August 27, 2026 • 41 mins
This episode is re-released in loving memory of Jason Strong.
Rest in Peace and Power
Jason Lee Strong
August 3, 1975 – August 8, 2026
In December 1999, the body of an unidentified young woman was found beaten to death in a forest preserve near North Chicago in Lake County, IL. Ten days after the body was discovered, Jeremy Tweedy, Jason Johnson and Jason Strong were brought in for questioning after Tweedy mentioned the woman's death to an undercover police officer posing as a prostitute. Police charged 24-year-old Jason Strong with first-degree murder and concealing a homicide and charged Tweedy and Johnson with concealing a homicide. Officers furnished a narrative about the circumstances of the victim's death to the two purported "witnesses," Tweedy and Johnson, both of whom agreed to testify against Jason Strong in exchange for lesser prison sentences. On October 18, 2000, Jason Strong was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 46 years in prison.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is Jason Flom, and I'm here with an update
that I wish I didn't have to share. My friend,
Jason Strong, exoneree and fellow brother-in-arms against injustice, passed away
on August 8th. Jason lost almost 16 years of his
life to wrongful incarceration. His story is, it's one that
(00:26):
haunts me. I mean, it's so insane, but despite Everything
he endured, he never lost his humanity. He never lost
his sense of humor either. He just was a guy
who loved life, loved music. I mean, I remember taking
him to a Greta Van Fleet show in the early days.
Such a joyful, joyful guy. And more than anything, he
was just like a good guy, like a really good
(00:46):
guy who cared deeply about the exoneree community and about
just other people in general. I gotta be honest, I
was in awe of Jason when we first met, and
I still am, and I probably always will be, and
I'm so grateful that he trusted us to share his
harrowing journey. So today, in his memory, and in tribute
to his extraordinary life, we want to share it with
(01:08):
you again. Rest in peace and power, my friend. Here
it is, the Jason Strong story.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
America has 2.2 million people in prison. If just 1%
is wrong, that's 22,000 people. That's a lot of people's
lives destroyed.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
If the system want to take you out of society,
they will do it. No matter what laws they have
to break, saying that they are enforcing the laws, but
they are breaking the law.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Having to hear those people say that I was guilty
of a crime that I did not commit, and then
hear my family break down behind me and not be
able to do anything about it, I can't describe the
crushing weight that was.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I'm not anti-police, I'm just anti-corruption.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
A lot of times we look and we see something
happen to somebody and that's the first thing we say,
that could never happen to me, but it can.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
This is Wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with
Jason Flom. This is the opening episode of Season 5,
(02:44):
and I'm absolutely honored to have today's guest, Jason Strong. Jason,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me on.
I'm honored to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, I'm really happy you're here for a number of reasons.
I'm sorry you had to go through this. So Jason,
before all this happened and your life was turned really
into a living hell for 15 and a half years,
how was your life? You grew up in Illinois, right?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
No, actually, I spent most of my life in Texas.
I was born in Arizona, lived in Texas most of
my life. And I moved to Illinois to try to, well, actually,
I moved to Wisconsin first. with my grandparents to try
to get a different start. Cause I was kind of
on a bad road doing drugs, drinking, acting up. So
eventually I moved to Illinois and with some friends and
(03:34):
then I got my own place there. But, uh, I mean,
I never really did change. I still kind of lived
like a rock star. You know, I was working in
an adult bookstore, did a lot of drinking and partying
and drugs. And, but I mean, at the end of
the day, I was still a good person. I mean,
I wasn't, you know, robbing people. I wasn't killing people.
I wasn't, you know, in any gangs or doing anything ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
You weren't hurting anybody other than yourself.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Exactly. Exactly. But I mean, I was, you know, living
in the fast life and I wasn't thinking about it,
you know, so it's just one of those things that
some people do that when they're young, you know, and
I was living like a rock star, but I wasn't
a rock star.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
But that being said, so you're, you're, you're hanging around
trying to figure it out. How old were you at
this time?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Uh, 24.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
24. So, yeah, so you're getting, you know, I mean,
it's funny because I think a lot of people in
their mid-20s start to figure out what it is that
they're really doing. I know for me it's true. That's
when I sobered up and started, you know, trying to
really build my life up instead of down.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Well, before I got locked up, so I got locked
up in December of 99. Before that happened, I mean,
I was trying to think about what do I want
to do? You know, I was considering going back to
school and pursuing something in the world of art. I
didn't really know exactly what, but I wanted to do
something with art. I've always been creative. But I never
(04:52):
got that opportunity. It was taken from me by the
fact that I got arrested for this crime.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
And that's a crazy story. I mean, it was your misfortune.
You didn't know it at the time, but you were
living in a county that turns out to have the
highest number of wrongful convictions in Illinois, which is one
of the states that has the highest number of wrongful convictions.
But other than Chicago, this area that you lived in was...
a bad spot. It was a hotbed for police misconduct
(05:18):
and wrongful convictions as a result. So there you are
knocking around, trying to figure it out, you know, having
your party in times, whatever you're doing. And this comes
out of the blue, right?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah. It was, uh, December 20th. I was hanging out
with my girlfriend and her friend, you know, we were
smoking a bowl, having a few beers and I get
a knock at the door. Thinking it's my buddy just
coming over to hang out. Open the door. It's a
bunch of cops standing there with guns drawn. And they
push into my room, throw me down on my bed,
handcuff me. And the nightmare began.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Did they tell you what they were arresting you for?
Speaker 2 (05:58):
No, but I had a clue because they had been
around earlier that day asking people if they'd seen anything
or knew anything. So, I mean, I had a little
bit of a clue, but it still threw me because,
I mean, I had nothing to do with this crime,
so I didn't understand why this was happening. I was confused.
I was scared.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
But when you say they were asking, did you see anything,
did you know anything, about what? Was it a specific
crime that they were asking about?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, they had discovered a Jane Doe's body in the
Lake County Forest Preserve. And so on December 9th, this
body was found. And apparently she had been badly beaten
and tortured and suffered a really bad death. And blunt
force trauma was the cause of death. And that was
on December 9th. Around December 14th, there was a prostitute
(06:44):
sting in the area where I lived. I lived next
door to the bookstore that I worked at, the adult bookstore.
So I had thought that this woman was a prostitute.
And I told her, you can't be doing this around here.
You know, I don't want to have to call the
cops on you. You know, just go back to your
room and keep it cool. And later on, I came
out and she was still doing that. And that's when
(07:04):
I first met Jeremy Tweedy, who would later become my co-defendant.
So that night I walked up to him. I said, hey,
how long has this woman been out here? Do you know?
He said, she's been out there a while. She looks
like she was crying. So I thought maybe she had
a pimp or something that was forcing her to do this.
So I struck up a conversation with her, asking if
there was anything I could do to help. whatever, because
(07:27):
I didn't want to have this going on and I
didn't want to see her hurt either. And we talked
for a little while. I mean, even to the extent
that we asked about her kids and, you know, why
didn't she find a better line of work, et cetera.
And I eventually went in to eat my dinner and
her and Jeremy Tweedy had this conversation that later turns
out he apparently allegedly said something to her about, you know,
(07:49):
you shouldn't be around here because there was a woman
that was killed here recently. And a bunch of people
had beat on her and threw her in a van
and got rid of her. And they used that as
a reason to come and arrest him. And then he
said that it was me. Now, why did he say
it was me? So the cop that arrested him somehow
(08:10):
or another claims that this was an accident, but that
his hand got crushed in the car door on the
way to the police station. And next thing you know,
he's fingering me for the crime. Years later, when he recants,
he says that it was because the cops only wanted
to talk about me. Since the moment he stepped into
the room, they kept saying, what did Jason Strong do
with this crime? What do you know about Jason Strong's
(08:32):
involvement in this crime? And they just kept mentioning me
over and over and over to the point where he
got the gist of it. They wanted me. So he
said that I did it. He saw it happen. And
then they came and arrested me. They came and arrested
my friend Jason Johnson.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
But wait, what's the thing with the hand in the
car door? How does that fit into.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
This whole narrative? I think they intimidated him by injuring him.
I can't prove that. But I mean, I think it's
kind of odd that his hand was slammed in a
police car door on a way to the police station.
And then next thing you know, he's singing these lies
for them. Well, there's a second part to this that
I can't prove this, but this is my opinion on
the matter, is the officer that brought him in actually
(09:13):
had it in for me. So prior to all this happening...
This cop had been coming around the bookstore and harassing
me for a couple months. And I don't even know
why he ever started doing that, but he did. And
he wanted me to be a snitch. He wanted me
to tell him about drug dealers and different things. I'm like, man,
I don't know nothing. I don't know nothing about no
drug dealers. And he told me if I did not
(09:36):
cooperate with him, he would make my life a living hell.
A few short weeks later, I'm locked up for a
murder I didn't commit. And he was the initiating officer
that arrested the guy who would become my co-defendant, who
I didn't even know on the night in question.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
That's a lot of coincidences.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Exactly. But I can't prove that he did anything.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
You were a victim of some really terrible misdeeds. Right.
by the people that were supposed to protect you and
everybody else in the community. And that's quite the opposite
of what they did. So it's pretty clear why Tweedy
would have implicated you because he would have implicated his
grandmother if he had to to make them stop doing
whatever it was they were doing to him. And he
implicated himself as well. But he wasn't involved in the
(10:18):
crime either. No.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
In fact, he turned out to be actually quite a character.
He's a bit of a pathological liar. Before my trial,
I think he had like six or seven different versions
of what happened that night, constantly changing. And to the
point where at my trial, he came up with a
new version of events that were different from all the
earlier ones. So he would always make changes. And he
(10:40):
just did this for years. He stuck to his lie
for years. But I think it all started because of
that one cop. I can't prove it. That's just my theory.
But part of it is going off of also what
he told me years later when he recanted Jeremy Tweedy
about how that's all they wanted to talk about was me.
And I'm like, well, why would they be so focused
on me? Why me of all the people that they
(11:03):
could have thought about?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Well, I mean, it sounds like this one officer. All right.
you know, had just sort of figured you were going
to be a good source of information because you were
in sort of a seedy area and a seedy business, right?
And he had it in his head, you must have
known stuff, and he felt like you were holding out
on him. So he decided to exact his revenge. This
insane story of yours ultimately ends up with you being
(11:27):
held in jail for quite a long time, pending trial,
and ultimately going to trial. What was that process like?
Did you have decent representation there?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Yeah, I did not have good representation. I had public defenders.
I actually, I asked my family over and over to
get me a lawyer. I knew I needed a real
lawyer because these guys just, they weren't going to cut it.
They didn't listen to me. They had their own view
on things, but I didn't know what a lot of
my rights were at that time either and how I
could make changes in anything. But we went to trial
(12:01):
with them basically handing me over to the jury. They
went in and said that my coerced false confession was
actually true and that I didn't do the crime, but
I was there when it happened. That was their defense
for me. And I was like, well, that's ridiculous. I
didn't do any of this. But that was their strategy,
if you will. They basically handed me over. They screwed
(12:22):
me for the prosecution. I had no chance.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
You're literally sitting there watching yourself drown.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Right. So when the time came for me to take
the stand, I couldn't take the stand. I would have
gone against every single thing they already said.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
That's unreal.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
They were looking for the easiest route. Rather than to
try to fight my case and prove my innocence, they
took the easiest option for themselves.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
It's a very bizarre set of circumstances when you have
your advocate actually working against you.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
And you're, I mean, I can't imagine. You're in this
crazy vortex. You've already been through hell. You've been sitting
in jail for, you know, how long were you.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
In jail for? So the trial, I believe, was in
October of 2000. So almost a year by that point. Right.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
So you're already dizzy from this experience. I mean, anybody
would be. And now you're in this crazy vortex. And
you've got these dolts, not even underrepresenting you, but actually
working against your best interests. for whatever their twisted motives were.
Did you know, like when the jury went out, did
you know you were fucked?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
I had a good feeling that, yeah, that was going
to be the case. I mean, I still had a
tiny bit of hope, you know, that maybe they would
figure something out, but no, I kind of had a
feeling I was screwed.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
I mean, from the sound of it, I mean, even
if I was on the jury.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I don't blame the jury in my case at all.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
I really don't. Unless they had just some weird intuition.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
If I was on my jury, I would have convicted me.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
That's a strong statement. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
I mean, at the end of the day, There was
nothing put forth to defend me and to prove my innocence.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
No. So there you go. So, yeah. So you– it's
interesting because a lot of the exonerees that have been
on the show had held out hope until the very end.
But your circumstance is relatively unique. I mean even with
some of the stories we've heard of incompetent defense. How
long do they deliberate?
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Oh, it wasn't very long at all. Maybe a couple hours.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Right. I mean, who knows that they were probably having lunch.
I mean, who knows what they were doing for two
whole hours.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
I mean, I don't even know if it was that long.
That's how it felt in my head as I was
sitting in a cell.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Then the moment came, right? Can you describe that horrible,
horrible moment when you're basically, you must've thought your life
was over.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah. I, uh, that was probably the loneliest day of
my life. Um, Having to hear those people say that
I was guilty of a crime that I did not commit,
and not just once, but the judge made each individual
one say their verdict, so I had to hear it
over and over again, and then hear my family break
(15:01):
down behind me and not be able to do anything
about it. I can't describe the crushing weight that was.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
How did you deal with it? How did you come
out of it? How did you get here? I am
actually in awe of the fortitude. That you have. How
did you do it? If you can even put it
into words.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Yeah, I think I can. I mean, so after that moment,
I mean, I wanted to die. Like, I've never wanted
to die before. It was terrible. And after we left
the courtroom, I asked the officer if he could take
me to a private solitary cell just so I could,
you know, just break down and decompress. And once I
(15:42):
put myself back together and I went back to the
general population, I just started doing a lot of thinking
and I was angry. I was confused. I didn't know
what my next move was going to be, but I
decided to adopt this kind of militaristic mentality and I
turned everything into a war against the state of Illinois.
(16:02):
And I studied Sun Tzu and Julius Caesar and tried
to incorporate this thinking of how to fight a war,
but I was doing it in the courtroom, the courtrooms
were my battlefields. So, I mean, I kind of took
on that, that mentality.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Did you have any help? Did you have an appellate
lawyer assigned to you or anything like that?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Yeah, we, uh, so after I lost, we hired an attorney,
Jed Stone, and, uh, he did a post-trial motion and
then he helped me through my first appeals, but those
didn't pan out. So when we lost him and we
couldn't afford him anymore, I became my own attorney and
I did it my way. And I threw every single
(16:44):
thing I could think about him. I filed my post-conviction
petition on my own, which was like 70-something pages long.
And I threw every single thing I could think of
that was wrong with my case at that courtroom. I
battled it on my own for a while. I got
an appellate attorney appointed to me at one point. And
all he did was basically drag things out. But for
(17:06):
the most part, I fought myself until I got Northwestern
to get involved. But that was years and years later.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
And talk about that a little bit, Jason. Northwestern? Northwestern, yeah. Because,
I mean, first of all, one of the best schools
in the country.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And they do amazing work.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Absolutely they do. Yeah, I would not be free if
it wasn't for them. So I was in the federal court.
I was filing a federal habeas corpus all on my own.
And there was a procedural issue that came up. Well,
let me back up. Before that, I had already been
trying to reach out to Innocence Projects for years. I've
been writing them letters and, you know, having my family
make phone calls. And I had been in touch with
(17:46):
Jane Raley at Northwestern. And we, you know, been kind
of back and forth and everything. But she couldn't take
on the case at the time. But we still communicated.
So when I got to federal court, I don't know
if Judge Kennelly saw something in my case or what.
But he called Thomas Garrity, the director of the clinic
(18:06):
at Northwestern, personally and asked him to look at my case.
And it was just for a procedural issue. But once
Tom looked at everything, he realized there was more to it.
And Northwestern decided to take my case on full all
the way. That team grew over the years, you know,
because they have students. And three of the students graduated,
(18:27):
went on to big law firms and brought their law
firms in. So I had Northwestern, Winston and Strawn, and
Cat Mute and Rosenman, all supporting my fight.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So you, I mean, at least in terms of your
legal representation, you really went from the bottom to the top.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
I mean, you went from guys who sold you down
the river to like an army, a legal army. And
by the way, that happened for a very specific reason,
which is that you found something that very few people
could find in your situation. I don't know where you
got it from, I don't either. But where I think
(19:05):
a normal person would have curled up in a corner
and collapsed or done harm themselves like you talked about
doing or whatever, you didn't stop. And you maintained faith
in the system even though the system had totally let
you down and turned on you, which is remarkable. I
keep coming back to that. And then as a result,
you end up with this powerhouse– sort of a power
(19:31):
trio of advocates, right? The two law firms plus the
Innocence Project at Northwestern, which, you know, as I said,
their reputation is amazing. So then things are turning in
your direction, but you've been in now for quite some time.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
So around the time they took over, I had been
in about seven and a half, eight years. It was
a short after we learned about the identity of the victim.
So yeah, I'd been in there for quite a while,
and it still was another eight years after that before
I was free.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Did you have any clue who might have done something
like this?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
No. We do now. We do now. So for many,
many years, I actually thought Jeremy Tweedy was the guy.
Because he was so quick to make up all these
lies about me and to help himself out that I thought, well,
I didn't even know this guy. Maybe he's the one
that did it. And that's why he's so adamant about
lying against me is he's trying to protect himself somehow.
(20:26):
He was my main suspect for many, many years. It
wasn't until we identified the victim, which was seven years
after I was arrested, that we finally figured out who
the victim was. It wasn't until then that we started
to develop an understanding of what might have really happened
or who the real perpetrators were. There was actually three
(20:47):
people that we suspect being involved, which is ironic considering
that three people were originally arrested.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Right, you, Tweedy, and Jason Johnson.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Right. But I was the only one that was ever
charged with murder. They were charged with the concealment of
a homicide. Tweedy's was dropped to obstruction for testifying against me.
But we discovered that There was three individuals, a mother-daughter team.
They had been, they're grifters. They basically took advantage of
elderly people, handicapped people, mentally disabled people, and extorted them
(21:17):
for their money. And they somehow came into a power
thing with the victim in this case, who we later
discovered was Mary Kate Sunderland, a mentally disabled woman. And
they took over her life. They kept her from her family.
They apparently, from what we understand, sold her to this
mentally deranged individual who they also extorted. They convinced this
(21:41):
guy to have his own arm chopped off by a
railroad track train, a train going across railroad tracks, and
sued the state of Illinois.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Wow. I mean, let's just go. I mean. That's a
lot to it.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
It's a lot, right?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
I mean, that's insane.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
It's just one of many twists to this case. I mean,
it really is a crazy case, a crazy story. But so, yeah,
they Gonzalo Chamizo was this guy's name. He's really mentally insane.
He's in an institution today. They convinced him to lay
on some tracks from what I understand, what my attorneys
told me to lay on some tracks and a train
ran over his arm and cut his arm off. And
(22:18):
in money he got from that, he gave to them
because they sold the victim to him. And then over
a certain amount of time, they starved her, beat her,
tortured her and extorted money out of her. So they
did this for this long period of time. The last
thing that the victim's family ever heard from their loved
(22:38):
one was that they don't want me to talk to you.
It was these people, they were keeping her for this
long period of time. And knowing this, learning this helped
us unravel the case. Because the whole theory of the
state when they convicted us was that me, Jason Johnson
and Jeremy Tweedy picked this random girl up off the
streets and took her to my room and we tortured
(23:00):
her and killed her in one night, dumped the body. And,
you know, they had all these, you know, different theories
on what evidence was there. Like they said the body
was burned by molten wax and all this. And years later,
after we started to put all the pieces together and
found these alternative suspects and we were in the federal courts,
the attorney general's office and the new Lake County attorney
(23:24):
who came in with the idea that he wants to
find the truth in all these cases, They decided to
reach out to my attorneys and say, let's reinvestigate this case.
So we did that. And what we discovered, we had
some independent forensic pathologists come in, three independent pathologists, and
they all came to the same conclusion that this person
(23:45):
was actually dead probably four to five days prior to
when they found the body, not the date before.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
And I'm glad you brought that up because that's a
really interesting part of this case. And it explains why
it was so hard to identify her as well, right? Right. Absolutely.
Because she had obviously decomposed to a significant degree by
that time.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Well, it was more than that. I mean, part of
the reason she was unidentified was just a lack of
police work, I believe. Because they had dental records. They
just didn't follow through with things. And once they had
what they wanted, they didn't follow through with investigating these things.
I mean, how can you not identify the person from
a few counties over? when there's a missing person report
(24:25):
on that person? How do you not make that connection?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah, it's not like she was from, you know... Yeah, she.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Wasn't from California or Nebraska or something.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Caracas. You know, one of the things that helped lead
to your exoneration was the fact that new experts were
brought in who are actual experts. And I'm glad we're
touching on this, Jason, because we know that junk science,
(24:56):
bad forensics are a major cause of wrongful conviction. And
in your case, it was a different kind of junk science,
which is that you had an examiner, a medical examiner
or somebody like that, who testified saying that the body
had been found within a short period of time, right? Right.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
She was found on the 9th, December 9th of 99.
They theorized that on the 8th is the night that
we partied with her and tortured her and killed her.
And he goes on to say that we poured molten
wax on her and she was burned and all this
different stuff. But years later, when we got these new
(25:33):
independent forensic pathologists to look at it, all of that
was wrong.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
All of it.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
One, she was dead at least four days prior to
the night they found her. But it went even beyond
that into the fact that her injuries were in different
stages of healing. Showing that she had been tortured for
a long period of time, weeks, if not months. So
this wasn't something that happened in one night. And further,
(26:00):
the information about molten liquid and wax being poured on
her and she was burned was wrong. They said that
all that discoloration and all the sloughing of the skin
and everything that this medical examiner said was evidence of
that was actually decomposition. There was no burns. There was
none of that. He was wrong. And I learned during
(26:23):
my civil suit from my attorneys telling me that he
actually doesn't even have a medical license from any American
medical schools. He got it from some Dominican Republic school
that was shut down for different reasons of being fraudulent
or not up to par or whatever. So he didn't
even go to medical school here in this country.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Well, he went to a non-medical school in a foreign country.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah. So he basically was just a yutz, like a
total yutz.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
I mean, that's the way my attorneys explained it to me. So, yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
It gets deeper and deeper. I mean, these things are
always so troubling to me because especially in a case
like this where you have a young, innocent woman who
had her life in front of her, who is taken
out and brutally beaten, maybe beaten to death. dumped in
the forest like trash. And, you know, one would think
(27:18):
and one would hope that the people in positions of
power would really want to find the right guy to
make sure this didn't happen, even if it's for selfish reasons, Jason, right?
Even if it's just like, because it's a small community
you lived in, right? Right.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Yeah, it wasn't a big town.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Right. I always try to rationalize this, but I can't.
Because you have All the people that are involved in this,
and it's usually more than one, right? It takes more
than one to sort of, you know, create this narrative
and then convicting this in a person like yourself, or
in this case, three. The actual killer, who is a sick,
depraved individual by any stretch of the imagination, is free,
(27:57):
stayed free, right? Once they convicted you, once they even
arrested you, they stopped looking for him. And whoever he was,
he was free to prey on anyone in the community
that he wanted to, and that could have been You know,
one of these people, somebody that was loved by one
of these officers or people in the prosecutor's office or
anything else. So even in the situation where we all
(28:19):
find it hard to understand how someone could have the
lack of soul or empathy or whatever it is, or
just the total breakdown that allows them to feel comfortable
locking up someone who they knew was innocent or more
than one person in this case. They would want to
keep their family and their community safe, but they didn't.
(28:39):
That goes out the window in these cases. They get
this tunnel vision like they did in your case, and
they just go for it.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
I think a lot of that, there's a lot there,
by the way, that you just said, but I think
a lot of that is systemic. There's a systemic problem,
especially in places like Illinois. Cook County is probably the worst,
where this has been going on for so many generations
that these cops just follow in the same footsteps of
all their predecessors. I mean, you probably follow this back
(29:04):
to the days of Al Capone. I mean, you've got
governors in Illinois that are in jail.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Most of them.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
I mean, it's a systemic problem that's been going on
for a long time. And if new police officers coming
into the force don't see good examples to follow, then
they're going to follow the bad examples that they see.
And that's what has gone on for so long that
that's all they know how to do. I'm not going
to say all of them are bad because they're not.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
No, of course not.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
But a few bad apples can corrupt all of them
because nobody wants to be the guy that says, Hey,
that cop's not doing his job right because then they're Serpico, right?
And nobody wants to be. that. So it becomes this
big problem that you can't get away from. And I
don't know what the answer is to fix it.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
If there's anything that stands out, and obviously it was
a miserable 15 and a half years, but One thing
I'm curious about is, was there a worst moment in
all that time in prison? And was there one moment
that actually you remember and brings you a smile?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Well, as far as prison goes, the worst moment would
probably be the ride to prison. It was the most
terrifying I could ever imagine. I mean, you're an innocent
man on a bus going to a place where you
know that everybody there is hardened criminals. Well, most people
there is hardened criminals. It's a maximum security prison. All
(30:26):
I could think about is, am I going to be raped?
Am I going to be murdered? Am I going to
be forced to kill somebody to survive? What is my
life going to become? I didn't know what to expect.
I was terrified. But I didn't show it. I stood tall,
stood my ground, and did what I had to do.
I met a lot of good people and showed myself
(30:47):
to be a stand-up guy. I got by. I survived it.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Was there a moment that you can remember besides obviously
the moment when the guard came to tell you that
you were free or even when your lawyer told you
that you were going to be getting out in a
few days? Was there any other moment that stands out
that you had a moment of humanity or grace or,
you know, something kind that somebody did or, you know,
anything like that?
Speaker 2 (31:08):
You know, I mean, probably a lot of small things,
but I can't think of nothing like really, really major
other than, you know, every time my family would come
to see me. That was my big moments, you know.
I mean, for the most part, it was just day-to-day stuff.
It was all the same. The monotony of it kind
of gets to you. So it's all the same stuff
(31:31):
over and over. I found joy in the fact that
I had some really good friends. I met some really
great people, one of which is like a brother to me.
I got to also say, man, I owe a lot
of credit to my mom and my grandmother and my family.
They were a source of strength for me as well.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
All these years go by, but you spent seven and
a half years fighting a lonely battle by yourself. And
then you get another seven and a half, eight years
with the cavalry, right? And then ultimately we know what
happened because you're sitting here. Um, and, and how did
that come down? What was the moment when you first knew,
(32:09):
like you knew you were fucked when you were in
the courtroom? What was the moment when you knew that
you were unfucked?
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Oh, wow. That's, uh, I mean, there's a couple different
areas where I started to feel hope. But I'd say
the moment when I knew things were probably going to
work out was about a few days before I was released.
My attorney called me and said that they were expecting
to have a meeting with the state's attorney and the
attorney general in Kennelly's office. That was the judge. And
(32:41):
that they expected a release to be signed, that they
were going to vacate my convictions. And it actually came
sooner than they expected. I was surprised. I was kind
of already packing and planning, hoping that this was going
to play out the way they thought. And I was
taking it easy, you know, taking a break and watching
a movie. And the officer comes by the cell and says, Strong,
what are you doing? Pack your shit, man. You're getting
(33:02):
out of here. I'm like, what? What the fuck are
you talking about? And I wasn't expecting it for, you know,
another day or two. And it just threw me, man.
I jumped down. I'm like packing all my shit as
fast as I can. All my guys are happy for me.
People are clapping, wishing me well. People that weren't in
their cells were coming up, giving me hugs. It was
a very crazy but wonderful feeling and day. Of course,
(33:27):
I had to wait for my mom to drive up
and pick me up. My attorneys were there. When I
walked out, I was so overwhelmed. I broke down into tears.
Just all those years of you know, staying stoic and fighting.
And it just, I was able to let it go.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
That's an amazing picture that you're painting right there. And
it's actually really heartwarming to think about all the other guys,
you know, who are still facing their own demons and
their own sentences. But the fact that they were able
to take joy in your release.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Well, I made a lot of, you know, good friends
in there. I mean, guilt or innocence didn't matter as
far as other people in there. you judge people by
who they were. And there's a lot of stand-up guys
in there. They're not all scum like some people would
have people believe. And I met a lot of good
people in there. There are some bad people, don't get
(34:24):
me wrong, but I made some good friends. I still
go back to the prison now to visit a couple guys.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
That's amazing. So you're watching the movie, you get this,
you're sort of touched by an angel, right? Although it's
in the form of a prison guard in this case.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
He was actually a cool prison guard. Oh, good.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Well, that adds a little something to it, too. And then...
A few hours later, whatever it is, your mom arrives.
She must have been breaking down too. And what time
of year was it when you got out? And what
time of day was it? Was it hot? Was it cold?
And where'd you go and what'd you do? What was
the first thing you did?
Speaker 2 (34:56):
So it was May 28th, 2015. And it was a nice,
nice day out. So there was three of my attorneys
there and my mom. And we went to this nearby diner.
And I had a bacon mushroom cheeseburger, which was the
best bacon mushroom cheeseburger I've ever had. And we sat
(35:16):
around and talked and just enjoyed the moment and kind
of let everything else just melt away.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Were there tears?
Speaker 2 (35:24):
At that point, no. It was just jubilation, man, just
telling stories and talking and being happy. The tears, most
of those were shed in the parking lot before we
went to the diner. so yeah it was just an
all happy moment you know with all of us sitting
there and eating a meal together and talking about future
dreams and hopes and.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
You know so I'm thinking about this first meal so
to speak right people think about the last supper I'm
thinking about the first meal and how good does food
taste after 15 and a half years of institutional you
know slop so to speak I think there's another element
to this particular story of the first meal.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Yeah so uh I have this story, which is kind
of it's a growing story, if you will. When I
went to court in federal court, I had a writ
to Stateville. I originally spent all my time in Menard
and we didn't have oranges. I used to love oranges
growing up as a kid. And when I got to Stateville,
(36:25):
they had oranges and I got an orange and I
hadn't seen or had an orange in like eight years,
eight and a half years at this point. And so
I just looked at that orange and smelled it and
rolled it around in my hand. I savored every moment
of that orange. And most people are like, oh, you
must really love oranges. But it's not so much that.
(36:46):
It's the little things that everyday people take for granted
that you miss so much when it's deprived of you.
And so I ate that orange and that was the
best orange I ever ate. And when I got out,
the day I got out and we went to that
little diner and had this bacon mushroom cheeseburger, I was
telling my attorneys about this story. And the waitress overheard.
And she came over to me after I was done
(37:08):
and gave me an orange.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
And so it kind of grew. And then later, last
year in San Diego at the Innocence Network Conference, I
was telling this same story. And after I was done,
one of the girls that was there in this little
group walked over and gave me an orange. So this
is like this evolving story about an orange and its
meaning in my life and how when I was sitting
(37:32):
in a prison cell, it had all this weight of
You know, something so small but so powerful and meaningful.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
So you drove back to Tennessee. What date was that?
Speaker 2 (37:43):
May 28, 2015.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
So that's pretty recent. And since then, how's life?
Speaker 2 (37:52):
It's good, you know. I mean, it took me a
little while to adapt to things and want to get
back out around people. I was very uncomfortable in public.
Like if I went to a Walmart, just having people,
you know, aimlessly wandering around me kind of put me
on ease, you know, so I still had that kind of,
(38:12):
you know, what are you doing behind me kind of feel,
you know, like you have in prison. And so, yeah,
I was very weird about being out in public for
a while. And I almost came dangerously close to creating
my own prison at home. So I didn't want to leave.
But I forced myself out of my comfort zone and
I got out there and just started facing things and
(38:33):
doing things. And I still like to sit where I
can see everybody. But, you know, I get around in
public with no problem. I go to concerts now and,
you know, I'm trying to become an aspiring filmmaker and
I do a TV show. So I'm getting around and
bumping elbows with people and going to conferences and doing
different things.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Jason, we have a tradition here on Wrongful Conviction, which
is that at the end of I'd like to turn
the mic over to you, the star of the show,
and just share with us anything at all that you
want to share. Okay.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Well, I did want to add that I'm also working
on a documentary that I'm filming about wrongful convictions. And
the purpose of this film is that I don't want
to preach to the choir anymore. I want to reach
out to more and more people and show people that
this is a bigger problem than one or two people
you might see in a documentary. I think too many
(39:32):
people are unaware of how big of a problem this is.
They see a story on Kurt Bloodsworth or someone else,
and they'll say, oh, poor that person, poor this person.
And I want them to understand that there are thousands
of people involved that this is probably happening to right
now that we don't even know about. America has 2.2
(39:53):
million people in prison. If just 1% is wrong, that's
22,000 people. That's a lot of people's lives destroyed potentially,
you know, and we need to be aware of this.
Martin Luther King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to
justice everywhere. We need to be aware of our problems
and hold people accountable when they break the laws that
they're supposed to uphold. Cops and prosecutors should not be immune.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll
join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to innocenceproject.org to learn
how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank
our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardus. The music
(40:44):
in the show is by three-time Oscar-nominated composer, Jay Ralph.
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at wrongfulconviction and
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason
Flom is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
association with Signal Company Number One.
This is Jason Flom, and I'm here with an update
that I wish I didn't have to share. My friend,
Jason Strong, exoneree and fellow brother-in-arms against injustice, passed away
on August 8th. Jason lost almost 16 years of his
life to wrongful incarceration. His story is, it's one that
(00:26):
haunts me. I mean, it's so insane, but despite Everything
he endured, he never lost his humanity. He never lost
his sense of humor either. He just was a guy
who loved life, loved music. I mean, I remember taking
him to a Greta Van Fleet show in the early days.
Such a joyful, joyful guy. And more than anything, he
was just like a good guy, like a really good
(00:46):
guy who cared deeply about the exoneree community and about
just other people in general. I gotta be honest, I
was in awe of Jason when we first met, and
I still am, and I probably always will be, and
I'm so grateful that he trusted us to share his
harrowing journey. So today, in his memory, and in tribute
to his extraordinary life, we want to share it with
(01:08):
you again. Rest in peace and power, my friend. Here
it is, the Jason Strong story.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
America has 2.2 million people in prison. If just 1%
is wrong, that's 22,000 people. That's a lot of people's
lives destroyed.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
If the system want to take you out of society,
they will do it. No matter what laws they have
to break, saying that they are enforcing the laws, but
they are breaking the law.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Having to hear those people say that I was guilty
of a crime that I did not commit, and then
hear my family break down behind me and not be
able to do anything about it, I can't describe the
crushing weight that was.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I'm not anti-police, I'm just anti-corruption.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
A lot of times we look and we see something
happen to somebody and that's the first thing we say,
that could never happen to me, but it can.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
This is Wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with
Jason Flom. This is the opening episode of Season 5,
(02:44):
and I'm absolutely honored to have today's guest, Jason Strong. Jason,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me on.
I'm honored to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, I'm really happy you're here for a number of reasons.
I'm sorry you had to go through this. So Jason,
before all this happened and your life was turned really
into a living hell for 15 and a half years,
how was your life? You grew up in Illinois, right?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
No, actually, I spent most of my life in Texas.
I was born in Arizona, lived in Texas most of
my life. And I moved to Illinois to try to, well, actually,
I moved to Wisconsin first. with my grandparents to try
to get a different start. Cause I was kind of
on a bad road doing drugs, drinking, acting up. So
eventually I moved to Illinois and with some friends and
(03:34):
then I got my own place there. But, uh, I mean,
I never really did change. I still kind of lived
like a rock star. You know, I was working in
an adult bookstore, did a lot of drinking and partying
and drugs. And, but I mean, at the end of
the day, I was still a good person. I mean,
I wasn't, you know, robbing people. I wasn't killing people.
I wasn't, you know, in any gangs or doing anything ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
You weren't hurting anybody other than yourself.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Exactly. Exactly. But I mean, I was, you know, living
in the fast life and I wasn't thinking about it,
you know, so it's just one of those things that
some people do that when they're young, you know, and
I was living like a rock star, but I wasn't
a rock star.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
But that being said, so you're, you're, you're hanging around
trying to figure it out. How old were you at
this time?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Uh, 24.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
24. So, yeah, so you're getting, you know, I mean,
it's funny because I think a lot of people in
their mid-20s start to figure out what it is that
they're really doing. I know for me it's true. That's
when I sobered up and started, you know, trying to
really build my life up instead of down.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Well, before I got locked up, so I got locked
up in December of 99. Before that happened, I mean,
I was trying to think about what do I want
to do? You know, I was considering going back to
school and pursuing something in the world of art. I
didn't really know exactly what, but I wanted to do
something with art. I've always been creative. But I never
(04:52):
got that opportunity. It was taken from me by the
fact that I got arrested for this crime.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
And that's a crazy story. I mean, it was your misfortune.
You didn't know it at the time, but you were
living in a county that turns out to have the
highest number of wrongful convictions in Illinois, which is one
of the states that has the highest number of wrongful convictions.
But other than Chicago, this area that you lived in was...
a bad spot. It was a hotbed for police misconduct
(05:18):
and wrongful convictions as a result. So there you are
knocking around, trying to figure it out, you know, having
your party in times, whatever you're doing. And this comes
out of the blue, right?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah. It was, uh, December 20th. I was hanging out
with my girlfriend and her friend, you know, we were
smoking a bowl, having a few beers and I get
a knock at the door. Thinking it's my buddy just
coming over to hang out. Open the door. It's a
bunch of cops standing there with guns drawn. And they
push into my room, throw me down on my bed,
handcuff me. And the nightmare began.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Did they tell you what they were arresting you for?
Speaker 2 (05:58):
No, but I had a clue because they had been
around earlier that day asking people if they'd seen anything
or knew anything. So, I mean, I had a little
bit of a clue, but it still threw me because,
I mean, I had nothing to do with this crime,
so I didn't understand why this was happening. I was confused.
I was scared.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
But when you say they were asking, did you see anything,
did you know anything, about what? Was it a specific
crime that they were asking about?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, they had discovered a Jane Doe's body in the
Lake County Forest Preserve. And so on December 9th, this
body was found. And apparently she had been badly beaten
and tortured and suffered a really bad death. And blunt
force trauma was the cause of death. And that was
on December 9th. Around December 14th, there was a prostitute
(06:44):
sting in the area where I lived. I lived next
door to the bookstore that I worked at, the adult bookstore.
So I had thought that this woman was a prostitute.
And I told her, you can't be doing this around here.
You know, I don't want to have to call the
cops on you. You know, just go back to your
room and keep it cool. And later on, I came
out and she was still doing that. And that's when
(07:04):
I first met Jeremy Tweedy, who would later become my co-defendant.
So that night I walked up to him. I said, hey,
how long has this woman been out here? Do you know?
He said, she's been out there a while. She looks
like she was crying. So I thought maybe she had
a pimp or something that was forcing her to do this.
So I struck up a conversation with her, asking if
there was anything I could do to help. whatever, because
(07:27):
I didn't want to have this going on and I
didn't want to see her hurt either. And we talked
for a little while. I mean, even to the extent
that we asked about her kids and, you know, why
didn't she find a better line of work, et cetera.
And I eventually went in to eat my dinner and
her and Jeremy Tweedy had this conversation that later turns
out he apparently allegedly said something to her about, you know,
(07:49):
you shouldn't be around here because there was a woman
that was killed here recently. And a bunch of people
had beat on her and threw her in a van
and got rid of her. And they used that as
a reason to come and arrest him. And then he
said that it was me. Now, why did he say
it was me? So the cop that arrested him somehow
(08:10):
or another claims that this was an accident, but that
his hand got crushed in the car door on the
way to the police station. And next thing you know,
he's fingering me for the crime. Years later, when he recants,
he says that it was because the cops only wanted
to talk about me. Since the moment he stepped into
the room, they kept saying, what did Jason Strong do
with this crime? What do you know about Jason Strong's
(08:32):
involvement in this crime? And they just kept mentioning me
over and over and over to the point where he
got the gist of it. They wanted me. So he
said that I did it. He saw it happen. And
then they came and arrested me. They came and arrested
my friend Jason Johnson.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
But wait, what's the thing with the hand in the
car door? How does that fit into.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
This whole narrative? I think they intimidated him by injuring him.
I can't prove that. But I mean, I think it's
kind of odd that his hand was slammed in a
police car door on a way to the police station.
And then next thing you know, he's singing these lies
for them. Well, there's a second part to this that
I can't prove this, but this is my opinion on
the matter, is the officer that brought him in actually
(09:13):
had it in for me. So prior to all this happening...
This cop had been coming around the bookstore and harassing
me for a couple months. And I don't even know
why he ever started doing that, but he did. And
he wanted me to be a snitch. He wanted me
to tell him about drug dealers and different things. I'm like, man,
I don't know nothing. I don't know nothing about no
drug dealers. And he told me if I did not
(09:36):
cooperate with him, he would make my life a living hell.
A few short weeks later, I'm locked up for a
murder I didn't commit. And he was the initiating officer
that arrested the guy who would become my co-defendant, who
I didn't even know on the night in question.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
That's a lot of coincidences.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Exactly. But I can't prove that he did anything.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
You were a victim of some really terrible misdeeds. Right.
by the people that were supposed to protect you and
everybody else in the community. And that's quite the opposite
of what they did. So it's pretty clear why Tweedy
would have implicated you because he would have implicated his
grandmother if he had to to make them stop doing
whatever it was they were doing to him. And he
implicated himself as well. But he wasn't involved in the
(10:18):
crime either. No.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
In fact, he turned out to be actually quite a character.
He's a bit of a pathological liar. Before my trial,
I think he had like six or seven different versions
of what happened that night, constantly changing. And to the
point where at my trial, he came up with a
new version of events that were different from all the
earlier ones. So he would always make changes. And he
(10:40):
just did this for years. He stuck to his lie
for years. But I think it all started because of
that one cop. I can't prove it. That's just my theory.
But part of it is going off of also what
he told me years later when he recanted Jeremy Tweedy
about how that's all they wanted to talk about was me.
And I'm like, well, why would they be so focused
on me? Why me of all the people that they
(11:03):
could have thought about?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Well, I mean, it sounds like this one officer. All right.
you know, had just sort of figured you were going
to be a good source of information because you were
in sort of a seedy area and a seedy business, right?
And he had it in his head, you must have
known stuff, and he felt like you were holding out
on him. So he decided to exact his revenge. This
insane story of yours ultimately ends up with you being
(11:27):
held in jail for quite a long time, pending trial,
and ultimately going to trial. What was that process like?
Did you have decent representation there?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Yeah, I did not have good representation. I had public defenders.
I actually, I asked my family over and over to
get me a lawyer. I knew I needed a real
lawyer because these guys just, they weren't going to cut it.
They didn't listen to me. They had their own view
on things, but I didn't know what a lot of
my rights were at that time either and how I
could make changes in anything. But we went to trial
(12:01):
with them basically handing me over to the jury. They
went in and said that my coerced false confession was
actually true and that I didn't do the crime, but
I was there when it happened. That was their defense
for me. And I was like, well, that's ridiculous. I
didn't do any of this. But that was their strategy,
if you will. They basically handed me over. They screwed
(12:22):
me for the prosecution. I had no chance.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
You're literally sitting there watching yourself drown.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Right. So when the time came for me to take
the stand, I couldn't take the stand. I would have
gone against every single thing they already said.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
That's unreal.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
They were looking for the easiest route. Rather than to
try to fight my case and prove my innocence, they
took the easiest option for themselves.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
It's a very bizarre set of circumstances when you have
your advocate actually working against you.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
And you're, I mean, I can't imagine. You're in this
crazy vortex. You've already been through hell. You've been sitting
in jail for, you know, how long were you.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
In jail for? So the trial, I believe, was in
October of 2000. So almost a year by that point. Right.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
So you're already dizzy from this experience. I mean, anybody
would be. And now you're in this crazy vortex. And
you've got these dolts, not even underrepresenting you, but actually
working against your best interests. for whatever their twisted motives were.
Did you know, like when the jury went out, did
you know you were fucked?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
I had a good feeling that, yeah, that was going
to be the case. I mean, I still had a
tiny bit of hope, you know, that maybe they would
figure something out, but no, I kind of had a
feeling I was screwed.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
I mean, from the sound of it, I mean, even
if I was on the jury.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I don't blame the jury in my case at all.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
I really don't. Unless they had just some weird intuition.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
If I was on my jury, I would have convicted me.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
That's a strong statement. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
I mean, at the end of the day, There was
nothing put forth to defend me and to prove my innocence.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
No. So there you go. So, yeah. So you– it's
interesting because a lot of the exonerees that have been
on the show had held out hope until the very end.
But your circumstance is relatively unique. I mean even with
some of the stories we've heard of incompetent defense. How
long do they deliberate?
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Oh, it wasn't very long at all. Maybe a couple hours.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Right. I mean, who knows that they were probably having lunch.
I mean, who knows what they were doing for two
whole hours.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
I mean, I don't even know if it was that long.
That's how it felt in my head as I was
sitting in a cell.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Then the moment came, right? Can you describe that horrible,
horrible moment when you're basically, you must've thought your life
was over.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah. I, uh, that was probably the loneliest day of
my life. Um, Having to hear those people say that
I was guilty of a crime that I did not commit,
and not just once, but the judge made each individual
one say their verdict, so I had to hear it
over and over again, and then hear my family break
(15:01):
down behind me and not be able to do anything
about it. I can't describe the crushing weight that was.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
How did you deal with it? How did you come
out of it? How did you get here? I am
actually in awe of the fortitude. That you have. How
did you do it? If you can even put it
into words.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Yeah, I think I can. I mean, so after that moment,
I mean, I wanted to die. Like, I've never wanted
to die before. It was terrible. And after we left
the courtroom, I asked the officer if he could take
me to a private solitary cell just so I could,
you know, just break down and decompress. And once I
(15:42):
put myself back together and I went back to the
general population, I just started doing a lot of thinking
and I was angry. I was confused. I didn't know
what my next move was going to be, but I
decided to adopt this kind of militaristic mentality and I
turned everything into a war against the state of Illinois.
(16:02):
And I studied Sun Tzu and Julius Caesar and tried
to incorporate this thinking of how to fight a war,
but I was doing it in the courtroom, the courtrooms
were my battlefields. So, I mean, I kind of took
on that, that mentality.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Did you have any help? Did you have an appellate
lawyer assigned to you or anything like that?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Yeah, we, uh, so after I lost, we hired an attorney,
Jed Stone, and, uh, he did a post-trial motion and
then he helped me through my first appeals, but those
didn't pan out. So when we lost him and we
couldn't afford him anymore, I became my own attorney and
I did it my way. And I threw every single
(16:44):
thing I could think about him. I filed my post-conviction
petition on my own, which was like 70-something pages long.
And I threw every single thing I could think of
that was wrong with my case at that courtroom. I
battled it on my own for a while. I got
an appellate attorney appointed to me at one point. And
all he did was basically drag things out. But for
(17:06):
the most part, I fought myself until I got Northwestern
to get involved. But that was years and years later.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
And talk about that a little bit, Jason. Northwestern? Northwestern, yeah. Because,
I mean, first of all, one of the best schools
in the country.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And they do amazing work.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Absolutely they do. Yeah, I would not be free if
it wasn't for them. So I was in the federal court.
I was filing a federal habeas corpus all on my own.
And there was a procedural issue that came up. Well,
let me back up. Before that, I had already been
trying to reach out to Innocence Projects for years. I've
been writing them letters and, you know, having my family
make phone calls. And I had been in touch with
(17:46):
Jane Raley at Northwestern. And we, you know, been kind
of back and forth and everything. But she couldn't take
on the case at the time. But we still communicated.
So when I got to federal court, I don't know
if Judge Kennelly saw something in my case or what.
But he called Thomas Garrity, the director of the clinic
(18:06):
at Northwestern, personally and asked him to look at my case.
And it was just for a procedural issue. But once
Tom looked at everything, he realized there was more to it.
And Northwestern decided to take my case on full all
the way. That team grew over the years, you know,
because they have students. And three of the students graduated,
(18:27):
went on to big law firms and brought their law
firms in. So I had Northwestern, Winston and Strawn, and
Cat Mute and Rosenman, all supporting my fight.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So you, I mean, at least in terms of your
legal representation, you really went from the bottom to the top.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
I mean, you went from guys who sold you down
the river to like an army, a legal army. And
by the way, that happened for a very specific reason,
which is that you found something that very few people
could find in your situation. I don't know where you
got it from, I don't either. But where I think
(19:05):
a normal person would have curled up in a corner
and collapsed or done harm themselves like you talked about
doing or whatever, you didn't stop. And you maintained faith
in the system even though the system had totally let
you down and turned on you, which is remarkable. I
keep coming back to that. And then as a result,
you end up with this powerhouse– sort of a power
(19:31):
trio of advocates, right? The two law firms plus the
Innocence Project at Northwestern, which, you know, as I said,
their reputation is amazing. So then things are turning in
your direction, but you've been in now for quite some time.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
So around the time they took over, I had been
in about seven and a half, eight years. It was
a short after we learned about the identity of the victim.
So yeah, I'd been in there for quite a while,
and it still was another eight years after that before
I was free.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Did you have any clue who might have done something
like this?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
No. We do now. We do now. So for many,
many years, I actually thought Jeremy Tweedy was the guy.
Because he was so quick to make up all these
lies about me and to help himself out that I thought, well,
I didn't even know this guy. Maybe he's the one
that did it. And that's why he's so adamant about
lying against me is he's trying to protect himself somehow.
(20:26):
He was my main suspect for many, many years. It
wasn't until we identified the victim, which was seven years
after I was arrested, that we finally figured out who
the victim was. It wasn't until then that we started
to develop an understanding of what might have really happened
or who the real perpetrators were. There was actually three
(20:47):
people that we suspect being involved, which is ironic considering
that three people were originally arrested.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Right, you, Tweedy, and Jason Johnson.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Right. But I was the only one that was ever
charged with murder. They were charged with the concealment of
a homicide. Tweedy's was dropped to obstruction for testifying against me.
But we discovered that There was three individuals, a mother-daughter team.
They had been, they're grifters. They basically took advantage of
elderly people, handicapped people, mentally disabled people, and extorted them
(21:17):
for their money. And they somehow came into a power
thing with the victim in this case, who we later
discovered was Mary Kate Sunderland, a mentally disabled woman. And
they took over her life. They kept her from her family.
They apparently, from what we understand, sold her to this
mentally deranged individual who they also extorted. They convinced this
(21:41):
guy to have his own arm chopped off by a
railroad track train, a train going across railroad tracks, and
sued the state of Illinois.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Wow. I mean, let's just go. I mean. That's a
lot to it.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
It's a lot, right?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
I mean, that's insane.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
It's just one of many twists to this case. I mean,
it really is a crazy case, a crazy story. But so, yeah,
they Gonzalo Chamizo was this guy's name. He's really mentally insane.
He's in an institution today. They convinced him to lay
on some tracks from what I understand, what my attorneys
told me to lay on some tracks and a train
ran over his arm and cut his arm off. And
(22:18):
in money he got from that, he gave to them
because they sold the victim to him. And then over
a certain amount of time, they starved her, beat her,
tortured her and extorted money out of her. So they
did this for this long period of time. The last
thing that the victim's family ever heard from their loved
(22:38):
one was that they don't want me to talk to you.
It was these people, they were keeping her for this
long period of time. And knowing this, learning this helped
us unravel the case. Because the whole theory of the
state when they convicted us was that me, Jason Johnson
and Jeremy Tweedy picked this random girl up off the
streets and took her to my room and we tortured
(23:00):
her and killed her in one night, dumped the body. And,
you know, they had all these, you know, different theories
on what evidence was there. Like they said the body
was burned by molten wax and all this. And years later,
after we started to put all the pieces together and
found these alternative suspects and we were in the federal courts,
the attorney general's office and the new Lake County attorney
(23:24):
who came in with the idea that he wants to
find the truth in all these cases, They decided to
reach out to my attorneys and say, let's reinvestigate this case.
So we did that. And what we discovered, we had
some independent forensic pathologists come in, three independent pathologists, and
they all came to the same conclusion that this person
(23:45):
was actually dead probably four to five days prior to
when they found the body, not the date before.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
And I'm glad you brought that up because that's a
really interesting part of this case. And it explains why
it was so hard to identify her as well, right? Right. Absolutely.
Because she had obviously decomposed to a significant degree by
that time.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Well, it was more than that. I mean, part of
the reason she was unidentified was just a lack of
police work, I believe. Because they had dental records. They
just didn't follow through with things. And once they had
what they wanted, they didn't follow through with investigating these things.
I mean, how can you not identify the person from
a few counties over? when there's a missing person report
(24:25):
on that person? How do you not make that connection?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah, it's not like she was from, you know... Yeah, she.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Wasn't from California or Nebraska or something.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Caracas. You know, one of the things that helped lead
to your exoneration was the fact that new experts were
brought in who are actual experts. And I'm glad we're
touching on this, Jason, because we know that junk science,
(24:56):
bad forensics are a major cause of wrongful conviction. And
in your case, it was a different kind of junk science,
which is that you had an examiner, a medical examiner
or somebody like that, who testified saying that the body
had been found within a short period of time, right? Right.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
She was found on the 9th, December 9th of 99.
They theorized that on the 8th is the night that
we partied with her and tortured her and killed her.
And he goes on to say that we poured molten
wax on her and she was burned and all this
different stuff. But years later, when we got these new
(25:33):
independent forensic pathologists to look at it, all of that
was wrong.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
All of it.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
One, she was dead at least four days prior to
the night they found her. But it went even beyond
that into the fact that her injuries were in different
stages of healing. Showing that she had been tortured for
a long period of time, weeks, if not months. So
this wasn't something that happened in one night. And further,
(26:00):
the information about molten liquid and wax being poured on
her and she was burned was wrong. They said that
all that discoloration and all the sloughing of the skin
and everything that this medical examiner said was evidence of
that was actually decomposition. There was no burns. There was
none of that. He was wrong. And I learned during
(26:23):
my civil suit from my attorneys telling me that he
actually doesn't even have a medical license from any American
medical schools. He got it from some Dominican Republic school
that was shut down for different reasons of being fraudulent
or not up to par or whatever. So he didn't
even go to medical school here in this country.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Well, he went to a non-medical school in a foreign country.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah. So he basically was just a yutz, like a
total yutz.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
I mean, that's the way my attorneys explained it to me. So, yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
It gets deeper and deeper. I mean, these things are
always so troubling to me because especially in a case
like this where you have a young, innocent woman who
had her life in front of her, who is taken
out and brutally beaten, maybe beaten to death. dumped in
the forest like trash. And, you know, one would think
(27:18):
and one would hope that the people in positions of
power would really want to find the right guy to
make sure this didn't happen, even if it's for selfish reasons, Jason, right?
Even if it's just like, because it's a small community
you lived in, right? Right.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Yeah, it wasn't a big town.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Right. I always try to rationalize this, but I can't.
Because you have All the people that are involved in this,
and it's usually more than one, right? It takes more
than one to sort of, you know, create this narrative
and then convicting this in a person like yourself, or
in this case, three. The actual killer, who is a sick,
depraved individual by any stretch of the imagination, is free,
(27:57):
stayed free, right? Once they convicted you, once they even
arrested you, they stopped looking for him. And whoever he was,
he was free to prey on anyone in the community
that he wanted to, and that could have been You know,
one of these people, somebody that was loved by one
of these officers or people in the prosecutor's office or
anything else. So even in the situation where we all
(28:19):
find it hard to understand how someone could have the
lack of soul or empathy or whatever it is, or
just the total breakdown that allows them to feel comfortable
locking up someone who they knew was innocent or more
than one person in this case. They would want to
keep their family and their community safe, but they didn't.
(28:39):
That goes out the window in these cases. They get
this tunnel vision like they did in your case, and
they just go for it.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
I think a lot of that, there's a lot there,
by the way, that you just said, but I think
a lot of that is systemic. There's a systemic problem,
especially in places like Illinois. Cook County is probably the worst,
where this has been going on for so many generations
that these cops just follow in the same footsteps of
all their predecessors. I mean, you probably follow this back
(29:04):
to the days of Al Capone. I mean, you've got
governors in Illinois that are in jail.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Most of them.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
I mean, it's a systemic problem that's been going on
for a long time. And if new police officers coming
into the force don't see good examples to follow, then
they're going to follow the bad examples that they see.
And that's what has gone on for so long that
that's all they know how to do. I'm not going
to say all of them are bad because they're not.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
No, of course not.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
But a few bad apples can corrupt all of them
because nobody wants to be the guy that says, Hey,
that cop's not doing his job right because then they're Serpico, right?
And nobody wants to be. that. So it becomes this
big problem that you can't get away from. And I
don't know what the answer is to fix it.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
If there's anything that stands out, and obviously it was
a miserable 15 and a half years, but One thing
I'm curious about is, was there a worst moment in
all that time in prison? And was there one moment
that actually you remember and brings you a smile?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Well, as far as prison goes, the worst moment would
probably be the ride to prison. It was the most
terrifying I could ever imagine. I mean, you're an innocent
man on a bus going to a place where you
know that everybody there is hardened criminals. Well, most people
there is hardened criminals. It's a maximum security prison. All
(30:26):
I could think about is, am I going to be raped?
Am I going to be murdered? Am I going to
be forced to kill somebody to survive? What is my
life going to become? I didn't know what to expect.
I was terrified. But I didn't show it. I stood tall,
stood my ground, and did what I had to do.
I met a lot of good people and showed myself
(30:47):
to be a stand-up guy. I got by. I survived it.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Was there a moment that you can remember besides obviously
the moment when the guard came to tell you that
you were free or even when your lawyer told you
that you were going to be getting out in a
few days? Was there any other moment that stands out
that you had a moment of humanity or grace or,
you know, something kind that somebody did or, you know,
anything like that?
Speaker 2 (31:08):
You know, I mean, probably a lot of small things,
but I can't think of nothing like really, really major
other than, you know, every time my family would come
to see me. That was my big moments, you know.
I mean, for the most part, it was just day-to-day stuff.
It was all the same. The monotony of it kind
of gets to you. So it's all the same stuff
(31:31):
over and over. I found joy in the fact that
I had some really good friends. I met some really
great people, one of which is like a brother to me.
I got to also say, man, I owe a lot
of credit to my mom and my grandmother and my family.
They were a source of strength for me as well.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
All these years go by, but you spent seven and
a half years fighting a lonely battle by yourself. And
then you get another seven and a half, eight years
with the cavalry, right? And then ultimately we know what
happened because you're sitting here. Um, and, and how did
that come down? What was the moment when you first knew,
(32:09):
like you knew you were fucked when you were in
the courtroom? What was the moment when you knew that
you were unfucked?
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Oh, wow. That's, uh, I mean, there's a couple different
areas where I started to feel hope. But I'd say
the moment when I knew things were probably going to
work out was about a few days before I was released.
My attorney called me and said that they were expecting
to have a meeting with the state's attorney and the
attorney general in Kennelly's office. That was the judge. And
(32:41):
that they expected a release to be signed, that they
were going to vacate my convictions. And it actually came
sooner than they expected. I was surprised. I was kind
of already packing and planning, hoping that this was going
to play out the way they thought. And I was
taking it easy, you know, taking a break and watching
a movie. And the officer comes by the cell and says, Strong,
what are you doing? Pack your shit, man. You're getting
(33:02):
out of here. I'm like, what? What the fuck are
you talking about? And I wasn't expecting it for, you know,
another day or two. And it just threw me, man.
I jumped down. I'm like packing all my shit as
fast as I can. All my guys are happy for me.
People are clapping, wishing me well. People that weren't in
their cells were coming up, giving me hugs. It was
a very crazy but wonderful feeling and day. Of course,
(33:27):
I had to wait for my mom to drive up
and pick me up. My attorneys were there. When I
walked out, I was so overwhelmed. I broke down into tears.
Just all those years of you know, staying stoic and fighting.
And it just, I was able to let it go.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
That's an amazing picture that you're painting right there. And
it's actually really heartwarming to think about all the other guys,
you know, who are still facing their own demons and
their own sentences. But the fact that they were able
to take joy in your release.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Well, I made a lot of, you know, good friends
in there. I mean, guilt or innocence didn't matter as
far as other people in there. you judge people by
who they were. And there's a lot of stand-up guys
in there. They're not all scum like some people would
have people believe. And I met a lot of good
people in there. There are some bad people, don't get
(34:24):
me wrong, but I made some good friends. I still
go back to the prison now to visit a couple guys.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
That's amazing. So you're watching the movie, you get this,
you're sort of touched by an angel, right? Although it's
in the form of a prison guard in this case.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
He was actually a cool prison guard. Oh, good.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Well, that adds a little something to it, too. And then...
A few hours later, whatever it is, your mom arrives.
She must have been breaking down too. And what time
of year was it when you got out? And what
time of day was it? Was it hot? Was it cold?
And where'd you go and what'd you do? What was
the first thing you did?
Speaker 2 (34:56):
So it was May 28th, 2015. And it was a nice,
nice day out. So there was three of my attorneys
there and my mom. And we went to this nearby diner.
And I had a bacon mushroom cheeseburger, which was the
best bacon mushroom cheeseburger I've ever had. And we sat
(35:16):
around and talked and just enjoyed the moment and kind
of let everything else just melt away.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Were there tears?
Speaker 2 (35:24):
At that point, no. It was just jubilation, man, just
telling stories and talking and being happy. The tears, most
of those were shed in the parking lot before we
went to the diner. so yeah it was just an
all happy moment you know with all of us sitting
there and eating a meal together and talking about future
dreams and hopes and.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
You know so I'm thinking about this first meal so
to speak right people think about the last supper I'm
thinking about the first meal and how good does food
taste after 15 and a half years of institutional you
know slop so to speak I think there's another element
to this particular story of the first meal.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Yeah so uh I have this story, which is kind
of it's a growing story, if you will. When I
went to court in federal court, I had a writ
to Stateville. I originally spent all my time in Menard
and we didn't have oranges. I used to love oranges
growing up as a kid. And when I got to Stateville,
(36:25):
they had oranges and I got an orange and I
hadn't seen or had an orange in like eight years,
eight and a half years at this point. And so
I just looked at that orange and smelled it and
rolled it around in my hand. I savored every moment
of that orange. And most people are like, oh, you
must really love oranges. But it's not so much that.
(36:46):
It's the little things that everyday people take for granted
that you miss so much when it's deprived of you.
And so I ate that orange and that was the
best orange I ever ate. And when I got out,
the day I got out and we went to that
little diner and had this bacon mushroom cheeseburger, I was
telling my attorneys about this story. And the waitress overheard.
And she came over to me after I was done
(37:08):
and gave me an orange.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
And so it kind of grew. And then later, last
year in San Diego at the Innocence Network Conference, I
was telling this same story. And after I was done,
one of the girls that was there in this little
group walked over and gave me an orange. So this
is like this evolving story about an orange and its
meaning in my life and how when I was sitting
(37:32):
in a prison cell, it had all this weight of
You know, something so small but so powerful and meaningful.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
So you drove back to Tennessee. What date was that?
Speaker 2 (37:43):
May 28, 2015.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
So that's pretty recent. And since then, how's life?
Speaker 2 (37:52):
It's good, you know. I mean, it took me a
little while to adapt to things and want to get
back out around people. I was very uncomfortable in public.
Like if I went to a Walmart, just having people,
you know, aimlessly wandering around me kind of put me
on ease, you know, so I still had that kind of,
(38:12):
you know, what are you doing behind me kind of feel,
you know, like you have in prison. And so, yeah,
I was very weird about being out in public for
a while. And I almost came dangerously close to creating
my own prison at home. So I didn't want to leave.
But I forced myself out of my comfort zone and
I got out there and just started facing things and
(38:33):
doing things. And I still like to sit where I
can see everybody. But, you know, I get around in
public with no problem. I go to concerts now and,
you know, I'm trying to become an aspiring filmmaker and
I do a TV show. So I'm getting around and
bumping elbows with people and going to conferences and doing
different things.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Jason, we have a tradition here on Wrongful Conviction, which
is that at the end of I'd like to turn
the mic over to you, the star of the show,
and just share with us anything at all that you
want to share. Okay.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Well, I did want to add that I'm also working
on a documentary that I'm filming about wrongful convictions. And
the purpose of this film is that I don't want
to preach to the choir anymore. I want to reach
out to more and more people and show people that
this is a bigger problem than one or two people
you might see in a documentary. I think too many
(39:32):
people are unaware of how big of a problem this is.
They see a story on Kurt Bloodsworth or someone else,
and they'll say, oh, poor that person, poor this person.
And I want them to understand that there are thousands
of people involved that this is probably happening to right
now that we don't even know about. America has 2.2
(39:53):
million people in prison. If just 1% is wrong, that's
22,000 people. That's a lot of people's lives destroyed potentially,
you know, and we need to be aware of this.
Martin Luther King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to
justice everywhere. We need to be aware of our problems
and hold people accountable when they break the laws that
they're supposed to uphold. Cops and prosecutors should not be immune.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll
join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to innocenceproject.org to learn
how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank
our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardus. The music
(40:44):
in the show is by three-time Oscar-nominated composer, Jay Ralph.
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at wrongfulconviction and
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason
Flom is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
association with Signal Company Number One.
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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