September 1, 2022 • 49 mins
On February 12th, 1990, a tragic accident occurred in which it is believed that Kathy Middleton mishandled a gun in her left hand, accidentally shooting herself one time in the head. The state turned this tragedy into a homicide investigation, sending her husband Ken Middleton to prison for life plus 200 years. In 2004, Ken had an opportunity to present to his motion trial court evidence of ineffective assistance of his counsel, as well as ballistics evidence that proved that the state's theory was impossible. Before the judge ruled, the state offered Ken freedom through an Alford plea, and he refused. Eventually, the judge granted him a new trial, but the state simply challenged that ruling on jurisdictional grounds, leaving Ken in prison ever since. A 2021 law now specifically grants that motion trial court the necessary jurisdiction, yet Ken and his family still await justice from prosecutor Jean Peters Baker.
The altered GSR test document is linked here: https://www.instagram.com/p/Ca4rRsDLWaC/
To learn more and get involved, visit:
http://www.free-kenmiddleton.com/
https://www.change.org/p/missouri-missouri-or-misery
https://silvercreekentertainment.net/
https://twitter.com/TheNewsBreaker
https://lavaforgood.com/with-jason-flom/
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
When we initially released Ken Middleton's episode in March twenty
twenty two, we were hoping that Jackson County District Attorney
Jean Peters Baker would be moved to action. But it
turns out it looks like Ken's son, Cliff Middleton, has
exposed another conflict of interest for the Jackson County Prosecutor's office,
and this one comes with a constitutional violation. When the
(00:21):
trial prosecutor struck a bond agreement with the court from
mister Middleton, there was a stipulation that he would not
have access to his assets. This was a clear violation
of his Sixth Amendment rights, as affirmed in two thousand
sixteen by the Supreme Court, who decided in Louise versus
United States that the Sixth Amendment prohibits the pre trial
(00:41):
restraint of assets needed to retain a defendants council of
choice when those assets have not been used in conjunction
with criminal activity. Mister Middleton is hoping that the Court
agrees that the actions of the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office
to do just that to mister Middleton pre trial represented
a conflict of interest that will disqualify that office and
(01:01):
result in the appointment of a special prosecutor. A prosecutor
who is free of this conflict, among others, would be
able to apply the newly enacted s. B fifty three
in order to grant Mr Middleton a new trial on
his ineffective assistance of counsel, constitutional violations and actual innocence claims.
(01:22):
Cannon Cathy Middleton had properties in Blue Springs, Missouri, as
well as Ken's family land back in Arkansas, where they
hope to one day retire. On February twelfth, when he
planned to clean a gun that he had brought back
from Arkansas, Ken felt ill, laid the gun down and
took a nap. Meanwhile, Cathy returned early from work to
confront Ken about news of a regretful affair that had
(01:43):
ended three years earlier. After grabbing the gun from where
Ken had laid it down, Cathy made her way to
the phone to call the alleged mistress. When tragedy struck.
It is believed that it destroyed. Cathy mishandled the weapon
in her left hand and shot herself in the head.
Ken immediately called nine one one when first responders found
him without a drop of blood or gunshot residue on him.
(02:04):
A positive gunshot residute test of Cathy's left hand would
have conclusively ruled her death as a tragic accident. However,
her left hand test results went missing and the crime
lab document was altered in what clearly appears to be
evidence tampering, where the medical examiner and blood spatter expert
willing to testify to an impossible scenario in which Ken
(02:24):
was magically able to shoot Kathy from less than a
foot away while remaining free of blood and g s R.
Ken was sentenced to life plus two hundred years. Despite
the mishandling of the crime scene, ballistics testing was still
able to prove Ken's innocence. His conviction was overturned in
two thousand four, but a jurisdictional technicality has held him
in legal limbo ever since. Kennada's son, Cliff Middleton, join
(02:48):
us to ask, how is it that, even though a
new statute remedies that technicality, the current prosecutor, Jean Peters Baker,
refuses to act. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
(03:13):
ronval Conviction. I'm your host, Jason Farm. You know, each
week I have a pretty good idea of how I'm
going to start the show. You know, usually there's one
main focus, one main problem that we can talk about
in any particular case. But this time, I don't even
know where to start. When our friend Larry Garrison, who's
actually known as the news Breaker, okay for his years
(03:35):
of investigative reporting and his work through Silver Creek Entertainment,
when he first told me in us here at Ron
Conviction about the case of Ken Middleton, he had lived
up to his nickname once again, I mean the Newsbreaker.
So I'll start by saying that Ken Middleton has been
in prison for over thirty years for being present during
what they may well have known all along was just
(03:56):
a tragic accident. And there's so many problems in this
case that we could literally pick on any one of
them and make an entire episode of the show just
about that. I'm talking about ineffective assistance of council, false
expert testimony, evidence tampering, incompetent investigator's official corruption, conflict of interest,
can refusing freedom through an Alfred play write something that
(04:18):
you never catch a guilty person doing. And that's something
that happened seventeen years ago, almost eighteen now. Plus there's
this insane jurisdictional technicality that has kept this innocent man
in prison long past the time that I believe everyone
knows that he should have ever been in there. So
without further ado, at seventy seven years old, Ken is
(04:39):
calling in from inside the prison walls in Missouri. Ken,
I'm so sorry you're here because of the reason why
you're here, but I'm very honored to have you on
the show. Thank you appreciate it. And with Ken is
his son and probably the most passionate advocate, Cliff Middleton.
Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having
(05:02):
me on. Jason, I really really appreciate it. And I
know how hard this is going to be. I mean,
like any other son, you love your dad and you
just want this thing to end. Okay, let's go back
in time and I'm gonna turn to you. Ken. This
is early in Blue Springs, Missouri, and you're there with
your wife Kathy. So tell us what was happening in
(05:23):
your life? What were things like before all this happened.
It was great. We had a great marriage for over
sixteen years, had a farm in Arkansas, two different farms.
I had three hundred and fifty two acres of the land.
I had drove a truck for over twenty years, and
I had injured my back and I wasn't working right then,
(05:44):
So I was going to the farm and doing projects,
working on the house and watching nice of the cattle
and stuff like that. Kathy worked at eight D and
T for twenty eight years, and two years you'd have
her time in worse, she could retire regardless of age.
And that's what was waiting on, and was moving back
to Arkansas for good. And let's get into how this
(06:07):
came to pass. So let's go back to February. Just
to set the stage here. You had been at your
place in Arkansas and you brought a handgun that you
owned back to Missouri with you. But meanwhile you had
been feeling sick, but no one knew at the time,
not you or anybody, that you were really seriously ill
(06:28):
at this point, is that right, right? And I was
sick for left Arkansas, and when I got back Sunday afternoon,
I didn't sleep much all night. So the next morning,
Kathy had went to work at a T and T,
and I unloaded the rest of the truck and brought
the gun in the house. It had been in Arkansas,
(06:49):
since I went to Coloratto elk hunt in the fall
before and there's a big snow and rain and stuff
in Coloraretto, and it got wet. So I picked it
up and brought it back to Missouri her I was
aimed to clean it. And when I got it out
of the truck, I went in the house and sat down.
I called Kathy at work, and she asked me how
I was feeling. I said about the same. I wasn't
(07:11):
feeling good, and I sat in a recliner and I
went to sleep. And I had never cleaned the gun.
So the next thing I knew is she was already home,
and she picked up the gun out of the towel
that had the gun laying on, and she was upset
that somebody had told her that I was having affair
with a woman, which was true, but it had been
(07:35):
over for three years. And she walked over to the
phone in the dining room to call a woman. So
I got up and UH dizzy, And next thing I know,
the tragedy had happened. And the tragedy that had happened
is the matter of this dispute between the Middleton's and
the state. Now Ken maintained his innocence in the matter,
(07:56):
that this was a tragic accident in which Kathy visibly
upset at the news of this affair, and on her
way to the phone to confront your alleged mistress, Cathy
was holding the gun in her left hand and accidentally
shot herself on the left side of her forehead, splattering
blood all over the wall. This version of events is
(08:16):
supported by the ballistics and all the other physical evidence.
And then there's what the state wants everyone to believe. Right,
bear with me, because this is nuts. That Ken had
somehow held Cathy up against the wall and shot her
in the face, but somehow, miraculously was able to be
completely clear of blood spatter or gunshot residue, not a
(08:38):
trace on him. And we'll get into all of that
a bit later. So back to this terrible tragedy. A
gunshot rang out and Cathy was on the floor in
a pool of blood. What a nightmare? Ken? What happened next?
I've seen her on the floor and grabbed the gun
and put it on the table and call nine one
one immediately. I asked for the medics, and I had
(09:01):
called them three times within a short period of time.
And wanted to know who the paramedics was. And the
third time, the operator told me to go outside, that
the paramedics were there, and I looked out, and I
told her that I had looked out and there wasn't
nobody out there, and she convinced me to go outside
that they were there. So I went out and the
(09:22):
first thing I've seen was a copy behind the walls,
screaming at me to get my hands in the air
and turn around with my back to him at his
gun pointed at me, and I've done as he said,
and he'd come up behind me and searched me. I
wanted to know who the paramedics were, and he ordered
(09:43):
me back in the house and we went back in
the house and he went in and checked on my wife.
And I was just historical, and I guess I was
done on my knees, and he jerked me up. And
when he had done that fast, I've become dizzy, real dizzy,
and I oh know, was ain't the blackout, So I said,
as I ain't be sick, and I went down the
(10:04):
hall to the bathroom and I went in and spliced
water on my face, and then he took me outside
and I had a real bad hurt and in my
left arm and chess. Now, when the paramedics arrived, they determined, Kenna,
you would have been hyperventilating, complaining of chess plains and
the blood pressure was going crazy, and they convinced you
to go to the hospital for an examination. They taught
(10:27):
me to go into the hospital, and they took me
to three medical hospitals, and then on the third one,
I was forced in a mental hospital till the next day.
They later tried to say that you had checked into
that mental hospital to try to get away with murder,
claimed by claiming in sanity defense. But we're getting ahead
of ourselves here, and let's not leave out the fact
that your dad was in and out of consciousness on
(10:49):
his way to the hospital. And they took an e
k G at the hospital and it showed that Kenna,
you had recently suffered from a heart attack. Now here's
another thing that I have trouble understanding. Are processing. The
officers didn't write their statements until days later, and they
did it by memory, right, And these statements that were
(11:09):
taken from a hysterical man who had to be rushed
to the hospital talking about you of course Ken, who
was just trying to help figure out what happened, so
the officers didn't bother to write it down. There were
a couple police reports that were handwritten out that day,
but the official reports that I have reviewed were written
(11:30):
on I believe it was February twenty one, and Cathy
died on the twelve. Now, in researching this case, I
saw in the police reports where they kept on documenting
instances in which Ken allegedly had done something with his hands,
Like he mentioned splashing water on its face, right, They
(11:50):
wrote down another instance where they said he wiped his
hands on a door, touched dirt in a potted plant,
and the implication is that Ken was trying to somehow
wash away the gunshot residue. There's a picture the Independence
News Examiner paper took of my father out there on
(12:11):
the front stoop, leaning over that potter plant, sobbing, and
the two paramedics are consoling him. It's it's very obvious
that he was in a state of shock and hysteria.
First of all, you already claimed he was washing his
hands when he splashed water on his face. It's crazy
(12:32):
to think that somebody's trying to wash their hands in
the dirt unless you've been involved in something like this,
How would you even know what a gunshot residue test is,
especially in JSON maybe today with crime shows and things.
But he didn't know what they were testing him for.
They took my shirt on the shirt and clothes and
(12:53):
shoes and all and they did tested then come back negative,
no blood or nothing on my long sleeve shirt. And
the picture in the front had a house when I
was over the stove shows the long sleeve shirt down
to the risk. There was no blood, no gunshot resident
on it. Right, And as the evidence clearly shows, she
was shot from very close range, less than a foot away,
(13:15):
and there's no way you can do that without being
covered in blood and gunshot residue. But you weren't because
you didn't kill her. And Cathy's gunshot residue tests would
likely have corroborated Ken's version of events and showing that
this was a tragic accident not homicide. Cliff, can you
explain what I mean by that they swabbed both of
(13:37):
her hands, that they four gunshot residue and the prime
document that they fill out shows that they swabbed both hands,
right and left hands and it shows they used two
different kids to do that, one for the right hand
and one for the left hand. Well, the next day,
(13:58):
when the corner did the up see, the corner ruled
in a homicide based on what the police were telling
him unless other information come forward to prove otherwise. Now
that gunshot residue was important information and took him nine
days to turn the gunshot residue samples into the crime lab.
(14:23):
And when they turned him into the crime lab, the
document was altered to show only one kid and the
left hand was wid it out to show they only
tested the right hand when she was shot from eight
to twelve inches away on the left side of her head.
You really have to see this to believe it. And
(14:44):
we're gonna link pictures of this in our episode because
I'm looking at it right now and i still can't
believe that I'm actually looking at what I'm looking at. Okay, So,
the test of Cathy's left hand, the one in which
she would have held the gun in order to shoot herself,
the test of that hand disappeared or it wasn't tested
(15:08):
on purpose. There's only two possibilities. The crime lab document
that should have been for both of her hands was
altered with white out. Okay, remember white out, it's unreal.
This is like to show that only her right hand
had been tested. And this is reinforced when you compare
it with the g SR test document for Ken in
(15:31):
the same handwriting okay, get ready for this, it states
quote number of articles too, g SR test kits for
right and left hands. End quote. But then on Cathy's
g SR test document, in the same exact handwriting, it says,
quote number of articles and whatever was there is white
(15:52):
it out, right, just white it out, and the number
one is in its place, And then it reads quote
gunshot residue for right end quote, followed by another gob
of white out and the word hand. So in all
likelihood the white out is simply covering the words and left,
(16:12):
as it would have been in a request for testing
of both right and left hands, where now only one
test for her right hand exists and the one that
really matters the left hand is missing. Later on, after
us convicted years later, we took their deposition and Geoff
(16:32):
Rogers that wrote the report out he swore that he
didn't put the white out on that because his own
green paper, and he said that he wouldn't have whited
it out. He had just build out a new report
and we got Dave Link, the one that took it
to the lab. Nine days later, he swore um down
that he didn't do it. And he was asked, did
(16:53):
he always take both hands of a close gunshot residue test?
He said, yeah, us My attorney ask him years later
in ninety seven, always, and he said absolutely. They whited
out the left hand, and they whited out the number
of articles. I mean, somebody literally just took white out. Yeah,
(17:15):
the left hand. If it would have come back positive,
it would have been powerful evidence that she accidentally fired
the gun herself. Our attorney told us that if that
left hand come back positive, the corner would have changed
his findings and they wouldn't have had a case against
my father. It all would have ended right there. This
(17:48):
episode is underwritten by A i G, a leading global
insurance company. A i G is committed to corporate social
responsibility and is 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 A I G's
commitment to criminal and social justice reform. The a i
(18:09):
G Pro Bono program provides free legal services and other
support to underrepresented communities and individuals. Now, this is a
small town police department. My understanding is there hadn't been
a homicide investigation in almost a decade. These people were
(18:30):
not up to the task, and they started making mistakes
more or less as soon as they walked into the house. Yes, yes,
And like so many other cases, I believe the police
immediately focused on my father and had tunnel vision as
they began to investigate this case. I'll start with the
fact that they took photos that day of the alleged
(18:55):
crime scene, and the photos allegedly did not come them out,
And after Cathy's body was removed, they went back and
restaged the crime scene and took new photos. By the
time they had done this, my stepmother had already been
taken out of the house, and the fire department had
(19:18):
actually been called in to cut sheet rock out of
the wall with blood spatter and things, and so the
new pictures they took the sheet rock was already cut out,
and they had drawn a diagram of the dining room
where this happened, and the diagram didn't match the pictures.
(19:39):
They had moved the dining room table all the way
up against the wall to make it appear that there
was a bigger area there when she was shot, right
to make room for this alleged struggle that never even happened.
When she went to use the phone. In every picture
they took of this small dining room, they missed that
(19:59):
phone Jason by a quarter of an inch. Another mistake
that was made that day at the crime scene. According
to the police reports, they unclothed my stepmother naked right
there on the dining room floor and folded her clothes
up and put them in bags and transported her to
(20:21):
the morgue naked for them to unclothe her and alter
any evidence that could have been gathered from that. Now,
that goes against every protocol of any police department anywhere.
Best I remember, the medical examiner said should come in
fully clothing. So what they actually done was reclosed the
(20:43):
poor the medical examiner examiner, that's exactly right. What the
medical examiner reported didn't match the police reports. They unclothed
her and at some point reclothed her, so they mishandled
the scene and the evidence altered or disappeared, the key
gunshot residue test of Cathy's left hand, and then they
(21:04):
arrested you, and eventually you got out on bond, and
even that was kind of odd. Prosecutor Peters agreed to
ten thousand and he put a restriction on my bond.
This says not the dispose of any martal or jointly
held property without the permission of the prosecute attorney and
(21:24):
the probate court. You got the State of Missouri coming
after you with unlimited resources, and your life and liberty
is on the line. My dad should have had access
to every dining he had to save his life, right,
And this also gets us to a crazy part of
this whole story. So while you're facing Prosecutor Patrick Peters
(21:47):
in this criminal trial against you, there's also a wrongful
death civil suit filed against you by Cathy's sisters. And
get this, Prosecutor Peters's father is part of the law
firm behind that civil suit, so stands to benefit from
(22:08):
the outcome. And of course you didn't even know that
at the time. They had concealed it and they had
said that he convinced them that he would convict me
and the law firm would help keep me in prison.
I'd like to point out that the Blue Springs Police Department,
city attorney for Blue Springs was also in the same
(22:30):
law firm as the prosecutor's father, So you had a
triangle of a conflict of interest here that was hidden
from from everyone. Every time we do an episode, I
always think I've heard it all, I could say, even
after doing two and fifty episodes of this show, I've
never heard of that the prosecutor refers the family of
(22:51):
the woman who died to his own father's law firm.
Now everybody's compromised, right, because now there's a whole another
for them to want to convict you with this crime
so that everybody can make money. And they ultimately got
a one point three five million dollar default wrongful debt
judgment against my father. So now there's been this litany
(23:14):
of errors, misconduct, malfeasance, stayed up, insanity. I'm going to
call it what it is, it's insanity. And now finally
it's time for the trial. It's February, a year after
the incident. Basically, the cross of the States case against
my dad was that he held her up against the wall,
(23:35):
and shot her from a foot away from her face.
The prosecutor put on his so called experts saying that
she was two inches away from the wall, and that
I had my arm across her chest and held her
up against the wall and shot her. And blood's experts
admitted that he had a weak's training, and he's self
(23:56):
taught he had taken a forty hour core some blood
spattered evidence. That's all the training that their expert had,
These quote unquote experts had for forty hour training course
that doesn't actually teach you anything except how to act
like you know what you're talking about in court pretty much, right,
But he didn't tell that there was no gun shot
residue on my hands or long sleeve shirt, or blood
(24:19):
or nothing else on my long sleeve shirt. And they
said he put a bootprint on the wall, which was false.
It had been there weeks prior, and in order for
that bootprint to get there, his leg would have had
to have been backwards at the knee and hyper extended
in order to put that bootprint there. Right, you have
(24:40):
this bootprint that was physically impossible to have been made
in this scenario. But you know what, none of it
freaking matters why they could have produced any other made
up nonsense to try to support their theory. But without
Ken being covered in blood and g SR, it's all
pure drivel. Blood and GSR has to be present for
(25:02):
us to even entertain these bullshit footprints. Not to mention
the analysis from Bob Tressell, the renowned forensic crime investigator,
that further clarifies just how bogus the state's theory was.
We'll get into all of that a bit later, but
unfortunately Ken didn't benefit from Bob Tressell's testimony or any
of this being pointed out at the original trial. Ken's attorney,
(25:24):
Bob Duncan, couldn't be bothered to do an investigation, not
even a thorough examination of the gun. Cliff what else
did the state present? They also put on evidence that
the gun would take ten pounds of pressure. I believe
it was without the hammer pulled three and a half
pounds with the hammer pulled. Well, the gun needed to
(25:46):
be examined in the exact state it was found in,
and it wasn't. They had dismantled it and put it
back together before testing it, so if there was any
problems with the gun, they fixed it. When they put
it back together. Bob Duncan and was asleep at the
will if you will, and had none of the physical
evidence examined by an expert, hadn't interviewed any witnesses. He
(26:09):
was totally unprepared for the case to even go to trial.
Did I hear this correctly? That he didn't even make
an opening statement? He reserved one and he forgot to
give it. I couldn't get him to do nothing. They
didn't see nothing about the gunshunk residue, not one word
of them was like in that document out they never
seen it. Without a proper defense, you're out there, mercy.
(26:32):
Years later, in n and ninety six, he gave me
a three Affidavid's of what he had failed to do.
This is my trial attorney, Robert Duncan. I did not
have any physical evidence in the case examined by a
forensic expert, other than to speak to a gun expert
about the gun. But I did not have him examined
(26:53):
the gun. And then he gave another affidavit and he said, father,
I believe my ability to defend Mr Middleton was empowered
because I wasn't given information of the connection between the
police department, the prosecutor, and the civil claims against Mr.
Middleton seeking a substantial monetary recovery. This information, if for
(27:17):
no other purpose, would have been admissible as impeachment evidence
showing the bias of the police and some of the witnesses.
So Cathy's sister, Mildred Anderson gave false testimony for the
prosecution to show motive that Ken had secret assets in
Arkansas that no one in the family was aware of.
And we know this is just another lie because Mildred
(27:38):
Anderson later said she admitted that she and the rest
of the family actually did know about all of the
assets before Cathy's death, which is a clear cut example
of perjury, which in Missouri in the murder case, that's
the class A felony. And Peter's colluded with her because
Peter's put it in the question would be simple for her, says, quote,
(28:00):
quite a bit of holdings down in Arkansas that you
and your family, including your sister, were unaware of. She says, yes.
It should also be mentioned Jason that after the sister
testified to that, the prosecutor instructed the police department to
(28:20):
release eighteen thousand, seven hundred dollars worth of jewelry that
was confiscated out of the house to the witness, So
not only was it perjury, she was rewarded with eighteen thousand,
seven hundred dollars worth of jewelry. And then eight years later,
on March at twenty fifth nine, Mildred Anderson gave foreign
(28:41):
testimony in her Arkansas lawsuit against Kenneth Middleton, which showed
she clearly perjured herself in and her sister corroborated it. Wow. Okay,
So I gotta ask about what must have been the
worst day all of your life, which of course is
the day that the jury would for a breaking hour
(29:01):
and came back in and sentenced you to life without
parole plus two hundred years. Well, I don't know how
to describe it, but I was in shock, and until
this outing, I never spent a day in jail in
my life. And take you from being free in the
country and working all my life to throw you in
(29:22):
a cage is unbelievable. And I can't explain. Growing up
as a kid, I would never in a million years
dream that what happened to my dad would have happened
to him. He just was, you know, a great father
was He's been more of a father to me behind
(29:43):
bars than most kids could ask for from a father
on the street. And uh, it was devastating to our
whole family. So now we moved to the post conviction
(30:11):
and there's still more insanity to come. So it's and
your appellate attorney is a man named Gerald Handley who
was recommended by Bob Duncan. Well, that's not a good sign.
And one of the first things we come to is
that what's called appeal, Cliff, can you explain that to
us and get us started here? After trial, the first
(30:31):
appeal that you have in the state of Missouri is
your post conviction is an appeal that's filed back in
front of the trial judge to evaluate your trial to
make sure that you had a fair trial. That's where
you bring your ineffective assistance of council issues if you
have any. So you have ninety days to do that
(30:54):
in Missouri or you don't get that hearing on ineffective
assistance a council. And that's right back in front of
the very trial judge that just set on your trial
and convicted you. So you got a high burden to
meet there, right, you got to prove that you had
an unfair trial and your attorney didn't do his job.
Our appellent attorney at that time had a ninety day
(31:16):
window to follow an amended petition for Dad and get
all of his issues in the appeal. He never met
with my dad, never went over any of the issues,
which the law requires him to do, and at the
last minute, before the ninety days was up and you
could get no extensions, my dad gets a letter from
(31:37):
his attorney telling him to sign this affidavit that all
of his issues are in the amended petition, even though
my dad had never seen the petition. And if you
didn't sign that affidavit and have it with your amended
petition when you filed it, you were out. You couldn't
even get a fifteen hearing. So my dad had to
sign it and at least hope that his attorney was
(32:01):
gonna put all of his issues in it. Well. We
had to do a lot of finaglin to get that
affidavit to him before Monday, and when we got it
to him on Monday, Gerald Hanley and filed a three
page motion on my dad's life, procedurally defaulting all of
his issues on appeal. So because that attorney procedurally defaulted
(32:23):
all of his issues, the facts and the merits of
his case were never heard. And when we went to
the evidentiary hearing, I had nine witnesses out in the hallway.
When I got to the courthouse, the witnesses that knew
Pat Peters through trial seeing Pat Peters talking to the
uniform guard, and the guard took a post at the
(32:45):
door and wouldn't let none of my witnesses in the courtroom.
I didn't know what happened to him till I got
back to the jail and made some called. Peters called
Duncan to the stand, and Duncan testified this base answered
Jesus questions, said I checked himself into the hospital while
I was shaking the head. It was a lie because
(33:06):
I was forced in that mental hospital. One of the
records that Bob Duncan didn't get was the medical records
from the mental ward. The prosecutions theory was that it
was trial strategy for Duncan did not get the medical
records because the prosecution had a witness that would have
said Dad told him, if you want to get away
(33:27):
with murder, you check yourself into a mental ward. After
you do it. So Judgementina agreed and said, yeah, that's
not ineffective assistance accouncil. He he didn't get them records
because he voluntarily checked himself into a mental ward. Well
that wasn't true, but Gerald Hanley never got the records either,
so the judge never knew this, and so the hearing
(33:49):
ended and no witnesses recalled, no expert testimony was given,
and no evidence was presented to refute the state Gerald
Hanley ended up being, and this is hard to believe,
but he ended up being just as disinterested as Bob
Duncan was before, and so predictably, Judge Messina rejected your appeal.
(34:10):
It's insane. It's not because the appeal was invalid. It's
because the lawyers didn't do their freaking jobs. And according
to the law at that time, the trial courts jurisdiction
over your case ended. So Cliff, eventually you all get
a new attorney, Jonathan Lawrence, and there's a new law
that gave you and your dad some hope, or maybe
false hopes, but some positive things came about nonetheless, So
(34:34):
can you tell us what happened next? In two thousand
and one, a law come down that give courts the
opportunity to reevaluate cases. If you could prove your fifteen attorney,
Gerald Hanley, abandoned you on your the trial, courts could
look at your case again. So my dad had done
(34:55):
all this research on this and had done everything, and
we get to Jonathan Lawrence, and Jonathan Lawrence at first
didn't think we could do it, but once he read
the case law, he said, yeah, I believe we can.
So Jonathan Lawrence got involved and filed an eighty one
page motion and convinced Judge Messina, who denied us back
(35:18):
in ninety two, reopened my father's case and she held
a two day evidentiary hearing in two thousand and four,
And you finally have an attorney here who can do
justice in your father's case, who gathered and presented some
powerful expert testimony, including from investigator Chuck Gay, who had
been at the courthouse for hearing but had been prevented
(35:42):
from entering the courtroom. Now he finally had a chance
to speak. Chuck Gay was a twenty five year police
officer in Long Beach, California. He had actually talked to
the FBI in different courses on crime scene investigation, and
he testified to the crime scene photos not coming out.
(36:03):
You can't restage a crime scene. That's absurd, unclothing her
at the scene, all of these things. Crime scene preservation
is what Chuck Gate testified to and how improper it was.
The gunshot residue was a real big one with him.
We found out a little more about the green document.
(36:24):
So you have to realize before trial, when they give
us that green document, it was just a copy, so
it was on white paper. We really didn't know what
it said underneath, but we knew something was wrong because
the left hand was missing. And when our investigator after
the trial went to go investigate that, the crime lab said,
(36:47):
we didn't do that. They said, these are our documents.
We used green owl. So they were pointing the finger
at the police. They knew that that wasn't right. There
was no in this, Jules or anything that would indicate
who did it or or why they did it. Myself
and our attorney in two thousand and six team went
(37:09):
to the crime lab and and got this document and
him and I both held it up to the light
and you could see underneath the wide out on the
number of articles and then underneath the other wide out
off to the side, you could see the word left.
And he gave us an affidavit that that was the
(37:29):
worst alteration of official documents he had ever seen in
thirty two years. I believe a practicing law and you
also had testimony from a ballistics expert proving that the
scenario presented by the state was physically impossible. And this
guy was no slouching. He had overseen over eight hundred investigations,
(37:51):
and importantly he had been an expert from both prosecution
and defense. And of course the guy I'm referring to
is Bob Tressel. I'm Bob Trestle. I'm a forensic crime
scene investigator. When I first looked at the case, the
bullet was found across the room after it had struck
the door frame, ricocheted up to the ceiling and over
(38:13):
to on the other side of the dining room. So
we began looking at the angles that the bullet took
in striking the door frame exiting the door frame. Their
lab came up with what we call a muzzle to
target or the barrel of the whip and having to
be approximately eight inches from her face where the bullet entered.
So then we started looking at the gun. The guns
(38:35):
of three seven magnum, you get the length of the
barrel chamber in the grip area. So although the barrels
seed inches from her face, the gun is almost fourteen
inches and total length away from her face. And then
we started looking at the wounds themselves. Pretty well, a
straight shot gunshot when with little deviation on the upward
(38:59):
or downward lane, and with the bullet not deviating very
much right or left, the shot had come from directly
in front of her the upper trajectory, because we know
where it strikes on the wall and then ricchet is off.
We know it's going upward, so she has to have
her upper body bent over or her head bent over
towards the table in order to receive that gunshot one
(39:21):
and there's only about two ft distance between the table
and the wall, and so you've got to get two
people almost directly in front of each other. But the
gun's gotta be held way down low, and in order
to get the distances that we saw, the gun has
got to be almost on top of the table. So
where can the shooter be at that point When we
(39:44):
finally did all the calculations in order for someone to
be directly in front of her. If a shooter was
the one that fired this weapon, he would have to
be under the table. That makes no sense whatsoever. There's
no direct for rents of evidence either by blood tissue,
gunshot residue, things of that nature that indicate that Middleton
(40:07):
fired this gun, killing his wife. And so all of
this powerful expert testimony has been heard. And to top
it all off, there was one more witness that testified
on your father's behalf. The former governor of Missouri. Yes,
you heard that correctly. The former governor of Missouri, Joseph P. Teasdale,
testified on Kent's be had and he had extensive trial
(40:30):
experience as an assistant U. S attorney, prosecuting attorney, and
as a trial lawyer. And he testified to the quote
suspect conduct of the prosecutors and the quote ineffective performance
of the defense council. And at the end of the testimony,
former Governor Teasdale was asked what he would have done
if this case had been presented to him in his
(40:52):
capacity as governor, and he replied that this was the
worst case of constitutional violations that he had ever witnessed
in forty one years of practicing law, and that he
and this is a direct quote, would clearly have pardoned
Mr Middleton of all wrongdoing end quote. That's a strong statement.
(41:15):
He had gotten familiar with Dad's case a few years before,
and I reached out to him when we got this
evidencurre hearing and asked him what his costs would be
for him to come testify, and and he said, I
don't want any money. I want to state dinner when
your dad gets out of there. And it meant a
(41:35):
lot to me. So finally, this information that you've been
trying to get hurt for so many years, the ineffective
Council of the Prosecutorial misconduct and complex of interest, the
botched investigation and alter reports, You're finally able to get
that before the judge, and even a more conservative judge,
Judge Massina, could not deny the merits of Kent's case.
(41:57):
So this was all powerful evidence that the jury ever heard.
After all this evidence was put forward, Judgementsina took it
under advisement and would not rule on the case for
eleven more months. Two weeks after the hearing was over,
the prosecutors come to my dad with an Alfred plea.
If he would plead to an Alfred plea and plead
(42:18):
guilty the second degree, he could walk out of prison
of Freeman. But even though all of his appeals were
exhausted and we were setting in front of very conservative judge,
my father refused the Alford plea. For him to turn
that down with all appeals exhausted, that speaks volumes to
(42:40):
his innocence. And on May twenty thousand five, Judgementsina came
back and vacated King's conviction and granted him a new trial.
So the same judge who denied him in nine two
overturned his conviction. Judge Massina found eight different points of
ineffective assistance a council on Bob Duncan. The man had
(43:00):
three other capital murder cases overturned at the same time
he was handling my dad's case. But just six days
after this incredible news, you get a huge punch to
the gun. What does the Jackson County Prosecutor's office do.
They appealed the decision, so if he would plead guilty
after that hearing, they were willing to let him go.
(43:22):
But when he stood by his innocence and the trial
judge agreed and overturned his conviction. They appealed it. They
ruled that Judge Messina didn't have jurisdiction to issue that
new trial. They never got to the merits or the
facts that she ruled he was wrongfully convicted in violation
of his sixth Amendment right to constitutional effective representation. They
(43:44):
never got to any of that. They just said she
didn't have jurisdiction. And this is now seventeen long years ago.
It's it's crazy. I mean, the court heard the merits
of his innocence and the sigh did he should get
a new trial, But outside of the fifteen appellate proceedings,
it was ruled that the trial court didn't have jurisdiction.
(44:07):
So Ken has just been sitting there since two thousand four,
awaiting a miracle or a change in the law so
that his case could be heard again, and that finally
happened in August, a new law was passed in Missouri
that allows a case to go before the trial judge
outside of hearing. So what that means is that if
(44:28):
a prosecutor knows that a man is innocent, as the
current prosecutor has implied in Ken's case, they're no longer
jurisdictionally barred from doing something about it. Judgementsine has already
ruled on this, and she's now an advisor to the
current prosecutor, Jean Peters Baker and Baker already made use
of this new law in Kevin Strickland's case in the
fall of one, Yet strangely she is yet to act
(44:51):
in Ken's case. It's it's mystifying and maddening at the
same time. So, Cliff, what's going on with all of this? Now?
This new law, Yes, it's about a prosecutor's right to
file a motion, but it's also about a court's right
to have jurisdiction to consider and here the matter. Well,
now they're given the motion courts jurisdiction, but the prosecutor
(45:14):
has to file it. So in our case, we've already
proved everything there is with this statute. The statute lays
out that upon the filing of such emotion, the court
shall have a hearing and issue of findings and facts
and conclusions of law on all issues presented. That's exactly
what Judge Messina did. So we've already been successful at
(45:39):
securing a new trial from my father. But the only
thing we didn't have was jurisdiction. Well, now this new
law gives the courts jurisdiction, but the prosecutor has been
reluctant to file it. So now that this new law
has passed, I believe the next steps are for Gene
to file emotion conceding jurisdiction. That's it. We don't need
(46:00):
anything else from her but a one page motion conceding
jurisdiction and allow a court there in Jackson County to
get to the merits of the trial Judge Edith Messina's
order overturning my dad's conviction. For our audience out there
listening now, is there something you'd like them to do?
(46:20):
What can they do to help to write this horrible injustice? Yes,
you'd go to our website at free hyphen Ken Middleton
dot com. There's a wealth of very compelling documents that
support everything we spoke about today. If we said it today,
rest assured. You can go to our website and find it.
(46:43):
And on the homepage right up front, there's a petition
asking Jean Peters Baker to abide by her oath and
follow the plain language of this new Missouri statute. It's
as simple as a one page motion conceding jurisdiction so
that my dad can once again prove his innocence and
(47:03):
come home to the family that waits him. Right, we'll
have that linked in the bio as well as a
link to Silver Creek Entertainment. Um, I believe there's a
film on the way about Ken's case, and it can't
come soon enough as far as I'm concerned. You know,
I'm both dreading and really looking forward to watching it.
So check that out, click on the link in the bio.
(47:24):
And now, guys, we have a tradition here and it's
really my favorite part of the show. It's called closing arguments.
And closing arguments is very simple. It works like this.
I'm just gonna turn my microphone off, kick back in
my chair with my headphones on. You'll turn the volume
up a little bit and just listen to anything else
you'd like to say, anything at all you have to
say to our audience. So Cliff, why don't you go first?
(47:46):
And can we'll let you close us out. I'd like
to thank you for using your celebrity to bring awareness
to wrong for convictions, given a voice to the voiceless.
It's an amazing thing what you're doing. It's encouraged other
celebrities like Kim Kardashian and John Grisham and Johnny Depp
and you know a lot of others to take up
(48:08):
the cause and stand up for justice. And so i'd
like to thank you again, Jason, and now Kim over
to you. Well, what I'd like to say here that
all the people that's listening, I would appreciate it more
than words can explain. Anything they can do, sign petitions,
signa letters to Baker to get her to follow the statute,
(48:32):
anything anybody can do to have to clear and get
the same justice that Kevin Strickland got. I would appreciate
it more than words can say. Thank you for listening
to ronfle Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team
(48:53):
Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Clyburn, and Kevin Wardis. With
research by Lila Robinson. The music in this production was
supplied by three time OSCAR nominating composer Jay Ralph. Be
sure to follow us on Instagram 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,
(49:15):
you can also follow me on both TikTok and Instagram
at it's Jason flom Wrangful Conviction is the production of
Lava for Good podcasts and association with signal Company Number
one
When we initially released Ken Middleton's episode in March twenty
twenty two, we were hoping that Jackson County District Attorney
Jean Peters Baker would be moved to action. But it
turns out it looks like Ken's son, Cliff Middleton, has
exposed another conflict of interest for the Jackson County Prosecutor's office,
and this one comes with a constitutional violation. When the
(00:21):
trial prosecutor struck a bond agreement with the court from
mister Middleton, there was a stipulation that he would not
have access to his assets. This was a clear violation
of his Sixth Amendment rights, as affirmed in two thousand
sixteen by the Supreme Court, who decided in Louise versus
United States that the Sixth Amendment prohibits the pre trial
(00:41):
restraint of assets needed to retain a defendants council of
choice when those assets have not been used in conjunction
with criminal activity. Mister Middleton is hoping that the Court
agrees that the actions of the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office
to do just that to mister Middleton pre trial represented
a conflict of interest that will disqualify that office and
(01:01):
result in the appointment of a special prosecutor. A prosecutor
who is free of this conflict, among others, would be
able to apply the newly enacted s. B fifty three
in order to grant Mr Middleton a new trial on
his ineffective assistance of counsel, constitutional violations and actual innocence claims.
(01:22):
Cannon Cathy Middleton had properties in Blue Springs, Missouri, as
well as Ken's family land back in Arkansas, where they
hope to one day retire. On February twelfth, when he
planned to clean a gun that he had brought back
from Arkansas, Ken felt ill, laid the gun down and
took a nap. Meanwhile, Cathy returned early from work to
confront Ken about news of a regretful affair that had
(01:43):
ended three years earlier. After grabbing the gun from where
Ken had laid it down, Cathy made her way to
the phone to call the alleged mistress. When tragedy struck.
It is believed that it destroyed. Cathy mishandled the weapon
in her left hand and shot herself in the head.
Ken immediately called nine one one when first responders found
him without a drop of blood or gunshot residue on him.
(02:04):
A positive gunshot residute test of Cathy's left hand would
have conclusively ruled her death as a tragic accident. However,
her left hand test results went missing and the crime
lab document was altered in what clearly appears to be
evidence tampering, where the medical examiner and blood spatter expert
willing to testify to an impossible scenario in which Ken
(02:24):
was magically able to shoot Kathy from less than a
foot away while remaining free of blood and g s R.
Ken was sentenced to life plus two hundred years. Despite
the mishandling of the crime scene, ballistics testing was still
able to prove Ken's innocence. His conviction was overturned in
two thousand four, but a jurisdictional technicality has held him
in legal limbo ever since. Kennada's son, Cliff Middleton, join
(02:48):
us to ask, how is it that, even though a
new statute remedies that technicality, the current prosecutor, Jean Peters Baker,
refuses to act. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
(03:13):
ronval Conviction. I'm your host, Jason Farm. You know, each
week I have a pretty good idea of how I'm
going to start the show. You know, usually there's one
main focus, one main problem that we can talk about
in any particular case. But this time, I don't even
know where to start. When our friend Larry Garrison, who's
actually known as the news Breaker, okay for his years
(03:35):
of investigative reporting and his work through Silver Creek Entertainment,
when he first told me in us here at Ron
Conviction about the case of Ken Middleton, he had lived
up to his nickname once again, I mean the Newsbreaker.
So I'll start by saying that Ken Middleton has been
in prison for over thirty years for being present during
what they may well have known all along was just
(03:56):
a tragic accident. And there's so many problems in this
case that we could literally pick on any one of
them and make an entire episode of the show just
about that. I'm talking about ineffective assistance of council, false
expert testimony, evidence tampering, incompetent investigator's official corruption, conflict of interest,
can refusing freedom through an Alfred play write something that
(04:18):
you never catch a guilty person doing. And that's something
that happened seventeen years ago, almost eighteen now. Plus there's
this insane jurisdictional technicality that has kept this innocent man
in prison long past the time that I believe everyone
knows that he should have ever been in there. So
without further ado, at seventy seven years old, Ken is
(04:39):
calling in from inside the prison walls in Missouri. Ken,
I'm so sorry you're here because of the reason why
you're here, but I'm very honored to have you on
the show. Thank you appreciate it. And with Ken is
his son and probably the most passionate advocate, Cliff Middleton.
Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having
(05:02):
me on. Jason, I really really appreciate it. And I
know how hard this is going to be. I mean,
like any other son, you love your dad and you
just want this thing to end. Okay, let's go back
in time and I'm gonna turn to you. Ken. This
is early in Blue Springs, Missouri, and you're there with
your wife Kathy. So tell us what was happening in
(05:23):
your life? What were things like before all this happened.
It was great. We had a great marriage for over
sixteen years, had a farm in Arkansas, two different farms.
I had three hundred and fifty two acres of the land.
I had drove a truck for over twenty years, and
I had injured my back and I wasn't working right then,
(05:44):
So I was going to the farm and doing projects,
working on the house and watching nice of the cattle
and stuff like that. Kathy worked at eight D and
T for twenty eight years, and two years you'd have
her time in worse, she could retire regardless of age.
And that's what was waiting on, and was moving back
to Arkansas for good. And let's get into how this
(06:07):
came to pass. So let's go back to February. Just
to set the stage here. You had been at your
place in Arkansas and you brought a handgun that you
owned back to Missouri with you. But meanwhile you had
been feeling sick, but no one knew at the time,
not you or anybody, that you were really seriously ill
(06:28):
at this point, is that right, right? And I was
sick for left Arkansas, and when I got back Sunday afternoon,
I didn't sleep much all night. So the next morning,
Kathy had went to work at a T and T,
and I unloaded the rest of the truck and brought
the gun in the house. It had been in Arkansas,
(06:49):
since I went to Coloratto elk hunt in the fall
before and there's a big snow and rain and stuff
in Coloraretto, and it got wet. So I picked it
up and brought it back to Missouri her I was
aimed to clean it. And when I got it out
of the truck, I went in the house and sat down.
I called Kathy at work, and she asked me how
I was feeling. I said about the same. I wasn't
(07:11):
feeling good, and I sat in a recliner and I
went to sleep. And I had never cleaned the gun.
So the next thing I knew is she was already home,
and she picked up the gun out of the towel
that had the gun laying on, and she was upset
that somebody had told her that I was having affair
with a woman, which was true, but it had been
(07:35):
over for three years. And she walked over to the
phone in the dining room to call a woman. So
I got up and UH dizzy, And next thing I know,
the tragedy had happened. And the tragedy that had happened
is the matter of this dispute between the Middleton's and
the state. Now Ken maintained his innocence in the matter,
(07:56):
that this was a tragic accident in which Kathy visibly
upset at the news of this affair, and on her
way to the phone to confront your alleged mistress, Cathy
was holding the gun in her left hand and accidentally
shot herself on the left side of her forehead, splattering
blood all over the wall. This version of events is
(08:16):
supported by the ballistics and all the other physical evidence.
And then there's what the state wants everyone to believe. Right,
bear with me, because this is nuts. That Ken had
somehow held Cathy up against the wall and shot her
in the face, but somehow, miraculously was able to be
completely clear of blood spatter or gunshot residue, not a
(08:38):
trace on him. And we'll get into all of that
a bit later. So back to this terrible tragedy. A
gunshot rang out and Cathy was on the floor in
a pool of blood. What a nightmare? Ken? What happened next?
I've seen her on the floor and grabbed the gun
and put it on the table and call nine one
one immediately. I asked for the medics, and I had
(09:01):
called them three times within a short period of time.
And wanted to know who the paramedics was. And the
third time, the operator told me to go outside, that
the paramedics were there, and I looked out, and I
told her that I had looked out and there wasn't
nobody out there, and she convinced me to go outside
that they were there. So I went out and the
(09:22):
first thing I've seen was a copy behind the walls,
screaming at me to get my hands in the air
and turn around with my back to him at his
gun pointed at me, and I've done as he said,
and he'd come up behind me and searched me. I
wanted to know who the paramedics were, and he ordered
(09:43):
me back in the house and we went back in
the house and he went in and checked on my wife.
And I was just historical, and I guess I was
done on my knees, and he jerked me up. And
when he had done that fast, I've become dizzy, real dizzy,
and I oh know, was ain't the blackout, So I said,
as I ain't be sick, and I went down the
(10:04):
hall to the bathroom and I went in and spliced
water on my face, and then he took me outside
and I had a real bad hurt and in my
left arm and chess. Now, when the paramedics arrived, they determined, Kenna,
you would have been hyperventilating, complaining of chess plains and
the blood pressure was going crazy, and they convinced you
to go to the hospital for an examination. They taught
(10:27):
me to go into the hospital, and they took me
to three medical hospitals, and then on the third one,
I was forced in a mental hospital till the next day.
They later tried to say that you had checked into
that mental hospital to try to get away with murder,
claimed by claiming in sanity defense. But we're getting ahead
of ourselves here, and let's not leave out the fact
that your dad was in and out of consciousness on
(10:49):
his way to the hospital. And they took an e
k G at the hospital and it showed that Kenna,
you had recently suffered from a heart attack. Now here's
another thing that I have trouble understanding. Are processing. The
officers didn't write their statements until days later, and they
did it by memory, right, And these statements that were
(11:09):
taken from a hysterical man who had to be rushed
to the hospital talking about you of course Ken, who
was just trying to help figure out what happened, so
the officers didn't bother to write it down. There were
a couple police reports that were handwritten out that day,
but the official reports that I have reviewed were written
(11:30):
on I believe it was February twenty one, and Cathy
died on the twelve. Now, in researching this case, I
saw in the police reports where they kept on documenting
instances in which Ken allegedly had done something with his hands,
Like he mentioned splashing water on its face, right, They
(11:50):
wrote down another instance where they said he wiped his
hands on a door, touched dirt in a potted plant,
and the implication is that Ken was trying to somehow
wash away the gunshot residue. There's a picture the Independence
News Examiner paper took of my father out there on
(12:11):
the front stoop, leaning over that potter plant, sobbing, and
the two paramedics are consoling him. It's it's very obvious
that he was in a state of shock and hysteria.
First of all, you already claimed he was washing his
hands when he splashed water on his face. It's crazy
(12:32):
to think that somebody's trying to wash their hands in
the dirt unless you've been involved in something like this,
How would you even know what a gunshot residue test is,
especially in JSON maybe today with crime shows and things.
But he didn't know what they were testing him for.
They took my shirt on the shirt and clothes and
(12:53):
shoes and all and they did tested then come back negative,
no blood or nothing on my long sleeve shirt. And
the picture in the front had a house when I
was over the stove shows the long sleeve shirt down
to the risk. There was no blood, no gunshot resident
on it. Right, And as the evidence clearly shows, she
was shot from very close range, less than a foot away,
(13:15):
and there's no way you can do that without being
covered in blood and gunshot residue. But you weren't because
you didn't kill her. And Cathy's gunshot residue tests would
likely have corroborated Ken's version of events and showing that
this was a tragic accident not homicide. Cliff, can you
explain what I mean by that they swabbed both of
(13:37):
her hands, that they four gunshot residue and the prime
document that they fill out shows that they swabbed both hands,
right and left hands and it shows they used two
different kids to do that, one for the right hand
and one for the left hand. Well, the next day,
(13:58):
when the corner did the up see, the corner ruled
in a homicide based on what the police were telling
him unless other information come forward to prove otherwise. Now
that gunshot residue was important information and took him nine
days to turn the gunshot residue samples into the crime lab.
(14:23):
And when they turned him into the crime lab, the
document was altered to show only one kid and the
left hand was wid it out to show they only
tested the right hand when she was shot from eight
to twelve inches away on the left side of her head.
You really have to see this to believe it. And
(14:44):
we're gonna link pictures of this in our episode because
I'm looking at it right now and i still can't
believe that I'm actually looking at what I'm looking at. Okay, So,
the test of Cathy's left hand, the one in which
she would have held the gun in order to shoot herself,
the test of that hand disappeared or it wasn't tested
(15:08):
on purpose. There's only two possibilities. The crime lab document
that should have been for both of her hands was
altered with white out. Okay, remember white out, it's unreal.
This is like to show that only her right hand
had been tested. And this is reinforced when you compare
it with the g SR test document for Ken in
(15:31):
the same handwriting okay, get ready for this, it states
quote number of articles too, g SR test kits for
right and left hands. End quote. But then on Cathy's
g SR test document, in the same exact handwriting, it says,
quote number of articles and whatever was there is white
(15:52):
it out, right, just white it out, and the number
one is in its place, And then it reads quote
gunshot residue for right end quote, followed by another gob
of white out and the word hand. So in all
likelihood the white out is simply covering the words and left,
(16:12):
as it would have been in a request for testing
of both right and left hands, where now only one
test for her right hand exists and the one that
really matters the left hand is missing. Later on, after
us convicted years later, we took their deposition and Geoff
(16:32):
Rogers that wrote the report out he swore that he
didn't put the white out on that because his own
green paper, and he said that he wouldn't have whited
it out. He had just build out a new report
and we got Dave Link, the one that took it
to the lab. Nine days later, he swore um down
that he didn't do it. And he was asked, did
(16:53):
he always take both hands of a close gunshot residue test?
He said, yeah, us My attorney ask him years later
in ninety seven, always, and he said absolutely. They whited
out the left hand, and they whited out the number
of articles. I mean, somebody literally just took white out. Yeah,
(17:15):
the left hand. If it would have come back positive,
it would have been powerful evidence that she accidentally fired
the gun herself. Our attorney told us that if that
left hand come back positive, the corner would have changed
his findings and they wouldn't have had a case against
my father. It all would have ended right there. This
(17:48):
episode is underwritten by A i G, a leading global
insurance company. A i G is committed to corporate social
responsibility and is 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 A I G's
commitment to criminal and social justice reform. The a i
(18:09):
G Pro Bono program provides free legal services and other
support to underrepresented communities and individuals. Now, this is a
small town police department. My understanding is there hadn't been
a homicide investigation in almost a decade. These people were
(18:30):
not up to the task, and they started making mistakes
more or less as soon as they walked into the house. Yes, yes,
And like so many other cases, I believe the police
immediately focused on my father and had tunnel vision as
they began to investigate this case. I'll start with the
fact that they took photos that day of the alleged
(18:55):
crime scene, and the photos allegedly did not come them out,
And after Cathy's body was removed, they went back and
restaged the crime scene and took new photos. By the
time they had done this, my stepmother had already been
taken out of the house, and the fire department had
(19:18):
actually been called in to cut sheet rock out of
the wall with blood spatter and things, and so the
new pictures they took the sheet rock was already cut out,
and they had drawn a diagram of the dining room
where this happened, and the diagram didn't match the pictures.
(19:39):
They had moved the dining room table all the way
up against the wall to make it appear that there
was a bigger area there when she was shot, right
to make room for this alleged struggle that never even happened.
When she went to use the phone. In every picture
they took of this small dining room, they missed that
(19:59):
phone Jason by a quarter of an inch. Another mistake
that was made that day at the crime scene. According
to the police reports, they unclothed my stepmother naked right
there on the dining room floor and folded her clothes
up and put them in bags and transported her to
(20:21):
the morgue naked for them to unclothe her and alter
any evidence that could have been gathered from that. Now,
that goes against every protocol of any police department anywhere.
Best I remember, the medical examiner said should come in
fully clothing. So what they actually done was reclosed the
(20:43):
poor the medical examiner examiner, that's exactly right. What the
medical examiner reported didn't match the police reports. They unclothed
her and at some point reclothed her, so they mishandled
the scene and the evidence altered or disappeared, the key
gunshot residue test of Cathy's left hand, and then they
(21:04):
arrested you, and eventually you got out on bond, and
even that was kind of odd. Prosecutor Peters agreed to
ten thousand and he put a restriction on my bond.
This says not the dispose of any martal or jointly
held property without the permission of the prosecute attorney and
(21:24):
the probate court. You got the State of Missouri coming
after you with unlimited resources, and your life and liberty
is on the line. My dad should have had access
to every dining he had to save his life, right,
And this also gets us to a crazy part of
this whole story. So while you're facing Prosecutor Patrick Peters
(21:47):
in this criminal trial against you, there's also a wrongful
death civil suit filed against you by Cathy's sisters. And
get this, Prosecutor Peters's father is part of the law
firm behind that civil suit, so stands to benefit from
(22:08):
the outcome. And of course you didn't even know that
at the time. They had concealed it and they had
said that he convinced them that he would convict me
and the law firm would help keep me in prison.
I'd like to point out that the Blue Springs Police Department,
city attorney for Blue Springs was also in the same
(22:30):
law firm as the prosecutor's father, So you had a
triangle of a conflict of interest here that was hidden
from from everyone. Every time we do an episode, I
always think I've heard it all, I could say, even
after doing two and fifty episodes of this show, I've
never heard of that the prosecutor refers the family of
(22:51):
the woman who died to his own father's law firm.
Now everybody's compromised, right, because now there's a whole another
for them to want to convict you with this crime
so that everybody can make money. And they ultimately got
a one point three five million dollar default wrongful debt
judgment against my father. So now there's been this litany
(23:14):
of errors, misconduct, malfeasance, stayed up, insanity. I'm going to
call it what it is, it's insanity. And now finally
it's time for the trial. It's February, a year after
the incident. Basically, the cross of the States case against
my dad was that he held her up against the wall,
(23:35):
and shot her from a foot away from her face.
The prosecutor put on his so called experts saying that
she was two inches away from the wall, and that
I had my arm across her chest and held her
up against the wall and shot her. And blood's experts
admitted that he had a weak's training, and he's self
(23:56):
taught he had taken a forty hour core some blood
spattered evidence. That's all the training that their expert had,
These quote unquote experts had for forty hour training course
that doesn't actually teach you anything except how to act
like you know what you're talking about in court pretty much, right,
But he didn't tell that there was no gun shot
residue on my hands or long sleeve shirt, or blood
(24:19):
or nothing else on my long sleeve shirt. And they
said he put a bootprint on the wall, which was false.
It had been there weeks prior, and in order for
that bootprint to get there, his leg would have had
to have been backwards at the knee and hyper extended
in order to put that bootprint there. Right, you have
(24:40):
this bootprint that was physically impossible to have been made
in this scenario. But you know what, none of it
freaking matters why they could have produced any other made
up nonsense to try to support their theory. But without
Ken being covered in blood and g SR, it's all
pure drivel. Blood and GSR has to be present for
(25:02):
us to even entertain these bullshit footprints. Not to mention
the analysis from Bob Tressell, the renowned forensic crime investigator,
that further clarifies just how bogus the state's theory was.
We'll get into all of that a bit later, but
unfortunately Ken didn't benefit from Bob Tressell's testimony or any
of this being pointed out at the original trial. Ken's attorney,
(25:24):
Bob Duncan, couldn't be bothered to do an investigation, not
even a thorough examination of the gun. Cliff what else
did the state present? They also put on evidence that
the gun would take ten pounds of pressure. I believe
it was without the hammer pulled three and a half
pounds with the hammer pulled. Well, the gun needed to
(25:46):
be examined in the exact state it was found in,
and it wasn't. They had dismantled it and put it
back together before testing it, so if there was any
problems with the gun, they fixed it. When they put
it back together. Bob Duncan and was asleep at the
will if you will, and had none of the physical
evidence examined by an expert, hadn't interviewed any witnesses. He
(26:09):
was totally unprepared for the case to even go to trial.
Did I hear this correctly? That he didn't even make
an opening statement? He reserved one and he forgot to
give it. I couldn't get him to do nothing. They
didn't see nothing about the gunshunk residue, not one word
of them was like in that document out they never
seen it. Without a proper defense, you're out there, mercy.
(26:32):
Years later, in n and ninety six, he gave me
a three Affidavid's of what he had failed to do.
This is my trial attorney, Robert Duncan. I did not
have any physical evidence in the case examined by a
forensic expert, other than to speak to a gun expert
about the gun. But I did not have him examined
(26:53):
the gun. And then he gave another affidavit and he said, father,
I believe my ability to defend Mr Middleton was empowered
because I wasn't given information of the connection between the
police department, the prosecutor, and the civil claims against Mr.
Middleton seeking a substantial monetary recovery. This information, if for
(27:17):
no other purpose, would have been admissible as impeachment evidence
showing the bias of the police and some of the witnesses.
So Cathy's sister, Mildred Anderson gave false testimony for the
prosecution to show motive that Ken had secret assets in
Arkansas that no one in the family was aware of.
And we know this is just another lie because Mildred
(27:38):
Anderson later said she admitted that she and the rest
of the family actually did know about all of the
assets before Cathy's death, which is a clear cut example
of perjury, which in Missouri in the murder case, that's
the class A felony. And Peter's colluded with her because
Peter's put it in the question would be simple for her, says, quote,
(28:00):
quite a bit of holdings down in Arkansas that you
and your family, including your sister, were unaware of. She says, yes.
It should also be mentioned Jason that after the sister
testified to that, the prosecutor instructed the police department to
(28:20):
release eighteen thousand, seven hundred dollars worth of jewelry that
was confiscated out of the house to the witness, So
not only was it perjury, she was rewarded with eighteen thousand,
seven hundred dollars worth of jewelry. And then eight years later,
on March at twenty fifth nine, Mildred Anderson gave foreign
(28:41):
testimony in her Arkansas lawsuit against Kenneth Middleton, which showed
she clearly perjured herself in and her sister corroborated it. Wow. Okay,
So I gotta ask about what must have been the
worst day all of your life, which of course is
the day that the jury would for a breaking hour
(29:01):
and came back in and sentenced you to life without
parole plus two hundred years. Well, I don't know how
to describe it, but I was in shock, and until
this outing, I never spent a day in jail in
my life. And take you from being free in the
country and working all my life to throw you in
(29:22):
a cage is unbelievable. And I can't explain. Growing up
as a kid, I would never in a million years
dream that what happened to my dad would have happened
to him. He just was, you know, a great father
was He's been more of a father to me behind
(29:43):
bars than most kids could ask for from a father
on the street. And uh, it was devastating to our
whole family. So now we moved to the post conviction
(30:11):
and there's still more insanity to come. So it's and
your appellate attorney is a man named Gerald Handley who
was recommended by Bob Duncan. Well, that's not a good sign.
And one of the first things we come to is
that what's called appeal, Cliff, can you explain that to
us and get us started here? After trial, the first
(30:31):
appeal that you have in the state of Missouri is
your post conviction is an appeal that's filed back in
front of the trial judge to evaluate your trial to
make sure that you had a fair trial. That's where
you bring your ineffective assistance of council issues if you
have any. So you have ninety days to do that
(30:54):
in Missouri or you don't get that hearing on ineffective
assistance a council. And that's right back in front of
the very trial judge that just set on your trial
and convicted you. So you got a high burden to
meet there, right, you got to prove that you had
an unfair trial and your attorney didn't do his job.
Our appellent attorney at that time had a ninety day
(31:16):
window to follow an amended petition for Dad and get
all of his issues in the appeal. He never met
with my dad, never went over any of the issues,
which the law requires him to do, and at the
last minute, before the ninety days was up and you
could get no extensions, my dad gets a letter from
(31:37):
his attorney telling him to sign this affidavit that all
of his issues are in the amended petition, even though
my dad had never seen the petition. And if you
didn't sign that affidavit and have it with your amended
petition when you filed it, you were out. You couldn't
even get a fifteen hearing. So my dad had to
sign it and at least hope that his attorney was
(32:01):
gonna put all of his issues in it. Well. We
had to do a lot of finaglin to get that
affidavit to him before Monday, and when we got it
to him on Monday, Gerald Hanley and filed a three
page motion on my dad's life, procedurally defaulting all of
his issues on appeal. So because that attorney procedurally defaulted
(32:23):
all of his issues, the facts and the merits of
his case were never heard. And when we went to
the evidentiary hearing, I had nine witnesses out in the hallway.
When I got to the courthouse, the witnesses that knew
Pat Peters through trial seeing Pat Peters talking to the
uniform guard, and the guard took a post at the
(32:45):
door and wouldn't let none of my witnesses in the courtroom.
I didn't know what happened to him till I got
back to the jail and made some called. Peters called
Duncan to the stand, and Duncan testified this base answered
Jesus questions, said I checked himself into the hospital while
I was shaking the head. It was a lie because
(33:06):
I was forced in that mental hospital. One of the
records that Bob Duncan didn't get was the medical records
from the mental ward. The prosecutions theory was that it
was trial strategy for Duncan did not get the medical
records because the prosecution had a witness that would have
said Dad told him, if you want to get away
(33:27):
with murder, you check yourself into a mental ward. After
you do it. So Judgementina agreed and said, yeah, that's
not ineffective assistance accouncil. He he didn't get them records
because he voluntarily checked himself into a mental ward. Well
that wasn't true, but Gerald Hanley never got the records either,
so the judge never knew this, and so the hearing
(33:49):
ended and no witnesses recalled, no expert testimony was given,
and no evidence was presented to refute the state Gerald
Hanley ended up being, and this is hard to believe,
but he ended up being just as disinterested as Bob
Duncan was before, and so predictably, Judge Messina rejected your appeal.
(34:10):
It's insane. It's not because the appeal was invalid. It's
because the lawyers didn't do their freaking jobs. And according
to the law at that time, the trial courts jurisdiction
over your case ended. So Cliff, eventually you all get
a new attorney, Jonathan Lawrence, and there's a new law
that gave you and your dad some hope, or maybe
false hopes, but some positive things came about nonetheless, So
(34:34):
can you tell us what happened next? In two thousand
and one, a law come down that give courts the
opportunity to reevaluate cases. If you could prove your fifteen attorney,
Gerald Hanley, abandoned you on your the trial, courts could
look at your case again. So my dad had done
(34:55):
all this research on this and had done everything, and
we get to Jonathan Lawrence, and Jonathan Lawrence at first
didn't think we could do it, but once he read
the case law, he said, yeah, I believe we can.
So Jonathan Lawrence got involved and filed an eighty one
page motion and convinced Judge Messina, who denied us back
(35:18):
in ninety two, reopened my father's case and she held
a two day evidentiary hearing in two thousand and four,
And you finally have an attorney here who can do
justice in your father's case, who gathered and presented some
powerful expert testimony, including from investigator Chuck Gay, who had
been at the courthouse for hearing but had been prevented
(35:42):
from entering the courtroom. Now he finally had a chance
to speak. Chuck Gay was a twenty five year police
officer in Long Beach, California. He had actually talked to
the FBI in different courses on crime scene investigation, and
he testified to the crime scene photos not coming out.
(36:03):
You can't restage a crime scene. That's absurd, unclothing her
at the scene, all of these things. Crime scene preservation
is what Chuck Gate testified to and how improper it was.
The gunshot residue was a real big one with him.
We found out a little more about the green document.
(36:24):
So you have to realize before trial, when they give
us that green document, it was just a copy, so
it was on white paper. We really didn't know what
it said underneath, but we knew something was wrong because
the left hand was missing. And when our investigator after
the trial went to go investigate that, the crime lab said,
(36:47):
we didn't do that. They said, these are our documents.
We used green owl. So they were pointing the finger
at the police. They knew that that wasn't right. There
was no in this, Jules or anything that would indicate
who did it or or why they did it. Myself
and our attorney in two thousand and six team went
(37:09):
to the crime lab and and got this document and
him and I both held it up to the light
and you could see underneath the wide out on the
number of articles and then underneath the other wide out
off to the side, you could see the word left.
And he gave us an affidavit that that was the
(37:29):
worst alteration of official documents he had ever seen in
thirty two years. I believe a practicing law and you
also had testimony from a ballistics expert proving that the
scenario presented by the state was physically impossible. And this
guy was no slouching. He had overseen over eight hundred investigations,
(37:51):
and importantly he had been an expert from both prosecution
and defense. And of course the guy I'm referring to
is Bob Tressel. I'm Bob Trestle. I'm a forensic crime
scene investigator. When I first looked at the case, the
bullet was found across the room after it had struck
the door frame, ricocheted up to the ceiling and over
(38:13):
to on the other side of the dining room. So
we began looking at the angles that the bullet took
in striking the door frame exiting the door frame. Their
lab came up with what we call a muzzle to
target or the barrel of the whip and having to
be approximately eight inches from her face where the bullet entered.
So then we started looking at the gun. The guns
(38:35):
of three seven magnum, you get the length of the
barrel chamber in the grip area. So although the barrels
seed inches from her face, the gun is almost fourteen
inches and total length away from her face. And then
we started looking at the wounds themselves. Pretty well, a
straight shot gunshot when with little deviation on the upward
(38:59):
or downward lane, and with the bullet not deviating very
much right or left, the shot had come from directly
in front of her the upper trajectory, because we know
where it strikes on the wall and then ricchet is off.
We know it's going upward, so she has to have
her upper body bent over or her head bent over
towards the table in order to receive that gunshot one
(39:21):
and there's only about two ft distance between the table
and the wall, and so you've got to get two
people almost directly in front of each other. But the
gun's gotta be held way down low, and in order
to get the distances that we saw, the gun has
got to be almost on top of the table. So
where can the shooter be at that point When we
(39:44):
finally did all the calculations in order for someone to
be directly in front of her. If a shooter was
the one that fired this weapon, he would have to
be under the table. That makes no sense whatsoever. There's
no direct for rents of evidence either by blood tissue,
gunshot residue, things of that nature that indicate that Middleton
(40:07):
fired this gun, killing his wife. And so all of
this powerful expert testimony has been heard. And to top
it all off, there was one more witness that testified
on your father's behalf. The former governor of Missouri. Yes,
you heard that correctly. The former governor of Missouri, Joseph P. Teasdale,
testified on Kent's be had and he had extensive trial
(40:30):
experience as an assistant U. S attorney, prosecuting attorney, and
as a trial lawyer. And he testified to the quote
suspect conduct of the prosecutors and the quote ineffective performance
of the defense council. And at the end of the testimony,
former Governor Teasdale was asked what he would have done
if this case had been presented to him in his
(40:52):
capacity as governor, and he replied that this was the
worst case of constitutional violations that he had ever witnessed
in forty one years of practicing law, and that he
and this is a direct quote, would clearly have pardoned
Mr Middleton of all wrongdoing end quote. That's a strong statement.
(41:15):
He had gotten familiar with Dad's case a few years before,
and I reached out to him when we got this
evidencurre hearing and asked him what his costs would be
for him to come testify, and and he said, I
don't want any money. I want to state dinner when
your dad gets out of there. And it meant a
(41:35):
lot to me. So finally, this information that you've been
trying to get hurt for so many years, the ineffective
Council of the Prosecutorial misconduct and complex of interest, the
botched investigation and alter reports, You're finally able to get
that before the judge, and even a more conservative judge,
Judge Massina, could not deny the merits of Kent's case.
(41:57):
So this was all powerful evidence that the jury ever heard.
After all this evidence was put forward, Judgementsina took it
under advisement and would not rule on the case for
eleven more months. Two weeks after the hearing was over,
the prosecutors come to my dad with an Alfred plea.
If he would plead to an Alfred plea and plead
(42:18):
guilty the second degree, he could walk out of prison
of Freeman. But even though all of his appeals were
exhausted and we were setting in front of very conservative judge,
my father refused the Alford plea. For him to turn
that down with all appeals exhausted, that speaks volumes to
(42:40):
his innocence. And on May twenty thousand five, Judgementsina came
back and vacated King's conviction and granted him a new trial.
So the same judge who denied him in nine two
overturned his conviction. Judge Massina found eight different points of
ineffective assistance a council on Bob Duncan. The man had
(43:00):
three other capital murder cases overturned at the same time
he was handling my dad's case. But just six days
after this incredible news, you get a huge punch to
the gun. What does the Jackson County Prosecutor's office do.
They appealed the decision, so if he would plead guilty
after that hearing, they were willing to let him go.
(43:22):
But when he stood by his innocence and the trial
judge agreed and overturned his conviction. They appealed it. They
ruled that Judge Messina didn't have jurisdiction to issue that
new trial. They never got to the merits or the
facts that she ruled he was wrongfully convicted in violation
of his sixth Amendment right to constitutional effective representation. They
(43:44):
never got to any of that. They just said she
didn't have jurisdiction. And this is now seventeen long years ago.
It's it's crazy. I mean, the court heard the merits
of his innocence and the sigh did he should get
a new trial, But outside of the fifteen appellate proceedings,
it was ruled that the trial court didn't have jurisdiction.
(44:07):
So Ken has just been sitting there since two thousand four,
awaiting a miracle or a change in the law so
that his case could be heard again, and that finally
happened in August, a new law was passed in Missouri
that allows a case to go before the trial judge
outside of hearing. So what that means is that if
(44:28):
a prosecutor knows that a man is innocent, as the
current prosecutor has implied in Ken's case, they're no longer
jurisdictionally barred from doing something about it. Judgementsine has already
ruled on this, and she's now an advisor to the
current prosecutor, Jean Peters Baker and Baker already made use
of this new law in Kevin Strickland's case in the
fall of one, Yet strangely she is yet to act
(44:51):
in Ken's case. It's it's mystifying and maddening at the
same time. So, Cliff, what's going on with all of this? Now?
This new law, Yes, it's about a prosecutor's right to
file a motion, but it's also about a court's right
to have jurisdiction to consider and here the matter. Well,
now they're given the motion courts jurisdiction, but the prosecutor
(45:14):
has to file it. So in our case, we've already
proved everything there is with this statute. The statute lays
out that upon the filing of such emotion, the court
shall have a hearing and issue of findings and facts
and conclusions of law on all issues presented. That's exactly
what Judge Messina did. So we've already been successful at
(45:39):
securing a new trial from my father. But the only
thing we didn't have was jurisdiction. Well, now this new
law gives the courts jurisdiction, but the prosecutor has been
reluctant to file it. So now that this new law
has passed, I believe the next steps are for Gene
to file emotion conceding jurisdiction. That's it. We don't need
(46:00):
anything else from her but a one page motion conceding
jurisdiction and allow a court there in Jackson County to
get to the merits of the trial Judge Edith Messina's
order overturning my dad's conviction. For our audience out there
listening now, is there something you'd like them to do?
(46:20):
What can they do to help to write this horrible injustice? Yes,
you'd go to our website at free hyphen Ken Middleton
dot com. There's a wealth of very compelling documents that
support everything we spoke about today. If we said it today,
rest assured. You can go to our website and find it.
(46:43):
And on the homepage right up front, there's a petition
asking Jean Peters Baker to abide by her oath and
follow the plain language of this new Missouri statute. It's
as simple as a one page motion conceding jurisdiction so
that my dad can once again prove his innocence and
(47:03):
come home to the family that waits him. Right, we'll
have that linked in the bio as well as a
link to Silver Creek Entertainment. Um, I believe there's a
film on the way about Ken's case, and it can't
come soon enough as far as I'm concerned. You know,
I'm both dreading and really looking forward to watching it.
So check that out, click on the link in the bio.
(47:24):
And now, guys, we have a tradition here and it's
really my favorite part of the show. It's called closing arguments.
And closing arguments is very simple. It works like this.
I'm just gonna turn my microphone off, kick back in
my chair with my headphones on. You'll turn the volume
up a little bit and just listen to anything else
you'd like to say, anything at all you have to
say to our audience. So Cliff, why don't you go first?
(47:46):
And can we'll let you close us out. I'd like
to thank you for using your celebrity to bring awareness
to wrong for convictions, given a voice to the voiceless.
It's an amazing thing what you're doing. It's encouraged other
celebrities like Kim Kardashian and John Grisham and Johnny Depp
and you know a lot of others to take up
(48:08):
the cause and stand up for justice. And so i'd
like to thank you again, Jason, and now Kim over
to you. Well, what I'd like to say here that
all the people that's listening, I would appreciate it more
than words can explain. Anything they can do, sign petitions,
signa letters to Baker to get her to follow the statute,
(48:32):
anything anybody can do to have to clear and get
the same justice that Kevin Strickland got. I would appreciate
it more than words can say. Thank you for listening
to ronfle Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team
(48:53):
Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Clyburn, and Kevin Wardis. With
research by Lila Robinson. The music in this production was
supplied by three time OSCAR nominating composer Jay Ralph. Be
sure to follow us on Instagram 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,
(49:15):
you can also follow me on both TikTok and Instagram
at it's Jason flom Wrangful Conviction is the production of
Lava for Good podcasts and association with signal Company Number
one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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