July 25, 2022 • 34 mins
In May of 1992, Sylvia Boykin and Bernetta Pope were struggling with substance addiction. Pope owed Boykin money who, in turn, owed money to two younger men. So Boykin and the men went to the house where Pope stayed in Philadelphia, PA to collect the drug debt. Boykin went inside alone but when she returned empty handed, the men went in with guns. An argument ensued, shots were fired, and Pope was killed. Since Boykin was unarmed, she should have been considered a witness. Nevertheless, she was arrested, convicted of first degree murder and sent to prison for life. Maggie speaks to Sylvia Boykin, Jill McCorkel, Boykin's advocate, and Boykin's daughter Pennie Oliver.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
A note for listeners, this episode contains discussion of child
sexual abuse and attempted suicide. Please listen with caution and care.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Jason, we talk a lot about false confessions, and we
know how and why they happen. Is there a scenario
in which you would willfully confess to a crime like
a murder.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Well, I can envision the scenario which I would confess
to a murder that I didn't commit, and that would
be if I became so disoriented, scared, confused, lonely, and
just terrified of the people who we all believe are
there to protect us and to help us and to
(00:45):
find the truth when they turn on you. Sometimes people
see it as their only way out of that impossible situation.
And you're in that room and you're like, I don't
want to die, and maybe this will get sorted out
because I know I didn't do it.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
And he kept saying, well, if you sign this, i'll
let you go home, and so I was like, but
this is not what happened. So we get me to
the chair and he hit me with a phone book
to wake me up.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
He's like, sign this and we will.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Let you go.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
I signed a paper and I never left prison.
Speaker 6 (01:26):
From Love of for Good.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Sylvia Boykin.
On May fifteenth, nineteen ninety two, Sylvia Boykin went to
collect a drug debt from a woman named Burnetta Pope.
(01:50):
Sylvia showed up at the house in North Philadelphia with
two men, Lamont Antoine Blackman, and Aaron Major. Burnetta owed
Sylvia money, who in turn owed Antoine and Aaron as
well as other men who were higher up in the
drug network. But Burnetta was late in pain, so Sylvia
brought Antoine and erin to prove that she was trying
(02:10):
her best to obtain the debt. But things went horribly
wrong when they got there. Burnetta and her son Albert,
refused to pay. Exactly what happened next we may never know,
but gunfire erupted and Burnetta Pope was shot dead. Sylvia
was quickly arrested, charged and convicted of first degree murder.
Speaker 6 (02:33):
But Sylvia did not shoot anybody.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
I went there with no one chitches that no one
would get killed. I didn't kill anyone. I didn't order
for anyone to get killed.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
I'm Sylvia Boaken, I'm sixty three, I'll be sixty four
in two days, and here I said thirty one years
later in a prison.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Sylvia Boykin was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May twenty sixth,
nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 6 (03:15):
She's the youngest of six kids.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
So when I was born, all my sisters were grown
and they were having babies, so I grew up with
my nieces and nephews.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
On the surface, Sylvia's life seemed great. She went to
Magnet Schools for kids with high IQs, and when she graduated,
she moved to Virginia for college, where she studied data
entry and medical administrative assistance. She had a good job
at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia was on
her way to greatness. But Sylvia wound up on a
different path, one of substance abuse and addiction.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
Somewhere inside of me, I was running.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
God always had his hands on me, but I was running,
and I was trying to I was trying to find
something to fix the pain because I was hurt, like
very bad, which is a really tough subject for me.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Sylvia's inner trauma and suffering it started when she was
a child and her grandfather sexually assaulted her.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
He didn't actually like have sex with me, to penetrate
me anything, but he touched me in my private area.
But that was just like the beginning, you know, of
things that happened in my life.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
As a child.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Then, at ten years old, she was raped by her
nineteen year old brother.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
I had to go to the hospital, and I was
a very young girl, and at that time I was
stitched up, and I was told by my mother and
not to tell the police who did it because that
they would arrest my brother.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
The assault and rape, plus the fact that her family
covered it all up, took a huge.
Speaker 6 (05:13):
Toll on Sylvia.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
After I was raped by my brother, I took my
mother's sleeping hills.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
I tried to kill myself when I was ten. Yeah,
I took the whole bottle.
Speaker 6 (05:28):
Oh my gosh, who found you?
Speaker 4 (05:31):
My knee's Valerie, and she's like two years younger than me.
She found me and she went and got my sister.
They took me to the hospital. They pumped my stomach
and they put me in the children psych wood.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Sylvia's older sister, Teresa, was furious at the situation an
intent on making sure Sylvia would be safe going forward.
The whole family lived in a three story, do you
Sylvia lived on the first floor with her mother and brother. Well,
the rest of the family lived upstairs. Teresa lived on
the second floor.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
She took me and wouldn't let me sleep downstairs in
my mother's part. She said, I couldn't stay down there.
She took me and so I stayed up in her
part until I healed up, till I got well.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
And this isn't even the extent of Sylvia's suffering. Throughout
her childhood and adolescence, Sylvia was again molested numerous times
by close family friends.
Speaker 5 (06:36):
So I went through a lot of.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Being raped and molested that I used to just go,
like get in the front of the church for altar
prayer and I would just stay there and pray, and
you know, I just wanted to like, why why did
these people do this to me?
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Well, Sylvia's sisters tried to protect her from the sexual abuse.
Sylvia sought out coping mechanisms.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
My sister she would she started, she would give me beer,
and sometimes she would give me strictest liquor called Macnoidan's
and she would give me some.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
So, you know, do you think your need to escape
is kind of what led you to drug use.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
Yes, I always felt like I needed to run away.
I needed to numb the pain. So I would always
be like the life of the party, like everybody wanted
like to be around me, And sometimes I think I
tried to ship my brain off from it.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Eventually, when she was seventeen years old, Sylvia met the
man who would become her first husband. She was motivated
to move forward past the trauma and build a normal life.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
As a little girl, I'd always dream about just having
this beautiful home and children and a husband and just
being very happy. I used to always draw pictures like
that when I was little, with the sunshine and the
house with a talent and trees.
Speaker 5 (08:30):
I used to always draw those pictures in school.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Sylvia ended up having three daughters, Penny, Tsha, and Kimberly.
She was seventeen and she had Penny, her oldest. Here's Penny.
Speaker 7 (08:46):
She was reay, I would say, into our lives, meaning
she was you know that mom that was into you know,
the girl scouts, the PTA meetings. She was always you know,
into the family functions and you know, everything with us.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Sylvia tried her best to be a good mom and wife,
but the damage from her past experiences inevitably disrupted her
personal life.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
I've been married four times already, but I could never maintain,
like keep them a marriage going.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
As the distractions from her trauma became increasingly destructive, Sylvia
eventually started abusing hard drugs like crack.
Speaker 6 (09:39):
Do you remember any of her drug use?
Speaker 7 (09:43):
Yes, yes, I remember. She tried to keep it undercover,
but as me being the oldest of three girls, I
noticed a lot that was going on with her.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
For example, Penny says she remembers late nights out and
a lot of trips in and out of the house.
Speaker 7 (10:05):
She would be late for jobs. She would work jobs,
but she would be late or sometimes she would be tired,
and so we would have to fund for ourself. And
when I say fund for ourselves, get up and get
ready for school, I will be responsible making sure that
(10:25):
we got up for school, or making sure everything was
handled in the household. It was a lot because I
felt like it was unfair to me. And I would
say at that age, I had a lot of goals
for myself, a lot of things I wanted to do
out of life. I wanted to go places and do
(10:49):
things and be on my own and be able to
live my life.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
But instead Penny would wind up permanently taking care of
her siblings. By nineteen ninety two, Sylvia was suffering from
a serious addiction to crack, and to finance her own addiction,
she was selling it for a network of street level
drug dealers. Sylvia says she sold crack to forty three
(11:20):
year old Burnetta Pope on a few occasions, but she
also felt sorry for Burnetta. She describes the house Burnetta
was staying in.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
No furniture, no running water, the bathroom didn't work still
TV a few old cheers like Willie Nasby. I bought
her a sweatsuit to put on. I took food there
and gable food, and I had just recently met them
and they were very kind to me.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
In May of nineteen ninety two, Sylvia was waiting on
seven dollars from Burnetta and then from the network, including
one of the bosses, Joseph, demanded she get the money.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
I didn't know how the whole operation was working.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Allie knew that he would tell me to take stuff
to her and that I would go back to pick
up the money.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
So she went to the place where she knew Burnetta
was staying.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
I went around here to collect money for him.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
She said that she didn't have the money and she
wasn't paying, and so I told him so.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
The next day he told me to go back.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
On May fifteenth, Sylvia smoked some crack, drank some booze,
and returned to the house. This time she brought seventeen
year old Lamont Antoine Blagman and nineteen year old Aaron Major.
These two were also part of the dealing network, and
Sylvia wanted to prove that she had actually been trying
to collect the money. She owed them all along. She
(12:56):
also thought their mail presence would persuade Burnetta into paying.
They all went in the same car together, Sylvia driving.
They found Brunetta at the house with a man and
her twenty six year old son, Albert.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
I went in the house first to ask her for
the money. She said she wasn't going to pay the
money in whatever, So I went back out and I
told Anon Antoine that she said. Aaron Antoine went in
and I don't really know exactly what happened, but I
(13:31):
guess everybody started arguing and all I heard was a
couple of gunshots by Froze. I was scared and I
was like what happened, So they ran they left me.
I drove and when I went around the block, I
seen them. Then they got back in across me.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Even after what had just happened, Antoine and Aaron still
demanded their money.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
So I went to ATM machine.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
And I took the money out of my bank account
and I paid them.
Speaker 6 (14:08):
Sylvia says she dropped them off and went home.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
She had no idea the gunshots she heard were bullets
coming at the neck and leg of Burnetta Pope. This
episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company.
(14:32):
AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and to making
a positive difference in the lives of its employees and
in the communities where we work and live. In light
of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and
in recognition of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform,
the AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and
(14:56):
other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. By the time
Sylvia got home, police were already waiting for her. They
asked her where she had been and what she knew
about her shooting. Sylvia was terrified. She denied knowing anything,
and she denied knowing Antoine and Aaron, but the police
(15:18):
had received word that Sylvia was at the house and
it wasn't just a shooting. Burnetta Pope was now dead.
Her son Albert, had called nine one one and told
the police where Sylvia lived, so police knew that Sylvia
was lying and that she wasn't going to cooperate. Just
two hours after the incident, Sylvia was arrested for robbery,
(15:41):
reckless endangerment, and assault. When they got to the police station,
Detective Dennis Dusak questioned Sylvia about everything that transpired that night.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
When he arrested me, he handcuffed me to a chair
for hours, and he kept adding to me what happened,
And I told him.
Speaker 5 (16:02):
I didn't really know what happened.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
And I was talking to him and I was scared
and I didn't know, you know, what to say or
what to do. And he wouldn't let me go to
the bathroom. He let me urinate on myself.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Then, she says, detective Dusak wrote out a statement for
her to sign.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
I kept telling him I had three children at home,
and he kept saying, well, if you sign this, I'll
let you go home, and so I was like, but
this is not what happened.
Speaker 5 (16:29):
So he kept me to the chair and then I
kept falling asleep and he hit me with a phone book.
There's a.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
Paperbag phone book to wake me up. He's like, sign
this and we will let you go. I signed the
paper and I never left.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Prison after that interaction, Sylvia ended up being charged with
first degree murder on top of robbery, conspiracy, and possession
of instruments of a crime. Antoine and Aaron were also
charged with murder, robbery, and a host of other crimes.
(17:10):
The three of them went to trial on March twenty third,
nineteen ninety four, and were all tried together. The prosecutor
was John Doyle. His argument was that Sylvia ordered Antoine
and Aaron to kill both Burnetta and her son Albert.
And Doyle developed this theory from Albert, who said that
(17:32):
even though she was unarmed, Sylvia ordered the hit on
their lives.
Speaker 6 (17:37):
In fact, because it was.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Agreed that Sylvia was unarmed, Albert's statements were the main
reason prosecutors could even charge Sylvia with murder in the
first place. Prosecutor Doyle also presented Sylvia's signed statement, as
well as one from Aaron Major. There's no evidence that
Antoine Blackman signed a statement, but the defense council said
(18:01):
that the two statements that were presented were coerced. In fact,
on the stand, both Antoine and Aaron said that Sylvia
did not have a gun and did not order anyone
to shoot.
Speaker 6 (18:12):
All three also.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Contended that Albert actually threatened them with a gun. First
forensics showed that Burnetta was shot by two different guns.
Although accounts of very the defense and prosecution agreed on
one thing. Sylvia did not have a gun and did
not shoot anyone. What was that like to see your
(18:37):
mom in cuffs and facing a murder trial?
Speaker 6 (18:40):
I mean, that's I imagine it's really traumatizing.
Speaker 7 (18:43):
Yes, it was, you know, not being able to touch
her or talk to her and seeing them question her.
And for me most because my grandmother was there and
at the time, my grandmother was starting to go through dementia,
so it was really hard. I think that was the
(19:06):
most for me watching my grandmother go through it, because
my grandmother would just burst out in court, just stand
up and scream and be like, you don't know what
you're doing or you don't know what you're talking about,
and just let my daughter go and and the things
that you're saying, she didn't do that, So yes, it
(19:29):
was really tough.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
On April first, nineteen ninety four, Sylvia, along with Antoine
and Aaron, was convicted of first degree murder. Sixteen year
old Penny was now in charge of taking care of
her younger siblings, and it was hard.
Speaker 7 (19:47):
I would tell friends like far as school jobs. When
they would asks about my mother, I would say that
my mother is still live in Virginia, so that did
not know that my mother was incarcerated. And I'm gonna
be honest, it was that love hate relationship.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Penny says it's been difficult to visit her mom in
prison over the years.
Speaker 7 (20:15):
So to be honest. As a kid, we did go
a lot. It was a group that went up and
they took the children all the time. But as I
got older, I stopped going because I didn't like it
at all. I didn't like the way it felt to me.
(20:36):
I didn't like seeing my mother like that, so I
really didn't. I stop going a lot.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
But now that she's an adult with children, Penny wants
her kids to have a relationship with their grandma, so
they visit her.
Speaker 7 (20:53):
It's the only way for her to have a relationship
with them since the sac You know, she is a
lifer and unfortunately we grew up and we had kids
of our own, and that's the only way she would
have a bond with them and see them.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Meanwhile, Sylvia filed appeal after appeal to no avail. Neither
of her two attorneys were effective. Sylvia's trial attorney, Michael Wallace,
failed to file her appeal in a timely manner, so
he was unable to appeal to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Eventually,
her rights to appeal were reinstated and she got a
new attorney, James Bruno, But the appeals that Bruno filed
(21:44):
were all denied and exhausted, leaving Sylvia very few options
for release, and Bruno had issues of his own. He
was later suspended from practicing law for violating rules of
professional conduct. Meanwhile, Antoine Blackman was released from prison on
his direct appeal in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 8 (22:04):
One of the tragedies in this particular case is that
she never had adequate legal representation.
Speaker 6 (22:10):
This is doctor Jill mccorkyl.
Speaker 8 (22:13):
I'm a professor of sociology and criminology, at Villanova University,
and I'm also the founder and the executive director of
the Philadelphia Justice Project for Women and Girls.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Doctor McCorkle studies how mass incarceration intersects with gender and poverty.
She was looking into another similar case, a woman who
is not the shooter in a crime and also got
a life sentence when she came across Sylvia's case.
Speaker 8 (22:39):
There are a number of women with similar kinds of
scenarios where it's the principal offender is a man.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
She says, women are often at a unique disadvantage in
this situation.
Speaker 8 (22:52):
They're unable to cooperate with police because usually they're scared
of retaliatory violence, and then you know, police and prosecutors
engage in a malicious prosecution. And so that's really how
I got to Sylvia.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Doctor mccorkyl believes that Sylvia would have and should have
been treated as a witness, and that it was Sylvia's
hesitancy to cooperate with police that got her the murder charge.
Remember when the police asked Sylvia what she knew about
the crime and if she knew Antoine and Aaron, she
said no.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
I was scared, and I was like, what did they
go do something to my girls if I go tell
on him what happened. I was scared, like, I got
three girls at home that's alone, and I was afraid
that if I told on him, like it's something that
might happen to my daughters.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Doctor mccorkyl says that a lot of women like Sylvia,
who are vulnerable because of poverty, precarious lifestyles, drug and
alcohol abuse, and her domestic violence, are not in a
position where they can cooperate with police and prosecutors.
Speaker 8 (24:00):
Puts them at risk. It often puts family members at risk,
and police and prosecutors, I'll say, I'll be as generous
as possible, misinterpret that hesitancy, and I think in some
cases honestly take that unwillingness to cooperate as an indicator
(24:21):
of criminal culpability and then hit them with elevated charges
to try to force their hand. And so, you know,
you can really look at these cases and see women
sort of situated between street violence and then what I
refer to as state violence, so that they're sort of
(24:41):
taking their chances either way. And those who are particularly
vulnerable to violence and retaliation are saying, all right, well,
you know I'm going to take my chances at trial
because it's better than taking my chances on the street.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Sylvia took those chances and they didn't land in her favor.
Albert's contention that Sylvia ordered the hit ended up being
her downfall, and doctor mccorky believes that Albert testified to
this because of pressure.
Speaker 6 (25:10):
He faced at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
He had an open drug charge, and after he offered
up this information, he was able to plead a very
favorable and short sentence to his own case, even though
he never initially said that Sylvia ordered the shooting. But
doctor mccorky believes that Albert's testimony about Sylvia during the
trial is actually one of the most preposterous things about
(25:33):
Sylvia's case.
Speaker 8 (25:36):
When Sylvia is initially arrested, she's arrested for robbery, maybe
simple assaul or aggravated assaults, nothing about murder. So even
when the police pick her up, there's no you know,
kind of framing of Sylvia as somehow this you know,
(25:59):
criminal master mind or street heavy ordering the execution of
the people in this house. Now, Albert testifies to that,
and I think probably does so because that's the only
way that prosecutors can can hook Sylvia on in any
meaningful way. They need some kind of statement, you know,
(26:20):
going directly to her culpability.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Doctor McCorkle has studied crack cocaine markets in depth. She
says knowing their structure is key to understanding the forces
that led to Sylvia's conviction.
Speaker 8 (26:32):
These markets are organized hierarchically and by gender. You know,
Sylvia is in her thirties at the time this goes down,
and so one of the things that prosecutors are doing
at trial is saying, here's this woman in her thirties
and she's got these two you know, teenagers, so she's
the adult, so therefore, you know, she must have been
(26:57):
in charge of this. But that's not how crack cocaine
markets work. These markets and particularly the responsibility for retaliation
and the responsibility for collecting debt is men's responsibility. So
you know, sort of gender segregation in the drug market.
(27:17):
So you know, women aren't the enforcers in these markets.
Speaker 6 (27:21):
That's men.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Even though Antoine Blackman was eventually released from prison, doctor
mccorko believes him to be the likeliest shooter in this case.
Speaker 8 (27:33):
The mythology on the street is, yeah, you give a
teenager the gun because they're not going to get as
lengthy a sentence as an adult Wood, Which is the
other reason that it's entirely plausible to me that blackman
is the shooter. He's the juvenile, and so that's certainly
not unusual. It was the norm to have a juvenile
(27:53):
be the shooter. So I can see major handing that
gun to blackmen.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Sylvia was left with a life without parole sentence, and
now with her appeals exhausted.
Speaker 8 (28:12):
Where we're really left here is commutation. And I think
she deserves commutation on her merits, you know, without even
looking into the kind of specifics of all, right, well,
how culpable was she in this particular case. But I
think on her own merits, she deserves to have a
sentence commutation, which would release her from life in prison
(28:36):
without possibility of parole. It would allow her to go
home to her family.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Sylvia has made the best of her time in prison.
Speaker 8 (28:44):
However, She's gotten, you know, multiple certifications, and she's got
three decades in Certainly, Sylvia has done everything that we
would expect someone to do over the duration of such
a long period of time.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Sylvia goes to church for weekly services, Bible study and prayer.
She has continued to develop her computer skills and she
studies entrepreneurship, but she especially enjoys being a certified peer specialist.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Train us to like sit down and to listen to people,
you know, so it's not like to tell them what
to do, but just to be listening and caring and
helping them to find their own answer.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
And it makes you feel good.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Also, I try to help, like a lot of the
young people, I try to guide them. I try to
talk to them a lot about being here and going
home and making a change in their life.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Sylvia loves doing this and this is what she wants
to continue to do. Doctor McCorkle has also offered her
a position with the Philadelphia Justice Project for Women and Girls.
Speaker 6 (29:58):
When she gets out.
Speaker 8 (29:59):
We're going to have her be our ambassador and do
a lot of outreach to other incarcerated women. And certainly,
you know, there's there's no better expert both with respect
to these kinds of prosecutions, as well as you know,
an expert in what it means to be a woman,
(30:20):
to be a mother, to be a grandmother, Navigating decades
in prison.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
I feel like after thirty one years in here that
I've came to know myself. I have so much that
I want to give back. I want to be able
to go out and to help young people. I want
to be able to tell my story that helps some
young girl know that no matter what happened in her life,
(30:51):
no matter if she was molested, no matter if somebody
you know led her down the wrong road to get
on drugs or to drink, that she can't change.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Sylvia is now sixty four and in declining health. Among
her ailments is psiatic nerve damage, arthritis, and herniated disks,
all of which cause her daily pain.
Speaker 8 (31:16):
It is costing Pennsylvania taxpayers so much to lock up
a prison population that you know, twenty five percent of
them are fifty and older, and it's just incredibly expensive,
and so regardless of sort of where you're situated politically,
there's a recognition that we have got to get aging
people out of prison.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
While Sylvia knows she's not directly responsible for Brunetta's death,
she still feels regret over what happened.
Speaker 5 (31:55):
And I'm just so so sorry everyone that I heard
for a paid that I cost.
Speaker 9 (32:08):
I'm very sorry for that. I wish I could take
it all back. I wish I could go back to
that day and two things are different. I would just
wish I could just go back.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
In July twenty twenty one, doctor mccorkyl submitted a letter
to the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons urging them to grant
Sylvia commutation. Sylvia's case is up for review in October
twenty twenty two. She needs a majority of a five
person panel to move to the next round of voting,
where she will need all five votes to be free.
(33:01):
If you'd like to show your support for Sylvia, go
to free Sylvia boycrind dot com to sign a petition
calling for her commutation.
Speaker 6 (33:13):
Next time.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
On Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, Troy Berner.
Speaker 10 (33:19):
You know I didn't have nothing to do with it,
so you know, and they're not going to be to
find nobody to say I had nothing to do with it,
so you know, I held on to that, you know,
that belief on where they say the truth says you're free.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
links in our bio to see how you can help.
I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flahm and
Kevin Wurtis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea,
researcher Lila Robinson, story editor Sonya Paul, with additional production
(33:57):
by Jeff Clyburn and Connor Hall. The music in this
production is 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 on Twitter at
Wrongful Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
(34:18):
Instagram and Twitter at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie
Freeling is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
association with Signal Company Number one
A note for listeners, this episode contains discussion of child
sexual abuse and attempted suicide. Please listen with caution and care.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Jason, we talk a lot about false confessions, and we
know how and why they happen. Is there a scenario
in which you would willfully confess to a crime like
a murder.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Well, I can envision the scenario which I would confess
to a murder that I didn't commit, and that would
be if I became so disoriented, scared, confused, lonely, and
just terrified of the people who we all believe are
there to protect us and to help us and to
(00:45):
find the truth when they turn on you. Sometimes people
see it as their only way out of that impossible situation.
And you're in that room and you're like, I don't
want to die, and maybe this will get sorted out
because I know I didn't do it.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
And he kept saying, well, if you sign this, i'll
let you go home, and so I was like, but
this is not what happened. So we get me to
the chair and he hit me with a phone book
to wake me up.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
He's like, sign this and we will.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Let you go.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
I signed a paper and I never left prison.
Speaker 6 (01:26):
From Love of for Good.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Sylvia Boykin.
On May fifteenth, nineteen ninety two, Sylvia Boykin went to
collect a drug debt from a woman named Burnetta Pope.
(01:50):
Sylvia showed up at the house in North Philadelphia with
two men, Lamont Antoine Blackman, and Aaron Major. Burnetta owed
Sylvia money, who in turn owed Antoine and Aaron as
well as other men who were higher up in the
drug network. But Burnetta was late in pain, so Sylvia
brought Antoine and erin to prove that she was trying
(02:10):
her best to obtain the debt. But things went horribly
wrong when they got there. Burnetta and her son Albert,
refused to pay. Exactly what happened next we may never know,
but gunfire erupted and Burnetta Pope was shot dead. Sylvia
was quickly arrested, charged and convicted of first degree murder.
Speaker 6 (02:33):
But Sylvia did not shoot anybody.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
I went there with no one chitches that no one
would get killed. I didn't kill anyone. I didn't order
for anyone to get killed.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
I'm Sylvia Boaken, I'm sixty three, I'll be sixty four
in two days, and here I said thirty one years
later in a prison.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Sylvia Boykin was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May twenty sixth,
nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 6 (03:15):
She's the youngest of six kids.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
So when I was born, all my sisters were grown
and they were having babies, so I grew up with
my nieces and nephews.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
On the surface, Sylvia's life seemed great. She went to
Magnet Schools for kids with high IQs, and when she graduated,
she moved to Virginia for college, where she studied data
entry and medical administrative assistance. She had a good job
at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia was on
her way to greatness. But Sylvia wound up on a
different path, one of substance abuse and addiction.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
Somewhere inside of me, I was running.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
God always had his hands on me, but I was running,
and I was trying to I was trying to find
something to fix the pain because I was hurt, like
very bad, which is a really tough subject for me.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Sylvia's inner trauma and suffering it started when she was
a child and her grandfather sexually assaulted her.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
He didn't actually like have sex with me, to penetrate
me anything, but he touched me in my private area.
But that was just like the beginning, you know, of
things that happened in my life.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
As a child.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Then, at ten years old, she was raped by her
nineteen year old brother.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
I had to go to the hospital, and I was
a very young girl, and at that time I was
stitched up, and I was told by my mother and
not to tell the police who did it because that
they would arrest my brother.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
The assault and rape, plus the fact that her family
covered it all up, took a huge.
Speaker 6 (05:13):
Toll on Sylvia.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
After I was raped by my brother, I took my
mother's sleeping hills.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
I tried to kill myself when I was ten. Yeah,
I took the whole bottle.
Speaker 6 (05:28):
Oh my gosh, who found you?
Speaker 4 (05:31):
My knee's Valerie, and she's like two years younger than me.
She found me and she went and got my sister.
They took me to the hospital. They pumped my stomach
and they put me in the children psych wood.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Sylvia's older sister, Teresa, was furious at the situation an
intent on making sure Sylvia would be safe going forward.
The whole family lived in a three story, do you
Sylvia lived on the first floor with her mother and brother. Well,
the rest of the family lived upstairs. Teresa lived on
the second floor.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
She took me and wouldn't let me sleep downstairs in
my mother's part. She said, I couldn't stay down there.
She took me and so I stayed up in her
part until I healed up, till I got well.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
And this isn't even the extent of Sylvia's suffering. Throughout
her childhood and adolescence, Sylvia was again molested numerous times
by close family friends.
Speaker 5 (06:36):
So I went through a lot of.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Being raped and molested that I used to just go,
like get in the front of the church for altar
prayer and I would just stay there and pray, and
you know, I just wanted to like, why why did
these people do this to me?
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Well, Sylvia's sisters tried to protect her from the sexual abuse.
Sylvia sought out coping mechanisms.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
My sister she would she started, she would give me beer,
and sometimes she would give me strictest liquor called Macnoidan's
and she would give me some.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
So, you know, do you think your need to escape
is kind of what led you to drug use.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
Yes, I always felt like I needed to run away.
I needed to numb the pain. So I would always
be like the life of the party, like everybody wanted
like to be around me, And sometimes I think I
tried to ship my brain off from it.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Eventually, when she was seventeen years old, Sylvia met the
man who would become her first husband. She was motivated
to move forward past the trauma and build a normal life.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
As a little girl, I'd always dream about just having
this beautiful home and children and a husband and just
being very happy. I used to always draw pictures like
that when I was little, with the sunshine and the
house with a talent and trees.
Speaker 5 (08:30):
I used to always draw those pictures in school.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Sylvia ended up having three daughters, Penny, Tsha, and Kimberly.
She was seventeen and she had Penny, her oldest. Here's Penny.
Speaker 7 (08:46):
She was reay, I would say, into our lives, meaning
she was you know that mom that was into you know,
the girl scouts, the PTA meetings. She was always you know,
into the family functions and you know, everything with us.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Sylvia tried her best to be a good mom and wife,
but the damage from her past experiences inevitably disrupted her
personal life.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
I've been married four times already, but I could never maintain,
like keep them a marriage going.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
As the distractions from her trauma became increasingly destructive, Sylvia
eventually started abusing hard drugs like crack.
Speaker 6 (09:39):
Do you remember any of her drug use?
Speaker 7 (09:43):
Yes, yes, I remember. She tried to keep it undercover,
but as me being the oldest of three girls, I
noticed a lot that was going on with her.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
For example, Penny says she remembers late nights out and
a lot of trips in and out of the house.
Speaker 7 (10:05):
She would be late for jobs. She would work jobs,
but she would be late or sometimes she would be tired,
and so we would have to fund for ourself. And
when I say fund for ourselves, get up and get
ready for school, I will be responsible making sure that
(10:25):
we got up for school, or making sure everything was
handled in the household. It was a lot because I
felt like it was unfair to me. And I would
say at that age, I had a lot of goals
for myself, a lot of things I wanted to do
out of life. I wanted to go places and do
(10:49):
things and be on my own and be able to
live my life.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
But instead Penny would wind up permanently taking care of
her siblings. By nineteen ninety two, Sylvia was suffering from
a serious addiction to crack, and to finance her own addiction,
she was selling it for a network of street level
drug dealers. Sylvia says she sold crack to forty three
(11:20):
year old Burnetta Pope on a few occasions, but she
also felt sorry for Burnetta. She describes the house Burnetta
was staying in.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
No furniture, no running water, the bathroom didn't work still
TV a few old cheers like Willie Nasby. I bought
her a sweatsuit to put on. I took food there
and gable food, and I had just recently met them
and they were very kind to me.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
In May of nineteen ninety two, Sylvia was waiting on
seven dollars from Burnetta and then from the network, including
one of the bosses, Joseph, demanded she get the money.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
I didn't know how the whole operation was working.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Allie knew that he would tell me to take stuff
to her and that I would go back to pick
up the money.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
So she went to the place where she knew Burnetta
was staying.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
I went around here to collect money for him.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
She said that she didn't have the money and she
wasn't paying, and so I told him so.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
The next day he told me to go back.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
On May fifteenth, Sylvia smoked some crack, drank some booze,
and returned to the house. This time she brought seventeen
year old Lamont Antoine Blagman and nineteen year old Aaron Major.
These two were also part of the dealing network, and
Sylvia wanted to prove that she had actually been trying
to collect the money. She owed them all along. She
(12:56):
also thought their mail presence would persuade Burnetta into paying.
They all went in the same car together, Sylvia driving.
They found Brunetta at the house with a man and
her twenty six year old son, Albert.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
I went in the house first to ask her for
the money. She said she wasn't going to pay the
money in whatever, So I went back out and I
told Anon Antoine that she said. Aaron Antoine went in
and I don't really know exactly what happened, but I
(13:31):
guess everybody started arguing and all I heard was a
couple of gunshots by Froze. I was scared and I
was like what happened, So they ran they left me.
I drove and when I went around the block, I
seen them. Then they got back in across me.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Even after what had just happened, Antoine and Aaron still
demanded their money.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
So I went to ATM machine.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
And I took the money out of my bank account
and I paid them.
Speaker 6 (14:08):
Sylvia says she dropped them off and went home.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
She had no idea the gunshots she heard were bullets
coming at the neck and leg of Burnetta Pope. This
episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company.
(14:32):
AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and to making
a positive difference in the lives of its employees and
in the communities where we work and live. In light
of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and
in recognition of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform,
the AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and
(14:56):
other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. By the time
Sylvia got home, police were already waiting for her. They
asked her where she had been and what she knew
about her shooting. Sylvia was terrified. She denied knowing anything,
and she denied knowing Antoine and Aaron, but the police
(15:18):
had received word that Sylvia was at the house and
it wasn't just a shooting. Burnetta Pope was now dead.
Her son Albert, had called nine one one and told
the police where Sylvia lived, so police knew that Sylvia
was lying and that she wasn't going to cooperate. Just
two hours after the incident, Sylvia was arrested for robbery,
(15:41):
reckless endangerment, and assault. When they got to the police station,
Detective Dennis Dusak questioned Sylvia about everything that transpired that night.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
When he arrested me, he handcuffed me to a chair
for hours, and he kept adding to me what happened,
And I told him.
Speaker 5 (16:02):
I didn't really know what happened.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
And I was talking to him and I was scared
and I didn't know, you know, what to say or
what to do. And he wouldn't let me go to
the bathroom. He let me urinate on myself.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Then, she says, detective Dusak wrote out a statement for
her to sign.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
I kept telling him I had three children at home,
and he kept saying, well, if you sign this, I'll
let you go home, and so I was like, but
this is not what happened.
Speaker 5 (16:29):
So he kept me to the chair and then I
kept falling asleep and he hit me with a phone book.
There's a.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
Paperbag phone book to wake me up. He's like, sign
this and we will let you go. I signed the
paper and I never left.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Prison after that interaction, Sylvia ended up being charged with
first degree murder on top of robbery, conspiracy, and possession
of instruments of a crime. Antoine and Aaron were also
charged with murder, robbery, and a host of other crimes.
(17:10):
The three of them went to trial on March twenty third,
nineteen ninety four, and were all tried together. The prosecutor
was John Doyle. His argument was that Sylvia ordered Antoine
and Aaron to kill both Burnetta and her son Albert.
And Doyle developed this theory from Albert, who said that
(17:32):
even though she was unarmed, Sylvia ordered the hit on
their lives.
Speaker 6 (17:37):
In fact, because it was.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Agreed that Sylvia was unarmed, Albert's statements were the main
reason prosecutors could even charge Sylvia with murder in the
first place. Prosecutor Doyle also presented Sylvia's signed statement, as
well as one from Aaron Major. There's no evidence that
Antoine Blackman signed a statement, but the defense council said
(18:01):
that the two statements that were presented were coerced. In fact,
on the stand, both Antoine and Aaron said that Sylvia
did not have a gun and did not order anyone
to shoot.
Speaker 6 (18:12):
All three also.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Contended that Albert actually threatened them with a gun. First
forensics showed that Burnetta was shot by two different guns.
Although accounts of very the defense and prosecution agreed on
one thing. Sylvia did not have a gun and did
not shoot anyone. What was that like to see your
(18:37):
mom in cuffs and facing a murder trial?
Speaker 6 (18:40):
I mean, that's I imagine it's really traumatizing.
Speaker 7 (18:43):
Yes, it was, you know, not being able to touch
her or talk to her and seeing them question her.
And for me most because my grandmother was there and
at the time, my grandmother was starting to go through dementia,
so it was really hard. I think that was the
(19:06):
most for me watching my grandmother go through it, because
my grandmother would just burst out in court, just stand
up and scream and be like, you don't know what
you're doing or you don't know what you're talking about,
and just let my daughter go and and the things
that you're saying, she didn't do that, So yes, it
(19:29):
was really tough.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
On April first, nineteen ninety four, Sylvia, along with Antoine
and Aaron, was convicted of first degree murder. Sixteen year
old Penny was now in charge of taking care of
her younger siblings, and it was hard.
Speaker 7 (19:47):
I would tell friends like far as school jobs. When
they would asks about my mother, I would say that
my mother is still live in Virginia, so that did
not know that my mother was incarcerated. And I'm gonna
be honest, it was that love hate relationship.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Penny says it's been difficult to visit her mom in
prison over the years.
Speaker 7 (20:15):
So to be honest. As a kid, we did go
a lot. It was a group that went up and
they took the children all the time. But as I
got older, I stopped going because I didn't like it
at all. I didn't like the way it felt to me.
(20:36):
I didn't like seeing my mother like that, so I
really didn't. I stop going a lot.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
But now that she's an adult with children, Penny wants
her kids to have a relationship with their grandma, so
they visit her.
Speaker 7 (20:53):
It's the only way for her to have a relationship
with them since the sac You know, she is a
lifer and unfortunately we grew up and we had kids
of our own, and that's the only way she would
have a bond with them and see them.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Meanwhile, Sylvia filed appeal after appeal to no avail. Neither
of her two attorneys were effective. Sylvia's trial attorney, Michael Wallace,
failed to file her appeal in a timely manner, so
he was unable to appeal to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Eventually,
her rights to appeal were reinstated and she got a
new attorney, James Bruno, But the appeals that Bruno filed
(21:44):
were all denied and exhausted, leaving Sylvia very few options
for release, and Bruno had issues of his own. He
was later suspended from practicing law for violating rules of
professional conduct. Meanwhile, Antoine Blackman was released from prison on
his direct appeal in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 8 (22:04):
One of the tragedies in this particular case is that
she never had adequate legal representation.
Speaker 6 (22:10):
This is doctor Jill mccorkyl.
Speaker 8 (22:13):
I'm a professor of sociology and criminology, at Villanova University,
and I'm also the founder and the executive director of
the Philadelphia Justice Project for Women and Girls.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Doctor McCorkle studies how mass incarceration intersects with gender and poverty.
She was looking into another similar case, a woman who
is not the shooter in a crime and also got
a life sentence when she came across Sylvia's case.
Speaker 8 (22:39):
There are a number of women with similar kinds of
scenarios where it's the principal offender is a man.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
She says, women are often at a unique disadvantage in
this situation.
Speaker 8 (22:52):
They're unable to cooperate with police because usually they're scared
of retaliatory violence, and then you know, police and prosecutors
engage in a malicious prosecution. And so that's really how
I got to Sylvia.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Doctor mccorkyl believes that Sylvia would have and should have
been treated as a witness, and that it was Sylvia's
hesitancy to cooperate with police that got her the murder charge.
Remember when the police asked Sylvia what she knew about
the crime and if she knew Antoine and Aaron, she
said no.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
I was scared, and I was like, what did they
go do something to my girls if I go tell
on him what happened. I was scared, like, I got
three girls at home that's alone, and I was afraid
that if I told on him, like it's something that
might happen to my daughters.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Doctor mccorkyl says that a lot of women like Sylvia,
who are vulnerable because of poverty, precarious lifestyles, drug and
alcohol abuse, and her domestic violence, are not in a
position where they can cooperate with police and prosecutors.
Speaker 8 (24:00):
Puts them at risk. It often puts family members at risk,
and police and prosecutors, I'll say, I'll be as generous
as possible, misinterpret that hesitancy, and I think in some
cases honestly take that unwillingness to cooperate as an indicator
(24:21):
of criminal culpability and then hit them with elevated charges
to try to force their hand. And so, you know,
you can really look at these cases and see women
sort of situated between street violence and then what I
refer to as state violence, so that they're sort of
(24:41):
taking their chances either way. And those who are particularly
vulnerable to violence and retaliation are saying, all right, well,
you know I'm going to take my chances at trial
because it's better than taking my chances on the street.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Sylvia took those chances and they didn't land in her favor.
Albert's contention that Sylvia ordered the hit ended up being
her downfall, and doctor mccorky believes that Albert testified to
this because of pressure.
Speaker 6 (25:10):
He faced at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
He had an open drug charge, and after he offered
up this information, he was able to plead a very
favorable and short sentence to his own case, even though
he never initially said that Sylvia ordered the shooting. But
doctor mccorky believes that Albert's testimony about Sylvia during the
trial is actually one of the most preposterous things about
(25:33):
Sylvia's case.
Speaker 8 (25:36):
When Sylvia is initially arrested, she's arrested for robbery, maybe
simple assaul or aggravated assaults, nothing about murder. So even
when the police pick her up, there's no you know,
kind of framing of Sylvia as somehow this you know,
(25:59):
criminal master mind or street heavy ordering the execution of
the people in this house. Now, Albert testifies to that,
and I think probably does so because that's the only
way that prosecutors can can hook Sylvia on in any
meaningful way. They need some kind of statement, you know,
(26:20):
going directly to her culpability.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Doctor McCorkle has studied crack cocaine markets in depth. She
says knowing their structure is key to understanding the forces
that led to Sylvia's conviction.
Speaker 8 (26:32):
These markets are organized hierarchically and by gender. You know,
Sylvia is in her thirties at the time this goes down,
and so one of the things that prosecutors are doing
at trial is saying, here's this woman in her thirties
and she's got these two you know, teenagers, so she's
the adult, so therefore, you know, she must have been
(26:57):
in charge of this. But that's not how crack cocaine
markets work. These markets and particularly the responsibility for retaliation
and the responsibility for collecting debt is men's responsibility. So
you know, sort of gender segregation in the drug market.
(27:17):
So you know, women aren't the enforcers in these markets.
Speaker 6 (27:21):
That's men.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Even though Antoine Blackman was eventually released from prison, doctor
mccorko believes him to be the likeliest shooter in this case.
Speaker 8 (27:33):
The mythology on the street is, yeah, you give a
teenager the gun because they're not going to get as
lengthy a sentence as an adult Wood, Which is the
other reason that it's entirely plausible to me that blackman
is the shooter. He's the juvenile, and so that's certainly
not unusual. It was the norm to have a juvenile
(27:53):
be the shooter. So I can see major handing that
gun to blackmen.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Sylvia was left with a life without parole sentence, and
now with her appeals exhausted.
Speaker 8 (28:12):
Where we're really left here is commutation. And I think
she deserves commutation on her merits, you know, without even
looking into the kind of specifics of all, right, well,
how culpable was she in this particular case. But I
think on her own merits, she deserves to have a
sentence commutation, which would release her from life in prison
(28:36):
without possibility of parole. It would allow her to go
home to her family.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Sylvia has made the best of her time in prison.
Speaker 8 (28:44):
However, She's gotten, you know, multiple certifications, and she's got
three decades in Certainly, Sylvia has done everything that we
would expect someone to do over the duration of such
a long period of time.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Sylvia goes to church for weekly services, Bible study and prayer.
She has continued to develop her computer skills and she
studies entrepreneurship, but she especially enjoys being a certified peer specialist.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Train us to like sit down and to listen to people,
you know, so it's not like to tell them what
to do, but just to be listening and caring and
helping them to find their own answer.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
And it makes you feel good.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Also, I try to help, like a lot of the
young people, I try to guide them. I try to
talk to them a lot about being here and going
home and making a change in their life.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Sylvia loves doing this and this is what she wants
to continue to do. Doctor McCorkle has also offered her
a position with the Philadelphia Justice Project for Women and Girls.
Speaker 6 (29:58):
When she gets out.
Speaker 8 (29:59):
We're going to have her be our ambassador and do
a lot of outreach to other incarcerated women. And certainly,
you know, there's there's no better expert both with respect
to these kinds of prosecutions, as well as you know,
an expert in what it means to be a woman,
(30:20):
to be a mother, to be a grandmother, Navigating decades
in prison.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
I feel like after thirty one years in here that
I've came to know myself. I have so much that
I want to give back. I want to be able
to go out and to help young people. I want
to be able to tell my story that helps some
young girl know that no matter what happened in her life,
(30:51):
no matter if she was molested, no matter if somebody
you know led her down the wrong road to get
on drugs or to drink, that she can't change.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Sylvia is now sixty four and in declining health. Among
her ailments is psiatic nerve damage, arthritis, and herniated disks,
all of which cause her daily pain.
Speaker 8 (31:16):
It is costing Pennsylvania taxpayers so much to lock up
a prison population that you know, twenty five percent of
them are fifty and older, and it's just incredibly expensive,
and so regardless of sort of where you're situated politically,
there's a recognition that we have got to get aging
people out of prison.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
While Sylvia knows she's not directly responsible for Brunetta's death,
she still feels regret over what happened.
Speaker 5 (31:55):
And I'm just so so sorry everyone that I heard
for a paid that I cost.
Speaker 9 (32:08):
I'm very sorry for that. I wish I could take
it all back. I wish I could go back to
that day and two things are different. I would just
wish I could just go back.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
In July twenty twenty one, doctor mccorkyl submitted a letter
to the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons urging them to grant
Sylvia commutation. Sylvia's case is up for review in October
twenty twenty two. She needs a majority of a five
person panel to move to the next round of voting,
where she will need all five votes to be free.
(33:01):
If you'd like to show your support for Sylvia, go
to free Sylvia boycrind dot com to sign a petition
calling for her commutation.
Speaker 6 (33:13):
Next time.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
On Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, Troy Berner.
Speaker 10 (33:19):
You know I didn't have nothing to do with it,
so you know, and they're not going to be to
find nobody to say I had nothing to do with it,
so you know, I held on to that, you know,
that belief on where they say the truth says you're free.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
links in our bio to see how you can help.
I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flahm and
Kevin Wurtis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea,
researcher Lila Robinson, story editor Sonya Paul, with additional production
(33:57):
by Jeff Clyburn and Connor Hall. The music in this
production is 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 on Twitter at
Wrongful Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
(34:18):
Instagram and Twitter at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie
Freeling is a 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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