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The Burden | 9. Vindication

Published May 7, 2024, 7:00 AM

Episode 9 of 10

The new D.A. personally overturns Derrick’s conviction. But is he really guilty? The question hovers over the series: Have murderers been freed because of Scarcella’s alleged misdeeds? We investigate. We track the lone eyewitness in Derrick's murder trial to the woods of North Carolina and sort truth from fiction. We reveal a secret report on Derrick’s case, and find out who’s really to blame.

The Burden is available everywhere you get your podcasts.
All episodes will be available one week early and ad free, along with exclusive bonus content on Orbit’s newly launched “True Crime Club House” subscription channel on Apple Podcasts. 

The Burden is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Co. No1

Hi, Steve Fishman here, creator of The Burden as well as the number one true crime podcast, My Friend The Serial Killer. For those of you who liked The Burden, I have good news. Season two starts August seventh. It's a series called The Burden Empire on Blood and it's the director's cut of the true crime classic Empire on Blood, which reached number one on the charts when it debuted half a dozen years ago. Then the fat cat funders abandon it. I wrangled it back and now I'm thrilled to share this story of a man who fought the law for two decades, fought against the Bronx's top homicide prosecutor and a detective sometimes known as the Louis Scarcela of the Bronx. It's all coming to you August seventh, wherever you get your podcasts.

Previously on The Burden.

He just started firing and shooting and shooting, shooting.

Derek Hamilton's Derek Hamilton.

Listen to me. I think a person that wouldn't lie. Dantrant is a fool.

I believe he's guilty of killing Nathaniel Cash. I believe the district attorney believes he's guilty. I believe the city believes he's guilty.

So when I see her coming in looking dishovel, I know something's wrong.

Oh they bring up Johnny, Johnny very short sleep. The scene is O'Neill's Pub in Masbeth, Queens, September twenty seventeen. A lively police dinner is underway for the retired detectives of the City of New York. In a crowded, windowless back room, cops have gathered Budweiser's in hand to honor one of their own, a first grade detective from benson Hurst, Brooklyn. It's a hero's when one.

Day it turned on the news and uh, lovill is Lord scar.

Lad They dragged him through the mud.

They called the protective disgrace and bet we all could have been in the same boat.

You can.

Yeah, it's criminals sitting on.

Your ass to the orn and that's why you're still concided in the world's greatest protective Lord scarch Solod we.

On a un though, and around this time, Detective Scarcella has another reason to feel vindicated. The Brooklyn District Attorney had essentially cleared Louise's name. It recently vacated seven convictions in Scarcella's cases, but none of those was quote related to any alleged misconduct by Detective Scarcella.

This is what Louis has been searching for validation from the top. It was about a year after this detective's dinner that I started looking into the Louis Scarcella story. And for all those years we've been talking to Louis, and Louie has been saying the same thing. I did nothing wrong.

I did absolutely nothing wrong.

I did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong, nothing wrong on every one of these cases.

I did nothing wrong. But does the public buy it? Do you? Maybe you're ready to call him detective disgrace too. Maybe you side with Derek Scarcella's no better than the serial killer. Who do you believe? At its core everything in this story, everything depends on credibility.

Scarcella tells us he's a truth teller, protector of the people, the guardian they need. Derek tells us he's a truth teller too, a crusader, a mouthpiece for everyone who's been wrongfully convicted. He's also told us he's a liar. He'd lie in his self interest. We know he was violent we know he shot people. He's Derek really a victim of Scarcella. The truth is, if one's a hero, then the other is a villain, and we need to know who's who.

It's in Derek's case that their fates cross. Scarcella played a role in Shabaka's case and in Nelson's, but Derek's was Louise's start to finish. So what do we think of Louis? Police work only one way to know.

We have to solve this case.

We did justice for the people learned that. We'll see about that. Feel your body shaking the switch on you.

You're gonna turn me. I'm gonna turn on you.

Welcome to the burden.

I'm Dax deviln Ross and I'm Steve Fishman.

M HM.

Today's episode Vindication, give me a life, detect detestion.

Not everybody trusts him, he said to me, we can't let the truth get in the way of Josa. Mister cops.

Put the eyes on you, man.

It's not whether or not you did it or not.

They're gonna close the books on your ass when we'll know.

You gotta hold all the time.

Derek Hamilton meant nothing to me, nothing, nothing, to me, I had nothing against him, absolutely nothing.

The case where Derek and Louis squared off was the Nate Cash murder. Remember cold winter day nineteen ninety one. Nate Cash is said to be gunned down in the vestibule of his apartment building. When detective Scarcella first sees Cash, he's lying in a pool of his own blood, dressed in a stylish robe and pajamas.

Scarcela arrived on the scene late that morning. There were shellcasings around the body. For him, this would be an open and shutcase. Another day, another murder.

I didn't crack the case. It was there. What do you mean there was?

Okay? All right? The witness, Jewel, that.

Was Jewel is Jewel Smith, the lone eye witness. She's the key to this case. You might say she's the prosecution's entire case.

Jewel said she knew the man who pulled the trigger. She grew up with him in Lafayette Gardens. Derek Hamilton, of course, known to most in the neighborhood as Bush. She said, is she's seeing me shoot a boyfriend in front of ours.

Sitting on her couch, she told me the story window figure.

That's when I observed Bush, also known as Derek Hamlton.

She makes an identification out of a book, a photo book, and that's it.

That's it.

There was no detective work involved in that case because of Jewel Smith.

Yeah.

I interviewed her and she told me what happened. I gave her a Joe Ponzie. Joe Ponzi interviewed her again. Detective Joe Ponzi was chief investigator for the District Attorney's office. He worked closely with Louis. Their fathers had both been cops. Louis sometimes called him Joey, my best friend.

If anyone ever listened to the audio tape of Jewel Joel Smith, a human being couldn't make up the story that she tells.

The tape of Jewel Smith's statement to the DA is thirty years old and hard to make out, so he of an actor reading her words.

I woke up this morning, I went and I brushed my teeth. So he was cleaning up the house a little.

Bit, speaking for myself, being exhilarated, being as high as you know you could possibly get when you know a person not with just making admission, but would give me, you know, exactly what happened in graphic detail.

So while he was calling me a cab, I was putting on my sneakers.

That's a beautiful feeling.

By that time, he put on his rope to walk me downstairs to the cab, like he always does.

She provides the entire backdrop of why it happened up to him, including how it happened.

Derek Hamilton stepped around the banister and asked me where they did, and Nate was like, I'm right here, Bush.

He just started firing and shooting and shooting and shooting.

So Jules Smith appears to be a perfect witness for the prosecution. After she gives her statements to Scarcella and Ponsi, she's preparing to go in front of a grand jury, but behind the scenes there's a problem.

They're ready to go in the grand jury, and Anne Gutman, the trial prosecutor on the case, says the prime witness is now saying she doesn't want to testify and that it didn't happen the way she originally told the police.

All of a sudden, Jewel changes her statement dramatically. She makes a second sore statement, this time to Derek's lawyer, saying I.

Owe Derek Hamilton my life. He was not there when mister Cash was shot. He did not shoot mister Cash. I don't know who shot Nathaniel Cash.

It is a peculiar statement, Yeah, like something from a hostage video.

To Louis and Joe Ponsei, this is just evidence that their star witness is being intimidated by Derek.

She was frightened the death of this guy, and she said to me repeatedly, you don't know him. You don't know what he's capable of. You don't know what he could do to me and my family.

So then Joe Ponzi does what he does best, gets her back on track.

Most of the work was trying to rehabilitate racalcitrant witnesses.

What's the magic, Dan, Joe, what's the magic?

You know?

How long you spending hours with her?

Hours?

Yeah? Hours, you know, hours, trying to convince her that Cash's life, the victim's life, meant something that the original story she told, audio taped by an assistant district attorney was so detailed and so chock full of background and context that she could not have made it up. Ultimately, she knew what the right thing was. She wanted to do the right thing. She was counterbalancing between her legitimate fear of this guy and knowing what the right thing to do was.

What Ponzi is not saying is there's a lot of pressure on Jewel. She's on parole for theft. She has two small children, and if she's arrested it's a violation. She could go back to jail, lose custody of her children. Now she seems to be caught between the police and Derek in a murder investigation. She has no good options.

She went in through the grand jury and testified truthfully, he got indicted. Now fast forward to the trial.

And in that trial, for the prosecution, everything depends on Jule Smith. Which story is she sticking to, can she be believed and is there more to this story?

Jule Smith says, Derek Hamman that committed this murder, never happened. Never happened. That's in a minute.

Is not really the trial. That's our focus here. Scarcella testifies and says Derek has killed people his entire life. Then Jewel, the star witness, takes the stand and she tells the jury the same story she told Scarcella and Ponsi that she saw Derek Hamilton shooting and shooting and shooting Nate Cash, and the jury must have believed her, after all, they convicted Derek.

The real action happens after the trial. It's then Derek File's emotion and wins a hearing that will allow a review of the evidence. And at this hearing, Jewel tells a completely different story, a third story if you're counting now. She says she wasn't at the crime scene at all. She was at the store. That's the story she will insist on for years to come. This is a nightmare for the prosecution. On the witness stand, Jewel tries to recant everything she said at the trial, says her testimony was coerced, but not by Derek, by prosecutor and government and Joe Ponzi. And years later she'd say her original story was formulated by Detective Scarcella.

Because they pressure me for Yeah, all the ones who were counseling me to shake me up, the ones I've seen all the time harassing me.

Judge Edward Rappaport is not happy. He's a former lawyer for the police. He reminds Jewel that she's told contradictory accounts both under oath. These are actors reading the exchange between Judge Rappaport and Juel Smith.

What is really concerning me, Miss Smith, is that you are subjecting yourself to possible prosecution for perjury. You don't want to answer these questions.

Do you I want to tell you why I did what I did, what I said, what I said.

Do you realize that you have the right under the United States Constitution and the Constitution of the State of New York to refuse to answer any and all questions concerning your last testimony As to this testimony, do you want to plead the Fifth Amendment?

I plead the fifth.

Amount close enough. In any event, the judge dismisses her recantation. He believes Scarcella and Ponsi Derek must have coerced her. Derek, though, has a different view of Jewel. I don't think Ju Smith know what the truth was. She don't give a damn what the truth is anymore.

But I think we should know what the truth is. I'm heading to the building where Nate Cash was killed. The building's still there in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The neighborhood has changed a lot there's a very expensive soap shop on the corner, for instance, but the actual building is pretty much the same as it was thirty years ago. There are even candles lit outside a memorial for someone else recently killed. It's the nice Candelmann just picked the log for us with a credit card. I'm walking through the vestibule where Jewels said the murder occurred. I recorded a few notes.

Wait a minute, you just broke in ducks.

The guy insisted he lived there. I'm now inside the vestibule and it is cramped. With my arms to extended, I can touch both walls. Jewel said. All the shots were fired in this small space, with Derek and Nate and Jewel all packed inside. I couldn't imagine two people in here, let alone three. The next thing that caught my attention, Jewel says she first saw Derek through the door's window while she was coming down the stairs.

When we went downstairs, I observed because I was walking in front and he was on the side of me. I was looking through the glass of the door, and that's when I observed Bush.

I walked down those stairs, and that's not possible. I could not see the outside, which is where Derek was supposed to have come from.

Then they ran out the building, brushed past him and ran out the building, and he was running after them.

I remember you called me to tell me your alarm bell started going off.

I mean, the story just doesn't work.

Could not have happened the way she says it does.

If you couldn't be doing all the things that she.

Said happened, it boggles the mind. It boggles the mind.

You think, if I'm seeing this, then a first grade detective like Louis Scarcella, he ought to be suspicious too. The more I looked, the more holes I found in Jewel's story. I scoured the court transcripts and get this. The ballistics report submitted by the prosecution's witness says Nate Cash was killed by not one, but two guns.

And Jewel said that there was only one gun.

Jewel also said this about Nate.

He ran down the sphere and he was running after them, and I was telling him, no, come back, come back.

Then he felled.

But the medical examiner's testimony at the trial was unequivocal. Nate Cash could not have run anywhere. The medical examiner said one shot blew off the top part of Nate Cash's heart, another shot shattered his ankle in two places. Basically, the medical examiner concluded Jules Smith's version of events was virtually impossible.

And didn't Louis Garcela say that he found shell casings around the body? And if Nate Cash was shot in the vestibule, why would the shellcasings be fifteen feet away on the sidewalk. Shellcasings are ejected from the gun.

Oh and in that vestibule which Louis walked through, where Jewel says Derek shot and shot and shot, no blood splatter. The ballistics evidence, the medical evidence, they show that Jewel's story is false, plain and simple.

So what the hell happened in how did Derek get convicted?

I'll tell you what happened. To my mind, it's clear the prosecution lied. I don't see any other explanation. They simply misled the jury.

How do you know?

I was given a copy of the Conviction Review Units report on the case. This copy was mostly uninformative. Key sections were redacted covered in black ink, especially the most important section, the one labeled findings and Recommendations. Then I tracked down the unredacted version.

So this is a confidential report by the DA's unit that investigates questionable convictions. They clearly didn't want the whole story out.

Yeah, this document is a revelation. Let's read a little from it.

At the very top, it reads, quote, the scientific and medical evidence confirms that Smith misrepresented each and every material element of the shooting end quote. Let's just pause there for a second, like, Wow, this is an astonishing thing to just read each and every material element.

Yeah, that one shocked me. Remember the prosecutor in this case was Anne Gutman. The CRU said she didn't quote perceive the obvious flaws in Smith's narrative.

Yeah, bullshit, the CRU. They're being nice to one of their own. As far as I can tell, she either lies or she's an idiot.

She's not an idiot, I'll tell you what, though. She's got a lot of gall In her closing statement, she tells the jury that the ballistics and medical evidence actually support Jule's testimony. Any jury who paid attention knows that's patently false. But apparently Gutman sways the jury.

It takes twenty five years, but the CRU agrees with us. The CRU concludes that Gutman failed to do justice failed to do her job. The prosecutor quote has a duty to present the evidence fairly to the jury, even at the risk that doing so may result in the jury not crediting the testimony of the witness. In other words, tell the damn truth.

The cru wondered if Gutman had already made up her mind, already convinced that Derek was a murderer and a criminal kingpin who needed to be removed from society. Anne Gutman declined, through a spokesperson to speak to us.

And I'll tell you this, Steve. It pisses me off. Louie didn't even bother to question, He didn't even investigate the story Jewel told him.

And I still want to know what the real story is about Jewel, also about Detective Scarsella, and about Derrek Hamilton. And I don't think we can really know who to believe until we talk to Jewel.

She's the one whom Louise said witnessed it all happen. She knows what he did or did not do. Jewel should know if the murderer was pinned on Derek Hamilton. And after thirty years, I gotta believe she's ready to have her truth told once and for all.

Dax I got her last known address. She's apparently moved out of state, far far from Brooklyn. Oh, Hi, it's Steve and Da.

That's in a minute, an give me a minute.

I gotta wrap this stuff. Steve and I have traveled seven hundred miles to try to find Jewel Smith. We're in rural North Carolina, audio recorders ready to go, Hello, Hello, Hello.

Jewel has no idea that we're looking for her, and we have no idea if we're going to find her.

There is a tornado advisory in effect. The downtown just one long street. All of its doors are shuttered. Early people were putting plywood over their store windows.

It feels ominous. We searched for Jewel's house for a couple of hours. We think we found it, though there's no number on the house, but we did the math. This has to be the one. We walk up a long gravel driveway. The house is tucked into the woods, not visible from the street. There's a couple of cars parked out front a tidy yard, flower beds, cut grass. The house itself is one floor, kind of shaped like a trailer, but bigger, and it looks like someone is home.

See if I remember my adrenaline pumping.

And I remember thinking, Dax, we rehearsed this. Come on, we thought about it. If a boyfriend comes to the door, a kid, a husband, a woman shouts through the door but doesn't open it.

Oh hi, it's Steve and Dax.

Well it's not coming out grade.

I can't even see you. Sorry.

We're a couple of storytellers working on a project.

I'm thinking the same thing storytellers.

This woman refuses to give her name or open the door, which is why we can't hear her so well, that and the cicadas. We have an actor saying her words so you can hear them better. It's dusk, moving quickly towards darkness, and the mosquitoes are about to come out, and their dogs are barking in the distance.

So now we're confused. We did not anticipate a stranger at the door. Luckily, you take over.

I was looking for miss Jewel Smith. I'll start from the beginning because I know this is really awkward. She was a witness in a trial.

Whoever this is claims the Jewel moved away.

You're coming into someone's life, right that don't even reside and.

Twenty years ago.

There's no clue what you're talking about, because you.

Have twenty five minutes past and we still have no idea who we're talking to.

You're telling vit all.

I didn't say she did anything wrong.

She doesn't like that we just showed up at her door.

Here's the thing that's very unprofessional, very unprofessional.

The person behind the door then moves to a side window and opens it from the bottom about six inches. Her hand pokes out, but that's all. We still can't see her face.

As she talks, she taps her finger on the window sill. She taps it into the window sill like she's trying to make a hole. I'm on the front stoop that you're standing on the ground a few feet away. It's really a bizarre scene.

Nobody cares what's going on in New York or what's happening with other people.

She talks about Jewel, this person she seems to know very well.

She built a whole new life for herself. She still kept on it, had to, still had to go through the fight. They didn't care about her.

Then.

She was a product of the environment. They used her up.

This book is closed and locked, not involved this list.

So now we are forty five minutes. In several times she threatens to call the police if we don't leave. We don't leave, she doesn't call the police. Instead, she keeps talking to.

Us, excuse gonn light me up out here.

I know, like my blood, madam.

So we go for it. At this point, what's there to lose.

Here's this young woman with two kids. She's trying to fight the judge, the courts, the police, trying to fight Derek. Nobody's listening to her.

Nobody at all is listening to her, to us, to us, Jewel Smith is a victim.

I'm not trying to keep reliving any of it.

I'm not gonna do it.

And suddenly she's talking in the first person.

I have three grandkids right now.

I cannot do it.

I'm not reliving any of this.

I'm not gonna do it.

It is Jewel, it is Juel Smith. Wow.

At this point I got to say I'm ready to leave. I mean, this is uncomfortable, really uncomfortable. I mean, this woman is clearly distraught. She doesn't want to go back to that time. This is traumatic for her, and we keep pushing.

Her I just can't leave. She wants to talk to us. She's not leaving that window. We have come too far. It's been years, we've traveled seven hundred miles. Let's just follow through. I want some answers, and I want to hear it from her.

Nobody has had as close experience with Scarcella as you have.

I don't believe that.

I don't believe that because I didn't have the closest.

Relationship with him.

Hed he usually in different trials that I was a prostitute.

And that's what y'all need to be interview with her.

Teresa Gomez, the sex worker who helps Scarcela in at least half a dozen cases.

She was killed.

Oh God, time is running out, she says she has to go to work overnight. She's a nurse. It's her second job.

This is our last conversation, our last chance.

We ask about Derek.

She's convinced that we're agents of Derek, that he sent us to North Carolina to do his bidding, and that he's living the good life after receiving eleven million dollars and settlements.

The man he has been exonerated. The man has got his millions. He needed to sit his tied ass down and think of something.

Else to do.

I went far beyond for the truth of this man, so I mean to be told. So that's the level of the ship I went through for the man, for the truth to be told, for somebody not to go to jail for something they did to do.

So there it is. She says, it couldn't let a man go to jail for something they didn't do.

We asked her what Scarcella did with her, did he shape her story? She won't go there.

I've got doing it. I reopening.

I thought.

Jewel followed Scarcella closely in the media. Her experience with him, him and the system he was part of not good. She'd come to a conclusion.

He was the dirty cot period point blank.

After that, it's time to go. We've overstayed there.

Welcome.

It's so weird. Was hurt the whole time?

Yeah, she said it.

I couldn't let a man didn't do it go to jail.

I'll tell you that that relieves me enormously, enormously.

Man.

After we left North Carolina, I thought a lot about Jewel. To me, it was clear Jewel Smith couldn't have seen Derek do that. Shooting. She tried to say it several times. She was not there, she'd gone to the store, and that's why her story had so many holes in it. But then I started thinking about her story again.

And I was deflated.

It occurred to me Jewel could not actually know.

That Derek was innocent.

She wasn't there, she was at the store. What she can know is that she lied. She lied to please the powers that be, Scarcella, Ponzi, Gutman. They knew Derek and they didn't like him. They wanted him in jail, and Jewel went along with it. But was Derek innocent?

Who knows? And on some level who cares? We can say that he was not guilty, and maybe that's enough.

That's for sure. He should not have been convicted. The evidence to convict wasn't there.

And remember what Candice Kurt said, the public aid attorney. The system can't cheat, and in this case it clearly did. That brings us back to Louis Scarcella.

Yeah, Louis, What to do about Louis Scarcella? The first grade detective who didn't see there were two guns, who did not figure out that Nate Cash could not have run twenty feet to the sidewalk, that the vestibule didn't have any blood splatter on it? What was Louis thinking? And you know, after everything, he still stands by the conviction. Listen, I've taken a long trip with Louis. I have given him the benefit of the doubt, but now I have doubts.

Next the final interview, I did my job. I'm not gonna say I'm sorry.

Maybe I will say I'm sorry. That's next time. On our final episode, Hey your boy shaking join you? You're gonna tell me.

I'm gonna turn on you. The Burden is created by Steve Fishman. It's hosted and reported by Steve Fishman and myself, Dax Devlyn Ross. Our story editor is Dan Bobkoff. Our senior producer is Simon Rittner. Our producer is Sonam Skelly. Our associate producer is Austin Smith. Our fact checker is Sona Avakian. The production coordinator is Davon Paradise. Mixing and sound design is provided by Mumble Media. Our executive producers are Fisher Stevens, Steve Fishman, and Evan Williams. Additional production help has been provided by Josie Holtzman, Isaac Kestenbaum, Naomi Brauner, Lucy Souchek, Drew Nellis, Micah Hazel, Priscilla A. Labbi, Saxon Baird, Katie Simon and Katie Springer. You want to give us special thanks to Ellen Horn, Zach Stuart Pontier, Lizzie Jacobs, Nathan Tempe, to buy a Black, Rachel Morrissey, Mark Smirling and Lila Robinson. Special thanks to Marcy Wiseman. Special thanks to our actors Kawana Jackson and Hugo Baker. We want to thank our agents, Ben Davis and Marissa Horowitz. Legal support has been provided by Mona Hook at MKSR ll P. And a very special thanks to Evan Williams, one of our executive producers and the person who made this podcast possible. We are honored to feature the song Black Lightning from The Bell Rays is our theme music. The Burden is a production of Orbit Media and association with Signal Company.

Number one, Season two of The Burden Empire on Blood will be available everywhere you get your podcasts on August seventh. All episodes will be available early and ad free, along with exclusive bonus content on Orbit's newly launched True Crime Clubhouse, our subscription channel on Apple Podcasts. It's only two ninety nine a month.

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