July 3, 2025 • 34 mins
In recognition of July 4th we want to highlight Clay Chabot, a Navy veteran who served almost 2 years on the USS Saratoga CVA-60 before he was honorably discharged. Veterans, even those who served their country honorably, are not immune to the shortcomings of our criminal justice system.
On April 19, 1986, the body of a 28 year old woman was found in her bedroom in Garland, Texas. She had been tied, gagged, raped and shot three times. Clay Chabot, a friend of the victim's husband, became the main suspect after voluntarily providing information to the police about his brother-in-law, Gerald Pabst, who had visited the victim's home on the morning of the murder. Initially telling police that he had no involvement in the crime, Pabst later changed his story by claiming that Clay had forced him to tie up the victim before she was shot. Despite no physical evidence linking Clay to the crime, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison solely on the testimony of Gerald Pabst.
To learn more and get involved, visit:
https://guiltypleaproblem.org/?id=clay_chabot
https://innocenceproject.org/clay-chabot-veterans-day-2018/
https://lavaforgood.com/with-jason-flom/
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. 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.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Innocence Network is a loose affiliation of independent innocence organizations,
and each year, members of these organizations, as well as
the hundreds of exanneries who they've helped free, gather for
the Innocence Network Conference, and it's a beautiful thing for
one weekend. The ex honorees can all count on the
fact that there are other people around who share their experience,
(00:22):
and our team was honored to join them for their
twenty twenty two gathering in Arizona. We recorded a number
of interviews and the damage that these stories due to
your faith in humanity is only then restored by the
amazing people telling those stories. Clay Shabbau and his friend
Doug Graham were bikers who dealt some drugs in Garland, Texas.
(00:45):
Clay's brother in law, Jerry Papps, was a customer with
a newborn son. Clay was beginning to leave that life
behind when on April nineteenth, nineteen eighty six, Doug Graham's
common law wife was found in her home having been
sexually assaulted and shot down when Paps returned a gun
that he'd taken from his sister. He told her husband Clay,
(01:05):
about how he was at Doug's that morning to buy drugs,
heard gunshots and fled. Witnesses had seen PAP's car there,
and he was later found wearing bloody clothing. However, even
with all of this evidence pointing towards PAPS, he was
able to redirect detectives towards his rough looking brother in law,
Clay Chabeau. A rape kit was performed, but in nineteen
(01:27):
eighty six, the DNA testing that would one day exclude
Clay was not available. Curiously, no blood type evidence was presented.
Instead of simply using the evidence that implicated PAPS, detectives
decided that they needed a statement from Clay. When Clay
refused to testify to something that he didn't know, detectives
chose to ignore all evidence and the inconsistent statements from
(01:49):
PAPS to focus their efforts squarely on Clay, using PAPS
as their star witness and the implicit bias against bikers.
Clay Schabeau was sentenced to life prison. It took the
evolution of DNA testing, the post conviction statutes allowing it,
and the dedicated team at the Innocis Project to finally
prove what seemed to be evident to the prosecutor at
(02:11):
Clay's original trial. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
Wrongful Conviction today's episode. How can I say this? If
(02:36):
I was going to teach a third grade class how
to solve a crime, I might present them with the
evidence that was available and abundant in this case, and
they would solve this case. I would say within an
hour at the most. I mean, this one came with instructions,
and yet the authorities managed to not only lock up
(02:59):
an NCMA, but let the obvious suspect remain free. And
of course I'm talking about the case of Clay Shabou. Clay,
I'm sorry for everything you went through. So thank you
for being here today. Thank you for having me and
with Clay one of his attorneys, Jason Craig from the
Innocence Project in New York. Jason, I think this is
your first time on the show, but hopefully not the last.
(03:21):
It is.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I'm happy to be here and so thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
All right, So, Clay, you were born a couple of
years before I was, and grew up in Texas, no Ohio, Ohio.
So tell us about that. What was your childhood like?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
My father was a truck driver mother. You know, home
cared a lot of kids, and my parents boke up
when I was eight years old and I got shuttled
for one family member to the other for about seven
years or so until I was about fifteen and decided
to just take off my own so I started cross
country hitchacking across country, wound up in California for a
few years, got married that lasted about a year, got divorced,
(03:55):
coming back to Ohio, and decided to join the military.
In nineteen eighty one. I was on an aircraft carrier.
There was a large ship with a five thousand guys
and we all could find a small spaces and under authority.
So I think it gave me the strength in the
fortitude to endure whatever went through later in life. Wow
served about three three and a half years of the
military and I got run over by hit and run
drug driver on my motorcycle. So I got discharged and
(04:17):
went back to Ohio.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
And we're here at the INNOCENTCE Network conference. I'm so
happy to be recording live and in person again. And
you can't see Clay, but I can. And the way
he dresses today, he looks like being a corporate boardroom somewhere.
But you were a tough guy back then, right, And
no judgment here. You were involved in some let's just say,
extra legal activities.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Right absolutely where I was raised in Ohio, you know, impoverished.
There's actually the Hell's Angels club to house, so a
lot of people there indulging mind altering drugs. We can't
afford to go to bail for skiing trips, so we
take ours locally.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Internally, yes, I understand. And by the way, like I said,
no judgment here. I mean when I was a kid,
we probably could compare our old photos because I had
so much hair I couldn't even see. I looked like
cousin it. And I used to smoke weed from sun
up to sundown, and I was involved in some stuff
I definitely shouldn't have been involved in it. So anyway,
so you were into motorcycles, the Hell's Angels, drugs, You
(05:16):
did some dealing, and you moved to Texas at some point.
You got married, had a son, Harley, a few months
before all this happened, and he's here with us today.
And Harley's uncle, your brother in law, Jerry Paps. He
lived nearby with his wife and he used to come
to you and a friend of yours, Doug Graham, for drugs. Now,
from what I understand, Paps was into speed and coke
and was led to believe that Doug had cut a
(05:37):
batch of whatever he was taking with too much baking
soda or some other substance, even though it was you, Clay,
who did the cutting, and Doug was aware of this,
And that leads us up to April nineteen, nineteen eighty six, Garland, Texas.
Unbeknownst to Clay, Paps had taken a gun from his sister,
Clay's wife, and later that day, Doug Graham's common law wife,
(05:59):
who was twenty eight years old, her body was found
in their home. And this is just awful, so brace yourself.
But she had been tied, gagged, shot three times, and
she had been raped. A rape kit was performed, but
that evidence, unfortunately wasn't useful, or perhaps the blood type
evidence wasn't useful to the state, because you got to
(06:21):
imagine if it was, they would have brought it up.
But we don't know either way. And however, the biological
evidence didn't become useful to Clay and really all of
us until DNA testing became available. Many years later. And
I want to turn to Jason here, because this really
was a horrific crime.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, no, that's absolutely true, and that did get attention immediately,
even on the local news. And it just so happened
to be someone who Clay knew of.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
The victim's husband. They weren't really legally married. Doug Graham
was really one of my best friends, and I mean
we associated on Christmas, we played cards, we hung out
together for several years, and.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So that was the initial nexus that even started any
interest in Clay for any reason.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
There was no physical evidence connecting Clay to the crime.
That wasn't the case for his brother in law.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
That's absolutely right when you said in the introduction that
most elementary school children could have solved this case within
a few hours and actually identified the actual perpetrator.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
You're right.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
The police they had one individual, Gerald Papps, who was
telling a series of different stories over and over again.
A person who had been found with blood on his
shirt within hours of this homicide. A person who had
proceeds from the victim's home, person who had pawned some
items that were taken there, whose car had been at
the victim's home earlier. In that day. None of this
(07:43):
information was dependent on anyone else's statement. This was actual
physical evidence linking him to the crime. What the detectives
also had was someone else, Clay, who was actually helping,
who actually reached out and said there might be something
to what had just happened when his brother in law
had shown back up to return this gun.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Correct, they came to my house, asked me a few questions,
and I told him all about how my brother in
law had taken the gun from his sister's purse prior
to this. And he was standing at the door and
I said, come on in. He said no, no, I got
to go, I said, And he handed me the gun
and I said, what are you doing with this? He said, well,
I parted this morning for Sandy's purse. I looked and
I said, where's the clip? He said, oh yeah, and
(08:26):
he hand me the clip and I noticed the clip
was empty. I said, were it's the bullet? He said.
I threw him out. I said, what are you talking about?
Him in here? So he came in and he tells
me the story of He claimed he was supposed to
meet the victim's husband, Doug Graham, but he said he
got over there, and before he could even get out
of his car and go in, he saw two men
pull up in a car and they went inside and
he heard gunshots. So he got scared and the left.
(08:48):
So he came back to my house and he returned
this gun. He left my house, and I'm thinking that
I didn't know anybody had been hurt at the time,
so I'm thinking, you know, he's just been up all
night on speed. So I didn't pay much attention to it.
And later that afternoon, I was supposed to meet Doug
or another deal we're gonna do, but and I wasn't
even paying attention to the TV. It's almost like it
(09:08):
played and then I heard it and I had to
replay it in my mind to say, what did they
just say? And my wife, she knew the victims, and
she said that's her.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
I said, what And for some reason in your mind,
you didn't leap to that conclusion.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
I just couldn't believe that he could do something like that.
It'd be like somebody trying to tell you your brother
or your mother or something, which cape I mean, I
knew the guy for several years. I'd been married to
his sister for several years, and I just couldn't conceive it.
That's just so far out of my realm and world
of you know, Like I said, I've never really heard
anybody about myself through my own abuse of things. So
(09:45):
I believed this story. I believed that he was there,
saw a couple people, and I really wanted him to
just try to lead them to help solve the situation itself.
I got to tell you, I pondered over it. I
didn't call Doug until like the next day, because I
tried to reach Doug that night because I was supposed
to meet and somebody strange answered his house phone, and
I thought, oh, I don't know who that is. I said, well,
who are you trying to get ahold of? What do
(10:06):
you want for it? So I hung up? So I said, man,
something that's really gone wrong over there. So I went
back down to Jerry's house and I said, Jerry, I'm
going to drive over to Dougs. You want to go
with me? He said, oh, no, no, no, man, I don't
want to go anywhere near that place. And then I
started getting little more larry and worried. And now I'm
in a situation to note where you know, if I
do do this. I got to live with this sister.
You know, how do you live with your wife when
(10:28):
you reported her brother for something like that? I mean,
just the conflict in that my head and heart was.
I thought to myself, you know what, if this was
my sister, my wife, I'd want somebody help me. And
the next day is when I decided to call Doug
and tell him how I think I had information. He
(10:58):
had just been born, he was five months old, and
I was trying to knock off the stupid stuff, straighten
myself up, because he was finally something more important to.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Me and for our listeners. Clays Son Harley's here with
us now. He's about twice the size of his father,
and he's now thirty six years old.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
And I just turned, you know, like twenty five, you know,
and they say the prefront of cortex and mailes doesn't
develop until twenty five when you start having huge consequences.
So I think it was just a matter of you know,
age and plus like I said, him being born, and
it was my friend. So I wanted to do the
right thing.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
But we see too often people like you who come
forward trying to help and wanted to be you know,
good citizens and believed in the system as you did,
and it ends up putting them in the crosshairs.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Let me say this, in fairness of things, I kind
of created this whole scenario in a way for myself.
Jerry wanted more drugs. I didn't want to get him
to him. I told him should call my friend Doug.
I just wanted him to get out of my house
and leave, So that's what led him to go over
To's house. Later though, Jerry would tell a story about
how the drugs I had had had gotten from Doug
earlier were inadequate. Well, quite frankly, it was my own doing.
(12:10):
I had put too much cut on the drugs. So
there was no animosity between me and Doug because Doug
didn't do anything wrong. But I had told Jerry that
just to get him out of my house. I said, Man,
this does no good joining this. So in fairness man,
I sort of set the stage that led the police
to believe that I had a reason that I was
angry with Doug over it, but they didn't really look
(12:33):
at the smaller facts, like Doug knew that wasn't true.
Doug knew that I was supposed to meet him again,
that night to do another deal. I mean, so when
they left my house that afternoon, they asked me if
they could have the gun. They asked if I had
any more of the same kind of bullets, and I
happily rented and given to him. They left, and within
a few hours my brother in law's wife came to
the house screening about how the police had showed up
arrested him. And as I understood it, by then, they
(12:54):
had already had a witness that positive identified his cart
to see the crime. They called him with blood on
his clothes, tickets for stolen merchandise and maybe some stole merchandise.
So I don't know, you know, like I said, it
was clean cut. I was a rough looking guy, and
so he gave him the story that I had borrowed
his car, and then he didn't go there, and they
allowed him just change his story every time his facts
proved wrong. They just let him change his story because
(13:14):
they didn't see why Jerry would do something like that.
You know, they were looking for the motive. And I'll
tell you this, the detectives simply didn't want to believe
that I had handed them the solution to this case
on a silver platter. They were like, no, where detectives.
There's gotta be more to this. It's got to be
more complicated, you know, something for us to unravel and figure.
I just don't think they could accept the fact that
this would have been so simple had they just looked
(13:37):
at the evidence as it stood. So they came back
and arrested me.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
So you're arrested, taking to jail. Were you in jail
awaiting trial? Did you can't bail out?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
No?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Well they had me on a I think a quartermain
and how long did you think about eight months? Eventually
just rolled out to where they came to me and
they said, look, we don't think you're actually there, but
we need somebody to testify. If you'll testify against your
brother law, will let you go.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
This was a situation where the state felt they needed
a confession, someone who could turn into a witness who
was actually there and one person had information because there
was only one person there, Gerald Pepps, and Clay was
not there, was not involved, and so he had no
ability to offer what the state wanted, what the state
(14:23):
felt they needed to prove a case.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I believed in the just system whole hardly. I just
come out of the military. I'd never been in a
serious trouble in any kind before, and so I said, listen,
I can't do that. You want me to lie to
possibly send this guy to death throw for something I
don't know he did or not. It was okay. Well,
they went to Jerry, my brother in law, and said
same thing, and she got the standpoint of the figure,
said yeah, we're both there. He pulled the trigger. They
(14:46):
let him go, and they gave me a licence.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
So he gave the state what they needed and he
got a benefit and immediate benefit that lasted for him
a couple of decades. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
I mean, there's that saying a body for a body, right,
and we know that sadly, in too many cases, the
authorities are happy to just get somebody, close the case
and move on. And then the idea that in this
case they had every reason to know, they may even
have known that the guy who was weaving these bizarre tales.
(15:19):
I mean, nobody could possibly believe that, but they did,
or at least the jury did.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
There's a very telling note that we uncovered in the
prosecutor's file years later when we're looking into the case,
acknowledging that pass he was found within ours bloody T shirt.
And the quote is you know something like this is
a problem for us. Well, yeah, it's a big problem
for us. You literally had the person who was connected
(15:44):
to the crime physically, with physical evidence. Who is your
star witness. That's a huge problem for the state. And
we can never know exactly what was in the prosecutor's
mind when she wrote that note, but the context clues
are fairly clear she understood that the person that they
were relying on to solve this homicide was someone who
was actually involved in the homicide. And of course now
(16:06):
we know that with certainty based on the DNA testing
that was done years later, but even at the time
of trial, the contemporaneous notes that the prosecutor had recognized
that they had a problem because perhaps their star witness
was the person who was found with blood. And of
course this is the person who initially said he had
nothing to do with the crime at all, wasn't even there,
(16:26):
and then puts himself there. Eventually it changes the story
that way, and then changes the story a little bit more,
and puts himself there, and then changes the story a
little bit more, and all of a sudden, he's now
inside the house, but never willing to say what we
now know he actually did.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
One of the things that really stuck out to me
when I was reading about the trial was the idea that,
and I think this should be a red flag in
every case, is when Jerry said that you forced him
at gunpoint to tie up the victim. That's not a
thing that happens except maybe in some weird TV show
or movie.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Right, supposed to be your criminal partner? Yeah, and you're
pointing to God at him, now, did I'd put a
gun in and making care of the TV out too, Jason?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Unless there was something else presented, I don't even understand
how a Jerry could get this one wrong.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
So what did they hear? They have a witness who
claims to have been there during the entire crime, who
is now backed by the state, called by the state,
who's walking them through what we now know is and
what Clay obviously knew then was a fictitious story about
what happened. I mean, they're hearing it blow by blow
from this witness as the state solicits information from him,
(17:33):
and then the state calls other witnesses to vouch for
Jerry to present Jerry as this person who was overwhelmed
by the ringleader. Who's the defendant there, Clay. But Jerry,
of course, in the state's eyes, was this person who
wasn't a violent person, hadn't done other bad things, didn't
look like Clay looked at the time.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
So what they presented was me as a criminal in general,
wrote Harley Davison's carried John's did drugs looked like Charles Manson.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
So, Clay, what was the evidence that was presented in
your defense at the trial?
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Unfortunately? I mean my defense was, look, I was at
home sleeping. I mean, how do you approve that? So
the only person that was able to testify in my
behalf was my wife, which was the sister of the
witness against me, And so they just claimed she was
a liar to protect me, not considering that, how do
you think she could get up there and say, you know, look,
(18:26):
he didn't do it, indirectly implicating her own brother.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
I think the failure is that the prosecutor, they knew
the limitations of what they knew. They didn't need DNA
testing in nineteen eighty six to know the limitations of
their case. They wrote about it in their notes and
they should have been the ones who check the beyond
a reasonable doubt standard before they put someone's life at stake.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
The jury goes out, how long did they deliverate Clay.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
I didn't have time to smoke a cigarette before they
send the jury is back?
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Wow, so as minutes. Yeah, if you could take us
back to that moment.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I just went into a sort of shock state because
they really didn't impact me or hit me until they
immediately conducted the penalty phase. And my wife at the time,
Harley's mother, had got up and went to the bathroom
and they ran a penalty face so fast. By the
time she came back in the bathroom, they were already
ann ounce of life. You know. As soon as I
(19:20):
do that, they should stand up and I drag you
the back, and I remember asking if they would put
me in a private self because I didn't want to
be in with the crowd of you know, other people
being transport around and I just wanted to scream and
tear and I did. In my mind, prison is ninety
(19:46):
percent border punctuated by ten percent cheer stark terror. You
just after the over the years, you adapt you have to.
When I went in Texas, Francisco. It was a run
by what they call the Building ten or system. Inmates
were running it. There was only a handful of guards
through three thousand inmates. The inmates were empowered with authority
(20:08):
weapons to maintain the for the system. It was brutal,
absolutely brutal. You know, it's odd even though it was
run by prisoners and it was brutal if you follow
the rules with them, there was a lot more internal
freedom and it was more of a physical thing. In fact,
it wasn't until some years to follow that a large
lawsuit Federal brought in special masters and they brought the
(20:29):
guards in and they took the building tenders out. Became
more of a mental pressure. But I had to say
again because I was a little older, i think, and
I had gone through the military, and I used my
head the gang members and things. I taught him how
to do things that they weren't doing that made it
profitable for them. So I became an asset, and so
(20:53):
they would say leave him alone. So I tried to stay,
you know, just actively involved with either education or something
to keep my mind off of, you know, the day
to day mundane.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
And was there a lowest and the highest point for
you while you were in there.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
I had a number of them, the one in the
first when my father died, and at those points I
considered suicide, but that's not in my day. I even
had it all figured out several ways to do it.
But quite frankly, I knew this. I see my mind
strip away everything else. My mind knew it didn't do
(21:29):
what it was being punished for, and it just needed
to know it had a way out if it had
to at all last resort. So once I had that
option of suicide, knowing that I do have the option
to get out of this if I have to, it
gave me the strength to go on. Finally, when you know,
after the years and years of Dallas telling me that
they had lost the evidence, I knew that had to
(21:51):
be a lie, and I fought it for ten twelve
years and finally found it. And then the high point
would have been on a little step was when Texas
finally passed a law whatever that said, you know, if
you want to apply for DNA testing. That gave me
some hope. But this would have been when DNA testing
proved that Jerry Papp's semen was recovered from the rape
kit his DNA was on her hands, DNA on his fingernails,
(22:14):
and then I knew that, you know, we probably had
a pretty good shot of at least, you know, convincing
them that they had it wrong and might want to
look at it.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Again, identifying perhaps DNA in the extremely probative items of evidence.
As Clay recounted, it was the key that turned the story.
And at that point in time, I think Clay's perception
is as accurate even the people who were absolutely convinced
that the prosecutor might have been on the right path
from the get go, even those individuals had to start
(22:41):
opening their eyes and wonder, now, what was going on.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
While this case came with instructions from the very beginning,
now twenty years later or so, it came with scientific certainty.
The actual perpetrator was identified, the.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
State located him. He had gone back to Ohio by
that point in time, and eventually was arrested for the crime.
Now this is the state's star witness, but they did,
with the DNA evidence testing that was done, identify him
and ultimately convict him. After Clay's conviction was overturned.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Jason, I think most people in the audience are probably
thinking now, well, amen, right, finally justice, exoneration, compensation, and
in this case.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
That's not the story of Clay's case right now. So tragically,
after the DNA evidence identified Paps, the state decided to
re prosecute Clay. They knew that they had been lied to,
that they allowed someone to lie to the jury, they
knew the actual perpetrator who had been convicted. They decided
to re prosecute Clay. And it gets worse. By that
(23:48):
important time. Clay was fortunate that some of the physical
evidence was retained, the evidence that identified Paps, but much
of the physical evidence had been lost by that point
in time. So the state's plan was to just run
it back now recognizing that the person who they had
put all their faith in the first time was the
(24:09):
actual perpetrator, but unwilling to recognize that the case had
no legs to stand on against Clay, and Clay was
forced to contemplate going to trial again without even the
ability to examine and retest some of the other evidence
that the state at this point had lost. So, for example,
the purported murder weapon we mentioned earlier, Jerry Papps, when
(24:31):
he was arrested, had a bloody T shirt that had
been lost. We couldn't demonstrate that even perhaps fourth or
fifth or eighth version of events wasn't accurate had we
been able to identify the victim's blood on his T shirt.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
For example.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
And I have to say I was actually hopeful that
we would be able to convince the judge once we
knew we couldn't convince the prosecutor to just dismiss it
against Clay, because the misconduct in this case was so deep.
We tried from all angles, both negotiating with the prosecutor,
we tried with a judge, and we weren't successful. And
ultimately that left Clay once again in the moment where
(25:09):
he's posed with a question that he should have never
had to face. What to do when the prosecutor comes
to him. Now, you can walk out time served, but
on one condition, you have to play guilty.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
It's hard to figure out what master they're serving at
this point in time, too. Right, they have the guy.
The guys they got him the right guy. Now finally
he got the right guy. Even though you guys did
everything you possibly could to fuck this up as bad
as you possibly could, now the right guy's in prison.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
And that was extremely frustrating, and so, as Clay mentioned,
you know, he had been failed by the system before
he had seen that happen. He'd seen what jurors did
very quickly at the original trial. And I don't fault
Clay for a second for making the decision that allowed
him to walk out and be with us today.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
And as I mentioned earlier, Clay's son, Harley is here
with us right now, so we wanted to give him
a chance to talk about his memories and what the
day his father was freed, what that time was like
for him.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
I don't know how to explain happiness and anger at
the same time. His brother is the one that brought
him a home, and I remember, I remember it was
it was a silver Dodge Ram that turned the corner.
I remember staying in the front yard. I was so
excited he was home, jumping up and down, obviously crying
as soon as you got out of the truck. Happy, happy,
(26:30):
and mad. I don't know how to explain it happy
about at the same time. You know, I hugged him
and told him I love him, And then I have
to share because him taking that guilty plea was partly
my decision. He had called me when they offered him that,
and he said, what do I do?
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Man?
Speaker 4 (26:50):
He said, I can, I can come home now, but
I'm gonna They're gonna leave it on my record.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
They're gonna call me a murderer.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Or I can fight this. And I didn't do this hardly.
I know I didn't do it, so I know I
can fight him. I could probably get some money on us.
You know, well we'll both be fighting. You know, everybody
will be fighting. Yeah, I said that. Who fucking cares
if they call you a murderer?
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Are you? He says, no, Harley, it's grew it. Man.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
You alread gave him twenty three years. They're gonna look
for every reason they can't. I love to gamble. I
already gave you twenty three years for nothing. The odds
are clearly not in my favor. I'll go home. That
affected me for twenty three years. That affected all of
his family. My mother, who asking her Almi. You know,
she stayed married to him til I was about nineteen.
She was in a pretty brutal place as well. You know,
(27:38):
it's your brother and your husband. She never called him
the dad guilty, and she never defended Jerry. So it
makes me feel like she knew more, but she was
just in a hard place. And it always kind of
barked me because Jerry was around her family. I almost
feel like a bad human for saying it sometimes, and
I'm glad that everything happened and happened now, you know,
he passed away in prison, which is perfect in my mind.
(28:00):
I think I'm allowed to feel that way. But it
ripped our paint apart. But we can do this to
humans and throw them in prison and it there not
be a lot of recourse, you know, the prosecutor. I
actually learned some of the day that I didn't know.
You know, this could be a problem for us. You
were aware of that, even you destroy your life. Oh well, sorry,
well no, you owe me more than that. I don't
(28:21):
want money. You go to prison, now, you know that's
what you should do. How many other people did you
do this too? Was this the only one you got
caught in? And that's just one, one time era, one
prosecutor in one city. How often does this happen all
over the United States, over the world. This is the
first time since conference that I've been to. I was
(28:42):
shocked by how many axon rees there are. I thought
it was only a couple, you know, or like ten
or fifteen, which is still that's still too many. Now,
if this was an airline, statistically speaking, if this was
an airline they had planes crashing, they would shut it
down and fix it immediately. They're being outrage everywhere. Something
(29:04):
has to change. This has got to be fixed.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
I also want to point out that these people who
were making these decisions to reprosecute, or at least we're
threatening to reprosecute the Clay. We're more than happy to
spend countless more tax dollars on a ridiculous sham trial,
a second ridiculous sham trial, but we're somehow so protective
of the idea that we wouldn't want to use those
(29:31):
same tax dollars to compensate this man.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
It's a little more complicated for one reason, and that's
something we've kind of missed over in that it's my
original prosecutor. See, as you've known, they have various laws
for set amounts of conversation when someone's determined wrongly convicted,
and you can't prosecute a prosecutor if they're just doing
their job within the limits of the law. But if
they violate the law, you can take that out and
(29:55):
sue for untold amounts. And that's what we proved. My
original prosecutor broke the law, like withholding evidence that presenting
testimony that she knew was false. So we had special earrings.
Went to the bar. She was found guilty, but I
caa'head the bar protect themselves and they they have a punishment,
but it was considered what do they call a private
sense or something that they wouldn't tell us what they
did to her. She still remained a current DA in
(30:18):
another county at that time.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Listen whether or not they want to put it in
a legal document. I don't think there's any sane or
rational person that believes you had anything to do with
this crime. The good news is you're here. You're never
going back, and I'm glad that we're here to put
a sort of a stamp on it and tell this
(30:43):
story in the way that you've told it today. Okay,
and now we have a tradition it's called closing arguments.
First of all, I think both of you again, Jason
Craig from the Innocence Project, Clay Chabeau, Dona Ree for
being here and sharing your story. And then I'm going
to turn off my microphone, kick back in my chair,
(31:06):
and turn it over to you guys for any final
thoughts you want to share with me and our audience.
As is also traditional, Jason, We're going to let you
go first and then have the man himself take us out.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Excellent, Jason, Thank you, and thank you for your team
for doing the podcast. I think it's super important to
share these stories. So I guess i'd just say this
when I see Clay, or particularly when I'm here at
these annual conferences and see hundreds of people who have
overcome similar challenges, I'm reminded by some of the people
(31:38):
who didn't have the same strength to get to the end,
or didn't have the same time because their life just
ended in prison, or gave up. Had Clay not had
the fortitude to keep fighting, to write the next letter,
to just say no, I'm not going to stop right now,
so Clay, just like everyone who's here at this conference,
(32:00):
they're the strongest people who we know. If Clay couldn't
keep going, if Clay couldn't figure out how to live
the next day in prison, just like everyone who's here
at the conference now, had they not had the fortitude
to keep going. We wouldn't know their story, we wouldn't
be able to tell their story. And so I guess
the closing thought that I wanted to see is, you know,
(32:21):
when I see Clay sitting here, I see the hundreds
or thousands of additional people who some of us know
them very well because we worked on their cases and
we could never get them to the innocence finish line.
They still are in prison, or tragically they died in prison.
And I think that seeing Clay here everyone else here
(32:41):
is absolutely wonderful and energizing, and it's a reminder of
the additional work we can do and some of the
work that we can't do because those cases will never
be identified. We'll just never know about thousands of people
who have the same tragedy, but we won't know their names.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Mine would be for the public decide, people to wake
up and recognize that, you know, they have the power
to assess the evidence as it's presented to them, not
just accept what the prosecutors tell them. And just keep
this in mind because these things, at least they're coming
more to like because of scientific DNA evidence has made
it conclusive, fully proven. But just remember this. It could
(33:22):
be your brother, your sister, your mother, your father that's
on that stand next time being accused. You know, if
you think you just walk in there and you want
to go home, you don't really want to delve into it,
just remember, let's gild be you next time.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wardis,
with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
was supplied by three time Oscar nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at
(34:01):
wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Flahm. Ronvel Conviction is
a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with
Signal Company Number one
The Innocence Network is a loose affiliation of independent innocence organizations,
and each year, members of these organizations, as well as
the hundreds of exanneries who they've helped free, gather for
the Innocence Network Conference, and it's a beautiful thing for
one weekend. The ex honorees can all count on the
fact that there are other people around who share their experience,
(00:22):
and our team was honored to join them for their
twenty twenty two gathering in Arizona. We recorded a number
of interviews and the damage that these stories due to
your faith in humanity is only then restored by the
amazing people telling those stories. Clay Shabbau and his friend
Doug Graham were bikers who dealt some drugs in Garland, Texas.
(00:45):
Clay's brother in law, Jerry Papps, was a customer with
a newborn son. Clay was beginning to leave that life
behind when on April nineteenth, nineteen eighty six, Doug Graham's
common law wife was found in her home having been
sexually assaulted and shot down when Paps returned a gun
that he'd taken from his sister. He told her husband Clay,
(01:05):
about how he was at Doug's that morning to buy drugs,
heard gunshots and fled. Witnesses had seen PAP's car there,
and he was later found wearing bloody clothing. However, even
with all of this evidence pointing towards PAPS, he was
able to redirect detectives towards his rough looking brother in law,
Clay Chabeau. A rape kit was performed, but in nineteen
(01:27):
eighty six, the DNA testing that would one day exclude
Clay was not available. Curiously, no blood type evidence was presented.
Instead of simply using the evidence that implicated PAPS, detectives
decided that they needed a statement from Clay. When Clay
refused to testify to something that he didn't know, detectives
chose to ignore all evidence and the inconsistent statements from
(01:49):
PAPS to focus their efforts squarely on Clay, using PAPS
as their star witness and the implicit bias against bikers.
Clay Schabeau was sentenced to life prison. It took the
evolution of DNA testing, the post conviction statutes allowing it,
and the dedicated team at the Innocis Project to finally
prove what seemed to be evident to the prosecutor at
(02:11):
Clay's original trial. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
Wrongful Conviction today's episode. How can I say this? If
(02:36):
I was going to teach a third grade class how
to solve a crime, I might present them with the
evidence that was available and abundant in this case, and
they would solve this case. I would say within an
hour at the most. I mean, this one came with instructions,
and yet the authorities managed to not only lock up
(02:59):
an NCMA, but let the obvious suspect remain free. And
of course I'm talking about the case of Clay Shabou. Clay,
I'm sorry for everything you went through. So thank you
for being here today. Thank you for having me and
with Clay one of his attorneys, Jason Craig from the
Innocence Project in New York. Jason, I think this is
your first time on the show, but hopefully not the last.
(03:21):
It is.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I'm happy to be here and so thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
All right, So, Clay, you were born a couple of
years before I was, and grew up in Texas, no Ohio, Ohio.
So tell us about that. What was your childhood like?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
My father was a truck driver mother. You know, home
cared a lot of kids, and my parents boke up
when I was eight years old and I got shuttled
for one family member to the other for about seven
years or so until I was about fifteen and decided
to just take off my own so I started cross
country hitchacking across country, wound up in California for a
few years, got married that lasted about a year, got divorced,
(03:55):
coming back to Ohio, and decided to join the military.
In nineteen eighty one. I was on an aircraft carrier.
There was a large ship with a five thousand guys
and we all could find a small spaces and under authority.
So I think it gave me the strength in the
fortitude to endure whatever went through later in life. Wow
served about three three and a half years of the
military and I got run over by hit and run
drug driver on my motorcycle. So I got discharged and
(04:17):
went back to Ohio.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
And we're here at the INNOCENTCE Network conference. I'm so
happy to be recording live and in person again. And
you can't see Clay, but I can. And the way
he dresses today, he looks like being a corporate boardroom somewhere.
But you were a tough guy back then, right, And
no judgment here. You were involved in some let's just say,
extra legal activities.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Right absolutely where I was raised in Ohio, you know, impoverished.
There's actually the Hell's Angels club to house, so a
lot of people there indulging mind altering drugs. We can't
afford to go to bail for skiing trips, so we
take ours locally.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Internally, yes, I understand. And by the way, like I said,
no judgment here. I mean when I was a kid,
we probably could compare our old photos because I had
so much hair I couldn't even see. I looked like
cousin it. And I used to smoke weed from sun
up to sundown, and I was involved in some stuff
I definitely shouldn't have been involved in it. So anyway,
so you were into motorcycles, the Hell's Angels, drugs, You
(05:16):
did some dealing, and you moved to Texas at some point.
You got married, had a son, Harley, a few months
before all this happened, and he's here with us today.
And Harley's uncle, your brother in law, Jerry Paps. He
lived nearby with his wife and he used to come
to you and a friend of yours, Doug Graham, for drugs. Now,
from what I understand, Paps was into speed and coke
and was led to believe that Doug had cut a
(05:37):
batch of whatever he was taking with too much baking
soda or some other substance, even though it was you, Clay,
who did the cutting, and Doug was aware of this,
And that leads us up to April nineteen, nineteen eighty six, Garland, Texas.
Unbeknownst to Clay, Paps had taken a gun from his sister,
Clay's wife, and later that day, Doug Graham's common law wife,
(05:59):
who was twenty eight years old, her body was found
in their home. And this is just awful, so brace yourself.
But she had been tied, gagged, shot three times, and
she had been raped. A rape kit was performed, but
that evidence, unfortunately wasn't useful, or perhaps the blood type
evidence wasn't useful to the state, because you got to
(06:21):
imagine if it was, they would have brought it up.
But we don't know either way. And however, the biological
evidence didn't become useful to Clay and really all of
us until DNA testing became available. Many years later. And
I want to turn to Jason here, because this really
was a horrific crime.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, no, that's absolutely true, and that did get attention immediately,
even on the local news. And it just so happened
to be someone who Clay knew of.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
The victim's husband. They weren't really legally married. Doug Graham
was really one of my best friends, and I mean
we associated on Christmas, we played cards, we hung out
together for several years, and.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So that was the initial nexus that even started any
interest in Clay for any reason.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
There was no physical evidence connecting Clay to the crime.
That wasn't the case for his brother in law.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
That's absolutely right when you said in the introduction that
most elementary school children could have solved this case within
a few hours and actually identified the actual perpetrator.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
You're right.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
The police they had one individual, Gerald Papps, who was
telling a series of different stories over and over again.
A person who had been found with blood on his
shirt within hours of this homicide. A person who had
proceeds from the victim's home, person who had pawned some
items that were taken there, whose car had been at
the victim's home earlier. In that day. None of this
(07:43):
information was dependent on anyone else's statement. This was actual
physical evidence linking him to the crime. What the detectives
also had was someone else, Clay, who was actually helping,
who actually reached out and said there might be something
to what had just happened when his brother in law
had shown back up to return this gun.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Correct, they came to my house, asked me a few questions,
and I told him all about how my brother in
law had taken the gun from his sister's purse prior
to this. And he was standing at the door and
I said, come on in. He said no, no, I got
to go, I said, And he handed me the gun
and I said, what are you doing with this? He said, well,
I parted this morning for Sandy's purse. I looked and
I said, where's the clip? He said, oh yeah, and
(08:26):
he hand me the clip and I noticed the clip
was empty. I said, were it's the bullet? He said.
I threw him out. I said, what are you talking about?
Him in here? So he came in and he tells
me the story of He claimed he was supposed to
meet the victim's husband, Doug Graham, but he said he
got over there, and before he could even get out
of his car and go in, he saw two men
pull up in a car and they went inside and
he heard gunshots. So he got scared and the left.
(08:48):
So he came back to my house and he returned
this gun. He left my house, and I'm thinking that
I didn't know anybody had been hurt at the time,
so I'm thinking, you know, he's just been up all
night on speed. So I didn't pay much attention to it.
And later that afternoon, I was supposed to meet Doug
or another deal we're gonna do, but and I wasn't
even paying attention to the TV. It's almost like it
(09:08):
played and then I heard it and I had to
replay it in my mind to say, what did they
just say? And my wife, she knew the victims, and
she said that's her.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
I said, what And for some reason in your mind,
you didn't leap to that conclusion.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
I just couldn't believe that he could do something like that.
It'd be like somebody trying to tell you your brother
or your mother or something, which cape I mean, I
knew the guy for several years. I'd been married to
his sister for several years, and I just couldn't conceive it.
That's just so far out of my realm and world
of you know, Like I said, I've never really heard
anybody about myself through my own abuse of things. So
(09:45):
I believed this story. I believed that he was there,
saw a couple people, and I really wanted him to
just try to lead them to help solve the situation itself.
I got to tell you, I pondered over it. I
didn't call Doug until like the next day, because I
tried to reach Doug that night because I was supposed
to meet and somebody strange answered his house phone, and
I thought, oh, I don't know who that is. I said, well,
who are you trying to get ahold of? What do
(10:06):
you want for it? So I hung up? So I said, man,
something that's really gone wrong over there. So I went
back down to Jerry's house and I said, Jerry, I'm
going to drive over to Dougs. You want to go
with me? He said, oh, no, no, no, man, I don't
want to go anywhere near that place. And then I
started getting little more larry and worried. And now I'm
in a situation to note where you know, if I
do do this. I got to live with this sister.
You know, how do you live with your wife when
(10:28):
you reported her brother for something like that? I mean,
just the conflict in that my head and heart was.
I thought to myself, you know what, if this was
my sister, my wife, I'd want somebody help me. And
the next day is when I decided to call Doug
and tell him how I think I had information. He
(10:58):
had just been born, he was five months old, and
I was trying to knock off the stupid stuff, straighten
myself up, because he was finally something more important to.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Me and for our listeners. Clays Son Harley's here with
us now. He's about twice the size of his father,
and he's now thirty six years old.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
And I just turned, you know, like twenty five, you know,
and they say the prefront of cortex and mailes doesn't
develop until twenty five when you start having huge consequences.
So I think it was just a matter of you know,
age and plus like I said, him being born, and
it was my friend. So I wanted to do the
right thing.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
But we see too often people like you who come
forward trying to help and wanted to be you know,
good citizens and believed in the system as you did,
and it ends up putting them in the crosshairs.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Let me say this, in fairness of things, I kind
of created this whole scenario in a way for myself.
Jerry wanted more drugs. I didn't want to get him
to him. I told him should call my friend Doug.
I just wanted him to get out of my house
and leave, So that's what led him to go over
To's house. Later though, Jerry would tell a story about
how the drugs I had had had gotten from Doug
earlier were inadequate. Well, quite frankly, it was my own doing.
(12:10):
I had put too much cut on the drugs. So
there was no animosity between me and Doug because Doug
didn't do anything wrong. But I had told Jerry that
just to get him out of my house. I said, Man,
this does no good joining this. So in fairness man,
I sort of set the stage that led the police
to believe that I had a reason that I was
angry with Doug over it, but they didn't really look
(12:33):
at the smaller facts, like Doug knew that wasn't true.
Doug knew that I was supposed to meet him again,
that night to do another deal. I mean, so when
they left my house that afternoon, they asked me if
they could have the gun. They asked if I had
any more of the same kind of bullets, and I
happily rented and given to him. They left, and within
a few hours my brother in law's wife came to
the house screening about how the police had showed up
arrested him. And as I understood it, by then, they
(12:54):
had already had a witness that positive identified his cart
to see the crime. They called him with blood on
his clothes, tickets for stolen merchandise and maybe some stole merchandise.
So I don't know, you know, like I said, it
was clean cut. I was a rough looking guy, and
so he gave him the story that I had borrowed
his car, and then he didn't go there, and they
allowed him just change his story every time his facts
proved wrong. They just let him change his story because
(13:14):
they didn't see why Jerry would do something like that.
You know, they were looking for the motive. And I'll
tell you this, the detectives simply didn't want to believe
that I had handed them the solution to this case
on a silver platter. They were like, no, where detectives.
There's gotta be more to this. It's got to be
more complicated, you know, something for us to unravel and figure.
I just don't think they could accept the fact that
this would have been so simple had they just looked
(13:37):
at the evidence as it stood. So they came back
and arrested me.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
So you're arrested, taking to jail. Were you in jail
awaiting trial? Did you can't bail out?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
No?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Well they had me on a I think a quartermain
and how long did you think about eight months? Eventually
just rolled out to where they came to me and
they said, look, we don't think you're actually there, but
we need somebody to testify. If you'll testify against your
brother law, will let you go.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
This was a situation where the state felt they needed
a confession, someone who could turn into a witness who
was actually there and one person had information because there
was only one person there, Gerald Pepps, and Clay was
not there, was not involved, and so he had no
ability to offer what the state wanted, what the state
(14:23):
felt they needed to prove a case.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I believed in the just system whole hardly. I just
come out of the military. I'd never been in a
serious trouble in any kind before, and so I said, listen,
I can't do that. You want me to lie to
possibly send this guy to death throw for something I
don't know he did or not. It was okay. Well,
they went to Jerry, my brother in law, and said
same thing, and she got the standpoint of the figure,
said yeah, we're both there. He pulled the trigger. They
(14:46):
let him go, and they gave me a licence.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
So he gave the state what they needed and he
got a benefit and immediate benefit that lasted for him
a couple of decades. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
I mean, there's that saying a body for a body, right,
and we know that sadly, in too many cases, the
authorities are happy to just get somebody, close the case
and move on. And then the idea that in this
case they had every reason to know, they may even
have known that the guy who was weaving these bizarre tales.
(15:19):
I mean, nobody could possibly believe that, but they did,
or at least the jury did.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
There's a very telling note that we uncovered in the
prosecutor's file years later when we're looking into the case,
acknowledging that pass he was found within ours bloody T shirt.
And the quote is you know something like this is
a problem for us. Well, yeah, it's a big problem
for us. You literally had the person who was connected
(15:44):
to the crime physically, with physical evidence. Who is your
star witness. That's a huge problem for the state. And
we can never know exactly what was in the prosecutor's
mind when she wrote that note, but the context clues
are fairly clear she understood that the person that they
were relying on to solve this homicide was someone who
was actually involved in the homicide. And of course now
(16:06):
we know that with certainty based on the DNA testing
that was done years later, but even at the time
of trial, the contemporaneous notes that the prosecutor had recognized
that they had a problem because perhaps their star witness
was the person who was found with blood. And of
course this is the person who initially said he had
nothing to do with the crime at all, wasn't even there,
(16:26):
and then puts himself there. Eventually it changes the story
that way, and then changes the story a little bit more,
and puts himself there, and then changes the story a
little bit more, and all of a sudden, he's now
inside the house, but never willing to say what we
now know he actually did.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
One of the things that really stuck out to me
when I was reading about the trial was the idea that,
and I think this should be a red flag in
every case, is when Jerry said that you forced him
at gunpoint to tie up the victim. That's not a
thing that happens except maybe in some weird TV show
or movie.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Right, supposed to be your criminal partner? Yeah, and you're
pointing to God at him, now, did I'd put a
gun in and making care of the TV out too, Jason?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Unless there was something else presented, I don't even understand
how a Jerry could get this one wrong.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
So what did they hear? They have a witness who
claims to have been there during the entire crime, who
is now backed by the state, called by the state,
who's walking them through what we now know is and
what Clay obviously knew then was a fictitious story about
what happened. I mean, they're hearing it blow by blow
from this witness as the state solicits information from him,
(17:33):
and then the state calls other witnesses to vouch for
Jerry to present Jerry as this person who was overwhelmed
by the ringleader. Who's the defendant there, Clay. But Jerry,
of course, in the state's eyes, was this person who
wasn't a violent person, hadn't done other bad things, didn't
look like Clay looked at the time.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
So what they presented was me as a criminal in general,
wrote Harley Davison's carried John's did drugs looked like Charles Manson.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
So, Clay, what was the evidence that was presented in
your defense at the trial?
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Unfortunately? I mean my defense was, look, I was at
home sleeping. I mean, how do you approve that? So
the only person that was able to testify in my
behalf was my wife, which was the sister of the
witness against me, And so they just claimed she was
a liar to protect me, not considering that, how do
you think she could get up there and say, you know, look,
(18:26):
he didn't do it, indirectly implicating her own brother.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
I think the failure is that the prosecutor, they knew
the limitations of what they knew. They didn't need DNA
testing in nineteen eighty six to know the limitations of
their case. They wrote about it in their notes and
they should have been the ones who check the beyond
a reasonable doubt standard before they put someone's life at stake.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
The jury goes out, how long did they deliverate Clay.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
I didn't have time to smoke a cigarette before they
send the jury is back?
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Wow, so as minutes. Yeah, if you could take us
back to that moment.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I just went into a sort of shock state because
they really didn't impact me or hit me until they
immediately conducted the penalty phase. And my wife at the time,
Harley's mother, had got up and went to the bathroom
and they ran a penalty face so fast. By the
time she came back in the bathroom, they were already
ann ounce of life. You know. As soon as I
(19:20):
do that, they should stand up and I drag you
the back, and I remember asking if they would put
me in a private self because I didn't want to
be in with the crowd of you know, other people
being transport around and I just wanted to scream and
tear and I did. In my mind, prison is ninety
(19:46):
percent border punctuated by ten percent cheer stark terror. You
just after the over the years, you adapt you have to.
When I went in Texas, Francisco. It was a run
by what they call the Building ten or system. Inmates
were running it. There was only a handful of guards
through three thousand inmates. The inmates were empowered with authority
(20:08):
weapons to maintain the for the system. It was brutal,
absolutely brutal. You know, it's odd even though it was
run by prisoners and it was brutal if you follow
the rules with them, there was a lot more internal
freedom and it was more of a physical thing. In fact,
it wasn't until some years to follow that a large
lawsuit Federal brought in special masters and they brought the
(20:29):
guards in and they took the building tenders out. Became
more of a mental pressure. But I had to say
again because I was a little older, i think, and
I had gone through the military, and I used my
head the gang members and things. I taught him how
to do things that they weren't doing that made it
profitable for them. So I became an asset, and so
(20:53):
they would say leave him alone. So I tried to stay,
you know, just actively involved with either education or something
to keep my mind off of, you know, the day
to day mundane.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
And was there a lowest and the highest point for
you while you were in there.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
I had a number of them, the one in the
first when my father died, and at those points I
considered suicide, but that's not in my day. I even
had it all figured out several ways to do it.
But quite frankly, I knew this. I see my mind
strip away everything else. My mind knew it didn't do
(21:29):
what it was being punished for, and it just needed
to know it had a way out if it had
to at all last resort. So once I had that
option of suicide, knowing that I do have the option
to get out of this if I have to, it
gave me the strength to go on. Finally, when you know,
after the years and years of Dallas telling me that
they had lost the evidence, I knew that had to
(21:51):
be a lie, and I fought it for ten twelve
years and finally found it. And then the high point
would have been on a little step was when Texas
finally passed a law whatever that said, you know, if
you want to apply for DNA testing. That gave me
some hope. But this would have been when DNA testing
proved that Jerry Papp's semen was recovered from the rape
kit his DNA was on her hands, DNA on his fingernails,
(22:14):
and then I knew that, you know, we probably had
a pretty good shot of at least, you know, convincing
them that they had it wrong and might want to
look at it.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Again, identifying perhaps DNA in the extremely probative items of evidence.
As Clay recounted, it was the key that turned the story.
And at that point in time, I think Clay's perception
is as accurate even the people who were absolutely convinced
that the prosecutor might have been on the right path
from the get go, even those individuals had to start
(22:41):
opening their eyes and wonder, now, what was going on.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
While this case came with instructions from the very beginning,
now twenty years later or so, it came with scientific certainty.
The actual perpetrator was identified, the.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
State located him. He had gone back to Ohio by
that point in time, and eventually was arrested for the crime.
Now this is the state's star witness, but they did,
with the DNA evidence testing that was done, identify him
and ultimately convict him. After Clay's conviction was overturned.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Jason, I think most people in the audience are probably
thinking now, well, amen, right, finally justice, exoneration, compensation, and
in this case.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
That's not the story of Clay's case right now. So tragically,
after the DNA evidence identified Paps, the state decided to
re prosecute Clay. They knew that they had been lied to,
that they allowed someone to lie to the jury, they
knew the actual perpetrator who had been convicted. They decided
to re prosecute Clay. And it gets worse. By that
(23:48):
important time. Clay was fortunate that some of the physical
evidence was retained, the evidence that identified Paps, but much
of the physical evidence had been lost by that point
in time. So the state's plan was to just run
it back now recognizing that the person who they had
put all their faith in the first time was the
(24:09):
actual perpetrator, but unwilling to recognize that the case had
no legs to stand on against Clay, and Clay was
forced to contemplate going to trial again without even the
ability to examine and retest some of the other evidence
that the state at this point had lost. So, for example,
the purported murder weapon we mentioned earlier, Jerry Papps, when
(24:31):
he was arrested, had a bloody T shirt that had
been lost. We couldn't demonstrate that even perhaps fourth or
fifth or eighth version of events wasn't accurate had we
been able to identify the victim's blood on his T shirt.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
For example.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
And I have to say I was actually hopeful that
we would be able to convince the judge once we
knew we couldn't convince the prosecutor to just dismiss it
against Clay, because the misconduct in this case was so deep.
We tried from all angles, both negotiating with the prosecutor,
we tried with a judge, and we weren't successful. And
ultimately that left Clay once again in the moment where
(25:09):
he's posed with a question that he should have never
had to face. What to do when the prosecutor comes
to him. Now, you can walk out time served, but
on one condition, you have to play guilty.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
It's hard to figure out what master they're serving at
this point in time, too. Right, they have the guy.
The guys they got him the right guy. Now finally
he got the right guy. Even though you guys did
everything you possibly could to fuck this up as bad
as you possibly could, now the right guy's in prison.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
And that was extremely frustrating, and so, as Clay mentioned,
you know, he had been failed by the system before
he had seen that happen. He'd seen what jurors did
very quickly at the original trial. And I don't fault
Clay for a second for making the decision that allowed
him to walk out and be with us today.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
And as I mentioned earlier, Clay's son, Harley is here
with us right now, so we wanted to give him
a chance to talk about his memories and what the
day his father was freed, what that time was like
for him.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
I don't know how to explain happiness and anger at
the same time. His brother is the one that brought
him a home, and I remember, I remember it was
it was a silver Dodge Ram that turned the corner.
I remember staying in the front yard. I was so
excited he was home, jumping up and down, obviously crying
as soon as you got out of the truck. Happy, happy,
(26:30):
and mad. I don't know how to explain it happy
about at the same time. You know, I hugged him
and told him I love him, And then I have
to share because him taking that guilty plea was partly
my decision. He had called me when they offered him that,
and he said, what do I do?
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Man?
Speaker 4 (26:50):
He said, I can, I can come home now, but
I'm gonna They're gonna leave it on my record.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
They're gonna call me a murderer.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Or I can fight this. And I didn't do this hardly.
I know I didn't do it, so I know I
can fight him. I could probably get some money on us.
You know, well we'll both be fighting. You know, everybody
will be fighting. Yeah, I said that. Who fucking cares
if they call you a murderer?
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Are you? He says, no, Harley, it's grew it. Man.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
You alread gave him twenty three years. They're gonna look
for every reason they can't. I love to gamble. I
already gave you twenty three years for nothing. The odds
are clearly not in my favor. I'll go home. That
affected me for twenty three years. That affected all of
his family. My mother, who asking her Almi. You know,
she stayed married to him til I was about nineteen.
She was in a pretty brutal place as well. You know,
(27:38):
it's your brother and your husband. She never called him
the dad guilty, and she never defended Jerry. So it
makes me feel like she knew more, but she was
just in a hard place. And it always kind of
barked me because Jerry was around her family. I almost
feel like a bad human for saying it sometimes, and
I'm glad that everything happened and happened now, you know,
he passed away in prison, which is perfect in my mind.
(28:00):
I think I'm allowed to feel that way. But it
ripped our paint apart. But we can do this to
humans and throw them in prison and it there not
be a lot of recourse, you know, the prosecutor. I
actually learned some of the day that I didn't know.
You know, this could be a problem for us. You
were aware of that, even you destroy your life. Oh well, sorry,
well no, you owe me more than that. I don't
(28:21):
want money. You go to prison, now, you know that's
what you should do. How many other people did you
do this too? Was this the only one you got
caught in? And that's just one, one time era, one
prosecutor in one city. How often does this happen all
over the United States, over the world. This is the
first time since conference that I've been to. I was
(28:42):
shocked by how many axon rees there are. I thought
it was only a couple, you know, or like ten
or fifteen, which is still that's still too many. Now,
if this was an airline, statistically speaking, if this was
an airline they had planes crashing, they would shut it
down and fix it immediately. They're being outrage everywhere. Something
(29:04):
has to change. This has got to be fixed.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
I also want to point out that these people who
were making these decisions to reprosecute, or at least we're
threatening to reprosecute the Clay. We're more than happy to
spend countless more tax dollars on a ridiculous sham trial,
a second ridiculous sham trial, but we're somehow so protective
of the idea that we wouldn't want to use those
(29:31):
same tax dollars to compensate this man.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
It's a little more complicated for one reason, and that's
something we've kind of missed over in that it's my
original prosecutor. See, as you've known, they have various laws
for set amounts of conversation when someone's determined wrongly convicted,
and you can't prosecute a prosecutor if they're just doing
their job within the limits of the law. But if
they violate the law, you can take that out and
(29:55):
sue for untold amounts. And that's what we proved. My
original prosecutor broke the law, like withholding evidence that presenting
testimony that she knew was false. So we had special earrings.
Went to the bar. She was found guilty, but I
caa'head the bar protect themselves and they they have a punishment,
but it was considered what do they call a private
sense or something that they wouldn't tell us what they
did to her. She still remained a current DA in
(30:18):
another county at that time.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Listen whether or not they want to put it in
a legal document. I don't think there's any sane or
rational person that believes you had anything to do with
this crime. The good news is you're here. You're never
going back, and I'm glad that we're here to put
a sort of a stamp on it and tell this
(30:43):
story in the way that you've told it today. Okay,
and now we have a tradition it's called closing arguments.
First of all, I think both of you again, Jason
Craig from the Innocence Project, Clay Chabeau, Dona Ree for
being here and sharing your story. And then I'm going
to turn off my microphone, kick back in my chair,
(31:06):
and turn it over to you guys for any final
thoughts you want to share with me and our audience.
As is also traditional, Jason, We're going to let you
go first and then have the man himself take us out.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Excellent, Jason, Thank you, and thank you for your team
for doing the podcast. I think it's super important to
share these stories. So I guess i'd just say this
when I see Clay, or particularly when I'm here at
these annual conferences and see hundreds of people who have
overcome similar challenges, I'm reminded by some of the people
(31:38):
who didn't have the same strength to get to the end,
or didn't have the same time because their life just
ended in prison, or gave up. Had Clay not had
the fortitude to keep fighting, to write the next letter,
to just say no, I'm not going to stop right now,
so Clay, just like everyone who's here at this conference,
(32:00):
they're the strongest people who we know. If Clay couldn't
keep going, if Clay couldn't figure out how to live
the next day in prison, just like everyone who's here
at the conference now, had they not had the fortitude
to keep going. We wouldn't know their story, we wouldn't
be able to tell their story. And so I guess
the closing thought that I wanted to see is, you know,
(32:21):
when I see Clay sitting here, I see the hundreds
or thousands of additional people who some of us know
them very well because we worked on their cases and
we could never get them to the innocence finish line.
They still are in prison, or tragically they died in prison.
And I think that seeing Clay here everyone else here
(32:41):
is absolutely wonderful and energizing, and it's a reminder of
the additional work we can do and some of the
work that we can't do because those cases will never
be identified. We'll just never know about thousands of people
who have the same tragedy, but we won't know their names.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Mine would be for the public decide, people to wake
up and recognize that, you know, they have the power
to assess the evidence as it's presented to them, not
just accept what the prosecutors tell them. And just keep
this in mind because these things, at least they're coming
more to like because of scientific DNA evidence has made
it conclusive, fully proven. But just remember this. It could
(33:22):
be your brother, your sister, your mother, your father that's
on that stand next time being accused. You know, if
you think you just walk in there and you want
to go home, you don't really want to delve into it,
just remember, let's gild be you next time.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wardis,
with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
was supplied by three time Oscar nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at
(34:01):
wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Flahm. Ronvel Conviction is
a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with
Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com