Wrongful Conviction

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#041 Jason Flom with Jeffrey Deskovic Nov 13, 2017

Show notes

In 1990, Jeffrey Deskovic was wrongfully convicted of the brutal rape and murder of his 15-year-old classmate, Angela Correa. Jeff was only 16 at the time of the crime with no prior record. Police claimed that Jeff was overly upset at the victim’s funeral and were certain they had their man. They interrogated him for over seven and a half hours, without his mother or legal counsel present. After browbeating and intimidating him, they ultimately extracted a false confession after promising that he could go home after he confessed. He had also been told that if his DNA did not match the semen in the rape kit, he would be cleared as a suspect. In January 1991, Jeffrey Deskovic was convicted of 1st degree rape and 2nd degree murder, despite DNA results showing that he was not the source of semen in the victim’s rape kit, and he was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. In 2006, post-conviction DNA testing done by the Innocence Project both proved Jeff’s innocence and identified the real perpetrator, convicted murderer Steven Cunningham, who subsequently confessed to the crime. On November 2nd, 2006, Jeffrey Deskovic’s indictment was dismissed on grounds of actual innocence and he was released after serving 16 years in prison. Since his release, he has started The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, which investigates wrongful conviction cases and provides support for exonerees once they are released.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.

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#040 Jason Flom with Dusty Turner Nov 06, 2017

Show notes

On June 19th, 1995, Dusty Turner was out at a bar with some friends in Virginia Beach, VA, including his roommate and training partner, Billy Brown. Dusty Turner and Jennifer Evans were sitting in his car waiting for Evans’s friends to join them when an extremely intoxicated Billy Brown forced his way into the back seat and began insulting Evans and pulling her hair. When she tried to defend herself, Brown suddenly attacked her, wrapped his arms around her neck in a forceful choke hold, and killed her instantly. All the while Dusty Turner had been prying and clawing Brown’s hand off of Evans, pleading with him to stop. Finally realizing that she was dead, Dusty panicked and reacted to his intensive SEAL training that demanded “always protect your swim buddy” regardless of the cost. Dusty’s instinct for survival and misplaced loyalty to Brown took over as he drove out of the parking lot and helped Brown hide the victim’s body in a nearby wooded area. Eight days later, Dusty confessed the entire story to his commanding officer and agreed to take the police to the body after being assured that he would only be used as a witness during the trial. During Billy Brown’s trial in 1996, Brown testified against Dusty to receive a lesser sentence of 72 years in prison. Three months later, with an outraged community and media frenzy surrounding the case, Dusty Turner was convicted of first-degree murder and abduction, and sentenced to 82 years in prison.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#039 Jason Flom with Kian Khatibi Oct 30, 2017

Show notes

In 1998, Kian Khatibi was 22 years old and living in Westchester County, NY when he was wrongfully convicted of stabbing two men during a bar fight and sentenced to 7 to 14 years in prison. After eventually discovering that his brother had committed the crime, Kian successfully fought for his release from prison in 2008 and was finally exonerated in 2012. Kian Khatibi graduated with honors from New York University in 2011 and passed the bar exam in New York after graduating from Cardozo School of Law in 2014. He established a law practice in New York City and is currently working to free other wrongfully convicted individuals.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#038 Jason Flom with Jon-Adrian Velazquez Oct 23, 2017

Show notes

This special edition of Wrongful Conviction highlights the updates from two episodes recorded from Behind Bars. Since airing the Season 4 premiere about Lamonte McIntyre’s case, which was recorded while Lamonte was awaiting a new trial, he was finally freed on Friday, October 13th, 2017 after serving more than two decades behind bars in a Kansas correctional facility for a double murder. Season 2, Episode 5 featured a behind bars interview with Jon-Adrian Velazquez. “J.J.” was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life for the 1998 shooting death of Albert Ward, a retired police officer who owned and operated an illegal gambling spot in Harlem. Ward was shot and killed in the course of a robbery. Following the robbery, witnesses provided a description of the gunman as “a light-skinned black male with dreadlocks,” which prompted the search for “Mustafa,” a known drug dealer who fit the description. After learning that he was being sought by the police, J.J. attempted to vindicate himself of the allegations by voluntarily subjecting himself to a lineup. Out of nine eyewitnesses present at the scene of the crime, three identified him at the lineup. Despite being a light-skinned Latino who had never had dreadlocks and despite providing phone records which corroborated his alibi and showed that he was talking to his mother during the time of the crime, J.J. Velazquez was sentenced to 25 years to life even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime. Since then, two of the witnesses have recanted, and the other eyewitness has expressed serious doubts. J.J. and his alibi witness have both taken lie detector tests and have passed them. He is currently in his 21st year at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#037 Jason Flom with Ryan Ferguson Oct 16, 2017

Show notes

Ryan Ferguson was a 17-year-old high school student when Kent Heitholt, a sportswriter for the Columbia Daily Tribune, was found beaten and strangled in Missouri. Heitholt's murder went unsolved for two years until police received a tip that a man named Charles Erickson could not remember the evening of the murder and had told a friend that he thought he may have been involved. Erickson, who had spent that fateful evening partying with Ryan Ferguson, was interrogated by police and despite initially seeming to have no memory of the night of the murder, eventually confessed and implicated Ryan as well. Police offered Erickson a plea deal in exchange for testimony against Ryan at his trial in 2005. Despite the lack of any physical evidence tying Ryan Ferguson to the crime, he was convicted of second-degree murder and robbery and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#036 Jason Flom with Lorenzo Johnson Oct 09, 2017

Show notes

Lorenzo Johnson served 22 years of a life sentence after he was framed twice for a murder that happened in Pennsylvania while he was in New York. On December 15th, 1995, Tarajay Williams was murdered outside of a bar in Harrisburg, PA. For several months after the murder, police detectives threatened Lorenzo with a murder charge unless he falsely accused a friend of committing the murder and dealing drugs. When he refused, Lorenzo and his co-defendant Corey Walker were convicted of first-degree murder and criminal conspiracy to commit murder and were sentenced to mandatory life in prison on the murder conviction, and concurrent five to ten years on conspiracy conviction. Lorenzo won his freedom in an October 2011 federal court of appeals decision stating that his conviction was based on insufficient evidence and he was released on bond in 2012. However just four months later, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed and reinstated his murder conviction and Lorenzo Johnson voluntarily surrendered himself and was re-incarcerated. After Lorenzo’s re-incarceration, he and his legal team began investigating the police and prosecutorial misconduct that led to his wrongful conviction, and on July 11th, 2017, Lorenzo finally won his freedom. He has since been advocating for other wrongfully convicted prisoners.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#035 Jason Flom with Lucinda Hites-Clabaugh Oct 02, 2017

Show notes

Lucinda Hites-Clabaugh was 53 years old when she was wrongfully convicted of first-degree sexual abuse of a third grader in 2009. She was convicted despite no physical evidence, no witnesses, and a police officer’s admitted failures to follow investigative protocols. Lucinda spent over two years in prison until her conviction was overturned on July 18, 2012.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#034 Jason Flom with Lamonte McIntyre Sep 25, 2017

Show notes

On the afternoon of April 15th, 1994, two men were sitting in a powder-blue Cadillac in the Quindaro neighborhood of Kansas City, KS. A man dressed in black ran up to the passenger side, raised a shotgun and fired four rounds in what looked like a drug-related hit, killing the two passengers Doniel Quinn and Donald Ewing. Lamonte McIntyre, who was 17 at the time, was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. The prosecution relied primarily on the testimonies of two eyewitnesses who identified Lamonte as the shooter. Both eyewitnesses later recanted. Even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, he was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#033 Jason Flom with Andrew Krivak Aug 21, 2017

Show notes

This special edition of Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars was recorded inside of Wende Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Buffalo, NY with Anthony DiPippo’s co-defendant, Andrew Krivak, and his attorney Professor Adele Bernhard. On November 22nd, 1995, a hunter found the remains of 12-year-old Josette Wright in a wooded area of Putnam County, NY with her hands and feet hog-tied behind her back and her underwear shoved down her throat. Detectives investigating the murder arrested 16-year-old Dominic Neglia on unrelated drug charges. During questioning, detectives claimed that Neglia said 18-year-old Anthony DiPippo, his girlfriend at the time Denise Rose, Andrew Krivak, Adam Wilson, Bill McGregor were involved in the rape and murder of Wright. Although co-defendants, they were convicted in separate trials in Putnam County Supreme Court in 1997, based largely on the testimony of Wilson, McGregor and Rose, and sentenced each to 25 years to life in prison. While Anthony DiPippo denied any involvement in the crime and testified in his trial, Andrew Krivak signed a false confession in which he admitted to raping Josette Wright but not killing her and implicating Anthony DiPippo in the murder. In 2016, Andrew Krivak’s legal team sought to introduce newly discovered evidence that points to Howard Gombert, who is serving time in Connecticut for sexual assault, as the killer, which ultimately led to the acquittal and release of his co-defendant, Anthony DiPippo. The motion seeking a new trial was denied, largely due to his false confession. However, in 2019 a judge threw out his conviction and granted him a new trial. He is still in prison awaiting his new trial.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#032 Jason Flom with Crystal Weimer Aug 14, 2017

Show notes

Curtis Haith was beaten to death and shot outside of his home in western Pennsylvania. Police determined that the evening before Haith had attended a party in Uniontown, PA. Crystal Weimer, whose sisters hosted the party, and her cousin had driven Haith home and returned directly to the party. Crystal became the focus of the investigation after an ex-boyfriend told authorities she confessed. The charges were dropped when he recanted, but police re-filed the charges in 2004 with the use of statements given by Joseph Stenger, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy of homicide of Haith while he was serving time for unrelated robbery charges. Stenger testified that Crystal had an earlier physical altercation with Haith, and she enlisted Stenger and two unidentified black men to return to Haith’s house after where she lured him outside, and they beat him to death and shot him in the face. At her trial in 2006, the only physical evidence that directly tied Crystal to the crime scene was an alleged bite mark on the victim’s arm. Expert odontologist Dr. Constantine Karazulas told the jury that a mark on the victim’s hand was a bite mark made minutes before he died, and that Crystal is the one who bit him. During closing argument, the prosecution told the jury that the jailhouse informants who testified against her at the trial had not asked for any leniency on their own cases in return for their testimony. Crystal Weimer was convicted of third-degree murder and conspiracy to commit homicide and sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison. She continued to fight for her innocence, acting as her own lawyer and filing motions for post-conviction relief, but all were denied until a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus was filed on her behalf. In December 2014, Joseph Stenger ultimately recanted all of his statements and admitted that prosecutors dropped more serious charges against him in exchange for his testimony against Crystal. In early 2015, Dr. Constantine Karazulas, that same expert declared his own trial testimony "junk science" and "invalid." In February 2015, Crystal, represented pro bono by the Pennsylvania Innocence Project and the firm of Jones Day, filed a motion for a new trial based on the discredited bite mark evidence and the recantations of key witnesses. Her lawyers had also discovered that the prosecution had failed to disclose to Crystal’s trial counsel that the jailhouse informants had written letters to the prosecution requesting favorable treatment, which showed that the informants had testified falsely at trial when they denied they sought deals for their testimony. A new trial was ordered on October 1st, 2015, and Crystal Weimer was released the same day on bond after serving 11 years in prison. She was forced to wear an electronic ankle bracelet for another nine months until the judge dismissed the charges with prejudice, and she was finally exonerated in June 2016. Crystal is joined by one of her attorneys from the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, Nilam Sanghvi, in this episode.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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