March 28, 2024 • 33 mins
Two gunmen robbed a liquor store in Edmond, OK, on December 30, 1974. The gunmen fatally shot an employee and left an eyewitness injured. At this time, police were also investigating a series of unrelated crimes and brought 22-year-old Glynn Simmons and his co-defendant in for questioning due to a tangential connection to the suspects in the other crimes. Glynn was put into various lineups and charged with the liquor store crime despite no physical evidence tying him to the robbery/murder. The two men were ultimately both sentenced to death for the crime.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
On the night of December thirtieth, nineteen seventy four, two
armed men entered a liquor store on the outskirts of
Oklahoma City. They ordered one clerk to empty the cash
register and fatally shot the other one in the head.
As the surviving clerk nervously fumbled the cash, one of
the assailants shot eighteen year old Belinda Brown in the
head as well, but miraculously the girl survived, and she
(00:25):
described her shooters as black men over six feet tall
and two hundred pounds. No identifications were made until five
weeks later, when two young men, Glenn Simmons and Don Roberts,
took part in a lineup. Even though both young men
fell well shy of the described height and weight, Belinda
Brown's ID was enough to convince a jury, and in
(00:45):
nineteen seventy five murder in Oklahoma carried an automatic sentence
of death. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
wrongful Conviction, where we're covering a robbery homicide out of Edmond,
(01:08):
Oklahoma that took place while our guest of honor, Glenn Simmons,
lived hundreds of miles away, just outside of New Orleans.
But before we try to make sense of all that.
I'd like to introduce his attorney, Joe Norwood. Joe, welcome
to the show. Thank you, and thank you for helping
win Glenn's release after more than forty eight years, one
of the longest terms of any previous guests or anybody
(01:32):
in the long and terrible history of bromful convictions in
this country. I think Tyrone Clark is the only other
innocent person that we know of who has served as
longer longer, and I hope no one else ever comes close.
So Glenn Simmons, welcome, Thank you. Now, this happened on
the outskirts of Oklahoma City, in the town called edmund
same as Julius Jones in nineteen ninety nine, by the way,
(01:54):
and we'll have his story lengked in the episode description
as we continue to seek justice.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
There everyone in Oklahoma's whare.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Of that case.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
But the crime in Glenn's story took place twenty five
years earlier, way back in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
When Glenn's case happened, Edmunds was a sundown community sundown,
meaning if you're black, you better get out before sundown
and most preferably not even show up there. It has
changed dramatically since then into fourth largest, one of the
wealthiest cities in Oklahoma now.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
But back in seventy four when the crime in question happened,
Glenn hadn't even arrived in this sundown town yet. He
was still living and was actually in Harvey, Louisiana, where
he had been born back in nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
One year before Brown Versus Education desegregation of the schools. However,
schools wasn't really desegregated into nineteen sixty eight. In a
town where I grew up at, you know, Harvard Luais
down It's on the west bank of the Mississippi River,
New Orleans.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Grew up in a very.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Large family, nine lords and four girls, went to all
black school in the neighborhood. Pretty good childhood, not a
whole bunch of drama now.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
The crime in question occurred during that sleepy week between
Christmas and New Year's in nineteen seventy four. Glenn had
just turned twenty one years old, and his aunt, Dorothy,
who lived Edmond, Oklahoma, was back in Harvey for the holidays.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Anti Dart did she would come for Christmas In New
Year's we had this tradition what we called the Turkey Bowl,
and every New Year's Eve we would go to this
high school and neighborhood guys would gather around and pick
teams to play ball.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
And we did it that year and thought.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
I was a little sharp, little pool player at the time,
so I hung out in the pool hall a lot,
and we had some pool tournaments that weekend also. And
this one particular time Anti Dart did she came, I
decided to go back with her jo Oklahoma, which was
in January nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
I wasn't intending to stay. I was just coming to visit. Well.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
I found me a job within a few days, and
I liked the job, so I decided to steal a
little while longer.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
However, before Glenn even arrived in Edmond, Oklahoma, a robbery
and murder had occurred at a liquor store. On December thirtieth,
nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Around nine thirty pm. Two perpetrators come into the Edmund
liquor store and hold it up demand the cash One
of the cashiers hands it over and they shoot the
other one in the head, who falls dead. As the
cashier that was still alive was handing over the cash
and eighteen year old young lady walks in and as
soon as she walks past the two perpetrators, they shoot
(04:28):
her in the back of the head. They grab the
cash and run off.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
The eighteen year old customer, Belinda Brown, ended up surviving,
while thirty year old Carolyn Sue Rogers died at the scene.
The surviving cashier was named Norma Hankins.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Her initial statement to the police was, I was busy
looking at that gun. I don't know that I'll be
able to give a good accurate description. That is what
she testified to at the preliminary hearing, and that's what
she testified to at the jury trial.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
As the police canvassed the area, a group of boys
allegedly saw the getaway, but didn't have anything useful for
the police until many weeks later. Meanwhile, the eighteen year
old customer, Belinda Brown, who had been shot in the head,
was in critical condition.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
She was in the hospital for about a week. She
had surgery, the bullet was removed and she been it
up surviving. Not but a day or two after she
got out of the hospital, she was interviewed by the
police and from the police report quote unquote, if she
thought about it anymore, it would get all jumbled up
in her mind.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
From what we understand, she wanted to give them any
information she had as soon as possible. She described the
assailants as two black men, a little over six feet
tall and two hundred pounds. She was shown several lineups
and initially only made partial identifications, like maybe the eyes
of someone she viewed were similar to the assailants, but
no concrete ideas. At this point, the investigation began to struggle.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
When I got to Oklahoma, this Ed Meligosto murder had
been going unsolved, and every day there was an article
about the inadequacies of the police department, how they couldn't
sell of the crime, and it was coming to a date,
and it was on the whole lot of pressure to
solve those crimes.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
And I just helped to walk into it, you know,
right into it.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
During what was supposed to be just an extended visit
with his aunt, Glynn attended a small get together at
a relative's home on the night of February third into
the fourth, when another robbery homicide occurred in Oklahoma City,
and by the fifth police had two suspects in custody
Leonard and Delbert Patterson, who had been at the same
party as Glenn.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
They was at the port that night and they left
him with did something. They come back half an hour
later kept all parted. So the next day when they
get arrested on the murder, the accent was they gave
oulibi that they was at the port and who all
was at the party, and they started arresting people as
material witnesses and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
In order to hold some of these material witnesses, the police,
with no probable cause to do so, charged some of
the people from the party as suspects in random open cases.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
They arrested me on the Bogies robbery case, which was
dismissed right there on. The woman who got robbed came
to the station and said, no, I ain't never seen
that guy before.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, it's something They threw on him to make sure
they could hold him.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
At some point during this morass where the police had
all these young folks from the party still in custody,
Leonard and Delbert Patterson, both of whom were about six
to two and a little over two hundred pounds, They
eventually confessed to the February robbery homicide in Oklahoma City,
but the Edmund liquor store robbery homicide in December remained
an open case.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
I take this out if you look at the police report.
On February the fifth, February to six officers show over
at the Oklahoma Police Department. Contacted Officer Garrett at the
Edmund Police Department and he told him, he said, we
got two suspects in custody fit the description of the
Edmund liquor store murder, and you need to come down
and conduct an ID right now. I don't see who
these suspects are, but they say they fitted the description
(07:51):
to composite that Belinda Brown gave him, saying they were
six feet two hundred sub pound right, totally different from
my description. I was like one hundred and fifty pounds
five eight. But I was actually to participate in the lineup.
I didn't know I had the right to refuse or
a right to a lawyer went in, got in the lineup,
and was told that I was picked out the lineup.
And so Linda Brown, she was so sure she came
(08:11):
to detect the house later on that night and told
him say, the more I think about it, the more positive,
I am that it was number six. They asked us, way,
can you come up tomorrow and make another idea. She
came back the next.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Day to say I picked the sam to I picked
the day before.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Belinda Brown was very confident in her choice of position
six in the first lineup, but only became more confident
in her second choice the following day. And on February eighth,
nineteen seventy five, both Glenn Simmons and another young man
from the party, Don Roberts, were charged with capital murder.
With no bail available, they awaited trial from jail and
(08:45):
Glenn hired private counsel.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
He was a friend of my aunt's, Henry Floyd.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
I think I gave him like twenty two hundred dollars,
which was a lot of money at that time. He
didn't do nothing either, found no pre trial motions or
nothing in.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
The case, and perhaps he felt confident considering the glaring
difference between Glenn and Don smaller statures and the over
six feet tall, two hundred pounds assailants, a discrepancy that
seemed to strike a chord with the Linda Brown at
the preliminary hearing.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
When she comes to preliminary three or four weeks later,
I'm sitting there next to Don Robbins in the prison uniform.
It written all over face. I'm confused, she confused all
the way. Every time she.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Look at me and I'm looking at her. You got
the wrong one, you know, That's what I'm saying, you know.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
And she gets on the stand and she does identify them,
but it's not a real confident ID.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
She said, well, he looked at taller, then he looked
at heavier, but he had a beard.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
He didn't have a beard.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
And she gets impeached.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Not only was the defense attacking the credibility of the ID,
but then, in trusting the lineup report he had received
from police, Oklahoma County Assistant Prosecutor Bob Mildfeld implied that perhaps,
after all that she'd been through, maybe Belinda Brown had
just gotten a little confused about who she had id'd.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
When they kept trying to make it look like she
was crazy. She was injured when she got shot in
the head. She couldn't be sure.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
She got real defined was eighteen years old, and they're
trying to tell it. Were you crazy? You don't know?
Speaker 4 (10:06):
And she knew she had made suits. She got the
right one so she got real defined. She put up
back up, and wouldn't never back down until this day.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
So the adversity only served to solidify the ID in
Belinda Brown's mind. Meanwhile, one of the teenage boys who
were interviewed back in December of seventy four was now
willing to say that he recognized Don Roberts from a
car that had passed by the liquor store that night,
and Glenn and Don were taking the trial in June
of seventy five, where the defense strategy focused on impeaching
(10:34):
Belinda Brown, who is now even more confident in her ID.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
And it had us to stand next to each other.
She was five eight, I was five eighting.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
She said, well, you lucky taller than him, and she said, well,
he might have had on stack your shoes. She was
defined because she knows she picked this and a winter.
Well I could have got to this defense statement. Oh
Wilders dreams and mob fails Wilder's dream.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Meanwhile, six alibi witnesses made the trip from Harvey, Louisiana
to testify it by the pool tournament on December thirtieth
and the Turkey Bowl the following day, which made it
impossible for Glenn to have been an edmund to commit
this crime. No, thanks to his attorney, Henry Floyd, though.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
No, we put that together, My family put that together.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
What he did was so he went to the court
and solicited money for travel expenses and lodgsing and stuff,
and put that money in his pocket and the people
had to find their own way to get here.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Six of them witness. He didn't even call them. All
he said would be redundant, so he didn't even bring
all the witness up.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
But the police never did investigate none of the alibi
witness and stuff that I gave him. You gotta report
say anything with the Dallas and looked at Don's He
had gave alibi that he was in Dallas, and the
detectives went to Dallas and checked out the alibi and
come back inconclusively. They couldn't prove that he was in there,
but they decided to say they couldn't prove that he was.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
You know, with Glenn and Don's alibi defenses, coupled with
the impeaching evidence against Belinda Brown, reasonable doubt had certainly
been raised and there was at least some hope for
a quittal.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
I thought I was going to walk up out of there. No,
I couldn't see no conviction. What's nothing to convict me on.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
It?
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Then?
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Last two and a half days. Just send us a
debt in the elected chair. Yeah, I don't have to
say any more about that. You know, some wounds you
let stay closed.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
Right, Wrongful conviction has always given voice to innocent people
in prison.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Now we're expanding that voice to you. Call us at
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(12:56):
seven four six sixty.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Six seventy five day.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
What they call a mandatory dead penoty if they find
you guilty of one two three elements of murder, like
you kill the police, or he kills about it being
the commission of a feling, he kills about it at
a certain age, or something like that. That he was
automatically given the dead penet and the jury had no
discretion and to rendering up the punishment because it was
set by legislative back it was automatic dead penalty.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
That's one of the reason why it was abolish.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
In June of nineteen seventy two, the Supreme Court ruled
in Furman versus Georgia that the death penalty violated the
Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments under certain circumstances, placing a four
year moratorium on executions until more challenges would bring about
guidance on the matter.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
US Supreme Court stayed the death penalty across the country, saying,
the death penalties being administered arbitrarily and capriciously, and so
Oklahoma and several other states response to that was, Okay,
you don't think that we administered the death penalty evenly
and equally, great, Well, we're just going to administer it
to everyone that is convicted of first degree murder. And
(14:10):
so that's the statute that Glenn was convicted under. Now,
that statute was appealed, and the Supreme Court came back
and rendered a decision on a group of statutes, including Oklahoma's,
saying basically, no, guys, we didn't mean to kill everyone.
We meant that you got to make it somewhat fair.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
In nineteen seventy six, the Supreme Court confirmed that capital
punishment was still legal in the United states, but under
limited circumstances, so the interim statutes in states like Oklahoma
were nullified, and in their place came the aggravating and
mitigating processes that we see used today, in which juries
have a say in sentencing. The Supreme Court ruling played
(14:52):
out differently in each state, but in Oklahoma, Glenn's sentence
and all others rendered before nineteen seventy six were commuted
by the Oklahoma Supreme Court to life, with the possibility
of parole from there. His direct appeal failed and financially
he was unable to mount anything further, which made the
parole board his only viable avenue at the time.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
I stayed in for forty eight years because my innocence
was my burden, so it was more of a luxury
to be guilty. Guys into guilty please for all kinds
of atrocious crimes. But they go through the parole board
and they tell them I feel regret and I feel remorse,
I take responsibility for my crime, and they give them
a parole, let them go six to eighteen months, they'd
be back in again.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
They let them go again.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
But I went up for thirty something years saying that
I'm innocent and it was denied because I didn't show remorse.
You know, I take responsibility, notwithstanding the fact that the
victim's sister wrote them a letter, sent them a video
deposition telling them, you know, I don't think mister Simmons
killed my sister. I think my sister and mister Simmons
victims of the same crime.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
In addition to the victim's sister, the prosecuting attorney, Bob Mildfeldt,
also came forward.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Like ninety three first letter he wrote, telling him that
he think I was innocent and I didn't get a
fair trial. I took it to the parole Board and
they accused me of forging the letter and denied me.
So at that time it was going up annually for
the row. So the next year I had myfl to
write the parole board itself, and he wrote him and
told him, he said, this is one case.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I'm sure a.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Week later that the verdict would have been different because
of all the unasked questions we had. You know, he
described the description that didn't fit me in all of this.
It's in letters that he wrote to the parole board.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
The exact quote is very powerful when talking about Belinda
Brown's description of the assailant at around six foot two
hundred pounds quote, a physical description greatly different from Glenn's
stature at the time. The jury on that day at
that time found him guilty. However, quite candidly, it was
one of the few cases I've been involved in that
the verdict a week later could easily have been different
(16:52):
end quote. Yet he was denied by the parole board
again in nineteen eighty six, but Bob milefelt the letter
was not a dead end. It gave Glynn an idea
that up until then he hadn't had the funds to
follow through on.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
In the nineties, Glenn strikes up a relationship with a
woman on the outside and they get married, and she
dies about six months after her and Glenn get married.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
My wife left me some money in an insurance policy,
and so I took the money and I had a
private investigator. I gave him a list of what I wanted,
but he came back with ten times more than I
had on the list.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
His name is Mike Noble, and Mike ended up talking
the Edmund City Attorney into turning over the entire file
from Glenn's case from seventy four to seventy five.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
If you remember, Belinda Brown seemed confused at the preliminary
hearing about whether Glenn and Don were the men she
had identified in the lineup. His private investigator turned up
the original lineup that seemed to have made Bob mildfelt
so confident in that idea trial.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
From what we can tell, the only thing the prosecution
had was the actual lineup that had the names of
the people, you know, spot one, spot two through seven,
and it has the date February seventh and eighth, and
so it's not a report, it's just a lineup. And
(18:15):
then there are stars above Glenn and Dawn's names.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
That's it. Then in the file from the Edmund City Attorney,
that lineup sheet was accompanied by the report of who
she actually chose.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
And so in the report it says Blenda Brown subject
number six confidently and she's not so sure about subject
number blank. And then it talks about her coming back
the next day again affirmatively id in subject number six
and then saying yes, I am now more confident that
(18:49):
subject number and the report has a blank. Is the
other suspect the actual lineup that had the spot one,
spot two through Glenn was two, Don Roberts was four,
Delbert Patterson was six, Leonard Patterson was seven.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
She consistently said, I picked number six.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
You see, she never picked Linson from a line up
all the way through and all the narratives is attacking
the witness. Well, my thing is give the witness to
benefit it out. Because she told them whose shadow. She
told them exactly who. She didn't picked nobody else. She
never did pick me.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
She picked Delbert Patterson. And then the report says suspect
number and it has a blank. So we're not actually
sure who the other person was that she picked, because
this report that was not disclosed and discovered twenty years
later is blank on who it is now, and there's
a lot of other surrounding evidence to make us believe
(19:45):
that it was Leonard Patterson. Leonard and Delbert were out
killing people and robin people at this time. They had
weapons that match the type of caliber that wounded Brown
and killed Miss Rogers. They were suspected of having been
in the area. The sketch of the suspect looks very
much like Leonard Patterson. Matter of fact, I put pictures
(20:07):
of Leonard in the briefire road along with the composite sketch.
It's a striking resemblance.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
And as we mentioned, Delbert and Leonard Patterson matched Belinda
Brown's description of her assailants.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Six two hundred pounds. And where this would lead to
clearly is police conspiracy cover up. There's no way I
could have got to that defense table without the police
hiding the reports because witness told the mousada.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
And it appears that Bob Mildfeld and everyone else, including
Belinda Brown, were just led to believe that she had
chosen Glenn Simmons and Don Roberts by the lineup sheet
that had been marked with stars. It's entirely possible that
Bob Mildfeld found out about the treachery after trial, and
perhaps that's what compelled him to write to the parole
board on Glenn's behalf.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
I asked him about it, what happened a week later,
and I concluded that he didn't never have the reports,
and after week after the conviction, I.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Checked this out.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
He was an upcoming prosecuting attorney, just successfully prosecuted two
first degree murder case in the high profile murder case
that was all dissolved. His career is supposed to be
in skyrocketing at the very least. But when I ran
into him years later, he was a public defendant for
the Juvenile Division and he stayed there for years and
years until he retired.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Perhaps he made that career choice considering what he was
led to do to not only Glennon Donn, but also
the victims, Carol and Sue Rodgers and Belinda Brown.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
You had the victim pick who it was, Delbert and
Leonard Patterson, who were already in custody for doing the
exact same shit that you're looking for these two suspects on,
and then you hide that report and you pin it
on two other guys. Now the big question is why.
(21:50):
My speculation is we got those two black guys, let's
get a couple others.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
And this was done with a crime that carried an
automatic death sentence.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
There's a name for that attempted murder. Nobody didn't want
to talk about it because it's real explosive, but it
happened to me, and I'm going to talk about it.
Not only was it attempted murder, it's excessive to murder
because you assist the perpetrators in getting away after she
told you it was. It wasn't just no mischaracter justice
(22:22):
or a misidentification, and that was deliberate, conscious, and deliberate.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
It wasn't no mistake.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
So Glenn goes and takes the rest of his money
that he got from his deceased wife and pays an
attorney to take this report back into court. This was
Glenn's first post conviction or habeas. It was a straight
Brady claim. Essentially, you got to turn over exculpatory defendants.
But it's a skeleton pleading. He doesn't lay out why
(23:05):
this report is so consequential, and if you are going
to ask a judge to overturn a black man's murder convention,
you have to come correct and throwing something that you
found that is good evidence, exculpatory evidence, onto a skeleton
pleading that doesn't lay out why it's important and how
(23:28):
it completely takes out the base of the state's case
where the government and judges have no choice. That's what
you got to do to win these things. You have
to give the government, prosecutors, judges no choice but to
see innocence and then hope at that point that the prosecutor, judge, pardoner,
(23:50):
and pro board governor whoever it is with the authority
you're asking to make this decision has a conscience on him. Well,
the lawyer in the nineties did not lay it out.
He said, this is new evidence, this is Brady. You
got to give us a new trial at least, and
did not show that this report not only is Brady,
(24:10):
but it proves Glenn innocent. And he just didn't lay
it out correctly. Well, the attorney ends up getting shot
down and state district court takes it to the Court
of Criminal Appeals. Basically a speed bump on the way
to federal court goes to federal court district court. They
don't do anything. Glenn runs out of money, the attorneys
don't even bother trying to do anything in the Tenth Circuit.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Meanwhile, Glenn and Donn had been trying their hands at
the parole board each year.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
We went up for parole two thousand and five and
we both got majority to the votes from the parole board,
but the governor turned us down. In Oklahoma, even when
you get but George is still up to the governor,
and so he turned us down. Stipulations to come back
up in three years. But by the time we rolled around,
I had two or three misconducts. They started letting sell
(25:00):
phones into the penitentiary and I had a cell phone,
so that was on me if you got a write
up and you can't go off for parole. And so
I missed it that year and he got out and
I didn't. After that, politics changed and it was hard
to get out.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Glenn faced denials in court and at the parole board,
even with this report proving that he and Don Roberts
had not been identified by the victim. And since his
attorney raised the evidence on appeal and was denied, it
became procedurally defaulted. Eventually, it took a convergence of events
and people to bring about justice in this case. First,
Joe Norwood's work feeing two other innocent men put him
(25:37):
on Glenn's radar, while media coverage of Glenn's case did
the same for Joe.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
The local reporter in Oklahoma City, Ali Meyer, did some
fantastic reporting on Glenn's case. Glenn reached out to me
and asked me to get into the case. And so
I read the transcript some of the reports and it
was clear Glenn was innocent, and at that point I
knew what I had to do. It was the end
of twenty nineteen early twenty twe I spent two years investigating,
(26:03):
putting it together, making sure we had everything.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
In addition, Glenn's evidence of actual innocence could finally be
raised again in court, this time effectively as a new
court ruling came to.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Pass Fortnight versus Crow. It's a tenth circuit case. It's
deal with newly presented evidence. If you could make a
colorable showing on actual innocence, then the jug would drive
all procedure bars and that you proceed if you had
newly presented evidence. And so what became with a new
presentation of the evidence instead of attacking the witness in
(26:33):
corner with the same night, if we switched it all
the way around.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Glynn had been battling this case for decades, long before
I ever came around. He knew all this stuff inside
and out. And he pointed out to me quickly, he's
just like listen, Blinda Brown was right. She picked the
right guys. I think that's who did it, and I
put that in the brief, And so we ended up
filing Glenn's case in mid twenty twenty one and then
(26:58):
evidentially hearing in being set April twenty twenty three, We
ended up putting fifteen witnesses on a stand. We had
an expert and eyewitness identification that looked over the case
and rendered an opinion that Blenda Brown's identification of Glenn
in court is just not an identification at all. We
ended up having total twelve alibi witnesses that testified that
(27:23):
Glenn was in New Orleans at the time. Bob Mihlefelt
testified that report was not in the file, and I
acknowledged that that report does a lot of damage to
the state's case. It impeaches Blnda Brown's testimony.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Unfortunately, Bob Milefelt didn't have any information as to how
or why that report was missing from his trial evidence,
as well as who might have starred Don and Glenn's
names on the bogus lineup sheet. But fortunately all of
this was playing out across from the newly elected DA
in Oklahoma County, Vicky Bihenna, who eventually joined their motion
to vacate, and on July twentieth, twenty twenty three, Judge
(27:58):
Palumbo vacated a conviction and ordered a new trial, and
Glenn was released on bond for the first time in
forty eight years, one month, in eighteen days.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
That was the moment, That was the first moment I
stepped out, you know, into freedom, when they took the
cuffsaus and I walked out of the courtroom unescored it.
That was it, but being born again, like the buildable
card has just been severed. You see the picture that
I took with my hands up in the air. I
think it's all my gofund me and it's been getting
(28:29):
better every day.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Shortly after this, in September twenty twenty three, Victory Bahenna
said that they didn't have sufficient evidence to move forward
with a trial. It was still a far cry from
being declared innocent.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Vicky Behenna. She objected to Glenn being found actually innocent,
So we had to fight that out a lot.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Oh here's what she said.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
One of the winds is still alive and sticking to
a story. We can't find you guilty, but we're gonna
let you slide. I'm like bullshit. I responded that I'm
sticking to a story too.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
The victims opinion is that she identified the right people. Well,
you damn right, she picked the right people. It was
Delbra Patterson and Leonard Patterson. And miss Beheen is correct.
We need to respect her id.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
As they damn well should have way back in nineteen
seventy five.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
So they didn't have nothing to do but to throw
it out. It was no defense for it.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
In December twenty twenty three, Glenn Simmons was declared actually innocent,
clearing the path for his civil litigation. But as listeners
of the show know, that can take a very long time.
In addition, as we record this, Glenn is undergoing chemotherapy
as he battles a stage four cancer diagnosis, so he
needs your support right now. As he mentioned, there's a GoFundMe.
(29:46):
It's going to be linked in the episode description, so
please give what you can. And with that, we're going
to go to closing arguments. It's where first of all,
I thank you to amazing man Joe Norwood and Glenn Simmons,
and I'm gonna turn off my microphone, kick back in
my chair with my headphones on and just close my
eyes and just listen to anything else you have to
(30:06):
share with me and our phenomenal audience. So Joe, you
go first, that's our tradition, and then just sort of
hand the microphone off to Glenn, and Glenn will take
us off into the sunset.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
You know we've covered it. It's I mean, I don't
view this as a grandiose statement. It's a historic case.
He's the longest serving wrongful conviction in the history of
the United States. He was sentenced to death and eventually
found and proven by clearing, convincing evidence to be innocent.
(30:39):
I don't have to say any more for people to
understand the gravity and what this case says about our
system planning.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
And I'm trying to launch my nonprofit and nonprofits. Grace
Redempson is salvation perfect for me to foot me integration.
So I want to get it to this reintegration thing.
I got this planned by this wrap around support system
for guys coming out. There's a lot of guys at
the same position that I was in, even worse because
they don't have the support that I had, and some
(31:11):
of them getting ready to be released.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Now.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
My objective is to curtail recidivism because these statistics seventy
two seventy one, seventy two percent of all inmates get
out going to return back to prison within six to
eighteen months, and this statistics has stood for twenty thirty
years for the numbers to see that consistent.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Then somebody delibered it.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
Got their hands on the scale, and all I know
is prison in and out. Like I said, I've seen guys,
brilliant guys who've got college degrees and all kind of
skills come back over and over again.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
And I've offered wonder why why they come back?
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Then they don't come back because they wanted to come back,
because they haven't had time to adjust, they haven't had
time to make the transition, they haven't had that wrap
around support system. And so this is what my nonprofit
going on intels and I would like to focus on
the women. Oklahoma quite one of the best kept secret
is that. And you don't hear politicians, of journalists or
(32:05):
nobody talking about this. Oklahoma is number one and the
incarceration of women and they have held that do.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Be just distinction for thirty years or more.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
And I'm not just talking about the number one in
the United States. I'm talking about the world over and
nobody mentioned this. It's just like you ask the questions,
why you know it's the women know Kaoma one inclined
to be criminals or they moved even than anybody else, and.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Nobody gonna answer that question say yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
And if you can answer that question and say yeah
to that question, then it's got to be the legislators.
We're a nation of laws, right, so it's got to
be the legislators doing this. So, you know, we really
need to rethink and reconsider the way we do this
criminal justice and the way we apply these things. And
so this is where I want to dedicate some of
my time and effort towards because I've had first saying
(32:50):
experience with it.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
You know, thank you for listening to Wrong for Conviction.
Listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts
one week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus
on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team,
Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow
(33:11):
executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn. The
music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across
all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at
Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at
It's Jason Vlahm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava
for Good podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one
On the night of December thirtieth, nineteen seventy four, two
armed men entered a liquor store on the outskirts of
Oklahoma City. They ordered one clerk to empty the cash
register and fatally shot the other one in the head.
As the surviving clerk nervously fumbled the cash, one of
the assailants shot eighteen year old Belinda Brown in the
head as well, but miraculously the girl survived, and she
(00:25):
described her shooters as black men over six feet tall
and two hundred pounds. No identifications were made until five
weeks later, when two young men, Glenn Simmons and Don Roberts,
took part in a lineup. Even though both young men
fell well shy of the described height and weight, Belinda
Brown's ID was enough to convince a jury, and in
(00:45):
nineteen seventy five murder in Oklahoma carried an automatic sentence
of death. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
wrongful Conviction, where we're covering a robbery homicide out of Edmond,
(01:08):
Oklahoma that took place while our guest of honor, Glenn Simmons,
lived hundreds of miles away, just outside of New Orleans.
But before we try to make sense of all that.
I'd like to introduce his attorney, Joe Norwood. Joe, welcome
to the show. Thank you, and thank you for helping
win Glenn's release after more than forty eight years, one
of the longest terms of any previous guests or anybody
(01:32):
in the long and terrible history of bromful convictions in
this country. I think Tyrone Clark is the only other
innocent person that we know of who has served as
longer longer, and I hope no one else ever comes close.
So Glenn Simmons, welcome, Thank you. Now, this happened on
the outskirts of Oklahoma City, in the town called edmund
same as Julius Jones in nineteen ninety nine, by the way,
(01:54):
and we'll have his story lengked in the episode description
as we continue to seek justice.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
There everyone in Oklahoma's whare.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Of that case.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
But the crime in Glenn's story took place twenty five
years earlier, way back in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
When Glenn's case happened, Edmunds was a sundown community sundown,
meaning if you're black, you better get out before sundown
and most preferably not even show up there. It has
changed dramatically since then into fourth largest, one of the
wealthiest cities in Oklahoma now.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
But back in seventy four when the crime in question happened,
Glenn hadn't even arrived in this sundown town yet. He
was still living and was actually in Harvey, Louisiana, where
he had been born back in nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
One year before Brown Versus Education desegregation of the schools. However,
schools wasn't really desegregated into nineteen sixty eight. In a
town where I grew up at, you know, Harvard Luais
down It's on the west bank of the Mississippi River,
New Orleans.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Grew up in a very.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Large family, nine lords and four girls, went to all
black school in the neighborhood. Pretty good childhood, not a
whole bunch of drama now.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
The crime in question occurred during that sleepy week between
Christmas and New Year's in nineteen seventy four. Glenn had
just turned twenty one years old, and his aunt, Dorothy,
who lived Edmond, Oklahoma, was back in Harvey for the holidays.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Anti Dart did she would come for Christmas In New
Year's we had this tradition what we called the Turkey Bowl,
and every New Year's Eve we would go to this
high school and neighborhood guys would gather around and pick
teams to play ball.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
And we did it that year and thought.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
I was a little sharp, little pool player at the time,
so I hung out in the pool hall a lot,
and we had some pool tournaments that weekend also. And
this one particular time Anti Dart did she came, I
decided to go back with her jo Oklahoma, which was
in January nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
I wasn't intending to stay. I was just coming to visit. Well.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
I found me a job within a few days, and
I liked the job, so I decided to steal a
little while longer.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
However, before Glenn even arrived in Edmond, Oklahoma, a robbery
and murder had occurred at a liquor store. On December thirtieth,
nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Around nine thirty pm. Two perpetrators come into the Edmund
liquor store and hold it up demand the cash One
of the cashiers hands it over and they shoot the
other one in the head, who falls dead. As the
cashier that was still alive was handing over the cash
and eighteen year old young lady walks in and as
soon as she walks past the two perpetrators, they shoot
(04:28):
her in the back of the head. They grab the
cash and run off.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
The eighteen year old customer, Belinda Brown, ended up surviving,
while thirty year old Carolyn Sue Rogers died at the scene.
The surviving cashier was named Norma Hankins.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Her initial statement to the police was, I was busy
looking at that gun. I don't know that I'll be
able to give a good accurate description. That is what
she testified to at the preliminary hearing, and that's what
she testified to at the jury trial.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
As the police canvassed the area, a group of boys
allegedly saw the getaway, but didn't have anything useful for
the police until many weeks later. Meanwhile, the eighteen year
old customer, Belinda Brown, who had been shot in the head,
was in critical condition.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
She was in the hospital for about a week. She
had surgery, the bullet was removed and she been it
up surviving. Not but a day or two after she
got out of the hospital, she was interviewed by the
police and from the police report quote unquote, if she
thought about it anymore, it would get all jumbled up
in her mind.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
From what we understand, she wanted to give them any
information she had as soon as possible. She described the
assailants as two black men, a little over six feet
tall and two hundred pounds. She was shown several lineups
and initially only made partial identifications, like maybe the eyes
of someone she viewed were similar to the assailants, but
no concrete ideas. At this point, the investigation began to struggle.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
When I got to Oklahoma, this Ed Meligosto murder had
been going unsolved, and every day there was an article
about the inadequacies of the police department, how they couldn't
sell of the crime, and it was coming to a date,
and it was on the whole lot of pressure to
solve those crimes.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
And I just helped to walk into it, you know,
right into it.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
During what was supposed to be just an extended visit
with his aunt, Glynn attended a small get together at
a relative's home on the night of February third into
the fourth, when another robbery homicide occurred in Oklahoma City,
and by the fifth police had two suspects in custody
Leonard and Delbert Patterson, who had been at the same
party as Glenn.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
They was at the port that night and they left
him with did something. They come back half an hour
later kept all parted. So the next day when they
get arrested on the murder, the accent was they gave
oulibi that they was at the port and who all
was at the party, and they started arresting people as
material witnesses and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
In order to hold some of these material witnesses, the police,
with no probable cause to do so, charged some of
the people from the party as suspects in random open cases.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
They arrested me on the Bogies robbery case, which was
dismissed right there on. The woman who got robbed came
to the station and said, no, I ain't never seen
that guy before.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, it's something They threw on him to make sure
they could hold him.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
At some point during this morass where the police had
all these young folks from the party still in custody,
Leonard and Delbert Patterson, both of whom were about six
to two and a little over two hundred pounds, They
eventually confessed to the February robbery homicide in Oklahoma City,
but the Edmund liquor store robbery homicide in December remained
an open case.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
I take this out if you look at the police report.
On February the fifth, February to six officers show over
at the Oklahoma Police Department. Contacted Officer Garrett at the
Edmund Police Department and he told him, he said, we
got two suspects in custody fit the description of the
Edmund liquor store murder, and you need to come down
and conduct an ID right now. I don't see who
these suspects are, but they say they fitted the description
(07:51):
to composite that Belinda Brown gave him, saying they were
six feet two hundred sub pound right, totally different from
my description. I was like one hundred and fifty pounds
five eight. But I was actually to participate in the lineup.
I didn't know I had the right to refuse or
a right to a lawyer went in, got in the lineup,
and was told that I was picked out the lineup.
And so Linda Brown, she was so sure she came
(08:11):
to detect the house later on that night and told
him say, the more I think about it, the more positive,
I am that it was number six. They asked us, way,
can you come up tomorrow and make another idea. She
came back the next.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Day to say I picked the sam to I picked
the day before.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Belinda Brown was very confident in her choice of position
six in the first lineup, but only became more confident
in her second choice the following day. And on February eighth,
nineteen seventy five, both Glenn Simmons and another young man
from the party, Don Roberts, were charged with capital murder.
With no bail available, they awaited trial from jail and
(08:45):
Glenn hired private counsel.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
He was a friend of my aunt's, Henry Floyd.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
I think I gave him like twenty two hundred dollars,
which was a lot of money at that time. He
didn't do nothing either, found no pre trial motions or
nothing in.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
The case, and perhaps he felt confident considering the glaring
difference between Glenn and Don smaller statures and the over
six feet tall, two hundred pounds assailants, a discrepancy that
seemed to strike a chord with the Linda Brown at
the preliminary hearing.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
When she comes to preliminary three or four weeks later,
I'm sitting there next to Don Robbins in the prison uniform.
It written all over face. I'm confused, she confused all
the way. Every time she.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Look at me and I'm looking at her. You got
the wrong one, you know, That's what I'm saying, you know.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
And she gets on the stand and she does identify them,
but it's not a real confident ID.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
She said, well, he looked at taller, then he looked
at heavier, but he had a beard.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
He didn't have a beard.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
And she gets impeached.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Not only was the defense attacking the credibility of the ID,
but then, in trusting the lineup report he had received
from police, Oklahoma County Assistant Prosecutor Bob Mildfeld implied that perhaps,
after all that she'd been through, maybe Belinda Brown had
just gotten a little confused about who she had id'd.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
When they kept trying to make it look like she
was crazy. She was injured when she got shot in
the head. She couldn't be sure.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
She got real defined was eighteen years old, and they're
trying to tell it. Were you crazy? You don't know?
Speaker 4 (10:06):
And she knew she had made suits. She got the
right one so she got real defined. She put up
back up, and wouldn't never back down until this day.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
So the adversity only served to solidify the ID in
Belinda Brown's mind. Meanwhile, one of the teenage boys who
were interviewed back in December of seventy four was now
willing to say that he recognized Don Roberts from a
car that had passed by the liquor store that night,
and Glenn and Don were taking the trial in June
of seventy five, where the defense strategy focused on impeaching
(10:34):
Belinda Brown, who is now even more confident in her ID.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
And it had us to stand next to each other.
She was five eight, I was five eighting.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
She said, well, you lucky taller than him, and she said, well,
he might have had on stack your shoes. She was
defined because she knows she picked this and a winter.
Well I could have got to this defense statement. Oh
Wilders dreams and mob fails Wilder's dream.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Meanwhile, six alibi witnesses made the trip from Harvey, Louisiana
to testify it by the pool tournament on December thirtieth
and the Turkey Bowl the following day, which made it
impossible for Glenn to have been an edmund to commit
this crime. No, thanks to his attorney, Henry Floyd, though.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
No, we put that together, My family put that together.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
What he did was so he went to the court
and solicited money for travel expenses and lodgsing and stuff,
and put that money in his pocket and the people
had to find their own way to get here.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Six of them witness. He didn't even call them. All
he said would be redundant, so he didn't even bring
all the witness up.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
But the police never did investigate none of the alibi
witness and stuff that I gave him. You gotta report
say anything with the Dallas and looked at Don's He
had gave alibi that he was in Dallas, and the
detectives went to Dallas and checked out the alibi and
come back inconclusively. They couldn't prove that he was in there,
but they decided to say they couldn't prove that he was.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
You know, with Glenn and Don's alibi defenses, coupled with
the impeaching evidence against Belinda Brown, reasonable doubt had certainly
been raised and there was at least some hope for
a quittal.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
I thought I was going to walk up out of there. No,
I couldn't see no conviction. What's nothing to convict me on.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
It?
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Then?
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Last two and a half days. Just send us a
debt in the elected chair. Yeah, I don't have to
say any more about that. You know, some wounds you
let stay closed.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
Right, Wrongful conviction has always given voice to innocent people
in prison.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Now we're expanding that voice to you. Call us at
eight three three two O seven four six sixty six
and leave us a message. Tell us how these powerful,
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(12:56):
seven four six sixty.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Six seventy five day.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
What they call a mandatory dead penoty if they find
you guilty of one two three elements of murder, like
you kill the police, or he kills about it being
the commission of a feling, he kills about it at
a certain age, or something like that. That he was
automatically given the dead penet and the jury had no
discretion and to rendering up the punishment because it was
set by legislative back it was automatic dead penalty.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
That's one of the reason why it was abolish.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
In June of nineteen seventy two, the Supreme Court ruled
in Furman versus Georgia that the death penalty violated the
Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments under certain circumstances, placing a four
year moratorium on executions until more challenges would bring about
guidance on the matter.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
US Supreme Court stayed the death penalty across the country, saying,
the death penalties being administered arbitrarily and capriciously, and so
Oklahoma and several other states response to that was, Okay,
you don't think that we administered the death penalty evenly
and equally, great, Well, we're just going to administer it
to everyone that is convicted of first degree murder. And
(14:10):
so that's the statute that Glenn was convicted under. Now,
that statute was appealed, and the Supreme Court came back
and rendered a decision on a group of statutes, including Oklahoma's,
saying basically, no, guys, we didn't mean to kill everyone.
We meant that you got to make it somewhat fair.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
In nineteen seventy six, the Supreme Court confirmed that capital
punishment was still legal in the United states, but under
limited circumstances, so the interim statutes in states like Oklahoma
were nullified, and in their place came the aggravating and
mitigating processes that we see used today, in which juries
have a say in sentencing. The Supreme Court ruling played
(14:52):
out differently in each state, but in Oklahoma, Glenn's sentence
and all others rendered before nineteen seventy six were commuted
by the Oklahoma Supreme Court to life, with the possibility
of parole from there. His direct appeal failed and financially
he was unable to mount anything further, which made the
parole board his only viable avenue at the time.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
I stayed in for forty eight years because my innocence
was my burden, so it was more of a luxury
to be guilty. Guys into guilty please for all kinds
of atrocious crimes. But they go through the parole board
and they tell them I feel regret and I feel remorse,
I take responsibility for my crime, and they give them
a parole, let them go six to eighteen months, they'd
be back in again.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
They let them go again.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
But I went up for thirty something years saying that
I'm innocent and it was denied because I didn't show remorse.
You know, I take responsibility, notwithstanding the fact that the
victim's sister wrote them a letter, sent them a video
deposition telling them, you know, I don't think mister Simmons
killed my sister. I think my sister and mister Simmons
victims of the same crime.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
In addition to the victim's sister, the prosecuting attorney, Bob Mildfeldt,
also came forward.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Like ninety three first letter he wrote, telling him that
he think I was innocent and I didn't get a
fair trial. I took it to the parole Board and
they accused me of forging the letter and denied me.
So at that time it was going up annually for
the row. So the next year I had myfl to
write the parole board itself, and he wrote him and
told him, he said, this is one case.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I'm sure a.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Week later that the verdict would have been different because
of all the unasked questions we had. You know, he
described the description that didn't fit me in all of this.
It's in letters that he wrote to the parole board.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
The exact quote is very powerful when talking about Belinda
Brown's description of the assailant at around six foot two
hundred pounds quote, a physical description greatly different from Glenn's
stature at the time. The jury on that day at
that time found him guilty. However, quite candidly, it was
one of the few cases I've been involved in that
the verdict a week later could easily have been different
(16:52):
end quote. Yet he was denied by the parole board
again in nineteen eighty six, but Bob milefelt the letter
was not a dead end. It gave Glynn an idea
that up until then he hadn't had the funds to
follow through on.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
In the nineties, Glenn strikes up a relationship with a
woman on the outside and they get married, and she
dies about six months after her and Glenn get married.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
My wife left me some money in an insurance policy,
and so I took the money and I had a
private investigator. I gave him a list of what I wanted,
but he came back with ten times more than I
had on the list.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
His name is Mike Noble, and Mike ended up talking
the Edmund City Attorney into turning over the entire file
from Glenn's case from seventy four to seventy five.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
If you remember, Belinda Brown seemed confused at the preliminary
hearing about whether Glenn and Don were the men she
had identified in the lineup. His private investigator turned up
the original lineup that seemed to have made Bob mildfelt
so confident in that idea trial.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
From what we can tell, the only thing the prosecution
had was the actual lineup that had the names of
the people, you know, spot one, spot two through seven,
and it has the date February seventh and eighth, and
so it's not a report, it's just a lineup. And
(18:15):
then there are stars above Glenn and Dawn's names.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
That's it. Then in the file from the Edmund City Attorney,
that lineup sheet was accompanied by the report of who
she actually chose.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
And so in the report it says Blenda Brown subject
number six confidently and she's not so sure about subject
number blank. And then it talks about her coming back
the next day again affirmatively id in subject number six
and then saying yes, I am now more confident that
(18:49):
subject number and the report has a blank. Is the
other suspect the actual lineup that had the spot one,
spot two through Glenn was two, Don Roberts was four,
Delbert Patterson was six, Leonard Patterson was seven.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
She consistently said, I picked number six.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
You see, she never picked Linson from a line up
all the way through and all the narratives is attacking
the witness. Well, my thing is give the witness to
benefit it out. Because she told them whose shadow. She
told them exactly who. She didn't picked nobody else. She
never did pick me.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
She picked Delbert Patterson. And then the report says suspect
number and it has a blank. So we're not actually
sure who the other person was that she picked, because
this report that was not disclosed and discovered twenty years
later is blank on who it is now, and there's
a lot of other surrounding evidence to make us believe
(19:45):
that it was Leonard Patterson. Leonard and Delbert were out
killing people and robin people at this time. They had
weapons that match the type of caliber that wounded Brown
and killed Miss Rogers. They were suspected of having been
in the area. The sketch of the suspect looks very
much like Leonard Patterson. Matter of fact, I put pictures
(20:07):
of Leonard in the briefire road along with the composite sketch.
It's a striking resemblance.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
And as we mentioned, Delbert and Leonard Patterson matched Belinda
Brown's description of her assailants.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Six two hundred pounds. And where this would lead to
clearly is police conspiracy cover up. There's no way I
could have got to that defense table without the police
hiding the reports because witness told the mousada.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
And it appears that Bob Mildfeld and everyone else, including
Belinda Brown, were just led to believe that she had
chosen Glenn Simmons and Don Roberts by the lineup sheet
that had been marked with stars. It's entirely possible that
Bob Mildfeld found out about the treachery after trial, and
perhaps that's what compelled him to write to the parole
board on Glenn's behalf.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
I asked him about it, what happened a week later,
and I concluded that he didn't never have the reports,
and after week after the conviction, I.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Checked this out.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
He was an upcoming prosecuting attorney, just successfully prosecuted two
first degree murder case in the high profile murder case
that was all dissolved. His career is supposed to be
in skyrocketing at the very least. But when I ran
into him years later, he was a public defendant for
the Juvenile Division and he stayed there for years and
years until he retired.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Perhaps he made that career choice considering what he was
led to do to not only Glennon Donn, but also
the victims, Carol and Sue Rodgers and Belinda Brown.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
You had the victim pick who it was, Delbert and
Leonard Patterson, who were already in custody for doing the
exact same shit that you're looking for these two suspects on,
and then you hide that report and you pin it
on two other guys. Now the big question is why.
(21:50):
My speculation is we got those two black guys, let's
get a couple others.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
And this was done with a crime that carried an
automatic death sentence.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
There's a name for that attempted murder. Nobody didn't want
to talk about it because it's real explosive, but it
happened to me, and I'm going to talk about it.
Not only was it attempted murder, it's excessive to murder
because you assist the perpetrators in getting away after she
told you it was. It wasn't just no mischaracter justice
(22:22):
or a misidentification, and that was deliberate, conscious, and deliberate.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
It wasn't no mistake.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
So Glenn goes and takes the rest of his money
that he got from his deceased wife and pays an
attorney to take this report back into court. This was
Glenn's first post conviction or habeas. It was a straight
Brady claim. Essentially, you got to turn over exculpatory defendants.
But it's a skeleton pleading. He doesn't lay out why
(23:05):
this report is so consequential, and if you are going
to ask a judge to overturn a black man's murder convention,
you have to come correct and throwing something that you
found that is good evidence, exculpatory evidence, onto a skeleton
pleading that doesn't lay out why it's important and how
(23:28):
it completely takes out the base of the state's case
where the government and judges have no choice. That's what
you got to do to win these things. You have
to give the government, prosecutors, judges no choice but to
see innocence and then hope at that point that the prosecutor, judge, pardoner,
(23:50):
and pro board governor whoever it is with the authority
you're asking to make this decision has a conscience on him. Well,
the lawyer in the nineties did not lay it out.
He said, this is new evidence, this is Brady. You
got to give us a new trial at least, and
did not show that this report not only is Brady,
(24:10):
but it proves Glenn innocent. And he just didn't lay
it out correctly. Well, the attorney ends up getting shot
down and state district court takes it to the Court
of Criminal Appeals. Basically a speed bump on the way
to federal court goes to federal court district court. They
don't do anything. Glenn runs out of money, the attorneys
don't even bother trying to do anything in the Tenth Circuit.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Meanwhile, Glenn and Donn had been trying their hands at
the parole board each year.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
We went up for parole two thousand and five and
we both got majority to the votes from the parole board,
but the governor turned us down. In Oklahoma, even when
you get but George is still up to the governor,
and so he turned us down. Stipulations to come back
up in three years. But by the time we rolled around,
I had two or three misconducts. They started letting sell
(25:00):
phones into the penitentiary and I had a cell phone,
so that was on me if you got a write
up and you can't go off for parole. And so
I missed it that year and he got out and
I didn't. After that, politics changed and it was hard
to get out.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Glenn faced denials in court and at the parole board,
even with this report proving that he and Don Roberts
had not been identified by the victim. And since his
attorney raised the evidence on appeal and was denied, it
became procedurally defaulted. Eventually, it took a convergence of events
and people to bring about justice in this case. First,
Joe Norwood's work feeing two other innocent men put him
(25:37):
on Glenn's radar, while media coverage of Glenn's case did
the same for Joe.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
The local reporter in Oklahoma City, Ali Meyer, did some
fantastic reporting on Glenn's case. Glenn reached out to me
and asked me to get into the case. And so
I read the transcript some of the reports and it
was clear Glenn was innocent, and at that point I
knew what I had to do. It was the end
of twenty nineteen early twenty twe I spent two years investigating,
(26:03):
putting it together, making sure we had everything.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
In addition, Glenn's evidence of actual innocence could finally be
raised again in court, this time effectively as a new
court ruling came to.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Pass Fortnight versus Crow. It's a tenth circuit case. It's
deal with newly presented evidence. If you could make a
colorable showing on actual innocence, then the jug would drive
all procedure bars and that you proceed if you had
newly presented evidence. And so what became with a new
presentation of the evidence instead of attacking the witness in
(26:33):
corner with the same night, if we switched it all
the way around.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Glynn had been battling this case for decades, long before
I ever came around. He knew all this stuff inside
and out. And he pointed out to me quickly, he's
just like listen, Blinda Brown was right. She picked the
right guys. I think that's who did it, and I
put that in the brief, And so we ended up
filing Glenn's case in mid twenty twenty one and then
(26:58):
evidentially hearing in being set April twenty twenty three, We
ended up putting fifteen witnesses on a stand. We had
an expert and eyewitness identification that looked over the case
and rendered an opinion that Blenda Brown's identification of Glenn
in court is just not an identification at all. We
ended up having total twelve alibi witnesses that testified that
(27:23):
Glenn was in New Orleans at the time. Bob Mihlefelt
testified that report was not in the file, and I
acknowledged that that report does a lot of damage to
the state's case. It impeaches Blnda Brown's testimony.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Unfortunately, Bob Milefelt didn't have any information as to how
or why that report was missing from his trial evidence,
as well as who might have starred Don and Glenn's
names on the bogus lineup sheet. But fortunately all of
this was playing out across from the newly elected DA
in Oklahoma County, Vicky Bihenna, who eventually joined their motion
to vacate, and on July twentieth, twenty twenty three, Judge
(27:58):
Palumbo vacated a conviction and ordered a new trial, and
Glenn was released on bond for the first time in
forty eight years, one month, in eighteen days.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
That was the moment, That was the first moment I
stepped out, you know, into freedom, when they took the
cuffsaus and I walked out of the courtroom unescored it.
That was it, but being born again, like the buildable
card has just been severed. You see the picture that
I took with my hands up in the air. I
think it's all my gofund me and it's been getting
(28:29):
better every day.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Shortly after this, in September twenty twenty three, Victory Bahenna
said that they didn't have sufficient evidence to move forward
with a trial. It was still a far cry from
being declared innocent.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Vicky Behenna. She objected to Glenn being found actually innocent,
So we had to fight that out a lot.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Oh here's what she said.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
One of the winds is still alive and sticking to
a story. We can't find you guilty, but we're gonna
let you slide. I'm like bullshit. I responded that I'm
sticking to a story too.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
The victims opinion is that she identified the right people. Well,
you damn right, she picked the right people. It was
Delbra Patterson and Leonard Patterson. And miss Beheen is correct.
We need to respect her id.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
As they damn well should have way back in nineteen
seventy five.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
So they didn't have nothing to do but to throw
it out. It was no defense for it.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
In December twenty twenty three, Glenn Simmons was declared actually innocent,
clearing the path for his civil litigation. But as listeners
of the show know, that can take a very long time.
In addition, as we record this, Glenn is undergoing chemotherapy
as he battles a stage four cancer diagnosis, so he
needs your support right now. As he mentioned, there's a GoFundMe.
(29:46):
It's going to be linked in the episode description, so
please give what you can. And with that, we're going
to go to closing arguments. It's where first of all,
I thank you to amazing man Joe Norwood and Glenn Simmons,
and I'm gonna turn off my microphone, kick back in
my chair with my headphones on and just close my
eyes and just listen to anything else you have to
(30:06):
share with me and our phenomenal audience. So Joe, you
go first, that's our tradition, and then just sort of
hand the microphone off to Glenn, and Glenn will take
us off into the sunset.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
You know we've covered it. It's I mean, I don't
view this as a grandiose statement. It's a historic case.
He's the longest serving wrongful conviction in the history of
the United States. He was sentenced to death and eventually
found and proven by clearing, convincing evidence to be innocent.
(30:39):
I don't have to say any more for people to
understand the gravity and what this case says about our
system planning.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
And I'm trying to launch my nonprofit and nonprofits. Grace
Redempson is salvation perfect for me to foot me integration.
So I want to get it to this reintegration thing.
I got this planned by this wrap around support system
for guys coming out. There's a lot of guys at
the same position that I was in, even worse because
they don't have the support that I had, and some
(31:11):
of them getting ready to be released.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Now.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
My objective is to curtail recidivism because these statistics seventy
two seventy one, seventy two percent of all inmates get
out going to return back to prison within six to
eighteen months, and this statistics has stood for twenty thirty
years for the numbers to see that consistent.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Then somebody delibered it.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
Got their hands on the scale, and all I know
is prison in and out. Like I said, I've seen guys,
brilliant guys who've got college degrees and all kind of
skills come back over and over again.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
And I've offered wonder why why they come back?
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Then they don't come back because they wanted to come back,
because they haven't had time to adjust, they haven't had
time to make the transition, they haven't had that wrap
around support system. And so this is what my nonprofit
going on intels and I would like to focus on
the women. Oklahoma quite one of the best kept secret
is that. And you don't hear politicians, of journalists or
(32:05):
nobody talking about this. Oklahoma is number one and the
incarceration of women and they have held that do.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Be just distinction for thirty years or more.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
And I'm not just talking about the number one in
the United States. I'm talking about the world over and
nobody mentioned this. It's just like you ask the questions,
why you know it's the women know Kaoma one inclined
to be criminals or they moved even than anybody else, and.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Nobody gonna answer that question say yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
And if you can answer that question and say yeah
to that question, then it's got to be the legislators.
We're a nation of laws, right, so it's got to
be the legislators doing this. So, you know, we really
need to rethink and reconsider the way we do this
criminal justice and the way we apply these things. And
so this is where I want to dedicate some of
my time and effort towards because I've had first saying
(32:50):
experience with it.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
You know, thank you for listening to Wrong for Conviction.
Listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts
one week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus
on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team,
Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow
(33:11):
executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn. The
music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across
all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at
Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at
It's Jason Vlahm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava
for Good podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one
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