#519 Jason Flom with Marcus Blalock

On March twenty fourth, two thousand and one, the body of Howard Rose was discovered inside a burnt out pickup truck on Interstate ninety in Pennsylvania. The night before, police had responded to suspicious activity outside the Ohio home of Arquita Willis. Two men sped off and were apprehended, both of whom gave statements that Willis had killed Rose and

Back, Thank you, thanks for having.

Me and joining us from an Ohio correctional facility where he never belonged, but he's been there for over twenty four long years. The man himself, Marcus Blaylock, Marcus, thank you for joining us.

Sure, I appreciate it.

And Marcus was originally Bordingland, but soon moved out to a nearby suburb called Maple Heights, or really a sub section of that suburb.

We moved out to Maple Heights seventy five seventy six at the time. It's a predominantly white area and the area that I grew up in was called President's Road. The railroad tracks run behind it, so those houses are cheaper, so they put the blacks in that area. So the blacks in that area, they kind of stuck together. So I had a good childhood. I played sports, football, wrestle, ran track, and then at the age of fourteen, I got a job working at the local hardware store, and

Now, we've seen a lot of cases where a connection to drugs made our guests the target of a frame job. But by two thousand and one, Mark was thirty two years old and he had built a successful landscaping company.

That landscaping company ended up being very profitable for me. I ended up having a lot of contracts with the county, so I'm with the city and helped me with money to put down to buy a house for my family that was off Libby.

And while Marcus had moved into the white part of town, it was some of his old acquaintances from President's Row, Dion Johnson, Ernest McCauley, and Arkeda Willis who dragged him into this case.

Arqita growing up, she just wasn't my type at the time, but years later I ended up having a friends with benefits or so you want to say, relationship with her that turned into something else. And then when I cut it off, it wasn't tooken in a great way. It was like she hated me after that. But Dion was a friend and cuts hair. He's a barber, so used to cut our hair and whatnot. And honest, he was

He also gave him a cell phone that was registered to Marx Landscaping Business, which was about to score a major contract.

And this contract was to service the children's playgrounds and the top lots in the city. But this contract was not publicized. The same Italian company, we're getting this contract for the last five years. So at the time, Maple Heights had just elected their first black councilman. So he came to my mom and told my mom, Hey, have Marcus call me. It's like they got this contract coming up. They haven't even publicized it. They keep giving it to

And even though he had the lowest bid, the contract went to the incumbent company. The council member encouraged Marcus to contest that decision at the upcoming meeting.

Now, mind you, at this council meeting. You have the chief of police, the mayor, seven council people, the fire chief. You have one of the two detectives that frame me for this crime. I haven't had any run ins with Maple Heist police or the police period. In over five years. Everything is going smooth for me. My business is going great. So I'm kind of leary to go to this council meeting. So when they get to the awarding of the contracts and did anybody have anything to say, I stand up

So that brings us to the end of March two thousand and one, when Marcus was growing his business and supporting his family in their newly purchased home in the White part of town. He had also been fortunate enough to be able to help send his cousin to the University of Cincinnati, so his cousin invited Marcus to an alumni event over the weekend of Friday, March twenty third into Saturday, the twenty fourth of two thousand and one.

They're having their first annual Black student reunion, hosting it in Cleveland. He lived in Cincinnati, so he's coming to clean. This is my cousin. I supported him all while he went through college. I know most of his fraternity friends, people that he went to college with, so normally when they have things, I'm always in attendance.

Dean Johnson had even given Marcus a haircut during the day on March twenty third, but after they parted ways, according to Johnson's police statement, he and Ernest McCauley were contacted by Archida Willis. She had been entertaining a known drug deal named Howard Rose, who had been fatally shot, and Willis needed help with disposing of his body.

So around eleven thirty, the next door neighbor and great ann of Arkida Willis, Dorothy Evans, makes a call to police concerning suspicious activity. She states that she heard noises like someone moving furniture outside her bedroom window near Arkida Willis's home, and then looked to see if Willis's car

Johnson and McCauley were arrested for trespassing. While the police did a safety check of Arkida's home and they saw a puddle of blood on her driveway.

They returned to Willis's house and they're like, what is this puddle of blood in the driveway, they went to the backyard, they find a back window unlocked. They go to the bathroom and find lick candles around the bathtub, a warm bathwater with Sophie residue and drying blood, and a pager with blood on it, and this blood later is tested and found to be the blood of Howard Rose.

As of now, there was no body and according to later statements from Marquita, at this time, Rose's body was in his truck parked on a side street while she went to work, where the police eventually tracked her down and they asked her to come to the station so they could ride to the house together, and she explained that Johnson and McAuley were not intruders.

First she said she had some friends over there moving some furniture. Then when they asked about the blood they found in the driveway, where did it come from? She said, what, a blood came from a dogfight. She was hosting a dog fight at her house.

Oh, obviously, dog fighting.

It's as ridiculous as it is sinister.

It's not what I would have gone with, but that's what our Keida Willis goes with. When they go to her house, she's accompanied then with like a thin black mail with a Jamaican accent, by the name of Omar. He was present while police questioned Willis outside her home. Willis refused to allow the officers to do a second search of her home, and in the police reports they report that Willis is evasive and uncooperative and.

Then they left. They appear to have lost all interest in Omar, and it's believed that at this point the body was disposed of near Exit six on the Interstate ninety in Pennsylvania.

In the early morning hours of March two, twenty fourth, Pennsylvania police are called to the scene of a fire on I ninety. A pickup truck with Ohio plates is engulfed in flames. Howard Rose is inside. He's identified through an autopsy and it's determined that the cause of death

Who knows why, perhaps since they had been so forthcoming with whose blood it was, as well as that it was Arkda who hads built.

It, they all pointed the finger on herd as she was the one that did it. She was the one that called them to help remove the body, clean up the whole nine.

I guess cooperation can buy you a lot. Case in point, Arquita was soon arrested, pressed again about her ridiculous dogfight explanation, threatened with the death penalty, and somehow was still able to come out of this with a plea deal for obstruction and evidence tampering, receiving only four years.

Willis is initially charged with aggravated murder, burglary, and kidnapping. Those charges are dropped in exchange for her testimony against Playlock.

All she had to do was write a statement, put the gun in my hand and sand that I killed this guy over a drug deal gone bad, which was all alive because I never was at her house doing a drug deal before or after he was killed. It was her and a Jamaican guy that accompanied her to PA and New York when she disposed of the body.

However, at this point, according to Arqida, Marcus had driven the body out to Pennsylvania alone. But how does one return to Maple Heights when the burnt out pickup truck was still out on I ninety. Well that would require another adjustment in her story, but for now. Upon this dubious statement, Marcus was arrested.

It was April six, two thousand and one. I'm riding with my contractor. We just come back from home depot from picking up some materials. It looked at like one hundred toy soldiers. They ran out of my house, my garage, my neighbor's house with black on with masks on, telling me to get out the truck, get out the truck. I get off the truck, and when a guy lift this mask up. This guy's been messing with me for years,

On April ninth, Arkita Willis said that Marcus had taken her car to Pennsylvania, so they searched for car for many physical ties to Marcus, and yeah, you guessed that they found nothing. But this still begs the question who actually drove the pickup then, which was answered in another narrative change at the preliminary hearing.

Willis, at this point, according to the third version of her story, now claims that she and a person by the name of Omar, followed the truck containing Howard Rose's body driven by Blaylock, who she claims as a person who set the truck on fire. Claimed that after Blaylock's hat the truck on fire, he got in the backseat of her car, and the three of them proceeded to New York City and stayed at Omar relative's home in the Bronx.

Curiously, this Omar character was never pursued.

They never arrested this guy, but he's in my paperwork with the prosecution. They sealed the investigative file before I even went to trial. My lawyers asked several times for discovery. We never received the discovery before trial or at trial. They have been withholding evidence since I was arrested in two thousand and one to this date, twenty twenty five, they're still fighting my attorney from getting post discovery, pre trial discovery and during trial discovery.

So who knows what else they have and why they need to hide it and why did they completely let this Omar guy off the hook. In addition to that, there's the grand jury, where evidence of probable cause is supposed to be presented to obtain the indict the transcripts of which are typically not made available to defendants, but Marcus's attorney had reason to fight to have it unsealed both before and after the trial.

Somebody told my trial attorneys that they need to get the grand jury transcripts if you want those charges thrown out. So they fought to get it. That judge said that she was doing an in camera inspection and if she finds anything that will warrant the defense council to have it and she would turn it over to us. Well, she denied us having it.

And who knows what the judge's motivations were, because what they discovered in post conviction is wild.

What we see is that there's no probable cause for him to have ever been indicted in the first place. At the time they went to the grand jury, the police only had three statements about the death of Howard Rose. Both McCully and Johnson's statements claimed that Willis told them that she, and not Marcus Blaylock, shot Howard Rose in the back of the head, and only Willis's statement implicated Blaylock.

And it appears that this wasn't the only misrepresentation.

They liedd a grand jury and said that they talked to me and I gave him a statement or I admitted that I was there or whatever. I never talked to you like that. I never admitted. But Danny cleaned it up. This is detective Airbar, that's who testified. He came right back and said, well, we never heard from Blaylock. Now, which one is that I told you that I was there? Or is it that you didn't hear from Blaylock. It's the second one. You didn't hear from me because I

In addition, the grand jury questioned how Marcus became a suspect at all, as Arkda is the only witness to mention Marcus, while the other two named only Arqda.

They said they had other cooperating evidence besides Alkeda Willard's statement. Well, they didn't have anything else besides her statement. They didn't have any coroborating evidence. I was indicted on the presumption that there will be other coroborating evidence to go along with Alqda's statement.

Perhaps the judge was also fooled into thinking that they'd have corroborating evidence by the time of Marcus's trial. Maybe even the prosecuting attorney, Richard Bomback, had fooled himself by now.

They already tried to use cell phones and say my telephones was a cell phone that was contacting the girl Arqda all that day. I haven't talked to her in almost two years. It's Ernest's phone, my friend who was just released from prison, who I went and purchased a cell phone for, was contacted her. You know, years ago, you couldn't just go get a cell phone. You had to have credit. His credit was messed up. I had a business account with all tail. I said, I'll just

So all they ever had was Arquida.

Well, she came in a courtroom. She get on the stand and they asked her, you know, did she see the accused or whatever? And she points at me. She's fake crying on the witness stand. Not a teardrop fell from her eye. Everybody in the courtroom witnessed. It seemed like the judge played right along into her because she handed her a box of clean next. So she's blowing and wiping her nose and there's nothing coming out. I'm listening to her and looking at her like this is crazy.

At While under oath, she admits to telling a different version of her story to the police, to actually driving the truck that contained Howard Rose's body, going to Pennsylvania to dispose of Howard Rose's body, lying to the police and feinding ignorance about what happened to Rose, lying during the March twenty third interview, lying during the April sixth interview, lying during the April ninth interview, line during the June

It's very difficult to co sign a witness's credibility if anything they've said is false, but that's what they did. The testimony that was truthful, according to this admitted liar, was that before going to work, she arranged for Marcus to buy drugs from Rose at her house. When she didn't hear from Rose, she called Marcus, who eventually told her to come home from work, where she said that she saw Rose's body on her bed and Marcus admitted

Her aunt justified that she would know me a mile away. I know what Mark drives, I know how Mark looks. I've been knowing him since he was a little boy. No, Mark was not one of the persons that I've seen that night.

Her kid's testimony continued that after she'd gotten off work, met with the police, told them to lie about the dogfight, and they left. That she, Omar, and Marcus got a gas can and then they followed Marcus out to Exit six on nine ninety, where he lit the truck on fire, and the three sped off to New York City, returning on Sunday, March twenty fifth, around eight am. But none of this was true, or at least the part about Marcus's involvement is.

No way impossible That I could have been traveling to PA or New York. I'm not David Copperfield. I can't be in two places at one time. I'm in Cleveland. My cell phone shows that I'm in Cleveland. Back in the day, you had roaming charges when you go out of your call area. None of my phones were roaming. That's because I never loved Cleveland. But her phone is Roman in another state. That's because that's where she went

Which was the site for the University of Cincinnati's first annual Black Students Reunion, for which he attended events on both Friday and Saturday nights. It was even photographic proof for Saturday, the twenty fourth.

I was on a picture that night. However, the prosecutor took it and twisted it and said, there's no date on the picture, but behind it is a banner. This is the first annual reunion, So there was no other one. This is where I was on this particular night.

And they brought in nineteen alibi witnesses to corroborate his alibi for both nights.

People that were at the party, people who were wh meed that weekend, some of them I didn't even know my brother. I took my niece shopping that weekend. I had all those people testifying it on my behalf, but it made no difference. I could have put on one hundred witnesses. It didn't make a difference.

The police and the prosecutors unethically and impermissively rely on testimony which they know to be false, and the jury just gets it.

Dead wrong, even though the prosecutor and the witness herself admitted that her testimony was full of lives, and so Marcus was convicted.

After I get found guilty, I'm distraught, family's distraw. My mother's screaming like she just witnessed me getting killed. While they hauling me off, you can hear her screams echoing throughout the courts corridor. They sent me back to the holding sale of wherever I was at my lawyer's coming. You know, tell me, hey, we're gonna untill it you got a case here. This isn't right. Appeals court, they're gonna overturn this right away. I don't see how the

And it's been an uphill battle despite many positive developments along the way, the first of which was getting one of the slew of charges an obstruction of justice conviction, overturned way back in two thousand and three, and at the same time, Marcus's attorney discovered all the lies and manipulation and the grand jury which he tried to raise in the obstruction proceedings.

And I received those grand jury transcripts, but my lawyer sent me a one page letter like this is everything. We get in front of the judge when they're dismissing the obstruction charges, and my lawyer says, you'r honor, we have the grand jury transcripts right here. There was no probable cost. My clients shouldn't have never been indicted. She says, she didn't want to hear about it. We're not there to discuss the grand jury transcripts. She hit the gavel and it was over with and I was out the.

Courtroom at this point. His sentence was reduced to twenty eight years to life, while his co defendants received very lenient deals for actually being involved. Rakida Willis was charged only with obstruction of justice and evidence tampering, even though according to Dion and Ernest, she was the actual shooter.

She ended up doing four years. Dion did two years, Ernest at nine. I think he ended up doing seven and a half.

So almost immediately after Arkita does her four years, she calls up Ernest mccaullay and in the conversation, she admits that she falsely implicates Blaylock. In this case, Willis admits to killing Howard Rose. McCauley asked, well is when she decided to shift the blame to Blaylock, and Willis told McCauley that she didn't care about mister Blaylock. McCully says, listen, you took a soul, She says, right, and McCully says,

She said she even told the detectives in front of her attorneys that she drove the body away and they fell out their cheer, laughing because they couldn't believe it. But they say, well, it doesn't make a difference. Just pay to ten percent bond. Whatever obstruction of justice and tempering what evidence bond was to get out.

When McCauley asks Willis what her largest reservation about admitting that she killed Rose would be, Willis responds because she wants to be home too. She then discusses a fictional in air quotes book she wants to write about the murder, entitled Murder One was the case they gave me, And then they talk about the contents in her book, where she admits that she hates Blaylock. She tells McCauley that she feels badly because of all the people in prison

Prison phone conversations are recorded, so McCauley reached out to Marcus's lawyer and they retrieved and transcribed the recording, adding it to his federal havias where you need to show that your constitutional rights were violing, and they bolstered the filing with this evidence of innocence.

It's two three hours worth of conversation that my lawyer ended up getting and submitted it into evidence in my federal hay and it changed the direction that my hat was going at that time. And I told my lawyer to file a stay and take that evidence back to the trial courts so you can exhaust it. If the federal courts hear it before the trial court, then I'll be forever barred from bringing it back up. So what happened was he didn't listen to me. He said, no,

However, the court ruled that an innocence claim absent the constitutional violation was insufficient so the recordings, having not been added to the record and exhausted in trial court, were now procedurally barred. But then Arkeita kept right on communicating with Ernest McCauley.

She admits her guilt on multiple occasions. In letters she's drafted to Ernest McCully, Willis admits to killing Howard Rose and that mister Blainlogg was not involved, and like the phone call, McCully often refers to a soul that was lost or stolen because of Willis's lies. She wrote, I guess when you take a life, you have to live with it. You really don't have a choice but to

This time, his attorney took it to the trial court.

A judge decided that to these letters and recordings you couldn't prove they were her. She would not testify taking responsibility for them, and so those subsequent post conviction petitions were denied. They went back and forth through the Court of Appeals.

At this point, it appears that the state offered Ernest a deal for early release, which he told Marcus about in a letter two days after he made the deal and later testified to in twenty fourteen. This is what he said about the offer.

Ernest said that he ended up writing a statement later for the prosecution to get out of prison early. He told him that whatever he writes is this against me is going to be a lie because I'm innocent. But they said they don't care if he lie. They just needed to stop my post conviction and it did.

A statement was drafted allegedly from Ernest that the phone conversations were just a setup and that Marcus was the actual shooter, And despite presenting a letter from Ernest admitting that the statement was just a means to get his on early release, Marcus didn't get any traction again on the now procedurally barred confession materials until a twenty thirteen affid David for one of the Cauley's cellmates, Shannon Drake.

He gets throwed in the mix because Ernest let him listen to Archidah on the phones and wrote affidavit from my lawyer Sam. He heard her saying how she set me up. In twenty fourteen, I'm back in the courtroom on our everdentary of hearing it. Ernest came in there and got on the stand and Danny said that he ended up writing a statement, and a statement is really no good until you testify to it. So now he's

Which goes back to the original sin that this phone conversation was presented in federal court but was never exhausted in trial court, so it was used up where it couldn't be effective on its own, and then they can say that this related evidence is not new. But there was a new hope in Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's office, the creation had long last of a conviction Integrity Unit.

Well, I found an application to them for my role for conviction in twenty eighteen. I didn't hear nothing from him for two years. In twenty twenty, during the pandemic, I had someone reach out to the head of that unit at the time. He said, oh, it's ironic that you're calling me about the Blacklock case because something new has came up and I'm going to ask the head prosecutor for special permission to re review his case.

So at this time Marcus reached out to Kim, who agreed to represent him with the CiU.

So I talked to the then head of the Conviction Integrity Unit, who says he won't confirm that they've found something new, but he doesn't deny that he's had this conversation with this contact person, mister Blaylock. But the whole time we're going through this and get a response from them one way or the other, like about what's going on, what the investigation is. However, McCully is telling us, Yeah,

Now, this CiU was assigned an independent review board made up of judges and community members, whose purpose was to review the findings of these reinvestigations and vote on recommendations for the head prosecutor.

I talked to the members of the board who said, no, we've never heard about this case. We haven't met for over two years, and As a result, November of twenty twenty two, all community members of the Higer County Prosecutor's Conviction Integrity Unit resigned, citing the units inactivity perceived lack of impact, with a letter noting that the office had not even referred a case for review since prior to the pandemic. As far as I'm concerned, Ural Sailor's the

And you can hear about both of those cases. We're going to have our coverage linked in the episode description. So Kim filed motions to compel the CiU to release anything they'd found, because, after all, when Marcus filed with the CiU, they'd signed an agreement to share materials, not to mention other obligations to do so.

As a result of the court sort of order that, well, if your beef is with the Conviction Integrity Unit, the whole board resigns. So we're not sure that they are a thing anymore, and therefore we can't compel them. These obligations exist out of ongoing Brady obligations, concepts of justice, out of the prosecutor's ethical duty to pursue justice. And there's an AVIA requirement that if they find subsequent evidence, they're required to turn it over. None of that seems

Is there anything that our audience can do to help?

Yeah, I mean I think public outcry, call the prosecutors, demand that they released information. Why are they protecting it?

What is the purpose?

What are they hiding?

And if anyone wants to learn more about Marcus and his case, he's written a book.

My book is out, My Long Journey through Faith at New Beginning by Marcus Blaylock. I appreciate to somebody that knows about this case, that heard about this case, that maybe the witness has talked to in the past, please come forward, Feel free to talk to my attorney. I have a website to free Mark M A R. C. Blaylock B L A L O C K dot com.

Okay, so we're going to link the book his website as well as ways that you can contact Kim if you have any information about this case, And with that we're going to go to closing arguments, where first of all, I think each of you for being here, and now I'm going to kick back in my chair and close my eyes and just listen to anything else you have to say. Kim, as always, let's start with you, and then you can just hand the microphone off to Marcus and he'll take us off into the sunset.

This case is so obvious. How it got indicted is the original question. How there was probable cause to move forward with an arrest, with an indictment, with a trial, and how a conviction is sustained. We're questions that weren't answered until after trial, unfortunately, but we've known the answer

Something is hidden and you're not showing it. You're not showing your hand. But yet and still she shows her hand. I mean, it's not right, it's not right. You have me wrongfully convicted now going on twenty four years support crime I didn't commit, and you use the self admitted statement, a percase statement at that to convict me. I need prayers. I need prayers, support phone calls for this to go through. My lawyer is amazing, but I need a miracle right now.

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free 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 Kleiber.

The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.