, and I put my faith for my code offending because he already knew the law. So for me, it was just I was just in survival mode. Survival mode and the Rikers in the nineties, it's no joke. No, you gotta make adjustments real fast. And there's somebody else and Wrikers at the time, right, somebody who ended up giving police what he said was information about your case. Yeah, Ray Kuan Sbas, Yeah, they

called him ice picked Marlin yeh. I met him. I knew him for all the three days, and I'm not going to lie to you. When we went to trial, we were sitting there and we're on trial, so I never know him as Ray Kuan Sbas. I only knew him as Marlin show as we're sitting there. When the d A, I mean the d A calls the next witness, they say, Ray Kua she Bas, and I turned and looked at my co defended and he put his head

down so I tapped him. I'm like, what's uping? And he shook his head like so I'm saying to myself like, okay, who And the door opened up and he come out. He got this Jene suit on looking fly and in my mind, I'm saying, what is he doing here? And he gett on the stand and he get the proceed of telling him how TIMEY chold him what we did and how I told him what we did and that I was in one up and with him for like

three months. And I'm and I'm saying to myself like, they got records that will show you how long I was up there. So when when when Ron and George's question and the guy and you just you just you just see it, you see it. Then they brought up his past. That's when I found out about we wasn't the first individuals he did this too. In my mind, I know, I'm coming home now. So you're there, you're being tried with Tommy, right, you're being tried together, separate juries,

but you're being tried together. And Shabaz comes up and says that you confessed again to him, and he must be sitting there going I'm going home because this guy is crazy. When you look at everything, from every witness that they had, so all the confessions to everything. If you just look at it, it's not a jury in the world. It's not a jury in the universe that's gonna convict the mother's crime. Ron. Can you of this

a rundown of this trial? How was this case with all these holes, these confessions that are obviously wrong, How does it result in these convictions? This was really before the time there was much science available on the issue of false confessions. UH. Some people had started work on its saul cast and I think had been doing it for a few years. But the idea of calling a false confession expert that that just was not an idea that existed UH in New York criminal trial practice at

the time. And Ray Kwon Shababs I actually did one of these these sort of bush league lawyer things. I took his criminal record, which at that time was written on paper, and I taped all of the sheets together, and as I approached him, I left the sheets unspooled as they did, and I handed him the document, which at this point stretched all the way back to the defense table, and I asked him if he recognized it,

and he said, yes, it's his criminal record. I knew that he had done this twice before, and I considered him to be a so called professional informant. He worked for the d a's office, not regularly, but whenever he needed to. Whenever he got in a jam, he would cook up some sort of plot, some confession, some conspiracy, and go to the d a's office and trade it for lighter treatment. The d a's office admitted that, yes, he had testified once in Brooklyn, and yes he had

testified once in Queen's Judge. France's xavier A Geto, a name which should also be familiar to your listeners because he presided over many of these wrongful convictions, said at two times isn't enough to make him a professional witness, and they let him testify. What we did not know, but the Brooklyn d A's office certainly knew, was that in the Brooklyn case which prec did this, he had testified that he was a professional liar. He was asked, you lie for a living, don't you, Mr Shabaz, and

he said yes, it's insane. I mean, when you think about the way that this playing field was stacked, right, It's stacked from the moment that a teenager walks into the interrogation room alone, without a parent, without a lawyer, without any clue about what's facing him, and a trial that all just continues with lies and concealments. Vince, I want to ask you if you'll take us back to that moment. I mean, this is when the wheels really

come off. Right. You've been sitting at this trial. You've been telling yourself, I just have to make it to the acquittal. I just have to make it to the moment when the jury realizes that this entire situation is constructed bullshit. Well, when they after closing organis, they came back with diverting little fat thing it was, and I don't I don't even think we probably wasn't even downstairs an hour something like that. They called us back upstairs.

I remember sitting down and I'm saying to myself, all right, I'm about to slide up out of here. It's over. And he said, we found the defenders guilty on all charges so quick fast. I did a calculation in my head. I how older people and I go to the board. I said, I'd be forty two years old. I said, i'd be an old man. My daughter wasn't even born yet,

a mother was six months pregnantly. But I really didn't hit me until I went back to get sentence, because even then I still thought they might have made a mistake, might be a chance. But I think the one good day about that sentence. That day I wore regular clothes, jeans, sweat on, sneakers, and my co defended. That's the only thing that made me smell that day. He walked into the court room. Until this day, I don't know where he got it from, but he had on alarme green suit,

alarm green suit. And I'm looking at him, and I'm saying to myself, this guy can't be serious. They're about to give us twenty five years and you walking here with a live green SUITO. And I remember when I was taking me out the court when I started singing Tupac, And somehow when I went to the board, somehow it changed for me singing Tupac to me cursing the judge out the barod board. When I went to the board, they asked, They asked me that I cursed the judge out.

I said, no, I didn't curach the judge out, I said, I read a statement that my mother wrote from me, I said, And when I walked out, I was singing Tupac. I said. I don't know how y'all got that, but it really didn't hit me until I got downstate that I wasn't going home for a long time. How did you survive all those years in prison? Y'all understand something rack is outand is different from the penitentiary. And you

hear all the Harvard stories about the penitentiary. When I get downstay the old timer that I ran into, he asked me, did I want to do a smooth bed? And I said yeah. He said, okay, that's what you do. He said, for the first five years of your bid, you put in major work. I don't care if somebody owe you a stamp, if they don't have your money. When they say they're gonna have it, you give him the business. So what happens. What happened to me, and

it still affects me to this day. My heart became real cold because that's what the penitentiary turned me into. I drink now a lot to shield all the pain I go through every day. Nobody knows what it's like when you go to prison for a crime you commit, and you wake up every morning and you go to brush your teeth, wash your face. You can't accept that.

But when you're there, there the day after hour, year after year, for something you didn't do, a lot of hate build up, a lot of thoughts about suicide setting. I couldn't put a rope around my neck. I couldn't take a lot of pills. I couldn't do that, Okay, so I would cause a lot of problems hoping that the police would kill me because I became tired. Nobody knows what it's like for me, even to this day, just to fight to get up. I got to get myself a reason. They keep getting up every day. Yeah,

people see me. I still look young, still got my swag, but they don't know what it's like from me. I gave these people twenty plus years of my life for no reason, and they started detective he's living somewhere suburbs, somewhere to get his picture. Yeah all right here, all right, No matter how many times people do stories about that coward not feeling another happitude. But I thought they say, when you committed crime, you go to jail for I

ain't commit no crime. I went to jail. They exonerated us. So that means everything he did, he lied, he can committed crumsy he forms to five evidence, they say it's a misdemeanor what he did. Okay, cool. I know a whole lot of people that got mister meetings that went to jail. I went with a few of them, So I understand what y'all doing. I appreciate. Let me make this clear to y'all, and I'm just being honest. It's only one person that's gonna make him pay for what

he did to all of us. Everyone. It was not just me and my code of fitters. We're the only ones that coward valet it. We ain't throwny ones. But the long I'm making pay for it though, he's gonna be Iraq. He gonna be Iraq. They broke me a little bit, but I'm gonna keep fighting there. They don't my code offending need me to hold him down. Now it's my turn. Do you help me? Damn? Do you helped me? Damn? While I was in prison, ripping and running, he was in a lower live brary fighting for both

of us. These tears just say for me, he's tear for him too. My code defended is hurt. It's the way they broke me. They broke my code defended too, But he kept fighting for That's what I'm sitting there. He got us to this point. No matter how many interviews I gotta do, I got us. I'm gonna let the people know about that coward. I got nephews that I didn't even grow up with. My mom's, my sister. What about their paid what about them knowing that they huh like no, I was in the same I got

a door room. We'd never have a relationship because she can't never understand why her dad wasn't there. And I don't know how to fix that. That coward took that from me. That coward took that from me. You know, yesterday I watched my daughter come out of the building from coming from my mom's house, and she was in the cab and she just turned and looked at me, and we looked at each other like we were full blooded enemies. You know how that feels. Don't nobody know

how that ship. But it's all right though, So all right, it's part of life. That's the only way it could make sense for me. That's The only way I could survive is if I say it's all right. That's the anyway. I ain't got no choice no more. Without that, my mom's and my sister be bevery at me. That's how it makes sense of it. It's all right. That's how I keep going everything. It's all right when I wake up every day, it's all right for me. I'm real for it because of the moment I stopped saying it's

all right. It's the moment I don't want to be here no more. So it's all right. I don't want me it's all right, you know what, Let's let's take a break. Okay, let's just take a break for a second from having to talk about this for just the NOMA. Okay, I think I just need a few minutes. I just need a few minutes to our listeners. I just want to acknowledge that Vince is clearly in a lot of pain here. All of us who work on this podcast take the health and safety of our guests very seriously.

Immediately after this interview, we connected Vince with a specialized trauma therapist, and we talked to his family to make sure he was being taken care of and supported. In the days and weeks following this conversation, we also spent a lot of time talking and thinking about which parts of this interview to air, whether or not his pain was too raw, too fresh, Whether or not Vince really wanted all of this out in the world, We asked him,

and the answer is he does. He wants the world to know what happened to him and how it still affects him today. You know, wrongful conviction stories are often packaged as these stories of triumph, but behind so many of them there's deep emotional suffering. So to Vince, I just want to say that I'm amazed and humbled by your bravery. You're sharing the truth of what happened to you, and our shared life work is to stop this from happening to anyone else ever again. So with that, let's

get back to what happened next in Vince's story. So, Ron, let's go back to you. You've been involved at the time of trial. Years pass and you do get back involved with this case. Can you tell us how you got involved again and how the case eventually started to turn its direction back towards justice. The turning point in the case came in early when Tommy Malik, who never gave up, sent the most extraordinary document to me that

I've ever seen. And what Tommy found was a ten page order from a state Supreme Court justice regarding ray Kwan Shabaz and his most recent false testimony where he created a conspiracy to murder a sitting judge. The FBI got involved and they quickly realized what the d A's office could never face, which this is. This is a hoax. This is something that Shabaz is doing simply to to create a reason for him to be an informer, to

get out of prison. And judge the judge issues a ten page injunction saying that ray Kwan Shabaz a k a. Marlon O. Villa is a clear and present danger to the administration of justice. He is permanently enjoined from ever

intacting anyone in law enforcement. Again. If he feels the need to contact someone in law enforcement, he will contact a Special Master who I am appointing, And he is the only person that Shabbaz is ever to contact because his history and his habit of lying, creating cases, falsifying testimony, falsifying conspiracies is such that to let him talk to law enforcement is, in fact, to to disrupt the criminal justice system. I had never seen a document like this before.

I have never seen a document like that since. And I called the head of the conviction Review Unit, who I had known from other cases, and he said, just wait a little bit. There's gonna be things coming out about Detective Scarcella that you're going to want to know. Early on, they took this case, this case was handed to them in and by the time of this exoneration in two it was the oldest case, the longest any

case had lingered. But in the end they found everything they needed to convince everybody beyond any doubt whatsoever, that all three of these young men, then young men, were wrongfully convicted. I started with Tommy, and then in I realized that they were all going to stand or fall together just like they did at trial. And so you ended up representing Vince too in his effort to be exonerated. But at this point, Vince, you had already been paroled, right,

you were parrolled in. How did you and Ron get in touch again? I got a letter from him and he said he wanted to come see me. All right, I already knew who he was, so ang really. You know, by this time is two thousand and seventeen. I got three years left before I go to the board. So all right, I said, my code of fitting. Munster came up with something. He pulled the rabbit out of had force or something. He comes up here just just for

no reason. And when he came to see me then he said, look, it's a seventy five percent chance we're gonna get it over to him. Sorry, seventy five percent. I'm saying to myself, that's pretty hard. On the seventy five percent note. Normally a lawyer tell you at the at the most he might put it at If he's trying to be a little cocky, he might put it at fifty. So right before I went to the board, I let him I was going to the board, and

I asked me to write me a letter. Now, normally, when you go in front of the parole board, you know, after you say your name, they tell you who they are, they name and everything, and they actually your name. They jumped right into the case, said everything. But they didn't do that with me. The first thing they asked me about what's the letter from my lawyer? And I said, yeah, I guess after getting a letter from Ron, and Ron told him he let him know straight up and down.

Y'all should do the right thing because this case is gonna get over. Trunk. Y'all don't want to be the reason why he had to stay in prison any longer, so y'all should let him go. And he was right. I made my board when I came home, and then I was sleeping. Called me early in the morning, like you always do. When he called me his greeting, Hey, Vince, I said, what's several are you doing? He said, I'm all right. He said, listen, you gotta be at the

court on Friday because your kids getting over. I said yeah, he said, yeah. I was tired. I was tired that morning. I was tired that morning. But after they told me that I couldn't go back to sleep, I started trying to put together what I'm away the court, nice white white shorts, my fit of hat broke down to the side. I still got a little bit of swag. I told you all that. Yeah, I came in there, you know, and I'm not gonna lie to them when I got there.

Ra High, however loyal. She met me out in the hallway. She says, I was nervous, so I asked me with my code defending, was that so? What Timmy yet? She said they're bringing them out, So I said all right, And they brought him out in the handcuffs. That kind of that that that that that pissed me off seeing him come out of handcuffs. We walked out, We walked out together. At the end, they asked as what we're gonna do now, and I told him We're going to

Disney World. So when this is all over with, when everything is all over with, man my boy going to Disney World. Depending on how this turned out, depending on how I see that the last the the ending cut, I might invite y'all. I don't know yet. And all I want to see is him in lime green, you and white at Disney World. That is how I want to see you. No he no, no, no, he can never know. He can never put on lime green again. No, no, that is against the rules for him. Ron, We're getting

to the end of the story. I just want to say, you've been working on this case for a long time. This has been a twenty seven year labor for you. Yeah. I mean, look, it's one of the advantages about living to be. My age is that sometimes you do get to see stuff come around again. I'm happy that I'm old enough now that I am living to see some of these things happen. So I wouldn't call it a

twenty seven year labor. I'd call it twenty seven year look at watching what goes around finally finally does come around. And while I don't think the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, in fact, I don't think the moral ark of the universe freaking exists. I do know that sometimes for some people there is a reckoning at least, and that's what's happened here, and that reckoning, I think is going to come one day for the officers who

did this. We all know that the law creates exceptions for police officers. We know that qualified immunity protects police officers even when they do things like this. But what I will say is that the world will know their names. They will know their names as bad police, and that's going to have to be where we leave this for now. At the end of every episode of Wrongful Conviction, we do what we call closing arguments. Vince. This is where you get to close out the show. You can talk

about anything you want to talk about. And before you do, I just want to say thank you to Ron and thank you to Vince for sharing your story with us today. It has been an honor. Vince. I'll give you the floor first and foremost, let me say thank you the wrong thank you to my codeffind Thomas Malee, because without there, I wouldn't be sitting there right now now. Yeah, the penitentiary broken. I ain't afraid to say, if you look deep enough in my eyes, you're sick. But I'm just

good at shilling it. That's what the penitentiary is designed to make, break your break you down. But for me, like I said, I just keep telling myself it's gonna be all right. They said, LAWD don't place a burden on the person that they can't bear. And I guess it was designed for me to carry a heavy burden. Some days it is light, like today it's real heavy, and for the next couple of days is gonna be real heavy. And I may isolate myself. My girlfriend may

not understand it, my mom's may not understand it. My sister will law that's my baby girl, my sister. These tear as you see man, he's ain't it for sal This is years a hurting pain. Those that we'll see this. No one understands something man penitentiary and designed for nobody. Man, white, black, blue green, especially for those that didn't do it. If you did a crime, you know, would't understand what it is. I could have did a million years longer than for

something I did. But it's all right though. Life goes on. Me and my cold and friends are gonna survive because the same thing I tell myself, each other, itself, because that's all we got. Our family there, but that's all we got tell ourself. We all right, We're gonna make it. And I'll leave you out with that. Thank you, 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 Slum and Kevin Wordis. The Senior producer for this episode is Jackie Polly, and our producers are Lila Robinson and Jeff Clyburne. Our editor is Roxandra Gwedy. 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 and Lauren Bright Pacheco will sit down with Mark Shannon, the victim of the Springfield, Massachusetts Police Department and their blatant disregard for the truth.

Mark served nearly thirty years behind bars while his family and community fought for his freedom, surviving not only prison but also a dire medical emergency. Lauren Bry Pacheco is a brilliant investigator and she's no stranger to wrongful conviction cases. You may know her from her groundbreaking incredible podcast Murder in Oregon and Murder in Illinois. Listen next Monday in the Wrongful Conviction podcast feed