0:00

Hi, This is Laura and I writer. Because

0:02

of COVID nineteen, Steve and I recorded

0:04

this episode from our homes, not together

0:06

in the studio. We might sound a

0:09

little difference, but I think the story we

0:11

tell is as inspirational as always

0:13

be well and stay healthy. Welcome

0:18

to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm

0:20

Laura and I writer, and I'm Steve Drissen.

0:23

Today we'll tell you the story of David McCallum,

0:26

one of two New York teens wrongfully

0:28

convicted of murder. In Luckily

0:31

for David, he had incredible allies

0:33

in his corner, the famous boxer

0:36

Reuben Hurricane Carter and a

0:38

district attorney, Ken Thompson, who

0:40

was dedicated to real justice. Here

0:43

comes the story of the d A and the Hurricane

0:46

and one of the men they saved. So

0:59

it was two thousand and six and I had

1:01

just become the legal director of the

1:04

Center on Wrongful Convictions, and

1:07

my colleague Rob Warden came

1:09

into my office and handed me

1:11

a VHS tape. On

1:13

the tape there were confessions from

1:15

David McCallum and Willie

1:18

Stucky. And Rob told me

1:20

he said, Ruben Hurricane

1:22

Carter would like you to look at

1:24

this. You know, when Ruben

1:26

Hurricane Carter asked you to do something,

1:29

you do it. At

1:32

the time, Ruben Carter was the most famous

1:34

person who had ever been wrongly convicted.

1:37

In the nineteen sixties, he was a prize

1:39

winning professional boxer, nicknamed

1:41

Hurricane for his record of early round

1:43

knockouts. But in nineteen sixties

1:46

six he was convicted of a triple

1:48

murder he didn't commit. After

1:50

twenty years behind bars, Reuben

1:53

was exonerated. He dedicated

1:55

the rest of his life to advocating for others

1:57

he'd been wrongly convicted. To invent

2:00

sex. Bob Dylan wrote the song Hurricane

2:02

as a tribute to Ruben Carter. You know, I

2:05

had met Reuben a couple of years before

2:07

Rob handed me that tape. Ruben

2:10

was at Northwestern he was at a conference

2:13

to honor dozens of people who

2:15

had been exonerated off of death row,

2:17

and for me, it was you know, there's

2:20

a little bit of hero worship on

2:22

my part. I was eager to meet him

2:24

because I was so impressed

2:27

with the way he remade himself.

2:30

You know, from a brawler to a

2:33

deep thinker. To be honest,

2:35

you need both of those skills to work on cases of

2:37

wrongful conviction, and you need

2:39

plenty of perseverance. I got

2:41

hooked on a ten year struggle

2:44

to represent David after

2:46

watching that tape. Today's

2:52

story begins in Queens, New York,

2:54

in South Ozone Park, a working

2:56

class neighborhood next to JFK Airport.

2:59

It's phil with single family homes, storefronts,

3:02

and the sound of jet planes circling overhead.

3:05

It's three thirty on a Sunday afternoon

3:08

October. Twenty

3:11

year old Nathan Blenner is behind

3:13

the wheel of his nineteen seventy

3:15

nine black Buick Regal. It's

3:17

parked on a neighborhood street and he's

3:19

trying to get the car to start. A

3:21

couple of kids playing in a nearby yard

3:24

were the only witnesses to what happened

3:26

next. According to the kids,

3:28

Nathan is fiddling with the ignition when

3:30

two men approach him from behind.

3:33

They're about to pass the car when they turn around,

3:36

go to the driver's side and tell Nathan

3:38

to move over. The men push

3:40

him into the backseat, get in, managed

3:43

to start the car and drive off.

3:46

It's over in the blink of an eye. A car

3:48

jacking and a kidnapping. Police

3:52

from the local precinct and Queen's canvass

3:54

the neighborhood looking for leads. About

3:57

a block away, they find a woman who

3:59

says she'd been outside washing

4:01

her Buick Regal a red one,

4:03

when two men walked by, clearly

4:06

checking out her vehicle. One of them

4:08

said nice car, She answered,

4:11

if it goes missing, I'll know where to look.

4:13

The two men didn't say anything else. Instead,

4:16

they kept on walking in the direction

4:19

of Nathan Blenner. The

4:21

woman gave a description to the police. Both

4:23

men were black and in their twenties. They

4:26

were also of noticeably different heights.

4:28

One was around five ft six and

4:31

the taller guy who had braided hair

4:33

was five ft ten. But this

4:35

car theft and kidnapping soon got even

4:38

more serious. The next day, October

4:41

one, police in Brooklyn get

4:43

a phone call a d O a

4:45

dead on arrival in a wooded

4:47

area near a cemetery. Nathan

4:50

Blenner's body had been found. He

4:52

was lying face down with a single gunshot

4:55

wound to the back of his head. And

4:57

two days after the car jacking, Brooklyn

5:00

lease were called to Fulton Street, about

5:02

a mile from where they discovered Nathan's body.

5:05

A car had been set on fire. It

5:07

was Nathan's Buick. Regal police

5:10

douse the flames, search the car and

5:13

find fingerprints, along with some cigarette

5:15

butts in the ashtray. Brooklyn

5:18

cops get in touch with NYPD Central

5:20

Robbery. They learned there's been a string

5:23

of eight car thefts in Queens

5:25

over the two days leading up to Nathan's kidnapping.

5:28

In every case, the offenders were

5:30

described as two black men

5:32

around age twenty one, five

5:35

ft six, the other five ft ten

5:37

and armed with a gun. This

5:39

was a two man car theft crime

5:42

spree that culminated in Nathan

5:44

Blenner's murder, and police were

5:46

feeling intense pressure to stop

5:48

it in its tracks. A

5:50

few days later, on October to

5:53

Brooklyn men Terence Hayward

5:55

and Herman Mumford are arrested

5:57

for snatching a chain off a subway rider.

6:00

One of these guys was five ft six,

6:03

the other one who had braided hair, was

6:05

five ft ten. Both were black.

6:08

In other words, they matched the car thief descriptions

6:10

pretty well. Police question

6:13

Hayward and Mumford about the string

6:15

of car thefts and about Nathan's

6:17

death. Now we'll never definitively

6:20

know whether these two were involved in anything.

6:22

They didn't confess, and police

6:25

stopped investigating them pretty soon. That's

6:27

because Hayward deflects attention

6:30

away by telling the cops

6:32

he knows about a gun that had been

6:34

used in a murder. Now

6:36

stick with me here, because like a lot of police

6:38

investigations, this gets messy.

6:41

Hayward told the police that his friend James

6:43

Johnson knew more about the gun. It

6:46

turns out that James was a suspect

6:48

in a grocery store robbery in which a gun

6:50

had been used. When police interviewed

6:53

James, he said that he'd given the grocery

6:55

store gun to his aunt Lottie, who

6:57

then gave the gun to a man named Jamie, and

7:00

then, shortly before Nathan's murder,

7:02

Jamie supposedly gave the gun to

7:04

a sixteen year old Brooklyn teenager

7:07

named Willie Stuckey. What kind

7:09

of story is that you got James's

7:11

and Jamie's and Lotties and who

7:14

are all these people? No kidding? This is

7:16

a ridiculous story, and it's even

7:18

worse because it's coming from two guys who

7:20

matched the descriptions of the car thieves

7:23

it's never clear whether the supposed grocery

7:25

store gun had anything to do with the car

7:27

thefts or Nathan Blenner, and there's

7:29

no record of police ever speaking to

7:31

Aunt Lottie or Jamie. Instead,

7:34

police go straight for Willie Stucky.

7:37

For some reason, they jumped to the conclusion

7:39

that Willie used that gun to kill

7:41

Nathan. At about

7:43

seven pm on October, police

7:46

pick up sixteen year old Willie Stuckey

7:49

and bring him to the eighty third Precinct in Brooklyn

7:51

for questioning, And within a few

7:53

hours police also pick up Willie's

7:56

sixteen year old buddy, David McCallum

7:58

and bring him in for questioning who Willie

8:01

and David were longtime friends who played

8:04

handball together at a local park. Now,

8:06

Willie had never been in trouble with the law before,

8:09

but for David it was a different story. David's

8:12

family had moved from South Carolina to

8:14

Brooklyn when he was just seven years old,

8:17

and the culture shock had been pretty severe.

8:19

You know. He went from a very rural

8:21

environment where he would play

8:23

in the fields and go fishing

8:26

and not have that

8:28

many worries in his life.

8:31

But once he hit the streets at Brooklyn, he

8:33

took on this sort of aura of

8:36

a big, tough guy because

8:38

he needed that to survive,

8:41

and he began to act

8:43

out on the street in ways to

8:45

fit his profile. But

8:48

it was really more bravado than anything

8:50

else. Police

8:55

feel like they're hot on the trail and they

8:57

begin interrogating Willie and David

8:59

in separate rooms at the police station. Now,

9:02

neither one of their interrogations was recorded,

9:05

so we'll never have a perfect record of what happened

9:07

inside the box, but suffice

9:09

to say that the detectives described

9:11

the interrogations very differently than

9:14

William David did. In

9:18

court, the lead detective testified that both

9:20

Willie and David voluntarily confessed

9:23

to killing Nathan Blenner after just a

9:25

few questions. But Willie

9:27

testified that police handcuffed

9:29

him and then hit him three or

9:32

four times. David also

9:34

testified that police hit him in the

9:36

mouth hard enough to draw blood and

9:38

they threatened to use a chair next time. You

9:41

know. The confession, when I first looked

9:43

at it had a very rehearsed quality

9:46

to it. It was very short.

9:48

But there's one moment it gave me pause.

9:53

It's when David McCallum looks

9:55

with a moment of sheer terror at

9:58

the police officer who's not on

10:01

the screen but is clearly sitting

10:03

in the room, and it was a look

10:05

like and like doing okay,

10:07

um, I telling

10:10

the story the way the story needs to be told.

10:13

And I remember Freeze framing

10:15

that one frame of

10:18

terror, and that

10:21

suggested to me that what David was saying

10:23

in terms of getting hit, it was

10:25

probably true. Both David

10:27

and Willie testified that after they agreed

10:29

to confess, the police rehearsed

10:31

a story with them. Willie

10:34

in particular, testified that police

10:36

fed him details about the perpetrator's

10:38

conversation with that woman washing her

10:41

red Buick Regal. But the police

10:43

claimed that all the information in Willie

10:45

and David's confessions came straight

10:47

from them. This is exactly

10:50

why you need to record the entire

10:52

interrogation process. If

10:54

you don't do that, it's the police

10:57

versus the suspects, and the suspects are

10:59

never going to be found more credible by

11:01

a judge or a jury.

11:04

Police officers are professional witnesses,

11:06

they testifying court on a regular

11:09

basis, and really and David

11:11

were just kids. They never stood

11:13

a chance on cross examination. But

11:15

David and Willie's confessions were both really

11:18

problematic. The stories they told

11:20

didn't match the actual evidence.

11:23

Willie said Nathan had been shot three times,

11:25

when in fact he had only been shot once.

11:28

Both Willie and David said the shooting

11:30

happened at night, but the medical examiner

11:33

said the murder happened during the day, probably

11:35

right after the carjacking. Willie

11:37

told the police that he had hidden the gun under

11:39

his mattress, but when police went to Willie's

11:42

home and looked, they couldn't find any

11:44

gun. There were other problems

11:46

too, Like a lot of New York City

11:48

kids, David and Willie didn't know

11:50

how to drive, making them unlikely

11:53

suspects for a car theft ring, and

11:55

most importantly, they didn't match

11:57

the descriptions of the car thieves. David

12:00

and Willie were sixteen years old, not

12:02

twenty something, neither one of

12:04

them had braids, and both were short,

12:07

nowhere near five ft ten. But

12:11

despite all this, Willie and David were charged

12:14

with the murder of Nathan Blenner based

12:17

on their confessions and nothing else. Both

12:19

were convicted on October six.

12:24

Each was sentenced to twenty five

12:26

years to life.

12:37

The story fast forwards now more than

12:39

eighteen years to two thousand four,

12:42

David McCallum was thirty four years

12:44

old. He had transformed from an

12:46

insecure teenager into a man

12:48

known by other prisoners for his unshakable

12:51

integrity. David had

12:53

always maintained his innocence, but

12:55

he'd lost all his appeals and was

12:58

running out of options. Tragically,

13:00

Willie Stucky had died in two thousand

13:03

one, at the age of thirty one,

13:05

from what the prison said was a heart attack.

13:08

So this was David's fight now, and

13:10

for too long, he'd been fighting alone.

13:13

By two thousand and for, David had written

13:15

over six hundred letters. He

13:17

wrote to lawyers, he wrote to TV stations,

13:20

radio stations, he wrote to anybody,

13:23

and he always insisted that he

13:25

was innocent, But all he got

13:27

back were rejections until

13:30

one of those letters made its way to

13:32

Ruben Hurricane Carter. Remember

13:34

Ruben Carter was the famous boxer who had

13:36

spent twenty years in prison for a triple murder

13:39

he didn't commit, whose long fight to

13:41

clear himself was immortalized by

13:43

Bob Dylan in the song Hurricane Now.

13:46

Ruben wasn't exonerated until the

13:49

same year that David and Willie went

13:52

down for Nathan Blenner's murder. When

13:54

he got out, Reuben was malnourished

13:57

from decades of prison food, and

13:59

he'd lost sight in one eye from a botched

14:01

prison surgery. He couldn't fight

14:03

for the middleweight crown any longer,

14:06

so instead he started fighting

14:08

for the wrongfully convicted. After

14:10

working for one of North America's leading

14:12

innocence organizations, Ruben founded

14:15

his own group, Innocence International.

14:18

Ruben recognized that he was

14:21

probably the most well

14:24

known figure who had

14:26

been wrongfully convicted, and

14:29

that if he didn't use

14:32

his voice in some way

14:34

to be a champion for the wrongfully

14:37

convicted, that it

14:39

would be a terrible waste. For

14:42

twenty years, I

14:44

was incuscerated as a racist,

14:48

triple murderer, condemned

14:50

by history, repudiated by

14:52

the court, and sentenced to die

14:55

amid the squalor and

14:57

despair, and you

15:00

creation of a maximum security

15:02

prison. And tonight I

15:04

am standing here at

15:06

the United Nations making

15:09

this address. Now,

15:11

if that's not miraculous,

15:14

then I don't know what it is. I

15:17

don't know what it is. David

15:21

was at his wits end. His

15:24

best friend had died, and

15:27

every day was a struggle for him

15:29

because he didn't see a

15:32

way out. In February two thousand

15:34

four, David McCallum read a magazine

15:36

interview with Ruben Hurricane Carter,

15:39

and he sent a letter asking for help

15:41

to the author, a man named Ken

15:43

Klonsky. Reuben and Ken

15:45

had started working together on wrongful conviction

15:48

cases, and today Ken is

15:50

the director of Innocence International. David

15:53

sent me a letter and he explained

15:55

his case and the situation

15:57

he was in. Now, I have no legal back

16:00

and I had no background in wrongful convictions,

16:03

so I just thought, well, here's a person

16:05

sounds honest, and I'll

16:07

just tell Reuben about him.

16:11

And Reuben at first he

16:13

took it in and he said at some point,

16:16

well, let's go visit the brother and see what

16:18

he's like. Both Ken Klonsky and

16:20

Ruben Carter read up on David's case and

16:22

came to visit him in prison. This was

16:24

a prison in New York called Eastern Correctional.

16:28

When we visited, first of all, I've

16:30

never been in a prison in my life, and the

16:32

place itself was enormous. It

16:35

looked like a medieval castle. In

16:37

a visiting room, Ruben and David sat

16:39

on opposite sides at the table, silently

16:42

studying each other. Later, David

16:44

would remember feeling like Ruben was reading

16:46

him, and David refused to

16:48

break the silence. The eye

16:51

contact was like love at first

16:53

sight, and they

16:56

had a conversation which

16:58

David started going on about case and Reuben

17:00

interrupted says, you know what, I'm not

17:02

interested right now in your case. I

17:05

want to know who you are. Ruben was

17:07

a tough interviewer. He grilled

17:09

David about you know, if I get involved in

17:12

your case, I don't want you to

17:14

come out of prison and act

17:16

like a fool and I'm wasting

17:18

my time. And he got

17:21

from David the said that

17:23

this was somebody who was going to make him

17:25

proud. And Ruben

17:28

left that meeting knowing

17:31

that he was going to do everything in his power

17:33

to get David McCallum out of prison.

17:38

I think we were there about two hours, and

17:41

I remember us getting up and leaving,

17:44

and I look back at that enormous

17:47

prison and I said, Reuben,

17:50

really, who's who's going to get him out of there.

17:53

Reuben and Ken hired a defense lawyer,

17:55

Oscar Michelin, and in two

17:57

thousand and six, the three of them sent

17:59

the con session tapes to the Center on Wrongful

18:02

Convictions for Steve to review. Now,

18:05

David had read about your work, Steve, and I'm

18:07

going to out you here. He considers

18:09

you the Lebron James of false

18:11

confessions. Look,

18:14

Laura, we're in Chicago, and out of respect

18:17

for the greatest basketball player of

18:19

all time, I think we should go

18:21

with the Michael Jordan's of false

18:23

confessions. Slow down, Steve. First

18:25

of all, you're from Philly, that's right. So

18:27

actually, the more I think about it, I

18:30

prefer to be known as the Doctor j

18:32

of false confessions. As in the

18:35

Doctors in the house, the doctor

18:37

makes house calls, the doctor

18:40

is on the case. Okay, Dr j you

18:42

analyze these confessions and you found a pretty

18:44

revealing error what we call a

18:47

false fed fact. I did. A

18:49

false fed fact is a fact that

18:51

comports with the police theory

18:54

at the time of the interrogation,

18:57

and it's adopted by the suspect

19:00

in his or her confession. Um,

19:02

but the fact later turns out to be false.

19:06

If it is in the suspect's confession,

19:08

then you know that the police fed

19:11

that fact to the suspects. And

19:13

that's exactly what happened here. At

19:15

the time of the interrogations, the police

19:17

believed that Willie and David were

19:20

the ones who had talked to that woman with a red

19:22

Buick Regal just before going around

19:24

the block and attacking Nathan Blenner. And

19:27

sure enough, right there in Willie

19:29

Stucky's confession is a story

19:31

about talking to that woman and saying

19:34

nice car. But David and Willie

19:36

didn't match their description. Remember,

19:38

the woman had described two guys five

19:41

ft six and five ten, one

19:43

with braids. Now David and

19:45

Willie were both five six and

19:47

neither of them had braids. They

19:50

couldn't have been the guys who talked to that woman.

19:52

And by the time of trial even

19:54

the state agreed that David

19:56

and Willie were not the ones she'd seen.

19:59

So how did story get into Willie's confession?

20:02

It must have been fed by the police.

20:05

That was enough to make Steve joined the team

20:08

right then and there, and I decided

20:10

to recruit Laura Cohen, a

20:12

law professor and an attorney at Rutgridge

20:14

University, to join our defense

20:16

team. Laura Cohen and Steve approached

20:19

the Brooklyn d A's office and got

20:21

them to agree to do forensic testing

20:24

on the cigarette butts and fingerprints

20:26

found in Nathan Blenner's car, and

20:28

the results the cigarette butts

20:30

had DNA on them that excluded

20:33

both David and Willie. Instead,

20:35

the DNA matched a different Brooklyn

20:37

teenager they had no connection to. The

20:40

fingerprints also excluded David and

20:42

Willie. They matched yet another

20:44

Brooklyn teenager who had been killed

20:46

years before in an altercation with

20:48

the police. This was more powerful

20:51

evidence of both Willie and David's

20:53

innocence, and the whole team,

20:56

including Rubin, was very

20:58

excited. But

21:01

this evidence still wasn't enough to persuade

21:03

the Brooklyn d A to exonerate David,

21:05

not yet. Then

21:08

two big things happened. First,

21:11

an election in a

21:13

new Brooklyn d A was elected a

21:16

reformer named Ken Thompson who

21:18

had campaigned on a platform of

21:20

rooting out wrongful convictions. David's

21:23

legal team immediately contacted

21:25

Thompson and told him about the case.

21:28

We used every bit of

21:30

our connections to try to get

21:32

David's case on Ken Thompson's

21:35

radar screen, and it worked.

21:39

The second big thing that happened was a terrible

21:42

blow to the whole team. In

21:45

Ruben announced that he had prostate

21:47

cancer, and it was spreading fast.

21:50

You know. When Ruben announced that he had

21:53

cancer, he and I were

21:55

kind of at odds with one another.

21:58

Ruben was upset

22:00

with me because he thought that we um

22:04

coddled the d A instead

22:06

of looking for an opportunity to land

22:08

a knockout blow with

22:11

new evidence. So Ruben's

22:13

answer to us was, stopped fiddling

22:16

around with the d a's office, stopped

22:18

dealing with state court. You

22:21

need to go to federal court in order

22:23

to get David out of prison. And

22:26

we told Ruben that's just not

22:28

gonna work. And it created

22:31

a tension between Reuben and

22:33

me at this point in time. But

22:36

the announcement that he had prostate

22:38

cancer was devastating because

22:41

even though we were at odds, I

22:43

had tremendous respect for

22:45

Reuben and I knew that

22:48

his voice was going to be crucial

22:51

if we were ever going to win this case. Reuben

22:54

was very sick and quickly got much

22:56

sicker, but he was still the ultimate

22:58

fighter. On his deathbed,

23:01

with ken Klonsky's help, Reuben

23:03

wrote an o ed for the New York Post

23:06

urging the New Brooklyn d A to exonerate

23:08

David McCallum. It was one of

23:10

the last things he did with his life.

23:13

Here's some of what Reuben Hurricane

23:15

Carter wrote. My single

23:18

regret in life is that David McCallum

23:20

is still in prison. My

23:22

aim in helping this fine man

23:24

is to pay it forward, to give

23:27

the help that I received as a wrongfully

23:29

convicted man to another who

23:31

needs such help. Now now

23:34

I'm looking death straight in the eye, Reuben

23:37

wrote, He's got me on the ropes,

23:40

but I won't back down. And

23:42

then Reuben asked the new Brooklyn d

23:44

A to look straight into the eye

23:47

of truth, a tougher customer

23:49

than death, and not to back

23:51

down either. To this day,

23:53

Ken Klonsky remembers helping Reuben

23:55

write that abed. We

23:59

wrote a utter together and

24:02

it didn't have a proper

24:04

ending, and finally I

24:07

hit on something to live in

24:09

a world where truth matters, and

24:11

just as however late still

24:13

happens, that world

24:15

would be heaven enough for us all. So

24:19

it was out there that Reuben was dying

24:22

and that Reuben had made a

24:25

last wish. That

24:27

op Ed was the knockout

24:30

blow that we were looking for. Reuben's

24:43

dying please, combined with the new DNA

24:45

evidence made the difference. A

24:48

few months after Reuben passed away,

24:50

the Brooklyn d A. Ken Thompson

24:53

announced that he was going to exonerate

24:56

David McCallum and posthumously

24:58

exonerate Willie Stuck two. And

25:01

while this news was incredibly welcome,

25:03

the way Ken Thompson's office handled

25:06

the exonerations was extraordinary.

25:09

I had never seen so much grace

25:11

in an exoneration. And let me explain

25:13

what I mean by that. When

25:15

we exonerate people, most

25:18

of the time, it's after a hard fought

25:20

legal battle that brings the

25:22

state down to its knees and

25:24

the state reluctantly gives

25:27

up, and on the day

25:29

of exoneration it's oftentimes

25:32

a kind of anticlimactic moment.

25:35

But David's case was so different.

25:38

When David was picked up by the detectives

25:42

from prison, he was taken to

25:44

the courthouse and then the d

25:46

a's office brought him a lunch

25:49

of barbecue chicken and whatever

25:51

he wanted to drink, and one

25:55

by one, members of the d

25:57

a's conviction Review unit

26:00

congratulated David. David

26:02

not only met Ken Thompson the

26:04

d A, but he also met Ken

26:06

Thompson's wife, and

26:09

there was such a recognition

26:11

of the humanity of David

26:14

throughout this process. I'm Brooklyn

26:16

District Attorney Ken Thompson, and

26:18

I'm here today with some members

26:21

of my conviction review team. And it continued

26:24

because from day one I made

26:26

a pledge to the people of Brooklyn, and

26:28

my pledge was to put the guilty

26:31

away, but also to make sure

26:33

that our criminal justice system was

26:36

based on fundamental fairness. That's

26:39

what we're doing here today.

26:41

Normally, when prisoners are brought

26:43

into the courtroom, they had come

26:45

in through the back door. They're

26:48

handcuffed and they are shackled.

26:50

When it came time for David's case

26:53

to be called, he walked

26:55

in through the front door with his head

26:57

held high, knowing that

26:59

he would soon be a freeman. Mr

27:02

McCallum asked me to look at his case.

27:05

I agreed to do so because my duty

27:07

is not just to convict, but to do justice.

27:10

We have conducted a thorough and

27:13

fair investigation of

27:15

this matter, and as

27:17

a result of that investigation, we've determined

27:20

that there's not a single piece of evidence that

27:23

linked David McCallum or William

27:25

Stuckey to the abduction

27:27

of Nathan Blunt. Of unbeknownst to

27:30

David, they had brought really Stucky's

27:33

mother in for the exoneration

27:35

and it was a reunion that

27:38

was just heartbreaking and incredibly

27:41

tender. She was there also

27:45

to feel that

27:47

her son was being vindicated

27:49

at the same time. And so today

27:53

at two pm before Judge

27:55

Demmick in Brooklyn State Supreme I

27:58

will move in the inches of justice is to

28:01

vacate the convictions of David McCallum

28:03

and Willie Stucky. This was

28:06

not a reluctant exhoneration, but

28:08

a public reckoning, and that

28:11

kind of exoneration really

28:14

is such an important step in

28:16

the healing process

28:18

for people who get out of prison. David

28:22

McCallum walked into

28:24

prison as a boy. Today

28:27

he will walk out of the courthouse as

28:29

a man. The

28:35

District Attorney had a press conference

28:37

and in the press conference he said, I've

28:40

inherited a legacy of disgrace with

28:43

respect to wrongful convictions. And

28:46

at that moment you knew his

28:49

intention to change things, to

28:51

write everything was gonna

28:53

be realized. It

28:56

was just a wonderful moment. You

29:01

know. The only thing missed from

29:04

David McCallum's exoneration was

29:07

Ruben Hurricane Carter, and

29:11

the state even found a way

29:13

to bring Reuben into these

29:15

proceedings. On

29:18

the day of David's exoneration, the

29:20

d a's office dispatched two

29:23

detectives to take him from prison to

29:25

court, and on

29:27

the way back from prison,

29:30

one of the detectives pulled out his iPhone

29:32

and he pressed play, and

29:35

of course it was the Story of the Hurricane

29:37

by Bob Dylan. It comes

29:40

the story of the Hurricane,

29:43

the man the authorities came to

29:45

blame. Reuben Carter

29:47

wasn't the only hero of this story who passed

29:50

away too soon. On October

29:52

nine, Ken

29:54

Thompson, that reform minded

29:56

Brooklyn da who exonerated David

29:58

McCallum and will He's stucky with

30:00

such grace, also died of cancer.

30:03

He had exonerated by that point in time

30:05

about thirteen or fourteen people, and

30:08

so when he died it

30:11

was a really terrible blow for

30:13

justice. But one of the

30:15

things that happened after Ken's death

30:18

was his wife actually reached

30:20

out to David McCallum

30:22

and invited David to speak

30:25

at the going home service

30:28

for Ken Thompson, and so David

30:31

McCallum stood up at the packed

30:33

memorial service for the d A who

30:35

had agreed to free him and gave

30:37

a powerful eulogy.

30:41

He promised that he would investigate

30:43

vawful convictions in a very

30:45

fair way and my legal

30:47

team and uh, that's all we ever

30:50

wanted. It was two years to the day

30:53

after David had been exonerated. Mr

30:55

Thompson touched me in

30:58

a way that I don't think anybody

31:00

ever would again. Because

31:03

Mr Thompson didn't only give me my

31:06

freedom. Mr

31:08

Thompson, and

31:10

this may sound quaint to some who don't

31:13

believe making passion. Mr

31:15

Thompson gave me my father an old daughter,

31:17

Quinn. Because

31:21

had he not did what

31:23

he promised he would do, I'm

31:26

not sure where I would be right now.

31:33

David, Yes, how still seek

31:35

It's been a while, so you've

31:38

been out now for five and a half

31:40

years almost. You know, what are

31:42

your hopes and dreams? And what are your hopes

31:45

and dreams for Quinn? What about

31:47

hopes and dreams is to become even

31:50

the more effective than I think. I'm pretty good at it

31:52

now, but I just want to be really really

31:54

good at it because the hard working, very

31:56

hard work if it's all worth it at the end

31:58

of the day. And I embraced it, you

32:00

know, set myself at hands on dad.

32:03

She had daddy's little girl. Absolutely.

32:09

I could tell you how many times I'm picked

32:11

us to school and so as I'm coming to door, oh

32:13

my god. You know, he doesn't runs from

32:15

what else she's doing. And that's uh, it's

32:18

almost underscinal one someday, but it's really

32:20

really good sailing up. And

32:30

that's the story of David McCallum.

32:33

Join us next week for the last episode

32:35

in our first season, we'll tell you about

32:37

one of the first modern day cases

32:39

of false confession from

32:43

Peter Riley was just sixteen when

32:45

he was wrongfully convicted of murdering his own

32:47

mother. Peter's innocence was championed

32:50

by everyone from neighborhood moms to

32:52

New York celebrities. His people

32:54

powered campaign for exoneration has

32:57

been the inspiration for the work Steve

32:59

and I do till then. Thanks

33:01

for listening to Wrongful Conviction, False

33:03

Confessions. Wrongful

33:10

Conviction, False Confessions is a production

33:12

of Lava for Good Podcasts in association

33:15

with Signal Company. Number one special

33:18

thanks to our executive producer Jason Flom

33:20

and the team at Signal Company Number one executive

33:23

producer Kevin Wardace Senior Producer

33:25

and Pope, and additional production and editing

33:28

by Connor Hall. Special thanks

33:30

to jog Hammer for additional script editing

33:33

and for wrangling and writing like a madwoman.

33:35

Our music was composed by j Ralph.

33:38

You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter

33:41

at Laura ni Writer and you can follow

33:43

me on Twitter at s Drizzing.

33:46

For more information on the show, visit Wrongful

33:48

Conviction podcast dot com and

33:50

be sure to follow the show on Instagram

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