On September fifteenth, nineteen eighty eight, there was an argument inside of Philadelphia rowhouse. As one party tried to leave, the other man followed, making threats that left him fatally shot. The victim's brother only knew one man in that party, Trevor Mattis, but Trevor maintained that he was just a bystander. Then another eyewitness corroborated that story. Yet this eyewitness said something else at Trevor's trial, This is wrongful conviction.
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Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. I'm Ben Bollen from The Stuff They Don't Want You to Know, and once again I'm excited to be hosting the show. In this episode, we're speaking with our guest, Trevor Matis, who was calling in from a Pennsylvania correctional facility to share a story. Trevor, thanks for joining us, Aware and folks. If we're detecting an accent here, that's because Trevor originally traveled to the US as a student from Jamaica, right.
I came from a backgrown of working class single Pearan household and she had her brothers, so I had an extended family. You just run into anybody else. That's just how it is in the community that came from properties, almost like a community property. With Winni Switchers growing up as an only child, a lot of times I was with my grandmother, who was a retired teacher who I think she instilled in me from a very early age the love of knowledge, reading specifically, but I was drawn
to the sciences as I grew up, specifically biology. Then I was always achieving in school without any extra.
Promping, and Trevor's academic achievement continued. His high scores on placement tests put him in the best high school in all of Jamaica, and soon it came time to take the Jamaican equivalent to the SATs.
I know my mom at a single appearance. She always told me to shoot for it without really being a conviction that I was achieving, and in one day sure enough came back. You have been accepted to City University and your college. So when I got accepted, I was another check caused a financial commitment that she wasn't really prepared for tuition is like twice the amount of the regular tuition when you be coming from a foreign country
or whatever. Because she always told me there's one man, so she always had she said, I'm not rich, i can't leave your riches, but I'm going to make sure you get a good education. At that point in time, because the promise was made, she found that we do not miss a point with that note. This scramble was on, well, who you gonna stay with housing arrangement blah blah blah, and just extended friends and family and netwhek somewhere was
found to me that was in Queen's village. So I ended up in Queen's going to your college.
So at this point Trevor is a pre med biology major and he ended up graduating with honors. He is planning to become a dentist, and he can pretty much go to any school he wishes.
For this after I finished, was interested in one of those schools in Philly like temp Law, University of pen and Afferent from the neighborhood. He was actually resided in
Philadevasys to come back and forth. So he said, well, whenever already actually should come up with him, and then I could see with him in his apartment, and then he was part of this community of Jamaican guys, young guys, and I think it was doing his spring and the summer's like somewhere around here when the weather was nice.
So usially screaming Soka dominos and as a nine young person, initially to me, it was almost like a boys camp because there are all these young guys, young Jamaicans, palier, cohesive little unit and it was just a bold, fun flirt with girls or whatever, just being a young man.
For some quick context here, it was the summer of nineteen eighty eight, and while Trevor was enjoying this coming of age experience, the crack epidemic had swept across many American cities, and this also applied to Philadelphia. It appears that some of the young men we've mentioned were involved.
I got to realize that they were involved in the joke game, but was not right where we were seeing it. There was just like an old hangover spot because it was well kept. Us at one bad Jamika and elder to us, and so we used to hang upstairs. But jokes would be so from the base then, and.
It was soon discovered that this house on Louis Street in Philadelphia was already under federal surveillance. The focus was on a man named Franklin Watson. He was present on the night of the incident September fourteenth into the fifteenth, nineteen eighty eight, when the crew selling drugs out the basement included a man named Kirk Crump, as well as two brothers, Paul White and Everton Mead Johnson. Trevor showed up with a man named Mikey Donovan who was visiting from out of town.
He was basically new to Philadelphia, not somebody I really had no extensive long term relationship with. We've made each other to somebody, and he said he wanted to what phil it was like. We had a good Rahore at that time.
So Trevor took Mikey Donovan to this hangout spot that doubled as a drug house to see the owner of the place, Rudy, but they spoke to Kirk Crump instead.
When I arrived, it was early in the morning, like twif thirty one name, and I was surprised to see a lot of the other guys upstairs in the living room. But these are guys that I know. The guy I'm with, Mike Donovan doesn't know them. So when I spoke to her indication, he said something like, oh, so many people in the house. Why so many people know? Something like that. But it was a basically generalized conversation, not about whether
someone should be here or not. So Johnson in the basements and stuff her he must have phone was offended and that I don't know. And he found up the steps, was like boom, boom, boom, flung the door open. That it his lamp, and then his first words was, by the fuck you want to know? So why so much people know? Something like that very barely cooes his manner. He liked to intimidate because he was kind of big, but that's just his personality and how he acts. Mike
had done but who was right beside me? He don't know the spurs and so he just basically he asked me in a low tone, he asked me, who is this guy? Why is he talking so rough? That further inside chance, So he basically was like pussue you, oh, the blue pursue you you know me and the code up the streets at that time, a remark like that basically that declaration of war, So that immediately escalated things. I could not understand where's all of that coming from.
I was like, what can I be done? The deed escalated, that was my first thought. He was like stepping towards an aggressive times step. So I basically put myself in between both of them, and I was pleading, minimisea listen, calm don, what's this all about? That's uncalled for. So I basically got him to step back and take a seat on the stool. And he was in a steering countest now with Michael donabout behind me. So it's a hardcore great locked in this real tunnel vision with anger.
Yeah me, it's clearing at him, and I have no clue what the reaction is going to be from Mikil Japan who is behind me. And so I looked towards the guy that was in the kitchen I was speaking to and I said that where is really just all the blue basically the giant change something? And he said he just left. He went to the bus stop to escort his daughter to work. So that basically gave me an opportunity to know to a right, let me go find him. So I'm just trying to divert that said
come let's go or something to that. I'm trying to back down up and come, and took two more steps towards the front doors. If you know me, this is not big something like that. And when I look back on more than I see him like a stepped back relax. And therefore I figured that the game did worked because that looked like nothing further gong go. So I hate my step towards the front door, over the front door, and I was ahead by a couple of steps. I looked back and I was seeing Mikey Donner was just
emerging on the front door. So while I'm thinking that I'm taking these steps towards the bust, I hear the screen door clang again. I mean somebody had come out by the time it shut. When I turned around on the streets, Johnson was buying his car jump and his car trunk was already opened and he was reaching in.
Mike Donovan was on the sidewalk. Johnson said something. Most likely it would have been something intimidating, and the moment he said something, Mikey Donovan pulled I've gone out of his ways and hop fire immediately.
Everton Meet Johnson was shot fatally. According to the autopsy report, the bullet entered from the back of his body toward the front. Perhaps Mikey Donovan didn't wait for me Johnson to turn around and fire, and since the scene of the crime was in front of a drug house, it appears no one stuck around to speak to the police,
except for the victim's brother, Paul White. According to others, Paul had tried to stop his brother from following Donovan and then he ran to the basement to get help during the shooting, but he told police something else.
Because he had never seen Mike Donovan in his life. He immediately told them he saw two people shoot his brother find me along with this unknown Jamaican me that you know. He said, I had a Tech nine, a big machine gun and mine and a handgun. And he said both the bos basically ambushim at the corner of the car, and I was shooting and Danavan was shooting.
The seven shot fat. So that was basically what he told them at the scene of the cramp what the state is now because it happened at a joke host the state really created this narrative of a joke curve for r peer. So they took that and said, well, it was a dispute of who was supposed to sell jokes of the hose now me and just have friends from back then, you know what I mean we had. Anyways, that's
not all we operate. If he wanted to sell jokes or the house he had, all right, Kirk is one selling know, so anybody could make some type of arrangement with Kirk or whatever. So it wasn't no circumstance that we would be in competition or anything like that. It just a third story. But the state basically said I took it upon myself to eliminate my arrivals.
So Trevor was arrested and over time, this unknown Jamaican is eliminated from the.
Narrative, so nobody could identify, nobody knew where he was. So basically, after I was made to target, the state and everyone does didn't even try to final anything. Thirred about the microdynamo that that's just how it works. They had to target that they wanted, and everything was gear to get this targeted regardless. What is my turn up?
Speaking of? While Trevor sat in pre trial detention for nearly two years. The separate federal investigation of the drug house closed in on Franklin Watson, who was present on the night of the murder and tried to trade information for leniency, And this was three weeks before trial in
January nineteen ninety. The Feds told the prosecution about this witness, but for reasons that we'll discuss later, the defense remained in the dark about this and a number of other things, including, for instance, why the state wanted a bench trial.
When I got to the court room, I requested the jury trial, and then my lawyer got very old rage and told me that he had an agreement with the prosecute that's did not seek the head penalty if I took a non jury trial. But I still was trying
to be adamant. So a couple of minutes before the trial started, my mom was there and she came to me in tears and distraughts, telling me that I should listen to the lawyer because he told her that they don't like Jamaicans in Philadelphia at that time, and I'm going to try in the electric cheer and she was so broken that that broke me. Just to see her so distraught, So I rel ended and basically went along.
So perhaps the state was confident that the assigned judge would give them their desired result, as would Franklin Watson.
The morning of the trial, the prosecutor announced as a surprise witness just walked into his office five minutes before the trial started and said he was there, and this is how he announced it.
Rotson.
So when he puts him understand, Watson testifies that he was present. What is the first person ever said that there was an argument in the house in the kitchen between Johnson and I over who should sell jokes from that location. And then he said for the first time also that I brandished a weapon in the house and had to be restrained by others. Then I walked out,
Johnson followed me out. We began to fight outside for one minute by the car trump and then I got the better of Johnson, pulled the weapon and shot him multiple times from close range, and no one else was involved. Blah blah blah.
So, in contrast to Paul White's original statement about two shooters, Watson named Trevor as the loan shooter, and on cross examination, Trevor's attorney was able to expose Watson's vulnerability.
He got the fact that Watson was a federal informant. I understand, but the lawyer he never followed up the final what was happening? What did he say to defense? It was just less that that just came out. So basically that was how he impeached the credibility. And as soon as he finished testifying, the prosecutor arrested their case. They were like, well, we're not going to call the
original White now no more. Werested my lawyer objective. He requested a mistrial, saying, Yeerona, it's a child by ambush. We have been waiting for this case for over two years. We have all this discovery. Nowhere in the entire discovery was a Watson mention. They brought this person at the twelfth hour claiming that he is a surprise waitness and
now they want to rest the case. They had the sidebar, and then prosecutor relented and said our year and postponed the case for one day and then we will bring White the following him.
Additionally, and this is absent from the record, Watson escaped a potential thirty year sentence in exchange for this testimony and then came Paul White.
So the next day he brought White to the standard and the White entire testimony was radically different and it mimicked almost play by play, what Watson said. So initially White was talking about two people shooting. Now he changed and he said there was only one person and that was me. And he also added an altercation because it was never an adducation mentioned anywhere at the scene of the crime or at the preliminary year and.
A year after.
But at the trial he testified it was an altercation, but he said it didn't last a minute. He said it lasted a few seconds before a brandish a weapon and Shaq Johnson. So that's how his testimony changed to mimic what Watson said, but he did not repeat the allegation of it was an argument over job.
Unfortunately, the inconsistencies between White statements as well as how they were inconsistent with Watson's, these issues are never pointed out to the judge.
Well, I him in the head with a gun. You know you hit somebody in the head with a gun. Be authors to going to show us a specific mark that I've gone with. Leave And then White after what he said the federal informant was not there to weakness, and the federal informant said White was not there. He said White was in the basement, and a federal informant
said I had a chrome nine millimeter. White said first it was a Tick nine machine handgun, and then at the child testimony he said it was a nine milimeter but it was grown.
So without these glaring inconsistencies pointed out or what else was hidden from the court at the time the judge made his decision on the first degree murder, criminal conspiracy, and weapons charges.
He basically summarized the case and said it was a straightforward, clear cut case of joke urs dispute, and I did defend and took it upon myself to eliminate my rival once and for all by gunning him down in cold and within less than sixty seconds.
I was sawing it with the automatic sendments of life, but of the passability of broad and my mom was there, so I know that basically broker Art. When I'm looking back to the whole scenario, it was basically a present with a foregun conclusion. Maybe two months after I was convicted, I received a statement that was made three weeks before matrial by what to the federal authorities, which was a
part of his pleats to the federal authorities. And in the statement it was Excotory specifically stated that he was present at the chance to shooting, that Johnson was shot by Mikey Dana Vlan and I was merely a bystander, and that was just three weeks before my child. And he spoke to the faith and told him basically actual version of events, and then came into the stage and gave a own separate contra victory statement.
For state prosecutor.
This was clearly a Brady violation. It upended the state's case. So this one Trevor an evidentiary hearing on direct appeal.
The same judge that convicted me had an evidential here in five six months after I was convicted. The federal prosecutors would understand when they carrabber the authenticity of the Watson Pree Deal statement that I had. So when they saw that I was able able to trial the case, they contacted this prosecutor and conveyed the information that he
might have the wrong perpetrator. And that is how this prosecutor became aware of Franklin Watson and made arrangements to interview was one of the federal prosecutors said he specifically recall that name sax because the saxophone or something that that is saying.
So it appears that Trevor's prosecutor, Richard Sachs, received this information that Trevor was indeed an innocent bystander, but somehow on the eve of the trial, Watson changed his story. This allowed Sacks to forge ahead with the prosecution anyway, in spite of the federal prosecutor's efforts.
They gave it to him orally over the phone, Prosecutor Toulist and also he said he didn't receive a specific information that he might have the wrong perpetrator. So they contradicted each other. But the judge said he found both bodies to be.
Truthful, even though these testimonies are indirect contradiction.
And then the judge it meantal gymnastics by saying, since the federal arts or conveyed the information orally over the telephone and not in writing, the information would not amount to really because of state prosecutor had nothing physically to turn over to the defense. Wow. Yeah, But then he went even Further, I guess he knows that wouldn't pass the smell this, so he came up with this rational.
He said, well, even if the document was available and turned over to the defense and the federal informal testified exactly the exculpulary statement he made in that document, he would still have found me guilty, not as a perpetrate at this time, but as a co con spirit and the laws at that time it will be sentenced exactly the same way of mandatory life with oparole.
Even though the only witness, Watson, who even said anything about a criminal conspiracy, the Trevor had allegedly killed me Johnson to take out a rival dealer. That witness had just been clearly proven to lie.
So I told my lawyer immediately, as we have to appeal this, and he was like, of course, So he agreed to file an appeal, and they sent me off state note and I was absolutely in the hole at that time. And weeks went by and then let us never got real response, never weeks and weeks went by, and then I reached over to my family, contact this lawyer and they find out what's going on with my appeal. He informed them that did not file an appeal within
the timeframe. The thurnit the window to find the notice of appeal, so the issue became waved. According to the legal language, was basically I gave up on that issue, and.
With that failure is barred from raising the issue again in state court. So he tries federal court.
There's a federal magistrate that the case and he ordered that I be retried within one hundred and twenty days are re released. The state appeal his decision, and the district judge reversed the magistrates and uphel the conviction, maintaining that there was a procedural default. Therefore, the federal courts cannot entertain this issue whatsoever because the state did not get full opportunity to reverse their own mistake or their own issue. And I appeal that to the appellate court
at the federal level. They ruled that they were very troubled by the circumstances of this case and they clearly articulated that they will not decide this case on the merits. Whether or not this judge is ruling that oral communication is not pretty. However, they could not welcome the procedural default the issue, but that claimed to be entertained in the federal courts. So as a result, they upheld the conviction, with the astering that they were very troubled by the circumstances.
So the case breaking evidence that surfaced back in nineteen ninety has effectively been newter by the system since nineteen ninety one. The fight was fortunately revived in twenty eleven. This is when the man who was in the kitchen that night, Kurt Crump, sent Trevor an affidavit.
The affidavit basically clarified that he operated residence and that it is the victim. Johnson was one of his friends. That the confrontation occurred in the kitchen between Johnson and Donovan, and I intervened calm Johnson down. I left the house with Donovan in tour and he said that Johnson was angry that he was going to get his guns, and
why he tried to stop him from bard. You know, Johnson shoved White aside, and a storm goes behind Donavar and said that White ran down the basement together two other guys to curve trailed behind Johnson to the front door, and in his activity he described his saw Johnson reaching the trunk when Mike Danaban shot him multiple times, and.
That version of events is corroborated by the trajectory of the bullets from the back to the front. This contradicted both trial witness testimonies, and it continued to further discredit Paul White.
When the shots were fired, Curve heard White and the guy from the basement coming up behind him from the kitchen. Basically that White was not a witness because he said was behind him when the shots got fired. But they heard the shots and when he turned they as really had begun to flee back down the business. He can exit the residence to a business and that basically was it.
And he actually did follow up with a sworn video deposition with the corroborreate affective and I submitted all of that to the state court and it was denied it untimely, no explanation. I appealed that to the state's unpelate courts and they ruled that this evidence was untimely, but they gave their explanation. They said it was cumulative because it produced no new facts. It basically said the same thing that the defense said. They said I should have gotten him,
and basically they didn't. Said I could have gone. It didn't tell me how I was going to get him. They didn't discuss the fact that the state was looking for kirk Crumb because he was one of the persons that was in the discovery as a weakness.
So you heard that, right, folks. Not even the state can find this guy, yet Trevor is expected to do so. It turned out that kirk Crump had been arrested in another state under an alias before he was deported to Jamaica, so finding him would have been nearly impossible. Yet when Trevor appealed to the federal courts, they said that these two factors made the witness unreliable and so they denied him as well.
Subsequent nine two tenty twenty three, friends and family finally get the resources to hire a forensic expert, doctor Sheril leg from Pittsburgh, and he compared the trial testimony from the witnesses, and he compared it to the autos report and the ballistics evidence, and he gave a report. It's his scientific conclusion that the description given by the state witnesses were fabricated because they conflicted with the autops report
and described things that were physically impossible. They described the victv shot multiple times in the chess face area, when the autopsy reports showed that all the shots were going from back to front.
Bullets don't have opinions. Bullets are not eye witnesses.
These are facts facing somebody face to face and shoot
them in the back. On top of that, in twenty twenty four, a private investigator in Jamaica located a federal informat and what's revealed that he actually did explain the same thing to the state prosecutor when the broad him in the office, when that I was an innoc advices standard, and then at that point he said Sacks got animated and was angry and said this would be an open and shortcase if he identified me as a perpetrator, explaining to him that he would have negative implications on his
upcoming federal sentencing and the pleaar agreement that he had signed feel incoporate. So this report that they investigator submitted, along with thessarily work report, those two things are currently in front the court and.
Another Acire Trevor, we wish you all the luck in court, even though you shouldn't need any well wish is in the first place, it certainly feels like you do.
And if anyone listening has any information or wishes to support Trevor in any way, we'll make sure to link ways to reach them. In our episode description, you'll see that he also goes by the name Anton ford On Socialist. And with that we go to our closing. You know, I'm just gonna sit back here and listen to anything that Trevor has left to say. Let's let you have the last word, all right, thank you.
For giving me this opportunity to address your listeners. I've endored more than my full measure of injustice. As a result, I'm driven by a desire to do my part and to contribute everything I can to bend the moralogue of the universe towards more justice. I aspire to embody the virtues of revolutionary love, radical empathy, unapologetic kindness, and unconditional freedom.
I was forged to leading the bowels of a castoral cauldun of oppression, where I was subjected to unspeakable trans and tribulations at the hands of manifesting justice, systemic violence, and steed inflicted torture meant to terrorize and design to dehumanize. Yet I survived. I was grown down by the millstone of oppression, tried by the fires of cruelty, and tested in the face of unmitigated brutality. Yet I persevered to emerge,
a defied, purified, and sanctified. I'm now obsessed with and possessed by an urgent need to call out, condemned and deconstruct white supremacy, to love, clear, for, and nurture all and any authentic expression of humanity. To demand liberty, equity, and the humane treatment of the entire spectrum of nature. And to end in justice and all forms of exploitation.
In the last seven years, Philadelphia's Conviction Integrity Units has released over fifty inmates who were wrongfully convicted, a total of more than seven hundred years sent incascerated illegally. All of these black and brown people were sentenced to deathbine casceration is sentenced ephimistically referred to as life without the possibility of parole. Note these wrongful convictions occurred in Philadelphia County, and there are many more similar cases like mine yet
to be reviewed. On June nineteen, twenty twenty three, Philadelphia District Attorneys Office released their Racial Injustice Report. This report stated unequivocally that Philadelphia's criminal justice system is racists. This is a refusable proof that the wrongful convictions uncovered and documented. We're not a matter of mistakes nor the system being broken. No, this is institutional racism at work, and like all other institutional racism, it's next serious and amounts to social engineering.
This is in justice by design. I argue that the wrongful convictions in Philadelphia are so pervasive that they cannot be tolerated by a civilized society, and we cannot depend on the current lethogic by drip one case at the time judicial review process to address this pervasive systemic problem. Too many cases will be missed. We need an across the board legislative fixed the remedy the cruel and unusual harms inflicted by the state sanctioned the convictions of innocent people.
We need parole eligibility for lifers. There is no parole for life as in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is one of the four states in the Union that still employs the Barrick draconian sentence in scheme of mandatory life without the possibility of parole for murder. It's time to drive Pennsylvania's archaic crime code into the modern era of Greece, mercy and
second chances. In February twenty sixteen, the United States Supreme Court, in the case of two co versus Louisiana, rule that sentence in juvenile offenders that is, offender seventeen years and younger to mandatory life without parole was unconstitutional. As a result of this ruling, Pennsylvania had to re sentence over five hundred juvenile lifers, many incarcerated for over twenty years. As of today, over one hundred of these juvenile lifers
have been sentenced and successfully reintegrated into society. Listen, there are more than five thousands of the lifers, many incarcerated over twenty years, languishing in prison in Pennsylvania. These other five thousand lifers are no different, not by one judge, now by one iota, from the juvenile lifers who were
paroled and successfully returned to the community. There is a moral imperative, if not legal, equal protection, case to be made that parole eligibility must be extended to these other five thousand lifers. These other five thousand lifers, including myself, do not have to die in prison to keep society safe. I have a vision to make parole available to all eligible lifers in Pennsylvania. I'm talking about bending the moral arc of the universe towards more justice by ending the
politics of injustice. To achieve this goals, I need substantial support and access to institutional resources. I want to create a nonprofit organization, Gordon Justice und Accountability Project, to implement a comprehensive five year plan design to achieve a roles eligibility for life within Pennsylvania. I call upon all councient just people who desire to help to join me on this mission. You may contact me on the social media platform of Instagram at my fun I am twenty three
page that is fun. I am twenty three a niam two three the sign up for this cause. Thank you for your time.
Thank you for listening to Ron for 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, Color Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliber. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer 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 Instagram at it's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal.
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