In this updated special edition of Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom & Maggie Freleng, we revisit the case of Andre Brown, whose conviction was vacated in 2022 after newly presented evidence and witness testimony demonstrated he could not have committed the crime.
Despite this, the Bronx District Attorney has shockingly overturned the vacated ruling—and Andre is now being sent back to prison this Friday, April 25, 2025, to serve an additional 17 years, after already spending 23 years behind bars for a crime he has always maintained he did not commit.
Recorded live at the UJC Summit 2023, Jason and Maggie sat down with Andre to hear his firsthand account of the nightmare that began in 1999, when he was wrongfully convicted of attempted murder in the Bronx. Although Andre suffered from a medical condition that made running nearly impossible—and multiple witnesses pointed to another suspect—he was sentenced to two 20-year terms.
This episode is a Call to Action. Andre Brown’s life is once again on the line. We need your help!
Listen, share, and speak out. Justice must be upheld.
Take Action Below:
1. Contact the Bronx DA , Darcel Clark, and respectfully ask her to consent to resentencing: 718-590-2000 and email (email script is here)
2. Contact New York State Governor Kathy Hochul and respectfully ask her to grant Andre Brown clemency: 518-474-8390 and complete contact form (script for form is here)
3. Sign the Petition: https://www.change.org/p/nyc-government-the-people-free-andre-brown
To learn more, please visit:
https://www.unjustandunsolved.com/post/episode-19-andre-brown
https://www.jiarizvi.com/andrebrown
https://www.deskovicfoundation.org/cases/the-case-of-andre-brown
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Since our original coverage of Andre Brown's case, there have
been some terrifying developments. Our listeners might recall that Andre's
team revealed a very compelling alternate suspect in this case,
someone who looked like Andrea, lived in the neighborhood, had
a motive, and who at the time of the crime,
was not recovering from a debilitating injury, unlike Andrea, who
(00:28):
could barely walk, let alone chase the victims in this case, so,
Andrea's conviction was overturned. But despite this information, the Bronx
District Attorney's office appealed the decision that overturned Andrea's conviction,
and they won. So this Friday, yes, this upcoming Friday,
(00:48):
April twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, they aimed to take
Andre from his wife and children and the freedom that
he richly deserves to serve out the remaining seventeen years
of someone else's forty year sentence. So I am pleading
with you to help save an innocent man from further injustice.
(01:10):
There's a petition for clemency linked in the episode description.
Scroll to it, sign it, share it, and perhaps by
this weekend there will be one less terrible thing happening.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
In this world.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
On the evening of January fifteenth, nineteen ninety nine, a
masked man approached two teenage boys in front of a
bodega in the Bronx, on a corner known for drug activity.
The assailant drew a gun and shot one of the
young men several times while the other ran off. The
gunman chased the other young man down the block and
around the corner before paralyzing him with one shot to
(01:48):
the back. While both victims survived, only one was conscious,
but he couldn't or wouldn't provide a lead. An eyewitness
said that she recognized the shooter as a guy from
the neighbor named Drey. The police remembered Andre Brown, a
neighborhood kid who was shot in the leg one year
prior in a drug dispute. The specter of his injured
(02:10):
leg and alternate suspects were ignored when both the witness
and the victim agreed that Andre was the assailant.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
But this is wrongful conviction.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
You're listening to wrongful conviction. You can listen to this
and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early
and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good plus
on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Welcome Back to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Recently, Jason Flamm and I were asked to record an
interview in front of a live audience at the annual
United Justice Coalition Summit.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
The UJC aims to raise awareness around.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Social justice issues and the need for criminal legal system reform.
So for our live interview, we thought of a mutual friend,
someone whose case I covered on my podcast Unjustin Unsolved. Well,
he was still wrongfully incarcerated, Andre Brown. Andrea agreed to
join us at the summit along with his attorney Oscar Michelin.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
Thanks everybody for being here.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
I'm gonna ask, first of all, how many people in
this room were wrongfully convicted and sentenced? Oh my god,
see that? And how many people here know somebody who
was wrongfully convicted? Oh my god, that's a lot of hands.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Yeah. This shit is everywhere.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
It's horrible, and I'm really really thrilled to be here
with these amazing, amazing people, Maggie Feeling, Oscar and of
course Andre Brown. And I'm so glad that Andrea is here.
I mean, I'm so glad you're here, because I'm so
glad you're here with your amazing, beautiful family and everything.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
But his case start with this, okay.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
It features a witness who didn't testify, but her testimony
was allowed in any way, which meant that no one.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Was allowed to cross examine her.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Second of all, the shooter shot one guy execution style,
then chased his friend caught up to him on the street.
Now that this was an eighteen year old kid running
for his life and somehow this guy was fast enough
to catch up with him and shoot him and paralyze
him too. Andre had a bullet wound in his leg
and had a syndrome that meant that he could barely walk,
(04:26):
much less run. And it also features a lawyer who,
while he was representing Andrea a trial, had a side
hustle which was committing so many crimes for the Banano
crime family that he ended up being the only attorney
in American history to enter the witness Protection program.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
So it's a shit show.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
So get ready to hear what we're about to hear,
because this is just different and Andre is just a
different kind of guy.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
I mean to no one is to love him. So
with that, Maggie, all right.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
So hello everyone, thanks for coming. I'm just gonna start
from the top with Andre, why don't you tell us
a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
I was raised in a two parent household. It was
the Uptime area, the Northeast Bronx. The crack epidemic was
going on, a lot of gun shots being fired continuously.
The trains were littered homeless people, and it was just
a real, just tragic time in the Bronx. My life
was a fair life. My mother was a stewardess for
(05:27):
the airlines, and she raised us and groomed us to
be good individuals. And then my mother and my father separated.
At that time, I was in high school and now
I was taken on the onus of raising my brothers.
So I said, how can I now change the course
(05:48):
of their lives and allow myself to continue in an
upward manner. First, I took on a job at creating barrel,
trying to think that it would be able to fit
the bill, and it didn't. It couldn't feed my little
sister or my other two brothers. So at that time
I said, you know what, I have to do something else.
(06:10):
And my friend introduced me to selling drugs. And when
I started to sell drugs, literally I thought I was
a genius Sabbath, And this is how your mind gets
cultivated poorly in the streets. You start to really engage
and think that you know better than law enforcement, you
know better than society, and you also know better than
(06:32):
that old adage cartoon the Turtle and the rabbit, thinking that, oh,
I know what I'm doing. I'm running past this little
working man, this turtle. So in selling drugs, in thinking
I was a genius, I got shot a simple leg shot,
mind you. It hit my major artery and I almost
(06:52):
bled to death. And that was the turning point in
my life.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
So you almost died, So you got on a better
path in life.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Yes, First of all, you have to be an enforcer
on a block in order to hold it down. I
was injured, critically injured. I was at the point where
I couldn't walk, I could no longer hold down a block.
So I said, what am I going to do now
with my life? And I started going back to college.
At that point, I enrolled in BMCC. And that's when
(07:21):
you know, tragedy.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Occurred, right, And I want to bring that to Oscar.
January fifteenth, nineteen ninety nine. What happened that day?
Speaker 6 (07:29):
So on that day there was a shooting on a
street corner in the Bronx Allerton Avenue, White Plains Road.
That area. The corner there was Little Bodeiga, a little
corner store had been a spot where young Jamaican gang
had started selling marijuana out of for the past about
year or so, and the cops were aware of that,
(07:49):
and so there became a little bit of a rival
turf war for that location from the earlier crews that
had been working there selling marijuana. And so the first
incident that happened was on January eleventh, there was a
shootout on that corner, two exchanges of gunfire. Nobody got shot,
some cars were shot up, so the police responded. On
(08:10):
January thirteenth, two days later, one of the guys that
hustles on that corner, guy named O'Neil virgo, got arrested,
and sure enough the gun he had on him was
connected to the shooting on the eleventh, so he gets
the rest of for a gun charge. And then on
the fifteenth O'Neil Virgo and another man Sewn Nicholson or
out on that corner selling drugs. Somebody comes up right
(08:30):
down White Planes Road sees them on the corner, they
see the gun. He's got a mask on. The shooter
literally stands over O'Neil Virgo and shoots him several times
and then runs down the street to try to get
the other guy, Sewn Nicholson, They were in a full
city block. He makes a left turn onto the next block,
which is Olinville, and the shooter shoots him there one time,
(08:53):
hits him in the spine and paralyzes him. Somehow they
both survived. So his attempted murder, there was lots of
descriptions as to what the shooter was wearing. Was it
a face mask, was it a handkerchief of bandana, et cetera.
So they asked the victim at that time, Sean Nicholson.
Mister Virgo could not speak. He was the one who
shot five or six times. And that initial police report,
(09:14):
Sewn Nicholson, he says, I can't identify the shooter, and
so the police start scouring the area looking for witnesses.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
So how did it end up with them settling on
a guy who, it should have been painfully obvious from
the very beginning not only didn't do it, but couldn't
have done it.
Speaker 6 (09:33):
They started listening to rumors in the in the street,
and one of the women who later recanted said, you know,
the shooter looked a little bit like this guy I
know from the neighborhood, Dre. So the next thing they
do with that is go to the hospital and get
Sean Nicholson, who had repeatedly said I didn't see the
guy he had a mask to pick Andre allegedly out
(09:54):
of a photo array. So what Nicholson actually said, or
what the police got him to say, was, as he
was falling to the ground, he looked over his shoulder
and saw the shooter pulled the mask off his face,
and he could recognize Andre from the neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Sounds totally legit exactly happens all the time.
Speaker 6 (10:10):
Two days later, a witness comes forward who claims she
was in her car when the shooting occurred. And this
is about five point thirty six o'clock at night on
a winter night, so it was just starting to get
dark in January. And then she says she saw the
shooter run past her and pull up his mask just
as he passed her car window. She also said that
(10:31):
the shots were fired by her car, but the shots
that shot mister Nicholson, as a described, were around the corner,
so she would not have been able to see what
she said she saw, and she said that she was
so upset that night she reported to the police because
she almost had a heart attack and she was treated
for angina that night. So she didn't come forward until
two days later after there was already the rumors in
(10:52):
the neighborhood and they were already looking for Andre.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
So, Andre, when you found out they were looking for you,
you turned yourself in with a lawyer.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
Yes, they came to my girlfriend's house early in the morning.
They missed me. I had just went out to get
breakfast really quick and came back. She was trembling, and
she said, listen, the police were here. They left the
card that they searched the home. I immediately reached out
to my mom and she said, Andre, they were just here. Also,
I was just about to call you. And I went
to the Bar Association to meet Martin Fisher. Martin Fisher
(11:24):
was a family attorney, and I said, Marty, they're looking
for me. I don't know what they're looking for me for.
They were contacted by Martin and they said we want
to ask him a few questions. He said, no, he's
represented by me. You cannot ask him any questions. I said, okay, well,
if we need him, we'll contact you. Two days later,
on the Wednesday morning, they contacted him, which was the
(11:44):
twentieth of January, and I went down there with my
mom and my girlfriend at the time, walked right into
the prison. I didn't have a worry in the world
because I knew that I didn't have anything to do
with this case. So at that time I was not
a prisoner yet. I was actually seated outside of the
push door. And it's ironic because one of the detectives there,
(12:05):
he said, Andre, don't you remember me? And I'm like, no,
I don't. Who are you? He said, when you were shot?
I came to the hospital, so they knew that I
was shot already before even any questions were occurring. And
then my attorney went inside spoke to them, and he
came back out, and at that point they arrested me,
(12:26):
and I became enraged. You know, I was yelling at
my attorney. I was yelling at them. I said, listen,
I could have never committed this crime. I showed them
my injury. They noted it. It was on the police
reports and then I went to a lineup, and when
I went to the lineup, I was picked out of
the lineup as the suspect.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Freedom Agenda is a proud sponsor of this episode of
Wrawful Conviction. Freedom Agenda is led by people to directly
impacted by incarceration, and they're organizing to get Mayor Eric
Adams to follow the law and shut down Rikers Island.
Right now, thousands of people are awaiting trial there in
life threatening conditions. Freedom Agenda is committed to creating a
(13:14):
safer and more just city by winning investments in long
neglected communities, protecting the rights of people involved in the
criminal legal system, and ending the cycle of violence that
Rikers perpetuates. To learn more about the campaign to Close
Rikers and to sign up for Freedom Agenda's mailing list,
go to Campaign to Close Rikers dot org, slash, get involved,
or follow at Freedom Agenda and Why on social media.
(13:44):
It's a perfect time to highlight the fact that eyewitness
identification has been proven in experiments to be less accurate
than guessing when you're in a hyper tense situation like
your own life is on the line, when there's gunshots
being fired, when it's a running gun situation. Literally in
the case, your adrenalinees going, and most people think their
minds work like a camera, but in fact we're so
(14:05):
easily influenced that in this case, it seems like the
police may have influenced these witnesses, and I'm being very kind.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
They may have.
Speaker 6 (14:12):
And we believe that she did witness it, that she
was there, that we do believe, but we believe that
she was guided into picking the wrong person.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
In addition to any guidance the victim and the witness
may have received from law enforcement, Andre's case features a
very unfortunate coincidence. It became clear many years later when
the true assailant was discovered that he and Andrea could
easily be mistaken for one another, especially given the alleged
quick glances that the witness and victim were relying on
(14:42):
to make their identifications.
Speaker 5 (14:44):
What were the charges to attempted martis? Two assaults, reckless endangerment,
and the list just goes on and on and everything
under a gun possession gun possession. The family hired a
well known criminal defense attorney named Ira Brown, and the
first appearance, Iira says to the judge, but the family
retained me, but they don't have enough money to pay
for an expert.
Speaker 6 (15:05):
Can the court pay for an expert? You see, Judge,
my client just recently started being able to walk without
a cane. He's still undergoing physical therapy, and at the
time of this shooting, he couldn't possibly have ran the
two city blocks that the shooter did. So I want
to get the medical records, and I want to hire
an expert orthopedist. And the judge said, well, that sounds
like a pretty strong defense. So let me start with
(15:27):
five hundred dollars, get the medical records, and then when
you hire the expert, let me know you know what
else you need, because yes, we'll pay for that. What
happened was Ira was on trial two or three times
in a row when Andrea's case was on and the
family decided we have to get somebody else. At that time,
there were a lot of mafia trials going on, you know,
(15:47):
the gotty cases, and mafia lawyers were kind of considered
the cream of the crop, and they hired a guy
named Thomas Lee to take over the case. And that's
where everything fell apart. So even though the judge had
proved this money, Thomas never pursued the medical evidence after that.
And there were two witnesses that he told the court
(16:08):
he was trying to locate who would name another shooter,
a witness named Graham and a witness named Cleveland. And
he gave subpoenas to the judge and he didn't have
the addresses on the subpoenas, so judge said, I can't
sign a blank subpoena. Get me the addresses and I'll
sign them. And he never did anything else after that.
The last straw, and what Jason was referring to, was
that the one eyewitness was going to testify. The woman
(16:30):
in the car ran into Andre's mother and a family
friend at a laundromat and they pleaded with her, you know,
he made a mistake, my son didn't do this. She
reports that to the DA, who reports it to the judge,
and the judge said, well, that's perfectly normal. They didn't
threaten her. They just told her they think her son
is innocent. But what the DA was saying was that
she didn't want to come forward and testify. We believe
(16:50):
she didn't want to come forward and testify because she
knew that she probably did not identify the right person.
But what happened after that is the day before she's
supposed to testify, a bullet in an envelope ends up
under her windshield wiper and it says, this is what
happens to rats, you fat bitch.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
And it was written in reading and ready with two
bullets in a left on her windshield right.
Speaker 6 (17:14):
So of incarcerated. So he didn't do it right the
point about Lee being involved, what the judge said was
it had to have been someone connected to the defendant.
What she didn't consider it was the lawyer was a
fully made member of the Bonano crime family and one
of the crimes he got arrested for and turned informant
(17:35):
was that he would go to the jail and speak
to the dawn who was arrested because he could go
see him without anybody listening. He's a lawyer, and he
would go back and give instructions including who to give
a garbage contract to in Staten Island, who to give
a garbage contract to in the Bronx, and who to
kill and who to promote within the family, who's more
likely to intimidate it Like that's their game, that's what
(17:56):
they do. This sounds like a mob guy. And it
would also explain why he wouldn't do the rest of
the work because he says, there's one witness. If she
doesn't show up, the case is over, and I can't
you know, many times they would tell clients, you know,
they would say, don't worry, she's not going to show up.
And I would say that, you know, the third floor
in Attica is called that she showed up wing. Okay,
(18:17):
you know, don't count on someone not showing up. She's
going to show up. She hates you, okay. But so
Heap was probably counting on that he was going to
be able to intimidate her and I don't need to
worry about it.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Even though it's believed that this witness refused to testify
due to her doubts over her identification, the appearance of
witness intimidation probably did not reflect well on Andre. Meanwhile,
his attorney's trial strategy hinged on both her absence and
being able to cross examine the victim, who had initially
said that he could not identify the shooter. Well, both
(18:49):
of those things came to pass. The witness's absence at
trial had an unforeseen and unfortunate result.
Speaker 6 (18:56):
They let the DA read her testimony from the jury.
It was a total of six questions, Where were you
on that night in my car? What happened? Somebody ran
by me? What happened after that? I saw a second
person would have gone ran after him. What happened after that?
I heard shots? What happened after that? He pulled his
mask off. Were he able to see his face? Yes?
(19:17):
Did you recognize him? Yes? Who Andre Brown? Now she
didn't know the name Andre Brown, She only knew was
Dre But by the time the grand jury she had
learned the name, and he said, how do you know
him from around the neighborhood? That's it? Okay, those eight questions,
whatever I just went through. That was her testimony. That's
what convicted Andre essentially was those eight questions. But she
(19:38):
wasn't cross examined about being in the car at night
being scared. The jury never heard she almost had a
heart attack. The jury never saw how similar Andrea looked
to the real shooter. Obviously, Now Nicholson testified, you know
also that he saw him as he fell, and he
was pretty well cross examined by Lee. I will say
that that's what he was good at to say how
incredible it could be that you could be falling down
(19:58):
looking over your shoulder and catch a glimpse of the guy,
you know. So that was the whole evidence.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Right there, right So to just summarize the entire evidence
against you, Andre, was not cross testimony from this witness.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
That's it.
Speaker 5 (20:12):
That's it.
Speaker 6 (20:13):
No motive, no physical evidence.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Those eight questions convicted Andre.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
I said, so, Andre, that moment when the jury came
back in, can you take us inside your heart, your soul,
your experience of being in that courtroom jury comes back
and says guilty.
Speaker 5 (20:30):
At that very moment, I was shaking the pinnacle of
either I'm going home or I received this forty years.
And I sat there and the judge came in and
we all rose, and there was one guy I'll never
forget in the jury and he kept looking at me
and he was shaking his head like, Yo, Yo, it's
not good, man, it's not good. And I looked at him.
I said what happened? He said, Yo, they found you guilty.
(20:54):
And I told Lee, I hit him. I said, Yo,
they're gonna find me guilty. He said, what are you
talking about. I put on a great defense here, and
he put on no defense didn't bring my medical records
anything like that to the jury's attention. And I was
trembling knowing that I was about to be convicted. I
just felt like an entire cold go over my body.
(21:15):
It's almost as if your soul leaves you, because you
know this is the transformation of life itself. After I
was convicted, I was taken back upstairs. I was crying
continuously taking back to records island. So the judge waited.
I think it was like three months before sentencing, and
I thought that the judge would have saw the lies
(21:38):
and would have changed her mind and sent me home.
I can remember it clearly. I said, she's going to
see it. She'll see the lies, she'll see that Thomas
Lee didn't put on the defense, She'll be able to
see medical records something. But when I come back, I'm
going to be freed. And when I was sentence, I
(22:01):
snapped again and I said, do you see what you're
doing to an innocent man? Do you see what you're
taking me away from? Do you see that you're taking
me from my college, from my family, from my potential girlfriend,
everything that I've worked so hard for. Do you see
what you're taking away? From me, and she said, mister Brown,
I understand what you have an appeal, and she sentenced me.
(22:22):
She said, for the first count, I'm going to sentence
you to twenty years, and then she said for the
second count, I'm going to sentence you to twenty years,
and both of these sentences will run consecutive to one another.
And I didn't understand what that meant at the time.
And then when I got back and they gave me
(22:43):
my sentence and commitment papers, it said forty years. I
want our audience to really understand going through a book
pin therapy the three stages of prison because it changes
(23:04):
the cognition of your mind.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Well, so you were a.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Child, so your brain is still developing when you went
into prison.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
Absolutely, so you know I'm arrested, kicking, screaming, being dragged
into prison saying you did something that you didn't do.
I go through the central Booking is the first stage
of prison. Straight madness and chaos. People sleeping on the floor,
you're trying to get to the phone system, You're trying
to lay on a bench where individuals is fighting and
(23:30):
pulling and tugging and saying if you're not built like that,
you're not sleeping on the bench. You're going to sleep
under the bench. You're going to sleep on the floor.
You may sleep near the toilet, whereas all urine filled.
So this is the first stage of being thrown inside
the madness. And then the second stage is going through
reik As Island. And now you're fighting to get on
(23:52):
the phones again, you're fighting in the yard. You're making
sure now you're exercising so that you can stay, you know,
buil for anything that's going to come at you. So
it's a war zone from Central Book and two ryk
As Island, and now you're getting thrown inside the Department
of Corrections where they're supposed to rehabilitate you. But now
(24:12):
it's more gangs, it's more violence, it's more police assault,
it's more just the pitfalls of the criminal justice system.
So immediately my mind started to trigger Andre. Now you're
going to be like them. You have to now engage
into the brutality to make it to take phone, to
(24:37):
carry raisers, to carry sharp objects, to protect yourself. You
have to battle in order to have your core beliefs
and your freedom's met. In the minds of these men
who understand that we're criminals.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
When you put an innocent child in prison with people
that are actually dangerous through d fist people in prison,
you have to survive, absolutely, and that could also be
a huge hindrance to him getting out if he got
in a fight or someone attacked him and something happened.
I mean, we don't even think about that when we
put someone like you in prison that's innocent, you could
(25:16):
come out an actual criminal.
Speaker 6 (25:18):
At that point, it came up but as strong because
he got into a fight and the DIA brought it
to the attention that he got into a violent altercation
at prison because they made a bail application. So even
though you didn't know that, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I didn't know that, but yeah, that could have hurt
your chances of getting out absolutely.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
So Oscar, how did you get this man out of prison?
Speaker 5 (25:37):
Yeah? That's good to the good stuff here. Well.
Speaker 6 (25:40):
So one of the reasons I got involved in Andrea's
case is this is my neighborhood. We went to the
same high school, Christopher Columbus.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
In the Bronx for Columbus, he wrongly identified a whole country.
Speaker 6 (25:48):
Exactly, wasn't even on the same continent. But in any event,
the case right, I said, it spoke to me, but
also showed how weak it was. We just found out
during freedom of information laws, which is everybody's good friend.
We first found a report at DD five that was
not given to either mister Ira Brown or to Lee
(26:11):
that showed that the police had actually tested the bullets
and found that the bullets on the fifteenth matched the
gun that was used on the eleventh, So we already
knew that Virgo had one of the guns, so this
had to be the gun that was shooting at Virgo
on the eleventh. So frankly, I felt that was almost
enough because now we had a motive for the jury
(26:32):
that the same person who shot at these two young
men also shot them on the fifteenth, and O'Neil Virgo
had told the police he got a look at the
person who shot him on the eleventh and he didn't
think it was Andre. So if Andre didn't shoot him
on the eleventh, and how could Andre have had the
gun on the fifteenth, And the judge at his hearing
had a lot of questions about that. That was the
first thing. We then found another DD five of a witness,
(26:54):
Courtney Weezy, who said that the shooter was wearing a TAM.
Tam is what Jamaica men were to hold. It's a
big woolf cat. Courtney Weezy said the shooter had a
TAM and he was showing a photo array with Andrea's
picture in it and said he couldn't recognize anybody in
the photo ray. We only got the first page and
I noticed there was a check mark on the front
(27:15):
page as witness can I d yes? And then no
one ever got the second page, said makes.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Id no, so that's a Brady violation.
Speaker 6 (27:22):
That would be a Brady violation. But they argued that
the shooter had a mask on, so you know, it
wasn't a big deal and he couldn't see it. But
the point is he had a right to know that.
And so I said, well, there'd be no reason for
Andre to be wearing a TAM. So this shooter was
likely Jamaican. And I knew that back then there was
a lot of battle between Jamaicans and American blacks over
(27:44):
turf as the Jamaicans are moving into the Bronx, So
didnt makes sense to me that both of the victims
were Jamaican. Why would a Jamaican shoot these victims. But
we found out when we located the witnesses was that
the real shooter was a Jamaican guy who happened to
have gotten into the neighborhood a little bit earlier and
was working with America Blacks to sell weed at that location.
And even though they were Jamaican, he didn't like that
(28:05):
they were working his corner, and that's what the shooting
was all about. The guy who we discovered was the
real shooter, we did some research and tried to get
his yearbook picture, and we got his middle school yearbook picture.
By sheer coincidence. The principal of the middle school that
he went to ended up being my English teacher from
back in seventh grade. So there's a lot of connections
for me in the case. If you put these pictures
(28:25):
side by side, Andre and the real shooter look extremely similar.
And that's a key factor is that the person who
might have seen the real shooter when his mass was
off could have easily picked him as Andre. They were
the exact same height and the exact same weight, okay,
and a very similar face. When we found the motion,
(28:46):
we showed, hey, look what tam means. The real shooter
we found out was Jamaican. He would wear that the
victims were selling weed. Andre never sold weed. This guy
only sold weed. Seven months after this shooting, guess what happened.
Real shooter gets gunned down.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
Just finding the funeral picture where he actually had dreads, right,
we were able to actually put together the two pieces
of the tim and now the dreads with the funeral pictures. Right.
Speaker 6 (29:08):
We found his funeral program, which is great because it
said his real name, but in the middle it said Bonkers. Okay,
his nickname was Bonkers, and the witness said, this guy
was crazy. This guy would shoot you up for no reason.
So it's like, let's put this together here, okay. And
then we actually found a surgeon who did the surgery
(29:29):
on Andre's leg. He had a very serious condition called
compartment syndrome. And what happens there is you get shot
and your leg swells up so much that they have
to expose all four quadrants of your calf. They cut
it open, and they leave you lying in bed with
open wounds until the pressure goes down. He had skin grasps.
We're talking about a scar from his thigh down to
(29:50):
his angle, proven atrophy, and the doctor actually remembered the case,
which is unbelievable. He's the head of trauma at Jacobi
in the Bronx, which is a trauma one center, so
this is not some quack. And now he was head
of medicine and surgery at my Moderny's in Brooklyn.
Speaker 5 (30:09):
And listen, I just want to say that when you're
wrongfully convicted, you better know God. All right, We're not
going to allow that not to be set on this
forum right now. It really must be stated because a
lot of this is sheer luck and God's umbrella had
to be on me because my surgeon was alive.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
And he said, there's no way someone with this injury
could have ran. He said, maybe he could pull his
leg along, he said, but he would have a noticeable
limp at best. And the judge at Andrea's hearings said,
could he jog? He said, no, he could not jog.
He could not jog. He could not run this quickly.
The problem was because the case was so old, there
(30:53):
were no physical therapy records to show how far along
to me when in.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
God those medical record to because his amazing wife, and
not to mention my.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
Brother Devon who's not here. Also where we were on
the phone, like illegally at that point, making three week
calls to Jacobe Hospital to locate these records.
Speaker 6 (31:14):
This surgeon he actually called over there to try to
get him himself. I mean, he really knew that something
wrong was going on. I got to give him Ronald Simon.
He said, there's got to be pt records there. Maybe
I five call, you know, we'll find them. And no
one could find those therapy recordscause they don't preserve them.
It's talk about the year in nineteen ninety, we're looking
for them in twenty twenty, you know. But we did
have Ira Brown telling the judge at his first court appearance,
(31:36):
my client is still undergoing physical therapy and only recently
was able to walk without a cane, and so that
formed the basis.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
You know, there are a series of sort of miracles,
right that led to you being here. But it points out,
you know, my estimate is that there's probably around two
hundred thousand innocent people in prison while we're sitting here
right now in this country, and that's probably conservative. And
those people, many of them don't have a way out.
They don't have an Oscar Michelin, right, they don't have
(32:06):
a Maggie feeling to do a podcast about the case.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
In fact, this goes back to.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Very early when we first started the Wrongful Conviction podcast
and our producer back then was a woman named Sabine Jansen.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
She alerted me to your case.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
I brought it to our fantastic PR person named Don Cameron.
To generate some interest, we brought Jeffrey Deskovic. I was
about to go there and let me brag on Jeffrey
for a second. So Jeffrey Deskovic right there sitting in
the front row, standing in the front row, wrongfully convicted,
served sixteen years in New York State and is now
(32:41):
a member of the bar.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
And he turned out to be Listen.
Speaker 5 (32:45):
As a joke, and as a joke, you know, we
say that Jeffrey is the media whore.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Okay, they love your case because you brought the case.
Speaker 5 (32:57):
Listen, they love jeff the media so immediately. And it's
not a joke, guys.
Speaker 6 (33:04):
He pays a lot of attention to this.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Yes, that's for sure, because Jeff is my brother. Jeff
is the guy who went hard, extremely hard in the
media for my case. Him and then Sabine will never
forget Sabine because she contacted Jason, and Jason said, who's
Andre Brown? And Sabin explained it and he said, listen,
we got to put Dawn on this because the only
(33:28):
thing that Governor Cuomo does in the morning is he
reads and not bad. So at that point he put
Dawn right in the fray of everything, and the campaign began.
Speaker 6 (33:42):
First, we went to the Conviction Review Unit. They rejected
the case and so we filed a four to forty.
Speaker 5 (33:48):
At that time, it was COVID and they were not
trying to bring me down on a hearing.
Speaker 6 (33:52):
We had asked for a virtual hearing because the courts
were closed to in person hearings, and the DA opposed that,
and then Jeff four organized a rally in front of
her office to try to get her to agree to
a virtual hearing, and we had a hearing and the
judge agreed that at the very least Lee was ineffective
for not presenting the medical evidence, and just to put
(34:16):
the icing on it. I've known Jeff for a long time.
We kind of mentored him through with his law school experience,
and he became an admitted attorney right before we had
got a hearing granted. So I asked him to second
seat me and Andre was 's first client. So and Jeff,
he's bat in one hundred.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
So actually, Oscar, I do want to point out not
exactly one hundred Andre.
Speaker 6 (34:38):
Oh, I shouldn't say that's right.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Andrea is not exonerated yet, which is why we were
here telling his story because the bronx DA is actually
still fighting his conviction, wanting to put Andre back in prison.
So not only do we need to exonerate him, we
need to make sure that he doesn't go back to prison.
Speaker 6 (34:56):
Yeah, they're filed an appeal of the khure of the conviction,
and I got to tell you, you know, the odds
of its success are not high, they're low. But this
room speaks to what happens when you caught up in
the criminal justice system. Right, if you're counting on the
criminal justicism to work out for you, you know you're
(35:16):
going to get very sorely disappointed. So it really, you know,
is a case that should not be appealed. Never mind
the fact that he served well over twenty years for
a crime that we established, you know, he didn't commit,
but to just drag it on, have this over his head.
They fought bail. Now after the judge vacated his conviction.
They asked for five hundred thousand dollars bail. Okay, the
(35:38):
judge released him, but to supervise release, just like it
wouldn't give us the measure that he was actually innocent.
Took the safe path and said he was ineffective. You know,
as I said to Jason before we came out here,
I've been involved in a lot of cases. I've never
had a case with this much evidence of innocence. And
the judge just couldn't get there. And then he couldn't
(35:59):
just do he had to send him to supervised release.
So it's just constant. The justice system loves finality. They
want to, you know, keep that hold on you. To
the point where when he first started going to the
supervised release place, which is now run by the Fortune Society,
they called us and said, why are we supervising this person?
He went to another program to be interviewed and ended
(36:21):
up hiring him instead of supervising. He works there. Now, Yes,
I mean it's really daunting and it's very discomforting to
believe that. You know, we now have to wait. It'll
take about two years to decide this appeal, and I want.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
To get to what people here can do, if they
can write letters, or if there's anything else they can
do to make their voices heard.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
For Andre, well, I do know there's a GoFundMe for Andre.
It's GoFundMe such support Andre Brown, So that exists, so
please donate to.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
That if you can, and we'll link to it in
the episode. Yeah description as well.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
And you guys have the power to vote for the DA.
I mean, we can vote in progressive district attorneys. So
just so you guys know that you have the power
to make sure that there are conviction review units, that
there are progressive das that don't fight these convictions that
are so obvious, so obvious.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
And before we go to we have a tradition on
the show. We call it closing arguments.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
But before we do that, there's one other very special
person in this room I want to acknowledge, and this
is a young man named Aj.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
Right, your son's daf Aj, And I.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Heard somewhere that he scored thirty points in a basketball
game this week.
Speaker 5 (37:28):
So if there's any.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Agents in the room, might want to get in now
because he's only twelve.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Actually, I did want to talk about Ajamika Tamika and
Andre you knew each other from high school, yes, and
now you're married.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
You did over twenty years in prison.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
And actually we talked about how you're lucky that you're alive,
because if you're a leg you're lucky now that you're out,
a lot of people get out and don't have family,
and you have a wonderful wife and a son, yes,
that you're coming home to right.
Speaker 5 (37:54):
There, right there, right Look for only do people not
have family, They don't have hope, they don't have faith.
They lose their souls inside of prison because they don't
have friends. I've seen individuals walk in the yard until
they turn mad because they're innocent, and now everybody has
(38:16):
shunned them. So what does that really mean when society
itself make you the treads and then inside of the
prison you're a nobody.
Speaker 6 (38:29):
Well, it's just a dangerous place. Where we were waiting
for Andrea's hearing because of COVID. One of the reasons
we filed for the virtual hearing was Andrew is actually
on the phone with Tamika on Thanksgiving Day and some
other guy in the prison thought he was on the
phone too long and nearly took Andre's that stabbed him
in the face with a pen. Yeah, while he was
on the phone with Tamika, right, Yes, And you know
(38:52):
I wrote to the judge and said, look, we got
to get this guy hearing like he's in the Honors prison.
By way, this is the place in the Eastern that
those are here. They call it happy Nap because it's
like the place where you're supposed to be the safest.
And he got attacked just on the phone. So, you know,
sending someone to prison is you know, it could potentially
be a death sentence.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
It is for too many people. And we know that're
right here in Manhattan and right here in New York
Rikers Island. Since may Or Adams took office, twenty nine
people at last count, have been murdered and Rikers Island,
and most of them, over one in b jar of
them had even been convicted of anything.
Speaker 6 (39:23):
Yet most of them were presumed innocent.
Speaker 5 (39:25):
Yeah, just waiting for trials detainees.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
That could have been you, or could have been so
many other people in this room. So anyone who's listened
to the Wrongful Conviction podcast knows this is my favorite
part of the show. We call it closing arguments. It's
where we thank each of you, Maggie and I for
being here with us today, everybody in the audience, everybody
listening at home, and then turn it over to Oscar
first to say anything else is left to be said,
(39:50):
and then you take us off into the sunset anything
you want to say.
Speaker 6 (39:53):
First of all, thank you for being involved in the
issue and spread the word. Tell people that there were
folks in there who do belong there. There are many
people who serve their time and are route that will
never get the justice that they deserve, and that time
has been lost. WI let people know that this is
an issue that should be addressed at every time that
there's a DA running for office.
Speaker 5 (40:12):
And for me, I got to mention some of my
great colleagues, Michael Cobb, who we all know is shat Do,
Raphael Martinez, Pedro Rodriguez, Nochia Rose, Ronaldo Morgan. These men
are still fighting for their freedom today and I mentioned
them because I want everybody here in the live audience
(40:36):
at home to take a second look. I give you
the analogy that I give to some of the students
when I did my last speech with Jeff and it
is like when you guys are driving home and you
just see something as simple as a pedestrian pulled over
(40:57):
on the side of the road, and you're just like, oh,
it must be a lawful stop, so you just keep moving.
Take a second look, take a second look when you
see somebody in trouble, because you never will know when
it's your time to give that help in hand.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
Thank you, Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You
can listen to this and all the Lava for Good
podcasts one week early by subscribing to Lava for Good
Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production
team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my
(41:39):
fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliburn.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at it's Jason Vlamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts association with Signal Company Number one
Since our original coverage of Andre Brown's case, there have
been some terrifying developments. Our listeners might recall that Andre's
team revealed a very compelling alternate suspect in this case,
someone who looked like Andrea, lived in the neighborhood, had
a motive, and who at the time of the crime,
was not recovering from a debilitating injury, unlike Andrea, who
(00:28):
could barely walk, let alone chase the victims in this case, so,
Andrea's conviction was overturned. But despite this information, the Bronx
District Attorney's office appealed the decision that overturned Andrea's conviction,
and they won. So this Friday, yes, this upcoming Friday,
(00:48):
April twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, they aimed to take
Andre from his wife and children and the freedom that
he richly deserves to serve out the remaining seventeen years
of someone else's forty year sentence. So I am pleading
with you to help save an innocent man from further injustice.
(01:10):
There's a petition for clemency linked in the episode description.
Scroll to it, sign it, share it, and perhaps by
this weekend there will be one less terrible thing happening.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
In this world.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
On the evening of January fifteenth, nineteen ninety nine, a
masked man approached two teenage boys in front of a
bodega in the Bronx, on a corner known for drug activity.
The assailant drew a gun and shot one of the
young men several times while the other ran off. The
gunman chased the other young man down the block and
around the corner before paralyzing him with one shot to
(01:48):
the back. While both victims survived, only one was conscious,
but he couldn't or wouldn't provide a lead. An eyewitness
said that she recognized the shooter as a guy from
the neighbor named Drey. The police remembered Andre Brown, a
neighborhood kid who was shot in the leg one year
prior in a drug dispute. The specter of his injured
(02:10):
leg and alternate suspects were ignored when both the witness
and the victim agreed that Andre was the assailant.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
But this is wrongful conviction.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
You're listening to wrongful conviction. You can listen to this
and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early
and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good plus
on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Welcome Back to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Recently, Jason Flamm and I were asked to record an
interview in front of a live audience at the annual
United Justice Coalition Summit.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
The UJC aims to raise awareness around.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Social justice issues and the need for criminal legal system reform.
So for our live interview, we thought of a mutual friend,
someone whose case I covered on my podcast Unjustin Unsolved. Well,
he was still wrongfully incarcerated, Andre Brown. Andrea agreed to
join us at the summit along with his attorney Oscar Michelin.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
Thanks everybody for being here.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
I'm gonna ask, first of all, how many people in
this room were wrongfully convicted and sentenced? Oh my god,
see that? And how many people here know somebody who
was wrongfully convicted? Oh my god, that's a lot of hands.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Yeah. This shit is everywhere.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
It's horrible, and I'm really really thrilled to be here
with these amazing, amazing people, Maggie Feeling, Oscar and of
course Andre Brown. And I'm so glad that Andrea is here.
I mean, I'm so glad you're here, because I'm so
glad you're here with your amazing, beautiful family and everything.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
But his case start with this, okay.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
It features a witness who didn't testify, but her testimony
was allowed in any way, which meant that no one.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Was allowed to cross examine her.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Second of all, the shooter shot one guy execution style,
then chased his friend caught up to him on the street.
Now that this was an eighteen year old kid running
for his life and somehow this guy was fast enough
to catch up with him and shoot him and paralyze
him too. Andre had a bullet wound in his leg
and had a syndrome that meant that he could barely walk,
(04:26):
much less run. And it also features a lawyer who,
while he was representing Andrea a trial, had a side
hustle which was committing so many crimes for the Banano
crime family that he ended up being the only attorney
in American history to enter the witness Protection program.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
So it's a shit show.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
So get ready to hear what we're about to hear,
because this is just different and Andre is just a
different kind of guy.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
I mean to no one is to love him. So
with that, Maggie, all right.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
So hello everyone, thanks for coming. I'm just gonna start
from the top with Andre, why don't you tell us
a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
I was raised in a two parent household. It was
the Uptime area, the Northeast Bronx. The crack epidemic was
going on, a lot of gun shots being fired continuously.
The trains were littered homeless people, and it was just
a real, just tragic time in the Bronx. My life
was a fair life. My mother was a stewardess for
(05:27):
the airlines, and she raised us and groomed us to
be good individuals. And then my mother and my father separated.
At that time, I was in high school and now
I was taken on the onus of raising my brothers.
So I said, how can I now change the course
(05:48):
of their lives and allow myself to continue in an
upward manner. First, I took on a job at creating barrel,
trying to think that it would be able to fit
the bill, and it didn't. It couldn't feed my little
sister or my other two brothers. So at that time
I said, you know what, I have to do something else.
(06:10):
And my friend introduced me to selling drugs. And when
I started to sell drugs, literally I thought I was
a genius Sabbath, And this is how your mind gets
cultivated poorly in the streets. You start to really engage
and think that you know better than law enforcement, you
know better than society, and you also know better than
(06:32):
that old adage cartoon the Turtle and the rabbit, thinking that, oh,
I know what I'm doing. I'm running past this little
working man, this turtle. So in selling drugs, in thinking
I was a genius, I got shot a simple leg shot,
mind you. It hit my major artery and I almost
(06:52):
bled to death. And that was the turning point in
my life.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
So you almost died, So you got on a better
path in life.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Yes, First of all, you have to be an enforcer
on a block in order to hold it down. I
was injured, critically injured. I was at the point where
I couldn't walk, I could no longer hold down a block.
So I said, what am I going to do now
with my life? And I started going back to college.
At that point, I enrolled in BMCC. And that's when
(07:21):
you know, tragedy.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Occurred, right, And I want to bring that to Oscar.
January fifteenth, nineteen ninety nine. What happened that day?
Speaker 6 (07:29):
So on that day there was a shooting on a
street corner in the Bronx Allerton Avenue, White Plains Road.
That area. The corner there was Little Bodeiga, a little
corner store had been a spot where young Jamaican gang
had started selling marijuana out of for the past about
year or so, and the cops were aware of that,
(07:49):
and so there became a little bit of a rival
turf war for that location from the earlier crews that
had been working there selling marijuana. And so the first
incident that happened was on January eleventh, there was a
shootout on that corner, two exchanges of gunfire. Nobody got shot,
some cars were shot up, so the police responded. On
(08:10):
January thirteenth, two days later, one of the guys that
hustles on that corner, guy named O'Neil virgo, got arrested,
and sure enough the gun he had on him was
connected to the shooting on the eleventh, so he gets
the rest of for a gun charge. And then on
the fifteenth O'Neil Virgo and another man Sewn Nicholson or
out on that corner selling drugs. Somebody comes up right
(08:30):
down White Planes Road sees them on the corner, they
see the gun. He's got a mask on. The shooter
literally stands over O'Neil Virgo and shoots him several times
and then runs down the street to try to get
the other guy, Sewn Nicholson, They were in a full
city block. He makes a left turn onto the next block,
which is Olinville, and the shooter shoots him there one time,
(08:53):
hits him in the spine and paralyzes him. Somehow they
both survived. So his attempted murder, there was lots of
descriptions as to what the shooter was wearing. Was it
a face mask, was it a handkerchief of bandana, et cetera.
So they asked the victim at that time, Sean Nicholson.
Mister Virgo could not speak. He was the one who
shot five or six times. And that initial police report,
(09:14):
Sewn Nicholson, he says, I can't identify the shooter, and
so the police start scouring the area looking for witnesses.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
So how did it end up with them settling on
a guy who, it should have been painfully obvious from
the very beginning not only didn't do it, but couldn't
have done it.
Speaker 6 (09:33):
They started listening to rumors in the in the street,
and one of the women who later recanted said, you know,
the shooter looked a little bit like this guy I
know from the neighborhood, Dre. So the next thing they
do with that is go to the hospital and get
Sean Nicholson, who had repeatedly said I didn't see the
guy he had a mask to pick Andre allegedly out
(09:54):
of a photo array. So what Nicholson actually said, or
what the police got him to say, was, as he
was falling to the ground, he looked over his shoulder
and saw the shooter pulled the mask off his face,
and he could recognize Andre from the neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Sounds totally legit exactly happens all the time.
Speaker 6 (10:10):
Two days later, a witness comes forward who claims she
was in her car when the shooting occurred. And this
is about five point thirty six o'clock at night on
a winter night, so it was just starting to get
dark in January. And then she says she saw the
shooter run past her and pull up his mask just
as he passed her car window. She also said that
(10:31):
the shots were fired by her car, but the shots
that shot mister Nicholson, as a described, were around the corner,
so she would not have been able to see what
she said she saw, and she said that she was
so upset that night she reported to the police because
she almost had a heart attack and she was treated
for angina that night. So she didn't come forward until
two days later after there was already the rumors in
(10:52):
the neighborhood and they were already looking for Andre.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
So, Andre, when you found out they were looking for you,
you turned yourself in with a lawyer.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
Yes, they came to my girlfriend's house early in the morning.
They missed me. I had just went out to get
breakfast really quick and came back. She was trembling, and
she said, listen, the police were here. They left the
card that they searched the home. I immediately reached out
to my mom and she said, Andre, they were just here. Also,
I was just about to call you. And I went
to the Bar Association to meet Martin Fisher. Martin Fisher
(11:24):
was a family attorney, and I said, Marty, they're looking
for me. I don't know what they're looking for me for.
They were contacted by Martin and they said we want
to ask him a few questions. He said, no, he's
represented by me. You cannot ask him any questions. I said, okay, well,
if we need him, we'll contact you. Two days later,
on the Wednesday morning, they contacted him, which was the
(11:44):
twentieth of January, and I went down there with my
mom and my girlfriend at the time, walked right into
the prison. I didn't have a worry in the world
because I knew that I didn't have anything to do
with this case. So at that time I was not
a prisoner yet. I was actually seated outside of the
push door. And it's ironic because one of the detectives there,
(12:05):
he said, Andre, don't you remember me? And I'm like, no,
I don't. Who are you? He said, when you were shot?
I came to the hospital, so they knew that I
was shot already before even any questions were occurring. And
then my attorney went inside spoke to them, and he
came back out, and at that point they arrested me,
(12:26):
and I became enraged. You know, I was yelling at
my attorney. I was yelling at them. I said, listen,
I could have never committed this crime. I showed them
my injury. They noted it. It was on the police
reports and then I went to a lineup, and when
I went to the lineup, I was picked out of
the lineup as the suspect.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Freedom Agenda is a proud sponsor of this episode of
Wrawful Conviction. Freedom Agenda is led by people to directly
impacted by incarceration, and they're organizing to get Mayor Eric
Adams to follow the law and shut down Rikers Island.
Right now, thousands of people are awaiting trial there in
life threatening conditions. Freedom Agenda is committed to creating a
(13:14):
safer and more just city by winning investments in long
neglected communities, protecting the rights of people involved in the
criminal legal system, and ending the cycle of violence that
Rikers perpetuates. To learn more about the campaign to Close
Rikers and to sign up for Freedom Agenda's mailing list,
go to Campaign to Close Rikers dot org, slash, get involved,
or follow at Freedom Agenda and Why on social media.
(13:44):
It's a perfect time to highlight the fact that eyewitness
identification has been proven in experiments to be less accurate
than guessing when you're in a hyper tense situation like
your own life is on the line, when there's gunshots
being fired, when it's a running gun situation. Literally in
the case, your adrenalinees going, and most people think their
minds work like a camera, but in fact we're so
(14:05):
easily influenced that in this case, it seems like the
police may have influenced these witnesses, and I'm being very kind.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
They may have.
Speaker 6 (14:12):
And we believe that she did witness it, that she
was there, that we do believe, but we believe that
she was guided into picking the wrong person.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
In addition to any guidance the victim and the witness
may have received from law enforcement, Andre's case features a
very unfortunate coincidence. It became clear many years later when
the true assailant was discovered that he and Andrea could
easily be mistaken for one another, especially given the alleged
quick glances that the witness and victim were relying on
(14:42):
to make their identifications.
Speaker 5 (14:44):
What were the charges to attempted martis? Two assaults, reckless endangerment,
and the list just goes on and on and everything
under a gun possession gun possession. The family hired a
well known criminal defense attorney named Ira Brown, and the
first appearance, Iira says to the judge, but the family
retained me, but they don't have enough money to pay
for an expert.
Speaker 6 (15:05):
Can the court pay for an expert? You see, Judge,
my client just recently started being able to walk without
a cane. He's still undergoing physical therapy, and at the
time of this shooting, he couldn't possibly have ran the
two city blocks that the shooter did. So I want
to get the medical records, and I want to hire
an expert orthopedist. And the judge said, well, that sounds
like a pretty strong defense. So let me start with
(15:27):
five hundred dollars, get the medical records, and then when
you hire the expert, let me know you know what
else you need, because yes, we'll pay for that. What
happened was Ira was on trial two or three times
in a row when Andrea's case was on and the
family decided we have to get somebody else. At that time,
there were a lot of mafia trials going on, you know,
(15:47):
the gotty cases, and mafia lawyers were kind of considered
the cream of the crop, and they hired a guy
named Thomas Lee to take over the case. And that's
where everything fell apart. So even though the judge had
proved this money, Thomas never pursued the medical evidence after that.
And there were two witnesses that he told the court
(16:08):
he was trying to locate who would name another shooter,
a witness named Graham and a witness named Cleveland. And
he gave subpoenas to the judge and he didn't have
the addresses on the subpoenas, so judge said, I can't
sign a blank subpoena. Get me the addresses and I'll
sign them. And he never did anything else after that.
The last straw, and what Jason was referring to, was
that the one eyewitness was going to testify. The woman
(16:30):
in the car ran into Andre's mother and a family
friend at a laundromat and they pleaded with her, you know,
he made a mistake, my son didn't do this. She
reports that to the DA, who reports it to the judge,
and the judge said, well, that's perfectly normal. They didn't
threaten her. They just told her they think her son
is innocent. But what the DA was saying was that
she didn't want to come forward and testify. We believe
(16:50):
she didn't want to come forward and testify because she
knew that she probably did not identify the right person.
But what happened after that is the day before she's
supposed to testify, a bullet in an envelope ends up
under her windshield wiper and it says, this is what
happens to rats, you fat bitch.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
And it was written in reading and ready with two
bullets in a left on her windshield right.
Speaker 6 (17:14):
So of incarcerated. So he didn't do it right the
point about Lee being involved, what the judge said was
it had to have been someone connected to the defendant.
What she didn't consider it was the lawyer was a
fully made member of the Bonano crime family and one
of the crimes he got arrested for and turned informant
(17:35):
was that he would go to the jail and speak
to the dawn who was arrested because he could go
see him without anybody listening. He's a lawyer, and he
would go back and give instructions including who to give
a garbage contract to in Staten Island, who to give
a garbage contract to in the Bronx, and who to
kill and who to promote within the family, who's more
likely to intimidate it Like that's their game, that's what
(17:56):
they do. This sounds like a mob guy. And it
would also explain why he wouldn't do the rest of
the work because he says, there's one witness. If she
doesn't show up, the case is over, and I can't
you know, many times they would tell clients, you know,
they would say, don't worry, she's not going to show up.
And I would say that, you know, the third floor
in Attica is called that she showed up wing. Okay,
(18:17):
you know, don't count on someone not showing up. She's
going to show up. She hates you, okay. But so
Heap was probably counting on that he was going to
be able to intimidate her and I don't need to
worry about it.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Even though it's believed that this witness refused to testify
due to her doubts over her identification, the appearance of
witness intimidation probably did not reflect well on Andre. Meanwhile,
his attorney's trial strategy hinged on both her absence and
being able to cross examine the victim, who had initially
said that he could not identify the shooter. Well, both
(18:49):
of those things came to pass. The witness's absence at
trial had an unforeseen and unfortunate result.
Speaker 6 (18:56):
They let the DA read her testimony from the jury.
It was a total of six questions, Where were you
on that night in my car? What happened? Somebody ran
by me? What happened after that? I saw a second
person would have gone ran after him. What happened after that?
I heard shots? What happened after that? He pulled his
mask off. Were he able to see his face? Yes?
(19:17):
Did you recognize him? Yes? Who Andre Brown? Now she
didn't know the name Andre Brown, She only knew was
Dre But by the time the grand jury she had
learned the name, and he said, how do you know
him from around the neighborhood? That's it? Okay, those eight questions,
whatever I just went through. That was her testimony. That's
what convicted Andre essentially was those eight questions. But she
(19:38):
wasn't cross examined about being in the car at night
being scared. The jury never heard she almost had a
heart attack. The jury never saw how similar Andrea looked
to the real shooter. Obviously, Now Nicholson testified, you know
also that he saw him as he fell, and he
was pretty well cross examined by Lee. I will say
that that's what he was good at to say how
incredible it could be that you could be falling down
(19:58):
looking over your shoulder and catch a glimpse of the guy,
you know. So that was the whole evidence.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Right there, right So to just summarize the entire evidence
against you, Andre, was not cross testimony from this witness.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
That's it.
Speaker 5 (20:12):
That's it.
Speaker 6 (20:13):
No motive, no physical evidence.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Those eight questions convicted Andre.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
I said, so, Andre, that moment when the jury came
back in, can you take us inside your heart, your soul,
your experience of being in that courtroom jury comes back
and says guilty.
Speaker 5 (20:30):
At that very moment, I was shaking the pinnacle of
either I'm going home or I received this forty years.
And I sat there and the judge came in and
we all rose, and there was one guy I'll never
forget in the jury and he kept looking at me
and he was shaking his head like, Yo, Yo, it's
not good, man, it's not good. And I looked at him.
I said what happened? He said, Yo, they found you guilty.
(20:54):
And I told Lee, I hit him. I said, Yo,
they're gonna find me guilty. He said, what are you
talking about. I put on a great defense here, and
he put on no defense didn't bring my medical records
anything like that to the jury's attention. And I was
trembling knowing that I was about to be convicted. I
just felt like an entire cold go over my body.
(21:15):
It's almost as if your soul leaves you, because you
know this is the transformation of life itself. After I
was convicted, I was taken back upstairs. I was crying
continuously taking back to records island. So the judge waited.
I think it was like three months before sentencing, and
I thought that the judge would have saw the lies
(21:38):
and would have changed her mind and sent me home.
I can remember it clearly. I said, she's going to
see it. She'll see the lies, she'll see that Thomas
Lee didn't put on the defense, She'll be able to
see medical records something. But when I come back, I'm
going to be freed. And when I was sentence, I
(22:01):
snapped again and I said, do you see what you're
doing to an innocent man? Do you see what you're
taking me away from? Do you see that you're taking
me from my college, from my family, from my potential girlfriend,
everything that I've worked so hard for. Do you see
what you're taking away? From me, and she said, mister Brown,
I understand what you have an appeal, and she sentenced me.
(22:22):
She said, for the first count, I'm going to sentence
you to twenty years, and then she said for the
second count, I'm going to sentence you to twenty years,
and both of these sentences will run consecutive to one another.
And I didn't understand what that meant at the time.
And then when I got back and they gave me
(22:43):
my sentence and commitment papers, it said forty years. I
want our audience to really understand going through a book
pin therapy the three stages of prison because it changes
(23:04):
the cognition of your mind.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Well, so you were a.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Child, so your brain is still developing when you went
into prison.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
Absolutely, so you know I'm arrested, kicking, screaming, being dragged
into prison saying you did something that you didn't do.
I go through the central Booking is the first stage
of prison. Straight madness and chaos. People sleeping on the floor,
you're trying to get to the phone system, You're trying
to lay on a bench where individuals is fighting and
(23:30):
pulling and tugging and saying if you're not built like that,
you're not sleeping on the bench. You're going to sleep
under the bench. You're going to sleep on the floor.
You may sleep near the toilet, whereas all urine filled.
So this is the first stage of being thrown inside
the madness. And then the second stage is going through
reik As Island. And now you're fighting to get on
(23:52):
the phones again, you're fighting in the yard. You're making
sure now you're exercising so that you can stay, you know,
buil for anything that's going to come at you. So
it's a war zone from Central Book and two ryk
As Island, and now you're getting thrown inside the Department
of Corrections where they're supposed to rehabilitate you. But now
(24:12):
it's more gangs, it's more violence, it's more police assault,
it's more just the pitfalls of the criminal justice system.
So immediately my mind started to trigger Andre. Now you're
going to be like them. You have to now engage
into the brutality to make it to take phone, to
(24:37):
carry raisers, to carry sharp objects, to protect yourself. You
have to battle in order to have your core beliefs
and your freedom's met. In the minds of these men
who understand that we're criminals.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
When you put an innocent child in prison with people
that are actually dangerous through d fist people in prison,
you have to survive, absolutely, and that could also be
a huge hindrance to him getting out if he got
in a fight or someone attacked him and something happened.
I mean, we don't even think about that when we
put someone like you in prison that's innocent, you could
(25:16):
come out an actual criminal.
Speaker 6 (25:18):
At that point, it came up but as strong because
he got into a fight and the DIA brought it
to the attention that he got into a violent altercation
at prison because they made a bail application. So even
though you didn't know that, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I didn't know that, but yeah, that could have hurt
your chances of getting out absolutely.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
So Oscar, how did you get this man out of prison?
Speaker 5 (25:37):
Yeah? That's good to the good stuff here. Well.
Speaker 6 (25:40):
So one of the reasons I got involved in Andrea's
case is this is my neighborhood. We went to the
same high school, Christopher Columbus.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
In the Bronx for Columbus, he wrongly identified a whole country.
Speaker 6 (25:48):
Exactly, wasn't even on the same continent. But in any event,
the case right, I said, it spoke to me, but
also showed how weak it was. We just found out
during freedom of information laws, which is everybody's good friend.
We first found a report at DD five that was
not given to either mister Ira Brown or to Lee
(26:11):
that showed that the police had actually tested the bullets
and found that the bullets on the fifteenth matched the
gun that was used on the eleventh, So we already
knew that Virgo had one of the guns, so this
had to be the gun that was shooting at Virgo
on the eleventh. So frankly, I felt that was almost
enough because now we had a motive for the jury
(26:32):
that the same person who shot at these two young
men also shot them on the fifteenth, and O'Neil Virgo
had told the police he got a look at the
person who shot him on the eleventh and he didn't
think it was Andre. So if Andre didn't shoot him
on the eleventh, and how could Andre have had the
gun on the fifteenth, And the judge at his hearing
had a lot of questions about that. That was the
first thing. We then found another DD five of a witness,
(26:54):
Courtney Weezy, who said that the shooter was wearing a TAM.
Tam is what Jamaica men were to hold. It's a
big woolf cat. Courtney Weezy said the shooter had a
TAM and he was showing a photo array with Andrea's
picture in it and said he couldn't recognize anybody in
the photo ray. We only got the first page and
I noticed there was a check mark on the front
(27:15):
page as witness can I d yes? And then no
one ever got the second page, said makes.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Id no, so that's a Brady violation.
Speaker 6 (27:22):
That would be a Brady violation. But they argued that
the shooter had a mask on, so you know, it
wasn't a big deal and he couldn't see it. But
the point is he had a right to know that.
And so I said, well, there'd be no reason for
Andre to be wearing a TAM. So this shooter was
likely Jamaican. And I knew that back then there was
a lot of battle between Jamaicans and American blacks over
(27:44):
turf as the Jamaicans are moving into the Bronx, So
didnt makes sense to me that both of the victims
were Jamaican. Why would a Jamaican shoot these victims. But
we found out when we located the witnesses was that
the real shooter was a Jamaican guy who happened to
have gotten into the neighborhood a little bit earlier and
was working with America Blacks to sell weed at that location.
And even though they were Jamaican, he didn't like that
(28:05):
they were working his corner, and that's what the shooting
was all about. The guy who we discovered was the
real shooter, we did some research and tried to get
his yearbook picture, and we got his middle school yearbook picture.
By sheer coincidence. The principal of the middle school that
he went to ended up being my English teacher from
back in seventh grade. So there's a lot of connections
for me in the case. If you put these pictures
(28:25):
side by side, Andre and the real shooter look extremely similar.
And that's a key factor is that the person who
might have seen the real shooter when his mass was
off could have easily picked him as Andre. They were
the exact same height and the exact same weight, okay,
and a very similar face. When we found the motion,
(28:46):
we showed, hey, look what tam means. The real shooter
we found out was Jamaican. He would wear that the
victims were selling weed. Andre never sold weed. This guy
only sold weed. Seven months after this shooting, guess what happened.
Real shooter gets gunned down.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
Just finding the funeral picture where he actually had dreads, right,
we were able to actually put together the two pieces
of the tim and now the dreads with the funeral pictures. Right.
Speaker 6 (29:08):
We found his funeral program, which is great because it
said his real name, but in the middle it said Bonkers. Okay,
his nickname was Bonkers, and the witness said, this guy
was crazy. This guy would shoot you up for no reason.
So it's like, let's put this together here, okay. And
then we actually found a surgeon who did the surgery
(29:29):
on Andre's leg. He had a very serious condition called
compartment syndrome. And what happens there is you get shot
and your leg swells up so much that they have
to expose all four quadrants of your calf. They cut
it open, and they leave you lying in bed with
open wounds until the pressure goes down. He had skin grasps.
We're talking about a scar from his thigh down to
(29:50):
his angle, proven atrophy, and the doctor actually remembered the case,
which is unbelievable. He's the head of trauma at Jacobi
in the Bronx, which is a trauma one center, so
this is not some quack. And now he was head
of medicine and surgery at my Moderny's in Brooklyn.
Speaker 5 (30:09):
And listen, I just want to say that when you're
wrongfully convicted, you better know God. All right, We're not
going to allow that not to be set on this
forum right now. It really must be stated because a
lot of this is sheer luck and God's umbrella had
to be on me because my surgeon was alive.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
And he said, there's no way someone with this injury
could have ran. He said, maybe he could pull his
leg along, he said, but he would have a noticeable
limp at best. And the judge at Andrea's hearings said,
could he jog? He said, no, he could not jog.
He could not jog. He could not run this quickly.
The problem was because the case was so old, there
(30:53):
were no physical therapy records to show how far along
to me when in.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
God those medical record to because his amazing wife, and
not to mention my.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
Brother Devon who's not here. Also where we were on
the phone, like illegally at that point, making three week
calls to Jacobe Hospital to locate these records.
Speaker 6 (31:14):
This surgeon he actually called over there to try to
get him himself. I mean, he really knew that something
wrong was going on. I got to give him Ronald Simon.
He said, there's got to be pt records there. Maybe
I five call, you know, we'll find them. And no
one could find those therapy recordscause they don't preserve them.
It's talk about the year in nineteen ninety, we're looking
for them in twenty twenty, you know. But we did
have Ira Brown telling the judge at his first court appearance,
(31:36):
my client is still undergoing physical therapy and only recently
was able to walk without a cane, and so that
formed the basis.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
You know, there are a series of sort of miracles,
right that led to you being here. But it points out,
you know, my estimate is that there's probably around two
hundred thousand innocent people in prison while we're sitting here
right now in this country, and that's probably conservative. And
those people, many of them don't have a way out.
They don't have an Oscar Michelin, right, they don't have
(32:06):
a Maggie feeling to do a podcast about the case.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
In fact, this goes back to.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Very early when we first started the Wrongful Conviction podcast
and our producer back then was a woman named Sabine Jansen.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
She alerted me to your case.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
I brought it to our fantastic PR person named Don Cameron.
To generate some interest, we brought Jeffrey Deskovic. I was
about to go there and let me brag on Jeffrey
for a second. So Jeffrey Deskovic right there sitting in
the front row, standing in the front row, wrongfully convicted,
served sixteen years in New York State and is now
(32:41):
a member of the bar.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
And he turned out to be Listen.
Speaker 5 (32:45):
As a joke, and as a joke, you know, we
say that Jeffrey is the media whore.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Okay, they love your case because you brought the case.
Speaker 5 (32:57):
Listen, they love jeff the media so immediately. And it's
not a joke, guys.
Speaker 6 (33:04):
He pays a lot of attention to this.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Yes, that's for sure, because Jeff is my brother. Jeff
is the guy who went hard, extremely hard in the
media for my case. Him and then Sabine will never
forget Sabine because she contacted Jason, and Jason said, who's
Andre Brown? And Sabin explained it and he said, listen,
we got to put Dawn on this because the only
(33:28):
thing that Governor Cuomo does in the morning is he
reads and not bad. So at that point he put
Dawn right in the fray of everything, and the campaign began.
Speaker 6 (33:42):
First, we went to the Conviction Review Unit. They rejected
the case and so we filed a four to forty.
Speaker 5 (33:48):
At that time, it was COVID and they were not
trying to bring me down on a hearing.
Speaker 6 (33:52):
We had asked for a virtual hearing because the courts
were closed to in person hearings, and the DA opposed that,
and then Jeff four organized a rally in front of
her office to try to get her to agree to
a virtual hearing, and we had a hearing and the
judge agreed that at the very least Lee was ineffective
for not presenting the medical evidence, and just to put
(34:16):
the icing on it. I've known Jeff for a long time.
We kind of mentored him through with his law school experience,
and he became an admitted attorney right before we had
got a hearing granted. So I asked him to second
seat me and Andre was 's first client. So and Jeff,
he's bat in one hundred.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
So actually, Oscar, I do want to point out not
exactly one hundred Andre.
Speaker 6 (34:38):
Oh, I shouldn't say that's right.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Andrea is not exonerated yet, which is why we were
here telling his story because the bronx DA is actually
still fighting his conviction, wanting to put Andre back in prison.
So not only do we need to exonerate him, we
need to make sure that he doesn't go back to prison.
Speaker 6 (34:56):
Yeah, they're filed an appeal of the khure of the conviction,
and I got to tell you, you know, the odds
of its success are not high, they're low. But this
room speaks to what happens when you caught up in
the criminal justice system. Right, if you're counting on the
criminal justicism to work out for you, you know you're
(35:16):
going to get very sorely disappointed. So it really, you know,
is a case that should not be appealed. Never mind
the fact that he served well over twenty years for
a crime that we established, you know, he didn't commit,
but to just drag it on, have this over his head.
They fought bail. Now after the judge vacated his conviction.
They asked for five hundred thousand dollars bail. Okay, the
(35:38):
judge released him, but to supervise release, just like it
wouldn't give us the measure that he was actually innocent.
Took the safe path and said he was ineffective. You know,
as I said to Jason before we came out here,
I've been involved in a lot of cases. I've never
had a case with this much evidence of innocence. And
the judge just couldn't get there. And then he couldn't
(35:59):
just do he had to send him to supervised release.
So it's just constant. The justice system loves finality. They
want to, you know, keep that hold on you. To
the point where when he first started going to the
supervised release place, which is now run by the Fortune Society,
they called us and said, why are we supervising this person?
He went to another program to be interviewed and ended
(36:21):
up hiring him instead of supervising. He works there. Now, Yes,
I mean it's really daunting and it's very discomforting to
believe that. You know, we now have to wait. It'll
take about two years to decide this appeal, and I want.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
To get to what people here can do, if they
can write letters, or if there's anything else they can
do to make their voices heard.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
For Andre, well, I do know there's a GoFundMe for Andre.
It's GoFundMe such support Andre Brown, So that exists, so
please donate to.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
That if you can, and we'll link to it in
the episode. Yeah description as well.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
And you guys have the power to vote for the DA.
I mean, we can vote in progressive district attorneys. So
just so you guys know that you have the power
to make sure that there are conviction review units, that
there are progressive das that don't fight these convictions that
are so obvious, so obvious.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
And before we go to we have a tradition on
the show. We call it closing arguments.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
But before we do that, there's one other very special
person in this room I want to acknowledge, and this
is a young man named Aj.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
Right, your son's daf Aj, And I.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Heard somewhere that he scored thirty points in a basketball
game this week.
Speaker 5 (37:28):
So if there's any.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Agents in the room, might want to get in now
because he's only twelve.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Actually, I did want to talk about Ajamika Tamika and
Andre you knew each other from high school, yes, and
now you're married.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
You did over twenty years in prison.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
And actually we talked about how you're lucky that you're alive,
because if you're a leg you're lucky now that you're out,
a lot of people get out and don't have family,
and you have a wonderful wife and a son, yes,
that you're coming home to right.
Speaker 5 (37:54):
There, right there, right Look for only do people not
have family, They don't have hope, they don't have faith.
They lose their souls inside of prison because they don't
have friends. I've seen individuals walk in the yard until
they turn mad because they're innocent, and now everybody has
(38:16):
shunned them. So what does that really mean when society
itself make you the treads and then inside of the
prison you're a nobody.
Speaker 6 (38:29):
Well, it's just a dangerous place. Where we were waiting
for Andrea's hearing because of COVID. One of the reasons
we filed for the virtual hearing was Andrew is actually
on the phone with Tamika on Thanksgiving Day and some
other guy in the prison thought he was on the
phone too long and nearly took Andre's that stabbed him
in the face with a pen. Yeah, while he was
on the phone with Tamika, right, Yes, And you know
(38:52):
I wrote to the judge and said, look, we got
to get this guy hearing like he's in the Honors prison.
By way, this is the place in the Eastern that
those are here. They call it happy Nap because it's
like the place where you're supposed to be the safest.
And he got attacked just on the phone. So, you know,
sending someone to prison is you know, it could potentially
be a death sentence.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
It is for too many people. And we know that're
right here in Manhattan and right here in New York
Rikers Island. Since may Or Adams took office, twenty nine
people at last count, have been murdered and Rikers Island,
and most of them, over one in b jar of
them had even been convicted of anything.
Speaker 6 (39:23):
Yet most of them were presumed innocent.
Speaker 5 (39:25):
Yeah, just waiting for trials detainees.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
That could have been you, or could have been so
many other people in this room. So anyone who's listened
to the Wrongful Conviction podcast knows this is my favorite
part of the show. We call it closing arguments. It's
where we thank each of you, Maggie and I for
being here with us today, everybody in the audience, everybody
listening at home, and then turn it over to Oscar
first to say anything else is left to be said,
(39:50):
and then you take us off into the sunset anything
you want to say.
Speaker 6 (39:53):
First of all, thank you for being involved in the
issue and spread the word. Tell people that there were
folks in there who do belong there. There are many
people who serve their time and are route that will
never get the justice that they deserve, and that time
has been lost. WI let people know that this is
an issue that should be addressed at every time that
there's a DA running for office.
Speaker 5 (40:12):
And for me, I got to mention some of my
great colleagues, Michael Cobb, who we all know is shat Do,
Raphael Martinez, Pedro Rodriguez, Nochia Rose, Ronaldo Morgan. These men
are still fighting for their freedom today and I mentioned
them because I want everybody here in the live audience
(40:36):
at home to take a second look. I give you
the analogy that I give to some of the students
when I did my last speech with Jeff and it
is like when you guys are driving home and you
just see something as simple as a pedestrian pulled over
(40:57):
on the side of the road, and you're just like, oh,
it must be a lawful stop, so you just keep moving.
Take a second look, take a second look when you
see somebody in trouble, because you never will know when
it's your time to give that help in hand.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
Thank you, Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You
can listen to this and all the Lava for Good
podcasts one week early by subscribing to Lava for Good
Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production
team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my
(41:39):
fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliburn.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at it's Jason Vlamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts association with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.