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The Hangout
#93 Jim McCloskey's Mission to Free the Wrongly Convicted
In this episode, we hear from Jim McCloskey about the journey that took him from the corporate world to his current work with those who have been wrongly convicted of crimes. McCloskey founded Centurion Ministries, an organization that has "completed 70 releases of men and women who were serving life or death sentences for crimes they did not commit." McCloskey is the author of When Truth is All You Have, and co-wrote Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions with John Grisham.
Welcome to the Hangout Podcast. I'm your host, David Shoretta. Come on in and hang out. In this episode, I was very privileged and honored to have a conversation with Jim McCluskey. Jim is currently an activist and the founder of Centurion Ministries.
Speaker 1:Centurion was the first innocence organization in the United States and their mission is to vindicate the wrongly convicted. In our conversation, Jim relates his earlier part of his life, when he was a highly paid but unfulfilled financial consultant and businessman in Asia. What led him into pursuing a master's of divinity, what led him then into working with prisoners and how, through relationships built and conversations held with at least one prisoner in particular, Chiefie it led to this lifetime devotion to this cause of vindicating the wrongly convicted. Along the way, Jim penned an engaging and often heart-wrenching autobiography called when Truth Is All you have. That will be linked in the show notes, as will be a recent book that he co-wrote with none other than the great John Grisham, and we talk about how both of those books came together.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Jim is a wonderful storyteller and just an engaging personality, and I encourage all listeners to check out centurionorg. Consider donating of time or resources. Welcome, Jim, it's such an honor to have you on the podcast this morning slash afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:Well, david, it's my privilege and I was surprised to get the invitation from your school and you and Tina in San Diego a while back. And the day has arrived and I've been looking forward to this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were surprised to hear back from you because you know, centurion is high profile and you co-wrote the book with a probably one of the highest profile of all all authors, and so I thought, ah, this. Neither one of them is going to even respond to me and, of course, you were very gracious and and everyone has a busy schedule, but I had something to look forward to in the new year with this, so it's a great, great honor to have this chat with you. I wanted to start out where we start out with all guests, which is with your origin story. Now, I know, having read your autobiography and then also framed, um, uh, your, your origin story is is colorful and long and complicated. So choose what you, what you will from there, and then we'll move on to stories of, uh, more of the specific work of centurion. But, like, what do you when you're on an airplane and someone says, hey, what do you do and where are you from? How do do you answer that?
Speaker 2:Well, as you say, it's a long story, so if I'm rattling on, you know. Please jump in and let me know that that's happening. I was born in a place called Habertown, which is about 10 miles west of Philadelphia. My mom and dad had three of us. I'm the oldest son, my younger brother, richard, is a year and a half younger than I am, and a sister, lois, who's 10 years younger. Anyway, we were raised in an affluent family in the suburbs of Philadelphia. My dad was a construction executive for a large family construction firm, mccluskey Company.
Speaker 2:But anyway I went to Bucknell, which is in central Pennsylvania, graduated in 64, and didn't really know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. But I did know that I wanted to be a quote unquote international business executive, whatever that meant and wherever that led me. But the first thing I did was go to Officer Candidate Training School, the Navy Training School in Newport, Rhode Island, and I graduated at the end of 1964 as an ensign a freshly minted ensign and they sent me to Japan, which is exactly where I asked them to send me, because I've always been fascinated, even from high school on, with the Japanese culture and people. And so I spent a year and a half in Yokosuka, which is about an hour south of Tokyo, at a big Navy base. But then I got bored with that and volunteered to go to Vietnam, and this is in the spring of 66. Things were starting to really heat up at that point down there and I wanted to be part of the action. And also I was very naive and idealistic and thought that this was something that America should be doing defending the democracy of South Vietnam and stem the flow of communism. I came to see how misplaced that view was not too long after arriving in Japan I mean in Vietnam. But anyway I was assigned which I had asked for to live on a South Vietnamese Navy base in the Mekong Delta and our job was to patrol the rivers of our particular sector of the Delta and the Saigon River leading up to Saigon, as well as the South China Sea coast. So I did that for a year. I learned a lot about life and how the world really works. That's when I really started to mature, I think, as an individual.
Speaker 2:But after three years I decided to resign from the Navy and start my career path of being an international businessman, which again led me to Japan, and I ended up going to Tokyo and working for a management consulting firm Now we're going into the late 60s, into the 70s, and our firm assisted American firms in understanding the Japanese market and identifying and negotiating joint venture partners with Japanese companies and negotiating joint venture partners with Japanese companies. I then decided, after five years in Tokyo as a civilian businessman, to return home. I got homesick and I came home to the suburbs of Philadelphia unemployed but was able to land on my feet with a very large management consulting firm headquartered in Philadelphia who, at that very time 1974, they were looking for someone to build its business with Japanese subsidiaries in the United States and set us up in Tokyo, which is what I was hired to do and did. So that was my, if you will, secular history While working for Hay H-A-Y, the Hay Group, the consulting firm.
Speaker 2:At the same time, I felt something was really missing in my life and that was a spiritual element in my life. And that was a spiritual element. And throughout the 70s, for the first time as an adult, I returned to church to hopefully regain my boyhood faith, which I had lost along the way, and I also had lost my moral compass along the way, and I wanted to rectify that. And so two things were going on within me. One was a disenchantment with the business world and a feeling that my life was selfish, self-centered, and at the same time, I was very inspired by Dick Streeter, the minister of a Presbyterian church that I belonged to. I was inspired by his preaching and I was inspired by the work that he was doing, really touching the hearts and souls of a lot of congregants, including myself. And so I started alone thinking you know, I want to be like Dick Streeter, I want to really help transform lives and touch the souls of people and serve others instead of serving myself, which I had been doing for 37 years.
Speaker 2:So again, long story short, over a couple year period of time, consulting only with Dick Streeter not my parents, not my family, not my friends, not my colleagues at Hay I felt God was calling me to leave the business world altogether and go into the ministry and become a church Presbyterian pastor. And so Dick advised me that if that's what you think the Lord is leading you towards, then you need to go to Princeton Theological Seminary and get your master divinity degree. Go to Princeton Theological Seminary and get your master divinity degree, which is a three-year program, in order to qualify for ordination. So that's what I did in the fall of 1979, at the age of 37. I started life all over again, thinking I was going to become a church pastor. So I'll stop there.
Speaker 1:Well, that's, I have so many questions, as I did when I also heard this in your autobiography as well. I'm wondering, you know, what the reaction from your parents was, from colleagues, I mean, you went from what was the societally accepted or exalted type of a role. Yeah, and you know, imagine, as Asia is just opening up to the West and this I remember when it was the Japanese tiger, right, that was like that thing when I was a kid, people must've thought you were crazy.
Speaker 2:Well, they absolutely did, and that's why and I knew that would be their reaction, and I certainly couldn't blame them for viewing it in that manner. That's why I did not consult for viewing it in that manner. That's why I did not consult or inform any of people close to me loved ones and others that this was percolating in my mind. And then this is what I'm going to do. But once I told my parents and brother and sister that this is what I'm doing I'm leaving the business world they were shocked, stunned, couldn't believe it. However, they were good church people and they were supportive, although wondering if I really knew what I was doing.
Speaker 2:Was this a midlife crisis that you're undergoing? And you're just not. We're just not sure this is the right thing for you. And my mother predicted even at that time. She said Jim, you're not cut out to be a pastor. Well, she was the secretary of a Presbyterian church in our neighborhood, so she knew what goes on within churches and what the real job of a pastor is. And she says there are too many committee meetings. You're going to get frustrated. A lot of hand-holding.
Speaker 1:I don't think this is what the Lord has cut out for you.
Speaker 2:I said oh, mom, come on, I know what I'm doing here. So, anyway, my boss at Hay, when I walked into his office one day in 1979 and told him what I was doing, his first word I'll never forget the first words out of his mouth. I'd been working for him, he was a top general partner in the consulting firm and he said Jim, I didn't even know you went to church, which was indicative of the two lives that I was leading at the same time, the secular life and the spiritual life, got them both separated one from the other. I have a tremendous ability, I guess, to compartmentalize. Anyway, he asked me to stay on for another six months to finish, tidy up what I'd been working on, which I did, and in September of 79, off, I went to the seminary, sold my home.
Speaker 2:One thing I didn't sell was my 1976 Lincoln Continental. I love that car. I couldn't part with it. But when I went up to the seminary and checked into the dormitory and at that time in 79, that's the gas crisis and I was maybe getting seven miles per gallon in that Lincoln Continental.
Speaker 2:So I got rid of that in exchange for a Pinto. But anyway, I started my seminary, my three-year Master of Divinity program and living in a dormitory, and it was a whole new life, whole new world. But I was excited, I was enthusiastic, I really believed this is what I was meant to do, this is my destiny, and I was really conforming to what I consider to be the call of the Lord. So in my second year at the seminary another thing is you ask what was the reaction of my friends I had heard from a few of the wives of my Bucknell friends and, by the way, to this day I've maintained a very strong relationship with my fraternity brothers at Bucknell. We happen to be five games Fijis with my fraternity brothers at Bucknell. We happened to be five games Fijis. But the wives of some of my fraternity brothers told me that they were worried, that they were going to lose me as a friend, that I'm going off in this crazy direction, my personality was going to change and that's the end of the friendship. They feared that that would happen, which it did not.
Speaker 2:So in my second year at the seminary I volunteered to do my field education assignment obligation at Trenton State Prison as a student chaplain and that was just the facility. The corrections facility that I was assigned was only about a 20, 25-minute ride from the seminary. Two completely different environments the leafy Princeton Seminary and then the harshness of the Trenton facility where I was assigned, which was for the most troublesome of New Jersey inmates. Anyway, two afternoons a week, tuesday and Thursday, three hours a day, I would go on, a cell block and cell by cell, a cell block and cell by cell. I had two cell blocks, 40 men, and my job was not evangelical, just to be their friend, to stand in front of their cell. They're in their cell, I'm outside looking in and we would converse about whatever they wanted to talk about. Those conversations with those inmates were very stimulating, challenging. They were very, very inquisitive about my faith and if there is a God, what makes you believe there's a God? A lot of fundamental, profound theological questions. Questions were being challenged from them to me.
Speaker 2:Anyway, one of the 40 men only one was proclaiming his name, was Jorge de los Santos. He was proclaiming his innocence. He told me I am in prison, I'm here on a murder conviction Seven years ago. I did not do it, I had nothing to do with it. And not only that, he insisted he was framed by the prosecutor and the police in Newark, new Jersey. So Mr De Los Santos, nicknamed Chiefie, was raised in the harsh public housing projects up in Newark and he was a drug addict, a heroin addict. When I met him he was 30, he was 35 or so. He had been in prison for seven years. He was convicted of being one of a botched armed robbery of a seedy used car lot in Newark, new Jersey. He was convicted based on the testimony of two men, both of whom were drug addicts. An eyewitness claimed that as he was driving by the used car lot he heard shots and he saw Chiefie run away along with another man who he also identified. Chiefie was indicted based solely on that eyewitness account, put in the county jail a career criminal as it turned out and claimed that while in the county jail together, mr De Los Santos confessed the crime to him in detail. So you have a jailhouse confession and an eyewitness account.
Speaker 2:Now, at that point, in the fall of 79, when I'm 37 years old, I had absolutely no experience whatsoever in any facet or aspect of the criminal justice system and I believed at that time that if you were convicted of a crime in America. You were guilty, that's all there was to it, that the police and the prosecutors would never bring anyone to the bar of justice without credible evidence of guilt If there was a mistake made. I never even really thought about that ever happening. That certainly was a rare, rare instance and I thought that police and prosecutors they still think that have a very challenging and notable job if it's done right. And so I expressed this to Chief. I said, chief, come on now. You were a heroin addict out there on the streets. Why would they put this murder on you? They could care less about you, he said. That's just the point.
Speaker 2:He said, if they could clear a case, get a conviction that looks good on their record, they're doing their job, they're getting convictions. The police are arresting people for crimes, violent crimes, and the prosecutors are convicting them. And I was a throwaway, but it didn't matter to them because it made them look good in terms of what their job was and what they were doing. So anyway, every day, every afternoon that I hit that cell block, all he would talk about was his innocence and his wife. He had a lovely wife, her name was Elena and she was really a strong supporter of this. So Thanksgiving of 1980, he said look, get my trial transcripts, read them and then come back to me with any other questions you might have. So I did. I got a hold of his trial transcripts a couple thousand pages, and other documents associated of his trial transcripts a couple thousand pages and other documents associated with his case. Now, I never had any experience in this. This was the first time I ever read a trial transcript, but I'm 37 years old.
Speaker 2:I have a you know, I have a pretty good history behind me, pretty good resume of doing things and good common sense. So, anyway, I come back after Thanksgiving. And he said what'd you think? I said well, you know how you have explained this crime to me and your conviction is backed up by the transcript. So he said well, let me ask. He said look, jim, I've answered every question you have over the last three months and I have a question for you. Do you think I'm innocent? And I said well, yeah, I guess I do, jeff, I do believe you're innocent. Then he challenged me and he stunned me. He said well, what are you going to do about it? I said what do you mean? What am you going to do about it? I said what do you mean? What am I going to do about it?
Speaker 2:I'm on my way, I'm going to go return to the seminary after this year off, by the way, I took a year off from the seminary to work on his behalf. I was about ready to do that, but he challenged me and said what are you going to do? Go back to your seminary and pray that somebody will come along and rescue me from this pit. And I said, well, that's kind of what I was thinking about doing. And so he said look, I've been on my knees for seven years praying for somebody to come along and believe in me and help free me. You might not realize it, but you're that man I believe God has shown you to my cell in order for you to work to free me. So that stunned me and I said well, chiefie, I don't know. I don't know about that, but I said I'll give it some thought. So I went back to the seminary and I prayed about it and I opened up the scriptures, as it turned out, to Isaiah the great prophet. It just happened upon chapter 59, where Isaiah talks about how truth has fallen from the public squares. There is no truth. Justice is far from us squares. There is no truth. Justice is far from us. And that it disturbed the Lord when he saw that justice was turned back and truth had fallen, but there was no one to intervene that word intervene, I believe that God was showing me that scripture and leading me to intervene on behalf of Jesus. So I went back to a cell block the following week and told him I made up my decision and I'm going to take a year off from seminary the calendar year of 1981, and I'm going to do what I can to move the ball forward to try and free him from what I believe was a wrongful conviction. And you can imagine that was a very emotional moment for him and me. I was giving him my life for a year, but he was giving me a purpose, a feeling that I'm doing something that's real for somebody else who's in a real difficult situation. So there was a mutuality to the decision and so that's what I did. I took a year off in 1981. And, as it turned out, I stayed in Princeton, moved down to the seminary and began working on his behalf. I did several things. I found a great lawyer for him, paul Castellero, who was a solo practitioner in Hoboken and a savvy, seasoned criminal defense lawyer, and also I ended up doing the investigation. And also I ended up doing the investigation. I would go up, sure that we cover in today's conversation, david. The first fork in the road was when I decided to leave the business world and go into the seminary. The second fork in the road, a year and a half later, was when I decided to take a year off and work on behalf of Chiefy.
Speaker 2:When I told my parents that I was honest with them, I said, mom and Dad, I got something that we need to talk about. And they of course oh well, what now? You know? And I said well, I explained the situation. I've met this inmate at Trent State Prison. He's doing life for murder. I believe he's innocent, so I promised him I would take a year off to try and help free him, and that's what I'm going to do. And my mother was particularly worried because she said this is reminding me of Vietnam. When you were in Vietnam, I couldn't sleep, and now I'm going to be worrying about you going to Newark. What do you know about investigating a murder? Newark's a tough town. You don't know what you're getting into. This is something way beyond anything that you have any idea about. And she was right. They were right. But I said I understand that, mother, and I'm sorry I'm going to create more anxiety for you, but it's something I feel compelled to do and it's also something I believe God has led me to do.
Speaker 2:And so again they believed, gave up resisting that and just said well, I hope you're right, jimmy, and we'll back you on this. So they did, by their moral support, that is.
Speaker 1:And Chiefie ultimately is exonerated, correct? Yes, and I think. I'm trying to see if I recall the details, but I think part of it was the eyewitness testimony. It was something based on it had happened at night and there's no way anybody could have identified him. Plus, with the jailhouse snitch kind of thing.
Speaker 2:We were able to work with Paul Castaneda, the attorney. He and I worked on this together and we were able to prove, to the satisfaction of a federal judge, that the eyewitness could not have seen what he said. He saw number one. Not only that, but the other man he identified as fleeing to see the crime with Chifie was proven to be in Oakland, california, when this crime occurred. So his credibility was shattered. The jailhouse confession man, richard Delosante, we proved he testified at trial that this is the first time he's ever given any testimony against the defendant who he claims confessed to him. We were able to establish that he had not only done it against Chafee, but he had done it three or four times before he testified against him. He was a serial prosecution witness claiming that these different defendants confessed the crime to him. Not only that, but the judge gave us access to the prosecutor's files. In the prosecutor's file, in his own handwriting, the trial prosecutor wrote that Mr De La Sante is in the habit of giving testimony when he, under direct examination, denied that he ever did that. So the prosecutor knew his witness was lying and the judge soon ruled in his opinion that reversed the conviction, exonerated Chiefie and in the summer of 1983, july of 83, after eight years, chiefie was freed and exonerated. That's two and a half years after I began working on his case. But by that time I had returned to the seminary, after that year off, finished my Master of Divinity degree, graduated from the seminary, chiefie was freed.
Speaker 2:Everything came together in the summer of 83. Not only that, but Chiefie and I had formed a very close friendship and he led me to three other lifers, new Jersey lifers, and whose innocence I had come to believe as well, and chiefly, was freed. The third and last fork in the road Do I go on with my degree in hand and get ordained as a Presbyterian church pastor, or do I not do that and set up a nonprofit organization to work to free these three other New Jersey lifers in whose innocence I believe? And I felt that the choice was obvious. I decided to do that and I set up Centurion Ministries.
Speaker 2:The Centurion came to me one day in the fall of 83 that I named the Centurion after the Centurion at the foot of the cross, the crucified Christ In Luke, chapter 23,. He looked up at the crucified Christ and said surely this one was innocent. That's where the name came from. So that's what happened. Now I told my parents you know, you can imagine being my parents this is the third. Everything comes in threes. I guess I don't know, but anyway they were worried about me. Jim, you don't have any money, you're broke. What are you going to do? Are you sure these three guys are innocent? All the legitimate, reasonable questions were asked, but I went ahead and did it anyhow.
Speaker 1:And as it turned, out.
Speaker 2:my parents came into an extraordinary sum of money, some income, and they sent each of their three kids, me included, a $10,000 gift, tax-free. I looked at that as manna from heaven and, to begin, as a capital investment in Centurion Ministries. So I started up Centurion with that $10,000 gift and that was the beginning of my work in this field.
Speaker 1:You can imagine, just kind of doing the rough math. Your parents must have been Depression-era generation and so for them to see you to go from this promising in their mind trajectory, financially, et cetera, to this. To what do you attribute your ability to take a upper middle class background and then kind of transfer that to skills on the street in Newark in the late 70s, early 80s, to be able to walk the streets and talk to people? And I remember I'm a little younger than you but I was a teenager in those years and you know, in the kind of suburbs outside of New York City and I remember the conversations, pardon me, about places like Newark, right, like you didn't even it was kind of a thing, you didn't even drive your car there. And so how does I mean? Your mom's preoccupations, I think, were fairly well placed, absolutely, how did you develop those skills to be able to actually talk to people?
Speaker 2:First of all, let's not forget that at that point, when I started to work with Chiefy in 1981, I was um 38, 39 years old I had had quite a bit of experience. When I was working in japan for the first management consulting firm, uh, we did a lot of market research. So we would study any particular market, the other manufacturers, the distributors, the distribution system and users, and put together all the pieces of that particular market. So this kind of when you're investigating a murder, that's exactly what you're doing. You're interviewing a lot of different people who play different roles, who played different roles in this particular conviction and crime and arrest, and you put the pieces together. So I had this kind of experience. This was not, I mean, murder investigations were completely new to me, but I applied the skills and the experience I had learned in the business world to doing, to formulating a plan of investigation for crimes. That's number one. Number two, and I also, by the way, had a bit of experience in Vietnam. I lived on a South Vietnamese junk fleet, a Navy base. I was the only American living on this base, on a South Vietnamese Navy base. I was the only American living on this base with the South Vietnamese. And so you develop. I'm an American with no experience in Vietnam and here I am advising senior South Vietnamese sailors and officers as to how to perform our function, our mission, which was to patrol and try and find VC, but anyway.
Speaker 2:Secondly, I like people. I don't care who they are, I don't care what their socioeconomic status is, what their race is, et cetera. I think people feel comfortable. I'm not a threat. I don't have a threatening aura about me, I have a friendly aura about me. That's the way I am and I think people there was an innate trust that developed when I would hit the streets and knock on doors. That's an example.
Speaker 2:Richard Della Sotti, the jailhouse confession witness. He was a star witness against Chiefy. It took me one year to convince him to talk to me and I did and he agreed. By this time he was in a Hudson County jail up in Jersey City and I visited him with two straight days and he came to trust me. He confessed that he lied. He not only lied against Chiefy, he lied against these other men and he pointed these other cases where he had offered that false testimony. He lied against these other men and he pointed these other cases where he had offered that false testimony. He trained me, I got my baptism of jailhouse confessions.
Speaker 2:Richard Del Asante led me through his entire history of being an informant and a snitch for the Essex County Prosecutor's Office. So you know, you just go step by step, witness by witness. One name leads to another. And then I developed a good relationship with the Public Defender's Office who had represented Chiefie. I developed a good relationship with other men who were wrongly convicted by Richard Delisante's confession testimony and you just build this edifice. And Paul did a great job, the lawyer, he trained me on how the criminal justice system works. I learned a lot from Paul. He was my mentor. Richard Delisante was my mentor Two different kinds of mentors, if you will. And you know I felt comfortable. I felt that this was my destiny, this was what I was meant to do. This fit my skills, my nature, my personality, my views on life. This is where I belonged and it made me feel comfortable in doing it.
Speaker 1:Clearly it was your calling. That's a powerful thing.
Speaker 1:We forget about the difference between a job, a career and a calling yeah um, so you, you found centurion and it begins to grow and I know there's I don't want to oversimplify all the hard work that went in and I know you didn't know how you're going to pay the bills and you got different investors and etc. Um, talk to us a little bit about the organization, because it was really on the cutting edge of innocence projects, organizations in the country. And then, as a secondary piece, um, my understanding of Centurion is that many of your cases don't rely on DNA evidence, although obviously advances in that technology have helped immensely on innocence efforts. But so talk to me about how it grew and then how you take on cases that don't rely on DNA evidence and how you got how your team still takes those on.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, first of all, I've been very fortunate to, if you will, attract different people who, like I was, are looking for a way to give them a sense of purpose and authenticity in their work. The first person I'm thinking of is Kate Germond. When Paul and I freed our third New Jersey lifer, nate Walker, in November of 1986. That received a lot of media attention. Now, this is pre-DNA. Dna didn't come into being until 1989, when the first person was exonerated by DNA for a sexual assault, for any kind of a crime. But we freed Mr Walker in November of 86. And Kate Germain had just moved from California to New York City with her husband, who was transferred or got a new job, and she read about the Nate Walker case in the New York Times. So she contacted me because just at that time she was like oh, I don't know, she was probably about 35, 36 years old, she had had no experience in the criminal justice system, but she felt to free innocent people in prison when they have nobody else, that's what she wanted to do and she thought she had the kind of what she wanted to do and she thought she had the kind of skills and personality to do that work as well, which, as it turned out, she did. So she joined me and you know, paul Castellaro, the lawyer, continued to work with us on behalf of other defendants and we worked together successfully.
Speaker 2:The first seven years of doing this work, from 80 to 87, there was very little attention paid to our efforts, even though we had freed three people. But once we started to get some attention by the media people. But once we started to get some attention by the media 60 Minutes, people Magazine, washington Post, new York Times that gave us credibility. And if you read about something in a paper, you believe what you read and you attach credibility to the subject being written about. And you attach credibility to the subject being written about. Now foundations started to approach us and provide us with financial support. People were volunteering to come and work for and with Centurion. So we were growing bit by bit over the years, bit by bit over the years.
Speaker 2:Centurion we were the only ones doing this work that is set up organizationally and systematically with a single purpose of freeing innocent people in prison until 1992. So for the first 12 years we were the only ones doing that. But in 1992, barry Sheck and Peter Neufeld. They founded an Innocence Project based on DNA. They would take cases only if it had a DNA potential to exonerate the convicted person, and they started to have a great deal of success. Now we have, to date, centurion has freed I'm fast forwarding a little bit to date, Centurion has freed 71 people, all of whom were serving life or death sentences for the crimes of others, and 10 of them were exonerated based on DNA, and 10 of them were exonerated based on DNA. The others were what we call old-fashioned shoe leather All across the country.
Speaker 2:When Mr Walker was freed in November of 1986 by Paul and me working together, not only did Kate Germain come forward and join us, but at that time Walker was the third New Jersey person. I was only working in New Jersey, nowhere else from all over the country, from inmates and loved ones asking me to come to their location and help free them or their loved one, one of whom was the brother of a man on Texas' death row, clarence Lee Bradley. This is in early 1987. And this responding to Clarence and his brother's plea for help coming from Texas. It was like a Macedonian call, if you will, and I heeded that call. Now Kate is joining me at this. She's with me at this point in terms of reviewing all these requests for help, and so Kate and I decided that I should go down to Texas and see what this is all about, because Mr Braley is going to be executed in 12 weeks with no other chances of freedom. All his appeals have been denied. He's dead in the water.
Speaker 2:So this took Centurion out of New Jersey across the United States and our first death row case. So all these requests for help were coming in from all over the country and, based on them and our response to them, we went national and along with that, when Clarence Brantley was, we exonerated Clarence. That's another story and, by the way, that's chapter two in the book called Framed that I wrote with John Grisham, if people are interested in reading that book and that story. Clarence came within six days of execution. When working with another investigator and the lawyers in Texas, we brought forward a start witness against him, who was there when this crime occurred and named the real killers and recanted his original testimony and 60 minutes got involved and we freed and exonerated Clarence after some time.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I went off track here in answering your question, but that's a thumbnail sketch of how we started to grow, and most of our cases are non-DNA, which involves exhaustive reinvestment. We reinvestigate not only the conviction but the crime, anybody who played any role in either the crime or the conviction as we understand it. It was our mission to interview them to see what light they could shed on the situation. That includes police prosecutors, as well as civilian witnesses, lawyers who represented the defendant years prior. We interview everybody who had any connection to the case in order to develop a case of innocence or wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1:As I read, framed and listened, also read and listened to your autobiography, I kept returning to this saying and I think it's.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure if he was the only one to say it, but Charlie Munger, who was Warren Buffett's investment buddy, who just passed away recently, at 99 or something, said that if you show me the incentives, I'll show you, I'll predict the result.
Speaker 1:And so that that concept keeps ringing in my, in my ears and in my, in my mind as I think about all these stories where it seems like the incentives that are set up by the system are at counter purposes to actually what society often believes right, that there's a fair process, that, you know, even the, the concept of using informants is a, is, as a, you know, obviously not everybody's corrupt. You said positive things about prosecutors and cops at the start of this conversation, but run into the combination of corruption, ambition that comes at the cost of, perhaps, fairness, and then also these areas of kind of junk science when it comes to evidence, whether that's. You know, I'm not an expert at all on this, but done a little bit of reading, even fire analysis and blood spatter and all of those things, because I imagine you had to learn all of that. You went into it as a fairly innocent guy, at least the way you brought up. So talk to us about all that. I know that's a lot.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, the 10 stories that Grisham and I tell in the book Framed. In every one of those stories there was some significant material shenanigans. The legal term is prosecutorial misconduct. Misconduct is a. It doesn't tell the story, doesn't describe the story. There's all kinds of misconduct. These are shenanigans.
Speaker 2:This is where, in each one of those 10 cases that we describe, the police and the prosecutors either support perjury, lie themselves, coerce witnesses into lying, hid evidence of innocence from the defense attorneys. When evidence would surface, when credible evidence would surface, whether it's DNA or as a result of our work with witnesses coming forward with the truth, district attorneys in particular, and police as well, would not want to hear this. They did not want to hear that an innocent person was wrongly convicted in their jurisdiction. Now, that's the back end of it. The front end of it is that if you're a homicide detective investigating a murder, your job is to clear cases and by clear, get somebody arrested for that crime. That's your job, that's your mission. Are not clearing those cases, or a good percentage of those cases, you are not looking good to your office and to your fellow investigators. Your reputation as a smart, dedicated homicide investigator is really tarnished and diminished. So that that doesn't happen, you start down a slippery slope of creating evidence, falsifying evidence in one form or another that enables you to arrest somebody for that particular murder. Now I can't put my mind in that homicide investigator, but maybe they, for whatever reasons, they believe that this is the real killer and they can't find legitimate evidence against him or her. So they start a fictional story to help them clear the case and be rewarded in stature, reputation and maybe promotion within the office.
Speaker 2:Then you take a prosecutor. If you're a prosecutor and you're assigned to prosecute a number of defendants who the police have arrested and consulted with you in the arrest of that particular defendant, your job is to get convictions. So if you prosecute 10 different defendants of 10 different murders, as an example, and you only come away with five convictions, you're not doing your job, you're failing. Your job is to get convictions. So you start doing and behaving in a manner that enables you to increase your chances of securing a conviction in the mind of the judge and the jury. And you begin to do things that are far from kosher and have witness, have witness, coerce witnesses to tell a story that conforms with incriminating tale of woe, even though it's not accurate and, in fact, false. So these are the pressures that I think police and prosecutors are under. There's also in the larger cities, of course. They are inundated with the quantity of crimes that they are tasked with clearing or convicting, and with the higher quantity, the quality of work diminishes as well. Shortcuts are taken that shouldn't be taken.
Speaker 2:Judges during a trial. Most judges come up through the prosecutorial ranks and off. Their career was as a prosecutor and now they're a judge, and they tend, in these wrongful conviction cases which we see time and time again. The judges make evidentiary decisions as to whether they will allow certain testimony to be presented to the jury or disallow it, and they tend to favor the prosecution in making their evidentiary decisions what they will allow or not allow. So, and then you have the defense lawyers. All these people are indigent. They have no money. They're at the mercy of the system. Their attorneys are mostly court-appointed, sometimes public defenders, but the court-appointed lawyers are by and large, in our experience, are inept, inexperienced, not devoted to the cause, and don't do what they should have done because they're not getting paid enough to do it, at least in their own minds. They don't work on behalf of the defendant as well as they should. That's an example.
Speaker 2:So the first thing I did it's common sense, this is not rocket science when I started work on the Chiefie case. On any case, I go to the scene of the crime in the exact same conditions that were prevalent when the crime was committed at that location in Chiefie's case at nighttime, with darkness, same time of year, to see well, from what the eyewitness said. The eyewitness was here and he said he saw the killer flee there. It was obvious to me that the eyewitness, mr Pasilov, could not have seen what he said he saw. It was physically impossible. We see that time. But do you think Chiefie's lawyer did that in preparation for cross-examining? Mr Pasillo, he did not. So things are not done. That should be done, that are common sense for defense lawyers to do, but don't do so. It's a perfect storm. You have inept, lazy, inexperienced defense lawyer up against, in a lot of these cases, corrupt police and or prosecutors in the same courtroom at the same time trying to defend or convict the defendant.
Speaker 1:And then, as you know, I think you and John Grisham note this, but it's a lot easier to convict than it is to exonerate.
Speaker 2:It is easier to convict. First of all, there is a presumption of I'm talking about among regular, everyday, good citizen jurors. We all have our biases and I think generally, even to this day, a bias of everyday people who become jurors, regardless of their socioeconomic level. They have a presumption of guilt If that defendant is sitting in that is being prosecuted for this particular crime. There is a conscious or unconscious presumption of guilt because you believe that the police and prosecutors as I did when I started this work at the age of 37, if I were on Chiefie's jury bringing to that event where I was in understanding how the system works, I would have believed the police, I would have believed the prosecutors, I would have believed the witnesses for the prosecution, because I'm thinking they would never bring anybody to lie at a trial.
Speaker 2:So there's, a presumption of guilt there and it really helps the conviction.
Speaker 2:And then getting back to your junk science question if a crime lab person or a forensic expert of one kind or another whether he's an expert in serology, arson, bite marks, gunshot residue, fibers, hair, whatever it might be, fibers, hair, whatever it might be when that forensic lab person or expert takes a stand on behalf of the prosecution, what that person says, you more than likely are going to hold his gospel. Well, this person knows what he's talking about, that's his experience, that's his job, this is expertise and you will tend to believe that person when in fact, often that person is inept or because he works for the local crime lab who works alongside and in partnership with the police, he might skew his findings, his forensic findings, towards the guilt of the defendant rather than possible exoneration of the defendant, because they work with police all the time. So they wanted to go along, to get along, to get along, you go along, and a lot of these forensic people don't have the courage to stand up and offer unadulterated scientific analysis.
Speaker 1:So I want to pivot a little bit. You mentioned Framed with John Grisham and you know it's a little bit like in the sports analogy of playing pickup basketball with Michael Jordan or something Right Getting to co-write a book and have not only write every other chapter with John Grisham but also equal size font on the on the book cover, and you know how, how publishers are about such things, Right. So tell us how that relationship came to be and then how it was writing a book with someone as acclaimed and experienced and really a superstar in the publishing world in the publishing world?
Speaker 2:Good question. All right, let me talk about how this came to be. Grisham and I co-writing this book Framed. I first met Mr Grisham in 2008. I'm in St Louis working on a case and I read in a newspaper where he's speaking at an event that night. Now, in 2008, he had already published his only other nonfiction book, called An Innocent man, where he wrote that book based on two men who were wrongly convicted of an Oklahoma murder and put on death row and later exonerated. So I went to that event and, in the receiving line, introduced myself and, much to my surprise, he said oh Jim, I know all about Centurion. You guys do great work. Blah, blah, blah. So I said well, would you, at some point when it's convenient, could you come to Princeton, new Jersey, where we're headquartered, and perhaps speak on our behalf at one of our fundraising or galas? He said, of course, which he did in 2010. He came up and spoke at a big fundraiser we had in Princeton. So then, john and I, we just kind of got to know each other and four years ago or so, I get an email from him hey, jim, how you doing? Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:I read your book, really liked it. The truth is all you have. Would you be interested in co-writing a nonfiction book with me about wrongful convictions? Well, that blew me away and, to be quite honest with you, I was very nervous about doing that for two reasons. I know how hard it was to write that first book. I'm not a professional writer. It's hard, hard work and I know how much.
Speaker 2:I poured my heart and soul into that book and I was really exhausted by the time it got published. Did I have it within me to do this again? Secondly, could I carry my weight in co-writing a book with John Grisham? Do I have what it takes? And you know, writing a memoir is one thing and now you're writing, you're telling stories about other cases. Anyway, I said, look, john, let me come down to Charlottesville and let's talk this thing over very carefully. So we did, and I walked away from that afternoon with him convinced that this is something I want to do and it's something I should do, because if this is done, and done well, because it's a Grisham book, it will lift up the brand and the name and reputation and even the fundraising for Centurion Ministries.
Speaker 2:So he is a real gentleman, he's a Mississippian, he's a Southern gentleman in the best sense of that word. He's generous, authentic, unpretentious, affable, easy to be, with all these qualities. And so we had agreed I will write five stories. He will write five stories. The five that I write, I can freely choose. I will select the five that I want to write Now. I'll run those by John, but it's my choice. So the five I chose are five Centurion cases that I worked on myself in years past. The five he chose one was a Centurion Ministries case, a DNA case. The other four John is very much part of the innocence world. He follows cases of exonerations very carefully and he chose from hundreds of exonerees. He chose the four that he was most attracted to and would want to write about and that's what he did. So that's how that came to be. You know, and I've told him this and I've told Doubleday this, when it was all said and done and the book was published and well-received and you know, everything went well, all's well that ends well, which this has.
Speaker 2:As I look back on it, john took a I mean he took a leap of faith because you know he'd written 50 books before this and now and he's never, ever, co-written a book with anybody. So now he's asking this rookie really this rookie person, the unprofessional rookie person, to join him in co-writing a book with equal weight. When he took that idea to Doubleday and now Doubleday's never confirmed this, nor has John. But I'm sure Doubleday said John, are you sure you want to do this? You're really going out on a limb. Bring McCluskey in as a co-partner on this and co-writer in equal fashion.
Speaker 2:But he did, and we never had and this is the honest to God truth. We never had one problem in as we would go about the work of writing these stories and conferring with each other and, you know, doing the contractual arrangements with Doubleday this, that and the other. It was a pure pleasure to work with him and now that it's over you know, the book was published in October of 2024 and we worked closely together, although independent of each other. Now, he was not my editor and I was not his editor. My editor was the senior editor at Doubleday for nonfiction and she was great. Chris Huapala was her name and John had his own editor. Uh and uh, but we would, before we sent our drafts off to our respective editors, we would send them to each other with whatever comments. But uh, things went very smoothly and very well and it really worked out well, nicely.
Speaker 1:And it reads like one comprehensive collection of stories. You can't tell who wrote what. So that should be a compliment to you and I also think that in his I think it's in the foreword or maybe the after the acknowledgements. But Mr Grisham talks about how he you know he he's devotes most of his life to inventing stories, right, but has been interested in the innocence world and you live these and I think that seems to be what has drawn him to this right and and and co-writing with you is this is, this is your blood, sweat and tears.
Speaker 2:That's right and he, he fully, as you point out, he fully recognized that and he fully appreciates that and is grateful about that. Now, listen, he's a professional writer. He tells stories. That's what he does. Now. He usually makes up stories, but this is hard work. Makes up stories, but this is hard work. And then he you know he is fond of saying that he hates writing nonfiction because it's it's too hard.
Speaker 1:You, got to research it, you got to research it and you got to be, accurate.
Speaker 2:But you know, obviously we have two different writing styles. His is, I think, more. I don't know if plain point is the right word. His is, I think, more. I don't know if flamboyant is the right word. But I, you know, I, methodically, I'm not a great writer, I think I'm a good writer. But the thing about my writing is it's clear, it's clear and it's easy to follow, if you will. And anyway, I think Doubleday and John have come to appreciate that we're two different people with two different life experiences in this field and two different ways of writing. But they'll complement each other, okay.
Speaker 1:So, on the topic of publishing, I want to return to your autobiography. I found very moving and touching and also, you know you didn't pull any punches. It got pretty raw. Tell us about your decision-making during that process. You disclosed things about your life before one of the forks, in the one of your several forks in the road that you've had pre-fork, pre-fork, right, right. What was this a? Was this a kind of coming clean with yourself experience?
Speaker 2:well you know what it was was is I. I thought it was important to be honest and not come across as some Sunday school, pure Christian person with no flaws a flawless kind of person, if you will to tell the story about my personal life and some of my behavior, both pre-seminar and even seminary. What I was up to and you know I wanted to let the reader know this is who I was, this is who I am, this is who I am. Take it or leave it. That's. That's the truth of the matter, cause I think people really appreciate when people are honest about themselves and don't pretend to be somebody that they're not, and so I thought that that would uh help the reader to have a better appreciation for the writer.
Speaker 1:What spoke to me, I think, was this kind of sentiment of loneliness and hollowness in one part of your life, right that, as I listened to it, these weren't just stories of gratuitous, you know, escapades in Times Square, just, you know, just to fill pages, but it was really trying to fill a void in yourself and I, I was deeply touched by that. That then, it seems, farther down the road, faith helped to address as well as dedicating yourself to this work of of service to humanity. So I was very touched. I, as I told you in the pre-call, I don't get super excited to read an autobiography written by a reverend or by you know. I'm like, ah, is this just going to be more self-help kind of stuff, like with a nice glossy cover? And this wasn't that way. So I appreciate that. Just from the writer to one reader, thank you.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you very much, and that was the purpose for revealing these skeletons in my closet. But, as I'm fond of telling people, yeah, I let some of my skeletons out in this memoir, but I still got a couple left for the next time around.
Speaker 1:I wanted to talk about what must have been and must continue to be an emotional and psychological I don't want to use the I guess I'm going to use the term rollercoaster, it's overused but the highs and lows of working with people on cases that sometimes can take a decade or more. Sometimes you get deep into them and things fall apart and you realize this person's really guilty. You have to back off. Sometimes you go all the way to the end and you end up. I think in one of your cases you know, an hour before the person is put to death on death row, you're having the final meal with them. How do you maintain, as you say, the sense of being approachable, loving humanity, being open to human beings, being a man of faith, as flawed as we all are? How do you maintain all that and do this work that you're exposed to the worst of humanity?
Speaker 2:Yeah, boy, that's a $64,000 question right there. First of all, doing this work fits my personality, my peculiarities like a glove. I was bent to do this work. It fits me perfectly. I really believe that God has carved out this work for me. This is who you are, jim, and this is what needs to be done, and you're a perfect fit for what needs to be done to help free innocent people in prison needs to be done to help free innocent people in prison, so go to it.
Speaker 2:You know one of the statements by Christ on the Sermon on the Mount. He says those of you who save your life will lose it. Those of you who lose your life for my sake and the gospels will find it. And that statement was very inspiring to me when I was considering whether or not to lose my life in the business world and what I was doing and go to the seminary and gain another life, that I will find it. I was confident that God would lead me to find my new life. If you lose your life now, don't worry, go on and I will lead you to another life. I believe that in making my mind up, and it's come to be confirmed within me as I look back on everything as far as the ups and downs of doing this work. One example of this was well, let me give the overview. Centurion has taken on. I think it's a total of 108 cases since I began this work 45 years ago. 71 have been freed. We've concluded 88.
Speaker 2:Okay 71 freed, 15 not. The other 20 are currently being worked on. They don't have a conclusion yet One way or the other. Of the 15 that we failed, if you will, or the system failed, six of them we vetted and we believed they were innocent. And then we went to work to free them. Doing the investigation and it became apparent to us that our belief in their innocence was misplaced, that they were in fact guilty, and I would visit once we reached that belief. I visited them in prison to let them know that we were dropping their case and that was the reason why Two died in prison while we were working on their behalf. Two were executed Jimmy Wingo in Louisiana, roger Coleman in Virginia, and five we had to leave behind because we couldn't develop enough new evidence.
Speaker 2:There weren't solid legal grounds to return to court with. You know this is life. You can't. You know you can't win everything, you can't prevail in every situation and legal grounds to return to court with. This is life. You can't win everything, you can't prevail in every situation and you just have to do your best to accomplish your mission. And if you can't, then you really feel for those who you've left behind or you could not prevent an execution, but that's the way the world works. Now here's something that goes right to that question and it's a matter of how it affects my faith as well Curry Max Cook, who's the ninth story in the book, the Tyler Texas 20,000 word story, which is a whole, nother story.
Speaker 2:But anyway, mr Cook has eventually been completely exonerated. I just want to lead off with that. But he went through four trials the third trial first of all he was convicted. Trials. The third trial first of all he was convicted. The net conviction was reversed. Then the second trial 6-6 on jury. Third trial he was reconvicted, sent back to death row. I mean, I was working on his behalf for the second, third and fourth trial not the first, not the original one when he was reconvicted and sent back to death row. That shook my faith to its core. What is the redeeming purpose of having? I mean, I was right at the defense table, I worked long and hard on his behalf and there's no question in my mind that he was innocent. I knew he was innocent, it wasn't a matter of belief and I knew who really did it. It wasn't a matter of belief. But the jury didn't see it that way. Very, very conservative jury and they believe the police and the prosecutors Come hell or high water. And the judge stacked the deck against us by not allowing us to introduce evidence or information of innocence. The deck was stacked against Mr Curry, max Cook, and so when he was sent back, when he was reconvicted and sent back to death row, that shook my faith in God.
Speaker 2:Where are you? Do you really intervene on things that happen here on earth? Do you have any influence or do you just watch it and is everything all just random? What goes on here, the good and the bad and the ugly here on earth? And so I went back home after that conviction from Texas, went back home and checked into a Catholic Church's parish seminary by myself, with the permission of the head priest. He let me stay at their facility and I just had a room and I ate there. And my objective was to really go back to God and ask what I thought were some pretty hard questions Do you exist? And if you do, why do you allow these things to happen?
Speaker 2:And I'm reading the scriptures and I saw something that I've read a million times, but it hit me in a far different way when I read it in that particular at that time, in that circumstance, searching for answers, and that was this he said. Jesus said again on the Sermon on the Mount that the Lord, god, the Father, that he sends rain on the just and the unjust and sun on the good and the evil. My interpretation of that is folks, that's the way the world is. Good and bad is going to happen to all of us, no matter how we conduct ourselves here on earth.
Speaker 1:It's going to happen to all of us?
Speaker 2:no, matter how we conduct ourselves here on Earth. So the message that I got from that was Jim, this is the way it is Now, go back and finish, do your work. So you know it's pretty existential stuff, but it helped clarify things within my own mind and heart, and I did go back to work. I still have questions that I'm not completely satisfied with about God and his existence and role here on earth.
Speaker 1:And I think that same lens can be applied to what has happened in some of the cases of exonerees where they, like Chiefie's an example, right, you know, tragically they get pulled back into a previous life and you know they don't make it.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's a good point. And you're right, Chief, for the listener to know, when we freed him in 1983, even though he had our support, his wife's support, he just could not resist the lure of drugs. And the reason for that was he was, although he was fluent verbally in English and Spanish, he was illiterate. And once he got out he was like a little boy, lost in the world, with no confidence, no self-esteem, and he went back to drugs and he eventually was killed in a bad drug deal that went bad up in New York City. They found him lying in a vacant lot. But here's the thing If it were not for Jorge de los Santos, aka Chiefie, a heroin addict who was innocent of a murder for which he was convicted and later exonerated but went back to drugs and was killed on the streets of New York City, if it weren't for that man, there would be no Centurion Ministries.
Speaker 2:An argument can be made that 70 other people would not be freed. And because there would be no Centurion Ministries, all the staff members, the volunteers, the lawyers who love doing this work because it makes them feel as if they're doing something important and purposeful they would not have had the luxury of being able to do this work and have a sense of fulfillment for their life. So God works in mysterious ways. I thank God for Jorge de los Santos.
Speaker 1:It's the proverbial butterfly effect. Right, there's a wing flapped by a butterfly over here and you're not sure where the storm or the weather conditions are going to be changed around the world. Right, we don't know until playing it in reverse.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:You've been extremely generous with your time, Jim, and I want to acknowledge that. I have one last question for you, but before I get there, do you have anything that you were hoping I was going to bring up today, themes that have been knocking around that you'd like to get out before I get to this last question?
Speaker 2:just a minute or two might be. What's life like for those folks who have spent decades in prison for crimes they didn't do, were exonerated and come home to a whole different world? How did they make it? What are their challenges? This is a whole nother subject. And, and not only that, but how did they do it? What gave them the strength, the courage to live in prison for decades? How did they survive? How did they come out of this experience? Now, all of them come out with some degree of post-traumatic stress disorder. There's no doubt about that, but the great majority are not really severely damaged at all. They are an inspiration to all of us who come to know them while they're in prison, while we're working on their behalf, and who have drawn closer to them once they're free. They're an impressive lot.
Speaker 1:You could imagine, right, just even simple things. You go into prison when you're used to growing up with a rotary phone in your house and one phone line and pay phones, and then you come out and everyone's walking around staring at these screens and gettingbers and and that's just one little area, right, that has shifted in 20, 30 years, or however long folks are in there, not to mention the human relationship side of things, right, that spouses remarry and and you know just all those pieces.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you come home and we do our best to work with them both financially and humanly, help them get reestablished, get their footing, work with them as they work through their. You know you can. When you go away and then you're in prison for 20, 25 years and then you come home to your wife or your mother or whomever, that takes a lot of work to navigate those relationships. They're very different than when you went in and you're very different than when you went in and you're very different than when you went in. It's a real challenge.
Speaker 1:And even the concept I think you mentioned in your book about choice right To not have had to make choices for decades. And then in the outside world, everything is choice and everything's customized and customizable. And what do you want to do tonight? What do you want to watch? And you could imagine how overwhelming that is for someone who just doesn't, hasn't developed those muscles because they've been, uh, in a de facto sense, taken away from them for so long, and that's that's one of the things that, uh, because of that, uh, that's one of the reasons why Chiefie went back to drugs as well.
Speaker 2:He was lost, he didn't know how to contend with all these freedoms that real life exposed him to.
Speaker 1:His relationship with his wife, elena, was very touching. That must have been complicated. When he got up and cut, it was Refell into that world. Yeah, so before I ask you this last question, I'm going to connect, I'm going to link to the Centurion website and the show notes and and folks can donate. It's a nonprofit. I know you, you do events, inevitably people. I probably also want to volunteer. I know you have on your website there's a link for that. Right now it's like it's paused, but I'm sure after the book came out you got a bunch of people wanting to volunteer too. But certainly I want to encourage listeners to check out the amazing work that you've been able to do and you were very humble today, but there are over 50 innocence projects in one way shape or form, usually connected to law schools, where they can kind of take advantage of the intelligence and the cheap labor of law students around the country, and so you've kind of spawned or had a really big role in spawning that. That needs to be recognized.
Speaker 2:Well, I appreciate that and, yes, we were the first ones to do this, and for the first 12 years of our existence, no one else in the world was doing this kind of work on a systematic, organized basis.
Speaker 2:But since then, a number of Innocence projects have sprouted, and a few of them I don't know if a few is the right descriptive, but they've really done amazing work in their own geographical location to free innocent people, including the ones in California as well.
Speaker 2:But in 2007, another thing that has developed over the recent 15 years our district attorney's offices have started what they call conviction integrity units.
Speaker 2:They revisit convictions that have taken place within their jurisdiction, where there's reason to believe that possibly an innocent person or innocent people have been wrongly convicted or innocent, and so they devote staff, investigators and assistant prosecutors to reinvestigate the possibility of wrongful convictions that have taken place in their office. And a number of these conviction review units a few are very robust and very serious and have done tremendous work, and I'm referring to the Philadelphia office. They've exonerated under this current DA, larry Krasner, who's very controversial. He's a progressive district attorney, he's running for a third term, he gave muscle to his conviction integrity unit and they have exonerated 45 innocent people who were only convicted of murder, serious crimes in Philadelphia. Dallas is another one. They're up to 44, their conviction integrity unit we worked with them on two of them in Dallas and two in Philadelphia as well some of their resources into revisiting cases of wrongful conviction, rather than fighting stubbornly to keep that false conviction intact so as not to embarrass the office or their predecessors.
Speaker 1:It's almost as if by creating those departments they could shift some of that political blowback that comes when any prosecutor is seen as quote unquote soft on crime. There's no politician on either side of the aisle. There's no prosecutor, whatever their orientation, is, who wants to DA here in San Diego for a long time and when I interviewed Justin Brooks, california Innocence Project, he despite the fact that I think politically they were very far apart on the spectrum he praised her work, especially around cases of wrongful convictions, for kind of shaken baby cases, for example. Yes, yeah, those. I asked him hey, what advice do you give to your own, to your, your kids as they were growing up? And he said never be a nanny.
Speaker 1:You know he's a pretty dry, he's a dry sense of humor, but he goes never be a nanny because you, it's just so easy to get pegged with something that falls and before you know it you're found guilty of something that's just. There's junk science behind that. It's hard to pin on people or it's hard to exonerate people, rather. So he talked about Bonnie Dumanis really taking a methodical look at wrongful convictions and perhaps, you know, maybe perhaps there's a pendulum that has swung in society. I think you mentioned in your book that when you got your start like, america was kind of in this phase of like. There's no way that there could be a systematic process at work that is wrongly convicting people Like they're up there on the stand uh, they're probably guilty and you've been part of that sea change yes, yeah, yeah it uh.
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting that you mentioned shaken baby. Um, I just got back from a month-long trip to japan. It was a vacation, essentially, and a revisit old times and old friends, because I have a great affection and respect for Japan and the Japanese and the culture. But I spent two days with the abutting, recently established Japan Innocence Project, wow, and while there and while there I met one of their exonerees who was wrongly convicted and exonerated of a shaken baby conviction in Tokyo, yeah.
Speaker 2:So this is something that has been sweeping the world, you know, in a lot of cases erroneouslyously, for a variety of reasons, just ignorance of what can cause a little baby to die. But yeah, I would like to see more of but a lot of these progressive DAs who are whose conviction integrity units are really robust and strong and dedicated. They're getting a lot of heat from police unions and the establishment the law enforcement establishment in their locality. It has not been easy and a couple have had to leave their positions as a result.
Speaker 1:And I'd imagine that I don't want to go political about what's the current state of DC right now is not going to take any heat off of them, so we'll leave it there. Doesn't help matters at all. Right, so I'm going to come to our final question, and it's a hypothetical. What would your current self tell your 21-year-old self about the road that lies ahead, the choices that lie ahead, the ups and downs of life?
Speaker 2:old self, to be careful on any kind of stereotypes you might hold to or assumptions you make about the wide variety of human beings and cultures, race, any kind of person who you are really not familiar with, you really don't know anything about, you've had little experience interacting with. Be careful in making judgments about them that are just not accurate. Just be open to humankind and what their experience in history is that formed them in the way they appear to be, and don't judge others. Don't judge Because so often when we judge, our judgment is based on ignorance, whether we realize that or not, and it can create all kinds of problems for them as well as you. So please do your best to not judge, to be open to others, to listen to others. Listen, don't talk. Listen to others and learn all the time about life as it is for you and those you encounter.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that, jim. You've led a fascinating life and I've just been inspired by the little. I've, you know, gotten to chat with you and also read your work, and look forward to continuing to follow your work. Have a great rest of your day and we'll be in touch soon.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Have a good one. All right, bye.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us on the Hangout Podcast. You can send us an email at podcastinfo at protonme. Many thanks to my daughter, maya, for editing this episode. I'd also like to underline that this podcast is entirely separate from my day job and, as such, all opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thanks for coming on in and hanging out.