November 27, 2017 • 50 mins
On September 12th, 1994, 17-year-old Michelle Murphy found her 15-week-old son stabbed to death in her kitchen. After being questioned without a parent or guardian present, which was prohibited under Oklahoma law, Michelle falsely confessed to the crime. Her 14-year-old neighbor William Lee testified during the preliminary hearing that he had walked around her house that evening and reportedly saw Michelle with the dead infant but did not report it to the police. Testing of blood at the scene of the crime excluded Michelle Murphy as a suspect, but at trial prosecution falsely implied that it matched Michelle’s blood type. In 1995, she was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. She was forced to give her only living child up for adoption, daughter Michelle. In 2014, the Innocence Project joined Michelle’s defense team and conducted more DNA testing, yielding results that the bloodstains at the crime scene revealed that there was an unidentified male present that night. On September 12th, 2014, Michelle Murphy was declared innocent, after having spent 20 years behind bars.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Back in two thousand seventeen, I recorded an episode with
Michelle Murphy and Michelle was wrongly convicted of the murder
of her baby, travel of fifteen week old boy. She
was egregiously framed and served twenty years to the day
in prison of a life sentence. Upon her release, the
(00:23):
judge said through tears that in his four decades on
the bench, it was the worst miscarriage of justice he'd
ever seen. She's been fully exonerated, and she is an
extraordinary person who is full of life, very brilliant, and
is working at the Bail Fund in Oklahoma helping to
(00:43):
free other women from sentences they don't deserve and getting
them back home with their families where they belong. Sad
news is that in two thousand eighteen March of two
thousand eighteen, she lost a lawsuit that she filed against
the city of tall So for violating her civil rights.
There are ongoing developments and hopefully this wrong will be
(01:06):
eventually righted, but it's shocking to say that now, almost
five years since her release, she has gotten nothing from
the state of Oklahoma or anyone else for her twenty
years of wrongful incarceration. Her daughter from whom she was
taken at the age of seventeen. When this tragedy happened,
(01:28):
she was taken directly to interrogation. She was a deterrogative
for nine hours, without an attorney, without a parent. It
was an illegal interrogation, and from that interrogation she was
taken to jail and never saw her daughter again. The
good news is that in two thousand eighteen, in May,
she was reunited with her daughter, and I was there.
(01:52):
It was an unbelievably emotional scene, her daughter not as
as a daughter of her own, And so there's still
a lot of healing to be done. But Michelle is
one of the strongest and bravest people I've ever known,
and you have to hear her story to believe it.
Michelle Murphy Bronthel conviction Shout out to Michelle. I fell
(02:21):
into the hands of corrupt detective. I was naive enough
to believe that I would be able to just present
all of my proof of actual innocence, that they would
investigate adequately, and so that I wouldn't be going to
prison because I was a good person. I hadn't do
anything wrong. In the back of your mind, you say, well,
when we go to a hearing, we go to court,
(02:42):
the truth will come out. The prosecution from day one
knew I was innocent and let forced testimony go uncorrected
from the lower courts all the way up to Unite
State Supreme Court. You have someone with a badge with
ultimate and in that moment unchecked authority. Don't presume that
(03:04):
people are guilty when you see him on TV, because
it may just be a dirty d a that is
trying to rise upward. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with
Jason Flam. I'm actually almost at a loss for words
already today because one of my favorite humans is here
in the studio with us. Michelle Murphy, the only female
as honoree in the history of Oklahoma. Twenty years in
(03:29):
prison for a crime she didn't commit. In September twelve,
or Iphy's fifteen week old son Travis was found debt
his throat slit one year later, or if he was
found guilty of murder, received a life sentence without the
possibility of parole. This morning at Tulsa County judge dismissed
Michelle Murphy's conviction. Prosecutors asked for the conviction to be
vacated because of new evidence they just became aware of.
(03:51):
It involves d n A evidence they say it wasn't
available twenty years ago. Murphy's attorneys, however, say the digit
Attorney's office always had the evidence and it was embarrassed
himself who applied to jurors twenty years ago. The blood
of the crime scene belonged to Murphy. After two decades
in prison, including four years of legal work, Murphy, now
thirty seven, gets a second chance at life. Michelle welcome,
(04:13):
Thank you. Yeah, it's good to you here. And with
Michelle is her attorney, Shannon McMurray, and is working on
her civil suits. O'Shannon, welcome to ronthal conviction. Thank you. So, Michelle,
your case is really it's just beyond I mean, your
case is so extreme that the judge in your original
(04:34):
hearing said that in his more than four decades on
the bench, it was the most terrible mischaracter justice he'd
ever seen. But let's go back to the beginning. You
were born in Tulsa, est And what was your upbringing
Like you had a difficult childhood, did you not? Yes?
I did. I was brought up in property stick in
(04:56):
projects and welfare. I was in and out foster homes.
I went through pretty much every form of abuse you
can think of as a child, and then you ended
up at the age of seventeen with two kids, right,
which may not be as unusual in Oklahoma, but certainly
in many parts of America, people be like, wow, that's
(05:18):
you know, that's pretty crazy. And you had a difficult
relationship with the father of your children as well, right,
It was a dysfunctional relationship. But I had kicked him out,
and I was raising my kids on my own because
that's all I wanted was kids in my own to raise.
I've pretty much brought up my sisters and my brother,
(05:39):
so I wanted to get out there and have my own,
So I started a little early. You raise your sisters
and your brothers as well, So you were you had
experienced at this, right, although it's seventeen, How much experience
can you really have. You've been through some crazy stuff already,
as you said, every kind of abuse and everything else.
So I guess you were sort of prepared. You know
(06:00):
that I knew it all, but I was seventeen. What
seventeen year old doesn't think that they know everything and
they're ready to take on the world. All I ever
wanted was my own kids, and I was ready to
make it happen, and I did so. Now we fast
forward to that faithful night we're talking about September twelfth,
(06:22):
right when you went to sleep, probably more or less
like any other night, you had your two and a
half year old daughter right and your baby's son, Travis.
Can you just walk us through what happened that night,
because it's you know, it's really the beginning of what
it's going to be an unbelievable saga. Um. Well, after
(06:47):
I left visiting a friend of mine, I went home.
I've fed Michelle, my daughter, and I've fed Travis and
gave him his little bath and everything else, prepared him
for sleep, went to sleep, and I couldn't sleep for
some reason, so I stayed up and I was going
through baseball cards that I was trying to save for
(07:08):
him for his future, because I just wanted him to
have something that could possibly be a collectible one day
or something, you know, And I was making a list
of them and stuff until I finally was able to
go to sleep. And I can't even remember what time
it was that I went to sleep, and when I
woke up, my um, my lights were on. My head
(07:35):
was hurting, and and I noticed my son was wasn't
where he was when I laid him down to the sleep.
You were sleeping with the kids right at the time.
My a c from upstairs had fallen out the window,
and so at that time we were all just sleeping
downstairs where it would be cooler, and we were sleeping
(07:59):
on a couch, all three of us. I had a
huge L shaped couch and so we were all in
different areas on it asleep. And so the first thing
you would have noticed when you woke up is that
your son was missing. I mean, because I mean he
would have been right in your media vicinity, would have
been in your I sighted as soon as you woke up,
So he was gone, right. My first instinct is to
(08:20):
look and make sure that there there and they're asleep
and they're okay, because I woke up to try to
go use the restaurant, right and there's no where he
could have gone. It's only fifteen weeks old, is now
that he walked somewhere, and I just I started panicking
because I was like, where's where's my baby? You know,
(08:40):
my front door was open and my closest friends lived
right behind me at that time, so I went to
go out the back door and that's when I found Travis.
He was in the kitchen. Yeah, pull of his own blood.
(09:01):
See ultimate nightmare of anybody who's ever had a child.
So what did you do? I I freaked out. I UM,
I went to my friends to get help, and UM,
it's the last time I got to see my daughter,
(09:22):
and it was the last time I felt complete having
my kids, you know. Um. After I went to my
friends and they seeing what had happened with Travis, they
went and they called the police, and then they came
out and I was in a police car. I remember
(09:44):
sitting there and people just kept coming up to the
car asking me what was going on. And eventually they
took me to the police station, where an officer of
the law, if you could call him that, interrogated me.
(10:05):
It wasn't so much an interrogation. It was more like, um,
a browbeating, Like he told me I had done this,
and this is what I did and how I did
it and why I did this and just and all
I could say was I didn't do it. There's so
many things wrong with this story, even just this beginning
part of this story because it's illegal in Oklahoma for
(10:29):
a seventeen year old you're a minor to be interrogated
without an adult in the room, a guardian or or
an attorney, right, But they that didn't stop him that
at that time in Oklahoma, it was not proper. It's
legal today, they've changed the law. But what they did
to Michelle is nothing less than despicable. But how why
why would they do this? And here you were just
(10:50):
an innocent child. I mean, you're still a child, and
they interrogated you for seven fucking hours, and that is
a long long time, particularly when you were in such
a fragile state, right and your your seventeen you have
an eighth grade education, you're totally overmatch. You've apparently been
(11:12):
hitting the ad right because you wake up with this
horrible headache. And yet they really didn't manage to extract
the confession from you. Seven hours and they finally get
you to say they say, you said something that was
sort of like, you know, well, maybe I could have
accidentally dropped a knife. What he had guided me to say,
(11:35):
the investigator was guiding me and things that I needed
to say. This is how I did it, and I
was more like asking him a question as to instead
of making a statement, I was asking him that's what
he wanted to hear, because because I wanted to see
my daughter. I wanted to make sure my daughter was okay.
I wanted to hold my daughter. He made false promises.
(11:58):
Just say it was an accident. Just say this, and
you'll get to go home and you'll get to see
your daughter. We'll get you counseling, will get you therapy.
You just need to say it this way. When he
didn't like what Michelle said, he would start the recording
over again. Michael Lee William William was very likely the
person who decapitated Travis and left him dead in Michelle's kitchen.
(12:24):
There was no knife, no weapon ever found, absolutely no
blood evidence on Michelle. They never illuminated. There were five
separate sets of fingerprints that they never tested. They didn't
test the screen door for fingerprints. They didn't test a
chair that was seemed like blocking the front screen door
and it had blood on it. There was an open
back window that they've later admitted Michael William could have
(12:46):
crawled through. There's so many inconsistencies between his interviews and
his testimony at preliminary hearing, and then after preliminary hearing,
he was found hung quite suspiciously and dead. So the
only person who really knows the truth is dead. After
he testified, and what the preliminary hearing, judge pulled the
(13:06):
prosecutor and the defense attorney in after the preliminary hearing
and said, you need to seriously consider him as the suspect. Well,
I was reading about the Shannon and I found it
absolutely extraordinary that the judge that your preliminary hearing was
Judge Messler, And in an interview he called this case,
and I'm quoting, the biggest miscarriage of justice unquote that
(13:30):
he had ever been connected to, and he was holding
back tears when he said it. I mean, what does
that tell you about I mean, for a judge who
had been on the bed for over four decades to
say something at that holding back tears, this is where
it really gets me. And I've never heard this before.
At one point during this preliminary hearing, which is when
this should have stopped, he actually called the attorneys to
(13:51):
his chambers to ask if the quote unquote witness who
we now know was almost certainly the perpetrator murderer William
Michael Lee if he had an attorney, And when the
prosecutor asked why, Judge Messler responded, and I'm quoting, because
that's the murderer of this baby, and everybody in the
(14:11):
courtroom knows it except you apparently. Uh wow. You know,
like you would hope that at that point somebody would
have said, Okay, we're done, that's enough, We could stop. Now,
we can shift our focus. You sit there and go wait,
(14:33):
wait a minute, like stop like something, just stop, right,
You have that feeling like this has to This can't
be right. It can't be that the judge said something
so strong and so profound, and yet everybody felt fine
just going ahead with this. Let's not called a prosecution.
Let's call it a persecution, right, because and that's really
what was happening. It wasn't an interrogation that Michelle endured.
(14:57):
It was like a witch hunt, basically. And it's so
nuts because this kid who was another neighbor, right, and
who had made unwanted sexual advances towards you, right. And
it gets worse and worse as this unravels because of
the fact that there was evidence that was not allowed
(15:18):
in court because the kid's self asphyxiated and hung himself
between the time of your arrest and the time of
the trial. It's all just totally bizarre. But the testimony
was not allowed that was going to be presented that
he had decapitated a cat, that he had shown up
at school the day of the murder, joyful and talking
about how he had, you know, exacted some revenge on
(15:39):
you and other details. Yeah right, so so, I mean
that would have been the end of the trial right there. Right,
It would have been like, oh well, I mean, any jury,
I don't care, any jury is going to hear that stuff.
And there was more. There was a psychologist who had
said that he was ten years old, he had examined
him and that he had shown when he feels rejected,
(16:00):
he had violent tendencies. I mean, this is textbook, right,
That's exactly what happened. He had this rejection, and obviously
he was pretty twisted considering the way he died right.
Self asphyxiation is uh is a bizarre thing at any age,
but the fact that he was doing that when he
was fourteen or fifteen when he died is really um
(16:21):
It takes it to a whole another level. So there's
just so many bad actors in this particular play. So
back to this crazy judicial nightmare of yours. Right, So
they decide to proceed even though everybody knows that you're innocent,
(16:43):
and they just went ahead anyway, which is shocking. So
what happens next? Now you're in jail awaiting trial. Right,
they didn't let you see your baby. They lied to
you in the interrogation room. You're in jail. I was
put in a cell by myself because I was seventeen,
with a barrier front of my door until I turned eighteen.
Even though I was being charged as an adult, I
(17:04):
was still treated as a juvenile. And I didn't get out.
I didn't get out but for an hour day after
everybody else was locked down and have access to the phones,
the shower, what have you, And it was only for
an hour at a time. You're in solitary confinement. Yeah,
that's correct, right, No, nobody bothered to think that she
(17:27):
needs a psychologist, any sort of counseling after what you've
been through. I mean, okay, I can't. I can't even
process that. And meanwhile, are you even aware of what's
going on with your daughter. At this point, as anybody
told you, I couldn't get any answers from anybody. Did
you have parents that you could talk to or anybody
mother that she didn't know either, Well, they just denied
(17:50):
her access as well because of things that had happened
to me in her care as a child. They kept
her out of the loop too. They didn't my entire
family was anyone visiting you. I got a few visits
from family, but they were in the dark just as
much as I was. And we find out later that
(18:13):
your daughter was adopted by close friends of the prosecutor,
right correct, Which again just adds a layer to this
that is off the fucking wall. I mean, it's just
like I mean, it just doesn't make any logical sense.
And then you go to trial. You you turned eighteen
in prison, the worst ever spent. Some of the best
(18:36):
birthdays are supposed to be the best birthdays in jail
or prison. And back then, you know, I've been a
lawyer now twenty some years, but I was an intern
for the Public Defender's Office and would have to go
to the adult detention center, and these women and men
were either in cages or in a in a bunk
or so to speak, lying on top of each other, roaches, rats,
(18:59):
my it was despicable, and this smell was unfathomable. I
mean I would throw up in my mouth every time.
It was just awful. But you had to go out there,
and as a public defender, intern or lawyer, we would
go out there just to check on their well being
and we would report the conditions and it never changed.
(19:22):
I could not even imagine having to endure that, even
if I did do something wrong, but knowing I didn't
do anything and being in that just it's just it's unspeakable.
That's where Michelle was held to the adult. Yes, it
was horrible, and that's something that is worth understanding. Jails
(19:44):
by and large, are worse than prisons for some of
the reasons that you're talking about. There's no recreation. Many
people are held, as Michelle was, in their self for
twenty three hours a day. The lights don't go off,
they're never cleaned. They're literally breathing grounds for disease, violence,
rape because there's so much pressure built up because there's
(20:05):
nothing to do except for sit there. And you've got
people in there who are innocent, like Michelle. You've got
people in there who are accused of crimes but can't
post bail, but they may or may not be innocent.
We have no idea, and then we have them mixed
in with violent criminals. It sounds like a more benign
word than prison, and it's important for people to understand
that it's it's the farthest thing from it. Well, and
then also especially whenever the media crucifies you and makes
(20:30):
you out to be one of the most horrific monsters
there is and you're charged with any form of a
child crime and they broadcast it. These people, these women
or men in jail, they see that, they watch the news.
You get taunted, You just get fucked with really bad
in there, and it's twenty four hours. You get fund with,
(20:55):
excuse my language, messed with in there, and especially for well,
the crime that I was charged with and the the
gory nous, the horror of it, and what they would
say on the news and stuff. People will take that
and then they twisted and make it even worse, as
(21:18):
if you could make it any worse. But being in
there and you're innocent of this as well, and you
don't know, like me, I didn't know where my daughter
was and just I'm going through this, and then I'm
having people yelling through the vents, hollering at me all
the time, calling me a baby killer. Um, I got
(21:41):
threats all the time. They were going to make sure
my food had something in it. They were gonna do
the same thing to me that I had supposedly done
to my talk. I mean, you learned to just kind
of try to block it out as much as you can,
but you can't block it all out. And it's twenty
(22:03):
four hours a day. I can't imagine how this is
bad and worse. And it's a miracle that you survived
that ordeal, because you're right, it can't be any worse
than that. To be in there accused of what you
were accused of, having lost your child, being deprived the scene.
I mean, it's like it's literally the ultimate nightmare, and
(22:24):
yet you live through it and here you are today,
which is that's a miracle. So then there's the trial
and you're finally going to trial. Did you believe that
things were going to work out and that finally somebody
would tell the truth and you would be able to
go home. I knew that I was innocent, and I
(22:45):
believe that once they heard all this bs that they
had made up about me and everything else is somebody
was gonna see what I knew, and they they would
let me go home, you know, But they were so
narrow minded and blinded by what the prosecutor portrayed. And
(23:09):
I got a life without Pearlson's well, the lawyer was asleep.
As a defense attorney, and I've done it my entire career,
I know that we as attorneys are the only thing
that can stop the mountain of the United States and
the government where the where the stop gap? And we
(23:30):
have to If you can't get in there and fight
like hell, then get the hell out of the courtroom.
I see it day in and day out, lawyers that
aren't prepared. But they weren't just not prepared. It's almost
like they just went with the prosecution and whatever their
theory of the case was, they did not control anything
in that courtroom or anything leading up into the courtroom,
(23:52):
and they didn't do what they're supposed to do. And
so that was a part of the problem as well.
Is a problem that we see all who frequently is
that people are not adequately represented by their defenders. And
you're certainly a textbook case of that as well. I mean,
this was a case where even though there was prosecutorial misconduct,
(24:13):
gross prosecuting, including lies about the blood evidence, which had
they told the truth, would have exonerated you instantly because
your blood type didn't match the blood that was found
with the crime scene. And of course it even goes further.
There was blood presumably from the perpetrator at the crime
scene and going out the front door and going out
(24:34):
the front door. I mean, this one comes with instructions.
I mean, it was on the chairs, well that was
propped up against the outside of my front door to
where I couldn't go out the front door if I'd
went out the front door, so I'd have to have
gone out the back. On top of everything else, you
have no blood on you, right, And so any investigator
right out of school would go, well, wait a minute,
(24:57):
this doesn't make any sense. You can't commit violent, terrible
stabbing with blood everywhere, but you don't get any blood
on you, right, And so immediately there should have been like,
she didn't do it. Let's take care of her, right,
She's just been through the most traumatic experience that anyone
can go through. Let's get her some help. Let's make
sure her daughters. Okay, that would be the appropriate reaction,
(25:18):
and let's go find who did this. You would think
that that would be the proper way to do well,
that is the proper But that's not what they did, right,
I mean, I mean, in a civilized society, there's no
question that that's what should have been done. They had
their sight set on you, and it's uh, it's hard.
It was an easier target for him. Yeah, right, except
for not really though when you think about it, because
(25:41):
they had all evidence that they needed to. I mean,
they blood evidence and everything. I mean, they knew he did. Okay,
I'm gonna get too angry. So back to where we
left off. At trial, you needed a dream team, you
(26:03):
needed a superstar attorney, and you've got someone who was,
let's say, borderline incompetent, and that may be being kind.
At the same time, not only was the prosecution on
this crazy mission to convict you at all costs, but
they also broke so many different rules. Right. The misconduct
(26:24):
of this case is extreme, including I think it was
Harris was the prosecutor right, he lied about the evidence.
Not only did they withhold the culpatory evidence, which is
a Brady violation. They lied about the actual evidence. They
at least suggested to the jury that the blood that
was found at the crime scene could have been or
(26:45):
was probably yours, which they knew was right. They knew
it was not yours, but they led the jury to
believe that it was. And that's hard when you're in
the jury seat, right You're one of these jurors, and
you're sitting there and you've been hit with all this
publicity around your case and everything else, and you know
you're feeling, I'm sure, very stressed out because it was
(27:07):
a baby killed. They even showed the jurors and autopsy
of my son, so that's horrific too. So they I
can only imagine what it was like for them to
sit there and see that. I mean, I had to
just listen to it. I was forced to. I didn't
want to see it, you know, I already had enough horrors,
(27:30):
but I had to sit in there and I could
hear the video plan and all the things that they
were doing, So I can only imagine that that made
a big impact on the jurors too. And they wanted
somebody to pay for it, and I get that. I
want somebody to pay for it too, but not me.
(27:51):
I didn't do it. So there had been this circus
of a trial and ultimately the jury is out. You
were probably even as a as a eighteen year old
girl with an eighth grade education, you were probably aware
that your your own attorney wasn't doing such a great job.
(28:12):
But did you think that they were going to come
back and actually find you guilty? I never lost hope,
and I was just I was praying that they would
see the truth and that they would know I couldn't
do something like that, but it was wrong. So that moment, Michelle,
(28:34):
Now you've been through everything a human being can endure
from the time you were a child, and and what
was that moment, Like, I can't forget it. There's a
lot of things I wish I could forget. When the
jurors come back in and I was in there, I
was just holding on to my faith and that that
they were going to know there is no way that
(28:57):
I could do that. There's too many holes in what
they tried to portray, and that they would see through that.
And I kept holding them to the fact that I
knew why I was innocent, and that I was hoping
that they were. They weren't too blind to see that
I was innocent, because it was clear I was wrong,
(29:19):
because they found me guilty and gave me a life
without pearl sentence. I remember my grandfather and my uncle
in the courtroom, and I had never seen him cry,
and they both broke down and cried. I remember my
sister breakdown and she was screaming at the juries, telling
(29:41):
them that how could they do it, that they were wrong.
And I remember seeing my mom over there and she
was breaking down crying as well. Well everybody that was there,
my family was We're all wroke down and crying because
(30:02):
they all believed I was going to come home. And
I didn't know what the sentence was that they had
given me until I was able to talk to my
mom later and I asked her, I said, what was
the sense? I mean, all I heard was guilty and life.
Everything else was just kind of like blacked out. I
(30:25):
I just I couldn't believe it that they had found
me guilty, and just hearing them say that, it was
like I lost my heart. It was ripped out again
what was left of it anyhow, And then seeing my
family breakdown like that, it was it was hard, and
(30:48):
then they took me back to the county jail and
put me in my room. Um, yeah, I can't believe
even now that they can. To you. It's it's something
that all of us as Americans and human beings should
be ashamed of. And I am. So You're sentenced to
(31:09):
life in prison, and you had a lot of life
left to live when you're eighteen years old and you
end up going to prison. I want to get to
how you managed to persevere and find the strength to
fight for yourself when you could have so easily given up.
I mean, I think most people in your situation would
(31:30):
have given up. There are times said I wanted to
give up, but I couldn't. I just couldn't because I
have a daughter and now I know I have a
granddaughter too, and tell with everybody else, I had to
prove to her that I didn't do this, and in
(31:51):
order for that, I had to get my innocence proven.
And that's what kept me going through the twenty years
and even now is what keeps me going is one
day having the possibility of let her heart know the facts,
not what she's been led to believe, and being a
(32:13):
part of our life the fact that you still now
two years after being three years after being fully exonerated
and found actual innocent, found actual innocent, and the ruling
was with prejudice, so that means they can't retry you.
The idea that you still haven't been able to re
(32:35):
establish a relationship with her is is something that troubles
me a lot. But I'm hopeful. I mean, I think
that ultimately you will and hopefully they'll be a happy
ending to this. And I believe one day she will
come around and she'll let me be a part of
her life. It is going to happen, because it has to.
You know. There's another couple of twists and turns in
this right because you ended up serving twenty years. It
(33:00):
halfway through that there was light, there was a break
in the case. Before my mom passed away. My mother
had written the Innocence Project. She wrote a lot of
people because she wanted to get me my dream team,
my own dream team, that's what she called it. They
had taken my case on it and they had requested
(33:22):
all this exculpatory evidence to be turned over to him
to be were and tested, and come to find out
now not all that evidence was provided to them. They
supposed we couldn't find some or it didn't exist anymore
or whatever. The games continued. There were three envelopes at
(33:43):
one point that were sent in the mail and two
of them were empty, right, which is really like, and
let's just reflect on just that alone. It's so nuts, right, like, really,
are you kidding me? That's ridiculous. But it's not funny.
It's it sounds it sounds ridiculous now, but it's not funny.
It's very it's a very real. They were still trying
to cover their masses. Yeah, so the inst Project took
your case, which is the blessing of blessings when you're
(34:06):
stuck in that nightmare, right, and the Inns Project takes
your case. But in two thousand, this is two thousand
and five, I believe it was before that. I think
of us two thousand and four. I'm not sure on
the timeline. But whenever they ran the test on what
they were provided with, there was nothing that they could
(34:28):
do because it was all just Travis's blood. There was
none of the perpetrators. It was just Travis's blood that
was provided to them. So they had said that there
was nothing that they could do. They did what they
could do, so it kind of lost hope for a
moment in a sense. But at the same time I
(34:50):
was like, I'm not giving up. I just didn't know
how to go about doing it because I didn't have money.
I was in prison. I had already lost my parents,
I lost a lot of people, and finances don't exist
really in prison. You can't make a living in there.
So I didn't know well how I was going to
(35:12):
do it, but I knew it was going to happen
one day. You didn't give up in Innisis Project didn't
give up either. Well. They weren't able to assist with
what was provided to him, and they had done what
they did. So eventually a friend of mine had found
my attorneys that helped prove my innocence, and my sister
(35:35):
and her guy at the time, he was a doctor.
He paid for my attorneys, and the Innocence Project got
involved with them on proof of my innocence because they
were able to locate the evidence that was held back
from the Innocence Project the first time to be ran
and tested again. And those lawyers, the ones that came
(35:59):
to your rescue at this time, it's worth giving them
a shout out here, right. That's why I am grateful
for them bringing me home and doing the work that
they did to prove my innocence. And that was Richard
and Sharise O'Carroll, right. So you finally got a team
on your side that was up to the task, right,
(36:20):
And then the Innocence Project got reinvolved because the evidence
was found, right, which existed all along with this group
of very sinister people had successfully hidden for as long
as they had. It was finally found, and I believe
it took Charisse and some interns going in theirselves and
looking through the evidence theirselves in order to get it
(36:44):
and have it tested. But see, the thing is is
that it had already been tested before my trial. Tim
Heritith had already had it tested. He knew, right, the
Oklahoma State Brewer of Investigations had tested the evidence and
had provided it to the prosecutor, which was Harris. But
he just chose to ignore it. He chose to hide
it and ignore it and then lie about it and
(37:05):
do basically everything he had to do in order to
turn your life into more of a living hell than
it already was. Ultimately, you come back to court with
(37:25):
appropriate representation strong representation. Actually, let's call it what it is,
and you finally get justice. What was that like? It
was like a huge way to the world just lifted
off of me and it was a major relief. But
at the same time, it was like it had a
moment of sadness because my parents couldn't be there, especially
(37:49):
my mom. My dad wasn't early a part of my life,
but my mom couldn't be there to experience it with me.
Are my daughter who was there that day, Michelle with
the other sides Richard and Cherisse Um, I had some
family in the courtroom that day. I believe my baby
sister was there with her husband. And the doctor was there,
(38:13):
Dr Fizel, who paid Theresa richardal Carol to take my
case on Oh that's uh, I mean, that's pretty heroic
of him. So finally some good people have come to
your aid rescue. It's bitter sweet because obviously your parents
weren't there to see their their baby be but it
(38:34):
was it was awesome to be able to finally the
court system acknowledges that I am innocent, and to all
the people that had prosecuted me and even in prison,
those that beat me down and talked horribly about me
and made my life hell in there to all those
(38:58):
people that had misjudged, and it was just like I
told you I was innocent. What did judge say. He
looked straight at me and he said, Michelle Lomer for
you are actually innocent. And he said that three times
(39:20):
and said that we were dismissed. Did anybody apologize? Oh no, no, h.
Not that it would have really changed anything, but it
might have been a nice gesture for Christ's sakes. I
would just add, and not only has nobody apologized to
Michelle from law enforcement, that it's their intent to attempt
(39:45):
to try and retry her in her civil suit for
the murder of Travis in order to convince the jury
that Michelle should not receive money damages for the twenty
year she's spent in prison innocent. So I think that
that's important for everyone to know. The nightmare persists. She
(40:08):
can never be convicted or go to prison or jail.
But it is their attempt in the civil trial, which
is going to be in April, to put her on
trial for killing Travis and to try to get this
confession before the jury. And so no, nobody's apologized to
her they still want to try to prosecute me innocence.
(40:32):
They don't want to admit that they were wrong, and
they don't want to compensate. There's not enough money in
the world that could ever replace what was taken from me.
I would rather go penniless and have my kids then
I have all the money in the world. And that's
something I want to talk about a little bit to Michelle,
because it's important for people to understand the struggle that
(40:57):
happens after you get out. I think people see on
the news, the the coverage on the courthouse steps, and
there's cameras, and there's hugging, and there's crying, and there's
cheering and there's everything. But then you walk out into
a world that doesn't really want you. You've got a
resume that's got a twenty year hole in it, and
you haven't had a chance to develop skills when everybody
(41:19):
else has been out building their career or their family
or there, and you get nothing. Here we are three
years later, and now you have to still wait until
April to go and fight for compensation that should be
provided to you, in my opinion, immediately, I mean so
that you can start rebuilding your life. I'm grateful to
be free and living in on this side of the world,
(41:42):
but it's so hard to survive sometimes out here because
we have to play catch up. Me for instance, I
have no computer skills on learning them now. I had
never had a job. I was seventeen years old. I
I never drove a car day in my life. I
(42:03):
never had a house amound. You know, I had never
experienced so much that most people have experienced in their
life at the beginning of their life, you know. So
it's a struggle and the panic attacks, the anxiety of
trying to catch up, which would probably never catch up
(42:25):
to the rest of the world. But I'd like to
know some things, you know. Yeah, I mean, the PTSD
has got to be profound. It's just like I said
another sentence, almost right, um form of another prison in
a sense. But you know, you're even with physical problems
(42:49):
related to time you spent in prison and everything else,
and you're still here, right, I'm still a fighter and
a survivor. Yeah, And we've got your back, and you're
taking classes now with an organization called Goodwill, is that right? Yeah?
Good Will? It also works. The thing is a lot
of people out there don't realize what all is available.
They know is the donation sites and the stores that
(43:11):
they have, but they don't realize that there's classes that
are available to them. For me, I didn't have any
computer skills, didn't know how to do Microsoft Word, power
Point and Excel and all this stuff. And I'm learning
that extremely quickly and I'm loving it. I know how
to do a power point, I know how to do
(43:31):
a spreadsheet now. I'm very quick learner. And they've taught
me how to do resume, which I don't have much
of a resume, but I know how to do one.
I know how to carry myself in an interview. I
know more about this process that it takes to get
a job now. But as soon as I complete this class,
(43:54):
I am going to start a plus certification which does
hard ribes and the motherboards and stuff like that and
building computers. And I'm going to take forklifting classes as well.
And then in January they're supposed to be starting an
ocean program, so I can be OCEA certified as well. Wow,
(44:15):
that's a lot. That's really great. It's great and it's
important because people ask me what can I do to help?
So programs like this good will program. Do you know
that there's not enough of them? People could start one.
You can learn more about it, check out the good
Will program, tutor mentor you know, help provide equipment or clothes.
There's a million things you can do and we're gonna
(44:36):
We're gonna help. It just takes somebody to believe in
is sometimes I'm always hungry for knowledge. I want to
learn everything. It's amazing. There's so many great stories of
auxonres coming out and succeeding and triumphing. If there's anything
else you can think of that you can recommend for
people to do. Who are going to hear this and
they're gonna say, I want to do something to help.
What what would you recommend people do. I would like
(44:59):
to see more program ms that are going to help,
especially axonorees. There are some programs that are available to
people coming out of prison that are being released from
their time re entry programs. Well, one of us axonorees,
we come out. We don't meet their criteria because we're
(45:20):
not being released. We've been exonerated for a crime we
did not commit, and we can't get into those programs
because their focus is to help those coming out of
prison from our serving a time and for a crime
that they did commit. Yeah, we have in this country.
We have various re entry programs and also you know,
(45:41):
parole probation officers, I should say probation officers for people
who are released after serving the time and the crime
that they were guilty of. But when you're an axonore,
you come out to nothing. It's actually paradoxical. You don't
get any of those services because you weren't guilty in
the first place. It's it's asked backwards. Actually mean, I mean,
help them by all means, but help us as well.
(46:04):
Because now I had never even talked on its cell
phone or used to cell phone. I had never even
seen it except for on TV, you know. And as
soon as I walk out the county del Dr Vizel
hands me my first phone and I'm like, um, how
do I use this? You know? And my sister is
(46:24):
calling me on it. I don't even know how to
answer it. We don't know how to live in this
side of the world. We've been trained to live by
prison rules, prison structure, if you can call it that.
We just need more programs and more awareness. I want
(46:45):
to get stuff out there that's going to help people
coming out and provide them with resources not just financial
and educational, but emotional mental health counseling, because r entry
after certainly twenty years in prison proves to be extremely overwhelming.
(47:06):
I've represented clients who have spent most of their life
in prison and come out and don't know how to
run a microwave or a CD player or a phone.
Without that support family or community, such as Michelle has had,
they literally either violate parole or reoffend in some way
(47:29):
so they can go back to what they know, which
is prison where they feel safe, which is tragic I've
had I'm like, why did you do that? Because I
don't know how to live in this world and I
can't cope. So, Michelle, we have a tradition on wrongful conviction,
as people who listen to the show already know, which
is that. I like to just turn the microphone over
(47:50):
to you for any closing thoughts at all. What's on
your mind? M h. I'm I'm determined. I'm going to
change some things. I want to change a feel all that,
especially in Oklahoma, and I want to start a program
that's going to go back into facilities and help prove
(48:12):
the innocence of those that need to be home. And
I want to get programs in the facilities that's going
to teach individual skills to survive out here. I want
to provide resources for them on what is available out
here for them. I want to go into schools and
to speak out and teach to let kids know, Hey,
(48:34):
you don't have to commit anything, you don't have to
be doing anything. You can still get caught up and
your life can be taken away from you in the
blink of an eye, especially the way this is going
out here in the world new and I just want
to help. Michelle, UM, what can I say? You are
(48:55):
amazing and it's been really a profound experience for me
well having you in my life and having you on
wrongful conviction today. So I want to thank Our two
guests are star Michelle Murphy and her wonderful attorney Shannon McMurray.
So thank you both for being here and I'm looking
(49:16):
forward to the next days of your life. Thank you
for having us. Don't forget to give us a fantastic
review wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps. And
I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project, and I
really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important
(49:38):
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 at Wrongful Conviction and on
Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Bronfel Conviction with Jason Flom
(50:01):
is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association
with Signal Company Number one m
Back in two thousand seventeen, I recorded an episode with
Michelle Murphy and Michelle was wrongly convicted of the murder
of her baby, travel of fifteen week old boy. She
was egregiously framed and served twenty years to the day
in prison of a life sentence. Upon her release, the
(00:23):
judge said through tears that in his four decades on
the bench, it was the worst miscarriage of justice he'd
ever seen. She's been fully exonerated, and she is an
extraordinary person who is full of life, very brilliant, and
is working at the Bail Fund in Oklahoma helping to
(00:43):
free other women from sentences they don't deserve and getting
them back home with their families where they belong. Sad
news is that in two thousand eighteen March of two
thousand eighteen, she lost a lawsuit that she filed against
the city of tall So for violating her civil rights.
There are ongoing developments and hopefully this wrong will be
(01:06):
eventually righted, but it's shocking to say that now, almost
five years since her release, she has gotten nothing from
the state of Oklahoma or anyone else for her twenty
years of wrongful incarceration. Her daughter from whom she was
taken at the age of seventeen. When this tragedy happened,
(01:28):
she was taken directly to interrogation. She was a deterrogative
for nine hours, without an attorney, without a parent. It
was an illegal interrogation, and from that interrogation she was
taken to jail and never saw her daughter again. The
good news is that in two thousand eighteen, in May,
she was reunited with her daughter, and I was there.
(01:52):
It was an unbelievably emotional scene, her daughter not as
as a daughter of her own, And so there's still
a lot of healing to be done. But Michelle is
one of the strongest and bravest people I've ever known,
and you have to hear her story to believe it.
Michelle Murphy Bronthel conviction Shout out to Michelle. I fell
(02:21):
into the hands of corrupt detective. I was naive enough
to believe that I would be able to just present
all of my proof of actual innocence, that they would
investigate adequately, and so that I wouldn't be going to
prison because I was a good person. I hadn't do
anything wrong. In the back of your mind, you say, well,
when we go to a hearing, we go to court,
(02:42):
the truth will come out. The prosecution from day one
knew I was innocent and let forced testimony go uncorrected
from the lower courts all the way up to Unite
State Supreme Court. You have someone with a badge with
ultimate and in that moment unchecked authority. Don't presume that
(03:04):
people are guilty when you see him on TV, because
it may just be a dirty d a that is
trying to rise upward. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with
Jason Flam. I'm actually almost at a loss for words
already today because one of my favorite humans is here
in the studio with us. Michelle Murphy, the only female
as honoree in the history of Oklahoma. Twenty years in
(03:29):
prison for a crime she didn't commit. In September twelve,
or Iphy's fifteen week old son Travis was found debt
his throat slit one year later, or if he was
found guilty of murder, received a life sentence without the
possibility of parole. This morning at Tulsa County judge dismissed
Michelle Murphy's conviction. Prosecutors asked for the conviction to be
vacated because of new evidence they just became aware of.
(03:51):
It involves d n A evidence they say it wasn't
available twenty years ago. Murphy's attorneys, however, say the digit
Attorney's office always had the evidence and it was embarrassed
himself who applied to jurors twenty years ago. The blood
of the crime scene belonged to Murphy. After two decades
in prison, including four years of legal work, Murphy, now
thirty seven, gets a second chance at life. Michelle welcome,
(04:13):
Thank you. Yeah, it's good to you here. And with
Michelle is her attorney, Shannon McMurray, and is working on
her civil suits. O'Shannon, welcome to ronthal conviction. Thank you. So, Michelle,
your case is really it's just beyond I mean, your
case is so extreme that the judge in your original
(04:34):
hearing said that in his more than four decades on
the bench, it was the most terrible mischaracter justice he'd
ever seen. But let's go back to the beginning. You
were born in Tulsa, est And what was your upbringing
Like you had a difficult childhood, did you not? Yes?
I did. I was brought up in property stick in
(04:56):
projects and welfare. I was in and out foster homes.
I went through pretty much every form of abuse you
can think of as a child, and then you ended
up at the age of seventeen with two kids, right,
which may not be as unusual in Oklahoma, but certainly
in many parts of America, people be like, wow, that's
(05:18):
you know, that's pretty crazy. And you had a difficult
relationship with the father of your children as well, right,
It was a dysfunctional relationship. But I had kicked him out,
and I was raising my kids on my own because
that's all I wanted was kids in my own to raise.
I've pretty much brought up my sisters and my brother,
(05:39):
so I wanted to get out there and have my own,
So I started a little early. You raise your sisters
and your brothers as well, So you were you had
experienced at this, right, although it's seventeen, How much experience
can you really have. You've been through some crazy stuff already,
as you said, every kind of abuse and everything else.
So I guess you were sort of prepared. You know
(06:00):
that I knew it all, but I was seventeen. What
seventeen year old doesn't think that they know everything and
they're ready to take on the world. All I ever
wanted was my own kids, and I was ready to
make it happen, and I did so. Now we fast
forward to that faithful night we're talking about September twelfth,
(06:22):
right when you went to sleep, probably more or less
like any other night, you had your two and a
half year old daughter right and your baby's son, Travis.
Can you just walk us through what happened that night,
because it's you know, it's really the beginning of what
it's going to be an unbelievable saga. Um. Well, after
(06:47):
I left visiting a friend of mine, I went home.
I've fed Michelle, my daughter, and I've fed Travis and
gave him his little bath and everything else, prepared him
for sleep, went to sleep, and I couldn't sleep for
some reason, so I stayed up and I was going
through baseball cards that I was trying to save for
(07:08):
him for his future, because I just wanted him to
have something that could possibly be a collectible one day
or something, you know, And I was making a list
of them and stuff until I finally was able to
go to sleep. And I can't even remember what time
it was that I went to sleep, and when I
woke up, my um, my lights were on. My head
(07:35):
was hurting, and and I noticed my son was wasn't
where he was when I laid him down to the sleep.
You were sleeping with the kids right at the time.
My a c from upstairs had fallen out the window,
and so at that time we were all just sleeping
downstairs where it would be cooler, and we were sleeping
(07:59):
on a couch, all three of us. I had a
huge L shaped couch and so we were all in
different areas on it asleep. And so the first thing
you would have noticed when you woke up is that
your son was missing. I mean, because I mean he
would have been right in your media vicinity, would have
been in your I sighted as soon as you woke up,
So he was gone, right. My first instinct is to
(08:20):
look and make sure that there there and they're asleep
and they're okay, because I woke up to try to
go use the restaurant, right and there's no where he
could have gone. It's only fifteen weeks old, is now
that he walked somewhere, and I just I started panicking
because I was like, where's where's my baby? You know,
(08:40):
my front door was open and my closest friends lived
right behind me at that time, so I went to
go out the back door and that's when I found Travis.
He was in the kitchen. Yeah, pull of his own blood.
(09:01):
See ultimate nightmare of anybody who's ever had a child.
So what did you do? I I freaked out. I UM,
I went to my friends to get help, and UM,
it's the last time I got to see my daughter,
(09:22):
and it was the last time I felt complete having
my kids, you know. Um. After I went to my
friends and they seeing what had happened with Travis, they
went and they called the police, and then they came
out and I was in a police car. I remember
(09:44):
sitting there and people just kept coming up to the
car asking me what was going on. And eventually they
took me to the police station, where an officer of
the law, if you could call him that, interrogated me.
(10:05):
It wasn't so much an interrogation. It was more like, um,
a browbeating, Like he told me I had done this,
and this is what I did and how I did
it and why I did this and just and all
I could say was I didn't do it. There's so
many things wrong with this story, even just this beginning
part of this story because it's illegal in Oklahoma for
(10:29):
a seventeen year old you're a minor to be interrogated
without an adult in the room, a guardian or or
an attorney, right, But they that didn't stop him that
at that time in Oklahoma, it was not proper. It's
legal today, they've changed the law. But what they did
to Michelle is nothing less than despicable. But how why
why would they do this? And here you were just
(10:50):
an innocent child. I mean, you're still a child, and
they interrogated you for seven fucking hours, and that is
a long long time, particularly when you were in such
a fragile state, right and your your seventeen you have
an eighth grade education, you're totally overmatch. You've apparently been
(11:12):
hitting the ad right because you wake up with this
horrible headache. And yet they really didn't manage to extract
the confession from you. Seven hours and they finally get
you to say they say, you said something that was
sort of like, you know, well, maybe I could have
accidentally dropped a knife. What he had guided me to say,
(11:35):
the investigator was guiding me and things that I needed
to say. This is how I did it, and I
was more like asking him a question as to instead
of making a statement, I was asking him that's what
he wanted to hear, because because I wanted to see
my daughter. I wanted to make sure my daughter was okay.
I wanted to hold my daughter. He made false promises.
(11:58):
Just say it was an accident. Just say this, and
you'll get to go home and you'll get to see
your daughter. We'll get you counseling, will get you therapy.
You just need to say it this way. When he
didn't like what Michelle said, he would start the recording
over again. Michael Lee William William was very likely the
person who decapitated Travis and left him dead in Michelle's kitchen.
(12:24):
There was no knife, no weapon ever found, absolutely no
blood evidence on Michelle. They never illuminated. There were five
separate sets of fingerprints that they never tested. They didn't
test the screen door for fingerprints. They didn't test a
chair that was seemed like blocking the front screen door
and it had blood on it. There was an open
back window that they've later admitted Michael William could have
(12:46):
crawled through. There's so many inconsistencies between his interviews and
his testimony at preliminary hearing, and then after preliminary hearing,
he was found hung quite suspiciously and dead. So the
only person who really knows the truth is dead. After
he testified, and what the preliminary hearing, judge pulled the
(13:06):
prosecutor and the defense attorney in after the preliminary hearing
and said, you need to seriously consider him as the suspect. Well,
I was reading about the Shannon and I found it
absolutely extraordinary that the judge that your preliminary hearing was
Judge Messler, And in an interview he called this case,
and I'm quoting, the biggest miscarriage of justice unquote that
(13:30):
he had ever been connected to, and he was holding
back tears when he said it. I mean, what does
that tell you about I mean, for a judge who
had been on the bed for over four decades to
say something at that holding back tears, this is where
it really gets me. And I've never heard this before.
At one point during this preliminary hearing, which is when
this should have stopped, he actually called the attorneys to
(13:51):
his chambers to ask if the quote unquote witness who
we now know was almost certainly the perpetrator murderer William
Michael Lee if he had an attorney, And when the
prosecutor asked why, Judge Messler responded, and I'm quoting, because
that's the murderer of this baby, and everybody in the
(14:11):
courtroom knows it except you apparently. Uh wow. You know,
like you would hope that at that point somebody would
have said, Okay, we're done, that's enough, We could stop. Now,
we can shift our focus. You sit there and go wait,
(14:33):
wait a minute, like stop like something, just stop, right,
You have that feeling like this has to This can't
be right. It can't be that the judge said something
so strong and so profound, and yet everybody felt fine
just going ahead with this. Let's not called a prosecution.
Let's call it a persecution, right, because and that's really
what was happening. It wasn't an interrogation that Michelle endured.
(14:57):
It was like a witch hunt, basically. And it's so
nuts because this kid who was another neighbor, right, and
who had made unwanted sexual advances towards you, right. And
it gets worse and worse as this unravels because of
the fact that there was evidence that was not allowed
(15:18):
in court because the kid's self asphyxiated and hung himself
between the time of your arrest and the time of
the trial. It's all just totally bizarre. But the testimony
was not allowed that was going to be presented that
he had decapitated a cat, that he had shown up
at school the day of the murder, joyful and talking
about how he had, you know, exacted some revenge on
(15:39):
you and other details. Yeah right, so so, I mean
that would have been the end of the trial right there. Right,
It would have been like, oh well, I mean, any jury,
I don't care, any jury is going to hear that stuff.
And there was more. There was a psychologist who had
said that he was ten years old, he had examined
him and that he had shown when he feels rejected,
(16:00):
he had violent tendencies. I mean, this is textbook, right,
That's exactly what happened. He had this rejection, and obviously
he was pretty twisted considering the way he died right.
Self asphyxiation is uh is a bizarre thing at any age,
but the fact that he was doing that when he
was fourteen or fifteen when he died is really um
(16:21):
It takes it to a whole another level. So there's
just so many bad actors in this particular play. So
back to this crazy judicial nightmare of yours. Right, So
they decide to proceed even though everybody knows that you're innocent,
(16:43):
and they just went ahead anyway, which is shocking. So
what happens next? Now you're in jail awaiting trial. Right,
they didn't let you see your baby. They lied to
you in the interrogation room. You're in jail. I was
put in a cell by myself because I was seventeen,
with a barrier front of my door until I turned eighteen.
Even though I was being charged as an adult, I
(17:04):
was still treated as a juvenile. And I didn't get out.
I didn't get out but for an hour day after
everybody else was locked down and have access to the phones,
the shower, what have you, And it was only for
an hour at a time. You're in solitary confinement. Yeah,
that's correct, right, No, nobody bothered to think that she
(17:27):
needs a psychologist, any sort of counseling after what you've
been through. I mean, okay, I can't. I can't even
process that. And meanwhile, are you even aware of what's
going on with your daughter. At this point, as anybody
told you, I couldn't get any answers from anybody. Did
you have parents that you could talk to or anybody
mother that she didn't know either, Well, they just denied
(17:50):
her access as well because of things that had happened
to me in her care as a child. They kept
her out of the loop too. They didn't my entire
family was anyone visiting you. I got a few visits
from family, but they were in the dark just as
much as I was. And we find out later that
(18:13):
your daughter was adopted by close friends of the prosecutor,
right correct, Which again just adds a layer to this
that is off the fucking wall. I mean, it's just
like I mean, it just doesn't make any logical sense.
And then you go to trial. You you turned eighteen
in prison, the worst ever spent. Some of the best
(18:36):
birthdays are supposed to be the best birthdays in jail
or prison. And back then, you know, I've been a
lawyer now twenty some years, but I was an intern
for the Public Defender's Office and would have to go
to the adult detention center, and these women and men
were either in cages or in a in a bunk
or so to speak, lying on top of each other, roaches, rats,
(18:59):
my it was despicable, and this smell was unfathomable. I
mean I would throw up in my mouth every time.
It was just awful. But you had to go out there,
and as a public defender, intern or lawyer, we would
go out there just to check on their well being
and we would report the conditions and it never changed.
(19:22):
I could not even imagine having to endure that, even
if I did do something wrong, but knowing I didn't
do anything and being in that just it's just it's unspeakable.
That's where Michelle was held to the adult. Yes, it
was horrible, and that's something that is worth understanding. Jails
(19:44):
by and large, are worse than prisons for some of
the reasons that you're talking about. There's no recreation. Many
people are held, as Michelle was, in their self for
twenty three hours a day. The lights don't go off,
they're never cleaned. They're literally breathing grounds for disease, violence,
rape because there's so much pressure built up because there's
(20:05):
nothing to do except for sit there. And you've got
people in there who are innocent, like Michelle. You've got
people in there who are accused of crimes but can't
post bail, but they may or may not be innocent.
We have no idea, and then we have them mixed
in with violent criminals. It sounds like a more benign
word than prison, and it's important for people to understand
that it's it's the farthest thing from it. Well, and
then also especially whenever the media crucifies you and makes
(20:30):
you out to be one of the most horrific monsters
there is and you're charged with any form of a
child crime and they broadcast it. These people, these women
or men in jail, they see that, they watch the news.
You get taunted, You just get fucked with really bad
in there, and it's twenty four hours. You get fund with,
(20:55):
excuse my language, messed with in there, and especially for well,
the crime that I was charged with and the the
gory nous, the horror of it, and what they would
say on the news and stuff. People will take that
and then they twisted and make it even worse, as
(21:18):
if you could make it any worse. But being in
there and you're innocent of this as well, and you
don't know, like me, I didn't know where my daughter
was and just I'm going through this, and then I'm
having people yelling through the vents, hollering at me all
the time, calling me a baby killer. Um, I got
(21:41):
threats all the time. They were going to make sure
my food had something in it. They were gonna do
the same thing to me that I had supposedly done
to my talk. I mean, you learned to just kind
of try to block it out as much as you can,
but you can't block it all out. And it's twenty
(22:03):
four hours a day. I can't imagine how this is
bad and worse. And it's a miracle that you survived
that ordeal, because you're right, it can't be any worse
than that. To be in there accused of what you
were accused of, having lost your child, being deprived the scene.
I mean, it's like it's literally the ultimate nightmare, and
(22:24):
yet you live through it and here you are today,
which is that's a miracle. So then there's the trial
and you're finally going to trial. Did you believe that
things were going to work out and that finally somebody
would tell the truth and you would be able to
go home. I knew that I was innocent, and I
(22:45):
believe that once they heard all this bs that they
had made up about me and everything else is somebody
was gonna see what I knew, and they they would
let me go home, you know, But they were so
narrow minded and blinded by what the prosecutor portrayed. And
(23:09):
I got a life without Pearlson's well, the lawyer was asleep.
As a defense attorney, and I've done it my entire career,
I know that we as attorneys are the only thing
that can stop the mountain of the United States and
the government where the where the stop gap? And we
(23:30):
have to If you can't get in there and fight
like hell, then get the hell out of the courtroom.
I see it day in and day out, lawyers that
aren't prepared. But they weren't just not prepared. It's almost
like they just went with the prosecution and whatever their
theory of the case was, they did not control anything
in that courtroom or anything leading up into the courtroom,
(23:52):
and they didn't do what they're supposed to do. And
so that was a part of the problem as well.
Is a problem that we see all who frequently is
that people are not adequately represented by their defenders. And
you're certainly a textbook case of that as well. I mean,
this was a case where even though there was prosecutorial misconduct,
(24:13):
gross prosecuting, including lies about the blood evidence, which had
they told the truth, would have exonerated you instantly because
your blood type didn't match the blood that was found
with the crime scene. And of course it even goes further.
There was blood presumably from the perpetrator at the crime
scene and going out the front door and going out
(24:34):
the front door. I mean, this one comes with instructions.
I mean, it was on the chairs, well that was
propped up against the outside of my front door to
where I couldn't go out the front door if I'd
went out the front door, so I'd have to have
gone out the back. On top of everything else, you
have no blood on you, right, And so any investigator
right out of school would go, well, wait a minute,
(24:57):
this doesn't make any sense. You can't commit violent, terrible
stabbing with blood everywhere, but you don't get any blood
on you, right, And so immediately there should have been like,
she didn't do it. Let's take care of her, right,
She's just been through the most traumatic experience that anyone
can go through. Let's get her some help. Let's make
sure her daughters. Okay, that would be the appropriate reaction,
(25:18):
and let's go find who did this. You would think
that that would be the proper way to do well,
that is the proper But that's not what they did, right,
I mean, I mean, in a civilized society, there's no
question that that's what should have been done. They had
their sight set on you, and it's uh, it's hard.
It was an easier target for him. Yeah, right, except
for not really though when you think about it, because
(25:41):
they had all evidence that they needed to. I mean,
they blood evidence and everything. I mean, they knew he did. Okay,
I'm gonna get too angry. So back to where we
left off. At trial, you needed a dream team, you
(26:03):
needed a superstar attorney, and you've got someone who was,
let's say, borderline incompetent, and that may be being kind.
At the same time, not only was the prosecution on
this crazy mission to convict you at all costs, but
they also broke so many different rules. Right. The misconduct
(26:24):
of this case is extreme, including I think it was
Harris was the prosecutor right, he lied about the evidence.
Not only did they withhold the culpatory evidence, which is
a Brady violation. They lied about the actual evidence. They
at least suggested to the jury that the blood that
was found at the crime scene could have been or
(26:45):
was probably yours, which they knew was right. They knew
it was not yours, but they led the jury to
believe that it was. And that's hard when you're in
the jury seat, right You're one of these jurors, and
you're sitting there and you've been hit with all this
publicity around your case and everything else, and you know
you're feeling, I'm sure, very stressed out because it was
(27:07):
a baby killed. They even showed the jurors and autopsy
of my son, so that's horrific too. So they I
can only imagine what it was like for them to
sit there and see that. I mean, I had to
just listen to it. I was forced to. I didn't
want to see it, you know, I already had enough horrors,
(27:30):
but I had to sit in there and I could
hear the video plan and all the things that they
were doing, So I can only imagine that that made
a big impact on the jurors too. And they wanted
somebody to pay for it, and I get that. I
want somebody to pay for it too, but not me.
(27:51):
I didn't do it. So there had been this circus
of a trial and ultimately the jury is out. You
were probably even as a as a eighteen year old
girl with an eighth grade education, you were probably aware
that your your own attorney wasn't doing such a great job.
(28:12):
But did you think that they were going to come
back and actually find you guilty? I never lost hope,
and I was just I was praying that they would
see the truth and that they would know I couldn't
do something like that, but it was wrong. So that moment, Michelle,
(28:34):
Now you've been through everything a human being can endure
from the time you were a child, and and what
was that moment, Like, I can't forget it. There's a
lot of things I wish I could forget. When the
jurors come back in and I was in there, I
was just holding on to my faith and that that
they were going to know there is no way that
(28:57):
I could do that. There's too many holes in what
they tried to portray, and that they would see through that.
And I kept holding them to the fact that I
knew why I was innocent, and that I was hoping
that they were. They weren't too blind to see that
I was innocent, because it was clear I was wrong,
(29:19):
because they found me guilty and gave me a life
without pearl sentence. I remember my grandfather and my uncle
in the courtroom, and I had never seen him cry,
and they both broke down and cried. I remember my
sister breakdown and she was screaming at the juries, telling
(29:41):
them that how could they do it, that they were wrong.
And I remember seeing my mom over there and she
was breaking down crying as well. Well everybody that was there,
my family was We're all wroke down and crying because
(30:02):
they all believed I was going to come home. And
I didn't know what the sentence was that they had
given me until I was able to talk to my
mom later and I asked her, I said, what was
the sense? I mean, all I heard was guilty and life.
Everything else was just kind of like blacked out. I
(30:25):
I just I couldn't believe it that they had found
me guilty, and just hearing them say that, it was
like I lost my heart. It was ripped out again
what was left of it anyhow, And then seeing my
family breakdown like that, it was it was hard, and
(30:48):
then they took me back to the county jail and
put me in my room. Um, yeah, I can't believe
even now that they can. To you. It's it's something
that all of us as Americans and human beings should
be ashamed of. And I am. So You're sentenced to
(31:09):
life in prison, and you had a lot of life
left to live when you're eighteen years old and you
end up going to prison. I want to get to
how you managed to persevere and find the strength to
fight for yourself when you could have so easily given up.
I mean, I think most people in your situation would
(31:30):
have given up. There are times said I wanted to
give up, but I couldn't. I just couldn't because I
have a daughter and now I know I have a
granddaughter too, and tell with everybody else, I had to
prove to her that I didn't do this, and in
(31:51):
order for that, I had to get my innocence proven.
And that's what kept me going through the twenty years
and even now is what keeps me going is one
day having the possibility of let her heart know the facts,
not what she's been led to believe, and being a
(32:13):
part of our life the fact that you still now
two years after being three years after being fully exonerated
and found actual innocent, found actual innocent, and the ruling
was with prejudice, so that means they can't retry you.
The idea that you still haven't been able to re
(32:35):
establish a relationship with her is is something that troubles
me a lot. But I'm hopeful. I mean, I think
that ultimately you will and hopefully they'll be a happy
ending to this. And I believe one day she will
come around and she'll let me be a part of
her life. It is going to happen, because it has to.
You know. There's another couple of twists and turns in
this right because you ended up serving twenty years. It
(33:00):
halfway through that there was light, there was a break
in the case. Before my mom passed away. My mother
had written the Innocence Project. She wrote a lot of
people because she wanted to get me my dream team,
my own dream team, that's what she called it. They
had taken my case on it and they had requested
(33:22):
all this exculpatory evidence to be turned over to him
to be were and tested, and come to find out
now not all that evidence was provided to them. They
supposed we couldn't find some or it didn't exist anymore
or whatever. The games continued. There were three envelopes at
(33:43):
one point that were sent in the mail and two
of them were empty, right, which is really like, and
let's just reflect on just that alone. It's so nuts, right, like, really,
are you kidding me? That's ridiculous. But it's not funny.
It's it sounds it sounds ridiculous now, but it's not funny.
It's very it's a very real. They were still trying
to cover their masses. Yeah, so the inst Project took
your case, which is the blessing of blessings when you're
(34:06):
stuck in that nightmare, right, and the Inns Project takes
your case. But in two thousand, this is two thousand
and five, I believe it was before that. I think
of us two thousand and four. I'm not sure on
the timeline. But whenever they ran the test on what
they were provided with, there was nothing that they could
(34:28):
do because it was all just Travis's blood. There was
none of the perpetrators. It was just Travis's blood that
was provided to them. So they had said that there
was nothing that they could do. They did what they
could do, so it kind of lost hope for a
moment in a sense. But at the same time I
(34:50):
was like, I'm not giving up. I just didn't know
how to go about doing it because I didn't have money.
I was in prison. I had already lost my parents,
I lost a lot of people, and finances don't exist
really in prison. You can't make a living in there.
So I didn't know well how I was going to
(35:12):
do it, but I knew it was going to happen
one day. You didn't give up in Innisis Project didn't
give up either. Well. They weren't able to assist with
what was provided to him, and they had done what
they did. So eventually a friend of mine had found
my attorneys that helped prove my innocence, and my sister
(35:35):
and her guy at the time, he was a doctor.
He paid for my attorneys, and the Innocence Project got
involved with them on proof of my innocence because they
were able to locate the evidence that was held back
from the Innocence Project the first time to be ran
and tested again. And those lawyers, the ones that came
(35:59):
to your rescue at this time, it's worth giving them
a shout out here, right. That's why I am grateful
for them bringing me home and doing the work that
they did to prove my innocence. And that was Richard
and Sharise O'Carroll, right. So you finally got a team
on your side that was up to the task, right,
(36:20):
And then the Innocence Project got reinvolved because the evidence
was found, right, which existed all along with this group
of very sinister people had successfully hidden for as long
as they had. It was finally found, and I believe
it took Charisse and some interns going in theirselves and
looking through the evidence theirselves in order to get it
(36:44):
and have it tested. But see, the thing is is
that it had already been tested before my trial. Tim
Heritith had already had it tested. He knew, right, the
Oklahoma State Brewer of Investigations had tested the evidence and
had provided it to the prosecutor, which was Harris. But
he just chose to ignore it. He chose to hide
it and ignore it and then lie about it and
(37:05):
do basically everything he had to do in order to
turn your life into more of a living hell than
it already was. Ultimately, you come back to court with
(37:25):
appropriate representation strong representation. Actually, let's call it what it is,
and you finally get justice. What was that like? It
was like a huge way to the world just lifted
off of me and it was a major relief. But
at the same time, it was like it had a
moment of sadness because my parents couldn't be there, especially
(37:49):
my mom. My dad wasn't early a part of my life,
but my mom couldn't be there to experience it with me.
Are my daughter who was there that day, Michelle with
the other sides Richard and Cherisse Um, I had some
family in the courtroom that day. I believe my baby
sister was there with her husband. And the doctor was there,
(38:13):
Dr Fizel, who paid Theresa richardal Carol to take my
case on Oh that's uh, I mean, that's pretty heroic
of him. So finally some good people have come to
your aid rescue. It's bitter sweet because obviously your parents
weren't there to see their their baby be but it
(38:34):
was it was awesome to be able to finally the
court system acknowledges that I am innocent, and to all
the people that had prosecuted me and even in prison,
those that beat me down and talked horribly about me
and made my life hell in there to all those
(38:58):
people that had misjudged, and it was just like I
told you I was innocent. What did judge say. He
looked straight at me and he said, Michelle Lomer for
you are actually innocent. And he said that three times
(39:20):
and said that we were dismissed. Did anybody apologize? Oh no, no, h.
Not that it would have really changed anything, but it
might have been a nice gesture for Christ's sakes. I
would just add, and not only has nobody apologized to
Michelle from law enforcement, that it's their intent to attempt
(39:45):
to try and retry her in her civil suit for
the murder of Travis in order to convince the jury
that Michelle should not receive money damages for the twenty
year she's spent in prison innocent. So I think that
that's important for everyone to know. The nightmare persists. She
(40:08):
can never be convicted or go to prison or jail.
But it is their attempt in the civil trial, which
is going to be in April, to put her on
trial for killing Travis and to try to get this
confession before the jury. And so no, nobody's apologized to
her they still want to try to prosecute me innocence.
(40:32):
They don't want to admit that they were wrong, and
they don't want to compensate. There's not enough money in
the world that could ever replace what was taken from me.
I would rather go penniless and have my kids then
I have all the money in the world. And that's
something I want to talk about a little bit to Michelle,
because it's important for people to understand the struggle that
(40:57):
happens after you get out. I think people see on
the news, the the coverage on the courthouse steps, and
there's cameras, and there's hugging, and there's crying, and there's
cheering and there's everything. But then you walk out into
a world that doesn't really want you. You've got a
resume that's got a twenty year hole in it, and
you haven't had a chance to develop skills when everybody
(41:19):
else has been out building their career or their family
or there, and you get nothing. Here we are three
years later, and now you have to still wait until
April to go and fight for compensation that should be
provided to you, in my opinion, immediately, I mean so
that you can start rebuilding your life. I'm grateful to
be free and living in on this side of the world,
(41:42):
but it's so hard to survive sometimes out here because
we have to play catch up. Me for instance, I
have no computer skills on learning them now. I had
never had a job. I was seventeen years old. I
I never drove a car day in my life. I
(42:03):
never had a house amound. You know, I had never
experienced so much that most people have experienced in their
life at the beginning of their life, you know. So
it's a struggle and the panic attacks, the anxiety of
trying to catch up, which would probably never catch up
(42:25):
to the rest of the world. But I'd like to
know some things, you know. Yeah, I mean, the PTSD
has got to be profound. It's just like I said
another sentence, almost right, um form of another prison in
a sense. But you know, you're even with physical problems
(42:49):
related to time you spent in prison and everything else,
and you're still here, right, I'm still a fighter and
a survivor. Yeah, And we've got your back, and you're
taking classes now with an organization called Goodwill, is that right? Yeah?
Good Will? It also works. The thing is a lot
of people out there don't realize what all is available.
They know is the donation sites and the stores that
(43:11):
they have, but they don't realize that there's classes that
are available to them. For me, I didn't have any
computer skills, didn't know how to do Microsoft Word, power
Point and Excel and all this stuff. And I'm learning
that extremely quickly and I'm loving it. I know how
to do a power point, I know how to do
(43:31):
a spreadsheet now. I'm very quick learner. And they've taught
me how to do resume, which I don't have much
of a resume, but I know how to do one.
I know how to carry myself in an interview. I
know more about this process that it takes to get
a job now. But as soon as I complete this class,
(43:54):
I am going to start a plus certification which does
hard ribes and the motherboards and stuff like that and
building computers. And I'm going to take forklifting classes as well.
And then in January they're supposed to be starting an
ocean program, so I can be OCEA certified as well. Wow,
(44:15):
that's a lot. That's really great. It's great and it's
important because people ask me what can I do to help?
So programs like this good will program. Do you know
that there's not enough of them? People could start one.
You can learn more about it, check out the good
Will program, tutor mentor you know, help provide equipment or clothes.
There's a million things you can do and we're gonna
(44:36):
We're gonna help. It just takes somebody to believe in
is sometimes I'm always hungry for knowledge. I want to
learn everything. It's amazing. There's so many great stories of
auxonres coming out and succeeding and triumphing. If there's anything
else you can think of that you can recommend for
people to do. Who are going to hear this and
they're gonna say, I want to do something to help.
What what would you recommend people do. I would like
(44:59):
to see more program ms that are going to help,
especially axonorees. There are some programs that are available to
people coming out of prison that are being released from
their time re entry programs. Well, one of us axonorees,
we come out. We don't meet their criteria because we're
(45:20):
not being released. We've been exonerated for a crime we
did not commit, and we can't get into those programs
because their focus is to help those coming out of
prison from our serving a time and for a crime
that they did commit. Yeah, we have in this country.
We have various re entry programs and also you know,
(45:41):
parole probation officers, I should say probation officers for people
who are released after serving the time and the crime
that they were guilty of. But when you're an axonore,
you come out to nothing. It's actually paradoxical. You don't
get any of those services because you weren't guilty in
the first place. It's it's asked backwards. Actually mean, I mean,
help them by all means, but help us as well.
(46:04):
Because now I had never even talked on its cell
phone or used to cell phone. I had never even
seen it except for on TV, you know. And as
soon as I walk out the county del Dr Vizel
hands me my first phone and I'm like, um, how
do I use this? You know? And my sister is
(46:24):
calling me on it. I don't even know how to
answer it. We don't know how to live in this
side of the world. We've been trained to live by
prison rules, prison structure, if you can call it that.
We just need more programs and more awareness. I want
(46:45):
to get stuff out there that's going to help people
coming out and provide them with resources not just financial
and educational, but emotional mental health counseling, because r entry
after certainly twenty years in prison proves to be extremely overwhelming.
(47:06):
I've represented clients who have spent most of their life
in prison and come out and don't know how to
run a microwave or a CD player or a phone.
Without that support family or community, such as Michelle has had,
they literally either violate parole or reoffend in some way
(47:29):
so they can go back to what they know, which
is prison where they feel safe, which is tragic I've
had I'm like, why did you do that? Because I
don't know how to live in this world and I
can't cope. So, Michelle, we have a tradition on wrongful conviction,
as people who listen to the show already know, which
is that. I like to just turn the microphone over
(47:50):
to you for any closing thoughts at all. What's on
your mind? M h. I'm I'm determined. I'm going to
change some things. I want to change a feel all that,
especially in Oklahoma, and I want to start a program
that's going to go back into facilities and help prove
(48:12):
the innocence of those that need to be home. And
I want to get programs in the facilities that's going
to teach individual skills to survive out here. I want
to provide resources for them on what is available out
here for them. I want to go into schools and
to speak out and teach to let kids know, Hey,
(48:34):
you don't have to commit anything, you don't have to
be doing anything. You can still get caught up and
your life can be taken away from you in the
blink of an eye, especially the way this is going
out here in the world new and I just want
to help. Michelle, UM, what can I say? You are
(48:55):
amazing and it's been really a profound experience for me
well having you in my life and having you on
wrongful conviction today. So I want to thank Our two
guests are star Michelle Murphy and her wonderful attorney Shannon McMurray.
So thank you both for being here and I'm looking
(49:16):
forward to the next days of your life. Thank you
for having us. Don't forget to give us a fantastic
review wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps. And
I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project, and I
really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important
(49:38):
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 at Wrongful Conviction and on
Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Bronfel Conviction with Jason Flom
(50:01):
is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association
with Signal Company Number one m
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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