On Easter Sunday nineteen ninety three, inmates at Lucasville Prison in Ohio took control of an entire cell block. The crisis that became known as the Lucasville Prison Riot lasted eleven days and claimed ten lives, including one of the prison guards. When the cell block was finally surrendered, an investigation ensued aimed at bringing the riot leadership to justice. After several rounds of interviews, five names emerged, including a man who lived on that cell block named Keith Lamar Now.
According to the state, Keith had allegedly commanded a team of men who murdered four supposed snitches before heading out to the prison yard, where the authorities ushered all the inmates into another block that was still under state controlled. Then, while confined in a cell with nine other men, he
allegedly ordered one more death. The other inmates weren't telling this particular story in their initial interviews, but by the time of Keith's Capitol trial, they were all somehow singing the same tune and that had to count for something. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today's guest is somebody I've been waiting for for a long time. His story. As terrifying as it is, it's also the stuff of legend because this is a man
and Keith, I'm talking about you. I'm talking about you in the third person. I'm going to talk directly to you. Now, Keith, do you have had a life that if somebody wrote it into a movie nobody would believe it? And this is a guy. Now I'm back to talking about the third person who has performed concerts all over the world from inside of your cell on death Throw.
It sounds bizarre when I hear you say it, you know, but yeah, it's been It's been a hell of a journey man to say, at least in this situation that I'm currently facing as only focus me more all trying to get as much life out of my life as I possibly can.
Yeah, I mean, despite fighting for your very life from death row, which is literally hell on Earth, your pursuit of art and life seems to have only gotten stronger. And like I just mentioned, you've put on this spoken word and jazz concert series called Freedom First. And if that wasn't enough, you also put out an album by the same name. But there's even more, you know, there's.
Books, documentaries, book clubs, and so on and so forth. I'll just wake up and try to do as much as I can with the time that I have, you know, which is what we all should be.
Going, right Yeah. I mean I don't even know a lot of people out here in the free world who are living as much as you are inside the literal living hell of Ohio Death Row. And we're going to get into all of that in more detail later on, and we're also going to be hearing from one of your attorneys, Keegan Stefan, as well. But now I just want to turn around first and start from the beginning of your life. You were born and grew up in Cleveland, right, Yeah.
I was born in nineteen sixty nine on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio, in a small little enc clave called the Village. You know that I was saying in case of village, I think the people who founded this little place took that seriously. My grandfather, Harry Lamar, brought
his own home in this little enc clave. It was made up of people who were in one form or another related and you know, during dinner time, you can walk into any number of houses and you know, people will let you sit down and eat dinner, where there was no distinction about the economic status because everybody was
pretty much on the same level. And that's where I really grew up at from a baby until I was around seven or eight, and my mother met and married a man named Larry Morris, and shortly thereafter we moved out of the village into the inner city.
Basically, I mean, the village sounds pretty amazing. It seems like an odd choice to leave. What were the circumstances.
Well, my grandmother, she was to make sure of our other family, pretty much said what went and what didn't go in our family. And my stepfather didn't like that, and so he moved so he can kind of run his own household. But he was a side or the
steff at a country club, working for meagal wages. And so that was the first time my life and I ever remember being home grey and sometimes, you know, the lights would be off, the gas would be off, and we had to heat the house with you know, keeping the oven door open and whatnot, and we weren't allowed to tell my grandparents about this. It all kind of happened between nine and twelve years old, and that is where I kind of marked the change in my life
becoming aware of the poverty. You know, you go to school to learn an arithmetic but so your peers teach you other things we couldn't afford. Polo and guest cheane and all these different things that meant so much to my peers.
So I take it you wanted to fit in. What did you do to make that happen or to try to make that happen?
I worked. I had two paper routes, cutting grass, shoveling snow, you know did all those things you know of pants might cost fifty sixty dollars. And this is before Eric Jordan came out potennis shoot. It was just out of my range as a kid trying to do it a legitimate way. And you know kids are brutal, man. You know, you show up with some knockoff Jordia's jeans and you mass well came to school. But Neckett, you know, the ridicule was severe. It's all authitary bullshit. But you don't
know that when you were a kid. And my brother, when I was saying, who was twelve, he was hanging out with all the kids, and you know he had undergone the same ridicule as I did, and had quickly opt to become a thief once I just made the decision to become a thief myself. He you know, kind of showed me how to go about stealing clothes and how to you know, remove the alarms from the jeans
and all this stuff. But then, you know, the reward of coming walking into the school building with some Jordana's jeans and a Polo shirt, The reception that I received from my peers. I mean, all of a sudden, girls who wouldn't speak to me a year ago are putting notes in my locker, and I think I got addicted to that, and so that ultimately became my life. And started hanging with a group of older kids in the neighborhood.
And these were the guys that your older brother was friends with, right.
Yeah, it was a couple of guys like legends in the neighborhood that lived in Joe Butler, Joe Bruce, Daryl Daniels. I was thirteen by then, and they were like fifteen, sixteen years old. And my older brother, Nelson what he had already been sent abated to juvenile and so I was pretty much by myself and I fell in with these guys one day and we all piled into a stolen car and we was going to drive out to
the adjacent suburb. As soon as we crossed over and to Sacred Heights, a police officers got right behind us, and we were in this high speed chase, like on eighty miles an hour, were down a residential district. And I was actually relieved when I got caught, like, thank god, you know, because this was extreme situation for me in
my life. And we went before this judge and he lined us all up, was about six of us altogether in our families, and he went down the line and he was giving guy six months for each offense that they had. And he said, Joe Bruce, this your third time in front of me eighteen months. Joe Butler, this your second time a year, you know. And he got down to me. He said, Keith Lamar said, what are you doing hanging with these bad boys? Now? You know, try to look big and you know, hang my head
and hunch my shoulders, you know. And he gave my mother and my parents to option me say, I tell you what I'm gonna do. Parents, you need to take them home and deal with them while I deal with them. And you know, stepfather told him, you deal with them, and fifteen minutes later I was sitting in the jail cell.
So given the choice, your stepfather effectively threw you away.
Yeah, because to him, my brother and I we were just two extra miles to feed.
And your mother didn't have anything to say about that.
You know, deally, that's what you would have hoped for somebody to intervene. But she she had already been broken to the point where she accepted somebody like this as her husband. You know, any man is better than no man, and as it turns out, he was. He was like a monster. He was, you know, the very abusive.
So now you're going from the boiling pot into the sizzling frying pan, so to speak. How long was your stint in Juvie?
Six months? But I was thirteen, so it felt like six years, believing or not compared the situation I lived and wasn't so bad. I had pre square meals a day. I was n a structured environment. I came out of it. I was on a on a roll in terms of my academic portion.
Of my life, and who knows, maybe you could have kept going in that direction. Had you returned to a more stable, you know, home in life.
When I when I came home, I came home, my parents had moved into a two bedroom apartment, as if my brother and I had went off through the army or something that we weren't coming back home, and so we moved up into this uninsulated attic. Was freezing cold and the winter squorching hot in the summer, and we were pretty much put on notice that we were on our own, beyond our bear necessities, that we would not
be provided for. And I was thirteen still when I came home, I think I'm gonna have to start selling marijuana.
Weed.
I bought two ounces of marijuana and I didn't look back. Man, that was the beginning of the infamy.
Yah, what about your brother?
My brother had found the means of escape. He met this girl named Paula who lives in the suburbs, and her mother took a liking to my brother and allow him to move in with them. And he was going to school in suburbs. So it's me basically by myself. Now I'm fourteen years old, I'm selling marijuana. I'm so serious about it too, because I figured this is my only way out, and I became very good at that.
I had about five or six guys working for me and everything, young guys fourteen thirteen years old, selling real I'm on the street corners and whatnot. And I came home one day and discovered that my stepfather had been up in my room and had found one of my statues of money. I bought me a safe, and not long after that, my stepfather kicked me out. I was fifteen years old and I moved into the projects. This was an apartment where we were selling drugs out of there.
And this was around eighty five eighty six, right around the time crack cocaine started trickling into the ghetto. Nobody really knew what it was, how dangerous it was.
So at the time it just seemed like an easy way to make money. The profit margins are better than they are with weed, right.
Yes, that's right, but the danger increases too. And at first everything was cope, said it. I was snorting cocaine by the time I was sixteen. I had a Mercedes Benz Cadillac, driving Porsches, BMW Rolex watches, but around a year or two, about nineteen eighty eight, was like the height of the epidemic, and all the detrimental effects of
crack cocaine really started to become clear. The communities were being decimated by this drug, and guys I grew up with were becoming dope fiends, and young women were selling their bodies, and it was just a real horrifying period to live through.
As a crack epidemic were on, the community became increasingly desperate, affecting even Keith's childhood friend, Kenyada Collins.
You know, he and I grew up together. We used to walk to school together, played basketball together. By the time nineteen eighty eight rolled around, he was, you know, hooked on a crack cocaine pretty significantly and had fell in with a group of guys called stick up kids, you know that used to go around robbing drug deal and so I became one of the targets.
And on December second, nineteen eighty eight, Keith was at the apartment that served as the base of his drug operation when Kenyata and the stick Up Kids showed up.
Now back in the back bedrooms counting money, and I heard commotion in the front. I come to the front of the door and guys were forcing their way into the apartment. You know, I had the gun in my hand. I was shot twice, myself in the legs, you know. I shot a king out of twice as he came through the door. I woke up in the hospital and I was right next to the king out of college. I heard the doctors when they pronounced him then said no,
he's not gonna he's not gonna make it. And you know, I woke up again, and I was chained to hospital big, you know. And so it was gradually that it began to dine on me the magnitude or normalcy of what had occurred. Even once I was able to walk again, I went to the county jail and I bombed out. Got an attorney.
I mean, this is not a legal opinion, but your actions in this incident sure sound like self defense and the purest sense of the word.
But I didn't have access to the old self defense now because I was selling drugs. My hands weren't playing right.
So what was your attorney's plan.
This attorney was a friend of a family, and I gave him like ten thousand cash. I gave him a Mercedes Benz and nineteen eighty three is savy cavalier. So I gave him two cars in cash to represent me, and he came to me on the evil trial with this scear tactic and told me, you know that they were going to try to put me on death row. And I was eighteen nineteen years old at the time, and since I was so ignorant out the law, I didn't know how to hold some to account, and I
played guilty. You know, he convinced me that that was in my benefit to do that, and I didn't find out. It's a letter on that he himself was strung out on cocaine at the time.
It's not ironic enough that you ended up giving the proceeds of your successful drug operation to an attorney who was one of the consumers of those same drugs, who then ended up selling you more or less down the river.
You know. The thing that I didn't know that I know now that they elevate could climb in order to entice you to take in the deal. I played guilty to murder. It really should have been mass you know, out in the state of defending myself. No four thoughts of malice or anything. When it too it's oba's manslaughter. But I topped out to murder. It gave me eighteen years of life in that and I remember to just saying,
you know, don't worry about his son. It's it's only twelve years six months to the pro boy, you know. And I was nineteen at the time. But of course he didn't tell me about the danger I was waiting into.
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We don't write people off.
They said, meet at le Lebanon, Ohio's first I lived in counter of racism that I have. You know, the in word You heard it constantly around the clock in where there is in word, And I'm talking about by staff, not just by the prisoners. And it was predominantly white guards and predominantly white prisoners down in this place. You know, Black people from Inner City were the minority, and everybody
was hopped up on these weights, the steroids. And after hearing all these war stories and young guys like me being raped, you know, I kind of fixed my mind that that wouldn't happen to me. Now, I didn't know how I would prevent that from happening to me.
Yeah, I understand that it's not uncommon for people to join a prison gang for protection.
Yeah. It was three gangs, the Black Age Disciples sending Muslims although they don't consider themselves a gang, and the Aaron Brotherhoods, three major factions that kind of control the resources, the media resources inside the prison. Since we were down in southern Ohio. The Aaron Brotherhood were being armed by the guards who worked there, some of whom were in
the Aaron Brotherhood. They had swashackles on their necks and all of this, and brotherhood they had real nice not the makeshift nine the shanks that you see on television, all kinds of things that were being brought in by the guards.
But you didn't join the Sunni Muslims or the Black Gangster Disciples, right.
Oh, you presume I wasn't in the area and brotherhood, but.
I got how rude of me? Not that I mean, I'm sure their invite got lost somehow.
I never got an invite. But the first thing I did when I came to level now, I joined the boxing team. That was, you know, one of the best things I could have done. You know, once twice a year you have a boxing match in front of the whole prison. You could show everybody what you made of and people can perform the opinion after that as to whether or not you are easy game or whatever. You know. But I got my GDD and then they rolling into
the college program. So I was on the trajectory in terms of preparing myself for this this parole.
Date and staying out of a prison gang was part of that plan, which continued after was transferred from Lebanon to Lucasville in nineteen ninety one, which was arguably a more difficult and violent situation because of a truly tragic incident involving an adult education teacher who worked at the prison.
Beverly Taylor was a name, and she was murdered by a black prisoner for nineteen ninety calls for the guy to be executed or being put forth by the community, but the guy was mentally handicapped and was deemed ineligible for the death journality, so they didn't get what they wanted, and so ultimately a new warden was appointed, a guy
they author take I think around ninety ninety one. And so after Kate instituted this thing called operations Shakedown, and he started kind of turning the grooves, tightening up on everything. You know, you have to have your shirt tucked in at all times. She got to walk on the right side of the hallway. It was more or less like a military camp down. You know. Something that happened overnight. He set up this po box. He wanted to drop the dime on somebody who wanted to become a snisch.
You just put an anonymous note in the mailbox on your way to chow and he would act on it. So it was a very contentious environment, all the various factions for being pitted against each other, and you can kind of cut the tension with it nice.
And there was one incident in particular that kind of pushed the whole thing over the edge.
They came up with this berclosis test and apparently had an alcoholic ssson called Eno that the Muslims are stringously objected to, and the warden Tate gave him also amazing, you either take the tests or we're going to make you take it. You know. They took advantage of the two days that they had been given to formulate this plan, you know, April eleventh they carried it out.
So April eleventh, nineteen ninety three was Easter Sunday and Warden Tate planned unforcibly injecting the Sunni Muslim population on Monday, April twelfth. So the Sunies devised a plan control of an entire cell block by taking advantage of the skeleton crew that worked on the holidays. When the staff of prison guards would go from around one hundred and thirty
strong down to only eighty. Now to give you a lay of the land, Lucasville Prison sprawled out in four directions like a wheel with four spokes, one spoken compass, maintenance, the hospital and dining hall. Walking from there toward the center, you'd meet up with the other three spokes. J Block to the right, Kate to the left, and L block straight ahead. Now, K and L both consisted of a long hallway with a jim at the end and eight wings to the sides, L one, L two, and so on.
Keith lived in L six. It was about three pm when Keith and the other prisoners were in the yard between K and L block when the Sunni Muslims saw their chance and struck.
Recreation was just about to end. They called over to intercomm ten minute warning for everybody to start lining up to come back inside the prison. And while we were standing in line, and a guard ran out with blood streaming down his space, and he was followed by masks and make caring the night stick and saying we're taking over, We're taking over. You know, I'll never forget it. It was so real because you immediately know, oh shit, this
is serious. You know whoever this person is with this mask, and they gonna kill him because you can't see insign you don't know that it's a whole semi Muslim organization. I didn't know That's then earned sidewalk and it was just around thirty minutes or so that took over the whole L side of the prison.
And they later barricaded themselves into L Block and held it for eleven days. But at this point Keith was still out on the yard and had no idea what was going on or what was to come.
News started to circle out that they were, you know, ramsacking the cells and everything. What was actually happened, They was going from sale to sale, accumulating food, telling people that they had to donate whatever food stuff that they had so they can administer it during the ensuing days. That reached us on the yard was that they was robbing the sales, and so I wanted to go in and secure my property. But I didn't know it was
a life of death situation. I thought it was just a situation where some guys that got a hold of some keys and non sales were being rummish through and so it was with that misinformation that I, I guess my better judgment, decided to go inside and check on my personal belongings.
And this decision to go inside L Block was how eventually Keith's name got dragged into what happened on L sex.
When I went in, I kind of immediately understood that, you know, this is something more involved than just one prisoner attacking the guard, because they were breaking windows, fire alarms was going off. I mean, it was pandemonium, and you know, I made my way to my I signed the sale block L six, and contrast to the chaos that was going on in the corridors, it was very
very quiet. You know, guards were already locked into the shower stalls and there was different prisoners inside of the seals who I later learned were hostages, but I didn't know that at the time I came in, and not really understand I ran down to my sale and there was a person inside of my cell, and so instinctively I ran up to the control panel trying to unlock my door so I can get this person out of my cell, because as far as I was serned, that confirmed,
but I already kind of figured that somebody was rifling through my things, but you know he was a hostage. I went up to the control panel and was turning the knobs randomly, you know, not really understanding how to work the panel, and opened up a few other doors inadvertently, and you know that alerted to someding Moslims who were inside the part, and they accostant me and told me, you know know on certain terms that you know this
is what's going on. You the Willers, or you get the fuck out of here, and you know, I chose to leave. I left and came back out into the yard.
Keith was ultimately accused of killing four men during his short trip inside of all block. The hostages being held on L six who, according to the state, or snitches. At this point, I want to bring in one of the attorneys representing Keith. He's an associate at Bell doc Lebine and Hoffman. Keegan Stephan. Welcome to the show. Thank
you so, Keegan. The state's narrative of what happened on that awful Easter Sunday in nineteen ninety three obviously diverges from Keith's version of events, but let's start with where they are the same.
You know, Keith was not in L six when the riot started, even by the states theory and narrative of events. Second, you know, this riot was very deliberately planned by a group of people that Keith was not a part of. And again the state concedes that, which seems like a very important point.
Right, But now the state disagrees with what we've already heard from Keith.
Yeah, so that's where their story is diverge. Keith goes in to get his belongings and leaves. That is what numerous alibi witnesses say. The state says that he goes in and then forms a death squad and executes the people that have been locked in their cells.
And this death squad was allegedly made up of Keith and four or five others who brutally four alleged snitches that were being held hostage on L six, Darryl Depina, Albert Steano, William Spetty, and Bruce Vitally. But what did they say was Keith's motivation for this?
The state says that it's effectively a bargaining chip that if he forms this death squad and executes these alleged snitches, then he can get out of l six, he can leave. You know, people who staged the uprising have said that Keith would not have had that power, that they wouldn't have let that happen, that this wouldn't have been a bargaining chip to let people leave. So it's inconsistent with what was going on in the prison, and it's inconsistent
with what Keith was doing. It's inconsistent with numerous alibi witnesses. It's only consistent with the stories of the people who testified against Keith, who were obviously highly motivated to testify in that manner.
And later on we'll get into the testimonies of those receiving either leniency, shorter sentences, immunity, a transfer, or most of the above. But first let's get back to this story from Keith's perspective, from when he returned to the yard and the prison was in full crisis and chaos mode.
I mean, helicopters were flying up above over the prison. And then gradually the National Guards showed up, the Ohio State Patrol showed up, and they took up stands around outside the perimeter fence. Had they you know, machine guns out and riot here, the riot helmets and everything, and so we're thinking this is the amount of time before they regained order, and an hour go by, two hours to go by, and then the body started coming out.
You know, a group of mass inmates would come out of the building, waved and what it does like to be ad a machete and it was surreal. Then they had the body on the yard ten fifteen minutes to go by, and someone for an administration medica or whatever come and retreew the body and take it back through the k side area thirty minutes to go by. Another body,
then another body the body. Then they started getting dark outside, started getting cold, and then eventually got started setting bombs fires, you know, out from the wood from the boxing rings. And you got to understand, you know, the boxing rink was my thanks Agarently this was the place where I went to to kind of you know, make peace with
all the bullshit that I've been throughing my life. You know, I'm tearing a waxing ring up, trying to get full so I can start a fire because it's chilly April for the silly at nighttime. So if we're standing around the fires and everything and all, why this is happening the highway controls and National Guards is standing there watching by. Now I don't know, five or six bodies have been
brought out to the yard, most of them dead. The people whose job it is to stop me from being one of those dead bodies are standing on the outside of the fence. And it's inaveod that you take in the notion that shit one of these bodies could be mine. Around three o'clock in the morning, how a waste state patrol came out gun strong and ordered all of us
to line up to indicase had gymnasium. Once we got inside of there, they stripped all of us naked, took all our clothes and made us sit down in the middle over the gymnasium floor, about four hundred people or so. And we stayed there like that and in total start nakedness four hours the same life. Eventually they started taking this random groups of teen and escorting us to these singleman's sales, and they put tennked individuals in these cells
the size of a closet. My recollection is right, I'm in K two thirty six or nine other megan individuals.
And in that cell the fifth murder happened. And the state says that Keith's ordered at the murder.
You know.
Keith says that there was a confrontation and that he had nothing to do with.
It when they finally came around and gave us jumpsuits, and that long after that threw sandwiches in the sale, which is the first time Minihim has that eating since the whole old deal started. There was like a feeding frenzy. Some guys took more than his share. And Dennis Weaver, he was one of the older prisoners in the cell, and he, you know, held onto his dignity to his
credit and was hues the candra joined afraid. He made the mistake of saying something about it to this guy, William Bowland, guy named Sabbat and Sebas and Thenners got into altercation. Sebas put him in a choke hold, and these two other prisoners held his feet down, you know,
because he was struggling trying to free himself. And when the authorities came to remove Dinners from the cell and tried to question us, Eye, along with most of the guys in the celle, said that we were asleep, which was our way saying that we didn't want to be involved, because that's one of the things you learned in prison to avoid violence by minding your own busines this and we don't know at the time that why not saying anything. We allowed the guy who actually committed the murder to
shift the blane. You know, he said he was forced to kill Dennis by me and several other individuals.
You know, it's a pretty wild leap to go from someone not telling you the complete truth, from someone saying that they were asleep, to saying that they ordered a murder.
It's also obviously hard or impossible to order a murder when you don't have a weapon or the cloud of a prison gang behind you. But that's what the state and its cooperators ended up saying Keith did. Once the riot thus settled and many rounds of interviews began, But that didn't start until Wednesday, April twenty first, and Dennis Weaver's body had only joined the others from L Block on the second day of the Lucasville riot April twelfth,
nineteen ninety three. At this point, the instigators of the riot were barricaded into L Block, armed with the prison's hostage negotiation handbook and eight hostages making demands while anticipating the authority's moves. On Wednesday, April fourteenth, a sheet was hung from a window threatening the death of a hostage
if their demands were not met. Among those demands were food, water, electricity, access to the news media, a stipulation regarding any future medical testing, the hiring of more blackguards, the relaxation of day to day restrictions, and various quality of life improvements, as well as the removal of Arthur Tate. Now. Early Thursday morning, April fifteenth, the body of one of the hostages, forty year old prison guard Robert ful Landingham, was produced
from L Block. He had been strangled to death. The negotiations continued, a few hostages were released, and finally, on Wednesday, April twenty first, a list of twenty one demands were met to solidify the surrender of L Block. These included that news media and religious leaders would witness the surrender, that there would be no retaliation on any inmate or group of inmates, and that discipline or criminal proceedings would
be carried out fairly and impartially. In the end, ten men had died, earl Elder Franklin Farrell, Bruce Harris, David Summers, Darryl de Pino, Bruce Vittali, Albert Seiano, William Sveetti, Dennis Weaver, and of course the prison guard Robert for Landingham.
And so the guard's murder is really drove the prosecution. The riot was desided over awesomeately by the Black Against Disciples, the Sonny Muslims in the Brotherhood. The goal was to put their leadership on death row. Well, Aaron Brother here is represented on death row. The Sunny Muslims I represented here on death row. The only people who are not represented here on death row in some Black Anster Disciples.
Guess where there they were at now walk in the street because they testified against the leadership of these other games. And I'm the fill in for the Black Angst Disciples. Never been in the game, but I had a prior record for murder. I was inside of the L six pod when I came in for that brief time. I wasn't wearing a mask. People identified me, said Keith and
Marbs inside the pot. They pulled my record recently when we did for your request, we found out that the prosecutor had written his name on my flow like this is significant. This is somebody who we can use I was dropped out of school in fifth grade, shoplifting when I was thirteen, fourteen years old, seven weed, and these are the things that the state tried to use the celeris to get me to cop out of crimes that didn't admit.
But the state had to come up with witnesses to corroborate this narrative.
It's remarkable the number of interviews that took place and the number of times the same incarcerated people were interviewed, and how much their stories changed. Most of them did not identify Keith in their early interviews and even affirmatively said that Keith was not involved. And then at a certain point in that arc of giving statements, they all started identifying Keith. Something shifted there and he became a very easy scapegoat. He was already facing a sentence that
maxed out at life. Everybody sort of thought he would take the plea But as everyone who's talked to Keith knows, here a remarkable individual of the utmost principles, and he was not going to plead guilty to a bunch of murders. He did not commit.
You know, one of the things that you don't see on law and order and those different police shows on televisions that you know it's real and formal environment. They call you by your first name, and you know, like your old buddies like Keith Lamo, we would pass that. We're going an age to come out to this and a you mean yourself a favor, Otherwise I'm going to put your black ass on death row, cop out to murder and running time concurrent with the time you're already
doing to be like you're getting off Scott free. I said, but I'm innocent, though I'm not getting off Scott free when you're talking about prolonger mustay in prison beyond my parole day and I haven't done anything.
You've just heard about how a riot and a rush to feed a community's sense of vengeance put Keith Lamar in a position where his past was leveraged against him in service of those who chose to escape their crimes
by coopera with the state. Listen to Part two, where we'll explore who those individuals were, what they stood to gain by sending Keith to death row, and the sham trial that put him there, as well as where we're at in his fight for justice and his very life find and listen to the second half of this very important episode available now if you're an Apple Plus subscriber, or you can listen next week in the free feed.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team Connor Hall, Andy Chelsea, and Lyla Robinson, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Awardis, and Jeff Cliburn. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Vlahm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one