00:00:00
Speaker 1: We first heard the harrowing and ultimately triumphant story of my friend Greg Bright when he told it to my fellow wrongful conviction host, Lauren Bright Pacheco. Greg spent almost 28 years in Angola prison for a murder he had nothing to do with, came out at 50 years old in 2003. Now, Greg's story is important because keep in mind, Louisiana caps compensation for wrongful imprisonment at $ 400, 000 or $ 40, 000 a year for 10 years. barely enough to stay alive. Greg has now hit that cap and the payments have stopped. So even though he spent almost three decades wrongfully imprisoned and lost the most important earning years of his life, that's all he gets. But earlier this year, Louisiana lawmakers actually unanimously agreed on something. They unanimously passed a bill that would have raised the cap from $ 400, 000 to $ 600, 000 and extended the compensation from 10 years to 15. But Governor Jeff Landry vetoed it. So think about that. The state takes 27 and a half years from a factually innocent man. He proves that he was innocent. Fights like hell. And then the state says, eh, this is all it's worth. Take your $ 400, 000 over 10 years and get lost, basically. So now Greg is 70 years old and facing an awful decision, which is that he may have to sell his humble home just to be able to afford to pay his bills. His story is one I'll never forget. We'll never forget. And once you hear it, you'll never forget it. I promise. Check it out. Here is his interview with Lauren Bright Pacheco.

00:01:44
Speaker 2: Tens of thousands of people incarcerated in the U.S. have been wrongfully convicted and are being held in captivity for crimes even as they adamantly maintain their innocence. What's it like to be one of those imprisoned people? And what's it like to be their ally, the one outside committed to fighting for their freedom? I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco, and this is Wrongful Conviction. Early on in October morning in 1975, a 15-year-old named Elliot Porter was shot and killed in a housing project in New Orleans, Louisiana. 20-year-old Gregory Bright, along with a 17-year-old co-defendant, someone he'd never met before, by the way, became suspects after a known drug addict turned state's witness implicated them in a crime in exchange for reward money. Arrested and charged with second-degree murder, Gregory and his co-defendant's trial would last for just one day, and the jury deliberated for all of 13 minutes before convicting them. They were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. in Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Though Gregory Bright was illiterate when he entered prison, he taught himself to read, then taught himself the law, getting his appeals all the way to the state Supreme Court before the Innocence Project of New Orleans stepped in. Ultimately, he would spend 27 and a half years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Today, Bright is an accomplished actor who's appeared in 12 Years a Slave, American Horror Story, and Treme. He is also the focus of an incredible one-man documentary stage play based entirely on his words and recollections titled Never Fight a Shark in Water, The Wrongful Conviction of Gregory Bright, which explores so many aspects of this staggering injustice. It was written by New Orleans-based writer Lara Naughton, who is also a teacher and compassion trainer, and survivor of a violent crime. Lara and Greg have forged a mutually supportive healing friendship and bond, and they are joining us today. I am so excited for this conversation. Welcome both of you to Wrongful Conviction.

00:04:09
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.

00:04:11
Speaker 4: Thank you. It's great to be here.

00:04:12
Speaker 2: Greg, I wanted to start with you. Can you just take me back before all of this unfolded What was your childhood like?

00:04:22
Speaker 5: I had come from a small family. It was me, my mom, my two sisters, and my stepfather. We did a lot of things as a family. We went to the movie theater, sat at home and played cards and stuff like that. Average stuff.

00:04:40
Speaker 2: And you had a lot of responsibility placed on you as well because you dropped out of school in sixth grade to care for your stepfather.

00:04:49
Speaker 5: Absolutely, you know, and it was really a tough time for me, you know, to be a kid, you know, 13 years old, having the full responsibility to care for a grown adult. It often had me wondering, you know, what my life would turn into at that point.

00:05:07
Speaker 2: You're obviously a very creative man. Did you have hopes and aspirations when you were a child in terms of what you wanted to be when you grew up?

00:05:18
Speaker 5: Well, I was attracted to music and stuff, and I had several instruments, a guitar, bongo drums, and conga drums. I'd sit around when I'd get spare time and tinker around with this stuff. So I always imagined myself as being some type of musician or something like that, because I was always making noise or picking on the guitars. But I had never actually settled into music. what I wanted to become or what I wanted to do. I just enjoyed the freedom that I suddenly had after my stepfather passed. I was just relieved of the burden of caring for him.

00:05:57
Speaker 2: How old were you when he passed?

00:06:00
Speaker 3: I was 15 when he passed.

00:06:01
Speaker 5: You know, at that point, I had been out of school, well, off and on since I was 13. And being tall and statured, I always felt out of place among the kids in my.

00:06:12
Speaker 3: Classes and stuff.

00:06:13
Speaker 5: But the The most important part, I think, of the experience of caring for my stepfather was the fact that he would often call me to read the Lord's Scripture. Because that was his way of trying to make sure that I stayed on top of reading and stuff or whatever. It helped me while I was in jail. It disciplined me to want to get into the books and study. It all came full circle.

00:06:38
Speaker 2: It's interesting that you experienced all this new freedom. at the age of 15, because that probably made what happened when you were just 20 that much more painful. So before we even get into that, you had a very close relationship with your mom.

00:07:00
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah.

00:07:03
Speaker 5: My mom was someone that I could turn to in any crisis, any bad experience, I could turn to her and.

00:07:09
Speaker 3: She would seem to have the words.

00:07:12
Speaker 5: She would say just the right things that would put me back and allow me to focus or concentrate. And she was just a wonderful lady, someone that I had missed tremendously after she had passed.

00:07:28
Speaker 2: And I know that you and Laura definitely incorporated her wisdom into the one-man show as well, because I.

00:07:39
Speaker 2: Feel like I got to know your mom a bit through the advice that she offered you throughout the years, which was always very powerful. Take me to that evening that changed everything for you when you were just 20. How did that unfold?

00:07:57
Speaker 3: You're speaking about the arrest.

00:08:00
Speaker 5: This particular Saturday morning, I'm laying on the sofa asleep, and all of a sudden I hear banging on the door.

00:08:06
Speaker 3: Bam!

00:08:08
Speaker 5: And I get up, I look through the door, I see a flashlight, see someone shine the flashlight on the porch outside. And, you know, I was hesitant to open the door because really, it took me out of my sleep. I thought it was knocking next door. They had an apartment just less than a foot away. The doors were parallel. And my mom came downstairs after all the banging. She asked me, who was that banging on the door? You know, I said, I don't know. My mom said, I it might be the police, you know, because I see flashlights and something. He said, look, open the door up, you know, and see what they talking about. So I opened the door up, showed up, there was two police officers, you know, and they asked me, did Gregory Bright live there? I said, yeah, that's me. So one of the guys said they had a warrant for my arrest. I said, warrant for my arrest?

00:08:56
Speaker 3: He said, yeah.

00:08:56
Speaker 5: I said, your name had come up in our investigation involving this murder of the 15-year-old Elliot Porter.

00:09:06
Speaker 3: I said, murder?

00:09:07
Speaker 5: I said, I don't even know Elliot Porter, you know. So the guy says, well, look, we're just going to bring you downtown and ask you some questions. So they brought me downtown, back at Tulane and Broad. They interrogated me for maybe an hour and a half, asking me about people that I didn't know. But I was arrested. They brought me over to Orleans Parish Prison. And that's where I learned I had a co-defendant.

00:09:36
Speaker 2: It's just so staggering because you had never had any issues with the law before.

00:09:41
Speaker 5: No.

00:09:42
Speaker 2: And you mentioned in the play that your mother's attitude was, sure, my son will go down with you. He didn't kill anybody.

00:09:53
Speaker 3: Right, absolutely.

00:09:54
Speaker 5: You know, she just knew in her heart and her soul immediately that didn't fit the son that she had raised.

00:10:04
Speaker 2: And the only time you had ever been to the New Orleans Parish Prison was to visit a friend. You describe it so eloquently in your show, which I would love to play a little excerpt from. But if you can just describe as well what that place was like and how it overwhelmed your senses even before you were taken there as a prisoner just visiting there.

00:10:32
Speaker 5: The experience was something that I'll never forget because I can remember there was a line of people waiting to go in. And the closer I had gotten to the door, to the opening, it's like the sicker I was becoming. It's like something had just came over me. some outside force had just taken over and it had gotten to the point.

00:10:54
Speaker 3: Where I was about to draw up.

00:10:56
Speaker 5: And so the sergeant, he noticed it and laughed and said, you're.

00:11:02
Speaker 3: Sick, huh?

00:11:04
Speaker 5: And I looked at him, I said, yes, sir. I don't know what to come over me. And he laughed and said, it's the smell. And I remember going inside the place to visit with this.

00:11:16
Speaker 3: Guy and.

00:11:18
Speaker 5: When I got in there, I didn't smell it anymore. It's like it had totally and completely consumed me. And I'll never forget that.

00:11:28
Speaker 2: And not only that, that visit becomes almost a foreshadowing of what would eventually befall you because you felt like there was a part of it that got into you and wanted to draw you back into it.

00:11:42
Speaker 3: Right.

00:11:44
Speaker 5: When I went to visit this guy, Think some of the evil inside the place got on me. I feel like some kind of evilness embedded itself in my body and decided I.

00:12:01
Speaker 3: Want him back in here. Get him back in here. Hey, I jump up, open the door. Police asked if Gregory Bright lived here. Yeah, that's me. They got a warrant for my arrest for the murder of Elliot Porter.

00:12:23
Speaker 2: It's so powerful. What was that like then getting brought back there?

00:12:30
Speaker 3: It was like deja vu.

00:12:32
Speaker 5: Everything that I had saw from the outside, now I'm inside and I'm stuck among what was in my mind at the time, my worst nightmare of being placed in there.

00:12:47
Speaker 3: Against my will.

00:12:48
Speaker 2: And that's the first time you ever met your 17-year-old co-defendant.

00:12:54
Speaker 5: Yeah, I met him while we were in prison. His face looked familiar, but come to find out, he was the brother of the person that I was thinking about. He was the younger brother of the person that seemed familiar.

00:13:08
Speaker 2: Now, I just want to point out to listeners that we're not going to fully name your co-defendant or use the last name of the woman, Sheila, who ended up being the witness against you. And if you want to just touch upon why that's important to you, why you're so protective of both of them, but particularly her.

00:13:29
Speaker 5: After I spoke with her, she told me some things. about what she had experienced in her life. And I knew that this wasn't just entirely her doing, you know. I know it was a difficult thing for her, you know, to send two innocent people to prison, but it was the life that she lived. It was the choices that she made. Even though there was choices that devastated not only my life, but my co-defendant's life and family. And I knew it was difficult for her. And, you know, I just didn't want to add to whatever trouble that she may have had or may be facing in the future.

00:14:12
Speaker 2: Greg, I'm so humbled by your grace, sincerely, because the woman that we're referring to had mental illness and addiction illness, and she exchanged her testimony for financial incentive, which is what's wrong with the system. more than anything else, but I've always tried to live believing that we're all victims of victims and that hurt people end up hurting other people. And the fact that you lost 27 and a half years of your life because of that testimony and you still afford her grace is so incredibly inspiring and evolved. So you're held in parish prison. For seven or so months before the trial, you are appointed a public defender who you met with, I believe, once before the trial?

00:15:11
Speaker 3: Once, yes.

00:15:12
Speaker 5: This guy spoke to me at a preliminary hearing in 1976, the early part, maybe January of 76. And he asked that I have a list of my witnesses, the people that I intend to call as witnesses. And I said, yeah, I had given it to a guy from the Indigent Defenders Program.

00:15:36
Speaker 3: And he had taken it.

00:15:38
Speaker 5: I asked him, did he speak to any of the witnesses? He said, no, I'll get around to it. And he never did.

00:15:44
Speaker 3: He never spoke to any of my witnesses.

00:15:47
Speaker 2: So his whole defense was he didn't do it.

00:15:49
Speaker 3: He didn't do it.

00:15:50
Speaker 2: Leading up to that trial, did you, your co-defendant, and your mom, your family, believe that this mistake was going to be corrected in the court of law?

00:16:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, absolutely. You know, I mean, here I'm an innocent person.

00:16:04
Speaker 5: You know, I had absolutely zero to do with this crime. The lady who testified against me, I didn't know her. The guy who I'm on a crime with, I didn't know him. I didn't know the guy who was killed. You know, you're saying that you and this guy committed this crime together, but you've never once shown anything other than the testimony of this witness that we're associated with each other.

00:16:33
Speaker 2: It must have been like an episode of the Twilight Zone for you.

00:16:36
Speaker 3: Yes.

00:16:37
Speaker 5: But, you know, now here's the thing about the trial. In hindsight, looking at all the facts and circumstances of this case, you know, I mean, orchestration is just clear from start to finish.

00:16:53
Speaker 2: And the fact that leading up to the trial, you were offered... a plea deal of five years, and you didn't want to take it because you were innocent.

00:17:04
Speaker 3: In fact, five years? Are you kidding me?

00:17:07
Speaker 5: It could have said five days. It would have seemed like a life sentence.

00:17:12
Speaker 3: Five days in prison? No, no, indeed.

00:17:15
Speaker 5: No, uh-uh. You're going to have to do more than just throw that out there and expect me to.

00:17:22
Speaker 3: Accept it. No, no.

00:17:35
Speaker 2: So that mockery of a trial lasts for all of a day and the jury deliberates for all of 13 minutes.

00:17:46
Speaker 5: I was like, they don't have anything. They don't have a gun. They don't have an eyewitness, you know. But when we got the trial and The state put on this case. After the state rests, my lawyers came and said, look, there's a recess. You know, the purpose of this, you know, we're going to switch over to the defense. And if we want to, we could call witnesses and stuff like that. He said, I'm going to confer with co-counsel and we're going to decide whether or not we're going to proceed with the Alibaba defense. And after recess was over, He came back in and, you know, this guy get up and say, at this time, the defense rests. And that was followed by my co-defendant, the co-counselor, saying the same thing. And when I questioned him about the defense rests, he said that, yeah, we decided that we're not going to go forward with the defense witness because the state witness got on the stand and cried and put on a show. See, he felt that would only aggravate. The judge, if we put on alibi, witnesses. And I said, aggravate the judge. I said, the judge is not on trial here.

00:18:56
Speaker 2: And then that's all they had, the hysterical testimony of a woman who it turns out had been in a mental institution.

00:19:06
Speaker 3: Absolutely.

00:19:07
Speaker 2: Leading up to her time on that trial. There's no physical evidence against you or your co-defendant. There's no murder weapon that was ever found and traced to either one of you. What was going through your head before they announced the verdict?

00:19:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I just absolutely couldn't believe it, you know.

00:19:27
Speaker 5: In fact, when they came back and started reading off the charge and stuff like that, I didn't want to show that. I was just so devastated. I just wanted to just really be strong, but I couldn't help it. I look back, you know, and my mind was in tears, you know. My girlfriend were in tears. My sisters, they were in tears. Some people were saying, well, we came to testify. When are we going to testify? They ushered them out of the courtroom. It was just a lot of people just really caught by surprise, especially for the.

00:20:00
Speaker 3: People that really knew me.

00:20:02
Speaker 5: They knew, like, he's not a murderer.

00:20:05
Speaker 3: It was just heartbreaking.

00:20:08
Speaker 2: And then you're sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in a place that honestly sounds at that time particularly like hell. We're going to play an excerpt from your show about Angola, but can you just talk to me about even what the journey from parish prison to Angola was like?

00:20:39
Speaker 3: Huh.

00:20:40
Speaker 5: To say that it was horrible is an understatement. It was my worst nightmare magnified 100 times, like something that someone just put together and put all the horrible things that they can imagine, just throw it in there, you know. It's like the trip gone there. I mean, we're in the back of a paddy wagon. It's seven of us. leg iron and seated in the back of this little SUV thing. And this snake road that leads from Highway 61 to the prison, it was just frightening. It's like you're about to fall off a cliff in a second, even getting to this place. And once you get there, you are among The worst people in the world. People that has committed all sorts of crimes against children, against the elderly, against family members. And I got to make sense of this stuff. I'm not in the same mind frame with these guys. I don't go to bed at night and have nightmares of the crime that I done committed.

00:22:07
Speaker 3: I go to bed at night. I sleep peacefully.

00:22:10
Speaker 5: You know, I don't have these demons ride me and stuff like that. But I'm among most of them who are going through this stuff or experiencing or revisiting these crimes. Angola is the bottom of the barrel.

00:22:30
Speaker 3: You have to be drawn away to go to Angola. Life of 50.

00:22:36
Speaker 5: 150 fat, maximum security prison, 5,000 inmates.

00:22:42
Speaker 3: Now it's 6,000.

00:22:43
Speaker 5: The only people qualified for a bed in Angola is those guys who are sentenced to die in that bed.

00:22:53
Speaker 3: It's the last stop. Angola used to be a slave plantation.

00:23:00
Speaker 5: The name Angola originates from the Africans who worked the plantations. Camp A used to be the old slave camp. I mean, that's something else to be part of such a long, long history.

00:23:18
Speaker 3: How do you claim a spot that's littered with blood?

00:23:23
Speaker 5: I'm talking about hundreds of years of brutality, the pain and suffering that land caused.

00:23:32
Speaker 3: Violence that exists on them grounds.

00:23:39
Speaker 2: How did you have to change as a person to survive it? How did you have to change from the moment you got there? What did you have to learn and teach yourself?

00:23:54
Speaker 3: I mean, going in there, I had two fears.

00:23:58
Speaker 5: I didn't want to die in prison, which I knew was a great possibility. And I didn't want to be in prison when my mom died. But going in there, I said, I don't have no problem with none of the inmates, no problem with the security. I know they're here to do a job. I know guys here do a sentence. I don't have a problem with any of that. What I have a problem with is the fact that I'm in prison for a crime I didn't commit. I'm going to do everything in my power to try and get out. And Somehow, some way, showed that I didn't have.

00:24:36
Speaker 3: Anything to do with it.

00:24:37
Speaker 5: Anyone that would listen, I would tell them, look, I'm here for something I didn't do. I'm not out here robbing people and raping people and doing all kinds of stuff. It's just some kind of mix-up that eventually is going to be revealed. That was the position I took, and I stood on that.

00:24:54
Speaker 2: In addition to teaching yourself how to read to make up for those years that you missed in school, you end up mastering the law and defending yourself all the way to the state Supreme Court. But they kept you pretty busy in terms of the physical labor you were expected to do while you were there in terms of digging ditches and backbreaking work.

00:25:20
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:25:20
Speaker 3: You're sentenced to hard labor, you know.

00:25:22
Speaker 5: So now I have a life sentence and I'm required to work hard for the rest of my life.

00:25:30
Speaker 3: Something I didn't do.

00:25:31
Speaker 5: But the first day, I was like, look, all this agriculture stuff, I'm a little too tall for that. All this bending over and stuff like that. So I was always going to the hole. Some guys were like.

00:25:40
Speaker 3: Look, Slim, man, you need to stop going to the hole, man.

00:25:43
Speaker 5: But the physical labor was just entirely too much for me.

00:25:48
Speaker 2: So one way or the other, they're going to break you. They're going to break your spirit. They're going to break your back and they're going to break your will.

00:25:53
Speaker 3: Absolutely.

00:25:54
Speaker 2: But then there's something that you to touch upon in the show that continues to blow my mind today. And that is the work that you ended up doing at the then governor's mansion, which I don't think anybody can wrap their head around. Will you please explain it to me?

00:26:17
Speaker 5: Well, it came as quite a surprise to me too, you know, because I'm sitting in prison, you know, and, um, Of course, I didn't know anything about it, you know, but each time the governor is about to leave office and stuff or come into office, he would usually commute the sentences of the people that worked for him. And that's if you didn't have a real controversial case where people were making a lot of noise and a lot of protests and stuff like that.

00:26:45
Speaker 3: If he could.

00:26:46
Speaker 5: Slide through there without any opposition or little opposition, then that was the way it was done. Second term, this is 1979. He can't run for governor any longer. David Treen has won governorship, and he's about to take office. So they come to the prison. They said, look, everyone else is going to commute the sentence of all the people that works for him. So we're going to need 17 guys to go down to the governor's mansion. I couldn't believe that I was chosen to be a part of that. For all the people that was interviewed, and they've winded down to the 17th, and I was part of the 17th. I didn't really feel it was the blessing that people were saying it was to me. Oh man, it's a blessing. I imagine it is a blessing for somebody that's actually guilty.

00:27:38
Speaker 2: But in reality, you were then given a uniform and you're basically... domestic help at the governor's mansion.

00:27:48
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean, I went there as a dishwasher.

00:27:50
Speaker 5: A guy in the kitchen said, look, you need to start bringing the governor's wife's breakfast in. That would help you over the long haul, you know. When the governor's wife becomes friendly, she knows your face and knows your name, she would encourage her husband to commute your sentence. But I wasn't interested in a commutation of my sentence. I wanted my freedom.

00:28:11
Speaker 2: You're a man who has been wrongfully accused, wrongfully convicted, but convicted of murder. And other people who have been convicted of, am I right? You had to just be a pure murderer. They wouldn't take anybody who had been convicted.

00:28:31
Speaker 5: And that's the one thing I found credible. These people had committed some serious offense. But they're working around a governor. Like I said, when I first went to the governor's mansion, I was on the dishwasher. After speaking with the governor's wife, they suddenly put me over the main dining hall.

00:28:50
Speaker 3: I can't believe it. Of course, they didn't know me.

00:28:52
Speaker 5: I could have been an actual killer or something, but I'm serving the governor.

00:28:59
Speaker 4: So corrupt.

00:29:00
Speaker 2: It's just so crazy. It's so crazy. You put it wonderfully in the show, which I hope everybody reads and gets the chance to see.

00:29:11
Speaker 3: Absolutely.

00:29:12
Speaker 2: But where did you get the drive and the strength to fight to get out for 27 and a half years?

00:29:21
Speaker 5: I went through this period of just being angry. And I came to the conclusion that just, you know, I'm just spending a lot of energy just being angry and not getting anything done. My anger's still there, but it started to subside enough to allow me to venture off into other areas, like my reading and and comprehension. Once I learned how to read, I mean, doors started opening up that I didn't even know was there, and that it kept me motivated, kept me interested, and I challenged that energy into the legal aspect of this. It just took over me, and You know, I started reading cases, cases of people that I knew. And the case, the actual trial proceedings, people that I was in the dome with. So if I was curious about somebody in the dome, all I do is get their name and read their case. And so most of the guys in the dome, I knew more about their case than they did.

00:30:24
Speaker 2: And then if you understand how it happened to them and sometimes recognize they were correctly convicted, you begin to understand how the system was used against you.

00:30:36
Speaker 3: Absolutely. And it was a long process, you know.

00:30:40
Speaker 5: I wish that it could have been cut in half, but it played out in its own time and stuff. And I was just so thankful that along the way I was able to make the right transitions and make the right decisions moving forward.

00:31:00
Speaker 2: And, Laura, you've been incredibly patient, and we're going to get to you in just one second, too. But you mentioned, Greg, that you had two wishes and two desires and hopes when all of this happened to you. And one was that you didn't die in prison, but the other one was that you wouldn't be in prison when your mom passed. Yeah, yeah. to me, is one of the most heartbreaking aspects of this and the way in which you were told. If you're comfortable talking to that.

00:31:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.

00:31:33
Speaker 5: Here's the thing about my mom fasting. It came as a total surprise to me. My family, they wouldn't tell me exactly what was going on with my mom's health.

00:31:45
Speaker 3: According to my sister's.

00:31:48
Speaker 5: Reasoning, it was that, well, you're already under pressure in prison.

00:31:53
Speaker 3: But I was like, look, you should have told me.

00:31:55
Speaker 5: That way I would have been prepared when this guy came into the dome. But when the priest came into the dormitory, came in and called my name, it just took everything out of me. I mean, it's just my mind just, everything was just.

00:32:11
Speaker 3: A blur, you know.

00:32:13
Speaker 5: The people I had been around a great length of time just seemed like strangers. It's like I'm looking at them the first time.

00:32:23
Speaker 2: I mean, we talked about how working to break your back and the whole to break your spirit, but that must have just broken your heart.

00:32:32
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was done, you know. I mean, I kept telling myself that I'm going to last through the night. It just was that low. It was all I had in the world. It was gone, just like that. Having someone that you can call on in a situation, it's a really good feeling to have that. I can call on this person. And suddenly, it's no longer there.

00:32:58
Speaker 3: I was in a dark hole.

00:33:01
Speaker 5: I was in a dark place. I just couldn't find my way. And all the work I had done, my locker was in the middle of the aisle. And I tell myself, I'm getting up in the morning. I'm going to try to do a little reading or whatever. But I look at that locker, and I just get so frustrated. It slammed me back down. That's what I'm doing it for.

00:33:22
Speaker 2: Another aspect of Angola is it's so difficult to get to for family. It's so inconvenient and hard to make the trip, which makes the cruelty of it even that much more magnified. But thankfully you did open that locker again and you fought. argued your appeals all the way up to the state Supreme Court. And then the Innocence Project of New Orleans got involved. And by the end of it, the court overturned your convictions, and that was upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court. And then on June 24th, 2003, after 27 years, seven months, and 10 days in prison, you and your co-defendant were both released from after the Orleans Parish DA dismissed all charges. This still just hits in such a painful way. You and your co-defendant left prison with nothing but a $ 10 check from the state and garbage bags full of your legal paperwork. Is that sugarcoating it?

00:34:39
Speaker 5: $ 10, I couldn't believe that. When we were leaving the prison, he gave me the envelope with the check. He said, man, I would tear that check up. He said, that's a shame. Someone would be in prison all these years for something they didn't do, and to be handed a check for $ 10, that's not even bus fare, to wherever it is you're going. I said, yeah, I'm just glad to be out. I'm glad to be getting away from this. They could have kept the check. But when you think about it, for 27-something years in prison, worked in the fields a little time, stayed a lot of years in the kitchen. I stayed a lot of years at the horse lot. Stayed a couple of years at the governor's mansion. And to be given a check for $ 10.

00:35:29
Speaker 2: It's so disgusting. I can't even, I have no words. And then you're tasked with processing everything that happened to you, and just building a new life?

00:35:42
Speaker 5: That's still difficult because I'm at a great disadvantage when I get out. I'm not 20 years old any longer. I'm 47 years old. I don't have any finances. I have to start at the bottom. I was offered a lot of jobs. I could have worked with a couple of lawyers and stuff, but I didn't want to be a part of the prison system.

00:36:06
Speaker 3: I wanted to be away from that.

00:36:08
Speaker 5: I didn't want to profit off of someone's grief, someone's pain and suffering. I needed to re-energize myself, reinvent myself, and then see what was out there. And it's been real, real difficult doing that.

00:36:25
Speaker 2: Because it's not like you're suddenly given a blueprint.

00:36:29
Speaker 3: Right.

00:36:29
Speaker 2: And even though you did end up receiving... some compensation. It was nominal.

00:36:36
Speaker 3: Right. I don't even feel it.

00:36:38
Speaker 5: It's just enough compensation to get you in a.

00:36:41
Speaker 3: World of debt.

00:36:43
Speaker 5: And the thing about it is, I don't feel like I've been compensated. I don't care what the numbers.

00:36:53
Speaker 3: Could be. I can't be compensated for what happened.

00:36:59
Speaker 5: The experience of being incarcerated a month The type of people that I was incarcerated with, for that length of time, it's just one day of that is enough that you would never, ever want to be involved in that kind of stuff again.

00:37:46
Speaker 2: I would love to know now from you, Laura, how you guys first crossed paths.

00:37:54
Speaker 4: We met when Greg had been out of prison, I guess about four years, and I was a volunteer working with the Innocence Project as a narrative consultant because there are probably more people exonerated out of Louisiana than any other state because there are more wrongful convictions in Louisiana. And so many people had been coming out of Angola. And like Greg, decades of experience, people were very interested in hearing their stories. But what do you do with 27 and a half years of incarceration? How do you even begin to put that into a 15-minute presentation for a church or community center? we had a group of four people initially. My role was to help kind of start to shape some of this life experience. So we worked together for a few months and had a presentation with all four of the exonerees. During that time, I was just continually drawn to Greg. Greg, as you can tell, has a great heart. He has a lot of wisdom. He's a great storyteller. And so after the initial project was complete, we continued to work together for the next couple of years. And we would meet everywhere. We met at coffee shots. We met in the park. We met at my office. We met once or twice a week for a couple of years.

00:39:17
Speaker 5: You know, she used to always say, wait a minute, Greg, wait a minute. Let me get my recorder. Let me take this down. I'm saying, hey, what did you talk about? He said, no, no, I got to type this out.

00:39:29
Speaker 4: And I just asked him question after question and recorded every conversation, transcribed it word for word. I had hundreds and hundreds of pages of transcribed notes. And slowly it took the shape of one man play.

00:39:44
Speaker 2: I should imagine too that it's interesting as an exoneree because People will ask you questions, but how much do they really want to know? Like, how deep is their commitment to your experience? And you met your match.

00:39:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.

00:40:00
Speaker 5: But this has been the most rewarding experience that I've ever had. It's painful in a lot of ways, but it's painfully true.

00:40:11
Speaker 2: Is it what led you on your path to become an actor?

00:40:15
Speaker 3: Yes and no.

00:40:15
Speaker 5: I mean... First, we had a professional actor that was doing the play, but the guy starts swaying from the script, slowly putting his personal stuff in there.

00:40:28
Speaker 3: I was like, you know what? Maybe it'd be a good idea for you to do the play.

00:40:32
Speaker 5: I had never thought about acting, but of course, it's not acting because this is something I've gone through.

00:40:39
Speaker 3: This is my experience.

00:40:40
Speaker 5: So I really didn't look at it like acting, but I was comfortable enough to Pursue other interests in acting. One of the interns that at the time was working at IPNO, she decided to switch careers, becoming part of the second line studios here in New Orleans.

00:41:00
Speaker 3: And so she became my agent.

00:41:03
Speaker 5: Megan Lewis, she's a tremendous person with good heart, good spirit and stuff. And so she is responsible for me being in These movies, the 12 Years a Slave, the 12 Rounds with John Cena, it's just a few of those movies she was instrumental in me being a part of.

00:41:24
Speaker 2: What about working on the entire process of creating that show with Laura was therapeutic for you?

00:41:34
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely. I mean, at.

00:41:38
Speaker 5: One point I couldn't get through the mother scene, I'd always break down and just get these flashbacks. And then we'd have to stop and start back and stuff like that. You know, it took me a long time to really put my mom's death in perspective.

00:41:55
Speaker 2: And that is something that you get to purge in the show because it's your truth.

00:42:01
Speaker 5: Right.

00:42:02
Speaker 2: And, and Laura, to you, and it's very interesting. evident in what you guys have created together, your empathy and your compassion and your understanding. I know in addition to being an incredibly gifted writer, you're also a compassion trainer, but you are also the survivor of a violent attack that happened years ago while you were traveling. In what way did dealing with that trauma affect lead you to what you do today and how you crossed paths with Greg?

00:42:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, very directly. So as you mentioned, I was traveling in Belize and I was picked up by a man pretending to be a cab driver and I was kidnapped into the jungle where I was robbed and raped and the man intended to kill me and.

00:42:59
Speaker 3: I couldn't run.

00:43:00
Speaker 4: I couldn't hide. I couldn't overpower the man, but what I could do was turn toward his pain. And you mentioned earlier that one of your sort of fundamental beliefs is that hurt people hurt people. And that was so obvious in this experience. It was to my benefit that he was a real talker. And so he was telling me the problems of his life. And so I turned my attention toward him. And caring for him is what literally saved my life. And so at the end of that experience, I was living in Los Angeles at the time. I flew home. I was just trying to make sense of this. what just happened and what is this thing called compassion? I knew to call it compassion, but I didn't know what compassion was. Certainly wasn't a compassion trainer yet at that point. And so thus began my journey. You know, I started down that walk of first trying to learn about, first trying to heal from that experience, from the fear of it, but also the disappointment that I experienced when I wanted to express care and concern for not just for myself, but also for him, for his wellbeing, for his healing. Because to me, the best consequence that could come from this is that we would both heal so that he would no longer have the kind of hurt and pain that would hurt then someone else. But I was met with a lot of resistance to that idea. And so I kept looking for teachers and counselors who I could work with. And I was having a really hard time finding people people who would match my exploration. And so I moved to New Orleans right after Katrina, and that seemed to make a lot of sense to me. The city was sort of in upheaval. My life was recently in upheaval. And everyone was just putting pieces back together again. I didn't think about it consciously. I love New Orleans, but I also felt really comfortable in that mess. And I was only in New Orleans for a couple of years before I met Greg and the other exonerees. And so Greg was somebody who could shed some light on the experience of incarceration and the experience of people who were responsible for harm, but he himself was not responsible for that harm. And so he was a step closer to my questions. My time with Greg was a way for me to really start to sort out both my questions and some answers. So he really became a great teacher for me.

00:45:30
Speaker 2: So you both brought about a great deal of healing in one another's lives just through this creative process that you shared.

00:45:41
Speaker 4: Healing is for sure a process. And I think we intersected in that process. Greg had already done healing work before we met. So had I. we were able to support one another while we were working on the play. And of course, both of us are still doing our work beyond that. And yes, but there's something about working on a creative project that places the experience outside of us so that we can kind of look at it, shape it, move it around. And I do want to talk a little bit too about Greg talking about his mom's death. When Greg and I first started, started meeting. Greg talked about his mom's death every single time. And it was by far the most painful thing still in his life. And after a while, after months of this, I became very concerned about what we were doing. Because yes, working on a creative project and story sharing can be healing, but it also can be re-traumatizing. And if done without that care and sensitivity, it can be devastating.

00:46:56
Speaker 2: It's like opening a wound.

00:46:57
Speaker 4: It's opening a wound. It's opening a wound. I mean, it was so complex and so deep. So I actually went off for a little while and I got trained in some trauma narrative work so that I could bring some new skills back to our conversation. And we started employing some of those techniques. And that's when Greg started to remember his mom's words of advice because they came to him at a time when he really needed them in Angola. But then once coming home, he was so, Greg, please let me know if I'm not saying this correctly, but he seemed to be so overwhelmed then by the grief that the wisdom had been lost inside the grief. And so what the retelling of the play did was it brought us back to the wisdom. I think the trust in the theater is what led us to Being able to cry through those scenes together over and over again until finally we could do it without that level of grief. Is that fair to say, Greg?

00:47:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. That's right on.

00:48:00
Speaker 5: And so I can understand when people say that they were affected by it or moved by that particular part because it is the heart of the play.

00:48:11
Speaker 2: I've had the pleasure, honestly, the honor of reading the play multiple times at this point. And I always cry at that point because it is so elegant in its honesty. Simplicity is not the right word. It's honesty, but just exquisite in its heartbreak because it's real.

00:48:34
Speaker 4: And it was because of Greg that I went to Angola for the first time. And since then, I have been very involved in prison work. After Greg and I wrote the play, I actually, I wrote a book and published a book about my own experience and became a compassion trainer and then ended up going to Angola once a week for many years and working to create a prison-wide compassion program.

00:49:01
Speaker 2: I can't imagine for both of you how incredible that trip together to Angola must have been because Greg, at that point, you have processed a lot of demons that were inflicted upon you by the experience in terms of working on the play. And Laura, you get to see a place that you have already seen through Greg's eyes with your own. Was it a really emotional experience for you to go there together?

00:49:32
Speaker 5: I didn't have any personal interest going back to prison. I wanted to go back For Laura's sake, because we had talked so much about Angola that I know she visualized it in her mind, but it's one thing to see it in your mind and then to be standing there.

00:49:55
Speaker 3: I wanted her to see what I saw while I was there.

00:50:01
Speaker 5: And I must say that when she got there, she saw it. She saw what I saw. We go in the dormitory and a guy come out.

00:50:11
Speaker 3: I look around. I don't see Laura. The guy come in and say, man, you with the lady? I'm like, yeah.

00:50:16
Speaker 5: He said, man, she's outside crying. And I knew what it was. I knew it was what she saw was just so overwhelming. But I knew for me it would draw a lot of memories back and feelings of helplessness when I have to look at guys that I didn't slept next to it and worked with, held long conversations with, and now to suddenly be on the outside and looking at them and dealing with them from the inside, it was just another part of the story, but it's part of the story that hit home with me because I can't help this situation, you know what I mean? I could just try to be strong, and that's the only advice I could give someone in that situation.

00:51:08
Speaker 3: It's just devastating.

00:51:12
Speaker 4: For me, there were layers of complexity to it. It was a really pivotal experience for me in terms of being able to write the play, but also in my own personal life. First, in terms of the play, Greg had been saying for months and months that the play wasn't just about him. And I kept saying, yeah, but it's really about you. It's not about me. It's not about me. It's about everyone there. And I did not understand that until I went to Angola. When I walked into the dorm and I felt, Greg talks about going to parish prison and the smell. For me, when I walked into the dorm, I just felt grief. And there was nothing to do but cry. It was so much. And in that moment, I realized, oh, this play is not about Greg. Greg is one person in this enormous system of both people who are innocent who end up in prison and also people who are responsible for harm who end up in prison. And so for me personally, the person who harmed me, had he been convicted, he in Louisiana would be spending the rest of his life at Angola, hard labor. And I, since working at Angola, have actually met people whose crimes look very similar to the one that I experienced, who are spending the rest of their lives at Angola. And what I know about every person there is that they are absolutely more than that event. And yet, that is not how we talk about people. That is not how we see people. We talk about, quote, murderers. A person who has taken a life committed a murder. That does not make them a murderer. It's not ongoing. I have the profound respect for so many of the individuals who I've met over the years there who have grappled with their crime, who are experiencing the grief, the suffering, the shame, the regret, but also the strength in living a life that also includes joy and love and compassion and healing. And I think that if we don't tell the whole complex story, then we're missing the humanness of it. And so that's what I got to see. And also Angola is beautiful. We forget to mention that it's 18,000 acres of rolling farmland. It is gorgeous land. It was a plantation. It's fertile soil. And the juxtaposition of that beauty and the pain that's on that land is really It's just profound. It's staggering.

00:53:59
Speaker 2: See, that is the emotional connection. That is the complexity of the human experience. And very much, you know, what I'm hoping to help do with this podcast is to show that emotional tether that we all have that erases the us and the them. Because what you just said goes right back to we're all victims of victims. And if you understand that legacy of trauma and that domino effect, that ripple effect it has, it just makes it more possible for us to create a better world with all of the people who are already in it, as opposed to picking and choosing and viewing people as dispensable. Going back to the show, Greg, if you can just explain to me where the name for the play came from and who Wing Ding is.

00:55:01
Speaker 5: Yeah, Wing Ding was the guy that slept next to me, you know, and he was someone that always had some words of wisdom. He always quick to make people laugh, you know, but he used to always get on me, you know, because he figured, you smart, you smart, you know, but You're fighting a shark in the water, you know. I had no idea what he was talking about. You grit your teeth at night. You sleep with your fist ball up. You see, those are signs that you're fighting a shark in the water, you know. I mean, he used to really get on my nerve with that.

00:55:33
Speaker 3: Never fight a shark in the water. You got to get him on land. I'm like, man, what is you talking about?

00:55:38
Speaker 5: I ain't fighting no sharks. He's like, yeah, you're fighting them sharks in the water. It just occurred to me one day that I said, yeah, it's just like Wayne Dang used to say, you never fight a shark in water. The only way you could really get him is to get him on land. And it just stayed with me, you know.

00:55:56
Speaker 2: Even you explaining how, because the play really shows the triumph of the human spirit over adversity, over trauma. But I viewed fighting a shark in water was basically giving into anger. Yeah. that it's you're setting yourself up for failure if you give in to anger. And that's what you were able to overcome. Laura, do you see parallels in terms of Greg's giving up on his anger with you basically refusing to identify solely as a victim?

00:56:38
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:56:38
Speaker 4: Anger is a dead end. There's nowhere to go. I use the word compassion a lot. Compassion is is simply recognizing suffering and being motivated to help. It's not condoning bad behavior. It's not even the same as forgiveness. It's just recognizing suffering and being motivated to help. And that's a visionary stance because you have to see all the way beyond the suffering. Anger, there's nowhere to see beyond it. Greg and I both giving ourselves the opportunity to have a little bit of emotional relief I think that's the essence of our lives. And then we put that into the play. I think Greg and I, you know, we were both kidnapped in different ways. Greg was kidnapped for a really long time. We don't call it that, but that's in fact what it was. He was taken from his home and he was held for 27 and a half years. And inside of that 27 years, Greg lived a full life of all the emotional highs and lows that come with life. And so, I hope that that comes through in our conversations and in the play because we keep coming back to the truth is in the complexity. And as soon as we try to simplify any experience, even the experience of anger, we're in territory that just maybe isn't as rich as we want it to be.

00:58:02
Speaker 3: As authentic.

00:58:03
Speaker 4: As authentic, yeah.

00:58:05
Speaker 2: What does your friendship mean to both of you? And Greg, I'll let you go first.

00:58:11
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.

00:58:12
Speaker 5: It's been really life-changing, you know what I mean? Laura has taught me a lot. I've had the opportunity, the chance to release a lot of positive energy. The healing has been something that was never offered in any way from the people who was responsible for this. And The play is something that I feel real strong about and I feel that it's a special thing being able to share that experience with people and not bring these emotions, being free of these emotions. I can express it as I don't get angry with the lady who testified against me when I.

00:59:00
Speaker 3: Do the play.

00:59:02
Speaker 5: I don't get angry with the judge or the police officer. I don't get angry with them. As far as I care, they can be sitting in the audience. My only purpose here is to help. My purpose is not here to hurt anyone.

00:59:18
Speaker 2: Absolutely.

00:59:19
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:59:20
Speaker 4: Gosh, like all great relationships. You know, Greg has lots of roles in my life. He's a friend. He's an amazing collaborator. He's a guide, a teacher.

00:59:29
Speaker 3: A wise person.

00:59:30
Speaker 4: One, you know, we worked really hard for a long time on this, and then we put it down. We also weren't in each other's lives as much. Years have gone by when we have just had a small touch in each other's lives. And interestingly, being invited into this conversation and also being invited to put the play back on in September has brought Greg and I back, not just to the conversation about wrongful conviction, but back to each other. So it's really special and wonderful. And yeah, it feels really super good. It feels great.

01:00:06
Speaker 2: I can't tell you the joy that fills my soul with, but also the fact that you are going to perform the play again this fall. Can you give me details so that we can link to it? And I hope to be there in person.

01:00:21
Speaker 4: Oh, that would be wonderful. We would love for you to be there.

01:00:23
Speaker 3: Yes, yes.

01:00:24
Speaker 4: The New Orleans Historic Collection is mounting an exhibition about the history of incarceration in Louisiana. It's going to open in September, and Greg has been invited to perform Never Fight a Shark as part of their programming. It'll be the middle of September, and Greg will be offering three performances.

01:00:43
Speaker 3: Yes.

01:00:44
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm going to figure out a way that I can be sitting in that audience.

01:00:47
Speaker 4: Fantastic.

01:00:48
Speaker 2: Thank you guys so much for your time today. It is such a pleasure to speak with both of you.

01:00:53
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.

01:00:54
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

01:00:57
Speaker 2: And in the show description, we will include links to both Greg's upcoming performances and a filmed excerpt of Never Fight a Shark in Water, as well as one to Lara Naughton's compelling memoir, The Jaguar Man. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in the episode description to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our executive producers, Jason Flom, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wardus, as well as our producers, Annie Chelsea, Kathleen Fink, and Jackie Pauley. This series is produced, edited, and hosted by me, Lauren Bright Pacheco. Our senior producer is Cara Kornhaber. Story editing by Hannah Beale. Researched by Shelby Sorrells. Mixing and sound design by Nick Massetti with additional production by Jeff Clybourne. Our theme music is by Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on all platforms at Lauren Bright Pacheco. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company No. 1.