July 4, 2024 • 40 mins
On January 24, 2001, a man was fatally shot while being chased from a home in Detroit, MI. Anthony Legion was one of three men who were identified as being in the home at the time of the shooting, but no one claimed to have witnessed it. Due to a combination of questionable police tactics and false testimony from a jailhouse informant, Anthony was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
In the early morning hours of January twenty fourth, two
thousand and one, gunfire erupted in front of a house
in Detroit, Michigan. Twenty five year old Jamon Mcatyre ran
toward a nearby alley, where his assailants finished the job. Initially,
two alleged witnesses claimed that they didn't see the assailants,
(00:24):
but a few weeks later, one of them identified three
men from a photo array, including Anthony Legion. Despite claims
of innocence from all three men, an alleged cellmate claimed
that they said differently in private, but this is wrongful conviction.
(00:50):
Wrongful conviction has always given voice to innocent people in prison,
and now we're expanding that voice to you. Call us
at eight three three two oh seven four six sixty
six and tell us how these stories make you feel
and what you've done to help the cause, even if
it's something as simple as telling a friend or sharing
on social media, and you might just hear yourself in
(01:12):
a future episode. Call us A three three two oh
seven four six sixty six. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction,
where we've got another Detroit case that involves a drug house,
(01:32):
a dirty cop playing both sides, a dead body, no
white witnesses, only fabrications, including a jailhouse snitch, and it
appears that a drug syndicate may have been pulling a
lot of the strings here and joining us, one of
the survivors of this insane story, Anthony Legion, Anthony, thanks
for doing.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
This with us, Thanks for having me and returning.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
To help tell this story. A guy who we met
in New Orleans at the twenty twenty four Innocent Network Conference,
civil rights attorney Wolf Muller. Wolf, welcome back to Ronful Conviction.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
And you may remember Wolf from Daryl Siggers's story. Another
case out of Detroit where it seems like police misconduct
was basically the norm, especially when it came to fabricating
witness testimony and using jailhouse snitches.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
The Detroit Police Department and particularly the homicide section in
the late nineteen eighties, all through the nineteen nineties and
extending the early two thousands, if they had a weak case,
they would recruit some snitch, typically from what would be
the ninth floor jail, where you're only supposed to be
held there for about forty eight hours before you get
transferred to the county jail. But some of these guys
(02:44):
on a ninth floor were in the ninth floor lockup
for a year or more and they had sheets over
their cells which were off to the side. They had VCRs,
they had TVs, they had food, they had drink, they
had everything because they were regular snitches for the DPD.
And what three of them have said under oath is
(03:04):
we would get discovery packages from the detectives, told to
memorize it, a handwritten statement from the homicide detective saying
how this guy confessed and all you had to do
was sign it. And so they had these extra benefits
that nobody knew about. And then one guy got off
on a second degree murder charge which was twelve to
twenty five years after doing seven years, and the testimony
(03:25):
from one of the homicide detectives was he's helped us
out in about twenty cases. Well, there is no way
any reasonable juror would ever listen to something like that
and think twenty different people who didn't know you confessed
to murder.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
It's hard to believe this is real life, but here
we are. And if you don't remember the case of
Larry Smith Junior, well, we're going to have it thinked.
In the episode description, the circumstances are similar to what
happened to Anthony and his co defend. It's Marvin Cotton
and DeVante Parks in the city that they all called home.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I grew up in a Detroit, Michigan seventies eighties. My
mother and father had been married until my father passed,
so for over thirty years. So, you know, I had
a structured home. You know, Detroit was on the rise.
You know, it was jobs, the factories. You know. I
had a pretty pretty good childhood. Went to school, graduated
(04:18):
from Cody High School, played sports, you know, just a
normal childhood life, engaged with the young ladies in the neighborhood.
Prior to my incarceration, I was twenty seven years old.
I had two children by one young lady, and right
before I got incarcerated, she had found out she had cancer.
And when she found out, our relationship wasn't on the
(04:41):
best of terms. So just imagine how that felt when
she found out that she had that and already wasn't
the best, you know, boyfriend, So it was difficult. Me
and her had kind of split up, but I had
to step up to the plate, and you know, take
care of my children. My son who was two and
my daughter was like seven at the time. So I
had them living with me, and you know, they would
(05:02):
go back and forth, but she was going through these treatments,
so I had the children with me for the most
of the part. And you know, I was in to
real estate, investing money in real estate and things of
that nature. So I was at home a lot with
the children.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
At twenty seven years old, Dantony had a full plate
and a meaningful career with no real connection to the victim,
Jamon McIntyre or what became the crime scene a place
called the Third Street House.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
From all the police reports, and what the police officers
knew is this was a drug house maintained and kept
by Jimmon McIntyre, who was related either by blood or
they call them plain nephews with the Johnson crime family,
the drug family that ran a lot of dope out
of Detroit at that time in the early two thousands,
(05:51):
late nineties. We found out later years and years later,
a nephew of the Johnsons, Santonian Adams, was a Detroit
police office there at the time of the crime was
actually running security for the Johnson crime family. As a
Detroit police officer.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Anthony's only connection to the Third Street house was through
his childhood friend Marvin Cotton.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
I actually didn't know anything about what was going on
in the house or the players. Only person that I
knew and vaguely knew him was Jamal McIntyre. Marvin and
Jamon were good friends, and I had went over there
one time with Marvin. We stopped over there. Marvin and
Jama was having conversations and they was in their own
(06:34):
little circle talking. He was there for probably about fifteen
to twenty minutes maybe. So that's the only thing that
I know about the house, and I don't know how
much you guys knew. But prior to mcatire's death, Marvin
had an issue with the police department.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Cotton wasn't the cleanest guy. I think he was selling
guns on the side. Well, the Detroit copp lost her
gun and it ended up in Cotton's hands and he
sold it and the cops busted into his house, strung
him up to his shower naked, started braiding him, and
he filed the citizens complaint against the two cops and
(07:08):
they ended up getting disciplined.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
And I believe one officer was fired behind it. This
was like a month or two before MCing Tires murder.
According to what Marvin had said that when he got arrested,
the police was talking about him filing that complaint against.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
It, So he had a target on his back from
an unrelated matter and Legion just got caught up in it.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
It probably also didn't help that Marvin arrived at the
third Street house shortly after the incident was over. But
let's back up to just before. It was shortly after
midnight on January twenty fourth, two thousand and one. Jimon
McIntyre was on the front porch and a man named
Kenny Lockhart was in the upstairs bedroom with his girlfriend,
Renee Tate, while Santonian Adams, the Johnson's police officer nephew,
(07:54):
was in a van in the driveway, and he eventually
told the story that was partially supported by McIntyre's sister.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Three guys had come up and we're hanging around on
the porch. Apparently McIntyre's sister comes over. This is a
little bit after midnight, and she's looking for some money.
He gives her some money, she leaves. She doesn't recognize
any of the three. Shortly after she leaves, Adams is
in the driveway and all of a sudden, here shots
being fired. Now at this time, Lockhart is in the
(08:24):
bedroom with his girlfriend, here's the shooting, doesn't see any
of this, closes his door because he's trying to protect
his girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
The only person who could really say what was going
on in the shooting was Santonio Adams. He said he
was in a van and he's seen two people on
a porch shooting. He didn't know which direction they were
shooting at. He said he heard Jama's voice.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
And McIntyre calls to him Tone nicknamed Tone. As he's
running out of the house being chased by these guys,
runs down an alley across the street and gets gunned down.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
No witnesses material the day it happened, nobody said who
it was.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
The sole source of the initial narrative was Officer Adams,
who has to cover for why he's had a known
drug house to begin with. He didn't make any ideas
or descriptions either, but he did claim that he shot
at the assailants.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
He says, I couldn't find my gun, but as I
was ducking when I heard the shots. I saw a
gun under the front passenger seat, so I grabbed that
and I got off about four shots. Well, he never
did turn in his official law enforcement handgun to have
it analyzed. When they did take a look at it,
they found there were four bullets missing. You have to
(09:41):
account for every bullet when you're a police officer, and
so they later found there were four bullets missing. His
story never added up, but they didn't pursue him.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
In the meantime, the police collected evidence. Two guns were
found near McIntire's body in the alley, three more in
the house, none of which were claimed by Officer Adams
as the one he alleged used. Now, they dusted the
house for fingerprints. Then, for reasons that were revealed much later,
Kenny Lockhart went from ear witness to eyewitness and lead
(10:10):
detective Cues put together a carefully selected photo array for
Lockhart to view on February fifteenth.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I think it was like eight people in a photo array,
including me, Marvin Cotton, and Devonte Parks, who was the
other individual who was charged in this case as well.
Lockhart said that it was Cotton for sure, that he
knew Cotton prior to this mind you.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Lockhart first told the officers he didn't see what happened,
and second he knew Cotton, so if Cotton had been there,
he would have identified Cotton.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And then he said two or seven, meaning me or
Devonte Parks looked like the other individual. That was the identification.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
To get around the fact that both Lockhart and his girlfriend,
Rene Tate had made statements that they never left the
bedroom and hadn't seen the assailants, the narrative was amended
to include the shooters returning to the house after Jaman
was already dead to kill Kenny Lockhart.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
And he never said none of this.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
On the day of the incident, Lockhart says that the
guys are in his house and the guy he identifies
as Cotton tells another guy shoot him, shoot Lockhart. Lockhart
claims he takes a shot, only the problem is there
are no bullet holes in the house. Even one of
the police officers wrote in his notes, the guy's not
(11:31):
telling the truth. I don't believe what word he says.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
And maybe there's something to that. Considering that Marvin, Devonte
and Anthony were not arrested until a week later, on
February twenty second, and for Anthony, it wasn't even for
this incident, but rather for the murder of someone named
Devin Taylor.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
I'll get arrested in an unrelated case. This was an
individual who I knew. He was killed on the East Side.
You know, the police what they did back then was
they just rounded up people, witnesses or not witnesses, anybody
without even charges, without warrants or anything, and bring them
in and then threaten them, you know, to either coherse
them to confess to that crime or conhurse them to
(12:08):
confess to other crimes, and that process. While I'm in jail,
they asking me about McIntire's case, saying, if I say
that Marvin and Devonte Parks did it, they won't charge
me with that, and they won't charge me what I'm
already in here for. I'm like, I didn't do either
one of these crimes. They said, well, all you got
to do is say Marvin and Devonte Parks did it,
(12:28):
and we'll let you go right now.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
But it appears that Anthony's refusal only led to his
own charges in both murders.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Now, this whole time, while the criminal proceedings is going on,
no discovery is coming out. The only evidence that they
claimed that they had with respect to the McIntire case
was Lockhart's photo identification, saying that me or Parks looked
like the individual. And then when he came to court,
you know, he made a positive identification. At the preliminary examination,
he said, oh, no, I'm certain, I'm certain it's him.
(12:58):
He was the light skinned guy. You see me sitting here.
I'm definitely not light skinned. So that was his description
of me. I was the high yellow, light skinned guy.
And then by the time it got the trial, he said,
you know, he's ninety percent sure that I look like
one of the guys. But moving right before the trial
is when they came up with the jail house informant,
(13:19):
Ellis Fraser.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
This snitch witness popped up five days before trial, which
is when it was disclosed the defense. We have a
witness who says that Cotton confessed and implicated legion. Now
that just shows how weak your case is when you
have to come up with something in the bottom of
the ninth inning to try to resurrect your case.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
My attorney came in with Fraser's statement and he said,
this guy said, you guys down there and confessed to him.
I'm like, what my lawyer said, I don't believe none
of this shit. This is what Detroit Police Department does,
but they're gonna use this guy. And so he filed
a pre trial motion not to let it in for
two reasons. Number one, it was basically a trial by
ambush because the police department said that they had this
(14:03):
information about Fraser four months before the trial, never turned
it over to us till right before trial. So my
lawyer argued that it shouldn't come in on that ground,
And then the alternative it shouldn't come in because he's
saying that Cotton confessed to him, and therefore that evidence
coming in against me will violate my right to confront Cotton.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Cotton can't testify because he's a defendant and was going
to exercise his constitutional right to remain silent.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
And I can't cross examine him.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
To avoid violating Anthony's right to confront his accuser. His
and Marvin's trials should have been sabered, but they continued
until the same issue arose again.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Kenny Lockhart, the key witness who the police knew hadn't
seen anything, said that he was absolutely one hundred percent
certain of the three guys who were charged, Legion Cotton
and Avante Park. Only it turns out right before a
trial they verified Park said an airtight alibi.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Parks charges were going to be dismissed, which would have
destroyed Kenny Lockhart's credibility, let's face it, and therefore the
whole state's case.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
If Parks gets on the stand and the agreement that
they're going to dismiss charges because he's got an alibi
is explained to the jury, well then there goes Lockhart's
whole identification because Lockhart said he is one hundred percent
certain of those three guys, and one of them has
an airtight alibi.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
The day of trial, we all was in the bullp me,
Marvin Cotton, and DeVante Parks. But the only two people
that they brought out was me and Cotton, and they
left him back there. So the jury never seen him,
never heard nothing really about him, and never knew that
Lockhart made that identification of him.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
And the lawyers are going, where's Parks because the whole
case was all three of them, and all of a sudden,
Parks is severed from the case and Devonte parks misidentification
got ruled inadmissible. It was irrelevant to this case. The
whole thing stinks. The gamesmanship of the prosecutor is telling
Devonte Parks, we will dismiss your case, but only after
(16:08):
the Cotton Legion trial, so they ensure that he does
not testify.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
You know, most lawyers, they don't call the co definden
to the stand because they lawyer co definit the layer
gonna say, oh, no, my client ain't getting on that stand.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Because he was a still defendant at the time and
was going to exercise his constitutional right to remain silent.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
And so that's why we couldn't call him.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So DeVante Parks's case breaking testimony was effectively hidden from
the jury, all while Anthony has another wrongful accusation to
fight after this trial, which began in October two thousand
and one. So let's start with the physical evidence.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Nick recovered, like five weapons, two weapons potentially is the
murder weapon. All these shell cases, they ran tests on
all of this stuff. They do fingerprints inside the house,
outside the house. None of this stuff come back to
New yor Cot. You got a missing gun by a
police officer, So who's admits to firing shots at somebody?
(17:03):
And his gun. They don't have his gun, but we
do got two guns in the alley, so it's one
of them. The guns that he claimed he lost. Who knows.
But you got all these witnesses surrounding this house, and
nobody said that I committed any crime. Even if you
believe Lockhart, which you shouldn't because he changed his story
(17:24):
from the beginning to the end, but he said that
I looked like one of the people that was in
the house.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
The state's evidence simply came to Lockhart and being backed
up by a snitch witness, which then would give credibility
to Lockhart. Right as much as the defense tried to
punch holes in Lockhart, Lockhart could say, I knew Cotton,
so I knew who it was. And then this other
guy legion, I saw him too. And they never got
(17:48):
to hear about the Devonte Parks misidentification, which would have
been huge. But then Lockhart, it's backed up by Elis Fraser,
who's saying the same thing.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Fraser testified that he and someone who he thought was
Anthony or in one cell while Marvin Cotton was in
the one next door, and Fraser's cellmate allegedly introduced him
to Cotton through a brick wall, and then Cotton supposedly
confessed implicating the person sharing the cell with Fraser, who
(18:19):
he claimed was named Anthony on the witness stand.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
And they said, well who was Anthony, Oh, Anthony is
the person in that photograph, which was Davonte Parks. He
just got his names mixed up and said Parks was Anthony.
He didn't remember the lie enough to come into court
and say, oh, no, Davonte Parks is the one that
introduced me.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Years later, Ellis Fraser finally grows a conscience and says
in an affidavit that the officer in charge Hughes walks
him into court and has to explain to him who
these guys are, so he makes sure that he picks
them out and identifies Cotton as Cotton and doesn't confuse
(18:59):
the guys.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
So either he got his names mixed up when the
police gave him the information, or he just didn't know
which person to pick out in the courtroom. But in
the jury's mind, where else would Fraser get this information?
Not knowing that the DPD ran a jail house snitch
program on the ninth floor, they provided people discovery material
so that they can familiarize themselves with the facts and
(19:23):
then come up with a story to support the facts.
The jury never knew that. Had they known that, then
they would have new this is all put together.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Anthony did mount the defense, presenting alibi witnesses to swear
to his actual whereabouts, which should have included his co
defend at Marvin Cotton, who had arrived on the scene
shortly after the shooting, importantly without Anthony, But Marvin couldn't
testify for the same reason that kept Parks off the stand.
All the others were loved ones who could be explained
(19:52):
away as willing to lie, so that left their last hope.
Kenny Lockhart's girlfriend, Renee Tate.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
If you look at her statements, she contradicts what Lockhart
was saying. She said Lockhart never left the room, never
seen anybody, and then somebody got to her, and she
was shaken and nervous at the trial, you know, and
we didn't know why she was, you know, while she
was acting like that, But that's what it was, and
we found out later she was pressured to stick to
the story Lockhart told her.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
And this time it appears that the pressure wasn't even
from the police. So both Tate and Fraser supported the Lockhart,
whose credibility was protected by the prosecutors, who went so
far as to say that the Third Stread House wasn't
even a well known drug house. Sure why not? And
on October nineteen, two thousand and one, both Marvin and
Anthony were convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to
(20:42):
life without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
You know, when you hear people say, before you're about
to die, like your life flashes, you know, in front
of you, That's what it was like. It was like
I seen, like everything just flashed in front of me,
like I seen myself as a child. You know, I
seen myself, you know, you know, coming through the wound
and coming into life and seeing my life snatched. And
(21:05):
that's what happened at that split second. But walking out
the courtroom, I walked out of that courtroom and said,
I'm getting out of prison, and I'm about to go
in prison and learn everything about this system that did
this to me, and I'm gonna get myself out of prison.
Before I even got sentenced, you know, I started putting
together my strategy on what I was going to do
(21:26):
to get out of prison.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
And if you remember, he still had to fight the
Devin tail, the murder charge for which he had been
preparing his defense until he saw what they were willing
to do in the mcintarre case, presenting testimony like Lockharts
and Frasiers while the defense witness appeared to have been coerced.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Once all of this stuff started coming out, I said,
oh no, I'm not gonna risk getting two life sentences.
I had to, you know, resolve that case because otherwise,
guess what another jail house informat would be like. Oh,
Anthony confessed to me, And so I took a plea.
I took a no contest.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Please.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
When you've rolled the dice and you come up snake
eyes because of some witness that came up five days
before trial, you don't want to roll the dice again.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And as you can see, they really didn't even care
to go to trial, but they just wasn't going to
dismiss it. That's why they offered me eight years, eight
to twenty. So I said, okay, I'll take that deep Now, okay,
I'm gonna do this time, but I'm gonna start working
on this life sentence and get this sentence off.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
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Speaker 2 (22:55):
When I went to prison, the first thing I said
after I got processed, where's the library? And so I
bought a Blackslaw dictionary. I bought a Michigan Court Rules.
I bought a Federal Rules of Civil Procedures. I bought
a typewriter. I spent like fifteen hundred dollars on legal supplies.
You know, I wanted to learn that language that they
(23:15):
were speaking in the courtroom that I didn't know, and
they learned what they knew in order to fight this case.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
In December two thousand and two, Anthony filed a motion
for a new trial in which he claimed ineffective assistance
of council for the failure to call Parks as a witness,
even though the prevailing wisdom is that a co defendant's
council will not advise the defendant to wave their Fifth
Amendment rights. This also drew attention to the gamesmanship of
the prosecution, effectively hiding the misidentification of Parks and the
(23:45):
unreliability of Lockhart, and along with the motion, Anthony submitted
an affidavid from Parks, who had plenty that he would
have liked to say.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Number one is da Fraser said that it was Parks
who introduced him to Cotton, and Parks was involved in
the conversation. He just got his names mixed up and
said Parks was Anthony, so DeVante. Parks would have been
able to testify and say, wait a minute, I didn't
introduce him and I ain't hear no conversation about that,
(24:14):
So that's discredits Fraser. He could have discredited Lockhart by saying,
wait a minute, Lockhart said that he knew Parks and
that we had all been there on several occasions. Parks
could have no, I don't know you, and he had
an alibi for that day which would have disproved with
Lockhart was saying. So that's what the emotion for new
(24:35):
trial was premised on, and they denied to hear it.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Both of their convictions were affirmed in a pos court
in October two thousand and three, and then Anthony filed
his federal habeas petition in two thousand and five.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Based on the reasons the Fader called Parks the confrontation violation,
and I'll talk about that in the minute. And insufficient evidence,
because we also argued it was insufficient evidence to convict
me a first degree murder. Even if you look at
the case and the light most favorable to the prosecution,
it wasn't no evidence that said I committed a murder.
Lockhard said he didn't see the shooting. If you believe
(25:07):
what he said, he said that the three people came
to the house after the shooting. So you have to
look at what testimony you had to look at to
support that. Fraser's so the violation of the rights to confrontation.
The sixth Amendment says that you have a right to
confront your accusers. Now in this context, Cotton would be
my accuser if you rely on Fraser, which was the
(25:31):
jail house informant. The jail house informant says Cotton told him, oh,
me and Anthony committed this murder and this rob even
though he doesn't specify who the anthony is because remember
he picked out a picture of Parks as being Anthony.
But in any respect, I needed to cross examine Cotton
so he could clarify his statement. But Cotton got a
(25:53):
Fifth Amendment right not to testify, so that infringed upon
my right right. So that's why we at trial, we
move for a separate trial out so that Fraser's testimony
couldn't come in against me, and the judge denied that.
The federal court in two thousand and seven agreed and
reversed my conviction and vacated.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
And that sounds like it should have been the end
of an episode, but we've got over another ten years
of fighting uf to go.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
In the federal court. When I won in two thousand
and seven, the Attorney General appealed it to the United
States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and what
happened was a new law had came out. So the
case that I relied on for the confrontation violation was
Ohio versus Roberts, and what that says is you can't
allow an unreliable, non testifying co defendit statement to come
(26:40):
in against another code defending so Fraser's testimony was obviously unreliable. However,
they changed that law in Crawford versus Washington, which came
out in two thousand and four after my conviction, and
that ruler said the Sixth Amendment confrontation clause only texts
(27:01):
testimonial statements. In other words, had Cotton confessed to the police,
that statement can't come in against me, but if he
tell it to a fellow inmate or a friend or
something like that, they said that that can come in
against you. And that's why they reversed that ruler. It's
an unfair law, but that's what put the life sentence
back on me. So what we did, we said, okay,
(27:22):
just they changed that confrontation law, which is the sixth Amendment. Well,
now we want to argue the fourteenth Amendment. He got
a due process right to confront his accusers. So it's
the same argument for different constitutional provisions. So the Sixth
Circus said, okay, we're remanded back to the law course
and you start that argument all over from scratch.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
And while that fight was underway, new evidence began to emerge,
starting with Fraser's recantation in twenty ten, and so.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
We had investigated. They finally tracked him down. He said,
oh yeah, the detectives gave me that information. Marvin didn't
confess to me, and then we found out that he
also testified in other cases. It's a guy in prison
right now serving a life sentence for Fraser's testimony a
guy named Bobby Smith, and our investigators reached out to
him as well, and he said he didn't confess to
(28:11):
Fraser either.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Fraser added that he got a seven month break on
a one year sentence, but that the prosecutor told him
not to say anything about any benefits in court. Fraser
gave a second affidavit in twenty fourteen, stating in even
stronger terms that he never spoke to Cotton and that
his statement was completely dreamed up by the prosecution. So
with that, the investigators moved on to Kenny Lockhart, who
(28:33):
remember was staying in the upstairs bedroom of a drug
house run by the Johnson crime family.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
A guy named Kurt Nerd was living with Lockhart, and
Lockhart told him the whole story, told him Johnson offered
him ten thousand dollars depend it on Cotton and Legion,
and he didn't want to do it, but ten thousand
dollars a lot of money, and so Nerd went to
a Detroit Police homicide detective Walter Bates and told him.
(29:02):
Even gave Bates the handwritten napkins that he took notes
on after Lockhart had told him this. Bates never turned
that evidence over.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
So it appears the police and the Johnson's were very
interested in steering the outcome of the investigation. And then
it became clear which of them had gotten to Renee Tape.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Lockhart's girlfriend at the time, who was in the bedroom
with him. She's terrified of the Johnson crime family. But
she spoke to an investigator for the State of Pelot
Defender's office and said exactly what happened, and that Lockhart
never saw anybody because neither of them saw anybody. But
she is afraid of the Johnson's.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
We found out later why she basically shut down and
testified to things contrary to what she put in her statement.
She was pressured by Keith Johnson to stick to the
story that Lockhart told him.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
So what did they do? Like, how did they stoop?
Speaker 2 (30:01):
They was gonna kill her kids?
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah, this was evidence that came out maybe like two
thousand and twenties.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
She won't sign an affidavit and has basically said, if
you subpoena me to testify, I'm just gonna lie. And
I said I would say I never said that. So
apparently the Johnsons still have a long reach in the neighborhood.
(30:40):
They had evidence of, for example, the affidavit of Curtin Ard,
and that helped, but it didn't give them any relief
in the court system. The court system is much more
focused on procedure than whether you're innocent or whether you
get screwed at trial. And finally, in about twenty eight
team the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office opened up a conviction
(31:04):
Integrity Unit and that was the life saving process for
a lot of guys. And the CiU does its own investigation.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
And they spoke with Detective Hughes.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
The investigator was a ex police officer, so he knew
the main detective on our case, so he didn't think
that this guy would record him, but he got the
detective on there admitted that the house was a drug house,
even though they told the jury that it wasn't. He's
admitting this. He admitted that Lockhart never gained that initial identification.
(31:39):
It was some other guy, a drug dealer, a major
drug dealer. And then he admitted to some other things
in there that the police officer was basically protecting that house.
He was a security for this drug organization and had
the jury now in all this, they'd have been like,
wait a minute, maybe some drug dealers did this murder.
We didn't know that this was a major drug location
(32:01):
and that the cop was running security for this operation,
and that Lockhart never made that identification like he testified too.
That would have shredded their entire case.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
So this is when Detroit PD officer Santonian Adams was
first revealed, and it seems like the jury wouldn't be
the only ones coming to the conclusion that this was
all related back to the Johnsons.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Everybody in the hood always knows, the streets always know,
really what happened, that Santonian Adams, who was friends with McIntyre,
set McIntyre up, and maybe Lockhart set McIntire up too,
because think about it, if he had been in the house,
he'd have been killed two. If this was just a
robbery for drugs, that would have killed everybody. Word on
the curb was that since McIntire's and Cod were buddies
(32:46):
and doing stuff together, Johnson wanted Cotten out of there.
So that's kind of how it came down. Johnson was
the one orchestrating all of this, whether it was a hit,
and then since McIntire's already dead, now if you can
get and legion, he doesn't want them in a picture,
have the cops go to them.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
So it looks like the Johnson's gave Detective Hughes the
three names, then gave a Lockhart ten grand to corroborate,
and then scared the shit out of her nay tate
while the police and prosecutors went ahead and did the rest.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
So the CiU took a fresh look at the case,
and then they were able to understand, especially with this
tape that the PI had with Donald Hughes, where Hughes
admitted that Lockhart hadn't seen anything. Now you start getting
into a whole lot of police misconduct. That shed a
whole new light on the trial and their right to
(33:38):
a fair trial. They were robbed of due process, and
the CiU concluded they that they couldn't say that these
guys were innocent. What they did was they said there
was so much police misconduct they were entitled to a
new trial. And then a Win County prosecutor's office realized
the flaws with the case and dismissed the charges. But
(33:58):
I think what really rocked this case is that the
prosecutor's office was very likely involved in this miscarriage of
justice with not allowing Parks to take the stand because
they didn't dismiss the charges until after this conviction.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Nonetheless, both Marvin and Anthony's charges were dismissed. Anthony told
us about how that day unfolded.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
You know, in prison. You know, I found inner peace
in prison through studying the law, and I worked on
other people's cases when I was in prison. You know,
I was the go to guy in prison. Any prison
that I went to, I turned the day room into
my law office and I would get me a corner.
(34:43):
I have my typewriter set up, I have all my
law books. People would come to my office and we
working on other cases. You know, I got people out
of prison from prison, and so that's what I was doing.
And I was actually working on the finishing touches on
this brief, and the counselor came in and said, you know,
come to the office with me for a minute. When
(35:04):
you got a phone call, normally that means somebody in
your family done died, or you know, some bad news.
So I'm like, okay, here we go. And I didn't
even have the CiU on my mind, but it was
my attorney and my investigator, and then she said, well, yeah,
you know, Kim Worthy agreed to let you go. I
broke down in te you. I couldn't even talk, and
so the councilor said, we'll have him call you back later.
(35:27):
He needed to get hisself together. So yeah, it was
definitely a breath of fresh air when I got that news.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
The decision came down on October first, twenty twenty, but
the nightmare wasn't over. He still had to contend with
his eight to twenty year sentence for Devin Taylor. He
was finally released on parole on December fifteen, twenty twenty,
and since his release, he's been reinvestigating and fighting that case,
as well as continuing the practice of law that he
began inside.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
I'm in the a Pillot division at Wolf Law Firm,
not Wolf Gang, but Rachel Wolf, so I run her
a pilot division. Then I'm also a Pillot consultant in
my own office, where I do pretty much the same thing,
but at a reduced rate for guys who can't afford
to pay for an attorney. We do investigation work, briefs,
motions and everything like that, and then I pitch their
(36:14):
cases to different attorneys where they can afford them or
even do it pro bono. I'm also a member of
the Organization of Exigneries. I'm on the board of directors
a Safe and Just Michigan. You know, I got my
own nonprofit here towards exposing the falsehood of jail house
nitch testimony Anthony Legion dot com and has my story
on there on my Facebook page, Safe and Just Michigan
(36:36):
DJST task Force. It can also support that DJST task
Force dot com. It's NonStop. I work all day, twelve
hours every day trying to save somebody's life from spending
the rest of their life in prison.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Meanwhile, Wolf is doing the same un your civil suit.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
The problem is civil litigation. Now. The wheels turned very
very slowly. Right now, we are just in the process
after a few years of summary judgment motions where they're
trying to throw the case out on qualified immunity. There's
a whole nother can of worm, but that's where we're
at now. And then they'll kick the can down the
road and go to the six Circuit Court of Appeals
(37:12):
if their motion is denied, and it'll drag it out further,
and all that does is just kick these guys in
the face some more.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
It's fucking disgraceful. But we hear the same thing all
too often. Right here, we're going to have both of
you linked in the episode description so people can keep
up with you or who knows, maybe they might need
your services. So with that, let's go to closing arguments.
Thanks again for being here and for all the incredible
work you're doing and closing arguments, well, if you start
(37:39):
anything else you want to share with our incredible audience
and with me of course, and then we're gonna let
Anthony take us off into the sunset.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
What would be a good closing on this story. It's
that they, as much as they have been screwed, are
trying to give back to get other guys out who
they know are innocent in prison, and they're doing the
best they can with the resources they have. To call
attention to wrongful convictions, to the causes of wrongful convictions,
(38:10):
witness misidentifications. It's the largest cause of wrongful convictions. Sometimes
they're innocent. Sometimes like this, they're intentional, and they're just
trying to do the best they can to make the
best of the lives that they've got, and they're doing
a very admirable job.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
For people that are similarly situated or have loved ones
that's similarly situated, don't give up. The road may seem long,
gloomy and dark, but you got to stay focused, you know,
you got to stay fighting.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Now.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
I used to always encourage the younger brothers, don't get
caught up in the prison politics. Don't get caught up
on a basketball court, on a chest table playing cards.
If you're trying to get out of prison, you have
to move like you want to get out of prison.
At talk, walk, sleep, everything like you want to get
(39:04):
out of prison, because then the officers are gonna respect
you in that manner. A lot of the correctional officers
knew my agenda was to get out of prison. I
didn't care about nothing that was going on in prison,
even though I seen people die in prison, get stabbed
in prison. You know, I had to see some horrific things.
And again, like I said, I found my inner piece
(39:25):
in studying the law. And so you know, I encourage
anybody whoever loved want to go through this and encourage
them to stay focused and on type of the fight
to get out of prison.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Thank you for listening to Ron for Conviction. You can
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
executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliburn. The
music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
(40:01):
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
In the early morning hours of January twenty fourth, two
thousand and one, gunfire erupted in front of a house
in Detroit, Michigan. Twenty five year old Jamon Mcatyre ran
toward a nearby alley, where his assailants finished the job. Initially,
two alleged witnesses claimed that they didn't see the assailants,
(00:24):
but a few weeks later, one of them identified three
men from a photo array, including Anthony Legion. Despite claims
of innocence from all three men, an alleged cellmate claimed
that they said differently in private, but this is wrongful conviction.
(00:50):
Wrongful conviction has always given voice to innocent people in prison,
and now we're expanding that voice to you. Call us
at eight three three two oh seven four six sixty
six and tell us how these stories make you feel
and what you've done to help the cause, even if
it's something as simple as telling a friend or sharing
on social media, and you might just hear yourself in
(01:12):
a future episode. Call us A three three two oh
seven four six sixty six. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction,
where we've got another Detroit case that involves a drug house,
(01:32):
a dirty cop playing both sides, a dead body, no
white witnesses, only fabrications, including a jailhouse snitch, and it
appears that a drug syndicate may have been pulling a
lot of the strings here and joining us, one of
the survivors of this insane story, Anthony Legion, Anthony, thanks
for doing.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
This with us, Thanks for having me and returning.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
To help tell this story. A guy who we met
in New Orleans at the twenty twenty four Innocent Network Conference,
civil rights attorney Wolf Muller. Wolf, welcome back to Ronful Conviction.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
And you may remember Wolf from Daryl Siggers's story. Another
case out of Detroit where it seems like police misconduct
was basically the norm, especially when it came to fabricating
witness testimony and using jailhouse snitches.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
The Detroit Police Department and particularly the homicide section in
the late nineteen eighties, all through the nineteen nineties and
extending the early two thousands, if they had a weak case,
they would recruit some snitch, typically from what would be
the ninth floor jail, where you're only supposed to be
held there for about forty eight hours before you get
transferred to the county jail. But some of these guys
(02:44):
on a ninth floor were in the ninth floor lockup
for a year or more and they had sheets over
their cells which were off to the side. They had VCRs,
they had TVs, they had food, they had drink, they
had everything because they were regular snitches for the DPD.
And what three of them have said under oath is
(03:04):
we would get discovery packages from the detectives, told to
memorize it, a handwritten statement from the homicide detective saying
how this guy confessed and all you had to do
was sign it. And so they had these extra benefits
that nobody knew about. And then one guy got off
on a second degree murder charge which was twelve to
twenty five years after doing seven years, and the testimony
(03:25):
from one of the homicide detectives was he's helped us
out in about twenty cases. Well, there is no way
any reasonable juror would ever listen to something like that
and think twenty different people who didn't know you confessed
to murder.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
It's hard to believe this is real life, but here
we are. And if you don't remember the case of
Larry Smith Junior, well, we're going to have it thinked.
In the episode description, the circumstances are similar to what
happened to Anthony and his co defend. It's Marvin Cotton
and DeVante Parks in the city that they all called home.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I grew up in a Detroit, Michigan seventies eighties. My
mother and father had been married until my father passed,
so for over thirty years. So, you know, I had
a structured home. You know, Detroit was on the rise.
You know, it was jobs, the factories. You know. I
had a pretty pretty good childhood. Went to school, graduated
(04:18):
from Cody High School, played sports, you know, just a
normal childhood life, engaged with the young ladies in the neighborhood.
Prior to my incarceration, I was twenty seven years old.
I had two children by one young lady, and right
before I got incarcerated, she had found out she had cancer.
And when she found out, our relationship wasn't on the
(04:41):
best of terms. So just imagine how that felt when
she found out that she had that and already wasn't
the best, you know, boyfriend, So it was difficult. Me
and her had kind of split up, but I had
to step up to the plate, and you know, take
care of my children. My son who was two and
my daughter was like seven at the time. So I
had them living with me, and you know, they would
(05:02):
go back and forth, but she was going through these treatments,
so I had the children with me for the most
of the part. And you know, I was in to
real estate, investing money in real estate and things of
that nature. So I was at home a lot with
the children.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
At twenty seven years old, Dantony had a full plate
and a meaningful career with no real connection to the victim,
Jamon McIntyre or what became the crime scene a place
called the Third Street House.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
From all the police reports, and what the police officers
knew is this was a drug house maintained and kept
by Jimmon McIntyre, who was related either by blood or
they call them plain nephews with the Johnson crime family,
the drug family that ran a lot of dope out
of Detroit at that time in the early two thousands,
(05:51):
late nineties. We found out later years and years later,
a nephew of the Johnsons, Santonian Adams, was a Detroit
police office there at the time of the crime was
actually running security for the Johnson crime family. As a
Detroit police officer.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Anthony's only connection to the Third Street house was through
his childhood friend Marvin Cotton.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
I actually didn't know anything about what was going on
in the house or the players. Only person that I
knew and vaguely knew him was Jamal McIntyre. Marvin and
Jamon were good friends, and I had went over there
one time with Marvin. We stopped over there. Marvin and
Jama was having conversations and they was in their own
(06:34):
little circle talking. He was there for probably about fifteen
to twenty minutes maybe. So that's the only thing that
I know about the house, and I don't know how
much you guys knew. But prior to mcatire's death, Marvin
had an issue with the police department.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Cotton wasn't the cleanest guy. I think he was selling
guns on the side. Well, the Detroit copp lost her
gun and it ended up in Cotton's hands and he
sold it and the cops busted into his house, strung
him up to his shower naked, started braiding him, and
he filed the citizens complaint against the two cops and
(07:08):
they ended up getting disciplined.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
And I believe one officer was fired behind it. This
was like a month or two before MCing Tires murder.
According to what Marvin had said that when he got arrested,
the police was talking about him filing that complaint against.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
It, So he had a target on his back from
an unrelated matter and Legion just got caught up in it.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
It probably also didn't help that Marvin arrived at the
third Street house shortly after the incident was over. But
let's back up to just before. It was shortly after
midnight on January twenty fourth, two thousand and one. Jimon
McIntyre was on the front porch and a man named
Kenny Lockhart was in the upstairs bedroom with his girlfriend,
Renee Tate, while Santonian Adams, the Johnson's police officer nephew,
(07:54):
was in a van in the driveway, and he eventually
told the story that was partially supported by McIntyre's sister.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Three guys had come up and we're hanging around on
the porch. Apparently McIntyre's sister comes over. This is a
little bit after midnight, and she's looking for some money.
He gives her some money, she leaves. She doesn't recognize
any of the three. Shortly after she leaves, Adams is
in the driveway and all of a sudden, here shots
being fired. Now at this time, Lockhart is in the
(08:24):
bedroom with his girlfriend, here's the shooting, doesn't see any
of this, closes his door because he's trying to protect
his girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
The only person who could really say what was going
on in the shooting was Santonio Adams. He said he
was in a van and he's seen two people on
a porch shooting. He didn't know which direction they were
shooting at. He said he heard Jama's voice.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
And McIntyre calls to him Tone nicknamed Tone. As he's
running out of the house being chased by these guys,
runs down an alley across the street and gets gunned down.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
No witnesses material the day it happened, nobody said who
it was.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
The sole source of the initial narrative was Officer Adams,
who has to cover for why he's had a known
drug house to begin with. He didn't make any ideas
or descriptions either, but he did claim that he shot
at the assailants.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
He says, I couldn't find my gun, but as I
was ducking when I heard the shots. I saw a
gun under the front passenger seat, so I grabbed that
and I got off about four shots. Well, he never
did turn in his official law enforcement handgun to have
it analyzed. When they did take a look at it,
they found there were four bullets missing. You have to
(09:41):
account for every bullet when you're a police officer, and
so they later found there were four bullets missing. His
story never added up, but they didn't pursue him.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
In the meantime, the police collected evidence. Two guns were
found near McIntire's body in the alley, three more in
the house, none of which were claimed by Officer Adams
as the one he alleged used. Now, they dusted the
house for fingerprints. Then, for reasons that were revealed much later,
Kenny Lockhart went from ear witness to eyewitness and lead
(10:10):
detective Cues put together a carefully selected photo array for
Lockhart to view on February fifteenth.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I think it was like eight people in a photo array,
including me, Marvin Cotton, and Devonte Parks, who was the
other individual who was charged in this case as well.
Lockhart said that it was Cotton for sure, that he
knew Cotton prior to this mind you.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Lockhart first told the officers he didn't see what happened,
and second he knew Cotton, so if Cotton had been there,
he would have identified Cotton.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And then he said two or seven, meaning me or
Devonte Parks looked like the other individual. That was the identification.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
To get around the fact that both Lockhart and his girlfriend,
Rene Tate had made statements that they never left the
bedroom and hadn't seen the assailants, the narrative was amended
to include the shooters returning to the house after Jaman
was already dead to kill Kenny Lockhart.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
And he never said none of this.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
On the day of the incident, Lockhart says that the
guys are in his house and the guy he identifies
as Cotton tells another guy shoot him, shoot Lockhart. Lockhart
claims he takes a shot, only the problem is there
are no bullet holes in the house. Even one of
the police officers wrote in his notes, the guy's not
(11:31):
telling the truth. I don't believe what word he says.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
And maybe there's something to that. Considering that Marvin, Devonte
and Anthony were not arrested until a week later, on
February twenty second, and for Anthony, it wasn't even for
this incident, but rather for the murder of someone named
Devin Taylor.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
I'll get arrested in an unrelated case. This was an
individual who I knew. He was killed on the East Side.
You know, the police what they did back then was
they just rounded up people, witnesses or not witnesses, anybody
without even charges, without warrants or anything, and bring them
in and then threaten them, you know, to either coherse
them to confess to that crime or conhurse them to
(12:08):
confess to other crimes, and that process. While I'm in jail,
they asking me about McIntire's case, saying, if I say
that Marvin and Devonte Parks did it, they won't charge
me with that, and they won't charge me what I'm
already in here for. I'm like, I didn't do either
one of these crimes. They said, well, all you got
to do is say Marvin and Devonte Parks did it,
(12:28):
and we'll let you go right now.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
But it appears that Anthony's refusal only led to his
own charges in both murders.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Now, this whole time, while the criminal proceedings is going on,
no discovery is coming out. The only evidence that they
claimed that they had with respect to the McIntire case
was Lockhart's photo identification, saying that me or Parks looked
like the individual. And then when he came to court,
you know, he made a positive identification. At the preliminary examination,
he said, oh, no, I'm certain, I'm certain it's him.
(12:58):
He was the light skinned guy. You see me sitting here.
I'm definitely not light skinned. So that was his description
of me. I was the high yellow, light skinned guy.
And then by the time it got the trial, he said,
you know, he's ninety percent sure that I look like
one of the guys. But moving right before the trial
is when they came up with the jail house informant,
(13:19):
Ellis Fraser.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
This snitch witness popped up five days before trial, which
is when it was disclosed the defense. We have a
witness who says that Cotton confessed and implicated legion. Now
that just shows how weak your case is when you
have to come up with something in the bottom of
the ninth inning to try to resurrect your case.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
My attorney came in with Fraser's statement and he said,
this guy said, you guys down there and confessed to him.
I'm like, what my lawyer said, I don't believe none
of this shit. This is what Detroit Police Department does,
but they're gonna use this guy. And so he filed
a pre trial motion not to let it in for
two reasons. Number one, it was basically a trial by
ambush because the police department said that they had this
(14:03):
information about Fraser four months before the trial, never turned
it over to us till right before trial. So my
lawyer argued that it shouldn't come in on that ground,
And then the alternative it shouldn't come in because he's
saying that Cotton confessed to him, and therefore that evidence
coming in against me will violate my right to confront Cotton.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Cotton can't testify because he's a defendant and was going
to exercise his constitutional right to remain silent.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
And I can't cross examine him.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
To avoid violating Anthony's right to confront his accuser. His
and Marvin's trials should have been sabered, but they continued
until the same issue arose again.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Kenny Lockhart, the key witness who the police knew hadn't
seen anything, said that he was absolutely one hundred percent
certain of the three guys who were charged, Legion Cotton
and Avante Park. Only it turns out right before a
trial they verified Park said an airtight alibi.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Parks charges were going to be dismissed, which would have
destroyed Kenny Lockhart's credibility, let's face it, and therefore the
whole state's case.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
If Parks gets on the stand and the agreement that
they're going to dismiss charges because he's got an alibi
is explained to the jury, well then there goes Lockhart's
whole identification because Lockhart said he is one hundred percent
certain of those three guys, and one of them has
an airtight alibi.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
The day of trial, we all was in the bullp me,
Marvin Cotton, and DeVante Parks. But the only two people
that they brought out was me and Cotton, and they
left him back there. So the jury never seen him,
never heard nothing really about him, and never knew that
Lockhart made that identification of him.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
And the lawyers are going, where's Parks because the whole
case was all three of them, and all of a sudden,
Parks is severed from the case and Devonte parks misidentification
got ruled inadmissible. It was irrelevant to this case. The
whole thing stinks. The gamesmanship of the prosecutor is telling
Devonte Parks, we will dismiss your case, but only after
(16:08):
the Cotton Legion trial, so they ensure that he does
not testify.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
You know, most lawyers, they don't call the co definden
to the stand because they lawyer co definit the layer
gonna say, oh, no, my client ain't getting on that stand.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Because he was a still defendant at the time and
was going to exercise his constitutional right to remain silent.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
And so that's why we couldn't call him.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So DeVante Parks's case breaking testimony was effectively hidden from
the jury, all while Anthony has another wrongful accusation to
fight after this trial, which began in October two thousand
and one. So let's start with the physical evidence.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Nick recovered, like five weapons, two weapons potentially is the
murder weapon. All these shell cases, they ran tests on
all of this stuff. They do fingerprints inside the house,
outside the house. None of this stuff come back to
New yor Cot. You got a missing gun by a
police officer, So who's admits to firing shots at somebody?
(17:03):
And his gun. They don't have his gun, but we
do got two guns in the alley, so it's one
of them. The guns that he claimed he lost. Who knows.
But you got all these witnesses surrounding this house, and
nobody said that I committed any crime. Even if you
believe Lockhart, which you shouldn't because he changed his story
(17:24):
from the beginning to the end, but he said that
I looked like one of the people that was in
the house.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
The state's evidence simply came to Lockhart and being backed
up by a snitch witness, which then would give credibility
to Lockhart. Right as much as the defense tried to
punch holes in Lockhart, Lockhart could say, I knew Cotton,
so I knew who it was. And then this other
guy legion, I saw him too. And they never got
(17:48):
to hear about the Devonte Parks misidentification, which would have
been huge. But then Lockhart, it's backed up by Elis Fraser,
who's saying the same thing.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Fraser testified that he and someone who he thought was
Anthony or in one cell while Marvin Cotton was in
the one next door, and Fraser's cellmate allegedly introduced him
to Cotton through a brick wall, and then Cotton supposedly
confessed implicating the person sharing the cell with Fraser, who
(18:19):
he claimed was named Anthony on the witness stand.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
And they said, well who was Anthony, Oh, Anthony is
the person in that photograph, which was Davonte Parks. He
just got his names mixed up and said Parks was Anthony.
He didn't remember the lie enough to come into court
and say, oh, no, Davonte Parks is the one that
introduced me.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Years later, Ellis Fraser finally grows a conscience and says
in an affidavit that the officer in charge Hughes walks
him into court and has to explain to him who
these guys are, so he makes sure that he picks
them out and identifies Cotton as Cotton and doesn't confuse
(18:59):
the guys.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
So either he got his names mixed up when the
police gave him the information, or he just didn't know
which person to pick out in the courtroom. But in
the jury's mind, where else would Fraser get this information?
Not knowing that the DPD ran a jail house snitch
program on the ninth floor, they provided people discovery material
so that they can familiarize themselves with the facts and
(19:23):
then come up with a story to support the facts.
The jury never knew that. Had they known that, then
they would have new this is all put together.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Anthony did mount the defense, presenting alibi witnesses to swear
to his actual whereabouts, which should have included his co
defend at Marvin Cotton, who had arrived on the scene
shortly after the shooting, importantly without Anthony, But Marvin couldn't
testify for the same reason that kept Parks off the stand.
All the others were loved ones who could be explained
(19:52):
away as willing to lie, so that left their last hope.
Kenny Lockhart's girlfriend, Renee Tate.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
If you look at her statements, she contradicts what Lockhart
was saying. She said Lockhart never left the room, never
seen anybody, and then somebody got to her, and she
was shaken and nervous at the trial, you know, and
we didn't know why she was, you know, while she
was acting like that, But that's what it was, and
we found out later she was pressured to stick to
the story Lockhart told her.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
And this time it appears that the pressure wasn't even
from the police. So both Tate and Fraser supported the Lockhart,
whose credibility was protected by the prosecutors, who went so
far as to say that the Third Stread House wasn't
even a well known drug house. Sure why not? And
on October nineteen, two thousand and one, both Marvin and
Anthony were convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to
(20:42):
life without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
You know, when you hear people say, before you're about
to die, like your life flashes, you know, in front
of you, That's what it was like. It was like
I seen, like everything just flashed in front of me,
like I seen myself as a child. You know, I
seen myself, you know, you know, coming through the wound
and coming into life and seeing my life snatched. And
(21:05):
that's what happened at that split second. But walking out
the courtroom, I walked out of that courtroom and said,
I'm getting out of prison, and I'm about to go
in prison and learn everything about this system that did
this to me, and I'm gonna get myself out of prison.
Before I even got sentenced, you know, I started putting
together my strategy on what I was going to do
(21:26):
to get out of prison.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
And if you remember, he still had to fight the
Devin tail, the murder charge for which he had been
preparing his defense until he saw what they were willing
to do in the mcintarre case, presenting testimony like Lockharts
and Frasiers while the defense witness appeared to have been coerced.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Once all of this stuff started coming out, I said,
oh no, I'm not gonna risk getting two life sentences.
I had to, you know, resolve that case because otherwise,
guess what another jail house informat would be like. Oh,
Anthony confessed to me, And so I took a plea.
I took a no contest.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Please.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
When you've rolled the dice and you come up snake
eyes because of some witness that came up five days
before trial, you don't want to roll the dice again.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And as you can see, they really didn't even care
to go to trial, but they just wasn't going to
dismiss it. That's why they offered me eight years, eight
to twenty. So I said, okay, I'll take that deep Now, okay,
I'm gonna do this time, but I'm gonna start working
on this life sentence and get this sentence off.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
You're listening to Ron for Conviction. 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.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
When I went to prison, the first thing I said
after I got processed, where's the library? And so I
bought a Blackslaw dictionary. I bought a Michigan Court Rules.
I bought a Federal Rules of Civil Procedures. I bought
a typewriter. I spent like fifteen hundred dollars on legal supplies.
You know, I wanted to learn that language that they
(23:15):
were speaking in the courtroom that I didn't know, and
they learned what they knew in order to fight this case.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
In December two thousand and two, Anthony filed a motion
for a new trial in which he claimed ineffective assistance
of council for the failure to call Parks as a witness,
even though the prevailing wisdom is that a co defendant's
council will not advise the defendant to wave their Fifth
Amendment rights. This also drew attention to the gamesmanship of
the prosecution, effectively hiding the misidentification of Parks and the
(23:45):
unreliability of Lockhart, and along with the motion, Anthony submitted
an affidavid from Parks, who had plenty that he would
have liked to say.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Number one is da Fraser said that it was Parks
who introduced him to Cotton, and Parks was involved in
the conversation. He just got his names mixed up and
said Parks was Anthony, so DeVante. Parks would have been
able to testify and say, wait a minute, I didn't
introduce him and I ain't hear no conversation about that,
(24:14):
So that's discredits Fraser. He could have discredited Lockhart by saying,
wait a minute, Lockhart said that he knew Parks and
that we had all been there on several occasions. Parks
could have no, I don't know you, and he had
an alibi for that day which would have disproved with
Lockhart was saying. So that's what the emotion for new
(24:35):
trial was premised on, and they denied to hear it.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Both of their convictions were affirmed in a pos court
in October two thousand and three, and then Anthony filed
his federal habeas petition in two thousand and five.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Based on the reasons the Fader called Parks the confrontation violation,
and I'll talk about that in the minute. And insufficient evidence,
because we also argued it was insufficient evidence to convict
me a first degree murder. Even if you look at
the case and the light most favorable to the prosecution,
it wasn't no evidence that said I committed a murder.
Lockhard said he didn't see the shooting. If you believe
(25:07):
what he said, he said that the three people came
to the house after the shooting. So you have to
look at what testimony you had to look at to
support that. Fraser's so the violation of the rights to confrontation.
The sixth Amendment says that you have a right to
confront your accusers. Now in this context, Cotton would be
my accuser if you rely on Fraser, which was the
(25:31):
jail house informant. The jail house informant says Cotton told him, oh,
me and Anthony committed this murder and this rob even
though he doesn't specify who the anthony is because remember
he picked out a picture of Parks as being Anthony.
But in any respect, I needed to cross examine Cotton
so he could clarify his statement. But Cotton got a
(25:53):
Fifth Amendment right not to testify, so that infringed upon
my right right. So that's why we at trial, we
move for a separate trial out so that Fraser's testimony
couldn't come in against me, and the judge denied that.
The federal court in two thousand and seven agreed and
reversed my conviction and vacated.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
And that sounds like it should have been the end
of an episode, but we've got over another ten years
of fighting uf to go.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
In the federal court. When I won in two thousand
and seven, the Attorney General appealed it to the United
States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and what
happened was a new law had came out. So the
case that I relied on for the confrontation violation was
Ohio versus Roberts, and what that says is you can't
allow an unreliable, non testifying co defendit statement to come
(26:40):
in against another code defending so Fraser's testimony was obviously unreliable. However,
they changed that law in Crawford versus Washington, which came
out in two thousand and four after my conviction, and
that ruler said the Sixth Amendment confrontation clause only texts
(27:01):
testimonial statements. In other words, had Cotton confessed to the police,
that statement can't come in against me, but if he
tell it to a fellow inmate or a friend or
something like that, they said that that can come in
against you. And that's why they reversed that ruler. It's
an unfair law, but that's what put the life sentence
back on me. So what we did, we said, okay,
(27:22):
just they changed that confrontation law, which is the sixth Amendment. Well,
now we want to argue the fourteenth Amendment. He got
a due process right to confront his accusers. So it's
the same argument for different constitutional provisions. So the Sixth
Circus said, okay, we're remanded back to the law course
and you start that argument all over from scratch.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
And while that fight was underway, new evidence began to emerge,
starting with Fraser's recantation in twenty ten, and so.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
We had investigated. They finally tracked him down. He said,
oh yeah, the detectives gave me that information. Marvin didn't
confess to me, and then we found out that he
also testified in other cases. It's a guy in prison
right now serving a life sentence for Fraser's testimony a
guy named Bobby Smith, and our investigators reached out to
him as well, and he said he didn't confess to
(28:11):
Fraser either.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Fraser added that he got a seven month break on
a one year sentence, but that the prosecutor told him
not to say anything about any benefits in court. Fraser
gave a second affidavit in twenty fourteen, stating in even
stronger terms that he never spoke to Cotton and that
his statement was completely dreamed up by the prosecution. So
with that, the investigators moved on to Kenny Lockhart, who
(28:33):
remember was staying in the upstairs bedroom of a drug
house run by the Johnson crime family.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
A guy named Kurt Nerd was living with Lockhart, and
Lockhart told him the whole story, told him Johnson offered
him ten thousand dollars depend it on Cotton and Legion,
and he didn't want to do it, but ten thousand
dollars a lot of money, and so Nerd went to
a Detroit Police homicide detective Walter Bates and told him.
(29:02):
Even gave Bates the handwritten napkins that he took notes
on after Lockhart had told him this. Bates never turned
that evidence over.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
So it appears the police and the Johnson's were very
interested in steering the outcome of the investigation. And then
it became clear which of them had gotten to Renee Tape.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Lockhart's girlfriend at the time, who was in the bedroom
with him. She's terrified of the Johnson crime family. But
she spoke to an investigator for the State of Pelot
Defender's office and said exactly what happened, and that Lockhart
never saw anybody because neither of them saw anybody. But
she is afraid of the Johnson's.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
We found out later why she basically shut down and
testified to things contrary to what she put in her statement.
She was pressured by Keith Johnson to stick to the
story that Lockhart told him.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
So what did they do? Like, how did they stoop?
Speaker 2 (30:01):
They was gonna kill her kids?
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah, this was evidence that came out maybe like two
thousand and twenties.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
She won't sign an affidavit and has basically said, if
you subpoena me to testify, I'm just gonna lie. And
I said I would say I never said that. So
apparently the Johnsons still have a long reach in the neighborhood.
(30:40):
They had evidence of, for example, the affidavit of Curtin Ard,
and that helped, but it didn't give them any relief
in the court system. The court system is much more
focused on procedure than whether you're innocent or whether you
get screwed at trial. And finally, in about twenty eight
team the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office opened up a conviction
(31:04):
Integrity Unit and that was the life saving process for
a lot of guys. And the CiU does its own investigation.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
And they spoke with Detective Hughes.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
The investigator was a ex police officer, so he knew
the main detective on our case, so he didn't think
that this guy would record him, but he got the
detective on there admitted that the house was a drug house,
even though they told the jury that it wasn't. He's
admitting this. He admitted that Lockhart never gained that initial identification.
(31:39):
It was some other guy, a drug dealer, a major
drug dealer. And then he admitted to some other things
in there that the police officer was basically protecting that house.
He was a security for this drug organization and had
the jury now in all this, they'd have been like,
wait a minute, maybe some drug dealers did this murder.
We didn't know that this was a major drug location
(32:01):
and that the cop was running security for this operation,
and that Lockhart never made that identification like he testified too.
That would have shredded their entire case.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
So this is when Detroit PD officer Santonian Adams was
first revealed, and it seems like the jury wouldn't be
the only ones coming to the conclusion that this was
all related back to the Johnsons.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Everybody in the hood always knows, the streets always know,
really what happened, that Santonian Adams, who was friends with McIntyre,
set McIntyre up, and maybe Lockhart set McIntire up too,
because think about it, if he had been in the house,
he'd have been killed two. If this was just a
robbery for drugs, that would have killed everybody. Word on
the curb was that since McIntire's and Cod were buddies
(32:46):
and doing stuff together, Johnson wanted Cotten out of there.
So that's kind of how it came down. Johnson was
the one orchestrating all of this, whether it was a hit,
and then since McIntire's already dead, now if you can
get and legion, he doesn't want them in a picture,
have the cops go to them.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
So it looks like the Johnson's gave Detective Hughes the
three names, then gave a Lockhart ten grand to corroborate,
and then scared the shit out of her nay tate
while the police and prosecutors went ahead and did the rest.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
So the CiU took a fresh look at the case,
and then they were able to understand, especially with this
tape that the PI had with Donald Hughes, where Hughes
admitted that Lockhart hadn't seen anything. Now you start getting
into a whole lot of police misconduct. That shed a
whole new light on the trial and their right to
(33:38):
a fair trial. They were robbed of due process, and
the CiU concluded they that they couldn't say that these
guys were innocent. What they did was they said there
was so much police misconduct they were entitled to a
new trial. And then a Win County prosecutor's office realized
the flaws with the case and dismissed the charges. But
(33:58):
I think what really rocked this case is that the
prosecutor's office was very likely involved in this miscarriage of
justice with not allowing Parks to take the stand because
they didn't dismiss the charges until after this conviction.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Nonetheless, both Marvin and Anthony's charges were dismissed. Anthony told
us about how that day unfolded.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
You know, in prison. You know, I found inner peace
in prison through studying the law, and I worked on
other people's cases when I was in prison. You know,
I was the go to guy in prison. Any prison
that I went to, I turned the day room into
my law office and I would get me a corner.
(34:43):
I have my typewriter set up, I have all my
law books. People would come to my office and we
working on other cases. You know, I got people out
of prison from prison, and so that's what I was doing.
And I was actually working on the finishing touches on
this brief, and the counselor came in and said, you know,
come to the office with me for a minute. When
(35:04):
you got a phone call, normally that means somebody in
your family done died, or you know, some bad news.
So I'm like, okay, here we go. And I didn't
even have the CiU on my mind, but it was
my attorney and my investigator, and then she said, well, yeah,
you know, Kim Worthy agreed to let you go. I
broke down in te you. I couldn't even talk, and
so the councilor said, we'll have him call you back later.
(35:27):
He needed to get hisself together. So yeah, it was
definitely a breath of fresh air when I got that news.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
The decision came down on October first, twenty twenty, but
the nightmare wasn't over. He still had to contend with
his eight to twenty year sentence for Devin Taylor. He
was finally released on parole on December fifteen, twenty twenty,
and since his release, he's been reinvestigating and fighting that case,
as well as continuing the practice of law that he
began inside.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
I'm in the a Pillot division at Wolf Law Firm,
not Wolf Gang, but Rachel Wolf, so I run her
a pilot division. Then I'm also a Pillot consultant in
my own office, where I do pretty much the same thing,
but at a reduced rate for guys who can't afford
to pay for an attorney. We do investigation work, briefs,
motions and everything like that, and then I pitch their
(36:14):
cases to different attorneys where they can afford them or
even do it pro bono. I'm also a member of
the Organization of Exigneries. I'm on the board of directors
a Safe and Just Michigan. You know, I got my
own nonprofit here towards exposing the falsehood of jail house
nitch testimony Anthony Legion dot com and has my story
on there on my Facebook page, Safe and Just Michigan
(36:36):
DJST task Force. It can also support that DJST task
Force dot com. It's NonStop. I work all day, twelve
hours every day trying to save somebody's life from spending
the rest of their life in prison.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Meanwhile, Wolf is doing the same un your civil suit.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
The problem is civil litigation. Now. The wheels turned very
very slowly. Right now, we are just in the process
after a few years of summary judgment motions where they're
trying to throw the case out on qualified immunity. There's
a whole nother can of worm, but that's where we're
at now. And then they'll kick the can down the
road and go to the six Circuit Court of Appeals
(37:12):
if their motion is denied, and it'll drag it out further,
and all that does is just kick these guys in
the face some more.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
It's fucking disgraceful. But we hear the same thing all
too often. Right here, we're going to have both of
you linked in the episode description so people can keep
up with you or who knows, maybe they might need
your services. So with that, let's go to closing arguments.
Thanks again for being here and for all the incredible
work you're doing and closing arguments, well, if you start
(37:39):
anything else you want to share with our incredible audience
and with me of course, and then we're gonna let
Anthony take us off into the sunset.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
What would be a good closing on this story. It's
that they, as much as they have been screwed, are
trying to give back to get other guys out who
they know are innocent in prison, and they're doing the
best they can with the resources they have. To call
attention to wrongful convictions, to the causes of wrongful convictions,
(38:10):
witness misidentifications. It's the largest cause of wrongful convictions. Sometimes
they're innocent. Sometimes like this, they're intentional, and they're just
trying to do the best they can to make the
best of the lives that they've got, and they're doing
a very admirable job.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
For people that are similarly situated or have loved ones
that's similarly situated, don't give up. The road may seem long,
gloomy and dark, but you got to stay focused, you know,
you got to stay fighting.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Now.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
I used to always encourage the younger brothers, don't get
caught up in the prison politics. Don't get caught up
on a basketball court, on a chest table playing cards.
If you're trying to get out of prison, you have
to move like you want to get out of prison.
At talk, walk, sleep, everything like you want to get
(39:04):
out of prison, because then the officers are gonna respect
you in that manner. A lot of the correctional officers
knew my agenda was to get out of prison. I
didn't care about nothing that was going on in prison,
even though I seen people die in prison, get stabbed
in prison. You know, I had to see some horrific things.
And again, like I said, I found my inner piece
(39:25):
in studying the law. And so you know, I encourage
anybody whoever loved want to go through this and encourage
them to stay focused and on type of the fight
to get out of prison.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Thank you for listening to Ron for Conviction. You can
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
executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliburn. The
music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
(40:01):
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
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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