Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Innocence Network is an informal collective of independent organizations
that advocate on behalf of the wrongfully convicted, and every
year they gather along with a growing number of those
whom they've helped free. Our team was honored to join
them for their twenty two gathering in Arizona. The stories
we heard were both heartbreaking and inspiring, and some of
those incredible people were willing to record with us. On
(00:25):
January tenth, nineteen seventy five, there was an open house
party in Suffolk County, Long Island, attended by seventeen year
old Keith Bush and fourteen year old Sharis Watson. Over
twenty alibi witnesses confirmed that Keith Bush was with them
in the house around one thirty am, which Sharise was
believed to have gotten into a red sedan, never to
be seen alive again. The following day, Terize's parents frantic
(00:47):
search for their daughter included a visit to Keith Bush,
who had told them about how he last saw her
inside the house party. Later that evening, her body was
discovered in the field near that house, having been strangled
to death. Her us were partially on zipped and there
were multiple groupings of small puncture wounds on her back. Curiously,
the wounds had not bled. Biological material and clothing vibers
(01:08):
were gathered from her fingernails, and hair pick was found
near her body. Two witness statements emerged alleging that Keith
was the last person scene with Charisse. Ignoring a more
promising lead, investigators instead tortured Keith in the police station
until he relented and signed a statement he hadn't even read.
It was a false confession riddled with inconsistencies, including an
(01:30):
impossible hair pick stabbing scenario that said Keith away for
twenty years to life. DNA testing, independent autopsies and witness
recantations proved Keith's confession was false, Yet Suffolk County authorities
and the Parole Board were not so easily convinced. This
is wrongful confection. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Here we're
(02:04):
recording at the Innocence Network conference in Phoenix, and what
you're about to hear combines junk science. A false confession,
police and prosecutorium is conduct on a scale that is staggering,
lying witnesses, incentivized witnesses. It involves so many of the
(02:25):
causes of wrongful convictions that we see again and again,
all wrapped up into one. Keith Bush, Welcome to wrongful conviction.
Thank you, Thank you for having me. You know, I
always say I'm sorry you're here because well, the reason
why we're interviewing it today. But I'm very honored to
have you here. I appreciate being here. And your story
is important for us to tell because a lot of
(02:46):
the reasons that I've already laid out. But before we
do that, what I really want to do is talk
about the young and Keith Bush. The young teenager Keith
Bush growing up in Long Island. Well, I was born
in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I was kind of raised in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
My mother and my father they separated when I was young.
(03:09):
My mother has her roots in Long Island. Her grandparents
were born on the Indian reservation. So she used to
take us back and forth to Long Island from Bridgeport, Connecticut,
and then she eventually moved to Belport, New York. Got it.
And from what I understand, you were a fine young man.
(03:31):
You weren't in any sort of trouble. Would you say
that you were on the right track growing up? I
was basically like most kids. I played sports, you know,
I went to school, went to parties and did basically
what you know kids normally do growing up. Sounds like
a nice childhood right in the ferry, back and forth.
Everything was fine more or less right. Everybody has their
(03:53):
ups and downs, but everything was fine until this terrible
incident that happened at a party in Suffolk County, Long Island.
And we know the Suffolk County unfortunately has been a
hotbed of police corruption and misconduct for generations. Of course,
we've covered the Marty Tankliffe story on this podcast, but
(04:14):
your story is as powerful as any, so let's get
right into it. So this crime we're talking about January eleven,
the middle of the winter, and on that fateful day,
the parents of a young girl named Sharie Watson called
the Suffolk County Police Department and they were worried because
(04:35):
their daughter hadn't come home from a party in a
friend's house just a few blocks away. This would be
a cause for concerns. She's fourteen, it's the wee hours
of the morning, and they began looking for Sharis. Now,
about a hundred people had attended this party, and you
were one of them. Right Saturday, the eleventh of January,
Terise's mother and her effort of trying to locate her daughter.
(04:57):
She was trying to go around finding all the people
that her daughter had come into contact with. They came
to my home and she had quiet about, you know,
Charice Watson, did she come home with me? Did she
leave with anybody or whatever? And I told her, I
don't know, because the last time I talked to her,
she walked out the front door and said I see
you later, But she didn't indicate that she was going
(05:20):
home or even coming back. And she said, well, if
you hear anything, could you give me a call. Later
on in the evening, they came back Terise's mother and
her father to my house. That's when they came with
the police officer. And this time they obviously hadn't you
heard from her? And you're talking about five or six
o'clock in the afternoon. I think it's every parents worst nightmare,
(05:42):
right missing it's a young girl. I think that adds
a layer of fear, you know. But her body was
found in the field nearby where the party had been.
Helped brace yourself for this because it's it's hard to
hear but she was faced down, her pants were partially unzipped,
and there were numerous small punctures on her back. That's
an important detail, as we'll see as we go along,
(06:04):
And autopsy would later say that she had been strangled
with enough force to snap the hyoid bone in her
throat near her body, another important detail which becomes the
subject of misconduct of a type that would be comical
if it wasn't so terrible and so serious. But near
her body, police also found a black plastic hairpick and
(06:25):
a white hat. You know, it's important to note that
that night they found Sherris Watson, my cousin, and another
friend that came to my house with this elder gentleman Vietnam.
That this guy named Robert Stewart, and I didn't know him,
but my cousin, George goldsonnew him, and he seemed to
be a concerned person in the community, and we were
(06:47):
talking about what happened, and he wanted to try to help,
like a lot of people in the community, to find
out what happened to Cheris. So he had asked us,
if you know, we were willing to help find out.
Some of the people who was at the party really
find out who did this, and so I agreed that,
you know, I wouldn't help in any way that I
couldn't and um, we had met over to this guy's
(07:07):
house two nights. He had said that, you know, there
was having some problems with the names of people who
was at the party. They didn't know how to connect
the names to the faces, and that may be that
we can kind of help connect them because these people
can probably provide some information about what really happened. The
only thing we knew at that time was that Terse
Watson had came out the house and got into a car,
(07:30):
a stolen red car with three individuals, and drove off.
We heard that these individuals were from Riverhead in Suffolk County,
which is another town over, but I never knew who
these persons were, and no one would really revealed it
at that time. So there's this whole red sedance scenario
(07:50):
right and compelling alternate suspects. In fact, in Man, which
was a few months after the murder, but critically before
You're wrong for conviction, a guy named John Jones had
given a statement the police which placed him at the
crime seed and he admitted that the hair pick at
the scene was his. Now we can only speculate that
(08:11):
Jones wasn't pursued any further and the state was hidden
from over four decades simply because police had already decided
that you were the guy. Right, of course, that had
dire consequences and not just only for you, But we'll
get to that in a minute. But back to the
mediate aftermath. So you knew shereise, and you had joined
Robert Sewart's effort with your cousin George Golson and your
(08:33):
friend Chuckie Corbin. Um, my understanding is you told police
what you told Teresa's mother write the same thing, that
you had seen her walk out of the party sometime
around one am. Now, over twenty alibi witnesses placed you
at the party before you left around three in the morning. Now,
police claimed to have learned that Therese had left the
party around one thirty am, and that a little while
(08:56):
later people heard screaming and shouts of rape coming from
the field near the party where her body was eventually bound.
So on its face, it seems very weird that no
one from the party looked into these alleged shouts of rape.
And then I also say that police claimed to have
learned this because wasn't Sharisse said to have left in
a red Sudan Now. Police also interviewed a girl named
(09:19):
Brenda Carlos, who said that she had last seen Sharie
talking to you around one fifteen am, but left the
party before Sharise, so it doesn't seem like her statement
is very relevant. Brenda Carlos was introduced to me by
Shterise Watson that night. For my understanding, Brenda Carlos was
a little older than Sharis and she was supposed to
walk her home and make sure she had got home.
(09:40):
And Brenda Carlos had said that she was going home
and Sharise Watson told her that she wasn't going to
go home, so she said, okay, I'll see you later
and she left. That was her statement to police, which
was kind of insignificant in terms of the crime itself.
But at trial when she testified, she kind of altered
(10:02):
that statement, and the pivocal part of her testimony then
became when she asked her where you're going home? She
said no, Kippy was going to walk home, and Kippy
was supposed to be me Keith Bush. Even still, this
would be circumstantial evidence, even if her second story was true. Right.
(10:23):
What they were doing is kind of painting a picture.
Her statement might not have been relevant within itself, but
her statement becomes relevant when she's mentioning my name, and
then there's other evidence of suggestion that kind of points
to me now. Police interviewed a teenage girl, fifteen year
old girl the vaccine Bell. She had recently run away
(10:44):
from her foster home. I was living in an abandoned building.
She knew Charise as well as you, Keith right, and
many other people at the party from when I guess
she had attended the same school as you did at
one time. So the statements she gave police, she said
that she was standing outside the party for several hours
and had seen you and Cherise leaving together quote unquote
(11:07):
hugged up. That's what she later testified, with your arms
cradling Charisse around the neck. I wonder if somebody told
her to say that, I'm just saying, what can you
tell us about this young girl? They had got two
statements from him. But in that first statement that Monday,
which was the thirteen of January nine, she alleges that
(11:29):
Terise Watson comes out the house with me, and when
the Carlos. Later, she backtracks. She testifies that Terise Watson
came out the house with me hugged up, and she
asked her that you know you want me to walk
you home, and then Terise allegedly told and know that
you know I was going to walk her home, and
(11:50):
she alleged that she left us standing there. That was
the last time, you know, she had seen Cherise, and
she had holitude that I'll call you tomorrow and she said, okay.
That was her testimony, and that made me, according to
the police, a suspect in the case because that testimony,
(12:11):
it was inconsistent with the original statement I gave to
police about my activities on the night of the party. Right,
what you've always maintained about your activities on the night
of the party was that you stayed inside the party
when Sharise left. And again over twenty alibi witnesses did
confirm that, and some of them later even testified despite
(12:32):
pressure from the police, But police used this statement from
Maxian Bell, alleging that you were the last person seeing
with Sharisse in order to establish probable cause. Now, she
tried to recant this statement as early as nine eighty
and eventually admitted into two thousand sixteen Davit that the
statement was made out of fear of the police and
that she chose to just confirm what they already believed.
(12:55):
And when our audience, here's what happens next to you,
we can only imagine what kind of pressure and terror
was brought down on Maxine Bell, this young female at
risk runaway, in order to evoke that false statement. So
on January fourteen, things started to spiral even further downhill.
You were at school and detectives were with your investigative
(13:19):
Chucky Corbin, George Golson and the Vietnam vet Robert Stewart,
and the cops didn't just come and grab you first.
The two younger guys were sent to get you from school,
but when the school said that they needed an adult
to come and get you, Robert Stewart came instead. You
were released to him and he brought you to his
house where you thought that you were still just helping
with this lead on the stolen red Sadan. Now apparently
(13:40):
there was a guy named Michael Christian who might have
known something about the guys in the red car, and
you thought you were just going to look at some
pictures and help the police in any way that you could.
So you got back to Mr Stewart's what happened next.
That's when the police officers came in and they started
interviewing us about you know what we knew a novice league.
I was the one that was at the party. George
(14:02):
Gholston wasn't Chucky Corbin had leupt earlier. So they were
mainly asking the questions towards me, and then they asked
if I can show them where Michael Christian lives. And
this was a guy that supposed to had heard something
from these guys the next day that was in that
red car. That was something that's supposed to be incriminating.
(14:23):
I know Michael Christian and I knew where he lived.
But now actually what they did is when I showed
him where he lived, they rolled past the house. So
I asked them where they were going, So they said, oh,
we have to go. We're going to the precinct to
get the list of names. We thought we had them,
but we don't have them. To that you can look
at them and go over. But before they got there,
and they had spoke to two detectives that was in
(14:44):
another car behind them, got back in the car. They
took me to the fifth Precinct and patch you all,
which is the town over, and then they brought me
down into a basement. When it brought me down to
the basement, they walked out, and two detectives walked in,
Detective Dennis Rafferty and Detective August Stall. They walked in
(15:08):
and took over the investigation. And that was the last
time I've seen the outside world. Yeah, and this interrogation,
it probably won't surprise people who are regular listeners to
the podcast, but disinterrogation resulted in your false confession after
they punched and kicked and abused you in ways that
(15:30):
had to be beyond terrifying. I mean, on top of
the fact that it was sort of a surprise attack
because you weren't even brought there as a suspect. Now
all of a sudden, you're in the basement. That's scary enough, right,
like kind of almost like a dungeon scenario. Right. As
we find out later, at least one of these detectives
was so racist that he was throwing the N word around.
(15:52):
So tell us about the interrogation itself. Let me just say, um,
you know, in the forty four years, I've been battling
with this effort to exonerate myself the encounter in the precinct,
particularly with the physical abuse, the psychological. Of all the
(16:16):
efforts that I made to exonerate myself, the most painful
part of that whole experience, at least sits there. What
they did to me was something I would have never
imagined from a person of that status, because obviously, when
(16:38):
you're young, you're taught to believe that law enforcement represents
an authority that's equivalent to your parents. So when they
begin to question me, in spite of the fact that
I maintained my innocence, they didn't really want to hear that.
They were only concerned with trying to get me to
confess to the crime and to sign a confess and
(17:00):
you know, with promises that they can help me. You know,
I was a young kid, you know, things happen. I
just wanted to get laid. And then they started to
tell me about this statement they had from this witness,
which is why they said they know that I committed
the crime because I was the last person to be
seen with her alive. And they went on and on
(17:20):
with this for maybe about an hour and a half
and then they decided to move me to Hogpog, which
is the headquarters for homicide squad. Now, I constantly asked
them could I call my mother. I felt the pressure
of confinement, of being trapped. Today I can articulate it
(17:41):
as in Communicato. There was no way, you know, they
was letting me out of here, and I had to
figure out how to get out of there. You know.
I found out that my cousin and Mr Stewart and
Chucky Corbin had came to the precinct two to four
times looking for me, and they told him that I
wasn't there. So obviously they had no intentions of it
(18:04):
ever letting me get past that phase. No, they wouldn't
have let Jesus and if he showed up to try
to help you at the right and their intentions was clear.
They wanted me to confess to this crime. And once
they took me to Hogpop they kept drilling me, one
officer coming in after another, and you know, they kept
going through that whole process, the good guy, bad guy tactic,
(18:26):
and I kept telling them over and over I didn't
commit the crime. I wanted to call my my mother,
called somebody, but you know, they just continue the process
until all of a sudden, six or seventies guys came
running in and grabbed me from all over and just
started pounding me, hit me upside the head with the
phone book and stop and trying to make me sign
a confession. And I kept telling him I didn't do it.
(18:48):
Then they would start back up, stop, start. You know
they're fretting, and know we're gonna make you still you'll
never have kids, and you know you're not going nowhere
to you sign this bill, beat you to f and
you know they're going on and on, and at some point,
you know, I just you know, I got scared. I
lost my focus and um, when I signed that confession,
(19:12):
I mean I signed my life away. I know I
(19:32):
signed something. I didn't know what the confession said or
what what I signed said. I never set it out
my mouth. I just signed the paper. When I first
came to the County jail, I was in sick Bay
for maybe the week to two weeks, and that's when
I first you know, read and found out what I
had allegedly said to them do the signing of the confession.
(19:57):
You quickly recanted your confession and saying that the detectives
wouldn't accept your denials or even let you call your mother.
And importantly, this confession said that when she pulled your
hand away from her pants, that she had refused your
sexual advance to them. When she pulled your hand away,
you started stabbing her with her hair pick, and that
when she screamed and strangled her to keep her quiet.
(20:18):
So they provided the narrative, but even what they said
was obviously provably not true and not possible scientifically, because
the victim didn't bleed, which means of course that she
was dead before whatever it was that punctured her skin
punctured her skin. That was a fabricated confession constructed by
(20:39):
them before the facts were cleared. Them, whatever they had
at that particular time, they used to try to paint
a picture of me committing this crime, and they got
it wrong. Now, the hairpick is so important in this scenario.
First of all, it's a ridiculous concept. The hairpick, unless
it's made out of steel, is going to break if
you start stabbing somebody with it. And you don't have
(20:59):
to be the scientist to figure this out, or an
expert in plastic did you even carry a hairpick at
the time, Keith is ball these days, so I don't
know what your hairstyle wars back then. Yeah, I wore
an afro. Back then, we all carried picks. They were popular.
During the interrogation, they had showed me a black plastic
pick that wasn't a plastic bag. And I didn't know
that the pick that they found was from the crime scene.
(21:22):
And they asked me, was that my pick? I said, no,
that wasn't. But I don't I don't know what's going on.
I didn't know what she had puncture wounds in a
lower back. How would you know? You weren't there. Yeah,
I don't know none of this now. They executed a
search warrant on your house on January fourteenth, and they
recovered or claimed to recover several items, including a metal
hairpick that would be introduced to trial as the weapon
(21:43):
that left the punctures on Charies's back, but it would
later be revealed, against surprise surprise, that the pick the
police seized didn't belong to you. They wasn't going to
leave my home until they found a metal pick. That
it didn't matter what kind, what style, or whatever, and
when they didn't have my pick. They called my cousin, George.
He came over and he gave them his pick because
(22:06):
my brother to him, they ain't gonna leave until they
get a pick. But the detective try to testify that
they got to pick from my brother, and my brother
said it was my pick, which was a lie. There's
no real way to describe this other than that they
planted the evidence. They didn't even bother the planted themselves.
They had to have somebody else come and bring me
(22:27):
so incredibly twisted so that pick that they alleged was
used to create those puncture wounds on a lower back
that when clusters of threes, four and five, and they
had one that went so deep that it almost hit
the liver. And you know, obviously today we have these
(22:47):
medical experts sore saying that it's impossible for that pick
to have caused those puncture wounds. You don't have to
be an expert to know that that's not possible. It's
not possible because it's not possible. It's plastic and it's dull.
With the experts are saying today is like, you know,
even an expert back then should have drawn that same conclusion.
They said, I confessed it to a crime that was
(23:08):
impossible to have happened. But the medical examiner testified in
his opinion that these pick calls those punctual wounds. But
you're not only the medical examiner who was either completely
wrong or lying. You have a Suffer County detective who's
there saying that the victim who fought for her life
scratching her assailant had your jacket under her fingernails, as
(23:32):
if they test eavy jack that was ever made and determined,
you know, the the particularities of those fibers or whatever.
But there was no science to back it up. Right,
when we talk about junk science again, I have to
laugh to keep from crying. I mean, it's so ridiculous
that a fourth grader should be able to figure out
that this was not possible. But of course a jury
(23:52):
is going to be susceptible to testimony from people like
this who are supposedly quote unquote experts. So on April eighteen,
this is important. There's not a logical suspect. I'm talking
about this guy John Jones. A few months after the crime,
they arrested a guy named John Jones on a charge
of unauthorities of a vehicle. Now, no one really knows
how he came to the attention of the homicide detextas,
(24:14):
but he was questioned about Teresa's death and given a
polygraph that was said to be inconclusive. He was interviewed
again on May nine, short time after, and this time
he gave a more expansive statement. I got another red flag.
He said he was at the party, got drunk and
started to walk to his sister's house, even though she
(24:34):
lived east to the party, and the body was found
to the west. Red Black number two Jones. This character
said that he stumbled over Charies's body in the field
and in the process dropped his hair pick. He said
he didn't know that the girl was dead until he
heard about the death on the news. Keep him out.
We never knew nothing about this guy to like forty
years later. You know, at the time they interviewed him,
(24:54):
they kept this hidden. We do know that the district
attorney was intimately involved in it, be because when they
did the polygraph tests, it was sent to him and
the person who took the statement from him was Detective Rafferty.
John Jones also admits to the guy that when that
showed him the black pick. He said, yeah, that looks
like my pick, and he places himself at the crime
(25:17):
scene around the time frame that the experts estimate the
cause of death. But they had already threw the crime
on me. They had already claimed that I voluntarily confessed
to the crime, and they didn't have the integrity or
dignity to step back and say we made a mistake
(25:38):
and open up that avenue of investigation. So they protected
this guy, who they had every reason to believe was
a vicious killer of a young child. They allowed him
to ring free. On In February sixteenth of nineteen seventy six,
he was arrested in charge with third degree rape after
he impregnated a fifteen year old girl. But two weeks
after Jones's arrest, ronically, two weeks later, on March first,
(26:01):
nineteen seventy six, your trial began in the Supreme Court
of the State of New York for Suffolk County. You
had a paid attorney named Harold Selligman, the prosecutor was
Gerald Sullivan, and the judge was Mervin town Abound. The
state's case, of course, was built around Bell's testimony your
false confession immediately recanted and the quote unquote forensic and
physical evidence, which we now know was just a pack
(26:22):
of lies. So Dr Edelman of the Suffolk County Medical
Examiner's Office, as you mentioned, he said that the punker
wounds on Teresa's back were consistent with the arrangement of
the times on the hair pick found at your house,
but the plastic pick was not entered into evidence of trial. Wow,
there's a lot of lies just in that sentence alone.
There's like three or four lies. It's incredible. A Suffol
County detective predictably testified that the three fibers recovered from
(26:44):
beneath Teresa's fingernails quote did contain unquote fibers taken from
a denim jacket that you wore. That would be laughable
if it wasn't so serious. And when this sick fuck
Raperty testified, he denied any wrong doing during your interrogation.
Also predictable, he claimed that you freely and voluntarily gave
(27:06):
your statement. Seligman had no knowledge your lawyer, right, had
no knowledge of John Jones, as you mentioned, Keith or
his statement to the police when he crossed examined Rafferty.
He said to the detective quote, Officer, was there other
suspects on the day you interviewed my client? Sullivan? The
DEA objected and the jury was excused while the two
sides had a conference in the judges chambers. According to
(27:28):
investigation by Newsday, Sullivan said there were no other suspects.
He told the judge that quote there was nobody else
who was connected with the crime with any evidence end quote.
That is an incredibly bold lie. Sullivan said that if
Seligman took Raffrey down that path, that would open the
door to him asking the detective about all sorts of
raw evidence that might be damaging to you, Keith, and
(27:49):
Seligman backed off. He was preventing my lawyer from opening
up lines of questioning as to other suspects in this case.
Detective Rafferty was the one who took the statement from
John J. Jones, and this was three weeks after he's
sitting at a Huntly hearing determining the voluntarily or involuntarily
(28:10):
nous of the confession. This guy has given testimony and
he's pretending like I'm the only person of interest. So
now when he testifies that trial, when we did not
question him in that area, we did not get an
opportunity for him to go on the record, and I
mean obviously been lying all throughout, but to continuously lie
(28:33):
by concealing exculpatory evidence, and the existence of Jones as
an ultimate suspect was hidden from us, you said, Keith
for four decades, forty long years. And you also had
multiple albi witnesses. Some of them testified again under oath,
that you would stay at the party until three am,
an hour and a half after the murder took place.
Others testified that they never saw a bell outside the party,
(28:55):
But several alibi witnesses didn't testify, And of course it
comes out later and they say at this an affidavis
that the police threatened them with the rest if they
helped you with your defense. So that's what the police
were doing. While they were letting this Jones guy walk
the streets. They were out there paying visits to the
people who wanted to do their duty, who wanted to
(29:17):
be honest and forthright and come to your defense, as
they knew you weren't the guy that did it. You
did testify in your own defense denying killing her, of course,
but when you testify about the brutal being that you
endured in the interrogation room, the prosecution attacks you. Tell
me if this is wrong, Keith. They asked how many
times you had been hit, and when you responded, I
(29:39):
don't know. I wasn't counting, but I know it was
a lot of times end quote. That was enough for
them to say, well, see that he doesn't even know
how many times he was hit. What the hell are
they talking about. That's the position they try to take.
But everybody should have seen through that you were acquitted
of intentional premeditated murder, but convicted of second agree murder,
(30:00):
an attempted sexual abuse and sentence the twenty years to
life in prison. I was withdrawn. I was in a
state of confusion, and it threw me into a deep
state of shame of hurt because I was ashamed at
myself for allowing them to do that to me, like
(30:23):
I trapped myself in hell. Obviously, I've seen the world
looking down upon me, and the hate fit that people
(30:45):
had for me was the direct result of me allowing
those detectives to do that to me, and not bothered
me to the extent that I hated them, I hated
the system. I just felt the sense of anger, almost
like it was borne out of me, like an entity
(31:08):
on my back. I had a sense of anger that
may have served as a few and all I wanted
to do was fight back. And for forty four years,
I just kept fighting back in every way I could,
and fight back you did. So let's talk about the
appellate process and how you got here. So initially, you
(31:29):
didn't go after all of the issues of innocence that
we've already laid out so far. Rather, the first appeal
was focused on whether or not it was legal for
them even to have detained you in the first place,
and a Supreme Court decision had come down in the
nineteen I believe, called Dunaway versus New York, which addressed
issues relating to the Fourth and fourteenth Amendments. Now, the
fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searchers or seizures and sets the
(31:52):
guidelines for the issuing of warrants, and importantly here that
warrants must be justified by probable cause. Now, after hearing
your arguments, the Pelic Division found the police used deception
and trickery to illegally to team you, but if there
were significant evidence to show probable cause, it would cure,
so to speak, the illegal detention. Your defense was ready
(32:15):
to argue that police did not have probable cause even
with the statement of Maxine Bell was just about to recant.
Maxine Bell had left Bell put after my conviction because
she was having problems with kids in the community, and
it was how did you lie on him? And so anyway, um,
to our surprise, the prosecutor had sent Maxine Bell a
(32:37):
plane ticket from Alabama to come back to testify. But
when she came back, she had told the district attorney
that she's going to tell the truth that she lied
and none of this really happened. That kind of like
knocked out the key argument of probable cause. But instead
of the judge ruling in favor of the defense based
(32:58):
on the recantation of Maxine l and the fact that
there wasn't sufficient evidence to support the illegal detention, he
concluded that Maxine Belt's trial testimony is chewing, that her
recantation is false, and he rendered in the determination that
from the trial she was a sympathetic and appealing figure.
Now she has grown into an immature adult, but the
(33:21):
extent of her disturbance is not fully described. So he
denied the probable cause hearing, so I had went back
on a clatter attack to argue against the judges fact findings.
And I argued that pro se. So I argued that
obviously she had matured into a disturbed a doubt. But
(33:41):
this girl, after she testified against me I was convicted,
she was home crying thinking about what she did during trial.
She was pregnant and she had a baby boy, and
three months after her baby was born, the baby just died.
So she thought God was punishing her for what she
did to me. She tried to commit suicide. She had
(34:01):
to seek psychiatric care. So I said, obviously there is
some disturbance in this girl, but all that disturbance relates
to her given false testimony against me. And I asked
the judge if he would order that a professional in
that psychiatric field can examine her and assist the judge
in his fact finding determination, because this judge concluded that
(34:25):
her disturbance is not fully described. He denied that too,
and you received denial after denial, first as a pro
sayltic in filing and federal habeas and then even with
the help of since you're in ministries, and the denials
continued through, which is when you became eligible for parole.
Of course, the Parole board denied you I think it
(34:45):
was five times because you refused to admit guilt and
register as a sex offender. And later the Department of
Corrections went so far as to impost policies that further
punished you for your refusal to admit guilt, and in
response to that, you took them to court with a
pelling argument, which was that since you swore on the
Bible and proclaimed your innocence at trial, for them to
(35:06):
penalize you and discriminate against you if you didn't break
that oath, that sounds like a violation of your right
to religion, and a judge determined that you had a
constitutional question of law that was entitled to review. It's
actually brilliant. Meanwhile, you had also been pursuing DNA testing,
and in two thousand and six Secn County DA started
a DNA review project to look at old cases that
(35:28):
had biological evidence that previously couldn't be tested. And so
it finally looked like this could get you around the
Borough Board entirely. They tested my d n A against
the finger nail scraping is that they found there was
a male profile and two female but the male profile
did not match me. But at that time they didn't
(35:50):
tell me that. And when my attorney Held Seligman, looked
into it for me, they wrote me a letter telling
me that they haven't got decision yet. They haven't heard
nothing yet, but when they do, they would notify me
and that I go to the parole board and I
will be released in two thousand and six. Now I
(36:12):
go to the parole board and I maintain my innocence.
I refused to take a sex offend. My stance don't change.
They released me from prison, but they labelized me as
a sexual predator, and they sent me back to the
community with that stigma. Then they make my life twice
(36:33):
as hard to transition because of that stigma for the
next twelve years. All that time, my release from prison
wasn't nothing but a transfer to another institution like a
bigger prison's a bigger picture of my life was institutionalized.
(36:54):
I read an incredible quote from you, Keith. Somebody must
have asked you about why you refused me up guilt
and probably would have opened the prison doors and set
you home right, I would have you would have been
paroled earlier, and you said, I refuse to let them
do to me as a man what they did to
me as a boy. I mean that that hits hard.
So there you are out in the quote unquote free world,
(37:15):
but unable to use the internet, to live within a
thousand or feet of a school, even try to rebuild
your life, try to get meaningful employment. All those doors
are totally closed to you. So the punishment continues, and
then it gets worse again because, on top of all
the other indignities, that you were supposed to pay a
monthly fee to allow officials to monitor your online activities. Okay,
(37:38):
so with the money that you can't make because they
won't let you really get a job because you're registered
sex offender, you're supposed to pay them to do the
job that they're supposedly doing, monitoring your your online activities. Okay,
there's a whole lot wrong with that, but we're gonna
jump to the next. So, during an inspection of your home,
officials found that you had been working on your niece's
(37:59):
computer writing your memoirs. Right, not doing anything wrong the
farthest thing from it, but the computer had Internet access.
Sure enough, they use this as an excuse to send
you back to prison for a freaking year because you
were trying to write your memoirs on a computer that
had Internet access. When you're living under these types of
stringent regulations, you basically live in the life of a
(38:22):
slave Ereegarless to whether they would have violated me or not.
You know, it would have made no different because I
wasn't going to stop fighting for my innocence. No, you
would not, And you were able to get one of
the one of the real grades in this field to
take your case. I'm talking about it, dal Bernhardt from
the Innocence Clinic at Pace Law School and later New
(38:43):
York Law School's Post Conviction Innocence Clinic as well. So
she was able to get the courts to allow DNA
testing and to confirmed with suff and County already knew
that your DNA was excluded from the fingernail scrapings and
the plastic pick bounded the scene. That, along with the
report criticize and the tactics of Detective Rafferty and others,
should have been more than enough to overturn the conviction.
(39:05):
But Subfolk County still had the confession, the false confession
that was signed under torture, police torture, and they argued
that the report was little more than a quote unquote
fishing expedition, and that the fingernail scrapings could have been contaminated,
and somehow that that was enough to get your motion denied.
And then next you went after the false confession, and
(39:27):
in order to prove that it was false, A Dell
got the renowned forensic pathologist Dr Michael Bodden to assess
the autopsy and other physical evidence to show that the
statement they wrote for you to sign did not match reality.
That the pattern and spacing of the pick did not
match up to the puncture wounds. The punctures were in
groups of three rather than ten like the pick. And
(39:48):
in addition, some of the wounds were too deep to
have been made by the pick without the neighboring wounds
being equally deep. Now, how the wounds were made, we
have no idea, and according to this alleged statement, needed
did you. But anyway, By also pointed out that without
bleeding around the wounds, they must have been made posthumously,
which contradicted the statement in which the stabbing happened before
(40:08):
she was strangled to death. Now you already had the
two thousand sixteen AFFI David from Vaccine Bell recanting saying
that quote, I was scared of the police. This is
a direct quote. I was scared of the police. I
believed I was doing the right thing by confirming what
they already believed and quote. Then in two thousand seventeen,
that's when you found out about this insane Brady violation,
(40:29):
with John Jones having admitted in nineteen seventy five, before
your trial and before a rape. The Jones committed in
nineteen seventy six that he admitted to being at the
scene and that the pick was his. Adele also obtained
Affidavid's from witnesses at the party, stating that they had
been discouraged from helping you. And discouraged that's not a
strong enough word, because we know what these motherfucker's were doing.
(40:51):
I mean, I forget my language, but this is it's
it's just sick. Then in two thousand eighteen, Adele presented
all of this to the new DA in Suffolk County,
Timothy Cinny, who had just opened a Conviction Integrity Bureau,
And when the Suffix c IB did their own investigation,
they agreed with Dr Boden's findings, as well as that
(41:11):
the detective testimony about the fibers was also unsubstantiated. They
furthermore suggested that John Jones, who died in two thousand six,
appeared to be quote and again I'm quoting directly the
most viable suspect in Sharie Watson's murder and quote. And
while they couldn't confirm the physical abuse during the interrogation,
they agreed that even in absence of that, the tactics
(41:32):
were psychologically coercive enough to produce a false statement from
a scared teenager. And while Rafferty would only communicate through
his lawyer, his partner August Stall, sat down for an
interview in which he stated, quote that fucking blank did it.
So I don't think we need to say anymore about
what Unfortunately, it is not a surprising statement for Detective Stalled.
(41:54):
So finally, it took forty four years of fighting, forty
four years, but the Suffolk County the I issued in
order to vacate your conviction on May nineteen, rightfully, so
you then filed suit against them and the State of
New York settling in Now no amount of money could
ever be enough for what they put you through. But
(42:15):
I'm glad that at least you can live out the
rest of your days and some you know, reasonable physical
comfort and the comfort of having your name cleared. Now,
I'm sure members of our audience would like to keep
up with you, like I already do. So what's a
good way for them to do that? You know, I'm
not really on the social media. I got on TikTok
as a little you know, so we did. I did
(42:37):
a couple of little skids on the plan on taking
some of my own poems and then tournament to skits
and threw them out there. Amazing. Well, I'm already following
him at Katie Bush five. That's Katie Bush, like the
plant five number five. We'll have that linked in the bio.
And by the way, you mentioned your poetry, and I
understand that you have a few books out, so what
(43:01):
can you tell us about all that stuff? Now? I
just I had did a book, a poetic book, um
Poetic Rays, Visioneer and Magnetic, and that was some of
the poems that I kind of wrote when I was
in prison, and it represents, you know, different stages of
my development, the transitions I went through, the anger, parts.
There were amicable parts, you know, just the different phases
(43:23):
that I went through. But I'm in the process so
completed the memoir. I just got to get it published.
And then there's another book that I had wrote on
the African American self reparation concept that I had kind
of developed. But um, I want to try to get
these two books out this year and you know, probably
within months. Okay, we'll, we'll, We'll put a link to
(43:44):
it in the biou. And now, Keith, we have a
tradition here at Wrong for Conviction. We closed the show
the same way every time, and it's my favorite part
of the show. And here's why, because it works like this.
It's called closing arguments, and it works like this. Again.
I thank you for being here, taking your time and
(44:05):
sharing your story. And then I'm gonna turn my microphone off,
leave yours on. I'm just gonna kick back in my
chair and listen for any final thoughts you want to
share with me and our amazing audience. Okay, first of all,
I you know, I gotta give the highest praise to
my mother. You know she is you know, she's my
(44:27):
Earth goddess and no one has fought on my side
with me all the way, persistently, even when I got tired,
that she had motivated me and she was there to
see me exonerate myself. And I also know that my
(44:52):
brothers and sisters never they never doubted my innocence and
it was always there for me. And there are family
members who also supported me, friends and a lot of
people in the community. But doing prison time also changed
(45:13):
the way I see the world, and there were some
of them prisoners who were my teachers inspired me to grow,
and I engaged myself and movements that led to educate
a whole lot of other prisoners by teaching them what
they need to learn in order to improve themselves. Because
(45:38):
it's not only the innocence that's a victim to the
criminal justice system, but it's the perpetrators who victimized that
create the feeding of the criminal justice system, and it
eats or victimization. And I spent my time in prison
wisely by investing in my personal development and giving back
(45:59):
and helping some of these guys to change their lives
around so that day can return home as an asset
as opposed to a liability. But my journey, it's a
difficult journey, and it is not one worth living again.
But one thing I can say that once I place
(46:22):
my faith in God, which is very important to my spirituality,
then I was able to draw those things that represents
god like righteousness right people to me and they helped
(46:42):
me to open this door. So I'm eternally grateful not
only to the innocent projects with a down and all
the other people who fight for the innocent, but for
the integrity units who have the dignity to stand up
when something is wrong and say that it's wrong, and
to on you in that fight for your generation. That
(47:03):
makes it easier. So you know, there is a debt
that I paid. My debt to the righteous, all those
who do right things and help us create a better
world for ourselves in spite of the things that we
go through. Because our world is balanced on polarity good
and evil, and there's always going to be a battle.
(47:25):
So I'm glad to be on that right side. Thank
you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank
our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Claver, and Kevin Wardis.
With research by Lila Robinson. The music in this production
was supplied by three time Oscar nominated composer Jay Ralph.
(47:47):
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
wrong Convictions, as well as at Lava for Good. On
all three platforms, you and also follow me on both
TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason flam Rainval Conviction is
the production of Lava for Good podcasts in association with
(48:08):
Signal Company Number one