June 12, 2017 • 50 mins
Johnny Hincapie was convicted as part of a gang that murdered 22-year-old tourist Brian Watkins, even though he himself was not charged with the act and neither the victim’s family nor the other attackers identified him as a perpetrator. In 1990, Brian Watkins and his family were attacked on a New York City subway platform by a group of 6 to 8 teenagers when they were in town for the U.S. Open, resulting in the death of Watkins as he tried to defend his parents. Johnny was only 18 years old at the time, and he did not have a lawyer present during his interrogation. He falsely confessed to the crime, after being tortured by police who threatened to kill him. After spending 25 years in prison, Johnny’s conviction was overturned based on the statements of several witnesses who testified that he was in fact not a part of the group of attackers. He was formally exonerated in January 2017.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
I think we have the best legal system. It's just
the people that implement They get lost along the way
and forget what the job really is. He just kept
on trying to remind me that who was in authority,
who was in control, and how easy it was for
my body to be found in any reality of New
(00:24):
York City. It's a tough prison when you have the
guards going against you because they are the biggest gang
in the prison. They do that. They'll give a guy
a life sentence and go home in East Spaghetti like
it was nothing. And anybody that said, well, why would
you confess to something that you didn't do? My question
to them will be why wouldn't you confess when somebody's
(00:46):
threatening to kill your life? Judge, he said, how you feel?
I said, I'm okay. He said, with the dad's you're lucky, Dane,
You're going home. This is wrong for conviction. Welcome back
(01:15):
to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam Today, I have a
very special guest, fellow New Yorker and someone who was
wrongfully convicted of one of the most notorious crimes in
the history of New York, Johnny Encap. It was one
of the bloodiest years in city history. That brutal murder
of tourists Brian Watkins, killed in the subway while defending
(01:37):
his family from a pack of teams, shook the city
to its core tourists. Brian Watkins was in the subway
on September three when he was stabbed in the chest
after a struggle with at least six teenagers. If you
lived in New York back then, you probably remember what
it was like. The murder rate was astonishingly high, the
police force a lot smaller than it is now, and
(01:58):
the long term solutions for those were just beginning to
come into play. People that were out of patience. A
high profile crime like this required quick action. Within twenty
four hours, seventeens, including of an eighteen year old Hincapier,
confessed on tape to taking part in the robbery. Hincapier
would later say that his confession was coerced by an
(02:19):
abusive detective. He says it was a combination of fear,
false promises, and youthful ignorance that led him to confess
to a crime that he did not commit. He was
convicted in three witnesses came forward to say Hincapier was
not on the subway platform when the stabbing happened. Conviction
overturned Johnny and Capier is out of prison after serving
(02:41):
twenty five years in one of the city's most notorious
murder cases. Johnny Hincapier paid his one dollar bail and
ran into the arms of his parents. Welcome, thank you, Jason,
thank you for having me. So Johnny, let's go back.
This is over twenty five years ago. It's gonna be
twenty seven September, right, and you were in high school
(03:02):
living in Queens. That was life back then. Life was
beautiful for an immigrant family from Columbia, South America. First
saw being raised in Florida, then coming to New York
and being in the neighborhood like Bay Terrorist Queens. For
anybody that knows about that section of Queens back in
the eighties, especially when I was there, it was predominantly
(03:24):
all Jewish, Italian and Irish. It's a residential neighborhood. You know,
you're away from any type of problems in any of
the places of New York City, which the crime rate
was extremely high back then. So um growing up was
definitely comfortable around a good group of friends and family members, right.
And then one night one horrible night, everything changed in
(03:45):
the worst possible way. There was a lot of crime
in New York City back then. Back then there was
borderline hysteria in terms of the fear that which the
media was really hyping up because it wasn't Mad Max,
but it was you know, you had to be careful.
And a terrible, terrible crime occurred. A family from Utah
was visiting, took the train. They decided to take the
(04:07):
subway to the U s Open to go see the tennis.
Can you take us through what happened and what you
were doing and how you came to be implicated wrongfully
in this terrible scenario. Well, growing up in New York,
like you said Jason Um talking about a time in
the eighties where breakdancing had came out and with rap music,
(04:28):
freestyle and house music, which was like the hit type
of music other than pop music to listen to in
the eighties, at least in New York. But I grew
up after being a dancer, I went into becoming a DJ.
As a teenager. I went to my first club for
teens and that kind of opened up the door for
me to work on weekends at other clubs that were
(04:50):
promoting team nights, and eventually I ended up working another
major clubs when I got older, and even started on
a minor level promoting with other individual was those clubs,
So I was a pretty decent minor or pre popular
top of guy amongst the group of people that knew me.
Back in September of uh Good Popular Digits was having
(05:14):
a birthday party that he was throwing out rolls Line
and everybody in New York City made plans to go
out that night. So the group of individuals that I
had met along the years and clubs and other parties
invited me to go out because they haven't seen me
for a while, And eventually they had friends that they invited,
and their friends invited other friends. So it was a
(05:34):
lot of people that didn't know each other that went out.
But there was a small fraction of individuals that didn't
quite have enough money to get inside the nightclub, so
they decided to commit a crime, and in the process
of committing that crime, someone died. Some of these kids
because you were kids, I mean you were still in
(05:55):
high school at the time, went down thinking I'm gonna
rob somebody and get some money so I can go
to the club, So they went into the subway. That's
when they encountered this family from Utah, and these were
Hispanic kids, right, and the family Hispanican black kids. Right.
This of course prayed on all the fears that were
in the in the media and the classic stereotypes of
the time, which unfortunately still persisted this day. But at
(06:19):
that time they were really peaking. And let's face the
crime sales newspapers too, so it was on the front page.
I remember the news and this this case was on
the front page for a long time. It was. It
was major, bold faced headlines. What happened when they went
down to rob this family? Where were you and why
did they pick on you? When I got out of
(06:39):
the train station, I made literally plans with one friend
of mine that night. I had my wallet and I
gave it to a friend of mine to hold for
me because he was wearing a Fannie pack. So apparently
when we got outside to the street, I didn't see him,
and I asked people, you know, basically where he was,
and some individuals indicated that he never came out of
the train station. Saw on my way going back inside
(07:02):
the train station, I saw another friend and we were
talking and at that moment when I got there, he
was flirting with some girls and I asked him and
he told me that he thought that he was out
of the platform. So I was gonna go back upstairs,
but I said, you know what, let me check and
let me go downstairs. And I started going down the escalators,
but I heard like a big commotion of people screaming
(07:22):
and saw people coming running up towards the escalator sold me.
So I never made it downstairs to the platform, and
I turned around with everybody that was coming towards me,
and I just went out to the street. I decided
to go to Roseland and I got online where I
saw other people that I knew, and maybe like a
couple of minutes later, the group of individuals that was
downstairs in the subway platform that committed the crime came
(07:46):
then and we all went inside of rolls and after
an individual decided to UH volunteer to buy tickets for everyone.
But at the end of the day, with the news
was reporting that these group of individuals that I told
you about that stood back in the platforms, that they
didn't have enough money to go inside a rose Land
and they decided to um rob a family which they
(08:09):
did not know. They were touristsed um, they were visiting
New York. They were planning to go see the tennis tournament,
and in the process of that, a young twenty two
year old man of the name of Brian Watkins died
behind a minor stab wound towards the rt V of
his heart. Well, there was more to it than that
as well, right, because it started as a robbery, and
(08:31):
as these things do, it progressed from there, right because
I think the kids they attacked the mother if I
remember correctly, and then the sun which was what really
brought everybody's focus to this case, because the son was
sort of a heroic kid. Brian Watkins was twenty two
at the time, and he came to the aid of
his mother and he tried to fight back and protect
(08:51):
her from these predators. And then one of them stabbed
him and they ran out of the subway and he
ran after them and collapsed on the stair than died
like in a movie. Right, Just a horrible, horrible thing.
And you know, I guess it really triggered again everyone's emotions,
especially because everyone would hope that they would behave the
way that this kid did in trying to defend his
(09:13):
family and his mother. So it was just a real flashpoint.
And we know in these cases when that kind of
stuff happens and there's a lot of media attention, the
cops they play a little loose with the rules a
lot of times. Right, they become hyper focused on solving
the crime. There may be accolades for them, right if
(09:33):
they do. There may be promotions involved in any case.
At a minimum, it will take away the pressure that
they're feeling from their bosses when when they get this
case resolved. And in this case, they knew they had
a group of kids. It's got to be tricky to
solve a case like that. It's hard enough to identify
one individual in a single perpetrator crime, but here you
have a whole group of kids. So you happen to
(09:54):
have the misfortune, the terrible misfortune of being inside the
club with the kids who actually committed this crime. But
did you know at that time that they had committed
the crime? No, not at all. No one had mentioned
anything about it before nor after the fact. And I
got caught up with it only because one of the
individuals they did commit the crime. I knew from going
to school with him, and he was one of the
(10:15):
individuals that I hadn't seen such a long time, invited
me to go out that night, and because he knew
my phone number, when the detectives asked him the list
of individuals or the names of individuals that they wanted
from him that went out to the coupe, they never
asked him that participated in the crime with him, that
committed the crime, but then went out with him that night.
He listed me and a few other individuals that he
(10:37):
knew their phone numbers, and that's how they came to
my house and dragged me on and took me to
the precinct. So you got dragged out. You were just
home with your parents? Was it daytime? Nighttime? What was
the scenario? It was already evening and I was at
home and the detectives came into my house after they
rang the bell. My mother opened the door and they
(10:58):
just barged in and they asked my mother if I
was home, and my mother was inquiring why did they
were asking about me? And they said that they wanted
to ask me questions about a stolen car. So she
called me and I came downstairs. They said they wanted
to take me to the precinct, and my mother wanted
to come along. And they asked my mother how old
(11:19):
I was, and she said that I just turned eighteen,
and they said there was no need for that, and
she kept on enquiring why and the until they finally
confessed that they wanted to question me about homicide that
took place in the subway station. And thereafter they just
took me outside and placed me in their police car.
And so she didn't go with you. No, they told
her that she couldn't come. She even attempted to call
(11:41):
an attorney, but it was a holiday, was labor days,
so she wasn't able to get in contact with anybody.
They took me all by myself in the car with
the rest of the detectives that were outside, and even
another car that was escorting them from a priestint from
my neighborhood into Manhattan's North Precinct. So you got taken
all the way across the bridge into this city and
then you end up in the North Precinct and then
(12:03):
the North And did they begin interrogating you immediately or
they keep you in the holding cell? What happened? Well,
when I got there. The detectives handcuffed me as soon
as I came out of the car, and one of
the detectives told me that there was a lot of
media outside the precinct, so he said that it was
in my best interest that he wanted to cover my
face with his coat and handcuffed me. He did that exactly.
(12:26):
He took me inside. I couldn't see any of the meat.
I just heard the camera's flashing and people yelling things out,
like asking questions or who was I who was it
that the detectives were bringing in. And they brought me
inside and they were still guiding me until they got me.
It was for them a secure place that the media
wasn't able to see me, in a corridor of the precinct.
(12:47):
And then they took me upstairs to a room where
I saw it was a double buns beds and there
was the detectives and a T shirt laying down smoking
a cigarette. And they uncuffed me and they some word
did he want me to be placed? And he said
placed him in the back of the room where the
tables at in the chair, and then they began interrogating
(13:08):
you soon after that or well, interesting enough in my case,
I came to find this out much later. The lead
detective in my case was Detective Carlos Gonzalez, the same
detective that was in the investigation of the Central Park
five and he had just been transferred a little less
(13:30):
than a year to Midtown North. So the detective that
was in the room, he was discussing with Carlos Gonzalez.
I don't know what, but throughout the whole entire interrogation,
he kept on walking in and out of the room
to the talk with Detective Gonzalez. And when I was
left alone in that room with Detective Casey, who was
(13:52):
the detective that interrogated me, keep in mind that I'm
still handcuffed in the chair. And when I was in handcuffed,
the detective asked me what happened then that, and I
told him the truth. I told him exactly what I
did from the moment I had left to my house
to go to Roseland and immediately, you know, he didn't
(14:13):
believe me, kept on saying that he didn't believe me,
kept on calling me a liar throughout this whole process,
until he went and bursted into a big rage and
started us blowing smoking my face from the cigarette that
he was smoking. He just decided to really get belligerent
with me until he finally started to beat me up.
And when he beat me up, I was crying. There
(14:34):
was like a moment of silence. There was a long pause,
and he basically told me that I was never gonna
make it out alive from that precinct unless I decided
to comply with him in memorizing a story. And he
just kept on trying to remind me that who was
in authority, who was in control, and how easy it
(14:57):
was for my body to be found in any alley
of New York City and nobody would care about it
because the police department in New York who he worked for,
had it. That's simple in their power to do such
a thing, and nobody would even point a finger to them,
like a Central American dictatorship or something. Yeah, this is
(15:17):
supposed to be New York City, which is located in
the America, United States, exactly. Yeah, that's not supposed to
be the way it is, obviously. I mean, so this
is an unbelievably terrifying situation to find yourself in your
eighteen years old. We know that the brain doesn't fully
develop until you're about. And we know that these confessions,
these false confessions, happen so frequently with teenagers because you
(15:41):
don't have enough life experience at that point to be
able to draw on, to be able to rationalize and say, well,
he can't really take me and kill me and dump
my body, because the rational mind would say, well, that
can't happen because my mom saw them come and take me.
But then again, who knows how you would react. Anybody
in that situation would be in a state of complete disorientation,
(16:05):
which is exactly what they were after. Right. They were
well aware that you couldn't withstand as a teenage boy
with no experience probably with this type of violence or
mental pressure, psychological pressure. They knew that they were going
to be able to get you to say almost anything
if they took these tactics. And what happened? Did they
(16:26):
give you a piece of paper to sign? Is that
what the next thing was? And how? I mean, how
long were you in there? At what point did you
get a lawyer? Did did they ever ask you if
you wanted a lawyer? Well, let me just say this, Jason,
before I get to answering that part of your question.
Everything that you just said, is absolutely true. You hit
it right on the head. New York had a technique
that they call the read technique where detectives basically questioned
(16:50):
an individual to find out whether he's telling the truth
or he's lying, and if they believe that he's lying,
then they start asking him questions as he's guilty, just
to make him to confess because they don't believe. In
my case, they didn't do any of that. This detective here,
from the beginning, he just said that I was liar
and then transitioned into beating me up, which he wasn't
supposed to do yet he violated that. Now when I
(17:13):
said that he was threatening to take my life, yeah,
that's absolutely true. A teenager like myself at that time,
at that age, eighteen years old, Yeah, my mind wasn't
fully developed, right, But I truly believe that any individual
who has been threatened with their lives being taken, I
don't care how old you are, right, is scared for
(17:33):
their life that those individuals that are physically pounding on
you are going to kill you because they say that's
exactly what they're going to do, whether you're eighteen or fifty.
And anybody that would say, well, why would you confess
to something that you didn't do. My question to them
will be why wouldn't you confess to exactly to what
I just mentioned when somebody's threatening to kill your life.
And not only that, but you add to it the
(17:55):
fact that I imagine you grew up like I grew up,
thinking that the police were there to protect you, right,
and you respect the police right, and they respect you,
and you know it says right on the side of
the car, to protect and serve right. And I think
most police that is the approach that they take. But
then there's bad ones, and the bad ones like this
guy Gonzalez, who we know was responsible for extracting the
(18:17):
false confessions in the Central Park Geograph case, the notorious
Central Park Geograph case. He's one of those guys who
obviously just didn't give a fuck. It's really hard for us,
who are what do you want to call it, empathetic
human beings. It's hard for us to really imagine what
could cause somebody to go so far wrong, to take somebody.
(18:38):
They had no idea, they had no evidence, There was
no evidence with you, there's nothing connecting you to this case.
There wasn't even anybody at this point saying that you
did it. I don't believe there was just this guy
who said I know I know this guy Johnny and
cap A who have his phone number, my phone whatever,
and my not my phone. By the time they took
me to precinct, they already had the fashion of the
(19:00):
individual that stabbed Brian Watkinson killed him, so they knew
who had killed him. But, like you said, aside from
being over zealous or any other elements that you want
to include, from racism and and just being biased whatsoever,
this detective just wanted to move up the ladder and
didn't care for him whether I was telling the truth
(19:21):
or not. He just wanted to tag me along with
everybody else only because one individual knew me, right, knew you.
But but to your knowledge at that point in time,
and any of the other individuals implicated you in the crime.
So that's just such a random and terrible twist of
fate that they just decided because at some point somebody
had to say, well, let's go pick him up or down.
(19:42):
Let's not gonna pick that guy up because we don't.
We don't the only thing about him. We go pick
him up for it doesn't make any sense. So from
that to beating this false confession out of you, literally
beating it out of you, and we know, literally beating
it into me, right, beating it into you, threatening you
with death. Now, all of a sudden, you're in the system,
you've confessed, You're not going home, you're not going anywhere.
(20:03):
You're going to trial. And that trial was a circus,
let's face it, right, I mean, this was the biggest
news in New York. And you were tried with some
of the other kids together, right, Yes, there was two
trials and I was tried in the first trial. Interesting,
before I was taken to the PRIESTSCT, there was one
individual that participated in the crime and made a confession
(20:26):
and said to them that I wasn't even there. So
everybody that he knew that participated in the crime, he
mentioned that he said six people committed the crime, not eight,
and two people left. And those two people that left
that went out with everybody else that got to that
train station was Johnny and Kevin. So Johnny and Kevin
(20:47):
had left. The district attorney, the a d A kept
on trying to implicate me, and this individual kept down
correcting the A D. And he said, no, Johnny was
not there. It was only six of us, not eight
of us. Did it about proctim me around six times?
And this individual was separated from trial then placed in
the second trial because the a D and the judge
(21:09):
decided that they didn't want the jury to hear my
expultory information from him to them, so they kept them
away from me so the jury couldn't hear this, and
they tried me along with other individuals. Where a jury
looking at a group of guys say, you know, everybody's guilty, right,
because the jury, the psychology of a jury would seem
(21:30):
to be that if there's four of you together and
the other three guys, were the other three guys all
guilty guys on your side, right, so there was there
was three in you, so you're guilty by association literally
and the idea that they're going well justice most people
think going into the jury box and justice system works,
if they got these guys here, they must be the guys.
This is a terrible crime. Everybody can relate to this.
(21:53):
Poor families or deal you're there must be a reason, right,
must be a reason. So you are ultimately convicted and
(22:14):
sentenced to years to life only due to a false confession,
like you said, no weapon, no knowledge, no malice, Harvard,
no identification, no DNA, nothing but a false confession. Not
one witness place you at the scene, No, not the family,
no one. Amazing false confession and sentenced to the same
(22:39):
exact sentence that everyone else in my case received, including
the individual that killed the victim in this case. So
you know, I'm getting the chills now thinking about this,
and now you're here to share the truth that these
false confessions are a plague that we have in our
justice system, and you know, we're making great progress in
(23:01):
terms of New York State just passed finally mandatory videotaping
of interrogations, which I was a part of. I'm proud
to say I know you were, and I'm glad you
mentioned that, because nobody could deny you the right to
do anything that you want after what you've been through.
But instead, you and almost every other wrongfully convicted person
I know, spends a huge amount of your time and
(23:23):
energy fighting to prevent future wrongful convictions for people that
you don't even know. Right, It's an amazing thing how
you're able to channel that possibly horrible experience into something
so positive and yeah, so my my hat's off to
you for helping with that effort, because just that simple
change is going to make such a big difference. Do
(23:46):
you think if your interrogation had been videotaped, is there
any possibility of a jury could convict you? Absolutely not. Like,
let's imagine this. Let's imagine that prosecutor goes up in
the courtroom and is playing the video. Oh and here, Oh,
what did he hit him with? There was that a
left or right? Right? Oh, he's handcuffed to the chair. Oh,
now he just threatened to kill him. And the jury
(24:07):
is going to go, wait, wow, you can't do that.
Everybody knows you can't do that. And of course you
would confession. When I interviewed Raymond Santana on the show,
and he explained, you know, going through a scenario different
than yours, but similar. His was more psychological torture than
anything else. But he was fourteen, and his interrogation went on,
(24:28):
I mean, with no sleep and no food and know
nothing and just for a long long time, and they
did threaten to kill him. I said to him, by
the end of it, you would have confessed to kidnapping
the Lindbergh. Baby, he says absolutely anything to make it stop, right,
And I imagine that's probably true for you too, you know.
And that's interesting that you say that, because it only
goes to show how powerful these techniques and tactics are
(24:50):
when used in getting someone to make a false confession.
Because most false confessions they have individuals there anywhere from
five to ten to fifteen hours. With me, that wasn't
even the case. I was there for four hours, and
in those four hours I confessed immediately because they put
their hands on me, this detective Casey physically beating me up.
(25:15):
I was just eighteen for three months, no trouble with
the law, had no criminal record whatsoever. This is my
first time inside a police precinct, and, like you said,
looking up to police officers, being taught and raised by
my parents to trust in them when anything goes wrong.
(25:36):
If you had any questions, you stop a police officer
in the middle of the street and ask him for help.
And yet inside this precinct, I'm being beat up and
threatened to die. Of course, exactly. You weren't a thug,
you weren't a street kid, you weren't even a fighter.
You're an artistic guy. Right, you're a guy who was
doing music. I know you got into theater and dancing
(25:58):
and things like that. My mind is exploding just thinking
about what you were going through. And it's it's so.
And let me just give you a little interesting fact.
If you would have saw a picture of me like
a week before, a couple of days before I was
taken into that precinct, and then you look at the
videotape confession. I had long hair back then, not very long,
(26:21):
but long that I was growing, and it was pushed back,
and on the side of my head you saw two
ball spots from the way that the detective was pulling
my hair out. And you would think that showing this
video tape confession to a jury, they would see the
truth and how this detective beat me up. But back
(26:42):
then nobody did not know anything about false confessions. So
introducing a confession to a jury, they're believing it immediately
and disregarding the physical abuse and signs on my head
of what took place. Did your lawyer bring that up?
Of course he did so. He said you had a
competent attorney. Well, I wouldn't say competent, but he brought
(27:04):
it up to a minimal factor, you know, because he
was really arguing another issue in my case more than this,
because he believed that, no matter how much I wanted
to take the stand, because I was eighteen inexperienced, that
the d A having this false confession was gonna walk
all over me all night stand and proved to the
(27:25):
jury that that confession was to be taken to its veracity,
they probably would have to. I mean, I don't think
there was any good answer to that situation. I think
you were doomed before you walked into that courtroom. So
you end up being convicted and sentenced to five years
to life. And what prison did they take you to
at that point? Well, after I left Rikers Island, which,
(27:48):
let me just say, Riker's Island back then was atrocious.
It was a hellhole. I literally literally went through hell
every single day in Rikers Island. From the moment that
I got there, I was told that if I wanted
to stay alive, I had it to fight. And the
(28:08):
thing about it is that the first people that we're
attacking me in Ranker's Island was the very CEOs, the
very correction officers. So to fight a correction officer that
has the power, and already going through this transition of
being beat up by a detective from the police department,
I was afraid to fight back. I didn't know how
(28:29):
to fight back. What are you supposed to do? Are
you going to fight a correction officer? It doesn't even
make any sense. And you're not I mean you're not
a small guy, but you're not a big guy either.
I mean you're not like back then, I waited a
hundred and fifty pounds exactly right, So so what do
you do? I just took the beating. I took the beating.
I cried all night behind it, and every single day
(28:49):
I was harassed by correction officers no matter where I
went because of the notoriety of my case, and it
was all over the news for so long, and correction
officers just kept on bringing it up against me until
it got to the point where they got other inmates
and rikers island to attack me. And that's where I
decided to put my hands up and fight back to
(29:12):
the best of my ability. But at the end of
the day that placed there, you know a lot of people,
they were fighting with razors and knives, and I didn't
know how to hold one, and I was afraid to
even use one. So when they used to pull out
their knives and there are razors, I used to just
comply and tell, what do you want? What are you
asking here for? Or if they were slapping me or
(29:33):
kicking me, and I just took it. I didn't want
no cuts in my face. I didn't want to be stabbed.
I was afraid. I was alone, I was eighteen, and
I didn't know how to deal with it. So I
dealt with with all the fear in the world that
I was going through. And until I went up state
to the state prison, it was the same treatment because
(29:54):
although the notoriety wasn't the same, but you know, you
had now a wreck and a file that was created
by the District Attorney's office and the New York City
Department of Corrections that was following me upstate, and this
file was like a red flag making me sound like
I'm the worst of the worst. And you're keep in mind,
(30:14):
I wasn't even in the individual that took this victim's life.
They had me charged as an accomplice. Yet I'm being
treated like if I was the perpetrator in this case.
So even upstate where there's even more biased and more racism.
I still went through a lot of more horror I was.
(30:35):
I was placed in segregation, I was set up with weapons.
Just be shown how easily I could have been in
segregation for years. They also had other inmates attempted to
do things and ended up getting me into segregation again.
So my agony, my my my hell hole for so
(30:57):
many years did not go away. How did you maintain
I mean, it's a miracle you maintain your physical well being.
I mean, the fact that you're here is a miracle.
How did you maintain your sanity? How did you maintain
your hope? I mean, because somehow or other you managed
to get to this place where you are now unexonerated. Man,
(31:19):
everyone knows you're innocent. How do you do that? That
scenario you're painting is so so grim, so terribly dark,
and like it's everybody's worst typemare. Literally when I was
in there, I was very angry and very bitter, and
I saw so many individuals doing what they were doing
(31:42):
to me, doing to other individuals for other reasons, jail
house prison reasons, whether it dealt with jealousy, drugs, or hatred,
and be whatever it was. But the difference was that
I saw a lot of these individuals that I was
being told stories about them, or even seeing them with
my own eyes, how they were turning into other beings
(32:04):
that they were never to begin with in the first place.
A lot of them were turning into animals or were
turning into the darkest, worst criminals that they were becoming
inside of a prison. And when I saw that, I
said to myself that, no matter how much I'm trying
to defend myself and fight from my life in prison
(32:26):
from two different parties, the CEOs and the inmates, I'm
not like that. That's not my parents raised me to be,
and I don't want to become that. And I just
had like an awakening and a conscientious moment where I
thought about my family. I thought about those simple words
(32:47):
when they tell you I love you, we will always
love you, We're your family and will always be here
for you. And those things used to bleed tears in
my heart, just reminding me of who my family was.
And how did I end up in there in the
first place? Why was I there? I asked God and everybody,
(33:09):
and I could not get the answer for so many years,
so I didn't know how to deal with that. But
because of that moment, I decided, you know what, I'm
just gonna fight in a different way, and it's not
gonna be with my fist. It's not gonna be with
my fist because I got to focus on my innocence here,
(33:30):
and I turned to education, and I did everything that
I could, go to the law library and write numerous
letters to so many different law firms and law professors
and organizations and even clergy asking for all different types
of help. And yet all of my letters were being
rejected or nobody wanted to help me because I had
(33:53):
no evidence at that time to prove my innocence, nor
did I have the financial resources to hire anybody helped me.
And education, yes, along with my family support, and and yeah,
a spiritual awakening as well. I mean, anybody in my
opinion that would say that they never had a spiritual
(34:13):
awakening in prison, I would say, that's a bunch of bs,
no matter what gangs, the role or hardcore role they
want to play. To anybody and tell them how much
of a big matro man they were. When you're locked
inside a cell and that CEO's turn that key and
turn off the lights and you're there by yourself in
(34:35):
four walls in the dark and a by ten cell
doing twenty five to life. The only person you can
turn to is God. So yes, I did have that
awakening and all those different realms of life, and that
was the only thing that I was hanging onto, the
only thing that I was clinging onto that kept on
(34:58):
giving me that hope and faith. What happened to eventually
unravel this mess? I mean, because it's a very difficult thing, right,
your case it was not a d NA case. I mean,
all the cases are difficult, but at least if it
(35:20):
was a DNA case where you could prove with that
you weren't there, right because DNA, we know it's science,
it's pure science. And in this case you had a
higher degree of difficulty even to prove it because you
weren't convicted based on evidence. So you can't prove that
the evidence is fault because there was no evidence in
the first place. So, and as you said, you weren't
a wealthy guy. You couldn't hire a lawyer. You couldn't
(35:41):
attract a lawyer because they look at the case and
they go, well, it's doesn't So how did how did
it break? Well, my parents and my child did hire
an attorney, but after that they just cant afford what
these attorneys wanted to take my case. They would they
wanted to charge anywhere over six figures and and my
parents basically um sold the house that we lived in.
(36:02):
They closed down the businesses that they had to take
this money to hire the attorney that supposedly was representing
me in the beginning, which all he did was it
just railroad me and take my family's money. So all
these years of my family going to visit me and prisoned,
the trips, the tolls, whatever food or packages they could
bring me, this was a you know, a financial stretch
(36:24):
for them. Everything else exactly. And let's keep in mind that, yeah,
I'm innocent. Here there was a victim in my case,
a victim that did not deserve to die. He should
have never died, This crime should have never taken place.
But the one thing that I can't get over is
that I don't know how this sounds, but because of
(36:48):
the actions of someone else, and because of Brian Walker's death,
I too became a victim. I became a victim where again,
there was no evidence, nobody wanted to help me. Nobody
wanted to believe even me. So while I was in
the theater program, there was a woman that approached me.
I was cast at as Tony for West Side Story,
(37:09):
and she was my music coach, my vocal coach, and
she said, you know, what are you doing here? You
don't look like you belong here. And I said, it's
a long story. I'll tell you another day. And eventually
I told her, But unbeknownst to me, she winded up
contacting a good friend of her who was a retired
police officer, and he told her said, this is a
job for Bill Hughes. And Bill Hughes at the time
(37:32):
was working for the Journal News up in Westchester County
and he was like a man that exposed the corruption
of judges, a d s and police officers. That was
his forte. So he decided to visit me and one
of the shows that I was in the theater and
he started digging into my case. And he told me
in the beginning, he said, listen, because you had no evidence,
(37:54):
I didn't really believe you. But the more I started
digging into your case and I saw these flaws and loophole,
it started making me more interested. So he wrote an
article that was printed in uh City Limits magazine here
in Manhattan, in New York City, and because of that article,
the ex commissioner of the New York State Division of Parole,
(38:16):
Robert Dennison, decided to get involved with him. In between
the both of them, they just started conducting their own
investigation until they found evidence with witnesses and letters that
actually proved my innocence. And that was the reason why
New York State judged throughout my conviction. So they were
(38:36):
like your angels pretty much right, yes, so in the
way your prayers were answered, I suppose right, Uh, yes,
they were answered. It took twenty five years. You know,
I'm just glad that I didn't die in there, because
I can't even tell you how many days I used
to wake up in the morning and ask myself the
(38:58):
same question over and over and over, you know, is
this today? Do I want to live? Or do I
want to die? And there was a moment when I
was on my fifteenth year of being incarce raded. All
my appeals were denied. Nobody wanted to help me, and
I just got down on my knees inside myself and
I started crying out to God and I told God,
I said, listen, please take my life away, because I
(39:20):
can't take this anymore. I can't do this time. I
didn't do this, you know. I didn't do this, and
don't I can't be here. I don't want to do
this anymore, I said to him. All I wanted was
just to wake up the next morning in heaven. I
didn't have the guts to take my own life. I
couldn't do the suicide, but I wanted him to do
(39:42):
it for me. And the next morning, when I woke up,
I saw those bars in front of me, and I
was so mad at God. I was so pissed at
him because I was still there. It was a miraculous
turn that took place in my life because since then,
every single door opened up. And that's when Bill Hughes
and Robert Tennison got involved in my case, and like
(40:05):
everything just went perfectly. I really couldn't believe it. It
took again twenty five years, but everything worked out so smoothly.
That led to my innocence. And I'm glad you brought
that up to Johnny, because there are people listening who
are in a position to make a difference like that,
to take a call, to take a letter, to take
a case like yours, and while at the outset they
(40:28):
all look borderline hopeless. I have a saying that pertains
to this, which is that I've seen too many miracles
to stop believing in miracles. At the end of the day,
it really comes down to one person. Like the impact
that any of us can make, which these two individuals
did in your case, it's it's really profound. I mean,
(40:49):
how somebody can come along and really rescue somebody like
you who needs help as badly as anyone can need
help in this fight. It's hard to think of anybody
who's more sort of alone and more desperately in need
of somebody to come along and be that angel than
(41:12):
somebody who's wrongfully convicted like yourself. And there's so many
of you out there, right, there's so many people who
have been wronged by this justice or injustice system, whatever
you want to call it, that it hurts my soul.
Now you're here, you ultimately were freed. What was that experience? Like?
This is the flip side now, right? So when I
mean as much as you can't imagine how the desperation
(41:33):
and the misery and the the total shock of being
wrongfully convicted. What's it like when that foot finally comes
off your neck? For me? From my mother, from my family,
all the reporters there. It was a very warm, yet subtle,
loud moment, just seeing that embracing taking place at the
(41:57):
so long knowing that I wasn't going to go back again,
and seeing the two investigators there, um which I finally
said to myself, you know, like a realization popped in
my head immediately said. The two people that I'm looking
up to right now is these two investigators, Robert Dennison
(42:17):
and Bill Hughes, and we need more people like that.
When you ask my emotions of walking out, I felt
valued again. I felt like I had worth again as
a as a human being, something that was taken away
from me from the moment that I was incarce faded.
(42:40):
You can be rich, you can be intelligent, you could
be nice and good looking, but if you don't have
ethics in this world, you're never gonna do the right thing.
All those things are worth nothing, and we need people
to do the right thing. We need people to have
these ethics, to have this courage. So when someone writes
a letter like I did, they would want to respond,
(43:03):
especially when I didn't receive any response and people were
turning me down. We need these type of people. So yes,
I felt like I had worth and I had value
in my life again. Walking out of that courthouse, I
was so overjoyed that I I felt I don't know
what what words are, emotions, but I just felt so
(43:25):
happy that I think that all my worries of dying
in prison we're gone now. But nonetheless being out here
and speaking constantly, protesting in city Hall and the New
York State Legislature, speaking against false confessions, asking for these
(43:46):
cameras to be placing Indez interrogations room, and even right
now speaking about my story my release in the last
eighteen months has been extremely hard for me. I constantly
remind myself of what I went through every time I
speak about this, and this is not easy. Why would
(44:06):
an individual like myself that came home after twenty five
years and there's nothing waiting for him, no job, there's
nobody saying Okay, we're gonna help you here. Yet everybody
that is a convicted felon, they have some form of
transition or re entry process to go to but there's
nothing for an innocent individual to go to or nor
source of help or assistance. This has been extremely crucial
(44:31):
for me, extremely hard for me, difficult. I've had nightmares
waking up about prison again, and and no matter how
hard I try to put this behind me, I still
haven't found that piece, no matter how much love my
family give me, because they don't know how to guide
me through this process. They can give me all the hugs,
(44:52):
kisses and affection in the world, but they don't know
how to help me. And I don't know how long
is it gonna take. And I don't know how long
is it gonna taken until um, you know, I continue
fighting and fighting and getting more things accomplished with the
help of the Innistence Project and so many other networks
of organizations. I don't know when I'm going to receive
(45:13):
that side of happiness. But from the moment, you would
think that freedom is nice. It is nice because I
would rather be out here than in there. But it's hard.
It's very hard. What are you doing now day to day, like,
aside from advocating and working for justice reform, what's your
(45:33):
daily life like you wake up and do I was
staying with my parents in the beginning and when I
came home, you know, while I was in prison. Just
keep in mind, I did everything in my power when
I said to educate myself. I facilitated classes, went through
the theater program, and I even got myself a master's degree.
I had highest inspirations when I came home, and I
(45:53):
wanted to get myself a good job. But nobody really
cared with all the buyas you know, whether I was
innocent or not. They just didn't want to formally incarcerate
an individual working in their working environment. So it was
difficult for me to find a job, and I winded
up gaining employment and a bail bond agency doing bails.
So look at this, ironically, I'm going to New York
(46:15):
City jails every single night to bail somebody out, and
that has been a turmol in a nightmare as well.
That was giving me some substance of financial income, but
it just wasn't enough. And it's on New York City
is expensive right now, you know, I have my own
apartment now. The money that I saved up, I got
(46:36):
an apartment right now. But it's still very difficult. And
I left that job and I'm looking for another job now,
you know again, you would think that, you know, there
would be some type of network organization or a system
say okay, you know what you did twenty five years
for a crime you didn't commit. We're gonna help you here,
get back on your feet. That doesn't exist for exonorees.
(46:56):
It's just not out there, so it even makes it
more difficult. Cool, we'll talk offline about that. I may
have some ideas, but before we have to sign off,
I always like to ask the featured guests, honored guests,
if there's any last thoughts that you want to share
with the audience, get off your chest, anything at all,
(47:17):
you know, I would say that, Um, if there were
cameras all over every priest in in New York, inside
every room, because that needs to be implemented. Cameras need
to be placed in every room in the police priest
inct because it's so easy to take someone and put
him in another room when there's not a camera and
(47:38):
still beat him up and then bring him into the
interrogation where the cameras that so he can make that
false confession. So, now that we have this law passed,
anybody out there listening, anybody that wants to help this
be prevented and has the power to do so. Needs
to put these politics to the side. They need to
(47:59):
start thinking about human beings lives here, because if that
camera was there twenty five years ago, I would have
never spent twenty five years in prison. And don't stop believing,
don't stop believing. I know there's a lot of people
out there that are believers or call themselves believers, but
I would say this. A believer to me is someone that, um,
(48:23):
when you know nothing is out there, there's no way
you can prove your innocence, and you write so many
letters and you're getting all the rejection letters like I was.
You know, most people were just stopped. Most people were
just that's sick, give up. It takes somebody to wake
up morning after morning and keep on going at it,
(48:44):
to see it there when you don't even see it there,
and then to finally receive your innocence. To me, that's
a believer. So I just want to share that with
everybody and say, don't stop believing. And that's the believers
that we need out there in society today to keep
on encouraging helping with this cause here of innocent people
in prison that are still in there and with false confessions.
(49:07):
I guess it's like I say, you've seen too many
miracles to stop believing in miracles too, and you are
a miracle. Last question, are you on any social media?
You could go on my Facebook page it's Johnny in
cop j O H and N Y H I N
C A p I E. And on Instagram on Johnny
in Coopia dot seventy two follow him, learn more, get involved.
(49:32):
We need your help. Let's make sure we minimize the
future wrongful convictions. Don't forget to give us a fantastic
review wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps. And
I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I
(49:52):
really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important
cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to
Innocence Project don't Org to learn how to donate and
get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
Hall and Kevin Awardis. The music in the show is
by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure
to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on
(50:14):
Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam
is a production of Lava for Good podcasts in association
with Signal Company Number one
I think we have the best legal system. It's just
the people that implement They get lost along the way
and forget what the job really is. He just kept
on trying to remind me that who was in authority,
who was in control, and how easy it was for
my body to be found in any reality of New
(00:24):
York City. It's a tough prison when you have the
guards going against you because they are the biggest gang
in the prison. They do that. They'll give a guy
a life sentence and go home in East Spaghetti like
it was nothing. And anybody that said, well, why would
you confess to something that you didn't do? My question
to them will be why wouldn't you confess when somebody's
(00:46):
threatening to kill your life? Judge, he said, how you feel?
I said, I'm okay. He said, with the dad's you're lucky, Dane,
You're going home. This is wrong for conviction. Welcome back
(01:15):
to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam Today, I have a
very special guest, fellow New Yorker and someone who was
wrongfully convicted of one of the most notorious crimes in
the history of New York, Johnny Encap. It was one
of the bloodiest years in city history. That brutal murder
of tourists Brian Watkins, killed in the subway while defending
(01:37):
his family from a pack of teams, shook the city
to its core tourists. Brian Watkins was in the subway
on September three when he was stabbed in the chest
after a struggle with at least six teenagers. If you
lived in New York back then, you probably remember what
it was like. The murder rate was astonishingly high, the
police force a lot smaller than it is now, and
(01:58):
the long term solutions for those were just beginning to
come into play. People that were out of patience. A
high profile crime like this required quick action. Within twenty
four hours, seventeens, including of an eighteen year old Hincapier,
confessed on tape to taking part in the robbery. Hincapier
would later say that his confession was coerced by an
(02:19):
abusive detective. He says it was a combination of fear,
false promises, and youthful ignorance that led him to confess
to a crime that he did not commit. He was
convicted in three witnesses came forward to say Hincapier was
not on the subway platform when the stabbing happened. Conviction
overturned Johnny and Capier is out of prison after serving
(02:41):
twenty five years in one of the city's most notorious
murder cases. Johnny Hincapier paid his one dollar bail and
ran into the arms of his parents. Welcome, thank you, Jason,
thank you for having me. So Johnny, let's go back.
This is over twenty five years ago. It's gonna be
twenty seven September, right, and you were in high school
(03:02):
living in Queens. That was life back then. Life was
beautiful for an immigrant family from Columbia, South America. First
saw being raised in Florida, then coming to New York
and being in the neighborhood like Bay Terrorist Queens. For
anybody that knows about that section of Queens back in
the eighties, especially when I was there, it was predominantly
(03:24):
all Jewish, Italian and Irish. It's a residential neighborhood. You know,
you're away from any type of problems in any of
the places of New York City, which the crime rate
was extremely high back then. So um growing up was
definitely comfortable around a good group of friends and family members, right.
And then one night one horrible night, everything changed in
(03:45):
the worst possible way. There was a lot of crime
in New York City back then. Back then there was
borderline hysteria in terms of the fear that which the
media was really hyping up because it wasn't Mad Max,
but it was you know, you had to be careful.
And a terrible, terrible crime occurred. A family from Utah
was visiting, took the train. They decided to take the
(04:07):
subway to the U s Open to go see the tennis.
Can you take us through what happened and what you
were doing and how you came to be implicated wrongfully
in this terrible scenario. Well, growing up in New York,
like you said Jason Um talking about a time in
the eighties where breakdancing had came out and with rap music,
(04:28):
freestyle and house music, which was like the hit type
of music other than pop music to listen to in
the eighties, at least in New York. But I grew
up after being a dancer, I went into becoming a DJ.
As a teenager. I went to my first club for
teens and that kind of opened up the door for
me to work on weekends at other clubs that were
(04:50):
promoting team nights, and eventually I ended up working another
major clubs when I got older, and even started on
a minor level promoting with other individual was those clubs,
So I was a pretty decent minor or pre popular
top of guy amongst the group of people that knew me.
Back in September of uh Good Popular Digits was having
(05:14):
a birthday party that he was throwing out rolls Line
and everybody in New York City made plans to go
out that night. So the group of individuals that I
had met along the years and clubs and other parties
invited me to go out because they haven't seen me
for a while, And eventually they had friends that they invited,
and their friends invited other friends. So it was a
(05:34):
lot of people that didn't know each other that went out.
But there was a small fraction of individuals that didn't
quite have enough money to get inside the nightclub, so
they decided to commit a crime, and in the process
of committing that crime, someone died. Some of these kids
because you were kids, I mean you were still in
(05:55):
high school at the time, went down thinking I'm gonna
rob somebody and get some money so I can go
to the club, So they went into the subway. That's
when they encountered this family from Utah, and these were
Hispanic kids, right, and the family Hispanican black kids. Right.
This of course prayed on all the fears that were
in the in the media and the classic stereotypes of
the time, which unfortunately still persisted this day. But at
(06:19):
that time they were really peaking. And let's face the
crime sales newspapers too, so it was on the front page.
I remember the news and this this case was on
the front page for a long time. It was. It
was major, bold faced headlines. What happened when they went
down to rob this family? Where were you and why
did they pick on you? When I got out of
(06:39):
the train station, I made literally plans with one friend
of mine that night. I had my wallet and I
gave it to a friend of mine to hold for
me because he was wearing a Fannie pack. So apparently
when we got outside to the street, I didn't see him,
and I asked people, you know, basically where he was,
and some individuals indicated that he never came out of
the train station. Saw on my way going back inside
(07:02):
the train station, I saw another friend and we were
talking and at that moment when I got there, he
was flirting with some girls and I asked him and
he told me that he thought that he was out
of the platform. So I was gonna go back upstairs,
but I said, you know what, let me check and
let me go downstairs. And I started going down the escalators,
but I heard like a big commotion of people screaming
(07:22):
and saw people coming running up towards the escalator sold me.
So I never made it downstairs to the platform, and
I turned around with everybody that was coming towards me,
and I just went out to the street. I decided
to go to Roseland and I got online where I
saw other people that I knew, and maybe like a
couple of minutes later, the group of individuals that was
downstairs in the subway platform that committed the crime came
(07:46):
then and we all went inside of rolls and after
an individual decided to UH volunteer to buy tickets for everyone.
But at the end of the day, with the news
was reporting that these group of individuals that I told
you about that stood back in the platforms, that they
didn't have enough money to go inside a rose Land
and they decided to um rob a family which they
(08:09):
did not know. They were touristsed um, they were visiting
New York. They were planning to go see the tennis tournament,
and in the process of that, a young twenty two
year old man of the name of Brian Watkins died
behind a minor stab wound towards the rt V of
his heart. Well, there was more to it than that
as well, right, because it started as a robbery, and
(08:31):
as these things do, it progressed from there, right because
I think the kids they attacked the mother if I
remember correctly, and then the sun which was what really
brought everybody's focus to this case, because the son was
sort of a heroic kid. Brian Watkins was twenty two
at the time, and he came to the aid of
his mother and he tried to fight back and protect
(08:51):
her from these predators. And then one of them stabbed
him and they ran out of the subway and he
ran after them and collapsed on the stair than died
like in a movie. Right, Just a horrible, horrible thing.
And you know, I guess it really triggered again everyone's emotions,
especially because everyone would hope that they would behave the
way that this kid did in trying to defend his
(09:13):
family and his mother. So it was just a real flashpoint.
And we know in these cases when that kind of
stuff happens and there's a lot of media attention, the
cops they play a little loose with the rules a
lot of times. Right, they become hyper focused on solving
the crime. There may be accolades for them, right if
(09:33):
they do. There may be promotions involved in any case.
At a minimum, it will take away the pressure that
they're feeling from their bosses when when they get this
case resolved. And in this case, they knew they had
a group of kids. It's got to be tricky to
solve a case like that. It's hard enough to identify
one individual in a single perpetrator crime, but here you
have a whole group of kids. So you happen to
(09:54):
have the misfortune, the terrible misfortune of being inside the
club with the kids who actually committed this crime. But
did you know at that time that they had committed
the crime? No, not at all. No one had mentioned
anything about it before nor after the fact. And I
got caught up with it only because one of the
individuals they did commit the crime. I knew from going
to school with him, and he was one of the
(10:15):
individuals that I hadn't seen such a long time, invited
me to go out that night, and because he knew
my phone number, when the detectives asked him the list
of individuals or the names of individuals that they wanted
from him that went out to the coupe, they never
asked him that participated in the crime with him, that
committed the crime, but then went out with him that night.
He listed me and a few other individuals that he
(10:37):
knew their phone numbers, and that's how they came to
my house and dragged me on and took me to
the precinct. So you got dragged out. You were just
home with your parents? Was it daytime? Nighttime? What was
the scenario? It was already evening and I was at
home and the detectives came into my house after they
rang the bell. My mother opened the door and they
(10:58):
just barged in and they asked my mother if I
was home, and my mother was inquiring why did they
were asking about me? And they said that they wanted
to ask me questions about a stolen car. So she
called me and I came downstairs. They said they wanted
to take me to the precinct, and my mother wanted
to come along. And they asked my mother how old
(11:19):
I was, and she said that I just turned eighteen,
and they said there was no need for that, and
she kept on enquiring why and the until they finally
confessed that they wanted to question me about homicide that
took place in the subway station. And thereafter they just
took me outside and placed me in their police car.
And so she didn't go with you. No, they told
her that she couldn't come. She even attempted to call
(11:41):
an attorney, but it was a holiday, was labor days,
so she wasn't able to get in contact with anybody.
They took me all by myself in the car with
the rest of the detectives that were outside, and even
another car that was escorting them from a priestint from
my neighborhood into Manhattan's North Precinct. So you got taken
all the way across the bridge into this city and
then you end up in the North Precinct and then
(12:03):
the North And did they begin interrogating you immediately or
they keep you in the holding cell? What happened? Well,
when I got there. The detectives handcuffed me as soon
as I came out of the car, and one of
the detectives told me that there was a lot of
media outside the precinct, so he said that it was
in my best interest that he wanted to cover my
face with his coat and handcuffed me. He did that exactly.
(12:26):
He took me inside. I couldn't see any of the meat.
I just heard the camera's flashing and people yelling things out,
like asking questions or who was I who was it
that the detectives were bringing in. And they brought me
inside and they were still guiding me until they got me.
It was for them a secure place that the media
wasn't able to see me, in a corridor of the precinct.
(12:47):
And then they took me upstairs to a room where
I saw it was a double buns beds and there
was the detectives and a T shirt laying down smoking
a cigarette. And they uncuffed me and they some word
did he want me to be placed? And he said
placed him in the back of the room where the
tables at in the chair, and then they began interrogating
(13:08):
you soon after that or well, interesting enough in my case,
I came to find this out much later. The lead
detective in my case was Detective Carlos Gonzalez, the same
detective that was in the investigation of the Central Park
five and he had just been transferred a little less
(13:30):
than a year to Midtown North. So the detective that
was in the room, he was discussing with Carlos Gonzalez.
I don't know what, but throughout the whole entire interrogation,
he kept on walking in and out of the room
to the talk with Detective Gonzalez. And when I was
left alone in that room with Detective Casey, who was
(13:52):
the detective that interrogated me, keep in mind that I'm
still handcuffed in the chair. And when I was in handcuffed,
the detective asked me what happened then that, and I
told him the truth. I told him exactly what I
did from the moment I had left to my house
to go to Roseland and immediately, you know, he didn't
(14:13):
believe me, kept on saying that he didn't believe me,
kept on calling me a liar throughout this whole process,
until he went and bursted into a big rage and
started us blowing smoking my face from the cigarette that
he was smoking. He just decided to really get belligerent
with me until he finally started to beat me up.
And when he beat me up, I was crying. There
(14:34):
was like a moment of silence. There was a long pause,
and he basically told me that I was never gonna
make it out alive from that precinct unless I decided
to comply with him in memorizing a story. And he
just kept on trying to remind me that who was
in authority, who was in control, and how easy it
(14:57):
was for my body to be found in any alley
of New York City and nobody would care about it
because the police department in New York who he worked for,
had it. That's simple in their power to do such
a thing, and nobody would even point a finger to them,
like a Central American dictatorship or something. Yeah, this is
(15:17):
supposed to be New York City, which is located in
the America, United States, exactly. Yeah, that's not supposed to
be the way it is, obviously. I mean, so this
is an unbelievably terrifying situation to find yourself in your
eighteen years old. We know that the brain doesn't fully
develop until you're about. And we know that these confessions,
these false confessions, happen so frequently with teenagers because you
(15:41):
don't have enough life experience at that point to be
able to draw on, to be able to rationalize and say, well,
he can't really take me and kill me and dump
my body, because the rational mind would say, well, that
can't happen because my mom saw them come and take me.
But then again, who knows how you would react. Anybody
in that situation would be in a state of complete disorientation,
(16:05):
which is exactly what they were after. Right. They were
well aware that you couldn't withstand as a teenage boy
with no experience probably with this type of violence or
mental pressure, psychological pressure. They knew that they were going
to be able to get you to say almost anything
if they took these tactics. And what happened? Did they
(16:26):
give you a piece of paper to sign? Is that
what the next thing was? And how? I mean, how
long were you in there? At what point did you
get a lawyer? Did did they ever ask you if
you wanted a lawyer? Well, let me just say this, Jason,
before I get to answering that part of your question.
Everything that you just said, is absolutely true. You hit
it right on the head. New York had a technique
that they call the read technique where detectives basically questioned
(16:50):
an individual to find out whether he's telling the truth
or he's lying, and if they believe that he's lying,
then they start asking him questions as he's guilty, just
to make him to confess because they don't believe. In
my case, they didn't do any of that. This detective here,
from the beginning, he just said that I was liar
and then transitioned into beating me up, which he wasn't
supposed to do yet he violated that. Now when I
(17:13):
said that he was threatening to take my life, yeah,
that's absolutely true. A teenager like myself at that time,
at that age, eighteen years old, Yeah, my mind wasn't
fully developed, right, But I truly believe that any individual
who has been threatened with their lives being taken, I
don't care how old you are, right, is scared for
(17:33):
their life that those individuals that are physically pounding on
you are going to kill you because they say that's
exactly what they're going to do, whether you're eighteen or fifty.
And anybody that would say, well, why would you confess
to something that you didn't do. My question to them
will be why wouldn't you confess to exactly to what
I just mentioned when somebody's threatening to kill your life.
And not only that, but you add to it the
(17:55):
fact that I imagine you grew up like I grew up,
thinking that the police were there to protect you, right,
and you respect the police right, and they respect you,
and you know it says right on the side of
the car, to protect and serve right. And I think
most police that is the approach that they take. But
then there's bad ones, and the bad ones like this
guy Gonzalez, who we know was responsible for extracting the
(18:17):
false confessions in the Central Park Geograph case, the notorious
Central Park Geograph case. He's one of those guys who
obviously just didn't give a fuck. It's really hard for us,
who are what do you want to call it, empathetic
human beings. It's hard for us to really imagine what
could cause somebody to go so far wrong, to take somebody.
(18:38):
They had no idea, they had no evidence, There was
no evidence with you, there's nothing connecting you to this case.
There wasn't even anybody at this point saying that you
did it. I don't believe there was just this guy
who said I know I know this guy Johnny and
cap A who have his phone number, my phone whatever,
and my not my phone. By the time they took
me to precinct, they already had the fashion of the
(19:00):
individual that stabbed Brian Watkinson killed him, so they knew
who had killed him. But, like you said, aside from
being over zealous or any other elements that you want
to include, from racism and and just being biased whatsoever,
this detective just wanted to move up the ladder and
didn't care for him whether I was telling the truth
(19:21):
or not. He just wanted to tag me along with
everybody else only because one individual knew me, right, knew you.
But but to your knowledge at that point in time,
and any of the other individuals implicated you in the crime.
So that's just such a random and terrible twist of
fate that they just decided because at some point somebody
had to say, well, let's go pick him up or down.
(19:42):
Let's not gonna pick that guy up because we don't.
We don't the only thing about him. We go pick
him up for it doesn't make any sense. So from
that to beating this false confession out of you, literally
beating it out of you, and we know, literally beating
it into me, right, beating it into you, threatening you
with death. Now, all of a sudden, you're in the system,
you've confessed, You're not going home, you're not going anywhere.
(20:03):
You're going to trial. And that trial was a circus,
let's face it, right, I mean, this was the biggest
news in New York. And you were tried with some
of the other kids together, right, Yes, there was two
trials and I was tried in the first trial. Interesting,
before I was taken to the PRIESTSCT, there was one
individual that participated in the crime and made a confession
(20:26):
and said to them that I wasn't even there. So
everybody that he knew that participated in the crime, he
mentioned that he said six people committed the crime, not eight,
and two people left. And those two people that left
that went out with everybody else that got to that
train station was Johnny and Kevin. So Johnny and Kevin
(20:47):
had left. The district attorney, the a d A kept
on trying to implicate me, and this individual kept down
correcting the A D. And he said, no, Johnny was
not there. It was only six of us, not eight
of us. Did it about proctim me around six times?
And this individual was separated from trial then placed in
the second trial because the a D and the judge
(21:09):
decided that they didn't want the jury to hear my
expultory information from him to them, so they kept them
away from me so the jury couldn't hear this, and
they tried me along with other individuals. Where a jury
looking at a group of guys say, you know, everybody's guilty, right,
because the jury, the psychology of a jury would seem
(21:30):
to be that if there's four of you together and
the other three guys, were the other three guys all
guilty guys on your side, right, so there was there
was three in you, so you're guilty by association literally
and the idea that they're going well justice most people
think going into the jury box and justice system works,
if they got these guys here, they must be the guys.
This is a terrible crime. Everybody can relate to this.
(21:53):
Poor families or deal you're there must be a reason, right,
must be a reason. So you are ultimately convicted and
(22:14):
sentenced to years to life only due to a false confession,
like you said, no weapon, no knowledge, no malice, Harvard,
no identification, no DNA, nothing but a false confession. Not
one witness place you at the scene, No, not the family,
no one. Amazing false confession and sentenced to the same
(22:39):
exact sentence that everyone else in my case received, including
the individual that killed the victim in this case. So
you know, I'm getting the chills now thinking about this,
and now you're here to share the truth that these
false confessions are a plague that we have in our
justice system, and you know, we're making great progress in
(23:01):
terms of New York State just passed finally mandatory videotaping
of interrogations, which I was a part of. I'm proud
to say I know you were, and I'm glad you
mentioned that, because nobody could deny you the right to
do anything that you want after what you've been through.
But instead, you and almost every other wrongfully convicted person
I know, spends a huge amount of your time and
(23:23):
energy fighting to prevent future wrongful convictions for people that
you don't even know. Right, It's an amazing thing how
you're able to channel that possibly horrible experience into something
so positive and yeah, so my my hat's off to
you for helping with that effort, because just that simple
change is going to make such a big difference. Do
(23:46):
you think if your interrogation had been videotaped, is there
any possibility of a jury could convict you? Absolutely not. Like,
let's imagine this. Let's imagine that prosecutor goes up in
the courtroom and is playing the video. Oh and here, Oh,
what did he hit him with? There was that a
left or right? Right? Oh, he's handcuffed to the chair. Oh,
now he just threatened to kill him. And the jury
(24:07):
is going to go, wait, wow, you can't do that.
Everybody knows you can't do that. And of course you
would confession. When I interviewed Raymond Santana on the show,
and he explained, you know, going through a scenario different
than yours, but similar. His was more psychological torture than
anything else. But he was fourteen, and his interrogation went on,
(24:28):
I mean, with no sleep and no food and know
nothing and just for a long long time, and they
did threaten to kill him. I said to him, by
the end of it, you would have confessed to kidnapping
the Lindbergh. Baby, he says absolutely anything to make it stop, right,
And I imagine that's probably true for you too, you know.
And that's interesting that you say that, because it only
goes to show how powerful these techniques and tactics are
(24:50):
when used in getting someone to make a false confession.
Because most false confessions they have individuals there anywhere from
five to ten to fifteen hours. With me, that wasn't
even the case. I was there for four hours, and
in those four hours I confessed immediately because they put
their hands on me, this detective Casey physically beating me up.
(25:15):
I was just eighteen for three months, no trouble with
the law, had no criminal record whatsoever. This is my
first time inside a police precinct, and, like you said,
looking up to police officers, being taught and raised by
my parents to trust in them when anything goes wrong.
(25:36):
If you had any questions, you stop a police officer
in the middle of the street and ask him for help.
And yet inside this precinct, I'm being beat up and
threatened to die. Of course, exactly. You weren't a thug,
you weren't a street kid, you weren't even a fighter.
You're an artistic guy. Right, you're a guy who was
doing music. I know you got into theater and dancing
(25:58):
and things like that. My mind is exploding just thinking
about what you were going through. And it's it's so.
And let me just give you a little interesting fact.
If you would have saw a picture of me like
a week before, a couple of days before I was
taken into that precinct, and then you look at the
videotape confession. I had long hair back then, not very long,
(26:21):
but long that I was growing, and it was pushed back,
and on the side of my head you saw two
ball spots from the way that the detective was pulling
my hair out. And you would think that showing this
video tape confession to a jury, they would see the
truth and how this detective beat me up. But back
(26:42):
then nobody did not know anything about false confessions. So
introducing a confession to a jury, they're believing it immediately
and disregarding the physical abuse and signs on my head
of what took place. Did your lawyer bring that up?
Of course he did so. He said you had a
competent attorney. Well, I wouldn't say competent, but he brought
(27:04):
it up to a minimal factor, you know, because he
was really arguing another issue in my case more than this,
because he believed that, no matter how much I wanted
to take the stand, because I was eighteen inexperienced, that
the d A having this false confession was gonna walk
all over me all night stand and proved to the
(27:25):
jury that that confession was to be taken to its veracity,
they probably would have to. I mean, I don't think
there was any good answer to that situation. I think
you were doomed before you walked into that courtroom. So
you end up being convicted and sentenced to five years
to life. And what prison did they take you to
at that point? Well, after I left Rikers Island, which,
(27:48):
let me just say, Riker's Island back then was atrocious.
It was a hellhole. I literally literally went through hell
every single day in Rikers Island. From the moment that
I got there, I was told that if I wanted
to stay alive, I had it to fight. And the
(28:08):
thing about it is that the first people that we're
attacking me in Ranker's Island was the very CEOs, the
very correction officers. So to fight a correction officer that
has the power, and already going through this transition of
being beat up by a detective from the police department,
I was afraid to fight back. I didn't know how
(28:29):
to fight back. What are you supposed to do? Are
you going to fight a correction officer? It doesn't even
make any sense. And you're not I mean you're not
a small guy, but you're not a big guy either.
I mean you're not like back then, I waited a
hundred and fifty pounds exactly right, So so what do
you do? I just took the beating. I took the beating.
I cried all night behind it, and every single day
(28:49):
I was harassed by correction officers no matter where I
went because of the notoriety of my case, and it
was all over the news for so long, and correction
officers just kept on bringing it up against me until
it got to the point where they got other inmates
and rikers island to attack me. And that's where I
decided to put my hands up and fight back to
(29:12):
the best of my ability. But at the end of
the day that placed there, you know a lot of people,
they were fighting with razors and knives, and I didn't
know how to hold one, and I was afraid to
even use one. So when they used to pull out
their knives and there are razors, I used to just
comply and tell, what do you want? What are you
asking here for? Or if they were slapping me or
(29:33):
kicking me, and I just took it. I didn't want
no cuts in my face. I didn't want to be stabbed.
I was afraid. I was alone, I was eighteen, and
I didn't know how to deal with it. So I
dealt with with all the fear in the world that
I was going through. And until I went up state
to the state prison, it was the same treatment because
(29:54):
although the notoriety wasn't the same, but you know, you
had now a wreck and a file that was created
by the District Attorney's office and the New York City
Department of Corrections that was following me upstate, and this
file was like a red flag making me sound like
I'm the worst of the worst. And you're keep in mind,
(30:14):
I wasn't even in the individual that took this victim's life.
They had me charged as an accomplice. Yet I'm being
treated like if I was the perpetrator in this case.
So even upstate where there's even more biased and more racism.
I still went through a lot of more horror I was.
(30:35):
I was placed in segregation, I was set up with weapons.
Just be shown how easily I could have been in
segregation for years. They also had other inmates attempted to
do things and ended up getting me into segregation again.
So my agony, my my my hell hole for so
(30:57):
many years did not go away. How did you maintain
I mean, it's a miracle you maintain your physical well being.
I mean, the fact that you're here is a miracle.
How did you maintain your sanity? How did you maintain
your hope? I mean, because somehow or other you managed
to get to this place where you are now unexonerated. Man,
(31:19):
everyone knows you're innocent. How do you do that? That
scenario you're painting is so so grim, so terribly dark,
and like it's everybody's worst typemare. Literally when I was
in there, I was very angry and very bitter, and
I saw so many individuals doing what they were doing
(31:42):
to me, doing to other individuals for other reasons, jail
house prison reasons, whether it dealt with jealousy, drugs, or hatred,
and be whatever it was. But the difference was that
I saw a lot of these individuals that I was
being told stories about them, or even seeing them with
my own eyes, how they were turning into other beings
(32:04):
that they were never to begin with in the first place.
A lot of them were turning into animals or were
turning into the darkest, worst criminals that they were becoming
inside of a prison. And when I saw that, I
said to myself that, no matter how much I'm trying
to defend myself and fight from my life in prison
(32:26):
from two different parties, the CEOs and the inmates, I'm
not like that. That's not my parents raised me to be,
and I don't want to become that. And I just
had like an awakening and a conscientious moment where I
thought about my family. I thought about those simple words
(32:47):
when they tell you I love you, we will always
love you, We're your family and will always be here
for you. And those things used to bleed tears in
my heart, just reminding me of who my family was.
And how did I end up in there in the
first place? Why was I there? I asked God and everybody,
(33:09):
and I could not get the answer for so many years,
so I didn't know how to deal with that. But
because of that moment, I decided, you know what, I'm
just gonna fight in a different way, and it's not
gonna be with my fist. It's not gonna be with
my fist because I got to focus on my innocence here,
(33:30):
and I turned to education, and I did everything that
I could, go to the law library and write numerous
letters to so many different law firms and law professors
and organizations and even clergy asking for all different types
of help. And yet all of my letters were being
rejected or nobody wanted to help me because I had
(33:53):
no evidence at that time to prove my innocence, nor
did I have the financial resources to hire anybody helped me.
And education, yes, along with my family support, and and yeah,
a spiritual awakening as well. I mean, anybody in my
opinion that would say that they never had a spiritual
(34:13):
awakening in prison, I would say, that's a bunch of bs,
no matter what gangs, the role or hardcore role they
want to play. To anybody and tell them how much
of a big matro man they were. When you're locked
inside a cell and that CEO's turn that key and
turn off the lights and you're there by yourself in
(34:35):
four walls in the dark and a by ten cell
doing twenty five to life. The only person you can
turn to is God. So yes, I did have that
awakening and all those different realms of life, and that
was the only thing that I was hanging onto, the
only thing that I was clinging onto that kept on
(34:58):
giving me that hope and faith. What happened to eventually
unravel this mess? I mean, because it's a very difficult thing, right,
your case it was not a d NA case. I mean,
all the cases are difficult, but at least if it
(35:20):
was a DNA case where you could prove with that
you weren't there, right because DNA, we know it's science,
it's pure science. And in this case you had a
higher degree of difficulty even to prove it because you
weren't convicted based on evidence. So you can't prove that
the evidence is fault because there was no evidence in
the first place. So, and as you said, you weren't
a wealthy guy. You couldn't hire a lawyer. You couldn't
(35:41):
attract a lawyer because they look at the case and
they go, well, it's doesn't So how did how did
it break? Well, my parents and my child did hire
an attorney, but after that they just cant afford what
these attorneys wanted to take my case. They would they
wanted to charge anywhere over six figures and and my
parents basically um sold the house that we lived in.
(36:02):
They closed down the businesses that they had to take
this money to hire the attorney that supposedly was representing
me in the beginning, which all he did was it
just railroad me and take my family's money. So all
these years of my family going to visit me and prisoned,
the trips, the tolls, whatever food or packages they could
bring me, this was a you know, a financial stretch
(36:24):
for them. Everything else exactly. And let's keep in mind that, yeah,
I'm innocent. Here there was a victim in my case,
a victim that did not deserve to die. He should
have never died, This crime should have never taken place.
But the one thing that I can't get over is
that I don't know how this sounds, but because of
(36:48):
the actions of someone else, and because of Brian Walker's death,
I too became a victim. I became a victim where again,
there was no evidence, nobody wanted to help me. Nobody
wanted to believe even me. So while I was in
the theater program, there was a woman that approached me.
I was cast at as Tony for West Side Story,
(37:09):
and she was my music coach, my vocal coach, and
she said, you know, what are you doing here? You
don't look like you belong here. And I said, it's
a long story. I'll tell you another day. And eventually
I told her, But unbeknownst to me, she winded up
contacting a good friend of her who was a retired
police officer, and he told her said, this is a
job for Bill Hughes. And Bill Hughes at the time
(37:32):
was working for the Journal News up in Westchester County
and he was like a man that exposed the corruption
of judges, a d s and police officers. That was
his forte. So he decided to visit me and one
of the shows that I was in the theater and
he started digging into my case. And he told me
in the beginning, he said, listen, because you had no evidence,
(37:54):
I didn't really believe you. But the more I started
digging into your case and I saw these flaws and loophole,
it started making me more interested. So he wrote an
article that was printed in uh City Limits magazine here
in Manhattan, in New York City, and because of that article,
the ex commissioner of the New York State Division of Parole,
(38:16):
Robert Dennison, decided to get involved with him. In between
the both of them, they just started conducting their own
investigation until they found evidence with witnesses and letters that
actually proved my innocence. And that was the reason why
New York State judged throughout my conviction. So they were
(38:36):
like your angels pretty much right, yes, so in the
way your prayers were answered, I suppose right, Uh, yes,
they were answered. It took twenty five years. You know,
I'm just glad that I didn't die in there, because
I can't even tell you how many days I used
to wake up in the morning and ask myself the
(38:58):
same question over and over and over, you know, is
this today? Do I want to live? Or do I
want to die? And there was a moment when I
was on my fifteenth year of being incarce raded. All
my appeals were denied. Nobody wanted to help me, and
I just got down on my knees inside myself and
I started crying out to God and I told God,
I said, listen, please take my life away, because I
(39:20):
can't take this anymore. I can't do this time. I
didn't do this, you know. I didn't do this, and
don't I can't be here. I don't want to do
this anymore, I said to him. All I wanted was
just to wake up the next morning in heaven. I
didn't have the guts to take my own life. I
couldn't do the suicide, but I wanted him to do
(39:42):
it for me. And the next morning, when I woke up,
I saw those bars in front of me, and I
was so mad at God. I was so pissed at
him because I was still there. It was a miraculous
turn that took place in my life because since then,
every single door opened up. And that's when Bill Hughes
and Robert Tennison got involved in my case, and like
(40:05):
everything just went perfectly. I really couldn't believe it. It
took again twenty five years, but everything worked out so smoothly.
That led to my innocence. And I'm glad you brought
that up to Johnny, because there are people listening who
are in a position to make a difference like that,
to take a call, to take a letter, to take
a case like yours, and while at the outset they
(40:28):
all look borderline hopeless. I have a saying that pertains
to this, which is that I've seen too many miracles
to stop believing in miracles. At the end of the day,
it really comes down to one person. Like the impact
that any of us can make, which these two individuals
did in your case, it's it's really profound. I mean,
(40:49):
how somebody can come along and really rescue somebody like
you who needs help as badly as anyone can need
help in this fight. It's hard to think of anybody
who's more sort of alone and more desperately in need
of somebody to come along and be that angel than
(41:12):
somebody who's wrongfully convicted like yourself. And there's so many
of you out there, right, there's so many people who
have been wronged by this justice or injustice system, whatever
you want to call it, that it hurts my soul.
Now you're here, you ultimately were freed. What was that experience? Like?
This is the flip side now, right? So when I
mean as much as you can't imagine how the desperation
(41:33):
and the misery and the the total shock of being
wrongfully convicted. What's it like when that foot finally comes
off your neck? For me? From my mother, from my family,
all the reporters there. It was a very warm, yet subtle,
loud moment, just seeing that embracing taking place at the
(41:57):
so long knowing that I wasn't going to go back again,
and seeing the two investigators there, um which I finally
said to myself, you know, like a realization popped in
my head immediately said. The two people that I'm looking
up to right now is these two investigators, Robert Dennison
(42:17):
and Bill Hughes, and we need more people like that.
When you ask my emotions of walking out, I felt
valued again. I felt like I had worth again as
a as a human being, something that was taken away
from me from the moment that I was incarce faded.
(42:40):
You can be rich, you can be intelligent, you could
be nice and good looking, but if you don't have
ethics in this world, you're never gonna do the right thing.
All those things are worth nothing, and we need people
to do the right thing. We need people to have
these ethics, to have this courage. So when someone writes
a letter like I did, they would want to respond,
(43:03):
especially when I didn't receive any response and people were
turning me down. We need these type of people. So yes,
I felt like I had worth and I had value
in my life again. Walking out of that courthouse, I
was so overjoyed that I I felt I don't know
what what words are, emotions, but I just felt so
(43:25):
happy that I think that all my worries of dying
in prison we're gone now. But nonetheless being out here
and speaking constantly, protesting in city Hall and the New
York State Legislature, speaking against false confessions, asking for these
(43:46):
cameras to be placing Indez interrogations room, and even right
now speaking about my story my release in the last
eighteen months has been extremely hard for me. I constantly
remind myself of what I went through every time I
speak about this, and this is not easy. Why would
(44:06):
an individual like myself that came home after twenty five
years and there's nothing waiting for him, no job, there's
nobody saying Okay, we're gonna help you here. Yet everybody
that is a convicted felon, they have some form of
transition or re entry process to go to but there's
nothing for an innocent individual to go to or nor
source of help or assistance. This has been extremely crucial
(44:31):
for me, extremely hard for me, difficult. I've had nightmares
waking up about prison again, and and no matter how
hard I try to put this behind me, I still
haven't found that piece, no matter how much love my
family give me, because they don't know how to guide
me through this process. They can give me all the hugs,
(44:52):
kisses and affection in the world, but they don't know
how to help me. And I don't know how long
is it gonna take. And I don't know how long
is it gonna taken until um, you know, I continue
fighting and fighting and getting more things accomplished with the
help of the Innistence Project and so many other networks
of organizations. I don't know when I'm going to receive
(45:13):
that side of happiness. But from the moment, you would
think that freedom is nice. It is nice because I
would rather be out here than in there. But it's hard.
It's very hard. What are you doing now day to day, like,
aside from advocating and working for justice reform, what's your
(45:33):
daily life like you wake up and do I was
staying with my parents in the beginning and when I
came home, you know, while I was in prison. Just
keep in mind, I did everything in my power when
I said to educate myself. I facilitated classes, went through
the theater program, and I even got myself a master's degree.
I had highest inspirations when I came home, and I
(45:53):
wanted to get myself a good job. But nobody really
cared with all the buyas you know, whether I was
innocent or not. They just didn't want to formally incarcerate
an individual working in their working environment. So it was
difficult for me to find a job, and I winded
up gaining employment and a bail bond agency doing bails.
So look at this, ironically, I'm going to New York
(46:15):
City jails every single night to bail somebody out, and
that has been a turmol in a nightmare as well.
That was giving me some substance of financial income, but
it just wasn't enough. And it's on New York City
is expensive right now, you know, I have my own
apartment now. The money that I saved up, I got
(46:36):
an apartment right now. But it's still very difficult. And
I left that job and I'm looking for another job now,
you know again, you would think that, you know, there
would be some type of network organization or a system
say okay, you know what you did twenty five years
for a crime you didn't commit. We're gonna help you here,
get back on your feet. That doesn't exist for exonorees.
(46:56):
It's just not out there, so it even makes it
more difficult. Cool, we'll talk offline about that. I may
have some ideas, but before we have to sign off,
I always like to ask the featured guests, honored guests,
if there's any last thoughts that you want to share
with the audience, get off your chest, anything at all,
(47:17):
you know, I would say that, Um, if there were
cameras all over every priest in in New York, inside
every room, because that needs to be implemented. Cameras need
to be placed in every room in the police priest
inct because it's so easy to take someone and put
him in another room when there's not a camera and
(47:38):
still beat him up and then bring him into the
interrogation where the cameras that so he can make that
false confession. So, now that we have this law passed,
anybody out there listening, anybody that wants to help this
be prevented and has the power to do so. Needs
to put these politics to the side. They need to
(47:59):
start thinking about human beings lives here, because if that
camera was there twenty five years ago, I would have
never spent twenty five years in prison. And don't stop believing,
don't stop believing. I know there's a lot of people
out there that are believers or call themselves believers, but
I would say this. A believer to me is someone that, um,
(48:23):
when you know nothing is out there, there's no way
you can prove your innocence, and you write so many
letters and you're getting all the rejection letters like I was.
You know, most people were just stopped. Most people were
just that's sick, give up. It takes somebody to wake
up morning after morning and keep on going at it,
(48:44):
to see it there when you don't even see it there,
and then to finally receive your innocence. To me, that's
a believer. So I just want to share that with
everybody and say, don't stop believing. And that's the believers
that we need out there in society today to keep
on encouraging helping with this cause here of innocent people
in prison that are still in there and with false confessions.
(49:07):
I guess it's like I say, you've seen too many
miracles to stop believing in miracles too, and you are
a miracle. Last question, are you on any social media?
You could go on my Facebook page it's Johnny in
cop j O H and N Y H I N
C A p I E. And on Instagram on Johnny
in Coopia dot seventy two follow him, learn more, get involved.
(49:32):
We need your help. Let's make sure we minimize the
future wrongful convictions. Don't forget to give us a fantastic
review wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps. And
I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I
(49:52):
really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important
cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to
Innocence Project don't Org to learn how to donate and
get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
Hall and Kevin Awardis. The music in the show is
by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure
to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on
(50:14):
Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam
is a production of Lava for Good podcasts in association
with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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