August 19, 2020 • 51 mins
At the tail end of the 1980’s, Randal Padgett was living an idyllic rural life of farm and family, when admittedly he made his biggest mistake that began with a skinny dipping joke.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
In the late nineteen eighties. Randall Paget was a poultry
farmer and family man in the small town of Arab, Alabama, who,
by his own admission, made the biggest mistake of his
life when he stepped out and his wife Kathy with
a coworker.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Named Judy Smith.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
The affair was on and off again over the years,
and during one of those on again times, Judy and
Randall took a road trip to Florida, only to be
awoken the first night they were there with some harrowing news.
On August seventeenth, nineteen ninety Cathy's body had been discovered
in her bed. She had endured a violent struggle and
had sustained forty six stab wounds, which ultimately killed her,
(00:40):
and to make matters worse, seamen was found inside of her.
Even though there was no indication that she had been raped.
The night before this Florida trip, that Paget children had
stayed with Randall in his tiny trailer, they knew that
he hadn't left in the middle of the night to
do anything, much less kill their mother. No signs of
(01:01):
a break in at her home, Randall became the suspect,
and he was arrested when the seamen turned.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Out to be his.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
The state would commit misconduct during the trial, involving blood
found at the crime scene that didn't match Kathy or Randall.
This misconduct was one of the factors that led ultimately
to Randall being sentenced to death. The prosecutor misconduct would
result in a retrial, and a defense investigation would uncover
some of the craziest perversities, proving that Paget had been
(01:32):
innocent all along and rescuing Randall from death.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Row is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
That's me.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
I'm your host, and today I'm actually I kind of butterflies.
I gotta be honest because today you're going to hear
a story that I've been wanting to tell for as
long as I've known about it. And when you hear it,
you'll understand why. Because this is one of the craziest
stories I believe in the history of American jurisprudence. And
(02:19):
to help tell the story, we have an attorney. He's
a personal hero of mine. Richard S. Jaffy is with us.
So Richard, Welcome to Wrongful conviction.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
I'm so happy to be here, Jason, and today.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
We're going to be telling the incredible saga of Randall.
Paget Randall, as I always say, I'm sorry you have
to be here, but I'm happy you're here.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I'm real happy to be here. I've been in a
lot worse places.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Well said Randall. Let's start with you, because you grew
up in a small town in Alabama, a town called Arab.
I had never heard of Arab, But can you just
give us an idea of what your life was like
before everything went so crazy?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Okay, the town has pronounced Ara. Yeah. I grew up
in the fifties. Well, a matter of fact, I was
born in nineteen fifty small town population probably about seven
thousand now. Grew up on a farm. For this simple life.
I had good parents. They worked hard, they carried me
to church, and well, I went to college. I got
(03:26):
a degree in business and started to work with this plant.
And I always loved outside, and so I ended up
buying a poetry farm, got married, had two children, and
had a pretty good life. Thirty two acres of land
and the house had the land paid for, the house
almost paid for, and I made probably the biggest mistake
(03:52):
in my life. I had an extramarital affair.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
When you're referring to Judy Smith, Now you used to
work together when all that started. Was it when you
already had the poultry farm?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
No, it was was eating corporation, another plant, and we
lived close together. One day here and work, she had
a swimming pool. Something was said about going skinny dipping.
So I remember when night we'd been working late and
(04:28):
almost at home, and I seen her car in front
of me and she pulled up in her driveway. So
I kept thinking about the skinny dipping joke, so I
put my headlights in behind her, trying to scare her.
I figured she knew it was me, and then I
went on home and didn't think anything else about it.
Or the next day at worked, she said, well did
(04:49):
you chicken out last night? So next night, same thing.
I got almost her place, which was just before I
got to my place, the he car is again pulled in.
I pulled in, let's go skinny. Didn't well, she starts
stripping off clothes. I thought it's all a big joke.
So we got totally naked and wanted to do the deed,
(05:09):
and I said no, I'm going home. Well, I did
a long weekend, and all weekend the devil got my
brain and said, you should just do it once. You
should just do it once. And then did it once,
and then it just more and more and more, and
I was I was miserable. I guess it was mainly
(05:31):
six and my wife and I Kathy, her name was Kathy.
We had separated and she got murdered. I stay up
numerous times, and right after she was dead, they said,
(05:52):
my children, I learned later, who were six and eleven
at the time, they really want that found the body
of their mother. And I'm thinking about all that stuff.
And I got physically ill when I first found out
about it. But it was like a nightmare, especially when
(06:14):
the police were kind of putting their finger at me.
I couldn't even mourn the death of my wife with
all that hanging over me. And I felt a lot
of guilt. If I had been home with my wife
where I should have been, she would probably be a lie.
(06:37):
And well, the police accused me of doing it, which
I can understand why. I've seen all the TV movies
about the affairs and all that stuff, But DNA was
brand new back then. It was nineteen ninety when she
was killed, and I was just learning about doing Most
(07:00):
people didn't know about that stuff back then, so I
willingally gave my blood sample and thought, man, I can't
wait till the UNITESK gets back, so they will start
looking at the right place, because I wanted every kill
my wife to be found.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
I read about your case in Richard's amazing book. It's
called Quest for Justice Defending the Damned by Richard S. Jaffe,
and now there's a second edition out. And this case
is extraordinary in so many ways. But I can understand
why the jury voted to convict you because even though
(07:40):
there was significant evidence that it couldn't have been you,
but this one thing was really almost impossible for your
attorneys to overcome. And Richard, you talk about this in
your book. So this murder happened on August seventeenth of nineteen.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Ninety, Randall and his paramour, Judy Smith, went to Florida
on a scuba diving trip. It's about six or seven
hours from arab While in Florida on the evening of
August sixteenth, the early mornings of August seventeenth, nineteen ninety,
(08:20):
Randall's asleep. They just got there and a phone call
comes from Randall's brother saying that his wife Kathy was murdered.
Randall immediately went and threw up, and then Judy and
Randall immediately turned around and drove back, and they drove
(08:40):
right to the Sheriff's department. The interesting thing is that
you would think that Randall was so shook up, so distraught,
that Judy would have driven the whole way back, But
apparently Judy was up all night and couldn't keep the
(09:01):
car in the road on these windy rural roads in Florida,
and after about thirty or forty minutes, they were about
colliding with everything, and Randall had to drive the entire
way back and Judy went to sleep in the passenger side.
They go straight to the station and both give interviews separately.
And then the next morning Randall invited them out to
(09:27):
his home, the home of the murder, and he was
videotaped for forty five minutes, going through the entire house
and basically excluding himself from not being a suspect because
every time he was offered an opportunity to, I guess
put himself out of harm's way. He didn't for example,
(09:50):
or the scuff marks in the door, are they fresh,
meaning maybe the house of burger eyes. Randall said, no,
they were Oh when was the last time you had
sex with your wife?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Kathy?
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Randall said, oh, it's been many months, three or four months,
which if he were guilty, he would have probably said
within the last few days, explaining what turned out to
be a DNA match, and on and on and on,
and then Randall gave a polygraph test, and he voluntarily
(10:29):
gave his blood for DNA testing, and then he thought,
as soon as it comes back, he'll be excluded as
a suspect. But it didn't happen that way.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
So the circumstantial evidence starts to mount. Right, it looked
a little strange that Randall and Judy had left town
the morning after the murders, and of course, with the
affair and it being a small town and everything else,
people are going to think whatever they think. But at
the same time they put out these crazy theories, like
(11:02):
the idea that Randall might have been after the life insurance,
when we know that she only had ten thousand dollars
in life insurance anyway, which would barely cover the cost
of the funeral, and it never made any sense on
the face of it. Why would Randall want to make
his children, who nobody had anything to say other than
that he loved and they loved him. And why would
(11:23):
he want to make them effectively orphans or at a
minimum take even if you got away with it, take
their mother from them. Can you talk a little bit
about that, the circumstances, and then you know where ultimately
it went when the DNA test came back.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Well, you know, the first suspect, of course is the spouse.
But at the same time, when authorities focus on one person,
they get myopic and the tunnel vision, and they never
look at anything else. And the investigation then is all
(12:00):
about finding information to confirm their suspicion or their bias
or their focus. In this case, though, nothing made sense.
As you point out initially, clearly Kathy was in a
fight for her life. She was in the bed, she
(12:22):
was accosted by her killer, and there was a life
and death struggle. Kathy was stabbed forty six times, almost
all of those were defensive wounds, and it took a
long time for finally a couple of stab wounds to
(12:44):
penetrate her organs and kill her. Randall is six two
hundred and thirty pounds. Kathy was very demure, very small.
In addition to that, the alleged rape was clearly staged.
The body was moved from a normal sleeping position to
(13:06):
across the bed. The left leg was propped down, the
right leg was propped up on a table where an
alarm clock was No one could be raped in that position.
All the blood was consistent to the body being moved.
The underwear was neatly cut off with scissors of Kathy.
(13:29):
There was zero trauma to her vaginal area, zero none, zero.
And what the pathologist testified to in both trials was
that Kathy was dead before the seaman ever entered her vagina,
meaning that if someone had raped her, that person would
(13:53):
have raped a corpse. So you had an extraordinary amount
of information that clearly show that someone else committed this
crime other than Randall Patchet.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And there's a lot more to that. You know, the
idea that she was allegedly raped in that position with
one leg up on the nightstand, but that the alarm
clock was undisturbed didn't make any sense. Very little of
this made any sense, But the detectives ignored the statements
of Randall's children who had been in the trailer with
him all night, including one the little one that's left
(14:27):
in the bed with him, and they had told the
detectives that he had never left the trailer that night
and that they would have heard it if he had,
that he hadn't showered. He had no blood on him,
of course, which we know it was a bloody struggle.
They didn't search his residence or his car, nor did
they search Judy's residence or car, and an investigator clumsily,
(14:48):
supposedly accidentally, let's call it, that destroyed a bloody fingerprint
on Kathy's body. So six weeks go by October fifth,
nineteen ninety Randall, they come and rescue it, and then
you were charged with capital murderer.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I was at my in law's home, Ketty's parents. I
went over there, me, me and the kids. I guess
the police were following me or what. I don't know
how they knew I was there. It was in a
town about thirty miles away from where I live. Anyways,
there was a knock on the door and mother in
law said there was someone to see me. And I
(15:28):
went outside and the detective says, you're under the rest
for the murder of Katy. I said, you rested their
own person. They put the handcuffs on me and said,
let me go back in tell my children by no,
you can't do that. And man, my mind was spinning.
(15:51):
I didn't know what was happening. And I was gravely
concerned about my kids. They don't have a mother, now
they don't have a father, and what's going to happen
to them. But I was only in jail, I think
about three days. I didn't need a thing I could eat,
(16:12):
but anyhows, I got bonded out after about three days.
So that part of my incarceration was kind of quick.
But the other part, when I got to prison was
kind of long.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
That's a whole different story death row. We'll get to that.
But Richard, in your book, you talk about the first trial,
and unlike most of the people that we've interviewed on
the show, Randall had not just competent but highly skilled
attorneys on the first trial. But they were up against
it because the state, well they broke the rules. To
(16:47):
put it mildly, they withheld evidence that I think would
be deemed to be exculpatory until the very last minute.
And there was other stuff going on. So can you
walk us through to first trial and explain to us
how it ended up the way it did.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
Randall did have good lawyers, and they retained an expert
in DNA, and when the expert was cross examined, the
expert had to concede that the DNA testing of the
semen was consistent with the DNA of Randall, meaning that
(17:27):
the expert basically confirmed the state's case. So once Randall testified,
the jury was pretty uninterested because they made up their mind.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
And there's more to this than that as well, because
what I was making reference to before is the fact
that there was blood at the scene, which is typical
in a case where someone had stabbed numerous times, because
the stabber in this case, the murderer would normally cut
themselves because the knife gets slippery and done the demonstrations
(17:59):
so many times, we just take a pen and you
stab a book or a table or whatever, and by
the third time down, your hand's already down on what
would be the blade. So that's why we almost always
find blood from the person doing the stabbing at the
crime scene, and in this case that was also the case.
Plus it was a violent struggle, and we know that
Kathy fought for her life and she scratched the assailant
(18:21):
numerous times. So there was blood found at the crime
scene that was not Kathy's and it was not Randal's.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
You're in the first trial. There was one point in
time when the zerologist was on the stand testifying that
my bloodtop had changed from one day to the next,
and he had never seen that happen. And here's twenty
five years of work. I thought, well, I'm not going
to get on your feet. I'm going to go home today.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So the rologist is up on the stand saying Randall's
blood type changed, which we know isn't a thing. It can't,
I mean. So the conclusion is that there was blood
from the scene that they were testing that did not
belong to Randal and was also not Kathy's, so mixed
in with Kathy's blood, someone else's blood was at the
(19:11):
crime scene, but the prosecution did not hand over that
evidence until after the DNA experts who had come to
town to testify had already left. And then Randall's lawyer
appropriately asked for a mistrial, and the judge seemingly inappropriately
denied the motion. So this is where things start to
really stack up and where you know, you can start
(19:32):
to understand or I can how the jury would have
found Randall guilty because it was hard for them to
get past the idea of how could his sperm have
ended up inside of her when he said he hadn't
seen her in such and such amount of time and
that is a you know, that's a pretty big albatross.
But this other evidence was either ignored with hell, there
(19:54):
were searches that were not done. There was all sorts
of leads left unexplored.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
The huge pink elephant in the room was Randall's ex paramore,
Judy Smith. Neither side was willing to call her to
testify in the first trial. The state would have given
her immunity if she would have implicated Randall, but she
wouldn't do it. So Judy never testified in the first trial,
(20:26):
and the video that we talked about earlier of Randall
going through the crime scene with the detectives was not
played either. The interesting twist in this case is that
the jury found him guilty and recommended a life without
parole sentence. In that time, Alabama had an override statue,
(20:48):
and the trial judge overwrote it and sentenced Randall to death.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
So Randall, that's May twenty second, nineteen ninety two, us
through that awful, awful moment.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Well my twenty second, that was my birthday. Matter of fact,
the sentence, I mean that bothered me a lot. But
I could anybody think that I would do such a thing.
And then they're going to kill the wrong person. Somebody's
up there that really done this and it's not me.
(21:27):
The whole world is going to believe what the court says.
The court says I'm guilty and that I must be
put to death.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
As a father myself, the idea of you being torn
away from your kids, who you now have even a
more intense responsibility to care for and protect after everything
they've been through and now they're effectively being orphaned, and
you're thrust into the most horrible situation imaginable and being
(22:01):
torn away from the people.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
You love the most at the same time.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yeah, it's horrible and helpless. Flect. I can't help myself.
Nothing I can do is going to help my children.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
This episode is sponsored by AIG, a leading global insurance company,
and Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison, a leading international
law firm. The AIG pro Bono program provides free legal
services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals
most in need, and recently they announced that working to
reform the criminal justice system will become a key pillar
(22:43):
of the program's mission. Paul Weiss has long had an
unwavering commitment to providing impactful pro bono legal assistance to
the most vulnerable members of our society and in support
of the public interest, including extensive work in the criminal
justice area.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
When I got to prison, it was it was I
don't know, about ten o'clock at night and never been
in a prison. Go in and it's all loud. People
locked up there. They're screaming, and you hear the metal
doors slamming shut and open, and that strip hole you
(23:30):
close off, and they spread you down with some kind
of chemical handcuffs and shackle on your legs and a
chain going from your hands to your feet and then
chain around your waist and all that lot and say
little bitty stay ups back to where death throw was,
(23:50):
and the guard would holler, and somebody would slide a
metal door open and it'd slide behind you and the
other inmates yelling at you and all this stuff and screaming,
and get back to my little cell, which is I
think was five feet by eight or nine feet and
(24:15):
there's no lot in there, a lot boy but shot
and it was completely dark. And get in there. They
take the cuss off of me and slammed the door
behind me and im and I'm all alone on a
different planet. And I can remember I kept thinking, I'm
(24:41):
gonna get out of here. I'm gonna get out here,
I'm gonna get out here. But after years went by,
I remember carried up one night in the feet of
position and just won't to give up, and I'm going
to die. I don't die in this place, and nobody don't.
The whole world don't care of world to be glad
when I do. But finally I got closer to God
(25:07):
than I've ever been in my life. I was confident
that God wouldn't want to let me die for something
I didn't do, and he didn't. You get me out
of there through Richard Jeffish.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Wow, Richard, to the table's turn. When you got involved?
But how did you come to be involved? And I'm
so fascinated by the process and the way you describe
it in the book, the decisions that you had to make,
which are actually literally life and death decisions because you
are the backstop. Right Have you failed, Randall would have
(25:48):
been put to death. So can you pick us through
that whole process.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
The way that I met Brenda Massingil, who later and
currently became Randall's wife, they hardly knew each other, but
I was speaking at the sixteenth Street Baptist Church in
nineteen ninety two, that's where the four young girls were
murdered in the bombing of the church, and we were
(26:14):
speaking on the death penalty. It was a kind of
a small rally. Brenda approached me after I spoke and
asked me if I had heard of Randall's case. I hadn't,
and I refused to intervene at that point because he
was well represented and I didn't expect ever to hear
from anyone again about that. And then a few years later,
(26:38):
in ninety five, Randall's family called the office through Brenda
and wanted to meet with me. Randall's case had been
reversed because the prosecution had failed to disclose the blood
typing evidence that was, as you say, exculpatory, and because
of that Randall was given a new trial. So when
(27:01):
I got involved, I began to learn immediately all kinds
of things about Judy, about her history, about how she
was totally obsessed with Randall to the point where she
actually constructed in her home a duplication of Randall's children's bedroom.
(27:26):
And Judy had actually confronted Kathy prior to the murder
in a church parking lot. Judy had a raincoat on
and sunglasses on a Wednesday night. Cathy went to church
every Wednesday night. Judy was hiding in Kathy's backseat. There
(27:46):
was a confrontation. A church deacon broke it up.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
When Kathy told me about that, Judy came up with
you know, I just wanted to talk to her. And
I wasn't dressed up thing more than my normal dress,
and so I don't know, I guess I'll let the
devil tak me into kind of believing that Judy wasn't
(28:10):
anything that was no good and instead of believing it
can't be like I should have. And I can't explain it.
It was just a crazy time in my life.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
The problem that Judy was having was patience. Because Randall
separated from Kathy, several times, but each time came back
to her. On this occasion, when the brutal murder happened,
it became clear to me that Judy wasn't going to
(28:44):
take the chance of the divorce not going through. So
apparently she took matters in her own hands. And then
now we have a gory, horrific, unimaginable crime scene that
ultimately led to Randall's arrest, conviction, and death sentence.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Randall, were there any other moments besides the church parking
lot incident that kind of made you think to yourself,
you know, Judy might just be a little bit.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Off thinking back through all the stuff. I remember one time,
when this was before Kethy got killed, when I was
at Judy's place and I saw a zip blocked bag
that had some I'm a smoker, I had some cigarette
butts in it and some fingernail clippings. What is this?
(29:38):
And Oh, I love you so much. I wanted to
save these, you know, And I said, well, what a
thing to say, is what I'm thinking. But thinking back,
you know, she might have been up to some mischief
with that, so I don't.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Know, And then, you know, then things get weirder, right,
you are investigator. I'm forgetting his name now. Who was
the investigator in this case.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
Our investigator was Rick Blake, and he was our in
house investigator, and he was amazing. What was really fascinating
is is that after the murder, Judy took two weeks
off from work, two weeks off, and we developed evidence
that Judy had scratch marks all up and down her arms,
(30:26):
meaning that she was apparently in some type of vicious
life or death struggle, and so she stayed at home
until those scratches healed. Another thing is is that Judy's
blood was never tested, her DNA was never tested, her
home was never searched, her car was never searched. The police,
(30:48):
for whatever reason, completely ignored her as I suspect.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Listen, if somebody had done this work that you did
all those years later. Initially, it's entirely possible, maybe even likely,
that the trial, the first trial, would have ended up
in an acquittal, because there's more right. There's also a
truck driver who came forward who said that he had
seen a car matching the description of Judy's car, which
was a very distinct car right a hubcap of a
(31:14):
certain color, leaving Kathy's home in the middle of the night.
That's pretty powerful. It's hard to come up with a
good excuse for that. But then comes the craziest part
of all of this, right and again, your investigator had
you know. I reread the chapter in your book this
(31:36):
morning talking about how he had gone to beauty parlors
trying to find people who knew Judy, thinking that in
the town, a small town with only a few beauty parlors,
she might have frequented one of them. And sure enough,
he found people that knew her. And what he discovered
from that point turns out to be really important evidence
(31:57):
and really bizarre.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
He found three different people that told him clearly that
Judy had this fetish with saving her then ex husband
Tommy Smith Simon and putting it in milkshakes.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
I can remember before Kathy was killed, usually after six,
we would both I'm talking about Judy would go up
to sleep. I don't know weeks before Kathy was killed.
After six, Judy she would immediately get up, go to
(32:35):
the bedroom. Then, while I'm sitting in there in prison,
I'm thinking, what was she doing in the bathroom? Was
she saving some stuff? I don't know, But I don't.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Know Rick Blake, our investigator. He found three different people.
We tried to get all three to court, but we
could only get one, the milkshake lady. She was one
of the three that Judy had discuss this whipt on
many occasions, and we hauled her to testify and it
was dynamic and powerful, and the prosecution did everything they
(33:10):
could to keep it out.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
I mean, I've told this story to a fair number
of people and it doesn't get crazier than that. And
that wasn't all though, Richard, the trial itself.
Speaker 4 (33:25):
The biggest decision that I've ever had to make in
any trial was whether to call Judy to testify. That
was crucial because again the prosecution kept holding out immunity
if she testify against Randall. We were back in the
(33:46):
judge's chambers. Time would run out. The judge looked up
and said, all right, call your next witness, and I said,
we're going to call Judy Smith. And at that point
the prosecutors jaws rocked to the floor. It was stunned
silence because no one believed we had the I guess
(34:08):
they guts to call her, and we did, and her
testimony was the most both powerful and bizarre testimony anyone
could envision. On the one hand, she testified that she
prayed every night. She loved Randall so much that every
(34:29):
night she prayed that something would happen to Kathy and
that she would get killed in a car wreck so
she could be with Randall, and she still loved him.
When I asked her about her ability to enter the home,
it slipped from her mouth almost that there was a
(34:50):
and I knew she meant key that was hidden in
a particular place for Randall's children to get when they
return home from school. Well, she knew about it where
it was hidden, and that slipped out of her mouth almost.
She tried to take it back, but she couldn't. And
Drawors remembered that during deliberations. But the most powerful thing
(35:12):
was and again you point out something very, very so crucial,
as every question asked of a witness in a death
penalty case, especially a witness like her, Judy could be
the bomb that destroy you. It could be the landmine
that blows the case up. So every question had to
(35:34):
be so measured. But I asked her, if that is
Randall's DNA in Kathy's vaginal canal, how do you think
it got there, it's an objectionable question, but the prosecution
didn't object because clearly they thought that she would either
(35:55):
say I have no idea, but her answer was if
that was Randall's DNA, and it had to have come
from me in that standing room only courtroom and you
could hear a pin drop.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
So the jury now has heard her try to walk
back her explanation of how she could have gotten into
the house, because, of course, one of the things that
the prosecution theory hinged on was the idea that there
was no break in. There was no signs of breaking
and entering, so it must have been somebody logically who
knew Kathy and was admitted into the house. But now
(36:44):
that the key and the location of the key was
known to Judy and that was out in the open,
that was one thing. And now, of course her making
this unbelievable admission in open court is a huge moment.
But even still, the jury goes to deliberate Randall, what
did you think they were gone for close to three
(37:06):
full days. Did you allow yourself to hope that they
would come back with a not growthy verdict or were
you what were you thinking?
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Well, I don't think I slipped any here those three days,
going back and forth to the jail, which was to
cross the street in the courthouse, but I had.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Hope and Richard. So the jury's out two and a
half days and the judge is basically at his wits end,
I would say, and is on the verge of declaring
a mistrial, which would have been devastating. Did you talk
about this in the book as well? How the judge
called you and the prosecution team into his chambers, I
(37:54):
guess right for a conference.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
He did, and he was very clear. He said, gentlemen,
I'm going to declara mistrial. I don't believe in forcing
drawers to give up o their feelings and beliefs. And
I tried to talk him out of it, and he went, no,
I've made up my mind. And this is a judge
that when he makes up his mind, he does. As
(38:17):
we filed out into the courtroom, I was the last
one other than he was behind me. As we began
to enter the courtroom, I turned around, I looked at
him right in the eyes, and I went, judge just
asked the jurors if they think they can come to
a verdict. He didn't say anything. We sat down, he
(38:40):
faced the jury. He said, ladies and gentlemen, I have
no choice but two. And then he paused just for
a second, and he turned to his left and looked
me right in the eye, and we locked. And then
he turned back around to the jury and he did
a one eighty. He said, is there anyone on the
(39:02):
jury that believes that you could come to a unanimous verdict?
And two or three people nodded their heads and said yes.
I was stunned or a reversal. The jury went back
to deliberate. The courthouse continued to be totally packed, standing
(39:25):
room only, and people were basically in prayer. And forty
five minutes later they came out and it was not guilty.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Now, I'm not gonna lie. I cried this morning when
I read the book and I knew the story, I'd
read it before. Randy, what was that moment like when
you were vindicated and you were on the verge of
being returned to your family, to your community, your good
name was given back to you. I can't imagine. Can
(39:58):
please explain?
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Well, I don't know if I can, But like I
had been held underwater to the point of drownding, I
had to come up and I'm at the point where
I'm either going to drowned or not, and then the
not guilty bird it just pulls me up into the air.
(40:22):
I can breathe again, and I'm going to live. It
was just total jubilation.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
And you hadn't really slept or eating in a few days,
as you said, so.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
The judge, I remember Judd saying, and you're free to go,
mister Paget and Jaylor came over to take me back
to the jail, would have someone to get my stuff,
and I going back to jail and could keep my stuff,
you know. And then my son, who had grown and
got his driver's license, got to drive his daddy home.
(41:00):
Was just wonderful, wonderful, Richard, What about you?
Speaker 4 (41:05):
It was a feeling of elation that it's really hard
to imagine unless you have heard not guilties on death
fumily cases before. This being a retrial made it all
that much more unimaginable.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
No, you have the best job in the world, at
least on days like that. You do. Now, before we
go to the closing of the show, talk about the
juror who approached you on your way out of the courtroom.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Richard.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Probably the credit for the jury's correct not guilty verdict,
A lot of it goes to her at.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
The end of the day.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
That's exactly right what happens in these trials. Having tried
hundreds myself, you often misread drawers. We thought that the
older lady and a younger lady, the one you're talking of,
probably in her forties, we thought that they hated us,
(42:06):
But it was the opposite. The initial vote was eight
to four for guilty, we later learned. And when we
walked out of the courtroom towards our car, the one
you allude to, the female, the forty year old forty
something you old, walked up to me and said, mister Jaffie,
can have a word with you? And I said, sure,
(42:28):
she said, and she just looked at me right in
the eye, was like a foot from her, and she said,
you know, only a woman would know you can't have
sex in that position. So I climbed on the table
and put my right leg up and my left leg down,
(42:50):
and I made it clear to the mostly male jury
that Randall Paget could not have had sex with Cas
in that position, and that flipped other jurors and ultimately
All twelve found Randall not guilty. The last thing she
said to me was you tell Randal Paga to stay
(43:12):
away from Judy Smith and go spend time with his kids.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
And then we walked away.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
And the truth is that Randall hadn't seen Judy since
the night at the police station when they arrived back
from Florida, and he of course hasn't since.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Do you know what became of Judy Smith after all
these years?
Speaker 2 (43:38):
I don't know, Richard.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Is it strange to you that they never prosecuted her?
Speaker 4 (43:44):
It's not strange because the prosecution had already publicly made
it clear that they didn't think she was involved at
all and knew nothing. So the chances of them getting
a conviction while it existed weren't really high. And I
think the prosecution was just done with that case. They
(44:04):
had pretty much been embarrassed enough, I guess.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
And Randall before I keep saying this, but one last
question before we get to the wrap up, how are
your kids doing? These poor children had to live through
a nightmare that is unimaginable, you know, losing their mom
and then almost losing their dad, losing their dad for
six years. How are they doing now?
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Well, they're doing good, and I've got three granddaughters now
from them. My son has two little red headed girls.
He lives in Nashville and he's an architect. My daughter
lives in Alabama and one time was president of the
company she worked for. She's since moved to a different
(44:56):
place of than go woman, and she has one little girl.
I'm so proud of them and love them.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
The basis, well, that's great, and I wish them all
the blessings in the world because they deserve. As to you,
everything good. So now we come to the wrap up
of our show, which is a segment that is my
favorite part call closing Arguments, where I first of all,
thank both of you, Richard Jaffe, criminal defense lawyer, author
(45:29):
and amazing advocate, Thank you for being here, and of
course Randall, thank you Randall Paget for sharing your story
so eloquently and beautifully. And this part of the show
is where I get to kick back in my chair,
switch off my microphone, and let you just share any
other thoughts that you may want to share with our audience. Randall,
(45:51):
we're going to save you for last. If that's okay, Richard,
You're first.
Speaker 4 (45:55):
It has been a true privilege, honor, and joy to
get to know and represent Randall Paget and become close
with he and his now wife, Brenda Massenguel of fifteen years.
This is the kind of case where reality really trump's fiction,
(46:21):
because had it not been for the failure to disclose
the exculpatory conflicting information of blood typing, Randall would never
have got a chance for a new trial. And it
amazes me that the prosecution hid that until it was
(46:42):
too late. The only other thing I would say would
be that law enforcement often excludes a wider investigation once
they focus on one suspect, and when that happens, the
wrong person can easily be convicted. And a really thorough
(47:06):
investigation would have revealed the truth that Randall was innocent.
And I thank God that Randall is here with us
to share his story. He is a true salt of
the earth human being.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Randall. I would just like to say, I think mister
Richard Jeffy is the greatest attorney in the world. He
believed in me, He believed the truth. I want to
thank Richard. I will love you Richard very much. One
thing about me, I guess I was naive about the
(47:51):
justice system in America. I had heard of people getting
wrongfully convicted. I didn't pay much attention to it, but
but I thought, you know, when you go to trial
in the United States, the foremost thing in the court's
mind is supposed to be the truth. But I don't
(48:11):
think it works that way. I think if a piece
of truth comes up, that's bad for whichever side. I
think it gets twisted around or or try to cover
it up or something. And I guess for people listening
to this, if you're ever sitting on a jury, I
(48:32):
would ask that you don't just believe because a defendant
has been accused of something that he probably did something
or he wouldn't be there. And I would ask that
you would make the prosecution show you some concrete proof
to back up what they're saying. If I got just
(48:55):
one other minute, I'd like to talk about my friend
and now wife, Brenda. When I was in prison, she
was so nice to me. She was trying to raise
money for me and writing legal aid places. I think
she wrote the governor and I don't know who all.
I thought, well, why is this woman being so nice
(49:15):
to me? I thought she's a spy for the prosecution,
because I was pretty sure I was going to get
a retrial because prosecution had withheld that exculpatory evidence. And
I thought, yeah, they know it's going to be a retrial.
And she's a spy, and she kept wanting to come
and visit me, and I wouldn't let her. I thought,
(49:36):
if I don't let her come down here, she can't
say I said something. But if I do let her come,
she can go back and say Randal said this. Randal
said that I wouldn't let her come. And a couple
of years, all my letters dwindled away except hers, and
so finally, through her letters, got to trust and she
(50:02):
did not be a spy but a great hey yep,
And after I got out, we've married about five years later.
But he's the most wonderful person.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud
donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll
join me in supporting this very important 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 Wartis.
(50:42):
The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
Wrongful Conviction podcast.
Speaker 1 (50:53):
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
I hope you may the land of your
In the late nineteen eighties. Randall Paget was a poultry
farmer and family man in the small town of Arab, Alabama, who,
by his own admission, made the biggest mistake of his
life when he stepped out and his wife Kathy with
a coworker.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Named Judy Smith.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
The affair was on and off again over the years,
and during one of those on again times, Judy and
Randall took a road trip to Florida, only to be
awoken the first night they were there with some harrowing news.
On August seventeenth, nineteen ninety Cathy's body had been discovered
in her bed. She had endured a violent struggle and
had sustained forty six stab wounds, which ultimately killed her,
(00:40):
and to make matters worse, seamen was found inside of her.
Even though there was no indication that she had been raped.
The night before this Florida trip, that Paget children had
stayed with Randall in his tiny trailer, they knew that
he hadn't left in the middle of the night to
do anything, much less kill their mother. No signs of
(01:01):
a break in at her home, Randall became the suspect,
and he was arrested when the seamen turned.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Out to be his.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
The state would commit misconduct during the trial, involving blood
found at the crime scene that didn't match Kathy or Randall.
This misconduct was one of the factors that led ultimately
to Randall being sentenced to death. The prosecutor misconduct would
result in a retrial, and a defense investigation would uncover
some of the craziest perversities, proving that Paget had been
(01:32):
innocent all along and rescuing Randall from death.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Row is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
That's me.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
I'm your host, and today I'm actually I kind of butterflies.
I gotta be honest because today you're going to hear
a story that I've been wanting to tell for as
long as I've known about it. And when you hear it,
you'll understand why. Because this is one of the craziest
stories I believe in the history of American jurisprudence. And
(02:19):
to help tell the story, we have an attorney. He's
a personal hero of mine. Richard S. Jaffy is with us.
So Richard, Welcome to Wrongful conviction.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
I'm so happy to be here, Jason, and today.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
We're going to be telling the incredible saga of Randall.
Paget Randall, as I always say, I'm sorry you have
to be here, but I'm happy you're here.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I'm real happy to be here. I've been in a
lot worse places.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Well said Randall. Let's start with you, because you grew
up in a small town in Alabama, a town called Arab.
I had never heard of Arab, But can you just
give us an idea of what your life was like
before everything went so crazy?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Okay, the town has pronounced Ara. Yeah. I grew up
in the fifties. Well, a matter of fact, I was
born in nineteen fifty small town population probably about seven
thousand now. Grew up on a farm. For this simple life.
I had good parents. They worked hard, they carried me
to church, and well, I went to college. I got
(03:26):
a degree in business and started to work with this plant.
And I always loved outside, and so I ended up
buying a poetry farm, got married, had two children, and
had a pretty good life. Thirty two acres of land
and the house had the land paid for, the house
almost paid for, and I made probably the biggest mistake
(03:52):
in my life. I had an extramarital affair.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
When you're referring to Judy Smith, Now you used to
work together when all that started. Was it when you
already had the poultry farm?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
No, it was was eating corporation, another plant, and we
lived close together. One day here and work, she had
a swimming pool. Something was said about going skinny dipping.
So I remember when night we'd been working late and
(04:28):
almost at home, and I seen her car in front
of me and she pulled up in her driveway. So
I kept thinking about the skinny dipping joke, so I
put my headlights in behind her, trying to scare her.
I figured she knew it was me, and then I
went on home and didn't think anything else about it.
Or the next day at worked, she said, well did
(04:49):
you chicken out last night? So next night, same thing.
I got almost her place, which was just before I
got to my place, the he car is again pulled in.
I pulled in, let's go skinny. Didn't well, she starts
stripping off clothes. I thought it's all a big joke.
So we got totally naked and wanted to do the deed,
(05:09):
and I said no, I'm going home. Well, I did
a long weekend, and all weekend the devil got my
brain and said, you should just do it once. You
should just do it once. And then did it once,
and then it just more and more and more, and
I was I was miserable. I guess it was mainly
(05:31):
six and my wife and I Kathy, her name was Kathy.
We had separated and she got murdered. I stay up
numerous times, and right after she was dead, they said,
(05:52):
my children, I learned later, who were six and eleven
at the time, they really want that found the body
of their mother. And I'm thinking about all that stuff.
And I got physically ill when I first found out
about it. But it was like a nightmare, especially when
(06:14):
the police were kind of putting their finger at me.
I couldn't even mourn the death of my wife with
all that hanging over me. And I felt a lot
of guilt. If I had been home with my wife
where I should have been, she would probably be a lie.
(06:37):
And well, the police accused me of doing it, which
I can understand why. I've seen all the TV movies
about the affairs and all that stuff, But DNA was
brand new back then. It was nineteen ninety when she
was killed, and I was just learning about doing Most
(07:00):
people didn't know about that stuff back then, so I
willingally gave my blood sample and thought, man, I can't
wait till the UNITESK gets back, so they will start
looking at the right place, because I wanted every kill
my wife to be found.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
I read about your case in Richard's amazing book. It's
called Quest for Justice Defending the Damned by Richard S. Jaffe,
and now there's a second edition out. And this case
is extraordinary in so many ways. But I can understand
why the jury voted to convict you because even though
(07:40):
there was significant evidence that it couldn't have been you,
but this one thing was really almost impossible for your
attorneys to overcome. And Richard, you talk about this in
your book. So this murder happened on August seventeenth of nineteen.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Ninety, Randall and his paramour, Judy Smith, went to Florida
on a scuba diving trip. It's about six or seven
hours from arab While in Florida on the evening of
August sixteenth, the early mornings of August seventeenth, nineteen ninety,
(08:20):
Randall's asleep. They just got there and a phone call
comes from Randall's brother saying that his wife Kathy was murdered.
Randall immediately went and threw up, and then Judy and
Randall immediately turned around and drove back, and they drove
(08:40):
right to the Sheriff's department. The interesting thing is that
you would think that Randall was so shook up, so distraught,
that Judy would have driven the whole way back, But
apparently Judy was up all night and couldn't keep the
(09:01):
car in the road on these windy rural roads in Florida,
and after about thirty or forty minutes, they were about
colliding with everything, and Randall had to drive the entire
way back and Judy went to sleep in the passenger side.
They go straight to the station and both give interviews separately.
And then the next morning Randall invited them out to
(09:27):
his home, the home of the murder, and he was
videotaped for forty five minutes, going through the entire house
and basically excluding himself from not being a suspect because
every time he was offered an opportunity to, I guess
put himself out of harm's way. He didn't for example,
(09:50):
or the scuff marks in the door, are they fresh,
meaning maybe the house of burger eyes. Randall said, no,
they were Oh when was the last time you had
sex with your wife?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Kathy?
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Randall said, oh, it's been many months, three or four months,
which if he were guilty, he would have probably said
within the last few days, explaining what turned out to
be a DNA match, and on and on and on,
and then Randall gave a polygraph test, and he voluntarily
(10:29):
gave his blood for DNA testing, and then he thought,
as soon as it comes back, he'll be excluded as
a suspect. But it didn't happen that way.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
So the circumstantial evidence starts to mount. Right, it looked
a little strange that Randall and Judy had left town
the morning after the murders, and of course, with the
affair and it being a small town and everything else,
people are going to think whatever they think. But at
the same time they put out these crazy theories, like
(11:02):
the idea that Randall might have been after the life insurance,
when we know that she only had ten thousand dollars
in life insurance anyway, which would barely cover the cost
of the funeral, and it never made any sense on
the face of it. Why would Randall want to make
his children, who nobody had anything to say other than
that he loved and they loved him. And why would
(11:23):
he want to make them effectively orphans or at a
minimum take even if you got away with it, take
their mother from them. Can you talk a little bit
about that, the circumstances, and then you know where ultimately
it went when the DNA test came back.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Well, you know, the first suspect, of course is the spouse.
But at the same time, when authorities focus on one person,
they get myopic and the tunnel vision, and they never
look at anything else. And the investigation then is all
(12:00):
about finding information to confirm their suspicion or their bias
or their focus. In this case, though, nothing made sense.
As you point out initially, clearly Kathy was in a
fight for her life. She was in the bed, she
(12:22):
was accosted by her killer, and there was a life
and death struggle. Kathy was stabbed forty six times, almost
all of those were defensive wounds, and it took a
long time for finally a couple of stab wounds to
(12:44):
penetrate her organs and kill her. Randall is six two
hundred and thirty pounds. Kathy was very demure, very small.
In addition to that, the alleged rape was clearly staged.
The body was moved from a normal sleeping position to
(13:06):
across the bed. The left leg was propped down, the
right leg was propped up on a table where an
alarm clock was No one could be raped in that position.
All the blood was consistent to the body being moved.
The underwear was neatly cut off with scissors of Kathy.
(13:29):
There was zero trauma to her vaginal area, zero none, zero.
And what the pathologist testified to in both trials was
that Kathy was dead before the seaman ever entered her vagina,
meaning that if someone had raped her, that person would
(13:53):
have raped a corpse. So you had an extraordinary amount
of information that clearly show that someone else committed this
crime other than Randall Patchet.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And there's a lot more to that. You know, the
idea that she was allegedly raped in that position with
one leg up on the nightstand, but that the alarm
clock was undisturbed didn't make any sense. Very little of
this made any sense, But the detectives ignored the statements
of Randall's children who had been in the trailer with
him all night, including one the little one that's left
(14:27):
in the bed with him, and they had told the
detectives that he had never left the trailer that night
and that they would have heard it if he had,
that he hadn't showered. He had no blood on him,
of course, which we know it was a bloody struggle.
They didn't search his residence or his car, nor did
they search Judy's residence or car, and an investigator clumsily,
(14:48):
supposedly accidentally, let's call it, that destroyed a bloody fingerprint
on Kathy's body. So six weeks go by October fifth,
nineteen ninety Randall, they come and rescue it, and then
you were charged with capital murderer.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I was at my in law's home, Ketty's parents. I
went over there, me, me and the kids. I guess
the police were following me or what. I don't know
how they knew I was there. It was in a
town about thirty miles away from where I live. Anyways,
there was a knock on the door and mother in
law said there was someone to see me. And I
(15:28):
went outside and the detective says, you're under the rest
for the murder of Katy. I said, you rested their
own person. They put the handcuffs on me and said,
let me go back in tell my children by no,
you can't do that. And man, my mind was spinning.
(15:51):
I didn't know what was happening. And I was gravely
concerned about my kids. They don't have a mother, now
they don't have a father, and what's going to happen
to them. But I was only in jail, I think
about three days. I didn't need a thing I could eat,
(16:12):
but anyhows, I got bonded out after about three days.
So that part of my incarceration was kind of quick.
But the other part, when I got to prison was
kind of long.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
That's a whole different story death row. We'll get to that.
But Richard, in your book, you talk about the first trial,
and unlike most of the people that we've interviewed on
the show, Randall had not just competent but highly skilled
attorneys on the first trial. But they were up against
it because the state, well they broke the rules. To
(16:47):
put it mildly, they withheld evidence that I think would
be deemed to be exculpatory until the very last minute.
And there was other stuff going on. So can you
walk us through to first trial and explain to us
how it ended up the way it did.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
Randall did have good lawyers, and they retained an expert
in DNA, and when the expert was cross examined, the
expert had to concede that the DNA testing of the
semen was consistent with the DNA of Randall, meaning that
(17:27):
the expert basically confirmed the state's case. So once Randall testified,
the jury was pretty uninterested because they made up their mind.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
And there's more to this than that as well, because
what I was making reference to before is the fact
that there was blood at the scene, which is typical
in a case where someone had stabbed numerous times, because
the stabber in this case, the murderer would normally cut
themselves because the knife gets slippery and done the demonstrations
(17:59):
so many times, we just take a pen and you
stab a book or a table or whatever, and by
the third time down, your hand's already down on what
would be the blade. So that's why we almost always
find blood from the person doing the stabbing at the
crime scene, and in this case that was also the case.
Plus it was a violent struggle, and we know that
Kathy fought for her life and she scratched the assailant
(18:21):
numerous times. So there was blood found at the crime
scene that was not Kathy's and it was not Randal's.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
You're in the first trial. There was one point in
time when the zerologist was on the stand testifying that
my bloodtop had changed from one day to the next,
and he had never seen that happen. And here's twenty
five years of work. I thought, well, I'm not going
to get on your feet. I'm going to go home today.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So the rologist is up on the stand saying Randall's
blood type changed, which we know isn't a thing. It can't,
I mean. So the conclusion is that there was blood
from the scene that they were testing that did not
belong to Randal and was also not Kathy's, so mixed
in with Kathy's blood, someone else's blood was at the
(19:11):
crime scene, but the prosecution did not hand over that
evidence until after the DNA experts who had come to
town to testify had already left. And then Randall's lawyer
appropriately asked for a mistrial, and the judge seemingly inappropriately
denied the motion. So this is where things start to
really stack up and where you know, you can start
(19:32):
to understand or I can how the jury would have
found Randall guilty because it was hard for them to
get past the idea of how could his sperm have
ended up inside of her when he said he hadn't
seen her in such and such amount of time and
that is a you know, that's a pretty big albatross.
But this other evidence was either ignored with hell, there
(19:54):
were searches that were not done. There was all sorts
of leads left unexplored.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
The huge pink elephant in the room was Randall's ex paramore,
Judy Smith. Neither side was willing to call her to
testify in the first trial. The state would have given
her immunity if she would have implicated Randall, but she
wouldn't do it. So Judy never testified in the first trial,
(20:26):
and the video that we talked about earlier of Randall
going through the crime scene with the detectives was not
played either. The interesting twist in this case is that
the jury found him guilty and recommended a life without
parole sentence. In that time, Alabama had an override statue,
(20:48):
and the trial judge overwrote it and sentenced Randall to death.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
So Randall, that's May twenty second, nineteen ninety two, us
through that awful, awful moment.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Well my twenty second, that was my birthday. Matter of fact,
the sentence, I mean that bothered me a lot. But
I could anybody think that I would do such a thing.
And then they're going to kill the wrong person. Somebody's
up there that really done this and it's not me.
(21:27):
The whole world is going to believe what the court says.
The court says I'm guilty and that I must be
put to death.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
As a father myself, the idea of you being torn
away from your kids, who you now have even a
more intense responsibility to care for and protect after everything
they've been through and now they're effectively being orphaned, and
you're thrust into the most horrible situation imaginable and being
(22:01):
torn away from the people.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
You love the most at the same time.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yeah, it's horrible and helpless. Flect. I can't help myself.
Nothing I can do is going to help my children.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
This episode is sponsored by AIG, a leading global insurance company,
and Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison, a leading international
law firm. The AIG pro Bono program provides free legal
services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals
most in need, and recently they announced that working to
reform the criminal justice system will become a key pillar
(22:43):
of the program's mission. Paul Weiss has long had an
unwavering commitment to providing impactful pro bono legal assistance to
the most vulnerable members of our society and in support
of the public interest, including extensive work in the criminal
justice area.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
When I got to prison, it was it was I
don't know, about ten o'clock at night and never been
in a prison. Go in and it's all loud. People
locked up there. They're screaming, and you hear the metal
doors slamming shut and open, and that strip hole you
(23:30):
close off, and they spread you down with some kind
of chemical handcuffs and shackle on your legs and a
chain going from your hands to your feet and then
chain around your waist and all that lot and say
little bitty stay ups back to where death throw was,
(23:50):
and the guard would holler, and somebody would slide a
metal door open and it'd slide behind you and the
other inmates yelling at you and all this stuff and screaming,
and get back to my little cell, which is I
think was five feet by eight or nine feet and
(24:15):
there's no lot in there, a lot boy but shot
and it was completely dark. And get in there. They
take the cuss off of me and slammed the door
behind me and im and I'm all alone on a
different planet. And I can remember I kept thinking, I'm
(24:41):
gonna get out of here. I'm gonna get out here,
I'm gonna get out here. But after years went by,
I remember carried up one night in the feet of
position and just won't to give up, and I'm going
to die. I don't die in this place, and nobody don't.
The whole world don't care of world to be glad
when I do. But finally I got closer to God
(25:07):
than I've ever been in my life. I was confident
that God wouldn't want to let me die for something
I didn't do, and he didn't. You get me out
of there through Richard Jeffish.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Wow, Richard, to the table's turn. When you got involved?
But how did you come to be involved? And I'm
so fascinated by the process and the way you describe
it in the book, the decisions that you had to make,
which are actually literally life and death decisions because you
are the backstop. Right Have you failed, Randall would have
(25:48):
been put to death. So can you pick us through
that whole process.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
The way that I met Brenda Massingil, who later and
currently became Randall's wife, they hardly knew each other, but
I was speaking at the sixteenth Street Baptist Church in
nineteen ninety two, that's where the four young girls were
murdered in the bombing of the church, and we were
(26:14):
speaking on the death penalty. It was a kind of
a small rally. Brenda approached me after I spoke and
asked me if I had heard of Randall's case. I hadn't,
and I refused to intervene at that point because he
was well represented and I didn't expect ever to hear
from anyone again about that. And then a few years later,
(26:38):
in ninety five, Randall's family called the office through Brenda
and wanted to meet with me. Randall's case had been
reversed because the prosecution had failed to disclose the blood
typing evidence that was, as you say, exculpatory, and because
of that Randall was given a new trial. So when
(27:01):
I got involved, I began to learn immediately all kinds
of things about Judy, about her history, about how she
was totally obsessed with Randall to the point where she
actually constructed in her home a duplication of Randall's children's bedroom.
(27:26):
And Judy had actually confronted Kathy prior to the murder
in a church parking lot. Judy had a raincoat on
and sunglasses on a Wednesday night. Cathy went to church
every Wednesday night. Judy was hiding in Kathy's backseat. There
(27:46):
was a confrontation. A church deacon broke it up.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
When Kathy told me about that, Judy came up with
you know, I just wanted to talk to her. And
I wasn't dressed up thing more than my normal dress,
and so I don't know, I guess I'll let the
devil tak me into kind of believing that Judy wasn't
(28:10):
anything that was no good and instead of believing it
can't be like I should have. And I can't explain it.
It was just a crazy time in my life.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
The problem that Judy was having was patience. Because Randall
separated from Kathy, several times, but each time came back
to her. On this occasion, when the brutal murder happened,
it became clear to me that Judy wasn't going to
(28:44):
take the chance of the divorce not going through. So
apparently she took matters in her own hands. And then
now we have a gory, horrific, unimaginable crime scene that
ultimately led to Randall's arrest, conviction, and death sentence.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Randall, were there any other moments besides the church parking
lot incident that kind of made you think to yourself,
you know, Judy might just be a little bit.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Off thinking back through all the stuff. I remember one time,
when this was before Kethy got killed, when I was
at Judy's place and I saw a zip blocked bag
that had some I'm a smoker, I had some cigarette
butts in it and some fingernail clippings. What is this?
(29:38):
And Oh, I love you so much. I wanted to
save these, you know, And I said, well, what a
thing to say, is what I'm thinking. But thinking back,
you know, she might have been up to some mischief
with that, so I don't.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Know, And then, you know, then things get weirder, right,
you are investigator. I'm forgetting his name now. Who was
the investigator in this case.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
Our investigator was Rick Blake, and he was our in
house investigator, and he was amazing. What was really fascinating
is is that after the murder, Judy took two weeks
off from work, two weeks off, and we developed evidence
that Judy had scratch marks all up and down her arms,
(30:26):
meaning that she was apparently in some type of vicious
life or death struggle, and so she stayed at home
until those scratches healed. Another thing is is that Judy's
blood was never tested, her DNA was never tested, her
home was never searched, her car was never searched. The police,
(30:48):
for whatever reason, completely ignored her as I suspect.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Listen, if somebody had done this work that you did
all those years later. Initially, it's entirely possible, maybe even likely,
that the trial, the first trial, would have ended up
in an acquittal, because there's more right. There's also a
truck driver who came forward who said that he had
seen a car matching the description of Judy's car, which
was a very distinct car right a hubcap of a
(31:14):
certain color, leaving Kathy's home in the middle of the night.
That's pretty powerful. It's hard to come up with a
good excuse for that. But then comes the craziest part
of all of this, right and again, your investigator had
you know. I reread the chapter in your book this
(31:36):
morning talking about how he had gone to beauty parlors
trying to find people who knew Judy, thinking that in
the town, a small town with only a few beauty parlors,
she might have frequented one of them. And sure enough,
he found people that knew her. And what he discovered
from that point turns out to be really important evidence
(31:57):
and really bizarre.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
He found three different people that told him clearly that
Judy had this fetish with saving her then ex husband
Tommy Smith Simon and putting it in milkshakes.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
I can remember before Kathy was killed, usually after six,
we would both I'm talking about Judy would go up
to sleep. I don't know weeks before Kathy was killed.
After six, Judy she would immediately get up, go to
(32:35):
the bedroom. Then, while I'm sitting in there in prison,
I'm thinking, what was she doing in the bathroom? Was
she saving some stuff? I don't know, But I don't.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Know Rick Blake, our investigator. He found three different people.
We tried to get all three to court, but we
could only get one, the milkshake lady. She was one
of the three that Judy had discuss this whipt on
many occasions, and we hauled her to testify and it
was dynamic and powerful, and the prosecution did everything they
(33:10):
could to keep it out.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
I mean, I've told this story to a fair number
of people and it doesn't get crazier than that. And
that wasn't all though, Richard, the trial itself.
Speaker 4 (33:25):
The biggest decision that I've ever had to make in
any trial was whether to call Judy to testify. That
was crucial because again the prosecution kept holding out immunity
if she testify against Randall. We were back in the
(33:46):
judge's chambers. Time would run out. The judge looked up
and said, all right, call your next witness, and I said,
we're going to call Judy Smith. And at that point
the prosecutors jaws rocked to the floor. It was stunned
silence because no one believed we had the I guess
(34:08):
they guts to call her, and we did, and her
testimony was the most both powerful and bizarre testimony anyone
could envision. On the one hand, she testified that she
prayed every night. She loved Randall so much that every
(34:29):
night she prayed that something would happen to Kathy and
that she would get killed in a car wreck so
she could be with Randall, and she still loved him.
When I asked her about her ability to enter the home,
it slipped from her mouth almost that there was a
(34:50):
and I knew she meant key that was hidden in
a particular place for Randall's children to get when they
return home from school. Well, she knew about it where
it was hidden, and that slipped out of her mouth almost.
She tried to take it back, but she couldn't. And
Drawors remembered that during deliberations. But the most powerful thing
(35:12):
was and again you point out something very, very so crucial,
as every question asked of a witness in a death
penalty case, especially a witness like her, Judy could be
the bomb that destroy you. It could be the landmine
that blows the case up. So every question had to
(35:34):
be so measured. But I asked her, if that is
Randall's DNA in Kathy's vaginal canal, how do you think
it got there, it's an objectionable question, but the prosecution
didn't object because clearly they thought that she would either
(35:55):
say I have no idea, but her answer was if
that was Randall's DNA, and it had to have come
from me in that standing room only courtroom and you
could hear a pin drop.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
So the jury now has heard her try to walk
back her explanation of how she could have gotten into
the house, because, of course, one of the things that
the prosecution theory hinged on was the idea that there
was no break in. There was no signs of breaking
and entering, so it must have been somebody logically who
knew Kathy and was admitted into the house. But now
(36:44):
that the key and the location of the key was
known to Judy and that was out in the open,
that was one thing. And now, of course her making
this unbelievable admission in open court is a huge moment.
But even still, the jury goes to deliberate Randall, what
did you think they were gone for close to three
(37:06):
full days. Did you allow yourself to hope that they
would come back with a not growthy verdict or were
you what were you thinking?
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Well, I don't think I slipped any here those three days,
going back and forth to the jail, which was to
cross the street in the courthouse, but I had.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Hope and Richard. So the jury's out two and a
half days and the judge is basically at his wits end,
I would say, and is on the verge of declaring
a mistrial, which would have been devastating. Did you talk
about this in the book as well? How the judge
called you and the prosecution team into his chambers, I
(37:54):
guess right for a conference.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
He did, and he was very clear. He said, gentlemen,
I'm going to declara mistrial. I don't believe in forcing
drawers to give up o their feelings and beliefs. And
I tried to talk him out of it, and he went, no,
I've made up my mind. And this is a judge
that when he makes up his mind, he does. As
(38:17):
we filed out into the courtroom, I was the last
one other than he was behind me. As we began
to enter the courtroom, I turned around, I looked at
him right in the eyes, and I went, judge just
asked the jurors if they think they can come to
a verdict. He didn't say anything. We sat down, he
(38:40):
faced the jury. He said, ladies and gentlemen, I have
no choice but two. And then he paused just for
a second, and he turned to his left and looked
me right in the eye, and we locked. And then
he turned back around to the jury and he did
a one eighty. He said, is there anyone on the
(39:02):
jury that believes that you could come to a unanimous verdict?
And two or three people nodded their heads and said yes.
I was stunned or a reversal. The jury went back
to deliberate. The courthouse continued to be totally packed, standing
(39:25):
room only, and people were basically in prayer. And forty
five minutes later they came out and it was not guilty.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Now, I'm not gonna lie. I cried this morning when
I read the book and I knew the story, I'd
read it before. Randy, what was that moment like when
you were vindicated and you were on the verge of
being returned to your family, to your community, your good
name was given back to you. I can't imagine. Can
(39:58):
please explain?
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Well, I don't know if I can, But like I
had been held underwater to the point of drownding, I
had to come up and I'm at the point where
I'm either going to drowned or not, and then the
not guilty bird it just pulls me up into the air.
(40:22):
I can breathe again, and I'm going to live. It
was just total jubilation.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
And you hadn't really slept or eating in a few days,
as you said, so.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
The judge, I remember Judd saying, and you're free to go,
mister Paget and Jaylor came over to take me back
to the jail, would have someone to get my stuff,
and I going back to jail and could keep my stuff,
you know. And then my son, who had grown and
got his driver's license, got to drive his daddy home.
(41:00):
Was just wonderful, wonderful, Richard, What about you?
Speaker 4 (41:05):
It was a feeling of elation that it's really hard
to imagine unless you have heard not guilties on death
fumily cases before. This being a retrial made it all
that much more unimaginable.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
No, you have the best job in the world, at
least on days like that. You do. Now, before we
go to the closing of the show, talk about the
juror who approached you on your way out of the courtroom.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Richard.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Probably the credit for the jury's correct not guilty verdict,
A lot of it goes to her at.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
The end of the day.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
That's exactly right what happens in these trials. Having tried
hundreds myself, you often misread drawers. We thought that the
older lady and a younger lady, the one you're talking of,
probably in her forties, we thought that they hated us,
(42:06):
But it was the opposite. The initial vote was eight
to four for guilty, we later learned. And when we
walked out of the courtroom towards our car, the one
you allude to, the female, the forty year old forty
something you old, walked up to me and said, mister Jaffie,
can have a word with you? And I said, sure,
(42:28):
she said, and she just looked at me right in
the eye, was like a foot from her, and she said,
you know, only a woman would know you can't have
sex in that position. So I climbed on the table
and put my right leg up and my left leg down,
(42:50):
and I made it clear to the mostly male jury
that Randall Paget could not have had sex with Cas
in that position, and that flipped other jurors and ultimately
All twelve found Randall not guilty. The last thing she
said to me was you tell Randal Paga to stay
(43:12):
away from Judy Smith and go spend time with his kids.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
And then we walked away.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
And the truth is that Randall hadn't seen Judy since
the night at the police station when they arrived back
from Florida, and he of course hasn't since.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Do you know what became of Judy Smith after all
these years?
Speaker 2 (43:38):
I don't know, Richard.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Is it strange to you that they never prosecuted her?
Speaker 4 (43:44):
It's not strange because the prosecution had already publicly made
it clear that they didn't think she was involved at
all and knew nothing. So the chances of them getting
a conviction while it existed weren't really high. And I
think the prosecution was just done with that case. They
(44:04):
had pretty much been embarrassed enough, I guess.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
And Randall before I keep saying this, but one last
question before we get to the wrap up, how are
your kids doing? These poor children had to live through
a nightmare that is unimaginable, you know, losing their mom
and then almost losing their dad, losing their dad for
six years. How are they doing now?
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Well, they're doing good, and I've got three granddaughters now
from them. My son has two little red headed girls.
He lives in Nashville and he's an architect. My daughter
lives in Alabama and one time was president of the
company she worked for. She's since moved to a different
(44:56):
place of than go woman, and she has one little girl.
I'm so proud of them and love them.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
The basis, well, that's great, and I wish them all
the blessings in the world because they deserve. As to you,
everything good. So now we come to the wrap up
of our show, which is a segment that is my
favorite part call closing Arguments, where I first of all,
thank both of you, Richard Jaffe, criminal defense lawyer, author
(45:29):
and amazing advocate, Thank you for being here, and of
course Randall, thank you Randall Paget for sharing your story
so eloquently and beautifully. And this part of the show
is where I get to kick back in my chair,
switch off my microphone, and let you just share any
other thoughts that you may want to share with our audience. Randall,
(45:51):
we're going to save you for last. If that's okay, Richard,
You're first.
Speaker 4 (45:55):
It has been a true privilege, honor, and joy to
get to know and represent Randall Paget and become close
with he and his now wife, Brenda Massenguel of fifteen years.
This is the kind of case where reality really trump's fiction,
(46:21):
because had it not been for the failure to disclose
the exculpatory conflicting information of blood typing, Randall would never
have got a chance for a new trial. And it
amazes me that the prosecution hid that until it was
(46:42):
too late. The only other thing I would say would
be that law enforcement often excludes a wider investigation once
they focus on one suspect, and when that happens, the
wrong person can easily be convicted. And a really thorough
(47:06):
investigation would have revealed the truth that Randall was innocent.
And I thank God that Randall is here with us
to share his story. He is a true salt of
the earth human being.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Randall. I would just like to say, I think mister
Richard Jeffy is the greatest attorney in the world. He
believed in me, He believed the truth. I want to
thank Richard. I will love you Richard very much. One
thing about me, I guess I was naive about the
(47:51):
justice system in America. I had heard of people getting
wrongfully convicted. I didn't pay much attention to it, but
but I thought, you know, when you go to trial
in the United States, the foremost thing in the court's
mind is supposed to be the truth. But I don't
(48:11):
think it works that way. I think if a piece
of truth comes up, that's bad for whichever side. I
think it gets twisted around or or try to cover
it up or something. And I guess for people listening
to this, if you're ever sitting on a jury, I
(48:32):
would ask that you don't just believe because a defendant
has been accused of something that he probably did something
or he wouldn't be there. And I would ask that
you would make the prosecution show you some concrete proof
to back up what they're saying. If I got just
(48:55):
one other minute, I'd like to talk about my friend
and now wife, Brenda. When I was in prison, she
was so nice to me. She was trying to raise
money for me and writing legal aid places. I think
she wrote the governor and I don't know who all.
I thought, well, why is this woman being so nice
(49:15):
to me? I thought she's a spy for the prosecution,
because I was pretty sure I was going to get
a retrial because prosecution had withheld that exculpatory evidence. And
I thought, yeah, they know it's going to be a retrial.
And she's a spy, and she kept wanting to come
and visit me, and I wouldn't let her. I thought,
(49:36):
if I don't let her come down here, she can't
say I said something. But if I do let her come,
she can go back and say Randal said this. Randal
said that I wouldn't let her come. And a couple
of years, all my letters dwindled away except hers, and
so finally, through her letters, got to trust and she
(50:02):
did not be a spy but a great hey yep,
And after I got out, we've married about five years later.
But he's the most wonderful person.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud
donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll
join me in supporting this very important 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 Wartis.
(50:42):
The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
Wrongful Conviction podcast.
Speaker 1 (50:53):
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
I hope you may the land of your
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Lauren Bright Pacheco
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Jason Flom
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