Shareef Cousin Pt. One

March 2, 1995. New Orleans, Louisiana. After leaving a restaurant with his date in the French Quarter, 25-year old Michael Gerardi is fatally gunned down by a trio of robbers. Weeks later, 16-year old Shareef Cousin is implicated in the crime and charged with first-degree murder. Even though Shareef seems to have an airtight alibi, Michael’s date identifies him as the shooter at trial. Shareef is found guilty and becomes one of the youngest people to ever be sentenced to death, but the verdict is surrounded with controversy. It turns out the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office committed egregious acts of prosecutorial misconduct, which included withholding exculpatory evidence, doctoring a tape-recorded interview, and illegally detaining defence witnesses. After nearly three years on death row, Shareef’s conviction is overturned, but Michael Gerardi’s real killers are never found. On this week’s episode of “The Path Went Chilly”, we chronicle a senseless murder which led to one of the most outrageous miscarriages of justice you’ll ever find.

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Additional Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareef_Cousin

https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3126

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,138469,00.html

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Welcome back to the Path with Chile.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I'm Robin, I'm Jules.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
And I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
March second, nineteen ninety five, New Orleans, Louisiana. After leaving
a restaurant with his date, twenty five year old Michael
Girardi is fatally gunned down in the French Quarter by
a tree year old robbers. Weeks later, sixteen year old
Sharif Coussin is implicated in the crime and charged with
first degree murder. Even though Sharif seems to have an

(01:01):
airtight alibi, Michael's state identifies them as a shooter at trial,
and he's found guilty and sentenced to death. However, it
turns out that the District Attorney's office withheld exculpatory evidence
and committed prosecutorial misconduct. After nearly three years on death row,
Sharif's conviction is overturned, but Michael Girardi's real killers are

(01:24):
never found.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
After that, the Path went Chiley, So we've got a
truly jaw dropping story to cover today. The nineteen ninety
five murder of Michael Girardi and the subsequent wrongful conviction
of Sharif Coussin. You might recall then, on our last
series of episodes, we covered the nineteen ninety six murder
of fourteen year old Crystal Champagne, which took place in
the Greater New Orleans metropolitan area and led to the

(01:48):
wrongful conviction of Damon Thibodeaux, who spent sixteen years on
death row for the crime before he was exonerated. We
know that Ashley is particularly impassion when talking about wrongful
conviction cases, so well, we've picked out another one which
took place in New Orleans during that time period and
is one of the most outrageous miscarriages of justice you'll
ever hear about. The defendant in this story is an

(02:10):
African American teenager named Sharif Cussen, who was only sixteen
years old when he was arrested for the murder of
Michael Girardi, and he was sent to death for the
crime at age seventeen, making him one of the youngest
people ever sent to death row. Given Sharif's young age,
this decision was bound to be controversial regardless whether or
not he was guilty of the crime. However, it soon

(02:30):
became apparent that the people who put Sharif away had
to have known he didn't do it, but were determined
to convict him no matter what. I've seen a lot
of wrongful convictions involving misconduct, but the prosecutors in this
case just went to insane lengths to withhold and fabricate evidence,
even though it meant an innocent kid could have wound
up being executed for a crime he did not commit.

(02:52):
Throughout all this injustice, one aspect of this story which
God overlooked is that the real killers of Michael Girardi
were never found. There were some promising suspects who seemed
to slip under the radar.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
Where do I start. I'm already so frustrated with this
case because of multiple factors. You have Sharif who is
sixteen years old at the time that he was arrested,
and then seventeen years old when he sentenced to death
for a crime he committed supposedly as a juvenile, and

(03:26):
thank the Lord today that can't happen. That doesn't happen
because of the landmark decision in Roper v. Simmons. But
believe it or not, that was only a five to
four ruling. If you know that case, that no longer
can someone who's a juvenile at the time that they
are that they have committed the crime. Right, if they've
committed the crime under the age of eighteen, they can

(03:47):
no longer be eligible for the death penalty. In the
United States, I want to say, there were like seventy
some odd kids on death row when that ruling came out.
And so that's the first problem. He's a child. So
let's say Sharif was guilty. He still has zero frontal
lobe development, right, there's very little stability going on there.

(04:09):
He won't fully mature you until he's about twenty five
years old. And to say that at sixteen there's not
any possibility that for the rest of his life he
could be redeemed or healed is wild. But in this
case it goes even further because Sharif is innocent and
his sentence not just to life in prison or any

(04:32):
other sentence, it's death. So then it it brings up
the idea of the death penalty. Right that, yes, there
are arguments that are valid arguments for why the death
penalty seems to be a good idea. There's crimes we
hear about where you say, wow, I don't know that
that person can be redeemed or that crime is so
evil that I understand why the death penalty would be

(04:55):
an option. But when you hear that there's been one case,
and let's all understand there's been many, many cases, but
there's a case where someone has sat on death row
and is later found to be innocent, there's a problem
with our death penalty process. So that's another thing that
is very frustrating. If one innocent person was ever sentenced

(05:17):
to death, that's a horrible alternative right and an option
for us to have because it's not fool proof. And
the final thing you nailed it wrongful convictions. I love
that our leading evidence here is an eyewitness, which every
listener who's ever tuned in before knows the drill worst
type of evidence you can have if you're talking about reliability,

(05:40):
because our minds lie to us, and even when we
have the best of intents, we don't do well picking
out suspects. We just don't. And you also have some
elements that add to it. You have a young African
American teenager, Sharif. I don't know much else about his demographics,
but you're in New Orleans. There's a lot of racial

(06:00):
tension in New Orleans. And you clearly have a kid
who is targeted by police, and that targeting by government
officials didn't stop all the way through his trial. You
said that there was prosecutorial on his conduct. It was
covering up of evidence that could have proven he was innocent.
And again, this isn't a kid who's being put away
and might be eligible for parole. This is a kid

(06:22):
that they knowingly were sentencing to death. He was not
given a fair trial. They knew there was evidence that
made him look like he was innocent, and still they
said he was so invaluable as a human being he
had no value that made that wrong in their eyes.
Is horrific. And I don't even know the start of

(06:44):
it until you guys tell me the rest of the story.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Well, you're going to be pretty shocked when you hear
some of the details we share, because we've done wrongful
conviction cases where you can say, okay, I think the
authorities were acting a good faith They genuinely thought they
had the right person, even though they turned out to
be innocent. But this is why, where you know that
people in power clearly knew that Jarif didn't do it,
but they just did not care. They wanted to close
this case and get a conviction at any cost. And

(07:08):
it's terrifying to think that there are people out there
in power who are willing to do something like this.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
One thing I wanted to ask you Ash before we
get going on the story. There's going to be a
callback to this later, but I really wanted to get
your definition or your opinion on the multi factorial issue
of recidivism, especially when especially when it pertains to young offenders.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah, okay, So I mean, recidivism has a billion factors
that go into it, right, especially like you said, when
there's a youth involved. One of the biggest factors is
what someone's going to go home to, right, And if
you are a product of your environment, an environment, family, friends,
lack of resources, lifestyle options, right, If that's what you're

(07:56):
going to go right back to, and that's what landed
you in hot water in the first place, the likelihood
of you recidivating is huge, right. It's they call prison
a revolving door for a reason. But one of the
problems is that our prison system and even jails, they're
creating worse individuals when sometimes like Sharif, he went to

(08:20):
prison as an innocent human being, but in order to survive,
he had to learn skills, and not all those skills
are positive ones. And you're really creating people who get
this fight or flight response. They're with people who have
committed different types of crimes, who share, you know, spirituality,

(08:40):
but they also share criminal tips, and they attack each other,
and they you know, manipulate each other, and they sexually
abuse one another, and all kinds of things that create
a much I don't know, a much more broken human
being when we release them with no resources and no
education that really helps them have a different life after
their release. So, especially when it's a wrongful conviction, it

(09:03):
breaks my heart because you put them in an environment
which is going to give them no option but to
struggle and to learn skills that do not translate to
a healthy individual outside of prison, and you expect them
to function like a normal person when they're released from prison.
The other problem with recidivism, though, is that we, in

(09:24):
good faith and with good principle behind it, put a
lot of really strenuous stipulations on individuals, and depending on
who your parole or probation officer is, will really dictate
how much grace and normalcy they allow for you as
a human being who's clearly struggled before serve time and

(09:45):
is now being released, which is also a struggle. So
you'll see some people who you know have a parole
officer who believes in them and fightes for them, and
maybe they drink and get caught drinking and they don't
get sent back. They're given an opportunity to heal and
get help. But then you also have the next person
who comes through and their person sends them back into

(10:06):
prison because of a minor infraction. So it's a whirlwind.
But we set people up to fail. We don't have
enough resources or structure in place to help people succeed
once they've gone to prison or jail, but especially when
they're innocent. How could you come out and be okay
when you went in for something you were not the
hardened criminal they presented you as. And for him, Sharif,

(10:27):
he's sixteen, he learned way too much, way too quick,
from the wrong people.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
Our story begins in New Orleans, Louisiana, in nineteen ninety five,
and our victim is twenty five year old Alfred Michael Girardi,
who goes by his middle name and lives in the
nearby town of Slidel. On the evening of March second,
Michael went out on a date with thirty seven year
old Connie Babin. They'd recently met at a Mardi Gras
party in New Orleans French Quarter before Michael phoned up

(10:57):
Connie to ask her out. They decided to return to
the French Quarter for their first date together and went
out to dinner at the Port of Call restaurant on
Esplanade Avenue. After they finished dinner, the couple left the
restaurant and walked towards Michael's pickup truck, which was parked
half a walk away. At ten twenty six pm, they
reached the truck when three African American males appeared and

(11:20):
headed in their direction. Once it became apparent that one
of the men was moving towards them in a threatening fashion,
Michael turned towards Connie and told her to run away.
Connie immediately took off, but as she was running, she
looked behind her and saw that one of the black
males was holding a gun, and he proceeded to shoot
Michael in the face. Connie made it back to the

(11:41):
Port of Call restaurant and called nine one one for assistance.
When police arrived at the scene, they found Connie kneeling
next to Michael's body and clutching his hand, but by
then he was already dead. Since Michael's wallet was missing,
robbery was the apparent motive for his murder.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
All right, so when we look here, remember she's going
to be the eyewitness who points out that Sharif is
one of these three African American men. He's one of
the young black men who shoots her significant other. Right,
this guy that is it her boyfriend?

Speaker 1 (12:16):
It's the first date, so they just started.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, he's one of the black men
who shoots her date. Now here's the problem you have
to think about when you look at eyewitness identification. This
case has tons of marks for why Connie, even in
her most authentic, genuine attempt, would have a problem correctly
identifying somebody. I'm going to assume that Connie and Michael

(12:42):
are Caucasian, which means the first thing that Connie has
going against her recollection is that she's making a cross
racial identification. And when that happens, the rate of accuracy
significantly drops no matter which race is identific fine and
another race. So let's say you have a Hispanic individual

(13:07):
identifying a Caucasian individual or a Hispanic individual identifying a
black individual. Right, there's going to be that cross racial
bias that has scientifically been proven to radically drop rates
of accuracy because there is not a likeness to compare
other person to right, Like I can't say, oh, they
have my eyes but not my nose, and the canvas

(13:30):
you're starting with is scientifically proven to make a significant
difference on that ability to put facial features in place.
It's also night time that obstructs a lot of things.
Right shadows, street lights, the way that things look at
night is problematic. There's also a gun present, and so
there's the weapon focus effect that occurs here where if

(13:53):
you pull out a gun or a knife or anything
that's going to be a risk to me, in order
to protect myself and the person I'm standing with, I
often will lock my eyes on the weapon and make
sure that that weapon is in my eyesight and I
know where it's being pointed, who's holding it, and if
it's being pointed towards us. So it's that idea that

(14:16):
we don't really focus at the person's face anymore. I'm
most concerned about where the tip of that gun is
being pointed. A lot of other things are going on here.
There's multiple people, and so the ability to mix features
that you might remember, like oh, there are bushy eyebrows,
and then you're going, well, I think it was on
the shooter, Well maybe not. And who was wearing the

(14:37):
ball cap and who had five o'clock shadow, and all
these different things could easily be convoluted. And not to
mention she just saw someone she's on a date with
get shot in the face. So the trauma of thinking
you could have died and the poor person that you
just went to dinner with is on the ground with

(15:01):
a significant trauma wound would also then startle your ability
to recall that person's face later.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
And not to mention that Connie was running away at
the time and was kind of looking over her shoulder
when she saw the shooting occurred. So that's a very
stressful situation. She's from a distance, so you could understand
how she might misidentify someone, and you got to feel
bad for it. But I do find that in a
lot of cases involving eyewitnesses who were survivors to crimes
that a lot of the time, the police kind of

(15:30):
lead them on where they say, oh, we got this suspect,
and we're pretty sure he's the right guy. We just
need you to make an identification. And even if they're
not entirely that sure, they're thinking in their selves, well,
if the police say he's the right guy, then he
must be the right guy, and that's why they make
their identification.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
And how dark was it at that time, Like how
well would she have been able to see the features
of any one of these three black men in the dark.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
A few weeks later, investigators got a promising lead when
sixteen year old James Rawl was arrested and charged with
nine counts of armed robbery. Raol implicated a sixteen year
old friend of his name, Sharif Coussen, who had allegedly
bragged to him about being responsible for the murder of
Michael Girardi. Sharif was one of eight siblings being raised
by a single mother in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

(16:19):
Even though Sharif grew up without a father and his
family struggle with poverty, he was known for being an
intelligent kid who did well in school. However, things started
to change when Sharif took the initiative to finally track
down and meet his biological father, who refused to acknowledge
that Sharif was his son. This reaction devastated Sharif and
sent him on a downward spiral as his attitude changed,

(16:41):
his grade started a fall, and he got involved in drugs.
After being sent to a substance abuse treatment center, Sharif
befriended James Rawl, who turned out to be a bad influence.
Sharif allegedly accompanied Raoul on some of his armed robberies,
though he claimed that he never got directly involved or
carried a weapon and only waited to the car anyway.
When Raul implicated Sharif and Michael Girardi's murder, he was

(17:04):
picked up by police and taken down to the station.
On March the twenty eighth, he was placed in a
lineup where Connie Babbin positively identified him as the shooter,
and Sharif was soon formally charged with first degree murder.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
Well, here's the sad thing for Sharif. Sharif has a
million things working against him right. He is growing up
without a father, and you know, mamas do a great job.
But I feel like there's such value in positive mail
influence and having you know, a healthy father in the home,
but Sharif didn't have the opportunity to have that. In fact,

(17:43):
it sounds like was exposed to a lifestyle of you know,
that existed in a low income area where drugs were common.
And it's really interesting because despite that, he is fighting
to be healthier because he had the opportunity to go
to a substance abuse treatment center. It sounds like he

(18:03):
does really well in school, and so there is potential
that he doesn't have to follow the kind of the
trajectory that's being put before him. That there's ways that
Sharif can beat what's before him. But like many people,
one of his biggest influences as a sixteen year old
kid is that he is hanging out with people who

(18:26):
are quote his friends, and are not doing anything to
be a true friend to him. They're engaging in the
same risky decisions and they're putting him at risk, and
they're in a lifestyle of you know, like high risk
kind of I don't know, just being young, dumb kids,
but they're making big mistakes and kind of playing with

(18:47):
fire and so It's sad because Sharif is trying. Sharif is,
you know, trying to do good in school. He's trying
to be sober and get away from drugs, and yet
here he is, He's about to get picked out of
a lineup, and it likely has to do with the
group he's hanging out with. Right He's associated by the

(19:08):
police and by some members in the community to be
a troubled kid, and he gets wrapped up, especially when
Connie can passibly I d him.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
And that's a sad thing about this story is that
the only reason sure I've even popped up on the
radar as a suspect is because James Raul decided to
point the figure at him. And you're automatically suspicious because
he's facing nine counts of armed robbery himself. So he
seems like the type of guy who will do anything
to help his legal situation, even if it means falsely
accusing a so called friend of his. And like I

(19:38):
mentioned earlier, it's one of those things where I'm sure
once he was brought in, the police told Connie, hey,
this is the guy. We've got another person who implicated him.
So if you could just pick him out that would
be great, that would be enough for us to make
an arrest. And even if Connie wasn't entirely sure if
this was the guy that she saw, she still went
ahead and identified him.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
However, Sharif would hit with additional charges besides murder. On
the basis of James Raoul's story. Police believed that Sharif
was part of a gang of teenagers who'd been committing
robberies throughout the city, so they charged him with four
additional counts of armed robbery. The case wound up in
the hands of the Orleans of the Orleans Parish District

(20:18):
Attorney's office, who announced that they were planning to try
Sharif four times for each separate count of armed robbery
before they even took him to trial for murder. If
convicted on all these armed robbery charges, Sharif could potentially
receive ninety nine years in prison. He was also going
to be tried in adult court for Michael Girardi's murder,

(20:39):
and if found guilty, he would be facing the death penalty.
Sharif maintained that he was innocent of both the murder
and the robbery charges, but his defense attorneys presented him
with a difficult choice. So they told Sharif that there
was no way that they could possibly win four separate
armed robbery trials and a murder trial. So they advised

(20:59):
him to plead guilty to the robberies and he would
receive a ten year prison sentence and likely only have
to serve half the time. This way, they could devote
all their energy to helping Sharif beat the murder charge
and potentially save his life. Sharif reluctantly agreed to enter
a guilty fleet of the robberies, but came to regret
the decision when he received a twenty year prison sentence

(21:20):
instead of his expected ten years. Nevertheless, Sharif and his
defense team still thought that there was a very good
chance that they would win the murder trial.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
Are these public defenders?

Speaker 1 (21:32):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (21:33):
Okay, yeah, I was like, this is bad advice. Yeah,
so as soon as you started talking about his attorneys, yes,
they had an uphill battle. You've got to keep in
mind when we talk about public defenders, it is something
a lot of attorneys have the honor of doing when
they first start in their career, especially, but public defenders

(21:54):
often have a massive caseload and when they're faced with
a case like this with Sharif, where the five major
crimes they're facing, they're trying to figure out, how can
I give my very limited resources to the best ability
to Sharif. And in their mind they thought, hey, you
know what, let's have him say he did armed robbery

(22:16):
because that'll make him look really good and then we
can spend our focus on the murder. But Sharif's saying,
I didn't do it. And here's what one of the
crazy things is. And I think one of the things
his defense attorneys could be thinking is that Sharif doesn't
have money to bond out and get bailed out. He's
also on trial for murder, so very unlikely he would

(22:39):
get released. Sometimes trials take two and three years to complete,
and so it might have been that his defense attorneys
were saying, listen, just plead guilty and you'll basically be
serving the same amount of time as you're going to
be waiting trial for this murder charge and you'll be out. Well,
they didn't have that in writing. That wasn't a promise.
And even if it was, if you said you're going

(23:00):
to serve six months for the armed robberies, he didn't
do an armed robbery, according to Shreef, and so when
he says I did it, Sharif now has lost any
ability down the road to function as a successful man
in an easy way. Right, no matter how hard he works,
he'll always have to overcome that he admitted to and

(23:21):
was charged with and had to serve time in prison
for armed robbery. I'm not hiring him right there's you're
not getting a job. You have to be careful where
you live, all kinds of things. So they by labeling
him a felon, who then says, I did it. Now
you've created a life where your opportunities and potential are

(23:44):
much more limited and bleak. And then you're going to
face a murder trial with your public defenders not good.
They disappointed you once, they gave you really bad advice once.
And now we're going to see, with very limited resources,
a young, you know, low income kiddo sitting there on trial.
It's not going to go well.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
And we'll talk more about this in our next episode.
But it turned out that the Orleans Parish District Attorney's
office had a history of using this dirty tactic and
other murder cases where they would charge a defendant with
a bunch of other additional crimes such as armed robbery,
and then just say I'm going to take you to
trial for each offense separately, and of course, if they
don't have a lot of money, they have a public defender,

(24:26):
they're going to say, there's no way we can win
all these separate trials, so you're better off pleading guilty
to the lesser charge. And it's all the more heartbreaking
because Sharif is screwed either way, and there's no real
evidence that he committed these robberies other than the story
from James Rowell, who, as we're going to talk about,
is a very unreliable eyewitness. So it just goes to

(24:46):
show that there was a lot of shadiness going on
in this District Attorney's office during that time period, which
made it very hard for innocent people to beat the charges.
So on the surface, it appeared that Sharif had an
airtight alibi which clear to him of any involvement in
Michael Girardi's murder. On the evening of March the second,
Sharif was playing in a youth league basketball game at

(25:06):
the Tremae Recreation Community Center, and the evidence clearly backed
up as alibi. His signature was on the signing sheet,
there were several witnesses who could place him there, and
there was even a videotape of Sharif playing in the game.
Sharif's coach, Eric White, maintained that he drove him home
that night and did not drop him off until ten
forty five pm, around twenty minutes after Michael was murdered,

(25:30):
but in spite of this, the Orleans Parish District Attorney's
office still went ahead with Sharif's trial as planned. It
began in January of nineteen ninety six and would be
prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Roger Jordan and his co
counsel Byron Barry. Since there was no physical evidence linking
Shreif to the crime and the murder weapon could not
be found, the prosecution's case would hinge on the eyewitness

(25:52):
testimony of Connie Babin. When she took the stand, Connie
stated that she was positive that Shariff was the shooter
and identified him, stating, I will never forget that face.
The prosecution also believed that James Raul's testimony would support
their case, but received an unexpected surprise. When he took
the witness stand.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
Raoul recounted his original story and now claimed that Sharif
had never bragged to him that he shot Michael Girardi. So,
according to Raoul, when he was arrested on nine counts
of armed robbery, he was told by his defense attorney,
George Simino, that he could potentially be facing eight hundred
years in prison, so Simino asked if he had any

(26:30):
information to offer which might help reduce that sentence. This
is what led to Raoul implicating Sharif in Michael Girardi's murder,
though he claimed he was coerced and told what to
say by the police and the two prosecuting attorneys when
he gave his official deposition, so in exchange for his testimony,
Raoul would only receive a fifteen year sentence, who was

(26:52):
instructed not to mention this a trial. A sentencing hearing
for Raul's robbery charges had been scheduled by the District
Attorney's office, but they made a calculated decision not to
hold the hearing until after Sharif's trial had concluded, so
they had no legal obligation to disclose this information to
the defense. This revelation prompted the prosecution to call George

(27:13):
Somino and a detective named Daniel Wharton to the stand
as impeachment witnesses. They both testify that they were present
at the meeting when Raoul gave his deposition, and that
he'd implicated Sharif of his own free will without any coercion, of.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
Course they did. Why would the kid retract his statement
if he actually had been right promised something. I love
how they said, Look, we're not even delivering on anything yet,
so how can you hold that against us. This is
one of the problems with our justice system. The deals
that you're willing to make with people. Sometimes they're necessary,

(27:50):
but a lot of times they lead to false information.
If you say, hey, I can get you a deal,
if you can give me anything, I can give you
a lot of things. Right, I'm a very creative person.
If I was hanging out with people who were doing
some questionable, immature, you know, dumb things, I could come
up with a lot of stories that would get you

(28:10):
some information you might want. And so I absolutely believe
that he's another kid who's caught up in this.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
Right, he's one of his friends. He's being caught up
in this as well too. And you know, when you
go back to poor Connie, she said, I'll never forget
that face. I bet she truly believes I know that
face so very well, because how long has it been
since the time he was picked up the lineup, in
the time that she's testifying, if it's you know, how

(28:40):
long was that?

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (28:42):
A whole year. So for a year, Connie is being
told she is safe. We have your you know dates
killer in our hands. This is who it is. Here
he is in the newspaper. Here, he is on TV.
Here he is in an orange jumpsuit. Here he is
at the defense table. Of course, Connie gets up there

(29:03):
and says, well, I know who it is. It's the
same kid I picked out a year ago and I've
been seeing for a year since. So she has been
confirmed in her mind to be right for a year.
The police would have never let someone innocent get to
court and sit in front of her if she wasn't right.
So that's a sad reality of eyewitness identification. And poor

(29:24):
Sharif and his you know, his uh, his basketball coach
is like, wait a minute, what are we talking about?

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Here?

Speaker 3 (29:31):
He was with me and he was with me past
the time that this other individual was murdered. I can
assure you from the sign in sheets to the videotapes
to me dropping him off, Sharif was with me. Sharif
was doing something a normal kid should have been doing. Yes,
he was making mistakes by hanging out with the wrong kids.
But remember Carrie is engaged in an extracurricular activity, he's

(29:55):
doing well in school. He's gone through substance abuse treatment
like my guy in the scenario he was dealt. He
really didn't have a whole lot of hope to escape
that cycle. And it seems like he's trying to escape,
but he's trying to find ways to be a healthy,
functioning kid given the circumstances he has. And now he's

(30:17):
sitting about to be assigned to death row because no
one's doing the right thing. No one's calling out issues
that are in his case. They're overlooking facts, they're hiding
evidence because they quote don't have a legal responsibility. You
have an ethical responsibility to do the right thing, whether
you have a legal win or not.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah. The basketball coach Eric White, he was always one
of Sharif's biggest supporters, and he was trying to help
him out, even though he had gotten into some trouble
in the past, had some substance abuse issues, and he
never changed his story. He always maintained that I dropped
Shreef off at this particular time, so he couldn't have
committed the crime. And we'll talk more about this in
a few minutes, but you're going to get particularly enraged

(30:57):
when you hear about the dirty tactics that were used
to try to discredit the coach's alibi. So the crux
of the defense's case would be Sharif's alibi. Like we
mentioned earlier, he was playing at a basketball game at
the Recreation Community Center in the Tremaine neighborhood and someone
from the crowd had actually videotaped the game and captured
Sharif in the footage. Not only that, but the video

(31:18):
was timestamped and seemed to show that there was no
way Sharif would have had enough time to travel to
the French Quarter and shoot Michael by ten twenty six pm. However,
the prosecution argued that the time stamps could have been
inaccurate if the video camera was not set correctly. In
spite of this, to Recreation department supervisors, a player from
the opposing team, and Sharif's coach, Eric White appeared as

(31:41):
witnesses to testify that the game ended sometime between ten
twenty and ten thirty PM, and White was adamant that
he dropped Sharif off at his home at ten forty five.
The defense was also planning to present three of Shreif's
teammates as alibi witnesses, as White had also driven them
home and dropped them off before Shari, But even though
they were subpoened, none of the three teammates showed up

(32:04):
in court on the day they were scheduled to testify,
and they could not be located. Prosecutor Roger Jordan attempted
to discredit Shreif's alibi by playing a recording of a
prior interview he had conducted with Eric White in which
he contradicted his trial testimony. In the recording, Why could
be heard saying that the game ended at nine thirty,

(32:24):
so Jordan argued that after being dropped off at home,
Shreif still could have had enough time to travel to
the French quarter and kill Michael at ten twenty six.
While making his closing statement to the jury, Jordan described
the circumstances of the murder, which prompted Shref to cause
an outburst by standing up and yelling out quote, I
wasn't there. In the end, the jury believed the prosecution's

(32:47):
version of events, and on January the twenty sixth, they
found Sharif guilty of first degree murder. The jury would
subsequently deliberate on Shreif's sentencing and voted for him to
receive the death penalty, though there would be a month's
long delay before sentencing would actually be pasted.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
Well, here's the poor thing that the jury's facing, right.
The reality behind jury psychology is that you have somebody
who's been brought to trial again. They're sitting there in
a jumpsuit, right, they're shackled probably, and they're sitting at
a defense table. You have a victim who's saying, I

(33:25):
one hundred percent know that I'm right. You have people
wearing a badge who are supposed to be honest and
respected saying this is what happened, this is what we saw.
And you have prosecutors who are making an argument that
they're debunking or trying to discredit everything that could stand
for Sharif when you have people who are supporting him,

(33:48):
like his coach, there's a questionable reality of saying like, well,
of course, someone who cared about him and was trying
to help him have a better life is going to
stand up for him, like the coach is almost a
daph and so wouldn't the dad of this kid or
the coach of this kid have a reason to lie
for him. So Sharif's in trouble from the get go.

(34:10):
We assume police wouldn't lie, prosecutors wouldn't lie, witnesses wouldn't lie.
A victim would never get it wrong because they would
remember that face for the rest of their life, and
that no one would make it to that room without
being guilty because innocent people, we would obviously know that
they're innocent. And so I think when you sit there

(34:30):
and you say innocent until proven guilty, I do believe
because it's, you know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that that
is the way we aim to be. But I think
when someone walks into a courtroom, there's an assumption they're guilty,
and I need to see questionable reasonable doubt before I
can change my mind. I think that's how the human
brain works.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
Why would they bring charges unless this person had evidence
against them. And you brought up jury psychology, and I
think that's an a important point. When Sharif has these
public defenders, how do you think, Ashley, that plays into
the process of wadier, which is jury selection, and you
have these prosecutors on the other side with more resources

(35:16):
and more ability to be able to vet these people, Like,
how likely do you think that he was able to
have a jury of his peers?

Speaker 3 (35:25):
I doubt it. You've also got to remember, oftentimes a
lot of people aren't getting a jury of their peers.
But here you have prosecutors. Often when you're talking about
district attorneys and things like that, they often have years
upon years and decades upon decades of experience. They know
jury psychology, they know those kinds of factors, how race

(35:46):
and gender play a role, And unfortunately for a public defender,
they also are very talented in that. But they have
to know their defendant, They have to know the case
incredibly well. They have to know what factors are working
against them and how that's going to impact the jury.
And I think because they're given so many cases in
so much workload, that they simply don't have the time

(36:10):
to get to know Sharif and his needs and his personality.
The people who are going to be testifying, I just
don't think they have the same time, in resources or
experience that you're going to see or honestly, in some cases,
conviction and dedication. I think most people, like any other profession,
when they say yes, I'll fulfill that job duty right,

(36:32):
they do it to the best of their ability. I
think most people do try to have integrity, but that's
one of those like we're going to do the best
we can, but sometimes the best we can is not
really what that defendant deserves.

Speaker 4 (36:46):
Well.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Almost immediately following the guilty verdict, Sharif's defense team was
mailed a recording from an anonymous source. It turned out
to be a tape recorded statement that Connie Babin had
made when she was interviewed three days after the murder,
where she stated that she was not wearing her glasses
or contact lenses when she witnessed Michael get shot. Since

(37:07):
it was dark at the time, Connie said that all
she could really see were patterns and shapes, so she
did not get a good look at the shooter or
as two accomplices. The only information Connie could provide was
that the shooter was slightly shorter than Michael, making him
around five foot seven or five foot eight, but Shariffe

(37:27):
was actually four inches taller than Michael. The defense was
also able to obtain a copy of a report written
by the first officer who interviewed Connie following the murder,
where she stated that she would probably not be able
to identify anyone. This was in direct contradiction to Connie's
trial testimony, in which she expressed absolute certainty that Sharif

(37:49):
was a shooter. Since in neither the report nor the
recording of Connie's interview were disclosed to the defense, they
filed a motion for a new trial, but it was
ultimately to The sentencing phase finally resumed, and on July second,
Jarife was officially sentenced to death by a lethal injection
and transferred to death row at Louisiana State Prison in Angola.

(38:12):
By this point, Sharife was only seventeen years old, making
him the youngest person ever to be condemned to death
row in the history of Louisiana.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
Can you imagine how terrified this poor kid is that
he is doing petty silly things, right, He's doing what
a lot of kids in his community are doing. He's
getting exposed to drugs. He might be doing a little
bit of petty theft to fund drugs or to steal
from somebody in his pursuit of drug dealing and things
like that. But this is not a kid who killed someone,

(38:43):
and it's not a kid who deserves to be in prison,
much less on death row. He's a child in a
very hardened man's game. I cannot imagine what he faced
walking through those doors and thinking, Okay, the sounds of smells,
the size of people, it's terrifying. It's so sad to

(39:03):
think of that. And not only is he walking into
prison with bars closing behind him, but his reality is
that the only way he's leaving there is deceased due
to lethal injection. The other thing that makes me enraged
is this audio tape of Connie. And do not misunderstand
I'm not frustrated with Connie whatsoever. Connie's a victim in

(39:25):
this case. Multiple times, because Connie is telling the police, Hey,
I wasn't wearing my contacts or glasses. I honestly couldn't
see them very well. Remember, there's reasons she wouldn't have
seen them very well if she did have her glasses
in contacts on, but she's saying I did not. I
honestly could only see shapes. But the police need her

(39:47):
to validate what they've already confirmed in their own minds,
And so Connie now becomes a pawn and manipulated and
loses her like the dignity that they give her as
a true victim. Right, They use her as a tool
at that point, And it's frustrating because you take someone
who's been through trauma, you gaslight them basically and try

(40:11):
to convince them that they saw something they didn't and
then they believe it. And remember Connie's part of this story.
So when eventually we found out Sharif was wrongfully convicted,
Connie has to deal with the repercussions of saying I
was the one who pointed to him and said I'd
remember that face for the rest of my life. And
Connie did nothing wrong here. The professionals handling her and

(40:33):
her testimony are the ones who, like I said, used her.
And she also becomes a even deeper victim because of
the investigation and trial process.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
Yeah, talking about how terrified Charif must have been at
that age, He said that he didn't really have much
concept on how the death penalty worked, Like all he
knew was he was being sent to this prison to
be executed. But I don't think he really graps that, No,
you don't get executed immediately. You'll at least be on
death row for several years while we tried to appeal
your conviction. But in his eyes, he could be taken

(41:05):
out and executed at any time, which is a very
traumatic experience. And it is also very bothersome that even
after they discovered that the primary evidence against him, Connie's
identification was not reliable, that nobody in power said, maybe
there's some reasonable doubt here and we shouldn't try to
execute a seventeen year old kid. But no, they just
stuck to their guns and sent him to death row. Anyway,

(41:28):
given Scherif's young age, the decision to give him the
death penalty was a controversial one. His supporter sought the
assistance of CLIVEE Stafford Smith, a British foreign attorney who
had become a prominent activist against the death penalty, and
he soon an uncovered evidence of some egregious aximis conduct
which had been committed by both the New Orleans Police
Department and the Orleans Parish District Attorney's office. The lead

(41:51):
detective on this case had been Anthony Small, but disturbing
allegations began to emerge against him. Small had initially claimed
that he uncovered two a day tional eye witnesses besides
Connie Babin, who saw Sharif commit the murder, but they
were never called upon to testify a trial. However, it
turned out that the reason for this was because the
witnesses did not actually exist, as Small had allegedly lied

(42:14):
about them, so he would have additional evidence to secure
a warrant for Sharif's arrest. Clive Stafford Smith would also
hear a shocking story from Small's ex wife. On March
twenty fourth, nineteen ninety five, three weeks after the murder,
the Crime Stoppers tip line supposedly received a call from
someone who claimed that they had heard Sharif Kussin boasting
about the crime, and Small made a note of this

(42:36):
in a report. When Sharif was arrested a few days later,
the tipster wound up receiving a reward of ten five
hundred dollars. Well, according to his ex wife, small was
the person who phoned in the tip and after the arrest,
he got one of his friends to pose as the
tipster so they could split the reward money together. And
needless to say, this was a major conflict of interest.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
Wow. Yeah, it's a catastrophic conflict of interest. What a
morally corrupt, dark human being. It sounds like lying with
something that was just natural to him, right that, I'm
going to basically create witnesses. I'm going to flub this
story and I'm going to make all these lies and

(43:20):
develop evidence that doesn't exist. Oh and I'm going to
capitalize on this by getting a friend to call it
in and we're going to split this. I'm going to
make money off of taking a child and ruining and
stealing their life from them to the point that they're
going to be executed. Like how much more corrupt do
you get? And remember when you guys told me that

(43:40):
there were actually some of Sharif's friends that were supposed
to come and testify, but they couldn't find them and
they never showed up. I would not be surprised if
they were not threatened or manipulated in some way or
made to feel fearful that if they did come and
they justified Sharif being innocent, that they they were going
to be charged with their own crimes, that the police

(44:02):
were going to plant something on them, or the prosecutors
were going to make charges against them. I guarantee you
there was some kind of intimidation where they said, I'm
not getting involved in that.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
There would also be disturbing allegations against prosecutors Roger Jordan
and Byron Barry, who used some very questionable tactics to
discredit Sharif's alby defense. As you might recall, three of
Sharif's teammates who'd been subpoena to testify that he was
with them when coach Eric White dropped them off after
the game, but they never showed up in court on

(44:32):
their scheduled date. As Ashley just mentioned, well, guess what.
These witnesses actually did show up as plan that morning
and were waiting in the hallway outside the courtroom when
they were intercepted by Roger Jordan and Byron Barry, who
instructed them to wait in the District Attorney's office across
the street. Without the defense's knowledge, the three teammates wound

(44:53):
up waiting in the office all day and missing their
scheduled time to testify until the prosecution informed them that
their testimony would no longer be required. In the defense's eyes,
the prosecution had practically kidnapped and illegally detained their witnesses.
When questioned about these allegations, Barry did admit that he
asked them to wait in the District Attorney's office, but

(45:16):
only did so because it was hot that day and
thought the witnesses might be more comfortable waiting there because
it was air conditioned.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
Well, the problem was that the trial took place in January,
in fact, one of the coldest januaries in the history
of New Orleans.

Speaker 3 (45:33):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (45:33):
Wow, I knew you'd say that.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Wow. Okay, So, like I said, something happened where these
poor kids wanted to testify. They wanted to show up
for Sharif's attempt or for his benefit, and they did.
Oh my god, these poor kids did. They came and
they said, we played ball with him. We played until

(45:58):
I guarantee you they would confirm thirty because remember the
coach accidentally says nine to thirty at one point. I
guarantee you they would confirm the timeline. I guarantee you,
they would confirm that they saw him there, and you
know what's sad. I still don't know if that would
have been enough, because again we talked about the issues
with people who know you and quote care about you
being your alibi, but they didn't even have a chance.

(46:22):
Sharif didn't even have a chance. They literally did. They said, hey,
go hide out over here, that's where that's where you
need to be, with all the purpose being they cannot
contradict the story we've told the jury, and that's exactly
what they were.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
Going to do.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
I mean, just imagine you're the jury and you see
three alibi witnesses just not show up to testify in
their scheduled date. They're probably thinking to themselves, well, they
probably knew that Sharif is guilty and that he committed
the murder, and they were planning to perjure themselves, but
they probably chickened out and that's why they didn't testify
when all along they were just directed to the wrong
place by the prosecuting attorneys. So it's just terrible. Shakairi.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
Yet they cared about him, so they like they would
show up. But if they don't show up, it shows
either they don't want to get involved. Maybe they've grown
apart because he is a killer, right and they were
gonna lie because they cared about him, But now they don't.
It looks bad.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
I think through the lens of twenty twenty five, if
people are familiar with true crime, they might look at
that in a different way. They might think that if
three witnesses don't show up, that is really strange. If
one decides to bail, okay, but you almost have to
ask the question if there was witness intimidation or something
else was afoot. But I think back then nobody was

(47:38):
going to be asking those questions, and there was probably
a lot more trust with the police and the prosecution.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Oh yeah, exactly, Like back in nineteen ninety five. I
don't think the average jury member was aware how unreliable
eyewitness identification could be, and that had led to many
wrongful convictions. So they were going to take Connie Babben's
testimony as as gospel. But of course, if t happened today,
I think enough people are familiar enough with these cases
and have listened to enough podcasts that they might find

(48:05):
this whole thing suspicious. Well, I hate to tell you this, ash,
but It gets even worse, as perhaps the most shocking
allegation of misconduct involved the tape recorded statement of coach
Eric White's pre trial interview with Roger Jordan. To recap,
White testified that the basketball game ended sometime between ten
twenty and ten thirty PM, but when he asked what

(48:27):
time the game ended during the recording, White could be
heard answering nine thirty. Theoretically, this still would have given
enough time for Sharif to make it to the French
quarter to commit the murder at ten twenty six. But
here's the big problem. Multiple games took place at the
recreation center that night, and an extra game was added
at the last minute, which caused Shreef's game to be delayed.

(48:49):
As a result, it did not actually start until nine thirty.
White maintained that he only answered nine to thirty when
Jordan asked him what time the game started, not when
it ended. According to White, when Jordan recorded the interview,
he used a micro cassette tape recorder, but when Jordan
played the interview during the trial, he used a regular
tape recorder. As a result, White became convinced that Jordan

(49:13):
had doctored the tape and edited his answer. He even
went so far as to openly object when the tape
was played in court, but was not allowed to elaborate
on this issue for the jury. If that wasn't enough,
it turned out that investigators for the prosecution had also
interviewed a pair of brothers who refereed the games that night,
and they also stated that Sharif's game ended right before

(49:34):
ten thirty. But this information was never shared with the defense.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
Why why why would you sit there and say it
is not even a question. It is confirmed over and
over and over again by the referees. Have a reason
to lie on his behalf. Like there's multiple people, his
entire team, his coach, people signing the players in for
the game, Reese, and and then you have other factors

(50:04):
that they know, Connie saying that she didn't really see
them very well. You have other people who are recount
recanting their testimonies, saying, you know, I said his name,
but I know he wasn't there. It is wild that
human life means so little to you. It's just his
kid was a throwaway to them. He was a like

(50:26):
he was discarded, like a piece of trash. Like you
just go ahead and they're going to stick a needle
in your arm and kill you. And that's okay with
me because I'm gonna win this case. I'm gonna lock
somebody up and all the wild guys. There's a real
killer who confronted this couple and shot the man in
the face, and we're just gonna send a kid to

(50:48):
death row for it, even though we know he didn't
do it. I don't understand there's multiple players in this
that knew they were wrong and they did it anyway.
I just cannot understand that.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
In Another factor is if you're recalled. There were three
people involved in the crime, the shooter and two accomplices,
Yet they arrest Sharif send them to death row, and
they don't seem to care too much about finding these
two other accomplices who were an accessory to murder. And
that's probably because they know Sharif did not have two
accomplices because he didn't do it.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
You could see something similar like this happening in Las Vegas.
It's any of those places that are like tourist destinations.
They always want to wrap it up quickly and they
don't seem to be too concerned with the details. There
seems to be so many cases from New Orleans, lots
from Las Vegas too, where it's like, let's just wrap.

Speaker 5 (51:35):
It up, even if it's a frame up job, Let's just.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
Do it quickly because we don't want to affect the
influx of cash and tourists to this destination.

Speaker 3 (51:43):
Yes, you have to paint a story that this can't
happen to you, and don't worry. If anything does happen,
we quickly apprehend and really significantly punish the person responsible.
And it's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
Well, all these shocking revelations prompted Sharif's defense attorneys to
file an appeal with the Louisiana Supreme Court, arguing the
prosecution had committed a number of Brady violations by withholding
so much exculpatory evidence. They now believed there were major
credibility issues with Connie Babbin's eyewitness testimony and that without it,

(52:18):
there was literally no evidence that Shariff committed the crime.
The defense also had issues with the prosecution's decision to
call George Soemino and Detective Daniel Wharton to the stand
as rebuttal witnesses. When James Raoul recounted his story, Their
argument was that the prosecution was now using Semino and
Wharton's memories of Raoul's earlier statements to strengthen their case

(52:42):
for Sharif's guilt, but their testimony was nothing more than
hearsay and should not have been considered evidence.

Speaker 4 (52:49):
Well.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
The Louisiana Supreme Court agreed with this particular argument and
stated that a quote flagrant misuse of evidence had taken place,
so in April nineteen ninety eight, they overturned Sharif's conviction
and ordered a new trial. By this point, Sharif's case
had already been featured on a number of television shows
and generated a lot of controversy, but there was still

(53:12):
uncertainty about whether or not he would be taken to
trial again. The case garnered the attention of prominent human
rights advocate Bianca Jagger, the former wife of singer Mick Jagger,
who announced her plans to travel to New Orleans and
organize some protests and rallies. While before any of this
could happen, Sharif was suddenly offered a plea bargain on

(53:34):
January eighth, nineteen ninety nine, so in exchange for pleading
guilty to the murder, Sharif would be sentenced to time
served and taken off death row, but he turned down
the deal. Within a few hours of Sharif making this decision,
the Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick Senior, publicly announced
that his office was going to drop the case because

(53:56):
there just wasn't enough evidence to take Sharif to trial again.
Sharif was removed from death row, he would still have
to remain in prison to serve out the remainder of
his sentence for the armed robbery charges that he pled
guilty to.

Speaker 3 (54:09):
It's erroneous, Okay, let me let me uh that he
should have never pled guilty to.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
Right.

Speaker 3 (54:16):
I love it here. He's sitting there and he's he's
approached with this deal. You're a kid, and you know
that your outcome is likely death. Right, that's what you've
been sentenced to. And all of a sudden you get
a reprieve that they're going to drop the charges, and
they say, hey, we're going to recharge you. Okay, we're
coming after you again because we know you did it.

(54:39):
And all you got to do is say I did
it and you can basically go home after you serve
your armed robbery charges because you'll be off death row,
you'll have already served your murder sentence, and you are
home free. What they're doing is they're trying to avoid
any responsibility for wrongfully convicting this kid. They're trying to

(55:00):
get it where they can be excused from all they're
wrongdoing because he just told you he's guilty. Sharif's smarter
than that. And Sharif says I didn't do it. I've
already suffered enough with people thinking I did it, and
my answer is no. And what makes it wild is
that just within a few hours, the prosecution says, you
know what, we're not going to recharge you anyway. So literally,

(55:23):
you can tell the only reason that they went to
him with that plea deal was to try to excuse
themselves from any further responsibility, financial compensation, anything like that.
But thank the Lord that you did have somebody who
was willing to relook at the evidence and say we
cannot reprosecute this case. Now at this point, I'm assuming

(55:47):
they're not declaring his actual innocence, which again would hold
them responsible. But Harry Connick Senior, remember Harry Knock Junior's dad,
we've seen him in a very recent in case where
was that.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
It was the Crystal Champagne murder, which took place in
the suburbs of New Orleans in nineteen ninety six, just
a year after this crime, and was prosecuted by his nephew,
Paul Conic. And in Part two we're going to talk
more about the whole situation with the Conic family. But
it is interesting to see the parallels because Paul Conic,
when he realized he had sent an innocent man to
death row, fought very hard to get the conviction overturned

(56:24):
and admitted he was wrong. But Harry Conic Senior would
not do the same thing.

Speaker 3 (56:29):
Nope, he's saying, hey, let's try to trick this kid
to say he's guilty so that we're not held capable
and then we don't owe him anything. And then he says, oh,
I wasn't going to recharge you anyway, no worries.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
But yeah, Like, how many cases are you going to
offer someone on death row for murder a plea deal
where you said, plea guilty and we'll send you to
time served, Like they're not going to do that to
a guilty person.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
This is feeling very like West Memphis three.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Yep, very much.

Speaker 3 (56:56):
Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh. I love when Damien
Eggles is told basically, you've got your two code offindants,
all three of you need to plead guilty in order
to get Damien off death row. He's the only one
on death row. And the two are going nope, nope,
we didn't do it, we didn't do it. And Damien
has to say, listen, you need to help me. If

(57:19):
we take an Alfred plea, at least my life is spared,
and then we'll have to fight for accountability for the
people who have wronged us. But like, what a desperate
situation of integrity and desire to prove your innocence and
then knowing you're running out of time for your friend
to not be killed for something you know is wrong

(57:40):
and that he's innocent. It's insane.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
On a side note there, they are still trying to
do DNA testing in the West Memphis three case, but
it keeps getting postponed, so hopefully we do get a
conclusive answer at some point.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
Didn't they get a lot of information that justified the
stepdad doing it?

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Yeah. Terry Hobbs, one of the stepdads, one of the victims,
is considered a potential alternate suspect to be the killer,
but they're hoping to conclusively prove that if they can
test the DNA, OH.

Speaker 3 (58:05):
That would be fantastic.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
If anyone's interested in long form coverage of this. The
prosecutors are taking it on. They're on the episode two
right now, but they're saying like there could be like
twenty episodes, twenty eight episodes of this case. They're going
through all the legal minutia and every little detail of it,
and they're so thorough. Bretton Alis are amazing. So if

(58:27):
anybody's looking to want to go deeper with that case,
they're going to uncover things that you've never heard before.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
So Sharif's family filed a civil lawsuit against the District
Attorney's office and the New Orleans Police Department, naming Roger Jordan,
Byron Barry, and Detective Anthony Small as the defendants. Harry
Connock Senior was also listed as a defendant, as they
sought to hold them liable for his failure to properly
train and supervise the prosecutors from his office. But in

(58:55):
two thousand and three, the US Court of Appeals for
the Fifth Circuit dismissed the lawsuit, that Jordan and Barry
were protected by the doctrine of absolute prosecutorial immunity and
that Conic had qualified immunity. However, a separate complaint was
filed against Jordan with the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board for
his allegimist conduct during Sharif's trial. In two thousand and five,

(59:17):
Jordan wound up being disciplined for his actions by the
Louisiana Supreme Court, the first time they had ever done
so to a prosecutor. But Jordan's punishment was nothing more
than a three month suspension, which would be waived on
the provision that he did not commit another ethics breach
over the course of the next year. While most people
considered this to be a slap on the wrist, Jordan

(59:37):
still felt that the ruling was too harsh and tarnished
his otherwise unblemish record, so he made an unsuccessful attempt
to appeal the decision. In September of that year, Sharif
was paroled for his armed robbery charges, and he finally
got to walk out of prison, Though it was a
very bittersweet feeling. Since Hurricane Katrina had destroyed his family's
home less than one month beforehand, so he was forced

(59:59):
to go live at a cousin's house in Bowser City.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
How sad I still remember Hurricane Katrina and you can
still see remnants of that damage when you go to
New Orleans. It's so so sad. The disparity and income
and things like that, the tension to certain areas and
little jurisdictions down there. It was It's pitiful that you
still see places that were never rebuilt or restored. And

(01:00:25):
he's in prison when all this is happening. You think
about losing your family home. You think about the years
that he was sitting there for something he did not
do in the level of the prison on death row,
and then and you as a very violent armed robber,
he was not with people doing white collar check writing.

(01:00:46):
You know, this is He's in a very intense situation.
And so in some ways, I'm praying that that move
to Bosier City actually put him maybe in a better environment,
even though I know in his heart he wanted to
go to his family home that no longer existed. Do
you know if he ever returned to New Orleans or
do you or did he stay in Bosuer City course ACTI.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
Jules was going to tell you about it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
This part's going to make you sad ash.

Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
Oh no, this has already been a day.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
Yeah so, And this is the callback to why I
asked you earlier to define recidivism. Sharife eventually moved to
Georgia and got a job as a legal clerk for
the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta. He also
wound up marrying a woman with three kids, and they
had another child together, which Sharif was unable to financially

(01:01:36):
support his new family. In two thousand and eight, Sharif
found himself in more legal trouble when he was caught
using his boss's name, birth date, and social Security number
in order to obtain credit cards and rack up forty
two thousand dollars in purchases. Sharif pled guilty to identity
fraud and credit card fraud and received a ten year

(01:01:57):
prison sentence. After serving three years, he was paroled for
good behavior and eventually moved back to New Orleans. He's
since become an activist for ending the death penalty in
Louisiana and had become involved with helping the wrongfully convicted.
He's also done work for such organizations as Witness to Innocence,
a nonprofit organization which supports people who've been exonerated from

(01:02:20):
death row, and the Resurrection After Exoneration Project, which was
founded by John Thompson, another wrongfully convicted death row inmate,
whom we will be discussing in part two of this series.
In spite of everything that has happened, the Orleans Parish
District Attorney's Office still seems to hold the position that
Sharif Couzin was guilty of Michael Gerardi's murder. As a result,

(01:02:44):
Michael's real killers have never been brought to justice and
the crime technically remains unsolved.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
So I guess you could say the path when Chile.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
They do not. They do not think that Sharif is
actually guilty of this murder. They cannot admit that they
did something wrong. And there's so many different players who
are wrong in this situation. It's not one thing that
went wrong where it's easy to say like, oh wow,
who would have known that was wrong? And during the
trial we messed up. There are multiple individuals who knowingly hid, disgraced,

(01:03:23):
embarrassed the evidence that was presented right, it wasn't real evidence.
They hid the real evidence. They manipulated people. They even
cashed in and made themselves a quick five thousand dollars
through a tip call, just to benefit their own family.
It's a really, really bad case. And you're right, Sharif

(01:03:44):
was set up to fail from the beginning of his life.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
He's born into a circumstance where the kids have to
fight hard to have a better life for themselves with
very little resources and sometimes without a lot of support.
And Reef goes and he gets married. He has three kids,
and when they have another kiddo, it's expensive, it's stressful.

(01:04:09):
Sharif is the man of the house. He needs to
be the provider. And Sharif was never taught how to
do any of those things. Remember, he did not have
a father. You do have his basketball coach, who seemed
to be a really positive male role model. But Sharif
is building a family from basically his imagination of what
it's supposed to look like. And remember, because his awesome

(01:04:32):
public defenders told him to plead guilty to armed robbery,
he's a felon, and so when he's released and out
there seeking positions that are going to hire him and
give him a paycheck. His options are incredibly limited. You're
talking about a fast food restaurants, maybe some manual labor positions,

(01:04:53):
but nothing that's going to be a competitive, good pay
type of job because there's a lot of peace people
buying for those and if I can hire someone who's
not an armed robber potential murderer, I'm going to do that.
So Sharif has a stigma that he's having to battle.
There is no surprise that he was desperate, and it

(01:05:17):
was easy for him to say, hey, listen, I don't
know what else to do. I'm gonna get some information
from someone who has the ability to get money. And
he tries to provide for his family the wrong way,
but to him, probably the best way he knew how.
And again, remember the people who did teach him how
to be a man were the people he served next

(01:05:38):
to you in prison, which is not the kind of people
you want raising you. He was a child in a
man's world, in a very dangerous man's world, and then
he's thrown out on the streets with a record and
expected to function and be successful. He did pretty darn good,
and now, thank the Lord, he can use his tragedy
for purpose and work with groups like Witness Tenniscence Resurrection.

(01:06:01):
After exoneration, I worked specifically with Witness Tennessence and Sabrina Butler,
who was a mother accused of killing her child and
as she too was on death row and later was exonerated.
And it's insane that there's so many people, that there's
organizations of these individuals. But my god, what a family

(01:06:22):
you don't want to be in, but a powerful family
of fellow wrongfully convicted individuals and they do beautiful, amazing work.
So it turned out okay for him. He can use
even the part where he messed up once he was
released as part of his testimony, like this is why
not caring about the sixteen year old boy mattered, because

(01:06:43):
it wasn't just me at sixteen. It was me when
I actually had a chance. It's me when I was
being loved. It's me when I had little ones who
needed me and I got I got in trouble and
caught up because I was set up to fail from
the moment those handcuffs went on me.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
Yeah. The good news is that ever since Shereef served
that time in prison on the product charges, he has
kept his nose clean since he was paroled and is
still doing good work today, so at least we do
have a somewhat happy ending, even though he has never
been officially exonerated, so this would be a good time
to bring an end to Part one. Join us next
week as we present part two of our series about
the murder of Michael Girardi and the wrongful conviction of

(01:07:19):
Sharifquissen Robin.

Speaker 5 (01:07:22):
Do you want to tell us a little bit about
the Trail Went Cold Patreon?

Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
Yes. The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
and signed thank you cards to anyone who signs up
with us on Patreon if you join our five dollars
tier Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus episodes in
which I talk about cases which are not featured on

(01:07:48):
the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon,
and if you join our highest tier tier free, the
ten dollar tier. One of the features we offer is
a audio commentary track over classic episodisodes of UNSAWD Mysteries,
where you can download an audio file and then boot
up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in

(01:08:11):
the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
download a commentary track in which I make more smart
ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Tier three.

Speaker 4 (01:08:30):
So I want to let you know a little bit
about the Jeweles and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad
free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our
Path Went Chili mini's, which are always over an hour,
so they're not very many, but they're just too short
to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those,
so we hope you'll check out those patreons.

Speaker 5 (01:08:48):
We'll link them in the show notes.

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
So I want to thank you all for listening, and
any chance you have to share us on social media
with a friend or d rate and review is greatly appreciated.
You can email us at The Path Went Chili at
g email dot com. You can reach us on Twitter
at the pathwin So until next time, be sure to
bundle up, because cold trails and chili pass call for
warm clothing.

Speaker 5 (01:09:09):
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy