#052 Jason Flom with John Huffington

John Huffington spent 32 years in the Maryland Prison System—10 of which were on death row—after being wrongfully convicted of a 1981 double murder. Previously, juries twice convicted John of first-degree murder in the deaths of Diane Becker and Joseph Hudson. The first trial, in 1981, occurred in Caroline County and John was later granted a new trial due to evidence improperly introduced by the State. The second trial took place in Frederick County in 1983. He faced the death penalty after both convictions, but his sentence was later commuted to two life terms in prison. Since his first trial, John had filed multiple appeals at the state and federal levels, challenging the state’s case against him. In 2013, as the result of newly discovered DNA evidence that demonstrated that hairs discovered at the crime scene were not John’s, the Circuit Court for Frederick County, MD, granted him a Writ of Actual Innocence and vacated his murder convictions, and John Huffington was released from prison on bond. The faulty evidence came from an FBI lab that has been forced to acknowledge widespread mismanagement and false testimony. Flawed forensic testimony was given in 257 of the 268 trials in which hair evidence was used, and John Huffington’s trial was one of them. Since his release from prison, John Huffington has been a tireless advocate for the re-entry community, and his work has been recognized by Baltimore City leaders, including State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby. He is now serving as the Director of Workforce Development for Living Classrooms Foundation, where he manages the workforce development department and its programming with 18 staff members and a $2 million budget. As part of his role, he manages Project SERVE, the same job-training program in which he enrolled upon being released from incarceration.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
America has two point two million people in prison. If
just one percent is wrong, that's twenty two people. That's
a lot of people's lives destroyed. If the system wants
to take you out of society, they will do it
no matter what lords they have to break, saying that

(00:23):
they are enforcing the lords, but they're breaking the lord.
Having to hear those people say that I was guilty
of a crime that I did not commit, and then
here my family break down behind me and not be
able to do anything about it. I can't describe the
crushing weight that was. I'm not anti police, I'm just
anti corruption. A lot of times we look and we

(00:46):
see something happened to somebody, and that's the first thing
we said, that could never happen to me, But they can.
This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with

(01:17):
Jason Flam Today, I am actually in the presence of
someone who I am. I can only say I'm in
awe of this guy. John Huffington is here. John was
in prison for thirty two years, tend of them on
death row for a double murder that he didn't commit.
And the things that he's doing today would embarrass the

(01:41):
biggest do gooder among us. So, John, welcome to wrongful conviction.
Thank you. I appreciate that. So John, let's go back
to the beginning, before this insane saga began, because this
happened when you were eighteen. But before that, how is
your life? What was it like? Where'd you grow up? So?

(02:03):
I grew up in a small town called Churchvills. It's
in Hartford County, in between two bigger towns that folk
would know, bell Air and Aberdeen and Maryland in Maryland, Yes, Maryland.
So I grew up probably what we considered middle class,
upper class kind of a situation, nice neighborhood, good schools.
I had everything that you know you would want in

(02:25):
that sense of support, a strong family. My parents ended
up being married over fifty six years. I think it was,
you know, at the end, siblings were doing well. So,
you know, it's like anything else young age, you know,
we make our choices. We get exposed to different things.
And I made a few the wrong choices and took

(02:45):
quicker routes to negativity is what it turned out to be,
and exposed myself to lifestyles that were not healthy. My
choices took me out of an arena where you know,
I should have had the white picket fence and to
an half kids or whatever and you know, and a dog.
Were you doing anything violent at the time. Oh no, no, no,
I mean when I say bad choices, um, it was

(03:09):
into getting into drugs and you know that's what I
was doing. I was, I was dealing drugs and I
was living that lifestyle as you were between tenth grade
and I guess twelfth grade when this happened, right, Did
you ever have any interaction with law enforcement based on
the fact that you were involved with drugs? No, I
never had any regular charge placed on me in that regard.

(03:30):
It was a wild child and my parents were trying
to bring me more under control. So there was that
I was exposed to the the juvenile criminal system justice
system at that time with a what they call sin
charld child and need a supervision because my parents were
kind of wits end what to do. So I got
juvenile probation and had to do like family counseling and

(03:51):
that kind of thing to work through that. But again
it was me being you know, rebellious against you know,
my parents were. There was a serious generation gap. My
parents were born in the twenties, and they were in
their forties before the kids came along. So as I
was pushing the boundaries of curfews and just lifestyle choices,

(04:11):
it was very hard to sort of transgress into that
through the family unit. And you know, having a younger
brother and sister, my parents didn't want that to be
a bad influence on them as well, so you know
they were right to try and bring me and bring
me in tighter. So none of the stuff that you're
describing would prepare you or anyone for death row or

(04:35):
any of the stuff that was to befall you. And
it all leads to that faithful day of May when
there was a double murder and you were implicated ultimately
by the guy who actually committed the crimes. So how
did how did they come to decide to come get

(04:59):
you in the first place. So the night over prior
in that evening, I was with what turned out to
be my co defendant and we were at a club
and they were closing that club early. It was a
Sunday night, and the owner was like, well, we're all
going to go over here, why don't we go? And
so we end up over at the club where one
of the victims worked as a DJ and the guy

(05:22):
had worked for me in the past. Like when I
say worked for me, he had purchased quantities of cocaine
you know, and sold for me. So we we had
various conversations, um, and my co defendant was actually looking
to make a purchase at night. I was waiting for
supply to come in anyway. So that's kind of the
realm of why we were all in that, you know, gathering,

(05:45):
so to speak. So we left that after having some
conversation at the end of the night at two in
the morning whatever, we had gone back to he lived
in a trailer home. We had gone back and had
further conversation. My co defend actually purchased like a eighth
of an ounce at coke or whatever from him, and
we left it at that and we left. So when

(06:05):
the murders were discovered the next day and the police
investigation led them to my co defendant because his name
had been said while they were in the car, because
I guess we were following them and somebody's like, who's
the car following us, and it was said, you know,
as Dino. So they they tracked him down and he
reached out to me asking for an alibi. And again,

(06:27):
look at that age, I was eighteen, I'm I'm a
drug dealer, I'm anti police, I'm like all about the
loyalty factor and you know, never snitching and all those
kind of things, just being young and stupid. So it
wasn't a big thing to me. It was like, whatever,
new problem this is. The following night, I guess, I
got a call from his cousin that said the police

(06:48):
had reached out to him looking for me because apparently
they didn't know my last name. They just wanted to
talk to me. So I was like, fine, let's go.
Let's go see him. So literally we went to the
police station and I walked in, knocked on the door
and I said, you know, I'm John Huffington. Understand you're
looking for me, and they were like, yeah, we are, so.
But you didn't know at that time what they were

(07:09):
looking for you for. No, Honestly, I didn't know the
extent of wold have happened. I just knew something had happened.
Well because your friend at the time co defendant had
turned out to be Dino Canaries. He hadn't told you
about what he had done. He just told you that
he wanted an alum like, we need to we need
to have been here all night because we had gone
to a convention music convention that they have as a

(07:32):
bluegrass convention the next day, and it was like, we
need to fill the gap from the night before. You know,
I'm not stupid, but I don't. I just didn't know
the extent of it. I mean, who would ever expect
that he had committed a double murder? I mean, did
you know this guy to be a violent guy? No,
But as the case developed, a quick sidebar on that
there was a witness that came forward who I didn't

(07:54):
even know. You know, I met once in my life.
But this guy said that he was with you know,
like two weeks prior to this, and they were at
the location the campground, and the Dino pulled out a
gun in a knife and wanted to go kill and
rob these people. Again, I don't, I don't find this
out till years later in his trial. Like that witness
never testified at one of my trials. Ever, it wasn't

(08:16):
my witnesses state witness. And again, you had never personally
known him to be prone to this type of talking
about violence and extreme violence extreme. Yeah, no, I had.
I mean I always looked at him. Quite honestly. He
wasn't a friend of mine. His other cousins were friends
of mine. Like I didn't like Dino. He was addicted
to the cocaine. This is a guy that chased it.

(08:38):
So you covered for him because you just were more
I mean, even though he wasn't really a friend, you
were more anti authority at the time, and you were
just kind of being a questionable to like the Greek.
He was much older than you, right, Yeah, he was
in something. I think I was eighteen. Right. The Greeks
have their things. Like I said, I was friends with

(08:58):
their cousins, and I'm thinking, I'm I'm rolling with the gangsters,
and this is what we all do, and it's that
kind of a lifestyle. But again it's something I still
ascribe to today, Like I don't you know, I have
my code of what we could call honor ethics were
I don't snitch, you know, And so when I get
in there and you know, they're confronting me with this,
I don't have a way out. Now. It's different to

(09:20):
think abstractly, like Okay, something happened, even a crime of violence,
something happened. You know, it's abstract, but when you you know,
started hearing the elements of it, it was very I'm eighteen,
it was a little overwhelming. I didn't even know how
to process it. So my reaction to them was, look,
I'm not involved in this. You can come search my
apartment right now. I'll take a lot of detective tests.

(09:42):
I'll do whatever I can to extricate myself the only
way I know how. So they were like, we'll do
all that. So literally left the police station. Now it's
probably midnight on Sunday, and they drove me back to
my apartment and I turned in like all my parapherneali
right then and there, because I told him, as if
you search my apartment, there might be some things you're
gonna find. And they're like like what, And I'm like,

(10:04):
you know, I have scales, I have drug parafany that
kind of thing, and they're like, are you willing to
turn it in? I'm like absolutely, I just retired and
as of today, as of this moment, I'm I'm retired.
I'm not a drug dealer anymore. Like I knew my
life had just completely changed right then and there. So
we went back to the apartment and I turned in
all this material and I volunteered to take the love
of detector tests. So the only thing I said is

(10:26):
I just wanted a lawyer there, and I don't. I
don't have a lawyer, I don't know a lawyer. So
the next morning, I literally went to the Yellow Pages,
and back in those days, they had Yellow Pages, and
there was a guy in my class at school who
I knew his father was an attorney. So I looked
for that last name, called that law firm, and it
turns out his father does civil but his uncle does
criminal law. So I set up an appointment and went

(10:47):
in there the very next morning at like nine o'clock
and met with the attorney and you know, they're like, well,
what is it you want us to do. I'm like,
I want to take a lie detector tests. I want
this to be you know, I don't want them looking
at me like I'm in I want to do this,
and they're like, okay, we'll set it up. So I
was leaving the police station, I went to get in
our cars with my future brother in law. He was

(11:08):
my sister's boyfriend at the time, and Dino's father was
standing outside because the restaurants right there. So I said
good morning to him and continued, I want to get
in the car. Well, unbeknownst to me that night, Dina
had gone to his father and gave his whatever you
want to call his confession. But obviously it was all
putting the weight on me, saying that I held him

(11:30):
hostage while all this stuff happened. So all that had
transpired unbeknownst to me during the evening, So when his
father saw me, his father ran into the police station
and said, you know, John Halfey, is that in the
parking lot. So we're starting to pull out of our
parkings apout. I look up, I see the back of
the police station door just burst open. A dozen officers
are fanning out into the parking lot. We're the only

(11:51):
vehicle moving, so we're immediately surrounded, guns drawn. So I
told my brother in law, like, just just stopped his
pull over and we get out of the car, and
it's like that was it. That was the last time
that right there, that moment was last time my feet
hit the ground until thirty two years later. Thirty two
years later, and I never did get that lie detective test,

(12:13):
never got the lie Detective tests. It sounds like some
other people should have been given lie detectives. They were,
and they were, and he failed to our knowledge and
what my law firm was able to ascertain. We're a
where that he took too, and he failed both of them.
You're talking about Dino, So now you know you're in
real trouble. You've got this lawyer. Now did he end

(12:34):
up representing you? And how did and how did things
go from there? How long were you held in jail?
I'm assuming you were held without bail because this was
I mean you're talking about Joe Hudson was shot and
killed outside of farm on his way to a turned
out to be a fabricated drug deal. Right. He was
the boyfriend of Diana Becker, who was beaten and stabbed.

(12:54):
She had been sleeping her trailer, her son founder. I mean,
it's the whole thing is horrible and every in every way,
and then it gets worse when an innocent man ends
up serving all this time in prison when they actually
had the real perpetrator. But he had every reason to
implicate you. I mean, he didn't care about you at all,
and he was making a deal for himself, probably to

(13:15):
spare his own life, because of course Marilyn had the
death penalty still does, I think, right, No, they've abolished
Marylyn's a Boston death, but they had the deathdeld back then.
So yeah, you were he had the strongest possible incentive
to implicate somebody, and you were the logical guy because
you were the guy who had been around that night, right,
So it's like he didn't need to be a brain
surgeon to figure that out. But then it's interesting too

(13:37):
because he came up with this story which every time
I think we've ever heard it, it's been false, right,
which is that you held him hostage, and it changes,
you know, his story changes every time he testifies grand jury.
I've had two trials who admit is his gun? There's
really no ducking that because when he was with these

(13:57):
undercover cops, there was a point in time where they
were driving somewhere and he was in the car with
the officer and he said, wait a minute, let me
go get my gun. I don't ever go anywhere with
that my gun. So he went back to his car.
He came back with the gun. Now the officer obviously
is not pleased with this. Nervously, he's carrying a gun,
so asked to see it, like, let me what do
you carry? Let me see it. Apparently it's a it

(14:19):
was a unique kind of a thirty eight is something.
There was an animal in the handle or something. The
officer noted that. So just just he can't duck the
fact that this officer is testifying it's an undercover state
police officer that canaries carries a gun. So he tells
different versions of he supposedly sells me this gun, like
either two weeks before or a month before. You know,

(14:41):
that kind of stuff changes every time he opens his mouth.
And of course you didn't have the gun. I don't
have gun. And they knew you didn't have a gun
because they searched your apartment, that searched everything. There was
no physical evidence connecting you to the crime. The only
thing that they as far as physical evidence goes, is
there was a vodka bottle that apparently was used as
a weapon to to blunde in Diana and my fingerprint

(15:03):
they've claimed just on the neck of this bottle. Now,
this is back in the eighties where everybody, myself included,
we always had these big bottles in your apartment or whatever.
And when you throw your coins, and usually you had
these big feathers sticking out of it. I did on mine,
and that's what this bottle was in the trailer apparently
was full of coins and such. So, you know, they
asked me, how could your fingerprint get on there and says,

(15:25):
I don't know, Like I was in the trailer, did
I touch it at one point? I don't know. I'm
not gonna sit here and tell you a lie and
say very specifically that night I moved the bottle, So
therefore my fingerprints on there, I don't know. If you
say my fingerprints on there. There was also I don't know,
it was over twenty other fingerprints and handprints on this
bottle that still to this day remain unidentified. But that

(15:46):
was the other piece of evidence that they've used to
put me at the scene. You know, I don't have
an answer for that. I'm not gonna sit here and
make up an answer. I've been in the trailer, I
was there that night. Did I touch it? If it's
my fingerprints on there, obviously I did a something point.
Did I swing it as a weapon. No, that's just
not the facts. So m so you go to trial,

(16:19):
did you still have the same lawyer. No, you know
at this point, I mean, you know, I'm eighteen. It
wasn't that that could have a drug dealer. I couldn't
afford lawyers, so it became a public defender. By the
time I made it to trial, I was represented by
a public defender. You actually did a fairly good job.
I mean he I thought, you know, he did a
great job, and apparently the jury didn't. Your parents didn't

(16:41):
want to pay for a lawyer. No, you know, I
was living on my own. I didn't really talk to
them about that. I mean, it was kind of understood, like,
you know, I'm growing, I'm an adult, and you know,
this is my journey, and you know, I wasn't gonna
pull the family down into it. My mom especially was
very supportive, sat there every day of trial and stuff.
But no, my entire incarceration, I never financially pulled anybody

(17:04):
into it. That's the way you are in any case.
So you had this public defender who did as good
of a job as you could have done under the circumstances,
which kudos to him. But at what point did you
realize that you were doomed? Mhmm. Here's a funny story.

(17:24):
So the funny story. There ain't nothing funny about now,
it's not. But this is this is when I knew
I was in serious, serious trouble. So it's a change
of venue because it's death penalty case, it's automatic change
of venue. So I'm not in Harford County with a
crime occurred, which is you know, rural but metropolitan. I
mean Caroline County, which is extremely rural. So in the

(17:46):
middle of the trial, the jury has been sworn, this
older woman approached the jury box and passed a note
to this out of the gentleman that was on the jury,
And of course everybody's watching it, like what the heck,
you know, what the hell is going on here? You
don't do this? And the judge stopped. Everything is like,
you know, I don't remember the names, but he's like, Myrtle,
come up here for a minute. And she comes up there,

(18:08):
and it's like what are you doing? What did you
just pass the bill? Everybody knows everybody in this county,
you know, Like she's like, oh, and he had the note,
he had the bail off grab the note. It had
one word on it, soybeans. So it's like, what is
this all about. She's like well, the seeds just came in,
and I need Bill at home to plant the crop.
And now I knew I'm in trouble because here I am.

(18:28):
This is a very cosmopolitan case and you know, you know,
it's drugs and it's the city and this kind of thing,
and I'm in a courtroom where they're talking about soybeans.
That's their priority, and they're not gonna get any of
this information whatsoever. It just was one of those you know,
I'm in Mayberry and I'm in trouble. They're gonna listen
to anything officials tell them, be it state's attorneys, FBI

(18:50):
agents on the stand. This is the kind of folk.
They are just gonna believe in authority without questioning it
or challenging it. So and they gotta get home to
deal with the soy and they gotta get home, so
they're gonna rush out of here as quickly as they can.
And it was Friday the thirteenth that the verdict came in,
so of course that it's an interesting day. But it
was just you ask when I knew it was like,

(19:12):
quite honestly, there was a lot of naiveness on my part, thinking,
you know, I had never really been exposed to this system,
and I'm like, truth, this is what this is about.
It's going to come out. They're going to figure this out.
And it just didn't come like that. It's just I
had FBI agent after FBI agent come in there and
their suits and ties and we're with the FBI lab

(19:32):
and they're saying what they're saying. Well, all three of
those FBI agents have now been discounted, like their testimony there,
their tests have been thrown out. But at the time,
that's an impressive thing to Maybury or anywhere else. And
you know, I was just up against it. And the
more you sit there day after day listening to a testimony,
the more worried you get. This is not going to

(19:53):
go well. No, you were. You were doomed at this
Backwood's place and people that are already get home and
it's a perfect storm. You're done. And we know now,
And the FBI has acknowledged this right because the four
year study was conducted by the Innocence Project and the FBI,
and the results showed that in a study I think

(20:13):
it was two hundred sixty eight cases, they found that
I think in two d and fifty seven of them
I'm trying to remember these numbers out of my head.
I think that's right. FBI agents had either lied or
been mistaken, and these were all cases involving hair analysis
like yours. In fact, yours is one of them. And
the fact is that when I say they either lied
or were mistaken, what I want people to understand is

(20:33):
that in every one of those cases in which they
were mistaken, they were mistaken in favor of the prosecution.
So it's hard to take a view and say, well,
these were honest mistakes, because none of them came down
in the other direction. And of the twenty eight FBI
agents involved, twenty six of them were complicit in this.

(20:53):
So you were a victim like so many other people,
based on this hair analysis in which they either lied
or exaggerated or or misstated the likelihood that the hairs
could have come from somebody else. And we know that
they were just making these fingers up out of thin
air and saying things with certainty that were in some

(21:15):
cases even money or even less right, that the odds
could have it could have come from almost anyone, And
of course it's extremely powerful. As you said, when an
FBI agent gets up there, I mean, who's gonna who's
gonna think twice? Maybe people who listen to the show
will think twice. Um, I hope. So so the day
comes right thirteenth, You've got very little hope in hell

(21:36):
at this point. What were you expecting when the jury
went out? How long did they deliberate? Day and a half. Wow,
that's actually longer than I would have thought. And then
they come back in did they look at you? No?
They always have heard that adage before, like if they're
not looking at you, you're in trouble. So they didn't.
And so I knew, you know, you just get that,
you know, like, I don't know that's true, but I've

(21:58):
been somebody who told me that prior. So I was
looking to see if they're going to look me in
the eye and they didn't. Um, so you stand for
the verdict. The first count it was it was the
strangest thing. I still don't understand how they did it.
But the first count was first degree premeditated mouths forethought murder,
you know, murdering the first degree, And they said not guilty. Wow.

(22:19):
So I was like, like, okay, and you thought you
were going home. I thought that's okay. This is good.
You know, we we we made it, We proved our point.
Then they said, okay, as to the first count, still
the same first count of the indictment to phony murder,
how do you find And that's when they say guilty
And I'm like, wait, I just got it guilty and
not guilty on the same count, just two different degrees

(22:39):
of murder. It always bothered me, and I've I've actually
challenged that over and over again as a double jeopardy violation,
but it never it just never caught win. You know,
we just couldn't prevail on that. But that's my feelings.
As I was standing there, is like wow, you know,
you go from all the way to the top of
the roller coaster all the way at the bottom that quickly,

(23:00):
and from then you don't really hear anything more Like
I didn't. I was just in a daze, like what
just happened here? And and you're trying to process it,
and I'm like, I'm eighteen years old, Like as smart
as I might have thought I was at that age,
you know, now I have thirty some years of hindsight
to look back on that eighteen year old kid that
was standing there, and I'm not smart, and I didn't

(23:21):
know how to process it. It It was way above my
capacity to really understand and fathom what had happened and
what was about to happen, the whole nine. I mean,
looking back, it's like, I don't even know how I
was able to stand there and just absorb it. Yeah,
I mean it's sammerically you were able to stay on
your feet. Actually I was rocking there. There wasn't any
breeze in that courtroom, but I certainly started, you know,

(23:43):
like just rocking on my heels a little bit, like
I was taken aback and your your mom was there,
and you remember who else was there, and you know,
I remember my parents were there, and you know, I'm
under custody, so I can't even go over and get
my mother. Oh, I can't be reassuring. I can't do
anything because I don't even know. I don't I don't
know what's about to befall me. I don't I don't
know what death row is going to be like in

(24:05):
the penitentiary because it's a biofurcated process. So the conviction
has happened, but now I've got to come back in
about a month and be sentenced there's a whole another
process about to occur as well. And again I had
not been exposed to this. This is long before forensic
files and c s I and all these kind of shows.
Like I don't know, I just didn't know, and I

(24:25):
don't think I ever processed it. I think I just
absorbed it in just it's like treading water. Just kept
my head above water and it just kept coming. You know,
so so amazing that you said what you just said,
and you were so young and in your situation couldn't
have been more direy. You're about to be sentenced to death,
and yet your thought was trying to comfort your mom,
not the other way around. It's amazing to me like that.

(24:48):
You know, what that says about your character is uh
is pretty profound, and I just want to take a
moment to recognize that. So now the worst possible thing
that could happen has happened, and off you go to prison.
Can you take us through that? I mean death row.
I think it's everybody's most primal fear. Well, interesting enough,

(25:10):
in Maryland at the time that I went on death row,
it was not segregated and we were in population. When
I first went in there. What they would do is
they put you on adam and say, in other words,
they lock you in a cell for a month just
to see if you're your heads right, I guess, and
then they let you out into a regular pop. You
know you're in gen pop. There's nothing to distinguish you

(25:31):
as being death row. They had a board somewhere where
they had kept our pictures on it and like, these
are the guys on death row. But we lived anywhere
we wanted inside the prison. We could live in any
housing block we wanted. We weren't all in the same
tier or whatever at the beginning. The years into it,
I don't know, four or five years in, they decided
to put us all on the same tiers, so like

(25:53):
we were so one through twelve on the second tier
street side of a block. So we were housed to
other at a later point, but in the beginning we weren't.
The thing about prison is like everybody knows everything. The
grapevine is extremely good, so people know you're on death
row whatever, but it doesn't carry any cachet value when
the guy next to you serving five life sentences, so

(26:14):
he doesn't give a ship that you've got to death punties.
You know, it doesn't matter, doesn't give you any credentials whatsoever.
It really comes down to who you are. Did you
say two death penalties? Yeah, my original sentence was death
plus death plus fifteen plus five plus three the first
total two death punties in like twenty one years, all consecutive,
by the way, how you do that time? But well,

(26:36):
so if they execute you when you come back to life,
they can execute you again and then hold my body
for twenty one years, I guess, Or if you come
back to life a second time, right, then they get
to hold you in prison for another twenty one years.
It's it's really just the concept is, yeah, double the
double death sentences, Like what the funk? Anyway? Can't I can't.

(26:57):
I can't even process this as far as death throws concerned.
I mean, there's there's no good news whatsoever. There's nothing.
There is absolutely zero for that. And you learn the
minute you step onto the tier, like nobody gives a
ship if you're innocent, you're not, so like there's no
point in going in there saying, you know, but wait,
I'm innocent. I'm innocent, so I guess I can like

(27:18):
and it it's like if you stepped out on the pond,
a frozen pond, and you suddenly the ice cracked and
you fell through and you drift, so you're not under
that air hole anymore, but you can see through the
ice and you know it's twelve inches of ice there.
You see the people, and you could scream all you want,
it's just air bubbles, you know, like you just can't
be heard. You're trapped. And that's just how it felt.

(27:41):
It's a self imposed cage that I put myself on
because you want to scream to the world like I'm innocent,
I don't belong here. But then you you know, everybody
doesn't belong in prison, and everybody's innocent. You fall into that,
so I don't know. I just you bite your tongue.
You learn to adjust to the situation the best you can.

(28:01):
And I just hit the law library. You know. I
spent the first year just reading everything I get my
hands on and studying law, and I was writing my
emotions and driving my lawyer is crazy, you know, but
I was fighting for my life, and that's any way
I knew how to do it. So I tried to
be a little bit more proactive or constructive in that
way instead of just sitting back with a woe was

(28:23):
me attitude, And obviously I couldn't count anybody else to
save my life. I had to fight for my life,
and that's what I did. You brought up an initiating point,
which is that as a death row inmate, you are
entitled to post conviction council right on the pellate council.
So that's about the only positive thing I guess about
being sentenced to death, Whereas if you were a normal
inmate or sense to life, you would not be entitled

(28:45):
to that and you'd be totally on your own. So
there you were in the law library. It was what
was the day to day experience, the physical experience, but
also what was the mental and spiritual thing that that

(29:07):
led you to be able to not only maintain your
physical health, So I mean, its best you could, but
also eventually find a way to get out and be
sitting right here right now. I mean, how what what
can you tell us? Well? Soon the beginning guys just angry.
You know, I was young and still not that I

(29:29):
figured myself out by any means, But I hadn't like
really took that time in the introspection and try to
figure out who I thought it was. So maybe the
first I wanta say, six or seven years, I probably
was close to becoming everything they wanted me to be,
which is the convict. I was getting in trouble inside.

(29:50):
I had my share of fights. I had violation of
the prison rules for whatever things I was doing. I
had an attempt to escape, you know, I just I
was not conformed, wasn't going to conform. I had a
real problem with authority with the officers. I literally got
an assault charge against one officer one time, who said
I saw to them. But I was defending myself against

(30:11):
five officers, and you know, I'm the one that gets
the assault charge, which was dropped later. But so that's
where I was becoming. And then I guess I had
a little epithany you know, I woke up and there
was a guy I was working with. I was in
the property room. You know, I went and did my
job every day, and I worked in the package room
and where the property was packed up. And this guy

(30:32):
was always involved in activities like he was a member
j c's was you had a chapter inside this is
the Junior Chamber of Commerce, and he was always doing
paperwork and doing stuff, and I was like, what are
you doing. He's like, you need to come join, you
need to be a part of this. So I ended
up joining the j CS and the minute I joined,
they asked me to be on their board as ways

(30:52):
and means director of their fundraiser. And then two years later, no,
one year later, I was the president and and you
know now the j C SAR it's a leadership training
through community service. They were doing a lot of good
things and I felt a responsibility that I got a
hundred twenty guys, maybe not all voted for me, but
they elected me, and so I'm there to lead them.

(31:14):
And then you know, I started looking around and it's
like here these you know, their kids, some of our
sixteen seventeen younger than me. They had come into the
system and they're the throwaway class, and nobody cared the
way he was working with them. The warden had two rules,
don't jump on my wall and don't jump on my officers.
Other than that, anything went. I mean, guy gets killed,

(31:34):
like stabbed to death on the yard. Literally two hours later,
they throw sand over the blood and we're back to normal,
like nothing ever happened. That's that was the penitentiary back then.
So I felt a calling to do something different, and
so through j CS, you know, we were able to
start doing some things that brought a certain degree of

(31:55):
i don't know, self respect and measurability to not just
the inmates, but to the population inside as well as out.
So we did a lot of projects out on the street,
and we had a local chapter then CP that was
in there as well. And this is like when school
uniforms were first coming back as a topic. There was
a young girl that got murdered straight bullet hit her
and she was like eight years old, attended Utah Marshburn

(32:17):
Elementary School and they were having trouble raising the money
for their school uniforms. So we did it inside of prison.
We raised that money for the school uniforms and w
c P and the j CS. And then it was
you know, I saw a little article and the it
was the open form section of the Agist. It was
a letter that a woman had written about her grandchild
needed a bone Marrew transplant. Sure as I'm gonna pay

(32:38):
for it. She was asking for help. So I reached
out and contacted her and said, look, you know, we
don't have a lot of money, but we have a
still screen shop, so you know, we can design some
T shirts and I'll give them to you. You can
sell them at your fundraisers, you know. So we ended
up giving her like five T shirts and like a
thousand of these little buttons, and they were using those
to raise money and the girl got her surgery. It

(33:00):
was successful, and you know, every Christmas, the grandmother would
send me pictures in a card, you know, telling give
me an update iss she you know, went through life
and graduated high school and stuff. So there was a
lot of good And I don't say that because it
was me. I say that because it was twenty guys
following what we were doing. They were doing good things
and giving back to the community outside as well as inside.

(33:20):
And that's where I found, I guess my calling in
a sense, we're re awoken my own social conscience and
my passion to do something right and do it well,
you know. To be honest, it was just being ornery,
like I'm still fighting my case, and my thought process
was I'm not gonna be carried kicking and screaming into
a gas chamber and I'm not gonna walk in there

(33:41):
head bowed. If that's the ultimate thing is gonna happen
when I walk in there, They're gonna still question for
decades later what they did and why they did it
and if they got the right guy, because I'm not
going to fit the stereotype of what they think. So
it's just important. And at the end, it really is
you know, they talk about the dash. It really comes
down to the dash. This man was born, this man dies.

(34:02):
It's about what happens in between the dash that's in
between those two dates. And if you don't make account
for something, then why were you here? So I figured
if i'm if I'm in there, that's where my dash
is gonna be, then it's still gonna count. And so
it was really really important to me to make my
life means something regardless of where I was. So, you know,
I was doing the j CS. We brought Alternative Violence

(34:23):
Project from New York down to Baltimore. You know, this
was starting green Haven State Prison up here by the Quakers,
is now an international organization conflict mediation. We started that
in Maryland, and I got my college degree while I
was inside. I was I was in the last graduating classes.
Congress took away our access to the pell grant. They
literally took away my senior year. I graduated as a junior.

(34:45):
I just was lucky. I was going for a dual
degree and I had enough credits to going out. But
I lost my senior year over that poor decision. But
so I I chose to make the time work for me,
not saying it was easy time. I did my time
time and all the hardest prisons in Maryland. You know,
I was in the penitentiary for my first sixteen I
was in Cumberland, I was in the cut, I was

(35:07):
in super Max. I didn't get any easy ride. There
was no country club prison for me at any point
in time. But we were able to make a difference
and change not just our mentalities, but I think somehow
society looked at us, and hopefully those seeds that we
planted back then grow trees now because more people are
looking at reentry and and trying to get recivitism down

(35:30):
and understanding the need to launch programs in the system
and work with folks, not to warehouse people, but to
actually say, regardless of why you're there, human beings are redeemable,
and the human spirit is going to thrive in spite
of So why don't we encourage that? Why don't we
order that with positivity rather than encourage the negativity. Because

(35:51):
you encourage the negativity, you just create an unsafe environment
for your own guard force and the people are coming home.
You is breeding repeats? So well, yeah, I mean nationally,
everyone that's in prison is gonna be released at some point.
So just purely on a societal level, it be who's

(36:12):
all of us to want to have those people have
a shot when they get out and getting on the
right track. So you survived this death row ordeal. All
the odds were stacked against you. Finally, decades into this
nightmare of yours, you discover that the evidence exists that
can actually free you. Right, and the response of the

(36:34):
authorities is actually fucking mind blowing. Right. Talk about the
hair and when that emerged and how it emerged, and
what the response of the people in power was. I'll
try to really quickly because it goes all the way
back to the Oklahoma City bombing case. So after the
Oklahoma City bombing case, there was a whistleblower that came
out of the FBI lab Dr Frederick Whitehurst, and he

(36:55):
brought for several allegations about the pressure to falsify evidence
and the very fact that the lab was not equipped
to deliver a good report. It was dirty, the best
practices weren't being utilized. He laid it out, and what
ended up happening. It launched I think about a year
long investigation from the Inspector General's Office at which time,

(37:17):
and the conclusion of that, they issued this massive report,
three page report, and they found that what Dr Whitehurst
had alleged was true in a lot of cases, so
in particular it affects me. They named the FBI agent
that it testified in my case, agent Michael Malone, and
their commentary about him was that he consistently testified outside

(37:39):
of his area of expertise and misrepresented evidence. Now I'm
just a layman. It sounds like you just called the
man a liar with very fancy words, but they didn't
go quite that far to call him that. So here's
this report and I'm thinking, great, we can do something.
Well we can't. I'm on collateral attack at this time,
meaning post conviction, and apparently that report doesn't mean anything.

(38:00):
So I was never able to persevere or follow any
kind of motions based on that so now, well let
me jump to the next part. So in two thousand three,
I get introduced to the Innocence Project. A friend of
mine was working through the Innocence Project and Nina, Nina
Morrison was handling his case. And he had a hair
evidence in this case and a DNA tested it came

(38:21):
back it wasn't his. He was about to go home
and he was like, you need to contact these people
because he knew my case and he knew me. He'd
been around me for decades. You know, we know trust me.
As fellow convicts, we know who did a crime and
who didn't. And he knew that I didn't do it.
So with his encouragement, I reached out and got the
Innocence Project involved my law firm, and we had filed

(38:44):
to do DNA testing on the hair. And this is
two thousand three. Well, the very first thing the state
did in writing was filed emotion ask him the courts
permission to destroy the evidence. Now we we didn't know
why this is an odd thing to right, you know,
like we want to just you've held it for whatever

(39:04):
seven years at that time, and now you want to
destroy it when we're about to send it to a
lab that we mutually agree, you know, is the top
It's mitotyping Lab in Pennsylvania Dr Terry Melton, who's the
foremost DNA scientists in the in the country. And we
all agree this is gonna be a fair review. And
you're saying you want to destroy the evidence. So the
judge ruled against that, and after an eight hour long

(39:26):
courtroom battle, we got to proveal to send the hair
to the lab. Well at least time for a second here, right,
So I'm just picturing the judge. The judge sitting there
and the prosecutors are arguing saying, you know what, before
we discover the truth, we just like to take the
preliminary step of destroying any chance of discovering the truth
by eliminating the one thing that can actually tell us

(39:46):
what happened. You know, you can't make this stuff off.
It's public record is is you couldn't write a script
like this. It's it's mind boggling. It becomes more mind
boggling when fourteen years later we understand why at that.
So what happens is we send these slides to the lab,
we get a call from the lab that basically says,

(40:08):
what do you want us to do with this, and
we're like, test the two hairs, and again, I have
to pay for this. I've been incarcerated twenty years at
this point. Coming up with fifteen thousand dollars is not
an easy task, and I'm still it wasn't clear on
how I was going to do that, but we were
moving forward. So Dr Melton hits my lawyers and says,
you know, what do you want me to do? And
it's like test the hairs. Well, the problem was it

(40:29):
was about ten microscopic slides. Each slide had five eight
hairs on them. They were preserved in some kind of
chemical mounting. They were not identified. They were not even
laid out like one strand pulled tight like they were
on top of each other. So you had to test
all of them. Well, to test all of them it
would have cost probably I think it was eighty five thousands.

(40:50):
And at the end of the day, like, what does
that tell me, Like I've had two trials, where do
these hairs even came from? All along? You've always said
we have two hairs, Like they were the only two
hairs ound in this entire trailer, and they belonged to
huffingtons and literally one of the hairs was found on
the body, and so you put you right at the scene.
So I didn't even know there were that many hairs.
We never do that. So we went back with the

(41:12):
help of the Instance Project, and we had an agent
look at the file to see if there was any
notes in there that might help us. We filed a
freem Information Act to get the file, which took another year,
and at the end of that the FBI told us, well,
whoever does their Freedom Information Act? Told us, well, your
file exists, here's the number, here's the town, here's the building,

(41:33):
here's the file. Cabinet is supposed to be in but
it's not there. So your request is denied. You can
appeal this if you want. Just like that. My file
wasn't around, so like okay, So there wasn't anything more
we could do. We sent the stuff back to the state.
We withdrew the motion from the court, and actually my
lawyers withdrew from the case because we were done. There

(41:53):
was nothing more that we could do. That was like
the last basically a hail Mary that we were trying
to prove the point. So years go by, this is
two thousand three four in that range. In two thousand nine,
Governor Malley puts a new law on the book called
a rid of actual innocence, And that's based on the
ponderance of evidence or the totality of the evidence. Meaning

(42:15):
before you would only look at this cup of water
by itself. But if you look at this couple of
water with that picture of water sitting on this table
with two of us talking, now there's a story if
we put it in this proper perspective. So here's this
chance to really go back in and say, let's look
at all these little pieces together. They tell a story.
So my lawyer spent, oh my god, probably a year

(42:36):
preparing that motion. They looked at every state that had
similar laws and really studied it. We filed a seventy motion,
and we had a hearing. At the hearing again, the
provader of this caste attorney. The first thing he tells
the judges, where your honor Mr. Having you had a
chance to test the hairs. He didn't even test them,
So why are we still here today? So the judge,
who doesn't know why we didn't test them, now turns

(42:58):
and says, well, why didn't you tell test him? So
my lawyers explained to him what happened, and he turned
to the state. He said, well, why does Mr Huffing
didn't have to test them anyway? You test them, which
the lawsyes I have to, but he told the state,
you go test them. I'm gonna hold this hearing. You
go test them. So we left that here and the
State went to the State Police and asked them to

(43:19):
test the hairs. And state police said, no, we don't
test it on the labs work and we don't have
a budget for that, so we're not touching it. So
all summer long, the judge thinks that we're testing hairs.
What the state was doing is they went back and
they tested my boots, and they tested my pants, and
they tested the jacket. They tested everything they could possibly test,
and then September Combs they're done. They haven't tried to

(43:40):
do the hairs with the FBI. So they tell my
lawyers were done, let's go back into court. We don't
have anything more to test. But they're telling the judge
with regular updates like we're working on, we're working on,
and they tested all your stuff just to see if
there was any evidence of the victim on your clothes,
whatever they could figure out. You know. Yeah, they were
trying to tie me to the scene through Now, DNA
didn't exist back then, so they were trying to pull

(44:02):
me in with forensic evidence and none of that worked.
So right after they made that announcement, out of the blue,
my lawyers got a phone call from a reporter at
the Washington Post Spencer's shoe. He's working on this big
expose of the FBI Lab and their hair analysis section.
So he wanted to talk to us because I was
the Maryland case that Michael Malone was involved in. So

(44:23):
my lawyers are like, well, you know, we're in court,
we can't talk about the case. And so the conversation continued,
and long story short on that he had my file,
the file that we couldn't get. He had it. He
got it through freem Information Act again years later, but
he has it. So there's two things in that file
that we never knew about. The first is after the

(44:44):
Inspector General's report was done on the FBI Lab, the
FBI Lab, that was a public report. What nobody knew
is the FBI Lab conducted their own internal investigation. After that,
they went out and hired forensic scientists to come in
and review their own agents work, including agent Malone and
my case. So there's a report in my file from
this outside expert. His report basically just says no where,

(45:07):
there's no way that Malone could have testified the way
he did in my trial. And he even raised the
doubt that Malone actually even did the test himself. So
there's this report, and then the other document that's in
there is a letter again from from the FBI to
the state's attorneys saying there's a problem in the Huffington
case with the hair. You might want to notify either

(45:28):
Mr Huffington's or his attorneys. Now, remember what happens in
two thousand three when I go to test the hair,
what's the first thing the state does? Try to destroy it.
Now it makes sense because they knew, they knew four
years earlier, and that here we are fourteen years later
just finding this out. So the FBI went to the state.

(45:50):
They sent the letter to the state. Now the state
and that an open court and open court, and this
I'll never forget or forgive. He sat in open court
and try to tell the judge that he had notified me.
Now do you think not to take me out of
the equation. You think anybody in prison would have sat
there for another fifteen years of that information and not
used it. Like, where's the logic of this? Like he claims,

(46:14):
he claims he sent it to the Public Defender's office.
I've been represented by Ropes in grade for twenty five years.
He knows that. He claims he sent it to the
Innocence Project. We talked to them. They've never heard of him.
So where did you send it? How is it? You
can go in there and literally as an afer the court,
And I'll say it now, you lied. You know to
the court. You're an obser to the court. You lied.
It's not the first time you've lied. You lied, and

(46:36):
that cover up cost me an extra fourteen years of
my life. And when people ask why I'm not bitter,
I will tell you that part right there. I'm bitter
about because I lost my mom like five years before
I came home. We talked about this earlier today, Like
don't run from the truth. Let the truth just be itself,
Like you have an obligation, you're elected official, you have
an oath that you're sworn to. Just let the truth
come out. Let your ego get on the side. Stop

(46:57):
with the win loss record and all that. Just let
the truth come out. We did DNA tested that back
then if he came back, it's mind you win your case,
it's over with. But either way, the truth comes out,
and and that that I can't. I can't get that
time back with my mother. I can't, you know, recover
what I lost with the extra fourteen years. Did that

(47:18):
cover up costs me? And to sit there and blatantly
tell the judge like, oh, I did all my due diligence,
that's bullshit. You didn't. You're a liar. Your name is
Joe Castley and your liar. And that's how it is.
I can say that now because I'm free and clear
that system. Yeah, it's it's impossible to understand what motivates
people to behave in that way. I'll hear another hundred

(47:39):
or two hundred of these stories, and I still want
to understand it. I don't think any of us ever can.
But it happens, and it happens not infrequently, and people
need to know that. I just don't stand in the
way of an opportunity for truth to come out. Look,
we we get too caught up in our own personalities
and egos, and it should be a system of laws
rather than a man. And that comes out of the

(47:59):
j C. Cree. That's one of the stanzas the government
should be, you know, laws rather than men. When we
put our own personalities and egos into that, that's where
the system gets derailed. Like I said, we had a
chance to fix this in we should have fixed it.
Shouldn't have took actually eighteen to fix it, because I mean,

(48:19):
at the end of the day, I still had to
fight even with this coming out. And so what ends
up happening is they scramble and instead of letting it
go to my lab, the FBI and themselves decided to
test it. They tell us ahead of time it's going
to totally consume the sample. So of course my conspiracy theories.
I'm like, they're just gonna say it's mine. I'm not
even gonna be able to send it to our lab

(48:40):
to can confirm or deny because the Harris fragile. It's
old as it's a piece of hair. And and that's
something that's been as you've been talking, I've been sitting
here thinking with that, like what an amazing phenomenon that
your life is hanging in the balance of two hairs,
and those hairs have to be brought from one place
to another. If there's a car accident, if somebody loses it,

(49:02):
if somebody goes off there. I mean a lot of
things can go wrong when that thing is being transported,
your life is being transported with it. And they're fucking hairs.
I mean, you know you're being told that this is
gonna it's gonna degrade them to the point that they're
useless when we tested, so this really talked about hail Mary,
this is it. But it ain't a football game, no,
And you know, luckily they did as a peer review.

(49:24):
So it's like a surgeon operating with other surgeons watching.
Because this is Michael Malone is so scandalous. This guy's
this guy is infamous for just screwing people's lives. It's
just terrible what he's gotten away with. But in this case,
they tested it and it wasn't my DNA, So you
would think, slam dunk, we're done, we're outta here. Nope.
I had to go back and then proved that that

(49:48):
would have made a difference. They fought us on that.
Luckily the judge I was fortunate that he didn't have
an ego and he looked at it what it was.
So I wanted rid of actual innocence, which meant that
they took away by victions in my sentence. But it
also meant that he set it for new trial. Now
here's the same prosecutor. You've been in office for forty years.

(50:08):
His career started around the same time as my case.
He's kind of his parallel course throughout the whole time.
Who won't let go so right? Your case probably helped
propel him to a long career that that he enjoyed,
you know, But I mean, you know, I think that
he has a history of abusing his power and the system.

(50:29):
And so it ended up that they set a bail
as half a million dollars cash bails. Again, here I
am sitting there after thirty two years. How's that going
to work? But it worked the help of a couple
of friends, I was able to post that bail and
I came home, and the whole time I've been home
for four years. Just as of December, the seventh's over,

(50:50):
you know, as of January the one, I'm not on
any kind of pro probation supervision, but for the four
years that I've been home, I've had one ft on
the banana. So you know, I've been really blessed in
the fact that, you know, I've been able to launch
a career and find some success in some degree of
voice out here. All the while with that still hanging

(51:12):
over my head, I've got an active prosecution or persecution
going on trying to put me back in prison for
the rest of my life. So and this prosecutors so
driven he actually delayed his own retirement just to get
a chance to prosecute you again. Well, he'd offered me
a deal right before that plead guilty and it would
all go away time served. And he announced his retirement

(51:34):
and then I can't say that it's definitely a coincidental,
but I will say this, when I said no to
the deal, within two days he took his retirement back.
M hmm. So let's talk a little bit about what's
been happening since you got out, because these four years,
I mean, do you sleep um, because I mean you're

(51:56):
on so many boards and different organizations. You know what,
I got it right in front of me. I'm going
to read it. So John is a committee member the
Greater Baltimore Committee's Coalition for a Second Chance. He's also
on the board of the Mayor's Green Network Leadership Team,
the Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention, Collateral Consequences
Work Group, Baltimore City Police Department, Community Collaborative Division, re

(52:20):
Entry Advisory Committee, the d h c d S Keep
Maryland Beautiful Steering Committee, and Pivot a Pathway for Women
from Prison to Purpose. I mean, I'm tired from reading that. Okay,
what what in the hell is going on? What are
you trying to prove? Once again, it's about the dash.
I mean, so when when I came home, obviously I'm

(52:42):
on bail and I don't know what the future holes.
I'm very cynical back the criminal justice system. I don't
trust it, and I fully expect they're gonna come and
hit me with the butterfly net and snatched me back
like we made a mistake or something, you know. So
it was very surreal getting out here, and then I
got very I keep saying lucky. Lucky's not the right word.

(53:03):
I was blessed that I made a few good steps
and involved myself with some good people. And I have
to say I got lucky because I came through the
very program that I now administer, which is Projects Serve,
our Rapid Attachment to work model. It's a re entry component.
But I was only there for like three months because,
like you said, I present myself a little different and

(53:24):
people tend to look at me and think, oh, he's okay,
and not think, well, you know, he's been gone for
thirty two years, he might need some service himself. So
I came into Living Classrooms Foundation as the organization, and
they gave me business cards in the title, and I
was a client advocate event coordinator, and so I didn't
do our normal go out in the alleys and clean
and do the normal project Serve work. I literally was

(53:47):
working with the members that were in Project Serve and
creating their counter of activities and things like that. But
there wasn't a funding stream for it, so I needed
to move on. So after three months, I interviewed for
another nonprofit, Second Chance in Ball the More, and went
to work for them. And when I left them, you know,
I was a salary employee and and doing well, and

(54:07):
they were they were a great organization, were very supportive,
but Living Classrooms that sort of called me back. The
director of workforce development position was open. Honestly didn't think
that it was, you know, something I could apply for
because you know, I was a man with no future.
You know, I don't bring that future to the table.
I'm literally still under trial, inder indictment and on bail.

(54:30):
And they know that, and they looked past that and
felt that I was suited for the job and the
right one for the job, and and gave me that opportunity,
knowing full well that my world could have ended at
any time. You know, I could have been sent back
to prison. And they they entrusted a department millions of dollars,
a budget and staff and everything else. So it became

(54:52):
even more important to me to honor that, you know,
to show that their faith in me was is was correct,
and that you know, I was going to redeem that
and and make a difference in that role. So I
don't know, it just comes down to the dash, you know,
it really does. Like howevery much time you have and
you know, Lord knows what any of us could walk

(55:14):
out of here and get hit by a bus. But
it's about trying to make make a difference. And that's
just the path that I've always been on, Like it's
important to me, you know, especially to redeem. Like I
had a law from Ropes and Gray, I should mention
this who believed in me and gave me twenty five
years of pro bono legal services. Now as think about

(55:35):
the cost value of that, and they did it because
they believed in me and they believed in my case.
So now how do I repay that? They're not sitting
there waiting to garnish my check. You know, they're telling
me go live my life and be successful. So again,
the only way to repay that debt is to be
successful and to redeem their faith in me and why
they did what they did, and and and then I

(55:56):
guess the mantle becomes even more big because the more
I out there and become involved in these various committees
or have an opportunity to speak, then you become representative
of what re entry can look like. So now I
can't mess up like you know, I'm visible, I'm publicly
visible as others are. I'm not the poster child here,
but I think that brings more responsibility that if I

(56:20):
were to mess up, then that gives all the naysayers
even more ammunitions that this is why we don't do this.
This is why we don't give jobs or work with
re entry. So you keep moving it forward. You have
no choice but to the more the more you add,
the more it becomes important that you utilize your voice
everywhere you can to make a difference. I go back

(56:42):
into prisons now to introduce the guys inside with here's
an opportunity when you come home. You can come get
trained and solar installations and we have jobs for you.
Just being able to sort of coalesce those folks and
to get that moving in the right direction and to start,
you know, having more in depth conversation is about why
and how we can make a difference with the whole

(57:04):
reentry model is important to me. And it's great you're
here because it's so important for people to hear that
message and too to take a different view of people
like yourselves, innocent or otherwise who are formally incarcerated and
to reach out and get and give them a chance.
I mean, I think that my experience is that that
community of formally incarcerated people will work their ass off

(57:27):
because they value every day and every minute. They think
nothing for granted. Before we close, if you could just
talk for a second, about the organization you're working with
it you're trying to raise money for, and how incredible
their success rate is that keeping people from restivating Living Classrooms. Amazing,
amazing organizations that I work for right now. It's a

(57:47):
nonprofit in Baltimore. We were primarily in East Baltimore through
our Target Investment Zone, where we've taken a two and
a half mile square area of East Baltimore and we
are transforming, trying to disrupt the cyclop poverty and UPLI
multigenerational approach to health and wellness, education and workforce development.
I can't express enough gratitude. You know, these folks gave

(58:09):
me an opportunity and a chance and supported me through
that this entire journey. For people who want to help,
they can give money to Living Classrooms absolutely. You know
that Living Classrooms dot org is Living Classes Foundation dot org.
You know we're nonprofit. You know we do a lot
of work. It's not just re entry. We do you know,
after school programming, we do early childhood development. Look at

(58:29):
our website and it will show you how you can
make a donation. We appreciate that support. So once again,
it's www. Dot Living Classrooms Foundation dot Org. I'm gonna
give money. I hope you'll join me and do so too.
And now is time for always the highlights of the
of the show, which is where I stopped talking, and
just turn it over to you for any closing thoughts

(58:51):
that you want to share. Well, first of all, I
want to thank you for having me, inviting me to
come out here and be a part of the show.
I to use my time just to say kudos to YouTube. Jason.
I mean, I think there's so crucial, so key and
important what you're doing and bringing the attention that you
bring not just the exonaries, but to the whole criminal
justice system, the families against mandatory minimums that I know

(59:13):
you're a big proponent of. So if I can just
flip the script and just say to everybody listening, like
this guy, like he introduced me, is doing all this.
Trust me. I'm not even in his league for what
he does. I don't know when he can possibly sleep.
So Jason is gonna expose you through this podcast and
everything that he's doing. If you're just follow him on Instagram,

(59:34):
That's what I'm gonna tell you right now, follow him
and see the different things he's doing and understand that
you two can have an impact. You know, this is
one guy, regardless of him being a record mogul or
whatever title we want to give him, it's one guy
making a difference. And honestly, we all can make a difference.
It's it takes a lot of one guys and one
women out there to make these things happen. And I

(59:55):
think the lesson that we can all take away from
this is that we're all empowered to do that. We
just gotta take action. Well, John, all I could say
is thank you for that. Um humbled and honored that
you're here, and thank you again for coming in and
sharing your experience, strength and hope with our audience. You've
been listening to a very moving episode for me personally

(01:00:19):
of wrongful conviction. Thank you for having and thanks to
the Innocence Project as well. If goodn't have been to
do this with Adams, So thank you. Don't forget to
give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts.
It really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the
Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in

(01:00:39):
supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future
Wrongful Convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn
how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank
our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music
on the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Rightful

(01:01:03):
Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one