#183 Jason Flom with Kiera Newsome

Published Feb 3, 2021, 5:12 AM

On the day after Easter 2001 in South Central, LA, a female 11 Deuce Hoover fired into a group of Blocc Crips, wounding one and killing another. Even though Kiera Newsome was in class at the time and avoided gangs entirely, the unending Crip-Hoover rivalry took both her boyfriend’s life and eventually 19 years of her own.

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South central Los Angeles was plagued by gang violence, and in Kierra Newsom's neighborhood, the block crips and the eleven Deuce Hoovers ran the streets. Kiara avoided the gang life, but it still took the life of her boyfriend Markel Norman on December tenth, two thousand. On April sixteen, two thousand one, in retaliation for another gang shooting, three female hoovers rolled up to some block cribs and one of the women got out and shot into the crowd, mortally wounding Christian Hinton. She got back into the car and shot again as she sped away, grazing the torso of Seante Allen. The shooter was described as African American in her twenties, with a lazy eye and a tattoo on her upper right thigh. This incident happened at eleven thirty am on a school day, ten miles from where Kierra Newsom was in class. But despite this rock solid alibi and the fact that she didn't have a car or even a driver's license, the prosecute a shan came up with a theory that Chiara, in retaliation for her boyfriend's murder, had somehow snuck out of her lockdown school, changed her clothes, dyed her hair, drove over thirty minutes of the scene, committed the crime, and somehow managed to return to her desk just seven feet from her teacher, with her absence going completely unnoticed, but with coerced eye witnesses and the fact that she happened to have a tattoo on her upper right thigh, Kiara ended up serving nearly twenty years, tormented by her co defendant Donnielle Flynn, a k astro, who is believed to have been the actual shooter. This is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam Welcome back to Ronful Conviction today. I am so excited and honored because I have, first of all, Chris Hawthorne. Chris is the founder, director and clinical professor at the Juvenile Innocence and Fair Sentence and Clinic at Loyola Law School. Welcome to Raapiction. Thanks Jason, I appreciate it, and with him, the featured guest on our show today is the one and only Kiara Newsom and Kiarra thank you for being here. Thank you and this story it's a California story and Kira, you grew up in South central l A. Can you tell us what that was like growing up in South central l A. My father grew up without his dad, so he gravitated to the gang lifestyle, which most young men do. And the neighborhood I grew up in, the blocks and the Hoovers are what we consider to be enemies. They always have gang violence. Before I was seventeen years old, I went to so many funerals I can't even tell you. But one thing I can say is that my mom was always the type of person. She really imposed education on this big time you know. Yeah, and I understand you did very well at school, and that's despite all of the violence and hardship that surrounded you, including one murder that hit so close to home. And that was the murder that actually started the snowball effect that ended in your tragic, wrongful conviction. I'm referring, of course, to the murder of your boyfriend, Mark L. Norman, who at the time of his death was in fact on eleven deuce Hoover, but he wasn't in a gang. At age thirteen when you started dating Markel at the time was the straight a student living with his grandmother. So when his grandmother passed away, Markelle and his sisters had to go back and live with his mom. She was addicted to crack cocaine. So when he went back to live with his mom, there were times that they didn't have food to eat. So I will sneak food out of my grandmother's house and my mother's house to make sure that they would be able to eat. So one day in particular, remember him calling me and he told me that he was gonna be put on the gang, and I was so upset, But then he started to explain to me the benefits that the gang was giving him. He'll have means to provide for his sisters and his mom, and everything was gonna be okay. And he really believed that. He believed this so much that he could go to school and be the straight age student and be a gang member outside of school. And that's what our whole little bet was about. And he was able to keep up that little facade for like the first report, Carter so and I lost the bet, and that's how I ended up with the tattoo that I have. So after that, things begin to change. Marquelle got deeper into the gang, and I was barely seeing them. And I will never forget when my mom looked me in my eyes and she said, I'm gonna end up walking you to a jail to see this boy. Um end up ging you to a grave site to see this boy. And of course you're talking about what happened on December tenth, two thousand and I was on a Sunday. It was a church today, and it was early and I remember walking outside and I remember seeing Marquail and he had on all black and I remember a car driving down the street looking at us. When we turned around, these guys were no longer in the car. One was on the sidewalk, one was standing in the street. They both had their arms posted to us, and they had something covering their arms, and you can hear the gunshots. Marquelle pushed me out the way and I ran into the house and I look out the window. I see Marquelle land on the ground, and I remember when he turned his body around, he had a gash at the top of his head, and that's when I knew that he was shot. I don't think many people have probably ever lived through anything nearly as traumatic, because that and it's it's hard to believe it. That was just the beginning of this awful journey. It's at this point, too, that the first hero in the story emerges, right when I'm talking about the principle at Duke Ellington High School. Yes, his name is Mr McLynn. When that happened to Markoe and I became a witness, I didn't know at the time that the gang members ran into the school looking to kill me. Mr mclinn called my mom and he said, no, don't bring her back here. I got a school for her. If it wasn't for him, I probably wouldn't be here today. So the school, sEH charter was they locked down school normally for kids who were involved in the juvenile justice system. Kira wasn't involved in the juvenile justice system, but she was definitely in danger and so she was safer at a lockdown school than at a regular school. Now things get really complicated April fifteen, two thousand and one, Easter Sunday, when three associates of the Hoovers were shot in the acting a lot of Red's Liquor store on West Century Boulevard. That's Rudy tiny Head and another man, and then the victims returned to a party, and police showed up at the party to ask questions about the shooting. One of the things about gang shootings is most people who participat in gangs are teenagers, and they tend to be really reactive. Most of what they do is very impetuous and very sudden. So it makes sense that the next day someone from the eleven Duce Hoovers would try to take a shot at the block cribs. It's not typical you wait around for four months before you decide to react to a shooting. So why the police didn't look at Red's liquor store is a mystery to me, especially since Rudy, who was one of the guys in the car who was shot at, was the boyfriend of one of the women who was in the car. The next day, Yeah, I mean this is we're talking literally the day afterwards. At eleven thirty in the morning on April thousand and one, when three young African American women pulled up in front of fourteen West Street and the Westmont neighborhood of Los Angeles, there was a group of men outside, all of whom were block crips. One of the women got out of the car and this is important. So she was described as wearing all red tube top corduroy short sneakers and advisor. One or more of the men on the scene described her as having a lazy eye and a name tattooed on her upper right thigh. So she asked about someone named Nakia, but none of the men knew who she was talking about. The young woman then walked back to the car, turned and fired a handgun once into the group of men, mortally wounding Christian Hinton, and the woman got into the car, They sped off and she fired a few more rounds, grazing Shaunte Alan's tour show, but Alan luckily survived. Hnton, however, died two weeks later in the hospital. They said that the woman who had shot Christian Hinton was in her early twenties and fairly tall. Here's still looking kind of like a baby. Then she's still a teenage yours. I mean, it would have seemed obvious for them to look towards a hoover named Donnie L. Flynn, also known as Astro, who would have been retaliating for the shooting of her boyfriend and the two other hoovers. The night before, right, But one way or another, the really important part of this is that we know exactly where Kiara was at the time of the shooting, in my classroom. And how do we know that you were in your classroom? I signed in in the morning, My teacher collected hay counts all throughout the day, and they would have noticed if I would have left, they would have caught the police on me, because that's what the school does. Would you have been able to show up at school wearing all red, No, I wear a uniform, white polo shirt, black pants. A couple of other things about that school. The classroom she was in where her teacher, Rebecca Woodroffe taught her, is very small, and Rebecca's desk was about six to seven feet from Kira's desk. Hi'm Rebecca Woodroft. I was Kira Newsom's teacher in the spring of two th and one. There was only one door to my classroom, and I always had a view of the door, whether I was at my desk or in front of the class, and my desk was actually positioned between the door and the students. So it's just impossible for somebody to get out and come back and have me not noticed right away, and even if somebody were to have gotten past me, which wouldn't happen. The front door was operated by the secretary, and she kept it locked, and they would have to be buzzed in or out. And the back door led to a locked gate. On top of the locked gate was barbed wire. Um And it was the day after Easter that day, and I had actually noticed that Kira had purple hair braided in She had said that her grandmother had done it for her. So everyone knows what African American ladies to take braids. Now that would have to take you anywhere from three to six hours. It just don't make sense. No one's going to miss the fact that you have purple hair, but straight usually enough. Nobody said that in the description. But still anyone who wanted to believe that you were actually the shooter would have had to believe is that somehow or other, you vanished into thin air without your teacher, who was seven feet away from you noticing it, snucked through multiple doors that were locked, climbed over barbed wire, got into a car which I don't even know if you had a car, changed your outfit, drove ten miles which would have been at least a thirty minute drive because l a traffic god knows it could be a two hour drive, and then killed. Someone calmly changed your clothes back, disposed of the other outfit, and magically snuck back into the thing, sat down at your seat. And she also managed to dye her hair on the way while she was speeding through traffic. It's also preposterous, So the state had nothing except for three eyewitnesses. These guys who were on the lawn were definitely intimidated, not only by members of their own gang, but also by Danielle Flynn, who had a fearsome reputation in the neighborhood. In addition to that, they really didn't want to talk to the police. They didn't think it was any of the police's business. I've had local law enforcement complained to me saying, like, you know the problem talking to gang members, that they just don't want to talk to us, And I said, the problem is that nobody wants to talk to you. It's never a good thing when a policeman is walking up your front walk and appearing at your door. No one wants to talk to police in these neighborhoods. They're not bringers of good tidings. They're not people who help you. Uh. They are only people who make your life more difficult. Ryan Faust, of course, only appeared in court because the police threatened him with an arrest. In another matter, Joe Cook, of course, didn't appear in court. After his preliminary hearing. He fled to Mississippi where they were apparently unable to find him, and they had to arrest Bobby Johnson to get him into court. But none of them particularly care about telling the truth on the stand because they don't regard this as a police thing. This is a blocked crypt eleven Duce Hoover thing, and frankly, they don't care who goes down for it. What they care about is their own value system and what they're going to do about it on the street. But talking about the street, every person I talked to in this case knew who actually did this crime. It's not a secret that Kira is innocent. So June fifth of two thousand and one, they brought you to the precinct right under the auspices of looking at a lineup to find your boyfriend's killer, But that was not what they had in mind. By this time, they already came out to my grandmother house the least five or six times, trying to get me to put the murder off on a block crypt member, and I wouldn't do it. So I'm like, Okay, I'll go see these lineups. So I remember them picking me up and my dad said, Kia, the longest they could hold you was seventy two hours. And I'm thinking in my head, like why would he say that? You know when we got there, and they were like Kiara Newsom and I'm like yes. So I walked to the guy. I'll never forget this. He has a poster in his hand, and I was so in shocked. It's like my soul left my body. It's that oneed for murder, and I'm like, murder, Who did I murder? And they put the handcuffs on me. All you hear is chained. I was placed in the hallway. The woman stripped me down and look for tattoos in a room full of men. I was only seventeen, and I'm not understanding why I'm here. I believe for seventy two hours that I was arrested from the murder of Marquille. This episode is brought to you by Stand Together. Stand Together is a philanthropic community dedicated to helping people improve their lives. For more than twenty years, Stand Together and its partners have been on the front lines of criminal justice reform. By empowering people to take action, supporting nonprofits, and working with businesses, Stand Together tackles the root causes of problems in our communities and empowers those closest to the problems to drive solutions. Solutions like reducing unjust prison sentences through the First Step Act, empowering community based programs that help people re enter society, and now working to bridge divides in our communities. To learn how you may get involved, visit stand together dot org slash conviction. When did they reveal to you that they were going to charge you with a different murder? Entirely? I walk into the room and I noticed one of the old detectives from our Kales case and a new detective. I remember sitting down and them starting to ask me about Mr Christianient and and all these people. Then they're saying all this stuff about retaliation from our Kale and listen, and I'm confused, and then they bring up as now I'm really confused. Then when he say the day that it happened, the time, it's all hit. I'm in school at that time and now and I'm hopeful because I'm like, as soon as he go back, he talks to my parents, they go down to the school, they get the paperwork, they bring it. I'm free to go. I've seen all the investigative materials in this case, and the police were focused on Kiera very early in this investigation, and they didn't check her alibi out until after they had arrested her in June. They originally targeted Kira as the driver of the car in this murder, I think because they thought that the person who was the shooter answered the description of Don Yelled Flynn pretty well. But then they discovered that Kierra couldn't drive, and so suddenly they put her on the street shooting Christian Hinton, right, And so now you know, she would have had to have been leaving school and then driving a car that didn't exist with a license she didn't have. They're willing to go to just extraordinary lanes, and not to serve and protect, but to frame and destroy. Now comes the next phase, going through the courts and the juvenile and the jail systems. You were a minor, so they started you off and Juvie where you were at least safe from Dannielle Flynn's reach at that time. But that was temporary. It was only until you turned eighteen, and then you were sent to the women's jail. So now Dannielle Finn has access to you for the first time. I've heard about her, but I've never seen her in action, you know. So my attorney at the time, Mr Tahan, he felt that the best thing was to get me separated from her. He did a court order. They come through and they switched my wristband so we were to not even be in the same dorm as each other, let alone the same hold intink as each other, or the same bus. So when we went to court that day, and that was my first time run into our seeing or, she walks into the room and she sits down next to me and then lady, it's like the devil itself. She says, Oh, everything is gonna be fine, It's gonna be all right. I need you to take this one for me. I need you to go to trial with me. That's how she does me. What what do you need me to go to trial with you for because at this time we're trying to separate this case and get far away from her as possible, you know. And right then and there, it was like a switch popped off in her head and she just went crazy. She spit on me and I jumped back, and the officers came in, grabbed her, They took her out. That was the first attack. So they separate us. We went on two separate buses and everything, and then all of a sudden, we're through the jail. Was I was a snitch. Don't snitches tell on people. Don't snitches know what actually happened. I don't understand how she manipulated these people to believe that I was a snitch. And our next court date, the police officers put us on the same floor. Her and I walked past and I heard somebody go snitch. It was her. She kicked me and she got a hold to me, and it was the officer. I'll never forget this. She jumped on top of my back and she had me down and she said, don't do anything. We've seen everything. So we were late for court that day. We're talking December fourth, two thousand and two. During jury selection, Kierra's lawyer files to dismiss on the grounds of the teacher, Rebecca Woodruff's testimony. The judge dismisses the case on the credibility of the testimony. Okay. Then six hours later the d A reindics and Kira was re arrested. So when she's alone with the detective in his car, he drove her to a motel, the Magic Carpet, where he offered her a deal, have sex with him and he'll give her an hour to run. Kira refused. He brought her in and while booking her and taking her fingerprints, he asked if the finger he was holding at the time was the and she masturbated with The room was full of chuckles from the other officers. I sometimes think that the police never actually wanted Kiarra to go down for this murder, but they were hoping that if they put her in terror, in fear of her life, that eventually Kira would break and she would tell them everything she knew. Unfortunately, she didn't know anything because Kira is not a gang member, and in part that's why she ended up getting convicted here, because everybody else in this case is a member of a gang and people have their back, but no one ever had Kiarra's back because she was not a member of a gang. She was an outsider. The police were looking out for themselves, gang members are looking at for themselves. No one's looking out for ki Era and that's just wrong. I mean, we get to the trial. They put her on trial with Danielle Flynn, who the prosecution had now decided was the driver on that day and Kierra was defended by Anthony tay Hunt at rand, a guy named Larry Williams offended Flynn, and the witnesses had described this tattoo on the upper right thigh of the shooter. The thing is, both Chiara and Donniell Flynn have a tattoo on their right thigh. It's it's it's a crazy coincidence, but in a preliminary hearing something quite consequential and very shady transpired. Kira has a tattoo under thigh, very very high under thigh, almost on our hipphone. Danielle Flynn has a tattoo much lower on the thigh, which is quite visible when you're wearing shorts. However, at the preliminary hearing, when Joe Cook was testifying, Danielle's lawyer did something that I think should be in the museum of clever tricks by defense attorneys. He said, I'd like to have my client, Danielle Flynn, pull up her pants leg and show that she doesn't have a tattoo on her thigh, which don Yelle did, but she only pulled it up about three or four inches above her knee, and so the tattoo wasn't visible. And even though this tattoo is in police reports, there are pictures of it, that tattoo exists. And yet during that preliminary hearing, the dispute attorney allowed the court to place on the record that Danielle Flynn didn't have that tattoo. So in the jury's mind, Kira is the only one of the two defendants with a tattoo on her right bye. But the defense presents her alibi very well. Again, she had signed in at eight am. Again, Mark President attend fifteen am and twelve fifteen am, and the murder was at her Teacher, Rebecca Woodruff, gave testimony verifying her presence in class and presented six dated assignments. The way that I taught class, I would teach and then I would give assignments. All of the assignments had to be completed during class time. For example, you you would not be able to get a packet of assignments from me if you had missed something from before. You'd actually have to be there every hour of the day to get each of the assignments. And Kira had completed all six assignments that day, so it just would have been impossible for her if she had left and come back. So this is where gang evidence plays such an important role in this trial. The gang evidence, which is put in evidence by a gang expert who's just a gang policeman who works the neighborhood, is really a way to get race into the courtroom. Gang evidence is race evidence, and the people who are the victims of this kind of evidence are always black and brown youth. It convinces the jury that the person sitting at the defendance table is capable of anything. Kiarra Newsom gang member can commit murder and then go back and finish her civil rights assignment that afternoon without breaking a sweat. That is what gang evidence does to a trial. Now, in this case, gang evidence was appropriate for some of the people involved. Christian Hanton, Bobby Johnson, Ryan Foust, Danielle Flynn, We're all in the cal Gangs database and all had what we call FI cards validating that they were gang members. Kierra Newsom had only one thing. She had a boyfriend tattoo on her upper thigh and it was a tattoo so high under thigh that the only person who was going to see that tattoo was Markel. That tattoo was identified as a gang tattoo by the gang expert at the trial. He said, you could not have a tattoo on your thigh like that unless you were a fully paid up gang member or you would be shot on site on the streets of South l A. Now that's a myth. You don't walk around with an invisible boyfriend tattoo and other gang members are prowling the streets looking to waste you. But that was the myth that they pushed at that trial, and frankly, it is the myth that I think convicted Kira Newsom. So Seante Allen, who was shot in the toy so, testified that he had gone to school with Kiarra and knew her. He spelled the identification is saying that it was not her in the car at the shooting. How the fund could she get convicted in spite of this, Chris, you gotta you gotta help us out here. Kira is convicted of the murder of Christian Hinton, but she's acquitted of the attempted murder of Shauntey Allen, even though clearly the woman who shot Christian Hinton is also the person who shoots at Shaunta Allen halfway down the block. That feels the irrational, but I suspect it was the jury had a momentary crisis of conscience and wondered maybe if they got the wrong person, and so they thought they'd throw Kiarra a bone, even though they convicted her of a crime she never committed. July two thousand and three. Carry You've now been through almost everything the human being can go through, and you're still just a kid. And now the jury goes out. They called Danielle Flynn, they called her team out first. It was like, not guilty first degree murder, not guilty second a murder, All these not guilties, you know. And she's sitting in the courtroom and she's crying, she's happy and everything, and they're like Karen News not guilty attempted murder and guilty first degree murder, and I'm like what and I'm in tears, and she looks at me and say to that's what snitches get. It walks out with many wrongful convictions. The person who actually committed the murder is still out on the street. What's even stranger is the person who committed the murder is sitting next to Kira at the defendant stable, Daniel Flynn stays out and years later she's convicted of an execution style drug murder on the streets of Las Vegas, and she's now doing twenty to life in Nevada State Prison. And you could say that that poor guy in that alleyway might be alive today if justice we're done at this trial. So here sense to six years a LAFE And now the torture wasn't over by any stretched the imagination. When I had prison, not only did they have me as a Hoover Crypt member, but also the people that was already there had got where I was a snitch, you know. So not only am I this gang member now supposedly, but I'm a snitch too. When I got up there in my first few years. Um, all I did was fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, And the only people that ever fought me was the hoovers. The blocks never fought me. They lost someone, but they knew the truth. I wasn't the best fighter, but I learned to become good at it because I did it so much for at least like three years straight. I had at least like two fights today, if not more. But there were some correction officers that looked out for you. There's one named Lieutenant Norman who was one of the good guys. Is that right, Yes, he's he's one of the good guys, you know. And Lieutenant Norman, he had me in his office and he told me, you're gonna tell me what's going on with you now. Mind you, the other life fers had already told him what was going on. The fact that I was innocent, they already had told him. But my whole perception of the law in the system and police officers was to not talk to them about anything because then a get twisted the wrong thing that happened. I was in fear of the justice system, you know, And he let me know that I can trust him. So I laid everything out to him and explained to him what was going on with me and what actually happened, and he reassured me that he already knew. So as long as he was on the yard that I was on, I was okay. I didn't have to worry. He started shifting people over, moving them to different yards and different things to make sure that these gang members stayed away from me. That was good for like a few years up until the time when he moved further along up to captain and he was no longer on the yards anymore. Every so many years you have people coming in like, oh, yeah, that's the girl that's nitched on the astro, and I'm like, are they serious If I said something about this lady, wouldn't this lady be incarcerated right now? It was just crazy. So I just physically and mentally fun hall art to approve to people I'm innocent, I'm innocent. I'm innocent, to the point to where I just gave up one day and said, you know what, I'm gonna stop doing that, and I decided to write letters. I was write every day and I wrote the Innocence Project. The first time they told me they had too many people at the day that I planned my own suicide. I get a paper from the Innocence Projects saying that they accepted my case, and that's the only reason why I decided to live to California Innocence Project. They did something great. They recognized that since you were a juvenile at the time of the alleged incident, they could reach out to the Juvenile Innocence and Fair Sentenced and Clinic at Local Law School also known as Jeff's And Chris, that's when you got involved. What year did you get involved in? And then how did things progress from there? Winter Justin Brooks came up here to speak at Loyola Law School and he brought Kierra's file with him and we went out to dinner that and Idea handing me this file, this big red weald full of random papers, and he said, we kind of reached a dead end on this case. Can you put your students on this case? And we were a relatively new clinic, and I said, yeah, I'll take this case on. And I just want to tell you how that Jeff's clinic works. I mean, students do everything in the jeffic clinic. So when we got the case, we noticed that C. I. P Had had interviewed a lot of people from the school, but they hadn't been able to get to people in the neighborhood, and so we thought, well, that's where we need to start our work. So we went down to South l A. And with the help of Kierra's mom, we started fanning out and talking to people in and around the neighborhood. And then we caught a lucky break. Um we were able to throw a documentary filmmaker who was making a movie about that neighborhood. We were able to get in touch with Ryan Faust, and Ryan simply said, well, you know, I know that it was and Kira who did that. I was under pressure from my family and from the police to identify somebody. When they walked in with the six pack, they had already circled Kierra's face, and so I knew that's what they wanted. So I simply initialed that photograph and that became part of my testimony. And once I had that testimony, I felt like I had to keep going into court and saying the same thing or I was going to get arrested and sent away for this bottle of vodka he had lifted from local Albertson's. I sent an investigator to talk to Joe Cook. Joe Cook didn't want to help because he'd been trying to avoid this case for I don't know how long. He said, I don't want to help anybody. I don't want to change my testimony. And then he says to my investigator, he said, but the one thing I remember is that woman who pulled her pant leg up at the preliminary hearing, that was the shooter. And I'm not even sure Joe knew that. He was saying that was Danielle Flynn. And then we talked to somebody else who was the neighborhood who said that Danielle Flynn had shown up at his house the day of the murder and had been looking for other to help her do this thing, and then had said to this guy, there's gonna be something going down. You better, you know, better lie low for a while. And sure enough, not long after that, the sirens started going off and that murder took place. Um So we put together what I thought was a pretty compelling case, but we still had to deal with the requirements of habeas corpus and the incredibly steep hill you have to climb in order to prove that in superior court, and frankly we were unable to prove it. To the satisfaction of the Torrent Superior Court, they rejected the petition. Now, luckily, in the California instance, Project needed an extra person for their California twelve March, and someone had dropped off that bank. He was wow. Okay. And and by the way, if you haven't seen the movie by that same name, I suggest you do watch it tonight. I mean, Brian is a great, great guy. And for those of you who don't know what the California twelve Innocence March was, justin Brooks, Alyssa ber Cow and Mike's so magic of the California and this is Project March. Get this all the way from San Diego to Sacramento, seven hundred and twelve miles to deliver clemency petitions to Governor Brown's office for twelve clients aka to California twelve, all of whom had compelling evidence of actual innocence. The march took something like fifty five days and it started at the end of April of two thousand thirteen. So in May they said, can we submit a clemency petition to the governor of Kierra Newsom. Will you co sign that petition? And I said, absolutely, we will do that. That was early in the Jerry Brown governorship. So towards the end of Jerry Brown's governorship, I got a call from a Border Parole hearing investigator and she said, I want to talk to you about Kierra Newsom's case. And so I sat down with my petition and the investigator sat down in Sacramento and for two hours we went through every piece of evidence there and I made the case that Kierra Newsom was innocent. At the end of that, the investigator said, thank you very much. And that's the last I heard until on Christmas Eve, Christina Linquist and the Governor's office called me up and said, I've just talked to your client. Her sentences being commuted to twenty years to life, she should be eligible for parole. Immediately, I thought I was gonna be sent directly home right away. I didn't know that I was going to have to go before the parole board, but I had to tell myself. I said, Carre, you already said whether through the boardroom or through the courtroom, he was gonna get out of here. You you can fight another day. Just do what you have to do. I'll do the court thing later. Is not justice all the way from me, but it's something. And like I told them, the only thing that Kara k Newsome is guilty of is dating a gang member. I feel so bad for the victims family. They still don't have the justice that they deserve. Okay, this is about them. I'll have my moment one day, and I believe that that day has coming eventually. So April seven, you walked. You walked out of prison a free woman after serving nearly nineteen years in prison for a crime you didn't commit, you didn't know about, you had no knowledge of. And what did you do when you walked out of prison? Well, the first thing I did is run into the arms of my fiancee. But when we got out the gates, Rebecca was right there. And I was told that Hawthorn was not going to be there because of this pandemic. And when I seen him, even though it was a pandemic, you know, I'm like, I'm gonna hug him anyway. I got to see my top two people outside of my family, and I saw a you know, my loved ones and then my career was there, Marissa, all the students, everybody was there and it was just so exciting. I mean, here it is now and you're seven months pregnant, right, Yeah, that's that's exciting, you know. So do you know if it's a girl or a boy? It's a boy? Okay, do you have a name picked out? I'm gonna name him Champion. I've been through a lot as well as you know. His father has a tremendous story too. We both went to that school together, you know, So this baby deserved to be called Champion. Has baby been through a lot even even since Yeah, even since I've been out, this baby has still been through a lot because whatever I feel, he feels. And I'm still going through it out here, still trying to find work. I have all these college degrees, and this big felon just keeps popping up, you know. But eventually things is going to change. I know something's gonna happen for me. What remains to be done for Kira Newsom? How do how does this eventually get truly righted? And what can people do to help her? And help you help others? So Kira is out of prison, she's free, but she's not exonerated. The next step for us, as you may have heard, we have a new DA in town here, George Gascone, and he is going to revamp the Conviction Integrity Unit where I hope to take this case again. We will have a petition up on change dot org. Eira should get the justice she's been deserving for so long and should be able to walk around a woman without a conviction to her name, which has kept a lot of doors closed for her so far. And it's it's not fair she should be walking around without this conviction to hanging around her neck. And so if you want to help, please look at the change dot org petition and also support the Juvenile Innocence and Fair Sentence and Clinic so that we can help more kids who were convicted and sent to the California prison system, kids like ki Era. So we will put a link in our bio to support Kira and to support Jeff's as well. And now we have what we call closing arguments. Closing Arguments is the section of the show where once again I think all right to extraordinary guests Chris Hawkern and Kierra Newsom and Chris and Kira, here's how this works. Um, this is the part of the show where I turned my microphone off, kicked back, close my eyes and just listen anything that you want to say. It's all yours for the close out. So Chris Hawthorne, why don't you go first, and then you can just hand the mike off to Kierra and she can do the mic drop. We started the Juvenile Innocence in Fair Sentence in clinic in because Los Angeles is the capital of juvenile over sentencing. There are so many kids during the nine nineties, during the early part of this century who got sent off to California prisons to serve really long sentences, some of them wrongly convicted, all of them over sentenced. It is so important for us as a city and a county to live up to the ideals we believe Los Angeles stands for, to be the city that we say we are, this big, beautiful, diverse city which values its citizens, values every citizen. Kara Newsom is just one of the most egregious examples of how unjustly children are treated in the criminal justice system here in Los Angeles and were for many many years. I have a lot of faith that the new District Attorney's office is going to change that. I'm hoping that we'll be able to continue the work we've been doing, and I'm so excited to be able to do it with Kira Newsom free and at the side of all of our amazing students and staff who are going to keep doing this work as long as we can possibly do it. First of all, I would like to thank each and every one of you guys for taking the time out to listen to my story. I am not the first that this is what happened to, and I know that I'm not the last this is what happened to. And I also know that where I come from, there are many many others I was just incarcerated, and I know at least ten more meat that's there that don't even have the opportunities that I have right now. I won't for anyone that ever has to do jury duty and deal with cases that has to deal with gangs and threats and violence and things like that to really really pay attention to the evidence, because one small mistake this can happen to anyone. And I just want to say that I blame no one for this happening to me and I realized that everyone had a job to do, whether it was a judge, whether it was a d a, whether it was the officers. In due time, God would deal with everybody accordingly. I just want everybody to have a peaceful and enjoy themselves, and each one teach one and each one reach one and go out there and make a difference in the change in someone else's life, because you never know who you'll touch. 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 on 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

Wrongful Conviction

Hosted by celebrated criminal justice reform advocate and founding board member of the Innocence Pro 
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