De’Marchoe Carpenter and Malcolm Scott were 17 years old when Tulsa police arrested them in connection to a gang-related shooting that killed 19-year-old Karen Summers, the mother of a 4-month-old baby, outside a house party in 1994. Neither teen was found with the murder weapon or the getaway car and no DNA linked either of them to the crime scene. Days after the murder occurred, a Tulsa homicide supervisor visited Michael Lee Wilson, a known member of the Bloods, who had the murder weapon, the car, and the motive. Prosecutors offered Wilson a plea deal in exchange for testifying against De’Marchoe Carpenter and Malcolm Scott, and Wilson was released on $5,000 bond. While he was free, he brutally butchered Richard Yost, a night clerk at a Tulsa convenience store in February 1995—that crime was so heinous that Wilson and his co-defendant Billy Alverson both received the death penalty. Two eyewitnesses who placed De’Marchoe Carpenter and Malcolm Scott at the scene, and who provided inconsistent statements to investigators, later recanted and claimed detectives had coerced their testimony by threatening them with charges. After their three-day trial, De’Marchoe and Malcolm were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison on the murder conviction, plus 170 years for two counts of shooting with intent to kill, and one count of using a vehicle to facilitate the discharge of a weapon. Days before Wilson was set to die by lethal injection in 2011, he provided a videotaped confession to the Oklahoma Innocence Project. In the footage, he claimed that he was the one who killed Summers, and that he’d allowed cops to suspect De’Marchoe and Malcolm. Almost 22 years later, on May 9, 2016, a judge finally vacated their convictions and declared them factually innocent.
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I've never been in trouble with my life. I didn't even have a parking ticket. I didn't you know what I mean. I was brought up like cops are the good guys. I didn't know what was going to happen. But I do know that everything was stacked against me. Everything like everything, this isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do with this. How is this possible? I grew up trusting the systems. I grew up believing that every human thing should do the right thing. And that's why, even though Neil was dealing with corrupt people, I wasn't going to brave anyone to get me out of prison because I wouldn't live with the fact that I braved my way out of my wife's death. I'm not innocent to proven guilty. I'm guilty until I proved my innocence. And that's absolutely what happened to me. Our system. Since I've been out ten years, it's come a little ways, but it's still broken. I totally a little trust in humanity after what happened to me. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back. To wrongful conviction with Jason flam That's me and today we're going to do something we've never done before and I'm really excited about it. We have two guests today to Marco Carpenter and Malcolm Scott, who were co defendants and now our co exonorees, both both wrongfully convicted of a murder and both exonerated twenty two years later. They were ultimately exonerated in an incredible twist of fate when the actual killer, Michael Wilson, as he was about to be executed, came clean and admitted, which he had done previously, but he said it again that he was the killer and that these men were not involved. You have to hear this story to believe it. Guys. I always say this, I'm sorry you're here, but I'm happy you're here. So DeMarco, Malcolm, welcome to the show. Thank you for inviting us to the show. Yes, yes, thank you. Jason. I really appreciate this opportunity to even be here in the big city of New York. It's a beautiful thing, and to be on your show talking about something that I think is very very important that the people need to hear and it's hot here in New York, just like Oklahoma, So you guys probably feeling that at home, even though it's got to be a little bit of culture shock too, but it really was. So this is a this is a Tulsa case. And it's interesting because, well, DeMarco, your case has been featured on The Buried, a live podcast which is based on writings that you did in prison. And I've been listening to that podcast, which I recommend everyone, and I feel like I got a history lesson, you know, along the way, which is really great. But you know, there's a real significance to Oklahoma that I think it's important for people to know about. It is the incarceration capital of the United States. Now it's now past Louisiana as the place where there's more people locked up per capita than anywhere else in the United States. Of course, the United States is the is the incarceration nation, right, So you're dealing with the worst state in the worst country in the world in that sense, and you guys were caught up in that. Um So let's go back because this takes us back to the nineties, right actually early right now, you guys grew up, did you know each other growing up. Oh yeah, we actually did. We were friends before we even got incarcera. And that's Malcolm talking. You'll get used to the voices on the air. But so you were friends growing up, and you grew up in a rough neighborhood by anybody's definitely yeah, right, definitely, um And so and I know I heard you talking about it, um listening to to the other podcast, the Bird Live podcast, about how you were pretty much surrounded by people who were in gangs. And because as I know, when people read the description, they say these guys were suspected gang members and stuff like that. And I think for a lot of people they say, WHOA, well, this guy doesn't salarly such a good guy. But in fact, that's a very nuanced situation, right, because you really didn't have it. I thought you described as very eloquently. You really didn't have much of an option in that situation, right, I mean, you were never formerly a gang member, but you were friends with somebody. Yes, all my friends. Everyone who I grew up with was my friends and someone was in gang. So right, So then the authorities trying to paint that picture and say this guy's gang affiliate or whatever it is, right, realizing that you have literally no options, like you can't be an island in your own neighborhood, right, and there's consequences that come with that as well. And wasn't that the same situation for you, Malcolm? Oh yeah, basically, I mean I grew up around gangs. I mean a lot of older you know, people in my family, friends that I had, who actually went to school with, so you know, you know, back then, it was much easier because you didn't look at these people as game members. You looked at them or these are just my friends. Before they even get involved in the gangs or anything. We were already friends and some of them were already in my family, so I didn't all of a sudden say, okay, we're you're a game member. Now you're no longer my family, you know what I mean. So when you hang out with these people, you're just looking at them as every day family and friends, so you don't see it as how the rest of the world may have seen them. So when a situation occurs where you get seen with them or something like that, they automatically think, oh, well, you must be a game member also because you're with these people but they don't realize, Hey, this is my family and that's where you live. You know what I mean. This is where I live. This is the people I grow around. We hang out sometimes. That doesn't mean that I go do things that they may do, you know what I mean. And it's geography, I mean, it's a big part of it. And that's one thing I do want to talk about before we get into the crazy details of your case and the twenty two years that you guys spent in prison for something that should have been clear from the very beginning that you didn't do in the very dramatic way in which it came to light as a guy who was about to be executed reiterated what he had said all along, which was that you guys weren't the guys that he was. And he was executed, of course, for a separate crime that he committed, which he should have been in prison in the first place for this crime, and that person would have been killed, and that was a terrible, brutal, brutal beating crime, a beating murder of a clerk in a convenience store. But Tulsa has a particular significance because of the fact that going back well a hundred years now, right, Tulsa was the sort of the epicenter of black culture in the United States. It was it was called the Black Wall Street, right, yes, ninety one. And I don't think a lot of people are really as familiar with that history as they should be. But it was the place where you had a higher percentage of African Americans who were doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, professional scholars. Um. It was the place um to be really um. And and then that terrible day happened. They call it the race riots, but in fact it wasn't a race. There was a massacre and a mass lynching. Yeah, um. And it's really one of the most shameful days in the history of America when you think about it, What can you explain what happened in that situation because you're you obviously know the histories very well. From what I understand, a white woman got an elevator along with a black man, and yeah, it was a black man named Dick Rowland. And that's partially why the whole incident of the nineteen twenty one race massacre happened. You know, after they get an elevator, no one really knows what happened because only those two were in there, and when the elevator came it opened, she came running out, crying and yelling and welling. And you know, no one really knows what happened while it was innovator in an elevator, but after that, you know, that's where it just it went crazy. Well what happened. What happened was he was arrested based on her complaint to the authorities. Now, it is an elevator ride. There's a limit to how much can happen in an elevator ride. It wasn't even a skyscraper, right, we're talking about nineteen twenty one. But then he was arrested and a lynch mob formed, and the sheriff wouldn't allow the mob to take this guy out of jail, this rolling guy, and and kill him. And because of that, the anger grew and welled over into this riot that involved burning down over a thousand homes, killing over three hundred African American people, destroying basically every black owned business in town, and turned what was this sort of oasis of culture and community into literally a wasteland. You had families that were missing fathers and mothers, You had you know, hundreds of dead bodies and basically all the businesses destroyed, and so it's it's important to reflect on that as we fast forward to the time that you guys grew up in in the eighties and nineties, where Tulsa had become a very violent or that area of Tulsa that you lived and had become a violent ghetto, you know, And there's at least a case to be made at gangs may have originated as a means of community members trying to protect themselves from this sort of a massacre. Let's not forget there were machine guns involved right back then, there were people spraying like government people with the flag. Yeah. So I mean, it's really impossible to overstate the horror of what happened. But you know, and no one's trying to justify gang behavior and what it's becoming the modern day. But when you look at the history, it's sort of it does put a certain you know, context in it that's important for everyone to be aware of. So, so let's fast forward to September tenth, nineteen ninety four, which is a day that nineteen year old woman named Karen Summers was fatally shot in the back and two young men, sixteen year old men boys were injured, both of them shot, Alonzo Johnson and Kenneth Price. And it seemed like originally they found the right guy, but they how did it get so screwed up where they had? And this always makes me crazy and I didn't even go through it. But they originally targeted Michael Wilson, who was the actual perpetrator, but somehow or other, its shifted to you guys. What happened and Marco Wilson he also got caught with the murder weapon and the car used in this drive by. And that's why it get crazy when it shift shifts to us, you know. So wait, so this crime, this really came with instructions, right, I mean, you're right out of the police academy. This one's like a gift here, right, I got the whole thing for you on a silver platter. Yes, So why would they go off that they got the guy? Why did they particularly want you guys? For some reason? I believe that Michael Wilson was an informant and once he got caught, you know, they didn't want to let him go away. They want to still use him. But once he caught that other case, too much later. That's when you know they couldn't deny, okay, we can't save him now. They were willing to turn a blind eye to the murder of Karen Summers as well as the shooting of these two other young men who hopefully recovered, and they were willing to allow this guy who they knew was a killer to stay on the streets just to protect their own well it's for their convenience, right that they wanted to continue to use him as an informant. And on top of that, those were black kids. They had incurred that, you know, the crime was committed against black so it was black on black black and he was black, that the kids were black, they were shot. You guys were black. So it was kind of like everybody's kind of disposable, including YouTube guys who are going to go to prison for the rest of your life. Yes, So was it Wilson that decided, Hey, I'm gonna save myself and just give up a couple of names of guys I know from the area, or how did that? Do you understand how that happened? I think, uh, me myself, I believe that they had made some mistakes with Wilson, like I think they had went into his house illegally got the gun. You know, they had made a lot of formal mistakes. I believe that hadn't they not allowed him to cooperate with them, and they would have basically destroyed the case because I think like if they had not been able to go in there, into his house and get that murder weapon, they wouldn't have been able to go into his car, they wouldn't have any of that evidence. I think that they've been able to use but once they did it without any type of searching seizure, because there was never any searching seizure or anything to go in his house and get that murder weapon, you see. So I truly believe like the police that made a lot of mistakes within the case that they wanted to cover up and they would have lost the case had they not allowed Michael Wilson to cooperate and help them bring someone else into the case, you know, because we've seen them that night. That was a perfect opportunity for them to use us. And the bullet recovered from the body of the victim, well, they're three victims, but the woman who was murdered, Karen Sommers that was traced or matched with the gun that was used and the shooting right, so again another bull's eye, so to speak, of evidence. And then they found around a way around that right by by saying that that he has lend you the bullets. Mean, lad me three bullets, And I don't understand, like three bullets. Three victims and three bullets, but he had gave me the bullets. And you know, it still doesn't make sense. Is that like a common thing for someone to just give somebody some bullets like here like under the Christmas tree or how does that even that? I don't even understand that, Like, here's three bullets, and that's what he said, three bullets. He gave me three bullets, and you just had three lucky shots. Three lucky shots. There's only three you needed. That's all I needed. Were you like an expert marksman at seventeen years old? Had you been in in the military? Never? Never? Right? I know, that's just ludicrous. Yeah, the whole thing is, I mean, it would be funny if not for the consequences not only to you, but to the other victim, which is again and I talk about this all the time on the show A rafal conviction, the idea that Wilson was free after period of time and went off and committed this, this gruesome murder where he beats literally beats somebody, literally beat somebody death with a bat ball bat and and it was just a clerk in a convenience store. This was, like, I mean, nobody deserves that favor. This is an innocent person who is he and his family and his friends, everybody are victims in this, in this in this sort of uh, this conspiracy to frame you guys. Yeah, I mean there's not It's not only you and your families that are victimized a society, right because that that guy working in the store, who knows what he was going to go do with his life, right to be left behind a wife and two children. Yeah, Okay, that's really to think about. Remember, Yeah, what I mean, it's it's sort of I don't doesn't listen. There's a lot of things in the world I don't understand, especially these days, but that's one of them. I don't understand how people can sleep at night when they go around and I'm speaking specifically in this case about the the police and the prosecutors um and I always say on this show. There's a lot of good police and a lot of good prosecutors out there, but the bad ones do a tremendous amount of damage, and the ripple effect of that damage can be felt throughout the community, and it puts everybody at risk. When this, when this is allowed to this stuff, it's allowed to continue and it and it does and it's it's horrible. So you guys, now you find yourselves arrested in charge with this murder. Did you have alibis? Did you have I mean, I'm assuming you had public defenders in the case, right, Oh, yes, yeah, definitely public defenders and I did have alibi. We both had alibis. I'm actually pretty good alibis. I mean people who are citizens, never being convicted of any crimes or anything. And my attorney never even called them up there to testify for us. He told us, who, you probably won't even really need them, you know, they don't really have nothing known. You guys won't really need the witnesses who could make sure that you don't go to prison for the rest of your life. Nah, that would be like white. I mean, it sounds like a lot of extra time. Guy probably had places to be you know what I mean, and I don't understand it, but you know, I mean, and you're you're living through this as I mean, still you're you know, you're you're closer to uh, I mean, you're you're halfway between the child and the man at that point, right, because we know that that the brain, the adolescent brain, doesn't fully form until twenty five years old, so you're eight years away from that, and this whole thing is spinning around you. And you got this lawyer telling you, I mean, did you let me ask you this tobic defender? Yeah it was he represents. Yeah, we had two different ones, but they was both trash and you were you were tried together. Yes, Um, so you had two public defenders who were useless. Um, I don't really understand how who in which my public defender, Stephen Sewell, after I got found guilty, he went over and worked for the district attorney. Well, there does raise a couple of interesting Oh yeah, yeah, those crushes. Right. I truly believe there was a lot of you know, little shady deals and things going on up under the table, behind the scenes. I mean, I mean, just as much as I was saying earlier about a lot of mistakes that the police had made and were covering up. I mean, once you've made a mistake like that and then this guy that you let out goes and you know, murders the guy in cold blood beats him to death, you have to continue to charade. You cannot admit, now, well we made a mistake on these other guys and let him out to do this, right, You can't. You can't admit that to the public. Was the guy who was killed? Was the guy's name was killed in the store? Richards Richard Jost? Was he white or block? He was white? Right? Even worse for them than right, because now they're responsible for the death of of of a white citizen. Right. Yeah, And it's back to the Tulsa thing, which is such a strange place when you look at it at the history. So oh yeah, So at that point you were really I mean, here, isn't that ironic too, because here you got this guy who two months and it sort of reminds me of the Central Part five case in a certain way. But two months after you guys are wrongly arrested and they ignore the fact that they knew because they knew, they knew Wilson was a guy O. They definitely know they definitely knew this. Like I said, this one was obvious as obvious as could be, and not just in hindsight, but right at the time. So you would think in an objective way that once this, once you guys found out that he had gone on and killed this guy Yost, you would go, well, okay, that proves that this guy was the guy and we should be going home now. But in fact it actually had the opposite effect because it caused them to dig in deep, predict, their heels in deeper into this false narrative that they were promoting, and so it actually was even worse than the fact that this guy had gone and committed this other horrible crime. And on top of that, ten months prior to that, this whole incidents with Karen simm and Michael Wilson, I was shot. I got shot ten months prior to that. How that happens. I was at an old It was a club called the Wagon Wheel, and it was a lot of older people and an old man. Some youngsters. Some young guys robbed this old man, and the old man came back and shot the club up. That's at least one of the stories I heard. I've heard many stories of who shot that club up that night. So I just came in guns blazing into a dark It was a drive by. And to this day, I don't know what happened or who who did it. But you know, I had a colost to me back, you know, I wore a colost to me back for three years. And you know I had a brace on this arm over here, and they took muscles out of my leg to put in my stomach, and a tracheost to me and all that. So fast forward to the time of the crime. When they arrest me, I'm in no physical condition to you know, du get around or do nothing barely, you know, I can. I have a brace on my arm. I'm sixty three, one hundred and sixty three pounds soaking wet, you know, and I'm not healthy. You know, I'm barely walking. I had to learn how to walk. I was in the hospital for three months, and you can tru check the records, but I was in the hospital three months, you know. And two months after being released from the hospital, they took the pins out my arm because I had pins on my arm and I had a brace when I was arrested. I had a brace on my arm and they told me I couldn't wear this brace in the county jail, so you know, my arm is you know, they actually wanted to cut my arm off. My mom and told him, no, don't cut my baby's arm off. So you know, and that's on top of everything else. Cut your arm off, cut my arm off, yes, because it's inconvenient to have you in there with the brace on. Yes. And it just so happened Malcolm this night that this when I was shot, Malcolm was there and his cousin, Big Marlon Williams, and they saved my life. You know. They picked me up with me in the back of Marlin's car, was headed to the hospital. Saw amby lamps flagged him down and you know, and that saved my life. So you were shotting the stomach in the arm, yes, and he's you guys. You can't see it on the on the radio obviously, but he just showed me the scars and there that's no joke. I mean, it wasn't a grazing wound. It was like this is I mean, you were really shott. I'm not sure I've heard five, I heard seven, two different caliber gun. So I'm not sure. Oh my god, you don't even don't have too many times shot shot twice. Yeah, so this guy came like spraying ball. Yes, it was definitely it was a real drive by. Whoever opened that door he was gonna shoot him. And because like when the door opened, because I think you were in front of me and I was behind him, and it was like it was an older, older guy coming out too, and as we're all going out, as soon as the door opened, we heard the shots. It was immediate thing, you know. So when he was shot right there in the door, because he was the first one out the door, and I remember standing behind him because I had got shot in the leg. You got your two. Yeah, I didn't get none of what he got. I just got basically it went in and out the leg. He got shot with basically most of everything. And then there was another older guy that was coming out with us he got shot also. It was like three people got shot. People got shot in because he didn't. It wasn't so much as a drive by. He actually stopped the car like when that door came open. Because when the Marco got shot, he fell into the door. He didn't realize that he didn't know. I can probably tell your story better because he was unconscious, Like he fell right there in the door once he got hit, so the door, his body kept the door open. So once the dude continued to shoot whoever was out there, because it's a small little dance floor that's like right there in front of this little you know, a little juke joint, you know what I mean. And uh so everybody who was out there kind of basically on that dance was probably some of those eleven people that got shot because the dude was still shooting into the door. Once he fell into the door, fell with the door and held the door open with his body. The guy was still shooting, and you had some some couple of months there, Jesus Christ. Most of you guys, you go to trial and your attorneys at dumb and dumber basically right basically, Well, and that's being kind because we don't know that one of them wasn't at least one of them wasn't on actually making a deal because he worked in a disattorney's office. After I I can convicted, right kind of like thanks, I think originally we had Steve sewell together, we had the same attorney together originally, I guess, and then un once he went on further, they separated it and they brought on Michael Harris, who was my attorney, and he took over my part of our case. I think Steve Sewell did his part. And they were supposed to work together. We still want to try together. You know, they were having issues where they weren't even really wanted to work together. Like I said, it was really you know, kind of let's push these guys under the rug. Let's get them out of the way. You know, we don't we don't need this type of you know, bad publicity upon this, especially this serious death penalty case, which was Michael Wilson. You know, that kind of took over as a more serious case because you know, of course it was a death penalty situation, and you know, it was here was this guy who was a clerk at a you know, convenience store to lose his life, a wife and children, small children left behind. So it was more of a storybook for people to want to look at and for them to admit, hey, we let this guy out to do this. You know. I think that that that in itself was very, very I think important and key in the in their pursuit to make sure that they convicted us. And you know, I can't let this go without talking about the fact that in America, the I don't have the exact statistics in front of me, but the odds of a of the death penalty being uh, of the sentence being given of death when it's a black perpetrator and a white victim are exponentially higher than if it's the other way around, or even if it's black on black or even white on white crime. Um. And that's something that persists from you know, uh, from from back in the day, and it's it's, uh, maybe, look, we should have a death penalty anyway in my opinion, but um, but certainly it's not. It's not uh, meeted out in a manner that is fair. Um, if there could even be such a thing, you know, it has a it has a clear racial bias, and um, it's not it's not something that anybody of good conscience should be okay with. And I always say to people, when I talk to somebody who's in favor of the death penalty, my thing is, well, what percentage of innocent people are you okay with executing? Oh? No, no no, No, I'm executing people I don't know. Well. But but you now, I'll say to somebody who had this conversation with somebody recently, but you know the system doesn't work. Oh yeah, yeah, but the system not doesn't work that good, or there's a lot of corruption. Okay, So then I'll go back to the same question. What percentage of innocent people are you okay with? Is it ten percent? Is it one percent? Which people? How do you like? Because you can't you can't look at it any other way. The system on. Somebody say, oh, we've got to fix the system, wouldn't Yeah, okay, it's what are you talking about. It's so broken and it never could be could be fixed, you know. It's it's impossible to have a perfect system, even if everybody is doing their job the way they're supposed to. Even if you had in your case, you hit the jackpot, right, the reverse jackpot, because you had you had cops and prosecuts who were willing to lie and cover up and and uh and do whatever they had to do. Um and you had incompetent defense attorneys. If all those things didn't line up, I can't believe that you guys would have been convicted. Oh no, no, because I mean even if you had, and what were these the witnesses who were prepared to testify as to your both of your alibis. Were they in the court in the courtroom, they were right there, right there. Yeah, so it would have been as as as difficult as uh, I would like to call the witness your honor. Okay, that would have been it. And the next thing you know, they would have been on the stand going on. I know Malcolm was over at my spot or whatever the hell it was, right, but it was too much trouble for the defense attorney. I mean, were you when when this was going on? Were you there like elbowing your guy going hey hey Carl? Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I gave him, I gave him the fool names of everyone. No. But I mean when you're in the courtroom, right, you're you're you're experiencing this, this horror show unfolding in real time. You know the rest of your life is at state. You're seventeen years old, and and you know the witnesses are sitting right behind you. Are you able to actually tell your attorney, hey, I want you to call Yes, Yes, I told seuld, Hey, hey, call this person here, called Melissa Shields. She was there. She you know, he didn't call none of the people, my brothers, you know, all these people who was there at my house, you know, Laurie Omen, all these different witnesses who were there in the courtroom, at least five or six people that they could have called. He didn't call any of them, even though you were telling them, yeah, call him. And I'm telling hey, right there, you know, he said this here. That's not true because I'm writing stuff down at you know, or whispering and is there that's not true. He said this here. You know, call this person, this person right here. They can you know, they can tell you the truth. Basically, this is like, I mean, I think everybody's had that dream in their life at least one of drowning. Right. This is literally like you're watching yourself drowning in real time. And so this whole procedure took. How long trial was bad today? I want to say three? Was it three? The last was they deliberate for nine hours? They deliberated nine hours nine hours? Was the jury? What was the makeup of the jury. It was all white, one black? Was it the old lady. Yeah, I remember. It was an old lady. I remember because they asked her some questions and they asked her and she said, yeah, I volunteered tear for the police department. I do some kind of volunteer work for the police depart And they still allowed her to be up there. So, like my lawyer was like, this is the best we can get. So the one black juror worked for the police department that she was a volunteer. She said, she did volunteer work for the police. This was our one black juror, you know what. And I'm like, aren't you going to be trying to get rid of her? She's saying, she's well, she's the only black up there. It's all we got. And I'm like, that's not helping us, Like I mean, that's gonna make it worse if anything. Like wow, that's just really And she did some more volunteer work for the police department. By convicting you guys, right, so then this trial, you know, it's it's amazing when you look at the elapsed time in the different areas, Right, So you're in jail for over a year waiting your trial, and then the trial takes two days, maybe three days. Nothing, It's gone in a blink of an eye. I mean civil trials take a lot longer than that. So two or three days you're in court. So the jury goes out and they're deliberating. Did you think you had a chance in hell of being exonerate or were you basically at this point, like I said, we're done me personally. You know, I believe that I was innocent. So I was like, ain't no way that they can convict us even though all this evidence is against us. We were innocent. We were innocent. What about you, Malcolm? Did you believe in the system even before this? And when they went out? I mean, were you guys able to talk to each other? Yeah? We were well, we were sitting waiting for the jury's deliberation. I think we rubbed there together. Yeah, I mean I felt like, and why they not to cut you off? But why they We was waiting on them today to deliberating. They came back and told us that, you know, we can settle out for some time. They offered us a deal. Why are we waiting on a jury to deliberate? What was the deal? I remember they came back with eight years for me. And you too. No, they never came to me with eight years. Why they deliberate? They came. They wanted me to test. They wanted me to say Malcolm did it. Oh yeah, why they deliberating. They kept trying to get him to to take me down. You know. I think it was because the evidence was looking funny, so they were really pushing for him to you know, kept giving him offers of smaller sentences, but he wouldn't take it right. And isn't that interesting too, because if they actually thought that you were a murderer, there isn't no way to go off for you eight years. So they arrested you for a crime and that they didn't come at then, didn't want to cut your arm off, And now they're trying to get you to cut your friend off in a symbolic way and still go to prison for you years. Yeah, it's like, oh, and by the way, we have something behind door number three. So so you didn't take the deal obviously, and the jury comes back in and what was that moment like if you can explain for each of you guys, I mean, obviously the worst moment of your life. And they come back in I'm assuming they didn't look at you, and you probably had a sense when they came in, But can you paint a picture of the courtroom? Was it hot? Was the coal? Was it noisy? Was it people there? What was the whole scenario? Trying to put the audience into your shoes as best as you can. For me, that was the longest few minutes ever, you know, waiting for them to give the verdict, and when they came back with a guilty verdict, you know, it's like everything stopped. I'm moving in slow motion and it just I'm watching people. I'm looking around my family. They're crying, and you know, it's it's warm in there. It got warmer, and you know, something dropped. I don't know if it was, you know, my heart, but I it was. It was a terrible moment for me, but I didn't cry. You know, I felt like I had to stay strong for my family that was looking. But you know it was it was heartbreaking. I mean for me, Like I'm gonna be honest, like just talking about it right now, my heart is beating fast just bringing back that memory, you know, of a day in my life that I'll never ever forget. I mean, I don't know I felt like every like bow movements and everything were better to just give away. It was almost like when that last breath of life goes out of a person and they lose all, you know, I mean, control of their bodies or something, and it's like I felt that way. It was like my life had just ended, and I was looking at me and seeing it, and I was saying, like, why is this happening? This isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do with this. How is this possible? How is this possible? Is what I kept saying to myself and thinking as my heart was beating so fast, and I'll never ever forget that moment. And then it gets it just wanted you think it can't get worse, it gets worse because you guys were sayingced to life in prison plus one hundred and seventy years, which is you know, I don't I mean, I don't understand our system. What do you need? Life plus? Does that mean in case you come back to life, you go back in another hundred and seventy years? That what is one hundred and seventy years? How long were you guys expected to live? I mean, and so so now off you go to prison um maximum security prison obviously right for this time in Oklahoma? Yes, And is that is? That? Was that As bad as it sounds, it was worse. It was worse. When I pulled up at the prison, someone was being executed. It was real quiet. And when I saw the prison, it looked like death. Looked like death. So you know, I'm looking at this place, McAlister, you know, I'm like, whoa, you know, this is where I'm fed to have to be. You know. It was a terrible feeling. Yeah. I think it was because of the fact that we had to automatically go to a maximum security prison. So we had to go to basically the worst prison in Oklahoma at the time. You know, at eighteen years we had finally turned eighteen and so we were basically still kids and we were stepping into the worst prison system, you know, praised prison in that uh state. And so you know, of course, it was definitely fear and you know, confusion and concern and worry of you know, what may happen. But you know, and it's like now you're going to this this mind of Okay, I gotta. I gotta survive, I gotta, I gotta make it through this, you know. And and there's no one else that's gonna protect me. There's no mom, mother, there's no daddy, there's no no one, no this you. So now you have to at eighteen, be you know, the man you know of yourself, like you have to be the pure protector of you. There is no one else there for you with yourself, and you have to step into that and realize, I may have to face this for the rest of my life. And and you know the painted picture, the Marco's a big man, sixty three. But you were in a week in state obviously because of your injuries. Haven't been shot however many times. And Malcolm, you're you're a guy who's in shape, but you're not a particularly physically imposing guy and not like a large, large guy. And even if you were, it doesn't even matter from what I understand, right, I mean, you're gonna be You're gonna be faced with terrible situations and they're regardless. Yeah, the size isn't in so much work. I mean, keep in mind, though I was eighteen then, I'm forty one years old now I've grown and a lot of what I put on right now, the muscle I put on has come from years and years you know, exercising and and building. But at that time I was a kid coming straight from the streets, basically sitting in a county jail land on the bump, So there was no none of the physical physique or anything like that. So you have to basically go on, you know, just coming in with your heart and even in there like a guy with shards that don't even means they're going to bring three or four of them instead of just one when they come for you. And you know, size and things like that don't really come into play when you got these guys with shields and knives and stuff coming at you. So I mean, in the system, you know, size of your physique, I don't think it's more important than really your heart and using your mind and being able to overcome the fear of you know, anyone out there, and being ready to protect yourself in whatever situation may occur. Well, first of all, it's incredible at you guys survived this ordeal um twenty two years in places like that, but it also is a very unusual and uh I think important story for people to hear of how the legal process unfolded that resulted in you being here right when when if it was up to the authorities, you would have died in prison sooner or later. And it involves a number of things that are remarkable, right, including the witnesses recanting right. Um, And you know, we know that that's not as uncommon as people think. But you know, and of course it's worth talking about the fact that in over half of all the wrongful, all the exonerations, the thousands of exonerations that have happened in this country now, over half of them involved police and prosecutori misconduct. So we probably shouldn't be shocked by that. We have scandals going on right in New York State right now. So because you had your you had your convictions upheld on appeal two years after you went to prison, and by now m Wilson had been sentenced for the other beating right here, the sentence to death. Was he in the same prison as you guys, Well he was, but you know it's underground mccallis. They have a death row. It's underground, underground, yes, yeah, he was separate, you know, has their own unit. They keep up it's like literally a dungeon. Yes, literally, so you get your conviction upheld. Did you guys think you had a chance of beating the rapp the second time around? Well, for me, I know at the time, you know, when I went in there, I wasn't aware of the appeals process and it was to the next day, you know when some of the older guys in the county jail told me that. So while I'm in the county jail, I mean, while I'm in McAlister, you know, I'm going to the law libraria. I'm writing lawyers and letters to whoever and whoever I could think of, whoever I think that could help me. I'm writing letters. So you know when they when they came back and they said that the sins was upheld, you know, it was discouraging. But at the same time, you know, I don't want to die in prison, so I had to continue with, you know, striving for freedom. So that's the writing letters, me going to the law library, you know, me working out. You know, you want to keep your your your body, you know, it's your temple, so you want to stay as healthy as possible. So you know, it was a lot of things that contributed faith. You know, it was my faith because I felt that, you know, the horror of being didn't allow me to live through getting shot all those times just to come to prison, you know, with a life in one hundred and seventy years to die there. So it was it was faith. And I want to get to Williams and Price, the two guys who falsely testified against you, and how they recanted another thirteen years later in twenty and ten. But before we do that, man, how did you I'm always in awe of the you know, the strength of the human spirit that's personified by every single person that sat in those shares that you guys are sitting in now. Um, but how did you manage to maintain hope and in a truly hopeless situation? I mean, there really was no a rational person. It seems like would just be like fuck it, I can't you know what I mean, Like, you know, and a lot of people do give up in there, right, yeah, they do. I mean, and I think that was one of you know, it's good that you said that, because I think that's one of the things that you know, kind of gave me, you know, that that that willpower is well that was one of the things I think contributed seeing the results of the guys who gave up. You know, I've seen I've watched a man, old man after being in prison for you know, thirty forty years, who had given up and he finally died in there and just watching him, you know, will him out on a gurney. And I think just seeing a lot of things like that was like, I can't go out like that. I refuse to allow this to happen. And and another thing I think that was very important for me was my family. Like I have a I got twelve brothers and sisters, and uh, you know, growing up with my family, you know, we didn't have a lot, but we had each other. And I think that's what made us closer because we didn't have a lot, so we had to make our own fun and games, you know what I mean. So it made us closer. And I think even me going inside, you know, I had to look back out there at my family and the support that they had given to me. You know, they never you know, like my mother, you know, uh, like she was my biggest champion, Like she's my biggest fan, Like she never once waved the eye and said, I don't believe you, or you are you sure you didn't have something? You know? It was no question there. It was like when I told her, when I sit down and told her in the county jail, I said, Mama didn't do it, like I didn't have anything to do it with it. And it's like she would always knew, like Mom, knew you're lying. I'm gonna get your butt, you know what I mean. So I was just like, I'm just gonna tell her the truth. But she never once said, you know, are you sure or I think you might? You know, it was okay, So I'm gonna be here for you. And it was never she never changed from that. You know, even times that I would be like, Mama, don't know if I can do this anymore, She's, well, you gotta keep fighting, you gotta keep fighting, you gotta keep believing, she said to me. She said, God helps those who help themselves. And if and if you want some change for yourself, you can have to start doing the things that you need to do to help yourself. Reach out to the right people, connect to the many people as you possibly can. Don't never be afraid to humble yourself and ask for help, you know, And she stood behind me that whole time, and and her encouragement helped me to write people like the Innocence Project and and all these different people. I got turned down a lot, you know, but we never we never gave up. We never gave up, you know. And I think my faith and my family are like two of the strongest pillars for me to help me get through that situation. So fast forwarding to two fourteen, you guys file the petition and seeking a new trial with the recantations of the state's key witnesses, whose names were Williamson Price. They had originally testified that they saw you guys in the car, which which the authorities knew wasn't your car, it belonged to the killer, Wilson. So they had recanted in two thousan ten and said that in this will surprise no one who's a listener of the show, that they had the police had threatened to convict them on other charges unless they falsely identified you guys in the first place, So they had finally recanted. So two fourteen is a crazy year, you know. You have Michael Wilson finally executed, right, um, And as much as I'm opposed to the death family doesn't sound like society's going to miss him very much. But I am opposed to the death penalty, and I make that very clear. I don't think that killing justifies killing, and I don't think the States should be in the business of killing. So um. But he's executed, and this is where it's almost like a Hollywood script, right, because he has now confessed to the crime in detail, has said over and over again that you guys didn't do it right, yes, and the other witnesses have recanted. He gets executed and goes to his death and his last words are you know, he's repeated what he's been saying all along, you guys didn't do it. Now he has very little motivation at this point, like what's the difference. He's going out, but you're still sitting in prison. Yes, must be confusing as hell when you're sitting there and the whole case against you has completely unraveled, and now you actually had proper representation on top of that. Right, So besides Eric Cullin, who was an investigator who was representing you guys now Oklahoma Innocence Project who got involved in two thousand and eleven when Oklahoma got an Innocence Project. Our case was the first case that they took. Wow amazing. At the time, I had a lawyer hired, and I didn't know how you know, a lot of legal things work. I don't know if it's gonna be a conflict of interest or anything. So I contacted my attorney first and was telling him about the letter, and he was immediately on board, like, yes, you need to get with these people. These people have a lot of influence, they have a you know, a lot of connections. You should you know, you know, allow them to come on board as well, because they can reach places that I can't. He was a local attorney, you know, you know, I didn't pay a lot of money for him whatever, but he was trying to help me as much as he could. And he was like, I'll even go and you know, speak to him on your behalf, show him a lot of the evidence that I had. He had the you know, the witness, the testimonies from the recantations of Rashawn Williams and and Keen Price or whatever, and so he went and you know, talked to the Innocence Project on my behalf and presented a lot of the evidence that he you know, he had been gathering itself, and you know, they came back and was like, hey, we're gonna help you guys. We're gonna you know, jump on board and try to see what we can do to help you guys as well. And from that point there they kind of just you know, kind of took control. What an amazing turn of events that is. Yeah, and when Michael Wilson, he said, Malcolm Scott and DeMarco Carpenter innocent, and he said it on video on video. Then he said when he was executed, and then it took two years after that, which is really crazy. And he and he explained the whole thing. He said the shooting was in retaliation for an earlier incident when he had been shot. He explained who else was in the car with him. It was the guy's Albertson and Hard Joe. And finally we get to May two thousand and sixteen. So this has now been almost twenty two years. You guys have been in prison because nineteen ninety four, two sixteen, the matter is not tricky, and you end up back in court. This is the flip side, right, This is the I mean the proverbial. I call it a happy ending because we know how many challenges there still are in front of you guys. And what was that like? So you come back to court, it's it's May May of two thousand and sixteen, May ninth. I think it was whatever, um, And did you did you know you were going to be released or was there still an element of suspense in the situation? Now, well, we didn't know it. I believed it, but we didn't know it. You know. Yeah, the suspense was definitely still there. I mean because I mean we were looking at you know, if they could do it this time, you know, we're always going to be until the judge I had already said, I mean, until the judge actually says, you know, you're innocent and free to go. I was gonna be like, please, please, please, please please let this go right this time. So, yeah, the suspense was definitely still there for me. I was still having my concerns because you gotta remember, I mean, if it was so preposterous that this could even happen to us after them, after all this evidence and stuff that they had on this other person, and they still took us down. So in my mind, it's like it's nothing that I could put past these people, Like, I can't say for sure that this is going to happen, you know what I mean? So, so explain that moment now. Because we talked about the moment of absolute shock and horror and the worst moment of your life. I'm assuming this was the best moment of your life or both of your lives. Um, I see you both nodding. Yeah. I couldn't imagine anything could be better. So and you were there together in court, Yes, just like back twenty two years ago, except the opposite. So what was that moment? Like families back in the courtroom, it's almost like a mirror image of the other one different judge though this one here, I got to say, I think I was sharing this with somebody else. I don't know if you guys remember whether the show where the old cold case where they the old cases. I always come back and they'll kind of run through it where they'll show the guy when he was young and then show him when he's old. It kind of felt like that for me in that scene because you could see, like when my lawyer got up there, he had looked a lot older. When Ken Price got up there, he looks a lot older, Like everybody looks. You can tell these are the same people, but they're a lot older. I've aged and you've aged, and I'm looking around the scene, you know what I mean. And and so when it finally gets to that point where the judge, you know, because she read off a lot of different things where she was like, no, I ain't I'm not giving you this, I'm not giving you that. And I was like, well, wait a minute, this isn't sounding good, sounding good at all. She's denying a lot of our stuff, like yes, okay, hold up, you know what I mean. But then when she finally got to the to the biggest one of the new evidence and things like that, and she kind of stopped there and went on a longer speech about that last one. And so as she started to speak about that one, I kind of felt like, okay, we might we still got this chance. And when so when she finally said, you know, at this moment, I want to find these these men. You know he's actually innocent, And like I just looked at my mom and it was just like man, and she looked at me and it was like we both it was like a tear dropped at the same time for us, but it was like finally and she was like, yes, you're coming home. And it was like she had never once said I don't think you're going to make it out of there. No matter how sad I would get, no matter how upset, she would be like, you're coming home. You're coming home. And at that moment when she said finally you're coming and I just like, it was like the biggest release I think for me, like it was a big release, like I could finally breathe again and say I have life again. I have life back in be It was an amazing moment, you know that I'll never ever forget in my life. And then I was glowing inside. I was glowing, you know. I don't know what nobody else seemed, but I felt it. Said wow. And then when I finally got outside and I was able to look up at the sun and just the sky, it was beautiful. Yeah, indeed, what do you do? What? What was the first thing and you got out? We get something to eat? Did you go a tree like the lawyers? We went with the lawyers and we went to some restaurant with all our family and I didn't even eat, you know, I was too exp I didn't even eat that. I think I took me a lap around the parking lot. I took a lap around the parking lot. I was just like, I can do this, you know what I mean, Like I'm free, man, Like I can do this now, Like I can just lap around park I can do a limitations, no boundaries, you know. Yeah, And I want to you know, as we come towards the conclusion here. Um. You know, I've been in this doing this work for twenty five years now. One of the two questions that people ask me the most, there's two questions people always ask me. One is what happens to the prosecutors? And the answer is nothing, right, unfortunately, nothing. There's no prosecutorial accountability and whatsoever in this country. It's in saints one of the only professions where you basically have total immunity from no matter what you do. Um, and there's some some crazy cases going on right now where whatever so in Massachusetts and New York, not just in the South. But the other one that everybody always asked me, isn't about compensation. People want to know. They hear these stories and they freak out and they're like, tell me the guy got money or the woman got money. Tell me they got money. And we know a lot of cases people don't get anything. Is there's a really terrible number of cases. There's still eighteen states to have no compensation statutes whatsoever. That's terrible. But but in Oklahoma, you guys didn't didn't exactly get rich off of this either. I mean, and I know you've talked about that before, but can you Oklahoma has a cap on it where they give Axonorees one hundred and seventy five K, which neither one of us received. That. We did receive something something, but due to you know, we get out, you know, loans and you know for cars, and so once we did get the money, you know, I got one hundred and seven thousand, and it should have been a one hundred and seventy five, but I had to pay the loans back, you know. But then I get one hundred and seventy and I am with one hundred and seven thousand dollars. You know, I have no management skills, you know nothing. So you know, I paid off some cars, bought new furniture, and but basically, you know, it's eight months later, I don't have a dime, you know, because I pretty much you know, squandered it, you know, and it was a learning experience. I didn't let it get me down or nothing, you know. I just know I got to work harder and make better decisions in the future. So you can't be killed. And you also, there's nothing that can get you down. I mean, he's in character. No. Life is really beautiful out here, it really is. So you know, it was a learning experience for me. That's how I take it. What about you, I mean, I agree, it was definitely a learning experience for me. Yeah, So I mean I learned from from that situation as well. I mean I still have, you know, a significant amount of money that I'm trying to invest and things like that. I've stayed with employment. I've been working consistently, you know, since I've been free, and trying to maintain that while I go through my process of earning my certification for personal training, like that's my true goal, you know, in my career. And if people if people are listening, some people that are listening or in the Tulsa area. You're still in Tulsa, right, I'm in Houston, Texas. Now, Oh you're Houston Okay. So if people are in Houston, they're going, hey, I'm looking for a trainer. How do they contact you? They can contact me on Facebook, Instagram, I'm on Snapchat. I'm on what's what's your hand on? Oh it's a mister swagger seven six four, mister m I S t R MR s W A g g A H seven sixty four. Okay, that's m R s W A G G A H seven six four. Contact Malcolm and get in shape, yause he's in shape. Let's trust me or he can get me on Facebook. It's just my regular name, Malcolm Scott. Okay, so you know they don't have to go through all the numbers and things if they don't want to. And and the Marco. You're up to some really interesting stuff. Now. So you got a book. I have a book which I brought you know, I wanted you to see it, you know, in person, the manuscript that's typed up. And you know I have I'm a call host of Actual Innocence, a podcast with Brooke Gettings, and I have a podcast documentary called bard Alive. And I've been listening to Bird Alive and Actual Innocence and I recommend both of them highly to anyone who's a fan of this of this genre, anyone who's interested in learning about these situations in these cases, those are two of the best podcasts that are out there. So Buried Alive is one of them, and Actual Innocences the other, both with Brook Gettings, who does an incredible job considering she's all on her own. Um. And so the book is you have a name for the book, Buried Alive? Buried Alive? Is there a way do you want people to contact you? Do you do public speaking and you have a interest from maybe is there somebody's out there, might a book agent, or might be somebody that could help you with that pursuit. So how do people reach out to you? And a goal of mine is I really want to team up with Malcolm and travel around because I'm a I am a motivation to speak. I go to schools and I'm on Instagram Buried Alive twenty two, I'm on Facebook to Marco Carpenter and I'm also I have a goal. I've always had this goal. You know, I was always a hoop star going back to high school, middle school, but I always wanted to play in a celebrity the NBA All Star Game, you know, because it's obvious that I can't go to the NBA now, but the Celebrity Off Star Game, I plan on playing it. I actually got a video on YouTube. It's called twenty two de Marco and my name is spelled d E m A r c h E twenty two to Marco and you can go watch this video. And I also want to do some acting, so if anybody can help me get into the acting business, you know, I'm definitely up for some acting. Okay, so we got Buried Alive twenty two is the Instagram. I know that because I follow you and I'm a you have to today too. Let's Buried Alive twenty two, number twenty two, and then DeMarco Carpenter on Facebook, which is d E m A r c Hoe and then Carpenter. We all know how to spell Carpenter, so everybody listens to show notes how spell Carpenter. So um, So as we wrap up, we have a tradition on wrongful conviction, which is that, first of all, I want to remind everybody someday you may find yourself on a jury. Remember what you're hearing today. Remember that what you're being told may not be the truth, and that the people who are who you trust to tell you the truth may not be acting in your best interests or society's best interests. And you have to be woke. So stay woke and pay attention. I have another question or are just really a statement? And this is this is real bizarre. Malcolm has a brother that's in prison that's been there twenty seven years for murder he didn't commit. He's in the county right now fighting for you know, hopefully he'll be released in September. But you know, what is the odds of having two brothers in prison for something they didn't do? Corey Achs and all evidence is pointed at other people. But you know, Coloring is also Eric Colin is also working on that case as well. I'll talk to Eric about it and we'll see what we could do. So now it comes to time, which is I think probably everybody's favorite part of the show. When I stopped talking and I just turned the microphone over to each of you guys, just for any final thoughts that you want to share, anything at all that's on your mind that you want to share with the audience, because we have a big audience out there, and I know they're gonna want to hear what you have to say. Who wants to go first? Yeah, sure, sure, I like to go first. I just want to like my messages to the youth, you know, I would like to you know, I like to see that. I want the kids to see that I come from this here and I stay strong. You know, I kept the faith, and I just want y'all to know if I can do it, then y'all don't have to go through everything that I went through, the accomplished goals. You know, y'all can do it. You know, just stay stay strong and believe, I said Malcolm. First of all, I just want to say thank you Jason for allowing thank you to come in and talk and tell our story. And I really appreciate what you do. And I also want to say just that I hope that us sharing what we're sharing with you today inspires gives encouragement and inspiration to many people out there, not simply those who are incarcerated for crimes they didn't commit it, but those who may be going through anything, any hardships in life that they feel like there's no way I can get through this because you can. The human spirit is very resilient. It's very very strong, a lot stronger than we realize. I never thought that I was my way back through a life plus one hundred and seventy years. But with the help of really good people like the Innocence Project, Eric Cullen, you know, and guys like that. A lot of these were students who gave of themselves without payment. I appreciate that, and I won't you all out there to know, you know, anytime you may get on a jury or anything like that, know that pay close attention to what's going on. Don't just be so quick to be ready to convict someone or whatever. And that goes for everyday people in society. Pay attention, be awoke, as he said, be aware of what's going on, and know that a lot of these things can happen to people. Innocent people do sometimes get the bad end of the stick, and I need society to really see that and know that, and maybe if more of us are aware of it, will start to do more about it. And that is my mission. It's that we start to do things about it to make a change for the better and give a lot of these guys that come out help give them a better chance for reintegration back into society. Help them, because if you want them to change, if you want them to do better, you have to give them an opportunity to see better things, in a better way of life. And it's me well said Malcolm, and thanks, thanks Jason Adams. Well, I'm just gonna say that this has been an extraordinary experience for me listen to you guys and learning, and I appreciate you being here. I appreciate everybody listening, and this has been a sort of a historic episode of wrong for conviction. So thanks for coming in Malcolm and de Marco and sharing your story. All right, don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Words. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominee composer Jay Ralph be Sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one