January 2, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Jim McCloskey grew up in church, but as he got older, he wanted nothing to do with his childhood faith. After a successful business career, Jim found himself feeling empty. He decided to return to church, and—to his surprise—began considering seminary, which would lead him to a jail cell with an innocent man in it.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, we
have a story from Jim McCluskey, co author of the
book entitled When the Truth Is All You Have. We
start off with Jim sharing a bit about his childhood
and early adult life.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
My brother and I were made to go to Sunday school,
but mom and Dad were completely unchurched, and so they
would just drop us off and pick us up. So
one day, when I was in fourth grade, I said
to Dad, how come Rich and I have to go
to Sunday school and you and Mom don't even don't
go to church. Well, that's stung him. I guess maybe
Mom and Dad were feeling a little guilty before that,
(00:51):
but I provoke them by that question, and then they
started going to the same church that I was going
to Sunday School. They became stalwart and very active and
members of the Bethany Presbyterian Church in Havertown. Dad became
a very important lad leader of the church. When I
was a great in grade school, my Christian faith was
(01:14):
very important to me. In fourth, fifth and sixth grade.
I was fearless at that time because of my Christian faith.
In other words, I wouldn't go along with the crowd.
I wouldn't. Peer pressure didn't phaze me in grade school,
but once I hit junior high then I fell into
that wanting to please my peers and their values became
my values. My faith was really compromised when I was
(01:41):
in high school. Never forget this. I saw a short
documentary on the nightlife in Tokyo with all the bars
and the and the beautiful Japanese women in their kimonos
and gate is shoes walking the streets and all the lights.
I was fascinating with that mysterious city, and that's where
(02:04):
I wanted to go. I wanted to go to Tokyo.
I wanted to be a quote unquote international businessman. I
always always had this obsession to to work overseas. International.
I thought that was again a great way to live
a life. But I didn't know specifically what I wanted
to do. So I decided, well, I'm going to join
the Navy, and so I went to Officer Acundemy Training
(02:27):
School in Newport, Rhode Island in the summer of sixty
four wild OCS. When you're nearing graduation, which I did
in November of sixty four.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
You feel out what they call a dream sheet.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
My first choice, so I put on my dream sheet
was sure duty Japan, and that's exactly what I got.
That in and of itself, is a miracle. The Navy
gave me what I wanted, and they assigned me to
the communications station in Yakuska, Japan, which is about an
hour's train ride south of Tokyo along the Tokyo Bay
(02:58):
as a commissioned twenty two year old Navy officer. I'm
on my way to the land that I've always wanted
to go to, Japan. Three years later, then I was
separated from the service, and now I'm going to the
American Graduate School for International Management in Glendale, Arizona, to
get a degree to return to Tokyo in a business capacity.
(03:22):
I graduated from the American Graduate School for International Management
in October of sixty eight. You know, I wanted to
go to Japan, but I couldn't find a company willing
to send me to Japan, and Tokyo in particular. So
I borrowed twelve hundred dollars from my parents as a stake,
and I flew to Tokyo without a job, no prospects
(03:45):
for a job, but I did have the name of
a man by the name of Bud Inglesby who had
started up this management consulting firm and market research firm
called Coral, and he hired me, and so I worked
for Bud for three or four years. As it turned out,
(04:07):
unbeknownst to me or the staff of Coral, Inglesby secretly
sold Coral to a joint venture between the Fuji Bank
of Japan in those days the first national City Bank
of New York now City Corp. And it became readily
apparent to me that I had no future in that firm.
(04:29):
I decided it's time to go home to Philadelphia. Now
here we are in the summer of nineteen seventy four.
I've come back from Japan disillusioned, disheartened, feeling betrayed by Inglesby.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
But now I'm looking for a whole new career.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
And I wrote a letter to twenty five different consulting firms,
including a local international management consulting firm called Hey Hay
Hey Associates. Hey was the only company who was interested
in hiring me. So I was one for twenty five,
but I struck gold with the one Hey Associates. Now
(05:12):
at the same time, during those five years, I felt
that an important part of my earlier life, my boyhood life,
if you will, I had gone completely off track. I
had left the church. I want nothing to do with
the church. When I came home from Buckdell in my
freshman year, I said to Dad, I've never gone to
(05:33):
church again, and so I didn't darken a church doorstep
from when I was nineteen until I'm now working for
Hey in the seventies. In my early thirties, but I
felt the need to go back to church and rekindle
my faith because I felt that my lifestyle was not
(05:56):
a good one. My moral compass had gone south. So
I joined the Pali Presbyterian Church, which was very close
to my house in Paley, Pennsylvania, and the minister there
was Dick Streeter, with whom I'm still close with today.
His message was to wash the other's feet, to give
of yourself to help the other, to follow the Gospels
(06:21):
of Christ, and that started to really take hold within me.
I was starting to become disillusioned. Even though things were
going well with the corporate life. I felt I was
leading a shallow, superficial, self centered life, and in reading
the words of the Gospels, where where Jesus talks about
(06:46):
what it means to be a disciple and to follow him.
Now I'm I felt I was a hypocrite leading one
life in darkness at the same time steeped to the scriptures.
So this was a battle going on within me. And
finally I decided, after consulting only with Dick Streeter, that
(07:07):
I think Christ was calling me to leave the business
world and become an ordained Presbyterian church pastor. Which I
saw the Dick Streeter, the minister of this large congregation.
He was touching the hearts and souls and life changing
(07:29):
way of a lot of his parishoners and even people
in the community. I wasn't touching anybody's heart or soul.
I wasn't serving anyone except myself. And this really started
to bother me deeply that I wanted a life where
I felt I was serving others in a purposeful, authentic,
(07:49):
meaningful way, and I felt the church pastor was the
way to do it. Just like Streeter in seventy nine,
I decided to leave, not only leave Hey, but leave
the business world and go to Princeton Theological Seminary. And
when I told my boss, Bill Dinsmore, who was the
second top executive and affirm. I said, Bill, there's something
(08:11):
I need to tell you. His first words were, Jim,
I didn't even know you went to church. So I
was still leaning two different lives. It was time for me,
not that they cared all that much, but to it
tell the world who I really am, what's really important
to me. So off to the seminary I went. So
(08:31):
for the next three years, I'm going to be at
the seminary to eurn that degree. Two of those three years,
all of those students, all of us were required to
do field education work hospitals, churches. I chose Trenton State Prison.
It was just a matter of curiosity. I've never been
(08:52):
in a prison. I had no experience in any regard
in any way with a criminal justice system. But who
are these people? Who are these inmates? And so I said,
I'm going to join the program as a student chaplain.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
And you're listening to Jim McCluskey tell the story of
his journey from businessman, international businessman, to pastor and in
the end returning to his youth and that connection between
the soul, his heart and the rest of his life.
When we come back, we're going to join Jim on
that journey, the journey of becoming a pastor. More of
(09:30):
Jim McCluskey's story here on our American Story, and we
(10:10):
continue with our American stories, and we've been listening to
Jim McCluskey tell his story those words earlier in that segment,
and in his story, my moral compass had headed south,
and that was the swing and determining factor in this
big pivot. We left off with Jim deciding to return
to church and reignite the faith he'd had as a boy.
(10:32):
Going back to church inspired him to leave the business
world and pursue a seminary degree. While there, he had
to choose required field education work, and he chose, of
all places, Trenton State Prison. Let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
I was assigned to the maximum security unit. He assigned
me to two different cell blocks, each containing twenty men
in their cells, twenty four to seven.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Our role was to go sell to sell.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Two afternoons a week, every Tuesday and Thursday, from one
to four o'clock in the afternoon, and just be their friend.
Talk to them, not to evangelize, just talk about whatever
they wanted to talk about. One of the forty men,
there was a man by the name of Jorge Delos Santos,
nickname Chiefy. He was the only one who was telling
(11:26):
me that he was an innocent man, he did not
do what he was convicted for, and that he was
serving a life sentence for a Newark, New Jersey murder. Now,
we were forewarned, do not, under any circumstances get involved
in either their personal or legal problems situation, and if
(11:54):
you do, you're out.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
You're out of here, never to come back again.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Up until my tenure as a student chaplain, that had
been strictly enforced and obeyed by all those who came
before me in years before chief When I arrived at
his cell which was midway down one cell block, all
he would talk about was that he's innocent. He got
(12:24):
framed by the prosecutors and the police in Newark. He
never killed anybody, and he was in prison for life
for the botched arm robbery attempt of a used car
lot in Newark, where whoever did this shot and killed
the proprietor of that used car lot. Now, at that point,
(12:48):
I'd never been a juror, I've never been in a courthouse.
I had absolutely zero connection or experience with our criminal
justice system. I believed at that time that if you
were convicted, that certainly you were guilty, that the police
and prosecutors would never countenance supporting perjury or in any
(13:09):
way presenting anything other than credible, substantial evidence of guilt,
that they were as honest as the day is law.
And yet here this man is now. He was twenty,
he was twenty eight years old. One he was convicted.
He's thirty four, thirty five by the time I encounter him,
(13:30):
and he was very honest and open with me about
his lifestyle. He was a heroin addict of Puerto Rican descent,
raised in the harshest of housing projects in Newark, New Jersey.
Two witnesses convicted him and sent him away. One was
an eyewitness who claimed that when he was driving his
tow truck by the used car lot, he heard gunshots
(13:54):
and then he looked at his rear view mirror and
he saw cha. He claimed to have seen Chiefye and
another man, who he identified as Lamont Harvey, fleeing the
crime scene. The second evidence used against Chief He was
a man by the name of Richard Delasante, who claimed
that while he and chief He were in the Essex
(14:15):
County jail. Chief he awaiting trial based only on the
eyewitness account. Delasante claimed the Chief he confessed the crime
to him. Both witnesses against Chiefe were drug addicts. Della
Santi in particular had an extensive criminal record, although that
was misrepresentative trial. As I said the Chief, I said,
(14:37):
come on, are you telling me you told me not
only that you're innocent, but that the prosecutors framed you. Now,
why in the world would they frame you, Chief? You
were a junkie, you were basically a throwaway, and why
would they conjure up and go to all that trouble
to frame somebody like you?
Speaker 3 (14:58):
He said, that's just the point.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
The police convinced the eyewitness to identify me and Harvey
because that helped them clear a case. That's all they
care about, a clearing cases. The prosecutors. When you're a prosecutor,
you want to get convictions. And if you don't get
convictions and you go to trial, then when you come
back to the prosecutor's office, you're not coming back with
(15:22):
what you were there for in the first place, a conviction.
So I had a very difficult time believing that. Over time.
Three months September October November, I finally said the Chief.
I said, look, I'm not supposed to do this, but
I'm going to get your trial transcripts. I want to
read what the state has to say. So I did.
(15:44):
I was able to get his trial transcripts, and I
read them over the Thanksgiving holiday of nineteen eighty some
two thousand pages of documents, and basically what I learned
in reading the transcripts was essentially what Chief he had
it confirmed. And then I learned that Richard Delasante had
(16:04):
not only given a false given a Joe House confession
against CHIEFI, but he did the same thing against his
first cousin, Danny Delasante. He claimed at Danny's trial that
Danny confessed the crime to him, and Danny got convicted
based on Richard Delasante's Joe House confession and sent away
to life. So I read the transcripts, and now I
(16:26):
come back from Thanksgiving. Now we're in early December, and
Chief he says to me, he said, look, you've asked
me a million questions, and I've answered every question that
you've posed as truthful as possible. Now I have a
question for you, chief, he said to me. I said,
(16:47):
what's that? He said, do you believe on medicine? And
I said, well, yeah, I do believe your edicon. Then
he threw out the sixty four thousand dollars question. Well
what are you going to do about it? He says
to me. I said, geev you what do you mean?
What am I going to do about it? There's nothing
I can do? You know, this is this is this
(17:10):
is way beyond my my, my thirty seven years of
experience in life. I don't know anything about murder. I
don't know anything about trials, criminal justice and DA's and police.
I know nothing about That's a whole new world for me.
He said, Well, Jim, I've been on my hands and
knees praying to God for someone to believe in me
(17:35):
and work to free me. Whether you know it or not,
whether you like it or not, you're that man. God
brought you to mysel to work to free me and
bring me home to my wife, Elena, who was stuck
by me all these years, even in my drug addiction days.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
What are you going to do? He said?
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Go back to your nice, safe, little secure seminary and
pray that somebody will help pre chief. He will help
rescue him from this wrongful conviction that you believe occurred.
I said, well, yeah, that's kind of what I was
thinking about doing. He said, if you leave me behind
knowing that I'm believing on medicine, then you're not really
(18:25):
a man of faith. How can you square that with God?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And you've been listening to Jim McClusky tell one heck
of a tale, and it gets me to thinking about
the two questions in the Bible. The first question God
ever asks man, which of course he asked, Adam, where
art thou? And the first question that man ever asked God,
and that's Kin saying, am I my brother's keeper? And
here is Jim on his faith journey in Seminary, trying
(18:55):
to fashion in answer to both of those questions, God's
and man's. We continue with this remarkable story, Jim McCluskey's
story here on our American Stories, and we return to
(19:39):
our American Stories. We've been listening to Jim McCluskey, author
of When the Truth Is All You Have and founder
of Centurion, an innocence project dedicated to freeing the wrongly convicted.
Jim had begun his seminary field work in prison when
he was confronted by a man who claimed to be innocent,
(19:59):
and that's Chiefe. Jim was challenging what he was going
to do next, let's return to Jim McCluskey.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
And that shook me up. It struck me right to
the core of my heart and soul. This man.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Was confronting me with who am I? What do I
really believe? What does God expect of me? So I
went back to the seminary quite disturbed by this challenge.
I prayed, I read scripture, then read. I came across
(20:41):
the Book of Isaiah, chapter fifty nine, and Isaiah says
in this chapter, no one goes to law honestly, they lie.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
It's been their web of deceit.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
We look for justice, but there is none. Truth has
fallen from the public squares. The Lord saw.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
This and was.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Upset and wondered why there was no one to intervene
in seeking justice. And I looked at that word intervene,
and I said, I wonder if this is God's signed
to me to intervene on behalf of chief. And I
felt that it was, And so I went into prison.
(21:31):
The next week actually a little before Christmas, and I
told him, I have a Christmas present for.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
You and Elena.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
And so I said, Chiefie, I'm going to take a
year off and I'm going to do what I can
move the ball forward to try and free you. I'm
going to start that in a month or so after
we finish our finals. Ams. I believe that I was
called by God to do this, So I'm doing it
and we'll see how it works out. We embraced through
the bars and silently tears coming down. We were both
(22:04):
moved by what was going to take place. I decided
to do this investigation myself. I'm thirty eight years old,
I've been around the world. I know a little bit
about how the world works. Nevertheless, I was a greenhorn.
The first thing I did. I went to Newark and
(22:26):
stood at the exact same spot where pat Pascillo said
he was when he heard the gunshots and saw these
two men flee the sea in the crowd through the
rear view mirror of his.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Tow truck in darkness.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
And I determined very easily and quickly it was impossible
for him to have seen what he said he saw
based on darkness and distance. Number one, So he's out
as a credible witness. It took ten minutes, which, by
the way, Chief's lawyer never did. Now I'm going to
(23:05):
investigate Richard Dela Sante, the Jae House confession person. Richard
said he had only been arrested, he'd only been convicted
of two crimes, when in fact, he had been arrested
forty times as an habitual criminal and had testified in
other cases. When at Chief's trial, under direct examination by
(23:30):
the trial prosecutor Kevin Kelly, he claimed he had never
testified in any.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Other case at all.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
That was a lie, and I had the documents to
prove that was a lie. Then I would write Richard
Delasante letter after letter. It took a year before he
finally agreed to meet with me. I got a call
from him in February of nineteen eighty two. No amenities.
He says, I know who you are, I know what
(23:58):
you've been doing. I got your letters. I'm in the
Hudson County Jail in Jersey City. If you want to
talk to me, come on up. Later that week, I
spent two full days visiting with Richard Delisante. Then he
told me the whole story, and I was taping all
his conversations with me, So we had a whole rich
treasure full of conversations and his confessions about all the
(24:21):
real wrongdoing he had done in Chief He's case and
Rich and Danny's case in other cases on behalf of
this crooked corrupt Esse County prosecutors detective who was his handler,
and I met with a prosecutor, Kevin Kelly, and told
them all this information. I was naive. I still believed
at that time that Kevin Kelly, although he mistakingly, he
(24:45):
honestly mistakingly convicted an innocent man, when he hears this
new evidence that establishes that he might even help me
free Chief.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
That was so naive and so dumb.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
And when I told Kevin Kelly what I had and
then I telephoned him. When I telephoned him months later,
when I learned even more, he hung up on me
and said, Jim, I don't give it darn If ten
people come forward and confess to this crime, you know Chief,
he's good for this, and he hung up on me.
One of the most important things I did and I
(25:21):
got lucky, is need I need a lawyer. I can't
do this by myself. Paul Castello began work on this
case with me.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
We were a team. In late nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
One, Paul was able to draw up a very compelling
rid of habeas corpus, and we got a hearing in
federal court for the federal district judge to consider and
review all the documented evidence as well as witness testimony
post conviction witness testimony. We put Kevin Kelly on the stand.
(25:56):
He had to account for what we knew to be
his subordination of perjury, and I almost felt sorry for
him by the time Paul got through with him, but
I didn't. On July sixth, nineteen eighty three, three or
four months after the hearing, Honorable District Judge Frederick B.
(26:17):
Lacy reversed the conviction and found as a fact that
Della Sante lied to stay out of prison, and that
the prosecutor knew that.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
He had lied and support perjury.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
And on July twenty sixth, nineteen eighty three, several weeks later,
Paul Castelliro and I went down to Trent State Prison
and picked Chief Ye up, a free and exonerated man,
and brought him home to his wife at York. That
glorious day. Up until that point, it was the best
day by far of my entire life. Now, during the
(26:56):
two and a half years I was working for Chiefye,
I had met three other New Jersey lifers who I
had come to believe were also innocent. That all three
were asking me to please do for them what I
had done for Chiefee. After we freedom. Now we come
to another crossroads, which is in July of nineteen eighty three,
(27:22):
Chief He's freed. I had finished my Master Divinity degree
program that was completed at the same time. But at
that time I was broke. However, just at that time,
now I have a choice to make. Am I going
to now go on and get ordained as a church pastor?
(27:42):
Or what am I going to do with these three
other men? Just when I'm struggling with that decision, I
received a ten thousand dollars tax free gift from my
mother and father. They had come into some extraordinary income
(28:03):
from an old investment they had made years before, and
they gave each of us three kids a ten thousand
dollars tax free gift. I looked at that as matter
from heaven and seed money to begin what I later
called Centurion ministries. I decided to establish a nonprofit organization
(28:33):
called Centurion Ministries, and I named it Centurion after the
Centurion in the Gospel of Luke. The centurion standing at
the foot of the crucified Christ looks up and says,
surely this one was innocent. That's where the name comes from.
Then I began work. I started to work on those
(28:54):
three cases. Eventually we freed all three. Renee Santana was
freed in February of eighty six, Nate Walker.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Was freed and.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
November of eighty six, and Domaso Vega was freed in
November of nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
And a terrific job on the storytelling and production by
Faith Buchanan and Robbie Davis. In a special thanks to
Jim McCluskey for his work with CHIEFI and with so
many others. Centurion has freed sixty seven men and women
serving life sentences and all again because he answered God's calls.
(29:42):
Who am I? He asked, what do I believe? And
what does God require of me? When challenged by CHIEFI
and Isaiah, Chapter fifty nine provided the answer for him.
God had sent a sign to me. He said that
word intervene. Just kept calling at me, and by the way,
you can get to j m's organization, Centurion at centurion
(30:03):
dot org. Jim McCluskey's story here on our American Story
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, we
have a story from Jim McCluskey, co author of the
book entitled When the Truth Is All You Have. We
start off with Jim sharing a bit about his childhood
and early adult life.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
My brother and I were made to go to Sunday school,
but mom and Dad were completely unchurched, and so they
would just drop us off and pick us up. So
one day, when I was in fourth grade, I said
to Dad, how come Rich and I have to go
to Sunday school and you and Mom don't even don't
go to church. Well, that's stung him. I guess maybe
Mom and Dad were feeling a little guilty before that,
(00:51):
but I provoke them by that question, and then they
started going to the same church that I was going
to Sunday School. They became stalwart and very active and
members of the Bethany Presbyterian Church in Havertown. Dad became
a very important lad leader of the church. When I
was a great in grade school, my Christian faith was
(01:14):
very important to me. In fourth, fifth and sixth grade.
I was fearless at that time because of my Christian faith.
In other words, I wouldn't go along with the crowd.
I wouldn't. Peer pressure didn't phaze me in grade school,
but once I hit junior high then I fell into
that wanting to please my peers and their values became
my values. My faith was really compromised when I was
(01:41):
in high school. Never forget this. I saw a short
documentary on the nightlife in Tokyo with all the bars
and the and the beautiful Japanese women in their kimonos
and gate is shoes walking the streets and all the lights.
I was fascinating with that mysterious city, and that's where
(02:04):
I wanted to go. I wanted to go to Tokyo.
I wanted to be a quote unquote international businessman. I
always always had this obsession to to work overseas. International.
I thought that was again a great way to live
a life. But I didn't know specifically what I wanted
to do. So I decided, well, I'm going to join
the Navy, and so I went to Officer Acundemy Training
(02:27):
School in Newport, Rhode Island in the summer of sixty
four wild OCS. When you're nearing graduation, which I did
in November of sixty four.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
You feel out what they call a dream sheet.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
My first choice, so I put on my dream sheet
was sure duty Japan, and that's exactly what I got.
That in and of itself, is a miracle. The Navy
gave me what I wanted, and they assigned me to
the communications station in Yakuska, Japan, which is about an
hour's train ride south of Tokyo along the Tokyo Bay
(02:58):
as a commissioned twenty two year old Navy officer. I'm
on my way to the land that I've always wanted
to go to, Japan. Three years later, then I was
separated from the service, and now I'm going to the
American Graduate School for International Management in Glendale, Arizona, to
get a degree to return to Tokyo in a business capacity.
(03:22):
I graduated from the American Graduate School for International Management
in October of sixty eight. You know, I wanted to
go to Japan, but I couldn't find a company willing
to send me to Japan, and Tokyo in particular. So
I borrowed twelve hundred dollars from my parents as a stake,
and I flew to Tokyo without a job, no prospects
(03:45):
for a job, but I did have the name of
a man by the name of Bud Inglesby who had
started up this management consulting firm and market research firm
called Coral, and he hired me, and so I worked
for Bud for three or four years. As it turned out,
(04:07):
unbeknownst to me or the staff of Coral, Inglesby secretly
sold Coral to a joint venture between the Fuji Bank
of Japan in those days the first national City Bank
of New York now City Corp. And it became readily
apparent to me that I had no future in that firm.
(04:29):
I decided it's time to go home to Philadelphia. Now
here we are in the summer of nineteen seventy four.
I've come back from Japan disillusioned, disheartened, feeling betrayed by Inglesby.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
But now I'm looking for a whole new career.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
And I wrote a letter to twenty five different consulting firms,
including a local international management consulting firm called Hey Hay
Hey Associates. Hey was the only company who was interested
in hiring me. So I was one for twenty five,
but I struck gold with the one Hey Associates. Now
(05:12):
at the same time, during those five years, I felt
that an important part of my earlier life, my boyhood life,
if you will, I had gone completely off track. I
had left the church. I want nothing to do with
the church. When I came home from Buckdell in my
freshman year, I said to Dad, I've never gone to
(05:33):
church again, and so I didn't darken a church doorstep
from when I was nineteen until I'm now working for
Hey in the seventies. In my early thirties, but I
felt the need to go back to church and rekindle
my faith because I felt that my lifestyle was not
(05:56):
a good one. My moral compass had gone south. So
I joined the Pali Presbyterian Church, which was very close
to my house in Paley, Pennsylvania, and the minister there
was Dick Streeter, with whom I'm still close with today.
His message was to wash the other's feet, to give
of yourself to help the other, to follow the Gospels
(06:21):
of Christ, and that started to really take hold within me.
I was starting to become disillusioned. Even though things were
going well with the corporate life. I felt I was
leading a shallow, superficial, self centered life, and in reading
the words of the Gospels, where where Jesus talks about
(06:46):
what it means to be a disciple and to follow him.
Now I'm I felt I was a hypocrite leading one
life in darkness at the same time steeped to the scriptures.
So this was a battle going on within me. And
finally I decided, after consulting only with Dick Streeter, that
(07:07):
I think Christ was calling me to leave the business
world and become an ordained Presbyterian church pastor. Which I
saw the Dick Streeter, the minister of this large congregation.
He was touching the hearts and souls and life changing
(07:29):
way of a lot of his parishoners and even people
in the community. I wasn't touching anybody's heart or soul.
I wasn't serving anyone except myself. And this really started
to bother me deeply that I wanted a life where
I felt I was serving others in a purposeful, authentic,
(07:49):
meaningful way, and I felt the church pastor was the
way to do it. Just like Streeter in seventy nine,
I decided to leave, not only leave Hey, but leave
the business world and go to Princeton Theological Seminary. And
when I told my boss, Bill Dinsmore, who was the
second top executive and affirm. I said, Bill, there's something
(08:11):
I need to tell you. His first words were, Jim,
I didn't even know you went to church. So I
was still leaning two different lives. It was time for me,
not that they cared all that much, but to it
tell the world who I really am, what's really important
to me. So off to the seminary I went. So
(08:31):
for the next three years, I'm going to be at
the seminary to eurn that degree. Two of those three years,
all of those students, all of us were required to
do field education work hospitals, churches. I chose Trenton State Prison.
It was just a matter of curiosity. I've never been
(08:52):
in a prison. I had no experience in any regard
in any way with a criminal justice system. But who
are these people? Who are these inmates? And so I said,
I'm going to join the program as a student chaplain.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
And you're listening to Jim McCluskey tell the story of
his journey from businessman, international businessman, to pastor and in
the end returning to his youth and that connection between
the soul, his heart and the rest of his life.
When we come back, we're going to join Jim on
that journey, the journey of becoming a pastor. More of
(09:30):
Jim McCluskey's story here on our American Story, and we
(10:10):
continue with our American stories, and we've been listening to
Jim McCluskey tell his story those words earlier in that segment,
and in his story, my moral compass had headed south,
and that was the swing and determining factor in this
big pivot. We left off with Jim deciding to return
to church and reignite the faith he'd had as a boy.
(10:32):
Going back to church inspired him to leave the business
world and pursue a seminary degree. While there, he had
to choose required field education work, and he chose, of
all places, Trenton State Prison. Let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
I was assigned to the maximum security unit. He assigned
me to two different cell blocks, each containing twenty men
in their cells, twenty four to seven.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Our role was to go sell to sell.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Two afternoons a week, every Tuesday and Thursday, from one
to four o'clock in the afternoon, and just be their friend.
Talk to them, not to evangelize, just talk about whatever
they wanted to talk about. One of the forty men,
there was a man by the name of Jorge Delos Santos,
nickname Chiefy. He was the only one who was telling
(11:26):
me that he was an innocent man, he did not
do what he was convicted for, and that he was
serving a life sentence for a Newark, New Jersey murder. Now,
we were forewarned, do not, under any circumstances get involved
in either their personal or legal problems situation, and if
(11:54):
you do, you're out.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
You're out of here, never to come back again.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Up until my tenure as a student chaplain, that had
been strictly enforced and obeyed by all those who came
before me in years before chief When I arrived at
his cell which was midway down one cell block, all
he would talk about was that he's innocent. He got
(12:24):
framed by the prosecutors and the police in Newark. He
never killed anybody, and he was in prison for life
for the botched arm robbery attempt of a used car
lot in Newark, where whoever did this shot and killed
the proprietor of that used car lot. Now, at that point,
(12:48):
I'd never been a juror, I've never been in a courthouse.
I had absolutely zero connection or experience with our criminal
justice system. I believed at that time that if you
were convicted, that certainly you were guilty, that the police
and prosecutors would never countenance supporting perjury or in any
(13:09):
way presenting anything other than credible, substantial evidence of guilt,
that they were as honest as the day is law.
And yet here this man is now. He was twenty,
he was twenty eight years old. One he was convicted.
He's thirty four, thirty five by the time I encounter him,
(13:30):
and he was very honest and open with me about
his lifestyle. He was a heroin addict of Puerto Rican descent,
raised in the harshest of housing projects in Newark, New Jersey.
Two witnesses convicted him and sent him away. One was
an eyewitness who claimed that when he was driving his
tow truck by the used car lot, he heard gunshots
(13:54):
and then he looked at his rear view mirror and
he saw cha. He claimed to have seen Chiefye and
another man, who he identified as Lamont Harvey, fleeing the
crime scene. The second evidence used against Chief He was
a man by the name of Richard Delasante, who claimed
that while he and chief He were in the Essex
(14:15):
County jail. Chief he awaiting trial based only on the
eyewitness account. Delasante claimed the Chief he confessed the crime
to him. Both witnesses against Chiefe were drug addicts. Della
Santi in particular had an extensive criminal record, although that
was misrepresentative trial. As I said the Chief, I said,
(14:37):
come on, are you telling me you told me not
only that you're innocent, but that the prosecutors framed you. Now,
why in the world would they frame you, Chief? You
were a junkie, you were basically a throwaway, and why
would they conjure up and go to all that trouble
to frame somebody like you?
Speaker 3 (14:58):
He said, that's just the point.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
The police convinced the eyewitness to identify me and Harvey
because that helped them clear a case. That's all they
care about, a clearing cases. The prosecutors. When you're a prosecutor,
you want to get convictions. And if you don't get
convictions and you go to trial, then when you come
back to the prosecutor's office, you're not coming back with
(15:22):
what you were there for in the first place, a conviction.
So I had a very difficult time believing that. Over time.
Three months September October November, I finally said the Chief.
I said, look, I'm not supposed to do this, but
I'm going to get your trial transcripts. I want to
read what the state has to say. So I did.
(15:44):
I was able to get his trial transcripts, and I
read them over the Thanksgiving holiday of nineteen eighty some
two thousand pages of documents, and basically what I learned
in reading the transcripts was essentially what Chief he had
it confirmed. And then I learned that Richard Delasante had
(16:04):
not only given a false given a Joe House confession
against CHIEFI, but he did the same thing against his
first cousin, Danny Delasante. He claimed at Danny's trial that
Danny confessed the crime to him, and Danny got convicted
based on Richard Delasante's Joe House confession and sent away
to life. So I read the transcripts, and now I
(16:26):
come back from Thanksgiving. Now we're in early December, and
Chief he says to me, he said, look, you've asked
me a million questions, and I've answered every question that
you've posed as truthful as possible. Now I have a
question for you, chief, he said to me. I said,
(16:47):
what's that? He said, do you believe on medicine? And
I said, well, yeah, I do believe your edicon. Then
he threw out the sixty four thousand dollars question. Well
what are you going to do about it? He says
to me. I said, geev you what do you mean?
What am I going to do about it? There's nothing
I can do? You know, this is this is this
(17:10):
is way beyond my my, my thirty seven years of
experience in life. I don't know anything about murder. I
don't know anything about trials, criminal justice and DA's and police.
I know nothing about That's a whole new world for me.
He said, Well, Jim, I've been on my hands and
knees praying to God for someone to believe in me
(17:35):
and work to free me. Whether you know it or not,
whether you like it or not, you're that man. God
brought you to mysel to work to free me and
bring me home to my wife, Elena, who was stuck
by me all these years, even in my drug addiction days.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
What are you going to do? He said?
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Go back to your nice, safe, little secure seminary and
pray that somebody will help pre chief. He will help
rescue him from this wrongful conviction that you believe occurred.
I said, well, yeah, that's kind of what I was
thinking about doing. He said, if you leave me behind
knowing that I'm believing on medicine, then you're not really
(18:25):
a man of faith. How can you square that with God?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And you've been listening to Jim McClusky tell one heck
of a tale, and it gets me to thinking about
the two questions in the Bible. The first question God
ever asks man, which of course he asked, Adam, where
art thou? And the first question that man ever asked God,
and that's Kin saying, am I my brother's keeper? And
here is Jim on his faith journey in Seminary, trying
(18:55):
to fashion in answer to both of those questions, God's
and man's. We continue with this remarkable story, Jim McCluskey's
story here on our American Stories, and we return to
(19:39):
our American Stories. We've been listening to Jim McCluskey, author
of When the Truth Is All You Have and founder
of Centurion, an innocence project dedicated to freeing the wrongly convicted.
Jim had begun his seminary field work in prison when
he was confronted by a man who claimed to be innocent,
(19:59):
and that's Chiefe. Jim was challenging what he was going
to do next, let's return to Jim McCluskey.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
And that shook me up. It struck me right to
the core of my heart and soul. This man.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Was confronting me with who am I? What do I
really believe? What does God expect of me? So I
went back to the seminary quite disturbed by this challenge.
I prayed, I read scripture, then read. I came across
(20:41):
the Book of Isaiah, chapter fifty nine, and Isaiah says
in this chapter, no one goes to law honestly, they lie.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
It's been their web of deceit.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
We look for justice, but there is none. Truth has
fallen from the public squares. The Lord saw.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
This and was.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Upset and wondered why there was no one to intervene
in seeking justice. And I looked at that word intervene,
and I said, I wonder if this is God's signed
to me to intervene on behalf of chief. And I
felt that it was, And so I went into prison.
(21:31):
The next week actually a little before Christmas, and I
told him, I have a Christmas present for.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
You and Elena.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
And so I said, Chiefie, I'm going to take a
year off and I'm going to do what I can
move the ball forward to try and free you. I'm
going to start that in a month or so after
we finish our finals. Ams. I believe that I was
called by God to do this, So I'm doing it
and we'll see how it works out. We embraced through
the bars and silently tears coming down. We were both
(22:04):
moved by what was going to take place. I decided
to do this investigation myself. I'm thirty eight years old,
I've been around the world. I know a little bit
about how the world works. Nevertheless, I was a greenhorn.
The first thing I did. I went to Newark and
(22:26):
stood at the exact same spot where pat Pascillo said
he was when he heard the gunshots and saw these
two men flee the sea in the crowd through the
rear view mirror of his.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Tow truck in darkness.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
And I determined very easily and quickly it was impossible
for him to have seen what he said he saw
based on darkness and distance. Number one, So he's out
as a credible witness. It took ten minutes, which, by
the way, Chief's lawyer never did. Now I'm going to
(23:05):
investigate Richard Dela Sante, the Jae House confession person. Richard
said he had only been arrested, he'd only been convicted
of two crimes, when in fact, he had been arrested
forty times as an habitual criminal and had testified in
other cases. When at Chief's trial, under direct examination by
(23:30):
the trial prosecutor Kevin Kelly, he claimed he had never
testified in any.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Other case at all.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
That was a lie, and I had the documents to
prove that was a lie. Then I would write Richard
Delasante letter after letter. It took a year before he
finally agreed to meet with me. I got a call
from him in February of nineteen eighty two. No amenities.
He says, I know who you are, I know what
(23:58):
you've been doing. I got your letters. I'm in the
Hudson County Jail in Jersey City. If you want to
talk to me, come on up. Later that week, I
spent two full days visiting with Richard Delisante. Then he
told me the whole story, and I was taping all
his conversations with me, So we had a whole rich
treasure full of conversations and his confessions about all the
(24:21):
real wrongdoing he had done in Chief He's case and
Rich and Danny's case in other cases on behalf of
this crooked corrupt Esse County prosecutors detective who was his handler,
and I met with a prosecutor, Kevin Kelly, and told
them all this information. I was naive. I still believed
at that time that Kevin Kelly, although he mistakingly, he
(24:45):
honestly mistakingly convicted an innocent man, when he hears this
new evidence that establishes that he might even help me
free Chief.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
That was so naive and so dumb.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
And when I told Kevin Kelly what I had and
then I telephoned him. When I telephoned him months later,
when I learned even more, he hung up on me
and said, Jim, I don't give it darn If ten
people come forward and confess to this crime, you know Chief,
he's good for this, and he hung up on me.
One of the most important things I did and I
(25:21):
got lucky, is need I need a lawyer. I can't
do this by myself. Paul Castello began work on this
case with me.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
We were a team. In late nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
One, Paul was able to draw up a very compelling
rid of habeas corpus, and we got a hearing in
federal court for the federal district judge to consider and
review all the documented evidence as well as witness testimony
post conviction witness testimony. We put Kevin Kelly on the stand.
(25:56):
He had to account for what we knew to be
his subordination of perjury, and I almost felt sorry for
him by the time Paul got through with him, but
I didn't. On July sixth, nineteen eighty three, three or
four months after the hearing, Honorable District Judge Frederick B.
(26:17):
Lacy reversed the conviction and found as a fact that
Della Sante lied to stay out of prison, and that
the prosecutor knew that.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
He had lied and support perjury.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
And on July twenty sixth, nineteen eighty three, several weeks later,
Paul Castelliro and I went down to Trent State Prison
and picked Chief Ye up, a free and exonerated man,
and brought him home to his wife at York. That
glorious day. Up until that point, it was the best
day by far of my entire life. Now, during the
(26:56):
two and a half years I was working for Chiefye,
I had met three other New Jersey lifers who I
had come to believe were also innocent. That all three
were asking me to please do for them what I
had done for Chiefee. After we freedom. Now we come
to another crossroads, which is in July of nineteen eighty three,
(27:22):
Chief He's freed. I had finished my Master Divinity degree
program that was completed at the same time. But at
that time I was broke. However, just at that time,
now I have a choice to make. Am I going
to now go on and get ordained as a church pastor?
(27:42):
Or what am I going to do with these three
other men? Just when I'm struggling with that decision, I
received a ten thousand dollars tax free gift from my
mother and father. They had come into some extraordinary income
(28:03):
from an old investment they had made years before, and
they gave each of us three kids a ten thousand
dollars tax free gift. I looked at that as matter
from heaven and seed money to begin what I later
called Centurion ministries. I decided to establish a nonprofit organization
(28:33):
called Centurion Ministries, and I named it Centurion after the
Centurion in the Gospel of Luke. The centurion standing at
the foot of the crucified Christ looks up and says,
surely this one was innocent. That's where the name comes from.
Then I began work. I started to work on those
(28:54):
three cases. Eventually we freed all three. Renee Santana was
freed in February of eighty six, Nate Walker.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Was freed and.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
November of eighty six, and Domaso Vega was freed in
November of nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
And a terrific job on the storytelling and production by
Faith Buchanan and Robbie Davis. In a special thanks to
Jim McCluskey for his work with CHIEFI and with so
many others. Centurion has freed sixty seven men and women
serving life sentences and all again because he answered God's calls.
(29:42):
Who am I? He asked, what do I believe? And
what does God require of me? When challenged by CHIEFI
and Isaiah, Chapter fifty nine provided the answer for him.
God had sent a sign to me. He said that
word intervene. Just kept calling at me, and by the way,
you can get to j m's organization, Centurion at centurion
(30:03):
dot org. Jim McCluskey's story here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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