March 10, 2026 • 39 mins
After helping free his childhood friend who spent 18 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, Georgetown professor Marc Howard couldn’t return to his normal life. Instead, he built programs that have exonerated 13 innocent people, educated 250 incarcerated people, helped 150 people return to society, and have brought to normal folks into 30 prisons across the country. This powerful conversation challenges us to rethink justice, redemption, and the role each of us can play in bringing light into broken systems.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
While important and I'm proud of that work, it was
unsatisfying because I wanted to do something with a greater impact.
And that coincided with some changes in my life that
involved my childhood friend who had been wrongfully convicted of
double murder, where I basically rededicated my life to helping
him get free, and that took me into this completely
different space and different world. I started visiting him and
(00:25):
I made a number of visits to him in prison,
and during one of those visits, I was just so
overwhelmed by just the injustice, the fact that he was
going back to a cage while I was going back
to freedom.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
In my life.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
And I said, you know, I'm going to do everything
I can to help get you out of prison, whatever
it takes. I'm even going to go to law school.
But I was devoting so much of my life to
helping Marty that I was like, I just have to
do more.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Ill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, i'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm a football coach in inner
city Memphis. And that last part unintentionally led to an
Oscar for the film about one of my teams.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
It's called Undefeated.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
I believe our country's problems are never going to be
solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits
using big words on CNN and Fox that nobody really
ever uses, but rather by an army of normal folks.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Guys.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
That's us, just you and me, deciding hey, I can help.
That's what Mark Howard, the voice you just heard, has done.
Mark couldn't go back to his normal life after helping
Marty get his life back, so he got a new life,
starting programs that have exonerated thirteen innocent people, educating two
(01:48):
hundred and fifty guilty people in prisons, and supporting one
hundred and fifty people re entering our society and challenging
us all to rethink what justice really does mean and
to think about what's unique about our own story that
can bring special light to where there's profound darkness. I
genuinely cannot wait for you to meet Mark right after
(02:11):
these brief messages from our general sponsors. Mark Howard from Washington,
d C. The founding director of the Prisons and Justice
(02:33):
Initiative at Georgetown University and the founder of the Frederick
Douglas Project of Justice.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
My god, that's a lot of words. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Great to be Hereville.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Just flew in this morning from Didch flood for I
know you like live in airplanes, right.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yeah, just got in straight into the studio.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Flat out tonight. Find out tonight where you had it.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Back to DC tonight and then to La Friday, to
Nevada Monday, to Houston next Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Well, we're lucky everywhere.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Lucky you've been able to fit you in and bring
you to Memphis. I appreciate the time everybody. I precursor
to this, I'm stoked about this conversation. It's something that
I've always had an interest in that I haven't fully
formed all of my personal feelings and thoughts about. And
(03:21):
I think as this interview goes on, many of our
listeners may find themselves in the same place. And I
think Mark here to discuss the work he's done is
really important and inspirational, but also on this one, really
informative and maybe help each of us in our lay terms,
(03:42):
grasp a little better how we as Americans feel about
criminal justice, criminal justice reform, crime, recidivism, and all of
those things. So Mark, I can't wait to talk to
you about with this stuff. So you're a political science
for Russ got right, and that all changed?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Tell us about that.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, I mean, so it's a long story and I'll
give a short version of it, but we got time.
My initial training after getting an undergraduate degree was and
after spending a year in Berlin studying political science, then
I went on and got a PhD at UC Berkeley
in political science.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
You're clearly a dump. Well you know, a lot of
gray matter going on up there.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah, I'm not sure how useful all of it is,
but now I've definitely found my passion. But so initially
I went on the academic job market a few different
positions and landed at Georgetown University, where I've been teaching
now for over twenty years. And that was initially in
the Government Department, which is political science as a field,
and that's what I taught and did research in and
(04:51):
got promoted and got tenured, became a full professor of
the highest sort of rank you can get as a
professor as an academic. But I also had this story
that I'm sure we'll get into in depth. That was
a personal connection that brought me into the criminal justice
system now made me realize how much injustice there is
and led me to completely change my life in the
(05:13):
sense of not leaving necessarily my old position, but changing
everything that I do in the direction.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Of criminal justice reform.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
My PhD was in basically European comparative politics. I focused
on countries and comparative politics.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
That's neat. Yeah, so this is just curious. I mean,
does that mean? What it sounds like is that you're
you're looking at different forms of government in Europe, comparing
the way Turkey or Greece operates government versus White frances
(05:49):
Is that, yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I mean that was some of my teaching was broadly
about all different sets of countries, even around the world,
but especially focusing on Europe. But then I did my
own research and writing and wrote to books that deal
with different specific issues within Europe. So one was on
civil society and democratization in post communist countries and the
transition of democracy in the nineteen nineties. Another one in
(06:11):
the two thousands was focusing on citizenship and immigration in
Western Europe, how different countries into great immigrants. But it
was very academic in focus, and while those books they
did well and each of them wanted several awards in
terms of little political science you recognition. They were very specialized,
and to me that while important and I'm proud of
(06:33):
that work, it was unsatisfying because I wanted to do
something with a greater impact that more people would pay
attention to. And that coincided with some changes in my
life that involved my childhood friend who had been wrongfully
convicted of double murder, where I basically rededicated my life
to helping him get free, and that took me into
(06:53):
this completely different space and different world.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
I'm going for a memory here, that's Marty.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Marty Tankliffe.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
It is first of all that background I actually think
has tentacles into what you do now, because I think
what you do now you have to understand government. You
have to understand assimilation. Even if it's assimilation can be
a very broad word, but I think assimilation is assimilation.
(07:21):
So I think all of that is important. I think
it's interesting that you've spent a PhD in all this
time studying and writing about European society, because I think
European society gives us a good reflector as it pertains
the work that you do now in our American society.
So I think all of that makes sense. Yeah, but
(07:43):
I don't think any of it really starts. The passion
can't really start without your personal connection to Marty, and
I don't think we can go forward in this interview
without everybody understanding that story.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
That's exactly right to me. The story of Marty Tanklip
is central to everything I do. It certainly is the
hook in terms of the transformation that I went through professionally,
and still is very central to what I do organizationally,
the activities that I'm involved in, the cases that I
work on. Marty and I work together side by side,
(08:18):
very closely still to the current day. So let me
give that story if you're ready for it. I am,
so I should give the backstory. Marty and I were
born nine days apart in the same location on Long Island,
New York. We went to the same preschool school called
Lovey Dovey Preschool Lovey.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Duvey can't make name that good grief, go ahead, and.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Then we went on to elementary school, middle school, high
school again in Port Jefferson, New York, on the north
shore of Long Island in Suffolk County, and then on
the first day of our senior year of high school.
We just turned seventeen, so we're both late August birthdays,
nine days apart. Marty woke up on that day and
imagine just the excitement of going to school as a
senior the first day. I mean, you've been through it
(09:07):
yourself with your kids. I mean, it's such a big day. Well,
Marty woke up to a brutal crime scene in his
own house, found his parents' bodies murdered, slaughtered, you could say,
viciously murdered, and his mother stabbed over fifty times, almost decapitated.
His father still clinging to life, but never came out
of a coma and died a few days later. And
(09:29):
as if that wasn't the worst thing that could happen
to a seventeen year old kid, to be orphaned and
to find that crime scene. That night, he was in handcuffs,
charged with killing his parents, and the next summer he
was convicted and sentenced to fifty years to life for
the murder of his parents. Now I was his friend,
and I actually went to the scene that day because
(09:49):
I had driver's ed and the driver's ed teacher took
us out in a car for the first day, and
we'd heard something happen, and we drove by the house
and saw police tape everywhere as a completely crazy scene.
But then I also was investigating it as the editor
of our high school newspaper called the Purple Parrot. So
there's another name for you, Lovey Dovey and the Purple Parrot.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Good grief, And they both seem like they belong in
Key West.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
But go ahead.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Well, I'm proud of what we did in the Purple
Parrot because well, Marty's case got so much coverage from
every New York newspaper media outlet. Only The Purple Parrot
got the story right, which is that Marty was innocent.
And I found a lot of evidence that showed that
his father's business partner had all these shady dealings and
owedis father money. And then he later staged his own
(10:37):
death and disappearance and was found weeks later in California,
having changed his appearance. It was never considered a suspect.
They focused on Marty. They fixated on Marty. Can you
tell me railroad in Marty? Why they fixated on Marty? Well,
there's strong likelihood that there was a head of homicide
was paid by the business partner to frame Marty.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
And at the time it was a very corrupt police
department still is from everything I hear. The most recent
sheriff actually ended up getting sentenced to prison and the DA.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
That would indicate corruption. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yeah. They had a at times a mid ninety percent
confession rate and murders, which is to say they basically
beat or psychologically tortured confessions out of people, which is
what happened in Marty's case. Although his confession wasn't an
actual confession, it was a hypothetical. They convinced them as
remember a seventeen year old kid that you know just
(11:31):
witnessed this trauma. They convinced them that he had done
it and blacked out in his memory of it. So
they lied and manipulated him to say for him. No,
Attorney President wasn't mirandized. I mean, it's it's a constitutional
violation day in and day at. Well, this is what
we'll get into this is, you know, the American criminal
legal system has these beautiful ideals as they're written down,
(11:54):
but not as they're carried out in practice. And Marty
was a textbook example of that injustice, and he ended
up being railroaded, sentenced to fifty years to life, and
so our lives went in completely different directions, and Marty
likes to say Mark went to Yale, I went to jail,
very different, you know, life courses at that point.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But
first you guys got to hear this. Okay, this is
real opportunity. Our six local service clubs are now badly
one another through April eighth to see which of them
can recruit the most members to their giving circle of
just ten dollars a month and up. And the winner
(12:43):
of this thing is going to get a twenty five
thousand dollars grant from Stand Together. If you live in Memphis, Oxford, Atlanta, wichitaal,
Northern Duchess County, or Ozaki County, join your giving circle
today by visiting normalfolks dot us backslash Service clubs normal
(13:07):
folks dot Us backslash Service Clubs and just click.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
On your club.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
And again, guys, the club that raised the most money
and gets most people and the most of the giving circle,
Stand Together is going to grant that club twenty five
k to go do something good in your community. I
can't imagine why you guys wouldn't do that. It's free stuff.
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
What's Marty a good student, good kid? He problems in it's.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Past, no, no problems whatsoever, no criminal record, not even
anything close. I mean, Marty was a kid who had,
you know, absolutely no trouble at all. And so this
was why it was so shocking and why the whole
process that unfolded I think just made no sense to
anybody who knew him. Now, I should say, and you
(14:14):
may know, and a lot of listeners will know about
the Menendez brothers who actually did kill their parents, and
it was around the same time, and Marty I think
got swept up into that.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Hole sentiment that really was about those same time period
when that happened.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Their crime happened after his, but his trial was taking
place in the middle of all the evidence making it
clear that they had killed their parents. So he kind
of gets swept in with that, which is like, oh,
rich spoiled kid kills parents for money.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
That was the narrative.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
There's absolutely no evidence to back that up. The wealth
wasn't nearly on the scale of the Menendez family, by
the way, but it became something that people believe because
the prosecution chose that narrative, picked their suspect, honed in
on him, and then sunk their teeth into him, and
wouldn't release him no matter what countervailing evidence.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Came to light. How long did he spend in jail?
Speaker 1 (15:07):
He spent almost eighteen years, six three hundred and thirty
eight days, eight.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Fifteen years of his life. Stone.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, so I'm.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Sorry, keep going.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, So our lives went in different directions. You know,
this was pre internet. This was hard to stay in
touch with somebody, especially in prison. And so I moved
on with my life. And there's a part of me that's,
you know, sad or even a little ashamed, like I
wish I'd done more at the time. But you know,
I was also a set eighteen year old kid, and
I went to college and you know, started my own
(15:40):
life in a way as a young adult. But I
would always tell people I have a friend in prison
who's innocent, and at first they would say, you know,
come on, that can't happen. I mean, if you go
back in time and think to our childhood that we
were taught, this is the greatest criminal justice system in
the world. There's innocent until proven guilty. There's a jury
of your peers. There's twelve people, there's guilty on a reasonableness.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
If it's in the newspaper, it's true.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Right, exactly what authority figures say is true. Even trusting
the police in many communities is something that we were
taught to believe in. Well, all of that has come undone.
Since then, there's been the Innocence Project and other organizations
in Marty and I have also created one called Making
an Xannaie where we have found and it's become clear
(16:24):
that there's a lot of misconduct. There's a lot of
mistakes or abuse of power that takes place. I learned
it through Marty's case, through the case just of me
as a person, as a kid really saying I think
my friend just got railroaded and there's been a tremendous injustice.
What can I do about it? Well, initially it was
(16:45):
in The Purple Parrot, and I did what I could,
and unfortunately, you know, people didn't listen to The Purple Parrot.
They listened to News Day and the New York Times
and Court TV and whatnot that had this prosecuted or
driven narrative that he was guilty. Over time, you know,
we lost touch, but he still stayed in the present
of my mind. I would talk about him. I would
(17:07):
tell people the story. I would somehow like take over
like a dinner party or a gathering if people really
wanted to know, like what about this? And then the
business partner, and you know, I could lay out the
whole story. But then something in me called out to
me to reach out to him, and so we started
writing letters, and I have several shoe boxes of letters
(17:30):
back and forth.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
In prison.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
We started talking on the phone. I started visiting him,
and I made a number of visits to him in prison,
and during one of those visits, I was just so
overwhelmed by just the injustice, the fact that he was
going back to a cage while I was going back
to freedom in my life. And I said, you know,
I'm going to do everything I can to help get
you out of prison, whatever it takes. I'm even going
(17:52):
to go to law school.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Now.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
I was already a Georgetown professor at that point, but
I was devoting so much of my life to help
helping Marty that I was like, I just have to
do more. And it turns out that at Georgetown, you
can actually get a law degree for free as a professor.
No one had ever done it before. No one's stupid
enough to you know.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
What, a free law degree from Georgetown sounds like a
pretty nice poe.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
So I made the plan that I was going to
go to law school with the goal of getting my
childhood friend out of prison. Just before I started, he
was exonerated, and I played a role in that I'd
written a brief on behalf of our high school classmates.
It was actually cited in the appellate court's ruling that
freed him. I played a role. You know, there are
a lot of other people. There's a private investigator, they
(18:37):
are lawyers. It's a big team effort. It takes a
village to help get someone exonerated. So Marty walked out,
and I was there, actually had I had arrived in
France five days earlier and found out who was getting out.
I flew right back to be there and walk you know,
him out of prison. And a lot of people who
knew my story and knew how obsessed I was with
(19:00):
helping Marty get free, said, okay, Mark, now you can
get back to your old life. You can be done
with this mission. It's a mission accomplished. But the way
I think of it is that my eyes through Marty's case,
my eyes were opened to injustice and I just couldn't
close them again. I couldn't be like, oh, Marty's out, now,
everything's fine, because through his case I learned about so
(19:23):
much injustice, corruption, incompetence, abusive power, misconduct, and it just
made me want to go deeper. So I went ahead
and went to law school while being a full time professor,
was a full time law student.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
That's a whole other crazy story.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
As I hear Marty's story, there's a couple questions that
I don't have answered that I'm just dying to know
that if I'm listening to this story right now, are listeners. One,
how did he get exonerated? What evidence that you know?
How did that work? And I think that's really important
(20:00):
deeper into the story to understand kind of systematically how
that can work. But with regard to Marty, how to
work on a human level. I am really interested in
how Marty, knowing he was innocent, and having to live
(20:23):
for a decade and a half surrounded by many people
who weren't in a atmosphere that can be very dangerous itself.
How he did just give up, how and how angry
he must have felt, and then the last part. And
(20:44):
you can answer these in anywhere you want to.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Did the did the jack legs that put them there? Hey?
For what they did?
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Well, let me go maybe in chronological orders however you
want to do. There's are great questions. First off, so
in terms of how he survived in prison, basically, you know,
he went in as as a kid. That's one pounds
from the white kid from Long Island. Yeah, that's up
state New York. Fact looks like the rest. He h.
(21:22):
He got good advice as he started from kind of
an older mentor, you could say, in prison, who said
two things. One, put some muscle on your body, work out,
get you know, you got to be able to protect
yourself and stand up for yourself. Two, more importantly, if
you really are innocent, get your to the law library.
(21:45):
And so Marty ended up going to law library every
single day and he worked there as a clerk. He
was paid, I believe it was about seven dollars and
fifty cents a week for forty hours of work in
the law library. That's what prison wages are and I
hope we'll get into some of that about the abuse
of that takes place in prisons. But people work and
they get paid about ten to twenty cents an hour.
(22:06):
So Marty worked in the law library, worked on his case,
but he also helped other people. So if you think
about it, you got people coming in looking for help
on their cases. They might be bloods, crips, you know,
Hispanic gangs, Area Nation whatever. There's like fifty gangs and
there can be a lot of you know, violence and
danger in there. Marty became untouchable because he was helping everybody.
(22:30):
So in a way he was protected by the legal
skills that he had and that he was developing and
working on.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
So he got out of the politics. For everybody listening,
when you hear prison politics, politics is a prison term
for referring.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
To the races exactly.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
So the politics of a prison are the whites with
the whites, the blocks with the blocks, the spanks with
the Hispanics, and many times inside each of those races,
the gangs within those races. But in prison terms, that's
called politics.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Right, Yeah, politics is a code word for race. Effectively,
he stayed out of it because he was a squal
opportunity jail lawyer. It absolutely does start now. He also
was for most of his seventeen and a half years
in something called Honor Block because his case was high
profile and because he had no disciplinary record in prison,
(23:27):
he was able to be in a place that was
less violent, and so Honor Block as it's called the
New York prisons, and there's different names for in other prisons,
but it's like an incentive pod or it's something that
you can earn through your good behavior but also perhaps
through your name recognition in order to sort of avoid
being a target.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
But he's still in jail for not having done anything.
So how he did.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
In fact, he was in the same unit, on the
same tier as Tupac Shakur the Rapper for a little
bit while he was cheapak was in the New Yorkers
and so they played I think they played handball or
basketball or something together like actually crazy. But so Marty
worked in the law library, helped other people, kept him safe.
(24:12):
He also lifted some weights, put some muscle on, so
he was safe. He was okay. Prison was not the
dangerous horror show that it often is for people. For him,
But what he also did, and this is what's incredible
and gets into the question about like optimism versus bitterness
and whatnot, is that he worked twenty four to seven
(24:34):
on his case. He was his leading, his own leading advocate.
He wrote fifty thousand letters from prison over seventeen and
a half years, and I've calculated that comes to nine
letters a day, including Sundays. He wrote to everyone he
could think of who might in any way be able
to help or connect him in any way. He wrote
to media personalities, He wrote to retired judges, He wrote
(24:57):
to experts in different areas of criminal law. Many of
them probably never opened his letters, most of them never responded,
but he was able to build up a group of supporters.
He was able to bring on lawyers and law firms
pro bono. He had this unbelievable array of top notch
lawyers pro bono, including the firm Baker Bots that had
(25:19):
a whole office that was just the Marty war room.
Basically that was just you know, it should have been
for an associate. Space is valuable in these law firms,
but it was literally just for his case and full
of files and boxes and people would be going in
there and checking stuff out like it was a library
in the law firm. Baker Bots probably spent over two
million just and that's back in, you know, a few
(25:40):
decades ago, big money on his case. So he was
his own leading advocate. He got people, He made people
want to help him, and that included me. You know,
when I first reached out to him, I didn't know
who I was going to see. At that point, it
had been a lot of you know, a lot of
time he'd been in prison, Like I didn't really know.
He was amazing. He was someone who was so positive
(26:00):
and optimistic. He stayed in touch with society. He used
to get the New York Times delivered by mail and
it would come a day late, and he was following
you know, politics, the world. I'm cooking. He loves cooking.
He would be like looking up recipes. He would cut
out recipes from the from the newspaper and send it
to people. He would like read restaurant reviews and be like, oh,
you should check out this new restaurant I heard. It's
really good. You know what I mean. He stayed connected,
(26:21):
And the way he puts it is that I never
lived in prison. I just resided there and his life.
He was always preparing for one day being free. He
always said, it's a matter of time. I know, one
day the truth is going to come out. And so
you didn't know it was going to take eighteen years.
And there was a close call like five years in
where he almost got out and he should have gotten out,
(26:43):
and then it's a show that happened and he didn't.
But he really found this resourcefulness in him and this
positivity to the point where you know what finally led
him And I'll explain how he got out. But that
was the nineteenth appeal. There'd been eighteen previous that have
been shot down. Each and every time. His team of
(27:04):
supporters was gut it devastated, you know, like they had
hopes they have the truth on their side. Boom, shot
down by this system that just is hell bent on
reaffirming convictions that values finality more than the truth. Well,
Marty would always say, you know it's okay, don't worry,
you know, like, oh, we can appeal this, or there's
(27:25):
another angle and there's another expert that we can bring in,
and you know, we can you know, bring up this
new issue. And he was like the best cheerleader for
his supporters who were all free in the free world,
but they'd be down, including me and Marty would get
us back up again. Think about it, He's sitting in
a freaking cage.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
What an example of courage.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Absolutely, I mean it's a courage and leadership from the
worst position possible, but to find an optimism, to find
a way to get people to rally, to come back,
to try again, to keep fighting, to keep the you know,
long term perspective in mind and not lose track of
the ultimate goal. It's like, you know, you're a former
(28:08):
football coach. I mean, imagine just losing every single quarter
and you're playing a twenty quarter game and you're saying
it's okay every quarter and like finally, you know, in
the nineteenth quarter, you win the game. That level of
optimism is really extraordinary.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
It is, especially under those circumstances. It's hard to have
that level optimism just being a guy out here. Run
around hard enough, Yeah, we'll be right back. I'm dying
(28:48):
to understand what freed him.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Well, So there was a hearing. The eighteenth Appeal was
a major hearing in Suffolk County on Long Island, in
front of a local hack. The judge and during that
hearing there are twenty plus different witnesses who came forward
who most of them didn't even know each other, were unconnected,
but had a version of the same story and the
(29:14):
same people involved. So when you think about what actually happened,
is the father's business partner named Jerry Stewarman who's still
free today. So I'm foreshadowing still a problem.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
That was my question. Did he get locked up? That
was coming now? Unbelievable go ahead.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
So there was a poker game at Marty's house. It
took place like every other week and it rotated different houses,
and it happened to be at his house that night.
Marty had actually set the table for everyone before the
guests came, and this business part of Jerry Stewart was
the last person to leave. He actually moved his car
out of the driveway so someone else could leave and
then he pulled back in. Was there at three in
(29:52):
the morning. There were two hitmen and a driver. The
hitmen were waiting in the bushes their cigarette butts outside
the a movie. Oh yeah, it'll be a real man. Yeah,
connected guys, and they came in yeah, I mean local.
I don't even know if they were just like one
of the guys. His nickname, his name was Joe Creedan.
(30:14):
He's dead now. His nickname was Joey Guns for you
know when you when you walk around with that nickname, Yo,
I'm Joey Gunns. Yeah, that kind of tells you who
you are. And uh, he and this other guy, Peter Kent,
were waiting uh for hand signal from the business partner.
They came in, they committed the murders. There's been a
lot of testimony, including Joey Guns his own son who
says his dad told him in detail how he did it,
(30:36):
and that he wore gloves and it matches the crime scene,
and that he walked up a half flight of stairs,
which also matches the crime scene. It was a split
level house. There's so much it became one hundred percent
clear what happened. And then the guy who was the
driver who testified, who initially actually confessed to a priest
in prison where he was locked up on other stuff.
Because when you're committing this kind of crime, you go
(30:56):
in and out of prison committing other he got caught sometimes.
So all these witnesses came forward with a version of
the story that implicated these other people, the driver and
the hitman, and it was clear as day that this
was the truth. And somehow this judge ruled against Marty.
(31:21):
And not only that, and by the way, there had
been a nun and a priest who testified. And the
judge in his ruling against Marty, this is the eighteenth
appeal that lost. Not only did he deny Marty, but
he used this colorful language. He said, you brought before
this court a cavalcade of nefarious scoundrels.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Priest. Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
And so.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Judge was being paid off.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Well, I think the whole county is so deeply corrupt
they have a vested interest in just covering up all
of the misconduct. Ninety percent of judges nationally are former prosecutors,
so there's a vested interest in preserving convictions because the
convictions come from the prosecutor's office. That's what they fight for.
They win, and when new evidence comes.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
To light, they don't want to feel like a wink
and a nod fraternity.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Yeah, fortunately that denial and it was so egregious with
the priest and nun stuff and some of the other people.
I mean sure some of the people had been in
criminal activity. That's how they knew about it. That's how
they knew these other guys who committed the murder. But
some of them, you know, had found religion, had turned
their lives around, and they were like, I got to
clear my conscience, like this guy told me he did,
or one of them said they wanted me to commit
(32:34):
the crime, but I wasn't free that night, I would
have done it. So it's crazy. Yeah, But so on
the nineteenth appeal, that denial got appealed to the New
York Appellate Division, which was getting out of the cesspool
of Suffolk County, where four judges heard the appeal. Funny
(32:54):
side story, James Gandolfini, who played Tony Soprano this was
at the height of the Sopranos, supported Marty and walked
into that courtroom like fifteen minutes late and walked up
to the front seat and everyone was like, Holy, Tony
Soprantoor just came in. He supports Marty.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
That's very believable.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
It chose Actually, I think the importance of some celebrity
support because this is the world we live in where
people recognize somebody and they pay extra attention to it. Anyway,
that court ruled for nothing unanimously to overturn Marty's conviction.
He was freed right after that. He was never retried,
but the real perpetrators also were never tried.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Part of that prators the cops, though absolutely none. Nobody
paid for anything.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Nobody, including the lead homicide detective his name is Kay
James McCready and who falsely testified. I don't want to
get into all the details.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
There's so many.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Movies, but it is crazy.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
The bottom line is.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Bottom line is Marty was clearly innocent. They knew it
at the time, they knew it throughout, and they still
know it. But they did everything they could to keep
him in prison for a life.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
They didn't pay for it.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Nobody paid for it.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
The guy who did it didn't pay for it.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
In Boca Ratone, in a gated community, they owned, together
with Marty's father, a bagel store on Long Island, and
there were some there were some struggles over money and
some other business dealings they had that weren't working that
they were arguing about, and Marty's father had put up
a lot of money and was reclaiming his debt. The
business partnered him about five hundred and thirty thousand dollars
(34:30):
in nineteen eighty eight. That's a lot of money, a
lot once once Marty's parents were killed, the debt was gone.
He made out. Not only that, the bagel store made
it big and became franchised, and they're still all over
Long Island, New York City, Florida. What's the name Strathmore Bagels?
Speaker 2 (34:49):
I know that place? Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1 (34:53):
That that money was literally made off of the blood
of Marty's parents and Marty's own sething.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Marty's discussed ony.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
He did, and he won a settlement, so he you know,
is fortunately financially it.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Is totally not good.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
The taxpayers are now having to pay for these jacks.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
That happen in the first place. But at least for
his sake, he was made financially old by the county
and the state.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Okay, there's the depth. Yeah, there's the setup.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
That is a real personal connection to what can happen.
And you even went to law school. But he's out.
And the question really is, lots of people have this
experience changed me?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Deal?
Speaker 3 (35:43):
But then as time goes on and then justice is handled,
that experience changed me?
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Can shrink? Whow was this different for you.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yeah, for me, it's not only grown, it's transformed. There's
been multiple like offshoots. It's like a tree that just
keeps developing new branches.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Which we're going to get into. But it is incredible.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
So, you know, the core, maybe the trunk, if I'm
going to stick with the tree metaphor, is Marty, and
everything stems from that and from Marty's experience and how
it transformed me and what it led me to do
in my life. But then there have been other branches,
and we can stick with the wrongful conviction one first,
although there's some others that go in different directions.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
But yeah, we're going to go down that path.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Which one, Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So I learned
through Marty's case that things that I thought were horrifying
and glaringly wrong and just completely immoral and shocking the
conscience to any citizen. We're just routine. We're just business
(36:53):
as usual. And that's to say police having unbelievable way
to craft a story that is off in fiction. Now,
I just want to make clear that I have a
lot of respect for the difficulty of police work and
for keeping a public safe, and it's a profession that
(37:17):
I respect and that I want to see enforced and supported.
But it has to be ethical, and so I'm not
in a throwaway the police, defund the police, ban, the
police abolished, with any of that stuff. I'm for pro
ethical policing, honest policing, policing that supports citizens that don't choose.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
The vast majority of cops.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Are I do. That's why I want to make sure I'm.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Not throwing Even if it's only three can do a
measurable day.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
There is a bigger problem, just to be honest, which
is I do think the I'll say the majority are
fully ethical, and I will agree that a minority of
very small minority are deeply ethical. But then there's also
a lot who just look the other way. And I'm
really troubled by the blue code of silence, the way it's.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
The blue wall thing.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Yeah, that's right, And how they you know, look the
other way when their partner does something or files a
false report, the supervisor that knows that this is impossible.
I would like to see a tighter reining in of misconduct,
which would mean consequences for cops who lie or cheat
or steal or you know, frame people immediate firing. I'd
(38:30):
like to see charges against them. I'd like to see
it made impossible to do, rather than tolerated, if not
sometimes openly in some departments, openly support.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
It's an ancient Greek notion that even if you're not
the actor, if you're aware of the actor and do nothing,
you're equally skilty. That's right, And that concludes part one
of our conversation with Mark Howard, and you don't want
to miss part two. It's now available to listen to. Together, guys,
(39:02):
we can change the country, and it starts with you.
I'll see in part two
While important and I'm proud of that work, it was
unsatisfying because I wanted to do something with a greater impact.
And that coincided with some changes in my life that
involved my childhood friend who had been wrongfully convicted of
double murder, where I basically rededicated my life to helping
him get free, and that took me into this completely
different space and different world. I started visiting him and
(00:25):
I made a number of visits to him in prison,
and during one of those visits, I was just so
overwhelmed by just the injustice, the fact that he was
going back to a cage while I was going back
to freedom.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
In my life.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
And I said, you know, I'm going to do everything
I can to help get you out of prison, whatever
it takes. I'm even going to go to law school.
But I was devoting so much of my life to
helping Marty that I was like, I just have to
do more.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Ill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, i'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm a football coach in inner
city Memphis. And that last part unintentionally led to an
Oscar for the film about one of my teams.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
It's called Undefeated.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
I believe our country's problems are never going to be
solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits
using big words on CNN and Fox that nobody really
ever uses, but rather by an army of normal folks.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Guys.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
That's us, just you and me, deciding hey, I can help.
That's what Mark Howard, the voice you just heard, has done.
Mark couldn't go back to his normal life after helping
Marty get his life back, so he got a new life,
starting programs that have exonerated thirteen innocent people, educating two
(01:48):
hundred and fifty guilty people in prisons, and supporting one
hundred and fifty people re entering our society and challenging
us all to rethink what justice really does mean and
to think about what's unique about our own story that
can bring special light to where there's profound darkness. I
genuinely cannot wait for you to meet Mark right after
(02:11):
these brief messages from our general sponsors. Mark Howard from Washington,
d C. The founding director of the Prisons and Justice
(02:33):
Initiative at Georgetown University and the founder of the Frederick
Douglas Project of Justice.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
My god, that's a lot of words. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Great to be Hereville.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Just flew in this morning from Didch flood for I
know you like live in airplanes, right.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yeah, just got in straight into the studio.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Flat out tonight. Find out tonight where you had it.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Back to DC tonight and then to La Friday, to
Nevada Monday, to Houston next Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Well, we're lucky everywhere.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Lucky you've been able to fit you in and bring
you to Memphis. I appreciate the time everybody. I precursor
to this, I'm stoked about this conversation. It's something that
I've always had an interest in that I haven't fully
formed all of my personal feelings and thoughts about. And
(03:21):
I think as this interview goes on, many of our
listeners may find themselves in the same place. And I
think Mark here to discuss the work he's done is
really important and inspirational, but also on this one, really
informative and maybe help each of us in our lay terms,
(03:42):
grasp a little better how we as Americans feel about
criminal justice, criminal justice reform, crime, recidivism, and all of
those things. So Mark, I can't wait to talk to
you about with this stuff. So you're a political science
for Russ got right, and that all changed?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Tell us about that.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, I mean, so it's a long story and I'll
give a short version of it, but we got time.
My initial training after getting an undergraduate degree was and
after spending a year in Berlin studying political science, then
I went on and got a PhD at UC Berkeley
in political science.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
You're clearly a dump. Well you know, a lot of
gray matter going on up there.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah, I'm not sure how useful all of it is,
but now I've definitely found my passion. But so initially
I went on the academic job market a few different
positions and landed at Georgetown University, where I've been teaching
now for over twenty years. And that was initially in
the Government Department, which is political science as a field,
and that's what I taught and did research in and
(04:51):
got promoted and got tenured, became a full professor of
the highest sort of rank you can get as a
professor as an academic. But I also had this story
that I'm sure we'll get into in depth. That was
a personal connection that brought me into the criminal justice
system now made me realize how much injustice there is
and led me to completely change my life in the
(05:13):
sense of not leaving necessarily my old position, but changing
everything that I do in the direction.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Of criminal justice reform.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
My PhD was in basically European comparative politics. I focused
on countries and comparative politics.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
That's neat. Yeah, so this is just curious. I mean,
does that mean? What it sounds like is that you're
you're looking at different forms of government in Europe, comparing
the way Turkey or Greece operates government versus White frances
(05:49):
Is that, yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I mean that was some of my teaching was broadly
about all different sets of countries, even around the world,
but especially focusing on Europe. But then I did my
own research and writing and wrote to books that deal
with different specific issues within Europe. So one was on
civil society and democratization in post communist countries and the
transition of democracy in the nineteen nineties. Another one in
(06:11):
the two thousands was focusing on citizenship and immigration in
Western Europe, how different countries into great immigrants. But it
was very academic in focus, and while those books they
did well and each of them wanted several awards in
terms of little political science you recognition. They were very specialized,
and to me that while important and I'm proud of
(06:33):
that work, it was unsatisfying because I wanted to do
something with a greater impact that more people would pay
attention to. And that coincided with some changes in my
life that involved my childhood friend who had been wrongfully
convicted of double murder, where I basically rededicated my life
to helping him get free, and that took me into
(06:53):
this completely different space and different world.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
I'm going for a memory here, that's Marty.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Marty Tankliffe.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
It is first of all that background I actually think
has tentacles into what you do now, because I think
what you do now you have to understand government. You
have to understand assimilation. Even if it's assimilation can be
a very broad word, but I think assimilation is assimilation.
(07:21):
So I think all of that is important. I think
it's interesting that you've spent a PhD in all this
time studying and writing about European society, because I think
European society gives us a good reflector as it pertains
the work that you do now in our American society.
So I think all of that makes sense. Yeah, but
(07:43):
I don't think any of it really starts. The passion
can't really start without your personal connection to Marty, and
I don't think we can go forward in this interview
without everybody understanding that story.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
That's exactly right to me. The story of Marty Tanklip
is central to everything I do. It certainly is the
hook in terms of the transformation that I went through professionally,
and still is very central to what I do organizationally,
the activities that I'm involved in, the cases that I
work on. Marty and I work together side by side,
(08:18):
very closely still to the current day. So let me
give that story if you're ready for it. I am,
so I should give the backstory. Marty and I were
born nine days apart in the same location on Long Island,
New York. We went to the same preschool school called
Lovey Dovey Preschool Lovey.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Duvey can't make name that good grief, go ahead, and.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Then we went on to elementary school, middle school, high
school again in Port Jefferson, New York, on the north
shore of Long Island in Suffolk County, and then on
the first day of our senior year of high school.
We just turned seventeen, so we're both late August birthdays,
nine days apart. Marty woke up on that day and
imagine just the excitement of going to school as a
senior the first day. I mean, you've been through it
(09:07):
yourself with your kids. I mean, it's such a big day. Well,
Marty woke up to a brutal crime scene in his
own house, found his parents' bodies murdered, slaughtered, you could say,
viciously murdered, and his mother stabbed over fifty times, almost decapitated.
His father still clinging to life, but never came out
of a coma and died a few days later. And
(09:29):
as if that wasn't the worst thing that could happen
to a seventeen year old kid, to be orphaned and
to find that crime scene. That night, he was in handcuffs,
charged with killing his parents, and the next summer he
was convicted and sentenced to fifty years to life for
the murder of his parents. Now I was his friend,
and I actually went to the scene that day because
(09:49):
I had driver's ed and the driver's ed teacher took
us out in a car for the first day, and
we'd heard something happen, and we drove by the house
and saw police tape everywhere as a completely crazy scene.
But then I also was investigating it as the editor
of our high school newspaper called the Purple Parrot. So
there's another name for you, Lovey Dovey and the Purple Parrot.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Good grief, And they both seem like they belong in
Key West.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
But go ahead.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Well, I'm proud of what we did in the Purple
Parrot because well, Marty's case got so much coverage from
every New York newspaper media outlet. Only The Purple Parrot
got the story right, which is that Marty was innocent.
And I found a lot of evidence that showed that
his father's business partner had all these shady dealings and
owedis father money. And then he later staged his own
(10:37):
death and disappearance and was found weeks later in California,
having changed his appearance. It was never considered a suspect.
They focused on Marty. They fixated on Marty. Can you
tell me railroad in Marty? Why they fixated on Marty? Well,
there's strong likelihood that there was a head of homicide
was paid by the business partner to frame Marty.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
And at the time it was a very corrupt police
department still is from everything I hear. The most recent
sheriff actually ended up getting sentenced to prison and the DA.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
That would indicate corruption. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yeah. They had a at times a mid ninety percent
confession rate and murders, which is to say they basically
beat or psychologically tortured confessions out of people, which is
what happened in Marty's case. Although his confession wasn't an
actual confession, it was a hypothetical. They convinced them as
remember a seventeen year old kid that you know just
(11:31):
witnessed this trauma. They convinced them that he had done
it and blacked out in his memory of it. So
they lied and manipulated him to say for him. No,
Attorney President wasn't mirandized. I mean, it's it's a constitutional
violation day in and day at. Well, this is what
we'll get into this is, you know, the American criminal
legal system has these beautiful ideals as they're written down,
(11:54):
but not as they're carried out in practice. And Marty
was a textbook example of that injustice, and he ended
up being railroaded, sentenced to fifty years to life, and
so our lives went in completely different directions, and Marty
likes to say Mark went to Yale, I went to jail,
very different, you know, life courses at that point.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But
first you guys got to hear this. Okay, this is
real opportunity. Our six local service clubs are now badly
one another through April eighth to see which of them
can recruit the most members to their giving circle of
just ten dollars a month and up. And the winner
(12:43):
of this thing is going to get a twenty five
thousand dollars grant from Stand Together. If you live in Memphis, Oxford, Atlanta, wichitaal,
Northern Duchess County, or Ozaki County, join your giving circle
today by visiting normalfolks dot us backslash Service clubs normal
(13:07):
folks dot Us backslash Service Clubs and just click.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
On your club.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
And again, guys, the club that raised the most money
and gets most people and the most of the giving circle,
Stand Together is going to grant that club twenty five
k to go do something good in your community. I
can't imagine why you guys wouldn't do that. It's free stuff.
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
What's Marty a good student, good kid? He problems in it's.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Past, no, no problems whatsoever, no criminal record, not even
anything close. I mean, Marty was a kid who had,
you know, absolutely no trouble at all. And so this
was why it was so shocking and why the whole
process that unfolded I think just made no sense to
anybody who knew him. Now, I should say, and you
(14:14):
may know, and a lot of listeners will know about
the Menendez brothers who actually did kill their parents, and
it was around the same time, and Marty I think
got swept up into that.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Hole sentiment that really was about those same time period
when that happened.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Their crime happened after his, but his trial was taking
place in the middle of all the evidence making it
clear that they had killed their parents. So he kind
of gets swept in with that, which is like, oh,
rich spoiled kid kills parents for money.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
That was the narrative.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
There's absolutely no evidence to back that up. The wealth
wasn't nearly on the scale of the Menendez family, by
the way, but it became something that people believe because
the prosecution chose that narrative, picked their suspect, honed in
on him, and then sunk their teeth into him, and
wouldn't release him no matter what countervailing evidence.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Came to light. How long did he spend in jail?
Speaker 1 (15:07):
He spent almost eighteen years, six three hundred and thirty
eight days, eight.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Fifteen years of his life. Stone.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, so I'm.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Sorry, keep going.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, So our lives went in different directions. You know,
this was pre internet. This was hard to stay in
touch with somebody, especially in prison. And so I moved
on with my life. And there's a part of me that's,
you know, sad or even a little ashamed, like I
wish I'd done more at the time. But you know,
I was also a set eighteen year old kid, and
I went to college and you know, started my own
(15:40):
life in a way as a young adult. But I
would always tell people I have a friend in prison
who's innocent, and at first they would say, you know,
come on, that can't happen. I mean, if you go
back in time and think to our childhood that we
were taught, this is the greatest criminal justice system in
the world. There's innocent until proven guilty. There's a jury
of your peers. There's twelve people, there's guilty on a reasonableness.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
If it's in the newspaper, it's true.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Right, exactly what authority figures say is true. Even trusting
the police in many communities is something that we were
taught to believe in. Well, all of that has come undone.
Since then, there's been the Innocence Project and other organizations
in Marty and I have also created one called Making
an Xannaie where we have found and it's become clear
(16:24):
that there's a lot of misconduct. There's a lot of
mistakes or abuse of power that takes place. I learned
it through Marty's case, through the case just of me
as a person, as a kid really saying I think
my friend just got railroaded and there's been a tremendous injustice.
What can I do about it? Well, initially it was
(16:45):
in The Purple Parrot, and I did what I could,
and unfortunately, you know, people didn't listen to The Purple Parrot.
They listened to News Day and the New York Times
and Court TV and whatnot that had this prosecuted or
driven narrative that he was guilty. Over time, you know,
we lost touch, but he still stayed in the present
of my mind. I would talk about him. I would
(17:07):
tell people the story. I would somehow like take over
like a dinner party or a gathering if people really
wanted to know, like what about this? And then the
business partner, and you know, I could lay out the
whole story. But then something in me called out to
me to reach out to him, and so we started
writing letters, and I have several shoe boxes of letters
(17:30):
back and forth.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
In prison.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
We started talking on the phone. I started visiting him,
and I made a number of visits to him in prison,
and during one of those visits, I was just so
overwhelmed by just the injustice, the fact that he was
going back to a cage while I was going back
to freedom in my life. And I said, you know,
I'm going to do everything I can to help get
you out of prison, whatever it takes. I'm even going
(17:52):
to go to law school.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Now.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
I was already a Georgetown professor at that point, but
I was devoting so much of my life to help
helping Marty that I was like, I just have to
do more. And it turns out that at Georgetown, you
can actually get a law degree for free as a professor.
No one had ever done it before. No one's stupid
enough to you know.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
What, a free law degree from Georgetown sounds like a
pretty nice poe.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
So I made the plan that I was going to
go to law school with the goal of getting my
childhood friend out of prison. Just before I started, he
was exonerated, and I played a role in that I'd
written a brief on behalf of our high school classmates.
It was actually cited in the appellate court's ruling that
freed him. I played a role. You know, there are
a lot of other people. There's a private investigator, they
(18:37):
are lawyers. It's a big team effort. It takes a
village to help get someone exonerated. So Marty walked out,
and I was there, actually had I had arrived in
France five days earlier and found out who was getting out.
I flew right back to be there and walk you know,
him out of prison. And a lot of people who
knew my story and knew how obsessed I was with
(19:00):
helping Marty get free, said, okay, Mark, now you can
get back to your old life. You can be done
with this mission. It's a mission accomplished. But the way
I think of it is that my eyes through Marty's case,
my eyes were opened to injustice and I just couldn't
close them again. I couldn't be like, oh, Marty's out, now,
everything's fine, because through his case I learned about so
(19:23):
much injustice, corruption, incompetence, abusive power, misconduct, and it just
made me want to go deeper. So I went ahead
and went to law school while being a full time professor,
was a full time law student.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
That's a whole other crazy story.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
As I hear Marty's story, there's a couple questions that
I don't have answered that I'm just dying to know
that if I'm listening to this story right now, are listeners. One,
how did he get exonerated? What evidence that you know?
How did that work? And I think that's really important
(20:00):
deeper into the story to understand kind of systematically how
that can work. But with regard to Marty, how to
work on a human level. I am really interested in
how Marty, knowing he was innocent, and having to live
(20:23):
for a decade and a half surrounded by many people
who weren't in a atmosphere that can be very dangerous itself.
How he did just give up, how and how angry
he must have felt, and then the last part. And
(20:44):
you can answer these in anywhere you want to.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Did the did the jack legs that put them there? Hey?
For what they did?
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Well, let me go maybe in chronological orders however you
want to do. There's are great questions. First off, so
in terms of how he survived in prison, basically, you know,
he went in as as a kid. That's one pounds
from the white kid from Long Island. Yeah, that's up
state New York. Fact looks like the rest. He h.
(21:22):
He got good advice as he started from kind of
an older mentor, you could say, in prison, who said
two things. One, put some muscle on your body, work out,
get you know, you got to be able to protect
yourself and stand up for yourself. Two, more importantly, if
you really are innocent, get your to the law library.
(21:45):
And so Marty ended up going to law library every
single day and he worked there as a clerk. He
was paid, I believe it was about seven dollars and
fifty cents a week for forty hours of work in
the law library. That's what prison wages are and I
hope we'll get into some of that about the abuse
of that takes place in prisons. But people work and
they get paid about ten to twenty cents an hour.
(22:06):
So Marty worked in the law library, worked on his case,
but he also helped other people. So if you think
about it, you got people coming in looking for help
on their cases. They might be bloods, crips, you know,
Hispanic gangs, Area Nation whatever. There's like fifty gangs and
there can be a lot of you know, violence and
danger in there. Marty became untouchable because he was helping everybody.
(22:30):
So in a way he was protected by the legal
skills that he had and that he was developing and
working on.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
So he got out of the politics. For everybody listening,
when you hear prison politics, politics is a prison term
for referring.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
To the races exactly.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
So the politics of a prison are the whites with
the whites, the blocks with the blocks, the spanks with
the Hispanics, and many times inside each of those races,
the gangs within those races. But in prison terms, that's
called politics.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Right, Yeah, politics is a code word for race. Effectively,
he stayed out of it because he was a squal
opportunity jail lawyer. It absolutely does start now. He also
was for most of his seventeen and a half years
in something called Honor Block because his case was high
profile and because he had no disciplinary record in prison,
(23:27):
he was able to be in a place that was
less violent, and so Honor Block as it's called the
New York prisons, and there's different names for in other prisons,
but it's like an incentive pod or it's something that
you can earn through your good behavior but also perhaps
through your name recognition in order to sort of avoid
being a target.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
But he's still in jail for not having done anything.
So how he did.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
In fact, he was in the same unit, on the
same tier as Tupac Shakur the Rapper for a little
bit while he was cheapak was in the New Yorkers
and so they played I think they played handball or
basketball or something together like actually crazy. But so Marty
worked in the law library, helped other people, kept him safe.
(24:12):
He also lifted some weights, put some muscle on, so
he was safe. He was okay. Prison was not the
dangerous horror show that it often is for people. For him,
But what he also did, and this is what's incredible
and gets into the question about like optimism versus bitterness
and whatnot, is that he worked twenty four to seven
(24:34):
on his case. He was his leading, his own leading advocate.
He wrote fifty thousand letters from prison over seventeen and
a half years, and I've calculated that comes to nine
letters a day, including Sundays. He wrote to everyone he
could think of who might in any way be able
to help or connect him in any way. He wrote
to media personalities, He wrote to retired judges, He wrote
(24:57):
to experts in different areas of criminal law. Many of
them probably never opened his letters, most of them never responded,
but he was able to build up a group of supporters.
He was able to bring on lawyers and law firms
pro bono. He had this unbelievable array of top notch
lawyers pro bono, including the firm Baker Bots that had
(25:19):
a whole office that was just the Marty war room.
Basically that was just you know, it should have been
for an associate. Space is valuable in these law firms,
but it was literally just for his case and full
of files and boxes and people would be going in
there and checking stuff out like it was a library
in the law firm. Baker Bots probably spent over two
million just and that's back in, you know, a few
(25:40):
decades ago, big money on his case. So he was
his own leading advocate. He got people, He made people
want to help him, and that included me. You know,
when I first reached out to him, I didn't know
who I was going to see. At that point, it
had been a lot of you know, a lot of
time he'd been in prison, Like I didn't really know.
He was amazing. He was someone who was so positive
(26:00):
and optimistic. He stayed in touch with society. He used
to get the New York Times delivered by mail and
it would come a day late, and he was following
you know, politics, the world. I'm cooking. He loves cooking.
He would be like looking up recipes. He would cut
out recipes from the from the newspaper and send it
to people. He would like read restaurant reviews and be like, oh,
you should check out this new restaurant I heard. It's
really good. You know what I mean. He stayed connected,
(26:21):
And the way he puts it is that I never
lived in prison. I just resided there and his life.
He was always preparing for one day being free. He
always said, it's a matter of time. I know, one
day the truth is going to come out. And so
you didn't know it was going to take eighteen years.
And there was a close call like five years in
where he almost got out and he should have gotten out,
(26:43):
and then it's a show that happened and he didn't.
But he really found this resourcefulness in him and this
positivity to the point where you know what finally led
him And I'll explain how he got out. But that
was the nineteenth appeal. There'd been eighteen previous that have
been shot down. Each and every time. His team of
(27:04):
supporters was gut it devastated, you know, like they had
hopes they have the truth on their side. Boom, shot
down by this system that just is hell bent on
reaffirming convictions that values finality more than the truth. Well,
Marty would always say, you know it's okay, don't worry,
you know, like, oh, we can appeal this, or there's
(27:25):
another angle and there's another expert that we can bring in,
and you know, we can you know, bring up this
new issue. And he was like the best cheerleader for
his supporters who were all free in the free world,
but they'd be down, including me and Marty would get
us back up again. Think about it, He's sitting in
a freaking cage.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
What an example of courage.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Absolutely, I mean it's a courage and leadership from the
worst position possible, but to find an optimism, to find
a way to get people to rally, to come back,
to try again, to keep fighting, to keep the you know,
long term perspective in mind and not lose track of
the ultimate goal. It's like, you know, you're a former
(28:08):
football coach. I mean, imagine just losing every single quarter
and you're playing a twenty quarter game and you're saying
it's okay every quarter and like finally, you know, in
the nineteenth quarter, you win the game. That level of
optimism is really extraordinary.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
It is, especially under those circumstances. It's hard to have
that level optimism just being a guy out here. Run
around hard enough, Yeah, we'll be right back. I'm dying
(28:48):
to understand what freed him.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Well, So there was a hearing. The eighteenth Appeal was
a major hearing in Suffolk County on Long Island, in
front of a local hack. The judge and during that
hearing there are twenty plus different witnesses who came forward
who most of them didn't even know each other, were unconnected,
but had a version of the same story and the
(29:14):
same people involved. So when you think about what actually happened,
is the father's business partner named Jerry Stewarman who's still
free today. So I'm foreshadowing still a problem.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
That was my question. Did he get locked up? That
was coming now? Unbelievable go ahead.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
So there was a poker game at Marty's house. It
took place like every other week and it rotated different houses,
and it happened to be at his house that night.
Marty had actually set the table for everyone before the
guests came, and this business part of Jerry Stewart was
the last person to leave. He actually moved his car
out of the driveway so someone else could leave and
then he pulled back in. Was there at three in
(29:52):
the morning. There were two hitmen and a driver. The
hitmen were waiting in the bushes their cigarette butts outside
the a movie. Oh yeah, it'll be a real man. Yeah,
connected guys, and they came in yeah, I mean local.
I don't even know if they were just like one
of the guys. His nickname, his name was Joe Creedan.
(30:14):
He's dead now. His nickname was Joey Guns for you
know when you when you walk around with that nickname, Yo,
I'm Joey Gunns. Yeah, that kind of tells you who
you are. And uh, he and this other guy, Peter Kent,
were waiting uh for hand signal from the business partner.
They came in, they committed the murders. There's been a
lot of testimony, including Joey Guns his own son who
says his dad told him in detail how he did it,
(30:36):
and that he wore gloves and it matches the crime scene,
and that he walked up a half flight of stairs,
which also matches the crime scene. It was a split
level house. There's so much it became one hundred percent
clear what happened. And then the guy who was the
driver who testified, who initially actually confessed to a priest
in prison where he was locked up on other stuff.
Because when you're committing this kind of crime, you go
(30:56):
in and out of prison committing other he got caught sometimes.
So all these witnesses came forward with a version of
the story that implicated these other people, the driver and
the hitman, and it was clear as day that this
was the truth. And somehow this judge ruled against Marty.
(31:21):
And not only that, and by the way, there had
been a nun and a priest who testified. And the
judge in his ruling against Marty, this is the eighteenth
appeal that lost. Not only did he deny Marty, but
he used this colorful language. He said, you brought before
this court a cavalcade of nefarious scoundrels.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Priest. Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
And so.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Judge was being paid off.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Well, I think the whole county is so deeply corrupt
they have a vested interest in just covering up all
of the misconduct. Ninety percent of judges nationally are former prosecutors,
so there's a vested interest in preserving convictions because the
convictions come from the prosecutor's office. That's what they fight for.
They win, and when new evidence comes.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
To light, they don't want to feel like a wink
and a nod fraternity.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Yeah, fortunately that denial and it was so egregious with
the priest and nun stuff and some of the other people.
I mean sure some of the people had been in
criminal activity. That's how they knew about it. That's how
they knew these other guys who committed the murder. But
some of them, you know, had found religion, had turned
their lives around, and they were like, I got to
clear my conscience, like this guy told me he did,
or one of them said they wanted me to commit
(32:34):
the crime, but I wasn't free that night, I would
have done it. So it's crazy. Yeah, But so on
the nineteenth appeal, that denial got appealed to the New
York Appellate Division, which was getting out of the cesspool
of Suffolk County, where four judges heard the appeal. Funny
(32:54):
side story, James Gandolfini, who played Tony Soprano this was
at the height of the Sopranos, supported Marty and walked
into that courtroom like fifteen minutes late and walked up
to the front seat and everyone was like, Holy, Tony
Soprantoor just came in. He supports Marty.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
That's very believable.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
It chose Actually, I think the importance of some celebrity
support because this is the world we live in where
people recognize somebody and they pay extra attention to it. Anyway,
that court ruled for nothing unanimously to overturn Marty's conviction.
He was freed right after that. He was never retried,
but the real perpetrators also were never tried.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Part of that prators the cops, though absolutely none. Nobody
paid for anything.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Nobody, including the lead homicide detective his name is Kay
James McCready and who falsely testified. I don't want to
get into all the details.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
There's so many.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Movies, but it is crazy.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
The bottom line is.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Bottom line is Marty was clearly innocent. They knew it
at the time, they knew it throughout, and they still
know it. But they did everything they could to keep
him in prison for a life.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
They didn't pay for it.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Nobody paid for it.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
The guy who did it didn't pay for it.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
In Boca Ratone, in a gated community, they owned, together
with Marty's father, a bagel store on Long Island, and
there were some there were some struggles over money and
some other business dealings they had that weren't working that
they were arguing about, and Marty's father had put up
a lot of money and was reclaiming his debt. The
business partnered him about five hundred and thirty thousand dollars
(34:30):
in nineteen eighty eight. That's a lot of money, a
lot once once Marty's parents were killed, the debt was gone.
He made out. Not only that, the bagel store made
it big and became franchised, and they're still all over
Long Island, New York City, Florida. What's the name Strathmore Bagels?
Speaker 2 (34:49):
I know that place? Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1 (34:53):
That that money was literally made off of the blood
of Marty's parents and Marty's own sething.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Marty's discussed ony.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
He did, and he won a settlement, so he you know,
is fortunately financially it.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Is totally not good.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
The taxpayers are now having to pay for these jacks.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
That happen in the first place. But at least for
his sake, he was made financially old by the county
and the state.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Okay, there's the depth. Yeah, there's the setup.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
That is a real personal connection to what can happen.
And you even went to law school. But he's out.
And the question really is, lots of people have this
experience changed me?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Deal?
Speaker 3 (35:43):
But then as time goes on and then justice is handled,
that experience changed me?
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Can shrink? Whow was this different for you.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yeah, for me, it's not only grown, it's transformed. There's
been multiple like offshoots. It's like a tree that just
keeps developing new branches.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Which we're going to get into. But it is incredible.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
So, you know, the core, maybe the trunk, if I'm
going to stick with the tree metaphor, is Marty, and
everything stems from that and from Marty's experience and how
it transformed me and what it led me to do
in my life. But then there have been other branches,
and we can stick with the wrongful conviction one first,
although there's some others that go in different directions.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
But yeah, we're going to go down that path.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Which one, Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So I learned
through Marty's case that things that I thought were horrifying
and glaringly wrong and just completely immoral and shocking the
conscience to any citizen. We're just routine. We're just business
(36:53):
as usual. And that's to say police having unbelievable way
to craft a story that is off in fiction. Now,
I just want to make clear that I have a
lot of respect for the difficulty of police work and
for keeping a public safe, and it's a profession that
(37:17):
I respect and that I want to see enforced and supported.
But it has to be ethical, and so I'm not
in a throwaway the police, defund the police, ban, the
police abolished, with any of that stuff. I'm for pro
ethical policing, honest policing, policing that supports citizens that don't choose.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
The vast majority of cops.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Are I do. That's why I want to make sure I'm.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Not throwing Even if it's only three can do a
measurable day.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
There is a bigger problem, just to be honest, which
is I do think the I'll say the majority are
fully ethical, and I will agree that a minority of
very small minority are deeply ethical. But then there's also
a lot who just look the other way. And I'm
really troubled by the blue code of silence, the way it's.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
The blue wall thing.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Yeah, that's right, And how they you know, look the
other way when their partner does something or files a
false report, the supervisor that knows that this is impossible.
I would like to see a tighter reining in of misconduct,
which would mean consequences for cops who lie or cheat
or steal or you know, frame people immediate firing. I'd
(38:30):
like to see charges against them. I'd like to see
it made impossible to do, rather than tolerated, if not
sometimes openly in some departments, openly support.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
It's an ancient Greek notion that even if you're not
the actor, if you're aware of the actor and do nothing,
you're equally skilty. That's right, And that concludes part one
of our conversation with Mark Howard, and you don't want
to miss part two. It's now available to listen to. Together, guys,
(39:02):
we can change the country, and it starts with you.
I'll see in part two
Host
Bill Courtney
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