This is an updated episode that originally aired on September 25, 2017.
On the afternoon of April 15th, 1994, two men were sitting in a powder-blue Cadillac in the Quindaro neighborhood of Kansas City, KS. A man dressed in black ran up to the passenger side, raised a shotgun and fired four rounds in what looked like a drug-related hit, killing the two passengers Doniel Quinn and Donald Ewing. Lamonte McIntyre, who was 17 at the time, was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. The prosecution relied primarily on the testimonies of two eyewitnesses who identified Lamonte as the shooter. Both eyewitnesses later recanted. Even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, he was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
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We originally released our interview with Lamont McIntyre on September twenty five, two thousand seventeen, but with all that has changed in this case and the world around us, we thought it a good time to release an updated version of this episode. On the afternoon of April fifteenth, nine, Danielle Quinn and Donald Ewing said in a powder blue Cadillac when a man dressed in black pumped four shotgun rounds into the car, killing the two men. Within six hours of the crime, Kansas City, Kansas Police detective Roger Golupski began the process of framing Lamont McIntyre, who was seventeen at the time, for two counts of first degree murder. Why did he do this because Lamont's mother had refused Golupski's repeated sexual advances. But without any physical evidence whatsoever to link Lamont to the crime, Kolubski in the state would rely on mistaken eyewitness identification to seal them Aunt's fate. And to make matters even worse, Lamont was represented at trial by a public defender who would later be disbarred for failing to diligently handle three other cases. All of this resulted in his wrongful conviction and being sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms. On this episode, I'll speak with Kansas City attorney Cheryl Pilot, who worked to exonerate Lamont McIntyre and was successful shortly after this story was released. She's joined by former FBI agent al jenner Rich, who spent much of his career investigating police corruption all over the country. And finally we spoke with Lamont while he was still behind bars, a victim of the systemic racism and police corruption that plagues our criminal legal system. This his wrongful conviction with Jason Flapper. Welcome back to ronfl Conviction with Jason flam Today's episode will make your blood boil and it will blow your mind. So settle in because this is going to be a crazy ride. Guilty one word ceiling Lamont McIntyre's fate. Lamont McIntyre, aged seventeen in has so far been imprisoned for twenty two years. Twenty two years ago, two young men, twenty one year old Danielle Quinn and his thirty four year old cousin, Donald Ewing, were gunned down in a horrible double homicide six hours after the murders. Police arrested McIntyre, but never searched his house for evidence. Moreover, it was a trial which prosecutors offered no physical evidence tying McIntyre to the crime, no motive, no connection between him and the victims, no weapon, no fingerprints, nor did Kansas City Campus believe even request search warrants to find any of that material. A retired officer who reviewed the calls the investigation grossly deficient. Most notable is that the family of the victims for twenty two years have steadfastly insisted that he is innocent. Other witnesses also relatives of the victim insisted as soon as they saw McIntyre sitting at the defense table they knew he was not the shooter. They told the prosecutor, but were ignored. One family member has signed an affidavid claiming that under pressure from police and the prosecutor, she lied at McIntyre's trial. We're the first time a jury is speaking publicly about the case. Greg Lover says that he now believes that yan Dot County jury was wrong. They didn't care about anything. They just had their man, and it was enough for the twelve person jury. In deliberations Loudber says he and another juror were holdouts, but it was late in the day and there was mounting pressure from others who wanted a verdict. Maybe I had an opportunity to, you know, do something good on that jury, but I sure didn't do it. I took a coward's way out. It is the speedy investigation and prosecution of that crime in this place that a team of exonerators now insist was also the focus of a terrible injustice. Lamont McIntyre aged seventeen and has so far been imprisoned for twenty two years, convicted and given two consecutive life sentences for a crime they say you never committed. Well, I'm just gonna say I'm really happy that today joining us to discuss the insane case of Lamont McIntyre, we have with us Lamont's attorney, Cheryl Pilot, as well as retired FBI special agent Al Generich. Cheryl and Al, thank you for being here. Thank you so much. We're glad to be here, happy to be here, and we will be hearing later on in the episode from Lamont, who will be calling in from president in Kansas, where he has been incarcerated for approximately twenty four years now, since he was a teenager for a crime that he did not commit. Now, let's go back to the beginning. On April fifte there are two men sitting in a Cadillac in Kansas City, Kansas, when they were approached by a man with a shotgun. These facts are not in dispute right correct, And what we know is that four shots were fired into the car, killing the passenger Don yelle Quinn instantly and the driver, Donald Ewing, who died later in the hospital. And amazingly, within six hours, they managed to find a guy who had nothing to do with the crime, Lamont McIntyre, who was seventeen at the time, and he was arrested and charged with two counts of first degree murder in spite of a total lack of any physical evidence connecting him to the crime. How did this happen? Cheryl, and I'll jump in whenever you want. Lamont was arrested and prosecuted after police obtained three interviews from eyewitnesses, one of them never testified, but the taped interviews of these eyewitnesses. In a very serious crime, obviously, where someone can go to prison for the rest of their life, amounted to a total of twenty taped minutes, and one of the eyewitnesses was only interviewed for four minutes. Is that an investigation? What is that so Ill? You've done a lot of research and you were in the FBI for quite a while, Is that right? I was in the FBI for twenty five years. I was a special agent. I specialized in investigating police corruption. I worked in Chicago very successfully, and then in Kansas City, Kansas. Agent Genera was not involved with this murder case at all when it happened. I knew Mr jenner Rich through other cases and after he retired a number of years after he retired, actually and I was working on trying to achieve Lamont's exoneration, I approached him to talk to him about the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department and things that I had an covered in my investigation. And it was at that point that Al and I started talking about some of the things he had learned while working for the FBI, and they, you know, matched up with some of the things I had uncovered in my investigation. And it was because of that that he became a witness in this case that I hope to use at our hearing, So prior to Lamont's arrest, can we talk about what was happening with this particular cop, whose name was Roger Globski. Sometime around or so, I was able to open an investigation into police corruption in Kansas City, Kansas. And as the investigation went on over time, over many years, we developed maybe somewhere between twelve and fifteen police officers who were titled subjects of the investigation. Some of it involved civil rights like beating people up, stealing their shoes when they were walking down the street because the officer liked the shoes, or in the case of Glupski, you know, sexual extortion. But most of it involved corruption involving drugs, mostly cocaine. And in the course of this investigation, just by talking to people, which is when I'm pretty good at over time, you know a number of people told us about Glupski extorting sex from black women and he liked black women. We never developed enough evidence on Glupski to prosecute him. That's the extent of my knowledge about Glupski. I always believe that that police were good, and the police were on our side and they're there to protect us all and so I always find these stories, even as long as I've been working on this issue, and I've got twenty five years now of experience, but I always find these stories so just depressing and shocking, and it flips everything upside down. Well, like you, I was very eve until I went to Chicago and then I saw police corruption on the massive scale. But then when I got back to Kansas City in six and probably got involved in Kansas City, Kansas, you know, I saw the same activity. There wasn't on the grand scale. You know that it's that it's conducted in Chicago. It's basically police officers, most of whom are white, picking on minories, most of whom are black, some of them are Hispanic. Because when you're a drug dealer, you know, you can't go to the police the FBI and say, hey, these cops are stealing my drugs, these cops are stealing my drug money. You basically have to you have to suck it up. So that's what they do in Chicago, That's what they do everywhere. So Lamont his troubles really began when his mom was in a car with I guess was her boyfriend at the time, Cheryl Right Glubski approached the car and told her to get out and threatened her with arrest or arrest of her boyfriend unless she agreed to come down to the police station. And then the problems really began when she refused to become one of his girls, so to speak, right, I mean, obviously, she was in a terrible situation where she's very vulnerable, not able to defend herself from a cop who's willing to go to almost any lanes to fulfill his desires. She had a tremendous problem, and she decided that she wanted to maintain her dignity, really, right, And so what seems like happen is that as a consequence, Globski decided that he would target and frame her son. And something that is so evil that, you know, makes me want to quit the human race. There was an encounter that Lamont's mother had with the detective some years earlier. I mean it was years actually before the double homicide happened. And at the time of the double homicide, my client was inexplicably dragged into the case. One of the eyewitnesses told the police she thought the shooter looked like a lament dating her niece police never bothered to find out what Lamont that was. They don't go ask the niece what Lamont that was. They simply put another lament and it's undisputed, an entirely different Lamont, my client into the case, and somehow obtain this identification. What's interesting about the lineup, and I've never seen anything like this before, is three of the five photos were of young male members of the mc entire family. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to say, well, that doesn't make a lot of sense. What it's one perpetrator. It is not like that somebody said there were three brothers that were involved. It's one perpetrator, you know. And then the justice system, we know, has a tendency to chew people up and spit them out when they are poor, particularly if they're minorities and underrepresented. It's really it's not a fair fight, is it. Well, I mean this, this whole thing um was an impossible battle for Lamont to begin with. I mean, first of all, the investigation itself, I don't think really qualified is is a true investigation because so little was done. No evidence of motive was ever uncovered. There was no physical evidence that tied Lamont to the crime. There was not even any evidence that he knew the two victims, their backgrounds of the two victims, and who might have a motive to harm them. That was never investigated. There was an eyewitness directly across the street who was never interviewed, whose whose mother said, you know, she she knows who the suspect is. I mean, the failures and lapses and ir regularities in this case just go on and on. I mean, other than the twenty minutes of taped interviews from the eyewitnesses, there was very little else and the only evidence at trial against Lamont were two eyewitnesses. One of them has admitted that she lied, that she was coerced. The other eyewitness seems frankly, very perplexed by her testimony, and it's it's very clear that it's an eye witness misidentification based on manipulation. And we know also that had this trial taken place twenty years later, So with everything that's known now about the unreliability of eyewitness identification, there's a very good chance that that would have been discredited because there was no other evidence connecting to the crime. You take a person who's traumatized who has just witnessed a really horrific event, and they can be pretty easy to pressure or manipulate. And in fact, this Nous provided in a tape statement my client's last name, a man she did not know and had never heard of, which raises the very interesting question of who gave her the name. It was undisputed at trial that she did not know my client, yet the fact that there was an original tape statement where she provided his name never came out. That was never admitted at trial. She also stated wrongly that my client was the Lamont who had dated her niece. At trial undisputed that that was not true. It was an entirely different Lamont who was in fact identified by his name to the jury, an entirely different person. So, I mean, the whole thing is is troubling beginning to end, really a perfect storm of chaos and horror and misconduct, things being done improperly. So you have this cop in this department that is so corrupt isn't even the word, but that's engaged in so many legal activities, And isn't it ironic and tragic that Lamont is in prison, living in hell after twenty four years and this this cop who was from what I've read, raping people, robbing people, dealing drugs, protecting drug dealers. He's out. How how is that? I mean, that must not not sit well with you with your whole background either. What I'm really hoping for, what our entire team is hoping for, and what we have sought for a long time, is a very full investigation into the activities of this detective. There needs to be an investigation by people who have the power to follow all the leads, develop information, compel the testimony of witnesses, and obtain other evidence. Let me let me turn it to you for a second, because we have not had somebody with your background and experience on the show before, and I would venture to say that you had a very very difficult and dangerous job, right, I mean, investigating cops, particularly when you're investigating cops, we've got a lot to hide, makes you a very unpopular person, I would think. So, looking back on it, how did this manage to go on for so long without somebody coming along and saying, uh, you know, besides you, hey, hey, we're not going to tolerate this. They don't give a ship. At the time we were doing these investigations. The police chief of Kansas City, Kansas, a guy named Tom Daily. He had previously been indicted by the Federal Strike Force for extorting money at a whorehouses along the kar River in Kansas. He was doing that allegedly when it was a captain. He was acquitted because it was a real weak case, but after going a quit it for extortion, the city wound up eventually making him the chief. Is that the actions you know of a responsible a city administration or a police department. So he had he had the chief over here, Tom Dale. He had previously been indicted by the FEDS. He despised the federal government, he hated the U. S. Attorney's Office and UH and the FBI. And he's the chief. He was part of it. So you have this guy Golubski who in that scenario is operating basically with impunity, right because he knows his chief doesn't give a ship. And with the chief having literally what it sounds like, gotten away with that particular pattern of activity as well as I'm sure other things that he was doing. The people underneath them are probably thinking, hey, this is great, no one's going to touch us. And they're right, and nobody did. So how frustrated was that for you? There? You are really fighting an unwinnable war, right You're You're they're trying to protect the public from the police force. Were they achieve a police who not only doesn't give a fuck, but doesn't want that he wants you. He probably wants you the funk out of his hair, so he could just you know, run the streets how he wants to write. When I started working over there, you've had a person, you know, some guy I knave, had a lot of people in the county jail, and they would say so and so confronted me and stole my money, stole my drugs. You go, what, what's the CoP's name? I don't know his name, you know what's he looked like, Well, you know he's some white guy. Well you go to the police. The police did not have photographs of their police officers, So if a victim came in there alleging that SO and so officer robbed from me, extorted me, they didn't even have photographs to show people so they could identify who the police officer was. So good luck, you know, through the U. S. Attorney's Office, through uh Julie Robinson, who was a prosecutor at the time. We subpoenaed photographs of every sworn officer in the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department, and there was hell to pay for that. I was almost removed from the investigation because of that. You know, I think one of the problems is that other law enforcement officers don't want to investigate law enforcement, and as a general rule, I think they find it distasteful, something they would rather avoid, and there is a tendency to minimize misconduct. I found that really pretty shocking, not in light of everything else we're talking about, but I could see how you would, and it's it really gets easier and easier to see how these wrongful convictions are so common. I mean, here, we have an interesting situation, right, We're talking to Al who's in there with his badge, working for the Federal Beer of Investigation and basically being told go fund himself. So what chance does a seventeen year old black kid from the poorer side of town. What shance as he have against this blue wall, this blue monster that was out to get him. He had no chance. So now fast forward to twenty four years later, Lamont sits in a prison studying reading by all accounts, a model prisoner, somebody who maintains a positive outlook in spite of this. You know what can only be described as the worst faith that can be fall an individual to be cars forraver, something he didn't do for the rest of your life. But now we have hope, right, I mean, he has hope thanks to you and the years of work that you've done in this case and al and other brave people who have devoted their time and in some cases probably even risk their own personal safety to try to get justice in this case. What does it look like now? What happens next? Tell us what's going on. We have a evidentiary hearing coming up in October, and we in tend to present somewhere between forty and fifty witnesses who provide very powerful testimony on various aspects of the case. There was almost nothing really to support the conviction to begin with, nothing other than the testimony of the two eye witnesses, and I believe that has been thoroughly shredded at this point through recantations and admissions and the result of other investigation. And we are also focusing on the very troubling misconduct in the case. It is intimately connected to how the investigation was conducted, and we're going to bring all that out and show how we believe this went wrong, and we very much hope to be successful. What's the date of the hearing October twelfth, October twelve, And is this in a federal court? We are in Windout County District Court just a state court. My client is litigating what's called a successive petition under sixty fIF seven, and you have essentially a procedural barrier to get over before you can get back into court. But we do have this evidentiary hearing schedule that we are very very excited about. One of the most compelling things about the case we haven't mentioned this yet, is that the families of both victims have always known my client is innocent and are very much squarely supporting the quest to free him. They know that they did not get justice, their families did not get justice, and that cheryld In your experience, that's not a common thing, right, I mean, most of the cases I've seen, even in the face of what could be overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the victims families sometimes stick with what they've been told all along because they just can't. They can't even process the idea that they may have been lied to and that the wrong person may have been serving time for the for the murder of their loved one. So in this case, this is a unusual scenario, isn't it It is? And one of the eyewitnesses is related to both of the victims, and she her family and the family of the second victim to whom she's a bit more distantly related, have always told me that they have known from the beginning that the authorities got the wrong man. They have always known this. They've made periodic efforts to correct this, to address this, to try and get some justice, all without success. And if there wasn't already enough to chew on, this is the part that really just sets me off, his courter pointed. Attorney Gary Long was on supervised probation at the time of the trial for failing to diligently handle three prior cases. He was suspended from the bar a couple of years later for failure to adequately hinder a separate criminal case. And he was this bar. How is it even possible that, in a life or death situation that you take somebody and you say, you know what, we're going to give you a lawyer who's already messed up three times when I said nobody gives a ship? Do you understand what I mean? Do you know that that you know that that Tara Moore had You know she's now a federal prosecutor. Yes, So Tara Morehead was the prosecutor in this case. Obviously didn't see anything wrong with her prosecuting a case in which a young man's life was at stake in front of a judge with whom she had carried on an affair a few years earlier. I think most reasonable people would agree that one or the other should have been recused from this particular scenario because even if they were saints, and obviously they weren't. Because she's also the same woman from what I've read, who threatened a witness who tried to come forward with the truth with losing custody of her own children. But yes, and now she's moved up the ladder. Seems like all the bad guys have one here. Al what the fuck? Well? I think Sarah Moorehead is currently married to a police officer. I think there's some other prosecutors over in the federal U. S. Attorney's Office that are married to other police officers. So you're not going to expect them to investigate police corruption, are you? Wow? I guess that would make it tricky, wouldn't it. They're not going to do it, and they don't. I mean, there there's so much that could be investigated that ought to be investigated, and you know, I I should also point out that sexual misconduct among police officers is not unusual in some departments. When you have poor and vulnerable people encounter folks with ultimate authority over them, ultimate authority in that particular moment, you know, those things can happen all too easily, and they do and happened frequently. You know, when I was an agent, I'm about six ft four. I had a gun, a badge and radio and everything. At nighttime when I was on my way home or on the weekends, I would not drive to Kansas City, Kansas, unless I was accompanied by another FBI agent. Thought they might have run you off the road or something else. They could do anything. They could pull me over and not saying they don't know who I was, and they could say pulled a gun and they could shoot me. So I have all that power and authority. What is some little black kid on the street half. I hope that in exposing the story of Lamont and some of the things that you've shared out that people, you know, get their backs up and get get angry and get involved. These are just people, They're just regular people, and they're they're being so terribly abused and victimized by people who are supposed to protect them. I I don't it makes me sick. I just say that the fear and the terror that some of the citizens experience cannot be overstated. I mean, you have someone with a badge with ultimate and really, as I said in that moment, unchecked authority, there's enormous fear of the police and enormous, sometimes unmovable resistance to getting involved in anything that has to do with the criminal justice system. I've spent some years, honestly, just earning the trust of some people in the community so that they will sit down and speak with me so that we can investigate the case. Nobody wants anything to do with a case you say, courthouse, people walk the other way. They don't want anything to do with that. And ultimately we have been successful in securing some very good witnesses because they did want to help someone they've viewed as innocent. And you know, I should point out here that all of the street talk we have ever heard in the community is that Lamont is innocent, the guy who got wrongfully convicted. It's like everyone knows. The whole community knows. The victims families know, everyone knows Lamont did not do this. Everyone knows. You have a prepaid call from an innate at Kansas Department of Corrections Lansing Correctional Facility. To accept this call, press or say five to refute. This call will be recorded and subject to monitoring. At any time. You may begin speaking now, Lamont, Welcome to the show. Thank you so, Lamont. I want to go back to the beginning, when you grew up and how this all started. I've seen photos of you with your family. Looked like you had not an easy but a happy childhood. Is that fair? Yeah? Can you just describe what it was like. I've heard you talk about Christmas and stuff. Uh, yeah, was tighten it. You know, it was like my mother was just only pair in the house and it was close me and my siblings, and we did everything together. We stayed in one house. You know, we took care of each other. So growing off of me was my family was a big game. Didn't really bite about a lot of stuff, you know. I was me and my three brothers and my sister and mother a sister. My mother worked a lot, so my sister kind of watched that. There was a little bit some other family members liked to go to my family member's house, uncles and be around them. Our mother was at work. I kind of still stayed around family. I sat my home so real family oriented and where you grew up. You had no idea at this time that the police force was really as corrupt as any one could possibly imagine until this terrible incident occurred. And I want to go back to that. What happened. You were a seventeen year old kid going along with your life, trying to make it in a difficult place, and then one day out of the blue, you get arrested and don't even know what's going on or what happened. Uh, that's exactly what happened. And I was it was a typical day. It was like a Friday, typical day. I was the road in a Downey comverge program where it's all time of school whenever, whatever. You get your high school to phone and then they gives you in uh college, so like a little degree program on the part of and um, it was just a Friday. I get a call phone call saying the police over my grandmother's house looking for me. Called my mother. We go to the police station and they started talking about two murders and I had no answers for him because I don't know if they were saying what they talking about. So from that moment, I was arrested, charge and vasously completed of two murders and I hadn't about And we know now that they were deliberately targeting you because of this particular police officer who was up to all kinds of criminal activity himself. And that's the irony of this is that he belongs in jail. And I'm hoping that by the end of this that's exactly what's going to happen. But the idea that this system, this so called justice system, had made a decision that you were going to be their guy. There was this double murder, right, two guys sitting in the car. They were involved in drug activity, They were dealers. We now know also that one of them had been beaten by the guys he was working for in the drug business. Right. He was working as a doorman in a crack then, and he had feared for his life, And in fact he had good reason to because I guess he had from what I've learned he has been he had been stealing from them, So that every reason to know that this was a drug hit. And you weren't involved in that game or that business. Did you know these guys and then know the witnesses. I don't know the victims that would have connected to it at all. That's why I so it so hard for me to understand how something like that could happen, because and I was forward about everything. I don't try to hide nothing because I knew that what they were talking about that time. I had nothing to do with it. I would involved. I don't know what the police officer's motive was to plan it on meal. I still don't know to this day what happened. Well, it does seem like now with everything we've learned that the officer involved, the first one who arrived on the scene was an officer named Golobski. It's a white guy who had a proclivity for women of color, and when he didn't get his way, he would exact revenge. And so what it seems like is that in this particular case, he targeted you because your mom wasn't having any part of that. And that's what makes this particularly sinister and sick. You end up going to trial. And I find it interesting, among all the other things in your case, that they offered you a plea bargain right and you didn't take it. I wouldn't the rest of the plea bargain. I can't understand how I sit in this situation, and I hadn't know nothing about them itself, so bargains far from my mom, I would And why I find that and why I brought that up, Lemont, And I've seen the mugshot picture of you, and it really hurt my heart because I could see in your face just how confused you were and scared of a situation that you couldn't possibly imagine what was happening at that time. I also would think that if you were guilty and they're offering you a deal, and you know your chances of winning in the court are going to be low because they have all these cops and everybody else is going to testify that you would have taken the plea bargain. Anybody with the right mind would take a plea bargain. You're not crazy, are you right? You don't You don't sound crazy. You don't sound crazy at all. So in the situation like this, I mean, we have in this country over cases end up in plea bargains. So had you been guilty, that would have been a very logical thing to do. But as an innocent person and probably somebody who's still trusted in the system, you went forward with your right to a trial, and you were represented by a guy who they knew your court appointed lawyer. They knew this guy was incompetent because he had already been disciplined for three previous cases that he had completely botched. It almost sounds like they did it on purpose. They assigned a guy who didn't go and interview witnesses, who didn't really didn't do anything he was supposed to do. And what was that like? Were you aware at that time that this guy it wasn't I mean, I don't even know if it was really on your side, but I mean, as you're watching these proceedings, what were you thinking. He presented himself like a lawyer. He presented itself like a person, and there on my behald to take care of this business. And he's seeing real professional at first. So I didn't know what to expect because I've never been in that situation before anyway, So his first impression was for me, it was a good impression because I didn't know what a lawyer was supposed to do, or I was so ignorant to the law on how things work. I just believed in the justice system at that time, I really did. I thought there was no possible way, being an innocent person or a person that has nothing to do with that crime, that I would be found guilty. So I don't really pay too much attention to the credibility of this lawyer. It didn't die on me that I would be found guilty of the crime that I had nothing to do with it. So I didn't really think about it in those terms. I was just thinking, you can give me any lawyer, anybody from anywhere, and it'd be okay, because once they realized that they had the wrong person and ironed out and trial, That's what I was thinking. But I didn't plan on all how to think that people would get on the stand and line it was gonna fabricade, And I didn't think that was gonna happen. I had no idea that they had already made up in their mind and I was going to escape God for this particular crime. So definitely being needed at the law and how things work in the justice system. I believe in the justice system at that time. I really did. I think all of us do when we're kids, especially brought up in a good home like you were. You brought up to believe that people are good and that the system is is going to work for you. And then you had a lawyer who, had he been competent, I still think would have one year case in spite of all this, because of the simple fact that it was an easy case. The witnesses were not credible at all. We now know that they also withheld exculpatory evidence, So you really didn't have a fair chance, especially not with a lawyer who was incompetent. And ultimately, let's not forget that this particular lawyer was disbarred not too long after your trial. And again for the listeners out there, think about that this is a guy who had been disciplined in numerous cases prior to laments, and then ultimately gets disbarred when the extent of his gross incompetence is brought to the Supreme Court of Kansas, the attention to the Supreme Court, and then he voluntarily gave up his license to practice law. And that wasn't the end of the nightmare. We now know too that your appellate lawyer was disbarred. I mean, you can't even make this stuff up. So what happened? Like now you're in the courtroom, the jury goes out, the arguments have been made. You saw these witnesses get up and lie. You saw these police officers get up and lie. Your defense made whatever arguments they made. Did you believe that they would come back and declare you innocent? I did. I did a five of my being I did. I just didn't know that this is how the system worked. They found me guilty based on false evidence or the kind of evidence that was presented by a certain district attorney. They heard stuff about me. It wasn't even about Lemar Macknetide, and she just kind of made self up. They told his story and the jury believed. But at the time before they came back with guilty, Birdie, I still didn't think I'll me found guilty because the whole time I'm sitting there, in the whole time I'm going through the process of getting to trial, I still had no knowledge of the actual crime. So I'm thinking, with my young mind being naive, that there's no way becau jury can find me guilty when I'm really not guilty, when I had nothing to do with it. I'm not tied to it at all. The witnesses, the victims, I'm not tied to it. I was in the area when it happened. When they came in, I noticed that no juries. No one looked me in my face, no one looked looked up. Everyone came in looking down at the floor. So I kind of had an eerie feeling, but I still had hope that it will work out in the right way. So when they read the verdict and they said guilty, it's like I've seen my whole life flash before me and I u and for that moment, I fosed and and I was sitting there, and I stood up, and I remember saying something. I was screaming something, you know, to the effects of I'm not guilty and you got the wrong person or whatever. And I stepped someone holding me or grabbing me from behind, and I was in shot, so I didn't really I was like a lost moment. But I turned around and I see my mother hold me, screaming, crying like don't take my baby away from me, don't take my baby. And I'm looking at her and I realized that this is a serious situation now, but it still didn't feel real. It was my life in my situation, but it didn't feel like my life on my situation. I felt like I was outside of myself looking at this event happened. I couldn't stop it. So I was in shot and that shot lasted for a few years after that. I was in shot. So now now you're convicted of a double murder and sense to life in prison. Where did they take you to the processes? Like from this time you get convicted in the county for about too much, then you go to citizen Now how cinis in Wanna County. They gave me to life sentences to ron consecutive and after that they sent me to a process of center which we call rd you where they see you to determine what classification, you would be what custody would be in a subsidered max custody. So from there they sent me to prison. I was in hus That's that's a prison in Kansas. They called Glady in the school, one of those tough prisons. You know what, people, you know, it's a prison. It's like the work not did you have a prison? Is that more? It's this dark is negative pension feel, it's hopelessness. It's a world that its long. I just seventeen year old. Did you have plans? Did you have a career in mind? What was the outlook for the future. We're still just trying to figure it out. Yeah, I was thing I wanted to do, and it was just I was I was misguide in the line, and I was just in a place where everybody around me was either die or going to jail or I was just in the kind of environment. It didn't produce a lot of hope. I didn't have. I didn't have a lot of people to look up to or emulation, nothing like that. But I did enjoy taking care of my family. So my life was just basically about trying to take care of my family the best way I know, or to look out for my loved ones. You know, I had skills and things I could do, Like I was a barber, I was cutting hair since I was twelve. You know, I was comedian and I had these in the back of my mind. I wanted to be a comedian and I had things I wanted to do. I just didn't know how to get to where I wanted to be. But I still I didn't think that my life was just of being in prison or going to jail, being in this kind of situation. What is a typical day like for you on the inside? How do you get through it? What's the schedule? Uh, typical day? Typical day is re readjusted. It's like from hunt day to the nexus. Finding a way to get by for one day, line something for my days, and then I just try to it just sucks. I gotta repeat it. Like if I have a bad day or I'm frustrated for one day, I'm going to sleep, wake up to repeat this day again. So I try to find the best I can or get the best I can out of a day, because waking up to repeat it is the anxiety. That's why all that the worst stuff is knowing of it. For the last twenty three years and two on in some months, and they have a on a weeks and eight sothern days. It's the same thing. It never changes. So I devote my time to read it and studying and right like music, write poetry. I try to keep my mind free as possible. I try to stay out of prison mentally. I try not to. I'm not into prison politics. I'm not in prison mentally, but I'm here. I had to be my body here, but I try to keep my mind far from this place as I can. So it's just a bunch of moments of readjusting every day. And I have a lot of love people that love me and care about me, so I'll focus on that. But it's bad. It used to be a lot worse than it is now. I'm starting to see I'm coming alive now because I can see it light at the end of this tuned I've been there for so long, so I'm better now. But yeah, it wasn't so good before. It's better now, But it was always sad to wake up. I had to repeat this same cycle over and over again. That stuff is another drib of person crazy. There's a lot of moments while I feel like it. What's the point, you know, to keep going to wake up every day that I had to deal with the exact same nightmare you trying to escape from the night before. But I had my mother, like she never gave up on me from day one. Like when the worst moments of my life, you know, I felt like I just couldn't do it no more, for that I couldn't take another step, she would show up. And when she would grab me and hold me and looked at my faith and tell me this is not my life. I passed through, this is not my destination. And so I had a lot of support my family and and I gave my life to God and I pray a lot of meditate a lot. So initially I was kind of in this dark place where I was so hurt and sad and depressed, and so I kept people kept coming to my life. There was like beacons of light and hope for me and I and I and I thank God for all those people came into my life and supported me, and they short it up. I always had something to look forward to, because this is a dark places. It's a dark situation where if you don't have enough support for me, it was just support. I found it supportant then years later Sheryl and to Yeah ministries and innocent projects. So I'm coming into my life and they breathe, uh, they breathe license to me, it's like a second wind. And I'm grateful for those people, everybody who support me and everybody who put forth effort, go out every day and do something to help me get my life back. I'm, however, grateful for those people. If you even allow yourself, if you allow your mind to go there, what are you dreaming about when you get out? Because I'm convinced you are going to come home and I'm gonna be there fighting right alongside with everybody else. What's the first thing you want to do? And then how do you see the future? The first day I'm gonna do eat something. That's what I fantasized about. Mostly, I want to eat something that from there, I want to have some type of impact or effect on young people make important sitsis it would eventially uh landing in a situation like this, you know, So I want to just raise any kind of awareness I can out decision making, because you know, had I've been told how to make better decisence myself. I think even no I was even to the law, and this is something that had nothing to do with me, and that I still gonna been making better desistence myself before this stuff and mean came about. So I don't want to be able to be there for young people as much as I can. So I can, I can help them understand that even though you don't do something wrong, even though you don't commit a crime, you can be You still gotta be accountable, and you still gotta be a mindful of the fact that you're out there and floating around and you can easily be put in a situation like that and if you're not being productive and doing something just uh productive out there in life. So I just want to be able to reach the young people as much as I can, and now that there's that to be young, just anybody that want to be able to share my experience and hopefully it will help out in any kind of way. I'm sure that you will do that, and then you're gonna have a very positive impact on a lot of people because you have a very rare combination of intelligence and manner that is so positive and strong but still gentle that I believe that You'll be able to affect a lot of a lot of young people, and I'm looking forward to watching you do that. There's one other thing I wanted to raise. I'm always amazed when I speak to someone in your situation, and especially so with you, that you don't seem to be bitter after everything that's happened. And I know you talked about your faith and family and the strength that you get from from them, But how is it possible that someone can go through this most unimaginable nightmare still be in it, and yet be as positive and strong as you are now? Well? I had a moment with an angerbook. You all we like taking points and hoping someone else died from it. I only want to affect about me being angry, no one else seeing the notice of Hey, it tasted to me being angry, So how is this a learning experience? Like being angry doesn't help me? So I just wanted to help myself because I knew, I always knew I was gonna be here forever. I knew that eventually the truth was surface and I would have a life outside of this wall. So I devoted a lot of time and energy towards helping myself and I hurt myself, so being angry was something that was a hinderest to me, not a benefit. So I try to say positive because these places you gotta keep up with the seven take care of yourself, and anger and stress and all those things is just short in your life span, and I got to like to live. So I just choose. I choose to be positive. I choose to not be angry and allow anger to kill me. I don't want to die in this place, and I don't want to have a short life. So I stick firm to what I believe in, and I believe in my faith, and I believe in meditation, I believe in exercise. I'm believing take care of my mom, body and soul, and that's what I vote my time to. Wow. UM, all I can do is tell you that you have UM, you have all my respect and support. And I was saying the man, you know, I've seen too many miracles to stop believing in miracles. So I'm excited to watch you be the next one or one of the next ones, and we'll never stop fighting for you and for other people in your situation. I'm looking forward to a positive outcome and to getting to know you on the outside the mind. I'm just going to turn it over to you and say, is your microphone, what do you want to share with the audience. Well, these these kind of cases having more than they should, you know. So it's like I always see on TV or day line see anything man so many years in prison and you get exonerated and you see this happened time and time again, but which would never ever see a heavy here about how much that stuff impact the effect of the families for those people like I had a post knit family. It was close and it was a thing. It's just just like me being affected by the event that happened in my life. It hurts me to see how much how much it affected not only me, with my family. And it's difficult because if if a man has to go through a certain thing by himself, that's a that's his life, that's his his path and life. He got to go through that. I had to do what I had to do, no matter what. But when you see someone you care about being affected about what you have to do or what you have to endure, it's it's a it's a different kind of feeling. And it's like people don't really pay attentions that don't know about that, like when uh, this is attorneys of of being dishonest when they're trying to get from visions and all that. I don't think they take that consideration how many people they are affecting, but just not going by the law of just not being truthful about certain things, not just me, whatever issue personal issue they may add about with me. My family is affected by that, my brothers, my brother's kids when all this happened, and they feel like they lost a mother because my mother devoted so much time for trying to give me back out of the system that they felt like they were neglected. So they were affected by that. My older sister was affected, my brother was affected. I mean, everybody was affected. One minute remaining. And when you try to hold onto something good, even when you try to get something good in this kind of situation, there's still nothing good come from it. It's just always bad. It's always negative as always a challenge is always hurtles, so always something. But for the person that's in the middle of it, that's just my experience. But on the outside of it, that's something people don't never get a chance to see. That's that's that's just a harsh or harsh reality for a person to live based on someone else being in competition when all this stuff basically could have been avoided by someone just doing their job. But the job people was uh employed them to do, you know. So I think people should understand that and know that there's a lot of people to be affected by something like that. I think a lot of teachers should be brought to this moment and this kind of situation, so a lot of people can, uh, if you'll find another person that situation, it can be more awful events not to help in a different kind of way, they could because it's not just about me. Somebody everybody who here about me too. On October wayan Dott County District Attorney Mark dupri moved to vacate the conviction and dismissed all charges against Lamont McIntyre. Hours later, Lamont walked free for the first time in over twenty three long, miserable years. He called me from the courthouse steps. It was it was one of the best calls I've ever gotten. And in that call, he said he thanked me um and he said that the exposure that his case had gotten from being on this podcast had helped, and even if it was a tiny bit, it had helped to lead to his exoneration. It was a really extraordinary feeling, and I'm excited to share that On has since one a one and a half million dollar judgment for his wrawful conviction, and he and his mother are currently suing Roger Klupski for all the damage he did to their lives and their family. After a thirty year reign of terror in the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department, disgraced officer Roger Kolupski went to work in Edwardsville, Kansas in two thousand and ten. He has yet to face justice, and he retired in two thousand and sixteen. 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 Wardis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated 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