Sharif Cousin Pt. Two

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:30):
Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two
of our series about the murder of Michael Girardi and
the wrongful conviction of Sharif Couzan Robin. Do you want
to catch everyone up when we talked about in our
previous episode.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, this is one of the most outrageous wrongful conviction
cases we've ever discussed. It took place in New Orleans
in nineteen ninety five. Michael Girardi was out on a
date with a woman named Connie Babbit in the French Quarter,
but as they were walking back to his truck, he
wound up getting shot to death and robbed by three
unidentified black mails. They soon arrested a sixteen year old

(01:03):
suspect named Sharif Coussen after Connie Babbin identified him as
the shooter, but that was really the only evidence against
him other than the testimony of a friend of Sharif's name,
James Rowel, though it soon became a parent that he
was falsely implicating Sharif because he had a whole bunch
of other charges that he was trying to get out of.

(01:23):
So Sharif was charged with first degree murder and as
well as four armed robberies that he was alleged to
have been involved in, even though Sharif claimed that he
had nothing to do with any of these crimes, and
the Orleans Parish District Attorney's office announced that they were
going to try Sharif four separate times on each of
the robbery charges before they charged him with murder, and

(01:43):
because he was being represented by a public defender, he
was told that there's no way we're going to win
five consecutive trials. So it's probably a good idea if
you plead guilty to the robbery charges even though you're innocent,
because you'll get a lighter sentence and we can put
all of the focus on getting you off on the
murder charge. Well, he did that. He got twenty year
cents for the robberies, and when they went on trial
for the murder charge, Connie Babin identified Charif as the

(02:07):
robber she saw and that was enough to get him
convicted and he received the death penalty, even though he
was only seventeen years old at that time, which generated
a lot of controversy, and of course it turned out
to the whole case was rife with corruption that Connie
Babin had originally made a statement to a police officer
that she didn't have her glasses on that night and
couldn't actually see the robber's face, but it seemed to

(02:30):
parent that police coursed her into identifying Charif as the robber.
It turned out that Sharif had a rock solid alibi
placing him at the other side of the city at
the time that Michael was murdered. But they prosecutors did
every dirty trick in the book to try to prevent
this alibi from making it. They even altered the tape
of Shreif's basketball coach, saying that he dropped him off

(02:51):
at ten thirty, which is when the murder took place.
They even falsely detained some alibi witnesses that were going
to back up Sharif. So the whole thing was pretty outrageous,
but it eventually generated enough controversy that Sharif's conviction was
overturned and the murder charges were dropped and he was
eventually released from prison. But the authorities continue to maintain
that he was guilty all along, so he never got

(03:13):
any compensation for his wrongful conviction. And unfortunately, the real killers,
all three of them of Michael Girardi were never identified
in cot, so this is technically an unsaw mystery. Again,
so would you say you were suitably outraged by all
the details we shared about this story in part one.
We're not going to turn this whole series into a
massive crusade against the death penalty, but I will say

(03:36):
that this story is a case study and how horribly
the death penalty can go wrong. Even if Sharif Kussen
was actually guilty of this murder, a lot of people
still had issues with the idea of executing someone who
was only sixteen years old when he committed the crime.
I mean, it's not like that type of thing is unprecedented,
as the United States has executed a few people for

(03:56):
having committed some pretty heinous murders when they were under
the age of eighteen. But if you're going to do
something like that, you need a rock solid case and
much stronger evidence than one eye witnesses who wasn't even
wearing her glasses when she saw the crime. In an
ironic PostScript to the story, only six months before Sharif
was released from prison, the Supreme Court of the United

(04:19):
States made a ruling on the case Roper versus Simmons,
voting five to four at a bar capital punishment for
offenders who commit crimes before the age of eighteen. The
case in question involved a seventeen year old named Christopher Simmons,
who was sent to death for his involvement in a
brutal murder, which he committed alongside two other friends. Even
though there was no doubt Simmons was guilty, the Supreme

(04:41):
Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to execute someone for
committing a crime at that age. So if Sharif Kusen's
conviction had occurred one decade later, he never would have
been sent to death row. But then perhaps his story
might not have garnered as much attention, and that is
ultimately the most disturbing thing about this case. The people
in power clearly knew that they were sending an innocent

(05:03):
teenage kid to be executed, but they didn't seem to
have any remorse about it. Perhaps they genuinely believe Sharif
was the perpetrator when his name first popped up in
the investigation, but once the uncovered concrete evidence that he
was at another location at the time the murder took place,
that should have been the end of it. Instead, they
committed some pretty egregious misconduct in order to secure a

(05:25):
conviction at any cost.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
This is where the case actually goes haywire when you
dig down and you see that people are knowingly hiding evidence,
People are knowingly falsifying testimonies from eyewitnesses and or coercing
a certain testimony out of them. When someone had to
make sure that they averted and got the witnesses who
were at the basketball game to go to another location

(05:50):
so that they would miss their calling to sit at
the trial and actually defend him and say he played
basketball with me that night. These are knowing, they're known actions.
These are purposeful actions where these people said, if this happens,
if the truth gets out, this kid's going to be
released because we're hiding the truth or we're coercing a

(06:12):
version of the truth that we want to actually exist
and not the actual truth. It's disturbing because it's not
just the fact that you have somebody on trial. You
have someone on trial who's eligible for the death penalty
in this case, and it's a child. This is someone
that literally they had no care whatsoever about this individual

(06:35):
because they said it's more important that we are right
and that we get our version of the truth across,
even if it means we need to break our own
professional and ethical standards. And that's exactly what they did.
You nailed it, Robin. It doesn't even matter the fact
if you're pro or are anti the death penalty itself,
because people can make very good arguments for the death penalty,
and people can make very good arguments against it. But

(06:58):
when you start to look at the fact that we
have had hundreds of people exonerated because they did not
do the crime they were convicted for, and many of those,
a large percentage of those are serving time on death
row before their release, it makes you call into question.
If you can make a mistake, how do you then
stand behind such a permanent punishment. There is not always

(07:22):
a guarantee, even when there's this overwhelming amount of evidence
that someone's going to be released, because other people stepped
over the line and did not withhold or did not
uphold their constitutional rights, did not stand behind their professional
ethics and do the right thing, and instead they fought
to win.

Speaker 4 (07:39):
That's exactly what happened in this case.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
The fact that the death penalty was on the table
is horrific, and you had a child who sat on
death row wondering if they were going to die for
something that they did not do.

Speaker 4 (07:49):
Blows my mind.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
It's particularly horrific in these cases where there's a wrongful conviction.
There's somebody, like you just said, is a child and
you've got the death penalty that's on the line here,
and these people seem to be colluding and conspiring to
bury him. And did they actually believe that he was guilty.
Maybe initially they did, but it seems like there's a

(08:12):
lot of people along the way who could have looked
at the evidence and went, m he's likely not the guy,
but he's a guy and we've got him, so like,
let's just go forward with this and close the case.
It feels so egregious because we put this trust in
the justice system, in the police, in the prosecutors, and
we hope that they are going to uphold the standard

(08:33):
of justice. So when they do something like this, it
just breaks our trust, and especially when they do it
on purpose. These weren't tiny little mistakes. These were big
mistakes that were made and Sharif paid for those mistakes,
and it's just so so sad.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
Let me ask you guys, this, if it wasn't knowingly.
A lot of these things wouldn't have happened. If you
look at the fact that we want the troops to
come out. We know we're right. Let the kids from
the basketball game testify. Share the complete eyewitness this testimony, right,
share the truth whatever she said. Share the fact that
you had an audio tape. And this is what the

(09:14):
full audio tape said the coach right talking about when
the when the or the referee, when the basketball game started,
when the basketball game ended. Remember in part one we
talked about he said, that's not what I said. It's
like they spliced the audio tape. I recorded on a
tiny tape. They had a large cassette tape. I think

(09:34):
they manipulated my testimony. These are why did you avert
the kids? Like they knew that a story was going
to come out that did not jibe with theirs, and
so they had to say, it's worth getting our story
to be the truth without letting the truth actually come out.
Like it's very purposeful in this case. Sometimes it's just

(09:54):
hey they dropped the ball, or hey, they didn't understand
what they were looking at. It feels like in this
one they knew every time they turned around. Ooh, this
isn't lining up. Ooh, this isn't lining up. Let's hide it,
let's lie about it, let's manipulate, let's hide it. And
when that happens, everyone's blood should be boiling. Pro death penalty,
anti death penalty, whatever you are, your blood should be boiling.

(10:18):
You signed up to have a justice system that provided
justice and fairness and constitutionality. In this case blows every
aspect of genuine truth and goodness about our country and
justice system.

Speaker 4 (10:32):
Out of the water.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, Like Juill said, the disturbing part was the collusion,
because it wasn't just one bad prosecutor. There were multiple
prosecutors and multiple police detectives who all did these unethical
things together to get this conviction to work. And it
just is very disturbing that none of them had a
conscience and didn't feel bad about setting an innocent kid
to death row.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
Sharif's family and his supporters were always convinced that his
realmful conviction was driven by racism, and as we're going
to discuss in a little while, the Orleans Parish District
Attorney's office had a pretty troubling history of sending innocent
African American men to death Row, but I can see
why the authorities would have felt pretty desperate to close

(11:13):
this particular case. To put everything into perspective, New Orleans
was experiencing a serious wave of violence back in nineteen
ninety five. In the first three months of the year,
there were over one hundred murders, including twenty one which
occurred in a single week. Michael Girardi's murder was one
of the most problematic because it took place in the

(11:34):
French Quarter, New Orleans' most popular tourist spot, and tourism
has always been the city's biggest industry. An innocent white
man was senselessly shot in the face in cold blood
by three black men during an armed robbery after leaving
a popular restaurant with his date, so I'm sure the
higher ups were terrified of a sharp decline in tourism

(11:57):
if the perpetrators weren't brought to justice immediately. It's been
reported that New Orleans Police chief was notified and brought
in only fifteen minutes after the crime took place, which
should give you an idea of what a top priority
it was. Dariff and his supporters believed that since the
shooter was a black man. The police were always going

(12:17):
to pin the murder on someone, regardless of whether or
not they actually did it. To me, one of the
biggest red flags here is that even though only one
person shot Michael Girardi, he still had two accomplices with
him when it happened. Yet, when Shariff was charged with
the murder, it doesn't seem like the police made any

(12:38):
attempt to find these two accomplices, even though they were
technically accessories. That signifies to me that they knew Sharif
was not the killer. If you're so convinced that you
have the right guy, why not try to arrest everyone
for their role in the crime.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
Exactly If you're really trying to bring safety and justice
here one, where are the other two? But also remember
your argument is you are a top tourist destination and
you've got to make sure that your community is safe
when you knowingly go after the wrong person, and it's
brought to your attention that there's some issues in this
case that you now need to bend and break all

(13:17):
the rules to keep your story as the truth right.
You also have the real killer out on the streets,
So that's another problem that they should have been considering
here did not cross their mind. It is interesting when
you look at this is not just someone getting on
a soapbox and you know, ranting about racism, but when
you look at the fact that there are areas in

(13:40):
our country that have always been let's say, even overtly racist. Okay,
the South has been a and it's not just it's
not just black against white, or white against black or
Hispanic against black, like, there's just racial tension all across
the board. South is incredibly prominent for that. And when
you look at New Orleans, you have a incredibly you know,

(14:04):
I don't know, the further we get in our lives,
it's more and more covert racism, but it's still there.
I don't think anybody would tell you that across races,
there's a lot of racism back and forth. And so
when you look at these crime statistically, when there is
a black offender and a white victim, you see a

(14:24):
much stronger pursuit of harsh, quick punishment for individuals, and
that makes way for mistakes. I would be very interested
to see what would happen had this been a black
man who was shot in the face by three white
boys young teenage boys. I'd be very interested to see
what would happen if this was a black sex worker

(14:47):
who had been shot by a white teenage boy or
something like that, or even a black boy. Right that
you have a difference in value of life, right, because
maybe it was a sex worker or something to that
extent here, Like you said, it was portrayed innocent white man,
which he was walking out of his date with his
innocent girlfriend and shot. One of the most horrific thoughts ever. Right,

(15:11):
we went to dinner and I lost my life. However,
in this part of the country, there was a quick
need to get it solved because this is a tourist place.
We need to present as if we're safe and that
this wouldn't happen to you and your family if you
visited New Orleans. But when you rushed and you didn't
care that as the time went on you knew this
person was innocent. You let a real killer who's potentially

(15:33):
maybe committing some of the other murders in New Orleans
the rest of that year out on the street.

Speaker 4 (15:38):
It makes no sense to me.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
You want justice, you want safe streets, you want fairness,
you want to make sure charges stick, do things the
right way. Where were the other two kids? And why
were you so quick and so adamant that it's this kid?
After time and time again it has shown it was not.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Just to piggyback on your point quickly. I think what
you said about it being a black sex worker or
any black individual. We see the police chief coming out
and he's there within fifteen minutes of the crime. How
often did the police chief with those one hundred or
so murders show up at the crime scenes of black individuals.

Speaker 4 (16:15):
If it's black on black two jewels, right, Like, it's
just it is.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
That's just not a valued a valuable victim, right like, Oh,
that's just what happens in that part of town.

Speaker 4 (16:25):
No, it's not.

Speaker 3 (16:25):
And honestly, like you said, let's say race is not
even an issue. Look at the value that we place
on someone who is a sex worker or drug dealer.
They could be white on white. But when we look
at those kind of factors, it would have changed. I
guarantee you it would have changed the response a sex
worker found dead, a drug dealer found dead, no matter
what race they were. I don't think the chief of
police is getting up in the middle of the night

(16:45):
and coming down there to make sure that they get justice.

Speaker 4 (16:48):
I just don't think that's going to happen now.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
One of the strangest aspects of this case is that
before his murder trial took place, Sharif willingly pled guilty
to four unrelated counts of armed robbery, even though he
insisted he was innocent of those particular crimes as well.
As a result, when Sharif had his murder conviction overturned,
he did not actually get released from prison, since he
still had to finish serving time on those robbery charges. Now,

(17:15):
Sharif would probably be the first person to tell you
that he was no angel. He was definitely a troubled
kid at the time he was arrested and allegedly accompanied
his friend James Rowell on some armed robberies, though Sharif
maintained that he did not do anything more than a
wait in the car. And of course, we also know
that following his release from prison, Sharif stole his boss's
identity to commit credit card fraud and wound up back

(17:38):
behind bars. It seems like Sharif has finally gotten his
life back on track and has not had any trouble
with the law in several years, but he certainly was
an immune to criminal behavior. It's unclear if Sharif actually
was one hundred percent innocent of those four counts of
armed robbery, but regardless, there was still a number of
issues with how the Orleans Parish District Attorneys off Is

(18:00):
handled things. Sharif was potentially looking at ninety nine years
in prison if he was convicted on those robbery charges,
which seems pretty harsh for a sixteen year old kid
who had no criminal record up until that point. It's
pretty sad how Sharis's defense team felt that he had
no shot of beating the murder charge unless he pled
guilty to the armed robberies, as they felt that doing

(18:21):
ten to twenty years in prison was still a better
option than facing the death penalty. It was an intentionally dirty,
strategic tactic from the District Attorney's office to say they
were going to try Sharif individually on each of the
armed robbery charges before the even put him on trial
for murder. There's just no way the defense attorneys for
a poor African American kid would have the money or

(18:43):
resources to secure an acquittal in five separate trials. But
as we're going to talk about momentarily. This is not
the first time that this particular district attorney's office has
used this questionable tactic.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
It's really sad because he's facing ten to twenty years
if he pleads guilt, which basically the the public defenders
are saying, look, man, they're going to charge you four
different times up to one hundred years in prison the
rest of your life, Like you have no value in life,
So you're either going to spend the rest of your
life in prison or you're going to die via an execution.
Pick your poison, right, And this poor kid, I mean,

(19:16):
it's a baby sitting there going okay, ten to twenty
years sounds better than life or death, right, and both
of those are my other option. So he's sitting there thinking, Okay,
I don't have the money or the resources my defense
attorneys who are supposed to advocate for me, or saying
this is my best bet. Honestly, it doesn't help him

(19:38):
when he pleads guilty because look, guys, he's a criminal. Right,
they're going to start assuming he confessed to this. He's
a criminal.

Speaker 4 (19:46):
It is what it is. They knew that that was
too daunting of a path for him. To take and then.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
He'd be forced to plead guilty to that if they
lost their murder trial. At least this kid's away for
twenty years. But it's just, oh, it just makes me
so angry because yes, yes he made mistakes, Yes he
was hanging around the wrong people. Yes he was in
the wrong several times, and he takes accountability for that.

(20:13):
But the reality is is that even as an armed
robber at age sixteen, Okay, horrible choices, bad decision, sharif right,
if he did do it, But does that mean that
ninety nine years that literally that kid needs to be
taken out of an adult prison in a pine box.
That's the only way he's ever going to see an

(20:33):
exit strategy from prison. It's crazy to me the attitude
that these people had, that there's no redeeming qualities of
this sixteen year old kid sitting in front of him,
like as a mother, as a human being, as somebody
who's like, look, we're trying to protect justice and our
community and things like that, let's look at this baby

(20:55):
and see he has zero value. I don't care if
he dies. I don't care if he dies via lethal injection,
and I don't care if he dies behind bars, that's
what he deserves.

Speaker 4 (21:05):
If he committed an armed.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Robbery, and if he killed somebody like right, the armed
robbery alone, they said was worth a death sentence. For
him to die in prison, that's insane.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
And think about how something like this could prejudice the jury.
If they found out that he's pled guilty to forearmed robberies,
they're probably going to be looking at him as a
defendant and saying, well, he's trying to say he's innocent
in the murder, but he's obviously a criminal. And I
think that kind of warped their perception and probably encouraged
them to give a guilty verdict in what was otherwise
a very weak case. And I think it says something

(21:36):
about the prosecutors where it's like, well, if you are
so confident that you're going to get a murder conviction,
and what's the point trying him four separate times for
armed robbery because if he's found guilty and murder, he's
going to get the death penalty and he's never getting
out of prison. So it just seemed like a desperation
tactic saying that we have to give him all these
obstacles to overcome before he even goes on trial for murder,

(21:57):
and no matter what, he's going to do prison time,
even if he is found not guilty.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
Does it feel like a waste of taxpayer money?

Speaker 2 (22:05):
Exactly?

Speaker 3 (22:05):
Yeah, absolutely, And you want to know why they did it.
Think about the act of armed robbery? Okay, you think
about the sixteen year old kid is so brazen. He's
going to take a lethal weapon and he is going
to go and harass people, to abandon their goods, to
give them their money, to give them their car, whatever
he was robbing them for. Right, He's gonna do it
with a weapon that can cause lethal consequences. So who's

(22:29):
to say the night this poor little couple goes to dinner,
comes out, and a man loses his life when confronted
by three black men, Right, who's to say that wasn't
an armed robbery gone wrong.

Speaker 4 (22:41):
You're setting him.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
Up to look like someone who wields a weapon, who
uses force to get what he wants. And it would
have taken one hair to go from being an armed
robber to a killer, because all you had to do
is pull the trigger out of fear anger whatever. So
if they can get him to confess to that, like
you said, Robin, what does that then say to the jury.

(23:03):
He's a dangerous weapon wielding like minutes who needs to
be killed is what they decided here.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
So now we're going to talk about Harry Connick Senior,
who was the Orleans Parish District Attorney when Sharif was convicted.
So if you listen to a recent series of episodes
about the murder of Crystal Champagne and the wrongful conviction
of Damon Thibodeaux, we had words of praise for his nephew,
Paul Connick Junior, because even though he convicted Damon and

(23:32):
sent an innocent man to death row, he was actually
willing to take responsibility for his mistake and played a
huge role in getting Damon's conviction overturned. Well, unfortunately we
can't share the same words of praise for his uncle.
You're probably familiar, as we talked about in our previous
episode with the famous jazz singer actor Harry Connick Junior,

(23:53):
and yes, Harry Connick Senior is his father. Conic Senior
was elected district attorney in nineteen seventy when he beat
Jim Garrison, who was best known for his investigation into
the John F. Kennedy assassination. Knick wound up holding the
position for thirty years until his retirement, and made it
to the age of ninety seven before he passed away

(24:15):
in January of twenty twenty four. However, Conach left behind
a tarnish legacy as Orland's parish District Attorney, as during
his tenure there were allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in no
less than thirty six cases that his office tried, and
nineteen of them resulted in being either overturned convictions or

(24:35):
reduced sentences. Even though Conic did not personally try Sharif Couzin,
he was named as a defendant in Sharif's civil suit
because of his failure to properly train and supervise his prosecutors.
Shariff is not the only innocent person who was sent
to death row on Conick's watch, and the most infamous
example of this has a number of parallels to Sharif's case.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
I mean, here, you have this idea, it's almost like
linking this to a surgeon, right that when you deal
with a human being who's asked to perform any task,
there's going to be times that you make a mistake,
an honest, horrific heavy mistake.

Speaker 4 (25:14):
Right.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
So you have a surgeon who's operating on somebody's spinal cord.
Their patient wakes up and they can't feel their feet,
and you say, oh my god, oh my god, something happened.
I don't know what happened. Let me trying to the
bottom of this. Right, Let's look at the procedure that happened.
Let me do X rays and cat scans and everything
else and see where I went wrong. Something happened. You
acknowledge I made a mistake, something happened. I'm so sorry,

(25:38):
and you try to fix it, or you do what
a surgeon does who wants to avoid any kind of
legal prosecution, and that's the only thing, right as civil
lawsuits the only thing they want to protect themselves against.
And they say, well, I don't know what happened, and
they don't validate, they don't acknowledge, they don't.

Speaker 4 (25:55):
Explore where they could have messed up.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
And to you, your reputation was more important than that
patient who was sitting before you.

Speaker 4 (26:03):
Happens every single day.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
Happened to my parents, right they my parents are crazy
for the fact that my dad's paralyzed out after he
should have walked out of an easy outpatient surgery.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Right.

Speaker 3 (26:14):
Doctor never acknowledged it. All they had to do was say,
I made a mistake. Let me help, let me see
what we can do. Had they done that, things can
be fixed. That's what happens here when one of the
conics says, uh, looks like I made a massive mistake.
Oh my god, how do I fix it? Let me

(26:35):
be on board with you, Let me fight to get
this kid free. I messed up, and I'm so sorry.
There's a lot of integrity. Remember he goes on to
win his race and to continue to be a prosecutor
and things like that, because I think there's value in
saying someone who deals with such heavy consequences says, I'm sorry,

(26:55):
I messed up. Now it's my responsibility to help make
it right. And then you had this case where they say, oh,
I'll double down. I'll triple down, just like with the
West Memphis three, where everyone just looked away and said like,
it's not my fault, not my fault. If you had
taken accountability and said, wait a second, something went wrong

(27:16):
in this case, there would have been a whole lot
more integrity and respect for these people and they didn't.

Speaker 4 (27:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
I think that's the thing with a lot of prosecutors
is that they're worried that if they admit to a mistake,
it's going to ruin their career and then they'll have
to lose reelection, we'll be forced to resign. But Paul
Konnig Junior is an example of this paying off because
he admitted his mistake and the public forgave him, and
he keeps getting reelected and is still in his position
as district Attorney, like thirty years after he made this

(27:45):
wrongful conviction. So obviously he has a lot of trust
from the public who feel, well, he made a mistake,
but he admitted to it, so let's keep reelecting him.
Whereas with Harry Connick Senior, he kept trying to cover
up his mistakes and he kept getting re elected and
was only after he retired that he had all these
horrible allegations come out about all these these aximus conduct
that he did while he was in office.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
Have you guys heard of what's going on in the
ad on say Ed case with them the State's the
Baltimore State's Attorney Ivan Bates, No, yes, Yeah, it's pretty insane.
He wrote this scathing report of basically fraud committed by
the previous people who were in office as State's attorney

(28:27):
and all the people there in trying to make ad
On look innocent and like it's like eighty pages long.
And the prosecutors on their podcast went through it, and
they didn't go through like all the eighty pages or
whatever it was, but they went through some of the
language that he used in certain parts and it was titillating. Like,

(28:49):
if you're interested in the ad on On say ed case,
I highly recommend going and listening to that.

Speaker 4 (28:54):
Arguing for or against his guilt.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
Oh, arguing for his guilt?

Speaker 4 (28:57):
Okay, okay. Interesting.

Speaker 3 (28:59):
I think I think we failed to recognize though, like
in that case, that's interesting.

Speaker 4 (29:04):
I'll be going to read that.

Speaker 3 (29:05):
But I think it's interesting how we downplay the value
of the grace that most human beings can offer. Like
even these individuals who you see that are wrongfully convicted
and stuff like that, before they've gotten any kind of money.

Speaker 4 (29:18):
People are like, well, it's because they got paid. No.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
Acknowledge that I'm not crazy, Acknowledge that I'm not bad,
Acknowledge that you made a mistake, there's a lot of
grace that human beings have the ability to offer one
another when there's vulnerability and responsibility and accountability that someone
takes on. That takes a big person, That takes an
emotionally mature person to say I messed up and I'm sorry,

(29:43):
and here's how I know that affected you, and let
me help make it right. That's what being a human
being is all about, and not some selfish like I
don't know, narcissistic kind of human being that says like
I don't care what happened to you. All I care
about is me. That's it's just not a good look.
Like I have so much pride when I see someone

(30:04):
who humbly says I messed up and I'm sorry, and
I know what it did, and tell me more of
what it did to you, and then how do I
make it better? That's what humanity's all about. And so
I don't understand money's more important to you than human
value in relationships, and I don't know integrity.

Speaker 4 (30:21):
It just blows my mind.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
So on December sixth, nineteen eighty four, a businessman named
Raymond Lyouza Junior was fatally shot to death during an
armed robbery, and shortly thereafter two African American men named
John Thompson and Kevin Freeman were arrested for the crime.
The murder weapon and a ring which was stolen from Liuza,
was found in Thompson's possession, but Thompson claimed that Freeman

(30:44):
sold him these items after the crime took place and
he had nothing to do with it. However, Freeman claimed
that he and Thompson committed the crime together and Thompson
was the shooter, so he agreed to testify against him
in exchange for a five year sentence. Shortly thereafter, the
family recognized Thompson's photo in the newspaper and identified him
as a man who had robbed them during a carjacking

(31:05):
several months earlier. Thompson maintained that he was innocent of
both the murder and the carjacking, but Harry Connick Senior
made the strategic decision to try Thompson separately for the
carjacking before he took him to trial for murder. As
you might have noticed, this is very similar to how
the District Attorney's office planned to try Sharif four separate
times on on robbery charges before they tried him for murder. Well,

(31:29):
in this particular case, Thompson was found guilty of felony
carjacking and was sent to forty nine years in prison.
So by the time he went on trial for Raymond
Lyuz's murder, Thompson was advised by his attorneys not to
testify at his own defense because if he did, the
prosecution would have been able to share his previous carjacking
conviction to the jury. As a result, Thompson was unable

(31:51):
to testify that Freeman sold him the gun and Lyuza's ring,
so he wound up being found guilty of the murder
and sends to death.

Speaker 3 (31:59):
So here's what he's doing. Here's what they're doing here.
They're scene that it's much easier for a juror to
be sitting there to say, hey, we're looking at an
armed robbery, we're looking at a carjacking, okay, And they
have taken resources in time and money. This person who
is shackled and in a jumpsuit, they're coming to sip

(32:21):
before us, and we are trying them for a violent
crime right period, But it's not murder. And you think
about the idea that, Okay, this person is going to
trial this person, they're pretty convinced did it, and by
the time they've walked into the courtroom, I think the
jury one assumes they did it unless you can prove otherwise.

Speaker 4 (32:41):
Even though that's not the way or do justice system
is supposed to work.

Speaker 3 (32:43):
And honestly, the stakes just quote aren't that high. We're
not talking life or death. We're talking a violent offense.
And so when you're asked, hey, let's make a ruling
on a carjacking, I think senses are less heightened in
that moment, like, Okay, is this kid robbing people at gunpoint?
Is he forcing people out of their car at gunpoint?

Speaker 4 (33:05):
Yes? Or no?

Speaker 3 (33:06):
It's just not the same type of scrutiny. I think
that people which they should be, but I don't think
as a juror you would put the same kind of
weight on your own heart as if you were ruling
on a murder. So I think strategically they're saying, Okay,
rule on this, it's an easier win for us. And
then what does that paint about this individual? They're a

(33:28):
terrible human being, They're a dangerous human being. They make
horrible decisions, they use a weapon. One action could turn
them into a murder and it did in this case.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Right.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
Look, they've already said that they rob people at gunpoint.
They already say they hijack and they steal cars at gunpoint.
What would make you think that one time it didn't
go too far and they killed someone. So they're really
setting these people up in that kind of situation where
let's try them for the minor minor, the less let's
say the les severe. It's not minor less severe case first,

(34:02):
and then how can the jury see them any other
way but a complete monster and they're very capable of murder.
If they can do this, why not the next best thing,
which is something went wrong and they shot the person.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
Yeah, as Jule said earlier, it does seem like a
major waste of taxpayer money to try someone on a
lesser crime before you take them to trial to murder,
even though if they're convicted of the murderer, they're never
getting out of prison. But it seems like that was
the strategy of this particular district attorney's office, where they think, well,
we have a weak murder case, so let's just find
some other random unsolved crime and pend it on them

(34:38):
as well, and then take them to trial. So that
we pretty much prejudice the jury before they even go
to trial for murder.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Well, Thompson languished on death row into the blood stain
which had been left behind by the robber during the carjacking,
was tested and it didn't match him. It turned out
the KNIC had already tested the blood at the time
of the original trial, but suppressed the results from the defense.
As a result, Thompson's carjacking conviction was overturned, and this

(35:07):
eventually led him to receiving a new trial on the
murder conviction. This time, several new witnesses testified that they
had only seen one person running away from the scene
when Raymond Lauza was murdered, and it seemed very likely
that Kevin Freeman, who had received the five year sentence
for testifying about Thompson, was the real killer. As a result,

(35:29):
Thompson was acquitted and finally released from prison after serving
eighteen years. Thompson leader won a fourteen million civil lawsuit
against Connick and the Orleans Parish District Attorney's office, but
Conic appealed to judgment and the case wound up making
it all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
In the case Conac v. Thompson, the Supreme Court voted

(35:50):
five to four to overturn the fourteen million dollar judgment,
ruling that the district Attorney's office was not liable for
Thompson's wrongful conviction. The Thompson case is pretty outrageous in
its own right and could probably be the subject of
its own podcast episode, But it just demonstrates the conic
and the Orleans Paris District Attorney's office had a very

(36:11):
troubling history of misconduct and railroading innocent people, particularly African Americans.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
Here's my thing, It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter the
intent behind it. So like again, let's go back to
the surgeon. You paralyzed somebody because something happened, something went wrong.
Was there mal intent? Was there a did you want
to hurt the individual?

Speaker 4 (36:33):
No, you could have.

Speaker 3 (36:35):
Followed everything to the tea. And if your patient wakes
up and there's a bad outcome, why would you not
want to make sure that they got resources to make
it right?

Speaker 2 (36:44):
Right?

Speaker 4 (36:44):
You now need a caregiver.

Speaker 3 (36:45):
You now need you know, a van that allows you
to use a wheelchair like you have expenses because something
went wrong. It was never intended there was no you know,
mal intent there, but something went wrong, and for that,
I'm sorry. Here's resources that we can provide you to
try to make life a little bit better and a.

Speaker 4 (37:04):
Little bit easier. Here.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
You hear people all the time, they're like, how much
money did they get? I'm sorry, I couldn't survive a
day in prison. I don't know if you sentenced me
to death row and I didn't do something right. I
can't imagine anybody who would say, well, let me make
sure that I prove it's not my fault.

Speaker 4 (37:26):
Something happened. It doesn't even need malintent.

Speaker 3 (37:29):
You could have done everything right and this poor person
innocently got convicted. Why can't the state take accountability to
say something happened, the outcome was wrong. We did everything
by the book, We upheld ethical standards, we were very professional.
Something wrong happened, and therefore this poor person is going
to need resources and access to money, services support to

(37:56):
make sure that they can now be integrated back into
society and have a healthy, productive life because we made
a mistake.

Speaker 4 (38:02):
Why is that so hard?

Speaker 2 (38:05):
And it's even more outrageous when you hear that Conic
appealed the fourteen million dollar judgment, even though he was
not going to be the one who had to personally
pay the money. It was going to be taxpayer money.
But he didn't want his reputation tarnished. He says, I
have to do this so they won't think that I'm wrong.
And it is a major shame that the Supreme Court
ruled in his favor because I hate to say it,
but they were liable for Thompson's wrongful conviction. He intentionally

(38:27):
suppressed evidence, he used, he orchestrated misconduct, so they should
have been responsible for that money in paying it out
to Thompson.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
I mean, you look at it when they take away
people's like fifty years of productivity and like you know,
you say, well they only.

Speaker 4 (38:41):
Served ten years. They have the rest of their life
to make their money back.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
Listen, if you're convicted of murder and sentence to death row,
I don't care if the Pope himself says you didn't
do it, you are forever going to be tarnished with
a reputation of maybe he did.

Speaker 4 (38:54):
And people that are just.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
Ignorant and don't know what you what happened, their life
is forever altered and stolen away from them.

Speaker 4 (39:02):
Who they could have been.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yes, they could have been in a lifestyle of crime. Yes,
they could have been in a place where they shouldn't
have been, and therefore, yes, they got falsely accused. But
who's to say that at eighteen they were irresponsible and
immature and at twenty eight they weren't married with kids
in a stable job, Like, who are you to know
where their life was going and the rest of their

(39:25):
life is going to be changed and tarnished and manipulated
because of the label that at one time they were
a murderer on death row. You can say they're innocent
all day long. You can say it's because of DNA acceneration.
There's a lot of ignorant people who will say, oh.

Speaker 4 (39:40):
I don't know, I actually think he did it.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
In the end, the District Attorney's office barely faced any
repercussions at all for what they did to Shrief Cussin.
The worst that happened is that the lead prosecutor, Roger Jordan,
wound up receiving a three month suspension for misconduct, but
would not have to serve it as long as he
didn't commit any more ethical violations year. So yeah, it
was essentially nothing more than a sentence of probation. But

(40:04):
believe it or not, Jordan still had the nerve to
attempt to appeal this ruling and complain that it tarnished
his record and could affect his future employment prospects. Well,
if he doesn't like it, maybe he shouldn't try to
execute innocent seventeen year old kids. It's mind boggling to
me that Jordan would believe that a three month suspension
was unfair punishment for something that egregious, I mean putting

(40:26):
aside the unethical stuff like failing to turn over evidence
to the defense. It was alleged that Jordan flat out
doctored a tape recorded interview with Shreif's coach, Eric White,
and illegally detained three of Shreif's alibi witnesses at the
District Attorney's office so they would miss their schedule time
to testify at trial. Those are the actions of someone
who clearly knew they were railroading an innocent person, but

(40:49):
did not care. Even though Harry Conic Senior was not
directly involved in this trial, you can see why he
was named as a defendant in the civil suit because
he created a culture where his prosecutors believed that they
could get away with stuff like this without consequences. Now,
I've seen a number of cases where the state offered
plea deals to wrongly convicted people which would allow them

(41:11):
to plead guilty and walk out of prison. It's a
convenient tactic which allows them to save face without actually
having to admit they made a mistake and convicted an
innocent person. The Orleans Parish District Attorney's office attempted to
do the same thing with Sharif, and he turned it down,
But remarkably, it was literally only hours later when KLNIC

(41:31):
publicly announced that they were dropping the case. You see,
the main reason inmates are sometimes willing to accept these
plea deals is because it means they can immediately walk
out of prison. But no matter what, Sharif was still
going to have to serve more years on the armed
robbery charges, So what motivation would he have had to
plead guilty to murder? So yeah, this was a pretty
pathetic attempt at damage control.

Speaker 3 (41:54):
Okay, so everyone who's listening, if you ever want to
cry and feel angry and in fired, google Dewey Bozella's
sp speech where he wins an SP for the Courage
Award and Dewey Bozella. It was a wrongfully convicted individual
who was a boxer. It was a way that in prison,

(42:15):
he said, I thought I was going to literally lose
myself and maybe literally die if I didn't find an
outlet for my anger for being wrongfully convicted. He had
been accused of killing an elderly woman I believe in
the Bronx, and he went to prison for her murder.
And there was a time where he was married to

(42:37):
an amazing woman named Trina, who helped him fight for
his freedom. But there was a time where he was
approached with Trina aware of the deal, and they said,
plead guilty to this case and you can leave today
and go home to your wife. And she actually begged
him come home to me, like, I know you didn't
do it. We've been fighting this for decades.

Speaker 4 (42:57):
Please please plead guty to this. And he said, there
is no fiber.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
In my bean as a man, as a human being,
who can say I not only killed someone, but like
I abused an elderly woman and took her life. Zero
Ever will I say yes, I did this? Literally Trina
in the video of the SB speech, she says, my
heart was broken because he said no to me, like
it wasn't worth him saying I did it and he

(43:24):
could have been free. He said no, his integrity and
saying I didn't hurt her was more important to him,
and he went on to fight.

Speaker 4 (43:31):
I want to say.

Speaker 3 (43:32):
He was in prison for like twenty three years, and
sure enough, one day they the Innocents Project goes to
the old an old detective's house and says, hey, do
you know the Dewey Bozella case? And he said, I
retired like fifteen years ago, and the only case I
ever kept, the only file I ever took home, which

(43:52):
I shouldn't have, was Dewey Bozella's because that man is innocent,
and he joined the fight to help free this man.
But oh, oh my god, doesn't hurt that. Matthew McConaughey
narrates the entire video. But Dewey Bosella, I want to
hug his face. I just want to I don't know,
I just want to cry and celebrate with him. But
same kind of thing they did, the same thing with

(44:14):
the West Memphis three, where you had Damien Eckles on
death row and his two accomplices were serving life in prison,
and the two young men that were serving life in prison,
they said, I'm never going to confess to something I
didn't do, and Damien Eckles said, that's easy for you guys,
because you're not facing death. I am going to be

(44:35):
killed for something we didn't do. Can you please take
the Alford plea in that situation.

Speaker 4 (44:42):
You gotta say you did it.

Speaker 3 (44:43):
You gotta say I did it, but I didn't do
it with an Alfred play and he said, my life
is on the line. They're going to kill me. And
that's what drove the other two boys to say, I'll
take an Alfred plea with you and basically say we
did it without saying we did it.

Speaker 4 (44:58):
It makes me so mad.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
The only reason for that is to protect themselves from
financial contributions to a civil lawsuit that they would lose
as a state.

Speaker 4 (45:09):
How dare you not say, hey, evidence shows you didn't
do it. Shame on us.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
Sorry, we saw your entire life and your future life
from you. Here's a little bit of money that might
help you along the way.

Speaker 4 (45:21):
Fourteen million.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
Guys, When you hear that that guy was awarded fourteen
million dollars, that is not normal. If you look up
state maximums. If you look up what's required. Some states
require DNA to prove you didn't do it. Some states
require that you didn't contribute to your guilt whatsoever. AKA,
if you make a false confession, you get zero dollars.

(45:43):
So there's tons of loopholes where the state says I
don't want to give a dime to this person. In fact,
I'll fight through the Supreme Court not to pay them.
And it's just bad. There are people's lives at stake.
There's fathers and daughters and wives and husbands sitting on

(46:04):
life in prison and death row situations, and if we
got it wrong, we owe them.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
Yeah, I've heard of the Douey Bozela case, and there
are countless examples of people like that who say that
I'm not going to plead guilty to something I didn't do,
so I'm willing to stay in prison longer until I
clear my name. But there are other cases where people
are like, well, I just want to get out of prison.
I can't take it anymore. So that's why they take
al Ford, please, and why they're willing to plead guilty
even though they maintain their innocence. What was Sharifa was

(46:32):
particularly ridiculous because he was not going to walk out
of prison. He would still have to serve time on
arm robbery charges, which he claimed he didn't do, so
it seemed pretty pathetic that they were going to try
to save face by having offering him a guilty plea,
even though he pretty much gained nothing.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Anyway. Even though many people believe the racism played a
role in Sharif's wrongful conviction, it should be noted that
the jury who found him guilty actually consisted of ten
blacks and whites. You might be wondering how they could
have reached that verdict with so much convincing alibi evidence
to support Sharif's innocence, but hearing testimony from a traumatized

(47:11):
victim who personally witnessed the crime can have a strong
impact on juris. Anyone who follows wrongful conviction cases knows
that eyewitness testimony can be unreliable and has played a
role in sending a number of innocent people to prison.
But back in nineteen ninety six, the average jury member
probably wouldn't have known this, and when they saw Connie

(47:33):
Babin point to Sharif in the courtroom, and positively identify
him as the man who shot Michael Girardi. I'm sure
they had no reason to doubt her, particularly since her
earlier statements about not getting a look at the killer
were suppressed at the trial. It would be easy to
feel angry towards Connie for identifying Sharife, but let's not
forget that she went through a pretty traumatic ordeal, and

(47:56):
I'd say there's a good chance that she was pressured
or manipul related by investigators. We've seen a couple of
wrongful conviction cases in which eyewitnesses have recounted their original testimony,
claiming that even though they weren't certain that the defendant
was actually the person they saw committing the crime, the
police assured them that they had the right person, so

(48:18):
if they could still identify the defendant a trial, it
would strengthen their case and improve their chances of conviction.
I don't believe Connie was knowingly implicating an innocent person,
as I think she genuinely believed the police arrested the
right guy and probably did not expect her testimony to
be the crux of the prosecution's entire case. I don't

(48:38):
mean to make light of the whole thing. But this
situation reminds me of the scene in the comedy My
Cousin Benny, where Joe Pashi Cross examines a witness who
positively identified the perpetrators even though she had bad eyesight
and wore very thick glasses. People should not be sent
to death row over things like this.

Speaker 4 (48:56):
Yeah, the judge is like, what did you say that?
Like the two youths Okay, sorry, your honor the two Uh.

Speaker 3 (49:06):
Yes, It's so true when you look at this poor witness,
I mean, I have just as much empathy for her
as I have for Sharif in this situation. We've seen
this a million times. Same with like Jennifer Thompson in
the Ronald Cotton case. Right where you have somebody who
has been a victim of a crime.

Speaker 4 (49:26):
They're in an.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
Incredibly traumatic situation, and you have law enforcement officials who
are the safe people who are good, and you've been
dealt with a group of people who are bad. And
so when the good guys say, hey, help me out,
let me help you, let me give justice to this
person you were with her, to yourself, and they lay
out exactly what they they believe happened, and they're able

(49:48):
to convince a witness that, yes, this reality the police
have must have been what happened. They falsely create a
memory in that eyewitness his mind. And it's really sad
here because again she told the truth. She said, Uh,
it was dark. These were some young black guys. I
couldn't see them.

Speaker 4 (50:08):
It was really dark.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
I didn't have my classes on, I didn't have any
contacts in Uh. She's like basically telling the police like,
I'm not that much help, and yet they craft a
story and they convince her, and they change and alter
her memory, and they confirm her memory, and they confirm
her memory, and they confirm her memory, and they tell
her that by being so strong and so brave, that

(50:31):
she's gonna help bring justice to her dates killer. And
by the time she gets a trial, it's been a
year of her thinking like, it's this all hinges on me,
and I've been so empowered because these people are so
good to me, and I'm going to get justice for
my date. And she testifies with one hundred percent confidence.
But remember she was honest at the beginning and she

(50:52):
said I'm probably not the best witness. They convince her
that she is, and that makes me so mad because
she also becomes a victim who, for the rest of
her life is going to carry a weight of saying
did I cause? Am I the reason why this poor
kid also really lost his life? Because the man I
was standing next to lost his and I basically caused.

Speaker 4 (51:15):
Another person to lose theirs. She did not.

Speaker 3 (51:17):
I'm not saying that, but that's a guilt that she
would carry, a psychological damage that she has to carry
because these people didn't care about her. If they didn't
care about the victim, and they didn't care about Sharif
if they did, they would have said, ooh, I need
to pause because this poor witness is not giving me
what I need.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
Yeah, as far as I can tell, Connie Babbittt is
pretty much shied away from the spotlight completely ever since
the trial took place. And who can really blame her
because I'm sure she feels awful because she was probably
unaware of all the other corruption and misconduct going on
in this case. So when she eventually found out that
the person she identified was probably innocent, I'm sure it
was a pretty traumatic ordeal and I can only imagine

(51:56):
why she wouldn't want to talk about it to this day.
So let's talk about about James Rowl, the guy who
originally implicated Sharif, to begin with, I do not think
anyone was expecting him to recant his story on the
witness stand and say he lied about Charif, bragging that
he committed the murder. When Rawl admitted that he was
facing eight hundred years in prison for multiple armed robberies

(52:16):
but was offered a lesser sentence for testifying against Sharif,
you can understand how this situation likely unfolded. Testimony from
unreliable criminal informants is another primary cause of wrongful convictions,
as demonstrated by the afore mentioned John Thompson case, where
the real killer, Kevin Freeman, made a deal to testify
against him in exchange for a lighter sentence. I don't

(52:39):
think the lead detective in this case, Anthony Small, ever
faced any repercussions for his conduct, but some of the
allegations against him are insane. In order to secure the
uress warrant for Sharif, he completely fabricated two other eye
witnesses to the crime who did not even exist, and
he supposedly phoned in a tip about Sharif to crimestoppers
so he collect the reward. I mean, it's bad enough

(53:02):
that a police officer could railroad an innocent person for
the purposes of closing a case, but when they're also
profiting and receiving reward money for their actions, that shows
an almost cartoonish level of corruption.

Speaker 3 (53:14):
Oh, one thousand percent. One thousand percent. When you look
at this idea that you have things like tip lines
where people fraudulently make reports and they lead to progression
in the case, and or you use jail house informants
and those kinds of things. When you have other criminals
or individuals that you're making deals with, you're providing money,

(53:35):
you're simplifying their sentence. You know, one in five wrongful
convictions has the use of a jailhouse snitch or another
criminal who's involved in some other crime that's getting an
incentive for sharing information that was either planted akai like,
positioned you in a cell and then I asked.

Speaker 4 (53:53):
You, Hey, did you get that info we fed you?

Speaker 3 (53:55):
All I have to do is say, yeah, you told
me to ask about this murder. I did, and here's
what they told me. But you already know the information anyway.
I mean, a corrupt officer will say, like, make sure
they tell you that the girl was x y and
z or the man was x y and z, and
therefore I just come back and tell you what you
already told me and I get a reduced sentence, I
get money, I get a charge dropped, whatever it is.

(54:18):
And what's interesting is that in many jurisdictions, the prosecutor
does not have to disclose any kind of reward that
was given for any information that was received.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
As bad as it is to say, even though he
went through a terrible ordeal, Sharif actually fared better than
many others in his situation as he only spent two
and a half years on death row, as opposed to
someone like John Thompson, who had to endure this for
eighteen years before he walked free. Well, the situation was
extra terrifying for Sharif because of his young age, as

(54:51):
he did not even understand how the death penalty and
disappeals process worked at that time. Since he was never
given an execution date. Time I'm on death row was
filled with uncertainty about how long he had left to live.
But there's one tragic aspect to this case which always
gets overlooked. Will Shariffe is most definitely a victim. His

(55:12):
story wound up taking a lot of the attention away
from Michael Girardi, the person who lost his life. Sadly,
one of the biggest side effects of wrongful conviction cases
is that the actual murder victim often gets overlooked.

Speaker 4 (55:27):
If you research the.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Story online, it's very difficult to find any photographs of
Michael Girardi, as the only place we've seen them are
on a YouTube documentary about this case, containing snippets of
old news segments which display Michael's picture. These segments featured
interviews with Michael's parents, who seem pretty devastated by the
whole ordeal, and I'm sure it must have been difficult

(55:49):
for them to think that they received closure when Sharife
was convicted of Michael's murder, only to find out that
they got the wrong person. There really isn't much information
out there Michael, but from what I can tell, he
sounded like a sweet guy. It seems like he had
really fallen for Connie and even told his mother that
this may be the one before they even went on

(56:10):
their first date. When Michael showed up for the date,
he gave Connie a red rose and things seemed to
be going really well until an unspeakable tragedy took place.
I think it demonstrates Michael's character that when he saw
the three blackmailes approaching him and felt threatened, his first
instinct was to turn to Connie and to tell her
to run away, a decision which probably saved her life

(56:33):
since she may have also been shot if she remained there.
This was a completely senseless crime because I'm sure that
if the perpetrator simply ordered Michael to hand over his
wallet at gunpoint, he likely would have done so without
any resistance, and there was no need to kill him.
This really isn't a complex crime to analyze, as it
appears the only motive was robbery and Michael was just

(56:55):
an unfortunate, random victim in the wrong place at the
wrong time. But who could have been responsible?

Speaker 4 (57:02):
Yeah, it's really sad.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
Like you said, his family is a victim, just like
the eyewitness is a victim, just like Sharif is a victim,
and just like the whole community of New Orleans is
a victim. You can't falsify information and give people a
false sense of security and justice and healing in those
kinds of things, and then rip it back out from

(57:24):
under them when you're proven to be a fraud and
someone who didn't have any kind of concern about the
individual who was murdered, the individual who was being held
as the lynch pen in this entire case, the poor eyewitness,
and especially this kid who all of a sudden, the
family has been rejoicing in certain ways of saying like, yes,
it's sad that this kid got caught up in this,

(57:45):
but he killed our baby and he's getting justice. It
is what it is. The court decided that we can
move forward and try to regroup and build a life
without our baby in it. And then all of a sudden,
the eyewitness, the family, the community finds out what if
they got the wrong person. Oh my lord, they got
the wrong person. And you have to undo all of

(58:07):
the fake promise you gave to everybody. You have to
undo the justice that you gave to everybody. You have
to undo the safety and security that you gave to everybody,
and say, oh, not only do we mess up, but
we actually might have purposefully lied and cheated to get
you this outcome. It's just a whole another like my
whole just world perception kind of crumbles and it's so

(58:31):
much more devastating than people acknowledge. Right, it's not just
the offender, it is people like the victim, the eyewitnesses,
the surviving family, those kinds of things. They become victims
in a game that these people are playing with criminal behavior,
and it's just wrong.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
Well, it turns out that before Sharif was arrested, investigators
had turned up a fairly promising lead which pointed towards
some alternate suspects. On the night of the murder, Crimestopper
received a tip from an eye witness who was in
the French Quarter when Michael's shooting took place. Since the
man was a bird watcher, he often carried around his
binoculars and used them to catch a glimpse of the

(59:10):
license plate number on the perpetrator's getaway car. The number
wound up matching a red nineteen eighty nine Ford Escort
registered to a woman named Krystal Baham. Just over a
week later, crimestoppers received another tip from an anonymous caller
who implicated three potential suspects in the crime, Antonio Harper,
Derek Smith, and a third person known only as Brandon.

(59:33):
When investigators attempted to track down Antonio Harper, they discovered
a red Ford escort parked outside his address. It had
the same license number provided by the bird watcher, and
it turned out that the registered owner, Krystel Baham, was
Derek Smith's mother. However, once Charif was charged with the crime,
the investigation against these three suspects was dropped, and of

(59:54):
course none of this information was ever turned over to
Shreef's defence team at his trial. Now there really is
a much information out there about the alternate suspects. But
I did manage to find an obituary for a New
Orleans resident named Derek Smith who died in December of
twenty sixteen at the age of forty. Since it listed
Crystal Baham as his mother, this is definitely the same guy.

(01:00:17):
Interestingly enough, I also found an obituary for a Robert Harper,
a New Orleans man who passed away in September of
twenty seventeen, and lists Crystal Baham as his sister, So
I can only assume that he's related to Antonio Harper.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Okay, so all this is withheld from evidence. But also,
don't you guys remember that one of the individuals actually
involved in this case had had people call in a
crime stoppers tip that was implicating sharief so that they
could collect and split money. Was it a detective or
the prosecutor himself?

Speaker 4 (01:00:49):
Well, who was that?

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
It was Detective Anthony Small. The guy who phoned in
the tip was a friend of Small's and Small was
able to use it as like leverage in order to
get the arrest warrant for Shreef. And then afterwards his
friend collected the reward and then Small split it with them.
So it was just like a very It's a corropt
scheme where he not only sent an innocent person to prison,
but he made money off the whole thing.

Speaker 4 (01:01:11):
Incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
Okay, So you've got that kind of erroneous stuff happening.
You also have real tips that are called in that
aren't followed up with. And again, when you have a
narrative and a tunnel vision, than saying we've made our claim,
this is who we've said did it, I don't care
what information comes across our desk. We need to disprove it,
we need to hide it, we need to manipulate it

(01:01:34):
so that it doesn't work in this case. Why right,
It's really interesting when you look at this idea that
these three suspects were called in and there was information
that maybe just maybe someone else did it, or that
there was information that other people should at least be explored.

Speaker 4 (01:01:49):
It was all shut down. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Yeah, you think to yourselves, would it just be easier
to find the guys who actually did it instead of
like running around in circles trying to fabricate a case
against an innocent case.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
And what to do to your community when you don't
like what does it do for the community. When you
do not do that, you are setting other murders up
for success.

Speaker 4 (01:02:09):
This person got.

Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
Away with it before they know they can do it again.
It creates a brazen sense of security for that person.
And then again, you robbed a baby. You robbed a
baby of their life, and like you said, yes, he
went on to make other mistakes. What do you expect
when you take a sixteen year old kid who didn't
have resources to start with, who didn't necessarily have good

(01:02:30):
examples to start with, You put him in prison with
a bunch of adult men who are dangerous, scary, violent
people who teach you to survive in prison by being
dangerous and violent, and then you release him with a
like a hangar over his head that says, hey, I'm
a murderer even though they released me and said I'm not,

(01:02:52):
and you expect him to be successful, like, of course
he took his boss's identifications that I got babies to feed,
I need help. No one will trust me or hire
me for a wage I'm worthy of. It's oh, it
just makes me mad. I'm a little passionate about it.
If you can't imagine that, yeah, we noticed, Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
No, I totally get it. I think we've got prisons
that are focused on punishment and not rehabilitation. You put
a child in prison with some scary, scary individuals, and
if you weren't a criminal to start with, you're very
likely going to end up being a criminal in the
end because you have to take on a certain persona
in prison in order to protect yourself. And I think

(01:03:33):
it's so easy to snap to judgment and be like, oh, well,
he committed another offense after like, what does that say
about him? I don't think it says anything except for
what actually just said that it is a really difficult place.
It is at dogg eat dog, and it is a
miracle that he survived and was able to come out
the other end, be an advocate and speak up for

(01:03:54):
the wrongfully convicted. I think that he's allowed a little
bit of grace considering what was done to him. Now,
we're not going to go so far as to accuse
Harper Smith and the guy named Brandon of being Michael
Gerardi's killers, but I think that if investigators had been
able to continue pursuing these guys, they may have potentially

(01:04:16):
built a case against them. It's worth voting that this
particular lead was investigated by three other detectives besides Anthony Small,
but Small pretty much pushed their work to the side
after he set his sights on Sharif and the money. Yep,
it seems like the moment James Raoul said Sharif's name,

(01:04:37):
Small decided that he was their fall guy and they
were going to pin the crime on him no matter what.
And that's one of the most frustrating things about this story.
I know law enforcement desperately wanted to solve this case,
but they may have actually had the right guys on
the radar get ultimately chose to railroad an innocent kid.

(01:04:57):
I mean, my god, when you consider the amount of
of work the police and prosecutors had to do in
order to fabricate a casey in Sharif, they might as
well have devoted all of this energy to, you know,
actually finding the real killers.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
I mean, if these three guys were brazen enough to
shoot an innocent man on a public street just to
steal his wallet, who knows how many other crimes they
may have gone on to commit. But even after Sharif's
conviction was overturned, the people in power still continue to
maintain that he was the right person, and it would
not surprise me if they still hold the same attitude
nearly thirty years later. If so, then I can't see

(01:05:33):
anyone else ever being brought to justice for this crime.
All that being said, if you happen to have any
information on the murder of Michael Girardi, please contact the
appropriate authorities. Jules Astley, any final thoughts in this case.
I doubt you'll have any thoughts. There's nothing else to
talk about, right.

Speaker 4 (01:05:50):
It just makes me mad. This is one of those cases.

Speaker 3 (01:05:54):
I think, his age, his vulnerability, the lack of advocacy
for him, it makes me and the lack of an advocacy
for Michael, like you had a murder victim who literally
is shot with this woman. It reminds me of this
is just sidebar. I remember our first date, my favorite
first date with Buddy, my late husband. He had called

(01:06:16):
his mother before our first date and said, I'm gonna
marry the woman that I'm about to take to dinner.

Speaker 4 (01:06:20):
So I just want to let you know. And it's
like I can.

Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
Put myself in that position of this young woman who says,
look at this like Casanova is bringing me this rose,
We're going to dinner. I'm going to maybe be going
to dinner for the last first date of my life,
and I'm going to be with Michael.

Speaker 4 (01:06:38):
That's what Michael thought.

Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
And so literally, like you said, he jumps in front
of these people saying I'm going to protect her and
if I lose my life, I do. It's this amazingly
heroic moment and he dies and no one seems to
care about him, her or getting the right people. In fact,
they didn't care about the sixteen year old that they
falseleep arrested. And as the case progresses, they have more

(01:07:03):
and more facts and more and more players who know
they got it wrong, and everyone said.

Speaker 4 (01:07:10):
Who cares? That's what blows my mind, who cares?

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
They should have cared on a million levels about a
million different players in this game, and they didn't. And
so it's not just sharif you know that there was
the victim here, but he truly was so unimportant in
this conversation that they said, if we can't get him
on the murder charges, let's at least steal his life
away from him with these armed robbery charges. And then

(01:07:35):
who cares if this kid who literally should be getting
ready for junior prom right like he's sixteen, he just
got his driver's license. Think about the sixteen year old
in your life. They're all dumb and naive and make
poor choices. Right, not murder, but they're dumb. And so
you think about this sixteen year old kid you thought

(01:07:58):
his best punishment his life to truly execute him. Thank
God for Roper Simmons that took that off the plate.
For every juvenile who commits a crime. I just don't
think you can say that a child has no redeemable ability,
that there's no way to teach them, to love them,

(01:08:19):
to give them resources that show them they're more valuable
than the environment they were born into. So Lord have
mercy this is one of the best and most egregious
cases we've looked at. On a million levels, I feel
sorry for the eyewitness, I feel sorry for the victim.
I feel sorry for the victim's family. I feel sorry
for the people of New Orleans who were told they
were safe. I feel sorry for the tourists who said

(01:08:40):
who were told they were safe because a murderer had
been caught. And I feel incredibly horrific for Sharif who
as a child went to an adults world of violence
and sat on death row wondering if the phone call
was going to occur that said you're going to die
in a couple months. Unbelievably disgusting because it wasn't a stake.

(01:09:00):
It was many people knowingly dropping the ball or coercing
and manipulating facts so that they got a conviction, and
afterwards they were unwilling and did not want to be
called out for It.

Speaker 4 (01:09:14):
Blows my mind.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Let me just preface this conclusion with Ashley, thank you
so much for giving your insights on these past couple
wrongful conviction cases, because you've done such an excellent analysis
and an excellent job, incredibly thorough You covered every single
point that I could possibly think of, and your conclusion,
I agree with every single point that you made. Charis's age,

(01:09:38):
the fact that they went to such great lengths to
essentially bury him, the fact that Small collected that money.
It just feels so egregious. And the Conic Senior was
involved and clearly didn't train the prosecutors properly, and they
were willing to go to whatever lengths it was to
get a conviction. And I think it comes down to

(01:10:00):
actually said earlier, speaking of what a great job you did,
ash she talked about the victims in the case. We
not only have Michael Girardi and Connie Babin and Sharif Kuzen,
but we also have the city of New Orleans because
they don't get justice. And what it comes down to you,
I think, is having a tourist city where the majority

(01:10:21):
of income that you have is coming from tourism. That
gives a motivation to the police department, probably coming from
the mayor's office, and to the prosecutors to find a
suspect and secure a conviction. And I think that that
can be done in haste, and that can be done
without doing your proper due diligence, like what we saw

(01:10:43):
with Connick Junior going back over the case and going, Wow,
there was a miscarriage of justice here. I made a mistake.
Let me rectify that that wasn't done here. He looked
back in retrospect and saw that the difference was he
wasn't in the moment trying to bury somebody. There was
corruption and there was collusion in this case, and it
was basically a.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
Fraud on the court.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
And it is so disgusting that Sharif had to endure
this and the Connie had to deal with the trauma
of having to testify and put the wrong man behind
bars because she is a victim too, and that Michael
Girardi ends up getting lost in the sea of the
whole wrongful conviction case against Sharif, and that Sharif had
to languish behind bars as a child doing those two

(01:11:27):
years on death row at the age of seventeen. I
cannot imagine what that would have felt like and what
that can do long term. That will leave an indelible mark.
This case is just heartbreaking across the board.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
Yeah, I've studied a lot of wrongful conviction cases and
I see a lot of recurring themes. I find out
that a lot of the time they're convicted for the
same reasons because of mistaken eyewitness testimony, or prosecutory misconduct
or jailhouse informants, and this case all of those. But
it did have some other moments which just truly shocked
me and made my jaw drop, Like when I read

(01:12:03):
about alibi witnesses being detained in the district Attorney's office
to miss their testimony and them giving the excuse, well,
it was January, so we thought they would want to
be in there when it's air conditioned, even though it
was a cold winter day outside. And of course like
allegedly like altering the original tape recorded interview of Sharif's
coach where they actually changed the time that he said

(01:12:25):
he dropped to Sharif off at home in order to
kind of dispute his alibi. I mean, this is the
type of stuff that should get people thrown to prison.
But the worst that ever happened is that one prosecutor
got a three month suspension, which he didn't even have
to serve because he was essentially put on probation. And
of course we talked about how the detective Anthony Small
actually like phoned in a phony tip to crime stoppers

(01:12:49):
and split the reward money with a friend of his,
so he was profiting off this wrongful conviction. So yeah,
this is one of the absolute worst that I've ever seen.
And Sharif, I don't want to say that he was lucky,
but because nobody deserves to spend any time on death
row if they're innocent, let alone two years. But he
also had to spend other time in prison for armed
robbery convictions which he probably also did not commit. And yes,

(01:13:12):
he ran into trouble with the law after his release
from prison, but he does seem to have changed turned
his life around and he is fighting now to be
an activist against the death penalty and to help wrongly
convicted people, and he deserves to live happiness and peace
for the rest of his life after what he went through.
But yeah, this is definitely a case of just the

(01:13:32):
justice system going horribly wrong. The death penalty got horribly wrong,
where clearly the people in power knew they were sending
an innocent kid to death row but just did not care,
which is just terrifying that people can do this and
not have a conscience about these wrongful acts which nearly
got an innocent kid killed. And another tragedy, of course,

(01:13:53):
is Michael Girardi, who sounded like a nice man who
pretty much sacrificed himself to save his date and got
shot for it, but he never received justice because the
authorities just wanted to solve the case as quickly as
possible and put anyone in prison, no matter as if
who is the right person or not. And we talked
about these other three suspects. For all we know, maybe

(01:14:13):
they went on to commit more crimes, and maybe they
went on to commit more murders in the years since
Shreep's conviction because they were allowed to get away with
it and no one was looking for them. So yeah,
this case is an absolute nightmare that went wrong on
so many levels. But I think I'm glad that we
shared this story because it's a good cautionary tale on
how the justice system can go horribly wrong.

Speaker 5 (01:14:37):
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
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 which
I talk about cases which are not featured on The

(01:15:03):
Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon,
and if you join our highest tier, tier three, the
ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is
a audio commentary track over classic episodes 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

(01:15:26):
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 5 (01:15:45):
So I want to let you know a little bit
about the Jewels 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 will link
them in the show notes.

Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
So I want to thank you all for listening, and
any chance you have to share us on social media
with a friend or to rate and review is greatly appreciated.
You can email us at the Pathwentchili at gmail dot com.
You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwink. So
until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold
trails and chili pass call for warm clothing.

Speaker 1 (01:16:24):
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy

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Sharif Cousin Pt. Two

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