#320 Jason Flom with Lamonte McIntyre - podcast episode cover

#320 Jason Flom with Lamonte McIntyre

Dec 29, 202255 minEp. 320
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Episode description

This is an updated episode that originally aired on September 25, 2017.

On the afternoon of April 15th, 1994, two men were sitting in a powder-blue Cadillac in the Quindaro neighborhood of Kansas City, KS. A man dressed in black ran up to the passenger side, raised a shotgun and fired four rounds in what looked like a drug-related hit, killing the two passengers Doniel Quinn and Donald Ewing. Lamonte McIntyre, who was 17 at the time, was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. The prosecution relied primarily on the testimonies of two eyewitnesses who identified Lamonte as the shooter. Both eyewitnesses later recanted. Even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, he was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. 

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https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction  is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

​​We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

We originally released our interview with Lamon McIntyre on September twenty fifth, twenty seventeen. Since then, a monumental shift has occurred in the dynamic that resulted with Lamont behind bars and the guy who deliberately framed him for a crime he didn't commit living free as a detective for Kansas City, Kansas.

It's alleged that Roger Golupski was notorious in the black community for using his authority to coerce women into sexual acts in exchange for leniency, turning a blind eye, or just for the courtesy of having him not frame them or a family member. I'm cautiously optimistic about what appears to be the beginning of some semblance of justice for Gallupski and the good people of Kansas City. Gallupski has

now been formally charged in several cases. In September twenty twenty two for two counts of sexual assault the same mom as we just mentioned, and then in November twenty twenty two, an indictment was revealed in which Glupski was alleged to have conspired with a drug kingpin to run a sex trafficking operation that routinely victimized miners. Kallupski allegedly shielded the operation from investigation in exchange for cash and

sexual acts from his choice of girls. One of the victims alleged that Glupski choked and raped her when she was just sixteen years old. Klupski maintains his innocence, but if these allegations are true, I hope he burns in the very real hell in which he puts so many

innocent and at risk people. On April fifteenth, nineteen ninety four, Donnielle Quinn and Donald Ewing were fatally shot while sitting at a powder blue Cadillac when a man dressed in black pumped four shotgun rounds into the car, and one alleged witness claimed to have recognized the shooter as an acquaintance, quote unquote Laman Something. Another witness identified seventeen year old

Lamont McIntyre from a photo lineup. Both witnesses made positive identifications in court, and despite a total lack of corroborating physical evidence, this case appeared to be as open and shut as they come, resulting in two consecutive life prison

terms for Lamont McIntyre. On this episode, we Speak with Lamont's appellet attorney Cheryl Pilot, former FBI agent and police corruption expert Al Jeneric, as well as Lamont himself from behind bars to find out how this seemingly righteous prosecution had actually been corrupted from the very start. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason flamm Today's episode will make your blood boil and it will

blow your mind. So settle in because this is going to be a crazy ride.

Speaker 2

Guilty one word ceiling Lamont McIntyre's fate.

Speaker 3

Lamont McIntyre, aged seventeen in nineteen ninety four, has so far been imprisoned for twenty two years. Twenty two years ago, two young men, twenty one year old Donielle Quinn and his thirty four year old cousin Donald Ewing, were gunned down in a horrible double homicide.

Speaker 2

Six hours after the murder's police arrested McIntyre, but never searched his house for evidence.

Speaker 3

Moreover, it was a trial which prosecutors offered no physical evidence tying McIntyre to the crime, no motive, no connection between him and the victims, no weapon, no fingerprints, Nor did Kansas City Kansas Belief even request search warrants to find any of that material.

Speaker 2

A retired officer who reviewed the case calls the investigation grossly deficient.

Speaker 3

Most notable is that the family of the victims for twenty two years have steadfastly insisted that he is innocent. Other witnesses also relatives of the victim, insisted as soon as they saw McIntyre sitting at the defense table they knew he was not the shooter. They told the prosecutor, but were ignored. One family member has signed an affi David, claiming that under pressure from police and the prosecutor, she lied at McIntyre's trial.

Speaker 2

For the first time, a jur is speaking publicly about the case, Greg Lauber says that he now believes that yan Dot County jury was wrong.

Speaker 4

They didn't care about anything. They just had their man.

Speaker 2

And it was enough for the twelve person jury. In deliberations, Lauber says he and another juror were holdouts, but it was late in the day and there was mounting pressure from others who wanted a verdict.

Speaker 3

Maybe I had an opportunity to, you know, do something good on that jury, but I sure didn't do it.

Speaker 5

I took a coward's way out.

Speaker 3

It is the speedy investigation and prosecution of that crime in this place that a team of exonerators now insist was also the focus of a terrible injustice. Lamont McIntyre, aged seventeen in nineteen ninety four, has so far been imprisoned for tw twenty two years, convicted, and given two consecutive life sentences for a crime they say you never committed.

Speaker 1

Well, I'm just gonna say I'm really happy that today joining us to discuss the insane case of Lamont McIntyre. We have with us Lamont's attorney, Cheryl Pilot, as well as retired FBI special agent Al Jenerich. Cheryl and Al, thank you for being here.

Speaker 5

Thank you so much.

Speaker 6

We're glad to be here, happy to be.

Speaker 1

Here, and we will be hearing later on in the episode from Lamont, who will be calling in from president Kansas, where he has been incarcerated for approximately twenty four years now since he was a teenager for a crime that he did not commit. Now, let's go back to the beginning. On April fifteenth, nineteen ninety four, there are two men sitting in a Cadillac in Kansas City, Kansas, when they

were approached by a man with a shotgun. These facts are not in dispute right correct, And what we know is that four shots were fired into the car, killing the passenger Donielle Quinn instantly and the driver, Donald Ewing,

who died later in the hospital. And amazingly, within six hours, they managed to find a guy who had nothing to do with the crime, Lamont McIntyre, who was seventeen at the time, and he was arrested and charged with two counts of first degree murder in spite of a total lack of any physical evidence connecting him to the crime. How did this happen? Cheryl and Al jump in whenever you want.

Speaker 5

Lamont was arrested and prosecuted after police obtained three interviews from eyewitnesses, one of them never testified. But the taped interviews of these eyewitnesses in a very serious crime obviously where someone can go to prison for the rest of their life, amounted to a total of twenty taped minutes, and one of the eyewitnesses was only interviewed for four minutes. Is that an investigation?

Speaker 4

What is that?

Speaker 1

So? Al, You've done a lot of research and you were in the FBI for quite a while, is that right.

Speaker 6

I was in the FBI for twenty five years. I was a special agent. I specialized in investigating police corruption. I worked in Chicago very successfully, and then in Kansas City, Kansas.

Speaker 5

Agent Generich was not involved with this murder case at all when it happened. I knew mister Generich through other cases, and after he retired a number of years. After he retired, actually and I was working on trying to achieve Lamont's exoneration, I approached him to talk to him about the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department and things that I had uncovered in

my investigation. And it was at that point that Alan I started talking about some of the things he had learned while working for the FBI, and they matched up with some of the things I had uncovered in my investigation. And it was because of that that he became a witness in this case that I hope to use at our hearing.

Speaker 1

So, prior to Lamont's arrest, can we talk about what was happening with this particular cop, whose name was Roger Glubski.

Speaker 6

Sometime around nineteen eighty eight or so, I was able to open an investigation into police corruption in Kansas City, Kansas. And as the investigation went on over time, over many years, we developed maybe somewhere between twelve and fifteen police officers who were titled subjects of the investigation. Some of it involved civil rights like beating people up, stealing their shoes when they were walking down the street because the officer liked the shoes, or in the case of Kulupski, you know,

sexual extortion. But most of it involved corruption involving drugs, mostly cocaine. And in the course of this investigation, just by talking to people, which is what I'm pretty good at, over time, you know, a number of people told us about Gaulupski extorting sex from black women and he liked black women. We never developed enough evidence on Gallupski to prosecute him. That's the extent of my knowledge about Gallupski.

Speaker 1

I always believed that that police were good, and the police were on our side and they're there to protect us all and so I always find these stories, even as long as I've been working on this issue, and I've got twenty five years now of experience, but I always find these stories so just depressing and shocking, and it flips everything upside down.

Speaker 6

Well, like you, I was very naive until I went to Chicago, and then I sought police corruption on the mass of scale. But then when I got back to Kansas City in eighty six and probably got involved in Kansas City, Kansas in eighty eight, and I saw the same activity there, it wasn't on the grand scale. You know. It's that it's conducted in Chicago. It's basically police officers, most of whom are white, picking on minorities, most of

whom are black, some of them are Hispanic. Because when you're a drug dealer, you know, you can't go to the police or the FBI and say, hey, these cops are stealing my drugs, these cops are stealing my drug money. You basically have to you have to suck it up. So that's what they do in Chicago's what they do everywhere.

Speaker 1

So Lamont his troubles really began when his mom was at a car with I guess was her boyfriend at the time. Shoyl Right Glubski approached the car and told her to get out and threatened her with arrest or the rest of her boyfriend unless she agreed to come down to the police station. And then the problems really began when she refused to become one of his girls,

so to speak. Right, I mean, obviously, she was in a terrible situation where she's very vulnerable, not able to defend herself from a cop who's willing to go to almost any lengths to fulfill his desires. She had a tremendous problem, and she decided that she wanted to maintain her dignity, really right, And so what seems like happened is that as a consequence, Golubski decided that he would target and frame her son in something that is so evil that makes me want to quit the human race.

Speaker 5

There was an encounter that Lamon's mother had with the detective some years earlier. I mean it was years actually before the double homicide happened. And at the time of the double homicide, my client was inexplicably dragged into the case. One of the eyewitnesses told the police she thought the shooter looked like a Lamont dating her niece. Police never bothered to find out what Lamont that was. They don't go ask the niece what Lamont that was. They simply

put another Lamont. And it's undisputed an entirely different. Lamont, my client into the case and somehow obtain this identification. What's interesting about the lineup, and I've never seen anything like this before, is three of the five photos were of young male members of the McIntyre family.

Speaker 1

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to say, well, that doesn't make a lot of sense. It's one perpetrator. It's not like somebody said there were three brothers that were involved. It's one perpetrator, you know. And then the justice system, we know has a tendency to chew people up and spit them out when they are poor, particularly if they're minorities and underrepresented. It's really it's not a fair fight, is it.

Speaker 5

Well, I mean, this whole thing was an impossible battle for Lamont to begin with. I mean, first of all, the investigation itself, I don't think really qualified is a true investigation because so little was done. No evidence of motive was ever uncovered. There was no physical evidence that tied Lamont to the crime. There was not even any evidence that he knew the two victims. There are backgrounds of the two victims and who might have a motive

to harm them that was never investigated. There was an eyewitness directly across the street who was never interviewed, whose mother said, you know, she knows who the suspect is. I mean, the failures and lapses and irregularities in this case just go on and on. I mean, other than the twenty minutes of taped interviews from the eyewitnesses, there was very little else and the only evidence at trial against Lamont were two eyewitnesses. One of them has admitted

that she lied, that she was coursed. The other eyewitness seems frankly, very perplexed by her testimony, and it's very clear that it's an eyewitness a misidentification based on manipulation.

Speaker 1

And we know also that had this trial taken place twenty years later or so, with everything that's known now about the unreliability of eyewitness identification, there's a very good chance that would have been discredited because there was no other evidence connecting him to the crime.

Speaker 5

You take a person who's traumatized, who has just witnessed a really horrific event, and they can be pretty easy to pressure or manipulate. And in fact, this witness provided in a tape statement my client's last name a man. She did not know and had never heard of, which raises the very interesting question of who gave her the name. Was disputed at trial that she did not know my client, yet the fact that there was an original tape statement where she provided his name never came out. That was

never admitted at trial. She also stated wrongly that my client was the Lamont who had dated her niece. At trial undisputed that that was not true. It was an entirely different Lamont who was in fact identified by his name to the jury, an entirely different person. So, I mean, the whole thing is troubling beginning to end, really a perfect storm of chaos and horror and misconduct, things being done improperly.

Speaker 1

So you have this cop and this department that is so corrupt isn't even the right word, but that's engaged in so many illegal activities. And isn't it ironic and tragic that Lamont is in prison living in hell after twenty four years and this cop who was from what I've read, raping people, robbing people, dealing drugs, protecting drug dealers, he's out. How is that? I mean, that must not sit well with you, with your whole background either.

Speaker 5

What I'm really hoping for. What our entire team is hoping for, and what we have sought for a long time, is a very full investigation into the activities of this detective. There needs to be an investigation by people who have the power to follow all the leads, develop information, compel the testimony of witnesses, and obtain other evidence.

Speaker 1

Let me turn it to you for a second, because we have not had somebody with your background and experience on the show before, and I would venture to say that you had a very very difficult and dangerous job, right I mean, investigating cops, particularly when you're investigating cops who've got a lot to hide, makes you a very unpopular person, I would think, so, looking back on it, how did this manage to go on for so long without somebody coming along and saying, you know, besides you, hey, hey,

we're not going to tolerate this.

Speaker 6

They don't give a shit. At the time we were doing these investigations, the police chief of Kansas City, Kansas, a guy named Tom Daly. He had previously been indicted by the Federal Strike Force for extorting money at a whorehouses along the Kaw River in Kansas. He was doing that allegedly when it was a captain, he was acquitted because it was a real weak case. But after being acquitted for extortion, the city wound up eventually making him

the chief. Is that the actions, you know, over responsible a city administration or a police department. So he had the chief over here, Tom Dale, who had previously been indicted by the Feds. He despised the federal government, he hated the US Attorney's Office and the FBI, and he's the chief. He was part of it.

Speaker 1

So you have this guy Glubski who in that scenario is operating basically with impunity, right because he knows his chief doesn't give a shit, And with the chief having literally, well for what it sounds like, gotten away with that particular pattern of activity as well as I'm sure other things that he was doing. The people underneath him are probably thinking, hey, this is great, no one's going to touch us, and they're right, and nobody did. So how frustrated was that for you?

Speaker 5

There?

Speaker 1

You are really fighting an unwinnable war, right You're there trying to protect the public from the police force with a chief of police who not only doesn't give a fuck, but doesn't want that he wants you. He probably wants you to fuck out out of his hair, so we could just you know, run the streets how he wants to.

Speaker 6

Right when I started working over there, you had a person, you know, some guy I knewed a lot of people in the county jail, and they would say so and so confronted me and stole my money, stole my drugs. You go, what's the cops name? I don't know his name, you know what's he looked like, Well, you know, he's

some white guy. Well you go to the police. The police did not have photographs of their police officers, so if a victim came in there alleging that so and so officer robbed from me, extorted me, they didn't even have photographs to show people so they could identify who the police officer was. So good luck, you know, through the US Attorney's office, through Julie Robinson, who was a prosecutor at the time, we subpoenaed photographs of every sworn

officer in the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department. And there was hell to pay for that. I was almost removed from the investigation because of that.

Speaker 5

You know, I think one of the problems is that other law enforcement officers don't want to investigate law enforcement, and as a general rule, I think they find it distasteful, something they would rather avoid, and there is a tendency to minimize misconduct. I found that really pretty shocking.

Speaker 1

Not in light of everything else we're talking about, but I could see how you would, and it really gets easier and easier to see how these wrongful convictions are so common. I mean, here, we have an interesting situation, right, We're talking to Al who's in there with his badge, working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and basically being

told go fuck himself. So what chance does a seventeen year old black kid from the poorer side of town, What chance does he have against this blue wall, this blue monster that was out to get him. He had no chance. So now fast forward to twenty four years later,

Lamont sets in a prison studying reading. By all accounts, a model prisoner, somebody who maintains a positive outlook in spite of this what can only be described as the worst fate that can befall an individual, to be incarcerated with something he didn't do for the rest of your life.

But now we have hope, right, I mean, he has hope thanks to you and the years of work that you've done in this case, in al and other brave people who have devoted their time and in some cases probably even risk their own personal safety to try to get justice in this case. What does it look like now? What happens next? Tell us what's going on.

Speaker 5

We have a evidentiary hearing coming up in October, and we intend to present somewhere between forty and fifty witnesses who provide very powerful testimony on various aspects of the case. There was almost nothing really to support the conviction to begin with, nothing other than the testimony of the two eyewitnesses, and I believe that has been thoroughly shredded at this point through recantations and admissions and the result of other investigation.

And we are also focusing on the very troubling misconduct in the case. It is intimately connected to how the investigation was conducted, and we're going to bring all that out and show how we believe this went wrong, and we very much hope to be successful.

Speaker 1

What's the data of the hearing October twelfth? October twelfth, and is this in a federal court?

Speaker 5

We are in Windott County District Court, which is a state court. My client is litigating what's called a successive petition under SIXTYSH fifteen oh seven, and you have essentially a procedural barrier get over before you can get back into court. But we do have this evidentiary hearing schedule

that we are very very excited about. One of the most compelling things about the case we haven't mentioned this yet, is that the families of both victims have always known my client is innocent and are very much squarely supporting the quest to free him. They know that they did not get justice. Their families did not get justice.

Speaker 1

And that's Cheryl. In your experience, it's not a common thing, right. I mean, most of the cases I've seen, even in the face of what could be overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the victims' family sometimes stick with you what they've been told all along because they just can't They can't even process the idea that they may have been lied to and that the wrong person may have been serving time for the murder of their loved one. So in this case, this is a very unusual scenario, isn't it.

Speaker 5

It is, And one of the eyewitnesses is related to both of the victims, and she her family in the family of the second victim, to whom she's a bit more distantly related, have always told me that they have known from the beginning that the authorities got the wrong man. They have always known this. They've made periodic efforts to correct this, to address this, to try and get some justice, all without success.

Speaker 1

And if there wasn't already enough to chew on, this is the part that really just sets me off his court, a pointed attorney. Gary Long was on supervised probation at the time of the trial for failing to diligently handle three prior cases. He was suspended from the bar a couple years later for failure to adequately hnder a separate criminal case. And he was this bar in nineteen ninety eight.

How is it even possible that, in a life or death situation that you take somebody and you say, you know what we're going to give you a lawyer who's already messed up three times.

Speaker 6

Well, when I said nobody gives a shit, do you understand what I mean? Do you know that that you know that Tara Morehead, do you know she's now a federal prosecutor.

Speaker 1

Yeah, so Tara Moorehead was the prosecutor in this case. Obviously didn't see anything wrong with her prosecuting a case in which a young man's life was at stake in front of a judge with whom she had carried on an affair a few years earlier. I think most reasonable people would agree that one or the other should have been recused from this particular scenario because even if they

were saints, and obviously they weren't. Because she's also the same woman, from what I've read, who threatened a witness who tried to come forward with the truth with losing custody of her own children. But yes, so now she's moved up the ladder. Seems like all the bad guys have won here. Al what the fuck?

Speaker 5

Well?

Speaker 6

I think Morehead's currently married to a police officer. I think there's some other prosecutors over in the federal US Attorney's Office that are married to other police officers. So you're not going to expect them to investigate police corruption, are you.

Speaker 1

Well? I guess that would make it tricky, wouldn't it.

Speaker 6

They're not going to do it, and they don't.

Speaker 5

I mean there is so much that could be investigated, that ought to be investigated. And you know, I should also point out that sexual misconduct among police officers is not unusual in some departments. When you have poor and vulnerable people encounter folks with ultimate authority over them, ultimate authority in that particular moment, you know, those things can happen all too easily, and they do, and they happen frequently.

Speaker 6

You know, when I was an agent, I'm about six foot four. I had a gun, a badge, and a radio and everything. At nighttime, when I was on my way home or on the weekends, I would not drive through Kansas City, Kansas unless I was accompanied by another FBI agent.

Speaker 1

So because you thought they might have run you off the road or something else.

Speaker 6

They could do anything. They could pull me over and not saying they don't know who I was, and they could say I pulled a gun and they could shoot me. So I have all that power and authority. What does some little black kid on the street half.

Speaker 1

I hope that in exposing the story of Lamont and some of the things that you've shared out that people, you know, get their backs up and get angry and get involved. These are just people They're just regular people and they're being so terribly abused and victimized by people who are supposed to protect them. I don't it makes me sick.

Speaker 5

I just say that the fear and the terror that some of the citizens experience cannot be overstated. I mean, you have someone with a badge with ultimate and really, as I said in that moment, unchecked authority, there's enormous fear of the police and enormous, sometimes unmovable resistance to getting involved in anything that has to do with the

criminal justice system. I've spent some years, honestly, just earning the trust of some people in the community so that they will sit down and speak with me so that we can investigate the case. Nobody wants anything to do with a case you say, courthouse people walk the other way. They don't want anything to do with that. And ultimately we have been successful in securing some very good witnesses because they did want to help someone they viewed as innocent.

And you know, I should point out here that all of the street talk we have ever heard in the community is that Lamon is innocent, the guy who got wrongfully convicted. It's like everyone knows the whole community knows. The victim's family leans now. Everyone knows Lamont did not do this. Everyone knows.

Speaker 7

You have a prepaid call from the font an Innate at Kansas Department of Corrections Lancing Correctional Facility. To accept this call, press or say five to refuse. This call will be recorded and subject to monitoring. At any time. You may begin speaking.

Speaker 1

Now, Lamont, welcome to the show.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Speaker 1

So, Lamont. I want to go back to the beginning, when you grew up and how this all started. I've seen photos of you with your family. Looked like you had not an easy but a happy childhood. Is that fair? Can you just describe what it was like. I've heard you talk about Christmas and stuff.

Speaker 4

Uh. Yeah, we was tight knit.

Speaker 5

You know.

Speaker 4

It was like my mother was just an only parent in the house and we was close, me and my siblings, and we did everything together. We stayed in one house, you know, we took care of each other. So glowing up of me was my family was a big game. We didn't really fight about a lot of stuff. You know. It was me and my three brothers and my sister, my oldest sister. My mother worked a lot, so my sister kind of watched after us a little bit, some other family members. I used to go to my family

member's house, my uncle's and be around them. Our mother was at work. I kind of still stayed around family outside my home.

Speaker 1

So real family oriented and where you grew up. You had no idea at this time that the police force was really as corrupt as anyone could possibly imagine until this terrible incident occurred. And I want to go back to that. What happened. You were a seen year old kid going along with your life, trying to make it in a difficult place, and then one day out of the blue, you get arrested and don't even know what's going on or what happened.

Speaker 4

Uh, that's exactly what happened. And I was it was a typical day. It was like a Friday, typical day. I was enrolled in a downity college program where there's alternate to school where they would help you get your high school and phone, and then they gets you in college. So it was like a little degree program I was a part of. And it was just a Friday. I get a car phone call saying the police is over at my grandmother's house looking for me. Call my mother.

We go to the police station and they start talking about two murders and I had no answers for him because I didn't know what they were saying or what they were talking about. So from that moment I was arrested, charged, and eventually convicted of two murders.

Speaker 1

Then I had another about and we know now that they were deliberately targeting you because of this particular police officer who was up to all kinds of criminal activity himself. And that's the irony of this is that he belongs in jail, and I'm hoping that by the end of this that's exactly what's going to happen. But the idea that this system, this so called justice system, had made a decision that you were going to be their guy. There was this double murder, right, two guys sitting in

a car. They were involved in drug activity, They were dealers. We now know also that one of them had been beaten by the guys he was working for in the drug business.

Speaker 8

Right.

Speaker 1

He was working as a doorman in a crack then, and he had feared for his life, and in fact, he had good reason to, because I guess he had from what I've learned he had been stealing from them, so that every reason to know that this was a drug hit, and you weren't involved in that game or that business. Did you know these guys?

Speaker 4

I didn't know the witnesses, I didn't know the victims. I would't connected to it at all. That's why so it so halted me to understand how something like that could happen, because and I was bored about everything. I tried to hide nothing because I knew what they was talking about at that time. I had nothing to do with it, and no one involved. I don't know what the police officer's motive was to plan it on me or I still don't know.

Speaker 8

To this day what happened.

Speaker 1

Well, it does seem like now with everything we've learned that the officer involved, the first one who arrived on the scene was an officer named Golubski. It's a white guy who had a proclivity for women of color and when he didn't get his way, he would exact revenge. And so what it seems like is that in this particular case, he targeted you because because your mom wasn't having any part of that. And that's what makes this

particularly sinister. And sick, you end up going to trial, and I find it interesting, among all the other things in your case, that they offered you a plea bargain right and you didn't take it.

Speaker 4

I went in the rest of the plea bargan. I can't understand how was I sitting in that situation, and I didn't know nothing about the PM itself, So plea barg goes far from my mom.

Speaker 8

I was thinking about a plea bargain.

Speaker 1

And why I find that and why I brought that up Lamont, And I've seen the mugshot picture of you, and it really hurt my heart because I could see in your face just how confused you were and scared of a situation that you couldn't possibly imagine what's happening

at that time. I also would think that if you were guilty and they're offering you a deal and you know your chances of winning in the court are going to be low because they have all these cops and everybody else that's going to testify, I guess you would have taken the plea barg and anybody with the right mind would take a plea bargain. You're not crazy, are you. I'm not right, you don't sound you don't sound crazy

at all. So in the situations like this, I mean, we have in this country over ninety percent of cases end up in plea bargains. So had you been guilty, that would have been a very logical thing to do. But as an innocent person and probably somebody who still trusted in the system, you went forward with your right to a trial, and you were represented by a guy who they knew your court appointed lawyer. They knew this guy was incompetent because he had already been disciplined for

three previous cases that he had completely botched. It almost sounds like they did it on purpose. They assigned a guy who didn't go and interview witnesses, who didn't really didn't do anything he was supposed to do. And what was that like? Were you aware at that time that this guy wasn't I mean, I don't even know if it was really on your side, but I mean, as you're watching these proceedings, what were you thinking.

Speaker 4

He presented himself like a lawyer, He presented itself like a person is there on my behalf to take care of this business. And he seeing real professional at first, So I didn't know what to expect because I've never been in that situation before anyway, So his first impression was for me. It was a good impression because I didn't know what my lawyer was supposed to do, or I was so ignorant to the law and how things worked. I just believed in the justice system at that time,

I really did. I thought there was no possible way, being an innocent person or person that has nothing to do with that crime, that I would be found guilty. So I didn't really pay too much attention to the credibility of this lawyer. It didn't down on me that I would be found guilty of the crime that I had nothing to do with, so I didn't really think

about it in those times. I was just thinking, you can give me any lawyer, anybody from anywhere, and it'd be okay because once they realized they had the wrong person to get ironed out in trial. That's what I was thinking. But I didn't plan all. I didn't think that people would get on the stand and lie they was going fabricate, and I didn't think that was gonna happen.

I had no idea that they had already made up in their mind that I was going to be escaped goal for this particular crime, so being needed at all, have they worked in the justice system. I believe in the justice system at that time, I really did.

Speaker 1

I think all of us do. When we're kids, especially brought up in a good home like you were. You brought up to believe that people are good and that the system is going to work for you. And then you had a lawyer who, had he been competent, I still think would have won your case in spite of all this, because of the simple fact that it was an easy case. The witnesses were not credible at all.

We now know that they also withheld exculpatory evidence. So you really didn't have a fair chance, especially not with a lawyer who was incompetent. And ultimately, let's not forget that this particular lawyer was disbarred not too long after your trial. And again for the listeners out there, think about that this is a guy who had been disciplined in new cases prior to Lamont's and then ultimately gets disbarred when the extent of his gross incompetence is brought

to the Supreme Court of Kansas. The attention to the Supreme court, and then he voluntarily gave up his license to practice law. And that wasn't the end of the nightmare. We now know too that your appellate lawyer was disbarred. I mean, you can't even make this stuff up. So what happened? Like now, you're in the courtroom, the jury goes out, the arguments have been made. You saw these witnesses get up and lie. You saw these police officers

get up and lie. Your defense made whatever arguments they made. Did you believe that they would come back and declare you innocent?

Speaker 8

I did.

Speaker 4

I did every fire of my being. I did. I just didn't know that this is how the system work. They've found me guilty based false evidence for kind of evidence that was presented by a certain she coun attorney. They heard stuff about me that wasn't even about Lama Mcatize, and she just kind of made stuff up. They told his story and the jury believed it. But at the

time before they came back it was guilty verdict. I still didn't think I'll be found guilty because the whole time I'm sitting there and the whole time I'm going through the process of getting too trial, I still had no knowledge of the actual crimes. So I'm thinking, with my young mind being naive, that there's no way a jury can find me guilty when I'm really not guilty, when I had nothing to do with it. I'm not tied to it at all. The witnesses, the victims, I'm.

Speaker 8

Not tied to it.

Speaker 4

I wasn't in the area when it happened. When they came in, I noticed that no jury's no one looked me in my face, no one looked looked up. Everyone came in looking down at the floor. So I kind of had an eerie feeling, but I still had hope that it would work out in the right way. So when they read the verdict and they said guilty, it's like I seen my whole life flash before me and I and for that moment, I posed, and I was sitting there, and I stood up, and I just remember

saying something. I was screaming something, you know, to the effects of I'm not guilty, and you got the wrong person whatever. And I felt someone hold me or grab me from behind, and I was in shot, so I didn't really I was like a lost moment, but I turned around. I see my mother hold me, screaming crying like, don't take my baby away from me, don't take my baby. And I'm looking at her and I realized that this is a serious situation. Now I'm but it still didn't

feel real. It was my life in my situation, but it didn't feel like my life or my situation. I felt like I was outside of myself looking at this event happened and I couldn't stop it. So I was in shot and that shot lasted for a few years after that, I was in shot.

Speaker 1

So now now you're convicted of a double murder and sentence to life in prison. Where did they take you to.

Speaker 4

The process is like from the time you get convicted and stay in the county for about two months, then you go to citizen now the cenizen in Juanna County. It gave me two life sentences to ront consecutive. Then after that they send me to a process and center which we kind of ark you where they see you to determine what classification.

Speaker 8

You would be, what custody you will be in. I was considered max custody.

Speaker 4

So from there they send me to prison. I was in Hutson that's a that's a prison in Kansas. They kind glad they're in school. One of those tough prisons, you know with people. You know, it's a prison. It's like the work idea you have a prison?

Speaker 7

Is that more?

Speaker 8

It's it's this dark, it's negative, it's pension field, it's hopelessness.

Speaker 4

It's a world that is all.

Speaker 1

As a seventeen year old, Did you have plans? Did you have a career mind? What was the outlook for the future where we're still just trying to figure it out.

Speaker 8

Yeah, it was things I wanted to do.

Speaker 4

It was just I was being guiding the line, and I was just in a place where everybody around me was either dying or going to jail or I was just in the kind of environment. It didn't produce a lot of hope or didn't have I didn't have a lot of people to look up to or emulate, nothing like that. But I did enjoy taking care of my family. So my life was just basically about trying to take care of my family the best way I knew how,

or to look out for my loved ones. You know, I had skills and things I could do, Like I was a barber. I was cut here since I was twelve, or you know, I was a comedian. You know, I had these in the back of my mind. I wanted to be a comedian. I had things I wanted to do. I just didn't know how to get to where I wanted to be. But I still didn't think that my life was just of being in prison or going to jail or being in this kind of situation.

Speaker 1

What is a typical day like for you on the inside? How do you get through it? What's the schedule, typical day?

Speaker 4

Typical day is I'll re readjusted. It's like from one day to the next is finding a way to get by for one day, learn something from my days, and then I just try to it just sucks. I gotta repeat it. Like if I have a bad day or I'm frustrated for one day, I go to sleep, wake up to repeat this day again. So I try to find the best I can or get the best I can out of a day, because waking up and repeat

it is the anxiety. That's why all that the worst stuff is knowing that for the last twenty three years and two hundred some months and eleven hundred weeks and eight thousand days, it's the same thing. It never changes. So I devote my time to reading and studying and write. I write music and write poetry. I try to keep my mind free as possible. I try to stay out of prison mentally. I try not to. I'm not into prison politics. I'm not in prison mentally, but I'm here.

I have to be in my body here, but I try to keep my mind far from as place as I can. So it's just a bunch of moments of readjusted every day. And I have a lot of love people that love me and care about me, so I focused on that. But it's bad. It used to be a lot worse than it is now. I'm starting to see I'm coming alive now because I can see a light and then it just dark toddled. I've been there for so long. Something better now, But yeah, it wasn't

so good before. It's better now. But it was always sad to wake up. I had to repeat this same cycle over and over again. That stuff is another driving person crazy. There's a lot of moments while I'm feeling like it was the point, you know, to keep going to wake up every day, that I have to deal with the exact same nightmare. You trying to stay something the night before. But I had my mother, like she

never gave up on me from day one. Like when the worst moments of my life, you know, I'm feeling like I just couldn't do it no more, so like I couldn't take another step, she would show up and when she would grab me and hold me and look me my face, this is not my life. I'm passing through. This is not my destination. And so I had a lot of support my family, and and I gave my life to God and I pray a lot, I meditated

a lot. So initially I was kind of in this dark place where I was just so hurt and sad and depressed. And so I kept people kept coming to my life. That was like beacons of light and hope for me and I and I and I thank God for all those people came into my life and supported me. They sure that, uh, I always had something to look forward to, because this is a dark place. It's a dark situation where if you don't have enough support. For me,

it was just support I had. Family is important. Then years later Chryl and she turning on ministries and anything projects. They kept start coming into my life and they breathed, they breed life into me. It's like my second win. And I'm grateful for those people. Everybody was poor me and everybody who put forth effort go out every day and do something that helped me get my life back. I'm very grateful for those people.

Speaker 1

If you're even allow yourself, if you allow your mind to go there, what are you dreaming about when you get out, Because I'm convinced you are going to come home and I'm going to be there fighting right alongside with everybody else. What's the first thing you want to do, and then how do you see the future?

Speaker 4

First day I'm gonna do with eat something. That's what I fantasized about. Mostly, I want to eat something that there From there, I want to have some type of impact or sect on young people making poor decisions that was eventually land them in a situation like this, you know.

So I want to just raise any kind of awareness I can about decision making, because, you know, had I been taught how to make better decisions myself, I think even though I was eiger to the law and this is something that had nothing to do with me, and I'm still could have been making better desistons for myself before this stuff even came about. So I don't want to be able to be there for young people as

much as I can. So I can I can help them understand that even though you don't do something wrong, even though you don't commit a crime, you can be you still got to be accountable, and you still got to be a momful of the segments you're out there floating around and you can easily be put in a situation like that and if you're not being productive and doing something that's productive out there in life. So I don't want to be able to reach the young people

as much as I can. And now that this that'd be young just anybody that doesn't want to be able to share my experience and hopefully it will help out in any kind of way.

Speaker 1

I'm sure that you will do that, and then you're going to have a very positive impact on a lot of people because you have a very rare combination of intelligence and manner that is so positive and strong but still gentle that I believe that you will be able to affect a lot of a lot of young people, and I'm looking forward to watching you do that. There's

one other thing I wanted to raise. I'm always amazed when I speak to someone in your situation, and especially so with you, that you don't seem to be bitter after everything that's happened. And I know you talked about your faith and family and the strength that you get from them, But how is it possible that someone can go through this most unimaginable nightmare still be in it, and yet be as positive and strong as you are now?

Speaker 8

Well?

Speaker 4

I had my moments with anger, but it was always like taking poison helping someone else die from it. I was the only one to fact about me being angry. No one else seemed to notice a payettition to me being angry, So I was just earn experience like being angry doesn't help me. So I just wanted to help myself because I knew, I always knew I was going to be here forever. I know that basically the truth was surface and I would have a life outside of it. So I devoted a lot of time and energy towards

helping myself and not hurt myself. So being angry was something that was a hindrance to me, not a benefit. So I try to say positive because this place is you got to keep up with yourself and take care of yourself. And anger and stress and all those things is just shorten your lifespan. And I got life to live, so I just choose. I choose to be positive. I choose to not be angry and allow anger to kill me. I don't want to die in this place, and I don't want to have a short life, So I stick

fine to what I believe in. And I believe in my faith, and I believe in meditation, I believe in exercise. I believe in taking care of my mom, body and soul, and that's what I'll devote my time to.

Speaker 1

Wow, all I can do is tell you that you have you have all my respect and support, and I have a saying you know, I've seen too many miracles to stop believing in miracles. So I'm excited to watch you be the next one or one of the next ones, and we'll never stop fighting for you and for other people in your situation. I'm looking forward to a positive outcome and to getting to know you on the outside my mind. I'm just going to turn it over to

you and say it's your microphone. What do you want to share with the audience.

Speaker 4

Well, these kind of cases having well more than they should, you know. So it's like a I always see on TV or Dayline twenty twenty. We see and it said, man so many years in prison. Then you get exonerated and you see this happen time and time again. But what you never ever see or hear or hear about is how much that stuff impact the affected the families of those people. Like I had a close knit family.

We was close and it was a thing. This is not just like me being affected by it invented, happened in my life. It hurts me to see how much how much it affected not only me but my family. And it's difficult because if a man had to go through a certain thing by himself, that's his life, that's his path and life he got to go through that. I had to do what I had to do, no

matter what. But when you see somebody you care about being affected by what you have to do or what you have to endure, it's a different kind of feeling. And it's like people don't really pay attentions that I know about that, Like when district attorneys of being dishonest when they're trying to get convictions and all that. I don't think they take that consideration how many people they are affected by just not going by the law, just

not being truthful about certain things. It's not just me, whatever issue, personal issue they may add about with me. My family is affected by that. My brothers, my brother's kids when all this happened, and they feel like they lost a mother because my mother devoted so much time for trying to get me back out of the system that they felt like they was neglected. So they were affected by that. My older sister was affected, my brother was affected. I mean, everybody was affected.

Speaker 7

One minute remaining.

Speaker 4

When you try to hold onto something good, even when you try to get something good this kind of situation, it's still nothing good comes from it. It's just always bad. It's always negative, it's always a challenge, it's always hurdles, it's always something. But for the person that's in the middle of it, that's just my experience. But on the outside of it, that's something that people don't ever get

a chance to see. That's just a harsh or harsh reality for the person to live based on someone else being incompetent, when all this stuff basically could have been avoided by someone that's doing their job. But the job people was employed them to do, you know, So I think people should understand that and know that it's a lot of people to be affected by something like that.

I think a lot of tastes should be brought to this moment and this kind of situation, so a lot of people can if you ever find another person in that situation, it can be more mindful of that trying to help in a different kind of way if they could, because it's not just about me, it's about everybody here. Bobby Hill.

Speaker 1

On October thirteen, twenty seventeen, Wayan Dot County District Attorney Mark dupri moved to vacate the conviction and dismissed all charges against Lamont. Hours later, Lamont McIntyre walked out of the courthouse a freeman for the first time in over twenty three years. Since then, Lamont has won his wroeful conviction civil suit, as well as a civil suit against a number of officers, including Roger Glubski. The suit included the initials of at least seventy three other women that

Gallupski allegedly victimized. After thirty years in the uniform of the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department. Roger Glupski went to work for nearby Edwardsville PD in twenty ten. Since Lamont's exoneration, Glupski faces three criminal indictments, and from what I understand, there are more on the way. It's also been rumored that Glubski may have been an active participant in at

least a dozen murders. And while there might be an attempt to cut him down as only one bad apple, we must remember as a director of the Midwest Innocence Project, Tricia Bushnell put it, quote, there's an entire system that not only permitted him to do it, but supported him and promoted him end quote. Goolupski had been made captain and his former partner was chief of police until twenty nineteen.

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wartis, with research by Lyla 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 plog Ronful Conviction is the production of Java for Good podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one

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