#2287 - Josh Dubin & J.D. Tomlinson

31:32So I was kind of just, I was stressed. It was very difficult to think about focusing my mind on anything else other than trying to exonerate myself first. And I did be good for your opponents because it makes you proud of your job. Awful. It gums everything up. Of course. I started to understand how on a national level what it affects that task. Imagine what Trump went through. It's the same, it's a similar thing. I've said it before I'll say it again. I don't care what your opinion is of that man to have the metal to face what he faced and continue On a path of getting anything accomplished let alone what he accomplished if you don't Stand up and cheer for that No, the human cost of these prosecutions.

32:17You're hearing it right now. Yeah, I mean he I still have gotten over this is Lawfare is very... This episode is brought to you by Oracle. Even if you think it's a bit overhyped, AI is suddenly everywhere, from self -driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. If it's not in your industry yet, it's coming fast. But AI needs a lot of speed and computing power. So how do you compete without costs spiraling out of control? Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI. OCI is a blazing fast and secure platform for your infrastructure, database application development, plus all of your AI and machine learning workloads.

33:02OCI costs 50 % less for compute and 80 % less for networking. So you're saving a pile of money. Thousands of businesses have already upgraded to OCI, including Vodafone, Thompson Reuters, and Soono AI. Right now Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to OCI for new U .S. customers with minimum financial commitment. Offer end March 31st. See if your company qualifies for the special offer at oracle .com slash Rogan. That's oracle .com slash Rogan. This episode is brought to you by GOPUFF. The grocery shopping drive unuts the lines and the chaos and inflated prices.

33:48Then you have all these third party delivery apps with their ridiculous fees, markups, and you still have to wait hours for delivery. Well, enter GOPUFF. The game changer. They deliver snacks, groceries, alcohol, essentials, whatever you need straight to your door in just 15 minutes. And get this, it's cheaper than the store because GOPUFF uses their own fulfillment centers. No middleman, no crazy markups, it's like Amazon, but for everyday essentials and way faster, GoPuff also just launched cheapest on the planet pricing. Think $2 organic eggs, $2 milk, $5 diapers, $10 tide pods, it's insane.

34:27They're beating big grocery stores at their own game. So do yourself a favor, download the GoPuff app on your phone, use the code Rogan20 for $20 off your order and experience faster, cheaper, better shopping. Trust me, you'll thank me later. An America. Well, it's a very un -American thing to do to unjustly accuse someone of crimes and use your position of power to try to arrest that person and jail that person. That's very un -American. Well, you know, that's how we should all look at it. Something. Something in terms of like parties and this is, you know, these are my people. these are this is against me, this is for me.

35:07It's bad for the country. It is. It is. Real bad for the country. We are supposed to represent freedom. Yeah. On the world stage, we're supposed to be the people that have the most freedom of speech, the most freedom of expression, the best path to success if you're a nobody. This is supposed to be a place where everybody gets a shot. And if you allow the system to unjustly accuse and prosecute people for crimes that are demonstrably false that's very, very un -American. And that's how we should look at it. I mean, instead of this fucking fuck my enemies, us versus them, you're kind of committing treason.

35:44You're kind of ruining everyone's, if you could pull it off, you ruin our faith in what this thing is supposed to be. Well, look, I think that quite obviously there are prosecutions that need to happen when someone commits a violent crime when there's domestic abuse, when there's robbery, all of that. That's not for sure. The what should not be lost on people because you are, you saw it play out on a national stage with the president. You are now hearing about it in a smaller, you know, not a small town, but a smaller jurisdiction. And the irony of this, it struck me as I was speaking to JD the first time, is here's a man that's fighting for his life.

36:33And I just, I mean, I'll confess to you, I used it to say, I continually said to JD, imagine you have to go through this for 30 years. It's not even possible. Behind bars. So when I finally got through to him that night, we must have spoke eight times that night. He knew that there was a problem with this case and he was creating in his understandably so we don't have time for me to actually sit and listen to you and go through the evidence again because he had been through it before and though in the Ohio 4 case. So as as Dame Fortune would have it, I don't know where I heard that but as the way it worked worked out is that three or four days after we spoke, the charges against JD were dropped.

37:26The election happened. He gets defeated in the election. It had its intended effect, I guess, in my opinion. That's what else, but they dropped the case. So now his problem went away for the time being. So he became a lot more singularly focused. So by the time I got to Ohio and I had a team of lawyers that were representing the other three men and I felt like I had a more captive audience at that point. and what happens from here and what leads us to today is in my mind just this perverse as the irony of him getting wrongfully accused of a crime because I presented to JD and at one point he weld up, you know, to prove a negative is one of the most difficult things.

38:29Our standard is the presumption of innocence. When someone is already convicted and they're wrongfully convicted, in order for you to get someone in JD's position there, he was tough on me as he should have been. But I had to prove a negative because I had to prove that Al Cleveland was not in Ohio when this happened, which frankly became easy to prove. Because we were able to show that he was in New York, visiting his probation officer on a different drug case. He had Damon John who of Shark Tank fame Was his was with him the day that this allegedly happened people saw him all over New York There were John Edwards who's my client had Alibi witnesses all over the place and if Al Cleveland is in New York this never happened because will you may have Rejunior story was that Al Cleveland was there leading the charge and they're beating this woman to death So when I was there and I by the time I was done presenting to JD and his chief of staff, they asked if they could have some time and get back to us and we said, well, if you guys are going to go chat, we're here in Ohio.

39:44You know, I'd come in from New York and the other attorneys had come from other parts of Ohio and we stayed for several hours. And I think it was prepared to stay there the whole night. I was, I had already extended my trip. And, you know, it interesting because it didn't, he didn't make a decision until sometime about a week later, but I never asked you what your impression was at that moment after we made a decision. I had experience not only with the assistant prosecutor that was involved in these cases, but with the Nancy Smith matter, but I can't indicate to you how important that was to my thinking.

40:26And doing 15 years of being a defense attorney, I know how easy it is for this stuff to happen. It happens. And so I was open to it. I was open to it. And so I think that, but I was free from the stress, at least for that part, and I was going to dedicate the rest of those two months to this issue. And he, I think realized that he told me this morning when we were talking, he said, I knew you weren't going away. Yeah, it's a nice. Do you think is it possible to have a third party system like you know you have your prosecutors you have defense attorneys Is it possible to also have an overview by an independent group before anything gets started or people can present their evidence So you can find out if something's totally bullshit Like what Joe it's supposed to be the grand jury system and you know what most people don't know this There's a judge in New York that has a very famous quote, which is you can indict a ham sandwich You can get a grand jury to believe anything because the standard is Much lower than it is to convict.

41:35It's that they have to be Convince what is it? It's a probable chance of success at trial. So two two issues Probably cause and a success or relatively, you know good chance of success at trial and who consists of the grand jury? who are the members? Nine citizens. Well, it's nine citizens in a high there are other jurisdictions both federal and state where there's more but what happens is and something that that people don't know is that the defense is not allowed to present anything the defense lawyer is not allowed to be there so it is quite literally this is not hyperbole it is quite literally a one -sided affair the number of cases that go before before grand juries and don't get indicted is so infinitesimal that it's probably less than 0 .001 percent.

42:30What I was asking about is an independent group of attorneys. Instead of having a grand jury system have a completely independent and then regulated. Make sure they're independent. No financial ties, no ties to anybody that's a part of any of it. And then make sure that those people, that their position is to review things and make sure there's no bias and there's no bullshit. Before you could actually say, yeah, let's try it out in court. Are you kind of seeing after the arrest, Joe? Yes. Yeah. It should be equal sides. Like the prosecution side should be able to divulge their evidence, the defense side, should be able to divulge their evidence.

43:11It should be independently reviewed by a group of completely outside attorneys that have no vested interest in the results of this whatsoever. It's an interesting idea. It's not a bad idea, because that would, you would, people would be less likely to try to commit fraud because then you would have to have some conspiratorial relationship with the people that are the independent attorneys. Now, there'd be another paper trail. It'd be a little sketchier. You wouldn't know if you could pull that off. That would be dangerous, especially if they're completely independent, you don't know them. right.

43:42So you you the way you could do it would you be you could you could find independent. First of all, think about the amount of money we spend in this country on shit that everybody agrees is terrible. If we could funnel some I don't even want to bring up whatever political costs just if we could funnel some of that money into preserving innocence make sure that people are never tried with a crime that they shouldn't be tried with. And it's not you have a bad defense attorney and they have an awesome prosecutor. It's all, is this a legitimate case? Right. And if you, if you started doing that, you would, there would be consequences for bringing up illegitimate cases.

44:26You would be investigated. You could potentially face charges. You've just stumbled into a, what is a wormhole? because you've brought up so many issues that are so mired in politics and statutes that in my mind make no sense, you would be you would be upending, you know, such a institution that it would cause a revolution and it's in fact not that revolutionary of an idea. It's not. And you know, if it were ever If there were ever possible, I would venture to say that these times make me feel like about anything as possible. Yeah, this would be the time that something like that could get pulled off.

45:16I think there's a problem and I think the problem is people are very competitive and they want to win. Everybody wants to win and it's important for your career if you win and when people play games they cheat. I see people cheat at pool. I see I see professionals cheat at pool. You know, I've seen people cheat at cards. I've seen people cheat at everything. People cheat. They want to win. It's a horrible byproduct of that instinct that we have to win when attached to a legal system that could lead innocent people to be prosecuted. I was listening to a podcast today about the founding of Jerusalem.

46:03And it was in one of the cases was a guy who was in trouble for something that he didn't commit. They knew he didn't commit it and then they kept him in jail and trumped up charges and charged him with something else. So it's like this is 1948 or 47 or whatever it was. So this shit's been going on probably thousands of years. People have been prosecuting people for things that they didn't do, knowing they didn't do it so they can win. I think cops do it sometimes. I've seen cops plant drugs. I've seen them video There's a ton of them online you could see cops plant guns You could see there's a one were a cop shot a guy and then pulls out a gun and throws it on the ground You could see the video of it.

46:41He didn't know he was being filmed it fucking happens It doesn't because people want to win they want to win They're playing a game and they're in a system and the system rewards success and And if you fucking fail or if you something falls apart and it looks bad, your career doesn't progress. Well, you know where you can start, which is an easier fix. If there's accountability, and I say easier fix because I don't wanna throw cold water on your idea, it's a fantastic idea, but it just seems like pushing, not a boulder uphill, like a mountain and moving it. Do you think that's bigger than Bobby Kennedy running the HHS?

47:19Yeah, I do. That's kind of, I'll tell you why. Because you would be it there's so many constitutional issues with the grand jury system and so forth But here's something that is not that difficult prosecutors have immunity There are no consequences So all of these cases where you hear people have been wrongfully convicted Prosecutors don't turn over evidence that would point to their innocence That's what JD was referring to when he said exculpatory. That just means that would tend to prove innocence rather than guilt. That's constitutionally required that prosecutors turn that over. But these prosecutors don't have any accountability.

48:03And you're going to see in a few minutes when we're going to get to it, what happened after JD made his decision? what happened between when we filed it and today is, if you don't have warm blood pumping through your veins, if this doesn't get you in some way. But yeah, I think, you know. I think there's an easier way to do it, Joe. Yeah. I think that you get county prosecutors that are extraordinarily powerful in their community. It's like, you know, I try to tell people vote local because you know, the President of the United States is gonna indict you, the guy that's sitting and the county prosecutors often will.

48:41And so, having experience as a defensive attorney for that long, it changes the way you think about prosecution. So I think that the easier thing is to require that a county prosecutor had some experience as a defense attorney, because you get to see it from that perspective and you never are the same, because you understand how these things happen. You see it. If you practice long enough, you will have a few minutes of clients, and I don't want to get down completely on the system because I think most of the time it works, most of the time. But when it doesn't work, it's awful. It's the worst thing on the face of the planet.

49:15I think that prosecutors, especially when, you know, they hide evidence which does occur, I think they think, well, he's guilty. I'll cheat a little bit so what? You know what I'm saying? But it happens. It's like that. Do you know that quote about capitalism? The capitalism is the absolute worst way to run a country except for all the other ways. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, but why is it great quote but when will when will this is the lesser of all the evils Finally start catching up with us and it's so yeah, you know, it's so politically driven if people were more aware of how Politically driven some of these prosecutions are and then you you put your finger on the nerve root of What the problem is from the standpoint of human psychology It's been happening since the beginning of time and will continue to happen until people suffer ego death.

50:09And suffering an ego death requires you to look yourself in the mirror in an honest way and to be able to say four magic words, I made a mistake. That's it. and what stands in the way in my mind of prosecutors just so often, not moving from their position, is because they can't say, I made a mistake or the office where I work, made a mistake, you're going to find that one of the judges that denied relief in this case of the Ohio 4 was a prosecutor in this office, his friends with the current prosecutor. One of the other judges that denied relief is the same judge that denied Al Cleveland post conviction relief when the six circuit court of appeals.

51:07The federal government says these guys, Al and it's likely innocent. And they just shove it aside, what gets in the way? What gets in the way is you touched on it. I wanna win. This is, I'm not gonna go against the former office. Whatever swirl of emotions, you know, whatever it is that just has people, you know what you get to that point in an argument, this happens, I always give the same example, because she's always right. You know, you get to a point in an argument where you're taking a real strong position and the other person, in this case, it's my wife, is always, you know, taking the opposite position and then you realize in the argument that you're wrong.

51:56And it's oftentimes it's like, you gave me, I gave you my keys to put in your purse. Where are they? No, you didn't give me your keys, you took them back since then. I'm not, no, no, no, I remember where I gave them to you. And, and then you remember in the middle of the argument, oh, yeah, that's right. She did give them back to me. Hmm. Which is, and, and what happens is at that moment, you have a choice to make. You could stop, right, which I've learned to do and say, you know what? I fucked up, you're right. In my experience, especially in a case like this, it's just like the, and that's not to pat myself on the back, there's plenty of times I dig in and I know I might be wrong, but you know, it's just the inability to say something bad might have happened here.

52:42Well, and it's protect the state at all times, at all costs. But wouldn't it be valuable for the people to know that the prosecuting attorneys are very ethical? Wouldn't that make you trust them more and want to support them more? Wouldn't that be good for everybody if they just said a mistake was made when a mistake was made? It maintains the integrity of it. I mean Joe let me say something might blow your mind at blue mine When I had exonerated Nancy Smith and Joseph Allen really was the highlight of my career Yeah, it was a 94 case, but she's interesting because it was happening simultaneously with the same assistant prosecutor as the one that Josh is referring to They were cute.

53:20She was a bus driver. She's kind she's now become family to me. So and their big fans Joe by the way But yeah, shout out. So, you know, there were 94, she was a bus driver for a place called Head Start for young kids. She was alleged to have driven these kids after picking them up from their homes back to another individual's house, a mail, and severely abused them sexually. Now the Broadway, which is the road where he allegedly lived off, lived off of, was a main thoroughfare through Lorraine. The allegations were so wild that, you know, If you can imagine seeing a school bus pull up on the main street, watch little kids go into a house.

53:58They were alleged to have been like punished by being tied up outside and trees, but it's just impossible. So this, this is the alleged abuse that occurred because what happened was someone coach the kids. Yes, that's, that's in fact, that's exactly what occurred. So one of the, the mother that eventually got paid, I think it was about 1 .5 million in, in 95 money, just decent amount of money. She had indicated that her daughter had been abused by Nancy, the bus driver. Now, when the investigation occurred, there was a detective on it that did a very thorough investigation and after months found out that, listen, this is, I don't even think a crime occurred, you know.

54:36He was very confused by the evidence. It wasn't clear. It was plain as data that he could even prove that these two individuals knew one another. And so he had indicated that basically, listen, I can't go forward on this. I have no evidence that it's true. Well, the public pressure I'm assuming was rising because the victim, the woman that had the child was becoming pretty public, she was organizing the other parents, was, as you well know, you can't get these parents together and start talking about the case because it just compromises so much. Now, to the police credit, they were trying to tell these individuals, you can't meet and talk about the case, but they did anyways.

55:13So then a bunch of erratic stories turned into one pretty substantial story that pretty much stayed all the way through is that she would drive a legend these kids to a house and they would take them down the basement and pretty much every child said that it was a basement that they went to. It turns out for example, Joseph Smith didn't have a basement. It was a slab home. I mean that's one fact out of a million facts that are true, that are so disturbing about the case. And so when I started to look at it, the funny part is during the first three or four months of me evaluating it, I had a couple investigators with me and we were reading only ex -culpatory information.

55:51Nancy didn't do it. We don't think a crime occurred and I was wondering when am I going to start finding the inculpatory information? When I'm going to start seeing the guilt and it just really never happened and so when I exonerated these these two individuals that were clearly innocent she had done 15 years, Joe. He had done 25. I was in court and my chief of staff and I had written something to kind of indicate to the court and I apologized to them for what it occurred to them. After the hearing, Mark Gottz, you have the Ohio Innocence Project came up to me, said, JD, I got to tell you something.

56:25You're the only prosecutor I've ever heard actually apologize to a defendant. Joe, imagine how remarkable that statement is. We took 40 years of your life combined, but we're not even going to apologize to you. Now, probably because they're assuming that it's going to protect the state's interests better, I'm a firm believer in that if the state suffers, then maybe it deserves a suffer and that's justice. This episode is brought to you by Amazon MGM Studios new movie, A Working Man in theaters March 28th. Jason Statham is back teaming up with the director of Suicide Squad and the be keeper for a brutal no BS action film a working man.

57:05Statham plays a former black ops soldier who's left that life behind, but when his boss's daughter, who's like family to him, is taken by human traffickers. His search to bring her home brings him no choice, but to do what he does best. Rec havoc on a world of corruption. Starring Jason Statham, David Harbour, and Michael Peña, this powerhouse cast delivers the relentless action that has to be experienced on the big screen. A working man only in theaters March 28th rated R. Check out a working man movie dot com to learn more. This episode is brought to you by Hulu ladies and gentlemen legendary comedy icon and good friend of mine Bill Burr on Hulu with his new Hulu area stand up special Bill Burr Drop dead years.

57:55Bill is one of the absolute best -to -end up comics alive. He's a brilliant guy and Always excited for his specials. I'm fucking pumped for this. He's one of the people that I mean I'll go out of my way to go see like when he was in town in Austin. I went out of my way I was like I want to see what he's doing and it was genius He's one of the best ever and he's the he's a grad. I just love him as a human being too is I can tell you all the other stuff they want me to say, but I know it's going to be fantastic. It's his most personal and his funniest hour yet. See the new Hoolerius stand -up special, Bill Burr, drop dead years streaming on Hulu March 14th.

58:37No, it's funny. A lot of cases where I ask where I have the, I represent a client in a civil rights case for wrongful conviction. I sometimes give the law enforcement official during the deposition in the civil case. I say, you know, I did it recently for Clemente Aguirre, who was exonerated from Florida's death row. I gave the, you know, the crime scene technician and the fingerprint analyst, all of who played a part in his wrongful conviction. I said, Mr. Aguirre's here, would you like to apologize to him? No, sorry, I will not. So he he exonerates the one to Smith and Joseph Allen Joseph Allen and all of these folks That prosecuted Nancy Smith and Joseph Allen law enforcement The prosecutors They all turn on him.

59:30I had no idea about any because you apologize or because you exonerated No, it was because I yeah, I mean it was that I mean the the assistant prosecutor rose in bomb that you're that you're referring to with these cases, he was the assistant prosecutor. He was heavily tied in with that office because he had been the chief prosecutor for a very long time under an individual by the name of Greg White, who was the Lorraine County prosecutor at the time. Now, Greg White doesn't get mentioned, you probably never even heard his name. Now that's interesting, he was the county prosecutor during that time.

59:59He seems to have escaped criticism. I think part of the reason is he's smart enough to be quiet. So when these cases come out in public, he doesn't say very much. But the truth of the matter is the buck stops at the office holder. So just so just so we're clear this prosecutor Rosenbaum prosecuted Nancy Smith and Joseph Allen And I believe you prosecuted all four yes, Ohio four yes, he did and so when I reviewed two cases Joe two cases from this assistant prosecutor I found that six people were wrongly convicted and did about 162 years in prison. That's two cases Joe The question is how many more are there out there?

1:00:39Two cases. It's extraordinary. It's terrifying. Two cases. And those are the only two I review. Now that doesn't mean most of them are probably good. That's the way the statistics are. But I think it was pretty scary. The thought of me going through all those cases and I think they knew that I was open to that type of stuff. Oh, God. And so I think that created these enemies that I never thought they would go as far as they do. I just never, you know, maybe it's not even a tie. But I was just I never assumed that they would go that far, but they they did so I after I presented to JD he he had a cart This is like a popular thing with prosecutors.

1:01:20They they wheel in a cart of evidence You know, it's like a shopping cart looks like without the full of files. Yeah, and it's full of files and And he had read a lot of it in years prior, and he said he wanted to re -familiarize himself with more. So I think we both canceled our Thanksgiving plans and got until a lot of... I was annoyed because when I left Ohio, it was so obvious to me that these men were innocent and that there was a terrible mistake made in a federal court never goes out of their way to say something like this. I have the opinion here and I showed this to JD and his chief of staff and it says this is the way it concludes.

1:02:24It goes through the things that the juries in the case heard that were bad about Avery, that he was a liar, he was a liar. But it didn't have, you know, all these prosecutors that are trying to protect convictions and And the man that's the county prosecutor now, in his motion to withdraw JD's decision to grant these men a new trial and then dismiss the case. We're going to get to this in a minute. This is what ended up happening. He says, well, these cases have gone through the courts for 30 years. That could be said about every single human that has ever been exonerated in this country. The court's the weakest argument.

1:03:04It's the weakest argument. What's the evidence that they did it? And here's one court that says had the jury also been able to consider Avery's unsolicited 2004 recantation. That's when he went into the FBI. The 2006 recanting affidavit, that's the one that Al Cleveland had in his post -conviction filings, evidence that Cleveland was in New York a couple of hours before Blakely's murder and could not have flown from New York to Ohio in time to commit the murder, along with the fact that there was no other evidence tying Cleveland to the crime. Now they're quoting a case in this opinion. It surely cannot be said that a juror conscientiously following the judges' instructions requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt would vote to convict.

1:04:02We find that Cleveland has presented a credible claim of actual innocence. So that is such a rare thing for a federal court to say those things. That's the federal court telling the lower courts in Lorraine County you have to give Al Cleveland a hearing. It's at that hearing where the judge advises Avery Jr. you know, you're basically gonna get charged with perjury. So I make the presentation to JD and he spends roughly the next five days. You know, at some point we were joking to each other and there was a lot of arguing because he wanted to go out to the apartment where the alleged beating took place and he did and he was reading lines of transcript from four different trials, and he'd say, well, what about this?

1:04:58What about that? And I just said, you know what? I'm going to cancel my Thanksgiving. He canceled his. And I was just there to answer any question he had. And there weren't really many questions of substance. And I started to realize the second or third day that he's looking for something to say they're guilty. He's looking for some evidence and every around every corner he looked. He would say things to me like, what is going on here? Why in the world would this happen? And how is it so obvious? You know, I'd be curious as to what your thought process was before you finally told about it. I couldn't believe they were ultimately convicted.

1:05:41I couldn't believe that there were four trials where people believed Avery. You know, I never told you this story, Josh, but I knew one of the lawyers for one of the defendants but I won't mention names. And I heard from a good source that would hang around with him in the office on Saturday that almost like, almost every Saturday one of the defendants would call him. And after the phone call he would cry because he would say that man does not deserve to be there and I screwed it up. And so when I heard that it made sense to me because in Josh's right up was looking for some reason why I was making the wrong decision.

1:06:15You know it's a big decision to decide to maybe try to free four people from prison. I wanted to be sure, I wanted to get there. You have to. You have to. And I understand, I appreciate it, Josh, just to ask because that's what good defense attorneys do. But I had to get there myself. And so I had to, I wanted to take my parents to Mexico City. It's called my mindset. We're not going to Mexico City. It's not happened. So we just stayed. But it was almost therapeutic for me because I had been so much stress on my own case. It was nice to divert attention away from me and try to think about something else.

1:06:47So I really immersed myself in it. I went to crime scene, which I always believe the defense attorneys should go. To every case I had, I went to the crime scene. I learned something that I didn't know. But I eventually got there and it was extraordinary, though not only was this case just on this individual Avery Jr.'s testimony, he might have been the worst witness I've ever seen in my life. I mean, so not only was there no physical evidence that linked these men to it, the only witness that was present was perhaps the worst I'd ever seen. And you know what the federal court is saying is that, yeah, they could damage his credibility of trial, but they didn't know obviously, because he does it later that he made the whole thing up.

1:07:28And they didn't know that he's admittedly made the whole thing up. And importantly, who walks in, unsolicited, to the FBI and says, here's what I did. And I want to clear my conscience and I want to tell you what I did. W .A. hell of a double cross. Yeah, and it's a crime to lie. And I knew I started to feel like, oh, okay, we're about to get hometown, small town, something bad is happening here because this should have been a moment to here we are where myself, my co -council, were about to change the trajectory, not just these four men's lives, but of their families that have lived under the crushing weight of these wrongful convictions for three decades.

1:08:20My client, John Edwards, and Al Cleveland and the other two as well, Lenworth and Benson, and you know, John is in, Al is out, but Al is suffering. You know, the most horrific psychological damage you can imagine. And John calls me from prison all the time. JD tells us that he is going to file a joint motion, joint meaning between defense counsel and the prosecutor to grant these men a new trial. That's the procedural mechanism based on new evidence. based on new evidence, which is the 2004 recantation. Which they never had the benefit of taking the trial. That evidence was never seen. And then the 2006 affidavit, and that once the new trial was granted, he would dismiss the case.

1:09:10So that all gets filed in front of one judge because it really should have been a matter of procedure. In all my years of doing this, 25 years, 24 years, have never seen a judge do anything other than have the hearing and respect what the prosecutor has filed for and asked for especially when it's joined by the defense. So all of a sudden the judge that this has filed before is silent. Now the clock is ticking because now we have the whole month of December and after January 6th he's out of office and right away within a few days of us filing this joint motion. There's a newspaper article that comes out, what's your local paper again?

1:10:00The Chronicle Telegram. Telegram or Telegram. The Chronicle Telegram and it has the person that just defeated him in the election, his name is Tony Sillo. It has comments from him and from this prosecutor Rosenberg saying that I don't understand what the rush is.

1:10:22I I take office, I tone, he still will take office and I want to review this. And I thought that that was really interesting because he's someone that worked in that office. He's someone that actually played a role in some of the investigation that I believe should have taken place.

1:10:49when he was a prosecutor in that office and he did not have the benefit of the thorough investigation that JD had done and he's a private citizen until he takes office. So I found that to be interesting. And all of a sudden a brief gets filed from the attorney general of Ohio saying, whoa, it's a brief that gets filed to the court where we filed this joint motion for a new trial. And the attorney general gets involved. You don't have to look far to see other attorney generals getting involved in criminal cases, right? That's happened on a national stage, happened in New York. And he basically is taking the position that this man, this should all wait until Tony Cillo takes office and I thought what this is weird what then I come to find out the Tony Cillo used to work at the attorney general's office.

1:11:44So I started to have hope when the judge, one of the judges in the case, because I won't bore you with the details, but the cases get sent out to different judges that were assigned to each man's case. And what the judge says is the AG's motion, this is a quote, this is from an order from the honorable Chris Cook. The AG and this is dated December 23rd. The AG's motion is not to advocate for either party to this litigation, which in most situations is the sole purpose of filing an amicus brief. but instead to ask this court to delay ruling on the pending motions until such time as the newly elected Lorraine County prosecutor is in office and the victims can be notified.

1:12:40Neither of these purported reasons to opine on this litigation are persuasive or necessary to aid the court. First, the AG argues that the current prosecutor will be leaving office shortly, referring to JD, within the next two weeks, in fact, in any ruling should be delayed in order to allow the incoming prosecutor to evaluate the matter and weigh in on the issues. But this reason is hardly compelling. After all, all elected officials eventually leave office and to suggest that simply because a newly elected prosecutor is taking over, a pending matter should be delayed for the incoming official to review is on wieldy, inconvenient invites delay and not how the system operates.

1:13:26More over why should rulings or evaluation of this case be singled out and subject to delay in favor of the new administration but not the other 150 pending criminal cases on this court stock it. At the end of the day the concept that a court or any government entity for that matter should come to a grinding halt because a newly elected official will be taking over is not how government should or does work. Shout out to that guy. Yeah. Put that thought on hold because three days later, three days later, now this is curious. What changes in three days? Well, I don't know if it happened during these three days, but this is the prosecutor.

1:14:10I mean, this is the judge that swears in the new prosecuting attorney. Three days later, there is another order filed by the same judge. And because we had moved for an emergency hearing, because in our mind, this incoming prosecutor Opines on the case in the paper had worked at that prosecutor's office and obviously had some feeling about the case. And if he had taken such an interest in talking to the press, we were concerned and filed an emergency motion not to let these men suffer any longer. So the same judge that you just said shout out, which was exactly my sentiment, issues another order, you could not get a more stark 180 degree turn than this.

1:15:14I'm going to quote from that order.

1:15:21How can it be possibly an emergency that a hearing and potential ruling be accomplished in a matter of weeks for a case and cases that have been pending for almost three decades, not to mention four years on the current prosecutors' watch, moreover no rational person will conclude that a change in county prosecutor constitutes an emergency. And in convenience to the movements arguably, a delay in rulings no doubt, but an emergency I don't think so. In addition to the lack of emergency, two additional but troubling issues are apparent by this motion. This is three days later. First, the movements go to great pains to paint the incoming prosecutor is incapable of fairly and rationally evaluating the defendant's claims of innocence and request for new trial to pause there because this man had sat and listened to and dove through and tore through this entire trial record.

1:16:24So yeah, we had concerns that we would face further delay. It already agreed. We filed this is often times right away the court will call hearing and Grant the relief so the judge goes on to say this effort is unfounded Contra the movements reliance on a newspaper article. That's the one I was talking about the same article quotes prosecutor or Alex Silo was saying he would review the matter anew, just like prosecutor Tomlinson did. And it goes on to say, second, even more troubling is the movement's assertion that Tomlinson's successor has no authority to review agreements made by Tomlinson. I've never seen this in an opinion before.

1:17:11Oh, really? With a question mark, the movement's right that Mr. Thomson's successor as an obligation to honor the Good Faith decisions made by the prior administration, JD, and it then goes on to use the Head Start case, the Nancy Smith case, and Joe Allen, where he granted these people, he exonerated these people, he then goes on to throw it in their face in my opinion, he says, recall the head start case and he goes through, make personalizing this and saying that because JD Tomlinson exonerated these people there, thereby undoing a prior administration's prosecution, that why should the same not apply to you?

1:18:01So in other words, three days before he says why should justice wait three days later he says What wait a second This should wait and it should wait and by the way Here's one to poke this man in the eye because he exonerated people you're undermining the decision of a prior Administration so he's using his granting of innocence in my opinion to now go back on what he said three days earlier, which is why should this wait? What happened in these three days? I don't know. But I can tell you that you've taken position A and then you've taken position Z. So what happens is on these judges, one of the judges, the one that denied Al Cleveland post -conviction relief that said to Avery Jr., you know, there are potential consequences here, he denies This is the joint motion for a new trial for Al Cleveland.

1:19:04Based on nothing, he doesn't call a hearing. This isn't December. He says, I'm denying it. He then, this man's silo takes office. All the other judges deny it, by the way, or delay it. The other judges punt until the new prosecutor comes to office. And you don't think this is personal? this man's second day in office. Tony Sillo takes office, his first order of business is to withdraw the joint motion on behalf of the state. So he undoes everything that we did. Because he worked at that office because he's friends with these guys I don't know, but I'd like to know. And to make these men suffer is truly at this point, it's really, really difficult to understand.

1:20:04The craziest part about these is that this judge cook in that first opinion, he said the AG, sites as one of the reasons why this should be delayed is that the victims have to be notified. He notified the victims and the judge said calls them on it here. So this is like, it's fascinating. Well, you know, I must have a caveat because I do love and respect Chris Cook. I really do. He's been there for me a lot in my career. Where I disagree with his opinion is the idea that I didn't have any experience with the idea that maybe Tony Sillo couldn't be objective. And I think where I diverge from Judge Cook is that I had a very real experience on why Tony Sillow couldn't be objective when I was involved in the Nancy Smith case.

1:20:53He was involved in that case in the later stages of it. And in my humble opinion, Joe, anybody that looks at that case and doesn't do the right thing is just, it's scary. It's scary. So I did have an experience and I know that the relationship that he shares with Attorney Rosenbaum, who was the assistant of the prosecutor, then I know that it was a mentor or protege type relationship. And so the idea that he's gonna be objective in undoing such a major case for someone that's arguably his mentor is almost impossible to conceive. And so I knew that I had to be quick about it, because if I wasn't quick about it, I don't think it would ever be done, and I still don't think it'll ever get done.

1:21:32Well, I refuse to think it won't get done. It's interesting to me that I had spoken to Mr. Sillo when he took office. And his first, my conversation with him wasn't about all the reasons they're innocent. He said, you know, there's this phone call between Al Cleveland and his dad where they're talking about giving every money and I said, what are you talking about? And I went and read the transcript. It's about them giving him money in 2006 for his expenses to put him in a hotel room so he could feel safe with a court reporter and to do the affidavit. And I felt like saying, you know, so let me get this straight.

1:22:19You your office pays this man reward money. He then tries to extort your office for more money in exchange for testimony. He has gone into the FBI before this affidavit was ever a thing. He went into the FBI and admitted he made the whole thing up and you want to talk about a conversation between Al Cleveland and his father when they're talking about whether or not they could reaper some for expenses if they have to fly them to Florida or get them to a place where he feels safe because he felt like if he told the truth again that there would be consequences for him because he was going against his father, he'd be labeled a snitch in the community.

1:22:57And I then emailed him and asked him for a meeting. And I didn't hear back. I heard back finally last week for the first time that we have a meeting with him on March 18th and I found that curious timing and I said to JD this morning did you tell anyone you were coming on the show He'll do and he looked at me and it's a small town a word travels fast so I have my suspicions But I would make Tony silo the following offer two things if you have any evidence that these men actually did this? Any whatsoever. With your blessing, Joe, I'd offer him a seat right next to me to show the world what the evidence is.

1:23:46You tell me what the evidence is. Come on on. And how about this? Rather than do this behind closed doors on the 18th, how about let's open it to the public? I just argued there are sentence commutation before Governor DeSantis. us. Last week, it was a public hearing. I had been told, just as I heard from JD, it just gives me fuel. I don't think it'll happen. I was told that he is never publicly listened to a sentence commutation ever. And you know what? It happened. And he listened and he's considering the case. And I feel like if we talk with each other and not at each other, we can get to the right place.

1:24:28And I'm not this, I want to be really clear. I have deep respect for what prosecutors do. I've deep respect for Tony Sillo's commitment to public service. I don't know the man. I don't know him personally. I don't know anything about him. But I do find, I find it really difficult to understand why he took such an interest in this case, such that he blocked justice from happening. And with Drew the state's position, how about hear us out and meet with us before you withdraw the joint motion to dismiss? How about that? How about you hear the evidence before making it the first like official act or among the first official acts?

1:25:18It was just, so I'm not optimistic going in, but I can tell you this, I have found something as recent as yesterday, where alternative suspects were brought to the attention of the Lorraine County prosecutor. And wouldn't you know that the person assigned to investigate these alternative suspects and to liais with the police department was one Tony Sillo? I saw that document for the first time yesterday. So what do you think that could mean? I don't know what it means. I'd like I have a lot of questions Do you what did you do to investigate these men? One of their one of their ex wives Says that he was cleaning bloody clothes The night of the martial Blakely murder and he knew her I don't know what it means, but I'd like to know I have questions.

1:26:13You know, what is it truth crush to earth There's truth across the ursale rise again. It always, the truth comes out at some point. And I am, I am singularly focused on finding out as much truth as I can about this case. And I just won't let up until I find it. Something's wrong and I want to figure out what it is. But these men are suffering. They should have been out in December and to continuously Needlessly delay the process hard to imagine you know Joe I think we're also getting in this dangerous territory We're not I mean the idea that you could have approved them guilty with this evidence objectively is impossible Now we're getting in this dangerous territory where we're having to prove their innocence and I and I and that's a That's a significant because that is not the standard and so when the case is that bad that you have to then just continue to try to find out ways to prove these guys innocent which is it's difficult.

1:27:14Now I was talking about my father. I said I can't prove you didn't kill Marsha Blakely on August 8th 1991. I can't prove that. So we're in this dangerous territory now where we're trying to actually just argue actual innocence and the standard is proof beyond the reasonable doubt. It's not even close. It's not even close. You know and where do I scary? Yeah and now all I want to do is what I want to do is do what I did with JD is to say, you know, how many times in your life do you have a chance to say, you know, something was really wrong. And I help make it right. And Tony Silo has that chance.

1:27:54I mean, how many moments are there when you have the ability to impact other human beings in a way to to set them literally free and to end the most unfathomable of nightmares. And he has that chance. I'm trying to appeal to, you know, I don't want there to be some nefarious conclusion drawn from maybe he did investigate alternative suspects. Maybe there is an explanation for it. One thing I know for sure is that no one has been able to show me any physical evidence, any eyewitness account. And actually we had been able to prove their innocence. What constellation of fate would come together so that you could show to a factual certainty that Al Cleveland was not in Ohio on the night these killings took place.

1:28:51He meets with his probation officer and he's seen by multiple people. And, you know, what more do you need? That's standing alone. You know, and then you factor in every saying, I made it all up. And you factor in the fact that the story he tells is belied by the physical evidence. It is so easy to put people behind those bars and it is a It takes almost a miracle to fight their way out. So am I hoping for a miracle here? I hope not. I hope that these Individuals that are presiding over this put whatever it is aside that is causing them to hang on and say you know What we just got this one wrong?

1:29:43We can't stand by this and think about this also the only person to ever place themselves at the murder scene is Avery Jr. He's the only one, and he's the only one that wasn't charged. It's fascinating. He admitted basically to being complicit. Fair enough. I mean, you're at the murder, it's happening. You're there, you're the only one that has been charged. In fact, I think maybe one of the facts you left out, Josh, is in 2004. He implicated his own father, Avery Sr., who went to the police originally. He said, I think he killed her. I think he killed her and told me to tell that story to cover up not only his guilt and killing, that he did no martial likely.

1:30:19There was some reports that they had a contentious relationship. So, it's very likely that the two individuals that implicated these individuals may have been involved with the crime. It's fascinating. And I've just never seen cases like this before. Like I said, I can't stress it enough. If I took this case to a bunch of fifth graders, they would be objectively able to see that there's a crazy bad case. I mean, it's not even close. And for the retort to be, well, four juries saw it another way and court saw it another way. That's not true. These juries did not see that this man said, I made it all up.

1:30:54And it always leads to this place like, what do we do?

1:31:04If you're a citizen of Lorraine County, you wanna feel that this couldn't happen to you. Regardless of what your background is, I would think that the citizens of Lorraine County would at some point demand action here. These men are not expendable. Whether you disagree with, look, I'll be the first one to say it. On behalf of my client, on behalf of Al Cleveland and the others, they're not proud of the fact that they were dealing drugs back then. They're not proud of the life they were living. That's not a reason to pin a murder on them. Absolutely. And you know, the reality is, if you grew up where they grew up and you lived their life, you'd probably sell drugs too.

1:31:59100%. That's reality. Nobody likes that. 100%. Everybody's got that. Pull them up by their boots, trap shit in their head. That's not real. That's not real. You grow up in crime. You commit crime. 100%. It's not 100 % that if you grow up in crime, you can make crime. Some people get out. Some people realize the folly of other people's ways and they have incredible strength and resolve and discipline. We get extraordinary people from those circumstances, whether it's in athletics or art or music, comedy. There's a lot of people that grew up in horrific circumstances. They became very extraordinary because of that pressure.

1:32:32But that's not normal. The normal thing is everybody gets beaten down by what's around you. You imitate your atmosphere. You're a part of a system that seems inescapable to all your family, to all your friends, people getting locked up, getting out, they're getting murdered, they're selling drugs. That's your reality. And if you grew up in fucking Connecticut and you go to private school and you're sitting here talking shit about this, like you, you're so fucking lucky. You don't know how lucky you are. If you're a person that's never committed crimes, never gone to jail, never done anything horrible, you are so lucky.

1:33:08You're so lucky. You're so lucky you didn't have to shoot somebody who was stealing money from you because you were both involved in some crime together and he was gonna kill you. And I'll send you in jail and you're like, what the fuck have I done? That's what there's people out there doing that. There's people out there that are committing crimes wishing they didn't have to commit them. Wishing they had some sort of pathway to life or some life skills or some education or counseling or mentorship or something that have given them a path to get out of there and be what everybody wants to be. A normal, healthy person who's enjoying their life, enjoying their family, enjoying their friends, and hopefully you get to make a living doing something you like doing too.

1:33:46That's what everybody fucking wants. Just everybody doesn't grow up in the right circumstances. Some people just get a shit roll of the dice. One. Right out of the gate, pop out of the vagina, and right into chaos. That's like Chris Rackett that joke, you know kind of depends on what vagina you fall out of Right, I mean I got lucky. I mean my parents. I didn't come for money. Job my parents are still together They cared about what I was doing. Did you get your homework done? Did you get your homework done? You know, I mean and I remember having these clients had really taught me a lot where it's like they never even had a shot So they didn't have a shot.

1:34:17I mean so many these people there's just growing up abused physically mentally They're seeing drug addiction in the household. It's just You know, it's not the same for everybody. So yeah, it sucks that they were selling drugs. It sucks that anybody sells drugs. It sucks that people die of overdose. It sucks that people get addicted. All that sucks, but that's not murder. You know what these people do? And you can't charge people for shit they didn't do. You know, and I do, I've been called a lot of things. One of them that I take exception to is being called a race bitter. I find that really problematic, you know, trolls on the internet.

1:34:54I know. I don't do it. One of the things that people should read, if you want to better understand what it's like to grow up a minority in this country or black in America, again, four black men in a very white community that were from out of town and drug dealers. So read cast by Isabel Wilkerson and you know before you go judging what is going on in terms of your perception that people should pull theirself up by their bootstraps you try being born into a cast system. O -C -A -S -T -E. O -C -A -S -T. And we are a country, and I'm not on my soapbox. This is a fact. And if you can dispute anything in Isabelle Wilkerson's book, this is a caste system that exists in America since its inception.

1:35:53And the experience of a black American in this country is different than that of a white American. So I think that these wrongful convictions happen disproportionately to people of color for a reason. And we have to start changing minds and we have to start getting people to come back to, I don't know what's more innate. Is it innate to be to find the humanity within ourselves or is it more innate to tear each other down? We all have that decision to make. I don't know what it is about human beings. There's some sort of ostensibly, there's like some satisfaction in the tearing down of another.

1:36:37I know where that comes from. It comes from a weakness within you. It comes from a hole that you're trying to fill. What we should want is uplifting these people that have been born into circumstances that are just different. I come from a middle middle class family, you know, sometimes trending toward the lower end. My dad had a knock around guy from Brooklyn. My mom was a school teacher and I think that going through some of those struggles set me up for success and to learn how to scrape a little bit. But I didn't have the experience of someone that was born in Watts or Bevverstuyverson or Harlem.

1:37:20I just didn't. And, you know, I'm a little less quick to judge that, you know, if more people had your sentiment, Joe, right, that sometimes it's a little bit deeper than you think. That's the why someone resorts the committing a crime. It's almost always deeper than you think. I mean, I'm not a full believer in determinism because I think will is real. I think free will, there's just an element of will. And that's one of the reasons why we seek inspiration from others, right? We see inspiration is fuel for will, you know, whether it's reading or just watching how people live their lives by example.

1:38:01That's that fuels people to make better decisions. Is that a part of determinism? If it is, maybe I do believe in it. But I think that there's there's a certain aspect of will. But you can't deny circumstances. You can't deny environmental influences. You can't deny poverty. You can't deny growing up abused. You can't deny those things. We have a real problem in this country is that we only treat the side effects. We only treat the symptoms of this greater problem, the symptoms of the crime, the side effect, that they're a side effect of poverty and of horrible environments and that never get fixed and that probably a lot of them are there because of red line loss and because of Jim Crow laws.

1:38:43all of it started out in the 1950s and 60s when they started making these places where you literally couldn't sell to black people. I mean, there's tracks of Baltimore that were like sectioned off. You could not sell these areas to black people. You would love this book. I mean, the cast by Isabel Wilkerson, I feel like a paid spokesperson for it, but she talks about how, you know, there's very real consequences from the practical implications of what Jim Crow laws did to fragment our society. And it's not as if this went on a thousand years ago. Right. It would take hundreds of years to mellow out.

1:39:27You know, this is like you're talking about the civil rights movement. You can watch videos on YouTube and then sicken dogs on protesters. You can watch that. It's from the 1960s. You can see all that. You know, it's my childhood. That's when I was a baby. That was going on. Okay. You know here I am an adult and there's people alive that experienced that went through it and then their children went through it because they carried that trauma And you know resources so important when it comes to defending yourself too. I mean I remember when I was a kid I watched the OJ trial and What eight million dollars can do is pretty extraordinary You know you can have juries that are simultaneously going on your testing theories out while the cow trials going and You know a lot of these guys get charged with crimes that kind of get usher through the system you know sometimes they'll get a good appointing attorney sometimes they won't.

1:40:13That one to me seemed like that was going to go that way anyway because of Rodney King. I don't think that had anything to do with being a good jury system or whether or not the prosecutors were in as good as the defense attorneys. I think that was just horsh. Kind of a foregone conclusion. Yeah, the way he's trying on the glove or the fuck out of here. You guys were going to just slip it on. It was a circus but it was also a wake up call to people that just because someone's guilty doesn't mean they get convicted. That you can see it that way too. I remember watching that case, watching how they did it live on television, the verdict.

1:40:49And I remember being in my apartment going, this girl was dating the time she started crying. She couldn't believe it. I remember where I was when that verdict was read out of shocking oysters at Barnacle Bill's on Northman Row when I was a student at Florida State. And I remember feeling like something really awful had just happened, but I understood it because of Rodney King, and I understood it not just because of Rodney King, because of what had happened to the community in Los Angeles that for decades had been abused by police. Now, whether or not one wrong gets another and whether that's rough justice.

1:41:34You know, I don't even feel like I'm in a position to say, I don't think that there's ever been a more guilty person put on trial than OG Simpson. Pretty fucking guilty. I mean, you have the victim's blood in your car, in your house. I mean, there's some of you gave me a copy of that book that you wrote if I did it. And my wife threw it out. Did you get to read it? No, I never was going to read it. It's one of those books I was just going to put on the shelf. I just watched the new book is that I just You know the certain book so why you have somebody in your office you go look somebody gave me this book I'm not really so it's so difficult because you know one one thing that always stuck with me about that case is the And I won't mention them by name the moral high ground that some of the lawyers involved have taken You know on various social and criminal justice reform issues and always in the back of my mind I'd be like you fucking defended OJ Simpson.

1:42:28What are you talking about? That's number one. And the second part of it is The human cost behind that tragedy also I have these seared images into my brain of that Goldman family the sister and the father yeah where they were very outward with their Torment and I recently watched the I'm a sucker for it. I guess I'm admitting it for the true crime genre, but I watch the latest documentary There's a new one on Netflix. There's always a new one on or J and OJ And it's very well done and it's like 30 years later and I know that there have been a few this one is excellent and You know Kim Goldman is still this ruined her life and you know on the flip side you have have these, you know, when there's a wrongful conviction, that was in my mind, a tragedy going the other way, but when there's a wrongful conviction, it's not just the people that are in there doing all the suffering.

1:43:35It's their families, it's their kids, you know, there is, it has a ripple effect where there is a community of people fighting for them, and And I just wish I had some sort of magical power to pull these prosecutors into what that emotional tumultus like. I was grateful that I had, you know, JD was able to let his guard down. And I don't know but for his experience being wrongfully accused of something. And you know, that he would have had the openness to hearing it. And you know, the way that he was charged with a crime without a grand jury. And I don't think that there's a person among us that if in your worst moments, if someone was recording you, and you're saying things you wish you didn't say to a significant other, that's what he did.

1:44:30That's the crime. I mean, hey, I'll tell on myself, there are things that I've done that if someone was recording it or things that I've said that I wish I didn't do or say, that you know but for the grace of God go there I fucked it up. But you know I mean I anyone in their private moments you know and then to just use that to weaponize and undermine you know to me is he a perfect man no he's not a perfect man. My friend doesn't exist. Am I saying it because he He ended up agreeing with me. No, he's a human that errors just like all of us. And I think we need more prosecutors, more judges like this man that have been on both sides of it and are willing to set their egos aside, willing to suffer whatever consequences come from it.

1:45:27You know, he told me at one point, when he was nervous about doing this, these people ruined my life because I exonerated two people. So they've been after me ever since and the fact that that sort of one upsmanship and that competitiveness that you referred to earlier, it's just sad to me that we can't get over ourselves enough. What bothers me so much is that I gave them that opening. I gave them that opening and somebody was hurt that I cared about very much and used and exploited and it's not like they're calling her today going, Hey, how are you doing? Are you doing okay? I mean it was simply, you You know, political, it was just political in its entirety.

1:46:09And I feel like I had a lot more years, Joe, to kind of look at these kind of cases because I was open to it. And you know, when I mentioned that those are just the only two I reviewed, how many more are there? And I'll never see them. And it was because of my stake I made. And you think you're gonna run again? You know, I really loved, I really loved the experience of politics. I was a door to door guy, Joe. I didn't have any money in the beginning because nobody gives you money when you first start. And so I just went door to door like eight, nine hours a day. My dad would take me, my dad's 75 now, but he was 70 and he would take me.

1:46:43You're a big fucker, I wouldn't let you in my house. I believe this guy's gonna rob me. Brother, you'd be surprised. You'd be surprised, dude. We would just let you right in. You know what? I got you dangerous. I got really good at reading somebody when they came to the door. How quickly I could be, how much time I could take. My goal was to get you to smile, be happy that I showed up and then leave before you asked me to leave. And I really enjoyed doing this. I really, I thought it was gonna be, the rest of my career was gonna be politics. And so I'm at this kind of interesting crossroads where I don't really know what I'm gonna do next.

1:47:13Well, hopefully this conversation will help you in that regard. Yeah, maybe. You know, I'm sure it will. And I'm hoping that all this stuff that you reveal will cause people, and let's be as charitable as charitable about this as possible. Just review things and maybe take the correct approach. I hope it does. because it seems like if you expose something to this extent that you have today, it seems like something has to be done. You can't just allow this to go on. There's too much we know now. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I don't want Egos to get in the way. Well, I also think that, you know, if there's more lurking beneath, it's going to get found out at some point.

1:47:56You know, we file the public records request with the AG's office so that we could see what communications occurred between if any, between the incoming prosecutor's silo and Yos to the AG of Ohio, we're entitled to that. And you know, at the time this decision came out, the first decision from Judge Cook, the we filed a public records request with him and he sent it to us and it turned out that well, I don't know if it was before or after this decision, but this guy, Rosenbaum was the one I believed that made the request or that sent an email to Judge Cookseng. You were at the Lorraine County Prosecutor's office in the past.

1:48:41Maybe you shouldn't be sitting in judgment of this. So there are communications that must exist, I would think, between the AG and the prosecutor. But yeah, all this will come to light and we have, we're not going anywhere. We're going to keep on pushing until, and the easy thing to do is just, all we're asking is look at the objective facts. That's why I wanna do it. I think what would help, you know, in terms of reform is what's the downside of hearing this out publicly? Let me make my presentation to you and make it a public hearing. What, what, what, is there, what's the downside of the community knowing what evidence exists against these four men?

1:49:26or the lack of evidence. And I just hope we end up connecting with them on some sort of human level so that they can put whatever it is aside that is causing them to have this pushback. And you know, these, I used to be way harder on myself about making a change happen and you know this because you've watched my evolution in that regard. And I just realized we just gotta keep, you know, building the sand castle one grain at a time. And when you, again, set up before I'll say it again, when you walk hand in hand with another individual and helping restore their freedom, I don't care, there's nothing like it.

1:50:11Yeah, there's no drug, there's no material, but there's just nothing that can match that feeling of playing a role in that and helping them just live out their days breathing free air. You know what I find most interesting and Nancy exonerates this is like the lack of bitterness is pretty amazing in some of these exonaries. You know, you're dealing with somebody that did 15 years for crime, not only that they she didn't commit, but that no crime occurred and she's still not bitter. And they still fight her at every moment. She right now she's battling, you know, there's a statutory remedy for getting paid when you're an innocent individual and you're jail.

1:50:47But you have a relatively high standard of proving you're innocent to get the money. There's nobody in a better position to prove their innocent, the Nancy Smith and Joseph Allen, and they still fight them to the nail every day. I mean, after the case of Exonerator, I tried my hardest to forego the interest of the state, and I actually stipulated an emotion that they were innocent, which is very unusual, because obviously that's acknowledging that the state screwed up pretty big, and because my goal was to get her paid. I mean, you know, I got criticized, you know, from some people that basically, you know, that shouldn't be my role, but my role is, you know, if hurting the state represents justice, then that's what happens.

1:51:26And sometimes it's costly. You put someone in prison for 15 years because you were reckless in the way you did it, then they should deserve compensation. And she was at the peak of her earning years, you know. She was a middle class woman, but she was at the peak of her life. And, you know, I think what I really want to get out today is Amber is her daughter, and she's got several children. and they've become like family to me. And Amber wanted to make sure that I told you how big of a fan she was, Joe. Shout out to Amber. Shout out to Amber. She's gonna love that. But the truth of the matter is I got to know them.

1:51:55And I got to know the fact that like their story is the untold story. Imagine have your mom leave you. And then for the worst allegations that you could possibly have as child molestation. And so every day they had to fight in school, every day. And the older brother had to take care of the family. in the fact that she's still fighting to get paid 50 -something thousand a year for the time that she was in. That's what the statutory remedy is and they're still fighting in every minute. Eventually I had to get off. It's so crazy. It's like it's like it's such a small amount of money. It happens in every it happens in every state.

1:52:29I was on the way here. I just took a card out of my wallet. I was on the way up here and I was sitting next to a guy that I asked the borrow his phone cord to charge my phone. And we started talking. And it turns out he's in the Florida House of Representatives. His name is John Snyder. Marine Corps veteran wasn't a lawyer which made him in many ways a heck of a lot more down the earth. And he told me he got into politics because he was like tired of complaining and wanted to actually do something different. And we got to talking, where are you going? I told him where I was going. He happened to have you, he happened to be listening to you and Elon from the other day.

1:53:18And I said, I'm actually going there. And he said, you know, I'm a Republican.

1:53:27And growing up in this party, I was all tough on crime. and now I sit through the claims bill process. A claims bill in Florida is when you have been wrongfully incarcerated and you're asking the legislator to compensate you. And he said, it changed my entire perspective on you can be for a position or against a position, but you don't understand the subtleties and the vagaries until you're in it. And to have somebody and then he took out his Carden gave it to me and he said if there's any way I can help, there's some bills pending. And that kind of openness and that kind of, you know, he struck me as a guy that was super comfortable with himself and secure with himself to be able to have that approach.

1:54:16And if we could all have that approach, I'm not right about, I've fucked up plenty. I'm not right about every position I take. I'm just trying to find, you know, some common ground, the humanity in all of us should always bend toward the truth, right? And that's what we mean when we say we want justice for these men. That's what we want.

1:54:40It's undeniable. How could anybody argue with that? No. You know, it's pretty well laid out. When we talked about that 2008 hearing with Al Cleveland, I was a young attorney, I was probably 27 and I only been practiced for a year and I remember being in there waiting for my case to be called I had another client and I saw one of the most unbelievable interactions I've ever seen in the courtroom still this day was Al Cleveland begging William every junior to tell the truth, begging him and I didn't know exactly what the facts where I later found out but you know I'm sitting in this courtroom watching what seemed to be very genuine emotion and and a man begging another man just to tell the truth so he can get out of prison and it stuck with me.

1:55:24And even now, it's like, I was a very charismatic guy. You know, what's devastating is what was his potential. Well, Alan, his wife Roberta are remarkable. Still married. Still married. Mary the whole time, Joe. Crazy. And, you know, John Edwards is still suffering. He's in prison. Benson Davis and Lenworth Edwards, you know, So my message to the four of you is I won't stop fighting. Unfortunately for my mental health, but fortunately for your prospects, I'm going to keep digging until I get you guys free. And thank you again. I always want to make sure I show my gratitude to continuing to give this forum.

1:56:08It makes a huge difference. I mean, if anybody not saying it makes a huge difference as a terrible understatement in my wildest dreams. If someone would have said to me, the prosecutor that agreed to set these men free would be sitting next to you on the show, I would have bet the house against it. And I think that this is just a remarkable forum to be able to tell these stories and to get into the level of detail where we can touch people. And I, um, there's too many people in criminal justice reform that don't extend, you know, their hand to prosecutors and, you know, people in law enforcement.

1:56:54And I have, it's been an eye -opening and incredibly rewarding experience to get to know these folks that feel just as passionate about issues that are on the other side. And that's what, you know, has led me more to the middle. And, um, you know, I thank you for your humanity, JD. and I hope you do run for something again because we need more people like you in those seats. Well, I appreciate you saying that I think that, like you said, humility is important. And I've always tried to pride myself on admitting when I'm wrong and knowing when I'm wrong, and knowing when I don't know. I think one of the problems I see in society now is like everybody wants to know and they don't know.

1:57:33And it's like sack religious to say you don't know. And I find that to be really just lying. You know if you're just guessing you're just lying really and so yeah And so I tried to always put my ego in check and I'm telling you I can't stress enough that doing defense work Is really what allows that vision for me to kind of understand work and happen because I've had innocent clients and in my experience You know was most likely domestic violence cases Because you know passions arise. There's cheating going on. There's infidelity You know emotions run high. It's easy to make accusations And so those were the scenarios.

1:58:08Now obviously I got to make a caveat. There's very terrible domestic violence cases that are awful. But because of the dynamic between the victim and the perpetrator, that seemed to generate, in my view, any cases that I had were that were innocent, typically were cases like that. For example, the allegations didn't match up. So someone said they struck their head on the curb, but there was no injuries. Stuff like that. But it's so easy to get probable cause. Probable cause is very easy. And so, you know, I was so lucky when I got charged, I joked around with Jim, Burge, my co -defendant in mentor for many years, who taught me a lot was, thank God I've got the smartest lawyer as a co -defendant ever.

1:58:45You know, and thank God, you know, because I mean, you know, I was, and I also learned that I'm probably not the best client as a lawyer. I used to bitch about clients like me, and I think I'm that way, you know, I'm sitting in the defense table trying to dictate everything to my lawyer, you know, it's like I wasn't the best client and I, and shout out to my camera, who was our lawyer who really had to deal with me. But the truth of matter is when it happens to you, the only thing I disagreed with Josh is, even if it didn't happen to me, I knew that it could happen. I would have listened no matter what.

1:59:15I think that, I was briefed about this case in 2022, 23. I was invited down to Cincinnati for Ohio Innocence Project. But I think I was probably the only prosecutor in there. But I got to be honest, I never really felt comfortable in the, in, we would go to a high -o' -prosicule association meetings, my mentor and I, and we never really fit in. I mean, the prosecutions, they're fantastic, but they're almost like the home monitors in class, you know what I mean? And I always just thought the fence attorneys were much more fun to hang out with, but we always kind of, and we would, because I have so much respect for defense attorneys, you know, I remember the presenters would go up and kind of clown on defense attorneys and I'd look around and meet and generally the only ones pissed off.

1:59:59You know, we were pissed off going, hey, what the hell? You know, defensive trade is trying to do the thing, man. And, and, and, and, and, thing got, it is posing quarterback so pussy. And that's the problem. And that's the problem right there, Joe, is, is really we're all looking for the same thing, justice. And you hit it right on the head. It's about winning. And I almost trust, I trust police much more than I almost do prosecutors because it seems like there's an inherent desire for them to get it right. And it's, it's more of the prosecutors that want to win. Yeah. And I just had such a great experience with law enforcement.

2:00:28and they changed my mind because I didn't really like the narrative and I criticized my own party about it. The anti -law enforcement rhetoric is just unwarranted. Agreed. It's a terribly difficult job that gets no reward and your life is in danger every day. And Joe, when I was County prosecutor, I had about 10 police involved shootings with fatalities in four years. So about two a year, or two or three year, every one of them was good. Every one of them was good. And you know, I would get with the officers, and I had a policy, which is a little unusual, where if I made a decision that a shooting was good, I would make a decision that's it, and never went to the grand jury.

2:01:08It's easy for prosecutors to kind of just dissed off over the grand jury, then that's not their responsibility anymore. But I felt like I wasn't gonna put something through the grand jury that I didn't believe in. So I had officers that, you know, the difficult part about being a police officer is when you have to use that lethal force, Then you get people armchair quarterbacking it for the next six months. Do you know what I mean? What you should have done, what you should have done. And what happens is what they get in the end of that is a congratulations you're not getting indicted. When in reality maybe we should say, hey, thank you for saving your partner's life.

2:01:39And thank you for saving the community from a guy that's obviously dangerous enough to pull a weapon on a police officer. I was just watching an officer involved shooting on one of the social media platforms the other day where there's this young very large man who seemed to be something was wrong. Some mental issue. He was just talking crazy. Maybe he was on drugs. The cops are trying to calm him down for like the longest time. It's a long, prolonged video. He escalates and then he eventually gets physical. And I think they tried to tease him and it didn't work and then they wound up shooting this guy and the officer broke down in tears when it was over.

2:02:19He was devastated. He couldn't believe he had to do this. He was horrified. His hands were shaking. The other officer was comforting him, trying to get him to breathe and calm down. But when you see it in real life like that, you see how it actually went down. They're trying to make these split second decisions and this big crazed guy who's out of his fucking mind is running at you. And you don't know what to do. You don't know what's gonna happen. Is this gonna be the end of your life? It didn't happen at all the time. Cops get their guns taken away all the time. It's a terrifying situation. And so I always am very careful to kind of parse out the fact that, you know, I'm always amazed by how much patients they really do show.

2:02:57Yes. I mean, the millions of interactions that happen every day. Now listen, does it happen in their bad kind of, yeah, I indict police officers when I was there was some I had to indict. But I believe I believe the vast majority just don't want they just want to go home. 100%. They just want to go home. The vast majority of interactions that people have with police are positive. Oh, once only gets to see the ones that are negative, they get recorded. That's right and then it's you get sampling bias because all you see is negative and so you start thinking That's up. Yeah, I'm sure you saw that Harvard professor who conducted that study about violence and police encounters and He found it was like it wasn't biased towards black people and people attacked him right because we're seeing it every day You're seeing these videos every day, but the only video as you're seeing that's right.

2:03:44There's the only ones You don't see the have a nice day. Thank you for your service. I appreciate you to knuckles drive safe You don't see those right you don't those are real those things happen where cops You know smooth things over and everybody's okay and they go home and everybody's fine that that happens to that happens a lot It happens way more than the other way, but you think cop murder black people bad everything happened horrible Bang bang windows shot out you see those videos over and over again, and they run like a fucking slideshow in your mind Yes, and but the you know those are statistically insignificant almost When it comes to the grand scheme of things.

2:04:22I mean it doesn't happen very often when it does we have to punish it harshly But I just I grew more respectful police officers the closer I got to I think the big problem that people have these days is You see something and you see it often and you see it replayed And it's just like you said it becomes a slideshow on your mind and it's hard to know how frequent the occurrence is. I had an interesting thing happen to me recently where my son Carter made the travel baseball team and I'm like he's like the new kid on the team because we moved from New York and we went to our first tournament and where I'm the new dad hanging out because it's out of town and I sit down at a table with these other three dads and they're introducing themselves and we just struck up a conversation.

2:05:14And we were talking about bias. And I said, you know, I would probably be the wrong, we were talking about, you know, juries and jury service. And he, I said, you know, I'd be like the wrong, oh, someone asked me, one of the dads asked me, how do I get out of jury service? I said, tell the truth. Because we're all biased. We all have a bias against something. And I was like, like for me, I've done a bunch of cases where corrections officers like did something bad to someone. So I'd probably be bad for a case like that. Because the reality is that most of them do their job and wanna go home and it's dangerous.

2:05:55But I was recognizing my own bias and I look around the table and they're all looking at each other smiling. And I knew it in that moment that one of them was a correction. It's all the same. It was my buddy Ryan Gillis. And it was it was like, oh, how do I wipe the shit off my foot? So I've gotten a no -rime and he's a corrections officer in Florida. He's and he's just a great guy He's quiet and soft spoken and my daughter was going to the county fair and there's like rough nights Some nights where like kids try to start fights and I was talking him about it and he goes, you know I do security detail there and I'm gonna I'm not there that night, but I'm gonna tell the guys You know if she has an issue you have a call and he's just the he's a great dude, you know And there's great people all walks of life and I look at him and sometimes I'll be thinking man I wonder what his day was like because he has you know of a really tough Dangerous job and I have such deep respect for him and it was like one of those moments I was like shit that came out wrong I articulate it wrong and I think the problem that a lot of people have and we're in a society where you it's you're so quick to pick a side and to label something.

2:07:12And I'm just trying to do a lot less, be a quicker to listen and slower to speak when it comes to making some big judgment about a group of people. Because you gotta take each of these situations individually. Well said. Well said. Words to live by. That's right. I think we did it. I think we got it all out. I do too. I do. Thank you JD. So really great man. Really appreciate you doing this and appreciate your honesty and the way you're able to express yourself. Thank you. It was excellent. Josh. I love you. I love you more. Thank you for everything. My pleasure. All right. Bye. back, buddy GPU.