February 25, 2026 • 40 mins
Bobby Gumpright finally explains the lie he told on March 1, 1999—and how he crafted a story that cost Jermaine Hudson decades of freedom. Jermaine describes surviving his years in Angola. And a closer look at courtroom testimony exposes Bobby’s manipulation of the jury.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
When Jermaine Hudson talks about his time spent in Angola,
he doesn't sulk about what happened behind bars, but he
mourns what his life came to be all because of
a lie.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I had a hard heart toward the situation that I
was in.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I had a.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hard heart because I wasn't being heard, I wasn't believed.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
He entered prison as a young father with so much
life ahead of him. Once a ninety nine year sentence
sealed his life away, he had to focus on survival,
and survival meant shutting down, letting go of what mattered most.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
It was like out of sight, out of mind. I
never call home complaining about anything. I never cried about anything.
I took it in stride.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Taking it in stride was how Germaine got around the pain.
But no matter how much he braved his circumstances, there
was no outrunning his reality.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
The most painful part of my existence there was knowing
that I was serving a nine to nine year sentence
for something that I didn't do.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I'm Nancy Glass. This is season two, A Burden of Guilt,
Episode three, The front Gate. Earlier this season, we told
you that an enormous lie put a young man, Jermaine
Hudson in prison for ninety nine years. In this episode,
we're going to break it down. Jermaine's ninety nine year
(01:50):
sentence was in one of the worst prisons in the
United States, Louisiana's and Gola Prison. We obtained the transcript
of his sentencing. The judge's words are read by a
voice actor.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Mister Hudson, you've been found guilty by a jury of
the offense of armed Robert and considering mister Hudson's prior
criminal history, it is the sentence of this court that
you serve ninety nine years in the Apartment of Corrections
at hard Labor, without the benefit of probation, parole, or
(02:28):
suspension of sentence.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Jermaine was let out of the courtroom while his girlfriend
Kristen watched in shocked silence. Those ninety nine years were
also a life sentence for Kristin and their daughter.
Speaker 5 (02:43):
It is took my life away from me, just like that.
I was no methodad.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
When Jermaine was first sentenced, Kristin held out hope that
he would win his case on appeal and come back home.
She missed him every day.
Speaker 5 (03:00):
His such the comfort, the friend, the respect, and the
protection like he made me feel love seen beautiful, and
he gave me wisdom. He taught me a lot. He
taught me a lot. I went into depression after he left.
(03:21):
I gained a lot. I gained like three sizes in
less than three months.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
And as time passed, Germaine missed milestones in his daughter's life.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
Him not being there, missed not on a lot my
first steps. And then she just reminded me of him
every single day. I just try to remind her when
she got old enough to understand that, you know, she
had a great father.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
For Christen, visiting Germaine and Angola was heartbreaking. Every time
she did it, she would leave emotionally destroyed.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
It was just hard to go see him knowing he
was in coming home. I had to like him out
or I think it would have just been harder for
me to do it.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Jermaine wanted Kristin to move on while he was in prison.
He wanted her to find happiness and focus on raising
their daughter.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I told her to go on with her life because
there is nothing I can do for you. I am
not about to be a burden on you all. I
asked you to do is make a promise to me.
Make a promise to me that you will not allow
my daughter to get in them streets, keep her in
school and raise it the right way, and keep me
in touch with her. That's all I asked you to do.
(04:56):
I was a father. I was a young kid, but
I was a faulther.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
His daughter, Jemia, grew up knowing her father mostly as
a story I knew.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
I had today.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
I knew he was the active dad.
Speaker 6 (05:14):
They let me know what kind of man he was,
how he always had me everywhere he went.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
He just loved his daughter.
Speaker 6 (05:21):
So they just always kept his name alive. They just
always kept his memories alive.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Whenever she did visit him in Angola with her mom,
it just made her miss him more.
Speaker 6 (05:33):
Feel like I'm about to cry because I hate talking
about it because it's still it's still affects me, and
sometimes I don't realize it's still affect me to the day.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Tremaine says the pain of being separated from his child
with no way to get to her it was almost
too unbearable.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I tried to keep my mind all for society. I
tried to do my best to not worry about what's
going on on the outside world, because that can play
a big factor into your mental state.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
If Germaine let himself think about his family, he would
go to a very dark place. So instead he focused
on something that felt within his control, surviving Angola.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
You got to be by the grace of God to
leave out of that place healthy. Everything about Angola is filthy,
it's contaminated.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
This isn't just Germaine's opinion. And Gola, also known as
the Louisiana State Penitentiary, has a long, well documented history
of disgusting living conditions, legal challenges over inadequate medical care,
and a high number of deaths compared with the other
US prisons.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
The spoons like somebody been chewing on them. The plates
got cracks in them, old food in them. They they're
not properly washing it. When I really realized that I
didn't go back to that kitchen no more.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
According to lawsuits filed on behalf of inmates, many of
these issues, such as delayed or denied medical treatment, have
been described in court rulings and independent reporting as preventable
the results of systemic failures at Angola.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
A lot of guys died in there. Cancer stomach cancer, hippotitis.
When I say Angola is horrible, it's horrible living condition.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
There are only two ways out of Angola, out the
front meaning release or transfer, or by being wheeled to
the morgue and usually buried on site. One former warden said,
we bury more people than leave out the front gate.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
I came here to do one thing, and one thing
only the leaders played the same way. I came out
of their front gate.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
But death is a constant presence at the prison. Week
after week, Jermaine watched friends and people who kept him
sane take their last breath.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
They got a prediction rate that eighty five percent of
the inmates is going to die there. They have like
six seven cemeteries in that place. For you to die there,
and no one's come and get your body. That means
you get buried on prison grounds, So that means you're
not free. Your soul is still incarcerated.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
After Jermaine's trial in two thousand, he held some hope
that his ninety nine year sentence would be overturned. His attorney,
public defender Don Donnelly, filed a motion for an appeal.
Jermaine couldn't afford a private attorney, so a nonprofit called
the Louisiana Appellate Project took over his representation. The appeal
(09:15):
was based on three issues where Jermaine and his appellate
lawyer felt the court had aired. The first was Donnelly
never put Jermaine's alibi witness on the stand. Remember what
Christen's sister Dewan said in the last episode.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
He say, I couldn't testify, and I'd kept asking him why,
and he couldn't give me a value reason why.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Donnelly didn't even meet Germaine's alibi witness to one until
the morning of the trial, and then refused to call her,
telling the judge he knew the alibi witness would lie
on the stand. The second was a discrepancy in Bobby's
idea of Jermaine. Bobby claimed he got a good look
at Jermaine's face up close. Here's some of the court
(09:59):
tests simony read by voice actors.
Speaker 7 (10:02):
From the time you pull up to this person who
asked you, when the bus passes, until you're no longer
looking at his face. How long is this period?
Speaker 3 (10:12):
A minute, two minutes.
Speaker 7 (10:15):
A minute or two minutes you're focusing on his face?
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yes, sir, considering that this was an armed robbery, that's
a lot of time, enough time to notice that Germaine
had some distinguishing features like twelve gold teeth and a
noticeable scar under his eye that he's had since he
was a kid. But Bobby didn't mention any of these
(10:39):
features when he described the attack to the police, and
that discrepancy never came up a trial, And finally, the
appeal argued the ninety nine year sentence was grossly disproportionate
to the crime of stealing one hundred dollars at gunpoint.
While Bobby was afraid and even traumatized, he wasn't hurt.
(11:04):
Despite those arguments, Germaine's appeal was denied, and after that
no one would take on his appeal again. There's one
more thing about Germaine's appeal that we want to share
with you. It was a shocking mistake in the records
that we saw with our own eyes, and that mistake
(11:27):
may have had devastating consequences.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
They put chilges in my record that I never even
been arrested for that never existed. They said that I
was found guilty of two further degree murders that was
later dropped down to manslaughter.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Jermaine is right. We got a copy of this record,
a miraculous feat considering how many in this case were
destroyed or missing. But on those documents we found we
saw two counts of first degree murder dropped down to
a plea bargain from manslaughter. But here's the thing that
didn't happen. The charges are printed on the page in
(12:09):
black and white, but at some point someone circled them
in pen and hand wrote on the margins. Does not
apply to mister Hudson. I don't know about you, but
this just blows my mind. How is it possible that
someone accidentally has two manslaughter convictions on the record. We wondered,
(12:30):
not only how was this mistake made, but when was
it caught? Did the appeals court know this was wrong?
Why not write a separate memo retracting that information. Instead,
there's a handwritten note on the side of the page.
Does not apply to mister Hudson. No date, no signature,
no explanation. If Jermaine had actually killed two people, a
(12:56):
ninety nine year sentence might begin to make sense. But
he hadn't. Those convictions didn't exist.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
I know that was one of the biggest reason why
I couldn't really get my case reviewed because they had
this in my records.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
We contacted both prosecutors in Jermaine's case. Neither was willing
to talk to us. It's difficult to imagine how a
mistake this consequential could have been made.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I tried my best to get those answers. I never
got those answers.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
After his appeal was denied, Jermaine was determined not to
give in to despair. His goal was to stay alive.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
My first three to four years there, I was stressing
a lot. You know, I was frustrated, and I found
myself getting into a lot of trouble. But then I
called myself down. I'll say, you not gonna go home
like that. You're gonna eat it, end up crazy, anybody bag.
(14:08):
You gotta swap it up. So I started going to
church and go to was the first place I got baptized.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
He was actually baptized twice.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
The first time I got baptized, I got out that
water and I told the pastor, I said, I don't
feel this. I see give me a year. I still
got some things I need to figure out, man, he said, Okay.
Came back there next year. And got baptized. I said, okay,
(14:39):
now I'm ready.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Jermaine had a goal in sight, and with that clarity,
he changed how he approached life inside prison.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
I started educating myself, getting myself an educational vocational programs
generator school. Well, in school, I've learned how to rebuild generators,
i learned how to do plumbing. I've learned HVAC. When
I started to educate myself everything with the change, it
(15:10):
kept my mind at ease.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
But as hard as your main tried, there would be
moments where the reality of his situation was just overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
I used to run the yard a lot, but I
just stopped in the middle of the yard and I screamed.
I'm like, ah, what is going on. I'm like, Lord,
please send me a sign. This can't be the end
of my life. This can't be my final destination. This
(15:47):
can't be. As the years started passing, I'm like, Lord,
I didn't do this, and you know I didn't do this.
What can I possibly have done to deserve this? I
know I didn't do anything heneous to deserve this kind
(16:07):
of pain.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
He hadn't done anything to deserve this sentence in this
notoriously harsh prison.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
I lost my life for not there.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
While Jermaine was in prison in Angola, he knew he
was innocent. The law got the wrong guy. The person
behind the crime, the real perpetrator, was still out there.
What he didn't know was that everything was a fabrication,
a lie, a story concocted by a young man named
(16:42):
Bobby Gumpbright.
Speaker 8 (16:45):
I thought that it sounded logical that I got held up,
that somebody stopped me and took my money, and I
felt like that was a plausible story.
Speaker 9 (16:59):
You know, our already been lying for so long.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
In the first episode of this podcast, we heard Bobby
Gunpright's story of how he was robbed at gunpoint. He
told us what happened the same way he told his
parents and the police. But that isn't what actually happened
that night. That was a story he made up. So
I asked him what really happened in March of nineteen
(17:36):
ninety nine when he was bartending at Applebee's restaurant. Bobby,
we know you weren't robbed the night you said Jermaine
held you up at gunpoint. What happened to the money
you made bartending? The money you claim was stolen.
Speaker 8 (17:50):
Met a guy who did and dealt cocaine, and so
tried it and immediately was an addict. I don't even
think it was a week and I needed it like
I wanted it. I was just taking every dollar I
had and buying what I could.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
So you're going home with no money? Why did that
matter so much?
Speaker 8 (18:15):
My dad had a habit of asking how my money was?
How much money did I have? You know, that was
just a normal question. I mean, he's trying to figure
out if I'm taking care of my finances.
Speaker 9 (18:26):
You know, I'm.
Speaker 8 (18:27):
Eighteen, still living at home with my parents, and he's
trying to make sure that I was stewarding things properly.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Okay, But why come up with that kind of lie?
Speaker 8 (18:39):
Because I know the question that's going to come. I
know the question is going to be how much money
do you have? How much did you make this week?
And I didn't have an answer right because it was
all gone, And like I'm high on cocaine at this
moment when I'm riding home and my mind is racing,
and I'm just trying to figure out what I can
(19:03):
say to get through the night without him finding out
that's where my money's going.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
So take me back. What was your thought process? How
are you trying to pull this off?
Speaker 9 (19:16):
You know, we lived on the West Bank.
Speaker 8 (19:17):
The West Bank had a reputation for not being the
safest sometimes, so I thought that it sounded logical that
I got held up, that somebody stopped me and took
my money, and I felt like that was a plausible story.
You know, I had already been lying for so long.
(19:40):
I knew what sounded reasonable and what wouldn't sound reasonable, right,
like back to when I was eight years old and
the cop walks me out there and tells me, this
is why your story isn't reasonable.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Wow, so you really thought about that?
Speaker 9 (19:54):
Yeah? Absolutely.
Speaker 8 (19:56):
I spent my time figuring out, Okay, what can they ask?
How can this not make sense? So I'm trying to
figure out the best way to tell the lie. You
know that that was what I did. I remember stopping
on my bike and I remember thinking, Okay, if somebody
(20:16):
stopped me right here, why would I stop number one?
Speaker 9 (20:20):
Right?
Speaker 8 (20:20):
Why would I just stop for some random person? And
he asked me what time it was, so that's why
I stopped. And as I'm looking at my watch, that's
when he pulls the gun. And he rips my chain
off my neck and tells me to lie down on
(20:41):
the ground and rifles through my bag and takes my
money and tells me not to get up until he's gone.
I just rolled it through my mind and said, that
sounds plausible.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
What else did you do to make your story more believable?
Speaker 8 (21:05):
So I took my chain and I actually threw it away.
Well why would he leave me with a necklace if
he's really robbing me, why would he leave me with
a chain on my neck? Even though the chain was like,
not an expensive chain, It wasn't a chain that somebody
would really rob you of. It was a Saint Christopher
medallion with a very small, you know, silver chain. But
(21:26):
to me, I was like, well, that makes it more
plausible that he took my chain. So now that the
story's developed, now I have to go home and get
into character and act scared, which I was. You know,
I was scared to death that somebody would find out
the truth and you know, find.
Speaker 9 (21:46):
Out that I was lying.
Speaker 8 (21:48):
So it was kind of easy to fall into that
frame of mind and acting like that because I was scared.
I wasn't scared of what had just happened. I was
scared that people would find out that I was lying,
But the lie was the only thing that was going
to protect me from them finding out the truth, which
(22:09):
was even scarier.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
The truth being you were addicted to drugs. That's what
you spent all your money on. Right, But you could
have said that you just lost your money. You could
have said you didn't make any good tips, right.
Speaker 9 (22:24):
I could have said that.
Speaker 8 (22:26):
I could have said a hundred different things, but I
settled on the robbery story. And I can't tell you
why that made the most sense to me at the time.
And once I grasped it, once I had it in
(22:49):
my mind, it was locked in there, and then as
soon as I told it, now it's done.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
How did your parents react? What did your dad do?
Speaker 8 (23:09):
He immediately calls the police, which I don't know if
in my mind I even got to that point where
I saw him doing that, but I was high. It
wasn't rational thought. So he called the police. Police showed up.
I gave him a very vague, nondescript description. You know,
(23:32):
in my mind could have been anybody.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
What description did you give to the police.
Speaker 9 (23:38):
Guy about my height? Black?
Speaker 8 (23:41):
I think I gave him a clothing description, maybe white
T shirt and jeans or something like that.
Speaker 9 (23:45):
It was very, very basic.
Speaker 8 (23:49):
I think he asked me if I ever saw him again,
if I would know if it was him, and I
think I did say yes, but at that point I
was just trying to stay able of water with a lie.
Like anything he asked me. It was just real quick,
you know, thought process of Okay, what's the best answer here.
Speaker 9 (24:09):
So he took his report and left. It was super quick, like, wow.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
You've made up this big story. You filed a report.
What did you do? After the police left.
Speaker 9 (24:23):
I went to my room. I didn't go to bed.
Speaker 8 (24:26):
I mean, at that point, the adrenaline is just out
of control.
Speaker 9 (24:30):
But I just went back to my life, you know.
Speaker 8 (24:34):
I just carried on like nothing had happened. And Okay,
got away with that one. I guess I need to
be more careful and save some of my money and
not spend it all on drugs. I continued working at Applebee's.
Speaker 9 (24:49):
I thought it was gone and done with.
Speaker 8 (24:51):
I didn't think twice about it after that, and I
was like, Okay, nothing's ever going to come of it.
A couple months later, I'm in the back of the
restaurant and somebody comes in and says, hey, there's two
New Orleans City detectives out there wanting to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
The detectives had six pictures of black men who fit
the basic description Bobby gave police. In reality, Bobby hadn't
seen any of these men before.
Speaker 9 (25:24):
They showed me this lineup.
Speaker 8 (25:26):
And they said, do you recognize any of these men
as the one who robbed you?
Speaker 1 (25:35):
So here's where Bobby could have said no. He could
have come clean, but he didn't.
Speaker 8 (25:41):
I pointed at one and I said, he looks familiar.
I don't know why I pointed at him. I still
to this day can't tell you why I decided to
point at anybody on that piece of paper. But as
soon as I said, that's him, that looks like him,
(26:01):
they said, that's who we thought it was. And as
soon as they said that, it felt like the rest
of it made sense for me, because then I felt
like I was doing something that was supposed to be done.
I had convinced myself at that moment that this was
(26:22):
a bad guy, because they told me that they had
been trying to get him and they weren't able to.
And you know, college dropout, military drop out, living in
my parents' house, you know, a drug addict.
Speaker 9 (26:39):
My life was not very.
Speaker 8 (26:41):
Good at that time, and I just I saw maybe
a glimpse of Hey, I can be somebody.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
The idea of helping the police made him feel important,
and he liked the attention he got when he told
people he had been robbed at gunpoint.
Speaker 8 (27:02):
I liked it when people felt sorry for me. Felt
like I was get in love when people felt sorry
for me.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
When Bobby pointed at a photo in the lineup, he
wasn't thinking about what would happen to the man he identified.
Speaker 8 (27:17):
I didn't think this is a human being just living
his life.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
After Bobby identified Jermaine Hudson, he was arrested during a
traffic stop. And then the police had one more important
question for Bobby.
Speaker 8 (27:31):
They said, we haven't had anybody that would testify. Would
you be willing to testify? I never had one thought
of how much time he would get or what would happen.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
The trial was Bobby's last chance to stop the lie,
maybe say he made a mistake, but he didn't do that.
He would take the stand to tell his story to
a jury, and he decided to double down and make
himself the perfect victim. Reading the trial transcript is illuminating.
(28:16):
You can see why Bobby Gumpwright was so believable. He
was young, emotional and detailed on the stand, and everyone
from the prosecutors to the jury hung on every word.
But now knowing Bobby lied about the whole thing, I
want to revisit his testimony. Once you know the truth,
(28:38):
it all looks different, calculated even. Let's start with the
prosecutor's direct examination of Bobby. The prosecutor asked, when Jermaine
pulled out the gun, what happened?
Speaker 3 (28:51):
He had the gun up to my face. I mean,
with some profanity. He basically just told me not to
look at him, and then and then he rips my
I had a Saint Christopher medallion that I had since
I was born, and he ripped it off my neck,
just popped the chain and told me to get off
(29:12):
the bike.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Bobby doesn't use provanity when recalling the sequence of the crime,
implying he doesn't approve a bad language. He can't even
repeat those words in chord. His reaction makes him appear respectable, upbraid.
Then he explains that Germaine ripped off his Saint Christopher medallion,
a religious symbol that he's had since he was a baby.
(29:37):
The truth is that when or how he received the
medallion isn't relevant to the crime. It just makes his
story better. It's like Germaine ripped off a piece of
his childhood and a piece of the church in a
very religious part of the country. Let me give you
another example. The prosecutor asked Bobby, what went through your
(29:59):
head when he put the gun up to your face?
Speaker 3 (30:03):
The past nineteen years of my life, my dad, I mean.
Speaker 9 (30:07):
Just.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
His entire life flashed before him. He was a victim
of a crime that could have cut his life short
even before it really began. And he references his father,
indicating that he's a loving and loyal son. There was
another opportunity Bobby used to convey his credibility. It was subtle,
(30:33):
maybe even unconscious. During the cross examination, public defender Don
Donnelly asked Bobby to describe the gun used in the robbery.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
I'm not very I'm not a very big gun person,
but as close as I could say, it resembled a
nine millimeter. You see, I was in the Coastguard and
I used a nine millimeter while I was in the Coast.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Guard as you heard in episode one, Bobby was in
the Coastguard for less than a year. He was discharged
due to unsuitability for military life, but in his answer,
he communicated that he served in the armed forces, and
we have reverence for people who serve. It elevates them.
(31:15):
Then came the charm when the prosecutor asked Bobby about
the photo lineup. Bobby had picked ture Maine out of
six photos as the perpetrator, but two months had passed
between the robbery and the time police officers brought the
photo lineup for Bobby to view. So the prosecutor asked, Bobby,
you said you bartended, Would you consider yourself good with
(31:38):
names and faces?
Speaker 3 (31:41):
That's my business, That's how I make money. I make
money by remembering people's first names and their faces. Basically,
we want to give the impression you want to be
their friend. The better friend you are, the better tips
you get.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
It's a subtle nod to Bobby's work ethic. He's out
at Appleby's hustling, working hard and memorizing faces to make
a buck. Who wouldn't like that guy? Never Mind that
Bobby failed to describe Germaine's distinctive scar or twelve gold
teeth in his original statement to police, but Bobby never
(32:18):
mentioned seeing either of those features, and that discrepancy in
the identification was never brought up by Jermaine's defense. Bobby
told us he chosen Jermaine's photo out of the lineup
because of a scar on Jermaine's face. He used it
as a way to remember who he identified.
Speaker 8 (32:38):
I remember that the one thing that kind of drew
me to Germaine was that he has a scar underneath
his right eye, and that was kind of different. I
don't know, it was just something that kind of stood
out to me.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Then there was pointing out Germaine in the courtroom. The
prosecutor asked Bobby if this was the same man that
he identified in the lineup, the man who robbed him.
Bobby confirmed it was the man sitting at the defense table,
Jermaine Hudson.
Speaker 8 (33:09):
Are you one hundred percent certain that this man right
here put a gun to your head and robbed you?
Speaker 3 (33:18):
One hundred and ten percent certain?
Speaker 1 (33:22):
He was so sure more than one hundred percent. I
wanted to hear from the jurors in this case. One
of our producers, jade Abdulmalik, was able to reach some
of the jurors by phone. Now, Jade, you said you
were able to get a hold of some jurors. What
happened there, Nancy?
Speaker 10 (33:42):
We're talking about a trial that was over twenty five
years ago. Some jurors had passed away, some didn't even
remember the trial, and others didn't want to speak. But
I did talk with a few.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
What was the overwhelming res response? What did they want
to say?
Speaker 10 (34:03):
We had to do a lot of memory jogging, and
a lot of them didn't really remember much from being
a juror on this case. They just remembered this case
being very open and shut and the defendant was obviously guilty. Okay,
Bobby was incredibly convincing. He was tearful, emotional, and really
(34:25):
shaken up on the stand. They believed him, at least
for the tenderers who voted guilty.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Right right, it was a ten to two verdict, and
I don't think it's widely known that we had non
unanimous juries in some states. So for the two who
voted not guilty, did you get any insight as to
why they felt differently? Since most jurors thought Bobby was
telling the truth.
Speaker 10 (34:48):
Yeah, So the recollection I heard was it didn't make
sense that someone would stop on a bike late at
night the way he did to answer a question about
the bus. That just seemed suspect.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Did the jury know that Germaine was sentenced to ninety
nine years in prison.
Speaker 10 (35:06):
No, None of the jurors I spoke to said they
had any idea Jermaine would be sentenced ninety nine years
for armed robbery. When I told him that, it was
a complete total surprise.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
After the verdict, the jurors were discharged from the courtroom,
Germaine was led away in handcuffs to await his sentencing hearing,
and Bobby walked out. Mission accomplished.
Speaker 9 (35:41):
So I was there as an actor.
Speaker 8 (35:47):
To tell the story that I needed to tell to
make people approve of what I was doing and feel
sorry for me.
Speaker 9 (35:54):
That was a big part and on the validation that
I needed.
Speaker 8 (36:00):
Everybody around me was just playing a part in my world.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
One juror told our producer Jay that Bobby came over
and personally thanked him for finding Jermaine guilty. Bobby doesn't
remember that interaction, and he didn't go to the sentencing
hearing where Germaine received a ninety nine year sentence. Bobby,
when you heard what the verdict was and the sentence was,
(36:30):
what did you think.
Speaker 8 (36:33):
I thought he must have been really bad. He must
have had a lot of stuff in his background. Ninety
nine years. I couldn't have imagined that. I still, you know,
even then, I couldn't wrap my mind around ninety nine years.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
As he got older, Bobby found it harder to convince
himself that he had done a good thing. It became
more difficult to block out the thoughts of Germane languishing
in prison.
Speaker 8 (37:08):
You know, over the years, it would come into my
mind and I would look him up online. I knew
he had gone to Angola, so I was like, well,
I wonder if he's still there, or I wanted maybe
he got out, maybe they let him out. So I
would look every once in a while, and he's still there.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
I was a monster.
Speaker 8 (37:34):
I took somebody's life away.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
On the next episode of Burden of Guilt, Bobby sets
out to right his wrong.
Speaker 11 (37:49):
I just told him that I was going to tell
the truth, and that I was pretty sure that it
was going to be nationwide news. You might see my
picture on the front page of the New York Times.
Is this horrible monster, but I gotta do.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
This, and Louisiana comes to Germaine with an offer he
can't refuse.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
I was actually going to be guilty to that crime
because the laws that didn't change.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Thank you for listening. If you're enjoying Burden of Guilt,
subscribe rape and review the series with five stars.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
Yay.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
It helps other people find our show. So are you
curious about what the people involved in this look like?
Do you want to hear bonus content? Just check out
our Instagram account at Glass Podcasts, where we recap each
episode with show notes that include people, places, and even
court records. You can reach out to the Burden of
(38:56):
Guilt team at Burden of Guilt at gmail dot com.
That's Burden of guiltpod at gmail dot com. Burden of
Guilt is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of
Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series
is executive produced and hosted by me Nancy Glass. This
(39:20):
episode was written and produced by Carrie Hartman, also produced
by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunning. Our story editor is
Monique Leboard. Our associate producer is Jade Abdul Malik. Our
production manager is Kristin Melcurie. Our iHeart team is Ali
Perry and Jessica Crincheck. Thank you to our voice actors
(39:44):
Bryan Balthasar, Todd Gahans, Trey Morgan and Ben Read. Audio
editing by Dean Welsh and Zach Prutteaux, with additional editing
and mastering by Anna McClain. The Burden of Guilt theme
is composed by Oliver Bains. Music Live provided by Mob Music,
and we want to give our special thanks to Jermaine
(40:05):
Hudson and Bobby Gumpright. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit
the iHeartRadio app or Apple Podcasts
When Jermaine Hudson talks about his time spent in Angola,
he doesn't sulk about what happened behind bars, but he
mourns what his life came to be all because of
a lie.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I had a hard heart toward the situation that I
was in.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I had a.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hard heart because I wasn't being heard, I wasn't believed.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
He entered prison as a young father with so much
life ahead of him. Once a ninety nine year sentence
sealed his life away, he had to focus on survival,
and survival meant shutting down, letting go of what mattered most.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
It was like out of sight, out of mind. I
never call home complaining about anything. I never cried about anything.
I took it in stride.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Taking it in stride was how Germaine got around the pain.
But no matter how much he braved his circumstances, there
was no outrunning his reality.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
The most painful part of my existence there was knowing
that I was serving a nine to nine year sentence
for something that I didn't do.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I'm Nancy Glass. This is season two, A Burden of Guilt,
Episode three, The front Gate. Earlier this season, we told
you that an enormous lie put a young man, Jermaine
Hudson in prison for ninety nine years. In this episode,
we're going to break it down. Jermaine's ninety nine year
(01:50):
sentence was in one of the worst prisons in the
United States, Louisiana's and Gola Prison. We obtained the transcript
of his sentencing. The judge's words are read by a
voice actor.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Mister Hudson, you've been found guilty by a jury of
the offense of armed Robert and considering mister Hudson's prior
criminal history, it is the sentence of this court that
you serve ninety nine years in the Apartment of Corrections
at hard Labor, without the benefit of probation, parole, or
(02:28):
suspension of sentence.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Jermaine was let out of the courtroom while his girlfriend
Kristen watched in shocked silence. Those ninety nine years were
also a life sentence for Kristin and their daughter.
Speaker 5 (02:43):
It is took my life away from me, just like that.
I was no methodad.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
When Jermaine was first sentenced, Kristin held out hope that
he would win his case on appeal and come back home.
She missed him every day.
Speaker 5 (03:00):
His such the comfort, the friend, the respect, and the
protection like he made me feel love seen beautiful, and
he gave me wisdom. He taught me a lot. He
taught me a lot. I went into depression after he left.
(03:21):
I gained a lot. I gained like three sizes in
less than three months.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
And as time passed, Germaine missed milestones in his daughter's life.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
Him not being there, missed not on a lot my
first steps. And then she just reminded me of him
every single day. I just try to remind her when
she got old enough to understand that, you know, she
had a great father.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
For Christen, visiting Germaine and Angola was heartbreaking. Every time
she did it, she would leave emotionally destroyed.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
It was just hard to go see him knowing he
was in coming home. I had to like him out
or I think it would have just been harder for
me to do it.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Jermaine wanted Kristin to move on while he was in prison.
He wanted her to find happiness and focus on raising
their daughter.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I told her to go on with her life because
there is nothing I can do for you. I am
not about to be a burden on you all. I
asked you to do is make a promise to me.
Make a promise to me that you will not allow
my daughter to get in them streets, keep her in
school and raise it the right way, and keep me
in touch with her. That's all I asked you to do.
(04:56):
I was a father. I was a young kid, but
I was a faulther.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
His daughter, Jemia, grew up knowing her father mostly as
a story I knew.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
I had today.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
I knew he was the active dad.
Speaker 6 (05:14):
They let me know what kind of man he was,
how he always had me everywhere he went.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
He just loved his daughter.
Speaker 6 (05:21):
So they just always kept his name alive. They just
always kept his memories alive.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Whenever she did visit him in Angola with her mom,
it just made her miss him more.
Speaker 6 (05:33):
Feel like I'm about to cry because I hate talking
about it because it's still it's still affects me, and
sometimes I don't realize it's still affect me to the day.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Tremaine says the pain of being separated from his child
with no way to get to her it was almost
too unbearable.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I tried to keep my mind all for society. I
tried to do my best to not worry about what's
going on on the outside world, because that can play
a big factor into your mental state.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
If Germaine let himself think about his family, he would
go to a very dark place. So instead he focused
on something that felt within his control, surviving Angola.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
You got to be by the grace of God to
leave out of that place healthy. Everything about Angola is filthy,
it's contaminated.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
This isn't just Germaine's opinion. And Gola, also known as
the Louisiana State Penitentiary, has a long, well documented history
of disgusting living conditions, legal challenges over inadequate medical care,
and a high number of deaths compared with the other
US prisons.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
The spoons like somebody been chewing on them. The plates
got cracks in them, old food in them. They they're
not properly washing it. When I really realized that I
didn't go back to that kitchen no more.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
According to lawsuits filed on behalf of inmates, many of
these issues, such as delayed or denied medical treatment, have
been described in court rulings and independent reporting as preventable
the results of systemic failures at Angola.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
A lot of guys died in there. Cancer stomach cancer, hippotitis.
When I say Angola is horrible, it's horrible living condition.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
There are only two ways out of Angola, out the
front meaning release or transfer, or by being wheeled to
the morgue and usually buried on site. One former warden said,
we bury more people than leave out the front gate.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
I came here to do one thing, and one thing
only the leaders played the same way. I came out
of their front gate.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
But death is a constant presence at the prison. Week
after week, Jermaine watched friends and people who kept him
sane take their last breath.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
They got a prediction rate that eighty five percent of
the inmates is going to die there. They have like
six seven cemeteries in that place. For you to die there,
and no one's come and get your body. That means
you get buried on prison grounds, So that means you're
not free. Your soul is still incarcerated.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
After Jermaine's trial in two thousand, he held some hope
that his ninety nine year sentence would be overturned. His attorney,
public defender Don Donnelly, filed a motion for an appeal.
Jermaine couldn't afford a private attorney, so a nonprofit called
the Louisiana Appellate Project took over his representation. The appeal
(09:15):
was based on three issues where Jermaine and his appellate
lawyer felt the court had aired. The first was Donnelly
never put Jermaine's alibi witness on the stand. Remember what
Christen's sister Dewan said in the last episode.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
He say, I couldn't testify, and I'd kept asking him why,
and he couldn't give me a value reason why.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Donnelly didn't even meet Germaine's alibi witness to one until
the morning of the trial, and then refused to call her,
telling the judge he knew the alibi witness would lie
on the stand. The second was a discrepancy in Bobby's
idea of Jermaine. Bobby claimed he got a good look
at Jermaine's face up close. Here's some of the court
(09:59):
tests simony read by voice actors.
Speaker 7 (10:02):
From the time you pull up to this person who
asked you, when the bus passes, until you're no longer
looking at his face. How long is this period?
Speaker 3 (10:12):
A minute, two minutes.
Speaker 7 (10:15):
A minute or two minutes you're focusing on his face?
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yes, sir, considering that this was an armed robbery, that's
a lot of time, enough time to notice that Germaine
had some distinguishing features like twelve gold teeth and a
noticeable scar under his eye that he's had since he
was a kid. But Bobby didn't mention any of these
(10:39):
features when he described the attack to the police, and
that discrepancy never came up a trial, And finally, the
appeal argued the ninety nine year sentence was grossly disproportionate
to the crime of stealing one hundred dollars at gunpoint.
While Bobby was afraid and even traumatized, he wasn't hurt.
(11:04):
Despite those arguments, Germaine's appeal was denied, and after that
no one would take on his appeal again. There's one
more thing about Germaine's appeal that we want to share
with you. It was a shocking mistake in the records
that we saw with our own eyes, and that mistake
(11:27):
may have had devastating consequences.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
They put chilges in my record that I never even
been arrested for that never existed. They said that I
was found guilty of two further degree murders that was
later dropped down to manslaughter.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Jermaine is right. We got a copy of this record,
a miraculous feat considering how many in this case were
destroyed or missing. But on those documents we found we
saw two counts of first degree murder dropped down to
a plea bargain from manslaughter. But here's the thing that
didn't happen. The charges are printed on the page in
(12:09):
black and white, but at some point someone circled them
in pen and hand wrote on the margins. Does not
apply to mister Hudson. I don't know about you, but
this just blows my mind. How is it possible that
someone accidentally has two manslaughter convictions on the record. We wondered,
(12:30):
not only how was this mistake made, but when was
it caught? Did the appeals court know this was wrong?
Why not write a separate memo retracting that information. Instead,
there's a handwritten note on the side of the page.
Does not apply to mister Hudson. No date, no signature,
no explanation. If Jermaine had actually killed two people, a
(12:56):
ninety nine year sentence might begin to make sense. But
he hadn't. Those convictions didn't exist.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
I know that was one of the biggest reason why
I couldn't really get my case reviewed because they had
this in my records.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
We contacted both prosecutors in Jermaine's case. Neither was willing
to talk to us. It's difficult to imagine how a
mistake this consequential could have been made.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I tried my best to get those answers. I never
got those answers.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
After his appeal was denied, Jermaine was determined not to
give in to despair. His goal was to stay alive.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
My first three to four years there, I was stressing
a lot. You know, I was frustrated, and I found
myself getting into a lot of trouble. But then I
called myself down. I'll say, you not gonna go home
like that. You're gonna eat it, end up crazy, anybody bag.
(14:08):
You gotta swap it up. So I started going to
church and go to was the first place I got baptized.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
He was actually baptized twice.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
The first time I got baptized, I got out that
water and I told the pastor, I said, I don't
feel this. I see give me a year. I still
got some things I need to figure out, man, he said, Okay.
Came back there next year. And got baptized. I said, okay,
(14:39):
now I'm ready.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Jermaine had a goal in sight, and with that clarity,
he changed how he approached life inside prison.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
I started educating myself, getting myself an educational vocational programs
generator school. Well, in school, I've learned how to rebuild generators,
i learned how to do plumbing. I've learned HVAC. When
I started to educate myself everything with the change, it
(15:10):
kept my mind at ease.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
But as hard as your main tried, there would be
moments where the reality of his situation was just overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
I used to run the yard a lot, but I
just stopped in the middle of the yard and I screamed.
I'm like, ah, what is going on. I'm like, Lord,
please send me a sign. This can't be the end
of my life. This can't be my final destination. This
(15:47):
can't be. As the years started passing, I'm like, Lord,
I didn't do this, and you know I didn't do this.
What can I possibly have done to deserve this? I
know I didn't do anything heneous to deserve this kind
(16:07):
of pain.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
He hadn't done anything to deserve this sentence in this
notoriously harsh prison.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
I lost my life for not there.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
While Jermaine was in prison in Angola, he knew he
was innocent. The law got the wrong guy. The person
behind the crime, the real perpetrator, was still out there.
What he didn't know was that everything was a fabrication,
a lie, a story concocted by a young man named
(16:42):
Bobby Gumpbright.
Speaker 8 (16:45):
I thought that it sounded logical that I got held up,
that somebody stopped me and took my money, and I
felt like that was a plausible story.
Speaker 9 (16:59):
You know, our already been lying for so long.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
In the first episode of this podcast, we heard Bobby
Gunpright's story of how he was robbed at gunpoint. He
told us what happened the same way he told his
parents and the police. But that isn't what actually happened
that night. That was a story he made up. So
I asked him what really happened in March of nineteen
(17:36):
ninety nine when he was bartending at Applebee's restaurant. Bobby,
we know you weren't robbed the night you said Jermaine
held you up at gunpoint. What happened to the money
you made bartending? The money you claim was stolen.
Speaker 8 (17:50):
Met a guy who did and dealt cocaine, and so
tried it and immediately was an addict. I don't even
think it was a week and I needed it like
I wanted it. I was just taking every dollar I
had and buying what I could.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
So you're going home with no money? Why did that
matter so much?
Speaker 8 (18:15):
My dad had a habit of asking how my money was?
How much money did I have? You know, that was
just a normal question. I mean, he's trying to figure
out if I'm taking care of my finances.
Speaker 9 (18:26):
You know, I'm.
Speaker 8 (18:27):
Eighteen, still living at home with my parents, and he's
trying to make sure that I was stewarding things properly.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Okay, But why come up with that kind of lie?
Speaker 8 (18:39):
Because I know the question that's going to come. I
know the question is going to be how much money
do you have? How much did you make this week?
And I didn't have an answer right because it was
all gone, And like I'm high on cocaine at this
moment when I'm riding home and my mind is racing,
and I'm just trying to figure out what I can
(19:03):
say to get through the night without him finding out
that's where my money's going.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
So take me back. What was your thought process? How
are you trying to pull this off?
Speaker 9 (19:16):
You know, we lived on the West Bank.
Speaker 8 (19:17):
The West Bank had a reputation for not being the
safest sometimes, so I thought that it sounded logical that
I got held up, that somebody stopped me and took
my money, and I felt like that was a plausible story.
You know, I had already been lying for so long.
(19:40):
I knew what sounded reasonable and what wouldn't sound reasonable, right,
like back to when I was eight years old and
the cop walks me out there and tells me, this
is why your story isn't reasonable.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Wow, so you really thought about that?
Speaker 9 (19:54):
Yeah? Absolutely.
Speaker 8 (19:56):
I spent my time figuring out, Okay, what can they ask?
How can this not make sense? So I'm trying to
figure out the best way to tell the lie. You
know that that was what I did. I remember stopping
on my bike and I remember thinking, Okay, if somebody
(20:16):
stopped me right here, why would I stop number one?
Speaker 9 (20:20):
Right?
Speaker 8 (20:20):
Why would I just stop for some random person? And
he asked me what time it was, so that's why
I stopped. And as I'm looking at my watch, that's
when he pulls the gun. And he rips my chain
off my neck and tells me to lie down on
(20:41):
the ground and rifles through my bag and takes my
money and tells me not to get up until he's gone.
I just rolled it through my mind and said, that
sounds plausible.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
What else did you do to make your story more believable?
Speaker 8 (21:05):
So I took my chain and I actually threw it away.
Well why would he leave me with a necklace if
he's really robbing me, why would he leave me with
a chain on my neck? Even though the chain was like,
not an expensive chain, It wasn't a chain that somebody
would really rob you of. It was a Saint Christopher
medallion with a very small, you know, silver chain. But
(21:26):
to me, I was like, well, that makes it more
plausible that he took my chain. So now that the
story's developed, now I have to go home and get
into character and act scared, which I was. You know,
I was scared to death that somebody would find out
the truth and you know, find.
Speaker 9 (21:46):
Out that I was lying.
Speaker 8 (21:48):
So it was kind of easy to fall into that
frame of mind and acting like that because I was scared.
I wasn't scared of what had just happened. I was
scared that people would find out that I was lying,
But the lie was the only thing that was going
to protect me from them finding out the truth, which
(22:09):
was even scarier.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
The truth being you were addicted to drugs. That's what
you spent all your money on. Right, But you could
have said that you just lost your money. You could
have said you didn't make any good tips, right.
Speaker 9 (22:24):
I could have said that.
Speaker 8 (22:26):
I could have said a hundred different things, but I
settled on the robbery story. And I can't tell you
why that made the most sense to me at the time.
And once I grasped it, once I had it in
(22:49):
my mind, it was locked in there, and then as
soon as I told it, now it's done.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
How did your parents react? What did your dad do?
Speaker 8 (23:09):
He immediately calls the police, which I don't know if
in my mind I even got to that point where
I saw him doing that, but I was high. It
wasn't rational thought. So he called the police. Police showed up.
I gave him a very vague, nondescript description. You know,
(23:32):
in my mind could have been anybody.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
What description did you give to the police.
Speaker 9 (23:38):
Guy about my height? Black?
Speaker 8 (23:41):
I think I gave him a clothing description, maybe white
T shirt and jeans or something like that.
Speaker 9 (23:45):
It was very, very basic.
Speaker 8 (23:49):
I think he asked me if I ever saw him again,
if I would know if it was him, and I
think I did say yes, but at that point I
was just trying to stay able of water with a lie.
Like anything he asked me. It was just real quick,
you know, thought process of Okay, what's the best answer here.
Speaker 9 (24:09):
So he took his report and left. It was super quick, like, wow.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
You've made up this big story. You filed a report.
What did you do? After the police left.
Speaker 9 (24:23):
I went to my room. I didn't go to bed.
Speaker 8 (24:26):
I mean, at that point, the adrenaline is just out
of control.
Speaker 9 (24:30):
But I just went back to my life, you know.
Speaker 8 (24:34):
I just carried on like nothing had happened. And Okay,
got away with that one. I guess I need to
be more careful and save some of my money and
not spend it all on drugs. I continued working at Applebee's.
Speaker 9 (24:49):
I thought it was gone and done with.
Speaker 8 (24:51):
I didn't think twice about it after that, and I
was like, Okay, nothing's ever going to come of it.
A couple months later, I'm in the back of the
restaurant and somebody comes in and says, hey, there's two
New Orleans City detectives out there wanting to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
The detectives had six pictures of black men who fit
the basic description Bobby gave police. In reality, Bobby hadn't
seen any of these men before.
Speaker 9 (25:24):
They showed me this lineup.
Speaker 8 (25:26):
And they said, do you recognize any of these men
as the one who robbed you?
Speaker 1 (25:35):
So here's where Bobby could have said no. He could
have come clean, but he didn't.
Speaker 8 (25:41):
I pointed at one and I said, he looks familiar.
I don't know why I pointed at him. I still
to this day can't tell you why I decided to
point at anybody on that piece of paper. But as
soon as I said, that's him, that looks like him,
(26:01):
they said, that's who we thought it was. And as
soon as they said that, it felt like the rest
of it made sense for me, because then I felt
like I was doing something that was supposed to be done.
I had convinced myself at that moment that this was
(26:22):
a bad guy, because they told me that they had
been trying to get him and they weren't able to.
And you know, college dropout, military drop out, living in
my parents' house, you know, a drug addict.
Speaker 9 (26:39):
My life was not very.
Speaker 8 (26:41):
Good at that time, and I just I saw maybe
a glimpse of Hey, I can be somebody.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
The idea of helping the police made him feel important,
and he liked the attention he got when he told
people he had been robbed at gunpoint.
Speaker 8 (27:02):
I liked it when people felt sorry for me. Felt
like I was get in love when people felt sorry
for me.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
When Bobby pointed at a photo in the lineup, he
wasn't thinking about what would happen to the man he identified.
Speaker 8 (27:17):
I didn't think this is a human being just living
his life.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
After Bobby identified Jermaine Hudson, he was arrested during a
traffic stop. And then the police had one more important
question for Bobby.
Speaker 8 (27:31):
They said, we haven't had anybody that would testify. Would
you be willing to testify? I never had one thought
of how much time he would get or what would happen.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
The trial was Bobby's last chance to stop the lie,
maybe say he made a mistake, but he didn't do that.
He would take the stand to tell his story to
a jury, and he decided to double down and make
himself the perfect victim. Reading the trial transcript is illuminating.
(28:16):
You can see why Bobby Gumpwright was so believable. He
was young, emotional and detailed on the stand, and everyone
from the prosecutors to the jury hung on every word.
But now knowing Bobby lied about the whole thing, I
want to revisit his testimony. Once you know the truth,
(28:38):
it all looks different, calculated even. Let's start with the
prosecutor's direct examination of Bobby. The prosecutor asked, when Jermaine
pulled out the gun, what happened?
Speaker 3 (28:51):
He had the gun up to my face. I mean,
with some profanity. He basically just told me not to
look at him, and then and then he rips my
I had a Saint Christopher medallion that I had since
I was born, and he ripped it off my neck,
just popped the chain and told me to get off
(29:12):
the bike.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Bobby doesn't use provanity when recalling the sequence of the crime,
implying he doesn't approve a bad language. He can't even
repeat those words in chord. His reaction makes him appear respectable, upbraid.
Then he explains that Germaine ripped off his Saint Christopher medallion,
a religious symbol that he's had since he was a baby.
(29:37):
The truth is that when or how he received the
medallion isn't relevant to the crime. It just makes his
story better. It's like Germaine ripped off a piece of
his childhood and a piece of the church in a
very religious part of the country. Let me give you
another example. The prosecutor asked Bobby, what went through your
(29:59):
head when he put the gun up to your face?
Speaker 3 (30:03):
The past nineteen years of my life, my dad, I mean.
Speaker 9 (30:07):
Just.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
His entire life flashed before him. He was a victim
of a crime that could have cut his life short
even before it really began. And he references his father,
indicating that he's a loving and loyal son. There was
another opportunity Bobby used to convey his credibility. It was subtle,
(30:33):
maybe even unconscious. During the cross examination, public defender Don
Donnelly asked Bobby to describe the gun used in the robbery.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
I'm not very I'm not a very big gun person,
but as close as I could say, it resembled a
nine millimeter. You see, I was in the Coastguard and
I used a nine millimeter while I was in the Coast.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Guard as you heard in episode one, Bobby was in
the Coastguard for less than a year. He was discharged
due to unsuitability for military life, but in his answer,
he communicated that he served in the armed forces, and
we have reverence for people who serve. It elevates them.
(31:15):
Then came the charm when the prosecutor asked Bobby about
the photo lineup. Bobby had picked ture Maine out of
six photos as the perpetrator, but two months had passed
between the robbery and the time police officers brought the
photo lineup for Bobby to view. So the prosecutor asked, Bobby,
you said you bartended, Would you consider yourself good with
(31:38):
names and faces?
Speaker 3 (31:41):
That's my business, That's how I make money. I make
money by remembering people's first names and their faces. Basically,
we want to give the impression you want to be
their friend. The better friend you are, the better tips
you get.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
It's a subtle nod to Bobby's work ethic. He's out
at Appleby's hustling, working hard and memorizing faces to make
a buck. Who wouldn't like that guy? Never Mind that
Bobby failed to describe Germaine's distinctive scar or twelve gold
teeth in his original statement to police, but Bobby never
(32:18):
mentioned seeing either of those features, and that discrepancy in
the identification was never brought up by Jermaine's defense. Bobby
told us he chosen Jermaine's photo out of the lineup
because of a scar on Jermaine's face. He used it
as a way to remember who he identified.
Speaker 8 (32:38):
I remember that the one thing that kind of drew
me to Germaine was that he has a scar underneath
his right eye, and that was kind of different. I
don't know, it was just something that kind of stood
out to me.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Then there was pointing out Germaine in the courtroom. The
prosecutor asked Bobby if this was the same man that
he identified in the lineup, the man who robbed him.
Bobby confirmed it was the man sitting at the defense table,
Jermaine Hudson.
Speaker 8 (33:09):
Are you one hundred percent certain that this man right
here put a gun to your head and robbed you?
Speaker 3 (33:18):
One hundred and ten percent certain?
Speaker 1 (33:22):
He was so sure more than one hundred percent. I
wanted to hear from the jurors in this case. One
of our producers, jade Abdulmalik, was able to reach some
of the jurors by phone. Now, Jade, you said you
were able to get a hold of some jurors. What
happened there, Nancy?
Speaker 10 (33:42):
We're talking about a trial that was over twenty five
years ago. Some jurors had passed away, some didn't even
remember the trial, and others didn't want to speak. But
I did talk with a few.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
What was the overwhelming res response? What did they want
to say?
Speaker 10 (34:03):
We had to do a lot of memory jogging, and
a lot of them didn't really remember much from being
a juror on this case. They just remembered this case
being very open and shut and the defendant was obviously guilty. Okay,
Bobby was incredibly convincing. He was tearful, emotional, and really
(34:25):
shaken up on the stand. They believed him, at least
for the tenderers who voted guilty.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Right right, it was a ten to two verdict, and
I don't think it's widely known that we had non
unanimous juries in some states. So for the two who
voted not guilty, did you get any insight as to
why they felt differently? Since most jurors thought Bobby was
telling the truth.
Speaker 10 (34:48):
Yeah, So the recollection I heard was it didn't make
sense that someone would stop on a bike late at
night the way he did to answer a question about
the bus. That just seemed suspect.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Did the jury know that Germaine was sentenced to ninety
nine years in prison.
Speaker 10 (35:06):
No, None of the jurors I spoke to said they
had any idea Jermaine would be sentenced ninety nine years
for armed robbery. When I told him that, it was
a complete total surprise.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
After the verdict, the jurors were discharged from the courtroom,
Germaine was led away in handcuffs to await his sentencing hearing,
and Bobby walked out. Mission accomplished.
Speaker 9 (35:41):
So I was there as an actor.
Speaker 8 (35:47):
To tell the story that I needed to tell to
make people approve of what I was doing and feel
sorry for me.
Speaker 9 (35:54):
That was a big part and on the validation that
I needed.
Speaker 8 (36:00):
Everybody around me was just playing a part in my world.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
One juror told our producer Jay that Bobby came over
and personally thanked him for finding Jermaine guilty. Bobby doesn't
remember that interaction, and he didn't go to the sentencing
hearing where Germaine received a ninety nine year sentence. Bobby,
when you heard what the verdict was and the sentence was,
(36:30):
what did you think.
Speaker 8 (36:33):
I thought he must have been really bad. He must
have had a lot of stuff in his background. Ninety
nine years. I couldn't have imagined that. I still, you know,
even then, I couldn't wrap my mind around ninety nine years.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
As he got older, Bobby found it harder to convince
himself that he had done a good thing. It became
more difficult to block out the thoughts of Germane languishing
in prison.
Speaker 8 (37:08):
You know, over the years, it would come into my
mind and I would look him up online. I knew
he had gone to Angola, so I was like, well,
I wonder if he's still there, or I wanted maybe
he got out, maybe they let him out. So I
would look every once in a while, and he's still there.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
I was a monster.
Speaker 8 (37:34):
I took somebody's life away.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
On the next episode of Burden of Guilt, Bobby sets
out to right his wrong.
Speaker 11 (37:49):
I just told him that I was going to tell
the truth, and that I was pretty sure that it
was going to be nationwide news. You might see my
picture on the front page of the New York Times.
Is this horrible monster, but I gotta do.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
This, and Louisiana comes to Germaine with an offer he
can't refuse.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
I was actually going to be guilty to that crime
because the laws that didn't change.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Thank you for listening. If you're enjoying Burden of Guilt,
subscribe rape and review the series with five stars.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
Yay.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
It helps other people find our show. So are you
curious about what the people involved in this look like?
Do you want to hear bonus content? Just check out
our Instagram account at Glass Podcasts, where we recap each
episode with show notes that include people, places, and even
court records. You can reach out to the Burden of
(38:56):
Guilt team at Burden of Guilt at gmail dot com.
That's Burden of guiltpod at gmail dot com. Burden of
Guilt is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of
Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series
is executive produced and hosted by me Nancy Glass. This
(39:20):
episode was written and produced by Carrie Hartman, also produced
by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunning. Our story editor is
Monique Leboard. Our associate producer is Jade Abdul Malik. Our
production manager is Kristin Melcurie. Our iHeart team is Ali
Perry and Jessica Crincheck. Thank you to our voice actors
(39:44):
Bryan Balthasar, Todd Gahans, Trey Morgan and Ben Read. Audio
editing by Dean Welsh and Zach Prutteaux, with additional editing
and mastering by Anna McClain. The Burden of Guilt theme
is composed by Oliver Bains. Music Live provided by Mob Music,
and we want to give our special thanks to Jermaine
(40:05):
Hudson and Bobby Gumpright. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit
the iHeartRadio app or Apple Podcasts
Host
Nancy Glass
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