July 28, 2022 • 51 mins
On June 28, 1997, 25-year-old member of the Lil Watts gang, Antonio Alarcon, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Hawthorne, California, by a rival gang, Lawndale 13. In exchange for release on unrelated charges, Santo “Payaso” Alvarez deflected attention for the Alarcon shooting toward fellow Lawndale 13 members Eduardo Dumbrique and John Klene, when he knew who the actual shooter was. Witness Daniel Curiel testified that after he was not able to make an identification in a photo lineup, Sergeant Doral Riggs pointed to the photos of Eduardo and John, convincing him to make the ID. However, Eduardo and John's alibis were corroborated by many friends and neighbors. Additionally, the actual shooter reached out to Eduardo’s family to confess to the murder. Regardless of the alibis, the confession, and the lack of physical or forensic evidence, Eduardo and John were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
In the eighties and nineties, Los Angeles gang culture was
much more nuanced than anyone outside of it bothered to know.
For some, gangs meant socializing, while the criminal activity of
others colored all affiliated with the same broadbrush gangs were
viewed as a problem that needed a swift and harsh solution,
and it seems that simply connecting it defended into a
gang was enough to get a conviction. While fifteen year
(00:26):
old Duardo Dambrican eighteen year old John Clinny were affiliated
with Lawn Del thirteen for the girls, parties and camaraderie,
three older Lawn Del thirteen members, Santo Alvarez, Lester mom Laura,
and Chad Landrum were in it for the drugs and violence.
On June seven, Antonio aller Khan, a rival gang member,
(00:46):
was killed in a drive by shooting. A few days later,
to escape unrelated charges, Santo Alvarez used his knowledge of
that drive by to blame me, Duardo, and John. A
few weeks later, Alvarez, mont Laure and Landrum committed another murder,
and the police were happy to pin alvare As role
on a woman who knew that deceased rather than their
(01:07):
star witness against Eduardo and John. With Alvarez a statement
and a corrupt identification process that was immediately recanted and
protested by the witness the two boys were taken to trial.
Chad Landrum was willing to confess to the drive by,
but his continued violence behind bars kept him unavailable. Despite
both Alvarez and the witnesses less than willing participation to trial,
(01:30):
the prosecutor and the detectives were able to harp on
Eduardo and John's gang affiliation in order to send them
away for life without parole. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome
(01:52):
back to wrongful conviction today, we're covering a case. It
gives us a peek into the gang world of Los
Angeles in the nine nineties and the way in w
the l a p D and the Prosecutor's office dealt
with that issue. We have two men that were affected
by those policies when they were just boys. There's a
third ronthly convicted person, Susan Mellen, from a related crime.
(02:12):
She's not recording with us today, but they're amazing. Lawyer
is one of the founders of Innocence Matters. Deirdre O'Connor,
Welcome to wrongful Conviction. Thank you for having me and
now our guests of honor, the two men themselves. You know,
I'm I always say this, but it's true. I'm sorry
that you guys are here because of why you're here,
(02:34):
but I'm really happy to have you on Wrongful Conviction today.
So I'm going to introduce John Clinny First. John, thank
you for being here with us today on wrongful Conviction.
Thanks for having me, And of course Ed dambri Que,
thank you for joining us, Thanks for having me. Appreciate
So you two guys grew up together. Can you give
(02:55):
us a little background there. I've known Ed since I
was about maybe fift We both grew up in Lawndale, California.
Lawn Bells kind of typical middle class city in the
South Bay. You know, it has its little areas that
aren't so great, and it's some areas are are decent.
(03:16):
So it's about ten minutes fifteen minutes from the beach.
I think it's it's a nice city. It's got a
good high school. So growing up in Lawndale, there was
a gang in your neighborhood called the Lawndale Thirteam. Well,
we grew up there and we were part of that.
So you two grew up in the gang culture of
Los Angeles in the eighties and nineties and really came
of age in the nineties. And I think it's news
(03:37):
to some people that the word gang and gang culture
in general is a bit more nuanced than most of
the country realized back then. You know, many of our
listeners are old enough to remember seeing news reports of
the violence associated with gangs, and that's pretty much all
anyone outside of that culture knew about it at the time.
Only negative connotations, of course, So society reacted to that
perception by electing quote unquote tough on crime politicians who
(04:01):
implemented these kinds of ham fisted policing tactics, which of
course had very real effects, as you can both attest
to locking people up for the sake of doing it,
but not the right people, and in too many cases
it's wrong people like in yours. But gang culture was
not just criminality and violence, right, It was much much
more nuanced than that. Would you say that's an accurate depiction, Yeah,
(04:23):
for sure, even in a single gang it maybe, like
you know, some people are just families, some people are
just friends. Of course, you have a criminal element to it,
but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is involved in crime.
The term gang is is not a good one. But
it's like when you're young and growing up and and
and you experienced the friendship and the camaraderie, and I
(04:44):
mean that's kind of where you end up at, especially
if you're growing up like in a neighborhood, you know
where gangs are there. You know, not everybody is on
the same page, not everybody gets along. We were having fun,
you know, whether we're trying to get girls, trying to
have a good time the so what it was. But
then you definitely had other guys that their version of
fun or or you know, what they would do is
(05:06):
drugs and violence. What I think is true for all gangs, right,
is that there are little subsets inside the gangs where
people gravitate towards certain activities, you know, chasing girls, maybe
scoring some weed, that kind of thing. And there was
that kind of group, and then there were the people
like Piasso, which is Santo Alvarez, or Ghosts Chad Landrum
(05:29):
or Wicked Lester Monlare that were really wanting to make
a name for themselves. They were getting high all the
time and doing some real vicious stuff. And they were
the ones out there doing the drive bys and the
kind of gratuitous violence that everybody associates gangs with. Did
(05:49):
you get along with these guys? We know them. Uh,
they're all significantly older than us. I knew Lester when
I was growing up a little bit, like just as
a as a younger kid it, but he kind of
went the druggie kind of violent route, and I just
was there for kind of like the camaraderie and the
friendships and the fun I saw Santos on my block
(06:11):
a lot here and there, and my neighbor that lived
in the backhouse, I guess he got his radio stolen,
you know, out of his car in my driveway, you know,
and I always pretty much suspected Santos as being the
one that that stole it, you know. Okay, so so
much for camaraderie. So this kind of accurately paints a
(06:33):
picture of the divide that's at the crux of this story.
And I mean by that the larger perception of gangs
in the nineties, and then how the issue was dealt with,
like I said, in a ham fisted kind of way
by detectives like the ones in this case. There was
Sergeant Riggs, but also Marcella Win in a related case Deirdre.
Have either of them had any other wrongful convictions that
(06:56):
they've been tied to Win certainly does. She's uh, she
real offender. There's at least five known people. Oh, b
Anthony and Reggie Cole case, they were co defendants. Um,
it was Win's first murder case at South Bay Homicide. Yeah,
we covered that case here on Rathle conviction and we'll
have it linked in to bio. Then she had these
(07:17):
two guys and John and now she had a tangential
role in that. But had she done the right thing,
these guys would not have been in custody. She also
had the Susan Mellon case where she relied on a
non reliable person obviously unreliable, there was no question about it.
And then she had another case, the Michelle Puo's case,
(07:39):
she relied on the same unreliable witnesses she used against
Susan Mellon. That is really disgusting tactic that we see
over and over again revisiting and reusing the same useful
liars like Mark Tabbans did in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan,
and this kid Joey Morales who was a witness in
six different murders and each time he was out getting
(08:01):
milk for his mom. And Danny Wrinkling, who he interviewed
on this podcast, which is still in prison three decades
later because of this fake witness, and of course Mark
Tavn's it looks like when was cut from the same cloth,
she was a terrible detective and didn't follow the rules
at all. Now, as far as Sergeant Riggs is concerned,
(08:22):
you're gonna see what he does in this case in
terms of the identification process, and one can only surmise
that if he was so comfortable running rough shot over
a witness who was protesting at the identification in the
courtroom and in post conviction, Yeah, while at the identification,
he's literally going, I can't see that far. I can't
do this identification for you because I can't see. So
(08:45):
this guy tried to stand up and do the right
thing and was overruled and overridden and bullied by these cops.
So it's fair to say that this is something that
this particular officer had done before. The one thing I
would say Jason in these In these gang cases, you know,
all bets are off with these detectives. They can do
whatever they want because they know that nobody has any sympathy.
(09:07):
All they have to do is say the word gang member,
and the prosecutors, adjurors, judges, everybody rallies around a conviction.
So the rules are completely different in a gang case.
And that's why you see detectives violate the rules as
much as they do because they can get away with it, right.
They violate the rules while lumping every gang member in
(09:28):
under the umbrella of quote violent gang member, regardless of
what subset of the gang that individual identified with. And
what happened in this case, as happens unfortunately all over
the country tragically, is that you have a violent character
like Santo Alvarez who conveniently trades false information for his
own freedom and then he and they remain free, i mean,
(09:53):
other people like him to commit more acts of violence
while getting innocent folks wrongfully convicted. And according to the
fall this information that Alvarez eventually gave the police, this
story began to unfold on the day before the incident
in question, Jun won a few kids from around the
lawn deal thirteen neighborhood who were not in any way affiliated,
(10:13):
were the victims of a dry button. This was allegedly
perpetrated by members of the Little Watts game. Now none
of this was ever investigated or substantiated, but this story
from Santo Alvarez was used as the alleged motive or
retaliatory drive by the following night. But did either of
you guys even know the kids who were shot or
shot at the night before, and particularly did you know
(10:34):
nineteen year old Luis Madrono. I didn't know the guy.
Those guys were not associates of Londel. They were not
friends of Londo that I know of. But somehow I
guess to maybe create a motive for our case, they
got brought into that as being a good way to say, oh, yeah,
these guys are retaliating for this. And what happened the
(10:55):
following night, June seven, was that a member of the
Little Watts gang, year old Antonio Alercon, was that an
auto body shop and while outside using the payphone next door,
out of sight of those in the auto body shop,
he was killed by a drive by shooter. Digital what
else can you tell us? Alercon had a truck that
was being worked on over a period of time at
(11:17):
the shop, and the shop owner, Daniel Curio, was at
the shops that night with a couple of other people
in the shop, and Alercon happened to stop by and
while he was there, I think he got a page
and he wanted to use the phone to call uh
this woman who turned out to be his mistress. So
he was offered to use the inside phone, but he
(11:39):
declined and decided to go outside because he wanted privacy.
So he went out of the shop. There's an adjacent
building and there's a pay phone outside of that, and
he went to the payphone to speak with his mistress,
and then suddenly a car pulled up. Somebody got out
of the car and just unloaded multiple shots and he
(12:01):
was killed really probably before he had any chance to
react in any way. And then the shooter got back
in the car and the car drove off, and as
it drove off, it passed the opening of the body
shop garage door. So basically there's the storefront on the corner.
Adjacent to it is the body shop, but the body
(12:21):
shop sits in from the sidewalk so that there's parking
in front of it. So when you're inside the body
shop with the door open and looking out, you would
not have a direct line to the phone booth because
the wall of the building would be blocking it. But
once the car moved forward, they would be able to
see the car pass by right, So no one actually
(12:45):
got a good look at the shooter, including the shop owner,
who told detectives that, but detectives cajoled him anyway into
making an idea that he has never supported. Curiel even
demonstrated later at trial that he can't reliably see twenty
feet in front of him. Can you talk a bit
about his vantage point curios Working on a car with
(13:05):
his back to the street, he hears the sound of
the gunshots going off, but he thought it was fireworks,
and because of the the echoing effect, he thought it
was coming from the back. So he goes to the
back and he looks out to see what's going on
back there, and that's when he realizes it's coming from
the front. And by then the car is moving past
(13:28):
the shop, so he would have been I think more
than twenty feet away from the car at the time
that he first observed it. So what he and others
did see was that this was a black or darker
in college to Dan, and that the front passenger had
yelled some kind of gang epithetic alercon as they drove off.
So this shooting happened around eleven PM on June, And
(13:50):
from looking into this case, I realized that this state
has some other significance and most of our audience will
remember this like I do, because early here that same night,
Mike Tyson bit a Vander Holyfield's ear off during a
heavyweight championship fight. So people remember that night very very clearly.
(14:12):
In fact, you guys were friends. Ed was fifteen, John
was eighteen, and you were hanging out to watch the
fight together. Is that right? Yes? Yeah, the day of
barbecue invited me and it was actually a great night.
You know, we've never seen something like that before, right,
It was pretty memorable. There was multiple people there, you know, cooking, eating, drinking.
(14:34):
It was it was a good night. Yeah, that was insane.
I remember calling my friends and family just to check
if they had seen it. Yeah, people called the house,
a few people and they're like, what the hell happened?
Seeing it on the news, and you know, if they
didn't watch the fight, you know, right, they knew you
were watching and called to ask about it. You were
(14:55):
seeing on the front lawn talking on your cordless phone
by a neighbor as well, who got home aroundled. So
not only the people at the party, but also those
that called you and your neighbor, they all placed you
at home at the time of the shooting, which was
about an eight to twelve minute drive away from your home.
And this shooting was alleged to be in retaliation for
the shooting of some kid you didn't even know. Now,
(15:15):
this case was being investigated by Sergeant DORYL. Riggs. Several
days go by and on July one, Santo Alvarez a
Kasso got picked up for possession of a weapon and
a hypodermic needle by Torrance p D. And this is
when the story started. So basically, Santos Alvarez is in
jail trying to find his way out of jail, starts
(15:36):
telling the I believe it was a Torrance police department
where he was at. You know, hey, I know something
about about a murder that happened, and they called the
Sheriff's Homicide right, so Torrance p D called over to
l A County Sheriff's Homicide department and Sergeant Riggs came
to interview Santo Alvarez and they started asking about this
dark colored car, maybe black, perhaps Queen, And while distancing
(15:59):
himself from Lawndale gang activity, he said that the only
person he can think of from Lawndale with a car
like that was a guy named Robert Caputo. And he
said that he saw the two of you in Caputo's
car on the day of the murder, among other things.
By also, Santo Alvarez creates this story that he saw
me the day of the murder and I was upset
(16:23):
about that shooting from the prior day of Luis Madrono,
and that I wanted to retaliate. And then he said
that he saw me like you know, a few days
later or whatever, and and says that he overhears me
talking to someone else saying that I shot someone or
blasted that for something like along those lines is what
(16:44):
he used. So with that, for my understanding, they let
him out. Then they go back to the witnesses. I
feel they put pressure the most on probably Daniel curie
El since he was a shop owner and showed him
six packs and coerced him and who identifying us because
of what Santos said. So you mentioned that Albert said
(17:06):
that we were in Campoodle's car, right, but the computer
had turned that car in or sold it. They could
tell there that he was lying about that. That's a
significant thing to lie about it. You said they were
in a car that the guy doesn't have exactly. Cappodo
had sold it in February seven, about five or six
months before the shooting. Yet, Riggs and his partner Garcia
(17:28):
brought a six pack photo array over to Curio with
the purpose of getting him to I D YouTube as
if they couldn't spot that lie about Caputo's car right
off the bat. This bogus photo lineup happened on July tenth,
I believe, before Ed's arrest, and Curiel has always disputed this,
but Riggs says that he identified Ed as the shooter
(17:49):
and John is the front passenger. He held a gang epithet.
So what really happened here, Well, Riggs convinces him basically, look,
you're never gonna have to go to court. We don't
even need you. This is just to help our case
a little bit. We already got these guys, but in
reality he was their entire case. So he convinces Curiel
(18:11):
to say, all right, I'll sign for you to day
my arrest. July on my way to the gym with
a friend, and he noticed that there was cock cars
behind us. Uh, and there was three of them, and
then there was three coming in front of us. It
had a bad feeling, like this is not a traffic ticket.
(18:35):
They pulled us over, pull the guns out, drive us
off the car. And one of my mom's friends happened
to be driving by, and so she was across the
street just observing. But I was trying to communicate with
her to call my mom. Do I didn't want my
mom not to know what happened to me either, you know.
So I was fifteen. They tried MS an adult, and
(18:55):
they sent me to the county jail, and I found
myself in in a very violent section of the other
college job and that was my kind of introduction to
the system. Three weeks after the aller Con shooting, Santo Alvarez,
(19:28):
Luster Monler, and Chad Landrum were hanging out in this
house that had been vacated that was referred to as
the melon Patch because the family that owned it their
last name was Melan. So they break in the back.
They're getting high homeless guy Richard Daily, who had prior
connection with the woman who used to live there. Susan
(19:49):
Mellon stops by their originally partying with him, and then
all of a sudden, Chad Landrum viciously attacks daily Max's
head multiple times with a hammer and kills him. And
then with the help of Santo and Lester, they wrap
up the body and bring it to an alley in
(20:12):
San Pedro, where they set it on fire in hopes
of destroying any evidence. Said, well, enable the police to
connect them, right, And you all didn't find out about
this until post conviction, even though the person who prosecuted
both Ed and John prosecuted this case as well, and
we talked a bit about her before. But the Daily
murder fell on Marcella Wind's desk, right, and all of
(20:34):
these informants came to her saying it was Piasso ghost
and wicked with the hammer right in the melon patch,
open and shut, right, But that's not what happened. This person,
Susan Melon, ended up getting dragged into it in Piassa's
stead right instead of him. How did that happen? Well,
I think initially, when you know she takes the path
of least resistance in all of her investigations, so when
(20:56):
people were handing up to the three gang members, she
was going to pursue that and go after them. She
even submitted an affidavit for restaurants for all three of them. However,
she doesn't want to do any heavy lifting, so there
wasn't enough evidence for the d A to pursue Piasso,
and when didn't do the investigation, she needed to build
(21:19):
a case against him. So at the same time that
it was becoming clear that she'd have to work to
get Piasso further implicated in it, this other tweaker, June Patty,
came along and said, Hey, I got some information on Melon.
You can pursue her. And so Wind shifted gears and
went after Melon. And while she was doing this, she
(21:39):
was in communication with Riggs about Piasso's role as a
witness as their star witness in that case. So in
those conversations that were never documented, the substance of that
was never documented. Clearly, these detectives made decisions that benefited
both of them. So Riggs was allowed to use Piasso
in the Alarcon shooting, and Win was free to pursue
(22:02):
Melan another innocent person for the daily murder. So ultimately
Chad Lange, I mean, Lester Mon Laura were rightfully pursued,
along with Susan Mellon, who was wrongfully pursued. They were
all tried separately, and Landrum and Melon were both convicted.
Man Laura was acquitted, so both Mon Laura and Alvarez
got off scott free, ready willing and able to commit
(22:25):
even more crimes. Jesus Christ. So now August fourteen rolls
around and John, you were arrested for the Alercon drive
by as the front seat passenger. Yeah, that was a shocker, obviously,
but for the first you know, six months of going
to jail. When I got arrested, I thought the next
court date they would realize this guy is not supposed
(22:48):
to be here, We're gonna go ahead and release him.
And you know, every court date turned into a next
court date until I finally realized, like, these guys are serious,
they really, you know, they're really trying to charge me
with this. So now October seven, curial was brought into
view a live lineup, and on the advice of your lawyer, John,
you tried to change your appearance. So even though you
(23:10):
were innocent of this crime. This move made you look
not so great. My lawyer drank to Jacomo. He tells me,
you know, hey, this guy, he's already seen pictures of you.
They've shown him your six pack or whatever. Let's kind
of make it a little more difficult for him to
pick you out. So, you know, grow your hair out,
shave your mustache. And I'm listening to the advice of
(23:32):
my attorney, so I'd say, all right, you know, I
grow my hair out, shave my mustache. I go to
my lineup and then I'm waiting. They bring me off
the stage from the lineup, and the deputy is like,
who are you? And I'm like, what do you mean
You're not John Clenny? Who are you? And I'm like, yes,
I am. And he's like, no one recognizes you out there.
Your your lawyer doesn't recognize you. The detective doesn't recognize you.
(23:56):
You did you switch wristbands? And I'm like, no, I
didn't switch wristbands, Like it's me, you know, And I said,
how did my lawyer not recognize me? He just saw
me two weeks ago. He's the one that told me
to change my appearance. Little did I know that was
going to be used against me. They used that as
a sign of a consciousness of guilt. So later on
Curiel and identifying you in the live lineup, he went
(24:19):
on to testify that he had just recognized John from
the photo race and in referring to Riggs quote, I
already knew who he was looking for end quote. Now
you two are on your way to be tried together,
and Chad Landrum has already been convicted and sentence to
life without the possibility of parole. Amazingly, Landrum reached out
to Ed's family because he wanted to come clean about
(24:41):
the alercon drive by. He wanted to testify in the case,
and my Lord did bring him down to our trial
or it was maybe a pre trial most or something,
and they never got his his statement. It didn't give
him a chance to testify or confess. From what I've read,
there's a reason why he didn't get that chance. He
was actually brought down to the courthouse. What happened, Yeah,
(25:04):
I guess he got into it or something with someone.
I think it was on the bus or I'm not
too sure, but he ended up stabbing him in the
courthouse tank and that was the end of that. So
you're one shot at getting around the false testimony of Alvarez,
and this protested identification just got dragged away for acting
(25:25):
out violently again stabbing another guy. And then you go
to trial in el A County Superior Court and no
one brought up Landrum's involvement or went to get an
Affidavid nothing. So Ed was represented by Walter Urban and
John by Frank te Jacomo. The prosecutors Valerie Cole. So
the prosecutions theory was that Ed, John and a third
long Dale thirteen gang member we're in the dark green car.
(25:47):
John was in the front passenger seat, Ed was in
the backseat, and Ed was the shooter. So they never
caught up with this alleged driver, right, John allegedly shouted
an epithet about the Little Watch gang. This was allegedly
retaliation for this other shooting. But of course this entire
theory came from Santo Alvarez, who was deflecting the blame
(26:07):
from his own crew. What was presented by the prosecution
to support this wacky ass theory. The prosecution was entirely
dependent on pre trial statements of Santo Alvarez and the
pre trial identification of Curio. At the actual trial, Curio
did not identify either Ed or John. He specifically testified
(26:31):
that the only reason he made the pre trial identification
was because he was, you know, kind of pressured to
and he gave the whole story about how the police
pointed out the pictures and said, hey, this guy's bragging
about it, this guy was in the front seat, this
guy's a shooter, all that. So the jurors weren't basing
their verdict on what the testimony in front of them.
(26:52):
They were basing their verdict on the statements made outside
of their presence. Same thing with Piassa. When he gets
into trial, he's like, I don't know, don't know, I
don't know what I said, might have said whatever. So
they used the tape recording of the statement that Piasso
made to Riggs. And by the way, they rehearsed it
before they did the official tape, right, they talked to
(27:14):
him off record, and then they put the tape on
and they talked to him, and so the jurors were told, hey,
look it, this is a gang case. Piasso doesn't want
to come in here and write out his homies, so
you can believe what he said to Riggs when he's
trying to get out of custody, and Curio, poor Curio,
he's being intimidated and threatened by all these gang members.
(27:36):
So that's why he's not going to say it in
front of you all. But he looked what he said
to the to the cops. You know, he made this idea,
and that was the entirety of the prosecutor's case. And
the other thing she did, without any legitimate basis for
doing so, is she made every single one of the
alibi witnesses look like liars and made it sound like
(27:58):
the alibi was this last minute defense that defense lawyers
put together at the very end, when John's mother had
presented the lawyers with line by line, minute by minute
timeline of where everybody was, who showed up, when, who
left when, the names, the phone numbers and all of
that the day she hired John's lawyer. So the alibi
(28:21):
was known right from the get go, but the jurors
were misled into believing it was all some fabrication by
the tricky defense lawyers. I mean, I can see how
you could impeach alibi witnesses as friends and loved ones
or as they did in this case fellow gang members
and friends of lawnd Al thirteen, So the messages that
everyone is gang related and therefore lying. But your lawyer
(28:42):
could have backed up the alibi with phone records. It's
not that complicated it but even without that support though,
from what I understand, the one witness that was used
in this corrupt identification process, Curiel, was adamant that he
did not stand by this identification. Did he really take
off his glasses to demonstrate how bad his vision was,
because that would have been pretty powerful. Does anyone remember that? Yeah?
(29:05):
I remember that he took off his glasses in court
and couldn't see anything. I mean, you could tell he
couldn't see anything. You know when when someone I can
take off my glasses and you can tell I need
them just by looking at me. So, I mean, it
was amazing, man, it was. It was crazy. Another thing
that I remember happening with the district attorney. She said
(29:27):
that I gave him my thumbs up. Yeah. I read
about that to Curio, like as if he was helping
you out. And I'm curious now she's ever used that
tactic against other defendants. Because the whole court room focused
on me and this is did you just give the
guy a thumbs up an open quote room. Now mind,
he wasn't doing me any favors, there was no reason,
and I did not give him a thumbs up. I'm
(29:49):
looking at the jury like I did not. But it
was effective. It was that was dirty. It sounds like
they were just running the disgraceful play book. I mean,
part of Curio's testimony was that the cops just convinced
him that they had the right guys, and at that time,
everyone believed the police right. And then all they had
to do is say gang and gang member enough times
(30:10):
and it's almost like Pavlov's dog and just almost a
knee jerk reaction from the jury to say, okay, great,
when do I get to vote guilty? The alibis and
the witness protesting the identification just didn't seem to matter
at all, You got it? And then they throw that
thumbs up in there. If I could jump in on
that point. And in l A, they created this hardcore
(30:31):
gang unit in the late eighties, I believe it was
eight or eighty nine, and the whole purpose of that
hardcore gang unit was like, damn, it's hard to prove
these cases because everybody's a liar, and everybody has baggage,
and and we don't have good witnesses. We got to
figure out a way. And basically what they did was
they created this unit where they recruited all these over
(30:54):
zealous prosecutors and say, hey, you get to be the
shining star here, and you can make these cases that
nobody else can may And then they gave them strategies
for how to do that. How do you what's the
work around when you really can't prove your case beyond
a reasonable doubt, Just say gang gang, gang, gang, gang,
as many times as you can make everything be about
scaring the hell out of the jurors and making them
(31:16):
think that whoever sitting in the dependence seat is the
worst person in the world just because they happen to
have affiliated with a gang for whatever reason, and regardless
of their level of involvement, let's get him off the street.
Evidence be damned. Even their use of the word homies,
I mean, that's a racist dog whistle if I ever
heard one. I saw the gang gang gang, pushed by
(31:38):
the prosecutor, by the you know, by the detectives. You know,
I saw my my lawyer not do a good job
at all. The combination of all those things, I felt
my life slipping away from me when they read the verdict.
I remember her, you know, my family, my mom were willing.
I remember looking up at the lights in the core
(32:00):
room trying to not you know, let no tears come out. Man,
I think I probably did shed a couple of tears.
You know, people talk about the worst moment in their life.
That was for sure the worst moment right there. You know,
(32:27):
I get to prison, I'm brand new. I don't know
what to expect. I know that I'm surrounded by a
bunch of guys that are violent, angry, confrontational, and so
I'm navigating through that. You gotta walk on eggshows to
be sure. And I used to work out a lot
(32:48):
because if I did end up having to get into
a confrontation, I wanted to be able to defend myself,
and so I used to work out for three hours
a day in the beginning. I tell people this story
all the time, like my kind of welcome to prison moment.
I'm scared, but I'm also trying not to show fear.
You know, that's not a good idea in prison. I'm
(33:09):
walking on the yard, some guys sitting down on a
curb and as I'm walking, I'm I'm, you know, probably
a foot or two away from him, and a guy
comes up behind him. It just slices his whole face open,
from like his lip to his ear. And just seeing
that happen, like, you know, a foot away from me,
(33:32):
it was like, where the funk am I? So, like
I said, it's just survival mode, that's it. As soon
as I could, I started to read books and then
I learned that, you know, the way the criminal fuel
process works is your lawyer is gonna dump the case
on you, and then it's gonna be on you to
(33:53):
represent yourself. And that's when I started going to the library.
I wouldn't go to the yard. I would go to
the library instead, because you could go, we choose one
or the other. And started to learn the law. And
then I found myself in solitary and I had to
try to figure out way how am I going to
get out of solitary was I started to study solitary
(34:15):
confinement cases and I put together a memorandum of law
on why lawyers should come to California and challenge long
term solitary confinement, and in those efforts I managed to
meet Professor Joe's Lobell from the University of Pittsburgh. It
was through his student Brett Groat, who's who now the
(34:36):
director of the Abolitionist Law Center. They read my memorandum,
they researched it, and they decided to come to California
follow a class action, and that case settled in twenty
And you know, I was partly responsible for getting guys
that had been in there for thirty five years, twenty
(34:57):
eight years, twenty seven years. Um Me myself, I was
there for thirteen years. It is one of the things
that I've done in my life that I still feel
the rewards of because today there's people that are outside
and seeing the sky, seeing their family, and that is
due to the work that I did. Obviously, I wasn't
(35:18):
acted alone. I had there was a team of lawyers.
But I put in the work and it paid off. Well.
You should be very proud of that. And as part
of that settlement, California can no longer put a prisoner
in solitary confinement for indeterminate periods. In Ed's case, it
was thirteen years with no end in sight, simply based
upon alleged gang membership. So now that you fought your
(35:42):
way out of the prison. Within the prison, let's get
to how you guys are here speaking with us today.
So your initial appeals were denied. As far as I
can see here, there's no real movement on this until
Landrum once again reached out to Ed's family, saying that
he wanted to confess the murdering Aller con Right. We
knew this already, but I guess he hadn't ever gone
(36:02):
on the record about it and wasn't exactly easily reachable.
He was also by this time in solitary doing life
without parole. So John, take us through this. My friend
told me when I got convicted, like, I'm gonna get
you a lawyer. I don't care how long it takes,
you know, once I can afford one, I'm gonna get
you one. So when this stuff came up with Landrum,
(36:24):
that's when I talked to my best friend and I
told him, you know, now is the time. You know,
this guy's coming forward and confessing, Like, we need to
get a lawyer, and thank god we got Dear Druft.
John's friend reached out to me in May of two
thousand and twelve, and what had happened prior to that
was Chad Landrum had written out a confession and provided
(36:47):
it to Ed's family and then Ed used it to
file his own habeas petition, but he didn't have any
resources or a lawyer to help him, so it was
just the paper that went in and the judge just
dismissed it without any thoughtful analysis at all. So when
John's friend reached out to me, the first thing we
(37:07):
did is we scheduled a trip to Pelican Bay to
meet with Chad Landrum and at Dumbrici. Both of them
were in the shoe unit and they had no ability
to communicate with one another. My sense of it was
if there was merit to Chad Landrum's confession, we needed
to do a lot more work to build it up,
and so we asked all kinds of details, including who
(37:30):
else would have known back in the day about Chad's
role in this killing and the details. He had not
a single note in front of him reminding him about
any of the details of the case, and he could
give me specific information consistent with the police report, including
the fact that he got out of the car and
(37:52):
shot Alarcon. There were only two witnesses that saw that
there were women across the street, and they were never
used in the trial, so none of that was in
the trial record. All of the people from the auto
body shop never saw anybody out of the car because
the car doesn't come into their line of sight until
after the shooting is done. He also knew that Alercon
was shot with different types of bullets. That was a
(38:15):
fact that, although it was contained in the records, would
not be something that some random person would have known about.
So there was a lot of key points in Chad
Landrum's statements to me that made me think that he
probably was telling the truth. And so I asked him
to tell me confirmation as to who else knew back then,
and he told me his brother knew, and we followed
(38:36):
up and talked to the brother, and the brother gave
us all kinds of information. And I also asked Chad
if he would take a polygraph, and he immediately agreed to,
but the prison wouldn't allow us to go up there.
And so then you know, all of the places you
would go logically in an investigation like this, including contact
and Curiel stopped by his work out of the blue.
He agrees to talk to us at an eyehop as
(38:59):
soon as he gets off of work, and he lays
it all out. He tells us consistent with his recantation, everything,
and it's all on tape, so nobody, nobody can say
we put words in his mouth or anything. And then
we did the same thing with all the alibi witnesses
to find out, you know, was there more that could
have been done to show that they were telling the truth,
including the logical things like phone records and other people
(39:22):
who could corroborate what they said. And it all fell
into place, and it was like I remember talking to John,
you know, we filed our brief and three months after investigation,
and we felt like, this is a no brainer. He
should be out that year. I think that's how we
all hope our system works, but unfortunately that's not how
it usually goes, and this was no exception. So John's
(39:44):
habeas was filed in October two thousand twelve. You presented
all of this material, and like you said, it was
a no brainer. In two thousand thirteen, Landrum made a
formal confession on the record. Then Ed joined the Habeous
as well. So it seems like they're a lot of momentum,
and in an effort to further support landrom confession, you
(40:05):
reached out to his co defendant on the Richard Daily Murder,
another wrongfully convicted person, Susan Mellon Right. So we went
and visited her. There was some delays along the way
because she was being represented by someone else, but a
year later I ended up representing her and in a
lot of what I needed to prove her innocence overlapped
(40:26):
with what I needed to prove for John and ultimately
ed because there were so many witnesses in common, and
representing Susan gave me access to witnesses that I didn't
have before that. So this is two thousand fourteen, Landrum
and even alvare as one of the record confessing to
their roles in the Daily Murder and clearing Susan of
any responsibility. And after seventeen years in prison, seventeen long years,
(40:50):
Susan's conviction was vacated, charges were dismissed and she went
on to sue Marcella win and one twelve million. Good
for her. So we're obviously very happy for Susan. That
seemed to be our system operating at the speed that
it should, I mean, notwithstanding the seventeen long years wrongfully incarcerated.
(41:10):
But for John and Ed there was a court order
in November of two thousand twelve for the d A
to respond to this habeas petition. What happened there was
one delay after another. There was transfers of district attorneys
and all kinds of stuff that just a month turned
into six month, turned into a year, turned into five years.
And uh, it's hard. I can't even imagine, excuse me,
(41:38):
what it's like for these guys, uh, to have to
count on a lawyer on the outside saying, don't worry,
I got you back. I'm gonna I'm gonna do this.
You know, I'm gonna get it taken care of, when
they have been disappointed every step of the way. And I,
you know, my experience of it is like, you know,
the frustration I feel on my end can't even begin
(41:58):
to compare to what these guys are going through. Right.
Imagine having the keys to the prison gates staring you
in the face for eight years before the district attorney
or the courts even pretend to not ignore them. It
wasn't until a judge finally made a ruling that amounts
to basically a brain fart of a man in cognitive decline.
So tell us about this, Judge, Edmund Clark Jr. And
(42:20):
how this thing finally turned around. So it was clear
we weren't going to be able to force anybody's hand
until we filed this supplemental brief. And I mean, this
is this brief because of all of the evidence that
was developed during Susan Mellon's case was even stronger than
what we had, and we had a clear winner from
from the beginning. But it lands in the hands of
(42:42):
a judge who couldn't care less and in a heartbeat,
without any hearing or anything, he denies it. He characterizes
it as a proceed proper petition. When I have my
name all over it, it's clear I'm representing him, and
I had already been on the record, and he completely
distorted the history of it and made it sound like
(43:04):
it was a brand new petition that was relitigating issues
that had already been decided against John. So he dismissed it,
and then he retired soon after that. So I filed
two motions, one for reconsideration and one for a ruling
on the original petition and either way, we were prepared
to go to the Court of appeal. That's where we
(43:26):
thought we were going to end up. But fortunately the
judge who took the other judge's place really was concerned
that this might be a case involving innocent people, and
she told the d A, you're gonna need to commit
get yourself on paper, tell me what your position is
on this case, because if these are innocent people, we
have to deal with it. And once they were forced
(43:47):
to deal with it, then they submitted. Then they just
read the document and answered the document. Back in two
thousand and twelve, it would have been the same answer
they submitted. They said that based on the cumulative error
in the case, that the conviction should be vacated and
they were not going to pursue the charges. They were
going to recommend that it be dismissed. They could have
(44:08):
done that back in two thousand. I'm rarely at a
loss for words, but this just really makes my stomach turn.
I mean, it's just so it makes me so angry, frustrated,
and just I feel a sense of deep sadness. And
(44:30):
this didn't even happen to me, but I just hate injustice.
And this is such a grotesque example of this system
at its worst. Um. We see it a lot on
the show, but this one, this one's really leaving a
bitter taste. But the silver lining, of course, is that
you're out, even if it took so much longer than
(44:51):
it should have. And never mind that it should have
never even happened in the first place. And John, I
understand that despite it all, you have somehow managed to
maintain a positive out luck. Every day is a blessing
for sure, you know. And as each day goes by,
it seems so much farther away from everything that happened.
But it just feels great to be out and great
(45:13):
to be free. And words can't express it or describe it. Really. Yeah,
you know, I getting arrested at fifteen and sent off
to prison. I, um, there's a lot of things in
normal society that I've never experienced. Um, you know, just
this last year was the first time I took a
(45:33):
plane ride, the first time I've been to a lake,
to a river. But also like the first time I
had to pay bills, Um, the first time I had
to keep up with the appointments, responsibilities, bouncing school and work.
What I'm finding is that it doesn't just fall in
the place. It doesn't and I'm working through that. But
there are times when I feel a little bit lost
(45:53):
out here. I really do, I really do. But I'm
confident and optimistic that it's going to come together. And
and I understand that you'd like to start a nonprofit.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you're
doing now. I applied for a job in Pittsburgh and
a nonprofit abolitionist law center. I'm hopeful that I get
the job. If I do, I'm headed out that way
(46:17):
in order for me to work there, but also to
learn about nonprofits and how it runs and m with
the goal of creating my own. I want to call
it juvenile Justice for All, and the goal would be
to have children treated equally and fairly, to have their
their parents rights respected. A lot of times they just
adopted out laws. The adult prison system doesn't help children
(46:40):
at all. I looked to filing cases in court, but
also working on policy changes, speaking to other nonprofits and
getting them to support some of these ideas. My goal
is to have a uniform system in America treating children
equally and fairly across the board well and you've already
(47:01):
been able to accomplish so much from behind bars, So
we're gonna be on the lookout for juvenile justice for all.
And we'll also link to Innocence Matters, the organization that
Deirdre co founded, so please show them your support, and
John's Instagram as well, where he'll keep you up to
date on the continued fight for justice in this case.
The courts are still trying to deny the factual innocence
claim here, but after what we've heard here today, I
(47:22):
can't see any reason for it. And with that we're
going to go to closing arguments, where first of all,
I thank each of you from the bottom of my
heart for joining us here, and then I'm gonna kick
back in my chair, shut my microphone off, and leave
my headphones on and just listen to anything else you
(47:43):
feel is left to be said. Deirdre please start us off,
and then we'll leave it to the guys to take
us off into the sunset. I think that it's essential
for these stories to be told, and I'm so grateful
that you guys give people like John and Ed the
opportunity to tell the story said they lived through. I
think it's important for the public to understand how fallible
(48:05):
the system is, and I wish it was limited to
the nineties, but I represent people who are charged today.
It's the same fight, the same struggle, and we've got
to get it right the first time. We have to
want to get it right the first time, because it
doesn't serve anybody, even if all we care about collectively
as a society is the money aspect of this. We're
(48:27):
throwing money away. We're paying for people to be housed
in prisons for crimes they didn't commit, and the real
criminals are out there committing other crimes. So we need
to get it right. We need to want to get
it right, and we need to applaud people like John
and Ed who have gone through hell and back and
we need to make their lives easier once they get out.
(48:50):
We need to we need to help them in whatever
way we can. Well. I um, I do appreciate this
opportunity to speak about our case and what we went
through to I know that there's a lot of other
people out there that are in the same circumstances and
during the same struggle. UM So I do appreciate the
work that you're doing, and I just I'm happy to
(49:11):
be free. You know, I'm happy to be free. I'm
looking forward to making a difference out here. I think
it kind of for me would give my life meaning
when I feel like I've lost so much of it already. UM,
I'm hopeful that what's left of it I can actually
make a difference and my experience will help other people. UM.
A couple of things. I'd just like to thank you
(49:33):
Jason for what you do and Wrongful Conviction podcast Lava
for Good. I follow all that stuff very closely. Keep
it up because it's needed. I think it helps a lot,
and even if it helps a little, a little is
more than nothing. So for me, the one thing I
would tell people is never to lose hope, never to
(49:54):
give up. That's the key to everything, because I know
in my case, I never gave up hope. I kept
the fight, never got away from that. If you're innocent,
you better fight until you can't fight anymore. Hope is
all you got, That's all that's gonna keep you going.
Don't lose it. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction.
(50:23):
I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburne,
and Kevin Wardis with research by Lila Robinson. The music
in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and
on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava
(50:44):
for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow
me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason flom
Raleful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
and association with Signal Company Number one
In the eighties and nineties, Los Angeles gang culture was
much more nuanced than anyone outside of it bothered to know.
For some, gangs meant socializing, while the criminal activity of
others colored all affiliated with the same broadbrush gangs were
viewed as a problem that needed a swift and harsh solution,
and it seems that simply connecting it defended into a
gang was enough to get a conviction. While fifteen year
(00:26):
old Duardo Dambrican eighteen year old John Clinny were affiliated
with Lawn Del thirteen for the girls, parties and camaraderie,
three older Lawn Del thirteen members, Santo Alvarez, Lester mom Laura,
and Chad Landrum were in it for the drugs and violence.
On June seven, Antonio aller Khan, a rival gang member,
(00:46):
was killed in a drive by shooting. A few days later,
to escape unrelated charges, Santo Alvarez used his knowledge of
that drive by to blame me, Duardo, and John. A
few weeks later, Alvarez, mont Laure and Landrum committed another murder,
and the police were happy to pin alvare As role
on a woman who knew that deceased rather than their
(01:07):
star witness against Eduardo and John. With Alvarez a statement
and a corrupt identification process that was immediately recanted and
protested by the witness the two boys were taken to trial.
Chad Landrum was willing to confess to the drive by,
but his continued violence behind bars kept him unavailable. Despite
both Alvarez and the witnesses less than willing participation to trial,
(01:30):
the prosecutor and the detectives were able to harp on
Eduardo and John's gang affiliation in order to send them
away for life without parole. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome
(01:52):
back to wrongful conviction today, we're covering a case. It
gives us a peek into the gang world of Los
Angeles in the nine nineties and the way in w
the l a p D and the Prosecutor's office dealt
with that issue. We have two men that were affected
by those policies when they were just boys. There's a
third ronthly convicted person, Susan Mellen, from a related crime.
(02:12):
She's not recording with us today, but they're amazing. Lawyer
is one of the founders of Innocence Matters. Deirdre O'Connor,
Welcome to wrongful Conviction. Thank you for having me and
now our guests of honor, the two men themselves. You know,
I'm I always say this, but it's true. I'm sorry
that you guys are here because of why you're here,
(02:34):
but I'm really happy to have you on Wrongful Conviction today.
So I'm going to introduce John Clinny First. John, thank
you for being here with us today on wrongful Conviction.
Thanks for having me, And of course Ed dambri Que,
thank you for joining us, Thanks for having me. Appreciate
So you two guys grew up together. Can you give
(02:55):
us a little background there. I've known Ed since I
was about maybe fift We both grew up in Lawndale, California.
Lawn Bells kind of typical middle class city in the
South Bay. You know, it has its little areas that
aren't so great, and it's some areas are are decent.
(03:16):
So it's about ten minutes fifteen minutes from the beach.
I think it's it's a nice city. It's got a
good high school. So growing up in Lawndale, there was
a gang in your neighborhood called the Lawndale Thirteam. Well,
we grew up there and we were part of that.
So you two grew up in the gang culture of
Los Angeles in the eighties and nineties and really came
of age in the nineties. And I think it's news
(03:37):
to some people that the word gang and gang culture
in general is a bit more nuanced than most of
the country realized back then. You know, many of our
listeners are old enough to remember seeing news reports of
the violence associated with gangs, and that's pretty much all
anyone outside of that culture knew about it at the time.
Only negative connotations, of course, So society reacted to that
perception by electing quote unquote tough on crime politicians who
(04:01):
implemented these kinds of ham fisted policing tactics, which of
course had very real effects, as you can both attest
to locking people up for the sake of doing it,
but not the right people, and in too many cases
it's wrong people like in yours. But gang culture was
not just criminality and violence, right, It was much much
more nuanced than that. Would you say that's an accurate depiction, Yeah,
(04:23):
for sure, even in a single gang it maybe, like
you know, some people are just families, some people are
just friends. Of course, you have a criminal element to it,
but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is involved in crime.
The term gang is is not a good one. But
it's like when you're young and growing up and and
and you experienced the friendship and the camaraderie, and I
(04:44):
mean that's kind of where you end up at, especially
if you're growing up like in a neighborhood, you know
where gangs are there. You know, not everybody is on
the same page, not everybody gets along. We were having fun,
you know, whether we're trying to get girls, trying to
have a good time the so what it was. But
then you definitely had other guys that their version of
fun or or you know, what they would do is
(05:06):
drugs and violence. What I think is true for all gangs, right,
is that there are little subsets inside the gangs where
people gravitate towards certain activities, you know, chasing girls, maybe
scoring some weed, that kind of thing. And there was
that kind of group, and then there were the people
like Piasso, which is Santo Alvarez, or Ghosts Chad Landrum
(05:29):
or Wicked Lester Monlare that were really wanting to make
a name for themselves. They were getting high all the
time and doing some real vicious stuff. And they were
the ones out there doing the drive bys and the
kind of gratuitous violence that everybody associates gangs with. Did
(05:49):
you get along with these guys? We know them. Uh,
they're all significantly older than us. I knew Lester when
I was growing up a little bit, like just as
a as a younger kid it, but he kind of
went the druggie kind of violent route, and I just
was there for kind of like the camaraderie and the
friendships and the fun I saw Santos on my block
(06:11):
a lot here and there, and my neighbor that lived
in the backhouse, I guess he got his radio stolen,
you know, out of his car in my driveway, you know,
and I always pretty much suspected Santos as being the
one that that stole it, you know. Okay, so so
much for camaraderie. So this kind of accurately paints a
(06:33):
picture of the divide that's at the crux of this story.
And I mean by that the larger perception of gangs
in the nineties, and then how the issue was dealt with,
like I said, in a ham fisted kind of way
by detectives like the ones in this case. There was
Sergeant Riggs, but also Marcella Win in a related case Deirdre.
Have either of them had any other wrongful convictions that
(06:56):
they've been tied to Win certainly does. She's uh, she
real offender. There's at least five known people. Oh, b
Anthony and Reggie Cole case, they were co defendants. Um,
it was Win's first murder case at South Bay Homicide. Yeah,
we covered that case here on Rathle conviction and we'll
have it linked in to bio. Then she had these
(07:17):
two guys and John and now she had a tangential
role in that. But had she done the right thing,
these guys would not have been in custody. She also
had the Susan Mellon case where she relied on a
non reliable person obviously unreliable, there was no question about it.
And then she had another case, the Michelle Puo's case,
(07:39):
she relied on the same unreliable witnesses she used against
Susan Mellon. That is really disgusting tactic that we see
over and over again revisiting and reusing the same useful
liars like Mark Tabbans did in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan,
and this kid Joey Morales who was a witness in
six different murders and each time he was out getting
(08:01):
milk for his mom. And Danny Wrinkling, who he interviewed
on this podcast, which is still in prison three decades
later because of this fake witness, and of course Mark
Tavn's it looks like when was cut from the same cloth,
she was a terrible detective and didn't follow the rules
at all. Now, as far as Sergeant Riggs is concerned,
(08:22):
you're gonna see what he does in this case in
terms of the identification process, and one can only surmise
that if he was so comfortable running rough shot over
a witness who was protesting at the identification in the
courtroom and in post conviction, Yeah, while at the identification,
he's literally going, I can't see that far. I can't
do this identification for you because I can't see. So
(08:45):
this guy tried to stand up and do the right
thing and was overruled and overridden and bullied by these cops.
So it's fair to say that this is something that
this particular officer had done before. The one thing I
would say Jason in these In these gang cases, you know,
all bets are off with these detectives. They can do
whatever they want because they know that nobody has any sympathy.
(09:07):
All they have to do is say the word gang member,
and the prosecutors, adjurors, judges, everybody rallies around a conviction.
So the rules are completely different in a gang case.
And that's why you see detectives violate the rules as
much as they do because they can get away with it, right.
They violate the rules while lumping every gang member in
(09:28):
under the umbrella of quote violent gang member, regardless of
what subset of the gang that individual identified with. And
what happened in this case, as happens unfortunately all over
the country tragically, is that you have a violent character
like Santo Alvarez who conveniently trades false information for his
own freedom and then he and they remain free, i mean,
(09:53):
other people like him to commit more acts of violence
while getting innocent folks wrongfully convicted. And according to the
fall this information that Alvarez eventually gave the police, this
story began to unfold on the day before the incident
in question, Jun won a few kids from around the
lawn deal thirteen neighborhood who were not in any way affiliated,
(10:13):
were the victims of a dry button. This was allegedly
perpetrated by members of the Little Watts game. Now none
of this was ever investigated or substantiated, but this story
from Santo Alvarez was used as the alleged motive or
retaliatory drive by the following night. But did either of
you guys even know the kids who were shot or
shot at the night before, and particularly did you know
(10:34):
nineteen year old Luis Madrono. I didn't know the guy.
Those guys were not associates of Londel. They were not
friends of Londo that I know of. But somehow I
guess to maybe create a motive for our case, they
got brought into that as being a good way to say, oh, yeah,
these guys are retaliating for this. And what happened the
(10:55):
following night, June seven, was that a member of the
Little Watts gang, year old Antonio Alercon, was that an
auto body shop and while outside using the payphone next door,
out of sight of those in the auto body shop,
he was killed by a drive by shooter. Digital what
else can you tell us? Alercon had a truck that
was being worked on over a period of time at
(11:17):
the shop, and the shop owner, Daniel Curio, was at
the shops that night with a couple of other people
in the shop, and Alercon happened to stop by and
while he was there, I think he got a page
and he wanted to use the phone to call uh
this woman who turned out to be his mistress. So
he was offered to use the inside phone, but he
(11:39):
declined and decided to go outside because he wanted privacy.
So he went out of the shop. There's an adjacent
building and there's a pay phone outside of that, and
he went to the payphone to speak with his mistress,
and then suddenly a car pulled up. Somebody got out
of the car and just unloaded multiple shots and he
(12:01):
was killed really probably before he had any chance to
react in any way. And then the shooter got back
in the car and the car drove off, and as
it drove off, it passed the opening of the body
shop garage door. So basically there's the storefront on the corner.
Adjacent to it is the body shop, but the body
(12:21):
shop sits in from the sidewalk so that there's parking
in front of it. So when you're inside the body
shop with the door open and looking out, you would
not have a direct line to the phone booth because
the wall of the building would be blocking it. But
once the car moved forward, they would be able to
see the car pass by right, So no one actually
(12:45):
got a good look at the shooter, including the shop owner,
who told detectives that, but detectives cajoled him anyway into
making an idea that he has never supported. Curiel even
demonstrated later at trial that he can't reliably see twenty
feet in front of him. Can you talk a bit
about his vantage point curios Working on a car with
(13:05):
his back to the street, he hears the sound of
the gunshots going off, but he thought it was fireworks,
and because of the the echoing effect, he thought it
was coming from the back. So he goes to the
back and he looks out to see what's going on
back there, and that's when he realizes it's coming from
the front. And by then the car is moving past
(13:28):
the shop, so he would have been I think more
than twenty feet away from the car at the time
that he first observed it. So what he and others
did see was that this was a black or darker
in college to Dan, and that the front passenger had
yelled some kind of gang epithetic alercon as they drove off.
So this shooting happened around eleven PM on June, And
(13:50):
from looking into this case, I realized that this state
has some other significance and most of our audience will
remember this like I do, because early here that same night,
Mike Tyson bit a Vander Holyfield's ear off during a
heavyweight championship fight. So people remember that night very very clearly.
(14:12):
In fact, you guys were friends. Ed was fifteen, John
was eighteen, and you were hanging out to watch the
fight together. Is that right? Yes? Yeah, the day of
barbecue invited me and it was actually a great night.
You know, we've never seen something like that before, right,
It was pretty memorable. There was multiple people there, you know, cooking, eating, drinking.
(14:34):
It was it was a good night. Yeah, that was insane.
I remember calling my friends and family just to check
if they had seen it. Yeah, people called the house,
a few people and they're like, what the hell happened?
Seeing it on the news, and you know, if they
didn't watch the fight, you know, right, they knew you
were watching and called to ask about it. You were
(14:55):
seeing on the front lawn talking on your cordless phone
by a neighbor as well, who got home aroundled. So
not only the people at the party, but also those
that called you and your neighbor, they all placed you
at home at the time of the shooting, which was
about an eight to twelve minute drive away from your home.
And this shooting was alleged to be in retaliation for
the shooting of some kid you didn't even know. Now,
(15:15):
this case was being investigated by Sergeant DORYL. Riggs. Several
days go by and on July one, Santo Alvarez a
Kasso got picked up for possession of a weapon and
a hypodermic needle by Torrance p D. And this is
when the story started. So basically, Santos Alvarez is in
jail trying to find his way out of jail, starts
(15:36):
telling the I believe it was a Torrance police department
where he was at. You know, hey, I know something
about about a murder that happened, and they called the
Sheriff's Homicide right, so Torrance p D called over to
l A County Sheriff's Homicide department and Sergeant Riggs came
to interview Santo Alvarez and they started asking about this
dark colored car, maybe black, perhaps Queen, And while distancing
(15:59):
himself from Lawndale gang activity, he said that the only
person he can think of from Lawndale with a car
like that was a guy named Robert Caputo. And he
said that he saw the two of you in Caputo's
car on the day of the murder, among other things.
By also, Santo Alvarez creates this story that he saw
me the day of the murder and I was upset
(16:23):
about that shooting from the prior day of Luis Madrono,
and that I wanted to retaliate. And then he said
that he saw me like you know, a few days
later or whatever, and and says that he overhears me
talking to someone else saying that I shot someone or
blasted that for something like along those lines is what
(16:44):
he used. So with that, for my understanding, they let
him out. Then they go back to the witnesses. I
feel they put pressure the most on probably Daniel curie
El since he was a shop owner and showed him
six packs and coerced him and who identifying us because
of what Santos said. So you mentioned that Albert said
(17:06):
that we were in Campoodle's car, right, but the computer
had turned that car in or sold it. They could
tell there that he was lying about that. That's a
significant thing to lie about it. You said they were
in a car that the guy doesn't have exactly. Cappodo
had sold it in February seven, about five or six
months before the shooting. Yet, Riggs and his partner Garcia
(17:28):
brought a six pack photo array over to Curio with
the purpose of getting him to I D YouTube as
if they couldn't spot that lie about Caputo's car right
off the bat. This bogus photo lineup happened on July tenth,
I believe, before Ed's arrest, and Curiel has always disputed this,
but Riggs says that he identified Ed as the shooter
(17:49):
and John is the front passenger. He held a gang epithet.
So what really happened here, Well, Riggs convinces him basically, look,
you're never gonna have to go to court. We don't
even need you. This is just to help our case
a little bit. We already got these guys, but in
reality he was their entire case. So he convinces Curiel
(18:11):
to say, all right, I'll sign for you to day
my arrest. July on my way to the gym with
a friend, and he noticed that there was cock cars
behind us. Uh, and there was three of them, and
then there was three coming in front of us. It
had a bad feeling, like this is not a traffic ticket.
(18:35):
They pulled us over, pull the guns out, drive us
off the car. And one of my mom's friends happened
to be driving by, and so she was across the
street just observing. But I was trying to communicate with
her to call my mom. Do I didn't want my
mom not to know what happened to me either, you know.
So I was fifteen. They tried MS an adult, and
(18:55):
they sent me to the county jail, and I found
myself in in a very violent section of the other
college job and that was my kind of introduction to
the system. Three weeks after the aller Con shooting, Santo Alvarez,
(19:28):
Luster Monler, and Chad Landrum were hanging out in this
house that had been vacated that was referred to as
the melon Patch because the family that owned it their
last name was Melan. So they break in the back.
They're getting high homeless guy Richard Daily, who had prior
connection with the woman who used to live there. Susan
(19:49):
Mellon stops by their originally partying with him, and then
all of a sudden, Chad Landrum viciously attacks daily Max's
head multiple times with a hammer and kills him. And
then with the help of Santo and Lester, they wrap
up the body and bring it to an alley in
(20:12):
San Pedro, where they set it on fire in hopes
of destroying any evidence. Said, well, enable the police to
connect them, right, And you all didn't find out about
this until post conviction, even though the person who prosecuted
both Ed and John prosecuted this case as well, and
we talked a bit about her before. But the Daily
murder fell on Marcella Wind's desk, right, and all of
(20:34):
these informants came to her saying it was Piasso ghost
and wicked with the hammer right in the melon patch,
open and shut, right, But that's not what happened. This person,
Susan Melon, ended up getting dragged into it in Piassa's
stead right instead of him. How did that happen? Well,
I think initially, when you know she takes the path
of least resistance in all of her investigations, so when
(20:56):
people were handing up to the three gang members, she
was going to pursue that and go after them. She
even submitted an affidavit for restaurants for all three of them. However,
she doesn't want to do any heavy lifting, so there
wasn't enough evidence for the d A to pursue Piasso,
and when didn't do the investigation, she needed to build
(21:19):
a case against him. So at the same time that
it was becoming clear that she'd have to work to
get Piasso further implicated in it, this other tweaker, June Patty,
came along and said, Hey, I got some information on Melon.
You can pursue her. And so Wind shifted gears and
went after Melon. And while she was doing this, she
(21:39):
was in communication with Riggs about Piasso's role as a
witness as their star witness in that case. So in
those conversations that were never documented, the substance of that
was never documented. Clearly, these detectives made decisions that benefited
both of them. So Riggs was allowed to use Piasso
in the Alarcon shooting, and Win was free to pursue
(22:02):
Melan another innocent person for the daily murder. So ultimately
Chad Lange, I mean, Lester Mon Laura were rightfully pursued,
along with Susan Mellon, who was wrongfully pursued. They were
all tried separately, and Landrum and Melon were both convicted.
Man Laura was acquitted, so both Mon Laura and Alvarez
got off scott free, ready willing and able to commit
(22:25):
even more crimes. Jesus Christ. So now August fourteen rolls
around and John, you were arrested for the Alercon drive
by as the front seat passenger. Yeah, that was a shocker, obviously,
but for the first you know, six months of going
to jail. When I got arrested, I thought the next
court date they would realize this guy is not supposed
(22:48):
to be here, We're gonna go ahead and release him.
And you know, every court date turned into a next
court date until I finally realized, like, these guys are serious,
they really, you know, they're really trying to charge me
with this. So now October seven, curial was brought into
view a live lineup, and on the advice of your lawyer, John,
you tried to change your appearance. So even though you
(23:10):
were innocent of this crime. This move made you look
not so great. My lawyer drank to Jacomo. He tells me,
you know, hey, this guy, he's already seen pictures of you.
They've shown him your six pack or whatever. Let's kind
of make it a little more difficult for him to
pick you out. So, you know, grow your hair out,
shave your mustache. And I'm listening to the advice of
(23:32):
my attorney, so I'd say, all right, you know, I
grow my hair out, shave my mustache. I go to
my lineup and then I'm waiting. They bring me off
the stage from the lineup, and the deputy is like,
who are you? And I'm like, what do you mean
You're not John Clenny? Who are you? And I'm like, yes,
I am. And he's like, no one recognizes you out there.
Your your lawyer doesn't recognize you. The detective doesn't recognize you.
(23:56):
You did you switch wristbands? And I'm like, no, I
didn't switch wristbands, Like it's me, you know, And I said,
how did my lawyer not recognize me? He just saw
me two weeks ago. He's the one that told me
to change my appearance. Little did I know that was
going to be used against me. They used that as
a sign of a consciousness of guilt. So later on
Curiel and identifying you in the live lineup, he went
(24:19):
on to testify that he had just recognized John from
the photo race and in referring to Riggs quote, I
already knew who he was looking for end quote. Now
you two are on your way to be tried together,
and Chad Landrum has already been convicted and sentence to
life without the possibility of parole. Amazingly, Landrum reached out
to Ed's family because he wanted to come clean about
(24:41):
the alercon drive by. He wanted to testify in the case,
and my Lord did bring him down to our trial
or it was maybe a pre trial most or something,
and they never got his his statement. It didn't give
him a chance to testify or confess. From what I've read,
there's a reason why he didn't get that chance. He
was actually brought down to the courthouse. What happened, Yeah,
(25:04):
I guess he got into it or something with someone.
I think it was on the bus or I'm not
too sure, but he ended up stabbing him in the
courthouse tank and that was the end of that. So
you're one shot at getting around the false testimony of Alvarez,
and this protested identification just got dragged away for acting
(25:25):
out violently again stabbing another guy. And then you go
to trial in el A County Superior Court and no
one brought up Landrum's involvement or went to get an
Affidavid nothing. So Ed was represented by Walter Urban and
John by Frank te Jacomo. The prosecutors Valerie Cole. So
the prosecutions theory was that Ed, John and a third
long Dale thirteen gang member we're in the dark green car.
(25:47):
John was in the front passenger seat, Ed was in
the backseat, and Ed was the shooter. So they never
caught up with this alleged driver, right, John allegedly shouted
an epithet about the Little Watch gang. This was allegedly
retaliation for this other shooting. But of course this entire
theory came from Santo Alvarez, who was deflecting the blame
(26:07):
from his own crew. What was presented by the prosecution
to support this wacky ass theory. The prosecution was entirely
dependent on pre trial statements of Santo Alvarez and the
pre trial identification of Curio. At the actual trial, Curio
did not identify either Ed or John. He specifically testified
(26:31):
that the only reason he made the pre trial identification
was because he was, you know, kind of pressured to
and he gave the whole story about how the police
pointed out the pictures and said, hey, this guy's bragging
about it, this guy was in the front seat, this
guy's a shooter, all that. So the jurors weren't basing
their verdict on what the testimony in front of them.
(26:52):
They were basing their verdict on the statements made outside
of their presence. Same thing with Piassa. When he gets
into trial, he's like, I don't know, don't know, I
don't know what I said, might have said whatever. So
they used the tape recording of the statement that Piasso
made to Riggs. And by the way, they rehearsed it
before they did the official tape, right, they talked to
(27:14):
him off record, and then they put the tape on
and they talked to him, and so the jurors were told, hey,
look it, this is a gang case. Piasso doesn't want
to come in here and write out his homies, so
you can believe what he said to Riggs when he's
trying to get out of custody, and Curio, poor Curio,
he's being intimidated and threatened by all these gang members.
(27:36):
So that's why he's not going to say it in
front of you all. But he looked what he said
to the to the cops. You know, he made this idea,
and that was the entirety of the prosecutor's case. And
the other thing she did, without any legitimate basis for
doing so, is she made every single one of the
alibi witnesses look like liars and made it sound like
(27:58):
the alibi was this last minute defense that defense lawyers
put together at the very end, when John's mother had
presented the lawyers with line by line, minute by minute
timeline of where everybody was, who showed up, when, who
left when, the names, the phone numbers and all of
that the day she hired John's lawyer. So the alibi
(28:21):
was known right from the get go, but the jurors
were misled into believing it was all some fabrication by
the tricky defense lawyers. I mean, I can see how
you could impeach alibi witnesses as friends and loved ones
or as they did in this case fellow gang members
and friends of lawnd Al thirteen, So the messages that
everyone is gang related and therefore lying. But your lawyer
(28:42):
could have backed up the alibi with phone records. It's
not that complicated it but even without that support though,
from what I understand, the one witness that was used
in this corrupt identification process, Curiel, was adamant that he
did not stand by this identification. Did he really take
off his glasses to demonstrate how bad his vision was,
because that would have been pretty powerful. Does anyone remember that? Yeah?
(29:05):
I remember that he took off his glasses in court
and couldn't see anything. I mean, you could tell he
couldn't see anything. You know when when someone I can
take off my glasses and you can tell I need
them just by looking at me. So, I mean, it
was amazing, man, it was. It was crazy. Another thing
that I remember happening with the district attorney. She said
(29:27):
that I gave him my thumbs up. Yeah. I read
about that to Curio, like as if he was helping
you out. And I'm curious now she's ever used that
tactic against other defendants. Because the whole court room focused
on me and this is did you just give the
guy a thumbs up an open quote room. Now mind,
he wasn't doing me any favors, there was no reason,
and I did not give him a thumbs up. I'm
(29:49):
looking at the jury like I did not. But it
was effective. It was that was dirty. It sounds like
they were just running the disgraceful play book. I mean,
part of Curio's testimony was that the cops just convinced
him that they had the right guys, and at that time,
everyone believed the police right. And then all they had
to do is say gang and gang member enough times
(30:10):
and it's almost like Pavlov's dog and just almost a
knee jerk reaction from the jury to say, okay, great,
when do I get to vote guilty? The alibis and
the witness protesting the identification just didn't seem to matter
at all, You got it? And then they throw that
thumbs up in there. If I could jump in on
that point. And in l A, they created this hardcore
(30:31):
gang unit in the late eighties, I believe it was
eight or eighty nine, and the whole purpose of that
hardcore gang unit was like, damn, it's hard to prove
these cases because everybody's a liar, and everybody has baggage,
and and we don't have good witnesses. We got to
figure out a way. And basically what they did was
they created this unit where they recruited all these over
(30:54):
zealous prosecutors and say, hey, you get to be the
shining star here, and you can make these cases that
nobody else can may And then they gave them strategies
for how to do that. How do you what's the
work around when you really can't prove your case beyond
a reasonable doubt, Just say gang gang, gang, gang, gang,
as many times as you can make everything be about
scaring the hell out of the jurors and making them
(31:16):
think that whoever sitting in the dependence seat is the
worst person in the world just because they happen to
have affiliated with a gang for whatever reason, and regardless
of their level of involvement, let's get him off the street.
Evidence be damned. Even their use of the word homies,
I mean, that's a racist dog whistle if I ever
heard one. I saw the gang gang gang, pushed by
(31:38):
the prosecutor, by the you know, by the detectives. You know,
I saw my my lawyer not do a good job
at all. The combination of all those things, I felt
my life slipping away from me when they read the verdict.
I remember her, you know, my family, my mom were willing.
I remember looking up at the lights in the core
(32:00):
room trying to not you know, let no tears come out. Man,
I think I probably did shed a couple of tears.
You know, people talk about the worst moment in their life.
That was for sure the worst moment right there. You know,
(32:27):
I get to prison, I'm brand new. I don't know
what to expect. I know that I'm surrounded by a
bunch of guys that are violent, angry, confrontational, and so
I'm navigating through that. You gotta walk on eggshows to
be sure. And I used to work out a lot
(32:48):
because if I did end up having to get into
a confrontation, I wanted to be able to defend myself,
and so I used to work out for three hours
a day in the beginning. I tell people this story
all the time, like my kind of welcome to prison moment.
I'm scared, but I'm also trying not to show fear.
You know, that's not a good idea in prison. I'm
(33:09):
walking on the yard, some guys sitting down on a
curb and as I'm walking, I'm I'm, you know, probably
a foot or two away from him, and a guy
comes up behind him. It just slices his whole face open,
from like his lip to his ear. And just seeing
that happen, like, you know, a foot away from me,
(33:32):
it was like, where the funk am I? So, like
I said, it's just survival mode, that's it. As soon
as I could, I started to read books and then
I learned that, you know, the way the criminal fuel
process works is your lawyer is gonna dump the case
on you, and then it's gonna be on you to
(33:53):
represent yourself. And that's when I started going to the library.
I wouldn't go to the yard. I would go to
the library instead, because you could go, we choose one
or the other. And started to learn the law. And
then I found myself in solitary and I had to
try to figure out way how am I going to
get out of solitary was I started to study solitary
(34:15):
confinement cases and I put together a memorandum of law
on why lawyers should come to California and challenge long
term solitary confinement, and in those efforts I managed to
meet Professor Joe's Lobell from the University of Pittsburgh. It
was through his student Brett Groat, who's who now the
(34:36):
director of the Abolitionist Law Center. They read my memorandum,
they researched it, and they decided to come to California
follow a class action, and that case settled in twenty
And you know, I was partly responsible for getting guys
that had been in there for thirty five years, twenty
(34:57):
eight years, twenty seven years. Um Me myself, I was
there for thirteen years. It is one of the things
that I've done in my life that I still feel
the rewards of because today there's people that are outside
and seeing the sky, seeing their family, and that is
due to the work that I did. Obviously, I wasn't
(35:18):
acted alone. I had there was a team of lawyers.
But I put in the work and it paid off. Well.
You should be very proud of that. And as part
of that settlement, California can no longer put a prisoner
in solitary confinement for indeterminate periods. In Ed's case, it
was thirteen years with no end in sight, simply based
upon alleged gang membership. So now that you fought your
(35:42):
way out of the prison. Within the prison, let's get
to how you guys are here speaking with us today.
So your initial appeals were denied. As far as I
can see here, there's no real movement on this until
Landrum once again reached out to Ed's family, saying that
he wanted to confess the murdering Aller con Right. We
knew this already, but I guess he hadn't ever gone
(36:02):
on the record about it and wasn't exactly easily reachable.
He was also by this time in solitary doing life
without parole. So John, take us through this. My friend
told me when I got convicted, like, I'm gonna get
you a lawyer. I don't care how long it takes,
you know, once I can afford one, I'm gonna get
you one. So when this stuff came up with Landrum,
(36:24):
that's when I talked to my best friend and I
told him, you know, now is the time. You know,
this guy's coming forward and confessing, Like, we need to
get a lawyer, and thank god we got Dear Druft.
John's friend reached out to me in May of two
thousand and twelve, and what had happened prior to that
was Chad Landrum had written out a confession and provided
(36:47):
it to Ed's family and then Ed used it to
file his own habeas petition, but he didn't have any
resources or a lawyer to help him, so it was
just the paper that went in and the judge just
dismissed it without any thoughtful analysis at all. So when
John's friend reached out to me, the first thing we
(37:07):
did is we scheduled a trip to Pelican Bay to
meet with Chad Landrum and at Dumbrici. Both of them
were in the shoe unit and they had no ability
to communicate with one another. My sense of it was
if there was merit to Chad Landrum's confession, we needed
to do a lot more work to build it up,
and so we asked all kinds of details, including who
(37:30):
else would have known back in the day about Chad's
role in this killing and the details. He had not
a single note in front of him reminding him about
any of the details of the case, and he could
give me specific information consistent with the police report, including
the fact that he got out of the car and
(37:52):
shot Alarcon. There were only two witnesses that saw that
there were women across the street, and they were never
used in the trial, so none of that was in
the trial record. All of the people from the auto
body shop never saw anybody out of the car because
the car doesn't come into their line of sight until
after the shooting is done. He also knew that Alercon
was shot with different types of bullets. That was a
(38:15):
fact that, although it was contained in the records, would
not be something that some random person would have known about.
So there was a lot of key points in Chad
Landrum's statements to me that made me think that he
probably was telling the truth. And so I asked him
to tell me confirmation as to who else knew back then,
and he told me his brother knew, and we followed
(38:36):
up and talked to the brother, and the brother gave
us all kinds of information. And I also asked Chad
if he would take a polygraph, and he immediately agreed to,
but the prison wouldn't allow us to go up there.
And so then you know, all of the places you
would go logically in an investigation like this, including contact
and Curiel stopped by his work out of the blue.
He agrees to talk to us at an eyehop as
(38:59):
soon as he gets off of work, and he lays
it all out. He tells us consistent with his recantation, everything,
and it's all on tape, so nobody, nobody can say
we put words in his mouth or anything. And then
we did the same thing with all the alibi witnesses
to find out, you know, was there more that could
have been done to show that they were telling the truth,
including the logical things like phone records and other people
(39:22):
who could corroborate what they said. And it all fell
into place, and it was like I remember talking to John,
you know, we filed our brief and three months after investigation,
and we felt like, this is a no brainer. He
should be out that year. I think that's how we
all hope our system works, but unfortunately that's not how
it usually goes, and this was no exception. So John's
(39:44):
habeas was filed in October two thousand twelve. You presented
all of this material, and like you said, it was
a no brainer. In two thousand thirteen, Landrum made a
formal confession on the record. Then Ed joined the Habeous
as well. So it seems like they're a lot of momentum,
and in an effort to further support landrom confession, you
(40:05):
reached out to his co defendant on the Richard Daily Murder,
another wrongfully convicted person, Susan Mellon Right. So we went
and visited her. There was some delays along the way
because she was being represented by someone else, but a
year later I ended up representing her and in a
lot of what I needed to prove her innocence overlapped
(40:26):
with what I needed to prove for John and ultimately
ed because there were so many witnesses in common, and
representing Susan gave me access to witnesses that I didn't
have before that. So this is two thousand fourteen, Landrum
and even alvare as one of the record confessing to
their roles in the Daily Murder and clearing Susan of
any responsibility. And after seventeen years in prison, seventeen long years,
(40:50):
Susan's conviction was vacated, charges were dismissed and she went
on to sue Marcella win and one twelve million. Good
for her. So we're obviously very happy for Susan. That
seemed to be our system operating at the speed that
it should, I mean, notwithstanding the seventeen long years wrongfully incarcerated.
(41:10):
But for John and Ed there was a court order
in November of two thousand twelve for the d A
to respond to this habeas petition. What happened there was
one delay after another. There was transfers of district attorneys
and all kinds of stuff that just a month turned
into six month, turned into a year, turned into five years.
And uh, it's hard. I can't even imagine, excuse me,
(41:38):
what it's like for these guys, uh, to have to
count on a lawyer on the outside saying, don't worry,
I got you back. I'm gonna I'm gonna do this.
You know, I'm gonna get it taken care of, when
they have been disappointed every step of the way. And I,
you know, my experience of it is like, you know,
the frustration I feel on my end can't even begin
(41:58):
to compare to what these guys are going through. Right.
Imagine having the keys to the prison gates staring you
in the face for eight years before the district attorney
or the courts even pretend to not ignore them. It
wasn't until a judge finally made a ruling that amounts
to basically a brain fart of a man in cognitive decline.
So tell us about this, Judge, Edmund Clark Jr. And
(42:20):
how this thing finally turned around. So it was clear
we weren't going to be able to force anybody's hand
until we filed this supplemental brief. And I mean, this
is this brief because of all of the evidence that
was developed during Susan Mellon's case was even stronger than
what we had, and we had a clear winner from
from the beginning. But it lands in the hands of
(42:42):
a judge who couldn't care less and in a heartbeat,
without any hearing or anything, he denies it. He characterizes
it as a proceed proper petition. When I have my
name all over it, it's clear I'm representing him, and
I had already been on the record, and he completely
distorted the history of it and made it sound like
(43:04):
it was a brand new petition that was relitigating issues
that had already been decided against John. So he dismissed it,
and then he retired soon after that. So I filed
two motions, one for reconsideration and one for a ruling
on the original petition and either way, we were prepared
to go to the Court of appeal. That's where we
(43:26):
thought we were going to end up. But fortunately the
judge who took the other judge's place really was concerned
that this might be a case involving innocent people, and
she told the d A, you're gonna need to commit
get yourself on paper, tell me what your position is
on this case, because if these are innocent people, we
have to deal with it. And once they were forced
(43:47):
to deal with it, then they submitted. Then they just
read the document and answered the document. Back in two
thousand and twelve, it would have been the same answer
they submitted. They said that based on the cumulative error
in the case, that the conviction should be vacated and
they were not going to pursue the charges. They were
going to recommend that it be dismissed. They could have
(44:08):
done that back in two thousand. I'm rarely at a
loss for words, but this just really makes my stomach turn.
I mean, it's just so it makes me so angry, frustrated,
and just I feel a sense of deep sadness. And
(44:30):
this didn't even happen to me, but I just hate injustice.
And this is such a grotesque example of this system
at its worst. Um. We see it a lot on
the show, but this one, this one's really leaving a
bitter taste. But the silver lining, of course, is that
you're out, even if it took so much longer than
(44:51):
it should have. And never mind that it should have
never even happened in the first place. And John, I
understand that despite it all, you have somehow managed to
maintain a positive out luck. Every day is a blessing
for sure, you know. And as each day goes by,
it seems so much farther away from everything that happened.
But it just feels great to be out and great
(45:13):
to be free. And words can't express it or describe it. Really. Yeah,
you know, I getting arrested at fifteen and sent off
to prison. I, um, there's a lot of things in
normal society that I've never experienced. Um, you know, just
this last year was the first time I took a
(45:33):
plane ride, the first time I've been to a lake,
to a river. But also like the first time I
had to pay bills, Um, the first time I had
to keep up with the appointments, responsibilities, bouncing school and work.
What I'm finding is that it doesn't just fall in
the place. It doesn't and I'm working through that. But
there are times when I feel a little bit lost
(45:53):
out here. I really do, I really do. But I'm
confident and optimistic that it's going to come together. And
and I understand that you'd like to start a nonprofit.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you're
doing now. I applied for a job in Pittsburgh and
a nonprofit abolitionist law center. I'm hopeful that I get
the job. If I do, I'm headed out that way
(46:17):
in order for me to work there, but also to
learn about nonprofits and how it runs and m with
the goal of creating my own. I want to call
it juvenile Justice for All, and the goal would be
to have children treated equally and fairly, to have their
their parents rights respected. A lot of times they just
adopted out laws. The adult prison system doesn't help children
(46:40):
at all. I looked to filing cases in court, but
also working on policy changes, speaking to other nonprofits and
getting them to support some of these ideas. My goal
is to have a uniform system in America treating children
equally and fairly across the board well and you've already
(47:01):
been able to accomplish so much from behind bars, So
we're gonna be on the lookout for juvenile justice for all.
And we'll also link to Innocence Matters, the organization that
Deirdre co founded, so please show them your support, and
John's Instagram as well, where he'll keep you up to
date on the continued fight for justice in this case.
The courts are still trying to deny the factual innocence
claim here, but after what we've heard here today, I
(47:22):
can't see any reason for it. And with that we're
going to go to closing arguments, where first of all,
I thank each of you from the bottom of my
heart for joining us here, and then I'm gonna kick
back in my chair, shut my microphone off, and leave
my headphones on and just listen to anything else you
(47:43):
feel is left to be said. Deirdre please start us off,
and then we'll leave it to the guys to take
us off into the sunset. I think that it's essential
for these stories to be told, and I'm so grateful
that you guys give people like John and Ed the
opportunity to tell the story said they lived through. I
think it's important for the public to understand how fallible
(48:05):
the system is, and I wish it was limited to
the nineties, but I represent people who are charged today.
It's the same fight, the same struggle, and we've got
to get it right the first time. We have to
want to get it right the first time, because it
doesn't serve anybody, even if all we care about collectively
as a society is the money aspect of this. We're
(48:27):
throwing money away. We're paying for people to be housed
in prisons for crimes they didn't commit, and the real
criminals are out there committing other crimes. So we need
to get it right. We need to want to get
it right, and we need to applaud people like John
and Ed who have gone through hell and back and
we need to make their lives easier once they get out.
(48:50):
We need to we need to help them in whatever
way we can. Well. I um, I do appreciate this
opportunity to speak about our case and what we went
through to I know that there's a lot of other
people out there that are in the same circumstances and
during the same struggle. UM So I do appreciate the
work that you're doing, and I just I'm happy to
(49:11):
be free. You know, I'm happy to be free. I'm
looking forward to making a difference out here. I think
it kind of for me would give my life meaning
when I feel like I've lost so much of it already. UM,
I'm hopeful that what's left of it I can actually
make a difference and my experience will help other people. UM.
A couple of things. I'd just like to thank you
(49:33):
Jason for what you do and Wrongful Conviction podcast Lava
for Good. I follow all that stuff very closely. Keep
it up because it's needed. I think it helps a lot,
and even if it helps a little, a little is
more than nothing. So for me, the one thing I
would tell people is never to lose hope, never to
(49:54):
give up. That's the key to everything, because I know
in my case, I never gave up hope. I kept
the fight, never got away from that. If you're innocent,
you better fight until you can't fight anymore. Hope is
all you got, That's all that's gonna keep you going.
Don't lose it. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction.
(50:23):
I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburne,
and Kevin Wardis with research by Lila Robinson. The music
in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and
on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava
(50:44):
for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow
me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason flom
Raleful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
and association with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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