March 26, 2024 • 35 mins
Episode 3 of 10
We meet Shabaka Shakur, Derrick Hamilton, and the rest of the law firm they founded in prison. They are the best jailhouse lawyers of their generation. They have roles: lecturer, writer, PR man, intern… They claim they were framed...by Louie Scarcella. They declare common cause: bring him down. That cause will change the history of New York state jurisprudence.
The Burden is available everywhere you get your podcasts.
All episodes will be available one week early and ad-free, along with exclusive bonus content on Orbit’s newly launched “True Crime Club House” subscription channel on Apple Podcasts.
The Burden is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Co. No1
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, Steve Fishman here, creator of The Burden as well
as the number one true crime podcast My Friend The
Serial Killer. For those of you who liked The Burden,
I have good news. Season two starts August seventh. It's
a series called The Burden Empire on Blood and it's
the director's cut of the true crime classic Empire on Blood,
(00:22):
which reached number one on the charts when it debuted
half a dozen years ago. Then the fat cat funders
abandon it. I wrangled it back and now I'm thrilled
to share this story of a man who fought the
law for two decades, fought against the Bronx's top homicide
prosecutor and a detective sometimes known as the Louis Scarcela
(00:44):
of the Bronx. It's all coming to you August seventh,
wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Previously on The Burden, we get on.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
The plane take off, and the plane it's air pocket.
Holy Christ, gotta take your jackals off because.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
We may go down and you gotta swim. He confessed.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
This guy named Derek Hamilton, who's an ex con kind
of like a jail house lawyer.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
So he gives me shabacca chaqueurs for forty information that
would substantiate that he was a crooked.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
God, I believe everybody wants to confess.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Y'all understand I didn't commit a crime. So in my mind,
I'm like, this is gonna be worked out. I came
into the precinct. You asked me where I was. I
told you where I was. You asked me if I
had any proof. I gave you the numbers of the
people who I was with. You call these people so
(01:55):
and you have no witnesses saying that they saw me
shooting anybody. So I should walk out the priest and
right there incomes Detective Lewis Scarsella. He was young, hat,
you know, his hair like one of Johnson Walter type looking.
You know what I'm saying. He just struck me as
somebody really flamboyant. He immediately comes in aggressive toward me,
(02:20):
telling me, I know who you are. I know you're
a drug dealer. I know they're drug dealers. I know
all y'all involved together, and you killed them. I immediately
was offended. I lost my temper and I cursed him out,
told him fuck you, and he started banging on the
table saying I came here to help you, but you're
(02:41):
gonna go upstate.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Now.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
You're gonna be in jail for the rest of your
life because you're an asshole. Just remember I gave you
this chance to help yourself. I ignored it and he left.
The first time I'm before the judge, the lawyer says, well,
(03:05):
because I was saying, Joe, we need to explain, and
he's like, no, no, no talk because we already have a confession.
And I said, I don't have no confession. And he said,
you made a statement to the police. I said, yeah,
I told the police where I was. I told him
I wasn't there. I never confessed with no murder. And
he said, oh no, no, not the first police, but
(03:26):
the second police. You confessed to him. And I was like,
are you crazy? I never made no confession.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Shabacca Chicord was found guilty of a double homicide and
received two terms of twenty to life to run consecutively.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Feel your body shaking.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
You're gonna turn me. I'm gonna turn on you. Welcome
to the Burden. I'm Dax delan Ross and I'm Steve Fishman.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
In this episode, the actual Innocence Team.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
So what's the detective's.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Job to do everything he can under the law with
the tools he has given to get the confession.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
He could be a gentle soul, he could be an
understanding soul, and he could be a gorilla too. It
takes a hell of a detective to know how to
do that.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
Yore.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Imagine if all of us was in the law library together.
Imagine what we could do. We'd be able to run
it like it's a real law firm. And that's when
it hit me, we got to expose him.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
You gotta hold old time.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
There's a jail house folklore right that says that the
best jail house law clerks or lawyers can never get
themselves out. They will get everybody else out, but they
can never get themselves out right, And it's true. That
was one of those myths that I wanted to break.
(05:39):
I was like, I bet I got to be able
to get myself out.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Sabacca Chakor had a problem. He was twenty three years
old and on the hook for two life sentences for
a double homicide. He insists he didn't commit. For him,
studying the law would become a necessity.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
But being in jail is not generally conducive to the
contemplation of a subject as complicated as the law.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
I went through Rikers Island in the eighties and the nineties,
it was like, could you even survive full to capacity?
It might be a week before you got to a cell.
In between that time, you were sleeping on the bullpen
on the floor because if you didn't know how to fight,
you wasn't going to get a bench. So the environment
(06:27):
was extremely violent.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Chabaca was sent to Auburn Correctional Facility, a maximum security
prison in upstate New York where only the most dangerous
criminals are sent. He was put in solitary, but for
Shabaka it was a blessing in disguise. It actually gave
him the chance to work on his first appeal.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I really believed on my first appeal, I was going
to get out.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
But at that time, Shebaca just didn't have what it took.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
After I blew my appeal, I felt like, Okay, they
don't want to let me go. They're gonna keep me here.
I'm gonna be a territory. You've seen how Rodney King
got beat that that's an everyday occurrence in prison. I'm
not gonna be a victim to that. From the very
first time that an officers struck me, I retaliated immediately.
(07:25):
I swung back. I just went ballistics, swinging on everybody,
trying to disarm them, take their stick swinging back. Instead
of wanting to beat me up, they just wanted to
put me in the cell, Like, put in the cell
and close the door, like this guy's crazy. Like I
wanted them to have that fear, and it worked. I
(07:48):
purposely was just angry at the world that I was here.
I felt like I had been red roaded, which I had,
but I also felt like helpless.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Time passed, things calmed a bit. Sabaki's reputation as a fighter,
it got around. Everyone left him alone, including the guards.
But fighting that's only one side of Shabaka. Really, He's
an intellectual, an introvert, kind of a bookworm.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
When I was a solitary, I read fantasy books, novels,
technical books, so I was always good by myself.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Shebaca was in solitary for a while, but once he
got out, he did what anybody does. He started to
build a life for himself. He got a job in
the mess hall, he joined the boxing and football teams,
and he even made some friends. I mean, after all,
even when you're in prison, you still have to live
a life. But then one day, another prisoner just a
(08:54):
few cells down, struck up a conversation with.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Him, talking to him, and I'm like, hey, what's up?
He said to me, Yo, man, I'm getting ready to
go home. Right. Of course, part of me is happy
for him, but part of me is miserable for me, Dax.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
At that moment, Chabaca's been in prison how long?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Ten years?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
I don't know what if the word jaded is right,
but because here are guys who actually committed a crime
and are going home, and I'm a guy who didn't
commit a crime, and I'm not going home. And he
kind of like left me feeling a little depressed, feeling
like how do I beat this? How do I get out?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
It was around this time that Schabacca remembered the conversation
he'd had about a decade before with another prisoner. His
name Derek Hamilton. You met him in episode one.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Derek is one of the first people that I met
when I first got arrested.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
When Derek and Schabacca met, Derek started making one point
very clear.
Speaker 5 (10:03):
And I'm telling him fuck your lawyer man. These guys
don't work hard.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Derek was known as a genius when it came to
the law, completely self taught and very motivated. At that moment,
he's fighting his own.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Murder conviction, and Derek he had some words of advice
for Shabaka.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
You gotta go to lay library, you gotta study. You
got to be the most smartest guy in that court.
When where you're going, you better work on you better work,
you better work.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
I remember him telling me you can't trust lawyers. Lawyers
are doing a job. They don't care whether you get
out or not, because they're going to get paid either way.
You are the only one who cares if you're getting out.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
As clearing director as Derek's message was, it still took
a while for it to sink in. But now years later,
Shebaka is ready.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
I said, Okay, I want to get out of jail.
So I'm going to work in the law library where
I can be around a book set all the time.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
And lucky for Shabaka, every New York prison has to
have a law library. It's a state mandate. So Shebacca
became a law clerk at Auburn.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Every morning Shebacca went off to study. On his way
to the law library, he would walk through the yard
wearing his state greens, carrying his papers in a net bag.
Eventually he even enrolled at Cornell University. It wasn't long
before as professor took a liking to him. One of
them even offered him a teacher's assistant position. But for Shabaka,
(11:34):
there was always only one goal freedom.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
I always thought I was with a couple hole, even
when everybody else gave up. And I remember writing people
and they was like, when you come at home, and
I said, probably another two years, because I always felt
like I'm right on the verge of getting out.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
The factory. Means that with all of his appeals denied,
he's running out of legal options. And it just so
happens that at that exact moment, whispers start to spread
through the yard, whispers of someone knew who's arrived, someone special.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
That's when Derek came to Auburn.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Derek Hamilton, that's the guy who urged Shabaka to take
the law into his own hands.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Even before Derek arrived at Auburn, he had quite a
reputation among the inmates. Nelson Cruz he'd heard of Derek, this.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
God like god when it comes to criminal law.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Nelson's another prisoner at Auburn.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Everybody loves him and knows him, and people that don't
know him hears about him, and everybody want to just
work with him because all they think about is freedom. Freedom, freedom, freedom,
and especially if you're here for a crime you didn't commit.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
So Nelson's thinking freedom. But I imagine that Shabaka, He's
got to be thinking relief. At last, he has a
partner as devoted to the law as he is.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
The Lord was my girlfriend. It was all I had.
It was all I had. I had to love it.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
This is the ang way the freedom coming up. Sabacca
and Derek reunited at Auburn. Get busy in the law library.
Stay with us, Okay, Steve, Let's pause for a moment. Sabacca,
(13:42):
as we've learned now, is adamant about his innocence. But
let's take a moment and look at the crime he
says he didn't commit.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Here are the essentials. So Schebacca was convicted of a
double homicide. There were no fingerprints, no murder weapon. There
was supposed lee and I witness, but his story turns
out to be a bit changeable. Still, the cops aren't
backing off. They like Shabaka for the crime. After all,
he had a rap sheet, he'd been a drug dealer,
(14:12):
he'd been in prison for a violent crime. You don't
need to be Sherlock Holmes. For the cops, Sabacca fit
the profile.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
And Steve there is another key piece of evidence against Schabacco.
Remember Scarcella claimed that Sabacca did confess to him. That's right.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
It turns out it's not exactly a confession, but it
is a very incriminating statement, and it is possible that's
what sealed his fate. Here's what Scarcella claimed, Shebacca said
to him, you know what happened, You have it all.
They were going to kill me. They deserve to die.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
That would be what would convince me if I now
know that this person was a drug dealer who's already
served time for a violent offense. All I would really
need to hear is a statement provided to me by
a very reputable detective. And this is it.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
They are really powerful words. Listen, they provide a motive,
and yeah, maybe that sealed his fate. What we know
for sure is that nobody gets up to present Shobacca's side.
Shobacca doesn't testify, his alibi witnesses don't testify, but Scarcela
does testify, and he reads that incriminating statement to the jury.
(15:39):
Of course, from Schebaca's point of view, its awn nonsense. Remember,
Sabacca claims he never made any statement. He didn't even
know there was a statement until his lawyer told.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Him, And that was the first time that I realized
that there was a statement from Scarcella, because I had
never made any statement.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
It's now twenty years into his sentence. In Schebacca, he's
at Auburn and still insisting that he never gave a
statement that he's innocent.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Meanwhile, we'd just gotten out that Auburn now hosts brilliant
legal minds. Another prisoner, Danny ringcon He immediately sees the potential.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
We all have something in common, which was that we
were wrong by a system.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Danny was convicted of four murders, which he says he
didn't do. One day in the yard, he approaches Shabaka.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
So Danny says, yo, imagine if all of us was
in a law library together, Imagine what we could do.
We'd be able to run it like it's a real law.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Firm, a real law firm in prison. Well, the firm's office,
that's the law library. Let me set the scene for you, Steve,
a corrections officer sits on a raised platform looking down
over the prisoners, not unlike a judge surveiling them. There
(17:12):
are a few worn out computers, no Internet, of course,
and then there are the legal books, and there are
lots of them. They line the walls. So what happens
is when they come into the law library, these convicted murderers,
they push together four wooden desks and they huddle around
this makeshift conference table and they get to work. They've
(17:35):
got their own filing cabinet, a whiteboard, and lots of
open law books scattered all around them. And joining them
at the table a young man named Nelson Cruz, the
one who called Derek a god. When it comes to criminal.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Law man, you gotta be serus. This is servious. There's
no game there, this is freedom there.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Like everyone else around that table, Nelson is also in
for murder, and like everyone else, he claims he didn't
do it.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
And of course, the firm's intellectual leader is there at
the head of the table, Derek Hamilton.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Don't tip the kool aid.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
They're gonna come back in August, some ridiculous, stupid stuff.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Don't go at it.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I can imagine Derek scribbling rules of procedure on that whiteboard.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
If you want to know how to do it, I'm
gonna show you. This is how you write emotion. This
is how you respond to something. This is how you
tack something. This is how your mindset be. How do
you get a hearing? How you don't get a hearing.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
We would sit there like we was in class, going
over everything. We analyzed every piece of evidence, We analyzed cases.
This is how no Derek cases how know Danny's case.
This is how they know my case because we would
pick it apart.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Then Schabaca recalls that one they had a visitor with
his own legal problem.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
He was a guy from upstate who natural life with
no possibility of parole, so he was never coming home.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Shabaka, Danny and Derek, they all liked e.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
We sat down with him and we said, okay, let
me see your paperwork. And we looked at me and said, wow,
this has to be in in three days and you
don't have nothing done. He had three issues argued on
his appeal, so we each took an issue. Danny did one,
Derek did one, and I did one. And it took
us probably all day and all night, or one day,
(19:34):
and then the next day all day and all night.
But by the third day we all came in. We
clamped it all together into one appeal, put a table
of contents with it, and said here, here's your emotion,
because we knew if he didn't get that in, his
chances of getting out was forever going to be closed.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
You can hear the excitement in Schebacca's voice. Maybe they
could really do this, Maybe they can use the law
to fight the law. It's like they realize at that
moment they have skills, maybe even power. This case didn't work,
he lost his appeal, but it's like this is an
(20:14):
inspiration to these budding law partners.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
And that's when I really started to say, like, wow,
we didn't even plan that. So I knew that if
we did plan we would get a lot more done.
And that's when we really started saying, Yo, look we
can do this actual innocystem. Let's start really putting this together.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
This actual innocence thing. So the team's timing extremely lucky.
Shebaca has all but exhausted in his state appeals in
terms of getting out of jail. He's basically in a
hopeless situation. But then Derek files emotion and the appeals
court rules in Derek's favor. It says that a credible
(21:00):
claim of actual innocence can't be ignored even if all
appeals are exhausted. The ruling gives Shabaka one last shot
in state court. If he can make a credible claim
of actual innocence, the merits of his case must be heard.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Look, man, this is our team right here, just the
AI team. We're gonna work these cases and we're gonna
get out.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Let's think about what's happening here. You've got this ragtag
group of convicted murderers, not a college degree among them,
and they're fighting the Brooklyn District Attorney's office. This is
in office with an entire division devoted to beating back
any appeal and inmate makes. It's in office with five
(21:46):
hundred highly trained prosecutors.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
And this AI team. They don't have much in the
way of technology, they don't have Google, but what they
have is something you cannot buy. They are a group
of people who are dead, dedicated to a singular cause
to win their freedom, and this is a life or
death situation for them. So I don't know about you,
but I wouldn't count them out.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
So back to the AI team. Everyone naturally found their role. Derek,
he was the law professor. Stick to what your burden
of proof is. Everybody knows how.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
To make emotions, but how many times do you really
know what your burden is?
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Chabacca was a natural an expert at drafting legal documents.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I really understood the law like I can interpret it
and say, okay, this is right, boy, look.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
At this, and you might call Danny the public relations officer.
He was reaching out to anyone who might help reporters, lawyers,
family members.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
I'm not going to coward. I'm not gonna sit down
and cry because I'm going to rise up. And if
I said I didn't commit this crime.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
And then there's Nelson Cruz. Nelson did whatever was necessary,
sort of like an intern. He was the youngest. He
drew crime scenes. He also made the coffee in his
cell and to do it, he used to sock as
a strainer.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
I got a brand new stock. Right. What I do
is I poured a coffee in it, and then I
poured the water inside the sock. And after I make
the coffee, I'll call it. I'm like yo, Bush, I'm done.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Bush is Derek's nickname. Together he and Nelson, they m
Agui rit the Pulley system to deliver the coffee back
and forth.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
A line is made out of our bass sheets. We
throw the line and then well, I'll grab it and
the hook hook the coffee onto it real nice and
be careful he don't spill it, and he'll be pulling
the line easily into a cell.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
So Nelson, the intern, his job is to keep Derek fueled.
Picture it Derek midnight in his cell. He rolls up
his mattress, puts it on the floor, sits on it
like it's a chair, and he places his typewriter on
the metal frame of his bed and he starts typing
(24:02):
his motions. He types his own motions and one for Nelson.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
We had to be drinking all night, no shit or nothing.
A straight black cowboys stout.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yet the AI team, it was now like a brotherhood,
and they made a promise to one another. Nobody from
the team was going to be left behind. They'd all
fight for each other's freedom, and that's going to be
very important to one team member, Nelson Cruz.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
The team was growing, flexing its muscles. They even started
the clinic on the DL. The administration had no idea
what they were up to.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
People were dying to get in the class. We had
twenty five and a wait unless of seventy five more.
Administration was like, what kind of class is this?
Speaker 1 (24:50):
They never had weight lisses like this Derek Danny Shebaka.
They analyzed the student's cases. One person Shobacca helped was
his friend Tone.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Tone was always getting extra time for minor infractions. Once,
when he was on parole, he was fifteen minutes late
for curfew. That landed him back in prison for two years.
And when he was almost done with those two years,
he got into a fight and he got two more years.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
This guy did two years for being fifteen minutes late
on a curfew, Like that makes no sense, and now
he's got another two years for a fight.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Remember, Danny is the firm's pr rep. He's also an
expert in writing letters.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
I said, Danny, write it up. He wrote a nice
letter to this guy, sent it to the superintendent the
superintendent dismissed the ticket, right, So I said, this is
step one to a watch. And then I took that
letter and sent it to his parole officer and said
there's no more basis for the two years he shouldn't
be in jail. The parole officer that I was cool with,
(25:53):
he said, you're right, you gotta be released. Probably a
month after we started doing his thing, he was released,
and Tone came in and crying. He's like, yo, I
can't believe it. They gonna let me go.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
The prison law firm was starting to get results, but.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
The question is can they beat the curse of the
jail house lawyer and get themselves out of jail.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Which means can they beat Scarcella.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
That's after the break.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
All right, Dax, Let's go back in time.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Long before the AI team was formed, Robert Hill was
transferred to Auburn Correctional He's another important character. You met
him in episode one. It's from talking to Robert Hill
that Chabaca learned a crucial piece of information.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Robert Hill had been charged with two murders committed on
two separate occasions, but there was just one witness. One
witness for both murders. Her name Teresa Gomez.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
The same witness that Frenchy discovered in that online cigar form,
the same witness that Louis used over and over.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
A prosecutor wrote that Teresa had a terrible drug addiction.
His actual words quote, it would be near folly to
believe anything she said, let alone that she saw two
murders in two different places. Shabaka is shocked by his discovery,
and he turns to Robert Hill.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
And I tell him, I said, Scarcila's the officer in
your case. And he's like, yeah. I said that's the
same officer in my case and he said yeah. I
said he's in my brother's case too. So I said,
oh what, I said, your brother's your coat of finn
He said no, no, no, no, my brother got his
own case. Well, Scarcella was all sort of copy in
his case. So I said, you know he's a crooked cop.
He said, you ain't got to tell me. He used
(28:04):
the same witness in my case and my brother case
and in you know what I'm saying. So I was like,
you gotta be kidding me. At the time, I still
didn't know what to do with the information. It really
wasn't until me and Derek had the conversation.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
That's when Derek dropped a bomb. He had been reading
Shabaka's legal papers when he noticed that Detective Louis Garcela
had played a crucial role.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
Damn, man, it's the same fucker that frame me.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
After all the time they'd known each other, Shebaca and
Derek had no idea that Louis Garcela was in each
of their cases, the same.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Cop in the bottom of the report that has its
attective Scarsella, Louis Scarsella.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
It turned out that Scarcella was also a detective in
Nelson's case, and.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
The stuff that I read it was kind of like
day Ja Vos all over again, Like, damn, this guy
doesn't stop.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
And Derek said, well, I know about this case in
that case, and he started naming cases and that's when
it hit me. We got to expose him. And that's
when Derek said, Yo, you might be right.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Going after any cop is delicate, but when you've got
one like Scarcella, who's high ranking, who's got accolades, who's
really got a reputation citywide, that's even more delicate.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
I said, Look, we can't attack him directly, because, of course,
don't like when you just call cop a crooked cop.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
So Gabacca devised a different strategy. In his four to
forty motion, he denied that he made the confession to Scarcella.
But remember Scarcella was widely respected for getting confessions. It
was kind of considered like his superpower. So Schobacca couldn't
just come out and call him a liar.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
So I said, he isn't worthy of credibility, and I
started showing a pattern of his misconduct. I showed that
anything he said had to be scrutinized.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Chabacca put together evidence gathered from his AI teen colleagues.
He cited the cases of Derek and the case of
Robert Hill, and for the first time he showed what
he called a pattern and practice of corrupt police behavior.
It was a breakthrough.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
He was particularly proud of the way he expressed his
concerns about Scarcela.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Detective Scarcella's a to procure incorporating evidence may not be
entirely the result of Christine police work.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
I gotta say that's impressively understated.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Schabacca's motion claimed actual innocence, and it worked. The court
granted him a new hearing. Sabacca was going to have
his day in court, but there is still a huge
challenge in front of him. Being a jailhouse lawyer, even
one as good as Shabaka is one thing. Standing up
(31:38):
in a courtroom with confidence and arguing the intricacies of
courtroom procedure, that's quite another.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
My only fit was that I didn't know courtroom etiquette.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
So Sabacca needed help. But he wasn't going to engage
just any lawyer. He demanded one who degree to a
key point.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
I came in there telling him, I don't care who
you are. I know my case and we're going to
do this my way. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
And what he meant was that there was one thing
that he wasn't going to negotiate with anyone about. Scarcella
needed to be confronted with evidence. It had taken him
years to a symbol of his past misdeeds.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
We're going to call Scarsela like he needs to.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Be put on a stand.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Schabacca would have to show that Scarcella is not worthy
of credibility, that he had a quote unquote pattern and
practice of cheating, and he had ammunition to start with
Remember the witness who had been Scarcella's secret weapon in
so many cases, the witness who claimed she saw Robert
Hill commit two different murders. I mean that sure did
(32:57):
seem fishy, and then suddenly it seemed even fishier. Turned
out she witnessed a lot of murders, or said she did.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
She was telling the truth.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
What more do you want me to tell you?
Speaker 1 (33:14):
This would have been eleven murders. That's next time on
The Burden.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Your body shaking.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
You, you're gonna tell me, I'm gonna turn on you.
The Burden is created by Steve Fishman. It's hosted and
reported by Steve Fishman and myself, Dax Devlyn Ross. Our
story editor is Dan Bobkoff. Our senior producer is Simon Rittner.
Our producer is Snon Skelly. Our associate producer is Austin Smith.
(33:51):
Our fact checker is Sona Avakian. A production coordinator is
Davon Paradise. Mixing and sound design is provided by Mumble Media.
Our executive producers are Fisher Stevens, Steve Fishman, and Evan Williams.
Additional production help has been provided by Josie Holtzman. Isaac Kestenbaum,
Naomi Brauner, Lucy Souchek, Drew Nellis, Micah Hazel, Priscilla A. Labbi,
(34:15):
Saxon Baird, Katie Simon and Katie Springer. We want to
give us special thanks to Ellen Horn, Zach Stuart Pontier,
Lizzie Jacobs, Nathan Tempe, to buy a Black, Rachel Morrissey,
Mark Smirling and Lila Robinson. Special thanks to Marcy Wiseman.
We want to thank our agents, Ben Davis and Marissa Horowitz.
(34:37):
Legal support has been provided by Mona Hook at MKSR LLP.
And a very special thanks to Evan Williams, one of
our executive producers and the person who made this podcast possible.
We are honored to feature the song black Lightning from
the Bell Rais is our theme music. The Burden is
a production of Orbit Media and association with Signal Company.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Number one, Season two of The Burden Empire on Blood
will be available everywhere you get your podcasts on August seventh.
(35:22):
All episodes will be available early and ad free, along
with exclusive bonus content on Orbit's newly launched True Crime Clubhouse,
our subscription channel on Apple Podcasts. It's only two ninety
nine a month,
Hi, Steve Fishman here, creator of The Burden as well
as the number one true crime podcast My Friend The
Serial Killer. For those of you who liked The Burden,
I have good news. Season two starts August seventh. It's
a series called The Burden Empire on Blood and it's
the director's cut of the true crime classic Empire on Blood,
(00:22):
which reached number one on the charts when it debuted
half a dozen years ago. Then the fat cat funders
abandon it. I wrangled it back and now I'm thrilled
to share this story of a man who fought the
law for two decades, fought against the Bronx's top homicide
prosecutor and a detective sometimes known as the Louis Scarcela
(00:44):
of the Bronx. It's all coming to you August seventh,
wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Previously on The Burden, we get on.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
The plane take off, and the plane it's air pocket.
Holy Christ, gotta take your jackals off because.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
We may go down and you gotta swim. He confessed.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
This guy named Derek Hamilton, who's an ex con kind
of like a jail house lawyer.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
So he gives me shabacca chaqueurs for forty information that
would substantiate that he was a crooked.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
God, I believe everybody wants to confess.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Y'all understand I didn't commit a crime. So in my mind,
I'm like, this is gonna be worked out. I came
into the precinct. You asked me where I was. I
told you where I was. You asked me if I
had any proof. I gave you the numbers of the
people who I was with. You call these people so
(01:55):
and you have no witnesses saying that they saw me
shooting anybody. So I should walk out the priest and
right there incomes Detective Lewis Scarsella. He was young, hat,
you know, his hair like one of Johnson Walter type looking.
You know what I'm saying. He just struck me as
somebody really flamboyant. He immediately comes in aggressive toward me,
(02:20):
telling me, I know who you are. I know you're
a drug dealer. I know they're drug dealers. I know
all y'all involved together, and you killed them. I immediately
was offended. I lost my temper and I cursed him out,
told him fuck you, and he started banging on the
table saying I came here to help you, but you're
(02:41):
gonna go upstate.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Now.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
You're gonna be in jail for the rest of your
life because you're an asshole. Just remember I gave you
this chance to help yourself. I ignored it and he left.
The first time I'm before the judge, the lawyer says, well,
(03:05):
because I was saying, Joe, we need to explain, and
he's like, no, no, no talk because we already have a confession.
And I said, I don't have no confession. And he said,
you made a statement to the police. I said, yeah,
I told the police where I was. I told him
I wasn't there. I never confessed with no murder. And
he said, oh no, no, not the first police, but
(03:26):
the second police. You confessed to him. And I was like,
are you crazy? I never made no confession.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Shabacca Chicord was found guilty of a double homicide and
received two terms of twenty to life to run consecutively.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Feel your body shaking.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
You're gonna turn me. I'm gonna turn on you. Welcome
to the Burden. I'm Dax delan Ross and I'm Steve Fishman.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
In this episode, the actual Innocence Team.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
So what's the detective's.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Job to do everything he can under the law with
the tools he has given to get the confession.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
He could be a gentle soul, he could be an
understanding soul, and he could be a gorilla too. It
takes a hell of a detective to know how to
do that.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
Yore.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Imagine if all of us was in the law library together.
Imagine what we could do. We'd be able to run
it like it's a real law firm. And that's when
it hit me, we got to expose him.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
You gotta hold old time.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
There's a jail house folklore right that says that the
best jail house law clerks or lawyers can never get
themselves out. They will get everybody else out, but they
can never get themselves out right, And it's true. That
was one of those myths that I wanted to break.
(05:39):
I was like, I bet I got to be able
to get myself out.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Sabacca Chakor had a problem. He was twenty three years
old and on the hook for two life sentences for
a double homicide. He insists he didn't commit. For him,
studying the law would become a necessity.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
But being in jail is not generally conducive to the
contemplation of a subject as complicated as the law.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
I went through Rikers Island in the eighties and the nineties,
it was like, could you even survive full to capacity?
It might be a week before you got to a cell.
In between that time, you were sleeping on the bullpen
on the floor because if you didn't know how to fight,
you wasn't going to get a bench. So the environment
(06:27):
was extremely violent.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Chabaca was sent to Auburn Correctional Facility, a maximum security
prison in upstate New York where only the most dangerous
criminals are sent. He was put in solitary, but for
Shabaka it was a blessing in disguise. It actually gave
him the chance to work on his first appeal.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I really believed on my first appeal, I was going
to get out.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
But at that time, Shebaca just didn't have what it took.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
After I blew my appeal, I felt like, Okay, they
don't want to let me go. They're gonna keep me here.
I'm gonna be a territory. You've seen how Rodney King
got beat that that's an everyday occurrence in prison. I'm
not gonna be a victim to that. From the very
first time that an officers struck me, I retaliated immediately.
(07:25):
I swung back. I just went ballistics, swinging on everybody,
trying to disarm them, take their stick swinging back. Instead
of wanting to beat me up, they just wanted to
put me in the cell, Like, put in the cell
and close the door, like this guy's crazy. Like I
wanted them to have that fear, and it worked. I
(07:48):
purposely was just angry at the world that I was here.
I felt like I had been red roaded, which I had,
but I also felt like helpless.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Time passed, things calmed a bit. Sabaki's reputation as a fighter,
it got around. Everyone left him alone, including the guards.
But fighting that's only one side of Shabaka. Really, He's
an intellectual, an introvert, kind of a bookworm.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
When I was a solitary, I read fantasy books, novels,
technical books, so I was always good by myself.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Shebaca was in solitary for a while, but once he
got out, he did what anybody does. He started to
build a life for himself. He got a job in
the mess hall, he joined the boxing and football teams,
and he even made some friends. I mean, after all,
even when you're in prison, you still have to live
a life. But then one day, another prisoner just a
(08:54):
few cells down, struck up a conversation with.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Him, talking to him, and I'm like, hey, what's up?
He said to me, Yo, man, I'm getting ready to
go home. Right. Of course, part of me is happy
for him, but part of me is miserable for me, Dax.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
At that moment, Chabaca's been in prison how long?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Ten years?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
I don't know what if the word jaded is right,
but because here are guys who actually committed a crime
and are going home, and I'm a guy who didn't
commit a crime, and I'm not going home. And he
kind of like left me feeling a little depressed, feeling
like how do I beat this? How do I get out?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
It was around this time that Schabacca remembered the conversation
he'd had about a decade before with another prisoner. His
name Derek Hamilton. You met him in episode one.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Derek is one of the first people that I met
when I first got arrested.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
When Derek and Schabacca met, Derek started making one point
very clear.
Speaker 5 (10:03):
And I'm telling him fuck your lawyer man. These guys
don't work hard.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Derek was known as a genius when it came to
the law, completely self taught and very motivated. At that moment,
he's fighting his own.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Murder conviction, and Derek he had some words of advice
for Shabaka.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
You gotta go to lay library, you gotta study. You
got to be the most smartest guy in that court.
When where you're going, you better work on you better work,
you better work.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
I remember him telling me you can't trust lawyers. Lawyers
are doing a job. They don't care whether you get
out or not, because they're going to get paid either way.
You are the only one who cares if you're getting out.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
As clearing director as Derek's message was, it still took
a while for it to sink in. But now years later,
Shebaka is ready.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
I said, Okay, I want to get out of jail.
So I'm going to work in the law library where
I can be around a book set all the time.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
And lucky for Shabaka, every New York prison has to
have a law library. It's a state mandate. So Shebacca
became a law clerk at Auburn.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Every morning Shebacca went off to study. On his way
to the law library, he would walk through the yard
wearing his state greens, carrying his papers in a net bag.
Eventually he even enrolled at Cornell University. It wasn't long
before as professor took a liking to him. One of
them even offered him a teacher's assistant position. But for Shabaka,
(11:34):
there was always only one goal freedom.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
I always thought I was with a couple hole, even
when everybody else gave up. And I remember writing people
and they was like, when you come at home, and
I said, probably another two years, because I always felt
like I'm right on the verge of getting out.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
The factory. Means that with all of his appeals denied,
he's running out of legal options. And it just so
happens that at that exact moment, whispers start to spread
through the yard, whispers of someone knew who's arrived, someone special.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
That's when Derek came to Auburn.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Derek Hamilton, that's the guy who urged Shabaka to take
the law into his own hands.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Even before Derek arrived at Auburn, he had quite a
reputation among the inmates. Nelson Cruz he'd heard of Derek, this.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
God like god when it comes to criminal law.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Nelson's another prisoner at Auburn.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Everybody loves him and knows him, and people that don't
know him hears about him, and everybody want to just
work with him because all they think about is freedom. Freedom, freedom, freedom,
and especially if you're here for a crime you didn't commit.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
So Nelson's thinking freedom. But I imagine that Shabaka, He's
got to be thinking relief. At last, he has a
partner as devoted to the law as he is.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
The Lord was my girlfriend. It was all I had.
It was all I had. I had to love it.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
This is the ang way the freedom coming up. Sabacca
and Derek reunited at Auburn. Get busy in the law library.
Stay with us, Okay, Steve, Let's pause for a moment. Sabacca,
(13:42):
as we've learned now, is adamant about his innocence. But
let's take a moment and look at the crime he
says he didn't commit.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Here are the essentials. So Schebacca was convicted of a
double homicide. There were no fingerprints, no murder weapon. There
was supposed lee and I witness, but his story turns
out to be a bit changeable. Still, the cops aren't
backing off. They like Shabaka for the crime. After all,
he had a rap sheet, he'd been a drug dealer,
(14:12):
he'd been in prison for a violent crime. You don't
need to be Sherlock Holmes. For the cops, Sabacca fit
the profile.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
And Steve there is another key piece of evidence against Schabacco.
Remember Scarcella claimed that Sabacca did confess to him. That's right.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
It turns out it's not exactly a confession, but it
is a very incriminating statement, and it is possible that's
what sealed his fate. Here's what Scarcella claimed, Shebacca said
to him, you know what happened, You have it all.
They were going to kill me. They deserve to die.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
That would be what would convince me if I now
know that this person was a drug dealer who's already
served time for a violent offense. All I would really
need to hear is a statement provided to me by
a very reputable detective. And this is it.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
They are really powerful words. Listen, they provide a motive,
and yeah, maybe that sealed his fate. What we know
for sure is that nobody gets up to present Shobacca's side.
Shobacca doesn't testify, his alibi witnesses don't testify, but Scarcela
does testify, and he reads that incriminating statement to the jury.
(15:39):
Of course, from Schebaca's point of view, its awn nonsense. Remember,
Sabacca claims he never made any statement. He didn't even
know there was a statement until his lawyer told.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Him, And that was the first time that I realized
that there was a statement from Scarcella, because I had
never made any statement.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
It's now twenty years into his sentence. In Schebacca, he's
at Auburn and still insisting that he never gave a
statement that he's innocent.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Meanwhile, we'd just gotten out that Auburn now hosts brilliant
legal minds. Another prisoner, Danny ringcon He immediately sees the potential.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
We all have something in common, which was that we
were wrong by a system.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Danny was convicted of four murders, which he says he
didn't do. One day in the yard, he approaches Shabaka.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
So Danny says, yo, imagine if all of us was
in a law library together, Imagine what we could do.
We'd be able to run it like it's a real law.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Firm, a real law firm in prison. Well, the firm's office,
that's the law library. Let me set the scene for you, Steve,
a corrections officer sits on a raised platform looking down
over the prisoners, not unlike a judge surveiling them. There
(17:12):
are a few worn out computers, no Internet, of course,
and then there are the legal books, and there are
lots of them. They line the walls. So what happens
is when they come into the law library, these convicted murderers,
they push together four wooden desks and they huddle around
this makeshift conference table and they get to work. They've
(17:35):
got their own filing cabinet, a whiteboard, and lots of
open law books scattered all around them. And joining them
at the table a young man named Nelson Cruz, the
one who called Derek a god. When it comes to criminal.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Law man, you gotta be serus. This is servious. There's
no game there, this is freedom there.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Like everyone else around that table, Nelson is also in
for murder, and like everyone else, he claims he didn't
do it.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
And of course, the firm's intellectual leader is there at
the head of the table, Derek Hamilton.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Don't tip the kool aid.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
They're gonna come back in August, some ridiculous, stupid stuff.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Don't go at it.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I can imagine Derek scribbling rules of procedure on that whiteboard.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
If you want to know how to do it, I'm
gonna show you. This is how you write emotion. This
is how you respond to something. This is how you
tack something. This is how your mindset be. How do
you get a hearing? How you don't get a hearing.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
We would sit there like we was in class, going
over everything. We analyzed every piece of evidence, We analyzed cases.
This is how no Derek cases how know Danny's case.
This is how they know my case because we would
pick it apart.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Then Schabaca recalls that one they had a visitor with
his own legal problem.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
He was a guy from upstate who natural life with
no possibility of parole, so he was never coming home.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Shabaka, Danny and Derek, they all liked e.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
We sat down with him and we said, okay, let
me see your paperwork. And we looked at me and said, wow,
this has to be in in three days and you
don't have nothing done. He had three issues argued on
his appeal, so we each took an issue. Danny did one,
Derek did one, and I did one. And it took
us probably all day and all night, or one day,
(19:34):
and then the next day all day and all night.
But by the third day we all came in. We
clamped it all together into one appeal, put a table
of contents with it, and said here, here's your emotion,
because we knew if he didn't get that in, his
chances of getting out was forever going to be closed.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
You can hear the excitement in Schebacca's voice. Maybe they
could really do this, Maybe they can use the law
to fight the law. It's like they realize at that
moment they have skills, maybe even power. This case didn't work,
he lost his appeal, but it's like this is an
(20:14):
inspiration to these budding law partners.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
And that's when I really started to say, like, wow,
we didn't even plan that. So I knew that if
we did plan we would get a lot more done.
And that's when we really started saying, Yo, look we
can do this actual innocystem. Let's start really putting this together.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
This actual innocence thing. So the team's timing extremely lucky.
Shebaca has all but exhausted in his state appeals in
terms of getting out of jail. He's basically in a
hopeless situation. But then Derek files emotion and the appeals
court rules in Derek's favor. It says that a credible
(21:00):
claim of actual innocence can't be ignored even if all
appeals are exhausted. The ruling gives Shabaka one last shot
in state court. If he can make a credible claim
of actual innocence, the merits of his case must be heard.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Look, man, this is our team right here, just the
AI team. We're gonna work these cases and we're gonna
get out.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Let's think about what's happening here. You've got this ragtag
group of convicted murderers, not a college degree among them,
and they're fighting the Brooklyn District Attorney's office. This is
in office with an entire division devoted to beating back
any appeal and inmate makes. It's in office with five
(21:46):
hundred highly trained prosecutors.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
And this AI team. They don't have much in the
way of technology, they don't have Google, but what they
have is something you cannot buy. They are a group
of people who are dead, dedicated to a singular cause
to win their freedom, and this is a life or
death situation for them. So I don't know about you,
but I wouldn't count them out.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
So back to the AI team. Everyone naturally found their role. Derek,
he was the law professor. Stick to what your burden
of proof is. Everybody knows how.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
To make emotions, but how many times do you really
know what your burden is?
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Chabacca was a natural an expert at drafting legal documents.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I really understood the law like I can interpret it
and say, okay, this is right, boy, look.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
At this, and you might call Danny the public relations officer.
He was reaching out to anyone who might help reporters, lawyers,
family members.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
I'm not going to coward. I'm not gonna sit down
and cry because I'm going to rise up. And if
I said I didn't commit this crime.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
And then there's Nelson Cruz. Nelson did whatever was necessary,
sort of like an intern. He was the youngest. He
drew crime scenes. He also made the coffee in his
cell and to do it, he used to sock as
a strainer.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
I got a brand new stock. Right. What I do
is I poured a coffee in it, and then I
poured the water inside the sock. And after I make
the coffee, I'll call it. I'm like yo, Bush, I'm done.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Bush is Derek's nickname. Together he and Nelson, they m
Agui rit the Pulley system to deliver the coffee back
and forth.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
A line is made out of our bass sheets. We
throw the line and then well, I'll grab it and
the hook hook the coffee onto it real nice and
be careful he don't spill it, and he'll be pulling
the line easily into a cell.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
So Nelson, the intern, his job is to keep Derek fueled.
Picture it Derek midnight in his cell. He rolls up
his mattress, puts it on the floor, sits on it
like it's a chair, and he places his typewriter on
the metal frame of his bed and he starts typing
(24:02):
his motions. He types his own motions and one for Nelson.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
We had to be drinking all night, no shit or nothing.
A straight black cowboys stout.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yet the AI team, it was now like a brotherhood,
and they made a promise to one another. Nobody from
the team was going to be left behind. They'd all
fight for each other's freedom, and that's going to be
very important to one team member, Nelson Cruz.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
The team was growing, flexing its muscles. They even started
the clinic on the DL. The administration had no idea
what they were up to.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
People were dying to get in the class. We had
twenty five and a wait unless of seventy five more.
Administration was like, what kind of class is this?
Speaker 1 (24:50):
They never had weight lisses like this Derek Danny Shebaka.
They analyzed the student's cases. One person Shobacca helped was
his friend Tone.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Tone was always getting extra time for minor infractions. Once,
when he was on parole, he was fifteen minutes late
for curfew. That landed him back in prison for two years.
And when he was almost done with those two years,
he got into a fight and he got two more years.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
This guy did two years for being fifteen minutes late
on a curfew, Like that makes no sense, and now
he's got another two years for a fight.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Remember, Danny is the firm's pr rep. He's also an
expert in writing letters.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
I said, Danny, write it up. He wrote a nice
letter to this guy, sent it to the superintendent the
superintendent dismissed the ticket, right, So I said, this is
step one to a watch. And then I took that
letter and sent it to his parole officer and said
there's no more basis for the two years he shouldn't
be in jail. The parole officer that I was cool with,
(25:53):
he said, you're right, you gotta be released. Probably a
month after we started doing his thing, he was released,
and Tone came in and crying. He's like, yo, I
can't believe it. They gonna let me go.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
The prison law firm was starting to get results, but.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
The question is can they beat the curse of the
jail house lawyer and get themselves out of jail.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Which means can they beat Scarcella.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
That's after the break.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
All right, Dax, Let's go back in time.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Long before the AI team was formed, Robert Hill was
transferred to Auburn Correctional He's another important character. You met
him in episode one. It's from talking to Robert Hill
that Chabaca learned a crucial piece of information.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Robert Hill had been charged with two murders committed on
two separate occasions, but there was just one witness. One
witness for both murders. Her name Teresa Gomez.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
The same witness that Frenchy discovered in that online cigar form,
the same witness that Louis used over and over.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
A prosecutor wrote that Teresa had a terrible drug addiction.
His actual words quote, it would be near folly to
believe anything she said, let alone that she saw two
murders in two different places. Shabaka is shocked by his discovery,
and he turns to Robert Hill.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
And I tell him, I said, Scarcila's the officer in
your case. And he's like, yeah. I said that's the
same officer in my case and he said yeah. I
said he's in my brother's case too. So I said,
oh what, I said, your brother's your coat of finn
He said no, no, no, no, my brother got his
own case. Well, Scarcella was all sort of copy in
his case. So I said, you know he's a crooked cop.
He said, you ain't got to tell me. He used
(28:04):
the same witness in my case and my brother case
and in you know what I'm saying. So I was like,
you gotta be kidding me. At the time, I still
didn't know what to do with the information. It really
wasn't until me and Derek had the conversation.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
That's when Derek dropped a bomb. He had been reading
Shabaka's legal papers when he noticed that Detective Louis Garcela
had played a crucial role.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
Damn, man, it's the same fucker that frame me.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
After all the time they'd known each other, Shebaca and
Derek had no idea that Louis Garcela was in each
of their cases, the same.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Cop in the bottom of the report that has its
attective Scarsella, Louis Scarsella.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
It turned out that Scarcella was also a detective in
Nelson's case, and.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
The stuff that I read it was kind of like
day Ja Vos all over again, Like, damn, this guy
doesn't stop.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
And Derek said, well, I know about this case in
that case, and he started naming cases and that's when
it hit me. We got to expose him. And that's
when Derek said, Yo, you might be right.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Going after any cop is delicate, but when you've got
one like Scarcella, who's high ranking, who's got accolades, who's
really got a reputation citywide, that's even more delicate.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
I said, Look, we can't attack him directly, because, of course,
don't like when you just call cop a crooked cop.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
So Gabacca devised a different strategy. In his four to
forty motion, he denied that he made the confession to Scarcella.
But remember Scarcella was widely respected for getting confessions. It
was kind of considered like his superpower. So Schobacca couldn't
just come out and call him a liar.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
So I said, he isn't worthy of credibility, and I
started showing a pattern of his misconduct. I showed that
anything he said had to be scrutinized.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Chabacca put together evidence gathered from his AI teen colleagues.
He cited the cases of Derek and the case of
Robert Hill, and for the first time he showed what
he called a pattern and practice of corrupt police behavior.
It was a breakthrough.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
He was particularly proud of the way he expressed his
concerns about Scarcela.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Detective Scarcella's a to procure incorporating evidence may not be
entirely the result of Christine police work.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
I gotta say that's impressively understated.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Schabacca's motion claimed actual innocence, and it worked. The court
granted him a new hearing. Sabacca was going to have
his day in court, but there is still a huge
challenge in front of him. Being a jailhouse lawyer, even
one as good as Shabaka is one thing. Standing up
(31:38):
in a courtroom with confidence and arguing the intricacies of
courtroom procedure, that's quite another.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
My only fit was that I didn't know courtroom etiquette.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
So Sabacca needed help. But he wasn't going to engage
just any lawyer. He demanded one who degree to a
key point.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
I came in there telling him, I don't care who
you are. I know my case and we're going to
do this my way. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
And what he meant was that there was one thing
that he wasn't going to negotiate with anyone about. Scarcella
needed to be confronted with evidence. It had taken him
years to a symbol of his past misdeeds.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
We're going to call Scarsela like he needs to.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Be put on a stand.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Schabacca would have to show that Scarcella is not worthy
of credibility, that he had a quote unquote pattern and
practice of cheating, and he had ammunition to start with
Remember the witness who had been Scarcella's secret weapon in
so many cases, the witness who claimed she saw Robert
Hill commit two different murders. I mean that sure did
(32:57):
seem fishy, and then suddenly it seemed even fishier. Turned
out she witnessed a lot of murders, or said she did.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
She was telling the truth.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
What more do you want me to tell you?
Speaker 1 (33:14):
This would have been eleven murders. That's next time on
The Burden.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Your body shaking.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
You, you're gonna tell me, I'm gonna turn on you.
The Burden is created by Steve Fishman. It's hosted and
reported by Steve Fishman and myself, Dax Devlyn Ross. Our
story editor is Dan Bobkoff. Our senior producer is Simon Rittner.
Our producer is Snon Skelly. Our associate producer is Austin Smith.
(33:51):
Our fact checker is Sona Avakian. A production coordinator is
Davon Paradise. Mixing and sound design is provided by Mumble Media.
Our executive producers are Fisher Stevens, Steve Fishman, and Evan Williams.
Additional production help has been provided by Josie Holtzman. Isaac Kestenbaum,
Naomi Brauner, Lucy Souchek, Drew Nellis, Micah Hazel, Priscilla A. Labbi,
(34:15):
Saxon Baird, Katie Simon and Katie Springer. We want to
give us special thanks to Ellen Horn, Zach Stuart Pontier,
Lizzie Jacobs, Nathan Tempe, to buy a Black, Rachel Morrissey,
Mark Smirling and Lila Robinson. Special thanks to Marcy Wiseman.
We want to thank our agents, Ben Davis and Marissa Horowitz.
(34:37):
Legal support has been provided by Mona Hook at MKSR LLP.
And a very special thanks to Evan Williams, one of
our executive producers and the person who made this podcast possible.
We are honored to feature the song black Lightning from
the Bell Rais is our theme music. The Burden is
a production of Orbit Media and association with Signal Company.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Number one, Season two of The Burden Empire on Blood
will be available everywhere you get your podcasts on August seventh.
(35:22):
All episodes will be available early and ad free, along
with exclusive bonus content on Orbit's newly launched True Crime Clubhouse,
our subscription channel on Apple Podcasts. It's only two ninety
nine a month,
Hosts And Creators
Dax-Devlon Ross
Steve Fishman
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
This is Gavin Newsom
I’m Gavin Newsom. And, it’s time to have a conversation. It’s time to have honest discussions with people that agree AND disagree with us. It's time to answer the hard questions and be open to criticism, and debate without demeaning or dehumanizing one other. I will be doing just that on my new podcast – inviting people on who I deeply disagree with to talk about the most pressing issues of the day and inviting listeners from around the country to join the conversation. THIS is Gavin Newsom.