We originally aired the following episode on February twenty, twenty seventeen. It was only our twelfth episode. Peter Pringle was a death row ex Honery in Ireland, and you'll hear all about that situation just after this, But he actually ended up marrying a death row ex Hognerie out of Florida, a wonderful human named Sunny Jacobs. They're both wonderful people, or were. Unfortunately, Peter Pringle passed away on December thirty first, twenty twenty two, New Year's Eve, at their home in
Clinic Muran Costello, County, Galway. Peter devoted himself tirelessly to his family, to his beloved animals, and most of all to helping other ex houneries get back on their feet and find their footing through meditation, yoga, diet. He just was a guy who never stopped giving back. And I'm honored to have known you, Peter, and I hope you're in a better place. He survived by his wife, Sonny, daughter Anna, and sons Thomas and John, as well as
their twelve grandchildren. Rest in peace and power, Peter Pringle.
With the police banging on the door, open up.
The choice to be in that lineup was the last choice I made as a free man.
A year later, I ended up writing the system.
I'm going to be one of those people who everyone in the world is going to think.
As a monster or suspect as a monster for the rest of my life, and I'm just going to have to come to peace with that.
Somebody was able to look at my picture in a database and say that I was somewhere where I definitely was.
I overheard three of the jailers discussing what part they might have to play in my hanging. They had been told that two prison officers would have to participate in my execution. Now I walked back inside that prison for the last time. Man all held broke loose.
But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Fomm. Today's guest is a dear friend of mine and an extraordinary person, Peter Pringle.
Pringle was accused of participating in a murder of two police officers following a bank robbery in Ireland.
After his conviction, he was sentenced to.
Death by hanging, and the police officer who had lied to get me convicted was now a retired detective superintendent. He had been promoted up to the top just.
Days before a noose was to be tied around his neck. Peter learned that our Land's president had commuted his sentence to forty years without pole.
It faced the forty years, which wasn't the possibility for me at the time. I could kill myself, which at the time was a reasonable.
I was, Peter, what an extraordinary story. So happy to have you here. You're also the first guest on wrongful conviction who's not born in America.
Thank you. It's an honor to be here. Thank you very much.
Yeah, I was just saying, it's exciting that you're here because, as I said, we're taking it international now, right. You're as Irish as Irish can be. So Peter, let's go back to the we're talking. This is a very interesting time right when things were going sort of crazy in your home country, right, So bring us back to what was give us the climate.
In the What happened was in nineteen eighty there was a bank robberty in Ireland, which the police say was carried out by two three men rather and the getaway car, traveling across country small country roads, collided with a police car at a small crossroads.
It sounds like a movie. Yeah.
Well, and this is now the police version of events because it goes I wasn't there, so I really can't give you the I can give you what I think is the accurate event of what happened because of my later investigations. But there was the two cars collided, there was an exchange of going far and two police officers were killed, and the three raiders escaped cross country.
With three bank crappers. Yeah, and where did this happen?
In a town called Balhadrin and County ross Common in Ireland.
But at the time you were far away.
I was in a different region, different county altogether.
That's an important detail.
Yeah. So that evening one man was arrested not too far away and he had a bullet wound in his chest. And the following morning a second man was arrested and the third man escaped cross country and two after the crime, a police officer managed to catch the man that were chasing, actually caught hold of him and was the only police officer to see the man when the man wasn't wearing
a mask. But the man struggled and got away from the police officer ran away across the fields, stole a car and escaped again, and apparently he passed through the town where I was and got away again from the police, and twelve days after the crime, they arrested me and brought me in and framed me up for the crime I hadn't committed.
Now there's a backstory there too, right, there was a reason they wanted you, right, you were known to the cops and you were a person that they would have liked to pin something on, and this was sort of a con.
Yeah, well, I was known in the context that I was a political activist. I'd been a political activist from the time I was sixteen years of age, and I'd been involved with the IRA and I had been interned when I was eighteen years of age. From nineteen fifty seven to fifty nine, I was imprisoned in a prison camp on the Courra in Ireland without interment. It means that you're imprisoned without any charge or trial on suspicion.
So they had this background. They classified me as a subversive, so it was handy for them to get me off the streets. That's the way they saw it. But at the time, at the crime happened. I had a very serious alcohol problem, and I was on a binge. I was drinking, and I had been drinking with buddies for days and days and days. And then they told me that they thought the police might be looking for me. I
said for what. So I decided, well, you know, I'd have to come off the drink and go and go to the police and find out what this is all about. But before that happened, I had come off the drink. But before I could go to them, they found me in the house of a friend and arrested me and took me in.
They found you in the house of friends. So you were on this binge, yeah, knowing you're you're someone who's prone to extremes, right.
Some days I've been drinking.
Twelve days of drinking. Well that's a lot of drinking. Yeah, And I imagine this is this is not casual drinking.
This is no this was serious alcoholic drinking. Yes. And I've been a fisherman you see at sea, which probably saved me because when you go to see in a trawler, you don't drink. There's no drinking a boat. And so I only drank when when I got Ashore, which was a different story. And at the time of my arrest, I was a skipper of a boat carrying cargo out to the Arten Islands, which are three islands off the west coast of Ireland at all Away, off Galway Bay
and habited islands. So my job was to carry different cargoes on the ship boat out of the islands of landed safety and bring the boat back safely. That was my job at the time.
Now, just to give some context, Peter looks like the skipper of a boat. He's very tall and strong and very well built. I mean, he's got long flowing hair. You know. For someone like me who grew up in Manhattan, what would I know about skippers of boats? Right? We have rowboats in Central Park here. That's about it. But in any case, yes, he very much looks the part. So you were, so this was your job at the time.
That was my job, And as luck would have it, I took the day off work the day that the robbery happened. I went on a binge and they used that against me as I had taken the day off work to go and commit the robbery, which hadn't happened. But anyway, when I was arrested and I was taken to the police station. And that's a funny thing about that too, because after twelve days on drinking, you know, I was entering into detox because this was the first
day I hadn't drank. And when they arrested me and took me into the police card, two detectives each side of me, I had to shiver it and they said I was shivering because of fear, because of gilt ski. I was shivering because I was after a binge. But when they got me into the police station, they first thing they did was strip me naked and a team of detectives walked around and inspected my body, which I found to be very weird, and they all looked very disappointed,
and I didn't know why. I later discovered they were disappointed because I didn't have a bullet wound. Because remember the guy that they arrested that had been shot told him that his friend had also been shot, so they were looking to see had I a bullet wound, And when I didn't have a bullet wound, that looked pretty disappointed. But that didn't stop them framing me up. So I was arrested at three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, and
at four o'clock this commenced interrogations. And I was interrogated from four pm Saturday afternoon until four point thirty a m. On Sunday morning, twelve and a half hours. Yeah, there was a break when I had a visit, two breaks when I had two short visits with my lawyers in the middle, but that was twelve hours.
Basically, Chris, you and two detectives in the room had that.
May and the team of detectives they were coming in relays of twos and trees and interrogating and you know, with the occasional beating in the thrown in for good measure because two colleagues had been killed and they were very,
very angry. And so then at four am in the morning, I was brought down into a dirty cell and put into a dirty cell, and a police officer was outside with a baton and it's the solid door, and they closed the door and then he was outside banging on the metal door with his baton so that I couldn't
fall asleep. And then at eight am they took me out of the cell and at eight thirty recommenced interrogations and I was interrogated from eight thirty am on Sunday morning right through until four thirty am on Monday morning.
Wow, so that's another twenty hours.
Yeah, And during that day it's very interesting actually in the afternoon that was on the Sunday what we're known in Ireland as the Heavy Gang. These were the Serious Crime Squad who had a terrible reputation. They took over the police station and they allowed they let all the local police go off to a football match or something, and so the only people in the police station with me on Sunday afternoon were the Serious Crime Squad and
Special Branch. And at one point in the afternoon I was being interrogated and I was they when they beat you, they make sure not to leave mark, so you get kidney punches. They I'd be standing while they'll be questioning me and one would come behind me with his pistol and you know, whack you in the in the kidneys, which is very very painful. And are they take their boots and rask them down along my shins, you know, along the shin bone, along the skin to tear the skin.
Stuff like that. You wouldn't think about a stamp on your toes. These are big, heavy men, you know, and you're you're wearing a pair of canvas shoes that they've given me. And at one point that I knew I needed a break. This was you know, I knew I was. I was getting very tired of this. So I said I wanted to use the toilet, and they said you're not going to use the toilet. You're not going to use the toilet, you know, because they use fierce language,
you know. And I waited a little while and then I said to the inspector who was conducting matters, I said, it's like this now. I said, if you don't let me use the toilet, I said, I'm going to piss on the floor here in this office. They went there and he said, well he would too. He would too to be you know. So with that they left the room and they called in two other detectives and they left the room, and after about ten minutes they were told they could take me out of the toilet. So
the two detectors took me out. I was in front, walked out the door, down the corridor and turned right along a long corridor, and about halfway down this corridor there's an alcove to a staircase going stairs ways gone up.
And the.
Men's room was on the left, near the opposite that that's alcove. And at the end of the corridor the door was open out onto the car park and the street. And I'm walking now, but you know, you can imagine I'm sort of hypertense because of all that's happening, and I'm walking down along the corridor, and I had the door open because they wanted me to make a run.
For it so they could show you.
Yeah, And when I got just at this alcohol, a detective standing in the alcohol that I couldn't see put his foot out to trip me. But I was so hypertense I saw it and I lift him. I stepped over his foot, and the detective behind me says, ah, you won't catch Peter like that. And with that, the guy that had tried to trip me says, I'll fucking catch me, he says, and he cocked a noozy submachine gun.
He said, I'll kill the bastard. And I got on a merciful push in my back and I was propelled through the door of the men's room and up against the wall to the side, and the detective behind me, who was a special Branch detective, shielded my body, put his hands up like that. She lied my body and said into my ears, say nothing, say nothing, Say nothing, And he said to his college shut that door, and they shut the door. And there was a big for already going on out in the hallway. The guy with
a gun was wanting to get at me. And the next thing we heard a torretive voice saying, what's going on here? And then hand me that weapon and then to somebody has take care of that weapon, and he says, you to my office, and I gather what happened to as a superintendent came in and saw what was going on and stopped it. But in the toilet, the detective that was protecting me still covered my back, covered me with his body, which is a very brave thing to do,
because that other lunatic was going to shoot me. And then when everything out quiet and down, he says to me, I need to have a pin out too, he says, after all that, and so that was it and I was brought back and the interrogations continued.
I mean, we've heard these stories from people who were wrongfully arrested and subjected to awful interrogations in America. And we don't really know much about the audience here because we haven't covered it in any detail what goes on overseas, but it sounds every bit as bad as anything that
goes on in America. And of course we do know that, as you pointed out, when police officers are killed, they get crazy, they get into an irrational state, and they probably do things that there they wouldn't normally do normally do, that's correct, And so you were subject to I mean from I'm just trying to do the math, like almost forty hours of interrogation thus far, and I'm guessing that there was well we know that you didn't get any sleep. I'm sure you weren't given anything to eat.
Well, no, they would bring along a coup of tea or something like that, you know, maybe a sandwich, you know.
Right, so they okay, so the at least you had that going for yourself. But that which is better than you would have thought based on the way they're treating you. Right, But then again, they like to do that, right, They like to pull you in a little bit and then put you back out right and do that whole like psychological torture thing as well, Jennifer.
When I was put into the cell down on Monday morning at four point am on Monday morning, I was taken out again at eight o'clock and I was interrogated then til noon on Monday, and then I was taken under an armed desk card of perlice to Dublin and brought before the Special Criminal Court, where I was charged with capital model and robbery.
But you never confessed, absolutely not.
I should tell you this one. My father was a policeman. My father had been a police officer. Yeah, and at the time when I was a young man, and he knew of my involvement with the Republican movement, and he tried to talk me out of it, of course, and he said to me at one stage he said to me, if you're going to stay with these people that you're involved in now, he said, I want to tell you to give you some advice. He says, if you're ever
arrested by that crowd. And I said, what crowd? He said, that crowd in the castle, Dublin Castle was the center for the Special Branch, and he was referring to a special Branch. He said, if they deal with political matters. He says, if you're arrested, don't answer any questions. He said, give them me your name, address, and date of bert and say nothing else. And I said, why that, he says, because no matter what you say, they'll twist it and
use it against you. So when I was arrested, and that was my policy when I had been arrested many times before, because if anything happened in the area that I was in, they would do a sort of round up the usual suspects. Anything political happened, I didn't mean, and they'd pulled me in and they questioned me, and I'd say nothing, and they'd released me and that was
the end of it. So I knew about the procedures when I was arrested, but they brought me before the Special Criminal Court which was established for the trial of political offenses, which is a tribunal of three judges, no jury, and there I was charged and remandement custody to the maximum security prison where I was put. And in truth, when I got to the maximum security prison, that even on the Monday evening, and I was That was kind of interesting too, because when I was brought into what
they call reception in the prison. I was stripped, of course, they stripped out to you're going into the prison, and there was a senior chief officer what they call the chief officer there, Jaylor, and they handed me prison clothes. I said them, They said, you have to put them on. You have to wear prison clothes. I said, no, I'm a political prisoner. I don't wear prison clothes. And they said, but you have to, that's it. No, I said, I'm
not wearing. No, I want my own clothes back. And I said, if you don't give me my own clothes, I'll go naked.
How did they respond to that.
And they said what Well, some of them wanted to beat me up again. You see. I wanted to beat me up. And the chief said no, no, no, don't do that. He said, are you serious? I said, of course, I'm serious. I said, I'm a politicod prisoner. I'm not wearing prison clothes. And he said, give me fucking clothes. So I got my clothes and I was brought into the prison wing where I was where everybody else was not wearing their own clothes too, because it was a
politic good wing. You see. I was put into a cell and I can tell you this much to get into that prison cell with a clean bed, even though it's a narrow, army type of bed, take off my clothes and get into the bed and sleep. It was such a relief after forty eight harrowing hours and me I was detoxing during all this time that I was
in the police station, and there I was. And then three months later I was given a copy of the Book of evidence, and I saw in the book of evidence where one detective sergeant was claiming that on the Monday morning that would have been after thirty four hours of interrogation, I had supposedly suddenly blurted out these words. I know that you know I was involved, but on the advice of my solicitor, I'm saying nothing, and you'll have to and you'll have to prove it all the way.
I'd never spoken those words, because, as I said, all I gave was my name, addressed, date of bed and if I wanted to use the toilet, I said, I want to use the toilet.
So for thirty four hours of them interrogating you and alternately beating you and witching people and going in and out and depriving you of sleep and everything else, all you gave them was your name.
Address, and birth day of parrot and to say to them, I am innocent of what you're accused me of.
So your dad's advice really stuck with.
You absolutely because he knew, I mean, he was a police officer.
Right, which is an iron ironic twist. It is a thing, right, the fact that your dad was a police officer and you end up being accused of killing two police officers and then tortured by police officers. Yeah, it's very strange. Life is very strange, and your story is particularly insane.
So and what an odd thing to just reflect for a second on the fact that you were just expressing how you felt the sense of relief and you almost sounded joyful at the idea that you were being put into a cell in a maximum security prison just because you had just been through this unbelievable ordeal.
Because I was away from the ardel, you see, right, I was safe from it. That's why I could relax.
I know. But you got to understand, like for anyone else you know who's in society to hear that or me right now, to go to think of how that could be that you could actually feel happy about being an innocent person put into a tiny cell with a hard cut. But then again it was the best thing you had seen in at least forty eight hours. Yes, right, I could get some sleeps, so.
My mind didn't go to that fact that I was in the maximum security prisoner, that I was accused wrongly. At that stage my exhaustion, all I wanted was rest. And then a funny thing happened the following morning. I woke up at seven o'clock in the following morning. The cell I was in was on the ground floor, and I woke up the following morning at seven o'clock to hear a voice outside the cell in the prison yard outside the cell screaming, Jesus help me, help me, help me.
Oh Jesus Christ helped me. Like I heard a scream, and I thought, oh my god, what's going on here? Because I didn't know. I thought maybe some prisoner was being battled or something. And then I heard other voice saying, come on, come on, come on, you know the cut that down, come on, And there was a whole commercial going on outside in the prison yard. I didn't know what it was, and I thought, really, I'm in a right hell hale here this is this is a prisoner being battered.
You know.
It was only afterwards when the cell or opened I heard that actually it was a prison officer had had a nervous breakdown in the heard and they were trying to take them away.
That was your first morning.
That was my first morning experience in the maximum security prison.
What was the name of the prison, port Lesha prison.
It was in the Midlands for prison.
So yeah, well, welcome to port Leicia.
Yeah, it was known it's known colloquially as the bark the Yeah.
So at this point, had you already been sentenced?
No, no, just accused.
They've thrown you into this prison while you await your trial.
That's right. And I was swing. There was no such thing as putting me in with other people and romand I was put in with people that had already been convicted. It was a politic good wing. So the way it worked there, in one way, it was a tough place to be.
So let's go forward to the trial and the conviction, because there's so much more to your story. So the trial takes, how long does it take to get to the trial?
Okay, Well, three months after I was arrested, I got a copy of the Book of evidence, and when I read the book of evidence, I saw where the detective sergeant was claiming that after thirty four hours of interrogation, I had suddenly blurted out these words, that did I say to them already? I know you know yeah, which I never said. And the first time I came across these words was when I read the book of evidence, and that was the principal evidence against me.
You're so called confession, my so called oral confession.
So when we went to try now the two other people had been arrested, the three of us were tried together, right, So the trial took twenty three court days over six weeks, and for the first twelve days of the trial, my name wasn't even mentioned, apart from the fact the chargers were read out to me. After that, my name wasn't mentioned for twelve days. So I'm sitting in the dock. It's surreal as if I'm one of the audience, because they're talking about stuff about these other guys and nothing
about me. And then after twelve days they went to my case, and when my case was then opened, they opened the case against me. The police officer who had captured the guy they were chasing, whom they claimed was me, went in the witness box and he was asked to see the man again, and he said, yes, he's in the court and can you point him out? And he said, yes, I'm sitting in the docks. So he pointed to a man in the public gallery, standing in the public gallery,
and he says, that's him standing up there. And it was really bizarre because the public gallery in the court was packed, but all the people standing beside this man moved away from him and somehow found space, and he was left standing like this on his own, like something you can see in the movies, you know, And the whole courtroom started laughing. It seemed so funny. But I was convicted. They never stopped that man, they never arrested him, They allowed him leave the court.
Is it your belief that was actually the guy?
Oh?
Well, the police officer who had caught him in spoke to him, said that was actually the guy, and he had the and he knew I was in the dock. He knew I was the accused.
And it's interesting and bizarre, though we've seen this before, that the actual killer would come to the courtroom to watch the proceedings.
Right, apparently he did.
Yeah, that is a phenomenon that happened. It's so weird.
And so he was allowed to leave the court. And I was convicted on the evidence of the detective sergeant that had spoken those words I told you about that. I never said, right, and that was the evidence of which I was convicted and sentence death.
Did your attorney bring up the fact that the other defendant had said that you had the guy?
But he said to me afterwards, what that evening? He said to me, Now I should explain the situation in the Special Priminent court, not like in America. I was the accused of not allowed sippy side these lawyers. Okay, So you have the tribunal, the registrar, the solicitors, the barristers, the journalists, and then behind una raised slightly elevated the dock.
I'm sitting in the dock, so I am about I suppose I'm about the equivalent of about six rows of seats behind my lawyers, and they're facing the opposite direction from me. They're facing the court as I am, so I can only see their backs and I can't consult with them. And the only time I can consult with
them is when the trial that day is over. So when I raised the matter with my lawyers at the time, they told me, oh, well, you can't be convicted now, as the detective has said, the police officer has made that identification, there's no way you can be convicted. And I thought, okay, I knew nothing about the law at the time.
Well it seems logical though, understand it says, yeah, the guy's here, there, he is, he is, and you're going okay.
Yeah, good. But the thing about it is, if that had happened in the North of Ireland, if my lawyers had been any good, they would have asked for a mistrial straight away. They would ask for the dismissal straight away. But they didn't. And actually, my senior counsel, who didn't even turn around to look at this man and didn't even turn around to look what the police officer pointed to. He said to the police officer, so you've identified the defendant as the man, and the police officer said yes.
And then the prosecution council stood up and he said, in fairness to the accused, my lords, he said, I have to point out, he said that this witness was shown a photograph of the accused before the trial, and they're not allowed to do that, you see, So then that meant that his evidence was disallowed.
Oh so his evidence of having pointed out the actual killer, who we believe is the actual killer, was disallowed because of that, but not your false confession. Were you able to testify in your defense?
No, my lawyer said there had no evidence against me and that if I went into the witness box it would mitigate against me and that the state would pull me apart. And I wasn't afraid to go into the witness box. In fact, I wanted to go into the witness box, but my lawyer's misdirected me and said, no, there's no evidence against you, so there's no need for you to go into the witness box.
So again another common factor that we see, well, a couple of common factors that we see in these wrongful convictions. You're a victim of police misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct, and incompetent defense attorneys, and ultimately you're convicted and sentenced to death. Let's talk about that moment, and then let's move forward to the craziness that happens on the eve of your execution. Right.
Yeah, Well, when the case was over, when the prosecution case in the defense case was finished, the court reserved judgment to the following day and we were brought back to the prison to be brought up the following day to hear their judgment. When we were convicted and so.
So you had been convicted in that sentenced No, I hadn't been convicted. Oh oh, so you had to go You had to go back to the prison and wait there, wonder.
Off the court as to whether they were going to convict or not.
That's a long night and it was.
It was.
It's pretty clear that they were going to convict the other two guys because there was evidence against them. But there was no The only evidence against me was the word of this police officer, which I had disputed, and plus the fact that the other police officer I had identified the actual culprit who was not me. So when we went up the following day anyway, they convicted me and they sentenced me to death, and the sentence went
like this. The presiding member of the court said, you should be taken from this court to the place in which you were last held. And this was now on the twenty seventh of November nineteen eighty and on the nineteen day of November nine and the year of Our Lord nineteen eighty you should be made to suffer debt by execution in the manner prescribed by law. And then and you're also sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment for the robbery. My inner response at the time was, this is crazy.
If I'm going to be executed in three weeks time, I can't save the fifteen years. And if I'm going to say out the fifteen years, I can't be executed three weeks time. But that was the way my head was around the whole time. And then I was taken down underneath the courtroom to the cells. I was putting the cell, and then my lawyers come down to see me in this alcove that was there, and I was brought out to the alcohol to meet with my lawyers.
But the senior lawyer hadn't yet come. And when he came in a few moments later and he came up to me, he was weeping. He was crying, he was in tears. And I found myself in this bizarre situation that I was standing up with my arm around. His name is Seamus Egan. The lawyer. My arm was around him and I was saying, it's okay, it's okay, don't worry, which we haven't appealed, don't worry, and he's crying his eyes out, and I think it was.
This is weird, go backwards, this is this is about face.
Yeah, he should be consoling me and I, you know, whereas I'm consoling him. And so I was brought back to the prison. Now, when I was brought back to the prison, now I'm a sentence I condemn prisoner, right, so I'm put in a death cell. And at first, actually they didn't put me in a death cell. They put me in an isolation area. And they put me in an ordinary cell in an isolation area with two
jailers in this stale seal with me. And that night there was no sleep because these guys were sitting reading papers, rustling, talking, you know, and I couldn't get to sleep until eventually during the night I sat up and I said to them and I said, now listen here to me, you guys, the chief has told me that in this situation that I mean, I can have whatever jailer's I want with me, and unless you pair be totally quiet, I'm going to ask for you every night, and they went, oh, jeess,
don to that, and they were as quite as lambs, and I got through the night.
But then the follow that was a very good reverse psychology there.
Yeah. Yeah, well it's almost it's sort of like an active rebellion, I guess in a certain way.
And also I'm a bit rebellious.
And an element of controlling your own situation which is completely out of your control.
Yeah, And then then I protested the following day and they put us into a they created what they called the death cell, which was a larger cell, and the three condemned prisoners were put in there, and I had bed down again in the wall.
You and the other two the natural bankroppers, Yeah, yeah, yeah, you didn't know until that point, right, No, well I.
Knew one of them previously because I knew them from drinking, but otherwise I didn't know them. And of course it's often asked to me, why didn't they say you weren't with them? And the fact of the matter is each of them were conducting a defense of not guilty. They were pleading not guilty, and if they were had said that I wasn't with them. That would prove that they were guilty, and the charge carried a mandatory death sentence.
So they had nothing to lose.
They weren't going to They were just trying to save
their own next and I understood that. But anyway, in that condemned cell that was I was in there on the twenty seventh of November and about a week before Christmas of that year in ninety eight, the way the rule was, the condemned prisoner wasn't allowed to speak to any of the prisoners, and the jailers were told not to speak the condemned prisoner for their own protection, because if a jailer, like a prison guard, gets to like a condemned prisoner or have respect for a condemned prisoner,
it would be very difficult for them to participate in cold bloodedly taking that person's life, which is logically true. But on this particular occasion, about a week before Christmas, I overheard three of the jailers discussing what part they might have to play in my hanging.
Now.
They were sitting as close as I am to you, Jason, and they were discussing this as if I wasn't there, as if I wasn't a human being. They had been told that two prison officers would have to participate in my execution, and they were very concerned to know would bonus they would receive for doing this job, because of course it was outside of their normal work, and what
role they would have to play. And the role they would have to play, they said, was that when my body would go down to the trap door of the gallows, there would be two prison officers underneath, and each one would have to pull on one of my legs to make sure my neck was broken.
You know, I'm almost never at a loss for words, but I don't even know what to say about that. That's a whole note.
Well, I didn't know what to say about it either, but I was already angry over what they had done to me. But this made me enraged, but in a funny kind of way, and if it's are kind of way, it helped me because it forced me to face the reality straight in front of me that I was likely to be hanged. How old were you at the time, forty one? And facing that reality, to my surprise, I discovered that I wasn't afraid to die, but what I was afraid of was that I might not be able
to die with dignity. I was terribly afraid that they might succeed in taking away my human dignity, and I determined I wouldn't have let them do that. Now they had imprisoned me physically, but they couldn't imprison my mind, or my heart or my spirit. And so I determined that it was in those realms of myself I would exist while I was in that situation.
And that's what I did, in the mind, the heart, and the spirit. Yeah, and so you came within eleven days of being executed.
That's correct. But before that, my lawyers made an application for leave to appeal, which put a stay on the execution. But then the appeal court refused my application for leave to appeal, so I got no appeal, and they said a new day for my execution, which was the eighth of June nineteen eighty one. And about two weeks after the new date was set, my lawyers come on to visit me in the prison and they wanted me to allow them to put in a plea for clemency on
my behalf, and I refused. I said no way, and the senior counsel, the guy who had been crying after the trial, he was in tears again, you know, very emotional man, and he's but they might hang you, Peter Well, I said, if they do, it wouldn't be the first innocent person they've hanged. But I will not plea for clemency for something I didn't do. And I actually asked for a piece of paper and I wrote, gave them written instructions to that effect, because I was afraid they
would actually go and do it anyway. Oh yes. The reason they said this was that government cabinet had met and discussed whether I would be executed or not and couldn't come to an agreement about it. And they were concerned that the following week the cabinet was going to meet again and the cabinet might decide to execute me. So they went away very upset, and I went back to my cell and the following week when the cabinet met, I later learned that the Prime ministers before any discussion
would happen and said, we're not executing Pringle. It would be political suicide. And then they instructed the President to commute the sentence, and the President commuted sentence from debt to forty years penal servitude without any possibility of parole or mission, and I was put out into the general prison population where I could talk to people and I could exercise the yard.
So it's almost like a I mean, better than being executed, I guess, but not by a whole lot, because essentially it's a death sentence. You're forty one years old, you got forty years in prison. You're going to die in prison, right, that's right. But that's not what.
Happened, no, because at the time I knew I had three options. You know, I could face the forty years, which wasn't a possibility for me at the time. I could kill myself, which at the time was a reasonable proposition, not let them refuse, to allow them to keep me for forty years. But then I realized if I did that, they'd say I had done it out of given remorse. So I couldn't allow that. So I determined I was going to try and prove my innocence.
And ultimately you did, yeah, fifteen years later. So let's walk through that because I want to get to the next phase of your life, which is so extraordinary.
Well, I should also tell you that there was no law library in the prison.
So how did you go about innocence.
I had a friend who worked in the university outside and she had access to the law library in the university, and I arranged with her to photocopy sections of law books and find out which were the best criminal law books and constitutional law books and photocopy sections of them.
You had plenty of time to study.
Well, then I couldn't study. You see, I left school when I was thirteen years of age, and I'd worked all my life and had no formal education, and my anger was such that I just couldn't read the documents understandable. So I determined I had to try and learn how to relax. So I got a friend to leave me in a little book on yoga with illustrations of the postures, and I began to teach myself yoga in the cell
on my own, and teach myself meditation. And as I mastered does two disciplines, my anger got less than I was able to study. And I spent my time studying. And then what happened was other guys in the prison would come to me with their documents, with their cases and asked me would I look at their cases? And I said, yeah, sure, and I would because it was helping them, was also helping me, and so that's what
I did most of my time in the jail. In the prison, I studied law as best I could, and eventually, in January of nineteen ninety two, I opened my own case on my own behalf in the High Court in
Dublin under the Irish Constitution. Now I had no money, i'd know lawyers, so I had to prepare the case myself, filet myself and conduct the case myself, so which meant that they had to take me on their armed escort of military and police up to the court where I represented myself against the top lawyers of the state and the case ran from January nineteen ninety two until May of nineteen ninety five, where my conviction was overturned. But in July of nineteen ninety two I won an order
for discovery in the High Court. And that's another I'll tell you. There's reams to this story that it's kind of important to say this one to you. One of the cars used in the crime had been stolen in Galway on the second of July. The crime happened the seventh. It was stolen on the second of July between eleven PM and eleven forty five pm from the car park
of a hotel. Right, and the evidence of the stealing of that car was allowed into the trial because the court ruled that the stealing of the car formed part of the res yestay of the offense, which meant that the person who stole the car had done the killing. Right. Okay, But on the date that the car was stolen. At the time the car was stolen, I was delivering four thousand concrete blocks on the art And Islands with fifty or more witnesses there. Now, I delivered the concrete bucket.
But five years after I had been I was imprisoned. I got a letter from my former boss, the guy who owned a little company that owned the boat that I was skippering, asking me if i'd been paid for the delivery and for the blocks to the value of six hundred pounds, which I didn't know about because that wasn't my role. My role was simply to be the skipper to take the cargo out. I didn't even know what a cost. I wrote back and told him that, and he said, no, we believe you, we understand that.
But he said, the man that you delivered to has refused to pay his bill, and five years later, when they threatened court action to get the money, he told them that he had paid me the money because I'm in prison. You see, I'm in prison doing forty years for murder capital word than a robbery. So he was going to blame me. So I wrote him out of the letter saying that of course I'd never done it. And when the case came for court, the man never appeared in court, and the court ruled against him and
accept my account, and the matter was finished. But I went into the book of evidence, and I saw that my boss supposedly had made a statement in the book of evidence saying I sailed at eleven o'clock in the morning and come back at eleven o'clock that night, which would have meant I had the possibility of stealing the car. Okay, whereas I sailed at four o'clock in the afternoon and didn't get back to go with un till two am
the following morning. Now I knew he had to, and I knew as a charge of the accountant he kept all records. So I wrote to him and I said, if you a record of the sailing on that day, and he said he had you sail at four o'clock in the afternoon and you got back at two am in the morning. So I wrote to him again, I said, well, then tell me this, why did you make this statement, this false statement?
What do you say?
I never made a statement.
Oh, they made it up.
They made it up.
He never made a stake back your conviction.
To try and keet me convicted. He never made a statement and he was never even asked to make a statement.
Wow.
And so later when I got a lot more discovery, I discovered there were actually twenty three prosecution witnesses in the case had never made any statements, although there were statements in the book of evidence attributed to them, and had he He told me that if he had been asked to make a statement, he would have told the truth. And had he been asked and made a statement and told the truth, I couldn't have been convicted. So I asked him, would he make an affidavits? Would he swear
an affidavit? At that and I drafted and Affidavid sent it out to him. He got it notorized and swore and sent it back in to me. So when I heard in the court and the High Court and looked for an order for discovery, and the lawyers for the state were saying, ah, he's only fishing. He hasn't got anything.
I said, yes, I have, and I produced two copies of this affidat, and I said, I have here the sworn affidavit of a prosecution witness stating clearly that he not only did he not make a statement of tribute to him, but he was never even asked to make a statement. And I offered it to the court and the judge woudn't accept it. And I offered it the state lawyers and they wouldn't accept it, because of course, if they'd accepted it, they would have had to deal with it.
But wouldn't the judge want to deal with it?
You would think, no, no, no, don't forget. He wasn't being I mean, he was looking at me as if I was a piece of dirt.
So what happened there?
So I won my order for discovery? And then when I got my order for discovery, didn't I get a photocopy of the notebook of the detective who had claimed I'd spoken those words in a particular period interrogation, and he has warned us on notes and that he had recorded the interrogation and recorded these words. And when I got his notebook, I saw in the notebook it's very clear he wrote the words in before the period of interrogation in which he claimed us said.
Yeah, that's tricky.
Well there's nothing against me, and they decided this was what I'm going to do.
I mean, it's a very organized and very insidious, absolutely very coordinated. I mean the lengths that they went to to get the conviction, to protect the conviction, to basically run rough shot over the truth, or extraordinary to still at it.
By the way, which I'll tell you about as we get on through this. But in January of nineteen ninety four, a human rights lawyer offered me his help. When I took it, we got a legal team, we went to the Court of Criminal Appeal on the new legislation, and the case ran from nineteen ninety four to ninety ninety five. And the police officer who had lied to get me convicted was now a retired detective superintendent. He had been
promoted up to the top. By the way, the cops who lied in the trial were all promoted, and the cop who saved my life and who refused to lie in the trial was never promoted.
Well, I am I not surprised. I mean, this is such a web of deceased absolutely lies and bad actors and everything else. So your convictions thrown out, your freed right. And then you told me a great story about your first day on the outside or your first what was the first thing you did when you got out?
Well, when I was released out of the special court, out on the street, I was met with a plethora of media people with microphones and cameras and ads took my face, strong questions at me, and I didn't have time to sort of realize that I was free, if you know what I mean. I didn't have time to let it sink in. And then I was taken by my lawyer to the TV station, the national TV station where I was. We were interviewed for the news that evening,
and then my friends organized a party. A bunch of people had set up a defense committee for me outside and they took a floor of a pub and organized a big party. And there was a huge, big party going on, and we went to that and that went on all that evening and everybody got drunk except me. I wasn't drinking, and I stayed with two friends that night in their house, and the following morning, when I
got up, I was the first one up. I went down to the kitchen and I went out to the back garden, which was a lovely long back garden, and the sunwishine was a beautiful day. There were no big walls around me. There was flowers and trees and bushes. And I walked down the garden and at the bottom of the garden there was a big old apple tree, really big old gnarled. The other way they'd become gnarled apple tree. And I could hear in the distance the sound,
the background noises of the city. But I went to this tree, and I stood with the tree, and I realized that and all the time I'd been in jail, and all the time the trouble I had gone through, this tree was growing in this garden on its own, with nature, producing its fruit and shedding its leaves every year in year out, doing its own thing, and immune from the corruption, the greed, the rat race, the injustices
and everything else. And I put my arms around the trunk of the tree, and I wept and I released And that's when I knew for certain I was free. That was in May nineteen ninety five.
So that's twenty one years ago. And then another extraordinary thing happened in your life, right, which is something I'm very well aware of. Well something or someone say.
Yeah, well, three years after I got out. And it was difficult times for a while after I got out, because it's very difficult to fit into society again when you're locked up. But I had yoga meditation and I used that and a little bit of prayer. And three years after, one day I got a phone call from an American lady who told me her name was Sunny Jacobs, and she told me she was speaking at a meeting three days later where I was, and invited me to come in here talk. And I said, what are you
going to talk about? And she said the death penalty. I said, yes, I'm interested in that. I'll come along, and I brought two friends and I went along and it was a room above a public course. At one o'clock on a Friday, I went up to the room. There was nobody there, and after a few minutes the door opened to the fire side of the room, and this little woman walked in and I walked over to her and I said, you must be Sunny Jacobs, and she looked up at me with a big smile, and
that's how we met. And I listened to her story and I was hugely emotionally upset by listening to it, and I knew I had to talk with her. And I said to her, I need to talk with you, and she said, got to be good. I needed to talk with you too. But she said, I'm leaving in an hour. This was on a Friday. I said, where are you going? She says, I have to go to Cork for the annual General Meeting of Amnesty into an Irish section of Amnist International. I should be there at
eight o'clock tomorrow evening. I said, stay over with me, I said, and I guarantee I'll get you down there.
And so she went how far away was Cork for our drive?
And she went to Mary Lawler, who was the General Secretary of Amnesty at the time, and asked Mary, because of course she was unsure about whether she should go with a stranger in the strange country. And Mary knew me and knew my story, and she said, oh, that's wonderful. Thank you. Peter yeah, yeah, great. So we transferred Sunday's case from her car into my audio loppy and she stayed in my house that night. In the following morning, we went to my friend on a cafe and go away.
We went to his place for breakfast. He asked us to come for breakfast and he said to me, are you driving her down the Cork? And I said yeah. He said, you can't go drive sbody to Cork and dot your lopy. He said here, and he reached his hand in his pocket and he gave me the keys of his Mercedes. He said, just get it back to me tomorrow morning. So I drove Sunny down the Cork
in the Mercedes. We traveled in style. And as we were on the car fairly crossing the river, Shannon eating a pack lunch which he'd made up for us, she said to me, what's your interest in all of this? And I told her that I too had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death, and she said, you seem to got through very well. She said, then, how did you get through so easy so well? And I said, yoga and meditation.
First of all. By the way, this is a hell of a first date. I got to give it up to you for a guy who had been in prison for fifteen years, you got game, okay, And so so that yeah, it's extraordinary, as I keep using that word because I don't know what else other words. You use the fact that Sonny, of course, had also been sentenced that for a similar crime that happened a continent away, five six thousand miles from where you were charged and convicted.
She was charged and convicted. Both of you were actually and absolutely innocent, and you served similar amounts of time in prison. She actually a little bit longer than you, and both of you had more in common than that, right, both were committed to a lifestyle of meditation and yoga. You're vegetarians, right, So it's sort of the universe organizing itself in a way, that is.
It was inevitable that we should come together, if you.
Think about serendipity as synchronisy and everyone cause metaphysics. So then you drive her there.
We drive her there and to Cork.
To Cork.
Now, Amnesty had got us two rooms in a hotel across from the hotel where the convention was, and each of us lay on a bed separately, and for three and a half hours. We discussed forgiveness. Well that was the key forgiveness. And then I brought her back to her room and she said to me, would I call her when as I leave at six in the morning, Would I call her in the morning. I said yes, So on the morning I knocked on her door and she got up and we said goodbye to each other
and we'd keep in touch. I had got my friend's car and drop back to go away.
Did you guys kiss or was there any physical interaction? Hold hands?
Exactly?
What happened was.
A perfect gentleman.
He said to me, I don't want you to think I'm not attracted to you, but I'm in a kind of a relationship, and I like to try to leave an honorable life. And that's what clicked in my mind, because at that point in my life I had no time for bs, you know, and so that impressed me.
How long have you been out of prison by this time?
I was out three years?
It's almost yeah, three years you were Oh he.
Was out eight Right, so you've been sex and you've been out three Okay, fine, that's nothing.
But we joke and say, you see that she's five years older than me, right, think I got it five years out before.
Me and anyway, okay, so then it was what happened.
And then we hadn't made any arrangement, but when he got home he called me, and that's I knew that it had clicked for him too.
So then you ultimately were married, yea, which is onto my favorite part of the story actually, But what.
We'd actually did was about ten years ago. We decided that we were going to exchange vows to each other, and we bought two clad of rings and on the winter salts it's the shortest day of the year, because Sonny said we should do it on the shortest day of the year because we don't have a long engagement.
We gave rings to each other in the morning, and we were engaged in the evening, and we went down to the seashore with our dogs and we exchanged vows on the seashore in the evening time, and the sun and the moon were both in the sky at the same time, which we thought was very auspicious. And then what happened. We were having some difficulty when we'd leave the country coming back because we were given to Sonny hassle about whether she could come back into the country
or not. And this was because she was with me, you see. So we decided we were going to get married. But getting married in Ireland is much more aureocratically difficult than it is in America. And we found out that you could apply in New York and get a license and get married the next day. But we had no money to come to New York. So now at that stage, by the way, we were existing on my state pension, which is like very small. So the theater that had
put on The Exonerated the film called contacted us. They were doing a producers weekend and they wanted us to come and speak at two dinners that they were hosting. And suddenly said, oh, we wanted to go to New York to get married, and they said, you got to get married in New York. We'll host the wedding. So they hosted the wedding. They brought us to New York and they follow us open a hotel and they hosted the wedding. So there were about one hundred and twenty
one hundred and thirty people at the wedding. We only knew six or seven of them, and none of our family were there. It was so funny it was hilarious. Brookshields, Amy Irving, Marlo Thomas, and Stockard Channing were at the wedding. They were four people actress who had played Sonny in.
The play of the Exoneration extraordinary play. Yeah, and Sunny story is one of six that are profiled in this remarkable play in which so many incredible actresses have portrayed you. And so they showed up at the wedding. So you have this sort of celebrity wedding which adds a certain element of strangeness to the whole thing.
The best part of it was that when Sonny was asked do you take this man to be your lawfully whether husband, the four actresses step forward and said, with Sonny, we.
Do hilarious, that's amazing, Oh my god, funny. So you may actually be married to five women at this point. Hard to say, and I'm not judging you. I'm just saying you might want to have somebody look into it. So there's a wonderful announcement if you google Peter Pringle and Sonny Jacob's wedding. My belief I can't prove this is that you're the only two Death Row ex hogneries who have ever been married after exonerations, because there are very few women who've been sentenced to death and even
many fewer who have been exonerated. So you really, you really hit the jackpot. And so I do want to put in a plug because now Sonny and Peter operate a phenomenal organization called the Sunny Sanctuary and it is sort of a haven or whatever you want to call it where they bring a newly exonerated people over to the coast of Ireland and help them reintegrate, right this is probably the best word, and get their get their lives back, and get their their spirits back, so to speak.
Right, Yeah, it's kind of healing from the inside out. We helped them to release the anger and business that they carry over what was done to them.
And paint the picture of the Sunny Sanctuary for people out there who can't really visualize.
Okay, well we managed. We managed to rent a three bedroom house on four acres on the side of a hill overlooking a lake and there's there's hazel woods down to the lake and each bedroom is on sweet so they have every person that comes has their own bathroom and toilet and it's on the coast it's four miles from the sea, but it's it's only just a bit above the lake, and it's in a very it's at the end of the road. The nearest store is six miles away.
There's more than a few animals there.
Oh, yes, we have. Let us see now, we have three cats and four dogs, four hens and five.
Goats, and aparture in a pear tree.
Something like that. I jokingly call it the menagerie. Sometimes we milk the goats and Sunny processes the milk, and Sunny makes wonderful goats cheese, three different types of goat cheese. So we also have what they call a polytunnel, which is the equivalent of a greenhouse, where we grow around vegetables. So when people come to us, we feed them on an organic food and organic free range of eggs, and they have milk and cheese, homemade goat cheese, organic goat cheese.
And do you teach them meditation yoga?
Yes, yes, we share with them. We don't conduct therapies as such. But what happens is that when they come at first, they will tell us what has happened to them, They release the things they need to release, and then we can share with them how we dealt with the issues that are causing them problems and open the way for them to the realization that actually they're more than just an ex honery. They're not just a person who's
been in prison. They're more than that. The fact that they were wrongfully in prison is just an episode in their life, and it's an episode they can put behind them now. It always travels with them, but they don't have to live in the past, and they have an opportunity of realizing them themselves as full human beings. And we bring them out and socialize with our friends, and we go to events and to the theater, and so they get a chance to mingle with people as ordinary people.
It's so inspiring to me and to many of us who work in the innocence movement that a very large percentage of xuarees are driven to help others who have gone through a similar ordeal. And so it's I think the most powerful thing I've witnessed, and I was asked this question yesterday, is the coming together of xenaies and the sharing of the experiences and the healing that comes from that and from being with others who are the only people alive who can possibly begin to understand what
you've been through. Even though every situation is unique and every story is unique, but still the experience is more
similar than not. And it's so wonderfully inspiring to hear the stories, both of your stories and the fact that they're now one, and what you've done and how you've turned this unimaginable set of circumstances into such a force for positivity and change and good is something that I think everyone who's listening and so many others are going to be affected by, and it's inspiring me and so many others to want to do more and help more,
or as many as we possibly can. I should say before we have to wrap this up, if any of you are listening now and haven't heard the Sunny Jacob's episode, I strongly encourage everyone to check out the Sunny Jacob's episode. But before we sign off, Peter, are there any last words that you'd like to share with the audience?
Learn not to carry anger. Anger is a national natural phenomenon. We get angry, I get angry, everybody gets angry, but don't hold it. Don't hold it. Don't hate because hate consumes the hater and anger consumes the angry person that doesn't consume the person you're angry against, and it damage your held. Let it go and try and be into spirit of forgiveness, because that's where your real strength is.
Our real strength is in the fact that we decided we would move towards healing and forgiveness and echo of all those negative emotions. And I wish everyone the best.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wardis, 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 plom Raeful Conviction is a product action of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one