#061 Jason Flom with De'Marchoe Carpenter and Malcolm Scott

De’Marchoe Carpenter and Malcolm Scott were 17 years old when Tulsa police arrested them in connection to a gang-related shooting that killed 19-year-old Karen Summers, the mother of a 4-month-old baby, outside a house party in 1994. Neither teen was found with the murder weapon or the getaway car and no DNA linked either of them to the crime scene. Days after the murder occurred, a Tulsa homicide supervisor visited Michael Lee Wilson, a known member of the Bloods, who had the murder weapon, the car, and the motive. Prosecutors offered Wilson a plea deal in exchange for testifying against De’Marchoe Carpenter and Malcolm Scott, and Wilson was released on $5,000 bond. While he was free, he brutally butchered Richard Yost, a night clerk at a Tulsa convenience store in February 1995—that crime was so heinous that Wilson and his co-defendant Billy Alverson both received the death penalty. Two eyewitnesses who placed De’Marchoe Carpenter and Malcolm Scott at the scene, and who provided inconsistent statements to investigators, later recanted and claimed detectives had coerced their testimony by threatening them with charges. After their three-day trial, De’Marchoe and Malcolm were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison on the murder conviction, plus 170 years for two counts of shooting with intent to kill, and one count of using a vehicle to facilitate the discharge of a weapon. Days before Wilson was set to die by lethal injection in 2011, he provided a videotaped confession to the Oklahoma Innocence Project. In the footage, he claimed that he was the one who killed Summers, and that he’d allowed cops to suspect De’Marchoe and Malcolm. Almost 22 years later, on May 9, 2016, a judge finally vacated their convictions and declared them factually innocent.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
I've never been in trouble with my life. I didn't
even have a parking ticket. I didn't you know what
I mean. I was brought up like cops are the
good guys. I didn't know what was going to happen.
But I do know that everything was stacked against me.
Everything like everything, this isn't supposed to happen this way.
I'm innocent. I know I'm innocent. I know I had

(00:23):
nothing to do with this. How is this possible? I
grew up trusting the systems. I grew up believing that
every human thing should do the right thing. And that's why,
even though Neil was dealing with corrupt people, I wasn't
going to brave anyone to get me out of prison
because I wouldn't live with the fact that I braved
my way out of my wife's death. I'm not innocent

(00:45):
to proven guilty. I'm guilty until I proved my innocence.
And that's absolutely what happened to me. Our system. Since
I've been out ten years, it's come a little ways,
but it's still broken. I totally a little trust in
humanity after what happened to me. This is wrongful conviction.

(01:17):
Welcome back. To wrongful conviction with Jason flam That's me
and today we're going to do something we've never done
before and I'm really excited about it. We have two
guests today to Marco Carpenter and Malcolm Scott, who were
co defendants and now our co exonorees, both both wrongfully
convicted of a murder and both exonerated twenty two years later.

(01:41):
They were ultimately exonerated in an incredible twist of fate
when the actual killer, Michael Wilson, as he was about
to be executed, came clean and admitted, which he had
done previously, but he said it again that he was
the killer and that these men were not involved. You
have to hear this story to believe it. Guys. I
always say this, I'm sorry you're here, but I'm happy

(02:03):
you're here. So DeMarco, Malcolm, welcome to the show. Thank
you for inviting us to the show. Yes, yes, thank you. Jason.
I really appreciate this opportunity to even be here in
the big city of New York. It's a beautiful thing,
and to be on your show talking about something that
I think is very very important that the people need
to hear and it's hot here in New York, just

(02:24):
like Oklahoma, So you guys probably feeling that at home,
even though it's got to be a little bit of
culture shock too, but it really was. So this is
a this is a Tulsa case. And it's interesting because, well, DeMarco,
your case has been featured on The Buried, a live
podcast which is based on writings that you did in prison.
And I've been listening to that podcast, which I recommend everyone,

(02:45):
and I feel like I got a history lesson, you know,
along the way, which is really great. But you know,
there's a real significance to Oklahoma that I think it's
important for people to know about. It is the incarceration
capital of the United States. Now it's now past Louisiana
as the place where there's more people locked up per

(03:05):
capita than anywhere else in the United States. Of course,
the United States is the is the incarceration nation, right,
So you're dealing with the worst state in the worst
country in the world in that sense, and you guys
were caught up in that. Um So let's go back
because this takes us back to the nineties, right actually

(03:26):
early right now, you guys grew up, did you know
each other growing up. Oh yeah, we actually did. We
were friends before we even got incarcera. And that's Malcolm talking.
You'll get used to the voices on the air. But
so you were friends growing up, and you grew up
in a rough neighborhood by anybody's definitely yeah, right, definitely,
um And so and I know I heard you talking

(03:47):
about it, um listening to to the other podcast, the
Bird Live podcast, about how you were pretty much surrounded
by people who were in gangs. And because as I know,
when people read the description, they say these guys were
suspected gang members and stuff like that. And I think
for a lot of people they say, WHOA, well, this

(04:08):
guy doesn't salarly such a good guy. But in fact,
that's a very nuanced situation, right, because you really didn't
have it. I thought you described as very eloquently. You
really didn't have much of an option in that situation, right,
I mean, you were never formerly a gang member, but
you were friends with somebody. Yes, all my friends. Everyone
who I grew up with was my friends and someone

(04:29):
was in gang. So right, So then the authorities trying
to paint that picture and say this guy's gang affiliate
or whatever it is, right, realizing that you have literally
no options, like you can't be an island in your
own neighborhood, right, and there's consequences that come with that
as well. And wasn't that the same situation for you, Malcolm?

(04:49):
Oh yeah, basically, I mean I grew up around gangs.
I mean a lot of older you know, people in
my family, friends that I had, who actually went to
school with, so you know, you know, back then, it
was much easier because you didn't look at these people
as game members. You looked at them or these are

(05:10):
just my friends. Before they even get involved in the
gangs or anything. We were already friends and some of
them were already in my family, so I didn't all
of a sudden say, okay, we're you're a game member.
Now you're no longer my family, you know what I mean.
So when you hang out with these people, you're just
looking at them as every day family and friends, so
you don't see it as how the rest of the
world may have seen them. So when a situation occurs

(05:33):
where you get seen with them or something like that,
they automatically think, oh, well, you must be a game
member also because you're with these people but they don't realize, Hey,
this is my family and that's where you live. You
know what I mean. This is where I live. This
is the people I grow around. We hang out sometimes.
That doesn't mean that I go do things that they
may do, you know what I mean. And it's geography,
I mean, it's a big part of it. And that's

(05:55):
one thing I do want to talk about before we
get into the crazy details of your case and the
twenty two years that you guys spent in prison for
something that should have been clear from the very beginning
that you didn't do in the very dramatic way in
which it came to light as a guy who was
about to be executed reiterated what he had said all along,

(06:15):
which was that you guys weren't the guys that he was.
And he was executed, of course, for a separate crime
that he committed, which he should have been in prison
in the first place for this crime, and that person
would have been killed, and that was a terrible, brutal,
brutal beating crime, a beating murder of a clerk in
a convenience store. But Tulsa has a particular significance because

(06:36):
of the fact that going back well a hundred years now, right,
Tulsa was the sort of the epicenter of black culture
in the United States. It was it was called the
Black Wall Street, right, yes, ninety one. And I don't
think a lot of people are really as familiar with
that history as they should be. But it was the
place where you had a higher percentage of African Americans

(07:00):
who were doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, professional scholars. Um. It was
the place um to be really um. And and then
that terrible day happened. They call it the race riots,
but in fact it wasn't a race. There was a

(07:20):
massacre and a mass lynching. Yeah, um. And it's really
one of the most shameful days in the history of
America when you think about it, What can you explain
what happened in that situation because you're you obviously know
the histories very well. From what I understand, a white
woman got an elevator along with a black man, and yeah,
it was a black man named Dick Rowland. And that's

(07:42):
partially why the whole incident of the nineteen twenty one
race massacre happened. You know, after they get an elevator,
no one really knows what happened because only those two
were in there, and when the elevator came it opened,
she came running out, crying and yelling and welling. And
you know, no one really knows what happened while it

(08:02):
was innovator in an elevator, but after that, you know,
that's where it just it went crazy. Well what happened.
What happened was he was arrested based on her complaint
to the authorities. Now, it is an elevator ride. There's
a limit to how much can happen in an elevator ride.
It wasn't even a skyscraper, right, we're talking about nineteen

(08:24):
twenty one. But then he was arrested and a lynch
mob formed, and the sheriff wouldn't allow the mob to
take this guy out of jail, this rolling guy, and
and kill him. And because of that, the anger grew
and welled over into this riot that involved burning down

(08:46):
over a thousand homes, killing over three hundred African American people,
destroying basically every black owned business in town, and turned
what was this sort of oasis of culture and community
into literally a wasteland. You had families that were missing

(09:08):
fathers and mothers, You had you know, hundreds of dead
bodies and basically all the businesses destroyed, and so it's
it's important to reflect on that as we fast forward
to the time that you guys grew up in in
the eighties and nineties, where Tulsa had become a very

(09:28):
violent or that area of Tulsa that you lived and
had become a violent ghetto, you know, And there's at
least a case to be made at gangs may have
originated as a means of community members trying to protect
themselves from this sort of a massacre. Let's not forget
there were machine guns involved right back then, there were

(09:50):
people spraying like government people with the flag. Yeah. So
I mean, it's really impossible to overstate the horror of
what happened. But you know, and no one's trying to
justify gang behavior and what it's becoming the modern day.
But when you look at the history, it's sort of
it does put a certain you know, context in it

(10:11):
that's important for everyone to be aware of. So, so
let's fast forward to September tenth, nineteen ninety four, which
is a day that nineteen year old woman named Karen
Summers was fatally shot in the back and two young men,
sixteen year old men boys were injured, both of them shot,

(10:34):
Alonzo Johnson and Kenneth Price. And it seemed like originally
they found the right guy, but they how did it
get so screwed up where they had? And this always
makes me crazy and I didn't even go through it.
But they originally targeted Michael Wilson, who was the actual perpetrator,

(10:55):
but somehow or other, its shifted to you guys. What
happened and Marco Wilson he also got caught with the
murder weapon and the car used in this drive by.
And that's why it get crazy when it shift shifts
to us, you know. So wait, so this crime, this
really came with instructions, right, I mean, you're right out
of the police academy. This one's like a gift here, right,

(11:15):
I got the whole thing for you on a silver platter. Yes,
So why would they go off that they got the guy?
Why did they particularly want you guys? For some reason?
I believe that Michael Wilson was an informant and once
he got caught, you know, they didn't want to let
him go away. They want to still use him. But
once he caught that other case, too much later. That's

(11:36):
when you know they couldn't deny, okay, we can't save
him now. They were willing to turn a blind eye
to the murder of Karen Summers as well as the
shooting of these two other young men who hopefully recovered,
and they were willing to allow this guy who they

(11:58):
knew was a killer to stay on the streets just
to protect their own well it's for their convenience, right
that they wanted to continue to use him as an informant.
And on top of that, those were black kids. They
had incurred that, you know, the crime was committed against
black so it was black on black black and he
was black, that the kids were black, they were shot.

(12:20):
You guys were black. So it was kind of like
everybody's kind of disposable, including YouTube guys who are going
to go to prison for the rest of your life. Yes,
So was it Wilson that decided, Hey, I'm gonna save
myself and just give up a couple of names of
guys I know from the area, or how did that?
Do you understand how that happened? I think, uh, me myself,

(12:41):
I believe that they had made some mistakes with Wilson,
like I think they had went into his house illegally
got the gun. You know, they had made a lot
of formal mistakes. I believe that hadn't they not allowed
him to cooperate with them, and they would have basically
destroyed the case because I think like if they had

(13:05):
not been able to go in there, into his house
and get that murder weapon, they wouldn't have been able
to go into his car, they wouldn't have any of
that evidence. I think that they've been able to use
but once they did it without any type of searching seizure,
because there was never any searching seizure or anything to
go in his house and get that murder weapon, you see.

(13:25):
So I truly believe like the police that made a
lot of mistakes within the case that they wanted to
cover up and they would have lost the case had
they not allowed Michael Wilson to cooperate and help them
bring someone else into the case, you know, because we've
seen them that night. That was a perfect opportunity for

(13:46):
them to use us. And the bullet recovered from the
body of the victim, well, they're three victims, but the
woman who was murdered, Karen Sommers that was traced or
matched with the gun that was used and the shooting right,
so again another bull's eye, so to speak, of evidence.
And then they found around a way around that right

(14:08):
by by saying that that he has lend you the bullets. Mean,
lad me three bullets, And I don't understand, like three bullets.
Three victims and three bullets, but he had gave me
the bullets. And you know, it still doesn't make sense.
Is that like a common thing for someone to just
give somebody some bullets like here like under the Christmas
tree or how does that even that? I don't even
understand that, Like, here's three bullets, and that's what he said,

(14:30):
three bullets. He gave me three bullets, and you just
had three lucky shots. Three lucky shots. There's only three
you needed. That's all I needed. Were you like an
expert marksman at seventeen years old? Had you been in
in the military? Never? Never? Right? I know, that's just ludicrous. Yeah,
the whole thing is, I mean, it would be funny
if not for the consequences not only to you, but
to the other victim, which is again and I talk

(14:52):
about this all the time on the show A rafal conviction,
the idea that Wilson was free after period of time
and went off and committed this, this gruesome murder where
he beats literally beats somebody, literally beat somebody death with
a bat ball bat and and it was just a
clerk in a convenience store. This was, like, I mean,

(15:12):
nobody deserves that favor. This is an innocent person who
is he and his family and his friends, everybody are
victims in this, in this in this sort of uh,
this conspiracy to frame you guys. Yeah, I mean there's
not It's not only you and your families that are
victimized a society, right because that that guy working in

(15:35):
the store, who knows what he was going to go
do with his life, right to be left behind a
wife and two children. Yeah, Okay, that's really to think about. Remember, Yeah,
what I mean, it's it's sort of I don't doesn't listen.
There's a lot of things in the world I don't understand,
especially these days, but that's one of them. I don't
understand how people can sleep at night when they go

(15:57):
around and I'm speaking specifically in this case about the
the police and the prosecutors um and I always say
on this show. There's a lot of good police and
a lot of good prosecutors out there, but the bad
ones do a tremendous amount of damage, and the ripple
effect of that damage can be felt throughout the community,
and it puts everybody at risk. When this, when this
is allowed to this stuff, it's allowed to continue and

(16:19):
it and it does and it's it's horrible. So you guys,
now you find yourselves arrested in charge with this murder.
Did you have alibis? Did you have I mean, I'm
assuming you had public defenders in the case, right, Oh, yes, yeah,
definitely public defenders and I did have alibi. We both
had alibis. I'm actually pretty good alibis. I mean people
who are citizens, never being convicted of any crimes or anything.

(16:42):
And my attorney never even called them up there to
testify for us. He told us, who, you probably won't
even really need them, you know, they don't really have
nothing known. You guys won't really need the witnesses who
could make sure that you don't go to prison for
the rest of your life. Nah, that would be like white.
I mean, it sounds like a lot of extra time.
Guy probably had places to be you know what I mean,

(17:03):
and I don't understand it, but you know, I mean,
and you're you're living through this as I mean, still
you're you know, you're you're closer to uh, I mean,
you're you're halfway between the child and the man at
that point, right, because we know that that the brain,
the adolescent brain, doesn't fully form until twenty five years old,
so you're eight years away from that, and this whole
thing is spinning around you. And you got this lawyer

(17:24):
telling you, I mean, did you let me ask you
this tobic defender? Yeah it was he represents. Yeah, we
had two different ones, but they was both trash and
you were you were tried together. Yes, Um, so you
had two public defenders who were useless. Um, I don't
really understand how who in which my public defender, Stephen Sewell,

(17:46):
after I got found guilty, he went over and worked
for the district attorney. Well, there does raise a couple
of interesting Oh yeah, yeah, those crushes. Right. I truly
believe there was a lot of you know, little shady
deals and things going on up under the table, behind
the scenes. I mean, I mean, just as much as

(18:06):
I was saying earlier about a lot of mistakes that
the police had made and were covering up. I mean,
once you've made a mistake like that and then this
guy that you let out goes and you know, murders
the guy in cold blood beats him to death, you
have to continue to charade. You cannot admit, now, well
we made a mistake on these other guys and let

(18:26):
him out to do this, right, You can't. You can't
admit that to the public. Was the guy who was killed?
Was the guy's name was killed in the store? Richards
Richard Jost? Was he white or block? He was white? Right?
Even worse for them than right, because now they're responsible
for the death of of of a white citizen. Right. Yeah,
And it's back to the Tulsa thing, which is such
a strange place when you look at it at the history.

(18:48):
So oh yeah, So at that point you were really
I mean, here, isn't that ironic too, because here you
got this guy who two months and it sort of
reminds me of the Central Part five case in a
certain way. But two months after you guys are wrongly
arrested and they ignore the fact that they knew because
they knew, they knew Wilson was a guy O. They
definitely know they definitely knew this. Like I said, this

(19:08):
one was obvious as obvious as could be, and not
just in hindsight, but right at the time. So you
would think in an objective way that once this, once
you guys found out that he had gone on and
killed this guy Yost, you would go, well, okay, that
proves that this guy was the guy and we should

(19:30):
be going home now. But in fact it actually had
the opposite effect because it caused them to dig in deep, predict,
their heels in deeper into this false narrative that they
were promoting, and so it actually was even worse than
the fact that this guy had gone and committed this
other horrible crime. And on top of that, ten months

(19:51):
prior to that, this whole incidents with Karen simm and
Michael Wilson, I was shot. I got shot ten months
prior to that. How that happens. I was at an
old It was a club called the Wagon Wheel, and
it was a lot of older people and an old man.
Some youngsters. Some young guys robbed this old man, and

(20:12):
the old man came back and shot the club up.
That's at least one of the stories I heard. I've
heard many stories of who shot that club up that night.
So I just came in guns blazing into a dark
It was a drive by. And to this day, I
don't know what happened or who who did it. But
you know, I had a colost to me back, you know,
I wore a colost to me back for three years.

(20:33):
And you know I had a brace on this arm
over here, and they took muscles out of my leg
to put in my stomach, and a tracheost to me
and all that. So fast forward to the time of
the crime. When they arrest me, I'm in no physical
condition to you know, du get around or do nothing barely,
you know, I can. I have a brace on my arm.
I'm sixty three, one hundred and sixty three pounds soaking wet,

(20:58):
you know, and I'm not healthy. You know, I'm barely walking.
I had to learn how to walk. I was in
the hospital for three months, and you can tru check
the records, but I was in the hospital three months,
you know. And two months after being released from the hospital,
they took the pins out my arm because I had
pins on my arm and I had a brace when
I was arrested. I had a brace on my arm

(21:19):
and they told me I couldn't wear this brace in
the county jail, so you know, my arm is you know,
they actually wanted to cut my arm off. My mom
and told him, no, don't cut my baby's arm off.
So you know, and that's on top of everything else.
Cut your arm off, cut my arm off, yes, because
it's inconvenient to have you in there with the brace on. Yes.
And it just so happened Malcolm this night that this

(21:42):
when I was shot, Malcolm was there and his cousin,
Big Marlon Williams, and they saved my life. You know.
They picked me up with me in the back of
Marlin's car, was headed to the hospital. Saw amby lamps
flagged him down and you know, and that saved my life.
So you were shotting the stomach in the arm, yes,
and he's you guys. You can't see it on the

(22:02):
on the radio obviously, but he just showed me the
scars and there that's no joke. I mean, it wasn't
a grazing wound. It was like this is I mean,
you were really shott. I'm not sure I've heard five,
I heard seven, two different caliber gun. So I'm not sure.
Oh my god, you don't even don't have too many
times shot shot twice. Yeah, so this guy came like

(22:24):
spraying ball. Yes, it was definitely it was a real
drive by. Whoever opened that door he was gonna shoot him.
And because like when the door opened, because I think
you were in front of me and I was behind him,
and it was like it was an older, older guy
coming out too, and as we're all going out, as

(22:46):
soon as the door opened, we heard the shots. It
was immediate thing, you know. So when he was shot
right there in the door, because he was the first
one out the door, and I remember standing behind him
because I had got shot in the leg. You got
your two. Yeah, I didn't get none of what he got.
I just got basically it went in and out the leg.

(23:07):
He got shot with basically most of everything. And then
there was another older guy that was coming out with
us he got shot also. It was like three people
got shot. People got shot in because he didn't. It
wasn't so much as a drive by. He actually stopped
the car like when that door came open. Because when

(23:29):
the Marco got shot, he fell into the door. He
didn't realize that he didn't know. I can probably tell
your story better because he was unconscious, Like he fell
right there in the door once he got hit, so
the door, his body kept the door open. So once
the dude continued to shoot whoever was out there, because
it's a small little dance floor that's like right there
in front of this little you know, a little juke joint,

(23:51):
you know what I mean. And uh so everybody who
was out there kind of basically on that dance was
probably some of those eleven people that got shot because
the dude was still shooting into the door. Once he
fell into the door, fell with the door and held
the door open with his body. The guy was still shooting,
and you had some some couple of months there, Jesus Christ.
Most of you guys, you go to trial and your

(24:26):
attorneys at dumb and dumber basically right basically, Well, and
that's being kind because we don't know that one of
them wasn't at least one of them wasn't on actually
making a deal because he worked in a disattorney's office.
After I I can convicted, right kind of like thanks,
I think originally we had Steve sewell together, we had

(24:48):
the same attorney together originally, I guess, and then un
once he went on further, they separated it and they
brought on Michael Harris, who was my attorney, and he
took over my part of our case. I think Steve
Sewell did his part. And they were supposed to work together.
We still want to try together. You know, they were
having issues where they weren't even really wanted to work together.

(25:10):
Like I said, it was really you know, kind of
let's push these guys under the rug. Let's get them
out of the way. You know, we don't we don't
need this type of you know, bad publicity upon this,
especially this serious death penalty case, which was Michael Wilson.
You know, that kind of took over as a more

(25:31):
serious case because you know, of course it was a
death penalty situation, and you know, it was here was
this guy who was a clerk at a you know,
convenience store to lose his life, a wife and children,
small children left behind. So it was more of a
storybook for people to want to look at and for

(25:52):
them to admit, hey, we let this guy out to
do this. You know. I think that that that in
itself was very, very I think important and key in
the in their pursuit to make sure that they convicted us.
And you know, I can't let this go without talking
about the fact that in America, the I don't have

(26:15):
the exact statistics in front of me, but the odds
of a of the death penalty being uh, of the
sentence being given of death when it's a black perpetrator
and a white victim are exponentially higher than if it's
the other way around, or even if it's black on
black or even white on white crime. Um. And that's
something that persists from you know, uh, from from back

(26:38):
in the day, and it's it's, uh, maybe, look, we
should have a death penalty anyway in my opinion, but um,
but certainly it's not. It's not uh, meeted out in
a manner that is fair. Um, if there could even
be such a thing, you know, it has a it
has a clear racial bias, and um, it's not it's

(27:01):
not something that anybody of good conscience should be okay with.
And I always say to people, when I talk to
somebody who's in favor of the death penalty, my thing is, well,
what percentage of innocent people are you okay with executing? Oh?
No, no no, No, I'm executing people I don't know. Well.
But but you now, I'll say to somebody who had
this conversation with somebody recently, but you know the system
doesn't work. Oh yeah, yeah, but the system not doesn't

(27:22):
work that good, or there's a lot of corruption. Okay,
So then I'll go back to the same question. What
percentage of innocent people are you okay with? Is it
ten percent? Is it one percent? Which people? How do
you like? Because you can't you can't look at it
any other way. The system on. Somebody say, oh, we've
got to fix the system, wouldn't Yeah, okay, it's what
are you talking about. It's so broken and it never

(27:44):
could be could be fixed, you know. It's it's impossible
to have a perfect system, even if everybody is doing
their job the way they're supposed to. Even if you
had in your case, you hit the jackpot, right, the
reverse jackpot, because you had you had cops and prosecuts
who were willing to lie and cover up and and
uh and do whatever they had to do. Um and

(28:07):
you had incompetent defense attorneys. If all those things didn't
line up, I can't believe that you guys would have
been convicted. Oh no, no, because I mean even if
you had, and what were these the witnesses who were
prepared to testify as to your both of your alibis.
Were they in the court in the courtroom, they were
right there, right there. Yeah, so it would have been
as as as difficult as uh, I would like to
call the witness your honor. Okay, that would have been it.

(28:29):
And the next thing you know, they would have been
on the stand going on. I know Malcolm was over
at my spot or whatever the hell it was, right,
but it was too much trouble for the defense attorney.
I mean, were you when when this was going on?
Were you there like elbowing your guy going hey hey Carl?
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I gave him, I gave
him the fool names of everyone. No. But I mean

(28:51):
when you're in the courtroom, right, you're you're you're experiencing this,
this horror show unfolding in real time. You know the
rest of your life is at state. You're seventeen years old,
and and you know the witnesses are sitting right behind you.
Are you able to actually tell your attorney, hey, I
want you to call Yes, Yes, I told seuld, Hey, hey,
call this person here, called Melissa Shields. She was there.

(29:13):
She you know, he didn't call none of the people,
my brothers, you know, all these people who was there
at my house, you know, Laurie Omen, all these different
witnesses who were there in the courtroom, at least five
or six people that they could have called. He didn't
call any of them, even though you were telling them, yeah,
call him. And I'm telling hey, right there, you know,
he said this here. That's not true because I'm writing
stuff down at you know, or whispering and is there

(29:36):
that's not true. He said this here. You know, call
this person, this person right here. They can you know,
they can tell you the truth. Basically, this is like,
I mean, I think everybody's had that dream in their
life at least one of drowning. Right. This is literally
like you're watching yourself drowning in real time. And so
this whole procedure took. How long trial was bad today?

(29:59):
I want to say three? Was it three? The last
was they deliberate for nine hours? They deliberated nine hours
nine hours? Was the jury? What was the makeup of
the jury. It was all white, one black? Was it
the old lady. Yeah, I remember. It was an old lady.
I remember because they asked her some questions and they

(30:19):
asked her and she said, yeah, I volunteered tear for
the police department. I do some kind of volunteer work
for the police depart And they still allowed her to
be up there. So, like my lawyer was like, this
is the best we can get. So the one black
juror worked for the police department that she was a volunteer.
She said, she did volunteer work for the police. This

(30:42):
was our one black juror, you know what. And I'm like,
aren't you going to be trying to get rid of her?
She's saying, she's well, she's the only black up there.
It's all we got. And I'm like, that's not helping us,
Like I mean, that's gonna make it worse if anything.
Like wow, that's just really And she did some more
volunteer work for the police department. By convicting you guys, right,

(31:02):
so then this trial, you know, it's it's amazing when
you look at the elapsed time in the different areas, Right,
So you're in jail for over a year waiting your trial,
and then the trial takes two days, maybe three days. Nothing,
It's gone in a blink of an eye. I mean
civil trials take a lot longer than that. So two

(31:25):
or three days you're in court. So the jury goes
out and they're deliberating. Did you think you had a
chance in hell of being exonerate or were you basically
at this point, like I said, we're done me personally.
You know, I believe that I was innocent. So I
was like, ain't no way that they can convict us
even though all this evidence is against us. We were innocent.

(31:46):
We were innocent. What about you, Malcolm? Did you believe
in the system even before this? And when they went out?
I mean, were you guys able to talk to each other? Yeah?
We were well, we were sitting waiting for the jury's deliberation.
I think we rubbed there together. Yeah, I mean I
felt like, and why they not to cut you off?
But why they We was waiting on them today to deliberating.

(32:07):
They came back and told us that, you know, we
can settle out for some time. They offered us a deal.
Why are we waiting on a jury to deliberate? What
was the deal? I remember they came back with eight
years for me. And you too. No, they never came
to me with eight years. Why they deliberate? They came.
They wanted me to test. They wanted me to say

(32:27):
Malcolm did it. Oh yeah, why they deliberating. They kept
trying to get him to to take me down. You know.
I think it was because the evidence was looking funny,
so they were really pushing for him to you know,
kept giving him offers of smaller sentences, but he wouldn't

(32:48):
take it right. And isn't that interesting too, because if
they actually thought that you were a murderer, there isn't
no way to go off for you eight years. So
they arrested you for a crime and that they didn't
come at then, didn't want to cut your arm off,
And now they're trying to get you to cut your
friend off in a symbolic way and still go to
prison for you years. Yeah, it's like, oh, and by

(33:09):
the way, we have something behind door number three. So
so you didn't take the deal obviously, and the jury
comes back in and what was that moment like if
you can explain for each of you guys, I mean,
obviously the worst moment of your life. And they come
back in I'm assuming they didn't look at you, and

(33:31):
you probably had a sense when they came in, But
can you paint a picture of the courtroom? Was it hot?
Was the coal? Was it noisy? Was it people there?
What was the whole scenario? Trying to put the audience
into your shoes as best as you can. For me,
that was the longest few minutes ever, you know, waiting

(33:51):
for them to give the verdict, and when they came
back with a guilty verdict, you know, it's like everything stopped.
I'm moving in slow motion and it just I'm watching people.
I'm looking around my family. They're crying, and you know,
it's it's warm in there. It got warmer, and you know,

(34:16):
something dropped. I don't know if it was, you know,
my heart, but I it was. It was a terrible
moment for me, but I didn't cry. You know, I
felt like I had to stay strong for my family
that was looking. But you know it was it was heartbreaking.
I mean for me, Like I'm gonna be honest, like

(34:37):
just talking about it right now, my heart is beating
fast just bringing back that memory, you know, of a
day in my life that I'll never ever forget. I mean,
I don't know I felt like every like bow movements
and everything were better to just give away. It was
almost like when that last breath of life goes out

(35:00):
of a person and they lose all, you know, I mean,
control of their bodies or something, and it's like I
felt that way. It was like my life had just ended,
and I was looking at me and seeing it, and
I was saying, like, why is this happening? This isn't
supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I know I'm innocent.

(35:25):
I know I had nothing to do with this. How
is this possible? How is this possible? Is what I
kept saying to myself and thinking as my heart was
beating so fast, and I'll never ever forget that moment.
And then it gets it just wanted you think it

(35:46):
can't get worse, it gets worse because you guys were
sayingced to life in prison plus one hundred and seventy years,
which is you know, I don't I mean, I don't
understand our system. What do you need? Life plus? Does
that mean in case you come back to life, you
go back in another hundred and seventy years? That what
is one hundred and seventy years? How long were you
guys expected to live? I mean, and so so now

(36:08):
off you go to prison um maximum security prison obviously
right for this time in Oklahoma? Yes, And is that is? That?
Was that As bad as it sounds, it was worse.
It was worse. When I pulled up at the prison,

(36:29):
someone was being executed. It was real quiet. And when
I saw the prison, it looked like death. Looked like death.
So you know, I'm looking at this place, McAlister, you know,
I'm like, whoa, you know, this is where I'm fed
to have to be. You know. It was a terrible feeling. Yeah.

(36:54):
I think it was because of the fact that we
had to automatically go to a maximum security prison. So
we had to go to basically the worst prison in
Oklahoma at the time. You know, at eighteen years we
had finally turned eighteen and so we were basically still
kids and we were stepping into the worst prison system,

(37:14):
you know, praised prison in that uh state. And so
you know, of course, it was definitely fear and you know,
confusion and concern and worry of you know, what may happen.
But you know, and it's like now you're going to
this this mind of Okay, I gotta. I gotta survive,

(37:35):
I gotta, I gotta make it through this, you know.
And and there's no one else that's gonna protect me.
There's no mom, mother, there's no daddy, there's no no one,
no this you. So now you have to at eighteen,
be you know, the man you know of yourself, like

(37:56):
you have to be the pure protector of you. There
is no one else there for you with yourself, and
you have to step into that and realize, I may
have to face this for the rest of my life.
And and you know the painted picture, the Marco's a

(38:17):
big man, sixty three. But you were in a week
in state obviously because of your injuries. Haven't been shot
however many times. And Malcolm, you're you're a guy who's
in shape, but you're not a particularly physically imposing guy
and not like a large, large guy. And even if
you were, it doesn't even matter from what I understand, right,
I mean, you're gonna be You're gonna be faced with

(38:41):
terrible situations and they're regardless. Yeah, the size isn't in
so much work. I mean, keep in mind, though I
was eighteen then, I'm forty one years old now I've
grown and a lot of what I put on right now,
the muscle I put on has come from years and
years you know, exercising and and building. But at that

(39:02):
time I was a kid coming straight from the streets,
basically sitting in a county jail land on the bump,
So there was no none of the physical physique or
anything like that. So you have to basically go on,
you know, just coming in with your heart and even
in there like a guy with shards that don't even
means they're going to bring three or four of them

(39:23):
instead of just one when they come for you. And
you know, size and things like that don't really come
into play when you got these guys with shields and
knives and stuff coming at you. So I mean, in
the system, you know, size of your physique, I don't
think it's more important than really your heart and using

(39:45):
your mind and being able to overcome the fear of
you know, anyone out there, and being ready to protect
yourself in whatever situation may occur. Well, first of all,
it's incredible at you guys survived this ordeal um twenty
two years in places like that, but it also is

(40:09):
a very unusual and uh I think important story for
people to hear of how the legal process unfolded that
resulted in you being here right when when if it
was up to the authorities, you would have died in
prison sooner or later. And it involves a number of

(40:34):
things that are remarkable, right, including the witnesses recanting right. Um,
And you know, we know that that's not as uncommon
as people think. But you know, and of course it's
worth talking about the fact that in over half of
all the wrongful, all the exonerations, the thousands of exonerations
that have happened in this country now, over half of

(40:56):
them involved police and prosecutori misconduct. So we probably shouldn't
be shocked by that. We have scandals going on right
in New York State right now. So because you had
your you had your convictions upheld on appeal two years
after you went to prison, and by now m Wilson
had been sentenced for the other beating right here, the
sentence to death. Was he in the same prison as
you guys, Well he was, but you know it's underground mccallis.

(41:21):
They have a death row. It's underground, underground, yes, yeah,
he was separate, you know, has their own unit. They
keep up it's like literally a dungeon. Yes, literally, so
you get your conviction upheld. Did you guys think you
had a chance of beating the rapp the second time around? Well,

(41:41):
for me, I know at the time, you know, when
I went in there, I wasn't aware of the appeals
process and it was to the next day, you know
when some of the older guys in the county jail
told me that. So while I'm in the county jail,
I mean, while I'm in McAlister, you know, I'm going
to the law libraria. I'm writing lawyers and letters to

(42:01):
whoever and whoever I could think of, whoever I think
that could help me. I'm writing letters. So you know
when they when they came back and they said that
the sins was upheld, you know, it was discouraging. But
at the same time, you know, I don't want to
die in prison, so I had to continue with, you know,
striving for freedom. So that's the writing letters, me going

(42:23):
to the law library, you know, me working out. You know,
you want to keep your your your body, you know,
it's your temple, so you want to stay as healthy
as possible. So you know, it was a lot of
things that contributed faith. You know, it was my faith
because I felt that, you know, the horror of being
didn't allow me to live through getting shot all those

(42:45):
times just to come to prison, you know, with a
life in one hundred and seventy years to die there.
So it was it was faith. And I want to

(43:07):
get to Williams and Price, the two guys who falsely
testified against you, and how they recanted another thirteen years
later in twenty and ten. But before we do that, man,
how did you I'm always in awe of the you know,
the strength of the human spirit that's personified by every

(43:27):
single person that sat in those shares that you guys
are sitting in now. Um, but how did you manage
to maintain hope and in a truly hopeless situation? I mean,
there really was no a rational person. It seems like
would just be like fuck it, I can't you know
what I mean, Like, you know, and a lot of
people do give up in there, right, yeah, they do.

(43:49):
I mean, and I think that was one of you know,
it's good that you said that, because I think that's
one of the things that you know, kind of gave me,
you know, that that that willpower is well that was
one of the things I think contributed seeing the results
of the guys who gave up. You know, I've seen

(44:09):
I've watched a man, old man after being in prison
for you know, thirty forty years, who had given up
and he finally died in there and just watching him,
you know, will him out on a gurney. And I
think just seeing a lot of things like that was like,
I can't go out like that. I refuse to allow

(44:31):
this to happen. And and another thing I think that
was very important for me was my family. Like I
have a I got twelve brothers and sisters, and uh,
you know, growing up with my family, you know, we
didn't have a lot, but we had each other. And
I think that's what made us closer because we didn't

(44:52):
have a lot, so we had to make our own
fun and games, you know what I mean. So it
made us closer. And I think even me going inside,
you know, I had to look back out there at
my family and the support that they had given to me.
You know, they never you know, like my mother, you know, uh,
like she was my biggest champion, Like she's my biggest fan,

(45:14):
Like she never once waved the eye and said, I
don't believe you, or you are you sure you didn't
have something? You know? It was no question there. It
was like when I told her, when I sit down
and told her in the county jail, I said, Mama
didn't do it, like I didn't have anything to do
it with it. And it's like she would always knew,
like Mom, knew you're lying. I'm gonna get your butt,

(45:38):
you know what I mean. So I was just like,
I'm just gonna tell her the truth. But she never
once said, you know, are you sure or I think
you might? You know, it was okay, So I'm gonna
be here for you. And it was never she never
changed from that. You know, even times that I would

(45:59):
be like, Mama, don't know if I can do this anymore, She's, well,
you gotta keep fighting, you gotta keep fighting, you gotta
keep believing, she said to me. She said, God helps
those who help themselves. And if and if you want
some change for yourself, you can have to start doing
the things that you need to do to help yourself.

(46:19):
Reach out to the right people, connect to the many
people as you possibly can. Don't never be afraid to
humble yourself and ask for help, you know, And she
stood behind me that whole time, and and her encouragement
helped me to write people like the Innocence Project and
and all these different people. I got turned down a lot,

(46:39):
you know, but we never we never gave up. We
never gave up, you know. And I think my faith
and my family are like two of the strongest pillars
for me to help me get through that situation. So
fast forwarding to two fourteen, you guys file the petition

(47:00):
and seeking a new trial with the recantations of the
state's key witnesses, whose names were Williamson Price. They had
originally testified that they saw you guys in the car,
which which the authorities knew wasn't your car, it belonged
to the killer, Wilson. So they had recanted in two

(47:21):
thousan ten and said that in this will surprise no
one who's a listener of the show, that they had
the police had threatened to convict them on other charges
unless they falsely identified you guys in the first place,
So they had finally recanted. So two fourteen is a
crazy year, you know. You have Michael Wilson finally executed, right, um,

(47:43):
And as much as I'm opposed to the death family
doesn't sound like society's going to miss him very much.
But I am opposed to the death penalty, and I
make that very clear. I don't think that killing justifies killing,
and I don't think the States should be in the
business of killing. So um. But he's executed, and this
is where it's almost like a Hollywood script, right, because

(48:03):
he has now confessed to the crime in detail, has
said over and over again that you guys didn't do
it right, yes, and the other witnesses have recanted. He
gets executed and goes to his death and his last
words are you know, he's repeated what he's been saying
all along, you guys didn't do it. Now he has

(48:26):
very little motivation at this point, like what's the difference.
He's going out, but you're still sitting in prison. Yes,
must be confusing as hell when you're sitting there and
the whole case against you has completely unraveled, and now
you actually had proper representation on top of that. Right,
So besides Eric Cullin, who was an investigator who was
representing you guys now Oklahoma Innocence Project who got involved

(48:48):
in two thousand and eleven when Oklahoma got an Innocence Project.
Our case was the first case that they took. Wow amazing.
At the time, I had a lawyer hired, and I
didn't know how you know, a lot of legal things work.
I don't know if it's gonna be a conflict of
interest or anything. So I contacted my attorney first and
was telling him about the letter, and he was immediately

(49:09):
on board, like, yes, you need to get with these people.
These people have a lot of influence, they have a
you know, a lot of connections. You should you know,
you know, allow them to come on board as well,
because they can reach places that I can't. He was
a local attorney, you know, you know, I didn't pay
a lot of money for him whatever, but he was
trying to help me as much as he could. And

(49:30):
he was like, I'll even go and you know, speak
to him on your behalf, show him a lot of
the evidence that I had. He had the you know,
the witness, the testimonies from the recantations of Rashawn Williams
and and Keen Price or whatever, and so he went
and you know, talked to the Innocence Project on my
behalf and presented a lot of the evidence that he

(49:51):
you know, he had been gathering itself, and you know,
they came back and was like, hey, we're gonna help
you guys. We're gonna you know, jump on board and
try to see what we can do to help you
guys as well. And from that point there they kind
of just you know, kind of took control. What an
amazing turn of events that is. Yeah, and when Michael Wilson,
he said, Malcolm Scott and DeMarco Carpenter innocent, and he

(50:14):
said it on video on video. Then he said when
he was executed, and then it took two years after that,
which is really crazy. And he and he explained the
whole thing. He said the shooting was in retaliation for
an earlier incident when he had been shot. He explained
who else was in the car with him. It was
the guy's Albertson and Hard Joe. And finally we get

(50:35):
to May two thousand and sixteen. So this has now
been almost twenty two years. You guys have been in
prison because nineteen ninety four, two sixteen, the matter is
not tricky, and you end up back in court. This
is the flip side, right, This is the I mean
the proverbial. I call it a happy ending because we

(50:56):
know how many challenges there still are in front of
you guys. And what was that like? So you come
back to court, it's it's May May of two thousand
and sixteen, May ninth. I think it was whatever, um,
And did you did you know you were going to
be released or was there still an element of suspense

(51:16):
in the situation? Now, well, we didn't know it. I
believed it, but we didn't know it. You know. Yeah,
the suspense was definitely still there. I mean because I
mean we were looking at you know, if they could
do it this time, you know, we're always going to
be until the judge I had already said, I mean,
until the judge actually says, you know, you're innocent and

(51:39):
free to go. I was gonna be like, please, please, please,
please please let this go right this time. So, yeah,
the suspense was definitely still there for me. I was
still having my concerns because you gotta remember, I mean,
if it was so preposterous that this could even happen
to us after them, after all this evidence and stuff

(51:59):
that they had on this other person, and they still
took us down. So in my mind, it's like it's
nothing that I could put past these people, Like, I
can't say for sure that this is going to happen,
you know what I mean? So, so explain that moment now.
Because we talked about the moment of absolute shock and

(52:19):
horror and the worst moment of your life. I'm assuming
this was the best moment of your life or both
of your lives. Um, I see you both nodding. Yeah.
I couldn't imagine anything could be better. So and you
were there together in court, Yes, just like back twenty
two years ago, except the opposite. So what was that moment?
Like families back in the courtroom, it's almost like a
mirror image of the other one different judge though this

(52:42):
one here, I got to say, I think I was
sharing this with somebody else. I don't know if you
guys remember whether the show where the old cold case
where they the old cases. I always come back and
they'll kind of run through it where they'll show the
guy when he was young and then show him when
he's old. It kind of felt like that for me

(53:03):
in that scene because you could see, like when my
lawyer got up there, he had looked a lot older.
When Ken Price got up there, he looks a lot older,
Like everybody looks. You can tell these are the same people,
but they're a lot older. I've aged and you've aged,
and I'm looking around the scene, you know what I mean.
And and so when it finally gets to that point

(53:24):
where the judge, you know, because she read off a
lot of different things where she was like, no, I
ain't I'm not giving you this, I'm not giving you that.
And I was like, well, wait a minute, this isn't
sounding good, sounding good at all. She's denying a lot
of our stuff, like yes, okay, hold up, you know
what I mean. But then when she finally got to

(53:45):
the to the biggest one of the new evidence and
things like that, and she kind of stopped there and
went on a longer speech about that last one. And
so as she started to speak about that one, I
kind of felt like, okay, we might we still got
this chance. And when so when she finally said, you know,

(54:07):
at this moment, I want to find these these men.
You know he's actually innocent, And like I just looked
at my mom and it was just like man, and
she looked at me and it was like we both

(54:31):
it was like a tear dropped at the same time
for us, but it was like finally and she was like, yes,
you're coming home. And it was like she had never
once said I don't think you're going to make it
out of there. No matter how sad I would get,
no matter how upset, she would be like, you're coming home.

(54:54):
You're coming home. And at that moment when she said
finally you're coming and I just like, it was like
the biggest release I think for me, like it was
a big release, like I could finally breathe again and

(55:14):
say I have life again. I have life back in
be It was an amazing moment, you know that I'll
never ever forget in my life. And then I was
glowing inside. I was glowing, you know. I don't know
what nobody else seemed, but I felt it. Said wow.

(55:35):
And then when I finally got outside and I was
able to look up at the sun and just the sky,
it was beautiful. Yeah, indeed, what do you do? What?
What was the first thing and you got out? We
get something to eat? Did you go a tree like
the lawyers? We went with the lawyers and we went
to some restaurant with all our family and I didn't

(55:57):
even eat, you know, I was too exp I didn't
even eat that. I think I took me a lap
around the parking lot. I took a lap around the
parking lot. I was just like, I can do this,
you know what I mean, Like I'm free, man, Like
I can do this now, Like I can just lap
around park I can do a limitations, no boundaries, you know. Yeah,

(56:20):
And I want to you know, as we come towards
the conclusion here. Um. You know, I've been in this
doing this work for twenty five years now. One of
the two questions that people ask me the most, there's
two questions people always ask me. One is what happens
to the prosecutors? And the answer is nothing, right, unfortunately, nothing.

(56:42):
There's no prosecutorial accountability and whatsoever in this country. It's
in saints one of the only professions where you basically
have total immunity from no matter what you do. Um,
and there's some some crazy cases going on right now
where whatever so in Massachusetts and New York, not just
in the South. But the other one that everybody always
asked me, isn't about compensation. People want to know. They

(57:04):
hear these stories and they freak out and they're like,
tell me the guy got money or the woman got money.
Tell me they got money. And we know a lot
of cases people don't get anything. Is there's a really
terrible number of cases. There's still eighteen states to have
no compensation statutes whatsoever. That's terrible. But but in Oklahoma,
you guys didn't didn't exactly get rich off of this either.

(57:26):
I mean, and I know you've talked about that before,
but can you Oklahoma has a cap on it where
they give Axonorees one hundred and seventy five K, which
neither one of us received. That. We did receive something something,
but due to you know, we get out, you know,
loans and you know for cars, and so once we

(57:47):
did get the money, you know, I got one hundred
and seven thousand, and it should have been a one
hundred and seventy five, but I had to pay the
loans back, you know. But then I get one hundred
and seventy and I am with one hundred and seven
thousand dollars. You know, I have no management skills, you
know nothing. So you know, I paid off some cars,

(58:07):
bought new furniture, and but basically, you know, it's eight
months later, I don't have a dime, you know, because
I pretty much you know, squandered it, you know, and
it was a learning experience. I didn't let it get
me down or nothing, you know. I just know I
got to work harder and make better decisions in the future.
So you can't be killed. And you also, there's nothing

(58:29):
that can get you down. I mean, he's in character. No.
Life is really beautiful out here, it really is. So
you know, it was a learning experience for me. That's
how I take it. What about you, I mean, I agree,
it was definitely a learning experience for me. Yeah, So
I mean I learned from from that situation as well.
I mean I still have, you know, a significant amount

(58:52):
of money that I'm trying to invest and things like that.
I've stayed with employment. I've been working consistently, you know,
since I've been free, and trying to maintain that while
I go through my process of earning my certification for
personal training, like that's my true goal, you know, in

(59:15):
my career. And if people if people are listening, some
people that are listening or in the Tulsa area. You're
still in Tulsa, right, I'm in Houston, Texas. Now, Oh
you're Houston Okay. So if people are in Houston, they're going, hey,
I'm looking for a trainer. How do they contact you?
They can contact me on Facebook, Instagram, I'm on Snapchat.
I'm on what's what's your hand on? Oh it's a

(59:36):
mister swagger seven six four, mister m I S t
R MR s W A g g A H seven
sixty four. Okay, that's m R s W A G
G A H seven six four. Contact Malcolm and get
in shape, yause he's in shape. Let's trust me or
he can get me on Facebook. It's just my regular name,

(59:57):
Malcolm Scott. Okay, so you know they don't have to
go through all the numbers and things if they don't
want to. And and the Marco. You're up to some
really interesting stuff. Now. So you got a book. I
have a book which I brought you know, I wanted
you to see it, you know, in person, the manuscript
that's typed up. And you know I have I'm a
call host of Actual Innocence, a podcast with Brooke Gettings,

(01:00:20):
and I have a podcast documentary called bard Alive. And
I've been listening to Bird Alive and Actual Innocence and
I recommend both of them highly to anyone who's a
fan of this of this genre, anyone who's interested in
learning about these situations in these cases, those are two
of the best podcasts that are out there. So Buried

(01:00:41):
Alive is one of them, and Actual Innocences the other,
both with Brook Gettings, who does an incredible job considering
she's all on her own. Um. And so the book
is you have a name for the book, Buried Alive?
Buried Alive? Is there a way do you want people
to contact you? Do you do public speaking and you
have a interest from maybe is there somebody's out there,
might a book agent, or might be somebody that could

(01:01:02):
help you with that pursuit. So how do people reach
out to you? And a goal of mine is I
really want to team up with Malcolm and travel around
because I'm a I am a motivation to speak. I
go to schools and I'm on Instagram Buried Alive twenty two,
I'm on Facebook to Marco Carpenter and I'm also I
have a goal. I've always had this goal. You know,

(01:01:23):
I was always a hoop star going back to high school,
middle school, but I always wanted to play in a
celebrity the NBA All Star Game, you know, because it's
obvious that I can't go to the NBA now, but
the Celebrity Off Star Game, I plan on playing it.
I actually got a video on YouTube. It's called twenty
two de Marco and my name is spelled d E

(01:01:43):
m A r c h E twenty two to Marco
and you can go watch this video. And I also
want to do some acting, so if anybody can help
me get into the acting business, you know, I'm definitely
up for some acting. Okay, so we got Buried Alive
twenty two is the Instagram. I know that because I
follow you and I'm a you have to today too.
Let's Buried Alive twenty two, number twenty two, and then

(01:02:05):
DeMarco Carpenter on Facebook, which is d E m A
r c Hoe and then Carpenter. We all know how
to spell Carpenter, so everybody listens to show notes how
spell Carpenter. So um, So as we wrap up, we
have a tradition on wrongful conviction, which is that, first
of all, I want to remind everybody someday you may

(01:02:26):
find yourself on a jury. Remember what you're hearing today.
Remember that what you're being told may not be the truth,
and that the people who are who you trust to
tell you the truth may not be acting in your
best interests or society's best interests. And you have to
be woke. So stay woke and pay attention. I have

(01:02:46):
another question or are just really a statement? And this
is this is real bizarre. Malcolm has a brother that's
in prison that's been there twenty seven years for murder
he didn't commit. He's in the county right now fighting
for you know, hopefully he'll be released in September. But
you know, what is the odds of having two brothers
in prison for something they didn't do? Corey Achs and

(01:03:08):
all evidence is pointed at other people. But you know,
Coloring is also Eric Colin is also working on that
case as well. I'll talk to Eric about it and
we'll see what we could do. So now it comes
to time, which is I think probably everybody's favorite part
of the show. When I stopped talking and I just
turned the microphone over to each of you guys, just

(01:03:28):
for any final thoughts that you want to share, anything
at all that's on your mind that you want to
share with the audience, because we have a big audience
out there, and I know they're gonna want to hear
what you have to say. Who wants to go first? Yeah, sure, sure,
I like to go first. I just want to like
my messages to the youth, you know, I would like
to you know, I like to see that. I want
the kids to see that I come from this here

(01:03:51):
and I stay strong. You know, I kept the faith,
and I just want y'all to know if I can
do it, then y'all don't have to go through everything
that I went through, the accomplished goals. You know, y'all
can do it. You know, just stay stay strong and believe,
I said Malcolm. First of all, I just want to
say thank you Jason for allowing thank you to come

(01:04:12):
in and talk and tell our story. And I really
appreciate what you do. And I also want to say
just that I hope that us sharing what we're sharing
with you today inspires gives encouragement and inspiration to many

(01:04:34):
people out there, not simply those who are incarcerated for
crimes they didn't commit it, but those who may be
going through anything, any hardships in life that they feel
like there's no way I can get through this because
you can. The human spirit is very resilient. It's very

(01:04:54):
very strong, a lot stronger than we realize. I never
thought that I was my way back through a life
plus one hundred and seventy years. But with the help
of really good people like the Innocence Project, Eric Cullen,
you know, and guys like that. A lot of these

(01:05:15):
were students who gave of themselves without payment. I appreciate that,
and I won't you all out there to know, you know,
anytime you may get on a jury or anything like that,
know that pay close attention to what's going on. Don't
just be so quick to be ready to convict someone

(01:05:38):
or whatever. And that goes for everyday people in society.
Pay attention, be awoke, as he said, be aware of
what's going on, and know that a lot of these
things can happen to people. Innocent people do sometimes get
the bad end of the stick, and I need society
to really see that and know that, and maybe if

(01:05:58):
more of us are aware of it, will start to
do more about it. And that is my mission. It's
that we start to do things about it to make
a change for the better and give a lot of
these guys that come out help give them a better
chance for reintegration back into society. Help them, because if

(01:06:20):
you want them to change, if you want them to
do better, you have to give them an opportunity to
see better things, in a better way of life. And
it's me well said Malcolm, and thanks, thanks Jason Adams. Well,
I'm just gonna say that this has been an extraordinary
experience for me listen to you guys and learning, and

(01:06:43):
I appreciate you being here. I appreciate everybody listening, and
this has been a sort of a historic episode of
wrong for conviction. So thanks for coming in Malcolm and
de Marco and sharing your story. All right, don't forget

(01:07:06):
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 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 Words. The music

(01:07:29):
in the show is by three time OSCAR nominee composer
Jay Ralph be Sure to follow us on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Wrongful
Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one