Episode 107 – The Helpers 2

Brooke: Previously, on Actual Innocence:

Sam: I can tell you a couple of things that people should know about these cases. They’re extremely interesting. If you are bored and think what could I possibly do to fill my time, just looking and reading through these cases will do it. They’re – at the low end, they’re interesting; at the high end, they’re transfixing.

But the other thing that goes along with that is, they’re depressing because they don’t usually have happy endings. Even the people who are released don’t really ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after. And then, worst of all, realize when you read these cases that these are the lucky ones. These are the ones who did get found; who did get released; who did get exonerated. And for each of those, there are several others or maybe dozens or hundreds of others who didn’t. ***MUSIC*** Brooke: Actual Innocence is a podcast that tells the stories of people who serve time for crimes they did not commit. Listen to the heartbreaking true accounts of wrongly convicted people and they’re journey to exoneration. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks for joining me for part 2 of The Helpers. If you haven’t listened to part 1, you might want to go back and do that first, as that’s where our experts are introduced. This episode includes interviews with three attorneys that work with people who have been wrongfully convicted. In the second half of the episode, there’s an interview with another Helper, who reveals some of the behind-the-scenes work done on the Undisclosed Podcast. I’m Brooke – and here are The Helpers. Imran: You know, some cases – and here we’re talking about, you know, cases that we’ve actually accepted for litigation, because the others – you know, if we’re investigating a case, even if I feel really strongly about something, I have to really hedge that because I don’t want to become too committed because that makes you less neutral in your evaluation, and you really need to make a neutral evaluation before you’ve concluded this person is innocent. At that point, you become their advocate; and then, of course, you take their side. My second year in the Clinic as a 3L, I started working on the David Gavitt case, which was another very meaningful case because that turned into my first exoneration. And it was an incredible factual case. I mean, a house had burned down and David’s wife and two young daughters had died in the fire; and then subsequently he was charged and convicted of murder for intentionally setting that fire. But, you know, that’s one of those cases where a lot of fire science, in quotes, was used against David which over the years has been discredited; and today, no one would agree with the State’s evidence in that case. So we went and hired independent experts who said that -- who said, look, taking away the junk science, there would be no evidence to convict this person. After we wrote a motion and had affidavits from experts, we went to the prosecutor and told him, look, this is a very obvious case and why don’t you review it and have your own experts look at it and maybe we can come to an agreement. And he did. It took him nearly a year, but after that, you know, he agreed to vacate charges – dismiss charges against David. He was released from prison without ever going to court. And that was after 27 years of serving a life sentence. Wolfgang: The Reed v. Ecorse case, the first wrongful conviction, was when I was able to, through a Freedom of Information request, obtain handwritten notes by the lead detective where he scratched out yeses and turned them into nos and head shakes up and down instead of head shakes left and right, and you saw all that. Well, when I sued and asked for the same thing through the lawyers, didn’t get that. But they didn’t know I had that document, so it’s one of those – it really is one of those aha moments when I know that I have you in a lie. That was – that was very memorable. That’s one of the things that drove that lawsuit. Brooke: If a person is fortunate enough -- and I use the word “fortunate” loosely -- to be exonerated, then what happens next? Sam: By now, exonerees who were in prison for long periods of time – 10, 20, 25 years – receive substantial compensation. By now, most states provide for compensation for wrongful imprisonment as a matter of law. Michigan does not. Michigan is a minority – one of the minority states that don’t, although there is a bill that passed one house of the Michigan State Legislature just the other day and may possibly actually pass this session. Texas provides the most generous of compensation and has one of the better systems for awarding it. Some states have systems in place that are just terrible and very few people bother to use them. Some people who are exonerated, regardless of which state they were convicted in, get even larger amounts of compensation from civil lawsuits, usually against police officers who committed misconduct that helped produce the conviction that they were ultimately exonerated of. That’s extremely variable and it’s only a minority of them. And some of them receive a large amount of compensation – you know, millions of dollars; in a small number of cases, tens of millions of dollars. But most do not. And many receive no help whatever from any source and are destitute. They come out years after exoneration and have no skills; they’re unfamiliar with the technology that they have to use just to live, let alone get jobs nowadays; family members may have died; and so forth. So they’re condition can be very bad. And in some respects, it is often worse than that of defendants who did commit crimes and served their time and were released because states often provide better and more helpful re-entry programs to people who were guilty of crimes and are re-entering society after completing their sentences. One organization that could be very useful to exonerees who have problems after they’ve been freed, and also someone you might want to interview, the organization is called “After Innocence”. It’s not hard to find on the web. And the person who runs it is a man by the name of John Eldan. And what he does is basically run a network of lawyers and other service providers who can help exonerees around the country who have problems that don’t relate to their criminal cases which can, be you, government benefits; healthcare is actually the one he’s devoted the most attention to in the last year or so; employment issues; family law problems; housing; anything. And has been very successful at it. He’s really helped, you know, several hundred of them in one form or another. Brooke: Wolf Mueller has completed a few wrongful conviction cases and still has one more in litigation. Using myself as an example, I asked Wolf what the process would be for me to receive compensation after having been exonerated. Wolfgang: How would you find me is typically like anybody in this position might lean on the lawyers who they owe their life and their freedom to, the folks who got them out. My first case involving a wrongful conviction just in a circular way came through the University of Michigan Innocence Clinic. And through that, and the publicity because it was the University of Michigan, I think other folks that University of Michigan exonerated heard about me and I probably got a recommendation from somebody that I did a good job for these other folks, and so that’s kind of how the ball gets rolling there. The first thing we’d have to do was sit down and have a long interview. Typically, if it’s a case – all of these wrongful conviction cases get publicity. If I know you’re coming in the office, I’ve done some research on your case. I have a general idea what it is. But the big thing is that distinguishes these civil rights cases from the work that innocence clinics have to do or public defender’s office have to do is I have to show that there’s police misconduct. Cuz a criminal defense attorney, you’re not going to be able to sue him and get any kind of money from him or her. That’s just – as a practical matter, by the time these folks get out, 8, 10, 20 years later, the 2 year statute of limitations is long past and these folks don’t have insurance anyways. So you can forget from a practical matter the lawyering. Then there’s the prosecutorial misconduct which happens, with overzealous prosecutors who may hide evidence, and that happens. But they have absolute immunity for their conduct during a criminal case. So you can’t sue them. Then it focuses on the police misconduct. Then the most important part of that is – what these innocence clinics try to do is – if it’s a technical expert – and for example, the University of Michigan has had success in arson cases, debunking the fire science or showing that the investigator just was sloppy or just didn’t know what he was doing. Well, I can’t rely on that. That gets the case thrown out. I have to show that the technical expert was or did something intentional or reckless way beyond simply being sloppy. So those are the things that we have to research to see what evidence is there. Was simply withheld, which it would be intentional. What we call a Brady violation, based on a case, Brady v. Maryland, which says that the police and the prosecutors have an obligation to give the defendant, the accused, all the evidence they have that show [sic] that the person didn’t do it or that might impeach the credibility of a witness for the prosecution. So those are the things we have to look at. What’s the evidence that got you out? How did you even get to my office? Once we do that, then we say, who’s at fault for that evidence and we work from there. You come to a lawyer who does this kind of work, the government and law enforcement they have such broad immunity over the things they do. Like I said, you have to show that they intentionally did something wrong -- police misconduct -- not just they were sloppy. So a lot of these cases can and do get dismissed. You think well, automatically, a guy did 10 years for something he didn’t do, he should get millions of dollars. It doesn’t work that way. There’s a lot of fighting; and at the end, the defendants always file a motion to throw the case out based on governmental immunity, what we call qualified immunity, that -- the law doesn’t allow for very much Monday morning quarterbacking of what they do, unless you can show that what they did was intentional. Like you withheld a smoking-gun memo that shows that he didn’t do it and you didn’t turn that over. Once you have that, now you have a case. So there’s – it’s not as nearly as simple as people think it is. That’s why you have to really work through the records and the photographs and everything else that makes up a conviction to try and unravel it. Brooke: I began to think about recent events and past interviews and I wondered if the monetary compensation is enough. I’m not talking about the amount but the magnitude of stealing someone’s time. When you steal a person’s important life moments by falsely incarcerating them, they can never, ever get that lost time back. In some particularly horrific cases, you’ve prevented a person from being able to grieve for their loved ones properly. I also wondered about the funding sources of these particular agencies. Sam: The law school provides – the University of Michigan Law School – provides a great deal of in-kind help. They provide space; they provide the – all of the IT work that’s done, including the servers, the hardware, the software programs that run it, the expertise of the programmer and graphic designer who have helped us create, you know, a database and a website and modified it and improved it greatly and taught us how to do many of the things that we would have done far worse. So that’s a major contribution. The law school does not provide any funding to pay for the staff or other out-of-pocket expenses we have so we’ve raised money from – mostly from small family foundations that are interested in this issue and have to continue doing that. We have received donations from people who use the website. Over the past year, I think altogether -- we sent out a couple of solicitations. I think altogether we probably received about $10,000 or $15,000 and it is extremely valuable. We are seriously underfunded. Imran: I think grant funding is the way a lot of them are funded, at least in part, is through federal government grants, especially in the DNA realm. There’s this thing called the Bloodsworth Grant, which is named for Keith Bloodsworth, who was exonerated off of death row in Maryland. The Bloodsworth Grant is, you know, several million dollars that is split to many recipients and it is for DNA cases. It pays for testing and staff to work on DNA cases and -- DNA testing can be quite expensive in these cases, of course. There’s also a Wrongful Conviction Review Grant, which is for non-DNA cases, and a lot of projects, Wisconsin, for example, has gotten that in the past. Our Clinic is entirely funded by the University of Michigan Law School 100% to this point. We have put in grant applications here and there; and if we were to get one, I’m sure we would be able to add certain – either expertise, resources. But I would say that’s kind of the model across the country is that they are funded either by universities that they’re affiliated with, through donations and fund raising, and then a lot of it is grant funded. And, you know, a lot of innocence projects are not affiliated with a law school. Many of them are independent non-profits. And some of them are affiliated with journalism schools because, you know, obviously investigative reporting plays a large role in conducting good investigations and kind of unraveling wrongful convictions. Brooke: There’s one question that I am asked more than all of the other questions, and that is: What can we do to help? Wolfgang: In your own states, look to see if there is a crime and exoneree compensation bill. After years and years, it looks like there is one in Michigan now about to be passed. But it’s too late for a lot of these folks. And like I say, it’s not a simple matter of you file a lawsuit just because you were wrongfully convicted and somebody pays you a lot of money. That doesn’t happen all that much. So the more important thing is to write your Congress person or your state legislator and – in support of a bill to help exonerees. Because what your listeners don’t know is, when you’re convicted of a crime that you did commit and sooner or later you get out of jail or out of prison, you’re given tools to help you assimilate back into society – education, clothes. You don’t get bus fare. If you’re wrongfully convicted and you didn’t do it, you don’t get an apology; you don’t get bus fare; you don’t get any training. You get nothing. And a lot of these folks go back to the same environment where they came from, which may lead to going to prison for something now that you did do, just because you don’t have the tools. And when I see guys come out after doing 10 or 15 years, and their kids went from toddlers to adults and they missed all that, well, they also missed the job education and the training and you don’t go on a resume – or a job interview and say, well, you know, I have this 15 year hole in my resume for a crime I didn’t commit – by the way, it was murder – that I didn’t commit. That doesn’t get you that far. So unless you have a big support system, there’s a very good chance that these people get lost and fall in the cracks for no good reason. Sam: The most important thing you could do, actually, is probably notice the cases and complain about the fact that they occurred in the first place, when they’re preventable – which is not always true, but many are preventable. That they’re not handled well at the point at which evidence of innocence is discovered. Some cases languish for years after the information which ultimately leads to the exoneration is already known and people who could have been released five years after conviction spend another five years in prison anyway. Or that there’s no compensation, the problem that’s now going on in Michigan and 15 or 20 other states which haven’t reformed their laws to address that issue. Dealing with cases, it is possible to deal with individual cases and help organizations that work on false convictions. The National Registry of Exonerations can’t generally use help from people who are not professionals or students because we’re a university-based research project and what we do is research on the only people that we can effectively supervise or are students who work in the schools that we work in or professionals who can work on cases as part of their work; and basically everybody who works with us is either a student or a professional researcher. Innocence projects, like the University of Michigan Innocence Clinic, might be able to use volunteers for some purposes but I can’t speak for that. And you can certainly contribute money to organizations that do this work. That’s helpful, and that’s helpful beyond the value of the money itself because showing support for, you know, for volunteer work like this is extremely valuable in keeping it going, maintaining morale, and getting out the word. Imran: This is a really interesting question because the answer is that the general person out there can do everything because that’s our system of government, but only if there’s a concerted effort to do something. And for the past 30, 40 years, there’s been a concerted effort to fight against perceived criminals, right? To get tougher and tougher on crime because somehow we’re protecting against these unbelievable super predator-types, whatever were the stereotypes in the ‘90s’. I think a lot of people are beginning to understand that that was not the most sane thing to do because in trying to fight back against the worst of the worst – you know, the terrorists and the mass murderers and everyone – what we’ve done is we’ve created a legal system that makes it impossible in some cases for the average defendant to get a good defense. And that’s really unfortunate. In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, changes were made to habeas corpus in this country that have resulted in many innocent people remaining in prison that before 1995 would have been able to get out. And that’s not me saying that – there are court opinions saying that, saying we might have granted relief pre-1995, but in light of the law that changed on habeas, than we no longer can. And that is incredibly frustrating to me. And that is a law that Congress passed; that is a law that if the public was to get together can be changed. So the real answer to that question is that we should be aware of what our courts and our governments are doing, and do we support all of those things? For many years when these tough on crime programs were happening, people were okay with it because they bought the hype. They said, well, of course I want the worst of the worst to remain in prison. Why would I want them getting out? But that’s not how these laws were applied. These laws were applied to make it very difficult for anyone, even innocent people, even innocent people who have physical evidence showing their innocence – made it very difficult for even them to get back into court. You know, and I’m hopeful that this trend has already started to be reversed, in light of some of the more famous wrongful convictions that have been in the news. I think juries, hopefully, will be more skeptical of certain evidence. And that’s what our system is built on. When we say, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that means there should be a healthy degree of skepticism when someone is brought into court. You have to start with prove to me that this person did it. That’s now how criminal prosecutions start in practice, though. In practice, juries presume that if you’ve been brought here – if they’ve spent all these resources to arrest you and bring you in here, you must have done it. They must have some great evidence against you. And even if the defense attorney fights and gets, you know, certain evidence suppressed so that it can’t be presented to the jury, the jurors think to themselves, they must have more. Even if I’m only seeing this, they must have so much more and I’m going to convict. Unfortunately, and my experience is limited to Michigan and Detroit. In the ‘90’s especially, people were convicted on very, very little evidence, that – people would be shocked that a person could be convicted of first degree murder and be sentenced to life in prison based on this tiny, tiny thing. You know, one witness who admits their high, admits that they received favorable treatment from police, maybe some years off their own sentence, to testify against this person. And yet, that’s enough to convict somebody. Our system is one where the defense doesn’t have to prove anything; yet many times jurors decide, well, if this guy’s got nothing to hide, why isn’t he testifying? It’s not his duty to testify. So as the general public, I think our duty to is to come – kind of come back home to the Constitution, come back home to the principles that existed for many years before we got excited over this there’s a new type of criminal and we need to do every single thing to fight back. Because what’s happened is a lot of people have been thrown under the bus. There have been people who have been executed because of laws being tightened to the point where they can’t get their cases heard. And that’s a huge tragedy. The sad part is that fixing that takes a lot of people coming together to believe a single thing, and inmates are not the easiest group to advocate for. So that – there’s all sort of systemic factors that it took us 50, 60 years to get to this point, it will probably take at least that long to get back. But I’m encouraged at least that the conversation has started on scrutinizing the evidence that’s presented against someone. And that’s not to say that people shouldn’t be convicted. People should be convicted based on appropriate evidence if the appropriate standard is satisfied. And if that makes a prosecution – the prosecutor’s job hard, I think our Constitution expects their job to be hard. The Constitution says, proof beyond a reasonable doubt. You know, the ones that really bother me, the ones that I really think about, are the ones that I don’t think will ever be in the news. Because they may be too difficult and we may not win them, or because it’s the type of conviction that, you know, no one’s going to care about this person, even if they get out. So those are some of the ones that I feel like I owe the most attention to because those are the ones that aren’t, you know, your sexy cases. Those aren’t the ones that are going to be on CNN. And we have a handful of them. I think in the long run, we’re going to lose more cases than we win. That’s just the reality of the line of work that we’re in. We’ve been fortunate enough to have a very good success rate to this point but when we take a case and we become committed and believe this person’s innocent, we also have to accept the fact that winning one of those cases is a long shot and, you know, that’s really, really difficult. That this person is innocent and there’s something that can be done about it; it’s a very significant case; and yet you have to accept the fact that you may not be able to win it. And that’s very difficult. ***MUSIC*** Dennis: My name is Dennis Robinson. I’m the Executive Producer of Undisclosed and this wonderful podcast, Actual Innocence. I’m also an attorney living in Baltimore, Maryland. Brooke: That was Dennis Robinson, Executive Producer of the Undisclosed Podcast. I brought Dennis on to talk about his history with Undisclosed. As Dennis mentioned, he is now also the Executive Producer for this show, Actual Innocence. And so I asked him if he could tell us how he got started. Dennis: I think I’d have to start from the beginning of how we began Undisclosed. And my version I’d say is the unofficial version. Whatever Rabia ends up writing in her book that’s coming out this summer – go by a copy – that’s the official version. That’ll be the doctrine of how Undisclosed Podcast came about. So here we go. I started doing defense work in Baltimore August/September, 2014. The State of Maryland started a program based on a very – I’d say a revolutionary law – where defendants at pretrial stages, specifically at bail hearings, had the right to have an attorney present when a magistrate, a juror, or a bail officer was making a determination as to the amount of bond they’d be released on for the crime they committed. In order to represent those clients, you had to go to like a three day seminar and a train-up and everything like that. So I went to the train-up and I learned that one of my old law professors, who I was quite close to – his name’s Doug Colbert out of University of Maryland – had helped to lead the charge on changing the law. He had done a lot of advocacy on behalf of changing the law. I called him and I said, hey, look, I’m thinking about doing this – I’m thinking about representing indigent clients at these bail hearings on a pro bono status, what can you tell me? He said, I’m very happy to hear that you’re doing this; come in, let’s talk, and there’s also another attorney that I want you to meet. His name is Chris Flohr. Chris and I have worked together to try to get this law changed in Maryland for a while now. He’s a great guy. I think you’d really click with him. So I got to talking with Doug and he introduced me to Chris. Brooke: Chris Flohr. That name sounded familiar to me. And it might to you, too, if you are familiar with a little podcast called Serial. Dennis: Well, Chris, it turns out, was one of Adnan Syed’s very first attorneys; Adnan obviously being the subject of Serial. Brooke: You can hear Chris Flohr on Season 1, Episode 10, of Serial. Dennis: This was summer/fall, 2014, when I started talking to Chris. And Chris and I just clicked. You know, he’s an interesting cat. He’s kind of got this advocacy at heart, you know, screw the system type vibe to him. I mean, you go in – he’s a defense attorney and he’s a great one, but you go into his office and I kid you not, there’s both like a giant poster of Bruce Lee, Buddha, and Jesus. Like, not in the same poster but in different places in his office where he sees clients. And I’m like, you know, I could really dig this guy. He’s a cool dude. So me and him just clicked and we started going out to breakfast and just talking about what it was to represent indigent persons. And we were at breakfast maybe September, October, and he said, yeah, so, look, I got interviewed for this radio program, and I don’t know what it’s about. Have you ever heard of This American Life? I’m like, yeah, I’ve heard of This American Life; you know, I’ve listened to NPR. And he’s like I don’t really know what they’re doing but the program’s based on a client I represented. Brooke: This relationship lead Dennis to meet someone you are definitely familiar with, if you’ve listened to Serial or Undisclosed. Dennis: His personal advocate is a lady named Rabia Chaudry. She’s really, really cool. There’s something about her that reminds me of you. Can I put you guys in touch? And I go, yeah, sure, whatever. That’s fine. Yeah, I like cool people. With like no plans whatsoever of working with Rabia. I just – Chris said she was cool and she was somebody I should meet and I said, yeah, I could connect to that. So I gave Rabia a call and I think our first call was very casual – oh, you’re doing this? That’s cool. I’m doing this so that’s cool. And we had some connections in the D.C. area based on professional work we had done in separate lives. And Rabia said, okay, well, you know, there’s this program coming out, Serial, you should listen, or something like that. And I said, yeah, I can do that. Brooke: Like many of us, Serial was the podcast that really drew him in. Dennis: I don’t know the right way to put this. It was obviously mind blowing. It was an amazing, amazing program. And I’d listened casually to podcasts as a concept before – like, you know, podcasts about sports or, you know, what NPR was putting on the internet. But the episodic coverage of a case out of Baltimore and the way that she did it just blew my mind. So like after the second episode came out, I called Rabia -- I think it was like the second or third episode, I can’t quite remember – but I called Rabia and was like, look, whatever help you need, I’m there. Not only because I think this is cool but it’s very, very obvious to me that Adnan got – he did not get a fair trial in the system, so what can I do to help? And from there, you know, Rabia, she’s got some notoriety, I think, on the internet, where people understand her personality. What I’m trying to say is she very much is what she is, you know? She is an advocate to the core. So when I said, okay, what can I do to help, she’s like, boom, let’s do this and it was just go time. And we set up Adnan’s legal defense fund. We tried to dovetail it to the end of Serial because we wanted people to kind of make a determination about how they felt about Adnan, rather than saying, like, you know, somewhere midway during the season, see, we told you, he’s innocent; he got a bad trial. We wanted Serial to kind of put everything they had out there and at that point -- it was probably around the end of December, whenever the last episode of Serial was -- we set up a crowd funding site to solicit money for his legal defense fund. We did pretty good – I forget the exact numbers. The numbers are public. But we raised a good amount of money, all of which went to funding Adnan’s attorneys and like associated efforts – paying for experts and investigators and stuff like that. Every dime of it. It was probably like the middle of January we noticed that the donations were kind of starting to trickle off, and we were worried about that because we knew at that point Adnan had a pretty good shot of getting a post-conviction relief hearing and we knew we would have to pay for it – we didn’t think we would have enough money for pay for it. Plus, there was – we had worries about – and we still do – worries about whether the State of Maryland would decide to retry Adnan if he was found to have a bad original trial or incompetent representation the first time around; whatever the case is, we were worried that the State of Maryland would consider retrying him and that would be very, very costly. And we noticed the donations dropping off and we figured that in part, the donations were dropping off because Serial was fading away from the public consciousness. And we were just talking about ways that we might be able to get people to continue giving. And, you know, Rabia was blogging about Serial and about Adnan and about all the attention that it’s gotten, and we noticed that there were several other people who were doing really great work blogging about Adnan’s case, looking at the holes, discovering new evidence. Brooke: Dennis and Rabia set up a post-conviction relief fund for Adnan to fund his defense. But when it seemed that relief might be in sight, donations to the fund started to drop off. Dennis: I’ll take credit. Again, it really depends more on what Rabia says in her book. I think we were just talking and I was like, look, why don’t we just do a podcast? You know, we’re putting all this information out there on the blogs and it’s great information but that’s not where the audience who came to know Adnan exists. Like, they might go to your blog but they really exist in the world of podcasts. You know, they want to hear more about Adnan. We started thinking about how to do it, and we wanted to make it so that – we wanted to exploit what we considered to be our biggest resource, and that was access to the tons of trial documents that Rabia has carried with her throughout the 14, 15 years since the original trial. You know, that was a real resource. So we thought, well, how could we get that information to the public through a podcast. So we decided to recruit two brilliant attorneys who were, we thought, doing the best work looking at the actual legal issues online in Adnan’s case, and those two people are obviously Susan Simpson, who was blogging at TheViewFromLL2, and then Colin Miller, who is the notorious Evidence Professor. And we contacted them and we said, hey, you guys, would you be interested in doing a podcast? And they’re like, yeah, sure, we’d love to do a podcast. And we said, okay, here’s the deal. The Trust will fund the startup but what we want to do is use this podcast as a vehicle to solicit continued donations for the Trust. Brooke: And so, Undisclosed, one of my favorite podcasts, was formed. Dennis: The Trust funded the startup costs of the podcast, which were absolutely minimal. I mean, we honestly – we were recording on I think Blue Yetis and laptops that everybody owns. We spent maybe like less than $200 to get everybody set up, if I remember right. And we were like, all right, we need to let everybody know about this. Let’s tweet. Let’s do like press releases. And the reason I say that’s interesting is cuz like none of us knew what the hell we were doing. You know, nobody – we thought, yeah, let’s do a podcast. We’ll talk into a microphone about Adnan and people will think it’s great. So we send out these press releases saying, look, we’re going to do a podcast called Undisclosed, The State Versus Adnan Syed. And it’s not Serial everybody – we’re like, in the press release, you know, following up on Serial but it’s not Serial. Obviously, every media outlet said, Serial 2 is coming. Serial’s – like, I remember Rolling Stone covered it in an online article and they used verbiage that suggested like, you know, the case of Serial is back. And we’re trying to tell them like, no, listen, this is not Serial. This is a few lawyers who got some microphones and thought they had something interesting to say. So we recorded our first episode. I remember scrambling madly. And Susan carried the heavy load in terms of like splicing it and getting it up onto Audio Boom. Brooke: I remember listening to Undisclosed before my own podcast was even a thought, and I was thinking, wow, this isn’t Serial, but I really love the content. Dennis: Day of, we’re still trying to figure out, does this cut sound good? Are we putting it together correctly? And like I think we told the world that it would be out at 6 p.m. on a Monday or something like that and we didn’t get it out until like 7:04 and the internets were freaking out like tweeting at us and we were like, ah, what the hell do we do? But we eventually got it out and it was largely horrible. The first episode, I mean. And the reason it was horrible was because, one, I wrote it sort of. Like I developed this lame script where Colin had like the professor’s moment and Susan would look at certain issues and – it was the worst. Brooke: After hearing Dennis describe the process, I had to go back and listen to the first episode of Undisclosed. It is largely as he described it. Dennis: I didn’t fill in any of the content. I just – I was like, alright, you guys are geniuses. You know the case. Please talk about this. And we wanted to visit it chronologically from what we thought were the strongest points of the case and from an individual perspective. So, you know, the first episode was Adnan’s day, and the second episode was Hae’s day, and the third episode was Jay’s day. And part of the reason that we wanted to do it that way was because we thought that the legal documents that we had were -- kind of strongly supported the chronology of what people were doing, which obviously was super important to the case. Like, you know, if we had documents and statements that said, hey, this was where Adnan was at this time when the State’s alleging that he was somewhere else at this time, well, then that’s obviously pretty good for Adnan. So, yeah, the first episode or two were just – they were just bad. And it wasn’t bad because of Susan, Colin, or Rabia; it was mostly bad because of me. And we were getting slammed online. It was just -- this is not Serial. There was this guy from the Baltimore Sun, David Zurawik, who we gave an advance copy to. And he’s a nice guy. I like this criticism. But he actually did this video blog just slamming Undisclosed. He started off by – he’s like, look, these are great attorneys. I’m sure they’re great people – dot, dot, dot, podcast sucks. And then he went on for like two minutes and talked about how bad it was. And we were crushed. Brooke: I remember having that same feeling after I looked up the meaning of the words “vocal fry”. Dennis: We knew it sounded bad but we had hoped people would actually pay attention to the subject matter and give us a pass on not being professional radio people. Brooke: As Dennis said those words, I looked around my closet, which doubles as my studio, and I nodded in agreement with what he had to say next. Dennis: But what we do have is a lot of heart and a desire to put what we think is interesting information out there. We also have a desire to connect to the people that want to connect to us. Like, that’s the other cool thing I think about podcasting is that you go in the big wide world and you find people who care about the same stuff you care about and interact with them through social media and you talk about the podcast content. So I think that’s one thing that at least I believe that we have that, you know, the big stations don’t. Not to slam them – I think they make great content, but I think that’s what makes us a little bit different. Brooke: The makers of Undisclosed are not people who give up easily. Dennis: So, yeah, so we did the first two or three episodes, and we decided at that point we’re going to continue doing this. Like we don’t really care about the criticism; we’re going to figure out a way to get better and we’re also going to figure out a way to get out what we believe is the most important information. Like, we’re not going to stop by saying, look, this is where we think Adnan was at this time, this is where we think Hae was at this time. We’re going to keep going; we’re going to get out the stuff that we think is the most important. So we did two crucial things. First, we went out and hired a contract producer sound engineer person, and that person still works with us today. It’s the wonderful Rebecca Lavoie of Partners in Crime Media. She also does Crime Writers On. And she is just one of the most fabulous people I’ve ever met. Not only cuz she’s talented from a sound engineering perspective, but she’s also a professional radio person so she knows what good radio sounds like. And she was, in my opinion, the difference maker in our podcast. I think by episode 3 or 4, we really started to put out a quality, semi-professional product -- as professional as you can get in podcasting. And she just made it great. Brooke: Crime Writers On is definitely in my top ten podcast list. So, sound editor – check. Dennis: And the second thing that we did was – just stepping back to Episode 1, I think we had like a million listeners within the first two weeks for Episode 1. And I mean, that’s – we say, wow now, but back then, I’m like, yeah, that’s cool; a million people. I thought it was cool. In podcasting terms like that kind of number, I had no idea what it meant. And the second episode had like half that. And the third episode dropped off to like 400,000 people. And we still didn’t know what the meant. But what we did notice was that those 400,000 to 500,000 people really got intense – well, not all of them but like, you know, sample size – got intense talking about the information that we were putting out. They’re tweeting about it and going on some message boards and dissecting it. And we thought, oh, that was really cool. We should try as best we can to engage these people. The reason that number’s important is because those folks became our core fan base and they stick with us to this day I think that the numbers that we get reflect the people that have been with us since day one, and we love those folks; we love talking to them; we love hearing their feedback. They’re very, very, very important to us because they allow us to continue to make the podcast. Brooke: I’ve recently gained some sponsors thanks to you, the listener. And I wanted to make sure that we all understand how important advertisements are to podcasting in helping with future production. Dennis: Around Episode 3, advertisers came to us. I forget who reached out first. I’d rather not mention any specific names, but there were advertising agencies that said, hey, we know your podcast does pretty well, would you be interested in having ads? And we were super conflicted about that for two reasons. One, we didn’t want to commercialize the product. Because, you know, we were all volunteers. We weren’t getting paid at all by the Trust. We wanted all of the money to go to Adnan. And just the idea of like selling a product on something like that would just – it kind of irked us the wrong way. So we had a lot of back and forth. And I went to the advertisers and I said hey, you know, I’m really not sure. We just don’t know if we want to be that kind of podcast. And they said, well, let me tell you what it would make. They showed me that podcasting can be very lucrative if you do it the right way. So I took the figures back to the team and basically what it came down to is I said, look, these advertisers are – they’re paying this – this money, “X” amount of dollars would go to Adnan’s fund. It’s way more money if we do this weekly than what we’re making soliciting donations online for Adnan’s trust. If we take ads, it’s really, really, really going to help to pay for Adnan’s legal defense fund. And that point, it was almost a given. We had to do it. We couldn’t turn it down. It’s been a tremendous boon paying for his legal defense, every penny of which has continued to go to his attorneys. Brooke: I asked Dennis if he could give us some insight into the next season of Undisclosed. Dennis: Man, what can I say? ***MUSIC*** So we’re obviously being super tight lipped about it. Part of that is a business decision because, you know, you want to surprise the audience. You want them to be fresh when they get to the show, right? Like, you don’t want – but the idea that, you know, Season 2, Episode 1 hits on July 11th, and boom, that’s when we tell our audience, hey, this is the case that we’re looking at. This is what we’ve got so far. Come along with us for the ride. We think that’s kind of cool, and we want the audience to think that’s kind of cool. So can’t talk about the case, can’t say who it is. What I can say is that it was brought to us by an innocence project. And you did a really great episode on Helpers 1 talking about like what the Innocence Project is, how it’s split. That was the most educational piece that I’ve ever gotten about how the Innocence Project works, by the way, so thank you for that. So it was brought to us by an innocence project, who turns out they really dig Undisclosed, and we’re happy for that. And this case – I only know reading it and listening to the audio, it is screwed up. Like, it’s bad. Real, real, real, real, real bad. And it’s just one of those things where you’re reading about it you’re like, how is this guy in jail? This doesn’t – this is America, it’s not supposed to be this way, let’s do something about it. And that’s kind of how we’re approaching it. Beyond that, if I say anything more, I think Susan Simpson will find a way to reach through his little microphone booth I’m recording in and strangle me, so I’m going to not do that. ***MUSIC*** Brooke: The Actual Innocence podcast website is www.ActualInPod.com. That’s ActualInPod.com. Share your feedback and questions by emailing [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @ActualInPod. Please share your support by rating us or giving us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app, or by becoming one of our Patreon sponsors by clicking the “Support” link on our website. Remember, sharing this podcast and the stories of those who have been exonerated help to fix our criminal justice system. I’m Brooke – thanks for listening.