March 13, 2025 • 41 mins
On the night of January 12, 2002, Corey MIller went to the Platinum Club in Jefferson Parish, LA. Corey, professionally known as “C-Murder,” lived in New Orleans and was at the peak of his rap career after being signed to the prominent label No Limit Records. A fight broke out at the overcrowded club, gunshots followed, and 16-year-old Steve Thomas was killed.
Eyewitness testimony alleging Corey as the shooter led to his arrest, and he was charged with second degree murder. The prosecution had no physical evidence, only eyewitness testimony. And the State was later found to have suppressed evidence helpful to the defense. Yet and still, after 2 trials and over 60 votes by the jury, Corey was convicted and sentenced to mandatory life in prison.
To learn more and get involved, visit:
https://www.change.org/p/john-bel-edwards-free-corey-miller-4b844fc5-2998-48f3-b7e8-e1dd8f1376f8
https://www.instagram.com/cmurder/?hl=en
https://lavaforgood.com/podcast/076-jason-flom-with-doug-dilosa-and-chris-pourciau-on-amendment-2/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
On January twelfth, two thousand and two, sixteen year old
Steve Thomas went to a crowded hip hop club in
Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, where a successful artist named Corey Miller
was slated to introduce a new hip hop group. But
before they even took the stage, a fight broke out
and Steve Thomas was fatally shot. When the police arrived,
(00:23):
it was allegedly rumored that Corey was involved, but when
specifically asked about Corey, none of the witnesses substantiated that
rumor until a week later, leading to his arrest, two trials,
and ultimately a non unanimous jury verdict, all of which
may well have been prejudiced by Corey's stage name C Murder.
(00:45):
This is Wrongful Conviction. You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You
can listen to this and all the LoVa for Good
podcasts one week early and ed free by subscribing to
Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to
(01:11):
Romful Conviction, where we've got a case out of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana,
involving a once celebrated hip hop artist, Corey Miller, also
known as C murderer. Now he and his brother's master
p and Silk the Shaker had a number of hits
collaborated with Snoop until his situation drastically changed. And here
we are twenty three years later, where he's grateful to
(01:34):
have the support of one of his fiercest advocates, Kim Kardashian. Kim,
welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Thank you for having me back on.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Were you a fan of Corey's music before you knew
about his case?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
I definitely was.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I definitely knew about The No Limit Soldiers and I
love New Orleans. But years later, the singer Monica called
me and was like, you have to help me with
A dear friend of mine told me all about the case.
And there's like a network of us, right so it's
like you and Scott Budnick and Jessica Jackson and Aaron Haney, and.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
We've been working on it for a while.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
So I'm glad that we can be here to talk
about Corey's case today.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
And calling in from a Louisiana penitentiary, the man himself,
Corey Miller, thank Jo Jeff and to help tell his story.
Corey's appellat attorney.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Jane Hogan, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Now, this is a Louisiana story where we've seen so
many many wrongful convictions marked by non unanimous jury verdicts,
which was a legal practice as late as twenty eighteen,
when they could convict you with as few as ten
out of twelve jurors voting guilty. This was a practice
that had its roots in the aftermath of the Civil War,
(02:49):
where the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery unless duly convicted of
a felony. It also allowed black people to serve on
jury's and in Louisiana, even if the defense managed to
keep two black people on the jury, well, their votes
could be ignored and the person could effectively be re enslaved.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
We've never learned how to have an economy that doesn't
rely on forced labor. There's so many prisons here and
that is the economy. Like you go in the middle
of Louisiana, they have nothing except like three private prisons.
It's the local employer. If you want to stop mass
incarceration in Louisiana, if you were to pay people at
(03:29):
least minimum wage for the labor that they perform while incarcerated,
I think that there would be a real push to
do sentencing reform immediately because it's such a business.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
There was a twenty twenty two ballot initiative in Louisiana
which would have ended the slavery loophole of the thirteenth Amendment,
but it was voted down. Yeah, but certainly before that
as well as this incident, and even before Corey's music career,
he was just another kid growing up in the New
Orleans Calio projects.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
I was raised my grandmother, my grandfather, and Big Bomb
and Big Daddy. My mother and father gave here for
addashing to her when I was just a baby and
lived in a county of price Action. When I came
up as and we didn't have Big Bomb and she
kept me out of trouble. She instilled didn't be that
(04:21):
drugs fad. That school was important. So throughout my whole
school I was on a student because I just had
to please Big bomba.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
And while school was important, Corey and his brothers Percy
and vy Sean also grew up loving hip hop during
its early years.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
We became integrated in rap long time ago, listened to
Right DMC and people like that. So Daddy takes that
were in the room and we were playing the instrumental shape.
Then we would play another teap record and we have
a recording take and we played it too, and write raps.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Messing around with tape recorders soon turned into renting studio time,
and eventually Percy Miller, better known as Master P, started
his label No Limit Records in nineteen ninety one with
the founding group tru which featured himself Corey as c
Murder his stage name, and by Sean as Silk the Shaker,
and they began to see big success in the mid
(05:17):
nineties and early two thousands.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Yeah, it was a good feeling. They had that much
momentum without music. It was a wonderful charity and it
was only the beginning, and Dallas star rose it in.
I'm basically this steel in the walls and I just
moved my family to bed Rouge and the Gaving community,
the country club.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Corey has three kids who at the time lived in
Baton Rouge while he worked out of New Orleans, which
is just across the Mississippi River from where this crime
took place, in a more conservative, white flight type of
area called Jefferson Parish.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
You gotta realize jeff Paris went to try to hit
There was some black people that trying to cross the
bridge to get some food, water and something like that.
It was a breakdan lady, couple of women, couple of
guys and trying to cross the bridge, and the police
was predicting the bridge any Katrina finish cross and the
(06:13):
actually shut these sheets and the whole as a story,
but distant lady that I got.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Called up and I hope that story might shed some
light on why their police department might have hired the
lead detective in this case, Detective Cloger, after well they
had found he wasn't a good fit for even Orleans Parish.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
We got Cloger's personnel record and Cloger was working in
Orleans Parish. Then he went to Jefferson Parish. The superintendent
of the New Orleans Police Department wrote this very scathing
letter that's in his personnel file that said he has
been messing up homicide investigations in Orleans Parish. So if
you do hire him, he is more studed to be
a guard at a correctional institution than on the streets
(06:54):
trying to solve murders.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
It appears Jefferson Parish heard this message as more of
a horseman than a condemnation. And that brings us to
January twelfth, two thousand and two, when a sixteen year
old kid named Steve Thomas was killed at the Jefferson
Parish music venue called the Pyramid Club.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
That night of the instandent a couple of guys out
they were they were going to perform at that club.
So by being in a savage audis and they know,
all we try to represent a kill of love, the
X me to get loose deal.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
So he goes over to the Platinum Club in Harvey, Louisiana,
January twelve, two thousand and two, and there were by
different accounts, three hundred and five hundred people in a
club like way over fire Marshall capacity.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
It's really a bowler there lived the bottom and then
a club of time to follow, one way up, one
way out to take the thing. And there's four hundred
people and call everybody that walks in getting tagged down.
And so I was saying I was padded down.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
And that security guard later testified that Corey was not armed,
but somehow a gun got in obviously, and as well
as sixteen year old Steve Thomas, who you know. He
probably they must have used a fake ID to get
in there.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
And they say that the guy was a tran of mind.
They even created a moten saying that I had a
rep the guy that was killed. I guess they had
got somebody to stay something like that, I have a
bad repide of my life from the South, and then
talk he's going the East Coast as yo. Especially back then,
we didn't know what bad a rep it was. That
whole night, I never messed the guy that was doing
(08:31):
that was Folk, never had one word with him.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
After all, Corey was not in this thick crowd, but
rather as you might have expected, he was in the
VIP area.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
I was just in there drinking, wait for them to
tell me go up the stage introduced, then I could leave,
right so, I remember talking to a shoot girl. I
never had a chance to even introduce my crew.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Then at some point during the night, a fight breaks
out near the dance floor, directly across from the DJ booth.
Everybody describes just kind of this group of men surrounding
and beating and kicking Steve as he's curled up on
the ground, and then at some point a gunshot goes off.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
I'm just as surprised that everybody else, but and so
unnatural reactions is the goal.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
A bunch of people flee, including Corey and his friends.
It goes from five hundred people to about one hundred.
And after this shot goes off, there was a really
drunk woman who was in the bathroom at the time
of the shooting, so she didn't see anything, but she
was intoxicated, and she starts hollering out, see mardyed this, y'all,
(09:39):
see murdered this, And I think that probably is what
began sort of the rumors. And pretty quickly the Jefferson
pair of Sheriff's office gets there.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
They discovered Steve Thomas lying on his back, having been
shot in the chest and there was a chain near
his body.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
The police seal up the doors basically with one hundred
people left inside. You know, they learned that Corey was there,
and they start interviewing people and they were asking specifically,
did you see c murder do this? And nobody said yes,
none of them.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Some of the witnesses called on that one one he'd
see the show those games like guard I'm six five
big steaks n skin.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Not only was it unlikely that a successful musician would
put his career and his family at risk. But then
the description wasn't even close, and not one eyewitness named him,
and that included the security guard, the guy who had
called nine one one, a man named Darnelle Jordan.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
The security guard spoke to the police that night and
said that he hadn't seen anything, and then a couple
of days later he gives an inculpatory statement against Corey,
and so based really on that statement alone, they locate
Corey at the House of Blues four days later. He's
not run, he's in New Orleans, and then he gets arrested.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Now, according to Darnell Jordan's twenty eighteen recantation, when asked
by the police, if Corey Miller had been the shooter,
he said, if that was the case, he would have
said so on the nine to one one call. But
then he went on to say, quote, they got me
the id C murder's picture and sign it. They tricked me.
I wasn't signing the picture to id the shooter. I
(11:22):
signed it because they told me to. I knew they
wanted me to say Corey Miller did it because he's famous.
End quote. Nevertheless, this interaction helped them get an arrest
warrant for Corey Miller.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
I actually had some kind of shape in eliteal system
at that time. I was like, oh, well, they're going
to live in rest and talked to Wicks and then
they gonna a panory. So there was my whole straight
up while I let it go.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
At this point, they continued to interview clubgoers. Meanwhile, they'd
found two DNA profiles on the chain from the crime scene,
and one was the victim, so they got a warrant
for Corey's DNA and Kim. I mean, it seems reasonable,
maybe not this positive, but very reasonable that whoever's DNA
(12:12):
was identified could well have been the shooter.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Knowing that the necklace that was allegedly taken from the
person that committed the crime, and obviously if it was
worn around someone's neck and pulled off of someone's neck,
there would be DNA evidence on it. And then when
it finally was DNA tested, it was not Corey's.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
DNA, And then suddenly the chain became unimportant.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I never understood why someone wouldn't want to find the
real killer. How our state can just be okay with
convicting someone not caring if that someone is actually the
right person. If God forbid, a family member of mine
(13:17):
or someone was harmed in a horrible crime, I would
not be satisfied with just anyone being convicted. I would
have to know without a reasonable doubt that this person
was the person that committed that crime. And since I
started to get involved in this work, I was really
hopeful at the beginning, and I still am and I
(13:38):
always will be. But like as you dig deeper and
as you work on more cases and you figure out more,
it just doesn't it become overwhelming to understand, like how
messed up our system is.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Case in point, despite the fact that every club Gore
initially denied Corey's involvement, Detective Cloger revisited them and out
of the hundreds, Cloger found four who were some degree
of willing to implicate Corey. Those four were keishaan Jones,
Ayisha Washington, Tanika Rankins, and Elouise Matthews. And his trial
(14:10):
approached in September two thousand and three. Darnell Jordan had
to be arrested on a material witness warrant, so he
was locked up in a hotel where Kloger visited him
with his alleged statement, which put the following words in
his mouth.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
As the fight was happening, Darnell saw fifteen or twenty
men beating Steve, and that Steve was lying on the
ground in a defensive position, and that Corey wasn't participating
in the fight, was standing back. And then eventually, at
some point he reaches his arm underneath the pile of bodies.
Darnell doesn't see a gun, but he hears a pop,
saw flash and sparks from underneath the pile of people,
(14:47):
which came from the direction of Corey's hand.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
And for this alleged account to have been an accurate
description of the murder, there would have had to have
been stippling on the body. Those are the burns associated
with close range gunshots, but there were none, and according
to Darnell's twenty eighteen recantation, despite Cloger's insistence, he told
him quote that's not what I said, end quote, Darnell
(15:11):
claimed that since he had signed that picture, he was
afraid of the police and went along with the narrative
a trial along with three others, whose testimonies, by the way,
varied wildly, starting with Tanika Rankins and Eloise Matthews.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
What Tanika testified to at the first trial is that
she was at the Platinum Club with Elouise Matthews. She
saw Corey verbally confront Steve. Then the fight broke out.
Corey went underneath his shirt raised his arm in Steve's direction.
She never said that she saw Corey with a gun,
but the shot was fired and Steve fell to the floor.
And then what Eloise testified too was that she had
(15:44):
gone to the club with Tanika Rankins and when the
fight started, they both climbed up on a chair. That
she saw four or five people stomping and punching Steve,
who was lying on the floor on his back. And
then after about thirty seconds, she fell off the chair
and then she heard a gun shot, but she didn't
see a gun. She didn't see who shot Steve. She
also testified that Tanika had not seen the shooting.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
To recap Elouise said both she and Tanika didn't see
the shooting. Tanika said she saw Corey shoot from a
standing position, while Darnell said that Corey reached under the
pile of bodies before hearing a pop and seeing sparks.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
All of the witnesses. Statements by these people are blatantly lying.
My lawyers closely examined it them.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
The state's next witness, Keishawn Jones, wouldn't even look up
when she testified that she saw Corey pull something from
his waist and heard a gunshot.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
The second she gets off the stand, she runs up
to the defense investigator in the courthouse, recamps her entire statement, said,
I'm only saying this because I am pressured into it
by the Sheriff's office, and there's a recess. She goes
and she recamps to the judge.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
On the record, she said she didn't directly see what
happened and had even told police that night that Corey
was not involved, but in the year following, Detector Cloger
threatened her with unrelated charges.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
She told him that everything they have provided the age
forced a delight and she was crying. She was in
distressing to law.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
That story of pressure from law enforcement to implicate Corey.
It's a similar story told by multiple different people that
aren't connected. So Another woman named Aisha Washington said that
people were popping up at her mom's house following her
she was taking her children to school, trying to pressure
her into making a statement against Corey.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Aisha Washington was also being detained on the material witness
warrant for trial, but after Kishawn Jones recanted, Aisha wasn't
called to the stand.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
And then also Corey had four witnesses testify for the
defense that they were there, that they know who Corey is,
that whenever the fight broke out, they saw Corey somewhere else,
that he was not engaged in the fight.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
But somehow the jury chose to believe the three wildly
inconsistent stories over the defenses United Front, which was supported
by Keishawn Jones's recantation.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Being at Jeffson pay would not be placed with somebody
like you to go to trial because I was basically
guilty and the eyes already you know what I'm saying,
you know, the old white men and old white women's
like discuss the with being bashing him, just siding the
way that I looked up like gold tee from my
name you from the tragic the NAC burden. I mean,
(18:31):
it wasn't a matter of I innocent. It was basically
like look who you are, Look how you look guilty.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
And the jury returned a unanimous verdict at the first
trial of guilty, and then that began the most extensive
postrial litigation of any case I've ever seen. Seven months,
thirteen different hearings. Corey's trial lawyer really did a phenomenal job.
A lot of the allegations were that there was withholding
of exculpatory impeachment information, and that Cloger was helping these witnesses,
(19:04):
that he was making convictions quickly get expunged. During the
post trial hearing they recalled Eloise and Tanika. It comes
out that Tanique actually had felony theft convictions outstanding warrants
which the Sheriff's office had arranged to have recalled. They
basically set aside her felony convictions quickly and expunge them.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Which gave the appearance that she had nothing to exchange
for her testimony, and Eloise Matthew's was no different.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Eloise testified that she had met with Cloger multiple times
he had said he'd do anything to help her in
Tanika that she had told Cloger that Corey didn't shoot Steve,
but Cloger wasn't interested and accused her of lying. There
was also impeachment evidence that wasn't turned over about her.
She had arrests for forgery. She was recommended for a diversion,
but she had failed out of diversion, but they hadn't
(19:55):
given notice of that.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Then Ayisha Washington and Keishaw and Jones testified about there experiences,
how they'd both been harassed, and Keishawn had actually been
detained three times and threatened with unrelated charges to ensure
her testimony. So Judge Martha Sasson simply couldn't ignore their claims.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
The judge tells Kloger, like, I want you to bring
your file up here and show me what you've got.
He said, no, I destroy my file, like the night
after the conviction. I just went and shredded everything. And
the judge is like, why would you do that. Then
it turns out later on into seven months of Postpol proceedings,
that he hadn't shredded his file and so he brought
it up there and within his file. Not only is
(20:34):
there the impeachment evidence against the three witnesses, but there's
also statements from a guy named Roger Lewis and Angela
Casten who were there at the club, who had said
they saw the fight. They knew that Corey wasn't involved
in it, so the judge granted Corey a new trial.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
That was in April two thousand and four, when Judge
Sasson was up for reelection that November.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
I think that she was sort of painted as the
judge who's trying to let see murder out of prison,
and then she lost her bid for reelection.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
It's still some parage. These people still sticked together. They
kicked the jail. So then I'm at the Furst year
of these different people now.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
And then the intermediate Appellate Court in Louisiana reversed a
new trial, and then the Louisiana Supreme Court actually in
March tenth of two thousand and six, said no, like
she conducted a painstaking review of all of this and
she concluded that there were constitutional violations that mandated a
new trial.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
So after two years of appeals, Corey was released on
house arrest awaiting his new trial in two thousand and nine,
giving him three years with his children.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
That was amazing good they didn't have to go there week.
And so I definitely hold on to Chared going home,
and those three years after brought us closer. You know,
when I heard that arrested. I just thought that they
were so fraged and so young and small. I couldn't
even chall that that I was in jail. There was
(22:00):
a wing on the business and on two I kept
thinking I was going to go to ChIL I was
gonna get release. So when the years says enough the action,
when you come back, oh good, I didn't want to
think that I worked. So I had to break it
down him again. Started they don't come to business. Even
though I love seeing U, they didn't broke malid. Every
(22:22):
time I said, oh, come with us, meaning with us
to break it.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
I gotta process that myself for a minute. So during
those three years, the state went back to the list
of clubgoers, one of whom was Keishawn Jones's half brother
Kenneth Jordan, whose newborn died in January two thousand and three,
at which time it's believed that the child's mother bore responsibility,
but they were both under investigation.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
So whenever they're questioning him about the death of his child,
they realized that he's on the list of people that
was at the Platinum Club that night, so they start
talking to him about the case.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
According to Kenneth's twenty eighteenantation. He initially told them that
the shooter was a dark skinned man in a hoodie
and was definitely not Corey Miller, but quote, the officers
pressured me to lie and say it was Corey Miller,
all the while holding criminal charges over my head end quote.
So he gave a statement naming Corey and his charges. Yep,
(23:18):
you guess did. They went away while the child's mother
got thirty five years. But Kenneth was never called at
the two thousand and three trial. So fast forward after
Corey was granted a new trial and the false statement resurfaced.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
In two thousand and five, Kenneth Jordan gets arrested for
a possession of crack cocaine. He gets placed on probation,
he absconds, and then in two thousand and seven he
is in prison facing revocation of his probation, and that's
when the prosecutor comes and says, I will extend your
probation in lieu of revocation. And then he signed a
(23:52):
written agreement at that point that he would testify against
Corey in exchange to get his probation extended.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So now the state moved forward to trial in two
thousand and nine with two reluctant witnesses, and even in
pre trial, the deck looked stacked, starting with the new judge,
a guy named Hans J. Lilgeberg.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
During Waldberg the first day he fell being his coach.
So you should be all bye, you should be arrested.
You a herd choice. I want to get you convicted,
and I want to put this case on a show.
We kind of s that is the riforbody and then
anything that we try to file, whatever the DA's wanted,
ain't that whatever will be asked for us an emotion.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Of fiul for that, including a critical request from his
hired attorney, who hadn't been paid in years.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
At this point, Corey had been in prison since two
thousand and two hadn't been able to earn an income.
In April of two thousand and nine, his trial lawyer
tries to withdraw from his case and says, I've not
been paid in three years. I cannot do a second
trial for Corey. And rather than permitting trial council to withdraw,
the judge which like kind of heckles Corey and was
(25:01):
like I'd feel a whole heck of a lot better
if my lawyer was paid, Corey, you know I'm not
going to let you withdraw. We've got a trial date
in four months.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
So without being paid the defense attorney. Instead of physically
calling Corey's alibi witnesses, he was allowed to just replay
the recording of their testimonies from the first trial, which
is not what the state did with Darnell and Kenneth.
Jordan no relation, by the way those two guys, except
perhaps for family histories that may have been intertwined with
one of the prosecutors, Roger Jordan, a powerful Louisiana white
(25:32):
man who also happens to share the same last name,
and it appears that their relationship was not so different
from their ancestors.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Prior to the second trial, Darnell and Kenneth do not
want to come and testify. They are arrested on material
witness warrants. They're held in communicado leading up to the trial,
and then they're brought to court in chains to testify
against Corey and Kenneth. His statement is different than even
Darnell's right, so he says that he sees the fight
(26:02):
and that after the fight is over and everybody walks away,
he sees Corey walk up, stand over Steven shoot him.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
So was he standing over the body or was he
reaching underneath the pylon? It can't be both. It appears
that these inconsistencies gave at least three of the jurors
some really serious reservations.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
This is the poster child for non unanimous verdicts because
it wasn't even ten to two, it was nine to three.
There were three African Americans on the jury, the rest
were white people, and there was one young black woman
on the jury who was getting attacked by the white
members of the jury. They were saying very horrible things
(26:43):
to her, like your mother should have aborted you. You're
just as dumb as he is. You're not doing your job.
They kept on reporting to the judge that like the
jurors were losing it. The young woman was so stressed
out she was throwing up.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
The jurors came as they can't help up with her
dirty wild up with helgoing out.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
So the judge is like, I'm going to sequester you
guys in a hotel overnight, So he does that. They
come back the next day. The abuse continues.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Meanwhile, because they clearly must have been unsure of the outcome.
The attorneys were discussing the offered that they'd made to
Corey before trial twenty years. At this point he almost
served half but still Corey maintains his innocence. And then
the jury came back with their first ten to two
vote for guilty.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
They pull the jurors and two African Americans say not guilty.
One woman, a white lady, writes guilty under duress, and
they're like, oh no, this won't do. So then they
send everybody back and then she comes back and she's
changed her vote at this point from guilty under duress
to just guilty and that's enough.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Then the next day she gives an interview to The
Times picky you and and she describes the scene in
deliberations and she just says, I didn't vote guilty because
I thought the state proved its case. I voted guilty
to end deliberations because the Mama bear instinct in me
came out and I was afraid for the sanity of
this young girl.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Yeah, and I just see I just thought she was dried,
kids on the eyes and stuff like that. So I
know something was going on in effect, I just didn't
find out until later, she described a total lens going
off back. It was unsel how to go through that,
and it was unself to me. They had to be
found guilty by Dervis said basically put out out in
(28:35):
the room there. It's just hard recapping all of those
times and it just takes you back to that place.
I wouldn't wish this all my words enemy, I lost
(29:02):
twenty two years of my life so far of being
able to raise my kids. Tryping me because I was
not raised by my father my mother. I was giving
my grand pans and I always vowed to break that cycle.
The most important thing in the world of people was
to be a father and be up in the thout
(29:24):
these lives. My youngest daughter was two years old. Now
she's graduated and let you so I wasn't there for
them because of the hearts of men, political figures and discontinas,
checkers and posy.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
But at the end of the day, all the easy
on you and been trying.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
To upgrade in their standards, and they just somebody like
me come along and they're just like that, We're gonna
go all out. This don't help us, It don't feel
us in our platfall. But I allowed. I did it
to change me and make my heart. I still believe
that if I staked go ahead a wait, and I
(30:05):
bet if my kids all of it was going real well,
going to college, when college being successful, I was, it
could have turned out much worse for them. And so
I hold on today. I could see the pain and
I can hear the pain what we shouldpeak, and I
know they been under the pain. It could be given
(30:25):
back to him, and the best thing that I could
do for him is give my freedom.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
He had his direct appeal and then he filed for
his initial state habeas or state post conviction, and it
was timely, and that was denied without a hearing. That's
a shame because what the law says is if there's
any contested factual issue, you cannot just resolve that on
inspection of the pleadings. You have to have a hearing.
And there's a lot of contested factual issues in this case.
(30:54):
So there was never a hearing on his initial timely
post conviction application.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Eighteen.
Speaker 5 (31:00):
Both the state's witnesses recanted. In twenty eighteen, both men
independently fully recanted their trial testimony. Both of them said,
I didn't see Corey Kenneth actually said that he saw
a shorter, darker skinned person, and they both described similar
coercion by the Sheriff's office. They both said what I
(31:22):
said at trial was not true, so the evidence against
Corey is gone.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
In addition, Jane hired a crime scene reconstruction expert.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
We had a crime scene reconstruction expert, and basically the
trajectory of the bullet, because it's got a slightly upward angle,
they were either on the same plane or the shooter
was standing up, Steve was laying down, and the shooter
had an unobstructive path from at least three feet away
because there was no stippling, so we know that it
came from at least three feet away. So the idea
that the shooter sticks his hand in a pile of
(31:53):
people fighting and shoots that clearly didn't happen, and that.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Was alleged by the only person who appear in both trials,
Darnell Jordan. At least Kenneth Jordan's version of events was
physically possible. Yet the post conviction filing was denied, ruling
that the recantations were suspect and not reliable. Even though
these recantations were in part supported by the crime scene
reconstruction and in total by Detective Cloger's pattern of coercion.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
There's corroboration that this is kind of the pattern in
practice of what the Sheriff's office was doing in this case.
And then subsequently, in the most recent filing that we did,
we got Cloger's personnel record and within it there was
this letter from the superintendent of the New Orleans Police
Department that said, this guy has been messing up homicide
investigations in Orleans Parish. So if you do hire mb
(32:42):
is more stuited to be a guard at a correctional institution.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Nevertheless, the motion was denied without a hearing, so.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
He's never had a hearing. They've never let him come
back to court for anything, even the new evidence.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Now, around this time, there was a ballot initiative in
Louisiana and the practice of non unanimous jew verdicts. We
even did an episode about it in October twenty eighteen.
It's linked in the episode description. In fact, that was
only about a month after Kim's first appearance on this show. Thankfully,
that November, Louisiana finally did the right thing, at least
for cases going forward.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
But everyone that had been convicted on that system, they
didn't retroactively let them out. Not changing laws retroactively is
something that really bothers me. I can't understand how that
makes sense to lawmakers and how people are comfortable with that.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
You know the reason, Kim that's cited by the powers
that be in Louisiana that they aren't changing this law
because it would clog up the court system with all
these people who would need to come home.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, I know, isn't that the most ridiculous thing ever?
I really can't wrap my head around it.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
We certainly can't either. So even though people like Corey
didn't benefit from that new law, since then, Louisiana has
passed other promising legislation.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
Louisiana enacted a provision of law that is meant to
provide people like Corey Miller with a pathway to prove
their innocence and what would otherwise be considered untimely filing
that says they can file a factual innocence petition before
December thirty first of twenty twenty two. So that's what
we did, alleging everything, showing everything, and we didn't get
(34:22):
a hearing on it. What they did was the trial
judge relied on previous decisions. So he said, like, because
I made the call in twenty eighteen that Darnell and
Kennet's recantations are suspicious, I don't think that this qualifies
as evidence to support a factual innocence filing. But in
every case dealing with recantations, there's a hearing to determine
the veracity of the recantation. Darnell and Kenneth have never
(34:44):
been called to court to testify under oaths, like the
veracity of the evidence has never been tested. And we
took it to the Supreme Court and the two of
the justices voted in our favor, but we needed four
and so that avenue is closed.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
His federal habeas was also But considering that there's literally
no evidence left that implicates Corey Miller, it's really hard
to understand how he hasn't seen relief after all these
long years.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
So it's said all around the forward there was a
victim involved, and it's more than one victim. And because
I've been playing at my innocence to the day one
and I know they're just pa and I know that's
the state that I'm innocent, and I know that when
Dane went and visited the day knows that I'm in.
(35:31):
They just don't know what to do with me.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
I have spoken several times to the District Attorney's office
and said, you know, Corey, he's not interested in spending
the rest of his life in prison trying to get exonerated.
We all offered him twenty years and he's.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Served that it's right all the judges of Street and
grant here my vote, and the das of Trade to
lean up my cage and give me in my freedom,
because they said I retroduced doing the right date would
be the wrong moved for anybody to China further than career.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Doing the right thing would be the wrong move for
anybody trying to further their career. I think that's the
best and maybe the only explanation for where Corey finds
himself today.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
I mean, he's just had every roadblock that you could
possibly imagine, and everyone screw him over every which way,
and it's just I definitely won't stop fighting for him.
That's why I want to be loud about him and
keep his case alive. Unfortunately, nothing has happened. He keeps
getting blocked at every motion, every step.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Of the way. Corey needs all the help he can get,
and I'm asking each and every one of you to
not only share his story, but also to please sign
the petition to free Corey Miller based on his actual innocence,
and beyond that, we all need to sign a petition
to apply the unanimous verdict standard retroactively in Louisiana. Both
(37:04):
will be linked in the episode description. Plus new evidence
is another way Corey could get back into court and
write this wrong.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
If you have any information about Corey's case, please contact me.
My email address is Jane ja and E at Hoganattorneys dot.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Com and we'll have Jane's contact info as well as
other action steps linked in the episode description. And with that,
we're going to go to closing arguments, starting with Kim,
then Jane, and then Corey will take us off into
the sunset.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
If you really think about it, that your family member,
or your loved one, or your friends or someone close
to you could be in the same exact situations as
so many of these people that are locked up for life,
it really opens up my heart to just want to
help people and do whatever we can so specifically with
(37:58):
Corey Miller, someone who has no evidence that he was
involved in this crime. His DNA was not on the evidence,
and I don't know why our system cannot take accountability
of the wrongs and let people out that have been
proven innocent. I believe in Corey Miller one hundred percent.
(38:19):
I really want him to come home. I think he
would be such an asset to our society, and I
really hope that Louisiana strongly considers changing the law retroactively
and letting those people out, because it would change so
many people's lives and families.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
I would just like to thank you for your interest
in it. I would also, of course like to thank
Kim and her team for their interest in it and
for using her platform to shed some light on this case.
I mean, this is not a verdict which should inspire
confidence in the system. If you look at it, it
was a house of cards to begin with. It collapsed,
and unfortunately there as a human being who is still
(39:01):
sitting in prison for something that he didn't do and
that there is no evidence that he did, and he
is now lost over two decades of his life to this,
and so that is an injustice it's also an injustice
of course that Steve Thomas was shot and killed. So
there's a lot of injustice here. But the one injustice
that can be remedied is record to get some relief somewhere,
and I believe that one day that will happen, and
(39:24):
I will continue to work on this case until hopefully
one day he can come home.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
I did what everybody to get the full shore. Because
everybody is aware of everything that went on in my case,
it'd be easiest for the proper officious to make the
right decision. And I feel like he's going to be
retrocuted and carry for making the right decision and relieve,
(39:52):
so I'd want everybody get the story. Help. We tried
everything else that work. No matter how great find appeal
and all and how great word and in people is
ever gonna matter. I will actually die after what I've done,
but only because of jam and love me, behold and
(40:16):
law and release you. That's political sabotage for them, and
so I gotta keep doing what we're going right down.
That's why it's important to bring awayness to my situation
and my summer.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Man.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
I have had it, man, because I haven't had me
in twenty three years.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Thank you for listening to Rawful 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 Wadis, and Jeff Cliber.
Music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
(41:02):
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.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
(41:23):
by the individuals featured in this show are their own
and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good
On January twelfth, two thousand and two, sixteen year old
Steve Thomas went to a crowded hip hop club in
Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, where a successful artist named Corey Miller
was slated to introduce a new hip hop group. But
before they even took the stage, a fight broke out
and Steve Thomas was fatally shot. When the police arrived,
(00:23):
it was allegedly rumored that Corey was involved, but when
specifically asked about Corey, none of the witnesses substantiated that
rumor until a week later, leading to his arrest, two trials,
and ultimately a non unanimous jury verdict, all of which
may well have been prejudiced by Corey's stage name C Murder.
(00:45):
This is Wrongful Conviction. You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You
can listen to this and all the LoVa for Good
podcasts one week early and ed free by subscribing to
Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to
(01:11):
Romful Conviction, where we've got a case out of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana,
involving a once celebrated hip hop artist, Corey Miller, also
known as C murderer. Now he and his brother's master
p and Silk the Shaker had a number of hits
collaborated with Snoop until his situation drastically changed. And here
we are twenty three years later, where he's grateful to
(01:34):
have the support of one of his fiercest advocates, Kim Kardashian. Kim,
welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Thank you for having me back on.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Were you a fan of Corey's music before you knew
about his case?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
I definitely was.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I definitely knew about The No Limit Soldiers and I
love New Orleans. But years later, the singer Monica called
me and was like, you have to help me with
A dear friend of mine told me all about the case.
And there's like a network of us, right so it's
like you and Scott Budnick and Jessica Jackson and Aaron Haney, and.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
We've been working on it for a while.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
So I'm glad that we can be here to talk
about Corey's case today.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
And calling in from a Louisiana penitentiary, the man himself,
Corey Miller, thank Jo Jeff and to help tell his story.
Corey's appellat attorney.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Jane Hogan, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Now, this is a Louisiana story where we've seen so
many many wrongful convictions marked by non unanimous jury verdicts,
which was a legal practice as late as twenty eighteen,
when they could convict you with as few as ten
out of twelve jurors voting guilty. This was a practice
that had its roots in the aftermath of the Civil War,
(02:49):
where the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery unless duly convicted of
a felony. It also allowed black people to serve on
jury's and in Louisiana, even if the defense managed to
keep two black people on the jury, well, their votes
could be ignored and the person could effectively be re enslaved.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
We've never learned how to have an economy that doesn't
rely on forced labor. There's so many prisons here and
that is the economy. Like you go in the middle
of Louisiana, they have nothing except like three private prisons.
It's the local employer. If you want to stop mass
incarceration in Louisiana, if you were to pay people at
(03:29):
least minimum wage for the labor that they perform while incarcerated,
I think that there would be a real push to
do sentencing reform immediately because it's such a business.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
There was a twenty twenty two ballot initiative in Louisiana
which would have ended the slavery loophole of the thirteenth Amendment,
but it was voted down. Yeah, but certainly before that
as well as this incident, and even before Corey's music career,
he was just another kid growing up in the New
Orleans Calio projects.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
I was raised my grandmother, my grandfather, and Big Bomb
and Big Daddy. My mother and father gave here for
addashing to her when I was just a baby and
lived in a county of price Action. When I came
up as and we didn't have Big Bomb and she
kept me out of trouble. She instilled didn't be that
(04:21):
drugs fad. That school was important. So throughout my whole
school I was on a student because I just had
to please Big bomba.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
And while school was important, Corey and his brothers Percy
and vy Sean also grew up loving hip hop during
its early years.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
We became integrated in rap long time ago, listened to
Right DMC and people like that. So Daddy takes that
were in the room and we were playing the instrumental shape.
Then we would play another teap record and we have
a recording take and we played it too, and write raps.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Messing around with tape recorders soon turned into renting studio time,
and eventually Percy Miller, better known as Master P, started
his label No Limit Records in nineteen ninety one with
the founding group tru which featured himself Corey as c
Murder his stage name, and by Sean as Silk the Shaker,
and they began to see big success in the mid
(05:17):
nineties and early two thousands.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Yeah, it was a good feeling. They had that much
momentum without music. It was a wonderful charity and it
was only the beginning, and Dallas star rose it in.
I'm basically this steel in the walls and I just
moved my family to bed Rouge and the Gaving community,
the country club.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Corey has three kids who at the time lived in
Baton Rouge while he worked out of New Orleans, which
is just across the Mississippi River from where this crime
took place, in a more conservative, white flight type of
area called Jefferson Parish.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
You gotta realize jeff Paris went to try to hit
There was some black people that trying to cross the
bridge to get some food, water and something like that.
It was a breakdan lady, couple of women, couple of
guys and trying to cross the bridge, and the police
was predicting the bridge any Katrina finish cross and the
(06:13):
actually shut these sheets and the whole as a story,
but distant lady that I got.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Called up and I hope that story might shed some
light on why their police department might have hired the
lead detective in this case, Detective Cloger, after well they
had found he wasn't a good fit for even Orleans Parish.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
We got Cloger's personnel record and Cloger was working in
Orleans Parish. Then he went to Jefferson Parish. The superintendent
of the New Orleans Police Department wrote this very scathing
letter that's in his personnel file that said he has
been messing up homicide investigations in Orleans Parish. So if
you do hire him, he is more studed to be
a guard at a correctional institution than on the streets
(06:54):
trying to solve murders.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
It appears Jefferson Parish heard this message as more of
a horseman than a condemnation. And that brings us to
January twelfth, two thousand and two, when a sixteen year
old kid named Steve Thomas was killed at the Jefferson
Parish music venue called the Pyramid Club.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
That night of the instandent a couple of guys out
they were they were going to perform at that club.
So by being in a savage audis and they know,
all we try to represent a kill of love, the
X me to get loose deal.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
So he goes over to the Platinum Club in Harvey, Louisiana,
January twelve, two thousand and two, and there were by
different accounts, three hundred and five hundred people in a
club like way over fire Marshall capacity.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
It's really a bowler there lived the bottom and then
a club of time to follow, one way up, one
way out to take the thing. And there's four hundred
people and call everybody that walks in getting tagged down.
And so I was saying I was padded down.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
And that security guard later testified that Corey was not armed,
but somehow a gun got in obviously, and as well
as sixteen year old Steve Thomas, who you know. He
probably they must have used a fake ID to get
in there.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
And they say that the guy was a tran of mind.
They even created a moten saying that I had a
rep the guy that was killed. I guess they had
got somebody to stay something like that, I have a
bad repide of my life from the South, and then
talk he's going the East Coast as yo. Especially back then,
we didn't know what bad a rep it was. That
whole night, I never messed the guy that was doing
(08:31):
that was Folk, never had one word with him.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
After all, Corey was not in this thick crowd, but
rather as you might have expected, he was in the
VIP area.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
I was just in there drinking, wait for them to
tell me go up the stage introduced, then I could leave,
right so, I remember talking to a shoot girl. I
never had a chance to even introduce my crew.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Then at some point during the night, a fight breaks
out near the dance floor, directly across from the DJ booth.
Everybody describes just kind of this group of men surrounding
and beating and kicking Steve as he's curled up on
the ground, and then at some point a gunshot goes off.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
I'm just as surprised that everybody else, but and so
unnatural reactions is the goal.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
A bunch of people flee, including Corey and his friends.
It goes from five hundred people to about one hundred.
And after this shot goes off, there was a really
drunk woman who was in the bathroom at the time
of the shooting, so she didn't see anything, but she
was intoxicated, and she starts hollering out, see mardyed this, y'all,
(09:39):
see murdered this, And I think that probably is what
began sort of the rumors. And pretty quickly the Jefferson
pair of Sheriff's office gets there.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
They discovered Steve Thomas lying on his back, having been
shot in the chest and there was a chain near
his body.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
The police seal up the doors basically with one hundred
people left inside. You know, they learned that Corey was there,
and they start interviewing people and they were asking specifically,
did you see c murder do this? And nobody said yes,
none of them.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Some of the witnesses called on that one one he'd
see the show those games like guard I'm six five
big steaks n skin.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Not only was it unlikely that a successful musician would
put his career and his family at risk. But then
the description wasn't even close, and not one eyewitness named him,
and that included the security guard, the guy who had
called nine one one, a man named Darnelle Jordan.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
The security guard spoke to the police that night and
said that he hadn't seen anything, and then a couple
of days later he gives an inculpatory statement against Corey,
and so based really on that statement alone, they locate
Corey at the House of Blues four days later. He's
not run, he's in New Orleans, and then he gets arrested.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Now, according to Darnell Jordan's twenty eighteen recantation, when asked
by the police, if Corey Miller had been the shooter,
he said, if that was the case, he would have
said so on the nine to one one call. But
then he went on to say, quote, they got me
the id C murder's picture and sign it. They tricked me.
I wasn't signing the picture to id the shooter. I
(11:22):
signed it because they told me to. I knew they
wanted me to say Corey Miller did it because he's famous.
End quote. Nevertheless, this interaction helped them get an arrest
warrant for Corey Miller.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
I actually had some kind of shape in eliteal system
at that time. I was like, oh, well, they're going
to live in rest and talked to Wicks and then
they gonna a panory. So there was my whole straight
up while I let it go.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
At this point, they continued to interview clubgoers. Meanwhile, they'd
found two DNA profiles on the chain from the crime scene,
and one was the victim, so they got a warrant
for Corey's DNA and Kim. I mean, it seems reasonable,
maybe not this positive, but very reasonable that whoever's DNA
(12:12):
was identified could well have been the shooter.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Knowing that the necklace that was allegedly taken from the
person that committed the crime, and obviously if it was
worn around someone's neck and pulled off of someone's neck,
there would be DNA evidence on it. And then when
it finally was DNA tested, it was not Corey's.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
DNA, And then suddenly the chain became unimportant.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I never understood why someone wouldn't want to find the
real killer. How our state can just be okay with
convicting someone not caring if that someone is actually the
right person. If God forbid, a family member of mine
(13:17):
or someone was harmed in a horrible crime, I would
not be satisfied with just anyone being convicted. I would
have to know without a reasonable doubt that this person
was the person that committed that crime. And since I
started to get involved in this work, I was really
hopeful at the beginning, and I still am and I
(13:38):
always will be. But like as you dig deeper and
as you work on more cases and you figure out more,
it just doesn't it become overwhelming to understand, like how
messed up our system is.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Case in point, despite the fact that every club Gore
initially denied Corey's involvement, Detective Cloger revisited them and out
of the hundreds, Cloger found four who were some degree
of willing to implicate Corey. Those four were keishaan Jones,
Ayisha Washington, Tanika Rankins, and Elouise Matthews. And his trial
(14:10):
approached in September two thousand and three. Darnell Jordan had
to be arrested on a material witness warrant, so he
was locked up in a hotel where Kloger visited him
with his alleged statement, which put the following words in
his mouth.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
As the fight was happening, Darnell saw fifteen or twenty
men beating Steve, and that Steve was lying on the
ground in a defensive position, and that Corey wasn't participating
in the fight, was standing back. And then eventually, at
some point he reaches his arm underneath the pile of bodies.
Darnell doesn't see a gun, but he hears a pop,
saw flash and sparks from underneath the pile of people,
(14:47):
which came from the direction of Corey's hand.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
And for this alleged account to have been an accurate
description of the murder, there would have had to have
been stippling on the body. Those are the burns associated
with close range gunshots, but there were none, and according
to Darnell's twenty eighteen recantation, despite Cloger's insistence, he told
him quote that's not what I said, end quote, Darnell
(15:11):
claimed that since he had signed that picture, he was
afraid of the police and went along with the narrative
a trial along with three others, whose testimonies, by the way,
varied wildly, starting with Tanika Rankins and Eloise Matthews.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
What Tanika testified to at the first trial is that
she was at the Platinum Club with Elouise Matthews. She
saw Corey verbally confront Steve. Then the fight broke out.
Corey went underneath his shirt raised his arm in Steve's direction.
She never said that she saw Corey with a gun,
but the shot was fired and Steve fell to the floor.
And then what Eloise testified too was that she had
(15:44):
gone to the club with Tanika Rankins and when the
fight started, they both climbed up on a chair. That
she saw four or five people stomping and punching Steve,
who was lying on the floor on his back. And
then after about thirty seconds, she fell off the chair
and then she heard a gun shot, but she didn't
see a gun. She didn't see who shot Steve. She
also testified that Tanika had not seen the shooting.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
To recap Elouise said both she and Tanika didn't see
the shooting. Tanika said she saw Corey shoot from a
standing position, while Darnell said that Corey reached under the
pile of bodies before hearing a pop and seeing sparks.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
All of the witnesses. Statements by these people are blatantly lying.
My lawyers closely examined it them.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
The state's next witness, Keishawn Jones, wouldn't even look up
when she testified that she saw Corey pull something from
his waist and heard a gunshot.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
The second she gets off the stand, she runs up
to the defense investigator in the courthouse, recamps her entire statement, said,
I'm only saying this because I am pressured into it
by the Sheriff's office, and there's a recess. She goes
and she recamps to the judge.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
On the record, she said she didn't directly see what
happened and had even told police that night that Corey
was not involved, but in the year following, Detector Cloger
threatened her with unrelated charges.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
She told him that everything they have provided the age
forced a delight and she was crying. She was in
distressing to law.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
That story of pressure from law enforcement to implicate Corey.
It's a similar story told by multiple different people that
aren't connected. So Another woman named Aisha Washington said that
people were popping up at her mom's house following her
she was taking her children to school, trying to pressure
her into making a statement against Corey.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Aisha Washington was also being detained on the material witness
warrant for trial, but after Kishawn Jones recanted, Aisha wasn't
called to the stand.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
And then also Corey had four witnesses testify for the
defense that they were there, that they know who Corey is,
that whenever the fight broke out, they saw Corey somewhere else,
that he was not engaged in the fight.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
But somehow the jury chose to believe the three wildly
inconsistent stories over the defenses United Front, which was supported
by Keishawn Jones's recantation.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Being at Jeffson pay would not be placed with somebody
like you to go to trial because I was basically
guilty and the eyes already you know what I'm saying,
you know, the old white men and old white women's
like discuss the with being bashing him, just siding the
way that I looked up like gold tee from my
name you from the tragic the NAC burden. I mean,
(18:31):
it wasn't a matter of I innocent. It was basically
like look who you are, Look how you look guilty.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
And the jury returned a unanimous verdict at the first
trial of guilty, and then that began the most extensive
postrial litigation of any case I've ever seen. Seven months,
thirteen different hearings. Corey's trial lawyer really did a phenomenal job.
A lot of the allegations were that there was withholding
of exculpatory impeachment information, and that Cloger was helping these witnesses,
(19:04):
that he was making convictions quickly get expunged. During the
post trial hearing they recalled Eloise and Tanika. It comes
out that Tanique actually had felony theft convictions outstanding warrants
which the Sheriff's office had arranged to have recalled. They
basically set aside her felony convictions quickly and expunge them.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Which gave the appearance that she had nothing to exchange
for her testimony, and Eloise Matthew's was no different.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Eloise testified that she had met with Cloger multiple times
he had said he'd do anything to help her in
Tanika that she had told Cloger that Corey didn't shoot Steve,
but Cloger wasn't interested and accused her of lying. There
was also impeachment evidence that wasn't turned over about her.
She had arrests for forgery. She was recommended for a diversion,
but she had failed out of diversion, but they hadn't
(19:55):
given notice of that.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Then Ayisha Washington and Keishaw and Jones testified about there experiences,
how they'd both been harassed, and Keishawn had actually been
detained three times and threatened with unrelated charges to ensure
her testimony. So Judge Martha Sasson simply couldn't ignore their claims.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
The judge tells Kloger, like, I want you to bring
your file up here and show me what you've got.
He said, no, I destroy my file, like the night
after the conviction. I just went and shredded everything. And
the judge is like, why would you do that. Then
it turns out later on into seven months of Postpol proceedings,
that he hadn't shredded his file and so he brought
it up there and within his file. Not only is
(20:34):
there the impeachment evidence against the three witnesses, but there's
also statements from a guy named Roger Lewis and Angela
Casten who were there at the club, who had said
they saw the fight. They knew that Corey wasn't involved
in it, so the judge granted Corey a new trial.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
That was in April two thousand and four, when Judge
Sasson was up for reelection that November.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
I think that she was sort of painted as the
judge who's trying to let see murder out of prison,
and then she lost her bid for reelection.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
It's still some parage. These people still sticked together. They
kicked the jail. So then I'm at the Furst year
of these different people now.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
And then the intermediate Appellate Court in Louisiana reversed a
new trial, and then the Louisiana Supreme Court actually in
March tenth of two thousand and six, said no, like
she conducted a painstaking review of all of this and
she concluded that there were constitutional violations that mandated a
new trial.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
So after two years of appeals, Corey was released on
house arrest awaiting his new trial in two thousand and nine,
giving him three years with his children.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
That was amazing good they didn't have to go there week.
And so I definitely hold on to Chared going home,
and those three years after brought us closer. You know,
when I heard that arrested. I just thought that they
were so fraged and so young and small. I couldn't
even chall that that I was in jail. There was
(22:00):
a wing on the business and on two I kept
thinking I was going to go to ChIL I was
gonna get release. So when the years says enough the action,
when you come back, oh good, I didn't want to
think that I worked. So I had to break it
down him again. Started they don't come to business. Even
though I love seeing U, they didn't broke malid. Every
(22:22):
time I said, oh, come with us, meaning with us
to break it.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
I gotta process that myself for a minute. So during
those three years, the state went back to the list
of clubgoers, one of whom was Keishawn Jones's half brother
Kenneth Jordan, whose newborn died in January two thousand and three,
at which time it's believed that the child's mother bore responsibility,
but they were both under investigation.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
So whenever they're questioning him about the death of his child,
they realized that he's on the list of people that
was at the Platinum Club that night, so they start
talking to him about the case.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
According to Kenneth's twenty eighteenantation. He initially told them that
the shooter was a dark skinned man in a hoodie
and was definitely not Corey Miller, but quote, the officers
pressured me to lie and say it was Corey Miller,
all the while holding criminal charges over my head end quote.
So he gave a statement naming Corey and his charges. Yep,
(23:18):
you guess did. They went away while the child's mother
got thirty five years. But Kenneth was never called at
the two thousand and three trial. So fast forward after
Corey was granted a new trial and the false statement resurfaced.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
In two thousand and five, Kenneth Jordan gets arrested for
a possession of crack cocaine. He gets placed on probation,
he absconds, and then in two thousand and seven he
is in prison facing revocation of his probation, and that's
when the prosecutor comes and says, I will extend your
probation in lieu of revocation. And then he signed a
(23:52):
written agreement at that point that he would testify against
Corey in exchange to get his probation extended.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So now the state moved forward to trial in two
thousand and nine with two reluctant witnesses, and even in
pre trial, the deck looked stacked, starting with the new judge,
a guy named Hans J. Lilgeberg.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
During Waldberg the first day he fell being his coach.
So you should be all bye, you should be arrested.
You a herd choice. I want to get you convicted,
and I want to put this case on a show.
We kind of s that is the riforbody and then
anything that we try to file, whatever the DA's wanted,
ain't that whatever will be asked for us an emotion.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Of fiul for that, including a critical request from his
hired attorney, who hadn't been paid in years.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
At this point, Corey had been in prison since two
thousand and two hadn't been able to earn an income.
In April of two thousand and nine, his trial lawyer
tries to withdraw from his case and says, I've not
been paid in three years. I cannot do a second
trial for Corey. And rather than permitting trial council to withdraw,
the judge which like kind of heckles Corey and was
(25:01):
like I'd feel a whole heck of a lot better
if my lawyer was paid, Corey, you know I'm not
going to let you withdraw. We've got a trial date
in four months.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
So without being paid the defense attorney. Instead of physically
calling Corey's alibi witnesses, he was allowed to just replay
the recording of their testimonies from the first trial, which
is not what the state did with Darnell and Kenneth.
Jordan no relation, by the way those two guys, except
perhaps for family histories that may have been intertwined with
one of the prosecutors, Roger Jordan, a powerful Louisiana white
(25:32):
man who also happens to share the same last name,
and it appears that their relationship was not so different
from their ancestors.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Prior to the second trial, Darnell and Kenneth do not
want to come and testify. They are arrested on material
witness warrants. They're held in communicado leading up to the trial,
and then they're brought to court in chains to testify
against Corey and Kenneth. His statement is different than even
Darnell's right, so he says that he sees the fight
(26:02):
and that after the fight is over and everybody walks away,
he sees Corey walk up, stand over Steven shoot him.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
So was he standing over the body or was he
reaching underneath the pylon? It can't be both. It appears
that these inconsistencies gave at least three of the jurors
some really serious reservations.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
This is the poster child for non unanimous verdicts because
it wasn't even ten to two, it was nine to three.
There were three African Americans on the jury, the rest
were white people, and there was one young black woman
on the jury who was getting attacked by the white
members of the jury. They were saying very horrible things
(26:43):
to her, like your mother should have aborted you. You're
just as dumb as he is. You're not doing your job.
They kept on reporting to the judge that like the
jurors were losing it. The young woman was so stressed
out she was throwing up.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
The jurors came as they can't help up with her
dirty wild up with helgoing out.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
So the judge is like, I'm going to sequester you
guys in a hotel overnight, So he does that. They
come back the next day. The abuse continues.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Meanwhile, because they clearly must have been unsure of the outcome.
The attorneys were discussing the offered that they'd made to
Corey before trial twenty years. At this point he almost
served half but still Corey maintains his innocence. And then
the jury came back with their first ten to two
vote for guilty.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
They pull the jurors and two African Americans say not guilty.
One woman, a white lady, writes guilty under duress, and
they're like, oh no, this won't do. So then they
send everybody back and then she comes back and she's
changed her vote at this point from guilty under duress
to just guilty and that's enough.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Then the next day she gives an interview to The
Times picky you and and she describes the scene in
deliberations and she just says, I didn't vote guilty because
I thought the state proved its case. I voted guilty
to end deliberations because the Mama bear instinct in me
came out and I was afraid for the sanity of
this young girl.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Yeah, and I just see I just thought she was dried,
kids on the eyes and stuff like that. So I
know something was going on in effect, I just didn't
find out until later, she described a total lens going
off back. It was unsel how to go through that,
and it was unself to me. They had to be
found guilty by Dervis said basically put out out in
(28:35):
the room there. It's just hard recapping all of those
times and it just takes you back to that place.
I wouldn't wish this all my words enemy, I lost
(29:02):
twenty two years of my life so far of being
able to raise my kids. Tryping me because I was
not raised by my father my mother. I was giving
my grand pans and I always vowed to break that cycle.
The most important thing in the world of people was
to be a father and be up in the thout
(29:24):
these lives. My youngest daughter was two years old. Now
she's graduated and let you so I wasn't there for
them because of the hearts of men, political figures and discontinas,
checkers and posy.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
But at the end of the day, all the easy
on you and been trying.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
To upgrade in their standards, and they just somebody like
me come along and they're just like that, We're gonna
go all out. This don't help us, It don't feel
us in our platfall. But I allowed. I did it
to change me and make my heart. I still believe
that if I staked go ahead a wait, and I
(30:05):
bet if my kids all of it was going real well,
going to college, when college being successful, I was, it
could have turned out much worse for them. And so
I hold on today. I could see the pain and
I can hear the pain what we shouldpeak, and I
know they been under the pain. It could be given
(30:25):
back to him, and the best thing that I could
do for him is give my freedom.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
He had his direct appeal and then he filed for
his initial state habeas or state post conviction, and it
was timely, and that was denied without a hearing. That's
a shame because what the law says is if there's
any contested factual issue, you cannot just resolve that on
inspection of the pleadings. You have to have a hearing.
And there's a lot of contested factual issues in this case.
(30:54):
So there was never a hearing on his initial timely
post conviction application.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Eighteen.
Speaker 5 (31:00):
Both the state's witnesses recanted. In twenty eighteen, both men
independently fully recanted their trial testimony. Both of them said,
I didn't see Corey Kenneth actually said that he saw
a shorter, darker skinned person, and they both described similar
coercion by the Sheriff's office. They both said what I
(31:22):
said at trial was not true, so the evidence against
Corey is gone.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
In addition, Jane hired a crime scene reconstruction expert.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
We had a crime scene reconstruction expert, and basically the
trajectory of the bullet, because it's got a slightly upward angle,
they were either on the same plane or the shooter
was standing up, Steve was laying down, and the shooter
had an unobstructive path from at least three feet away
because there was no stippling, so we know that it
came from at least three feet away. So the idea
that the shooter sticks his hand in a pile of
(31:53):
people fighting and shoots that clearly didn't happen, and that.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Was alleged by the only person who appear in both trials,
Darnell Jordan. At least Kenneth Jordan's version of events was
physically possible. Yet the post conviction filing was denied, ruling
that the recantations were suspect and not reliable. Even though
these recantations were in part supported by the crime scene
reconstruction and in total by Detective Cloger's pattern of coercion.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
There's corroboration that this is kind of the pattern in
practice of what the Sheriff's office was doing in this case.
And then subsequently, in the most recent filing that we did,
we got Cloger's personnel record and within it there was
this letter from the superintendent of the New Orleans Police
Department that said, this guy has been messing up homicide
investigations in Orleans Parish. So if you do hire mb
(32:42):
is more stuited to be a guard at a correctional institution.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Nevertheless, the motion was denied without a hearing, so.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
He's never had a hearing. They've never let him come
back to court for anything, even the new evidence.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Now, around this time, there was a ballot initiative in
Louisiana and the practice of non unanimous jew verdicts. We
even did an episode about it in October twenty eighteen.
It's linked in the episode description. In fact, that was
only about a month after Kim's first appearance on this show. Thankfully,
that November, Louisiana finally did the right thing, at least
for cases going forward.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
But everyone that had been convicted on that system, they
didn't retroactively let them out. Not changing laws retroactively is
something that really bothers me. I can't understand how that
makes sense to lawmakers and how people are comfortable with that.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
You know the reason, Kim that's cited by the powers
that be in Louisiana that they aren't changing this law
because it would clog up the court system with all
these people who would need to come home.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, I know, isn't that the most ridiculous thing ever?
I really can't wrap my head around it.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
We certainly can't either. So even though people like Corey
didn't benefit from that new law, since then, Louisiana has
passed other promising legislation.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
Louisiana enacted a provision of law that is meant to
provide people like Corey Miller with a pathway to prove
their innocence and what would otherwise be considered untimely filing
that says they can file a factual innocence petition before
December thirty first of twenty twenty two. So that's what
we did, alleging everything, showing everything, and we didn't get
(34:22):
a hearing on it. What they did was the trial
judge relied on previous decisions. So he said, like, because
I made the call in twenty eighteen that Darnell and
Kennet's recantations are suspicious, I don't think that this qualifies
as evidence to support a factual innocence filing. But in
every case dealing with recantations, there's a hearing to determine
the veracity of the recantation. Darnell and Kenneth have never
(34:44):
been called to court to testify under oaths, like the
veracity of the evidence has never been tested. And we
took it to the Supreme Court and the two of
the justices voted in our favor, but we needed four
and so that avenue is closed.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
His federal habeas was also But considering that there's literally
no evidence left that implicates Corey Miller, it's really hard
to understand how he hasn't seen relief after all these
long years.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
So it's said all around the forward there was a
victim involved, and it's more than one victim. And because
I've been playing at my innocence to the day one
and I know they're just pa and I know that's
the state that I'm innocent, and I know that when
Dane went and visited the day knows that I'm in.
(35:31):
They just don't know what to do with me.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
I have spoken several times to the District Attorney's office
and said, you know, Corey, he's not interested in spending
the rest of his life in prison trying to get exonerated.
We all offered him twenty years and he's.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Served that it's right all the judges of Street and
grant here my vote, and the das of Trade to
lean up my cage and give me in my freedom,
because they said I retroduced doing the right date would
be the wrong moved for anybody to China further than career.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Doing the right thing would be the wrong move for
anybody trying to further their career. I think that's the
best and maybe the only explanation for where Corey finds
himself today.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
I mean, he's just had every roadblock that you could
possibly imagine, and everyone screw him over every which way,
and it's just I definitely won't stop fighting for him.
That's why I want to be loud about him and
keep his case alive. Unfortunately, nothing has happened. He keeps
getting blocked at every motion, every step.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Of the way. Corey needs all the help he can get,
and I'm asking each and every one of you to
not only share his story, but also to please sign
the petition to free Corey Miller based on his actual innocence,
and beyond that, we all need to sign a petition
to apply the unanimous verdict standard retroactively in Louisiana. Both
(37:04):
will be linked in the episode description. Plus new evidence
is another way Corey could get back into court and
write this wrong.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
If you have any information about Corey's case, please contact me.
My email address is Jane ja and E at Hoganattorneys dot.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Com and we'll have Jane's contact info as well as
other action steps linked in the episode description. And with that,
we're going to go to closing arguments, starting with Kim,
then Jane, and then Corey will take us off into
the sunset.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
If you really think about it, that your family member,
or your loved one, or your friends or someone close
to you could be in the same exact situations as
so many of these people that are locked up for life,
it really opens up my heart to just want to
help people and do whatever we can so specifically with
(37:58):
Corey Miller, someone who has no evidence that he was
involved in this crime. His DNA was not on the evidence,
and I don't know why our system cannot take accountability
of the wrongs and let people out that have been
proven innocent. I believe in Corey Miller one hundred percent.
(38:19):
I really want him to come home. I think he
would be such an asset to our society, and I
really hope that Louisiana strongly considers changing the law retroactively
and letting those people out, because it would change so
many people's lives and families.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
I would just like to thank you for your interest
in it. I would also, of course like to thank
Kim and her team for their interest in it and
for using her platform to shed some light on this case.
I mean, this is not a verdict which should inspire
confidence in the system. If you look at it, it
was a house of cards to begin with. It collapsed,
and unfortunately there as a human being who is still
(39:01):
sitting in prison for something that he didn't do and
that there is no evidence that he did, and he
is now lost over two decades of his life to this,
and so that is an injustice it's also an injustice
of course that Steve Thomas was shot and killed. So
there's a lot of injustice here. But the one injustice
that can be remedied is record to get some relief somewhere,
and I believe that one day that will happen, and
(39:24):
I will continue to work on this case until hopefully
one day he can come home.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
I did what everybody to get the full shore. Because
everybody is aware of everything that went on in my case,
it'd be easiest for the proper officious to make the
right decision. And I feel like he's going to be
retrocuted and carry for making the right decision and relieve,
(39:52):
so I'd want everybody get the story. Help. We tried
everything else that work. No matter how great find appeal
and all and how great word and in people is
ever gonna matter. I will actually die after what I've done,
but only because of jam and love me, behold and
(40:16):
law and release you. That's political sabotage for them, and
so I gotta keep doing what we're going right down.
That's why it's important to bring awayness to my situation
and my summer.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Man.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
I have had it, man, because I haven't had me
in twenty three years.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Thank you for listening to Rawful 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 Wadis, and Jeff Cliber.
Music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
(41:02):
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.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
(41:23):
by the individuals featured in this show are their own
and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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