Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Innocent Man Setup By Crooked Cops | Sentenced to Life In Prison

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

Innocent Man Setup By Crooked Cops | Sentenced to Life In Prison

And she had the misfortune of coming across a 29-year-old drug addict who was high. He attacked, murdered, and raped her. I got on the police radar because some of the police interviewed a lot of students from the high school, or some people told the police they might want to speak with. And then he wired me up to the polygraph, and then he launched into his third-to-grade tactics. He raised his voice at me. He got in my personal space. He kept repeating the same questions over and over.

And as each hour passed by, my fear increased in proportion to the time. And he kept that up for six and a half to seven hours. And so towards the end, he said, you know, what do you mean? You didn't do it. You just told me through the test that you did. We just want you to verbally confirm it. Then he added, look, just tell them what they want to hear. And you can go home afterwards that you're not going to be arrested.

So being young, naive, frightened 16 years old, I wasn't thinking about the long term. I would just concern up my safety in the moment. Well, wait a second. This is starting to feel unfair. And I know specifically that I've been told over and over again that the U.S. justice system is extremely fair. They couldn't possibly have made a mistake. Hey, this is Matt Cox.

I'm going to be doing an interview with Jeffrey Deskiewicz, and he is currently an attorney. and was also wrongfully convicted and spent a significant time in prison. We're going to be going over his story. It's super interesting, so check out the interview. I was born in actually a town that doesn't actually exist anymore, at least not by that name. I was born in North Terry Town, which, of course, later became known as Sleepy Hollow. I grew up in Peakskill, New York, which is in West Jersey County, New York.

it was the suburbs population of approximately 25,000 people. I would say in kind of lived a double life, both in grade school and high school. I didn't quite think of it that way as a double life, but I realized now it kind of was. It was my life in school, my life outside of school. So in school I was kind of quiet, kind of to myself, I was kind of on the fringes of the society in the school. whereas there was my life after school. So I grew up in an apartment complex. There were a lot of kids that lived there in the surrounding areas.

And they used to come over to the complex where I lived at. And I was one of the main two kids in the sense that what we suggested would generally be what we would do. We're going to go to the movies where I play Monopoly, ride bikes, swimming, basketball, stickball, kickball. We even made up a few games. Yeah, so that's my, I was kind of like an All-American Kid, After. school but in school I was you know had the quiet I'm a fringes of society and I and I fucking thought about why that really is is and then firstly I mean the kids were a little bit older than I was like I skipped a grade I skipped first grade and I think that

that kind of caught up with me but another thing also is that I was familiar with the kids in the neighborhood that was not really familiar with the kids that were in school okay did you ever get in it like in high school did you ever get in trouble or anything or? No, not prior to what we're going to talk about unless you're ready for me to start talking about it. No, it's fine. Okay, so just kind of a regular, I'm not, if there is a regular, you know, upbringing,

everybody's either on the fringes or maybe they're popular or maybe they're not popular or, you know, nobody really, I don't know that there's really a traditional, you know, growing up, everybody's got something going on. Um, so what, so you were in high school. So when did this, did you go to college? You start college or? Oh, well, no, I was, so I was in the year is 1989. I'm, I'm a freshman in high school. And one of my classmates, Angel Correa, who had been, um, I said, I'm a sophomore high school. So she was, I was in, she was in, uh, she was in two of my classes as a freshman, one as a sophomore. Uh, I knew her name. She UMRI. That was really the extent of it. We weren't even really on a high by basis.

She had been an immigrant in the country for about a year and a half from Columbia. Let her sheltered life never really wanted to wear unless she was accompanied by her older sister or her parents. And so she went missing. She had been in a water of classes was a photography class and the professor had assigned the class to take pictures of foliage. And he had assigned a buddy system, you know, whereby male students, a female system for a students were paired up. And so she went home with her older sister after school. Her sister went to the restroom, and when she came out, Angela was gone. She went off to the park to do the assignment connected to her photography class.

The male student who had been assigned to her played hooky never showed up. and so she there was an area between uh hillcrest new york which there's condominiums and then there's um hillcrest school and there's like a really thick woods with like a macadam path there that links the two which is kind of like a shortcut way of getting from one from point eight to point fee rather than going in a big uh circle on the street that woods area is um pretty thick there and she had the misfortune of coming across a 29 year old uh drug addict who was high and he attacked murder and raped her and so her body was missing for like three days okay I didn't realize this wasn't high that this

this all took place in high school I just kind of I don't know why I assumed it was college or something but okay so yeah so I mean so she's missing for three days and you know and there's an announcement over the high school PA system and in the local daily newspaper and three days later her body was found in the it's found in the park area naked from the way to staff uh basically it was a you know again it was a city of population about 25 000 people or murders were fairly rare so when this murder happened it created this atmosphere of fear rumor paranoia i mean parents were bringing their kids to school picking them up after school bringing them

straight home there were you know town hall meetings held where safety tips and progress of investigation were were were given um so i um i got on the police radar because some of the police interviewed a lot of students from the high school or some of them told the police they might want to speak with because uh i didn't quite fit in i guess their underlying thinking was people who are quiet to themselves commit enous crimes yes that was their thought ludicatory thought process. But that answers a question of how I got on the police radar. But an additional factor after that is I was a sensitive teenager, and this is my first

real brush with death. And so I had an emotional reaction. And so the police thought that my emotional reaction was somehow some outward sign of my feeling guilty for what I did because it felt that that reaction was. disproportionate to what my actual relationship with the victim was, which is, you know, no relationship at all. I mean, I mentioned choosing a couple of classes, and that was really it. It wasn't even really on a high by basis. A reinforcing factor is that the police got a psychological profile from the NYPD, which purported to have the psychological characteristics of the actual perpetrator.

And I had the misfortune of matching those characteristics. So the profile said, that he was, you know, somebody who was, like, be a loner, probably somebody from, or probably somebody from high school, somebody that knew her. That really narrows it down quite a bit, right? But also, it also excludes her running across a random person. It's now, now they're focusing on, on a peer. Yeah, exactly.

So, so, my interaction with the police, which went on for about six weeks. They played like a cat-mouse game in which half the time they would speak to me as if I was a suspect, another half the time they would pretend like they needed my help to solve the crime. They would say things like

the kids won't talk freely around us, but they will around you. Let us know if you're hearing. Stop in time to time. They always asked me opinion questions and congratulate me like my opinion was correct. They made me feel important. I came from a single parent household.

My father was never involved. my life in any aspect and that intersected with the good cop bad cop technique where one officer pretended to be a friend in the other and the other officer took on a more aggressive approach and in time I began to look at the officer pretending to be my friend as like a father figure also prior to being a teenager the career that I fantasized about having when I grew up was to be a cop so that's unexpected the early opportunity to do this quasi-police work was how the police were able to pull the wool over my eyes, you know, that 16-year-old would be able to assist them in an active homicide investigation. So eventually they got me to agree to take a polygraph test. They said

we have some no information which just came in the file that will allow you to be even more helpful to us. But first you're going to have to take and pass a polygraph test. So the next day, rather than report to the high school, I went to the police station for the test, but instead of giving me the test there, they drove me by car to the town of Brewster, which was in Putton County. So it was about 40 minutes away by car, which meant that I wasn't able to leave anymore on my own. I was totally dependent upon the police. So there were three cops that came with me from Peakskill of Brewster. But then there was also. So the polygrapers, who was a partner in Kennedy Shurison, Daniel Seavis was his name, and he was dressed like a civilian, and, you know, he never identified himself as law enforcement. He never read me my rights. I didn't have an attorney present. They didn't give me anything to eat.

He gave me a four-page brochure, which explained how the polygraph worked. But I had a lot of big words in it that I didn't understand, but then I figured, well, I'm there to help the police. So what does it matter? Right. Let's just get on with it. And from there, he put me in a small rum and gave me countless cups of coffee. That's got me nervous. And then he wired me up to the polygraph.

And then he launched into his third to be tactics. He raised his voice at me. He got in my personal space. He kept repeating the same questions over and over. And as each hour passed by, my fear increased in proportion to the time. and he kept that up for six and a half to seven hours. Towards the end, yes. Where was your mother?

My mother and grandmother, they were at home. Because it was a school day, they had no idea that anything was not. They didn't call around looking for them. Okay. And so towards the end, he said, you know, what do you mean? You didn't do it. You just told me through the test that you did. We just want you to verbally confirm it.

and that really shot my fear through the roof and then the officer had been pretended to be my friend he came in the room and told me that the other officers were going to harm me, basketball would harm me, that he had been holding them off, that he couldn't do so any longer. You have to help yourself here. Then he added, look, just tell them what they want to hear

and you can go home afterwards that you're not going to be arrested. So being young, naive, frightened 16 years old, I wasn't thinking about the long term. I would just concern up my safety in the moment. And so I made up a story based on the information that gave me in the course of the interrogation room and in the six weeks run up to that. By the time everything was said and done, I had collapsed on the floor in a fetal position, crying uncontrollably. Obviously, I was arrested.

The interrogation was not videotaped. It was not audio tape. There was no sign confession. It was just the cops' word for it. What year was this? Yeah, this was 1990. So she went missing in 89, and by the time they extracted this false confession, I mean, it was in 1990. So before I went to trial, the results of a DNA test came in from the FBI lab,

which showed that seminal fluid found in and around the victim, did it match me? When instead of acknowledging they made a mistake, they continued to prosecute false speed ahead. In order to explain away the DNA, the prosecutor got the medical exam to commit fraud to commit perjury. When there's an autopsy done, there's written in audio notes, which are taken as the findings are made when they're doing the autopsy. So it was only six months after doing that autopsy, only after the DNA didn't match me, that he suddenly claimed that, try to follow now, this is going to be tricky. he remembered that he forgot to document medical findings which he claimed showed that the victim

had been promiscuous which is what opened the door for the prosecutor to argue that that was how the DNA did it match me and yet I was guilty that she was sleeping around that she must have slept with someone prior to my murdering and reaping I thought they were going to go with the old

that just means there were two perpetrators you and someone else Right. Yeah, they go with that sometimes, but not on this particular instance. They took it a step further, and they named another youth by name that they claimed she had slept with. But they never set the proper evidentiary foundation for that. So they didn't try to get a DNA test, a DNA sample from him to run the test, for example. They didn't call him as a witness. They just made the unsupported argument to the jury.

They got away with that because of two factors. First of all, the victim's family was not coming to court, so they had no idea what was being said about in the courtroom that they were trashing her reputation in the furthums of trying to convict me. And secondly, my public, if the public defendant that I had essentially didn't defend me, he never interviewed a call as a witness, my haliby. I was actually playing with the ball and the crime happened. He really met with me. When he did meet with me and I tried to explain to him that I was innocent and what happened in the interrogation room. He was always shutting me up. One time he told me he didn't care if I was guilty or innocent. My lawyer never explained to the jury the significance of the DNA not

matching me. He never used that to prove that that proved that the confession was coerced and false. He literally never cross-examined the medical examiner. And my lawyer should never representing me in the first place because of a conflict of interest. So this other view that the prosecutor was falsely claiming had slept with the victim was represented by another attorney at the same public defender's office. And so that conflict prevented the defense from asking him to give a DNA sample. It prevented the defense from calling him as a witness to explode the whole unsexual sex theory. He wouldn't allow me to testify. I mean, I wanted to testify because when the because the interrogation had not been video audio tape when the cops

came to court they left the threat and false promise out of their story and so i wanted to add those facts to the record but he wouldn't allow me to testify he said that his one lost record was better when his clients did not testify compared to what they did well probably his clients have had a pre-existing record and if they were they took the stand and they could be asked questions about that, but that really didn't apply to me because I had never been convicted of anything. Then he said it wasn't up to him to prove that I was innocent, it was up to the prosecutor to prove that I was guilty. And, you know, that really is a legal principle that's very naive. You have to really try to prove your client's innocent, or they run a risk of possibly being

wrongfully convicted, especially the confession case. You know, you have to answer that confession. the confession you have to disprove the confession you know bringing it all together your closing argument but he didn't do any of that sometimes he told the jury that the confession never happened sometimes he told the jury that it did happen but it was coerced and then other times he said that it was a false so by taking this throw mud against the wall type of approach he had to have been standing there with you know no credibility at all in front of the jury there were there were a few other irregularities I mean despite there being a general rule that polygraph test results are not admissible in court the judge created a backdoor rule he allowed the polygraphers to repeatedly tell the jury that I failed he said well the confession is alleged to have happened when you were you were attached to while during the polygraph so he allowed the polygraphers to repeatedly tell the jury that I failed the polygraph while blocking my attorney from asking any questions on the methods he used to arrive at his opinion.

The victim's clothes, including the bra, had been entered into evidence, and the jury asked to see the bra, which was important because that intersected with one of the statements in the false confession, where I said that I ripped her bra off. And it was at that moment that the judge said that the clothes had been left, including the bra, had been left in the courtroom over the weekend. and that the janitors apparently thought it was garbage, so it had been thrown out, and so it wasn't available anymore. And lastly, the jury sent out a note on their third day of deliberation.

They asked the judge, well, if we don't come up with an anonymous verdict, if you don't come up with the verdict, are we going to be kept sequestered over the Christmas holiday? And the judge told them, yes. and I learned very here's later that it was 11-01 for a conviction at that point there was a holdout juror was innocent but

they were all pressuring him and when the answer to that question being back that ratcheted up the pressure and that was why he no one wanted to be there over the Christmas holiday so that was why he switched to vote and so ultimately I was convicted of a murder

and rape which I did not commit and I was given the 50 to life sentence because I had been charged as an adult and I was set to amends maximum security. Wow. You know what? The interesting thing,

I mean, other than just, you know, what an egregious act, is that I'll bet you the prosecutor and those detectives just broke their arms patting themselves on the back, telling themselves that they did the right thing, went home, slept like babies.

Don't think a, didn't think a thing about it. Yeah, I would, I would, I would agree with you on that. Yeah. Um, so, okay, so, wow. So you, you, you get shipped off to prison. Right. Right. You're processed.

You get shipped off to prison. Right. You're how old again? I'm 17 by this point. And they sent you to a maximum security prison. Yes. You had to have been put in, like, protective custody or something, right? I mean...

No, they put me in general population. When I arrived from El Mirok, they asked me, well, do you want to go to a protective custody? And, you know, very naive. I said, well, you know, what's that? And they said, well, I mean, we would... You know, if you told us that you felt that your life was in danger because of the the charges, then, you know, we would put you in a cell and you would be there for like 23 hours a day.

You just come out for an hour. You come out by yourself and watch the television to take a shower or use the phone. And, you know, that would be it. And, you know, I mean, I really was kind of beside myself. I couldn't believe I had been, you know, found, been arrested and wrongfully convicted and, you know, given the 15 of life sentence and I'm in prison. And now you're, you know, I couldn't believe all that had happened in the first place. And I really wasn't used to being in the self at that point.

So, you know, I couldn't see myself, you know, agreeing to protective custody, which would, you know, make the situation worse. You know, so I may, I embarked on this line of reasoning. So I'm already doing a life sentence. So I'm not going to agree to make this worse. I'm going to go to general population and take my chances. And if somebody kills me, well, then I guess I don't need to worry about doing the rest of of this life sentence.

Could you imagine thinking that at that each? That's a horrible situation. Yeah, it was Elmira. There was three or four stabbings or cuttings every day. There was gang, other violence that didn't involve weapons. There was gang activity. Cimidivably, there was a general environment of violence and adrenaline that permeated the air. You know, the guards were, some were professional did their job, but a lot were not.

A lot of them were dangerous, and, you know, some of them were lazy, and they'd look the other way and walked in the opposite direction, and violence was occurring so that they didn't have to break anything up physically or file any paperwork. The food was sometimes burned. Other times it wasn't fully cooked. They had a system of maintaining order in a prison. They were called Keep-off, which, you know, involved,

if some of us found guilty of breaking a prison rule, they would be kept in the cell at 23 hours a day out of the 24. It would send you less food. Sometimes it would be three or four days old. You could take two showers one week and three the next rather than daily as the rest of the population. You could not go to the commissary, which is a way of going to the store in the prison, so you couldn't purchase high-tenant items or food items while you were on that status. It would give you one hour a day recreation by yourself in a small-caged area with maybe a pull-up bar on it if you were lucky.

you could use the fall while you were on that status. So there were a bunch of times in the course of my incarceration where I was assaulted one time in which I nearly lost my life, but beyond dealing with the physicality of that, that was subjected to those sections because in prison, if you're defending yourself, and that obviously meant that you were fighting. Right.

I tried to minimize the loss I experienced while I was in prison. I got the GAD. I got completed a bunch of vocation. trades. I got an associate's degree, completed another year towards the bachelor, but then the silver lining was taken from me. The college, funding for college education for prisoners was removed. Then I just, again, did more of the trades, and I started reading nonfiction books, and of course I was going through a law library to learn the law to try to proactively work towards my exoneration because I didn't trust attorneys to defend me anymore on my...

Yeah, I was going to say, gee, I don't know why. Yes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. My mother used to, I had, my mother used to come see me, but not in the last five years. The last five years, she would come like once every six months. My mother passed away while I was in prison. I had several sets of aunts and uncles would come and then would disappear for three years. I'm in dissing years. So in many respects, though not literally. I mean, I, from most intense, and purposes, I did the time by myself as what it amounted to. Towards the end of the sentence, in a moment, the correctional officials told me if I wanted to have any chance at all of making parole, I would have to take it past the sex offender training program, but the problem was there was a guilt admission requirement tied to that everybody in the class would be expected to admit guilt to the other prisoners in the class, the instructor simply saying that one was guilty was not enough they were the complete blow-by-blow

account and they wanted it all in writing and failure to complete any aspect of that would result in automatic removal from the program and being deemed to have refused to complete the program kind of similar to a he type of philosophy right you have a problem before you can make any actual progress on it so in the end I decided not to take the program? Did you want to ask something about that? I, well, what I wanted to ask is, you know, you're going in

as a rapist, murderer, essentially a sex offender, right? That's right. Yeah, exactly, right. Into a maximum security prison. Yeah. How, I mean, I understand you said you had, you know, there was several,

you know, there was, you know, altercations. But I mean, how are the other inmates are you being told like hey you can't you can't watch TV you can't do this you can't walk on the rec yard you can't like is that is that happening at that prison or are they saying or are you saying hey I went to trial I'm not guilty of this and the other inmates yeah yeah well yeah yeah I mean I did say that to some people I did say that to some people I mean I did get transferred I didn't stay in Elmira the whole time. I did get transferred to other, to other facilities. I would say I had more problems than the other facilities than in Elmira. But, you know, people, you know,

sometimes people found out what I was frustrated for and, you know, that motivated them to attack me. I mean, I did have some conversations with people a couple of times and I, you know, showed them my paperwork where it shows, you know, the DNA did it, did it match me? And, you know, that, that restrained a few people, you know, so it works sometimes, but not, not all the time. No, well, inmates aren't known for, you know, well-thought-out responses. So, I mean, I can see them, you know, they hear guilty. And even though, you know, most of them want to say that, you know, they were, they were bamboozled by the, you know, by the, you know, by the, you know, by the, the government, you know, whatever, the U.S. Attorney's Office or the State Attorney's

office, you know, in their case, and they didn't desire this much time. They didn't, but the moment they hear somebody has a charge of, oh, he's a rapist. They're, oh, that scumbag piece of garbage. What are you talking about, bro? Like, you, you said you shouldn't even be here. He said he shouldn't be here. Like, they're always quick to jump on somebody. Even though.

Yeah, I was going to say, even though, you know, when you get up there for sentencing, the prosecutor makes you sound like the biggest piece of garbage. And you already, you know like, hey, that's not true. That's an exaggeration. He's, you know, that that's not, that never happened at all, you know, in your own case. So, but then guys jump on each other. You know, they're always, I don't know, whatever. People are assholes.

I agree with you. When I went to the parole board, I knew they were in the habit of rubber stamps, nine applications, anybody that I had been found guilty of a violent crime. So I kept raising the issue of my innocence to try to protect myself when I referenced the DNA. but they didn't want to hear that. So at the end, they asked me in a question about regression replacement training program. I gave him the answer, and that's when a different commissioner piped up and said, well, that's good, Mr. Descovic, because you're going to need those skills

once you return back to society. Good luck. And, you know, they don't give me the decision right there at the spot. It's mailed via institutional mail three days later. And I actually walked around the prison for the next three days. thinking that I had somehow defied the odds and that I would be going home. And when I got the decision in the mail, it said I had a good disciplinary record, I had an excellent educational record, that I had some letters to support,

including from a prison chaplain, but that nonetheless I had been found guilty of a brutal senseless crime, and therefore they wrote to release me would be too lessened that seriousness. So they ordered me to appear in front of them to, years later. And it seemed kind of certain at that point I was going to die in prison on a wrongful conviction. You know, the other aspect of the incarceration and one I mentioned to you that it didn't recount, you know, is, you know, that I had to keep fighting off feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, thoughts at giving up suicidal ideation, you know, all those, all those things

were, were thoughts that I had to, that I had to deal with. So I'd like to change gears a little bit and share how I was exonerated and proven this. At what point, how long had you been locked up at this point? 16 years. 16 years, okay. Yeah, so, I mean, while I was in prison, I was appealing my case. I went to the L division, my lawyer argued that my, you know, the manner which I had been questioned, you know, violated my rights, that the evidence throwing out the

blocking my lawyer from questioning the polygraphs, DNA was made use of, you know, the legal insufficiency and that they hadn't proven guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. A verdict was against the weight of the evidence. A whole slew of issues about 10 and all had been argued, and I thought all the arguments were really super solid. And the court ruled that I was not, that I was free to come and go. And so, you know, I had my rights had not been violated by the matter of which I have a question. They wrote that there was overwhelming evidence and guilt, which kind of is a head scratcher, since the N.A. didn't match me. Then they knocked out all the rest of my issues in one sentence. They wrote that they looked at my remaining contentions and found

them either to be without merit or else not preserved for a review. And they ruled against me five, nothing. And it was all downhill from there. The argument motion was denied in one word. denied. The New York Court of Appeals, the New York State's highest court is it's a two-step process. You have to get permission to appeal to them before they'll agree to hear, you actually hear your case, and they declined to give

me permission to appeal to that. It's a certificate of eligibility? That's right. Certificate, close. Certificate of appealability, yeah, did not issue, was not issued. I filed the Hagueis Corpus petition, which is when a state prisoner is arguing that they're being held

in violation of the Constitution rights. So I lost the habeas petition because my lawyer was given the wrong information pertaining to the filing procedure by the court clerk. So as a result of that misinformation, the petition arrived four days too late, which the court ruled at the urging of the then-Western District Attorney, Janine Piro, her office urged the court to simply rule that I was late. without getting to my issues. And so the court did that.

And now I was time barred. So I, yeah, I mean, I can't, I can't win for lose it, okay? I can't, I can't lose it. So I appeal that ruling to the federal court of appeals. The two judges there were Rosemary Pooler, more importantly, future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and the, yeah, the so-called empathetic Latina. And my lawyer argued that, number one, this was not a delayed by me and my attorney,

but by the misinformation by the court clerk, which I think is reasonable enough. She argued that upholding that rule and would cause a miscarriage of justice to continue, which kind of links back to the DNA in innocence, at least as a contextual matter. and last stated overturning the procedure ruling against me would open the door to a more sophisticated DNA testing. So again, the district attorney opposed, and the two judges ruled with the district attorney, they upheld that ruling. Then those same two judges rejected my re-argument motion. We requested all the judges in the circuit to hear the court and make an electric decision. And then the U.S. Supreme Court declined to give me permission to appeal.

And that marked the end of my appeal. So that seven appeals lost. I've got 11 years in now. Well, wait a second. This is starting to feel unfair. And I know specifically that I've been told over and over again that the U.S. justice system is extremely fair. They couldn't possibly have made a mistake. That is the thought that people think.

but I don't, I don't think it's, I think, I feel confident with the justice system as well. That hasn't been your experience? It hasn't, has not been my experience, nor the experience of, um, nor the experience of many other, uh, many other people. So the only way back into court once your appeals are over is if you, there's a retroactive ruling in the law, a new law has been passed, you know, or has been, um, uh, but made by the courts. and then it's been, you know, retroactive.

So it's either that or find some previously unknown evidence of innocence, which probably would have led to a different help. So because I didn't have any money to hire an attorney or investigator, I began this letter writing campaign for four years writing anywhere, everywhere I could possibly think of that could, you know, that could help me. So that really was my legal work for, for many years. And then as I mentioned, I went to the parole board,

and I got the door slammed there as well. But ultimately, I was exonerated because one of those letters found its way to investigate what are you whitman in? She wrote me, and I showed her the DNA test results. I mailed a copy of that, and she was convinced on my innocence at that point. And then she tried to get people to take my case,

and one of her ideas was the winning one. She suggested I write the Innocent's project, again. I wrote them back in 90 now part of the letter writing campaign back in 1990 but she said look the prior denial is irrelevant because the DNA data bank has been created so I wrote them I filled out their application and then I forgot about it I looked for other ways of getting representation not none of which worked out but I learned many years later during that six-month time period of waiting that one of the intake workers was not an attorney with the Innesus project

attorneys didn't want to take the case. She represented my case to them. And when they said no again, she represented it a third time. And this time she got it across using an idea that I had given her about the DNA database. So getting a representation was the first key. the second key was that Piro left office and her successor didn't have her heel

to get it so she allowed me to get the testing and the third thing is we got lucky that the actual perpetrator's DNA was in the database and so it matched him so his DNA was only there because left free while I was doing time for his crime he killed a second victim

three and a half years later after killing the victim of my case and she was a school teacher at and had two children. So, September 22nd, 2006, the conviction was overturned. I was released. I went back to court November 2nd, 2006, at which point all the charges were dismissed against being on actual innocence grounds, and the actual perpetrator was subsequently

arrested and convicted and sentenced for the crime. What's going on YouTube? Ardap Dan here, Federal Prison Time Consulting. Hope you guys are all having a great day. If you're seeing and hearing this right now, that means you're watching Matt Cox. on Inside True Crime. At the end of Matt's video, there will be a link in the description where you can book a free consultation with yours truly Ardap Dan, where we can discuss things that can

potentially mitigate your circumstances to receive the best possible outcome at sentencing or even after you started your prison sentence. Prior to sentencing, we can focus on things like your personal narrative, your character reference letters, pre-sentence interview, which is going to determine a lot of what type of sentence you receive. If you've already been sentenced, we can also focus on the, residential drug abuse program, how you can knock off one year off of your sentence. Also, we have the First Step Act where you can earn FSA credits while serving your sentence. For every 30 days that

you program through the FSA, you can actually knock an additional 15 days off per month. These are huge benefits. And the only way you're going to find out more is by clicking on the link, booking your free consultation today. All right, guys, see you soon at the end of the video. Peace. I'm out of here. Back to you, Matt. If that happened today and they said, hey, they're semen and they ran it against everyone would it stay in the system if it was uploaded yeah so they have what's called the keyboard search but they don't update they don't upload it it goes up and it compares to everything and that's it right but they don't score it right but then there's another thing when they do actually upload it then it stays there and periodically another test is run and see it to

see if it matches anybody else okay so the the innocence project had to get them had to Get the DNA, upload it, it matched. Yeah. Because what I was wondering was, well, okay, well, you're saying that he'd killed someone else. And they retested his DNA. And I was thinking to myself, well, why wasn't it already in the system? But you just didn't. Yeah, right.

Yeah, I just asked you that. Okay. So my second question is when you got that, when you got that news, you were incarcerated. did they did the lawyer come see you did they just say call the office yeah the lawyer the lawyer came to see me and uh so i'll tell you the story okay we're here for right so the prison guard opens my cell door you know when that happens just supposed to walk down and you know see why they opened your door for and you know and he told me i had a visit and i said well can you double-checked that because I'm really not expecting anybody.

So they double-checked and, you know, sure enough, I had a visit. So I remember running back to my cell and I, you know, it was kind of a tradition to keep like a visiting room shirt because this is the one opportunity you kind of, kind of sort of make a public appearance, you know, so you have your best shirt. So I'm hurrying up to the visiting realm of buttoning up to this button down shirt and, you know, I'm thinking, yeah, thinking who the hell came to see me. Right. So when I get in the visiting room, this woman is like waving at me like this. And I wait back, but I'm thinking, well, maybe she's infusing me with someone else or maybe she knows me from a different facility. So I asked the guard, well, where's my visitor? And she told me, well, the lady right there, but wait, don't you know who it is that came to see you? So not wanting to visit to be canceled. I just quickly lied to her and said, yeah, of course I do. And I walked over there and she told me, you know, that. She was, the name was Nita Morrow since she was my, you know, my attorney.

And, you know, by this point, having lost a lot of appeals, sometimes on technicalities, you know, like my antennas are up. I'm looking for anything out of the ordinary that might spell bad news. So she says, well, you know, the items have been tested. And I'm like, well, what are you talking about? The items are not supposed to have been tested for another month. And she says, no, no, the items were tested and the results match the actual perpetrator. you're going home tomorrow and I said no I'm not and we went back and forth like two more times no and I remember just my head kind of spinning and all these thoughts running through my

head one after the other one thought having nothing to do with the other it not none of them having anything to do with you know what she was there to talk to me about and she was sitting there I had this like three-hour mental paralysis she's all in my hand and every now and then she cuts in and says, are you ready to talk about tomorrow? I'm not. Hold up. Get that away for me. I'm not not entertaining that.

Stay with me like that. Not going home. No. And what made it real at the end was that what made it real was that she looked up at the clock and said, look, for the visiting, how is there almost over? There's a ton of work to do between now and then. I got to get your suit size.

said, you know, and, you know, your clothing sizes and everything. And that made it real. And I felt better for five minutes. And then a different thought came in, right head. And I thought, well, something's going to happen between today and tomorrow. They're going to change their mind. And they're going to do what they always do, which is fight and win. So that was how I, that was how I got the news. what so she they they they the next day they come they pick you up they drive you to court yeah they're press there yeah there was a ton of press there was a ton of press in the courtroom and outside the court and you know they had my extended family my mother came and my extended family

came and i remember when i went outside at the press conferences my trying to speak i remember saying is this really happening you know because i thought i thought i finally did it i thought i finally managed to lose my mind and that that was wake up and you know still be in the prison cell and see the cell wall and sell bars and you know hear all the all the other cues and clues to remind you you're here in prison yeah um so i mean i just yeah what happened in the courtroom what yeah so I mean when I so when I came in the court room I saw Barry Shack and my and my other lawyer at the NSS project and he shak leans over and says well I spoke to the judge and and the in the chambers and you're you're definitely going home today and then

he said do you you want to say something to the judge and you know but then the judge came I said the case is supposed to come back in front of the same judge that presided over the trial he was still on a bench but he he dubbed the essentially assignment. He didn't want to be a part of this. Yeah, exactly. So I had the impression from the rush in and the rush out that this judge got stopped doing this. You know, he really, that the joke, you know, he really didn't want to have any part of it either, but he was just stuck. He was the low man on the, I'm on the throne full. Um, so by him running out, I didn't get the chance to say anything. What about the U.S. prosecutor, or sorry, the state prosecutor. Yeah, so

my lawyer mentioned, you know, the DNA never matched me, that it, that it, that it, that it, that And then they went to the data bank and it matched the actual perpetrator and that person admitted they committed the crime. And then the state prosecutor, you know, said the same thing my lawyer did. And, you know, they both agreed in asking for the conviction to be overturned and me to be released. It was just the same U.S. prosecutor? No, no. Same state prosecutor? Oh, it was not.

No, none of the people, none of the people were the original people that were involved in the case. So for the next, you know, I mean, it was very difficult transitioning back to society. I mean, one more question. Did the state prosecutor give you, you know, my bad or, you know, hey? Yeah, yeah, but well, not fair. But, well, wait, yes. The short answer is yes. It's, for me, it was a bifurcated process.

So they overturned the conviction. And then we went back to court like six weeks later. Then the charge would dismiss. And that's when the prosecutor, you know, gave me a symbolic apology. but she was not the prosecutor that was, you know, had prosecuted me, you know, said I got a symbolic apology from the district attorney, but she wasn't the eighth time this happened. I got a symbolic apology from the judge, but that was not the one who presided over the trial. Right. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. You were saying.

Yeah, I was just going to just discuss what it was like, you know, trying to put my life back together and again, you know, I mean, I used to go to a mental health professional at four times a week, I had six years with dealing with the psychological after effects. There was a stigma involved. I was in prison for 16 years wrongfully, yeah, but I was still there for 16 years. So, you know, how much of that rubbed off on you? Is it safe to be alone someplace with you? So definitely that's been a challenge in terms of personal relationships.

It was awkward when I meet up with my extended family because most of them had never come to see me in the few that did. It was few and far between. so they had in effect become strangers who I knew was intellectually but I was a different person so they technology was different

self-lossed GPS internet hadn't been created culture was different cities look cities look different I was released with nothing I was always passed over for gainful employment

I did get a job as a weekly columnist but they only wanted one article a week I was making money doing speaking engagements but it's really not a consistent form of income. So things were very difficult financially. I lacked stability at housing. I bounced around from place to place. At one point, I was a couple of weeks away from the homeless shelter.

Mercy College, which gave me a scholarship to finish the bachelor's degree, they allowed me to stay on campus that gave me the meal plan. So that was how I avoided that. But I want to say that I had some particular challenges, though, just because my incarceration spanned from age 17 to 32. I mean, I had never before lived alone. I hadn't had a driver's license. I had never went shopping.

I had never wrote a check or balanced the budget. So all those things were new and difficult one. I understand. Did you go through a period of time when you felt like like the doorbell would ring or you kept feeling like they were going to come and say we made a mistake.

Yeah. I did. I did have that feeling. And then I also, you know, had a feeling like, like for a while it took me well. Like I still felt like I was a prisoner that just somehow or another,

managed to somehow get loose or get free. Yeah, there definitely was that saying and for a while I I would like feel something in the back of my head. I mean, not literally, but almost like a metaphorical tapping

on my shoulder and well, well what are you doing? Like everybody else belongs here but you don't but you realize that you realize that you realize that you don't but but nobody else does you know what are you you doing out here.

In state, in the state prison system, do they, do they have like a four o'clock count where you have to be standing up in your cell? Yeah, they do. Yeah, about four, about four 20. But yeah, they do. They do. I was just say, so around 330, 3.45 for probably the first, I'm telling you, over a year, I would feel extremely anxious in my chest, like this, I would get this anxiety.

like I need to be somewhere. You know, and I knew, you know, I'm supposed to be standing up in my cell at 4 o'clock. They're going to come around to count. You have to stand there and you stand there and you be quiet in the whole. The only time the dorm or the unit was quiet. Because every time, you know, most people, they think of prison, they think, oh, you're isolated and it's quiet. I prayed for isolation. It was constant noise and banging and screaming and hollering.

But, yeah, there was the only time the unit was quiet and I, you know, just. 10, 15 minutes beforehand, you always feel like, you know, okay, we got to hurry up, I got to hurry up, I got to get my cell, I got to get myself. You didn't want to be caught outside your cell. Now, I was in the medium at one point. They had a door, so obviously, you know, there's lockdown. But I was also in a open bay, and you just basically just had to be in your cell. You just run there and you go there. But I felt like that for over a year. And I did. I kept thinking they're going to, they're going to realize they made a mistake. Like, they're going to come get me. Oh, I mean, a lot of the same things you're talking about. Like even, you know, dating someone, it's, yeah, they, they, they feel uncomfortable around you. They, they, they, it's a, it's a, it's an issue, you know. Sure.

And then on my end of it, you know, um, really not knowing how to read body language or signs and, you know, sometimes being, being, being, being dense and then being concerned, well, I'm going to miss a sign and it's going to be a miscommunication, but then then also thinking, like, I didn't have some fear. Like, I thought that somebody was going to say that, you know, I tried to rape them or something like that. It wasn't that. But I did have the fear. I did have the concern that somebody was going to say, well, he made, he made, he made, he made me feel uncomfortable. So that, that I, that I, that I did happen. So, you know, there were many times where I kind of, kind of kicked myself in the pants. Well, you know, I was attracted to this

person or that person, but I never said anything, and I never asked them, you know, I didn't ask them out. I didn't try to get a phone number and, you know, approach dynamics, you know, in different settings was all, was all, you know, a challenge. And, you know, it's really just like a short three questions, right? Well, what do you do and, you know, how'd you get into that? And then the whole damn thing is out on the table. But on the other hand, a couple of times I did go the opposite route. And, you know, I just didn't say anything. But, you know, as we're going to unfold in the story, I mean, you know, I was an advocate and, you know, ultimately I'd become an attorney and civil rights advocate, you know, on behalf of the wealthy convicted with a nonprofit. We're going to

get into all that and a few. But for now, my point I want to make is when I did go the other route and I didn't say anything about anything, you know, I mean, I can't really talk about what I do because of those three questions, but then when I don't at all, nothing, it almost felt like I was living like a double life, though, because that was such, that's, my advocacy work now is such an integral part of who I am or what my life is, so I experienced it that way. Yeah, no, I, I understand that, yeah. Yeah, you really, you really have to address it.

You just have to address it pretty much up front, even though you're going to lose a few. Right. I agree. So, but I'm sorry. So, so now you were, you had said you had gotten a, um, a scholarship. Yeah, I got a scholarship from Mercy College so that allowed me to finish the bachelor's degree. They allowed me to live on campus. So I waited the homeless shelter that way. They gave me the meal plan. So, so actually, yeah. Um, uh, and, um, you know, I, um, so all those difficulties, but I'm on, I'm on the campus. I'm, I'm finishing the bachelor's degree. I began an advocacy career, which had the elements of speaking, you know, up and down New York across the country. I was making somebody doing that. I was the weekly columnist, as I mentioned, so I'm writing.

I figured out how to keep the media coverage going. As long as there's some new angle or something new, I can keep that going rather than the normal five minutes of fame that then disappears. You know, so I'm doing regular television, radio, print media interviews, ultimately new media. when that becomes a thing. So I'm trading privacy for awareness. And I got introduced to meeting with elected officials. So I'm regularly meeting with them, urging the past, wrongful conviction prevention, policy,

you know, the laws, basically. Right. So I did that for five years. I didn't get into law school. And then I decided to get a master's degree. I thought having the additional credential. make me a more effective advocate. So I wound up getting a master's degree from the John Jay College Criminal Justice. My thesis was written on wrongful conviction causes and reform. My thesis was

written on wrongful conviction cause and reform. I figured that the extra credential would make me a more effective advocate. And then I got some financial compensation. You know, the year of state, you can get compensation from the state and then also file a federal civil rights lawsuit against the entities that were responsible. So I got financially compensated and I decided that I wanted to go to the next level. I wanted to continue the advocacy work I was doing as an individual, but I wanted to do it from a nonprofit perspective and be able to be involved in helping to free people. So I used some of the money.

I used a lot of money, not all of it, but a nice portion of it to start the Jeffrey Descovic Foundation for Justice. And, you know, we've been able to help free now from when we opened our doors in 2011 until now we've been able to free 13 people. And we've been able to help pass three laws. And then another six was part of a national coalition group. And at some point, I became not satisfied with sitting in the front row of the courtroom. I wanted to be able to sit at the defense table and represent some of the clients, make some of the arguments. So I recently had my first success as a lawyer helps overturn Andre Brown's conviction as co-counsel. He was in for 23 years.

Overall, the authorization, we currently have 13 active cases, and there's another five that are approved. but waiting. And so now I continue the same work, but, you know, I am, I do have a case load. I do have people that I'm working on, and the case I'm working on, and we're doing policy work in New York, in Pennsylvania, California. Pennsylvania is one of 12 states that does not compensate promptly convicted people. So that's a border state to New York. So the foundation through our coalition, it could happen to you, which I'm an advisory board

member of, and the foundation is part of we're working on trying to pass, It's on a recompensation. In New York, we did pass the country's first oversight commission for prosecutors, for the commission and prosecutor conduct. And, you know, we're working on some other bills in New York. We helped to improve our discovery laws that pertain to sharing information between the defense and the prosecution. So it went from being one of the worst dates in terms of discovery to one of the better ones.

I worked on a number of bills that would prevent awful conviction by coerced false confession. So firstly, I want to mention that coerce, false confessions have caused wrongful convictions and 29% of the DNA proven wrongful convictions with particularly vulnerable populations that people have mental health issues and youth. So there's a bill called the Youth Interrogation Act, which the Foundation is active with, you know, coalition partners trying to pass, which would give a mandatory right to counsel for 16, 17-year-olds and kids younger than that, saying that they would have to consult with the lawyer to explain their rights before, they would be in position to then make an intelligent

decision about whether they were going to waive them or not. There is a general law in New York that says that custodial interrogations are supposed to be videotaped, but when that law was asked, it made exceptions for homicide, sex offenses, and drug cases, so we're trying to get rid of those exceptions. Like you suggest, what's the point in that? That's the cases we need it the most, right? Right. And then it's what's called a police deception bill, which recognized, if it passed, I mean, it would recognize that the police lying to suspects in the course of interrogation, that that's inherently coercive, so it would ban the cops from lying in it in interrogations. So those are the primary bills that were working. I'll try to pass the, we just passed, and we're waiting for the trying to get the governor to sign the challenging wrongful convictions.

So in my story, I mentioned that I wrote letters for four years, you know, trying to get something to take the case. So that's because the courts, defendants don't have a right to counsel and post-conviction proceeding. So this would give people an indigent defendant's a right to counsel. And a weird quirk in New York law is if someone leads guilty, but then after that you get a good attorney and investigator and you find some evidence of innocence. the courts will not allow you to argue that you're innocent. They would be limited to just arguing that that evidence proves that the attorney was ineffective for not investigating. So we're saying that we want the court to consider the evidence.

Also, that's the legislation in New York. I mentioned a compensation effort of Pennsylvania. In California, we are working on passing the Commission on Prosecutor Conduct, which would, you know, the same bill that we passed, like in New York, just, you know, tailored a little bit of order to the California state constitution. So those are the campaigns we're involved in. There is a documentary short called Conviction, which is available on Amazon Prime, which is about my life post-exoneration and my advocacy work with a larger feature,

supposed to, you know, do to be released later this year without it be a documentary. But I'm still hoping to find a literary agent to get, you know, get a book published by a major publishing company and, you know, ultimately have like a movie and have my story released in other art forms. I mean, it would be, I mean, far, far lesser stories have been told, say, in musicals or one-man show or I'd like to have my story in as many different iterations. You know, on just as a cautionary tale and, you know, just to raise awareness about wrongful conviction and, you know, the efficiencies in the justice system that lead to wonderful convictions with the hope that that dialogue would spur on some legislative

changes that, you know, and, of course, to increase the profile of my organization, I mean, we're always trying to debate in the nonprofit world, just trying to raise money, you know, and while we have gotten the 13 people held, and we're working on 13 other cases, there's also five cases that we have that are approved but are just waiting. We don't have the bandwidth to move as currently constructive. We really need to raise more money so we can bring in other lawyers and investigators, all our essential personnel. I mean, my ultimate goal would be to have a chapter of the foundation, like in each state

and ultimately in each country, because I really see this as a worldwide issue. And I think that in countries where we don't hear about eviction, it's not that the wrongful convictions aren't happening. It's that nobody is, the injustices are not being undone. Nobody is working. None of the, you know, the courts are not overturing the cases. So, yeah, that's what, you know, this is what my life's about. I mean, I make sense of my, what happened to me.

In this kaleidoscopic way, look, I found my purpose, in other words, and this is what it is. Yeah, you've turned it. You've definitely turned a life-altering massive injustice into a crusade, you know? Right. You know, which, you know, maybe that's why it happened. I believe that it is. No, I believe that it is. And with that, you know, I have an acceptance.

since I have an inner piece, a higher sense of purpose, you know, and, you know, I'm not, I'm not an angry person, you know,

I want to enjoy my life as much as I can. And, you know, I can't do that, you know, if I'm an angry or bitter person. And, you know,

if I was to be angry or bitter, you know, I felt like I would be impacting any of the people that were involved. I'd be the only loser. That's an area. I were going to say, it's, it's not going to get you anywhere.

It's, you know, it's the whole concept. of, you know, drinking the poison, hoping it kills the other guy. You know, it's just, you know, silly. So, yeah, you're absolutely going about it the right way. I was going to say the book, have you written a manuscript? Have you written a manuscript?

Yes. I have. Well, so I've written a book. It's 95% done. It has another 5% to go. But what would be added, you know, would just be some strategic context. So it really would be about adding to my adventure. or things I've done and accomplished since I've been released.

You know, a significant amount of things have happened since the last time I, you know, was working on it. But I'm all the way out with certain things that happen. But I have to add other things like graduating law school, graduating law school, my first client, some of the bills we passed, other cases that have been won. That's what would have to be added. But, you know, there's a lot of anxiety books out there. And I try to, like, reflect on myself, the world around me and other people and try to draw themes and, you know, benefit from experience.

You know, they always say hindsight's 20-20, but at the same time, whoever can look at what has you already happened and then draw lessons to, you know, to get around those things going forward. I mean, you're that much better off. So there's a lot of genre books out there that really haven't made a ripple. They really haven't been read. They don't make a bestseller list. And that's because the people ran to a smaller publishing company or at least one instance, you know, self-published. So I, you know, I want to, I have a lot of things on my plate. You know, I mean, I work maybe like 50 or 60 hours a week.

I don't get me, you know, I have the compensation invested in some conservative investment. So that pays me, that serves in lieu of a salary that allows me to focus my time on this. It's all between working on cases, working on legislation, meeting with potential. owner, strategizing over things, and some of the other stuff associated with running a nonprofit. And then I speak and then sometimes there's training sessions, whether I'm in front of judges or prosecutors or defense lawyers, or sometimes even law enforcement. I don't want to add, why don't I figure out how to set up book doors and do the press around that and get, you know, book signing and shelf space. Okay, I want to import that and let somebody

else do that, and I want it to be for a major publishing copy. Otherwise, it's just going to go, I have one story to sell, right? I don't want to waste it. I really want it to make an impact. And the general order, not always, but the general order is that the book does well, then there's a movie possibility. But if the book bombs, you're probably not going to get a movie done out of it. So I would rather sit and wait until the right agent and ultimately the right offer. comes out and that it's marketed properly and it can be the big splash that I'm that I'm looking for I'd rather wait for the right offer than to just you know run run to the first thing that comes along and nobody nobody ever reads it and you know none of those other dreams come

true um for as far as a bestseller's concern you're right you probably have more of a chance but doesn't mean you don't have a chance if it's not a bestseller but um and I was going to say you definitely, you need a literary agent, obviously. Sure. You're waiting for that. I went through two of them already. So I went through one person, and I thought that that was the guy. And it's the old story if you want to be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish,

you know, in a huge pond, right? And unfortunately, I was a small fish in a huge pond. And there's only so many hours a day. And so although he wanted to push me, he spent his time on client. that would yield much more money and so that didn't work out. And then I had a different literary agent

after that. And I think the climate was different than I wasn't a lawyer than either. And I think the winds of justice reform and wrong for conviction that are like well and rather strong now weren't as much than I mean at that time I feel like

the mass incarceration moved me kind of like sucked all the oxen out of the room and that was what the craze was not wrongful conviction and so the publishing companies you know weren't were interested at that at that point but i think it could be different now i just have to find i have to find the right person i did meet with somebody i'll tell you quick big net laughed a little bit at life to not go crazy so it started out this guy was supposed to represent me as my literary agent and it went from that to he connected me with a former

a client of his who had written a bestseller and then and then it turned out he wanted that guy and him to get to get the money and I wouldn't have gotten anything and it would have just been for the exposure and then try to recoup something on the back end through to the movie you know and that just right simply didn't make any you working for him or you're working for me it's my story you've got this thing backwards uh well here's where you have it written you're weren't asking them to write the story. Like, I can understand them getting a chunk of it if they wrote the story, but you've written your, you're saying 95% done. Like, right. Exactly. It's not like you can't write, you write, you were writing a column, you know, once a week. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

And I have more than charted articles in print and I've been published in nine different publications. So yes, I do, I do know how to write. Yeah. So that was, you know, so that's where that went. But look, I'm waiting to find the right person. And I think also with the book comes out, other opportunities open up. So I'd love to have a Speakers Bureau represent me, but if you don't have a book, they don't want to touch you. I had one entity that agreed to take me on anyway, but, you know, what they promised me, they didn't deliver. They promised that they were going to proactively seek out speaking engagements and be into a higher, you know, honorarian level. And instead, all they did was manage offers that came in. And I really didn't.

Right. I have the same problem. I have the exact end problem. So I got a lot away from them, but I think I could go back to, if I had a book that was doing well, I think that that's a game changer. And somehow or another, I really would like to get into motivational speaking, because, you know, I could never give up where the back end of the story would not be about systemic deficiencies that lead to wrongful convictions, but it would be maybe life lessons and inspirational, never give up. and I could share the formula I came up with for, you know, making a difference and it would be that. But again, I feel like I need more infrastructure. Like I haven't met the right person or people yet to open those, you know, doors for me because, you know, I can't be a master of everything. But the idea would be in speaking, whether it was motivational or otherwise. The idea would be that it would be a sideline, that it would be a minor income stream for the foundation.

and towards, you know, expanding our capacity, how many more additional innocent people could we work on, trying to bring all how many other places can we, you know, pursue policy initiatives in preventing this. And that kind of ties into my biggest challenge, you know, which is, you know, I didn't arrive at the social economic position that I'm in. Now, I mean, I kind of arrived there artificially somewhat, It's just my means of the lawsuit rather than coming up in business 10, 20, 30, 40 years,

or I came upon that one life-changing idea that then, you know, both, you know. So I don't have this cachet of people that I know that I have credibility with that I can go back to and, you know, they fund the organization. So I really need third-party who can function as connectors, just so I can get in conversations with. people and entities of capacity. And it's a soft self. Look, here's who I am. Here's my credentials. Here's the organization's mission is. Here's our trap effort. Here's what we could accomplish, you know, if we did get to finding the metrics that we could hit. And is this something that speaks to you or is it not? And you're not thanking for your time. But I need help to get into

those type of conversations. And it's really not about me. It's really about other people. like I'm free. I'm a lawyer. I know the system and, you know, I have finances. So I doubt very seriously I would ever be, you know, roughly convicted again. So it's not, it's not really about me. It's about the other people, the men and women that I metaphorically left behind, not just in the York, but everywhere. You know, so the more we can raise, the more that we could work on freeing people. So that's really the biggest challenge, you know, is for that. So, or maybe some of the people that are listening, you know, they can reach me. There's a web form on the website, www.duscovick.org.

They have the Patreon campaign. So that's, you know, politicians of both artists can raise tens of millions, hundreds of millions of what they refer to as small dollar donors. You know, why not money to free innocent people? Imagine dream for a second with me here. What if 25,000 people were willing to sacrifice three to five dollars on a recurring monthly basis? I mean, that would give us close to a million dollars. You imagine how many people we could work on trying to bring home, you know, with that or people that work at corporations that do corporate philanthropy.

I mean, just to, you know, put a B in someone's bonnet, you know, how you can see them. You know, so that's really what I need that or people that can help in one way or another. But all of that being separate and distinct from people and entities that aren't looking to help the mission, but instead simply want to do business or want to sell me a product or sell me, you know, a service. I'm really not interested in that. I don't like equations where, you know, one, a service provider, their money's guaranteed and everyone else is speculative. that I left and people sit at the same side of the table as me and we rise or fall together. Because look, I, you know, I've been burned a few times, you know, in trying to raise money.

So, I mean, I've learned, I've learned, you know, from that. But, yeah, that's really what it's about, you know, trying to be able to not have this waiting list of people and, you know, expand that type of thing. But, you know, last point on that, I want to be the dead horse. But, you know, all the money would go definitely to the mission. None of it would make its way into my pocket under any rationale, under any theory. You know, this doesn't gain money. I've actually put money into it. But I'm not because, I mean, I earn money all the ways, you know, whether investments

or the people are exonerated as a lawyer, I can help them compensation on the back-end part. I have my ways that I can earn personally. You know, it's not through disorganization. Yeah, it's definitely one of the things prison teaches you is that, you know, money is not going to make you happy. No, it's definitely, it's definitely not. And, you know, just the social side of it, you know, just putting my life together on the social level. You know, just have people, hey, you're free, I'm free. Not literally, are you free?

But, yeah, listen, I'm going to come over, man, with disco ride bikes, man. you know they think the carnival's in town man i want to hit up the bumper cards or let's play you'll get get the boys together let's play some basketball or you know kickball or you know stuff to you know play a game with chess or you know let's go to a sporting event and me but just trying to build the social part of my life the friendship side of the equation you know and and in the romantic side of the equation i mean that's the part that i found has been the most challenging and the most frustrating, to be, to be frankly, because in some ways, I feel like I'm still paying for the wrongful conviction even now to this, you know, to this second, because I haven't

been able to put the social side of the equation really together. My life was pretty well positioned socially before the social train got knocked off the tracks. I mean, I mentioned I was one of the I mean, it's out of a lot of them, and it would do all kind of kid-like things, and, you know, like, I miss that, you know, but where, how do I, when you're not starting with any human assets, where do you start? I mean, if you're an immigrant and you come from another country, you know, Spanish people find Spanish enclaves and the Italians and, you know, the Chinatown or, you know, you name the Russians, you name it, right? they go to a certain area they you know i call it theory of one person right pointing my own term okay you find one person and that person brings you around to that community you mean i now you met everybody now some of the people take a liking to you not everybody a few people do that's your and then they need you to even more people and then you're right i listen i understand where's my

where where's my version of that to find though i hear you listen i i i have no friends that I didn't meet in prison. You know, I don't know if you, you know this. I was, you know, I was, you know, I was incarcerated for 13 years, you know, guilty, absolutely guilty of every one of the charges. But all my current friends are guys that I knew from prison. Because you're right, you're right. Even if you meet somebody and they're nice and they're friendly and everything else, you're right. They don't invite you out.

They don't, you make them feel uncomfortable. you know I get it you don't you don't feel comfortable that's fine I don't want I'm not begging you to come around me you know but yeah but you're right all my friends I met in prison they eventually get out I kept in touch with them they get out we hang out we help each other we support each other but yeah you're right no there's no there's no new friends there's no I don't know any normal people so I I understand what you're saying it's tough yeah and I made an effort when I first got out I made it a genuine genuine effort didn't happen you know yeah i have one friend i have one friend but he actually lives in

an estate so we're more text friends you know you you text each other once a day or you send you send it you send a tic-tok you know right like we don't hang out right right and then yeah i mean that's i i i can i i can relate and then i the other thing the other challenge i i i've noticed Because, you know, I do know a number of other people that were exonerated, a few of which I knew were when we were both wrongfully in prison, a much bigger population of exoneries that I did not know on the inside. And, you know, I do know quite a bit of people committed to our crime-free life guilty before, but on parole, doing the right thing now.

Some of them I knew on the inside. But I've made this observation that I feel like in some ways I'm a subset of a subset, meaning that I was like 16, when I was arrested and in for 17 to 32. I mean, that's a lot different than someone's life is interrupted at 21 or 25 or 30, you know, in that we don't necessarily have the same hobbies. Like most people, they're not still looking to get out of basketball court or, you know, ride a bike or go to the bumper cars or, you know, explore this aspect of the world or another. I mean, we can get together. We can shoot the breeze.

You know, maybe we can play a game with chess. But even if it becomes limited, I like, I would like to find people that you share three, four, maybe five different things. So we can change genres of activities and, you know, see what the world is about going here or going there. But, you know, a lot of people also are, frankly, struggling a lot, you know, on the income level, on the job level. You know, I was that way for about five years. But, you know, my reality is changed. But, you know, it's tiring sometimes where if Jeff doesn't pay for everything, then nobody can go anywhere, do anything. And that, you know, so I've found that sometimes becomes somewhat of an obstacle.

So really across the board, I'm really, I'm neither fished or foul. Well, you know, I was even going to say, even the things that you have in common, going to law school, going to college. When you went to college, you weren't 20 years old. You didn't have the same college experience that other people did at 20, 21, 19, 23, you know, maybe if they're dated, 25, when they graduated. You didn't go to college until you were in your 30s. Right. You know, law school, playing.

Exactly. And everybody there was much younger and their idea of being friendly was just saying, hi, Jeff. How was you week? All right. See you tomorrow, Jeff. I mean, it wasn't like I was like hanging out with people and socializing with her, you know. So, I mean, I feel there's still the dichotomy also.

I feel I'm 49, right? But I feel like I'm 26. but not in this fountain of youth, Jason, now I've found type of joyous, joyish way. More of a dichotomy, you know, where I have all those energy, but the things that I want to do are not really things that like a 49-year-old is going to do,

want to do. But now you've got to go, you know, younger. But then the more you do, the less in common because, you know, number one, it's not really peer-to-peer anymore. is not the same maturity level. Like, I like things, like right place, right time, right people in the right setting, we can let her hair down to a certain extent, right?

But I understand how one thing can lead to another, it snowballs, and now there's a big consequence. But people, like, nunger much, you know, like, and it's what, they don't necessarily think about that, how something can snowball. It's like going back to prison, right? There were a lot of people I avoided. I could see like a metaphorical storm cloud above their head, where it was clear they were going to self-destruct. The main thing was to make sure that they didn't manage to bring me down with them. So I kept my distance and careful and thinking for other people, but someone in their 20s or even their young 30s is not necessarily thinking in that, in that way either.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I definitely, I can, I can definitely see, talk to people and start to play out how things are going to go down for them when most people don't think that way. Because in prison, you have to think that long term. Is this someone I need to be around? Because he's got a week to six months before he gets stabbed or gets in trouble or do I want to be around him? Do I want to be associated with him? It's, it's kind of like the, when two guys get into a fight in. prison, you walk away. Everybody walks away. You all stand around and watch it because when the guards show up, they're going to grab both of them and five or ten of the guys that are standing around them. You walk away. In high school, you stand around and watch the fight. You know, it's people, there's all these little things that people don't understand how you behave, you know. I was going to say as far as, you know, the, you know, the funding is concerned. I was that we can put, you know, we'll put, make sure to put all of your links, to the Patreon in the description box for you.

As far as, you know, share that too from their social media. Once they see it, what do you put it? That would be really helpful. Yeah, that would. Okay, so six, so you broke up for a second there. One, what was it again? You want?

Yeah, I was just, yeah, what I was, yeah, what I was saying is when people see the link from when you put it in, people can share that on their social media and word of mouth so they can. can help move things around that way also. You know, I have a Patreon and I mean, look, like 10 bucks helps. People think, oh, well, you know, I don't really have anything. Well, you know, I'd like to. But listen, I'm not asking for $400 a month.

$10, $9, $9.99, you know, sign up for a nice thing about Patreon. You can sign up for $3. Like, you know, if it's 50, that's great. If it's $10, it adds up. I know what I mean and you know so I'm I'm extremely appreciative of anybody that can anybody that can contribute in any way especially because they don't have to you know they don't owe me anything so you know and they don't owe you anything but you're if it's a good pause then you know throw a little bit of money that way if you can um you know people you know last year there were they were maybe I want to say like five to 10 people that you know they did um Facebook birthday party things. Well, for my birthday this year, I'm trying to raise this much for this entity. You know, a bunch of people did that for the Foundation Week, you know,

about getting getting some checks. That's another way of doing that. Or look, if you know somebody that, you know, does a podcast or does block radio or does a blog or they do reporting of one kind or another, definitely, you know, ever mentioned because, you know, I don't gauge the show size and the size of I'm going to go on or not. I go on because they might just one person. I might just reach one person that's a key person that could help them one way or another. Or maybe it's just one person that, you know, it enlightens or one way.

You never know who may go into, you know, a mission and doing something really positive and they felt inspired by one thing or another. Speaking of which, if there's any future lawyers listening, You know, I, like I always say in person, I do encourage people to take on one wrongful conviction case pro bono on the course of your career. But going back to prison for just a second, you know, in the documentary short, Amazon Prime conviction is called about me, you know, I used some of the platform that the director and producer, Chi Awards, gave me. To bring some attention to some of the non-innocence justice reform work, right? My rationale is, look, the fact that it's about me means that wrongful conviction, false accusation is automatically going to get some play, just automatically, because it's about me.

But I used some of that to bring attention to many things I either was personally affected by in prison or that I witnessed, which indirectly impacts me. I talked about things like, you know, mass incarceration. I mean, there were people in prison that were doing 20 and 30 years for, you know, just drug possession. I mean, they weren't some big-time drug kingpin, but they had a quantity of drugs that made it a felony rather than a slightly lesser amount that was misdemeanor. And they had those type of sentences, which was more time than, you know, people that had done. burglaries, robberies, or arsons, or even, even murderate. You know, so over-sentencing and, you know, nonviolent offenders, so mass incarceration,

and, you know, I talked about the terrible medical care in prison. So the prison where I, where I, Zat Elmira, you know, they had one of the highest inmate mortality rates in New York State and how the, you know, the medical staff, their answer to everything was to give over-the-counter medication. and come back and then it would take a month or two. Right. But it would take a month. And that's just to see the nurse, by the way.

That's not the doctor. The doctor, that's like a month or two. You know, but the medical care and, you know, how just the bureaucracy involved with compassionate release, which is when prison medical staff determined that a prisoner is terminally ill. And so the idea is you put in an application so that somebody. can, you know, die with some dignity in a normal environment surrounded by friends or family rather than by yourself in a, you know, prison setting. And that how by the time a lot of the

decisions came down, I mean, people had like one or two days left or, you know, they already died before the decision actually came down and, you know, and how there really wasn't any real effort on the part of the prison administration to reduce the prisoner or prisoner violence or to try to professionalize the correctional officers, you know, that the verbal abuse, the level of verbal abuse that and abuse of authority that then went on and there really wasn't any serious effort, not even a pretense of staying, but tried to reel that in and how if we really were serious about crime prevention. You know, I mean, the curriculum and the vocational trades. I mean, I completed six certificates in plumbing, but nearly all the training was on

cast iron pipe and metal pipe. So now it's PVC and copper. So if I decided that I wanted that career, I was started virtually the same place out here as I would, you know, having never received the training in there. And so I, you know, just updating curriculum and making sure the professors actually, their disruptors actually teach rather than just being there for a, you know, for a paycheck. So all these issues I kind of raged about in a dignified way, but tried to bring attention. I mean, the punishment for crimes, I feel strongly about this. The punishment for crimes is it is supposed to be the loss of your freedom. It's not supposed to be mistreated while you're there. And I feel that the U.S. prison system misses that mark. And just

proportionality. I mean, when you look in the south in particular and I mean, the types of time they give out for various offenses. It's it's crazy. The amount of time that's given out for different offenses. I mean, I think there's something to be said for proportionality and fairness. It's not about cobbling criminals, but it is about fairness. Right. I think it's supposed to be about fairness. Yeah. No, I agree. I, you know, love what? Any of those issues or any of those different issues being in parole reform and, you know, and, you know, fool just being not, I mean, me, I... Not burns or not under, you know, being undercooked.

I mean, yeah. Well, we used to joke, we used to always joke the leading cause of death at, at the prison I was at, it was Coleman. We used to say the leading cause of death here is medical. You know, I can't tell you how many guys that went in for clearly, there were clear problems and they were dead, you know, two weeks later. It was clear. The guy's got heart problem. He's got heart pain, heart pain. He goes in three times. They say, come back on Monday. Come back on this. Oh, you just got indigestion. Oh, you'll be fine. Oh, come back Monday. Boom. He dies right then. He went in three times. You know, I have a buddy who had self-diagnosed himself as having a, you know, a hernia. They said, you've got an ulcer. Don't eat these foods. Stop eating these foods. Because I didn't eat one food that was on that list. Sure enough, eventually he complained so much. Eventually, they

came back, sent him out for like a, whatever it is, the scan to see if he had what was wrong with him. He had two ulcers, but they wouldn't give him the report. They told him that they found nothing. He eventually got his mother to get a copy of the report, showed two ulcers. But they were telling him, nope, you have an ulcer. I'm sorry, it showed two hernias. They were telling him it's an ulcer. He finally got the report. When he got the report, Then his mother, of course, contacted the governor's office. They immediately called the prison. Now suddenly they were like, oh, we're going to give you the surgery.

Of course we were. What are you talking about? We never said that. I mean, they're just, you know, they're scumbags. But I understand exactly what you're saying. It's the whole giving some guy 15 years for selling, you know, a crack rock. I mean, you know, a crack rock, you know, because he had a gun in his house. He sold it three miles away, but he had a gun in his house, sold a crack rock.

15 years. Why? Because, oh, well, yeah, but he's been arrested for selling crack before. 15 years? So, you know, I, I mean, listen, we could go back and forth and back and forth. This, I'll, I'll, you know, bitch and complain the entire time, but I'm just not in a position to do anything but bitching complain. Um, you know, you're, you're, luckily, you're in a, in a better position. So I was going to say, uh, definitely, I mean, definitely anybody watching should, you know, go in the description and click the. link and donate if it's $10 or $5 or $50 or whatever it may be, a one-time donation or even just sign up. To me, signing up is better because $10 a month isn't going to bother me at all.

You know, giving, you know, $100 once, I'd rather have the $10 every month for two years than the $100 once. You know, I know, and it hurts less. Do you have anything else you want to say? Or, you know, set a goal. have a realistic plan of getting there. In other words, you should be able to look at your plan three or four different ways and say to yourself, well, yeah, I could see how that might work. Be flexible. Remember that, you know, the plan is the plan.

The plan is not the goal. So you got to be flexible. Don't be afraid of hard work. You know, I don't believe with the pie in the sky type thing where everything's going to be okay just before. because I instead believe in rolling up your sleeves, working really, really hard to put yourself in a position for a miracle to happen or a door to open.

And there are no excuses why something can't be done. I mean, maybe there's reasons why something will be harder, but no excuses why something can't be done. And lastly, never, ever give up. And once you make it, you have to reach back and try to bring someone else across that. So that's not limited to wrongful conviction. I mean, I've seen homicide, victim, family members,

you know, be involved in advocacy and reach out to other people in that same position, whether it's someone who's a victim of domestic abuse that's gotten out, survived, and rebuilt their life and reaching back to other people, or, you know, whether it's someone that's been sexually trafficked or someone that's faced racism or discrimination or some other type of calamity of greater or lesser. You know, that I think is a formula for making the world a little bit better, making your suffering count for something and, you know, having some inner peace and it would be cathartic and healing. Hey, I appreciate you guys watching. If you like the video, do me a favor.

Hit the subscribe button. Hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Also, share the video. That really helps. leave me a comment in the comment section that helps with the algorithm and definitely if you want to click on any of the links and you want to donate to Jeff's foundations the links will be in the description box and I really do appreciate you guys checking out the video and see you.