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June 23, 2022 42 mins

On October 13, 1991, Amy Moore, a nine year old with intellectual limitations, complained to her babysitter that her father, Howard Dudley, was "nasty," kicking off a series of sexually charged leading questions resulting in sexual abuse allegations. Dudley denied the claims, and after nine interviews, Amy's story grew increasingly inconsistent and implausible. However, in order to do a fuller investigation, the Lenoir County Department of Social Services had to substantiate Amy's claims, triggering the police to seek an indictment.  Based on a testimony that Amy later recanted, Dudley was convicted of first-degree sexual offense and taking indecent liberties with a minor.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
With the rise of dual income households throughout the eighties
and nineties, an unprecedented number of families were relying on
near strangers for childcare. Subsequently, a wave of child sex
abuse hysteria began, in which any claim at all from
a child was granted credence, no matter how outlandish or
probably false they were. At this time, Howard Dudley and

(00:24):
Diane Moore were jointly raising their daughter Amy, but were
never married. Eventually, Howard founder a nude sense of faith
that his wife and had two sons. Even though Howard
paid child support and maintained a presence in Amy's life,
one can imagine that Howard's new willingness to settle down
was not well received by the mother of his first
child or her family, including Amy's babysitter, Lydia mas Darkey.

(00:47):
On October thirty one, Amy allegedly told missus Darkey that
her father was quote nasty, already primed to believe the
worst about Howard, and demanding an explanation, Starkey began a
series of suggestive question and Amy allegedly claimed sexual abuse.
To look out for Amy's best interest. During the social
services investigation, she was aside a guardian Ed Lightham, who

(01:09):
determined that Amy's story was untrue. Nonetheless, the trend demanded
that credence be granted to the child's claims, triggering Howard's arrest.
The prosecution ignored and hit the guardian ed Lighthem's recommendation,
and even though Amy recanted her allegations immediately after trial,
Howard's been nearly twenty five years in prison as a

(01:29):
child sex offender. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
Wrongful Conviction. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to

(01:50):
share this story because it's unique in terms of the
almost three episodes we've we've done, but it's not unique
because it was a common story at the time that
it was happening. It's the story of a man named
Howard Dudley who was convicted of a crime that never happened,
and who spent almost three decades incarcerated because of a

(02:13):
series of lies, superstitions, hysteria that sort of swept the nation.
So before I introduced the other distinguished guests who we
have on here, I want to introduce Mr Dudley himself,
Howard Dudley. Welcome to Raffle Conviction. Good morning, excited about
being here this morning. Well listen, I'm excited to have
you here. I'm sorry you're here because of what you

(02:34):
went through with Howard. Today is a remarkable woman named
Teresa Newman. Teresa is recently retired, but she was a
clinical professor of law and Merida at Duke Law. So
this is a serious person. You don't get that title
by not being tough and smart. And you also don't
get Howard Dudley out of prison without those qualities and characteristics.

(02:58):
So Teresa, thank you for being here today. Thank you
so much for having us. And this story is outrageous.
Stories like this have actually kept me up at night.
And I mean again, this one is this is It's
about as bad as it gets, but it isn't unique,
and that's why I think it's all the more important
that we tell it. But Howard, before we get into
the story itself, let's talk about your youth. You grew

(03:22):
up in a small town in North Carolina. Is that right?
That's correct, that's right, a little town called Institute. I
grew up in the home mom, dad and nine siblings,
and my dad had squat rules and he enforced talk
the work. They out of trouble not to go out
and disperse the family. Name. Yeah, I guess have any case,

(03:44):
you'd have to have some strict rules or it would
be pure chaos. But it sounds like your parents and
still had some good values in you. And I also
understand that you played guitar and still do, and eventually
you grew up, and that a woman named Diane Moore.
You had a daughter together named Amy. But it appears
that you never intend unmarried Diane and weren't ready to
settle down. I wasn't really a good boyfriend. I ad

(04:05):
met to that right there. But we worked out between
the court and myself and Amy's mother that I could
spend time with her. She spent weekends. Maybe we had
a great relationship and that was on good terms, I thought.
And while you two tolerated each other for the good
of your daughter, Diane ended up becoming infected with HIV
and she was very ill for a while, so a
relative named Lydia May Starkey began shouldering more of Diane

(04:28):
into the bargain. But nonetheless you moved on with your life.
I met my wife, and uh we got married. She
wouldn't sup me as I was, and after Mary, we
had a son named Dennis, who was a musician today,
and Adrian living a productive life. I was determined to
make a good life for my children, and that was
my in devil. I worked, my wife went to college,

(04:49):
and her last year in school she had a major quote.
And so basically I was a provider for my family.
So at this time, you were providing for your family
living in a trailer, while paying child support for Amy,
who would join you on the weekends and during the
week her relative Lydia makes Darkey would care for her
as Diane's health continued to deteriorate. The babysitter she called

(05:12):
Howard mean because he had broken up with Diane Moore,
who she later died of age she was ill, and
then Howard, moving on with life, became born again. Christian
got married, had these two kids. So one could easily
see how some really, you know, hard hurt feelings could develop,
making it easy for Lydia May to believe horrible things
about you, and later on maybe even to cajole young

(05:36):
Amy into making wild accusations that she would later recaan't Amy.
As I understand, it was a bit more susceptible to suggestion,
as she had some intellectual limitations. But even before we
get into the specifics of your case, I think it's
important to mention at this time period, the late eighties
and early nineties, was the absolute height of a wave

(05:56):
of child sex abuse hysteria, and cases were weeping across
the country, one nonsensical case after the other, and I
think probably the most widely known one was the McMartin preschool,
but very close by to Howard and his family in
North Carolina was a Little Rascal's daycare center, where the
accusations were beyond absurd, I mean just absolutely outlangeious things

(06:17):
that a kid might conjure up on the spot. Now
that's not to say that there perhaps weren't, you know,
some real allegations among the false ones, but in that climate,
social services, police and eventually juries were buying the allegations
credible or not. Absolutely. And I wasn't a lawyer when
these cases were sweeping the nation and frankly internationally, um

(06:40):
but I remember, just like you, Jason, reading it and
thinking these sort of fantasy allegations. And people have different
theories about what led to this period of near hysteria,
but I think many believe it was a time of
two parent families. Both parents were working, so children were

(07:00):
being taken care of by strangers, were near strangers, and
all it takes is rumor and innuendo that something untoward
is happening in these places. And the Little Rascals is
a great example, and that's right here in North Carolina.
The trial which was against every worker and owner at

(07:22):
that day care center. That trial was occurring for the
owner of the center just minutes away from where Howard
Dudley lived. The stories were in the New York Times,
where in the international papers, were in every local newspaper,
and in that one newborn babies were being tossed to
sharks off the coast of North Carolina. There were pirate

(07:42):
ship allegations, clearly the stories of children, But the the
other important piece of this period of time was that
no research had really been conducted on whether young children
could fabricate such stories. So if they told you a
quote story, that story had to be true. Any listener

(08:03):
who is a parent today knows that that's a crazy notion.
Children makeup stories all the time. They lived in fantasy.
But that was that period. Today it is known that
children can lie that it's really important to conduct interviews
of children in a certain way that the medical evidence
that was believed to be dispositive abuse at the time

(08:25):
is not a friend of mine named Gus Gustler. I
don't know if he ever came across him, but he's
a criminal defense lawyer for a long time in North
Carolina and he defended one of these cases. He was
actually representing a man who was a golf pro whose
wife operated a daycare facility, and just because he would
go and pick her up from work once in a while,
he got caught up in it as well. And I

(08:46):
believe he got convicted because at the time it was
just like everybody was just believing anything that anybody said,
and of course these were crimes that never even happened.
We represent one of the last surviving multi defendant, multi
children cases from this period, and the man was convicted
in seven and it absolutely nothing happened. But he was

(09:08):
a van driver for a day care center with some
cognitively impaired adults on the van as well, and two
of those adults were boyfriend and girlfriend, and they were
doing as the children said that married people were doing
married people things on the bus and That's how it started,
and it ended up with our client, Junior Chandler in

(09:30):
prison since seven and we'll be there for the rest
of his life unless we can successfully petition the cord.
There's still so many people suffering in prison, like Junior Chandler,
James King, whose case we've covered on the show. And
if you have the opportunity, please go back and list
of that one. That one it hurts my heart and
we'll have it linked in the bio. And then who knows,

(09:52):
maybe you know something, Maybe it's something you can do
to help me. And Howard, you haven't even been home
that long. It was only two thousand sixteen when you
got out. So let's turn to the story at hand. Here.
This was October, which was a Sunday. Amy had just
been returned to her mother and Miss Darkey and I
understand that over the weekend you had been firm with
Amy about something, as parents often are when trying to

(10:14):
raise their children, you know, the right way, and she
had a complaint that you were quote nasty, And it
was at this point that Ms Darkey began a series
of leading questions, resulting in some very serious allegations and accusations.
Well What's really important is that the babysitter was predisposed
to believing that Howard was me and would do anything right.

(10:37):
So when Amy said my daddy is nasty, she went
straight to sexual and said does he put his mess
inside of you? So at that, given Amy's other characteristics,
you know, she went with it. And she had been
inappropriately watching adult TV. So she had seen the Sally
Jesse Raphael show where they had talked about rape. So

(11:00):
with a head full of adult content and being pressed
for an explanation about her meaning of the word nasty
by miss Darkey with a suggestive line of question like
does he put his mess inside you? I mean that's
the first direction she went in talking about Amy's dad. Eventually,
under this absurd and obscene pressure, nine year old Amy,

(11:21):
who was even more impressionable than her contemporaries, allegedly said
that Howard had quote humped her and quote had s
e X with her. So the accusation was reported to
Diane and then the police. Diane and Miss Starkey, I
think they noted certain things that they can run down
into the pole sit and they're gonna come back running
with handcuffs and wants. I think that you that little trial,

(11:44):
the little rascal that you that as an opportune time
to vent her anger out at me. Of course, in
this incredibly fraught time period, with a little Rascal case
looming in the headlines, the Kinston Police and Lenore County
DSS were primed to jump on a case like this one.
But it soon should have been clear that these accusations
of sexual activity on multiple occasions were totally false, because

(12:07):
when they began to ask Amy to retell what happened,
she told at least nine different stories to d s S. Nine,
and the stories were both inconsistent and wildly implausible, if
not impossible. For example, she said that on one occasion
she had been stabbed and then a neighbor came and
halted the alleged attack. There was no evidence, of course,
that she had ever been stabbed, and no neighbor could

(12:28):
corroborate the story. There was also a claim about him
putting hot sauce on his privates and the hot sauce
smelled like goats, And you know, it starts to go
into really bizarre and obviously patently false territory. This was
all supposed to be happening inside. Remember just a tiny
trailer while Howard's wife was there nursing their newborn. Just

(12:49):
wholly unbelievable. I mean, there was also a claim in
which she was supposed to have been raped while wearing
pajamas and underwear, which she said that time with the pajamas,
she was wearing her pandies and pajamas, and yet she
was vaginally penetrated by her father. Well, you can't do
that through pajamas. Amy was the evidence, and bless her heart,

(13:13):
she is the faulty evidence in the case. And it's
not her fault. Remember, she was a nine year old
child with intellectual limitations and didn't know how things worked,
including sacks and what would happen to her father with
these false claims. And we know Amy immediately recanted after trial.
She clearly feels guilt about that all of these years later,

(13:34):
But she was a child nine years old and the
adults in her life as well as the authorities, should
have known better. And as it turned out, there was
one person that did so as his protocol in a
case where the dispute between legal guardians and a minor's
interest must be looked. After Amy was assigned a guardian
d Lightham and this person also looked into the allegations.
While Amy was being interviewed and the claims were being verified,

(13:56):
the Guardian ed Lightham read everything you know. His job
is to advocate for the best interests of the child
and he concluded that it was an Amy's best interest
not to let her testify falsely against her father. He
decided that not from the start of his investigation. He
decided at the end of his investigation, he did a

(14:17):
full investigation. He interviewed people who knew Amy, He went
to her school. He understood Amy's pensions, for limitations, her characteristics,
the other actors. He read the reports. He did a
full investigation, a fuller investigation, and really tried to stop

(14:38):
the prosecution of Howard and to try to stop the
substantiation of abuse by the Department Social Services. But he
was unsuccessful. So you mentioned an important word here, substantiation.
The police were waiting for that to move forward with
an indictment. As unclear if the SS even knew that. So,

(14:58):
even though the Guardian light Um could see the writing
on the wall. After the initial investigation and interviews, DSS
inexplicably continued down this course towards substantiation, and on December
they filed the petition in Lenore County Juvenile Court alleging
abuse and neglect, and there was a hearing two weeks
later in which Howard was ordered to seize contact with
Amy and Diana, at which point the social workers also decided,

(15:20):
despite the total lack of evidence to corroborate Amy's claims,
that they would go with the mantra of that time
that credence must be given to the child story, thus
substantiating the claim and triggering the police to act more aggressively.
But something else happens here that makes absolutely no fucking sense.
It's crazy, and it all goes to show that the
social workers didn't really believe in they's claims. Now, get this,

(15:42):
The social workers agreed to a plan in which Howard
could potentially regain unsupervised visits upon completing some kind of
counseling for an unspecified amount of time. I mean, am
I missing something here? You're not missing a thing. And
they came to that conclusion after they had a team meeting.
How can you substantial ate the allegations? Because if they

(16:02):
believed them to be true, they never could have given
visitation to the person who perpetrated those kinds of acts.
That said. When we interviewed the lead social worker years later,
I asked, do you sometimes just substantiate so you can
get access to the family, In other words, do a
deeper investigation, And she said yes, yes, yes, evidently without

(16:28):
any appreciation about what substantiating the allegations would lead to,
and in fact did lead to in Howard's case. The

(16:53):
police department then charged because the Department of Social Services
was substantiating and they were substantially eating largely because they
had to give queens to the child, which is in
their report, and also because they wanted to figure out
what was going on with this family, so they had
to substantiate something to get DSS access to the family,

(17:13):
if that makes sense. Of course, couldn't have happened the
way she described it, given the size of the trailer
and where people were sleeping, and that Howard's wife was
home with a newborn and waking up every hour throughout
the night to take care of this newborn and had
a two year old close by. It just didn't happen.
And the guardian udelighted him, who was overridden by d

(17:34):
S s and Kingston Police Department. He didn't succeed in
stopping the train that had already headed off the station. Right,
this is a crime that not only didn't happen, you
also have that there was no opportunity even for Howard
to have done this or anyone to have done this
in this space that they cohabitated, as you just said, Teresa.

(17:56):
So Howard, turning to you during this period of time,
where were you, were you being held, were you out
on bond? And what was going on? And you're you're
a guy who had had no previous interaction with the
criminal justice system. You were a good young man, right,
that's right. I was sitting back in that count of
jail my lawyer, Mr Harvy, he comes in. He thought

(18:17):
talking with me about a police bargain. He told me,
said things ain't looking good for you. And I learned
that the police barging basically saying that you were guilty.
And that's all I need to hear. Right down, I said,
oh no, I said, no police bargain for me, And
he got a little hysterical. He said, Mr, this is
one thing that he told me with true, and you
don't take the police ball. You're gonna be gone for
a long time. That's what he told me. And then

(18:40):
it kind of hit me kind of hard. Think about
my children here, wife, here, how are they going to survive?
I begin to think about it. So I talked to
those with my wife. She pointed at me, she said,
you tell the truth. It's like you've been doing. And
so that's what helped me make my choice to stick
with it. I don't regret it. I don't regret it.
I had to live with Howard I got. I got

(19:02):
to coneper more and look at Howard in the mirror.
If I would have gave them what they wanted to
taken the police boggin. I don't think I've be seen
here talking to y'all to day. I think he took
me out. I think it's easy to understand not being
able to live with yourself if you had to say
publicly not only something so disgusting, but also so patently untrue.
Although some people are fine with things like that, I mean,

(19:22):
consider our former president, but Howard is not like that.
So you stuck to your innocence righteously and went to trial. Now,
as Teresa mentioned earlier, amy was the only evidence in
this case, false evidence. Of course that she immediately recanted
after trial, But that's all there ever was. And I
want to turn to Teresa here, because when you dove

(19:42):
into this case many years after the wrongful conviction, you
did what Howard's Lawn really everybody else should have done
in the first place, was to appropriately assess Amy's mental
state and competency to stay in trial. Now we alluded
to this earlier, the fact that she had some intellectual limitations.
Can you tell us what you learned Amy has some challenge?
Is a psychological problems? Did then? Does now? She has

(20:04):
some cognitive limitations more suggestible than of the population. So
this was a little girl who had nine probably was
much younger in her affect and her intellectual attainments. There's
a real question about whether she was competent to stand trial,

(20:26):
and I think everyone will be interested in learning how
they assessed her competence. They asked her if she knew
her colors, if she knew her letters, if she knew
a number of things, and she answered yes to each
of those without demonstrating that she in fact knew her colors,
knew her letters. You could ask a one and a

(20:48):
half year old, you know, yes or no questions, and
they likely answer guests. I mean, this poor girl was
just thrust into this situation answering questions about these vulgar,
terrible acts of which she had no knowledge because at
most she had heard about them from an episode of
Sally Jesse, Raphael her babysitter, or more likely the prosecutors.

(21:08):
She should have just been in school, but instead she
was in a courtroom walking through these inconsistent and implausible statements.
But wise, let's call what they are that she had
made up. So how did they make her sound credible
to the jury? When she testified, she was asked leading
questions because she was a child. You usually can't ask
leading questions and witnesses, um, there's a prohibition. But with

(21:32):
a child you can ask leading questions if you requested,
and you're the stay. So, of course, as you might imagine,
the testimony was bare bones, but also quite different from
the previous tellings of the story by Amy. So the
prosecutors allowed this, this sort of way of leading Amy
through a coherent narrative. Meanwhile, I understand the DSS reports

(21:54):
which contained all of Amy's interviews. Now those reports were
all with hell, we've been talking about the different retellings
by Amy, and the wild inconsistencies among the tellings and
the outlandish details, so all of that was withheld. Howard
didn't know about them at the time of trial, and
his defense lawyer didn't know. Now this state new. The

(22:16):
prosecutors knew because they had access to the DSS records,
and certainly the DSS chose a worker who led the
investigation knew. Even when it's the era of one must
give credence to the child, there was still one hopes
it would have been a juror or two at least
um who would say no, no, no, no, that's crazy talk,

(22:36):
and maybe would have hung the jury. I like to
believe that the defense lawyer would have won of outright
acquittal if he had had those documents and had done
even a modicum of investigation of his own. And he
had not. And this was a guy I don't forget,
who had been practicing law for only about a year
and had devoted only about thirty hours of this case,
including the two day trial. He found no pre trial emotions,

(22:58):
nor conducted any of own investigation, including it to Amy's
competency or the story she had told. He could have
also hired an independent medical expert, who knows how helpful
it could have been. When children are believed to have
been physically abused sexually abused, child medical evaluation report is completed.
In this case, one was worried by d s S.
I believe it was done three weeks later, which is

(23:22):
a mistake. But they did three weeks later, and there
was no physical evidence of abuse. Importantly, at trial, Howard's
defense lawyer did not call an independent medical expert. He
called that doctor, the one who conducted the child medical
evaluation for the state, and he got that doctor to say, no,

(23:44):
there wasn't any physical abuse. But that doctor also said,
in a lot of cases of sex abuse, the exam
is normal. So that was completely unhelpful. I mean to
have the medical examination conducted three weeks later. Our bodies
are elastic, they heal. Of course, they were't gonna find
anything three weeks later unless the damage was so severe,

(24:06):
which I don't even want to imagine, and thankfully we
don't have to in this case. There was no damage
even three weeks earlier. So Amy's mother, Diane and Lydia May,
the babysitter, also took the stand. Obviously, they weren't witnesses
to anything, so I'm not sure what they had to offer.
And Howard You took the stand as well, denying the charges,
saying that the comment about you being nasty, this all
started with you disciplining Amy for poor behavior. Your wife

(24:29):
also testified about the size of your mobile home and
how she had never heard any screams or anything unusual
during Amy's visits, as well as how she was up
at all hours nursing a newborn, which rendered all these
claims impossible. And one more thing I heard that Jrewish
said that I was believable and Amy was believable. But

(24:49):
they say at the end of the day they had
to go with the daughter. No, why not go with
the other dance? Right? I mean, if you have two
people telling completely different stories, now granted one of them
as a nine year old child, go with the evidence.
The problem with these cases, particularly during that period of time,

(25:10):
was that people were told they had to believe the children.
His daughter is saying it, right, why would she say
that it has to be true? Ultimately the jury went out.
When they came back in, did you still have a
hope that finally the truth would come out? And you
could go back to your normal life. When use an

(25:32):
innocent individual, absolutely you look for them, come back, get
this over with so I can go home, go back
with my life. As I strew that, that's what I
was looking to hear. And I watched twelve jurist come
out and say guilty, guilty, guilty. I said, I can't
believe this is happening. It's ridiculous. H you know what

(26:17):
society sometimes saying what people in feel say you were
found guilty. I'd like to use the term I was
made guilty because they had an absolutely nothing to prove
that I was guilty. And inside prison, that's a bad
that's a terrible case to carry inside the prison because
everybody is talking have their opinion about your case or

(26:41):
what they've seen on the new I slung hard to
my relationship with God, and I met other Christians that
was in prison, Gods that had made some mistakes, bad choices,
and we connected and sharing my story talking to them.
That's what helped me to be in to deal with
my situation at hand. And it got a little better

(27:04):
from there and people begin to believe in me. I
never dropped my relationship with God. I kept it for
the twenty four years in prison, prayer read my bottle
each and every day, and that's something I did every
They're repetitious. That was my survival. Of course, I'm glad
that you found a way through considering what prison life
can be like for someone founder or actually made guilty

(27:26):
of a crime like the one that never happened in
this case. And it must have eased your burden and
your mind a bit. When your daughter, Emmy came forward
to recount immediately after trial, can you tell us about that?
Did it surprised you? I knew my daughter. It didn't
surprise me. But what surprised me she did it so quickly.
I knew my daughter. I knew she couldn't live with
that because she and I were so cool. It would

(27:48):
it wouldn't have been so bad if we had a
close relationship. I was a good day, and I love
my daughter, still in love with the day. That's why
it fits her so bad when she had to live
with what she had to live with, which was a
whole lot. Right now today, She'll tell me, right now today, Dad,
I think I owe you explanation. I said, no, you
don't owe mer explanation. I know I was a good day.

(28:09):
I wasn't a perfect day. I definitely wasn't a perfect boyfriend. Yeah.
And by the way, you don't get life in prison
for being a bad boyfriend. Not even in this country
did Diane ever come around. Before Diane and his mother
passed away, she was even trying to get me out
of prisone. We went to court and she made a statement.
I didn't know amy with Lyne. I thought she was

(28:30):
telling the truth. These are her words. So with these
two very powerful recantations, plus support from family and your church,
they hired a lawyer to amount your post conviction campaign.
My family had a season lawyer in Kingston, James Perry.
We thought that he would do the investigation that never
occurred previously. What we realized that the information that would

(28:52):
needed to free me. He didn't get it, but he
did come down and talk to me when I was
in prison, but his conversation was only about me taking
a policebar can get out of Frielson. I wasn't about
to say I have committed a crime against my daughter
just to get out of Friels. And if I was
gonna do that, I would never came to film because
that door was open for me at the very beginning.
So the reason the earlier lawyers, including Mr Perry, failed

(29:16):
in part because they had a fundamental misunderstanding of what
you needed to do to get relief in a recantation case.
The recantation the case is when the principal witness or
a material witness lies during the trial and then they admitted.
Like Amy did immediately after the trial, she was with

(29:38):
a different babysitter. That babysitter was reading a Bible story
about truth and Amy started crying and said, I lied
on my daddy. So that gives you an opportunity to
go back into court on a recantation claim. But what
they did was just put Amy on the stand, and
Amy says, okay, I lied. But they don't give the
judge anything else because then the judge has, well, she
told story A at trial and now she's telling story B.

(30:02):
How do I decide which one is the truth. So
when we got it, we said, how can we provide
the judge the context to understand that Amy's recantation is
true and her trial testimony is false? Right? Not only
was his trial lawyer wildly ineffective, but his seasoned to
Pelt attorney neglected to do what was necessary in a

(30:24):
recantation case as well, so as I understand that Howard's
friend of volunteer would come into work in the prison chapel,
a guy named Lewis Alexander May he rest in peace.
He advocated for Howard with the Duke Quanfi Convictions Clinic,
and that really put Howard on the radar and on
the path to freedom. A really important step along that path, though,
was a series of articles written by a man of

(30:46):
a journalist named Joseph Neff who's now with the Marshall Project.
He worked for the Raleigh Newson Observer and he wrote
series on Howard's case that really helped us, including he
got an interview with the Guardian at lightem who spoke
out of turn. He realized he shouldn't have spoken to
a journalist and called the journalist the next day, I

(31:08):
believe and said, can I say now that that was
all you know off record? And the journalists said no,
And so we had what the Guardian and Lightham thought
about the case. We accepted Howard's case in two thousand
eight and we investigate fully. We had a remarkable expert,

(31:28):
a woman named Sally Johnson of m D psychiatrist, and
she did testing of Howard and Amy and it was
extremely helpful information, but it did take five years to
file the motion for appropriate reliefs that collected all of
the evidence. During that time, we were also talking to

(31:48):
the district attorney, which is what we do in every case.
We try to get the district attorney to agree with
us and join us in seeking relief for our clients.
But it didn't work in that case actually lasted through
that district attorney and another. We then had to go
before the judge, Judge Paul Jones, who was the last
person to deny relief to Howard. We had to convince

(32:11):
him not to bar us procedurally which is a court mechanism,
and to allow us to reopen the case in court,
and we did. He allowed us to go forward with
all of our claims and then he recused himself so
we had a different judge. So now you Jamie law
who our listeners world question remember from the Ronney Long case,

(32:32):
and another great lawyer of Spencer Paris, a friend of
yours to Resa, tremendous travel layer who came out of
retirement just for this case. The three of you prepared
for this hearing in two thousand sixteen. We had seven claims.
The very first claim which I was amused when I
look back at it this morning. The very first claim
is Howard Dudley is innocent, and then we lay out
make a just an argument for his innocence. You can't

(32:54):
win on innocence. There is no pre standing claim in
North Carolina or nearly anywhere. But innocence is enough. But
if you actually make a claim, a real claim of it,
there's just a corresponding increased likelihood in the past cases.
He looked at of relief, so I'm like, we're leading
off with claim of inniscence. So but then the other

(33:17):
claims were all the context right. So it was that
Amy was tested on suggestibility and she truly is more
suggestible than ninety nine point nine percent of the general population.
And that was done by Dr Sally Johnson. That was
a real forensic evaluation that Amy has a low i
Q in the sixty eight range, which makes her less

(33:39):
able in some ways to understand the ramifications of what
was happening, that it arose in this period of mass hysteria,
and we explained the context of the Little Rascal's trial
happening essentially next door. We had three claims and ineffective
assistance of counsel that explained everything that the lawyer failed
to do, including getting all the documents from the Department

(34:01):
Social Services and from Paul Porter, the Guardian and light Um.
So we put all of that together and that bolstered
Amy's recantation. One amazing thing that happened at that hearing, though,
was that when Amy was on the stand and it's
difficult for her as a nine year old, as a
teenager again and then as a grown woman, but the

(34:22):
judge asked if he could speak to her directly. The
judge turned towards Amy and he said, look at me.
This ain't got nothing to do with this between me
and you. He said, your dad to do anything to you.
She said no, sir, and that was all he needed.
So on March two, two thousand sixteen, the Honorable Judge
Parsons agreed that Amy's recantation was credible, that there was

(34:42):
ineffective assistance of counsel, and that the prosecution failed to
disclose both the Social Services report as well as the
fact that the Guardian ad light Um had concluded that
Amy's claims were false. The prosecution would eventually dismiss all
charges two months later. But what was that moment like
when the judge vacated confection and finally ordered you release
from prison and we sit there and court Mrs Newman

(35:05):
hill my arm. She would look around at my family
and with a smile on and I knew was going
in our favor him. But I had had so many
that down, so I didn't know what to believe, you know,
And so when things really like to knock me out.
When that judge turned around, looked at me, said most
of you going home today, I said myself, Did I

(35:25):
hear what I think I hear? And I didn't tell
me knew, but I was more famous. But that was
a great moment. My family, everybody started to a roar
in the court room, and it was just a high moment.
My favorite story is, because I'm a lawyer and a
rule followers. We're walking out and Howard's wearing his prison
guard and he's just dropping it behind him on the ground,

(35:48):
and I'm like, we've got to read, Howard, we have
to return these He looked at me like I was insane.
I am not worried about returning. He closed. Yeah, we
get outside and they're just throngs of his supporters and
reporters and Joe Naffer of the series on Us attended

(36:10):
the whole hearing. He was writing more. It was a
truly joyous, joyous day. It was great. It was great
when I walked out the door. Freedom, It was freedom.
But it hit me that my wife wasn't there to
see that. She worked so hard. My mama wasn't there
to see this. That was a moment that called me

(36:34):
to break down. They were hard at this speciplo moment
because they wasn't there. They worked so hard. One day
my wife just failed. Dated my MoMA vihan her the
last time in the Rex hospital. We sung together, we
prayed together, we cried together, and I left that day.
I knew that would be the last time I would
see her alive. And those emotions just came on me

(36:57):
all at once when I was walking out, and it
just overtook me. But very good day, you know, they're
very difficult day. Bitter sweet, yeah, bi sweet. So then
the April two eighteen, you fold the federal civil rights
suit against the City of Kingston, seeking compensation. They eventually
settled in July. You know, I mean nothing they could

(37:20):
ever pay you with make up for what you lost,
absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing. And then you are granted a
pardon of innocence from Governor Roy Cooper. So not only
did the prosecution dismiss the charges, but then you've got
to officially recognize officially, yes, I got hanging on my wall.
I'd like to say this right here, Jamie Most, the spensive,

(37:44):
Miss Newman, the Dude Law Team. I'd like to see
it like this right here. They saved my life. They
saved my life. I can't put it in a better
words of that right there, all of them. Well, we'll
be sure to you know, link up to the Duke
Law School Wrongful Conviction Clinic to check the link in

(38:06):
the bio of the episode. And now I'll turn to
closing arguments. You know, it starts off with me, of course,
thanking both of you for joining us, Theresa Howard, and
so now we're going to turn to closing arguments. This
is the part of the show where I turned my
microphone off and leave both of yours on and just
listen to anything else you want to share with me
in our audience. So Theresa, why don't you go first?

(38:26):
Then hand the mic off to Howard, and Howard, you
can take us out into the sunset. Every time Howard
and I have an opportunity to talk about this case,
whether it's publicly or in private, I learned something new
about Howard. And what I learned today is that Howard

(38:48):
sees himself as sort of everyman or ordinary man, just
a regular person trying to live his life, when in fact,
I and the people who have gotten to know him
through this long journey would say he's truly extraordinary in
that he refused to do what I think so many

(39:13):
of us would do to go home to be with
our families. He refused to take that early exit with
the plea bargain before trial and layer when it looked
like maybe it was going to be offered through the
previous lawyers, and he refused to do that because he
is a man of truly remarkable integrity, and as he says,

(39:37):
I wanted to be able to look in the mirror
and say, you know, I could not have taken that
plea and admitted to doing the things that I did
not do. In that that I have lived my life
in a different way from what they expect me to say. So,
how are your truly extraordinary well on my behave? I

(39:57):
would say, might just say that Teresa Jamie most expense,
some must the Coleman, the Duke law students, Well, I
say that they helped helped to restore my integrity of
the law. I didn't think they were such things after
my situation at any lawyers that had a heart. I
really didn't think that until they restored it. There are

(40:20):
some good lawyers out there. There's something that got a heart.
There is something that want to do the right thing.
They'll something take their work serious. There is something that
out there that really really care about what they are doing.
People lives. Like I said earlier, and I continue to
say this, because they saved my life. I was in

(40:44):
a situation that I didn't think I would never get
out of. I had so many notes. I didn't think
it was sa thing and yes's would it come down
the lawyers and this was the turn. I had no idea.
But I could never say enough about what they have
done on my behalf, restoring my freedom back and back
with my family children, even though they are wrong now
but old old at all to do well. Family Will Family,

(41:08):
Real Family. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd
like to thank our production team Connor Hall, 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

(41:32):
at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and
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 flom
Rnful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
and association with Signal Company Number one THO
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Lauren Bright Pacheco

Lauren Bright Pacheco

Maggie Freleng

Maggie Freleng

Jason Flom

Jason Flom

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