#228 Jason Flom with Carlton Roman

Published Oct 20, 2021, 4:12 AM

On March 16, 1989, Lloyd Witter and Jomo Kenyatta sustained several gunshot wounds at a residence in Jamaica, Queens. Witter died from his injuries. Paul Anderson, who also lived at the residence, was found handcuffed near Witter’s body. Under questioning, both Kenyatta and Anderson provided at least a half dozen different versions of the story that finally landed on Carlton Roman as the gunman. Roman claimed he’d been with his girlfriend on the night of Witter’s murder, an alibi that she corroborated. Nevertheless, he was charged with murder. Despite maintaining his innocence throughout the trial, and no forensic, ballistic, fingerprint, or DNA evidence tying him to the shooting, Roman was convicted and served 32 years until his exoneration in August 2021.

Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1.

In nine, Paul Anderson lived in a Jamaica queen's drug house owned by his sister but operated by a man named Jomo Kenyatta. On March sixteenth, nine, Jomo Kenyatta and one of his associates, Lloyd Witter, were shot at the house, leaving Winter dead and Kenyatta in a coma. Police found Paul Anderson alone, bound, handcuffed, and unharmed outside the home, under pressure from lead Detective William Peppy and desperately trying to divert attention away from himself. Anderson's initial description of four unknown men quickly changed to that of two acquaintances who did not fit his initial descriptions, Carlton Roman and Hollis Laylor. With no physical or forensic evidence tying Carlton or Hollis to the shooting, the state's case relied solely on the inconsistent and outright false testimonies of Anderson, Kanyata, and Detective Peppy. Carlton, a twenty six year old bother at college dude with no connection to the drug trade, was portrayed by the prosecution as a dangerous drug kingpin, and despite the testimony of alibi witnesses Carlton was convicted and sentenced over forty three years in prison. The Queens a blocked Carlton's attempts at justice for over three decades until the election of District Attorney Olympic Cats and the formation of a new Conviction Integrity Unit. A reinvestigation revealed the misdeeds of Paul Anderson, Jomo Kenyata, and Detective Peppy, as well as led to Carlton's freedom after thirty two long years in prison. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful Conviction. I'm your host, Jason Floman. I'm going to start today's episode by issuing an apology and I'm going to direct that at our featured guest, Carlton Roman, because what he went through doesn't make any logical sense whatsoever, even by our crazy standards. And so Mr Roman, thank you for being here. And then with Mr Roman today is his attorney James Henning. James, welcome to the show. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having us. Jason, Yeah, and I'm glad you're here as well to help tell this crazy story because honestly, when I was researching this, I was kind of just like turning the paper upside down, back and forth and saying maybe somebody left something out, Maybe there's a mistake or omission here somewhere. I mean, Carlton, you were a twenty six year old man who was a father boyfriend, going to college, living in Queen's, New York, no criminal record whatsoever. So if a guy like you can get caught up in something like this, then the uncomfortable fact is that nobody's safe. Right, So let's go back to that. First of all, where are you from? But I'm Jamaican. I was born here into this country that was in My mother migrated before me, and she worked to a three four jobs sometimes until she was able to sponsor me and get me up here. At the one point of me coming here was educational purposes to go to college. We started going around trying to get me into a college, and she kept bringing me to different colleges and I'd be looking at the campuses. I have no frame of reference and what to go by. I mean, it's completely difference. It's a first world country and all that. We started looking at colleges and queens and I fell in love with Queensboro, which was a community of college. That's what I settled on. So my mom and her husband started looking at place in Queens and then we moved there within like maybe ten months of me coming up here. So it seems like everything was going pretty well until of course, one day in and that's when it all went terribly wrong. Now, this was the late eighties in New York, a time that was rife with both drug dealing and police corruption that stretched through the nineties. And I'm not breaking any news here, right. It was the cry epidemic, the War on drugs. A lot of bad shit happened on both sides of the law. And in Jamaica, Queens, there was a house known for drug activity and a guy Carlton knew Paul Anderson, lived there. It was his sister's house, and a guy named Jomo Kenyatta, who we later find out was a very violent guy operating under a number of aliases. He was dealing drugs out of that house. There was also a dude that Carlton knew, Lloyd Witer or Jimbo as people call them, who hung around with those guys and may or may not have been involved in drugs as well. Now, on March six, a shooting happened at this drug house, killing Lloyd Witter and putting Jomo Kenyatta into a coma that lasted for weeks, and when police first arrived at the crime scene, they found Paul Anderson outside, bound and handcuffed, but somehow unharmed. James tell us where the investigation went from there. Lloyd Witter is obviously killed and can't give an account of the crime. Jomo Kenya Wada is in a coma for several weeks following the crime, and so the initial stories come from Paul Anderson, and he gives several Initially, he claims that a group of individuals came to his house, unknown individuals that he describes in detail, and they force him inside at gunpoint, and they handcuff him and tie him up, and they tell him that they're after Jomo Kenyatta and Lloyd Whiter and then they do nothing to him when they go and shoot Joe Ocanada and Lloyd Witter when they show up. It isn't until the next day that Carlton is purportedly identified by Paul Anderson as one of the individuals, along with another guy he knew, Hollis Laylor Fro among the shooters, and this is the same day that Carlton learns of the shooting of his very good friend Lloyd Witter and calls up Witter's wife and says is this true, and she says, yes, it's true, and Carlton, being a good friend, runs over to his friend's house to check what's going on. And it was found out later that the victim's wife, Andrea Witter, was told by someone we don't know who that Carlton was responsible for her husband's death. We know she was contacted on her husband's beeper after the shooting took place. It may have been Paul Anderson, perhaps Detective Peppe, We're not exactly sure. So when Carlton got to her house, she called the police. When he shows up, nobody answers the door at the winter home and he goes across the street to a pay phone to call up the house and see what's going on. And as he's calling, a number of one marked cars show up and Mrs Whitter crosses the street, points at Carlton and says, that's the man who killed my husband, and things are just off to the races. From there, Carlton is identified as being one of the shooters and is taken into custody by Detective William Peppe. And this is the morning of the seventeenth, and it just changes Carlton's life, James, As you're talking about these various different stories that Anderson told, this is where the whole thing starts to become surreal, right because Anderson initially told Detective John Logocio that four men came to his house and that he couldn't identify the men. And there's no dispute here, Jason, that he knew who Carlton was at that point, right, So major red flag right there. But this initial description given to Detective Legercio was never even presented to the jury and was only discovered recently, and he gave a detailed description for the police report. According to Paul Anderson, he didn't know any of the men, but the apparent leader was five two or five three and walked with a limp. Two other guys no taller than five four, and then the fourth guy. It was about six ft tall with a cameo haircut, which you remember from the music videos. At that time, this meant tight on the sides and tall on top. But then Anderson's account and descriptions changed six times before this thing even went to trial, And it comes out much later that according to Anderson, he was under a great deal of pressure from Detective Peppy, who fed of various details along the way, but before his narrative changed. His description definitely did. When they get Anderson to the precinct, he allegedly identified Carlton Roman as the shooter. So somehow he magically remembered that his friend was the shooter from these four unknown men who he described with some detail, right, and even stranger, Carlton, you had no criminal record whatsoever, no involvement with this drughouse. He didn't match any of the initial descriptions. Of his initial descriptions, He's talking about guys who are under five four and then one over six ft, but you're five seven. He'll be out here. Do you have any other matching characteristics from the initial police report? No, absolutely not. And if Anderson knew it was you, Carlton, why in the world didn't he say so from the very beginning, right when the police first showed up after the shooting. How in the world is he not going to say, yeah, it was my friend that did this, and here's where he lives and here's his phone number. That would have been the easiest idea ever if you were the guy who actually did it. I think the other thing that flows into that, Jason, which has always been a big point to me and was a big point to the judge who ultimately exonerated Carlton, is I kind of refer to it as like a Batman or James Bond scenario where Paul Anderson says that these guys came in, told him their entire criminal plot, shot two other guys to pieces that they told him they were going to shoot, and then leave him completely unscathed and able to tell this story. Nobody questioned that from the beginning. Yeah, I was wondering about that too. And then it gets weirder write because with Kenyatta drifting in and out of consciousness for several weeks at the hospital, they went in and did some really crazy stuff in the hospital in order to get him to make an identification. Right, how did that work? So, according to Detective Pepe, the lead investigator, when Kenyatta awakens from this coma, he goes to visit with him and he displays a board with letters on it. Because Kenyatta is supposedly nonverbal, and he has Kenyata supposedly spell out the names of the people who shot him, and according to Pepe, he identifies Carlton, Hollis Laylor by their nicknames, and the other two people who by this point, Paul Anderson has identified a pair of brothers named Bigger and Richie. Now, there are a couple of problems with this. Number One, there's no basis in any police procedure for going and showing a nonverbal witness a letter board to identify people. Number two, there's no indication that Kenyatta is separated from Paul Anderson or other people who could have influenced an identification. There's no indication that another officer is present or involved in this procedure. And number three, when Kenyatta ultimately testifies at Carlton's trial, he says, I didn't spell out these guys names. I gave three letters. So he's only claiming to have identified three people during this procedure, and they don't correspond to the claims that Pepe made. Not top of this, when Carlton's attorney makes a motion to see what procedures produced identifications in this case, the prosecution essentially hides Kenyatta's i D. They represent that only Paul Anderson has made an idea, and because he knows Carlton, there's nothing suggestive in any way, shape or form. But Carlton's trial attorneys actually saying somebody in Kenyatta's condition could have easily been led to make a misidentification. And the people's response, which is relied upon by a court, is that no, there's no problem because the only witness to make an i D knew the defendant. So they kind of pushed forward without any review. These two ideas by these guys who were, you know, years later acknowledged to be completely incredible and all over the place. Yeah, and if I'm hearing you correctly, there was only the two of them in the hospital room at the time anyway, right, he could have said he identified, you know, Santa Claus or Helen Keller as the shooter. Rite anybody, right, because it was just his word. And there's an interesting aspect there where he aims that Kenyatta spelled out the name of Hollis Laylor's girlfriend, which he doesn't explain why Kenyatta would have found that to be at all relevant. And the first three letters of that name just happened to be the same as Carlton's nickname. So it kind of stinks all around here. This is how, you know, sort of rash they were back in those days. Right, They didn't even bother to attempt to pretend to make this sound credible because they knew they'd get away with it anyway. Right. Was there any other evidence physical for forensick or anything tying you to the shooting? Absolutely nothing. During trial, they said they scoured the entire hours from top to bottom, and they found no fingerprints that were usable, no gun, no confession, no physical or biological evidence. It really just comes down to the word of Jomo Kenyada and Paul Anderson. And then how long were you held before the trial? The trial took eighteen months before it got there. I was in I did, and you know, march shoot the system. A female associate of Mr Greenberg. She came to represent me. She came back, I'm such and such and you're go in front of a judge, this is what's gonna happen. And I remember selling this woman like, what do you mean I'm not going to be able to go home today, and she's like, no, this is such a I'm like, listen, I'm a working man, I have college, I have a girlfriend and the child home, and I'm going And she started writing all this stuff down, and when we went in front of a judge, she hammered him exactly with all the information I had just given her a minute ago. And the judge granted me bail. Okay, bail, said that a hundred thousand dollars bangers gable and left and she was like, amazing to judge gave you bail, and you know you have a great record. All that, my family ran around. They put the house up and I was built out, and I remained at liberty, going back and forth to court for another sixteen seventeen months until certain changes were made in my case. It was a new judge and suddenly a new DA When Mrs Lemucio came on the case, everything changed. I think in the second our sole appearance with her, she asked from my ability to be revoked, and the new judge did it, and you know, my life went completely in the toilet from that point on. This episode is underwritten by A i G, a leading global insurance company, and by Accenture, a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Working to reform the criminal justice system is a key pillar of the ai G pro Bono program, which provides free legal services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need as part of Accenture's commitment to racial and civil justice. Accenture's Legal Access Program provides pro bono legal services in partnership with more than forty organizations, bringing meaningful change to people and communities worldwide. And so we moved to the trial so because of the fact that there was no evidence, no actual evidence. The entire case of the state relied solely on the testimony of Detective Peppy, who we find out is totally unreliable. And then, of course the contradictory and inconsistent testimonies of two perhaps incentivized, if not at least coerced witnesses, Anderson and Kenyatta, and they each described the shooting and the events leading up to it. So Anderson's testimony, he said that Carlton Roman, Hollis Laylor, Jomo Kenyatta, and Lloyd Witter were at Paul Anderson's house on March fifty nine, the day before the shooting, a quote unquote bus occurred after Jomo Kenyatta and Lloyd Witterer took a gun from Carlton Roman. Did you ever have a gun? Carlton, by the way, did you ever own a gun? Absolutely not, No, of course not. And now back to Anderson's bogus account again. He said that day after this alleged a bus over a gun that you never owned, Jomo Kenyatta and Lloyd Witner were supposed to come over to help him, Paul Anderson, I'm talking about move, but allegedly before they arrived, Carlton Roman, Hollis Laylor and these two other made up characters Bigger and Richie came by handcuffed Anderson and put him in the basement. Several hours later, he heard the doorbell and then a series of shots. He also testified that he was an architect. I mean, if you're gonna lie, why not just say you're a freaking astronaut. He also testified that he was not involved with drug dealing, and when it was alleged that he Paul Anderson had been shot by the victim Lloyd witter just a few months earlier in November, he denied that he had been shot or treated at a hospital for the shooting. He also refused to show the leg where it was alleged that he had been shot. So he was an architect, had nothing to do with drug dealing or any ill will towards the victim in this case. What we know now is Paul Anderson's residence was a drug house. It was used for drugs and gambling. And the underlying thing is that the law enforcement actors involved in this case had to have known the truth about Paul Anderson and what he was doing. So to let him get on the stand and say, oh, yeah, I'm an architect, I've never been shot, it was just fundamentally unfair. Now we get to Kenyatta's testimony, so he said that the initial March fifteenth argument was about drugs and involves Carlton Roman, Hollis Laylor, and Lloyd Witter, not a gun as Paul Anderson said. According to Kenyata, he and Lloyd went back to Anderson's house on March sixteenth, and when they walked into the house, the door shut quickly behind them, followed by gunshots, and he allegedly saw Hollis Laylor and Carlton Roman shooting Lloyd Witter when he tried to run away, Carlton Roman allegedly shot him on the stairs. On direct examination, Kenyada testified that his criminal record consisted of a single conviction for reckless driving and that he was not involved in dealing drugs. He was recalled to the stand after Carlton's attorney showed of him leading guilty to attempted possession of a weapon after being charged with attempted murder. So not only does he lie in the stand, but the two lying liars who lied don't match up with each other. Not surprising, and they both just directly lied about their own backgrounds in ways that were probably false and in this case were in fact proven false. And Carlton, I have to ask you before we even get the Peppy's testimony. You lived through this, right, I mean, what were you thinking at that time? Well, I was so stupid. I was just so naive. I still expected Kenyada to come in there and say no, that it's not this guy. He wasn't there. So I was sitting there listening to this guy talking about how I shot him and all this other stuff, and I was like, I'm sitting here with my mouth hanging out. I remember at one point turned around to look at my mom, and my grandmother was there. They were also sitting there with their mouths hanging. No. I couldn't believe he was actually saying any of this stuff. I'm sitting there like a training at me listening to this stuff. Yeah, I mean he must have felt like you just want to scream out and say, wait a minute, that's not true, right. I wanted to do that, and I made several attempts on Mr Greenberg. He had a hand on my knee under the table and he kept squeezing my knee. Just relax, don't worry, take it easy, don't make a scene in the court. It's not like I was going to turn the table over or anything. But I wanted to really, like stand up and scream. It is do like you're lying. You understand what I'm saying. And I've always regretted that I listened to my attorney. From what I read in the research, there was very little defense to speak of. James, can you talk about what did this guy do wrong? And what did he leave out and how did he manage to blow what should have been an easy win. We only have one podcast, so I can't really go through everything he did wrong. Carlton's attorney had an alibi that Carlton provided to him. He had alibi witnesses that supported that Carlton was nowhere near Paul Anderson's house on the day of the shootings. Carlton testified in his own defense. His testimony was coherent with his alibi witnesses. Mr Greenberg, the trial attorney, called some of them, but then he permitted so much of this false insinuation by the prosecution that Carlton was a drug dealer. One example of this is that Carlton had a car that his mother had put the down payment on, and all Mr Greenberg would have needed to do is bring in the financing agreement for that car, which was a fairly easy thing to do to show that this wasn't the product of drug money. It was a car that was financed by his mother. And instead, because he didn't do that, the prosecutor was able to make it seem as if, look, this is a drug dealer who's buying new cars and living high on drug money. But Mr Greenberg just didn't rise to the occasion. In response to these bogus allegations by the prosecution, there were so many opportunities where he just showed that he had not been engaged in the case. And maybe that's because in the time between the shootings and the trial, it didn't seem like Paul Anderson was actually going to come back from Jamaica to testify. He had fled to Jamaica after the grand jury, and from what I gathered from the transcripts, I in Greenberg thought this was going to be dismissed. But you don't not prepare based on that. You've still got a client on trial for murder. You gotta be ready to defend them. And so with the fact that these lies were allowed to be foisted on the jury and that your own team didn't really do much of anything to help you, the results were predictable, and ultimately you were convicted of second degree murder as well as other counts and sentenced to forty three and a half years in prison. Can you describe what you were feeling in that moment they said guilty and I just fell into a black hole like I couldn't think. I don't remember it was in the court. I don't remember even if I looked around on anybody. Everything that's closed in at me at once and like I was just dragged into a black hole. I couldn't think. I was a complete wreck. It was like the worst thing in the world that could happen to anybody. The thing that never left me was like, I did not do this, and I'm gonna have to prove that to everybody. So I never lost any of that. Over all the years, I always knew deep down that some way, somehow I'm getting out of this. You're gonna know I did not do this. I'm an only child from my mother and I have one daughter now, and those are the most two important people for me in the world. And I knew if I broke what it would do to my mom it would destroy her completely. I really felt that that hanger that this had happened to me, and that I'm dragging my mother right along with me through all of this stuff. So I could not stop, and I never did. No, you did not and facing denial after denial from the courts and the opposition from Richard Brown's d A office and Queen's Justice did not look like it must have looked like a very distant possibility, but you just didn't quit. So, James, when did you get involved and how does this situation finally get to where we are now? And how did the Queen's District Attorney's race play a role in all of that? In two thou fifteen, the Queen's DA's office certifies Carlton's file as completely missing. The prosecution file first case is gone. And this is although since his conviction in nine Carlton had been litigating his conviction. I come in in two thousand seventeen as co counsel for another attorney who had been working on Carlton's case, and we put an emotion based on some material that we felt was newly discovered from the Hollis Slaylor file, and we were unsuccessful in that motion. It was denied in two thousand nineteen. A lot of this is because they could kind of argue whatever they wanted in the absence of a prosecution file. There's no reference point for saying this is what occurred or this is what was said, because all of the material was purportedly lost. The attorney that I had been working with left the case, and Carlton asked me if I would stay on as lead counsel, and I said sure, and we sent an investigator to Jamaica to locate Paul Anderson because we said, look, there's not a lot of moving parts in this case. And in two thousand nineteen, we went down and spoke with Paul Anderson and he recanted in an affidavit and on tape. And as you alluded to, Jason, there was a race for Queen's DA. Richard Brown had been there for years. His office had steadfastly opposed any attempt by Carlton to try and get a review of this evidence. Carlton had never had a hearing on any of his motions. And we brought the recantation of Paul Anderson to the new district attorney who had been elected, Melinda cats Her newly formed Conviction Integrity Unit, and they agreed to a reinvestigation of this case. And ultimately what they found and what we put forward made them agree that Carlton should no longer be in prison, that this conviction should be vacated. So what were the major points that ultimately tipped the scales of justice back to where they should have been in the first place. So, for one, it's Paul Anderson unsurprisingly comes forward and acknowledges that his story was bs and he knew that the cops were looking at his house, which belonged to his sister, and that they knew that there was a legal activity going on there, that there was a drug operation running out of there which was headed up by Joe Moo Kenyata. And we also learned that Joemo Kenyada was operating under we don't know how many different aliases, but other than the crimes that were revealed at trial, he was wanted for at least one murder that's still a cold case in Queens. He was a heavy drug dealer. His brother was a drug dealer. Essentially, there was motive for many other people other than Carlton, who had no criminal record, to have committed this crime, including even the state's main witness, Paul Anderson, who according to new eyewitnesses, had survived being shot by the victim in this case, ace Lloyd Witter. In November, the Conviction Integrity Unit did a number of interviews with Carlton and as alibi witnesses, and those essentially corroberated the alibi that was or should have been presented at trial. And interviews with Andrea Wider and others demonstrate that Detective Pepe was unreliable to say the least detective Pepe fabricated a visa to bring Paul Anderson back from Jamaica to testify at Carlton's trial. The fact that he's willing to break federal law fabricate an official document to push forward this case. Where does that end? Does that end with fabricating witness statements? You have to take a hard look at that. This is the guy that pushes forth the evidence in this case. Ultimately, what they come down to is that the original descriptions from Paul Anderson that did not match Carlton Roman are nowhere in the transcript, and that new evidence completely and totally undermines the two witnesses, Paul Anderson and Jomo Kenyada, whose testimony is used to convict him. So now you're still in at this point, Carlton. You've been through everything at this point, and you've been through every heartbreak and disappointment. But are you now feeling like there really is finally light at the end of this horrible tunnel? Yes. I realized then that this was the closest I've come to getting the truth revealed and my freedom back. I've been to the appellate Division, I've tried have been to the Court of Appeals, I did federal a I've done everything, and everywhere that I went it was just a consistent slam in the face, denied, denied, denied, denied, denied. Like James correctly said, despite all the craziness you're seeing in my case, no judge that actually looked at it and seeing fit to at least grant me a hearing. So nobody wanted to hear anything at all from me. I just kept going back like a boxer getting punch in the face every time, and just kept going back. But when this was happening now, it kind of felt different. It felt different, mainly because at the Year's Office there were different people there and it seemed like they were serious. It was actually new people here who might be receptive to correct in what had happened to me. So finally, August nine, the Queen's District Attorney and you James, filed the joint motion asking the court to vacate Carlton Romans convictions. In that affirmation, the District Attorney's office said, quote, it had concluded that three witnesses and the facts undermine the credibility of the key trial witnesses Anderson and Kenyatta could not have been discovered in the context of your trial, Carlton, with the exercise of due diligence, and are of such character that they would have probably led to a verdict more favorable to the defendant. So on August nine, one, Justice Michelle Johnson of Queen's County Supreme Court granted the motion and dismissed the charges against you and d A. Melinda cat said, there is a quote. We are not so arrogant to think that the system doesn't make mistakes powerful words. She went on to say, when we find mischaracters of justice, we do everything in our power to correct them quickly and court into the daily news, it's quoted you, Carlon was saying right outside the courtroom. I'm not technically a shy person. I have nothing prepared to say to you all, but let me say one thing. The justice system. Everybody knows it's broken. I've read a thousand reports that say that. But words alone aren't going to get that fixed. You have all have a part to play in this also. But I'm here now, but there's a lot of people in there who need your attention. Now, there's people in there who have been fighting for justice longer than I have end. Quote, what a fucking thing. By the way, here, you are just getting out of this thirty two year or deal that something out of a Greek tragedy or something, and the first thing you're doing is thinking about other people. I mean, who are you, dude? Who are you? I've heard that so much different times. A lot of it is a blurnout to I have to watch the thing to digest fully the entire moment. It was just overwhelming for me. I had a conversation with somebody that was locked in sing sing that I knew for a long time, you know, made a securest phone call and I was talking to him and he said, Man, I just want to to talk to you about one thing, and it's what you said when you came out of the court. He said, there's dozens of people here who don't know you, and they're just so happy you said that. They're praising you and all this other stuff. I use this reference. It's like if you're in the desert and you're dying of thirst and there's wild animals circling you, and you're there with a bunch of people and some are miraculously you stumble and make it out. The first thing any decent human beings should do is say, wait, there's more people in there that needs help. So that's the point of view where I was coming from. And you know, it's a day for justice and all that, but we can't forget all the people in there who's going to the very same thing. Yeah, it just speaks a lot to your character. I'm sure there's a lot of people listening. Now. You're inspiring them to want to take action to make a difference, and you're inspiring me to want to two more. And what would you suggest that's a course of action. The first thing that the mind for me is when people wind up in my situation and they finally get exonerated, something needs to be done to reintegrate them into society. For instance, I've lost all my paperwork. I have no idea where my Social Security card is, passport, my immigration papers, my driver's license, all that stuff is gone. I have to go to hell just to get a learner's permit. On the way to getting the driver's license, I went to the d m V and I had nothing to show them that would make them allow me to take the written tests to start the whold process over. The thing that helped me most get that accomplished was the front page of the Daily News with my picture on the cover saying I was exonerated after thirty two years. I know right now, like off the top of my head, three other exonerated people who's out here and we're in regular touch, and all of us had the same problem. You can't go to a bank and establish an account because when you go there, there first thing you're asking you for his I D. I remember pulling out the last j L D they gave me and it was told like, well, that's absolutely useless. I went to try to get my social Security card reached. Well you need a driver advice and then you need a password. But I don't have any of those things. And when I go to another office, they asked me for my social Security card. So it's like this cap when the two things happening and something needs to be done about that. Now we have But I always referred to as my favorite part of the show, and everybody who's listening knows what I'm talking about because he gave me say it every week. But this is the part of the show called closing arguments. And it works like this. First of all, I thank each of you again, James Henning for the great work you've done for Mr Roman and on behalf of other clients. Thank you for that, and thank you for taking your time to be on the show with us today. Thanks for having us. Jason, what you're doing means a lot, and of course same for you Carlton again, thank you so much for just being yourself and inspiring everybody to march forward and try to make change. And now the closing arguments works like this. I turned my microphone off, I leave yours on. James, you're gonna go first, if that's okay, and say the best for last. With all due respect to you, And all you have to do now is say whatever you want, anything that we may have left out, or anything that's left unsaid. This is closing arguments. James Henning, you go, dropped the mic, pass it off to Carlton, and that's how we'll close the show. I think basically what I would say is that Carlton's case, the cliche never give up gets thrown around a lot. There was not a tremendous amount of hope after his entire file was lost, but he always kept fighting, and I think that's the spirit that this story should inspire in people. The people who actually did this were allowed to go free and potentially take other lives, but Carlton absolutely refused to let his life be taken, and I think that should be a message to everybody in whatever situation they're in. This guy was in the darkest of places and he just never gave up. And it's a beautiful thing to see because he's a truly remarkable person. And I'm very proud to have played whatever role I did in helping bring him back to society because he's an important guide and how you know, he's great. So that's what I'll say, and I'll pass around to him. Hold public officials accountable. All the district attorney and the idea is accountable, and even more important, all the judges accountable. People tend to forget how much power a judge as and how much thing a judge can look away from. From my point of view, if my case had landed in front of a fear judge, even say twenty five years ago, this should have been over. Then judges can be allowed to just ignore the cries of innocent people because they just don't feel like reviewing it or granted a hearing or looking further into what happened or whatever. So there needs to be a spotlight on what judges are doing, how they're coming to the conclusions that they're coming to, and when they're shirking your duties. Man, they got to get out of there. And it's the same thing with the District attorney's offices. And again, none of that stuff is secret stuff. Start calling hesterin, hammering whoever it is that's in the points of authority that's responsible for what's going on in these courtrooms when they can't live up to the holtes they take, get them out of there, whole public officials accountable, make them do better. Thank you for listening to Wrong for 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 Wardas. The music on this show, as always, is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrong for Conviction, on Twitter at Wrong Conviction, and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one

Wrongful Conviction

Hosted by celebrated criminal justice reform advocate and founding board member of the Innocence Pro 
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 522 clip(s)