May 22, 2025 • 41 mins
On November 18, 2001, a woman returned home from church to a man burglarizing her apartment in Thunderbolt, GA. While wearing a pair of batting gloves, the man proceeded to sexually assault her and steal various items. In the days following, police found those items in the residence of a man named Sterling Flint. When the victim identified Flint as a possible perpetrator, Flint blamed a man named Sonny Bharadia, who had pressed charges against Flint days prior for stealing his car and threatening to kill Sonny and his family. A new photo array was presented to the victim, and she identified Sonny, however that photo array disappeared prior to trial. Nevertheless, Sonny was convicted and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode of Wrongful Conviction includes discussion of sexual assault
and suicide. Please listen with caution and care. On November eighteenth,
two thousand and one, a Georgia woman found a burglar
in her home who blindfolded and tied her down. He
bizarrely claimed to be an Islamic militant before completing the
(00:23):
burglary and a sexual assault. The victim described her attacker
as black, and she eventually chose a man named Sterling
Flint from a photo lineup. Separately, a man named Sonny
Baradia reported Sterling Flint for stealing a Chevy Tahoe and
a motorcycle, and while investigating that, the police found the
(00:44):
sexual assault victim's property in Sterling's house. But Sterling's girlfriend
was a former sheriff's deputy and they both said that
Sonny Baradia had asked him to hold the stolen items.
Even though Sonny wasn't black, the police chose to believe
that he was an Islamic militant. This is wrongful conviction.
(01:12):
You're 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. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction this story today.
(01:34):
First of all, it's going to make you want to
jump through your headset whatever you're listening to this on,
and strangle somebody, because well, I've been wanting to do
something like that ever since I first heard about it
years ago, and I'm so glad that Suddy Barati is
here with us today to tell it. But before I
introduced Studdy, I want to introduce my co host, Ben Bolan.
(01:54):
Many of you will know, he's one of my favorite
podcasters and probably one of yours as well, and we're
so thrilled to have him on this season of Rawful Conviction.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
This is and anger that we all share, like you
were saying, wanting to jump through the headset. We're going
to talk about some gross miscarriages of justice, but I
don't know, Jason, what better way to begin than to
speak with the man.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Himself, Sonny, Thanks so much for being here, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
And to help tell this story. We're also joined by
Sonny's pro bono attorney, Olivia Vigiletti.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Welcome, Thank you so much, and this story begins in
the metro Atlanta area.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
Yes, suburbs. I grow up of Stone Mountain. I mean
growing up out a pretty good childhood. I mean I
had parents now're married, you know, red with things like holidays,
go camping, Daisy World, did all that growing up. I mean,
play sports, eleague, baseball, stuff like that, hanging out my
friends and stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I mean that was it.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And by the time this happened in September two thousand
and one, Sonny was in his mid twenties.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
The fall this happened, I was working. I was going
to school and go to gym Rediley. I was doing
that sheet metal work. I mean does a good job
because like at that time probably like seventy five dollars
now doing it. And he gave me opportunities to move
up in a job. And so for me at the
time that was good and was something stable.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeahs an hour, it was good money. Yes, this is
how you were able to afford a tahoe and some
other nice things. Right, So you're doing all right.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
And you also had a side interest.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
In cars vehicles.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Yeah, yeah, yes, my little side thing was I like
to buy cars and fix the myself.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
And Sunny was very generous with his talents, especially with
his close friends Ray Sewan and Keisha Pitts. While it
seems some acquaintances took advantage of Sonny's generosity, one of
them was a guy named Sterling Flint. But before Sterling
enters the story, a different friend who stayed in Beuford,
South Carolina, had asked to borrow Sonny's shabby tahoe.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
I let a friend of mine use my car because
his car was in the shop. I'm like sure, just
like two three days a camp, and it ended up
being a breach of trust. Like when Friday came, it's
like a cell phone was cut off so he won't respond.
And I knew it was his mother's house in South Carolina,
so I got all his ex wife, got his mother's address,
and I called to Cab County Police explain what happened
(04:03):
to my vehicle. And I remember clearly being a Saturday,
November seventeenth, two thousand and one, I met a friend
of mine named Rayshawn's house exactly from Brooklyn, and so
I just to go check on his wife when he's
out of town in New York working and take his
wife's kids.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Out that night Sunny, his girlfriend Alitia Colbert and Rayshawn's wife, Kesha.
They all went out together with their kids for the
opening weekend of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which
they watched to drive it now. They got home very
late around midnight.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
So the next day being Sunday, which was a day
a crime. November eighteenth, two thousand and one. I'm at
my girlfriend's house. About ten o'clock, my cell phone rings
and it's a detective from Beauford County, South Carolina, and
he told me he has my vehicle in his impound
and I can pick it up Monday through Friday. So
that day I dropped my girlfriend's daughter to Mova's house.
(04:54):
I took my girlfriend, took her to Wendy's. I went
through the drive through day on cameras. I got her
something to and I dropped across street to a job
and then a comma from ray Sean, and I asked
him I'll pick up a socket set from his house
because I was working on his car out bought from
auction a while back. So I get the soaka set
a little left, like twelve o'clock and I go to
a friend of mine's house. I had a car park
there which I was working on and around four thirty
(05:17):
five o'clock I stopped by Ray Shawn's dropped a soakka
set off.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
So Sonny's whereabouts were accounted for in the Metro Atlanta area,
over two hundred and fifty miles away from the scene
of the crime, which was in a Savannah suburb called Thunderbolt, Georgia. Now,
remember this happened not even ten weeks after nine to eleven,
when average Americans were just learning the names of militant
groups like Al Qaeda, and this fear of terrorist cells
(05:42):
operating in the US was at a fever pitch. So
with that backdrop, it's believed that an acquaintance of Sonny's
named Sterling Flint, committed a burglary in the early afternoon
of November eighteenth, two thousand and one.
Speaker 5 (05:54):
Basically, this was a daytime burglary gone wrong. Sterling Flint
breaks into the house and he's stealing electronics and the
victim comes home, so he very quickly blindfolds her and
he tells her this very scary story about how he's
part of al Qaeda and he was sent here for her,
and she says in her original police statement that he
was pretending to be on the phone with someone else
(06:15):
who's maybe like instructing him what to do next, but
she knew that there was no one actually on the phone.
She could hear the dial tone, and he tells her
he needs to commit what he calls a fake rape
to make this other person happy, so that she's scared quiet,
and he's holding her at knife point and does some
assault of things to her.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Be aware.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
The following language is graphic and maybe disturbing. This is
from the victim's statement. The victim says, this man tied
her up to the bed, performed oral sex on her, masturbated, ejaculated,
cleaned up after himself had then left with a number
of electronic items and a suitcase. When the victim freed
herself and removed the blindfold, she noticed it was two forty.
Speaker 5 (06:58):
Pm, fortunately for some Before she gets blindfolded, she sees
he's wearing blue and white bat and gloves, and she
tells the police that but the GBI the Georgia labs
at the time were only testing fluids. The labs weren't
doing touch DNA testing, so they scan all the evidence
that they have. They don't find any fluids. They say
there's nothing to test, and that's really important.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
We're going to hold onto that detail for later, But
at that time all they had to go on was
her description. Now, remember the attacker was partially masked, she
had only seen his eyes shortly before she was blindfolded,
and the victim was white, which made this a cross
racial identification situation, whether with the actual attacker as described
(07:38):
by the victim or with Sonny.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
The victim's description of the guy was a black mail
bushy bras bushy musta's darskin ruskin face five six, one fifty.
I was like one eighty five. I just go to
gym like four days a week at a time. So
you're not saying one hundred fifty pounds. You're not said
I was a black mail.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
After all, Sonny's ethnicity is Indian, which I guess if
you're a racist and you're all suit not good at
being racist, then that makes Sunny a member of al
Qaeda somehow. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. At this point,
they had made a composite sketch of a black man. Meanwhile,
Sunny was headed just a short distance north of Savannah, Georgia,
(08:17):
to Beauford County, South Carolina to get his car back. However,
the only friend he could scramble to come with him
to drive one of the vehicles back home she had
a problem with her license.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
We finally get a Buford like five pm on November nineteenth,
and I picked my vehicle up and just randomly startling.
Flint called me at that time, and I've only seen
this coup once or twice. So he's like, where am
I at? I said him in Bufford and he's like,
were you like thirty minutes from me. It's like light
bulb goes off in a head. I was like, hey, man,
is any way you go on Atlanta soon? Because I
got a scirrel me took me to get my car,
(08:48):
but she has some type of issue of license.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I think she had a DUI or something.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
So I didn't want to getting pulled over going back
to Atlanta driving behind me, you know, So I asked
me to drive my vehicle back and he's like sure.
So we met him and his girlfriend at a restaurant.
We ate dinner, and he left on his motorcycle and
I follow his girlfriend to his house. So when we
get to his house, she introduced me her roommate with
he was a Chatham County share steputy, and she tells
me she used to be a Chatham County shaf's deputy.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Now it appears that Sterling's girlfriend, Ashley Dold's affiliation to
law enforcement may have played a role in this case.
But at this point in the story, Sterling Flint parked
his motorcycle at home. He got into Chabby Tahoe and
was supposed to follow Sonny back to his friend's house
at Atlanta.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
When we entered one of the interstates in Atlanta, my
vehicle disappeared. I don't see him on the highway no more.
But finally when I get to my friend's house, I'll
keep calling. His phone is not answering. Probably about three
o'clock in the morning, he calls. He says that he
stopped for gas and he ran into a friend of
his aid and seen in some yours and he'll beat in.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
A few So she left the doornlock.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
So I don't wake up, probably about seven o'clock, and
it's like, you know, you have that feeling like you
just know something's not right.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
And so by eleven o'clock in the morning, he calls.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
He says he stopped at his mom's house and he'll
beat in a few and I clearly looked at a.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Phone number on the call ide I wrote the number down. Well,
well I'm waiting. I'm waiting. He never comes.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
So going into the next morning, I caught his mother's
house and I'm like asking if he's there, and she's
like no, and I said, my name's Sonny. I said,
your son has my vehicle. Can you ask him bring
it back by twelve o'clock noon. If he doesn't, I'm
report of stolen. So right before noon, I hear my
friend on the phone arguing with somebody and yelling and stuff.
So I asked what's going on. She's like, that's Sterling
and she's saying his threatening to kill her. So I
(10:23):
grabbed the phone. He said, it's going to kill my
family because he's got my home address, because I've got
mail in my car and is in kill mcgarthin and
kill me.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
So I called a police.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Suddy made a police report that Sterling Flint had stolen
his Chevy Tahoe and made terroristic threats. Now, at some point,
the burglary and sexual assault victim viewed a photo lineup
and identified Sterling Flint as her attacker. So now Sterling
is wanted by Thunderbolt PD in Chatham County for terroristic
(10:52):
threats into Cab County, as well as in Clayton County
where he first made off with the Chevy Tahoe.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
So this whole time, I'm calling Sterring. Finally answers, he says,
gonna run my truck off a cliff, gonna kill my family.
And I said, man, I work for everything I have,
and you got a motorcycle, it's like if that bike
is hot, and you mentioned the stolen And a couple
of days later there was a messed with my parents'
voicemail for me to call this Detective Underwood in Cobb
County and he asked for Sterling Flint and I'm like, yes,
(11:22):
that's the guy still my vehicles. And he's like, the
reason I came looking for your vehicles involved in a
burger in Cobb County and the residents came home, Sterling
Flint was in the house. He assaulted the guy fled
in a tahoe, which was my vehicle, so to report
the tag number. When he ran the tag, it showed
up in my name, but it also showed up it
was stolen. A week prior and goes, well, your vehicle
was in a high speed chase with Atlanta Pede last night.
(11:42):
Black Mail jumped out of the vehicle, fled on foot,
and my vehicle went down a hill hit the telephone pole.
He's like, they're looking for him now, so he asked
me to get in touch with him, and I'm like, well,
is this girlfriend's phone number if that'll help.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
So Detective Underwood called Chatham County shared Ashley Dole's phone number,
but they already knew her and they went looking for
the stolen motorcycle.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
When the police show up to Sterling Flint's house, the
victims stolen items are inside of his house and we
know that they're her items because he stole some luggage
and I had her name on it, so we know
they're her items. And the batting gloves she describes to
the police are with the stolen items.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
When he found his stuff at her house, she called
him on the phone and he tells her say, I
brought the stuff there.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
Sterling Flint says, I am holding these items for Sonny Bradia.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
I'merstaying his girlfriend was ex Chaman County. Shaf Stepani roommates
a Chatham County. Shaf Steppye telling a Thunderbolt police officer,
which is a Chatham County that I brought this stuff there.
Now the whole storyline changed from a blackmail to.
Speaker 5 (12:38):
Me, it's kind of brilliant, right because he's like, Hey,
let me get out of this crap that I did,
and let me implicate this guy that's giving me trouble
for stealing his car. The police should have said, well,
that's absurd. That doesn't make sense. Sonny is the one
who sent us over here. Why would Sonny tell the police, hey,
go check out this guy when he's holding stolen items
for Sunny. It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Lost.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
The victim had already identified sterling Flint from a photo array,
so this case literally came with instructions.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
But when we're thinking about how to secure a conviction,
they only had the victims who was blindfolded for most
of it. They only had her identification. Well, if Sterling
Flint is willing to testify against Sonny, then now they
have two witnesses that would speak against Sonny, where there's
only maybe one witness that would speak against Sterling Flint.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
But then the lead detective on the burglary and sexual
assault and thunderbolt. Detective Henry Trey Connors brought the victim
in to view a second photo lineup. This time Sterling
Flint wasn't even in it.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Every photo on a lineup was blurred and they will blackmails.
One guy had one eye and I was the only
clear photo on a lineup. She has circled photo number four,
which was me. Another lineup she circled Sterling Flint and
somebody else and so she identified three different people, but
one person did crime.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
Which is a traumatized person who didn't get a good
look at the perpetrator. We're talking about crossracial identification. There's
a lot of research that showed is that all humans
of all races are worse at identifying strangers of other
races than they are strangers of their own race.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I think it one step further, Olivia, which is that
multiple studies have shown that, particularly in instances where someone
has either been a victim or a witness to a
violent crime, cross racial identification has been proven to be
less accurate than guessing, which means, as crazy as it sounds,
a person who wasn't even there, just by virtue of guessing,
would have a better chance of identifying the actual perpetrator
(14:32):
than somebody who was.
Speaker 5 (14:33):
Yeah, it's understandable that she made that mistake, it's not
understandable that the police rolled with it.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
So the next day, which was Friday, November thirty, if
I got arrest in this served me a warrant from bravery,
sexual assault actively to sodom and kidnapping. I'm laughing, thinking
as candid camera, like this some kind of sordid joke,
you know, But when they pulled the guns out on
knew this was serious and sex goes, you know why
I arrested you, and I'm like why he goes Ashley.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Which is Sterling Flint's girlfriend.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Next chers deputy, I arrest you because of what she said,
not because of what the victim said. I didn't know
what to think. They placed me under the wrist. He
(15:23):
said a crime happened in Thunderbolt. I've never heard this
time in my life. Had these boots on one and
as like it's going to be a long time.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Before season boots agin. I never forget that.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Sunny couldn't bond out and spent about a year and
a half in pre trialed attention while Sterling Flint, the
man whose whereabouts were unknown during the crime, The man
who was fending off several other burglary charges as well
as a charge for Sonny stolen vehicle and a motorcycle.
The guy who was originally identified by the victim and
(15:58):
had her belongings. He was able to shift the blame
onto Sonny, and he appeared to have everyone's help in
doing so.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Sterling Flint took a plea to receiving stolen property right
because that's his story that he received these things from Sonny.
As far as I know, that's the deal he got
to testify against Sonny. Of course, there's these other separate
crimes in a separate county, and so he was working
on that. He is, actually, if you can believe it,
a jailhouse informant in another Georgia Innocence Project case where
(16:30):
he cut a deal to completely fabricate a story against
another man.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
And that man's name is Eric Hurd. Now, over twenty
percent of the first two hundred and fifty DNA exonerations
in history involved the use of jail house informants, which
isn't hard to believe considering how much these jailhouse snitches
or informants have to gain from there, and said device testimony.
But it appears that the lead detective had a motivation
(16:55):
to ignore this more compelling suspect, instead choosing to pursue
what was an impossible narrative.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
We go to my plumbing hearing and the detectives. His
old events were when I came to Savannah to pick
my vehicle up from the impound. He said, I did
all that Sunday record, show all my vehicles an impound Sunday.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I didn't even have my vehicle that Sunday. I came
to Savannah that.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Monday, and then we did a video audio statement in
front of an attorney and he's saying my account for
that day, and I'm like, look, these are my witnesses.
I said, I went through Wedndays that morning to have cameras.
I went through this quick trip gas station to have cameras.
It's gonna be substantiate. These are my witnesses. He didn't
care about none of that. In his mind. I'm a Muslim,
I come did this and he goes that. He called
(17:36):
home ob security said this guy's terrorists. You need to
check on him. This is literally what the guy said.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
So it seems that this detective, Henry Trey Carter's, well,
he thought that Sonny's complexion made him a better fit
for Al Qaeda than Sterling and Flint. This still wouldn't
have been acceptable if Sunny was Muslim or Arab, But
to make matters even more absurd, Sunny is an Indian
American Evangelical Christian, not a black man, as the victim
(18:05):
had described to this detective.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Yeah, the lead detective got arrest before my trial on
something else he had going on. The original police statement disappeared,
which before my name was put into it, the victim
description of the guy was a blackmail The photo lineups disappeared.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
Trial council's whole strategy was to show the two photo
arrays where the victim identifies Sterling, Flint and one other
black man. She does a second photo array where Sterling
Flint is not a part of it, and she identifies Sonny.
He's going to show how ridiculously dissimilar these people look
and that she identified everyone, and it destroys the case.
And that's his whole plan. Well, he doesn't get the
(18:41):
photo arrays before trial. He expects the prosecution to show
up with the photo arrays at trial and they don't.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
He's seen them, but DA doesn't have a copy of
When I was testifying the trial attorney, he stated, like
on his little ad lib starts on out of lineups,
how I was only clear a photo, that every photo
on a lineup was blurred, and they will blackmails.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
He said.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
He talked to the chief police at that time and
he goes chief police said that he laughed about it.
He's like, this case is nonsensical. Just the things didn't
add up.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
Trial Council's whole strategy is gone. So he, with no preparation,
calls alibi witnesses to the stand, who were just thinking
they're going to court to sit in the gallery and
support Sonny. So he's calling Sonny's girlfriend, Sonny's friend to
the stand, and they're trying to remember dates and things
off the top of their heads. They're not prepared.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
If you remember, Sonny and his alibi witnesses had seen
Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone on November seventeenth, the
second day of its release in the US.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
They get the date wrong of when they go to
the movies, Sunny's girlfriend says, we took the kids to
see the Harry Potter movie on this date. It wasn't
this other date. Well, the movie wasn't even out yet.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Misremembering this event as from a prior weekend appears to
have damaged the rest of Sonny's alibi as far as
when he picked up and dropped off the socket wrenches
with Keisha Pitts, so we know.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Oh, it's just a mix up. A's because as they
weren't prepared, because he wasn't prepared, and I think that
this case is so ridiculous. He kind of thought it
would resolve itself, but that's not an attorney strategy. You
have to be over prepared. He didn't investigate the alibi
any more than the police did.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Sunny's cell phone records would have placed him in Atlanta.
The Wendy's security cam at eleven am would have left
Sonny with insufficient time to make the four hour one
way trip to Thunderbolt in order to commit the crime
before two forty pm. And it would have been helpful
if the batting gloves had been tested for touch DNA,
(20:35):
but at that time testing of this nature wasn't even
being done by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. And then
Sterling Flint took the stand.
Speaker 5 (20:44):
So Sterling Flint at this time had been convicted of
committing two other burglaries in Sunny's Tahoe, daytime burglaries, very
similar crimes. He does not come prepared with the police reports,
and he thinks at the time that their open charges
against Sterling Flint. He doesn't realize he took a pleat
he's already been convicted of those. So he asked sterling
(21:04):
Flint on the stand, well, isn't it true that you
have these pending charges of burglaries? And sterling Flint says, no,
that's not true. They've been disposed of. Well, that's a
tricky way to say it, but yeah, he is right.
It's not true that he had pending charges. He had
convictions for similar crimes, and the attorney didn't come in
prepared to say, look, this guy was stealing things out
of people's homes in Sonny's.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Tahoe, and without all of this crucial preparation, Sonny didn't
have a chance in hell. When the victim took the stand.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
When she got an oath, she goes a friend emailer
article by the crime, Yeah, color photo me in the paper.
She satisfied, and she's been looking at that photo every day.
She goes those were the eyes. I got brown eyes.
He has brown eyes. I just couldn't believe it, Like
my heart dropped because I was adamant, like she's going
to see me say hey to Saint the guy.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Add the district attorney leaned into the racism of the
time to further seal Sonny's fate.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
I remember clearly being a trial to DH she goes,
am I a Muslim? And I said no, I said,
I just go to this church here. If you choose
be a Muslim, that's fine. I respect that by faith.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I'm Christian. It's like, no, you're a Muslim. And I'm like,
I'm not a Muslim. And it's on my child transcript.
She's telling me I'm a Muslim.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
And you know how the jury looked at the post
ninet eleven, I get convicted and the judge said life
file parole.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
That's the first of my life. My knees ever shook.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
It's like you're trying to process this like this is
a nightmare that just want to stop here. I'm in
prison for something I did not do and they want
me to die. How are you supposed to process that.
You know, prison is a violence. I mean it's like
a fight of flight mode in a jungle when you
have to survive and you as like you have shape
(22:53):
you put in a jungle full alliance, I mean, what
are you supposed to do? I was a hate state prism,
Like two thousand five through fourteen. The captain of the
prison was putting hits on inmateson officers, so you understand,
like this is general. Not everybody knew this. Like he'd
bring like the contraband in give it to this gang.
This gang would take him off. He'd goes have this
(23:15):
officerc confiscated to give to another gang. And like it
was so wild. And my officer was saying they were
scared to come into dormitories because the inmates rano prison.
They would literally they might kidnap somebody from one building,
have them in another building, calling their family, threaten to
kill them if they don't send him money. So this
is the environment you're in and you gotta survive. It's
(23:36):
not only inmates. You have to look officers too. And
like twenty eighteen, I went in a dormitory also open
the doors. Two officers right there and a guy comes
to me on a knife about a foot long. The
oss is looking at and they got tastes on them.
They're just looking like with a mousa jar. I'm like
forty something years old. This guy's like half my age.
I can't run and so I'm trying to fight this guy,
and finally, by fluke, I pushed him and he fell
(23:58):
and I got on top of him. The office came,
throw me against the wall, handcuffed me, and that's when
I saw a blood all of me.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
I got stabbed twelve times.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Jesus, I didn't even know i'd got stab but this
is Georgia prisons, like a life is not valued, and
I just I'm okay. I made it through that. It
was a nightmare through it all. I lost my father,
I lost people deed to me, and you see yours,
your life go by, You see your youth go by,
to prim you life go by.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Winning his freedom was an urgent matter that took just
short of twenty three long years.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
In Georgia. The first step after your conviction is called
a motion for a new trial, and so it's basically
an appeal that goes back to that same court, that
same judge. So that was filed right after Sunny's conviction,
and it was amended by Sonny's appellata attorney to add
just a mountain of claims for him, and.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Many of these claims stem from the ineffectiveness of his
trial counsel. This is when the batting gloves come into play.
Let's remember Georgia Bureau of Investigation only DNA tested biological fluids.
These gloves needed touch DNA testing, meaning they needed to
lift skin cells from inside the gloves, and Sonny's appelleat
(25:08):
attorney got this testing approved.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
In two thousand and four.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
My attorney goes, hey, are you sure you want to
get DNA tested in these gloves because if he comes
back showing a shoot, that's a found nail in the coffin.
And I wrote him a letter in big words, I
am innocent, and I'm mailed it to him.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
And so when Sonny's a Pellet attorney gets this super
cutting edge test and he has to send it to
a lab in California because he can't find anyone locally
that's doing it, Sonny's a Pellet attorney believes in him
so wholeheartedly he offers to forego his own pay in
the case to pay for the DNA testing, and the
court takes him up on it. He gets the DNA results.
They exclude sonny.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
But also on the outside of gloves because the victim goes,
I covered the mouthfoot of gloves. He said, there's a
female DNA and outside of gloves. They got a coke
can from the victim's house. He tested in the same
female denis and coke can is on the outside of gloves.
So he recommends that for a profile the victims DNA
get taken as well as sterling flints.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
The State of checks to it.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
So he moves forward with the only new evidence that
he's got.
Speaker 5 (26:04):
However, the way he raised the new evidence was that
the trial attorney should have gotten this test done. Well,
that's not really true. The trial attorney can't be expected
to get a test done that the Georgia lab won't
even do. He does at the end throw in like
or maybe this is new evidence. But when you raise
a new evidence claim, you have to make a really
specific showing. And he doesn't make that showing. And he
(26:25):
gets a hearing on this motion for a new trial,
so he gets to put some evidence on the record.
And so even though this evidence that Sonny was not
part of this crime. This DNA evidence has existed since
like two thousand and three. The way that it was
raised procedurally posed a problem. It's not the right claim
because he actually went so far above and beyond what
an attorney can be expected to do to get this
test done. So we can't say the trial council was
(26:47):
deficient for not doing the same thing.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
The courts concluded that the attorney was not at fault,
so even though the new evidence proved Sonny's innocence, this
claim failed.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
The next thing that what happens is the Appella attorney
starts partnering with the Georgia Innosonce Project around twenty eleven
to file what in Georgia is called an extraordinary motion
for new trial the post conviction litigation avenue in the
state of Georgia, where you have new evidence that was
not available to you before. And one of the bases
(27:19):
for this new evidence is that in twenty twelve they
were able to get a codis hit for sterling flint
on the gloves. But Matt goes up to the Supreme
Court of Georgia and they say trial council should have
gotten this test done. If you got it done a
year later, trial council should have done it without really
appreciating what he went through to get the test done.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
So you hold to be accountable in two thousand and
three for a test that the crime lab didn't even
use twenty eleven.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
It also kind of sounds like the reverse course on
the earlier ruling that trial council was not ineffective. Now
they're saying that trial council could have done this, but
it doesn't matter since it's procedurally barred. So after this defeat,
Sunny's attorneys needed to regroup. In the interim, at Old
did an interview.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
She did an interview called Shadow of Doubt we Living
the Life on YouTube and originally the Stolen Goods. She
goes that when my boyfriend picked up from work, he
had a UHUL trailer and he had a burgeran Cobb
County involvement, an U haul trailer, and they parked the
U all trailer at her sister's house and her sister
stay a stone's throw from a victim's house. Recalls a
couple days later, says, hey, can you go to your
sister's house, go get the stuff out of you haul
(28:23):
and put it your house, and that's the victim stolen goods.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
She covered up for a boyfriend.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
And she went on TV years ago said when it
found the stuff, he told Race I brought stuff there.
So she believing what he said, told a police that.
Then the whole storyline changes. So does one police officer
telling another police officer, Hey, who's wordy?
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Gonna take just one officer to another. And she said
the stolen goods came from Sonny. And then the victim
viewed another photo lineup. This one did not contain Sterling
Flint and only had one clear photo Sonnings. But it
doesn't even have to be that devious for cross racial
misidentification to occur. Consider the case of Ronald Cotton and
(29:03):
Jennifer Thompson.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
I came across a book in twenty sixteen picking Cotton,
and it was about a guy named Ronald Cotton. Said
he was convicted of crime, he was innocent of the victim.
Jennifer Thompson said she was sure that it was him
the eyes and this, and that I could empatize with
that because of my case.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
That's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Recovered the case on the podcast and Jennifer Thompson was
called the perfect witness. She was sober, she was awake,
a black man broke into her home and brutally assaulted
her for twenty five minutes, and her whole being was
wrapped up. As she describes it, in studying every feature because,
as she says, I get the chills thinking about it.
(29:40):
If I survived, I was going to make sure that
I could identify this man so no one would ever
have to suffer the way I was. And sure enough,
they picked up mister Cotton not too long after this
horrible crime occurred, and she identified him with absolute certainty.
Of course, he was convicted, and eleven years later there
was another guy in the prison that people were talking about.
(30:03):
He's the one who actually committed the crime. It turned
out he looked very much like mister Cotton, and DNA
ultimately proved that he in fact was the perpetrator, and
he had gone on to commit many other horrible crimes
by the time he was arrested, and.
Speaker 5 (30:16):
Just a small plug to defense attorneys and prosecutors. She
founded an organization called Healing Justice. And if you're in
a situation like this where you need to approach a
victim and you're trying not to do more harm, You're
trying not to impose more trauma. Her organization will help
you figure out how to do that the best way.
(30:36):
So I've used that many times, and it's so important
because this problem is not an individual's problem. It's a
systemic problem.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
It's a great organization. And I'm a proud donor. And
Jennifer as one of my heroes, as is Ronald Cotton.
And important to note they became very close friends. As
they wrote picking Cotton, which is such an incredible name.
They've done sixty minutes together, They've been on wrongful conviction together.
They've toured the country giving presentations to lost students and
prosecutors and anyone that will listen to them about the
(31:05):
unreliability of eyewitness identification. And Sonny, if memory serves me,
she brought your case to my attention.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
And yes, So I got in touch with her on
Facebook and she's like, I'm on team Sonny.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
So she was my life readily for me. She's one
of my mentors. She really is. I try to hang
myself years ago. I did, I actually did.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
I didn't succeed, just went through some things, but It's
like Jennifer was like one of people i'd always go
to kind of give me reality check. She was always
blunt with me and honest with me. She's like, I'm
gonna beat it the gates when you get out, and
it's like these things manifested, they really did.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
She kept a word.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
She's kind of like an angel. She has a very
angelus quality.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Jennifer.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
If you're listening and you're blushing, you should be because
we have so much respect for you here. So okay,
So then along comes through other angel, Olivia.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Right.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
I was working for the Georgia Innocence Project. Sonny was
my first client. So even after I left the Georgia
Ennosonce project. It's always hard to leave a job, leave
your case, but I couldn't leave Sonny. So I have
stayed with him as pro bono council for the past
three years. And so when we filed an amended habeas
petition in twenty twenty two, all of our claims they
were all based on ineffective assistance of appellate Council for
(32:13):
the way he raised the claims. And I want to
just be really clear, ineffective assistance of council doesn't mean
bad attorney. This appellate Council did an amazing job getting
the DNA, very vigorous advocate, and still it was constitutionally defective.
So we were granted an evidentiary hearing in the middle
of twenty twenty three where we put all this evidence
(32:35):
on the record that finally clarified what these procedural mistakes were.
And Sunny's appellat attorney was very helpful at the hearing.
He explained that he just made a lot of mistakes.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
In addition, many witnesses testified in support of Sonny's innocence claim,
including Ashley Dold.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
She testified that I wasn't there.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
My ex girlfriend test fied the one who got confused
at trial, and one of my witnesses died over the.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Years, that was Kisha Pitts. But her husband Ray Shawan
took the stand in hestead.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
He said he remembers I called him that morning asked
I pick of soakkasent from his house, and Kesha called
him and he's like, Sonny came picked it up, and
then when I came back that evening she called to
Sonny dropped the stuff off.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
And this established a timeframe which made it impossible for
an eight hour round trip to Thunderbolt, Georgia, a timeframe
that your trial counsel didn't prepare enough to even do
a rudimentary job of laying it out.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
And I will say that trial attorney did testify and
he wept on the stand. He told us he thinks
about Sonny all the time. This case keeps him up
at night. He always believed in Sonny. He just was
so overconfident because the case was so ridiculous and had
a lot of regret. But of course we can't not
prepare just because the case is ridiculous. And in twenty
(33:49):
twenty four, Judge Tate out of Gwinnett County granted Sonny's
habeas petition, which was not appealed by the Attorney General,
so that overturned his conviction.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Sonny was transferred to jail prior to his release, but
the date of his actual release still remained unclear.
Speaker 5 (34:06):
That morning, I was like, look, the paperwork's not done.
I don't know when you're getting out. We didn't think
he was getting out.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
That day I was in a county jail.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
But remember I go up to intake and she told
officer like gave my property and stuff. So I had
certain books like Long Walked, Freedom of my Bible, some
letters I kept over the years, and these things meant
something to me. So they're like in a little clear
trash bag. So she tells us to dress me out.
So I'm still like the reality is not sitting in,
like something's gonna happen, Like they're gonna say, hey, we're
(34:34):
making a mistake of something. She told me like, hey,
you got to go out this door. So when I
pressed the button, the door open, it's a parking lot.
So it's me, this trash bag of books and a
parking lot.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
So I run.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
I forrest gumped at that guy was running out the
drunning down his driveway. That's how I was running. I
didn't know where I was going. I was just running.
I said, I got to get on the phone, somebody
to call Olivia. So I ran one way and it's
like a concrete plant. I'm like, what this is the
wrong way. Then I'm running along a tree line, so
I'm like looking back, saying, hey, they might realize we
made a mistake.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Lay this guy out. So I keep looking back every second. Paranol.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
My bag of books is like coming apart, like holes
in it, and I'm trying to hold these books together.
And finally I get to this little place and I'm
like yelling, cause somebody help me. And a guy's like,
how can I help you. I said, Hey, my name
is Sonny Barata. You can google me.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
They just let me out of jail. I was innocent.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
I've been in prison twenty something years. I just need
to call him, my attorney, so to come get me in.
He's like, what's the phone number? Sort of laughing, he cold.
Speaker 5 (35:31):
And then I get this random number call and I
know it's Sonny, and I pick up the phone and
he said, they let me out. They let me out,
They let me out. I don't know where I am.
And then a man gets on the phone, gives me
the address and hangs up on me. And that's it.
That's all the information I get. I passed the information
along to someone closer and she said, why is he
at this address? And I was like, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
And by the time I got home, Oliviy was at
my mother's house. Came from Detroit, and Jennifer Thompson came
from Chapel Hill. She was at my mom's house. Amazing
so I was like, it's such a highlight, just like
a mount top experience. The last couple of months, I mean,
just trying to find my place right now, it's still
hard to process at all. I don't understand a purpose
why I went through it, but it's like at the
same time, I like to help people. Me and Jennifer
(36:12):
Thompson talked about it, and she was like, maybe I
could start some time Healing Justice thing in Georgia. So
that's maybe one thing I'm looking at. But I had
not imporous of having a voice because so many years
I didn't have a voice, and I have a voice now,
so I want to use my voice to help people
that don't have a voice.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
If anyone would like to talk to Sunny about public speaking,
and I really hope you will, then we're going to
link his instagram in the episode description so you can
reach out. And Sunday's Instagram is at sun B nineteen
forty four. I'm gonna spell it out. That's so and
letter B like Sunny Varietia So son B nineteen forty four.
We're also going to link to Healing Justice and the
(36:49):
episode that Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton did together.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
And since the recording of this interview, on May sixteenth,
twenty twenty five, Sunny's charges were officially dismissed.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
The feeling itself was exhilarating. I mean, I've never had
a feeling like that. It's like, I'll wait off you
and Jennifer Thompson of Healing Justice was there, my attorney
Olivia Vigiletti, Christina Cribs, Noah Pines, and the George Andoson's project,
and my mom and it was just amazing because I
(37:22):
couldn't have made it in this journey about these people.
After my dismissal, they had like a little pot luck
type party and my Girlfriendjoe down to Florida, so I've
been at Panama City Beach since Sunday and needed this
much needed.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
We were all so happy for you, while of course
wishing that this never happened in the first place.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
And with that, we're going to go to closing arguments
where first I think we thank both of you for
joining us, and then I'm just gonna turn my microphone
off with my headphones on and just kicked back in
my chair and listen for you to share anything you
feel is left to be said, We're going to start
with Olivia and then Sonny, you take us off into
(38:04):
the sunset.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
Wow, that is fun, and I feel very put on
the spot. I would like to tell a story of Sonny,
because it's of course never a requirement that your client
be exceptional and incredible. But Sonny has been lead counsel
on this case his entire life, and the whole time
he's been fighting this and has taught me a lot
(38:26):
of things at every turn. And we were talking one time,
kind of dreaming about the day Sonny might get out
of prison, and I asked him how he was preparing
to transition back into the world, and he told me
something that I thought was really random at first, but
connected it back. He said, do you remember in the
nineties when they would always show the oil spills on
TV and you'd always see like oil covered pictures of
(38:48):
ducks and stuff. But then they show that like you
just wipe them down with some dawn and then they're
okay after you clean them up. But if the oil
gets into the animal's body, things get really bad and
you die instantly. And he was like, that's been my
task here in prison the entire time. I am in
this environment, but it is not inside of me. And
so from here until I'm out, I just have to
keep myself fortified and know that although it is all
(39:11):
around me, I can clean this off and it's gonna
be okay. It's not inside of me, so I'm not
gonna die.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
All I can say is that I'm grateful and humbled
because when you're in prison, lifeile, parole, and it's like
you're fighting with hope and it's hard, and you see
people with serious crimes that are guilty, that don't have
no remorse getting out doing less time than.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
You and have a sentence to dine in prison.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
And I just didn't think the day would come. I
lost my twenties, my thirties, my forties, I'm fifty years old.
But I have great people in my life and the
last six months and like being like a roller coaster
to me. And I was speaking to one of my
old attorneys, the one that got the DNA test, Mapple attorneys, like, Sonny,
you know what what kept you going all these years
in prison? Because it's two thousand and three years, like
(39:54):
my attorney, it's like, hope, Sonny, I used to talk
to you all the time, hope kept you and I said,
you know what, right, And so no matter how dark
things get in life, you gotta have hope. And that's
what pulled me through. Those are tools I'm using in
my life that are helping me and propelling me to
my future.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
And that's what I'm gonna do. And I'm just content
and I'm.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
Just thankful and grateful that chapter my life is over with.
And next chapter, next half the story book of my life,
it's a different story. I can rewrite the ending and
that's what I'm doing now.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
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 Cliber.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
(40:47):
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 Lava
for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in
this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect
those of Lava for Good
This episode of Wrongful Conviction includes discussion of sexual assault
and suicide. Please listen with caution and care. On November eighteenth,
two thousand and one, a Georgia woman found a burglar
in her home who blindfolded and tied her down. He
bizarrely claimed to be an Islamic militant before completing the
(00:23):
burglary and a sexual assault. The victim described her attacker
as black, and she eventually chose a man named Sterling
Flint from a photo lineup. Separately, a man named Sonny
Baradia reported Sterling Flint for stealing a Chevy Tahoe and
a motorcycle, and while investigating that, the police found the
(00:44):
sexual assault victim's property in Sterling's house. But Sterling's girlfriend
was a former sheriff's deputy and they both said that
Sonny Baradia had asked him to hold the stolen items.
Even though Sonny wasn't black, the police chose to believe
that he was an Islamic militant. This is wrongful conviction.
(01:12):
You're 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. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction this story today.
(01:34):
First of all, it's going to make you want to
jump through your headset whatever you're listening to this on,
and strangle somebody, because well, I've been wanting to do
something like that ever since I first heard about it
years ago, and I'm so glad that Suddy Barati is
here with us today to tell it. But before I
introduced Studdy, I want to introduce my co host, Ben Bolan.
(01:54):
Many of you will know, he's one of my favorite
podcasters and probably one of yours as well, and we're
so thrilled to have him on this season of Rawful Conviction.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
This is and anger that we all share, like you
were saying, wanting to jump through the headset. We're going
to talk about some gross miscarriages of justice, but I
don't know, Jason, what better way to begin than to
speak with the man.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Himself, Sonny, Thanks so much for being here, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
And to help tell this story. We're also joined by
Sonny's pro bono attorney, Olivia Vigiletti.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Welcome, Thank you so much, and this story begins in
the metro Atlanta area.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
Yes, suburbs. I grow up of Stone Mountain. I mean
growing up out a pretty good childhood. I mean I
had parents now're married, you know, red with things like holidays,
go camping, Daisy World, did all that growing up. I mean,
play sports, eleague, baseball, stuff like that, hanging out my
friends and stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I mean that was it.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And by the time this happened in September two thousand
and one, Sonny was in his mid twenties.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
The fall this happened, I was working. I was going
to school and go to gym Rediley. I was doing
that sheet metal work. I mean does a good job
because like at that time probably like seventy five dollars
now doing it. And he gave me opportunities to move
up in a job. And so for me at the
time that was good and was something stable.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeahs an hour, it was good money. Yes, this is
how you were able to afford a tahoe and some
other nice things. Right, So you're doing all right.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
And you also had a side interest.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
In cars vehicles.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Yeah, yeah, yes, my little side thing was I like
to buy cars and fix the myself.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
And Sunny was very generous with his talents, especially with
his close friends Ray Sewan and Keisha Pitts. While it
seems some acquaintances took advantage of Sonny's generosity, one of
them was a guy named Sterling Flint. But before Sterling
enters the story, a different friend who stayed in Beuford,
South Carolina, had asked to borrow Sonny's shabby tahoe.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
I let a friend of mine use my car because
his car was in the shop. I'm like sure, just
like two three days a camp, and it ended up
being a breach of trust. Like when Friday came, it's
like a cell phone was cut off so he won't respond.
And I knew it was his mother's house in South Carolina,
so I got all his ex wife, got his mother's address,
and I called to Cab County Police explain what happened
(04:03):
to my vehicle. And I remember clearly being a Saturday,
November seventeenth, two thousand and one, I met a friend
of mine named Rayshawn's house exactly from Brooklyn, and so
I just to go check on his wife when he's
out of town in New York working and take his
wife's kids.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Out that night Sunny, his girlfriend Alitia Colbert and Rayshawn's wife, Kesha.
They all went out together with their kids for the
opening weekend of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which
they watched to drive it now. They got home very
late around midnight.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
So the next day being Sunday, which was a day
a crime. November eighteenth, two thousand and one. I'm at
my girlfriend's house. About ten o'clock, my cell phone rings
and it's a detective from Beauford County, South Carolina, and
he told me he has my vehicle in his impound
and I can pick it up Monday through Friday. So
that day I dropped my girlfriend's daughter to Mova's house.
(04:54):
I took my girlfriend, took her to Wendy's. I went
through the drive through day on cameras. I got her
something to and I dropped across street to a job
and then a comma from ray Sean, and I asked
him I'll pick up a socket set from his house
because I was working on his car out bought from
auction a while back. So I get the soaka set
a little left, like twelve o'clock and I go to
a friend of mine's house. I had a car park
there which I was working on and around four thirty
(05:17):
five o'clock I stopped by Ray Shawn's dropped a soakka
set off.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
So Sonny's whereabouts were accounted for in the Metro Atlanta area,
over two hundred and fifty miles away from the scene
of the crime, which was in a Savannah suburb called Thunderbolt, Georgia. Now,
remember this happened not even ten weeks after nine to eleven,
when average Americans were just learning the names of militant
groups like Al Qaeda, and this fear of terrorist cells
(05:42):
operating in the US was at a fever pitch. So
with that backdrop, it's believed that an acquaintance of Sonny's
named Sterling Flint, committed a burglary in the early afternoon
of November eighteenth, two thousand and one.
Speaker 5 (05:54):
Basically, this was a daytime burglary gone wrong. Sterling Flint
breaks into the house and he's stealing electronics and the
victim comes home, so he very quickly blindfolds her and
he tells her this very scary story about how he's
part of al Qaeda and he was sent here for her,
and she says in her original police statement that he
was pretending to be on the phone with someone else
(06:15):
who's maybe like instructing him what to do next, but
she knew that there was no one actually on the phone.
She could hear the dial tone, and he tells her
he needs to commit what he calls a fake rape
to make this other person happy, so that she's scared quiet,
and he's holding her at knife point and does some
assault of things to her.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Be aware.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
The following language is graphic and maybe disturbing. This is
from the victim's statement. The victim says, this man tied
her up to the bed, performed oral sex on her, masturbated, ejaculated,
cleaned up after himself had then left with a number
of electronic items and a suitcase. When the victim freed
herself and removed the blindfold, she noticed it was two forty.
Speaker 5 (06:58):
Pm, fortunately for some Before she gets blindfolded, she sees
he's wearing blue and white bat and gloves, and she
tells the police that but the GBI the Georgia labs
at the time were only testing fluids. The labs weren't
doing touch DNA testing, so they scan all the evidence
that they have. They don't find any fluids. They say
there's nothing to test, and that's really important.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
We're going to hold onto that detail for later, But
at that time all they had to go on was
her description. Now, remember the attacker was partially masked, she
had only seen his eyes shortly before she was blindfolded,
and the victim was white, which made this a cross
racial identification situation, whether with the actual attacker as described
(07:38):
by the victim or with Sonny.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
The victim's description of the guy was a black mail
bushy bras bushy musta's darskin ruskin face five six, one fifty.
I was like one eighty five. I just go to
gym like four days a week at a time. So
you're not saying one hundred fifty pounds. You're not said
I was a black mail.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
After all, Sonny's ethnicity is Indian, which I guess if
you're a racist and you're all suit not good at
being racist, then that makes Sunny a member of al
Qaeda somehow. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. At this point,
they had made a composite sketch of a black man. Meanwhile,
Sunny was headed just a short distance north of Savannah, Georgia,
(08:17):
to Beauford County, South Carolina to get his car back. However,
the only friend he could scramble to come with him
to drive one of the vehicles back home she had
a problem with her license.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
We finally get a Buford like five pm on November nineteenth,
and I picked my vehicle up and just randomly startling.
Flint called me at that time, and I've only seen
this coup once or twice. So he's like, where am
I at? I said him in Bufford and he's like,
were you like thirty minutes from me. It's like light
bulb goes off in a head. I was like, hey, man,
is any way you go on Atlanta soon? Because I
got a scirrel me took me to get my car,
(08:48):
but she has some type of issue of license.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I think she had a DUI or something.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
So I didn't want to getting pulled over going back
to Atlanta driving behind me, you know, So I asked
me to drive my vehicle back and he's like sure.
So we met him and his girlfriend at a restaurant.
We ate dinner, and he left on his motorcycle and
I follow his girlfriend to his house. So when we
get to his house, she introduced me her roommate with
he was a Chatham County share steputy, and she tells
me she used to be a Chatham County shaf's deputy.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Now it appears that Sterling's girlfriend, Ashley Dold's affiliation to
law enforcement may have played a role in this case.
But at this point in the story, Sterling Flint parked
his motorcycle at home. He got into Chabby Tahoe and
was supposed to follow Sonny back to his friend's house
at Atlanta.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
When we entered one of the interstates in Atlanta, my
vehicle disappeared. I don't see him on the highway no more.
But finally when I get to my friend's house, I'll
keep calling. His phone is not answering. Probably about three
o'clock in the morning, he calls. He says that he
stopped for gas and he ran into a friend of
his aid and seen in some yours and he'll beat in.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
A few So she left the doornlock.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
So I don't wake up, probably about seven o'clock, and
it's like, you know, you have that feeling like you
just know something's not right.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
And so by eleven o'clock in the morning, he calls.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
He says he stopped at his mom's house and he'll
beat in a few and I clearly looked at a.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Phone number on the call ide I wrote the number down. Well,
well I'm waiting. I'm waiting. He never comes.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
So going into the next morning, I caught his mother's
house and I'm like asking if he's there, and she's
like no, and I said, my name's Sonny. I said,
your son has my vehicle. Can you ask him bring
it back by twelve o'clock noon. If he doesn't, I'm
report of stolen. So right before noon, I hear my
friend on the phone arguing with somebody and yelling and stuff.
So I asked what's going on. She's like, that's Sterling
and she's saying his threatening to kill her. So I
(10:23):
grabbed the phone. He said, it's going to kill my
family because he's got my home address, because I've got
mail in my car and is in kill mcgarthin and
kill me.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
So I called a police.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Suddy made a police report that Sterling Flint had stolen
his Chevy Tahoe and made terroristic threats. Now, at some point,
the burglary and sexual assault victim viewed a photo lineup
and identified Sterling Flint as her attacker. So now Sterling
is wanted by Thunderbolt PD in Chatham County for terroristic
(10:52):
threats into Cab County, as well as in Clayton County
where he first made off with the Chevy Tahoe.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
So this whole time, I'm calling Sterring. Finally answers, he says,
gonna run my truck off a cliff, gonna kill my family.
And I said, man, I work for everything I have,
and you got a motorcycle, it's like if that bike
is hot, and you mentioned the stolen And a couple
of days later there was a messed with my parents'
voicemail for me to call this Detective Underwood in Cobb
County and he asked for Sterling Flint and I'm like, yes,
(11:22):
that's the guy still my vehicles. And he's like, the
reason I came looking for your vehicles involved in a
burger in Cobb County and the residents came home, Sterling
Flint was in the house. He assaulted the guy fled
in a tahoe, which was my vehicle, so to report
the tag number. When he ran the tag, it showed
up in my name, but it also showed up it
was stolen. A week prior and goes, well, your vehicle
was in a high speed chase with Atlanta Pede last night.
(11:42):
Black Mail jumped out of the vehicle, fled on foot,
and my vehicle went down a hill hit the telephone pole.
He's like, they're looking for him now, so he asked
me to get in touch with him, and I'm like, well,
is this girlfriend's phone number if that'll help.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
So Detective Underwood called Chatham County shared Ashley Dole's phone number,
but they already knew her and they went looking for
the stolen motorcycle.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
When the police show up to Sterling Flint's house, the
victims stolen items are inside of his house and we
know that they're her items because he stole some luggage
and I had her name on it, so we know
they're her items. And the batting gloves she describes to
the police are with the stolen items.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
When he found his stuff at her house, she called
him on the phone and he tells her say, I
brought the stuff there.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
Sterling Flint says, I am holding these items for Sonny Bradia.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
I'merstaying his girlfriend was ex Chaman County. Shaf Stepani roommates
a Chatham County. Shaf Steppye telling a Thunderbolt police officer,
which is a Chatham County that I brought this stuff there.
Now the whole storyline changed from a blackmail to.
Speaker 5 (12:38):
Me, it's kind of brilliant, right because he's like, Hey,
let me get out of this crap that I did,
and let me implicate this guy that's giving me trouble
for stealing his car. The police should have said, well,
that's absurd. That doesn't make sense. Sonny is the one
who sent us over here. Why would Sonny tell the police, hey,
go check out this guy when he's holding stolen items
for Sunny. It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Lost.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
The victim had already identified sterling Flint from a photo array,
so this case literally came with instructions.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
But when we're thinking about how to secure a conviction,
they only had the victims who was blindfolded for most
of it. They only had her identification. Well, if Sterling
Flint is willing to testify against Sonny, then now they
have two witnesses that would speak against Sonny, where there's
only maybe one witness that would speak against Sterling Flint.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
But then the lead detective on the burglary and sexual
assault and thunderbolt. Detective Henry Trey Connors brought the victim
in to view a second photo lineup. This time Sterling
Flint wasn't even in it.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Every photo on a lineup was blurred and they will blackmails.
One guy had one eye and I was the only
clear photo on a lineup. She has circled photo number four,
which was me. Another lineup she circled Sterling Flint and
somebody else and so she identified three different people, but
one person did crime.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
Which is a traumatized person who didn't get a good
look at the perpetrator. We're talking about crossracial identification. There's
a lot of research that showed is that all humans
of all races are worse at identifying strangers of other
races than they are strangers of their own race.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I think it one step further, Olivia, which is that
multiple studies have shown that, particularly in instances where someone
has either been a victim or a witness to a
violent crime, cross racial identification has been proven to be
less accurate than guessing, which means, as crazy as it sounds,
a person who wasn't even there, just by virtue of guessing,
would have a better chance of identifying the actual perpetrator
(14:32):
than somebody who was.
Speaker 5 (14:33):
Yeah, it's understandable that she made that mistake, it's not
understandable that the police rolled with it.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
So the next day, which was Friday, November thirty, if
I got arrest in this served me a warrant from bravery,
sexual assault actively to sodom and kidnapping. I'm laughing, thinking
as candid camera, like this some kind of sordid joke,
you know, But when they pulled the guns out on
knew this was serious and sex goes, you know why
I arrested you, and I'm like why he goes Ashley.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Which is Sterling Flint's girlfriend.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Next chers deputy, I arrest you because of what she said,
not because of what the victim said. I didn't know
what to think. They placed me under the wrist. He
(15:23):
said a crime happened in Thunderbolt. I've never heard this
time in my life. Had these boots on one and
as like it's going to be a long time.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Before season boots agin. I never forget that.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Sunny couldn't bond out and spent about a year and
a half in pre trialed attention while Sterling Flint, the
man whose whereabouts were unknown during the crime, The man
who was fending off several other burglary charges as well
as a charge for Sonny stolen vehicle and a motorcycle.
The guy who was originally identified by the victim and
(15:58):
had her belongings. He was able to shift the blame
onto Sonny, and he appeared to have everyone's help in
doing so.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Sterling Flint took a plea to receiving stolen property right
because that's his story that he received these things from Sonny.
As far as I know, that's the deal he got
to testify against Sonny. Of course, there's these other separate
crimes in a separate county, and so he was working
on that. He is, actually, if you can believe it,
a jailhouse informant in another Georgia Innocence Project case where
(16:30):
he cut a deal to completely fabricate a story against
another man.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
And that man's name is Eric Hurd. Now, over twenty
percent of the first two hundred and fifty DNA exonerations
in history involved the use of jail house informants, which
isn't hard to believe considering how much these jailhouse snitches
or informants have to gain from there, and said device testimony.
But it appears that the lead detective had a motivation
(16:55):
to ignore this more compelling suspect, instead choosing to pursue
what was an impossible narrative.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
We go to my plumbing hearing and the detectives. His
old events were when I came to Savannah to pick
my vehicle up from the impound. He said, I did
all that Sunday record, show all my vehicles an impound Sunday.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I didn't even have my vehicle that Sunday. I came
to Savannah that.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Monday, and then we did a video audio statement in
front of an attorney and he's saying my account for
that day, and I'm like, look, these are my witnesses.
I said, I went through Wedndays that morning to have cameras.
I went through this quick trip gas station to have cameras.
It's gonna be substantiate. These are my witnesses. He didn't
care about none of that. In his mind. I'm a Muslim,
I come did this and he goes that. He called
(17:36):
home ob security said this guy's terrorists. You need to
check on him. This is literally what the guy said.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
So it seems that this detective, Henry Trey Carter's, well,
he thought that Sonny's complexion made him a better fit
for Al Qaeda than Sterling and Flint. This still wouldn't
have been acceptable if Sunny was Muslim or Arab, But
to make matters even more absurd, Sunny is an Indian
American Evangelical Christian, not a black man, as the victim
(18:05):
had described to this detective.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Yeah, the lead detective got arrest before my trial on
something else he had going on. The original police statement disappeared,
which before my name was put into it, the victim
description of the guy was a blackmail The photo lineups disappeared.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
Trial council's whole strategy was to show the two photo
arrays where the victim identifies Sterling, Flint and one other
black man. She does a second photo array where Sterling
Flint is not a part of it, and she identifies Sonny.
He's going to show how ridiculously dissimilar these people look
and that she identified everyone, and it destroys the case.
And that's his whole plan. Well, he doesn't get the
(18:41):
photo arrays before trial. He expects the prosecution to show
up with the photo arrays at trial and they don't.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
He's seen them, but DA doesn't have a copy of
When I was testifying the trial attorney, he stated, like
on his little ad lib starts on out of lineups,
how I was only clear a photo, that every photo
on a lineup was blurred, and they will blackmails.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
He said.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
He talked to the chief police at that time and
he goes chief police said that he laughed about it.
He's like, this case is nonsensical. Just the things didn't
add up.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
Trial Council's whole strategy is gone. So he, with no preparation,
calls alibi witnesses to the stand, who were just thinking
they're going to court to sit in the gallery and
support Sonny. So he's calling Sonny's girlfriend, Sonny's friend to
the stand, and they're trying to remember dates and things
off the top of their heads. They're not prepared.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
If you remember, Sonny and his alibi witnesses had seen
Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone on November seventeenth, the
second day of its release in the US.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
They get the date wrong of when they go to
the movies, Sunny's girlfriend says, we took the kids to
see the Harry Potter movie on this date. It wasn't
this other date. Well, the movie wasn't even out yet.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Misremembering this event as from a prior weekend appears to
have damaged the rest of Sonny's alibi as far as
when he picked up and dropped off the socket wrenches
with Keisha Pitts, so we know.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Oh, it's just a mix up. A's because as they
weren't prepared, because he wasn't prepared, and I think that
this case is so ridiculous. He kind of thought it
would resolve itself, but that's not an attorney strategy. You
have to be over prepared. He didn't investigate the alibi
any more than the police did.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Sunny's cell phone records would have placed him in Atlanta.
The Wendy's security cam at eleven am would have left
Sonny with insufficient time to make the four hour one
way trip to Thunderbolt in order to commit the crime
before two forty pm. And it would have been helpful
if the batting gloves had been tested for touch DNA,
(20:35):
but at that time testing of this nature wasn't even
being done by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. And then
Sterling Flint took the stand.
Speaker 5 (20:44):
So Sterling Flint at this time had been convicted of
committing two other burglaries in Sunny's Tahoe, daytime burglaries, very
similar crimes. He does not come prepared with the police reports,
and he thinks at the time that their open charges
against Sterling Flint. He doesn't realize he took a pleat
he's already been convicted of those. So he asked sterling
(21:04):
Flint on the stand, well, isn't it true that you
have these pending charges of burglaries? And sterling Flint says, no,
that's not true. They've been disposed of. Well, that's a
tricky way to say it, but yeah, he is right.
It's not true that he had pending charges. He had
convictions for similar crimes, and the attorney didn't come in
prepared to say, look, this guy was stealing things out
of people's homes in Sonny's.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Tahoe, and without all of this crucial preparation, Sonny didn't
have a chance in hell. When the victim took the stand.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
When she got an oath, she goes a friend emailer
article by the crime, Yeah, color photo me in the paper.
She satisfied, and she's been looking at that photo every day.
She goes those were the eyes. I got brown eyes.
He has brown eyes. I just couldn't believe it, Like
my heart dropped because I was adamant, like she's going
to see me say hey to Saint the guy.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Add the district attorney leaned into the racism of the
time to further seal Sonny's fate.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
I remember clearly being a trial to DH she goes,
am I a Muslim? And I said no, I said,
I just go to this church here. If you choose
be a Muslim, that's fine. I respect that by faith.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I'm Christian. It's like, no, you're a Muslim. And I'm like,
I'm not a Muslim. And it's on my child transcript.
She's telling me I'm a Muslim.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
And you know how the jury looked at the post
ninet eleven, I get convicted and the judge said life
file parole.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
That's the first of my life. My knees ever shook.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
It's like you're trying to process this like this is
a nightmare that just want to stop here. I'm in
prison for something I did not do and they want
me to die. How are you supposed to process that.
You know, prison is a violence. I mean it's like
a fight of flight mode in a jungle when you
have to survive and you as like you have shape
(22:53):
you put in a jungle full alliance, I mean, what
are you supposed to do? I was a hate state prism,
Like two thousand five through fourteen. The captain of the
prison was putting hits on inmateson officers, so you understand,
like this is general. Not everybody knew this. Like he'd
bring like the contraband in give it to this gang.
This gang would take him off. He'd goes have this
(23:15):
officerc confiscated to give to another gang. And like it
was so wild. And my officer was saying they were
scared to come into dormitories because the inmates rano prison.
They would literally they might kidnap somebody from one building,
have them in another building, calling their family, threaten to
kill them if they don't send him money. So this
is the environment you're in and you gotta survive. It's
(23:36):
not only inmates. You have to look officers too. And
like twenty eighteen, I went in a dormitory also open
the doors. Two officers right there and a guy comes
to me on a knife about a foot long. The
oss is looking at and they got tastes on them.
They're just looking like with a mousa jar. I'm like
forty something years old. This guy's like half my age.
I can't run and so I'm trying to fight this guy,
and finally, by fluke, I pushed him and he fell
(23:58):
and I got on top of him. The office came,
throw me against the wall, handcuffed me, and that's when
I saw a blood all of me.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
I got stabbed twelve times.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Jesus, I didn't even know i'd got stab but this
is Georgia prisons, like a life is not valued, and
I just I'm okay. I made it through that. It
was a nightmare through it all. I lost my father,
I lost people deed to me, and you see yours,
your life go by, You see your youth go by,
to prim you life go by.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Winning his freedom was an urgent matter that took just
short of twenty three long years.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
In Georgia. The first step after your conviction is called
a motion for a new trial, and so it's basically
an appeal that goes back to that same court, that
same judge. So that was filed right after Sunny's conviction,
and it was amended by Sonny's appellata attorney to add
just a mountain of claims for him, and.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Many of these claims stem from the ineffectiveness of his
trial counsel. This is when the batting gloves come into play.
Let's remember Georgia Bureau of Investigation only DNA tested biological fluids.
These gloves needed touch DNA testing, meaning they needed to
lift skin cells from inside the gloves, and Sonny's appelleat
(25:08):
attorney got this testing approved.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
In two thousand and four.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
My attorney goes, hey, are you sure you want to
get DNA tested in these gloves because if he comes
back showing a shoot, that's a found nail in the coffin.
And I wrote him a letter in big words, I
am innocent, and I'm mailed it to him.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
And so when Sonny's a Pellet attorney gets this super
cutting edge test and he has to send it to
a lab in California because he can't find anyone locally
that's doing it, Sonny's a Pellet attorney believes in him
so wholeheartedly he offers to forego his own pay in
the case to pay for the DNA testing, and the
court takes him up on it. He gets the DNA results.
They exclude sonny.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
But also on the outside of gloves because the victim goes,
I covered the mouthfoot of gloves. He said, there's a
female DNA and outside of gloves. They got a coke
can from the victim's house. He tested in the same
female denis and coke can is on the outside of gloves.
So he recommends that for a profile the victims DNA
get taken as well as sterling flints.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
The State of checks to it.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
So he moves forward with the only new evidence that
he's got.
Speaker 5 (26:04):
However, the way he raised the new evidence was that
the trial attorney should have gotten this test done. Well,
that's not really true. The trial attorney can't be expected
to get a test done that the Georgia lab won't
even do. He does at the end throw in like
or maybe this is new evidence. But when you raise
a new evidence claim, you have to make a really
specific showing. And he doesn't make that showing. And he
(26:25):
gets a hearing on this motion for a new trial,
so he gets to put some evidence on the record.
And so even though this evidence that Sonny was not
part of this crime. This DNA evidence has existed since
like two thousand and three. The way that it was
raised procedurally posed a problem. It's not the right claim
because he actually went so far above and beyond what
an attorney can be expected to do to get this
test done. So we can't say the trial council was
(26:47):
deficient for not doing the same thing.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
The courts concluded that the attorney was not at fault,
so even though the new evidence proved Sonny's innocence, this
claim failed.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
The next thing that what happens is the Appella attorney
starts partnering with the Georgia Innosonce Project around twenty eleven
to file what in Georgia is called an extraordinary motion
for new trial the post conviction litigation avenue in the
state of Georgia, where you have new evidence that was
not available to you before. And one of the bases
(27:19):
for this new evidence is that in twenty twelve they
were able to get a codis hit for sterling flint
on the gloves. But Matt goes up to the Supreme
Court of Georgia and they say trial council should have
gotten this test done. If you got it done a
year later, trial council should have done it without really
appreciating what he went through to get the test done.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
So you hold to be accountable in two thousand and
three for a test that the crime lab didn't even
use twenty eleven.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
It also kind of sounds like the reverse course on
the earlier ruling that trial council was not ineffective. Now
they're saying that trial council could have done this, but
it doesn't matter since it's procedurally barred. So after this defeat,
Sunny's attorneys needed to regroup. In the interim, at Old
did an interview.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
She did an interview called Shadow of Doubt we Living
the Life on YouTube and originally the Stolen Goods. She
goes that when my boyfriend picked up from work, he
had a UHUL trailer and he had a burgeran Cobb
County involvement, an U haul trailer, and they parked the
U all trailer at her sister's house and her sister
stay a stone's throw from a victim's house. Recalls a
couple days later, says, hey, can you go to your
sister's house, go get the stuff out of you haul
(28:23):
and put it your house, and that's the victim stolen goods.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
She covered up for a boyfriend.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
And she went on TV years ago said when it
found the stuff, he told Race I brought stuff there.
So she believing what he said, told a police that.
Then the whole storyline changes. So does one police officer
telling another police officer, Hey, who's wordy?
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Gonna take just one officer to another. And she said
the stolen goods came from Sonny. And then the victim
viewed another photo lineup. This one did not contain Sterling
Flint and only had one clear photo Sonnings. But it
doesn't even have to be that devious for cross racial
misidentification to occur. Consider the case of Ronald Cotton and
(29:03):
Jennifer Thompson.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
I came across a book in twenty sixteen picking Cotton,
and it was about a guy named Ronald Cotton. Said
he was convicted of crime, he was innocent of the victim.
Jennifer Thompson said she was sure that it was him
the eyes and this, and that I could empatize with
that because of my case.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
That's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Recovered the case on the podcast and Jennifer Thompson was
called the perfect witness. She was sober, she was awake,
a black man broke into her home and brutally assaulted
her for twenty five minutes, and her whole being was
wrapped up. As she describes it, in studying every feature because,
as she says, I get the chills thinking about it.
(29:40):
If I survived, I was going to make sure that
I could identify this man so no one would ever
have to suffer the way I was. And sure enough,
they picked up mister Cotton not too long after this
horrible crime occurred, and she identified him with absolute certainty.
Of course, he was convicted, and eleven years later there
was another guy in the prison that people were talking about.
(30:03):
He's the one who actually committed the crime. It turned
out he looked very much like mister Cotton, and DNA
ultimately proved that he in fact was the perpetrator, and
he had gone on to commit many other horrible crimes
by the time he was arrested, and.
Speaker 5 (30:16):
Just a small plug to defense attorneys and prosecutors. She
founded an organization called Healing Justice. And if you're in
a situation like this where you need to approach a
victim and you're trying not to do more harm, You're
trying not to impose more trauma. Her organization will help
you figure out how to do that the best way.
(30:36):
So I've used that many times, and it's so important
because this problem is not an individual's problem. It's a
systemic problem.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
It's a great organization. And I'm a proud donor. And
Jennifer as one of my heroes, as is Ronald Cotton.
And important to note they became very close friends. As
they wrote picking Cotton, which is such an incredible name.
They've done sixty minutes together, They've been on wrongful conviction together.
They've toured the country giving presentations to lost students and
prosecutors and anyone that will listen to them about the
(31:05):
unreliability of eyewitness identification. And Sonny, if memory serves me,
she brought your case to my attention.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
And yes, So I got in touch with her on
Facebook and she's like, I'm on team Sonny.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
So she was my life readily for me. She's one
of my mentors. She really is. I try to hang
myself years ago. I did, I actually did.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
I didn't succeed, just went through some things, but It's
like Jennifer was like one of people i'd always go
to kind of give me reality check. She was always
blunt with me and honest with me. She's like, I'm
gonna beat it the gates when you get out, and
it's like these things manifested, they really did.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
She kept a word.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
She's kind of like an angel. She has a very
angelus quality.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Jennifer.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
If you're listening and you're blushing, you should be because
we have so much respect for you here. So okay,
So then along comes through other angel, Olivia.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Right.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
I was working for the Georgia Innocence Project. Sonny was
my first client. So even after I left the Georgia
Ennosonce project. It's always hard to leave a job, leave
your case, but I couldn't leave Sonny. So I have
stayed with him as pro bono council for the past
three years. And so when we filed an amended habeas
petition in twenty twenty two, all of our claims they
were all based on ineffective assistance of appellate Council for
(32:13):
the way he raised the claims. And I want to
just be really clear, ineffective assistance of council doesn't mean
bad attorney. This appellate Council did an amazing job getting
the DNA, very vigorous advocate, and still it was constitutionally defective.
So we were granted an evidentiary hearing in the middle
of twenty twenty three where we put all this evidence
(32:35):
on the record that finally clarified what these procedural mistakes were.
And Sunny's appellat attorney was very helpful at the hearing.
He explained that he just made a lot of mistakes.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
In addition, many witnesses testified in support of Sonny's innocence claim,
including Ashley Dold.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
She testified that I wasn't there.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
My ex girlfriend test fied the one who got confused
at trial, and one of my witnesses died over the.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Years, that was Kisha Pitts. But her husband Ray Shawan
took the stand in hestead.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
He said he remembers I called him that morning asked
I pick of soakkasent from his house, and Kesha called
him and he's like, Sonny came picked it up, and
then when I came back that evening she called to
Sonny dropped the stuff off.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
And this established a timeframe which made it impossible for
an eight hour round trip to Thunderbolt, Georgia, a timeframe
that your trial counsel didn't prepare enough to even do
a rudimentary job of laying it out.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
And I will say that trial attorney did testify and
he wept on the stand. He told us he thinks
about Sonny all the time. This case keeps him up
at night. He always believed in Sonny. He just was
so overconfident because the case was so ridiculous and had
a lot of regret. But of course we can't not
prepare just because the case is ridiculous. And in twenty
(33:49):
twenty four, Judge Tate out of Gwinnett County granted Sonny's
habeas petition, which was not appealed by the Attorney General,
so that overturned his conviction.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Sonny was transferred to jail prior to his release, but
the date of his actual release still remained unclear.
Speaker 5 (34:06):
That morning, I was like, look, the paperwork's not done.
I don't know when you're getting out. We didn't think
he was getting out.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
That day I was in a county jail.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
But remember I go up to intake and she told
officer like gave my property and stuff. So I had
certain books like Long Walked, Freedom of my Bible, some
letters I kept over the years, and these things meant
something to me. So they're like in a little clear
trash bag. So she tells us to dress me out.
So I'm still like the reality is not sitting in,
like something's gonna happen, Like they're gonna say, hey, we're
(34:34):
making a mistake of something. She told me like, hey,
you got to go out this door. So when I
pressed the button, the door open, it's a parking lot.
So it's me, this trash bag of books and a
parking lot.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
So I run.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
I forrest gumped at that guy was running out the
drunning down his driveway. That's how I was running. I
didn't know where I was going. I was just running.
I said, I got to get on the phone, somebody
to call Olivia. So I ran one way and it's
like a concrete plant. I'm like, what this is the
wrong way. Then I'm running along a tree line, so
I'm like looking back, saying, hey, they might realize we
made a mistake.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Lay this guy out. So I keep looking back every second. Paranol.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
My bag of books is like coming apart, like holes
in it, and I'm trying to hold these books together.
And finally I get to this little place and I'm
like yelling, cause somebody help me. And a guy's like,
how can I help you. I said, Hey, my name
is Sonny Barata. You can google me.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
They just let me out of jail. I was innocent.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
I've been in prison twenty something years. I just need
to call him, my attorney, so to come get me in.
He's like, what's the phone number? Sort of laughing, he cold.
Speaker 5 (35:31):
And then I get this random number call and I
know it's Sonny, and I pick up the phone and
he said, they let me out. They let me out,
They let me out. I don't know where I am.
And then a man gets on the phone, gives me
the address and hangs up on me. And that's it.
That's all the information I get. I passed the information
along to someone closer and she said, why is he
at this address? And I was like, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
And by the time I got home, Oliviy was at
my mother's house. Came from Detroit, and Jennifer Thompson came
from Chapel Hill. She was at my mom's house. Amazing
so I was like, it's such a highlight, just like
a mount top experience. The last couple of months, I mean,
just trying to find my place right now, it's still
hard to process at all. I don't understand a purpose
why I went through it, but it's like at the
same time, I like to help people. Me and Jennifer
(36:12):
Thompson talked about it, and she was like, maybe I
could start some time Healing Justice thing in Georgia. So
that's maybe one thing I'm looking at. But I had
not imporous of having a voice because so many years
I didn't have a voice, and I have a voice now,
so I want to use my voice to help people
that don't have a voice.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
If anyone would like to talk to Sunny about public speaking,
and I really hope you will, then we're going to
link his instagram in the episode description so you can
reach out. And Sunday's Instagram is at sun B nineteen
forty four. I'm gonna spell it out. That's so and
letter B like Sunny Varietia So son B nineteen forty four.
We're also going to link to Healing Justice and the
(36:49):
episode that Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton did together.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
And since the recording of this interview, on May sixteenth,
twenty twenty five, Sunny's charges were officially dismissed.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
The feeling itself was exhilarating. I mean, I've never had
a feeling like that. It's like, I'll wait off you
and Jennifer Thompson of Healing Justice was there, my attorney
Olivia Vigiletti, Christina Cribs, Noah Pines, and the George Andoson's project,
and my mom and it was just amazing because I
(37:22):
couldn't have made it in this journey about these people.
After my dismissal, they had like a little pot luck
type party and my Girlfriendjoe down to Florida, so I've
been at Panama City Beach since Sunday and needed this
much needed.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
We were all so happy for you, while of course
wishing that this never happened in the first place.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
And with that, we're going to go to closing arguments
where first I think we thank both of you for
joining us, and then I'm just gonna turn my microphone
off with my headphones on and just kicked back in
my chair and listen for you to share anything you
feel is left to be said, We're going to start
with Olivia and then Sonny, you take us off into
(38:04):
the sunset.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
Wow, that is fun, and I feel very put on
the spot. I would like to tell a story of Sonny,
because it's of course never a requirement that your client
be exceptional and incredible. But Sonny has been lead counsel
on this case his entire life, and the whole time
he's been fighting this and has taught me a lot
(38:26):
of things at every turn. And we were talking one time,
kind of dreaming about the day Sonny might get out
of prison, and I asked him how he was preparing
to transition back into the world, and he told me
something that I thought was really random at first, but
connected it back. He said, do you remember in the
nineties when they would always show the oil spills on
TV and you'd always see like oil covered pictures of
(38:48):
ducks and stuff. But then they show that like you
just wipe them down with some dawn and then they're
okay after you clean them up. But if the oil
gets into the animal's body, things get really bad and
you die instantly. And he was like, that's been my
task here in prison the entire time. I am in
this environment, but it is not inside of me. And
so from here until I'm out, I just have to
keep myself fortified and know that although it is all
(39:11):
around me, I can clean this off and it's gonna
be okay. It's not inside of me, so I'm not
gonna die.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
All I can say is that I'm grateful and humbled
because when you're in prison, lifeile, parole, and it's like
you're fighting with hope and it's hard, and you see
people with serious crimes that are guilty, that don't have
no remorse getting out doing less time than.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
You and have a sentence to dine in prison.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
And I just didn't think the day would come. I
lost my twenties, my thirties, my forties, I'm fifty years old.
But I have great people in my life and the
last six months and like being like a roller coaster
to me. And I was speaking to one of my
old attorneys, the one that got the DNA test, Mapple attorneys, like, Sonny,
you know what what kept you going all these years
in prison? Because it's two thousand and three years, like
(39:54):
my attorney, it's like, hope, Sonny, I used to talk
to you all the time, hope kept you and I said,
you know what, right, And so no matter how dark
things get in life, you gotta have hope. And that's
what pulled me through. Those are tools I'm using in
my life that are helping me and propelling me to
my future.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
And that's what I'm gonna do. And I'm just content
and I'm.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
Just thankful and grateful that chapter my life is over with.
And next chapter, next half the story book of my life,
it's a different story. I can rewrite the ending and
that's what I'm doing now.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
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 Cliber.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
(40:47):
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 Lava
for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
The views and opinions expressed 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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