48 Hours - Guilty Until Proven Innocent - Encore

Episode Date: December 10, 2017

Two friends convicted of rape claim neither did it.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. Real people, real crimes, real life drama. people, real crimes, real life drama. On December 7, 1989, in Lake County, there's been a series of bump, rapes, and robs occurring.

And what that means is you're a single woman driving alone at night, your car gets bumped, and they would grab you, rob you, and sexually assault you. The victim in this case, she's been out that night drinking. She's driving home, and she's bumped. And she gets out of her car, and she's assaulted, taken into another vehicle, and she says raped by five men. But there's a racial component here. The five attackers were black. The woman was white. It was terrorizing the community,

and they wanted arrests at all costs, perhaps. I had the responsibility. I was a detective lieutenant. I had a free hand. I received no interference from anybody. Whoever perpetrated this crime were monsters. My next reaction was, can we as prosecutors prove beyond reasonable doubt the identity of the persons who perpetrated this crime? We obtained two convictions out of five people that raped this girl. I didn't do it.

I couldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. And when you heard the word rape... It sent chills through me. I couldn't believe that my name was being associated with such a crime.

When the judge said 75 years, I'm 38 years old. That's like a death sentence. I'm going to die in prison for a crime I didn't do. And one night, I hit rock bottom, and I attempted to take my life. I dreamt of a professor and law students coming to my rescue. I used to see it on TV all the time. Then one day I said I got my dream team. Do you believe 100% that these two men are innocent? Yes, absolutely.

100%? Yes. The more you read the case, you see all the factors leading to wrongful convictions, like jailhouse snitches, ineffective assistance of counsel, junk science. How confident are you that Daryl Pinkins and Roosevelt Glenn raped that woman? 100%. No questions? No questions.

We had DNA evidence that was taken off her clothing. What was your first impression when you read the vial? I was confused because the DNA was already done and it excluded both of those men. When it's not you in the DNA, it's not you. Zero, nothing to talk about. And everybody knew it before trial. They had to have known it. Every night I pray for my son. The only thing I can do is trust that the Lord will keep him safe so he can come out.

I'm Maureen Maher. Tonight on 48 Hours, guilty until proven innocent. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop.

Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. For nearly two decades, Sally Glenn went to prison every other weekend to visit her son, Roosevelt. It would hurt me. And when we leave, I would cry. Glenn's daughter, Darnice, just seven when her father went to prison, was often by her grandmother's side on those visits. I was nervous for him due to the fact I knew he was a very innocent man behind bars with very bad criminals.

I had suicide all over me for a while. And what stopped you? I believe it was the power of God. I was a good man before I went to prison, but I wasn't a man of faith. Prison changed my way of thinking, and I wasn't a man of faith. Prison changed my way of thinking, and it made me a man of faith. How do you survive in that environment? You have to become colder as far as emotions, because I don't trust people like I used to. I don't know if they realize you've pretty much taken the most valuable thing people have. Time, says Daryl Pinkins' son, Damien.

I feel like I've lost the most important time of my life, where a son bonds with his father and becomes a man. Mildred Pinkins lost her eldest son. I just couldn't imagine him being locked up. Your child? My child. He'd never been in trouble before. Why now? I've got one job as a detective, to get to the truth. The trouble started nearly three decades ago,

when retired Detective Lieutenant Mike Solon worked so diligently to solve a brutal rape case in Hammond, Indiana. I want you to understand something, Maureen. When you do a criminal investigation, you watch where the evidence takes you and you follow it. This was tunnel vision police work and they let the real bad guys go. Indiana University law professor Fran Watson runs the university's wrongful conviction clinic, where every semester law students like Max, Polly, and Brenda eagerly sign up to help Watson investigate cases. Did it change your opinion about the law or the system? I guess I started my career knowing

that the system can fail. For the last 15 years, Professor Watson has enlisted hundreds of her students to help her battle Detective Solon and the entire judicial system to overturn the convictions of Roosevelt Glenn and Daryl Pinkins. You start looking in the case thinking Fran can not possibly be right about this.

I mean, these people got convicted for a reason. Their first assignment? Study the case file, the scientific evidence, a victim ID, the political pressure to solve the case quickly, and accusations of racism. All of a sudden, each of us had our own aha moments. It was about 1 a.m. December 7th, 1989, and the first of two bump and robs that would occur that night was about to take place. Flight attendant Jill Martin was on her way home on Interstate 65, not far from Hammond,

when she was bumped from behind. A car occupied by at least three black males. She pulls over and the car pulls in front of her. And then a man comes out of the driver's side of that car and calmly walks to her car. And the black man says, are you all right, ma'am? Fortunately for her, a pickup truck was coming down the highway and started to pull behind them, thinking it was an accident. All three blacks walked rapidly to that car, got in, and left. Jill Martin said the men took off.

Still, she was able to get a good look at their car and write down a partial license plate number. About 30 minutes later, another bump and rob. The victim in this case, who we will call Jane, was also on her way home. So this is essentially where she pulled over. Right, right here. Right here at the light. 26-year-old Jane was stopped at this traffic light, just one block from her home and husband,

when she was bumped from behind. She got out of the car, and she walked to the back of her car, and a black man gets out of the car and she walked to the back of her car and a black man gets out of the car and walks very calmly, very leisurely to her and says, are you all right, ma'am? The exact same words flight attendant Jill Martin reported hearing less than an hour earlier. But this time there was no escape. Before she has a chance to respond, he grabs her by the arm. Jane says it all happened so fast. Two other men appeared, grabbed her from behind, and forced her into their car.

Then both cars sped off. Jane would later report that she was stripped naked, and all five men took turns brutally assaulting her in the back seat of their car. She gave a very detailed statement to Lieutenant Solon. Former Lake County Prosecutor Joe Karosh. It's her testimony that all five men ejaculated. Solon had the rapist's semen, Solon had the rapist's semen, giving him their DNA. But the national DNA database did not exist yet, so he still had to find the attackers. But Solon did have these workmen's coveralls, also called greens.

Jane's attackers had used them to cover her eyes. She was still clutching them when she was forced back into her own car and released. Westec lot number 311 was stamped into the greens. There was a tag there saying size medium. Solon tracked every pair of medium coveralls stamped Westec slot number 311 until he got to a scrap metal management company called Luria Brothers. And I took the greens out of the bag and I held them up. Okay. Kevin Barker, who takes care of greens, says, if those are our greens, I know who we gave them to. Roosevelt Glenn was an employee at Luria Brothers who wore medium-sized greens.

at Luria Brothers, who wore medium-sized greens. Four days after the attack, Glenn reported his coveralls had been stolen on the night in question. Two more employees had also submitted and signed reports stating that their coveralls were stolen that night as well, Daryl Pinkins and a man named Bill Durdy. Because they signed those sheets, they attached to each other that the night of the rape, they were together when they left Luria Brothers. That's not all Solon tracked to Luria Brothers.

Based on descriptions given by both women, Solon determined that the car the attackers were driving that night was a 1970s green Pontiac Catalina. So he tracked down every single registered car in the area that fit the description. Fortunately, there were only nine in Lake and Porter counties registered cars of that nature. Seven belonging to white people, two belonging to black people. One of those two cars

belonged to Gary Daniels, a janitor at Luria Brothers. Solon now believed he had a fourth rape suspect. There was just one problem. Remember, Jill Martin had given police a partial license plate number. Did the plate match on Gary Daniels' car? No. But the plates did match a car that had been stolen the night before the attack. Solon contends the men stole that car, sold it for scrap metal, and put the stolen plates on Daniels' car. It doesn't make sense why they would steal an entire car and then put a plate on somebody else's car.

Yes. Why not just use the stolen vehicle? I can't answer that question other than the fact that they stole a car. But the fact is, these men were never charged with stealing any car. And no DNA was ever found in Daniel's car linking it to the crime. Solon still needed one more suspect. Jane said five men attacked her. So Solon went back to Luria Brothers and found a fifth suspect, Barry Jackson.

What did you have on Jackson? Jackson, everybody said he's out with them all hours of the night and that was enough for the judge to say, okay. Solon easily got an arrest warrant for all five men. I remember him coming to my house, knocking on my door, and asking me, why don't you tell your son to plead guilty? I said, oh, no, Gal is not guilty of nothing. And I slammed the door in his face

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Roosevelt Glenn, who, like Daryl Pinkins, had never been in trouble with the law, It's okay, take your time. will never forget the day he was arrested and charged with a monstrous crime. It was a little hard because I know the picture they was painting of me was furthest from

the truth. I mean, it was like a night and day situation. Well, I'm a rape advocate and I knew that he didn't fit all those characteristics like that. Me and my sister are probably as close as two siblings could possibly be. Glenn's sister, Renita Stout, says because of her work with rape victims, she knew the Hammond Police Department. She knew Detective Solon. And she knew her brother was no rapist.

So it was that night that we started fighting for him. And you're still fighting to clear his name? Yes. And I won't stop. My auntie Renetta, you could tell she was tired, but she would never give up. She would go stand in front of the city hall to get her brother out because she knew he was innocent.

Roosevelt doesn't deny that those were likely his coveralls. I don't think he can deny those were likely his coveralls. I don't think he can deny those are likely his coveralls. Glenn says there is an explanation. Nearly two hours before the brutal gang rape, he was at Luria Brothers with co-workers Daryl Pinkins and Bill Durden. It was 11 p.m. and their shifts had just ended. The men say that they all got into Bill Durden. It was 11 p.m. and their shifts had just ended. The men say that they all got into Bill

Durden's car with the plan to stop at the local liquor store to cash their checks, grab a beer, and go home. But before we can get there, his car started having problems. And he said, it's my oil. I don't have any oil in the car. It was running hot. And he said, it's my oil. I don't have any oil in the car. It was running hot. So we left there, the three of us, walking. They exit Durden's car, and they walk away, and there's a state police trooper. He sees them walking away from that disabled vehicle. So it's undisputed. The car broke down, and they walked away from it on a frigid night.

The men say they took only what they needed and walked to a pay phone. Roosevelt called a friend who picked them up and then let Roosevelt use her car. After we dropped her off, we went to cash our paychecks. And the lady there, she was very nice. You know, she sees us all the time. And so she said, you guys are late. I said, yeah, the car broke down. From there, they bought two quarts of oil and headed back to Bill Durden's car. And that's when we found out that the windows had been broken out. The car had been broken into. The passenger

side window was shattered. Two shopping bags and a duffel bag, which had been in plain sight, were now gone. Inside those bags, three workman coveralls. He does not dispute that those are his greens. He said, those are my greens. They were stolen from the car. That's the story he gave. Solon was so sure he had the right guys that he urged the men to confess. He told Daryl Pinkins DNA was better than a fingerprint.

Then if we didn't do the crime, DNA would surely exonerate us. So we told them, well, bring the test on. But long before the test results were in, there was a stunning turn of events. For nearly five months, the victim, Jane, had insisted she could not, would not ID the suspects.

She had even refused to participate in any physical or photo lineups. Then she showed up here at the courthouse for a hearing. The place was jammed, Maureen. Even people standing against the wall. Solon says Daryl Pinkins, out on bail and wearing street clothes, walked into the packed courtroom through the front door. The moment Jane saw him, she reportedly recognized Daryl as the rapist who first approached her car.

Do you think that the ID was significant in terms of this case? Oh, yes. Solon now had Jane's ID of Daryl Pinkins. The coveralls that belonged to Roosevelt Glenn and a hair found on Jane's clothing. An expert was prepared to testify that it matched the hair on Glenn's head. When they said they had my hair, I was like, run every test you got. It's not my hair. The hair had no root, so at the time there was no way to test it for DNA. But the state could test several semen stains found on Jane's sweater and jacket for DNA.

Three months after Jane identified Daryl Pinkins, the results were in. And it's those stains that Darden, Pinkins, Glenn, Jackson, Daniels are all excluded from. Those men did not contribute to those stains that Durden, Pinkins, Glenn, Jackson, Daniels are all excluded from. Those men did not contribute to those stains. The test results showed three clear DNA profiles in the mixtures, the victim and two men, neither of which were a match to any of the five men arrested. There was additional male DNA in the mixture, but it was missing unique DNA markers from each of the number 8, you're excluded. The DNA did that in great detail and everybody knew it before trial. But the state disregarded those results.

Arguing that DNA was so new, the tests were inconclusive. Prosecutors did concede there was not enough evidence against Barry Jackson and Gary Daniels and dropped the charges against those two men. And they wiped their names out and then they refile showing that Daniels and Jackson have been dismissed. Far more confident in the case against the remaining three suspects, the state set its sights on convicting Pinkins, Glenn, and Durden. How do you take somebody's life away and act like it was nothing? It was January 28, 1991, and the first to go on trial was Bill Durden. The most damning evidence against him, his ties to Pinkins and Glenn on the night of the crime.

The result was a hung jury. We never retried him. And why wasn't he retried? The weakest case a hung jury. We never retried him. And why wasn't he retried? The weakest case out of three. The next to go to trial was Daryl Pinkins. Pinkins was convicted on three counts. Rape, criminal deviant conduct, and robbery. My knees kind of like buckled a little.

I moved a little, swerved a little, and I couldn't believe it. I was like, this don't make sense. It's rough. It's very rough. I wouldn't wish this on anybody, you know, because it's a lot. Roosevelt Glenn was tried twice. The first trial ended in a hung jury. A second jury convicted Glenn of rape. I was in such shock that I couldn't even think. And then I heard my mother and sister scream.

It was a bad day for everybody. My grandmother would always ask me, am I ever going to see my grandchild on the ground again because I know it didn't do it. Hope dwindled in this case for about a decade. Then along came Professor Watson's wrongful conviction clinic and her law students. It doesn't make any sense. Did you walk in thinking, well, they convicted him, they must have had something? I think that's what we all hoped.

We were all in our third year of law school. That's what we'd been taught. Having gone through all the evidence, there's nothing to me that, outside of the coveralls, that really indicates that they're guilty. But the real problem for the defense has always been the victim's ID of Darrell Pinkins. That ID is deeply flawed.

I would say that ID should have been problematic from day one. Problematic, they say, because it contradicts the victim's initial statement given to police. I thought she said they were young, punk sounding. She said young, black males in their 20s, punk talk. Right. Not one of the five men arrested fit the description of a young punk, especially Daryl Pinkins, who was 37 years old and married with young children at the time.

But even more disturbing to the young investigators, the crime spree continued even after the men were arrested. In the next seven months, there were 18 bumping robs and one bumping rape. So then how could it be you guys if it was still happening? Well, the word they used was copycat crimes. Ultimately, it was the way the prosecution handled the DNA evidence that deeply troubled Professor Watson and caused her to reach out to DNA expert Greg Hapikian.

He believes the prosecution intentionally downplayed the results of the DNA tests by using a significantly less reliable test called serology. Basically, the state argued that the men could not be excluded from the semen because their blood types could be found in the stains. Everybody in the room would have been in that stain because everybody in the room's A, B, or O blood. To even use blood typing when you have DNA is so unethical as to, you know, make my blood boil. And this is where it gets even more complicated. After arguing that the men probably did contribute to the semen stains, the prosecution then contradicted itself by saying that Pinkins and Glenn may

not have ejaculated at all. This, according to several jailhouse informants who allegedly reached out to Detective Solon. Pinkins, he confided in a cellmate and he asked the cellmate these questions. Is it rape if you didn't ejaculate? He also tells him, I'm not worried about the DNA evidence because I didn't ejaculate. That informant got a plea deal in return for his testimony. And so did a snitch who testified that Roosevelt Glenn told him he had only kissed the victim. But remember, the victim told police she had been raped by each of the five men and that all five men ejaculated. You're raped. You're being hurt.

If you think you're going to be accurate on did everyone ejaculate, well, you're fooling yourself. You're wrong. How do you, as an investigator, decide which parts of her eyewitness testimony to use and which parts to discount? I take it all. I don't discount it unless the evidence discounts it. There was part of me that just could not believe that they were pursuing this case. And more... Karen Freeman Wilson was a prosecutor turned public defender when she was assigned to represent Roosevelt Glen in his second trial. I talk about this case as the case that has haunted me throughout my career

because I knew he wasn't guilty. Today, Freeman Wilson is the mayor of Gary, Indiana. I really didn't know Detective Solon, but I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But you've been in prison, you've lost your dad, both brothers, and you lost a sister. My oldest sister, yeah. By 2005, Daryl Pinkins had exhausted his appeals, even though new and improved DNA tests

continue to exclude him and Roosevelt Glenn from the semen stains. The only hope left was Roosevelt Glenn's appeal, filed in 2003 by Fran Watson, who had officially begun working as the pro bono attorney for both Pinkins and Glenn. Did it ever cross your mind to maybe cut a deal? No. Have you ever once given a confession? No, I would never confess to something I didn't do. Knowing that the science of DNA had worked against the men so far, Watson turned to a different science,

one that actually had caught up with the case, hair analysis. The FBI came out in the last couple years and said, we're sorry, we've convicted people with bad hair comparison testimony. We now know that you can't put two hairs under a microscope and figure out if they came from the same person to a reliable degree of scientific certainty. But that's not all. Remember the hair used against Roosevelt Glenn did not have a root and it could not be tested for DNA at the time. But by 2003, it could be tested for mitochondrial DNA, the genes you get from your mother. That test would show whether or not the hair actually came from Roosevelt Glen.

In a twist of fate, though, when Fran Watson got the court order to test that hair, she was given a second hair as well. And that second hair, it did have a root. They never tested that hair. It had a root, always. So we test that hair. Professor Watson tested both hairs. As it turns out, neither belong to Roosevelt Glenn, Daryl Pinkins, or Bill Durden. But more importantly, says DNA expert Greg Hampikian,

the hair with the root provided a new, previously unknown, third DNA profile. We thought that was enough because hair evidence just like that has overturned cases all over the country. The FBI is, you know, apologizing for the way they've taught people to interpret hair. And DNA, everyone recognizes, corrects those mistakes. In 2008, a judge ruled that the new hair evidence was not enough to grant Roosevelt Glenn a new trial, citing the testimony of the snitch and the witness ID of Daryl Pinkins as proof of Roosevelt's guilt. But a year and a half later, after serving nearly 17 years as a model prisoner,

Roosevelt Glenn was released from prison anyway, paroled under Indiana law for good behavior. They also forced you to register as a sex offender. Right. You see me flinch. Yeah, that's, that's, it hurts. Yeah, that's, that's, it hurts. It also hurt his daughters, who lost their father for nearly 17 years. I mean, I wish he could have been there to help me pick out a prom dress or say no, not to that boyfriend. Even now, you know, I struggle, you know, trying to build a relationship.

Dad's supposed to be the one that teaches you, you know, this is what you deserve, this is how you should be treated. And I've never, I haven't had a chance to experience that. My children now are 31, 30, and 25. And we don't even know each other. And we're very respectful and we love each other. But deep down inside, we don't really know each other. Every man needs a father in their life. 39-year-old Damian Pinkins is about the same age his father, Daryl, was

when he was convicted nearly 25 years ago. I told him he's the strongest man that I know. And I told him before that I needed him just as much as he needed me because he was actually helping me. The love I wanted to express to my children has not been able to come forth yet. Yes, Darrell, you are not forgotten. That's right. Eighty-four-year-old Mildred Pinkins has spent a quarter century getting desperate letters from prison.

Hey, moms, wrote Daryl, it's another lonely night. She'd leave messages sometimes, and they were haunting, and would just say, just checking to see if you're working on Daryl's case. And a lot of times there was nothing I could do on Daryl's case, but I'd look at it, and I'd think about it, and I'd go to meetings, and I'd ask people how they would approach this. And eventually that's how we got the answer. It was at one of those scientific meetings where Greg Hempikian met Dr. Mark Perlin.

Perlin had recently developed a new DNA technology he calls TrueAllele. It's a computer program specifically designed to analyze DNA mixtures. This software allows Perlin to see profiles belonging to minor contributors to the DNA in a way that lab technicians just can't. Trualil, for example, was used in 9-11 because there were so many human remains mingled. Trualil was being used by crime labs. For prosecution?

Well, presumably for justice. Perlin agreed to run the test in this case for free, a process that began back in October 2013. The last 25 years has been very exhausting. But we haven't given up hope. No, we're not going to give up hope. Nope. In early August 2014, Fran Watson got a call from Mark Perlin. The results of the TruAllil DNA test were in, and the news was big.

Along with the original two DNA profiles, TruAllil was able to identify two additional DNA profiles, and neither of them matched Daryl Pinkins or Roosevelt Glenn. of them matched Daryl Pinkins or Roosevelt Glenn. How confident are you that the true allele test results are accurate and show that these two men, Roosevelt and Daryl, were not there? They did not rape this woman. Incredibly confident. The match statistics here were very strong and they were exclusionary. And remember the DNA profile from the hair with the root? It didn't match any of the four profiles in the semen either. That meant there were now five known rapists. Here are five separate genotypes, five bad guys. None of them are dirt and pink and sicklehead. And TruAllele provided even more information.

Three of the rapists are related. These three unknown profiles who did not match any of the defendants are brothers. There's no brothers anywhere in the case. Seven months later, a hearing was set for Monday, April 25th, 2016. But on the Thursday before the hearing, Professor Watson was informed there would be no hearing. After two decades of defending the convictions in this case, the prosecutor's office conceded and agreed to overturn Daryl Pinkin's conviction. The very next day, Daryl was set to be released, an innocent man with no record. Are you serious?

Daryl's getting out tomorrow. Are you serious? After working on this case for three years, we called Daryl's family and Roosevelt Glen with life-changing news. Hi. and Roosevelt Glen with life-changing news. Hi. We were also there the next day, when Daryl, still handcuffed, finally heard the news he'd been waiting for for nearly 25 years.

50 feet across from this building is your mom, some of your kids, sisters, nephews, and they are so anxious to see you. I feel like I'm about to explode, but I'm so thankful. We all waited that entire day for Daryl to be released, all on the edge. But it never happened. Apparently, the paperwork had not been signed in time, so a man now innocent in the eyes of the law would remain locked up for the weekend. This is not what you do to people who have put up with 25 years of absolute injustice, and they have a court order in their hands to say, free this man.

The process has to start back up at 8 a.m. here, which is 9 a.m. there, Monday morning. He'll be starting business. That Monday, there were even more people there to see Daryl Pinkins released. One day, there were even more people there to see Daryl Pinkins released. And thanks to jail administrator Mark Purvich, 48 Hours got an extraordinary look at Daryl's re-entry into his world. Hey, can I take your stuff? Because you're not going to have any arms to hold anything. Had you seen him dressed in civilian clothes before? No, never.

Never. He had a different stance. Yeah. You already saw the different person. Got to see Daryl be a man again, you know, be a proud man and leave feeling exonerated, knowing that the world would know he didn't do it. Here we go. This is your moment, Daryl.

For the first time in more than two decades, Daryl Pinkins, now 64 years old, was actually able to hold his mother and his children. But Daryl wasn't alone. For him, it was also about his partner in innocence. Thank you. Thank you. his partner in innocence. Is this the first wrongfully convicted case that True Leal has been responsible for overturning

the conviction? Yes. Precedent setting? Clearly. And hopefully opened up the eyes of other lawyers that in these mixture cases, it's now time to go back and try again. It feels like this day was, it was meant to be. I feel like this is a new beginning. You know, it is.

Shortly after these men were convicted, Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter took office and has vehemently fought every appeal in this case. One month after Darrell's release, Carter finally agreed to an interview. Has this office, have you gone back and looked at the case all the way through to say, did we miss something here? Yeah, we have done that. And not really. Only thing we feel that we got conclusive evidence once that last DNA profile was, we felt absolutely that something has to be done. But all the way up until that? All the way up until that, it was an arguable

case. Yes, it was. With one pretty significant exception. Well, when you look at that identification, that identification was, in my opinion, very flawed. After personally taking the time to review the entire case file, Carter, who shook Darrell's hand the day he was released, says he is now very bothered by the victim identification, which kept Darrell behind bars for nearly a quarter century. If that hadn't happened, that ID, would Darrell Pinkins have spent 24 1⁄2 years in prison?

I don't think he would have. I don't think he would have. Absolutely not. And if Darrell Pinkins, who was tried before Glenn, had not been convicted, would Roosevelt Glenn have gone? No, he'd have failed too, probably. Detective Mike Solin strongly disagrees and remains convinced that Daryl Pinkins is guilty. The prosecutor said the words, he didn't do it. Yeah.

Right, he didn't do it. Does that make him right? Does it make you right to say that he did? But we got people on the other side to say he's wrong. Not the mayor of Gary, Indiana, Karen Freeman Wilson, who gave Roosevelt Glenn a job when he was paroled. Is it a fair question to ask you if you think race played a role in this case? I certainly think it did in the investigation, in the way that Detective Solon viewed these men, the fact that there were black men charged with raping a white woman.

I asked them to produce any evidence to show that I was racist on this. I talked to them. I gave them the Miranda warnings. I never threatened any of them. I followed the evidence. I never used the word nigger to them. I never insulted them using that word. Have I ever used it in my life? Earlier in life I have. I haven't used that word in 20 years. You know how

much you all mean to me, you know, and that we did this together. We did this together. That's how that worked. Thank God for Fran. She's an angel sent from above. To me, she's a lifesaver. She is. This case overall could have been prevented from day one. And it's sad to say that those that are in charge, in power, need to get back to ethics, good ethics. Just this week, Roosevelt Glenn's conviction was officially overturned. He will now move to have his name expunged from the Federal Sex Offenders Registry. Daryl Pinkins is living with his nephew and is looking for a job. Pinkins and Glenn will be filing a civil rights lawsuit

that will include the State Crime Lab and Detective Solon. will include the State Crime Lab and Detective Solon. Relive Daryl Pinkin's emotional release from prison, now at 48hours.com. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey.