February 12, 2020 • 55 mins
On October 13th, 1997, Julie Rea’s nightmare would begin, when an intruder broke into her home, killed her son Joel, and the authorities would begin a bumbling, tunnel vision investigation to pin the murder on her. With their blinders on, the incompetent investigators would inadvertently destroy or fail to capture vital evidence of the intruder’s presence at the crime scene. They would ignore developing leads that implicated the 3rd party to this horrific crime of which Julie still cannot speak. The prosecution’s blood spatter “expert” who played an integral role in Julie’s conviction at her first trial would become, according to jurors, “a powerful witness for the defense” under more competent cross examination at her retrial.
The state would later willfully ignore the intruder’s confession and crassly attempt to conceal the new evidence from the retrial jury. Their gross misconduct only added insult to this grave injury. Julie was acquitted in 2006 and formally exonerated in 2010 with the help of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law under the leadership of Karen Daniel to whom this episode is dedicated. Karen’s colleague and one of Julie’s attorneys, Ron Safer, joins Julie and Jason to both pay tribute to Karen and tell Julie’s terrifying story.
You can read more about the life and career of Karen Daniel here: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-karen-daniel-obit-20191227-h3jbt3ch3ff7naqdin6kletytu-story.html
You can read the NY Times article mentioned in this episode here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/magazine/she-was-exonerated-of-the-murder-of-her-son-her-life-is-still-shattered.html
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
On October thirteenth, seven, Julie Ray woke to a sound
from her ten year old boy, Joel's bedroom. When she looked,
she did not see Joel and a man in a
ski mask lunch from the darkness. Julie, a black belt
in taekwondo, struggled with the masked man as he escaped
to the back yard, slamming her head on the ground
before fleeing into the night. Julie banged on her neighbor's door,
(00:25):
asking for help and saying that Joel was gone. When
sheriff Deputy Dennis York searched the house, he found Joel
between the bed and the nearby wall, his pajamas soaked
in blood. He had been stabbed twelve times. Despite her
own injuries and the miniscule amount of Joel's blood found
in her shirt, authorities came up with the theory that
there was no intruder and that Julie was responsible for
(00:46):
the death of her own son. After a bumbling tunnel
vision investigation searching only for evidence of Julie's killed and
coming up empty, prosecution resorted to using blood spatter analysis,
a known junk science. They're experts testified anyway, employing no
actual demonstration that the bloodstains were consistent with Julie wielding
(01:07):
the murder weapon. Julie was sentenced to sixty five years
in prison and subjected to the abuse that befalls a
person who murdered their own child. Just two years later,
a serial child murderer facing the death penalty for a
nearly identical crime and who was linked to many other
similar crimes, confessed to being the masked man from Julie's
version of events. His confession was corroborated, and she was
(01:30):
acquitted at her retrial in two thousand and six and
formally exonerated in two thousand ten. All of this was
made possible with the help of the Center on Wrongful
Convictions at Northwestern University, and, most notably, staff attorney Karen Daniel,
to whom this episode is lovingly and respectfully dedicated. Karen
was a pioneer in the innocence movement and a hero
(01:51):
to many. She passed away on December two thousand nineteen.
This is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Plot Welcome back to
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam. I'm your host, and I'm
(02:14):
here today with a woman who I am really kind
of in awe of, to put it mildly, Julie Ray
is a person of incredible integrity, strength, and purpose, I
would say, And she is an exnerie from Illinois who
was wrongfully convicted of the murder of her own son. Julie,
(02:36):
I'm very happy you're here. I'm obviously sorry you have
to be here, but I'm happy you're here. Thank you, Jason.
And with Julie, it's a guy named Ron Safer. Ron
is a partner at Riley Safer, Holmes and Concilla. And
Ron is a former assistant u S Attorney for the
Northern District of Illinois and moreover, he does work today
(02:57):
for the Center of Wrongful Convictions at the Western University's
Pritzker School of Law. And he's a colleague and a
dear friend of the late great Karen Daniel, who will
speak to you about to whom we will pay tribute
later in this episode. So Ron, welcome to Wrongful Conviction.
It's a pleasure to be here. So yeah, it's a
(03:19):
side because I'm going to go back to the beginning.
I read Julie's story when she was on the cover
of the New York Times magazine and the headline was
she was exonerated of the murder of her son. Her
life is still shattered and with that it's one of
the most powerful pictures I've ever seen. Let me just
say that. You can look it up yourselves, but it
(03:39):
was there was so much pain and so much, so
much more to it than that in this photograph. I
I just thought, this is someone I you know, if
I can do anything to share her story or two
help in any way, I am committed to do it.
So Julie, going back to the beginning, can you take
(04:01):
us through what your life was like before this happened.
I mean, you were a woman of tremendous potential and
someone who had accomplished a great deal of black belt
in taekwondo, a doctoral student. Well the black belt in
taekwon is kind of a joke, but it was something
Joel and I did together which was really fun. But
(04:22):
you were working towards your doctor and educational psychology right
at the time that everything went completely haywire. Can you
just talk to us a little bit of how you
chose that field and that's a hell of a thing
to take on when you're raising a child, you know,
as a single mom. It was a perfect fit. It
(04:44):
gave me time to be there for Joel, a flexible schedule.
School was a good match for me. I really enjoy
graduate work and the field was very interesting. I had
wonderful mentors, and I had a planned on a career
(05:08):
in academia, which would give me a chance to research
things I loved and was interested in. It would give
me an excellent environment for Joel. He was brilliant and
intrigued with learning. Joel and I enjoyed the life that
we had at the time. We had a lot of
extracurricular activities and friends. We had a great neighborhood and
(05:32):
um community where we lived. We were doing a lot
of fun things together and just really looking forward to
the next part of our lives together. I remember things
that Joel and I used to like to do before
everything changed. I remember sitting by the door when it
(05:57):
was storming and listening to the rain while we were reading.
And his favorite soup of chicken noodles, so he had
chicken noodle and I like tomatoes, so I had tomato.
Just so many gut memories of all the things we
were doing in our lives at that time. I remember
(06:18):
I can't sing to save my life, and John kind
of inherited some of that ability from me. But we
would drive through and get tacos from this one place.
It was actually a little tavern, was a very small talent,
so we had limited options. And then this one night
of the week we had these great tacos and they
had a drive through, and then we would drive through
(06:39):
and get a half budge Sunday and we had done that.
We were coming home from taekwondo and we were singing
I don't know what this song is in the Jungle
and Mighty Jungle, the line sleeps tonight with the windows down,
and there was just a really happy time. So much
(07:00):
was going right, So much was going right. And Ron,
if I can turn this over to you, because I
know this is borderline impossible for Julie to discuss, um,
but can you share some of the details of this case. Um,
you know what happened and how this all went so
(07:20):
horribly wrong. Sure, Julie Joel were together in Julie's home
and in the middle of the night, four am, an
intruder came into the home. Julie didn't tear him. He
is somebody who has broken into homes and trailers across
(07:42):
the country without being heard. He was a serial murderer
and somebody very skilled at this, and so he was
not heard. He came into Joel's bedroom, stabbed him to death,
and pushed him off the bed. Julie awoke to some
(08:03):
sound and she looked across from her bed into Joel's
bedroom and saw that he was not in the bed,
and so she woke herself up, started going towards his
bedroom and banged into somebody in the hallway. It was
Tommy lind Cells who she banged into, and the knife
(08:24):
that he held was found right there where Julie said
they banged into each other. He then sought to leave
the house. Julie grabbed onto his legs. Now again, Julie
doesn't know what's going on. All she knows is that
Joel's not in his bed. So you can imagine what
a flood of thoughts anybody would have at that time.
(08:49):
So she doesn't know what's going on, but she grabbed
onto this guy for dear life. He drags her along
the carpet and indeed she has rug burns on her
knees from that. He breaks away, get into the garage
where there is another door to the outside. Julie wants
again grabs onto him because he's having trouble getting out
(09:12):
of that back door. He breaks the glass to get
out of the back door, and Julie grabs onto him
again for dear life, thinking that he's the only link
to Joel, and he drags her along. She has scrapes
on the top of her feet from being dragged across
(09:33):
the glass that is broken from that door. He goes
out into the backyard she's holding on as grass stains
from that. He then takes her head, smashes it into
the ground and walks off. Julie immediately went to a
neighbor's house and they called the police, and the police
(09:56):
found Joel's at that point dying body. And from there,
you know, of course, the universe has changed, and everything
that happened from that minute that I started that narrative
until Julie got out of jail years later went wrong.
(10:21):
And this one, I mean, even for me, this one
is absolutely mind boggling because it not only didn't make sense,
it couldn't have made sense. You have nothing to pin
this on, Julie, And in fact, there's every arrow pointing
directly at an intruder. Of course, like then, nobody knew
(10:43):
who it was. That comes clear later at the story
when he actually confesses. Right, the case agent testified under
my cross examination ultimately that everyone, people who liked Julie,
people who didn't like Julie, everyone told him that Julie
and Joel had a good and loving relationship. This was
(11:06):
a quote. He could not find anyone who would say
that she raised her voice to him, let alone her hand.
So why would anybody think that somebody who is a
PhD candidate in educational psychology, with a good and loving
relationship with her son, and a good and caring person
(11:29):
would do something like this and no prior history of
violence or mental issues or anything nice. Quite not quite
the opposite, actually right, in order to get to where
we're trying to figure out how, I don't know if
we'll ever really know why the authorities in this case
chose to pin this on Julie. Julie had just lived
through a scene from the worst horror movie than anyone
(11:51):
could ever see. Every parent's worst nightmare. So Julie, if
you can talk about it from there, you weren't arrested
then and there. This was something that took time to
wind its way through, and at some point they decided
to develop a narrative, maybe just because they couldn't figure
it out that involved you. But you've spoken to me
and in the article about what your life was like
(12:14):
in the aftermath of this horror. Well, in defense of
the police, I mean, I think that they were poorly trained.
I think that they didn't know what to do. It
was a small town, they weren't used to handling these
kinds of crime scenes. They showed up mishandled the evidence horribly.
(12:35):
I mean where there were hair and fiber evidence opportunities,
they lost them. They actually ruined them. They picked up
the quilt that Joel had been under and took a
picture of themselves destroying evidence and then showed that picturing
court as though they were proud of it. That is
(12:56):
the level of incompetence. And they did not take fingerprints.
They for whatever reason, decided that because the way the
glass broke and fell on the floor or the ground,
that it was broken out, like I told them, the
(13:20):
man had broken the glass out, that they didn't think
that was reasonable, which I don't know what is reasonable
when you have somebody coming into a home and killing someone.
He did use a knife from my home, and they
didn't fingerprint around the knife block that they took the
(13:40):
knife from. I guess they thought that. I really have
no clue what they thought. I just don't know. I
thought they were trying to solve the crime. I thought
they were trying to catch the person. I was in shock.
I was in denial. When you're in shock, you look
(14:05):
for ways to fix things. I thought if I helped them,
maybe somehow we could fix what had happened. I don't
I don't know, So I just talked to them and
tried to answer all their questions. I had no idea
that they could possibly consider me a suspect. I mean,
they actually came to me at one point and said
(14:26):
that they had satellite photos, and I was thrilled to
death because if they had satellite photos, then we had
evidence that we could use to catch the person that
did this. And so we went back and forth for
quite a long time because there were no satellite photos,
(14:50):
and they thought they were going to catch me in
some kind of a lie or confuse me or trip
me up or something. So they kept moving the information
around like no the satellite photos are only of a
certain part of the art, and so I would say, oh, okay,
well that's fine, and you know, just broaden the scope
(15:11):
of whatever you've got, you know, or look at the
different time periods. He had to have moved through that
part of the art at some point, and they had
no satellite photos at that point. I had no idea
cops would line. You know, I was looking for some
real information. I mean, the kind of person that does
something like this, it's going to do it again. That's
(15:37):
a key point. I'm glad you brought that up, because
as citizens, all of us want to see a person
like Tommy lind Cells apprehended and brought to justice as
quickly as possible, because everyone's at risk if not. And
of course we know from the case after case that
when the wrong person is pursued, ultimately arrested and then charged,
(16:00):
they stopped looking for the right person. In this case,
the right person was a serial killer named Tommy themselves.
And I think you're right to point out the training.
This was a small town, right, so it's reasonable to
assume that these officers didn't have a great deal of
experience investigating crimes as serious as this one. But the
fact that they didn't even dust the bedroom or the
butcher block, as you said, for fingerprints, that they didn't
(16:20):
preserve critical trace evidence from Joel's bedspread, the fact that
from the beginning they focused on you and any blood
that you might have tried to wash away right with
digging they done, thank they dug out the septic tank,
they did all kinds of things, and they didn't bother
to give us this information at the time. But apparently
the first officer on the scene threw up on the scene. Wow.
(16:43):
I mean that exactly a time when you should have
been receiving nothing but care and support and they're, you know,
instead hunting you and trying to pin this thing on you. Okay,
but let me inject a little bit of experience into this.
I was a prosecutor. These were not only local police,
they were the Illinois State Police. These people had experience
(17:06):
where this went off the rails, was where cases all
too often get off the rails. They did not believe
Julie from the first second, and often when children are murdered,
parents become suspects for whatever reason. These officers jumped to
(17:27):
a conclusion and then took steps that resulted in confirmation
of that conclusion. That is, they concluded that Julie did
it with no evidence, no reason, but they did. Therefore,
why fingerprint because her fingerprints are going to be all
over the place. Why preserved fibers because her fibers are
(17:51):
going to be all of the place. And then they say, well,
there's no evidence of an intruder. Of course, there's no
evidence of an true to you destroyed it or it
did not capture any of the evidence of the intruder.
So when you view the evidence and then either failed
to create it or destroy the evidence that is counter
(18:14):
to the way you view it, then you have a
self fulfilling prophecy. And by the way, you mentioned the
investigation went on for years. What happened is they investigate, investigate, investigated,
got of course no evidence that Julie committed the crime
because she didn't. Asked her to take a polygraph, She
(18:37):
took a polygraph, passed the polygraph, They investigated some more,
asked her to take a second polygraph. She passed the
second polygraph. The local prosecutor would not indict me. He said,
there's no evidence. I'm not going to indict her. So
they got a special prosecutor and brought him in. Ed
Parkinson was a state prosecutor. He came from the Special
(18:59):
process secutor's office Appellate prosecutor's office. They indicted with a
grand jury, and he promised that he would tell the
grand jury if they asked that I had passed two polygraphs.
Not only did he not give them that information, he himself,
who was conducting the grand jury, testified by saying, when
(19:21):
they asked, did she take a polygraph? He said, out
of fairness to the defendant, I will not answer that question,
we won't give you that information, implying I had not
passed polygraphs. Do you feel that at this point, and
you're really a perfect person to answer this, that the
(19:41):
people in position to make these decisions knew that they
were prosecuting an innocent woman. I think that the prosecutors,
if I had to guess, didn't care. I think he
certainly misled the jury and didn't care one way or
the other. The local police, I'm not sure if they knew,
(20:04):
but they ignored all of the evidence of the contrary.
For example, Julie put together a sketch of the intruder.
The local bus station person called the police and said, Hey,
that guy was just here. He purchased a bus ticket
(20:25):
to win a Mecca, Nevada, a tiny town. He didn't
have enough money. I gave him the ticket anyway, I
wanted him out of here. He gave a horrible vibe
and she called the police and told him that where
was Tommy Lynn Sells arrested at one point Winnemucca, Nevada.
(20:50):
What is between Winnemucca, Nevada and where he bought that
bus ticket? Springfield, Missouri where two days after he murder Joel,
he murdered a little girl named Stephanie Mahaney. The police
knew that the police ignored Unbelievably, it gets worse because
(21:25):
even if you totally ignore Tommy Lynn Cells, if you
examine the physical evidence, you realize that it prohibits Julie
as a suspect. It excludes her. And one thing that
the state used at her trial was a blood spatter
expert who testified in a way that is unscrupulous, is
(21:51):
a compliment. He took over the courtroom, He splattered fake
blood all over the courtroom, and then he testified that
the blood ains convicted Julie showed that she committed the crime.
It showed, in fact exactly the oppost. Julie had three
(22:12):
transfer stains on her T shirt that had Joel's blood
on it, which were smudged. They were not transferred by
a hand. They would transferred by a glove or something,
something that an intruder might wear. There was blood spatter
all of this room. Her T shirt was Christine of
(22:36):
blood spatter, and it was not cleaned. They illumin all
the house. There was no cleaning that went on. And
there was one blood spatter from Joel's blood on Julie's
T shirt. It was a ninety degree that is, a
drop from directly above it on her back. So when
(23:03):
could that have possibly happened? Obviously not if she was
committing the crime. Could not have come from Joel, but
easily could have come from Tommy Lynn Cells or some
unnamed intruder at that time who after he smashed her
head into the ground in the backyard, dropped a bit
(23:24):
of blood whatever it is. You know that she could
not have committed that crime from that one drop of
blood spatter. They put this expert on the stand in
the second trial. As the juror said, he ended up
after cross examination, after telling the same lies undirect after
(23:46):
cross examination, he ended up being a powerful defense witness
because the blood spatter evidence proved beyond any reasonable doubt
that Julie was totally innocent of this crime. And there
are no eyewitnesses. Obviously, there's no forensic evidence. As we've discussed,
(24:07):
there's no motive. So the entire case hinged on that
tiny amount of blood on a T shirt. And we
know that bloods batter. It's not conducted by scientists. Typically
is conducted by detectives or other law enforcement Personnelity may
be trained in crime scenes stuff, but they're not trained
in science, generally speaking. And you know, the idea that
(24:29):
they can get up there with impunity and with authority
and make assertions to things like they did in this
case that are so damning when they actually don't know
what they're talking about or they're lying. It's another reform
that needs to be made so that this doesn't happen again.
The blood evidence really was just as you described in
(24:51):
the first trial. It was distorted, it was lied about,
and unfortunately Julie's attorney at that time was not equipped
to take that expert on that and the unanswered question
of who does this, Who breaks into a home to
(25:13):
kill a child, leaves an adult essentially unharmed, and forgets
to bring a murder weapon, uses the weapon from the house, Well,
the answer is Tommy land selves. He's done that in
half a dozen cases across the country, but they close
(25:34):
their mind to the possibility that a person like that existed.
I think a big part of the reason that juries
convict people wrongly, especially in a case like this, is
because it's terrifying to let this kind of a crime
(25:54):
go unanswered. And we resume that our detectives have done
their jobs and brought us the right people, that our
prosecutors are prosecuting sincerely, that they've done their jobs and
they've worked hard, and they know that they're prosecuting the
(26:14):
right people. That we can trust the people in the
stand when they're under oath, that they wouldn't lie. And sadly,
we are finding that we can't assume these things, and
that's a terrifying reality that's got to change. And if
we as a culture and as a country, as a
(26:35):
group of people, as jurors don't hold accountable prosecutors and
detectives and law enforcement, it won't change I would add,
by the way, that at the time we began Julie's case,
I shared the naive assumptions that Julie just said that
(26:56):
we have to disabuse people of that the prosecutors are
there to do the right thing, that the police are
there to do the right thing. That had been my experience.
I was a prosecutor for ten years. The Illinois State's
Attorney General supervised this. When I saw the evidence in
(27:16):
this case, I said, we need to take this to
the state's attorney general because they will dismiss this case
when they hear this. And my colleagues were more experienced,
said no, that's not going to happen, but I insisted
on doing it. We went to the highest levels of
the state's attorney general and I said, look, here's the evidence.
(27:40):
Here's what we're gonna say an opening statement. Here's how
I'm going to cross examine your expert. Forget about Tommy
Lynn cells. Julie could not have committed this crime. Here's
why at trial, you're going to be humiliated. We are
going to absolutely not only prove that you can't prove
(28:00):
her guilty, we will prove her innocent beyond any reasonable doubt.
You should not put her through this. Stop this now,
and I was convinced they would. Obviously I was wrong.
When they arrested me and took me to the county jail,
I still thought, when they figure out they've made a mistake,
(28:23):
it's all going to be okay. When they did what
they did to me in that county jail, I realized,
not only do they not care, they're fully aware you're innocent.
That's not an issue on the table. That's not what
this is about. People have no idea what's going on
(28:48):
when they think privatizing prisons is an option. Think about
what happens when we privatize military. We call that mercenaries.
We take the heart out of the military, we take
the ethics out of it. We have mercenaries. Think about
what you're doing when you take the value and the
(29:13):
concern for rehabilitation out of correctional systems, you privatize that
and make that a business where the bottom line is
only money. My god, what is going to happen to
our country when that is a done deal. Let's go
back to this sham trial that you experienced. When the
(29:34):
jury goes out, when they came back, did you still
hold on to that belief that justice would be done.
You're talking about the first trial. Yeah, when the jury
came back, you hope and trust that the truth will
come out and that they will have heard it, because
(29:54):
you know you're innocent. But they didn't. Obviously they didn't,
and they did find you guilty and convicted. You have
first degree murder and since to sixty five years in prison.
At that point, how did you even remain sane? Now
you're looking at spending the rest of your life in prison.
Sixty five years is very unlikely would survive that, but
(30:17):
you stayed strong to fight. And then along comes the
team from the Center on Wrongful Convictions and Northwestern, Karen
Daniel and her team of Avengers. Right, how did you
first come in contact with them? And what did that
mean to you when you found out that you were
going to be represented by this well, let's just call
it what it was. I mean, she was a legend. Um. First,
(30:39):
I want to say something about the time I was
in there and what happened with the conviction, And um,
I remember getting a letter from one of the jurors saying,
can you please forgive me for convicting you? And I
remember one of the jurors saying something about I just
needed her to look me in the eye and tell
me she didn't do it. And my attorney at my
(31:01):
first child would not let me take the stand I
wanted to, but he wouldn't let me wow, which was
very frustrating because obviously I would have been able to,
you know, tell them, um, you know I didn't do it,
and what had happened, and all those kinds of things,
and you know, getting that letter and having someone say,
(31:23):
you know, I'm so sorry, I can't sleep at night,
can you please forgive me? And I remember thinking, you know,
that makes two of us that can't sleep at night,
but for different reasons. Um, there's just this futility that
you feel about life when something like this happens. It
(31:45):
takes away your faith and humanity. And that's why I
wanted to answer these questions to gather because when Karen
told me that they're we're going to take the case,
I didn't know all of what that meant. But over
(32:07):
time I came to understand what it meant, and I
got my sense of confidence and humanity back through each
hearing and um hug through every time they sat beside me.
When she told the judgment she would be proud to
(32:27):
have me as her daughter, which she wasn't old enough
to have me as her daughter. She would have been
my sister and we became. I mean, she did for
me the things a sister would have done. The team
from Center on Rawful Convictions, again led by Karen Um,
(32:50):
they really did the work that the authorities should have
done and could have done in the first place. Right,
they found the killer, they got a confession. Can you
talk about how the whole thing on row really the
identity of Tommy land Cells happened by an accident. There
was a episode on Julie's case and it said, essentially,
(33:15):
this is weird. This woman, you know again, had a
good and loving relationship with her son. There was no
reason in the world she would do this. There was
no hard evidence. On the other hand, who does this?
So it's just weird. And nobody breaks into a home
to kill a kid, leaves an adult essentially not mortally wounded,
(33:39):
and forgets to bring a murder weapon. A woman who
was writing a book on a Texas Death Row inmate,
Tommy lind Cells, wrote to him and said, I just
heard somebody say on TV nobody does this. We know
that's not true, because she knew as he did that
he had done this time and time again. He wrote
(34:01):
back and said, now this is six years after the fact.
Was it in Illinois? Was it two days before? Stephanie Mahaney?
And the answer, of course was yes and yes. And
she said why do you ask? And he says, because
I did it. And then these prosecutors went down and
(34:22):
they took a tape recorded confession, an eighty six page
tape recorded confession. Now this is a drug adult guy
who had committed fifty murders across the United States. So
we got what the subdivision looked like wrong, He got
what that outside of the house looked like wrong. He
(34:43):
got a number of details wrong. But he described the
conflict with Julie in exactly the same terms as she did.
He described where he got the knife exactly right. He
described Joel's bedroom exactly as it was. But they ignored
(35:03):
all that. Northwestern came along Karen Daniel, who was easily
the most brilliant legal mind, the most fearless lawyer with
whom I have ever worked. She put all of this together.
She put together the corroborating evidence that I described earlier
(35:24):
at the bus terminal about the fact that he had
been arrested in Winnimok and all of the things that
gave teeth to this, and she wrapped it up in
a beautiful package and filed the habeas petition. They vacated
the conviction really on grounds that had little to do
with any of that. They vacated the conviction because the
(35:48):
prosecutors had been pointed pursuingto the wrong statute, which is
kind of a technicality. But at the same time, they
had all of this evidence in front of them, so
they vacated the conviction. Julie is free for a minute,
and then they rearrested. That's one of the fascinating things
(36:09):
to me about our court system and our legal system.
They specifically said, this is not about Tommy Lynn's cells.
In our court system works that way. It's not about
this i e. It is about this. Uh. It's not
about what's logical, it's not about necessarily what's true, and
it's certainly not necessarily about what's right. It's about legal precedent,
(36:33):
it's about technicalities. And so it really is a game.
It really is a puzzle. It really is a whole
different language. And that's why if you don't have the
right attorneys, you don't have a chance. It doesn't matter
if you're innocent or not. At least that's what I've learned.
(36:53):
And if I hadn't had Karen and Ron and Jeff
and the attorneys that I had, I would be locked
up in a very very bad situation for a very
very long time if I were still alive. And it's
also quite shocking that the state chose to retry you,
(37:16):
but they did. By this point, everybody knew you were innocent.
I mean, I don't know if I would disagree with that,
but I think that it's it's fair to say that
this was now a game, right, This was about protecting
the wrongful conviction. Oh yeah. I mean even the prosecutor
he offered me twenty years due tien both trials. And
both trials, I said, look, if you think I'm guilty,
(37:40):
you need to be giving me the destins because whoever
committed this crime needs to have capital punishment. That's what
needs to happen here. This is not the kind of
crime that you give somebody twenty years due ten for
that's just an insult to Joel and for him to say, oh,
(38:00):
this woman's evil, which he went on record as saying
after I was acquitted. But to have offered me twenty
years due tim that's just well, it doesn't equate well.
And they did know at that point that Julie was innocent.
They said at the bond tearing, the first appearance that
(38:21):
we had on this case. First time I stood in
front of the judge said, judge, you have to let
her out on bond, because you yourself said this was
a very thin, circumstantial case that first of all, she
appeared at every pre trial hearing. In the trial, second,
this circumstantial case went off on one unanswered question, who
(38:42):
does this? Now? Not only do we know who does this,
but he's confessed. And the judge turned to the prosecutor
and said, yeah, what about this confession thing? And here
are the words that the state uttered over a decade ago,
but they earned in my memory, this is almost verbatim. Oh, judge,
(39:06):
don't worry about Tommy Lynn Sells. No one will ever
hear about him because, first of all, Texas will not
honor an out of state subpoena for a death row inmate,
which is true, by the way, because they are afraid
that he will go to a non death penalty state
and they won't get him back to kill him. And
(39:28):
we immunized him for the death penalty. So it is
not a statement against penal interest. It is hearsay no
jury will ever hear about Tommy Lynn Sells. I said,
wait a minute, Judge, I do not hear the representative
of the people of the state of Illinois to be
telling you that he intends to try this woman for
(39:52):
essentially her life while concealing from the jury the fact
that he took a confession from a serial murderer that
he knows is corroberated by independent definitt I don't hear
the representative of the people of the state of Illinois
to be saying that. But if you hear him to
(40:13):
be saying that, you ought to say not in my courtroom.
This is not happening. Judge looked at me, looked at him,
and then imposed a significant bond. So everybody knew that
Julie was innocent at that point, and it was, unfortunately,
(40:34):
as Julie describes it. Again, so the retrial goes forward.
This time it's all out in the open. They're not
(40:55):
able to railroad her the way they did the first time.
This time, Julie, it's at the stand and proclaimed your innocence,
and of course, ultimately the jury saw through the bullshit,
they're bullshit and returned a not guilty verdict. And I've
read that your knees buckled in the court room. Is that?
(41:18):
Is that right? When the when the verdict was announced,
I fell. Yes, I don't remember falling. I mean, I
know I did, but I don't. I don't remember that part. Um.
What I remember is looking at Ron and him looking
at me, and um, I was just really, really really thankful.
(41:42):
I'll tell you what I remember about that day. First
of all, we were at lunch and Julie said, so,
in your experience as a criminal defense attorney, how long
does it take the jury in cases like this? I said, well,
when the jury comes back, I'll let you know, because
then I will have one criminal defense case. She said, what,
(42:06):
You've never done this before. Don't you sound excited or worry?
I know I didn't. Don't you think you should have
told me that? I said, I guess no. Do you
feel underrepresented? Uh? But we were, we were in the courtroom,
and look, there was no evidence it was overwhelming. There
(42:31):
was no chance, and yet you're standing there. And I
remembered waiting for the verdict, thinking, I don't know what
tomorrow looks like. If they say guilty, I don't know
how to go on in life. So I can't imagine
(42:52):
what Julie is thinking right now. And when they said
not guilty. I turned to Julie. Her knees did buckle.
I went to catch her missed, but we picked her up,
you know, and we all hugged. It was just an
(43:16):
enormous relief that finally you could put this aspect of
the nightmare behind her. She would never again be put
in that kind of danger. For all the years I've
been doing this, and I'm constantly Everyone who knows me
knows I'm always out there talking to strangers about this
cause people will say to me, well, um, well, there's
(43:39):
two questions I asked. One is was the prosecutor disciplined
in any way? And the second is, tell me the
person who suffered so much the honoree was compensated by
the state in your case. We know the answer the
first question is no, as it is in all cases.
(44:00):
And the answer the second question, I think you have
to look at compensation broadly. To answer that question, there's
a lot of different kinds of um riches in life.
(44:20):
I think I appreciate life more and I have been
blessed with some of the most amazing people in the
world through this experience. I think that there are lessons
that you learn when you walk a desperately lonely path
where your shadow is your only company, and there is
(44:42):
a homecoming when you find out that the world is
full of wonderful people. They've just been hidden from you
for a while and you thought they were gone. So yes,
I've been compensated. So you just heard the grace and
generosity and strength of character and just uniquely wonderful spirit
(45:09):
that Julie has to have survived with that kind of
an attitude and that kind of a desire to help others.
The answer to your question is no, the state didn't
compensate Julie. You know, it is unthinkable what she has
had to bear, and the way she has boarded is
(45:31):
equally unfathomable, but in a diametrically posed way, in a
wonderful way. And the way we're gonna stop this is
for people to stop electing prosecutors who only care about
statistics and not justice. It's going to be to have
(45:55):
people stop electing judges who are off on crime and
more interested injustice. It's going to be people who take
their oath as jurors seriously and not have the naive
(46:17):
presumption because you can't have it in today's world. There's
too much evidence that people are wrongfully drawn into these courtrooms.
And to have jurors who have an open mind and
not just listen to the prosecution. And people like Karen
Daniel devoted her life to doing just that, to opening
(46:41):
people's eyes time and time and time again, to opening
the judges eyes, to open the sort of appeals eyes
the Supreme courtsize jurors eyes, citizens eyes through her indomitable spirit,
through her incredible intel, act and energy. And we need
(47:02):
more of those, and we need more Julies in the
world without the nightmare proceeding it, and we'll get them.
Thank you Jason so much for having the show and
taking the time to do the research you do, And
I would just really beg people to do. You know
what Karen did. She didn't just see problems. She went
(47:25):
about finding solutions, one little endeavor at a time. And
you just put all those things together and you start
solving the big problems. And again, just be informed. When
you know things, when you share information, when you educate others.
(47:46):
These things can't continue to happen because people won't allow
them to. Information is very, very powerful, So be informed. Well,
that's very well said, and I appreciate you really are
doing my out for me because you speak so eloquently
about the problems and the solutions, and I think we're
moving as a society in that direction. There's been a
(48:10):
number of positive developments recently, too numerous to get into now.
And of course also check out Center for Wrongful Convictions
and Northwestern who do such wonderful work, and of course
the Edisence Project Innocence Project dot org. Now closing arguments.
Usually I asked for closing arguments, but you guys already
did them. I think at this point all I can
(48:31):
say is how I'm really honored to have had both
of you on the show. I think the work that
you've done and you continue to do Roun is exemplary
and heroic. And Julie, I said it before at the
beginning of the show, and I'll say it again, you
are a hero to me and to so many others,
And I don't even have the right words to say.
(48:52):
You know what your perseverance and what you're The best
word is grace, as Ron said, means to all of us.
It makes us all want to fight harder, longer, and
better and to help people in your situation and to
help prevent others from falling into this trap going forward.
So thank you just for being you, and thank you
(49:15):
for joining us on wrongful Conviction. This has been an
amazing experience. Thank you Jason so much. So. Now it's
with a heavy heart that I want to offer a
tribute to one of the true legends in the field
of righting wrongful convictions, a woman who we lost too
(49:37):
soon in a tragic accident very short time ago, and
that person is Karen Daniel. Karen was the director of
the Center for a Awful Convictions at Northwestern Moreover. She
was a warrior. She's described by so many different people
who worked with her, who loved her, who were represented
(49:58):
by her as someone who was tough as nails and
at the same time was warm and soft and was
a hugger and someone who cared deeply about the people
that she represented, and that went far beyond the courtroom
into all aspects of her life. So I think today
(50:20):
we have two people who were directly touched by her
in different ways, and I can't find the right words.
So I'm going to turn it over to you. I
guess we'll save Julie, will save you for last, and
let Ron first, please share your remembrances of this wonderful woman.
Karen Daniel. Karen was an angel who was lent to
(50:46):
us from heaven for too short period of time. She
was a fierce, fearless, incredibly persuasive lawyer, and she was
also a teacher. She taught countless students about what is
important in a law degree. She taught me everything that
(51:08):
I know about wrongful conviction cases. I had never done
any I was a prosecutor in a previous life and
then a corporate lawyer. She had tremendous patients, she had
tremendous intellect. Anything that I do, anything that her students do,
are all because of what Karen taught us. And you know,
(51:32):
the ripple effect of the pebbles that Karen tossed into
the ocean with all of us would cause a tidal wave.
She is one of the few people who we can
appropriately use the term hero. Karen changed the world for
(51:54):
the better. Julie, over to you. Karen's story is the
stuff that legends are made of. She was quiet, kind
of like the sun is. She could make things grow.
She was there in ways that mattered. She wasn't always
(52:17):
just saying she would do things to make the world
a better place, but she was doing them. She helped
exonres with legal matters beyond their exoneration. She would help
with their medical emergencies, with personal tragedies, family events, celebration.
She was there when they made memories, and she was
(52:40):
there when the heart was breaking. She was the one
that walked you to the cab when everybody else had
already gone home from the party or was still partying.
She made sure you were safe getting from here to there,
when you were of otherwise been alone on the road.
Karen was there. She was the sister that you didn't have,
(53:03):
the best friend you always wanted. She wasn't about money.
She was better than money could ever hire or buy.
She was priceless. And the changes and the things that
we all wish we could do in life, she did.
(53:24):
And she passed that on to a lot of people,
the desire to do that, the methods for how to
do it, and I know that all of us who
were blessed enough to know her, who are struggling still
with losing her, are trying to figure out how in
the world we're gonna do something to prove that we
(53:46):
deserved having had her in her life. That's beautiful. Thank you, Julie,
Thank you. Welcome Karen wherever you are. You're gone but
never forgotten, and we're sending our respect and appreciation your way.
(54:13):
Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll
join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to innisce project dot
org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis.
(54:36):
The music on the show is by three time OSCAR
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Wrongful Conviction with Jason flam is a production of Lava
for Good podcasts and association with signal company Number one
On October thirteenth, seven, Julie Ray woke to a sound
from her ten year old boy, Joel's bedroom. When she looked,
she did not see Joel and a man in a
ski mask lunch from the darkness. Julie, a black belt
in taekwondo, struggled with the masked man as he escaped
to the back yard, slamming her head on the ground
before fleeing into the night. Julie banged on her neighbor's door,
(00:25):
asking for help and saying that Joel was gone. When
sheriff Deputy Dennis York searched the house, he found Joel
between the bed and the nearby wall, his pajamas soaked
in blood. He had been stabbed twelve times. Despite her
own injuries and the miniscule amount of Joel's blood found
in her shirt, authorities came up with the theory that
there was no intruder and that Julie was responsible for
(00:46):
the death of her own son. After a bumbling tunnel
vision investigation searching only for evidence of Julie's killed and
coming up empty, prosecution resorted to using blood spatter analysis,
a known junk science. They're experts testified anyway, employing no
actual demonstration that the bloodstains were consistent with Julie wielding
(01:07):
the murder weapon. Julie was sentenced to sixty five years
in prison and subjected to the abuse that befalls a
person who murdered their own child. Just two years later,
a serial child murderer facing the death penalty for a
nearly identical crime and who was linked to many other
similar crimes, confessed to being the masked man from Julie's
version of events. His confession was corroborated, and she was
(01:30):
acquitted at her retrial in two thousand and six and
formally exonerated in two thousand ten. All of this was
made possible with the help of the Center on Wrongful
Convictions at Northwestern University, and, most notably, staff attorney Karen Daniel,
to whom this episode is lovingly and respectfully dedicated. Karen
was a pioneer in the innocence movement and a hero
(01:51):
to many. She passed away on December two thousand nineteen.
This is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Plot Welcome back to
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam. I'm your host, and I'm
(02:14):
here today with a woman who I am really kind
of in awe of, to put it mildly, Julie Ray
is a person of incredible integrity, strength, and purpose, I
would say, And she is an exnerie from Illinois who
was wrongfully convicted of the murder of her own son. Julie,
(02:36):
I'm very happy you're here. I'm obviously sorry you have
to be here, but I'm happy you're here. Thank you, Jason.
And with Julie, it's a guy named Ron Safer. Ron
is a partner at Riley Safer, Holmes and Concilla. And
Ron is a former assistant u S Attorney for the
Northern District of Illinois and moreover, he does work today
(02:57):
for the Center of Wrongful Convictions at the Western University's
Pritzker School of Law. And he's a colleague and a
dear friend of the late great Karen Daniel, who will
speak to you about to whom we will pay tribute
later in this episode. So Ron, welcome to Wrongful Conviction.
It's a pleasure to be here. So yeah, it's a
(03:19):
side because I'm going to go back to the beginning.
I read Julie's story when she was on the cover
of the New York Times magazine and the headline was
she was exonerated of the murder of her son. Her
life is still shattered and with that it's one of
the most powerful pictures I've ever seen. Let me just
say that. You can look it up yourselves, but it
(03:39):
was there was so much pain and so much, so
much more to it than that in this photograph. I
I just thought, this is someone I you know, if
I can do anything to share her story or two
help in any way, I am committed to do it.
So Julie, going back to the beginning, can you take
(04:01):
us through what your life was like before this happened.
I mean, you were a woman of tremendous potential and
someone who had accomplished a great deal of black belt
in taekwondo, a doctoral student. Well the black belt in
taekwon is kind of a joke, but it was something
Joel and I did together which was really fun. But
(04:22):
you were working towards your doctor and educational psychology right
at the time that everything went completely haywire. Can you
just talk to us a little bit of how you
chose that field and that's a hell of a thing
to take on when you're raising a child, you know,
as a single mom. It was a perfect fit. It
(04:44):
gave me time to be there for Joel, a flexible schedule.
School was a good match for me. I really enjoy
graduate work and the field was very interesting. I had
wonderful mentors, and I had a planned on a career
(05:08):
in academia, which would give me a chance to research
things I loved and was interested in. It would give
me an excellent environment for Joel. He was brilliant and
intrigued with learning. Joel and I enjoyed the life that
we had at the time. We had a lot of
extracurricular activities and friends. We had a great neighborhood and
(05:32):
um community where we lived. We were doing a lot
of fun things together and just really looking forward to
the next part of our lives together. I remember things
that Joel and I used to like to do before
everything changed. I remember sitting by the door when it
(05:57):
was storming and listening to the rain while we were reading.
And his favorite soup of chicken noodles, so he had
chicken noodle and I like tomatoes, so I had tomato.
Just so many gut memories of all the things we
were doing in our lives at that time. I remember
(06:18):
I can't sing to save my life, and John kind
of inherited some of that ability from me. But we
would drive through and get tacos from this one place.
It was actually a little tavern, was a very small talent,
so we had limited options. And then this one night
of the week we had these great tacos and they
had a drive through, and then we would drive through
(06:39):
and get a half budge Sunday and we had done that.
We were coming home from taekwondo and we were singing
I don't know what this song is in the Jungle
and Mighty Jungle, the line sleeps tonight with the windows down,
and there was just a really happy time. So much
(07:00):
was going right, So much was going right. And Ron,
if I can turn this over to you, because I
know this is borderline impossible for Julie to discuss, um,
but can you share some of the details of this case. Um,
you know what happened and how this all went so
(07:20):
horribly wrong. Sure, Julie Joel were together in Julie's home
and in the middle of the night, four am, an
intruder came into the home. Julie didn't tear him. He
is somebody who has broken into homes and trailers across
(07:42):
the country without being heard. He was a serial murderer
and somebody very skilled at this, and so he was
not heard. He came into Joel's bedroom, stabbed him to death,
and pushed him off the bed. Julie awoke to some
(08:03):
sound and she looked across from her bed into Joel's
bedroom and saw that he was not in the bed,
and so she woke herself up, started going towards his
bedroom and banged into somebody in the hallway. It was
Tommy lind Cells who she banged into, and the knife
(08:24):
that he held was found right there where Julie said
they banged into each other. He then sought to leave
the house. Julie grabbed onto his legs. Now again, Julie
doesn't know what's going on. All she knows is that
Joel's not in his bed. So you can imagine what
a flood of thoughts anybody would have at that time.
(08:49):
So she doesn't know what's going on, but she grabbed
onto this guy for dear life. He drags her along
the carpet and indeed she has rug burns on her
knees from that. He breaks away, get into the garage
where there is another door to the outside. Julie wants
again grabs onto him because he's having trouble getting out
(09:12):
of that back door. He breaks the glass to get
out of the back door, and Julie grabs onto him
again for dear life, thinking that he's the only link
to Joel, and he drags her along. She has scrapes
on the top of her feet from being dragged across
(09:33):
the glass that is broken from that door. He goes
out into the backyard she's holding on as grass stains
from that. He then takes her head, smashes it into
the ground and walks off. Julie immediately went to a
neighbor's house and they called the police, and the police
(09:56):
found Joel's at that point dying body. And from there,
you know, of course, the universe has changed, and everything
that happened from that minute that I started that narrative
until Julie got out of jail years later went wrong.
(10:21):
And this one, I mean, even for me, this one
is absolutely mind boggling because it not only didn't make sense,
it couldn't have made sense. You have nothing to pin
this on, Julie, And in fact, there's every arrow pointing
directly at an intruder. Of course, like then, nobody knew
(10:43):
who it was. That comes clear later at the story
when he actually confesses. Right, the case agent testified under
my cross examination ultimately that everyone, people who liked Julie,
people who didn't like Julie, everyone told him that Julie
and Joel had a good and loving relationship. This was
(11:06):
a quote. He could not find anyone who would say
that she raised her voice to him, let alone her hand.
So why would anybody think that somebody who is a
PhD candidate in educational psychology, with a good and loving
relationship with her son, and a good and caring person
(11:29):
would do something like this and no prior history of
violence or mental issues or anything nice. Quite not quite
the opposite, actually right, in order to get to where
we're trying to figure out how, I don't know if
we'll ever really know why the authorities in this case
chose to pin this on Julie. Julie had just lived
through a scene from the worst horror movie than anyone
(11:51):
could ever see. Every parent's worst nightmare. So Julie, if
you can talk about it from there, you weren't arrested
then and there. This was something that took time to
wind its way through, and at some point they decided
to develop a narrative, maybe just because they couldn't figure
it out that involved you. But you've spoken to me
and in the article about what your life was like
(12:14):
in the aftermath of this horror. Well, in defense of
the police, I mean, I think that they were poorly trained.
I think that they didn't know what to do. It
was a small town, they weren't used to handling these
kinds of crime scenes. They showed up mishandled the evidence horribly.
(12:35):
I mean where there were hair and fiber evidence opportunities,
they lost them. They actually ruined them. They picked up
the quilt that Joel had been under and took a
picture of themselves destroying evidence and then showed that picturing
court as though they were proud of it. That is
(12:56):
the level of incompetence. And they did not take fingerprints.
They for whatever reason, decided that because the way the
glass broke and fell on the floor or the ground,
that it was broken out, like I told them, the
(13:20):
man had broken the glass out, that they didn't think
that was reasonable, which I don't know what is reasonable
when you have somebody coming into a home and killing someone.
He did use a knife from my home, and they
didn't fingerprint around the knife block that they took the
(13:40):
knife from. I guess they thought that. I really have
no clue what they thought. I just don't know. I
thought they were trying to solve the crime. I thought
they were trying to catch the person. I was in shock.
I was in denial. When you're in shock, you look
(14:05):
for ways to fix things. I thought if I helped them,
maybe somehow we could fix what had happened. I don't
I don't know, So I just talked to them and
tried to answer all their questions. I had no idea
that they could possibly consider me a suspect. I mean,
they actually came to me at one point and said
(14:26):
that they had satellite photos, and I was thrilled to
death because if they had satellite photos, then we had
evidence that we could use to catch the person that
did this. And so we went back and forth for
quite a long time because there were no satellite photos,
(14:50):
and they thought they were going to catch me in
some kind of a lie or confuse me or trip
me up or something. So they kept moving the information
around like no the satellite photos are only of a
certain part of the art, and so I would say, oh, okay,
well that's fine, and you know, just broaden the scope
(15:11):
of whatever you've got, you know, or look at the
different time periods. He had to have moved through that
part of the art at some point, and they had
no satellite photos at that point. I had no idea
cops would line. You know, I was looking for some
real information. I mean, the kind of person that does
something like this, it's going to do it again. That's
(15:37):
a key point. I'm glad you brought that up, because
as citizens, all of us want to see a person
like Tommy lind Cells apprehended and brought to justice as
quickly as possible, because everyone's at risk if not. And
of course we know from the case after case that
when the wrong person is pursued, ultimately arrested and then charged,
(16:00):
they stopped looking for the right person. In this case,
the right person was a serial killer named Tommy themselves.
And I think you're right to point out the training.
This was a small town, right, so it's reasonable to
assume that these officers didn't have a great deal of
experience investigating crimes as serious as this one. But the
fact that they didn't even dust the bedroom or the
butcher block, as you said, for fingerprints, that they didn't
(16:20):
preserve critical trace evidence from Joel's bedspread, the fact that
from the beginning they focused on you and any blood
that you might have tried to wash away right with
digging they done, thank they dug out the septic tank,
they did all kinds of things, and they didn't bother
to give us this information at the time. But apparently
the first officer on the scene threw up on the scene. Wow.
(16:43):
I mean that exactly a time when you should have
been receiving nothing but care and support and they're, you know,
instead hunting you and trying to pin this thing on you. Okay,
but let me inject a little bit of experience into this.
I was a prosecutor. These were not only local police,
they were the Illinois State Police. These people had experience
(17:06):
where this went off the rails, was where cases all
too often get off the rails. They did not believe
Julie from the first second, and often when children are murdered,
parents become suspects for whatever reason. These officers jumped to
(17:27):
a conclusion and then took steps that resulted in confirmation
of that conclusion. That is, they concluded that Julie did
it with no evidence, no reason, but they did. Therefore,
why fingerprint because her fingerprints are going to be all
over the place. Why preserved fibers because her fibers are
(17:51):
going to be all of the place. And then they say, well,
there's no evidence of an intruder. Of course, there's no
evidence of an true to you destroyed it or it
did not capture any of the evidence of the intruder.
So when you view the evidence and then either failed
to create it or destroy the evidence that is counter
(18:14):
to the way you view it, then you have a
self fulfilling prophecy. And by the way, you mentioned the
investigation went on for years. What happened is they investigate, investigate, investigated,
got of course no evidence that Julie committed the crime
because she didn't. Asked her to take a polygraph, She
(18:37):
took a polygraph, passed the polygraph, They investigated some more,
asked her to take a second polygraph. She passed the
second polygraph. The local prosecutor would not indict me. He said,
there's no evidence. I'm not going to indict her. So
they got a special prosecutor and brought him in. Ed
Parkinson was a state prosecutor. He came from the Special
(18:59):
process secutor's office Appellate prosecutor's office. They indicted with a
grand jury, and he promised that he would tell the
grand jury if they asked that I had passed two polygraphs.
Not only did he not give them that information, he himself,
who was conducting the grand jury, testified by saying, when
(19:21):
they asked, did she take a polygraph? He said, out
of fairness to the defendant, I will not answer that question,
we won't give you that information, implying I had not
passed polygraphs. Do you feel that at this point, and
you're really a perfect person to answer this, that the
(19:41):
people in position to make these decisions knew that they
were prosecuting an innocent woman. I think that the prosecutors,
if I had to guess, didn't care. I think he
certainly misled the jury and didn't care one way or
the other. The local police, I'm not sure if they knew,
(20:04):
but they ignored all of the evidence of the contrary.
For example, Julie put together a sketch of the intruder.
The local bus station person called the police and said, Hey,
that guy was just here. He purchased a bus ticket
(20:25):
to win a Mecca, Nevada, a tiny town. He didn't
have enough money. I gave him the ticket anyway, I
wanted him out of here. He gave a horrible vibe
and she called the police and told him that where
was Tommy Lynn Sells arrested at one point Winnemucca, Nevada.
(20:50):
What is between Winnemucca, Nevada and where he bought that
bus ticket? Springfield, Missouri where two days after he murder Joel,
he murdered a little girl named Stephanie Mahaney. The police
knew that the police ignored Unbelievably, it gets worse because
(21:25):
even if you totally ignore Tommy Lynn Cells, if you
examine the physical evidence, you realize that it prohibits Julie
as a suspect. It excludes her. And one thing that
the state used at her trial was a blood spatter
expert who testified in a way that is unscrupulous, is
(21:51):
a compliment. He took over the courtroom, He splattered fake
blood all over the courtroom, and then he testified that
the blood ains convicted Julie showed that she committed the crime.
It showed, in fact exactly the oppost. Julie had three
(22:12):
transfer stains on her T shirt that had Joel's blood
on it, which were smudged. They were not transferred by
a hand. They would transferred by a glove or something,
something that an intruder might wear. There was blood spatter
all of this room. Her T shirt was Christine of
(22:36):
blood spatter, and it was not cleaned. They illumin all
the house. There was no cleaning that went on. And
there was one blood spatter from Joel's blood on Julie's
T shirt. It was a ninety degree that is, a
drop from directly above it on her back. So when
(23:03):
could that have possibly happened? Obviously not if she was
committing the crime. Could not have come from Joel, but
easily could have come from Tommy Lynn Cells or some
unnamed intruder at that time who after he smashed her
head into the ground in the backyard, dropped a bit
(23:24):
of blood whatever it is. You know that she could
not have committed that crime from that one drop of
blood spatter. They put this expert on the stand in
the second trial. As the juror said, he ended up
after cross examination, after telling the same lies undirect after
(23:46):
cross examination, he ended up being a powerful defense witness
because the blood spatter evidence proved beyond any reasonable doubt
that Julie was totally innocent of this crime. And there
are no eyewitnesses. Obviously, there's no forensic evidence. As we've discussed,
(24:07):
there's no motive. So the entire case hinged on that
tiny amount of blood on a T shirt. And we
know that bloods batter. It's not conducted by scientists. Typically
is conducted by detectives or other law enforcement Personnelity may
be trained in crime scenes stuff, but they're not trained
in science, generally speaking. And you know, the idea that
(24:29):
they can get up there with impunity and with authority
and make assertions to things like they did in this
case that are so damning when they actually don't know
what they're talking about or they're lying. It's another reform
that needs to be made so that this doesn't happen again.
The blood evidence really was just as you described in
(24:51):
the first trial. It was distorted, it was lied about,
and unfortunately Julie's attorney at that time was not equipped
to take that expert on that and the unanswered question
of who does this, Who breaks into a home to
(25:13):
kill a child, leaves an adult essentially unharmed, and forgets
to bring a murder weapon, uses the weapon from the house, Well,
the answer is Tommy land selves. He's done that in
half a dozen cases across the country, but they close
(25:34):
their mind to the possibility that a person like that existed.
I think a big part of the reason that juries
convict people wrongly, especially in a case like this, is
because it's terrifying to let this kind of a crime
(25:54):
go unanswered. And we resume that our detectives have done
their jobs and brought us the right people, that our
prosecutors are prosecuting sincerely, that they've done their jobs and
they've worked hard, and they know that they're prosecuting the
(26:14):
right people. That we can trust the people in the
stand when they're under oath, that they wouldn't lie. And sadly,
we are finding that we can't assume these things, and
that's a terrifying reality that's got to change. And if
we as a culture and as a country, as a
(26:35):
group of people, as jurors don't hold accountable prosecutors and
detectives and law enforcement, it won't change I would add,
by the way, that at the time we began Julie's case,
I shared the naive assumptions that Julie just said that
(26:56):
we have to disabuse people of that the prosecutors are
there to do the right thing, that the police are
there to do the right thing. That had been my experience.
I was a prosecutor for ten years. The Illinois State's
Attorney General supervised this. When I saw the evidence in
(27:16):
this case, I said, we need to take this to
the state's attorney general because they will dismiss this case
when they hear this. And my colleagues were more experienced,
said no, that's not going to happen, but I insisted
on doing it. We went to the highest levels of
the state's attorney general and I said, look, here's the evidence.
(27:40):
Here's what we're gonna say an opening statement. Here's how
I'm going to cross examine your expert. Forget about Tommy
Lynn cells. Julie could not have committed this crime. Here's
why at trial, you're going to be humiliated. We are
going to absolutely not only prove that you can't prove
(28:00):
her guilty, we will prove her innocent beyond any reasonable doubt.
You should not put her through this. Stop this now,
and I was convinced they would. Obviously I was wrong.
When they arrested me and took me to the county jail,
I still thought, when they figure out they've made a mistake,
(28:23):
it's all going to be okay. When they did what
they did to me in that county jail, I realized,
not only do they not care, they're fully aware you're innocent.
That's not an issue on the table. That's not what
this is about. People have no idea what's going on
(28:48):
when they think privatizing prisons is an option. Think about
what happens when we privatize military. We call that mercenaries.
We take the heart out of the military, we take
the ethics out of it. We have mercenaries. Think about
what you're doing when you take the value and the
(29:13):
concern for rehabilitation out of correctional systems, you privatize that
and make that a business where the bottom line is
only money. My god, what is going to happen to
our country when that is a done deal. Let's go
back to this sham trial that you experienced. When the
(29:34):
jury goes out, when they came back, did you still
hold on to that belief that justice would be done.
You're talking about the first trial. Yeah, when the jury
came back, you hope and trust that the truth will
come out and that they will have heard it, because
(29:54):
you know you're innocent. But they didn't. Obviously they didn't,
and they did find you guilty and convicted. You have
first degree murder and since to sixty five years in prison.
At that point, how did you even remain sane? Now
you're looking at spending the rest of your life in prison.
Sixty five years is very unlikely would survive that, but
(30:17):
you stayed strong to fight. And then along comes the
team from the Center on Wrongful Convictions and Northwestern, Karen
Daniel and her team of Avengers. Right, how did you
first come in contact with them? And what did that
mean to you when you found out that you were
going to be represented by this well, let's just call
it what it was. I mean, she was a legend. Um. First,
(30:39):
I want to say something about the time I was
in there and what happened with the conviction, And um,
I remember getting a letter from one of the jurors saying,
can you please forgive me for convicting you? And I
remember one of the jurors saying something about I just
needed her to look me in the eye and tell
me she didn't do it. And my attorney at my
(31:01):
first child would not let me take the stand I
wanted to, but he wouldn't let me wow, which was
very frustrating because obviously I would have been able to,
you know, tell them, um, you know I didn't do it,
and what had happened, and all those kinds of things,
and you know, getting that letter and having someone say,
(31:23):
you know, I'm so sorry, I can't sleep at night,
can you please forgive me? And I remember thinking, you know,
that makes two of us that can't sleep at night,
but for different reasons. Um, there's just this futility that
you feel about life when something like this happens. It
(31:45):
takes away your faith and humanity. And that's why I
wanted to answer these questions to gather because when Karen
told me that they're we're going to take the case,
I didn't know all of what that meant. But over
(32:07):
time I came to understand what it meant, and I
got my sense of confidence and humanity back through each
hearing and um hug through every time they sat beside me.
When she told the judgment she would be proud to
(32:27):
have me as her daughter, which she wasn't old enough
to have me as her daughter. She would have been
my sister and we became. I mean, she did for
me the things a sister would have done. The team
from Center on Rawful Convictions, again led by Karen Um,
(32:50):
they really did the work that the authorities should have
done and could have done in the first place. Right,
they found the killer, they got a confession. Can you
talk about how the whole thing on row really the
identity of Tommy land Cells happened by an accident. There
was a episode on Julie's case and it said, essentially,
(33:15):
this is weird. This woman, you know again, had a
good and loving relationship with her son. There was no
reason in the world she would do this. There was
no hard evidence. On the other hand, who does this?
So it's just weird. And nobody breaks into a home
to kill a kid, leaves an adult essentially not mortally wounded,
(33:39):
and forgets to bring a murder weapon. A woman who
was writing a book on a Texas Death Row inmate,
Tommy lind Cells, wrote to him and said, I just
heard somebody say on TV nobody does this. We know
that's not true, because she knew as he did that
he had done this time and time again. He wrote
(34:01):
back and said, now this is six years after the fact.
Was it in Illinois? Was it two days before? Stephanie Mahaney?
And the answer, of course was yes and yes. And
she said why do you ask? And he says, because
I did it. And then these prosecutors went down and
(34:22):
they took a tape recorded confession, an eighty six page
tape recorded confession. Now this is a drug adult guy
who had committed fifty murders across the United States. So
we got what the subdivision looked like wrong, He got
what that outside of the house looked like wrong. He
(34:43):
got a number of details wrong. But he described the
conflict with Julie in exactly the same terms as she did.
He described where he got the knife exactly right. He
described Joel's bedroom exactly as it was. But they ignored
(35:03):
all that. Northwestern came along Karen Daniel, who was easily
the most brilliant legal mind, the most fearless lawyer with
whom I have ever worked. She put all of this together.
She put together the corroborating evidence that I described earlier
(35:24):
at the bus terminal about the fact that he had
been arrested in Winnimok and all of the things that
gave teeth to this, and she wrapped it up in
a beautiful package and filed the habeas petition. They vacated
the conviction really on grounds that had little to do
with any of that. They vacated the conviction because the
(35:48):
prosecutors had been pointed pursuingto the wrong statute, which is
kind of a technicality. But at the same time, they
had all of this evidence in front of them, so
they vacated the conviction. Julie is free for a minute,
and then they rearrested. That's one of the fascinating things
(36:09):
to me about our court system and our legal system.
They specifically said, this is not about Tommy Lynn's cells.
In our court system works that way. It's not about
this i e. It is about this. Uh. It's not
about what's logical, it's not about necessarily what's true, and
it's certainly not necessarily about what's right. It's about legal precedent,
(36:33):
it's about technicalities. And so it really is a game.
It really is a puzzle. It really is a whole
different language. And that's why if you don't have the
right attorneys, you don't have a chance. It doesn't matter
if you're innocent or not. At least that's what I've learned.
(36:53):
And if I hadn't had Karen and Ron and Jeff
and the attorneys that I had, I would be locked
up in a very very bad situation for a very
very long time if I were still alive. And it's
also quite shocking that the state chose to retry you,
(37:16):
but they did. By this point, everybody knew you were innocent.
I mean, I don't know if I would disagree with that,
but I think that it's it's fair to say that
this was now a game, right, This was about protecting
the wrongful conviction. Oh yeah. I mean even the prosecutor
he offered me twenty years due tien both trials. And
both trials, I said, look, if you think I'm guilty,
(37:40):
you need to be giving me the destins because whoever
committed this crime needs to have capital punishment. That's what
needs to happen here. This is not the kind of
crime that you give somebody twenty years due ten for
that's just an insult to Joel and for him to say, oh,
(38:00):
this woman's evil, which he went on record as saying
after I was acquitted. But to have offered me twenty
years due tim that's just well, it doesn't equate well.
And they did know at that point that Julie was innocent.
They said at the bond tearing, the first appearance that
(38:21):
we had on this case. First time I stood in
front of the judge said, judge, you have to let
her out on bond, because you yourself said this was
a very thin, circumstantial case that first of all, she
appeared at every pre trial hearing. In the trial, second,
this circumstantial case went off on one unanswered question, who
(38:42):
does this? Now? Not only do we know who does this,
but he's confessed. And the judge turned to the prosecutor
and said, yeah, what about this confession thing? And here
are the words that the state uttered over a decade ago,
but they earned in my memory, this is almost verbatim. Oh, judge,
(39:06):
don't worry about Tommy Lynn Sells. No one will ever
hear about him because, first of all, Texas will not
honor an out of state subpoena for a death row inmate,
which is true, by the way, because they are afraid
that he will go to a non death penalty state
and they won't get him back to kill him. And
(39:28):
we immunized him for the death penalty. So it is
not a statement against penal interest. It is hearsay no
jury will ever hear about Tommy Lynn Sells. I said,
wait a minute, Judge, I do not hear the representative
of the people of the state of Illinois to be
telling you that he intends to try this woman for
(39:52):
essentially her life while concealing from the jury the fact
that he took a confession from a serial murderer that
he knows is corroberated by independent definitt I don't hear
the representative of the people of the state of Illinois
to be saying that. But if you hear him to
(40:13):
be saying that, you ought to say not in my courtroom.
This is not happening. Judge looked at me, looked at him,
and then imposed a significant bond. So everybody knew that
Julie was innocent at that point, and it was, unfortunately,
(40:34):
as Julie describes it. Again, so the retrial goes forward.
This time it's all out in the open. They're not
(40:55):
able to railroad her the way they did the first time.
This time, Julie, it's at the stand and proclaimed your innocence,
and of course, ultimately the jury saw through the bullshit,
they're bullshit and returned a not guilty verdict. And I've
read that your knees buckled in the court room. Is that?
(41:18):
Is that right? When the when the verdict was announced,
I fell. Yes, I don't remember falling. I mean, I
know I did, but I don't. I don't remember that part. Um.
What I remember is looking at Ron and him looking
at me, and um, I was just really, really really thankful.
(41:42):
I'll tell you what I remember about that day. First
of all, we were at lunch and Julie said, so,
in your experience as a criminal defense attorney, how long
does it take the jury in cases like this? I said, well,
when the jury comes back, I'll let you know, because
then I will have one criminal defense case. She said, what,
(42:06):
You've never done this before. Don't you sound excited or worry?
I know I didn't. Don't you think you should have
told me that? I said, I guess no. Do you
feel underrepresented? Uh? But we were, we were in the courtroom,
and look, there was no evidence it was overwhelming. There
(42:31):
was no chance, and yet you're standing there. And I
remembered waiting for the verdict, thinking, I don't know what
tomorrow looks like. If they say guilty, I don't know
how to go on in life. So I can't imagine
(42:52):
what Julie is thinking right now. And when they said
not guilty. I turned to Julie. Her knees did buckle.
I went to catch her missed, but we picked her up,
you know, and we all hugged. It was just an
(43:16):
enormous relief that finally you could put this aspect of
the nightmare behind her. She would never again be put
in that kind of danger. For all the years I've
been doing this, and I'm constantly Everyone who knows me
knows I'm always out there talking to strangers about this
cause people will say to me, well, um, well, there's
(43:39):
two questions I asked. One is was the prosecutor disciplined
in any way? And the second is, tell me the
person who suffered so much the honoree was compensated by
the state in your case. We know the answer the
first question is no, as it is in all cases.
(44:00):
And the answer the second question, I think you have
to look at compensation broadly. To answer that question, there's
a lot of different kinds of um riches in life.
(44:20):
I think I appreciate life more and I have been
blessed with some of the most amazing people in the
world through this experience. I think that there are lessons
that you learn when you walk a desperately lonely path
where your shadow is your only company, and there is
(44:42):
a homecoming when you find out that the world is
full of wonderful people. They've just been hidden from you
for a while and you thought they were gone. So yes,
I've been compensated. So you just heard the grace and
generosity and strength of character and just uniquely wonderful spirit
(45:09):
that Julie has to have survived with that kind of
an attitude and that kind of a desire to help others.
The answer to your question is no, the state didn't
compensate Julie. You know, it is unthinkable what she has
had to bear, and the way she has boarded is
(45:31):
equally unfathomable, but in a diametrically posed way, in a
wonderful way. And the way we're gonna stop this is
for people to stop electing prosecutors who only care about
statistics and not justice. It's going to be to have
(45:55):
people stop electing judges who are off on crime and
more interested injustice. It's going to be people who take
their oath as jurors seriously and not have the naive
(46:17):
presumption because you can't have it in today's world. There's
too much evidence that people are wrongfully drawn into these courtrooms.
And to have jurors who have an open mind and
not just listen to the prosecution. And people like Karen
Daniel devoted her life to doing just that, to opening
(46:41):
people's eyes time and time and time again, to opening
the judges eyes, to open the sort of appeals eyes
the Supreme courtsize jurors eyes, citizens eyes through her indomitable spirit,
through her incredible intel, act and energy. And we need
(47:02):
more of those, and we need more Julies in the
world without the nightmare proceeding it, and we'll get them.
Thank you Jason so much for having the show and
taking the time to do the research you do, And
I would just really beg people to do. You know
what Karen did. She didn't just see problems. She went
(47:25):
about finding solutions, one little endeavor at a time. And
you just put all those things together and you start
solving the big problems. And again, just be informed. When
you know things, when you share information, when you educate others.
(47:46):
These things can't continue to happen because people won't allow
them to. Information is very, very powerful, So be informed. Well,
that's very well said, and I appreciate you really are
doing my out for me because you speak so eloquently
about the problems and the solutions, and I think we're
moving as a society in that direction. There's been a
(48:10):
number of positive developments recently, too numerous to get into now.
And of course also check out Center for Wrongful Convictions
and Northwestern who do such wonderful work, and of course
the Edisence Project Innocence Project dot org. Now closing arguments.
Usually I asked for closing arguments, but you guys already
did them. I think at this point all I can
(48:31):
say is how I'm really honored to have had both
of you on the show. I think the work that
you've done and you continue to do Roun is exemplary
and heroic. And Julie, I said it before at the
beginning of the show, and I'll say it again, you
are a hero to me and to so many others,
And I don't even have the right words to say.
(48:52):
You know what your perseverance and what you're The best
word is grace, as Ron said, means to all of us.
It makes us all want to fight harder, longer, and
better and to help people in your situation and to
help prevent others from falling into this trap going forward.
So thank you just for being you, and thank you
(49:15):
for joining us on wrongful Conviction. This has been an
amazing experience. Thank you Jason so much. So. Now it's
with a heavy heart that I want to offer a
tribute to one of the true legends in the field
of righting wrongful convictions, a woman who we lost too
(49:37):
soon in a tragic accident very short time ago, and
that person is Karen Daniel. Karen was the director of
the Center for a Awful Convictions at Northwestern Moreover. She
was a warrior. She's described by so many different people
who worked with her, who loved her, who were represented
(49:58):
by her as someone who was tough as nails and
at the same time was warm and soft and was
a hugger and someone who cared deeply about the people
that she represented, and that went far beyond the courtroom
into all aspects of her life. So I think today
(50:20):
we have two people who were directly touched by her
in different ways, and I can't find the right words.
So I'm going to turn it over to you. I
guess we'll save Julie, will save you for last, and
let Ron first, please share your remembrances of this wonderful woman.
Karen Daniel. Karen was an angel who was lent to
(50:46):
us from heaven for too short period of time. She
was a fierce, fearless, incredibly persuasive lawyer, and she was
also a teacher. She taught countless students about what is
important in a law degree. She taught me everything that
(51:08):
I know about wrongful conviction cases. I had never done
any I was a prosecutor in a previous life and
then a corporate lawyer. She had tremendous patients, she had
tremendous intellect. Anything that I do, anything that her students do,
are all because of what Karen taught us. And you know,
(51:32):
the ripple effect of the pebbles that Karen tossed into
the ocean with all of us would cause a tidal wave.
She is one of the few people who we can
appropriately use the term hero. Karen changed the world for
(51:54):
the better. Julie, over to you. Karen's story is the
stuff that legends are made of. She was quiet, kind
of like the sun is. She could make things grow.
She was there in ways that mattered. She wasn't always
(52:17):
just saying she would do things to make the world
a better place, but she was doing them. She helped
exonres with legal matters beyond their exoneration. She would help
with their medical emergencies, with personal tragedies, family events, celebration.
She was there when they made memories, and she was
(52:40):
there when the heart was breaking. She was the one
that walked you to the cab when everybody else had
already gone home from the party or was still partying.
She made sure you were safe getting from here to there,
when you were of otherwise been alone on the road.
Karen was there. She was the sister that you didn't have,
(53:03):
the best friend you always wanted. She wasn't about money.
She was better than money could ever hire or buy.
She was priceless. And the changes and the things that
we all wish we could do in life, she did.
(53:24):
And she passed that on to a lot of people,
the desire to do that, the methods for how to
do it, and I know that all of us who
were blessed enough to know her, who are struggling still
with losing her, are trying to figure out how in
the world we're gonna do something to prove that we
(53:46):
deserved having had her in her life. That's beautiful. Thank you, Julie,
Thank you. Welcome Karen wherever you are. You're gone but
never forgotten, and we're sending our respect and appreciation your way.
(54:13):
Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll
join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to innisce project dot
org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis.
(54:36):
The music on the show is by three time OSCAR
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Wrongful Conviction with Jason flam is a production of Lava
for Good podcasts and association with signal company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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