00:00:00 Speaker 1: The Innocence Network is a loose affiliation of independent innocence organizations, and each year, members of these organizations, as well as the hundreds of exanneries who they've helped free, gather for the Innocence Network Conference, and it's a beautiful thing for one weekend. The ex honorees can all count on the fact that there are other people around who share their experience, and our team was honored to join them for their twenty twenty two gathering in Arizona. We recorded a number of interviews and the damage that these stories due to your faith in humanity is only then restored by the amazing people telling those stories. Clay Shabbau and his friend Doug Graham were bikers who dealt some drugs in Garland, Texas. Clay's brother in law, Jerry Papps, was a customer with a newborn son. Clay was beginning to leave that life behind when on April nineteenth, nineteen eighty six, Doug Graham's common law wife was found in her home having been sexually assaulted and shot down when Paps returned a gun that he'd taken from his sister. He told her husband Clay, about how he was at Doug's that morning to buy drugs, heard gunshots and fled. Witnesses had seen PAP's car there, and he was later found wearing bloody clothing. However, even with all of this evidence pointing towards PAPS, he was able to redirect detectives towards his rough looking brother in law, Clay Chabeau. A rape kit was performed, but in nineteen eighty six, the DNA testing that would one day exclude Clay was not available. Curiously, no blood type evidence was presented. Instead of simply using the evidence that implicated PAPS, detectives decided that they needed a statement from Clay. When Clay refused to testify to something that he didn't know, detectives chose to ignore all evidence and the inconsistent statements from PAPS to focus their efforts squarely on Clay, using PAPS as their star witness and the implicit bias against bikers. Clay Schabeau was sentenced to life prison. It took the evolution of DNA testing, the post conviction statutes allowing it, and the dedicated team at the Innocis Project to finally prove what seemed to be evident to the prosecutor at Clay's original trial. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction today's episode. How can I say this? If I was going to teach a third grade class how to solve a crime, I might present them with the evidence that was available and abundant in this case, and they would solve this case. I would say within an hour at the most. I mean, this one came with instructions, and yet the authorities managed to not only lock up an NCMA, but let the obvious suspect remain free. And of course I'm talking about the case of Clay Shabou. Clay, I'm sorry for everything you went through. So thank you for being here today. Thank you for having me and with Clay one of his attorneys, Jason Craig from the Innocence Project in New York. Jason, I think this is your first time on the show, but hopefully not the last. It is.

00:03:21 Speaker 2: I'm happy to be here and so thanks for having me.

00:03:23 Speaker 1: All right, So, Clay, you were born a couple of years before I was, and grew up in Texas, no Ohio, Ohio. So tell us about that. What was your childhood like?

00:03:31 Speaker 3: My father was a truck driver mother. You know, home cared a lot of kids, and my parents boke up when I was eight years old and I got shuttled for one family member to the other for about seven years or so until I was about fifteen and decided to just take off my own so I started cross country hitchacking across country, wound up in California for a few years, got married that lasted about a year, got divorced, coming back to Ohio, and decided to join the military. In nineteen eighty one. I was on an aircraft carrier. There was a large ship with a five thousand guys and we all could find a small spaces and under authority. So I think it gave me the strength in the fortitude to endure whatever went through later in life. Wow served about three three and a half years of the military and I got run over by hit and run drug driver on my motorcycle. So I got discharged and went back to Ohio.

00:04:18 Speaker 1: And we're here at the INNOCENTCE Network conference. I'm so happy to be recording live and in person again. And you can't see Clay, but I can. And the way he dresses today, he looks like being a corporate boardroom somewhere. But you were a tough guy back then, right, And no judgment here. You were involved in some let's just say, extra legal activities.

00:04:38 Speaker 3: Right absolutely where I was raised in Ohio, you know, impoverished. There's actually the Hell's Angels club to house, so a lot of people there indulging mind altering drugs. We can't afford to go to bail for skiing trips, so we take ours locally.

00:04:53 Speaker 1: Internally, yes, I understand. And by the way, like I said, no judgment here. I mean when I was a kid, we probably could compare our old photos because I had so much hair I couldn't even see. I looked like cousin it. And I used to smoke weed from sun up to sundown, and I was involved in some stuff I definitely shouldn't have been involved in it. So anyway, so you were into motorcycles, the Hell's Angels, drugs, You did some dealing, and you moved to Texas at some point. You got married, had a son, Harley, a few months before all this happened, and he's here with us today. And Harley's uncle, your brother in law, Jerry Paps. He lived nearby with his wife and he used to come to you and a friend of yours, Doug Graham, for drugs. Now, from what I understand, Paps was into speed and coke and was led to believe that Doug had cut a batch of whatever he was taking with too much baking soda or some other substance, even though it was you, Clay, who did the cutting, and Doug was aware of this, And that leads us up to April nineteen, nineteen eighty six, Garland, Texas. Unbeknownst to Clay, Paps had taken a gun from his sister, Clay's wife, and later that day, Doug Graham's common law wife, who was twenty eight years old, her body was found in their home. And this is just awful, so brace yourself. But she had been tied, gagged, shot three times, and she had been raped. A rape kit was performed, but that evidence, unfortunately wasn't useful, or perhaps the blood type evidence wasn't useful to the state, because you got to imagine if it was, they would have brought it up. But we don't know either way. And however, the biological evidence didn't become useful to Clay and really all of us until DNA testing became available. Many years later. And I want to turn to Jason here, because this really was a horrific crime.

00:06:37 Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's absolutely true, and that did get attention immediately, even on the local news. And it just so happened to be someone who Clay knew of.

00:06:46 Speaker 3: The victim's husband. They weren't really legally married. Doug Graham was really one of my best friends, and I mean we associated on Christmas, we played cards, we hung out together for several years, and.

00:06:57 Speaker 2: So that was the initial nexus that even started any interest in Clay for any reason.

00:07:04 Speaker 1: There was no physical evidence connecting Clay to the crime. That wasn't the case for his brother in law.

00:07:10 Speaker 2: That's absolutely right when you said in the introduction that most elementary school children could have solved this case within a few hours and actually identified the actual perpetrator.

00:07:21 Speaker 3: You're right.

00:07:22 Speaker 2: The police they had one individual, Gerald Papps, who was telling a series of different stories over and over again. A person who had been found with blood on his shirt within hours of this homicide. A person who had proceeds from the victim's home, person who had pawned some items that were taken there, whose car had been at the victim's home earlier. In that day. None of this information was dependent on anyone else's statement. This was actual physical evidence linking him to the crime. What the detectives also had was someone else, Clay, who was actually helping, who actually reached out and said there might be something to what had just happened when his brother in law had shown back up to return this gun.

00:08:05 Speaker 3: Correct, they came to my house, asked me a few questions, and I told him all about how my brother in law had taken the gun from his sister's purse prior to this. And he was standing at the door and I said, come on in. He said no, no, I got to go, I said, And he handed me the gun and I said, what are you doing with this? He said, well, I parted this morning for Sandy's purse. I looked and I said, where's the clip? He said, oh yeah, and he hand me the clip and I noticed the clip was empty. I said, were it's the bullet? He said. I threw him out. I said, what are you talking about? Him in here? So he came in and he tells me the story of He claimed he was supposed to meet the victim's husband, Doug Graham, but he said he got over there, and before he could even get out of his car and go in, he saw two men pull up in a car and they went inside and he heard gunshots. So he got scared and the left. So he came back to my house and he returned this gun. He left my house, and I'm thinking that I didn't know anybody had been hurt at the time, so I'm thinking, you know, he's just been up all night on speed. So I didn't pay much attention to it. And later that afternoon, I was supposed to meet Doug or another deal we're gonna do, but and I wasn't even paying attention to the TV. It's almost like it played and then I heard it and I had to replay it in my mind to say, what did they just say? And my wife, she knew the victims, and she said that's her.

00:09:18 Speaker 1: I said, what And for some reason in your mind, you didn't leap to that conclusion.

00:09:24 Speaker 3: I just couldn't believe that he could do something like that. It'd be like somebody trying to tell you your brother or your mother or something, which cape I mean, I knew the guy for several years. I'd been married to his sister for several years, and I just couldn't conceive it. That's just so far out of my realm and world of you know, Like I said, I've never really heard anybody about myself through my own abuse of things. So I believed this story. I believed that he was there, saw a couple people, and I really wanted him to just try to lead them to help solve the situation itself. I got to tell you, I pondered over it. I didn't call Doug until like the next day, because I tried to reach Doug that night because I was supposed to meet and somebody strange answered his house phone, and I thought, oh, I don't know who that is. I said, well, who are you trying to get ahold of? What do you want for it? So I hung up? So I said, man, something that's really gone wrong over there. So I went back down to Jerry's house and I said, Jerry, I'm going to drive over to Dougs. You want to go with me? He said, oh, no, no, no, man, I don't want to go anywhere near that place. And then I started getting little more larry and worried. And now I'm in a situation to note where you know, if I do do this. I got to live with this sister. You know, how do you live with your wife when you reported her brother for something like that? I mean, just the conflict in that my head and heart was. I thought to myself, you know what, if this was my sister, my wife, I'd want somebody help me. And the next day is when I decided to call Doug and tell him how I think I had information. He had just been born, he was five months old, and I was trying to knock off the stupid stuff, straighten myself up, because he was finally something more important to.

00:11:07 Speaker 1: Me and for our listeners. Clays Son Harley's here with us now. He's about twice the size of his father, and he's now thirty six years old.

00:11:17 Speaker 3: And I just turned, you know, like twenty five, you know, and they say the prefront of cortex and mailes doesn't develop until twenty five when you start having huge consequences. So I think it was just a matter of you know, age and plus like I said, him being born, and it was my friend. So I wanted to do the right thing.

00:11:31 Speaker 1: But we see too often people like you who come forward trying to help and wanted to be you know, good citizens and believed in the system as you did, and it ends up putting them in the crosshairs.

00:11:46 Speaker 3: Let me say this, in fairness of things, I kind of created this whole scenario in a way for myself. Jerry wanted more drugs. I didn't want to get him to him. I told him should call my friend Doug. I just wanted him to get out of my house and leave, So that's what led him to go over To's house. Later though, Jerry would tell a story about how the drugs I had had had gotten from Doug earlier were inadequate. Well, quite frankly, it was my own doing. I had put too much cut on the drugs. So there was no animosity between me and Doug because Doug didn't do anything wrong. But I had told Jerry that just to get him out of my house. I said, Man, this does no good joining this. So in fairness man, I sort of set the stage that led the police to believe that I had a reason that I was angry with Doug over it, but they didn't really look at the smaller facts, like Doug knew that wasn't true. Doug knew that I was supposed to meet him again, that night to do another deal. I mean, so when they left my house that afternoon, they asked me if they could have the gun. They asked if I had any more of the same kind of bullets, and I happily rented and given to him. They left, and within a few hours my brother in law's wife came to the house screening about how the police had showed up arrested him. And as I understood it, by then, they had already had a witness that positive identified his cart to see the crime. They called him with blood on his clothes, tickets for stolen merchandise and maybe some stole merchandise. So I don't know, you know, like I said, it was clean cut. I was a rough looking guy, and so he gave him the story that I had borrowed his car, and then he didn't go there, and they allowed him just change his story every time his facts proved wrong. They just let him change his story because they didn't see why Jerry would do something like that. You know, they were looking for the motive. And I'll tell you this, the detectives simply didn't want to believe that I had handed them the solution to this case on a silver platter. They were like, no, where detectives. There's gotta be more to this. It's got to be more complicated, you know, something for us to unravel and figure. I just don't think they could accept the fact that this would have been so simple had they just looked at the evidence as it stood. So they came back and arrested me.

00:13:40 Speaker 1: So you're arrested, taking to jail. Were you in jail awaiting trial? Did you can't bail out?

00:13:46 Speaker 2: No?

00:13:46 Speaker 3: Well they had me on a I think a quartermain and how long did you think about eight months? Eventually just rolled out to where they came to me and they said, look, we don't think you're actually there, but we need somebody to testify. If you'll testify against your brother law, will let you go.

00:14:01 Speaker 2: This was a situation where the state felt they needed a confession, someone who could turn into a witness who was actually there and one person had information because there was only one person there, Gerald Pepps, and Clay was not there, was not involved, and so he had no ability to offer what the state wanted, what the state felt they needed to prove a case.

00:14:25 Speaker 3: I believed in the just system whole hardly. I just come out of the military. I'd never been in a serious trouble in any kind before, and so I said, listen, I can't do that. You want me to lie to possibly send this guy to death throw for something I don't know he did or not. It was okay. Well, they went to Jerry, my brother in law, and said same thing, and she got the standpoint of the figure, said yeah, we're both there. He pulled the trigger. They let him go, and they gave me a licence.

00:14:48 Speaker 2: So he gave the state what they needed and he got a benefit and immediate benefit that lasted for him a couple of decades. Yeah.

00:14:55 Speaker 1: I mean, there's that saying a body for a body, right, and we know that sadly, in too many cases, the authorities are happy to just get somebody, close the case and move on. And then the idea that in this case they had every reason to know, they may even have known that the guy who was weaving these bizarre tales. I mean, nobody could possibly believe that, but they did, or at least the jury did.

00:15:23 Speaker 2: There's a very telling note that we uncovered in the prosecutor's file years later when we're looking into the case, acknowledging that pass he was found within ours bloody T shirt. And the quote is you know something like this is a problem for us. Well, yeah, it's a big problem for us. You literally had the person who was connected to the crime physically, with physical evidence. Who is your star witness. That's a huge problem for the state. And we can never know exactly what was in the prosecutor's mind when she wrote that note, but the context clues are fairly clear she understood that the person that they were relying on to solve this homicide was someone who was actually involved in the homicide. And of course now we know that with certainty based on the DNA testing that was done years later, but even at the time of trial, the contemporaneous notes that the prosecutor had recognized that they had a problem because perhaps their star witness was the person who was found with blood. And of course this is the person who initially said he had nothing to do with the crime at all, wasn't even there, and then puts himself there. Eventually it changes the story that way, and then changes the story a little bit more, and puts himself there, and then changes the story a little bit more, and all of a sudden, he's now inside the house, but never willing to say what we now know he actually did.

00:16:40 Speaker 1: One of the things that really stuck out to me when I was reading about the trial was the idea that, and I think this should be a red flag in every case, is when Jerry said that you forced him at gunpoint to tie up the victim. That's not a thing that happens except maybe in some weird TV show or movie.

00:16:58 Speaker 3: Right, supposed to be your criminal partner? Yeah, and you're pointing to God at him, now, did I'd put a gun in and making care of the TV out too, Jason?

00:17:05 Speaker 1: Unless there was something else presented, I don't even understand how a Jerry could get this one wrong.

00:17:10 Speaker 2: So what did they hear? They have a witness who claims to have been there during the entire crime, who is now backed by the state, called by the state, who's walking them through what we now know is and what Clay obviously knew then was a fictitious story about what happened. I mean, they're hearing it blow by blow from this witness as the state solicits information from him, and then the state calls other witnesses to vouch for Jerry to present Jerry as this person who was overwhelmed by the ringleader. Who's the defendant there, Clay. But Jerry, of course, in the state's eyes, was this person who wasn't a violent person, hadn't done other bad things, didn't look like Clay looked at the time.

00:17:53 Speaker 3: So what they presented was me as a criminal in general, wrote Harley Davison's carried John's did drugs looked like Charles Manson.

00:18:00 Speaker 1: So, Clay, what was the evidence that was presented in your defense at the trial?

00:18:06 Speaker 3: Unfortunately? I mean my defense was, look, I was at home sleeping. I mean, how do you approve that? So the only person that was able to testify in my behalf was my wife, which was the sister of the witness against me, And so they just claimed she was a liar to protect me, not considering that, how do you think she could get up there and say, you know, look, he didn't do it, indirectly implicating her own brother.

00:18:29 Speaker 2: I think the failure is that the prosecutor, they knew the limitations of what they knew. They didn't need DNA testing in nineteen eighty six to know the limitations of their case. They wrote about it in their notes and they should have been the ones who check the beyond a reasonable doubt standard before they put someone's life at stake.

00:18:46 Speaker 1: The jury goes out, how long did they deliverate Clay.

00:18:50 Speaker 3: I didn't have time to smoke a cigarette before they send the jury is back?

00:18:53 Speaker 1: Wow, so as minutes. Yeah, if you could take us back to that moment.

00:19:00 Speaker 3: I just went into a sort of shock state because they really didn't impact me or hit me until they immediately conducted the penalty phase. And my wife at the time, Harley's mother, had got up and went to the bathroom and they ran a penalty face so fast. By the time she came back in the bathroom, they were already ann ounce of life. You know. As soon as I do that, they should stand up and I drag you the back, and I remember asking if they would put me in a private self because I didn't want to be in with the crowd of you know, other people being transport around and I just wanted to scream and tear and I did. In my mind, prison is ninety percent border punctuated by ten percent cheer stark terror. You just after the over the years, you adapt you have to. When I went in Texas, Francisco. It was a run by what they call the Building ten or system. Inmates were running it. There was only a handful of guards through three thousand inmates. The inmates were empowered with authority weapons to maintain the for the system. It was brutal, absolutely brutal. You know, it's odd even though it was run by prisoners and it was brutal if you follow the rules with them, there was a lot more internal freedom and it was more of a physical thing. In fact, it wasn't until some years to follow that a large lawsuit Federal brought in special masters and they brought the guards in and they took the building tenders out. Became more of a mental pressure. But I had to say again because I was a little older, i think, and I had gone through the military, and I used my head the gang members and things. I taught him how to do things that they weren't doing that made it profitable for them. So I became an asset, and so they would say leave him alone. So I tried to stay, you know, just actively involved with either education or something to keep my mind off of, you know, the day to day mundane.

00:21:03 Speaker 1: And was there a lowest and the highest point for you while you were in there.

00:21:07 Speaker 3: I had a number of them, the one in the first when my father died, and at those points I considered suicide, but that's not in my day. I even had it all figured out several ways to do it. But quite frankly, I knew this. I see my mind strip away everything else. My mind knew it didn't do what it was being punished for, and it just needed to know it had a way out if it had to at all last resort. So once I had that option of suicide, knowing that I do have the option to get out of this if I have to, it gave me the strength to go on. Finally, when you know, after the years and years of Dallas telling me that they had lost the evidence, I knew that had to be a lie, and I fought it for ten twelve years and finally found it. And then the high point would have been on a little step was when Texas finally passed a law whatever that said, you know, if you want to apply for DNA testing. That gave me some hope. But this would have been when DNA testing proved that Jerry Papp's semen was recovered from the rape kit his DNA was on her hands, DNA on his fingernails, and then I knew that, you know, we probably had a pretty good shot of at least, you know, convincing them that they had it wrong and might want to look at it.

00:22:21 Speaker 2: Again, identifying perhaps DNA in the extremely probative items of evidence. As Clay recounted, it was the key that turned the story. And at that point in time, I think Clay's perception is as accurate even the people who were absolutely convinced that the prosecutor might have been on the right path from the get go, even those individuals had to start opening their eyes and wonder, now, what was going on.

00:22:44 Speaker 1: While this case came with instructions from the very beginning, now twenty years later or so, it came with scientific certainty. The actual perpetrator was identified, the.

00:22:57 Speaker 2: State located him. He had gone back to Ohio by that point in time, and eventually was arrested for the crime. Now this is the state's star witness, but they did, with the DNA evidence testing that was done, identify him and ultimately convict him. After Clay's conviction was overturned.

00:23:14 Speaker 1: Jason, I think most people in the audience are probably thinking now, well, amen, right, finally justice, exoneration, compensation, and in this case.

00:23:24 Speaker 2: That's not the story of Clay's case right now. So tragically, after the DNA evidence identified Paps, the state decided to re prosecute Clay. They knew that they had been lied to, that they allowed someone to lie to the jury, they knew the actual perpetrator who had been convicted. They decided to re prosecute Clay. And it gets worse. By that important time. Clay was fortunate that some of the physical evidence was retained, the evidence that identified Paps, but much of the physical evidence had been lost by that point in time. So the state's plan was to just run it back now recognizing that the person who they had put all their faith in the first time was the actual perpetrator, but unwilling to recognize that the case had no legs to stand on against Clay, and Clay was forced to contemplate going to trial again without even the ability to examine and retest some of the other evidence that the state at this point had lost. So, for example, the purported murder weapon we mentioned earlier, Jerry Papps, when he was arrested, had a bloody T shirt that had been lost. We couldn't demonstrate that even perhaps fourth or fifth or eighth version of events wasn't accurate had we been able to identify the victim's blood on his T shirt.

00:24:45 Speaker 3: For example.

00:24:46 Speaker 2: And I have to say I was actually hopeful that we would be able to convince the judge once we knew we couldn't convince the prosecutor to just dismiss it against Clay, because the misconduct in this case was so deep. We tried from all angles, both negotiating with the prosecutor, we tried with a judge, and we weren't successful. And ultimately that left Clay once again in the moment where he's posed with a question that he should have never had to face. What to do when the prosecutor comes to him. Now, you can walk out time served, but on one condition, you have to play guilty.

00:25:21 Speaker 1: It's hard to figure out what master they're serving at this point in time, too. Right, they have the guy. The guys they got him the right guy. Now finally he got the right guy. Even though you guys did everything you possibly could to fuck this up as bad as you possibly could, now the right guy's in prison.

00:25:36 Speaker 2: And that was extremely frustrating, and so, as Clay mentioned, you know, he had been failed by the system before he had seen that happen. He'd seen what jurors did very quickly at the original trial. And I don't fault Clay for a second for making the decision that allowed him to walk out and be with us today.

00:25:55 Speaker 1: And as I mentioned earlier, Clay's son, Harley is here with us right now, so we wanted to give him a chance to talk about his memories and what the day his father was freed, what that time was like for him.

00:26:10 Speaker 4: I don't know how to explain happiness and anger at the same time. His brother is the one that brought him a home, and I remember, I remember it was it was a silver Dodge Ram that turned the corner. I remember staying in the front yard. I was so excited he was home, jumping up and down, obviously crying as soon as you got out of the truck. Happy, happy, and mad. I don't know how to explain it happy about at the same time. You know, I hugged him and told him I love him, And then I have to share because him taking that guilty plea was partly my decision. He had called me when they offered him that, and he said, what do I do?

00:26:48 Speaker 3: Man?

00:26:50 Speaker 4: He said, I can, I can come home now, but I'm gonna They're gonna leave it on my record.

00:26:54 Speaker 3: They're gonna call me a murderer.

00:26:56 Speaker 4: Or I can fight this. And I didn't do this hardly. I know I didn't do it, so I know I can fight him. I could probably get some money on us. You know, well we'll both be fighting. You know, everybody will be fighting. Yeah, I said that. Who fucking cares if they call you a murderer?

00:27:13 Speaker 3: Are you? He says, no, Harley, it's grew it. Man.

00:27:18 Speaker 4: You alread gave him twenty three years. They're gonna look for every reason they can't. I love to gamble. I already gave you twenty three years for nothing. The odds are clearly not in my favor. I'll go home. That affected me for twenty three years. That affected all of his family. My mother, who asking her Almi. You know, she stayed married to him til I was about nineteen. She was in a pretty brutal place as well. You know, it's your brother and your husband. She never called him the dad guilty, and she never defended Jerry. So it makes me feel like she knew more, but she was just in a hard place. And it always kind of barked me because Jerry was around her family. I almost feel like a bad human for saying it sometimes, and I'm glad that everything happened and happened now, you know, he passed away in prison, which is perfect in my mind. I think I'm allowed to feel that way. But it ripped our paint apart. But we can do this to humans and throw them in prison and it there not be a lot of recourse, you know, the prosecutor. I actually learned some of the day that I didn't know. You know, this could be a problem for us. You were aware of that, even you destroy your life. Oh well, sorry, well no, you owe me more than that. I don't want money. You go to prison, now, you know that's what you should do. How many other people did you do this too? Was this the only one you got caught in? And that's just one, one time era, one prosecutor in one city. How often does this happen all over the United States, over the world. This is the first time since conference that I've been to. I was shocked by how many axon rees there are. I thought it was only a couple, you know, or like ten or fifteen, which is still that's still too many. Now, if this was an airline, statistically speaking, if this was an airline they had planes crashing, they would shut it down and fix it immediately. They're being outrage everywhere. Something has to change. This has got to be fixed.

00:29:09 Speaker 1: I also want to point out that these people who were making these decisions to reprosecute, or at least we're threatening to reprosecute the Clay. We're more than happy to spend countless more tax dollars on a ridiculous sham trial, a second ridiculous sham trial, but we're somehow so protective of the idea that we wouldn't want to use those same tax dollars to compensate this man.

00:29:33 Speaker 3: It's a little more complicated for one reason, and that's something we've kind of missed over in that it's my original prosecutor. See, as you've known, they have various laws for set amounts of conversation when someone's determined wrongly convicted, and you can't prosecute a prosecutor if they're just doing their job within the limits of the law. But if they violate the law, you can take that out and sue for untold amounts. And that's what we proved. My original prosecutor broke the law, like withholding evidence that presenting testimony that she knew was false. So we had special earrings. Went to the bar. She was found guilty, but I caa'head the bar protect themselves and they they have a punishment, but it was considered what do they call a private sense or something that they wouldn't tell us what they did to her. She still remained a current DA in another county at that time.

00:30:20 Speaker 1: Listen whether or not they want to put it in a legal document. I don't think there's any sane or rational person that believes you had anything to do with this crime. The good news is you're here. You're never going back, and I'm glad that we're here to put a sort of a stamp on it and tell this story in the way that you've told it today. Okay, and now we have a tradition it's called closing arguments. First of all, I think both of you again, Jason Craig from the Innocence Project, Clay Chabeau, Dona Ree for being here and sharing your story. And then I'm going to turn off my microphone, kick back in my chair, and turn it over to you guys for any final thoughts you want to share with me and our audience. As is also traditional, Jason, We're going to let you go first and then have the man himself take us out.

00:31:18 Speaker 2: Excellent, Jason, Thank you, and thank you for your team for doing the podcast. I think it's super important to share these stories. So I guess i'd just say this when I see Clay, or particularly when I'm here at these annual conferences and see hundreds of people who have overcome similar challenges, I'm reminded by some of the people who didn't have the same strength to get to the end, or didn't have the same time because their life just ended in prison, or gave up. Had Clay not had the fortitude to keep fighting, to write the next letter, to just say no, I'm not going to stop right now, so Clay, just like everyone who's here at this conference, they're the strongest people who we know. If Clay couldn't keep going, if Clay couldn't figure out how to live the next day in prison, just like everyone who's here at the conference now, had they not had the fortitude to keep going. We wouldn't know their story, we wouldn't be able to tell their story. And so I guess the closing thought that I wanted to see is, you know, when I see Clay sitting here, I see the hundreds or thousands of additional people who some of us know them very well because we worked on their cases and we could never get them to the innocence finish line. They still are in prison, or tragically they died in prison. And I think that seeing Clay here everyone else here is absolutely wonderful and energizing, and it's a reminder of the additional work we can do and some of the work that we can't do because those cases will never be identified. We'll just never know about thousands of people who have the same tragedy, but we won't know their names.

00:33:00 Speaker 3: Mine would be for the public decide, people to wake up and recognize that, you know, they have the power to assess the evidence as it's presented to them, not just accept what the prosecutors tell them. And just keep this in mind because these things, at least they're coming more to like because of scientific DNA evidence has made it conclusive, fully proven. But just remember this. It could be your brother, your sister, your mother, your father that's on that stand next time being accused. You know, if you think you just walk in there and you want to go home, you don't really want to delve into it, just remember, let's gild be you next time.

00:33:40 Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wardis, with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time Oscar nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow me on both TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Flahm. Ronvel Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one