August 12, 2020 • 61 mins
On January 24th, 2004, a party at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple devolved into violence, resulting in one man’s death. Before the violence erupted, an overserved young man left the party into the care of his new girlfriend - only to become the murder suspect on the word of his jilted ex.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
On January two thousand four, James J. Davis went to
a big party at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple to celebrate
his little brother, Daniel's birthday. James's knight was cut short
when he drank too much and vomited several times. Daniel
put him in a cab to meet with his girlfriend,
Canine Johnson. Two hours later, a big fight broke out
in the club, resulting in their friend, Jamal Black, being
(00:24):
stabbed and another man, Blake Harper, being shot and killed.
Police would interview people at the scene to get a
description of the shooter, a light skinned black man with braids,
but James didn't have braids at the time. He had
short hair with waves. Police then called stabbing victim Jamal
Black's home and spoke to his sister, who happened to
(00:45):
be James's spurned x teena Black who casually named James
is the shoot her, even though she had never even
been at the party in the first place. Police found
Jamal at the hospital, who told them the identity of
the real shooter, Tay Hall, so was it ta or Ja.
Two weeks later, Jose Machicote, who was at the club
(01:06):
that night, would enter the precinct and second Tina Blacks identification.
About six weeks after that, James found himself the target
of an interrogation, a sham lineup, and a murder charge.
Only after his case was picked up by the Legal
Aid Society wasn't revealed that Jose machic Cote was actually
one of the most dangerous drug dealers in Brooklyn and
(01:27):
the subject of a joint FBI NYPD investigation. Magic Cote
was murdered five months after his false testimony that sent
James to prison for the rest of his life. This
is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam. Welcome back to Wrongful
(01:52):
Conviction with Jason Flam. That's me. I'm your host, and
today you're gonna hear a story that when they write
the History of Wrongful Conviction as they could put this
on the cover because this story is so outrageous that well,
you're just gonna have to hear it for yourself. Hello,
this is a prepaid correct call from an inmate at
(02:12):
New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. This
call is subject to recording and monitoring. To accept charges,
press one to refuse charges, press too. You would like
thank you for using Securist. You may start the conversation now.
On the phone from prison where he's been for almost
twenty years, we have James J. Davis. Hello, Jay, thanks
(02:35):
for calling in and I hope that we'll be able
to make a difference. And with us today we have
Elizabeth Felber, who is the supervising attorney in the Wrongful
Conviction Unit of the Legal Aid Society. Thank you for
having us. Let's go back to the beginning. James, you
had a rough childhood growing up in Brownsville in Brooklyn, right, Yeah,
very My mother and my father were really in my life.
(02:58):
There was more of my grandma my prother School was
good up until maybe in fifth sixth grade, where where
you start noticing that you're closing ain't the same as
everybody else's and people pick on you and stuff like that.
My father died when I was in fourth grade. Roughly
two years later. My mother passed away. The year before that,
(03:21):
my brother father passed away, so both of us had
no parents by the time I reached sixth grade. Did
you feel like a certain amount of responsibility, you know,
as an older sibling at that point, I think I
had all little responsibility. I had to watch that to
my little brothers. I had to keep people from picking
on him outside as well as keep people from picking
(03:41):
on me and bullying me. So that's when the fight started. Happened,
and I started getting into a lot of trouble. No,
everybody has your mother joke. I've got to imagine that
they stung you know a lot more with all you've
been through already, So now you're staying at Grandma was
looking out for your younger brother, But who's looking out
for you? By the time I was fourteen, I was
(04:05):
getting beat a lot. I had a cousin who was
supposed to be disciplining me for getting in trouble in
school and in the neighborhood, and it was kind of assessive.
So what ended up happening. I started running into the
streets as much as I could, for as long as
I could. I was doing a lot of stupid stuff.
I was young, robbing people. I was something weird or
(04:30):
whatever the older, the older guys on the corner might
be able to supply. And that's when you ended up
in juvie. Yes, when when I when I made it
the juvie, I'm going to school and I met this teacher,
the guy named Mr Bliss, very very very smart guy,
like he knew something about anything or whatever you wanted
(04:51):
to act. I liked that he had that much knowledge,
and I confided in him about schooling, and he convinced
me to take much e D and I ended up
passing at that past. He was like, you can go
to community college and keep going to high school now
for re education. I was taking like biology and in
(05:12):
global history or economics classes and it was giving me
credit for is somebody had come and check my work.
So I understand. You're accepted to Cape for your community
college in North Carolina, near where your aunt lived, no
small feat considering your record, but your probation officer wouldn't
transfer your supervision out of state, so you were trying
to get yourself into some computer science classes locally. Around
(05:36):
that time, I found out that my brother was into
the streets, and that's pretty much where I got back
involved in the streets, stunning weed and being there for
this case. Elizabeth, take us back to January four. What
happened that faithful night? Okay, So January was his brother
(05:57):
Daniel's birthday, and Dan wanted to go to a party
that was being held at a Masonic temple lodge where
they hosted events. It was a party for people with
January birthdays. Well, my brother birthday was coming up. It
was more whatever you want to do, I'm gonna participate.
Bo is an older guy from the neighborhood that he's
(06:19):
like a well like guy. He does parties. He knew
my brother as well. Two of them was promoting the
party po and another guy, I don't know which. One
of them my brother. He've been talking about his birthday
for a long time, so they put him on the
fly I guess Jay was not really a partygoer. He
was a quiet guy. I think he'd tell you himself.
(06:40):
He'd rather stay home with friends smoke weed um. But
he loved his brother. He was fiercely protective, so he
decided to go with them as well my brother birthday.
My plan was the like, we just gonna shield, maybe
call up some girls to come hang out at the
projects with us. They can't drink for free hang out.
He was been doing going to the party because his
(07:01):
name was on the flyers. So it comes to be
almost twelve o'clock and I wanted to surprise my brother,
so I walked to the liquor store before closed to
get a bottle all away and a bottle of Hennessey.
And when I got back, my brother was like, oh,
I forgot the party. And Jay was not a big drinker,
so by the time he got to the party, he
(07:23):
had had a few already. And then he persuaded the
bouncer to let him or one of the hosts to
let him combine the two drinks he was drinking, which
were Hennessey and champagne. Uh, kind of a disgusting combination.
He threw them to you know, we put them together.
He went into the party and he proceeded to have
a few more drinks in the bathroom because they told him, Okay,
(07:44):
you can have your own drink, but you have to
put some shade on it before you know it. I
was trying to rush my drinks so that we can
actually get out of the bathroom. I wanted to see
what the party was really light. Plus my brother you
don't smoke, so he's out on the dance floor most
of it. Um anyway, when I want to get out there.
Actually enjoyed some of his birthday with him, and the
(08:05):
mixture didn't agree with me. The Hennessey, and the more
wet turned my stomach over. That was the start of
the end of the night. I threw up maybe once
or twice in the bathroom, and before I know it,
through the laugh and I hit my brother pretty much like,
come on, man, now, I gotta take you back home.
(08:26):
We just got here. We ain't even fully been in
the club long enough. Through negotiation, I just told him
and I just woke me outside. I catch a cab
and I go to my girlfriend house. So they went outside.
They got a cab and James called his girlfriend kennein
Johnson and took the cab to her place and she
(08:48):
met him outside. Her mother didn't like James, so they
would stay with her aunt. I got there at to
forty five maybe three. So when I got there, she's
sitting on the steps already. I step out the cab.
They got threw up in between, cause before I even
tested this out, she came running down the steps, rubbed
my back, I think, in well to our house, stop
(09:10):
at the store, and went into our house. And that
was this. I think she even had a couple of
jokes and I, hey, y'all go again. So he was
long gone before anything happened at the party, which was
around four in the morning. A fight broke out and
somebody was seriously stabbed. We now know that was Jamale Black,
(09:31):
and Blake Harper was shot and killed. A couple other
people were shot, but not seriously. But Um James had
already left the party hours earlier. So you wake up
the next morning at your girlfriend canins her aunt's house.
Really and one of the guys you were with, Jamale Black,
had been stabbed the night before. How did you hear
that news? Both of us up, The news is on,
(09:54):
it's about the Masonic temple. Immediately called my house on
the land. Uh. And the first thing I asked, this
is my brother there. My grandmother like, yeah, he came
in last night. He's in the room sleep. You know
they had a fight, right, And I asked for my
aunt because my honor probably no more than my grandmother would.
(10:15):
And my honor is like, yeah, Jamal got stabbed and
and this guy got stabbed and somebody got killed, but
nobody knew who the guy was that got killed. So
I'm like, I'm coming over there. I got there. My
brother pretty much told me I wasn't really involved in it,
but it was crazy and it fight broke out, people shooting,
(10:36):
girls screaming, and everybody running. Police had responded to the
scene and they interviewed a number of people at the club,
and no one that the interviewed knew the identity of
the shooter. But he was described as a young, light
skinned blackmail with braids on the back of his head. Now,
m James, is that an accurate description of you at
that time? No, I actually didn't have braids at the time.
(10:59):
I had a low speed is a like waves. So
police have already interviewed witnesses at the scene the night before.
Your friend who was stabbed, Jamal Black. They called his house,
but they get a sister on the phone and stat Now, James,
you have a storied past with this young woman, correct,
a black like the first girlfriend I've ever had. We've
(11:20):
never done anything together, but we've been like close friends
ever since, being boyfriend and girlfriend and like eight and
nine years old. And when I win Tod, Juvie me
and have made contact against somehow, and we was talking
about pretty much moving in with each other when I
came home. But when I came home from Juvie, it
(11:41):
was like, I don't know she gave me like the
cold showed up. I did three and a half years
almost I'm coming home to a girlfriend thinking that, you know,
sex is like right there on the list one of
the first things at the seeing each other's family and
kicking it for a little bit. Holme on. It was like, no,
(12:02):
I'm not trying to do that. So I was like
not really to be pressure and p and pressure in anything.
But this is stuff that we've been speaking about for
like over a year. Ready after that day, we never
spoke as girlfriend and boyfriend the game, but we see
eachev v and passing and we always remain called you,
but we never spoke on a relationship or any of
(12:22):
that stuff of her. Again. What we learned was that
Tina Black still Harvard a flame for him and was
hugely jealous when she found out that he had a
new girlfriend, and out of spite, she told the police
that James did the shooting, even though you can tell
by the only police record on her she wasn't at
the party that night. She was very sick with juvenile diabetes,
(12:46):
too sick to go to a party. The police should
have known that she wasn't at the party, and yet
they just focused on him. The second page of the
detective notebook says PERP James Davis j So it's just
tunnel vision from then on out right. So the people
that were there couldn't identify the suspect. The woman who
wasn't there does identify a suspect. And of course we
(13:07):
know that Tina later on confess to her mother and
to others, and she had lied to the police. It
just seems like so many different things went wrong that
didn't need to write. And this now we're up to
the part where the detectives went to the hospital, right
and the interview Jamal Black So, can you can you
talk about the Aliabet? Sure? So the detectives actually went
to the hospital the day of the incident and they
(13:29):
were told he was just coming out of surgery. He
was too out of it. The doctors wouldn't let him
interview Jamal. Jamal testified out our hearing and he told
the court that what happened was those detectives came back
later and they wanted to know what happened, and at
first he wasn't really engaging with them, but then they
made it seem like they thought he was the shooter,
(13:51):
which makes sense. Because if there's a brawl and one
person gets shot and the other person get stabbed, you
kind of think that they're they're somehow related. And so
because of that, Jamal told them what happened, which was
he had been stabbed by the guy who was subsequently killed,
and this guy named Tay Hall was helping him out
(14:11):
of the party when he says, oh shit, pushes Jamal
to the ground and you hear shots fired. Jamal looks
up and he sees Tay putting a gun back in
his pocket and saying, I got to get out of here.
The police are coming. But there was no written report
about that conversation, and it never came out. At the hearing.
The judge said, Oh, it's just not credible that they
(14:33):
wouldn't have a report about it. Well, it's also not
credible that you wouldn't interview the person who was stabbed,
because they would most likely have the most relevant information.
So let's fast forward then to a couple of months
after the shooting, right, and that's when the warrant squad came.
They were actually looking for your younger brother when they
arrested you, and you weren't even aware that they were
(14:56):
looking for you because you knew that you didn't have
anything to do with this, and there was no reason
to suspect you of anything other than being drunk and
throwing up on the sidewalk um. And they arrested you
and brought you to the precincts and interrogated you for
hours and hours. Maybe they thought you were going to
confess or something like, maybe even a false confession, but
you never did. No. They took me from my house
(15:19):
and under the guys that I had a warrant, which
I did. I did have a warrant for dissortedly conduct
and do community service. But they never took me to
the court building. They took me down to like COMMASI headquarters,
where I met Detective Hutchinson for the first time before
they took me to the precinct. At the precinct, they
(15:41):
pretty much was asking me, do I know Jamal Black?
And do I know what happened to Jamal Black? So
I explained to them the same thing that I just
was telling you about getting drunk and leaving the party,
and that seemed all right. They left, and then they
came back and they were still asking me about the
party and where I was at so I gave him
(16:03):
more detail of who I went with, who actually walked
me to the door, whatever, where I went after I
left the party, and they left again, but this time
I'm I'm I'm feeling funny. I'm like, they keep asking
me where was that? The next time he came in,
I think he started asking about the shooting. Do you
know the guy that got killed? I'm like, I don't
(16:24):
know the guy that got killed, but I know one
of the guys that got shot because I went to
school with him as well. But I don't know the
guy that got killed. And from there, I don't I
don't remember exactly the rest of the questions, but it
was pretty much all about the shooting there. So I'm like,
when when am I going to court? I'm supposed to
be going to court, and like, no, what we're gonna
do is we're gonna put you in the lineup. I'm like,
(16:47):
a line up. I need a lawyer. It was like,
do you have a lawyer. I'm like, no, I don't
have a lawyer, but I have a lawyer and my
family who can come and represent me. And he asked
me for his name and phone him. I'm like, I
don't have a phone number for him, but he should
be listed. My uncle, Robert, Robert Davis is a lawyer.
I don't want somebody present. But he tells me if
(17:09):
I don't have a number for him, then he can't
call them. And they just took me back to the
room and left me in the room, and from there
they went to the lineup and they came back with
four guys. Three of them is dog skin, two of
them heavy. Said this can't be the people that they
got to put in the lineup with me. Nobody looks
(17:29):
like me, nobody favors me in no way, shape or form.
But I'm like, this can't be. Then he brings two
more guys in, like Indian looking guys. I'm like, nah,
this is this is a fix. Can you tell us
a little bit about this lineup and how things went
so wrong? As he says in his own statement, this
(17:49):
is not a fair lineup. So the lineup in itself
was already suggestive. But there were three people who viewed
the lineup. One of them was Jose Macha Cody. He
was the first witness that they brought into view a
photo spread about six weeks earlier, and it was unclear
why he was called He was the brother in law
of the man who died, but he was not one
(18:10):
of the people that had been originally interviewed. Is pretty
common knowledge that when you've picked someone out of a photograph,
you picked them again in the lineup because you recognize
them as the person. But the lineup happened six weeks
later at the lineup um. The two other witnesses, Harold
Poe and Sean Belton, they were brought there by the
mother of the deceased, and according to their testimony, she
(18:31):
called them and said, they have the guy they think
who did it at um the precinct and they want
you to just come to see if you can, you know,
identify him, or something to that effect. That's already contaminating
the lineup because there's a pressure put on them that
this is the person they have, the person. They feel
compelled to pick one person, especially especially when the mother
(18:51):
of the deceased has show for driven you to the precincts.
So they picked James, but one of them said, always
from the beginning, well he resembles him except where the braids,
because when James got arrested, his hair was short, and
the other guy Sean Belton. Now, originally he had said
I didn't see anything when the police spoke to him.
Now he said, oh, I just said that because I
was afraid. But the description he gave before he viewed
(19:14):
him was someone wearing a Skully cap and that's nowhere
in any description. And also five ten and James was
like five seven, so he didn't even describe someone that
looked like James. So that's how they picked him. There
was a fourth person at the lineup who did not
testify at the trial or the hearings, and what Detective
Hudginson said about him was we picked him out. He
(19:35):
just wouldn't sign the sheets, saying he had Again, you
know though some things just your alarm goes off that
smells fishies. So um, we caught up with him. He
did not want to be involved. He made that a
hundred and fifty percent clear. But what he told us was, no,
I never said that was the guy. That's why I
wouldn't sign. And what I said to them was if
you say that's the guy, that's the guy. So to me,
(19:59):
that says they will be prompted to pick James. And
I should just add that. Sean Belton at the second
trial retanted again and said I just glanced at him.
He gave four separate statements, so that was him, and
the other guy always only said he resembled him. So essentially,
it really came down to host the cod when you
think about the the convenience of Tina Black Jr. Given
(20:23):
my name to to the detective, and then a week later,
Jose Macha Cody, the drug building, violent robber who's a
humble barber, now just happens to walk into the priestinct.
Though he didn't stay at the crime scene when everything happened,
he fled the crime scene. He walks into the precinct
(20:44):
and he picks my picture. He's the only one that
goes to the precinct and it just so happens that
he's known in this neighborhood. To me, the whole the
whole case is weird from beginning to end. I think
that this was a misunderstand Then maybe from speaking to
Jamale Black, him telling them the story he told them
(21:06):
about pay in them act his system about pay and
she telling them Jane and Ages went from there with
the easiest thing that they could do to close the case,
and and it dies so't happen to be that I
was convenient for them. This episode is sponsored by A
(21:33):
i G, a leading global insurance company, and Paul Weiss Rifkin,
Wharton and Garrison, a leading international law firm. The A
I G pro Bono Program provides free legal services and
other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need,
and recently they announced that working to reform the criminal
justice system will become a key pillar of the program's mission.
(21:55):
Paul Weiss has long had an unwavering commitment to providing impact,
actual pro bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable members
of our society and in support of the public interest,
including extensive work in the criminal justice area. After the lineup,
(22:15):
they told me I was being charged with murder, and
he offered me a deal pretty much to taking hunchings,
and asked me to tell him that I did it,
because he already heard about the story of what happened.
Somebody told him that two groups of guys was fighting,
and the guy and one of the groups had a knife,
and the guy of a group had a gun, and
(22:38):
he shot the guy with the knife to defend itself.
But if you tell me that, then I can help you.
I speak to the D eight. I'm like, what the
hell kind of ship is that? Why the fund would
I tell you I did something that I'm telling you
I wasn't even aware of. I wasn't there for it.
He's like, you know, if I was you, I would
have did the same thing. If it was me, a
god comes at me with a knife and I got
(22:59):
a gun, I would have shot at him. To you,
ain't doing that wrong? I was like, well, you want
me to admit to somebody didn't do it? That's wrong
right there, and told them if you would have told
me that this was this was about from the beginning,
I probably would have never spoke to you. I wouldn't
have tried to help you. But here it is. I
tried to help you, and I turned out to be
the one going to jail. Pretty much. They think of
(23:20):
printing me and put me in a holding cell for
the rest of the night. So now things go from
bad to worse right the trial. There's a number of
problems at both trials, although the first trial amazingly ended up.
And you know it hurts me to say this, and
I know you must have had a lot of sleepless
(23:42):
nights over this, James. But the first trial, in spite
of the fact that you had substandard defense, you still
ended up with an eleven to one hung jury in
favor of acquittal. I rarely hear that, So talk about
the trial from your perspect James. So his trial is
(24:02):
going on. I'm reading the paperwork that they gave me
the day before my trial actually started. I'm still going
through paperwork and I'm noticing that, you know, they black
out the names, so you don't know who's who. But
I'm listening to the stories, and now it was making
sense with the d D fives from the police station,
because now I'm seeing, oh, this is the guy that
(24:25):
said he never seen nothing at the crime scene. That
changed his story the other two times to this story now,
which happened to be Sean Belton. His first statement to
the police at the crime scene was I never seen
what happened. I was talking to two girls and shots
went off and I ducked for cover to protect myself.
(24:45):
I've never seen anything. Have a told throughout the whole thing,
he never identified me from the precinct to trial. He
only told the officers that it was two guys that
looked like each other that had the fight and the
shooting and everything, and he only referred to me as
looking similar to one of the guys in that trial.
(25:08):
He said, I resembled the guy that he's seen as
the priest, and he never picked me out and said
definitively that's him right there that I've seen doing the shooting.
Like you have this this one guy, jose A Macha Cody,
who's laming the cause of his murder on his brother
in law. Well, the two prosecutors witnesses beside him are
(25:31):
saying that he started the whole fight. You have a
conflict between your own witnesses with their pointing the finger
at this guy is saying that he did X, Y
and Z that caused us to come over and be
if assistance to him. But this is your main witness,
jose Macha Codis, and he's saying that I had nothing
to do with it. I'm a humble barber. I never
(25:53):
committed a crime again after I was blocked up all
of those years ago. But here it is. You got
two witnesses that you put in on the stand. You
want us to believe that they identified me, but you
don't want us to believe that they're saying that this
guy's lying and he started to fight that led to
the shooting in Stabbin. Did you think you were gonna
(26:15):
be exonerated as you should have been? I thought that
I would be at the first trial because the jury
that we had, they was asking questions that were relevant,
that should have stood out to the police officers that
did the investigation, to the d a's office that got
the paperwork from the police officers, and though my lawyer
(26:37):
didn't put on the best case, the jurors used their
comments sense Tonin Johnson. His girlfriend did testify at the
first trial. I think that in part was part of
what led to the eleven to one acquitted that she
was a very persuasive witness, because she was very persuasive
at the hearing as well. She's explaining to them how
I came to the house a stand over her aunt's place.
(27:00):
She explained pretty much why her mother didn't like me
as much or why we didn't stay at a mother's
house and some others was like a CEO or x
CEO at the time, so it was like kind of
a conflict of interest. This guy that's selling weed and
always smoking with no job. I guess she didn't think
I was good enough for her daughter. The first trial
(27:22):
ended up with an eleven to one hungry in favor
of acquittal. Even the judge that it must be wrong
if eleven of your PIDs the things one way and
you go against that. But at the second trial, the
d A is saying that I one of the witnesses
have a pod. Didn't really change his testimony. We had
(27:46):
his testimony read into the record because throughout the whole
thing he never identified me. He only referred to me
as looking similar to one of the guys Sean Belton rekn't.
But it's I can't really consider that. We can't because
he went back to the initial statement that he never
seen anything. The other person that they say picked me
(28:07):
out of a photo of right, he never signed on
none of the pitches. But the detective is saying I
made a monk next to the picture that he picked
out because he wouldn't sign it. It's like that don't
even make sense. The only only witness that they had
was jose marche Cody that actually positively picked me out
of the lineup. And we find out later that the
(28:29):
state's sole remaining witness jose machic Cot, the testimony on
which the whole case rested, was not the humble barber
that the state made him out to be, but actually
a full time drug dealer, right prone to violence and
under a joint investigation by the FBI and NYPD. And
all you needed was your star witness Kennyan Johnson to
show up and counter matic coch just like she did
(28:50):
at the first trial. But at the second trial. I'm
not with my girlfriend anymore, so our contact is kind
of really touching goal where she know that I'm only
calling to notify her court dates and what's going on
with my life, which she's trying to avoid. I guess
I don't know. But and Kenyan Johnson, the day before
(29:12):
she was supposed to come in or two days before,
we spoke, and then I didn't hear nothing from her.
My lawyer said he spoke to her and she was
supposed to be coming in, and then she didn't show up,
but she was still being nice to him on the phone.
He called her again and then she cursed him out.
(29:32):
She told him that he sent police to her house
that like one in the morning. But we learned that
day in the courtroom that it wasn't actually my lawyer
that sent the police, that it was the district attorney
who subpoenaed her, even though in court she said, I
never planned on calling this girl as a witness because
(29:52):
I don't know what she's gonna say. Even though she
heard what my witness said at the first trial. It
was well known at my case that come over there
and like me. But they still this is the point
at her and sent police to her house that like
one in the morning while her mother's house, which actually
infuriated her mother and caused her mother to kick out.
(30:16):
That right there pretty much still to deal as far
as her come in to court. And at that point
I was asking, like put me on the stand, and
she's not gonna come in. I'm the only thing we
got left. You didn't do nothing else with nobody else.
So for me understand, like they're gonna eat you alive,
with your with your prior history and stuff. They eat
(30:39):
you alive, and the jury see that, then then find
you guilty. That's the last thing I wanted. So I'm
no lawyer. Let him got me and tell me guilty.
Anyone who's listening it is probably wondering right now. Well,
if if I was representing him back then, I would
(31:00):
have checked to cell phone records. I would have checked
the cab records. We could have gotten ahold of the
cab company and see if anybody because you took a
cab right, and none of that stuff was done right.
The weird thing is, out of all of the easy
stuff that we think of that could have been done,
my attorney at the time highest uh chiropractor or a
(31:22):
child doctor to do medical examin or work, and I've
never even seen the medical examin or work or any
paperwork that he had done. But he didn't go and
check a cab. He didn't go and speak to none
of these witnesses that's in the d D files from
the police reports. But you found adopted to play as
a medical examiner from your office building. It's sad to say,
(31:45):
but if you don't have money to actually pay for
a lawyer, in the justice system doesn't really work for you.
It's real that it does. You really come across lawyers
like Susan and Liz or people like to actually go
out of their way to help somebody out to show
that they're innocent. And I appreciate every good of it.
(32:06):
Look the officers telling me that I have to get
off the phone. He's uh pressing them because of the
time frame, I guess, because we was really only supposed
to get like half our phone calls. No problems. You
can do that around a couple of guys that that
are friendly, hit and know my situation that wanted to
make sure that everything was all right, but well back
(32:27):
even even today or tomorrow or whenever. I can thank
you again, Thank you again. I appreciate you, and I
hope you will have a nice day. I will speak
to you soon. Yeah, we'll be back in touch for
sure later. H J has hung up. What an unbelievably
calm and gentle spirit he's got. It's here. He is
(32:50):
in this chaotic situation in actual security prison in the
time of COVID, with people whose phone time he's sort
of you know, borrowing or whatever, and guards who are
going hey, you know, like and yet he is so focused,
which makes me even more sad thinking about the lost
potential that that a simple act of kindness from that
(33:13):
parole officer twentysomething years ago could have just avoided this
whole thing. And god knows what he'd be doing with
his life now contributing to society and probably building a
family and everything else. So um, So meanwhile the story
goes on. Mr Machakote was murdered by a drug dealer
five months after james second trial, after he was trying
(33:34):
to rob the drug dealer for for the second time
in a month. Um. So, yeah, he was tortured and killed.
And I mean, this is some Quentin Tarantino stuff now,
but this is the guy that the authorities were painting
to be a wonderful citizen who was bravely coming forward
and now he's a simple barber and blah blah blah.
So that's all out the window. But there was also
Brady violations in this case, right, so can you talk
(33:56):
can you speak to that? So we learned this. Um.
The hearing was going on, the actual innocence hearing that
we litigated last summer and we're appealing now. Um it
was actual innocence and ineffective assistance of council. That's when
we finally got eight witnesses in to talk um and
support James's story of innocence. So um, during our hearing,
(34:18):
I reached out to the assistant U S attorney because
people were prosecuted federally for killing Matcha Cody and through
it I met the FBI agent who told me that
at the time of the trial, Jose Matcha Cody was
under their investigation. It was a joint NYPD FBI investigation
into drug dealing, major drug dealing in Brownsville and lo
(34:40):
and Behold. In the spring, which was when the second
trial was happening, a confidential informant was buying huge quantities
of heroin and cocaine from Matcha Cody. Now we don't
know if the assistant district attorney knew that, but it's
hard to believe that the detective who used to be
a narcotics detective Brownsville did not know that this man
(35:02):
was a one of the major, most violent drug dealers
in Brooklyn and be under you know, investigation by the FBI.
So that was never disclosed. No, that would have been
an inconvenient fact to bring up, and they were trying
to present him as the perfect witness, right, so he
was so brave. Yeah, So there's the Brady violation because
this wouldn't be complete without that, right, right. So they
(35:26):
have an obligation to turn over this information that they
knew about and that's what we believe happened here. And yes,
it does seem like that happens all the time. And
what was in it for Matic Cody Um, you know,
I don't want to go down too deep a rabbit
hole of conspiracy theories, but that he was on parole
the night of this murder. He had violated parole by
being out past his curfew. And the fight that Jay
(35:49):
was referring to, a lot of the police reports say
a Spanish guy wearing a fur coat grabbed a bottle
within a fight on the floor. That was Magic Cody.
So that was also a violation of paroles. So I
don't know whether they threatened him with having him locked up,
whether there was something corrupt going on. You know, it
was the seventy five Precinct, which is notorious. UM has
(36:12):
had some problems with corruption over the years. I don't
know what happened. Even the FBI agent, although he said,
you know, he was on a bad guy list, that's
what he how he referred to matcha cody, which is
a computer database that you're supposed to check for any
witness And in fact, the day they interviewed the witnesses
at the club. They did HEID to checks on those witnesses,
(36:32):
but there's no HEID to check in the paperwork for
Match of Cody. So there's just something fishy about Match
of Cody and why they're so protective of him. And
all we do know is that when the prosecutor got
up in summation and said, he's such a credible witness,
and you know he's credible because he was so honest
about his past and now he's a barber. Well he
(36:53):
might have been honest about his past, but he wasn't
really honest about his present. So you know, in addition
to the problems with you know, idea evidence in a
situation like that, you also have this unsavory character pretending
to be someone that he's not. Wow. Yeah, it's it's exhausted.
This this one's actually tell me about it. I'm still
(37:17):
writing the brief with the appeal, so none of that's
disclosed to the defense of James second trial, right, and
we know about the whole Match of Cote thing. Of course,
it's almost like a an exclamation point on the whole
thing that he ends up. I mean, I'm sorry the
guy got murdered, but so such a short time after this,
(37:39):
as if to really just drive this home. You know,
he ends up in like a scene from Reservoir Dogs
being tortured to death by a guy who he was
trying to rob for a second time, a drug dealer,
I mean, nice witness, right, and the first time he
entered at gunpoint and tied them up and robbed them.
(37:59):
So it wasn't his first rodeo, no, And it sounds
like they turned the tables on him and then he, yes,
he met his demise and took this, uh, this false
testimony he presented to the grave with him. Yes. Now
(38:23):
you know, we get to the post conviction investigation and
of course you had a meeting with the conviction Review
Unit in Brooklyn and this would seem to be one
little ray of light. So where do we stand with that?
So that was actually before I became involved in in
the case. Um Susan Epstein, who did the appeal and
(38:43):
did a phenomenal investigation, brought the witnesses to the conviction
review unit. They had the case incredibly for five years.
It's not exactly clear what happened, but one refrain that
is throughout the transcripts of those interviews is why didn't
you come forward sooner. The assistant district attorney assigned to
(39:04):
this case just seemed very suspicious from the beginning, and
she gave some of them a really hard timing. But
she got a lot of this information. I mean, she
went to prisons and she spoke to Jamal Black, who's
currently incarcerated, and he told her that it was Tay
who did the shooting. And she also fixated on some
inconsistencies that I think are not material. The story that
(39:27):
was told was coherent. Each witness corroborated one another. The
vast majority of the witnesses told them that Jay's hair
was short. He cut his hair because he had some
kind of skin condition. So just like you'd remember a
party because you were throwing up all night, you'd remember
that someone had short hair because they thought it was
ring worm. It's not entirely clear that's what it was,
but it was some skin condition that they remembered and
(39:49):
his hair was short. But they had all this information,
and honestly, I don't know why they dragged their feet
and they never came right out and said, we don't
believe you. We think he's guilty. Even after we brought
the motion and started the hearing, they said to the press,
you know, we're still looking into it, or something to
that effect, but for some reason they just were unpersuaded.
(40:10):
That's weird. I mean, look, there's even inside of a
conviction of your unit like Brooklyn, where we'd like to
think that everybody is on top of their game. Um,
I don't know, I can't really explain. You have these
witnesses who are actually bravely coming forward now, right, and
there's lots of them, right. It's not like this is
one person. These are people who are you know, members
(40:32):
of the community, who are who are not kids anymore either.
And I think it's also worthwhile to mention why james
brother Daniel, and Tina Black were unavailable to testify. Tina,
a young woman who named James in the first place,
is sadly no longer with us. In two thousand and thirteen,
she died of complications related to the very diabetes that
(40:52):
had kept her from the party that faithful night, all
the way back in two thousand and four, And sadly,
Daniel James is younger brother there who put him in
the cab that night, tragically was murdered. In two thousand twelve,
so now the Brooklyn cru hasn't come to a decision,
and they still could do something about it if they
so choose, but you and Susan Epstein weren't going to
(41:14):
wait around for that, And that brings us to the
hearing we've been referring to this entire time. You and
Susan Filder for forty Emotion, which is New York Legal
lees for a motion to set aside the judgment that
was in September two thousand eighteen, and you argued for
James's actual innocence as well as ineffective assistance of council
and newly discovered evidence at this hearing back in June
(41:37):
of two thousand nineteen. Yes, we were pretty optimistic going
into it. So we had eight witnesses, including James. James
went first, as you saw his very intelligent, UM, humble,
low keyed and um, I think he makes a good impression,
and he went first. And also so they couldn't say, oh,
of course he said this. He sat through the whole
hearing and listened to what everyone else said. So he
(42:00):
told the story that you heard, you know, about leaving
because he was intoxicated. And then Jamal Black came in
and one thing about Jamal Black that was really, I think,
very persuasive. He had initially refused to cooperate and sent
a letter to Susan saying he ruined my life because
he had James had slept with his girlfriend when he
(42:21):
was locked up at Riker's, and he held a grudge.
And he even told me when we were preparing to testify,
because he has a bad quality I have. I get
it from my father. I can really hold a grudge.
But he came in and he told the whole story.
First of all, he helped walk James out to the car,
but then they started to get into a fight about
this girlfriend again and he went inside and he met
up with Tay, the shooter. So he told the whole
(42:43):
story about how he got stabbed because his younger brother
was involved in the fight and he went over and
he heard this guy say, you thought this was over.
He turned around, he was steps. He he goes through
the whole incident of how the stabbing happened, and how
the shooting happened, and how it was Tay, and then
how he told this to the police. We also had
the woman who cut his hair, who although she didn't
(43:04):
remember exactly when she cut it. She did remember that
she told him it was breaking off and that he
had to cut it, and that the last time she
saw him his hair was short. And you had Corey Hines,
who was at the party in the bathroom laughing at
him as he was throwing up UM. Sadly, his brother
had signed an Affidavid saying I put him in a
cab and sent him to his girlfriend's house. He was
(43:27):
murdered UM in two thousand and twelve, so we you know,
didn't have his him as a witness. We had his
affidavit and we believe the judge should have allowed that
into evidence, and he didn't. UM. And we had nine Johnson,
the girlfriend who didn't show up at the second trial.
We actually had to do what's called a material witness
order to have her arrested to bring her in, which
(43:49):
I really didn't want to do. But she came in,
even though she was mad at me about that. She
got on the stand. So when that happens, they assigned
an attorney to you, and the attorney came in and
said to the judge, she's willing to testify, but she's
terrified of the family and What came out on the
witness stand is that after she testified at the first trial,
friends and family of the deceased followed her not just
(44:11):
out of the courtroom, but out of the courthouse, calling
her names, threatening her if we're going to find out
where you live, if we see you on the street.
And it was so bad that James's attorney put her
in a cab because he was afraid of her having
to take public transportation home. So here she is. She
hasn't seen James since the first trial. And she gets
on and she essentially says exactly what she testified to
(44:33):
years before that. You know, she met him at her
mother's house. He got out of the car. He was
staggering like stupid drunk because kind of how she put it,
and and threw up, and she got am a ginger
ale out of bodega and they walked to his hands.
So she told that entire story. The two new witnesses
that I found also particularly compelling. One was in the
statement by James. He refers to Bio. His real name
(44:55):
is Ernest. Ernest was one of the promoters, and we
found him and he was willing to testify, and like
a few days before he testified, we asked him, well,
how is it that you remember that he was there,
and he said, because we used to have a competition
about who had the better waves in our hair. So
I remember when he came in and I was joking
(45:15):
about whose waves were better. So, unprompted, he basically said
he had short hair at the time. So he said
that on the witness stand. And he also said somebody
had thrown up by the bar, and he asked the
bouncer what happened here, and he said, oh, you know
those two brothers. One of them was drunk, and I
told him they had to leave. So that was information
we didn't even know about. And then, lastly, and maybe
(45:37):
the most emotionally compelling witness was taina black senior, the mother.
So she came in, you know, with the cane. She's
like crippled by arthritis. She basically was racked with guilt
that she knew her daughter. Her daughter eventually confessed to her,
and she went through all this stuff about they got
a call one day from Rikers and her kids were
(45:57):
there and she said, who's that Rikers? Uh? And they
said James, And she said, why is James at Rikers?
And one of the sun said, ash your dumbasked daughter,
So like she remembered little details like that, and then
bit by bit her daughter revealed to her that she
had set James up and that he was never coming
home and that she was still in love with him.
So that was extremely compelling testimonies. So that was essentially
(46:19):
our case. It was like so many people who you know,
added little bits and pieces to the story and created
this really cohesive story about what really happened there that
nobody bothered to investigate. Then there's another sort of what
could be seen as a devastating blow that took place
on January sixteen years to the day after Blake Harper
(46:43):
was tragically murdered. The judge denied James Davis wrongful conviction
motion and its entirety. I remember reading that the first time.
We're going, oh god right, we were stunned. Um so
he he ruled against us on everything. We By the
end of the hearing we had three points. One was
that we had proved James was actually innocent by clear
(47:05):
and convincing evidence. That's the standard. That his lawyer was
ineffective by not doing a proper investigation. Um. He didn't
even hire an investigator, that's what James was referring to.
And he said he hired a doctor. He hired a
doctor who appeared to have been his brother to review
the medical records, so he knew what he had to
do to get paid to hire someone. So we had
(47:26):
an ineffective assistance of counsel point. And then we asked
the judge to reopen the hearing so that we could
call this FBI agent, so that we could show that
they would have known about this evidence that Matchic Cody
was not just a humble barber, but he was a
major drug dealer in Brooklyn. And the judge refused to
reopen the hearing. Originally set all simus subpoena for an
(47:49):
FBI agent because you have to subpoena them, then changed
his mind on that, said you didn't prove it, but
he didn't give us a chance to completely prove it,
and um, so he denied every aspect of hearing. And
now there's really literally one stop left on this. Um
you don't get to appeal these to call them for
forty hearings in New York. You don't get to appeal
(48:09):
of for forty as a matter of right. You have
to ask permission. It's called seeking leave to appeal, and
we did get permission to appeal. So we are in
the process of writing a brief and this is the
last stop. We are going to the second Department of
Pellet Division and asking them first and foremost to find
him innocent and dismiss these charges. Do you know when
that hearing is going to be. We're shooting for September, UM,
(48:33):
hoping to get the brief filed in time for September.
If it's not September, it will be October. There is
a petition and we're gonna link to it in the
episode description. So for anyone who feels outraged as I
do and wants to help James, go to our episode
description and it will be links to take you two
action steps that you can take. Hello, this is a
(48:58):
prepaid collect call from an inmate at New York State
Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. This call is subject
to recording and monitoring. To accept charges, press one to
refuse charges, Press thank you for using Securist. You may
start the conversation now. Hello, Oh James, I'm glad you're back. Um.
(49:19):
Elizabeth and I spoke a bit about your post conviction
litigation or where you're at now legally speaking. But I
didn't know that justice system actually takes this long. But
I thought, maybe, you know, uh, two years, I'll be
back home. They fixed this whole thing, and I'll be home.
Two years turned into seventeen and I'm still fighting and
(49:40):
trying to convince them that they actually locked up the
wrong person. And then, to compound this tragedy again, the
little brother that you felt so responsible for it was
murdered in two thousand twelve. I mean, I can't possibly
begin to imagine your pain, but your grandmother's still here.
(50:01):
My brother and my grandmother is like my oldest friends
in the world. My grandmother had been there for as
long as I knew. I know she know my pain
because she lost some other and she lost her daughter
the same way I did. Well, not the daughter, but
my mother the same way. She lost some of her
And my brother was there with me through everything. So
(50:22):
it's like I lost out on with little I was
able to spend his life with him in seventeen years,
and my grandmother's life she just turned eighty June eighteenth,
like she was sixty three. I just missed all of
these birthdays and times to spend with her. I would
have been an adult where I could have actually because
(50:43):
I just I think that was my first Christmas ever
actually really buying my grandmother my own gifts, and she
was so happy for that. And then if every year
since that's something I didn't even do. I prayed for
her every night. I he had to be strong for me.
That's one of the reasons that I lived for my grandmother,
(51:05):
about the grace of God. She just turned eighties June nineteen.
My mother was murdered two weeks or yeah, weekend some
change at the Mother's Day, which was hard for my grandmother,
and then my brother on Father's Day right before her birthday.
So it's like I've had a real, real rough journey.
Her journey is just as rough. So this is why
(51:27):
that's like my closest friend right there outside of my
brother that passed away. The same beings I got. He got,
the same little budget clothes or whatever you want to
call him, I got. He got. He's in in the neighborhood,
in the house over not having our parents or my
mother being a crackhead. He got the same thing. We
(51:48):
endured everything together, so it was like, it's the only
person that really really know my struggle. So to lose
him while here right the hard Yeah, I can't imagine
your story. Your life has exhausted, has taken so much
out of me, and I've only listened to it. I
can't imagine having lived it. We need to do everything
(52:12):
we can to bring you home. James. Um, I want
to thank you. I mean, we have as our regular listeners, no,
at the end of each episode, we have our featured segment,
which I call closing Arguments, and this is where I
first of all thank you, and then I just kicked
back in my chair and turn my microphone off and
(52:35):
leave my headphones on and turn it over to you
for whatever else you think needs to be said. So now, um,
Liz over to you for closing arguments. All right, Well,
first of all, thank you so much for taking the
time to listen and to speak to James and to
get to know what a what a good person he is,
what a smart, humble, kind person he is, and for
(52:57):
giving us this chance to tell a story to as
many people as possible. There was from from the day
he was arrested. I'm going to get emotional me clear
and convincing evidence of his innocence. Not just clear and convincing,
compelling evidence of his innocence, and he told everyone what
they needed to do to learn that he was innocent.
(53:18):
From the beginning, he told Detective Hutchinson, go speak to
He listed about six names, and you know, from those
six names there would have been other people because this
was a huge party and a lot of people knew him.
But whether it was tunnel vision, a lack of respect,
or indifference, Detective Hutchison did nothing to investigate. The prosecutor
(53:41):
did nothing to investigate, and the person who, under the law,
has the obligation to investigate, did not do so. He
kept telling James, well, it's their burden, it's not our burden.
But this is a twenty one year old facing murder charges,
facing life in prison, which he's now serving a life
in prison sentence. Seems to me, you have both a
legal and a moral obligation to do everything you can
(54:04):
to prove his innocence, to prove he's not guilty. That's
the standard at a trial. When you have so much evidence,
it's almost obscene to turn your back to it. And
yet that's what happened. At this trial. And yet fifteen
years afterwards, these people came forward, and you know, they
may know each other from the community, but somewhere in
their thirties, somewhere in their forties, somewhere in their fifties,
(54:25):
they weren't all hanging out together conspiring to tell a
story to help James. They told different pieces, and what
they didn't remember they said they didn't remember, but each
and every one of them painted a very vivid picture
of a young man who loved his brother very much,
who went to the party because he wanted to celebrate
with his brother, who got stumbled down, throwing up, drunk,
(54:48):
left the party kind of out of it, met his girlfriend,
spent the night at her aunt's house, and wasn't even
there when the shooting happened. And yet, incredibly, once again,
the judge chose not listen to James. In fact, in
his decision he said, well, you can't listen to anything
he said, because he's the defendant here, he's he's convicted,
(55:08):
and of course he has an overwhelming interest in the outcome,
which is not the law. So he just disregarded everything
James said, despite the fact that most of it was
corroborated and substantiated by the other witnesses. You know. He
he also said you had to have direct evidence. There
was no direct evidence that James went to his girlfriend's
(55:30):
house that night. Well, there was a huge amount of
circumstantial evidence. They walked him to the car, so they
didn't see the cab leave. Circumstantial evidence is extremely compelling
and used all the time in court. So he discounted
circumstantial evidence. And he also wouldn't let us bring in
Daniel's AFFI David, even though again this federal law says
(55:51):
when you're talking about actual innocence, you're allowed to bring
in everything, even if it wouldn't come in ordinarily at
a trial. So Daniel is dead, he was murdered, but
we have his affidavit and guess what it says I
put him in a cab and it went to Kenen's house.
So we did have that piece, but we weren't allowed
to put it in. So once again justice was denied
(56:12):
for James. And I think we've already been through just
the shaky, questionable evidence that was the prosecution. This is
the last chance. There's nothing after the second Department of
Pellet Division, and I just I just hope people hear
this and and they're rightfully outraged and they demand justice
for James because he really is innocent and he deserves
(56:34):
to go home. That was well said, m beautiful closing
argument actually, and I've heard a lot of them. Um,
and now James, over to you for closing arguments. You
are an incredible person. Your spirit comes through even over
the phone, even in the most stressful situation. You are
(56:55):
just an inspiring guy. What can I say? And so
we're gonna keep fighting for you out here. And I
thank you for being on the show and shining a
light on this awful injustice. And now I'll turn it
over to you for closing arguments. I want to say
thank you to you again. Thank you to the Elizabeth Felba,
(57:16):
Susan have Stein, the whole legal as society, everybody that's
been helping me with my case. Without them, I probably
would have gave up this fight. They kept me strong
and kept me motivated. All of the stuff that's going
on in the world today is so much on my mind.
I think that our justice system really needs to be
looked at on the outside and on the inside. The
(57:38):
treatment is really really no different and it's going all
the way starts that law enforcement, with their investigations and
the things that they may do. If they make one
bad mistake, it may change somebody's life forever. And they're
human like everybody else. Everybody's encycled to make mistakes. But
(57:58):
when you don't try to exture mistakes, you just lie
about them or cover them up, you only make things
worse for people that should actually have a fair shot.
You're telling people lives away from people, people families actually
still love them and care about them in their stuffering.
Just as much more efforts should be done on on
(58:20):
getting things right, opposed to just worrying about convictions and
putting people away. Sometimes because in our hate wee we
make poor judgment decisions. We send people away that shouldn't
be locked up. People do deserve to have a fair
shot at whether it be trial, grand jury hearings, or
(58:40):
even the benefit of the doubt when the officer comes
in the restue. It's no different on the inside. Not
everybody in here deserves to be treated so harshly. When
you are already sentenced for a crime, you've already been punished.
You don't come to prison and be and it's more
(59:00):
or torture you come to correct whatever bad behavior you
was doing. You do your time that they gave you,
because that's what they say, if you did the crime,
through the time. But I'm not supposed to be tortured
and the views what about the people that actually didn't
do the crime. That's just like a casualty of war.
(59:21):
And for let him get tortured and being and everything too,
it don't seem like staring impart your trials or what
actually takes place. They label you and then they send
you away, and then they make it hard for you
to prove your innocence to get back out. Even when
you do prove it, it's still hard for them to
(59:43):
let you go. As they're saying, well, it sounds like
he's telling the truth, and it's the same thing. And
we learned that these other guys were liars and all
of these other things. But I don't know, maybe he's
still guilty. Let's just keep him in there and double
triple qua truble check and let him waste some more
of his life away even though he might be totally innocent.
(01:00:06):
And it seems like he is from where we've we've
been looking at, but not a hundred percent show. He
didn't prove it to me a hundred like, that's that's crazy,
that's insane, that would huly life is worth. Don't forget
(01:00:35):
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
wrong for convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to
learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to
thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The
(01:00:58):
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 Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with Sicknal Company Number one
On January two thousand four, James J. Davis went to
a big party at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple to celebrate
his little brother, Daniel's birthday. James's knight was cut short
when he drank too much and vomited several times. Daniel
put him in a cab to meet with his girlfriend,
Canine Johnson. Two hours later, a big fight broke out
in the club, resulting in their friend, Jamal Black, being
(00:24):
stabbed and another man, Blake Harper, being shot and killed.
Police would interview people at the scene to get a
description of the shooter, a light skinned black man with braids,
but James didn't have braids at the time. He had
short hair with waves. Police then called stabbing victim Jamal
Black's home and spoke to his sister, who happened to
(00:45):
be James's spurned x teena Black who casually named James
is the shoot her, even though she had never even
been at the party in the first place. Police found
Jamal at the hospital, who told them the identity of
the real shooter, Tay Hall, so was it ta or Ja.
Two weeks later, Jose Machicote, who was at the club
(01:06):
that night, would enter the precinct and second Tina Blacks identification.
About six weeks after that, James found himself the target
of an interrogation, a sham lineup, and a murder charge.
Only after his case was picked up by the Legal
Aid Society wasn't revealed that Jose machic Cote was actually
one of the most dangerous drug dealers in Brooklyn and
(01:27):
the subject of a joint FBI NYPD investigation. Magic Cote
was murdered five months after his false testimony that sent
James to prison for the rest of his life. This
is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam. Welcome back to Wrongful
(01:52):
Conviction with Jason Flam. That's me. I'm your host, and
today you're gonna hear a story that when they write
the History of Wrongful Conviction as they could put this
on the cover because this story is so outrageous that well,
you're just gonna have to hear it for yourself. Hello,
this is a prepaid correct call from an inmate at
(02:12):
New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. This
call is subject to recording and monitoring. To accept charges,
press one to refuse charges, press too. You would like
thank you for using Securist. You may start the conversation now.
On the phone from prison where he's been for almost
twenty years, we have James J. Davis. Hello, Jay, thanks
(02:35):
for calling in and I hope that we'll be able
to make a difference. And with us today we have
Elizabeth Felber, who is the supervising attorney in the Wrongful
Conviction Unit of the Legal Aid Society. Thank you for
having us. Let's go back to the beginning. James, you
had a rough childhood growing up in Brownsville in Brooklyn, right, Yeah,
very My mother and my father were really in my life.
(02:58):
There was more of my grandma my prother School was
good up until maybe in fifth sixth grade, where where
you start noticing that you're closing ain't the same as
everybody else's and people pick on you and stuff like that.
My father died when I was in fourth grade. Roughly
two years later. My mother passed away. The year before that,
(03:21):
my brother father passed away, so both of us had
no parents by the time I reached sixth grade. Did
you feel like a certain amount of responsibility, you know,
as an older sibling at that point, I think I
had all little responsibility. I had to watch that to
my little brothers. I had to keep people from picking
on him outside as well as keep people from picking
(03:41):
on me and bullying me. So that's when the fight started. Happened,
and I started getting into a lot of trouble. No,
everybody has your mother joke. I've got to imagine that
they stung you know a lot more with all you've
been through already, So now you're staying at Grandma was
looking out for your younger brother, But who's looking out
for you? By the time I was fourteen, I was
(04:05):
getting beat a lot. I had a cousin who was
supposed to be disciplining me for getting in trouble in
school and in the neighborhood, and it was kind of assessive.
So what ended up happening. I started running into the
streets as much as I could, for as long as
I could. I was doing a lot of stupid stuff.
I was young, robbing people. I was something weird or
(04:30):
whatever the older, the older guys on the corner might
be able to supply. And that's when you ended up
in juvie. Yes, when when I when I made it
the juvie, I'm going to school and I met this teacher,
the guy named Mr Bliss, very very very smart guy,
like he knew something about anything or whatever you wanted
(04:51):
to act. I liked that he had that much knowledge,
and I confided in him about schooling, and he convinced
me to take much e D and I ended up
passing at that past. He was like, you can go
to community college and keep going to high school now
for re education. I was taking like biology and in
(05:12):
global history or economics classes and it was giving me
credit for is somebody had come and check my work.
So I understand. You're accepted to Cape for your community
college in North Carolina, near where your aunt lived, no
small feat considering your record, but your probation officer wouldn't
transfer your supervision out of state, so you were trying
to get yourself into some computer science classes locally. Around
(05:36):
that time, I found out that my brother was into
the streets, and that's pretty much where I got back
involved in the streets, stunning weed and being there for
this case. Elizabeth, take us back to January four. What
happened that faithful night? Okay, So January was his brother
(05:57):
Daniel's birthday, and Dan wanted to go to a party
that was being held at a Masonic temple lodge where
they hosted events. It was a party for people with
January birthdays. Well, my brother birthday was coming up. It
was more whatever you want to do, I'm gonna participate.
Bo is an older guy from the neighborhood that he's
(06:19):
like a well like guy. He does parties. He knew
my brother as well. Two of them was promoting the
party po and another guy, I don't know which. One
of them my brother. He've been talking about his birthday
for a long time, so they put him on the
fly I guess Jay was not really a partygoer. He
was a quiet guy. I think he'd tell you himself.
(06:40):
He'd rather stay home with friends smoke weed um. But
he loved his brother. He was fiercely protective, so he
decided to go with them as well my brother birthday.
My plan was the like, we just gonna shield, maybe
call up some girls to come hang out at the
projects with us. They can't drink for free hang out.
He was been doing going to the party because his
(07:01):
name was on the flyers. So it comes to be
almost twelve o'clock and I wanted to surprise my brother,
so I walked to the liquor store before closed to
get a bottle all away and a bottle of Hennessey.
And when I got back, my brother was like, oh,
I forgot the party. And Jay was not a big drinker,
so by the time he got to the party, he
(07:23):
had had a few already. And then he persuaded the
bouncer to let him or one of the hosts to
let him combine the two drinks he was drinking, which
were Hennessey and champagne. Uh, kind of a disgusting combination.
He threw them to you know, we put them together.
He went into the party and he proceeded to have
a few more drinks in the bathroom because they told him, Okay,
(07:44):
you can have your own drink, but you have to
put some shade on it before you know it. I
was trying to rush my drinks so that we can
actually get out of the bathroom. I wanted to see
what the party was really light. Plus my brother you
don't smoke, so he's out on the dance floor most
of it. Um anyway, when I want to get out there.
Actually enjoyed some of his birthday with him, and the
(08:05):
mixture didn't agree with me. The Hennessey, and the more
wet turned my stomach over. That was the start of
the end of the night. I threw up maybe once
or twice in the bathroom, and before I know it,
through the laugh and I hit my brother pretty much like,
come on, man, now, I gotta take you back home.
(08:26):
We just got here. We ain't even fully been in
the club long enough. Through negotiation, I just told him
and I just woke me outside. I catch a cab
and I go to my girlfriend house. So they went outside.
They got a cab and James called his girlfriend kennein
Johnson and took the cab to her place and she
(08:48):
met him outside. Her mother didn't like James, so they
would stay with her aunt. I got there at to
forty five maybe three. So when I got there, she's
sitting on the steps already. I step out the cab.
They got threw up in between, cause before I even
tested this out, she came running down the steps, rubbed
my back, I think, in well to our house, stop
(09:10):
at the store, and went into our house. And that
was this. I think she even had a couple of
jokes and I, hey, y'all go again. So he was
long gone before anything happened at the party, which was
around four in the morning. A fight broke out and
somebody was seriously stabbed. We now know that was Jamale Black,
(09:31):
and Blake Harper was shot and killed. A couple other
people were shot, but not seriously. But Um James had
already left the party hours earlier. So you wake up
the next morning at your girlfriend canins her aunt's house.
Really and one of the guys you were with, Jamale Black,
had been stabbed the night before. How did you hear
that news? Both of us up, The news is on,
(09:54):
it's about the Masonic temple. Immediately called my house on
the land. Uh. And the first thing I asked, this
is my brother there. My grandmother like, yeah, he came
in last night. He's in the room sleep. You know
they had a fight, right, And I asked for my
aunt because my honor probably no more than my grandmother would.
(10:15):
And my honor is like, yeah, Jamal got stabbed and
and this guy got stabbed and somebody got killed, but
nobody knew who the guy was that got killed. So
I'm like, I'm coming over there. I got there. My
brother pretty much told me I wasn't really involved in it,
but it was crazy and it fight broke out, people shooting,
(10:36):
girls screaming, and everybody running. Police had responded to the
scene and they interviewed a number of people at the club,
and no one that the interviewed knew the identity of
the shooter. But he was described as a young, light
skinned blackmail with braids on the back of his head. Now,
m James, is that an accurate description of you at
that time? No, I actually didn't have braids at the time.
(10:59):
I had a low speed is a like waves. So
police have already interviewed witnesses at the scene the night before.
Your friend who was stabbed, Jamal Black. They called his house,
but they get a sister on the phone and stat Now, James,
you have a storied past with this young woman, correct,
a black like the first girlfriend I've ever had. We've
(11:20):
never done anything together, but we've been like close friends
ever since, being boyfriend and girlfriend and like eight and
nine years old. And when I win Tod, Juvie me
and have made contact against somehow, and we was talking
about pretty much moving in with each other when I
came home. But when I came home from Juvie, it
(11:41):
was like, I don't know she gave me like the
cold showed up. I did three and a half years
almost I'm coming home to a girlfriend thinking that, you know,
sex is like right there on the list one of
the first things at the seeing each other's family and
kicking it for a little bit. Holme on. It was like, no,
(12:02):
I'm not trying to do that. So I was like
not really to be pressure and p and pressure in anything.
But this is stuff that we've been speaking about for
like over a year. Ready after that day, we never
spoke as girlfriend and boyfriend the game, but we see
eachev v and passing and we always remain called you,
but we never spoke on a relationship or any of
(12:22):
that stuff of her. Again. What we learned was that
Tina Black still Harvard a flame for him and was
hugely jealous when she found out that he had a
new girlfriend, and out of spite, she told the police
that James did the shooting, even though you can tell
by the only police record on her she wasn't at
the party that night. She was very sick with juvenile diabetes,
(12:46):
too sick to go to a party. The police should
have known that she wasn't at the party, and yet
they just focused on him. The second page of the
detective notebook says PERP James Davis j So it's just
tunnel vision from then on out right. So the people
that were there couldn't identify the suspect. The woman who
wasn't there does identify a suspect. And of course we
(13:07):
know that Tina later on confess to her mother and
to others, and she had lied to the police. It
just seems like so many different things went wrong that
didn't need to write. And this now we're up to
the part where the detectives went to the hospital, right
and the interview Jamal Black So, can you can you
talk about the Aliabet? Sure? So the detectives actually went
to the hospital the day of the incident and they
(13:29):
were told he was just coming out of surgery. He
was too out of it. The doctors wouldn't let him
interview Jamal. Jamal testified out our hearing and he told
the court that what happened was those detectives came back
later and they wanted to know what happened, and at
first he wasn't really engaging with them, but then they
made it seem like they thought he was the shooter,
(13:51):
which makes sense. Because if there's a brawl and one
person gets shot and the other person get stabbed, you
kind of think that they're they're somehow related. And so
because of that, Jamal told them what happened, which was
he had been stabbed by the guy who was subsequently killed,
and this guy named Tay Hall was helping him out
(14:11):
of the party when he says, oh shit, pushes Jamal
to the ground and you hear shots fired. Jamal looks
up and he sees Tay putting a gun back in
his pocket and saying, I got to get out of here.
The police are coming. But there was no written report
about that conversation, and it never came out. At the hearing.
The judge said, Oh, it's just not credible that they
(14:33):
wouldn't have a report about it. Well, it's also not
credible that you wouldn't interview the person who was stabbed,
because they would most likely have the most relevant information.
So let's fast forward then to a couple of months
after the shooting, right, and that's when the warrant squad came.
They were actually looking for your younger brother when they
arrested you, and you weren't even aware that they were
(14:56):
looking for you because you knew that you didn't have
anything to do with this, and there was no reason
to suspect you of anything other than being drunk and
throwing up on the sidewalk um. And they arrested you
and brought you to the precincts and interrogated you for
hours and hours. Maybe they thought you were going to
confess or something like, maybe even a false confession, but
you never did. No. They took me from my house
(15:19):
and under the guys that I had a warrant, which
I did. I did have a warrant for dissortedly conduct
and do community service. But they never took me to
the court building. They took me down to like COMMASI headquarters,
where I met Detective Hutchinson for the first time before
they took me to the precinct. At the precinct, they
(15:41):
pretty much was asking me, do I know Jamal Black?
And do I know what happened to Jamal Black? So
I explained to them the same thing that I just
was telling you about getting drunk and leaving the party,
and that seemed all right. They left, and then they
came back and they were still asking me about the
party and where I was at so I gave him
(16:03):
more detail of who I went with, who actually walked
me to the door, whatever, where I went after I
left the party, and they left again, but this time
I'm I'm I'm feeling funny. I'm like, they keep asking
me where was that? The next time he came in,
I think he started asking about the shooting. Do you
know the guy that got killed? I'm like, I don't
(16:24):
know the guy that got killed, but I know one
of the guys that got shot because I went to
school with him as well. But I don't know the
guy that got killed. And from there, I don't I
don't remember exactly the rest of the questions, but it
was pretty much all about the shooting there. So I'm like,
when when am I going to court? I'm supposed to
be going to court, and like, no, what we're gonna
do is we're gonna put you in the lineup. I'm like,
(16:47):
a line up. I need a lawyer. It was like,
do you have a lawyer. I'm like, no, I don't
have a lawyer, but I have a lawyer and my
family who can come and represent me. And he asked
me for his name and phone him. I'm like, I
don't have a phone number for him, but he should
be listed. My uncle, Robert, Robert Davis is a lawyer.
I don't want somebody present. But he tells me if
(17:09):
I don't have a number for him, then he can't
call them. And they just took me back to the
room and left me in the room, and from there
they went to the lineup and they came back with
four guys. Three of them is dog skin, two of
them heavy. Said this can't be the people that they
got to put in the lineup with me. Nobody looks
(17:29):
like me, nobody favors me in no way, shape or form.
But I'm like, this can't be. Then he brings two
more guys in, like Indian looking guys. I'm like, nah,
this is this is a fix. Can you tell us
a little bit about this lineup and how things went
so wrong? As he says in his own statement, this
(17:49):
is not a fair lineup. So the lineup in itself
was already suggestive. But there were three people who viewed
the lineup. One of them was Jose Macha Cody. He
was the first witness that they brought into view a
photo spread about six weeks earlier, and it was unclear
why he was called He was the brother in law
of the man who died, but he was not one
(18:10):
of the people that had been originally interviewed. Is pretty
common knowledge that when you've picked someone out of a photograph,
you picked them again in the lineup because you recognize
them as the person. But the lineup happened six weeks
later at the lineup um. The two other witnesses, Harold
Poe and Sean Belton, they were brought there by the
mother of the deceased, and according to their testimony, she
(18:31):
called them and said, they have the guy they think
who did it at um the precinct and they want
you to just come to see if you can, you know,
identify him, or something to that effect. That's already contaminating
the lineup because there's a pressure put on them that
this is the person they have, the person. They feel
compelled to pick one person, especially especially when the mother
(18:51):
of the deceased has show for driven you to the precincts.
So they picked James, but one of them said, always
from the beginning, well he resembles him except where the braids,
because when James got arrested, his hair was short, and
the other guy Sean Belton. Now, originally he had said
I didn't see anything when the police spoke to him.
Now he said, oh, I just said that because I
was afraid. But the description he gave before he viewed
(19:14):
him was someone wearing a Skully cap and that's nowhere
in any description. And also five ten and James was
like five seven, so he didn't even describe someone that
looked like James. So that's how they picked him. There
was a fourth person at the lineup who did not
testify at the trial or the hearings, and what Detective
Hudginson said about him was we picked him out. He
(19:35):
just wouldn't sign the sheets, saying he had Again, you
know though some things just your alarm goes off that
smells fishies. So um, we caught up with him. He
did not want to be involved. He made that a
hundred and fifty percent clear. But what he told us was, no,
I never said that was the guy. That's why I
wouldn't sign. And what I said to them was if
you say that's the guy, that's the guy. So to me,
(19:59):
that says they will be prompted to pick James. And
I should just add that. Sean Belton at the second
trial retanted again and said I just glanced at him.
He gave four separate statements, so that was him, and
the other guy always only said he resembled him. So essentially,
it really came down to host the cod when you
think about the the convenience of Tina Black Jr. Given
(20:23):
my name to to the detective, and then a week later,
Jose Macha Cody, the drug building, violent robber who's a
humble barber, now just happens to walk into the priestinct.
Though he didn't stay at the crime scene when everything happened,
he fled the crime scene. He walks into the precinct
(20:44):
and he picks my picture. He's the only one that
goes to the precinct and it just so happens that
he's known in this neighborhood. To me, the whole the
whole case is weird from beginning to end. I think
that this was a misunderstand Then maybe from speaking to
Jamale Black, him telling them the story he told them
(21:06):
about pay in them act his system about pay and
she telling them Jane and Ages went from there with
the easiest thing that they could do to close the case,
and and it dies so't happen to be that I
was convenient for them. This episode is sponsored by A
(21:33):
i G, a leading global insurance company, and Paul Weiss Rifkin,
Wharton and Garrison, a leading international law firm. The A
I G pro Bono Program provides free legal services and
other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need,
and recently they announced that working to reform the criminal
justice system will become a key pillar of the program's mission.
(21:55):
Paul Weiss has long had an unwavering commitment to providing impact,
actual pro bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable members
of our society and in support of the public interest,
including extensive work in the criminal justice area. After the lineup,
(22:15):
they told me I was being charged with murder, and
he offered me a deal pretty much to taking hunchings,
and asked me to tell him that I did it,
because he already heard about the story of what happened.
Somebody told him that two groups of guys was fighting,
and the guy and one of the groups had a knife,
and the guy of a group had a gun, and
(22:38):
he shot the guy with the knife to defend itself.
But if you tell me that, then I can help you.
I speak to the D eight. I'm like, what the
hell kind of ship is that? Why the fund would
I tell you I did something that I'm telling you
I wasn't even aware of. I wasn't there for it.
He's like, you know, if I was you, I would
have did the same thing. If it was me, a
god comes at me with a knife and I got
(22:59):
a gun, I would have shot at him. To you,
ain't doing that wrong? I was like, well, you want
me to admit to somebody didn't do it? That's wrong
right there, and told them if you would have told
me that this was this was about from the beginning,
I probably would have never spoke to you. I wouldn't
have tried to help you. But here it is. I
tried to help you, and I turned out to be
the one going to jail. Pretty much. They think of
(23:20):
printing me and put me in a holding cell for
the rest of the night. So now things go from
bad to worse right the trial. There's a number of
problems at both trials, although the first trial amazingly ended up.
And you know it hurts me to say this, and
I know you must have had a lot of sleepless
(23:42):
nights over this, James. But the first trial, in spite
of the fact that you had substandard defense, you still
ended up with an eleven to one hung jury in
favor of acquittal. I rarely hear that, So talk about
the trial from your perspect James. So his trial is
(24:02):
going on. I'm reading the paperwork that they gave me
the day before my trial actually started. I'm still going
through paperwork and I'm noticing that, you know, they black
out the names, so you don't know who's who. But
I'm listening to the stories, and now it was making
sense with the d D fives from the police station,
because now I'm seeing, oh, this is the guy that
(24:25):
said he never seen nothing at the crime scene. That
changed his story the other two times to this story now,
which happened to be Sean Belton. His first statement to
the police at the crime scene was I never seen
what happened. I was talking to two girls and shots
went off and I ducked for cover to protect myself.
(24:45):
I've never seen anything. Have a told throughout the whole thing,
he never identified me from the precinct to trial. He
only told the officers that it was two guys that
looked like each other that had the fight and the
shooting and everything, and he only referred to me as
looking similar to one of the guys in that trial.
(25:08):
He said, I resembled the guy that he's seen as
the priest, and he never picked me out and said
definitively that's him right there that I've seen doing the shooting.
Like you have this this one guy, jose A Macha Cody,
who's laming the cause of his murder on his brother
in law. Well, the two prosecutors witnesses beside him are
(25:31):
saying that he started the whole fight. You have a
conflict between your own witnesses with their pointing the finger
at this guy is saying that he did X, Y
and Z that caused us to come over and be
if assistance to him. But this is your main witness,
jose Macha Codis, and he's saying that I had nothing
to do with it. I'm a humble barber. I never
(25:53):
committed a crime again after I was blocked up all
of those years ago. But here it is. You got
two witnesses that you put in on the stand. You
want us to believe that they identified me, but you
don't want us to believe that they're saying that this
guy's lying and he started to fight that led to
the shooting in Stabbin. Did you think you were gonna
(26:15):
be exonerated as you should have been? I thought that
I would be at the first trial because the jury
that we had, they was asking questions that were relevant,
that should have stood out to the police officers that
did the investigation, to the d a's office that got
the paperwork from the police officers, and though my lawyer
(26:37):
didn't put on the best case, the jurors used their
comments sense Tonin Johnson. His girlfriend did testify at the
first trial. I think that in part was part of
what led to the eleven to one acquitted that she
was a very persuasive witness, because she was very persuasive
at the hearing as well. She's explaining to them how
I came to the house a stand over her aunt's place.
(27:00):
She explained pretty much why her mother didn't like me
as much or why we didn't stay at a mother's
house and some others was like a CEO or x
CEO at the time, so it was like kind of
a conflict of interest. This guy that's selling weed and
always smoking with no job. I guess she didn't think
I was good enough for her daughter. The first trial
(27:22):
ended up with an eleven to one hungry in favor
of acquittal. Even the judge that it must be wrong
if eleven of your PIDs the things one way and
you go against that. But at the second trial, the
d A is saying that I one of the witnesses
have a pod. Didn't really change his testimony. We had
(27:46):
his testimony read into the record because throughout the whole
thing he never identified me. He only referred to me
as looking similar to one of the guys Sean Belton rekn't.
But it's I can't really consider that. We can't because
he went back to the initial statement that he never
seen anything. The other person that they say picked me
(28:07):
out of a photo of right, he never signed on
none of the pitches. But the detective is saying I
made a monk next to the picture that he picked
out because he wouldn't sign it. It's like that don't
even make sense. The only only witness that they had
was jose marche Cody that actually positively picked me out
of the lineup. And we find out later that the
(28:29):
state's sole remaining witness jose machic Cot, the testimony on
which the whole case rested, was not the humble barber
that the state made him out to be, but actually
a full time drug dealer, right prone to violence and
under a joint investigation by the FBI and NYPD. And
all you needed was your star witness Kennyan Johnson to
show up and counter matic coch just like she did
(28:50):
at the first trial. But at the second trial. I'm
not with my girlfriend anymore, so our contact is kind
of really touching goal where she know that I'm only
calling to notify her court dates and what's going on
with my life, which she's trying to avoid. I guess
I don't know. But and Kenyan Johnson, the day before
(29:12):
she was supposed to come in or two days before,
we spoke, and then I didn't hear nothing from her.
My lawyer said he spoke to her and she was
supposed to be coming in, and then she didn't show up,
but she was still being nice to him on the phone.
He called her again and then she cursed him out.
(29:32):
She told him that he sent police to her house
that like one in the morning. But we learned that
day in the courtroom that it wasn't actually my lawyer
that sent the police, that it was the district attorney
who subpoenaed her, even though in court she said, I
never planned on calling this girl as a witness because
(29:52):
I don't know what she's gonna say. Even though she
heard what my witness said at the first trial. It
was well known at my case that come over there
and like me. But they still this is the point
at her and sent police to her house that like
one in the morning while her mother's house, which actually
infuriated her mother and caused her mother to kick out.
(30:16):
That right there pretty much still to deal as far
as her come in to court. And at that point
I was asking, like put me on the stand, and
she's not gonna come in. I'm the only thing we
got left. You didn't do nothing else with nobody else.
So for me understand, like they're gonna eat you alive,
with your with your prior history and stuff. They eat
(30:39):
you alive, and the jury see that, then then find
you guilty. That's the last thing I wanted. So I'm
no lawyer. Let him got me and tell me guilty.
Anyone who's listening it is probably wondering right now. Well,
if if I was representing him back then, I would
(31:00):
have checked to cell phone records. I would have checked
the cab records. We could have gotten ahold of the
cab company and see if anybody because you took a
cab right, and none of that stuff was done right.
The weird thing is, out of all of the easy
stuff that we think of that could have been done,
my attorney at the time highest uh chiropractor or a
(31:22):
child doctor to do medical examin or work, and I've
never even seen the medical examin or work or any
paperwork that he had done. But he didn't go and
check a cab. He didn't go and speak to none
of these witnesses that's in the d D files from
the police reports. But you found adopted to play as
a medical examiner from your office building. It's sad to say,
(31:45):
but if you don't have money to actually pay for
a lawyer, in the justice system doesn't really work for you.
It's real that it does. You really come across lawyers
like Susan and Liz or people like to actually go
out of their way to help somebody out to show
that they're innocent. And I appreciate every good of it.
(32:06):
Look the officers telling me that I have to get
off the phone. He's uh pressing them because of the
time frame, I guess, because we was really only supposed
to get like half our phone calls. No problems. You
can do that around a couple of guys that that
are friendly, hit and know my situation that wanted to
make sure that everything was all right, but well back
(32:27):
even even today or tomorrow or whenever. I can thank
you again, Thank you again. I appreciate you, and I
hope you will have a nice day. I will speak
to you soon. Yeah, we'll be back in touch for
sure later. H J has hung up. What an unbelievably
calm and gentle spirit he's got. It's here. He is
(32:50):
in this chaotic situation in actual security prison in the
time of COVID, with people whose phone time he's sort
of you know, borrowing or whatever, and guards who are
going hey, you know, like and yet he is so focused,
which makes me even more sad thinking about the lost
potential that that a simple act of kindness from that
(33:13):
parole officer twentysomething years ago could have just avoided this
whole thing. And god knows what he'd be doing with
his life now contributing to society and probably building a
family and everything else. So um, So meanwhile the story
goes on. Mr Machakote was murdered by a drug dealer
five months after james second trial, after he was trying
(33:34):
to rob the drug dealer for for the second time
in a month. Um. So, yeah, he was tortured and killed.
And I mean, this is some Quentin Tarantino stuff now,
but this is the guy that the authorities were painting
to be a wonderful citizen who was bravely coming forward
and now he's a simple barber and blah blah blah.
So that's all out the window. But there was also
Brady violations in this case, right, so can you talk
(33:56):
can you speak to that? So we learned this. Um.
The hearing was going on, the actual innocence hearing that
we litigated last summer and we're appealing now. Um it
was actual innocence and ineffective assistance of council. That's when
we finally got eight witnesses in to talk um and
support James's story of innocence. So um, during our hearing,
(34:18):
I reached out to the assistant U S attorney because
people were prosecuted federally for killing Matcha Cody and through
it I met the FBI agent who told me that
at the time of the trial, Jose Matcha Cody was
under their investigation. It was a joint NYPD FBI investigation
into drug dealing, major drug dealing in Brownsville and lo
(34:40):
and Behold. In the spring, which was when the second
trial was happening, a confidential informant was buying huge quantities
of heroin and cocaine from Matcha Cody. Now we don't
know if the assistant district attorney knew that, but it's
hard to believe that the detective who used to be
a narcotics detective Brownsville did not know that this man
(35:02):
was a one of the major, most violent drug dealers
in Brooklyn and be under you know, investigation by the FBI.
So that was never disclosed. No, that would have been
an inconvenient fact to bring up, and they were trying
to present him as the perfect witness, right, so he
was so brave. Yeah, So there's the Brady violation because
this wouldn't be complete without that, right, right. So they
(35:26):
have an obligation to turn over this information that they
knew about and that's what we believe happened here. And yes,
it does seem like that happens all the time. And
what was in it for Matic Cody Um, you know,
I don't want to go down too deep a rabbit
hole of conspiracy theories, but that he was on parole
the night of this murder. He had violated parole by
being out past his curfew. And the fight that Jay
(35:49):
was referring to, a lot of the police reports say
a Spanish guy wearing a fur coat grabbed a bottle
within a fight on the floor. That was Magic Cody.
So that was also a violation of paroles. So I
don't know whether they threatened him with having him locked up,
whether there was something corrupt going on. You know, it
was the seventy five Precinct, which is notorious. UM has
(36:12):
had some problems with corruption over the years. I don't
know what happened. Even the FBI agent, although he said,
you know, he was on a bad guy list, that's
what he how he referred to matcha cody, which is
a computer database that you're supposed to check for any
witness And in fact, the day they interviewed the witnesses
at the club. They did HEID to checks on those witnesses,
(36:32):
but there's no HEID to check in the paperwork for
Match of Cody. So there's just something fishy about Match
of Cody and why they're so protective of him. And
all we do know is that when the prosecutor got
up in summation and said, he's such a credible witness,
and you know he's credible because he was so honest
about his past and now he's a barber. Well he
(36:53):
might have been honest about his past, but he wasn't
really honest about his present. So you know, in addition
to the problems with you know, idea evidence in a
situation like that, you also have this unsavory character pretending
to be someone that he's not. Wow. Yeah, it's it's exhausted.
This this one's actually tell me about it. I'm still
(37:17):
writing the brief with the appeal, so none of that's
disclosed to the defense of James second trial, right, and
we know about the whole Match of Cote thing. Of course,
it's almost like a an exclamation point on the whole
thing that he ends up. I mean, I'm sorry the
guy got murdered, but so such a short time after this,
(37:39):
as if to really just drive this home. You know,
he ends up in like a scene from Reservoir Dogs
being tortured to death by a guy who he was
trying to rob for a second time, a drug dealer,
I mean, nice witness, right, and the first time he
entered at gunpoint and tied them up and robbed them.
(37:59):
So it wasn't his first rodeo, no, And it sounds
like they turned the tables on him and then he, yes,
he met his demise and took this, uh, this false
testimony he presented to the grave with him. Yes. Now
(38:23):
you know, we get to the post conviction investigation and
of course you had a meeting with the conviction Review
Unit in Brooklyn and this would seem to be one
little ray of light. So where do we stand with that?
So that was actually before I became involved in in
the case. Um Susan Epstein, who did the appeal and
(38:43):
did a phenomenal investigation, brought the witnesses to the conviction
review unit. They had the case incredibly for five years.
It's not exactly clear what happened, but one refrain that
is throughout the transcripts of those interviews is why didn't
you come forward sooner. The assistant district attorney assigned to
(39:04):
this case just seemed very suspicious from the beginning, and
she gave some of them a really hard timing. But
she got a lot of this information. I mean, she
went to prisons and she spoke to Jamal Black, who's
currently incarcerated, and he told her that it was Tay
who did the shooting. And she also fixated on some
inconsistencies that I think are not material. The story that
(39:27):
was told was coherent. Each witness corroborated one another. The
vast majority of the witnesses told them that Jay's hair
was short. He cut his hair because he had some
kind of skin condition. So just like you'd remember a
party because you were throwing up all night, you'd remember
that someone had short hair because they thought it was
ring worm. It's not entirely clear that's what it was,
but it was some skin condition that they remembered and
(39:49):
his hair was short. But they had all this information,
and honestly, I don't know why they dragged their feet
and they never came right out and said, we don't
believe you. We think he's guilty. Even after we brought
the motion and started the hearing, they said to the press,
you know, we're still looking into it, or something to
that effect, but for some reason they just were unpersuaded.
(40:10):
That's weird. I mean, look, there's even inside of a
conviction of your unit like Brooklyn, where we'd like to
think that everybody is on top of their game. Um,
I don't know, I can't really explain. You have these
witnesses who are actually bravely coming forward now, right, and
there's lots of them, right. It's not like this is
one person. These are people who are you know, members
(40:32):
of the community, who are who are not kids anymore either.
And I think it's also worthwhile to mention why james
brother Daniel, and Tina Black were unavailable to testify. Tina,
a young woman who named James in the first place,
is sadly no longer with us. In two thousand and thirteen,
she died of complications related to the very diabetes that
(40:52):
had kept her from the party that faithful night, all
the way back in two thousand and four, And sadly,
Daniel James is younger brother there who put him in
the cab that night, tragically was murdered. In two thousand twelve,
so now the Brooklyn cru hasn't come to a decision,
and they still could do something about it if they
so choose, but you and Susan Epstein weren't going to
(41:14):
wait around for that, And that brings us to the
hearing we've been referring to this entire time. You and
Susan Filder for forty Emotion, which is New York Legal
lees for a motion to set aside the judgment that
was in September two thousand eighteen, and you argued for
James's actual innocence as well as ineffective assistance of council
and newly discovered evidence at this hearing back in June
(41:37):
of two thousand nineteen. Yes, we were pretty optimistic going
into it. So we had eight witnesses, including James. James
went first, as you saw his very intelligent, UM, humble,
low keyed and um, I think he makes a good impression,
and he went first. And also so they couldn't say, oh,
of course he said this. He sat through the whole
hearing and listened to what everyone else said. So he
(42:00):
told the story that you heard, you know, about leaving
because he was intoxicated. And then Jamal Black came in
and one thing about Jamal Black that was really, I think,
very persuasive. He had initially refused to cooperate and sent
a letter to Susan saying he ruined my life because
he had James had slept with his girlfriend when he
(42:21):
was locked up at Riker's, and he held a grudge.
And he even told me when we were preparing to testify,
because he has a bad quality I have. I get
it from my father. I can really hold a grudge.
But he came in and he told the whole story.
First of all, he helped walk James out to the car,
but then they started to get into a fight about
this girlfriend again and he went inside and he met
up with Tay, the shooter. So he told the whole
(42:43):
story about how he got stabbed because his younger brother
was involved in the fight and he went over and
he heard this guy say, you thought this was over.
He turned around, he was steps. He he goes through
the whole incident of how the stabbing happened, and how
the shooting happened, and how it was Tay, and then
how he told this to the police. We also had
the woman who cut his hair, who although she didn't
(43:04):
remember exactly when she cut it. She did remember that
she told him it was breaking off and that he
had to cut it, and that the last time she
saw him his hair was short. And you had Corey Hines,
who was at the party in the bathroom laughing at
him as he was throwing up UM. Sadly, his brother
had signed an Affidavid saying I put him in a
cab and sent him to his girlfriend's house. He was
(43:27):
murdered UM in two thousand and twelve, so we you know,
didn't have his him as a witness. We had his
affidavit and we believe the judge should have allowed that
into evidence, and he didn't. UM. And we had nine Johnson,
the girlfriend who didn't show up at the second trial.
We actually had to do what's called a material witness
order to have her arrested to bring her in, which
(43:49):
I really didn't want to do. But she came in,
even though she was mad at me about that. She
got on the stand. So when that happens, they assigned
an attorney to you, and the attorney came in and
said to the judge, she's willing to testify, but she's
terrified of the family and What came out on the
witness stand is that after she testified at the first trial,
friends and family of the deceased followed her not just
(44:11):
out of the courtroom, but out of the courthouse, calling
her names, threatening her if we're going to find out
where you live, if we see you on the street.
And it was so bad that James's attorney put her
in a cab because he was afraid of her having
to take public transportation home. So here she is. She
hasn't seen James since the first trial. And she gets
on and she essentially says exactly what she testified to
(44:33):
years before that. You know, she met him at her
mother's house. He got out of the car. He was
staggering like stupid drunk because kind of how she put it,
and and threw up, and she got am a ginger
ale out of bodega and they walked to his hands.
So she told that entire story. The two new witnesses
that I found also particularly compelling. One was in the
statement by James. He refers to Bio. His real name
(44:55):
is Ernest. Ernest was one of the promoters, and we
found him and he was willing to testify, and like
a few days before he testified, we asked him, well,
how is it that you remember that he was there,
and he said, because we used to have a competition
about who had the better waves in our hair. So
I remember when he came in and I was joking
(45:15):
about whose waves were better. So, unprompted, he basically said
he had short hair at the time. So he said
that on the witness stand. And he also said somebody
had thrown up by the bar, and he asked the
bouncer what happened here, and he said, oh, you know
those two brothers. One of them was drunk, and I
told him they had to leave. So that was information
we didn't even know about. And then, lastly, and maybe
(45:37):
the most emotionally compelling witness was taina black senior, the mother.
So she came in, you know, with the cane. She's
like crippled by arthritis. She basically was racked with guilt
that she knew her daughter. Her daughter eventually confessed to her,
and she went through all this stuff about they got
a call one day from Rikers and her kids were
(45:57):
there and she said, who's that Rikers? Uh? And they
said James, And she said, why is James at Rikers?
And one of the sun said, ash your dumbasked daughter,
So like she remembered little details like that, and then
bit by bit her daughter revealed to her that she
had set James up and that he was never coming
home and that she was still in love with him.
So that was extremely compelling testimonies. So that was essentially
(46:19):
our case. It was like so many people who you know,
added little bits and pieces to the story and created
this really cohesive story about what really happened there that
nobody bothered to investigate. Then there's another sort of what
could be seen as a devastating blow that took place
on January sixteen years to the day after Blake Harper
(46:43):
was tragically murdered. The judge denied James Davis wrongful conviction
motion and its entirety. I remember reading that the first time.
We're going, oh god right, we were stunned. Um so
he he ruled against us on everything. We By the
end of the hearing we had three points. One was
that we had proved James was actually innocent by clear
(47:05):
and convincing evidence. That's the standard. That his lawyer was
ineffective by not doing a proper investigation. Um. He didn't
even hire an investigator, that's what James was referring to.
And he said he hired a doctor. He hired a
doctor who appeared to have been his brother to review
the medical records, so he knew what he had to
do to get paid to hire someone. So we had
(47:26):
an ineffective assistance of counsel point. And then we asked
the judge to reopen the hearing so that we could
call this FBI agent, so that we could show that
they would have known about this evidence that Matchic Cody
was not just a humble barber, but he was a
major drug dealer in Brooklyn. And the judge refused to
reopen the hearing. Originally set all simus subpoena for an
(47:49):
FBI agent because you have to subpoena them, then changed
his mind on that, said you didn't prove it, but
he didn't give us a chance to completely prove it,
and um, so he denied every aspect of hearing. And
now there's really literally one stop left on this. Um
you don't get to appeal these to call them for
forty hearings in New York. You don't get to appeal
(48:09):
of for forty as a matter of right. You have
to ask permission. It's called seeking leave to appeal, and
we did get permission to appeal. So we are in
the process of writing a brief and this is the
last stop. We are going to the second Department of
Pellet Division and asking them first and foremost to find
him innocent and dismiss these charges. Do you know when
that hearing is going to be. We're shooting for September, UM,
(48:33):
hoping to get the brief filed in time for September.
If it's not September, it will be October. There is
a petition and we're gonna link to it in the
episode description. So for anyone who feels outraged as I
do and wants to help James, go to our episode
description and it will be links to take you two
action steps that you can take. Hello, this is a
(48:58):
prepaid collect call from an inmate at New York State
Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. This call is subject
to recording and monitoring. To accept charges, press one to
refuse charges, Press thank you for using Securist. You may
start the conversation now. Hello, Oh James, I'm glad you're back. Um.
(49:19):
Elizabeth and I spoke a bit about your post conviction
litigation or where you're at now legally speaking. But I
didn't know that justice system actually takes this long. But
I thought, maybe, you know, uh, two years, I'll be
back home. They fixed this whole thing, and I'll be home.
Two years turned into seventeen and I'm still fighting and
(49:40):
trying to convince them that they actually locked up the
wrong person. And then, to compound this tragedy again, the
little brother that you felt so responsible for it was
murdered in two thousand twelve. I mean, I can't possibly
begin to imagine your pain, but your grandmother's still here.
(50:01):
My brother and my grandmother is like my oldest friends
in the world. My grandmother had been there for as
long as I knew. I know she know my pain
because she lost some other and she lost her daughter
the same way I did. Well, not the daughter, but
my mother the same way. She lost some of her
And my brother was there with me through everything. So
(50:22):
it's like I lost out on with little I was
able to spend his life with him in seventeen years,
and my grandmother's life she just turned eighty June eighteenth,
like she was sixty three. I just missed all of
these birthdays and times to spend with her. I would
have been an adult where I could have actually because
(50:43):
I just I think that was my first Christmas ever
actually really buying my grandmother my own gifts, and she
was so happy for that. And then if every year
since that's something I didn't even do. I prayed for
her every night. I he had to be strong for me.
That's one of the reasons that I lived for my grandmother,
(51:05):
about the grace of God. She just turned eighties June nineteen.
My mother was murdered two weeks or yeah, weekend some
change at the Mother's Day, which was hard for my grandmother,
and then my brother on Father's Day right before her birthday.
So it's like I've had a real, real rough journey.
Her journey is just as rough. So this is why
(51:27):
that's like my closest friend right there outside of my
brother that passed away. The same beings I got. He got,
the same little budget clothes or whatever you want to
call him, I got. He got. He's in in the neighborhood,
in the house over not having our parents or my
mother being a crackhead. He got the same thing. We
(51:48):
endured everything together, so it was like, it's the only
person that really really know my struggle. So to lose
him while here right the hard Yeah, I can't imagine
your story. Your life has exhausted, has taken so much
out of me, and I've only listened to it. I
can't imagine having lived it. We need to do everything
(52:12):
we can to bring you home. James. Um, I want
to thank you. I mean, we have as our regular listeners, no,
at the end of each episode, we have our featured segment,
which I call closing Arguments, and this is where I
first of all thank you, and then I just kicked
back in my chair and turn my microphone off and
(52:35):
leave my headphones on and turn it over to you
for whatever else you think needs to be said. So now, um,
Liz over to you for closing arguments. All right, Well,
first of all, thank you so much for taking the
time to listen and to speak to James and to
get to know what a what a good person he is,
what a smart, humble, kind person he is, and for
(52:57):
giving us this chance to tell a story to as
many people as possible. There was from from the day
he was arrested. I'm going to get emotional me clear
and convincing evidence of his innocence. Not just clear and convincing,
compelling evidence of his innocence, and he told everyone what
they needed to do to learn that he was innocent.
(53:18):
From the beginning, he told Detective Hutchinson, go speak to
He listed about six names, and you know, from those
six names there would have been other people because this
was a huge party and a lot of people knew him.
But whether it was tunnel vision, a lack of respect,
or indifference, Detective Hutchison did nothing to investigate. The prosecutor
(53:41):
did nothing to investigate, and the person who, under the law,
has the obligation to investigate, did not do so. He
kept telling James, well, it's their burden, it's not our burden.
But this is a twenty one year old facing murder charges,
facing life in prison, which he's now serving a life
in prison sentence. Seems to me, you have both a
legal and a moral obligation to do everything you can
(54:04):
to prove his innocence, to prove he's not guilty. That's
the standard at a trial. When you have so much evidence,
it's almost obscene to turn your back to it. And
yet that's what happened. At this trial. And yet fifteen
years afterwards, these people came forward, and you know, they
may know each other from the community, but somewhere in
their thirties, somewhere in their forties, somewhere in their fifties,
(54:25):
they weren't all hanging out together conspiring to tell a
story to help James. They told different pieces, and what
they didn't remember they said they didn't remember, but each
and every one of them painted a very vivid picture
of a young man who loved his brother very much,
who went to the party because he wanted to celebrate
with his brother, who got stumbled down, throwing up, drunk,
(54:48):
left the party kind of out of it, met his girlfriend,
spent the night at her aunt's house, and wasn't even
there when the shooting happened. And yet, incredibly, once again,
the judge chose not listen to James. In fact, in
his decision he said, well, you can't listen to anything
he said, because he's the defendant here, he's he's convicted,
(55:08):
and of course he has an overwhelming interest in the outcome,
which is not the law. So he just disregarded everything
James said, despite the fact that most of it was
corroborated and substantiated by the other witnesses. You know. He
he also said you had to have direct evidence. There
was no direct evidence that James went to his girlfriend's
(55:30):
house that night. Well, there was a huge amount of
circumstantial evidence. They walked him to the car, so they
didn't see the cab leave. Circumstantial evidence is extremely compelling
and used all the time in court. So he discounted
circumstantial evidence. And he also wouldn't let us bring in
Daniel's AFFI David, even though again this federal law says
(55:51):
when you're talking about actual innocence, you're allowed to bring
in everything, even if it wouldn't come in ordinarily at
a trial. So Daniel is dead, he was murdered, but
we have his affidavit and guess what it says I
put him in a cab and it went to Kenen's house.
So we did have that piece, but we weren't allowed
to put it in. So once again justice was denied
(56:12):
for James. And I think we've already been through just
the shaky, questionable evidence that was the prosecution. This is
the last chance. There's nothing after the second Department of
Pellet Division, and I just I just hope people hear
this and and they're rightfully outraged and they demand justice
for James because he really is innocent and he deserves
(56:34):
to go home. That was well said, m beautiful closing
argument actually, and I've heard a lot of them. Um,
and now James, over to you for closing arguments. You
are an incredible person. Your spirit comes through even over
the phone, even in the most stressful situation. You are
(56:55):
just an inspiring guy. What can I say? And so
we're gonna keep fighting for you out here. And I
thank you for being on the show and shining a
light on this awful injustice. And now I'll turn it
over to you for closing arguments. I want to say
thank you to you again. Thank you to the Elizabeth Felba,
(57:16):
Susan have Stein, the whole legal as society, everybody that's
been helping me with my case. Without them, I probably
would have gave up this fight. They kept me strong
and kept me motivated. All of the stuff that's going
on in the world today is so much on my mind.
I think that our justice system really needs to be
looked at on the outside and on the inside. The
(57:38):
treatment is really really no different and it's going all
the way starts that law enforcement, with their investigations and
the things that they may do. If they make one
bad mistake, it may change somebody's life forever. And they're
human like everybody else. Everybody's encycled to make mistakes. But
(57:58):
when you don't try to exture mistakes, you just lie
about them or cover them up, you only make things
worse for people that should actually have a fair shot.
You're telling people lives away from people, people families actually
still love them and care about them in their stuffering.
Just as much more efforts should be done on on
(58:20):
getting things right, opposed to just worrying about convictions and
putting people away. Sometimes because in our hate wee we
make poor judgment decisions. We send people away that shouldn't
be locked up. People do deserve to have a fair
shot at whether it be trial, grand jury hearings, or
(58:40):
even the benefit of the doubt when the officer comes
in the restue. It's no different on the inside. Not
everybody in here deserves to be treated so harshly. When
you are already sentenced for a crime, you've already been punished.
You don't come to prison and be and it's more
(59:00):
or torture you come to correct whatever bad behavior you
was doing. You do your time that they gave you,
because that's what they say, if you did the crime,
through the time. But I'm not supposed to be tortured
and the views what about the people that actually didn't
do the crime. That's just like a casualty of war.
(59:21):
And for let him get tortured and being and everything too,
it don't seem like staring impart your trials or what
actually takes place. They label you and then they send
you away, and then they make it hard for you
to prove your innocence to get back out. Even when
you do prove it, it's still hard for them to
(59:43):
let you go. As they're saying, well, it sounds like
he's telling the truth, and it's the same thing. And
we learned that these other guys were liars and all
of these other things. But I don't know, maybe he's
still guilty. Let's just keep him in there and double
triple qua truble check and let him waste some more
of his life away even though he might be totally innocent.
(01:00:06):
And it seems like he is from where we've we've
been looking at, but not a hundred percent show. He
didn't prove it to me a hundred like, that's that's crazy,
that's insane, that would huly life is worth. Don't forget
(01:00:35):
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
wrong for convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to
learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to
thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The
(01:00:58):
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 Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with Sicknal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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