00:00:02
Speaker 1: I fell into the hands of a corrupt detective.

00:00:07
Speaker 2: I was naive enough to believe that I would be able to just present all of my proof of actual innocence, that they would investigate adequately, and so that I wouldn't be going to prison because I was a good person. I hadn't do anything wrong.

00:00:19
Speaker 1: In the back of your mind, you say, well, when we go to a hearing or we go to court, the truth will come out. The prosecution from day one knew I was innocent and let forced testimony go uncorrected from the lower courts all the way up to the United States Supreme Court.

00:00:36
Speaker 3: You have someone with a badge with ultimate and really, in that moment, unchecked authority.

00:00:44
Speaker 2: Don't presume that people are guilty when you see them on TV, because it may just be a dirty da that is trying to rise upward.

00:00:57
Speaker 4: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today's guest is a friend of mine. He's a remarkable human and an inspiration to everybody who knows him. And I will embarrass you, but without further ado, let me introduce you Ryan Ferguson. At just nineteen years old, Ryan Ferguson was wrongly convicted of murder. He served nearly a decade in prison.

00:01:37
Speaker 5: Ferguson was convicted for the brutal murder of beloved journalist ken Heidholt in two thousand and one. The crime scene outside the newspaper where he worked littered with physical evidence bloody footprints, fingerprints, and even hair, but none of it matched Ryan. Again and again, he denied knowing anything about the murder. Charles Erickson, a childhood friend of Ryan's, came forward two years after the murder, claiming he had dreamlike visions that he and Ryan committed the crime together. When police led Ericson to believe Ferguson would testify against him, Erickson said he felt pressure to confess to the murder, thinking he'd otherwise face the death. Comedy and a second witness, janitor Jerry Trump, identified Ferguson as one of two men he saw in the parking lot immediately after the murder. In the years after that two thousand and five conviction, both of those crucial prosecution witnesses recant in their testimony.

00:02:29
Speaker 4: On his last appeal attempt, Ryan's conviction was overturned.

00:02:33
Speaker 5: After a year and a half more behind Barns. Finally, and at Pellet Court overturned that ruling, finding quote newly discovered evidence clearly and convincingly establishes that he's actually innocent. And then the Missouri Attorney General's office announced it will not retry or pursue further action against Ryan Ferguson at this time, meaning Ryan Ferguson was a free man.

00:02:58
Speaker 4: Welcome to the show.

00:03:00
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be on your podcast. I remember when you when you launched it the launch party.

00:03:05
Speaker 3: Man, just being there was amazing, And I want to say before we start, just thank you so much for what you do for everyone, including myself. You know, you were part of my case before I got out, and uh, and that gave me a lot of hope and I appreciate that. And then you've been very supportive to myself and everyone that I know in the innocence community since I've been out, and it's just amazing to see what you do for everyone. So thank you first and foremost, and let's get this thing started.

00:03:31
Speaker 4: Oh well, I don't know, I gotta take a breath after that, but thank you for saying so. I uh, you know, I forget these things because you know, there's just so much to do every day. Because this is such a an epidemic in this country. You couldn't have seen this coming a million miles away. We'll talk about that, right. So you're you're from Missouri, right.

00:03:51
Speaker 6: Yep, from Missouri. I was born born in Australia, raised in Missouri.

00:03:55
Speaker 4: So you grew up in Missouri. And what was that like? I mean, you had you had a happy childhood.

00:03:58
Speaker 3: I had a great childhood. Grew up in Columbia, is right in the middle of Missouri. University of Missouri, college town, great town, a lot of culture, education, a lot to do, and so for me, it was a town of opportunity. I had great education. My parents, they took me all over the world. They traveled with me constantly, and I got to learn a lot about people from being in that town and from traveling and everything else.

00:04:22
Speaker 6: So my childhood couldn't have been any better.

00:04:26
Speaker 4: A close family, very close family.

00:04:29
Speaker 3: We were all together my whole life, and you know, it was it was like the picture book.

00:04:34
Speaker 6: Family, right, you know, mom, dad's sister.

00:04:36
Speaker 3: We had a little dog, and you know, just a little middle class existence and everyone was happy.

00:04:41
Speaker 6: Everything Everything was going good.

00:04:43
Speaker 3: And I played sports in high school and had a lot of friends and everything, and then went to college, and at that point everything was still very normal.

00:04:53
Speaker 4: Everything was very normal until everything went completely haywire. And you hadn't had any experience with police or arrests or authority in any way to this point.

00:05:04
Speaker 3: Right, Well, I had never been accused of any crimes, for sure when I was in high school. You know, it's a college town, so of course there's going to be police that show up at parties. People get mips and things of that nature. No one that I knew had ever been arrested for anything that would have put them in jail. I had never met anyone that had spent the night in jail. You know, some kids got in trouble for small things like like in most towns, but the fact of being arrested for a real crime was it didn't even exist in my world.

00:05:35
Speaker 4: I was so moved and angry and just upset in general. After seeing the forty eight hours piece, which was the first exposure I ever had to your case. Some of the things that stuck out for me about that piece were the idea that this was a cold case. Right It was the murder of a sports reporter and he had been beaten to death outside of his car.

00:05:58
Speaker 6: I guess right, yeah, outside of his work.

00:06:02
Speaker 4: And two and a half years later, no leads, nothing going on, right, One of the local TV stations ran one of those things that they run time to time where they had like a composite sketch. Right, did you even know about this murder when it happened? Was it big news in the area.

00:06:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a small town. There's about one hundred thousand people. I do recall hearing about it. You know, anything that happens in that town, like a murder, you hear about it was its big news because they don't happen that often. That was the extent of my knowledge on you know, I mean young in high school and it's like, whoa, somebody was murdered on howe any night.

00:06:39
Speaker 6: That's kind of creepy.

00:06:40
Speaker 4: So let's go back to that. Because the sports reporter, ken Heidholt was murdered in a very brutal manner. He was beaten to death with a tire iron or something like that. I don't you know if they even know to this day, but it was a heavy metal object of some sort and when that Crimesoppers piece ran, Charles Rickson was affected by it in some way. Right. He saw this on TV. He was with his friends and he had some sort of a vision or something came over him which made him say to his friends, Hey, you know, I mean I kind of look like that guy. I wonder if it could have been, if I could have been involved in so or some crazy thing like that. And then one of the friends called the cops.

00:07:22
Speaker 6: Right.

00:07:22
Speaker 4: And this is an interesting thing about your case, Ryan, because we've covered false confessions on this show, and false confessions are so terribly troubling. In your case, you were the victim of false confession, but you didn't confess. That's what's crazy about this, Right, You were implicated because somebody else who also didn't commit the crime, actually thought that maybe he did for some reason. And the brain is a strange things to memory. Who knows what came over him, right.

00:07:51
Speaker 3: And one of the quotes that always stuck out to me is something that Charles ericson my co defendant, the person who had these images, who ultimately testified against me, something that he said, and this is verbatim. He says, if I did it, Ryan must have been with me. And based on that, I mean, that is what starts this whole thing. Based on that, I lost ten years of my life. I was put into prison for a crime I had nothing to do with.

00:08:16
Speaker 4: Was there any physical evidence of any kind connecting to this case.

00:08:20
Speaker 3: There was no physical evidence connecting me or Charles Erickson. But the important fact is there is a lot.

00:08:26
Speaker 6: Of physical evidence there.

00:08:28
Speaker 3: You know, there's a bloody footprint, there's a hair in the victim's hand, there's a paper with a palm print.

00:08:35
Speaker 6: There are things.

00:08:35
Speaker 3: That, even to this day, could be tested to determine guilt of another individual. And the police have chosen not to look into those things. And here's what's really really frustrating is when I got out, the public was enraged. They were frustrated with what the police had done, and they said, we want to know what really happened in this case, because clearly it wasn't Ryan, it wasn't Ericson, the kid who is still to this day in prison. And so the police said, we're gonna we're gonna open this case, We're going to look back into it, We're going to see what happened here. Well, three months later, you know, in a very low key way. They're just kind of like, well, you know, we got somebody in prison for it right now, so we're not gonna we're not gonna investigate it.

00:09:15
Speaker 6: That's not gonna happen.

00:09:16
Speaker 4: Right, So the net effect if you're a resident of Columbia or Missouri or the United States, because we don't know where this guy is. This guy who is a dangerous, violent killer is out there walking amongst us. I mean, it is an outrage that they have this evidence and they won't test it. It even for me, like, my head's going, what first of all, and let's talk about this right jail because this is something that people don't focus on enough. You were in jail for a long time awaiting trial. They set bail at twenty million dollars.

00:09:48
Speaker 6: Right, twenty million dollars. Yeah, it was it was a jo you know. That is a in my mind, that's how publicity's the reality.

00:09:55
Speaker 3: The way our legal system works is if you're arrested for a very serious crime, like a murder, they can choose not to give you a bail, and they do that often, or they can give you a million dollar bail whatever. Right bail is meant so that you should have the opportunity to raise those funds and get out so you can fight your case because you have not been proven guilty. At that point, I had no bail for eight months. I went into a bail hearing and the judge out of nowhere says twenty million dollars. And so that is a different thing than saying no bail. That is a political statement. That is her saying that I endorse this case as a judge, and they're supposed to be independent. I endorse this case. I'm with the prosecutor, and we're going to take this kid and put him in prison for the rest of his life. And that is not something a judge should do. Judge Ellen Roper made a huge mistake there. I think she should be health accountable for that. And that is the politics we see with our criminal legal system in these people's lives, you know, I mean, this is my life and that judge is playing a game with it. And that is incredibly scary to see, especially at the age of nineteen or twenty, and you're just like, how is this our legal system? How is this innocent until proven guilty?

00:11:04
Speaker 6: Because it's not.

00:11:05
Speaker 4: So Yeah, and I hadn't even thought about that, because to my knowledge, your bail was the highest bail in the history of the state of Missouri.

00:11:13
Speaker 3: Oh, I think it's the highest in the history of the country in terms of the charge. Right, you have a charge of first agree murder, second degree robbery. There's no evidence I had never been arrested or convicted of any crime, and I'm getting a twenty million dollar bail. Here's a guy sitting next to me in the same pod, in the same county with a first agree murder charge and he is a repeat offender. In his bail for pretty much the same charge was five hundred thousand dollars.

00:11:43
Speaker 4: Wow. So yeah, and I hadn't even thought about it. But you're absolutely right. In fact, by setting that bail of twenty million and that going out in the press as it does, basically it's poisoning the jury pool because it's saying, hey, you know what, we can say that or this guy to be extremely dangerous, so dangerous that we're going to set the bail so high that even if its family's rich, and your family wasn't poor, but they weren't rich, So even if the family is one of the wealthiest families around, they're still not gonna be able to post it. So it's a wink wink, like we're going to keep this guy around because we know he's guilty. And that's absolutely really it's.

00:12:27
Speaker 6: Makes me sick.

00:12:27
Speaker 4: Okay, so you go to trial, you by now had been in jail for how long?

00:12:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been in jail for about eighteen months at that point a year and a half. Trial was actually set and I don't think this is a coincidence. On my twenty first birthday, it was Monday through Friday, and my birthday for the twenty first birthday was Wednesday, So I'll never never forget that. And by the way, I want to mention county jail, and I think this is overlooked a lot.

00:12:54
Speaker 6: I think it's really interesting for people to hear.

00:12:56
Speaker 3: But when you're innocent until proven guilty and you're in the county jail, it is far worse than being in prison. Most guys I know, they're happy to go to prison after being in the country jet. It is a very, very poor existence. My first year in the county jail, I went outside, literally outside two times. And that is innocent until proven because I don't understand how that can be. And I went outside every time that I could, but you're literally sleep deprived. The lights never go off, you never go outside, you have no human contact with anyone outside of prison. So it's a horrible existence. But for those eighteen months before you go to trial, they're basically sucking the life out of you. And then what you're seeing in trial is a shell of a human being. So when you watch forty eight Hours or Dayline or any other show and you see these people sitting there on trial, I mean, they probably look emaciated, they probably look strange, they probably act weird, and that's because they've been in this horrific environment for so long that I mean, they have no emotions left, they've spent them all, and they haven't been eating right, they have no nutrition. So just take that into consideration when you're looking at somebody who's going through this situation. You know, you're sitting in a courtroom full of these people who are staring at you. You're in a fish bowl and you're the only fish, and people are going to do like this satanic fish or something. And not to mention in the way you were treated the last eighteen months.

00:14:18
Speaker 4: No, I'm glad you brought that up, Ryan, and when you described that to me, and it's not like you're comparing jail to a minimum security prison. You were in a maximum security prison, right, And jails are chaotic, I mean, among other things. And this is something that's really so horrible to think about. But they're never cleaned, right, They're always occupied and they're never cleaned. So you're in a extremely toxic, poisonous environment in so many different ways. And you're in a pressure cooker, right because you were going to sell with how many other guys.

00:14:48
Speaker 3: Eight guys, twenty four to seven and you know, yeah, you're right, it is a pressure cooker.

00:14:53
Speaker 6: I mean, you have these people.

00:14:54
Speaker 3: Every single one of those people's lives is on the line. They don't know what's going to happen next. They don't know if they're going to go to prison for the rest of the life. Some of them don't know if they're gonna get the death penalty.

00:15:02
Speaker 6: Some might get out tomorrow.

00:15:04
Speaker 3: And so you have all these different thoughts and feelings and emotions going on. You know, people are losing their families or they can't see their kids.

00:15:09
Speaker 6: Whatever it might be.

00:15:11
Speaker 3: And you have that on top of the fact that you can't eat right. You can't get any exercise. Really, you can't be with loved ones. There's no outlet, right, The only outlet is towards another person, and so people end up fighting and getting hurt.

00:15:27
Speaker 6: And you know, you don't want to be in that situation.

00:15:28
Speaker 3: You don't want to be forced to fight somebody for survival. But that's what they make you do. That's what they put you in a situation where there's no other options. And then when it happens, they want to charge you with another crime, like you did something wrong.

00:15:40
Speaker 6: Put me in the cell with my girlfriend for a year.

00:15:43
Speaker 3: We're gonna, you know, hate each other by the end of it, right, You can't do that, and they'd put you in there with these people who are violent criminals.

00:15:51
Speaker 6: You don't know each other, you don't care about each other.

00:15:53
Speaker 3: Yet you have to be there twenty four to seven with all that going on, all those emotions, all those feelings, and that loss of your liberty and privilege. So it is a frightening place.

00:16:05
Speaker 4: The claustrophobic element of it alone, right, because you're never getting out. You're not getting out of cell, right, I mean, what you've got to get out for a shower, no.

00:16:13
Speaker 3: Well, the thing is it's like a pod and it's very small. It's smaller than a one story home, and the showers in there, and you have a TV in there on a phone, and eight other guys, and it is The claustrophobic feeling is so intense, because even if even if you've been there for three months and you start to feel like you know the guys and you don't feel like you're in danger, that day you'll wake up and you realize I can't get up and walk out of this thing today. I can't get up and walk out of here tomorrow or next month or next year. Like I can't go anywhere but this little house. Like I can't even step foot outside see the sunlight. I can't look out a window because there are no windows.

00:16:50
Speaker 6: Like this is it. I can't do anything.

00:16:53
Speaker 3: I have no freedom, I have no choices, I have nothing, no responsibility because I can't even go work if I want to work, I can't go grab a book if I want to grab a buck.

00:17:01
Speaker 6: I can't do anything.

00:17:03
Speaker 4: There's no books in there.

00:17:04
Speaker 3: There are some books, but they don't come by very often. Fortunately, after a while I was able to get some books. My father was able to bring me some, but you know, they change the policies, and so for a while, they took out all the legal books. You know, I thought, at least if I got to sit here at twenty four to seven, I'll be able to read legal books. It's my constitutional right to be able to defend myself. But they took out all the legal books, so I couldn't even read that. And you know, I'm here, I'm nineteen years old. I want to prove my innocence and fight my case, and they don't even give you the resources to do that.

00:17:33
Speaker 4: And I top of everything else, you're going to the bathroom on top of each other. Where do you sleep? And how do you change clothes? How does that even work well?

00:17:39
Speaker 3: And where I was at it was a violent felon tank, so it has its benefits and his down sides. Of course, in many tanks it's just an open bay, so everybody's out there together. And yeah, I mean, you just got to get naked in front of people or whatever. You poop in front of people, you pee in front of people, everything, and so that is one existence in a violent fell in tank. They put you in your own cell because they don't want people sleeping in an environment where there are people who are accused of murder, right, so you don't want to be asleep, and then some guy snaps out and comes over there and tries to murder you. Like that's a liability, I suppose, So they give you your own cell in the violent Fellon tank.

00:18:16
Speaker 6: That's why there's eight people. There's eight cells. So that is the.

00:18:20
Speaker 3: One, I guess good thing about being in a violent Pealent tank. The bad thing is that they're violent felons, so it's a lot more dangerous when those doors are open.

00:18:30
Speaker 6: Those doors are open about eighteen hours a day.

00:18:32
Speaker 4: And you had reason to understand that the system was not designed to work for justice and that as an innocent man, you had a real chance of ending up in prison for a long long time. So you devised a workout program, right in order to be able to defend yourself. And if you can't obviously see him on the radio, but if you see Ryan now he is he looks like a bodybuilder. So how did you do that without any kind of access to gym equipment or weights or anything else? And how did that work for you?

00:19:05
Speaker 3: You know, it comes down to education, really That's what I love about fitness now, is I see a lot of people work out. I've been around, you know, I was in an incubator with guys for a decade and I could see what they were doing, and a lot of people work really hard, but they never educate themselves on what to do for themselves physically, and so, you know, that's why I developed this routine, is just understanding how.

00:19:28
Speaker 6: The body works. What's what are the best workouts that.

00:19:31
Speaker 3: Are going to get you the largest gains in the smallest amount of time, and then what do you have to do nutritionally to supplement that? And so that's you know, I just started figuring it out reading books and everything. When you're in an environment like prison and you have only so many outlets, I mean, really, the only thing.

00:19:47
Speaker 6: You possess are your mind in your body. Nothing else is yours.

00:19:50
Speaker 3: You don't have any other really choices or anything. So I educated myself daily and I worked out daily because all I had was myself, and I worked on myself every day, and I think that taught me a valuable lesson. I think we can all do that no matter where we're at in life. It's very important.

00:20:07
Speaker 4: Well, you had a very strong motivation, and you were really thinking ahead because of the fact that you knew that if you ended up in a maxim security prison, there were going to be times when you're going to have to defend yourself or even inside this jail. So you designed a program to make yourself strong for that eventuality. And I know you talked to me about punching the walls, like, how does that work?

00:20:32
Speaker 6: Right?

00:20:32
Speaker 3: So I did skip over the part about why why I was working on so hard, and it is it's my why was survival and that is a very strong motivator and that's why I would work out and eventually ended up punching walls. So the walls are concrete and you know, they don't move. They're not soft by any means. But I saw people fight, and I saw people break their fists, and if you break your fist, you're not gonna be able to fight. And you know, I did everything I could to ensure my existence because it is scary what you see with our legal system and the fact that if you're arrested, your life is pretty much over at that point, you have a very small chance of winning, regardless of the facts. I mean, everything stacked against you. So I didn't want to end up in a fight to save my own life, to protect myself and not be able to function. And so I realized, you know, you had to have strong hands. You had to be able to take a hit, and you have to be able to give a hit and not break down. And so I would start lightly hitting the walls, the concrete walls, and I would hit them until you know, my knuckles got bloody and everything, and then i'd stop for that day, and while they're still trying to heal, I would continue hitting the walls. And I ended up building a very very strong fist that I feel I could probably last through anything. And the only reason I did that is because I didn't want to be victimized while I was in prison for a crime I didn't commit.

00:21:57
Speaker 6: And that's it, really, I.

00:21:58
Speaker 3: Mean, it's it's an odd feeling knowing that your whole being is built around not becoming a victim. But that's what it was, man, that's survival in prison. You gotta do what you gotta do to protect yourself and any and every way that you can find.

00:22:27
Speaker 4: So the trial comes Ryan, and you've been caged for eighteen months in the most extreme circumstances. You come to trial and then you're forced to watch your co defendant get up there, Charles Erickson, and tell a story that has no relationship to reality or the truth, and ultimately you're convicted. I can't even fathom what that moment must have been like. But it's not too painful to go back there.

00:23:02
Speaker 6: That is, without it out in my thirty three years of life. The worst week.

00:23:07
Speaker 3: Of my entire life kind of jels horrible. Prison's bad, but when you're in trial, there's nothing worse. You're basically naked in front of the world. Right, I had no secrets, I have no Everything that I am is out in front of people. And then they take that and they add lies on top of it, and they're accusing you of something that you didn't do that you have no knowledge of.

00:23:31
Speaker 6: And you know, every media source that could have been there was there.

00:23:35
Speaker 3: And the courtroom is completely full, and these people are looking at you like you're some kind of animal, right, and you're trying to be respectful of the court. You're just trying to sit there and be quiet. And I remember I would turn around and, you know, wave to my mom during a recess you know, and I would smile because I saw my mom, like, hey, how you doing, Mom, Like I'm glad you're doing okay, and smile because I'm doing okay.

00:23:57
Speaker 6: So let's, you know, get through this. And then me would go out and say, look at this cocky piece of shit.

00:24:03
Speaker 3: You know, he's just like you don't care about the Cordies and they're like smiling and way being at his fans and stuff. It's like, you don't have fans. There's no such thing as a fan. You are being accused of a crime you didn't commit. You're fighting for your life, and you're saying hi to your family. And then even then the media takes liberty with that, and it's it's insane and it is horrific to deal with that component of it. But it's even worse knowing that the police know you're innocent, the prosecutor knows you're innocent, the judge knows you're innocent, and yet they're allowing this tobacle to go on and allowing these people to get on the stand and tell what they know are lies.

00:24:41
Speaker 6: And I get why some of these people lied.

00:24:44
Speaker 3: It's self preservation, because you know, they get a person out of prison, and they say, you know, you know, it'd be nice if you said these things, it would be really helpful. What's the implication is if you don't say these things, then we're going.

00:24:57
Speaker 6: To help you get back into prison.

00:24:58
Speaker 3: Right, And so they're doing for their own existence. But there's no reason the police of the prosecutor should be doing these things to people, right, They're they're manipulating and taking advantage of these people and uh, and they're doing it to the end to take another human being's life. And so it's you lose all faith in humanity, you lose all hope and humanity. And I mean that was the turning point for me. I fundamentally hated people outside of my family. I pretty much just hated human existence to human race for a good three.

00:25:30
Speaker 6: Or four years.

00:25:31
Speaker 4: And I can understand that. I mean, like you said, the people that are supposed to be paid to help you, or the people are supposed to be there to help the victim and the family, the victim and society and all of them letting down everyone for their own selfish.

00:25:43
Speaker 6: Are ones who are perpetuating this offense. And that's it is. You will never I still don't understand it.

00:25:49
Speaker 3: You know, people will look at my case and they're like, we didn't realize this can happen. Looking at you, realize that this could happen to us. And I think so many people want to compartmentalize that, right. They want to say, oh, this is happening, but that will never happen to me, that will never happen to my family or whatever. But the reality is that it doesn't matter what you look like, where you come from, how you act, this could happen to you. This is a subject. This is an issue that does affect us, all right. I mean it affects us economically, it affects our society, it affects everything. And it is happening disproportionately to young black men, poor people, even if you're poor and white, whatever it might be. The fact is, though, that this is happening more to people who don't look like me. And it's sad that for a lot of our society to stand up and say, hey, this is wrong, it has to be a young white kid because the reality is this is happening to so many people that are going unnoticed, and I think that needs to be discussed and we need to talk about that. There are a lot of issues with raising this country obviously, and so hopefully that will change. Hopefully, you know, wonderful commissioners will stop in general, but will acknowledge the fact that, hey, I mean, this has happening all over the place, but primarily to these.

00:27:02
Speaker 6: Young black men, and.

00:27:03
Speaker 3: That really has to stop, and it's really tearing apart communities.

00:27:08
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then there's all the effects are terrible. It's an issue, as you said, that affects everybody in so many different ways. And again you're right, it's a sensitive topic. But yeah, it's a sad commentary on our society. But it's a fact, and it's one of the reasons why I think it's so important that you've been out there doing what you've been doing to spread the word. So you were sentenced to what I was.

00:27:31
Speaker 3: Sentenced to forty years. Yeah, so in trial you get to see that it's not going well. You have a person sitting there saying something that isn't true, being egged on and led by the prosecution, and so then you get convicted. And before I was sentenced, you have a sentencing hearing and you.

00:27:51
Speaker 6: Have the opportunity to speak. The first time I had the opportunity to speak.

00:27:53
Speaker 3: This whole entire time from March tenth, two thousand and four to two years later, I never done anything. I was arrested, I never said anything that implicated me or anything. All the facts proved my innocence. I never had the opportunity to speak to the public or anything. So I'm basically just being like I jumped in the stream or I got pushed in the stream, basically, and then have been going down current this whole time. So two years later, I have the first opportunity to actually speak publicly, right, and I get to speak to the judge at the sentencing hearing after I've already been convicted, and I'm telling her, I hope you can see the facts. I mean, the facts are blatantly clear. Please look at those, Please be unbiased. This is the same judge that gave me a twenty million dollar bail, and you know, give me a new trial at the very least, because I will prove my innocence.

00:28:43
Speaker 6: You'll see that I'm innocent or whatever.

00:28:45
Speaker 3: The whole time I'm talking, she didn't even look at me, didn't pay anytention, just like I wasn't even there. I'm like, this is my whole entire life, and I have one opportunity to speak and to be heard by this court. You know, I've respected the court and that you respect me the same. The one opportunity I had, she wouldn't even look at me. She didn't listen to a word I'm saying, and then she just did what she did forty years see you later. And it was just one of the most disgusting things that I've experienced in my whole entire life, and is by this judge who were supposed to, you know, hold in high respect and it's supposed to be a pillar of our community.

00:29:21
Speaker 6: It's a horrible person. It's a horrible person who.

00:29:24
Speaker 3: Has no motivation to do what's right for the society that she lives in.

00:29:30
Speaker 6: And it's disgusting.

00:29:32
Speaker 3: And even now, you know she she's still you know, she lives in like a million dollar house or something, and she's enjoying a great life and uh, and she's just this person who has destroyed lives. And there are many great judges, don't get me wrong, but the fact that that person can sit up there and be esteemed or they're not even doing their job, it is ah, it's sickening.

00:29:55
Speaker 4: I'm u. The idea that she would be shuffling papers or doing whatever she felt was more important than forty years of your life at that particular time after everything you've been through is just yeah, that's hard to process. It just takes a person who's like just so completely fucking bankrupt, right, so morally devoid of anything, and I don't get it. Wow, So you end up going to maximum security prison and you could put in a selling it a sell mat.

00:30:31
Speaker 3: Right, So it's difficult not to go on and on because there are so many It's ten years of your life, right, So my first selling when I go into prison, you know, I mean prison at a young age. I'm twenty one. I'm thinking, you know this is I'm going straight into hell. Like I'm basically just jumping feet first into hell. I got no no ifans or butts about it, no choice, and so I'm scared. There's no doubt about it. I'm very afraid at this point.

00:31:03
Speaker 6: And I go into the room and he's not in there. Everybody's out at rec or whatever. And then an.

00:31:09
Speaker 3: Hour later, this huge guy comes in and he's completely covered in tattoos. But it's really interesting how the tattoos are laid out, like half of his body are demonic tattoos and the other half are angelic tattoos.

00:31:24
Speaker 6: And I'm like, what the hell is going on here? Right? And so.

00:31:29
Speaker 3: He gets to talk and I realize his face is completely messed up and the demonic side had been shot with a shotgun and basically distorted his face and the upper part of his body's shoulder and whatnot. And so later on we get to talking and he's like, basically, you know, he was robbing a dope house and he got shot on the demonic side because that was like God.

00:31:50
Speaker 6: Telling him that he should be good or whatever.

00:31:52
Speaker 3: Well, it turns out this guy is essentially bipolar, and he definitely wasn't good at any point, and he was probably the most frightening individual I came across in prison, and especially as a first selly. But it's like, there were these imaginary lines in the cell and imagine like.

00:32:09
Speaker 6: You're in this little eight by eight foot box.

00:32:12
Speaker 3: Imagine being in your bathroom with somebody who's twice your size and insane, like literally insane.

00:32:18
Speaker 6: Who's known to be violent, known to.

00:32:20
Speaker 3: Have been arrested multiple times and spend a lot of time in the hole, and he draws these imaginary line So if you put your toe over this line that you don't even know exist, then a fight would ensue. And if a fight ensues, there's nowhere to go. You can't run, you can't beat them, you can't call for help because they're in another room. So basically, I'm tiptoeing around for the first three months of my time in prison, and it's just like a ticking time mom. I know that if I'm there long enough, this guy will kill me. And that's how I had to live for the first three or four months of my prison experience. And it was very bad, and we got into it quite a few times, and you know, and you're just trying to be as quiet and peaceful as you can, but nothing you do is right. So, yeah, I wish I could bring you into the mental anguish that exists, because although I was able to avoid being stabbed or hit by this individual, the mental anguish that you experienced from knowing that that could happen at any second for any reason, is it'll aid you like two years in one month.

00:33:30
Speaker 6: It's insane, it's horrible.

00:33:31
Speaker 4: Did you have any dialogue with him? Did you have any light moments at all? Was there, you know, was there any kind of camaraderie with this?

00:33:38
Speaker 6: There was? Yeah, man, And that's so weird about it. Like you you're around these people.

00:33:44
Speaker 3: And some of them are just horrible, horrible human beings, but you know, it's life and you get to know them or whatever. And so I didn't have a TV yet or I might have just gotten I can't remember, and the Notebook came on and uh. And so we're watching the Notebook at the same time. And the Notebook comes to a conclusion and we're not really talking during it or anything like that.

00:34:05
Speaker 6: It ends, and I'm like, I'm basically about to cry, you know, I'm like trying to hold back tears. I'm like, oh my.

00:34:10
Speaker 3: God, I'm in this cell with this maniac and the freaking great movie has got me, you know. It's like, you know, I miss society and females and everything. Of course, and then I can't talk. And then I realized this guy is sniffling up there. He's up there crying, and.

00:34:27
Speaker 7: I'm like, what's up in and and he's like, man, that was a good movie, you know, and uh, and He's like I'm crying or whatever, and I'm like, I'm bout to to and so that was just like this weird, very odd experience, and we like we were laughing about it or whatever, and we're surprised that impacted us both.

00:34:43
Speaker 3: But I mean it was very up and down. It was like that, you know. I mean, that was one good moment. There are a million bad moments. And then when I left, I went over to the.

00:34:51
Speaker 6: Yard, the guy gave me a hug. He's like, oh man, I'm gonna miss you. I'm not gonna miss you, dude.

00:34:56
Speaker 3: But all right, you know, it's just it's that's a lot of people in there.

00:35:01
Speaker 6: There are some really good people.

00:35:02
Speaker 3: I still talk to some people in prison, but there are some people that you'll just never understand that are insane.

00:35:07
Speaker 6: They'll hug you one minute and stab you the next.

00:35:10
Speaker 3: So it's just you gotta be on your p's and q's per se.

00:35:23
Speaker 4: So you were in there for nine and a half years. You had many many appeals denied. How many appeals did you have?

00:35:31
Speaker 3: I mean at least six or seven primary appeals, and then you know.

00:35:36
Speaker 6: They they go up through the court, so you have like.

00:35:40
Speaker 3: The initial court filing and then you have the appellate court, and then it goes to the Supreme Court, which you never hears it, and so it's just this like basic routine that you get in. You know, you file appeal and then it waited six months, and then they'll hear it, and then they wait another six months, and then they deny it, and then it wait another six months and it goes to another court and they'll hear it, and then they wait another six months. So it's like every appeal you file, you know, I was like, oh, it'll be another year, year and a half of my life because they're not going to listen to this. These courts that they're going to, you know which ones will will be biased and you know which ones won't. So an appeal was filed and you automatically know what the next year and a half of my life is not going to happen.

00:36:17
Speaker 6: So I'm just gonna sit back and hope to get out of that.

00:36:20
Speaker 3: Court and back into one that actually cares about justice.

00:36:23
Speaker 4: At some point, the only other witness against you besides your co defendant who falsely confessed and then falsely implicated you and told the story that didn't make any sense and kept changing it and was obviously anything but incredible witness against you. The only other witness against you was a convicted child molester, right, who was an incentivized witness.

00:36:43
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, this individual, he was a custodian. He was at the crime scene when it happened, and he went outside when the two individuals were out by this car, who may or may not have committed the crime. In the police phone call, the police were called minutes later, he says, I don't know what the people looked like.

00:37:01
Speaker 6: I couldn't even tell you what they were wearing.

00:37:02
Speaker 3: I didn't get that good of a look, right, And so he gives the phone to a female and she could tell the police what the guy's actually looked like and their build and everything, And so we have on the record this guy is saying to the police, I have no idea what these guys look like. I can't tell you what color the hair is anything. And then he gets out of jail child molestation. The prosecution obviously calls him in and ultimately he says.

00:37:26
Speaker 6: Yep, that's the guy that I saw.

00:37:28
Speaker 3: So you have the you know, So that's that story in a nutshell.

00:37:32
Speaker 4: So in case there wasn't enough, that's troubling everybody about this case already, the fact that they would actually release a convicted child molester in exchange for perjured testimony against you.

00:37:42
Speaker 3: Well, I think his time was up, so I think more of what happened there is got he was gonna get out, and they basically insinuated if you don't help us, then you're gonna go back in. So it's actually that would be the assumption, right that they helped get him out, But ultimately what they were doing is we're just.

00:38:00
Speaker 6: Not gonna help put you back in if you help.

00:38:02
Speaker 3: Us, right, But if you don't help us, then we're gonna make sure that you violate your probation and you spend another two or three years in prison as a child molester, which is very very rough to me. There is nothing worse than a jailhouse snitch. I mean that is, if you are a prosecutor and you use a jailhouse snitch, you should go straight to hell because jailhouse snitches have zero credibility. They are always lying there, always incentivized. It is literally the most discussing thing that I've ever seen, and you know, it impacts people's lives. I was in maximum security prison in jail for a decade, ten years of my life. My case really turned in two thousand and nine when Kathleen Zelner got involved. Here's one of the greatest attorneys in our nation. She has more exonerations than any other individual attorney in the whole entire country. And she was willing to take my case pro bono at that and that was just I mean, that was the biggest ray of hope that I had had at that point. And I'm so great that she's in my life, not only, you know, on the legal side, but just as as a friend and a confidant.

00:39:07
Speaker 4: But your biggest advocate through all those years was your father, who went to extraordinary lengths to fight for you, to make sure that you knew that he had your back, and to ultimately prevail, or you wouldn't be sitting here now. But there was another person who played an important role in this right and she was someone who had written to you as so many other people had. But but they took on a whole new life.

00:39:30
Speaker 6: Absolutely.

00:39:32
Speaker 3: Micah my girlfriend, current girlfriend. Still we've been together, I think over five years at this point. I've been out less than four. You know, I've been very fortunate, like I said, I, you know, without my family, I wouldn't have survived. I would have been crazy, I wouldn't have given up, but I would have lost a lot of hope.

00:39:47
Speaker 6: So without them, I wouldn't be here.

00:39:49
Speaker 3: And then Micah came along somehow we just ended up writing and talking more and she became a big part of my life and really kind of initiated this whole social media movement which helped my case get so much attention, which was really incredible. So, you know, it is amazing what has happened with her in the social media movement. We have a friend from Facebook, Mike, who was just very helpful. I mean he helped us like design the Facebook page and get it up there. And another guy, Richard, and so with those three they ran the social media thing. And when our page got up to one hundred thousand people on Facebook and that was big. Then there was no Instagram really and that really helped push the case forward and really helped push what.

00:40:30
Speaker 6: My father was doing out there and what my mother was doing.

00:40:32
Speaker 3: And like I said earlier, whenever my trial happened, I lost hope in humanity.

00:40:37
Speaker 6: I hated people.

00:40:38
Speaker 3: I just I couldn't stand I couldn't understand them, and that's what was so frustrating about it. I coudn't understand how people could do these things to people. I still don't, But then so many beautiful people have been in my life, like my family and Mike and Richard and Mike and so many other incredible individuals from forty eight hours in Dayline and people who wrote and so well, so many great people have shown me that the goodness in humanity can overcome the negativity, right, And there's too many people the name of course I found. No I'm leaving people out it, but it's just like thank you to them, thank you to everyone who supported me and supported other people in my situation, because without that support we would lose hope. And it's really given me the opportunity actually live my life now, right, because if I still had that mentality and I never saw the good side of people, then what would I be doing with my life now. I wouldn't want to help other people. I wouldn't I don't think i'd be happy in society. I wouldn't be happy in my life. So really they help save my life by giving me my life back, but they also help save my life a second time by showing me, you know, the real passion and real beauty of the human race.

00:41:49
Speaker 4: I get people asking me frequently what can I do to help? And aside from donating to Innocence Project and other organizations. It's interesting to hear you talk about it because so many people wrote to you and what that meant. What would you say to someone who's listening now in wherever they are.

00:42:09
Speaker 3: Well, that's a great question, and the reality is there's a lot you can do. It might not be as much as you want because you just want to reach in there and pull those people out like they're obviously innocent, and you want to do everything you can, and so you just got to you got to be patient. You've got to find the right ways. I mean, the number one thing I would say is to be active. Right, So, if you find a case that you believe in, number one, rite that person right their family and let them know you support them. I mean that that right there opens up a huge door and helps so much.

00:42:38
Speaker 6: But then if you.

00:42:39
Speaker 3: Initiate that contact, they might have other opportunities for you to help, like riding the governor or putting together some kind of thing that would bring other people in and make them aware of it. So to me, it is it is being active and creating awareness.

00:42:54
Speaker 6: The best thing you can do.

00:42:56
Speaker 3: Right a family member, right the person that you support, and then get involved and start spreading awareness to your friends and family. Tell them about the case, have them read the case, and start talking to your local politicians.

00:43:09
Speaker 6: Write them letters, make phone calls.

00:43:11
Speaker 3: I mean even this day, every week or two weeks, I'm calling some governor. I never get a hold of the governor himself, but I am letting them know how I feel about a case. And I am writing them, and I'm sending them tweets, and I'm writing them emails, Like any way we can let them know, let the people in charge of these systems know that we are paying attention and that we demand accountability. I think that is what is going to help make change right. And so what I hear a lot is people say like, I don't feel like me as a person can do enough to bring about change. But that's how change is actually done right. It's not done by one person. It's done by groups of individuals, done by all of us together doing our own little part. Like I wish I could do more, I'm just one little guy. But you know, I do my little part, and I ask other people to do their little parts. And if we keep doing that individually, then I think we're gonna we're gonna see a big change.

00:44:07
Speaker 4: You know, we talked about the worst moment of your life and the worst week of your life. What about the best moment of your life?

00:44:14
Speaker 3: You know, I think as a human being that you focus on the negative so much that I don't know what the best of the I mean, the thing about living in prison for so long is that you kind of, I don't know, you see the world a different way, and you aren't able to have those high moments of happiness. I haven't really been able to find that in my life yet, which is someone unfortunately I've been I've been able to do some incredible things. I mean, I've been to a lot of different countries and I've traveled the world since i've been out.

00:44:49
Speaker 6: I've been able to go to the Super Bowl.

00:44:51
Speaker 3: I've been able to with my father, which is really amazing, and spend that weekend with them there. And you know, I spend as much time as I can with my family doing whatever we can.

00:45:00
Speaker 6: There's dinner or traveling.

00:45:01
Speaker 3: I have my own TV show, I wrote my own book, which which was, you know, probably my greatest accomplishment personally. And throughout all these things, I've never had like this, this moment of intense joy, and and I didn't used to be that way, you know, when I was younger, when I was in high school, and you know, I mean, I I just love life so much, like every day I had intense joy. And while I do drive some joy out of these things, of course, it's just I can't. I can't get to that next level where I used to be. And I think that's kind of what prison does to people, you know. I mean, some people may be able to get out and resume a normal life. I think a lot of people, you know, put on a strong front after what's happened to them, and I certainly do. But the reality is that, you know, it affects you, and it impacts you. And that's one of the things that impacts me most. And the reality is like I walk around with this rain cloud over my head, I feel like a lot of times, and I'm afraid of the lightning, you know, And so if it's raining and thundering outside and there's lightning every I'm not going to go out there because I don't want to get hit by it, right, But the way the legal system affects a human being in these situations, and you see how humans act and everything, you know, this can happen to you or somebody you love.

00:46:10
Speaker 6: It's like they could come right now and kick in the door and arrest you. They could do it to me, They could do it to anybody.

00:46:16
Speaker 3: And so I walk around with this this cloud over my head and you know, I could get hit by that lightning at any moment, and there's nothing I can do. I can't there is no indoors, right, I could be in another country.

00:46:27
Speaker 6: It could happen, So it is. It is frightening.

00:46:29
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean your happy moment, it's hard to describe. I I love life and I enjoy life, but for me, my happiest moments are giving back because it makes me feel like I'm protecting myself in a way as well, and it gets rid of that cloud a bit because hopefully it's turning this thing around that impacts us all.

00:46:50
Speaker 4: What about the moment of exoneration.

00:46:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wish I could say that was amazing, you know, and that you know, you really expect it would be in everything.

00:46:59
Speaker 6: But that was hell for me. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know if I was actually gonna be let out.

00:47:06
Speaker 3: A lot of times they will take you back to the county jail and then just read you your rights and recharge you and then put you in the count of jail for another year and a half. I didn't know any of that what was going to happen until I watched my parents walk through the sally Port door. And I'm still sitting in the back of a van in a cage with shackles on and an orange jumpsuit, and.

00:47:26
Speaker 6: That's when I realized it was over.

00:47:27
Speaker 3: So, I mean, it felt good, but I still like, I don't know if these people are gonna come kick my door. On the next day, I was literally looking out my windows every time I thought I heard something for the next six months. And so that's that's the way these things impact people. And you know, I think, now, obviously there's enough facts to protect me, and I think I am safe, but I know that just happens to other people.

00:47:49
Speaker 6: So it's yeah, man, it's good that.

00:47:52
Speaker 3: Some people can enjoy it, But I've looked so much into our legal system and seen what's happened to so many other people like Brian Ferguson.

00:47:59
Speaker 6: You know, he was exonerating. They wanted to retry him and everything.

00:48:03
Speaker 3: And basically forced him into taking an alpha plea.

00:48:06
Speaker 6: It's situations like that that really don't allow you.

00:48:10
Speaker 3: To necessarily live your life to the fullest. And I think as time goes on, you get better. But here we are four years and I still have all these considerations.

00:48:16
Speaker 4: So let's talk about your book, all right, So tell us about the book and then any other final thoughts that you have.

00:48:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, so my book Stronger, Faster, Smarter. I wrote it in my last five months in prison. It is one of my greatest achievements. I just wanted to see if I could write a book, and I saw so many people working out really hard, but they weren't getting where they wanted. They weren't accomplishing their goals, and I realized that they're not educating themselves on what to do in the fitness world. So I came up with this plan of doing like basically.

00:48:47
Speaker 6: Six main moves.

00:48:48
Speaker 3: You eat it right, eat a certain way, and then educate yourself and you'll be able to accomplish whatever fitness goals you want, That's what the book is kind of about. But I tied it in with my experience in prison and how I I didn't know that ten years ago. You know, I didn't know how to get in shape. I had to figure it out to survive. And if I could do it in that environment, then certainly everyone can wherever they're.

00:49:09
Speaker 6: At in the life. And so that's what it's about.

00:49:11
Speaker 3: Man. It's a hopeful book that has some good information. I think that can help people achieve their goals.

00:49:16
Speaker 4: Get the book great, read, stronger, faster, or smarter. Get stronger, faster, and smarter than Ryan Ferguson way. He was able to do it in prison, so I guess the rest of us have no excuse. And Ryan, any final thoughts that you want to share, you.

00:49:30
Speaker 6: Know, my final thoughts are just be aware. As Jason was saying earlier, You know, when you look at.

00:49:36
Speaker 3: These cases, always question what you're reading, Always question what you're watching. The best thing we can do is educate ourselves, right. Don't take anyone's word as the truth. Don't take it as gospel. Whether it's your police or prosecutors, your local newspaper, whatever, look into it.

00:49:53
Speaker 6: Yourself.

00:49:53
Speaker 3: These are really interesting cases. They're very important and they impact us all and I think that each one of us can do a lot to change the way our legal system operates. And it is for ourselves, it's for our youth, it's for everyone.

00:50:07
Speaker 6: So yeah, it's it's it's amazing.

00:50:10
Speaker 3: I think the more you loo get into it, the more you're going to be intrigued, and the more you're gonna want to want to get involved.

00:50:15
Speaker 4: You've been listening to a very special episode of Wrongful Conviction with a very special person, my friend Ryan Ferguson. Ryan, thank you for coming and sharing your thoughts and wisdom, and once again the book is stronger, faster, smarter.

00:50:33
Speaker 6: Great.

00:50:33
Speaker 3: Thanks Jason Man. Thanks for all that you do. Seriously, like you lead by example and I appreciate that. What I just said is, you know, go out there and do what you can.

00:50:42
Speaker 6: That's what you've been doing. And uh and there's a.

00:50:44
Speaker 3: Lot you could do that you know, you could not care about any of this, and it's amazing to see what you do.

00:50:48
Speaker 6: Man. You give me a lot of hope. So thanks for having me. It was an honor and uh, yeah.

00:50:54
Speaker 4: Right it on. Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project 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 nominatede composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one