On March twenty ninth, nineteen ninety four, ten year old Rodney Collins was fatally struck by a stray bullet on the South side of Chicago. The investigation began with two alleged gang members, whose witness statements led to three more young men, Marcus Wiggins, as well as brothers Reggie Henderson and Sean Tyler. Wiggetts had previously been wanted for murder in nineteen ninety one, but Sean Tyler had come forward to clear him in that case, thwarting the prosecution once again.
In nineteen ninety four, Marcus had an airtight alibi, which left just Sean and Reggie, who were arrested and eventually signed statements admitting to their alleged roles in the shootout. The Juries heard those statements in court, but they also heard allegations that the statements were the product of police torture, not only from Sean, Reggie and their co defendants, but
also from the alleged gang members who had signed witness statements. Still, the jury chose to believe the police, after all, they weren't the ones in some street game with escort to settle. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful Conviction. And I say that in a melancholy tone because the story you're about to hear, well, it might make you want to quit the human race. On the other hand,
it also was a story of hope. You know, I can't help thinking before I even introduce our distinguished guest today that Mick Jagger just celebrated his eightieth birthday. And it was him who said, when all the cops are criminals and all the sinners saints, and there's some real heroism in this story, but it ain't coming from the guys in blue. It's coming from the guys who are about to hear from on this show, Sean Tyler and
Reginald Henderson, who were wrongfully convicted. There were two of just hundreds of black men who were wrongfully convicted in this era in Chicago, when police torture was the norm. So thank you for being here today. I wrong for conviction, Thank you forever.
Thank you for having us Jackson.
And with them to tell this incredible true story. Was an attorney at the Exoneration Project in Illinois, Carl Leonard.
It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
So this happened to you when Sean was just seventeen and Reggie you were eighteen. And although you have different last names, you guys are full brothers, right.
Absolutely blood brother the same mother, same father.
My father's name is Reginald Lamar Henderson Senior. I'm junior my brother Ian. That was my mother's maiden name, which is Tyler.
Okay, that explains it. Let's start with you, Reginald. Growing up in Chicago, what was your childhood like before this terrible series of events.
I was born to last sixteenth, the summer of nineteen seventy five. I'd say childhood was like you know, any other childhood. Growing up in the poverish communities of Chicago. Things we've subjected to was normal, you know, coming up, our family was a beautiful family. I love to use the term we was raised by villains because our neighbors was like aunts and uncles, and you know, everybody knew everybody.
We've always had good people around us. You know, it wasn't perfect, you know, as good as it was. Our parents did happened to get nabbed by the crack era. But the love around us, you know, we've never fell short on that. My granny and my aunts you know, everybody had us, even when my mom and dad couldn't have us.
That village.
He speak of aunts and uncles. They filed in the hole. So you never felt like you was lost. So as bad as it was, I couldn't even tell you it was bad.
So it was difficult, but you were surrounded by love, and that ultimately is the most important thing for a child growing up. Absolutely, Carl, I would have turned to you paint the picture of the crisis in law enforcement in the city of Chicago at this time. Of course, we've done an episode on the Midnight Crew on the Wrong for Conviction, False Confession Show, and we've interviewed Marcus Wiggins, whose name is going to be coming up prominently throughout this story.
This time there was, as you mentioned, the Midnight Crew. These are officers who were trained by or supervised by Jumberge, notorious Chicago police detective who employed straight up torture to try to get people to confess to crimes, whether they committed them or not just close cases. This is torture that would involve chaining people to radiators to burn them. They would electro shock people their hands or their genitals.
They would take the plastic dust cover that they used to cover the typewriters and strangle people with that.
They called it bagging, and they were carrying out mock executions. I mean stuff that people were outraged when they saw in Abu Grab. I think would be shocked to learn that this was happening right under everybody's noses in the city of Chicago not that long ago.
To children, to teenagers, and the officers that were involved in shot and Reggie's case were no strangers to those tactics. There's a recent opinion from one of the Illinois Pellet courts about one of the officers involved in this case, said that he was engaged in what they called a criminal street gang under the direction of John Burge.
During his tenure as a Cook County detective from nineteen seventy two, through his promotion to detective commander in nineteen eighty one, and finally to his termination in nineteen ninety three, John Burge developed his notorious Midnight Crew, torturing almost exclusively young black men and boys, suspects and witnesses alike into signing false statements to close an untold number of cases, and the terror at the hands of the police continued
well after he was gone. The many statements they squeezed out of people were remarkably similar, so much so that judges and prosecutors must have seen a pattern. Eventually, this criminal behavior was brought to light, but not before Sean and Reggie had their lives turned upside down. And to give their story context, we've got to talk about another boy from their neighborhood, Marcus Wiggins, whose first run in
with the Midnight Crew. He began on September twenty fifth, nineteen ninety one, when a sixteen year old kid named Alfredo Hernandez was gunned down in the street.
And later that night, officers from Area three, one of the police areas, supervised by John Birch, they arrest several people, including Marcus Wiggins, who's thirteen at the time. Wiggins himself was arrested by Detective O'Brien, who you'll hear more about. They bring Wiggins in and they use the torture techniques that we've been describing.
Detectives James O'Brien and Kenneth Boujeau punched thirteen year old Marcus repeatedly in the chest, hit him with their flashlights, and electrocuted him until he eventually said whatever they wanted him to say. But in spite of his coerced false confession, Sean was able to save Marcus.
Sean actually witnessed the shooting of mister Hernandez knew that the confession was false, and he spoke to wiggins defense attorney, a public defender named Julie Hall, and explained to her what he saw.
You know, basically saying that I didn't see Marcus, you know the guys that they grabbed, that I didn't see them that night.
And little did you know that coming forward with the truth would put you right in the crosshairs of the notorious midnight crill.
That was my introduction to it. Let's just say that I'm a kid. You know, it was scary when they threatened to do something to me. I was coming out the house and I didn't know who they were. They pulled up and you know, they asked me, you know, my name, and I told him my name and behind that was a threat. You know, My mom had to send me out of town after that threat.
For Sewan's safety, Evie Tyler sent him to Wisconsin until the pre trial hearing.
I never knew why my mother took him and sent away. She never disclosed that to me or my other younger siblings, but I just knew he had left. To be honest, I was kind of peed off because he it is I got to go to school and he's somewhere having the summer vacation. And it wasn't an til years later that I found out it's about some guys follow him in chasing him and all.
I never knew none of that.
And in response to that, the public defender in the Wiggins case, Miss Hall got Judge Straehorn, the Kirk County judge overseeing the Wiggins case, to enter a protective order which said that these specific officers involved in the Wiggins case were not allowed to interact with, speak to interrogate question Sean Tyler at all period, and that nobody from the Chicago Police Department should talk to Seawan either without permission from the court.
It is our understanding that as a result of seeking the protective order, that Miss Hall was also the victim of threats from these same officers that she continues to fear them to this day now. When Shawn returned from Wisconsin to testify at Marcus's pre trial hearing, it became clear that Marcus had been coerced into a false confession, which was then barred from trial evidence. Without it, the case was dismissed.
Shawn helped prove that the confession that they tortured out of this child was false. It was really the first time that the public was exposed to these tactics that we've been talking about.
Then, in nineteen ninety three, Marcus's mother, Carolyn Wiggans, sued the City of Chicago, arguing that the torture caused post traumatic stress disorder, as evidenced by Marcus's stutter that continues to this very day. Other kids and even some of these dirtbag cops began taunting him, calling him stutters.
To see him in interviews trying to express itself. It's hard to watch because it takes me back to everything we went through.
This lawsuit also came on the heels of another one naming John Burge, which led to his termination from Cook County PD in nineteen ninety three. Unfortunately, the Wigan suit settled for only ninety five thousand dollars, while Burge's cohorts remained on the force to carry on his legacy. Of torture.
Marcus Wiggins's case was a huge embarrassment to the Chicago Police Department, and while Marcus Wiggins suing the police department, while there's still a protective order in place to protect Sean from these officers, they found an opportunity to get revenged by framing him and Marcus originally for this crime.
And the crime in question happened around five pm on March twenty ninth, nineteen ninety four, when a ten year old boy named Rodney Collins was fatally shot while riding his bike near the intersection of fifty first Street and Winchester Avenue on the South side of Chicago. The same detectives that had tortured Marcus Wiggins, O'Brien and Boudreau began assembling a narrative about crossfire between two rival gangs, the Blackstones and the Gangster Disciples.
If you believe the police version of events, it started with a couple of anonymous tips, and who knows that these tips ever even happened, but they say maybe the Gangster Disciples, maybe they were involved. And then there's another anonymous tip that says it was Twan and Yogi. So the police arrested. Antoine Ward, who was known as Twan Antwine, tells the police that he doesn't know anything about this crime, doesn't know what happened. He's beaten by the police, he's threatened.
He's left in an interrogation room for twenty four hours. He wasn't taken to the bathroom. He had to urinate on the floor at one point. And after a couple days of this, he finally gives a statement that he provided a gun to somebody named Carl Brannigan, and.
Carl Brannigan was allegedly affiliated with the Gangster Disciples. Now, what about.
Yogi is a nickname for someone named Kenneth McGraw. And just like Twan, he's beaten, and eventually he agrees to give a statement where he gives three nicknames, Droopy, Stutter, and Bullwinkle. He identifies a photo of Marcus Wiggins as Stutter, and he identifies a photo of Reggie as Bullwinkle. For whatever reason, he's never asked to identify any photos or anything or otherwise explain who Droopy is.
Now, Sean, was that your nickname?
Even at seven years old, I had this exact same face, So you know the face has always been big and hanging, you know, hints the name droopy, you know, like the dog.
But with this protective order in place, they went after Marcus and Reggie first. Now was Bullwinkle your nickname?
So here's the thing. Man. As a child, I was always called Moose. With Moose came the Bullwinkle and Rocky show.
Everybody told me I looked like which I didn't find funny because as a kid, I had big lips. I think they were like, no fucking Bullwinkle. So it was something that some people found funny and I didn't find funny. So excuse my French, but you've seen Bullwinkle, so I don't think I looked like that.
But nevertheless, that's where it came from.
So they got what they needed from Yogi aka Kenath McGrath, and on March thirtieth, nineteen eighty four, they snatched up eighteen year old Reggie.
They was relentless in the things that they did.
Like Carl said, the exact same thing that you know happened to Twyn in a dog room. Now they able to use the bathroom even to this day. It's traumatizing.
They left Reggie handcuffed to a wall. Alone for twenty four hours with no access to a toilet. The following day, detectives Foley and Hollerin demanded details of Shawn and Reggie's involvement. After repeated denials, one of them grabbed Reggie by the throat, saying, quote, we know you're lying and you're going to get fifty fucking years from murder end quote. Then they delivered blows to his chest.
I can't recall specifically who it was, the guy folly Man, you know, his tactics again, like, I'm trying my best not the gey emotional about it while reliving it, because I'm seeing it as I speak about it.
Later on, Reggie was put into a live lineup and was not identified, but was then brought to what was called the Mission Room, where he was forced to sign a statement in front of Assistant State's Attorney Stephen Kleczynski. The statement was never read aloud to Reggie, who importantly at the time was functionally illiterate.
Yeah, it was something that I didn't write.
I think anybody would do, you know, what they needed to do to get out of situation like that.
This statement named Marcus Wiggins as well as said Reggie had handed a gun to his little brother Sean before the shootout. Now, the police were emboldened to ignore Seawn's protective.
Order and they go to his house. They leave a card. His mom told him, do the right thing. Talk to the police, tell them what you know.
So I did call the number on the car and they walked me into Area one. They put me in this room, handcuffed me to the ball. That was the introduction and the ending was me being rushed out of the same police station that I walked into out the back door to an emergency room for throwing up blood after signing the false confession.
This episode is sponsored by marsh mccleannan, the world's lead being professional services firm in the areas of risk, strategy and people. It's legal and compliance department provides pro bono legal assistance and other support to underrepresentative communities and individuals.
Being a big brother, I feel I had to do what I had to do to protect my siblings.
It's no that I couldn't protect them. It was like the weak seeing world. And here we are man thirty years later.
And remember, at this time, Sean is a kid. He's being he's tortured, but He's also told that the police broke his big brother. In his mind, if they can break my big brother, what chance do I stand. They get this false confession from Sean, like Sean says he's throwing out blood. He's taken to the emergency room. All
of this is documented. The police then continue to talk to other witnesses, evidently under the impression that these false confessions aren't enough, possibly because they're not substantiated by any physical evidence.
Before Shawn was rushed to the hospital, a witness named Andrea Murray was called in to view a lineup and allegedly identified Sean, as well as another guy named Michael Taylor, who also after his own torture session, had signed a statement saying that he was the one who had accidentally shot Rodney Collins. So now they had the alleged shooter
and accomplished supported by an alleged eyewitness. But the statements from Sean, Michael, Reggie, Kenneth McGraw, Antoine Ward were riddled with glaring inconsistencies and obvious contradictions.
So they had to go back and try to revise some of these statements, like Reggie's statement.
Reggie allegedly handed Sean a gun, but in Shawn's statement it was Carl Brannigan. Also, Reggie and McGraw's statements were written before detectives knew that Marcus Wiggins was away at school in Wisconsin at the time of the shooting. So now both McGraw and Reggie had signed statements containing the exact same line.
So they have Reggie changed that to say, actually, Wiggins wasn't there. I was with this guy Travis Ashby, who come to find out, also couldn't have been involved. So they changed the statement again to say that it was with Andrew Ganaway.
Oh, and Ganaway's nickname was also Drew By. Now, ultimately five young men were charged in the murder of Rodney Collins, Sean Reggie, Michael Taylor, Andrew Ganaway, and Antoine Ward. Curiously, Carl Brannigan, who represented a contradiction between Shawn and Reggie's statements, he was never charged. Andrew Ganaway pleaded guilty for a thirty eight year sentence, not exactly a deal, and perhaps
he was actual droopy. Nevertheless, Sean went to trial alongside Michael Taylor in September nineteen ninety five.
My attorney at the time was a Frank Medea, and I think the prosecutor was Matthew Coughlin.
Yeah.
The judge was Henry R. Simmons, a former assistant States Attorney who decades later was named in several civil suits as a co conspirator of the Midnight Crew, where during his tenure as an assistant State's attorney he actually took handwritten notes during the false confessions of torture victims. So this guy Simmons was no stranger to the language of the false statements being read in his courtroom for Sewn and Michael. What else did the state present?
They presented evidence that there had been this sort of gang conflict that sort of led up to these shots being fired that hit the ten year old boy. They presented a couple of eyewitnesses from the scene, kids who were out there with the victim, who described sort of
what happened. But the really interesting thing is nobody who actually witnessed the shooting said that it was Sean for that they had Andrea Murray, she identified Sean and also Michael Taylor as someone that she saw running through the alley behind her house, which was in the general vicinity of where the shooting happened. It turns out he had
received some benefits from the police or the state. They paid for her to move, They provided money for a security deposit and rent prior to her testimony.
And it will surprise exactly no one that this incentivized. Witness later recanted, which we'll get into in further detail later on. Now. The defense called it alibi witness Donald Jones, who testified that he and Sean had played video games that afternoon before going to the mall. Sean said the same, as well as detailed what happened in the interrogation room. His cousin Teresa Bonner, and his mother ev Tyler also testified to seeing the signs of physical abuse on Sean
after his interrogation. Then the state added insult to injury by calling the doctor who had treated Sean at the hospital. Doctor Bruce Tizes, said that Seawan had not mentioned being abused.
I didn't see that coming, you know, him denying that he was told what was going on and everything. You know, I explained to him for the reason as to why I said I was vomiting blue.
Unfortunately, the doctor was an effective rebuttal witness, and then remarkably Sean's attorney failed to present any evidence about the motives of the Midnight Crew.
The defense did not present any evidence about Marcus Wiggins and the protective order, so that really important part of the story. The jury never did get to hear Sean.
Did you hold out any hope that the jury was gonna actually finally see the truth and get this right?
I did. I never looked at it from the side of how deep it really was. You know that cops had testified, who's intertwine with his crooked state's attorneys, who's hooked up with a judge who shouldn't have never set on the bench. I'm blind sided by believing that as a kid that right gun outdo wrong, and to have
it go the opposite way was breathtaking, you know. And to hear them come back and say guilty took the breath out of me because I'm hearing them while looking at my mother watching her flip out, and my cousins and my brother. I'm here in my family scream out. I'm hearing the family of the kids. They're cheering, and this brings about the altercation between family and family, and I'm here and this says I'm being rushed to the back by the sheriffs. How was I know the whole
setup was rig to take me down? Because as a kid, I should have shut my damn mouth as a kid, I should have minded my damn business. As a kid, I should have ignored television ads and America with you know, teach your kid to do the right thing, raise your child the right way, and only for you to turn around and say, because you did everything we said, take this fifty eight years.
The alleged shooter, Michael Taylor got sixty years, and his alleged accomplished Sean got fifty eight, a discrepancy that was later corrected to fifty years for Sean cold Comfort considering his actual innocence of nineteen ninety six. The family experienced their second tragic loss when Reggie went to trial alongside Antoine Ward. Reggie's attorney was Leo Fox, and again Matthew Coglan prosecuted in front of Henry R. Simmons, and again
the jury heard the false statements. Then the state called Kenneth McGraw, but instead of identifying Reggie from the stand as he allegedly had done from a photo, he testified about the torture that led to his own false statement to rebut the allegations from McGraw, Reggie and Antoine, the state called the actual criminals the perpetrators of the torture.
They had these cricket detectives whose up their land and the state's attorneys. They gave their rendition of what they felt took place.
Detective O'Brien denied that Reggie was even in the station on the day he had been picked up March thirtieth, nineteen ninety four. Then Detective Hallerin denied any abuse in the mission room or that Detective Foli had even been there, and he was joined by an assistant state's attorney named Virginia Brigaine, who claimed that she was present on March
thirty first and that no abuse took place. And it appears that the jury gave them all the benefit of the doubt over Reggie, who also took the stand that day.
I was doing man from the beginning, sadly to say man, but my mother she had to sit and watch. That got so intense with the aggression of the state's attorney and trying to get me to respond. Matthew Cocklem even came behind the counter and jumped in my face of saying how he was going to prove that I was a gang banger and looking for a response, and I didn't respond, but my mother did. It was at that
point that they removed her from the court room. I don't think we were ever able to say what transpired because of the dynamics we were in the story of the fixed fight and who would listen back then, the jury wasn't able to come to the greatest conclusion without the history of these guys.
And you know you've already seen what had happened to your brother, So did you have any hope at all that the jury would finally see the light and get this right?
Gave me hope. It was a juror. It was a Latino juror, and he was staring at me doing trial. The guy shook his head like, man, I guess to say, you're doing good. And when they came from deliberating, this guy couldn't look at me no more. And I was trying to get his eye contact and the man literally turned his head.
Man.
That was kind of like how known I was found guilty. I just hated to see my mother go through it again. They escorted her out because she ran to the thing screaming to the jurors like like, no, this is my segment, Like no, y'all got it wrong.
It's the second one. So my auntie grabbed her and they escorted her out. You know what's crazy is that the bailiffs. They know it's wrong, Miss Roberts. Then this was nothing Latino bailiffs. I'll never forget Miss Roberts. They knew they was wrong. They said, I knew you too, two guys, was going wrong.
When my mother told me to do the right thing in nineteen ninety one, and then when y'all came looking for me in the Rodney Collins case and said we needed to talk to him and left a card. Clearly, you presented yourself as someone who was nice and it was gonna be okay when you left the card because she told me to go to the police station. You
understand that. So to be a mother who two times called herself doing the right thing what America tell her to do, see something, say something, help out, she did that tried to lead me to do the same thing,
and each time y'all took advantage of her. So to be in prison for something you didn't do to be wrongfully convicted, to call home and find out that she's had a stroke, and the things that led to the stroke was to worry, and because you called and home constantly to check on your mother, and people are telling you things that you don't want to hear.
Literally and from prison, how she's going crazy, damn hugging trees and shit and losing two boys at the same time. The depth of the trauma, man, is undisputable.
Man, can't nobody tell me that the weight of all of this, that this situation was responsible for not just her two strokes, but eventually the heart attack that she suffered. It'll never be okay, Jason, And I'm seeing the therapist right now, and I can say that priordly, but it'll never be okay because what I've seen from seventeen to forty two I shouldn't have seen. I shouldn't have been placed an adults for something I didn't do during twenty
five years. I shouldn't have been subjected to all the things that incarceration does. But you did so for a seventeen year old kid.
I think we always kept the faith that was instilled inis as children. Man whose core values is what got us through him through his twenty five years and me through my twenty six years and nine months.
There was many people impacted by this.
I left the world with a five month old child and to come home with a damn that twenty eight year old child and three grant children, Like, how do you accept.
That all that was taken from Shawn and Reggie's family and countless other families by the Midnight Crew and their enablers in the State's attorney's office and on the bench. It's unfucking believable and it's unforgivable. Eventually, John Burde served a few years in prison for perjury in a civil suit, but again cold comfort. Meanwhile, none of his accomplices ever lost their freedom.
So let's get to.
How Sean and Reggie regained theirs. Starting with Sean, so he appealed his conviction. The conviction was a firm in June of nineteen ninety eight when the post conviction petition was filed in October of nineteen ninety eight. That post conviction petition was pending continuously up and down from the appellate courts is nineteen ninety eight, so he files his own pro se post conviction petition. His allegations were that Marcus Wiggins public defender Julie Hall would be available to
testify about what happened in the Marcus Wiggins case. Clearly an effective assistance of his trial council, who should have raised the Texas motivation to target him. So when did the petition start to gain traction?
In two thousand and eight, the exoneration project ends up filing an amendment to it. I'd say there were sort of four big pieces of evidence of actual innocence. We had new evidence of these officers patterned in practice of misconduct. We had additional evidence from alibi witnesses. We had new evidence related to the fact that Sean had been vomiting blood and that was caused by the beating that he received. And we had Andrea Murray's recantation. In her affidavit, Andrea
Murray said that we heard these gunshots. She called nine one one. She saw two boys run through the alley near her house, and she felt that she didn't get a good enough look at the two boys to really be of any assistance. She felt that the police intimidated her and threatened her, and that she had no choice
but to go to the police station. They wanted her to come see a lineup, and the first thing they do is show her photos of Sean Tyler and Michael Taylor and said that they needed her to pick these two out of the lineup.
Jesus Christ.
So they blew right past suggestion to full blown fabrication.
She's then taken to the lineup. She said that she remembered Sean's face from the photo and so she was able to pick him out, and she says the detective said something to her like, good job. She at first wasn't able to pick out Michael Taylor. She thought that two of the guys in the lineup looked similar to the photo she had been shown, but she wasn't sure.
So she says that she basically guessed and said it's the person in the number two position in the lineup, and detective says something on the lines that are you sure, and that led her to say, actually, it's the person in number one, and the detective said, good job.
And so the only evidence that did not arise from torture and brutality had now finally been exposed.
And also she disclosed that she'd been paid in exchange for her testimony that was new evidence for us.
So how did this recantation play out in appellate court?
When it came time to have an evidentiary hearing, the state went and spoke to her. She ultimately sat for a deposition at which she was not fully consistent with what she said in her affidavit to US. I don't know what her motivations were for changing her story, but she did. All the claims were denied. We appealed, the appellate court reversed and sent it back for another evidentiary hearing that happened in twenty fifteen.
Meanwhile, during that stretch, the Illinois General Assembly formed the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission in two thousand and nine to investigate the Midnight Crew, exposing a dense history of tortured false confessions and witness statements, and the findings of this commission eventually played a role in this case.
Following the remand from the appellate court in twenty fifteen, the State's Attorney's office undertook a really lengthy investigation attempted to get all sorts of files from other cases, what we would call the pattern cases. The other individuals which I've accused the same officers of similar misconduct. They did a bunch of work researching those. That process took an
extremely long time. In the meantime, Reginald filed his post conviction petition in twenty nineteen, which then sort of followed the same path as Sean's delegations of misconduct by the same officers, ineffective assistance of counsel for failing to investigate an alibi.
And we'll get to that in a minute. But Reggie, did I read this right? Your initial appeal that was filed in two thousand, it was just lost, like gone.
It was crazy to me.
I went to looking for it, knew it was filed, and somehow it disappeared and I couldn't tell you how, where, when, But it disappeared after they lost my petition in two thousand and then I found in two thousand and seven. Again, I said, for eleven years almost with continuous and continuous and continuous by two thoy nineteen, and once I seen the petitioned the I'm like, wow, he he was targeted, Like I'm like what I never knew? And DN exceed
the history of it. The depth of it was our Judge Henry L. Simmons being attached to these detectives, and my attorneys took it from there.
And that was Stephen Hall and Jennifer bon Jean. But even with the evidence that was available in two thousand and eight, coupled with the momentum from the Torture Commission, it's insane how long it all took.
Talking about the delays a little bit, it reminded me of another case that involves some of the same detectives, another Exoneration Project case George Anderson. He was recently exonerated. The Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission had looked at the case, and there was a concurring opinion from one of the Appellate Court justices, Justice Hyman, who addressed sort of this issue and said Anderson was twenty eight years old in nineteen ninety one. Anderson, now sixty years old, has waited
over three decades for this day. For an injustice like that should have provoked an urgent reaction from the beginning. Instead, for far too many of these victims of police brutality, delay has immeasurably deprived them of their liberty, compounded their suffering impeded their healing. An injustice never ceases to be an injustice until justice prevails.
Amen to that. And your cases were no different because it wasn't a judicial process but parole that saw Sean release after twenty five years on Beverly fifteenth, twenty nineteen, and Reggie after twenty six years and nine months on April sixteenth, twenty twenty.
Thirty days after COVID struck.
Unreal, but at least you got to reunite with your family after all these years.
Well, the greatest part about it was that I was able to see my mother gam.
Yeah, you shared video of that moment.
It's beautiful.
Probably like a year after coming home. My birthday is thirteen. Mother's day was May fourteenth, and was getting a call at three in the morning. She was telling me she couldn't breathe. I rushed over to her. She clapsed, Moms, and I minished the CEPR tour. She ended up passing. The crazy part about it is when I looked up my grandchildren sitting on and there looking at me right after that, Man, it was just it was horrific, man, because every thirty to forty days it was from my
mother to my younger cousin. Literally, the people who was accepting our collect calls is the people that passed away. And the day we were exonerated September seventeenth, twenty twenty one, no older cousin.
She always been like my sister. She died an hour later.
Once we left the courthouse, she died an hour later.
She is the same cousin who came to see me when they tortured me and testified that my face was swollen. On the day of the exoneration, it was over with. We was on the stairs and they planned to put a little get together that night. She hugs us, congratulations, I feilda, go get my hair done and I see all the night. And hour later they called a cessation had auto attacked.
And so how much tragedy can one family handle? Even the day they were exonerated was overshadowed. Nonetheless, it had finally come to pass. Their convictions were vacated and the state chose not to pursue anything further. Yet they still have not granted their certificates of actual innocence, which would
make them eligible for state compensation. They're suing civilly, but neither of them have been waiting around for that they're doing public speaking, They've written books, and Sean has a clothing line that he began working on in prison called New Vision.
New Vision is spelled in U V I S E A N. I'm in the process of the building a whale page, but you can see most of it on the Instagram or the New Vision underscore and you can DM me. I'm also an author of six books I would love assistance own. They're completed now they're putting them in. The form is up to the people that got that job titled, so look me up.
So we'll have your Instagram linked in the bio so folks can check out the clothing and reach out for public speaking or to help with publishing these books and your website. Now, Reggie, I understand you do spoken word and have a book of poems called Emancipated Thoughts, and people can also reach out to you for public speaking.
Right, oh yeah, you can find me on Instagram at the Ripple Effect Tha Ripple Effects. Outside of spoken Word, I have a show on app amp where you can look me up The Ripple Effect.
Again.
I love to speak on all topics, whether it be prison reform, vinus prevention, cognitive behavior, therapy, traumatization. So again I'm just, you know, just trying to get out there and do the right thing by speaking about the wrongdoings of the world.
Yeah, we'll have both of your handles linked in the bio. And now that brings us to my favorite part of the show, closing arguments, which works like this. I'm first of all gonna thank you guys for courageously sharing this incredible and terrifying, harrowing and sickening story. And now I'm going to kick back and by chair, turn my microphone off, leave my headphones on, close my eyes, and just listen for any final thoughts you want to share with us.
I think my sort of closing thoughts are just to thank people for listening to this. I think a lot of times people ask what can we do? How can we help? And I never know, but I think you're doing it by listening to this podcast or reading about
Sean and Reggie's story. I think at some point you're going to be called for jury duty, or your friends are or your spouse's or something like that, or you're going to be called upon to vote for prosecutor a judge or something like that, and you have done a lot to educate yourself that people falsely confess, sometimes the police get the wrong guy, sometimes people lie in court.
And you know that by educating yourself about Sean and Reggie's story and listening to them, and I think that helps, and talking dear friends and family about this sort of thing helps. So I just try to thank the program for doing this story and thank everyone for listening to it.
I equally want to thank you, guys, because you know, without you guys, you know a lot of us who have been through this, the struggle on the platform like this, you know a lot of us don't get the opportunity to you know. And I know a lot of guys who are still incarcerated, who have been wrongfully convicted, who are torture survivors, who should equally be here. But the
system is not swift. It's not fast, you know. And guys shouldn't have to, like he said, with George Anderson, be sixty before they received something they should have been received,
you know. So I thank you guys for just you know, allowing us to have a voice, man, because we do look to inspire, uplift and motivate people when people hit a story, want them to say to theyself that it really ain't that bad for them, Because if your situation ain't mind, if you wasn't tortured as a teen, if you wasn't kidnapped from your mother, if you wasn't, you know, forced to serve twenty five years, you know, if that's not your story and it ain't close to that, then
tiny your boots up, dust yourself all say to yourself that it ain't that bad, because it really can be worse. But I thank you, man, and I thank the listeners for allowing us the opportunity to share our story with you guys out there, because again, those of us who are seeking justice, we can't get it without the assistance of everybody. Is it okay if Reggie closed one of his spoken word pieces.
Yeah, it's totally up to him.
Put me on funks, all right, no pressure, man, Go ahead, Big broke in with this poem called growing Things.
It's been three years since I've been back on the streets, and things that was once misunderstood it's now seen is mentally deep. I was an adolescent who once questioned the wrongs and rights of life. So where's the curiosity that produced its rebellious plight. Society said, blame on my mother, But in actuality she had done that best, from the nurturing of her breast to the appropriate way I was taught to dress and address.
So I guessed it was.
Just a young man's quest for self respect, and in retrospect there's a few things I regret, but nevertheless it was all a part of life's test. So many say, take the bit of what to sweep, Yet things has never been sweet for me. Raised in a single parent home, mine left the room always thinking, damn, what was really wrong that me and my brother deserve to be left alone?
Through it all, Mom stood strong, but the psychological alteration was done, and as time went on it all started to show, from her late night hanging out to the abuse of drugs and alcohol. So with the decrease of love now being shown at home, I had to the streets, where the snakes in the rest.
Room started hustling stealing. So the void feeling that the career was given the streets was now fulfilling.
Damn, how was our tribulations before the world's eyes. Family members criticized, never once considering the fact that my mother's public aid could no longer provide, and their heavy attempt to retrieve a nine to five ended with silent christ from one didn't have what she and her children survived.
So action.
Are we the pitting me of poverty stricken lives or just a misfortune through the world's eyes? These are my growing things.
Thank you, Thank you for listening to Wrong for 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 Any, Chelsea, Lyla Robinson, and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Awardis, and Jeff Cleiber. 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 Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one