Georgia Focus - Innocence Project

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
Welcome to Georgia Focus. I'm JohnClark on the Georgia News Network. In
January twenty twenty three, Joy Watkinswas granted bond and was released from prison.
On September twenty first, twenty twentythree, he was exonerated after a
da chose not to proceed with thecharges against him. On that day,
Joy's ankle monitor was cut off andhe was finally free, over twenty two
years after his nightmare began. Thankslargely in part to the Innocence Project,

(00:34):
we have his story today. Hereto tell his story are Henry Ball,
resident wrongful conviction expert and author ofthe book, Michael Chappele, Christina Cribbs
from the Georgia Innocence Project, Joy'sattorney, Noah Pines, and Joy Watkins
himself. Henry Ball, good tosee you again. Good to see you,
John. I've met Joey and talkedto Joey a few times now.
Joey Watkins, as you know,was convicted in Rome, Georgia for murder

(00:58):
that occurred in two thousand and Joeyhad been incarcerated since two thousand and one
for twenty two years for a crimehe didn't commit. And what really struck
me about the case, and it'sone of the things I encountered some of
it in the Michael Chapel case,where hearsay and double hearsay was kind of

(01:18):
allowed as evidence, really contrary toyou know, to the written law.
But there are certain ways that exceptionscan be made, and there was some
of it in the Michael Chapel case. But I you know, and you
and I have gone through the evidencein that case and the physical evidence and
you know, manipulations and different things. But in Joey's case, what I

(01:42):
noticed was they didn't have any evidence. They had no evidence against this man
save the Rome, Georgia rumor mill. And Joey was nineteen years old at
the time, so all of thesewitnesses and all of these people involved in
this case were seventeen, eighteen,nineteen, twenty years old. So it's
a bunch of high school kids,and it's well, my cousin's sisters,

(02:06):
brothers, best friends, hairdresser saidthey heard Joey say this, and that
was used to convict Joey. Andof the things that need to be fixed
in our criminal justice system. AndI will say before I get into that,
that the Georgia Innoson's project and misterNoah Pines here did a wonderful job

(02:29):
of really holding the state's feet tothe fire in this case. After I
would say Joey had exhausted all ofhis post conviction opportunities or his post conviction
relief opportunities, and probably had losthope in our justice system. But these
guys, you know, really broughtit back around. And to me,

(02:49):
that is the biggest thing, orone of the biggest things that needs to
be fixed in our criminal justice system. That is the way evidence is collected
and presented, and the way rulesare manipulated in regards to that. Because
sitting beside me is Joey Watkins,who literally spent twenty two years in prison

(03:09):
for a crime he didn't commit,and they never had any evidence whatsoever to
even insinuate that he committed it.So welcome Joey Watkins, thank you,
and welcome home. Welcome home,Yeah, welcome home, Joey. Good
to see you, to see you. I've heard a little bit about this
case. What happened in this case, you know, kind of like Henry

(03:35):
said, you know, it's abunch of high school rumors, you know,
a bunch of high school kids,small town, you know, nothing
to do in the town, abunch of kids running around, you know,
driving around, meeting in kmart parkinglot or home depot parking lot.
You know. It was just yourtypical small town Georgia. You know,
if someone says one thing, youknow, the whole town knows it,

(03:59):
or you know, someone accuses youof something, it's like, you know,
everybody hears it, and then it'simmediately around and it was just a
big mess. Now this was inRome, Georgia where it happened, and
these were people you I don't know, You largely knew them, didn't you.
Oh yeah, yeah. What wasthe crime? The crime was murdered.
I was convicted of a murder intwo thousand and one. I was

(04:23):
arrested in two thousand and Supposedly itwas about that. It happened about a
girl that the guy that got killed, Isaac Dawkins. He and I dated
the same girl. I dated herfor probably three four years, and then
she had gotten with him, andthen it kind of went from from there.

(04:43):
You know, she'd liked to makeboth of us jealous, and he
and I ended up one night ina fight in town. He approached me
and and you know, we kindof got into it. He followed me
to my home and it, youknow, just a scuffle there. And
then after that at you know,you know, have small town rumors this,
that and the other. And thenwhen he ends up getting killed,

(05:08):
they asked me if I was downthe road that night, and I told
her I didn't have anything to hide. I was like, yeah, you
know, I've traveled that route.I was dating another girl in Cedartown.
And mind you all this happened,you know, with he and I many
months before he was killed, andI drove this route. Like I said,
I was dating another girl in cedarTown, right below Rome, and

(05:29):
I was down the road that night. And when they found out that I
was down the road that night,they started looking at me. And then
it just kind of went from there. You got arrested, You stayed in
that, you didn't get sent hometo do anything for twenty two years.
No, now you're you're out.What is the state going to do to

(05:51):
They just let you go and well, sorry, we messed up. Is
that how they do it? Uh? That's pretty much the situation. Now.
We uh created a bill to tryto help me get compensated, and
the bill passed the House. TheHouse was very you know, recepted.
They were awesome, they were great. And then when it was stalled in

(06:12):
the Senate. So you know,that's kind of what happened. This last
sessions just stalled out. Yeah,you know, they didn't. I don't
even think they actually sit down andlooked at it. No, I'll ask
you, what what do you doat this point? You were the guy
in charge this case. Definitely notin charge charge. I'll explain, how
explain. I'd heard Joey's story ona podcast on the Undisclosed podcast years years

(06:38):
ago, and you know, Iknow the people in the Innocence Project.
I knew that they were working onJoey's case, Christina and Meghan and Ben
Goldberg. And at some point Iwas having a conversation with Ben, who
was a pro bono attorney working withthe Innocence Project on this case, and
I just said, hey, ifyou you know, if you get him
a new trial, I'll try thecase with you for free. And there's

(07:01):
one day I was up in WalkerCounty, which is you know, North
Georgia, and saw some familiar facespeople from the Innocence project, and I
was like, what are you alldoing here? And they're like, oh,
we're having a habeus hearing on Joey'scase. I went up and watched
a little bit. I met Joeyand I think Ben said, Hey,
this is Noah and he said,you will work on your case for free
if we get your new trial.And you know, I never even asked,

(07:21):
like like like what do you evenlike think do you even think about
what I'm saying at that point,Joey like You're like, yo, who
is this guy? Because you don'tknow me. At that point, you
just kind of gave me a looklike okay, nice to meet you.
Yeah, I've never you know,being in prison, you don't. You
don't really, I mean you're kindof you know, you don't know what's

(07:46):
going on in the legal world,so you know, as far as attorneys
and stuff like that. And thenI asked Ben after I had met I
was like, who is that guy? And Being was like he's good.
He was like he's good. He'slike and I don't know if he was
a kidding or not, but ifhe wasn't, he'll be your attorney when
we get in the trial. Yeah. And so once the Innocents Project,

(08:07):
you know, got Joey a newtrial. Christina and Meghan and abandon all
our hard work. I agreed tostep in and help get the case ready
for a retrial. Ultimately, wedidn't have to. The Districttorney's office dismissed
the case what's called an old proskay, So the prosecution ended, but we
were all geared up to try thecase. So Christina, now you're you're

(08:30):
the innocent product Georgia Innoson's Project.How did you get involved in this case?
So? I actually first met Joeyin twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen,
and the Georgia Innocence Project had beenworking on Joey's case that long. So
and just to put that in perspective, I know there's a lot of dates
kind of coming out here, butJoey did not get out and needed to

(08:52):
come home until twenty twenty three.Wow, so you know, nine years,
and then by the time the casewas actually dismissed, it was closer
to time years. So yeah,I got involved as an attorney working at
the Georgia Innocence Project. It doesn'ttake long when you start looking at Joey's
case to realize it is a verystrong innocence case. And you know,

(09:15):
we worked really hard for years asa team of people to do everything that
we could to raise all the rightclaims, to find all the right evidence
to be able to raise, youknow, the claims that eventually led to
the conviction being overturned. So she'sbeen working for a long time with Joey
and no, she comes to you. Is that what happens is she comes

(09:37):
to you and you agreed to takeit. Well, yeah, what happened
was one day Ben I think itwas Ben reached out and he's like,
we just won Joey's case. AndI was like, all right, cool,
I need to I need the boxes. Yeah, you know in the
boxes were twelve thirteen. I meanit was you know, we're talking bankers
boxes, twelve thirteen boxes full ofstuff. And you know, I just

(09:58):
kind of went back and started fromthe beginning, and you know, realize
some stuff when you're doing a habeastand an appellic case, you're just so
hyper focused on the legal issues,and you know, getting a case overturned
like this doesn't happen a lot.Especially this is an unusual case for the
Instance Project because it's not a DNAexoneration. It's easy. Err, it's

(10:18):
not easy. It's easy er toexonerate somebody through you know, DNA testing
that wasn't available twenty years ago.There was no DNA testing in this case.
This was just a pure innocence case. But then I started going back
and looking at stuff that, youknow, from a broader aspect, and
I realized how crazy this case was. So I'm going to give you example.

(10:39):
And I know, you know highschool hearsay, right, that's why
we are well, it's high schoolhearsay, but none of the hearsay was
actually accurate, you know. Andone of one of the things that really
was crazy to me in this case, when Joey was originally arrested by the
city police, a kind of like, yeah, he's not our man.
It's when the county came in andone detective and he's he's the one who

(11:01):
really put the hooks to Joey.There was a detective who I would say
he controlled Rome. I mean,he would put posters up in the jail
offering rewards. And I was lookingthrough his preliminary hearing transcript. That's the
first hearing you know about the evidence, and he was asked a question about
whether he illegally taped conversations Joey's conversations, and he took the Fifth amendment.

(11:22):
This is a police officer who testifiedat a preliminary hearing who said I plead
the fifth as to whether he illegallytaped any of Joey's conversations. And I
was like, are you kidding me? And it was just something that wasn't
brought out on his trial. Itwasn't brought out on appeal because it wasn't
important to that. But it's justlike one thing that I'm like, this

(11:45):
case was messed up from you know, from the go, Joe, what
did you think about that? You? You know, you have the Innocent
Project working on your case already,they're looking at it. They get a
lawyer and wow, a miss meimjust get me out. What did you
think of that point? You know, I didn't want to get my hopes
up too much because I've been fightingfor so many, so many years,

(12:07):
so many years, and you know, I'll tell you this real quick,
and I want to say twenty eighteen. Was it twenty eighteen, Christina?
When we had we got denied firstin the Supreme Court. So I think
it was twenty eighteen. We gotdenied, and you know I was done.
You know, I was crushed,and you know I went in myself,

(12:31):
hit my knees and I prayed andcried like a baby, and I
said, God, I've had toomuch on me. You know, whatever
your purpose is, you know,I'm too much of a coward to kill
myself. I can't. I can'tdo that. You know, whatever your
purpose is with me, please,you know you've got to move. You've
got to you've got to act.And the very next day, and this

(12:54):
is the this is the truth.The very next day, I came in
from my detail and I called homeand Mom, so, your dad's got
something he wants to tell you.And I was like, look, if
it's bad news, I don't Idon't want to hear it. And so
she's like, no, it's goodnews. So he gets on the phone
and he tells me that the GeorgiaSupreme Court has done something that they hardly

(13:15):
ever do, that they never dothis, and they they reconsidered my case
and they said they're going to hearmy case. So that's kind of went
from that point on. I don'tthink I lost another motion. I think
I think from that point on,I think I won everything from from then
out and you know, and Iwon my habeas and then Ben told me

(13:41):
Noah was coming on. I reallydidn't know know, and then I started
doing some research and I was like, well, you know what this this
guy's good. You know, I'mI may actually go home. And you
know, it was it was greatIya. You know, I didn't,
like I said, I didn't wantto get my hopes up, but you
know, with the team I had, you know, when Christina and Megan

(14:03):
being I mean, these guys havefought tooth and nail and they back down
and nothing, you know, Andwhen Noah came on, I was like,
you know this, this this isgonna work. Joe. I mean,
Joey brings up a really interesting orimportant part, you know, for
I think what we do Christina andI is we don't we can't give our

(14:24):
clients false hope. And so youknow, we were moving personally, I
felt we were moving in a directionof getting this case dismissed long before Joey
knew anything about it. In fact, Joey didn't know anything about it until
we called him up and said yourcases to this and and you know,
and it's because you can't give yourclient false hope. So it it started

(14:48):
with I knew it was happening.When I finally knew it was happening,
I got Ben, Christina and Meganon the phone, and then I got
Claire from the Innocence Project, whowas also deeply involved in this case,
and and we're all on the phoneto get They're like, well, we
got to call Joey. And I'mlike, no, no, no,
we don't call Joey until it's signedand filed. They're like, well,
no, we got to call.I'm like, I don't care what the
prosecutor said. Until it's filed,we are not calling him. And so

(15:11):
we just kind of stayed on thephone and talked for a few minutes,
and I finally got the email thatwas filed, and then we called him.
Because the worst thing that we cando as attorneys is give clients false
hope, and too many your attorneysdo do that. They say, Joey,
don't you worry, and they pathim on the back, Everything's going
to be okay. I never telleverybody anything's going to be okay. I

(15:31):
never tell that to anybody, becauseyou know, when you're dealing with jurors
or judges or prosecutors, until it'sdone, you can't make that promise,
and you shouldn't make that promise.Christina, What made it done? I
mean, what did the did thedid the prosecution wake up? And so
this is right? How did theywhat made it done? And what made

(15:52):
what made the prosecution act the waythey did towards him in favor of him?
How did you do that? It'smagic? So I'm actually gonna let
Noah perspective on that, but Iwanted to say, you know, we're
talking about hope. Noah's talking aboutfalse hope. Completely agree, But when
you work with incarcerated people all thetime, who have been in prison for

(16:17):
decades for something they didn't do,there's a danger of real hope because people
we call it the roller coaster.It's something that we deal with a lot
with incarcerated people and their families.At some point, people cannot get on
the roller coaster anymore. They justcan't do it again. They can't get
up there to the top because ifthey go down, they just can't deal

(16:37):
with it anymore. So, youknow, false hope definitely agree, But
it's really hard for folks that arein Joey's position that he's been in to
be hopeful at all, even ifit's real hope. Right. So I
think between you and Megan, youguys kilt me, even Gil, you
know. And if it hadn't beenfor them, I would have got back

(17:00):
on that roller coaster. And theywere like, just you know, be
hopeful, but you know, andbut they would come see me, call
me, talk to me, andthey would. They were awesome when it
came to that, my family,they were great. What what gave the
what gave the prosecution? What madehim do it? Yeah? I mean
we had a great strategy as ateam of we foughtow a bunch of motions

(17:23):
that would what we were trying toshow the state is your case isn't good
anymore, okay, And here's whyit's not good. And the best piece
of evidence that nobody really understood atthe trial, at least Joey's lawyers didn't
understand, was cell phone data thatput Joey away from the murder scene and
impossible to get there unless he wasdriving like one hundred and over one hundred

(17:45):
miles p hour like under best casescenario, he would have had driven out
one hundred miles per hour to getto this place to commit the murder,
and just not possible and also notfactual. So are We had lots of
you know, discussions and strategy,and I love strategy. It's the best

(18:06):
part of what I do. Idon't want to say that Joey's case is
fun, because that's not fair whenit's his life. But this part of
the case is always interesting to me. And we just strategized about how to
make it obvious that there were problemswith the case, including the cell phone
data, and I think ultimately theDistrict Attorney's office probably consulted with a cell

(18:26):
phone expert that explained to them thatJoey really wasn't there. I mean,
they don't tell us in the endwhy they did it. They did it,
and we don't ask because I don'tcare. I just want to know
that Joey's going home right. Butit was. It took a lot,
and it you know, you weren'tan adversarial job. That's what we do.

(18:47):
We're on one side there on theother side. And while you know,
sometimes prosecutors are adversaries, there arealso people on our profession, and
you have to work with him,and you have to you have to let
them make their decision, but explainto them why they should make it.
And I think that's one of thethings I'm probably good at. And you
know, I have done both sides. I was a prosecutor for over seven
years. I can explain it tothem in a way that's not you know,

(19:11):
jamming it down their throat. Butlike, look, let's look at
this, and I think we justreally spent the time to do that.
We didn't go in there and youknow, start slamming them and yelling at
him. That never gets anything donein my way. And you know a
lot of my clients are like,well, you're you know, pre trial.
They're like, well, you're talkingto the prosecutor. But yeah,
you're right, I'm talking to theprosecutor. That's my job now that in

(19:32):
court, I'm going to fight themon everything. But if I can get
concessions before court, I mean,the best win is when they give up.
I'll take that any day over trial, you know, you know,
a trial where he's gone back totrial and murder and facing life again.
I'll take the dismissal any day,and I'll let them take. I don't
care who gets the credit, Like, it's not that's never important to me.

(19:55):
What's important is you know, thisyear, and part of my problem
is I loved working on Joey's caseand then it's like, okay, he's
free, and now I got kindof go work on the next one,
in which I have to do compartmentally. But this year kind of it hit
me around Thanksgiving, Christmas and NewYear's right, right, So this is
the this is the first Thanksgiving,Christmas and New Year's that Joey spent at
home with his family since he wasnineteen years old. How was that joy?

(20:19):
It was awesome. That's awesome.Yeah, it was great. You
know, it's it's kind of bittersweetbecause when you when you go to prison
for so long and then you comehome, everything you knew before doesn't exist
anymore. You know, it's familymembers. You know, I remember Christmas
when I was a teenager, andwhen you come home, you know,

(20:41):
your grandparents are gone, you gotother family members that are gone, and
it's just it was kind of,you know, kind of bittersweet, but
it was it was awesome. Howold are you when you went in you
arrested. It started when I wasnineteen. They arrested me in November of
two thousand, so I was twenty, so I actually went into jail.

(21:03):
You spent all that time in jail? What what do you do? Like?
You just have to rely on thewhat do you what are you writing
now? Somebody's it just seems tome, somebody's got to pay you back?
You know, what do you do? You know, I'm I look
at it like this. I wasblessed to have the attorneys that I had

(21:26):
and the people that helped me,and I'm blessed to be home to take
care of my family now, andyou know anything else. I don't hold
any grudges or anything like that.Was it wrong, Absolutely, it was
wrong. But the the big thingis I'm free and I have a chance
to life again, So I don't. I don't kind of dwell on,
you know, well, what's goingto happen? Should they do this,

(21:48):
should they do that? And whenthat happened in the legislation this year,
when we were trying to get thecompensation or whatever, it really opened my
eyes because at first, you know, I was angry because it didn't get
passed, and then it hit meas like, you know what, it
doesn't even matter. The money's notthe thing. I mean, yeah,
lacks of struggle, but everybody strugglesdaily. And but it really opened my

(22:15):
eyes back up to the ultimate goaland the ultimate prize, which is I'm
free. So anything else is justa blessing if it doesn't happen. So
what I'm free? Is there adoes this prosecution have a person of interest
in the case or somebody in thecase that they didn't They didn't know,
Christina, you know, I don'tknow what their thought process is. Now.

(22:37):
The certainly have known all along thatit wasn't just Watkins, which means
there is someone who shot and killedIsaac Dawkins. And if you look at
the facts of the case, itcertainly looks like a random sort of road
rage situation where there's a car kindof you know, cat and mouse with
Isaac struck driving down the road,and there with another shooting in Rome that

(23:02):
same night involving a very similar car. So you know, that's sort of
been a piece of the case allalong as well. What is clear is
that someone who killed Isaac Dawkins hasnot been called responsible. The Georgia Innocence
Project now there are other cases obviouslylike this that you have just talk about

(23:22):
what you do and so we canand give your website out so people want
to get in touch with you,they can't. Yeah, absolutely, So
we're our organization is about twenty oneyears old now and our mission is mainly
to help exonerate people who are wrongfullyincarcerated. We also have an education component
where we do things like this,We talk in the community about wrongful convictions

(23:45):
and just bring awareness to the factthat there are people sitting in prison who
did not do anything to get themselvesthere, which is really a stain on
our whole society. Right that thingslike that happen. It's very hard to
undo once that happens. The statisticsare roughly two to four percent of the

(24:07):
people that are incarcerated are factually innocent, had nothing to do with what they
were convicted of. So there arethousands of people in Georgia to day in
prison for something that they weren't involvedin. So the work is vast,
the resources are small, and it'sit's always an uphill battle. But yeah,
we have social media. We havea website Georgia Innocenceproject dot org.

(24:32):
We're on all of the platforms Instagram, Facebook, whatever, Twitter is called.
Yeah, yeah, right, butyeah, follow us. We've got
you know, active cases that we'reworking on that are in the public eye.
We actually just won another habeas lastmonth, which is a feat.
It's hard to do that, sothat's very exciting and we're kind of working

(24:53):
on that now, hoping for asimilar outcome, you know with Joey where
our client gets to come home.Well, this is a good This story's
good news. It is and Enjoy. I appreciate you coming in and talking
about it. Noah, thank youso much for what you did. Thank
you. Just keep going, keepgoing. You're out. That's out.
Absolutely. That's Henry Ball, ChristinaCribbs, Noah Pines, and Joy Watkins

(25:15):
telling the story of Joy Watkins inhis release after twenty two years wrongfully convicted.
For more information on this and otherprojects, visit the Georgia Innocence Project
at Georgia Innocenceproject dot org. Forquestions or comments related to the program,
contact me John Clark at Georgiannewsnetwork dotcom. Thanks for listening. I'll talk
to you next week right here onyour local radio station on Georgia Focus