Introducing: The Burden

The Burden - available everywhere on March 19

Detective Louis N. Scarcella was a legendary figure in New York City during the '90s. In a city overrun with violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. But the story changed when a group of convicted murderers-turned-jailhouse lawyers made a startling discovery that linked all their cases: Scarcella was the cop who helped put many of them away. They made a vow: Take down Scarcella. And with the help of a relentless New York Times reporter, they did just that. Thirty years later, 20 people who Scarcella helped put behind bars have since walked free. In the media, he’s known as the disgraced, rogue cop who hoodwinked an entire system. But was this really the workings of one person? 

We spent hundreds of hours talking with witnesses who were coerced, jailhouse lawyers, outraged attorneys, and righteous cops. Scarcella insists he didn’t do anything wrong. And after finally tracking him down, he agreed to take us into the belly of the beast... where justice is done (and undone). Welcome to The Burden. 

The Burden is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Co. No1.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
He goes for a gun. I put my glock to
his head and pulled the trigger. But the gun's no good.
My gun's no good. I grab him and I knock
him to the ground. There's no feeling like it in
the world. No, you're doing good for good people, putting
bad guys away.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Meet Detective Louis Scarsella. It's the nineteen eighties and nineties
and New York City is a crazy world of murder,
twenty five hundred bodies one year. The city wanted a hero.
They called me the Hulk.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yes, he was the guy who made sure the worst
killers were brought to justice. I am the protector of
these people. I am the guardian that they need.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
That's one version.

Speaker 4 (00:49):
This guy is a piece of shit, but he gets
to run around like he's god.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Derek Hamilton was put away for murder by Detective Scarcella.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
It took me to the precist.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
And lie in prison. Derek turned into a jailhouse lawyer,
the best of his generation, and.

Speaker 4 (01:08):
Lord was my girlfriend. I had to love it because
it's my only way to freedom.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Derek and other convicted murderers banded together and started a
law firm behind bars.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
This is how you had emotion.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
This is how you respond to something. Then Derek and
two other members of the prison law firm stumble on
to something we never knew.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
We had the same cop in the case Scarcella. We
got to show that he's a corrupt cop.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
The law firm targeted Scarcella with the help of a
fearless reporter.

Speaker 5 (01:41):
And then he says to me, girl, you're not going
to give up when things get too hot. And I said, look,
if I get killed doing this, that is not a
bad way to die.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
They could go for themselves. I did nothing wrong.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
I'm Dax Devlin Ross and I'm Steve Fishman. And this
is The Burden.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
What happens when the best jailhouse lawyer of his generation.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Takes on the toughest detective of his Listen to new
episodes of The Burden starting March nineteenth on the iHeartRadio app,
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