February 20, 2023 • 31 mins
On April 7, 1991, Joe Travis was found dead from a single gunshot wound to the head in an apartment complex in Cleveland, OH. Witnesses indicated the murder resulted from a drug transaction that had gone awry. Two weeks later, Ronald Lacey was arrested on drug charges and told police that he witnessed the Travis murder and described what he believed to be the shooter’s car: a late 70s Monte Carlo. Cleveland Police recalled stopping a car that fit this description, as they suspected the driver was carrying drugs. The driver, 27 year old Charles Jackson, had no drugs, but was arrested anyway. Officers found the arrest record and charged Charles for the murder. Despite the witness identifying someone else, and despite Charles’s solid alibi, he was convicted and sent to prison. Maggie speaks to Charles Jackson, Charles’s nephew, Houston Foster, and Charles’s attorney, Donald Caster.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Charles Jackson and his nephew, Houston Foster, were born just
two years apart, and they grew up together in the
same house in Cleveland, as close as any two brothers
could be. Even into their fifties, they still talked by
phone several times a week, sometimes for hours, about everything
under the sun. Houston had been diagnosed with stage four
(00:26):
kidney failure, so he was undergoing dialysis three times a
week and waiting hoping for a kidney transplant. He was
on the list, but as he told his uncle Charles,
the weight could be up to five years, who said,
I had that loan to you know, live. So by
the grace of God, Charles came out and said, you
(00:47):
know what, I'm all positive, nephew. I'm gonna give me
one of my kids. But there was a problem. Charles
was in prison for murder and had been for nearly
thirty years. My name is Charles Jackson. I served twenty
seven years, six months, twenty days for a crime I
didn't commit from LoVa for good. This is wrongful conviction
(01:13):
with Maggie Freeling today, Charles Jackson. Charles Jackson, Jr. Was
(01:34):
born in Cleveland, Ohio, on January seven, nineteen sixty four
to Elizabeth Foster and Charles Jackson, Sr. And they had
a big family as sister jack like five sisters and
three more brothers, you know, but I'm the baby off
the whole bunch. It was like teenagers, you know what
I'm saying. So they were bigger, and a couple of
(01:55):
them was grown. And it was because of this age
difference with some of his siblings that Charles became closest
with his nephew, Houston. Charles and Houston did everything together,
and everyone in their family adored Charles. Houston remembers how
his uncle even earned himself a nickname. I think my grandmother.
(02:16):
I think of my grandmother, she was named from sweet Man,
and I think that's where it actually came for. Just
called him sweet That's how everybody know him by sweet Man.
But Charles describes himself another way. What's your personality? My personality,
I'm silly as hell, and all my friends and I
(02:43):
just kept everybody laughing, everybody around. When he was about
nine years old, Charles's parents divorced. Charles decided to live
with his dad, and for a while it was just
the two of them, but occasionally Charles's sister and her son, Houston,
came to live with them. Charles and Houston had always
(03:05):
been like brothers, but living together, they were inseparable. And
we used to run home from after school because he
was in a grade higher than me, and are going
to get home from after school, you know, do our
homework and then go watch Batman and rob So they
started calling us Batman and Robin. Who was Batman? Who
(03:28):
was Robbin? Well, you know, Charles had to be Batman.
He would never let me be Batman. Charles was like
a typical older brother, but by the time he got
to junior high school, things began to change. I fought
a lot, I was overweight, chubby, got bullied. On that
next year I came to school, I asked them down.
(03:49):
Nobody even knew me. That's when I started, I guess,
maturing and growing up, you know what I'm saying. And
that's when like my life turned like different. I guess.
I started learning how to play cars, and then I
had a lot of time on my hands because you know,
just me and my father. He'd be at work. So
I get out out of school, and you know what
I'm saying, So I got to do pretty much what
(04:11):
I wanted to do. When he was around eighteen, Charles's son,
Christopher was born. He was married by then, and he
and his wife at the time went on to have
two more kids, twins, Terry and Sherry. By cooking, took
care of the kids, you know what I'm saying, Like,
come from a big fan of you. You know, you
always in the kitchen and somebody's always running through the house,
(04:32):
and so I had all that too, you know what
I mean, How do you support your family at the time? Well,
I was illegal sometimes, but I didn't kill anyone, you
know what I'm saying. Whatever I did, you know, hustled
or murder wasn't wasn't even in the picture. In the
(04:56):
early morning hours of April seven, the body of twenty
nine year old Joe Travis was found in the hallway
of his apartment complex, dead from a single gunshot wound
to the head. There had been an altercation earlier at
the complex between rival drug dealers Charlie Dog Davis and
Amelia Tucker. Tucker had allegedly shot at Davis, and as
(05:20):
he left the complex, Davis yelled, quote, you shot me.
I'll be back about forty five minutes later, two men
arrived and two shots were fired. The men then vanished,
leaving Joe Travis dead. Just over two weeks later, twenty
three year old Ronald Lacy was arrested on drug charges.
(05:41):
Lacey lived at the apartment complex, and he told police
he had witnessed the gunman shoot Travis in the head
over a drug altercation. He said that the shooter was
a regular in the neighborhood and that he drove a
nineteen seventy eight or nineteen seventy nine brown or maroon
Monte Carlo with chrome wheels and low writer tires. As
(06:02):
it happened, seven year old Charles Jackson also drove a
Monte Carlo and had recently had to run in with
the police, So I guess this is the same carded
Ryan Lacey said that I was driving and the podies
had pulled me over it maybe a month or two
before the end, and I had a traffic ticket and
(06:22):
I went to jail. So when I went to jail,
they took much shots on me. Police had suspected Charles
of carrying drugs that night, but finding nothing on him,
they arrested him on a traffic violation instead. The cops
showed Lacy the mug shot they took that night, and
Lacy said, quote, that's definitely him. You don't forget someone
(06:43):
that tries to kill you. A month after the shooting,
on May eight, Charles was arrested while sitting in a
neighborhood bar. They put their guns on me, They asked
me for driver's license, They saw my name, an I guess,
just him, and locked me up. So I didn't had
(07:03):
nothing to worry about because I didn't do anything. And
three four days later, you know, I was targed with murder. Yeah,
Charles when he got arrested, and what he went down for,
I was, you know, I missed my buddy because he
(07:24):
was gone. You know, Charles's nephew, Houston was devastated when
Charles was taken into custody. I mean it was at
just bringback some memories there, buddy, just touching. But I
(07:44):
missed him, so must and what he went down for.
It really touched me because I knew my uncle had never,
you know, commit no crime like that, because he would
never do nothing like that. But that was my uncle,
and yeah, wow. Charles meanwhile was racking his brain to
(08:10):
remember what he was doing the night of that shooting, Wanning,
like where was I you know what I'm saying, that alibi?
What was I doing? And at the time, my girlfriend
she had kept a little little diary, you know what
I'm saying, a little journal, and she used right in
there and she had told me like that night, that
(08:31):
was the night that we went to a party and
then it started coming back and m I ran the
streets that night and I was out late. I ran
from the police the same night, So I guess if
I want to run from the police. I had been
in jail the night that Joe Travis was murdered, you
know what, I decided to run from the police. In
Charles's mind, if he hadn't run from the police that night,
(08:54):
he would have never been a suspect in the shooting.
Before trial, Charles was assigned public defenders Edward Wade and
Howard Manager. Charles still remembers his lawyer's advice every way.
He was just chilling me, like cop out, because you know,
I've been a lawyer all these years and all this stuff,
(09:17):
like they're saying this and that, and you know, I said,
I didn't do anything, so why should I cop out?
To some my ain't do so instead of taking a
plea bargain from the get go, Charles went to trial
in December of This episode is underwritten by a i G,
(09:47):
a leading global insurance company. A i G is committed
to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive difference
in the lives of its employees and in the communities
where we work and live. In light of the compelling
need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of
a I g's commitment to criminal and social justice reform,
(10:08):
the a i G pro Bono Program provides free legal
services and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. The
case against Charles relied solely on the witness testimonies of
Ronald Lacey and Amelia Tucker. The prosecutors were Winston Gray
(10:30):
and Thomas Rain. They called Lacey to the stand first. Lacey,
the man who identified Charles's mug shot, repeated what he
had told the police that he saw Charles shoot Joe
Travis in the head during an argument over drugs. The
other witness was Amelia Tucker, who remember had had a
(10:53):
separate altercation that night with Charlie dog Davis. On the stand,
Tucker said she heard the shots and when she looked
out the window, she saw the gunmen running away. And
she also said it was Charles now seeing there's just
and they time. We just don't show no emotion in it.
And obviously they're just like he'splode on inside. You know
(11:14):
what I'm saying, Like she's lying. I I'm going crazy.
Charles's defense did the best they could with these two
eye witnesses, whose testimonies were the only evidence presented against Charles.
They countered with Charles's alibi at the time of the
shooting he was at a party with his girlfriend, but
they could have done more. It turns out while Charles
(11:38):
was in jail awaiting trial, he met a guy from
the neighborhood named Vincent. Vincent told Charles he knew who
shot Travis. He said it was a guy named Jimmy.
This turned out to be James Morris, the nephew of
Charlie Dog Davis, and this scenario would make sense. His
nephew might have wanted to get back at Tucker for
shooting at Charlie Dog and Joe Travis. He could have
(12:00):
just been caught in the crossfire arms. With this new
information and a plausible scenario. Charles immediately went to his lawyers.
I told any Wade immediately that it's a guy in
here that say he saw everything, and he said it's
not me. They did it. But at trial, Charles's defense
(12:23):
did not call Vincent to testify. Instead, they presented photos
of James, and in the pictures, James looked nearly identical
to Charles Jackson. So when Ronald Lacy was on a
witness stand, so we cut time to cross examine every way.
Here that one picture of James. And he showed his
(12:45):
picture to Ronald Lacey and said who was this on
his picture? And Ronald Lacy looked at the picture and
he didn't hesitate. He said, this is a picture of
sweet Man. Sweet Man the child took nickname Charles was
still known by. But many of the people in the
courtroom knew the picture was of James. And I'm thinking, like, oh,
(13:09):
something to go home now, you know, if it's just
be fireworks because of this picture. And it wasn't nothing
like that. It's just it was quite quiet. The alibi
and mistaken identity was not enough. After only a few
days of trial and deliberation, Charles was convicted of murder
and attempted murder with a firearm. He was sentenced to
(13:30):
seven to years for attempted murder, three years for possession
of a firearm, and twenty years to life for the
murder of Joe Travis. As Charles settled into prison life,
he started resigning himself to the reality of being locked
away forever. He knew too many other people who had
(13:51):
faced the same situation. The only thing about prisons, like
it's just saying, like like a rice of passage, Like
in my neighborhood growing up, like I saw so many
guys that I haven't saw that I thought was dead
or moved away, and they were in prison for years,
you know what I mean. And it's just like I
(14:12):
knew people there and they waiting on me. You know
what I'm saying. It was gonna take care of me.
I was gonna be all right. So I went in
there with surviving on my mind. Charles knew though, that
in order to survive inside he had to put up
a pretty hard front. And what a surviving mean, Um,
(14:35):
just I'm not gonna tell everybody I'm innocent because they
don't want to hear that, because they're doing all this
time and if I make them think that I'm not
like them, then how can I survive? You know what
I'm saying. So I shouldn't went in there trying to
find my way out, you know. I shouldn't went in
there going to the library. Like I said, I had
a bad attitude. I was angry, you know, and I
(14:58):
feel like they to my life, you know. So I'm
just gonna be like no respect for no type of authority.
And for like the first ten years, you know, I
didn't even recognize myself no more because I was turning
to an animal. While Charles was in prison, his fourth child,
(15:34):
a daughter, was born. Her name was Siara. Were you
able to be a dad from person? It's crazy because
like first, like she little and she don't know you.
She whole visited day isten her try and like not
(15:57):
be scared of me, just sit on my lap and
play with me. Then by the end of the day
she would be more to play. Nice time for her
to go. Then I don't know whenning this time, I'm
a Siri and I see her again, she a little
bit bigger, got her personality, the change, you know what
I'm saying. And I just watched her grow up like that,
you know, and then it got you a part to
where her mind like wasn't in my life, so she
(16:20):
wasn't encouraging her. And Charles knew that without any encouragement,
no twelve or thirteen year olds would want to spend
their summers visiting someone in prison. So his visits with
Sierra ended. As the years passed, things just kept getting worse.
(16:43):
I started getting older, and like I said, I ain't
I ain't recognize what I was. And and then my
relatives started passing away, you know what I'm saying, And
my mom died, and that was like like my life
like turned around because I felt I couldn't it like
I was living no more, you know. Charles realized he
needed to change his mindset in order to change his life.
(17:06):
You know, as I've been here so long, I wake
up in the middle of the night and come up
with a way to get out. I need somebody to
listen till you help me, you know what I'm saying.
One thing that continued to sustain Charles during those years
was his connection to his nephew, Houston, the Robin to
his batman. Houston was now a deacon living in Jacksonville, Florida,
and they talked by phone several times a week, but
(17:28):
Houston was going through challenges of his own. At the
age of fifty three, he learned that he had staged
for kidney failure, and I told him I was all
positive and I needed a kitten and I was gonna
get him the transplant with this. But it's Mike took
two or three or five years to get a kid
who said, I had that loan to you know, live.
(17:48):
So he started off, Dad, this is like once a week,
and then he got so bad to hes like three
times a week. And I'll be talking to him while
he beat here, and I said, man, I'm gonna get
up out of here. Man, I'm gonna give you a
kidney man and is air ding will be good, you know.
And not knowing what's gonna happen me, Charles knew he
(18:08):
had to find a way to get out of prison.
His nephew's life depended on it. Determined to fight for
his exhoneration, Charles wrote to the Ohio Innocence Project to
(18:30):
ask them to review his case, and when they did,
pretty quickly, we knew at the very least that the
government's case against Charles back at the time a trial
was really really weak. UM, so we started to look
at it more. This is Donald Castor. I'm a professor
of clinical law with the Ohio Innocence Project to the
University of Cincinnati. He's also Charles's attorney. The police seized
(18:54):
on this theory that Charles might have been the guy
because Charles car was somewhere near the area, but it
wasn't actually Charles car Remember he drove a Monty Carlo
similar to the one used by the shooter. The state
also said that they had a credible witness, UM, and
we'll put quotes around witness named Ron Lacey who was
(19:16):
there at the time and who said that that he
saw the fatal shot being fired, and you know, put
a single picture in front of Mr Lacey, and Mr
Lacy says, yeah, that's the guy, and that's that's how
the police come to believe that it's Charles Jackson. Is
that even legal to just do one photo and not
a lineup? It's not now, it's not now. At the
(19:37):
time that Charles was convicted, there were no standards at least,
you know, sort of by statute for what kind of
lineup you can do now. Ohio has a statute that says,
if you're going to do a lineup, this is the
way that you have to do it. Charles's team continued
to dig into his case in they were finally able
to get ahold of previously undisclosed police reports, and what
(19:59):
they learned was huge. Um, so these are all things
that should have been turned over to Charles's defense at
the time of trial. That would have made a huge difference,
that would have saved Charles all these years in prison.
So we're talking about Brady violation. We are talking about
Brady violations. Brady violations are exactly that when the prosecution
hides or fails to disclose evidence favorable to a defendant.
(20:23):
And the reports revealed plenty of this. The first piece
of evidence, well, Miss Tucker said one thing at trial.
She had said a very different thing the night of
the shooting and the day after the shooting to the police.
And what she had told the police was that she
couldn't see the face of the person who did the shooting,
that she wasn't going to be able to identify the shooter. Remember,
(20:47):
Amelia Tucker was the rival drug dealer who was in
the initial altercation. Her first statement to police said that
she looked out her window and saw a man wearing
a bulky jacket get into the rear passenger seat of
a gray car. His back was to her and she
did not see his face. In a second interview, she
repeated the same thing to police, that she did not
(21:07):
see a face. Yet when she testified at trial, she
said she saw the shooter's face and that it was Charles.
And obviously you'd want to know that. Their key eye
witness said twice within thirty six hours of the shooting,
I didn't see the person's face. I can't tell you
who did it. You want to be able to ask
(21:28):
that person about those statements in front of a jury,
and and Charles never got that chance. The second piece
of evidence, Mr Lacy had made the statement that the
shooter had shot the decedent on the wrong side of
the head, that that he identified the shot is going
one place, the corner identified the shot is going the other.
(21:49):
The defense at the time of charles trial never knew
these things. Not only that there were more eyewitnesses to
the crime that were never called to test A five.
One of them was a man named Thomas Silvano. Mr.
Silvano saw it, He saw what happened, and there was
a statement in the records by him. But he never
(22:12):
never gets called. He never Nobody on Charles side knows
what Silvano knows, which is that he saw it and
it wasn't Charles Um. And then we had a private
investigator go and talked to Silvano, who was amazingly eager
to help out. You know, he didn't have any reason
personally to want to help Charles, but he really was
(22:33):
was stunned um that the wrong person had been in
prison for that whole time, and he really felt like
he had a duty to help out. When Charles's attorneys
presented him with all this information, he finally felt vindicated. Man,
(22:54):
was it was they bled me. You didn't do this,
you know I'm saying, when somebody just believing you. You
know what I said, we already thought you didn't do
but now we know you didn't do it. As now,
I was like, okay, cool, if I if I died
that night, you know what I'm saying, I knew that
someone knew that I wouldn't. You know, I wasn't. I
wouldn't alone no more, you know, what I'm saying. I
(23:16):
had a voice again in Charles was granted a hearing
to present all this newly discovered evidence to a judge.
(23:40):
Judge Robert McClelland felt the evidence was compelling enough to
sign an order vacating Charles's convictions. He ruled that Charles
should get a new trial. Months later, Donald Caster was
driving to Cleveland for a hearing in Charles's case when
he got a call. The prosecutor called me on my
(24:01):
cell phone. UM, so I had I had to pull
over because I'm starting to cry. He immediately called the
rest of the team, who were also on their way
to the hearing. So, okay, you guys need to pull
over before I tell you this, um And I said,
you know they're they're going to concede. And it's because
(24:22):
Lacey's backed away from his story. At the time of trial,
Ronald Lacey, the star witness and first person to implicate Charles,
was suddenly changing his story. Um And. He said that
they had reinterviewed Mr Lacy and that Mr Lacey had
backed away from saying that he saw the fatal shot
being fired. Without Lacy, the state didn't have a case.
(24:46):
Tucker had been discredited by this time, and there was
never any physical evidence to begin with. On November to,
fifty five year old Charles Jackson was released after almost
twenty eight years in prison. Though at first officials got
(25:09):
the right name, but the wrong person. They brought the
wrong They brought the wrong Charles out at right, they
brought the wrong Charles Jackson out. Not only was like
you know somebody was this guy like, oh, I guess
it's my time. And we had to. We had to.
We were like, wait, we don't this is not our Charles.
It's funny. It ain't funny, but you know what I'm saying.
(25:32):
They got the wrong money and not even try to
meet the wrong one out, I mean, come out after
the snaffoo and after the right Charles Jackson was released.
The day it was joyous for everyone, but Houston was
still in need of a kidney, and Charles, now a freeman,
was on a mission. Once it was confirmed that he
was a match, he headed down to Florida where his
(25:54):
nephew was waiting, and he came. You couldn't hear everything. Uh,
I thank god for him, because I don't know, you
know where I beat. I might have been to be
hearing today, but one for the blessing that he gave
(26:14):
me with it. You know, he was more than like
my brother. He was like he was like a hero
because even though instead he took a life, but he
didn't take no life. He helped save a life. So
to me, that's a hero. To me, he was just
(26:36):
a blessing to excuse m today. Charles lives in a
(27:02):
quiet suburb of Cleveland in a communal house known as
the Axonoree Home. So we started off like it was
just a house, you know what I'm saying. Now you
know it's more of a home now. So what does
that like to live with other axonore Ees. Do you
feel like they understand you better than other people? Might?
They definitely do because everybody else, like you know, being
(27:27):
a jail for so long, didn't come out here. He's like,
you dropped me from I can't could have been from
another planet or something. So nobody understand what you're doing
through except for another person who've been through exact same thing.
So that's what for that. That brotherhood. You know, Axonorees
like be a different kind. We take care of each other.
(27:48):
You know. When Charles first got to the Axonorey Home,
he took special care of one of his older housemates,
Isaiah Andrews, was wrongfully convicted of murder in teen seventy four.
He was exonerated in one at the age of eighty four,
and he died less than a year later, right after
(28:09):
he was awarded compensation by the City of Cleveland for
his wrongful imprisonment. These days, Charles spends a lot of
his time advocating for the wrongfully incarcerated and cooking for
his friends and housemates at the Axonary Home. He's just
completed a culinary training course and has ambitions to open
(28:29):
his own food truck, although, as his nephew Houston tells it,
Charles wasn't always a foodie. When me and Charles was
coming up, Charles wouldn't eat anything. You know what I'm saying.
He had that my grandmother cooks a home cooked meal.
Charles had to go to McDonald's burger king because he
wouldn't eat. This is how Charles was. But me, I
(28:49):
should watch my mother and my grandmother and nam cook
all the time. Houston even comes and helps out in
the kitchen at the Axonary Home. I'm not gonna say
I can cook better than Charles, but I get Charles
and run for with money. I'll leave it at that.
They ain't all about who can cook better? Who you right?
But I got tell him. I said, Robin can cook
(29:09):
better than beat Man. You might can do something better
to be, but I can cook better, yes, ma'am, Oh
yeah we cook, We definitely could. You can definitely get
something to eat at Design of your House. If you
(29:35):
want to donate to the Exonorey Home, go to x
Dash Freedom Studio dot org. You'll find that link in
our bio, along with other ways to help support Charles.
Next time Unwrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, Amelia Bird, did
you ever ask Chad to kill your parents? So? I
(29:59):
wanted my gradually by mam alone and me alone? But
I am dad. Thanks for listening to Wrongful Conviction with
Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go
to the links in our bio to see how you
can help. I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason
(30:20):
Flom and Kevin Wurtis, as well as our senior producer
Annie Chelsea, producer Lila Robinson, and story editor Sonya Paul.
The show is edited and mixed by Annie Chelsea, with
additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Connor Hall. The music
in this production is by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
(30:40):
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On all three platforms, you can also follow me on
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Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
in association with Signal Come Penny Number one
Charles Jackson and his nephew, Houston Foster, were born just
two years apart, and they grew up together in the
same house in Cleveland, as close as any two brothers
could be. Even into their fifties, they still talked by
phone several times a week, sometimes for hours, about everything
under the sun. Houston had been diagnosed with stage four
(00:26):
kidney failure, so he was undergoing dialysis three times a
week and waiting hoping for a kidney transplant. He was
on the list, but as he told his uncle Charles,
the weight could be up to five years, who said,
I had that loan to you know, live. So by
the grace of God, Charles came out and said, you
(00:47):
know what, I'm all positive, nephew. I'm gonna give me
one of my kids. But there was a problem. Charles
was in prison for murder and had been for nearly
thirty years. My name is Charles Jackson. I served twenty
seven years, six months, twenty days for a crime I
didn't commit from LoVa for good. This is wrongful conviction
(01:13):
with Maggie Freeling today, Charles Jackson. Charles Jackson, Jr. Was
(01:34):
born in Cleveland, Ohio, on January seven, nineteen sixty four
to Elizabeth Foster and Charles Jackson, Sr. And they had
a big family as sister jack like five sisters and
three more brothers, you know, but I'm the baby off
the whole bunch. It was like teenagers, you know what
I'm saying. So they were bigger, and a couple of
(01:55):
them was grown. And it was because of this age
difference with some of his siblings that Charles became closest
with his nephew, Houston. Charles and Houston did everything together,
and everyone in their family adored Charles. Houston remembers how
his uncle even earned himself a nickname. I think my grandmother.
(02:16):
I think of my grandmother, she was named from sweet Man,
and I think that's where it actually came for. Just
called him sweet That's how everybody know him by sweet Man.
But Charles describes himself another way. What's your personality? My personality,
I'm silly as hell, and all my friends and I
(02:43):
just kept everybody laughing, everybody around. When he was about
nine years old, Charles's parents divorced. Charles decided to live
with his dad, and for a while it was just
the two of them, but occasionally Charles's sister and her son, Houston,
came to live with them. Charles and Houston had always
(03:05):
been like brothers, but living together, they were inseparable. And
we used to run home from after school because he
was in a grade higher than me, and are going
to get home from after school, you know, do our
homework and then go watch Batman and rob So they
started calling us Batman and Robin. Who was Batman? Who
(03:28):
was Robbin? Well, you know, Charles had to be Batman.
He would never let me be Batman. Charles was like
a typical older brother, but by the time he got
to junior high school, things began to change. I fought
a lot, I was overweight, chubby, got bullied. On that
next year I came to school, I asked them down.
(03:49):
Nobody even knew me. That's when I started, I guess,
maturing and growing up, you know what I'm saying. And
that's when like my life turned like different. I guess.
I started learning how to play cars, and then I
had a lot of time on my hands because you know,
just me and my father. He'd be at work. So
I get out out of school, and you know what
I'm saying, So I got to do pretty much what
(04:11):
I wanted to do. When he was around eighteen, Charles's son,
Christopher was born. He was married by then, and he
and his wife at the time went on to have
two more kids, twins, Terry and Sherry. By cooking, took
care of the kids, you know what I'm saying, Like,
come from a big fan of you. You know, you
always in the kitchen and somebody's always running through the house,
(04:32):
and so I had all that too, you know what
I mean, How do you support your family at the time? Well,
I was illegal sometimes, but I didn't kill anyone, you
know what I'm saying. Whatever I did, you know, hustled
or murder wasn't wasn't even in the picture. In the
(04:56):
early morning hours of April seven, the body of twenty
nine year old Joe Travis was found in the hallway
of his apartment complex, dead from a single gunshot wound
to the head. There had been an altercation earlier at
the complex between rival drug dealers Charlie Dog Davis and
Amelia Tucker. Tucker had allegedly shot at Davis, and as
(05:20):
he left the complex, Davis yelled, quote, you shot me.
I'll be back about forty five minutes later, two men
arrived and two shots were fired. The men then vanished,
leaving Joe Travis dead. Just over two weeks later, twenty
three year old Ronald Lacy was arrested on drug charges.
(05:41):
Lacey lived at the apartment complex, and he told police
he had witnessed the gunman shoot Travis in the head
over a drug altercation. He said that the shooter was
a regular in the neighborhood and that he drove a
nineteen seventy eight or nineteen seventy nine brown or maroon
Monte Carlo with chrome wheels and low writer tires. As
(06:02):
it happened, seven year old Charles Jackson also drove a
Monte Carlo and had recently had to run in with
the police, So I guess this is the same carded
Ryan Lacey said that I was driving and the podies
had pulled me over it maybe a month or two
before the end, and I had a traffic ticket and
(06:22):
I went to jail. So when I went to jail,
they took much shots on me. Police had suspected Charles
of carrying drugs that night, but finding nothing on him,
they arrested him on a traffic violation instead. The cops
showed Lacy the mug shot they took that night, and
Lacy said, quote, that's definitely him. You don't forget someone
(06:43):
that tries to kill you. A month after the shooting,
on May eight, Charles was arrested while sitting in a
neighborhood bar. They put their guns on me, They asked
me for driver's license, They saw my name, an I guess,
just him, and locked me up. So I didn't had
(07:03):
nothing to worry about because I didn't do anything. And
three four days later, you know, I was targed with murder. Yeah,
Charles when he got arrested, and what he went down for,
I was, you know, I missed my buddy because he
(07:24):
was gone. You know, Charles's nephew, Houston was devastated when
Charles was taken into custody. I mean it was at
just bringback some memories there, buddy, just touching. But I
(07:44):
missed him, so must and what he went down for.
It really touched me because I knew my uncle had never,
you know, commit no crime like that, because he would
never do nothing like that. But that was my uncle,
and yeah, wow. Charles meanwhile was racking his brain to
(08:10):
remember what he was doing the night of that shooting, Wanning,
like where was I you know what I'm saying, that alibi?
What was I doing? And at the time, my girlfriend
she had kept a little little diary, you know what
I'm saying, a little journal, and she used right in
there and she had told me like that night, that
(08:31):
was the night that we went to a party and
then it started coming back and m I ran the
streets that night and I was out late. I ran
from the police the same night, So I guess if
I want to run from the police. I had been
in jail the night that Joe Travis was murdered, you
know what, I decided to run from the police. In
Charles's mind, if he hadn't run from the police that night,
(08:54):
he would have never been a suspect in the shooting.
Before trial, Charles was assigned public defenders Edward Wade and
Howard Manager. Charles still remembers his lawyer's advice every way.
He was just chilling me, like cop out, because you know,
I've been a lawyer all these years and all this stuff,
(09:17):
like they're saying this and that, and you know, I said,
I didn't do anything, so why should I cop out?
To some my ain't do so instead of taking a
plea bargain from the get go, Charles went to trial
in December of This episode is underwritten by a i G,
(09:47):
a leading global insurance company. A i G is committed
to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive difference
in the lives of its employees and in the communities
where we work and live. In light of the compelling
need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of
a I g's commitment to criminal and social justice reform,
(10:08):
the a i G pro Bono Program provides free legal
services and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. The
case against Charles relied solely on the witness testimonies of
Ronald Lacey and Amelia Tucker. The prosecutors were Winston Gray
(10:30):
and Thomas Rain. They called Lacey to the stand first. Lacey,
the man who identified Charles's mug shot, repeated what he
had told the police that he saw Charles shoot Joe
Travis in the head during an argument over drugs. The
other witness was Amelia Tucker, who remember had had a
(10:53):
separate altercation that night with Charlie dog Davis. On the stand,
Tucker said she heard the shots and when she looked
out the window, she saw the gunmen running away. And
she also said it was Charles now seeing there's just
and they time. We just don't show no emotion in it.
And obviously they're just like he'splode on inside. You know
(11:14):
what I'm saying, Like she's lying. I I'm going crazy.
Charles's defense did the best they could with these two
eye witnesses, whose testimonies were the only evidence presented against Charles.
They countered with Charles's alibi at the time of the
shooting he was at a party with his girlfriend, but
they could have done more. It turns out while Charles
(11:38):
was in jail awaiting trial, he met a guy from
the neighborhood named Vincent. Vincent told Charles he knew who
shot Travis. He said it was a guy named Jimmy.
This turned out to be James Morris, the nephew of
Charlie Dog Davis, and this scenario would make sense. His
nephew might have wanted to get back at Tucker for
shooting at Charlie Dog and Joe Travis. He could have
(12:00):
just been caught in the crossfire arms. With this new
information and a plausible scenario. Charles immediately went to his lawyers.
I told any Wade immediately that it's a guy in
here that say he saw everything, and he said it's
not me. They did it. But at trial, Charles's defense
(12:23):
did not call Vincent to testify. Instead, they presented photos
of James, and in the pictures, James looked nearly identical
to Charles Jackson. So when Ronald Lacy was on a
witness stand, so we cut time to cross examine every way.
Here that one picture of James. And he showed his
(12:45):
picture to Ronald Lacey and said who was this on
his picture? And Ronald Lacy looked at the picture and
he didn't hesitate. He said, this is a picture of
sweet Man. Sweet Man the child took nickname Charles was
still known by. But many of the people in the
courtroom knew the picture was of James. And I'm thinking, like, oh,
(13:09):
something to go home now, you know, if it's just
be fireworks because of this picture. And it wasn't nothing
like that. It's just it was quite quiet. The alibi
and mistaken identity was not enough. After only a few
days of trial and deliberation, Charles was convicted of murder
and attempted murder with a firearm. He was sentenced to
(13:30):
seven to years for attempted murder, three years for possession
of a firearm, and twenty years to life for the
murder of Joe Travis. As Charles settled into prison life,
he started resigning himself to the reality of being locked
away forever. He knew too many other people who had
(13:51):
faced the same situation. The only thing about prisons, like
it's just saying, like like a rice of passage, Like
in my neighborhood growing up, like I saw so many
guys that I haven't saw that I thought was dead
or moved away, and they were in prison for years,
you know what I mean. And it's just like I
(14:12):
knew people there and they waiting on me. You know
what I'm saying. It was gonna take care of me.
I was gonna be all right. So I went in
there with surviving on my mind. Charles knew though, that
in order to survive inside he had to put up
a pretty hard front. And what a surviving mean, Um,
(14:35):
just I'm not gonna tell everybody I'm innocent because they
don't want to hear that, because they're doing all this
time and if I make them think that I'm not
like them, then how can I survive? You know what
I'm saying. So I shouldn't went in there trying to
find my way out, you know. I shouldn't went in
there going to the library. Like I said, I had
a bad attitude. I was angry, you know, and I
(14:58):
feel like they to my life, you know. So I'm
just gonna be like no respect for no type of authority.
And for like the first ten years, you know, I
didn't even recognize myself no more because I was turning
to an animal. While Charles was in prison, his fourth child,
(15:34):
a daughter, was born. Her name was Siara. Were you
able to be a dad from person? It's crazy because
like first, like she little and she don't know you.
She whole visited day isten her try and like not
(15:57):
be scared of me, just sit on my lap and
play with me. Then by the end of the day
she would be more to play. Nice time for her
to go. Then I don't know whenning this time, I'm
a Siri and I see her again, she a little
bit bigger, got her personality, the change, you know what
I'm saying. And I just watched her grow up like that,
you know, and then it got you a part to
where her mind like wasn't in my life, so she
(16:20):
wasn't encouraging her. And Charles knew that without any encouragement,
no twelve or thirteen year olds would want to spend
their summers visiting someone in prison. So his visits with
Sierra ended. As the years passed, things just kept getting worse.
(16:43):
I started getting older, and like I said, I ain't
I ain't recognize what I was. And and then my
relatives started passing away, you know what I'm saying, And
my mom died, and that was like like my life
like turned around because I felt I couldn't it like
I was living no more, you know. Charles realized he
needed to change his mindset in order to change his life.
(17:06):
You know, as I've been here so long, I wake
up in the middle of the night and come up
with a way to get out. I need somebody to
listen till you help me, you know what I'm saying.
One thing that continued to sustain Charles during those years
was his connection to his nephew, Houston, the Robin to
his batman. Houston was now a deacon living in Jacksonville, Florida,
and they talked by phone several times a week, but
(17:28):
Houston was going through challenges of his own. At the
age of fifty three, he learned that he had staged
for kidney failure, and I told him I was all
positive and I needed a kitten and I was gonna
get him the transplant with this. But it's Mike took
two or three or five years to get a kid
who said, I had that loan to you know, live.
(17:48):
So he started off, Dad, this is like once a week,
and then he got so bad to hes like three
times a week. And I'll be talking to him while
he beat here, and I said, man, I'm gonna get
up out of here. Man, I'm gonna give you a
kidney man and is air ding will be good, you know.
And not knowing what's gonna happen me, Charles knew he
(18:08):
had to find a way to get out of prison.
His nephew's life depended on it. Determined to fight for
his exhoneration, Charles wrote to the Ohio Innocence Project to
(18:30):
ask them to review his case, and when they did,
pretty quickly, we knew at the very least that the
government's case against Charles back at the time a trial
was really really weak. UM, so we started to look
at it more. This is Donald Castor. I'm a professor
of clinical law with the Ohio Innocence Project to the
University of Cincinnati. He's also Charles's attorney. The police seized
(18:54):
on this theory that Charles might have been the guy
because Charles car was somewhere near the area, but it
wasn't actually Charles car Remember he drove a Monty Carlo
similar to the one used by the shooter. The state
also said that they had a credible witness, UM, and
we'll put quotes around witness named Ron Lacey who was
(19:16):
there at the time and who said that that he
saw the fatal shot being fired, and you know, put
a single picture in front of Mr Lacey, and Mr
Lacy says, yeah, that's the guy, and that's that's how
the police come to believe that it's Charles Jackson. Is
that even legal to just do one photo and not
a lineup? It's not now, it's not now. At the
(19:37):
time that Charles was convicted, there were no standards at least,
you know, sort of by statute for what kind of
lineup you can do now. Ohio has a statute that says,
if you're going to do a lineup, this is the
way that you have to do it. Charles's team continued
to dig into his case in they were finally able
to get ahold of previously undisclosed police reports, and what
(19:59):
they learned was huge. Um, so these are all things
that should have been turned over to Charles's defense at
the time of trial. That would have made a huge difference,
that would have saved Charles all these years in prison.
So we're talking about Brady violation. We are talking about
Brady violations. Brady violations are exactly that when the prosecution
hides or fails to disclose evidence favorable to a defendant.
(20:23):
And the reports revealed plenty of this. The first piece
of evidence, well, Miss Tucker said one thing at trial.
She had said a very different thing the night of
the shooting and the day after the shooting to the police.
And what she had told the police was that she
couldn't see the face of the person who did the shooting,
that she wasn't going to be able to identify the shooter. Remember,
(20:47):
Amelia Tucker was the rival drug dealer who was in
the initial altercation. Her first statement to police said that
she looked out her window and saw a man wearing
a bulky jacket get into the rear passenger seat of
a gray car. His back was to her and she
did not see his face. In a second interview, she
repeated the same thing to police, that she did not
(21:07):
see a face. Yet when she testified at trial, she
said she saw the shooter's face and that it was Charles.
And obviously you'd want to know that. Their key eye
witness said twice within thirty six hours of the shooting,
I didn't see the person's face. I can't tell you
who did it. You want to be able to ask
(21:28):
that person about those statements in front of a jury,
and and Charles never got that chance. The second piece
of evidence, Mr Lacy had made the statement that the
shooter had shot the decedent on the wrong side of
the head, that that he identified the shot is going
one place, the corner identified the shot is going the other.
(21:49):
The defense at the time of charles trial never knew
these things. Not only that there were more eyewitnesses to
the crime that were never called to test A five.
One of them was a man named Thomas Silvano. Mr.
Silvano saw it, He saw what happened, and there was
a statement in the records by him. But he never
(22:12):
never gets called. He never Nobody on Charles side knows
what Silvano knows, which is that he saw it and
it wasn't Charles Um. And then we had a private
investigator go and talked to Silvano, who was amazingly eager
to help out. You know, he didn't have any reason
personally to want to help Charles, but he really was
(22:33):
was stunned um that the wrong person had been in
prison for that whole time, and he really felt like
he had a duty to help out. When Charles's attorneys
presented him with all this information, he finally felt vindicated. Man,
(22:54):
was it was they bled me. You didn't do this,
you know I'm saying, when somebody just believing you. You
know what I said, we already thought you didn't do
but now we know you didn't do it. As now,
I was like, okay, cool, if I if I died
that night, you know what I'm saying, I knew that
someone knew that I wouldn't. You know, I wasn't. I
wouldn't alone no more, you know, what I'm saying. I
(23:16):
had a voice again in Charles was granted a hearing
to present all this newly discovered evidence to a judge.
(23:40):
Judge Robert McClelland felt the evidence was compelling enough to
sign an order vacating Charles's convictions. He ruled that Charles
should get a new trial. Months later, Donald Caster was
driving to Cleveland for a hearing in Charles's case when
he got a call. The prosecutor called me on my
(24:01):
cell phone. UM, so I had I had to pull
over because I'm starting to cry. He immediately called the
rest of the team, who were also on their way
to the hearing. So, okay, you guys need to pull
over before I tell you this, um And I said,
you know they're they're going to concede. And it's because
(24:22):
Lacey's backed away from his story. At the time of trial,
Ronald Lacey, the star witness and first person to implicate Charles,
was suddenly changing his story. Um And. He said that
they had reinterviewed Mr Lacy and that Mr Lacey had
backed away from saying that he saw the fatal shot
being fired. Without Lacy, the state didn't have a case.
(24:46):
Tucker had been discredited by this time, and there was
never any physical evidence to begin with. On November to,
fifty five year old Charles Jackson was released after almost
twenty eight years in prison. Though at first officials got
(25:09):
the right name, but the wrong person. They brought the
wrong They brought the wrong Charles out at right, they
brought the wrong Charles Jackson out. Not only was like
you know somebody was this guy like, oh, I guess
it's my time. And we had to. We had to.
We were like, wait, we don't this is not our Charles.
It's funny. It ain't funny, but you know what I'm saying.
(25:32):
They got the wrong money and not even try to
meet the wrong one out, I mean, come out after
the snaffoo and after the right Charles Jackson was released.
The day it was joyous for everyone, but Houston was
still in need of a kidney, and Charles, now a freeman,
was on a mission. Once it was confirmed that he
was a match, he headed down to Florida where his
(25:54):
nephew was waiting, and he came. You couldn't hear everything. Uh,
I thank god for him, because I don't know, you
know where I beat. I might have been to be
hearing today, but one for the blessing that he gave
(26:14):
me with it. You know, he was more than like
my brother. He was like he was like a hero
because even though instead he took a life, but he
didn't take no life. He helped save a life. So
to me, that's a hero. To me, he was just
(26:36):
a blessing to excuse m today. Charles lives in a
(27:02):
quiet suburb of Cleveland in a communal house known as
the Axonoree Home. So we started off like it was
just a house, you know what I'm saying. Now you
know it's more of a home now. So what does
that like to live with other axonore Ees. Do you
feel like they understand you better than other people? Might?
They definitely do because everybody else, like you know, being
(27:27):
a jail for so long, didn't come out here. He's like,
you dropped me from I can't could have been from
another planet or something. So nobody understand what you're doing
through except for another person who've been through exact same thing.
So that's what for that. That brotherhood. You know, Axonorees
like be a different kind. We take care of each other.
(27:48):
You know. When Charles first got to the Axonorey Home,
he took special care of one of his older housemates,
Isaiah Andrews, was wrongfully convicted of murder in teen seventy four.
He was exonerated in one at the age of eighty four,
and he died less than a year later, right after
(28:09):
he was awarded compensation by the City of Cleveland for
his wrongful imprisonment. These days, Charles spends a lot of
his time advocating for the wrongfully incarcerated and cooking for
his friends and housemates at the Axonary Home. He's just
completed a culinary training course and has ambitions to open
(28:29):
his own food truck, although, as his nephew Houston tells it,
Charles wasn't always a foodie. When me and Charles was
coming up, Charles wouldn't eat anything. You know what I'm saying.
He had that my grandmother cooks a home cooked meal.
Charles had to go to McDonald's burger king because he
wouldn't eat. This is how Charles was. But me, I
(28:49):
should watch my mother and my grandmother and nam cook
all the time. Houston even comes and helps out in
the kitchen at the Axonary Home. I'm not gonna say
I can cook better than Charles, but I get Charles
and run for with money. I'll leave it at that.
They ain't all about who can cook better? Who you right?
But I got tell him. I said, Robin can cook
(29:09):
better than beat Man. You might can do something better
to be, but I can cook better, yes, ma'am, Oh
yeah we cook, We definitely could. You can definitely get
something to eat at Design of your House. If you
(29:35):
want to donate to the Exonorey Home, go to x
Dash Freedom Studio dot org. You'll find that link in
our bio, along with other ways to help support Charles.
Next time Unwrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, Amelia Bird, did
you ever ask Chad to kill your parents? So? I
(29:59):
wanted my gradually by mam alone and me alone? But
I am dad. Thanks for listening to Wrongful Conviction with
Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go
to the links in our bio to see how you
can help. I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason
(30:20):
Flom and Kevin Wurtis, as well as our senior producer
Annie Chelsea, producer Lila Robinson, and story editor Sonya Paul.
The show is edited and mixed by Annie Chelsea, with
additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Connor Hall. The music
in this production is by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
(30:40):
Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good.
On all three platforms, you can also follow me on
both Instagram and Twitter at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with
Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
in association with Signal Come Penny Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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