December 15, 2021 • 38 mins
In just the first month of 1984, five women from the ages of 18 to 20 were sexually assaulted in East Richmond, Virginia. One victim saw an 18 year old named Thomas Haynesworth while he was walking to his local grocery store and called the police naming him as her attacker. Thomas was eventually convicted for three of the sexual assault incidents and sentenced to a total of 74 years in prison. Even though the assumed perpetrator was in custody, the rapes continued throughout East Richmond. Leon Davis, Thomas’s neighbor, was eventually arrested and convicted for a dozen incidents over the remainder of 1984. DNA testing ultimately confirmed that Leon was responsible for the crimes for which Thomas was convicted, and Thomas was finally exonerated in 2011 after spending 27 years in prison.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Beginning on January third, nineteen eighty four, and stretching over
the next five weeks, five women were victims of some
degree of sexual assault in East Richmond, Virginia. Due to
the location, nature of the attacks and similar descriptions of
the assailant, police believed that there was a single attacker.
On February fifth, nine eight four, eighteen year old Thomas
(00:22):
Haynesworth was misidentified by one of the victims and arrested.
All five victims eventually echoed the misidentification. Two of the
attacks included biological evidence, but in nineteen eighty four, with
no DNA testing available, prology could only determine that Thomas's
blood type matched that of the attacker. After one of
the charges was dropped, he was tried four separate times,
(00:45):
convicted in three cases, and sentenced to seventy four years.
Although Thomas was in custody, the assaults continued through December
of nineteen eighty four, concluding with the arrest of Leon Davis,
a neighbor of Thomas's. According to both men, they wrongly
resembled one another. Despite their similar appearances and the continued attacks.
(01:05):
Authorities maintained that both men were guilty. Finally, in two
thousand five, DNA testing excluded Thomas from his only conviction
in which there was biological evidence, simultaneously inculpating le On Davis.
After an investigation, the prosecutors joined Thomas and the mid
Atlantic Innocence Project, laying responsibility for all of the attacks
(01:26):
on Mr Davis. Yet, even without opposition, Thomas's case just
barely succeeded in the Court of Appeals, but nevertheless he
was finally exonerated after twenty seven years. This is wrongful conviction.
(01:55):
Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your host, Jason Flaman.
I want to start by saying this episode demonstrates a
classic example of why eyewitness identification is so terribly unreliable
and why we must keep working to institute practices that
safeguard us against the problems with cross racial misidentification as
(02:18):
happened in this case, keeping an innocent man in prison
for twenty seven years. And that man is our guest today,
Thomas Haynesworth. Thomas, I'm so happy to have you here,
even though I hate the reason why you're here, but
thank you for taking the time to be with us
on the show today and with Thomas, as somebody who
(02:39):
are avid listeners will recognize, Sean Arburst is the She's
sort of the straw that stirs the drink at the
mid Atlantic Innocence Project. She is an attorney, she's an advocate,
she's a fighter, and she's my friend. And I'm super
glad to have you here as well, Sean. So welcome
back to rawfle Conviction. Thank you, Jason script to be here,
(03:00):
and it is always greing to be with Thomas. So, Thomas,
take us back, if you would. What was your life
like growing up? Normal schadow? Grew up with three sisters
and a younger brother, you know, into sports and some music,
much child and you grew up in Richmond, Virginia? Is
that right? Right? Which? Vir right? So it sounds about
(03:23):
like what the childhood is more or less I want
to say, supposed to be like, but pretty much sports music.
You know. I'm sure you had your ups and downs
like any other teenager. But a series of terrible, terrible
crimes sort of rock the city of Richmond at this time.
And Sean, can you describe to us what happened? So
the crimes Thomas initially got caught up in were a
(03:46):
group of five crimes between January three and February one night,
and they were all rapes or sexual assaults in the
tiny corner of Richmond that's also right on the border
of Henrico County. It was four crimes in Richmond, one
in Henrico County. And these are eerily similar crimes. They
(04:06):
happened at the same time of day, all white victims.
They all describe I mean, it's a fairly generic description
because it's white victims describing a black perpetrator. But they
all describe someone who looks fairly similar, someone who typically
approaches with a knife, who has a series of kind
(04:27):
of odd behaviors, says a bunch of odd things. So
this sort of prototypical One of these crimes was either
early in the morning or right around dusk. Victim would
be approached by a perpetrator outside on the street, and
the perpetrator would take the victim to various locations and
(04:48):
commit different types of sexual assault, so sometimes vaginal rape,
sometimes oral sodomy, sometimes adal sodomy, and would make the
victims kind of pretend to be his girlfriend as they
were walking around. And when you're looking at a pattern
like this, obviously not every crime fits precisely into the
pattern some get interrupted. You know, in this case, the
(05:11):
attacker was pretty easily scared away. This is part of
how he avoided being caught for so long. But it's
that same basic arc. And these are terrifying crimes. And
the first case the one that said all of this
in motion. I believe it was not only the crime
itself that was so jarring, but also the location that
(05:32):
it occurred in that drew the story to the forefront.
So tell us what happened there. The first case took
place on January three, and the victim in that case
went to her work at a church preschool and she
was waiting for students to come in for the day
and was very quickly accosted by a rapist who held
(05:53):
her at knife point, raped her, and ran away as
the first parents started coming in for the day. And so,
you know, if you can imagine that a woman who
she's in her late teens, early twenties, she is in
a church, she is waiting for three year olds to
come in and is dealing with the fact that she's
(06:13):
just been raped. So right off the bat, these crimes
are really horrific and the kind of crime that makes
you think you're not safe anywhere, right, And I think
it's that mentality that really started making these crimes particularly
high profile in Richmond. And the second crime took place
(06:33):
just a few weeks after the first, on January one,
and it took place in a grocery store. Again, I
think it added to the horror that these assaults were
happening in places that we normally think of as being
safe spaces, right A nursery school, a grocery store. And
they continued on with alarming regularity because then the time
(06:54):
between the crimes started shrinking. So we're talking about on
January and so, now only six days after the second attack,
a man with a knife approached a woman outside of
her home and demanded money and sex. She oh luckily
went inside and slammed the door shut and locked it
and called the police, so she escaped. That on January
(07:16):
thirt so, just three days later, an eighteen year old
woman was abducted, raped, and sodomized at gun point in
Henrico County, just a few blocks from the other attacks.
And then on February onet, so again the windows are
just shrinking faster and faster, a ninety year old woman
was abducted at gunpoint outside her East Richmond home. The
(07:36):
gunman forced her to go inside the house, but he
fled when the family dog began barking at him. And wow,
I mean what a close call that was. So all
of these incidents happened within a one mile radius. This
guy was almost begging to be caught, but he continued
getting away with it. Now, because of the locations of
the attacks, that description of the attacker, and the nature
(07:57):
of the assault, everyone was pretty much on the same
page that it was one person that was responsible, right,
But what happens in these cases that we see again
and again is that there was a misidentification which set
this awful chain of events in motion. Take us through that, Sean,
if you don't mind. Absolutely. So, Thomas was walk into
(08:20):
the store to get sweet potatoes for his mom and
one of the victims saw him and said, that's my rapest.
She called police. Police came, picked him up, arrested him,
and then four more victims identified him as the perpetrator,
and that was it. Now, these are all cross racial
eyewitness identifications, and that comes with its own problems already,
(08:45):
And we find out later that the actual perpetrator did
in fact resemble Thomas as well, just adding to the
confusion and making it even harder for the victims to
make the correct idea. But before we even get into that, Sean,
can you tell us a bit about cross racial idea
edification in general. So what we know, and we know
this based on now decades of social science research, is
(09:08):
that people are not good at identifying people of different races.
We also know that white people are particularly bad at
identifying people of different races, particularly when those people are
African American. So what we have seen over and over
and over again is that the likelihood of an error
(09:30):
by an eye witness is just magnified when it is
a cross racial identification, that is, a white person identifying
a black person. If you look at the actual percentage
of black on white rapes in the country, it is
infinitesimally small. If you look at the percentage of DNA
(09:51):
exonerations in rinked cases that are black on white rape,
it is extraordinarily large. And just those two numbers can
tell you all you need to know about the enhanced
risk of air when you have a black and white idea. Yeah,
and it fits into the stereotype, this sort of racist
(10:11):
mythology that has been a part of unfortunately, our culture
and our judicial system for as long as we've had one.
And then you can't look at the cross racial nature
of these crimes and not talk about where you are
and when you're there. So you're in Richmond, which is
the capital of the Confederacy, and it's and you cannot
(10:33):
divorce these cases from that time period and that place either. Now, Thomas,
tell us what happened when they arrested you and what
was going through your mind? Lease stop me in the morning,
and they said it later. She picked you out and
she can dinnify you. That's what I was going. I
was we're going to the store. He said, what he
used to do right here, she could denify the person.
(10:55):
I said, yeah, I ain't gonna question. I'm not gonna
So you know what, they want to get the female
the big border back and she licked at me like
she wan't too shore. And then pol sees the tour
and she looked in me again like she want to
shoot about the person. And then they did it for
the third time. They talked to it. In the third time,
she just put her hands up and then he came
in said he was unrest on the rest for what
(11:17):
you put the handcuffs of me and then you put
me in back in your control call and he took
me to the which is said the jail, and I
got Daniel. They're when it came to reality to me
what was going on the child will rape actually been.
We're going to enter I know what did you know?
(11:43):
This episode is underwritten by a i G, a leading
global insurance company, and by Accenture, a global professional services
company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Working
to reform the criminal justice system is a key pillar
of the ai G pro Bono program, which provides legal
services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals
(12:05):
most in need as part of Accenture's commitment to racial
and civil justice. Accenture's Legal Access Program provides pro bono
legal services in partnership with more than forty organizations, bringing
meaningful change to people and communities worldwide. Okay, so the
(12:27):
initial identification, at least from your perspective, looked shaky. Hey,
the victims seemed to go back and forth a few
times until throwing her hands up in the air. Then
you're arrested, and eventually all five victims misidentified you as
the attacker, all five dealing with the cross racial nature
of this idea as well as the fact that you
(12:49):
actually did resemble the attackers. So you're charged with rape,
along with a slew of other charges that came with
each incident, talking about her abduction, breaking and entering, robbery,
and then you go to trial. One of ali they
came with suggesting, you know, you've got these serious childs,
and I think it'd be best you way plead you
have to, you know, get a license to get fastbo role.
(13:09):
The someone that the line you cant go these serious chibs,
You're going to get a license. And I said, now,
I'm not gonna pleagu get nothing to do. I said,
I'd rather go to trial and I could be to
con beleet the license. I deal with it, but I'm
never getting my right up to being innocent though. So
you've got your own defense team trying to push you
to admit guilt, which is not, unfortunately, exactly uncommon. Obviously
(13:31):
some people are actually guilty while others plead guilty just
because it's a smarter decision to do so. I mean,
based with the choice of a lenient sentence or the
unknown at trial, right, especially when life or even death
sentences are you know, dangling over your head. I mean,
with that at play, it's no wonder that convictions are
(13:52):
obtained through guilty pleas at a rate of close to
nine eight percent, right over ninety seven percent of melody
convictions in the United States, and results of guilty. Please,
it's a very understandable choice to make. But when given
that choice, Thomas, you held firm in your innocence. I mean,
that's a courageous and principle stand to take. Now, Okay,
(14:14):
So we go to the trial rights or should I
say the trials, because there were four separate trials. The
charges in the January seven incident where the attacker approached
with a knife and the victim fled to her house,
those charges were dropped. So for the four trials, though,
the prosecution relied on the victims misidentifications of Thomas. Now,
in two of the four cases there was some biological evidence,
(14:36):
But in the early eighties there was no DNA testing,
only sorology. Right. Yeah, what you have in terms of
physical evidence in the nineteen eighties is you can test
seamen for blood type, and you also can test for
something that's known as secretor status. If I am a secretor,
I'm somebody who's blood type shows up in my other
(14:57):
bodily fluids. So like if I spit on a table,
you can figure out my blood type from the spit.
A non secretor is somebody whose blood type isn't at
the spit. So they were in you know, at least
a couple of Thomas's cases able to do that very
limited amount of science, but that's science. It could give
you percentages, but the percentages were pretty big, right, So
(15:18):
think about all the people in the world who have
type of blood. Well, that's what you can really narrow
down to. So you know, Thomas was in that case
in the population of people who could have committed the crime.
But that's a really big population to people, right, So
it really doesn't do a great job of proving anything
at all. Prology is actually really better at ruling a
(15:42):
suspect out rather than in. And there's also a moment
in one of the trials where Thomas's height should have
ruled him completely out. So in the case in Henriko County,
the victim had sworn and believed correctly. It turns out
that her rapist was taller than her. She described the
(16:03):
rapist as being about five ten. Thomas is five six.
So Thomas's lawyer actually had the two of them stand
next to each other in that trial to demonstrate that
Thomas is actually shorter than this victim. But this is
part of why I witness testimony is so powerful, right,
but still didn't shake her confidence that Thomas was the perpetrator.
She was still sure that Thomas did it. And so
(16:27):
there's not much a defense lawyer could do in the
face of that kind of testimony. So the charges had
been dropped in the January incident, but you still had
to sit through similar proceedings four times over where the
facts of four very real, unspeakably horrible assaults were presented,
but along with no meaningful physical evidence to implicate you,
(16:50):
even the fact that you didn't match the January thirty
victims description of the assailant's height. And now the jury
goes out four times on you, and I've got to
imagine that the first time was probably the hardest pill
to swallow. Right. The January third break in and rape
at the nursery school, how long did that particular trial.
Last I'm in the first drift the last I think
(17:12):
a day and a half the jew can that come
to a verdict and the jealous in the back home
overnight and told them to think about it, and he
came back the next day. I think about three are
they deliberated, and they came back for to get the virgin.
And I would devastate in my family devastated because the
three charges at the beginning with rate breaking the entrant
(17:32):
and Robert Lordy got them to do. Mr Robert child
so left the jew only with two charges and rate
and bringing the entrant. They came back. Their family get
to the rate, but their family not get to breaking
into the entrance. The preparatory had to break into the
place to rape the person. So I would wonder how
you can family get to one and not the other.
And I noticed about the jel and all my trials.
(17:53):
Every time their family get to they give me the
lowest sentence on each charges, the care fading life, the
five years. If you get twenty to life, they give
me twenty years. Because they had no sustained everden that
placed me at the cramp scene. The only thing to
hey is here words and it's not worried. So now
your since ten years, and I mean this would seem
to be the worst day in anybody's life, but you
(18:16):
have to still stay on trial in these other cases.
Then you've got thirty six years for January. Then you
were acquitted for the January twenty one incident, and finally
wrongfully convicted again for the February first incident and sentenced
to another twenty eight years. I mean, it's hard to
even read this stuff, and you lived it, and thus
begins your saga of being a number instead of a name.
(18:39):
And I got into the penitential. Nothing was that I'm
not gonna see him later. And to take this, I'm
not gonna say here in a b a parler, this
corrupt system. I'm not gonna sit here they accepting seven
for my family in my life, you know, at the
age of eighteen, I'm not gonna see, you know, waste
all my life and penetendence. So I had to go
that I'm going right to the end. I had things
I know how to do. When I first added to
(19:00):
the system. Everything I asked with the Low Library was
and I signed up for that. Then I signed up
for the g d class and I signed up for college.
So my thing was it, you know, I will prove
the people wrong. Now I'm in the place that I
had to grew up overnight. I had to become a
man over night. It took me three years just to
open up to people. I did nothing for three years
this working when the school, I had to learn quick
(19:21):
and be quick on my feet of thinking all the time.
And you know, I had a couple of older guys
guide me and tell me, the young blood signed for school,
take all the tradees and take opportunity you can get.
Some of the guys are statement the right way, and
it gave me good advice, and I taking each to that. Well,
it sounds like there were some good people in there
who were mentors to you. So I guess there was
a little bit of light in this miserable, dark tunnel
(19:45):
that you were in. And now we've got to turn
our attention to a very important part of this terrible story,
which is that while you were incarcerated, when the rapes
should have stopped, they didn't stop at all. They actually increased.
They continued throughout the East Richmond area, where another at
least ten women reported being attacked by a young African
(20:08):
American man who actually asked his victims to call the
police and refer to him as the quote black ninja. Now,
on December four to Richmond residents saw a man following
a woman down the street. He was arrested. This was
a guy named Leon Davis. Now this is crazy, right.
So Leon was actually your neighbor, Thomas, and you saw
(20:29):
him on January right after that incident. But it didn't
click for you, right, The dots didn't connect until you
were hearing the victims story and the witnesses at your
own preliminary hearing for that incident. Right, what was on
I was my birthday and I came outside of the
front one of my friends we do it was on
(20:51):
the front talk and Leon Davis came from the side.
How is he the leopard? And I looked at him
and say what do you And he said I would
come the ndoubted him. That's with the white girls then
there and so the man you know you're gonna put
me down there? He said, yeah, he said, he chased
me and I failed and hit my leg. At the time,
I had on one interacted with him. So then when
(21:12):
my priminal here and when the big to see what happened?
Has she told her friends and he chased them. I
was saying myself, wow, there was the date on my
these birthday party. I was at home new day and
I told my lawyer, I said, look at this guy
named Leon lit in the street from it. I think
he has something to do with it. And I told
him to take the heart also lead to take them
my case. But you know, my worried fell of death.
(21:32):
Yet they ain't people, no man, and if only they
would have who knows how many of these other crimes
could have been prevented. Sean tell us about this Leon
Davis guy and how they managed to miss what should
have been obvious signs. So, in the opinion of the
Richmond Police Department and the Hanreca Police Department, the crimes
(21:54):
that Thomas was convicted of, those types of crimes stopped
when Thomas was arrested, and there was a break in
crimes like this until April, and that is when Leon Davis,
according to the original government narrative, began his crime spree.
I think what the police missed, of course, is that
(22:15):
he just never stopped his crime spree, but he was
committing crimes that looked an awful lot like, specifically like
the last crime Thomas was convicted of, which is the
one in Henryko County where he made the woman walk
around and pretend she was his girlfriend, And so he
was able to keep committing these crimes in an incredibly
brazen way until his arrest in December. One of the
(22:40):
most interesting stories I think in this case is what
I didn't believe when Thomas told me at first. He
told me that when Hen Leon were locked up together,
Leon approached him in the Richmond City jail and said, Hey,
you know we kind of look alike. I've got a
hearing coming up in my case. Would you Thomas mind
standing in for me Leah at defense table to see
(23:02):
if we can confuse the victim, to see if the
victim would identify you instead of me. And I thought
Thomas had to be making that up because it's too
crazy to be true, but I actually confirmed it. So
this is something Leon knew, It's something Thomas knew. And
even though it didn't appear that the police were putting
(23:23):
two and two together, there was one interrogation record of
Leon Davis where he was asked if he knew Thomas,
but I think for a lot of the police officers
at the time, there's that ongoing stereotype about black men
being sexual predators, and so I think it was probably
quite conceivable to the police department at the time that
(23:46):
there could just be two people who were black men
going around and doing the same thing. I mean, it's
a crazy coincidence. And you've mentioned earlier, Sean, about the
fact that these crimes are exceedingly rare, in fact, that
that stereotype is based on nothing. Yeah, I mean the
lone black beat up in Thomas's neighborhood. He apparently told
(24:06):
detectives at the time like you've got the wrong kid,
like this just isn't him, but detectives didn't buy it.
Even the juries struggled in this case. The January third
rape that went to trial first was supposed to be
the strongest case, but as you heard Thomas say, the
jury really struggled to reach a verdict and that first
(24:26):
case sentence Thomas to ten years, and that was supposed
to be the strong case. So even at the time,
there should have been warning signs that this wasn't right
and someone should have put two and two together, but
they didn't. Okay, so let's get to the good part.
(24:59):
Because Thomas's case, just as his trials were particularly screwy,
the process of getting him out took some twists and
turns that we don't often see. All Right, Thomas's case
first came to our attention because he wrote to us,
but the context in which he wrote to us was
a little bit different. There had been several people at
(25:21):
that point who had been exonerated based on DNA tests
done on evidence like little tiny clippings of evidence, clippings
of Q tips, clippings of underwear clothing that had been
saved by a particular analyst at Virginia's Department of Forensic Science.
After a few of those exonerations, then Virginia Governor Mark
(25:45):
Warner ordered the State Crime Lab to do DNA testing
in every single case between nineteen seventy three and nineteen
eighty nine where there was physical evidence saved in these files.
The Lab sent out of the letters to people who
had been convicted and who now had DNA testing happening
in their cases, And I was listed as the contact
(26:07):
person in those letters. So he already wrote to me
as a potential d N a case. But then I
got a call from a Richmond Times Dispatch reporter named
Frank Greene, who said, there's a case you gotta jump on.
It's this guy, Thomas Hainsworth. I covered his trial. I
also covered the trial of the guy who did it.
Frank had gotten ahold of the DNA reports in the case,
(26:31):
and it was one of the three cases where Thomas
had been convicted. The DNA excluded Thomas as the perpetrator
and linked to Leon Davis as the perpetrator. And this
was great news for Thomas. But the problem was that
we only had DNA and one of the three cases
where Thomas was convicted. What we did have was potential
(26:53):
DNA in the case where Thomas had been acquitted. So
we worked with a Richmond Commonwealth's attorney to get that
evidence tested and once again it cleared Thomas and linked
to Leon Davis. Wow. And it would seem like this
is where things should have just opened up for Thomas,
(27:13):
that he should have been right on his way out
of there, right, But unfortunately that's just not the way
that played out. So at that point, what we had
was five rapes and sexual assaults in a five week
period that everyone thought were committed by the same person,
and we know concretely that two were committed by Leon Davis.
(27:34):
For most people, logically, that gets you to a place
where you say, well, Leon Davis did the rest of
these crimes, right, everyone thought they were the same person.
But that kind of deduction isn't evidence, right. So, even
though at that point the Richmond Commonwealth Attorney thought Thomas
was innocent, the Virginia Attorney General, Hank Chinelli, very right
(27:54):
wing conservative, was on the way to thinking Thomas was innocent.
You can't prove anything in court that way. What you
have to do is go to the Virginia Court of
Appeals and file something very legal sounding called a writ
of actual innocence, and you have to have proof. So
we did a couple of different things to try to
(28:16):
get us there. Thomas took polygraph tests, one for the
Richmond crimes that he was convicted of and one for
the Henrico County crime he was convicted of. Passed both
with flying colors. Of course, we don't necessarily believe too
much in the reliability of polygraph tests, but it was
something that the prosecutors could use to sort of justify
(28:40):
why they believed in Thomas's innocence, and then what we
had was the similarities between the crimes. So we worked
with the Attorney General's Office and the Commonwealth Attorney to
meticulously document all of the similarities between the crimes that
we new Leon Davis had committed and the remaining convictions
(29:03):
on Thomas's record, and using all of that, we filed
a rid of actual innocence in the Court of Appeals
and I think February of twenty eleven, so Thomas was
still in prison, we were able to get him paroled
and released unfortunately as a sex offender. While the case
(29:25):
was pending, we had an oral argument in March of eleven,
and again there was no one opposing Thomas's exoneration except
the court. That oral argument did not go well. It
was pretty clear that the court just didn't believe we
had met the burden we were supposed to meet in
the case. In the summer of two thousand eleven, the
(29:47):
Court of Appeals came back to us and said, all
of the judges on the court want to sit for
another oral argument in this case. And at the time,
in order to win a rid of actual innocence you
had to prove by clear and convincing evidence that no
rational Trier effect could find proof of guilt beyond a
(30:09):
reasonable doubt. And that is to anyone normal out there,
that just sounds like a bunch of legal, legal, legal boring.
It's about as highest standard as you can have. So
we did that oral argument. Thankfully, six of the ten
judges ultimately agreed that Thomas deserved to have his convictions
overturned and to be exonerated. So we won by six
(30:33):
to four. But to put that in perspective, we only
won by one vote in a case where the Attorney
General's office agreed with us, which is pretty extraordinary terrifying, actually,
I mean it's absolutely terrifying. Yeah, I mean you almost lost.
In other words, like with overwhelming evidence of innocence, the
(30:56):
Attorney general, prosecutors everybody going, hey, guess what, this was
a mistake here, a terrible mistake. This guy is innocent,
and yet you won by one vote. I mean, this
is this is what happens when you have bad laws.
So many exhonerations depend on just having a decent person
(31:18):
on the other side who's gonna wink and nod when
the bad laws in front of them, And that's not
what happens in Virginia. Thinking and nodding doesn't work, so
you're stuck with the bad law. So Thomas, from your perspective,
finally you've got a fantastic team and all the things
are lining up. Everybody's starting to acknowledge what you've been
(31:38):
saying all along, that you're innocent. But you're finally freed
with all these conditions. You got to wear an ankle monitor,
you're on the sex offender registry. What was it like
to walk out into the light, even with all those
sort of caveats and restrictions, It was flushed with the
I mean, I would happy to be out, just come home.
(32:00):
I wanted this because I'll put a chinch and you
come home and be back with your family. When I
first came home, I had to meet with one of
my probation office. I think Sean was with me. I
knew that I'm a high condition because I was still,
you know, arranging a sex offender. I didn't have a
problem with that. You know, I'm gonna apply to the
law and I'm gonna be obedient to the law when
I gotta do to maintain my freedom. But when she
(32:20):
told me that, because I choose to dig something at it.
I had to bring in person there and be for
she can meet them and she could tell them what
I'm locked down for. You know why my cues are.
And I looked at Sean, and that's sod, Sean. I
had more freedom and writing prison I have on the street.
It was a little bit hard to getting adjested to
because really you're home, you got all the condition still
(32:41):
leave as a sex offender and still convicted feathering. You
still ain't really free from me. I couldn't go no where.
I had to be in the house by five o'clock.
I couldn't go out the house after that. I could
leave one of the feet for my house. I had
his mom's, I had the wood rund my leg, and
I had this big video. I had to put him
out pocket with the contraction and it was frustrating, and
I told Sean on we got to get this over.
(33:01):
I'm tired in the rest of six of fandom signing,
you know, I just wanted this over and done. Now
we get to the best part, which is that in
two thousand eleven, ten years ago, when you were freed
and then finally you were exonerated formally exonerated, cut that ankle,
bracelet off, and Governor Bob McDonald signed legislation which provided
(33:25):
you with compensation as well, which is unfortunately most exonaries
never get compensation. But I'm really glad that you did.
It wasn't nearly enough, but at least it gave you
a chance to get started, I would say, with a
new life. So what was it like when you finally
were vindicated. It's something that I've tried to do since
(33:46):
the big one, just to prove my innocenceive I mean, Sean,
and you know they did outstand the job. I couldn't
ask for nothing, that I mean, just being literated, being
back and get me claims over my back, get my
name stored, that be the person that you know, you
all not be who they want you to be, the
bigest monster that to treated me to be. That's all
(34:07):
I want, you know. Once I got my name clear,
none of the matter. You know, days she called me
and say you want six or four? I didn't care,
like she said, were one by one vote. And I
did a function one time and one of the judges
who went against me, he kept there, spoke and he
got them. He looked at me sir Thomas, I'm sorry,
I got a wrong. I want to get you. I
told him, Hey, I know who want to go against you.
(34:28):
What happened happening, and I'm free. That's all that matters.
That call is one of the best calls I've ever
gotten to make. So now we turned to my favorite
part of the show, which is called closing arguments, and
closing arguments as part of the show where I first
of all thank both of you again, Sean Armbers from
the mid Atlantic Innocence Project and Thomas Haynesworth for sharing
(34:50):
your incredible stories here today and just for being who
you are in the world, because I can't even describe
how much respect I have for each of you for
the for reasons. And with that, here's how closing arguments works.
I'm going to turn off my microphone, kick back in
my chair and leave my headphones on, probably close my eyes,
and just listen to whatever else you want to share
(35:12):
with our audience. Let's start with you Sean and save
the man Thomas Haynesworth for the final closing argument. So
what I want to say is that sometimes people listen
to these stories and hear them as proof that the
system works. They hear them as proof that well, we
got it wrong, but eventually we did get it right.
(35:34):
And in every single one of these cases that I
have worked on, every exoneration I've seen has been an
example of the system actually not working the way it
was intended to work. Innocent people getting out is the
opposite of what's supposed to happen. There's an extraordinary confluence
of circumstances that has to happen to even put someone
(35:54):
in a position to be exonerated. Mary Jane Burton, the
lab technician at the Department of Front Sciences, had to
decide that she was going to be the analysts who
kept random clippings of stuff in her files. She had
to be assigned to Thomas's case. Three other people had
to be exonerated. The governor had to order testing in
(36:15):
those cases. The lab had to agree to notify people,
and that person had to be me, and Thomas had
to be Thomas. All of those things had to happen
just to put Thomas in a position to even prove
his innocence, and then from there. The scariest thing to
me about Thomas's case is that the standard to actually
(36:35):
win was so high that the core wasn't necessarily long
that we should lose. That's how high it was, even
in a case where innocences as obvious as Thomas's and
we won anyway. And so his freedom isn't the result
of anything going the way it was supposed to. It
was really the result of everything going the opposite of
(36:56):
the way it's designed to work. So for all of
you out here who are taking the time to learn
about this issue, which is super important and one of
the many reasons why I think Jason is a national treasure,
try to remember that changing that system is absolutely crucial
if we really are going to try to protect people
(37:19):
who get convicted of things they didn't do. Thomas on you, Yeah,
I just want to say to the inn surpriseect Sean,
I should appreciate her. What did y'all do? If you
new feeling and all of them I can speak you
have more about your project. I just want to say
to people wherever you're going to you feel you've been wrong,
convicted wrong, because don't give up. Stand on your grand
(37:40):
You know, if you don't give up, you will overcome.
If you don't, anybody who'll be wrong with a big
speak of for them I'm the best life. Things ain't
turning what I want there, but they ain't turn out
better for me, and I just want you to keep
dis tray, don't give your claim, but to be right,
stand on your innocent, and a stand up for yourself.
(38:04):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Clyburne,
and Kevin Wardis with research by Lila Robinson. The music
in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and
(38:25):
on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava
for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow
me on both TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason flam Ravul.
Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
association with Signal Company Number one
Beginning on January third, nineteen eighty four, and stretching over
the next five weeks, five women were victims of some
degree of sexual assault in East Richmond, Virginia. Due to
the location, nature of the attacks and similar descriptions of
the assailant, police believed that there was a single attacker.
On February fifth, nine eight four, eighteen year old Thomas
(00:22):
Haynesworth was misidentified by one of the victims and arrested.
All five victims eventually echoed the misidentification. Two of the
attacks included biological evidence, but in nineteen eighty four, with
no DNA testing available, prology could only determine that Thomas's
blood type matched that of the attacker. After one of
the charges was dropped, he was tried four separate times,
(00:45):
convicted in three cases, and sentenced to seventy four years.
Although Thomas was in custody, the assaults continued through December
of nineteen eighty four, concluding with the arrest of Leon Davis,
a neighbor of Thomas's. According to both men, they wrongly
resembled one another. Despite their similar appearances and the continued attacks.
(01:05):
Authorities maintained that both men were guilty. Finally, in two
thousand five, DNA testing excluded Thomas from his only conviction
in which there was biological evidence, simultaneously inculpating le On Davis.
After an investigation, the prosecutors joined Thomas and the mid
Atlantic Innocence Project, laying responsibility for all of the attacks
(01:26):
on Mr Davis. Yet, even without opposition, Thomas's case just
barely succeeded in the Court of Appeals, but nevertheless he
was finally exonerated after twenty seven years. This is wrongful conviction.
(01:55):
Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your host, Jason Flaman.
I want to start by saying this episode demonstrates a
classic example of why eyewitness identification is so terribly unreliable
and why we must keep working to institute practices that
safeguard us against the problems with cross racial misidentification as
(02:18):
happened in this case, keeping an innocent man in prison
for twenty seven years. And that man is our guest today,
Thomas Haynesworth. Thomas, I'm so happy to have you here,
even though I hate the reason why you're here, but
thank you for taking the time to be with us
on the show today and with Thomas, as somebody who
(02:39):
are avid listeners will recognize, Sean Arburst is the She's
sort of the straw that stirs the drink at the
mid Atlantic Innocence Project. She is an attorney, she's an advocate,
she's a fighter, and she's my friend. And I'm super
glad to have you here as well, Sean. So welcome
back to rawfle Conviction. Thank you, Jason script to be here,
(03:00):
and it is always greing to be with Thomas. So, Thomas,
take us back, if you would. What was your life
like growing up? Normal schadow? Grew up with three sisters
and a younger brother, you know, into sports and some music,
much child and you grew up in Richmond, Virginia? Is
that right? Right? Which? Vir right? So it sounds about
(03:23):
like what the childhood is more or less I want
to say, supposed to be like, but pretty much sports music.
You know. I'm sure you had your ups and downs
like any other teenager. But a series of terrible, terrible
crimes sort of rock the city of Richmond at this time.
And Sean, can you describe to us what happened? So
the crimes Thomas initially got caught up in were a
(03:46):
group of five crimes between January three and February one night,
and they were all rapes or sexual assaults in the
tiny corner of Richmond that's also right on the border
of Henrico County. It was four crimes in Richmond, one
in Henrico County. And these are eerily similar crimes. They
(04:06):
happened at the same time of day, all white victims.
They all describe I mean, it's a fairly generic description
because it's white victims describing a black perpetrator. But they
all describe someone who looks fairly similar, someone who typically
approaches with a knife, who has a series of kind
(04:27):
of odd behaviors, says a bunch of odd things. So
this sort of prototypical One of these crimes was either
early in the morning or right around dusk. Victim would
be approached by a perpetrator outside on the street, and
the perpetrator would take the victim to various locations and
(04:48):
commit different types of sexual assault, so sometimes vaginal rape,
sometimes oral sodomy, sometimes adal sodomy, and would make the
victims kind of pretend to be his girlfriend as they
were walking around. And when you're looking at a pattern
like this, obviously not every crime fits precisely into the
pattern some get interrupted. You know, in this case, the
(05:11):
attacker was pretty easily scared away. This is part of
how he avoided being caught for so long. But it's
that same basic arc. And these are terrifying crimes. And
the first case the one that said all of this
in motion. I believe it was not only the crime
itself that was so jarring, but also the location that
(05:32):
it occurred in that drew the story to the forefront.
So tell us what happened there. The first case took
place on January three, and the victim in that case
went to her work at a church preschool and she
was waiting for students to come in for the day
and was very quickly accosted by a rapist who held
(05:53):
her at knife point, raped her, and ran away as
the first parents started coming in for the day. And so,
you know, if you can imagine that a woman who
she's in her late teens, early twenties, she is in
a church, she is waiting for three year olds to
come in and is dealing with the fact that she's
(06:13):
just been raped. So right off the bat, these crimes
are really horrific and the kind of crime that makes
you think you're not safe anywhere, right, And I think
it's that mentality that really started making these crimes particularly
high profile in Richmond. And the second crime took place
(06:33):
just a few weeks after the first, on January one,
and it took place in a grocery store. Again, I
think it added to the horror that these assaults were
happening in places that we normally think of as being
safe spaces, right A nursery school, a grocery store. And
they continued on with alarming regularity because then the time
(06:54):
between the crimes started shrinking. So we're talking about on
January and so, now only six days after the second attack,
a man with a knife approached a woman outside of
her home and demanded money and sex. She oh luckily
went inside and slammed the door shut and locked it
and called the police, so she escaped. That on January
(07:16):
thirt so, just three days later, an eighteen year old
woman was abducted, raped, and sodomized at gun point in
Henrico County, just a few blocks from the other attacks.
And then on February onet, so again the windows are
just shrinking faster and faster, a ninety year old woman
was abducted at gunpoint outside her East Richmond home. The
(07:36):
gunman forced her to go inside the house, but he
fled when the family dog began barking at him. And wow,
I mean what a close call that was. So all
of these incidents happened within a one mile radius. This
guy was almost begging to be caught, but he continued
getting away with it. Now, because of the locations of
the attacks, that description of the attacker, and the nature
(07:57):
of the assault, everyone was pretty much on the same
page that it was one person that was responsible, right,
But what happens in these cases that we see again
and again is that there was a misidentification which set
this awful chain of events in motion. Take us through that, Sean,
if you don't mind. Absolutely. So, Thomas was walk into
(08:20):
the store to get sweet potatoes for his mom and
one of the victims saw him and said, that's my rapest.
She called police. Police came, picked him up, arrested him,
and then four more victims identified him as the perpetrator,
and that was it. Now, these are all cross racial
eyewitness identifications, and that comes with its own problems already,
(08:45):
And we find out later that the actual perpetrator did
in fact resemble Thomas as well, just adding to the
confusion and making it even harder for the victims to
make the correct idea. But before we even get into that, Sean,
can you tell us a bit about cross racial idea
edification in general. So what we know, and we know
this based on now decades of social science research, is
(09:08):
that people are not good at identifying people of different races.
We also know that white people are particularly bad at
identifying people of different races, particularly when those people are
African American. So what we have seen over and over
and over again is that the likelihood of an error
(09:30):
by an eye witness is just magnified when it is
a cross racial identification, that is, a white person identifying
a black person. If you look at the actual percentage
of black on white rapes in the country, it is
infinitesimally small. If you look at the percentage of DNA
(09:51):
exonerations in rinked cases that are black on white rape,
it is extraordinarily large. And just those two numbers can
tell you all you need to know about the enhanced
risk of air when you have a black and white idea. Yeah,
and it fits into the stereotype, this sort of racist
(10:11):
mythology that has been a part of unfortunately, our culture
and our judicial system for as long as we've had one.
And then you can't look at the cross racial nature
of these crimes and not talk about where you are
and when you're there. So you're in Richmond, which is
the capital of the Confederacy, and it's and you cannot
(10:33):
divorce these cases from that time period and that place either. Now, Thomas,
tell us what happened when they arrested you and what
was going through your mind? Lease stop me in the morning,
and they said it later. She picked you out and
she can dinnify you. That's what I was going. I
was we're going to the store. He said, what he
used to do right here, she could denify the person.
(10:55):
I said, yeah, I ain't gonna question. I'm not gonna
So you know what, they want to get the female
the big border back and she licked at me like
she wan't too shore. And then pol sees the tour
and she looked in me again like she want to
shoot about the person. And then they did it for
the third time. They talked to it. In the third time,
she just put her hands up and then he came
in said he was unrest on the rest for what
(11:17):
you put the handcuffs of me and then you put
me in back in your control call and he took
me to the which is said the jail, and I
got Daniel. They're when it came to reality to me
what was going on the child will rape actually been.
We're going to enter I know what did you know?
(11:43):
This episode is underwritten by a i G, a leading
global insurance company, and by Accenture, a global professional services
company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Working
to reform the criminal justice system is a key pillar
of the ai G pro Bono program, which provides legal
services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals
(12:05):
most in need as part of Accenture's commitment to racial
and civil justice. Accenture's Legal Access Program provides pro bono
legal services in partnership with more than forty organizations, bringing
meaningful change to people and communities worldwide. Okay, so the
(12:27):
initial identification, at least from your perspective, looked shaky. Hey,
the victims seemed to go back and forth a few
times until throwing her hands up in the air. Then
you're arrested, and eventually all five victims misidentified you as
the attacker, all five dealing with the cross racial nature
of this idea as well as the fact that you
(12:49):
actually did resemble the attackers. So you're charged with rape,
along with a slew of other charges that came with
each incident, talking about her abduction, breaking and entering, robbery,
and then you go to trial. One of ali they
came with suggesting, you know, you've got these serious childs,
and I think it'd be best you way plead you
have to, you know, get a license to get fastbo role.
(13:09):
The someone that the line you cant go these serious chibs,
You're going to get a license. And I said, now,
I'm not gonna pleagu get nothing to do. I said,
I'd rather go to trial and I could be to
con beleet the license. I deal with it, but I'm
never getting my right up to being innocent though. So
you've got your own defense team trying to push you
to admit guilt, which is not, unfortunately, exactly uncommon. Obviously
(13:31):
some people are actually guilty while others plead guilty just
because it's a smarter decision to do so. I mean,
based with the choice of a lenient sentence or the
unknown at trial, right, especially when life or even death
sentences are you know, dangling over your head. I mean,
with that at play, it's no wonder that convictions are
(13:52):
obtained through guilty pleas at a rate of close to
nine eight percent, right over ninety seven percent of melody
convictions in the United States, and results of guilty. Please,
it's a very understandable choice to make. But when given
that choice, Thomas, you held firm in your innocence. I mean,
that's a courageous and principle stand to take. Now, Okay,
(14:14):
So we go to the trial rights or should I
say the trials, because there were four separate trials. The
charges in the January seven incident where the attacker approached
with a knife and the victim fled to her house,
those charges were dropped. So for the four trials, though,
the prosecution relied on the victims misidentifications of Thomas. Now,
in two of the four cases there was some biological evidence,
(14:36):
But in the early eighties there was no DNA testing,
only sorology. Right. Yeah, what you have in terms of
physical evidence in the nineteen eighties is you can test
seamen for blood type, and you also can test for
something that's known as secretor status. If I am a secretor,
I'm somebody who's blood type shows up in my other
(14:57):
bodily fluids. So like if I spit on a table,
you can figure out my blood type from the spit.
A non secretor is somebody whose blood type isn't at
the spit. So they were in you know, at least
a couple of Thomas's cases able to do that very
limited amount of science, but that's science. It could give
you percentages, but the percentages were pretty big, right, So
(15:18):
think about all the people in the world who have
type of blood. Well, that's what you can really narrow
down to. So you know, Thomas was in that case
in the population of people who could have committed the crime.
But that's a really big population to people, right, So
it really doesn't do a great job of proving anything
at all. Prology is actually really better at ruling a
(15:42):
suspect out rather than in. And there's also a moment
in one of the trials where Thomas's height should have
ruled him completely out. So in the case in Henriko County,
the victim had sworn and believed correctly. It turns out
that her rapist was taller than her. She described the
(16:03):
rapist as being about five ten. Thomas is five six.
So Thomas's lawyer actually had the two of them stand
next to each other in that trial to demonstrate that
Thomas is actually shorter than this victim. But this is
part of why I witness testimony is so powerful, right,
but still didn't shake her confidence that Thomas was the perpetrator.
She was still sure that Thomas did it. And so
(16:27):
there's not much a defense lawyer could do in the
face of that kind of testimony. So the charges had
been dropped in the January incident, but you still had
to sit through similar proceedings four times over where the
facts of four very real, unspeakably horrible assaults were presented,
but along with no meaningful physical evidence to implicate you,
(16:50):
even the fact that you didn't match the January thirty
victims description of the assailant's height. And now the jury
goes out four times on you, and I've got to
imagine that the first time was probably the hardest pill
to swallow. Right. The January third break in and rape
at the nursery school, how long did that particular trial.
Last I'm in the first drift the last I think
(17:12):
a day and a half the jew can that come
to a verdict and the jealous in the back home
overnight and told them to think about it, and he
came back the next day. I think about three are
they deliberated, and they came back for to get the virgin.
And I would devastate in my family devastated because the
three charges at the beginning with rate breaking the entrant
(17:32):
and Robert Lordy got them to do. Mr Robert child
so left the jew only with two charges and rate
and bringing the entrant. They came back. Their family get
to the rate, but their family not get to breaking
into the entrance. The preparatory had to break into the
place to rape the person. So I would wonder how
you can family get to one and not the other.
And I noticed about the jel and all my trials.
(17:53):
Every time their family get to they give me the
lowest sentence on each charges, the care fading life, the
five years. If you get twenty to life, they give
me twenty years. Because they had no sustained everden that
placed me at the cramp scene. The only thing to
hey is here words and it's not worried. So now
your since ten years, and I mean this would seem
to be the worst day in anybody's life, but you
(18:16):
have to still stay on trial in these other cases.
Then you've got thirty six years for January. Then you
were acquitted for the January twenty one incident, and finally
wrongfully convicted again for the February first incident and sentenced
to another twenty eight years. I mean, it's hard to
even read this stuff, and you lived it, and thus
begins your saga of being a number instead of a name.
(18:39):
And I got into the penitential. Nothing was that I'm
not gonna see him later. And to take this, I'm
not gonna say here in a b a parler, this
corrupt system. I'm not gonna sit here they accepting seven
for my family in my life, you know, at the
age of eighteen, I'm not gonna see, you know, waste
all my life and penetendence. So I had to go
that I'm going right to the end. I had things
I know how to do. When I first added to
(19:00):
the system. Everything I asked with the Low Library was
and I signed up for that. Then I signed up
for the g d class and I signed up for college.
So my thing was it, you know, I will prove
the people wrong. Now I'm in the place that I
had to grew up overnight. I had to become a
man over night. It took me three years just to
open up to people. I did nothing for three years
this working when the school, I had to learn quick
(19:21):
and be quick on my feet of thinking all the time.
And you know, I had a couple of older guys
guide me and tell me, the young blood signed for school,
take all the tradees and take opportunity you can get.
Some of the guys are statement the right way, and
it gave me good advice, and I taking each to that. Well,
it sounds like there were some good people in there
who were mentors to you. So I guess there was
a little bit of light in this miserable, dark tunnel
(19:45):
that you were in. And now we've got to turn
our attention to a very important part of this terrible story,
which is that while you were incarcerated, when the rapes
should have stopped, they didn't stop at all. They actually increased.
They continued throughout the East Richmond area, where another at
least ten women reported being attacked by a young African
(20:08):
American man who actually asked his victims to call the
police and refer to him as the quote black ninja. Now,
on December four to Richmond residents saw a man following
a woman down the street. He was arrested. This was
a guy named Leon Davis. Now this is crazy, right.
So Leon was actually your neighbor, Thomas, and you saw
(20:29):
him on January right after that incident. But it didn't
click for you, right, The dots didn't connect until you
were hearing the victims story and the witnesses at your
own preliminary hearing for that incident. Right, what was on
I was my birthday and I came outside of the
front one of my friends we do it was on
(20:51):
the front talk and Leon Davis came from the side.
How is he the leopard? And I looked at him
and say what do you And he said I would
come the ndoubted him. That's with the white girls then
there and so the man you know you're gonna put
me down there? He said, yeah, he said, he chased
me and I failed and hit my leg. At the time,
I had on one interacted with him. So then when
(21:12):
my priminal here and when the big to see what happened?
Has she told her friends and he chased them. I
was saying myself, wow, there was the date on my
these birthday party. I was at home new day and
I told my lawyer, I said, look at this guy
named Leon lit in the street from it. I think
he has something to do with it. And I told
him to take the heart also lead to take them
my case. But you know, my worried fell of death.
(21:32):
Yet they ain't people, no man, and if only they
would have who knows how many of these other crimes
could have been prevented. Sean tell us about this Leon
Davis guy and how they managed to miss what should
have been obvious signs. So, in the opinion of the
Richmond Police Department and the Hanreca Police Department, the crimes
(21:54):
that Thomas was convicted of, those types of crimes stopped
when Thomas was arrested, and there was a break in
crimes like this until April, and that is when Leon Davis,
according to the original government narrative, began his crime spree.
I think what the police missed, of course, is that
(22:15):
he just never stopped his crime spree, but he was
committing crimes that looked an awful lot like, specifically like
the last crime Thomas was convicted of, which is the
one in Henryko County where he made the woman walk
around and pretend she was his girlfriend, And so he
was able to keep committing these crimes in an incredibly
brazen way until his arrest in December. One of the
(22:40):
most interesting stories I think in this case is what
I didn't believe when Thomas told me at first. He
told me that when Hen Leon were locked up together,
Leon approached him in the Richmond City jail and said, Hey,
you know we kind of look alike. I've got a
hearing coming up in my case. Would you Thomas mind
standing in for me Leah at defense table to see
(23:02):
if we can confuse the victim, to see if the
victim would identify you instead of me. And I thought
Thomas had to be making that up because it's too
crazy to be true, but I actually confirmed it. So
this is something Leon knew, It's something Thomas knew. And
even though it didn't appear that the police were putting
(23:23):
two and two together, there was one interrogation record of
Leon Davis where he was asked if he knew Thomas,
but I think for a lot of the police officers
at the time, there's that ongoing stereotype about black men
being sexual predators, and so I think it was probably
quite conceivable to the police department at the time that
(23:46):
there could just be two people who were black men
going around and doing the same thing. I mean, it's
a crazy coincidence. And you've mentioned earlier, Sean, about the
fact that these crimes are exceedingly rare, in fact, that
that stereotype is based on nothing. Yeah, I mean the
lone black beat up in Thomas's neighborhood. He apparently told
(24:06):
detectives at the time like you've got the wrong kid,
like this just isn't him, but detectives didn't buy it.
Even the juries struggled in this case. The January third
rape that went to trial first was supposed to be
the strongest case, but as you heard Thomas say, the
jury really struggled to reach a verdict and that first
(24:26):
case sentence Thomas to ten years, and that was supposed
to be the strong case. So even at the time,
there should have been warning signs that this wasn't right
and someone should have put two and two together, but
they didn't. Okay, so let's get to the good part.
(24:59):
Because Thomas's case, just as his trials were particularly screwy,
the process of getting him out took some twists and
turns that we don't often see. All Right, Thomas's case
first came to our attention because he wrote to us,
but the context in which he wrote to us was
a little bit different. There had been several people at
(25:21):
that point who had been exonerated based on DNA tests
done on evidence like little tiny clippings of evidence, clippings
of Q tips, clippings of underwear clothing that had been
saved by a particular analyst at Virginia's Department of Forensic Science.
After a few of those exonerations, then Virginia Governor Mark
(25:45):
Warner ordered the State Crime Lab to do DNA testing
in every single case between nineteen seventy three and nineteen
eighty nine where there was physical evidence saved in these files.
The Lab sent out of the letters to people who
had been convicted and who now had DNA testing happening
in their cases, And I was listed as the contact
(26:07):
person in those letters. So he already wrote to me
as a potential d N a case. But then I
got a call from a Richmond Times Dispatch reporter named
Frank Greene, who said, there's a case you gotta jump on.
It's this guy, Thomas Hainsworth. I covered his trial. I
also covered the trial of the guy who did it.
Frank had gotten ahold of the DNA reports in the case,
(26:31):
and it was one of the three cases where Thomas
had been convicted. The DNA excluded Thomas as the perpetrator
and linked to Leon Davis as the perpetrator. And this
was great news for Thomas. But the problem was that
we only had DNA and one of the three cases
where Thomas was convicted. What we did have was potential
(26:53):
DNA in the case where Thomas had been acquitted. So
we worked with a Richmond Commonwealth's attorney to get that
evidence tested and once again it cleared Thomas and linked
to Leon Davis. Wow. And it would seem like this
is where things should have just opened up for Thomas,
(27:13):
that he should have been right on his way out
of there, right, But unfortunately that's just not the way
that played out. So at that point, what we had
was five rapes and sexual assaults in a five week
period that everyone thought were committed by the same person,
and we know concretely that two were committed by Leon Davis.
(27:34):
For most people, logically, that gets you to a place
where you say, well, Leon Davis did the rest of
these crimes, right, everyone thought they were the same person.
But that kind of deduction isn't evidence, right. So, even
though at that point the Richmond Commonwealth Attorney thought Thomas
was innocent, the Virginia Attorney General, Hank Chinelli, very right
(27:54):
wing conservative, was on the way to thinking Thomas was innocent.
You can't prove anything in court that way. What you
have to do is go to the Virginia Court of
Appeals and file something very legal sounding called a writ
of actual innocence, and you have to have proof. So
we did a couple of different things to try to
(28:16):
get us there. Thomas took polygraph tests, one for the
Richmond crimes that he was convicted of and one for
the Henrico County crime he was convicted of. Passed both
with flying colors. Of course, we don't necessarily believe too
much in the reliability of polygraph tests, but it was
something that the prosecutors could use to sort of justify
(28:40):
why they believed in Thomas's innocence, and then what we
had was the similarities between the crimes. So we worked
with the Attorney General's Office and the Commonwealth Attorney to
meticulously document all of the similarities between the crimes that
we new Leon Davis had committed and the remaining convictions
(29:03):
on Thomas's record, and using all of that, we filed
a rid of actual innocence in the Court of Appeals
and I think February of twenty eleven, so Thomas was
still in prison, we were able to get him paroled
and released unfortunately as a sex offender. While the case
(29:25):
was pending, we had an oral argument in March of eleven,
and again there was no one opposing Thomas's exoneration except
the court. That oral argument did not go well. It
was pretty clear that the court just didn't believe we
had met the burden we were supposed to meet in
the case. In the summer of two thousand eleven, the
(29:47):
Court of Appeals came back to us and said, all
of the judges on the court want to sit for
another oral argument in this case. And at the time,
in order to win a rid of actual innocence you
had to prove by clear and convincing evidence that no
rational Trier effect could find proof of guilt beyond a
(30:09):
reasonable doubt. And that is to anyone normal out there,
that just sounds like a bunch of legal, legal, legal boring.
It's about as highest standard as you can have. So
we did that oral argument. Thankfully, six of the ten
judges ultimately agreed that Thomas deserved to have his convictions
overturned and to be exonerated. So we won by six
(30:33):
to four. But to put that in perspective, we only
won by one vote in a case where the Attorney
General's office agreed with us, which is pretty extraordinary terrifying, actually,
I mean it's absolutely terrifying. Yeah, I mean you almost lost.
In other words, like with overwhelming evidence of innocence, the
(30:56):
Attorney general, prosecutors everybody going, hey, guess what, this was
a mistake here, a terrible mistake. This guy is innocent,
and yet you won by one vote. I mean, this
is this is what happens when you have bad laws.
So many exhonerations depend on just having a decent person
(31:18):
on the other side who's gonna wink and nod when
the bad laws in front of them, And that's not
what happens in Virginia. Thinking and nodding doesn't work, so
you're stuck with the bad law. So Thomas, from your perspective,
finally you've got a fantastic team and all the things
are lining up. Everybody's starting to acknowledge what you've been
(31:38):
saying all along, that you're innocent. But you're finally freed
with all these conditions. You got to wear an ankle monitor,
you're on the sex offender registry. What was it like
to walk out into the light, even with all those
sort of caveats and restrictions, It was flushed with the
I mean, I would happy to be out, just come home.
(32:00):
I wanted this because I'll put a chinch and you
come home and be back with your family. When I
first came home, I had to meet with one of
my probation office. I think Sean was with me. I
knew that I'm a high condition because I was still,
you know, arranging a sex offender. I didn't have a
problem with that. You know, I'm gonna apply to the
law and I'm gonna be obedient to the law when
I gotta do to maintain my freedom. But when she
(32:20):
told me that, because I choose to dig something at it.
I had to bring in person there and be for
she can meet them and she could tell them what
I'm locked down for. You know why my cues are.
And I looked at Sean, and that's sod, Sean. I
had more freedom and writing prison I have on the street.
It was a little bit hard to getting adjested to
because really you're home, you got all the condition still
(32:41):
leave as a sex offender and still convicted feathering. You
still ain't really free from me. I couldn't go no where.
I had to be in the house by five o'clock.
I couldn't go out the house after that. I could
leave one of the feet for my house. I had
his mom's, I had the wood rund my leg, and
I had this big video. I had to put him
out pocket with the contraction and it was frustrating, and
I told Sean on we got to get this over.
(33:01):
I'm tired in the rest of six of fandom signing,
you know, I just wanted this over and done. Now
we get to the best part, which is that in
two thousand eleven, ten years ago, when you were freed
and then finally you were exonerated formally exonerated, cut that ankle,
bracelet off, and Governor Bob McDonald signed legislation which provided
(33:25):
you with compensation as well, which is unfortunately most exonaries
never get compensation. But I'm really glad that you did.
It wasn't nearly enough, but at least it gave you
a chance to get started, I would say, with a
new life. So what was it like when you finally
were vindicated. It's something that I've tried to do since
(33:46):
the big one, just to prove my innocenceive I mean, Sean,
and you know they did outstand the job. I couldn't
ask for nothing, that I mean, just being literated, being
back and get me claims over my back, get my
name stored, that be the person that you know, you
all not be who they want you to be, the
bigest monster that to treated me to be. That's all
(34:07):
I want, you know. Once I got my name clear,
none of the matter. You know, days she called me
and say you want six or four? I didn't care,
like she said, were one by one vote. And I
did a function one time and one of the judges
who went against me, he kept there, spoke and he
got them. He looked at me sir Thomas, I'm sorry,
I got a wrong. I want to get you. I
told him, Hey, I know who want to go against you.
(34:28):
What happened happening, and I'm free. That's all that matters.
That call is one of the best calls I've ever
gotten to make. So now we turned to my favorite
part of the show, which is called closing arguments, and
closing arguments as part of the show where I first
of all thank both of you again, Sean Armbers from
the mid Atlantic Innocence Project and Thomas Haynesworth for sharing
(34:50):
your incredible stories here today and just for being who
you are in the world, because I can't even describe
how much respect I have for each of you for
the for reasons. And with that, here's how closing arguments works.
I'm going to turn off my microphone, kick back in
my chair and leave my headphones on, probably close my eyes,
and just listen to whatever else you want to share
(35:12):
with our audience. Let's start with you Sean and save
the man Thomas Haynesworth for the final closing argument. So
what I want to say is that sometimes people listen
to these stories and hear them as proof that the
system works. They hear them as proof that well, we
got it wrong, but eventually we did get it right.
(35:34):
And in every single one of these cases that I
have worked on, every exoneration I've seen has been an
example of the system actually not working the way it
was intended to work. Innocent people getting out is the
opposite of what's supposed to happen. There's an extraordinary confluence
of circumstances that has to happen to even put someone
(35:54):
in a position to be exonerated. Mary Jane Burton, the
lab technician at the Department of Front Sciences, had to
decide that she was going to be the analysts who
kept random clippings of stuff in her files. She had
to be assigned to Thomas's case. Three other people had
to be exonerated. The governor had to order testing in
(36:15):
those cases. The lab had to agree to notify people,
and that person had to be me, and Thomas had
to be Thomas. All of those things had to happen
just to put Thomas in a position to even prove
his innocence, and then from there. The scariest thing to
me about Thomas's case is that the standard to actually
(36:35):
win was so high that the core wasn't necessarily long
that we should lose. That's how high it was, even
in a case where innocences as obvious as Thomas's and
we won anyway. And so his freedom isn't the result
of anything going the way it was supposed to. It
was really the result of everything going the opposite of
(36:56):
the way it's designed to work. So for all of
you out here who are taking the time to learn
about this issue, which is super important and one of
the many reasons why I think Jason is a national treasure,
try to remember that changing that system is absolutely crucial
if we really are going to try to protect people
(37:19):
who get convicted of things they didn't do. Thomas on you, Yeah,
I just want to say to the inn surpriseect Sean,
I should appreciate her. What did y'all do? If you
new feeling and all of them I can speak you
have more about your project. I just want to say
to people wherever you're going to you feel you've been wrong,
convicted wrong, because don't give up. Stand on your grand
(37:40):
You know, if you don't give up, you will overcome.
If you don't, anybody who'll be wrong with a big
speak of for them I'm the best life. Things ain't
turning what I want there, but they ain't turn out
better for me, and I just want you to keep
dis tray, don't give your claim, but to be right,
stand on your innocent, and a stand up for yourself.
(38:04):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Clyburne,
and Kevin Wardis with research by Lila Robinson. The music
in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and
(38:25):
on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava
for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow
me on both TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason flam Ravul.
Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
association with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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