April 1, 2024 • 30 mins
On the morning of February 19th, 2022, Cassandra Black Elk awoke to find her three-week-old daughter StarLight lifeless beside her. Police insisted the baby had died due to Shaken Baby Syndrome - and that Cassandra was responsible. “They were telling me their story,” Cassandra remembers, “that somebody did something to StarLight…somebody killed her.” Cassandra knew she hadn’t hurt her baby. She asked her lawyer repeatedly - what does the autopsy report say? But by the time she got the answer, Cassandra had been convicted of having caused her daughter’s death, and was already in prison.
To learn more and get involved, visit:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/cassi-black-elk-innocent-and-finally-freed
https://www.greatnorthinnocenceproject.org
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freleng is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
In February of twenty twenty two. Cassandra black Elk was
a young mother of three living in Bismarck, North Dakota.
Her girls were her whole world. Six year old de
Laiza loved school and wanted to be a biologist. One
year old a Maria already had a strong personality. Cassie
called her their wild child, and Starlight was the baby,
(00:29):
just three weeks old. On the evening of February eighteenth,
Cassie was at home with the girls and Starlight's father,
Seth Eagle.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Chilling, hanging out with my kids. We was watching a movie.
It was cooking supper.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Seth left around midnight to go hang out with friends.
Cassie fed Starlight and put the two oldest girls to bed,
Then she lay down with Starlight beside her and fell asleep.
She woke up around six in the morning to find
Starlight wasn't breathing. Daliza called nine one one, but it
was already too late. Starlight was dead, and before she
(01:07):
could fully process what had happened, the police were telling
Cassie that she was under arrest for felony child neglect.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
They were telling me, if somebody did something to Starlight,
somebody killed her.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Cassie knew that wasn't true, and she had one question
for her lawyer, what does the autopsy report say?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I kept the same, Well, what if it came back
as I wasn't at fault? And then he was like
telling me we could deal with that later.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
But by the time she got the answer, it was
too late. Cassie was already in prison.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I'm Cassie black Elk and I was wrongfully incarcerated for
eleven months.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
From Lava for Good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie
Freeling today. Cassandra blackout O. Cassandra black Elk was born
(02:17):
August fourth, nineteen ninety five, in Bismarck, North Dakota. She's
a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe. Cassie grew
up in Rapid City, South Dakota, the middle child of nine.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
It was.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Busy, chaotic, closest to my three little sisters. We'd always
play house school, went swimming at the Why all the time.
We just ran around the trailer park that we used
to live in and hung out with all our friends. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Cassie had her first daughter, Daliza, at nineteen, with a
boyfriend from high school. At age twenty two, she decided
to move back to Bismarck to go to school. She
had plans to become a social worker. Cassie's second daughter, Amara,
was born in twenty twenty and then Starlight. When was Starlight.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Born January twenty fifth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
How did you meet Starlight's dad?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Up here hanging out with friends? Yeah, meant the first
year I moved up here.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Cassie and Seth Eagle moved in together and at twenty
six years old, Cassie was happy to be a stay
at home mom. She loved hanging out with her girls.
Seth helped to support Starlight and Cassie's two older daughters
with oil royalties he received as a member of the
Mja tribe the Mandan Hidatsa and Arikara nation. On the
(03:45):
evening of February eighteenth, twenty twenty two, Cassie, Seth, and
the girls were all at home together. So what do
you remember from that night?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Like?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
How did the night start? Tell me? I guess from
the beginning.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I don't know. We were hanging out after my oldest
got back from school. We was watching a movie, We
was cooking supper, barbecue chicken, steamed veggies, and mashed potatoes.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
At what point you and Seth got in an argument?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yes, yeah, well yeah, well we was kind of fighting
throughout that whole day. Really.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
As the evening went on, Cassie and Seth began drinking,
and when their fight turned physical, Cassie ended up with
a bloodied ear. Finally, Seth stormed out to go see
some friends.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, he was there all the way up until I
don't know about midnight one.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Or some Yeah, and what'd you do when he left?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Fed my daughter and laid down with them.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
So when you guys go to sleep, everything was normal.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I thought it was normal.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I just I didn't think I was gonna wake up too.
Everything gone. What do you remember waking up?
Speaker 5 (05:08):
It's okay, Cassie, my daughter gone.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
She was she was stiff and cold. I was freaking out.
My oldest had to call nine on one.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
And then when the police got there, what happened.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Well, right away they were questioning me at my house.
I wasn't even with them in my house for a
full ten minutes. They wanted to know what happened here.
I was trying to get a hold of someone to
get a hold of Seth and they told me I
needed to get off my phone. They noticed I had
(05:56):
a bloody ear, and after that they told me to
go to the police station.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
And then what happens at the police station.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
They start questioning me.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Were they questioning or were they kind of telling you?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Oh? Yeah, they were telling me their story.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Which was what what was their story?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Somebody did something to starlight, somebody killed her.
Speaker 6 (06:40):
So that first interrogation that she goes into is actually
three hours long, and you can imagine the state that
she was in given the timing of the interrogation. My
name is Jim Mayer and I'm a managing attorney with
the Great North Innocence Project. The officers doing the interrogation
(07:02):
are convinced and have jumped to the conclusion that Cassie
has done something to the baby. They begin their interrogation
by telling her that the child had bruising, that they
could tell the child had some injury. They start to
speculate that maybe there was some kind of abusive event,
maybe there was shaking. They start describing the symptoms of
shaking baby syndrome to her and how that could have happened.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Remember, this is just a few hours after Cassie had
found Starlight lifeless beside her. The officers telling her all
this were not trained medical professionals, and the body had
not even been examined yet.
Speaker 6 (07:40):
It sounded to me like one of those officers had
recently been to a training and learned about shaken baby syndrome,
which of course is a highly controversial and dubious diagnosis,
as any of us who work in this industry know.
But he started explaining to Cassie in this interrogation room
what happens when you shake a baby and how you know.
(08:00):
That seemed to fit the situation that she was in.
Couldn't have been further from the truth, but he was
insisting that that was probably what had happened here and
trying to get her to confess to it. She continued
throughout this interrogation to insist that there were no injuries,
that the baby was fine when she had given her
a bottle and swaddled her and put her to bed
around one or two in the morning, and that there
(08:22):
was no injury.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So the officers ramped up their interrogation.
Speaker 6 (08:26):
They would try all of these techniques, like telling her
you didn't mean to do it, whatever you did was
an accident. You just lost control, that maybe the baby
was crying, maybe the baby couldn't sleep, maybe she got
frustrated and just lost control and shook the baby. Just
tell us that you're a person who needs help and
not an evil person, right, and that things will go
(08:46):
better for you, or they would tell her that, you know,
the autopsy is going to come back and it's going
to show there's trauma. You're much better off if you
just tell us now what you did, it's going to
go better for a jury. They even told her that
Child Protective Services had taken her other two children and
that she wouldn't get them back unless she was willing
to say what it was she did to this baby
(09:08):
to cause its death, which of course put her in
an impossible situation because she didn't do anything, and she
knew she didn't do anything, nor had her boyfriend, and
so she maintained her innocence throughout this interrogation despite the
pressure that they put on her.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Did you start questioning yourself at any point? Were you wondering, like,
maybe maybe I did roll over on her because she
was in the bed with you.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Right, Yeah? But no, no, because the way I had
her sleeping. She was out a slant away from me
and my girls were on the other side, and I
woke up in the same spot, literally, like the same
way when I went to bed.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Three days later, on February twenty second, Cassie was trying
charged with felony child's neglect. That same day, state medical
examiner doctor Barry Miller performed an autopsy on Starlight. The
autopsy was attended by the state's attorney, Julie Lawyer, and
several officers from the Bismarck Police Department. While they were
still awaiting the autopsy results, Cassie's case was going forward.
(10:20):
She was assigned to public defender James Lores.
Speaker 6 (10:24):
And the first thing that happens is they have a
bail hearing that the prosecution comes in. It says, look,
this is an infant death case. We need to set
bail at a high level. She couldn't meet it, so
she's stuck. She's behind bars, awaiting trial. She's got two
young children from whom she separated at this incredibly dramatic time,
So that's one layer of pressure that was added to her.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
And I guess maybe I'm missing something, But how is
she able to be charged without even having a medical diagnosis.
Can they do that? I mean, I've never seen that.
Speaker 6 (10:58):
The charging documents in her case, which came out on
February nineteenth, what they said was, we know that she
was responsible for the death, but we don't yet know
the mechanism of the death, pending the autopsy results. So
it was just the you know, a perfect example of
(11:18):
a rush to a conclusion with really no solid foundation
for it whatsoever, just assumptions that were made. Then, when
a plea deal is offered by the prosecution, her lawyer
urges her to take the deal.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Well, he said that they were considering of two years
and he was going to talk to them and see
if he get it out to eighteen months. And that's
when I went to eighteen months.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
That following week, her attorney was trying to rush Cassie
into taking the plea because he knew that the prosecute
was leaving for private practice in a few weeks after that.
He said the deal might be off the table.
Speaker 6 (12:07):
And he says things like, you'll be out before you
know it. You're pleading guilty, you'll get a five year sentence,
but you'll only serve about eighteen months. And you'll be
out before you know it. Cassie was resistant to that
for good reason. She kept saying, I know I didn't
do anything to my child. I'm innocent. When can we
see a copy of the autopsy report?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
I kept asking him for the autopsy. I kept said
the same, Well, what if it came back as I
wasn't at fault.
Speaker 6 (12:35):
Ultimately, what her lawyer says to her is, you're getting
ahead of yourself for now. Just plead guilty. If the
autopsy comes back favorable to you, we'll deal with that later.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
How did that make you feel when he was like, no, no,
and just kind of brushed something so important aside.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Like it didn't matter. I don't think it mattered to anybody.
How Starlight passed away.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
At her lawyer's urging, Cassie finally gave in and pled
guilty to the charge of felony child's neglect. The plea
deal did not mention Starlight's death. It simply said that
Cassie had willfully failed to provide proper parental care or
control necessary for the physical health of her baby. She
received a sentence of five years, with all but eighteen
(13:26):
months of it suspended because Seth was not the father
of the two older girls. They were placed in foster care.
Cassie was sent to the Dakota Women's Correctional Center in
New England, North Dakota.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
What was prison like? Well, I don't recommend it to nobody.
Everybody says it's a cakewalk and what not, but it wasn't.
It's like how, It's just how.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
When you first got in there, did you tell anybody
like I don't belong here. I didn't do.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
This, yep. I told everyone that every day. A lot
of girls in there just content with that life.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Not me.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
So that's not me, that's not my life. I couldn't
relate to half their stories. I just didn't know what
to say to half of them. I was always just
angry because I felt like I shouldn't have been in jail.
Everybody heard it from me. Oh no, I lost my daughter.
None of that made sense, none of it was okay.
(14:27):
So I was always mad.
Speaker 6 (14:31):
So here she is, she's pled guilty, she's been sentenced,
she's in prison serving her sentence, and her lawyer had
essentially told her that he couldn't help her get the
autopsy report at that point, but she didn't give up.
She kept working on her own to get a copy
of it.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Cassie called the Medical Examiner's office in Bismarck over and
over from prison, asking for the report. Finally she was
able to fill out an online form to have it
mailed to her, and then she waited and waited. Three
months went by.
Speaker 6 (15:08):
And then eventually she gets that copy, I think sometime
in July of twenty twenty two, where she gets to read,
you know, the story of what actually happened to her
baby for the first time.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
You're listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. You can
listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts
one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava
for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Doctor Miller's final autopsy
(15:55):
report was dated May twenty seven, twenty twenty two, two
weeks after cast entered her plea, and it confirmed what
she had always known, which she had tried to tell
everyone that she hadn't done anything to hurt her baby.
There was no evidence of neglect, trauma, or abuse. Three
week old Starlight had died of unexplained sudden infant death syndrome.
(16:26):
Do you remember that moment when you got it and
reading it.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, I felt a whole lot of relief, but didn't
really do much. So I was just sat there crying
because there was nothing I could do. I was already
sent in prison.
Speaker 7 (16:43):
My name's Adam Martin. I'm ten years sober, formally incarcerated,
have multiple felonies on my background.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Adam is the founder and CEO of the F five Project,
a nonprofit based in Fargo, North Dakota. It provides the
formally incarcerated with support and re entry resources.
Speaker 7 (17:01):
You know, all my friends were either dying or going
to prison, and so after the last friend had went
to prison and then the couple had overdosed off fetanol
or heroin or whatever, I just felt like I wanted
to do something different than what was being done. There
was no real plan to start it. I just started
(17:22):
going into the jail and trying to help guys that
were being released, really just through storytelling. I didn't have
any services or resources or anything. And then what happened
is is that the guy started calling me when they
were getting out of prison or jail, and I didn't
have anything, so I just let him sleep on my couch.
And then it turned into seven years later, we have
(17:42):
over sixty employees in that we're in nine different cities
and have three transitional houses or three cities that we
have transitional houses in Okay.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
So what is far going North Dakota, Like, I mean,
maybe tell me a little bit about the demographic. I mean,
we know Cassie is Indigenous, so tell me about it.
Speaker 7 (18:00):
Yeah, So the landscape is you know, obviously it's like
eighty five percent white. We have there's not even a
million people in North Dakota, Okay. So there's like seven
hundred and seventy thousand of that seven seventy to about
two hundred and forty thousand identifies having a criminal conviction.
And so we're about twenty eight percent of our general
(18:22):
population identify as that, which is about three percent higher
than the national average. Of that Native Americans or Indigenous
people account for around five percent of the population, but
they account for twenty five percent of the prison population.
And so a lot of the stuff that we see
nationally trending is similar here, but just with different groups
(18:43):
and then higher percentages.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Adam's work with F five led him to joining the
board of the Great North Innocence Project, where he met
Jim in August of twenty twenty two, they went together
to speak about their organizations at the New England Women's Prison.
Speaker 7 (19:00):
And so this young Native American woman came up to
me and she was very timid, and she couldn't even
look me in the eye. She was shaking, she was teary,
teary eyed, and she just all she said to me
was I don't belong here.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Cassie told Adam that she was in prison for killing
her baby, but she was innocent. And then she told
him about the autopsy report.
Speaker 7 (19:27):
And I've been in court enough to know that autosy
reports are a big deal, right, And the fact that
it came out after she was convicted sent off a
red flag. And I was like, okay, well what did
it say? And she said that my baby died of SIDS.
And so I introduced her right there to James. And
(19:47):
when we left the prison, James came up to me
and he was like, we have a case. She has
a case, and we're going to get her released.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
In a way, her story was just so simple and straightforward.
You know, you tell a lot of these stories and
you see how convoluted they can be. Cassie's story is
not convoluted at all. There was a tragic death of
her baby that could not have been prevented by anyone.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
In December of twenty twenty two, Jim moved to vacate
Cassie's conviction, citing the autopsy report as new evidence, and
also that Cassie's attorney had provided ineffective representation by advising
her to take the plea and evidentiary hearing was held
on January nineteenth, twenty twenty three, before Judge Daniel Borkin.
Speaker 6 (20:53):
We presented the testimony from the medical examiner herself. She
testified about the fact that there was no trauma in
this case, that there was no evidence that the death
resulted from something Cassie did or did not do.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Doctor Miller told the court that she would have been
willing to share her preliminary findings with the defense prior
to the final report, but Cassie's defense attorney never asked
for it. The prosecution, however, knew all along what it
would say.
Speaker 6 (21:20):
One of the claims we made in our petition was
that the state's attorney was present at the autopsy, so
she knew that the autopsy was not showing any signs
of trauma. And yet she managed to extract a guilty
plea without disclosing what she knew.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
But in addition to the evidence they had, Jim knew
that in order to present the most effective case, Cassie
would have to testify.
Speaker 6 (21:44):
And I was a little nervous about telling her that
because she was so quiet and soft spoken. I thought
that would scare her. And she said something like, I'm ready,
I can do that, and I just thought, Wow, She's
come a long way in the few months that I've
known her in terms of her confidence, and part of
that was just that she was ready to tell her story.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
So Cassie took the stand and told Judge Borgan everything
that had happened.
Speaker 6 (22:07):
The conversations with her defense lawyer, where she's professing her
innocence and saying I want the autopsy. I want the autopsy,
and he's telling her, just take this plea. We'll deal
with that later. She tells that entire story, and her
testimony was very, very credible, which the judge found and
that was a big reason why he granted relief.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Cassie was released from prison the next day pending a
new trial.
Speaker 6 (22:35):
And one of the North Dakota Supreme Court justices actually
wrote separately to say that with the new evidence of
the autopsy report, it's very likely that she would be
acquitted at trial as a matter of law, because they
just didn't have the evidence.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
At that point. Jim says, the state had a decision
to make.
Speaker 6 (22:53):
Do they now let the case go or do they
choose to recharge her. Again, very disappointed to learn from
them that they and to continue to prosecute. So they
shifted their theory to say that because Cassie had been
drinking alcohol that night, regardless of whether that had anything
to do with her baby's death, that in and of itself,
(23:17):
drinking alcohol while you have children at home is felony
child neglect, and so they pursued the case on that theory.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Has that ever been a precedent that was set before
drinking equals felony child neglect?
Speaker 6 (23:32):
I have not seen an example where that fact alone
was constituting felony child neglect. That really makes you wonder
in terms of a charging decision, whether a middle class
white mother who'd had a few glasses of wine at
the ballet and was still under the influence when she
relieved the nanny would be charged. I seriously doubt it.
(23:54):
I spoke to a lot of other defense lawyers about this,
you know, in other states around the country, and what
I heard mostly was your client's not white, is she m?
I said, no, she isn't. So I guess sometimes drinking
while being non white and in charge of children could
get in some more trouble than other folks would see.
(24:23):
I think some assumptions were made based on who Cassie
is and what she looks like, and what community she
comes from. I also think that on all sides of
the issue, people didn't think that it was such a
big deal for Cassie to go to prison for eighteen months.
I mean, even her own lawyer told her something to
the effect of you'll be home before you know it.
(24:46):
She'd never been in prison before. This was a totally
new experience for her, so the idea that they wouldn't
be such a big deal to go to prison for
eighteen months is just shocking.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
After Judge Morgan's ruling, this Date continued with its efforts
to prosecute Cassie, but when the judge ordered them to
identify specific conduct from Cassie that constituted felony child neglect,
they were unable to do so because she wasn't guilty.
So on October nineteenth, twenty twenty three, the state moved
to dismiss the charges. Cassie was finally free. Adam remember
(25:22):
seeing her united with her two daughters.
Speaker 7 (25:26):
I got a picture of when they were all hanging
out and they were hugging her, and I just, I
just I was emotional wreck. Just the moment of joy
that that she's feeling at that moment. Enclosure was it was,
It was inspiring for sure.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Since then, Adam and f five have been helping Cassie
to rebuild her life outside of prison.
Speaker 7 (25:51):
I've often played out the scenario like what person would
it be the hardest for in re entry? And my
opinion is, actually, here native American female that's being released
from prison that has a bunch of felonies on her
background is by far going to be the most stigmatized.
Speaker 6 (26:10):
You know, one of the worst things that happened to
her was that when she was arrested, she was absolutely
savaged in the Bismarck media. You know, her mugshot was
plastered on the front pages of papers with a headline
suggesting that she was a baby killer, right that she'd
been arrested for killing her own child, and that was
(26:31):
so awful for her to see that and to have
that be the story about her, to have her name
associated with that. I think it started to feel empowering
for her to take back her name and take back
her own narrative.
Speaker 7 (26:44):
And so through all that stuff that she'd been through,
that negative mindset that exists is basically just one big
ball of trauma. And so if your listeners are you know,
praying people, or if they're you know, thoughtful people, just
having her in your thoughts and just given sending her
good vibes and good prayers is going to be. She's
going to need it because she's got a long journey
(27:05):
ahead of her.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Eventually, Cassie hopes to return to Rapid City and to school.
For now, she's just enjoying spending time with Dealeza and
em Maria. She says that being separated for all those
months took a toll on their relationship and she's working
to rebuild that bond, and Cassie says, all three of
them mean time to heal from losing Starlight.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
I'm traumatized. It's traumatized and losing my baby, but I
went through a lot more with it. Like even my babies,
my three year old and my eight year old, are affected,
not just me.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
How often do you think about her, Cassie every day?
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Yeah, yep.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
I see my two oldest and I always think of
how would have been with all three.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
We all still talk.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
About my daughter. My oldest always talks about because she
remembers how she was. She was a calm little baby.
My three year old she doesn't understand it. She kind
of makes me laugh. She thinks she carries my starlight
in her stomach. Whenever she gets really fool or she's
(28:40):
done eating a snack, she'll say, Starlight's making her stomach
hurt because.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
It looks like she's pregnant.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yeah, she's really funny with all that. Or like three
peas in a pod.
Speaker 5 (29:00):
Yeah, I always tease everybody and say we're cool out
in public. We'll get along, all three of us, but
we get back in our house, it's chaos disastery.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
If you'd like to help support Cassie and her daughters
as they restart their life together, there's a GoFundMe for her.
We'll have that link in the episode description. And if
you'd like to know more about the Great North Innocence
Project and the F five Project. Please check out their
links on the page as well. Thank you for listening
(29:54):
to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local
innocence organizations and go to the in the episode description
to see how you can help. I'd like to thank
our executive producers Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis,
as well as senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Kathleen Fink,
story editor Hannah Beal, and researcher Shelby Sorels. Mixing and
(30:16):
sound design are by Jackie Pauley, with additional production by
Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music is by three
time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
us on all social media platforms at Lava for Good
and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on
all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling
(30:38):
is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association
with Signal Company Number one
In February of twenty twenty two. Cassandra black Elk was
a young mother of three living in Bismarck, North Dakota.
Her girls were her whole world. Six year old de
Laiza loved school and wanted to be a biologist. One
year old a Maria already had a strong personality. Cassie
called her their wild child, and Starlight was the baby,
(00:29):
just three weeks old. On the evening of February eighteenth,
Cassie was at home with the girls and Starlight's father,
Seth Eagle.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Chilling, hanging out with my kids. We was watching a movie.
It was cooking supper.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Seth left around midnight to go hang out with friends.
Cassie fed Starlight and put the two oldest girls to bed,
Then she lay down with Starlight beside her and fell asleep.
She woke up around six in the morning to find
Starlight wasn't breathing. Daliza called nine one one, but it
was already too late. Starlight was dead, and before she
(01:07):
could fully process what had happened, the police were telling
Cassie that she was under arrest for felony child neglect.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
They were telling me, if somebody did something to Starlight,
somebody killed her.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Cassie knew that wasn't true, and she had one question
for her lawyer, what does the autopsy report say?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I kept the same, Well, what if it came back
as I wasn't at fault? And then he was like
telling me we could deal with that later.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
But by the time she got the answer, it was
too late. Cassie was already in prison.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I'm Cassie black Elk and I was wrongfully incarcerated for
eleven months.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
From Lava for Good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie
Freeling today. Cassandra blackout O. Cassandra black Elk was born
(02:17):
August fourth, nineteen ninety five, in Bismarck, North Dakota. She's
a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe. Cassie grew
up in Rapid City, South Dakota, the middle child of nine.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
It was.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Busy, chaotic, closest to my three little sisters. We'd always
play house school, went swimming at the Why all the time.
We just ran around the trailer park that we used
to live in and hung out with all our friends. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Cassie had her first daughter, Daliza, at nineteen, with a
boyfriend from high school. At age twenty two, she decided
to move back to Bismarck to go to school. She
had plans to become a social worker. Cassie's second daughter, Amara,
was born in twenty twenty and then Starlight. When was Starlight.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Born January twenty fifth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
How did you meet Starlight's dad?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Up here hanging out with friends? Yeah, meant the first
year I moved up here.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Cassie and Seth Eagle moved in together and at twenty
six years old, Cassie was happy to be a stay
at home mom. She loved hanging out with her girls.
Seth helped to support Starlight and Cassie's two older daughters
with oil royalties he received as a member of the
Mja tribe the Mandan Hidatsa and Arikara nation. On the
(03:45):
evening of February eighteenth, twenty twenty two, Cassie, Seth, and
the girls were all at home together. So what do
you remember from that night?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Like?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
How did the night start? Tell me? I guess from
the beginning.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I don't know. We were hanging out after my oldest
got back from school. We was watching a movie, We
was cooking supper, barbecue chicken, steamed veggies, and mashed potatoes.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
At what point you and Seth got in an argument?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yes, yeah, well yeah, well we was kind of fighting
throughout that whole day. Really.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
As the evening went on, Cassie and Seth began drinking,
and when their fight turned physical, Cassie ended up with
a bloodied ear. Finally, Seth stormed out to go see
some friends.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, he was there all the way up until I
don't know about midnight one.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Or some Yeah, and what'd you do when he left?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Fed my daughter and laid down with them.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
So when you guys go to sleep, everything was normal.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I thought it was normal.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I just I didn't think I was gonna wake up too.
Everything gone. What do you remember waking up?
Speaker 5 (05:08):
It's okay, Cassie, my daughter gone.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
She was she was stiff and cold. I was freaking out.
My oldest had to call nine on one.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
And then when the police got there, what happened.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Well, right away they were questioning me at my house.
I wasn't even with them in my house for a
full ten minutes. They wanted to know what happened here.
I was trying to get a hold of someone to
get a hold of Seth and they told me I
needed to get off my phone. They noticed I had
(05:56):
a bloody ear, and after that they told me to
go to the police station.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
And then what happens at the police station.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
They start questioning me.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Were they questioning or were they kind of telling you?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Oh? Yeah, they were telling me their story.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Which was what what was their story?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Somebody did something to starlight, somebody killed her.
Speaker 6 (06:40):
So that first interrogation that she goes into is actually
three hours long, and you can imagine the state that
she was in given the timing of the interrogation. My
name is Jim Mayer and I'm a managing attorney with
the Great North Innocence Project. The officers doing the interrogation
(07:02):
are convinced and have jumped to the conclusion that Cassie
has done something to the baby. They begin their interrogation
by telling her that the child had bruising, that they
could tell the child had some injury. They start to
speculate that maybe there was some kind of abusive event,
maybe there was shaking. They start describing the symptoms of
shaking baby syndrome to her and how that could have happened.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Remember, this is just a few hours after Cassie had
found Starlight lifeless beside her. The officers telling her all
this were not trained medical professionals, and the body had
not even been examined yet.
Speaker 6 (07:40):
It sounded to me like one of those officers had
recently been to a training and learned about shaken baby syndrome,
which of course is a highly controversial and dubious diagnosis,
as any of us who work in this industry know.
But he started explaining to Cassie in this interrogation room
what happens when you shake a baby and how you know.
(08:00):
That seemed to fit the situation that she was in.
Couldn't have been further from the truth, but he was
insisting that that was probably what had happened here and
trying to get her to confess to it. She continued
throughout this interrogation to insist that there were no injuries,
that the baby was fine when she had given her
a bottle and swaddled her and put her to bed
around one or two in the morning, and that there
(08:22):
was no injury.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So the officers ramped up their interrogation.
Speaker 6 (08:26):
They would try all of these techniques, like telling her
you didn't mean to do it, whatever you did was
an accident. You just lost control, that maybe the baby
was crying, maybe the baby couldn't sleep, maybe she got
frustrated and just lost control and shook the baby. Just
tell us that you're a person who needs help and
not an evil person, right, and that things will go
(08:46):
better for you, or they would tell her that, you know,
the autopsy is going to come back and it's going
to show there's trauma. You're much better off if you
just tell us now what you did, it's going to
go better for a jury. They even told her that
Child Protective Services had taken her other two children and
that she wouldn't get them back unless she was willing
to say what it was she did to this baby
(09:08):
to cause its death, which of course put her in
an impossible situation because she didn't do anything, and she
knew she didn't do anything, nor had her boyfriend, and
so she maintained her innocence throughout this interrogation despite the
pressure that they put on her.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Did you start questioning yourself at any point? Were you wondering, like,
maybe maybe I did roll over on her because she
was in the bed with you.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Right, Yeah? But no, no, because the way I had
her sleeping. She was out a slant away from me
and my girls were on the other side, and I
woke up in the same spot, literally, like the same
way when I went to bed.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Three days later, on February twenty second, Cassie was trying
charged with felony child's neglect. That same day, state medical
examiner doctor Barry Miller performed an autopsy on Starlight. The
autopsy was attended by the state's attorney, Julie Lawyer, and
several officers from the Bismarck Police Department. While they were
still awaiting the autopsy results, Cassie's case was going forward.
(10:20):
She was assigned to public defender James Lores.
Speaker 6 (10:24):
And the first thing that happens is they have a
bail hearing that the prosecution comes in. It says, look,
this is an infant death case. We need to set
bail at a high level. She couldn't meet it, so
she's stuck. She's behind bars, awaiting trial. She's got two
young children from whom she separated at this incredibly dramatic time,
So that's one layer of pressure that was added to her.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
And I guess maybe I'm missing something, But how is
she able to be charged without even having a medical diagnosis.
Can they do that? I mean, I've never seen that.
Speaker 6 (10:58):
The charging documents in her case, which came out on
February nineteenth, what they said was, we know that she
was responsible for the death, but we don't yet know
the mechanism of the death, pending the autopsy results. So
it was just the you know, a perfect example of
(11:18):
a rush to a conclusion with really no solid foundation
for it whatsoever, just assumptions that were made. Then, when
a plea deal is offered by the prosecution, her lawyer
urges her to take the deal.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Well, he said that they were considering of two years
and he was going to talk to them and see
if he get it out to eighteen months. And that's
when I went to eighteen months.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
That following week, her attorney was trying to rush Cassie
into taking the plea because he knew that the prosecute
was leaving for private practice in a few weeks after that.
He said the deal might be off the table.
Speaker 6 (12:07):
And he says things like, you'll be out before you
know it. You're pleading guilty, you'll get a five year sentence,
but you'll only serve about eighteen months. And you'll be
out before you know it. Cassie was resistant to that
for good reason. She kept saying, I know I didn't
do anything to my child. I'm innocent. When can we
see a copy of the autopsy report?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
I kept asking him for the autopsy. I kept said
the same, Well, what if it came back as I
wasn't at fault.
Speaker 6 (12:35):
Ultimately, what her lawyer says to her is, you're getting
ahead of yourself for now. Just plead guilty. If the
autopsy comes back favorable to you, we'll deal with that later.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
How did that make you feel when he was like, no, no,
and just kind of brushed something so important aside.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Like it didn't matter. I don't think it mattered to anybody.
How Starlight passed away.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
At her lawyer's urging, Cassie finally gave in and pled
guilty to the charge of felony child's neglect. The plea
deal did not mention Starlight's death. It simply said that
Cassie had willfully failed to provide proper parental care or
control necessary for the physical health of her baby. She
received a sentence of five years, with all but eighteen
(13:26):
months of it suspended because Seth was not the father
of the two older girls. They were placed in foster care.
Cassie was sent to the Dakota Women's Correctional Center in
New England, North Dakota.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
What was prison like? Well, I don't recommend it to nobody.
Everybody says it's a cakewalk and what not, but it wasn't.
It's like how, It's just how.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
When you first got in there, did you tell anybody
like I don't belong here. I didn't do.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
This, yep. I told everyone that every day. A lot
of girls in there just content with that life.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Not me.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
So that's not me, that's not my life. I couldn't
relate to half their stories. I just didn't know what
to say to half of them. I was always just
angry because I felt like I shouldn't have been in jail.
Everybody heard it from me. Oh no, I lost my daughter.
None of that made sense, none of it was okay.
(14:27):
So I was always mad.
Speaker 6 (14:31):
So here she is, she's pled guilty, she's been sentenced,
she's in prison serving her sentence, and her lawyer had
essentially told her that he couldn't help her get the
autopsy report at that point, but she didn't give up.
She kept working on her own to get a copy
of it.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Cassie called the Medical Examiner's office in Bismarck over and
over from prison, asking for the report. Finally she was
able to fill out an online form to have it
mailed to her, and then she waited and waited. Three
months went by.
Speaker 6 (15:08):
And then eventually she gets that copy, I think sometime
in July of twenty twenty two, where she gets to read,
you know, the story of what actually happened to her
baby for the first time.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
You're listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. You can
listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts
one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava
for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Doctor Miller's final autopsy
(15:55):
report was dated May twenty seven, twenty twenty two, two
weeks after cast entered her plea, and it confirmed what
she had always known, which she had tried to tell
everyone that she hadn't done anything to hurt her baby.
There was no evidence of neglect, trauma, or abuse. Three
week old Starlight had died of unexplained sudden infant death syndrome.
(16:26):
Do you remember that moment when you got it and
reading it.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, I felt a whole lot of relief, but didn't
really do much. So I was just sat there crying
because there was nothing I could do. I was already
sent in prison.
Speaker 7 (16:43):
My name's Adam Martin. I'm ten years sober, formally incarcerated,
have multiple felonies on my background.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Adam is the founder and CEO of the F five Project,
a nonprofit based in Fargo, North Dakota. It provides the
formally incarcerated with support and re entry resources.
Speaker 7 (17:01):
You know, all my friends were either dying or going
to prison, and so after the last friend had went
to prison and then the couple had overdosed off fetanol
or heroin or whatever, I just felt like I wanted
to do something different than what was being done. There
was no real plan to start it. I just started
(17:22):
going into the jail and trying to help guys that
were being released, really just through storytelling. I didn't have
any services or resources or anything. And then what happened
is is that the guy started calling me when they
were getting out of prison or jail, and I didn't
have anything, so I just let him sleep on my couch.
And then it turned into seven years later, we have
(17:42):
over sixty employees in that we're in nine different cities
and have three transitional houses or three cities that we
have transitional houses in Okay.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
So what is far going North Dakota, Like, I mean,
maybe tell me a little bit about the demographic. I mean,
we know Cassie is Indigenous, so tell me about it.
Speaker 7 (18:00):
Yeah, So the landscape is you know, obviously it's like
eighty five percent white. We have there's not even a
million people in North Dakota, Okay. So there's like seven
hundred and seventy thousand of that seven seventy to about
two hundred and forty thousand identifies having a criminal conviction.
And so we're about twenty eight percent of our general
(18:22):
population identify as that, which is about three percent higher
than the national average. Of that Native Americans or Indigenous
people account for around five percent of the population, but
they account for twenty five percent of the prison population.
And so a lot of the stuff that we see
nationally trending is similar here, but just with different groups
(18:43):
and then higher percentages.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Adam's work with F five led him to joining the
board of the Great North Innocence Project, where he met
Jim in August of twenty twenty two, they went together
to speak about their organizations at the New England Women's Prison.
Speaker 7 (19:00):
And so this young Native American woman came up to
me and she was very timid, and she couldn't even
look me in the eye. She was shaking, she was teary,
teary eyed, and she just all she said to me
was I don't belong here.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Cassie told Adam that she was in prison for killing
her baby, but she was innocent. And then she told
him about the autopsy report.
Speaker 7 (19:27):
And I've been in court enough to know that autosy
reports are a big deal, right, And the fact that
it came out after she was convicted sent off a
red flag. And I was like, okay, well what did
it say? And she said that my baby died of SIDS.
And so I introduced her right there to James. And
(19:47):
when we left the prison, James came up to me
and he was like, we have a case. She has
a case, and we're going to get her released.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
In a way, her story was just so simple and straightforward.
You know, you tell a lot of these stories and
you see how convoluted they can be. Cassie's story is
not convoluted at all. There was a tragic death of
her baby that could not have been prevented by anyone.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
In December of twenty twenty two, Jim moved to vacate
Cassie's conviction, citing the autopsy report as new evidence, and
also that Cassie's attorney had provided ineffective representation by advising
her to take the plea and evidentiary hearing was held
on January nineteenth, twenty twenty three, before Judge Daniel Borkin.
Speaker 6 (20:53):
We presented the testimony from the medical examiner herself. She
testified about the fact that there was no trauma in
this case, that there was no evidence that the death
resulted from something Cassie did or did not do.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Doctor Miller told the court that she would have been
willing to share her preliminary findings with the defense prior
to the final report, but Cassie's defense attorney never asked
for it. The prosecution, however, knew all along what it
would say.
Speaker 6 (21:20):
One of the claims we made in our petition was
that the state's attorney was present at the autopsy, so
she knew that the autopsy was not showing any signs
of trauma. And yet she managed to extract a guilty
plea without disclosing what she knew.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
But in addition to the evidence they had, Jim knew
that in order to present the most effective case, Cassie
would have to testify.
Speaker 6 (21:44):
And I was a little nervous about telling her that
because she was so quiet and soft spoken. I thought
that would scare her. And she said something like, I'm ready,
I can do that, and I just thought, Wow, She's
come a long way in the few months that I've
known her in terms of her confidence, and part of
that was just that she was ready to tell her story.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
So Cassie took the stand and told Judge Borgan everything
that had happened.
Speaker 6 (22:07):
The conversations with her defense lawyer, where she's professing her
innocence and saying I want the autopsy. I want the autopsy,
and he's telling her, just take this plea. We'll deal
with that later. She tells that entire story, and her
testimony was very, very credible, which the judge found and
that was a big reason why he granted relief.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Cassie was released from prison the next day pending a
new trial.
Speaker 6 (22:35):
And one of the North Dakota Supreme Court justices actually
wrote separately to say that with the new evidence of
the autopsy report, it's very likely that she would be
acquitted at trial as a matter of law, because they
just didn't have the evidence.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
At that point. Jim says, the state had a decision
to make.
Speaker 6 (22:53):
Do they now let the case go or do they
choose to recharge her. Again, very disappointed to learn from
them that they and to continue to prosecute. So they
shifted their theory to say that because Cassie had been
drinking alcohol that night, regardless of whether that had anything
to do with her baby's death, that in and of itself,
(23:17):
drinking alcohol while you have children at home is felony
child neglect, and so they pursued the case on that theory.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Has that ever been a precedent that was set before
drinking equals felony child neglect?
Speaker 6 (23:32):
I have not seen an example where that fact alone
was constituting felony child neglect. That really makes you wonder
in terms of a charging decision, whether a middle class
white mother who'd had a few glasses of wine at
the ballet and was still under the influence when she
relieved the nanny would be charged. I seriously doubt it.
(23:54):
I spoke to a lot of other defense lawyers about this,
you know, in other states around the country, and what
I heard mostly was your client's not white, is she m?
I said, no, she isn't. So I guess sometimes drinking
while being non white and in charge of children could
get in some more trouble than other folks would see.
(24:23):
I think some assumptions were made based on who Cassie
is and what she looks like, and what community she
comes from. I also think that on all sides of
the issue, people didn't think that it was such a
big deal for Cassie to go to prison for eighteen months.
I mean, even her own lawyer told her something to
the effect of you'll be home before you know it.
(24:46):
She'd never been in prison before. This was a totally
new experience for her, so the idea that they wouldn't
be such a big deal to go to prison for
eighteen months is just shocking.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
After Judge Morgan's ruling, this Date continued with its efforts
to prosecute Cassie, but when the judge ordered them to
identify specific conduct from Cassie that constituted felony child neglect,
they were unable to do so because she wasn't guilty.
So on October nineteenth, twenty twenty three, the state moved
to dismiss the charges. Cassie was finally free. Adam remember
(25:22):
seeing her united with her two daughters.
Speaker 7 (25:26):
I got a picture of when they were all hanging
out and they were hugging her, and I just, I
just I was emotional wreck. Just the moment of joy
that that she's feeling at that moment. Enclosure was it was,
It was inspiring for sure.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Since then, Adam and f five have been helping Cassie
to rebuild her life outside of prison.
Speaker 7 (25:51):
I've often played out the scenario like what person would
it be the hardest for in re entry? And my
opinion is, actually, here native American female that's being released
from prison that has a bunch of felonies on her
background is by far going to be the most stigmatized.
Speaker 6 (26:10):
You know, one of the worst things that happened to
her was that when she was arrested, she was absolutely
savaged in the Bismarck media. You know, her mugshot was
plastered on the front pages of papers with a headline
suggesting that she was a baby killer, right that she'd
been arrested for killing her own child, and that was
(26:31):
so awful for her to see that and to have
that be the story about her, to have her name
associated with that. I think it started to feel empowering
for her to take back her name and take back
her own narrative.
Speaker 7 (26:44):
And so through all that stuff that she'd been through,
that negative mindset that exists is basically just one big
ball of trauma. And so if your listeners are you know,
praying people, or if they're you know, thoughtful people, just
having her in your thoughts and just given sending her
good vibes and good prayers is going to be. She's
going to need it because she's got a long journey
(27:05):
ahead of her.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Eventually, Cassie hopes to return to Rapid City and to school.
For now, she's just enjoying spending time with Dealeza and
em Maria. She says that being separated for all those
months took a toll on their relationship and she's working
to rebuild that bond, and Cassie says, all three of
them mean time to heal from losing Starlight.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
I'm traumatized. It's traumatized and losing my baby, but I
went through a lot more with it. Like even my babies,
my three year old and my eight year old, are affected,
not just me.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
How often do you think about her, Cassie every day?
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Yeah, yep.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
I see my two oldest and I always think of
how would have been with all three.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
We all still talk.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
About my daughter. My oldest always talks about because she
remembers how she was. She was a calm little baby.
My three year old she doesn't understand it. She kind
of makes me laugh. She thinks she carries my starlight
in her stomach. Whenever she gets really fool or she's
(28:40):
done eating a snack, she'll say, Starlight's making her stomach
hurt because.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
It looks like she's pregnant.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yeah, she's really funny with all that. Or like three
peas in a pod.
Speaker 5 (29:00):
Yeah, I always tease everybody and say we're cool out
in public. We'll get along, all three of us, but
we get back in our house, it's chaos disastery.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
If you'd like to help support Cassie and her daughters
as they restart their life together, there's a GoFundMe for her.
We'll have that link in the episode description. And if
you'd like to know more about the Great North Innocence
Project and the F five Project. Please check out their
links on the page as well. Thank you for listening
(29:54):
to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local
innocence organizations and go to the in the episode description
to see how you can help. I'd like to thank
our executive producers Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis,
as well as senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Kathleen Fink,
story editor Hannah Beal, and researcher Shelby Sorels. Mixing and
(30:16):
sound design are by Jackie Pauley, with additional production by
Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music is by three
time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
us on all social media platforms at Lava for Good
and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on
all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling
(30:38):
is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association
with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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