October 18, 2018 • 32 mins
Sven was on a jury that sentenced a man named Paul Storey to death. He's regretted it ever since. Then, eight years later, Sven gets an email from Paul’s mother.
The original article that Maurice Chammah reported with Sven about his experience on the jury: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/03/10/my-regrets-as-a-juror-who-sent-a-man-to-death-row
Credits
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein.
This episode was also produced by Stevie Lane, Peter Bresnan, and Kalila Holt.
Editing by Jorge Just, with additional editing by Alex Blumberg.
Special thanks Emily Condon, Maurice Chammah, Emanuele Berry, Caitlin Kenney, Jon-Mikel Tuttle-Gates, Amanda Marzullo, Mike Ware, Emily Fallis, Brian Reed, Sean Cole, Diane Wu, Christopher Swetala, Ira Glass, the rest of our friends at This American Life, and Jackie Cohen.
The show was mixed by Bobby Lord.
Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, Michael Hearst, Blue Dot Sessions, and Bobby Lord. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello Bie. You know it's something that we don't do
very often. I'm realizing on.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Because ye.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I'm asking if I can use the personal pronoun with her,
if that would be okay. I don't want to be presumptuous.
You're like in grade four again, So your French never evolved.
If I ever had a girl, you know what I
would name her?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
What?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Pooh bell? That's that's French for garbage.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Oh god.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
If there was a boy twin, you know what i'd
call him? What would you call him? Moutard? That's French
for mustard. Moutard and pooh bell.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Garbage and mustard.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
We kind of go together, like garbage and mustard. Yep,
I'm the garbage from Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and
this is Heavyweight Today's episode Sven. In two thousand and eight,
(01:15):
Sven received a letter for jury duty.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
You know, lots of.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
People would say, oh, this is such a boring thing.
Oh no, I hope I don't get jury duty. But
I was more curious and interested in like the process,
and you know, I liked watching stuff like Law and
Order and other things like that.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
SVU Criminal Intent, svenn liked them all. He was a
software developer, newly married, and he and his wife had
just bought a new house, his first. The house had
a flagpole in the front and a hammock out back.
After work, he'd come home, relax on the couch and
watches legal dramas. Jury Duty was going to offer an
inside view of the TV shows he loved.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
I he wasn't fooled into thinking it was some weird,
glamorous thing like that. But uh, I thought jury's were interesting,
the idea of, you know, judging your peers right or wrong.
I've all sort of had a sense of civic responsibility.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
In my book, the only thing that makes responsibility less
appealing is adding the word civic to it. Paying your taxes,
appearing before his zoning board not for me. Like most,
when I appeared for Jury duty, I prayed for dismissal,
not spend. Though during the selection process he engaged with
the questions the lawyers posed as best he could, and
(02:35):
when he was asked how he felt about capital punishment,
he answered candidly.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
I believe bad people should be punished in that way
or could be punished in that way, and so I
wouldn't say I was strongly for it, but I wasn't
against it, and consequently I got on the jury.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
The case was the State of Texas versus Paul David's Story.
Story was a twenty two year old accused of the
murder of Jonas Cherry, the manager of a mini golf
course in Hearst, Texas. Story and an accomplice forced Cherry
into the back office, made him unlock the safe and
put the money a few hundred dollars in a bag,
and then they shot him multiple times. Story's trial lasted
(03:15):
two weeks and would have felt familiar to anyone who
watches TV courtroom dramas. There were lawyers with thick minders
full of bilistics reports and medical examinations. Character witnesses were called,
and disturbing photographs of the victim's body were shown. The
only thing missing was any suspense about the verdict.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
There was no doubt that he was guilty of murder
and robbery, and so really, as a jury, all we
had to worry about was sentencing.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
The jury had to decide between life imprisonment or the
death penalty. It seemed the victim's family knew what they
wanted it should go without saying the prosecutor announced his
Fen and the other jurors that all of Jonas's family
and everyone who loved him believed the death penalty is appropriate.
The prosecutor asked the jurors to sentence Paul's story to death.
(04:05):
The instruction stated that for the death penalty to be imposed,
the jurors must judge three things to be true. That
Paul's story was guilty, That there were no mitigating circumstances
like say, mental illness or provocation. And lastly, that story
posed a future threat to his community.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
That was the one I had issue with.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
I seriously doubted that he would be a continuing threat
to the prison community.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
And what was it about Paul's story that made you
feel like you just didn't see him as a continued threat?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
A couple of things.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
His testimony, the young man's Fen saw in the courtroom
appeared confused, in over his head, and remorseful. This was
his first offense, and some of the evidence suggested that
it was Story's accomplice who'd been the mastermind behind the
horrible crime, as well as the one who'd fired Savin
was certain that Paul's story should be punished, but he
didn't think he should be put to death.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
But in the chambers there was a very different feel.
Everyone else was in favor of the death penalty, and
so faced with you know, almost a dozen other people
who already felt strongly, I didn't think I could convince
(05:31):
anyone that of what I was thinking. I'll be honest,
I was scared.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
At twenty seven, Savan was the youngest juror by about
ten years, and he was the kind of guy who
avoided speaking up at all costs. At home, if his
neighbor parked in his space, he let it go. At
the office, if his boss told him to do something,
even if he disagreed, he did it without question. In
other words, even though he'd been looking forward to being
(05:57):
a juror, when he found himself in the jury, Sven
wasn't exactly Henry Fonda and twelve angry men. The way
he understood it, the jurors had to reach unanimous decision,
and the idea of swaying eleven strangers over to his
way of thinking seemed impossible. He was also afraid that
if he opposed the group, he would result in a
(06:18):
hung jury. In a mistrial, they'd have to start the
whole process over again with a new jury everyone would
be mad at him, so Sven said nothing. An hour
and a half later, Paul's story was sentenced to death
by lethal injection.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
It was hard to look at him during the sentence.
We sat waiting for the judge to ask us, you know,
what's the sentencing, and everyone was really tense. And the
woman next to me, another juror, began crying. She's trying
to hide it, you know. And I gave him my
(06:57):
handkerchief and she just wept. Then the foreman announced the verdict,
and I think his mother cried out. They had an
exit for us to go through after we collected our things,
and we were out of that courtroom fast.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
It felt like a mistake right away.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Svan went over to his parents' house, where he had
dinner and drank scotch with his dad. He told his
family about the trial, and then he went home, where
he had more to drink before bed.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
And then that was that. Then it was over.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And I went on with my life, or at least
he tried to.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
But what do you do with these feelings? I was
just stuck.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I felt massive amounts of regret. I felt, you know,
I felt guilty, you know, sending someone to death row.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
When you think about the people a capital murder trial effects,
you think of the victims, their loved ones, the accused
and their families and what they're going through. You don't
usually think about what it does to the jurors. But
for Spen, the trial wasn't something he could put behind
him at the crack of a gavel. In the days
and weeks after the verdict, he read every article about
(08:20):
the case he could find, but the more he read,
the more shame he felt. So eventually he just stopped.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I realized it wasn't really healthy.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
At the time. Spenn was a regular drinker, and.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
It only got worse after the trial. But got a
lot worse after the trial.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
He was drinking more beginning as soon as he got
home from work and spending more days hung over. His
wife didn't understand what was going on.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
It may have contributed to my divorce, which was the
following year.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
A year after the trial and Sveen's life had changed.
The new house with the hammock and the flagpole was
sold and Spen moved out of Texas. Sven settled in Olympia,
Washington to start his life over. He found an apartment
(09:11):
for himself and his cat Niku, but he couldn't shake
his memories of the trial. When a friend bought a
second hand silver Nissan, Sven couldn't stop thinking about how
that was the same car as the victim, Jonas Cherry
had driven. When addressing coworkers, the name Jonas would accidentally
slip from Spen's lips, and Paul's Story, who still was
on death row, was never far from Sveen's mind. He
(09:34):
tried to escape through alcohol, but it didn't free him
from his shame. Sometimes after a night out drinking, he'd
return to a Facebook page Paul Story's mother had made
for Paul. One mother had already lost her son, and
now because Fenn had been too afraid to speak up,
another mother was going to as well.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
I'm not trying to excuse his crime. It was terrible,
but to Sunday guide it doath for anyon?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Is it all that?
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Just the presence in your mind, the sort of recurring
thoughts about it?
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Can that go away?
Speaker 1 (10:13):
For all the bad rapid gets Shame offers a certain safety.
It provides a comfortable hole to hide in away from
the judgment of others, but it can also lead to
isolation and inertia, and for eight years, eight years in
which Paul's Story sat on death row awaiting an execution date,
Sven barely talked about the trial with anybody. But then,
(10:35):
in twenty sixteen, the year after Paul Story's federal appeal
had been denied, a reporter writing a series of articles
about the judicial system approached Ven about his experience as
a juror. Sven was tired of being all alone with
his regrets, and so for the first time, he opened
up about his feelings. I felt guilty, he told the reporter,
(10:56):
and sad and a little helpless. I don't think I
made the right call. Sven had hoped that talking about
the trial might help, and it did up until the
article was published. That was when Spen received an uncomfortable
phone call from a lawyer who'd read the article. Sveen
was at work, fearing his coworkers might overhear, he took
(11:17):
the call outside behind his office building. It was there
that he learned that eight years earlier, he'd misunderstood a
key part of the jury instructions.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
I thought incorrectly.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Essentially, I believed I would have to convince everyone to
choose life imprisonment. When In fact, all I had to
do was declined the death penalty, and that's all it
would have taken.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Preventing the death sentence only required one dissenting vote, a
vote Spen could have cast, so there would have been
no mistrial, no hungury, and instead of the death penalty,
Paul's story would have gotten life in prison without parole.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
And that would that would have been nice to know
I could have changed Oh, I could have let him live.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
After the article was published, something else happened, something Spenn
never expected or wanted. Paul Story's mother, Marilyn, got in touch.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
She reached out with an email filled with sentiments of forgiveness.
She had forgiven me and if I wanted to, I
could reach out and talk with her. And knowing that
there was that forgiveness, it felt so weird like it.
It wasn't something I could completely understand.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Forri Sven, it didn't make sense. Why would Marilyn want
to speak with him? How could she, of all people,
forgive him for something he couldn't forgive himself.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
I didn't know how to deal with I still kind
of don't know how to deal with that.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
And I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't match her message.
How do you mean? Well?
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I wasn't sure how to reply with something as powerful
as that.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
It just floored me. I didn't know what to say.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Sven was never able to write Maryland back.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I did began a reply, but I didn't.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
I didn't have the courage to finish or send it.
It's just, you know, there's so much pain in there,
and I feel like I really wrecked things up.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
A few months after Spenn received Maryland's email, an execution
date was set. The state would put Paul's Story to
death on April twelfth of twenty seventeen. But then something
unexpected happened. Glenn and Judith Cherry, the parents of the victim,
came forward. It seems that at the trial the prosecution
had lied. The Cherries, in spite of their son's murder,
(14:13):
are and always have been, against capital punishment. In a
video they released publicly, Judith Cherry presents a statement which reads,
in part, we do not want Paul Story's family, especially
a mother, to witness the purposeful execution of their son.
They are innocent of his deeds. Based on this testimony,
(14:34):
with only five days to spare, Paul Story's execution was postponed.
When news of the stay of execution reached Fenn, it
felt like a second chance, an opening to finally respond
to Marilyn's email. But he didn't. It's now been over
two years, he's remarried, doesn't drink anymore, but he still
hasn't contacted Marilyn. And so at this point, what do
(14:58):
you want?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
I need to apologize for not.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
For not doing what I should have done to begin with,
for not following my gut, for not trying.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Shame leads to inertia, And as even the most casual
reader of the fundamentals of physics will tell you, an
inert object will remain inert until it is acted upon
by an external force. In other words, it takes a
little nudge. And who better to supply a little nudge
than a little nudge. And so I write Marilyn a letter.
(15:39):
I know this is a really sensitive and deeply personal issue.
It reads, and I hope I'm not being too forward.
I ask Marilyn if she remembers a juror by the
name of spen Burger. About a week later, I receive
a note back via email. Thank you so much for
your letter, Marilyn, writes, I have no ill will toward
mister Berger. I have offered on my email address as
(15:59):
well as my phone number with no reply. She also
forwards me her original email to Fenn, the one she
sent two years ago, the one he can't stop thinking
about when I read it. I'm expecting a grand gesture
of forgiveness, but Marilyn never mentions forgiveness, never even uses
the word. Instead, it's just six short sentences in which
(16:21):
Marilyn thanks Vin for the article and says she shared
it with her son. Her tone's breezy. She ends with,
have a great day exclamation mark. I understand That'svenn, consumed
by guilt, would read so much into so little. What
I don't understand is why Marilyn sent him the email
in the first place.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I know you're jokingly mentioned breakfast. Oh, I was joking.
I have, like I.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Have a couple of little things if you get packish
at all, some croissant, some of this stuff I don't know,
some cookies, yeah, okay. Marylyn lives in Fort Worth, Texas.
The two of us meet in a hotel suite downtown,
where I can't stop offering her food, but she can't
stop refusing.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Do you want to have a coffee or cheek?
Speaker 4 (17:29):
No.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Marilyn is tall and stately, with smiling eyes. She's in slacks, boots,
and a crop blazer, all in black. She sits on
the end of the couch next to an empty armchair
and tries to give me a sense of what her
life was like before the trial.
Speaker 5 (17:43):
I was always the life of the party. I mean,
I was a joster. Oh make sure you have Marylynd there,
because she's gonna keep the party going. I was always
kind of the one that everybody went to. People know,
you can call me in the middle of the night.
You know, if you need somebody to come pick you up,
you call Maryland. She'd get up, She'll go do it.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Since the trial, Maryland doesn't feel like the same person.
But after ten years, her friends and family want her
to go back to being the same old Maryland she
always was.
Speaker 5 (18:10):
So it went through a transition of my family not
understanding because it's like, Okay, you know, well, why aren't
you cheery and happy like you used to? And you
got to go on with your life.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
But this is Maryland's life. Every day she's reckoning with
the horror of her son's crime and worrying endlessly about
his safety in prison. The thing that's hardest, though, is
the way the people closest to her now look upon
her son. She says that everyone's past judgment on Paul
written him off as worthless and unredeemable, and they blame
him for her pain.
Speaker 5 (18:42):
And I even had a family remember where Paul is
the cause of all of this, and that was.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Very hurtful.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
It's like they wanted everything to be okay. But that's
my child, and I love him and I'm not going
to ever stop fighting for him.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Fighting for him meant working with her son's lawyers to
change his sentence to life in prison.
Speaker 5 (19:06):
Paul's appeals more exhausting.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
It took up all of her time and energy, which
affected the hospitality job she worked at for over thirty years.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
It became extremely hard for me to concentrate at work,
and I feel like it cost me my job.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
After losing her job, Marilyn then lost her house. She
was forced to move in with her younger son.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
So it's kind of like, you know, at my age,
where I felt that i'd be getting ready to retire,
I'm storing over. So that's a hard thing.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Ten years after the trial, and everyone, her friends, her
family have all moved on. So when Marilyn reads friend's article,
she saw in him someone like her, someone who never
gotten past that final day of the trial, and they.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Actually gave the sentence, the death penalty. I thought I
had died. I thought I had literally died. It didn't
even register because I'm just like, what just happened? What
have they done? You know? My whole time there, I
was just look at the jurors to try to read, Okay,
(20:23):
what are they thinking?
Speaker 2 (20:24):
What are they doing?
Speaker 5 (20:27):
I wanted them to know if I could only tell
them what kind of person he is, And I want
people to know, you know, everybody's they're assumed that if
you're involved in a hang his crime like that.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
That you're a monster.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
But he wasn't a monster.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Okay, so he's going to come up.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Marilyn and I have been talking for about an hour
and a half. When the front desk funds.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
As the n spin Yes, I'll hope I get that
before he gets it.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
But before we get a chance to practice our fans.
Sven is at the door, Jonathan, it's very nice to
Marilyn is here Spin Sven lingers in the door of
the hotel room. Here, sit down, have a seat over there.
(21:25):
He's bespectacled, neatly dressed in a collared shirt and sweater.
He looks around and clears his throat.
Speaker 6 (21:31):
I'm a little nervous.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
So.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
The last time Marilyn and s Fan had been in
the same room was ten years ago. At the trial,
Marilyn was seated behind the bar span sat in the
jury box, But today he sits down in the empty
armchair beside her. He can't quite bring himself to look
at her. As he tells Marilyn what it was like
to receive her email, he gazes down at his lap.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
It was it was very surprising, and I read it
and I reread it, and I even.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Began several letters that never went anywhere. I didn't know
what to say. What do you say about that?
Speaker 3 (22:10):
I don't want to write a letter that's trying to
make me feel better, do you know what I mean?
From the moment the vote was cast, I had regret.
I thought I am doing the wrong thing. And although
it was great hearing that you know you forgave me,
I couldn't forgive myself exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
And I can't even imagine how you must feel.
Speaker 5 (22:37):
Okay, first of all, I want to say, I don't
want you to feel shamed, because you know my son
was involved in a crime. He made a wrong choice.
And I don't ever want you to feel that you
did anything wrong. You did what you felt you had
to do at the time, but you came back and
(23:01):
for you to come out and for you to say, hey,
I made a mistake, you write your wrong.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
I can tell by Sven's face that he isn't convinced,
he doesn't feel like he's righted anything. This is because
for years Spen has been avoiding all traces of the case.
No googling, no newspapers. He never even read the article
he'd been interviewed for. So he doesn't know what Marilynd knows,
which is the chain of events that his articles set
(23:32):
in motion. The jury instructions for Paul Story's case were
written in dense legal ees, and nowhere in their nine
pages did they state that a single dissenting vote can
prevent the death penalty. In fact, courts in Texas are
prohibited from telling jurors that. In theory, that's to encourage
(23:54):
them to arrive at a consensus. Well, What it means
is Spen's confusion wasn't his fault. For years, legal advocates
had wanted to bring a bill before the legislature. They
would clarify the instructions, but they needed someone who could say,
I would have done things differently if I had understood.
Marilyn explains to FN that with him and the things
(24:15):
he'd said in the article, they'd finally found that person.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
There are senitors in the state of Texas who have
introduced the bill based on you, to change the way
destructions are given to a death ponem.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
To Jerid, Sven, slumped in his chair, straightens up.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Really, you have no idea what sort of impact you had.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
I don't know anything about that.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
You were very instrumental.
Speaker 6 (24:43):
This is I'm shocked.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
While his eyes have tended to dart around the room,
looking at me or down at his hands, right now,
Sven is looking directly at Marylyn. She tells him that
had he in fact voted against the death penalty at
her son's trial, these attempts at reform might never have happened.
Speaker 5 (25:02):
I'm a firm believer of the things happened for a reason,
because this is not just about my son. It's about
other mothers sons that are on death row as well.
So if this can help any other case, you know,
outside of polls, then we've served that purpose. You came forward,
so I look at you as my hero.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Then physically shrinks from the word hero. It's as though
she's placed a large, awkward crown atop his head.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Wow, that's not the way i'd considered myself for my
actions in any way.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
I don't feel.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
That's to me. You are so you know it means
a lot.
Speaker 6 (25:49):
That's a lot to process. I I had no idea
you didn't know any of this. No.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Oh, the articles.
Speaker 5 (25:57):
There's a really good one in the Texas Tribute. It's
one of the ones. I actually printed it out for you,
but I waste Coca Cola on it, so I didn't
want to give you an article that was uh, but
you should look it up.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Oh, this blows my mind.
Speaker 5 (26:17):
I need to send you some articles here because it's
definitely movement.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
It's definitely movement.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Well, I'm sorry, I'm a little at loss for words. Yeah,
but walking in here, I didn't I didn't know what
to expect, and I was a little nervous. I do
feel even just now a little bit of weight taking
(26:45):
off my shoulders.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
This helps, This helps so much, Oh, this helps so much.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
After all these years, Sven is finally able to accept
Marylyn's forgiveness, even if he still isn't ready to forgive himself.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
It choos me up today that I didn't express a
dissenting opinion. I should have spoken up at least. I mean,
I didn't think he would be a danger too with
the prison community.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I didn't see a hardened criminal there.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
I got the impression of sort of a kid who
was in a situation he didn't know how to handle.
I saw someone who made a terrible mistake and someone
I did not believe would do it again.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
As Benn speaks, Marylynd's eyes well up now.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
I kept looking at the jurors and I was like,
you know, it has to be somebody owned there that
feels and dick and see through all of this, that
the prosecutor that's presenting in everything to know that my
son is not a monster.
Speaker 6 (27:55):
No, no, never, I never saw Paul as a monster.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
After the crime. Marilyn's family never saw her son the
same way again. From that moment on, he was nothing
more than a murderer, and on the final day of
the trial, twelve jurors confirmed that judgment. Her hope had
been that maybe someone had seen something else. It wasn't
a hope for someone to recognize in her son anything
special or good. She just wanted them to see him
(28:21):
as something other than a monster.
Speaker 6 (28:24):
I thank you God, I appreciate that s the trial,
I never saw that once.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Paul's story is still on death row and Sven still
can't reverse the sentence. But in speaking aloud the words
that Marilyn's been repeating to herself for so long, Sven's
made her feel less alone.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
You have some of the hurt that I have carried
on my heart for the last twelve years. You just
lived in it.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
You have no earthly idea what.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
That meant to me. It's meant a lot, and for
you to say that it is it, it's.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
It really is my heart.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
After years of worry over what to say to Marylyn,
Sven's finally found the right words.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 6 (29:27):
I never wrote back, that's okay, I totally understood.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
It's a lot.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Since then and Maryland's meeting, a judge made an official
recommendation that, based on Glenn and Judith Cherry's testimony, Paul's
story sentence be changed to life in prison without parole,
though the Court of Criminal Appeals still has to make
a final ruling. Stories lawyers are hopeful, and so is Marilyn.
As for Sven, After finally responding to Marylyn decided to
(30:00):
send a letter of apology to Paul's story. I couldn't
find the strength to speak up in the jury room,
he wrote, and that is a mistake I will carry forever.
Sven has yet to hear anything back.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
Now that the Fernitures returning to its goodwill home, now
that the last month's rand is scheming with the damage
to take.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
This moment to save if we imagine, if.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
We too felt far.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
From things accident.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein, along
with Stevie Lane, Peter Bresnan, and Khalila Holt. The show
is edited by Jorge Just, with additional editing by Alex Bloomberg.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Emmanuel Barry, Caitlin Kenny, John,
Michael Tuttlegates, Amanda Marzulo, Mike Ware, Emily Follis, Brian Reed,
Sean Cole, Diane Wu, Christopher Swetala, Ira Glass and the
(31:47):
rest of our friends at This American Life and Jackie Cohen.
A very special thanks to Maurice Shamas. If you want
to read the original article that Maurice reported with Spen,
we're including a link to it on our website. Bobby
Lord mixed the episode with music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson,
Michael Hurst, Blue Dot Sessions, and Bobby Lord. Additional music
(32:07):
credits can be found on our website, Gimbletmedia dot com
slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans
courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by
Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email
us at Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com. We'll have a
special episode next week, special because it was recorded in
front of a live studio audience. We'll see you then,
Hello Bie. You know it's something that we don't do
very often. I'm realizing on.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Because ye.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I'm asking if I can use the personal pronoun with her,
if that would be okay. I don't want to be presumptuous.
You're like in grade four again, So your French never evolved.
If I ever had a girl, you know what I
would name her?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
What?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Pooh bell? That's that's French for garbage.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Oh god.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
If there was a boy twin, you know what i'd
call him? What would you call him? Moutard? That's French
for mustard. Moutard and pooh bell.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Garbage and mustard.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
We kind of go together, like garbage and mustard. Yep,
I'm the garbage from Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and
this is Heavyweight Today's episode Sven. In two thousand and eight,
(01:15):
Sven received a letter for jury duty.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
You know, lots of.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
People would say, oh, this is such a boring thing.
Oh no, I hope I don't get jury duty. But
I was more curious and interested in like the process,
and you know, I liked watching stuff like Law and
Order and other things like that.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
SVU Criminal Intent, svenn liked them all. He was a
software developer, newly married, and he and his wife had
just bought a new house, his first. The house had
a flagpole in the front and a hammock out back.
After work, he'd come home, relax on the couch and
watches legal dramas. Jury Duty was going to offer an
inside view of the TV shows he loved.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
I he wasn't fooled into thinking it was some weird,
glamorous thing like that. But uh, I thought jury's were interesting,
the idea of, you know, judging your peers right or wrong.
I've all sort of had a sense of civic responsibility.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
In my book, the only thing that makes responsibility less
appealing is adding the word civic to it. Paying your taxes,
appearing before his zoning board not for me. Like most,
when I appeared for Jury duty, I prayed for dismissal,
not spend. Though during the selection process he engaged with
the questions the lawyers posed as best he could, and
(02:35):
when he was asked how he felt about capital punishment,
he answered candidly.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
I believe bad people should be punished in that way
or could be punished in that way, and so I
wouldn't say I was strongly for it, but I wasn't
against it, and consequently I got on the jury.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
The case was the State of Texas versus Paul David's Story.
Story was a twenty two year old accused of the
murder of Jonas Cherry, the manager of a mini golf
course in Hearst, Texas. Story and an accomplice forced Cherry
into the back office, made him unlock the safe and
put the money a few hundred dollars in a bag,
and then they shot him multiple times. Story's trial lasted
(03:15):
two weeks and would have felt familiar to anyone who
watches TV courtroom dramas. There were lawyers with thick minders
full of bilistics reports and medical examinations. Character witnesses were called,
and disturbing photographs of the victim's body were shown. The
only thing missing was any suspense about the verdict.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
There was no doubt that he was guilty of murder
and robbery, and so really, as a jury, all we
had to worry about was sentencing.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
The jury had to decide between life imprisonment or the
death penalty. It seemed the victim's family knew what they
wanted it should go without saying the prosecutor announced his
Fen and the other jurors that all of Jonas's family
and everyone who loved him believed the death penalty is appropriate.
The prosecutor asked the jurors to sentence Paul's story to death.
(04:05):
The instruction stated that for the death penalty to be imposed,
the jurors must judge three things to be true. That
Paul's story was guilty, That there were no mitigating circumstances
like say, mental illness or provocation. And lastly, that story
posed a future threat to his community.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
That was the one I had issue with.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
I seriously doubted that he would be a continuing threat
to the prison community.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
And what was it about Paul's story that made you
feel like you just didn't see him as a continued threat?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
A couple of things.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
His testimony, the young man's Fen saw in the courtroom
appeared confused, in over his head, and remorseful. This was
his first offense, and some of the evidence suggested that
it was Story's accomplice who'd been the mastermind behind the
horrible crime, as well as the one who'd fired Savin
was certain that Paul's story should be punished, but he
didn't think he should be put to death.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
But in the chambers there was a very different feel.
Everyone else was in favor of the death penalty, and
so faced with you know, almost a dozen other people
who already felt strongly, I didn't think I could convince
(05:31):
anyone that of what I was thinking. I'll be honest,
I was scared.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
At twenty seven, Savan was the youngest juror by about
ten years, and he was the kind of guy who
avoided speaking up at all costs. At home, if his
neighbor parked in his space, he let it go. At
the office, if his boss told him to do something,
even if he disagreed, he did it without question. In
other words, even though he'd been looking forward to being
(05:57):
a juror, when he found himself in the jury, Sven
wasn't exactly Henry Fonda and twelve angry men. The way
he understood it, the jurors had to reach unanimous decision,
and the idea of swaying eleven strangers over to his
way of thinking seemed impossible. He was also afraid that
if he opposed the group, he would result in a
(06:18):
hung jury. In a mistrial, they'd have to start the
whole process over again with a new jury everyone would
be mad at him, so Sven said nothing. An hour
and a half later, Paul's story was sentenced to death
by lethal injection.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
It was hard to look at him during the sentence.
We sat waiting for the judge to ask us, you know,
what's the sentencing, and everyone was really tense. And the
woman next to me, another juror, began crying. She's trying
to hide it, you know. And I gave him my
(06:57):
handkerchief and she just wept. Then the foreman announced the verdict,
and I think his mother cried out. They had an
exit for us to go through after we collected our things,
and we were out of that courtroom fast.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
It felt like a mistake right away.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Svan went over to his parents' house, where he had
dinner and drank scotch with his dad. He told his
family about the trial, and then he went home, where
he had more to drink before bed.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
And then that was that. Then it was over.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And I went on with my life, or at least
he tried to.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
But what do you do with these feelings? I was
just stuck.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I felt massive amounts of regret. I felt, you know,
I felt guilty, you know, sending someone to death row.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
When you think about the people a capital murder trial effects,
you think of the victims, their loved ones, the accused
and their families and what they're going through. You don't
usually think about what it does to the jurors. But
for Spen, the trial wasn't something he could put behind
him at the crack of a gavel. In the days
and weeks after the verdict, he read every article about
(08:20):
the case he could find, but the more he read,
the more shame he felt. So eventually he just stopped.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I realized it wasn't really healthy.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
At the time. Spenn was a regular drinker, and.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
It only got worse after the trial. But got a
lot worse after the trial.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
He was drinking more beginning as soon as he got
home from work and spending more days hung over. His
wife didn't understand what was going on.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
It may have contributed to my divorce, which was the
following year.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
A year after the trial and Sveen's life had changed.
The new house with the hammock and the flagpole was
sold and Spen moved out of Texas. Sven settled in Olympia,
Washington to start his life over. He found an apartment
(09:11):
for himself and his cat Niku, but he couldn't shake
his memories of the trial. When a friend bought a
second hand silver Nissan, Sven couldn't stop thinking about how
that was the same car as the victim, Jonas Cherry
had driven. When addressing coworkers, the name Jonas would accidentally
slip from Spen's lips, and Paul's Story, who still was
on death row, was never far from Sveen's mind. He
(09:34):
tried to escape through alcohol, but it didn't free him
from his shame. Sometimes after a night out drinking, he'd
return to a Facebook page Paul Story's mother had made
for Paul. One mother had already lost her son, and
now because Fenn had been too afraid to speak up,
another mother was going to as well.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
I'm not trying to excuse his crime. It was terrible,
but to Sunday guide it doath for anyon?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Is it all that?
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Just the presence in your mind, the sort of recurring
thoughts about it?
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Can that go away?
Speaker 1 (10:13):
For all the bad rapid gets Shame offers a certain safety.
It provides a comfortable hole to hide in away from
the judgment of others, but it can also lead to
isolation and inertia, and for eight years, eight years in
which Paul's Story sat on death row awaiting an execution date,
Sven barely talked about the trial with anybody. But then,
(10:35):
in twenty sixteen, the year after Paul Story's federal appeal
had been denied, a reporter writing a series of articles
about the judicial system approached Ven about his experience as
a juror. Sven was tired of being all alone with
his regrets, and so for the first time, he opened
up about his feelings. I felt guilty, he told the reporter,
(10:56):
and sad and a little helpless. I don't think I
made the right call. Sven had hoped that talking about
the trial might help, and it did up until the
article was published. That was when Spen received an uncomfortable
phone call from a lawyer who'd read the article. Sveen
was at work, fearing his coworkers might overhear, he took
(11:17):
the call outside behind his office building. It was there
that he learned that eight years earlier, he'd misunderstood a
key part of the jury instructions.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
I thought incorrectly.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Essentially, I believed I would have to convince everyone to
choose life imprisonment. When In fact, all I had to
do was declined the death penalty, and that's all it
would have taken.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Preventing the death sentence only required one dissenting vote, a
vote Spen could have cast, so there would have been
no mistrial, no hungury, and instead of the death penalty,
Paul's story would have gotten life in prison without parole.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
And that would that would have been nice to know
I could have changed Oh, I could have let him live.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
After the article was published, something else happened, something Spenn
never expected or wanted. Paul Story's mother, Marilyn, got in touch.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
She reached out with an email filled with sentiments of forgiveness.
She had forgiven me and if I wanted to, I
could reach out and talk with her. And knowing that
there was that forgiveness, it felt so weird like it.
It wasn't something I could completely understand.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Forri Sven, it didn't make sense. Why would Marilyn want
to speak with him? How could she, of all people,
forgive him for something he couldn't forgive himself.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
I didn't know how to deal with I still kind
of don't know how to deal with that.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
And I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't match her message.
How do you mean? Well?
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I wasn't sure how to reply with something as powerful
as that.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
It just floored me. I didn't know what to say.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Sven was never able to write Maryland back.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I did began a reply, but I didn't.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
I didn't have the courage to finish or send it.
It's just, you know, there's so much pain in there,
and I feel like I really wrecked things up.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
A few months after Spenn received Maryland's email, an execution
date was set. The state would put Paul's Story to
death on April twelfth of twenty seventeen. But then something
unexpected happened. Glenn and Judith Cherry, the parents of the victim,
came forward. It seems that at the trial the prosecution
had lied. The Cherries, in spite of their son's murder,
(14:13):
are and always have been, against capital punishment. In a
video they released publicly, Judith Cherry presents a statement which reads,
in part, we do not want Paul Story's family, especially
a mother, to witness the purposeful execution of their son.
They are innocent of his deeds. Based on this testimony,
(14:34):
with only five days to spare, Paul Story's execution was postponed.
When news of the stay of execution reached Fenn, it
felt like a second chance, an opening to finally respond
to Marilyn's email. But he didn't. It's now been over
two years, he's remarried, doesn't drink anymore, but he still
hasn't contacted Marilyn. And so at this point, what do
(14:58):
you want?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
I need to apologize for not.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
For not doing what I should have done to begin with,
for not following my gut, for not trying.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Shame leads to inertia, And as even the most casual
reader of the fundamentals of physics will tell you, an
inert object will remain inert until it is acted upon
by an external force. In other words, it takes a
little nudge. And who better to supply a little nudge
than a little nudge. And so I write Marilyn a letter.
(15:39):
I know this is a really sensitive and deeply personal issue.
It reads, and I hope I'm not being too forward.
I ask Marilyn if she remembers a juror by the
name of spen Burger. About a week later, I receive
a note back via email. Thank you so much for
your letter, Marilyn, writes, I have no ill will toward
mister Berger. I have offered on my email address as
(15:59):
well as my phone number with no reply. She also
forwards me her original email to Fenn, the one she
sent two years ago, the one he can't stop thinking
about when I read it. I'm expecting a grand gesture
of forgiveness, but Marilyn never mentions forgiveness, never even uses
the word. Instead, it's just six short sentences in which
(16:21):
Marilyn thanks Vin for the article and says she shared
it with her son. Her tone's breezy. She ends with,
have a great day exclamation mark. I understand That'svenn, consumed
by guilt, would read so much into so little. What
I don't understand is why Marilyn sent him the email
in the first place.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I know you're jokingly mentioned breakfast. Oh, I was joking.
I have, like I.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Have a couple of little things if you get packish
at all, some croissant, some of this stuff I don't know,
some cookies, yeah, okay. Marylyn lives in Fort Worth, Texas.
The two of us meet in a hotel suite downtown,
where I can't stop offering her food, but she can't
stop refusing.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Do you want to have a coffee or cheek?
Speaker 4 (17:29):
No.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Marilyn is tall and stately, with smiling eyes. She's in slacks, boots,
and a crop blazer, all in black. She sits on
the end of the couch next to an empty armchair
and tries to give me a sense of what her
life was like before the trial.
Speaker 5 (17:43):
I was always the life of the party. I mean,
I was a joster. Oh make sure you have Marylynd there,
because she's gonna keep the party going. I was always
kind of the one that everybody went to. People know,
you can call me in the middle of the night.
You know, if you need somebody to come pick you up,
you call Maryland. She'd get up, She'll go do it.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Since the trial, Maryland doesn't feel like the same person.
But after ten years, her friends and family want her
to go back to being the same old Maryland she
always was.
Speaker 5 (18:10):
So it went through a transition of my family not
understanding because it's like, Okay, you know, well, why aren't
you cheery and happy like you used to? And you
got to go on with your life.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
But this is Maryland's life. Every day she's reckoning with
the horror of her son's crime and worrying endlessly about
his safety in prison. The thing that's hardest, though, is
the way the people closest to her now look upon
her son. She says that everyone's past judgment on Paul
written him off as worthless and unredeemable, and they blame
him for her pain.
Speaker 5 (18:42):
And I even had a family remember where Paul is
the cause of all of this, and that was.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Very hurtful.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
It's like they wanted everything to be okay. But that's
my child, and I love him and I'm not going
to ever stop fighting for him.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Fighting for him meant working with her son's lawyers to
change his sentence to life in prison.
Speaker 5 (19:06):
Paul's appeals more exhausting.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
It took up all of her time and energy, which
affected the hospitality job she worked at for over thirty years.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
It became extremely hard for me to concentrate at work,
and I feel like it cost me my job.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
After losing her job, Marilyn then lost her house. She
was forced to move in with her younger son.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
So it's kind of like, you know, at my age,
where I felt that i'd be getting ready to retire,
I'm storing over. So that's a hard thing.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Ten years after the trial, and everyone, her friends, her
family have all moved on. So when Marilyn reads friend's article,
she saw in him someone like her, someone who never
gotten past that final day of the trial, and they.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Actually gave the sentence, the death penalty. I thought I
had died. I thought I had literally died. It didn't
even register because I'm just like, what just happened? What
have they done? You know? My whole time there, I
was just look at the jurors to try to read, Okay,
(20:23):
what are they thinking?
Speaker 2 (20:24):
What are they doing?
Speaker 5 (20:27):
I wanted them to know if I could only tell
them what kind of person he is, And I want
people to know, you know, everybody's they're assumed that if
you're involved in a hang his crime like that.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
That you're a monster.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
But he wasn't a monster.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Okay, so he's going to come up.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Marilyn and I have been talking for about an hour
and a half. When the front desk funds.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
As the n spin Yes, I'll hope I get that
before he gets it.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
But before we get a chance to practice our fans.
Sven is at the door, Jonathan, it's very nice to
Marilyn is here Spin Sven lingers in the door of
the hotel room. Here, sit down, have a seat over there.
(21:25):
He's bespectacled, neatly dressed in a collared shirt and sweater.
He looks around and clears his throat.
Speaker 6 (21:31):
I'm a little nervous.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
So.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
The last time Marilyn and s Fan had been in
the same room was ten years ago. At the trial,
Marilyn was seated behind the bar span sat in the
jury box, But today he sits down in the empty
armchair beside her. He can't quite bring himself to look
at her. As he tells Marilyn what it was like
to receive her email, he gazes down at his lap.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
It was it was very surprising, and I read it
and I reread it, and I even.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Began several letters that never went anywhere. I didn't know
what to say. What do you say about that?
Speaker 3 (22:10):
I don't want to write a letter that's trying to
make me feel better, do you know what I mean?
From the moment the vote was cast, I had regret.
I thought I am doing the wrong thing. And although
it was great hearing that you know you forgave me,
I couldn't forgive myself exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
And I can't even imagine how you must feel.
Speaker 5 (22:37):
Okay, first of all, I want to say, I don't
want you to feel shamed, because you know my son
was involved in a crime. He made a wrong choice.
And I don't ever want you to feel that you
did anything wrong. You did what you felt you had
to do at the time, but you came back and
(23:01):
for you to come out and for you to say, hey,
I made a mistake, you write your wrong.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
I can tell by Sven's face that he isn't convinced,
he doesn't feel like he's righted anything. This is because
for years Spen has been avoiding all traces of the case.
No googling, no newspapers. He never even read the article
he'd been interviewed for. So he doesn't know what Marilynd knows,
which is the chain of events that his articles set
(23:32):
in motion. The jury instructions for Paul Story's case were
written in dense legal ees, and nowhere in their nine
pages did they state that a single dissenting vote can
prevent the death penalty. In fact, courts in Texas are
prohibited from telling jurors that. In theory, that's to encourage
(23:54):
them to arrive at a consensus. Well, What it means
is Spen's confusion wasn't his fault. For years, legal advocates
had wanted to bring a bill before the legislature. They
would clarify the instructions, but they needed someone who could say,
I would have done things differently if I had understood.
Marilyn explains to FN that with him and the things
(24:15):
he'd said in the article, they'd finally found that person.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
There are senitors in the state of Texas who have
introduced the bill based on you, to change the way
destructions are given to a death ponem.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
To Jerid, Sven, slumped in his chair, straightens up.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Really, you have no idea what sort of impact you had.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
I don't know anything about that.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
You were very instrumental.
Speaker 6 (24:43):
This is I'm shocked.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
While his eyes have tended to dart around the room,
looking at me or down at his hands, right now,
Sven is looking directly at Marylyn. She tells him that
had he in fact voted against the death penalty at
her son's trial, these attempts at reform might never have happened.
Speaker 5 (25:02):
I'm a firm believer of the things happened for a reason,
because this is not just about my son. It's about
other mothers sons that are on death row as well.
So if this can help any other case, you know,
outside of polls, then we've served that purpose. You came forward,
so I look at you as my hero.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Then physically shrinks from the word hero. It's as though
she's placed a large, awkward crown atop his head.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Wow, that's not the way i'd considered myself for my
actions in any way.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
I don't feel.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
That's to me. You are so you know it means
a lot.
Speaker 6 (25:49):
That's a lot to process. I I had no idea
you didn't know any of this. No.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Oh, the articles.
Speaker 5 (25:57):
There's a really good one in the Texas Tribute. It's
one of the ones. I actually printed it out for you,
but I waste Coca Cola on it, so I didn't
want to give you an article that was uh, but
you should look it up.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Oh, this blows my mind.
Speaker 5 (26:17):
I need to send you some articles here because it's
definitely movement.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
It's definitely movement.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Well, I'm sorry, I'm a little at loss for words. Yeah,
but walking in here, I didn't I didn't know what
to expect, and I was a little nervous. I do
feel even just now a little bit of weight taking
(26:45):
off my shoulders.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
This helps, This helps so much, Oh, this helps so much.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
After all these years, Sven is finally able to accept
Marylyn's forgiveness, even if he still isn't ready to forgive himself.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
It choos me up today that I didn't express a
dissenting opinion. I should have spoken up at least. I mean,
I didn't think he would be a danger too with
the prison community.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I didn't see a hardened criminal there.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
I got the impression of sort of a kid who
was in a situation he didn't know how to handle.
I saw someone who made a terrible mistake and someone
I did not believe would do it again.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
As Benn speaks, Marylynd's eyes well up now.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
I kept looking at the jurors and I was like,
you know, it has to be somebody owned there that
feels and dick and see through all of this, that
the prosecutor that's presenting in everything to know that my
son is not a monster.
Speaker 6 (27:55):
No, no, never, I never saw Paul as a monster.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
After the crime. Marilyn's family never saw her son the
same way again. From that moment on, he was nothing
more than a murderer, and on the final day of
the trial, twelve jurors confirmed that judgment. Her hope had
been that maybe someone had seen something else. It wasn't
a hope for someone to recognize in her son anything
special or good. She just wanted them to see him
(28:21):
as something other than a monster.
Speaker 6 (28:24):
I thank you God, I appreciate that s the trial,
I never saw that once.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Paul's story is still on death row and Sven still
can't reverse the sentence. But in speaking aloud the words
that Marilyn's been repeating to herself for so long, Sven's
made her feel less alone.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
You have some of the hurt that I have carried
on my heart for the last twelve years. You just
lived in it.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
You have no earthly idea what.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
That meant to me. It's meant a lot, and for
you to say that it is it, it's.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
It really is my heart.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
After years of worry over what to say to Marylyn,
Sven's finally found the right words.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 6 (29:27):
I never wrote back, that's okay, I totally understood.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
It's a lot.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Since then and Maryland's meeting, a judge made an official
recommendation that, based on Glenn and Judith Cherry's testimony, Paul's
story sentence be changed to life in prison without parole,
though the Court of Criminal Appeals still has to make
a final ruling. Stories lawyers are hopeful, and so is Marilyn.
As for Sven, After finally responding to Marylyn decided to
(30:00):
send a letter of apology to Paul's story. I couldn't
find the strength to speak up in the jury room,
he wrote, and that is a mistake I will carry forever.
Sven has yet to hear anything back.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
Now that the Fernitures returning to its goodwill home, now
that the last month's rand is scheming with the damage
to take.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
This moment to save if we imagine, if.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
We too felt far.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
From things accident.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein, along
with Stevie Lane, Peter Bresnan, and Khalila Holt. The show
is edited by Jorge Just, with additional editing by Alex Bloomberg.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Emmanuel Barry, Caitlin Kenny, John,
Michael Tuttlegates, Amanda Marzulo, Mike Ware, Emily Follis, Brian Reed,
Sean Cole, Diane Wu, Christopher Swetala, Ira Glass and the
(31:47):
rest of our friends at This American Life and Jackie Cohen.
A very special thanks to Maurice Shamas. If you want
to read the original article that Maurice reported with Spen,
we're including a link to it on our website. Bobby
Lord mixed the episode with music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson,
Michael Hurst, Blue Dot Sessions, and Bobby Lord. Additional music
(32:07):
credits can be found on our website, Gimbletmedia dot com
slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans
courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by
Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email
us at Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com. We'll have a
special episode next week, special because it was recorded in
front of a live studio audience. We'll see you then,
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