May 6, 2020 • 34 mins
Am I telling the story the way the story needs to be told?
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell us the story of David McCallum, one of two New York teens wrongfully convicted of murder in 1986. Luckily for David, he had incredible allies in his corner - the famous boxer, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, and a district attorney, Ken Thompson, who was dedicated to real justice. Here comes the story of the DA and the Hurricane, and one of the men they saved.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, This is Laura and I writer. Because of COVID nineteen,
Steve and I recorded this episode from our homes, not
together in the studio. We might sound a little difference,
but I think the story we tell is as inspirational
as always be well and stay healthy. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction,
False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I'm Steve Drissen.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Today we'll tell you the story of David McCallum, one
of two New York teens wrongfully convicted of murder in
nineteen eighty six. Luckily for David, he had incredible allies
in his corner, the famous boxer Reuben Hurricane Carter and
a district attorney, Ken Thompson, who was dedicated to real justice.
Here comes the story of the DA and the Hurricane
(00:46):
and one of the men they saved.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
So it was two thousand and six and I had
just become the legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions,
and my colleague Rob Warden came into my office and
handed me a VHS tape. On the tape there were
confessions from David McCallum and Willie Stuckey. And Rob told me,
(01:20):
he said, Ruben Hurricane Carter would like you to look
at this. You know, when Rubin Hurricane Carter asked you
to do something, you do it.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
At the time, Ruben Carter was the most famous person
who'd ever been wrongly convicted. In the nineteen sixties, he
was a prize winning professional boxer, nicknamed Hurricane for his
record of early round knockouts, but in nineteen sixty six
he was convicted of a triple murder he didn't commit.
After twenty years behind bars, Ruben was exonerated. He dedicated
(01:55):
the rest of his life to advocating for others he'd
been wrongly convicted too. In nineteen seventy six, Bob Dylan
wrote the song Hurricane as a tribute to Ruben Carter.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
You know, I had met Rubin a couple years before
Rob handed me that tape. Ruben was at Northwestern he
was at a conference to honor dozens of people who
had been exonerated off of death row, and for me
it was now there was a little bit of hero
worship on my part. I was eager to meet him
because I was so impressed with the way he remade himself,
(02:30):
you know, from a brawler to a deep thinker.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
To be honest. You need both of those skills to
work on cases of wrongful conviction, and you need plenty
of perseverance.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I got hooked on a ten year struggle to represent
David after watching that tape.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Today's story begins in Queens, New York, in South Ozone Park,
a working class neighborhood next to JFK Airport. It's phil
with single family homes, storefronts, and the sound of jetplanes
circling overhead. It's three point thirty on a Sunday afternoon,
October twentieth, nineteen eighty five. Twenty year old Nathan Blenner
(03:12):
is behind the wheel of his nineteen seventy nine black
Buick Regal. It's parked on a neighborhood street, and he's
trying to get the car to start. A couple kids
playing in a nearby yard were the only witnesses to
what happened next. According to the kids, Nathan is fiddling
with the ignition when two men approach him from behind.
(03:33):
They're about to pass the car when they turn around,
go to the driver's side and tell Nathan to move over.
The men push him into the backseat, get in manage
to start the car. And drive off. It's over in
the blink of an eye. A carjacking and a kidnapping.
Police from the local precinct and Queen's canvass the neighborhood
(03:55):
looking for leads. About a block away, they find a
woman who says she'd been outside washing Herbuick Regal a
red one when two men walked by, clearly checking out
her vehicle. One of them said nice car, She answered,
if it goes missing, I'll know where to look. The
two men didn't say anything else. Instead, they kept on
(04:17):
walking in the direction of Nathan Blenner. The woman gave
a description to the police. Both men were black and
in their twenties. They were also of noticeably different heights.
One was around five foot six and the taller guy
who had braided hair was five foot ten. But this
car theft and kidnapping soon got even more serious. The
(04:39):
next day, October twenty first, police in Brooklyn get a
phone call a doa dead on arrival in a wooded
area near a cemetery, Nathan Blenner's body had been found.
He was lying face down with a single gunshot wound
to the back of his head, and two days after
the carjacking, Brooklyn police were called to Fulton Street, about
(05:02):
a mile from where they discovered Nathan's body. A car
had been set on fire. It was Nathan's Buick Regal
Police douse the flames, search the car and find fingerprints,
along with some cigarette butts in the ashtray. Brooklyn cops
get in touch with NYPD Central Robbery. They learned there's
(05:22):
been a string of eight car thefts in Queen's over
the two days leading up to Nathan's kidnapping. In every case,
the offenders were described as two black men around age twenty,
one five foot six, the other five foot ten, and
armed with a gun. This was a two man car
theft crime spree that culminated in Nathan Blenner's murder, and
(05:46):
police were feeling intense pressure to stop it in its tracks.
A few days later, on October twenty fifth, two Brooklyn men,
Terence Hayward and Herman Mumford are arrested for snatching a
chain off a subway rider. One of these guys was
five foot six, the other one who had braided hair,
was five foot ten. Both were black. In other words,
(06:09):
they matched the car thief descriptions pretty well. Police question
Hayward and Mumford about the string of car thefts and
about Nathan's death. Now will never definitively know whether these
two were involved in anything. They didn't confess and police
stop investigating them pretty soon. That's because Hayward deflects attention
(06:30):
away by telling the cops he knows about a gun
that had been used in a murder. Now stick with
me here, because like a lot of police investigations, this
gets messy. Hayward told the police that his friend James
Johnson knew more about the gun. It turns out that
James was a suspect in a grocery store robbery in
(06:50):
which a gun had been used. When police interviewed James,
he said that he'd given the grocery store gun to
his aunt Lottie, who then gave the gun to a
man named Jamie, and then, shortly before Nathan's murder, Jamie
supposedly gave the gun to a sixteen year old Brooklyn
teenager named Willy Stucky.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
What kind of story is that you got James's and
Jamie's and Lotties and who are all these people?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
No kidding? This is a ridiculous story, And it's even
worse because it's coming from two guys who match the
descriptions of the carthieves. It's never clear whether this opposed
grocery store gun had anything to do with the car
thefts or Nathan Blenner, and there's no record of police
ever speaking to Aunt Lottie or Jamie. Instead, police goes
straight for Willy Stucky. For some reason, they jump to
(07:38):
the conclusion that Willy used that gun to kill Nathan.
At about seven pm on October twenty seventh, police pick
up sixteen year old Willy Stucky and bring him to
the eighty third Precinct in Brooklyn for questioning, and within
a few hours police also pick up Willy's sixteen year
old buddy, David McCallum and bring him in for questioningo.
(08:01):
Willy and David were longtime friends who played handball together
at a local park. Now, Willy had never been in
trouble with the law before, but for David it was
a different story. David's family had moved from South Carolina
to Brooklyn when he was just seven years old, and
the culture shock had been pretty severe.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
You know, he went from a very rural environment where
he would play in the fields and go fishing and
not have that many worries in his life. But once
he hit the streets of Brooklyn, he took on this
sort of aura of a big tough guy because he
needed that to survive, and he began to act out
(08:43):
on the street in ways to fit his profile. But
it was really more bravado than anything else.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Police feel like they're hot on the trail and they
begin interrogating Willy and David separate rooms at the police station. Now,
neither one of their interrogations was recorded, so we'll never
have a perfect record of what happened inside the box,
but suffice to say that the detectives described the interrogations
very differently than Willi and David did. In court, the
(09:18):
lead detective testified that both Willia and David voluntarily confessed
to killing Nathan Blenner after just a few questions. But
Willie testified that police handcuffed him and then hit him
three or four times. David also testified that police hit
him in the mouth hard enough to drop blood and
they threatened to use a chair next time.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
You know, the confession, when I first looked at it
had a very rehearsed quality to it. It was very short,
but There's one moment it gave me pause. It's when
David McCallum looks with a moment of sheer terror at
the police officer who's not on the screen but is
(10:02):
clearly sitting in the room. And it was a look like,
am I doing okay? Am I telling the story the
way the story needs to be told? And I remember
Freeze framing that one frame of terror, and that suggested
to me that what David was saying in terms of
(10:23):
getting hit was probably true.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Both David and Willie testified that after they agreed to confess,
the police rehearsed a story with them. Willy in particular,
testified that police fed him details about the perpetrator's conversation
with that woman washing her red Bwick Regal. But the
police claimed that all the information in Willy and David's
confessions came straight from them.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
This is exactly why you need to record the entire
interrogation process. If you don't do that, it's the police
versus the suspects. The suspects are never going to be
found more credible by a judge or a jury. Police
officers are professional witnesses. They testify in court on a
regular basis, and Willy and David were just kids. They
(11:12):
never stood a chance on cross examination.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
But David and Willy's confessions were both really problematic. The
stories they told didn't match the actual evidence. Willie said
Nathan had been shot three times, when in fact he'd
only been shot once. Both Willy and David said the
shooting happened at night, but the medical examiner said the
murder happen during the day, probably right after the carjacking.
(11:37):
Willie told the police that he'd hidden the gun under
his mattress, but when police went to Willy's home and looked,
they couldn't find any gun. There were other problems too,
Like a lot of New York City kids, David and
Willie didn't know how to drive, making them unlikely suspects
for a car theft ring, and most importantly, they didn't
(11:57):
match the descriptions of the car thieves. David and Willie
were sixteen years old, not twenty something, neither one of
them had braids, and both were short, nowhere near five
foot ten. But despite all this, Willy and David were
charged with the murder of Nathan Blenner based on their
confessions and nothing else. Both were convicted on October twenty seventh,
(12:22):
nineteen eighty six. Each was sentenced to twenty five years
to life. The story fast forwards now more than eighteen
years to two thousand and four. David McCallum was thirty
(12:44):
four years old. He'd transformed from an insecure teenager into
a man known by other prisoners for his unshakable integrity.
David had always maintained his innocence, but he'd lost all
his appeals and was running out of options. Tragically, Willie
Stuckey had died in two thousand and one at the
age of thirty one, from what the prison said was
(13:07):
a heart attack. So this was David's fight now, and
for too long he'd been fighting alone.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
By two thousand and four, David had written over six
hundred letters. He wrote to lawyers, he wrote to TV stations,
radio stations, he wrote to anybody, and he always insisted
that he was innocent, But all he got back were
rejections until one of those letters made its way to
Ruben Hurricane Carter.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Remember Ruben Carter was the famous boxer who'd spent twenty
years in prison for a triple murder. He didn't commit.
Whose long fight to clear himself was immortalized by Bob
Dylan in the song Hurricane Now. Rubin wasn't exonerated until
nineteen eighty five, the same year that David and Willie
went down for Nathan Blenner's murder. When he got out,
(13:55):
ruben was malnourished from decades of prison food, and he'd
lost sight in one eye from a botched prison surgery.
He couldn't fight for the middleweight crown any longer, so
instead he started fighting for the wrongfully convicted. After working
for one of North America's leading innocence organizations, Rubin founded
his own group, Innocence International.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Rubin recognized that he was probably the most well known
figure who had been wrongfully convicted, and that if he
didn't use his voice in some way to be a
champion for the wrongfully convicted, that it would be a
(14:40):
terrible waste.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
For twenty years, I was incarcerated as a racist, triple murderer,
condemned by history, repudiated by the courts, and sentenced to
die amid the squalor and despair and of a maximum
security prison. And tonight I am standing here at the
(15:07):
United Nations making this address. Now, if that's not miraculous.
Then I don't know what it is.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
I don't know what is. David was at his wits end.
His best friend had died, and every day was a
struggle for him because he didn't see a way out.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
In February two thousand and four, David McCallum read a
magazine interview with Reuben Hurricane Carter, and he sent a
letter asking for help to the author, a man named
Ken Klonsky. Ruben and Ken had started working together on
wrongful conviction cases, and today Ken is the director of
Innocence International.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
David sent me a letter and he explained his case
and the situation he was in. Now, I have no
legal background, and I had no background in wrongful convictions,
so I just thought, well, here's a person sounds honest,
and I'll just tell Ruben about him. And Ruben at
first he took it in and he said at some point, well,
(16:16):
let's go visit the brother and see what he's like.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Both Ken Klonsky and Ruben Carter read up on David's
case and came to visit him in prison.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
This was a prison in New York called Eastern Correctional.
When we visited, first of all, I'd never been in
a prison in my life, and the place itself was enormous.
It looked like a medieval castle.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
In a visiting room, Reuben and David sat on opposite
sides of the table, silently studying each other. Later David
would remember feeling like Ruben was reading him, and David
refused to break the silence.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
The eye contact was like love at first sight. And
they had a conversation which David started going on about
it case, and Ruben interrupted and says, you know what,
I'm not interested right now in your case. I want
to know who you are.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Ruben was a tough interviewer. He grilled David about you know,
if I get involved in your case, I don't want
you to come out of prison and act like a
fool and I'm wasting my time. And he got from
David the sense that this was somebody who was going
to make him proud, and Rubin left that meeting knowing
(17:31):
that he was going to do everything in his power
to get David McCallum out of prison.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
I think we were there about two hours, and I
remember us getting up and leaving and I look back
at that enormous prison and I said Rubin. Really, who's
going to get him out of there?
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Rubin and Ken hired a defense lawyer, Oscar Michelin, and
in two thousand and six, the three of them sent
the confession tapes to the Center on Wrongful Convictions for
Steve to review. Now, David had read about your work, Steve,
and I'm going to out you here. He considers you
the Lebron James of false confessions.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Look, Laura, we're in Chicago, and out of respect for
the greatest basketball player of all time, I think we
should go with the Michael Jordan of false confessions.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Slow down, Steve. First of all, you're from Philly, that's right.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
So actually, the more I think about it, I prefer
to be known as the Doctor j of false confessions,
as in, the doctor is in the house. Oh see,
the doctor makes house calls. The doctor is on the case.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Okay, Doctor j you analyze these confessions and you found
a pretty revealing error what we call a false fed fact.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
I did.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
A false fed fact is a fact that comports with
the police theory at the time of the interrogation, and
it's adopted by the suspect in his or her confession,
but the fact later turns out to be false, and
if it is in the suspects confession, then you know
(19:09):
that the police fed that fact to the suspects. And
that's exactly what happened here.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
At the time of the interrogations, the police believed that
Willy and David were the ones who had talked to
that woman with the red Buick regal just before going
around the block and attacking Nathan Blenner. And sure enough,
right there in Willie Stucky's confession is a story about
talking to that woman and saying nice car.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
But David and Willie didn't match their description. Remember, the
woman had described two guys five feet six and five ten,
one with braids. Now David and Willie were both five
six and neither of them had braids.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
They couldn't have been the guys who talked to that woman.
And by the time of trial even the state agreed
that David and Willie were not the ones she'd seen.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
So how did story get into Willie's confession? It must
have been fed by the police.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
That was enough to make Steve join the team right
then and there, and.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
I decided to recruit Laura Cohen, a law professor and
an attorney at Rutgridge University to join our defense team.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Laura, Cohen and Steve approached the Brooklyn DA's office and
got them to agree to do forensic testing on the
cigarette butts and fingerprints found in Nathan Blenner's car, and
the results the cigarette butts had DNA on them that
excluded both David and Willie. Instead, the DNA matched a
different Brooklyn teenager they had no connection to. The fingerprints
(20:41):
also excluded David and Willie. They matched yet another Brooklyn
teenager who had been killed years before in an altercation
with the police.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
This was more powerful evidence of both Willie and David's innocence,
and the whole team, including Rubin, was very excited.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
But this evidence still wasn't enough to persuade the Brooklyn
DA to exonerate David, not yet. Then two big things happened. First,
an election in twenty thirteen, a new Brooklyn DA was elected,
a reformer named Ken Thompson who had campaigned on a
platform of rooting out wrongful convictions. David's legal team immediately
(21:24):
contacted Thompson and told him about the case.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
We used every bit of our connections to try to
get David's case on Ken Thompson's radar screen, and it worked.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
The second big thing that happened was a terrible blow
to the whole team. In twenty fourteen, Rubin announced that
he had prostate cancer and it was spreading fast.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
When Rubin announced that he had cancer, he and I
were kind of at odds with one another. Rubin was
upset with me because he thought that we coddled the
DA instead of looking for an opportunity to land a
knockout blow with new evidence. So Ruben's answer to us was,
(22:15):
stop fiddling around with the DA's office, stop dealing with
state court. You need to go to federal court in
order to get David out of prison. And we told
Ruben that's just not going to work. And it created
a tension between Rubin and me at this point in time.
(22:36):
But the announcement that he had prostate cancer was devastating
because even though we were at odds, I had tremendous
respect for Ruben and I knew that his voice was
going to be crucial if we were ever going to
win this case.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Ruben was very sick and quickly got much sicker, but
he was still the ultimate fighter. On his deathbed, With
ken Klonsky's help, Ruben wrote an op ed for the
New York Post urging the New Brooklyn DA to exonerate
David McCallum. It was one of the last things he
did with his life. Here's some of what Reuben Hurricane
(23:15):
Carter wrote.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
My single regret in life is that David McCallum is
still in prison. My aim in helping this fine man
is to pay it forward, to give the help that
I received as a wrongfully convicted man to another who
needs such help. Now now I'm looking death straight in
the eye, Ruben wrote, He's got me on the ropes,
(23:40):
but I won't back down. And then Ruben asked the
New Brooklyn DA to look straight into the eye of truth,
a tougher customer than death, and not to back down either.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
To this day, ken Klonsky remembers helping Ruben write that
op ed.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
We wrote a look utter together and it didn't have
a proper ending, And finally I hit on something. To
live in a world where truth matters, and just as
however late still happens, that world would be heaven enough
for us.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
All.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
So it was out there that Ruben was dying and
that Ruben had made a last wish.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
That op ed was the knockout blow that we were
looking for.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Ruben's dying plea, combined with the new DNA evidence, made
the difference. A few months after Ruben passed away, the
Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson announced that he was going to
exonerate David McCallum and posthumously exonerate Willie Stuck too. And
while this news was incredibly welcome, the way ken Thompson's
(25:05):
office handled the exonerations was extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
I had never seen so much grace in an exoneration.
And let me explain what I mean by that. When
we exonerate people, most of the time, it's after a
hard fought legal battle that brings the state down to
its knees, and the state reluctantly gives up, and on
(25:29):
the day of exoneration it's oftentimes a kind of anticlimactic moment.
But David's case was so different. When David was picked
up by the detectives from prison, he was taken to
the courthouse and then the DA's office brought him a
lunch of barbecue chicken and whatever he wanted to drink,
(25:53):
and one by one, members of the DA's conviction Review
Unit congratulated David. David not only met Ken Thompson the DA,
but he also met Ken Thompson's wife, and there was
such a recognition of the humanity of David throughout this process.
Speaker 6 (26:16):
I'm Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson, and I'm here today
with some members of my conviction review team. And it
continued because from day one I made a pledge to
the people of Brooklyn, and my pledge was to put
the guilty away, but also to make sure that our
criminal justice system was based on fundamental fairness. That's what
(26:39):
we're doing here today.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Normally, when prisoners are brought into the court room, they
had come in through the back door. They're handcuffed and
they are shackled. When it came time for David's case
to be called, he walked in through the front door
with his head held high, knowing that he would soon
be a free man.
Speaker 6 (27:02):
Mister McCallum asked me to look at his case. I
agreed to do so because my duty is not just
to convict, but to do justice. We have conducted a
thorough and fair investigation of this matter, and as a
result of that investigation, we've determined that there's not a
single piece of evidence that linked David McCallum or William
(27:25):
Stuckey to the abduction of Nathan Blenna.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Unbeknownst to David, they had brought Willie Stucky's mother in
for the exogeneration and it was a reunion that was
just heartbreaking and incredibly tender. She was there also to
feel that her son was being vindicated at the same time.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
And so today at two pm before Judge Demic in
Brooklyn State Supreme I will move in the interest of
justice to vacate the convictions of David McCallum and Willie Stuckey.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
This was not a reluctant exonerations, but a public reckoning,
and that kind of exoneration really is such an important
step in the healing process for people who get out
of prison.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
David McCallum walked into prison as a boy. Today he
will walk out of the courthouse as a man.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
The District Attorney had a press conference and in the
press conference he said, I've inherited a legacy of disgrace
with respect to wrongful convictions, and that moment you knew
his intention to change things, to write everything was going
to be realized. It was just a wonderful moment.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
The only thing missed from David McCallum's exoneration was Rubin.
Hurricane Carter and the state even found a way to
bring Rubin into these proceedings. On the day of David's exoneration,
the DA's office dispatched two detectives to take him from
(29:24):
prison to court, and on the way back from prison,
one of the detectives pulled out his iPhone and he
pressed play, and of course it was the Story of
the Hurricane by Bob Dylan. It comes the Story of
the Hurricane, the man the authorities came to.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Blame Ruben Carter wasn't the only hero of this story
who passed away too soon. On October ninth, twenty sixteen,
Ken Thompson, that reform minded Brooklyn DA who exonerated David
McCallum and Will Stucky with such grace, also died of cancer.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
He'd exonerated by that point in time about thirteen or
fourteen people, and so when he died it was a
really terrible blow for justice. But one of the things
that happened after Ken's death was his wife actually reached
out to David McCallum and invited David to speak at
(30:26):
the going home service for Ken Thompson.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
And so David McCallum stood up at the packed memorial
service for the da who had agreed to free him
and gave a powerful eulogy.
Speaker 7 (30:41):
He promised that he would investigate lawful convictions in a
very fair way, and my legal team and I that's
all we ever wanted.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
It was two years to the day after David had
been exonerated.
Speaker 7 (30:55):
Mister Thompson touched me in a way that I don't
think anybody ever would again, because mister Thompson didn't only
give me my freedom. Mister Thompson, and this may sound
point to some who don't believe in compassion, mister Thompson
(31:15):
gave me my old daughter, Quinn. Because had he not
did what he promised he would do, I'm not sure
where I.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Would be right now.
Speaker 5 (31:33):
David, Yes, you still see it's been a while, so
you've been out now for five and a half years almost.
You know, what are your hopes and dreams? And what
are your hopes and dreams for Quinn?
Speaker 8 (31:46):
What about hopes and dreams is to become even the
more effective then I think I'm pretty good at it now,
but I just want to be really really good at
it because I work very hard work, because it's all
worth at the end of the day, and I am
braced it.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
You know.
Speaker 8 (32:01):
I consider myself for hairs on Dad.
Speaker 5 (32:04):
She Daddy's little girl.
Speaker 8 (32:05):
Absolutely. I have to tell you how many times I've
picked us at school that soon I come in the door.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
Oh my god.
Speaker 8 (32:14):
You know, she just runs from what else he's doing.
And that's it's almost undesciable in some way when it's
really really good failing up.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
And that's the story of David McCallum. Join us next
week for the last episode in our first season, we'll
tell you about one of the first modern day cases
of false confession from nineteen seventy three. Peter Riley was
just sixteen when he was wrongfully convicted of murdering his
own mother. Peter's innocence was championed by everyone from neighborhood
(32:51):
moms to New York celebrities. His people powered campaign for
exoneration has been the inspiration for the work Steve and
I do till then. Thanks for listening to wrongful conviction,
false confessions, wrongful Conviction False Confessions is a production of
(33:13):
Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One.
Special thanks to our executive producer Jason Flamm and the
team at Signal Company Number one. Executive producer Kevin wardis
Senior producer and Pope and additional production and editing by
Connor Hall. Special thanks to Jogi Hammer for additional script
editing and for wrangling and writing like a mad woman.
(33:36):
Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow
me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Nyriter and you can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
Twitter at wrong Conviction
Hi, This is Laura and I writer. Because of COVID nineteen,
Steve and I recorded this episode from our homes, not
together in the studio. We might sound a little difference,
but I think the story we tell is as inspirational
as always be well and stay healthy. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction,
False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I'm Steve Drissen.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Today we'll tell you the story of David McCallum, one
of two New York teens wrongfully convicted of murder in
nineteen eighty six. Luckily for David, he had incredible allies
in his corner, the famous boxer Reuben Hurricane Carter and
a district attorney, Ken Thompson, who was dedicated to real justice.
Here comes the story of the DA and the Hurricane
(00:46):
and one of the men they saved.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
So it was two thousand and six and I had
just become the legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions,
and my colleague Rob Warden came into my office and
handed me a VHS tape. On the tape there were
confessions from David McCallum and Willie Stuckey. And Rob told me,
(01:20):
he said, Ruben Hurricane Carter would like you to look
at this. You know, when Rubin Hurricane Carter asked you
to do something, you do it.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
At the time, Ruben Carter was the most famous person
who'd ever been wrongly convicted. In the nineteen sixties, he
was a prize winning professional boxer, nicknamed Hurricane for his
record of early round knockouts, but in nineteen sixty six
he was convicted of a triple murder he didn't commit.
After twenty years behind bars, Ruben was exonerated. He dedicated
(01:55):
the rest of his life to advocating for others he'd
been wrongly convicted too. In nineteen seventy six, Bob Dylan
wrote the song Hurricane as a tribute to Ruben Carter.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
You know, I had met Rubin a couple years before
Rob handed me that tape. Ruben was at Northwestern he
was at a conference to honor dozens of people who
had been exonerated off of death row, and for me
it was now there was a little bit of hero
worship on my part. I was eager to meet him
because I was so impressed with the way he remade himself,
(02:30):
you know, from a brawler to a deep thinker.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
To be honest. You need both of those skills to
work on cases of wrongful conviction, and you need plenty
of perseverance.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I got hooked on a ten year struggle to represent
David after watching that tape.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Today's story begins in Queens, New York, in South Ozone Park,
a working class neighborhood next to JFK Airport. It's phil
with single family homes, storefronts, and the sound of jetplanes
circling overhead. It's three point thirty on a Sunday afternoon,
October twentieth, nineteen eighty five. Twenty year old Nathan Blenner
(03:12):
is behind the wheel of his nineteen seventy nine black
Buick Regal. It's parked on a neighborhood street, and he's
trying to get the car to start. A couple kids
playing in a nearby yard were the only witnesses to
what happened next. According to the kids, Nathan is fiddling
with the ignition when two men approach him from behind.
(03:33):
They're about to pass the car when they turn around,
go to the driver's side and tell Nathan to move over.
The men push him into the backseat, get in manage
to start the car. And drive off. It's over in
the blink of an eye. A carjacking and a kidnapping.
Police from the local precinct and Queen's canvass the neighborhood
(03:55):
looking for leads. About a block away, they find a
woman who says she'd been outside washing Herbuick Regal a
red one when two men walked by, clearly checking out
her vehicle. One of them said nice car, She answered,
if it goes missing, I'll know where to look. The
two men didn't say anything else. Instead, they kept on
(04:17):
walking in the direction of Nathan Blenner. The woman gave
a description to the police. Both men were black and
in their twenties. They were also of noticeably different heights.
One was around five foot six and the taller guy
who had braided hair was five foot ten. But this
car theft and kidnapping soon got even more serious. The
(04:39):
next day, October twenty first, police in Brooklyn get a
phone call a doa dead on arrival in a wooded
area near a cemetery, Nathan Blenner's body had been found.
He was lying face down with a single gunshot wound
to the back of his head, and two days after
the carjacking, Brooklyn police were called to Fulton Street, about
(05:02):
a mile from where they discovered Nathan's body. A car
had been set on fire. It was Nathan's Buick Regal
Police douse the flames, search the car and find fingerprints,
along with some cigarette butts in the ashtray. Brooklyn cops
get in touch with NYPD Central Robbery. They learned there's
(05:22):
been a string of eight car thefts in Queen's over
the two days leading up to Nathan's kidnapping. In every case,
the offenders were described as two black men around age twenty,
one five foot six, the other five foot ten, and
armed with a gun. This was a two man car
theft crime spree that culminated in Nathan Blenner's murder, and
(05:46):
police were feeling intense pressure to stop it in its tracks.
A few days later, on October twenty fifth, two Brooklyn men,
Terence Hayward and Herman Mumford are arrested for snatching a
chain off a subway rider. One of these guys was
five foot six, the other one who had braided hair,
was five foot ten. Both were black. In other words,
(06:09):
they matched the car thief descriptions pretty well. Police question
Hayward and Mumford about the string of car thefts and
about Nathan's death. Now will never definitively know whether these
two were involved in anything. They didn't confess and police
stop investigating them pretty soon. That's because Hayward deflects attention
(06:30):
away by telling the cops he knows about a gun
that had been used in a murder. Now stick with
me here, because like a lot of police investigations, this
gets messy. Hayward told the police that his friend James
Johnson knew more about the gun. It turns out that
James was a suspect in a grocery store robbery in
(06:50):
which a gun had been used. When police interviewed James,
he said that he'd given the grocery store gun to
his aunt Lottie, who then gave the gun to a
man named Jamie, and then, shortly before Nathan's murder, Jamie
supposedly gave the gun to a sixteen year old Brooklyn
teenager named Willy Stucky.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
What kind of story is that you got James's and
Jamie's and Lotties and who are all these people?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
No kidding? This is a ridiculous story, And it's even
worse because it's coming from two guys who match the
descriptions of the carthieves. It's never clear whether this opposed
grocery store gun had anything to do with the car
thefts or Nathan Blenner, and there's no record of police
ever speaking to Aunt Lottie or Jamie. Instead, police goes
straight for Willy Stucky. For some reason, they jump to
(07:38):
the conclusion that Willy used that gun to kill Nathan.
At about seven pm on October twenty seventh, police pick
up sixteen year old Willy Stucky and bring him to
the eighty third Precinct in Brooklyn for questioning, and within
a few hours police also pick up Willy's sixteen year
old buddy, David McCallum and bring him in for questioningo.
(08:01):
Willy and David were longtime friends who played handball together
at a local park. Now, Willy had never been in
trouble with the law before, but for David it was
a different story. David's family had moved from South Carolina
to Brooklyn when he was just seven years old, and
the culture shock had been pretty severe.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
You know, he went from a very rural environment where
he would play in the fields and go fishing and
not have that many worries in his life. But once
he hit the streets of Brooklyn, he took on this
sort of aura of a big tough guy because he
needed that to survive, and he began to act out
(08:43):
on the street in ways to fit his profile. But
it was really more bravado than anything else.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Police feel like they're hot on the trail and they
begin interrogating Willy and David separate rooms at the police station. Now,
neither one of their interrogations was recorded, so we'll never
have a perfect record of what happened inside the box,
but suffice to say that the detectives described the interrogations
very differently than Willi and David did. In court, the
(09:18):
lead detective testified that both Willia and David voluntarily confessed
to killing Nathan Blenner after just a few questions. But
Willie testified that police handcuffed him and then hit him
three or four times. David also testified that police hit
him in the mouth hard enough to drop blood and
they threatened to use a chair next time.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
You know, the confession, when I first looked at it
had a very rehearsed quality to it. It was very short,
but There's one moment it gave me pause. It's when
David McCallum looks with a moment of sheer terror at
the police officer who's not on the screen but is
(10:02):
clearly sitting in the room. And it was a look like,
am I doing okay? Am I telling the story the
way the story needs to be told? And I remember
Freeze framing that one frame of terror, and that suggested
to me that what David was saying in terms of
(10:23):
getting hit was probably true.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Both David and Willie testified that after they agreed to confess,
the police rehearsed a story with them. Willy in particular,
testified that police fed him details about the perpetrator's conversation
with that woman washing her red Bwick Regal. But the
police claimed that all the information in Willy and David's
confessions came straight from them.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
This is exactly why you need to record the entire
interrogation process. If you don't do that, it's the police
versus the suspects. The suspects are never going to be
found more credible by a judge or a jury. Police
officers are professional witnesses. They testify in court on a
regular basis, and Willy and David were just kids. They
(11:12):
never stood a chance on cross examination.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
But David and Willy's confessions were both really problematic. The
stories they told didn't match the actual evidence. Willie said
Nathan had been shot three times, when in fact he'd
only been shot once. Both Willy and David said the
shooting happened at night, but the medical examiner said the
murder happen during the day, probably right after the carjacking.
(11:37):
Willie told the police that he'd hidden the gun under
his mattress, but when police went to Willy's home and looked,
they couldn't find any gun. There were other problems too,
Like a lot of New York City kids, David and
Willie didn't know how to drive, making them unlikely suspects
for a car theft ring, and most importantly, they didn't
(11:57):
match the descriptions of the car thieves. David and Willie
were sixteen years old, not twenty something, neither one of
them had braids, and both were short, nowhere near five
foot ten. But despite all this, Willy and David were
charged with the murder of Nathan Blenner based on their
confessions and nothing else. Both were convicted on October twenty seventh,
(12:22):
nineteen eighty six. Each was sentenced to twenty five years
to life. The story fast forwards now more than eighteen
years to two thousand and four. David McCallum was thirty
(12:44):
four years old. He'd transformed from an insecure teenager into
a man known by other prisoners for his unshakable integrity.
David had always maintained his innocence, but he'd lost all
his appeals and was running out of options. Tragically, Willie
Stuckey had died in two thousand and one at the
age of thirty one, from what the prison said was
(13:07):
a heart attack. So this was David's fight now, and
for too long he'd been fighting alone.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
By two thousand and four, David had written over six
hundred letters. He wrote to lawyers, he wrote to TV stations,
radio stations, he wrote to anybody, and he always insisted
that he was innocent, But all he got back were
rejections until one of those letters made its way to
Ruben Hurricane Carter.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Remember Ruben Carter was the famous boxer who'd spent twenty
years in prison for a triple murder. He didn't commit.
Whose long fight to clear himself was immortalized by Bob
Dylan in the song Hurricane Now. Rubin wasn't exonerated until
nineteen eighty five, the same year that David and Willie
went down for Nathan Blenner's murder. When he got out,
(13:55):
ruben was malnourished from decades of prison food, and he'd
lost sight in one eye from a botched prison surgery.
He couldn't fight for the middleweight crown any longer, so
instead he started fighting for the wrongfully convicted. After working
for one of North America's leading innocence organizations, Rubin founded
his own group, Innocence International.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Rubin recognized that he was probably the most well known
figure who had been wrongfully convicted, and that if he
didn't use his voice in some way to be a
champion for the wrongfully convicted, that it would be a
(14:40):
terrible waste.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
For twenty years, I was incarcerated as a racist, triple murderer,
condemned by history, repudiated by the courts, and sentenced to
die amid the squalor and despair and of a maximum
security prison. And tonight I am standing here at the
(15:07):
United Nations making this address. Now, if that's not miraculous.
Then I don't know what it is.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
I don't know what is. David was at his wits end.
His best friend had died, and every day was a
struggle for him because he didn't see a way out.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
In February two thousand and four, David McCallum read a
magazine interview with Reuben Hurricane Carter, and he sent a
letter asking for help to the author, a man named
Ken Klonsky. Ruben and Ken had started working together on
wrongful conviction cases, and today Ken is the director of
Innocence International.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
David sent me a letter and he explained his case
and the situation he was in. Now, I have no
legal background, and I had no background in wrongful convictions,
so I just thought, well, here's a person sounds honest,
and I'll just tell Ruben about him. And Ruben at
first he took it in and he said at some point, well,
(16:16):
let's go visit the brother and see what he's like.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Both Ken Klonsky and Ruben Carter read up on David's
case and came to visit him in prison.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
This was a prison in New York called Eastern Correctional.
When we visited, first of all, I'd never been in
a prison in my life, and the place itself was enormous.
It looked like a medieval castle.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
In a visiting room, Reuben and David sat on opposite
sides of the table, silently studying each other. Later David
would remember feeling like Ruben was reading him, and David
refused to break the silence.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
The eye contact was like love at first sight. And
they had a conversation which David started going on about
it case, and Ruben interrupted and says, you know what,
I'm not interested right now in your case. I want
to know who you are.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Ruben was a tough interviewer. He grilled David about you know,
if I get involved in your case, I don't want
you to come out of prison and act like a
fool and I'm wasting my time. And he got from
David the sense that this was somebody who was going
to make him proud, and Rubin left that meeting knowing
(17:31):
that he was going to do everything in his power
to get David McCallum out of prison.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
I think we were there about two hours, and I
remember us getting up and leaving and I look back
at that enormous prison and I said Rubin. Really, who's
going to get him out of there?
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Rubin and Ken hired a defense lawyer, Oscar Michelin, and
in two thousand and six, the three of them sent
the confession tapes to the Center on Wrongful Convictions for
Steve to review. Now, David had read about your work, Steve,
and I'm going to out you here. He considers you
the Lebron James of false confessions.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Look, Laura, we're in Chicago, and out of respect for
the greatest basketball player of all time, I think we
should go with the Michael Jordan of false confessions.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Slow down, Steve. First of all, you're from Philly, that's right.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
So actually, the more I think about it, I prefer
to be known as the Doctor j of false confessions,
as in, the doctor is in the house. Oh see,
the doctor makes house calls. The doctor is on the case.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Okay, Doctor j you analyze these confessions and you found
a pretty revealing error what we call a false fed fact.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
I did.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
A false fed fact is a fact that comports with
the police theory at the time of the interrogation, and
it's adopted by the suspect in his or her confession,
but the fact later turns out to be false, and
if it is in the suspects confession, then you know
(19:09):
that the police fed that fact to the suspects. And
that's exactly what happened here.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
At the time of the interrogations, the police believed that
Willy and David were the ones who had talked to
that woman with the red Buick regal just before going
around the block and attacking Nathan Blenner. And sure enough,
right there in Willie Stucky's confession is a story about
talking to that woman and saying nice car.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
But David and Willie didn't match their description. Remember, the
woman had described two guys five feet six and five ten,
one with braids. Now David and Willie were both five
six and neither of them had braids.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
They couldn't have been the guys who talked to that woman.
And by the time of trial even the state agreed
that David and Willie were not the ones she'd seen.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
So how did story get into Willie's confession? It must
have been fed by the police.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
That was enough to make Steve join the team right
then and there, and.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
I decided to recruit Laura Cohen, a law professor and
an attorney at Rutgridge University to join our defense team.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Laura, Cohen and Steve approached the Brooklyn DA's office and
got them to agree to do forensic testing on the
cigarette butts and fingerprints found in Nathan Blenner's car, and
the results the cigarette butts had DNA on them that
excluded both David and Willie. Instead, the DNA matched a
different Brooklyn teenager they had no connection to. The fingerprints
(20:41):
also excluded David and Willie. They matched yet another Brooklyn
teenager who had been killed years before in an altercation
with the police.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
This was more powerful evidence of both Willie and David's innocence,
and the whole team, including Rubin, was very excited.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
But this evidence still wasn't enough to persuade the Brooklyn
DA to exonerate David, not yet. Then two big things happened. First,
an election in twenty thirteen, a new Brooklyn DA was elected,
a reformer named Ken Thompson who had campaigned on a
platform of rooting out wrongful convictions. David's legal team immediately
(21:24):
contacted Thompson and told him about the case.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
We used every bit of our connections to try to
get David's case on Ken Thompson's radar screen, and it worked.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
The second big thing that happened was a terrible blow
to the whole team. In twenty fourteen, Rubin announced that
he had prostate cancer and it was spreading fast.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
When Rubin announced that he had cancer, he and I
were kind of at odds with one another. Rubin was
upset with me because he thought that we coddled the
DA instead of looking for an opportunity to land a
knockout blow with new evidence. So Ruben's answer to us was,
(22:15):
stop fiddling around with the DA's office, stop dealing with
state court. You need to go to federal court in
order to get David out of prison. And we told
Ruben that's just not going to work. And it created
a tension between Rubin and me at this point in time.
(22:36):
But the announcement that he had prostate cancer was devastating
because even though we were at odds, I had tremendous
respect for Ruben and I knew that his voice was
going to be crucial if we were ever going to
win this case.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Ruben was very sick and quickly got much sicker, but
he was still the ultimate fighter. On his deathbed, With
ken Klonsky's help, Ruben wrote an op ed for the
New York Post urging the New Brooklyn DA to exonerate
David McCallum. It was one of the last things he
did with his life. Here's some of what Reuben Hurricane
(23:15):
Carter wrote.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
My single regret in life is that David McCallum is
still in prison. My aim in helping this fine man
is to pay it forward, to give the help that
I received as a wrongfully convicted man to another who
needs such help. Now now I'm looking death straight in
the eye, Ruben wrote, He's got me on the ropes,
(23:40):
but I won't back down. And then Ruben asked the
New Brooklyn DA to look straight into the eye of truth,
a tougher customer than death, and not to back down either.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
To this day, ken Klonsky remembers helping Ruben write that
op ed.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
We wrote a look utter together and it didn't have
a proper ending, And finally I hit on something. To
live in a world where truth matters, and just as
however late still happens, that world would be heaven enough
for us.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
All.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
So it was out there that Ruben was dying and
that Ruben had made a last wish.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
That op ed was the knockout blow that we were
looking for.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Ruben's dying plea, combined with the new DNA evidence, made
the difference. A few months after Ruben passed away, the
Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson announced that he was going to
exonerate David McCallum and posthumously exonerate Willie Stuck too. And
while this news was incredibly welcome, the way ken Thompson's
(25:05):
office handled the exonerations was extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
I had never seen so much grace in an exoneration.
And let me explain what I mean by that. When
we exonerate people, most of the time, it's after a
hard fought legal battle that brings the state down to
its knees, and the state reluctantly gives up, and on
(25:29):
the day of exoneration it's oftentimes a kind of anticlimactic moment.
But David's case was so different. When David was picked
up by the detectives from prison, he was taken to
the courthouse and then the DA's office brought him a
lunch of barbecue chicken and whatever he wanted to drink,
(25:53):
and one by one, members of the DA's conviction Review
Unit congratulated David. David not only met Ken Thompson the DA,
but he also met Ken Thompson's wife, and there was
such a recognition of the humanity of David throughout this process.
Speaker 6 (26:16):
I'm Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson, and I'm here today
with some members of my conviction review team. And it
continued because from day one I made a pledge to
the people of Brooklyn, and my pledge was to put
the guilty away, but also to make sure that our
criminal justice system was based on fundamental fairness. That's what
(26:39):
we're doing here today.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Normally, when prisoners are brought into the court room, they
had come in through the back door. They're handcuffed and
they are shackled. When it came time for David's case
to be called, he walked in through the front door
with his head held high, knowing that he would soon
be a free man.
Speaker 6 (27:02):
Mister McCallum asked me to look at his case. I
agreed to do so because my duty is not just
to convict, but to do justice. We have conducted a
thorough and fair investigation of this matter, and as a
result of that investigation, we've determined that there's not a
single piece of evidence that linked David McCallum or William
(27:25):
Stuckey to the abduction of Nathan Blenna.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Unbeknownst to David, they had brought Willie Stucky's mother in
for the exogeneration and it was a reunion that was
just heartbreaking and incredibly tender. She was there also to
feel that her son was being vindicated at the same time.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
And so today at two pm before Judge Demic in
Brooklyn State Supreme I will move in the interest of
justice to vacate the convictions of David McCallum and Willie Stuckey.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
This was not a reluctant exonerations, but a public reckoning,
and that kind of exoneration really is such an important
step in the healing process for people who get out
of prison.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
David McCallum walked into prison as a boy. Today he
will walk out of the courthouse as a man.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
The District Attorney had a press conference and in the
press conference he said, I've inherited a legacy of disgrace
with respect to wrongful convictions, and that moment you knew
his intention to change things, to write everything was going
to be realized. It was just a wonderful moment.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
The only thing missed from David McCallum's exoneration was Rubin.
Hurricane Carter and the state even found a way to
bring Rubin into these proceedings. On the day of David's exoneration,
the DA's office dispatched two detectives to take him from
(29:24):
prison to court, and on the way back from prison,
one of the detectives pulled out his iPhone and he
pressed play, and of course it was the Story of
the Hurricane by Bob Dylan. It comes the Story of
the Hurricane, the man the authorities came to.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Blame Ruben Carter wasn't the only hero of this story
who passed away too soon. On October ninth, twenty sixteen,
Ken Thompson, that reform minded Brooklyn DA who exonerated David
McCallum and Will Stucky with such grace, also died of cancer.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
He'd exonerated by that point in time about thirteen or
fourteen people, and so when he died it was a
really terrible blow for justice. But one of the things
that happened after Ken's death was his wife actually reached
out to David McCallum and invited David to speak at
(30:26):
the going home service for Ken Thompson.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
And so David McCallum stood up at the packed memorial
service for the da who had agreed to free him
and gave a powerful eulogy.
Speaker 7 (30:41):
He promised that he would investigate lawful convictions in a
very fair way, and my legal team and I that's
all we ever wanted.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
It was two years to the day after David had
been exonerated.
Speaker 7 (30:55):
Mister Thompson touched me in a way that I don't
think anybody ever would again, because mister Thompson didn't only
give me my freedom. Mister Thompson, and this may sound
point to some who don't believe in compassion, mister Thompson
(31:15):
gave me my old daughter, Quinn. Because had he not
did what he promised he would do, I'm not sure
where I.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Would be right now.
Speaker 5 (31:33):
David, Yes, you still see it's been a while, so
you've been out now for five and a half years almost.
You know, what are your hopes and dreams? And what
are your hopes and dreams for Quinn?
Speaker 8 (31:46):
What about hopes and dreams is to become even the
more effective then I think I'm pretty good at it now,
but I just want to be really really good at
it because I work very hard work, because it's all
worth at the end of the day, and I am
braced it.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
You know.
Speaker 8 (32:01):
I consider myself for hairs on Dad.
Speaker 5 (32:04):
She Daddy's little girl.
Speaker 8 (32:05):
Absolutely. I have to tell you how many times I've
picked us at school that soon I come in the door.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
Oh my god.
Speaker 8 (32:14):
You know, she just runs from what else he's doing.
And that's it's almost undesciable in some way when it's
really really good failing up.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
And that's the story of David McCallum. Join us next
week for the last episode in our first season, we'll
tell you about one of the first modern day cases
of false confession from nineteen seventy three. Peter Riley was
just sixteen when he was wrongfully convicted of murdering his
own mother. Peter's innocence was championed by everyone from neighborhood
(32:51):
moms to New York celebrities. His people powered campaign for
exoneration has been the inspiration for the work Steve and
I do till then. Thanks for listening to wrongful conviction,
false confessions, wrongful Conviction False Confessions is a production of
(33:13):
Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One.
Special thanks to our executive producer Jason Flamm and the
team at Signal Company Number one. Executive producer Kevin wardis
Senior producer and Pope and additional production and editing by
Connor Hall. Special thanks to Jogi Hammer for additional script
editing and for wrangling and writing like a mad woman.
(33:36):
Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow
me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Nyriter and you can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
Twitter at wrong Conviction
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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