#411 Jason Flom with John Jerome White

John Jerome White received compensation for his wrongful conviction in the state of Georgia, but only after having to convince a majority of the state legislature that he deserved that compensation. At the twenty twenty three Innocance Network Conference, we spoke with John and other Georgia ex honoreies like Clarence Harrison, who also had to go through the same arduous process, and they're all in the fight to bring about change

We've got toil states in the United States that don't have a compensation law. In Georgia one of them, Man, I've been strong with advocate they get some type of compensation law in play.

That way, if I'm the guy that's coming out, it.

Seems like she would be common knowledge that you know they did it wrong.

They should rectify it.

I mean, they can never rectify it because they can't give you your years of your life back. But how can you say to some buddy, oops, we locked you up for half of your life, three quarters of your life, whatever it is, but we got nothing for you when you come home.

It's amazing how simpathety they are. It's really amazing, you know.

They they seem to be fighting tooths in nails to not let this happen.

Let's not forget that guys like yourself spend it all that time in prison.

You don't get socials.

You don't qualify for any of the benefits that anybody else does just from being free.

We don't got no Social Security benefit if we weren't given the opportunity.

To build oodle benefits.

So and when we apply for them, they tell us you don't have nothing.

Built up to receive these farms, you know.

But they seem to want to keep their eye closed to the fact that, you know, their wrongs created a problem for the guy that coming out. We have plans, that's the reasons getting together and going to these capitals in these states that don't have these conversation all and lobby them for ourself and inform these people that is their responsibility to address these issues. And you know, yup in their process of uscain in a meaningful liestyle back in society.

When it comes to trying to make some kind of amends for these horrendous injustices. I'm just not sure how anyone could be against it. So when this legislation comes up for a vote, maybe keeping John's story fresh in their minds and all of our minds will help. Here's our original coverage right now. In the early morning hours of August eleventh, nineteen seventy nine, a seventy four year old woman was asleep in her den when she awoke to find.

A black man had broken in through.

The window by the light of her television. He brutalized and raped her for over an hour. After stealing seventy dollars, The assailant pulled the telephone court out of the wall and fled through the back door. When the victim finally was able to contact the police, she was taken to the hospital, but in her bloodied state, they decided.

Against performing a rape kit.

However, other biological evidence was collected from the scene. The victim helped that Georgia Bureau of Investigation develop a composite sketchet immediately. One of the investigators said that it looked like a young man named John Jerome White, who was a person of interest in a string of burglaries. They arrested John and collected physical samples from him as well

Then again at a live lineup.

And after all that, how could anyone deny her gut wrench in courtroom identification? So they didn't. This is rawful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction today. We have a unique story, but not rare, and it's just as tragic every time something like this happen. Happens when a black man is misidentified by a white victim. So there's this double victimization that happens. And it was much easier for these things to happen before the dawn of DNA testing. Not that

Thank you.

You're very welcome. So, John, as we like to do here, you know, it's sort of almost a tradition. Now, we'd like to spend some time getting to know you a bit. I think our audience get to know you a bit. So can you tell us a little bit about what your life was like prior to all this insanity?

Uh?

Well, I'm from the Smile what we'd like to call it the railroad town, Uh, in Manchester, Georgia. Uh, that's in South Georgia. I'm the only boy's six girls. I was raised by my grandmother. I'd love to do things for my grandmother, you know, cut wood and working in gardens and things of that nature. You know, growed up and got a chance to experience you know, what we

I was going in the wrong direction.

It was going totally against the way I was brought up, you know, how it all happened to me, you know, and the way things happened. I felt like it regards way of putting that putting that roadblock in my path.

Well, that sounds like one way of taking response ability for the actual wrong that you've admitted to doing in the past. And I suppose thinking of your wrongful conviction like that is a way to make peace with it. But I mean, sometimes on this show we speak with folks that are pulled completely out of obscurity to be tried for a crime that had absolutely nothing to do with But in your case, and this doesn't make it right by any means, but you were known entity the

Yeah, I couldn't believe it.

You know, I always been the type that you know, I respect the women you know, I was raised by my grandmother, you know, all alive that you know, that's all I've been around, you know, women, And it was kind of hard to believe that, you know, I would be in charge with, you know, the whole type of crime.

Nevertheless, the burglaries had you on the radar of the local police when this terrible crime occurred. And it was in the early morning hours of August eleventh, nineteen seventy nine, when a man broke into the Manchester, Georgia home of a seventy four year old woman.

Well, what we know is that she was in the din. She was asleep on her couch, and she had her sheets on the couch, and she did have the light on in the kitchen, and she had her television on, so that was the only line available to her. She also wore prescription glasses and she didn't have her glasses on and someone broke in through a window in the din. He attacked her, He raped her, He brutalized her for

He also stole seventy dollars in cash from her purse. Now she eventually called the cops and was taken to the hospital. But do I have this right that no rape kit was collected.

No rape kit was collected. They said because she was so damaged during the rape, The rape was so brutal, and there was just so much blood, they made a determination that they couldn't get any viable evidence. And you know, you've got to remember back then, they were only able to do blood typing. So I think that their thought process may have been, there's so much of her blood, you know, his blood type is going to just get

And since there was no rape kit, there's no seminal evidence. But there was other blood and biological evidence at the scene, which we'll get into in a bit. But in nineteen seventy nine, as Amy mentioned, all we had was sorology, which had its own limitations. DNA testing, of course, was not available yet, and I can't imagine collecting a rape kit would have been an easy thing to do with this poor seventy four year old woman in the state that she was in. But the fact that she did

Well, I should point out that this is such a small town that their local police didn't do the investigation. They brought in the state police, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. And when they were collecting evidence, they collected the bed sheet that was on the couch, and the bed sheet had hairs. Now, I will say that at trial they only thought there was one hair. It turned out there

Now, yeah, definitely not. We did a whole episode, by the way of Wrongful Conviction Junk Science that Josh Duben hosted about hair microscopy, and we're going to link to it in the episode bio. But to think that someone could compare hairs from a suspect and a crime scene just by looking and match them to the exclusion, by the way of all other potential suspects, every anybody else, all other people on the whole planet, is absolutely bonkers. Now,

Yes, so apparently when the man came in through the window, he cut himself on his hand and there was literally like a triangular piece of his palm that was also recovered from a scene.

And it's unclear whether or not they did seriological testing on that either. But we're going to come back to the piece of skin in a bit. But at this point they moved on to relying on cross racial identification. Now, study after study has shown, these are studies of which they used a control group that has not seen the crime, that that control group tends to be more accurate than victims or witnesses. So get this. Cross racial identification has

So they do a composite sketch of her attacker that she saw in the dark, the only light from the kitchen and the television while she's being traumatized. Right, So she does do a composite sketch, and there is a GBI agent who is part of the investigation. He says, hey, that looks a lot like John White. And then everything, of course, is often running at that point.

So John, this wasn't a big town, so I'm sure word traveled fast at that point, had you heard about what had happened?

We heard, you know, this particular lady had got raped. You know, I didn't think much of it. I really didn't, you know. And when all this occurred, they was suspect me for doing those mount of burgers around town, and come to find out that they were looking for me. So I decided to just up and leave Manchester. You know, I was at the age of nineteen then, and I went to a little small town and the Corps Georgia, where I had some people, you know, some cousins staying.

So this crime happened on August eleventh, and they finally caught up with you into Core, Georgia and drove you back to Meriweather County around September twenty first.

On the ride back, they kept on asking me questions about this here particular crime involved in the seventy something year old lady and I had a venera disease they called goungria, and you know, being a little small addict like I was, you know, I didn't answer the question directly.

You know.

When they kept on asking me, I said, well, if I did it, she got Goungarria. They took that and I like to say they ran with it. When they got me back to the county, JA. They took a house and apples finger Prince loves an Apple blood from me, and they took my driving license and I'm a Social Security car and everything, and you know, they locked me up.

So they took those samples in order to run tests on all the physical evidence that they had tried to match the hair. Like we already mentioned, they probably did some seriological testing with the patcherskin in your blood. We don't know that for sure, but that would seem like it would have been the least thing they could have done. And had any of it matched you, they would have been shouting it from the rooftops. Now they already had

My grandma came to get me out the next day. Apple, you know, had brought me back to Milweather County. That's when she was in on that I would be in charge with, you know, Ray Rob reggravated so and murgery.

Curiously, she got that news before they had even taken your driver's license to be viewed by the victim in an alleged photo array.

I don't know if they took my driving license or they took many pictures. They say they took a photo array to her apartment, but I'm assuming they took my driver license.

We don't know much about it because, of course, you know, they didn't record a lot of information. They certainly didn't record the photo array, and I don't believe we ever found that photo array did with John. I don't think we've ever seen those photos, so we don't know who else was in the photo and how well they matched, either the composite or John.

Now, maybe this composite sketch looked enough like you that your likeness was already imprinted in her mind, So photo array or not, she had been primed to pick you with that come positive in mind. And it's also possible that they only brought along your driver's license rather than a number of other photos that favored your features. We don't know, but now you had been chosen from this alleged photo array, and things started going down how fast?

A few you know, weeks after they did all this, here they performed the line up. It was just us on the room and me standing about ten feet from her, along with a few other guys. And I couldn't believe, you know, it would tick with it because they brought another person up there of a place I had robbed, and she didn't pick me out, but they bringed it old

Again, we're not sure what happened at that alleged photo lineup, as no documentation has ever been found, But I want our audience to note that I witnessed misidentification is a contributing factor in sixty nine percent of all known convictions, and in this case, we have a cross racial mis identification. So, as I mentioned earlier, in study after study, cross racial identifications are actually less accurate than guessing. But what about the robbery victim also white and that would have been

They gave me a quarter pointed attorney. But my mom and them, you know, they raised the money and they had you know, Sampa Bishop.

And he's now a US representative, right.

He was a part of the legislature back you know, when I was going to trial. They took me to trial. You know, they picked a jury which was mainly all white. They presented the evidence. The finger pressed they said they collected at the scene of the crime. They said all of them were sponged to the point that they couldn't get no kind of identification off of them. They say the blood test came back negative. I don't know what they had tested. I don't know they tested the skin.

Which really this technician was testifying that the hair was a black person's and you were also black, which is just not that probative. And what was it that they tested your blood against.

I don't really remember what it was they tested with the blood, I have to be honest with you. But also, you know we talked about the piece of skin, right that there was the cut, and when they picked John up five weeks later, he had a cut on his palm, and so that was another.

Piece, right. But the item that they tested for blood, which the skin, was more than likely the item it excluded him. But I suppose none of this matters when you have the word of a seventy year old white lady who was a victim of a brutal assault.

They actually to peak me out in court why she was on a stand.

The problem with eyewitness identification is it's unreliable, but it's incredibly powerful in court. You have a now seventy five year old woman who is so traumatized the er didn't even want to do an examination of her. Get on the stand and say that's the man that did that to me. You know, the jury at that point is done right if there's a few little things that they can put together, like oh, that hair might be the same or oh when he had a cut too, that was enough.

I mean, how do you combat that? Even pointing out that she wore glasses, that it was dark in there. It's debatable whether that helps or hurts your client. When you have an emotionally charged moment like that, how are you going to try to contradict her the victim?

Right?

John?

At that point, did you have any hope that the jury might actually still get this right?

You know, me knowing that I didn't do it, I didn't have no doubt in my mind that I was going on. I was that young and I was so inexperienced that I thought I was going home.

Can you take us back to that awful moment when they read the verdict.

That it broke down and started crying.

You know, I will convicted of rape, robbery, aggravated the salt and two council burgery.

And they asked.

Me did I have anything to say? I just said I didn't do it. When they took me back to the hole and say, well, I know, I broke down and started crying. I was corresponding with a cousin.

Of my mind. You know.

He told me, you know, you know, God got his reasons for everything, you know what I'm saying. And he said it was a reason behind it, you know for me, you know, it was a reason behind and I thought, I just thought that reason behind it, you know, I just accepted it at God's will, and I moved forward.

I couldn't go through that their time, all that time that.

They gave me feeling some type of way, and I just had to learn how to how to survive inside the contention. I found what they call it jail house attorney, and we tried, you know, by buying Ahabor Corpus against my lawyer that he didn't represent me right. We had requested, you know, from a transcript and all that everything that pertained into my trial. But they, you know, the time of mayor, wealla didn't send me anything but a transfer. They said they didn't have nothing else to send me.

So at that time, it was much easier to be granted parole even with a sentence like yours.

Which was life plus sixty years.

And usually, let's face it, they're not going to grant you parole without an admission of guilt and a show of remorse, even if you didn't commit the crime. That that's that's a detail gets washed away. But it appears that they may have actually believed in your innocence.

Yeah, after I want to say, eleven years, I came up a parole. They told me, in order to make parole that I would have to do some type of sex offlinal program. And I told the lady that, you know, I didn't do it. They muster white. Unless you'd get in some sex offlinal program, you ain't gonna get out of jail. So they sent me to Metro up here in Atlanta, George, where they had the programs there.

And my mamma came.

Up and she says, go on, get in this program if it gonna help you get out, even you had to tell a lie. And they told me to cry till you for getting in the safe Defending program, which you had to describe what to play during the crime. And so I told him, Man, you know I can't do that. I say, I can't imagine what took play doing this stair crime. You know, I couldn't make that lie up. So I basically had just just gave it

Survey then on my knee.

So one of the inmates that was coming in from work helping to notice a piece of paper that had all the transfers on and everything, and he told me that said, John, you weren't going to Augusta Medical Hospital, say you going to constantly on Haldway House. And it totally shocked me that they're all finna get out of Parrison.

That the par board cut you a brake or was it the warden points of strings? I don't know, And no one told you.

Nobody told them.

Okay, that's weird. So you got paroled, I guess. And now you were starting out on a tough road to reacclimate into society. There are a lot of obstacles to employment and getting IDs and things like that, and those are some of the many reasons why recidivism rates can be as high as they are in some places. Not to mention that you turned to burglary in the past, and so where and how did you start that journey?

When I first got out, I was up in Atlanta in the halfway house. I parode out of there to room and house. I got tired of the room and house, and I moved to moved to manchouse.

Did you move back in with your mom? Your grandma?

My mom?

My grandma had passed while I was incarcerated.

Sorry to hear that, But luckily you still had some family, right Were your sisters around now?

Most of them had, they had married, they moved on. It was most of just me and my mom and my dad was still living at the time, and my niece.

You know, John got the opportunity to come out on parole, but he came out as a sex offender, right, who hires a sex offender? You know, it was a struggle when he was out on parole.

So what did you do for work? And I understand you eventually went back to prison.

When I was dying back down here, I was doing odds and then work. And one day I was at McDonald's and seeing this guy and he pulled his wallet out and he had a lot of money in it, and me and another guy follow him and Robin, the other guy got caught up some kind of way, and he told you know what that appened. And I turned myself in again and I revoked my parole and saw me back.

I talked with the DA.

He gave me ten years ran into what I already had, and that he wouldn't have no kind of negative recommendation towards if I was to come up with a role again.

Well, I can't say a lot of people are going to have a ton of sympathy for you on that situation. But it's like you said earlier about how you made peace with your wrongful conviction, you kind of felt deserving of it because of the wrong that you had done. And I want to point out that in nabbing the wrong guy for that ultra violent rape and robber all those years ago, this did a really terrible disservice the entire community, not least of which to the victim, because

The Georgia nisis Project started in two thousand one. Obviously we got cases coming to us fairly quickly. But as we were working on the cases, I started thinking, well, what about all those people who don't know that we could look at the cases. What about those people who've not heard that we exist? So in two thousand and four, first of all, we tried to go through the prison hierarchy and try to get notices posted in prison, and

I didn't I really didn't even know what to write, but I wrote it won a week or so late today, Aim, and I'm gonna responding.

We looked at his evidence and the hair evidence. They only really talked about one hair that they compared, and so we were under the impression from the crime lab report and from the testimony that there was only the one hair. But most importantly, we were trying to find that piece of flesh. In fact, we called it the piece of flesh case, right, because it was such an unusual piece of evidence. You know, this was a straight up If we could find this evidence, we would know

Right.

We just could not find it. We couldn't find it at the GBI, we couldn't find it anywhere, and so we just just kept on. It's hard people tell you that the evidence doesn't exist.

Or they just haven't looked at all because either they didn't care or they were instructed to ignore such requestions.

Well, there might be that. So finally we went in person to the clerk's office, and what they ended up finding was not the piece of flesh, but there were several of their hairs from the crime scene. Now, let me just say that hair are they're good evidence.

If they're good evidence, right, if the hairs are pulled out from the root, then a DNA profile can be developed, right, if they.

Can give us information. But there's also I mean, there could be other reasons hairs were there. There was another Georgia case that involved hairs, and the theory was that she did her wash at the laundromat and she might have picked up some random hairs there, which, of course, these are pubic hairs, right, Why are you picking up pubic hairs at the laundry. So anyway, but we were we were concerned, you know, if these hairs didn't match John, that helped us, but it might not walk him out

Yeah, I'm looking at the photo right now and we're gonna link to it from the bio. I mean, oh my god, Like John is in the number three spot of course because he was the target. And James Parham sure enough, is right there in number five right.

Oh, actually you know Edie institution now was there? Me and it were roommates that I am a a one.

What Yeah, Oh my god, I'm rarely at a loss for words, but that's insane.

It was a strange thing.

He helped through it at my whole a journey because he was in the same room up with me, and I ended up with his Bible. When I got out, it had the name on it. I gave it back to it sister to get him. But yeah, Amy came down and told me about I was getting out. And when they did come to get me out, they came back. They rushed back there because they didn't want no media down at the institution. They rushed me in, wanted to

So, Amy, what were the machinations that you had to go through to finish the job and get him home?

Well, it was so quick. So you know, we get all the information, but so does the district attorney. And so of course when the district's attorney, and at that time it was Pete Scandalacus, who is now the head of the Prosecuting Attorney's Council here in Georgia, and he saw what we saw. And of course I'm on the phone with him on the way back from the and I'm like, Pete, they got a codus match. What are

So John was hum So John, what was your first meal? Where did you go? What did you what did you do?

It was like a blur. It was like a blur.

I can't remember too much of the only thing I can remember looking back, when we passed the Prills and going out, I think I went to sleep. I think I went to sleep because somebody were happening. We went by some my sister house, and then we went straight to Atlanta for press conferences and sayings of that nature. And I had me some fride grade tomatoes, had some some ochre. I've had been warnings. And I remember that

So James Parham played guilty who since to twenty years in prison on this rape. Right, and then in two thousand and nine, the Georgia legislature authorized the payment of five hundred thousand dollars in compensation to you. Now, no amount of money would ever be enough, and that's not even I mean, that's that number is tiny compared to what it should be.

Yeah, well, you know, Georgia don't have a compensation law. And I got five hundred thousand dollars a conversation with prescriptions that I gotta maintain some type of employment. I got submit to drug tests and every so often I can't catch another fella there though, I'll lose my conversation. I believe they put those stipulations in it because they don't want to get it, they don't want to give me the money, and that it was done for me to fail. You know, we asked for a million and something,

Yeah, you know, it's just crazy to me that anybody could look at someone in your shoes and not have an instinct to immediately want to help, but rather their first instinct is I'm gonna fight this. I'm gonna fight to not write this wrong, to keep this wrong as wrong as it could be. Is there anything our audience can do for you.

You know, right now?

Give them this opportunity to say what I'm about to say, I never you know, go vote. You know what I'm saying, Get these unsimpensated people that that's a part of our legislators wave up there so we can't get some of the bill pass that would that a and us getting you know, the support we need not only me, but other people that's in then you know, the similar situations yea, you know, I you know, I'm gonna look out for me,

It change to be removed.

I hope our audience really takes those words to heart. And what about you, amy, any call to action for our audience?

Well, I think folks can obviously follow the Georgia Innocence Project, particularly about the legislation, but there is also an Exignery Fund, So if folks wanted to donate to the Georgia Edocence Project, they could donate and specify that it's for the Exignery fun That would be great.

Okay, So we'll have those action steps linked in the bio, which brings us to my favorite part of the show. It's called, of course, closing arguments. And this is the part of the show where I thank you both for being here and just sharing this unbelievable, horrible story. And with that, I'm going to kick back in my chair, turn my microphone off, leave my headphones on, and close my eyes and just listen for anything else you want to share with me and our amazing audience.

I would highly recommend people google the live lineup photo in John's case. When you get a chance to look at the live lineup, you're going to see how different James Parham looked from everybody else in that lineup. And it just goes to show how incredibly difficult it is to deal with eyewitness identification. I mean, the actual perpetrator was there live in front of her and she still picked the wrong man. So I think that we all need to be very cautious because as we said earlier.

I'm there, I'm thankful. I'm thank buy, you know.

I love and her determination to start to answer the project. My experience being incost rated, it's like PGSD soldiers. I don't have too much trust for nobody. I'm pretty much a loner. I don't you know.

I don't deal with a whole lot of people. It's hard.

It's hard, and I just want the government to step up to the plate and establish our social security benefits, our medical benefits and make these things are possible so we can you know, at least live, you know, when we do get sick or something like that, that we can go see a doctor. We constantly being denied either

That's what I want.

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cleibern, and Kevin Wardis, with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good.

On all three platforms.

You can also follow me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one