July 21, 2022 • 46 mins
On October 3, 1993, 21-year-old Marvin McCloud was leaving an after-hours club in Anderson, Indiana, when he was shot and killed in his car by two gunmen, Romeo Lee and Khaidi Harvell, who drove off in Romeo's half brother Walter Goudy's car. Months later, Walter Goudy went to that after-hours club in the same car, and the police brought him in for a one-person show up in which a passenger in the car, Jill Barclay, identified Walter, mistaking him for Romeo. Initially, Walter was charged with murder and attempted murder, but the charges were dropped after 16 alibi witnesses placed Walter over 40 miles away at the time of the incident. Later that year, the lead detective Rodney Cummings was elected county prosecutor and re-indicted Walter. Regardless of the fact that Romeo Lee confessed, naming himself and Khaidi Harvell, who was also identified separately, Walter was still prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to 110 years in prison.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
On October three, Walter Goudy, through a party at his
Indianapolis home, his half brother Romeo Lee, and their shorter
friend Kydie Harvell, drove one of Walter's cars to an
after hours club in Anderson, Indiana. After an altercation outside,
Romeo approached a car on the passenger side and Kiti
was on the driver's side. The driver was fatally shot
(00:25):
and a passenger was wounded. Witnesses described the driver's side
shooter as shorter than the other. Months later, Walter Goudy
was put the same after hours club in the same
car and picked up by Detective Rodney Cummings, who put
him into a one man show up where Walter was
mistaken for the passenger side shooter his half brother Romeo.
Despite sixteen alibi witnesses, Walter was charged with the murder,
(00:49):
but between Walter's overly suggestive I d and his strong alibi,
the charges were dropped, which did not sit well with
Detective Cummings. When Kaytie Harvell was later i deed in
a live lineup by three witnesses as the driver's side shooter,
he told Cummings that Walter was the driver's side shooter,
not him. While placing Romeo on the passenger's side. Detective
(01:10):
Cummings ran for District Attorney one and reindicted Walter. Despite
Romeo's confession naming Kiti and himself, the state still forged
ahead with a prosecution based on conflicting witnesses. Almost all
misidentified Walter as his half brother on the passenger's side,
except Kaiti, who placed Walter in his place on the
(01:32):
driver's side. Walter was sentenced to one hundred and ten
years in prison. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
(01:54):
wrongful Conviction today's episode. This is almost like the cartoon
of the Ping Pong match, where your head just going
back and forth. You're like, wait, what what Like you
just got gonna believe the way this case unfolded and
how the system, I'm gonna be generous to say, made
mistake after mistake and then compounded their mistakes, and then
even when the mistakes were corrected, they made sure to
(02:16):
correct the correction to make sure the mistakes. I mean,
it's I'm at a loss for words on this one,
I gotta tell you, but we're here with the man
who survived this ordeal, Walter Gaudy Walter I'm so sorry
you're here because of why you're here, but I'm really
honored that you're here to tell your story. Appreciate, appreciate.
And with him is his civil attorney Richard Dvorak. Richard,
(02:38):
it's your first time on the show, and I certainly
hope it's not your last. And I know you've done
great work on this case in particular, and I'm really
really delighted to have you on the show. Thank you
for the invitation. I appreciate it. So this is an
Indiana story, which we're hearing more and more about lately,
as more wrongful convictions and prosecutors conducted police corruption are
(02:59):
being wreck ignized, not only in Indiana but all over
the country. But before we get into how that affects
your case, Walter, I want to go back to before
all of that happened. Now, you were born in Chicago,
but you grew up out West. Is that right? Okay?
I grew up in Los Angeles, myself and my three symbtoms.
My mom's up and moved moved away from my father's.
(03:21):
But I grew up in Los Angeles doing the heyday
of the gang banging and the drugs. You know, I mean,
that's all we had to do to get by. You
mentioned your siblings. Now two of them, Lamont and Romeo,
were deeply affected by this incident. Romeo, of course, was
directly involved. Can you tell us about him, never smoked
a joint nothing in his life, He tried it, stuff
(03:41):
on that. He's a real cool guy. He really loyal,
but he gets angry really quick. Romeo is the one
that you go get with us drama. They want to
fight out here, We're going to get Romeo. Growing up,
we both took marcel arts, both took boxing. We both
started gang banging out there. No father figure are male
figures consists of the older guys in the streets. We
(04:03):
didn't had the people that tells you you could be somebody.
And the guys doing well out there worth selling drugs
exactly exactly. We see the guy with the big Cadillac
h he always got the money, you got the jury,
got the girls slock here. We want to be like that.
Me being the oldest I felt and coming upon me
to get out there and make something for my siblings.
You know what I mean. I saw setting drugs really young,
(04:24):
like thirteen years old. So I'll get a hold to Indiana.
I say what, I'll turn one. A friend of mine
was out there and tell me, uh, how much the
drugs is going for? You know? So I came out
there and visit and found out, Yeah, yeah, it's more
expensive Indiana than they are in California. So you saw
this as an opportunity and started taking the risk. And
(04:45):
you know, there was a lot of risk, let's face it,
of transporting the drugs from California to Indiana in order
to reap the reward of a higher profit margin. And
despite if you arrest including one in St. Louis from
marijuana possession, that had an effect. As it turns out,
on this case, the risk had paid off, at least temporarily.
You made a lot of money, owned the home, had
multiple cars, and we're investing in legitimate businesses. You had
(05:08):
your own nightclub. But before we go any further, can
you tell us a little bit about this one character
who you met in Indiana with the interesting name Kydie Harvell.
I don't had new Kydi like five months before this
all this happen. Titi is Okay, Laura Smith, which is
my girlfriend at the time. Her brother was locked up
and her brother best friend was Katie Harville. Me and
(05:29):
her brother became real cool. Like my brother in law.
He let me know one day, man, my god cat
get out. Now, don't you look out for him? Kydie
got out. I'll take him shopping. I'll take him. My
mond under my wing started to hang with me all
the time. You know, we become best of friends. I
felt that he really was a genuine guy. Man, I
just did I don't know. I don't know how I
got sold to see And that's what really the problem.
(05:51):
My brother got me now because my brother didn't even
know him. My brother just called himself having his back
because he's my guy. So now he finds stuff in
prison a hundred ten years now, we're trying to help
my guy. We turned out to be a scumbat, you know,
I mean, for lack of a better term, right, I'm
sure you probably feel some, you know, a degree of
guilt for even putting those two together. But your brother
(06:13):
did what he did, and at least he came forward
instead of lying about you like Kaitie did. Now there's
one more thing to cover, which bears heavily on this case.
Kaitie is about five eight look and looks nothing like
you and Romeo, who are both over six ft tall,
and let's face it, you share a mother, your family.
You guys look similar. We do. We get a lot
(06:34):
even to this dayca were both bowed now, so we
really get it now. And this is important because it
really gums up the identification process in this case, because
you have people identifying you in your brother Romeo's role
on the passenger side of the car, and then Kiti
and perhaps the police tried to create and capitalize on
some confusion around there being two shooters, one short, one
(06:57):
tall on which side of a car. So let's get
to that. The night of October three three, you were
hosting a party at your home in India. Opus now
tell us how the rest of the night played out,
and Richard, feel free to jump in whatever you want.
So October three, I thought a party in Annapolis. Nice party,
big party, not the way you're smoking, drinking and hanging
party of miss party. During the party, my brother and
(07:22):
Harveil they left went to the club and it was
like thirty four or five minutes they go to Anderson, Indiana.
Altercation occurred outside of the club. I later found out
it was in one of my cars. At the time.
I had like six cars. I'm ready in the cars.
The altercation occurred with Kayati and the victim Mr McCleod
soon occurred and roam your assistant in the student. It
(07:44):
had to do with a card jack and that's the
story Cordie made up. I later found out through my
brother and again again I had several cars and I
wouldn't need to, you know, be involved in like that.
But they had this incident. They agreed not to tell
me about it because I'll be upset. I absolutely nothing
about this case. So there was a shooting at a
(08:04):
club called the Oasis and Anderson, Indiana. There were two
shooters ran up on a car that was parked in
the parking lot outside of the Oasis, and one shooter
was a shorter person and he was up on the
driver's side and there was a taller suspect on the
passenger side. The occupants of the vehicle were A Marvin
(08:26):
McLeod who was in the driver's seat, Damon Nunn who
was in the passenger seat, and then Jail Barkley who
was in the back seat. So Mr McLeod unfortunately and
tragically was shot and died and Mr Nunn was shot,
but he survived and end up being a witness in
this case, so there was no suspect. Originally, this went
(08:46):
on for several months with no suspect. There was some
heat from the Double A c P and other organizations,
and there's some pressure to solve the case. So fast
forward in February, Walt he was actually at the Oasis
and there was someone an employee of Oasis, who said, oh,
that person you know looks familiar. They thought that maybe
(09:07):
he might have been one of the people involved. Now,
that person never testified a trial, never identify him or anything.
That just that's what got their attention. And obviously it'd
be pretty logical to show up at the place where
you did the shooting in the same car, no less,
in the same car, in the same car some there
playing poo and here comes to officers as step. So
(09:30):
I was identified as being someone who's evolving a suit
in October, which we wouldn't come out to the station
for a lineup. So at this point we've already established
that you knew nothing about this crime, but you did
something that later really seemed to get under the skin
of Detective Rodney Cummings. You gave him an alias James
Benneman in order to avoid the war that I mentioned
(09:51):
earlier out of St. Louis from marijuana possession. So continue,
you go down to the station for this lineup, right.
I go to the station. They put me in a
room by myself. There's a one way mirror glass. He
come back in the area. He tells me I was identified,
possible and possible. They don't. I'm not arrested, but they
(10:11):
put me in the jail suit like four or five
minutes later, just time to put me in a full
lineup with five people. This time me and five people,
because the witness knew four of the other people it
was in the lineup. The people that's identified, it's inport reports.
So the second lineup was basically pointless. It's almost as
suggestive as the one man show up, if that's even possible.
(10:32):
So nonetheless, the witness from the backseat, Jill Barkley, identified
you as the taller passenger side shooter, which kind of
makes sense since you look like your own half brother.
But then you were released. Maybe they kind of knew
that their lineup was overly suggested. I don't know, I mean,
why were you released at that time that cart would
(10:54):
me still be an adamant that it wasn't me willing
to submit to a polygraph. Okay, all cell phone numbers,
I gave my page you none. I gave my address
to well, I'm located at all that. So he told
me he was willing to let me go this on Friday,
he's willn't let me go. Come back money when he
gets some more witnesses. That he put me in more lineups,
had me agree to come back Monday. When I agree,
(11:16):
I agree. But however, I gave you it is name
because I had warrant by the St. Louis had marijuana
on the highway, So I gave him a fake name
and they ran my princes. I wasn't going nowhere. So
by Monday you knew I was because you went on
ran the prints. You knew I was. No. You know
I had to warrant. Yeah, you're not who you say
you were. So Monday I call him, I said, I
(11:37):
ain't got translation, can you come pick me up. I
don't worry about what being touch Two day they came,
kicked the door into my girlfriend house, arrested me, did
another lineup. They tried to do an official lineup, and
they do a second lineup. This one didn't involve people
that she knew, but by that time, the it's ridiculous
because she obviously know who who she picked out originally,
(11:59):
and then they need to charge Walter with the murder.
But Walter was at a party in Indianapolis, and he
had sixteen al of my witnesses, and you had, let's
face it, you had no clue about what happened to Anderson.
But your brother, who was locked up in Arizona unrelated charge,
had found out that you were now in jail for
a murder in which he played a role, and he
(12:21):
eventually officially confessed before you went to trial. Unfortunately, that
confession was never heard by your jury. But could you
tell us about when you first found out about your
brother's involvement. When I first got locked up, I was
in there maybe two weeks. No idea why I'm here.
This sounds crazy. I know I haven't done that much
wrong in the world. I know, I love you things.
(12:41):
But so Romeo calls my girlfriends, my daughter's mother, when
she told about locked up for murder. He liked for murder, like, yeah,
they say he saw somebody Anderson you're like, you recognize,
like he's playing my lawyer. Eythy. Now my Laury comes
of visibly, big old smile on his face. I know
(13:04):
what it thinks you. I said, what it was your
brother and our veil because my brother's in Arizona locked up.
I know, I've been on the phonower tomorrow morning. Okay,
so this is and maybe March, but he doesn't officially
come forward until December, which is after you were re
indicted and about to go to trial. And let's be clear,
(13:25):
Romeo gave that confession against his own self interest. He
ended up with a hundred and ten years sentence. So
I mean, talk about it's going against your own self interest.
But it finally made sense of your misidentification because, like
we said, you too are half brothers, and you do
look alike. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. At
this point, all you officially had in your defense which
(13:46):
was enough to drop the charges was sixteen alibi witnesses
placing you in Indianapolis, the fact that your identification was
overly suggestive, and then Jill Barkley, the backseat passenger witness,
had spotted kydie Hartveld in Indianapolis and reported it the
Courts of Reports. Toddy was in a Value City one
day in Indianapolis and the chick that was in the
(14:07):
back seat of the car when the suit happened. Seeing
they locked eyes on each other and she watched him
as he walked out and she like, that's the guy.
So this is in her in the report. She mentioned
that because when they gave a lineup, She's like, that's
the guy right there in the Value City. That's you know,
that's the shooter. That's the suit that was on the
driver side of the car. Right So Jill Barclay's identification
(14:27):
of Kiti happened in March of ninety four, along with
two other witnesses, Jackie Barclay and Latania Young. Latania had
at one point I did Walter as a driver's side shooter,
but in March of ninety four she was positive it
was Kiti. So maybe Latania impeaches herself, but Jackie and
Jill have been pretty consistent. So dislikely played heavily into
(14:50):
your charges being dropped by the prosecutor at the time,
Bill Lawler. So then you were extradited to St. Louis
for the marijuana possession warrant Rodney Cummings and his partner
Steve Navier. They did not agree with this decision to
drop the charges. One will let it go. He didn't
want to let it go to him to this day.
You think I got away to him, I got away
with murder. I don't know how I got away this
(15:13):
nine years for one but two out how to do
it at all. His beef with me was that I
deceived him with the name. He felt that I played him.
This is where that, this is where to use. He said,
you played me, but fake name or not. The prosecutor
was simply following the evidence, not some personal vendetta. He
was doing his job. In other words, So while Cummings
(15:35):
continued to investigate the case, Walter remained on his mind. Now,
despite this positive idea, Kiti didn't get picked up until
June of ninety four, an unrelated burglary charge and an
interview that was not even discovered until civil litigation. Kiti
denied being involved and gave a bogus alibi. Now, perhaps
after looking into that, Cummings brought Kity in for a
(15:56):
videotaped live lineup in September ninety four, and once again
and he was positively ideed as the driver's side shooter
by the three witnesses. Now Katie decided to save himself,
and despite the conflict between Walter's height and that of
the driver's side shooters description, Kittie Harvell, who stood only
five eight, said that it wasn't him who was the
(16:18):
shorter driver's side shooter, but it was Walter, who is
not five eight but again over six ft tall. Hard
to make that mistake and snitched on Romeo as the
tallest shooter on the passengers side. But now with this
statement and your charges being dropped, there was a dynamic
created between the then prosecutor Bill Lawler and Detective Cummings.
(16:39):
And Roddy Cummings happened to be a lawyer. He had
gone to night school while he was a police officer
to become a lawyer, and he took it upon himself
to run for the prosecutor's office. It's election season, it's
the fall of ninety four, and lo and behold, he wins.
(17:00):
Detective Cummings now becomes Prosecutor Cummings. And what does Prosecutor
Cummings do? He turns around and reindites Walter for the
charges that the prior prosecutor dismissed, so now we have
the detective becoming the prosecutor to prosecute a case where
he was once the detective. The Pacers Foundation is a
(17:32):
proud supporter of this episode of rawful Conviction and of
the Last Mile organization, which provides business and tech training
to help incarcerated individuals successfully and permanently re enter the workforce.
The Pacers Foundation is committed to improving the lives of
Hoosiers across Indiana, supporting organizations that are dedicated primarily to
helping young people and students. For more information on the
(17:54):
work of the Pacers Foundation or the Last Bile Program,
visit Pacers Foundation dot org or the Last Smile dot org.
When Cummings reindites Walter, it's on the theory that the
two shooters are Walter and his brother Romeo Lee, and
(18:18):
Kaytie was a witness to all this. Part of the problem, though,
is that the state witnesses, some of whom identified Walter
is one of the possible shooters, had identified Kayde Harvel
as the shooter, and that was something that would have
completely messed up debt theory. So what happens is they
go to trial and Mark Mader in the original trial
(18:39):
attorney suspected that he was not being given all the
police reports, and he did a motion to get the
police reports and a second motion reconsider a motion for
in camera inspection of the prosecutor's file to see if
there were some police reports that he wasn't getting well.
The judge denied it, and Walter went to trial without
knowing that the state's witnesses had identified Kaydie Harvel, another
(19:04):
state's witness, as one of the shooters. But what further
makes it absolutely impossible to Walter was was one of
the shooters was the fact that during this prosecution, before
he went to trial, Romeo, his half brother, finally came
forward and admitted that he was the second shooter, that
he and Kaide did the shooting. So we have our
(19:24):
two shooters now. That makes all the sense in the world.
Because the physical descriptions in this case were that a
shorter gentleman was on the driver's side and a taller
gentleman was on the passenger side. Well, Walter and Romeo
are both tall and they look alike. Kaydie Harvell is short.
So rather than go on what was the truth? And
(19:45):
the truth is that Romeo lead to the shooting on
the passenger side and Kadi did the shooting on the
driver's side instead. The theory at Walter's trial was that
Walter did it with Romeo and Kaide was just a witness. Yeah,
this one with instructions. Right. So you have this shooter,
Romeo admitting, which is highly unusual before the trial for
(20:09):
Walter's trial, that he did it, and he not only
said that Kitty was the other shooter, but that Walter
wasn't there. He's a guy with firsthand knowledge and a
lot of everything to lose, right, And unfortunately, the jury
never heard the Romeo Lee confession because Maynard couldn't figure
out how to get into evidence. The confession never came in.
So one of the single most important piece of evidence
(20:32):
in this whole freaking case, which was later used to
convict Romeo, that jury never even heard it. It's insane,
let's face it. And in case this wasn't enough, the
idea that this judge didn't feel that there was any
need for the defense to see the evidence from the
police files. Richard, help you out, well, this is another
(20:53):
unique thing about this case, unique to Indiana. Under Indiana law,
the Indiana Supreme Corps actually ruled this and it still
exists today. Police reports are considered work product and they
do not have to be tendered by the state to
the defense. Now you have to ask, well, they still
(21:13):
have to comply with the United States Constitution, they have
to comply with Brady, So how do they how do
they do that? Well, I took several depositions in this
case as part of the civil matter, and I asked
several prosecutors, and none of them had a good answer
for how that happens. I mean, how do you tender
exculpatory material that's in a police report without tendering the
police report. So that's another aspect of all this is
(21:37):
that they were withheld under the fig leaf that this
was work product, which actually had some sort of legal
fig leaf to cover it. Now, what's interesting is that
we know from later on that the withheld evidence was
the viewing of the witnesses of Harvell as the other shooter.
(21:58):
So this was a videotape. Well, under any in the law,
a videotape cannot be considered work product, but police reports ken.
So the police reports that were exculpatory were tendered to
the prosecutors. They weren't Cummings because Cummings had to recuse himself.
But the trial prosecutors had the police reports, they had
the exculpatory evidence, but they didn't have the videotape. And
(22:21):
why was that Well, because back in election season, in
September of before Walter was reindicted, Cummings took the videotape
out of evidence, signed it out of evidence and it
was returned back to the police locker back and guess
(22:41):
what the date was that that was returned back into
the evidence locker. It was the exact same afternoon that
the judge denied the in camera inspection of the file.
The prosecutors would not have had the fig leaf of
not giving over the lineup video. They did have the
fig leaf of not giving over the police reports. So
(23:03):
under this work product rule, they were covered from sharing
the police reports about Kittie being identified as the driver's
side shooter. But the videotape of that identification procedure, which
would fall under non work product evidence, was technically not
hidden because Cummings, who had recused himself, had taken it
out of the evidence locker. So now two of the
(23:25):
most important critical piece of evidence in this case that
point to who actually committed this crime. We're out of play.
So Walter was charged with the murder as well as
attempted carjacking and robbery. You know, those other two charges
related to the motive that Kittie Harvell had invented, A
motive that made no sense considering that Walter owned six
(23:46):
or seven cars already and had more than enough money
to buy whatever he wanted. Now, David Puckett and Paula
Mariice Roberts were the prosecutors in this case, and Walter
was represented by Mark Maynard. So I'm almost afraid to
ask what upened at the trial. At the trial, the
state presented the eyewitness testimony, so the incredibly suggestive I
witness identification came in against Walter. Kaid testified against Walter,
(24:10):
and unfortunately the jury never heard the Romeo Lee confession,
even though he came forward a couple of months before
the trial. Cummings indicted Romeo for the murder, but that
happened right before Walter's trial, and when they tried to
call Romeo as a witness, he took the fifth and
the confession never came into evidence. Now, that would have
(24:31):
been incredibly helpful to Walter as well, for the jury
to know that his brother, who looks like him and
everyone said looks like him, confessed to doing it with Kaide,
the state's witness. And of course at trial, the jury
also didn't know that Kaydie Harboll had been identified by
the other state's witnesses as one of the shooters. So
the jury heard Kadi identify Walter as the driver's side
(24:53):
shooter and Romeo as the passenger's side shooter, but then
the rest of the state's witnesses identified Walter as the
passengers side shooter because he looks like Romeo. And it's
never pointed out the jury that Kitty was identified as
a driver's side shooter because the prosecution kept that to themselves.
It's too bad the evidence that would have exposed the
lies and made it all make sense, all of it
(25:13):
was either hidden or not admitted as evidence. No. Now,
something happened outside of the trial that I need to
mention here. Walter's brother, Lamont, who we haven't really talked about.
On October three, he was at the party and Kittie
pulled him into the situation. In his statement to Cummings,
so as soon as Lamont landed to testify on Walter's behalf,
(25:36):
Lamont was arrested. He never had to testify against Walter,
but he was coerced into a plea bargain corroborating Kitie's statement.
So this was not part of trial, but it kept
his alibi testimony out of trial. What about the other
alibi witnesses? So Walter presented several alibi witnesses, you know,
but this is not something where you know, he's on
(25:58):
on video, but he is at a party with you know, friends,
and one of the witnesses they did sort of trip
her up in that she testified she took a flight
and she was confused about which airline she took, and
there was some impeachment about that. One of the other
reasons why I believe that Walter was convicted and why
they didn't believe the alibi was because one of the
(26:20):
alibi witnesses, a woman by the name of Linda Phelps,
you know, happened to be friends with Kaydie Harvel and
before trial she came off of her statement that Walter
was at at this party, which undercut his alibi defense. Well,
the problem is there was a police report that was
withheld from evidence that indicated that before she flipped, Kaid
(26:42):
had a conversation with her, which then miraculously then she
comes off of her alibi. So really anything like that
that can sort of chip away at an alibi when
you're staring at five eye witnesses, you know, and no,
no confession that was introduced, no evidence the eye witnesses
were identifying the other states witnessed Kittie r L And
(27:05):
it's hard for a jury to overcome that. Ultimately, Walter
was convicted by the jury of murder, attempted murder, attempted carjacking,
and attempted robbery in December twenty one, sentenced about a
month later on January seventy six to a hundred and
ten years in prison. So a life sentence. Yeah, that
was wow. Jeez. Let's go to the verdict first, then
(27:30):
we go to citizen because both of them was really painful.
So they found me guilty. I'm I'm I'm living, to
say the least, very perplexed about not only all the
money I spent in it, not only the fact that
you're innocent, you know, it's it's the fact that, like
where is justice sentizens Like thirty days later, citizen came up.
I didn't go. You just found me good to someone.
(27:52):
I don't want to hear nothing else I got to say, so,
they said. My lawyer to the deal. He said, I
need you to be in court for I can make
this motion most to just miss the verdict, and a'most
for the judge to step aside. After that, if you
decided to leave, find you let the judge you know
you want to leave, It's okay, I agree to that.
I go over there, I walk in. The judge makes
(28:12):
it loves before the post. Citizen. Is anything you'd like
to say, Mr County, Yes I would, Johnny, I would
like to let you the court that prosecy right there,
my lawyer, my prime Ustcar, everybody here. No, I'm not
guilty this crime, I said. I don't care. It doesn't
matter how much time you give me. I'm a spend
(28:33):
every day of it proved minuses. I said, this time,
I don't want to hear the verdict. I'd like to
go back to myself. Whatever time you're gonna give me,
you're gonna give me, I don't care if you gave
me sixty or you gave me hunt the ten. And
I'm not good for none of it. In sixteen years
(29:03):
of being in prison, sixteen and a half years for
me that he lived the lifestyle I lived in all that.
I didn't have no one fight in sixteen half years here,
not one on My beef is not with no inmate,
my beef with the system. I did my whole time
law line, berries, digging, in researching cases. Man was my
(29:23):
second home. I didn't get into the prison politics and
the things that going on in prison, with the games
and the playing cars and this shoe dice and and
smoke sick wrests time. But when they stopped smoking cigarettes
in there, they gave us heads up that they're gonna quit.
And the August they told January first, no more cigarettes
(29:44):
in Mexican City Prison nine. When they cut out the cigarettes,
I saw the opportunity that we got the black market.
What I do. I took a whole bunch of cartons stash.
I dig holes everywhere. I had hold, dug all around
the prison. Why hold I had used to work in
the kitchen, I had it. I had cards all in
the ceiling up in the man. I stasped all the
(30:05):
way to January and look I didn't break him out
of January. I didn't break up my tolight April mate.
But when I broke him out, WHOA, we talked about
a hundred dolls of pack of cigarettes. You talk five
for one cigarette. They take the one cigarette down and
break it down in five cigarettes two dollars apiece. So
that's what that's really what I got. The bulk of
my money for my attorney fees, I paid for like
(30:26):
four attorneys in there. But the bulk of my attorney
fees came from tobacco sales. Ain't lots of tobacco sales,
So tobacco sales made up to walter Gallery defense fund.
But you also did a lot of your appeals on
your own pro say, And it's crazy, though not unbelievable
in our system, but still crazy that with how all
(30:47):
of the evidence had come out during your brother's trial,
even then, it's still took another sixteen years. The Romeoly
trial was the unraveling of Walter's conviction. Ultimately, although it
took a long time, the state put on a case
against Romeo Lee heavily reliant on his confession. And remember
that confession was that Kaide and Romeo did the did
(31:10):
the shooting. But you know, they presented the same evidence
that they presented against Walter, and that's with the eyewitnesses
putting Walter as the passenger side shooter, even though romeo
confession was that he was on the passenger side, So
there was some something for him to argue, at least
at that trial. But it was during that trial that
during the cross examination of Steve Napier, they learned that
(31:34):
Kaydie Harvel was identified by these states witnesses as the
other shooter. So it wasn't enough to you know, cause
a knock guilty and Romeo's trial, but the attorney for
Romeo Lee did give that evidence to Mark Maynard. I
should also note that the lineups Natalie consisted of three
of the state's witnesses identifying Kaydie Harvel as the shooter.
(31:57):
But Damon Nunn, who was the attempt murder victim and
was an eyewitness who identified Walter as one of the shooters,
um when he was shown the lineups with Kaydie Harvell,
he identified a filler in that lineup as one of
the shooters. So obviously that's going to destroy Nun's credibility
or reliability as well. When he identifies a Filler as
(32:18):
one of the shooters. Romeo's lawyer recovered his evidence. It
turned it over to recipes to Saron Clark. A matter
of fact, she didn't have to do that because she
had been watching my whole trial or my lawyers were
really cool, so she knew very much about the case.
So she's like, wait a minute, Mark never had this.
This is gonna help mysticality. So now Romeo Lee's attorney
(32:39):
gives Mark Maynard these withheld police reports. Mark Maynard had
been representing Walter and direct appeal as well. He tried
to get this into the record on direct appeal. That
didn't work. My lawyer, he says it this pre course
and trying to mend my pew. Now, mind you end
appeal here, lest that the prosecutor withheld the sculptor evidence
here leaves this without having a proof. Now he got
(33:02):
the proof, mind you, When he first got the proof,
he said on them for two weeks because he dealing
it with his father's death, so he weren't doing nothing.
And I understood that. You know, he had to do
with father's death and all that. So here goes our time.
Now when you send it up to the courts as
you send it up, the decisions coming down already denied,
(33:22):
and the decision you deny it because you said that
he's a legend that this happened, but he had no
proof of it. But the proof is on your desk now,
but you are denied it. The court said, no, you're
gonna have to a post conviction. So Walter is left
alone here. He has to file a pro se post
conviction petition saying that these Brady materials should give him
(33:44):
a new trial, and he was appointed a new council
public defender named Sharon Faye. Now you would think that
when the original judge would hear about all these shenanigans,
Walter would have been immediately given a new trial and
never prosecuted again. But no, it took six years and
an evidentry hearing before the judge finally denied the post
(34:06):
conviction petition. And then you would think an appellate court
would step in and say, well, that's wrong, that didn't happen.
Indiana Supreme Court denied. We'll go to federal court. Federal
courts have to take this seriously, right, Nope, pro sed
federal habeas corpus petition denied. If you don't have a degree,
they don't honor up nobody like you and me just
(34:26):
coming there and just know all a lot to them,
like it's a slap in the face for was it
with the school all them years? Bus they but to
get the degree? You're gonna come here reciting all the
same thing. They know they're gonna honor you know. As
one of our guest host, Patrick Presley likes to say,
pro say gets no play. They will rarely, not never,
but rarely ever gave you the time of day if
(34:47):
you don't have a lawyer. So how does this turn around?
What happened next? His last shot is his pro say
attempt to get this overturned in the Seventh Circuit, And
thankfully the Seventh Circuit appointed him counsel from a big
law firm, and this attorney was able to convince the
Seventh Circuit that he received an unfair trial. On the
(35:08):
Seventh Circuit reversed his conviction after Walter did about sixteen
years wrongfully in prison. It never ceases to amaze me
that the defendant could present such clear Brady violations exculpatory
materials that completely destroy the state's case at trial. And
prove their claims of actual innocence along with ineffective assistance
of council claims. I mean Mark Maynard even told Walter
(35:29):
to pursue that claim since he was in fact ineffective
at getting that confession and the identifications of Katie as
the driver's side shooter into court. So with that evidence,
no reasonable juror would have convicted Walter. Yet every court
along the way bent over backwards, fell over themselves to
ignore this wrongful conviction in favor of I can only
(35:49):
guess here the finality of judgment and the sacrosag jury
verdict not to mention covering for their colleagues in the
prosecutor's office. And in fact, Cummings is currently seeking a
seventh term and running unopposed in I don't know what
could be done about that, but it really is sickening.
(36:11):
So sixteen years it took for a court to finally
accept the evidence that they used to convict his brother
Romeo in another trial that was shortly after his own.
It's just disgusting, let's face it, there's no other word
for it. But this ruling came down in May, and
your lawyer at that time was Andrew Curitas. Remember Richard
is Walter's civil attorney. But Walter tell us, what do
(36:35):
you remember about that moment when you got the news. Oh,
this is one of the best days in my life.
Right here, I get a legal male may fil down
order come down. You got is to give him a
new trial or release him. Now, I think I'm gonna
go home any days, but they're still playing hardball. I'm in, honey.
I mean, I'm counting down days. Every every day I'm
(36:55):
watup thinking for the common Dame. Any day. Now, I
think they're gonna say, you know what, let him go
on a hunted and twentieth day. I got to be
going home this morning. I wouldn't gave my phone to
my neighbor. I gave all my all my commissary way
and gave anything design a twenty day. I ain't the trial.
I asked my neighbor back to my let me see
(37:15):
my phone, like quick call the lawyer. He said, be patient,
I work with and talk to him right now if
we file the targets and said they're gonna take his trial.
He said he talked to the prosecutor and asked the prosecutor,
what did you see in this case that you said,
I didn't see nothing. That's the problem. They just handled
the case, and I didn't want to just drop it.
So the Madison County prosecutor was Rodney Cummings. When this
(37:37):
thing was reversed and sent back to the lower court
for a new trial, the judge, you know, ordered that
a new prosecutor's office should look at it, and so
an independent prosecutor named Barry Brown from a different county
looked at this and he was the one who finally
decided to drop the charges. And I will say that
(37:58):
Rodney Cummings was quoted as saying at the time that
Mr Brown didn't have the guts to retry Walter whoa
the guts right after the I don't even know how
to dignify that with words. After the evidence that they
had at the time of trial completely shredded this guy's theory,
he's still holding onto it almost three decades later. You know,
(38:22):
if it's not too late, I really wish somebody would
run against him. You could hit him over the head
with his own words all the way into the prosecutor's
office this fall. But we're running out of time. The
citizens of Madison County really do deserve better. Walter certainly
did so Brown dismissed the charges in January. I remember
January thirteen, two times twelve, like I remember like it
(38:44):
was yesterday. I got that phone call from Richard let
me know all Chares dismissed. We ready to go with
the loss, and he found my lawsuit the very next day.
He had already been pairing for the lawsuit because he
was the one laurder that was willing to take my
case without it being all the way resolved. He bled
the case. So thanks to Richard, the civil suit was
filed immediately, But of course these things are rarely resolved immediately.
(39:06):
At the time, Indiana didn't even have a compensation statute.
Now now they do, and there's something not so good
about it because it forces innocent men and women to
waive their right to civil litigation if they accept the compensation.
To me, this just adds insult to injury, and I
hope that it's corrected soon, along with that ridiculous work
product rule, which we should just call call it legalized
(39:30):
or legitimized Brady violations. I believe there's a movement on
both sides of those issues that we fully support that
So as far as Walters civil suit is concerned, the U. S.
District Court denied it, but in May the Seventh Circuits
stepped up again and reinstated the lawsuits. So in April
Walter settled his lawsuit. But let's face it, there's no
(39:51):
amount of money that would ever make up for the
lost time with loved ones. First, I want to say,
I think it's very unfair that he's prosecutor uh and
detectives are able to pull something like this off and
get away with just giving a little bit of money
and it's over, you know. I mean, like you get
some years like my I would imprison the new father.
(40:13):
My oldest was number three years old. I came by
to grandfather. I can't get them the years back. I
dontay how much money you getting there, can't get them back, kids, graduations,
their birthdays. I can't. I can't get that back there.
It actually destroyed my ability to be a really affective father.
Their minds are made up already in life with life
means to them. I don't even know what to say.
(40:36):
I mean, I can only imagine through the lens of
my relationship with my own kids, and it just breaks
my heart. What about your brothers. I mean, Romeo is
still inside. I'm sure you'll probably take this opportunity to
visit them. But what about Lamont, the brother that they
coerced into a plea that corroborated Kitie statement. Do you
think you'd be able to put that behind you and reconnect?
(40:58):
Listen my fluid the test file for me and the
rest of him on the spot and said that Katie
said he's involved and just had a charge on him.
He said in the jail when they found me guilty,
and I'm no one with the money now, so he
don't have a lawyer in the no money. He didn't
want to take the chance the game police bargain of
five years probation to say that what Katie said was correct,
(41:21):
that he was there and he watched it. He didn't
have test fied to this because I already convicted. I'm
already gone. Matter of fact, nobody in the family has
seen her from m since then, because it was all
piste off of him for doing that, like why would
you do that? It's almost like you coroberating Katie story.
But I understood his part. I haven't been able to
talk to him and let him know dude, listen, I'm
(41:42):
not mad at you. I understood that's a big chance
to take right there, and he took the police bargain
that he Since nobody in the family seen him, we
don't know where he at. Again, I just reaching out
to leave you. No, I wasn't mad at gave up
on reaching out because I don't want to think I
was reaching out trying to look for you or nothing.
You know what I mean, Like it ain't it ain't
that serious. I'm just havy to be home. Wow. So
(42:04):
Lamont or if anyone knows Lamont, please let him know.
Make the most out of the time you both have left.
We're gonna have Walter socials linked in the bio reach
out to him. Walter also has a podcast that will
link to and with that we're going to go to
closing arguments. This is of course a part of the
show where I thank you both for joining us and
sharing your story. And now I'm going to turn my
(42:25):
microphone off, kick back in my chair and just listen
to anything you feel is left to be said. Richard,
let's start with you and Walter take us on home.
So there's been a lot of talk about you know,
Rodney Cummings, and people may have the impression that, well,
this is sort of a one bad apple situation. But
(42:46):
the real problem here is that time and again there
were numerous people involved in the in the judicial system
who could have stopped this. From the judge initially who
could have forced the review of the prosecutor's file so
that the withholding wouldn't have happened in the first place,
(43:08):
to the trial prosecutors going along with this withholding, to
the trial judge again once they learned about this withholding
not correcting this wrong. To the Indiana appellate courts who
could have stopped this, To the Indiana Supreme Court who
could have stopped this. The federal Havius Corpus judge could
have stopped this. We shouldn't have to rely on the
(43:34):
second highest court in in in the land of Federal
court to right these wrongs. Uh. These should be corrected
immediately in the lower courts, but they're not, unfortunately, and
in Indiana, not only in Walter's case, but in in
in other Indiana cases. Time and again, these wrongs are
(43:55):
not corrected, UH in a timely manner. The people who
come as crossed these wrong for convictions need to step
up and not just allow it to happen, and they
need to do it quickly to make sure it gets
done in a timely matter, not sixteen years later. I
do appreciate you all give me the opportunity now I
feel that. And no amount of money they give me,
(44:17):
no amount of money they gave me, no mount of
money to give me form me on now. It's gonna
take back all the years this spunk kids life. That's
the biggest thing for me. My kids, like, uh, anything
they do for me now, it's gonna be for my
baby securing their futures, you know what I mean. Make
sure they got the right account set up, put insurances
on us if something happened, make sure I got insurance.
(44:37):
So make sure my family don't have to be out
there with a bucket on the corner trying to bury me.
If you know when I when I passed, I went out.
If I passed, I'm gonna pass someday, but when I do,
to make sure they ain't gotta struggle in and try
to go and go fund me. I didn't went through
all this in that boxing there to get out and
die and can't be buried out here. You know what
(44:58):
I mean. I know what it is to appreciate. I
wake up appreciate life. I wake up appreciate my freedom.
I really do. I wake up appreciate everything about my freedom.
And I'm free. I'm still free. I don't care if
I ain't got it right now. I got to dine
in my pocket. I am free. Thank you for listening
(45:21):
to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team
Connor Hall, Jeff Claver, and Kevin Wardis, with research by
Lila 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 wrong Conviction, as
(45:43):
well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms.
You can also follow me on both TikTok and Instagram
at It's Jason flom Raleful Conviction is the production of
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number
one one on
On October three, Walter Goudy, through a party at his
Indianapolis home, his half brother Romeo Lee, and their shorter
friend Kydie Harvell, drove one of Walter's cars to an
after hours club in Anderson, Indiana. After an altercation outside,
Romeo approached a car on the passenger side and Kiti
was on the driver's side. The driver was fatally shot
(00:25):
and a passenger was wounded. Witnesses described the driver's side
shooter as shorter than the other. Months later, Walter Goudy
was put the same after hours club in the same
car and picked up by Detective Rodney Cummings, who put
him into a one man show up where Walter was
mistaken for the passenger side shooter his half brother Romeo.
Despite sixteen alibi witnesses, Walter was charged with the murder,
(00:49):
but between Walter's overly suggestive I d and his strong alibi,
the charges were dropped, which did not sit well with
Detective Cummings. When Kaytie Harvell was later i deed in
a live lineup by three witnesses as the driver's side shooter,
he told Cummings that Walter was the driver's side shooter,
not him. While placing Romeo on the passenger's side. Detective
(01:10):
Cummings ran for District Attorney one and reindicted Walter. Despite
Romeo's confession naming Kiti and himself, the state still forged
ahead with a prosecution based on conflicting witnesses. Almost all
misidentified Walter as his half brother on the passenger's side,
except Kaiti, who placed Walter in his place on the
(01:32):
driver's side. Walter was sentenced to one hundred and ten
years in prison. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
(01:54):
wrongful Conviction today's episode. This is almost like the cartoon
of the Ping Pong match, where your head just going
back and forth. You're like, wait, what what Like you
just got gonna believe the way this case unfolded and
how the system, I'm gonna be generous to say, made
mistake after mistake and then compounded their mistakes, and then
even when the mistakes were corrected, they made sure to
(02:16):
correct the correction to make sure the mistakes. I mean,
it's I'm at a loss for words on this one,
I gotta tell you, but we're here with the man
who survived this ordeal, Walter Gaudy Walter I'm so sorry
you're here because of why you're here, but I'm really
honored that you're here to tell your story. Appreciate, appreciate.
And with him is his civil attorney Richard Dvorak. Richard,
(02:38):
it's your first time on the show, and I certainly
hope it's not your last. And I know you've done
great work on this case in particular, and I'm really
really delighted to have you on the show. Thank you
for the invitation. I appreciate it. So this is an
Indiana story, which we're hearing more and more about lately,
as more wrongful convictions and prosecutors conducted police corruption are
(02:59):
being wreck ignized, not only in Indiana but all over
the country. But before we get into how that affects
your case, Walter, I want to go back to before
all of that happened. Now, you were born in Chicago,
but you grew up out West. Is that right? Okay?
I grew up in Los Angeles, myself and my three symbtoms.
My mom's up and moved moved away from my father's.
(03:21):
But I grew up in Los Angeles doing the heyday
of the gang banging and the drugs. You know, I mean,
that's all we had to do to get by. You
mentioned your siblings. Now two of them, Lamont and Romeo,
were deeply affected by this incident. Romeo, of course, was
directly involved. Can you tell us about him, never smoked
a joint nothing in his life, He tried it, stuff
(03:41):
on that. He's a real cool guy. He really loyal,
but he gets angry really quick. Romeo is the one
that you go get with us drama. They want to
fight out here, We're going to get Romeo. Growing up,
we both took marcel arts, both took boxing. We both
started gang banging out there. No father figure are male
figures consists of the older guys in the streets. We
(04:03):
didn't had the people that tells you you could be somebody.
And the guys doing well out there worth selling drugs
exactly exactly. We see the guy with the big Cadillac
h he always got the money, you got the jury,
got the girls slock here. We want to be like that.
Me being the oldest I felt and coming upon me
to get out there and make something for my siblings.
You know what I mean. I saw setting drugs really young,
(04:24):
like thirteen years old. So I'll get a hold to Indiana.
I say what, I'll turn one. A friend of mine
was out there and tell me, uh, how much the
drugs is going for? You know? So I came out
there and visit and found out, Yeah, yeah, it's more
expensive Indiana than they are in California. So you saw
this as an opportunity and started taking the risk. And
(04:45):
you know, there was a lot of risk, let's face it,
of transporting the drugs from California to Indiana in order
to reap the reward of a higher profit margin. And
despite if you arrest including one in St. Louis from
marijuana possession, that had an effect. As it turns out,
on this case, the risk had paid off, at least temporarily.
You made a lot of money, owned the home, had
multiple cars, and we're investing in legitimate businesses. You had
(05:08):
your own nightclub. But before we go any further, can
you tell us a little bit about this one character
who you met in Indiana with the interesting name Kydie Harvell.
I don't had new Kydi like five months before this
all this happen. Titi is Okay, Laura Smith, which is
my girlfriend at the time. Her brother was locked up
and her brother best friend was Katie Harville. Me and
(05:29):
her brother became real cool. Like my brother in law.
He let me know one day, man, my god cat
get out. Now, don't you look out for him? Kydie
got out. I'll take him shopping. I'll take him. My
mond under my wing started to hang with me all
the time. You know, we become best of friends. I
felt that he really was a genuine guy. Man, I
just did I don't know. I don't know how I
got sold to see And that's what really the problem.
(05:51):
My brother got me now because my brother didn't even
know him. My brother just called himself having his back
because he's my guy. So now he finds stuff in
prison a hundred ten years now, we're trying to help
my guy. We turned out to be a scumbat, you know,
I mean, for lack of a better term, right, I'm
sure you probably feel some, you know, a degree of
guilt for even putting those two together. But your brother
(06:13):
did what he did, and at least he came forward
instead of lying about you like Kaitie did. Now there's
one more thing to cover, which bears heavily on this case.
Kaitie is about five eight look and looks nothing like
you and Romeo, who are both over six ft tall,
and let's face it, you share a mother, your family.
You guys look similar. We do. We get a lot
(06:34):
even to this dayca were both bowed now, so we
really get it now. And this is important because it
really gums up the identification process in this case, because
you have people identifying you in your brother Romeo's role
on the passenger side of the car, and then Kiti
and perhaps the police tried to create and capitalize on
some confusion around there being two shooters, one short, one
(06:57):
tall on which side of a car. So let's get
to that. The night of October three three, you were
hosting a party at your home in India. Opus now
tell us how the rest of the night played out,
and Richard, feel free to jump in whatever you want.
So October three, I thought a party in Annapolis. Nice party,
big party, not the way you're smoking, drinking and hanging
party of miss party. During the party, my brother and
(07:22):
Harveil they left went to the club and it was
like thirty four or five minutes they go to Anderson, Indiana.
Altercation occurred outside of the club. I later found out
it was in one of my cars. At the time.
I had like six cars. I'm ready in the cars.
The altercation occurred with Kayati and the victim Mr McCleod
soon occurred and roam your assistant in the student. It
(07:44):
had to do with a card jack and that's the
story Cordie made up. I later found out through my
brother and again again I had several cars and I
wouldn't need to, you know, be involved in like that.
But they had this incident. They agreed not to tell
me about it because I'll be upset. I absolutely nothing
about this case. So there was a shooting at a
(08:04):
club called the Oasis and Anderson, Indiana. There were two
shooters ran up on a car that was parked in
the parking lot outside of the Oasis, and one shooter
was a shorter person and he was up on the
driver's side and there was a taller suspect on the
passenger side. The occupants of the vehicle were A Marvin
(08:26):
McLeod who was in the driver's seat, Damon Nunn who
was in the passenger seat, and then Jail Barkley who
was in the back seat. So Mr McLeod unfortunately and
tragically was shot and died and Mr Nunn was shot,
but he survived and end up being a witness in
this case, so there was no suspect. Originally, this went
(08:46):
on for several months with no suspect. There was some
heat from the Double A c P and other organizations,
and there's some pressure to solve the case. So fast
forward in February, Walt he was actually at the Oasis
and there was someone an employee of Oasis, who said, oh,
that person you know looks familiar. They thought that maybe
(09:07):
he might have been one of the people involved. Now,
that person never testified a trial, never identify him or anything.
That just that's what got their attention. And obviously it'd
be pretty logical to show up at the place where
you did the shooting in the same car, no less,
in the same car, in the same car some there
playing poo and here comes to officers as step. So
(09:30):
I was identified as being someone who's evolving a suit
in October, which we wouldn't come out to the station
for a lineup. So at this point we've already established
that you knew nothing about this crime, but you did
something that later really seemed to get under the skin
of Detective Rodney Cummings. You gave him an alias James
Benneman in order to avoid the war that I mentioned
(09:51):
earlier out of St. Louis from marijuana possession. So continue,
you go down to the station for this lineup, right.
I go to the station. They put me in a
room by myself. There's a one way mirror glass. He
come back in the area. He tells me I was identified,
possible and possible. They don't. I'm not arrested, but they
(10:11):
put me in the jail suit like four or five
minutes later, just time to put me in a full
lineup with five people. This time me and five people,
because the witness knew four of the other people it
was in the lineup. The people that's identified, it's inport reports.
So the second lineup was basically pointless. It's almost as
suggestive as the one man show up, if that's even possible.
(10:32):
So nonetheless, the witness from the backseat, Jill Barkley, identified
you as the taller passenger side shooter, which kind of
makes sense since you look like your own half brother.
But then you were released. Maybe they kind of knew
that their lineup was overly suggested. I don't know, I mean,
why were you released at that time that cart would
(10:54):
me still be an adamant that it wasn't me willing
to submit to a polygraph. Okay, all cell phone numbers,
I gave my page you none. I gave my address
to well, I'm located at all that. So he told
me he was willing to let me go this on Friday,
he's willn't let me go. Come back money when he
gets some more witnesses. That he put me in more lineups,
had me agree to come back Monday. When I agree,
(11:16):
I agree. But however, I gave you it is name
because I had warrant by the St. Louis had marijuana
on the highway, So I gave him a fake name
and they ran my princes. I wasn't going nowhere. So
by Monday you knew I was because you went on
ran the prints. You knew I was. No. You know
I had to warrant. Yeah, you're not who you say
you were. So Monday I call him, I said, I
(11:37):
ain't got translation, can you come pick me up. I
don't worry about what being touch Two day they came,
kicked the door into my girlfriend house, arrested me, did
another lineup. They tried to do an official lineup, and
they do a second lineup. This one didn't involve people
that she knew, but by that time, the it's ridiculous
because she obviously know who who she picked out originally,
(11:59):
and then they need to charge Walter with the murder.
But Walter was at a party in Indianapolis, and he
had sixteen al of my witnesses, and you had, let's
face it, you had no clue about what happened to Anderson.
But your brother, who was locked up in Arizona unrelated charge,
had found out that you were now in jail for
a murder in which he played a role, and he
(12:21):
eventually officially confessed before you went to trial. Unfortunately, that
confession was never heard by your jury. But could you
tell us about when you first found out about your
brother's involvement. When I first got locked up, I was
in there maybe two weeks. No idea why I'm here.
This sounds crazy. I know I haven't done that much
wrong in the world. I know, I love you things.
(12:41):
But so Romeo calls my girlfriends, my daughter's mother, when
she told about locked up for murder. He liked for murder, like, yeah,
they say he saw somebody Anderson you're like, you recognize,
like he's playing my lawyer. Eythy. Now my Laury comes
of visibly, big old smile on his face. I know
(13:04):
what it thinks you. I said, what it was your
brother and our veil because my brother's in Arizona locked up.
I know, I've been on the phonower tomorrow morning. Okay,
so this is and maybe March, but he doesn't officially
come forward until December, which is after you were re
indicted and about to go to trial. And let's be clear,
(13:25):
Romeo gave that confession against his own self interest. He
ended up with a hundred and ten years sentence. So
I mean, talk about it's going against your own self interest.
But it finally made sense of your misidentification because, like
we said, you too are half brothers, and you do
look alike. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. At
this point, all you officially had in your defense which
(13:46):
was enough to drop the charges was sixteen alibi witnesses
placing you in Indianapolis, the fact that your identification was
overly suggestive, and then Jill Barkley, the backseat passenger witness,
had spotted kydie Hartveld in Indianapolis and reported it the
Courts of Reports. Toddy was in a Value City one
day in Indianapolis and the chick that was in the
(14:07):
back seat of the car when the suit happened. Seeing
they locked eyes on each other and she watched him
as he walked out and she like, that's the guy.
So this is in her in the report. She mentioned
that because when they gave a lineup, She's like, that's
the guy right there in the Value City. That's you know,
that's the shooter. That's the suit that was on the
driver side of the car. Right So Jill Barclay's identification
(14:27):
of Kiti happened in March of ninety four, along with
two other witnesses, Jackie Barclay and Latania Young. Latania had
at one point I did Walter as a driver's side shooter,
but in March of ninety four she was positive it
was Kiti. So maybe Latania impeaches herself, but Jackie and
Jill have been pretty consistent. So dislikely played heavily into
(14:50):
your charges being dropped by the prosecutor at the time,
Bill Lawler. So then you were extradited to St. Louis
for the marijuana possession warrant Rodney Cummings and his partner
Steve Navier. They did not agree with this decision to
drop the charges. One will let it go. He didn't
want to let it go to him to this day.
You think I got away to him, I got away
with murder. I don't know how I got away this
(15:13):
nine years for one but two out how to do
it at all. His beef with me was that I
deceived him with the name. He felt that I played him.
This is where that, this is where to use. He said,
you played me, but fake name or not. The prosecutor
was simply following the evidence, not some personal vendetta. He
was doing his job. In other words, So while Cummings
(15:35):
continued to investigate the case, Walter remained on his mind. Now,
despite this positive idea, Kiti didn't get picked up until
June of ninety four, an unrelated burglary charge and an
interview that was not even discovered until civil litigation. Kiti
denied being involved and gave a bogus alibi. Now, perhaps
after looking into that, Cummings brought Kity in for a
(15:56):
videotaped live lineup in September ninety four, and once again
and he was positively ideed as the driver's side shooter
by the three witnesses. Now Katie decided to save himself,
and despite the conflict between Walter's height and that of
the driver's side shooters description, Kittie Harvell, who stood only
five eight, said that it wasn't him who was the
(16:18):
shorter driver's side shooter, but it was Walter, who is
not five eight but again over six ft tall. Hard
to make that mistake and snitched on Romeo as the
tallest shooter on the passengers side. But now with this
statement and your charges being dropped, there was a dynamic
created between the then prosecutor Bill Lawler and Detective Cummings.
(16:39):
And Roddy Cummings happened to be a lawyer. He had
gone to night school while he was a police officer
to become a lawyer, and he took it upon himself
to run for the prosecutor's office. It's election season, it's
the fall of ninety four, and lo and behold, he wins.
(17:00):
Detective Cummings now becomes Prosecutor Cummings. And what does Prosecutor
Cummings do? He turns around and reindites Walter for the
charges that the prior prosecutor dismissed, so now we have
the detective becoming the prosecutor to prosecute a case where
he was once the detective. The Pacers Foundation is a
(17:32):
proud supporter of this episode of rawful Conviction and of
the Last Mile organization, which provides business and tech training
to help incarcerated individuals successfully and permanently re enter the workforce.
The Pacers Foundation is committed to improving the lives of
Hoosiers across Indiana, supporting organizations that are dedicated primarily to
helping young people and students. For more information on the
(17:54):
work of the Pacers Foundation or the Last Bile Program,
visit Pacers Foundation dot org or the Last Smile dot org.
When Cummings reindites Walter, it's on the theory that the
two shooters are Walter and his brother Romeo Lee, and
(18:18):
Kaytie was a witness to all this. Part of the problem, though,
is that the state witnesses, some of whom identified Walter
is one of the possible shooters, had identified Kayde Harvel
as the shooter, and that was something that would have
completely messed up debt theory. So what happens is they
go to trial and Mark Mader in the original trial
(18:39):
attorney suspected that he was not being given all the
police reports, and he did a motion to get the
police reports and a second motion reconsider a motion for
in camera inspection of the prosecutor's file to see if
there were some police reports that he wasn't getting well.
The judge denied it, and Walter went to trial without
knowing that the state's witnesses had identified Kaydie Harvel, another
(19:04):
state's witness, as one of the shooters. But what further
makes it absolutely impossible to Walter was was one of
the shooters was the fact that during this prosecution, before
he went to trial, Romeo, his half brother, finally came
forward and admitted that he was the second shooter, that
he and Kaide did the shooting. So we have our
(19:24):
two shooters now. That makes all the sense in the world.
Because the physical descriptions in this case were that a
shorter gentleman was on the driver's side and a taller
gentleman was on the passenger side. Well, Walter and Romeo
are both tall and they look alike. Kaydie Harvell is short.
So rather than go on what was the truth? And
(19:45):
the truth is that Romeo lead to the shooting on
the passenger side and Kadi did the shooting on the
driver's side instead. The theory at Walter's trial was that
Walter did it with Romeo and Kaide was just a witness. Yeah,
this one with instructions. Right. So you have this shooter,
Romeo admitting, which is highly unusual before the trial for
(20:09):
Walter's trial, that he did it, and he not only
said that Kitty was the other shooter, but that Walter
wasn't there. He's a guy with firsthand knowledge and a
lot of everything to lose, right, And unfortunately, the jury
never heard the Romeo Lee confession because Maynard couldn't figure
out how to get into evidence. The confession never came in.
So one of the single most important piece of evidence
(20:32):
in this whole freaking case, which was later used to
convict Romeo, that jury never even heard it. It's insane,
let's face it. And in case this wasn't enough, the
idea that this judge didn't feel that there was any
need for the defense to see the evidence from the
police files. Richard, help you out, well, this is another
(20:53):
unique thing about this case, unique to Indiana. Under Indiana law,
the Indiana Supreme Corps actually ruled this and it still
exists today. Police reports are considered work product and they
do not have to be tendered by the state to
the defense. Now you have to ask, well, they still
(21:13):
have to comply with the United States Constitution, they have
to comply with Brady, So how do they how do
they do that? Well, I took several depositions in this
case as part of the civil matter, and I asked
several prosecutors, and none of them had a good answer
for how that happens. I mean, how do you tender
exculpatory material that's in a police report without tendering the
police report. So that's another aspect of all this is
(21:37):
that they were withheld under the fig leaf that this
was work product, which actually had some sort of legal
fig leaf to cover it. Now, what's interesting is that
we know from later on that the withheld evidence was
the viewing of the witnesses of Harvell as the other shooter.
(21:58):
So this was a videotape. Well, under any in the law,
a videotape cannot be considered work product, but police reports ken.
So the police reports that were exculpatory were tendered to
the prosecutors. They weren't Cummings because Cummings had to recuse himself.
But the trial prosecutors had the police reports, they had
the exculpatory evidence, but they didn't have the videotape. And
(22:21):
why was that Well, because back in election season, in
September of before Walter was reindicted, Cummings took the videotape
out of evidence, signed it out of evidence and it
was returned back to the police locker back and guess
(22:41):
what the date was that that was returned back into
the evidence locker. It was the exact same afternoon that
the judge denied the in camera inspection of the file.
The prosecutors would not have had the fig leaf of
not giving over the lineup video. They did have the
fig leaf of not giving over the police reports. So
(23:03):
under this work product rule, they were covered from sharing
the police reports about Kittie being identified as the driver's
side shooter. But the videotape of that identification procedure, which
would fall under non work product evidence, was technically not
hidden because Cummings, who had recused himself, had taken it
out of the evidence locker. So now two of the
(23:25):
most important critical piece of evidence in this case that
point to who actually committed this crime. We're out of play.
So Walter was charged with the murder as well as
attempted carjacking and robbery. You know, those other two charges
related to the motive that Kittie Harvell had invented, A
motive that made no sense considering that Walter owned six
(23:46):
or seven cars already and had more than enough money
to buy whatever he wanted. Now, David Puckett and Paula
Mariice Roberts were the prosecutors in this case, and Walter
was represented by Mark Maynard. So I'm almost afraid to
ask what upened at the trial. At the trial, the
state presented the eyewitness testimony, so the incredibly suggestive I
witness identification came in against Walter. Kaid testified against Walter,
(24:10):
and unfortunately the jury never heard the Romeo Lee confession,
even though he came forward a couple of months before
the trial. Cummings indicted Romeo for the murder, but that
happened right before Walter's trial, and when they tried to
call Romeo as a witness, he took the fifth and
the confession never came into evidence. Now, that would have
(24:31):
been incredibly helpful to Walter as well, for the jury
to know that his brother, who looks like him and
everyone said looks like him, confessed to doing it with Kaide,
the state's witness. And of course at trial, the jury
also didn't know that Kaydie Harboll had been identified by
the other state's witnesses as one of the shooters. So
the jury heard Kadi identify Walter as the driver's side
(24:53):
shooter and Romeo as the passenger's side shooter, but then
the rest of the state's witnesses identified Walter as the
passengers side shooter because he looks like Romeo. And it's
never pointed out the jury that Kitty was identified as
a driver's side shooter because the prosecution kept that to themselves.
It's too bad the evidence that would have exposed the
lies and made it all make sense, all of it
(25:13):
was either hidden or not admitted as evidence. No. Now,
something happened outside of the trial that I need to
mention here. Walter's brother, Lamont, who we haven't really talked about.
On October three, he was at the party and Kittie
pulled him into the situation. In his statement to Cummings,
so as soon as Lamont landed to testify on Walter's behalf,
(25:36):
Lamont was arrested. He never had to testify against Walter,
but he was coerced into a plea bargain corroborating Kitie's statement.
So this was not part of trial, but it kept
his alibi testimony out of trial. What about the other
alibi witnesses? So Walter presented several alibi witnesses, you know,
but this is not something where you know, he's on
(25:58):
on video, but he is at a party with you know, friends,
and one of the witnesses they did sort of trip
her up in that she testified she took a flight
and she was confused about which airline she took, and
there was some impeachment about that. One of the other
reasons why I believe that Walter was convicted and why
they didn't believe the alibi was because one of the
(26:20):
alibi witnesses, a woman by the name of Linda Phelps,
you know, happened to be friends with Kaydie Harvel and
before trial she came off of her statement that Walter
was at at this party, which undercut his alibi defense. Well,
the problem is there was a police report that was
withheld from evidence that indicated that before she flipped, Kaid
(26:42):
had a conversation with her, which then miraculously then she
comes off of her alibi. So really anything like that
that can sort of chip away at an alibi when
you're staring at five eye witnesses, you know, and no,
no confession that was introduced, no evidence the eye witnesses
were identifying the other states witnessed Kittie r L And
(27:05):
it's hard for a jury to overcome that. Ultimately, Walter
was convicted by the jury of murder, attempted murder, attempted carjacking,
and attempted robbery in December twenty one, sentenced about a
month later on January seventy six to a hundred and
ten years in prison. So a life sentence. Yeah, that
was wow. Jeez. Let's go to the verdict first, then
(27:30):
we go to citizen because both of them was really painful.
So they found me guilty. I'm I'm I'm living, to
say the least, very perplexed about not only all the
money I spent in it, not only the fact that
you're innocent, you know, it's it's the fact that, like
where is justice sentizens Like thirty days later, citizen came up.
I didn't go. You just found me good to someone.
(27:52):
I don't want to hear nothing else I got to say, so,
they said. My lawyer to the deal. He said, I
need you to be in court for I can make
this motion most to just miss the verdict, and a'most
for the judge to step aside. After that, if you
decided to leave, find you let the judge you know
you want to leave, It's okay, I agree to that.
I go over there, I walk in. The judge makes
(28:12):
it loves before the post. Citizen. Is anything you'd like
to say, Mr County, Yes I would, Johnny, I would
like to let you the court that prosecy right there,
my lawyer, my prime Ustcar, everybody here. No, I'm not
guilty this crime, I said. I don't care. It doesn't
matter how much time you give me. I'm a spend
(28:33):
every day of it proved minuses. I said, this time,
I don't want to hear the verdict. I'd like to
go back to myself. Whatever time you're gonna give me,
you're gonna give me, I don't care if you gave
me sixty or you gave me hunt the ten. And
I'm not good for none of it. In sixteen years
(29:03):
of being in prison, sixteen and a half years for
me that he lived the lifestyle I lived in all that.
I didn't have no one fight in sixteen half years here,
not one on My beef is not with no inmate,
my beef with the system. I did my whole time
law line, berries, digging, in researching cases. Man was my
(29:23):
second home. I didn't get into the prison politics and
the things that going on in prison, with the games
and the playing cars and this shoe dice and and
smoke sick wrests time. But when they stopped smoking cigarettes
in there, they gave us heads up that they're gonna quit.
And the August they told January first, no more cigarettes
(29:44):
in Mexican City Prison nine. When they cut out the cigarettes,
I saw the opportunity that we got the black market.
What I do. I took a whole bunch of cartons stash.
I dig holes everywhere. I had hold, dug all around
the prison. Why hold I had used to work in
the kitchen, I had it. I had cards all in
the ceiling up in the man. I stasped all the
(30:05):
way to January and look I didn't break him out
of January. I didn't break up my tolight April mate.
But when I broke him out, WHOA, we talked about
a hundred dolls of pack of cigarettes. You talk five
for one cigarette. They take the one cigarette down and
break it down in five cigarettes two dollars apiece. So
that's what that's really what I got. The bulk of
my money for my attorney fees, I paid for like
(30:26):
four attorneys in there. But the bulk of my attorney
fees came from tobacco sales. Ain't lots of tobacco sales,
So tobacco sales made up to walter Gallery defense fund.
But you also did a lot of your appeals on
your own pro say, And it's crazy, though not unbelievable
in our system, but still crazy that with how all
(30:47):
of the evidence had come out during your brother's trial,
even then, it's still took another sixteen years. The Romeoly
trial was the unraveling of Walter's conviction. Ultimately, although it
took a long time, the state put on a case
against Romeo Lee heavily reliant on his confession. And remember
that confession was that Kaide and Romeo did the did
(31:10):
the shooting. But you know, they presented the same evidence
that they presented against Walter, and that's with the eyewitnesses
putting Walter as the passenger side shooter, even though romeo
confession was that he was on the passenger side, So
there was some something for him to argue, at least
at that trial. But it was during that trial that
during the cross examination of Steve Napier, they learned that
(31:34):
Kaydie Harvel was identified by these states witnesses as the
other shooter. So it wasn't enough to you know, cause
a knock guilty and Romeo's trial, but the attorney for
Romeo Lee did give that evidence to Mark Maynard. I
should also note that the lineups Natalie consisted of three
of the state's witnesses identifying Kaydie Harvel as the shooter.
(31:57):
But Damon Nunn, who was the attempt murder victim and
was an eyewitness who identified Walter as one of the shooters,
um when he was shown the lineups with Kaydie Harvell,
he identified a filler in that lineup as one of
the shooters. So obviously that's going to destroy Nun's credibility
or reliability as well. When he identifies a Filler as
(32:18):
one of the shooters. Romeo's lawyer recovered his evidence. It
turned it over to recipes to Saron Clark. A matter
of fact, she didn't have to do that because she
had been watching my whole trial or my lawyers were
really cool, so she knew very much about the case.
So she's like, wait a minute, Mark never had this.
This is gonna help mysticality. So now Romeo Lee's attorney
(32:39):
gives Mark Maynard these withheld police reports. Mark Maynard had
been representing Walter and direct appeal as well. He tried
to get this into the record on direct appeal. That
didn't work. My lawyer, he says it this pre course
and trying to mend my pew. Now, mind you end
appeal here, lest that the prosecutor withheld the sculptor evidence
here leaves this without having a proof. Now he got
(33:02):
the proof, mind you, When he first got the proof,
he said on them for two weeks because he dealing
it with his father's death, so he weren't doing nothing.
And I understood that. You know, he had to do
with father's death and all that. So here goes our time.
Now when you send it up to the courts as
you send it up, the decisions coming down already denied,
(33:22):
and the decision you deny it because you said that
he's a legend that this happened, but he had no
proof of it. But the proof is on your desk now,
but you are denied it. The court said, no, you're
gonna have to a post conviction. So Walter is left
alone here. He has to file a pro se post
conviction petition saying that these Brady materials should give him
(33:44):
a new trial, and he was appointed a new council
public defender named Sharon Faye. Now you would think that
when the original judge would hear about all these shenanigans,
Walter would have been immediately given a new trial and
never prosecuted again. But no, it took six years and
an evidentry hearing before the judge finally denied the post
(34:06):
conviction petition. And then you would think an appellate court
would step in and say, well, that's wrong, that didn't happen.
Indiana Supreme Court denied. We'll go to federal court. Federal
courts have to take this seriously, right, Nope, pro sed
federal habeas corpus petition denied. If you don't have a degree,
they don't honor up nobody like you and me just
(34:26):
coming there and just know all a lot to them,
like it's a slap in the face for was it
with the school all them years? Bus they but to
get the degree? You're gonna come here reciting all the
same thing. They know they're gonna honor you know. As
one of our guest host, Patrick Presley likes to say,
pro say gets no play. They will rarely, not never,
but rarely ever gave you the time of day if
(34:47):
you don't have a lawyer. So how does this turn around?
What happened next? His last shot is his pro say
attempt to get this overturned in the Seventh Circuit, And
thankfully the Seventh Circuit appointed him counsel from a big
law firm, and this attorney was able to convince the
Seventh Circuit that he received an unfair trial. On the
(35:08):
Seventh Circuit reversed his conviction after Walter did about sixteen
years wrongfully in prison. It never ceases to amaze me
that the defendant could present such clear Brady violations exculpatory
materials that completely destroy the state's case at trial. And
prove their claims of actual innocence along with ineffective assistance
of council claims. I mean Mark Maynard even told Walter
(35:29):
to pursue that claim since he was in fact ineffective
at getting that confession and the identifications of Katie as
the driver's side shooter into court. So with that evidence,
no reasonable juror would have convicted Walter. Yet every court
along the way bent over backwards, fell over themselves to
ignore this wrongful conviction in favor of I can only
(35:49):
guess here the finality of judgment and the sacrosag jury
verdict not to mention covering for their colleagues in the
prosecutor's office. And in fact, Cummings is currently seeking a
seventh term and running unopposed in I don't know what
could be done about that, but it really is sickening.
(36:11):
So sixteen years it took for a court to finally
accept the evidence that they used to convict his brother
Romeo in another trial that was shortly after his own.
It's just disgusting, let's face it, there's no other word
for it. But this ruling came down in May, and
your lawyer at that time was Andrew Curitas. Remember Richard
is Walter's civil attorney. But Walter tell us, what do
(36:35):
you remember about that moment when you got the news. Oh,
this is one of the best days in my life.
Right here, I get a legal male may fil down
order come down. You got is to give him a
new trial or release him. Now, I think I'm gonna
go home any days, but they're still playing hardball. I'm in, honey.
I mean, I'm counting down days. Every every day I'm
(36:55):
watup thinking for the common Dame. Any day. Now, I
think they're gonna say, you know what, let him go
on a hunted and twentieth day. I got to be
going home this morning. I wouldn't gave my phone to
my neighbor. I gave all my all my commissary way
and gave anything design a twenty day. I ain't the trial.
I asked my neighbor back to my let me see
(37:15):
my phone, like quick call the lawyer. He said, be patient,
I work with and talk to him right now if
we file the targets and said they're gonna take his trial.
He said he talked to the prosecutor and asked the prosecutor,
what did you see in this case that you said,
I didn't see nothing. That's the problem. They just handled
the case, and I didn't want to just drop it.
So the Madison County prosecutor was Rodney Cummings. When this
(37:37):
thing was reversed and sent back to the lower court
for a new trial, the judge, you know, ordered that
a new prosecutor's office should look at it, and so
an independent prosecutor named Barry Brown from a different county
looked at this and he was the one who finally
decided to drop the charges. And I will say that
(37:58):
Rodney Cummings was quoted as saying at the time that
Mr Brown didn't have the guts to retry Walter whoa
the guts right after the I don't even know how
to dignify that with words. After the evidence that they
had at the time of trial completely shredded this guy's theory,
he's still holding onto it almost three decades later. You know,
(38:22):
if it's not too late, I really wish somebody would
run against him. You could hit him over the head
with his own words all the way into the prosecutor's
office this fall. But we're running out of time. The
citizens of Madison County really do deserve better. Walter certainly
did so Brown dismissed the charges in January. I remember
January thirteen, two times twelve, like I remember like it
(38:44):
was yesterday. I got that phone call from Richard let
me know all Chares dismissed. We ready to go with
the loss, and he found my lawsuit the very next day.
He had already been pairing for the lawsuit because he
was the one laurder that was willing to take my
case without it being all the way resolved. He bled
the case. So thanks to Richard, the civil suit was
filed immediately, But of course these things are rarely resolved immediately.
(39:06):
At the time, Indiana didn't even have a compensation statute.
Now now they do, and there's something not so good
about it because it forces innocent men and women to
waive their right to civil litigation if they accept the compensation.
To me, this just adds insult to injury, and I
hope that it's corrected soon, along with that ridiculous work
product rule, which we should just call call it legalized
(39:30):
or legitimized Brady violations. I believe there's a movement on
both sides of those issues that we fully support that
So as far as Walters civil suit is concerned, the U. S.
District Court denied it, but in May the Seventh Circuits
stepped up again and reinstated the lawsuits. So in April
Walter settled his lawsuit. But let's face it, there's no
(39:51):
amount of money that would ever make up for the
lost time with loved ones. First, I want to say,
I think it's very unfair that he's prosecutor uh and
detectives are able to pull something like this off and
get away with just giving a little bit of money
and it's over, you know. I mean, like you get
some years like my I would imprison the new father.
(40:13):
My oldest was number three years old. I came by
to grandfather. I can't get them the years back. I
dontay how much money you getting there, can't get them back, kids, graduations,
their birthdays. I can't. I can't get that back there.
It actually destroyed my ability to be a really affective father.
Their minds are made up already in life with life
means to them. I don't even know what to say.
(40:36):
I mean, I can only imagine through the lens of
my relationship with my own kids, and it just breaks
my heart. What about your brothers. I mean, Romeo is
still inside. I'm sure you'll probably take this opportunity to
visit them. But what about Lamont, the brother that they
coerced into a plea that corroborated Kitie statement. Do you
think you'd be able to put that behind you and reconnect?
(40:58):
Listen my fluid the test file for me and the
rest of him on the spot and said that Katie
said he's involved and just had a charge on him.
He said in the jail when they found me guilty,
and I'm no one with the money now, so he
don't have a lawyer in the no money. He didn't
want to take the chance the game police bargain of
five years probation to say that what Katie said was correct,
(41:21):
that he was there and he watched it. He didn't
have test fied to this because I already convicted. I'm
already gone. Matter of fact, nobody in the family has
seen her from m since then, because it was all
piste off of him for doing that, like why would
you do that? It's almost like you coroberating Katie story.
But I understood his part. I haven't been able to
talk to him and let him know dude, listen, I'm
(41:42):
not mad at you. I understood that's a big chance
to take right there, and he took the police bargain
that he Since nobody in the family seen him, we
don't know where he at. Again, I just reaching out
to leave you. No, I wasn't mad at gave up
on reaching out because I don't want to think I
was reaching out trying to look for you or nothing.
You know what I mean, Like it ain't it ain't
that serious. I'm just havy to be home. Wow. So
(42:04):
Lamont or if anyone knows Lamont, please let him know.
Make the most out of the time you both have left.
We're gonna have Walter socials linked in the bio reach
out to him. Walter also has a podcast that will
link to and with that we're going to go to
closing arguments. This is of course a part of the
show where I thank you both for joining us and
sharing your story. And now I'm going to turn my
(42:25):
microphone off, kick back in my chair and just listen
to anything you feel is left to be said. Richard,
let's start with you and Walter take us on home.
So there's been a lot of talk about you know,
Rodney Cummings, and people may have the impression that, well,
this is sort of a one bad apple situation. But
(42:46):
the real problem here is that time and again there
were numerous people involved in the in the judicial system
who could have stopped this. From the judge initially who
could have forced the review of the prosecutor's file so
that the withholding wouldn't have happened in the first place,
(43:08):
to the trial prosecutors going along with this withholding, to
the trial judge again once they learned about this withholding
not correcting this wrong. To the Indiana appellate courts who
could have stopped this, To the Indiana Supreme Court who
could have stopped this. The federal Havius Corpus judge could
have stopped this. We shouldn't have to rely on the
(43:34):
second highest court in in in the land of Federal
court to right these wrongs. Uh. These should be corrected
immediately in the lower courts, but they're not, unfortunately, and
in Indiana, not only in Walter's case, but in in
in other Indiana cases. Time and again, these wrongs are
(43:55):
not corrected, UH in a timely manner. The people who
come as crossed these wrong for convictions need to step
up and not just allow it to happen, and they
need to do it quickly to make sure it gets
done in a timely matter, not sixteen years later. I
do appreciate you all give me the opportunity now I
feel that. And no amount of money they give me,
(44:17):
no amount of money they gave me, no mount of
money to give me form me on now. It's gonna
take back all the years this spunk kids life. That's
the biggest thing for me. My kids, like, uh, anything
they do for me now, it's gonna be for my
baby securing their futures, you know what I mean. Make
sure they got the right account set up, put insurances
on us if something happened, make sure I got insurance.
(44:37):
So make sure my family don't have to be out
there with a bucket on the corner trying to bury me.
If you know when I when I passed, I went out.
If I passed, I'm gonna pass someday, but when I do,
to make sure they ain't gotta struggle in and try
to go and go fund me. I didn't went through
all this in that boxing there to get out and
die and can't be buried out here. You know what
(44:58):
I mean. I know what it is to appreciate. I
wake up appreciate life. I wake up appreciate my freedom.
I really do. I wake up appreciate everything about my freedom.
And I'm free. I'm still free. I don't care if
I ain't got it right now. I got to dine
in my pocket. I am free. Thank you for listening
(45:21):
to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team
Connor Hall, Jeff Claver, and Kevin Wardis, with research by
Lila 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 wrong Conviction, as
(45:43):
well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms.
You can also follow me on both TikTok and Instagram
at It's Jason flom Raleful Conviction is the production of
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number
one one on
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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