July 3, 2017 • 50 mins
Daniel Tapia was arrested on April 12th, 2003 for second-degree murder in the Calliope housing projects in New Orleans where he lived. He was accused of being the getaway driver and master mind in this murder. The only witness was a police officer who made conflicting statements and even was recorded stating that he was in pursuit of three black males who committed this crime. Despite being Caucasian, Daniel was arrested less than 10 minutes after the shooting occurred, along with three black males. He was wrongfully convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in 2005. Prior to his transfer to a state correctional facility, he barely survived Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding while he was locked up in Orleans Parish Prison. His conviction was overturned by a judge, reinstated by the higher court, and eventually overturned for good. Daniel Tapia was released in 2017 after serving 12 years and is now the Lead Mentor at Rising Foundation—an organization which provides pathways to self-sufficiency for formerly incarcerated people with an aim to stop the cycle of incarceration in low income communities in Louisiana—where he is able to pursue his passion of guiding other men and women in changing themselves, their communities, and the circumstances around them.
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Episode Transcript
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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, Dan,
You're going home. This is wrong for Conviction. Welcome back
(01:14):
to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam Today, we are recording
from New Orleans with a very special individual. My friend
Daniel Tapia is here today. Daniel, welcome to the show.
Thank you, thank you, thanks for having Well, let's start
with this. We're in New Orleans, which is the epicenter
of the problem with the criminal justice system in or
(01:34):
the world. Actually, America locks up more people per capita
than any place in the world, five times as many
people per capita as the rest of the Western world,
fourteen times as many as Japan, which is insane. Louisiana
locks up twice as many people per capita as the
rest of the United States, and New Orleans locks up
more people than any other county or city in Louisiana.
(01:59):
So overall, it's really not that shocking that somebody like
you could be wrongfully convicted in a place like this.
That happens way, it's often unfortunately, it's really troubling. Daniel
was forced to take a plea even though he's innocent,
because had he not done that, he'd probably be in
prison for the rest of his life. Is that fair?
(02:21):
Because the way things roll down here, and to be fair,
and most of the rest of the country, a huge
number of people are faced with the same sort of
Sophie's choice that you had, which is either plead guilty
and sort of have that scarlet letter, or try to
fight for your innocence and and run the risk of
the very likely scenario that you're gonna spend the rest
of your life in prison. So so let's go back
(02:42):
to your case. Because it's like something out of a movie.
It absolutely is. That's the only way I know it's
a bad movie. So walk us through that. What happened?
Where were you? How did you get caught up in this? Okay?
I used to live in the Callio projects in the Wads.
That's where this incident occurred. That so on the day
that it occurred, I was with a friend of mine.
(03:03):
Let me say this. I had just bought my first call.
I was a teenager. I was eighteen years old, just
bought my first call and basically all I was doing
was everybody I knew, all my friends, anybody, Hey, you
need to ride, Let's go to this place, Let's go
that place. You know, We're just were riding around everywhere,
typical of most teenagers when they buy their first vehicle,
you know, especially when you're the only one out of
your friends who has one. At the time. You know,
(03:25):
the data incident happened, I was outside talking to another
friend of mine, man, one of my friends, were getting
ready to leave, and he was like, well, y'all about
to go. I said, I'm gonna go past by my
girlfriend and then we're probably gonna go downtown, which was
you know, I lived uptown. So he said, alright, well
just drop me off on your way over there. So
I said, all right, So I dropped him off, and uh,
a friend of mine had recently been another guy that
(03:46):
I knew. He had recently been shot by another individual.
And you know, he was my friend who I was
dropping off. Was going to check on him because he
lived upstairs where I was dropping him off, fair in
the projects on the other side. So as I dropped
him off, he gets out, he goes in there. I
pulled off. I pulled up a way I was going to.
My girlfriend was probably approximately maybe two to three blocks away.
(04:07):
She lived in another driveway. And as I'm going that way,
I started hearing gunshots. And when I started hearing gunshots,
my friend, who was in the vehicle with me, he's like, man,
you know that's coming from where we just dropped off
my other two friends. So I look back. I can't
see anything because the way the buildings are you can't
see over to what's going on. All I hear is gunshots.
(04:28):
And then I started hearing gunshots getting rapid succession, like
semi automatic, you know, like an assault rifle. You can
you know the difference between assault rifle and a pistol
going off. I mean it's shot after shot, it's just
relentless shot after shot. At that time, probably less than
a minute later, my friend and his friend come running
and it's they're running, somebody's behind them shooting at them
(04:50):
with the assault rifle. Overe it sounds it was crazy. No,
it's real life. It's split second. You gotta make a decision.
What are you gonna do. So as he's running, he's
running towards me, and I see him, so I you know,
I'm looking. I get back in my car and he
comes running towards my car. Pull up, he jumps in
my car. I take off. I'm like, man, what happened?
He's like, man, just go, just go, just go. So
(05:12):
I know somebody's shooting at him. You know, I don't
know exactly what went on, but I see someone shooting
at him. Someone at YouTube. Now. Yeah, so there's no
time to sit around and think about what happened or
what might have happened. What's the right decision? Was not
the right decision, So I pull off and I pull
out of the driveway, and I mean less than maybe
two blocks. There's cops coming from everywhere. So I stopped.
(05:33):
I didn't do anything, you know, I stopped. I pull
over to the side of the road. And as I
pull over to the side of the road, they come
pulling up on us. So, you know, I put my
hands up, get out the car. Whatever. I know something happened,
but I don't know what happened. I know, you know,
there was a shooting going on. I don't know what
happened though. So we get out. They pull us all out,
They separate all of us, put us in different players.
Four of you, four of us, Yes, sir, there was
(05:54):
four of us. And this is where the story gets crazy.
This is where it starts not making sense at all.
Pretty crazy so far. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well I'm gonna just say, you know, this is when
the corruption starts. Let me put it like that. So
as we get stopped, we get pulled out. So I
don't know what the cops are telling the other guy.
But there's a black car that pulls, a black Cadillac
with tinted windows and rims in it, and the guy
(06:15):
pulls in front of gets out and he comes straight
to where I'm at and he comes back. Then he
opens the door and he tells me he's a police officer.
He just saw everything that happened, and he knows I
didn't have anything to do with it. But he needs
to know what's going on because it's the second murder
in the neighborhood within that week. There was someone who
was killed maybe a block away from where this incident happened,
about five days before that. The Callio Projects in New
(06:37):
Orleans is a lot of murders, a lot of stuff
going on. It's a really bad neighborhood to grow up
in the living. And so I told him, I said, look,
I don't know what happened. I don't know anything about
the shooting. I said, man, I was just over here
and I heard some shots. So he punched me. He
hit me. He said, you're trying to take up for him.
I said, look, well, look I want to talk to
a lawyer. Man. You know, I'm I ain't got nothing
else to say to y'all. Y'all sitting here punching on me,
(06:58):
saying I'm lying, I ain't got nothing to say. So
then he slams the door. So then one after one
cops start coming up to the car and they opened
the back door and they keep asking me what my
race is. I'm like, what my racist? What does that
have to do with anything? Why y'all keep why they
Why are these cops so interesting if I'm black or white?
And so I don't think anything of it. I'm just,
you know, whatever, They stupid cops. You know, I'm not
(07:20):
thinking anything. Well, the captain of the sixth District comes
and he tells me, because I want to take up
for them, he's gonna make sure I get the death
penalty went him after, you know alone whatever. We've been
sitting out there maybe two or three hours now. The
problem being that you don't actually know. I don't know
what happened. So even if you wanted to tell them that,
you certainly would not if you couldn't live in that
neighborhood exactly, but there was no snitching, you would have
(07:43):
to just make up a story out of the Yeah,
I really legitimately don't know what happened for for real,
because I couldn't see over that. I couldn't see what
was going on. But I know in my heart, I'm
like I didn't. I didn't have anything to do with this.
So I'm not even worrying about if I'm gonna go
to jail or if you know, because I'm like, I
didn't do anything. I stopped, y'all, I stopped, I got out.
I don't know, y'all. Tell y'all are telling me what happened.
(08:04):
I don't know what happened. Y'all are telling me that
somebody got shot and all this type of stuff. So
I go to jail, and they let the guy who
was with me, my friend who was they let him
go that same night, and I'm just thinking in my
head like this, this is crazy, you know, like what
what this is the guy who came running into the car. No,
this was another guy, the guy who was with me
(08:24):
at the time when the other guys came run into
the car. It was two guys who ran to the car,
and it was me and another friend of mine who
were in the car at the time already. And they
let him go, but they didn't let me go. So
I'm like, man, you know why they taking me and
and and and let him go. It's like, you know,
but I still don't know what's going on. I didn't
actually find out what was going when it actually happened
until when I was in jail, had been processed about
(08:47):
three days later. Because I didn't even see myself on
the news. I got a newspaper article from somebody. They
let me see the newspaper when I got up on
the tail I was going on and I read what
happened and I was like, what, holy shit, And then
start reading how they're trying to involve me in and
I'm like, man, that's not even what happened. But I mean,
what can I say? What can I do about it?
I'm in jail now, So the first thing I'm thinking is,
(09:08):
all right, this is gonna get played out in court.
You know, I'll go to court, it'll be over. You know,
they'll see Because the cops telling me he saw everything
that happened. He knows I didn't have anything to do
with it, and he told me because I'm he thinks
I'm trying to take up for them, that he's gonna
mess over me. But I'm like, this guy is really
gonna go through this and really come in here and
lying in court and say you know that I had
(09:29):
something to do with something I didn't, but he did
And what's crazy is that even as they played the
dispatch tape of him calling in the shooting that he
allegedly witnessed, it doesn't even line up with what he
testified to a court, Like it doesn't even make sense
because he called it and said it with three black
He called in and say it was three black males,
which obviously I have no melan and I don't have
(09:50):
a drop of it in my skin. That's all I can. Yeah,
that's it, you know, especially in that neighborhood. I'm one
of the only white people in that neighborhood period. Actually,
if he did witness the shooting, it would have been
really easy for him to identify. You just spotted me
a mile away. If I had something, would have been yeah,
that's the white guye from the name right exactly. And
you said it was three black males. But when you
(10:12):
stopped us, you stopped three black males and meat and
you let one of them go, which he didn't have
anything to do with it either. But it's just the
thought like where's all this going, Like how does this
even make sense to y'all to actually prosecute this. It
took over two years and I was eventually convicted a
second degree murder. Took two years for the trial to resolve.
So you were in jail for two years away to
(10:33):
go to trial, yes, sir, thinking I was gonna go
home and and I didn't. They convicted me, and it
was it was the most surreal feeling I ever felt
in my life. And the crime happened in two thousand
and three April eleven, two thousand three, And Hurricane Katrina
has a role in this whole crazy saga of your
life as well, definitely, So let's talk about that. Um So,
(10:55):
in August two thousand five, Hurricane Katrina comes through. So
in the day is leading up to Katrina, they basically
just it was like nothing was gonna happen, no big deal.
I'm looking at this giant storm coming our way, but
there's no preparations being made. They're not moving us out
of the line of fire. They're not taking us to
another prison up north or somethingwhere we're out of the
way of the storm and out of homes where they
(11:17):
just left us there. Friday, Hurricane katraina hitting Sunday. That Friday,
they turned the phones off inside the jail so nobody
can make a phone call. Outside to talk to their
family and thing like that. I'll let him know that
we were still in there. Which jail was it again?
Orleans Parish prison? And what does that look like? Is
it a tall building? Is it a flat? It's full
story is tall, So it's not tall at all, not
(11:38):
when you have hurricane, not at all, not at all.
And if you're on the first the second floor, if
you're on the first floor, you'd have been dead because
I was on the second floor and we were standing
in water. So let me just get this straight. Hurricane
Katriina is coming one of the biggest storms in the
history of this country. Didn't take anybody by surprise. Now,
(11:58):
everybody saw that thing that he's coming a mile away,
days away, just one time. The weather man actually got
it right. Yeah, yeah, they couldn't miss that one up.
So they decided that the appropriate response would be too
abandon you there because they want to go protect their
own asses and turn off the phones. That's exactly what
they did. So the storm comes, you were on the
(12:20):
second floor, was on the second floor, What was the vibe?
What was everybody saying and doing? I mean, like it
just just when you think things can't get worse. So
what happened was we were all on the tip and
of course, you know the power went out. When the
power goes out before the deputy is basically locked us
in there. Left we can see out the window onto
the fourth floor, which is the highest level inside of
(12:42):
the building. Up there, that's where the deputies have stationed
themselves at. They removed the inmates who are up there
on the fourth floor and put them at lower floors.
And they were up there and they had like some
of their family members and stuff in there up on
the fourth floor, and they were up there cooking, and
you know, you could see they had like a barbecue
it and they had all the food that was left
they took it up there with them. So they locked
(13:04):
us inside of our tears, which is your cell blocks
of your domes, and we had no food. Once the
storm comes, sure, we have no running water, we have
no clean water, we have nothing. We can barely even
breathe in there because it's stifling from the lack of
air and circulation going on inside there. And you've got
on the particular tie I was on, there's enough beds
for forty two people. We had about sixty four at
(13:27):
the time up there, and like I said, with with
nothing else, not even enough beds for everybody to being
obviously being in prison, you know, you you're around other
people who are maybe not so nice individuals and who
have different beefs and stuff from the street. And so
when the lights go out, nobody wants to be that guy,
because I mean you literally couldn't see your hand in
front of your face when the power was out in there.
(13:48):
So you had guys that started lighting fires inside of
there and stuff like that, and and there's no air,
there's no circulation, there's no windows, there's no anywhere for
this smoke to get out. So you got these idiots
who started a fire on the other side, and there's
smoke going all through the inside of the down where
we act. So we had to break windows in order
for the smoke to get out, just so we could
(14:10):
breathe and everybody didn suffocate up there. How did you
break a window? I mean, they have bars around them
and it's reinforced glass. But we had like a big
iron metal bar that goes across the shower, and we
ended up breaking that down out of the wall and
used that along with a broom and a mopstick that
was up there to just beat on the glass until
it put a hole in it. And once they put
(14:32):
a hole in it, we just chipped away at it
and broke it out. So the bars were still intact,
like we couldn't get out of the window, but the
glass itself was broken where we could. Air was able
to come in and go out, and saved everybody's life
right there, literally your painting a picture of literally the
worst imaginable scenario that anybody could be in. It's dark,
(14:54):
it's stifling heat, there's no air, no food, no food,
no water. The water and the storm coming in that
drets might kill you all. Well, by this time the
storm had passed when the popular lights and everything went off,
the storm had passed. Now with Hurricane can Train it
it wasn't the storm itself that caused the flooded. That's
why we were so lost, Because the storm came, the
(15:17):
wind came through, the rain came through, the power went out,
and then it passed and the sun was shining outside. Well,
all of a sudden, now we're seeing water just coming
up and up and up and up and up and up,
and we're looking out the wind and we're like man,
where's all this fucking water coming from? You know, it
just keeps pouring, raising up and up closer to where
we are, until eventually it's to the second floor where
we at. Well, at the time, the building where I
(15:38):
was at, we were right next to the coroner's office.
We didn't process this at the time because, you know,
you're just not thinking about what it could potentially be.
We look outside the winter and it's dead bodies floating
right right around the window right where we are, right
next to us. There's it was at least seven dead
bodies that were floating around out there. So we're like, man,
this fucking waters coming up. There's no guards, no help,
(16:01):
no food, no water, and we got dead bloodies floating
around in the window next to us. But they came
from the corner's office. Because the corner's office, which was
on the first floor, was completely submerged in water and
floated up. We didn't realize that until after everything was over.
We just in panicked. Now everybody's panicking. It's fucking waters
coming up. There's nobody here with us. We're locked inside
of here, literally can't get out. There's dead bodies floating
(16:23):
around the window next to us, and we don't even
know if anybody even knows we're here more or less
gonna come rescue us and get us out of here.
What happened to the people on the first floor, They
ha got moved. That was the one thing I give
them credit that they were smart enough to do, is
they moved the people off for the first floor. There's
a lot of rumors about some people were left down
(16:43):
there and stuff like that. I'll never know the truth
on that because some of the guys who were on
the first floor edge on the second floor with me
while I was at and they just moved them and
kind of separated them on different tiers. Like I said,
they took the guys who off the fourth floor and
put them down lower so that they can go station
themselves on the fourth floor and be at the highest point.
So there were actually cards there, but there they just
(17:05):
weren't coming there. Because so if I'm I'm going to
just make an assumption that they probably lived in houses
that they couldn't stay in, because you can't. New Orleans
is undersea level, and we all know, we've all seen
the pictures of what happened. So had they stayed home,
they probably would have been flooded out. They were using
this as a shelter building. Not sure the building is
(17:28):
built pretty well. It's it's that building is not going
and we're not going anywere no matter what storm comes.
So they had their family members. You can see their
family members were up there with them, like you saw kids,
you saw women who weren't officers and stuff like that.
We're all staying up there on the an emergency shelter.
So how long were you stuck in this situation? On
Friday is when everybody left. Sunday They left you there
(17:49):
outside and left us there on Sunday. Wednesday evening is
when we were finally we're taken out of there. And
so what did you drink? You didn't drink anything. You
didn't have anything to drink, certainly couldn't drink the water
you head, you had the sewage in it had dead
bodies floating around. So we were all severely dehydrated, I mean,
and the water was up to what was it up
(18:09):
to your ankles? Was it was about it our ankles,
It was about it our ankles. On the second floor.
When it finally stopped, it was almost a side of
relief because we didn't know if it was just gonna
keep coming up. And yeah, because we couldn't go anywhere,
and we tried. I mean, we ripped down the air
conditioned ventilation. There were bars in the wall, we ripped
the tilets out of the ground, there were bars in
(18:30):
the in the floor. We tried to chip through the show.
I mean, that place is a real fortress. Like you're
not getting out of there unless you're going through. The
guards were keys. So seventy two hours of sheer, terror, uncertainty, hunger, thirst. Absolutely,
you had guys started fighting. They had two guys had
a knife fight, just because everybody was so stressed out
(18:53):
and so on high red alert. Every little thing was
taking them off. I actually had taken a sheet and
rolled on it with a because we can hear the
helicopters flying around and see the helicopters flying around outside.
And like I said, we didn't even know if anybody
knew we were in there. So I had taking a
sheet and wrote on that you know people in here
and need help, and tried to hang it outside the
bars because you know, we're broken the glass, and tried
(19:14):
to hang it out there, and the officers started shooting
at us because we're sticking our hands out of the
balls trying to put a flag out there. They started
taking potshots apps. Okay, so there's another thing. So that
was that was That was the end of us trying
to send a flag. So now the idea is started
another fire because now we got the winners over. So
now you've got guys who don lit another fire and
uh throwing flames like little mattress on fire and there
(19:38):
sticking and hanging it out the bars to try and
get the attention of the helicopters going around trying to
just get anybody to come help us. It's taking me
(19:59):
a minute to proce says this. Okay, so now I'm
sure everybody else is listening and scratching their head like
I am and going what uh. Yeah, So you didn't drown.
It was a miracle and you you survived this ordeal
and ultimately you end up getting convicted of second agree
(20:21):
murder and since the life of prison. And you were
twenty years old at the time. I was twenty when
I was convicted. I was eighteen when I was arrested, right,
and you get sent to Angola. Yes, I mean it's
hard to say what the worst prison is in America.
But I think a lot of people who are knowledgeable
in this field would say that's a strong consideration. And
(20:43):
Gola is a plantation in the middle of nowhere in
Louisiana which is named Angola because it originally was a
slave plantation and the slaves that worked the fields there
were from Angola. And so it's certainly at the time
you were there, and I would say probably true to
this day, it still operates basically like a slave plantation,
(21:06):
exactly like the slave plantes. You know, it's so far
removed from sight, and people go there to die. It's
it's its own world. Most of the people, I think
I read some of the percent of people that go
there die there. So I mean, you've got all kinds
of people were talking about before they've been there. Since
the seventies eighties, you have about three average two and
a half to three people a month die and go right.
(21:30):
And I was told that during one particular flood, the
Army Corps of Engineers came down there and wanted to
build some damns or whatever, do some dig up some stuff,
and they wouldn't let him in because they had to
move some of the bodies that they had buried first
because they didn't want to, you know, because those people
didn't necessarily die of natural causes. So here you are,
in one of the worst places on earth and with
(21:54):
basically no hope of ever going home. One thing I
can say, though, is is that's one thing I can't say.
I never gave her my hope. I never gave up
my hope. I think when I was convicted and the
jury walked past me. When I was convicted, literally and
this is in my minutes, this is in my transcripts,
I told my judge judge came here Grevers, I told
(22:14):
her I'd rather have the death penalty than spend the
rest of my life and ain't going And I even
made a statement, I said, Yanna, all due respect, that
was exactly what I told I rather had a dependent,
I said, I'd rather y'all kill me. They sent me
up there to wait another fifty sixty years to die.
She just put her head down and kind of, you know,
motion to the bail left to get me out of
(22:35):
the court room. And they took me out of that
because I was just like, man, there's no wait. And
after that, probably that first night I was down on myself.
And then after that, I was like, man, I gotta
get out of here. This is crazy, this isn't fair,
but this is my life, and I gotta figure out
the way to get out of here. You know, it's
interesting you sit there and you say, well, I had hope,
(22:57):
but we're getting the chill thinking about it. But I
think most people would lose hope. Absolutely. It's it's nobody's
vouching for you at this point. Yeah, I'm on my own, man.
It's it's it's total mental gymnastics, because you want to
have hope and you want to believe that the right
thing is going to happen, and that these people are
gonna realize that they made a mistake and they're gonna
(23:19):
realize that you're innocent. But every day you're waking up
next to guys who've been in prison since before my
mother was born, before my mother was born. You know,
you've got guys that's been up there forty fifty some
of my years, right, and and some of them not
guilty in the first places. Some of them, like you said,
for minor crimes. I mean in Louisiana. Some of the things,
(23:40):
some of the stories that you hear, really just twist
your mind around. Yeah, the justice system here is just
I don't even know how to describe it. It's it's
very inhuman. It's it's it's all about winning and locking
people up. It's not about actual justice, it's not about
finding out the truth. There's there's more of a pursuit
of fiction so that people can say, look, I punished
(24:02):
this guy. I punished this guy. You know, we found it,
we solved it. And there's no in my opinion, real
thought too. You know, it's like they do that. They'll
give a guy a life sentence and go home and
eat spaghetti like it was nothing, you know, And I
think about that, man, maybe I really sent the wrong
person to prison for the rest of their life. But then,
this is another very interesting thing about your case, because
(24:26):
you ended up in a scenario where you found a way,
you found a crack, right, and talk about that and
how you ended up being here, your sentence to life
in prison. You're not supposed to be here right now. No, absolutely,
I'm not. After I was convicted, I think I've really
I fired my attorney who I had. I had another
attorney who was working on my appeal. The first thing
(24:48):
that her and I spoke about. I told her, I said, listen,
I know you probably don't believe I'm innocent. I don't
think my last lawyer believed I was innocent. I said,
but if you listen to what I'm gonna tell you,
and you help me investigate this like it should have
been investigated, I'll prove to you that I am. And
so she said, listen, it's not my job to figure
out if you're innocent or not. It's my job to
get you out. I said, all right, that might not
(25:10):
be a job, but it's important to me that you
know that I am. So I started talking to people
and doing my own kind of investigating and being I
guess you could call my own kind of jail house
lawyer and investigator, just finding out everything I can find
out about it, because there were just certain things that
didn't make sense about what the police officers said with
my case. For one, he said that he was there
to meet up with a confidential informant. My first thought is,
(25:34):
why would you go there to meet up with a
confidential informant Because everything that you knew about meet with
a confidential informat is that you want to keep it confidential.
You don't want people around to know. So if you're
meeting with a confidential informant in an area where there's
big time heroin being sailed and there's all kind of
people outside, if you're a copy gonna pull up and
pick this guy up and go sit down and have
(25:55):
a talk, why would you go there. Why wouldn't you
meet him anywhere else in the city that you can
meet him at. Why would you go right to the
dope set and meet up with an informant and sit
down and talk. That just doesn't make sense. So then
I told my turn that said, we need to find
out who that informant was, because that's a potential witness.
So we filed what was called the subpoena in deducers
tech them get the police officers confidence and informant list.
(26:15):
As soon as we filed that, they went crazy. They
did not want to turn that over, They did not
want to hand it up. I said, listen, I don't
even need to see it. I don't want to see
it for any reason. Just short to my lawyer, because
this is a potential witness. This is someone who they
must have been out there. Why aren't they named in
this as a witness. If this cop was sitting out
here and say he saw also all this stuff go on,
(26:37):
why isn't the informant who he was sitting out there
with a witness. Also, if this cop, We've poked holes
in his story so many times and so many things
about his story that don't make sense. He described me
as a black male. The way they made the scene
was I was there when the murder happened, almost like
I sent the guys to do it. I was out
there to make sure it went right and all this
type of stuff. Because the guy was shot with two
different guns. I didn't have any gunpowder residue on me.
(26:59):
There was only two guns that were found. Because that's,
you know, all it was. But then there was another
thing that came up that I saw in my police report.
Because this was a shootout, I didn't see it with
my own two eyes, but from what I've been told
by my co defending from other guys, it was a shootout.
You heard it, Yeah, you could hear all the shots
going on. This guy had. He was shot with a
forty five caliber gun and a thirty eight All around
(27:22):
his body exactly where he's laying. There were nine millimeter
casings all around his body. He wasn't shot with a
nine millimeter. He had a nine millimeter that he was
shooting at my co defenders with and they were shooting
at each other, and then someone else came and was
shooting at them with the assault rifle who was one
of his friends. This cop claims that this guy never
(27:43):
had a gun. It wasn't a shootout, it was a hit.
It was an execution, a broad day murder, all this
type of stuff that they try and make, you know,
try to tie it in the beat. But where did
these show cases come from? The Literally, if I'm standing
here shooting in the shell cases, that's where they fall
around where I'm shooting from the shell casings all around
white where he's at. But it's not from a gun
that he was shot with. It just didn't make sense.
(28:04):
So now we started investigating the where the gun could
have possibly been. But this happened in the middle of
the projects where there's a bunch of people outside, and
so of course nobody wants to come to court and
be the witness. But if there's a gun laying on
the ground, somebody's gonna pick it up. I'm I just
gonna leave it out there. So this is just some
of the things that didn't make sense about my case
that I think when the alternatives that I had started
looking into it, she started saying, Okay, maybe there's something here,
(28:25):
maybe this guy really is innocent. Then he comes to
my co defendant. He and I had the severance, which
means we got separate trials. He went to trial, he
was convicted. I want to trial. I was convicted, but
it was at separate times. When he found out I
had been convicted, he sent a letter to my mother,
who turned it over to my attorney and told her that,
you know, listen, I just don't feel right with this Dan.
(28:47):
He didn't have anything to do with this. He wasn't
even there when it happened. He didn't even know me
and this guy were beef, and he had no idea
any of this could have went on. He's literally just
was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I
can't live with imagining him doing the rest of his
life in prison and knowing that he didn't even have
anything to do with this. So my attorney presents it
to the judge they called my co defending, and he
gets understand testified tells him exactly what I just said,
(29:09):
that I didn't have anything to do with it. It
was him and the other guy that got into a
shoot out with the guy. I didn't know that they
were even beefing with this guy more or less because
I had just literally I was with another friend and
he walked up to me and then just like, oh,
you're going that way and let me get a ride.
I'm not thinking anything of it always, and I've been
giving everybody a ride, you know. I just bought my
first call. So he testifies that judge orders me a
(29:32):
new trial. She vacates my conviction, orders me a new
trial because she presided over my case, you know, and
this is a judge and commere bureaus, you're gonna do
the research. She doesn't overturn convictions. If a jury finds
you guilty, you gotta take that up with the appellate calls.
She is not big on granted post conviction relief. She's
very conservative. I have nothing negative to say about her,
(29:53):
but she's a very conservative judge and she takes jury
convictions very seriously. She vacates my viction. The district attorney
at the time appeals it to the appellate court. The
appellate court overturns her and reinstates my conviction. So now
I went from life sentence, no life sentence, life sentence again.
So you want to talk about mental gymnastics and trying
(30:15):
to keep your mind right, you know, trying to stay focused.
I'm literally being twisted and pulled upside down. I got
my hopes up. Now my conviction has been overturned. It
looks like I'm going home. He came in and told
him it was him, It wasn't me. I gotta be
about to go home now, right, Yeah, no, no, they
overturned it. They say I should have got him to
testify before I went to trial or at my trial.
(30:36):
I didn't practice due diligence, so therefore it doesn't count. Right.
That's sort of like how they used to be these laws,
Like in Virginia, there was a twenty one day rule,
you know, like that, which basually meant that after twenty
two days, if the dead guy walked in the courtroom
and was like, hey, wait a minute, you guys made
a mistake. I'm still alive, it didn't matter because you're
(30:56):
too late. So that's basically what they were saying they
wanted you to be basically Clarence Darrow, you know, and
Colombo baxed up in one and produce a witness before
the trial, right when he was still hoping that he
was going to exact it. I mean, who who can
he's hoping that he's going to get out to How
How am I gonna know that he's going to testify
and get up there and tell him that I didn't
have anything to do with it? I mean, what what
(31:18):
what co defendant? That doesn't happen very often. It was me,
it wasn't him, Yeah, especially when it's the rest of
his life in prison that he's facing for saying that exactly.
I mean, friends are friends. But that's that's a little much.
So on a technicality, they said to you, we don't
really give a fun go spend the rest of your
life in prison anyway, and next time this happens to you,
(31:41):
make sure you get to us a little bit earlier, basically, right,
So now you've got that, So then what happens? So
because you're here? Yeah yeah, yeah, So I appealed it
to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court, the NAMI, so
my conviction is reinstated. So this is the craziest story
I'm about to tell you, Jason. And I don't know
if you're a spiritual person. I don't know if anybody
listeners spiritual person. But this is honest to God, exactly
(32:03):
what happened. And the tattoo on my right arm right
here that you're looking at CODA Criminal Procedure Article eight
fifty one point five with the angel wings. That's my angel.
That was my sent from guy right there. I'm in prison.
I'm in the hole for a knife fight. I had
a fight with a guy who pulled a knife out
on man stabbing. So I'm in a hole in a
cell by myself. Get the letter from the Supreme Court
(32:26):
saying that basically, you're fucked. We've reviewed it. We felt
that the Appellate Corps made the right decision. You didn't
practice due diligence, your convictions reinstated. You gotta go spend
the rest of your life in prison. That's basically what
they told upon getting that letter. I'm in a hole.
I have nothing, I have no books, i have no
none of my legal work with me. I'm just in
there basically with myself and in a cell. And I
(32:49):
got down on my knees and I started praying, and
I said, God, I don't know what you're trying to
get out of me. I don't know if you're real.
I don't know if you're listening to me. I don't
know anything. All I know is I don't know how
much longer I can make it like this because I
did everything I could do. You know, my heart, you
know I didn't do this. You know I didn't have
anything to do with this. I need some help, please.
(33:13):
As I'm on my knees praying that I had read
this auto called the law before. Just you know, when
you're in jail, that's one of the things you do,
especially mere trying to work on your case, you read
all kinds of stuff and the law and stuff like that.
But I didn't have a law book in front of me.
But for some reason, this just kept just kept replaying
in my mind over and over again. And I'm not
trying to sound like because I'm not some super holy
(33:33):
religious person anything like that. I believe in God. I
believe in spiritual life and stuff. But man, I'm you know,
far from a preacher or anything like that. But I'm
telling you I believe in my whole heart. That was
guy speaking to me in my head about this auticule
a law right here. So I go to court for
my hearing to put everything on the record to stay,
you know, basically on the record what the Supreme Court
(33:53):
has said. And they're ruling and they're gonna reinstate my
conviction and sent me back to Angola for the rest
of my life. As I go in there, my attorney
I bring it up to her. I said, you know,
are you familiar with couta criminal procedure Article eight fifty
one five And she's like, no, not really. And this
is a woman who's been an attorney for over twenty
five years. At the time, she was not only an
assistant district attorney who prosecuted people. Then she went and
(34:15):
she was an attorney, a defense attorney, worked all kind
of federal cases. Lord White, she's a she's now chief
judge of criminal Court. She knows a ship, she knows
the law. She wasn't familiar with it. She said, tell
me what it says. And your education at this point
was what eighth grade. I had a g D. Okay, okay,
(34:35):
bring it. I bring it to it and she's like, well,
I mean all she could do is say, I mean, what,
they're gonna give your life anyway, there's nothing else they
can do. We might as well try it. So I said, yeah,
just go up to and talk to her and see
what she'll do. So she has to tell the assistant
district attorney that she's going to go to the judge
and ask for continuing so that she can file a
(34:56):
formal motion based upon this auto called the law. The
prosecutor at the time turns and looks at me when
she says it. She turned and looked at me in
my face and started laughing in my face, basically trying
to make me feel like, you idiot, What do you
know about the law? You know, because I guess she
had told you know, my client wants me to raise
this issue. What or whatever. She goes up there and
talks to the judge. The judge says, you know what,
(35:16):
I want to hear more about that that sounds intriguing.
Grants me a continuance. We filed the motion. The state
opposes at YadA YadA, YadA, we go back. We rule,
she grants me another new trial. A judge who I
can't name. One other person she's granted a new trial
for grants me a second new trial, this time based
upon this auto called a law right here. So now
as bad as I want to get my hopes up,
(35:38):
like okay, this might really be it, I'm thinking, you
know what, I went through this before and then this
a pellet court shot me down and they reinstated it.
Let me see how this is gonna play out. Goes
back in front the same Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
What happens. They uphold it. They say, yes, you have
to give him a new trial. They appealed to the
same Supreme Court that I've held it before and that
(36:00):
I had to go do life. The Supreme Court comes
back and says, we uphold it, you have to grant
him a new trial. So they finally grant me a
new trial. So I get a new trial, and I'm thinking,
all right, this is it. You know, I got a
new trial. My co defendant confessed said I didn't have
anything to do with it. They gotta be about to
let me go home now, right. This is two thousand
(36:20):
and eight, by the way, people are listening to the show. No,
I've never heard this quiet for this long. But I'm
just sitting here, like my eyes blazed over like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So and you can read about this. This is fact.
This is on my docket master. You can read about this.
So they change the prosecutors on my case because that's
what they do every so often. So I get two
new prosecutors on my case, one of whom as I'm
(36:44):
in one of my hearings, because they're saying they're gonna
take me to trial again. This is after my appeal
has been granted. I get a new trial. They still
won't just drop it. They're saying they have you know,
they might bring me to trial. They deciding what they're
gonna do. So I'm sitting in prison all the time waiting.
She goes to my mother and tells my mother, ma'am,
I know you've been through a lot with this. We're
gonna drop him. The worst that might happen is we're
(37:05):
gonna give him credit for time serve and he pleads
to all that's a charge and we'll let him out.
Tells that to my mother the district attorney, not my
lawyer or not someone who works for the state. The
lady who's prosecuting me, goes and tells that to my mother.
This is in September two tho eight, when I'm about
to go to court. So I'm like, this is it,
you know what I'm going I'm about to get out.
The day before I'm about to go to court for that,
(37:26):
I'm on my tear in my cell. Right at the time,
I was what's called a tear rep in the prison,
which is basically I'm in charge of, you know, stuff
on the tear making sure everything goes right. They had
two officers that came down there. They had a guy
that yelled something out the gate. And I had been
talking to one of the officers because he used to
work in my court section, and he's asking me what's
going on my case, and so I'm telling like, yeah, man,
(37:47):
I'm about to get out. I go to court tomorrow.
They're saying they're gonna drop and give me credit for
time serving. I'm about to go home. Well, the other
officer to hears them saying that, he comes over there
and calls for me to come back there. Asked me
who was the guy who just yells they're honesome? Man?
I don't know. You know, you don't tell on people,
you know, that's just that's just a rule. Yeah, that's
just you know, you're not supposed to tell on another man.
So he takes me out. They bring me in the
(38:08):
closet and locked me in. Now, beat the dogs ship
out of me, says I know you're supposed to go
home tomorrow. I want you to hit me back so
I can read book you. I'm gonna make sure you're
never going home. In my mind, I'm feeling like this
is my test. I'm like, you know what I said,
I don't even want to hit you. You're not even
worth it. I said, you don't even hit hard enough
to make me hit you. All I want is my freedom.
(38:28):
I don't care what you do to me. I'm going
home tomorrow. Beat the dogs sh out of me. It's
in my medical you know they sent me to medical whatever.
I didn't have any right up. I didn't even do
anything wrong. They just did it because they thought I
was about to get out and they were trying to
get me to get another charge. I go to court
the next day. They changed prosecutors again, and this time
the one that comes on my case says, no deals,
we're taking him to trial again. So now how I
(38:51):
got my hearts up again? September two and now I'm
just like, but I'm like, I can't give up because
I feel like, I know this conviction didn't get over
turn for nothing. So in my mind, I'm like, all right, well,
we're gonna go to trial, and I'm gonna call my
code defendant and understand this time he's gonna come testify
in front the jury. And they got the same police
(39:12):
officer who's saying he's gonna, you know, he's gonna testify
and say what he saw. So I'm getting ready preparations
to go to trial again. I was supposed to go
to trial. November two thousand and eight, two days before
I'm supposed to go to trial, I have a meet
with my attorney. She's literally in tears begging me to
(39:33):
take a police barking, and I'm telling them, you know, man,
I just, I just I don't want to give up.
You know. I feel like we fought all this, you know,
we got it going. I'm innocent. She's like, I know
you're innocent. Thing. She's like, but I'm telling you right now,
it's your word and your friend's word against a cop,
and I don't believe that they're gonna believe y'all. She's
like listen, I've been doing this a long time. She's like,
I'm just telling you. I have it's in it's a
(39:54):
gut instinct. I have them. And she's like, if you
go to trial again, I think you're gonna get convicted again.
She's like, you need to take this, please, please take
this plea. So I thought about it. I thought about it.
I fought with it. I said, all right, I'll take
the police. The police balling they offered me. Was I
plead guilty to manslaughter? Right? They put a cap on
it in fifteen years and leave it up to my
judge to sentence me, to say, you know what she's
(40:17):
gonna sentence me to. They're gonna do a presentence investigation,
you know, looking to my background, looking to my house,
and you know, talk to me. The probation people come
talk to me all this and leave it up to
the judge who was giving me two new trials on
what she's gonna give me. Somethinking. Okay, you know, I
should be all right, I should at least get out
on this right go to court. When I go to
(40:37):
court from my sentence and they have a man in that,
who are they're saying, is that the guy who was killed.
They're saying it was his father. I'm gonna tell you
about this. This is crazy. I still to this day
don't believe this was this guy's dad. Yeah, they don't
have the same name. I don't even believe he could
tell you what the guy looks like. You put him
on the stand. He gets up there and says, I've
(40:58):
had two heart attacks and the strokes as my and died.
The family can't get over it. Were so hurt, heartbroken.
He needs to be in prison for the rest of
his life. Why are y'all considering lettin him out? He
didn't say we really miss convicted murdering, major heroin dealing. Yeah,
they didn't say that. He made it sound like it
(41:18):
was a choir boy exactly. So my attorney says, well, sir,
all due respect to you and your family, all due
respect to what y'all lost. Your son was convicted of manslaughter. Also,
he served six years. You felt like that was an
adequate sentence for him. Why are you so opposed to
this man getting the same amount of time for the
time that your son did for the same crime. My
(41:40):
son's never been a jail before in his life. Everybody
looks even a d a looks like they're They're like, oh,
ship were busted. My son's never been a jail before.
I don't know what you're talking about. You don't know
your son was in prison for six years. You don't
know your son was arrested for murder. Do you know
who they're even talking about right now? Who the funk
are you? Dude? What are you even doing here? So
the judge gets mad. She said, you know what, We're
(42:01):
not gonna go through this line of question. Your badger
and his witness, they stayed objects to it. They say,
you don't have to answer that, sir, And he's adamant.
My son was never in jail. My son was never
in jail. It was some crackhead looking dude off the street.
I don't know if they told him that I killed
his son and it was somebody else. I don't know
if he was just an actor. I don't know what
the story was. But this didn't make any fucking sense. Wow,
(42:24):
he gets off the stand. The judges mad. She gives
me fifteen years. So now, even the parole officer who
came and talked to me, who did the PRECINSE investigation,
told me his recommendation was no more than ten years,
but he didn't feel like it was necessary to keep
me in any longer. He wouldn't have a problem with
me getting credit for time sir getting out. Not only
did she disregard that, now I gotta go do another
(42:46):
seven years in prison before I can get out. This story,
ladies and gentlemen, is I don't even know what to say.
I don't have the right words. You know. One of
(43:09):
the reasons that I really wanted to have you on
the show is that we are in the midst of
a lot of different crises in the criminal justice system
in America right now, but one of them is something
called the guilty plea problem. And people don't realize that
(43:29):
of the felony convictions in the United States are obtained
through guilty pleae on a much more mundane level, on
much lesser crimes and dealing with lesser sentences every day,
all day in all these courts in the country, tens
of thousands of people every day our face with the
same problem that you had, which is their attorney. And
here in New Orleans we know that last year there
(43:51):
were fifty two public defenders who dealt with twenty cases
do the math. So a lot of those public defenders
who are underpaid, overworked, that's madness, that's that's anarchy. So
these people who are doing something that I could only
say is noble, are out there every day having to
(44:13):
meet with their clients, sometimes for the first time on
the day of their trial and say to them to
the next Daniel, listen, the best thing for you to
do is plea guilty. And that person, that kid is
going but I'm innocent. They're going, I know, but they're
gonna throw the book at you. And so we are
filling the prisons and jails with people who are innocent
(44:35):
because of the fact that are our public defender system
is broken as well as the rest of the system.
The scales of justice are so tilted in the favor
of the prosecution. You were playing actually the highest stakes
game of poker that anybody ever played, other than the
death sentence, because you have to either put all your
(44:56):
cars on the table and and literally bet your life,
literally back your life, and you would be betting against
a dealer that you know cheats. Yeah, absolutely, you know
they're hiding cards and there's nothing I can do about
them cheating. And this was your last year. And that's
what the attorneys tell you. They told it to me,
and I've heard I hear him say it all the
time because I work at criminal court. Now, It's like,
do you want to take a chance with the rest
(45:17):
of your life? Yeah, you may be innocent, you might
not have done this crime, but look at what you're
facing if this jury doesn't happen to believe you, if
they win, this is what you're gonna have. So do
you want to take that chance and think you're gonna win?
Or do you want to take this lesser of two
evils and at least know that you're getting out one
day or know what your fate is going to be
(45:37):
because the work you're doing now it's fantastic. Tell us
about that. All right, Well, it's kind of twofold. I
work for a criminal court now, actually, ironically, the same
criminal court where I was convicted of second agree murder,
which in Louisiana is a mandatory life sentence, mandatory life,
mandatory life. And that's our first degree murder. No, no, no no, sir,
that second degree second degree. I am now the one
(45:59):
of the case managers for a re entry program, which
is a program that was instituted by Judge Lloyd White.
It's an alternative to a long term incarceration for drug
offenders and people who you know have been convicted maybe
a few times for selling drugs, burglary, stuff like that.
As of now, the program has no quote unquote violent
offenders in it. These guys in Louisiana. There are men
(46:21):
right now in Louisiana State Penitential who've been there since
the seventies and the eighties for heroin, drugs, just drugs, violence,
no violence, nothing, none whatsoever. And most of them is
very small amounts of drugs, less than a Graham, less
than announced. I really admire the work that you're doing.
Thank you, and it's it's really typical of the axon
areas that have been on the show and the group
(46:43):
of Axonaries Exonary nation at large, that you are devoting
yourself to helping other people. So interesting that the group
of people that you could say are the most wronged
by society of anyone are the ones who are contributing
almost more to society as a group than any other group.
And now you have to wear that scarlet letter. You're
(47:05):
not technically an exonoree even though you're innocent. And in
the DNA exoneration plea cases, the alternate perpetrator was identified,
So you had somebody who pleaded guilty and was proven
innocent and the actual perpetrator was later identified. So there's
in case there was ever any doubt about the depth
(47:27):
of the problem, the serious of the problem, and about
the fact that it happens. There you go and in
your case, it's it's actually that's sort of a similar
case too, even tho it's not a DNA case, but
the actual perpetrator was right there going, hey, look at me,
I'm the guy. I mean, that would seem to be
pretty strong evidence for any court to look at. But
you know, look, the fact is you're here. You somehow
(47:48):
or other survived. Let's let's just let's just look back
at this for a second. Of what we've discussed over
the last hour. You survived a shootout, corrupt system that
wanted to put you away for the rest of your life,
or something that they knew that you didn't do, a hurricane,
a flood, almost being roasted to death, almost dying of
smoke inhalation, being shot at, being stabbed, being beaten. Did
(48:12):
we mention almost dying of thirst. I think we left
that one out. Then you survived the worst prison in
the worst criminal justice system in the western world, and
another series of trials that were rigged against you within
eighth grade education, just to sum up one more time,
(48:33):
and then from somewhere in the depths of your consciousness
or subconscious you pulled an obscure legal doctrine right statute
that I've never heard of. That I would bet if
we went to Stanford Law School right now and whip
(48:54):
that out, they'd be like, everybody be scrambled for their textbooks,
like what and you manage to get yourself free? What
the hell? Can I say? You have all my respect,
and I think it's incredible that you're here sharing the story.
And I think there's a lot more that we have
to do together because there's a lot of messages here.
It's gonna take me a while to process this. All
(49:15):
I can do now is ask you, is there any
final thought that you would like to share with the
audience before we sign off? I guess you know. My
my biggest thing that I tell people ever, did you
never know what you can deal with until you don't
have a choice, no matter what's going on in your life.
You know, whether you're listening to this and you're dealing
with cancer, are you're dealing with incarceration, Are you're dealing
with the loss of someone, Are you're dealing with, you know,
(49:37):
a loss of a job, or just anything in your
life that seems like it's insurmountable. If you still have
breath in your body, you can still fighting and you
can still win. Don't give up on yourself, 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
(49:59):
Innocence for Project, and I really hope you'll join me
in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent
future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to
learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to
thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The
music on the show is by three time OSCAR nominated
composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
(50:21):
at Wrongful Conviction and on 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, Dan,
You're going home. This is wrong for Conviction. Welcome back
(01:14):
to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam Today, we are recording
from New Orleans with a very special individual. My friend
Daniel Tapia is here today. Daniel, welcome to the show.
Thank you, thank you, thanks for having Well, let's start
with this. We're in New Orleans, which is the epicenter
of the problem with the criminal justice system in or
(01:34):
the world. Actually, America locks up more people per capita
than any place in the world, five times as many
people per capita as the rest of the Western world,
fourteen times as many as Japan, which is insane. Louisiana
locks up twice as many people per capita as the
rest of the United States, and New Orleans locks up
more people than any other county or city in Louisiana.
(01:59):
So overall, it's really not that shocking that somebody like
you could be wrongfully convicted in a place like this.
That happens way, it's often unfortunately, it's really troubling. Daniel
was forced to take a plea even though he's innocent,
because had he not done that, he'd probably be in
prison for the rest of his life. Is that fair?
(02:21):
Because the way things roll down here, and to be fair,
and most of the rest of the country, a huge
number of people are faced with the same sort of
Sophie's choice that you had, which is either plead guilty
and sort of have that scarlet letter, or try to
fight for your innocence and and run the risk of
the very likely scenario that you're gonna spend the rest
of your life in prison. So so let's go back
(02:42):
to your case. Because it's like something out of a movie.
It absolutely is. That's the only way I know it's
a bad movie. So walk us through that. What happened?
Where were you? How did you get caught up in this? Okay?
I used to live in the Callio projects in the Wads.
That's where this incident occurred. That so on the day
that it occurred, I was with a friend of mine.
(03:03):
Let me say this. I had just bought my first call.
I was a teenager. I was eighteen years old, just
bought my first call and basically all I was doing
was everybody I knew, all my friends, anybody, Hey, you
need to ride, Let's go to this place, Let's go
that place. You know, We're just were riding around everywhere,
typical of most teenagers when they buy their first vehicle,
you know, especially when you're the only one out of
your friends who has one. At the time. You know,
(03:25):
the data incident happened, I was outside talking to another
friend of mine, man, one of my friends, were getting
ready to leave, and he was like, well, y'all about
to go. I said, I'm gonna go past by my
girlfriend and then we're probably gonna go downtown, which was
you know, I lived uptown. So he said, alright, well
just drop me off on your way over there. So
I said, all right, So I dropped him off, and uh,
a friend of mine had recently been another guy that
(03:46):
I knew. He had recently been shot by another individual.
And you know, he was my friend who I was
dropping off. Was going to check on him because he
lived upstairs where I was dropping him off, fair in
the projects on the other side. So as I dropped
him off, he gets out, he goes in there. I
pulled off. I pulled up a way I was going to.
My girlfriend was probably approximately maybe two to three blocks away.
(04:07):
She lived in another driveway. And as I'm going that way,
I started hearing gunshots. And when I started hearing gunshots,
my friend, who was in the vehicle with me, he's like, man,
you know that's coming from where we just dropped off
my other two friends. So I look back. I can't
see anything because the way the buildings are you can't
see over to what's going on. All I hear is gunshots.
(04:28):
And then I started hearing gunshots getting rapid succession, like
semi automatic, you know, like an assault rifle. You can
you know the difference between assault rifle and a pistol
going off. I mean it's shot after shot, it's just
relentless shot after shot. At that time, probably less than
a minute later, my friend and his friend come running
and it's they're running, somebody's behind them shooting at them
(04:50):
with the assault rifle. Overe it sounds it was crazy. No,
it's real life. It's split second. You gotta make a decision.
What are you gonna do. So as he's running, he's
running towards me, and I see him, so I you know,
I'm looking. I get back in my car and he
comes running towards my car. Pull up, he jumps in
my car. I take off. I'm like, man, what happened?
He's like, man, just go, just go, just go. So
(05:12):
I know somebody's shooting at him. You know, I don't
know exactly what went on, but I see someone shooting
at him. Someone at YouTube. Now. Yeah, so there's no
time to sit around and think about what happened or
what might have happened. What's the right decision? Was not
the right decision, So I pull off and I pull
out of the driveway, and I mean less than maybe
two blocks. There's cops coming from everywhere. So I stopped.
(05:33):
I didn't do anything, you know, I stopped. I pull
over to the side of the road. And as I
pull over to the side of the road, they come
pulling up on us. So, you know, I put my
hands up, get out the car. Whatever. I know something happened,
but I don't know what happened. I know, you know,
there was a shooting going on. I don't know what
happened though. So we get out. They pull us all out,
They separate all of us, put us in different players.
Four of you, four of us, Yes, sir, there was
(05:54):
four of us. And this is where the story gets crazy.
This is where it starts not making sense at all.
Pretty crazy so far. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well I'm gonna just say, you know, this is when
the corruption starts. Let me put it like that. So
as we get stopped, we get pulled out. So I
don't know what the cops are telling the other guy.
But there's a black car that pulls, a black Cadillac
with tinted windows and rims in it, and the guy
(06:15):
pulls in front of gets out and he comes straight
to where I'm at and he comes back. Then he
opens the door and he tells me he's a police officer.
He just saw everything that happened, and he knows I
didn't have anything to do with it. But he needs
to know what's going on because it's the second murder
in the neighborhood within that week. There was someone who
was killed maybe a block away from where this incident happened,
about five days before that. The Callio Projects in New
(06:37):
Orleans is a lot of murders, a lot of stuff
going on. It's a really bad neighborhood to grow up
in the living. And so I told him, I said, look,
I don't know what happened. I don't know anything about
the shooting. I said, man, I was just over here
and I heard some shots. So he punched me. He
hit me. He said, you're trying to take up for him.
I said, look, well, look I want to talk to
a lawyer. Man. You know, I'm I ain't got nothing
else to say to y'all. Y'all sitting here punching on me,
(06:58):
saying I'm lying, I ain't got nothing to say. So
then he slams the door. So then one after one
cops start coming up to the car and they opened
the back door and they keep asking me what my
race is. I'm like, what my racist? What does that
have to do with anything? Why y'all keep why they
Why are these cops so interesting if I'm black or white?
And so I don't think anything of it. I'm just,
you know, whatever, They stupid cops. You know, I'm not
(07:20):
thinking anything. Well, the captain of the sixth District comes
and he tells me, because I want to take up
for them, he's gonna make sure I get the death
penalty went him after, you know alone whatever. We've been
sitting out there maybe two or three hours now. The
problem being that you don't actually know. I don't know
what happened. So even if you wanted to tell them that,
you certainly would not if you couldn't live in that
neighborhood exactly, but there was no snitching, you would have
(07:43):
to just make up a story out of the Yeah,
I really legitimately don't know what happened for for real,
because I couldn't see over that. I couldn't see what
was going on. But I know in my heart, I'm
like I didn't. I didn't have anything to do with this.
So I'm not even worrying about if I'm gonna go
to jail or if you know, because I'm like, I
didn't do anything. I stopped, y'all, I stopped, I got out.
I don't know, y'all. Tell y'all are telling me what happened.
(08:04):
I don't know what happened. Y'all are telling me that
somebody got shot and all this type of stuff. So
I go to jail, and they let the guy who
was with me, my friend who was they let him
go that same night, and I'm just thinking in my
head like this, this is crazy, you know, like what
what this is the guy who came running into the car. No,
this was another guy, the guy who was with me
(08:24):
at the time when the other guys came run into
the car. It was two guys who ran to the car,
and it was me and another friend of mine who
were in the car at the time already. And they
let him go, but they didn't let me go. So
I'm like, man, you know why they taking me and
and and and let him go. It's like, you know,
but I still don't know what's going on. I didn't
actually find out what was going when it actually happened
until when I was in jail, had been processed about
(08:47):
three days later. Because I didn't even see myself on
the news. I got a newspaper article from somebody. They
let me see the newspaper when I got up on
the tail I was going on and I read what
happened and I was like, what, holy shit, And then
start reading how they're trying to involve me in and
I'm like, man, that's not even what happened. But I mean,
what can I say? What can I do about it?
I'm in jail now, So the first thing I'm thinking is,
(09:08):
all right, this is gonna get played out in court.
You know, I'll go to court, it'll be over. You know,
they'll see Because the cops telling me he saw everything
that happened. He knows I didn't have anything to do
with it, and he told me because I'm he thinks
I'm trying to take up for them, that he's gonna
mess over me. But I'm like, this guy is really
gonna go through this and really come in here and
lying in court and say you know that I had
(09:29):
something to do with something I didn't, but he did
And what's crazy is that even as they played the
dispatch tape of him calling in the shooting that he
allegedly witnessed, it doesn't even line up with what he
testified to a court, Like it doesn't even make sense
because he called it and said it with three black
He called in and say it was three black males,
which obviously I have no melan and I don't have
(09:50):
a drop of it in my skin. That's all I can. Yeah,
that's it, you know, especially in that neighborhood. I'm one
of the only white people in that neighborhood period. Actually,
if he did witness the shooting, it would have been
really easy for him to identify. You just spotted me
a mile away. If I had something, would have been yeah,
that's the white guye from the name right exactly. And
you said it was three black males. But when you
(10:12):
stopped us, you stopped three black males and meat and
you let one of them go, which he didn't have
anything to do with it either. But it's just the
thought like where's all this going, Like how does this
even make sense to y'all to actually prosecute this. It
took over two years and I was eventually convicted a
second degree murder. Took two years for the trial to resolve.
So you were in jail for two years away to
(10:33):
go to trial, yes, sir, thinking I was gonna go
home and and I didn't. They convicted me, and it
was it was the most surreal feeling I ever felt
in my life. And the crime happened in two thousand
and three April eleven, two thousand three, And Hurricane Katrina
has a role in this whole crazy saga of your
life as well, definitely, So let's talk about that. Um So,
(10:55):
in August two thousand five, Hurricane Katrina comes through. So
in the day is leading up to Katrina, they basically
just it was like nothing was gonna happen, no big deal.
I'm looking at this giant storm coming our way, but
there's no preparations being made. They're not moving us out
of the line of fire. They're not taking us to
another prison up north or somethingwhere we're out of the
way of the storm and out of homes where they
(11:17):
just left us there. Friday, Hurricane katraina hitting Sunday. That Friday,
they turned the phones off inside the jail so nobody
can make a phone call. Outside to talk to their
family and thing like that. I'll let him know that
we were still in there. Which jail was it again?
Orleans Parish prison? And what does that look like? Is
it a tall building? Is it a flat? It's full
story is tall, So it's not tall at all, not
(11:38):
when you have hurricane, not at all, not at all.
And if you're on the first the second floor, if
you're on the first floor, you'd have been dead because
I was on the second floor and we were standing
in water. So let me just get this straight. Hurricane
Katriina is coming one of the biggest storms in the
history of this country. Didn't take anybody by surprise. Now,
(11:58):
everybody saw that thing that he's coming a mile away,
days away, just one time. The weather man actually got
it right. Yeah, yeah, they couldn't miss that one up.
So they decided that the appropriate response would be too
abandon you there because they want to go protect their
own asses and turn off the phones. That's exactly what
they did. So the storm comes, you were on the
(12:20):
second floor, was on the second floor, What was the vibe?
What was everybody saying and doing? I mean, like it
just just when you think things can't get worse. So
what happened was we were all on the tip and
of course, you know the power went out. When the
power goes out before the deputy is basically locked us
in there. Left we can see out the window onto
the fourth floor, which is the highest level inside of
(12:42):
the building. Up there, that's where the deputies have stationed
themselves at. They removed the inmates who are up there
on the fourth floor and put them at lower floors.
And they were up there and they had like some
of their family members and stuff in there up on
the fourth floor, and they were up there cooking, and
you know, you could see they had like a barbecue
it and they had all the food that was left
they took it up there with them. So they locked
(13:04):
us inside of our tears, which is your cell blocks
of your domes, and we had no food. Once the
storm comes, sure, we have no running water, we have
no clean water, we have nothing. We can barely even
breathe in there because it's stifling from the lack of
air and circulation going on inside there. And you've got
on the particular tie I was on, there's enough beds
for forty two people. We had about sixty four at
(13:27):
the time up there, and like I said, with with
nothing else, not even enough beds for everybody to being
obviously being in prison, you know, you you're around other
people who are maybe not so nice individuals and who
have different beefs and stuff from the street. And so
when the lights go out, nobody wants to be that guy,
because I mean you literally couldn't see your hand in
front of your face when the power was out in there.
(13:48):
So you had guys that started lighting fires inside of
there and stuff like that, and and there's no air,
there's no circulation, there's no windows, there's no anywhere for
this smoke to get out. So you got these idiots
who started a fire on the other side, and there's
smoke going all through the inside of the down where
we act. So we had to break windows in order
for the smoke to get out, just so we could
(14:10):
breathe and everybody didn suffocate up there. How did you
break a window? I mean, they have bars around them
and it's reinforced glass. But we had like a big
iron metal bar that goes across the shower, and we
ended up breaking that down out of the wall and
used that along with a broom and a mopstick that
was up there to just beat on the glass until
it put a hole in it. And once they put
(14:32):
a hole in it, we just chipped away at it
and broke it out. So the bars were still intact,
like we couldn't get out of the window, but the
glass itself was broken where we could. Air was able
to come in and go out, and saved everybody's life
right there, literally your painting a picture of literally the
worst imaginable scenario that anybody could be in. It's dark,
(14:54):
it's stifling heat, there's no air, no food, no food,
no water. The water and the storm coming in that
drets might kill you all. Well, by this time the
storm had passed when the popular lights and everything went off,
the storm had passed. Now with Hurricane can Train it
it wasn't the storm itself that caused the flooded. That's
why we were so lost, Because the storm came, the
(15:17):
wind came through, the rain came through, the power went out,
and then it passed and the sun was shining outside. Well,
all of a sudden, now we're seeing water just coming
up and up and up and up and up and up,
and we're looking out the wind and we're like man,
where's all this fucking water coming from? You know, it
just keeps pouring, raising up and up closer to where
we are, until eventually it's to the second floor where
we at. Well, at the time, the building where I
(15:38):
was at, we were right next to the coroner's office.
We didn't process this at the time because, you know,
you're just not thinking about what it could potentially be.
We look outside the winter and it's dead bodies floating
right right around the window right where we are, right
next to us. There's it was at least seven dead
bodies that were floating around out there. So we're like, man,
this fucking waters coming up. There's no guards, no help,
(16:01):
no food, no water, and we got dead bloodies floating
around in the window next to us. But they came
from the corner's office. Because the corner's office, which was
on the first floor, was completely submerged in water and
floated up. We didn't realize that until after everything was over.
We just in panicked. Now everybody's panicking. It's fucking waters
coming up. There's nobody here with us. We're locked inside
of here, literally can't get out. There's dead bodies floating
(16:23):
around the window next to us, and we don't even
know if anybody even knows we're here more or less
gonna come rescue us and get us out of here.
What happened to the people on the first floor, They
ha got moved. That was the one thing I give
them credit that they were smart enough to do, is
they moved the people off for the first floor. There's
a lot of rumors about some people were left down
(16:43):
there and stuff like that. I'll never know the truth
on that because some of the guys who were on
the first floor edge on the second floor with me
while I was at and they just moved them and
kind of separated them on different tiers. Like I said,
they took the guys who off the fourth floor and
put them down lower so that they can go station
themselves on the fourth floor and be at the highest point.
So there were actually cards there, but there they just
(17:05):
weren't coming there. Because so if I'm I'm going to
just make an assumption that they probably lived in houses
that they couldn't stay in, because you can't. New Orleans
is undersea level, and we all know, we've all seen
the pictures of what happened. So had they stayed home,
they probably would have been flooded out. They were using
this as a shelter building. Not sure the building is
(17:28):
built pretty well. It's it's that building is not going
and we're not going anywere no matter what storm comes.
So they had their family members. You can see their
family members were up there with them, like you saw kids,
you saw women who weren't officers and stuff like that.
We're all staying up there on the an emergency shelter.
So how long were you stuck in this situation? On
Friday is when everybody left. Sunday They left you there
(17:49):
outside and left us there on Sunday. Wednesday evening is
when we were finally we're taken out of there. And
so what did you drink? You didn't drink anything. You
didn't have anything to drink, certainly couldn't drink the water
you head, you had the sewage in it had dead
bodies floating around. So we were all severely dehydrated, I mean,
and the water was up to what was it up
(18:09):
to your ankles? Was it was about it our ankles,
It was about it our ankles. On the second floor.
When it finally stopped, it was almost a side of
relief because we didn't know if it was just gonna
keep coming up. And yeah, because we couldn't go anywhere,
and we tried. I mean, we ripped down the air
conditioned ventilation. There were bars in the wall, we ripped
the tilets out of the ground, there were bars in
(18:30):
the in the floor. We tried to chip through the show.
I mean, that place is a real fortress. Like you're
not getting out of there unless you're going through. The
guards were keys. So seventy two hours of sheer, terror, uncertainty, hunger, thirst. Absolutely,
you had guys started fighting. They had two guys had
a knife fight, just because everybody was so stressed out
(18:53):
and so on high red alert. Every little thing was
taking them off. I actually had taken a sheet and
rolled on it with a because we can hear the
helicopters flying around and see the helicopters flying around outside.
And like I said, we didn't even know if anybody
knew we were in there. So I had taking a
sheet and wrote on that you know people in here
and need help, and tried to hang it outside the
bars because you know, we're broken the glass, and tried
(19:14):
to hang it out there, and the officers started shooting
at us because we're sticking our hands out of the
balls trying to put a flag out there. They started
taking potshots apps. Okay, so there's another thing. So that
was that was That was the end of us trying
to send a flag. So now the idea is started
another fire because now we got the winners over. So
now you've got guys who don lit another fire and
uh throwing flames like little mattress on fire and there
(19:38):
sticking and hanging it out the bars to try and
get the attention of the helicopters going around trying to
just get anybody to come help us. It's taking me
(19:59):
a minute to proce says this. Okay, so now I'm
sure everybody else is listening and scratching their head like
I am and going what uh. Yeah, So you didn't drown.
It was a miracle and you you survived this ordeal
and ultimately you end up getting convicted of second agree
(20:21):
murder and since the life of prison. And you were
twenty years old at the time. I was twenty when
I was convicted. I was eighteen when I was arrested, right,
and you get sent to Angola. Yes, I mean it's
hard to say what the worst prison is in America.
But I think a lot of people who are knowledgeable
in this field would say that's a strong consideration. And
(20:43):
Gola is a plantation in the middle of nowhere in
Louisiana which is named Angola because it originally was a
slave plantation and the slaves that worked the fields there
were from Angola. And so it's certainly at the time
you were there, and I would say probably true to
this day, it still operates basically like a slave plantation,
(21:06):
exactly like the slave plantes. You know, it's so far
removed from sight, and people go there to die. It's
it's its own world. Most of the people, I think
I read some of the percent of people that go
there die there. So I mean, you've got all kinds
of people were talking about before they've been there. Since
the seventies eighties, you have about three average two and
a half to three people a month die and go right.
(21:30):
And I was told that during one particular flood, the
Army Corps of Engineers came down there and wanted to
build some damns or whatever, do some dig up some stuff,
and they wouldn't let him in because they had to
move some of the bodies that they had buried first
because they didn't want to, you know, because those people
didn't necessarily die of natural causes. So here you are,
in one of the worst places on earth and with
(21:54):
basically no hope of ever going home. One thing I
can say, though, is is that's one thing I can't say.
I never gave her my hope. I never gave up
my hope. I think when I was convicted and the
jury walked past me. When I was convicted, literally and
this is in my minutes, this is in my transcripts,
I told my judge judge came here Grevers, I told
(22:14):
her I'd rather have the death penalty than spend the
rest of my life and ain't going And I even
made a statement, I said, Yanna, all due respect, that
was exactly what I told I rather had a dependent,
I said, I'd rather y'all kill me. They sent me
up there to wait another fifty sixty years to die.
She just put her head down and kind of, you know,
motion to the bail left to get me out of
(22:35):
the court room. And they took me out of that
because I was just like, man, there's no wait. And
after that, probably that first night I was down on myself.
And then after that, I was like, man, I gotta
get out of here. This is crazy, this isn't fair,
but this is my life, and I gotta figure out
the way to get out of here. You know, it's
interesting you sit there and you say, well, I had hope,
(22:57):
but we're getting the chill thinking about it. But I
think most people would lose hope. Absolutely. It's it's nobody's
vouching for you at this point. Yeah, I'm on my own, man.
It's it's it's total mental gymnastics, because you want to
have hope and you want to believe that the right
thing is going to happen, and that these people are
gonna realize that they made a mistake and they're gonna
(23:19):
realize that you're innocent. But every day you're waking up
next to guys who've been in prison since before my
mother was born, before my mother was born. You know,
you've got guys that's been up there forty fifty some
of my years, right, and and some of them not
guilty in the first places. Some of them, like you said,
for minor crimes. I mean in Louisiana. Some of the things,
(23:40):
some of the stories that you hear, really just twist
your mind around. Yeah, the justice system here is just
I don't even know how to describe it. It's it's
very inhuman. It's it's it's all about winning and locking
people up. It's not about actual justice, it's not about
finding out the truth. There's there's more of a pursuit
of fiction so that people can say, look, I punished
(24:02):
this guy. I punished this guy. You know, we found it,
we solved it. And there's no in my opinion, real
thought too. You know, it's like they do that. They'll
give a guy a life sentence and go home and
eat spaghetti like it was nothing, you know, And I
think about that, man, maybe I really sent the wrong
person to prison for the rest of their life. But then,
this is another very interesting thing about your case, because
(24:26):
you ended up in a scenario where you found a way,
you found a crack, right, and talk about that and
how you ended up being here, your sentence to life
in prison. You're not supposed to be here right now. No, absolutely,
I'm not. After I was convicted, I think I've really
I fired my attorney who I had. I had another
attorney who was working on my appeal. The first thing
(24:48):
that her and I spoke about. I told her, I said, listen,
I know you probably don't believe I'm innocent. I don't
think my last lawyer believed I was innocent. I said,
but if you listen to what I'm gonna tell you,
and you help me investigate this like it should have
been investigated, I'll prove to you that I am. And
so she said, listen, it's not my job to figure
out if you're innocent or not. It's my job to
get you out. I said, all right, that might not
(25:10):
be a job, but it's important to me that you
know that I am. So I started talking to people
and doing my own kind of investigating and being I
guess you could call my own kind of jail house
lawyer and investigator, just finding out everything I can find
out about it, because there were just certain things that
didn't make sense about what the police officers said with
my case. For one, he said that he was there
to meet up with a confidential informant. My first thought is,
(25:34):
why would you go there to meet up with a
confidential informant Because everything that you knew about meet with
a confidential informat is that you want to keep it confidential.
You don't want people around to know. So if you're
meeting with a confidential informant in an area where there's
big time heroin being sailed and there's all kind of
people outside, if you're a copy gonna pull up and
pick this guy up and go sit down and have
(25:55):
a talk, why would you go there. Why wouldn't you
meet him anywhere else in the city that you can
meet him at. Why would you go right to the
dope set and meet up with an informant and sit
down and talk. That just doesn't make sense. So then
I told my turn that said, we need to find
out who that informant was, because that's a potential witness.
So we filed what was called the subpoena in deducers
tech them get the police officers confidence and informant list.
(26:15):
As soon as we filed that, they went crazy. They
did not want to turn that over, They did not
want to hand it up. I said, listen, I don't
even need to see it. I don't want to see
it for any reason. Just short to my lawyer, because
this is a potential witness. This is someone who they
must have been out there. Why aren't they named in
this as a witness. If this cop was sitting out
here and say he saw also all this stuff go on,
(26:37):
why isn't the informant who he was sitting out there
with a witness. Also, if this cop, We've poked holes
in his story so many times and so many things
about his story that don't make sense. He described me
as a black male. The way they made the scene
was I was there when the murder happened, almost like
I sent the guys to do it. I was out
there to make sure it went right and all this
type of stuff. Because the guy was shot with two
different guns. I didn't have any gunpowder residue on me.
(26:59):
There was only two guns that were found. Because that's,
you know, all it was. But then there was another
thing that came up that I saw in my police report.
Because this was a shootout, I didn't see it with
my own two eyes, but from what I've been told
by my co defending from other guys, it was a shootout.
You heard it, Yeah, you could hear all the shots
going on. This guy had. He was shot with a
forty five caliber gun and a thirty eight All around
(27:22):
his body exactly where he's laying. There were nine millimeter
casings all around his body. He wasn't shot with a
nine millimeter. He had a nine millimeter that he was
shooting at my co defenders with and they were shooting
at each other, and then someone else came and was
shooting at them with the assault rifle who was one
of his friends. This cop claims that this guy never
(27:43):
had a gun. It wasn't a shootout, it was a hit.
It was an execution, a broad day murder, all this
type of stuff that they try and make, you know,
try to tie it in the beat. But where did
these show cases come from? The Literally, if I'm standing
here shooting in the shell cases, that's where they fall
around where I'm shooting from the shell casings all around
white where he's at. But it's not from a gun
that he was shot with. It just didn't make sense.
(28:04):
So now we started investigating the where the gun could
have possibly been. But this happened in the middle of
the projects where there's a bunch of people outside, and
so of course nobody wants to come to court and
be the witness. But if there's a gun laying on
the ground, somebody's gonna pick it up. I'm I just
gonna leave it out there. So this is just some
of the things that didn't make sense about my case
that I think when the alternatives that I had started
looking into it, she started saying, Okay, maybe there's something here,
(28:25):
maybe this guy really is innocent. Then he comes to
my co defendant. He and I had the severance, which
means we got separate trials. He went to trial, he
was convicted. I want to trial. I was convicted, but
it was at separate times. When he found out I
had been convicted, he sent a letter to my mother,
who turned it over to my attorney and told her that,
you know, listen, I just don't feel right with this Dan.
(28:47):
He didn't have anything to do with this. He wasn't
even there when it happened. He didn't even know me
and this guy were beef, and he had no idea
any of this could have went on. He's literally just
was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I
can't live with imagining him doing the rest of his
life in prison and knowing that he didn't even have
anything to do with this. So my attorney presents it
to the judge they called my co defending, and he
gets understand testified tells him exactly what I just said,
(29:09):
that I didn't have anything to do with it. It
was him and the other guy that got into a
shoot out with the guy. I didn't know that they
were even beefing with this guy more or less because
I had just literally I was with another friend and
he walked up to me and then just like, oh,
you're going that way and let me get a ride.
I'm not thinking anything of it always, and I've been
giving everybody a ride, you know. I just bought my
first call. So he testifies that judge orders me a
(29:32):
new trial. She vacates my conviction, orders me a new
trial because she presided over my case, you know, and
this is a judge and commere bureaus, you're gonna do
the research. She doesn't overturn convictions. If a jury finds
you guilty, you gotta take that up with the appellate calls.
She is not big on granted post conviction relief. She's
very conservative. I have nothing negative to say about her,
(29:53):
but she's a very conservative judge and she takes jury
convictions very seriously. She vacates my viction. The district attorney
at the time appeals it to the appellate court. The
appellate court overturns her and reinstates my conviction. So now
I went from life sentence, no life sentence, life sentence again.
So you want to talk about mental gymnastics and trying
(30:15):
to keep your mind right, you know, trying to stay focused.
I'm literally being twisted and pulled upside down. I got
my hopes up. Now my conviction has been overturned. It
looks like I'm going home. He came in and told
him it was him, It wasn't me. I gotta be
about to go home now, right, Yeah, no, no, they
overturned it. They say I should have got him to
testify before I went to trial or at my trial.
(30:36):
I didn't practice due diligence, so therefore it doesn't count. Right.
That's sort of like how they used to be these laws,
Like in Virginia, there was a twenty one day rule,
you know, like that, which basually meant that after twenty
two days, if the dead guy walked in the courtroom
and was like, hey, wait a minute, you guys made
a mistake. I'm still alive, it didn't matter because you're
(30:56):
too late. So that's basically what they were saying they
wanted you to be basically Clarence Darrow, you know, and
Colombo baxed up in one and produce a witness before
the trial, right when he was still hoping that he
was going to exact it. I mean, who who can
he's hoping that he's going to get out to How
How am I gonna know that he's going to testify
and get up there and tell him that I didn't
have anything to do with it? I mean, what what
(31:18):
what co defendant? That doesn't happen very often. It was me,
it wasn't him, Yeah, especially when it's the rest of
his life in prison that he's facing for saying that exactly.
I mean, friends are friends. But that's that's a little much.
So on a technicality, they said to you, we don't
really give a fun go spend the rest of your
life in prison anyway, and next time this happens to you,
(31:41):
make sure you get to us a little bit earlier, basically, right,
So now you've got that, So then what happens? So
because you're here? Yeah yeah, yeah, So I appealed it
to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court, the NAMI, so
my conviction is reinstated. So this is the craziest story
I'm about to tell you, Jason. And I don't know
if you're a spiritual person. I don't know if anybody
listeners spiritual person. But this is honest to God, exactly
(32:03):
what happened. And the tattoo on my right arm right
here that you're looking at CODA Criminal Procedure Article eight
fifty one point five with the angel wings. That's my angel.
That was my sent from guy right there. I'm in prison.
I'm in the hole for a knife fight. I had
a fight with a guy who pulled a knife out
on man stabbing. So I'm in a hole in a
cell by myself. Get the letter from the Supreme Court
(32:26):
saying that basically, you're fucked. We've reviewed it. We felt
that the Appellate Corps made the right decision. You didn't
practice due diligence, your convictions reinstated. You gotta go spend
the rest of your life in prison. That's basically what
they told upon getting that letter. I'm in a hole.
I have nothing, I have no books, i have no
none of my legal work with me. I'm just in
there basically with myself and in a cell. And I
(32:49):
got down on my knees and I started praying, and
I said, God, I don't know what you're trying to
get out of me. I don't know if you're real.
I don't know if you're listening to me. I don't
know anything. All I know is I don't know how
much longer I can make it like this because I
did everything I could do. You know, my heart, you
know I didn't do this. You know I didn't have
anything to do with this. I need some help, please.
(33:13):
As I'm on my knees praying that I had read
this auto called the law before. Just you know, when
you're in jail, that's one of the things you do,
especially mere trying to work on your case, you read
all kinds of stuff and the law and stuff like that.
But I didn't have a law book in front of me.
But for some reason, this just kept just kept replaying
in my mind over and over again. And I'm not
trying to sound like because I'm not some super holy
(33:33):
religious person anything like that. I believe in God. I
believe in spiritual life and stuff. But man, I'm you know,
far from a preacher or anything like that. But I'm
telling you I believe in my whole heart. That was
guy speaking to me in my head about this auticule
a law right here. So I go to court for
my hearing to put everything on the record to stay,
you know, basically on the record what the Supreme Court
(33:53):
has said. And they're ruling and they're gonna reinstate my
conviction and sent me back to Angola for the rest
of my life. As I go in there, my attorney
I bring it up to her. I said, you know,
are you familiar with couta criminal procedure Article eight fifty
one five And she's like, no, not really. And this
is a woman who's been an attorney for over twenty
five years. At the time, she was not only an
assistant district attorney who prosecuted people. Then she went and
(34:15):
she was an attorney, a defense attorney, worked all kind
of federal cases. Lord White, she's a she's now chief
judge of criminal Court. She knows a ship, she knows
the law. She wasn't familiar with it. She said, tell
me what it says. And your education at this point
was what eighth grade. I had a g D. Okay, okay,
(34:35):
bring it. I bring it to it and she's like, well,
I mean all she could do is say, I mean, what,
they're gonna give your life anyway, there's nothing else they
can do. We might as well try it. So I said, yeah,
just go up to and talk to her and see
what she'll do. So she has to tell the assistant
district attorney that she's going to go to the judge
and ask for continuing so that she can file a
(34:56):
formal motion based upon this auto called the law. The
prosecutor at the time turns and looks at me when
she says it. She turned and looked at me in
my face and started laughing in my face, basically trying
to make me feel like, you idiot, What do you
know about the law? You know, because I guess she
had told you know, my client wants me to raise
this issue. What or whatever. She goes up there and
talks to the judge. The judge says, you know what,
(35:16):
I want to hear more about that that sounds intriguing.
Grants me a continuance. We filed the motion. The state
opposes at YadA YadA, YadA, we go back. We rule,
she grants me another new trial. A judge who I
can't name. One other person she's granted a new trial
for grants me a second new trial, this time based
upon this auto called a law right here. So now
as bad as I want to get my hopes up,
(35:38):
like okay, this might really be it, I'm thinking, you
know what, I went through this before and then this
a pellet court shot me down and they reinstated it.
Let me see how this is gonna play out. Goes
back in front the same Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
What happens. They uphold it. They say, yes, you have
to give him a new trial. They appealed to the
same Supreme Court that I've held it before and that
(36:00):
I had to go do life. The Supreme Court comes
back and says, we uphold it, you have to grant
him a new trial. So they finally grant me a
new trial. So I get a new trial, and I'm thinking,
all right, this is it. You know, I got a
new trial. My co defendant confessed said I didn't have
anything to do with it. They gotta be about to
let me go home now, right. This is two thousand
(36:20):
and eight, by the way, people are listening to the show. No,
I've never heard this quiet for this long. But I'm
just sitting here, like my eyes blazed over like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So and you can read about this. This is fact.
This is on my docket master. You can read about this.
So they change the prosecutors on my case because that's
what they do every so often. So I get two
new prosecutors on my case, one of whom as I'm
(36:44):
in one of my hearings, because they're saying they're gonna
take me to trial again. This is after my appeal
has been granted. I get a new trial. They still
won't just drop it. They're saying they have you know,
they might bring me to trial. They deciding what they're
gonna do. So I'm sitting in prison all the time waiting.
She goes to my mother and tells my mother, ma'am,
I know you've been through a lot with this. We're
gonna drop him. The worst that might happen is we're
(37:05):
gonna give him credit for time serve and he pleads
to all that's a charge and we'll let him out.
Tells that to my mother the district attorney, not my
lawyer or not someone who works for the state. The
lady who's prosecuting me, goes and tells that to my mother.
This is in September two tho eight, when I'm about
to go to court. So I'm like, this is it,
you know what I'm going I'm about to get out.
The day before I'm about to go to court for that,
(37:26):
I'm on my tear in my cell. Right at the time,
I was what's called a tear rep in the prison,
which is basically I'm in charge of, you know, stuff
on the tear making sure everything goes right. They had
two officers that came down there. They had a guy
that yelled something out the gate. And I had been
talking to one of the officers because he used to
work in my court section, and he's asking me what's
going on my case, and so I'm telling like, yeah, man,
(37:47):
I'm about to get out. I go to court tomorrow.
They're saying they're gonna drop and give me credit for
time serving. I'm about to go home. Well, the other
officer to hears them saying that, he comes over there
and calls for me to come back there. Asked me
who was the guy who just yells they're honesome? Man?
I don't know. You know, you don't tell on people,
you know, that's just that's just a rule. Yeah, that's
just you know, you're not supposed to tell on another man.
So he takes me out. They bring me in the
(38:08):
closet and locked me in. Now, beat the dogs ship
out of me, says I know you're supposed to go
home tomorrow. I want you to hit me back so
I can read book you. I'm gonna make sure you're
never going home. In my mind, I'm feeling like this
is my test. I'm like, you know what I said,
I don't even want to hit you. You're not even
worth it. I said, you don't even hit hard enough
to make me hit you. All I want is my freedom.
(38:28):
I don't care what you do to me. I'm going
home tomorrow. Beat the dogs sh out of me. It's
in my medical you know they sent me to medical whatever.
I didn't have any right up. I didn't even do
anything wrong. They just did it because they thought I
was about to get out and they were trying to
get me to get another charge. I go to court
the next day. They changed prosecutors again, and this time
the one that comes on my case says, no deals,
we're taking him to trial again. So now how I
(38:51):
got my hearts up again? September two and now I'm
just like, but I'm like, I can't give up because
I feel like, I know this conviction didn't get over
turn for nothing. So in my mind, I'm like, all right, well,
we're gonna go to trial, and I'm gonna call my
code defendant and understand this time he's gonna come testify
in front the jury. And they got the same police
(39:12):
officer who's saying he's gonna, you know, he's gonna testify
and say what he saw. So I'm getting ready preparations
to go to trial again. I was supposed to go
to trial. November two thousand and eight, two days before
I'm supposed to go to trial, I have a meet
with my attorney. She's literally in tears begging me to
(39:33):
take a police barking, and I'm telling them, you know, man,
I just, I just I don't want to give up.
You know. I feel like we fought all this, you know,
we got it going. I'm innocent. She's like, I know
you're innocent. Thing. She's like, but I'm telling you right now,
it's your word and your friend's word against a cop,
and I don't believe that they're gonna believe y'all. She's
like listen, I've been doing this a long time. She's like,
I'm just telling you. I have it's in it's a
(39:54):
gut instinct. I have them. And she's like, if you
go to trial again, I think you're gonna get convicted again.
She's like, you need to take this, please, please take
this plea. So I thought about it. I thought about it.
I fought with it. I said, all right, I'll take
the police. The police balling they offered me. Was I
plead guilty to manslaughter? Right? They put a cap on
it in fifteen years and leave it up to my
judge to sentence me, to say, you know what she's
(40:17):
gonna sentence me to. They're gonna do a presentence investigation,
you know, looking to my background, looking to my house,
and you know, talk to me. The probation people come
talk to me all this and leave it up to
the judge who was giving me two new trials on
what she's gonna give me. Somethinking. Okay, you know, I
should be all right, I should at least get out
on this right go to court. When I go to
(40:37):
court from my sentence and they have a man in that,
who are they're saying, is that the guy who was killed.
They're saying it was his father. I'm gonna tell you
about this. This is crazy. I still to this day
don't believe this was this guy's dad. Yeah, they don't
have the same name. I don't even believe he could
tell you what the guy looks like. You put him
on the stand. He gets up there and says, I've
(40:58):
had two heart attacks and the strokes as my and died.
The family can't get over it. Were so hurt, heartbroken.
He needs to be in prison for the rest of
his life. Why are y'all considering lettin him out? He
didn't say we really miss convicted murdering, major heroin dealing. Yeah,
they didn't say that. He made it sound like it
(41:18):
was a choir boy exactly. So my attorney says, well, sir,
all due respect to you and your family, all due
respect to what y'all lost. Your son was convicted of manslaughter. Also,
he served six years. You felt like that was an
adequate sentence for him. Why are you so opposed to
this man getting the same amount of time for the
time that your son did for the same crime. My
(41:40):
son's never been a jail before in his life. Everybody
looks even a d a looks like they're They're like, oh,
ship were busted. My son's never been a jail before.
I don't know what you're talking about. You don't know
your son was in prison for six years. You don't
know your son was arrested for murder. Do you know
who they're even talking about right now? Who the funk
are you? Dude? What are you even doing here? So
the judge gets mad. She said, you know what, We're
(42:01):
not gonna go through this line of question. Your badger
and his witness, they stayed objects to it. They say,
you don't have to answer that, sir, And he's adamant.
My son was never in jail. My son was never
in jail. It was some crackhead looking dude off the street.
I don't know if they told him that I killed
his son and it was somebody else. I don't know
if he was just an actor. I don't know what
the story was. But this didn't make any fucking sense. Wow,
(42:24):
he gets off the stand. The judges mad. She gives
me fifteen years. So now, even the parole officer who
came and talked to me, who did the PRECINSE investigation,
told me his recommendation was no more than ten years,
but he didn't feel like it was necessary to keep
me in any longer. He wouldn't have a problem with
me getting credit for time sir getting out. Not only
did she disregard that, now I gotta go do another
(42:46):
seven years in prison before I can get out. This story,
ladies and gentlemen, is I don't even know what to say.
I don't have the right words. You know. One of
(43:09):
the reasons that I really wanted to have you on
the show is that we are in the midst of
a lot of different crises in the criminal justice system
in America right now, but one of them is something
called the guilty plea problem. And people don't realize that
(43:29):
of the felony convictions in the United States are obtained
through guilty pleae on a much more mundane level, on
much lesser crimes and dealing with lesser sentences every day,
all day in all these courts in the country, tens
of thousands of people every day our face with the
same problem that you had, which is their attorney. And
here in New Orleans we know that last year there
(43:51):
were fifty two public defenders who dealt with twenty cases
do the math. So a lot of those public defenders
who are underpaid, overworked, that's madness, that's that's anarchy. So
these people who are doing something that I could only
say is noble, are out there every day having to
(44:13):
meet with their clients, sometimes for the first time on
the day of their trial and say to them to
the next Daniel, listen, the best thing for you to
do is plea guilty. And that person, that kid is
going but I'm innocent. They're going, I know, but they're
gonna throw the book at you. And so we are
filling the prisons and jails with people who are innocent
(44:35):
because of the fact that are our public defender system
is broken as well as the rest of the system.
The scales of justice are so tilted in the favor
of the prosecution. You were playing actually the highest stakes
game of poker that anybody ever played, other than the
death sentence, because you have to either put all your
(44:56):
cars on the table and and literally bet your life,
literally back your life, and you would be betting against
a dealer that you know cheats. Yeah, absolutely, you know
they're hiding cards and there's nothing I can do about
them cheating. And this was your last year. And that's
what the attorneys tell you. They told it to me,
and I've heard I hear him say it all the
time because I work at criminal court. Now, It's like,
do you want to take a chance with the rest
(45:17):
of your life? Yeah, you may be innocent, you might
not have done this crime, but look at what you're
facing if this jury doesn't happen to believe you, if
they win, this is what you're gonna have. So do
you want to take that chance and think you're gonna win?
Or do you want to take this lesser of two
evils and at least know that you're getting out one
day or know what your fate is going to be
(45:37):
because the work you're doing now it's fantastic. Tell us
about that. All right, Well, it's kind of twofold. I
work for a criminal court now, actually, ironically, the same
criminal court where I was convicted of second agree murder,
which in Louisiana is a mandatory life sentence, mandatory life,
mandatory life. And that's our first degree murder. No, no, no no, sir,
that second degree second degree. I am now the one
(45:59):
of the case managers for a re entry program, which
is a program that was instituted by Judge Lloyd White.
It's an alternative to a long term incarceration for drug
offenders and people who you know have been convicted maybe
a few times for selling drugs, burglary, stuff like that.
As of now, the program has no quote unquote violent
offenders in it. These guys in Louisiana. There are men
(46:21):
right now in Louisiana State Penitential who've been there since
the seventies and the eighties for heroin, drugs, just drugs, violence,
no violence, nothing, none whatsoever. And most of them is
very small amounts of drugs, less than a Graham, less
than announced. I really admire the work that you're doing.
Thank you, and it's it's really typical of the axon
areas that have been on the show and the group
(46:43):
of Axonaries Exonary nation at large, that you are devoting
yourself to helping other people. So interesting that the group
of people that you could say are the most wronged
by society of anyone are the ones who are contributing
almost more to society as a group than any other group.
And now you have to wear that scarlet letter. You're
(47:05):
not technically an exonoree even though you're innocent. And in
the DNA exoneration plea cases, the alternate perpetrator was identified,
So you had somebody who pleaded guilty and was proven
innocent and the actual perpetrator was later identified. So there's
in case there was ever any doubt about the depth
(47:27):
of the problem, the serious of the problem, and about
the fact that it happens. There you go and in
your case, it's it's actually that's sort of a similar
case too, even tho it's not a DNA case, but
the actual perpetrator was right there going, hey, look at me,
I'm the guy. I mean, that would seem to be
pretty strong evidence for any court to look at. But
you know, look, the fact is you're here. You somehow
(47:48):
or other survived. Let's let's just let's just look back
at this for a second. Of what we've discussed over
the last hour. You survived a shootout, corrupt system that
wanted to put you away for the rest of your life,
or something that they knew that you didn't do, a hurricane,
a flood, almost being roasted to death, almost dying of
smoke inhalation, being shot at, being stabbed, being beaten. Did
(48:12):
we mention almost dying of thirst. I think we left
that one out. Then you survived the worst prison in
the worst criminal justice system in the western world, and
another series of trials that were rigged against you within
eighth grade education, just to sum up one more time,
(48:33):
and then from somewhere in the depths of your consciousness
or subconscious you pulled an obscure legal doctrine right statute
that I've never heard of. That I would bet if
we went to Stanford Law School right now and whip
(48:54):
that out, they'd be like, everybody be scrambled for their textbooks,
like what and you manage to get yourself free? What
the hell? Can I say? You have all my respect,
and I think it's incredible that you're here sharing the story.
And I think there's a lot more that we have
to do together because there's a lot of messages here.
It's gonna take me a while to process this. All
(49:15):
I can do now is ask you, is there any
final thought that you would like to share with the
audience before we sign off? I guess you know. My
my biggest thing that I tell people ever, did you
never know what you can deal with until you don't
have a choice, no matter what's going on in your life.
You know, whether you're listening to this and you're dealing
with cancer, are you're dealing with incarceration, Are you're dealing
with the loss of someone, Are you're dealing with, you know,
(49:37):
a loss of a job, or just anything in your
life that seems like it's insurmountable. If you still have
breath in your body, you can still fighting and you
can still win. Don't give up on yourself, 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
(49:59):
Innocence for Project, and I really hope you'll join me
in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent
future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to
learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to
thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The
music on the show is by three time OSCAR nominated
composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
(50:21):
at Wrongful Conviction and on 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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