#226 Jason Flom with Atif Rafay

Published Oct 6, 2021, 4:12 AM

Atif Rafay was a thriving, brilliant, and happy student who had just finished his freshman year at Cornell University. On a weekend trip in July of 1994, while visiting his family in Bellevue, Washington, Atif Rafay’s mother, father, and sister were all brutally murdered in their home. Investigators targeted Atif and his best friend, Sebastian Burns, because they were ‘acting strangely.’ Despite a corroborated alibi that both young men were not present during the killings, as well as extensive evidence of other parties’ involvement, Atif and Sebastian were convicted of murder.

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The Raffets were a Pakistani Canadian immigrant family who moved to Bellevue, Washington, while their son of teeth finished his freshman year at Cornell University. A chief's father, doctor Terek Raffet, was a prominent and outspoken moderate Muslim with controversial views in their old community in Vancouver. While a thief and his best friend, Sebastian Burns, were out for the night on July twelfth, a thief's father, mother, and sister were brutally bludged to death in their home. Neighbors on either side of the Reves home independently reported hearing the sounds of the murders at a time for which the boys whereabouts were well known. Their vocal operation revealed no incriminating evidence. DNA evidence mixed with doctor at vas blood belonged to neither the victims nor a Tief or Sebastian. Yet, despite all of this, as well as compelling leads implicating religious extremists, the Bellevue police never took their focus off of a thief and Sebastian. While the boys went up to live with Sebastia his parents in Canada, investigators enlisted the help of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to perform an undercover sting called Mr Big that extracted two false confessions that were riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions. To solidify their case, they coerced a Tief and Sebastian's friend Jimmy Yoshi to give a third inconsistent statement. When expert testimony on false confessions, as well as the evidence of other possible suspects were ruled inadmissible, the jury was only able to weigh the inconsistent false confessions against the physical evidence and eyewitness accounts that clearly contradicted them. This is wrongful conviction with Jason Flom. Welcome back to wrongful Conviction with Jason Floman. Wow. I mean, where do why you even start? Because this case should have gone in an entirely different direction with what came from the initial investigation. But they took the really long, borderline, crazy way around the right answer to get to this one. It's so convoluted, and luckily with us today to help tell the story, we have a true hero of the innocence movement, and of course I'm talking about Ken Klonsky. Ken is the director of Innocence International, an organization that he co founded with a legend, a boxing legend, and a civil rights legend, a man whose name you will probably recognize, Reuben Hurricane Carter so Ken. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction. Thank you, Jason. It's great to be here today. We are compelled to shine a light on the horrendous case of at Frafe and Sebastian Burns to nineteen year old boys. Back then, seven years ago were nineteen who were egregiously framed, her secuted in the court system and in the press. A tief is with us today. Sebastian can't be unfortunately, but the case, I want to be clear, they're both equally innocent, and they're both framed in the exact same proceedings. You have a prepaid call. You will not be charged for this call. This call is from and inmate at Monroe Correctional Complaint. This call will be recorded and monitored. So on the phone with us now, calling in from prison in Washington State where he's been locked up for a triple murder he had nothing to do with. Is my friend and personal hero atif Rafe. Atif I'm sorry you have to be here under these conditions, but hopefully not for too much longer, but I am happy you're here and thanks for calling in. Thank you, Jason. I'm so grateful, So Tief. Your story was covered by Kelly Loudenburg in the Confession Tapes on Netflix, and in a series that was one episode per case yours, she actually dedicated two episodes to it. So we've had a lot of ground to cover. So let's start by going back to a time before this unspeakable tragedy befell your family. What was life like for you growing up? It was remarkably happy and lucky life, I was thinking almost every respect. I grew up partly in the Karachi, Pakistan, but most of my life I lived in Vancouver, and I had amazing, devoted, wonderful parents. I mean, my parents were extraordinary people, and I didn't really just love them, I admired them. My mom was the best friend to me. My dad was the kind of person who cared deeply about everything in the world and was able to continuously engage me in being interested in the world in a way that I think two people ever get to experience. It was a real enormous privilege to grow up like that and to be able to have the parents I did so no one ever even claimed that there were any problems of any kind in your family, that there were any bad feelings, much less violence or strife. And I also want to highlight that your father, doctor terk With, was a prominent Sunni Muslim and was active in his religious and cultural communities both in Vancouver and Bellevue, only a two and a half hour drive away from one another. By the way, he was the co founder and one time president of the very moderate interfaith friendship building organization, the Pakistan Canada Association, whose activities were frankly very upsetting to some more radical Muslims. And it's important to note that Dr Off they also published a paper and developed a controversial computer program indicating that Muslims in British Columbia were mistakenly not facing Mecca when they prayed. The direction Muslims are meant to face is called Kibla, which is the direction of the shortest possible path from any place to Mecca, and it has all sorts of important implications, not only daily prayers, but also Muslims are not permitted to urinate, spit or stretched their feet in the direction of Mecca, and when dead, Muslims must be buried on their right hand side to face Mecca. Now much later, during a Chief's trial, this controversy came up and the prosecution misquoted Dr Rafe's paper stating that according to Dr raf A, the kibla in use in the Pacific Northwest was only off by one degree and how would anyone be angered by such a small degree. But the prosecutor had misquoted Dr f A, who said that the true kibla direction was one degree off from the north pole, which would mean that Muslims praying in the Pacific Northwest were off by close to one hundred degrees. So imagine a ninety degree turn and then ten more degrees, and then imagine telling folks that their dead parents were facing the wrong direction forever, So a chief, the night when your parents and sister were tragically killed was July twelve, n But you and your friend Sebastian Burns were heading out for the night while your mother, father, and sister stayed home. If you could give us the timeline for that night, where did you go and what did you do? Sure? So it was in any ways a typical night for us as teenagers going out to a diner. Then going to the movies, and then afterwards searching for a club and going for a dessert. We had an early light dinner at the Keg Restaurant from around nine o'clocks to about nine thirty issues and at that time we went over for the nine fifty showings of The Lion King, and so we were in the lobby for a while until the movie started. At nine fifty. They would play a large number of advertisements and trailers before the movie actually started. Those takes several minutes, and then what happened that night was something quite unusual. The curtains closed after the advertisements and trailers were over, and The Lion King began and started to be projected over the closed curtains, and the movie went on like that for quite a while, enough that Sebastian and I think some other patrons were in the audience got up and went and had to go get the manager. It took a while for them to get the movie restarted and the curtains opened again, and so you know, it was probably ten o eight or something by the time all that was solved. And that manager's name is Jose Martinez, who spoke with Sebastian and handled this projector and curtain issue. He could place you both in the theater at that time, as could the concessions employee Jesse Kaplan, who's the guy who sold Sebastian his kid cat and talked with him about his T shirt before the movie. Now, both men, Jose Martinez and Jesse Kaplan distinctly recall you guys both in the lobby of the theater before the movie began and during this projector issue as well, because, according to them, a Pakistani kid and a white guy with blonde hair made a notable pair. So that covers a tief sense Sebastian's whereabouts from their arrival to the movie theater around nine PM to at least ten oh eight PM when the projector shoe was fixed. Meanwhile, a thief's neighbors, Mark Sidell and Julie Rackley, who lived on either side of the Raffae household, whose houses were so close in fact, that they had complained sometime of the volume of the Rafa's TV. They independently reported and later went on to testify that they heard the exact same sounds, describing them as a hammering or banging sound, but hollow and muffled sounding, and they heard those sounds comfortably in the window of time. When Jose Martinez and Jesse Kaplan can place a thief in Sebastian in the lobby of the movie theater, they just can't be in two places at once. It's making me crazy because you had just about as good of an alibi as you could possibly have. So now you've just seen the lion king right, and you hit a few other places, just a typical night that millions of teenagers have every weekend all over the country. Then you go home and find yourself in a literal horror scene. So we got out of the car, not expecting anything unusual, walked into the living room, and I saw my mother lying in that room, and I could see stain on the carpet, and after that, I was in a daze. I rushed upstairs. The fashion was rushing everywhere around too, and it's it's a confusion of disbelief and bewilderment. I went over to my dad's room. Even though the lights were off, I could be what the officers would later describe as it looked like a shotgun blast over the back wall, and it was I was. I was spinning around literally on my feet. I don't think I've ever really recovered from it. I felt frightened, I felt completely disoriented and in shock fast, and I had just instinctively, I think, ran and ran outside, and he had already called the police. I could hear him calling, and as soon as the first police officer arrived, Gary Motto, he actually drove past us while we were in the driveway, and we ran after them, trying to flag him down, and he had to actually pound on the trunk of the car because he was just driving off. And he got out and yelled at us to sit on the curve. I don't know whether he thought we were perpetrators or something, or somehow involved, but Garry Rata was very serious about us sitting down and being quiet, and I didn't know what to do other than to follow his direction. I think that changed the way everyone else looked at us and our behavior afterwards. I think the other detectives came in would say they were not as emotional as we would expect, they were not as concerned as we would expect. We gave them every cooperation we could. We gave them all our clothes or shoes, my glasses, fingerprints and photographs. They did searches with lights, and they did a gunshot retibute chat, you know, given cart blash to search the house and do whatever else they wanted to do. They recorded statements and then they bought us some sweats and jumped us off in the w mortel without a phone. My assumption was always that they didn't want them to call a lawyer or Mr Burns to get advice on what to do, but to keep them isolated. Okay, so they've got you confined in the ceed motel room, poking and prodding you and Sebastian with a whirlwind of questions and examinations that you submitted to voluntarily, which lasted about fifty six hours and turned up exactly nothing. Neither did the physical evidence that the crime scene incriminate a Teeth or Sebastian, and nor did the extensive testing that a Tief and Sebastian voluntarily submitted to afterwards. There was not a shred of bone, blood, tissue, or anything else found in either boy's body or clothing or in their hair. The idea that you could just shower away all of that blood evidence, it's pretty remote. So they're pinning their hopes on the DNA test results to incriminate you too, because they have nothing else. But in the meantime, you're two teenage boys. I mean, let's face it, the responsible adults in your lives here in America. Your parents were simply gone, right, your sister was gone, and your house was a crime scene. You had no home here at all. Right, nowhere to go, and I mean now, put yourself in Sebastian's parents shoes right there. They were definitely going to try like hell to get you and their son back to their home in Canada. And all of this was happening while funeral arrangements were being made by your extended family. So at the time I didn't realize this, but my relatives were actually flying in and coming into town, and they kept the fact that that was happening from us. Sadashian's parents had contacted the Canadian consulates, and the consulates contacted the police and informants that they wanted to return us to Canada. And I left a message with the check Off Thompson saying that we would be leaving, And on that very day, my relatives were in Seattle, but the police were not disclosing to them where we were or how to reach us, and they weren't telling us that they were even in town. And so on the day that I went back to Canada, I didn't even know what the police did know, which was that the funeral was already being arranged completely without my knowledge or participation. And this would later be something that the police would then lie about and describe us as fleeing the country. They were seen as, I think, a couple of wise guys who had gotten away with something, so now they want to paint you as fleeing, right, even though you had given them everything they'd asked for over the course of those fifty six hours in that CD motel room. Now, one of the other bizarre things about the prosecution's theory in this case was that a thief had wanted the insurance money from his parents. But even that you would need to suspend a huge amount of disbelief because of the level of violence in these murders, and particularly of a chief's father, who the police estimated was bashed in the head forty times with a baseball pad, and indications were and are that the first blow was the blow that ended doctor of Faye's life. So Why would a loving son who now supposedly suddenly out for money commit a murder in that manner? The amount of violence done could only have indicated fanaticism to me. So now while they were still waiting on the DNA to incriminate you, or so, they thought, more evidence was pouring in pointing instead toward religious extremists. You'll remember Dr Refay's efforts to improve relations with other religious communities and his controversial views on Kibla okay. So in the days following the murders, the Bellevue Police received not one, not two, but three tips from other law enforcement agencies. First Constable Jelina's with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told them that a confidential informant had warned them of a man who had been offered twenty thou dollars to kill an East Indian family that had previously lived in Vancouver but had moved to Bellevue. The informant became aware of this two days before the murders were committed. Joline's contacted investigators Robert Thompson and Jeff Combs, the lead Bellevue officers on the case, who then traveled to Vancouver and knocked on the door of the man in questions home twice. He didn't answer either time, and the officers returned to the US without making any contact. Secondly, the Intelligence division of the Seattle Police had information that Al Fucra, a radical and militant organization, may have been involved in the homicides, but they didn't bother to follow up on that tip either, And five days after the murders, another tip came in from the FBI. Right so OURCMP royally amount of police, Seattle Police Intelligence and now the freaking FBI. They delivered an informant to Bellevue and he told them that a militant Islamic faction to which he was privy, said that Dr Teriq Rafe should die because of his beliefs and teachings about the Koran. The informant also said that in the days after the murders, a member of this same militant faction came to his house and was worried that he the informant had seen a baseball bat that the militant and others had had in their car. Because of this concern, the FBI informant came to believe that the murder weapon was a bat. Now the Bellevue police already knew the murder weapon wasn't bad, but that fact critically had not been made public yet. This guy was a reliable FBI informant. The police were given full addresses, names, places of work, telephone numbers, and they just ignored him. They didn't even spell the names that he gave them correctly. All of this information never came to our attention until years later, because they said that they didn't have to turn over discovery until we were in the United States, and so for years we didn't know about any of this information and we couldn't investigate it. So if all of these credible and compelling leads couldn't break through the Bellevue investigators tunnel vision, I'm gonna go ahead and guess at conflicting DNA test results probably wouldn't have made a difference either, So let's dive in. Investigators found d NA mixed with Dr a Phay's blood in the downstairs shower, DNA mixed in with a bloody footprint in the garage made with Dr a face blood, as well as a coarse body here or pubic hair on the parents fitted sheet where Dr PA's body was found, but none of the other DNA profiles that were discovered at the crime scene matched the DNA of the victims to Reek Sultana or Bosma Rafe or the supposed alleged culforts in the case Sebastian and a Tief. So there's DNA evidence at the crime scene clearly excluding a Tief and Sebastian and pointing at unknown perpetrators. One more thing about that hair that you mentioned the detective initially when they found it, that it was in a position that could only be explained if it had been left part to killer. And they kept saying that right until the DNA proove that have didn't belong to Sebastian. Army more inconvenient truths. So if they had no evidence of your guilt, which they didn't, In fact, they had evidence of someone else's guilt, but they were fixed on getting new, then why and I've go ahead and make shut up right. They pointed to books you had read and philosophy papers, saying that you two guys love Nietzsche and subscribe to his superman theory, and in their slanted understanding, implied that you and Sebastian were capable of callously taking what you wanted from those who you deemed weaker than yourselves. Then they went after your alibi, saying the Sebastian ordered wine at the restaurant you had gone through that night. The keg so specifically so that he would be carded right in order to solidify his alibi. But what's wrong with this theory? Well, we had, like most of under age kids at that time, to get into clubs and order drinks. But you know you had a different name on it, Edward Montardo Mantaro. So I'm not sure how that would help us exactly right, For that theory about being remembered to hold water, you'd have to have I d that wasn't fake, not idea that was. And then they attacked your alibi again, saying that you left the larger than usual will tip just to be remembered. Okay, fifteen dollars on the bill of nine fifty. And if you think that's too much, and of course it is more, but try asking your server or bartender what they usually do when they go out. They're usually very generous to one another. And Sebastian used to be a server. Sebastian likely that he had been a server. He knew how much that meant to them. You can tell a server to keep the change. You're not gonna just give them a fifty cent tip because you have ten even in your bill, the nine fifty you're going to give them the next will you have, which I guess in this case was a five. But obviously this is all really weak, and with the physical evidence all pointing away from you, plus all the media hype around your case, they had to come up with something. So it's January, months after the murders, you're both in Canada and Bellevue investigators and list the help of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to perform a sting operation that was illegal in the US but legal in Canada and is known as Mr Big. The mist Big technique involves undercover officers playing roles as gangsters, thus gaining the trust of a police target. They seduce the target with the gangster mystique and the promise of big money schemes. They eventually ask about the targets criminal history under the guise of knowing whether any past criminal behavior poses a risk to future criminal operations that they're going to perform together. For example, you know, will you turn on me if you get pinched and then, as with other methods of eliciting confessions and Jason your network has covered this extensively on your show Wrongful Conviction, false Confessions. The results are a mixed bag, some reliable confessions, some false, and the most reliable way one can tell the difference is by the evidence that does or does not corroborate the statements made by police targets. Now, in this case, the operation begins with setting up electronic and visual surveillance of the targets, which include of the tief, Sebastian and their friend Jimmy Miyoshi. And it's important to note that the authorities knew Jimmy wasn't even in any area at the time of the murders, but they were leaning on him as an alleged accomplished either before or after the killing. They would take either. So the game begins and over time there's a chance meeting, well it's not really a chance meeting between Sebastian and these undercover agents, and a slow seduction process begins into making him believe in they're assumed criminal identities. They let Sebastian in on some stage meetings and some fake victim of scenarios like moving a car he had been told was stolen, and then with a mix, a toxic mix of trust and fear, they hoped to elicit a confession. So this seduction process went on for about four months, and there's been talking about the murder in Bellevue, but Sebastian repeatedly denied it. Then around May through July, things start to come to a head. I had nothing to do would be underconf for officers. First, I knew fashion was getting involved with them. He was telling me about it. But by May sixth Sebastian didn't want to have anything to do with them. Every time Sebastian tried to say I don't want to have anything to do with you, you would say, who you're going to give up when the police come and arrest you? And I know from my inside information that the police are come to arrest you, And Sebastian would say, well, they must be fabritating something, they must be misrepresenting something. It can't be the case because we didn't do the crimes. Now, if you're speaking to a police officer, you have the right not to incriminate yourself. You can plead the Fifth Amendment. But if you're speaking to gangsters. It's far more intimidating because you can't plead the Fifth Amendment with these gangsters. You're afraid of what they're going to do to you or your family. And it didn't matter whether we thought or we were worried that we were about to be arrested, because what mattered was what Mr Big believed. And he kept saying that what he believed is that we were being arrested, and that are being arrested was putting him in danger, and he says, I'm not going to take the risk of going down. You have to rem remember that you have to satisfy me that I can get rid of all the evidence that's down there so that you don't go to jail, so that you're not putting my organization at risk. It's a corner that they paint you into it from which there is no escape unless you do what they say. And to be clear, a thief and Sebastian never really came out and said we killed them and this is how we did it. What passed as a confession came from the bogus answers to the undercover agent's questions, questions that were aimed at filling in the large gaps in this investigation that had so far pointed away from a Chief and Sebastian, for example, about how they had covered their tracks. And these bogus answers that a Chief and Sebastian ended up giving to these questions are what ended up passing for an admission of guilt. For example, when Sebastian was asked about what you guys did with the bloody clothing, he said, we threw them in a dumpster, which one I can't remember. Well what happens when they find it panicked? He came up with, uh, no, we threw each piece of clothing out in different dumpsters, you know, so two socks, two shoes, pants, underwear, shirt, that's seven pieces of clothing each. How many dumpsters could you even find in Bellevue? Right? You need to have a Google map of dumpsters which didn't exist back then. These are just childish lies. The next time the undercover agent asked him about the bloody clothing, he changed his story again. No, no, no, we did it naked, so there were no bloody clothes. But then there were also no bloody footprints leading to the shower or blood that had dripped off of their supposedly naked bodies. It's a miracle. Then later on, when they ask you a tief, the same question about the disposal of any bloody clothing, you said, oh, we just hucked them out the window. So now that's four different fucking stories just about the clothing. Then there's the utter nonsense with the murder weapon, the baseball bat. Right where did you get it? Well, first, Abashian said, it was just laying around the raffet household. I mean, I'm not sure if you can speak for all Pakistani's the thief, But isn't cricket more of the usual thing? We played cricket. I've never played baseball in any form whatsoever. The next time, Sebastian comes up with a completely different lie, which is that you guys bought the bat the murder weapon in a sporting goods store, but which store you couldn't remember where it doesn't know. The undercover agents also asked Sebastian about how they were able to commit these murders if they were at the movie theater, and he said, oh, we left by the side door, and no one ever bothered to demonstrate how impossible it would be to commit the murders during the time frame supplied by the neighbors. So again, another implausible answer is given to please these gangsters. So there's only one reason why these stories contradicted the facts and each other, and that's because they were all made up stories. You would have literally needed to rehearse this because there's no way that the two different minds are going to come up with the same story independently when the whole story is made up out of whole cloth. All right, I mean, we tried the best to provide a plausible story, but yes, we didn't come up with perfect stories because we didn't commit the murder. Then we couldn't keep our stories straight because we didn't practice them well enough. Okay, So eventually you're arrested July thirty one, you and Sebaschelor charged with three counts of aggravated first degree murder, and your friend Jimmy Miyoshi was charged with conspiracy to commit murder. And you guys were locked up in maximum security pre trial facilities INBC British Columbia for six years, and in the fall of Jimmy Miyoshi was threatened by the RCMP with a suggestion that he might face the death penalty if he didn't tell them what they wanted to hear, which is that you guys were guilty. So, understandably, scared for his life, Jimmy signed an immunity agreement from his charge of conspiracy to commit murder and provided a number of statements incriminated you guys. But again we see the same pattern. Each statement contradicted the last one, and each one of them contradicted the physical evidence at the crime scene. So how many times did Jimmy initially deny that you and Sebastian had anything to do with it? Jimmy denied it twenty four times. And even after he made statements that were necessary to get an immunity agreement, he contacted our attorneys and he tried to find a way to tell the truth without being punished. Forth, prosecutors goad he was working for Lehman Brothers and for pressure on Lehman Brothers. He was told he was going to be fired unless he fulfilled his obligations to the prosecutors, and then he was toldly my face murder charges in addition, So Jimmy did what everyone does, I think in the system that's designed to make people say what the prosecutors want you to say. Jimmy did in fact go through with fulfilling his agreements, and then Lehman fired him. Anyway, So after six years in a Canadian maximum security facility, in March of two thousand one, you were finally extradited to the United States, and in the lead up to trial in January of two thousand three, something both horrifying and what should have been like the final alarm sounding your innocence occurred. If you remember, a Thief's father, Dr Rafe, co founded and led a Muslim group in Vancouver that sought to build bridges with other faith communities. Well, his co founder and successor in leading that group, Riya sat Ali Khan, was murdered. He was murdered on his doorstep, very close to the eve of the trial. Maybe it was a message, the killing of Riyasad Ali Khan that A, we still are here and we're going to do what we can to keep these religions apart and be you have the wrong people, You're prosecuting the wrong people. Finally, the trial began November two thousand three, over eight years after the original arrest, but the trial in some ways was as messed up as the rest of this nightmare scenario. I mean when I say that the trial judge Charles Myrtel ruled key evidence and admissible, so the jury never learned about the leads that were provided to the Bellevy Police by the FBI or the Seattle Intelligence Division informants. And those leads, for obvious reasons, would have been essential to prove your innocence as well as introduced the element of religious extremism that would have again been absolutely compelling to any jury. But they weren't permitted to hear that. And they also weren't permitted to hear from doctor Richard Leo. He's a leading expert on false confessions. He had agreed to present information regarding the false confessions that took place in order to provide the jury with relevant and reliable social scientific information about the psycholo logical phenomenon of interrogation and false confessions so the jury could make an informed decision. The judge somehow determined that it was quote the province of this jury to decide whether or not in their common experience and common sense, these statements made by these defendants of these undercover officers are voluntary or involuntary. You were doomed at that point. You were doomed. All the trial council, including my own and in the judge, were convinced that everything could be admitted from Canada on a silver platter without any American constitudual scrutiny. You were wrong about that, but that wasn't discovered till years after the trial. Wow. So this technique that was illegal in the States but legal at the time in Canada was just sort of greenlit right in And that is, of course the only evidence in this case against you. I say that because, as I mentioned, the prosecution did present the ridiculous brain fart about the fake ideas a large tip and the Nizka nonsense to try how to bolster the false confessions, which they knew ran directly counter to the physical evidence, DNA evidence, alibi witnesses and eyewitness accounts of the neighbors, as well as the leads that they didn't bother to follow up on involving religious extremists who were in all likelihood the real killers in this case. But it's really hard to overcome confession evidence, no matter how many inconsistencies and contradictions there are. So now at this point, it's nearly ten freaking years after your family was murdered, and the jury came to what was probably a predictable conclusion, a guilty verdict, and you and Sebashi were sentenced to serve three consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. Tell us about that moment. I don't think anything as bad as the moment that I came home that night, but that was generally close seconds. Even after everything that happened in this I didn't expect it. I believe somehow the jury would still be able to see that we were innocence. I was shocked. Okay, so you've already been in jail for a decade. Now you're sent to prison, but you've continued, you know, your dedication to constantly learning and improving and growing. I was very fortunate to find myself amongst some prisoners who were really interested in education, and a a great volunteer named Carolstas who wanted to found a university beyond Bars program here, and so I was able to spend some of my time actually contributing to that and helping other people learn, which was felt satisfying and meaningful. And now you know multiple college education programs. Did you still working on and through the university beyond bars on loop quick on your undergraduate thesis honors thesis of film philosophy of literature. It's extrudinary, so much more than so many people on the outside have wherever will do. So let's talk about your appeals and your prospects for free them. A Chief's appeals were underway by the time we got involved. I had seen a film made by Sebastian sister Tiffany and Ruben Hurricane Carter and I were obviously floored by the facts here, and we joined David Coke, the appeals lawyer, in support of Sebastian and a teeth and I actually attended his state appeal to a three judge panel in Seattle. And this was early on. I mean, we thought this would be a slam dunk. Uh. There's no forensic evidence, no alternative suspects allowed to be brought into the courtroom. There's no allowance of Richard Leo, who was an expert on false confessions, and Michael Levine, who was an expert on FBI sting operations. He wasn't allowed into the courtroom either. It was as if Judge Martell had simply decided, We're going to convict these guys in a kangaroo court. But it didn't seem to matter how much since our arguments made as a Chief and Sebastian were seen as guilty in the state of Washington, and the media coverage really made sure they were never going to receive a fair shake. And then a Chief later got married to Loretta Fisher, who worked tirelessly on his behalf, and more appeals were filed on the back of her work, also to no avail. Then the Supreme Court of Canada ruled to limit the admissibility of evidence obtained through the missed Big operation. So now even in Canada, where this evidence was conjured up, the admissibility of these confessions was brought into question, where in the absence of forensic evidence, as was the case here, these so called confessions would not now be any longer admissible. And that should have been huge, but sadly it was not. It was apperiod when I didn't know where to turn, really, and out of the blue, Kellie Laudenberg decided to make my case the first one in her series of false confession documentaries, and Ken told me that someone's who had watched the confession tapes had become so indignant and so impassionate about the case that she reached out to the person that everyone who knows about him thinks about first, and that's you. Jason. Okay, so I know who you're talking about, But are you at liberty? Do you feel comfortable telling us about this amazing mystery woman so later into someone with whom I didn't know her before last year, and now she's become someone very special to me to my talk every day. And it's because of her that you got involved, and of course it's because of her getting you involved that David Kim got involved. And David Kim has been a force of nature in my case. She wrote a seven hundred and two page analysis of this case that found things in it that even I hadn't found, and I thought I'd looked over absolutely everything in my case. And then, because he thought I needed the best to pelt attorney in the United States, he reached out to Tom Goldstein, who was considered by everyone to be the tenth Supreme Court Justice, and certainly Google chose him as their lawyer when they needed to win a case at the Supreme Court of the United States, and it was a miracle to me when Tom got involves and then Larsovski, who leads the Washington Instance Project, became involved in my case. All these things just have been building over the last year and that has completely transformed how I do the future. Now amen to that, and now we're all awaiting the Habeas Corpus proceedings in the Ninth Circuit Court in the United States District for the Western District of Washington. So there's a lot of stuff going on. We're gonna keep our audience surprised of it. We're gonna link to the petition use your power, Let's help a Thief and Sebastian get home. There's also a website refite burns appeal dot com. All of it will be linked in the bio so Ken and the Thief. This is a part of the show that I know I look forward to the most, that I think our audience does as well. It's called closing arguments. It's a part of the show where I first of all have the privilege of thanking both of you for joining me and sharing this unbelievable story and how this works is I'm going to turn my microphone off and leave yours both on and kick back in my chair and just listen to whatever you have to say anything. We haven't covered anything you want to say at all about anything. And of course, a tif we're going to save you the best for last, all due respect to you, Ken. Yeah, so Ken, let's go to you first, and then you can just hand the mic off to a Tief and I'm just gonna sit back and listen. So, as I said before, this case came to us as a result of the movie that Sebastian Burne's sister did back in two thousand and seven. It was at the Vancouver International Film Festival and I happened to be in the audience. I saw this and realized that the burns As were in the audience. They had been introduced. So I went up to them and I said, I'm working for Reuben Hurricane Carter, and I think this case would be of interest to him. Do you want some help? And of course they did, and so I got this case in front of Ruben and he was infuriated by the way a pair of teenager had been manipulated by people who should have known better. But we're trying to burnish their own reputations, and to me, this story is really about friendships, both the one that a thief and Sebastians shared as well as the one between the Muslim community and other faith based communities in Canada that Dr Tariq Rafe and later Ryasa Ali Khan try to foster and endeavor for which they paid with their lives. Well. The potential of these two young friends and the greater friendship between those communities both were snuffed out Atif Rafe. Over to you, Vashum and I have been wrongly in prison for over twice seven years and the same age today my parents were when I was a kid, when they were raising me, I imagine looking back in my life with their eyes and every day it's been a struggle to keep going, and I still hardly believe all that has happened. But what I feel most now is gratitude, amazingly rough. When I was a child, my parents told me stories about the hard times they had in their early years in Vancouver when my dad was looking for work, how they would eat boiled potatoes off and uspapers spread on the floor. And I understood when I was a kid that the life would involve struggle, but I didn't fathom then that's how much the caring and generosity of others would need for my life, that this grounds while the support would make it possible for my struggles to matters. Still today, I owe so many people so much, not only Ruben and Ken and Tom and you, Jason, all of you people who were like Oscar Schindler's you know, you know our day and age of nciple convictions and mass and persuations. That feeling of gratitude is what carried me through every day, and I'm just grateful to have had the opportunity to feel that love and care for someone for some small life. Thank you for sing to Wrongful Conviction. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in our bio to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Cleburne, and Kevin wardis. The music on this show, as always is by three time Oscar nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Twitter at wrong Conviction, and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good podcast in 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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