August 5, 2020 • 43 mins
In the summer of 2007, Jamal Trulove was an aspiring rapper from San Francisco’s Sunnydale projects. He had hoped that scoring himself a role on a reality television show would help his music career. Instead, his appearance on television would help police pin a July 27 murder on him. Over 30 witnesses, including Jamal himself, would not snitch, but someone had to go down for it. His most momentous mention on television yet would occur during the 2020 Democratic Primary debate.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
On the night of July twenty third, two thousand and seven,
Jamal true Love was hanging out in the common area
of San Francisco's Sunnydale Projects with his younger brother, Joshua.
Jamal's friend sel Kuka, drove up intoxicated, ripping off the
side view mirror from Joshua's car. Jamal got between Cel
and his brother. Then gunfire in the air would send
(00:22):
Cel into an alcohol fueled rage. In search of a
gun himself, Jamal tried to come sell again, who pushed
him away and punched another man. Frustrated and fed up,
Jamal left the scene, only to turn in time to
witness his friend Cell being gunned down in the street. Now,
since snitching is a surefire away to be sent to
the same fate, Jamal kept his mouth shut. Cel's cousin,
(00:45):
Priscilla Lualamaga, would go downtown to identify the shooter she
claimed to see from her second story window, only to
pass over Jamal's mugshot that was in plain sight. Police
pressured her to name Jamal so they could coerce the
identity of the shooter. Either he would name the killer
or he'd go down for the murder. Himself. Jamal would
(01:06):
receive fifty years to life. The prosecutor's closing argument would
point to l Wallamaga's bravery in light of the supposed
thread of Jamal Truelove. This comment, unsupported by evidence and
unobjected to by counsel, would ultimately lead to a new
trial in which Jamal's new lawyers would be able to
successfully argue that ballistic evidence at the autopsy report proved
(01:29):
that the shooter was out of the Wallamaga's second story view.
Jamal was finally set free in twenty fifteen. This is
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction
(01:55):
with Jason Flamm. That's me. I'm your host, and today
I'm very excited because this this is a story I've
wanted to tell from quite some time, and that's primarily
because of the person who survived this incredible ordeal, Jamal Truelove.
He has the best name on top of everything else.
So Jamal, welcome, Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Jason.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah. Man, Like I always say, I'm sorry you have
to be here, but I'm really happy that you are here.
So Jamal, this story touches me on a personal level
because you were in the entertainment business before this horrible
misidentification and all the other things that went wrong happened
to you. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Because you grew up in San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Right, Yes, grew up in San Francisco Sunnydale Projects. Always
wanted to get into entertainment within music and acting, and.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
The ball was starting to bounce your way, so to speak. Right,
because at the time of this incident, you had been
recently featured on the reality TV show Popped, the show
called I Love New York Too. Right, you were just
a kid from the project with no connections, but you
were making it happen anyway. How did you do that?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Well, initially I was recording music. My friend had a
studio which he would lend me some time to get
into actually record, and then I had an opportunity to
audition for this character for this show called I Love
New York Too. So I figured if I could get
on the show and put a name to a face,
(03:26):
then I will get the exposure that I need to
shine on to my music and to ultimately get into film.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
And sure enough you had now gone and shot this show.
Which did you shoot in La or yeah, it was
based in La and so this was like an exciting
time for you. How old were you at the time, Jamal.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Well, I started recording music when I was sixteen years old.
When I ended up landing on the show, I was freshly.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Twenty one, So a kid with big dreams and aspirations
and you know, the ability to really manifest those things.
And I think people let meet you now still see
that same spark. It makes it a certain way. It
makes this wrong for conviction more tragic. So, Jamal, your
life took a terrible turn because of events that occurred
(04:12):
around eleven pm on July twenty third of two thousand
and seven. And of course you know what I'm referring to,
but it was that night that twenty eight year old
sel Kuka, was a resident in your housing project, was
shot nine times. How did this happen? How did you
find out about it? And how did you get misidentified
(04:33):
as the shooter.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
We were all kicking it in the projects in the
area that would typically chill at and the incident had
happened between Sale Kuka and my little brother Joshua. Sale
was intoxicated driving up the street where he came real
close to my brother's car and ripped off his Sime mirror,
and you know, I've seen it but didn't think too
(04:58):
much of it. Then somebody yelled down to me like
there was some type of altercation between him and my brother.
So I come through to diffuse the situation. I seen
how my brother was contorting his face. Sells, one of
my good friends. He's got some liquor in them, so
you know, he's ramped up. He's not trying to take
no blame, and they're getting closer to each other where
(05:20):
it's gonna end up, you know, turning into a fight.
So I intervened, you know, I told both of them chill, relaxed.
Sale was hyped up to start being kind of a
crowd people looking on, and next you know, we hear
some gunshots going off kind of like I guess in
the air, and I think, you know that field Sell
(05:41):
that much more to feel some type of way, and
he started heading down saying that he was gonna go
get a gun. So me, I remember some of my
other friends used to you know, kind of contain his
anger when he's in this type of stake. So me
trying to prevent anything from escalating. I kind of followed him,
(06:02):
and he was asking somebody one of our other friends
to give him a gun, and I'm telling him, no, like, bro,
there ain't no reason for all of that. But he like,
you know, m mess out here shooting and I'm like that
ain't got nothing to do with us or this situation.
So I got like close up on him. I like
held him, like, you know, in a kind of bear hug,
and he's like way bigger than me. I'm probably like
(06:23):
one hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet at that point,
and he's like two twenty two thirty at least, and
he's listening, but you could definitely tell that he's kind
of drunk. And then he kind of bust out of
my bear hug in an angry type of way, and
at that point it felt like, you know, he wasn't
trying to hear me or calm the altercation. So I
(06:47):
ended up leaving across the street, which I had my
car inside the parking lot. I had a female friend
inside the car. I bent down to let her know
that we're about to get up out of here, and
by the time I stood up from the side of
the car, I seen sale skipping around the building right
(07:07):
there from off of the street, and I seen the
perpetrator already holding the gun in the shooting position. Before
I could say stop, gunshots had already rained off. So
I just got down until all the gunshots was overwood.
And typically in situations like this in the project, regardless
(07:27):
if you did something or if you didn't do it,
you just h tail up out of there. So that's
what I ended up doing.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
So I'm gonna ask you point blank, did you know
at the time who the actual shooter was.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yes, I did, And there.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Were a lot of witnesses. Thirty or more witnesses were
there because as you described, it was a street team,
a lot of people hanging out, of course, and it
seemed like this a lot of people are going to
be scared to come forward. Nobody wants to be labeled
to snitch.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Because I know what that actually means. Something happened to
me my family.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
But one woman did come forward and she became a
key part of this whole awful scenario, right And this
woman's name was Priscilla Lualamaga, and she claimed to have
seen the whole thing from her second story window. Already,
my spidy sense to start tingling because it's eleven o'clock
at night, it's dark. It sounds like a pretty dicey
(08:21):
scenario to think that she's going to identify somebody. But okay,
so she told police that her distant relative was just deceased.
Sell Kuka was chasing another man around a car who
she identified as your brother, Joshua. And then she further
claimed that while chasing Joshua, Kuka bumped into a knockdown
(08:43):
another man who got up, chased him down the street
and sloping downhill and open fire close range, so this
is important. She gets taken to the police station and
showing thirty four mug shots that were set up on
a bulletin board, and she recognized many of the mugshots
at spaces from her neighborhood, understandably. But then in the
two hours she was in that room with the bulletin
board of mugshots, she didn't recognize your face, correct, which
(09:05):
was immediately above Joshua Bradley's mugshots. So that's even weirder, right,
it was right there in front of her face, and
she still didn't recognize it, okay, correct. So two days
later the cops come to her workplace and take us
from there.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Two days later the police came to her workplace, but
the day before that, it is real interesting that they
actually came to her house showing her a mugshot picture
which we believe to have been me, and they denying
that it was me that didn't run side by side
(09:37):
to what you ultimately ended up coming out when it
comes down to the lineup and the mug shots. So
they told her that if we were to bring a
photo lineup with the person who did it inside the
lineup which be able to identify it. So the next
day they went to her job. They brought her a
six pack lineup with really me wearing an orange jumpsuit
(10:00):
and everybody else in playing clothes. But she had already
identified the other people, you know, not being the person
and people that she already knows.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
It's even worse than that, right, because of the fact
that she said that you quote unquote looks like the
guy who could have shot Kouka, right, So that's pretty
damn weak.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
The six pack lineup, it had two standout things. It
had me inside of an orange jumpsuit and then it
also had the dates that came off of the system
when they brought up the mug shots where my date
was dated different than the other dates that came off
of the system. Because they had me down as the
(10:41):
shooter on day one.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Why do you think the detectives had it out for
you or they just like, whoever, we just got to
close the case. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
I wasn't somebody that was out there. I was always
trying to do something positive. I was doing music, you know,
I'll hang around, of course, but with my name coming
up on the day that actually happened, whether they wanted
questions from me or them saying oh it was the
guy that Jamal was with, they was like, okay, this
(11:10):
is how we gonna get him. We're gonna pressure him.
It's aid either tail on the person who did it,
or we're gonna make sure that he goes down for this.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
And then no weapon was recovered, but hl casings were
found down hill from the body, in the trail leading
up to the body, which means that what she said
was false because she said the shooter was chasing Kuka downhill.
So now we know, and they should have known that
she didn't know what the fuck she was talking about.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
So to be honest right, her representation of what actually happened.
If anything, she could have only seen what was on
the side of that building. She didn't see when the
person was actually shooting.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
She told police that Sela Kuka was chasing another man
around the car and then Kooka bumped into a knockdown
another man who got up, chased him down the street
and sloping down on hill and open fire close range.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
It wasn't me who sail had knocked down?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
What was her agenda here? Do you know?
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Her whole thing? And the family which I was deeply
connected to, felt like they weren't scared of me, they
were scared of the person who actually did it, right,
So by way of throwing me in there, they felt
that I was going to tell on the person who
actually did it.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
So that's the big boom right there.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
And then things take another crazy turn, right because the
TV show airs the show that you were in, which
should have been a cause for celebration. She happens to
see the TV show, right, and then she comes back
and says, oh, now I know it's definitely him.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, So they were getting her closer and closer to
that it was me one hundred percent, and then on
top of her saying that she talked to her cousin,
and then on top of the detectives really trying to
get somebody to go to jail for this. You know,
that's what brewed up to what that ultimately ended up being.
(13:07):
But even still that didn't work. What ultimately ended up
happening was I said. About fourteen months later, the police
had did a traffic stop with this other woman named Letitia,
who had a gun in her lap, had cracked cocaine
on her baby in the back, had her boyfriend who
(13:28):
was on parole in the passenger seat. Pulled over. She's
going to jail, and she goes down and they basically say, well,
if you could tell us X, Y, and Z about
this case, everybody basically goes free. She initially tells them
that it was daylight and this altercation happened, and then
(13:50):
she said she looked through the window and looked all
the way down the block and seeing that this happened,
and just threw my name in there. So there was
a lot of things is wrong with that, right as
if first, she says that she's seen it for fifty
yards away on a slant heel in the daylight, when
it didn't happen in the daytime, it happened at night.
(14:13):
But what got the arrest warrant was the write up
that detectives had rolled up. They were guiding her the
whole way, making everything like it was a clear record,
and then wrote at the bottom extremely credible. So now
when they take that to the DA, now they feel
(14:33):
they have two witnesses saying the same exact thing.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
So this is a crazy timeline too, because the crime
we know happens in two thousand and seven, you don't
get brought in and rested until two thousand and eight,
over a year later, and then the trial doesn't happen
till twenty ten.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
So during that time were you in jail, did you
bail out? How did that unfold? After you arrested?
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Well, after I was arrested, they wanted to question me. Obviously,
there's two things you can do. You can give up information,
but never mind that because in that situation, which you're
taught in the streets, is you know it's not to snitch,
not to give up information. Something happened to me my family,
you know, So I balanced that with also knowing that
(15:19):
it's not my duty to put somebody else into jail.
That's for them to actually get it right. And that
was my way of going at it. So it actually
took me about a year and a half to go
to trial. It was hard trying to get the thirty
people that was out there to actually come in, you know,
not say who did it, you know, but to say
I didn't do it. I wasn't trying to put nobody
in no situation where I was trying to have somebody
(15:41):
else tell on the assailant because I wasn't going to
do anything like that. Then I have to go what
hide for the rest of my life or something. That's
just not my job. That's up to the system to do.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
So nobody would want to be in that situation. But
you were in it, and you're still just a young
guy without you know, resources, and so you roll with
it and you go to trial.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah, so we thought the case added an identity case,
you know, identity testify. We didn't call nobody to testify
or whatever. So it took three days and then it
took five days of deliberation. Ultimately they came back with
a murder one conviction. It was it was definitely tough
I stayed optimistic because I know I didn't do it
(16:23):
at the end of the day, and that's what, ultimately,
you know, kept the wools turning in my mind on
how do I figure this out?
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And you were convicted, of course, and you were sentenced
to fifty years in prison.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
So I want you to understand this right before I
get since it's to fifty the life I'm inside of
my cell, I become we're doing a retrial motion right
to ask for a retrial before a sentence. I'm come
back from church, come aside. It's a twelve man like
tank and this kid by the name of Oliver Bart
sentence comes up to me. Now I don't know who
(17:03):
this kid is. He comes up to me and he
asked me, like, you know, is your last name true Love?
And I say yes. He said, did you go to
jail like in seven I'm like no, but that's when
my case happened. He said yes. I remember being in
a police station at the time where some like some
mooning girl and some detectives came in and she was
(17:26):
crying and they were pointing out a picture saying are
you sure it ain't something something? True Love? And I'm
like whoa, you know, and it blows my mind that
it just so happens that I run into this guy
and he had just been transported from sam Bruno Jail
to San Francisco County on his way to prison. And
(17:48):
he's seen in the newspaper when he was in saying
Bruno about my case, and he remembered the last name
that was the first spark. And then when he ended
up in a sale with me the name again, that's
when he actually approached me and told me these things.
So I called my attorney immediately and tell my attorney
about him, and my attorney came up and you know,
(18:11):
talk to him, got his statement, and come to find out,
he was at the police station at the exact same
time that Lula Lamanga had came into the police station.
He was a sixteen year old kid come to the
bench watching all of this unfold. So what he ended
up saying was big in my case because remind you
(18:33):
that that photo, that photo and the six pack lineup
that had the date that was different from everybody else's
which we called in the question made that much more
sense because they had me down as the shooter on
day one, and what made more sense from his testimony,
is why she never put it at my picture on
(18:56):
the wall, because on day one she was saying that
it wasn't me. Even on day two she was saying
it wasn't me. Now this is newly found evidence. There
was no way that we could have knew that this
kid was inside the police station. So there's no way
we could have called him. Now, just in the heap
(19:16):
of that time, what was going on in San Francisco.
You got you know, Kamala Harris, who's going to try
to be Attorney General. You have another case which got overturned,
and then you have a big drug scandal that's happening
in San Francisco also at the exact same time. So
in the retrial motion hearing when we put him on
(19:39):
the stand to testify, Linda Allen, the city's attorney, attacked
Oh that he was a gang member and he's trying
to do this for a favor for the blacks, like
some prison politics type stuff. And neither one of us
have ever been to prison, and we just don't know
each other at all. So in this moment though that
(20:03):
this is new discovered evidence, I feel like I was
politicked out because if they were to grant me a retrial.
That would have been two murder cases with convictions granted
retrial before conviction. And plus the drug scandal that was
national attention. So ultimately, even what Oliver Barcon is, they
(20:26):
still denied my retrial motion. That's when I got sentenced
to fifty to life in prison.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah, I mean it's important to look at the role
that politics played in this because there was a lot
going on and now things are really looking a lot
better in San Francisco with the new DA Chase A. Boudin,
who is doing incredible, incredible thing is probably the most
impactful six months of any new prosecutor in the history
of this country, I would say, in terms of what
(20:55):
he's been able to accomplish. But that's a separate issue.
Mss Harris at the time does not come out. I mean,
we can't sugarcoat it. I mean, she was one of
the villains in this story, in your story, and in
too many other stories that took place around this time.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah, the think about Kamala Harris as a senator, she
talks a lot of things that ploys towards the African
American community, and you know it's good, Like if I
didn't go through the experience that I went through, then
I will probably be on the side of what Kamala
Harris actually talks about. And that's if you know, I
didn't find out about me. But when we talk about
(21:32):
being a progressive prosecutor, I think of chase A Boudin
Kamala Harris at the time she had opportunity to alleviate
this case and dive into it, especially a murder charge.
Any head DA is overlooking any murder charge that's happening
inside of their city. But also just knowing politics at
(21:53):
that time. I know four people who went to jail
innocently for murders. In every single last one of them
got convicted. They call it a street sweep. Once elections
come up, they come through and they sweep any case
that they have. They say, arrest them, arrest them, marest them,
and look. I went to jail right before elections and
(22:14):
one of the detectives my dad had ran into before
I went to trial, Kevin Noble, had told my dad.
My dad was like, yo, why you got my son?
And he said, oh, you know how it is. And
during election time, you know DA's they just come and sweep,
you know, everybody up any case that they got and
see if they can pressure people into taking deals. Because
(22:35):
they offered me a deal, you know, before I went
to try my first time, they was like, you know,
you complete out and take voluntary man slid, don't take
thirteen years under her watch. So my feeling on Kamala
Harris being in that position, being African American, coming from
the Bay Area and being hard on crime the way
that she was, and how many people that was going
(22:55):
to jail for marijuana chargers at one of the highest
rates in the country, you know, played a big part
of mass incarceration and also to gentrification in San Francisco.
So I cannot unfeel that or see that, or when
I'm getting sentenced, you know, or my conviction, she's in
there smiling and you know, proud of what this is,
(23:17):
what this conviction is, and what it means to her career.
And then right after I lose my case, she wins
you know, Attorney General. So that all tells a story,
you know, just within itself.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah, And what a sick thing to say to your father.
I mean, it's I mean, that's as cold as it gets,
like it's your father, for fox sakes.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
So Kevin Noble before I went to trial, and this
was not turned over to us. Kevin Noble actually came
in with a confidential format saying that somebody else did it.
So he was out there investigating and he found somebody
saying that this person did it, and they took it
and they tucked it under the rug. You know, they
(23:58):
felt like they had their God at the actually sold
on on doing it.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Jaman, if you could talk about for a minute, and
we're going to get to the to the retrial, of course,
your exoneration, because you were fully exonerated. That being said,
can you tell us when you were in prison, was
there a best moment.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
When I was waiting for the courts to give their
opinion on if I was gonna get a retrial or not.
And they initially I came back and I'm on the
phone at the same time with my appella attorney, Mark Zilversmith,
and they deny, well they didn't deny. They changed the
conviction from first degree murder to second degree murder, which
(24:39):
I would have had from fifty years. It would have
went down to forty years to life. And I'm like, WHOA, like,
you know what I mean? And My selling at the
time was like, that's good. I mean, they're really looking
at it now. Mind you, I'm in prison for three
years before I even get this opinion from the appellate courts.
But I knew that until I get another decision, I
(25:00):
will be in prison for at least another two to
three years because that's the time that it typically takes.
So then my attorney put in a motion to review.
So with this strategy at the same time, I ended
up getting two witnesses to sign FI David testifying to
what happened that day without saying the person who did it,
(25:23):
and we filed the Habes corpus through the appellate court
so it could go across judges climbed them table at
the exact same time as our review was and to
say that there's two more witnesses saying that he didn't
do it. So ninety days later we got the opinion
(25:43):
back that the judges said, you know what, you're right,
and they granted a new retrial. It was a crying moment,
you know, I cried like a baby, you know, inside
that cell.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yeah. I don't think anyone who's ever not been through
that could possibly even imagine such a transformative I mean,
you get your life back.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Well, well, the crazy part about it is like in
that moment, you feel excited, right, but come to find out,
once you get back to County jail, you just know
that you don't have the life sentence no more, but
you still have a whole nother fight and that's potentially
going to trial. Are them coming to you and offering
you a deal where you're almost close to want to
(26:26):
take that deal just so you don't have to go
to trial and lose again, because at that point, you know,
you don't I don't believe in the system. You know,
I just got to convict the fuck prime. I didn't do.
Like you ask anybody who has a life sentence right now,
innocent or not innocent, if they had a deal on
the table right now to take it and they get
(26:48):
to come home in two years. They're taking it.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
So let's get to the good stuff, because we don't
have a ton of time left. But I do want to,
of course, talk about how you manage to finally get
some measure of justice, and by that I mean, of
course the retrial and your exoneration.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
When I got back to County, it took me a
year to go back to trial. I had two extraordinary lawyers,
Kate Chatfield and Alex Riiseman. The way that we fought
the case, we asked for the original homicide file and
the judge granted it to us. What helped us was
that they were tampering with the evidence. So when we
(27:29):
slipped at the original homicide file, we seen that the
detectives was writing in pen pencil in marker. So the
ballistics of the trajectory of the bullets, it didn't fit
Lula Lamanga's testimony of the bullets going from the left
to the right. The trajectory of the bullets went from
(27:51):
the right to the left, and that made more sense
if the shooter was coming up from the bottom into
the top of the hill. So what they did was
erased because they wrote in pencil. They erased everything that
the autosy lady has said about the trajectory of the
(28:12):
bullet wounds, so they knew that that was an issue. Also,
a gun shoots off the shellcases from the right into
the rear ninety eight percent of the time, so is
she saying that this murder happened coming from this way,
then the shellcases will be in the street and not
in a straight line in the grass from where the
(28:35):
shellcases landed. It made more sense that the shooter was
coming from the bottom into the top, so it did
not match with what Lulu La Maga had actually said.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
So you were able to undermine the police's theory of
the crime because the autopsy and ballistics findings pointed to
the gunman approaching sell Kuka from downhill, which was out
of Loalamana's view. Now what about the deliberation.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Every day, within deliberation, you get to choose if you
want to stay downstairs inside the holding tank, or you
could stay upstairs until they come back with a verdict.
I chose to stay downstairs because the deliberation room was
right next to the holding tank. And I'm in there panicing,
I'm stressing, I'm pacing, you know, I'm thinking about what
(29:23):
I'm gonna do if I win. I'm thinking about what
I'm gonna do if I lose. So five days later,
they finally end up coming back with a verdict, so
I come downstairs. I didn't have no opportunity to call
my family. Uh, they were living in the East Bay.
So when I come downstairs for the verdict, the only
people that are sitting on my side is my attorney's
(29:45):
loved ones, and it's also chasing Boudin, chasing Boudin. I
don't know who chasea Boudein is at that point, right,
But on the other side the whole DA's office, So
Gascon was the DA at that point, right. So there
are all in there waiting for the verdict, and the
clerk reads off in the case of Jamal true Love
on first degree murder, not guilty, and I break out
(30:10):
in tears. I'm crying. I'm hugging my attorney and I'm
just crying my eyes out. I can't believe it. I'm
really breaking down. And then my attorney says, hold on, wait,
you gotta listen for second degree murder. I said, what
hold on? Because I thought I won at that point,
so oh man, it was I felt the sweat just
coming down my face. And then they said, in the
(30:31):
case of Jamal true Love on second degree murder, we
find the defendant not guilty. And I'm literally feeling that
right now. I'm trying not to get emotional. But when
I looked over to the jury, that was the first
time that they could actually show an expression on their faces,
and you see them over there crying. They're giving me
(30:53):
prayer hands, they're sitting kisses at me, you know, and
all of these things, and I'm you know, and I'm
just crying my eyes out. You know. I look back,
you see all the district attorneys just leaving, you know, upset,
and I'm just crying out. I'm just crying my eyes out.
And even going back up to the sixth for where
I was being held and telling everybody on the line,
(31:16):
which everybody knew I was innocent, and I told everybody,
you know, I got found not guilty. The whole floor,
the whole jail erupts, even some of the deputies that
were you know, cool, and even the ones that was
foul as fun because this hell of file shit was
trying to you know, clap their hands and stuff like that.
So it was a good feeling. And I went home
(31:36):
that day. I was able to surprise my mother and
you know, my family, which they didn't know if I
want or not. But I popped up on them and they,
you know, they see me. They couldn't believe it. It
was more tears shit, And it was the most exhilarating
feeling to know that you know I'm free again today.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
You've been out for how long I've been out?
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Five years?
Speaker 1 (32:09):
And I've seen you around and you know, I know
you're making the most of every minute of it. Do
you want to tell us a little bit about what
you're working on now? And then we're going to get
to the closing of the show.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
I end up suing, you know, the police. They try
to offer me, you know, some moneys to shut up. Ultimately,
our health them accountable, and I won my civil case.
I was awarded ten million dollars that ended up rounding
out to be thirteen point one million, which obviously I
didn't get all the money. But from there on, so
what's ironic is before I won my civil case, three
(32:43):
days before that, I landed a role in this movie
called The Last Black Man in San Francisco, which I
got the opportunity by volunteering at a nonprofit called United Players.
Rudy Corpez that's my mentor, and you know the mantras
it takes the Hood to save the Hood. So they
(33:03):
were coming there to get some kids for the rock
thoughing scene. Here comes that opportunity. I say, look, I
know how to act. I'm acting all my life, you know,
trying to fit in the city where I stand out
in And I think that was the line that got
me the opportunity to read Joe Talbot Jimmy Fails called
me back two times after I got it. Three days later,
I win my civil case, and from there on I
(33:26):
took on what I believed my life was meant to be.
And before all of that, I went to school for
Psychology Africana Studies at State and after one semester I
identified that much more of what my life was supposed
to be. So when you were saying manifestation, you know,
I run my life on you know, manifesto desto. If
(33:48):
you could manifest it and you can see the steps
that you got to take to actually get there, then
you take what's it, a tangible right in front of you,
and you make sense of it on how you ultimately
get to that next platu. I also landed a role
on this upcoming animation film called p Other Pigeonhawk, which
has Whooping gowerk Keenan Thompson, Howie Mandell and of course
(34:11):
myself and the slew of other names. I'm producing this
film called Black and White. It's about the USC seventy
two football team and working on other projects. I launched
my production company with one of my good friends and
business partners, said Twaley Holder called True Narrative, also launching
(34:32):
a record label. I have my son and a few
other artists that's coming up that I plan on putting
out there with their music. And I do a lot
of you know activism. I use my platform to speak
on you know, social issues and to bring the enlightenment
to my community about you know, what we need to
be doing with the voting and letting our voices be
(34:54):
heard behind you know, systemic racism behind all these police
involved shootings. Know, I campaign for Chase A Boudin Now.
Before I would have never in my life be a
campaign for a DA because the DA is looked at
as basically the police. But once I got the understanding
that there's gonna be a DA regardless, and don't you
(35:14):
want it to be the right one. So that's what
I start pressing on to my people to understand that
there's gonna be a DA regardless, and we have a
say so in who the DA actually is, so get
out and vote. So that's everything in a nutshell.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
That's a pretty damn good nutshell. And you know, I
got to say I was a big supporter of Chase
A Boudin's campaign as well, and I'm super proud of
everything he's been doing. You know, the truth is, we
need to clone that guy and put the clones of
him in DA offices all over the country. And while
we're on the subject of dismantling systemic racism and all
(35:50):
the other things that we've managed to talk about in
this brief time we've had together, we can't leave out
the young man who testified for you about what he's
on the police station, right, And that was the guy
who talked about the police coercing lou A Lamaga. His name,
of course, was Oliver bar Senda's and he was actually
(36:11):
shot in the back by the police, right.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Oliver bar Sendas. The story is really that much like
we will have to have two hours because the police
shot him after he testified against me the first time,
San Francisco Police Department. Right when he went to prison,
came home within sixty days, they shot him in the
back while he was running. He had a gun on him. Right,
he goes to jail, he does three years, come home
(36:35):
around the same time I come home and then he
stays home three years, get off probation, we go to trial.
We actually use him to testify in my civil case.
He testifies in my civil case, and within two months
again SFPD again shoots him in the back while he's
running and tries to literally kill him, which he doesn't die.
(37:01):
They had it on camera, and he actually just two
weeks ago settled for less than five hundred thousand dollars
in a civil suit. And the media has not connected
these at all both cases. But would I know what
they ended up doing, because we know this shit is crooked.
(37:22):
They gave a belief like a doe feed or somebody
it's called a chipped gun, so a drop gun to
make sure that this gun gets in this person's hands,
so they could go ahead and trail them ultimately to
go to take them down. And when they going to
take them down, there's only two things they can do.
So if they run and they got the gun on them,
then all they gotta do is kill them. And then
(37:45):
they're gonna say, oh, well he had a gun on them.
I seen a gun and blase the thing with Oliver.
He didn't die both times.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Okay, wait, wait what a chipped gun, like with GPS
or something.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Yes, e'sactly what they do, right. So you know how
when they do like set up cars, they'll put a
car right there with the keys in and stuff like that,
kind of like lure you, but they already got it
all set up. Same thing with a gun, and they
was doing this in the nineties, right, That's how I
know about it. It's called a drop gun. So they'll
chip the gun, right, and they'll get this dau fiend
or something like that that'll go up to a specific
(38:18):
person or if not a specific person, a crowd and
be like, we're gonna give you this. Go sell this
gun for one hundred dollars. If you go to any
projects and any hood with a dauphend with a gun
saying that he's selling it for one hundred dollars, somebody's
gonna buy it. And Oliver case that's what I believe
they did, because the same scenario happened twice. In the
(38:39):
second time, it just so happened that they have footage
On the day the Warriors won the championship. They first championship,
they pull out on a group of five Latinos with
one can of beer talking about, oh, what are you
guys doing here? And they're like, where is this one?
We're just chilling. It's like, oh, well, you got an
open can of beer. It's like, now, at that moment,
(39:01):
you see Oliver kind of like testing a little bit,
and then next you know, he takes off running. As
soon as he takes off running, the officer already pulled
out his gun and start running with the gun. Before
the officer could see even if he had a gun
on him or not, the officer already starts shooting blah
blah blah blah, drops him with three of them, and
then shoot an extra three of them while he on
(39:23):
the floor, saying get down, get down, and he still lives.
This is the thing, though, right that same officer killed
a fourteen year old boy in South San Francisco just
three years prior.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Wow, you're right, and we wouldn't need at least a
few more hours. And I'm not even sure there'd be
enough to cover all of this stuff that's coming out now.
But you know, at this point, let's go to our
closing argument. This is the part of the show where
everyone I think that's a part of the show everybody
looks forward to I know I do. We call it
(40:02):
closing arguments. This is where I get to, first of all,
thank you for being here, sharing your incredible story and
doing it so beautifully. And then I get to turn
my microphone off and just kick back in my chair,
leave my headphones on, and listen to you for any
closing thoughts that you have about anything you want to
(40:24):
talk about.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
My philosophy that I've got out of all of this
that I've been through is that I don't stand for
nothing because I find understanding in everything. And what that
is is just find a mediation. You can have an opinion,
you can have an opinion on how you look at things,
but also knowing that there's somebody else's opinion and you
(40:47):
have to look at it from their lenses and identify
why they're looking at it like that causing mediation. Mediation
is peaceful. So if people could always look at what
they're going through or their ideology of how they see
things and compare it to somebody else's and find understanding
in that. But then if it's a negative or a positive,
(41:10):
then you'll be able to come to a common ground
to understand why you're going through what you're going through.
And why the opposite person looks at something the way
that they look at it, and that leads me to
knowing that there will not be a positive for you
or in this life without a negative. You have to
(41:31):
accept every negative. Then you'll understand that me being in
this positive situation right now, there's no way I get
here or can predict that I get anywhere else in
life without going through the most horrific thing that somebody
could actually go through, and that's being put in jail
and given a death sentence that you have to live
(41:51):
the rest of your life until you actually die on
And that leads me to the end, and that's knowing
your past could better predict your future than plan for
If you know the decisions that you made that led
to a positive and the ones that led to a negative,
then you will better identify where your future is actually
(42:13):
going towards knowing that we all have to plan for sure,
but not putting a plan so far ahead are so
heavy onto your shoulders, so when you fail, you don't
find understanding of why you fail, But then you'll understand
it that much more by knowing why you failed before.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
It really helps.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
And I'm a proud donor to the Nnocence 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 orgorg to learn how to donate
and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team,
Connor and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is
by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure
(43:06):
to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on
Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm
is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association
with Signal Company Number one
On the night of July twenty third, two thousand and seven,
Jamal true Love was hanging out in the common area
of San Francisco's Sunnydale Projects with his younger brother, Joshua.
Jamal's friend sel Kuka, drove up intoxicated, ripping off the
side view mirror from Joshua's car. Jamal got between Cel
and his brother. Then gunfire in the air would send
(00:22):
Cel into an alcohol fueled rage. In search of a
gun himself, Jamal tried to come sell again, who pushed
him away and punched another man. Frustrated and fed up,
Jamal left the scene, only to turn in time to
witness his friend Cell being gunned down in the street. Now,
since snitching is a surefire away to be sent to
the same fate, Jamal kept his mouth shut. Cel's cousin,
(00:45):
Priscilla Lualamaga, would go downtown to identify the shooter she
claimed to see from her second story window, only to
pass over Jamal's mugshot that was in plain sight. Police
pressured her to name Jamal so they could coerce the
identity of the shooter. Either he would name the killer
or he'd go down for the murder. Himself. Jamal would
(01:06):
receive fifty years to life. The prosecutor's closing argument would
point to l Wallamaga's bravery in light of the supposed
thread of Jamal Truelove. This comment, unsupported by evidence and
unobjected to by counsel, would ultimately lead to a new
trial in which Jamal's new lawyers would be able to
successfully argue that ballistic evidence at the autopsy report proved
(01:29):
that the shooter was out of the Wallamaga's second story view.
Jamal was finally set free in twenty fifteen. This is
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction
(01:55):
with Jason Flamm. That's me. I'm your host, and today
I'm very excited because this this is a story I've
wanted to tell from quite some time, and that's primarily
because of the person who survived this incredible ordeal, Jamal Truelove.
He has the best name on top of everything else.
So Jamal, welcome, Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Jason.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah. Man, Like I always say, I'm sorry you have
to be here, but I'm really happy that you are here.
So Jamal, this story touches me on a personal level
because you were in the entertainment business before this horrible
misidentification and all the other things that went wrong happened
to you. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Because you grew up in San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Right, Yes, grew up in San Francisco Sunnydale Projects. Always
wanted to get into entertainment within music and acting, and.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
The ball was starting to bounce your way, so to speak. Right,
because at the time of this incident, you had been
recently featured on the reality TV show Popped, the show
called I Love New York Too. Right, you were just
a kid from the project with no connections, but you
were making it happen anyway. How did you do that?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Well, initially I was recording music. My friend had a
studio which he would lend me some time to get
into actually record, and then I had an opportunity to
audition for this character for this show called I Love
New York Too. So I figured if I could get
on the show and put a name to a face,
(03:26):
then I will get the exposure that I need to
shine on to my music and to ultimately get into film.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
And sure enough you had now gone and shot this show.
Which did you shoot in La or yeah, it was
based in La and so this was like an exciting
time for you. How old were you at the time, Jamal.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Well, I started recording music when I was sixteen years old.
When I ended up landing on the show, I was freshly.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Twenty one, So a kid with big dreams and aspirations
and you know, the ability to really manifest those things.
And I think people let meet you now still see
that same spark. It makes it a certain way. It
makes this wrong for conviction more tragic. So, Jamal, your
life took a terrible turn because of events that occurred
(04:12):
around eleven pm on July twenty third of two thousand
and seven. And of course you know what I'm referring to,
but it was that night that twenty eight year old
sel Kuka, was a resident in your housing project, was
shot nine times. How did this happen? How did you
find out about it? And how did you get misidentified
(04:33):
as the shooter.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
We were all kicking it in the projects in the
area that would typically chill at and the incident had
happened between Sale Kuka and my little brother Joshua. Sale
was intoxicated driving up the street where he came real
close to my brother's car and ripped off his Sime mirror,
and you know, I've seen it but didn't think too
(04:58):
much of it. Then somebody yelled down to me like
there was some type of altercation between him and my brother.
So I come through to diffuse the situation. I seen
how my brother was contorting his face. Sells, one of
my good friends. He's got some liquor in them, so
you know, he's ramped up. He's not trying to take
no blame, and they're getting closer to each other where
(05:20):
it's gonna end up, you know, turning into a fight.
So I intervened, you know, I told both of them chill, relaxed.
Sale was hyped up to start being kind of a
crowd people looking on, and next you know, we hear
some gunshots going off kind of like I guess in
the air, and I think, you know that field Sell
(05:41):
that much more to feel some type of way, and
he started heading down saying that he was gonna go
get a gun. So me, I remember some of my
other friends used to you know, kind of contain his
anger when he's in this type of stake. So me
trying to prevent anything from escalating. I kind of followed him,
(06:02):
and he was asking somebody one of our other friends
to give him a gun, and I'm telling him, no, like, bro,
there ain't no reason for all of that. But he like,
you know, m mess out here shooting and I'm like that
ain't got nothing to do with us or this situation.
So I got like close up on him. I like
held him, like, you know, in a kind of bear hug,
and he's like way bigger than me. I'm probably like
(06:23):
one hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet at that point,
and he's like two twenty two thirty at least, and
he's listening, but you could definitely tell that he's kind
of drunk. And then he kind of bust out of
my bear hug in an angry type of way, and
at that point it felt like, you know, he wasn't
trying to hear me or calm the altercation. So I
(06:47):
ended up leaving across the street, which I had my
car inside the parking lot. I had a female friend
inside the car. I bent down to let her know
that we're about to get up out of here, and
by the time I stood up from the side of
the car, I seen sale skipping around the building right
(07:07):
there from off of the street, and I seen the
perpetrator already holding the gun in the shooting position. Before
I could say stop, gunshots had already rained off. So
I just got down until all the gunshots was overwood.
And typically in situations like this in the project, regardless
(07:27):
if you did something or if you didn't do it,
you just h tail up out of there. So that's
what I ended up doing.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
So I'm gonna ask you point blank, did you know
at the time who the actual shooter was.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yes, I did, And there.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Were a lot of witnesses. Thirty or more witnesses were
there because as you described, it was a street team,
a lot of people hanging out, of course, and it
seemed like this a lot of people are going to
be scared to come forward. Nobody wants to be labeled
to snitch.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Because I know what that actually means. Something happened to
me my family.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
But one woman did come forward and she became a
key part of this whole awful scenario, right And this
woman's name was Priscilla Lualamaga, and she claimed to have
seen the whole thing from her second story window. Already,
my spidy sense to start tingling because it's eleven o'clock
at night, it's dark. It sounds like a pretty dicey
(08:21):
scenario to think that she's going to identify somebody. But okay,
so she told police that her distant relative was just deceased.
Sell Kuka was chasing another man around a car who
she identified as your brother, Joshua. And then she further
claimed that while chasing Joshua, Kuka bumped into a knockdown
(08:43):
another man who got up, chased him down the street
and sloping downhill and open fire close range, so this
is important. She gets taken to the police station and
showing thirty four mug shots that were set up on
a bulletin board, and she recognized many of the mugshots
at spaces from her neighborhood, understandably. But then in the
two hours she was in that room with the bulletin
board of mugshots, she didn't recognize your face, correct, which
(09:05):
was immediately above Joshua Bradley's mugshots. So that's even weirder, right,
it was right there in front of her face, and
she still didn't recognize it, okay, correct. So two days
later the cops come to her workplace and take us
from there.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Two days later the police came to her workplace, but
the day before that, it is real interesting that they
actually came to her house showing her a mugshot picture
which we believe to have been me, and they denying
that it was me that didn't run side by side
(09:37):
to what you ultimately ended up coming out when it
comes down to the lineup and the mug shots. So
they told her that if we were to bring a
photo lineup with the person who did it inside the
lineup which be able to identify it. So the next
day they went to her job. They brought her a
six pack lineup with really me wearing an orange jumpsuit
(10:00):
and everybody else in playing clothes. But she had already
identified the other people, you know, not being the person
and people that she already knows.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
It's even worse than that, right, because of the fact
that she said that you quote unquote looks like the
guy who could have shot Kouka, right, So that's pretty
damn weak.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
The six pack lineup, it had two standout things. It
had me inside of an orange jumpsuit and then it
also had the dates that came off of the system
when they brought up the mug shots where my date
was dated different than the other dates that came off
of the system. Because they had me down as the
(10:41):
shooter on day one.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Why do you think the detectives had it out for
you or they just like, whoever, we just got to
close the case. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
I wasn't somebody that was out there. I was always
trying to do something positive. I was doing music, you know,
I'll hang around, of course, but with my name coming
up on the day that actually happened, whether they wanted
questions from me or them saying oh it was the
guy that Jamal was with, they was like, okay, this
(11:10):
is how we gonna get him. We're gonna pressure him.
It's aid either tail on the person who did it,
or we're gonna make sure that he goes down for this.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
And then no weapon was recovered, but hl casings were
found down hill from the body, in the trail leading
up to the body, which means that what she said
was false because she said the shooter was chasing Kuka downhill.
So now we know, and they should have known that
she didn't know what the fuck she was talking about.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
So to be honest right, her representation of what actually happened.
If anything, she could have only seen what was on
the side of that building. She didn't see when the
person was actually shooting.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
She told police that Sela Kuka was chasing another man
around the car and then Kooka bumped into a knockdown
another man who got up, chased him down the street
and sloping down on hill and open fire close range.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
It wasn't me who sail had knocked down?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
What was her agenda here? Do you know?
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Her whole thing? And the family which I was deeply
connected to, felt like they weren't scared of me, they
were scared of the person who actually did it, right,
So by way of throwing me in there, they felt
that I was going to tell on the person who
actually did it.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
So that's the big boom right there.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
And then things take another crazy turn, right because the
TV show airs the show that you were in, which
should have been a cause for celebration. She happens to
see the TV show, right, and then she comes back
and says, oh, now I know it's definitely him.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, So they were getting her closer and closer to
that it was me one hundred percent, and then on
top of her saying that she talked to her cousin,
and then on top of the detectives really trying to
get somebody to go to jail for this. You know,
that's what brewed up to what that ultimately ended up being.
(13:07):
But even still that didn't work. What ultimately ended up
happening was I said. About fourteen months later, the police
had did a traffic stop with this other woman named Letitia,
who had a gun in her lap, had cracked cocaine
on her baby in the back, had her boyfriend who
(13:28):
was on parole in the passenger seat. Pulled over. She's
going to jail, and she goes down and they basically say, well,
if you could tell us X, Y, and Z about
this case, everybody basically goes free. She initially tells them
that it was daylight and this altercation happened, and then
(13:50):
she said she looked through the window and looked all
the way down the block and seeing that this happened,
and just threw my name in there. So there was
a lot of things is wrong with that, right as
if first, she says that she's seen it for fifty
yards away on a slant heel in the daylight, when
it didn't happen in the daytime, it happened at night.
(14:13):
But what got the arrest warrant was the write up
that detectives had rolled up. They were guiding her the
whole way, making everything like it was a clear record,
and then wrote at the bottom extremely credible. So now
when they take that to the DA, now they feel
(14:33):
they have two witnesses saying the same exact thing.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
So this is a crazy timeline too, because the crime
we know happens in two thousand and seven, you don't
get brought in and rested until two thousand and eight,
over a year later, and then the trial doesn't happen
till twenty ten.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
So during that time were you in jail, did you
bail out? How did that unfold? After you arrested?
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Well, after I was arrested, they wanted to question me. Obviously,
there's two things you can do. You can give up information,
but never mind that because in that situation, which you're
taught in the streets, is you know it's not to snitch,
not to give up information. Something happened to me my family,
you know, So I balanced that with also knowing that
(15:19):
it's not my duty to put somebody else into jail.
That's for them to actually get it right. And that
was my way of going at it. So it actually
took me about a year and a half to go
to trial. It was hard trying to get the thirty
people that was out there to actually come in, you know,
not say who did it, you know, but to say
I didn't do it. I wasn't trying to put nobody
in no situation where I was trying to have somebody
(15:41):
else tell on the assailant because I wasn't going to
do anything like that. Then I have to go what
hide for the rest of my life or something. That's
just not my job. That's up to the system to do.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
So nobody would want to be in that situation. But
you were in it, and you're still just a young
guy without you know, resources, and so you roll with
it and you go to trial.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah, so we thought the case added an identity case,
you know, identity testify. We didn't call nobody to testify
or whatever. So it took three days and then it
took five days of deliberation. Ultimately they came back with
a murder one conviction. It was it was definitely tough
I stayed optimistic because I know I didn't do it
(16:23):
at the end of the day, and that's what, ultimately,
you know, kept the wools turning in my mind on
how do I figure this out?
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And you were convicted, of course, and you were sentenced
to fifty years in prison.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
So I want you to understand this right before I
get since it's to fifty the life I'm inside of
my cell, I become we're doing a retrial motion right
to ask for a retrial before a sentence. I'm come
back from church, come aside. It's a twelve man like
tank and this kid by the name of Oliver Bart
sentence comes up to me. Now I don't know who
(17:03):
this kid is. He comes up to me and he
asked me, like, you know, is your last name true Love?
And I say yes. He said, did you go to
jail like in seven I'm like no, but that's when
my case happened. He said yes. I remember being in
a police station at the time where some like some
mooning girl and some detectives came in and she was
(17:26):
crying and they were pointing out a picture saying are
you sure it ain't something something? True Love? And I'm
like whoa, you know, and it blows my mind that
it just so happens that I run into this guy
and he had just been transported from sam Bruno Jail
to San Francisco County on his way to prison. And
(17:48):
he's seen in the newspaper when he was in saying
Bruno about my case, and he remembered the last name
that was the first spark. And then when he ended
up in a sale with me the name again, that's
when he actually approached me and told me these things.
So I called my attorney immediately and tell my attorney
about him, and my attorney came up and you know,
(18:11):
talk to him, got his statement, and come to find out,
he was at the police station at the exact same
time that Lula Lamanga had came into the police station.
He was a sixteen year old kid come to the
bench watching all of this unfold. So what he ended
up saying was big in my case because remind you
(18:33):
that that photo, that photo and the six pack lineup
that had the date that was different from everybody else's
which we called in the question made that much more
sense because they had me down as the shooter on
day one, and what made more sense from his testimony,
is why she never put it at my picture on
(18:56):
the wall, because on day one she was saying that
it wasn't me. Even on day two she was saying
it wasn't me. Now this is newly found evidence. There
was no way that we could have knew that this
kid was inside the police station. So there's no way
we could have called him. Now, just in the heap
(19:16):
of that time, what was going on in San Francisco.
You got you know, Kamala Harris, who's going to try
to be Attorney General. You have another case which got overturned,
and then you have a big drug scandal that's happening
in San Francisco also at the exact same time. So
in the retrial motion hearing when we put him on
(19:39):
the stand to testify, Linda Allen, the city's attorney, attacked
Oh that he was a gang member and he's trying
to do this for a favor for the blacks, like
some prison politics type stuff. And neither one of us
have ever been to prison, and we just don't know
each other at all. So in this moment though that
(20:03):
this is new discovered evidence, I feel like I was
politicked out because if they were to grant me a retrial.
That would have been two murder cases with convictions granted
retrial before conviction. And plus the drug scandal that was
national attention. So ultimately, even what Oliver Barcon is, they
(20:26):
still denied my retrial motion. That's when I got sentenced
to fifty to life in prison.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah, I mean it's important to look at the role
that politics played in this because there was a lot
going on and now things are really looking a lot
better in San Francisco with the new DA Chase A. Boudin,
who is doing incredible, incredible thing is probably the most
impactful six months of any new prosecutor in the history
of this country, I would say, in terms of what
(20:55):
he's been able to accomplish. But that's a separate issue.
Mss Harris at the time does not come out. I mean,
we can't sugarcoat it. I mean, she was one of
the villains in this story, in your story, and in
too many other stories that took place around this time.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah, the think about Kamala Harris as a senator, she
talks a lot of things that ploys towards the African
American community, and you know it's good, Like if I
didn't go through the experience that I went through, then
I will probably be on the side of what Kamala
Harris actually talks about. And that's if you know, I
didn't find out about me. But when we talk about
(21:32):
being a progressive prosecutor, I think of chase A Boudin
Kamala Harris at the time she had opportunity to alleviate
this case and dive into it, especially a murder charge.
Any head DA is overlooking any murder charge that's happening
inside of their city. But also just knowing politics at
(21:53):
that time. I know four people who went to jail
innocently for murders. In every single last one of them
got convicted. They call it a street sweep. Once elections
come up, they come through and they sweep any case
that they have. They say, arrest them, arrest them, marest them,
and look. I went to jail right before elections and
(22:14):
one of the detectives my dad had ran into before
I went to trial, Kevin Noble, had told my dad.
My dad was like, yo, why you got my son?
And he said, oh, you know how it is. And
during election time, you know DA's they just come and sweep,
you know, everybody up any case that they got and
see if they can pressure people into taking deals. Because
(22:35):
they offered me a deal, you know, before I went
to try my first time, they was like, you know,
you complete out and take voluntary man slid, don't take
thirteen years under her watch. So my feeling on Kamala
Harris being in that position, being African American, coming from
the Bay Area and being hard on crime the way
that she was, and how many people that was going
(22:55):
to jail for marijuana chargers at one of the highest
rates in the country, you know, played a big part
of mass incarceration and also to gentrification in San Francisco.
So I cannot unfeel that or see that, or when
I'm getting sentenced, you know, or my conviction, she's in
there smiling and you know, proud of what this is,
(23:17):
what this conviction is, and what it means to her career.
And then right after I lose my case, she wins
you know, Attorney General. So that all tells a story,
you know, just within itself.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah, And what a sick thing to say to your father.
I mean, it's I mean, that's as cold as it gets,
like it's your father, for fox sakes.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
So Kevin Noble before I went to trial, and this
was not turned over to us. Kevin Noble actually came
in with a confidential format saying that somebody else did it.
So he was out there investigating and he found somebody
saying that this person did it, and they took it
and they tucked it under the rug. You know, they
(23:58):
felt like they had their God at the actually sold
on on doing it.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Jaman, if you could talk about for a minute, and
we're going to get to the to the retrial, of course,
your exoneration, because you were fully exonerated. That being said,
can you tell us when you were in prison, was
there a best moment.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
When I was waiting for the courts to give their
opinion on if I was gonna get a retrial or not.
And they initially I came back and I'm on the
phone at the same time with my appella attorney, Mark Zilversmith,
and they deny, well they didn't deny. They changed the
conviction from first degree murder to second degree murder, which
(24:39):
I would have had from fifty years. It would have
went down to forty years to life. And I'm like, WHOA, like,
you know what I mean? And My selling at the
time was like, that's good. I mean, they're really looking
at it now. Mind you, I'm in prison for three
years before I even get this opinion from the appellate courts.
But I knew that until I get another decision, I
(25:00):
will be in prison for at least another two to
three years because that's the time that it typically takes.
So then my attorney put in a motion to review.
So with this strategy at the same time, I ended
up getting two witnesses to sign FI David testifying to
what happened that day without saying the person who did it,
(25:23):
and we filed the Habes corpus through the appellate court
so it could go across judges climbed them table at
the exact same time as our review was and to
say that there's two more witnesses saying that he didn't
do it. So ninety days later we got the opinion
(25:43):
back that the judges said, you know what, you're right,
and they granted a new retrial. It was a crying moment,
you know, I cried like a baby, you know, inside
that cell.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yeah. I don't think anyone who's ever not been through
that could possibly even imagine such a transformative I mean,
you get your life back.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Well, well, the crazy part about it is like in
that moment, you feel excited, right, but come to find out,
once you get back to County jail, you just know
that you don't have the life sentence no more, but
you still have a whole nother fight and that's potentially
going to trial. Are them coming to you and offering
you a deal where you're almost close to want to
(26:26):
take that deal just so you don't have to go
to trial and lose again, because at that point, you know,
you don't I don't believe in the system. You know,
I just got to convict the fuck prime. I didn't do.
Like you ask anybody who has a life sentence right now,
innocent or not innocent, if they had a deal on
the table right now to take it and they get
(26:48):
to come home in two years. They're taking it.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
So let's get to the good stuff, because we don't
have a ton of time left. But I do want to,
of course, talk about how you manage to finally get
some measure of justice, and by that I mean, of
course the retrial and your exoneration.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
When I got back to County, it took me a
year to go back to trial. I had two extraordinary lawyers,
Kate Chatfield and Alex Riiseman. The way that we fought
the case, we asked for the original homicide file and
the judge granted it to us. What helped us was
that they were tampering with the evidence. So when we
(27:29):
slipped at the original homicide file, we seen that the
detectives was writing in pen pencil in marker. So the
ballistics of the trajectory of the bullets, it didn't fit
Lula Lamanga's testimony of the bullets going from the left
to the right. The trajectory of the bullets went from
(27:51):
the right to the left, and that made more sense
if the shooter was coming up from the bottom into
the top of the hill. So what they did was
erased because they wrote in pencil. They erased everything that
the autosy lady has said about the trajectory of the
(28:12):
bullet wounds, so they knew that that was an issue. Also,
a gun shoots off the shellcases from the right into
the rear ninety eight percent of the time, so is
she saying that this murder happened coming from this way,
then the shellcases will be in the street and not
in a straight line in the grass from where the
(28:35):
shellcases landed. It made more sense that the shooter was
coming from the bottom into the top, so it did
not match with what Lulu La Maga had actually said.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
So you were able to undermine the police's theory of
the crime because the autopsy and ballistics findings pointed to
the gunman approaching sell Kuka from downhill, which was out
of Loalamana's view. Now what about the deliberation.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Every day, within deliberation, you get to choose if you
want to stay downstairs inside the holding tank, or you
could stay upstairs until they come back with a verdict.
I chose to stay downstairs because the deliberation room was
right next to the holding tank. And I'm in there panicing,
I'm stressing, I'm pacing, you know, I'm thinking about what
(29:23):
I'm gonna do if I win. I'm thinking about what
I'm gonna do if I lose. So five days later,
they finally end up coming back with a verdict, so
I come downstairs. I didn't have no opportunity to call
my family. Uh, they were living in the East Bay.
So when I come downstairs for the verdict, the only
people that are sitting on my side is my attorney's
(29:45):
loved ones, and it's also chasing Boudin, chasing Boudin. I
don't know who chasea Boudein is at that point, right,
But on the other side the whole DA's office, So
Gascon was the DA at that point, right. So there
are all in there waiting for the verdict, and the
clerk reads off in the case of Jamal true Love
on first degree murder, not guilty, and I break out
(30:10):
in tears. I'm crying. I'm hugging my attorney and I'm
just crying my eyes out. I can't believe it. I'm
really breaking down. And then my attorney says, hold on, wait,
you gotta listen for second degree murder. I said, what
hold on? Because I thought I won at that point,
so oh man, it was I felt the sweat just
coming down my face. And then they said, in the
(30:31):
case of Jamal true Love on second degree murder, we
find the defendant not guilty. And I'm literally feeling that
right now. I'm trying not to get emotional. But when
I looked over to the jury, that was the first
time that they could actually show an expression on their faces,
and you see them over there crying. They're giving me
(30:53):
prayer hands, they're sitting kisses at me, you know, and
all of these things, and I'm you know, and I'm
just crying my eyes out. You know. I look back,
you see all the district attorneys just leaving, you know, upset,
and I'm just crying out. I'm just crying my eyes out.
And even going back up to the sixth for where
I was being held and telling everybody on the line,
(31:16):
which everybody knew I was innocent, and I told everybody,
you know, I got found not guilty. The whole floor,
the whole jail erupts, even some of the deputies that
were you know, cool, and even the ones that was
foul as fun because this hell of file shit was
trying to you know, clap their hands and stuff like that.
So it was a good feeling. And I went home
(31:36):
that day. I was able to surprise my mother and
you know, my family, which they didn't know if I
want or not. But I popped up on them and they,
you know, they see me. They couldn't believe it. It
was more tears shit, And it was the most exhilarating
feeling to know that you know I'm free again today.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
You've been out for how long I've been out?
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Five years?
Speaker 1 (32:09):
And I've seen you around and you know, I know
you're making the most of every minute of it. Do
you want to tell us a little bit about what
you're working on now? And then we're going to get
to the closing of the show.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
I end up suing, you know, the police. They try
to offer me, you know, some moneys to shut up. Ultimately,
our health them accountable, and I won my civil case.
I was awarded ten million dollars that ended up rounding
out to be thirteen point one million, which obviously I
didn't get all the money. But from there on, so
what's ironic is before I won my civil case, three
(32:43):
days before that, I landed a role in this movie
called The Last Black Man in San Francisco, which I
got the opportunity by volunteering at a nonprofit called United Players.
Rudy Corpez that's my mentor, and you know the mantras
it takes the Hood to save the Hood. So they
(33:03):
were coming there to get some kids for the rock
thoughing scene. Here comes that opportunity. I say, look, I
know how to act. I'm acting all my life, you know,
trying to fit in the city where I stand out
in And I think that was the line that got
me the opportunity to read Joe Talbot Jimmy Fails called
me back two times after I got it. Three days later,
I win my civil case, and from there on I
(33:26):
took on what I believed my life was meant to be.
And before all of that, I went to school for
Psychology Africana Studies at State and after one semester I
identified that much more of what my life was supposed
to be. So when you were saying manifestation, you know,
I run my life on you know, manifesto desto. If
(33:48):
you could manifest it and you can see the steps
that you got to take to actually get there, then
you take what's it, a tangible right in front of you,
and you make sense of it on how you ultimately
get to that next platu. I also landed a role
on this upcoming animation film called p Other Pigeonhawk, which
has Whooping gowerk Keenan Thompson, Howie Mandell and of course
(34:11):
myself and the slew of other names. I'm producing this
film called Black and White. It's about the USC seventy
two football team and working on other projects. I launched
my production company with one of my good friends and
business partners, said Twaley Holder called True Narrative, also launching
(34:32):
a record label. I have my son and a few
other artists that's coming up that I plan on putting
out there with their music. And I do a lot
of you know activism. I use my platform to speak
on you know, social issues and to bring the enlightenment
to my community about you know, what we need to
be doing with the voting and letting our voices be
(34:54):
heard behind you know, systemic racism behind all these police
involved shootings. Know, I campaign for Chase A Boudin Now.
Before I would have never in my life be a
campaign for a DA because the DA is looked at
as basically the police. But once I got the understanding
that there's gonna be a DA regardless, and don't you
(35:14):
want it to be the right one. So that's what
I start pressing on to my people to understand that
there's gonna be a DA regardless, and we have a
say so in who the DA actually is, so get
out and vote. So that's everything in a nutshell.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
That's a pretty damn good nutshell. And you know, I
got to say I was a big supporter of Chase
A Boudin's campaign as well, and I'm super proud of
everything he's been doing. You know, the truth is, we
need to clone that guy and put the clones of
him in DA offices all over the country. And while
we're on the subject of dismantling systemic racism and all
(35:50):
the other things that we've managed to talk about in
this brief time we've had together, we can't leave out
the young man who testified for you about what he's
on the police station, right, And that was the guy
who talked about the police coercing lou A Lamaga. His name,
of course, was Oliver bar Senda's and he was actually
(36:11):
shot in the back by the police, right.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Oliver bar Sendas. The story is really that much like
we will have to have two hours because the police
shot him after he testified against me the first time,
San Francisco Police Department. Right when he went to prison,
came home within sixty days, they shot him in the
back while he was running. He had a gun on him. Right,
he goes to jail, he does three years, come home
(36:35):
around the same time I come home and then he
stays home three years, get off probation, we go to trial.
We actually use him to testify in my civil case.
He testifies in my civil case, and within two months
again SFPD again shoots him in the back while he's
running and tries to literally kill him, which he doesn't die.
(37:01):
They had it on camera, and he actually just two
weeks ago settled for less than five hundred thousand dollars
in a civil suit. And the media has not connected
these at all both cases. But would I know what
they ended up doing, because we know this shit is crooked.
(37:22):
They gave a belief like a doe feed or somebody
it's called a chipped gun, so a drop gun to
make sure that this gun gets in this person's hands,
so they could go ahead and trail them ultimately to
go to take them down. And when they going to
take them down, there's only two things they can do.
So if they run and they got the gun on them,
then all they gotta do is kill them. And then
(37:45):
they're gonna say, oh, well he had a gun on them.
I seen a gun and blase the thing with Oliver.
He didn't die both times.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Okay, wait, wait what a chipped gun, like with GPS
or something.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Yes, e'sactly what they do, right. So you know how
when they do like set up cars, they'll put a
car right there with the keys in and stuff like that,
kind of like lure you, but they already got it
all set up. Same thing with a gun, and they
was doing this in the nineties, right, That's how I
know about it. It's called a drop gun. So they'll
chip the gun, right, and they'll get this dau fiend
or something like that that'll go up to a specific
(38:18):
person or if not a specific person, a crowd and
be like, we're gonna give you this. Go sell this
gun for one hundred dollars. If you go to any
projects and any hood with a dauphend with a gun
saying that he's selling it for one hundred dollars, somebody's
gonna buy it. And Oliver case that's what I believe
they did, because the same scenario happened twice. In the
(38:39):
second time, it just so happened that they have footage
On the day the Warriors won the championship. They first championship,
they pull out on a group of five Latinos with
one can of beer talking about, oh, what are you
guys doing here? And they're like, where is this one?
We're just chilling. It's like, oh, well, you got an
open can of beer. It's like, now, at that moment,
(39:01):
you see Oliver kind of like testing a little bit,
and then next you know, he takes off running. As
soon as he takes off running, the officer already pulled
out his gun and start running with the gun. Before
the officer could see even if he had a gun
on him or not, the officer already starts shooting blah
blah blah blah, drops him with three of them, and
then shoot an extra three of them while he on
(39:23):
the floor, saying get down, get down, and he still lives.
This is the thing, though, right that same officer killed
a fourteen year old boy in South San Francisco just
three years prior.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Wow, you're right, and we wouldn't need at least a
few more hours. And I'm not even sure there'd be
enough to cover all of this stuff that's coming out now.
But you know, at this point, let's go to our
closing argument. This is the part of the show where
everyone I think that's a part of the show everybody
looks forward to I know I do. We call it
(40:02):
closing arguments. This is where I get to, first of all,
thank you for being here, sharing your incredible story and
doing it so beautifully. And then I get to turn
my microphone off and just kick back in my chair,
leave my headphones on, and listen to you for any
closing thoughts that you have about anything you want to
(40:24):
talk about.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
My philosophy that I've got out of all of this
that I've been through is that I don't stand for
nothing because I find understanding in everything. And what that
is is just find a mediation. You can have an opinion,
you can have an opinion on how you look at things,
but also knowing that there's somebody else's opinion and you
(40:47):
have to look at it from their lenses and identify
why they're looking at it like that causing mediation. Mediation
is peaceful. So if people could always look at what
they're going through or their ideology of how they see
things and compare it to somebody else's and find understanding
in that. But then if it's a negative or a positive,
(41:10):
then you'll be able to come to a common ground
to understand why you're going through what you're going through.
And why the opposite person looks at something the way
that they look at it, and that leads me to
knowing that there will not be a positive for you
or in this life without a negative. You have to
(41:31):
accept every negative. Then you'll understand that me being in
this positive situation right now, there's no way I get
here or can predict that I get anywhere else in
life without going through the most horrific thing that somebody
could actually go through, and that's being put in jail
and given a death sentence that you have to live
(41:51):
the rest of your life until you actually die on
And that leads me to the end, and that's knowing
your past could better predict your future than plan for
If you know the decisions that you made that led
to a positive and the ones that led to a negative,
then you will better identify where your future is actually
(42:13):
going towards knowing that we all have to plan for sure,
but not putting a plan so far ahead are so
heavy onto your shoulders, so when you fail, you don't
find understanding of why you fail, But then you'll understand
it that much more by knowing why you failed before.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
It really helps.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
And I'm a proud donor to the Nnocence 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 orgorg to learn how to donate
and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team,
Connor and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is
by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure
(43:06):
to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on
Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm
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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