Wrongful Conviction

Angel Cordero was convicted in 1999 of attempted murder and robbery of then-Boston University freshman Jason Mercado, who was attacked and stabbed by strangers while walking in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. Four plainclothes Bronx Gang Unit cops driving by the scene observed the tail end of the assault and quickly arrested five men out of the crowd, including Angel Cordero, who at age 26 had no prior criminal record, and his brother, Ramon Rivas. Three of the five young men pleaded guilty in exchange for lesser sentences, but Angel Cordero and Ramon Rivas refused to plead guilty and went to trial. At trial, multiple people testified that a man named Dario Rodriguez had committed the stabbing. In addition, the three confessed assailants also told police that Angel and his brother were not involved. Both brothers were found guilty of second-degree attempted murder, robbery in the first degree, and assault in the first degree, and they were both sentenced to 15 years in prison. Ramon Rivas won his appeal due to judicially inappropriate actions made by the court and was released 6 years into his sentence. Angel Cordero served 13 years in prison despite numerous statements from witnesses that he was not involved, as well as the 2007 confession of longtime drug dealer Dario Rodriguez, who admitted he actually committed the crime. Angel Cordero was released on parole in 2012, and he is still fighting for exoneration with his attorneys at the Innocence Project. In this episode, he is joined by his biggest supporter, his wife Michelle Cordero, who married him while he was still in prison.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction  is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

​​We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In December 1979, a triple murder shook the small town of St. Albans, WV. John Moss III was convicted in 1983 and sentenced to life in prison, and he has since served 38 years for this crime that he did not commit. Jason Flom teams up with Georgetown University Professor of Government and Law, Marc Howard, and his student, Jessica Scoratow, to interview John Moss from behind bars in West Virginia and unravel the saga behind this tragic miscarriage of justice. On December 13th, 1979, in St. Albans, WV, twenty-six-year-old Vanessa Reggettz and her two young children, Paul Eric and Bernadette, were strangled to death by electrical cords. The murders were gruesome–Vanessa was brutally beaten and stabbed with scissors, Paul Eric was left in a bathtub, and Bernadette was hung from a door. Paul Reggettz, the husband of Vanessa and the father of Bernadette and Paul Eric, was immediately taken into custody and after being interrogated for hours, he confessed in graphic detail and reenacted the crime for investigators. Reggettz was indicted on three counts of first-degree murder and held in pre-trial detention for eleven months. Charges were dropped, however, when John Moss, a 17-year-old former neighbor, was arrested for the murders instead. In October 1980, West Virginia State Police investigators traveled to interview John Moss in Ohio, where he was being held in juvenile detention for an unrelated crime. John denied any involvement in the murders, and the troopers took a blood sample from him without his parents’ consent or a court order. They returned to pick him up five months later to take him into custody. The policemen in the car claimed that John confessed to the murders. He then gave a tape-recorded confession. The police stated that John confessed again a third time, but there is no recording or written record of the confession. John maintains that he was coerced, beaten, and threatened during interrogations. Armed with these confessions, however, Kanawha County, West Virginia authorities charged John Moss with three counts of first-degree murder and brought him to Charleston to stand trial for the Reggettz slayings in 1985. Importantly, there was blood at the scene of the crime that did not match any of the family members, and the blood was found to match Moss’s blood type. The blood sample was tested by Fred Zain, the infamous lab technician later convicted of falsifying blood evidence in over 134 cases spanning decades, and later destroyed after the conviction. On April 30, 1983, John Moss was convicted of the murders after fourteen hours of jury deliberation and sentenced to three life sentences without the possibility of parole in 1985. He was convicted again in 1990 after his first trial was thrown out for judicial errors in jury polling and prosecutorial misconduct. John Moss has been incarcerated in West Virginia for 38 years, filing numerous appeals alleging ineffective assistance of counsel and challenging Fred Zain's testimony, the validity of his confessions, and arguments about the purportedly stolen items. His appeals have thus far been unsuccessful, and without new evidence, his options for further appeals are limited. For more information visit https://www.justiceforjohnmoss.com

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction  is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

​​We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rodney Roberts was arrested in 1996 in Newark, NJ, after an altercation with a friend. After several days in custody, he found himself charged with the kidnapping and rape of a 17-year-old girl. His court appointed attorney advised him to plead guilty or spend the rest of his life in prison. Rodney had a good job and had recently moved with his young son into a new apartment. Hoping to get back to his son as soon as possible, Rodney pleaded guilty to the crime in exchange for a seven-year sentence. He would end up spending 18 years in custody before DNA evidence excluded him as a perpetrator and he was exonerated and released in 2014.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction  is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

​​We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kirstin Blaise Lobato was twice convicted of the gruesome murder of a 44-year-old homeless man named Duran Bailey, whose body was found behind a dumpster off the Las Vegas Strip just after 10 p.m. on July 8, 2001, covered in a thin layer of trash. Bailey’s teeth had been knocked out, and his eyes were bloodied and swollen shut; his carotid artery had been slashed, his rectum stabbed, and his penis amputated. Despite a crime scene rich with potential evidence, Las Vegas detectives Thomas Thowsen and James LaRochelle ignored obvious leads. Instead, they focused their investigation on 18-year-old Kirstin Blaise Lobato, based solely on a third-hand rumor. Lobato became a suspect because of an attack she fended off in Las Vegas in May 2001. A man attempted to rape her, and she fought him off with a knife, slashing him in the groin area before escaping in her car. In July, police drove up to the small town of Panaca to interview Lobato about the incident. On the day of the crime, she was at home with her parents in Panaca, which was nearly three hours northeast of Las Vegas near the Utah state line. She was forthcoming with police and described an incident entirely different from Bailey’s murder. When the police told her that the man had died, she mistakenly believed it was the same man that had attacked her, and she expressed remorse, which the police took to be a confession. Even though there was not a shred of physical evidence linking Lobato to the crime scene, on May 18, 2002, she was convicted of first-degree murder and sexual penetration of a dead body and sentenced to 40 to 100 years. The state’s theory of the crime fell apart in October 2017, when Vanessa Potkin, Director of Post-Conviction Litigation at the Innocence Project, and a team of attorneys presented nearly a week’s worth of testimony from several renowned entomologists and a medical examiner, each of whom demonstrated why the state’s narrative never made any scientific sense. On December 19, 2017, the judge vacated Lobato’s conviction and ordered a new trial. Ten days later, the prosecution dropped all charges, and Kirstin Blaise Lobato was freed after serving almost 16 years in prison. In this episode she is joined by two of her Innocence Project attorneys, Jane Putcher & Adnan Salter.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction  is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

​​We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction  is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

​​We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Malcolm Alexander was wrongfully convicted for a 1979 rape in Gretna, LA and spent nearly four decades incarcerated before DNA evidence proved his innocence. In February 1980, police arrested 20-year-old Malcolm Alexander after a white woman accused him of sexually assaulting her. Malcolm, who is black, told police that the sex occurred after he gave the woman money and that it was consensual. This encounter, which was uncorroborated and later dropped, prompted police to place Malcolm’s photo in an array that was shown to the 1979 rape victim over four months after she was attacked at gunpoint by a complete stranger. The assailant was behind the victim for the entirety of the crime, and her opportunity to view him was extremely limited. According to police reports, the victim “tentatively” selected Malcolm Alexander’s photo. Yet, police conducted a physical line-up three days later that included Malcolm, who was the only person from the photo array who was shown again to the victim in the physical line-up. Again, the victim made a “possible” identification and the word “tentative” was written next to Malcolm’s line-up number. However, when the original detective returned later that day to record a statement from the victim, the victim’s confidence was recorded as 98% sure that Malcolm Alexander was the assailant. He was arrested and charged with aggravated rape and he went to trial on November 5, 1980. The entire trial—from selection of the jury until the jury’s guilty verdict—lasted one day, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Malcolm’s paid attorney, who was subsequently disbarred, failed to make court appearances and to file important pleadings, including a motion challenging the identification. The Innocence Project first took up Malcolm Alexander’s case in 1996 but quickly learned that the rape kit and a semen-stained towel had been destroyed only four years after his conviction. In 2013, new hair evidence recovered from the crime scene was found at the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office Crime Lab. The tests showed that all three hairs came from the same person, and Malcolm Alexander was excluded as the source of the hairs. On January 30, 2018, absolved of the crime thanks to DNA evidence, Malcolm Alexander walked free from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola after serving 38 years. He is joined by his son Malcolm Jr. and Innocence Project's Director of Post-Conviction Litigation, Vanessa Potkin, in this episode.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction  is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

​​We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In July 1984, an assailant broke into Jennifer Thompson-Cannino’s apartment and sexually assaulted her; later that night, the assailant broke into another apartment and sexually assaulted a second woman. Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, then a 22-year-old college student, made every effort to study the perpetrator’s face while he was assaulting her. Ms. Thompson-Cannino first chose Ronald Cotton as her attacker in a photo lineup. Soon after, she chose him again in a live lineup – she was 100% sure she had the right man. In January 1985, Ronald Cotton was convicted by a jury of one count of rape and one count of burglary. In a second trial, in November 1987, Ronald was convicted of both rapes and two counts of burglary. He was sentenced to life in prison plus fifty-four years. Ronald was unsuccessful overturning his conviction in several appeals, but in the spring of 1995, his case was given a major break: the Burlington Police Department turned over all evidence, which included the assailant’s semen for DNA testing, to the defense. When the DNA test results were reported in May 1995, the district attorney and the defense motioned to dismiss all charges. On June 30, 1995, Ronald Cotton was officially cleared of all charges and released from prison after serving over 10 years. In July 1995, the governor of North Carolina officially pardoned him. Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton met for the first time after his exoneration and immediately became good friends. They appear together on *Wrongful Conviction *and travel around the country working to spread the word about wrongful convictions and reforms – especially for eyewitness identification procedures – that can prevent future injustice.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction  is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

​​We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From the moment he was charged with rape and robbery in 1989, Leroy Harris has insisted on his innocence. In May 1983, a New Haven, CT nightclub owner was robbed at gunpoint by three young men late one night. The men stole his car, and later that evening robbed and sexually assaulted two women. Leroy became one of the numerous suspects because he was misidentified. He was tried in April 1989, six years after the crimes were committed. Despite the fact that not a single eyewitness identified Leroy as being involved in the crimes prior to the trial, all four witnesses—the two assault victims, nightclub owner, and nightclub owner’s girlfriend—positively identified Leroy for the first time in court. He was convicted of three counts of robbery and one count of sexual assault in the first degree and sentenced to 80 years in prison. Even after his conviction, he fought the verdict through five appeals. Leroy finally got the Innocence Project of New York working on his case in 2012. The Innocence Project had the Connecticut forensic lab test new DNA evidence which excluded Leroy from the male DNA on the inside of one victim’s blouse. The sexual assault charge against Leroy was dismissed, but in order to be released, Leroy Harris agreed to enter “Alford” pleas to the remaining charges in exchange for his freedom. He spent almost 30 years in prison in Connecticut.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction  is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

​​We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jimmie C. Gardner was a Charleston minor league baseball player when he was accused of sexual assault in 1987. He grew up in Tampa, FL and was drafted by the Chicago Cubs just after high school graduation, playing with them in the minor leagues for four seasons. In 1990, while working towards his business degree, Jimmie Gardner was arrested and charged with robbing and raping a woman and physically assaulting her and her mother at a home in Kanawha City. Despite always maintaining his innocence, Jimmie was put on trial and prosecutors used West Virginia State Trooper and Chief Serologist Fred Zain as the expert witness. Zain knowingly presented false testimony which resulted in Jimmie’s guilty verdict, and he was convicted of two separate counts of robbery and sexual assault as well as burglary and assault-during-the-commission-of-a-felony and sentenced to 110 years in prison. Jimmie Gardner's case is one of over 140 cases from the late 1970’s through the 1980’s in which the state of West Virginia relied on falsified forensic evidence testimony by Chief Serologist Fred Zain in order to convict. It was not until April 1st, 2016, nearly 3 decades after the Chief Serologist was exposed—when Jimmie C. Gardner’s case was overturned, and he was finally released after serving 26 years in prison. Since his release, Jimmie has become an active motivational speaker and is in the process of establishing the Gardner House, a 48-bed facility dedicated to providing shelter, food and opportunities to people recently released from prison. For more information on how to book Mr. Gardner, visit www.jcgardnerspeaks.com. In this episode, he is joined by his attorney A. Scott Bolden, Managing Partner of Reed Smith, Washington, DC and the Honorable Leslie J. Abrams, United States District Court Judge for the Middle District of Georgia.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction  is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

​​We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In December 1999, the body of an unidentified young woman was found beaten to death in a forest preserve near North Chicago in Lake County, IL. Ten days after the body was discovered, Jeremy Tweedy, Jason Johnson and Jason Strong were brought in for questioning after Tweedy mentioned the woman's death to an undercover police officer posing as a prostitute. Police charged 24-year-old Jason Strong with first-degree murder and concealing a homicide and charged Tweedy and Johnson with concealing a homicide. Officers furnished a narrative about the circumstances of the victim's death to the two purported "witnesses," Tweedy and Johnson, both of whom agreed to testify against Jason Strong in exchange for lesser prison sentences. On October 18, 2000,  Jason Strong was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 46 years in prison. 

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction  is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

​​We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.