#439 Jason Flom with Glynn Simmons

On the night of December thirtieth, nineteen seventy four, two armed men entered a liquor store on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. They ordered one clerk to empty the cash register and fatally shot the other one in the head. As the surviving clerk nervously fumbled the cash, one of the assailants shot eighteen year old Belinda Brown in the head as well, but miraculously the girl survived, and she described her shooters as black men over six feet tall

There everyone in Oklahoma's whare.

Of that case.

But the crime in Glenn's story took place twenty five years earlier, way back in nineteen seventy four.

When Glenn's case happened, Edmunds was a sundown community sundown, meaning if you're black, you better get out before sundown and most preferably not even show up there. It has changed dramatically since then into fourth largest, one of the wealthiest cities in Oklahoma now.

But back in seventy four when the crime in question happened, Glenn hadn't even arrived in this sundown town yet. He was still living and was actually in Harvey, Louisiana, where he had been born back in nineteen fifty three.

One year before Brown Versus Education desegregation of the schools. However, schools wasn't really desegregated into nineteen sixty eight. In a town where I grew up at, you know, Harvard Luais down It's on the west bank of the Mississippi River, New Orleans.

Grew up in a very.

Large family, nine lords and four girls, went to all black school in the neighborhood. Pretty good childhood, not a whole bunch of drama now.

The crime in question occurred during that sleepy week between Christmas and New Year's in nineteen seventy four. Glenn had just turned twenty one years old, and his aunt, Dorothy, who lived Edmond, Oklahoma, was back in Harvey for the holidays.

Anti Dart did she would come for Christmas In New Year's we had this tradition what we called the Turkey Bowl, and every New Year's Eve we would go to this high school and neighborhood guys would gather around and pick teams to play ball.

And we did it that year and thought.

I was a little sharp, little pool player at the time, so I hung out in the pool hall a lot, and we had some pool tournaments that weekend also. And this one particular time Anti Dart did she came, I decided to go back with her jo Oklahoma, which was in January nineteen seventy five.

I wasn't intending to stay. I was just coming to visit. Well.

I found me a job within a few days, and I liked the job, so I decided to steal a little while longer.

However, before Glenn even arrived in Edmond, Oklahoma, a robbery and murder had occurred at a liquor store. On December thirtieth, nineteen seventy four.

Around nine thirty pm. Two perpetrators come into the Edmund liquor store and hold it up demand the cash One of the cashiers hands it over and they shoot the other one in the head, who falls dead. As the cashier that was still alive was handing over the cash and eighteen year old young lady walks in and as soon as she walks past the two perpetrators, they shoot her in the back of the head. They grab the cash and run off.

The eighteen year old customer, Belinda Brown, ended up surviving, while thirty year old Carolyn Sue Rogers died at the scene. The surviving cashier was named Norma Hankins.

Her initial statement to the police was, I was busy looking at that gun. I don't know that I'll be able to give a good accurate description. That is what she testified to at the preliminary hearing, and that's what she testified to at the jury trial.

As the police canvassed the area, a group of boys allegedly saw the getaway, but didn't have anything useful for the police until many weeks later. Meanwhile, the eighteen year old customer, Belinda Brown, who had been shot in the head, was in critical condition.

She was in the hospital for about a week. She had surgery, the bullet was removed and she been it up surviving. Not but a day or two after she got out of the hospital, she was interviewed by the police and from the police report quote unquote, if she thought about it anymore, it would get all jumbled up in her mind.

From what we understand, she wanted to give them any information she had as soon as possible. She described the assailants as two black men, a little over six feet tall and two hundred pounds. She was shown several lineups and initially only made partial identifications, like maybe the eyes of someone she viewed were similar to the assailants, but no concrete ideas. At this point, the investigation began to struggle.

When I got to Oklahoma, this Ed Meligosto murder had been going unsolved, and every day there was an article about the inadequacies of the police department, how they couldn't sell of the crime, and it was coming to a date, and it was on the whole lot of pressure to solve those crimes.

And I just helped to walk into it, you know, right into it.

During what was supposed to be just an extended visit with his aunt, Glynn attended a small get together at a relative's home on the night of February third into the fourth, when another robbery homicide occurred in Oklahoma City, and by the fifth police had two suspects in custody Leonard and Delbert Patterson, who had been at the same party as Glenn.

They was at the port that night and they left him with did something. They come back half an hour later kept all parted. So the next day when they get arrested on the murder, the accent was they gave oulibi that they was at the port and who all was at the party, and they started arresting people as material witnesses and stuff like that.

In order to hold some of these material witnesses, the police, with no probable cause to do so, charged some of the people from the party as suspects in random open cases.

They arrested me on the Bogies robbery case, which was dismissed right there on. The woman who got robbed came to the station and said, no, I ain't never seen that guy before.

Yeah, it's something They threw on him to make sure they could hold him.

At some point during this morass where the police had all these young folks from the party still in custody, Leonard and Delbert Patterson, both of whom were about six to two and a little over two hundred pounds, They eventually confessed to the February robbery homicide in Oklahoma City, but the Edmund liquor store robbery homicide in December remained an open case.

I take this out if you look at the police report. On February the fifth, February to six officers show over at the Oklahoma Police Department. Contacted Officer Garrett at the Edmund Police Department and he told him, he said, we got two suspects in custody fit the description of the Edmund liquor store murder, and you need to come down

Day to say I picked the sam to I picked the day before.

Belinda Brown was very confident in her choice of position six in the first lineup, but only became more confident in her second choice the following day. And on February eighth, nineteen seventy five, both Glenn Simmons and another young man from the party, Don Roberts, were charged with capital murder. With no bail available, they awaited trial from jail and Glenn hired private counsel.

He was a friend of my aunt's, Henry Floyd.

I think I gave him like twenty two hundred dollars, which was a lot of money at that time. He didn't do nothing either, found no pre trial motions or nothing in.

The case, and perhaps he felt confident considering the glaring difference between Glenn and Don smaller statures and the over six feet tall, two hundred pounds assailants, a discrepancy that seemed to strike a chord with the Linda Brown at the preliminary hearing.

When she comes to preliminary three or four weeks later, I'm sitting there next to Don Robbins in the prison uniform. It written all over face. I'm confused, she confused all the way. Every time she.

Look at me and I'm looking at her. You got the wrong one, you know, That's what I'm saying, you know.

And she gets on the stand and she does identify them, but it's not a real confident ID.

She said, well, he looked at taller, then he looked at heavier, but he had a beard.

He didn't have a beard.

And she gets impeached.

Not only was the defense attacking the credibility of the ID, but then, in trusting the lineup report he had received from police, Oklahoma County Assistant Prosecutor Bob Mildfeld implied that perhaps, after all that she'd been through, maybe Belinda Brown had just gotten a little confused about who she had id'd.

When they kept trying to make it look like she was crazy. She was injured when she got shot in the head. She couldn't be sure.

She got real defined was eighteen years old, and they're trying to tell it. Were you crazy? You don't know?

And she knew she had made suits. She got the right one so she got real defined. She put up back up, and wouldn't never back down until this day.

So the adversity only served to solidify the ID in Belinda Brown's mind. Meanwhile, one of the teenage boys who were interviewed back in December of seventy four was now willing to say that he recognized Don Roberts from a car that had passed by the liquor store that night, and Glenn and Don were taking the trial in June of seventy five, where the defense strategy focused on impeaching Belinda Brown, who is now even more confident in her ID.

And it had us to stand next to each other. She was five eight, I was five eighting.

She said, well, you lucky taller than him, and she said, well, he might have had on stack your shoes. She was defined because she knows she picked this and a winter. Well I could have got to this defense statement. Oh Wilders dreams and mob fails Wilder's dream.

Meanwhile, six alibi witnesses made the trip from Harvey, Louisiana to testify it by the pool tournament on December thirtieth and the Turkey Bowl the following day, which made it impossible for Glenn to have been an edmund to commit this crime. No, thanks to his attorney, Henry Floyd, though.

No, we put that together, My family put that together.

What he did was so he went to the court and solicited money for travel expenses and lodgsing and stuff, and put that money in his pocket and the people had to find their own way to get here.

Six of them witness. He didn't even call them. All he said would be redundant, so he didn't even bring all the witness up.

But the police never did investigate none of the alibi witness and stuff that I gave him. You gotta report say anything with the Dallas and looked at Don's He had gave alibi that he was in Dallas, and the detectives went to Dallas and checked out the alibi and come back inconclusively. They couldn't prove that he was in there, but they decided to say they couldn't prove that he was.

You know, with Glenn and Don's alibi defenses, coupled with the impeaching evidence against Belinda Brown, reasonable doubt had certainly been raised and there was at least some hope for a quittal.

I thought I was going to walk up out of there. No, I couldn't see no conviction. What's nothing to convict me on.

It?

Then?

Last two and a half days. Just send us a debt in the elected chair. Yeah, I don't have to say any more about that. You know, some wounds you let stay closed.

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Six seventy five day.

What they call a mandatory dead penoty if they find you guilty of one two three elements of murder, like you kill the police, or he kills about it being the commission of a feling, he kills about it at a certain age, or something like that. That he was automatically given the dead penet and the jury had no discretion and to rendering up the punishment because it was set by legislative back it was automatic dead penalty.

That's one of the reason why it was abolish.

In June of nineteen seventy two, the Supreme Court ruled in Furman versus Georgia that the death penalty violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments under certain circumstances, placing a four year moratorium on executions until more challenges would bring about guidance on the matter.

US Supreme Court stayed the death penalty across the country, saying, the death penalties being administered arbitrarily and capriciously, and so Oklahoma and several other states response to that was, Okay, you don't think that we administered the death penalty evenly and equally, great, Well, we're just going to administer it to everyone that is convicted of first degree murder. And

In nineteen seventy six, the Supreme Court confirmed that capital punishment was still legal in the United states, but under limited circumstances, so the interim statutes in states like Oklahoma were nullified, and in their place came the aggravating and mitigating processes that we see used today, in which juries

I stayed in for forty eight years because my innocence was my burden, so it was more of a luxury to be guilty. Guys into guilty please for all kinds of atrocious crimes. But they go through the parole board and they tell them I feel regret and I feel remorse, I take responsibility for my crime, and they give them a parole, let them go six to eighteen months, they'd be back in again.

They let them go again.

But I went up for thirty something years saying that I'm innocent and it was denied because I didn't show remorse. You know, I take responsibility, notwithstanding the fact that the victim's sister wrote them a letter, sent them a video deposition telling them, you know, I don't think mister Simmons killed my sister. I think my sister and mister Simmons victims of the same crime.

In addition to the victim's sister, the prosecuting attorney, Bob Mildfeldt, also came forward.

Like ninety three first letter he wrote, telling him that he think I was innocent and I didn't get a fair trial. I took it to the parole Board and they accused me of forging the letter and denied me. So at that time it was going up annually for the row. So the next year I had myfl to write the parole board itself, and he wrote him and told him, he said, this is one case.

I'm sure a.

Week later that the verdict would have been different because of all the unasked questions we had. You know, he described the description that didn't fit me in all of this. It's in letters that he wrote to the parole board.

The exact quote is very powerful when talking about Belinda Brown's description of the assailant at around six foot two hundred pounds quote, a physical description greatly different from Glenn's stature at the time. The jury on that day at that time found him guilty. However, quite candidly, it was one of the few cases I've been involved in that the verdict a week later could easily have been different

In the nineties, Glenn strikes up a relationship with a woman on the outside and they get married, and she dies about six months after her and Glenn get married.

My wife left me some money in an insurance policy, and so I took the money and I had a private investigator. I gave him a list of what I wanted, but he came back with ten times more than I had on the list.

His name is Mike Noble, and Mike ended up talking the Edmund City Attorney into turning over the entire file from Glenn's case from seventy four to seventy five.

If you remember, Belinda Brown seemed confused at the preliminary hearing about whether Glenn and Don were the men she had identified in the lineup. His private investigator turned up the original lineup that seemed to have made Bob mildfelt so confident in that idea trial.

From what we can tell, the only thing the prosecution had was the actual lineup that had the names of the people, you know, spot one, spot two through seven, and it has the date February seventh and eighth, and so it's not a report, it's just a lineup. And then there are stars above Glenn and Dawn's names.

That's it. Then in the file from the Edmund City Attorney, that lineup sheet was accompanied by the report of who she actually chose.

And so in the report it says Blenda Brown subject number six confidently and she's not so sure about subject number blank. And then it talks about her coming back the next day again affirmatively id in subject number six and then saying yes, I am now more confident that subject number and the report has a blank. Is the other suspect the actual lineup that had the spot one, spot two through Glenn was two, Don Roberts was four, Delbert Patterson was six, Leonard Patterson was seven.

She consistently said, I picked number six.

You see, she never picked Linson from a line up all the way through and all the narratives is attacking the witness. Well, my thing is give the witness to benefit it out. Because she told them whose shadow. She told them exactly who. She didn't picked nobody else. She never did pick me.

She picked Delbert Patterson. And then the report says suspect number and it has a blank. So we're not actually sure who the other person was that she picked, because this report that was not disclosed and discovered twenty years later is blank on who it is now, and there's a lot of other surrounding evidence to make us believe that it was Leonard Patterson. Leonard and Delbert were out

And as we mentioned, Delbert and Leonard Patterson matched Belinda Brown's description of her assailants.

Six two hundred pounds. And where this would lead to clearly is police conspiracy cover up. There's no way I could have got to that defense table without the police hiding the reports because witness told the mousada.

And it appears that Bob Mildfeld and everyone else, including Belinda Brown, were just led to believe that she had chosen Glenn Simmons and Don Roberts by the lineup sheet that had been marked with stars. It's entirely possible that Bob Mildfeld found out about the treachery after trial, and perhaps that's what compelled him to write to the parole board on Glenn's behalf.

I asked him about it, what happened a week later, and I concluded that he didn't never have the reports, and after week after the conviction, I.

Checked this out.

He was an upcoming prosecuting attorney, just successfully prosecuted two first degree murder case in the high profile murder case that was all dissolved. His career is supposed to be in skyrocketing at the very least. But when I ran into him years later, he was a public defendant for the Juvenile Division and he stayed there for years and years until he retired.

Perhaps he made that career choice considering what he was led to do to not only Glennon Donn, but also the victims, Carol and Sue Rodgers and Belinda Brown.

You had the victim pick who it was, Delbert and Leonard Patterson, who were already in custody for doing the exact same shit that you're looking for these two suspects on, and then you hide that report and you pin it on two other guys. Now the big question is why. My speculation is we got those two black guys, let's get a couple others.

And this was done with a crime that carried an automatic death sentence.

There's a name for that attempted murder. Nobody didn't want to talk about it because it's real explosive, but it happened to me, and I'm going to talk about it. Not only was it attempted murder, it's excessive to murder because you assist the perpetrators in getting away after she told you it was. It wasn't just no mischaracter justice or a misidentification, and that was deliberate, conscious, and deliberate.

It wasn't no mistake.

So Glenn goes and takes the rest of his money that he got from his deceased wife and pays an attorney to take this report back into court. This was Glenn's first post conviction or habeas. It was a straight Brady claim. Essentially, you got to turn over exculpatory defendants.

Meanwhile, Glenn and Donn had been trying their hands at the parole board each year.

We went up for parole two thousand and five and we both got majority to the votes from the parole board, but the governor turned us down. In Oklahoma, even when you get but George is still up to the governor, and so he turned us down. Stipulations to come back up in three years. But by the time we rolled around, I had two or three misconducts. They started letting sell phones into the penitentiary and I had a cell phone, so that was on me if you got a write

Glenn faced denials in court and at the parole board, even with this report proving that he and Don Roberts had not been identified by the victim. And since his attorney raised the evidence on appeal and was denied, it became procedurally defaulted. Eventually, it took a convergence of events and people to bring about justice in this case. First, Joe Norwood's work feeing two other innocent men put him on Glenn's radar, while media coverage of Glenn's case did the same for Joe.

The local reporter in Oklahoma City, Ali Meyer, did some fantastic reporting on Glenn's case. Glenn reached out to me and asked me to get into the case. And so I read the transcript some of the reports and it was clear Glenn was innocent, and at that point I knew what I had to do. It was the end of twenty nineteen early twenty twe I spent two years investigating, putting it together, making sure we had everything.

In addition, Glenn's evidence of actual innocence could finally be raised again in court, this time effectively as a new court ruling came to.

Pass Fortnight versus Crow. It's a tenth circuit case. It's deal with newly presented evidence. If you could make a colorable showing on actual innocence, then the jug would drive all procedure bars and that you proceed if you had newly presented evidence. And so what became with a new presentation of the evidence instead of attacking the witness in corner with the same night, if we switched it all the way around.

Glynn had been battling this case for decades, long before I ever came around. He knew all this stuff inside and out. And he pointed out to me quickly, he's just like listen, Blinda Brown was right. She picked the right guys. I think that's who did it, and I put that in the brief, And so we ended up filing Glenn's case in mid twenty twenty one and then evidentially hearing in being set April twenty twenty three, We

Unfortunately, Bob Milefelt didn't have any information as to how or why that report was missing from his trial evidence, as well as who might have starred Don and Glenn's

That was the moment, That was the first moment I stepped out, you know, into freedom, when they took the cuffsaus and I walked out of the courtroom unescored it. That was it, but being born again, like the buildable card has just been severed. You see the picture that I took with my hands up in the air. I think it's all my gofund me and it's been getting better every day.

Shortly after this, in September twenty twenty three, Victory Bahenna said that they didn't have sufficient evidence to move forward with a trial. It was still a far cry from being declared innocent.

Vicky Behenna. She objected to Glenn being found actually innocent, So we had to fight that out a lot.

Oh here's what she said.

One of the winds is still alive and sticking to a story. We can't find you guilty, but we're gonna let you slide. I'm like bullshit. I responded that I'm sticking to a story too.

The victims opinion is that she identified the right people. Well, you damn right, she picked the right people. It was Delbra Patterson and Leonard Patterson. And miss Beheen is correct. We need to respect her id.

As they damn well should have way back in nineteen seventy five.

So they didn't have nothing to do but to throw it out. It was no defense for it.

In December twenty twenty three, Glenn Simmons was declared actually innocent, clearing the path for his civil litigation. But as listeners of the show know, that can take a very long time. In addition, as we record this, Glenn is undergoing chemotherapy as he battles a stage four cancer diagnosis, so he needs your support right now. As he mentioned, there's a GoFundMe. It's going to be linked in the episode description, so please give what you can. And with that, we're going

You know we've covered it. It's I mean, I don't view this as a grandiose statement. It's a historic case. He's the longest serving wrongful conviction in the history of the United States. He was sentenced to death and eventually found and proven by clearing, convincing evidence to be innocent. I don't have to say any more for people to understand the gravity and what this case says about our system planning.

And I'm trying to launch my nonprofit and nonprofits. Grace Redempson is salvation perfect for me to foot me integration. So I want to get it to this reintegration thing. I got this planned by this wrap around support system for guys coming out. There's a lot of guys at the same position that I was in, even worse because they don't have the support that I had, and some of them getting ready to be released.

Now.

My objective is to curtail recidivism because these statistics seventy two seventy one, seventy two percent of all inmates get out going to return back to prison within six to eighteen months, and this statistics has stood for twenty thirty years for the numbers to see that consistent.

Then somebody delibered it.

Got their hands on the scale, and all I know is prison in and out. Like I said, I've seen guys, brilliant guys who've got college degrees and all kind of skills come back over and over again.

And I've offered wonder why why they come back?

Then they don't come back because they wanted to come back, because they haven't had time to adjust, they haven't had time to make the transition, they haven't had that wrap around support system. And so this is what my nonprofit going on intels and I would like to focus on the women. Oklahoma quite one of the best kept secret is that. And you don't hear politicians, of journalists or nobody talking about this. Oklahoma is number one and the incarceration of women and they have held that do.

Be just distinction for thirty years or more.

And I'm not just talking about the number one in the United States. I'm talking about the world over and nobody mentioned this. It's just like you ask the questions, why you know it's the women know Kaoma one inclined to be criminals or they moved even than anybody else, and.

Nobody gonna answer that question say yeah.

And if you can answer that question and say yeah to that question, then it's got to be the legislators. We're a nation of laws, right, so it's got to be the legislators doing this. So, you know, we really need to rethink and reconsider the way we do this criminal justice and the way we apply these things. And so this is where I want to dedicate some of my time and effort towards because I've had first saying experience with it.

You know, thank you for listening to Wrong for Conviction. 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 and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR