Tens of thousands of people incarcerated in the US have been wrongfully convicted and are being held in captivity for crimes, even as they adamantly maintain their innocence. What's it like to be one of those imprisoned people, and what's it like to be their ally, the one outside committed to fighting for their freedom. I'm Lauren Bride Pacheco, and this
is wrongful conviction. On February fourth, nineteen seventy nine, the bodies of a mother and her teenage daughter were found in an apartment in Norfolk, Virginia, known as a party house due to a steady flow of visitors. Twenty one year old Joe Giarretano lived there in the month before and the night of the murders. Waking up upon the scene with no recollection of the events due to excessive drug and alcohol use, Jerretano assumed that he was the
one who'd committed the murders. Over time, he provided five different confessions to the police, each of which were inconsistent with the facts of the crime. Although no physical evidence indicated he'd committed the crimes, He was ultimately convicted and sentenced to death for the murders. Which placed him in the path of our second guest. Joe Ingle, is a former death row minister, which is where he devoted his
adult life. While the death penalty is an issue for many, for Joe Ingele, it is primarily about the people caught in the killing machinery. His work against mass incarceration and the death penalty, while with the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons, which he helped create, led him to visit
every Southern death row. That experience created deep bonds with the men and women imprisoned there, and Ingle's effort to save their lives led him to meetings and churches, synagogues, bishop on archbishop offices, as well as governor's offices, legislators and courtrooms. It also led him into the homes of
the families of the condemned and victims. Realizing many of the condemned lacked legal representation, he joined in the efforts to create the Southern Center for Human Rights to represent them. Joe Garretano and Joe Ingele, welcome to wrongful connect You nice you have us. Now, in terms of simplicity, how shall we deal with the fact that you're both named Joe? May we do Reverend Joe and Joe.
Well, I will never use the reverend except when it's handy, So it seems to be handy for you, so we'll use it.
I appreciate it, sir. All right, Joe, I would love to start with you. You know, I usually begin these episodes asking people to tell me a little bit about their childhoods, but having researched yours, I feel compelled to start with an article pull just for context. Born to a bronx family involved with drug rings and organized crime, Gerretano started shooting demrol when he was eleven, under the watchful eye of his junkie mother.
That's a lot, it is.
I mean at the time, you know, I was a kid and just following my mother's leave. But she was a junkie herself. My mother was a paranoid, schizophrenic and a criminal genius.
Wow.
And I've read that she actually ran one of the largest drug smuggling operations on the East Coast.
She did. She worked with Carlos later Revus out of Columbia with the Medaine drug cartel.
Wow. Was your father involved in your upbringing? Was he part of your household?
No, my father left when I was a child. I don't really have any memories of him. And then sometime in the nineties, People magazine did an article about me. I was supposed to get cover the Sammy Davis Junior died that week, so they gave him the cover and gave me the centerfold. So I've been at the centerfold. No dat. My father apparently saw he was imprisoned in Florida and reached out to me and contacted me.
How old were you then when you reconnected with him.
After the murders, so probably sometime the early nineties.
We mentioned that you were exposed to drug use at a very very young age. How did that change the way you saw yourself and the world in general?
Back then? The only thing I knew to do from the way I was brought up with the followers. Whatever my mother told me to do, that's what I did. And everybody that I knew was a criminal. They were either made ment for the mafia or street hoods, and then the Columbians got involved. Thing I knew was criminal activity. That's how we survived.
I've also read that you were sent to a reform school in Florida as a child, which later was known for its ridiculously troubling abuse of the children in its care. Is that description in keeping with what you experienced there?
Yes, And in fact that's very relevant now because Governor DeSantis down in Florida should be signing an authorizing compensation for the survivors from nineteen forty to nineteen seventy five who were at the Dootia School for Boys, and I have been working all by affidavit for that. Wow.
How long were you there? What age?
Oh? I was young. I was there twice. The last time was probably seventy five. I was raped there under the watchful eyes of a cottage parent who stood there, laughed and did nothing, and then told me to clean myself up and forget about it. If I knew what was good for me.
Wow, Joe, I'm so sorry that you experienced what you experienced.
Oh, it was tough. I've been working on the Affidavid now for almost two months. It's going back revisiting. That's hard.
So given everything that you had on your plate, being raised by somebody with mental illness and addiction illness on top of surrounded by criminal activity, and then sexually and physically abused at a school where you were supposed to go to become a better person.
They're still finding bodies at that school. They're still digging out bodies of people that were killed.
It's not surprising that you ended up dropping out of school altogether.
No, I dropped out of school, And does you're really set the course? After that was released from Doser, the only place they would allow me to go was back to my mother, back into criminal activity. And then in nineteen seventy eight, seventy late seventy eight, early seventy nine, my mother wanted to expand her criminal activity into virgin She had two friends. She said, you're going with them
to Virginia. You're going to work on the fishing boats up there, and we're going to use the boats to smuggle cocaine into virgin.
So I was going to ask you how you ended up being a scallop fisherman in Norfolk, Virginia. But it was just a front for your mother's drug smuggling operations exactly.
So. I actually enjoyed being on the boats. I loved the work, but the main focus was smuggling cocaine into this state.
Wow. And that takes us pretty much up to the time when this tragedy unfolded. You're twenty one years old. Honestly, all of this makes much more sense to me now that I know that cartels were in the landscape of how this unfolded too. But just the facts of the case were that on February fourth of nineteen seventy nine in Norfolk, Virginia, a forty four year old named Barbara Ann, also known as Tony Klein, and her fifteen year old daughter Michelle were murdered, and that you had arrived at
the apartment at six o'clock, nobody was there. You come back at eight. You're under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
I was wasted. I was injecting de Lawdance, which is a major painkiller for cancer patients. I was probably using five to six to lawns a day as well as drinking.
So you wake up on the couch, wake up.
On the couch and didn't see anybody. Initially went to the bathroom and that's when I saw Barbara before and the bathroom face one of the bedrooms, and when I turned I saw Michelle Lane on. I panicked. My criminal instincts kicked in and I said I need to get back to my mother.
But it must have been like waking up into a scene from a horror movie.
It was a nightmare. It was a nightmare. I still see it through this day sometimes in my head.
In that moment of complete blackout, brain fog, you just assumed you had something to do.
With it exactly. I was there. I don't remember anybody else being there. Uh.
And I mean not to get into too much detail or gore, but was there any physical sign that you had been involved in two bloody murders?
No?
On you?
No, No. There was one little speck of blood on my boot, a little tine of speck of blood, and they sent it off to lab to be analyzed. But at Blood's convinced me. At that point, I didn't know where the blood came from. I couldn't remember. I must have done. We found out years later that the blood owned shoe didn't company the one of the victims and I had been in a fight at some point at one of the bars. That's how the blood got off the sheet.
You panicked initially and fled to Florida, Yes, only to then turn yourself in at a greyhound bus station at three am to a uniformed police officer who was just sitting minding his own business, and we were.
Sitting there eating breakfast. All I could see was dead body. All I could see was Barbara and Michelle laying here. And I just walked up to the cop and sat down and said, hey, I think I killed two people in Aufolk.
And you thought you did, but had no idea of how it was done. So you end up waving your miranda right.
Well, I waved my Miranda rights. I gave the Jacksonville police officers what amounted to a full confession. They said, well, how'd you do it? I said, I don't know, and they started suggesting to me, did you do it like this? Did you do it like that? And I just said yes. Then the contacted the No off Of Police department, and two detectives from an off came to Florida brought me back to Virginia, and that's where the series of other
five confessions came in. They said, no, it couldn't have happened like this, it had to have happened like this, and I just followed their lead. And these were police certain confessions. I didn't write these confessions they wrote, but they started doing it before they had actually investigated the crime. Scene. They hadn't been to the crime scene yet.
I know that this was ten years before DNA evidence was of value, truly, but a proper investigation at the time would have uncovered all of the things you ended up uncovering a decade later exactly.
And what they did because they hadn't seen the crime scene, they had to keep coming back and revising the confessions and.
The autopsy afterwards just to keep this clear. So you end up giving five different versions of the confession, and basically you're playing charades and they're feeding you what to say, so by the time you come up with your fifth confession, you're just parroting back what they have told you are the crime scene exactly.
Then I get a quarter pointer to Turney had just gone to trial, had a head a decent atturning because it was physical evidence, which we didn't find till later. And none of that physical evidence bloody footprints, headhairs, pupa hairs, and sperm, none of it matched me. And they hid that promise.
So before we even get to that shamble of a half day trial on February sixth of nineteen seventy nine, at the age of twenty one, you're indicted for rape of the daughter, statutory burglary, capital murder of the daughter, and murder of the mother. You're twenty one. Who was your support person at that time? Who did you reach out to?
Didn't have any except my mother. I reached out to my mother, and my mother's response was let him kill you. She was worried that I would run my mouth about her business. She hadn't been under the radar at that time.
Your mother's first response is your dispensable. She wants to protect herself and her business structure. So exactly your life is insignificant as far as she's concerned. Exactly that is a lot. Okay, So now we get to that shamble of a trial. How long did that trial last and was there a jury involved?
There was no jury. It was a half day trial, including the launch break. They appointed an attorney who decided to plead me not guilty by reason of insanity, even though all the experts said he's not insane. So a trial the facts never occurred. There was no discovery when you plead not guilty, there were reasons insanity. The only thing that gets tried is whether or not you're insane, and the psychiatrist come in and said, this man has
no memory of the crime. His memory shot. He actually said that when they did the blood work at twenty one years old, I had the liver of a seventy eight year old man. I shouldn't have been alive.
Wow, I just so there's no one in that courtroom supporting you. No, you must have felt so alone.
No, they had me drugged and fact to judge stopped the trial at one point and instructed to shareff to find out where I was getting the illegal drugs from. I was literally drooling out the side of my mouth and falling asleep, and my attorney stood up and said, no, he's under psychiatric care. They had him on high doses of thors.
Oh gosh, which is just basically your body, mind, everything is just frozen.
It's a horse tranquilizer, it's an animalizer. So I was just sitting there in a drug and do stupor.
We're going to get into this, but very much, Reverend Joe, after reading your book Too Close to the Flame, it's very obvious that at that point Joe was already caught up in the machinery of the legal system and on his way to the belly of the killing machine, beast, because you were in no shape really to probably even absorb what had happened during the trial or your sentence.
But you're convicted and in nineteen seventy nine for thirty years confinement for the rape of the daughter, life imprisonment for the murder of the mother, and death for the capital murder of the exactly, so you're sentenced to death.
I went straight from the core group. Now if you're back to the jail. They took me straight the death house.
You had a date with execution five times over the years. I mean, how do you what is that like psychologically to feel like it's just there, could happen at any time.
Well, for several years, nothing registered in my head because they kept me on thwarsen for most of the years I was in prison. I was walking around like a sambre.
While you were incarcerated, Joe, you at some point woke up from your drug stupor.
It took a court order to get me off the drugs. The prison was injecting me with the drugs whether I wanted them or not. If I refused, and I often did refuse, they would dress up and riote here open my cell door, come in, beat me down, chain to the bed, and hit me in the hill.
It's just the cruelty of it seems to be the point.
At one point I just said enough kill. I'm ready to go. And that's when Joe Angle and Redanes got involved.
Enter Reverend Joe. Reverend Joe, can you just tell me a little bit about the path that took you to where your path ended up crossing with Joe? In other words, how did you choose to make Death Row your congregation.
I sort of backed into it. Native of North Carolina and went to Sanders Presbyterian College and then said I want to do more studying. So I went to Union Theological Seminary in New York and there was a program there where you could live and work in East Harlem, which really attracted me. So here I am a white boy moving up from North Carolina to East Harlem, which was a class ghetto when I arrived in nineteen seventy. So you had forty five five percent African American, forty
five percent Puerto Rican, ten percent everything else. And as part of that, you worked in the community. You took your classes at Union Seminary, and the idea was your theology would emerge from your interaction with people in the community and also your theological studies, and it certainly did
for me. My senior year of seminary, I visited men at the Bronx House of Detention because my neighbors were dealing with cops and das all the time, and I'd never even been in a jail or a prison and Attica happened that fall in seventy one, and watching that all my fuzzy black and white TV. Because the prisoners gave press conferences every day they were in control of the prison, I thought, if ten percent of what these guys are saying is true, I would be upset too.
So all that motivated me to go visit prisoners at the Bronx House of Detention, and that's where I had my revelation about what the machinery we have created in this country we call criminal justice system, which it is not. It's a criminal legal system. There's no justice in it. Justice is almost totally absent. It's criminal, it's legal, and it's a system. And these guys were all, as I learned,
awaiting trial, average length of time eighteen months. No one's convicted, they're just there because they're poor and they're charged with the crime. And when I walked in there for the first time, I was a nause seminary student. I got up to the sixth floor and guard saw my little badge that the chaplain had given me, and he opened the door to this enormous cage there with human beings in it, and he walks along and I follow him.
He says, lawyers and clergy visiting this room, and he gestured to the left.
There.
I'm a naive seminary student, so I said, why don't you let me in here with these guys. That guard looked at me and shrugged, opened the door, asked up to cross a threshold. Now, as i'd casually glanced into the cell block, I'd assumed everybody's in a cell, they're locked, and I'll just visit through the cell doors of each cell. But when I walked across the threshold, I realized all these cell doors are open, and he slams that door
behind me. I'll never forget this. My first thought was, oh my god, he's locked me in here with these animals, because that's what we're taught to think by virtue of someone being in a prison or a jail. They're less than us. So once you reach that point in your understanding of who you are versus everybody else, you realized how lost you are. Because those guys taught me a lot that year. I didn't do much for them. I showed up. I gave him my twenty hours a week.
We talked. If I could afford it, I'd buy stamps for him. I had no contacts to lawyers, but boy did they ever educate me. So when I came back south and to Nashville, Tennessee, I was involved the fellow named Will Campbell and Tony Dunbar, and we started something called Southern Prison Ministry, then the Southern Coalitional Jails and Prisons in the spring of six, nineteen seventy four.
I want to talk about that moment of walking through that threshold figuratively as well, because reading your book, I so clearly understand the power of compassion and empathy to alter one's mindset. Because you stopped seeing the individuals behind those bars as less than you saw them actually as human. And that is a mind shift that negates the US versus them mentality.
Well, it does completely. And what it's all about is judgment and Jesus. In the Gospel of John the eighth chapter, there is this great little story of this woman who's guilty of adult at the time, which means she gets stoned. Of course, a man would not get the death penalty at that time, but she's guilty, she's going to get stoned. These people brought her to Jesus and they basically want her to say, oh yeah, do away with her. And he looks at him and looks at her and says,
let he is without sin, throw the first stone. Well, they realize they're not without sin, so they walked away, and Jesus looks at her and says, woman, has no one condemned you? And she says no, Rabbi, no one. He says, neither do I condemn you? Go and sin no more. Now a lot of folks think that is against the death penalty, it is against the deathenally, but it's a greater statement than that. It's a whole judgment issue. Who are we to judge, like for Joe Garontano and
say this guy, well, he's not fit to live. We're going to kill him. Who are we to do that? And once you realize that this whole system. We have built this adversary system, the so called retributive justice model, where you have a defense lawyer and a prosecutor and the truth comes out of this. The truth hardly ever comes out of this, because it's a stag.
Deck and a lucrative one for the ones who have the game.
Exactly, And Steve Bright says, who's a great anti death only lawyer? It's not the people who commit. The worst murderer go to death row, So people have the worst lawyers. He's exactly right. And that's all based on poverty and race.
Now back to when your pads first cross. Tell me how you two met and what your initial thoughts were of one another. Joe, why don't you go first?
Well, initially, Joe got involved in Virginia because of another gentleman, a volunteer to be executed named Frank, a former Newport News police officer who volunteered to be executed. Frank and I were very good friends, and after he was executed, I was the next volunteer. And that's when Joe came into the picture and sent redeems to.
Me, explain what you mean by volunteer, volunteer.
To be executed? Wave all appeals, set a date, let's do this.
What led you were? You just so exhausted at that point.
Exhausted and they had just executed by best friend. Right, just lack of bother you to me.
And that was something that was sorely lacking in your life.
Yeah, I was hard hitting guards, get hear me. I would attack him every day, getting beat down, getting shot up with Thorsen, and Frank pulled me to decide, said you can't win that way. He said you have to fight, and then he gave up. Well.
I spent that weekend with Frank prior to his execution, and Joe at that point was in Mecklenburg, where death row was. Frank had been moved up to the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond, and so I'm visiting with him trying to hopefully get him to persuade him to change his mind. If you can image a very intense situation. His ex wife is there o lovely woman and she's just torn up by this whole thing. He has two children. Of course, when you're on death row, you get a notoriety.
It's in the newspapers. People read about it and talk about it, and part of the thing that had driven Frank to this extreme was in one of the kids' classes. One of the classmates had made a little paper electric chair and put it on his son's chair, and when Frank found out about that, he realized the cruelty his family was being submitted to. I think that was one of the key reasons said, I just can't keep going like this. I can't keep having my family having to
deal with what I'm facing. So ultimately I was not able to persuade him. It was a horrifically painful time, and he was executed. And then there was Joe.
Do you remember the first time you met Joe and what your thoughts were.
So I went to Mecklenburg, which was a hell hole, violent, all sorts of stuff going on there. Look fine on the outside, you know, it's pretty, got flowers and everything, but inside it's the abyss. So that's where death Row is. When I meet people in prison for the first time, I try to be just totally open. So that was my approach with Joe, And although clearly he had some issues, he was also a very bright guy. I really felt like,
here's a guy who could help us. We got a ways to go before we get there, that this guy can actually really help us. And after Frank's execution, I looked around the state of Virginia. Then you've got virtually no organized opposition in the entire state of the death penalty. There are no lawyers involved, and I'm just shaking my head. So I directed the Southern Coalitional Jails and Prisons. We're fighting mass incarceration in the death penalty, so I said,
I think we need to expand in Virginia. It's a woman named Marie Deans who wants to do this. Let's hire and set up the Virginia Coalitional Jails and Prisons and hire Marie Deans to do that work. The decider was the total absence of help for guys like Joe Jarontana, I mean, zero help. So that's what Marie walked into and began her amazing work to help all these guys for you.
At this point, Joe, at the point that your pads crossed, you had already given up.
Well, Joe was a nice guy, but he couldn't convince me to pick up my peels. I was determined, but he had a secret weapon. He set readings in and I was in the death house. They had moved me to the Open's ind and State Penitentiary on Spring Street, an old Civil War prier was a little green from MI the top table and two chairs. Immediately to the right of that there was a big, huge oak door and behind that door was the chair. They had the
entry on the other side. They'd walked the prisoner in strap and then execute them and then bring them out that door and set them on that table to cool off table and basically put sandbags on them to stretch them out. And that's where we and Marine met, but that's where we ate lunch. My first meeting with Marie was intense. I remember a woman came through some administrator in the prison and pardon me, were saying this. She had a big butt and I commented on that, and
Marie doubts me the hot cup of coffee. I looked at her and I said, woman, are you crazy? Don't you know them on death row I could kill you? And she just last she said, you're not gonna hurt anybody. We talked and she convinced me to pick up my pills. She found her in attorney to represent me. Lloyd Snook, fresh out of law.
School now you're in the process getting off of drugs, and you're also opening up law books on your own.
My mother introduced me to drugs. Marie got me off the drugs and introduced me to books, and I began reading, and I started picking up law books, and Virginia was getting ready to execute another man, mentally challenged black gentleman named Earl Washington. Marie said, you know, we have no attorneys to represent these guys. They're setting execution dates. You need to figure out how to get them stays. You need to learn to teach yourself how to help these guys.
And that's what I I was finally states of execution, not just in Earl's case, but several of the other guys. I'm brown.
What was that awakening like for you? At what point did you start seeing beyond your own day to day to the point where you wanted to help others?
Aside from Marie, there was one very memorable incident while I was in the death house. The head of the execution squad, Captain Parker, Anthony Parker, he asked that you could pray with I said, sure, go ahead, and I looked into his eyes and what I saw was my reflection, and I realized at that point that Marie was right, this was wrong, and I began working to stop Earl's execution.
You're listening to Wrongful Conviction with Lauren Bright Pitch Ecko. You can listen to this and all all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. In terms of law in general, you got to the point where you were noted as a legal scholar, to the point that you were actually published in the Yale Law Journal.
Yes, I was invited to write an article for your help. It was their centennial edition, a special edition. But I was convinced that Earl, and by this time we had DNA and Earl's case was another interesting case. It was a police raper confession. They actually took him to the crime scene and pointed everything out to him, and Earl just said okay and landed on death roAP, falseley confession to crime.
And remember Earle is mentally challenged, yes, and.
Had mental illness on top of addiction as well. Ultimately, Washington would be exonerated a year after another man confessed to having committed the murder but not before he served seventeen years and came within nine days of being executed and arguing with both of your help his case all the way up to the Supreme Court. Now back to Joe's legal situation. When you two first met, I was.
Really disturbed at the mess of his case. I mean, his case was just one of the worst I'd ever seen, and so far off any map of proper judiciary conduct that it was abominable. So I felt like he could help us and we could help him.
Joe, what for you was the moment where you had the aha shift that you actually were innocent.
Well, we got the labor word from the forensic expert who tested the boots, and she gave us an affidavit and said the blood on the boot is not Jose. She said, if his boots had stepped in the blood, it couldn't have been washed off. She said, there would have been evidence of it. There's nothing there. That was the point for me that I said, Okay, I didn't do this. It was the blood that convinced me that I did it, And now I know it's not their blood.
And this was like the nineteen eighty five she was willing to testify in court. And this is where as Joe said, my case was a mess because of my quarter pointed tourney. He handled my direct appeal, but he didn't raise anything. And in Virginia at the time, if you didn't raise all your issues in your direct appeal, they were waiting raise them Habeus corpus. So my appeals were never hurt, not my state, Havi, it's not my federal haters. They were never heard. The issues weren't hurt.
So the facts of my case and the constitutional violations of my case were never considered.
And then you open up that file and you realize that there's discrepancy as to whether or not the person who committed the murdered would have been right handed or left handed. And it's at odds with the reality.
I'm left handed. I've got a neurological deficit on my right side from being beaten ahead so much as a kid. Yeah, if I use this hand, my right hand, and I dragged my right foot, so if I had a stepped in anything, it would have been smeared all over. And then we found out that none of the physical evidence actually matched me, So we tried raising that, but Virginia had what's called twenty one day. Would any new evidence in the case had to be raised within twenty one
days of the final conviction. If you raise it on the twenty second day, it's forever bought.
So it doesn't matter if you're innocent, doesn't matter.
In fact, this is the exact quote from the state Attorney General at that time, MARYS. Terry. Evidence of innocence is they're relative under Virginia procedural law, and every court from that point on adhere to that. They said they could not intervene. Luckily, we got that rule loose and later with Earl's case, took some years, but we got it done. But and then DNA comes about, so we check with the lab. We Marie digs to the records. She realized that the lab utained some of the evidence.
So we go back to court to Norfolk. We put the medical examiner on the stand. He said, yes, we retain the evidence, but we can't find it. So the lawyer asked, have you lost it? He said, no, we haven't lost it, we just don't know where it's at. And the judge said, well, I'm going to have to dismiss this case without prejudice, and if y'all ever find the evidence you can come back to this day has never been found.
Yeah, which seems very convenient. Again, it's the murders happened in seventy nine and it's a full decade before DNA is of true use in terms of how it can be used in these sort of cases. And they conveniently lose everything.
They lose by they said they haven't lost, They just said they can't find it.
They still haven't. Just breeks of corruption.
We need to think about Joe's situation because it's not a one off. I mean, this happens again and again and again. I've seen it personally. It all makes sense if you look at the system as a killing machine. That's what it's about. It's not about helping Joe Jorantano, it's not about graining clemency in some cases, it's not about any of that. It's all about killing people. And so that's the context for this work and you have to understand that. And once you see that, it all
kind of makes a sickening sense. And so that's the way Joe and I got to know each other. We're in a context of me visiting him at Mecklenburg of a relationship growing. Then he gets in all his escapades with the Virginia Department of Corrections, who fly him all over the freaking country because they don't know what to do with him. His his nonviolent witness and his legal effectiveness has freaked him out. So they're putting them on airplanes in the middle of the night and flying him into Utah.
Not just an airplane, the Governor's personal of jet.
So I mean it's like it's macab This whole thing is crazy.
So through all of this they're hoping, hoping you can get killed in the process or just die.
Yeah.
Absolutely, Yeah, that's the whole point. It's killing machine.
I kept thinking of the twenty third Psalm. Both of you really met in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
We were trenches, that's what we call We were in the trenches. Yeah, And there I was. I'm going up against attorney generals, as system attorney generals, judges, I'm going up against skilled the terms, and frankly, I was kicking the asses.
And every turn, well, I mean, how what would that must have been like on the other end of it for you, Reverend Joe, you know, fighting for someone's life really and at the same time realizing that their life is in constant flux and jeopardy aside from the chair.
Well, it's a battle. I think when you think of our fight against the death penalting those terms, that makes sense. Joe says, we're in the trenches. We're literally in the trenches. We're being shot at. They're trying to kill us, they're trying to kill him. They're trying to do whatever they can to deter me. You get death threats, you get all this stuff. That's just part of it. And I think the reality is the ancient Greeks, they had people who would come from the battle and report back the
results of the battle. They were called battle singers. That's what Joe and I are now. We are battle singers. We have been in the war and we are now singing about what is actually happening. And that's what I try to do in the book to let people know what is actually happening in the criminal legal system that we call the killing machine. And that's what's so important for people to understand that, by the great of God and a lot of effort, Joe Garontino is talking with
us today. If you had asked me in nineteen eighty two. What I thought the chances of that it were, I would have said slim and none, not only for today, but maybe the next year, because that's how bad it was.
Can you tell me the story of at one point you gifted Joe with a replica of cross that you carry.
Yes, it's the symbol of the Committee of Southern Churchmen, and it's the symbol of the world with an equal marks in it. And then the cross is on top of that, and it means we're all equal in the world under the cross. It's as simple as that, and we all are and that's what we need to act on the basis of. And it goes back to my first trip to the Bronx of Detention when I realized I'm all equal to these guys. You know, we're brothers. I come into prison to meet people, to get to
know Jesus. That's who we're talking about here. That's what it's all about.
The last time I was in the death house, I was wearing that cross.
Now I read that you then eventually were robbed and someone took it from you.
Yes, that was after I got off death row. I was I left the death house. It brought me straight to Power Tech Wrexable Center h exactly what we call it, the slaughter house. People died there every day. I was there. Two days, two guys came to my shell with nines and threatened to kill me. Took the cross, I took a few canteen tickets I had.
It seems to be a strange coincidence too, that.
Yeah, because some of the guards that worked that unit were alled the Desk Walk. The Desk Walk with volunteers.
Now, I just want to clarify because you're talking about the fact that in nineteen ninety one, the then Governor Douglas Wilder commuted your sentence to life with a part in sentencing you to life imprisonment with a recommendation for a new trial and the possibility of parole after twenty.
Five years, which was unhurt and given the.
Time that you'd already served, it would have been parole in thirteen years. And that didn't sit well with.
A lot of people. For some people didn't sit well with me. When Marie walked into death House, she had the draft of his order. She showed it to me, she said, you want I said, let me see the order, and I read it and I said, I'm not accepting it. I said, the new trial will never happen, and it didn't. That's Marris you, Terry's famous quote. And I said they'll never parole, and mariekad something she had never done. She'd never asked me for anything. She said, Joe, you have
to do it for me. I accepted Mary, and Terry came out with her evidence of entis Is it irrelevant everything I said what happened would happen. I'll get into the parole thing later, because that's a whole other interesting story.
Yeah, because I was going to say that that. Okay, So you find out that you're not going to be put to death, but you still have life in prison, and you're sent to a place that in some ways is just as deadly. I was sent there to be killed, and so immediately you're robbed. You were stabbed at one point.
I was stabbed the next prison.
So you're robbed, you're stabbed, and then at one point you actually lose a leg because of the lack of medical treatment.
They had me trying to remember where I was at at the time. I can't.
So while you're thinking, let me just say lack of medical treatment is a severe understatement here, Okay, I know.
Absolutely, because it was intentional neglect and abuse.
Really correct, heaven a cell. I've been on a hunger strike. Actually, hunger struck my way all the way across the country to get back to Virginia. I went to stand up, fell flat on my face, and they just left me laying around for Doctors came in and looked at me and said, just leave me. A psychiatrist came through. A visiting psychiatrist came through, saw me laying on the floor, came in and took one look at me and said, you need to get this man to the hospital now.
The local hospital said we can't deal with it. It's too severe for us. You have to fly into MCB and Richard. They decided not to fly. They drove seven and a half hours to Richmond. I get to Richmond. One of the young guards I'll never forgetting his name was most really nice kid. He looked at me and he said, Joe, you know you're supposed to die and row. They rolled me into the hospital. They made me sign paper stamp to take both my legs. They were able to shave my left leg at the last minute.
So that seven hour. That seven hour drive was basically supposed to kill you, supposed to which would have made your legal expertise and your fight for freedom miraculously disappear exactly.
He told me, Joe, you were supposed to die and rot.
How did you keep persevering? Where did you get the strength?
Anger? Just looking at the system and seeing what was happening and recognizing How I got the skill, I don't know. I mean I took to the law like a fish takes to water, and I realized I had a talent that I never knew. I had readings, and Joey, they were manners, and they were my strength, and without them, it wouldn't have happened.
You or my brother, Joe. It's as simple as that.
Yes, we are.
So.
Finally, on November twentieth, in twenty seventeen, twenty six years after Governor Wilder had commuted your death sentence to life, the Virginia State Parole Board finally voted to grant you parole. Can you, gentlemen, take me to that moment and what that meant for both of you?
Relief. I was at Deerfield Correctional Center where they send Jerry Actor prisoners in the dormitory style prison. It was a nightmare there as well. I was released five days before Christmas. Marie wasn't there to see it, but lawyers a lot of folks there. I stepped out. I was using a walker. I had a different light than the one I had, basically a peg leg almost and I wheeled myself out the door, and I couldn't believe it,
like I felt lighter than there. But I immediately stepped out the door and went to work with the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia. I was hired to clean up their back lagger cases. When I finished with that, after about almost two years, I went to work for a small law room. I was in and out of courtrooms all over Virginia. I think I've been to every courthouse in Virginia.
You've also lectured at University of Virginia, American University, Universe of Richmond.
New York University Albany, probably a few about the death penalty. And I think I want over some people.
That's amazing.
I don't go. I don't go to preach to the choir. I don't have time to preach to the choir. Give me the people to.
Believe in it, and you can change their minds.
I gave a lot of talks like that.
So, Reverend Joe, I haven't gotten your take on when you found out that he had been granted parole.
Well, I was elated because, like Marie, you know, I can appreciate Joe not wanting a conditional pardon, but look, you grab whatever straw you can get, and then you worry about the next problem. At least you've got that one.
Uh.
We're not in the perfection game here, We're taking what we can get. And when I heard that he had received the harden was walking was going to be walking out. That just really made my day. I was really elated that he was stepping out and experiencing freedom.
What does your friendship look like today and what does it mean to you today?
Well, I'm glad to see his face because I haven't seen him in a while.
It's great, it's been it's been a while.
It's really great.
I have to ask you a question that I had, Reverend Joe. In many ways, I see how you're religious calling dovetails with ending mass incarceration and the death penalty, But how do you factor in and process the additional layer of wrongful convictions into that. You know, it's not just a situation where the system is broken, it's that the system has gotten it completely wrong.
It's going to happen repeatedly as long as we stick with this system. So we need to move from the retributive just system to the restorative justice system, whole different model. You bring the victim and a fender together with a trained facilitator. I've done hundreds of these things and they talk.
So after you met with each one of them individually and learn where they're coming from, it's a voluntary process, and that whole process, that's a way to deal with the suffering and hurt, because that's what we're talking about. Our current system is all about punishment, creating more suffering, more hurt, more harm. It has nothing to do with restoring anyone. It does nothing for victims. So wrongful convictions now, God, we're going to be having wrong convictions as long as
we keep doing the system. It's just baked into the cake because it's such a stack deck. There is no way it's going to be fair for anybody who's caught up in it. Without monetary resources.
We're dealing with the system that does not like to admit mistakes will bite you tooth and nail to the end. To this day, people in the system, including some people in the Attorney General's office, even after DNA cleared girl, still say it's guilty. They back machine and most of us are still looked out on.
That's why I wrote that book. That's a key hole into the system so people can see how it's operating. And then once you see it and realize what's going on, hopefully, like Joe says, you're going to be moved to do something about it.
I love the concept of empowering everyone to become not only their own hero, but the champion for someone who needs one.
The truth is out there, people just have to see it.
Is there anything else from your europe shared experience?
When someone is killed by the state, as Joe described what happened to the body in Virginia, take it to the cooling table. After that, there's a doctor, It performs a medical examination and issues a death certificate, and on that death certificate it has cause of death. The cause of death is homicide. Even the state is clear what they're doing. This is a public murder, homicide documented by
the state medical examiner. We use euphemisms like executions and death penalty, etc. It's a cold blooded public murder, and this is being done in our names. These people are acting on our behalf. Welcome to the murder club. I mean, I don't think we really want to be a part of that.
We no longer have capital punishment in Virginia. I don't think it's going to come back. And I can say I was somewhat instrumental in help bringing that about. I testify the Senate and the House here in the jail about capital punishment, and it was abolish and the governor signed and the law.
I sincerely appreciate your time, both of your time. I am very glad that you two are battle singers, and I very much appreciate you sharing your voices with.
Me a pleasure.
You're welcome, You're welcome.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in the episode description to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wardis, as well as our producers Annie Chelsea, Dathleen Fink, and Jackie Pauley. This series is produced, edited, and hosted by me Lauren Bright Pacheco. Our senior producer
is Kara Krnhaber. Story editing by Hannah Bial, research by Shelby Sorels, mixing and sound design by Nick Massetti, with additional production by Jeff Clyborne. Our theme music is by 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 all platforms at Lauren Bright Pacheco. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one