In part one of our coverage of John Juker, you heard about how a corrupt investigation turned a group of friends against one of their own, producing initially three and eventually a fourth false and conflicting testimony that led to John's arrest and conviction. Now hear about his continuing fight for freedom and where the case stands today.
They're taking thing from me that I'll never get back.
You know.
They took all my twenties and now all my thirties soup, and now they're going to start working on the forties unless something happens. When I came up States, they automatically started trying to go to the Low Library alive. But it's hard to even get up out of bed in the morning knowing what's being done to you. But you want to just try to keep going on at which I did, and I try to. I was going to the Low Library every day at one point, trying to
get to know the law. And that's when I saw that my prosecutor, NICOLASI is the prescatorial misconduct handbook of like a playbook, even though all those things are considered the gregious misconduct. And my lawyer, whose name was Lloyd Epstein at the time said that that's your major issue right here, because there's so much here. This is just a case based off of words, and so they had to beat their piece with misconduct and pull in every
dirty move. That because she suppressed evidence more than once that we could prove between coursing witnesses, misstating the full record, or even misstating the law. She told the jury that and this was in my first appeal that what Lornen said alone is enough to convict me of fill any murder. And that's not really true either, but it's all that is moot now because of the recantations. But the major one was, besides her polygraph trade, was a whitewashed drug
program violations documents that they gave us. So they literally whitewashed records that they gave us for John of Veto. They put him up on a stand and got him to say that he wasn't getting anything and didn't want anything in return for his testimony, no leniency and no
benefits at all. Meanwhile, he just fucked up seven or eight drug programs and got like all these violations and he just got violated like a couple of days before he was on the stand up there, but they gave us drug program violation reports that didn't have any of that stuff on there. And then later when we got the case file, we got the real copy of the exact same document. It's the same document. It's not a
different document. It's the exact same If you've pulled them up to each other, they are the same document, but they have more sentences in them. So somebody just highlighted that part presidently and printed it out and gave it to us. Then the Supreme Court judges have said for years that is huge. That's the major that the jury knows the credibility of someone and what their motive is
for testifying against someone. They just propped them up there and made it look like he was just testifying to be a good citizen and that he didn't want anything in change for his testimony. It was a total wife. She even showed up to one of his court appearances and made sure he didn't go to jail. That was my first appeal of the prospratorial and misconduct stuff. But then really those early years were more about my jura misconduct issue.
I understand that one of your friends was with your mom and noticed somebody in the jury that he recognized. Do I have that right?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure. It was the day the verdict. Someone came in to support me and he saw one of the jurors and he was like, holy shit, I know this guy from the neighborhood and he hangs out at the Wenvil's house, and that's the same place John always hangs out. How the fuck does this guy not know John or no of John or something? You know, how, this is weird.
So he told my mother, and then your mom puts on her literal superhero cape and goes and you gotta hearing the audience. Now, you're gonna have to hear this to believe it. She's unbelievable. I can't say enough about Doreen tried to go.
Through a private investigator. First, she got ripped. Dolph tried multiple private investigators, and she just had to take matters into her own hands, and she did. And then I think they found out through a barber or something like that, exactly where he was from and who he was.
She watched him for a period of time and eventually started communicating with him and they started hanging out. Now, of course, she was not known to him to be John Jukea's mother, but she recorded her interactions with him.
They began an ostensible friendship, and after a period of time, she started talking about the case, and this guy Alo started saying things that would make your jaw drop or make you spit out your morning coffee if you're talking about due process and having a fair and impartial jury.
He said that he written newspapers and watched TV all about the case, even though the judge won them. I think it was like thirteen or fifteen times not to and he's that bullshit. He said that he couldn't get off of work because his boss really didn't want him to take off of curiate duty, but once he told them about which case it was, his boss gave him off and said, I want to see that fucking kid. Fry told him he'll give him off with pay something like that.
All kinds of things were coming out of this guy's mouth, including admitting that he never should have been on the jury because he knew some of the people. I've heard of this crowd of kids.
He said that his cousin who also used to hang out at a house that I hung out at before, and knew those guys, and she thought I was guilty, so she told him that I was guilty. He said his cousin wouldn't lie to me about something like that.
Another thing was that.
He said, which is, guys that I used to hang out with used to bully his brother. I didn't even recognize the names that he was talking about, but guys that I knew or that who knew me used to bully his brother. So it was like revenge. He had an accident rhyme.
And he also basically said that he didn't like Jews. Obviously, the name Juka sounds like jew but it's very Italian, not Jewish.
He's not even a competent anti semi. He's wrong on every conceivable way, morally bankrupt, mentally deficient. Just can't even process this.
And there is that famous cringe inducing interview on twenty twenty where when this became public, Jason Alo actually made the very ill advised decision to defend himself on TV and he was interviewed by Martin Basher if you remember him, and you know he was denying a lot of this, where Basher's reading the transcript and playing the recording for anyone and everyone to hear, and there's just no question that the case should have been tossed because of the German's conduct.
He said that pushed your other jurors in to a guilty verdict. He even admitted it, and he was pushing these other jurors into a guilty person.
When they filed a motion to reverse the conviction on that issue. The recordings were not authenticated. There are rules of evidence in a courtroom. You can't just take someone's word for it, and for whatever reason, those recordings were not authenticated in the proper way, and so the motion
was denied on procedural grounds. But the judge who denied the motion went farther and said, even if it was proper, I would deny it on the merits, because this is, you know, an assault on the judicial system for somebody to be going after a jur So the criticism was actually leveled entirely at Doreen for exposing this, rather than the juror who clearly had no business being on the case.
She didn't do anything wrong, she didn't commit any crimes. It was just she dug for the truth that she got it, and they didn't like what they found out what they heard.
So I got involved in this in two thousand and two twelve was contacted by Doreen John's mother or whose some Noah's mother justice because of what she did trying to unravel the conviction. When she showed up in my office with just stacks of papers, the first piece of paper that was on top of this whole pile was a transcript in the People of the State of New York versus John Avito, not John Juca, And it was the court appearance in which a veto had gone to
court after he started meeting with John's prosecutor. Now, on the cover of any transcript, it's gonna list the caption of the case, the name of who appears for the DA's office, who appears for the defense, that sort of thing, and the appearance for the DA on the cover of this transcript in June thirteenth of two thousand and five
was Anna Sega Nicolozzi, who was John's prosecutor. And there was no reason why a homicide prosecutor on the biggest murder case in New York City would be appearing on a mundane, meaningless return on warrant for some mope who had a burglary sentence. Because he violated a drug program other than the fact he had to be cooperating in the murder case, and so I knew within the first day I met Doreen that this case was sideways.
And all of this is happening in the ramp up to the historic run of Ken Thompson. It seemed like he was really ready to change things for good in Brooklyn.
There was some story in the press during the election in twenty twelve thirteen, because we were in the process of trying to get Juca's conviction overturned, and a lot of this news about angel di Pietro came out, and again the idea that she could be hired by Hines as a prosecutor and be Nicolozzi's colleague years later just so absurd on his face that he asked me about what is all this? In my view, he wanted to
campaign on Juka. Ironically enough, and maybe it was my mistake at the time, but I told him, I don't want to talk to you about anything Jukeer related because you're probably going to be the next DA And I'm telling you right now, I'm going to be coming to you to right this wrong. And I look back and one of my sins in this case is probably not unloading to him because ironically what he would have probably done is campaigned on it.
So Ken Thompson challenges Hines against long Eyes in the primary. He wins, and what does Joe Hines do. He's got to go to the GOP King's County Executive Committee and get the Wilson Pacula waiver to allow him to run as a Republican.
He pulled the sneaky political move and he used that card when he needed it. So it was something that he was always getting during all of his elections, just in case he needed it. But in twenty thirteen he actually needed it and used it and ran as Republicans to take a second bite at the apple and tried to win the race even though he lost the primary.
So now, Mark, at this point, you're thinking, this is your time. You got Ken Thompson in. It's time to resolve this once and for awe.
Yeah, the idea here was to convince the incoming administration of the Brooklyn Thea's Office that the Hinz crowd got this wrong and here's a chance to do right. When we did bring the case to the Conviction Review Unit, we presented them with all kinds of evidence, including literally hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of medical records of John Jukeas Senior, who had the strokes that we talked about,
which meant that the Avido's story couldn't have happened. We presented them with the sworn affidavits of the two women who were at that jailhouse visit, who denied that conversation ever took place. We presented them with overwhelming proof of how Angel and Albert clearly testified falsely, and how it contradicted what they told the police and contradicted all the
other available evidence. We presented them with sworn affidavits of the residents of Argyle Road who explained how they heard the car door, the voice of the young woman, the car fleeing the location.
And while this is in the cru we're talking twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen. Amazingly, this is when the recantations start rolling in. So in twenty fourteen, Lauren Calciano recanted, and I have some excerpts here that I want to share, she said, and this is a long quote, So hang in there with me, because you have to hear every word of this. Okay, here's her quote. I have regretted this testimony since I was first pressured to claim this by law enforcement officials.
I repeatedly told them that he did not have any information regarding John's a legend involvement in this crime. Law enforcement pressured and frightened me to the point that I ultimately relented and told them what they wanted to hear. Specifically, I was pressured to admit that John had told me that he gave Tony Russell a gun before Tony shot
and killed Mark Fisher. She goes on to say, law enforcement officials suggested that I was involved in the after method the crime by telling me that Albert Cleary had told them that I removed a gun bag or evidence from John's house. Although this was untrue, I recognized the seriousness of this claim. Law enforcement officers threatened me with jail and told me that I could be charged with
obstruction and or perjury. Ada Nicolazzi told me that if I did not cooperate with her, the police would show open my place of employment with a subpoena. Ada Nicolozzi referenced a very personal issue between John and me, which was discussed only in our private letter she told me, you do not want this to come out of trial. I interpreted this as a not so subtle threat that I would be publicly humiliated by the DA if I
did not cooperate. Ada Nicolozzi and detectives told me that they were aware that my father was in prison and that by not cooperating with them, I was quote going to make this hard on him and my family. More than any other factor, this threat influenced me to testify in the manner that they desired. Now, this thing goes on for eight full pages, and it completely shreds the state's case.
She also, in her affidavit, explained how Albert Cleary lied and that his testimony was false because I was there and he didn't say that either. In other words, what I said was not true, but what he said was not true either. And she also gave a little insight into what ghetto mafia were. Now, she didn't testify to what it was because she wasn't asked, but in her sworn recantation she said I was around these people during
this time period. In ghetto mafia is the name of a bunch of local kids and knuckleheads, not some sophisticated street gang. We also gave them a sworn affidavit from if you recall when we talked about Albert Cleary, the guy that he said was the boss of the gang who had spoken to John about let's catch a body,
and that's why maybe Mark Fisher was shot. And he very calmly explained under oath that I was going to college in North Carolina and I was not the leader of a gang, and John and I did not discuss how to get a body or anything like that.
And then John Avito recants.
He did and a Veto was very seriously mentally ill, and he was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. We got all of his Riker's Island jail records and sure enough, he was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who had been taken a number of drugs psychotropic drugs, including Sarahquill, and part of his symptoms and what Sarahquill treats our people who suffer auditory hallucinations, which Avido was. So it turns out that the guy who says I overheard a man who can't
speak ask questions about a murder. You can't make this up, had a history of actually hearing voices and seeing snakes was another one of his visual hallucinations. We had many many meetings with their conviction review unit, including one in the summer I want to say a twenty fourteen, which was chaired by Ericnzalis, who at the time was not
the DA. Obviously, Eric was overseeing the process, so he knew exactly what was going on here, and they declined to overturn the conviction, either on innocence or on any constitutional violations. They had Mark Hale call me to tell me, I believe the words were that the district Attorney is not going to disturb the conviction. I have to be honest with you. I was a little surprised for a couple of reasons. One because the decision is wrong. But I know Ken, and I would have expected that call
to come from him given what this was. And I said that to Mark, and I asked, I'd like to hear that from Ken. So I was hoping to get in touch with Ken, and instead I got a call from Eric, who at the time was you know, the number two guy. Eric's a nice guy. We had a conversation and I told him I was disappointed that Ken couldn't find the time to tell me himself and explain his reasoning, and this was in late fourteen, and by the first couple of months and fifteen we filed the motion.
It's just really disappointing is not as strong enough word. It's devastating, And even with Ken Thompson in there, they just for some reason had some sort of a block against doing this.
The worst part about it for me was that all these other guys, they were like when Ken Thompson took over, there were twenty five generations and that gave me so much hope, and at this point I've almost ceased to hope because of what they did to me. Although the difference between me and all those other guys is that the ada that put them in jail doesn't work there anymore.
But when it came to me, when Ken Thompson got elected, he didn't fire Nicolazi, so she did still work there, and they covered for her instead of doing justice like they should have. I mean, there was all a pile of mountain of evidence that pointed away from me, and they just didn't care. They denied me and use what we gave them to try to counter me.
They knew that there was no way in hell that if they denied his review, that there wasn't going to be a post conviction motion. So I believe that they exploited our petition to gather evidence, to cross examine witnesses and use it as discovery. And when Johonavito and Lauren Calciano and others at risk to themselves, they're controverting sworn testimony with new sworn testimony.
When they went in to.
See the conviction Review unit, what the DA did was record them, swear them in, make transcripts, and put them under oath. When the Brooklyn DA witnesses were interviewed Anne Sega, Nicolozzi, others, they weren't sworn. There's no record of their interviews, and the report has never been made public. It's never been shared,
like so many others that they do share. But it's as if they viewed the Djuka conviction review as an exercise in preparing for a post conviction motion and locking down these witnesses to cross examined them if they testify for the defense.
So now, after the cru decided for reasons i'll never understand, to pass, you got set up to file a four forty.
Motion that culminated in a reversal in February of twenty eighteen.
Yeah, I got an unanonymous decision this ski should be reversed and he should get a new trial. Well, I got the reversal of the John of Vito issue and the fact that NICOLASI did give him benefits. The DA showed up to want a witnesses court hearing and kept him from going to jail, and that is leniency in a change for cestimony. My jury should have known about that. And then I go back down to Rugas Island and I sit there for a year.
And a half when the DA was contemplating a retrial. They actually so desperate to get Juka okay that they set these detectives up there to interview Russo for one reason.
They want to.
Secure his cooperation to testify against John. Now, Antonio Russo is the murderer in this case. Everybody knows it.
They know it.
Antonio Russo carried a gun, threatened people. Yet when it came time to potentially retry the case, they went up there for the purpose of trying to flip Russo to testify against Juca. And instead, what he tells them is I did it alone with my own gun, and that was the end of their discussions with Antonio Russo.
So now you're back at Rikers for a couple months, and during the discovery process you discover this recording that was made with a guy named Ingram.
Ada NIKOLASI made a recording in two thousand and five before the trial that was recorded, and this was a guy who was probably trying to help himself somehow, you know. He told them he had information and she said things that she didn't want to hear because it did pretty much clear me. So they what held it for? I think what was it thirteen years?
This tape was not disclosed prior to trial. It was disclosed to me in twenty eighteen and Joseph Ingram was in the same cell block as John and traveled to Bellevue for medical treatment one day with Antonio Russo and him and Russo were on the bus chit chatting, he said.
Russo admitted he did this alone. I wasn't there. I had nothing to do with it, none of that.
And Russo admitted to Ingram that I tried to get John to take the gun after the murder. I went to his house and he wouldn't do it. He told me leave go no, And this was the exact opposite of what the trial evidence was. Again, but Harry says John got rid of a gun. Antonio Russo told Joseph Ingram John would not take the gun.
But the new trial was never actualized. For now they didn't have to contend with this evidence. In June twenty nineteen, the New York Court of Appeals reinstated the conviction that you had reversed in twenty eighteen, and John went back to state prison.
The New York State Court of Appeals authored a decision that is so absurd defined logic, and it was obvious by the decision that they didn't know the facts of the case.
Although they agreed with us that Nicolazzi suppressed evidence, they argued it was not material to the outcome of trial, which is reasoning, which is mind boggling, given that Nicolozzi's whole summation, as I told you earlier, was about how critical a witness A. Vito was, and how credible he was, and how altruistic he was, and how he established the
real theory of what happened. And one would think that if the defense had known the full story about his credibility, and demolished him as it should have been that would somehow have impacted the significance of his testimony. But in the five to one opinion against us, they argued it wasn't material because a veto had been impeached about other things.
And it was Judge Rivera, in a very lengthy descent, who explained why that reasoning was flawed and why his credibility on this particular issue is so important, and why the behavior of the trial prosecutor was intended to mislead the judge, the jury and defense. You don't usually see a judge of the Court of Appeals call out a prosecutor and essentially say you engaged in deliberate misconduct in violation of your ethical responsibilities. But again in Brooklyn, what's for dinner? Nobody cares.
They do care, it seems though, about bending over backwards and doing mental gymnastics to maintain this inexplicable wrongful conviction, which it seems they did when you were able to get a hearing on this Brady material, this recording that was made with a guy named Ingram in front of Justice Danny Chun.
Now, I have sworn statements and there's been sworn testimony from Russo's lawyer and from Sam Gregory that they didn't get this evidence and they would have remembered it if they did. And then we had testimony from Nicolotzi who said, I can't say whether I did or didn't, but if I did, it wasn't on purpose, but I probably did.
And this was litigated a couple of years ago in front of Justice Chun, who found that the DA probably disclosed it, notwithstanding the fact that they explained why this would have been significant evidence and steps they would have taken had they known about it back then. But nevertheless, Justice Chun found that we did not satisfy our burden that it wasn't disclosed. And I just respectfully because I like him personally, but the ruling on that case is just flat out one hundred percent wrong.
So that's where this is at. What can any of us do?
The help Writing to the governor is probably best right now, because I really don't see myself getting justice in Brooklyn in these with these judges and with this DA, so I need to get a special prosecutor appointed, and the only one who can do that for me is the governor. That's my next motion. I'm pretty sure.
All right, I'm going to link your website and Instagram account to keep our audience abreast of all future developments and action steps, as well as if they wanted to learn more about your case.
Yeah, we've got briefs, transcripts, exhibits. One thing we definitely believe in is shining a bright light on this and with.
That we go to closing arguments. This, of course, is the part of the show where I'm going to put my microphone down, leave my headphones on, kick back in my chair, close my eyes, and just take a couple of deep breaths because I need it after this, and listen to anything else you guys want to share. So Mark, what if you take it from here and then hand
the mic off to John. And John you have the last word, and you know my last word is I just wish you all the best, and I hope we see you back in the free world home with your family where you belong, really really soon.
We are always investigating, gathering and doing things as I said these John, his mother, his family, his supporters. Sometimes they fade out of the public eye a little bit, but we're always getting ready to fight, and we are still looking into certain things, which, as I said, I think will at some point lead us back. They want us to be gone, but we're not going anywhere. I
know that. You know, in the eyes of the Brooklyn DA at this point, they just wish we would go away and fade away, and he would do his time and Doreen would stop fighting. And why did they get better row to help them? How can he fall for this nonsense?
You know?
I know that's kind of how they perceive my involvement of this, and they couldn't be more wrong. I believe in this one hundred percent. I have no doubt that John was wrongfully convicted. I have confidence in his actual innocence. I believe to my core that he didn't commit this crime, and that's after reviewing all the evidence. And I certainly believe and know, based on my review of the evidence of the law that his rights were violated several different ways,
and that this was not a trial. What happened in two thousand and five, it was a railroading. It was just Brooklyn style justice in the Charles Hines administration, and those skeletons are still there. It's not so far past where people are going to be willing to forget about it, and certainly we aren't, and we're not going anywhere.
It's just been too much suffering for too long.
You know.
It's wrong on top of wrong, on top of injustice on top of injustices, but an ongoing tragedy. This is not only am I being affected, but my family is being crushed from this. It took my youth from me and all the experiences I would have had it, and I feel like a financial burden on my family too. I can anchor around the neck, and my mother's getting older now. I'm afraid she. I pray every day that she could come home while she's still alive, and she makes it. And they took all that time away from
me that I was supposed to have with her. And being in prison wrongfully is much different than being here for something you actually did. That's what me and a lot of these other guys have already been on your show have in common, I think, is them we understand what it feels like. That's why I feel it's not a kinship with them, some of them who I even never met, Because when you're here for something you actually did, I see it. These other guys, they get into a
routine and they just say they accept it. But when you hear wrongfully, it's impossible for you to accept. You just really can't accept it, So every day it becomes torture.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction Special thanks to our amazing production team Connor Hall, Annie Chelsea, Jeff Clyburn, and Kevin Watis, with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time Oscar nominated composer Jay Ralph 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 on TikTok and
Instagram at its Jason Flamm. That's its Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one