00:00:05
Speaker 1: With the police banging on the door open up.

00:00:10
Speaker 2: The choice to be in that lineup was the last choice I made as a free man.

00:00:14
Speaker 3: A year later, I ended up writing the system.

00:00:18
Speaker 4: I'm going to be one of those people who everyone in the world is going to think as a monster or suspect as a monster for the rest of my life, and I'm just going to have to come to peace with that.

00:00:27
Speaker 3: Somebody was able to look at my picture in the database and say that I was somewhere where I definitely wasn't. I overheard three of the jailers discussing what part they might have to play in my hanging. They had been told that two prison officers would have to participate in my execution. Now I walked back inside that prison for the last time. Man, all help broke loose.

00:00:49
Speaker 2: But welcome to another episode of Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today we have a very incredible person as our guest. Our featured exonnery today is Frankie Correo.

00:01:13
Speaker 4: Korea was sixteen. In nineteen ninety one, fifteen sheriff's deputies with guns drawn storm through the front door. Korea was convicted of murder and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.

00:01:23
Speaker 3: Frankie was released.

00:01:24
Speaker 4: From jail in downtown LA this afternoon after spending twenty years in prison. Rio was released after the court found evidence that Koreo was framed through coerced testimony for a fatal drive by shooting. The gang of corrupt LA Sheriff's deputies known as the Linwood Vikings co wer six witnesses into identifying him in a photo lineup.

00:01:44
Speaker 3: Frankie, welcome, Jason's good to be here.

00:01:47
Speaker 2: So, Frankie, your story begins when you were really just a child and the baby man. Let's go back to the beginning. You grew up in La, right, that's correct, Southern California, and you had a pretty happy upbringing, right, Yeah, I would say that.

00:02:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, everything was going along more or less.

00:02:05
Speaker 2: Okay, nothing's easy about being a sixteen year old boy, that's right.

00:02:09
Speaker 3: Then one day it all was turned upside down. That day was January twenty fourth, nineteen ninety one. I was just a little color there. I was a high school student. I was a child of a divorce family, four siblings. My father had raised us in stage of nine, so it's a very male dominated household. Dad and two boys. It was what I'd known for the past seven years.

00:02:29
Speaker 2: And you had a sort of a unique situation too it, which is that your mom had did one day just decided to check out.

00:02:33
Speaker 3: That's it.

00:02:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't like it got separated and you spent half the time with her or she just left.

00:02:39
Speaker 3: That was it. Yeah, I mean, it's an unfortunate story, but that's what happened.

00:02:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you had been abandoned in a very real way and experienced something that's obviously going to affect any young man for the rest of his life. But that wasn't the worst of what was to come by far. And again, sixteen is really not a child, but you're closer to a child.

00:03:01
Speaker 1: Than an adult.

00:03:02
Speaker 3: Right even though it was my age, I was sixteen, Psychologically you're you're still a kid, you know, maybe operating at thirteen fourteen level, not to you know, minimize it, but I'm a boy, I'm a kid.

00:03:11
Speaker 2: We were in tenth grade, tenth grader, tenth grade, exactly what I'm saying. Tenth grade, you're you know, yeah, you're closer to middle school than you are to college.

00:03:19
Speaker 3: And they hadn't been shaved. So it's like a good, good reference is that you're at the point where like facial hair is sort of developing, but you're not there yet, Frankie, like, hold off right.

00:03:27
Speaker 2: And then one night, fifteen cops bust in your house. What a surreal situation. You were asleep.

00:03:33
Speaker 1: I was asleep, just a normal night.

00:03:35
Speaker 3: Actually it was early morning, so it was dark, but it was it was six in the morning when this happened. And my father and I went home and they couldn't get in. They were pounding away, and ultimately I opened the door, looked out the window and new was them. They were screaming who they were, and they stormed in, stormed in, ordered my father and I to the floor. And that's the beginning of the nightmare.

00:03:54
Speaker 2: Really, so they already had to the floor. Did they tell you what was going on?

00:03:59
Speaker 3: I wish it did?

00:04:00
Speaker 4: You know?

00:04:00
Speaker 3: It was pretty strategic in all business, so they want to, like ram Seck, the home was their main objective, and you know, my father and I. My dad was trying to exert his position, this is my home, what are you doing here? And he was being ignored. So he's telling me, like, what's happening. I'm like I don't know, Like I have no idea why they're here. Soon after, on the ride to the sheriff station is when I learned that I had been accused and ultimately now being arrested for a murderer I hadn't committed.

00:04:25
Speaker 2: So you get to the sheriff's station and what happens next.

00:04:29
Speaker 3: Really, I was expecting my father to show up, but what happened was I was placed into an interrogation room. The people who showed up instead were these two sort of cowboy detectives ready to play the good call bad cop on me, and I played along. You know. They said what they were arrested me for, and if I would willing to talk, and I said, sure, I'll talk like I have nothing to hide.

00:04:49
Speaker 1: Right, And so you waved your marana, right I did.

00:04:52
Speaker 2: And that's such a crazy thing, Frankie, because I think it's hard for most people to understand why someone would wave their miranda when you.

00:05:00
Speaker 1: Have the right to a lawyer who would going to give that up?

00:05:04
Speaker 2: But the fact is, in your case, I think it's fairly typical, which is that if you're innocent, and this is an ironic thing, right, if you're innocent, a lot of people go in they think, well, why do I need a lawyer. I'm just going to answer some questions, and the justice system is going to work because I'm an innocent person who abides by the law, and then they'll see that they made a mistake and then they'll go catch the real guy.

00:05:24
Speaker 1: Exactly right.

00:05:25
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, it's going to take stories like yours to help educate people so that they don't do that. You do not give up any information without getting a lawyer.

00:05:36
Speaker 3: But I will adjason that when you're in that code room and the power imbalance is obvious, you are in a detention facility. Basically, you're in the stronghold, you're in the sheriff's departments space, and you're there as a visitor. You're there obviously being charged with this crime, in my case, being wrongfully charged. And so to some degree, as a young boy, you want these are adults. Some look at these men and you want to cooperate. You want it like I'll talk to you. I have nothing to hide. It is sort of my position looking back now. Obviously I wish I wish there was a Civics class that would have said, you know what, no matter what, innocent, guilty, whatever, the situation is just wait for your parents or wait for a lawyer.

00:06:14
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a tragic twist or irony that when you're innocent and you go into the situation, you're more likely to waive your Miranda rights and if you're guilty. Exactly in that interrogation room, how long were you interrogated for?

00:06:25
Speaker 1: Do you even know?

00:06:26
Speaker 3: You know? Surprisingly, I think back of that fived him minute interrogation and I sort of left that room thinking, you know, where was the lamp? You know, where were these guys punching on me? Like, you know, you watch enough TV to understand that this is supposed to unfold a little bit differently than it did in my case. At least, they were very quick to just say, there's a young boy who witnessed the crime, who was adamant that you were the guy who did it. So we got you. Let's talk about you just confessing to it. So it was really very brief, very precise on their end, and I think I'm go on have chuckle not to be silly here, but it was just like so unreal, like one, you're are you sure you're talking to me? I'm adamant that it wasn't me obviously, and their position was like, we're beyond if you did it or not. We just want you to just come clean, just confess that you did it. And I was like, I can't do that.

00:07:14
Speaker 1: It ended after ten minutes.

00:07:15
Speaker 3: That's it. Like they weren't trying to press me and starve me out anything. They were just like, okay, well we'll see you in court, like we're going to jail now, Like that was it.

00:07:24
Speaker 2: Hearing that and that's an unusual interrogation, and that it went on for such a short period of time, it sounds to me like at that point they actually did think they had the right guy, because they were like, Okay, well this guy's not gonna give it up, but we got the right guy, so it's okay, We're gon We're gonna get him no matter what. But as things unraveled, they took steps that were corrupt and illegal. How did they end up managing to convict you when you were so obviously not the guy?

00:07:49
Speaker 3: So you know, in Los Angeles at least, there's a very familiar story about misconduct with the LAPD SO Rampart Division scandal. It's more readily available knowledge. But my case didn't involve LAPED involved the LA's Sheriff's department, and there's a well known at least locally of the Linwood Vikings. So Lindwood is where this crime happened and where my arrest was ultimately investigated. And the Linwood Vikings had become a rogue police gang. So what I thought is a naive boy, that I was dealing with law enforcement who were abided by the constitution and their policies in the department. Some of the people on this investigation team were these bad cops sort of fast forward in here of information I knew, not at the time, but as the case developed. And so when this young boy who was used to identify me, who was shown a photo line of a photo six pack to ultimately say this is the guy who committed the crime, the case sounded pretty pretty cut and dry. There's a witness, there's a he show was showing a photographic lineup. He quickly identified the shooter. We got in the rest Slamm Dunk. And so there was a trial when I was tried as an adult and moved forward to a conviction. But at some point it was discovered that this young boy wasn't as innocent as you know. He was more than just a witness. It was revealed that he was an informant for one specific law enforcement officer, Deputy Ditch. And so Deputy Ditch, Ditch, Deputy of all.

00:09:13
Speaker 1: Things, Deputy Ditch.

00:09:14
Speaker 3: Right, I mean what a name, right, Craig Ditch is the guy's name. He's now retired. The guy had this boy under his wing as an informant, and he happened to be at this crime scene, and so it was very very easy to say, I'm your go to guy here. So the story later was discovered that this young boy was showing photographs after he'd been interviewed five times by other investigators with no results. They realized Ditch had a relationship with this boy. Ditch shows up cases over. The case was solved once Stitch arrived in less than eight hours, and the story that was revealed that the young boy was showing the photographs as what was in the report, and so he picks a random picture just to play along, and Ditch says, that's the wrong guy. He's in jail right now, try again. You know, I'm sure he's feeling like an idiot. Point. You know, you're trying to help, You're young, you're scared, so he picks another photograph, and the deputy says, this guy's dead. What about this guy here? We think he's trying to come up in the rankings or whatever, And so the boy just says, yeah, I guess that makes sense. I guess I guess that's the guy. And this is there.

00:10:15
Speaker 1: He was looking at six photographs. Yep, he was over too exactly. He picked. He picked very badly. He picked a guy who was in jail and a guy who was dead. Right. That's yeah, really hard to make a case against those guys. Right.

00:10:26
Speaker 2: And by the way, it's sort of odd that there was a guy in the six pack who was dead. Give me a break, I mean, you would think they would take that guy out just I mean to let me jump in here and say, well, you know, Frankie, what's up. You're coming off as this high school student, nice guy. What's your photograph doing in the sheriff's apartment? Like, tell us about that. I'm sure that was your next question, right, I'm getting to that what happened.

00:10:45
Speaker 3: In this environment is so nineteen ninety nineteen ninety one is what we're referencing here. That specific sheriff's department's policy was that if there was any anyone that you thought was a potential bad kid or bad guy or bad anything, let's do some racial profiling at this point, right, gather intel. And so the photograph was obtained in the summer between my sixth grade and seventh grade vacation block. There, me and some of my buddies just riding our BMX spikes through a local park, no big deal, summertime, and this deputy, Deputy Luna, I remember the guy's name, sort of just rolls up next to us. He's done of the official lights on pull over. He stops, We stopped, start talking about who has a girlfriend, and where do you live? And what's up with you? Whatever? Right, just pretty cool talking to a cop, No big deal. Then the guy says, do you mind if I take your photograph to the group? I don't remember us looking around saying what do you think? Guys? We just like, I guess like you're a cop, right, Like what do we say?

00:11:38
Speaker 4: No?

00:11:39
Speaker 3: And so this is the time when you had polaroad camera. So the guy got out of his car, went into the trunk and pulled out the little manual polaroid camera, and one by one he just came to write where we were on our bike standing and just snapped the photograph. And so that photograph that was taken in a park with trees in the background and whatever else was in the background, I was smiling them picture. That photograph ended up in the sixth pack. So talk about like a chain of events here that fucks your life up, right, Oh my.

00:12:07
Speaker 2: God, I mean, that's really the most I've heard all types of different stories, and you're right, that is a question that people often ask, why was this picture?

00:12:14
Speaker 1: Now?

00:12:14
Speaker 2: What we know is that if you live in a poor neighborhood spetiicularly a poor minority neighborhood, the cops do sweeps and they'll pick up everybody, right, And so your picture could be in there because you had a joint, or any other thing could be in there because you were trespassing, right, I have air quotes under that one or whatever. And so it's really true that a lot of people have records for the most minor misdemeanors. In your case, you had no record whatsoever. Actually, it was probably I mean, thinking back to when I was in sixth or seventh grade, if a cop would have asked to take my picture, I would have felt good, right, but like, wow, this guy.

00:12:49
Speaker 1: Wants to take my picture. I'm pretty cool kid.

00:13:03
Speaker 2: So your picture was in the lineup because this cop had, in a sneaky way, racially profiled you as a thirteen year old boy riding his bike in the park, which is exactly as far as I can tell, what thirteen year old boys are supposed to be doing. You were identified in this insane process, right, which is literally like it would be funny.

00:13:22
Speaker 1: Except the results are so tragic.

00:13:24
Speaker 2: So he eventually managed to come up with the answer that the cop wanted, which he could have saved himself the trouble by just saying initially to the kid, hey, this is the guy we want identify him. That would have been simple, exactly. I would have saved five minutes. So you're identified, you go to trial.

00:13:37
Speaker 3: Well, I try as an adult. I'm going to keep parking this spit.

00:13:39
Speaker 1: I'm a kid.

00:13:40
Speaker 3: So there's a process here in California that determines if you're worthy of juvenile court or you have to go with the big boys. Right, And so this was a murderer and they felt that it deserved it a higher punishment, and so ultimately went to trial, had an assigned attorney that the county. It wasn't a public defenders like a panel attorney. I have to say this part here. And when I walked into the court and I was chained to you know, the chain gang there, everyone's there being arraigned, all adults and then was looking like what did you do, like steal some candy and blah blah blah, and you know, they're just ragging on me, these adults who had obviously been there before. And so I'm the last guy to be arraigned, and so everyone's freaking out like, oh shit, we weren't expecting that charge for this kid, right And prior to that, I will say that, and it's and it kind of goes to just me being so naive here is that I heard someone call my name and I'm like, I'm so little. I'm like raising my hand like I'm over here. And I looked over and I saw this good looking white man with this amazing suit on, just like canned suit, walking towards me with the file and I was like, oh my god, David, you have signed me the best fucker in the room, man, Like this is all going to be worked out, Like this is it? I got the very sheck of the world. Sadly, it's just an example of like where my mentality was, even my perception of this new world. This courtroom was like sadly, like the white guy come into your rescue had like such an impact from living in a society where the majority of people around you are people who look like you and who you know than the teacher or whatever, and so I thought it was a sort of funny and looking back at that moment, getting me so excited about everything's gonna be okay now right obviously.

00:15:15
Speaker 2: Not obviously not. I mean the odds, the odds were stacked against you. The government was willing to lie to get the conviction. They were willing to use an incentivized witness, and they convicted you, they did, and now you get sent to maximum security prison.

00:15:30
Speaker 3: At the time, they had a juvenile facility, so it was like the Youth Authority for young adults. So I went there and the sentence was thirty years to life, with an additional six life sentences attached to that. So I'll say that when I heard those words coming to the judge's mouth, I couldn't imagine or perceived like a week or a few months in my life to now to imagine thirty years to life plus life, I couldn't even comprehend that. For someone wants to be sort of funny and sort of mess with me, it meant like, do thirty years to life die and then you're back in prison, like even if you ever come back, right, And it was.

00:16:05
Speaker 1: Like, you mean, like if you get reincarnated.

00:16:06
Speaker 3: I suppose, right, like you're you're seting you up for your next life.

00:16:10
Speaker 2: It doesn't make any sense, right, and none of this makes any sense, But that in particular doesn't make any sense just in terms of the semantics of it. It's interesting too write because there was a witness who actually wanted to come forward and who had information that could have prevented you from being convicted in the first place.

00:16:26
Speaker 3: Is there was, so he wasn't just a witness. This guy that you're referring to was the actual killer. So as a bizarre twist in this case, the investigator had discovered who the murderer was, and your investigator there and this is it's a bizarre twist all this. And it's not to minimize the bad police work here, but now it's also bad defense work here. My defense attorney had an investigator who had went out and become the world's best investigator by tracking down who excumented the crime. Turns out he knew the murderer, and so there was just this conflict of interest of either get off the case or reveal that this is the guy who did it. He had this young man, the actual murderer, confessed to the crime. There's a six page confession that he took from this man, and what he tried to do. To his credit, he tried to convince this guy to come to the court and just say, look, Frankie didn't do it, it was me. And he arrived with an attorney. You would assume that the judge would say, well, wait a minute here, before Frankie goes down and he's sentenced, let's hear about this guy in the hallway. And lo and behold, the judge says, you're too late. You've been convicted by a jury. All this sort of like last information that's apparently in the hallway. Just deal with it in your appeal.

00:17:37
Speaker 2: So after the jury renders you guilty, and the guy standing outside the doors of the courtroom exactly who's actually holding the cards to your freedom?

00:17:46
Speaker 3: Well, I mean it would have shed light if someone cared about truth, right, it would have been like, well, let's bring this guy in. And so it failed me even again at that point, that's such a crazy it's a bizarre man. You were like thirty feet from freedom sort of right, the doors would have opened and this guy would have been allowed to walk in and provided he actually came clean, true, because he might have changed his mind.

00:18:06
Speaker 1: People do that.

00:18:06
Speaker 2: But you had a real opportunity to avoid this most nightmarish fate that anybody can possibly imagine. But that's not what happened. And ultimately there were six witnesses who testified against you, and the crazy thing is they all recanted, right, eventually they all recanted.

00:18:23
Speaker 3: They initially use this one boy, the swift year old boy, to arrest me based on this photographic lineup, and so six months which is bizarre. Here everyone was under eighteen, so that everyone was very young. Six months maybe even seven months after the crime had occurred. For the first time, the other five boys had been shown the photographic lineup. And we all know about memory, and there's been studies and it's been proven that this is not a recording.

00:18:45
Speaker 1: Dick.

00:18:45
Speaker 3: You have on your phone. In your mind, memories record a little bit differently. It's like little snapshots, and as time goes on they fade and other information filters in and it gets very tainted. So it's hard to really recall, especially a dry by shooting the middle of the night. You hear gunfire, you're ducking, you're running, So to really capture that, it's like an immediate on the scene interview is like the best one. So we're talking about seven months later now where these boys are showing photographs for the first time ever. Wow, And sure enough, sure enough, one by one they say, yep, that's the guy. It's photograph number one. And it was obviously later determined that's this young boy. The fifteen year old boy. Made it a point to tell everyone else if they ever show you photographs, believe me, I know who did it. It was photograph number one. And so now we got six people.

00:19:31
Speaker 2: Right, And it's so absurd to think that seven months later, as you said, in the middle of the night, in the dark and a drive by shooting, all the factors are there for almost a guarantee of wrongful identification, a mess identification, and that's exactly what happened. So you spent much more than half your life behind bars. You're only really a cognizant human, right maybe for ten years to a round number, so more than twice that amount of time. You're now in a cage in a violent, scary, hostile environment. How did you manage to make it through that?

00:20:05
Speaker 3: You know? Well, you know, when I think back about how I survived twenty years incarceration, what I remembered most about something my dad said sort of in passing or just try to give me some advice up to dinner table, which was if there's adults around, go to them. He's sort of instilling these things about just society, they'll help you. And so I think, here I am in a room full of adults. I'm in an adult court, and I'm expecting everyone to do the right thing just because you're an adult. I'm a kid. You're supposed to be watching out for the system and yourself and everyone in the room. And so that went haywire. That that failed me. But I think that this very fuzzy idea of humanity was being born, and so I arrived in the place that was very sad. I mean, it's dangerous when you hear about it from the outside, but from the inside it's a very somber and just a sad place where people are being confined. And so I'm talking to you from the ground level here other people who don't want to be there, and they're also suffering on whatever level, and you join in on this pity party about life, you know. And so first couple of years of that, you know, you're trying to sort of find your place. It's a social dynamic there, and so you're moving in groups of your kind, and you know, you get a job and you kind of get active in what's happening there. But luckily for me, and I really thank my dad for saying that, it's instilling in this idea that whoever they are, but people are good people. And in my case, I had to be careful with who I told that I was innocent, because you know, that's back to the sort of ranking about like you're a murderer in prison has more status than if you're there for child molestation. And so even in my environment, I think innocent is probably below child molester. You don't belong here, like what the fuck man like you're you know, I mean a criminal like we're all you know, we're all tough here. So I learned that I made a mistake and told the wrong guy that I was innocent, and the look he gave me was like, oh shit, maybe I shouldn't be telling people that I'm not like you, right Obviously, like everyone else I read and I and I feel like I'm on a sound like a natural chameleon. So I just adapted to my environment. I've been always been very diplomatic, so I was always trying to be the peacekeeper, and so that helped the pain. And also, like the hope was that like somewhere, somehow someone was going to realize that this was a huge mistake. And so the system that failed me, the criminal justice system that failed me, and everyone who makes that sort of turn, you know, happen and work though it's it's supposed to work. I suppose I was expecting them to figure it out and help me. It's sort of like suspending reality and thinking, forget what just happened to you where you've been wrongly convicted, and try to hold onto the one piece that these people can do the right thing, and some expecting people to do the right thing.

00:22:52
Speaker 2: It's incredible that you would be expecting people to do the right thing when, with the exception of your father, everybody who was supposed to have protected you either abandoned you or turned on you in the most vicious way, and yet you maintained this outlook like, if I just be me and be honest and be optimistic, then eventually people are going to accept me for who I am, which is an innocent guide trapped in a sentence that doesn't belong to me. That's really there's a lot to be learned from that, right, because all of us go through little disappointments on a daily basements, right, or a weekly basis or whatever, and so many people react to those, and certainly being around you and the other exgneries, I always say, it puts gratitude in my attitude, you know, and I learned to be I think much more understanding of life's little twists and turns, because they all seem so trivial. When you deal with someone who's been through hell right and managed to maintain not just sanity, but a sense of grace and kindness and optimism, it's remarkable, you know.

00:23:53
Speaker 3: I'm going to add to also, Jason, that there was something happening that I didn't realize this until many years later. But we're all conditioned in the way, and specifically, when we think of prison, we think of the ugliest human from his behavior, what he did, or the way he looks and the tattoos and ponytail. Whatever we have in our minds etched out as like what a prison who looks like. And so imagine a guy who's great looking as I am in a prison. You might think, oh, man, this guy's vulnerable to like sexual assaults, right, But the reality is that pull perversion out of it. You're in a place where you're almost like a porcelain figurine in a bar, and it's almost like people want to protect you, and they're curious about, like, what's this guy with no tattoos doing amongst us? Why is he so nice? Like, you know, we're all mean and talking shit to each other, and this guy's like talking about good morning and whatever. Right, And so I learned that my humanity hadn't been detached from me. There was no guilt that made me feel like I couldn't be human. So I was just who I thought I had to be, And as time went on, I'd use it as a shield because I knew that that was happening, that there was like these social conditioning that was working in my favor, even just a survival part, let alone the criminal justice be trying to get out.

00:25:14
Speaker 2: Now that you've been out for six years, and hearing you talk about it, you're very calm, and you paint a picture that is I think either you're in a little bit of denial, you know, like they say, denial is not.

00:25:28
Speaker 1: A river in Egypt.

00:25:29
Speaker 2: About how terrifying and how I know it was a brutal experience, no matter all the things you're saying, notwithstanding, but I do want to turn to the happy part of the story, right your exoneration and then what happened after you got out, because America loves to come back. Yeah, man, and your story is very uplifting. I mean, just the fact that you're here now has got to be inspiring to so many people. So how did you Was it the Northern California Innocent's Project that took your case?

00:25:57
Speaker 3: I think my exoneration is sort of twofold here, But when it came to the legal components to it, I did what many other people do. They write letters and they bother their families and that they have a friend who they can nag about it. They do that like it's a constant scratching away at this right. And so for me, it was a fifteen year letter writing campaign that went nowhere. I mean it was Oprah and twenty twenty and forty eight hours and some roll back, you know, along with Barry shk who wasn't interested in at the time with a case who wasn't involved in DNA, which I understood. But as bizarre as it was, I was. I was a folesome prisoner working as a teacher's aid. So I was, you know, helping the teacher correct papers and do some algebra on the board, whatever, just pretty basic stuff, right. And Tony Carter, who was a teacher, she is about to retire, and there was like this internal policy where you can't get too close to the prisoners because they'll fire you and so on. And so I knew that, and now I want to get her in trouble. So she knew my plight, but I never never went as far as to say, hey, Tony, would he help? But now I figure she's done, you know, she's about to retire. Now is the time, right, So on the last moments she's walking away on that Friday, I say, Tony, Tony, and she looks back and she says, yeah, what's up. Did you forget to say something? And sure enough I did, right? I said, would you help me? She's like sure, Like, what can I do for you? Right? You know my story, if Nelicher retired, if you're in your travels in the world, if you come across a lawyer, a reporter, anyone you think might be interested in my story, would you just mind just sharing that with them? And I think anyone would have said yes, it's pretty simple. Right, you're about to leave, and so she she says, sure, I can do that, and I was. I was really relieved because a letter I can do that all day long, but face to face it's a different dynamic there. But I felt really happy that I was able to muster the guts to do that. And so turns out that six months after that conversation, she was invited to a book club in Sacramento. This guy named Bo Mosof who's now has passed, who was going to do some book signing and she had seen him before, and so she shows up and lo and behold, there's an attorney in the room, and luckily for me, she mentioned that she was a lawyer because I guess who was listening Tony, who says, oh shit, I guess this is I guess this is a calling, right, So she goes over and says, I heard you're a lawyer, and you know have this guy. You know, I used to be a former teacher in prison, and there's a story I want to share with you. And literally that's what's triggered it. This woman was Ellen Naggers, was a public defender working on death penalty cases in California, who then got in touch with Northern California Innocence Project Morrison Forrester, and this dream came together. It took them five years, and they could have taken them ten years. I didn't care. But finally someone was going beyond the record and saying, let's listen to this guy has to say. So they turned stones over that had been ignored. They tracked down these six boys, these now men, you know, they weren't kids anymore, and one by one it was almost like if they were being freed from their own miseries. They all, from what I hear, they were all so gracious to say like, you know what, thank you for finding me. I need to tell you the truth as if they were living with this pain as well. There was witnesses that were brought in to clarify the Paul. Things were described that happened couldn't have happened. And so the evidence that was used against me had gone away and there was a final hearing. Luckily for me, the Los Angeles disc Attorney's office conceded the case, so there was ultimately no fight. They agreed that this had gone wrong and I was free to go. And so the words I've been yearning to hear all my life, well it seemed to be my entire life, the judge said them, which is basically, get out of here.

00:29:24
Speaker 1: You apologize.

00:29:25
Speaker 3: The DA's apologized in the room, which felt really good. They came over and shook my hand. I think the judge he gave more of like a philosophical response to that, but it was less about him. It was more about the DA's office. And it turned out that the corporate the bad players here were just as bad cop. I'm a big fan of law enforcement, but in this situation, it was a bad cop who was tied up with this internal gang situation and shit went bad and I had to suffer.

00:29:48
Speaker 2: Yes, you certainly did. So you walked out of the courthouse. You walked in, Well, you were arrested and you can walk in. You were taken in as a sixteen year old boy. You walk out as a thirty seven year old man.

00:30:01
Speaker 1: What's that like? You walk out?

00:30:03
Speaker 2: I mean, what is freedom taste? And your dad had died in the drum, right, so now you're an orphan yep, and you walk out into what would you do?

00:30:12
Speaker 1: Did you go get something to eat?

00:30:14
Speaker 4: Like?

00:30:14
Speaker 1: What'd you DoD? I mean?

00:30:18
Speaker 3: I wish I would have been released from the court room. I was released from the Sheriff's Department's jail there the county jail, I La County jail. And it was about it was mid midweek. It was about maybe two in the afternoon, and they called me out of my cell and took me down to the street level when doors open, and there was like a TMZ moment, really, all these cameras bouncing on their shoulders trying to interview me, right, and all the mics come out before my family and lawyers could get to me. And how does it feel to be free? How does it feel to be free, right, and the big question, And I think I ignored that one because I sort of thought about that for a very long time when I was in prison. What's they going to feel like? And it sort of felt stupid, as safe, it felt as great or whatever. So but I remember thinking that it was such a bright day, the colors that just at my disposal now it seemed to be like a century overload, which is my immediate reaction was whoa the wind, the colors, the people, the attention, because you know, Jason, the reality was that at a very young age I had become like the man in the iron mask, where my voice was taken away. My existence before I had a chance to even blossom, was extinguished. There was no chance for this young life to become anything, and so I had to live with that. I lived with the fact that when I did try to make an attempt to speak up for myself, I was ignored and that was minimized. So that was a personal struggle that all kind of came together the day I was out, So from no attention to like, hey, we're all here for you, right, which was great. My attorneys were there, my family was there. Somehow I hadn't seen them very long time, and.

00:31:48
Speaker 1: So what happened? So then you're out? Yeah, where'd you go?

00:31:51
Speaker 3: And I was ushered into a car pretty quickly, and we went to Echo Park to a friend's home who they had a good whole food sort of spread awaiting for me. Right, So I went for a cafeteria food for twenty years or prison food, which is even worse, to this long table of organic almonds and dried apricots.

00:32:09
Speaker 4: You know.

00:32:09
Speaker 3: So that was pretty cool.

00:32:10
Speaker 2: Almonds and apricots a whole ya, man, sounds a little biblical, you know, It's kind of funny, that's right.

00:32:15
Speaker 1: I was thinking of you.

00:32:16
Speaker 2: I was thinking, you're gonna say you got like a sandwiches, and you know, I was picturing more of a you know. I mean, if they had almonds and eight apricots, I would have actually been pissed out of it, like come on, really, like can I get a slice?

00:32:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, pizza? Something? I mean, come on, man.

00:32:32
Speaker 2: So then you went home, and then you know, now here it is. You rebuilt your life. You successfully filed a lawsuit, well, you had two lawsuits, right, and one was settled. The other one you won, right, so you're now unlike many of our x houneries. There's a bright spot there because you know I talk about often. But the fact is, you know, so many ex houneries and something we're working to fix, do not receive compensation. You were able to prove violations of your civil rights and other things that led to you being compensated in a meaningful way. That's going to now allow you to help fix the system. That that would be a great full circle, wouldn't it.

00:33:11
Speaker 3: You know, I can't wait, and I'm not minimizing the money here because it makes my life very enjoyable. I think the true joyous moments for me since I've been home is that before I even got out, And this is this is I hope it can be sort of passed along to those who are who were imprisoned rightly or wrongly. But this idea that you have to before you even get out. You can't sort of prepare yourself the week to date, that the week to the night before, like okay, tomorrow is my big release date. Let me kind of get my thoughts together. This has to happen long before the door opens. And so I feel that in sort of credit to myself and those who were around me that my transition phase happened long before the door opened, and so when the door opened, I felt very prepared to just attempt to just now really be free. Because a common theme was when you got there, some older guy kind of gave you some like advice. As an example, you have five years years to do, and the advice was, for the first four years, just kind of hang out, man, you know you're in prison, Just relax, just play some cards and shit, and if you know you want to play dominoes, go work out, right. But the last year, man, like the last year, like, you know, go to church, or if you're smoking, stop smoking, get it together, right, And I thought that was pretty good advice. Shit, why not, man? What else you got to lose? Right? And at some point I realized that that even though it was a lifer, that advice applied to me, and it was against suspending complete reality here, but it was like, you know what, I'm making all these efforts to try to get my case hurt and try to get some attention here. Let me work on me too, Let me work on this idea that I need to prepare myself. And so fast forward, I went a month after I got out with some good friends Scott Wooden and who ended up living with in Mannon Beach and his wife Jeanie would. I enrolled at a great university in Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount University. So I went from and I'm sort of funny here, but I went from one prison to another because it had all the elements that I needed. And it felt like for a guy like me, I needed the structure that I had been accustomed to. And it's not the put down, but it was the university gave me the camaraderie, the friendship. There was no Bob Wire, but shit, I had deadlines, man. I had to show up, you know. And so it went from a very negative environment that I was into a very very loving and encouraging space, which was the school right along with just sort of being active and being activism. How could I not support the Innocence Project and ways the end of death penalty in California and other social issues around the state.

00:35:30
Speaker 2: And that's just gotten a whole lot worse with the speed up to death penalty referendum that passed in California, which is absolutely unimaginable and unconscionable that people would have been terrible because well, essentially they voted for guaranteeing that we're going to execute a lot of innocent people because the changes to the law are devastating to people who have claims of innocence. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's to speed up to death penalty. Yep, none of it makes any sense. But voices like yours and all the cure that is the media is really driving interest in this issue, this issue of innocence, this issue of mass incarceration and other related criminal justice problems that are sadly uniquely American problems because other countries are so much more evolved than we are. You know, it's incredible, Frankie. We have five percent of the world's population at twenty five percent of the world's prison population. The point I'm making is that when we process people at this rate, where we just keep feeding this prison industrial complex, they're going to be mistakes, They're going to be more Frankie Correos, we have to reverse the entire way of thinking that we have and start to become a more progressive society in terms of the way we treat the people who are really the least among us, people who find themselves in the situation that you are in, not a wealthy person by any means, and then just being ground.

00:36:51
Speaker 1: Up by the system.

00:36:52
Speaker 2: I want to get to last words because I always like to give our guests the opportunity to air anything that you can think of that you want to share with our audience. You've been through so much, You've come through sounding, looking, feeling, acting like a person who knows stuff. You have such a calm demeanor and such a positive outlook. It's almost unnerving to be honest with you, you know. I mean for a minute there you were making prison sound like it was like, yeah, you know whatever this many years that man, I'm like, it's just.

00:37:24
Speaker 3: You know, thank you Jason for these final words here that I think that for many people listening, and people even in my life now think, you know, like this dude, you know this optimism stuff is he's taken to a different level here, right. And you know, I wish that I can sort of either write a book or explain how I made it through and how these things weren't able to penetrate my armor here. But I suffer I can't minimize that there are things and moments where I might hear a song that might trigger true sadness about what I'd experienced as a whole, about the things that were lost, about you know, all the what ifs. Right and very quickly I made it a point to remember what anger and what revenge and what hatred does to someone. Tell you even deeper here that when I was in prison, I think about those who had owned that, who had owned the anger and the revenge and the hatred, and I saw these men that were being blinded by it, and I don't want to be that. And here we are in a room full of statues, this beautiful art that predates all of us here, and I think about if that was who I'd become in prison, I would I wouldn't be here one and two. If I had traces of that and I was out on some level, I would still be on the inside. I would be physically free, but the rage that would be living within me would be like a prison all to itself. And so I mean, I'm happy that I can make those connections of my own existence for my own personal healing and as a move forward to my life. And speaking of that life, I'm happily married, I have three amazing children, I have theo Akiva and Frieda, my wife, FT is amazing and life is great. And I think it's a responsibility for not only myself my family to take on this responsibility of giving people the pleasure of experiencing the cognitive dissonance, which is you are around or you hear and you experience something. It suspends you from and it shocks you into like this is not what I expected from a guy who had been in prison for all these years. And it challenges you your own beliefs, your own things you've been carrying with you. This psychological moment says wow, like I need to change what I used to think about those who were on the inside. And so it's a responsibility for me and other exenreies, I feel that to awaken that side of all of us to say, let's not do that, Let's not do that to each other. And when someone says, and it's not a joke anymore that they are innocent, let's listen because we know many experiences and many stories that are tragic that we've been listening to this whole weekend of If only someone really listened and cared.

00:39:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, and everybody out there has the power to make a difference. I always encourage our audience to get involved, and it's great to see that many of them are, I know, and hearing story. For me again, it puts gratitude in my attitude. It makes all those little wham wains that we all have in life just seem so much easier to deal with and so much to surface noise right when somebody like you can come and have this sort of aura. And it's amazing, Frankie. You know, the fact is, to any of us in the movement and to other people on the outside, it's a source of never ending wonder and awe that every single Xonery I've ever met has some version of that type of higher consciousness that you've managed to achieve. They have this state of almost like a state of grace that is it's just inspiring, that's all it is. And so I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience, strength and hope with us. And again, I'm just going to have to take a moment to process this, and then I'm going to go and get busy and get back to work on helping others.

00:41:00
Speaker 3: That's right.

00:41:01
Speaker 1: We've had a very.

00:41:01
Speaker 2: Unique experience because we've been recording the podcast in an idyllic environment. We're actually in a room and a home overlooking the Pacific Ocean on a cliff, surrounded by the most incredible African art. So I want to thank our hosts, Bill LaRock and Michelle Chicarelli The Rock for having us here and allowing us to record in their beautiful home. Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts.

00:41:33
Speaker 1: It really helps.

00:41:34
Speaker 2: And I'm a proud donor to the Ennosis Project, and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on faceboo book at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one