#447 Jason Flom with Darien Harris

On June seventh, twenty eleven, twenty three year old Rondel Moore was driving down South Stony Island Avenue in Chicago with his friend and his brother. Rondell was having car trouble, so they pulled into a gas station. While Rondell and another man looked under the hood, a black sedan pulled into the lot. A gunman exited the sedan and opened fire on Rondel's car. Two men were injured, and Rondel Moore was fatally shot. An APB went out for a black sedan in the area and a young man in

Thank you so much. Jason, I'm excited to be back with a newly released client.

Darien Harris. Darien, I'm so sorry for what you've been through that brought you to this microphone today, but we're honored to have you here as well.

Yeah, I appreciate you allowed me to be here on your platform as well.

So let's go back even before this murder that you ended up being charged with. You're only eighteen at the time, so there's not that much to even cover. But what was your life like before this title wave of insanity?

A family, good, supportive family, you know, but the sisters. I was in high school, I was playing sports, you know. I was living my life basically and just having a good life, you know. And no matter what I was doing while I was outside and having fun with my friends, I wasn't doing no crams or nothing like that. I was just being a typical teenager and just enjoying my life. And I was set to graduate from high school the week before I got locked up and I got to set in to Georgia State.

Sounds like you had a pretty bright future. You were into music as well, right, you.

Know, at the time, just being creative. We were just raving about things we come up seeing and things like homies might be doing something. Was just having fun, you know.

Around that time, Darien appeared in a RapidIO with a few other guys, some of them were tied up with gangs, and it seems like gang tensions and the hand fisted approach of the Cook County police were at play in this wrong for conviction. There was a shooting on June seventh, twenty eleven, at a gas station on South Stony Island Avenue. If you're looking at it on a map, there's a McDonald on the corner above it to the north, and

The victim had gone to the gas station with some friends and his brother. They were having issues with the car and this black BMW comes into the parking lot. What the police say happened is someone gets out of the black car, goes over and shoots at the victim, Rondell Moore, and then there are a few other people who are shot. There's Marcus Diggs, Quincy Woollard, and then the victim's brother, Ronald claimed that he was shot at,

Both Marcus Diggs and Quincy Wollard could not identify their shooter, but Rondell's brother Ronald. The gas station attended Joe Tony and two alleged witnesses, Dexter Saffold and Aaron Jones, all later made identifications and gave their own versions of events. Luckily, there was surveillance footage.

There is surveillance video of the crime. You can't make out much about the person committing the crime, you can't see his face, but you can learn some details that really helped to kind of unravel the case and show what really happened.

At fourteen seconds after eight twenty seven pm, a black sedan pulled into the gas station from the north and stopped at the south end, ready to pull back out onto South Stony Island Avenue. The shooter got out of the car and walked out a frame as he got close to Rondell's car and shots were fired. All the witnesses agreed that Rondell ran west toward the back of the depot, and his friend Marcus Diggs ran north towards

Now, initially, the brother of the victim ran to this black car that was pulled over nearby, yelling you killed my brother. You killed my brother. So they take that guy, the driver, into custody, Aaron Jones.

According to Ronald Moore's initial statement, the shooter had dark skin of mohawk and fled in the black sedan. Aaron Jones did not have a mohawk and was alone. Maybe this was not the correct black sedan. Ronald later changed his statement, saying that he just assumed that the shooter got into the black sedan, which left Aaron Jones still in suspicion of being connected to the shooter and right

The gas station attendant. His name was Jody Tony, and so right away when the police came, they talked to him and he said, I saw this happen. I know who was the shooter because he was in the gas station an hour before this happened and he was threatening me and threatening to blow my head off. So I saw him when he did this, and you know, I could identify him.

Jody Tony was later called in to view a lineup. In the meantime, investigators followed up with Dexter Saffold, who had called nine to one one.

So he witnesses a shooting, allegedly doesn't stick around back at his apartment. They go to talk to him. He's what they call an independent witness, so he's not tied to any one. It's not like the brother, it's not like someone who would have, you know, some kind of motivation potentially to lie.

Strangely, Saffold made claims that are not supported by the surveillance footage, and his statements changed along the way.

And changed in important ways, including what the perpetrator was wearing. He described the perpetrator's wearing a black shirt, all this stuff. In the video you can see he's wearing like a gray tank top or a light colored tank top. What has hair looked like.

Saffold said that the shooter had his hair and twists, meaning braids or dreads, which conflicts with Ronald Moore, who said the shooter had worn a mohawk.

And one of the things about Dexter Saffold that the video showed was that he claimed he was eighteen feet away, but he was actually eighty feet away, and you can see that because at some point right after the shooting happens, you can see his scooter in the top of one of the frames.

Saffold pulled into frame a full minute after the shooter left the scene. So it's not clear what he saw, if anything, including that the shooter ran right by him while chasing the victim behind the station, which was contradicted by the surveillance footage. And somehow there's room for Saffold to become even more absurd, but we'll get to that later.

A discription of the shoot was fast seven.

And does that describe you in any way?

No, at the time I was six ' two. I never had had a low headcut. They don't scrab me it out.

Then the investigation received one more lead.

From the police reports. A couple of people who were close with the victim, Rondell. His girlfriend and one of his friends both said that he had been shot at a couple days prior by some people from the East Block set of the gangster Disciples. So they said that the guy who had shot at Rundell, that it was this guy Dony.

Coincidentally, both Dooney and one of his known associates, a guy nicknamed Slim, had appeared in a rap video with Darien aka Kingchucky.

You know I did music and shot music video, so you know I was around these people or whatever.

The brother of the victim, he brings this rap video to the police and said someone said the shooter was in here. And then ends up pointing out Darien.

It appears this information made its way to Aaron Jones.

He's being interrogated for murder. They get him to say that it was someone named Slim at first. The next day that changes to someone named Chucky.

And then again Aaron Jones originally said, we looked just like literally like when they showed a music video we used to. I said, he like, do it look just like.

I don't know if there was some confusion from the outset as to who it was because they were both in this video, or it was just because Darien was in a video with some guys that Rundell was feuding with. I don't know.

Perhaps they're similar looking faces, had Ronald confused. After all, there was this huge height discrepancy, and either way, the investigators chose to ignore the Doony and Slim lead to focus singularly on Darien, who had no record and therefore no photos in the system. So they pulled pictures from social media and got Aaron Jones to identify Darien as the man who had flagged him down for a ride to the gas station, which was enough for the rest warrant.

They came to a mom crib like, hey were looking for your son. He's been implicated in the murder. And she called me like, what did you do? Did you do anything? I'm like, I ain't doing nothing. She was like, well, let's they want to talk to him, Like, okay, let's go talk home. Got none to had, and I got me a lawyer and I went down there and they tried to talk to me, and I told him I have none to say because I don't know nothing, and y'all nothing to create something off of what me saying,

You're doing exactly well. I think any good lawyer would recommend that they do people do more or less what you did, which you say, I'm not talking and I want a lawyer.

She came down there and she was like, don't say nothing, and they ain't want to talk to me because I ain't want to talk to them. And then she left, and then they tried to bring me and put me in a lineup, and I was like, I don't want to go into land up without my lawyer. They was like, you have to go on the line up, and I went in like three full lineups and I remember one line up, I was number three. They said it was number five and then never came up, and they put

So with his own potential murder charges Aaron Jones again, I d Darien and then they dragged in the gas station attended Jody Tony.

When they brought himTo the station, they showed him a picture of Darien and said, you know, this is the guy we have as a shooter, and he said that is not the shooter. They had him look at the lineup. He did not pick out dary and he said the shooter is not in that lineup, and they tried to get him to identify Dariy and he said he wouldn't do it, and they tried to pressure him and all of that, and he wouldn't do it. He was never

Was, but that was many years later. For now, Jody Tony was ignored for Dexter Saffold and the victim's brother, Ronald Moore. Despite saffold stubious accounts, the police valued his id and then Ronald. Why would the brother of the victim id someone that doesn't match his own initial description both height and hair.

Sometimes in the streets like guys or rather lead other guys out there.

We've had that in several cases where when we find out why they implicated the wrong person, it was because they wanted to take care of it themselves.

He put me in a situation because you feel like, ba't me not doing it? They would have let me go. But that's not how the system works here. Once they get any type of name, they don't care to do their job to make sure the case is closed. They just make up create things to get you out the way. And that's why so many guys that's wrongfully convicted, that's in the conserrated right now because police don't do their job and the state's attorney don't care, and they get immunity.

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Yeah. I was in the police station for about two days. Then I was taken to Cook County and process. Then I wasn't prepared for it, but in a way I had a little bit of street smarts because you know that's where I come from. You know, this is my neighborhood, is how to grow up. But the gym's around about real grown me in fighting, real murders too, And they got knaves and they game banging and gang fights go on,

Is sounds like hell on Earth. And so there you are. What did they set bail? You never saw the streets again.

They didnam on bonn and said I was a minister society, I shouldn't be let out on the streets. And I never called a case of damn my life. I bet you've been arrested. I was encountered three years three years.

Jesus Christ Darien was charged with aggravated battery with a firearm, attempted murder, and first degree murder, and at the grand jury, Jones, Moore, and Saffold reaffirmed their identifications. But now Ronald said that he saw Jones drop Darien off at the gas station and then leave, so a new inconsistency. And then he said that he recognized Darien from this rap video, even though we know that he hadn't seen that video until after the shooting.

There were a ton of issues with his identification. He initially accused someone else and then he also was in the backseat of his car and claimed the shooter pointed the gun at him, but the video shows that the shooter didn't point the gun at him, So there are a ton of issues with him and with his testimony. The brothers' statements and dexter saffold statements, those changed every time they told what happened.

This time, Saffold said that he had chased after the shooter on his scooter, which is not supported by the video. But importantly, Saffold explained why he wrote a Scooter that his diabetes had caused a stroke, and we'll get to why that's important later. At Darien's bench trial in front of Judge Nicholas Ford.

This judge is notorious in the end, was run off the bench in Cook County because of his actions in a lot of cases, and then he ended up a Trump appointee an immigration judge in California and was run off the bench there for being racist, ableist, etc. And so he's currently not a judge, but he has a long history of problems with his judicial conduct.

Darien's bench trou began in March of twenty fourteen. Again Ronald Moore testified about seeing Jones drop Darien off and leave that he recognized Darien from the rap video, and then he made an in court identification. Next up was Aaron Jones, but that didn't go as a prosecution had planned.

He starts testifying and then he immediately recants and he says, you know what, man, fuck this. None of this happened. The police made me say this. They threatened me. What would you do. I had a newborn baby. Darien was never in my car. This never happened. And the judge says, I'm holding you in direct contempt just because he's recanting, Maybe because he's cursing. I don't know. The state had

During the crossing examination, mister Jones elaborated, saying that the police had told him what to say or he would quote rot in prison for the rest of his life. Jes said that the police showed him your photograph there and told him to pick you as the gunman, of course Jones. The detective then testifies that he interviewed them multiple times and never threatened them. But what we expect you.

Have Aaron Jones, They said, the police officer, Devin Jones can hurst him to say what he said. You have the aud witness from the gas station, Jody Tunya. They said that Devin Jones can hurst him to say what he said. You got the victim's brother. This original statement did the shooter was fast seven and all that, But he changed the statement once he talked to detective Devin Jones. So you have to say, Alficer basically colhurst him into what to say with this overlooked.

Though, then the state put on Dexter Saffold, who appears to be a willing participant in story time with Detective Devin Jones. But that's even worse than that.

As he's testifying, the defense council asks him about his vision because he's diabetic and there are often vision issues with that, and he starts looking at the state and this is all on the record, it's in the transcripts, and the defense council says to the judge, can you order him to answer? He keeps looking at the state and the witness. Dexter says, I thought that medical was supposed to be private. The judge said, well, usually it is, but your ability to see is critical to the case,

At the state's attorney KNWDA, this person was legally bland. So he said, I thought my medical was private. How did he know that his medical was private? I mean he told him that.

But neither the defense nor the judge knew that, as was made abundantly clear by Judge Ford's closing statement as he sentenced Darien to seventy six years.

He said aloud that he don't believe nobody else. He's based in this fan based on the old man. That's yourself of testimony. You have an old man that seems credible, that seems honest, like he said, and he don't have nothing to rebut what he's saying. And at the time the judge didn't know that he was legally blind. He went on record to say that he trust this person, and y'all knew this person was legally blind. Y'all made him look like an asshole. And my out day was

Like gas.

They cut their stomach up and rip their tests out. They stick chicken bones and they dick hole and try to piss and their stomach blow up. They be on the yard, they play with feces, They put feces in their mouth shit and they mouth and spit it on each other. They go outside with a plastic bag full of shit and be squirting it back and forth on each other like it's wow down there, Like it be men having sex on the yard, like it's wow down there.

It's hard to bathom that this shit goes on in this country, but it's going on right now. It's really sickening the whole freaking thing. So I don't know how the hell you managed to maintain your sanity, but I'm glad you did. And now I want to hear about how the hell you manage to find a way out, because that's the miracle, right. I mean, we never hear about the guys who lost their minds in there, who gave up, Oh, who did drugs or killed themselves or

I had a mentor of His name is Samuel Kareem, and he had life in jail. So coming into that sale with him, you know, I know he was real good with the loss. I gave him my paperwork and he started reading and he only read like the first sixty pages. Was like, I don't have to read it no more. And say why he said, because that's your way out of jail. Man. That man led he can't see. I'm like, how do you know that? He said, because I'm a diabetic. He landed back the ability to see.

Me back, and I believe Darien. You told you were a Pellet lawyer. What Samuel said that Dexter Staffold was blind.

My new lawyer, Jody Garvey went to Dester Staffold and say, pointed out right now in Atlanta, up with the private vestigat. He said, I can't I need a special apparatus that magnifies the image on the paper. That means that in the police station they had to give you a special apparatus, or they circled and told you what to say. At trial, you know, they give you the paper and they say do you recognize his paper? He post a look at the paper and say yes, is that your signature? Yes?

But despite Dexter Saffold's blindness as well as Jody Tony, Darien's conviction was affirmed on appeal. Then Darien met Lauren around twenty nineteen, who was able to find more new evidence, starting with Dexter Saffold's litigation history.

Dexter Staffold had filed so many discrimination lawsuits basically alleging that different organizations, colleges, whatever, had discriminated against him because of being blind. So he had attached to these lawsuits his own vision records, medical records related to his blindness over the span. I mean he was filing these starting back in like two thousand and two till twenty twenty one maybe after, and attaching all this stuff to prove he was blind. So that's where we got the evidence

In February twenty twenty two, Lauren and Jody Garvey filed a post conviction petition to vacate Darien's conviction, and they attached a report from an ophthalmologist and professor doctor Vina Raigi, who determined that Saffold had advanced glaucoma by twenty eleven and had less than five degrees of central vision in both eyes and in addition to his legal blindness, the time of day that this shooting occurred, made Saffold even less reliable.

Jody Garby had already gotten some halfa davids from an investigator had talked to Dexter Saffold, and he told the investigator that he had told the prosecution about his vision issues.

So it appears the prosecution knowingly put on a blind eyewitness, and then when he purjured himself about his ability to see, they did not bother to correct the record. Lauren also sought the help of doctor and Nancy.

Franklin, an eyewitness expert, to show all of the issues. Any sort of police coergion what made any sort of identification in this case unreliable from the get go, regardless

Tony, the gas station attendant, the only eyewitness whose statements didn't shift with the police narrative, said that the shooter had come into the station before the shooting and threatened him, and he identified him from a photo. It was a young man named Devonte Pippen aka Slim, who not only appeared in the rap video but was also later a victim of gang violence in twenty fourteen.

So we had all this evidence, it was already such a thin case. No physical evidence ever tied Darien to the crime. The description just didn't even match. The judge didn't hear from Jody Tony, who had always said he could see it and he knew who did it, and it always said it wasn't Darien. So all of this just really put it over the edge. So this is December fifth, twenty twenty three. We go to court and they agree to v kate Darien's conviction based on all

Again.

What they were going to retry him with is beyond me. I don't know what their plan was. They never told me if they were planning to call the blind eyewitness again or what the plan was there. But that's when Jason, that's when you got involved because.

Well, I feel very grateful that I was in the right place at the right time, and that I have, you know, a real lasting friendship with Kim Fox, who's been doing her level best against powerful forces that are lined against her. And you know, her job is no picnic, trust me, but you know, it happens that she's got such a big office, so many you know, adas and others working for her that sometimes one of them just you know, probably many of them don't share her vision

I get a call, I think the very next day saying that they are not going to move forward with the case, and they were very apologetic about it. We were already doing up in court December nineteenth, twenty twenty three, to argue some bond issues.

When I came to court, now I was thinking it's a regular court day. Lauren came up like, soy, you had the good news, and I was like, yeah, what they gonna give me a bond or something. She was like, no, They're gonna throw everything out. And I was like, like I was shocked, Like I ain't even believe it, and I was just like, wow, I really didn't feel real at all.

You know, Darien has been out just a few months now and is you know, trying to rebuild his life and put everything back together after so many years gone. And you know, I'm he can talk about it. I mean, it's a struggle for all of our clients to do that, so we're just trying to do what we can to help them with that. We filed for a certificate of innocence, so we'll keep you posted on that on our end. But you know, he's working through everything.

When you've been going so long, you've been removed from society, you've been moved from the world that you once knew. Me coming home personally, I'm in a whole new world for me to be free. It don't feel like I'm free because mentally it's hard for me to understand and adapt to what's going on. Because I got out of jail with nothing, and I had slight a little small donations, yeah, from the company that Lauren put me into it where they gave me two thousand dollars and things like that.

To preaching today. I'll tell you that much. And and we appreciate it. We need to hear this stuff. And what's the name again? This is a real hero in this case. Another one is your mentor what was his name again?

His name is Samuel Kareem ka R I M. He's currently located in Stateville Correctional Center. And honestly, that's the guy that changed me. That's the guy that I'm fighting to get out of jail because he's the smartest man I ever met. He has a training out of mask all day every day, he read his books, study case law.

Darren asked that we win in competition for clemency for his mentor, Samuel Kareem, So we're going to have that length in the episode description. And in addition to his advocacy, Darien is making music, also starting a nonprofit and launching a.

Podcast, Justice is Blind. It's a podcast for me to give a platform to everybody that's incoscerated all over the world to call in and tell their story, rather they was wrongfully convicted, or the trauma that they're going through a jail all the way the police treating them, or they just want to be heard because in jail, with our silence and don't nobody listen to us, don't nobody give us a chance. Everybody look at us as criminals, but everybody in jail not bad people. People could change.

Well, we're gonna link your Instagram and the GoFundMe as well, and with that we're gonna go to my favorite part of the show where first of all, I think both of you, Lauren and Darien, you're both heroes to me and so many other people, and so I appreciate you joining us here today. And now I'm just going to kick back in my chair with my microphone off and just listen to anything else you feel is left to

I just hope that people listen to this episode and they take away from the fact that this kind of thing can really happen to anyone. Darien had never committed a crime, he had never been arrested. He was a good kid. The only thing was where he lived. I mean, he got picked up just by virtue of living in a certain neighborhood, being a certain color, and the evidence

I just want to say that I appreciate Lauren the most because she stepped in and did everything and just still on the business for real. And Jody Garf, he helped me out a lot as well. And I just want to let everybody know that everything that I'm doing to help free to jails and those people that's growfully and convicted, or even the people that is serving a town doing this for the black families and the mothers that have to go through this because they are incarcerated

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 and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliburn. The music in this production was supplied by three time Oscar

Hi. My name is Amanda Graham. I've written down what I want to say so I don't start rambling. But I began listening to Wrongful Conviction about exactly eight year ago. I was on a hunt for a new podcast to binge on, and I became hooked. I was so shocked by these stories. The story that changed my life, though, was episode three forty eight with Zabian Johnson. At this same time that this aired, an old high school friend of mine was on her second trial for the death