June 3, 2020 • 54 mins
This is an updated episode that originally aired on September 25, 2017.
On the afternoon of April 15th, 1994, two men were sitting in a powder-blue Cadillac in the Quindaro neighborhood of Kansas City, KS. A man dressed in black ran up to the passenger side, raised a shotgun and fired four rounds in what looked like a drug-related hit, killing the two passengers Doniel Quinn and Donald Ewing. Lamonte McIntyre, who was 17 at the time, was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. The prosecution relied primarily on the testimonies of two eyewitnesses who identified Lamonte as the shooter. Both eyewitnesses later recanted. Even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, he was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We originally released our interview with Lamont McIntyre on September
twenty five, two thousand seventeen, but with all that has
changed in this case and the world around us, we
thought it a good time to release an updated version
of this episode. On the afternoon of April fifteenth, nine,
Danielle Quinn and Donald Ewing said in a powder blue
(00:22):
Cadillac when a man dressed in black pumped four shotgun
rounds into the car, killing the two men. Within six
hours of the crime, Kansas City, Kansas Police detective Roger
Golupski began the process of framing Lamont McIntyre, who was
seventeen at the time, for two counts of first degree murder.
Why did he do this because Lamont's mother had refused
(00:46):
Golupski's repeated sexual advances. But without any physical evidence whatsoever
to link Lamont to the crime, Kolubski in the state
would rely on mistaken eyewitness identification to seal them Aunt's fate.
And to make matters even worse, Lamont was represented at
trial by a public defender who would later be disbarred
(01:08):
for failing to diligently handle three other cases. All of
this resulted in his wrongful conviction and being sentenced to
two consecutive life prison terms. On this episode, I'll speak
with Kansas City attorney Cheryl Pilot, who worked to exonerate
Lamont McIntyre and was successful shortly after this story was released.
(01:29):
She's joined by former FBI agent al jenner Rich, who
spent much of his career investigating police corruption all over
the country. And finally we spoke with Lamont while he
was still behind bars, a victim of the systemic racism
and police corruption that plagues our criminal legal system. This
(01:50):
his wrongful conviction with Jason Flapper. Welcome back to ronfl
Conviction with Jason flam Today's episode will make your blood
(02:10):
boil and it will blow your mind. So settle in
because this is going to be a crazy ride. Guilty
one word ceiling Lamont McIntyre's fate. Lamont McIntyre, aged seventeen
in has so far been imprisoned for twenty two years.
Twenty two years ago, two young men, twenty one year
old Danielle Quinn and his thirty four year old cousin,
(02:32):
Donald Ewing, were gunned down in a horrible double homicide
six hours after the murders. Police arrested McIntyre, but never
searched his house for evidence. Moreover, it was a trial
which prosecutors offered no physical evidence tying McIntyre to the crime,
no motive, no connection between him and the victims, no weapon,
no fingerprints, nor did Kansas City Campus believe even request
(02:55):
search warrants to find any of that material. A retired
officer who reviewed the calls the investigation grossly deficient. Most
notable is that the family of the victims for twenty
two years have steadfastly insisted that he is innocent. Other
witnesses also relatives of the victim insisted as soon as
they saw McIntyre sitting at the defense table they knew
(03:17):
he was not the shooter. They told the prosecutor, but
were ignored. One family member has signed an affidavid claiming
that under pressure from police and the prosecutor, she lied
at McIntyre's trial. We're the first time a jury is
speaking publicly about the case. Greg Lover says that he
now believes that yan Dot County jury was wrong. They
didn't care about anything. They just had their man, and
(03:38):
it was enough for the twelve person jury. In deliberations
Loudber says he and another juror were holdouts, but it
was late in the day and there was mounting pressure
from others who wanted a verdict. Maybe I had an
opportunity to, you know, do something good on that jury,
but I sure didn't do it. I took a coward's
way out. It is the speedy investigation and prosecution of
(03:59):
that crime in this place that a team of exonerators
now insist was also the focus of a terrible injustice.
Lamont McIntyre aged seventeen and has so far been imprisoned
for twenty two years, convicted and given two consecutive life
sentences for a crime they say you never committed. Well,
I'm just gonna say I'm really happy that today joining
(04:22):
us to discuss the insane case of Lamont McIntyre, we
have with us Lamont's attorney, Cheryl Pilot, as well as
retired FBI special agent Al Generich. Cheryl and Al, thank
you for being here. Thank you so much. We're glad
to be here, happy to be here, and we will
be hearing later on in the episode from Lamont, who
(04:43):
will be calling in from president in Kansas, where he
has been incarcerated for approximately twenty four years now, since
he was a teenager for a crime that he did
not commit. Now, let's go back to the beginning. On
April fifte there are two men sitting in a Cadillac
in Kansas City, Kansas, when they were approached by a
(05:05):
man with a shotgun. These facts are not in dispute
right correct, And what we know is that four shots
were fired into the car, killing the passenger Don yelle
Quinn instantly and the driver, Donald Ewing, who died later
in the hospital. And amazingly, within six hours, they managed
to find a guy who had nothing to do with
the crime, Lamont McIntyre, who was seventeen at the time,
(05:28):
and he was arrested and charged with two counts of
first degree murder in spite of a total lack of
any physical evidence connecting him to the crime. How did
this happen? Cheryl, and I'll jump in whenever you want.
Lamont was arrested and prosecuted after police obtained three interviews
(05:51):
from eyewitnesses, one of them never testified, but the taped
interviews of these eyewitnesses. In a very serious crime, obviously,
where someone can go to prison for the rest of
their life, amounted to a total of twenty taped minutes,
and one of the eyewitnesses was only interviewed for four minutes.
(06:13):
Is that an investigation? What is that so Ill? You've
done a lot of research and you were in the
FBI for quite a while, Is that right? I was
in the FBI for twenty five years. I was a
special agent. I specialized in investigating police corruption. I worked
in Chicago very successfully, and then in Kansas City, Kansas.
(06:35):
Agent Genera was not involved with this murder case at
all when it happened. I knew Mr jenner Rich through
other cases and after he retired a number of years
after he retired, actually and I was working on trying
to achieve Lamont's exoneration, I approached him to talk to
him about the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department and things
(06:59):
that I had an covered in my investigation. And it
was at that point that Al and I started talking
about some of the things he had learned while working
for the FBI, and they, you know, matched up with
some of the things I had uncovered in my investigation.
And it was because of that that he became a
(07:21):
witness in this case that I hope to use at
our hearing, So prior to Lamont's arrest, can we talk
about what was happening with this particular cop, whose name
was Roger Globski. Sometime around or so, I was able
to open an investigation into police corruption in Kansas City, Kansas.
(07:44):
And as the investigation went on over time, over many years,
we developed maybe somewhere between twelve and fifteen police officers
who were titled subjects of the investigation. Some of it
involved civil rights like beating people up, stealing their shoes
when they were walking down the street because the officer
liked the shoes, or in the case of Glupski, you know,
(08:07):
sexual extortion. But most of it involved corruption involving drugs,
mostly cocaine. And in the course of this investigation, just
by talking to people, which is when I'm pretty good
at over time, you know a number of people told
us about Glupski extorting sex from black women and he
liked black women. We never developed enough evidence on Glupski
(08:31):
to prosecute him. That's the extent of my knowledge about Glupski.
I always believe that that police were good, and the
police were on our side and they're there to protect
us all and so I always find these stories, even
as long as I've been working on this issue, and
I've got twenty five years now of experience, but I
(08:51):
always find these stories so just depressing and shocking, and
it flips everything upside down. Well, like you, I was
very eve until I went to Chicago and then I
saw police corruption on the massive scale. But then when
I got back to Kansas City in six and probably
got involved in Kansas City, Kansas, you know, I saw
(09:14):
the same activity. There wasn't on the grand scale. You
know that it's that it's conducted in Chicago. It's basically
police officers, most of whom are white, picking on minories,
most of whom are black, some of them are Hispanic.
Because when you're a drug dealer, you know, you can't
go to the police the FBI and say, hey, these
(09:35):
cops are stealing my drugs, these cops are stealing my
drug money. You basically have to you have to suck
it up. So that's what they do in Chicago, That's
what they do everywhere. So Lamont his troubles really began
when his mom was in a car with I guess
was her boyfriend at the time, Cheryl Right Glubski approached
(09:57):
the car and told her to get out and threatened
her with arrest or arrest of her boyfriend unless she
agreed to come down to the police station. And then
the problems really began when she refused to become one
of his girls, so to speak, right, I mean, obviously,
she was in a terrible situation where she's very vulnerable,
(10:22):
not able to defend herself from a cop who's willing
to go to almost any lanes to fulfill his desires.
She had a tremendous problem, and she decided that she
wanted to maintain her dignity, really, right, And so what
seems like happen is that as a consequence, Globski decided
that he would target and frame her son. And something
(10:45):
that is so evil that, you know, makes me want
to quit the human race. There was an encounter that
Lamont's mother had with the detective some years earlier. I
mean it was years actually before the double homicide happened.
And at the time of the double homicide, my client
was inexplicably dragged into the case. One of the eyewitnesses
(11:09):
told the police she thought the shooter looked like a
lament dating her niece police never bothered to find out
what Lamont that was. They don't go ask the niece
what Lamont that was. They simply put another lament and
it's undisputed, an entirely different Lamont, my client into the case,
and somehow obtain this identification. What's interesting about the lineup,
(11:35):
and I've never seen anything like this before, is three
of the five photos were of young male members of
the mc entire family. You don't have to be a
conspiracy theorist to say, well, that doesn't make a lot
of sense. What it's one perpetrator. It is not like
that somebody said there were three brothers that were involved.
(11:55):
It's one perpetrator, you know. And then the justice system,
we know, has a tendency to chew people up and
spit them out when they are poor, particularly if they're
minorities and underrepresented. It's really it's not a fair fight,
is it. Well, I mean this, this whole thing um
(12:16):
was an impossible battle for Lamont to begin with. I mean,
first of all, the investigation itself, I don't think really
qualified is is a true investigation because so little was done.
No evidence of motive was ever uncovered. There was no
physical evidence that tied Lamont to the crime. There was
(12:37):
not even any evidence that he knew the two victims,
their backgrounds of the two victims, and who might have
a motive to harm them. That was never investigated. There
was an eyewitness directly across the street who was never interviewed,
whose whose mother said, you know, she she knows who
the suspect is. I mean, the failures and lapses and
(12:59):
ir regularities in this case just go on and on.
I mean, other than the twenty minutes of taped interviews
from the eyewitnesses, there was very little else and the
only evidence at trial against Lamont were two eyewitnesses. One
of them has admitted that she lied, that she was coerced.
(13:21):
The other eyewitness seems frankly, very perplexed by her testimony,
and it's it's very clear that it's an eye witness
misidentification based on manipulation. And we know also that had
this trial taken place twenty years later, So with everything
that's known now about the unreliability of eyewitness identification, there's
(13:43):
a very good chance that that would have been discredited
because there was no other evidence connecting to the crime.
You take a person who's traumatized who has just witnessed
a really horrific event, and they can be pretty easy
to pressure or manipulate. And in fact, this Nous provided
in a tape statement my client's last name, a man
(14:04):
she did not know and had never heard of, which
raises the very interesting question of who gave her the name.
It was undisputed at trial that she did not know
my client, yet the fact that there was an original
tape statement where she provided his name never came out.
That was never admitted at trial. She also stated wrongly
(14:26):
that my client was the Lamont who had dated her niece.
At trial undisputed that that was not true. It was
an entirely different Lamont who was in fact identified by
his name to the jury, an entirely different person. So,
I mean, the whole thing is is troubling beginning to end,
really a perfect storm of chaos and horror and misconduct,
(14:51):
things being done improperly. So you have this cop in
this department that is so corrupt isn't even the word,
but that's engaged in so many legal activities, And isn't
it ironic and tragic that Lamont is in prison, living
in hell after twenty four years and this this cop
(15:14):
who was from what I've read, raping people, robbing people,
dealing drugs, protecting drug dealers. He's out. How how is that?
I mean, that must not not sit well with you
with your whole background either. What I'm really hoping for,
what our entire team is hoping for, and what we
have sought for a long time, is a very full
(15:37):
investigation into the activities of this detective. There needs to
be an investigation by people who have the power to
follow all the leads, develop information, compel the testimony of witnesses,
and obtain other evidence. Let me let me turn it
to you for a second, because we have not had
(15:59):
somebody with your background and experience on the show before,
and I would venture to say that you had a
very very difficult and dangerous job, right, I mean, investigating cops,
particularly when you're investigating cops, we've got a lot to hide,
makes you a very unpopular person, I would think. So,
(16:20):
looking back on it, how did this manage to go
on for so long without somebody coming along and saying, uh,
you know, besides you, hey, hey, we're not going to
tolerate this. They don't give a ship. At the time
we were doing these investigations. The police chief of Kansas City, Kansas,
(16:42):
a guy named Tom Daily. He had previously been indicted
by the Federal Strike Force for extorting money at a
whorehouses along the kar River in Kansas. He was doing
that allegedly when it was a captain. He was acquitted
because it was a real weak case, but after going
a quit it for extortion, the city wound up eventually
(17:03):
making him the chief. Is that the actions you know
of a responsible a city administration or a police department.
So he had he had the chief over here, Tom Dale.
He had previously been indicted by the FEDS. He despised
the federal government, he hated the U. S. Attorney's Office
and UH and the FBI. And he's the chief. He
was part of it. So you have this guy Golubski
(17:26):
who in that scenario is operating basically with impunity, right
because he knows his chief doesn't give a ship. And
with the chief having literally what it sounds like, gotten
away with that particular pattern of activity as well as
I'm sure other things that he was doing. The people
(17:48):
underneath them are probably thinking, hey, this is great, no
one's going to touch us. And they're right, and nobody did.
So how frustrated was that for you? There? You are
really fighting an unwinnable war, right You're You're they're trying
to protect the public from the police force. Were they
achieve a police who not only doesn't give a fuck,
but doesn't want that he wants you. He probably wants
(18:10):
you the funk out of his hair, so he could
just you know, run the streets how he wants to write.
When I started working over there, you've had a person,
you know, some guy I knave, had a lot of
people in the county jail, and they would say so
and so confronted me and stole my money, stole my drugs.
You go, what, what's the CoP's name? I don't know
his name, you know what's he looked like, Well, you
know he's some white guy. Well you go to the police.
(18:32):
The police did not have photographs of their police officers,
So if a victim came in there alleging that SO
and so officer robbed from me, extorted me, they didn't
even have photographs to show people so they could identify
who the police officer was. So good luck, you know,
through the U. S. Attorney's Office, through uh Julie Robinson,
(18:54):
who was a prosecutor at the time. We subpoenaed photographs
of every sworn officer in the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department,
and there was hell to pay for that. I was
almost removed from the investigation because of that. You know,
I think one of the problems is that other law
enforcement officers don't want to investigate law enforcement, and as
(19:17):
a general rule, I think they find it distasteful, something
they would rather avoid, and there is a tendency to
minimize misconduct. I found that really pretty shocking, not in
light of everything else we're talking about, but I could
see how you would, and it's it really gets easier
and easier to see how these wrongful convictions are so common.
(19:41):
I mean, here, we have an interesting situation, right, We're
talking to Al who's in there with his badge, working
for the Federal Beer of Investigation and basically being told
go fund himself. So what chance does a seventeen year
old black kid from the poorer side of town. What
shance as he have against this blue wall, this blue
(20:04):
monster that was out to get him. He had no chance.
So now fast forward to twenty four years later, Lamont
sits in a prison studying reading by all accounts, a
model prisoner, somebody who maintains a positive outlook in spite
(20:25):
of this. You know what can only be described as
the worst faith that can be fall an individual to
be cars forraver, something he didn't do for the rest
of your life. But now we have hope, right, I mean,
he has hope thanks to you and the years of
work that you've done in this case and al and
other brave people who have devoted their time and in
some cases probably even risk their own personal safety to
(20:47):
try to get justice in this case. What does it
look like now? What happens next? Tell us what's going on.
We have a evidentiary hearing coming up in October, and
we in tend to present somewhere between forty and fifty
witnesses who provide very powerful testimony on various aspects of
(21:10):
the case. There was almost nothing really to support the
conviction to begin with, nothing other than the testimony of
the two eye witnesses, and I believe that has been
thoroughly shredded at this point through recantations and admissions and
the result of other investigation. And we are also focusing
(21:32):
on the very troubling misconduct in the case. It is
intimately connected to how the investigation was conducted, and we're
going to bring all that out and show how we
believe this went wrong, and we very much hope to
be successful. What's the date of the hearing October twelfth,
(21:54):
October twelve, And is this in a federal court? We
are in Windout County District Court just a state court.
My client is litigating what's called a successive petition under
sixty fIF seven, and you have essentially a procedural barrier
to get over before you can get back into court.
But we do have this evidentiary hearing schedule that we
(22:16):
are very very excited about. One of the most compelling
things about the case we haven't mentioned this yet, is
that the families of both victims have always known my
client is innocent and are very much squarely supporting the
quest to free him. They know that they did not
get justice, their families did not get justice, and that
(22:38):
cheryld In your experience, that's not a common thing, right,
I mean, most of the cases I've seen, even in
the face of what could be overwhelming evidence to the contrary,
the victims families sometimes stick with what they've been told
all along because they just can't. They can't even process
the idea that they may have been lied to and
that the wrong person may have been serving time for
the for the murder of their loved one. So in
(22:58):
this case, this is a unusual scenario, isn't it It is?
And one of the eyewitnesses is related to both of
the victims, and she her family and the family of
the second victim to whom she's a bit more distantly related,
have always told me that they have known from the
(23:19):
beginning that the authorities got the wrong man. They have
always known this. They've made periodic efforts to correct this,
to address this, to try and get some justice, all
without success. And if there wasn't already enough to chew on,
this is the part that really just sets me off,
(23:40):
his courter pointed. Attorney Gary Long was on supervised probation
at the time of the trial for failing to diligently
handle three prior cases. He was suspended from the bar
a couple of years later for failure to adequately hinder
a separate criminal case. And he was this bar. How
is it even possible that, in a life or death
(24:00):
situation that you take somebody and you say, you know what,
we're going to give you a lawyer who's already messed
up three times when I said nobody gives a ship?
Do you understand what I mean? Do you know that
that you know that that Tara Moore had You know
she's now a federal prosecutor. Yes, So Tara Morehead was
(24:22):
the prosecutor in this case. Obviously didn't see anything wrong
with her prosecuting a case in which a young man's
life was at stake in front of a judge with
whom she had carried on an affair a few years earlier.
I think most reasonable people would agree that one or
(24:44):
the other should have been recused from this particular scenario
because even if they were saints, and obviously they weren't.
Because she's also the same woman from what I've read,
who threatened a witness who tried to come forward with
the truth with losing custody of her own children. But yes,
and now she's moved up the ladder. Seems like all
(25:07):
the bad guys have one here. Al what the fuck? Well?
I think Sarah Moorehead is currently married to a police officer.
I think there's some other prosecutors over in the federal U. S.
Attorney's Office that are married to other police officers. So
you're not going to expect them to investigate police corruption,
are you? Wow? I guess that would make it tricky,
wouldn't it. They're not going to do it, and they don't.
(25:28):
I mean, there there's so much that could be investigated
that ought to be investigated, and you know, I I
should also point out that sexual misconduct among police officers
is not unusual in some departments. When you have poor
and vulnerable people encounter folks with ultimate authority over them,
(25:53):
ultimate authority in that particular moment, you know, those things
can happen all too easily, and they do and happened frequently.
You know, when I was an agent, I'm about six
ft four. I had a gun, a badge and radio
and everything. At nighttime when I was on my way
home or on the weekends, I would not drive to
Kansas City, Kansas, unless I was accompanied by another FBI agent.
(26:17):
Thought they might have run you off the road or
something else. They could do anything. They could pull me
over and not saying they don't know who I was,
and they could say pulled a gun and they could
shoot me. So I have all that power and authority.
What is some little black kid on the street half.
I hope that in exposing the story of Lamont and
some of the things that you've shared out that people,
(26:39):
you know, get their backs up and get get angry
and get involved. These are just people, They're just regular people,
and they're they're being so terribly abused and victimized by
people who are supposed to protect them. I I don't
it makes me sick. I just say that the fear
and the terror that some of the citizens experience cannot
(27:00):
be overstated. I mean, you have someone with a badge
with ultimate and really, as I said in that moment,
unchecked authority, there's enormous fear of the police and enormous,
sometimes unmovable resistance to getting involved in anything that has
to do with the criminal justice system. I've spent some years, honestly,
(27:25):
just earning the trust of some people in the community
so that they will sit down and speak with me
so that we can investigate the case. Nobody wants anything
to do with a case you say, courthouse, people walk
the other way. They don't want anything to do with that.
And ultimately we have been successful in securing some very
(27:49):
good witnesses because they did want to help someone they've
viewed as innocent. And you know, I should point out
here that all of the street talk we have ever
heard in the community is that Lamont is innocent, the
guy who got wrongfully convicted. It's like everyone knows. The
whole community knows. The victims families know, everyone knows Lamont
(28:15):
did not do this. Everyone knows. You have a prepaid
call from an innate at Kansas Department of Corrections Lansing
(28:36):
Correctional Facility. To accept this call, press or say five
to refute. This call will be recorded and subject to monitoring.
At any time. You may begin speaking now, Lamont, Welcome
to the show. Thank you so, Lamont. I want to
go back to the beginning, when you grew up and
(28:58):
how this all started. I've seen photos of you with
your family. Looked like you had not an easy but
a happy childhood. Is that fair? Yeah? Can you just
describe what it was like. I've heard you talk about
Christmas and stuff. Uh, yeah, was tighten it. You know,
it was like my mother was just only pair in
the house and it was close me and my siblings,
(29:18):
and we did everything together. We stayed in one house.
You know, we took care of each other. So growing
off of me was my family was a big game.
Didn't really bite about a lot of stuff, you know.
I was me and my three brothers and my sister
and mother a sister. My mother worked a lot, so
my sister kind of watched that. There was a little
bit some other family members liked to go to my
(29:41):
family member's house, uncles and be around them. Our mother
was at work. I kind of still stayed around family.
I sat my home so real family oriented and where
you grew up. You had no idea at this time
that the police force was really as corrupt as any
one could possibly imagine until this terrible incident occurred. And
(30:06):
I want to go back to that. What happened. You
were a seventeen year old kid going along with your life,
trying to make it in a difficult place, and then
one day out of the blue, you get arrested and
don't even know what's going on or what happened. Uh,
that's exactly what happened. And I was it was a
(30:26):
typical day. It was like a Friday, typical day. I
was the road in a Downey comverge program where it's
all time of school whenever, whatever. You get your high
school to phone and then they gives you in uh college,
so like a little degree program on the part of
and um, it was just a Friday. I get a
call phone call saying the police over my grandmother's house
(30:49):
looking for me. Called my mother. We go to the
police station and they started talking about two murders and
I had no answers for him because I don't know
if they were saying what they talking about. So from
that moment, I was arrested, charge and vasously completed of
two murders and I hadn't about And we know now
(31:13):
that they were deliberately targeting you because of this particular
police officer who was up to all kinds of criminal
activity himself. And that's the irony of this is that
he belongs in jail. And I'm hoping that by the
end of this that's exactly what's going to happen. But
(31:35):
the idea that this system, this so called justice system,
had made a decision that you were going to be
their guy. There was this double murder, right, two guys
sitting in the car. They were involved in drug activity,
They were dealers. We now know also that one of
them had been beaten by the guys he was working
(31:55):
for in the drug business. Right. He was working as
a doorman in a crack then, and he had feared
for his life, And in fact he had good reason
to because I guess he had from what I've learned
he has been he had been stealing from them, So
that every reason to know that this was a drug hit.
And you weren't involved in that game or that business.
(32:18):
Did you know these guys and then know the witnesses.
I don't know the victims that would have connected to
it at all. That's why I so it so hard
for me to understand how something like that could happen,
because and I was forward about everything. I don't try
to hide nothing because I knew that what they were
talking about that time. I had nothing to do with it.
I would involved. I don't know what the police officer's
(32:41):
motive was to plan it on meal. I still don't
know to this day what happened. Well, it does seem
like now with everything we've learned that the officer involved,
the first one who arrived on the scene was an
officer named Golobski. It's a white guy who had a
proclivity for women of color, and when he didn't get
(33:02):
his way, he would exact revenge. And so what it
seems like is that in this particular case, he targeted
you because your mom wasn't having any part of that.
And that's what makes this particularly sinister and sick. You
end up going to trial. And I find it interesting,
among all the other things in your case, that they
(33:24):
offered you a plea bargain right and you didn't take it.
I wouldn't the rest of the plea bargain. I can't
understand how I sit in this situation, and I hadn't
know nothing about them itself, so bargains far from my mom,
I would And why I find that and why I
brought that up, Lemont, And I've seen the mugshot picture
of you, and it really hurt my heart because I
(33:46):
could see in your face just how confused you were
and scared of a situation that you couldn't possibly imagine
what was happening at that time. I also would think
that if you were guilty and they're offering you a deal,
and you know your chances of winning in the court
are going to be low because they have all these
(34:07):
cops and everybody else is going to testify that you
would have taken the plea bargain. Anybody with the right
mind would take a plea bargain. You're not crazy, are
you right? You don't You don't sound crazy. You don't
sound crazy at all. So in the situation like this,
I mean, we have in this country over cases end
up in plea bargains. So had you been guilty, that
would have been a very logical thing to do. But
as an innocent person and probably somebody who's still trusted
(34:30):
in the system, you went forward with your right to
a trial, and you were represented by a guy who
they knew your court appointed lawyer. They knew this guy
was incompetent because he had already been disciplined for three
previous cases that he had completely botched. It almost sounds
like they did it on purpose. They assigned a guy
(34:50):
who didn't go and interview witnesses, who didn't really didn't
do anything he was supposed to do. And what was
that like? Were you aware at that time that this
guy it wasn't I mean, I don't even know if
it was really on your side, but I mean, as
you're watching these proceedings, what were you thinking. He presented
himself like a lawyer. He presented itself like a person,
and there on my behald to take care of this business.
(35:13):
And he's seeing real professional at first. So I didn't
know what to expect because I've never been in that
situation before anyway, So his first impression was for me,
it was a good impression because I didn't know what
a lawyer was supposed to do, or I was so
ignorant to the law on how things work. I just
believed in the justice system at that time, I really did.
(35:33):
I thought there was no possible way, being an innocent
person or a person that has nothing to do with
that crime, that I would be found guilty. So I
don't really pay too much attention to the credibility of
this lawyer. It didn't die on me that I would
be found guilty of the crime that I had nothing
to do with it. So I didn't really think about
it in those terms. I was just thinking, you can
give me any lawyer, anybody from anywhere, and it'd be okay,
(35:56):
because once they realized that they had the wrong person
and ironed out and trial, That's what I was thinking.
But I didn't plan on all how to think that
people would get on the stand and line it was
gonna fabricade, And I didn't think that was gonna happen.
I had no idea that they had already made up
in their mind and I was going to escape God
for this particular crime. So definitely being needed at the
(36:18):
law and how things work in the justice system. I
believe in the justice system at that time. I really did.
I think all of us do when we're kids, especially
brought up in a good home like you were. You
brought up to believe that people are good and that
the system is is going to work for you. And
then you had a lawyer who, had he been competent,
I still think would have one year case in spite
(36:41):
of all this, because of the simple fact that it
was an easy case. The witnesses were not credible at all.
We now know that they also withheld exculpatory evidence, So
you really didn't have a fair chance, especially not with
a lawyer who was incompetent. And ultimately, let's not forget
that this particular lawyer was disbarred not too long after
(37:04):
your trial. And again for the listeners out there, think
about that this is a guy who had been disciplined
in numerous cases prior to laments, and then ultimately gets
disbarred when the extent of his gross incompetence is brought
to the Supreme Court of Kansas, the attention to the
Supreme Court, and then he voluntarily gave up his license
(37:27):
to practice law. And that wasn't the end of the nightmare.
We now know too that your appellate lawyer was disbarred.
I mean, you can't even make this stuff up. So
what happened? Like now you're in the courtroom, the jury
goes out, the arguments have been made. You saw these
witnesses get up and lie. You saw these police officers
(37:49):
get up and lie. Your defense made whatever arguments they made.
Did you believe that they would come back and declare
you innocent? I did. I did a five of my
being I did. I just didn't know that this is
how the system worked. They found me guilty based on
false evidence or the kind of evidence that was presented
(38:09):
by a certain district attorney. They heard stuff about me.
It wasn't even about Lemar Macknetide, and she just kind
of made self up. They told his story and the
jury believed. But at the time before they came back
with guilty, Birdie, I still didn't think I'll me found
guilty because the whole time I'm sitting there, in the
whole time I'm going through the process of getting to trial,
I still had no knowledge of the actual crime. So
(38:32):
I'm thinking, with my young mind being naive, that there's
no way becau jury can find me guilty when I'm
really not guilty, when I had nothing to do with it.
I'm not tied to it at all. The witnesses, the victims,
I'm not tied to it. I was in the area
when it happened. When they came in, I noticed that
(38:52):
no juries. No one looked me in my face, no
one looked looked up. Everyone came in looking down at
the floor. So I kind of had an eerie feeling,
but I still had hope that it will work out
in the right way. So when they read the verdict
and they said guilty, it's like I've seen my whole
life flash before me and I u and for that moment,
I fosed and and I was sitting there, and I
(39:14):
stood up, and I remember saying something. I was screaming something,
you know, to the effects of I'm not guilty and
you got the wrong person or whatever. And I stepped
someone holding me or grabbing me from behind, and I
was in shot, so I didn't really I was like
a lost moment. But I turned around and I see
my mother hold me, screaming, crying like don't take my
baby away from me, don't take my baby. And I'm
(39:36):
looking at her and I realized that this is a
serious situation now, but it still didn't feel real. It
was my life in my situation, but it didn't feel
like my life on my situation. I felt like I
was outside of myself looking at this event happened. I
couldn't stop it. So I was in shot and that
shot lasted for a few years after that. I was
(39:58):
in shot. So now now you're convicted of a double
murder and sense to life in prison. Where did they
take you to the processes? Like from this time you
get convicted in the county for about too much, then
you go to citizen Now how cinis in Wanna County.
They gave me to life sentences to ron consecutive and
(40:18):
after that they sent me to a process of center
which we call rd you where they see you to
determine what classification, you would be what custody would be
in a subsidered max custody. So from there they sent
me to prison. I was in hus That's that's a
prison in Kansas. They called Glady in the school, one
(40:38):
of those tough prisons. You know what, people, you know,
it's a prison. It's like the work not did you
have a prison? Is that more? It's this dark is
negative pension feel, it's hopelessness. It's a world that its long.
(41:06):
I just seventeen year old. Did you have plans? Did
you have a career in mind? What was the outlook
for the future. We're still just trying to figure it out. Yeah,
I was thing I wanted to do, and it was
just I was I was misguide in the line, and
I was just in a place where everybody around me
was either die or going to jail or I was
just in the kind of environment. It didn't produce a
(41:27):
lot of hope. I didn't have. I didn't have a
lot of people to look up to or emulation, nothing
like that. But I did enjoy taking care of my family.
So my life was just basically about trying to take
care of my family the best way I know, or
to look out for my loved ones. You know, I
had skills and things I could do, Like I was
a barber, I was cutting hair since I was twelve.
(41:49):
You know, I was comedian and I had these in
the back of my mind. I wanted to be a
comedian and I had things I wanted to do. I
just didn't know how to get to where I wanted
to be. But I still I didn't think that my
life was just of being in prison or going to jail,
being in this kind of situation. What is a typical
day like for you on the inside? How do you
(42:10):
get through it? What's the schedule? Uh, typical day? Typical
day is re readjusted. It's like from hunt day to
the nexus. Finding a way to get by for one day,
line something for my days, and then I just try
to it just sucks. I gotta repeat it. Like if
(42:30):
I have a bad day or I'm frustrated for one day,
I'm going to sleep, wake up to repeat this day again.
So I try to find the best I can or
get the best I can out of a day, because
waking up to repeat it is the anxiety. That's why
all that the worst stuff is knowing of it. For
the last twenty three years and two on in some months,
and they have a on a weeks and eight sothern days.
(42:52):
It's the same thing. It never changes. So I devote
my time to read it and studying and right like music,
write poetry. I try to keep my mind free as possible.
I try to stay out of prison mentally. I try
not to. I'm not into prison politics. I'm not in
prison mentally, but I'm here. I had to be my
(43:12):
body here, but I try to keep my mind far
from this place as I can. So it's just a
bunch of moments of readjusting every day. And I have
a lot of love people that love me and care
about me, so I'll focus on that. But it's bad.
It used to be a lot worse than it is now.
I'm starting to see I'm coming alive now because I
can see it light at the end of this tuned
(43:33):
I've been there for so long, so I'm better now.
But yeah, it wasn't so good before. It's better now,
But it was always sad to wake up. I had
to repeat this same cycle over and over again. That
stuff is another drib of person crazy. There's a lot
of moments while I feel like it. What's the point,
you know, to keep going to wake up every day
that I had to deal with the exact same nightmare
(43:54):
you trying to escape from the night before. But I
had my mother, like she never gave up on me
from day one. Like when the worst moments of my life,
you know, I felt like I just couldn't do it
no more, for that I couldn't take another step, she
would show up. And when she would grab me and
hold me and looked at my faith and tell me
this is not my life. I passed through, this is
not my destination. And so I had a lot of
(44:17):
support my family and and I gave my life to
God and I pray a lot of meditate a lot.
So initially I was kind of in this dark place
where I was so hurt and sad and depressed, and
so I kept people kept coming to my life. There
(44:38):
was like beacons of light and hope for me and
I and I and I thank God for all those
people came into my life and supported me, and they
short it up. I always had something to look forward to,
because this is a dark places. It's a dark situation
where if you don't have enough support for me, it
was just support. I found it supportant then years later
(44:58):
Sheryl and to Yeah ministries and innocent projects. So I'm
coming into my life and they breathe, uh, they breathe
license to me, it's like a second wind. And I'm
grateful for those people, everybody who support me and everybody
who put forth effort, go out every day and do
something to help me get my life back. I'm, however,
(45:20):
grateful for those people. If you even allow yourself, if
you allow your mind to go there, what are you
dreaming about when you get out? Because I'm convinced you
are going to come home and I'm gonna be there
fighting right alongside with everybody else. What's the first thing
you want to do? And then how do you see
the future? The first day I'm gonna do eat something.
(45:42):
That's what I fantasized about. Mostly, I want to eat
something that from there, I want to have some type
of impact or effect on young people make important sitsis
it would eventially uh landing in a situation like this,
you know, So I want to just raise any kind
of awareness I can out decision making, because you know,
(46:02):
had I've been told how to make better decisence myself.
I think even no I was even to the law,
and this is something that had nothing to do with me,
and that I still gonna been making better desistence myself
before this stuff and mean came about. So I don't
want to be able to be there for young people
as much as I can. So I can, I can
help them understand that even though you don't do something wrong,
(46:24):
even though you don't commit a crime, you can be
You still gotta be accountable, and you still gotta be
a mindful of the fact that you're out there and
floating around and you can easily be put in a
situation like that and if you're not being productive and
doing something just uh productive out there in life. So
I just want to be able to reach the young
people as much as I can, and now that there's
that to be young, just anybody that want to be
(46:46):
able to share my experience and hopefully it will help
out in any kind of way. I'm sure that you
will do that, and then you're gonna have a very
positive impact on a lot of people because you have
a very rare combination of intelligence and manner that is
so positive and strong but still gentle that I believe
that You'll be able to affect a lot of a
(47:07):
lot of young people, and I'm looking forward to watching
you do that. There's one other thing I wanted to raise.
I'm always amazed when I speak to someone in your situation,
and especially so with you, that you don't seem to
be bitter after everything that's happened. And I know you
talked about your faith and family and the strength that
(47:30):
you get from from them, But how is it possible
that someone can go through this most unimaginable nightmare still
be in it, and yet be as positive and strong
as you are now? Well? I had a moment with
an angerbook. You all we like taking points and hoping
(47:50):
someone else died from it. I only want to affect
about me being angry, no one else seeing the notice
of Hey, it tasted to me being angry, So how
is this a learning experience? Like being angry doesn't help me?
So I just wanted to help myself because I knew,
I always knew I was gonna be here forever. I
knew that eventually the truth was surface and I would
have a life outside of this wall. So I devoted
(48:12):
a lot of time and energy towards helping myself and
I hurt myself, so being angry was something that was
a hinderest to me, not a benefit. So I try
to say positive because these places you gotta keep up
with the seven take care of yourself, and anger and
stress and all those things is just short in your
life span, and I got to like to live. So
(48:33):
I just choose. I choose to be positive. I choose
to not be angry and allow anger to kill me.
I don't want to die in this place, and I
don't want to have a short life. So I stick
firm to what I believe in, and I believe in
my faith, and I believe in meditation, I believe in exercise.
I'm believing take care of my mom, body and soul,
and that's what I vote my time to. Wow. UM,
(48:57):
all I can do is tell you that you have UM,
you have all my respect and support. And I was
saying the man, you know, I've seen too many miracles
to stop believing in miracles. So I'm excited to watch
you be the next one or one of the next ones,
and we'll never stop fighting for you and for other
(49:18):
people in your situation. I'm looking forward to a positive
outcome and to getting to know you on the outside
the mind. I'm just going to turn it over to
you and say, is your microphone, what do you want
to share with the audience. Well, these these kind of
cases having more than they should, you know. So it's
(49:38):
like I always see on TV or day line see
anything man so many years in prison and you get
exonerated and you see this happened time and time again,
but which would never ever see a heavy here about
how much that stuff impact the effect of the families
for those people like I had a post knit family.
It was close and it was a thing. It's just
(50:00):
just like me being affected by the event that happened
in my life. It hurts me to see how much
how much it affected not only me, with my family.
And it's difficult because if if a man has to
go through a certain thing by himself, that's a that's
his life, that's his his path and life. He got
to go through that. I had to do what I
had to do, no matter what. But when you see
someone you care about being affected about what you have
(50:22):
to do or what you have to endure, it's it's
a it's a different kind of feeling. And it's like
people don't really pay attentions that don't know about that,
like when uh, this is attorneys of of being dishonest
when they're trying to get from visions and all that.
I don't think they take that consideration how many people
they are affecting, but just not going by the law
of just not being truthful about certain things, not just me,
(50:45):
whatever issue personal issue they may add about with me.
My family is affected by that, my brothers, my brother's
kids when all this happened, and they feel like they
lost a mother because my mother devoted so much time
for trying to give me back out of the system
that they felt like they were neglected. So they were
affected by that. My older sister was affected, my brother
(51:06):
was affected. I mean, everybody was affected. One minute remaining.
And when you try to hold onto something good, even
when you try to get something good in this kind
of situation, there's still nothing good come from it. It's
just always bad. It's always negative as always a challenge
is always hurtles, so always something. But for the person
that's in the middle of it, that's just my experience.
(51:27):
But on the outside of it, that's something people don't
never get a chance to see. That's that's that's just
a harsh or harsh reality for a person to live
based on someone else being in competition when all this
stuff basically could have been avoided by someone just doing
their job. But the job people was uh employed them
to do, you know. So I think people should understand
(51:48):
that and know that there's a lot of people to
be affected by something like that. I think a lot
of teachers should be brought to this moment and this
kind of situation, so a lot of people can, uh,
if you'll find another person that situation, it can be
more awful events not to help in a different kind
of way, they could because it's not just about me.
(52:10):
Somebody everybody who here about me too. On October wayan
Dott County District Attorney Mark dupri moved to vacate the
conviction and dismissed all charges against Lamont McIntyre. Hours later,
Lamont walked free for the first time in over twenty
three long, miserable years. He called me from the courthouse steps.
(52:36):
It was it was one of the best calls I've
ever gotten. And in that call, he said he thanked
me um and he said that the exposure that his
case had gotten from being on this podcast had helped,
and even if it was a tiny bit, it had
helped to lead to his exoneration. It was a really
extraordinary feeling, and I'm excited to share that On has
(53:00):
since one a one and a half million dollar judgment
for his wrawful conviction, and he and his mother are
currently suing Roger Klupski for all the damage he did
to their lives and their family. After a thirty year
reign of terror in the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department,
disgraced officer Roger Kolupski went to work in Edwardsville, Kansas
(53:22):
in two thousand and ten. He has yet to face justice,
and he retired in two thousand and sixteen. 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
(53:43):
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 Wardis. The music
in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
(54:05):
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
We originally released our interview with Lamont McIntyre on September
twenty five, two thousand seventeen, but with all that has
changed in this case and the world around us, we
thought it a good time to release an updated version
of this episode. On the afternoon of April fifteenth, nine,
Danielle Quinn and Donald Ewing said in a powder blue
(00:22):
Cadillac when a man dressed in black pumped four shotgun
rounds into the car, killing the two men. Within six
hours of the crime, Kansas City, Kansas Police detective Roger
Golupski began the process of framing Lamont McIntyre, who was
seventeen at the time, for two counts of first degree murder.
Why did he do this because Lamont's mother had refused
(00:46):
Golupski's repeated sexual advances. But without any physical evidence whatsoever
to link Lamont to the crime, Kolubski in the state
would rely on mistaken eyewitness identification to seal them Aunt's fate.
And to make matters even worse, Lamont was represented at
trial by a public defender who would later be disbarred
(01:08):
for failing to diligently handle three other cases. All of
this resulted in his wrongful conviction and being sentenced to
two consecutive life prison terms. On this episode, I'll speak
with Kansas City attorney Cheryl Pilot, who worked to exonerate
Lamont McIntyre and was successful shortly after this story was released.
(01:29):
She's joined by former FBI agent al jenner Rich, who
spent much of his career investigating police corruption all over
the country. And finally we spoke with Lamont while he
was still behind bars, a victim of the systemic racism
and police corruption that plagues our criminal legal system. This
(01:50):
his wrongful conviction with Jason Flapper. Welcome back to ronfl
Conviction with Jason flam Today's episode will make your blood
(02:10):
boil and it will blow your mind. So settle in
because this is going to be a crazy ride. Guilty
one word ceiling Lamont McIntyre's fate. Lamont McIntyre, aged seventeen
in has so far been imprisoned for twenty two years.
Twenty two years ago, two young men, twenty one year
old Danielle Quinn and his thirty four year old cousin,
(02:32):
Donald Ewing, were gunned down in a horrible double homicide
six hours after the murders. Police arrested McIntyre, but never
searched his house for evidence. Moreover, it was a trial
which prosecutors offered no physical evidence tying McIntyre to the crime,
no motive, no connection between him and the victims, no weapon,
no fingerprints, nor did Kansas City Campus believe even request
(02:55):
search warrants to find any of that material. A retired
officer who reviewed the calls the investigation grossly deficient. Most
notable is that the family of the victims for twenty
two years have steadfastly insisted that he is innocent. Other
witnesses also relatives of the victim insisted as soon as
they saw McIntyre sitting at the defense table they knew
(03:17):
he was not the shooter. They told the prosecutor, but
were ignored. One family member has signed an affidavid claiming
that under pressure from police and the prosecutor, she lied
at McIntyre's trial. We're the first time a jury is
speaking publicly about the case. Greg Lover says that he
now believes that yan Dot County jury was wrong. They
didn't care about anything. They just had their man, and
(03:38):
it was enough for the twelve person jury. In deliberations
Loudber says he and another juror were holdouts, but it
was late in the day and there was mounting pressure
from others who wanted a verdict. Maybe I had an
opportunity to, you know, do something good on that jury,
but I sure didn't do it. I took a coward's
way out. It is the speedy investigation and prosecution of
(03:59):
that crime in this place that a team of exonerators
now insist was also the focus of a terrible injustice.
Lamont McIntyre aged seventeen and has so far been imprisoned
for twenty two years, convicted and given two consecutive life
sentences for a crime they say you never committed. Well,
I'm just gonna say I'm really happy that today joining
(04:22):
us to discuss the insane case of Lamont McIntyre, we
have with us Lamont's attorney, Cheryl Pilot, as well as
retired FBI special agent Al Generich. Cheryl and Al, thank
you for being here. Thank you so much. We're glad
to be here, happy to be here, and we will
be hearing later on in the episode from Lamont, who
(04:43):
will be calling in from president in Kansas, where he
has been incarcerated for approximately twenty four years now, since
he was a teenager for a crime that he did
not commit. Now, let's go back to the beginning. On
April fifte there are two men sitting in a Cadillac
in Kansas City, Kansas, when they were approached by a
(05:05):
man with a shotgun. These facts are not in dispute
right correct, And what we know is that four shots
were fired into the car, killing the passenger Don yelle
Quinn instantly and the driver, Donald Ewing, who died later
in the hospital. And amazingly, within six hours, they managed
to find a guy who had nothing to do with
the crime, Lamont McIntyre, who was seventeen at the time,
(05:28):
and he was arrested and charged with two counts of
first degree murder in spite of a total lack of
any physical evidence connecting him to the crime. How did
this happen? Cheryl, and I'll jump in whenever you want.
Lamont was arrested and prosecuted after police obtained three interviews
(05:51):
from eyewitnesses, one of them never testified, but the taped
interviews of these eyewitnesses. In a very serious crime, obviously,
where someone can go to prison for the rest of
their life, amounted to a total of twenty taped minutes,
and one of the eyewitnesses was only interviewed for four minutes.
(06:13):
Is that an investigation? What is that so Ill? You've
done a lot of research and you were in the
FBI for quite a while, Is that right? I was
in the FBI for twenty five years. I was a
special agent. I specialized in investigating police corruption. I worked
in Chicago very successfully, and then in Kansas City, Kansas.
(06:35):
Agent Genera was not involved with this murder case at
all when it happened. I knew Mr jenner Rich through
other cases and after he retired a number of years
after he retired, actually and I was working on trying
to achieve Lamont's exoneration, I approached him to talk to
him about the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department and things
(06:59):
that I had an covered in my investigation. And it
was at that point that Al and I started talking
about some of the things he had learned while working
for the FBI, and they, you know, matched up with
some of the things I had uncovered in my investigation.
And it was because of that that he became a
(07:21):
witness in this case that I hope to use at
our hearing, So prior to Lamont's arrest, can we talk
about what was happening with this particular cop, whose name
was Roger Globski. Sometime around or so, I was able
to open an investigation into police corruption in Kansas City, Kansas.
(07:44):
And as the investigation went on over time, over many years,
we developed maybe somewhere between twelve and fifteen police officers
who were titled subjects of the investigation. Some of it
involved civil rights like beating people up, stealing their shoes
when they were walking down the street because the officer
liked the shoes, or in the case of Glupski, you know,
(08:07):
sexual extortion. But most of it involved corruption involving drugs,
mostly cocaine. And in the course of this investigation, just
by talking to people, which is when I'm pretty good
at over time, you know a number of people told
us about Glupski extorting sex from black women and he
liked black women. We never developed enough evidence on Glupski
(08:31):
to prosecute him. That's the extent of my knowledge about Glupski.
I always believe that that police were good, and the
police were on our side and they're there to protect
us all and so I always find these stories, even
as long as I've been working on this issue, and
I've got twenty five years now of experience, but I
(08:51):
always find these stories so just depressing and shocking, and
it flips everything upside down. Well, like you, I was
very eve until I went to Chicago and then I
saw police corruption on the massive scale. But then when
I got back to Kansas City in six and probably
got involved in Kansas City, Kansas, you know, I saw
(09:14):
the same activity. There wasn't on the grand scale. You
know that it's that it's conducted in Chicago. It's basically
police officers, most of whom are white, picking on minories,
most of whom are black, some of them are Hispanic.
Because when you're a drug dealer, you know, you can't
go to the police the FBI and say, hey, these
(09:35):
cops are stealing my drugs, these cops are stealing my
drug money. You basically have to you have to suck
it up. So that's what they do in Chicago, That's
what they do everywhere. So Lamont his troubles really began
when his mom was in a car with I guess
was her boyfriend at the time, Cheryl Right Glubski approached
(09:57):
the car and told her to get out and threatened
her with arrest or arrest of her boyfriend unless she
agreed to come down to the police station. And then
the problems really began when she refused to become one
of his girls, so to speak, right, I mean, obviously,
she was in a terrible situation where she's very vulnerable,
(10:22):
not able to defend herself from a cop who's willing
to go to almost any lanes to fulfill his desires.
She had a tremendous problem, and she decided that she
wanted to maintain her dignity, really, right, And so what
seems like happen is that as a consequence, Globski decided
that he would target and frame her son. And something
(10:45):
that is so evil that, you know, makes me want
to quit the human race. There was an encounter that
Lamont's mother had with the detective some years earlier. I
mean it was years actually before the double homicide happened.
And at the time of the double homicide, my client
was inexplicably dragged into the case. One of the eyewitnesses
(11:09):
told the police she thought the shooter looked like a
lament dating her niece police never bothered to find out
what Lamont that was. They don't go ask the niece
what Lamont that was. They simply put another lament and
it's undisputed, an entirely different Lamont, my client into the case,
and somehow obtain this identification. What's interesting about the lineup,
(11:35):
and I've never seen anything like this before, is three
of the five photos were of young male members of
the mc entire family. You don't have to be a
conspiracy theorist to say, well, that doesn't make a lot
of sense. What it's one perpetrator. It is not like
that somebody said there were three brothers that were involved.
(11:55):
It's one perpetrator, you know. And then the justice system,
we know, has a tendency to chew people up and
spit them out when they are poor, particularly if they're
minorities and underrepresented. It's really it's not a fair fight,
is it. Well, I mean this, this whole thing um
(12:16):
was an impossible battle for Lamont to begin with. I mean,
first of all, the investigation itself, I don't think really
qualified is is a true investigation because so little was done.
No evidence of motive was ever uncovered. There was no
physical evidence that tied Lamont to the crime. There was
(12:37):
not even any evidence that he knew the two victims,
their backgrounds of the two victims, and who might have
a motive to harm them. That was never investigated. There
was an eyewitness directly across the street who was never interviewed,
whose whose mother said, you know, she she knows who
the suspect is. I mean, the failures and lapses and
(12:59):
ir regularities in this case just go on and on.
I mean, other than the twenty minutes of taped interviews
from the eyewitnesses, there was very little else and the
only evidence at trial against Lamont were two eyewitnesses. One
of them has admitted that she lied, that she was coerced.
(13:21):
The other eyewitness seems frankly, very perplexed by her testimony,
and it's it's very clear that it's an eye witness
misidentification based on manipulation. And we know also that had
this trial taken place twenty years later, So with everything
that's known now about the unreliability of eyewitness identification, there's
(13:43):
a very good chance that that would have been discredited
because there was no other evidence connecting to the crime.
You take a person who's traumatized who has just witnessed
a really horrific event, and they can be pretty easy
to pressure or manipulate. And in fact, this Nous provided
in a tape statement my client's last name, a man
(14:04):
she did not know and had never heard of, which
raises the very interesting question of who gave her the name.
It was undisputed at trial that she did not know
my client, yet the fact that there was an original
tape statement where she provided his name never came out.
That was never admitted at trial. She also stated wrongly
(14:26):
that my client was the Lamont who had dated her niece.
At trial undisputed that that was not true. It was
an entirely different Lamont who was in fact identified by
his name to the jury, an entirely different person. So,
I mean, the whole thing is is troubling beginning to end,
really a perfect storm of chaos and horror and misconduct,
(14:51):
things being done improperly. So you have this cop in
this department that is so corrupt isn't even the word,
but that's engaged in so many legal activities, And isn't
it ironic and tragic that Lamont is in prison, living
in hell after twenty four years and this this cop
(15:14):
who was from what I've read, raping people, robbing people,
dealing drugs, protecting drug dealers. He's out. How how is that?
I mean, that must not not sit well with you
with your whole background either. What I'm really hoping for,
what our entire team is hoping for, and what we
have sought for a long time, is a very full
(15:37):
investigation into the activities of this detective. There needs to
be an investigation by people who have the power to
follow all the leads, develop information, compel the testimony of witnesses,
and obtain other evidence. Let me let me turn it
to you for a second, because we have not had
(15:59):
somebody with your background and experience on the show before,
and I would venture to say that you had a
very very difficult and dangerous job, right, I mean, investigating cops,
particularly when you're investigating cops, we've got a lot to hide,
makes you a very unpopular person, I would think. So,
(16:20):
looking back on it, how did this manage to go
on for so long without somebody coming along and saying, uh,
you know, besides you, hey, hey, we're not going to
tolerate this. They don't give a ship. At the time
we were doing these investigations. The police chief of Kansas City, Kansas,
(16:42):
a guy named Tom Daily. He had previously been indicted
by the Federal Strike Force for extorting money at a
whorehouses along the kar River in Kansas. He was doing
that allegedly when it was a captain. He was acquitted
because it was a real weak case, but after going
a quit it for extortion, the city wound up eventually
(17:03):
making him the chief. Is that the actions you know
of a responsible a city administration or a police department.
So he had he had the chief over here, Tom Dale.
He had previously been indicted by the FEDS. He despised
the federal government, he hated the U. S. Attorney's Office
and UH and the FBI. And he's the chief. He
was part of it. So you have this guy Golubski
(17:26):
who in that scenario is operating basically with impunity, right
because he knows his chief doesn't give a ship. And
with the chief having literally what it sounds like, gotten
away with that particular pattern of activity as well as
I'm sure other things that he was doing. The people
(17:48):
underneath them are probably thinking, hey, this is great, no
one's going to touch us. And they're right, and nobody did.
So how frustrated was that for you? There? You are
really fighting an unwinnable war, right You're You're they're trying
to protect the public from the police force. Were they
achieve a police who not only doesn't give a fuck,
but doesn't want that he wants you. He probably wants
(18:10):
you the funk out of his hair, so he could
just you know, run the streets how he wants to write.
When I started working over there, you've had a person,
you know, some guy I knave, had a lot of
people in the county jail, and they would say so
and so confronted me and stole my money, stole my drugs.
You go, what, what's the CoP's name? I don't know
his name, you know what's he looked like, Well, you
know he's some white guy. Well you go to the police.
(18:32):
The police did not have photographs of their police officers,
So if a victim came in there alleging that SO
and so officer robbed from me, extorted me, they didn't
even have photographs to show people so they could identify
who the police officer was. So good luck, you know,
through the U. S. Attorney's Office, through uh Julie Robinson,
(18:54):
who was a prosecutor at the time. We subpoenaed photographs
of every sworn officer in the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department,
and there was hell to pay for that. I was
almost removed from the investigation because of that. You know,
I think one of the problems is that other law
enforcement officers don't want to investigate law enforcement, and as
(19:17):
a general rule, I think they find it distasteful, something
they would rather avoid, and there is a tendency to
minimize misconduct. I found that really pretty shocking, not in
light of everything else we're talking about, but I could
see how you would, and it's it really gets easier
and easier to see how these wrongful convictions are so common.
(19:41):
I mean, here, we have an interesting situation, right, We're
talking to Al who's in there with his badge, working
for the Federal Beer of Investigation and basically being told
go fund himself. So what chance does a seventeen year
old black kid from the poorer side of town. What
shance as he have against this blue wall, this blue
(20:04):
monster that was out to get him. He had no chance.
So now fast forward to twenty four years later, Lamont
sits in a prison studying reading by all accounts, a
model prisoner, somebody who maintains a positive outlook in spite
(20:25):
of this. You know what can only be described as
the worst faith that can be fall an individual to
be cars forraver, something he didn't do for the rest
of your life. But now we have hope, right, I mean,
he has hope thanks to you and the years of
work that you've done in this case and al and
other brave people who have devoted their time and in
some cases probably even risk their own personal safety to
(20:47):
try to get justice in this case. What does it
look like now? What happens next? Tell us what's going on.
We have a evidentiary hearing coming up in October, and
we in tend to present somewhere between forty and fifty
witnesses who provide very powerful testimony on various aspects of
(21:10):
the case. There was almost nothing really to support the
conviction to begin with, nothing other than the testimony of
the two eye witnesses, and I believe that has been
thoroughly shredded at this point through recantations and admissions and
the result of other investigation. And we are also focusing
(21:32):
on the very troubling misconduct in the case. It is
intimately connected to how the investigation was conducted, and we're
going to bring all that out and show how we
believe this went wrong, and we very much hope to
be successful. What's the date of the hearing October twelfth,
(21:54):
October twelve, And is this in a federal court? We
are in Windout County District Court just a state court.
My client is litigating what's called a successive petition under
sixty fIF seven, and you have essentially a procedural barrier
to get over before you can get back into court.
But we do have this evidentiary hearing schedule that we
(22:16):
are very very excited about. One of the most compelling
things about the case we haven't mentioned this yet, is
that the families of both victims have always known my
client is innocent and are very much squarely supporting the
quest to free him. They know that they did not
get justice, their families did not get justice, and that
(22:38):
cheryld In your experience, that's not a common thing, right,
I mean, most of the cases I've seen, even in
the face of what could be overwhelming evidence to the contrary,
the victims families sometimes stick with what they've been told
all along because they just can't. They can't even process
the idea that they may have been lied to and
that the wrong person may have been serving time for
the for the murder of their loved one. So in
(22:58):
this case, this is a unusual scenario, isn't it It is?
And one of the eyewitnesses is related to both of
the victims, and she her family and the family of
the second victim to whom she's a bit more distantly related,
have always told me that they have known from the
(23:19):
beginning that the authorities got the wrong man. They have
always known this. They've made periodic efforts to correct this,
to address this, to try and get some justice, all
without success. And if there wasn't already enough to chew on,
this is the part that really just sets me off,
(23:40):
his courter pointed. Attorney Gary Long was on supervised probation
at the time of the trial for failing to diligently
handle three prior cases. He was suspended from the bar
a couple of years later for failure to adequately hinder
a separate criminal case. And he was this bar. How
is it even possible that, in a life or death
(24:00):
situation that you take somebody and you say, you know what,
we're going to give you a lawyer who's already messed
up three times when I said nobody gives a ship?
Do you understand what I mean? Do you know that
that you know that that Tara Moore had You know
she's now a federal prosecutor. Yes, So Tara Morehead was
(24:22):
the prosecutor in this case. Obviously didn't see anything wrong
with her prosecuting a case in which a young man's
life was at stake in front of a judge with
whom she had carried on an affair a few years earlier.
I think most reasonable people would agree that one or
(24:44):
the other should have been recused from this particular scenario
because even if they were saints, and obviously they weren't.
Because she's also the same woman from what I've read,
who threatened a witness who tried to come forward with
the truth with losing custody of her own children. But yes,
and now she's moved up the ladder. Seems like all
(25:07):
the bad guys have one here. Al what the fuck? Well?
I think Sarah Moorehead is currently married to a police officer.
I think there's some other prosecutors over in the federal U. S.
Attorney's Office that are married to other police officers. So
you're not going to expect them to investigate police corruption,
are you? Wow? I guess that would make it tricky,
wouldn't it. They're not going to do it, and they don't.
(25:28):
I mean, there there's so much that could be investigated
that ought to be investigated, and you know, I I
should also point out that sexual misconduct among police officers
is not unusual in some departments. When you have poor
and vulnerable people encounter folks with ultimate authority over them,
(25:53):
ultimate authority in that particular moment, you know, those things
can happen all too easily, and they do and happened frequently.
You know, when I was an agent, I'm about six
ft four. I had a gun, a badge and radio
and everything. At nighttime when I was on my way
home or on the weekends, I would not drive to
Kansas City, Kansas, unless I was accompanied by another FBI agent.
(26:17):
Thought they might have run you off the road or
something else. They could do anything. They could pull me
over and not saying they don't know who I was,
and they could say pulled a gun and they could
shoot me. So I have all that power and authority.
What is some little black kid on the street half.
I hope that in exposing the story of Lamont and
some of the things that you've shared out that people,
(26:39):
you know, get their backs up and get get angry
and get involved. These are just people, They're just regular people,
and they're they're being so terribly abused and victimized by
people who are supposed to protect them. I I don't
it makes me sick. I just say that the fear
and the terror that some of the citizens experience cannot
(27:00):
be overstated. I mean, you have someone with a badge
with ultimate and really, as I said in that moment,
unchecked authority, there's enormous fear of the police and enormous,
sometimes unmovable resistance to getting involved in anything that has
to do with the criminal justice system. I've spent some years, honestly,
(27:25):
just earning the trust of some people in the community
so that they will sit down and speak with me
so that we can investigate the case. Nobody wants anything
to do with a case you say, courthouse, people walk
the other way. They don't want anything to do with that.
And ultimately we have been successful in securing some very
(27:49):
good witnesses because they did want to help someone they've
viewed as innocent. And you know, I should point out
here that all of the street talk we have ever
heard in the community is that Lamont is innocent, the
guy who got wrongfully convicted. It's like everyone knows. The
whole community knows. The victims families know, everyone knows Lamont
(28:15):
did not do this. Everyone knows. You have a prepaid
call from an innate at Kansas Department of Corrections Lansing
(28:36):
Correctional Facility. To accept this call, press or say five
to refute. This call will be recorded and subject to monitoring.
At any time. You may begin speaking now, Lamont, Welcome
to the show. Thank you so, Lamont. I want to
go back to the beginning, when you grew up and
(28:58):
how this all started. I've seen photos of you with
your family. Looked like you had not an easy but
a happy childhood. Is that fair? Yeah? Can you just
describe what it was like. I've heard you talk about
Christmas and stuff. Uh, yeah, was tighten it. You know,
it was like my mother was just only pair in
the house and it was close me and my siblings,
(29:18):
and we did everything together. We stayed in one house.
You know, we took care of each other. So growing
off of me was my family was a big game.
Didn't really bite about a lot of stuff, you know.
I was me and my three brothers and my sister
and mother a sister. My mother worked a lot, so
my sister kind of watched that. There was a little
bit some other family members liked to go to my
(29:41):
family member's house, uncles and be around them. Our mother
was at work. I kind of still stayed around family.
I sat my home so real family oriented and where
you grew up. You had no idea at this time
that the police force was really as corrupt as any
one could possibly imagine until this terrible incident occurred. And
(30:06):
I want to go back to that. What happened. You
were a seventeen year old kid going along with your life,
trying to make it in a difficult place, and then
one day out of the blue, you get arrested and
don't even know what's going on or what happened. Uh,
that's exactly what happened. And I was it was a
(30:26):
typical day. It was like a Friday, typical day. I
was the road in a Downey comverge program where it's
all time of school whenever, whatever. You get your high
school to phone and then they gives you in uh college,
so like a little degree program on the part of
and um, it was just a Friday. I get a
call phone call saying the police over my grandmother's house
(30:49):
looking for me. Called my mother. We go to the
police station and they started talking about two murders and
I had no answers for him because I don't know
if they were saying what they talking about. So from
that moment, I was arrested, charge and vasously completed of
two murders and I hadn't about And we know now
(31:13):
that they were deliberately targeting you because of this particular
police officer who was up to all kinds of criminal
activity himself. And that's the irony of this is that
he belongs in jail. And I'm hoping that by the
end of this that's exactly what's going to happen. But
(31:35):
the idea that this system, this so called justice system,
had made a decision that you were going to be
their guy. There was this double murder, right, two guys
sitting in the car. They were involved in drug activity,
They were dealers. We now know also that one of
them had been beaten by the guys he was working
(31:55):
for in the drug business. Right. He was working as
a doorman in a crack then, and he had feared
for his life, And in fact he had good reason
to because I guess he had from what I've learned
he has been he had been stealing from them, So
that every reason to know that this was a drug hit.
And you weren't involved in that game or that business.
(32:18):
Did you know these guys and then know the witnesses.
I don't know the victims that would have connected to
it at all. That's why I so it so hard
for me to understand how something like that could happen,
because and I was forward about everything. I don't try
to hide nothing because I knew that what they were
talking about that time. I had nothing to do with it.
I would involved. I don't know what the police officer's
(32:41):
motive was to plan it on meal. I still don't
know to this day what happened. Well, it does seem
like now with everything we've learned that the officer involved,
the first one who arrived on the scene was an
officer named Golobski. It's a white guy who had a
proclivity for women of color, and when he didn't get
(33:02):
his way, he would exact revenge. And so what it
seems like is that in this particular case, he targeted
you because your mom wasn't having any part of that.
And that's what makes this particularly sinister and sick. You
end up going to trial. And I find it interesting,
among all the other things in your case, that they
(33:24):
offered you a plea bargain right and you didn't take it.
I wouldn't the rest of the plea bargain. I can't
understand how I sit in this situation, and I hadn't
know nothing about them itself, so bargains far from my mom,
I would And why I find that and why I
brought that up, Lemont, And I've seen the mugshot picture
of you, and it really hurt my heart because I
(33:46):
could see in your face just how confused you were
and scared of a situation that you couldn't possibly imagine
what was happening at that time. I also would think
that if you were guilty and they're offering you a deal,
and you know your chances of winning in the court
are going to be low because they have all these
(34:07):
cops and everybody else is going to testify that you
would have taken the plea bargain. Anybody with the right
mind would take a plea bargain. You're not crazy, are
you right? You don't You don't sound crazy. You don't
sound crazy at all. So in the situation like this,
I mean, we have in this country over cases end
up in plea bargains. So had you been guilty, that
would have been a very logical thing to do. But
as an innocent person and probably somebody who's still trusted
(34:30):
in the system, you went forward with your right to
a trial, and you were represented by a guy who
they knew your court appointed lawyer. They knew this guy
was incompetent because he had already been disciplined for three
previous cases that he had completely botched. It almost sounds
like they did it on purpose. They assigned a guy
(34:50):
who didn't go and interview witnesses, who didn't really didn't
do anything he was supposed to do. And what was
that like? Were you aware at that time that this
guy it wasn't I mean, I don't even know if
it was really on your side, but I mean, as
you're watching these proceedings, what were you thinking. He presented
himself like a lawyer. He presented itself like a person,
and there on my behald to take care of this business.
(35:13):
And he's seeing real professional at first. So I didn't
know what to expect because I've never been in that
situation before anyway, So his first impression was for me,
it was a good impression because I didn't know what
a lawyer was supposed to do, or I was so
ignorant to the law on how things work. I just
believed in the justice system at that time, I really did.
(35:33):
I thought there was no possible way, being an innocent
person or a person that has nothing to do with
that crime, that I would be found guilty. So I
don't really pay too much attention to the credibility of
this lawyer. It didn't die on me that I would
be found guilty of the crime that I had nothing
to do with it. So I didn't really think about
it in those terms. I was just thinking, you can
give me any lawyer, anybody from anywhere, and it'd be okay,
(35:56):
because once they realized that they had the wrong person
and ironed out and trial, That's what I was thinking.
But I didn't plan on all how to think that
people would get on the stand and line it was
gonna fabricade, And I didn't think that was gonna happen.
I had no idea that they had already made up
in their mind and I was going to escape God
for this particular crime. So definitely being needed at the
(36:18):
law and how things work in the justice system. I
believe in the justice system at that time. I really did.
I think all of us do when we're kids, especially
brought up in a good home like you were. You
brought up to believe that people are good and that
the system is is going to work for you. And
then you had a lawyer who, had he been competent,
I still think would have one year case in spite
(36:41):
of all this, because of the simple fact that it
was an easy case. The witnesses were not credible at all.
We now know that they also withheld exculpatory evidence, So
you really didn't have a fair chance, especially not with
a lawyer who was incompetent. And ultimately, let's not forget
that this particular lawyer was disbarred not too long after
(37:04):
your trial. And again for the listeners out there, think
about that this is a guy who had been disciplined
in numerous cases prior to laments, and then ultimately gets
disbarred when the extent of his gross incompetence is brought
to the Supreme Court of Kansas, the attention to the
Supreme Court, and then he voluntarily gave up his license
(37:27):
to practice law. And that wasn't the end of the nightmare.
We now know too that your appellate lawyer was disbarred.
I mean, you can't even make this stuff up. So
what happened? Like now you're in the courtroom, the jury
goes out, the arguments have been made. You saw these
witnesses get up and lie. You saw these police officers
(37:49):
get up and lie. Your defense made whatever arguments they made.
Did you believe that they would come back and declare
you innocent? I did. I did a five of my
being I did. I just didn't know that this is
how the system worked. They found me guilty based on
false evidence or the kind of evidence that was presented
(38:09):
by a certain district attorney. They heard stuff about me.
It wasn't even about Lemar Macknetide, and she just kind
of made self up. They told his story and the
jury believed. But at the time before they came back
with guilty, Birdie, I still didn't think I'll me found
guilty because the whole time I'm sitting there, in the
whole time I'm going through the process of getting to trial,
I still had no knowledge of the actual crime. So
(38:32):
I'm thinking, with my young mind being naive, that there's
no way becau jury can find me guilty when I'm
really not guilty, when I had nothing to do with it.
I'm not tied to it at all. The witnesses, the victims,
I'm not tied to it. I was in the area
when it happened. When they came in, I noticed that
(38:52):
no juries. No one looked me in my face, no
one looked looked up. Everyone came in looking down at
the floor. So I kind of had an eerie feeling,
but I still had hope that it will work out
in the right way. So when they read the verdict
and they said guilty, it's like I've seen my whole
life flash before me and I u and for that moment,
I fosed and and I was sitting there, and I
(39:14):
stood up, and I remember saying something. I was screaming something,
you know, to the effects of I'm not guilty and
you got the wrong person or whatever. And I stepped
someone holding me or grabbing me from behind, and I
was in shot, so I didn't really I was like
a lost moment. But I turned around and I see
my mother hold me, screaming, crying like don't take my
baby away from me, don't take my baby. And I'm
(39:36):
looking at her and I realized that this is a
serious situation now, but it still didn't feel real. It
was my life in my situation, but it didn't feel
like my life on my situation. I felt like I
was outside of myself looking at this event happened. I
couldn't stop it. So I was in shot and that
shot lasted for a few years after that. I was
(39:58):
in shot. So now now you're convicted of a double
murder and sense to life in prison. Where did they
take you to the processes? Like from this time you
get convicted in the county for about too much, then
you go to citizen Now how cinis in Wanna County.
They gave me to life sentences to ron consecutive and
(40:18):
after that they sent me to a process of center
which we call rd you where they see you to
determine what classification, you would be what custody would be
in a subsidered max custody. So from there they sent
me to prison. I was in hus That's that's a
prison in Kansas. They called Glady in the school, one
(40:38):
of those tough prisons. You know what, people, you know,
it's a prison. It's like the work not did you
have a prison? Is that more? It's this dark is
negative pension feel, it's hopelessness. It's a world that its long.
(41:06):
I just seventeen year old. Did you have plans? Did
you have a career in mind? What was the outlook
for the future. We're still just trying to figure it out. Yeah,
I was thing I wanted to do, and it was
just I was I was misguide in the line, and
I was just in a place where everybody around me
was either die or going to jail or I was
just in the kind of environment. It didn't produce a
(41:27):
lot of hope. I didn't have. I didn't have a
lot of people to look up to or emulation, nothing
like that. But I did enjoy taking care of my family.
So my life was just basically about trying to take
care of my family the best way I know, or
to look out for my loved ones. You know, I
had skills and things I could do, Like I was
a barber, I was cutting hair since I was twelve.
(41:49):
You know, I was comedian and I had these in
the back of my mind. I wanted to be a
comedian and I had things I wanted to do. I
just didn't know how to get to where I wanted
to be. But I still I didn't think that my
life was just of being in prison or going to jail,
being in this kind of situation. What is a typical
day like for you on the inside? How do you
(42:10):
get through it? What's the schedule? Uh, typical day? Typical
day is re readjusted. It's like from hunt day to
the nexus. Finding a way to get by for one day,
line something for my days, and then I just try
to it just sucks. I gotta repeat it. Like if
(42:30):
I have a bad day or I'm frustrated for one day,
I'm going to sleep, wake up to repeat this day again.
So I try to find the best I can or
get the best I can out of a day, because
waking up to repeat it is the anxiety. That's why
all that the worst stuff is knowing of it. For
the last twenty three years and two on in some months,
and they have a on a weeks and eight sothern days.
(42:52):
It's the same thing. It never changes. So I devote
my time to read it and studying and right like music,
write poetry. I try to keep my mind free as possible.
I try to stay out of prison mentally. I try
not to. I'm not into prison politics. I'm not in
prison mentally, but I'm here. I had to be my
(43:12):
body here, but I try to keep my mind far
from this place as I can. So it's just a
bunch of moments of readjusting every day. And I have
a lot of love people that love me and care
about me, so I'll focus on that. But it's bad.
It used to be a lot worse than it is now.
I'm starting to see I'm coming alive now because I
can see it light at the end of this tuned
(43:33):
I've been there for so long, so I'm better now.
But yeah, it wasn't so good before. It's better now,
But it was always sad to wake up. I had
to repeat this same cycle over and over again. That
stuff is another drib of person crazy. There's a lot
of moments while I feel like it. What's the point,
you know, to keep going to wake up every day
that I had to deal with the exact same nightmare
(43:54):
you trying to escape from the night before. But I
had my mother, like she never gave up on me
from day one. Like when the worst moments of my life,
you know, I felt like I just couldn't do it
no more, for that I couldn't take another step, she
would show up. And when she would grab me and
hold me and looked at my faith and tell me
this is not my life. I passed through, this is
not my destination. And so I had a lot of
(44:17):
support my family and and I gave my life to
God and I pray a lot of meditate a lot.
So initially I was kind of in this dark place
where I was so hurt and sad and depressed, and
so I kept people kept coming to my life. There
(44:38):
was like beacons of light and hope for me and
I and I and I thank God for all those
people came into my life and supported me, and they
short it up. I always had something to look forward to,
because this is a dark places. It's a dark situation
where if you don't have enough support for me, it
was just support. I found it supportant then years later
(44:58):
Sheryl and to Yeah ministries and innocent projects. So I'm
coming into my life and they breathe, uh, they breathe
license to me, it's like a second wind. And I'm
grateful for those people, everybody who support me and everybody
who put forth effort, go out every day and do
something to help me get my life back. I'm, however,
(45:20):
grateful for those people. If you even allow yourself, if
you allow your mind to go there, what are you
dreaming about when you get out? Because I'm convinced you
are going to come home and I'm gonna be there
fighting right alongside with everybody else. What's the first thing
you want to do? And then how do you see
the future? The first day I'm gonna do eat something.
(45:42):
That's what I fantasized about. Mostly, I want to eat
something that from there, I want to have some type
of impact or effect on young people make important sitsis
it would eventially uh landing in a situation like this,
you know, So I want to just raise any kind
of awareness I can out decision making, because you know,
(46:02):
had I've been told how to make better decisence myself.
I think even no I was even to the law,
and this is something that had nothing to do with me,
and that I still gonna been making better desistence myself
before this stuff and mean came about. So I don't
want to be able to be there for young people
as much as I can. So I can, I can
help them understand that even though you don't do something wrong,
(46:24):
even though you don't commit a crime, you can be
You still gotta be accountable, and you still gotta be
a mindful of the fact that you're out there and
floating around and you can easily be put in a
situation like that and if you're not being productive and
doing something just uh productive out there in life. So
I just want to be able to reach the young
people as much as I can, and now that there's
that to be young, just anybody that want to be
(46:46):
able to share my experience and hopefully it will help
out in any kind of way. I'm sure that you
will do that, and then you're gonna have a very
positive impact on a lot of people because you have
a very rare combination of intelligence and manner that is
so positive and strong but still gentle that I believe
that You'll be able to affect a lot of a
(47:07):
lot of young people, and I'm looking forward to watching
you do that. There's one other thing I wanted to raise.
I'm always amazed when I speak to someone in your situation,
and especially so with you, that you don't seem to
be bitter after everything that's happened. And I know you
talked about your faith and family and the strength that
(47:30):
you get from from them, But how is it possible
that someone can go through this most unimaginable nightmare still
be in it, and yet be as positive and strong
as you are now? Well? I had a moment with
an angerbook. You all we like taking points and hoping
(47:50):
someone else died from it. I only want to affect
about me being angry, no one else seeing the notice
of Hey, it tasted to me being angry, So how
is this a learning experience? Like being angry doesn't help me?
So I just wanted to help myself because I knew,
I always knew I was gonna be here forever. I
knew that eventually the truth was surface and I would
have a life outside of this wall. So I devoted
(48:12):
a lot of time and energy towards helping myself and
I hurt myself, so being angry was something that was
a hinderest to me, not a benefit. So I try
to say positive because these places you gotta keep up
with the seven take care of yourself, and anger and
stress and all those things is just short in your
life span, and I got to like to live. So
(48:33):
I just choose. I choose to be positive. I choose
to not be angry and allow anger to kill me.
I don't want to die in this place, and I
don't want to have a short life. So I stick
firm to what I believe in, and I believe in
my faith, and I believe in meditation, I believe in exercise.
I'm believing take care of my mom, body and soul,
and that's what I vote my time to. Wow. UM,
(48:57):
all I can do is tell you that you have UM,
you have all my respect and support. And I was
saying the man, you know, I've seen too many miracles
to stop believing in miracles. So I'm excited to watch
you be the next one or one of the next ones,
and we'll never stop fighting for you and for other
(49:18):
people in your situation. I'm looking forward to a positive
outcome and to getting to know you on the outside
the mind. I'm just going to turn it over to
you and say, is your microphone, what do you want
to share with the audience. Well, these these kind of
cases having more than they should, you know. So it's
(49:38):
like I always see on TV or day line see
anything man so many years in prison and you get
exonerated and you see this happened time and time again,
but which would never ever see a heavy here about
how much that stuff impact the effect of the families
for those people like I had a post knit family.
It was close and it was a thing. It's just
(50:00):
just like me being affected by the event that happened
in my life. It hurts me to see how much
how much it affected not only me, with my family.
And it's difficult because if if a man has to
go through a certain thing by himself, that's a that's
his life, that's his his path and life. He got
to go through that. I had to do what I
had to do, no matter what. But when you see
someone you care about being affected about what you have
(50:22):
to do or what you have to endure, it's it's
a it's a different kind of feeling. And it's like
people don't really pay attentions that don't know about that,
like when uh, this is attorneys of of being dishonest
when they're trying to get from visions and all that.
I don't think they take that consideration how many people
they are affecting, but just not going by the law
of just not being truthful about certain things, not just me,
(50:45):
whatever issue personal issue they may add about with me.
My family is affected by that, my brothers, my brother's
kids when all this happened, and they feel like they
lost a mother because my mother devoted so much time
for trying to give me back out of the system
that they felt like they were neglected. So they were
affected by that. My older sister was affected, my brother
(51:06):
was affected. I mean, everybody was affected. One minute remaining.
And when you try to hold onto something good, even
when you try to get something good in this kind
of situation, there's still nothing good come from it. It's
just always bad. It's always negative as always a challenge
is always hurtles, so always something. But for the person
that's in the middle of it, that's just my experience.
(51:27):
But on the outside of it, that's something people don't
never get a chance to see. That's that's that's just
a harsh or harsh reality for a person to live
based on someone else being in competition when all this
stuff basically could have been avoided by someone just doing
their job. But the job people was uh employed them
to do, you know. So I think people should understand
(51:48):
that and know that there's a lot of people to
be affected by something like that. I think a lot
of teachers should be brought to this moment and this
kind of situation, so a lot of people can, uh,
if you'll find another person that situation, it can be
more awful events not to help in a different kind
of way, they could because it's not just about me.
(52:10):
Somebody everybody who here about me too. On October wayan
Dott County District Attorney Mark dupri moved to vacate the
conviction and dismissed all charges against Lamont McIntyre. Hours later,
Lamont walked free for the first time in over twenty
three long, miserable years. He called me from the courthouse steps.
(52:36):
It was it was one of the best calls I've
ever gotten. And in that call, he said he thanked
me um and he said that the exposure that his
case had gotten from being on this podcast had helped,
and even if it was a tiny bit, it had
helped to lead to his exoneration. It was a really
extraordinary feeling, and I'm excited to share that On has
(53:00):
since one a one and a half million dollar judgment
for his wrawful conviction, and he and his mother are
currently suing Roger Klupski for all the damage he did
to their lives and their family. After a thirty year
reign of terror in the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department,
disgraced officer Roger Kolupski went to work in Edwardsville, Kansas
(53:22):
in two thousand and ten. He has yet to face justice,
and he retired in two thousand and sixteen. 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
(53:43):
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 Wardis. The music
in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
(54:05):
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
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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