October 3, 2024 • 41 mins
On the morning of December 9th, 1984, 19-year-old Christopher Turner woke up to the police breaking into his bedroom with guns drawn. He was arrested for the murder of Catherine Fuller, who was assaulted, robbed, and killed on the evening of October 1st, 1984. Based on testimonies delivered under coercion, Christopher was convicted of first degree murder, along with 8 other defendants, and sentenced to life in prison. It was later revealed that the prosecution withheld vital information, including several eyewitness testimonies implicating a different suspect, thus violating the Brady Rule. Turner remained hard-working, resilient, and optimistic despite the adversity he endured. He was released on parole in 2011 and continues to engage in prisoner advocacy work.
Send emails of support for the pardon petition to: 8thandH@exonerate.org
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
On October first, nineteen eighty four, a forty nine year
old mother named Catherine Fuller took a shortcut through an
alleyway in a busy area of Washington, d C. Known
as eighth and h. She was beaten and violated in
a particularly brutal fashion, and she succumbed to her injuries.
(00:24):
Even though only two men were seen fleeing when police arrived,
it was believed that there just had to be more
assailants involved. An alleged anonymous tip confirmed that fear and
led to seventeen arrests and eight convictions, none of whom
were the two who had fled the scene. This is
(00:45):
wrongful conviction. 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 seven four six
sixty six and tell us how these stories make you
feel and what you've done to help the cause, even
(01:06):
if it's something as simple as telling a friend or
sharing on social media, and you might just hear yourself
in a future episode. Call us A three three two
oh seven four six sixty six. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction,
(01:29):
where we've got a historical case from a historical place Washington, DC, where,
even though two assailants were witnessed fleeing the scene of
a sexually violent robbery and murder, somehow a narrative about
a frenzied gang assault took hold and our guest, Chris Turner,
was roped into this precursor to the Central Park five,
(01:50):
now known as the Exonerated five. Only in this case,
it wasn't five.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
There was seventeen people. The first time ever in the
history of America that many people were charge for the
murder one person without it being a conspiracy or anything.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
So seventeen were charged an eight conviction stuck. And we're
just super relieved and glad that you survived and are
here joining us today.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, you're very welcome and returning to the show from
the mid Atlantic Innocence Project is one of my personal heroes.
Sean Armbrus, John, welcome back.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Any chance to talk about this case, I am happy
to take.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
So this story when it happened was huge news. The
graphic gang assault narrative stuck in people's minds, and the
setting Chris's hometown also has the distinction of being the
nation's Capital.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I literally grew up on Capitol hill Man when Union Station,
all those fountains that you see down Pennsylvania Avenue, Constitution Avenue,
I swim in all in my I played hide and
go see in the bushes at the Supreme Court. We
used to ride our bikes and around the Capitol, around
the stairs, and I was your average kid growing up.
The neighborhood was like any average middle class neighborhood. The
(03:10):
community supported each other. My grandmother was one of the
highest ranking members in Peace Corps. She used to take
us all over the place my siblings. I had two
brothers and a sister, and my parents were separated, but
my grandmother was the foundation in the family. She took
us everywhere. So we would hang out at the Pentagon.
(03:33):
From being around that atmosphere, my dream was to go
in the Air Force. I graduated when I was seventeen
years old. Never been arrested. Used to hang out with
a bunch of guys and we'd go to the go gos.
We go to different shows, we go to club. You know.
We were trying to get a band, started a go
go band.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Go go music for those who don't remember, it was
a subgenre of funk born out of the DC area,
And I'm just going to do you a favor and
link one of the originating groups in the episode description
to give you a feel a flavor for the soundtrack
for this group of friends, among whom were the children
of the victim in this case, Catherine Fuller.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yes absolutely new Wellnewer son David her son Willim was
younger than us, but they both looked up to me
as a big brother. So we had some instruments and
then we thought we could make some go go music.
I used to be the so called manager of the
band because I was the one who was putting it together,
the drama, the guitars, the keyboards. But we only had
(04:37):
really two guys in the band that was any good,
and that was James Gomellia and Gregory Williams, who would
end up charged with the case.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
And we're going to get to the laundry list of
people from the neighborhood who were dragged into this, including
Chris and his alibi witness, Calvin Smith. But first let's
go to the afternoon of October first, nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
October first, eighteen four, kind of a drizzly day in
DC but it's a busy day at eighth and H
Streets Northeast. That area is a very populated section of
the city. A whole bunch of bus lines come together.
It's check day, so you have people out shopping, doing whatever.
(05:19):
And I actually like to tell the story the way
it actually happened, as opposed to the way the government
has it happened.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
So on that.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Day, there was a street vendor who was at the
corner of eighth and H Streets and his job was
kind of watching the area, making sure nobody touched the merchandise,
looking for customers. So he's watching the corner, he's watching
the alley, and he sees two guys kind of walking
(05:51):
up and down H Street Northeast looking like their case
in the joint. But that's about it. At around six
or six thirty, he goes into the alley to take
a leak, and he goes kind of over to where
this garage is at the t point of the alley,
and he sees blood and he finds the body of
Catherine Fuller, who is a very tiny, I think like
(06:14):
four foot nine ninety eight pounds mother in the neighborhood,
and she's been badly beaten. She's clearly dead. He calls
the police. Him and a couple of his friends are
kind of like monitoring the alley waiting for the police.
As the police show up, the two guys who had
(06:34):
been kind of walking up and down each street the
street vender sees them agin as police were arriving, those
two guys bolt. One of them has something puffy in
his jacket.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
They're literally at the garage what a victim is, and
they're tucking someone in the jacket and I think the
police here. The guys say don't run, and then both
of them take off running, So.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
The police start processing the scene. Missus Fuller's body is
in a very small, cluttered garage. She's been badly beaten
anally sodomized, so she's got pretty significant brutal injuries. And
if you look at the crime scene, evidence looks like
it's happened in this garage. There are a group of
(07:16):
witnesses who come forward who say they'd been walking through
the alley at around five thirty that evening and the
garage doors were closed and they heard some low like
moans or groans coming through the garage. If you look
in that garage, there's all sorts of stuff all over
the place, and you don't see that stuff as disturbed
(07:37):
that there was room for ten, fifteen, twenty people to
be committing this crime. So, if you are someone who's
looking at this case like first blush, what you probably
think is those two guys who were walking up and down,
who were running from the garage, seem important, and this
(07:58):
might have been happening at around And so you might ask,
how do you go from that to a mob of
crazed young people beating Missus Fuller to death in an
alley in a total frenzy and sodomizing her with an object, right,
Because that's not what that crime looks like.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Well, as we mentioned, many of the kids who eventually
were convicted were friends with Missus Fuller's sons, never been
in trouble, and would not likely be motivated to do
something like this for any reason at all, let alone
the jewelry and fifty dollars that were stolen. But according
to the investigators McGuinness and Sanchez Torano, they received an
(08:39):
anonymous tip and I'm not buying it. It's like a
go to fallback, you know. Something about that sounds fishy
to me.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I'm glad you say that, because I'd never brought the
theory of anonymous call, because they just created a theory
and say, way it was an anonymous tip that it
was these even ahe guys talking about snatches on one
in alley.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
They don't tend to be huge organized gangs in DC
the way there are in like Chicago ORLA. DC has cruise.
There was not an eighth and H Crew, though another
DC thing is go go clubs, go go's like the
DC homegrown music, and the eighth and H Crew was
kind of like a go go thing. Someone would say,
is the eighth and H Crew in the house, and
(09:23):
people from eighth and H would cheer. So there's not
really an eighth and H Crew. But in nineteen eighty
four you're kind of at the early talk about wilding
and youths and.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Gangs, and this alleged tip led them to a guy
named Clifton Yardborough as well as his brother Ernie, and
to their alleged involvement in this fabricated gang.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Cliff Yardborough is sixteen at the time, super talented basketball
player but very low IQ. So they pick up Cliff,
separate him from his older brother and tell Cliff that
they know he was at this scene that if he
denies it, he's lying, and if he keeps denying it,
he's going to end up getting charged with it.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
That right there should tell everyone the story that you
pick this guy, the youngest, weakest guy who didn't have
the mental capacity, and that's where you win at you
just drill them for nineteen hours, the problem of food, water, anything.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Cliff gives police a statement telling them that a guy
named Alfonso Harris, his nickname was Monk, a guy named
Levi Rouse, Roland Franklin, and a couple of other guys
robbed Missus Fuller, and on that basis they arrest Monk Harris.
At that point though, all they have is cliff statement,
and so they keep investigating. Their next big break, to
(10:45):
the extent that we can call it, that comes from
a young woman who is sixteen, a heavy PCP user,
also has an IQ of sixty three, someone who by
the time of trial has changed the specifics of her
story so many times that it's hard to keep track.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
And that was Carrie Ellerby, whose initial statement was made
while she was high on PCP. And for those of
you who don't know PCP is a powerful drug, and
she identified a guy named Calvin Austin.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
The police are talking to her about some kind of
unrelated fight at one of the go go clubs, and
she kind of spontaneously tells them that she knows who
killed Missus Fuller.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
First, she says she was riding in a car coming
from a go go somewhere in southeast and she over
heard a Calvin Austin tell them mout killed the woman
in an alley.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
So police bring in Calvin Alston, very low IQ teenager
interrogated by the same police. Officers who interrogated Cliff tell
him that they know he was there. He's denying it.
They tell him he faces life in prison if he
doesn't talk to them. He can either have a piece
of the pie or they can have the whole thing.
And Austin eventually says he witnessed.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
A group assault thirteen other people. Yeah, when you're hearing
the three, you like y'all got this room, man, people
would have random Missus Fuller's defense on a street. This
wouldn't have happened that way.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
He says, it's on video and he thought he was
going to give the statement and go home.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Calvin Austin immediately recanted it, but it was too late.
His statement named thirteen other people, including Chris Turner, his
younger brother Charles, and a friend named Timothy Catlett.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah, me and Katnet went to a late night movie
and watched Beverly Hills Cop and came home and the
next morning they kicking out doors. And the crazy thing
about it is is someone that you know that you
had to grieve about, you had to grieve with a
friend about. That's the difference in the Central Park case,
(12:48):
in the Norfolk case, and this is somebody that you
actually know.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
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Speaker 2 (13:20):
The people that were charged on the case have never
been together. No one has ever heard of an aph
and H gang. Like. I know all the people that
were charged, but some of the people on the case
don't know each other. The only person I did not
know in the case was Lisa Roughing. Some of the
guys are meeting each other. They like, Chrissy, who is this,
(13:41):
I'm like, Oh, that's such and such. That's Bobo or man?
Who is this? I ain't never seen this dude for
in our neighborhood and I'm like, no, he live in
the neighborhood, just live up top. And there was a
total of seventeen people charged with the case, so naturally
people saw on TV that they are arresting people and
they are up to seventeen. So you better come up
(14:03):
and tell them something when they come knocking on your
door or you will be number eighteen, nineteen, and twenty.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
The other witnesses were mostly teenagers who the police interviewed
multiple times, and they just keep bringing people in until
they finally broke. There was one witness, Linda Jacobs, who
was friend of Carrie Ellerby's.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Linda Jacobs gave a statement making her and Carrie ellerbe
witnesses instead of just eavesdroppers to Calvin Austin's confession, and
the police went back to Carrie ellerb.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Now the story changes and now she's a witness tutor
murder at the scene in the alley, her and her
best friend. Now, if you there, Calvin Austen, don't have
to tell you about it. But that was her initial statement.
They used her against Calvin Austen and then got her
to change all her whole testimony around to Kelvin Smith.
(14:59):
Curry Elab was supposed to have had a baby by
Kelvin Smith, which was ludicrous because Kelvin Smith he didn't
even meet Curry Llerb till after missus Fuller's death.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Now, if you recall, Kelvin Smith was Chris's alibi witness.
They were at Kelvin's during the crime. So this new
statement from Ellerb somehow gave Llerb credibility making a statement
that incriminated her alleged baby's father and discredited Chriss alibi,
even though it was all a total departure from the
statement Llerb had made about Calvin Austen. But nevertheless, seventeen
(15:33):
people from the eighth and H area were now in
jail awaiting trial.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Many of the defendants would blame in each other because
they didn't know each other. Like, man, whatever y'all guys
got me into, y'all need to get me the f
off for this case. Man, y'all need to take your
fucking weight if you did this. And everybody's agging back
and forth, and so we got argaments and fight among
ourselves about man. What you know about this man? You
better tell the people whatever you know and get me
(15:59):
off of this case. And everybody on the case is
just lost and dumbfounded, except for Harry Bennett. Harry Bennett
is not from that neighborhood. He put itself on the
case to take away a drug charge that he had,
but he's not from that neighborhood. He's never mentioned in
any of the.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
False confessions, and he's referred to Calvin Austin's statement and
a striking inconsistency.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Calvin Austin and Bennett said the similar story, but they
switched up different people doing different things, and they don't
implicate each other. Why because Harry Bennett don't know Calvin
alst Kavin don't know Harry Bennett, so they never implicate
each other.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Which sounds like a blazing red flag.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
What the government says is essentially, well, these inconsistencies don't
matter because they all basically say the same thing, so
that there was a large grip that attacked Missus Fuller.
And first of all, as details do matter when you're
looking at those inconsistencies and trying to tell a story
and figure out how the witnesses got.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
There, and not only are they inconsistent with the each other,
but with the objective facts of the crime.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
When we asked a pathologist before the twenty twelve hearing
to take a look at this and sort of see, like,
are these injuries possible for one or two people to
have inflicted? He said yes, It's actually much more likely
that this is one or two people than a large
grip crime because of the way they're concentrated.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
But Calvin Alsen and Harry Bennett said that all these
guys was dead. Oh yeah, Chrissy he hit her, Yeah,
Charles he kicked her. Snot Rag he hit her. Stephen Webb,
yeah he kicked her. It's like it was a similar
line like guys had taken torry, Okay, now you go
kick and the autos report didn't support this.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
This pathologist looked at some of the witness statements and said,
if this had happened the way this witness said, here
are the injuries he would have expected. If it had
happened the way this witness had said, here are the
injuries he would have expected, and they're not there. The
other piece of that is that the government has often
said in this case that the injuries were so severe
(18:02):
that they couldn't have been inflicted by one or two people.
The pathologist said, that's absolutely not the case. If what
the witnesses are saying is true, it would have actually
been a more brutal crime.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
In addition, Calvin Austin fought to suppress his own false confession,
a process he began upon leaving the interrogation room.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
He immediately retracts the confession and is writing everybody under
the sun telling them he falsely confessed. Was planning to
go to trial up until very late in the game.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
He was in the sale right next to me, across
from Lamont, Bobby, Calvin Smith, and Daryl Murchison. And once
he lost that suppression motion for the video, they actually
moved Calvin Alsten. We don't know why they move them.
I don't want to say they moved him intentionally, but
they put them with people who were sentenced already and
(18:56):
he ended up right.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
He was sixteen, He got raped in the DC jail
and at that point he said, like, I've got to
get out here, and so he agreed to testify for
the government Jesus.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
So they had Austin, Bennett, Yarborough, Ellerbye Jacobs and a
young man named Maurice Thomas, who claimed to be able
to identify Chris Turner from a distance by the shape
of his head. Yeah, and that is what passed Muster
as the state's evidence that they planned to present at
two separate trials, the first of which was for ten
(19:32):
of the seventeen co defendants.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
They told the public that they were more and they
were gonna get more. The other seven were supposed to
be indicted on full of two, but the one guy,
Darryl Merchison, was not indicted because he had a time
cause showing that he was at work at the time.
Lamart Bobbitt, his girlfriend had a detailed journal hour on
(19:56):
the hour and her and Lamont was together. Another one
of the guys, we were not in town or was
locked up somewhere else at the time, maybe Rowland Franklin
or something. And so they don't want none of that
stuff to come out.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
The alibi evidence would have impeached the credibility of all
of the state's witnesses, so those whose alibis could be
undermined went to trial, including Chris and Charles Turner, Kelvin Smith,
Timothy Catlett, Levi Rouse, Stephen Webb, Russell Overton, Clifton, Yarborough,
Alfonso Harris, and Lisa Ruffin.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
One person had public defendant Alfonso Harris because he was
the first person arrested, so the public Defender's office couldn't
represent no one else on the case because of conflict
they're interests. So we all received quarter pointed attorneys. They
never did no investigation work, They never did any research.
This would have been came out, but they thought that
(20:50):
we all were gonna plead guilty. How could you not
plead guilty to the worst case ever in the history
of DC when they offering you plead deals to six years.
They offered me a plea deal to two years at
least a rough and one year, and offered everybody else
a plead deal to six years. And I told him
I'm not pleading guilty to somebody didn't do And it
should have woke the lawyers up if they were actually
(21:14):
defense attorneys. Even when trial was going on, they offered
us plead They kept on convincing us that we need
to plead out to this and move on.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
But they refused, and the prosecutor, Jerry Goren, took them
to trial in late nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
The evidence that it is presented at trial is the
testimony of Calvin Austen and Harry Bennett that they, along
with the defendants of some other individuals, were hanging out
at a bus stop at the corner of eighth and
h Streets when cliff Yarborough started singing a go go
song about getting some money. That someone saw Missus Fuller
(21:51):
from across the street and said let's go get her,
and that they accosted her, drag her into the alley,
rob her her, beat her in a wild frenzy, and
somehow they all come to agree eventually that the person
who committed the analsodomy with an object was Leevi Ross,
and that they then left. That's the overarching narrative. Bennett
(22:16):
and Alston put themselves in the crime. Carrie Ellebie and
her friend Linda Jacobs. They tell very different stories about
what they saw, but they put themselves there watching the crime.
Another teenage witness, Maurice Thomas. Police were initially looking for
a different Maurice who they heard knew something about the crime,
(22:37):
but they found Maurice Thomas, and he ultimately told them
that he had been walking by the Alley, and he
was able to sort of identify some of the people,
including Chris Turner by the shape of his head. The
witnesses weren't great, they weren't super credible, so the jury.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Must have picked up on some of the inconsistencies. But then,
out of ten attorneys, only the public defender, Michelle Roberts
raised the suspects who ran from the scene, and without
Clifton Yarborough testifying to what had been coerced out of him,
the case against her client, Alfonso Harris was basically non existent.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Calvin Austen didn't know Afonso Hers, Harry Bennett didn't know
Afonso Hers really, and then the girls lay what from
the neighborhood and didn't know Afonso Hers.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So Harris had a shot. Meanwhile, none of the attorneys
even bothered questioning the state's theory of a group assault. Instead,
there was a great deal of call it friendly fire.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
They were just all fighting with each other. So it
was this defendant was there, but my client wasn't, and
so they adopted the government's narrative and just quiverled with
the specifics. And again the witnesses weren't super credible, but
the crime was awful, and there wasn't any sort of
(23:58):
real competing theory presented.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
It was a mess. I mean, we had the worst
attorneys that you could possibly have if anyone had just
went to the crime scene. We kept begging for attorneys.
Just go down there, just look, just take pictures. You'll see.
This not possible to happen like this. This can't occur
the way they're saying it.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
So it appears that the only person who worked in
the service of justice was the public defender. And meanwhile
the jury was stuck with these inconsistent witnesses and a
defense panel that resembled crabs in a barrel.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
The initial convictions took a really long time. I think
the jury was out for about a week.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
One jury told me that they voted over seventy times
before they reached the verdict. They found two not guilty
right then and there, and then they convicted six.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
The two who are acquitted are Alfonso Harris and then
Felicia Ruffin, frankly, because I think there's like nothing against her.
It's unclear how she ended up there, which.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Left two more for the jury, Russell Overton and Chris Turner.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I was already grieving because they found my brother and
other men guilty of a crime. I knew that they
had not committed, so I was already grieving, but it
was just like you had found me guilty already before.
So over the course of the next two days, the
juriors kept telling the judge, we can't reach a verdict,
(25:18):
that they wanted to go home. They've been sequestered in
a hotel, they haven't seen their family, they hadn't been
able to take care of their homes. This trial been
going on for two months. This impossible for a verdict
to be reached, and my attorney moved for a mistrial,
and Russell Overton attorney didn't want a mistrial. The judge
(25:39):
continued to send them back there to deliberate anyway, and
basically told them what they know, what their verdict should be.
They had a duty to bring back a verdict and
they found us guilty.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
So Chris ultimately was convicted of murdering Missus Fuller. He
was sentenced to twenty six years to life in prison.
He was nineteen at the time, and that was actually
the latest sentence received by any of the eight men
who were convicted.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
It was gut rich and it had broke my spirit
because I thought that I let so many people down,
and so it was a tough time for me. I
didn't want people who had invested so much in me
to think that I threw that all the way and
that I did the crime, and so it put me
(26:29):
at the lowest point in my life. They gave most
of the US federal destination. I was sent to Ashland, Kentucky,
(26:49):
and so I would spend the next three years there.
I angry, mad as hell solitary confinement. Most of the time.
The gods hated me, the inmates hated me. They applied
to kill me a couple of times. They told me
that my life was in danger. I just didn't even
care at that time. I'm like, you guys think you mad,
(27:12):
you should imagine how mad I am. But I also
made the transformation there. I was locked down twenty three
hours a day by myself. So I began to read
everything that I could get my own hands on. The
more I read, the more I love reading. And so
I read a book Call for a Boy, and it
(27:32):
changed my life.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
I thought my.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Situation was the worst situation in the world, and I
thought no one could relate to it. When I read
that book about the trocity in South Africa. As bad
as I thought my situation was, it was not the
worst situation in the world. That's when the transformation made place.
That was when I made up in my mind that Chris,
(27:54):
you get a chance to make this your monastery, or
you get the chance to make this your place of
how I learned in it. And so from that point on,
I began to change my perception. I changed people's perception
of how they was gonna perceive me. I stopped feeling
sorry for myself. I stopped feeling bitter, I stopped being angry,
(28:17):
and I said, I'm gonna do something about it. I
began studying the law. I said, you know what, I'm
gonna get myself out of prison.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And part of that journey was reaching out to a
journalist named Patrice Gaines, who had covered the trial for
the Washington Post.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
I was blaming Patrese in Washington Post and everyone for
our conviction because I told him that we were convicted
in the newspaper long before we ever went to trial,
and we were never given a fair trial. And I
reminded her that I was still innocent, and she wrote
me back and told me that the case didn't set
well with her and she had a problem with it.
(28:51):
Then then she was new to the Post and she
didn't have no backing.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Patrese was the lone black journey all us there who
was covering the case. Even then, she had serious doubts
about the case, but she was the only one at
the Post who felt that way. And so when she
heard from Chris again later, I think it really stirred
(29:16):
something inside her. Patrese talks to Calvin Alston and Harry Bennett.
I think Calvin Alston had been kind of recanting for
a while at this point, and he recanted to her.
Bennett recanted to her. In two thousand and one. She
ultimately wrote a story for the Post, but this case,
at least back then, still had a lot of power
(29:39):
in DC and instead of a series like she was hoping,
it became one article in the Style section. But it
got the attention of the then newly formed mid Atlantic
Innocence Project.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
And she had a literal bombshell to share. Patrese discovered
that a woman named Amy Davis had told the police
about her boyfriend James Blue just weeks after Catherine Fuller's
awful murder.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Amy Davis comes forward and says she witnessed her boyfriend
James Blue commit the murder. Police follow up, they decide
they don't think Ammy Davis is credible.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
They say they never believe their story. Her family vividly
says they went to visit her and witness protection in
Annapolis at a hotel that the government is known to
have used for witness protection. The family wouldn't have had
no reason to make this up. Amy Davis actually had
Missus Fuller's wedding ring. They actually sold her ring to
(30:43):
a group of people down on a street when they
took it to the police office and say we got
this ring. We think that might be described as the
ring miss fullet. It was last scene when she left home.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Ammy Davis statement just goes in a pile. It's never
just close to the defense. Eventually, Amy Davis is actually
murdered by.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
That boyfriend, a murder that happened the week before the
Fuller trial. Now, James Blue died in prison in nineteen
ninety three, and it's possible that Amy Davis was lying
to gain protection for herself from an abusive partner, and
the wedding ring was just a coincidence, but either way
it's Brady material.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
And so based on the initial recantations and the Amy
Davis evidence, the initial lawyers filed a joint Innocence Protection
Act petition and post conviction petition.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
And while this filing was processed, Chris had already done
twenty six long, miserable years and was finally eligible for parole.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
We told him ahead of time that we were not
beingmit and guilt, and we presented this Brady material to
the parole boy and they had enough sense to believe
in my innocence. I'm the first person to ever parole
first time up without admitting guilt.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
By now, Sean and her team at the mid Atlanticainnis's
project had officially taken over the.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Case, so we sought formal discovery, and that's where we
got information about all of the times the government interviewed
its own witnesses, all of the times those stories were changed,
about the people walking through the alley who saw the
garage door closed and heard moans at five point thirty.
(32:23):
That's where we got some of the most valuable information
in the case, including information about James McMillan.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
If you recall the street vendor who discovered the body.
He and his friend saw two men fleeing the scene.
The police arrived, well, they had actually made an id
back in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
One of the men, identified, a guy named James McMillan,
is known to police. He lives right on that alley
with his aunt, and he's known to police because he's
been robbing and beating women in alleys in that area,
and the beatings are particularly brutal and nasty.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
But it appears that since this didn't fit the gang narrative,
McMillan was merely prosecuted for his other violent robberies at
that time.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
And just months after getting out of prison for those robberies,
in nineteen ninety two, James McMillan happened to murder and
Analie Sodoma as another young woman in an alley a
couple of blocks away. And when you look at the
later crime, those injuries actually have a similar pattern and
if anything, are even more severe, and we know that
(33:33):
crime was only committed by one person.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Unfortunately, the nineteen ninety two murder doesn't qualify as Brady
material since it didn't exist at trial, but the nineteen
eighty four identification and McMillan's nineteen eighty four violent crimes
absolutely did so. In twenty twelve, they filed a motion
that contained the Brady material as well as some really
helpful supporting evidence.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
So at the twenty twelve hearing, all of the recanters,
a bunch of witnesses from the neighborhood testify, including two
women with CIA level security clearances, who testify about the
ways in which the police interrogated them in this case
and were making accusations and just kind of assuming that
(34:17):
every teenager in the neighborhood was potentially guilty. But at
the end of the day it was all denied by
the trial judge, who had been friends with the original
trial judge on the case, so I think came in
with some pretty strong preconceived notions and brought those to bear.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
It appears this judge felt similarly to the trial prosecutor,
Jerry Goren, who also took the.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Stand specifically with the macmillan evidence. He said, it really
would have only made a difference if this had been
a one or two person crime, and of course, like
that's the point, that's exactly the point.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Both Goren and the judge had ignored the new evidence
because it had flown in the face of the trial evidence,
which was also shown to have been wholly unreliable.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
So we appeal that to the DC Court of Appeals.
We also lost there, and then as kind of what
we saw as hail Mary, we filed a petition for
regisource errari with the US Supreme Court. And in the
US Supreme Court, we couldn't bring forward the evidence of innocence,
so we couldn't bring the recantations because that's only a
(35:22):
claim under DC law, but we could raise the Brady issues.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
When they said the Supreme Court I accepted it, I
thought it was a dune dee. I don't recall a
Brady violation that they accepted that they did not overturn.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
We figured we had at least four votes because that's
what it takes to get cert in the US Supreme Court,
and why would they bother granting cert if four people
weren't fairly sure they wanted to reverse the lower court decision.
So we had oral argument in the case, and it
was pretty clear that we did not have justice sodom or,
(35:58):
which was a bad sign, and we ultimately lost. We
had given it our best shot there was a lot
of stuff that was withheld from the defendants at trial.
But at the end of the day, the most powerful
evidence we have is the similarity between the murder of
Missus Fuller and the nineteen ninety two murder that James
(36:21):
McMillan committed. But the Supreme Court can't consider that or
chooses not to consider that, because it is about what
the prosecutor knew at the time and what they should
have turned over at the time, and what the trial
would have been like at the time. So anything that
happens after that isn't really relevant.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Since this defeat in twenty seventeen, Chris has been focused
on living even though his name still hasn't been fully cleared.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
The charge is still come up on the certain criterias.
I try to apply for a job with Homeland Security TSA,
the charge is still come up. This case is over
forty years old and we still get back down on verse.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
People who are convicted in local DC courts can't go
to the mayor. We don't have a governor because we're
not a state. What we have is the president. The
Central Park five now exonerated five just spoke at the
Democratic National Convention and if there's any case that this
case reminds me of, it is the Central Park five
(37:22):
case that kids were like having kind of a wild
night in Central Park and ergo, they must have all
just gang raped someone. That if you browbeat teenagers for
long enough, they'll either confess or give you the witness
statements you want. And at the end of the day,
this type of case is exactly what a pardon is for.
(37:44):
Right a pardon is supposed to be a chance for
you to bring evidence that you can't take to court.
And so no one with any kind of unbiased view
has ever looked at the facts of this case.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Right now we have a part and in front of
the president by we're confident that we have enough evidence
to get him to do the right thing, and all
the guys on the case, some of the families can
finally get the relief that they deserve, including the fullest family.
They hoping that we get the pardon and they can
actually get the rest that they deserve and finally move
(38:19):
past the case, because until justice is to serve, no
one can actually move forward.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Amen to that, and we're going to link some action
steps in the episode description and with that, let's now
go to closing arguments, my favorite part of the show,
where once again I thank you Sean and Chris from
the bottom of my heart. And it works like this. Sean,
you know you've been here several times before. I'm going
to turn my microphone off and leave my headphones on
and just listen to anything else you want to share
(38:46):
with me and our wonderful audience. Sean, you go first,
and then just hand the mic off to Chris and
he'll take us off into the sunset.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
Nobody wins when innocent people are convicted. Family of the
person James McMillan murdered when he got out of prison
like that never should have happened, and the guys who
were convicted shouldn't have to live their lives with the
stain of allegedly committing one of the most gruesome murders
(39:16):
in DC history. Yes, they're out of prison, but I
don't like being falsely accused of knowingly parking in someone
else's parking space. Imagine that you are just known in
DC and have been since you were a child, for
committing a murder like that. Imagine being nineteen years old,
(39:36):
being convicted of something you didn't do and going back
to the DC jail and having the whole jail erupt
in cheers because you were convicted. That's what happened to them.
Imagine being target in prison because of the crime you're
convicted of, even though you didn't do it. Like that's
what they've been living with for most of their adult
(39:57):
lives and some of their non adult life. And the
President has the power to undo that, and he should
or she should.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
I extend my honest to you, Jason and the entire
staff there and the work you're doing. Whether we get
the partner or don't get the partner, we'll still be
talking about it. My closing thoughts is just extend honors
to the entire wrongful conviction community and the advocates and
the tremendous work that's being done on so many fronts
(40:28):
behind the scenes to bring this to the forefront. We
wish that the Justice Department get behind it, pull your
head out of the sand, but I think they're afraid
to get behind it. This is the one case that
they don't allow any of their attorneys to have opinion
about one way or another, because you got to ask
(40:49):
yourself if you did this in a case that everybody
was watching what the hell is going on in cases
where nobody is watching? And I think that's the thing
that they're afraid of, that there'll be a windfall, you know,
when you think about what's really going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful 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. 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
(41:35):
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number
one
On October first, nineteen eighty four, a forty nine year
old mother named Catherine Fuller took a shortcut through an
alleyway in a busy area of Washington, d C. Known
as eighth and h. She was beaten and violated in
a particularly brutal fashion, and she succumbed to her injuries.
(00:24):
Even though only two men were seen fleeing when police arrived,
it was believed that there just had to be more
assailants involved. An alleged anonymous tip confirmed that fear and
led to seventeen arrests and eight convictions, none of whom
were the two who had fled the scene. This is
(00:45):
wrongful conviction. 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 seven four six
sixty six and tell us how these stories make you
feel and what you've done to help the cause, even
(01:06):
if it's something as simple as telling a friend or
sharing on social media, and you might just hear yourself
in a future episode. Call us A three three two
oh seven four six sixty six. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction,
(01:29):
where we've got a historical case from a historical place Washington, DC, where,
even though two assailants were witnessed fleeing the scene of
a sexually violent robbery and murder, somehow a narrative about
a frenzied gang assault took hold and our guest, Chris Turner,
was roped into this precursor to the Central Park five,
(01:50):
now known as the Exonerated five. Only in this case,
it wasn't five.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
There was seventeen people. The first time ever in the
history of America that many people were charge for the
murder one person without it being a conspiracy or anything.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
So seventeen were charged an eight conviction stuck. And we're
just super relieved and glad that you survived and are
here joining us today.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, you're very welcome and returning to the show from
the mid Atlantic Innocence Project is one of my personal heroes.
Sean Armbrus, John, welcome back.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Any chance to talk about this case, I am happy
to take.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
So this story when it happened was huge news. The
graphic gang assault narrative stuck in people's minds, and the
setting Chris's hometown also has the distinction of being the
nation's Capital.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I literally grew up on Capitol hill Man when Union Station,
all those fountains that you see down Pennsylvania Avenue, Constitution Avenue,
I swim in all in my I played hide and
go see in the bushes at the Supreme Court. We
used to ride our bikes and around the Capitol, around
the stairs, and I was your average kid growing up.
The neighborhood was like any average middle class neighborhood. The
(03:10):
community supported each other. My grandmother was one of the
highest ranking members in Peace Corps. She used to take
us all over the place my siblings. I had two
brothers and a sister, and my parents were separated, but
my grandmother was the foundation in the family. She took
us everywhere. So we would hang out at the Pentagon.
(03:33):
From being around that atmosphere, my dream was to go
in the Air Force. I graduated when I was seventeen
years old. Never been arrested. Used to hang out with
a bunch of guys and we'd go to the go gos.
We go to different shows, we go to club. You know.
We were trying to get a band, started a go
go band.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Go go music for those who don't remember, it was
a subgenre of funk born out of the DC area,
And I'm just going to do you a favor and
link one of the originating groups in the episode description
to give you a feel a flavor for the soundtrack
for this group of friends, among whom were the children
of the victim in this case, Catherine Fuller.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yes absolutely new Wellnewer son David her son Willim was
younger than us, but they both looked up to me
as a big brother. So we had some instruments and
then we thought we could make some go go music.
I used to be the so called manager of the
band because I was the one who was putting it together,
the drama, the guitars, the keyboards. But we only had
(04:37):
really two guys in the band that was any good,
and that was James Gomellia and Gregory Williams, who would
end up charged with the case.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
And we're going to get to the laundry list of
people from the neighborhood who were dragged into this, including
Chris and his alibi witness, Calvin Smith. But first let's
go to the afternoon of October first, nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
October first, eighteen four, kind of a drizzly day in
DC but it's a busy day at eighth and H
Streets Northeast. That area is a very populated section of
the city. A whole bunch of bus lines come together.
It's check day, so you have people out shopping, doing whatever.
(05:19):
And I actually like to tell the story the way
it actually happened, as opposed to the way the government
has it happened.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
So on that.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Day, there was a street vendor who was at the
corner of eighth and H Streets and his job was
kind of watching the area, making sure nobody touched the merchandise,
looking for customers. So he's watching the corner, he's watching
the alley, and he sees two guys kind of walking
(05:51):
up and down H Street Northeast looking like their case
in the joint. But that's about it. At around six
or six thirty, he goes into the alley to take
a leak, and he goes kind of over to where
this garage is at the t point of the alley,
and he sees blood and he finds the body of
Catherine Fuller, who is a very tiny, I think like
(06:14):
four foot nine ninety eight pounds mother in the neighborhood,
and she's been badly beaten. She's clearly dead. He calls
the police. Him and a couple of his friends are
kind of like monitoring the alley waiting for the police.
As the police show up, the two guys who had
(06:34):
been kind of walking up and down each street the
street vender sees them agin as police were arriving, those
two guys bolt. One of them has something puffy in
his jacket.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
They're literally at the garage what a victim is, and
they're tucking someone in the jacket and I think the
police here. The guys say don't run, and then both
of them take off running, So.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
The police start processing the scene. Missus Fuller's body is
in a very small, cluttered garage. She's been badly beaten
anally sodomized, so she's got pretty significant brutal injuries. And
if you look at the crime scene, evidence looks like
it's happened in this garage. There are a group of
(07:16):
witnesses who come forward who say they'd been walking through
the alley at around five thirty that evening and the
garage doors were closed and they heard some low like
moans or groans coming through the garage. If you look
in that garage, there's all sorts of stuff all over
the place, and you don't see that stuff as disturbed
(07:37):
that there was room for ten, fifteen, twenty people to
be committing this crime. So, if you are someone who's
looking at this case like first blush, what you probably
think is those two guys who were walking up and down,
who were running from the garage, seem important, and this
(07:58):
might have been happening at around And so you might ask,
how do you go from that to a mob of
crazed young people beating Missus Fuller to death in an
alley in a total frenzy and sodomizing her with an object, right,
Because that's not what that crime looks like.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Well, as we mentioned, many of the kids who eventually
were convicted were friends with Missus Fuller's sons, never been
in trouble, and would not likely be motivated to do
something like this for any reason at all, let alone
the jewelry and fifty dollars that were stolen. But according
to the investigators McGuinness and Sanchez Torano, they received an
(08:39):
anonymous tip and I'm not buying it. It's like a
go to fallback, you know. Something about that sounds fishy
to me.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I'm glad you say that, because I'd never brought the
theory of anonymous call, because they just created a theory
and say, way it was an anonymous tip that it
was these even ahe guys talking about snatches on one
in alley.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
They don't tend to be huge organized gangs in DC
the way there are in like Chicago ORLA. DC has cruise.
There was not an eighth and H Crew, though another
DC thing is go go clubs, go go's like the
DC homegrown music, and the eighth and H Crew was
kind of like a go go thing. Someone would say,
is the eighth and H Crew in the house, and
(09:23):
people from eighth and H would cheer. So there's not
really an eighth and H Crew. But in nineteen eighty
four you're kind of at the early talk about wilding
and youths and.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Gangs, and this alleged tip led them to a guy
named Clifton Yardborough as well as his brother Ernie, and
to their alleged involvement in this fabricated gang.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Cliff Yardborough is sixteen at the time, super talented basketball
player but very low IQ. So they pick up Cliff,
separate him from his older brother and tell Cliff that
they know he was at this scene that if he
denies it, he's lying, and if he keeps denying it,
he's going to end up getting charged with it.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
That right there should tell everyone the story that you
pick this guy, the youngest, weakest guy who didn't have
the mental capacity, and that's where you win at you
just drill them for nineteen hours, the problem of food, water, anything.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Cliff gives police a statement telling them that a guy
named Alfonso Harris, his nickname was Monk, a guy named
Levi Rouse, Roland Franklin, and a couple of other guys
robbed Missus Fuller, and on that basis they arrest Monk Harris.
At that point though, all they have is cliff statement,
and so they keep investigating. Their next big break, to
(10:45):
the extent that we can call it, that comes from
a young woman who is sixteen, a heavy PCP user,
also has an IQ of sixty three, someone who by
the time of trial has changed the specifics of her
story so many times that it's hard to keep track.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
And that was Carrie Ellerby, whose initial statement was made
while she was high on PCP. And for those of
you who don't know PCP is a powerful drug, and
she identified a guy named Calvin Austin.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
The police are talking to her about some kind of
unrelated fight at one of the go go clubs, and
she kind of spontaneously tells them that she knows who
killed Missus Fuller.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
First, she says she was riding in a car coming
from a go go somewhere in southeast and she over
heard a Calvin Austin tell them mout killed the woman
in an alley.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
So police bring in Calvin Alston, very low IQ teenager
interrogated by the same police. Officers who interrogated Cliff tell
him that they know he was there. He's denying it.
They tell him he faces life in prison if he
doesn't talk to them. He can either have a piece
of the pie or they can have the whole thing.
And Austin eventually says he witnessed.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
A group assault thirteen other people. Yeah, when you're hearing
the three, you like y'all got this room, man, people
would have random Missus Fuller's defense on a street. This
wouldn't have happened that way.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
He says, it's on video and he thought he was
going to give the statement and go home.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Calvin Austin immediately recanted it, but it was too late.
His statement named thirteen other people, including Chris Turner, his
younger brother Charles, and a friend named Timothy Catlett.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah, me and Katnet went to a late night movie
and watched Beverly Hills Cop and came home and the
next morning they kicking out doors. And the crazy thing
about it is is someone that you know that you
had to grieve about, you had to grieve with a
friend about. That's the difference in the Central Park case,
(12:48):
in the Norfolk case, and this is somebody that you
actually know.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
You're listening to wrongful conviction. You can listen to this
and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early
and ed free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus
on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
The people that were charged on the case have never
been together. No one has ever heard of an aph
and H gang. Like. I know all the people that
were charged, but some of the people on the case
don't know each other. The only person I did not
know in the case was Lisa Roughing. Some of the
guys are meeting each other. They like, Chrissy, who is this,
(13:41):
I'm like, Oh, that's such and such. That's Bobo or man?
Who is this? I ain't never seen this dude for
in our neighborhood and I'm like, no, he live in
the neighborhood, just live up top. And there was a
total of seventeen people charged with the case, so naturally
people saw on TV that they are arresting people and
they are up to seventeen. So you better come up
(14:03):
and tell them something when they come knocking on your
door or you will be number eighteen, nineteen, and twenty.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
The other witnesses were mostly teenagers who the police interviewed
multiple times, and they just keep bringing people in until
they finally broke. There was one witness, Linda Jacobs, who
was friend of Carrie Ellerby's.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Linda Jacobs gave a statement making her and Carrie ellerbe
witnesses instead of just eavesdroppers to Calvin Austin's confession, and
the police went back to Carrie ellerb.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Now the story changes and now she's a witness tutor
murder at the scene in the alley, her and her
best friend. Now, if you there, Calvin Austen, don't have
to tell you about it. But that was her initial statement.
They used her against Calvin Austen and then got her
to change all her whole testimony around to Kelvin Smith.
(14:59):
Curry Elab was supposed to have had a baby by
Kelvin Smith, which was ludicrous because Kelvin Smith he didn't
even meet Curry Llerb till after missus Fuller's death.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Now, if you recall, Kelvin Smith was Chris's alibi witness.
They were at Kelvin's during the crime. So this new
statement from Ellerb somehow gave Llerb credibility making a statement
that incriminated her alleged baby's father and discredited Chriss alibi,
even though it was all a total departure from the
statement Llerb had made about Calvin Austen. But nevertheless, seventeen
(15:33):
people from the eighth and H area were now in
jail awaiting trial.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Many of the defendants would blame in each other because
they didn't know each other. Like, man, whatever y'all guys
got me into, y'all need to get me the f
off for this case. Man, y'all need to take your
fucking weight if you did this. And everybody's agging back
and forth, and so we got argaments and fight among
ourselves about man. What you know about this man? You
better tell the people whatever you know and get me
(15:59):
off of this case. And everybody on the case is
just lost and dumbfounded, except for Harry Bennett. Harry Bennett
is not from that neighborhood. He put itself on the
case to take away a drug charge that he had,
but he's not from that neighborhood. He's never mentioned in
any of the.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
False confessions, and he's referred to Calvin Austin's statement and
a striking inconsistency.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Calvin Austin and Bennett said the similar story, but they
switched up different people doing different things, and they don't
implicate each other. Why because Harry Bennett don't know Calvin
alst Kavin don't know Harry Bennett, so they never implicate
each other.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Which sounds like a blazing red flag.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
What the government says is essentially, well, these inconsistencies don't
matter because they all basically say the same thing, so
that there was a large grip that attacked Missus Fuller.
And first of all, as details do matter when you're
looking at those inconsistencies and trying to tell a story
and figure out how the witnesses got.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
There, and not only are they inconsistent with the each other,
but with the objective facts of the crime.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
When we asked a pathologist before the twenty twelve hearing
to take a look at this and sort of see, like,
are these injuries possible for one or two people to
have inflicted? He said yes, It's actually much more likely
that this is one or two people than a large
grip crime because of the way they're concentrated.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
But Calvin Alsen and Harry Bennett said that all these
guys was dead. Oh yeah, Chrissy he hit her, Yeah,
Charles he kicked her. Snot Rag he hit her. Stephen Webb,
yeah he kicked her. It's like it was a similar
line like guys had taken torry, Okay, now you go
kick and the autos report didn't support this.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
This pathologist looked at some of the witness statements and said,
if this had happened the way this witness said, here
are the injuries he would have expected. If it had
happened the way this witness had said, here are the
injuries he would have expected, and they're not there. The
other piece of that is that the government has often
said in this case that the injuries were so severe
(18:02):
that they couldn't have been inflicted by one or two people.
The pathologist said, that's absolutely not the case. If what
the witnesses are saying is true, it would have actually
been a more brutal crime.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
In addition, Calvin Austin fought to suppress his own false confession,
a process he began upon leaving the interrogation room.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
He immediately retracts the confession and is writing everybody under
the sun telling them he falsely confessed. Was planning to
go to trial up until very late in the game.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
He was in the sale right next to me, across
from Lamont, Bobby, Calvin Smith, and Daryl Murchison. And once
he lost that suppression motion for the video, they actually
moved Calvin Alsten. We don't know why they move them.
I don't want to say they moved him intentionally, but
they put them with people who were sentenced already and
(18:56):
he ended up right.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
He was sixteen, He got raped in the DC jail
and at that point he said, like, I've got to
get out here, and so he agreed to testify for
the government Jesus.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
So they had Austin, Bennett, Yarborough, Ellerbye Jacobs and a
young man named Maurice Thomas, who claimed to be able
to identify Chris Turner from a distance by the shape
of his head. Yeah, and that is what passed Muster
as the state's evidence that they planned to present at
two separate trials, the first of which was for ten
(19:32):
of the seventeen co defendants.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
They told the public that they were more and they
were gonna get more. The other seven were supposed to
be indicted on full of two, but the one guy,
Darryl Merchison, was not indicted because he had a time
cause showing that he was at work at the time.
Lamart Bobbitt, his girlfriend had a detailed journal hour on
(19:56):
the hour and her and Lamont was together. Another one
of the guys, we were not in town or was
locked up somewhere else at the time, maybe Rowland Franklin
or something. And so they don't want none of that
stuff to come out.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
The alibi evidence would have impeached the credibility of all
of the state's witnesses, so those whose alibis could be
undermined went to trial, including Chris and Charles Turner, Kelvin Smith,
Timothy Catlett, Levi Rouse, Stephen Webb, Russell Overton, Clifton, Yarborough,
Alfonso Harris, and Lisa Ruffin.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
One person had public defendant Alfonso Harris because he was
the first person arrested, so the public Defender's office couldn't
represent no one else on the case because of conflict
they're interests. So we all received quarter pointed attorneys. They
never did no investigation work, They never did any research.
This would have been came out, but they thought that
(20:50):
we all were gonna plead guilty. How could you not
plead guilty to the worst case ever in the history
of DC when they offering you plead deals to six years.
They offered me a plea deal to two years at
least a rough and one year, and offered everybody else
a plead deal to six years. And I told him
I'm not pleading guilty to somebody didn't do And it
should have woke the lawyers up if they were actually
(21:14):
defense attorneys. Even when trial was going on, they offered
us plead They kept on convincing us that we need
to plead out to this and move on.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
But they refused, and the prosecutor, Jerry Goren, took them
to trial in late nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
The evidence that it is presented at trial is the
testimony of Calvin Austen and Harry Bennett that they, along
with the defendants of some other individuals, were hanging out
at a bus stop at the corner of eighth and
h Streets when cliff Yarborough started singing a go go
song about getting some money. That someone saw Missus Fuller
(21:51):
from across the street and said let's go get her,
and that they accosted her, drag her into the alley,
rob her her, beat her in a wild frenzy, and
somehow they all come to agree eventually that the person
who committed the analsodomy with an object was Leevi Ross,
and that they then left. That's the overarching narrative. Bennett
(22:16):
and Alston put themselves in the crime. Carrie Ellebie and
her friend Linda Jacobs. They tell very different stories about
what they saw, but they put themselves there watching the crime.
Another teenage witness, Maurice Thomas. Police were initially looking for
a different Maurice who they heard knew something about the crime,
(22:37):
but they found Maurice Thomas, and he ultimately told them
that he had been walking by the Alley, and he
was able to sort of identify some of the people,
including Chris Turner by the shape of his head. The
witnesses weren't great, they weren't super credible, so the jury.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Must have picked up on some of the inconsistencies. But then,
out of ten attorneys, only the public defender, Michelle Roberts
raised the suspects who ran from the scene, and without
Clifton Yarborough testifying to what had been coerced out of him,
the case against her client, Alfonso Harris was basically non existent.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Calvin Austen didn't know Afonso Hers, Harry Bennett didn't know
Afonso Hers really, and then the girls lay what from
the neighborhood and didn't know Afonso Hers.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So Harris had a shot. Meanwhile, none of the attorneys
even bothered questioning the state's theory of a group assault. Instead,
there was a great deal of call it friendly fire.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
They were just all fighting with each other. So it
was this defendant was there, but my client wasn't, and
so they adopted the government's narrative and just quiverled with
the specifics. And again the witnesses weren't super credible, but
the crime was awful, and there wasn't any sort of
(23:58):
real competing theory presented.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
It was a mess. I mean, we had the worst
attorneys that you could possibly have if anyone had just
went to the crime scene. We kept begging for attorneys.
Just go down there, just look, just take pictures. You'll see.
This not possible to happen like this. This can't occur
the way they're saying it.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
So it appears that the only person who worked in
the service of justice was the public defender. And meanwhile
the jury was stuck with these inconsistent witnesses and a
defense panel that resembled crabs in a barrel.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
The initial convictions took a really long time. I think
the jury was out for about a week.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
One jury told me that they voted over seventy times
before they reached the verdict. They found two not guilty
right then and there, and then they convicted six.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
The two who are acquitted are Alfonso Harris and then
Felicia Ruffin, frankly, because I think there's like nothing against her.
It's unclear how she ended up there, which.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Left two more for the jury, Russell Overton and Chris Turner.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I was already grieving because they found my brother and
other men guilty of a crime. I knew that they
had not committed, so I was already grieving, but it
was just like you had found me guilty already before.
So over the course of the next two days, the
juriors kept telling the judge, we can't reach a verdict,
(25:18):
that they wanted to go home. They've been sequestered in
a hotel, they haven't seen their family, they hadn't been
able to take care of their homes. This trial been
going on for two months. This impossible for a verdict
to be reached, and my attorney moved for a mistrial,
and Russell Overton attorney didn't want a mistrial. The judge
(25:39):
continued to send them back there to deliberate anyway, and
basically told them what they know, what their verdict should be.
They had a duty to bring back a verdict and
they found us guilty.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
So Chris ultimately was convicted of murdering Missus Fuller. He
was sentenced to twenty six years to life in prison.
He was nineteen at the time, and that was actually
the latest sentence received by any of the eight men
who were convicted.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
It was gut rich and it had broke my spirit
because I thought that I let so many people down,
and so it was a tough time for me. I
didn't want people who had invested so much in me
to think that I threw that all the way and
that I did the crime, and so it put me
(26:29):
at the lowest point in my life. They gave most
of the US federal destination. I was sent to Ashland, Kentucky,
(26:49):
and so I would spend the next three years there.
I angry, mad as hell solitary confinement. Most of the time.
The gods hated me, the inmates hated me. They applied
to kill me a couple of times. They told me
that my life was in danger. I just didn't even
care at that time. I'm like, you guys think you mad,
(27:12):
you should imagine how mad I am. But I also
made the transformation there. I was locked down twenty three
hours a day by myself. So I began to read
everything that I could get my own hands on. The
more I read, the more I love reading. And so
I read a book Call for a Boy, and it
(27:32):
changed my life.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
I thought my.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Situation was the worst situation in the world, and I
thought no one could relate to it. When I read
that book about the trocity in South Africa. As bad
as I thought my situation was, it was not the
worst situation in the world. That's when the transformation made place.
That was when I made up in my mind that Chris,
(27:54):
you get a chance to make this your monastery, or
you get the chance to make this your place of
how I learned in it. And so from that point on,
I began to change my perception. I changed people's perception
of how they was gonna perceive me. I stopped feeling
sorry for myself. I stopped feeling bitter, I stopped being angry,
(28:17):
and I said, I'm gonna do something about it. I
began studying the law. I said, you know what, I'm
gonna get myself out of prison.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And part of that journey was reaching out to a
journalist named Patrice Gaines, who had covered the trial for
the Washington Post.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
I was blaming Patrese in Washington Post and everyone for
our conviction because I told him that we were convicted
in the newspaper long before we ever went to trial,
and we were never given a fair trial. And I
reminded her that I was still innocent, and she wrote
me back and told me that the case didn't set
well with her and she had a problem with it.
(28:51):
Then then she was new to the Post and she
didn't have no backing.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Patrese was the lone black journey all us there who
was covering the case. Even then, she had serious doubts
about the case, but she was the only one at
the Post who felt that way. And so when she
heard from Chris again later, I think it really stirred
(29:16):
something inside her. Patrese talks to Calvin Alston and Harry Bennett.
I think Calvin Alston had been kind of recanting for
a while at this point, and he recanted to her.
Bennett recanted to her. In two thousand and one. She
ultimately wrote a story for the Post, but this case,
at least back then, still had a lot of power
(29:39):
in DC and instead of a series like she was hoping,
it became one article in the Style section. But it
got the attention of the then newly formed mid Atlantic
Innocence Project.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
And she had a literal bombshell to share. Patrese discovered
that a woman named Amy Davis had told the police
about her boyfriend James Blue just weeks after Catherine Fuller's
awful murder.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Amy Davis comes forward and says she witnessed her boyfriend
James Blue commit the murder. Police follow up, they decide
they don't think Ammy Davis is credible.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
They say they never believe their story. Her family vividly
says they went to visit her and witness protection in
Annapolis at a hotel that the government is known to
have used for witness protection. The family wouldn't have had
no reason to make this up. Amy Davis actually had
Missus Fuller's wedding ring. They actually sold her ring to
(30:43):
a group of people down on a street when they
took it to the police office and say we got
this ring. We think that might be described as the
ring miss fullet. It was last scene when she left home.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Ammy Davis statement just goes in a pile. It's never
just close to the defense. Eventually, Amy Davis is actually
murdered by.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
That boyfriend, a murder that happened the week before the
Fuller trial. Now, James Blue died in prison in nineteen
ninety three, and it's possible that Amy Davis was lying
to gain protection for herself from an abusive partner, and
the wedding ring was just a coincidence, but either way
it's Brady material.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
And so based on the initial recantations and the Amy
Davis evidence, the initial lawyers filed a joint Innocence Protection
Act petition and post conviction petition.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
And while this filing was processed, Chris had already done
twenty six long, miserable years and was finally eligible for parole.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
We told him ahead of time that we were not
beingmit and guilt, and we presented this Brady material to
the parole boy and they had enough sense to believe
in my innocence. I'm the first person to ever parole
first time up without admitting guilt.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
By now, Sean and her team at the mid Atlanticainnis's
project had officially taken over the.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Case, so we sought formal discovery, and that's where we
got information about all of the times the government interviewed
its own witnesses, all of the times those stories were changed,
about the people walking through the alley who saw the
garage door closed and heard moans at five point thirty.
(32:23):
That's where we got some of the most valuable information
in the case, including information about James McMillan.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
If you recall the street vendor who discovered the body.
He and his friend saw two men fleeing the scene.
The police arrived, well, they had actually made an id
back in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
One of the men, identified, a guy named James McMillan,
is known to police. He lives right on that alley
with his aunt, and he's known to police because he's
been robbing and beating women in alleys in that area,
and the beatings are particularly brutal and nasty.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
But it appears that since this didn't fit the gang narrative,
McMillan was merely prosecuted for his other violent robberies at
that time.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
And just months after getting out of prison for those robberies,
in nineteen ninety two, James McMillan happened to murder and
Analie Sodoma as another young woman in an alley a
couple of blocks away. And when you look at the
later crime, those injuries actually have a similar pattern and
if anything, are even more severe, and we know that
(33:33):
crime was only committed by one person.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Unfortunately, the nineteen ninety two murder doesn't qualify as Brady
material since it didn't exist at trial, but the nineteen
eighty four identification and McMillan's nineteen eighty four violent crimes
absolutely did so. In twenty twelve, they filed a motion
that contained the Brady material as well as some really
helpful supporting evidence.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
So at the twenty twelve hearing, all of the recanters,
a bunch of witnesses from the neighborhood testify, including two
women with CIA level security clearances, who testify about the
ways in which the police interrogated them in this case
and were making accusations and just kind of assuming that
(34:17):
every teenager in the neighborhood was potentially guilty. But at
the end of the day it was all denied by
the trial judge, who had been friends with the original
trial judge on the case, so I think came in
with some pretty strong preconceived notions and brought those to bear.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
It appears this judge felt similarly to the trial prosecutor,
Jerry Goren, who also took the.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Stand specifically with the macmillan evidence. He said, it really
would have only made a difference if this had been
a one or two person crime, and of course, like
that's the point, that's exactly the point.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Both Goren and the judge had ignored the new evidence
because it had flown in the face of the trial evidence,
which was also shown to have been wholly unreliable.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
So we appeal that to the DC Court of Appeals.
We also lost there, and then as kind of what
we saw as hail Mary, we filed a petition for
regisource errari with the US Supreme Court. And in the
US Supreme Court, we couldn't bring forward the evidence of innocence,
so we couldn't bring the recantations because that's only a
(35:22):
claim under DC law, but we could raise the Brady issues.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
When they said the Supreme Court I accepted it, I
thought it was a dune dee. I don't recall a
Brady violation that they accepted that they did not overturn.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
We figured we had at least four votes because that's
what it takes to get cert in the US Supreme Court,
and why would they bother granting cert if four people
weren't fairly sure they wanted to reverse the lower court decision.
So we had oral argument in the case, and it
was pretty clear that we did not have justice sodom or,
(35:58):
which was a bad sign, and we ultimately lost. We
had given it our best shot there was a lot
of stuff that was withheld from the defendants at trial.
But at the end of the day, the most powerful
evidence we have is the similarity between the murder of
Missus Fuller and the nineteen ninety two murder that James
(36:21):
McMillan committed. But the Supreme Court can't consider that or
chooses not to consider that, because it is about what
the prosecutor knew at the time and what they should
have turned over at the time, and what the trial
would have been like at the time. So anything that
happens after that isn't really relevant.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Since this defeat in twenty seventeen, Chris has been focused
on living even though his name still hasn't been fully cleared.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
The charge is still come up on the certain criterias.
I try to apply for a job with Homeland Security TSA,
the charge is still come up. This case is over
forty years old and we still get back down on verse.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
People who are convicted in local DC courts can't go
to the mayor. We don't have a governor because we're
not a state. What we have is the president. The
Central Park five now exonerated five just spoke at the
Democratic National Convention and if there's any case that this
case reminds me of, it is the Central Park five
(37:22):
case that kids were like having kind of a wild
night in Central Park and ergo, they must have all
just gang raped someone. That if you browbeat teenagers for
long enough, they'll either confess or give you the witness
statements you want. And at the end of the day,
this type of case is exactly what a pardon is for.
(37:44):
Right a pardon is supposed to be a chance for
you to bring evidence that you can't take to court.
And so no one with any kind of unbiased view
has ever looked at the facts of this case.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Right now we have a part and in front of
the president by we're confident that we have enough evidence
to get him to do the right thing, and all
the guys on the case, some of the families can
finally get the relief that they deserve, including the fullest family.
They hoping that we get the pardon and they can
actually get the rest that they deserve and finally move
(38:19):
past the case, because until justice is to serve, no
one can actually move forward.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Amen to that, and we're going to link some action
steps in the episode description and with that, let's now
go to closing arguments, my favorite part of the show,
where once again I thank you Sean and Chris from
the bottom of my heart. And it works like this. Sean,
you know you've been here several times before. I'm going
to turn my microphone off and leave my headphones on
and just listen to anything else you want to share
(38:46):
with me and our wonderful audience. Sean, you go first,
and then just hand the mic off to Chris and
he'll take us off into the sunset.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
Nobody wins when innocent people are convicted. Family of the
person James McMillan murdered when he got out of prison
like that never should have happened, and the guys who
were convicted shouldn't have to live their lives with the
stain of allegedly committing one of the most gruesome murders
(39:16):
in DC history. Yes, they're out of prison, but I
don't like being falsely accused of knowingly parking in someone
else's parking space. Imagine that you are just known in
DC and have been since you were a child, for
committing a murder like that. Imagine being nineteen years old,
(39:36):
being convicted of something you didn't do and going back
to the DC jail and having the whole jail erupt
in cheers because you were convicted. That's what happened to them.
Imagine being target in prison because of the crime you're
convicted of, even though you didn't do it. Like that's
what they've been living with for most of their adult
(39:57):
lives and some of their non adult life. And the
President has the power to undo that, and he should
or she should.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
I extend my honest to you, Jason and the entire
staff there and the work you're doing. Whether we get
the partner or don't get the partner, we'll still be
talking about it. My closing thoughts is just extend honors
to the entire wrongful conviction community and the advocates and
the tremendous work that's being done on so many fronts
(40:28):
behind the scenes to bring this to the forefront. We
wish that the Justice Department get behind it, pull your
head out of the sand, but I think they're afraid
to get behind it. This is the one case that
they don't allow any of their attorneys to have opinion
about one way or another, because you got to ask
(40:49):
yourself if you did this in a case that everybody
was watching what the hell is going on in cases
where nobody is watching? And I think that's the thing
that they're afraid of, that there'll be a windfall, you know,
when you think about what's really going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful 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. 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
(41:35):
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at It's Jason Flamm. 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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