#325 Maggie Freleng with Johnetta Carr

A warning for listeners, this episode contains discussion of suicide. Please listen with caution and care. In January of two thousand and six, Janetta car was over at her best friend's house when there was a knock at the door. Police were investigating a violent murder that occurred in the area a few months earlier. Sixteen year old Janetta was handcuffed, taken down to the precinct, and questioned for nearly twelve hours.

When I asked for my mom, he told me that it was not a girl Scouts meeting, that my mom was not a way to come down there.

It was a nightmare she couldn't wake up from. Janetta soon found herself locked up in juvenile detention, charged with the murder of the man who had been her boyfriend. Janetta had a solid alibi, but as the investigation closed in around her, she felt more and more hopeless, until finally she saw only one way out.

I took all these pills one night that I had been saving that I wasn't taken, and like two o'clock in the morning, I get a tap on my arm and it's this lady stand in front of me. She got an all white nurse's outfit. She just kept touching me, saying everything's gonna be okay, It's okay, sweenye. And I thought she was an angel. I feel like she honestly saved my life. My name is Johanetta Carr and I'm thirty four years old. I'm from Louisville, Kentucky.

From LoVa for Good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today. Janetta Carr. Janetta Carr was born on me twenty fifth, nineteen eighty eight, in Louisville, Kentucky. She's the youngest of six kids and often spent time with her extended family.

You know, the youngest child, I always were in things so like I'm kind of it was cool, you know, I was. I'm very, very spoiled by my siblings. I really didn't get in trouble as much by my great grandmother, my mom's mom's mom. When stuff would happen, we would all be at her house and my great grandmother was like, she's a baby. She didn't do that.

You know, you had the baby privilege.

Yeah, the baby privilege. Definitely the baby privilege.

Until Janetta's stepdad, Edward came into the picture. Janetta's mom, Lorinda, raised all six kids on her own.

She worked hard her whole life to take care of us. But you know, we had a lot of family support. So like my family's always been close.

We would have.

Dinners, you know, at my grandmother's house, who's my mom's mom, very very close to my biolage dad's mom, and my aunties and uncles on that side of the family, seven of us total, you know. So I was always with my brothers and sisters, my cousins. You know. When I became a teenager, I would hang with my friends in the neighborhood. We'd be at my mom's house. We wasn't at my mom's house, we'd be at one of my other two friends house. We'd be in the porch, you know.

Lorenda kept a religious household, and Janetta and her siblings went to church every Sunday. Janetta also kept busy performing in plays at her church and taking acting classes at the local theater camp.

And we actually did the The Midsummer's Night Dream was one of the plays that we did, and I wanted to be the witch, but I didn't get the witch part. I ended up being the unicorn. And I actually love unicorns today, so I got to be a unicorn and a point.

She was just a typical teenager.

You know, this is Janetta's mom, Loreinda Baker, doing.

What typical teenage just do.

Own the phone with her friends, withjama parties, movies, skating, hanging out into some on the front, forge ice cream, you know that type of thing.

Was she ever in any kind of trouble.

No. Joannette is a lovely person.

She's got a lovely personality on a wonderful spirit.

And everyone around her felt that spirit. She loved to spend time with her friends and pamper them.

Like when we would go, you know, do stuff to the mom me and my friends. I would always be the last one to get ready because I was doing everybody else's her make up.

This stuff they used to rush me.

Janetta was super smart and a driven young woman. She graduated high school early at just sixteen years old. Right after graduation, Janetta started school at Sullivan University, studying to be a paralegal. She had planned to work for the Prosecutor's office. Around this time, she met Michael.

I met him just in the neighborhood, like my best friend. Her and her mom had lived in these apartments, and he lived in the apartments next to where they lived at Planis.

Michael Adolphe, who went by Michael, was from Haiti. He worked as a cab driver.

He was nice.

I mean, he was cool. You know.

Michael and Janetta started dating even though he was twenty years older than she was.

I mean, I had already graduated high school. I really went into dudes my age, and I know, I don't care about y'all judging me America, because let me tell y'all something, right now, Okay, let's get this straight. Okay, yes, that is part of my story. I don't care what y'all think, how y'all feel about it, because every single teenager has something that they do to rebel against their parents. Okay, some teenagers still stuff, maybe some still cars do whatever. Okay, I just liked oda dudes.

Despite their age difference, Janetta and Michael had a great relationship. They had fun together, and Janetta says that he was a kind and generous man.

We was two individuals that connected and liked each other.

On the night of October twenty second, two thousand and five, about two months into their relationship, Michael had friends over at his apartment to play dominoes. Janetta was spending the night at a friend's house for a sleepover party. What do you remember about that night?

I just remember me and my friends. We was doing her We was doing you know, makeup. We was watching videos, you know, slapping, eating snacks. At just a normal night, yep.

But the next morning would be anything but normal. Around nine am, a neighbor called the police to report that someone was collapsed in front of their apartment building.

It was Michael.

He had been strangled, apparently with an electrical cord from a fan that was wrapped around his neck. His feet were bound with duct tape. Michael's wallet and cell phone were missing, and in his pocket was a Growl restore receipt timestamped ten forty seven pm the night before. His cab was later found a few miles away, ransacked and abandoned, with the stereo missing. Sometime after Michael left the grocery store that night, he had been robbed and violently murdered.

I've seen it on the news. It was crazy and scary and horrible and like unbelievable about who could have done it because he didn't have, you know, no like enemies that I knew of, because he was such a sweet person. So I was like, why would somebody do this?

Like?

Who would do this?

Janetta was heartbroken and things were about to get worse. Two and a half months later, Janetta was at her friend's house when investigators came looking for her.

They showed up in my best friend's house, who I was sleep next to the night that the crime happened. They showed up at her house and a detective Tony Finch knocked on the door. Her mom was like, Janetta, detective for a play you.

Detective Tony Finch was the lead investigator on the case, and when Janetta came to the door, he took out his handcuffs and arrested her for the murder of plunt As Michael Adolphe. Then he brought her down to the precinct.

I was really confused. I didn't know why I was there, what was going on. I just thought that I was going to get to go home because I didn't do nothing, So I was scared. I was everything any emotion you can think of. I was angry, you know, was it like registering?

Like were you processing like, oh, they think I did this. No, even though Kentucky laws his police must notify my nurse parents before questioning them. Janetta was interrogated alone by Sergeant James Hellinger and lead Detective Tony Finch. She says Detective Finch was extremely harsh with her.

When I asked for my mom, he told me that it was not a girl Scouts meeting, that my mom was not allowed to come down there.

Janetta says he threatened her, calling her a murderer, a bitch, and a whore.

He asked me if I was in a gang. He tell me he had people that placed me at the scene and that he knew that I was guilty. He told me that I was a danger and threat to society and that he didn't want me on his f and streets and that I was going to prison for f and live.

The interrogation went on for over eleven hours. Janetta maintained her innocence the entire time. She was sure she would soon be released to go home, but that didn't happen. This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company. AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive difference in the lives of its employees and

I went straight from the interrogation room. They took me in his highway. They started taking pictures of me and had me held up its number, and then they yet they sent me shirt to j c Wise. The same night I got boked into j CYS.

J c Yse is the Jefferson County Youth Detention Center. Janetta's mother, Larinda, had no idea what had happened. How did you find out?

My neighbor, Miss Pete, let me use her phone for any type of situation that I may have, and she came and knocked on my door and told me that Jace Wyse wanted me on the phone. I had ma Pajamazone. It was about seven forty five, eight o'clock in the morning. I ran out the back door. As a matter of fact, I left the back door open when I went to

Janetta had a rock solid alibi. Over half a dozen people had been at that sleepover, but detectives had their sights set on her.

For the first time.

I couldn't tell her this is it's gonna be okay, It's going to be all right. You know, You're gonna be fine. We're going to get through this, because I didn't know if we were going to get through this. I didn't know what was going to happen, you know. And I could see her she was trying to be strong, because I guess she was trying to be strong for me,

What Janetta didn't know was that while she was left confused and alone in juvenile jail, detectives were building an entire case against her. A few weeks before Janetta was arrested, detectives had interrogated a friend who was also at the sleepover. To protect the identities of these individuals, we'll call this friend, Carrie, Detective Finch had arrested nineteen year old Carrie on a bench warrant for shoplifting. While in custody, he interrogated her

I'll try to kill myself.

After her suicide attempt, Janetta was transferred to Our Lady of Peace Hospital. She was diagnosed with clinical depression and put on medication.

So they started give me these pills I was supposed to take, and I would have the pels in my cheek because I still wanted to to kill myself because I was that hopeless from being incarcerated for a crime I didn't commit, having nothing to do with. So I took all these pills one night that I had been saving that I wasn't taken, and like two o'clock in the morning, I get a tap on my arm and it's this lady stand in front of me. She got on an all white nurses outfit. She had like caramel

Soon after that experience, Janetta reached out to her mom and told her about taking the pills.

And to the hospital and set with her and just held her hand, you know, and told her, you know, I'm so sorry that this has happened to you. I'm so sorry that you're going through this, you know. I mean, you sitting in his jael Syal day after day, minute at the minute, you know, and you see people going home and you're still sitting here for something that you

Meanwhile, instead of probing other angles, like analyzing the evidence at the murder scene or pursuing other potential suspects, Detective Finch was hell bent on closing the case.

He would do whatever he needed to do to get a conviction.

This is Suzanne Hopp, directing attorney of the Kentucky in a Since project. They represented Janetta in her post conviction efforts.

The final sort of nail in the coffin there is that there was a jailhouse informant that was used against Janetta.

After Janetta turned eighteen, she was transferred from juvenile detention to an adult jail, and an informant who lived in the cell next door, Laurie Deckard, said that Janetta confessed to her. According to Laurie, Janetta told her she was mad at Michael, and so she, Carrie and Kyle went

She told him that Johnetta did not do this, she was snaxting me.

Sleep that night, but laws In dismissed her account. Instead, he fabricated a report saying Brittany told him she was a heavy sleeper and couldn't say whether or not Janetta had left the house. Even with all their alleged evidence against Janetta, Carrie, and Kyle, detectives were still hell bent on getting one of the three to flip on the others.

They were relentless. They just kept going after all three co defendants and repeatedly questioning them. What the police were doing was they were telling all three co defendants that if all of you don't admit to this crime and enter into guilty please, and we're going to try one of the adults under the death penalty.

Remember Kyle and Carrie were both nineteen.

That was sort of like the ultimate, the end point where these three individuals were thinking about their friends and somebody facing the death penalty.

With this life or death situation looming over the trio, the state offered them a plea bargain called an Alfred plea, and Alfred plea is a deal with the state or defendants plead guilty for a lesser sentence, but are allowed to maintain their innocence. Prosecutors told them they would only accept the plea deal if all three pled guilty, so they did. On April fourteenth, two thousand and eight. Janetta took the deal and pled guilty to evidence tampering, two

What did that feel like?

I literally felt like I had no other choice because at that point I was just helpless. Just know that I was not the Johnetta then that I am now, you know, I went educated about the law and thinking they could arrest people for crimes they didn't committed.

While in prison, Janetta tried to stay as productive as possible.

I took computer classes, and I went to church a lot, you know, swung in the choir, a lot, wrote letters, a lot ate a lot too many noodles. I do not eat noodles. No more, y'all cany, No, we're not.

Than.

What was that like to be around adults as a as a kid.

Well, at first, it was kind of scary because I was thinking, oh, my guinness, these people are criminals, Like what am I gonna do? But actually I met a bunch of beautiful women from all different walks of life, and they was really lights to me. You know. We gave each other hope because there was nothing else we could do. I think I went through every emotion that a parent could go through. I got frustrated, I got angry, I got upset, I cried because you know, there were.

No resources available, and it.

Was just a horrible, horrible, horrible thing to go through for anybody. I think one of the hardest parts for me was having to explain to Johanetta's nieces and nephews that we didn't know when she was going to come home because Johnette is very close to them and they love her, you know. And then they're crying and I'm crying, and we're all trying to make some sense out of this, and we still can't make any sense out of it as it stands today.

About a year or so after her conviction, and Janetta was called into the prison office.

Surprised me because I didn't know why I was getting called in her because I didn't get in any trouble while I was, you know, incarcerated, so I didn't know why I was getting called in there.

When she walked in, Laurie Deckard, the jail house snitch, was there, and she admitted that during the investigation the police told her to lie about Janetta and say she confessed.

Because I'm like, okay, you're saying this now, why didn't you say that, you know a long time ago? Like I'm basically, you're a part of this. You're a part of the fabricated evidence and part of the reason why I'm here. It is her fault because she didn't have to lie. But when you really think about the jail house snitches. The system actually puts them in situations, you know what I'm saying. So really the detectives on my case is responsible for that.

In two thousand and nine, after serving four years of a twenty year sentence, Janetta was eligible for parole. She was granted time served for the time she spent in the juvenile detention facility and was released from prison.

It was a joy and of blessing to see her after not being able to see her for so many years, and being able to see her was you know, I was in at mowhere. I didn't want to let it go. She used to tell me all the time, when my mama go, miss Peties. I'd be like, no, I want you to stay in the house.

I don't want you to go nowhere.

You know, I think I kind of wented to a mother overload, but I think I kind of had a rite to at everything that she had been through. I just wanted to keep her as close to me as I possibly could.

Although she was home, Janetta's journey wasn't over. She was physically free, but people on parole are still under scrutinous state control. Janetta had to do random check ins and drug tests and even had to pay a monthly twenty five dollars fee. She also had to maintain a job, which wasn't eat because of her record of incarceration.

So I would go in jobs, you know, and they would be like, you know, you seem like a great person everything, but your background, you know. And I went in like ten jobs a day sometimes, and I was living with my mom at the time, and I would just go home and I would just bother to her. Then I started doing research and found fault that it's estimated in America with ten thousand people get falsely convict

And you know, I asked her one day, I said, you know, I'm so angry. And I asked, I said, how come you're not mad? She said, my mom, don't I'm not gonna be angry. I'm not gonna be mad. She said, what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna fight. I'm gonna fight, she said, because I didn't do this and I'm innocent.

I started to go to the Plasma center and donate plasma. And it was a foun dollar right next to the plasma center, and I would take the money from plasma, go to family Dollar, get posts to border markers, and I would make signs trying to write his awareness for wrongful convictions, and I would just started walking around, you know, my city.

Holding At the same time, Janetta was also trying to get off parole and still working to prove her innocence.

I would look up numbers, you know, for like innocent projects, people who helped innocent I would just google it, and I would you know, call and lead messages on different people's voicemails and stuff, still trying to find help.

Finally, almost a decade after her release, the Kentucky Innocence Project agreed to help Janetta fight for her exoneration.

So when we inherited the case in twenty eighteen, we started doing the record review and attempting to find individuals to interview. And then shortly after getting the case, we received news that we were getting a DNA testing grant from the Department of Justice.

Janetta would finally get a chance to test the evidence, specifically the duct tape and the electrical cord that were found on Michael Adolphe's body to see if there was a DNA match with the actual perpetrator.

If we could get a hit on something in the national database and CODIS, it would then build a stronger case for Janetta. Obviously we would have been able to locate who had actually killed the victim.

And during its investigation, the Kentucky Innocence Project discovered bombshell information that had never been disclosed to Janetta or her attorneys all those years ago. First off, it turns out that DNA testing had been conducted on the case back in two thousand and six. While it didn't point to someone else as the perpetrator, it did indicate that neither Janetta nor her co defendants could have committed the murder. Not only that, the Kentucky Innocence Project discovered that there

He should have been a person of interest. I think the police should have pursued a very deep investigation into mister Lewis.

Steve Lewis was an acquaintance of Michaels and in the early days of the investigation officers got a tip from a friend of Michael's who said he had seen Steve Lewis and Michael in a heated argument over a girl, and that during the fight, Steve threatened to kill Michael. When he was questioned by police, Steve denied involvement, but he was unable to provide an alibi for his whereabounds around the time of the murder. Yet, for whatever reason,

Oh. I think the state offered her an offered plea because they knew she would go to trial and they had questions about the strength of their case. I think the case had been pending long enough that the prosecutor wanted to get some closure on it. They knew that they had some problems with their case, that if they went to trial they might not get a conviction.

Do you think if you went to trial you might have won?

Probably? So I can't think about it and the reason why I can't think about it because it brings back so much pain. I'm trying to be a light in the world, so I can't think about these things. I just had to move with purpose and take the pain that I've been through and make it. My purpose is to make legislation for the next generations so that people don't get wrongly convicted and so that my children don't have to go through what I went through. Johnetta doesn't

The Kentucky Innocence Project also applied for a pardon for Janetta, and on December ninth, twenty nineteen, Kentucky Governor Matthew Bevin pardoned her based on her actual innocence.

The Governor called me and he actually apologized. He said, I want to apologize to you for what the Commonwealth did to you, and we actually cried.

However, the pardon left Janetta in a strange situation. The Kentucky state statuted for DNA testing says that a person must be under state supervision to qualify for testing.

So it's very unfortunate because we think that there is biological material on the evidence that was collected, the evidence still exists, we would like to test it.

If that DNA isn't tested, Michael's true killer may never be known.

If indeed there is a person out there that killed the victim and that they're still out there, they may still be doing the same thing to other people. The public is certainly at greater risk to not have that DNA testing get done.

Janetta is also not eligible for any kind of wrongful conviction compensation because Kentucky is one of the twelve states that do not have compensation laws for xoneries.

But somebody needs has to start being held accountable when wrongful convictions happen. I'm so discussed it and appalled at the justice system in Kentucky and what they are using

Janetta is now represented by the Exoneration Project and the national civil rights firm Lov and Lov. She's also a mother to two children, one year old Royalty and six year old Jakari, and she's again pursuing one of her early dreams. She's back in paralegal school, but this time she doesn't want to work in the prosecutor's office. She wants to help prevent and write wrongful convictions.

I'm on a journey. I'm healing me. Being wrongfully convicted something I will live with and it's going to impact my life for the rest of my life. However, I choose not to make that my entire life. I'm just really really focused on my purpose right now. You know what I need to do on life as far as bring and change, you know, and raising my kids, you know, just trying to heal and become a better me every day is all vall.

If you'd like to help others who have been wrongfully convicted, Janetta recommends supporting the organizations I Am Resilience and the Chandler Project in Kentucky House Bill six ninety one. Janetta also has a GoFundMe to help raise travel expenses for exoneries attending the Innocence Conference. There will be links to all of this in our bio. Next time, on Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, Hope White, do you think there was police corruption in your case?

Absolutely, there was a loss of police corruption.

In that case.

Thanks for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in our bio to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flamm and Kevin Wurtis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Lyla Robinson, and story editor Sonia Paul. The show is edited and mixed by Annie Chelsea, with additional production by Jeff Cliburn and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by