December 7, 2023 • 50 mins
In September 1986, 34-year-old Douglas DiLosa was found bound with rope in his Jefferson Parish, LA home. His wife was found strangled upstairs. DiLosa, who is white, told police that he was awakened by a noise, and when he went downstairs to investigate, he was beaten and bound by two black men. Police suspected that DiLosa, who was in financial trouble, had murdered his wife for the insurance money. A jury convicted DiLosa of second-degree murder and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
We originally released our interview with Doug de Losan November
twenty eighth, twenty sixteen. It was our eighth episode that
we ever recorded, and Doug and I go back even
further than that. So running into him at the twenty
twenty three Instance Network conference was like seeing an old friend.
So we caught up on everything he's been up to
his organization, the first seventy two plus, which aids people
(00:25):
in re entry to society coming out of prison. We'll
have that linked in the bio, but mostly we talked
about the people who do the time with the wrongfully convicted,
their loved ones. Doug, it's been a long time since
you came home after fourteen years of a life sentence.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
What's going on now? Update everybody?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Well, I'm now in my twenty third year of freedom
and I'm happily married. I don't know if I was
married when we did the other episode. My children are
even older now. My daughter, who will be forty two.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
This h year.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
She managed to graduate from college with honors, has a
degree in finance. She's been working as an accountant for
the same company seventeen eighteen years.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Now.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
She's a single mom. She has my grandson who's getting
ready to turn seventeen and she owns her own home.
My son has married, he is living in Sacramento, California,
and he's expecting twins, which I couldn't be more delighted
to become a grandfather again.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
That's great, and it's great to hear about the new
family members coming your way. But I have to ask
you this, Doug So, you talked about on the podcast
when we recorded it back in I think it was
twenty sixteen, about how when you were almost at the
fourteenth year of your life sentence without parole, you had
felt like you had become such a burden to your
(01:54):
kids coming to visit you week in and week out,
instead of doing the things that you hoped that they
would be doing and that kids wont to be doing.
Let's face it, now, your kids enduring the loss of
their mother who was murdered, the ronful imprisonment of their father,
and yet it seems like they have led good lives
and seem to be doing good things in the world.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
How do you explain the fact that those kids could
go through this.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Double trauma and still, you know, flourish in the world.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Well, I think they deserve all the credit for where
they are in life today. My daughter, I couldn't be
more proud of her because she's overcome so many obstacles
in her life. But she says all the time, biggest
thing in her life is she wished she would have
had a childhood. But she's doing fantastic today. She could
(02:44):
be happier, but you know again, I think she's done
a fantastic job of helping raise herself and reaching where
she has in life. As far as my son, who
will turn forty five this year, my son has experienced
a number of problems. I hate to say it, but
(03:07):
there's no sense in trying to hide it. He had
a terrible problem with drugs and alcohol, and he had
spiraled so far out of control in his late teens
and early twenties that I didn't know if I'd get
a phone call any given night given me bad news
regarding him. But somehow, when he reached about thirty years old,
(03:30):
he woke up, looked at himself in the mirror and said,
I'm not going to do it anymore. And he still
has an occasional drink. I don't think he has a
drinking problem. He doesn't do drugs. He's happily married. His
wife's a doctor, moved to California, and they have twins
on the way. And I guess the biggest thing I
(03:51):
wonder is given all the credit to my son and
daughter for managing to succeed in life. Where would they
be today if the police hadn't framed me, the DA
hadn't framed me, and they had grown up with a
loving father and had some direction in life. Because they
(04:12):
had none, they did it all on their own.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And now Doug's story our eighth episode ever and one
of the most powerful ones I have to say I've
ever heard here.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
It is as it originally aired.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
I came from a beautiful neighborhood, had a beautiful life.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I went to sleep because September seventh was the first
day of my high school year.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I was going to be a senior.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
At twenty two, I was set to start college.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
I woke up and my life was never the same again.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Cops came out with guns drawn, and I never saw
freedom ever since after that.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
It's like groach mode ta once you get in and
I can't now this is wrong for conviction with Jason Klom.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Particularly thrilled today to have as our guest, my good
friend Doug Delosa.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Doug, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Thank you, Jason.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Having worked with the Nisis Project now for twenty years
in my role as a founding board member, I thought
I had heard everything until I heard Doug's story. So
you were living in Louisiana, right.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I grew up there.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. At
the time, I wasn't living in New Orleans proper, but
I was living just outside of New Orleans in the
city of Canaa. I was married. My wife and I
had been together a little over ten years. We had
two beautiful children and a son who was seven at
(06:02):
the time and a daughter who was five.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Right, So you had a little yard and basically some
neighbors and sort of like they we think of in
New York.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
We think everything's a culled the sack.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Right, we have this strange region know America as a
series of called the sack. But basically, am I painting
the right picture?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Until it all went wrong?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Absolutely, until that American dream turned into the American nightmare?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Right, And it's a nightmare of proportions that are impossible
to overstate. You were at home with your wife and kids. Right,
and tell us what happened.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
It was a typical Friday evening in our lives. Fast
forward to about two thirty in the morning on Saturday morning,
September twenty seventh, and I woke up, sat up in bed.
I heard a noise. The noise that I was positive
(06:59):
I heard was our pet parrot squawking and fluttering around
in its cage. I get up from bed. Tell my wife,
I'm going to check on Andy. That was the name
of the bird.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
And what was your wife's name.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
My wife's name was Glinda. Right, I get up, I
go downstairs. As soon as I got to the foot
of the stairs, one person came from the side of
me out of our bathroom area, and this person immediately
struck me with an object that I think was a
(07:36):
piece of mob pandle or a broomstick. Another person came
from the kitchen area and immediately knocked me to the ground.
And the two individuals, I don't know how long it lasted,
probably less than thirty seconds, kicked me, beat me until
(07:57):
I lost consciousness. Sometime later I was regaining consciousness. I'm
not sure how long I laid on the floor. But
I realized thing that sort of frightened me. At first,
I couldn't move my fans and feet were tied behind
my back. I was hog tied, and I was struggling
(08:18):
to gain consciousness and put my thought process together to
figure out what had happened. And after whether it was
one minute or ten minutes, I started calling for my wife.
Didn't get any response at all.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
So you're at the foot of the stairs, at the.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Foot of the stairs, inside of what would have been
our den.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Right, and she's and she's upstairs.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
She's upstairs, upstairs in the bedroom. Getting no response at
all from my wife. I called for my seven year
old son, Dennis, and on the third of the fourth
call from my son, I heard him stirring upstairs. He
(09:04):
answered me. Initially, he went into the master bedroom and
I could hear him say, Daddy, where are you? I
see mommy, but she's sleeping, and I said, Daddy's downstairs,
Please come downstairs. He came downstairs and I told him, Dennis,
(09:27):
two bad men had broken in the house and they
hurt Daddy. But I'm gonna be all right. I need
you to untie my hands. He couldn't untie my hands
because the rope was tied so tightly. Then I asked
him to go in the kitchen, please get a knife
and try to cut the rope. He came back with
a knife, but he was panicking because he said, Daddy,
(09:50):
I'm scared because I can see four legs under the
blind or the curtain in the kitchen leading out to
the patio. I can see people standing on the patio,
and I'm afraid it's the bad men that hurt you.
And I sort of panicked myself then, and I said, Dennis,
(10:12):
pick up the phone. The phone was right there on
the landing of the stairs. I said, dial nine one one,
and he immediately picked up the phone, dial nine one one.
He says, what do I say? And I said, just
tell him you need help, that your daddy's hurt. And
(10:33):
you had seen two men standing on the patio. I
don't think he told them that exact anyway, he got
their attention, and within minutes police arrived on the scene.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
And then the police arrive on the scene, and then
this is where things start to really get crazy, right,
because it seems like a pretty simple situation.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
You're hog tied, right the police enter. The first thing
one of them does is kneel down next to me,
ask me if I'm all right. I guess I basically
tell him, yeah, I'm fine. He doesn't untime, he doesn't
do anything, and I hear another officer goes upstairs, and
(11:17):
at that point in time, the next thing I hear
him is kicking the door off the hinges. And it
turned out that after my son had gone in the
bedroom when I called him and he found his mother
what he described as being asleep, he must have pulled
the door shut behind him and it just automatically locked.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
So he kicks in the door.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
He kicks in the door. When he kicks in the door,
he really startles my daughter, who's in the bedroom next door,
and she starts crying hysterically. And at that point then
my son starts crying hysterically. And I'm getting pretty hysterical myself.
Laying on the floor. I'm still hog tied, and I'm
telling you what's going on, what's going on, And policemen
(12:08):
is trying to restrain me and keep me on the ground.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Which is not that hard. You're but go ahead, and.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
I'm like, and he says, don't worry, Everything'll be fine,
and I mean, within moments, it seems like ambulance attendants
arrived on the scene. I couldn't hear exactly what they
were being told, but they were being told something about
my wife was in the bedroom upstairs, and that somebody
needed to get my daughter and bring a downstairs, which
(12:39):
they did. And again I don't know how much time
was elapsing, but at some point in time, more police
officers arrived on the scene. Eventually someone cut me free.
Moments after they cut me free, they told me that
(13:00):
that I would have to be taken to the emergency room,
and that the other paramedic team was working on my
wife and I'd see her there. And also at some
point in time they asked me if there was anybody
that they could call to take care of my children.
(13:22):
I'm being treated in the emergency room. I don't know
how much later, again, was it ten or fifteen minutes?
Was it an hour later? My brother and a priest
come into the emergency room, and they informed me that
my wife had been killed.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
And at this point, you're I mean, you've just been
through an impossibly traumatic experience and now you're getting hit
with this news, and the whole world must be collapsing
around you.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
At this point in time, it was pretty hard to
believe what I was being told. I think I almost
went in the shock when they told me my wife
had been killed, And I mean, I just can't process
what I'm being told and come up with any logical
reason why it had happened.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
And then you get back with your kids and try
to piece things back together. You had given the police
the information that they wanted right about it, basically the story.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
That you just told us.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
I had recalled everything I could remember to the police.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Except for when you were unconscious, of course, which was
that's the only missing part. And then they were having
trouble solving the case.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Right There had been considerable criticism of the police department
for not solving having any viable leads in this case,
demanding to know from the police chief what were they doing,
how were they protecting the neighborhood. I had gotten a
little bit vocal, and I probably said on more than
(15:05):
one occasion, all of these stupid son of a bitches
need to be fired because they don't appear to know
what they're doing. Their actions were, in my mind, reminiscent
of the old Keystone cops in slapstick comedies because they
just didn't appear to be very.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Bright, right, Okay, And so obviously the police, you know,
they're feeling a lot of pressure and they're feeling a
little they're getting their back up about this, right, right.
So then comes the craziest part, in some ways the
craziest part of the story, right, which is that now
we're three months from the day to the crime basically.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Right, we're now the morning of December twenty ninth.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I was it's hot, it's hot in.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
It's very warm in Louisiana. I'm deciding I'm going to
put out the Christmas tree. It's starting. It was a
live tree. It's starting to drop needles all over. So
I tell my children, I'll be right back. I'm just
going to put the Christmas tree out for the trash.
I've got a pair of cutoff jeans on, nothing else.
(16:12):
And as I'm putting the tree in the back of
my house by the curve for the trash, I hear
Doug Delosa turn around, and I sort of turn around
and I'm like almost in shock. I have no idea
how many police officers are there, at minimum of six,
(16:33):
maybe ten or more. I have many. No idea how
many news cameras are there. Probably as many personnel were
there as there were police officers pointing cameras at me,
and the police pointing guns at me, and they say,
you know why we're here. We're here to rest you
for the murder or your wife. And I'm just like
(16:56):
thinking to myself, this can't be true. This nightmare just
keeps getting worse and worse. I knew that I had
been labeled to suspect, but I never, in my wildest imagination,
thought that it would evolve into an arrest. I'm not
dressed except for with a pair of cutoffs on. My
(17:17):
children are in their pajamas, and I asked the one detective,
could I please go dress my children and call somebody
to take them well. As I was changing their clothes,
I turned to this man who couldn't have been more
than two to three feet away from me, standing right
in my face, and I asked him. I said, detective Dote,
(17:41):
why are you doing this to me? Why are you
doing this to my children? You know that I didn't
kill my wife, and this police officer, when I asked
him that question, he had the look of a wild
man on his face, and he almost I don't know
how to describe it. His voice was almost venomous, and
(18:05):
he says, man, fuck you, fuck your children, and fuck
that dead wife of yours. I didn't ask that stupid
bitch to die in my city. And he goes on
to say, he says, why should I give a fuck
about you or your children? Do you care about me
and my children? My job's on the line, and he said,
(18:26):
you have asked that I be terminated in competence. Well,
you know what, I don't know who did it. Maybe
I know you didn't do it, but I can build
the case against you. So you're it.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
So you're you know, you go to trial, and well
they withheld several critical pieces of evidence from the defense,
that which is called a Brady violation, which which would
have excluded you and would have led to you being
found innocent. Do you want to talk about the trial?
Speaker 3 (19:02):
From start to finish, nine days had passed, and from
the very beginning, the two district attorneys prosecuting me told
the jury that they were never going to hear any
direct evidence that tied me to this crime. That basically
what they were trying to convict me on was a
(19:23):
theory of how I did it and why I did it,
and what was going to be important to the jury
to find me guilty was that I had no evidence
to support my story that two black men broke into
my house that night, beat me unconscious, hog tied me,
(19:47):
and at some point in time killed my wife.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Right now, But the reason we know that you couldn't
provide any proof is because they were withholding the proof
that they had. They had the investigators. You didn't have investigators.
They had all the guys sweeping the and doing the
whole thing exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
There were fingerprints found in several places throughout the house
that didn't belong to me, any of my family members,
any of our friends, anyone any member of the investigative
team that had all been ruled out, and these fingerprints
found throughout the house belonged to someone. But we have
(20:25):
no idea who they belonged to.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
But they didn't tell you that.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
No, their fingerprint expert committed perjury on the stand when
he said absolutely no other fingerprints were found in the house.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Can we talk about the cab driver for a second,
because that's one to me, that's one that's always stuck
in my mind.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
It's really you know.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Sometime after I was arrested, well, actually, let's back up
to right after my wife's funeral, three days after the murder,
a taxi driver came forward to the can of Police
department and he said, I think I may have some
(21:05):
testimony that would help you catch the people who killed
this lady, meaning my wife. And as the story goes
in his written deposition to the police, he was dropping
off affair in that neighborhood, which at that time was
exclusively white. There would have been no reason whatsoever to
(21:29):
have seen blacks in that particular neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
At least about three in the morning.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Yeah, least of all at three to four o'clock in
the morning. And he goes on to give in his
written deposition that as he was driving down this one street,
he saw two black men leaving the vicinity of the
front of my house carrying what would have fit the
(21:55):
description of some of the items I told police were
taken from my house. And he says that as his
lights shone on the two men, it appeared that they panicked.
They ran to a silver van that was waiting, and
they sped off in a reckless manner, and he found
that very unusual and thought it was important to bring
(22:17):
that testimony to the police, which he did.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
As it was, but they, of course withheld that from
the defense illegally.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
They withheld that and said that there was nobody had
ever seen anything regarding any black men in that neighborhood,
much less in the vicinity of my home. Now fast
forward another six to seven months, I'm at trial this
you know, good citizen is reading in the newspaper and
(22:47):
hearing on the TV that I'm undergoing a trial for
the murder of my wife. Well, he just doesn't understand,
and at this point he doesn't trust the police because
he's already gone to the police twice. So he shows
up at the courthouse somehow manages to talk to one
of the two or maybe perhaps both, of the district
attorneys who were trying the case, and he tells his
(23:11):
story to them, and they very nonchalantly brush him off
and said, oh, don't worry. We presented your written statement
to mister Dolosa's attorney. He reviewed it, but in light
of the overwhelming evidence against him, he knows that your
(23:32):
testimony wouldn't do any good, so he decided not to
call you as a witness, which was a total lie.
They hadn't given any of that information to my attorney.
And one of the biggest parts of their case was
over and over again they repeated to the jury, no
one repeat, no one saw anything suspicious in that neighborhood
(23:55):
that night, much less two black men. And that's why
you must find mister Dolosa guilty because he was lying.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
The jury comes back, they find you guilty and sends
you to life in prison. Now, the only thing that
can make it worse is they're going to send you
to what is arguably the worst prison in America, in Louisiana,
which is the state which has the highest prison population
by far. Louisiana does have three times higher rate of
incarceration than the rest of the country per capita, and
(24:38):
of course America has a five times higher rate than
the rest of the world. So it's off the chain.
But now you're being sent to Angola prison farm, and
let's talk about that.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Well.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Arriving at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, which they call Angola,
it was beyond culture shock. I didn't know what to expect.
I'd heard numerous rumors that scared the hell out of me.
But I arrived at Angola and one of the first
things that I guess was really strange was they put
(25:14):
you in an initial classification to decide where you're going
to be housed. And I'm going before these classification officers
and they decide that they're going to put me in
a working cell block for my protection rather than general population.
And then they make a statement that's pretty odd. They
(25:34):
said that they don't have a white cell available to
put me in, so I'd have to be sent to
a security cell while they prepare a white cell. And
I'm like, what the hell is a white cell. At
that time, they still believed in segregating the white and
(25:54):
black prisoners at Angola. They didn't mix and blacks in
the same cell. But my very first night in Angola,
I'm in a disciplinary tier and I'm in a cell
and there's someone down the tier in another cell acting up,
(26:19):
and at some point in time he throws human waste
on a security guard, and I'm just like, scared shitless.
I don't know what's going on. Their guards would appear
to be swat uniforms and riot shields and everything. Coming
down the tier. They're dragging this person out by force.
(26:41):
They're beating him, and I guess I'm curious. I'm sort
of looking, you know. I guess maybe I should have
known better than to try to look. When one of
the gods saw me looking, he's like, what the fuck
are you looking at? He turns around and sprayed me
with a pepper spray of mace for about twenty thirty seconds.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
And the only thing I knew was my lungs were burning,
my face was burning, and it was sort of like
a welcomed angola. That was my first night in the penitentiary.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
So and then things get even crazier. So you end
up working on a chain gang.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (27:21):
I mean, I don't know that chain gang is a
little bit misleading because we're not actually linked by chains.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Right, But it's a term that applies.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
To It's a group of inmates working under the supervision
of gun guards on horses in the swamps. It could
be swamps, it could be anywhere on the farm.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Here's a clip where Burl Kane, the warden, talks about
the infamous history of Louisiana State Penitentiary.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
The work in the farm is critical angela. That's what
it is. It's a plantation in prison. It was that
way throughout its entire history important that we have agriculture
here on the farm that provide work for the innate,
which you know is good for them because they have
something to do to use after energy and so forth.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
It turned out that I was working in what they
called camp a Line twenty one under one of the
most vicious inhuman farm bosses that Angola had at the time,
and I found it difficult at my age and my
(28:31):
physical condition to keep up with the average man who
was only in their early twenties and I'm thirty seven
thirty eight years old at this time in horrible shape.
But one of the things that this particular field foreman
used to enjoy doing to torment the people under his supervision.
(28:54):
He would put us, say on the levee cutting high
grass with what they called ditch bank blade, which is
it's impossible to describe on air, but it's this huge,
heavy cutting blade. And what he would do is they
might have been close to one hundred men in the line.
(29:14):
He would put us up on the levee and there
would be two inmates with a water bucket, and he'd
tell the people with the water bucket I want y'all
to move about a mile down the road with the
gun guard supervising you, and he said, y'all keep moving
that water bucket and don't let anybody have water, because
(29:37):
it says until ten people pass out from the heat,
I'm not letting anybody drink water. And that was a
typical day working for this man mac Shaw, where he
would see people pass out fall out, as we'd say,
from heat stroke, heat exhaustion, from lack of water, and
(29:59):
once a whatever number he arbitrarily determined he wanted to
pass out and be carried off in the back of
a truck for disciplinary purposes. Then he'd let everybody else
have a drink of water.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
And then things got really crazy because at one point
you were singled out.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
It was at more than one point, I mean, it
seemed it was something that happened day after day, every
time I'd go in the field. I never had the
distinction of being one of the people. I guess I
was fortunate enough that I could go without drinking water
longer than other people that I might not be one
(30:41):
of the first five to ten people to pass out
from heatstroke and lack of water. But I certainly wasn't
keeping up with the work quote according to this field form,
and he would just almost every day that I went
to work, he would write me up on a disciplinary report,
lock me up in administrative segregation to be disciplined by
(31:04):
the disciplinary court. They would hear my case and say
it would say something like I flatly refused to work. Well,
I never ever flatly refused to work. I simply worked
until I couldn't work anymore, or I worked at the
fastest pace that I was capable of. But the field
foreman never wrote the truth on a disciplinary report, and
(31:28):
the disciplinary board that helped court, they didn't. They knew
what the truth was, but they would just continue to
stack punishment on you, and I'd be sent back out
to work.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
It's it's just I don't I can't even I can't
find any words.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
The good news is you're a smart guy.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
You're a guy of an educated guy, somebody who can
can really think for himself.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
So you get to the point.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Where you realize, if you're going to get out, you're
going to have to be the one to do it.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Is that a fair statement?
Speaker 3 (32:01):
That absolutely? And I would say that I worked as
a clerk in an air conditioned office in the print
shop silkscreen shop at Angola for a little bit over
a year, but I knew I my ultimate goal was
I want to get the hell out of prison. And
everybody that I associated with said, you know, you'd probably
(32:25):
be better off going to be what they call an
inmate council substitute or prison lawyer working in the law library,
and I finally decided I'd apply for that job. I
did end up with a job over there, and over
the next several years, I learned the law. I think
(32:49):
I became pretty proficient with it. And after I had
exhausted all of my appeals in state court, after I
had gone through hundreds of thousands of dollars on about
seven different lawyers who all promised to do something, but
no one followed through and did what I hired him
(33:09):
to do, I finally sat back, spent six months researching
and another two to three months writing my own federal
writ one hundred percent on my own or with having
other inmate counsels review it give me their critique. I
(33:29):
filed my rit a habeas Corpus into the federal court
system on my own. I didn't know what my chances
were going to be I figured slim to none at best,
but I felt like, at this point in time, if
I'm denied, I'm going to be denied on my own terms,
(33:50):
and I'll have given it my best shot. Finally, one
day they call me for legal mail. So I get
(34:12):
up at like five o'clock in the morning, go eat breakfast.
I went to the window where they pass out the
legal mail. They had me a little brown envelope and
I was scared shitless to open it.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
I'm like, because if if it's if it's the wrong answer,
you're done.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
This is your last appeal, right.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
It's the wrong answer. I had a plan to escape
from Angola, and my escape from Mangola was I had
enough drugs in my possession hidden that probably within twenty
four hours, I was gonna od and that's how I
was going to get out of prison. And that had
been something I had planned for months, anticipating a negative
(34:52):
response from the court.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
So I'm getting the chills right now. So you've got
this envelope and it's gonna it's gonna basically tell you
whether you're gonna I'll never die. At this point, you've
been in prison for fourteen years, fourteen years. It's been
a long time, exactly. I'd put up with as much
as I felt like I could live with. And I
felt like my children were getting up in age, and
(35:15):
as much as I love them, as much as I
felt that they loved me, they continue to visit me
almost every opportunity that they got. I felt I was
doing them a disservice by having them come to visit
me in prison, by having them try to explain to
their friends in college, well, why can't you hang out
(35:38):
with us this weekend? Oh, because I'm going to the
penitentiary to see my dad. And I think I probably
was looking at it the wrong way, and I know
I would have heard them tremendously, but I felt like
the best thing for myself and for my children in
the long run.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Was to take my life.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Fortunately it didn't that. Because you're sitting here now, and
so you've got this envelope, what do you do?
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Do you open it?
Speaker 3 (36:06):
I went to the law library where I worked, and
I locked it in the bottom cabinet. I'm like, I'm
the only person here this early in the morning. I
just need somebody else around me. When I opened this up,
So about half hour Forty five minutes later, a couple
of my close friends that work in the law library
(36:28):
lived around me. They came in and I told my
one friend, Mike Singletary, who was my closest friend in
the law library at that time. I said, Mike, I
got my decision from the federal court. And he says, well,
what's it say? I said, I don't know, Mike, I
don't have the nerve to open it. And he says,
(36:48):
oh my god, he said, come on, give me that envelope.
I'll open it for you. So I said, yeah, but
I said he took it out of my hands. After
I got it out the cabinet, he opened it. I said, now,
let me read that, Mike, don't so I took a
couple of big, deep breaths uh And I don't know how.
My heart was probably beaten two hundred beats a minute,
(37:09):
and I was shaking.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
And nine is right now, and I know the aser and.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
I opened the uh writ to the last page, and
all of a sudden, I just stopped shaking, and I
guess sort of a smile came over my face, and
for the first time since my wife's funeral, I cried.
I started crying almost uncontrollably when I read that the
(37:38):
magistrate judge recommended that my conviction be set aside and
that I'll be you know, freed. I just, against all odds,
I went up against the most conservative federal magistrate in
the Eastern District for the State of Louisiana, who, according
to what I had been told, had have a before
(38:00):
granted a writ filed by an inmate on their room. Behalf.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
That's a happy ending to an incredibly terrible saga. And
you're back and I've gotten to know you well. Doug
is now working closely with the Rising Foundation in New Orleans,
helping other exoneries to rebuild their lives on the outside,
(38:27):
using the skills that he has to help them with
everything from you know, you name a job applications, to
tax problems to building their houses to you know, fixing
things getting employment. He's he's become a tremendous advocate for
(38:48):
not only the Innocence Project and innocence projects, although in
your case you represented yourself, but really somebody who has
devoted himself to helping others, which is quite an extraordinary thing.
It makes me really so proud to know you and
to be a part of your life. It's important to
(39:09):
note in all of this that the compensation that you
were given ultimately by the state was paltry, to say
the least, right because people ask me all the time, well,
these guys must get they must get millions of dollars
when they get out. I mean, after what you went
through fourteen years in Angola prison and all the stuff
almost being beaten to death, all the other indignities that
(39:30):
you suffered, and the fact that you were so egregiously framed.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
The compensation in the state of Louisiana allows for twenty
five thousand dollars a year for a maximum of ten
years of incarceration. It's doled out at twenty five thousand
dollars a year over ten years, which gives a person
(39:55):
barely enough to exist on if you have a very
modest lifestyle for ten years. But the other thing, I mean,
in my case, it fell short one hundred and thirty
seven thousand dollars short of my actual expenses, So I
(40:17):
didn't even recoup what I spent.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Right, because you had actually spent the money on.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Attorneys on my legal defense.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
You basically paid ten thousand dollars a year to be
locked up for fourteen.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Years is what it comes down to.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
That's about what it comes down to.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
It's important to note that there are twenty states that
have no compensation statutes, and the ones that do have
compensation statutes, some of them are even worse than Louisiana,
like Wisconsin.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
You know, people think that, oh, you were proven that
you were wrongfully convicted, you must have gotten millions. Well no,
I'm still struggle to this day. I was never able
to repay my children for selling their interest in their
family homes so I could hire that le us attorney.
(41:02):
And it's just not right, not just for me, but
for all of the men in Louisiana and elsewhere too,
and elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
According to the National Registry of his Honerations, there have
been forty six exonerations in Louisiana since nineteen eighty nine,
and the quarter them occurred in Jefferson County, the same
office that prosecuted you. The sad truth is that there's
probably hundreds, if not thousands of other Doug deloss in
Louisiana alone. It's certainly around the country, and I can
tell you that we won't stop until we exonerate as
(41:34):
many of them as we possibly can.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
People say to me, you know my work, I think
it is suspired.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
They say, what that? But prosecutors they don't lie that.
People don't understand like it's it's Unfortunately, it's common, which
is why we asked Nina Morrison to join us in
the studio today. Welcome to Ronful Conviction with Jason Flommer's good.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
To have you here.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
Thank you, good to be here.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
So Nina is the your staff attorney at the Innocence Project.
She litigates claims for access to post conviction DNA evidence
under both federal civil rights laws and state DNA testing statutes.
To date, Ms Morrison has served as lead or co
counsel for more than twenty innocent prisoners who were freed
from prison or even death row based on DNA or
(42:21):
other newly discovered evidence. So, can you explain to us
what exactly is a Brady violation? We talk about it
a lot.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
On the show.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
Yeah, So, a Brady violation is where a prosecutor doesn't
give the defense evidence that either the prosecutor or the
police or some other agent of the state like a
crime lab has that is favorable to the defendant's case.
Sometimes it's proof of their innocence, you know, another suspect
(42:49):
who was seen in the area, somebody else who admitted
to the crime. Sometimes it's evidence that shows that a witness,
you know, who claimed to be an eyewitness, was you know,
high out of their minds that night according to five
other people, or couldn't have seen what they said they said.
There's a whole array of stuff. It's basically anything that
helps the defense. And it's a strange system when you
(43:09):
think about it, because you know, prosecutors and defense layers
go into court, they're fighting hard in these big murder
cases or rape cases or other hard fought criminal trials,
and the way the law is set up is the
prosecutor has to give the other side something voluntarily that
might make them lose, and we trust them in most
places to turn it over, so they say, I'm fulfilling
(43:31):
my Brady obligations, and there's no check on it until
after the case is over, and sometimes not even then until.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
It's literally too late.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
And this leaves a very wide lane open for the
bad actors in the system, the bad prosecutors, to do
what they feel like on a given day and to
really railroad people who are just regular people like you
and I who get find themselves stuck in this nightmare.
People like Doug Delosa.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
Yeah so, and they're even worse news in terms of
how it gets dealt with after the trial. Because if
you discover that a prosecutor in your case withheld Brady
material something favorable to you, your conviction doesn't automatically get reversed.
You then, according to US Supreme Court case law, have
to show an appeals court that the violation is what
(44:20):
the courts call material, which means it actually made a difference.
So you basically have to come in after the fact,
when a jury never heard this information, a witness was
never cross examined on it, and say, you know, Judge,
if I'd had this, I would have argued this. I
would have said that the jury wouldn't have believed this person.
And here's why you have to kind of have a
mental do over, a hypothetical due over of the trial.
(44:43):
And if they say, eh, you know, it made a difference, maybe,
but we don't know, it might not necessarily have made
a difference in the outcome. So it's what's called harmless error.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
So, Nina, I wanted to ask you how common are
these Brady violations, you know, we.
Speaker 4 (44:57):
Don't know because by definition, men of them are hidden.
We know that we have seen them in a very
significant proportion of our cases. You know, there's at least
fifteen featured cases on the Innocence Project website just from
the last few years that involve serious Brady violations which
we uncover in the course of investigating a client's other
(45:18):
claim of innocence. And there is no scientific way to
study them because by definition, there are things that haven't
been turned over. It's sort of like everyone we find
is in some ways by chance. You don't have a
right to get a lot of files after somebody has
been convicted. Things get destroyed. I wake up at nights
sometimes worrying about you know, these days, when almost everything
(45:38):
is electronic, we don't have the piece of paper in
the file anymore the way we used to in the
cases from the eighties and early nineties. Now it's all
in a memo on somebody's computer and they hit delete,
or that person leaves the office and it's gone. It's
in an email, it's in a voicemail, it's in a
text from a witness.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
It's you know, you know, it's really a level of
evil that in this particular case, I don't know what
else to call it, the prosecutor.
Speaker 4 (46:04):
Is And you know, I know, Barry check in one
of your other episodes when you had Barry Gibson was
talking about this concept of noble cause corruption, which I
think is a very real phenomenon. You know, I don't
think even the prosecutors that we've caught red handed withholding evidence,
I think most, if not all of them honestly believed
(46:25):
that they were doing it for a higher purpose, which is,
they had a killer sitting in the courtroom who was
going to get away with murder if they didn't win
their case, and so they convinced themselves that whatever they
were holding back was not really proof of innocence. It
was something the defense would use to create a smoke screen. Right.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
But the law's the law.
Speaker 4 (46:45):
You have a job as an officer of the court
to follow the law and turn it over. And now
we know that many of those people were actually innocent,
so we see what the real harm is from that
skirting the ethical line.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
So bring this to the sort of the practical question
of what can be done.
Speaker 4 (47:07):
We at the Innocence Project are working on a couple
of things to police things before trial happens. So one
of the things we are trying to do is get
judges to take a more active role in ensuring that
Brady's guarantee is a real one by putting prosecutors on
the record issuing court orders to say, I want you
(47:29):
to check these five locations to see if there's anything
favorable to the defense, and I'm going to have a
conference a month before the trial to see how it's going.
What have you turned over, what are you looking for?
And at that point the defense lawyer will have an
opportunity to speak up and say, I haven't gotten anything
on the witness statements. I don't know who what these
witness statements are. And our theory is, you know, for example,
(47:50):
two black men came in and did this crime. Are
there any reports of suspicious African Americans in the area,
whether you think they did it or not? You know,
is there anything we should invest to gate? And the
reason why you want to have the judges be policing
it is that if you lie to a judge, you
can get charged with contemptive court and lose your law
license and even go to jail and on the back end,
(48:12):
we need to take accountability seriously, you know, we need
to make sure that the state bars have a culture
where they can go after just as they would a
lawyer who doesn't give a client all their money back
or didn't do the job they were hired to do
in a trust, some estates case or a civil case,
(48:32):
that they will go after the prosecutors who break the law,
even if it's not politically easy to do. And then lastly,
you know, it is very hard, as you know, and
you've talked about on your show, for prosecutors to ever
be sued civilly and even for states or counties to
be held liable for the misconduct of prosecutors. Prosecutors are
(48:55):
what's called immune from suit in all but a few
very rare cases.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
And so if a prosecutor.
Speaker 4 (49:02):
Knows of some favorable evidence and doesn't turn it over,
the court Supreme Court has said, well, you can go
after them on bar discipline, or you can maybe criminally
prosecute them. Talk about Fox and Penhouse, right, but you
can't see them unless there's a pattern and practice of violations,
and those are very hard to prove.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
And criminal prosecutions of prosecutors are extremely difficult, not least
it which because prosecutors generally don't like prosecuting prosecutors.
Speaker 4 (49:28):
Correct, and they will air I mean, you know, they
will give every benefit of the doubt. Oh they missed it,
they were busy, they thought they turned it over, they
put it in the wrong notebook, you know, yes they did.
The defense layer says they didn't have it, but we
think they did. I mean, you know, and look, our
clients should have been so lucky to get the benefit
of every doubt when they were being accused of a crime.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
Thank you so much for being on Wrongful Conviction with
Jason Flom And it was great.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
It's great to have you here.
Speaker 4 (49:54):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
It's great to be here. Don't forget to give us
a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and
I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and
get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is
by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure
(50:29):
to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on
Facebook at.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Wrongful Conviction podcast.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one
We originally released our interview with Doug de Losan November
twenty eighth, twenty sixteen. It was our eighth episode that
we ever recorded, and Doug and I go back even
further than that. So running into him at the twenty
twenty three Instance Network conference was like seeing an old friend.
So we caught up on everything he's been up to
his organization, the first seventy two plus, which aids people
(00:25):
in re entry to society coming out of prison. We'll
have that linked in the bio, but mostly we talked
about the people who do the time with the wrongfully convicted,
their loved ones. Doug, it's been a long time since
you came home after fourteen years of a life sentence.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
What's going on now? Update everybody?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Well, I'm now in my twenty third year of freedom
and I'm happily married. I don't know if I was
married when we did the other episode. My children are
even older now. My daughter, who will be forty two.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
This h year.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
She managed to graduate from college with honors, has a
degree in finance. She's been working as an accountant for
the same company seventeen eighteen years.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Now.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
She's a single mom. She has my grandson who's getting
ready to turn seventeen and she owns her own home.
My son has married, he is living in Sacramento, California,
and he's expecting twins, which I couldn't be more delighted
to become a grandfather again.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
That's great, and it's great to hear about the new
family members coming your way. But I have to ask
you this, Doug So, you talked about on the podcast
when we recorded it back in I think it was
twenty sixteen, about how when you were almost at the
fourteenth year of your life sentence without parole, you had
felt like you had become such a burden to your
(01:54):
kids coming to visit you week in and week out,
instead of doing the things that you hoped that they
would be doing and that kids wont to be doing.
Let's face it, now, your kids enduring the loss of
their mother who was murdered, the ronful imprisonment of their father,
and yet it seems like they have led good lives
and seem to be doing good things in the world.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
How do you explain the fact that those kids could
go through this.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Double trauma and still, you know, flourish in the world.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Well, I think they deserve all the credit for where
they are in life today. My daughter, I couldn't be
more proud of her because she's overcome so many obstacles
in her life. But she says all the time, biggest
thing in her life is she wished she would have
had a childhood. But she's doing fantastic today. She could
(02:44):
be happier, but you know again, I think she's done
a fantastic job of helping raise herself and reaching where
she has in life. As far as my son, who
will turn forty five this year, my son has experienced
a number of problems. I hate to say it, but
(03:07):
there's no sense in trying to hide it. He had
a terrible problem with drugs and alcohol, and he had
spiraled so far out of control in his late teens
and early twenties that I didn't know if I'd get
a phone call any given night given me bad news
regarding him. But somehow, when he reached about thirty years old,
(03:30):
he woke up, looked at himself in the mirror and said,
I'm not going to do it anymore. And he still
has an occasional drink. I don't think he has a
drinking problem. He doesn't do drugs. He's happily married. His
wife's a doctor, moved to California, and they have twins
on the way. And I guess the biggest thing I
(03:51):
wonder is given all the credit to my son and
daughter for managing to succeed in life. Where would they
be today if the police hadn't framed me, the DA
hadn't framed me, and they had grown up with a
loving father and had some direction in life. Because they
(04:12):
had none, they did it all on their own.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And now Doug's story our eighth episode ever and one
of the most powerful ones I have to say I've
ever heard here.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
It is as it originally aired.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
I came from a beautiful neighborhood, had a beautiful life.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I went to sleep because September seventh was the first
day of my high school year.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I was going to be a senior.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
At twenty two, I was set to start college.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
I woke up and my life was never the same again.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Cops came out with guns drawn, and I never saw
freedom ever since after that.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
It's like groach mode ta once you get in and
I can't now this is wrong for conviction with Jason Klom.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Particularly thrilled today to have as our guest, my good
friend Doug Delosa.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Doug, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Thank you, Jason.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Having worked with the Nisis Project now for twenty years
in my role as a founding board member, I thought
I had heard everything until I heard Doug's story. So
you were living in Louisiana, right.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I grew up there.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. At
the time, I wasn't living in New Orleans proper, but
I was living just outside of New Orleans in the
city of Canaa. I was married. My wife and I
had been together a little over ten years. We had
two beautiful children and a son who was seven at
(06:02):
the time and a daughter who was five.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Right, So you had a little yard and basically some
neighbors and sort of like they we think of in
New York.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
We think everything's a culled the sack.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Right, we have this strange region know America as a
series of called the sack. But basically, am I painting
the right picture?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Until it all went wrong?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Absolutely, until that American dream turned into the American nightmare?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Right, And it's a nightmare of proportions that are impossible
to overstate. You were at home with your wife and kids. Right,
and tell us what happened.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
It was a typical Friday evening in our lives. Fast
forward to about two thirty in the morning on Saturday morning,
September twenty seventh, and I woke up, sat up in bed.
I heard a noise. The noise that I was positive
(06:59):
I heard was our pet parrot squawking and fluttering around
in its cage. I get up from bed. Tell my wife,
I'm going to check on Andy. That was the name
of the bird.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
And what was your wife's name.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
My wife's name was Glinda. Right, I get up, I
go downstairs. As soon as I got to the foot
of the stairs, one person came from the side of
me out of our bathroom area, and this person immediately
struck me with an object that I think was a
(07:36):
piece of mob pandle or a broomstick. Another person came
from the kitchen area and immediately knocked me to the ground.
And the two individuals, I don't know how long it lasted,
probably less than thirty seconds, kicked me, beat me until
(07:57):
I lost consciousness. Sometime later I was regaining consciousness. I'm
not sure how long I laid on the floor. But
I realized thing that sort of frightened me. At first,
I couldn't move my fans and feet were tied behind
my back. I was hog tied, and I was struggling
(08:18):
to gain consciousness and put my thought process together to
figure out what had happened. And after whether it was
one minute or ten minutes, I started calling for my wife.
Didn't get any response at all.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
So you're at the foot of the stairs, at the.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Foot of the stairs, inside of what would have been
our den.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Right, and she's and she's upstairs.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
She's upstairs, upstairs in the bedroom. Getting no response at
all from my wife. I called for my seven year
old son, Dennis, and on the third of the fourth
call from my son, I heard him stirring upstairs. He
(09:04):
answered me. Initially, he went into the master bedroom and
I could hear him say, Daddy, where are you? I
see mommy, but she's sleeping, and I said, Daddy's downstairs,
Please come downstairs. He came downstairs and I told him, Dennis,
(09:27):
two bad men had broken in the house and they
hurt Daddy. But I'm gonna be all right. I need
you to untie my hands. He couldn't untie my hands
because the rope was tied so tightly. Then I asked
him to go in the kitchen, please get a knife
and try to cut the rope. He came back with
a knife, but he was panicking because he said, Daddy,
(09:50):
I'm scared because I can see four legs under the
blind or the curtain in the kitchen leading out to
the patio. I can see people standing on the patio,
and I'm afraid it's the bad men that hurt you.
And I sort of panicked myself then, and I said, Dennis,
(10:12):
pick up the phone. The phone was right there on
the landing of the stairs. I said, dial nine one one,
and he immediately picked up the phone, dial nine one one.
He says, what do I say? And I said, just
tell him you need help, that your daddy's hurt. And
(10:33):
you had seen two men standing on the patio. I
don't think he told them that exact anyway, he got
their attention, and within minutes police arrived on the scene.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
And then the police arrive on the scene, and then
this is where things start to really get crazy, right,
because it seems like a pretty simple situation.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
You're hog tied, right the police enter. The first thing
one of them does is kneel down next to me,
ask me if I'm all right. I guess I basically
tell him, yeah, I'm fine. He doesn't untime, he doesn't
do anything, and I hear another officer goes upstairs, and
(11:17):
at that point in time, the next thing I hear
him is kicking the door off the hinges. And it
turned out that after my son had gone in the
bedroom when I called him and he found his mother
what he described as being asleep, he must have pulled
the door shut behind him and it just automatically locked.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
So he kicks in the door.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
He kicks in the door. When he kicks in the door,
he really startles my daughter, who's in the bedroom next door,
and she starts crying hysterically. And at that point then
my son starts crying hysterically. And I'm getting pretty hysterical myself.
Laying on the floor. I'm still hog tied, and I'm
telling you what's going on, what's going on, And policemen
(12:08):
is trying to restrain me and keep me on the ground.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Which is not that hard. You're but go ahead, and.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
I'm like, and he says, don't worry, Everything'll be fine,
and I mean, within moments, it seems like ambulance attendants
arrived on the scene. I couldn't hear exactly what they
were being told, but they were being told something about
my wife was in the bedroom upstairs, and that somebody
needed to get my daughter and bring a downstairs, which
(12:39):
they did. And again I don't know how much time
was elapsing, but at some point in time, more police
officers arrived on the scene. Eventually someone cut me free.
Moments after they cut me free, they told me that
(13:00):
that I would have to be taken to the emergency room,
and that the other paramedic team was working on my
wife and I'd see her there. And also at some
point in time they asked me if there was anybody
that they could call to take care of my children.
(13:22):
I'm being treated in the emergency room. I don't know
how much later, again, was it ten or fifteen minutes?
Was it an hour later? My brother and a priest
come into the emergency room, and they informed me that
my wife had been killed.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
And at this point, you're I mean, you've just been
through an impossibly traumatic experience and now you're getting hit
with this news, and the whole world must be collapsing
around you.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
At this point in time, it was pretty hard to
believe what I was being told. I think I almost
went in the shock when they told me my wife
had been killed, And I mean, I just can't process
what I'm being told and come up with any logical
reason why it had happened.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
And then you get back with your kids and try
to piece things back together. You had given the police
the information that they wanted right about it, basically the story.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
That you just told us.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
I had recalled everything I could remember to the police.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Except for when you were unconscious, of course, which was
that's the only missing part. And then they were having
trouble solving the case.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Right There had been considerable criticism of the police department
for not solving having any viable leads in this case,
demanding to know from the police chief what were they doing,
how were they protecting the neighborhood. I had gotten a
little bit vocal, and I probably said on more than
(15:05):
one occasion, all of these stupid son of a bitches
need to be fired because they don't appear to know
what they're doing. Their actions were, in my mind, reminiscent
of the old Keystone cops in slapstick comedies because they
just didn't appear to be very.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Bright, right, Okay, And so obviously the police, you know,
they're feeling a lot of pressure and they're feeling a
little they're getting their back up about this, right, right.
So then comes the craziest part, in some ways the
craziest part of the story, right, which is that now
we're three months from the day to the crime basically.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Right, we're now the morning of December twenty ninth.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I was it's hot, it's hot in.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
It's very warm in Louisiana. I'm deciding I'm going to
put out the Christmas tree. It's starting. It was a
live tree. It's starting to drop needles all over. So
I tell my children, I'll be right back. I'm just
going to put the Christmas tree out for the trash.
I've got a pair of cutoff jeans on, nothing else.
(16:12):
And as I'm putting the tree in the back of
my house by the curve for the trash, I hear
Doug Delosa turn around, and I sort of turn around
and I'm like almost in shock. I have no idea
how many police officers are there, at minimum of six,
(16:33):
maybe ten or more. I have many. No idea how
many news cameras are there. Probably as many personnel were
there as there were police officers pointing cameras at me,
and the police pointing guns at me, and they say,
you know why we're here. We're here to rest you
for the murder or your wife. And I'm just like
(16:56):
thinking to myself, this can't be true. This nightmare just
keeps getting worse and worse. I knew that I had
been labeled to suspect, but I never, in my wildest imagination,
thought that it would evolve into an arrest. I'm not
dressed except for with a pair of cutoffs on. My
(17:17):
children are in their pajamas, and I asked the one detective,
could I please go dress my children and call somebody
to take them well. As I was changing their clothes,
I turned to this man who couldn't have been more
than two to three feet away from me, standing right
in my face, and I asked him. I said, detective Dote,
(17:41):
why are you doing this to me? Why are you
doing this to my children? You know that I didn't
kill my wife, and this police officer, when I asked
him that question, he had the look of a wild
man on his face, and he almost I don't know
how to describe it. His voice was almost venomous, and
(18:05):
he says, man, fuck you, fuck your children, and fuck
that dead wife of yours. I didn't ask that stupid
bitch to die in my city. And he goes on
to say, he says, why should I give a fuck
about you or your children? Do you care about me
and my children? My job's on the line, and he said,
(18:26):
you have asked that I be terminated in competence. Well,
you know what, I don't know who did it. Maybe
I know you didn't do it, but I can build
the case against you. So you're it.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
So you're you know, you go to trial, and well
they withheld several critical pieces of evidence from the defense,
that which is called a Brady violation, which which would
have excluded you and would have led to you being
found innocent. Do you want to talk about the trial?
Speaker 3 (19:02):
From start to finish, nine days had passed, and from
the very beginning, the two district attorneys prosecuting me told
the jury that they were never going to hear any
direct evidence that tied me to this crime. That basically
what they were trying to convict me on was a
(19:23):
theory of how I did it and why I did it,
and what was going to be important to the jury
to find me guilty was that I had no evidence
to support my story that two black men broke into
my house that night, beat me unconscious, hog tied me,
(19:47):
and at some point in time killed my wife.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Right now, But the reason we know that you couldn't
provide any proof is because they were withholding the proof
that they had. They had the investigators. You didn't have investigators.
They had all the guys sweeping the and doing the
whole thing exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
There were fingerprints found in several places throughout the house
that didn't belong to me, any of my family members,
any of our friends, anyone any member of the investigative
team that had all been ruled out, and these fingerprints
found throughout the house belonged to someone. But we have
(20:25):
no idea who they belonged to.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
But they didn't tell you that.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
No, their fingerprint expert committed perjury on the stand when
he said absolutely no other fingerprints were found in the house.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Can we talk about the cab driver for a second,
because that's one to me, that's one that's always stuck
in my mind.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
It's really you know.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Sometime after I was arrested, well, actually, let's back up
to right after my wife's funeral, three days after the murder,
a taxi driver came forward to the can of Police
department and he said, I think I may have some
(21:05):
testimony that would help you catch the people who killed
this lady, meaning my wife. And as the story goes
in his written deposition to the police, he was dropping
off affair in that neighborhood, which at that time was
exclusively white. There would have been no reason whatsoever to
(21:29):
have seen blacks in that particular neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
At least about three in the morning.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Yeah, least of all at three to four o'clock in
the morning. And he goes on to give in his
written deposition that as he was driving down this one street,
he saw two black men leaving the vicinity of the
front of my house carrying what would have fit the
(21:55):
description of some of the items I told police were
taken from my house. And he says that as his
lights shone on the two men, it appeared that they panicked.
They ran to a silver van that was waiting, and
they sped off in a reckless manner, and he found
that very unusual and thought it was important to bring
(22:17):
that testimony to the police, which he did.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
As it was, but they, of course withheld that from
the defense illegally.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
They withheld that and said that there was nobody had
ever seen anything regarding any black men in that neighborhood,
much less in the vicinity of my home. Now fast
forward another six to seven months, I'm at trial this
you know, good citizen is reading in the newspaper and
(22:47):
hearing on the TV that I'm undergoing a trial for
the murder of my wife. Well, he just doesn't understand,
and at this point he doesn't trust the police because
he's already gone to the police twice. So he shows
up at the courthouse somehow manages to talk to one
of the two or maybe perhaps both, of the district
attorneys who were trying the case, and he tells his
(23:11):
story to them, and they very nonchalantly brush him off
and said, oh, don't worry. We presented your written statement
to mister Dolosa's attorney. He reviewed it, but in light
of the overwhelming evidence against him, he knows that your
(23:32):
testimony wouldn't do any good, so he decided not to
call you as a witness, which was a total lie.
They hadn't given any of that information to my attorney.
And one of the biggest parts of their case was
over and over again they repeated to the jury, no
one repeat, no one saw anything suspicious in that neighborhood
(23:55):
that night, much less two black men. And that's why
you must find mister Dolosa guilty because he was lying.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
The jury comes back, they find you guilty and sends
you to life in prison. Now, the only thing that
can make it worse is they're going to send you
to what is arguably the worst prison in America, in Louisiana,
which is the state which has the highest prison population
by far. Louisiana does have three times higher rate of
incarceration than the rest of the country per capita, and
(24:38):
of course America has a five times higher rate than
the rest of the world. So it's off the chain.
But now you're being sent to Angola prison farm, and
let's talk about that.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Well.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Arriving at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, which they call Angola,
it was beyond culture shock. I didn't know what to expect.
I'd heard numerous rumors that scared the hell out of me.
But I arrived at Angola and one of the first
things that I guess was really strange was they put
(25:14):
you in an initial classification to decide where you're going
to be housed. And I'm going before these classification officers
and they decide that they're going to put me in
a working cell block for my protection rather than general population.
And then they make a statement that's pretty odd. They
(25:34):
said that they don't have a white cell available to
put me in, so I'd have to be sent to
a security cell while they prepare a white cell. And
I'm like, what the hell is a white cell. At
that time, they still believed in segregating the white and
(25:54):
black prisoners at Angola. They didn't mix and blacks in
the same cell. But my very first night in Angola,
I'm in a disciplinary tier and I'm in a cell
and there's someone down the tier in another cell acting up,
(26:19):
and at some point in time he throws human waste
on a security guard, and I'm just like, scared shitless.
I don't know what's going on. Their guards would appear
to be swat uniforms and riot shields and everything. Coming
down the tier. They're dragging this person out by force.
(26:41):
They're beating him, and I guess I'm curious. I'm sort
of looking, you know. I guess maybe I should have
known better than to try to look. When one of
the gods saw me looking, he's like, what the fuck
are you looking at? He turns around and sprayed me
with a pepper spray of mace for about twenty thirty seconds.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
And the only thing I knew was my lungs were burning,
my face was burning, and it was sort of like
a welcomed angola. That was my first night in the penitentiary.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
So and then things get even crazier. So you end
up working on a chain gang.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (27:21):
I mean, I don't know that chain gang is a
little bit misleading because we're not actually linked by chains.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Right, But it's a term that applies.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
To It's a group of inmates working under the supervision
of gun guards on horses in the swamps. It could
be swamps, it could be anywhere on the farm.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Here's a clip where Burl Kane, the warden, talks about
the infamous history of Louisiana State Penitentiary.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
The work in the farm is critical angela. That's what
it is. It's a plantation in prison. It was that
way throughout its entire history important that we have agriculture
here on the farm that provide work for the innate,
which you know is good for them because they have
something to do to use after energy and so forth.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
It turned out that I was working in what they
called camp a Line twenty one under one of the
most vicious inhuman farm bosses that Angola had at the time,
and I found it difficult at my age and my
(28:31):
physical condition to keep up with the average man who
was only in their early twenties and I'm thirty seven
thirty eight years old at this time in horrible shape.
But one of the things that this particular field foreman
used to enjoy doing to torment the people under his supervision.
(28:54):
He would put us, say on the levee cutting high
grass with what they called ditch bank blade, which is
it's impossible to describe on air, but it's this huge,
heavy cutting blade. And what he would do is they
might have been close to one hundred men in the line.
(29:14):
He would put us up on the levee and there
would be two inmates with a water bucket, and he'd
tell the people with the water bucket I want y'all
to move about a mile down the road with the
gun guard supervising you, and he said, y'all keep moving
that water bucket and don't let anybody have water, because
(29:37):
it says until ten people pass out from the heat,
I'm not letting anybody drink water. And that was a
typical day working for this man mac Shaw, where he
would see people pass out fall out, as we'd say,
from heat stroke, heat exhaustion, from lack of water, and
(29:59):
once a whatever number he arbitrarily determined he wanted to
pass out and be carried off in the back of
a truck for disciplinary purposes. Then he'd let everybody else
have a drink of water.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
And then things got really crazy because at one point
you were singled out.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
It was at more than one point, I mean, it
seemed it was something that happened day after day, every
time I'd go in the field. I never had the
distinction of being one of the people. I guess I
was fortunate enough that I could go without drinking water
longer than other people that I might not be one
(30:41):
of the first five to ten people to pass out
from heatstroke and lack of water. But I certainly wasn't
keeping up with the work quote according to this field form,
and he would just almost every day that I went
to work, he would write me up on a disciplinary report,
lock me up in administrative segregation to be disciplined by
(31:04):
the disciplinary court. They would hear my case and say
it would say something like I flatly refused to work. Well,
I never ever flatly refused to work. I simply worked
until I couldn't work anymore, or I worked at the
fastest pace that I was capable of. But the field
foreman never wrote the truth on a disciplinary report, and
(31:28):
the disciplinary board that helped court, they didn't. They knew
what the truth was, but they would just continue to
stack punishment on you, and I'd be sent back out
to work.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
It's it's just I don't I can't even I can't
find any words.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
The good news is you're a smart guy.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
You're a guy of an educated guy, somebody who can
can really think for himself.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
So you get to the point.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Where you realize, if you're going to get out, you're
going to have to be the one to do it.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Is that a fair statement?
Speaker 3 (32:01):
That absolutely? And I would say that I worked as
a clerk in an air conditioned office in the print
shop silkscreen shop at Angola for a little bit over
a year, but I knew I my ultimate goal was
I want to get the hell out of prison. And
everybody that I associated with said, you know, you'd probably
(32:25):
be better off going to be what they call an
inmate council substitute or prison lawyer working in the law library,
and I finally decided I'd apply for that job. I
did end up with a job over there, and over
the next several years, I learned the law. I think
(32:49):
I became pretty proficient with it. And after I had
exhausted all of my appeals in state court, after I
had gone through hundreds of thousands of dollars on about
seven different lawyers who all promised to do something, but
no one followed through and did what I hired him
(33:09):
to do, I finally sat back, spent six months researching
and another two to three months writing my own federal
writ one hundred percent on my own or with having
other inmate counsels review it give me their critique. I
(33:29):
filed my rit a habeas Corpus into the federal court
system on my own. I didn't know what my chances
were going to be I figured slim to none at best,
but I felt like, at this point in time, if
I'm denied, I'm going to be denied on my own terms,
(33:50):
and I'll have given it my best shot. Finally, one
day they call me for legal mail. So I get
(34:12):
up at like five o'clock in the morning, go eat breakfast.
I went to the window where they pass out the
legal mail. They had me a little brown envelope and
I was scared shitless to open it.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
I'm like, because if if it's if it's the wrong answer,
you're done.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
This is your last appeal, right.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
It's the wrong answer. I had a plan to escape
from Angola, and my escape from Mangola was I had
enough drugs in my possession hidden that probably within twenty
four hours, I was gonna od and that's how I
was going to get out of prison. And that had
been something I had planned for months, anticipating a negative
(34:52):
response from the court.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
So I'm getting the chills right now. So you've got
this envelope and it's gonna it's gonna basically tell you
whether you're gonna I'll never die. At this point, you've
been in prison for fourteen years, fourteen years. It's been
a long time, exactly. I'd put up with as much
as I felt like I could live with. And I
felt like my children were getting up in age, and
(35:15):
as much as I love them, as much as I
felt that they loved me, they continue to visit me
almost every opportunity that they got. I felt I was
doing them a disservice by having them come to visit
me in prison, by having them try to explain to
their friends in college, well, why can't you hang out
(35:38):
with us this weekend? Oh, because I'm going to the
penitentiary to see my dad. And I think I probably
was looking at it the wrong way, and I know
I would have heard them tremendously, but I felt like
the best thing for myself and for my children in
the long run.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Was to take my life.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Fortunately it didn't that. Because you're sitting here now, and
so you've got this envelope, what do you do?
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Do you open it?
Speaker 3 (36:06):
I went to the law library where I worked, and
I locked it in the bottom cabinet. I'm like, I'm
the only person here this early in the morning. I
just need somebody else around me. When I opened this up,
So about half hour Forty five minutes later, a couple
of my close friends that work in the law library
(36:28):
lived around me. They came in and I told my
one friend, Mike Singletary, who was my closest friend in
the law library at that time. I said, Mike, I
got my decision from the federal court. And he says, well,
what's it say? I said, I don't know, Mike, I
don't have the nerve to open it. And he says,
(36:48):
oh my god, he said, come on, give me that envelope.
I'll open it for you. So I said, yeah, but
I said he took it out of my hands. After
I got it out the cabinet, he opened it. I said, now,
let me read that, Mike, don't so I took a
couple of big, deep breaths uh And I don't know how.
My heart was probably beaten two hundred beats a minute,
(37:09):
and I was shaking.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
And nine is right now, and I know the aser and.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
I opened the uh writ to the last page, and
all of a sudden, I just stopped shaking, and I
guess sort of a smile came over my face, and
for the first time since my wife's funeral, I cried.
I started crying almost uncontrollably when I read that the
(37:38):
magistrate judge recommended that my conviction be set aside and
that I'll be you know, freed. I just, against all odds,
I went up against the most conservative federal magistrate in
the Eastern District for the State of Louisiana, who, according
to what I had been told, had have a before
(38:00):
granted a writ filed by an inmate on their room. Behalf.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
That's a happy ending to an incredibly terrible saga. And
you're back and I've gotten to know you well. Doug
is now working closely with the Rising Foundation in New Orleans,
helping other exoneries to rebuild their lives on the outside,
(38:27):
using the skills that he has to help them with
everything from you know, you name a job applications, to
tax problems to building their houses to you know, fixing
things getting employment. He's he's become a tremendous advocate for
(38:48):
not only the Innocence Project and innocence projects, although in
your case you represented yourself, but really somebody who has
devoted himself to helping others, which is quite an extraordinary thing.
It makes me really so proud to know you and
to be a part of your life. It's important to
(39:09):
note in all of this that the compensation that you
were given ultimately by the state was paltry, to say
the least, right because people ask me all the time, well,
these guys must get they must get millions of dollars
when they get out. I mean, after what you went
through fourteen years in Angola prison and all the stuff
almost being beaten to death, all the other indignities that
(39:30):
you suffered, and the fact that you were so egregiously framed.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
The compensation in the state of Louisiana allows for twenty
five thousand dollars a year for a maximum of ten
years of incarceration. It's doled out at twenty five thousand
dollars a year over ten years, which gives a person
(39:55):
barely enough to exist on if you have a very
modest lifestyle for ten years. But the other thing, I mean,
in my case, it fell short one hundred and thirty
seven thousand dollars short of my actual expenses, So I
(40:17):
didn't even recoup what I spent.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Right, because you had actually spent the money on.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Attorneys on my legal defense.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
You basically paid ten thousand dollars a year to be
locked up for fourteen.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Years is what it comes down to.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
That's about what it comes down to.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
It's important to note that there are twenty states that
have no compensation statutes, and the ones that do have
compensation statutes, some of them are even worse than Louisiana,
like Wisconsin.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
You know, people think that, oh, you were proven that
you were wrongfully convicted, you must have gotten millions. Well no,
I'm still struggle to this day. I was never able
to repay my children for selling their interest in their
family homes so I could hire that le us attorney.
(41:02):
And it's just not right, not just for me, but
for all of the men in Louisiana and elsewhere too,
and elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
According to the National Registry of his Honerations, there have
been forty six exonerations in Louisiana since nineteen eighty nine,
and the quarter them occurred in Jefferson County, the same
office that prosecuted you. The sad truth is that there's
probably hundreds, if not thousands of other Doug deloss in
Louisiana alone. It's certainly around the country, and I can
tell you that we won't stop until we exonerate as
(41:34):
many of them as we possibly can.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
People say to me, you know my work, I think
it is suspired.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
They say, what that? But prosecutors they don't lie that.
People don't understand like it's it's Unfortunately, it's common, which
is why we asked Nina Morrison to join us in
the studio today. Welcome to Ronful Conviction with Jason Flommer's good.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
To have you here.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
Thank you, good to be here.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
So Nina is the your staff attorney at the Innocence Project.
She litigates claims for access to post conviction DNA evidence
under both federal civil rights laws and state DNA testing statutes.
To date, Ms Morrison has served as lead or co
counsel for more than twenty innocent prisoners who were freed
from prison or even death row based on DNA or
(42:21):
other newly discovered evidence. So, can you explain to us
what exactly is a Brady violation? We talk about it
a lot.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
On the show.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
Yeah, So, a Brady violation is where a prosecutor doesn't
give the defense evidence that either the prosecutor or the
police or some other agent of the state like a
crime lab has that is favorable to the defendant's case.
Sometimes it's proof of their innocence, you know, another suspect
(42:49):
who was seen in the area, somebody else who admitted
to the crime. Sometimes it's evidence that shows that a witness,
you know, who claimed to be an eyewitness, was you know,
high out of their minds that night according to five
other people, or couldn't have seen what they said they said.
There's a whole array of stuff. It's basically anything that
helps the defense. And it's a strange system when you
(43:09):
think about it, because you know, prosecutors and defense layers
go into court, they're fighting hard in these big murder
cases or rape cases or other hard fought criminal trials,
and the way the law is set up is the
prosecutor has to give the other side something voluntarily that
might make them lose, and we trust them in most
places to turn it over, so they say, I'm fulfilling
(43:31):
my Brady obligations, and there's no check on it until
after the case is over, and sometimes not even then until.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
It's literally too late.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
And this leaves a very wide lane open for the
bad actors in the system, the bad prosecutors, to do
what they feel like on a given day and to
really railroad people who are just regular people like you
and I who get find themselves stuck in this nightmare.
People like Doug Delosa.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
Yeah so, and they're even worse news in terms of
how it gets dealt with after the trial. Because if
you discover that a prosecutor in your case withheld Brady
material something favorable to you, your conviction doesn't automatically get reversed.
You then, according to US Supreme Court case law, have
to show an appeals court that the violation is what
(44:20):
the courts call material, which means it actually made a difference.
So you basically have to come in after the fact,
when a jury never heard this information, a witness was
never cross examined on it, and say, you know, Judge,
if I'd had this, I would have argued this. I
would have said that the jury wouldn't have believed this person.
And here's why you have to kind of have a
mental do over, a hypothetical due over of the trial.
(44:43):
And if they say, eh, you know, it made a difference, maybe,
but we don't know, it might not necessarily have made
a difference in the outcome. So it's what's called harmless error.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
So, Nina, I wanted to ask you how common are
these Brady violations, you know, we.
Speaker 4 (44:57):
Don't know because by definition, men of them are hidden.
We know that we have seen them in a very
significant proportion of our cases. You know, there's at least
fifteen featured cases on the Innocence Project website just from
the last few years that involve serious Brady violations which
we uncover in the course of investigating a client's other
(45:18):
claim of innocence. And there is no scientific way to
study them because by definition, there are things that haven't
been turned over. It's sort of like everyone we find
is in some ways by chance. You don't have a
right to get a lot of files after somebody has
been convicted. Things get destroyed. I wake up at nights
sometimes worrying about you know, these days, when almost everything
(45:38):
is electronic, we don't have the piece of paper in
the file anymore the way we used to in the
cases from the eighties and early nineties. Now it's all
in a memo on somebody's computer and they hit delete,
or that person leaves the office and it's gone. It's
in an email, it's in a voicemail, it's in a
text from a witness.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
It's you know, you know, it's really a level of
evil that in this particular case, I don't know what
else to call it, the prosecutor.
Speaker 4 (46:04):
Is And you know, I know, Barry check in one
of your other episodes when you had Barry Gibson was
talking about this concept of noble cause corruption, which I
think is a very real phenomenon. You know, I don't
think even the prosecutors that we've caught red handed withholding evidence,
I think most, if not all of them honestly believed
(46:25):
that they were doing it for a higher purpose, which is,
they had a killer sitting in the courtroom who was
going to get away with murder if they didn't win
their case, and so they convinced themselves that whatever they
were holding back was not really proof of innocence. It
was something the defense would use to create a smoke screen. Right.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
But the law's the law.
Speaker 4 (46:45):
You have a job as an officer of the court
to follow the law and turn it over. And now
we know that many of those people were actually innocent,
so we see what the real harm is from that
skirting the ethical line.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
So bring this to the sort of the practical question
of what can be done.
Speaker 4 (47:07):
We at the Innocence Project are working on a couple
of things to police things before trial happens. So one
of the things we are trying to do is get
judges to take a more active role in ensuring that
Brady's guarantee is a real one by putting prosecutors on
the record issuing court orders to say, I want you
(47:29):
to check these five locations to see if there's anything
favorable to the defense, and I'm going to have a
conference a month before the trial to see how it's going.
What have you turned over, what are you looking for?
And at that point the defense lawyer will have an
opportunity to speak up and say, I haven't gotten anything
on the witness statements. I don't know who what these
witness statements are. And our theory is, you know, for example,
(47:50):
two black men came in and did this crime. Are
there any reports of suspicious African Americans in the area,
whether you think they did it or not? You know,
is there anything we should invest to gate? And the
reason why you want to have the judges be policing
it is that if you lie to a judge, you
can get charged with contemptive court and lose your law
license and even go to jail and on the back end,
(48:12):
we need to take accountability seriously, you know, we need
to make sure that the state bars have a culture
where they can go after just as they would a
lawyer who doesn't give a client all their money back
or didn't do the job they were hired to do
in a trust, some estates case or a civil case,
(48:32):
that they will go after the prosecutors who break the law,
even if it's not politically easy to do. And then lastly,
you know, it is very hard, as you know, and
you've talked about on your show, for prosecutors to ever
be sued civilly and even for states or counties to
be held liable for the misconduct of prosecutors. Prosecutors are
(48:55):
what's called immune from suit in all but a few
very rare cases.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
And so if a prosecutor.
Speaker 4 (49:02):
Knows of some favorable evidence and doesn't turn it over,
the court Supreme Court has said, well, you can go
after them on bar discipline, or you can maybe criminally
prosecute them. Talk about Fox and Penhouse, right, but you
can't see them unless there's a pattern and practice of violations,
and those are very hard to prove.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
And criminal prosecutions of prosecutors are extremely difficult, not least
it which because prosecutors generally don't like prosecuting prosecutors.
Speaker 4 (49:28):
Correct, and they will air I mean, you know, they
will give every benefit of the doubt. Oh they missed it,
they were busy, they thought they turned it over, they
put it in the wrong notebook, you know, yes they did.
The defense layer says they didn't have it, but we
think they did. I mean, you know, and look, our
clients should have been so lucky to get the benefit
of every doubt when they were being accused of a crime.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
Thank you so much for being on Wrongful Conviction with
Jason Flom And it was great.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
It's great to have you here.
Speaker 4 (49:54):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
It's great to be here. Don't forget to give us
a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and
I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and
get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is
by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure
(50:29):
to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on
Facebook at.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Wrongful Conviction podcast.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a 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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