January 29, 2026 • 51 mins
Ryan Ferguson was a 17-year-old high school student when Kent Heitholt, a sportswriter for the Columbia Daily Tribune, was found beaten and strangled in Missouri. Heitholt's murder went unsolved for two years until police received a tip that a man named Charles Erickson could not remember the evening of the murder and had told a friend that he thought he may have been involved. Erickson, who had spent that fateful evening partying with Ryan Ferguson, was interrogated by police and despite initially seeming to have no memory of the night of the murder, eventually confessed and implicated Ryan as well. Police offered Erickson a plea deal in exchange for testimony against Ryan at his trial in 2005. Despite the lack of any physical evidence tying Ryan Ferguson to the crime, he was convicted of second-degree murder and robbery and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
I fell into the hands of a corrupt detective.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I was naive enough to believe that I would be
able to just present all of my proof of actual innocence,
that they would investigate adequately, and so that I wouldn't
be going to prison because I was a good person.
I hadn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
In the back of your mind, you say, well, when
we go to a hearing or we go to court,
the truth will come out. The prosecution from day one
knew I was innocent and let forced testimony go uncorrected
from the lower courts all the way up to the
United States Supreme Court.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
You have someone with a badge with ultimate and really,
in that moment, unchecked authority.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Don't presume that people are guilty when you see them
on TV, because it may just be a dirty da
that is trying to rise upward.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with
Jason Flamm. Today's guest is a friend of mine. He's
(01:20):
a remarkable human and an inspiration to everybody who knows him.
And I will embarrass you, but without further ado, let
me introduce you Ryan Ferguson. At just nineteen years old,
Ryan Ferguson was wrongly convicted of murder. He served nearly
a decade in prison.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
Ferguson was convicted for the brutal murder of beloved journalist
ken Heidholt in two thousand and one. The crime scene
outside the newspaper where he worked littered with physical evidence
bloody footprints, fingerprints, and even hair, but none of it
matched Ryan. Again and again, he denied knowing anything about
the murder. Charles Erickson, a childhood friend of Ryan's, came
(01:57):
forward two years after the murder, claiming he had dreamlike
visions that he and Ryan committed the crime together. When
police led Ericson to believe Ferguson would testify against him,
Erickson said he felt pressure to confess to the murder,
thinking he'd otherwise face the death. Comedy and a second witness,
janitor Jerry Trump, identified Ferguson as one of two men
(02:18):
he saw in the parking lot immediately after the murder.
In the years after that two thousand and five conviction,
both of those crucial prosecution witnesses recant in their testimony.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
On his last appeal attempt, Ryan's conviction was overturned.
Speaker 5 (02:33):
After a year and a half more behind Barns. Finally,
and at Pellet Court overturned that ruling, finding quote newly
discovered evidence clearly and convincingly establishes that he's actually innocent.
And then the Missouri Attorney General's office announced it will
not retry or pursue further action against Ryan Ferguson at
this time, meaning Ryan Ferguson was a free man.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 6 (03:00):
Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be on
your podcast. I remember when you when you launched it
the launch party.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Man, just being there was amazing, And I want to
say before we start, just thank you so much for
what you do for everyone, including myself. You know, you
were part of my case before I got out, and uh,
and that gave me a lot of hope and I
appreciate that. And then you've been very supportive to myself
and everyone that I know in the innocence community since
I've been out, and it's just amazing to see what
(03:25):
you do for everyone. So thank you first and foremost,
and let's get this thing started.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Oh well, I don't know, I gotta take a breath
after that, but thank you for saying so. I uh,
you know, I forget these things because you know, there's
just so much to do every day. Because this is
such a an epidemic in this country. You couldn't have
seen this coming a million miles away. We'll talk about that, right.
So you're you're from Missouri, right.
Speaker 6 (03:51):
Yep, from Missouri. I was born born in Australia, raised
in Missouri.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
So you grew up in Missouri. And what was that like?
I mean, you had you had a happy childhood.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
I had a great childhood. Grew up in Columbia, is
right in the middle of Missouri. University of Missouri, college town,
great town, a lot of culture, education, a lot to do,
and so for me, it was a town of opportunity.
I had great education. My parents, they took me all
over the world. They traveled with me constantly, and I
(04:19):
got to learn a lot about people from being in
that town and from traveling and everything else.
Speaker 6 (04:22):
So my childhood couldn't have been any better.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
A close family, very close family.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
We were all together my whole life, and you know,
it was it was like the picture book.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
Family, right, you know, mom, dad's sister.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
We had a little dog, and you know, just a
little middle class existence and everyone was happy.
Speaker 6 (04:41):
Everything Everything was going good.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
And I played sports in high school and had a
lot of friends and everything, and then went to college,
and at that point everything was still very normal.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Everything was very normal until everything went completely haywire. And
you hadn't had any experience with police or arrests or
authority in any way to this point.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Right, Well, I had never been accused of any crimes,
for sure when I was in high school. You know,
it's a college town, so of course there's going to
be police that show up at parties. People get mips
and things of that nature. No one that I knew
had ever been arrested for anything that would have put
them in jail. I had never met anyone that had
spent the night in jail. You know, some kids got
(05:25):
in trouble for small things like like in most towns,
but the fact of being arrested for a real crime
was it didn't even exist in my world.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
I was so moved and angry and just upset in general.
After seeing the forty eight hours piece, which was the
first exposure I ever had to your case. Some of
the things that stuck out for me about that piece
were the idea that this was a cold case. Right
It was the murder of a sports reporter and he
(05:56):
had been beaten to death outside of his car.
Speaker 6 (05:58):
I guess right, yeah, outside of his work.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
And two and a half years later, no leads, nothing
going on, right, One of the local TV stations ran
one of those things that they run time to time
where they had like a composite sketch. Right, did you
even know about this murder when it happened? Was it
big news in the area.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yeah, it's a small town. There's about one hundred thousand people.
I do recall hearing about it. You know, anything that
happens in that town, like a murder, you hear about
it was its big news because they don't happen that often.
That was the extent of my knowledge on you know,
I mean young in high school and it's like, whoa,
somebody was murdered on howe any night.
Speaker 6 (06:39):
That's kind of creepy.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
So let's go back to that. Because the sports reporter,
ken Heidholt was murdered in a very brutal manner. He
was beaten to death with a tire iron or something
like that. I don't you know if they even know
to this day, but it was a heavy metal object
of some sort and when that Crimesoppers piece ran, Charles
Rickson was affected by it in some way. Right. He
(07:02):
saw this on TV. He was with his friends and
he had some sort of a vision or something came
over him which made him say to his friends, Hey,
you know, I mean I kind of look like that guy.
I wonder if it could have been, if I could
have been involved in so or some crazy thing like that.
And then one of the friends called the cops.
Speaker 6 (07:22):
Right.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
And this is an interesting thing about your case, Ryan,
because we've covered false confessions on this show, and false
confessions are so terribly troubling. In your case, you were
the victim of false confession, but you didn't confess. That's
what's crazy about this, Right, You were implicated because somebody
else who also didn't commit the crime, actually thought that
(07:44):
maybe he did for some reason. And the brain is
a strange things to memory. Who knows what came over him, right.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
And one of the quotes that always stuck out to
me is something that Charles ericson my co defendant, the
person who had these images, who ultimately testified against me,
something that he said, and this is verbatim. He says,
if I did it, Ryan must have been with me.
And based on that, I mean, that is what starts
this whole thing. Based on that, I lost ten years
(08:13):
of my life. I was put into prison for a
crime I had nothing to do with.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Was there any physical evidence of any kind connecting to
this case.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
There was no physical evidence connecting me or Charles Erickson.
But the important fact is there is a lot.
Speaker 6 (08:26):
Of physical evidence there.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
You know, there's a bloody footprint, there's a hair in
the victim's hand, there's a paper with a palm print.
Speaker 6 (08:35):
There are things.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
That, even to this day, could be tested to determine
guilt of another individual. And the police have chosen not
to look into those things. And here's what's really really
frustrating is when I got out, the public was enraged.
They were frustrated with what the police had done, and
they said, we want to know what really happened in
this case, because clearly it wasn't Ryan, it wasn't Ericson,
(08:58):
the kid who is still to this day in prison.
And so the police said, we're gonna we're gonna open
this case, We're going to look back into it, We're
going to see what happened here. Well, three months later,
you know, in a very low key way. They're just
kind of like, well, you know, we got somebody in
prison for it right now, so we're not gonna we're
not gonna investigate it.
Speaker 6 (09:15):
That's not gonna happen.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Right, So the net effect if you're a resident of
Columbia or Missouri or the United States, because we don't
know where this guy is. This guy who is a dangerous,
violent killer is out there walking amongst us. I mean,
it is an outrage that they have this evidence and
they won't test it. It even for me, like, my head's going,
(09:36):
what first of all, and let's talk about this right
jail because this is something that people don't focus on enough.
You were in jail for a long time awaiting trial.
They set bail at twenty million dollars.
Speaker 6 (09:48):
Right, twenty million dollars. Yeah, it was it was a
jo you know. That is a in my mind, that's
how publicity's the reality.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
The way our legal system works is if you're arrested
for a very serious crime, like a murder, they can
choose not to give you a bail, and they do
that often, or they can give you a million dollar
bail whatever. Right bail is meant so that you should
have the opportunity to raise those funds and get out
so you can fight your case because you have not
been proven guilty. At that point, I had no bail
(10:16):
for eight months. I went into a bail hearing and
the judge out of nowhere says twenty million dollars. And
so that is a different thing than saying no bail.
That is a political statement. That is her saying that
I endorse this case as a judge, and they're supposed
to be independent. I endorse this case. I'm with the prosecutor,
and we're going to take this kid and put him
(10:38):
in prison for the rest of his life. And that
is not something a judge should do. Judge Ellen Roper
made a huge mistake there. I think she should be
health accountable for that. And that is the politics we
see with our criminal legal system in these people's lives,
you know, I mean, this is my life and that
judge is playing a game with it. And that is
incredibly scary to see, especially at the age of nineteen
(10:59):
or twenty, and you're just like, how is this our
legal system? How is this innocent until proven guilty?
Speaker 6 (11:04):
Because it's not.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
So Yeah, and I hadn't even thought about that, because
to my knowledge, your bail was the highest bail in
the history of the state of Missouri.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Oh, I think it's the highest in the history of
the country in terms of the charge. Right, you have
a charge of first agree murder, second degree robbery. There's
no evidence I had never been arrested or convicted of
any crime, and I'm getting a twenty million dollar bail.
Here's a guy sitting next to me in the same pod,
in the same county with a first agree murder charge
(11:35):
and he is a repeat offender. In his bail for
pretty much the same charge was five hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Wow. So yeah, and I hadn't even thought about it.
But you're absolutely right. In fact, by setting that bail
of twenty million and that going out in the press
as it does, basically it's poisoning the jury pool because
it's saying, hey, you know what, we can say that
or this guy to be extremely dangerous, so dangerous that
(12:04):
we're going to set the bail so high that even
if its family's rich, and your family wasn't poor, but
they weren't rich, So even if the family is one
of the wealthiest families around, they're still not gonna be
able to post it. So it's a wink wink, like
we're going to keep this guy around because we know
he's guilty. And that's absolutely really it's.
Speaker 6 (12:27):
Makes me sick.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Okay, so you go to trial, you by now had
been in jail for how long?
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Yeah, I've been in jail for about eighteen months at
that point a year and a half. Trial was actually
set and I don't think this is a coincidence. On
my twenty first birthday, it was Monday through Friday, and
my birthday for the twenty first birthday was Wednesday, So
I'll never never forget that. And by the way, I
want to mention county jail, and I think this is
overlooked a lot.
Speaker 6 (12:54):
I think it's really interesting for people to hear.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
But when you're innocent until proven guilty and you're in
the county jail, it is far worse than being in prison.
Most guys I know, they're happy to go to prison
after being in the country jet. It is a very,
very poor existence. My first year in the county jail,
I went outside, literally outside two times. And that is
innocent until proven because I don't understand how that can be.
(13:18):
And I went outside every time that I could, but
you're literally sleep deprived. The lights never go off, you
never go outside, you have no human contact with anyone
outside of prison. So it's a horrible existence. But for
those eighteen months before you go to trial, they're basically
sucking the life out of you. And then what you're
seeing in trial is a shell of a human being.
(13:40):
So when you watch forty eight Hours or Dayline or
any other show and you see these people sitting there
on trial, I mean, they probably look emaciated, they probably
look strange, they probably act weird, and that's because they've
been in this horrific environment for so long that I mean,
they have no emotions left, they've spent them all, and
they haven't been eating right, they have no nutrition. So
(14:03):
just take that into consideration when you're looking at somebody
who's going through this situation. You know, you're sitting in
a courtroom full of these people who are staring at you.
You're in a fish bowl and you're the only fish,
and people are going to do like this satanic fish
or something. And not to mention in the way you
were treated the last eighteen months.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
No, I'm glad you brought that up, Ryan, and when
you described that to me, and it's not like you're
comparing jail to a minimum security prison. You were in
a maximum security prison, right, And jails are chaotic, I mean,
among other things. And this is something that's really so
horrible to think about. But they're never cleaned, right, They're
always occupied and they're never cleaned. So you're in a
(14:39):
extremely toxic, poisonous environment in so many different ways. And
you're in a pressure cooker, right because you were going
to sell with how many other guys.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Eight guys, twenty four to seven and you know, yeah,
you're right, it is a pressure cooker.
Speaker 6 (14:53):
I mean, you have these people.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Every single one of those people's lives is on the line.
They don't know what's going to happen next. They don't
know if they're going to go to prison for the
rest of the life. Some of them don't know if
they're gonna get the death penalty.
Speaker 6 (15:02):
Some might get out tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
And so you have all these different thoughts and feelings
and emotions going on. You know, people are losing their
families or they can't see their kids.
Speaker 6 (15:09):
Whatever it might be.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
And you have that on top of the fact that
you can't eat right. You can't get any exercise. Really,
you can't be with loved ones. There's no outlet, right,
The only outlet is towards another person, and so people
end up fighting and getting hurt.
Speaker 6 (15:27):
And you know, you don't want to be in that situation.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
You don't want to be forced to fight somebody for survival.
But that's what they make you do. That's what they
put you in a situation where there's no other options.
And then when it happens, they want to charge you
with another crime, like you did something wrong.
Speaker 6 (15:40):
Put me in the cell with my girlfriend for a year.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
We're gonna, you know, hate each other by the end
of it, right, You can't do that, and they'd put
you in there with these people who are violent criminals.
Speaker 6 (15:51):
You don't know each other, you don't care about each other.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yet you have to be there twenty four to seven
with all that going on, all those emotions, all those feelings,
and that loss of your liberty and privilege. So it
is a frightening place.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
The claustrophobic element of it alone, right, because you're never
getting out. You're not getting out of cell, right, I mean,
what you've got to get out for a shower, no.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Well, the thing is it's like a pod and it's
very small. It's smaller than a one story home, and
the showers in there, and you have a TV in
there on a phone, and eight other guys, and it
is The claustrophobic feeling is so intense, because even if
even if you've been there for three months and you
start to feel like you know the guys and you
(16:33):
don't feel like you're in danger, that day you'll wake
up and you realize I can't get up and walk
out of this thing today. I can't get up and
walk out of here tomorrow or next month or next year.
Like I can't go anywhere but this little house. Like
I can't even step foot outside see the sunlight. I
can't look out a window because there are no windows.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
Like this is it. I can't do anything.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
I have no freedom, I have no choices, I have nothing,
no responsibility because I can't even go work if I
want to work, I can't go grab a book if
I want to grab a buck.
Speaker 6 (17:01):
I can't do anything.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
There's no books in there.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
There are some books, but they don't come by very often. Fortunately,
after a while I was able to get some books.
My father was able to bring me some, but you know,
they change the policies, and so for a while, they
took out all the legal books. You know, I thought,
at least if I got to sit here at twenty
four to seven, I'll be able to read legal books.
It's my constitutional right to be able to defend myself.
But they took out all the legal books, so I
(17:25):
couldn't even read that. And you know, I'm here, I'm
nineteen years old. I want to prove my innocence and
fight my case, and they don't even give you the
resources to do that.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
And I top of everything else, you're going to the
bathroom on top of each other. Where do you sleep?
And how do you change clothes? How does that even
work well?
Speaker 3 (17:39):
And where I was at it was a violent felon tank,
so it has its benefits and his down sides. Of course,
in many tanks it's just an open bay, so everybody's
out there together. And yeah, I mean, you just got
to get naked in front of people or whatever. You
poop in front of people, you pee in front of people, everything,
and so that is one existence in a violent fell
(18:00):
in tank. They put you in your own cell because
they don't want people sleeping in an environment where there
are people who are accused of murder, right, so you
don't want to be asleep, and then some guy snaps
out and comes over there and tries to murder you.
Like that's a liability, I suppose, So they give you
your own cell in the violent Fellon tank.
Speaker 6 (18:16):
That's why there's eight people. There's eight cells. So that
is the.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
One, I guess good thing about being in a violent
Pealent tank. The bad thing is that they're violent felons,
so it's a lot more dangerous when those doors are open.
Speaker 6 (18:30):
Those doors are open about eighteen hours a day.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
And you had reason to understand that the system was
not designed to work for justice and that as an
innocent man, you had a real chance of ending up
in prison for a long long time. So you devised
a workout program, right in order to be able to
defend yourself. And if you can't obviously see him on
(18:53):
the radio, but if you see Ryan now he is
he looks like a bodybuilder. So how did you do
that without any kind of access to gym equipment or
weights or anything else? And how did that work for you?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
You know, it comes down to education, really That's what
I love about fitness now, is I see a lot
of people work out. I've been around, you know, I
was in an incubator with guys for a decade and
I could see what they were doing, and a lot
of people work really hard, but they never educate themselves
on what to do for themselves physically, and so, you know,
that's why I developed this routine, is just understanding how.
Speaker 6 (19:28):
The body works. What's what are the best workouts that.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Are going to get you the largest gains in the
smallest amount of time, and then what do you have
to do nutritionally to supplement that? And so that's you know,
I just started figuring it out reading books and everything.
When you're in an environment like prison and you have
only so many outlets, I mean, really, the only thing.
Speaker 6 (19:47):
You possess are your mind in your body. Nothing else
is yours.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
You don't have any other really choices or anything. So
I educated myself daily and I worked out daily because
all I had was myself, and I worked on myself
every day, and I think that taught me a valuable lesson.
I think we can all do that no matter where
we're at in life. It's very important.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Well, you had a very strong motivation, and you were
really thinking ahead because of the fact that you knew
that if you ended up in a maxim security prison,
there were going to be times when you're going to
have to defend yourself or even inside this jail. So
you designed a program to make yourself strong for that eventuality.
And I know you talked to me about punching the walls, like,
(20:30):
how does that work?
Speaker 6 (20:32):
Right?
Speaker 3 (20:32):
So I did skip over the part about why why
I was working on so hard, and it is it's
my why was survival and that is a very strong
motivator and that's why I would work out and eventually
ended up punching walls. So the walls are concrete and
you know, they don't move. They're not soft by any means.
(20:55):
But I saw people fight, and I saw people break
their fists, and if you break your fist, you're not
gonna be able to fight. And you know, I did
everything I could to ensure my existence because it is
scary what you see with our legal system and the
fact that if you're arrested, your life is pretty much
over at that point, you have a very small chance
of winning, regardless of the facts. I mean, everything stacked
(21:16):
against you. So I didn't want to end up in
a fight to save my own life, to protect myself
and not be able to function. And so I realized,
you know, you had to have strong hands. You had
to be able to take a hit, and you have
to be able to give a hit and not break down.
And so I would start lightly hitting the walls, the
concrete walls, and I would hit them until you know,
(21:36):
my knuckles got bloody and everything, and then i'd stop
for that day, and while they're still trying to heal,
I would continue hitting the walls. And I ended up
building a very very strong fist that I feel I
could probably last through anything. And the only reason I
did that is because I didn't want to be victimized
while I was in prison for a crime I didn't commit.
Speaker 6 (21:57):
And that's it, really, I.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Mean, it's it's an odd feeling knowing that your whole
being is built around not becoming a victim. But that's
what it was, man, that's survival in prison. You gotta
do what you gotta do to protect yourself and any
and every way that you can find.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
So the trial comes Ryan, and you've been caged for
eighteen months in the most extreme circumstances. You come to
trial and then you're forced to watch your co defendant
get up there, Charles Erickson, and tell a story that
has no relationship to reality or the truth, and ultimately
(22:52):
you're convicted. I can't even fathom what that moment must
have been like. But it's not too painful to go
back there.
Speaker 6 (23:02):
That is, without it out in my thirty three years
of life. The worst week.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Of my entire life kind of jels horrible. Prison's bad,
but when you're in trial, there's nothing worse. You're basically
naked in front of the world. Right, I had no secrets,
I have no Everything that I am is out in
front of people. And then they take that and they
add lies on top of it, and they're accusing you
(23:27):
of something that you didn't do that you have no
knowledge of.
Speaker 6 (23:31):
And you know, every media source that could have been
there was there.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
And the courtroom is completely full, and these people are
looking at you like you're some kind of animal, right,
and you're trying to be respectful of the court. You're
just trying to sit there and be quiet. And I
remember I would turn around and, you know, wave to
my mom during a recess you know, and I would
smile because I saw my mom, like, hey, how you doing, Mom,
Like I'm glad you're doing okay, and smile because I'm
(23:56):
doing okay.
Speaker 6 (23:57):
So let's, you know, get through this. And then me
would go out and say, look at this cocky piece
of shit.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
You know, he's just like you don't care about the
Cordies and they're like smiling and way being at his
fans and stuff. It's like, you don't have fans. There's
no such thing as a fan. You are being accused
of a crime you didn't commit. You're fighting for your life,
and you're saying hi to your family. And then even
then the media takes liberty with that, and it's it's
insane and it is horrific to deal with that component
(24:26):
of it. But it's even worse knowing that the police
know you're innocent, the prosecutor knows you're innocent, the judge
knows you're innocent, and yet they're allowing this tobacle to
go on and allowing these people to get on the
stand and tell what they know are lies.
Speaker 6 (24:41):
And I get why some of these people lied.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
It's self preservation, because you know, they get a person
out of prison, and they say, you know, you know,
it'd be nice if you said these things, it would
be really helpful. What's the implication is if you don't
say these things, then we're going.
Speaker 6 (24:57):
To help you get back into prison.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Right, And so they're doing for their own existence. But
there's no reason the police of the prosecutor should be
doing these things to people, right, They're they're manipulating and
taking advantage of these people and uh, and they're doing
it to the end to take another human being's life.
And so it's you lose all faith in humanity, you
lose all hope and humanity. And I mean that was
(25:20):
the turning point for me. I fundamentally hated people outside
of my family. I pretty much just hated human existence
to human race for a good three.
Speaker 6 (25:30):
Or four years.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
And I can understand that. I mean, like you said,
the people that are supposed to be paid to help you,
or the people are supposed to be there to help
the victim and the family, the victim and society and
all of them letting down everyone for their own selfish.
Speaker 6 (25:43):
Are ones who are perpetuating this offense. And that's it is.
You will never I still don't understand it.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
You know, people will look at my case and they're like,
we didn't realize this can happen. Looking at you, realize
that this could happen to us. And I think so
many people want to compartmentalize that, right. They want to say, oh,
this is happening, but that will never happen to me,
that will never happen to my family or whatever. But
the reality is that it doesn't matter what you look like,
where you come from, how you act, this could happen
(26:11):
to you. This is a subject. This is an issue
that does affect us, all right. I mean it affects
us economically, it affects our society, it affects everything. And
it is happening disproportionately to young black men, poor people,
even if you're poor and white, whatever it might be.
The fact is, though, that this is happening more to
(26:32):
people who don't look like me. And it's sad that
for a lot of our society to stand up and say, hey,
this is wrong, it has to be a young white
kid because the reality is this is happening to so
many people that are going unnoticed, and I think that
needs to be discussed and we need to talk about that.
There are a lot of issues with raising this country obviously,
and so hopefully that will change. Hopefully, you know, wonderful
(26:55):
commissioners will stop in general, but will acknowledge the fact that, hey,
I mean, this has happening all over the place, but
primarily to these.
Speaker 6 (27:02):
Young black men, and.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
That really has to stop, and it's really tearing apart communities.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
Yeah, and then there's all the effects are terrible. It's
an issue, as you said, that affects everybody in so
many different ways. And again you're right, it's a sensitive topic.
But yeah, it's a sad commentary on our society. But
it's a fact, and it's one of the reasons why
I think it's so important that you've been out there
doing what you've been doing to spread the word. So
(27:29):
you were sentenced to what I was.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Sentenced to forty years. Yeah, so in trial you get
to see that it's not going well. You have a
person sitting there saying something that isn't true, being egged
on and led by the prosecution, and so then you
get convicted. And before I was sentenced, you have a
sentencing hearing and you.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
Have the opportunity to speak. The first time I had
the opportunity to speak.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
This whole entire time from March tenth, two thousand and
four to two years later, I never done anything. I
was arrested, I never said anything that implicated me or anything.
All the facts proved my innocence. I never had the
opportunity to speak to the public or anything. So I'm
basically just being like I jumped in the stream or
I got pushed in the stream, basically, and then have
(28:16):
been going down current this whole time. So two years later,
I have the first opportunity to actually speak publicly, right,
and I get to speak to the judge at the
sentencing hearing after I've already been convicted, and I'm telling her,
I hope you can see the facts. I mean, the
facts are blatantly clear. Please look at those, Please be unbiased.
This is the same judge that gave me a twenty
(28:36):
million dollar bail, and you know, give me a new
trial at the very least, because I will prove my innocence.
Speaker 6 (28:43):
You'll see that I'm innocent or whatever.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
The whole time I'm talking, she didn't even look at me,
didn't pay anytention, just like I wasn't even there. I'm like,
this is my whole entire life, and I have one
opportunity to speak and to be heard by this court.
You know, I've respected the court and that you respect
me the same. The one opportunity I had, she wouldn't
even look at me. She didn't listen to a word
I'm saying, and then she just did what she did
(29:06):
forty years see you later. And it was just one
of the most disgusting things that I've experienced in my
whole entire life, and is by this judge who were
supposed to, you know, hold in high respect and it's
supposed to be a pillar of our community.
Speaker 6 (29:21):
It's a horrible person. It's a horrible person who.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Has no motivation to do what's right for the society
that she lives in.
Speaker 6 (29:30):
And it's disgusting.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
And even now, you know she she's still you know,
she lives in like a million dollar house or something,
and she's enjoying a great life and uh, and she's
just this person who has destroyed lives. And there are
many great judges, don't get me wrong, but the fact
that that person can sit up there and be esteemed
or they're not even doing their job, it is ah,
(29:54):
it's sickening.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
I'm u. The idea that she would be shuffling papers
or doing whatever she felt was more important than forty
years of your life at that particular time after everything
you've been through is just yeah, that's hard to process.
It just takes a person who's like just so completely
(30:19):
fucking bankrupt, right, so morally devoid of anything, and I
don't get it. Wow, So you end up going to
maximum security prison and you could put in a selling
it a sell mat.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Right, So it's difficult not to go on and on
because there are so many It's ten years of your life, right,
So my first selling when I go into prison, you know,
I mean prison at a young age. I'm twenty one.
I'm thinking, you know this is I'm going straight into hell.
Like I'm basically just jumping feet first into hell. I
(30:54):
got no no ifans or butts about it, no choice,
and so I'm scared. There's no doubt about it. I'm
very afraid at this point.
Speaker 6 (31:03):
And I go into the room and he's not in there.
Everybody's out at rec or whatever. And then an.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Hour later, this huge guy comes in and he's completely
covered in tattoos. But it's really interesting how the tattoos
are laid out, like half of his body are demonic
tattoos and the other half are angelic tattoos.
Speaker 6 (31:24):
And I'm like, what the hell is going on here? Right?
And so.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
He gets to talk and I realize his face is
completely messed up and the demonic side had been shot
with a shotgun and basically distorted his face and the
upper part of his body's shoulder and whatnot. And so
later on we get to talking and he's like, basically,
you know, he was robbing a dope house and he
got shot on the demonic side because that was like God.
Speaker 6 (31:50):
Telling him that he should be good or whatever.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Well, it turns out this guy is essentially bipolar, and
he definitely wasn't good at any point, and he was
probably the most frightening individual I came across in prison,
and especially as a first selly. But it's like, there
were these imaginary lines in the cell and imagine like.
Speaker 6 (32:09):
You're in this little eight by eight foot box.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Imagine being in your bathroom with somebody who's twice your
size and insane, like literally insane.
Speaker 6 (32:18):
Who's known to be violent, known to.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Have been arrested multiple times and spend a lot of
time in the hole, and he draws these imaginary line
So if you put your toe over this line that
you don't even know exist, then a fight would ensue.
And if a fight ensues, there's nowhere to go. You
can't run, you can't beat them, you can't call for
help because they're in another room. So basically, I'm tiptoeing
(32:42):
around for the first three months of my time in prison,
and it's just like a ticking time mom. I know
that if I'm there long enough, this guy will kill me.
And that's how I had to live for the first
three or four months of my prison experience. And it
was very bad, and we got into it quite a
(33:03):
few times, and you know, and you're just trying to
be as quiet and peaceful as you can, but nothing
you do is right. So, yeah, I wish I could
bring you into the mental anguish that exists, because although
I was able to avoid being stabbed or hit by
this individual, the mental anguish that you experienced from knowing
(33:23):
that that could happen at any second for any reason,
is it'll aid you like two years in one month.
Speaker 6 (33:30):
It's insane, it's horrible.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
Did you have any dialogue with him? Did you have
any light moments at all? Was there, you know, was
there any kind of camaraderie with this?
Speaker 6 (33:38):
There was? Yeah, man, And that's so weird about it.
Like you you're around these people.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
And some of them are just horrible, horrible human beings,
but you know, it's life and you get to know
them or whatever. And so I didn't have a TV
yet or I might have just gotten I can't remember,
and the Notebook came on and uh. And so we're
watching the Notebook at the same time. And the Notebook
comes to a conclusion and we're not really talking during
it or anything like that.
Speaker 6 (34:05):
It ends, and I'm like, I'm basically about to cry,
you know, I'm like trying to hold back tears. I'm like,
oh my.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
God, I'm in this cell with this maniac and the
freaking great movie has got me, you know. It's like,
you know, I miss society and females and everything. Of course,
and then I can't talk. And then I realized this
guy is sniffling up there. He's up there crying, and.
Speaker 7 (34:27):
I'm like, what's up in and and he's like, man,
that was a good movie, you know, and uh, and
He's like I'm crying or whatever, and I'm like, I'm
bout to to and so that was just like this weird,
very odd experience, and we like we were laughing about
it or whatever, and we're surprised that impacted us both.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
But I mean it was very up and down. It
was like that, you know. I mean, that was one
good moment. There are a million bad moments. And then
when I left, I went over to the.
Speaker 6 (34:51):
Yard, the guy gave me a hug. He's like, oh man,
I'm gonna miss you. I'm not gonna miss you, dude.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
But all right, you know, it's just it's that's a
lot of people in there.
Speaker 6 (35:01):
There are some really good people.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
I still talk to some people in prison, but there
are some people that you'll just never understand that are insane.
Speaker 6 (35:07):
They'll hug you one minute and stab you the next.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
So it's just you gotta be on your p's and
q's per se.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
So you were in there for nine and a half years.
You had many many appeals denied. How many appeals did
you have?
Speaker 3 (35:31):
I mean at least six or seven primary appeals, and
then you know.
Speaker 6 (35:36):
They they go up through the court, so you have like.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
The initial court filing and then you have the appellate court,
and then it goes to the Supreme Court, which you
never hears it, and so it's just this like basic
routine that you get in. You know, you file appeal
and then it waited six months, and then they'll hear it,
and then they wait another six months, and then they
deny it, and then it wait another six months and
it goes to another court and they'll hear it, and
then they wait another six months. So it's like every
appeal you file, you know, I was like, oh, it'll
(36:02):
be another year, year and a half of my life
because they're not going to listen to this. These courts
that they're going to, you know which ones will will
be biased and you know which ones won't. So an
appeal was filed and you automatically know what the next
year and a half of my life is not going
to happen.
Speaker 6 (36:17):
So I'm just gonna sit back and hope to get
out of that.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Court and back into one that actually cares about justice.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
At some point, the only other witness against you besides
your co defendant who falsely confessed and then falsely implicated
you and told the story that didn't make any sense
and kept changing it and was obviously anything but incredible
witness against you. The only other witness against you was
a convicted child molester, right, who was an incentivized witness.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Oh yeah, this individual, he was a custodian. He was
at the crime scene when it happened, and he went
outside when the two individuals were out by this car,
who may or may not have committed the crime. In
the police phone call, the police were called minutes later,
he says, I don't know what the people looked like.
Speaker 6 (37:01):
I couldn't even tell you what they were wearing.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
I didn't get that good of a look, right, And
so he gives the phone to a female and she
could tell the police what the guy's actually looked like
and their build and everything, And so we have on
the record this guy is saying to the police, I
have no idea what these guys look like. I can't
tell you what color the hair is anything. And then
he gets out of jail child molestation. The prosecution obviously
(37:23):
calls him in and ultimately he says.
Speaker 6 (37:26):
Yep, that's the guy that I saw.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
So you have the you know, So that's that story
in a nutshell.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
So in case there wasn't enough, that's troubling everybody about
this case already, the fact that they would actually release
a convicted child molester in exchange for perjured testimony against you.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Well, I think his time was up, so I think
more of what happened there is got he was gonna
get out, and they basically insinuated if you don't help us,
then you're gonna go back in. So it's actually that
would be the assumption, right that they helped get him out,
But ultimately what they were doing is we're just.
Speaker 6 (38:00):
Not gonna help put you back in if you help.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Us, right, But if you don't help us, then we're
gonna make sure that you violate your probation and you
spend another two or three years in prison as a
child molester, which is very very rough to me. There
is nothing worse than a jailhouse snitch. I mean that is,
if you are a prosecutor and you use a jailhouse snitch,
you should go straight to hell because jailhouse snitches have
zero credibility. They are always lying there, always incentivized. It
(38:25):
is literally the most discussing thing that I've ever seen,
and you know, it impacts people's lives. I was in
maximum security prison in jail for a decade, ten years
of my life. My case really turned in two thousand
and nine when Kathleen Zelner got involved. Here's one of
the greatest attorneys in our nation. She has more exonerations
(38:46):
than any other individual attorney in the whole entire country.
And she was willing to take my case pro bono
at that and that was just I mean, that was
the biggest ray of hope that I had had at
that point. And I'm so great that she's in my life,
not only, you know, on the legal side, but just
as as a friend and a confidant.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
But your biggest advocate through all those years was your father,
who went to extraordinary lengths to fight for you, to
make sure that you knew that he had your back,
and to ultimately prevail, or you wouldn't be sitting here now.
But there was another person who played an important role
in this right and she was someone who had written
to you as so many other people had. But but
(39:29):
they took on a whole new life.
Speaker 6 (39:30):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Micah my girlfriend, current girlfriend. Still we've been together, I
think over five years at this point. I've been out
less than four. You know, I've been very fortunate, like
I said, I, you know, without my family, I wouldn't
have survived. I would have been crazy, I wouldn't have
given up, but I would have lost a lot of hope.
Speaker 6 (39:47):
So without them, I wouldn't be here.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
And then Micah came along somehow we just ended up
writing and talking more and she became a big part
of my life and really kind of initiated this whole
social media movement which helped my case get so much attention,
which was really incredible. So, you know, it is amazing
what has happened with her in the social media movement.
We have a friend from Facebook, Mike, who was just
(40:11):
very helpful. I mean he helped us like design the
Facebook page and get it up there. And another guy, Richard,
and so with those three they ran the social media thing.
And when our page got up to one hundred thousand
people on Facebook and that was big. Then there was
no Instagram really and that really helped push the case
forward and really helped push what.
Speaker 6 (40:30):
My father was doing out there and what my mother
was doing.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
And like I said earlier, whenever my trial happened, I
lost hope in humanity.
Speaker 6 (40:37):
I hated people.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
I just I couldn't stand I couldn't understand them, and
that's what was so frustrating about it. I coudn't understand
how people could do these things to people. I still don't,
But then so many beautiful people have been in my life,
like my family and Mike and Richard and Mike and
so many other incredible individuals from forty eight hours in
Dayline and people who wrote and so well, so many
(41:01):
great people have shown me that the goodness in humanity
can overcome the negativity, right, And there's too many people
the name of course I found. No I'm leaving people
out it, but it's just like thank you to them,
thank you to everyone who supported me and supported other
people in my situation, because without that support we would
lose hope. And it's really given me the opportunity actually
(41:23):
live my life now, right, because if I still had
that mentality and I never saw the good side of people,
then what would I be doing with my life now.
I wouldn't want to help other people. I wouldn't I
don't think i'd be happy in society. I wouldn't be
happy in my life. So really they help save my
life by giving me my life back, but they also
help save my life a second time by showing me,
(41:45):
you know, the real passion and real beauty of the
human race.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
I get people asking me frequently what can I do
to help? And aside from donating to Innocence Project and
other organizations. It's interesting to hear you talk about it
because so many people wrote to you and what that meant.
What would you say to someone who's listening now in
wherever they are.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Well, that's a great question, and the reality is there's
a lot you can do. It might not be as
much as you want because you just want to reach
in there and pull those people out like they're obviously innocent,
and you want to do everything you can, and so
you just got to you got to be patient. You've
got to find the right ways. I mean, the number
one thing I would say is to be active. Right, So,
if you find a case that you believe in, number one,
(42:31):
rite that person right their family and let them know
you support them. I mean that that right there opens
up a huge door and helps so much.
Speaker 6 (42:38):
But then if you.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Initiate that contact, they might have other opportunities for you
to help, like riding the governor or putting together some
kind of thing that would bring other people in and
make them aware of it. So to me, it is
it is being active and creating awareness.
Speaker 6 (42:54):
The best thing you can do.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Right a family member, right the person that you support,
and then get involved and start spreading awareness to your
friends and family. Tell them about the case, have them
read the case, and start talking to your local politicians.
Speaker 6 (43:09):
Write them letters, make phone calls.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
I mean even this day, every week or two weeks,
I'm calling some governor. I never get a hold of
the governor himself, but I am letting them know how
I feel about a case. And I am writing them,
and I'm sending them tweets, and I'm writing them emails,
Like any way we can let them know, let the
people in charge of these systems know that we are
(43:33):
paying attention and that we demand accountability. I think that
is what is going to help make change right. And
so what I hear a lot is people say like,
I don't feel like me as a person can do
enough to bring about change. But that's how change is
actually done right. It's not done by one person. It's
done by groups of individuals, done by all of us
(43:54):
together doing our own little part. Like I wish I
could do more, I'm just one little guy. But you know,
I do my little part, and I ask other people
to do their little parts. And if we keep doing
that individually, then I think we're gonna we're gonna see
a big change.
Speaker 4 (44:07):
You know, we talked about the worst moment of your
life and the worst week of your life. What about
the best moment of your life?
Speaker 3 (44:14):
You know, I think as a human being that you
focus on the negative so much that I don't know
what the best of the I mean, the thing about
living in prison for so long is that you kind of,
I don't know, you see the world a different way,
and you aren't able to have those high moments of happiness.
(44:37):
I haven't really been able to find that in my
life yet, which is someone unfortunately I've been I've been
able to do some incredible things. I mean, I've been
to a lot of different countries and I've traveled the
world since i've been out.
Speaker 6 (44:49):
I've been able to go to the Super Bowl.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
I've been able to with my father, which is really amazing,
and spend that weekend with them there. And you know,
I spend as much time as I can with my
family doing whatever we can.
Speaker 6 (45:00):
There's dinner or traveling.
Speaker 3 (45:01):
I have my own TV show, I wrote my own book,
which which was, you know, probably my greatest accomplishment personally.
And throughout all these things, I've never had like this,
this moment of intense joy, and and I didn't used
to be that way, you know, when I was younger,
when I was in high school, and you know, I mean,
I I just love life so much, like every day
(45:22):
I had intense joy. And while I do drive some
joy out of these things, of course, it's just I can't.
I can't get to that next level where I used
to be. And I think that's kind of what prison
does to people, you know. I mean, some people may
be able to get out and resume a normal life.
I think a lot of people, you know, put on
a strong front after what's happened to them, and I
(45:43):
certainly do. But the reality is that, you know, it
affects you, and it impacts you. And that's one of
the things that impacts me most. And the reality is
like I walk around with this rain cloud over my head,
I feel like a lot of times, and I'm afraid
of the lightning, you know, And so if it's raining
and thundering outside and there's lightning every I'm not going
to go out there because I don't want to get
hit by it, right, But the way the legal system
(46:04):
affects a human being in these situations, and you see
how humans act and everything, you know, this can happen
to you or somebody you love.
Speaker 6 (46:10):
It's like they could come right now and kick in
the door and arrest you. They could do it to me,
They could do it to anybody.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
And so I walk around with this this cloud over
my head and you know, I could get hit by
that lightning at any moment, and there's nothing I can do.
I can't there is no indoors, right, I could be
in another country.
Speaker 6 (46:27):
It could happen, So it is. It is frightening.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
So yeah, I mean your happy moment, it's hard to describe.
I I love life and I enjoy life, but for me,
my happiest moments are giving back because it makes me
feel like I'm protecting myself in a way as well,
and it gets rid of that cloud a bit because
hopefully it's turning this thing around that impacts us all.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
What about the moment of exoneration.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
Yeah, I wish I could say that was amazing, you know,
and that you know, you really expect it would be
in everything.
Speaker 6 (46:59):
But that was hell for me. I didn't know what
was going on. I didn't know if I was actually
gonna be let out.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
A lot of times they will take you back to
the county jail and then just read you your rights
and recharge you and then put you in the count
of jail for another year and a half. I didn't
know any of that what was going to happen until
I watched my parents walk through the sally Port door.
And I'm still sitting in the back of a van
in a cage with shackles on and an orange jumpsuit, and.
Speaker 6 (47:26):
That's when I realized it was over.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
So, I mean, it felt good, but I still like,
I don't know if these people are gonna come kick
my door. On the next day, I was literally looking
out my windows every time I thought I heard something
for the next six months. And so that's that's the
way these things impact people. And you know, I think, now,
obviously there's enough facts to protect me, and I think
I am safe, but I know that just happens to
(47:48):
other people.
Speaker 6 (47:49):
So it's yeah, man, it's good that.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Some people can enjoy it, But I've looked so much
into our legal system and seen what's happened to so
many other people like Brian Ferguson.
Speaker 6 (47:59):
You know, he was exonerating. They wanted to retry him
and everything.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
And basically forced him into taking an alpha plea.
Speaker 6 (48:06):
It's situations like that that really don't allow you.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
To necessarily live your life to the fullest. And I
think as time goes on, you get better. But here
we are four years and I still have all these considerations.
Speaker 4 (48:16):
So let's talk about your book, all right, So tell
us about the book and then any other final thoughts
that you have.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
Yeah, so my book Stronger, Faster, Smarter. I wrote it
in my last five months in prison. It is one
of my greatest achievements. I just wanted to see if
I could write a book, and I saw so many
people working out really hard, but they weren't getting where
they wanted. They weren't accomplishing their goals, and I realized
that they're not educating themselves on what to do in
the fitness world. So I came up with this plan
(48:46):
of doing like basically.
Speaker 6 (48:47):
Six main moves.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
You eat it right, eat a certain way, and then
educate yourself and you'll be able to accomplish whatever fitness
goals you want, That's what the book is kind of about.
But I tied it in with my experience in prison
and how I I didn't know that ten years ago.
You know, I didn't know how to get in shape.
I had to figure it out to survive. And if
I could do it in that environment, then certainly everyone
(49:08):
can wherever they're.
Speaker 6 (49:09):
At in the life. And so that's what it's about.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
Man. It's a hopeful book that has some good information.
I think that can help people achieve their goals.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
Get the book great, read, stronger, faster, or smarter. Get stronger, faster,
and smarter than Ryan Ferguson way. He was able to
do it in prison, so I guess the rest of
us have no excuse. And Ryan, any final thoughts that
you want to share, you.
Speaker 6 (49:30):
Know, my final thoughts are just be aware. As Jason
was saying earlier, You know, when you look at.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
These cases, always question what you're reading, Always question what
you're watching. The best thing we can do is educate ourselves, right.
Don't take anyone's word as the truth. Don't take it
as gospel. Whether it's your police or prosecutors, your local newspaper, whatever,
look into it.
Speaker 6 (49:53):
Yourself.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
These are really interesting cases. They're very important and they
impact us all and I think that each one of
us can do a lot to change the way our
legal system operates. And it is for ourselves, it's for
our youth, it's for everyone.
Speaker 6 (50:07):
So yeah, it's it's it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
I think the more you loo get into it, the
more you're going to be intrigued, and the more you're
gonna want to want to get involved.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
You've been listening to a very special episode of Wrongful
Conviction with a very special person, my friend Ryan Ferguson. Ryan,
thank you for coming and sharing your thoughts and wisdom,
and once again the book is stronger, faster, smarter.
Speaker 6 (50:33):
Great.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
Thanks Jason Man. Thanks for all that you do. Seriously,
like you lead by example and I appreciate that. What
I just said is, you know, go out there and
do what you can.
Speaker 6 (50:42):
That's what you've been doing. And uh and there's a.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
Lot you could do that you know, you could not
care about any of this, and it's amazing to see
what you do.
Speaker 6 (50:48):
Man. You give me a lot of hope. So thanks
for having me. It was an honor and uh, yeah.
Speaker 4 (50:54):
Right it on. Don't forget to give us a fantastic review.
Wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm
a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really
hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause
and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence
Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved.
(51:17):
I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three
time OSCAR nominatede composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at
Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a
production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal
(51:37):
Company Number one
I fell into the hands of a corrupt detective.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I was naive enough to believe that I would be
able to just present all of my proof of actual innocence,
that they would investigate adequately, and so that I wouldn't
be going to prison because I was a good person.
I hadn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
In the back of your mind, you say, well, when
we go to a hearing or we go to court,
the truth will come out. The prosecution from day one
knew I was innocent and let forced testimony go uncorrected
from the lower courts all the way up to the
United States Supreme Court.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
You have someone with a badge with ultimate and really,
in that moment, unchecked authority.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Don't presume that people are guilty when you see them
on TV, because it may just be a dirty da
that is trying to rise upward.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with
Jason Flamm. Today's guest is a friend of mine. He's
(01:20):
a remarkable human and an inspiration to everybody who knows him.
And I will embarrass you, but without further ado, let
me introduce you Ryan Ferguson. At just nineteen years old,
Ryan Ferguson was wrongly convicted of murder. He served nearly
a decade in prison.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
Ferguson was convicted for the brutal murder of beloved journalist
ken Heidholt in two thousand and one. The crime scene
outside the newspaper where he worked littered with physical evidence
bloody footprints, fingerprints, and even hair, but none of it
matched Ryan. Again and again, he denied knowing anything about
the murder. Charles Erickson, a childhood friend of Ryan's, came
(01:57):
forward two years after the murder, claiming he had dreamlike
visions that he and Ryan committed the crime together. When
police led Ericson to believe Ferguson would testify against him,
Erickson said he felt pressure to confess to the murder,
thinking he'd otherwise face the death. Comedy and a second witness,
janitor Jerry Trump, identified Ferguson as one of two men
(02:18):
he saw in the parking lot immediately after the murder.
In the years after that two thousand and five conviction,
both of those crucial prosecution witnesses recant in their testimony.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
On his last appeal attempt, Ryan's conviction was overturned.
Speaker 5 (02:33):
After a year and a half more behind Barns. Finally,
and at Pellet Court overturned that ruling, finding quote newly
discovered evidence clearly and convincingly establishes that he's actually innocent.
And then the Missouri Attorney General's office announced it will
not retry or pursue further action against Ryan Ferguson at
this time, meaning Ryan Ferguson was a free man.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 6 (03:00):
Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be on
your podcast. I remember when you when you launched it
the launch party.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Man, just being there was amazing, And I want to
say before we start, just thank you so much for
what you do for everyone, including myself. You know, you
were part of my case before I got out, and uh,
and that gave me a lot of hope and I
appreciate that. And then you've been very supportive to myself
and everyone that I know in the innocence community since
I've been out, and it's just amazing to see what
(03:25):
you do for everyone. So thank you first and foremost,
and let's get this thing started.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Oh well, I don't know, I gotta take a breath
after that, but thank you for saying so. I uh,
you know, I forget these things because you know, there's
just so much to do every day. Because this is
such a an epidemic in this country. You couldn't have
seen this coming a million miles away. We'll talk about that, right.
So you're you're from Missouri, right.
Speaker 6 (03:51):
Yep, from Missouri. I was born born in Australia, raised
in Missouri.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
So you grew up in Missouri. And what was that like?
I mean, you had you had a happy childhood.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
I had a great childhood. Grew up in Columbia, is
right in the middle of Missouri. University of Missouri, college town,
great town, a lot of culture, education, a lot to do,
and so for me, it was a town of opportunity.
I had great education. My parents, they took me all
over the world. They traveled with me constantly, and I
(04:19):
got to learn a lot about people from being in
that town and from traveling and everything else.
Speaker 6 (04:22):
So my childhood couldn't have been any better.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
A close family, very close family.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
We were all together my whole life, and you know,
it was it was like the picture book.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
Family, right, you know, mom, dad's sister.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
We had a little dog, and you know, just a
little middle class existence and everyone was happy.
Speaker 6 (04:41):
Everything Everything was going good.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
And I played sports in high school and had a
lot of friends and everything, and then went to college,
and at that point everything was still very normal.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Everything was very normal until everything went completely haywire. And
you hadn't had any experience with police or arrests or
authority in any way to this point.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Right, Well, I had never been accused of any crimes,
for sure when I was in high school. You know,
it's a college town, so of course there's going to
be police that show up at parties. People get mips
and things of that nature. No one that I knew
had ever been arrested for anything that would have put
them in jail. I had never met anyone that had
spent the night in jail. You know, some kids got
(05:25):
in trouble for small things like like in most towns,
but the fact of being arrested for a real crime
was it didn't even exist in my world.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
I was so moved and angry and just upset in general.
After seeing the forty eight hours piece, which was the
first exposure I ever had to your case. Some of
the things that stuck out for me about that piece
were the idea that this was a cold case. Right
It was the murder of a sports reporter and he
(05:56):
had been beaten to death outside of his car.
Speaker 6 (05:58):
I guess right, yeah, outside of his work.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
And two and a half years later, no leads, nothing
going on, right, One of the local TV stations ran
one of those things that they run time to time
where they had like a composite sketch. Right, did you
even know about this murder when it happened? Was it
big news in the area.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yeah, it's a small town. There's about one hundred thousand people.
I do recall hearing about it. You know, anything that
happens in that town, like a murder, you hear about
it was its big news because they don't happen that often.
That was the extent of my knowledge on you know,
I mean young in high school and it's like, whoa,
somebody was murdered on howe any night.
Speaker 6 (06:39):
That's kind of creepy.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
So let's go back to that. Because the sports reporter,
ken Heidholt was murdered in a very brutal manner. He
was beaten to death with a tire iron or something
like that. I don't you know if they even know
to this day, but it was a heavy metal object
of some sort and when that Crimesoppers piece ran, Charles
Rickson was affected by it in some way. Right. He
(07:02):
saw this on TV. He was with his friends and
he had some sort of a vision or something came
over him which made him say to his friends, Hey,
you know, I mean I kind of look like that guy.
I wonder if it could have been, if I could
have been involved in so or some crazy thing like that.
And then one of the friends called the cops.
Speaker 6 (07:22):
Right.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
And this is an interesting thing about your case, Ryan,
because we've covered false confessions on this show, and false
confessions are so terribly troubling. In your case, you were
the victim of false confession, but you didn't confess. That's
what's crazy about this, Right, You were implicated because somebody
else who also didn't commit the crime, actually thought that
(07:44):
maybe he did for some reason. And the brain is
a strange things to memory. Who knows what came over him, right.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
And one of the quotes that always stuck out to
me is something that Charles ericson my co defendant, the
person who had these images, who ultimately testified against me,
something that he said, and this is verbatim. He says,
if I did it, Ryan must have been with me.
And based on that, I mean, that is what starts
this whole thing. Based on that, I lost ten years
(08:13):
of my life. I was put into prison for a
crime I had nothing to do with.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Was there any physical evidence of any kind connecting to
this case.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
There was no physical evidence connecting me or Charles Erickson.
But the important fact is there is a lot.
Speaker 6 (08:26):
Of physical evidence there.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
You know, there's a bloody footprint, there's a hair in
the victim's hand, there's a paper with a palm print.
Speaker 6 (08:35):
There are things.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
That, even to this day, could be tested to determine
guilt of another individual. And the police have chosen not
to look into those things. And here's what's really really
frustrating is when I got out, the public was enraged.
They were frustrated with what the police had done, and
they said, we want to know what really happened in
this case, because clearly it wasn't Ryan, it wasn't Ericson,
(08:58):
the kid who is still to this day in prison.
And so the police said, we're gonna we're gonna open
this case, We're going to look back into it, We're
going to see what happened here. Well, three months later,
you know, in a very low key way. They're just
kind of like, well, you know, we got somebody in
prison for it right now, so we're not gonna we're
not gonna investigate it.
Speaker 6 (09:15):
That's not gonna happen.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Right, So the net effect if you're a resident of
Columbia or Missouri or the United States, because we don't
know where this guy is. This guy who is a dangerous,
violent killer is out there walking amongst us. I mean,
it is an outrage that they have this evidence and
they won't test it. It even for me, like, my head's going,
(09:36):
what first of all, and let's talk about this right
jail because this is something that people don't focus on enough.
You were in jail for a long time awaiting trial.
They set bail at twenty million dollars.
Speaker 6 (09:48):
Right, twenty million dollars. Yeah, it was it was a
jo you know. That is a in my mind, that's
how publicity's the reality.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
The way our legal system works is if you're arrested
for a very serious crime, like a murder, they can
choose not to give you a bail, and they do
that often, or they can give you a million dollar
bail whatever. Right bail is meant so that you should
have the opportunity to raise those funds and get out
so you can fight your case because you have not
been proven guilty. At that point, I had no bail
(10:16):
for eight months. I went into a bail hearing and
the judge out of nowhere says twenty million dollars. And
so that is a different thing than saying no bail.
That is a political statement. That is her saying that
I endorse this case as a judge, and they're supposed
to be independent. I endorse this case. I'm with the prosecutor,
and we're going to take this kid and put him
(10:38):
in prison for the rest of his life. And that
is not something a judge should do. Judge Ellen Roper
made a huge mistake there. I think she should be
health accountable for that. And that is the politics we
see with our criminal legal system in these people's lives,
you know, I mean, this is my life and that
judge is playing a game with it. And that is
incredibly scary to see, especially at the age of nineteen
(10:59):
or twenty, and you're just like, how is this our
legal system? How is this innocent until proven guilty?
Speaker 6 (11:04):
Because it's not.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
So Yeah, and I hadn't even thought about that, because
to my knowledge, your bail was the highest bail in
the history of the state of Missouri.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Oh, I think it's the highest in the history of
the country in terms of the charge. Right, you have
a charge of first agree murder, second degree robbery. There's
no evidence I had never been arrested or convicted of
any crime, and I'm getting a twenty million dollar bail.
Here's a guy sitting next to me in the same pod,
in the same county with a first agree murder charge
(11:35):
and he is a repeat offender. In his bail for
pretty much the same charge was five hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Wow. So yeah, and I hadn't even thought about it.
But you're absolutely right. In fact, by setting that bail
of twenty million and that going out in the press
as it does, basically it's poisoning the jury pool because
it's saying, hey, you know what, we can say that
or this guy to be extremely dangerous, so dangerous that
(12:04):
we're going to set the bail so high that even
if its family's rich, and your family wasn't poor, but
they weren't rich, So even if the family is one
of the wealthiest families around, they're still not gonna be
able to post it. So it's a wink wink, like
we're going to keep this guy around because we know
he's guilty. And that's absolutely really it's.
Speaker 6 (12:27):
Makes me sick.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Okay, so you go to trial, you by now had
been in jail for how long?
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Yeah, I've been in jail for about eighteen months at
that point a year and a half. Trial was actually
set and I don't think this is a coincidence. On
my twenty first birthday, it was Monday through Friday, and
my birthday for the twenty first birthday was Wednesday, So
I'll never never forget that. And by the way, I
want to mention county jail, and I think this is
overlooked a lot.
Speaker 6 (12:54):
I think it's really interesting for people to hear.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
But when you're innocent until proven guilty and you're in
the county jail, it is far worse than being in prison.
Most guys I know, they're happy to go to prison
after being in the country jet. It is a very,
very poor existence. My first year in the county jail,
I went outside, literally outside two times. And that is
innocent until proven because I don't understand how that can be.
(13:18):
And I went outside every time that I could, but
you're literally sleep deprived. The lights never go off, you
never go outside, you have no human contact with anyone
outside of prison. So it's a horrible existence. But for
those eighteen months before you go to trial, they're basically
sucking the life out of you. And then what you're
seeing in trial is a shell of a human being.
(13:40):
So when you watch forty eight Hours or Dayline or
any other show and you see these people sitting there
on trial, I mean, they probably look emaciated, they probably
look strange, they probably act weird, and that's because they've
been in this horrific environment for so long that I mean,
they have no emotions left, they've spent them all, and
they haven't been eating right, they have no nutrition. So
(14:03):
just take that into consideration when you're looking at somebody
who's going through this situation. You know, you're sitting in
a courtroom full of these people who are staring at you.
You're in a fish bowl and you're the only fish,
and people are going to do like this satanic fish
or something. And not to mention in the way you
were treated the last eighteen months.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
No, I'm glad you brought that up, Ryan, and when
you described that to me, and it's not like you're
comparing jail to a minimum security prison. You were in
a maximum security prison, right, And jails are chaotic, I mean,
among other things. And this is something that's really so
horrible to think about. But they're never cleaned, right, They're
always occupied and they're never cleaned. So you're in a
(14:39):
extremely toxic, poisonous environment in so many different ways. And
you're in a pressure cooker, right because you were going
to sell with how many other guys.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Eight guys, twenty four to seven and you know, yeah,
you're right, it is a pressure cooker.
Speaker 6 (14:53):
I mean, you have these people.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Every single one of those people's lives is on the line.
They don't know what's going to happen next. They don't
know if they're going to go to prison for the
rest of the life. Some of them don't know if
they're gonna get the death penalty.
Speaker 6 (15:02):
Some might get out tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
And so you have all these different thoughts and feelings
and emotions going on. You know, people are losing their
families or they can't see their kids.
Speaker 6 (15:09):
Whatever it might be.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
And you have that on top of the fact that
you can't eat right. You can't get any exercise. Really,
you can't be with loved ones. There's no outlet, right,
The only outlet is towards another person, and so people
end up fighting and getting hurt.
Speaker 6 (15:27):
And you know, you don't want to be in that situation.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
You don't want to be forced to fight somebody for survival.
But that's what they make you do. That's what they
put you in a situation where there's no other options.
And then when it happens, they want to charge you
with another crime, like you did something wrong.
Speaker 6 (15:40):
Put me in the cell with my girlfriend for a year.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
We're gonna, you know, hate each other by the end
of it, right, You can't do that, and they'd put
you in there with these people who are violent criminals.
Speaker 6 (15:51):
You don't know each other, you don't care about each other.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yet you have to be there twenty four to seven
with all that going on, all those emotions, all those feelings,
and that loss of your liberty and privilege. So it
is a frightening place.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
The claustrophobic element of it alone, right, because you're never
getting out. You're not getting out of cell, right, I mean,
what you've got to get out for a shower, no.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Well, the thing is it's like a pod and it's
very small. It's smaller than a one story home, and
the showers in there, and you have a TV in
there on a phone, and eight other guys, and it
is The claustrophobic feeling is so intense, because even if
even if you've been there for three months and you
start to feel like you know the guys and you
(16:33):
don't feel like you're in danger, that day you'll wake
up and you realize I can't get up and walk
out of this thing today. I can't get up and
walk out of here tomorrow or next month or next year.
Like I can't go anywhere but this little house. Like
I can't even step foot outside see the sunlight. I
can't look out a window because there are no windows.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
Like this is it. I can't do anything.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
I have no freedom, I have no choices, I have nothing,
no responsibility because I can't even go work if I
want to work, I can't go grab a book if
I want to grab a buck.
Speaker 6 (17:01):
I can't do anything.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
There's no books in there.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
There are some books, but they don't come by very often. Fortunately,
after a while I was able to get some books.
My father was able to bring me some, but you know,
they change the policies, and so for a while, they
took out all the legal books. You know, I thought,
at least if I got to sit here at twenty
four to seven, I'll be able to read legal books.
It's my constitutional right to be able to defend myself.
But they took out all the legal books, so I
(17:25):
couldn't even read that. And you know, I'm here, I'm
nineteen years old. I want to prove my innocence and
fight my case, and they don't even give you the
resources to do that.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
And I top of everything else, you're going to the
bathroom on top of each other. Where do you sleep?
And how do you change clothes? How does that even
work well?
Speaker 3 (17:39):
And where I was at it was a violent felon tank,
so it has its benefits and his down sides. Of course,
in many tanks it's just an open bay, so everybody's
out there together. And yeah, I mean, you just got
to get naked in front of people or whatever. You
poop in front of people, you pee in front of people, everything,
and so that is one existence in a violent fell
(18:00):
in tank. They put you in your own cell because
they don't want people sleeping in an environment where there
are people who are accused of murder, right, so you
don't want to be asleep, and then some guy snaps
out and comes over there and tries to murder you.
Like that's a liability, I suppose, So they give you
your own cell in the violent Fellon tank.
Speaker 6 (18:16):
That's why there's eight people. There's eight cells. So that
is the.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
One, I guess good thing about being in a violent
Pealent tank. The bad thing is that they're violent felons,
so it's a lot more dangerous when those doors are open.
Speaker 6 (18:30):
Those doors are open about eighteen hours a day.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
And you had reason to understand that the system was
not designed to work for justice and that as an
innocent man, you had a real chance of ending up
in prison for a long long time. So you devised
a workout program, right in order to be able to
defend yourself. And if you can't obviously see him on
(18:53):
the radio, but if you see Ryan now he is
he looks like a bodybuilder. So how did you do
that without any kind of access to gym equipment or
weights or anything else? And how did that work for you?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
You know, it comes down to education, really That's what
I love about fitness now, is I see a lot
of people work out. I've been around, you know, I
was in an incubator with guys for a decade and
I could see what they were doing, and a lot
of people work really hard, but they never educate themselves
on what to do for themselves physically, and so, you know,
that's why I developed this routine, is just understanding how.
Speaker 6 (19:28):
The body works. What's what are the best workouts that.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Are going to get you the largest gains in the
smallest amount of time, and then what do you have
to do nutritionally to supplement that? And so that's you know,
I just started figuring it out reading books and everything.
When you're in an environment like prison and you have
only so many outlets, I mean, really, the only thing.
Speaker 6 (19:47):
You possess are your mind in your body. Nothing else
is yours.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
You don't have any other really choices or anything. So
I educated myself daily and I worked out daily because
all I had was myself, and I worked on myself
every day, and I think that taught me a valuable lesson.
I think we can all do that no matter where
we're at in life. It's very important.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Well, you had a very strong motivation, and you were
really thinking ahead because of the fact that you knew
that if you ended up in a maxim security prison,
there were going to be times when you're going to
have to defend yourself or even inside this jail. So
you designed a program to make yourself strong for that eventuality.
And I know you talked to me about punching the walls, like,
(20:30):
how does that work?
Speaker 6 (20:32):
Right?
Speaker 3 (20:32):
So I did skip over the part about why why
I was working on so hard, and it is it's
my why was survival and that is a very strong
motivator and that's why I would work out and eventually
ended up punching walls. So the walls are concrete and
you know, they don't move. They're not soft by any means.
(20:55):
But I saw people fight, and I saw people break
their fists, and if you break your fist, you're not
gonna be able to fight. And you know, I did
everything I could to ensure my existence because it is
scary what you see with our legal system and the
fact that if you're arrested, your life is pretty much
over at that point, you have a very small chance
of winning, regardless of the facts. I mean, everything stacked
(21:16):
against you. So I didn't want to end up in
a fight to save my own life, to protect myself
and not be able to function. And so I realized,
you know, you had to have strong hands. You had
to be able to take a hit, and you have
to be able to give a hit and not break down.
And so I would start lightly hitting the walls, the
concrete walls, and I would hit them until you know,
(21:36):
my knuckles got bloody and everything, and then i'd stop
for that day, and while they're still trying to heal,
I would continue hitting the walls. And I ended up
building a very very strong fist that I feel I
could probably last through anything. And the only reason I
did that is because I didn't want to be victimized
while I was in prison for a crime I didn't commit.
Speaker 6 (21:57):
And that's it, really, I.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Mean, it's it's an odd feeling knowing that your whole
being is built around not becoming a victim. But that's
what it was, man, that's survival in prison. You gotta
do what you gotta do to protect yourself and any
and every way that you can find.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
So the trial comes Ryan, and you've been caged for
eighteen months in the most extreme circumstances. You come to
trial and then you're forced to watch your co defendant
get up there, Charles Erickson, and tell a story that
has no relationship to reality or the truth, and ultimately
(22:52):
you're convicted. I can't even fathom what that moment must
have been like. But it's not too painful to go
back there.
Speaker 6 (23:02):
That is, without it out in my thirty three years
of life. The worst week.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Of my entire life kind of jels horrible. Prison's bad,
but when you're in trial, there's nothing worse. You're basically
naked in front of the world. Right, I had no secrets,
I have no Everything that I am is out in
front of people. And then they take that and they
add lies on top of it, and they're accusing you
(23:27):
of something that you didn't do that you have no
knowledge of.
Speaker 6 (23:31):
And you know, every media source that could have been
there was there.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
And the courtroom is completely full, and these people are
looking at you like you're some kind of animal, right,
and you're trying to be respectful of the court. You're
just trying to sit there and be quiet. And I
remember I would turn around and, you know, wave to
my mom during a recess you know, and I would
smile because I saw my mom, like, hey, how you doing, Mom,
Like I'm glad you're doing okay, and smile because I'm
(23:56):
doing okay.
Speaker 6 (23:57):
So let's, you know, get through this. And then me
would go out and say, look at this cocky piece
of shit.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
You know, he's just like you don't care about the
Cordies and they're like smiling and way being at his
fans and stuff. It's like, you don't have fans. There's
no such thing as a fan. You are being accused
of a crime you didn't commit. You're fighting for your life,
and you're saying hi to your family. And then even
then the media takes liberty with that, and it's it's
insane and it is horrific to deal with that component
(24:26):
of it. But it's even worse knowing that the police
know you're innocent, the prosecutor knows you're innocent, the judge
knows you're innocent, and yet they're allowing this tobacle to
go on and allowing these people to get on the
stand and tell what they know are lies.
Speaker 6 (24:41):
And I get why some of these people lied.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
It's self preservation, because you know, they get a person
out of prison, and they say, you know, you know,
it'd be nice if you said these things, it would
be really helpful. What's the implication is if you don't
say these things, then we're going.
Speaker 6 (24:57):
To help you get back into prison.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Right, And so they're doing for their own existence. But
there's no reason the police of the prosecutor should be
doing these things to people, right, They're they're manipulating and
taking advantage of these people and uh, and they're doing
it to the end to take another human being's life.
And so it's you lose all faith in humanity, you
lose all hope and humanity. And I mean that was
(25:20):
the turning point for me. I fundamentally hated people outside
of my family. I pretty much just hated human existence
to human race for a good three.
Speaker 6 (25:30):
Or four years.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
And I can understand that. I mean, like you said,
the people that are supposed to be paid to help you,
or the people are supposed to be there to help
the victim and the family, the victim and society and
all of them letting down everyone for their own selfish.
Speaker 6 (25:43):
Are ones who are perpetuating this offense. And that's it is.
You will never I still don't understand it.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
You know, people will look at my case and they're like,
we didn't realize this can happen. Looking at you, realize
that this could happen to us. And I think so
many people want to compartmentalize that, right. They want to say, oh,
this is happening, but that will never happen to me,
that will never happen to my family or whatever. But
the reality is that it doesn't matter what you look like,
where you come from, how you act, this could happen
(26:11):
to you. This is a subject. This is an issue
that does affect us, all right. I mean it affects
us economically, it affects our society, it affects everything. And
it is happening disproportionately to young black men, poor people,
even if you're poor and white, whatever it might be.
The fact is, though, that this is happening more to
(26:32):
people who don't look like me. And it's sad that
for a lot of our society to stand up and say, hey,
this is wrong, it has to be a young white
kid because the reality is this is happening to so
many people that are going unnoticed, and I think that
needs to be discussed and we need to talk about that.
There are a lot of issues with raising this country obviously,
and so hopefully that will change. Hopefully, you know, wonderful
(26:55):
commissioners will stop in general, but will acknowledge the fact that, hey,
I mean, this has happening all over the place, but
primarily to these.
Speaker 6 (27:02):
Young black men, and.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
That really has to stop, and it's really tearing apart communities.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
Yeah, and then there's all the effects are terrible. It's
an issue, as you said, that affects everybody in so
many different ways. And again you're right, it's a sensitive topic.
But yeah, it's a sad commentary on our society. But
it's a fact, and it's one of the reasons why
I think it's so important that you've been out there
doing what you've been doing to spread the word. So
(27:29):
you were sentenced to what I was.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Sentenced to forty years. Yeah, so in trial you get
to see that it's not going well. You have a
person sitting there saying something that isn't true, being egged
on and led by the prosecution, and so then you
get convicted. And before I was sentenced, you have a
sentencing hearing and you.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
Have the opportunity to speak. The first time I had
the opportunity to speak.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
This whole entire time from March tenth, two thousand and
four to two years later, I never done anything. I
was arrested, I never said anything that implicated me or anything.
All the facts proved my innocence. I never had the
opportunity to speak to the public or anything. So I'm
basically just being like I jumped in the stream or
I got pushed in the stream, basically, and then have
(28:16):
been going down current this whole time. So two years later,
I have the first opportunity to actually speak publicly, right,
and I get to speak to the judge at the
sentencing hearing after I've already been convicted, and I'm telling her,
I hope you can see the facts. I mean, the
facts are blatantly clear. Please look at those, Please be unbiased.
This is the same judge that gave me a twenty
(28:36):
million dollar bail, and you know, give me a new
trial at the very least, because I will prove my innocence.
Speaker 6 (28:43):
You'll see that I'm innocent or whatever.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
The whole time I'm talking, she didn't even look at me,
didn't pay anytention, just like I wasn't even there. I'm like,
this is my whole entire life, and I have one
opportunity to speak and to be heard by this court.
You know, I've respected the court and that you respect
me the same. The one opportunity I had, she wouldn't
even look at me. She didn't listen to a word
I'm saying, and then she just did what she did
(29:06):
forty years see you later. And it was just one
of the most disgusting things that I've experienced in my
whole entire life, and is by this judge who were
supposed to, you know, hold in high respect and it's
supposed to be a pillar of our community.
Speaker 6 (29:21):
It's a horrible person. It's a horrible person who.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Has no motivation to do what's right for the society
that she lives in.
Speaker 6 (29:30):
And it's disgusting.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
And even now, you know she she's still you know,
she lives in like a million dollar house or something,
and she's enjoying a great life and uh, and she's
just this person who has destroyed lives. And there are
many great judges, don't get me wrong, but the fact
that that person can sit up there and be esteemed
or they're not even doing their job, it is ah,
(29:54):
it's sickening.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
I'm u. The idea that she would be shuffling papers
or doing whatever she felt was more important than forty
years of your life at that particular time after everything
you've been through is just yeah, that's hard to process.
It just takes a person who's like just so completely
(30:19):
fucking bankrupt, right, so morally devoid of anything, and I
don't get it. Wow, So you end up going to
maximum security prison and you could put in a selling
it a sell mat.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Right, So it's difficult not to go on and on
because there are so many It's ten years of your life, right,
So my first selling when I go into prison, you know,
I mean prison at a young age. I'm twenty one.
I'm thinking, you know this is I'm going straight into hell.
Like I'm basically just jumping feet first into hell. I
(30:54):
got no no ifans or butts about it, no choice,
and so I'm scared. There's no doubt about it. I'm
very afraid at this point.
Speaker 6 (31:03):
And I go into the room and he's not in there.
Everybody's out at rec or whatever. And then an.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Hour later, this huge guy comes in and he's completely
covered in tattoos. But it's really interesting how the tattoos
are laid out, like half of his body are demonic
tattoos and the other half are angelic tattoos.
Speaker 6 (31:24):
And I'm like, what the hell is going on here? Right?
And so.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
He gets to talk and I realize his face is
completely messed up and the demonic side had been shot
with a shotgun and basically distorted his face and the
upper part of his body's shoulder and whatnot. And so
later on we get to talking and he's like, basically,
you know, he was robbing a dope house and he
got shot on the demonic side because that was like God.
Speaker 6 (31:50):
Telling him that he should be good or whatever.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Well, it turns out this guy is essentially bipolar, and
he definitely wasn't good at any point, and he was
probably the most frightening individual I came across in prison,
and especially as a first selly. But it's like, there
were these imaginary lines in the cell and imagine like.
Speaker 6 (32:09):
You're in this little eight by eight foot box.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Imagine being in your bathroom with somebody who's twice your
size and insane, like literally insane.
Speaker 6 (32:18):
Who's known to be violent, known to.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Have been arrested multiple times and spend a lot of
time in the hole, and he draws these imaginary line
So if you put your toe over this line that
you don't even know exist, then a fight would ensue.
And if a fight ensues, there's nowhere to go. You
can't run, you can't beat them, you can't call for
help because they're in another room. So basically, I'm tiptoeing
(32:42):
around for the first three months of my time in prison,
and it's just like a ticking time mom. I know
that if I'm there long enough, this guy will kill me.
And that's how I had to live for the first
three or four months of my prison experience. And it
was very bad, and we got into it quite a
(33:03):
few times, and you know, and you're just trying to
be as quiet and peaceful as you can, but nothing
you do is right. So, yeah, I wish I could
bring you into the mental anguish that exists, because although
I was able to avoid being stabbed or hit by
this individual, the mental anguish that you experienced from knowing
(33:23):
that that could happen at any second for any reason,
is it'll aid you like two years in one month.
Speaker 6 (33:30):
It's insane, it's horrible.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
Did you have any dialogue with him? Did you have
any light moments at all? Was there, you know, was
there any kind of camaraderie with this?
Speaker 6 (33:38):
There was? Yeah, man, And that's so weird about it.
Like you you're around these people.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
And some of them are just horrible, horrible human beings,
but you know, it's life and you get to know
them or whatever. And so I didn't have a TV
yet or I might have just gotten I can't remember,
and the Notebook came on and uh. And so we're
watching the Notebook at the same time. And the Notebook
comes to a conclusion and we're not really talking during
it or anything like that.
Speaker 6 (34:05):
It ends, and I'm like, I'm basically about to cry,
you know, I'm like trying to hold back tears. I'm like,
oh my.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
God, I'm in this cell with this maniac and the
freaking great movie has got me, you know. It's like,
you know, I miss society and females and everything. Of course,
and then I can't talk. And then I realized this
guy is sniffling up there. He's up there crying, and.
Speaker 7 (34:27):
I'm like, what's up in and and he's like, man,
that was a good movie, you know, and uh, and
He's like I'm crying or whatever, and I'm like, I'm
bout to to and so that was just like this weird,
very odd experience, and we like we were laughing about
it or whatever, and we're surprised that impacted us both.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
But I mean it was very up and down. It
was like that, you know. I mean, that was one
good moment. There are a million bad moments. And then
when I left, I went over to the.
Speaker 6 (34:51):
Yard, the guy gave me a hug. He's like, oh man,
I'm gonna miss you. I'm not gonna miss you, dude.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
But all right, you know, it's just it's that's a
lot of people in there.
Speaker 6 (35:01):
There are some really good people.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
I still talk to some people in prison, but there
are some people that you'll just never understand that are insane.
Speaker 6 (35:07):
They'll hug you one minute and stab you the next.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
So it's just you gotta be on your p's and
q's per se.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
So you were in there for nine and a half years.
You had many many appeals denied. How many appeals did
you have?
Speaker 3 (35:31):
I mean at least six or seven primary appeals, and
then you know.
Speaker 6 (35:36):
They they go up through the court, so you have like.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
The initial court filing and then you have the appellate court,
and then it goes to the Supreme Court, which you
never hears it, and so it's just this like basic
routine that you get in. You know, you file appeal
and then it waited six months, and then they'll hear it,
and then they wait another six months, and then they
deny it, and then it wait another six months and
it goes to another court and they'll hear it, and
then they wait another six months. So it's like every
appeal you file, you know, I was like, oh, it'll
(36:02):
be another year, year and a half of my life
because they're not going to listen to this. These courts
that they're going to, you know which ones will will
be biased and you know which ones won't. So an
appeal was filed and you automatically know what the next
year and a half of my life is not going
to happen.
Speaker 6 (36:17):
So I'm just gonna sit back and hope to get
out of that.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Court and back into one that actually cares about justice.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
At some point, the only other witness against you besides
your co defendant who falsely confessed and then falsely implicated
you and told the story that didn't make any sense
and kept changing it and was obviously anything but incredible
witness against you. The only other witness against you was
a convicted child molester, right, who was an incentivized witness.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Oh yeah, this individual, he was a custodian. He was
at the crime scene when it happened, and he went
outside when the two individuals were out by this car,
who may or may not have committed the crime. In
the police phone call, the police were called minutes later,
he says, I don't know what the people looked like.
Speaker 6 (37:01):
I couldn't even tell you what they were wearing.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
I didn't get that good of a look, right, And
so he gives the phone to a female and she
could tell the police what the guy's actually looked like
and their build and everything, And so we have on
the record this guy is saying to the police, I
have no idea what these guys look like. I can't
tell you what color the hair is anything. And then
he gets out of jail child molestation. The prosecution obviously
(37:23):
calls him in and ultimately he says.
Speaker 6 (37:26):
Yep, that's the guy that I saw.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
So you have the you know, So that's that story
in a nutshell.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
So in case there wasn't enough, that's troubling everybody about
this case already, the fact that they would actually release
a convicted child molester in exchange for perjured testimony against you.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Well, I think his time was up, so I think
more of what happened there is got he was gonna
get out, and they basically insinuated if you don't help us,
then you're gonna go back in. So it's actually that
would be the assumption, right that they helped get him out,
But ultimately what they were doing is we're just.
Speaker 6 (38:00):
Not gonna help put you back in if you help.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Us, right, But if you don't help us, then we're
gonna make sure that you violate your probation and you
spend another two or three years in prison as a
child molester, which is very very rough to me. There
is nothing worse than a jailhouse snitch. I mean that is,
if you are a prosecutor and you use a jailhouse snitch,
you should go straight to hell because jailhouse snitches have
zero credibility. They are always lying there, always incentivized. It
(38:25):
is literally the most discussing thing that I've ever seen,
and you know, it impacts people's lives. I was in
maximum security prison in jail for a decade, ten years
of my life. My case really turned in two thousand
and nine when Kathleen Zelner got involved. Here's one of
the greatest attorneys in our nation. She has more exonerations
(38:46):
than any other individual attorney in the whole entire country.
And she was willing to take my case pro bono
at that and that was just I mean, that was
the biggest ray of hope that I had had at
that point. And I'm so great that she's in my life,
not only, you know, on the legal side, but just
as as a friend and a confidant.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
But your biggest advocate through all those years was your father,
who went to extraordinary lengths to fight for you, to
make sure that you knew that he had your back,
and to ultimately prevail, or you wouldn't be sitting here now.
But there was another person who played an important role
in this right and she was someone who had written
to you as so many other people had. But but
(39:29):
they took on a whole new life.
Speaker 6 (39:30):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Micah my girlfriend, current girlfriend. Still we've been together, I
think over five years at this point. I've been out
less than four. You know, I've been very fortunate, like
I said, I, you know, without my family, I wouldn't
have survived. I would have been crazy, I wouldn't have
given up, but I would have lost a lot of hope.
Speaker 6 (39:47):
So without them, I wouldn't be here.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
And then Micah came along somehow we just ended up
writing and talking more and she became a big part
of my life and really kind of initiated this whole
social media movement which helped my case get so much attention,
which was really incredible. So, you know, it is amazing
what has happened with her in the social media movement.
We have a friend from Facebook, Mike, who was just
(40:11):
very helpful. I mean he helped us like design the
Facebook page and get it up there. And another guy, Richard,
and so with those three they ran the social media thing.
And when our page got up to one hundred thousand
people on Facebook and that was big. Then there was
no Instagram really and that really helped push the case
forward and really helped push what.
Speaker 6 (40:30):
My father was doing out there and what my mother
was doing.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
And like I said earlier, whenever my trial happened, I
lost hope in humanity.
Speaker 6 (40:37):
I hated people.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
I just I couldn't stand I couldn't understand them, and
that's what was so frustrating about it. I coudn't understand
how people could do these things to people. I still don't,
But then so many beautiful people have been in my life,
like my family and Mike and Richard and Mike and
so many other incredible individuals from forty eight hours in
Dayline and people who wrote and so well, so many
(41:01):
great people have shown me that the goodness in humanity
can overcome the negativity, right, And there's too many people
the name of course I found. No I'm leaving people
out it, but it's just like thank you to them,
thank you to everyone who supported me and supported other
people in my situation, because without that support we would
lose hope. And it's really given me the opportunity actually
(41:23):
live my life now, right, because if I still had
that mentality and I never saw the good side of people,
then what would I be doing with my life now.
I wouldn't want to help other people. I wouldn't I
don't think i'd be happy in society. I wouldn't be
happy in my life. So really they help save my
life by giving me my life back, but they also
help save my life a second time by showing me,
(41:45):
you know, the real passion and real beauty of the
human race.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
I get people asking me frequently what can I do
to help? And aside from donating to Innocence Project and
other organizations. It's interesting to hear you talk about it
because so many people wrote to you and what that meant.
What would you say to someone who's listening now in
wherever they are.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Well, that's a great question, and the reality is there's
a lot you can do. It might not be as
much as you want because you just want to reach
in there and pull those people out like they're obviously innocent,
and you want to do everything you can, and so
you just got to you got to be patient. You've
got to find the right ways. I mean, the number
one thing I would say is to be active. Right, So,
if you find a case that you believe in, number one,
(42:31):
rite that person right their family and let them know
you support them. I mean that that right there opens
up a huge door and helps so much.
Speaker 6 (42:38):
But then if you.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Initiate that contact, they might have other opportunities for you
to help, like riding the governor or putting together some
kind of thing that would bring other people in and
make them aware of it. So to me, it is
it is being active and creating awareness.
Speaker 6 (42:54):
The best thing you can do.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Right a family member, right the person that you support,
and then get involved and start spreading awareness to your
friends and family. Tell them about the case, have them
read the case, and start talking to your local politicians.
Speaker 6 (43:09):
Write them letters, make phone calls.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
I mean even this day, every week or two weeks,
I'm calling some governor. I never get a hold of
the governor himself, but I am letting them know how
I feel about a case. And I am writing them,
and I'm sending them tweets, and I'm writing them emails,
Like any way we can let them know, let the
people in charge of these systems know that we are
(43:33):
paying attention and that we demand accountability. I think that
is what is going to help make change right. And
so what I hear a lot is people say like,
I don't feel like me as a person can do
enough to bring about change. But that's how change is
actually done right. It's not done by one person. It's
done by groups of individuals, done by all of us
(43:54):
together doing our own little part. Like I wish I
could do more, I'm just one little guy. But you know,
I do my little part, and I ask other people
to do their little parts. And if we keep doing
that individually, then I think we're gonna we're gonna see
a big change.
Speaker 4 (44:07):
You know, we talked about the worst moment of your
life and the worst week of your life. What about
the best moment of your life?
Speaker 3 (44:14):
You know, I think as a human being that you
focus on the negative so much that I don't know
what the best of the I mean, the thing about
living in prison for so long is that you kind of,
I don't know, you see the world a different way,
and you aren't able to have those high moments of happiness.
(44:37):
I haven't really been able to find that in my
life yet, which is someone unfortunately I've been I've been
able to do some incredible things. I mean, I've been
to a lot of different countries and I've traveled the
world since i've been out.
Speaker 6 (44:49):
I've been able to go to the Super Bowl.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
I've been able to with my father, which is really amazing,
and spend that weekend with them there. And you know,
I spend as much time as I can with my
family doing whatever we can.
Speaker 6 (45:00):
There's dinner or traveling.
Speaker 3 (45:01):
I have my own TV show, I wrote my own book,
which which was, you know, probably my greatest accomplishment personally.
And throughout all these things, I've never had like this,
this moment of intense joy, and and I didn't used
to be that way, you know, when I was younger,
when I was in high school, and you know, I mean,
I I just love life so much, like every day
(45:22):
I had intense joy. And while I do drive some
joy out of these things, of course, it's just I can't.
I can't get to that next level where I used
to be. And I think that's kind of what prison
does to people, you know. I mean, some people may
be able to get out and resume a normal life.
I think a lot of people, you know, put on
a strong front after what's happened to them, and I
(45:43):
certainly do. But the reality is that, you know, it
affects you, and it impacts you. And that's one of
the things that impacts me most. And the reality is
like I walk around with this rain cloud over my head,
I feel like a lot of times, and I'm afraid
of the lightning, you know, And so if it's raining
and thundering outside and there's lightning every I'm not going
to go out there because I don't want to get
hit by it, right, But the way the legal system
(46:04):
affects a human being in these situations, and you see
how humans act and everything, you know, this can happen
to you or somebody you love.
Speaker 6 (46:10):
It's like they could come right now and kick in
the door and arrest you. They could do it to me,
They could do it to anybody.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
And so I walk around with this this cloud over
my head and you know, I could get hit by
that lightning at any moment, and there's nothing I can do.
I can't there is no indoors, right, I could be
in another country.
Speaker 6 (46:27):
It could happen, So it is. It is frightening.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
So yeah, I mean your happy moment, it's hard to describe.
I I love life and I enjoy life, but for me,
my happiest moments are giving back because it makes me
feel like I'm protecting myself in a way as well,
and it gets rid of that cloud a bit because
hopefully it's turning this thing around that impacts us all.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
What about the moment of exoneration.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
Yeah, I wish I could say that was amazing, you know,
and that you know, you really expect it would be
in everything.
Speaker 6 (46:59):
But that was hell for me. I didn't know what
was going on. I didn't know if I was actually
gonna be let out.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
A lot of times they will take you back to
the county jail and then just read you your rights
and recharge you and then put you in the count
of jail for another year and a half. I didn't
know any of that what was going to happen until
I watched my parents walk through the sally Port door.
And I'm still sitting in the back of a van
in a cage with shackles on and an orange jumpsuit, and.
Speaker 6 (47:26):
That's when I realized it was over.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
So, I mean, it felt good, but I still like,
I don't know if these people are gonna come kick
my door. On the next day, I was literally looking
out my windows every time I thought I heard something
for the next six months. And so that's that's the
way these things impact people. And you know, I think, now,
obviously there's enough facts to protect me, and I think
I am safe, but I know that just happens to
(47:48):
other people.
Speaker 6 (47:49):
So it's yeah, man, it's good that.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Some people can enjoy it, But I've looked so much
into our legal system and seen what's happened to so
many other people like Brian Ferguson.
Speaker 6 (47:59):
You know, he was exonerating. They wanted to retry him
and everything.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
And basically forced him into taking an alpha plea.
Speaker 6 (48:06):
It's situations like that that really don't allow you.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
To necessarily live your life to the fullest. And I
think as time goes on, you get better. But here
we are four years and I still have all these considerations.
Speaker 4 (48:16):
So let's talk about your book, all right, So tell
us about the book and then any other final thoughts
that you have.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
Yeah, so my book Stronger, Faster, Smarter. I wrote it
in my last five months in prison. It is one
of my greatest achievements. I just wanted to see if
I could write a book, and I saw so many
people working out really hard, but they weren't getting where
they wanted. They weren't accomplishing their goals, and I realized
that they're not educating themselves on what to do in
the fitness world. So I came up with this plan
(48:46):
of doing like basically.
Speaker 6 (48:47):
Six main moves.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
You eat it right, eat a certain way, and then
educate yourself and you'll be able to accomplish whatever fitness
goals you want, That's what the book is kind of about.
But I tied it in with my experience in prison
and how I I didn't know that ten years ago.
You know, I didn't know how to get in shape.
I had to figure it out to survive. And if
I could do it in that environment, then certainly everyone
(49:08):
can wherever they're.
Speaker 6 (49:09):
At in the life. And so that's what it's about.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
Man. It's a hopeful book that has some good information.
I think that can help people achieve their goals.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
Get the book great, read, stronger, faster, or smarter. Get stronger, faster,
and smarter than Ryan Ferguson way. He was able to
do it in prison, so I guess the rest of
us have no excuse. And Ryan, any final thoughts that
you want to share, you.
Speaker 6 (49:30):
Know, my final thoughts are just be aware. As Jason
was saying earlier, You know, when you look at.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
These cases, always question what you're reading, Always question what
you're watching. The best thing we can do is educate ourselves, right.
Don't take anyone's word as the truth. Don't take it
as gospel. Whether it's your police or prosecutors, your local newspaper, whatever,
look into it.
Speaker 6 (49:53):
Yourself.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
These are really interesting cases. They're very important and they
impact us all and I think that each one of
us can do a lot to change the way our
legal system operates. And it is for ourselves, it's for
our youth, it's for everyone.
Speaker 6 (50:07):
So yeah, it's it's it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
I think the more you loo get into it, the
more you're going to be intrigued, and the more you're
gonna want to want to get involved.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
You've been listening to a very special episode of Wrongful
Conviction with a very special person, my friend Ryan Ferguson. Ryan,
thank you for coming and sharing your thoughts and wisdom,
and once again the book is stronger, faster, smarter.
Speaker 6 (50:33):
Great.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
Thanks Jason Man. Thanks for all that you do. Seriously,
like you lead by example and I appreciate that. What
I just said is, you know, go out there and
do what you can.
Speaker 6 (50:42):
That's what you've been doing. And uh and there's a.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
Lot you could do that you know, you could not
care about any of this, and it's amazing to see
what you do.
Speaker 6 (50:48):
Man. You give me a lot of hope. So thanks
for having me. It was an honor and uh, yeah.
Speaker 4 (50:54):
Right it on. Don't forget to give us a fantastic review.
Wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm
a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really
hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause
and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence
Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved.
(51:17):
I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three
time OSCAR nominatede composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at
Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a
production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal
(51:37):
Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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