00:00:02
Speaker 1: America has 2.2 million people in prison. If just 1% is wrong, that's 22,000 people. That's a lot of people's lives destroyed.

00:00:13
Speaker 2: If the system want to take you out of society, they will do it. No matter what laws they have to break, saying that they are enforcing the laws, but they are breaking the law.

00:00:27
Speaker 1: Having to hear those people say that I was guilty of a crime that I did not commit and then hear my family break down behind me and not be able to do anything about it, I can't describe the crushing weight that was.

00:00:39
Speaker 3: I'm not anti-police, I'm just anti-corruption.

00:00:44
Speaker 2: A lot of times we look and we see something happen to somebody and that's the first thing we say, that could never happen to me, but it can.

00:00:57
Speaker 3: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom. This is the opening episode of Season 5, and I'm absolutely honored to have today's guest, Jason Strong. Jason, welcome to the show.

00:01:28
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me on. I'm honored to be here.

00:01:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm really happy you're here for a number of reasons. I'm sorry you had to go through this. So Jason, before all this happened and your life was turned really into a living hell for 15 and a half years, how was your life? You grew up in Illinois, right?

00:01:48
Speaker 1: No, actually, I spent most of my life in Texas. I was born in Arizona, lived in Texas most of my life. And I moved to Illinois to try to, well, actually, I moved to Wisconsin first. with my grandparents to try to get a different start. Cause I was kind of on a bad road doing drugs, drinking, acting up. So eventually I moved to Illinois and with some friends and then I got my own place there. But, uh, I mean, I never really did change. I still kind of lived like a rock star. You know, I was working in an adult bookstore, did a lot of drinking and partying and drugs. And, but I mean, at the end of the day, I was still a good person. I mean, I wasn't, you know, robbing people. I wasn't killing people. I wasn't, You know, in any gangs or doing anything ridiculous.

00:02:31
Speaker 3: You weren't hurting anybody other than yourself.

00:02:33
Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly. But I mean, I was, you know, living in the fast life and I wasn't thinking about it, you know. So it's just one of those things that some people do that when they're young, you know. And I was living like a rock star, but I wasn't a rock star.

00:02:44
Speaker 3: But that being said, so you're hanging around trying to figure it out. How old were you at this time?

00:02:50
Speaker 1: Twenty-four. 24.

00:02:52
Speaker 3: So, yeah, so you're getting, you know, I mean, it's funny because I think a lot of people in their mid-20s start to figure out what it is that they're really doing. I know for me it's true. That's when I sobered up and started, you know, trying to really build my life up instead of down.

00:03:07
Speaker 1: Well, before I got locked up, so I got locked up in December of 99. Before that happened, I mean, I was trying to think about what do I want to do? You know, I was considering going back to school and pursuing something in the world of art. I didn't really know exactly what, but I wanted to do something with art. I've always been creative. But I never got that opportunity. It was taken from me by the fact that I got arrested for this crime.

00:03:34
Speaker 3: And that's a crazy story. I mean, it was your misfortune. You didn't know it at the time, but you were living in a county that turns out to have the highest number of wrongful convictions in Illinois, which is one of the states that has the highest number of wrongful convictions. But other than Chicago, this area that you lived in was... a bad spot. It was a hotbed for police misconduct and wrongful convictions as a result. So there you are knocking around, trying to figure it out, you know, having your party in times, whatever you're doing. And this comes out of the blue, right? Yeah.

00:04:09
Speaker 1: It was, uh, December 20th. I was hanging out with my girlfriend and her friend, you know, we were smoking a bowl, having a few beers and I get a knock at the door. Thinking it's my buddy just coming over to hang out. Open the door. It's a bunch of cops standing there with guns drawn. And they push into my room, throw me down on my bed, handcuff me. And the nightmare began.

00:04:31
Speaker 3: Did they tell you what they were arresting you for?

00:04:34
Speaker 1: No, but I had a clue because they had been around earlier that day asking people if they'd seen anything or knew anything. So, I mean, I had a little bit of a clue, but it still threw me because, I mean, I had nothing to do with this crime, so I didn't understand why this was happening. I was confused. I was scared.

00:04:49
Speaker 3: But when you say they were asking, did you see anything, did you know anything, about what? Was it a specific crime that they were asking about?

00:04:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had discovered a Jane Doe's body in the Lake County Forest Preserve. And so on December 9th, this body was found. And apparently she had been badly beaten and tortured and suffered a really bad death. And blunt force trauma was the cause of death. And that was on December 9th. Around December 14th, there was a prostitute sting in the area where I lived. I lived next door to the bookstore that I worked at, the adult bookstore. So I had thought that this woman was a prostitute. And I told her, you can't be doing this around here. You know, I don't want to have to call the cops on you. You know, just go back to your room and keep it cool. And later on, I came out and she was still doing that. And that's when I first met Jeremy Tweedy, who would later become my co-defendant. So that night I walked up to him. I said, hey, how long has this woman been out here? Do you know? He said, she's been out there a while. She looks like she was crying. So I thought maybe she had a pimp or something that was forcing her to do this. So I struck up a conversation with her asking if there was anything I could do to help. whatever, because I didn't want to have this going on and I didn't want to see her hurt either. And we talked for a little while. I mean, even to the extent that we asked about her kids and, you know, why didn't she find a better line of work, et cetera. And I eventually went in to eat my dinner and her and Jeremy Tweedy had this conversation that later turns out he apparently allegedly said something to her about, you know, you shouldn't be around here because there was a woman that was killed here recently. And a bunch of people had beat on her and threw her in a van and got rid of her. And they used that as a reason to come and arrest him. And then he said that it was me. Now, why did he say it was me? So the cop that arrested him somehow or another claims that this was an accident, but that his hand got crushed in the car door on the way to the police station. And next thing you know, he's fingering me for the crime. Years later, when he recants, he says that it was because the cops only wanted to talk about me. Since the moment he stepped into the room, they kept saying, what did Jason Strong do with this crime? What do you know about Jason Strong's involvement in this crime? And they just kept mentioning me over and over and over to the point where he got the gist of it. They wanted me. So he said that I did it. He saw it happen. And then they came and arrested me. They came and arrested my friend, Jason Johnson.

00:07:23
Speaker 3: But wait, what's the thing with the hand in the car door? How does that fit into.

00:07:27
Speaker 1: This whole narrative? I think they intimidated him by injuring him. I can't prove that. But I mean, I think it's kind of odd that his hand was slammed in a police car door on the way to the police station. And then the next thing you know, he's singing these lies for them. Well, there's a second part to this that I can't prove this, but this is my opinion on the matter, is the officer that brought him in actually had it in for me. So prior to all this happening... This cop had been coming around the bookstore and harassing me for a couple months. And I don't even know why he ever started doing that, but he did. And he wanted me to be a snitch. He wanted me to tell him about drug dealers and different things. I'm like, man, I don't know nothing. I don't know nothing about no drug dealers. And he told me if I did not cooperate with him, he would make my life a living hell. A few short weeks later, I'm locked up for a murder I didn't commit. And he was the initiating officer that arrested the guy who would become my co-defendant, who I didn't even know on the night in question.

00:08:26
Speaker 3: That's a lot of coincidences.

00:08:28
Speaker 1: Exactly. But I can't prove that he did anything.

00:08:31
Speaker 3: You were a victim of some really terrible misdeeds by the people that were supposed to protect you and everybody else in the community, and that's quite the opposite of what they did. So it's pretty clear why Tweedy would have implicated you, because he would have implicated his grandmother if he had to, to make them stop doing whatever it was they were doing to him. And he implicated himself as well. Right. But he wasn't involved in the crime either. No.

00:08:56
Speaker 1: In fact, he turned out to be actually quite a character. He's a bit of a pathological liar. Before my trial, I think he had like six or seven different versions of what happened that night, constantly changing, to the point where at my trial, he came up with a new version of events that were different from all the earlier ones. So he would always make changes, and he just did this for years. He stuck to his lie for years. But I think it all started because of that one cop. I can't prove it. That's just my theory. But part of it is going off of also what he told me years later when he recanted Jeremy Tweedy about how that's all they wanted to talk about was me. And I'm like, well, why would they be so focused on me? Why me of all the people that they could have thought about?

00:09:41
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, it sounds like this one officer. All right. You know, had just sort of figured you were going to be a good source of information because you were in sort of a seedy area and a seedy business, right? And he had it in his head that you must have known stuff and he felt like you were holding out on him. So he decided to exact his revenge. This insane story. story of yours ultimately ends up with you being held in jail for quite a long time, pending trial, and ultimately going to trial. What was that process like? Did you have decent representation?

00:10:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did not have good representation. I had public defender's I actually, I asked my family over and over to get me a lawyer. I knew I needed a real lawyer because these guys just, they weren't going to cut it. They didn't listen to me. They had their own view on things, but I didn't know what a lot of my rights were at that time either and how I could make changes in anything. But we went to trial with them basically handing me over to the jury. They went in and said that my coerced false confession was actually true and that I didn't do the crime, but I was there when it happened. That was their defense for me. And I was like, well, that's ridiculous. I didn't do any of this. But that was their strategy, if you will. They basically handed me over. They screwed me for the prosecution. I had no chance.

00:11:02
Speaker 3: You're literally sitting there watching yourself drown.

00:11:04
Speaker 2: Right.

00:11:05
Speaker 1: So when the time came for me to take the stand, I couldn't take the stand. I would have gone against every single thing they already said. That's unreal.

00:11:10
Speaker 3: That's unreal.

00:11:12
Speaker 1: They were looking for the easiest route rather than to try to fight my case and prove my innocence. They took the easiest option for themselves.

00:11:29
Speaker 3: It's a very bizarre set of circumstances when you have your advocate actually working against you.

00:11:37
Speaker 1: Right.

00:11:38
Speaker 3: And you're, I mean, I can't imagine. You're in this crazy vortex. You've already been through hell. You've been sitting in jail for, you know, how long were you.

00:11:46
Speaker 1: In jail for? So the trial, I believe, was in October of 2000. So almost a year by that point.

00:11:54
Speaker 3: Right. So you're already dizzy from this experience. I mean, anybody would be. And now you're in this crazy vortex. And you've got these dolts, not even underrepresenting you, but actually working against your best interests. for whatever their twisted motives were. Did you know, like when the jury went out, did you know you were fucked?

00:12:13
Speaker 1: I had a good feeling that, yeah, that was going to be the case. I mean, I still had a tiny bit of hope, you know, that maybe they would figure something out. But no, I kind of had a feeling I was screwed.

00:12:22
Speaker 3: I mean, from the sound of it, I mean, even if I.

00:12:24
Speaker 1: Was on the jury... I don't blame the jury in my case at all.

00:12:27
Speaker 3: I really don't. Unless they had just some weird intuition.

00:12:31
Speaker 1: If I was on my jury, I would have convicted me.

00:12:33
Speaker 3: That's a strong statement. Yeah.

00:12:34
Speaker 1: I mean, at the end of the day... There was nothing put forth to defend me and to prove my innocence.

00:12:40
Speaker 3: No. So there you go. So, yeah. So you– it's interesting because a lot of the exonerees that have been on the show had held out hope until the very end. But your circumstance is relatively unique. I mean even with some of the stories we've heard of incompetent defense. How long do they deliberate?

00:12:56
Speaker 1: Oh, it wasn't very long at all. It's maybe a couple hours.

00:12:59
Speaker 3: Right. I mean, who knows? They were probably having lunch. I mean, who knows what they were doing for two whole hours.

00:13:04
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't even know if it was that long. That's how it felt in my head as I was sitting in a cell.

00:13:08
Speaker 3: Then the moment came, right? Can you describe that horrible, horrible moment when you're basically, you must've thought your life was over.

00:13:17
Speaker 1: Yeah. I, uh, that was probably the loneliest day of my life. Um, Having to hear those people say that I was guilty of a crime that I did not commit, and not just once, but the judge made each individual one say their verdict, so I had to hear it over and over again, and then hear my family break down behind me and not be able to do anything about it. I can't describe the crushing weight that was.

00:13:44
Speaker 3: How did you deal with it? How did you come out of it? How did you get here? I am actually in awe of the fortitude. That you have. How did you do it? If you can even put it into words.

00:13:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I can. I mean, so after that, after that moment, I mean, I wanted to die. Like I've never wanted to die before. It was, it was terrible. And after we left the courtroom, I asked the officer if he could take me to a private solitary cell just so I could, you know, just break down and decompress. And once I put myself back together and I went back to the general population and I just started doing a lot of thinking and I was angry. I was confused. I didn't know what my next move was going to be, but I decided to adopt this kind of militaristic mentality and I turned everything into a war against the state of Illinois. And I studied Sun Tzu and Julius Caesar and tried to incorporate this thinking of how to fight a war, but I was doing it in the courtroom, the courtrooms were my battlefields. So, I mean, I kind of took on that, that mentality.

00:14:53
Speaker 3: Did you have any help? Did you have an appellate lawyer assigned to you or anything like that?

00:14:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, we, so after I lost, we hired an attorney, Jed Stone, and he did a post-trial motion and then he helped me through my first appeals, but those didn't pan out. So when we lost him and we couldn't afford him anymore, I became my own attorney and I did it my way. And I threw every single thing I could think about him. I filed my post-conviction petition on my own, which was like 70 something pages long. And I threw every single thing I could think of that was wrong with my case at that courtroom. You know, I battled it on my own for a while. I got an appellate attorney appointed to me at one point. And all he did was basically drag things out. But for the most part, I fought myself until I got Northwestern to get involved. But that was years and years later.

00:15:50
Speaker 3: And talk about that a little bit, Jason.

00:15:51
Speaker 1: Northwestern?

00:15:52
Speaker 3: Northwestern, yeah. Because, I mean, first of all, one of the best schools in the country. And they do amazing work.

00:15:59
Speaker 1: Absolutely, they do. Yeah, I would not be free if it wasn't for them. So I was in the federal court. I was filing a federal habeas corpus all on my own. And there was a procedural issue that came up. Well, let me back up. Before that, I had already been trying to reach out to Innocence Projects for years. I've been writing them letters and, you know, having my family make phone calls. And I had been in touch with Jane Raley at Northwestern. And we, you know, been kind of back and forth and everything. But she couldn't take on the case at the time. But we still communicated. So when I got to federal court, I don't know if Judge Kennelly saw something in my case or what. But he called Thomas Garrity, the director of the clinic at Northwestern, personally and asked him to look at my case. And it was just for a procedural issue. But once Tom looked at everything, he realized there was more to it. And Northwestern decided to take my case on full all the way. That team grew over the years because they have students. And three of the students graduated, went on to big law firms, and brought their law firms in. So I had Northwestern. Winston and Strawn, and Cat and Mewch and Rosenman, all supporting my fight.

00:17:14
Speaker 3: So you, I mean, at least in terms of your legal representation, you really went from the bottom to the top.

00:17:19
Speaker 1: Absolutely.

00:17:20
Speaker 3: I mean, you went from guys who sold you down the river to like an army, a legal army. And by the way, that happened for a very specific reason, which is that you found something that very few people could find in your situation. I don't know where you got it from, I don't either. But where I think a normal person would have curled up in a corner and collapsed or done harm themselves like you talked about doing or whatever, you didn't stop. And you maintained faith in the system even though the system had totally let you down and turned on you, which is remarkable. I keep coming back to that. And then as a result, you end up with this powerhouse system sort of a power trio of advocates, right? The two law firms plus the Innocence Project at Northwestern, which, you know, as I said, their reputation is amazing. So then things are turning in your direction, but you've been in now for quite some time.

00:18:20
Speaker 1: So around the time they took over, I had been in about seven and a half, eight years. It was shortly after we learned about the identity of the victim. So yeah, it was, I'd been in there for quite a while and it still was another eight years of after that, before I was free.

00:18:36
Speaker 3: Did you have any clue who might have done something like this?

00:18:39
Speaker 1: No, we do now. We do now. But here, so for many, many years, I actually thought Jeremy Tweedy was the guy because he was so quick to make up all these lies about me and to help himself out that I thought, well, I didn't even know this guy. Maybe he's the one that did it. And that's why he's so adamant about lying against me is he's trying to protect himself somehow. He was my main suspect for many, many years. It wasn't until we identified the victim, which was seven years after I was arrested, that we finally figured out who the victim was. It wasn't until then that we started to develop an understanding of what might have really happened or who the real perpetrators were. There was actually three people that we suspect being involved, which is ironic considering that three people were originally arrested.

00:19:28
Speaker 3: Right, you, Tweedy, and Jason Johnson.

00:19:30
Speaker 1: Right. But I was the only one that was ever charged with murder. They were charged with the concealment of a homicide. Tweety's was dropped to obstruction for testifying against me. But we discovered that there was three individuals, a mother-daughter team. They had been, they're grifters. They basically took advantage of elderly people, handicapped people. mentally disabled people, and extorted them for their money. And they somehow came into a power thing with the victim in this case, who we later discovered was Mary Kate Sunderland, a mentally disabled woman. And they took over her life. They kept her from her family. They apparently, from what we understand, sold her to this mentally deranged individual who they also extorted. They convinced this guy to have his own arm chopped off by a railroad track train, a train going across railroad tracks, and sued the state of Illinois.

00:20:24
Speaker 3: Wow. I mean, let's just go. I mean. That's a lot to it.

00:20:29
Speaker 1: It's a lot, right?

00:20:30
Speaker 3: I mean, that's insane.

00:20:32
Speaker 1: It's just one of many twists to this case. I mean, it really is a crazy case, a crazy story. But so, yeah, they Gonzalo Chamizo was this guy's name. He's really mentally insane. He's in an institution today. They convinced him to lay on some tracks from what I understand, what my attorneys told me to lay on some tracks and a train ran over his arm and cut his arm off. And in money he got from that, he gave to them because they sold the victim to him. And then over a certain amount of time, they starved her, beat her, tortured her and extorted money out of her. So they did this for this long period of time. The last thing that the victim's family ever heard from their loved one was that they don't want me to talk to you. It was these people, they were keeping her for this long period of time. And knowing this, learning this helped us unravel the case. Because the whole theory of the state when they convicted us was that me, Jason Johnson, and Jeremy Tweedy picked this random girl up off the streets and took her to my room, and we tortured her and killed her in one night and dumped the body. And they had all these different theories on what evidence was there. They said the body was burned by molten wax and all this. And years later, after we started to put all the pieces together and found these alternative suspects and we were in the federal courts, the attorney general's office and the new Lake County attorney who came in with the idea that he wants to find the truth in all these cases They decided to reach out to my attorneys and say, let's reinvestigate this case. So we did that. And what we discovered, we had some independent forensic pathologists come in, three independent pathologists, and they all came to the same conclusion that this person was actually dead probably four to five days prior to when they found the body, not the day before.

00:22:30
Speaker 3: And I'm glad you brought that up because that's a really interesting part of this case. And it explains why it was so hard to identify her as well, right? Right. Absolutely. Because she had obviously decomposed to a significant degree by that time.

00:22:41
Speaker 1: Well, it was more than that. I mean, part of the reason she was unidentified was just a lack of police work, I believe. Because they had dental records. They just didn't follow through with things. And once they had what they wanted, they didn't follow through with investigating these things. I mean, how can you not identify the person from a few counties over? when there's a missing person report on that person? How do you not make that connection?

00:23:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not like she was from, you know... Yeah, she.

00:23:08
Speaker 1: Wasn't from California or, you know, Nebraska or something.

00:23:12
Speaker 3: Caracas.

00:23:12
Speaker 1: Right.

00:23:19
Speaker 3: You know, one of the things that helped lead to your exoneration was the fact that new experts were brought in who were actual experts. And I'm glad we're touching on this, Jason, because we know that Junk science, bad forensics are a major cause of wrongful conviction. And in your case, it was a different kind of junk science, which is that you had an examiner, a medical examiner or somebody like that, who testified saying that the body had been found within a short period of time, right?

00:23:47
Speaker 1: Right. She was found on the 9th, December 9th of 99. They theorized that on the 8th is the night that we partied with her and tortured her and killed her. And he goes on to say that we poured molten wax on her and she was burned and all this different stuff. But years later, when we got these new independent forensic pathologists to look at it, all of that was wrong.

00:24:11
Speaker 3: All of it.

00:24:12
Speaker 1: One, she was dead at least four days prior to the night they found her. But it went even beyond that into the fact that her injuries were in different stages of healing. Showing that she had been tortured for a long period of time, weeks, if not months. So this wasn't something that happened in one night. And further, the information about molten liquid and wax being poured on her and she was burned was wrong. They said that all that discoloration and all the sloughing of the skin and everything that this medical examiner said was evidence of that was actually decomposition. There was no burns. There was none of that. He was wrong. And I learned during my civil suit from my attorneys telling me that he actually doesn't even have a medical license from any American medical schools. He got it from some Dominican Republic school that was shut down for different reasons of being fraudulent or not up to par or whatever. So he didn't even go to medical school here in this country.

00:25:20
Speaker 3: Well, he went to a non-medical school in a foreign country. Right. Yeah. So he basically was just a yutz, like a total yutz.

00:25:26
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the way my attorneys explained it to me.

00:25:29
Speaker 3: So, yeah. It gets deeper and deeper. I mean, these things are always so troubling to me because especially in a case like this where you have a young, innocent woman who had her life in front of her, who is taken out and brutally beaten, maybe beaten to death. dumped in the forest like trash. And, you know, one would think and one would hope that the people in positions of power would really want to find the right guy to make sure this didn't happen, even if it's for selfish reasons, Jason, right? Even if it's just like, because it's a small community you lived in, right?

00:26:06
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, it wasn't a big town.

00:26:07
Speaker 3: Right. I always try to rationalize this, but I can't. Because you have all the people that are involved in this, and it's usually more than one, right? It takes more than one to sort of, you know, create this narrative and then convicting this in a person like yourself, or in this case, three. The actual killer, who is a sick, depraved individual, by any stretch of the imagination, is free, stayed free, right? Once they convicted you, once they even arrested you, they stopped looking for him. And whoever he was, he was free to prey on anyone in the community that he wanted to, and that could have been You know, one of these people, somebody that was loved by one of these officers or people in the prosecutor's office or anything else. So even in the situation where we all find it hard to understand how someone could have the lack of soul or empathy or whatever it is, or just the total breakdown that allows them to feel comfortable locking up someone who they knew was innocent or more than one person in this case. They would want to keep their family and their community safe, but they didn't. That goes out the window in these cases. They get this tunnel vision like they did in your case, and they just go for it.

00:27:18
Speaker 1: I think a lot of that, there's a lot there, by the way, that you just said, but I think a lot of that is systemic. There's a systemic problem, especially in places like Illinois. Cook County is probably the worst, where this has been going on for so many generations that these cops just follow in the same footsteps of all their predecessors. I mean, you probably follow this back to the days of Al Capone. I mean, you've got governors in Illinois that are in jail.

00:27:43
Speaker 3: Most of them.

00:27:45
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a systemic problem that's been going on for a long time. And if new police officers coming into the force don't see good examples to follow, then they're going to follow the bad examples that they see. And that's what has gone on for so long that that's all they know how to do. I'm not going to say all of them are bad.

00:28:03
Speaker 3: Because they're not. No, of course not.

00:28:04
Speaker 1: But a few bad apples can corrupt all of them because nobody wants to be the guy that says, hey, that cop's not doing his job right, because then they're Serpico, right? And nobody wants to be that. So it becomes this big problem that you can't get away from. And I don't know what the answer is to fix it.

00:28:21
Speaker 3: If there's anything that stands out, and obviously it was a miserable 15 and a half years, but one thing I'm curious about is, was there a worst moment in all that time in prison? And was there one moment that actually you remember and brings you a smile? Um.

00:28:39
Speaker 1: Well, as far as prison goes, the worst moment would probably be the ride to prison. It was the most terrifying I could ever imagine. I mean, you're an innocent man on a bus going to a place where you know that everybody there is hardened criminals. Well, most people there is hardened criminals. It's a maximum security prison. All I could think about is, am I going to be raped? Am I going to be murdered? Am I going to be forced to kill somebody to survive? What is my life going to become? I didn't know what to expect. I was terrified. But I didn't show it. I stood tall, stood my ground, and did what I had to do. And I met a lot of good people and showed myself to be a stand-up guy. And I got by. I survived it.

00:29:25
Speaker 3: Was there a moment that you can remember besides, obviously, the moment when the guard came to tell you that you were free or even when your lawyer told you that you were going to be getting out in a few days? Was there any other moment that stands out that you had a moment of humanity or grace or something– It comes. that somebody did or anything like that?

00:29:42
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, probably a lot of small things, but I can't think of nothing really, really major other than every time my family would come to see me. That was my big moments. I mean, for the most part, it was just day-to-day stuff, It was all the same. The monotony of it kind of gets to you. So it's all the same stuff over and over. I found joy in the fact that I had some really good friends. I met some really great people, one of which is like a brother to me. I got to also say, man, I owe a lot of credit to my mom and my grandmother and my family. They were a source of strength for me as well.

00:30:23
Speaker 3: All these years go by. You spent seven and a half years fighting a lonely battle by yourself. And then you got another seven and a half, eight years with the cavalry, right? And then ultimately, we know what happened because you're sitting here. And how did that come down? What was the moment when you first knew, like you knew you were fucked when you were in the courtroom? What was the moment when you knew that you were unfucked? Oh, wow.

00:30:52
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a couple different areas where I started to feel hope. But I'd say the moment when I knew things were probably going to work out was about a few days before I was released. My attorney called me and said that they were expecting to have a meeting with the state's attorney and the attorney general in Kennelly's office. That was the judge. And that they expected a release to be signed, that they were going to vacate my conviction. And it actually came sooner than they expected. I was surprised. I was kind of already packing and planning, hoping that this was going to play out the way they thought. And I was taking it easy, you know, taking a break and watching a movie. And the officer comes by the cell and says, Strong, what are you doing? Pack your shit, man. You're getting out of here. I'm like, what? What the fuck are you talking about? And I wasn't expecting it for, you know, another day or two. And it just threw me, man. I jumped down. I'm like packing all my shit as fast as I can. You know, all my guys are happy for me. People are, you know, clapping, wishing me well. People that weren't in their cells were coming up, giving me hugs. It was just, it was a very Just crazy but wonderful feeling and day. Of course, I had to wait for my mom to drive up and pick me up, and my attorneys were there. But when I walked out, I was so overwhelmed. I broke down into tears. Just all those years of staying stoic and fighting, I was able to let it go.

00:32:22
Speaker 3: That's an amazing story. picture that you're painting right there and it's it's actually really heartwarming to think about all the other guys you know who are still facing their own demons and their own sentences but the fact that they were able to take joy in your release well.

00:32:40
Speaker 1: I made a lot of you know good friends in there i mean guilt or innocence didn't matter as far as other people in there you judge people by who they were and there's there's a lot of stand-up guys in there they're not all scum like some people would have people believe. And I mean, I met a lot of good people in there. You know, there are some bad people, don't get me wrong, but I mean, I made some good friends. I still go back to the prison now to visit a couple of guys.

00:33:04
Speaker 3: That's amazing. So you're watching the movie, you get this, you're sort of touched by an angel, right? Although it's in the form of a prison guard in this case.

00:33:12
Speaker 1: He was actually a cool prison guard.

00:33:13
Speaker 3: Oh, good. Well, that adds a little something to it too. And then a few hours later, whatever it is, your mom arrives. She must have been breaking down too. And what, What time of year was it when you got out and what time of day was it? Was it hot? Was it cold? And where'd you go and what'd you do? What was the first thing you did?

00:33:30
Speaker 1: So it was May 28th, 2015. And it was a nice, nice day out. So there was three of my attorneys there and my mom. And we went to this nearby diner and I had a bacon mushroom cheeseburger, which was the best bacon mushroom cheeseburger I've ever had. And we sat around and talked and just enjoyed the moment and you know kind of let everything else just melt away.

00:33:57
Speaker 3: Were there tears and you know.

00:33:59
Speaker 1: At that point no it was just jubilation man just telling stories and talking and and being happy that the tears uh most of those were shed you know in the parking lot before we uh went to the diner so yeah it was just an all happy moment you know with all of us sitting there and eating a meal together and talking about future dreams and hopes and you.

00:34:20
Speaker 3: Know so i'm Thinking about this first meal, so to speak, right? People think about the last supper. I'm thinking about the first meal and how good does food taste after 15 and a half years of institutional, you know, slop, so to speak. I think there's another element to this particular story of the first meal.

00:34:39
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I have this story, which is kind of, it's a growing story, if you will. When I went to court in federal court, I had a writ to Stateville. I originally spent all my time in Menard and we didn't have oranges. I used to love oranges growing up as a kid. And when I got to Stateville, they had oranges and I got an orange and I hadn't seen or had an orange in like eight years, eight and a half years at this point. And so I just looked at that orange and smelled it and rolled it around in my hand. I savored every moment of that orange. And most people are like, oh, you must really love oranges. But it's not so much that it's It's the little things that everyday people take for granted that you miss so much when it's deprived of you. And so I ate that orange and that was the best orange I ever ate. And when I got out, the day I got out and we went to that little diner and had this bacon mushroom cheeseburger, I was telling my attorneys about this story and the waitress overheard. And she came over to me after I was done and gave me an orange.

00:35:44
Speaker 3: Wow.

00:35:45
Speaker 1: And so, you know, it kind of grew. So and then later, last year in San Diego at the Innocence Network Conference, I was telling this same story. And after I was done, one of the girls that was there in this little group walked over and gave me an orange. So this is like this evolving story about an orange and its meaning in my life and how, you know, when I was sitting in a prison cell, it had all this weight of, you know, something so small, but so powerful and meaningful.

00:36:14
Speaker 3: So you drove back to Tennessee. What date was that?

00:36:17
Speaker 1: May 28, 2015.

00:36:20
Speaker 3: So that's pretty recent. And since then, how's life?

00:36:27
Speaker 1: It's good, you know. I mean, it took me a little while to adapt to things and want to get back out around people. I was very uncomfortable in public. Like if I went to a Walmart, just having people aimlessly wandering around me kind of put me on ease. You know, so I still had that kind of, you know, what are you doing behind me kind of feel, you know, like you have in prison. And so, yeah, I was very weird about being out in public for a while. And I almost came dangerously close to creating my own prison at home. That's where I didn't want to leave. But I forced myself out of my comfort zone and I got out there and just started facing things and doing things. And I still like to sit where I can see everybody. But, you know, I... get around in public with no problem. I go to concerts now and, you know, I'm trying to become an aspiring filmmaker and I do a TV show. So I'm getting around and bumping elbows with people and going to conferences and doing different things.

00:37:27
Speaker 3: Jason, we have a tradition here on wrongful conviction, which is that at the end of the show, I like to turn the mic over to you, the star of the show, And just share with us anything at all that you want to share. Okay.

00:37:45
Speaker 1: Well, I did want to add that I'm also working on a documentary that I'm filming about wrongful convictions. And the purpose of this film is that I don't want to preach to the choir anymore. I want to reach out to more and more people and show people that this is a bigger problem than one or two people you might see in a documentary. I think too many people are unaware that of how big of a problem this is. They see a story on Kurt Bloodsworth or someone else, and they'll say, oh, poor that person, poor this person. And I want them to understand that there are thousands of people that this is probably happening to right now that we don't even know about. America has 2.2 million people in prison. If just 1% is wrong, that's 22,000 people. That's a lot of people's lives destroyed potentially, you know? And we need to be aware of this. Martin Luther King said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We need to be aware of our problems and hold people accountable when they break the laws that they're supposed to uphold. Cops and prosecutors should not be immune.

00:38:55
Speaker 3: 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 innocenceproject.org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardus. 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 Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company No. 1.