In the late 80’s and early 90’s, Stefon Morant and Scott Lewis were selling drugs for organized crime figure Frank Parise. When Frank was set to go away on a weapon’s charge, he asked Scott to take over the drug dealing arm of his criminal enterprise, but Scott wasn’t trying to go deeper into illegal activity. When he refused, Frank tapped a detective he had on the payroll, Vincent Raucci.
On October 11th, 1990, former New Haven, CT alderman Ricardo Turner and his lover Lamont Fields were shot dead in their bed, and Raucci knew just who to pin it on. How would he make it stick? By extracting a false confession from Scott’s good friend Stefon - one he would never sign. His refusal to participate in Scott’s railroading sealed him to the same fate. Stefon was in the Carolinas at the time of the murders, but that didn’t matter. Raucci put the screws to another character in the New Haven drug game, Ovil Ruiz, who would name Scott and Stefon in his false confession in exchange for leniency in his own legal troubles.
With the help of Raucci’s direct supervisor, Detective Sweeney, an FBI investigation, and the tireless aid of some Ivy League law school students under the tutelage of professor Brett Dignam, Scott Lewis would eventually be fully exonerated. However, the District Attorney would only allow Stefon to cop a plea, rather than be declared innocent as well. The man that was targeted for wrongful conviction simply for knowing Scott Lewis is still fighting for exoneration from the outside for the same crimes that Scott was exonerated for in 2016.
The trailer for the documentary “120 Years” about Scoot and Stefon’s case can be found here: https://www.120yearsfilm.com/
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
In the late eighties and early nineties, Stefan Morant and his best friend Scott Lewis were dealing drugs for local New Haven drug kingpin Frank Parissi, who was going away on a weapon's charge. When Paris asked Scott to take a larger role in his business, Scott refused, a decision that would alter the course of his and Stefan's lives forever. On October eleven, former New Haven, Connecticut alderman Ricardo Turner and his lover Lamont Fields were shot and killed while they lay in bed. Now meet Detective Vincent Rauschi, a detective involved in Parisi's drug game who would pin this double homicide on Scott Lewis. For Paris. Roushi put pressure on Stefon to extract the false confession that Stefon would recant the very next day. His refusal to participate in Scott Lewis's wrongful conviction would seal him to the same fate. So now we have a double homicide. Politicians and law enforcement entangled in the drug game of a local Mafio so kingpin, Frank Parizi. But eventually the FBI and a whole bunch of Yale and Columbia law students under Professor Brett Dignam saved the day, bringing down the entire house of cards and setting Stefan and Scott free after they had served over twenty years in prison for crimes that they did not commit. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Fasten your seatbelts and listen up, because the story of Stefan Morant includes a tangled web of a drug gang, a politician who turned up dead with his male lover in his bed, a corrupt detective who was in on the drug dealing as well and who ended up framing you, Stefan not to mention false confession, an incentivized witness who we know now was mentally ill and who lied through his teeth and changed his story multiple times, a mafia kingpin in case all that other stuff wasn't enough for you, and finally, a good judge who ironically was named hate. I mean, you can't even make this stuff up. And our featured guest today is Stefan Rant who lived through this nightmare. So Stefan, welcome to the show. Thank you. So let's go back to the beginning. I mean, this is a Connecticut story and the backs are that on October eleven, former New Haven alderman named Ricardo Turner and his lover Lamont Fields were shot and killed in their bed, and that's where our story starts. So back were a kid, yes, and you were you know, you were hustling right, yes, but you weren't killing anybody, absolutely not. And you certainly weren't killing Ricardo Turner and Lamont Fields. Okay, so how does this start? Because you ended up getting into the cross hairs of a let's say, corrupt detective. I mean corrupt wived be two light of a word for this guy Rouci. I mean you weren't his only victim. There were tons. He's sort of like a character along the lines of that guy out in Brooklyn Um who framed so many of those people. Stefan set the stage for us as to this crazy cast of characters in the New Haven drug market at the time that this double murder went down, because this was a culmination of a lot of other factors. So can you give us an overview. There's a lot of different what you mad call, I guess, organizations, guys um selling on different blocks. I was working with Scott and he was getting drugs from this guy by the name of Frank Parisi from out of the Favorite Heights area. That's who detective she used to work for. I think the reason why me and Scott got framed because Frank was about to go to prison. I think he was sentenced to eighteen years. So he wanted somebody to take over the organization and he picked Scott to take over the organization, and Scott wanted to get out of the drug trade. So Scott said that he would not do it. And next thing you know, me and Scott to be a frame for murder. So how did this cross your consciousness? When did you first become entangled in it? As a young man, I was living with my mother at the time. I happened to call my mother in between seven three and eight o'clock, me and a couple of the guys where we have got to go to a script club. So I just just calling her not to tell I was going to script club. But you just we're not doing that. So she tells me that if someone came by, it was a detective, a couple of them, so she said they wanted me to call. So I was like, I have no problem with calling him, so she gave me the number. Happened to be Detective Rachi and I think it was a detective swinging at the time, which came into case later on. And uh, just probably by the reason why I'm sent before you to day because of Detective Sweeney. That's another part of the story. But um, so I happened to call him. He's asking me because I meet him somewhere, and I said, not a problem. So my court defended Mr Lewis and I and another gentleman. We jumped into a vehicle. We dropped me off at a local gas station round the corner for my mother's home, and um, he started asking me questions. I was hesitant about answering anything because I don't know what's going on. He opened the back door and he thrusted me in. That was the beginning of a nightmare in my life. Um. They took me to the new police precinct, helped me to the Detective Burrow how may there for hours at the time, brought out police reports, statements, loose paper articles and started asking me questions about doing anything about the double homicide. I said, I did not, had you even heard about it in the neighborhood anything. No, I did not. So this is taking you totally off. And you didn't have a lawyer? No I did not. Did you read your right because you weren't a suspect yet, you know, I wasn't suspect, like I said. We were at the house drinking and smoking, so it was a little no nice, you know, before going to the script club. Instead of spending all the money in the script club, we just to get high before. So, um, we're in the police precinct for hours at the time they start threatening me with talking about all you could get the death penalty, we'll put you an out of bond. So I'm looking around, like in a room such as this, one small little room, you know, how do I get out of here? Like if you help us, will help you. We don't want you anyway, we want Lewis. So and Lewis was Scott Lewis correct, Scott Lewis was your friend, my brother, your brother not from another mother an okay? So, and he had not been picked up yet. No, he wasn't. Right. So you're in there by yourself. Obviously a scary situation going on. Un Plus, you were already a little impaired in the first place. That couldn't have helped, although I imagine this would kill your buzz real quick. But still you didn't have all your wits about you. Um. I mean, listen, I would like to go back in time to that day and shake you by the collar and go, dude, call a lawyer, like, tell them you want a lawyer. That's all you had to do, and the question would have had to stop. But you didn't know that because most people don't know. That was one of the reasons why we do the show, because we want to tell people what to do if they got for a bit of end up in a situation like yours. So this question goes on and on and on. You don't even know. You probably have no sense of time at this point. Did you have a watch or anything that was probably got there, Like I said, it was like I didn't get out of there until like probably like five six hours later. After if they gave me all this information, it was recording me, of course, and it kept stopping the tape. That's not how we wanted. We need you to write the statement correctly, stopping the tape starting stopping the tap. After they felt me all this information, so I said, I felt in my best interest on it with him to get out of here is to do what they want me to do. Because the key thing for me was what they said was you, after you write this, you gotta come back. So now I see a way out. Don't see a way out before because they weren't give me a way. I was like, listen, I don't know anything about the crime. I need to leave in let me go. And it was not let me go, which is actually against the law as well. They had to let you go if you have to be let go, like I mean, considering they were willing to break so many other rules, they certainly weren't going to abide by that one either. So so you give a statement, which is a statement that they had basically fed your giving details of the crime that you had no idea about. Correct, but that we're accurate presumably if they fed him to you. Yes, and then of course stopping and starting the tape. I mean, that's right out of a TV show as well. An amateur scriptwriter would put that in there, you know. And so they end up getting what they want. Did they then arrest you or did they send you home? No? They actually let me go. That's crazy to let me told me to come back because I have to signed a statement. So my godmother name is Emma Jones. She was a lawyer at the time, and I immediately went to her home. Um I got there, it was like three four in the morning. She looked at me, and I looked at her, and I told her what I was coming from. And she said, you did not say anything right, And I just put my head down and she said, the first thing in the morning, we're going to get representation. And my cousin, Detective Planto was my father's first cousin. He called my mother and he knew because at the time of the crime, when it actually happened, I wasn't even living here. I was living in South Carolina, actually going back and forth from South Carolina North Carolina. So he was aware that I didn't live here at the time, so he called my mother. I didn't know where we camp meant, so he's like, do you have a statement down here? Tell Steflon coming down here. We can't the statement. We know that he wasn't here. He knew he wasn't here. So I went back to the detective place with my mother a detective came out and he was brought the statement off of me to sign it. I heard over the dispatch because I actually supposed to meet my cousin over there, which you detective Planto, and it was disregard. We got this. So the detective came out, He's like, you have to sign this or so, I'm not signing anything. I said, that's bullshit. I'm not signing it. I'm not signing it because it's a lie, it's false information, it's not true. Like what if you don't sign this, if you could charge with conspiracy? And I mean my mother just she grabbed a pocketbook and we walked out the door. Okay, so this is a bizarre story in a number of levels. One is that they let you go in the first place, instead of making you sign a statement right after you had false to confessed. That's I've never heard that one before. There must have been some reason for it, but I don't know what it was. By now, this is the next day talking about going back to the police station. It was a couple of days later. By now you knew the details of the crime. You knew this was a double murder. You know, the super serious situation. Um probably getting extra attention because of the fact that one of the dead guys, Ricardo Turner, was a former alderman, right, so there was probably pressure to stolve this crime. Um. So now, in these three days that had passed, did you touch base with Scott Lewis? Did you let him know what's going on? Yes? I called him actually probably the next day, and I told him about it. So he actually called the police priesting and called the detective himself and went down there and spoke to him. I don't know what the details of the conversation were, but he went down there himself. So what happens next? How does it progress from here to where you end up getting convicted and serving almost half your life in prison? So what was I doing prior to being convicted? So after leaving the police precinct, I went on with my life. I was I was working. I was working at a piece of place, being a delivery guy. And it detected Rachi. He's like used to follow me everywhere. I moved back and forth, you know, from North Carolina, South Carolina. I moved back down there with me and my kids mother. I formerly got arrested two years later. So this is the crime happened. I got arrested and February nineteen, my kids mother, Christie Sobing, she was pregnant with my sons and we were actually living in favor of North Carolina. Her mother and father came to pick her up in December of nine. Um. She was complaining because I was, of course still in the drug trade. I was going back and forth from North Carolina, South Caronlina trying to make ends meet something a little bit of drugs. So I called her in. Happened to be February, right, my sons was born on Valentine's Day, twins one of the great yeah, one of the greatest days in my life. Of course, it was definitely a blessing. I'm like, I got to get back to Connecticut, right. I didn't have no warrant, didn't have no nothing. The last time I heard from the detectives when I seen him following me around in the piece of place, in other various places like nightclubs and stuff like that. So I didn't see him anymore because I went back down South. So when I get here from my mother home she lives in New Haven, happened to see a K car, you know, police detective car. I just knew, you know what the detective car looks like. So I've seen him, and I just went the opposite way. So I happened to park in my car in the communal lot in Derby, Connecticut, and me and my friend named his name is robbed. After seeing my boys, I was on my way going back to South Carolina. So I was going to pick my car up at the communal lot and I've seen my left tire was flat and it looked crazy. I just felt something. And then I've seen a guy like in the Seville with a newspaper up on his face, like nobody reads the newspaper like that, something's not right. So anyway, I get out of the car. As soon as I get out of the car, police come from everywhere. It's like the scene out of a movie. My sons was in the back, my name was in the back. I was in the front. I got out the detectives. I was like, they asked me what was my name? Myself, of course my name and staff with my random but I said, you guys, I got kids in the car, and you put your guns down. It was like I was in control of the situation. But I wasn't because they put their guns down. I told of my name and the oh you have an arrest want for the homicide? Like what now, I'm arrested for the homicide. Like I believe if I would have never came back to Connecticut because what they was doing, they was about to take Scott the trial. So what they did was rest me so they could put pressure on me. I had to come and testify against Mr Lewis, And that's just that how you say. They tried to put division between both of us, and it didn't work. We both ended up, of course, getting convicted. I never testified on them because I'm not testifying to a lie. But I ended up getting arrested that day. Detective Rocher was the detective that came him and another detective and picked me up from the Orange Precinct. I said him, this bull crap again. So he's like, all we want you to do is tell us that Mr Lewis committed his crime. You could go home, this warrant could go away. Mike, listen, man, what's my bond? I just need to know my bond, That's all I wanna know. Ended up giving my phone call. I called my mother she wasn't home. So I called my aunt, told my aunt about it, and she called my mother let her know. And I was in jail for like a few months, and then my mother she bonded me out. She put her home up in my stay out for an additional two years, and then I went to trial. The whole thing is really surreal. I mean, for a lot of reasons, but also because of in particular because of the elapsed time, right, because I feel like you're listening to you talking about it now, it seems like it was kind of in the tail life. You were going out your life. You're raising your family, trying to make hims meet, doing whatever you can, a little of this, a little legitimate stuff, some other stuff. But you weren't killing anybody. You weren't even hurting anybody. They had another sort of nefarious weapon in their arsenal, which was this and another another name that could only come out of a fictional account, right, This guy Oville Ruise like Oville, Are you getting me with this name? Not? Orville? Oville like evil? And Oval Ruise gave well, let's call it a co werst eyewitness account. He was incentivized, He was coerced they were using the carrot and the stick. He was promised leniency, and according to Ruise, he came up with this story. I imagine the first time you heard about this was a trial. Did you know this Ruise guy? Yes, I knew of him where when we sold drugs he was he used to sell drugs. We used to sell drugs. Yes, we wasn't the best of friends, but I know who he was. So Ruise came up with a pretty interesting story. He said that this alderman, the former alderman, Ricardo Turner, was storing drugs and money for Louis, your co defendant for his operation in the second flour apartment that he lived in, and that he also owed Louis money. So, according to Oval, Ruise, I love saying that name over and over again. On October tenth and eleventh, he claimed that you and Lewis discussed the idea that Turner might take the money and run, and therefore, whui He's rode with you guys to turn his apartment away in the car while you Again this is his account, his false account, but his account. He claimed that, armed with a three fifty seven and a thirty eight, do you guys forced your way into Turner's apartment, murdered he and Fields in their bed, then took the money and the coke got in the getaway car. Now, this would all be a little bit more believable if not for the fact that he was promised leniency if he admitted to being a getaway driver. And you know, he probably didn't even come up with his story. They probably came up and then gave it to him. But whatever, Um, you know, at the time, I'll be going to trial this young kid, what a background in mental health issues. My lawyer at the time subpoena in his records, and this guy was talking, but he see red bean, Um, he see different visions. He's on hollid doll and various drugs for his mental health. So he was not only thrown and thrusted in giving leniency for giving false testimony, but he also was a mental health patient. You know, I don't even understand how to jury believe this guy. So now they had you, guys, they had this guy. They had a false confession. You had no shot at trial. So you go to trial. You're tried separately from Lewis. I have four counts first, I have five counts one count of conspiracy dropped. That to the beginning of the trial too, counts eight into bendon and two counts of felony murdered. So when the jury came back in, did you have any hope that they would come to the right answer? We still believed even after everything that happened, you still believe that justice was gonna win. Out of course I did have hope because I didn't do it. So okay, so take us to that moment. So the jury comes in and they read the charges in order, right, So you've already had the one charge dropped. Now you have the first two charges and they go not guilty. So after that second not guilty, you're You're like, I'm going home, yes, I mean, and then they dropped a bomb on you, and then the literal Bob almost fell over, literally rocked back. I had to catch myself. And then I looked at the Jerry person. Um he like he shook his hand like, yeah, we're convicting you, and then he had read it off again. I looked in his eyes again and then he put his head down. The prosecutor, which is he was just as corrupt as the detective in my eyes, my son's again. He was twins. It was two years old at the time, and um, I didn't see my sons in a while, you know, So I didn't bring me the court. I don't even know I was going to court. The prosecutor rising fruit basket. He puts him on the table. So my mother's there. I didn't know my mother's gonna be there, and my sons are there. So he says to me, you missed this. Of course, what kind of questions? And of course I missed my kids, he said, So what you're gonna do about it? I listen, I told you before, I don't know nothing about this. I'm the same way. I'm looking at my son's right here. Mr Lewis has kids as well. So I'm gonna just take myself and say, okay, I'm gonna lie on the man to take myself out of prison and put him in prison. Possibly I can't do that, and I just can't do that. Did he actually tell you that he was willing to give you a deal if you were testify against Lewis? Or he would just assume that that's what he told me. And what was the deal they offered you? He said, we would work it out. He didn't tell me, well, I'm gonna take thirty five I got seventy years now, thirty five years running wile, which means do this thirty five years and start all over again. So what can you offer me? You can't offer me. No, you couldn't. He couldn't offer me a day because I'm not gonna see here and lying the man for something that I didn't do and he didn't do. It's just not gonna happen. Then that speaks to your character too, because I think there's you know, again, no one knows how you would, hell anyone would deal with the situation like the one that you were in. But you handled it, I mean with courage and um, you know, you did the right thing at extreme cost to yourself. So now you're sentenced to seventy years and you get taken to prison, I mean, how did you get out? And these are the things I want to get to here, because you were there for twenty years, twenty one years and maximum security. Obviously it's felony murder. I believe that my guy made away, you know to me, of course legal things took place, but people came back. Like I mentioned to you earlier, detected Sweeney. He was a great part in this case. He came back after he was in Bosnia in nine nine. He happened to see my case. I was going back for a petition for new trial and um, I had to lawyer by the name of Michael Fitzpatrick at the time, and he said, I got some good evidence that's coming, and um that was It took another two sixteen more years for the court to even listen to him. And this is the supervisor of detective Racci. That's telling you that the two men that you have imprisoned, if you're going by the information that was gathered by Detective Racci and that informat that you had to testify in, these guys absolutely not seen Sween. Sween he came to testify to that. That's so crazy. I'm getting the chills now thinking about it, because here you have a senior official in law enforcement who is coming forward with no motivation. What could his motivation possibly be other than the truth? And they're going, yeah, we're good, like yeah, I mean, he's he's one of the heroes in this story, right, without a doubt. Scott Lewis wrote a letter to the FBI as well about Racchi. They looked into it, and every time they did they would find that things were not as he said they were, but as you guys said they were. They found that Rachi not only framed you and Lewis, but that he framed a number of other people. I don't think we'll ever know how many, because we know when these guys do it, like Scarcella in Brooklyn, they just keep doing it and doing it and doing it as long as they get away with it, which is why it's so important that we tell these stories. And they even brought him back Crouchy, They brought him back to New Haven to question him, but they never charged him. They ended up charging him, this is ridiculous. But they charged him for misbuilding his overtime hours and assaulting his wife, which is a serious crime in my view, and yet he received two years of probation. Um, so he was dealing drugs, framing people for murder, assaulting his wife and uh, he gets two years of probation and you end up with seventy years for a crime you didn't commit. Another hero in this story, and it's it's interesting because it's a New Haven story and along comes a Yale law professor named Brett, Dignham and Richard Mamanuel and a whole bunch of law students right coming in like the cavalry, all from Yale. And that's a pretty good group to have on your side because at Yale they don't mess around. There's no question that you have an incredible amount of brain power and energy to vote to your case. How did they get involved, how they find out about it? They got involved in Scott case actually two thousand and nine and m Brett moved from him. She was a law professor at Yale, and then she moved to Columbia and then they just the students. A lot of the students just went along with her, or she just had some more Columbian students. I'm not really sure of the whole procedure how it went down, but they played a big role in this getting the conviction overturn. And finally a good judge who ironically was named Hate the judge Hate huh with a name but a loving guy. Yeah, Judge Charles Hate, the U S District Judge Charles Hate Jr. Your team wanted ruling in front of Judge Hate that the prosecution had failed to tell the defense and does this heavvy get ready that the key witness over Louise had repeatedly denied having any knowledge of the murders, all of a sudden he had a big memory recall, after he was offered a deal. But it's important to recognize that he was at least initially telling the truth. Doesn't excuse his behavior whatsoever, but it does highlight the lengths that they were willing to go to to get a conviction. And let us not forget that, of course, in your case, like in so many other roblic conviction cases, like whoever it was that went in cold bloodedly gunned these two guys down? But there was one guy, two guys, women. We don't know who it was, right, I don't know if you took this day know who was I don't know what it is. I mean, they have the suspects that they say they have, um, but I don't know if they pushed forward to try to arrest anybody. I mean, I don't wish nothing bad on anybody, but whether it's one individual, two or three individuals still out there. So now, what about our public exactly, Let's just say it's not unlikely that whoever it was that committed his crime, went on to commit other terrible crimes while you guys were serving the time for them. So how did you end up getting out? And why? I'm sure people are listening at home in their cars whatever, saying to themselves. But wait a minute. So you had this whole dream team all of a sudden Avengers riding in from Yale. How is it that you were never fully exonerated? How did that work? And was that because of your false confession? Is that why they refused to ultimately admit your innocence? Actually, Mr Lewis, he was releasing February March and two thousand and fourteen on a bracelet. Judge heat ordered that they released him within ninety days I think of after the conviction was overturned in December. Well actually after they affirmed it. It got overturned, then they had to go to the second Circuit court and then all the charges was dropped. I think he got exonerated in two thousand sixteen, if I'm not mistaken, But it went in sequence like one year he got out, the next year it was affirmed next year. I think he got exonerated. Unlike myself, Mr Lewis had a dream team, and I had a team that wasn't frightening for me at all. So push full or to a year later after they affirmed from Mr Lewis average released because the attorney said he he spoke with the district attorney and said, oh I think that, Um, I could talk to him to talk to him about what like, why now you're not found the motion for me to get out of prison? Um, because you and Mr Lewis cases different. I said, what you mean, what do you mean different? We went to we just went to trial differently. The evidence is the same. We just went to trial at different times. I want to be out released from prison. I said, how long more do you think this is gonna take? He said it might take another three years. What this man is out of prison? You're telling me I still got away the additional three years to be released in prison. He was like, yeah, So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go talk because I'm friends with the district attorney. So I'm gonna go down there and see if he had just say see what happened. I think that was a Tuesday. So he came back the very next day He's like, I got good news from you going home. The district attorney said, really give you time, sir, but you have the cop out. I'm thinking now, my little brother, he just passed away. Lopus. I lost my grandfather. I lost my father, I lost the host of a lot of friends. My mother's getting older, my children are older. You know they did when you come home. I have a wife now that married me for I don't know why in prison in two thousand and nine, what do I do between the rock and hard place. Do I sit here and say, listen, I won't fight for my name to be clear for another three years. There's nothing guaranteed in the judicial system. They already failed me once. So what do I do. I've always heard that if you could fight better from the outside and the inside, I need to get out. I need to get out of here. So I went with the terms in the agreement. I mean ignorant, of course, of the repercussions of still fighting for my conviction. Because I still have a conviction. Mr Lowis, as I told you a couple of minutes ago, is exonerated, same evidence, just different trial. He desonerated. I'm struggling. I just had to get a second job. You know what do you do. You know, I gotta survive though, you know, yeah, I just hope, I hope that this show, maybe you can be a part of helping you to get the justice that you have deserved for a quarter of a sentry now ever since you were wrongfully arrested in the first place, over quarter of centry almost thirty years, and that you can get a chance to get the compensation that you deserve, and that you're codefendant has received a significant amount of compensation. A lot of guys never get it, you know, a lot of guys or and women, um even whether they too complete or whether they were exonerated. And people ask me all the time, and we still only have like thirty two states that have conversation statutes, and we're trying to change that because I think that everyone who's wrongfully convicted deserves compensation and deserves help to get back on their feet, as opposed to put in more roadblocks in their way like they're doing with you, which I call the second punishment. I'm out here and I don't thankful like again, I mean, I'm thankful that I'm able to be able to stand on my two feet. I'm able to to go to a job and to go and make a difference some I don't know if you know, but I work at a halfway house. You know, it's a part of the correctional facility. Like my grandmother was a caregiver, so I guess I'm following the footsteps of her. Um. I also just took on another job working with the mental health. I work at hearth and Healthcare. Now it's not a lot of money, but it's getting me and my wife by because at the end of the day, I mean it's a struggle again. Mr Mr Lewis was compensated for his wrong for conviction. I'm still fighting. I told you I spoke with you earlier as far as UM. Me and my lawyer. Right now, we're trying to put together a pardon to try to see if that the state of Connecticut were part of me un using circumstances. We spoke with various people about it. So hopefully that this doesn't take forever, that my conviction is a return, so I could go on and live my life because I can't get job, just pay as well because I have a conviction of our record. You know, I'm actually like getting half to pay, you know, for somebody didn't do what I'm still suffering. Sometimes I'd be like, yo, why, But then at the end of the day, why not. I'm not the first person that happened to him, won't be the last person that happens to One of the reasons I do this work and I'm so obsessed and committed to it, have been from a whole adult life and will be for the rest of my adult life, however long that may be. It's because of people like you. Um, honestly in awe that people like yourself can go through what you went through and come out with this and I picked it up when we've met before. Is one of the reasons I want to have you on the show, because you're such a positive guy and you're such a sort. If I mean to meet you, no one would ever know that you had been through anything like this, much less this totally insane ordeal. So how did you survive prison? Was it as bad as what you were expecting? Was it as bad as what people think it is? Well? For me, Um, I have a Christian background, right, My grandmother was. She just was a faith driven women woman. My mother, you know, my father used to take me to church all the time. Actually the day I got convicted June eighth. That night when they threw me told me, they reminded me, how was it like, like the whole building on top of me, like, and I didn't know how it was would get it off of me? So they put me in the bullepen. There was nobody down there, and I'm looking around and I had a suit on, so in the tie. So I shifted my tie from the left to the right, and I'm like, yo, how did that get How did this happen to me? So I was about to cry, of course, I'm like and so literally a voice came over me and said, son, you go a b all right. You know, I got down on my knees in that bullpen and I prayed and that was my piece. That was my sinxtuy as my sanity. That's what brought me through. Just not my faith alone, but my family was there for me and they're still there for me. My big brother Frank, my brother julian Um he passed away at Lupus a year before I came home. He was my greatest support. My brother leand and my mother Linda, or host of family and friends. I mean, you know, it's crazy in prison because some people don't even know what the visiting room look like. I just had a great support my wife Rangely the snow, I'm telling you, if it was six ft of snow and the roses clear, she was there, you know. And and that says a lot for her, you know. But again, I had a lot of family there for me. My family was there, they're still there for me. And again my faith kept me whole. You know. I actually go to school right now, to a Bible institute to become a minister. It's not easy. See, I go through a lot of ups and downs because of the incarceration I call it today, because of they thrust them into a cage. I'm that dog that's running away from the cage, never to go back to that cage again. I want to go back there, but I want to go back there for the right reasons, as far as if I could inspire and encourage somebody to be like, listen, there is hope. These guys that see me today when I was actually incarcerated, when I don't call incarcerated again, when I was thrusting into that cage, they just literally like start crying like yeah, you know, you believed, like you believed you was coming home when you was going home and you're here. Sometimes, of course it gives rough sometimes, you know, But what do you do with the situation when it happens to you? Do you sit down weeping crowd and you get up a stand to all? Because that's what they want you to do. They want you to be like, Okay, we're gonna take this person, thrust them in the cage, and we want them to become an animal. I did the total opposite. I became an example, like to be a better person than what they wanted me to be. Even through incarceration, I was counseling people, whether it was CEO's, whether it was convicts, whether its inmates. I just I just had a calling and I'm still doing that to this day. So I'm just not say grateful for incarceration, Absolutely not, But I'm grateful now for the opportunity to give back and to share with others that I've been through what you've been through. Like I talked to the guys in the halfway house all the time. Listen, I don't sit down and tell you that I've been in prison for twenty one years, but I'm gonna let you know I've been where you are. You can change, you can transition. Your life could be totally different than what it really is today, but you have to make that first step. I could only give you a little bit of tools and ingredients, something that I could share with you, a word of advice, but I can't make you walk like they say you could. You could bring a course to the trought, but you can't make them drink stuff. Fine, if people want to reach out to you, do you do public speaking? And how do uh people want to get involved in your case in any way? How do they reach out to you? Do Gmail? Step far Morant s t e f O n m r r a n t at gmail dot com. Stefan Morant st e f O n m O r a n t at gmail dot com. And the movie about this crazy case is called A Hundred and twenty Years. You haven't watched it yet. I think you could go on YouTube and watch it, but it's it's called A hundred and twenty Years, a documenting of Scott Lewis. I'm also a part of that as well. Check it out. So now we get to my favorite part of the show, where I first of all. I thank you again Stefan Moran for coming into the studio and sharing your thoughts and your incredible story. I wish you all the best for the future. And then I get to turn off my microphone and just sit back and leave yours on for what we've come to call closing arguments, go for it. Well, I just like to say I appreciate and I thank you for everything that you do wrong of conviction. Um, it's just it's a sad day. It's just a sad situation. I remember my first Innocence Project conference and um, they say you go in your network. It was in Texas. So I was walking about and I've seen this guy and I just walked up to him and he was a social worker for my to Ohio, how are you doing? He says, um, all right, how are you? I said yeah. They said we need a network, need different people. So um, he said, what's what happened with you? And I said, um, well, I wasn't just incarcerated for twenty one years, I know, even Connecticut and m I said to him, I said, yeah, everybody says that that they're innocent. And he looked at me and he says, no, they don't. And I had to think about that and I said, Wow, you're actually right. You hear that on TV. But in prison, it's like I could count on probably one of my hands and somebody actually said that they were innocent. And I've been around thousands and thousands of guys. If somebody tell you the innocent right, how much effort does it take for you just to reopen investigation or two just look into what he or she is saying instead of allowing this to carry on for like it carried on with me and Mr Lewis, for Mr Lewis twenty years and for myself twenty one years, crying, like getting shot down, denials after denials after denials, you know again. Now I have seven kids, Christian and Julian or Twilight, Stefan jorjanal A, Mida and Prince Boy Jr. So we have me and my wife have a total of seven kids. Her name is Kimberly Morant, you know for biological, but all of them are biological to me now because that's how I bring my acceptance. You know, my children today, I don't even have a relationship like with them. I mean, we're we're building one and that's like the at as part of this this situation. But at the end of the day, it's like, how do you just do that to somebody and how do you live with yourself? Right? We need to change the way that judicial system is being ran today, you know, it has to be changed. We just need somebody just to have an ear and to listen, not just to say, well, we're gonna talk about doing something, don't do something. If you just put forth for effort and take the time out of your day, just be like, okay, just let me look into this case. Give me an opportunity to give me a chance. The evidence is going to speak for yourself. It's just as simple as that. If the person actually committed the crime, you could set time for saying they did this or they didn't do it. But just give my opportunity to be investigating the situation, you know, I mean, I thank god for the FBI. You know who does that. They don't just say okay, you write me a letter and not I'm gonna get involved, and they said hold up, something that's wrong is going on, and then the state's attorney still doesn't do anything about it. The state's attorney stated that for a period of time. We knew that the lead detective was a liar, also the key witness. So why am I sitting here taking time served? Why are you just not saying, okay, we're dismissing this case right now. So if if it's a lie, if it's a taint of situation, why on earth is stuff? I'm a rent, still convicted fellow. Mind you, I've never had a traffic ticket, I've never had a conviction. I sold a little drugs to get by, but I worked on my life. The question is, and I leave with this, I need help and I need stuff from a rent conviction to be overturned, because it's just not right. If one is innocent, the other one definitely has to be innocent because you're saying I was just there. You didn't say I kill anybody? So how am I still a convicted? Fellow? Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcast us. 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 Wardis. The music on the show is by three time Oscar nominet 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 in association with Signal Company Number one