April 27, 2020 • 26 mins
Social distancing orders have had us on lockdown for well over a month, leaving many of us struggling with not only isolation and restricted movement, but also the looming economic implications. Jason Flom has been reaching out to our wrongfully convicted community for the kind of advice that only they can give.
In the third interview of our mini series from Wrongful Conviction Podcasts, Nick Yarris draws upon his harrowing experiences on death row to show us how to leave the existential threat behind and practice radical kindness. His story is unmatched, and you can hear it in full on our double episode 5 of season 9.
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome back to our mini series Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
In the time of COVID, you know, social distancing orders
were put in place well over a month ago, and
on top of the tragic loss of life, we're starting
to see the effects of isolation and restricted movement as
they make their impact. For many, there's the specter going
without basic necessities when their businesses can't bear the idle time,
(00:27):
or when stimulus money runs dry when they can't get unemployment.
But for those incarcerated, a potential death sentence looms as
a very real possibility as they have no way of
social distancing in our overcrowded prisons. And yet some people
on the outside are ignoring the necessary precautions and even
(00:50):
going so far as to demand an ill advised and
straight crazy returned to business as usual. Clearly the advice
of our experts, it's from the wrongfully convicted community as
now more necessary, even essential than ever previously. We spoke
to Damien Echols and Amanda Knox about the importance of
structuring your time, keeping an exercise regimen, cleanliness, focusing the
(01:13):
mind inward, and they gave us tips on combating the
absence of physical touch, and this is really important holding
on to our senses of humor. This week we will
talk to a man who was not only sentenced to
death for a crime he didn't commit, but who also
unintentionally do you not going to leave this escape from
(01:34):
death Row only to return to some new, fresh version
of hell now? He tells us about how the current
state of affairs reminds him of his experiences on death Row,
how he overcame his anger, escaped into literature, and about
the detrimental role that the ego plays on our respective
(01:55):
abilities to deal with being in our own versions of Lockdown.
You can hear his entire story of triumph over tragedy
in an episode so insane that we had to break
it into two parts for episode five of season nine.
He's the author of Monsters and Madmen, the star of
the documentary film The Fear of Thirteen. But mostly he's
(02:16):
our friend, nick Yarris on Coping in the time of COVID.
Nick Yaris is here.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Thank you for having me back on. It's a real
honor to do this at a time that we're all
struggling to handle Lockdown.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
You're up in Oregon, right.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, I'm in a small town on the coast of Oregon,
just above California, and we're blessed by having only six
thousand people in the population.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Well, Nick, you survived death row in Pennsylvania at a
time when it was so brutal. So you've been to
hell and back and now here you are in the
free world and experiencing a much milder, shall we say,
sort of lockdown. But is it triggering for you to
(03:10):
have to be sort of, you know, stationary and not
have the freedom of movement that you've enjoyed now for
so many years.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
It's actually reinvigorating all of my lessons learned from it.
I had to replace the structure in my life when
my life hit a brick wall. When I was getting
no new sensory input in my daily life to have
memories of interactions with others, it was killing me. Initially
(03:38):
I had no structure, and I realized that that learning
process of giving myself structure every day while being locked
in a six x nine cell has come back and
rebounded again now to point towards Oh, okay, I'm okay
with this. So I used it to set up the
(03:59):
structure for the children in the house to have their school.
We built them a little classroom. We're trying to have
everything regimented because structure keeps the mind healthy.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
And how are you doing now?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Right now? The worst thing that I'm facing, I guess
is the same thing we're all facing. We have worry
in our heart, our loves ones. We consider it aside
for ourselves, but we struggle with worryment for everyone. From
a farm. My dad is eighty five years old. He
(04:35):
goes over and he picks up the newspaper every day,
and he refuses to stop living his life, and he
won't put on a mask. He said, I've lived through
war and terrorism. I lived through all the worst things
in life. If God wanted me, he would have gotten
me sooner. I'm not going to stop living my life.
(04:55):
But I'm not going to be a fool.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah. I think a lot of people are experiencing right now.
You know, we're all having a tough time with the isolation,
but some of the people in our lives are not
taking all of the precautions. For some, the issue is
economic desperation, but for others, they feel like their rights
are being infringed, rather than that this is temporary and
(05:18):
for the common good, And I mean you actually had
your freedom stolen without cause? So how did you persevere?
What was the key for you that allowed you to,
you know, transcend? It's probably the right word. This unbelievably
(05:39):
terrible environment. And how can those lessons be applied for
people who now are at home frustrated, no work, no
recreation activities, stuck in the walls, closing in, money tight
all the other pressures that people are experiencing. How can
your experience help them?
Speaker 2 (05:59):
In real time? I'm doing it with everyone in that
same feeling that I had on death Row, And it
goes back to a very terrible night in November of
nineteen eighty nine when Huntington Prison was set on fire
during a riot and I was locked up in the
(06:20):
death row housing unit two hundred and twenty five of
us all went quiet as we watched the prisoners across
the courtyard burn the block across from us, knowing that
the building structure was connected and it was going to
set us on fire, and the guards had already left us.
(06:41):
So you sit there in those moments with this fear
in your chest, like is this real? Is this how
it ends? And my next what will happen? How can
I have control over these feelings? And right now our
whole world is feeling this way. We didn't do anything
to be put in lockdown. Why are we here enduring
(07:06):
these fears when this had nothing to do with it.
We didn't cause this mayhem around us, but we're suffering
through it? How do we deal with it? And the
one thing that kept me going through it all was
I refuse to give up my humanity. My kindness was
so important to me that I refused to feed the
(07:29):
negative cycle, just like feeding into the negative news cycles
now in today's social media, I refuse to feed into
the negative, believing that good was the only way going forward.
And if I believed in that, then I could wake
this out, see how it plays out, and remember that
(07:49):
it's a humbling for me. And I swear to God
that death row experience is playing out right now in
my life with me.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
There must have been times, Dick, I mean, you were
Franks for a crime that they knew you didn't commit.
Your life is in danger every day, not just from
being executed, but from being beaten to death by guards,
other inmates, all the other deprivations. There must have been
moments when you felt bitter.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
No oh yeah, oh, Jason, I don't want to misplace
this truth. But in my early days I was so
bitter about having nothing that I would beat my head
on the wall so hard by slamming it backwards into
the wall. It was the only way I felt like
(08:38):
I could keep going if I stayed angry. In first,
I was consumed by the insult done to me and
my family to be sentenced to death for a crime,
for a murder of a woman I never met in
my life. To have my parents cry and humiliation in
the courtroom while the people taunted them and laughed in
(08:59):
their face. I was so angry that I thought the
only way I'm gould get through this is if I
stay angry. And it consumed me, and I was so
ashamed of that that it was only because of a
miracle chance encounter. A man hung himself on my prison block.
(09:22):
His cell was empty. The guards took me out of
my cell to take me to the nurses station to
patch my head up again. I'm walking back and the
guard says to me, go in that cell and get
them books. He said, I'll keep you from being angry
from somehow that moment, that chance encounter, I decided to
(09:46):
try to stop being angry. And it was really hard
to stop being angry. How embarrassing that I was so
consumed by anger that I couldn't read more than a
few pages. I started to pray for or a way
to figure out how to become strong enough to handle
this without anger and bitterness, and I couldn't articulate much.
(10:11):
I didn't have the fluidity of a beautiful vernacular that
would come later. So I stripped all the photographs off
the wall, and I put a photograph of myself up,
and I began to politely speak to the image before
me of myself, hoping to give myself enough respect, love
(10:33):
and encouragement, because that was the person that had to
get me through this life. And in this transition, I
found this wonderful sense that maybe if I stopped and
looked at who I was for one minute, maybe I
could possibly just hopefully love myself. That's all I was
(10:57):
looking for.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Had it worked, I mean, had you not had that epiphany,
there's no way you would be here today. You would
have almost certainly died in prison, Like I said, either
at the hands of the state or at the hands
of one of the many people who were trying to
kill you, and I know those stories. Well.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
The thing I found out, Jason, that really is true.
I watched I don't know four hundred guys entered the
prison system on death row, particularly on death row from
a member of the DuPont family. On down. You know,
people of high ilk suffer the worse when they go
into lockdown. So the analogy is, the bigger the ego,
(11:43):
the harder it is to be in lockdown. How much
of an affront is all of this to you? Is
a measure of your ego, and it will attack your health.
It will cause you to undo every good bond in
your life. Some people can't really handle this because they're
(12:03):
fucking egos so out of control that they really are
affronted by this. How dare I, as an American have
to sit in my house for four weeks because some
Chinese person ate a bat like this is real? People
are walking around in this country with the notion that
this is an affront to them in their lives, when
(12:26):
in fact they're being taught how to be more polite,
how to be less germ spreading, how in the future
to be more consistently conscientious of your own public health,
and yet it's such an angry moment for so many people.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
You mentioned Nick about serving time with one of the
DuPont heirs. Can you talk about how did he adapt it?
Was he able to somehow or other turn a corner
like you did.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
It's amazing how it has to have the humbling first.
A lot of people who do well in society, when
they hit prison, they just break down. And it happened
with John DuPont, it happened with others who were very
well to do in society because their ego is inflated
in life to the stature of how they live. Imagine
(13:27):
one of these super wealthy people going from a yacht
to the prison house. Man. It is such a demoralizing
downfall that they can't handle that. Jason. The one answer
to the trouble people have when they acknowledge their ego,
if they can acknowledge their ego, is what is your outlet.
(13:52):
You can't mindlessly look at screens, you can't endlessly go
on social media. That's going to burn you out really quick.
This is why I'm so grateful I can go back
to my first love of reading. I love books for
one thing, each one taught me a different aspect of myself.
(14:13):
And if I go back and read one now, I
realized the changes of who I was at the time
that I read it the first time to now.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Is there a particular book or was there a particular
book that meant the most to you that others may
be able to benefit from?
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Great question, because one of the things that I recently
did was I picked up The Prophet by Khalil Gebraun
and this is my touchstone book. This book was my
present at Christmas. I rewarded myself by rereading this one
work because I felt so akin to its main character,
(14:55):
al Mustafa, the Chosen who spent twelve years within a waltz,
and on the day of his leaving, he was asked
by everyone to give them parting wisdom knowledge of what
he experienced. And the reason I did this is because
I was so angry. At first. I thought it was flimsy, flamsley,
(15:16):
flusy bullshit, and I didn't like it, and I threw
it against the wall. My mind was so scrambled, I
thought this was crazy. Why would I bother reading this crap.
It wasn't until about two years later when I had
the fluidity in my mind to really absorb that. I
found Gabron's work so uplifting. So I sat down and
(15:38):
I opened up the book, and I was so rewarded
with this beauty of this writing. You see, Gabron suffered
through the tragedy of losing all of his family members
to another plague. It was called tuberculosis, and his family
moved to the Boston area from leban On, and he
(16:01):
was enraptured with trying to hold down the family farm
in Lebanon while migrating back and forth to Boston on
these ships, and his whole family perished during a three
year period of his life while he wrote The Prophet.
That's why I loved him. He took the worst tragedies
(16:25):
of his life and turned it into the most beautiful
book he could think of and gave that to the world.
That is what I make the analogy today of today's
COVD hero was my personal hero. Khalil Gebraun. Picking up
that book the other day meant so much to me
(16:47):
because it reinvigorated that touch, that field, that smell of art.
There's nothing like it. Man. The other thing I wanted
to touch on about reading is this right now, studies have
shown that we read on average about two hundred books
a year in social media messaging of reading other people's words,
(17:10):
we read them in snippets and you know, five and
ten minute bounds. But we're not really reading the books
that we should be reading. And this is where a
lot of times we have to recognize we have to
implement actual time away from a screen and into enjoying
(17:31):
art and literature the way it's meant to be. We're
doing it anyway, and it's a loss to us because
we would rather sit there and watch the left and
right argue about what's right or people's opinions, than to
absorb some really cool literature and feel good about yourself.
Like I couldn't imagine sitting there day after day on
(17:55):
a retort to someone else's reply to someone else's words
and an argument about a conspiracy in all this crap,
when I could be enjoying something truly invigorating from my brain.
That's how we do this. My prison guards would walk
past me and I would be so happy, so uplifted,
(18:17):
so alive. They thought I was mentally off. It wasn't
just that I read, and therefore I was absorbing things
I left prison behind.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
So I want to talk to you about another innocent
man that you met on death row in Pennsylvania way
back in nineteen ninety nine. And of course you know
I'm referring to Walter Ogrid. Just before this lockdown started,
you were on your way to Philadelphia to fight for him, right.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I started out trying to drive across this country in
a pickup truck to go get my friend Walter Ogrod
out of death row after twenty eight years of being
on death row wrongly, having the mother of the victim
begging for his release, and all this only to be
stopped cold by the judge. And I would have been
(19:18):
still in Philadelphia begging for his release had I not
listened to wisdom better than my own. Honestly, lately, I'm
just I keep thinking about my friend Gregory Ogrid, Walter's brother.
Now that Anne Marie Fahey, the mother of the victim,
the little girl who my friend Walter Ogrod was falsely
(19:40):
convicted of murdering, is begging for Walter's release. He kept saying, Man,
she's such a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. Can I do
anything to try and get her? A signed CD from
Bruce that's all he wants to do. This is a
man who suffers from his brother being on death row
(20:03):
right now for a crime that he didn't commit for
the last twenty eight years, and his main concern is
trying to show grace to the mother of the victim
for her efforts to show grace to his brother. That's
why I keep thinking about Jason. Isn't it wonderful that
in the height of this horrible thing that we're going through,
(20:26):
so many good things are shining. Like Greg gives me
so much hope because he's not allowing all of this
negativity of his brother being cheated from being released to
affect him from finding a way to go forward with
good for his brother. And you know, I'm so inspired
(20:47):
by you. And it's another thing I have to tell
you this man I struggled before I met you. No
one with your stature has given me any respect. I've
done podcast around the world, but that's a moment for
that person. Sir. You're the only sincere friend that has
(21:12):
stayed true throughout this process, and it's because of you
I'm going to keep standing up strong and making these
efforts for people to see. This is the message right
here Jason, you and me man, showing people that you
might be in New York and I might be in Oregon,
but I fucking love you, man, and I love the
effort you make for other people. And good is going
(21:34):
to win, and you believe it and I believe it,
and that's why we're here today, so that all of
us right now, if you hear my voice and you're
struggling to handle this, we get it, man, and we
love you for it. And reach out to someone. Do
the nice thing, man, don't reach out and tell your woes.
Reach out and be someone else's answered prayer. Be the
(21:56):
uplifting moment they need, and you'll feel so much much
better for yourself.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
And Nick, I'm really touched. And you know you're someone
who I look up to and I draw a tremendous
amount of inspiration from. So I love YouTube brother, and
we will continue to fight this fight together. We will
bring Walter home and we're going to go get Bruce
Springsteen's autograph for that wonderful woman who has been through
(22:25):
such hardship and tragedy and is now showing such grace.
As you said, so.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah, and I like the one thing that you continue
to do on the social media, you continue to share
positive messaging that uplifts people or relieves them of the
stress with good neuroplasticity posts. I love it that you
always started the same way. I didn't know how much
I needed to see a giraffe hug a donky, but
(22:54):
there it is, you know what I mean, and that
really matters to someone. Jason. You're doing your part and
that's what people need to hear. Those little things mean
something to someone somewhere, even if you didn't notice it,
and that's what we got to keep alive. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Amen, brother. So again, Nick, thank you for sharing your thoughts.
You never cease to amaze me, and I appreciate our
friendship more than words can say. You know, I feel
like you've already shared your words of wisdom with us,
So I'm just going to say stay safe and I'll
be looking forward to seeing and working with you as
(23:32):
soon as we're allowed to travel.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Again. Thank you for having me on and I'm really
grateful to you.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
It never fails whenever I speak to Nick. I learned
so much and one of the most interesting things I
just learned. I mean, we all know the importance of literature,
but we tend to, you know, neglect it or take
it for granted sometimes. But from Nick, I learned that
we read the equivalent of two hundred books a year
(24:02):
in terms of the total number of words that we consume,
but we consume them in such sort of trite ways,
right on social media and little bites. But reading real art,
reading some of the classics is something that so many
people who were wrongfully convicted, so many of our x
hoonerary community have told me that's one of the things
(24:23):
that got them through as Nick did, that lifted their spirits,
even turned their whole you know, mojo around was reading
Victor frankel Man Search for Meaning or some of the
other classics the Prophet. Do you hear these things come
up over and over again. You know, if I learned
anything talking to Nick, it's stay positive and always be kind.
(24:46):
Nick practice is radical kindness, and I think we can
all take something from that. I mean, right now, more
than ever, I think it's a time when we can
help each other. You could be someone else's you know, lifeline.
Before we go any further, I want to thank all
our heroes. They've always been heroes, but now they're finally
(25:07):
being recognized as such. And by that I mean, of course,
our healthcare providers, all the essential workers, the grocery store people,
that delivery people, everybody who is helping us to keep going,
risking their own safety to keep society from coming apart.
So in the meantime, I hope you've been listening and
(25:30):
hearing Laura and I Writer and Steve Drissen as they
shed light on why someone would ever admit to a
crime they didn't commit in Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'll
be returning with the new season of Wrongful Conviction with
Jason Floman May and next week we're going to have
a very special guest. I'm going to leave it a mystery,
but you're going to want to hear this one. So
(25:51):
come back next week from more alternative perspective on life
and living in the time of COVID. 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
(26:13):
wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org. To learn how
to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our
production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music in
the show is by three time OSCAR nominatede composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Be sure to.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook
at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is
a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
Signal Company Number one
Welcome back to our mini series Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
In the time of COVID, you know, social distancing orders
were put in place well over a month ago, and
on top of the tragic loss of life, we're starting
to see the effects of isolation and restricted movement as
they make their impact. For many, there's the specter going
without basic necessities when their businesses can't bear the idle time,
(00:27):
or when stimulus money runs dry when they can't get unemployment.
But for those incarcerated, a potential death sentence looms as
a very real possibility as they have no way of
social distancing in our overcrowded prisons. And yet some people
on the outside are ignoring the necessary precautions and even
(00:50):
going so far as to demand an ill advised and
straight crazy returned to business as usual. Clearly the advice
of our experts, it's from the wrongfully convicted community as
now more necessary, even essential than ever previously. We spoke
to Damien Echols and Amanda Knox about the importance of
structuring your time, keeping an exercise regimen, cleanliness, focusing the
(01:13):
mind inward, and they gave us tips on combating the
absence of physical touch, and this is really important holding
on to our senses of humor. This week we will
talk to a man who was not only sentenced to
death for a crime he didn't commit, but who also
unintentionally do you not going to leave this escape from
(01:34):
death Row only to return to some new, fresh version
of hell now? He tells us about how the current
state of affairs reminds him of his experiences on death Row,
how he overcame his anger, escaped into literature, and about
the detrimental role that the ego plays on our respective
(01:55):
abilities to deal with being in our own versions of Lockdown.
You can hear his entire story of triumph over tragedy
in an episode so insane that we had to break
it into two parts for episode five of season nine.
He's the author of Monsters and Madmen, the star of
the documentary film The Fear of Thirteen. But mostly he's
(02:16):
our friend, nick Yarris on Coping in the time of COVID.
Nick Yaris is here.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Thank you for having me back on. It's a real
honor to do this at a time that we're all
struggling to handle Lockdown.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
You're up in Oregon, right.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, I'm in a small town on the coast of Oregon,
just above California, and we're blessed by having only six
thousand people in the population.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Well, Nick, you survived death row in Pennsylvania at a
time when it was so brutal. So you've been to
hell and back and now here you are in the
free world and experiencing a much milder, shall we say,
sort of lockdown. But is it triggering for you to
(03:10):
have to be sort of, you know, stationary and not
have the freedom of movement that you've enjoyed now for
so many years.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
It's actually reinvigorating all of my lessons learned from it.
I had to replace the structure in my life when
my life hit a brick wall. When I was getting
no new sensory input in my daily life to have
memories of interactions with others, it was killing me. Initially
(03:38):
I had no structure, and I realized that that learning
process of giving myself structure every day while being locked
in a six x nine cell has come back and
rebounded again now to point towards Oh, okay, I'm okay
with this. So I used it to set up the
(03:59):
structure for the children in the house to have their school.
We built them a little classroom. We're trying to have
everything regimented because structure keeps the mind healthy.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
And how are you doing now?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Right now? The worst thing that I'm facing, I guess
is the same thing we're all facing. We have worry
in our heart, our loves ones. We consider it aside
for ourselves, but we struggle with worryment for everyone. From
a farm. My dad is eighty five years old. He
(04:35):
goes over and he picks up the newspaper every day,
and he refuses to stop living his life, and he
won't put on a mask. He said, I've lived through
war and terrorism. I lived through all the worst things
in life. If God wanted me, he would have gotten
me sooner. I'm not going to stop living my life.
(04:55):
But I'm not going to be a fool.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah. I think a lot of people are experiencing right now.
You know, we're all having a tough time with the isolation,
but some of the people in our lives are not
taking all of the precautions. For some, the issue is
economic desperation, but for others, they feel like their rights
are being infringed, rather than that this is temporary and
(05:18):
for the common good, And I mean you actually had
your freedom stolen without cause? So how did you persevere?
What was the key for you that allowed you to,
you know, transcend? It's probably the right word. This unbelievably
(05:39):
terrible environment. And how can those lessons be applied for
people who now are at home frustrated, no work, no
recreation activities, stuck in the walls, closing in, money tight
all the other pressures that people are experiencing. How can
your experience help them?
Speaker 2 (05:59):
In real time? I'm doing it with everyone in that
same feeling that I had on death Row, And it
goes back to a very terrible night in November of
nineteen eighty nine when Huntington Prison was set on fire
during a riot and I was locked up in the
(06:20):
death row housing unit two hundred and twenty five of
us all went quiet as we watched the prisoners across
the courtyard burn the block across from us, knowing that
the building structure was connected and it was going to
set us on fire, and the guards had already left us.
(06:41):
So you sit there in those moments with this fear
in your chest, like is this real? Is this how
it ends? And my next what will happen? How can
I have control over these feelings? And right now our
whole world is feeling this way. We didn't do anything
to be put in lockdown. Why are we here enduring
(07:06):
these fears when this had nothing to do with it.
We didn't cause this mayhem around us, but we're suffering
through it? How do we deal with it? And the
one thing that kept me going through it all was
I refuse to give up my humanity. My kindness was
so important to me that I refused to feed the
(07:29):
negative cycle, just like feeding into the negative news cycles
now in today's social media, I refuse to feed into
the negative, believing that good was the only way going forward.
And if I believed in that, then I could wake
this out, see how it plays out, and remember that
(07:49):
it's a humbling for me. And I swear to God
that death row experience is playing out right now in
my life with me.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
There must have been times, Dick, I mean, you were
Franks for a crime that they knew you didn't commit.
Your life is in danger every day, not just from
being executed, but from being beaten to death by guards,
other inmates, all the other deprivations. There must have been
moments when you felt bitter.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
No oh yeah, oh, Jason, I don't want to misplace
this truth. But in my early days I was so
bitter about having nothing that I would beat my head
on the wall so hard by slamming it backwards into
the wall. It was the only way I felt like
(08:38):
I could keep going if I stayed angry. In first,
I was consumed by the insult done to me and
my family to be sentenced to death for a crime,
for a murder of a woman I never met in
my life. To have my parents cry and humiliation in
the courtroom while the people taunted them and laughed in
(08:59):
their face. I was so angry that I thought the
only way I'm gould get through this is if I
stay angry. And it consumed me, and I was so
ashamed of that that it was only because of a
miracle chance encounter. A man hung himself on my prison block.
(09:22):
His cell was empty. The guards took me out of
my cell to take me to the nurses station to
patch my head up again. I'm walking back and the
guard says to me, go in that cell and get
them books. He said, I'll keep you from being angry
from somehow that moment, that chance encounter, I decided to
(09:46):
try to stop being angry. And it was really hard
to stop being angry. How embarrassing that I was so
consumed by anger that I couldn't read more than a
few pages. I started to pray for or a way
to figure out how to become strong enough to handle
this without anger and bitterness, and I couldn't articulate much.
(10:11):
I didn't have the fluidity of a beautiful vernacular that
would come later. So I stripped all the photographs off
the wall, and I put a photograph of myself up,
and I began to politely speak to the image before
me of myself, hoping to give myself enough respect, love
(10:33):
and encouragement, because that was the person that had to
get me through this life. And in this transition, I
found this wonderful sense that maybe if I stopped and
looked at who I was for one minute, maybe I
could possibly just hopefully love myself. That's all I was
(10:57):
looking for.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Had it worked, I mean, had you not had that epiphany,
there's no way you would be here today. You would
have almost certainly died in prison, Like I said, either
at the hands of the state or at the hands
of one of the many people who were trying to
kill you, and I know those stories. Well.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
The thing I found out, Jason, that really is true.
I watched I don't know four hundred guys entered the
prison system on death row, particularly on death row from
a member of the DuPont family. On down. You know,
people of high ilk suffer the worse when they go
into lockdown. So the analogy is, the bigger the ego,
(11:43):
the harder it is to be in lockdown. How much
of an affront is all of this to you? Is
a measure of your ego, and it will attack your health.
It will cause you to undo every good bond in
your life. Some people can't really handle this because they're
(12:03):
fucking egos so out of control that they really are
affronted by this. How dare I, as an American have
to sit in my house for four weeks because some
Chinese person ate a bat like this is real? People
are walking around in this country with the notion that
this is an affront to them in their lives, when
(12:26):
in fact they're being taught how to be more polite,
how to be less germ spreading, how in the future
to be more consistently conscientious of your own public health,
and yet it's such an angry moment for so many people.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
You mentioned Nick about serving time with one of the
DuPont heirs. Can you talk about how did he adapt it?
Was he able to somehow or other turn a corner
like you did.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
It's amazing how it has to have the humbling first.
A lot of people who do well in society, when
they hit prison, they just break down. And it happened
with John DuPont, it happened with others who were very
well to do in society because their ego is inflated
in life to the stature of how they live. Imagine
(13:27):
one of these super wealthy people going from a yacht
to the prison house. Man. It is such a demoralizing
downfall that they can't handle that. Jason. The one answer
to the trouble people have when they acknowledge their ego,
if they can acknowledge their ego, is what is your outlet.
(13:52):
You can't mindlessly look at screens, you can't endlessly go
on social media. That's going to burn you out really quick.
This is why I'm so grateful I can go back
to my first love of reading. I love books for
one thing, each one taught me a different aspect of myself.
(14:13):
And if I go back and read one now, I
realized the changes of who I was at the time
that I read it the first time to now.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Is there a particular book or was there a particular
book that meant the most to you that others may
be able to benefit from?
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Great question, because one of the things that I recently
did was I picked up The Prophet by Khalil Gebraun
and this is my touchstone book. This book was my
present at Christmas. I rewarded myself by rereading this one
work because I felt so akin to its main character,
(14:55):
al Mustafa, the Chosen who spent twelve years within a waltz,
and on the day of his leaving, he was asked
by everyone to give them parting wisdom knowledge of what
he experienced. And the reason I did this is because
I was so angry. At first. I thought it was flimsy, flamsley,
(15:16):
flusy bullshit, and I didn't like it, and I threw
it against the wall. My mind was so scrambled, I
thought this was crazy. Why would I bother reading this crap.
It wasn't until about two years later when I had
the fluidity in my mind to really absorb that. I
found Gabron's work so uplifting. So I sat down and
(15:38):
I opened up the book, and I was so rewarded
with this beauty of this writing. You see, Gabron suffered
through the tragedy of losing all of his family members
to another plague. It was called tuberculosis, and his family
moved to the Boston area from leban On, and he
(16:01):
was enraptured with trying to hold down the family farm
in Lebanon while migrating back and forth to Boston on
these ships, and his whole family perished during a three
year period of his life while he wrote The Prophet.
That's why I loved him. He took the worst tragedies
(16:25):
of his life and turned it into the most beautiful
book he could think of and gave that to the world.
That is what I make the analogy today of today's
COVD hero was my personal hero. Khalil Gebraun. Picking up
that book the other day meant so much to me
(16:47):
because it reinvigorated that touch, that field, that smell of art.
There's nothing like it. Man. The other thing I wanted
to touch on about reading is this right now, studies have
shown that we read on average about two hundred books
a year in social media messaging of reading other people's words,
(17:10):
we read them in snippets and you know, five and
ten minute bounds. But we're not really reading the books
that we should be reading. And this is where a
lot of times we have to recognize we have to
implement actual time away from a screen and into enjoying
(17:31):
art and literature the way it's meant to be. We're
doing it anyway, and it's a loss to us because
we would rather sit there and watch the left and
right argue about what's right or people's opinions, than to
absorb some really cool literature and feel good about yourself.
Like I couldn't imagine sitting there day after day on
(17:55):
a retort to someone else's reply to someone else's words
and an argument about a conspiracy in all this crap,
when I could be enjoying something truly invigorating from my brain.
That's how we do this. My prison guards would walk
past me and I would be so happy, so uplifted,
(18:17):
so alive. They thought I was mentally off. It wasn't
just that I read, and therefore I was absorbing things
I left prison behind.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
So I want to talk to you about another innocent
man that you met on death row in Pennsylvania way
back in nineteen ninety nine. And of course you know
I'm referring to Walter Ogrid. Just before this lockdown started,
you were on your way to Philadelphia to fight for him, right.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I started out trying to drive across this country in
a pickup truck to go get my friend Walter Ogrod
out of death row after twenty eight years of being
on death row wrongly, having the mother of the victim
begging for his release, and all this only to be
stopped cold by the judge. And I would have been
(19:18):
still in Philadelphia begging for his release had I not
listened to wisdom better than my own. Honestly, lately, I'm
just I keep thinking about my friend Gregory Ogrid, Walter's brother.
Now that Anne Marie Fahey, the mother of the victim,
the little girl who my friend Walter Ogrod was falsely
(19:40):
convicted of murdering, is begging for Walter's release. He kept saying, Man,
she's such a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. Can I do
anything to try and get her? A signed CD from
Bruce that's all he wants to do. This is a
man who suffers from his brother being on death row
(20:03):
right now for a crime that he didn't commit for
the last twenty eight years, and his main concern is
trying to show grace to the mother of the victim
for her efforts to show grace to his brother. That's
why I keep thinking about Jason. Isn't it wonderful that
in the height of this horrible thing that we're going through,
(20:26):
so many good things are shining. Like Greg gives me
so much hope because he's not allowing all of this
negativity of his brother being cheated from being released to
affect him from finding a way to go forward with
good for his brother. And you know, I'm so inspired
(20:47):
by you. And it's another thing I have to tell
you this man I struggled before I met you. No
one with your stature has given me any respect. I've
done podcast around the world, but that's a moment for
that person. Sir. You're the only sincere friend that has
(21:12):
stayed true throughout this process, and it's because of you
I'm going to keep standing up strong and making these
efforts for people to see. This is the message right
here Jason, you and me man, showing people that you
might be in New York and I might be in Oregon,
but I fucking love you, man, and I love the
effort you make for other people. And good is going
(21:34):
to win, and you believe it and I believe it,
and that's why we're here today, so that all of
us right now, if you hear my voice and you're
struggling to handle this, we get it, man, and we
love you for it. And reach out to someone. Do
the nice thing, man, don't reach out and tell your woes.
Reach out and be someone else's answered prayer. Be the
(21:56):
uplifting moment they need, and you'll feel so much much
better for yourself.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
And Nick, I'm really touched. And you know you're someone
who I look up to and I draw a tremendous
amount of inspiration from. So I love YouTube brother, and
we will continue to fight this fight together. We will
bring Walter home and we're going to go get Bruce
Springsteen's autograph for that wonderful woman who has been through
(22:25):
such hardship and tragedy and is now showing such grace.
As you said, so.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah, and I like the one thing that you continue
to do on the social media, you continue to share
positive messaging that uplifts people or relieves them of the
stress with good neuroplasticity posts. I love it that you
always started the same way. I didn't know how much
I needed to see a giraffe hug a donky, but
(22:54):
there it is, you know what I mean, and that
really matters to someone. Jason. You're doing your part and
that's what people need to hear. Those little things mean
something to someone somewhere, even if you didn't notice it,
and that's what we got to keep alive. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Amen, brother. So again, Nick, thank you for sharing your thoughts.
You never cease to amaze me, and I appreciate our
friendship more than words can say. You know, I feel
like you've already shared your words of wisdom with us,
So I'm just going to say stay safe and I'll
be looking forward to seeing and working with you as
(23:32):
soon as we're allowed to travel.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Again. Thank you for having me on and I'm really
grateful to you.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
It never fails whenever I speak to Nick. I learned
so much and one of the most interesting things I
just learned. I mean, we all know the importance of literature,
but we tend to, you know, neglect it or take
it for granted sometimes. But from Nick, I learned that
we read the equivalent of two hundred books a year
(24:02):
in terms of the total number of words that we consume,
but we consume them in such sort of trite ways,
right on social media and little bites. But reading real art,
reading some of the classics is something that so many
people who were wrongfully convicted, so many of our x
hoonerary community have told me that's one of the things
(24:23):
that got them through as Nick did, that lifted their spirits,
even turned their whole you know, mojo around was reading
Victor frankel Man Search for Meaning or some of the
other classics the Prophet. Do you hear these things come
up over and over again. You know, if I learned
anything talking to Nick, it's stay positive and always be kind.
(24:46):
Nick practice is radical kindness, and I think we can
all take something from that. I mean, right now, more
than ever, I think it's a time when we can
help each other. You could be someone else's you know, lifeline.
Before we go any further, I want to thank all
our heroes. They've always been heroes, but now they're finally
(25:07):
being recognized as such. And by that I mean, of course,
our healthcare providers, all the essential workers, the grocery store people,
that delivery people, everybody who is helping us to keep going,
risking their own safety to keep society from coming apart.
So in the meantime, I hope you've been listening and
(25:30):
hearing Laura and I Writer and Steve Drissen as they
shed light on why someone would ever admit to a
crime they didn't commit in Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'll
be returning with the new season of Wrongful Conviction with
Jason Floman May and next week we're going to have
a very special guest. I'm going to leave it a mystery,
but you're going to want to hear this one. So
(25:51):
come back next week from more alternative perspective on life
and living in the time of COVID. 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
(26:13):
wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org. To learn how
to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our
production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music in
the show is by three time OSCAR nominatede composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Be sure to.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook
at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is
a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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