This is Democracy – Episode 25: Wrongful Convictions

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Intro voices: This is Democracy, a podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional unheard voices living in the world’s most influential democracy.
Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. We have a very special episode this week, we’re joined by Mr. Clarence Moses-EL and Eric Klein. Good morning, gentleman.
Both Guests: Good morning.
Jeremi: Mr. Clarence Moses-EL was wrongfully convicted more than 28 years ago and spent quite a long time, 28 years, in prison for a wrongful conviction and we’re going to talk today about his ordeal and the criminal justice system and how all of us can work toward preventing these sorts of tragedies from never occurring again and making our criminal justice system more fair and free. But before we do that, we have a scene setting poem from Mr. Zachary Suri. Zachary, what’s the title of your poem this week?
Zachary Suri: It’s entitled “So Long.”
Jeremi: “So Long,” well please, let’s hear it.
Zachary: “Why? The word that only leads to a thousand excuses. Why? Why do so many of us rest on the metal of the prison bars? Why? Why, I want to know, was a man killed for killing the dead he did not kill? Why? Why, tell me, do people suffer in the backs of patrol cars, lying on the sidewalk choking on the air? Why, I demand, did a man lose 28 years of his life for an image and a traumatized imagination? Why? Why did it all take so long? Why did all the life-sucking, forgotten miss the lost generation amongst every generation that was the life of so many living and so many lost? Why did it have to haunt us so long? Why? Why did a man who was the father to a village not deserve to be the father to his son?
How many? How many bike rides, father and son, how many have ended in shouted commands and handcuffs across the free Denver-mountain sky? How many? How many lives will pass a life taken for a life, two dying to equal lives? And how many? How many lies have been told to lock up the truth? How many forgotten under hopeless roofs? How many? How many scientific remnants of the supposed last breath of freedom are to be destroyed before the truth can be shed finally with shameful tears? And how many shall suffer to avenge our fantasy fears? How long? 28 years? And when finally liberty is breathed under every sky, when all this is over and the value of life we refuse to defy, that will be the day, oh far off morn, when all know why and so long, never again, and no more.”
Jeremi: Wow, that’s powerful, Zachary.
Mr. Clarence Moses-EL: Yeah, that’s very powerful.
Eric Klein: Chills, that was amazing.
Jeremi: What is your poem about?
Zachary: Well my poem is about the many questions that are unanswered about our criminal justice system and cases like Mr. Moses-EL, who spend so long in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. And it’s about how we can only know the truth and we can only be free of these past crimes when those questions are all answered and when everyone knows why and how many.
Jeremi: That’s very profound and we’re lucky to have Mr. Moses-EL here to help educate us.
Mr. Moses-EL: I’m happy to be here, just listening to Jeremi’s–
Jeremi: Zachary’s.
Mr. Moses-EL: Zachary, was that a poem or just something you just wrote?
Zachary: It was, well it was more just like an outpouring of emotion, I had a lot of questions about how we could get to the point where your experience happened in our society.
Mr. Moses-EL: What triggered you to want to delve into that? Looking at the whys and…
Zachary: Well I think we all go through our daily lives and we don’t think about those in prison and we just assume, “Oh, they’re all bad people,” but we don’t really think about what our criminal justice system does and how it sends so many innocent to prison and it doesn’t treat those in prison as well as it should.
Jeremi: And just following on that, Mr. Moses-EL, why do think this happened to you? How did you get caught up in this mess that was not of your creation?
Mr. Moses-EL: That’s a good question. I mean I have a lot of theories, but I really can’t say exactly why that… why what transpired in 1987 happened. I really can’t say because I’ve asked myself that question even after conviction, why? Why? And the only conclusion I could come up with is that Moses-EL had to become some kind of example, a symbol. That was the only thing understanding or explainable to me.
Jeremi: Right.
Mr. Moses-EL: So I ask myself, why? I’ve asked myself, many times, “Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?”
Jeremi: And how did you survive the ordeal? I think about how it would have torn me apart, most people would have gone crazy knowing they were innocent, locked up, feeling powerless, how did you survive? How did you keep yourself together?
Mr. Moses-EL: Well it wasn’t an easy task, believe me, just being a human being is not an easy task because of the way we are built and put together, but some of the things that helped me really get through was my religious belief. Because I wasn’t always a practicing individual when it came to having some kind of insight into a higher being. And the reason for that is because of the area I came from, you know, it was very rare, it’s very rare in this country, areas like what they describe as “the ghetto” and “the hood,” it’s very rare that people had the notion to even want to seek out consciousness because they’re dealing with so many problems.
Jeremi: Of course, of course.
Mr. Moses-EL: But, that very factor became what my life hinged upon while I was incarcerated. Not so much as the church, but religion, the idea of a higher power and you can call on that power. Even though it wasn’t explained to me exactly how I could call on it and who to look for, but that was the core of me actually surviving the psychological trauma because to be in prison, like I’ve said to Eric on a number of occasions, you had to be a special type of individual to go through that and then come out and assume a position like myself and have some sanity. Now, I’m not saying I’m the most perfect, sane man, but the crisis and the hurdles that I had to jump over, I mean that’s rare. That’s very rare.
Jeremi: How did you survive with, what we at least hear about, the other kinds of people in prison? With the violence, with the difficulties of interacting with other individuals who were not like yourself?
Mr. Moses-EL: Well I had to make a personal choice, like everybody else, when once you’re out that door, you’re confronted with various things and one of the major things that you are confronted with is the reality, “Okay, I’m in prison, you know, I made it to the big house, now what is it all about?” And one of the cardinal rules in prison is survival.
Jeremi: Right.
Mr. Moses-EL: That’s the cardinal rule, by any means necessary because that’s the reality you’re dealing with. So I decided that– after evaluating and looking at what was going on, you know, people spiraling out of control from a number of things and there was no real recourse other than self. You have to make a decision, either I could go over here and be involved in gangs, homosexuality, murder, rape– because all of those things goes on in prison. Just because they convict those individuals or send them off to prison for whatever reason, some of the reasons that they go to prison, those things continue while you’re in prison.
Jeremi: Of course.
Mr. Moses-EL: So you have to look at the lifestyles in prison and decide, “What am I going to do? What role do I want to play? Where’s my value? Where’s my interest when things are going this way?” You have to be a bigger man because you’re going to be confronted with people trying to bully you and tell you, “Hey, this and that, this.”
Jeremi: Right, right.
Mr. Moses-EL: And I wasn’t personally confronted with it, but from a distance I was confronted watching other people and I was saying to myself– I had already had my mind made up, you know, “Nobody’s going to be bully me, nobody’s going to take advantage of me, irregardless, but I’m here to defend my integrity and prove my innocence,” but the reality that that place is a jungle.
Jeremi: Right.
Mr. Moses-EL: That is the reality, sometimes you’ve got to put that aside, the civil side of you, and look at what’s going on and your decisions come from your evaluation of your environment. So I had to go through all of that and make a decision about what I wanted to do because I could have… In brief, I could have got caught up in the jail house lifestyle, but I chose not to because I know what it was going to result to.
Jeremi: Right, right. We had, on one of our prior podcasts, Professor Michelle Dite, she was an expert on prisons, and she talked about how prisons often make people far worse.
Mr. Moses-EL: They do.
Jeremi: They go in with problems and they get much worse in that environment.
Mr. Moses-EL: That’s a fact, but you have to be a person that makes a decision on your own. You have to be strong, you can’t be influenced. You can’t allow yourself to be influenced because if you do, 9 times out of 10, you’re going to end up going down a path that…it highlights the prison life, not social life, civil life.
Jeremi: Of course, of course. Eric Klein, as Mr. Moses-EL’s attorney, how did you connect with him and how were able to put together a defense for him?
Eric: Well we were very fortunate to get the call to be appointed to represent him when his prior attorney developed a conflict of interest. And at that time our office was all hands on deck, we had a hearing coming up quickly, there was a lot more work we wanted to do and we were able to, fortunately, put together a great team, my law partner, myself, we had another attorney who had previously been on the case who stayed with us, and a great team of investigators who did, just, incredible work talking to the person we believe is the true perpetrator of this offense.
My partner and investigator developed a relationship of trust where he spoke very candidly with them about his own personality and somewhat candidly about what had occurred on the night of the incident that Mr. Moses-EL was convicted for, convicted of. And, but that wasn’t in our investigators, we spoke to other people, witnesses that night, the true perpetrator, nobody had spoken to– in almost thirty years, nobody had ever spoken to his girlfriend who he was living with to find out, did he have an alibi for that night? And it turned out he had actually left her home at the very time when this attack happened and was unaccounted for during that time. And so we really got working hard on the investigation front, on the legal front, and were able to put together a defense and find out the truth.
Jeremi: And why was it so hard to do that? Why did it take so long? It seems at some level, so obvious that Mr. Moses-EL shouldn’t have been convicted based on someone’s dream and that others who had been named by the victim should have been investigated before they took Mr. Moses-El, why did this happen?
Eric: Well, I think you asked Mr. Moses-EL that question, too, and I think I have a more, in my opinion, concrete answer and I think that, certainly, race and economics played a factor here. I think this is something that happened in the housing projects in Denver, we had a victim who was– and there is no question, she is a victim here and she was brutalized here, but she’s a poor, African-American woman in a poor African-American neighborhood and the investigation here was a shoddy investigation.
Jeremi: Right.
Eric: That I think that had this been someone else, somewhere else, that the investigation would have been much more thorough. So the victim told the police initially, it was too dark for her to see who had done this to her and she said, but the hairstyle she described, she said, “It was like the hairstyle of men that she had been out at a party with that night,” none of whom were Mr. Moses-EL. And she named these men and the police never bothered to go follow up, never bothered to investigate them, never bothered to see where they were, if they had an alibi at this time. When she came around a day and a half later and said that she had a dream– or she said she knew who the person was before and named Mr. Moses-EL, that was good enough for the police, they didn’t look into, “Well how did you now come to say it was him?” They didn’t look into, you know, “Oh this happened after you had a dream where you think you relived this?” And it was just a really poor investigation that I think would have happened very differently had it been someone else and somewhere else, and, you know, maybe they would have looked into the man, the true perpetrator. And maybe they would have, hopefully they would have, done the right thing and arrested him and actually ended up preventing later sexual assaults that he committed.
Jeremi: Right, right one of the things I heard you say when you talked about this last night was that they were just looking to get the case closed, right? And this was a way of closing the case rapidly.
Eric: And that’s my opinion and unfortunately, I’ve seen that before in other cases, you know, in similar circumstances where you have a victim who is a poor person of color and you end up with a defendant who’s a poor person of color and it’s easy to wrap it up that way.
Jeremi: Sure, sure. So we have some student questions, our students were fascinated, horrified, and I hope inspired by your story, Mr. Moses-EL. And so we’re going to play the first of these student questions, this is about how you adjusted to life outside prison when you were finally released, it’s from Benjamin Sharp.
Benjamin Sharp: What has been the hardest part of reacclimating to life outside of prison? What policies do you feel would make that transition easier?
Mr. Moses-EL: Technology. That was one of the greatest challenges because in 1987, I didn’t even really get a chance to venture or experience, they had a beeper.
Jeremi: Right, right. (laughs)
Mr. Moses-EL: That had just came out so I never got a chance to even delve into that, so.
Jeremi: Some of our listeners don’t even know what that is, you would get beeped and then you’d have to go to a phone and call someone back from a payphone, right? (laughs)
Mr. Moses-EL: Right, right. I mean, we were just getting ready to get into the Jetson era, so to speak. But technology, the way it exists today– and I’m still baffled with it, you know, when I see– it could be something very small and elementary, but dealing with the phone, I’m looking at the phone like, “It has the ability to do this? Wow.”
Jeremi: (laughs) It’s okay, I’m the same way.
Mr. Moses-EL: No, so that has been a real challenge, but a fun challenge, you know, something that really appeals to me, that had me curious like, “Oh man, how did they come up with this? You know, I like this.” Even yesterday on the plane, it was one of the passengers, he had his iPad or something, but he was tracking the plane we was on.
Jeremi: Sure, sure.
Mr. Moses-EL: And he said, “This is us flying,” and I said, “Oh yeah?” I said, “Man, thank God for technology.”
Jeremi: Yeah, yeah.
Mr. Moses-EL: So, you know, I’m still acclimating to technology.
Jeremi: Right, right and certainly something that I imagine could be done more of is preparing you in prison. Preparing you for life outside, which involves technology, job skills, things of that kind, right?
Mr. Moses-EL: Yes, I think that that could be very instrumental, but there’s a problem there. In prison, they will not allow inmates to have that type of education because there’s security risks. So when it comes to being educated about advancement, by the time they introduce that program in a setting, a prison setting, it may be 10, 15, 20 years later. It’s kind of like keeping the inmates in the blind because you have some very unique individuals incarcerated and it’s amazing what they could do with information. So I could see it from that angle, but it would be instrumental and important to educate individuals prior to release.
Jeremi: Right, right.
Mr. Moses-EL: Like myself, that would be a good program to introduce individuals to so they can better cope and acclimate with society, reacclimate with society once they get—
Jeremi: Of course, and there wasn’t any of that when you were in prison/
Mr. Moses-EL: No, I had to– there was programs, but not in the sense where it keeps you updated, it may be a program or education that’s almost 10 or 15 years old.
Jeremi: Right, right.
Mr. Moses-EL: That’s how they do it.
Jeremi: Right and so that means, that’s another reason why when you come out it’s very hard to connect, right?
Mr. Moses-EL: It’s hard to connect for those reasons and security is top.
Jeremi: Right, right. Eric, how did you manage this when you had to be in communication with Mr. Moses-EL and you had to prepare him for his trial and then you had to help prepare him to come out, how did you deal with this?
Eric: Well, fortunately, Mr. Moses-EL is a very bright individual.
Jeremi: Obviously.
Eric: And a quick learner and he got a smartphone, he learned about it and he took to it and became a prolific texter. (Jeremi laughs) And I’ll tell you, all of us on–
Jeremi: Shame on you, Mr. Moses-EL.
Mr. Moses-EL: I mean…
Eric: I tell you all of us on the team, it’s myself, my law partner, the investigators, all of us who he recognizes as his team, we get morning texts from Moscie with a “Good morning” and just cheerful and positive and it’s something we all look forward to and we relish, but it certainly was an adjustment for him and you know learning how to use that technology was difficult, but he was an avid learner and really we had a great team, he had a lot of people who believed in him, who fought for his release beyond our team even, and supported him and there were a lot of people there to help him and to help him learn and so he really had a dedicated group of folks there.
Jeremi: I was thinking about this last night as we were talking about this with students and others and, you know, the criminal justice system is about more than lawyers and judges, it’s about the community, right? And if you think historically about how the system developed and the fact that so many people were involved, you had pictures of all the people on your defense team, members of the family, members of the community, that’s a really inspiring part of the story.
Eric: It was and I think a lot of that is because of the story of what happened and the gross injustice that happened to Mr. Moses-EL, but I think a lot of it is because of who he is as a person and you know people were happy to get behind him as an individual and to support him and fight for him.
Jeremi: We like our podcasts to always close with some positive thoughts about how we can continue to improve our democracy, and we have another student question along those lines, this is from Carly Johnson.
Carly Johnson: My name is Carly Johnson and I would like to know, what is the best thing we can do as students to help improve the criminal justice system?
Jeremi: What can students do Mr. Moses-EL?
Mr. Moses-EL: I think by having podcasts.
Jeremi: (laughs) Like this one.
Mr. Moses-EL: Like this one, I think students, instead of– and this is just my belief, right?
Jeremi: Please.
Mr. Moses-EL: Because we have a society that’s growing, it’s advancing, it’s evolving, et cetera, and I think with fresh ideas like this, with your son, I think that we need to open the door to fresh ideas and with those ideas I think that those ideas can really blossom if the individuals is privileged to have an opportunity to– Take for instance young upcoming lawyers, law students, DAs, et cetera, if they had a chance to talk to individuals like myself who was there and speak about what wasn’t done, what was done, et cetera, just having conversations, starting off like this here, having conversations with individuals who actually went through it.
Jeremi: Yes.
Mr. Moses-EL: I think that that would be a good starting point.
Jeremi: Absolutely, it’s extraordinary how we get separated into different worlds. I mean I’m in my mid-forties and this is the first time I’ve ever had the opportunity to speak to someone who’s had the experiences you had, but you’re not alone. Right? And we need to create this knowledge. Zachary, you had a question you wanted to ask.
Zachary: Yeah, Mr. Klein talked about, in his talk last night that he did here at UT, he showed a picture of you when you were released from prison and he mentioned that one of the people in the photo was someone you had mentored in prison. Could you talk to the role that you had as a mentor for so many while you were incarcerated?
Mr. Moses-EL: Well it was a role that was forced on me, not forced on me, but forced on me because nobody else seemed to be that caring about these individuals because they’re all individuals, just like myself, they have a soul, they have consciousness, they have all these things, but I think what really– I think what really leads to the problem is when you have a lot of issues and you don’t have anyone you could really talk to about those problems, you don’t have a release. So Mr. Moses-EL, going to prison, I took up that slack, I saw so many people, they were hopeless, didn’t have anybody to talk to. I mean just for small moments in their life, they didn’t have anybody to talk to and for some reason I was there.
Jeremi: Sure, sure.
Mr. Moses-EL: To discuss for that brief moment, if it was brief, maybe it might have took an hour– I didn’t really know, didn’t understand at that time, but I committed myself to talking to people, hearing their problems, just like today, I’m here, you’re hearing me, we’re speaking on this podcast, issues is being addressed, et cetera. So it gives me an opportunity, the opportunity that I didn’t have.
Jeremi: Right.
Mr. Moses-EL: And the same opportunity that I’ve been given today was the opportunity that I gave to these individuals who was looking for an opportunity. They want to make changes, but the people that would allow them to make the change, I believe, they didn’t have that contact. So coming in contact with a person like me, provided them with that opportunity. I gave them a chance to feel like somebody.
Jeremi: Yeah, you humanized individuals and one of the problems in our system and Mr. Klein talks about this quite a lot in his presentation last night is the way in which we dehumanize people in prison.
Mr. Moses-EL: Especially in places like prison. You know, you– a person would be more dehumanized in prison than he or she would be in actual society.
Jeremi: Of course.
Mr. Moses-EL: Despite the problems about racism and bias that exists in society, it’s compound in prison. I mean the lifestyle about prison is so retarded when it comes to civilized thinking because there, when the individual is separated or removed from anything that could give us some kind of stability and civility, that individual spirals out of control.
Jeremi: Of course, of course. It’s a jungle like you said.
Mr. Moses-EL: Absolutely and a lot of them fail because they never had the opportunity to be confronted with a situation like that to see how they would come out of it, like a trial test and so because it’s their first experience, naturally they spiral down instead of going up because it’s easier to go down than to go up.
Jeremi: Sure. Your insights are inspiring and important reminders to us about these, about how this happens in our own society. Zachary, what do you think in terms of other young people today who care about our democracy, is this an issue that people can mobilize around, is this an issue where young people are willing to make a change?
Zachary: I do think there’s a significant part of the younger generations that do feel that criminal justice reform is very important and that the way that our legal system conducts itself is not working, but I do also think that there’s still a stigma around talking about prison issues and people automatically think that everyone in prison is a bad person and everyone is there because they did something wrong. And I do think that young people still, as older generations do, define the men in prison by, like, the worst thing they ever did and I think that’s a really major problem that has to do with, simply education and we need to educate young people, like we’re doing today by talking about these issues.
Jeremi: Right, right. I think ignorance is truly, even among the educated, ignorance is one of the biggest problems, the world of the prison that Mr. Moses-EL has given us insight into and Eric Klein as well, it’s a world we don’t see. And so we can go about our lives and assume there aren’t problems there, when in fact we’re all contributing to this– I want to give you, Mr. Moses-EL the last word. So Mr. Moses-EL, you survived such difficult circumstances and came out such an obviously stable, hopeful, positive person, with evident charisma. What is your message to young people today who often become disillusioned, frustrated, cynical when they look at our world? How can they learn from you to be positive and make the kind of difference you’re making today?
Mr. Moses-EL: I think that they could really make a difference by not allowing themselves to actually rush to conclusions. I think that we all have to take time to evaluate ourselves, including the young, because I was young once upon a time and I thought I knew things.
Jeremi: (laughs)
Mr. Moses-EL: You know and I really didn’t know and the purpose to discovering what needs to be known is to observe the actions of the elders, the ones who qualify, use their example. Incorporate the best. I read once upon a time, “Look for the best that’s in a person that it may bring out the best that’s in you.” And so what I would encourage young people to do is look at role models that do exist, take bits and pieces from them, incorporate it in yourself, fashion yourself, and then act on how you have fashioned yourself.
Jeremi: That’s a wonderful note for us to close on, the power of the individual, the power of hope, and the importance of not rushing to judgement, but thinking through these important issues. Eric Klein and Clarence Moses-EL, thank you for joining us today, Zachary thank you for a wonderful poem, and please join us again for future episodes of This is Democracy.
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Intro voices: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lemke and you can find his music at HarrisonLemke.com. Subscribe and stay tuned for a new episode every Thursday, featuring new perspectives on democracy.
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