Left, Right, and Wrongful Convictions: Commanding Common Cause

[00:00:00]finish.

[00:00:01]I'd like to ask acclaimed actor Holt McCallany, who's with us, to come up and share a few words before our keynote speaker.

[00:00:11]I'm really excited to be dating in my wrongful conviction advocacy.

[00:00:16]If you haven't seen The Iron Claw, he has a prominent role in that.

[00:00:21]Thank you, Mr. Von Erich. Holt McCallany.

[00:00:25]>> [cheering] >> Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:00:32]Tonight, we're gathered not just to celebrate an organization, but to honor a principle that truth matters and that freedom should never be taken away from an innocent person.

[00:00:51]>> [applause] >> The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice has dedicated itself to that principle with extraordinary courage and relentless determination.

[00:01:03]Through painstaking legal work, through the pursuit of DNA evidence, and through an unwavering belief in justice, this foundation has helped to free people who were convicted, sometimes to life, for crimes they did not commit.

[00:01:20]Think about that for a moment.

[00:01:22]Years, decades lost.

[00:01:26]Families torn apart.

[00:01:28]Lives paused in a system that got it wrong.

[00:01:33]But because of this foundation, many of those lives have been given back.

[00:01:40]One of the stories is very personal to me.

[00:01:43]John Kennedy O'Hara is not just a name in a case file. He's a lifelong friend.

[00:01:48]Our mothers were best friends. We grew up together.

[00:01:52]And I watched as his life was upended in what can only be described as a politically motivated prosecution.

[00:02:00]Under the late district attorney from Brooklyn, Charles Hynes, John O'Hara was tried Charles Hynes, yes. Yes. May he uh John O'Hara was tried three times, three times, for illegal voting.

[00:02:18]He became the first person convicted of that offense since Susan B. Anthony in 1872.

[00:02:26]Yep. A disbarred attorney, a man unable to earn a living for 16 years, a life derailed.

[00:02:35]And yet today, he's been vindicated.

[00:02:39]>> [applause] >> He's getting back up. He's fighting back. And that would not have been possible without the help of the JEFFREY DESKOVIC FOUNDATION.

[00:02:53]>> [applause] >> NOW, AS AN ACTOR, I ONCE HAD THE privilege of playing the Manhattan District Attorney on the television series Blue Bloods.

[00:03:04]And in preparation, I met with Cyrus Vance Jr. at his office in Manhattan.

[00:03:09]And over lunch, I asked him directly about wrongful convictions, about the allegations we all hear of witness intimidation, coerced testimony, even fabricated evidence. And he was in fact He said those cases were very rare.

[00:03:25]It's only natural >> [laughter] >> Like, why would a prosecutor do that?

[00:03:29]They're just government employees.

[00:03:32]>> [laughter] >> Hey, there's another perspective.

[00:03:35]Right, Jeff?

[00:03:36]Less than 1% of criminal cases actually go to trial.

[00:03:41]Because the pressure to plead is so immense and the risk of losing a trial is so catastrophic. We have to ask ourselves, who are the people willing to take that risk?

[00:03:54]Well, the answer is, exactly, that the people who refuse to plead guilty are often the truly innocent.

[00:04:04]And in certain cases, >> [applause] >> which means the number of wrongful convictions is far greater than we, the public, are comfortable acknowledging.

[00:04:19]And that's why this foundation is so important.

[00:04:23]They give a voice to the voiceless.

[00:04:25]They restore dignity where it's been stripped away.

[00:04:30]And most importantly, they get people their lives back.

[00:04:35]So tonight, tonight, let us recognize the extraordinary accomplishments of Jeffrey Deskovic and his team.

[00:04:49]>> [applause] [applause] [applause] >> Michelle Malkin is an American journalist, author, and entrepreneur.

[00:05:26]She is the author of seven books and the founder of two internet media companies.

[00:05:32]Her syndicated newspaper column was published in more than 100 newspapers.

[00:05:37]She worked in national conservative TV radio uh for three decades.

[00:05:43]Michelle is the daughter of a Filipino immigrants, a dedicated neonatologist who headed the NICU at Atlantic City Medical Center, and a South Jersey public school teacher who taught everything from math to bilingual education to gifted and talented students.

[00:06:02]>> [applause] >> Mr. Michelle's maternal grandfather was a police officer who loved the law, John Wayne and Frank Sinatra.

[00:06:16]Born in Philadelphia and raised in Absecon, New Jersey, Michelle graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio in 1992.

[00:06:24]Married at 21, Michelle and her husband, Jesse, have a daughter and son who they raised in Colorado to love hiking, fishing, camping, and fresh mountain air.

[00:06:36]During the COVID lockdowns, Michelle went back to school for paralegal studies at Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado Springs. She is a paralegal, by the way.

[00:06:46]>> [laughter] >> She is the host of Corrupt-A-Homa: Unlock the Truth podcast, works on wrongful conviction cases, and volunteers with a women's group and teaches South Florida inmates to play pickleball.

[00:07:00]She's a documentarian whose documentary Railroaded: Surviving Wrongful Conviction documents the ongoing Daniel Holtzclaw wrongful conviction case, in which I'm in the documentary as the side and main subject of the documentary, uh Daniel Holtzclaw.

[00:07:16]Wrongful conviction is a human rights issue.

[00:07:20]It does not belong to the left.

[00:07:23]And it doesn't belong to the right. It belongs to all of us. It's a human rights issue. And to overcome wrongful conviction, the we need the left, the right, and independents to all come together on this one issue. Leave everything else aside. We can do all that later. It's been done a lot already, and it will be done in the future. Let's come together on the issue that we can all agree on, wrongful conviction. Let's all work together.

[00:07:50]Let's pool our funds, talents, and resources. And to give life to that, to give breath to that, our keynote speaker, Michelle Malkin.

[00:07:59]>> [applause and cheering] >> Thank you so much. It is truly an honor to stand in this room before you and stand beside you in the fight to undo wrongful convictions across the board, across the country, and achieve justice for each and every individual who's been screwed by evil people. And that is what they are.

[00:08:34]Uh I have to tell you that uh there are people, maybe in this room, uh maybe every time I um enter a public space, who see me as an enemy.

[00:08:52]And I want you to see me tonight as someone without a label.

[00:08:59]The only identity I want you to see in me tonight is someone who seeks truth and desires justice.

[00:09:12]>> [applause] >> I heard um several chuckles when it was mentioned that I coach pickleball at S- Peters.

[00:09:25]And I was there last Friday at a correctional facility in South Florida.

[00:09:29]Any pickleball fanatics here? Yeah!

[00:09:32]That's what I'm talking about. Okay? You cannot be a half-assed pickleball player. It's You're all in or nothing.

[00:09:41]Okay?

[00:09:44]Mixed doubles.

[00:09:46]That's it. Come on, Oscar and Christine.

[00:09:48]All right, let's go. Okay.

[00:09:50]Maybe we'll make it a fundraiser for uh for Jeff.

[00:09:54]>> [laughter] >> Did you play pickle ball?

[00:10:00]So, anyway, last Friday I was at a correctional facility in in Florida, and there was a group of about 30 inmates.

[00:10:07]I don't know what they did to get there.

[00:10:09]I don't know how many of them were innocent, how many of them were actually innocent or procedurally innocent. I don't know how many of them are guilty.

[00:10:16]It didn't matter.

[00:10:18]We're all on a court having crazy fun whacking around a plastic yellow ball on a rutted uh concrete pavement wreck yard with one goal, win.

[00:10:34]Um men of all ages, backgrounds, races, socioeconomic status playing in front of a a jerry-rigged net, okay, to get around all of the regulations. The net was tied around orange rubber cones.

[00:10:53]Ingenious, but that's just how life is.

[00:10:56]And I know it sounds like it's a silly game, but pickleball is a serious business, and our students actually had been studying videos of pickleball strategy for weeks on end um before they got to play with us.

[00:11:11]So, the pickleball court is 20 ft by 40 ft, and then once you get into something called the non-volley zone, it's real close in. Uh it's just 7 ft deep and and 20 ft wide.

[00:11:26]And once you get close in uh pickleball transforms into this cat and mouse uh pursuit between two teams, and it requires a lot of discipline, a lot of patience, a lot of precision, and anticipation.

[00:11:43]And this is key, okay? Because you got to keep your eye on the ball.

[00:11:47]You have to stay focused.

[00:11:50]You have to figure out your opponent's weaknesses.

[00:11:53]You have to find good partners.

[00:11:56]You have to stick to your game plan. You have to communicate effectively. You have to always be ready, and you can never give up.

[00:12:05]That's why So, some of the higher-level players that um I've been coaching know that the the key is not in hitting the ball harder, but in in hitting the ball smarter.

[00:12:19]And last week we focused focused on this combination of of hitting this crosscourt gentle shot that we call a dink, drawing your opponent out wide, and then surprising them by hitting them on their inside foot, causing a pop-up, and bam!

[00:12:35]Slamming that ball and putting it away.

[00:12:38]Which, even though I'm 5 ft, I can do it.

[00:12:43]Um Why am I telling you this?

[00:12:47]The first reason is that that good pickleball, like most things in life, is about pattern recognition.

[00:12:55]And in the work that you all do and that we're all committed to here, it's the work of the Exonerate Foundation, undoing wrongful convictions and freeing innocent people and achieving justice.

[00:13:09]Pattern recognition is everything.

[00:13:14]Reason number two is that my prison pickleball journey shows that you can never underestimate the impact that your actions can have on people who you think are beyond reach.

[00:13:28]30 years ago, as a young law and order, lock 'em up and throw away the key conservative, the last place on Earth I would have ever imagined myself being is on a wreck prison courtyard playing pickleball with inmates and standing here before you today making common cause.

[00:13:54]>> [clears throat] >> I met Jeff Deskovic in late 2016 or early 2017 when I started seeing patterns.

[00:14:05]Patterns of police incompetence and malfeasance.

[00:14:08]Patterns of forensic fraud.

[00:14:11]Patterns of prosecutorial misconduct.

[00:14:14]Patterns of judicial corruption.

[00:14:18]And it's been about almost 10 years since I began investigating the case that Jeff mentioned, the Daniel Holtzclaw case, and started seeing the wider big picture of miscarriages of justice, not just in Oklahoma, where that case was, but across the country. And this is what has led me to dig into the wider world of wrongful conviction nightmares that occur routinely from the heartland of America to the coast to everywhere in between.

[00:14:48]And when Jeff shared his own harrowing story, you know, when you have to be a public figure like Jeff, you have to constantly retell and retell your story.

[00:15:00]And it's not that it becomes old, but it's part of your public persona, and maybe you don't understand the impact that it has on someone who's hearing it for the first time.

[00:15:13]But I'm sitting there, and I'm trying to look professional, and he's telling me that as a teenager that he didn't have his parents with him, that he didn't have a lawyer, that he basically was starved of food and couldn't think straight. And when he tells it, he says he was in a fetal position underneath the interview table.

[00:15:35]And he's telling me this in late 2016 or early 2017, I have two children.

[00:15:41]And my daughter was the exact same age as you when that happened to you.

[00:15:47]And I can't imagine. I could not, as a mother, listen to what Jeff was telling me and just shrug my shoulders and say, "Next story."

[00:15:57]You never know the impact that you have on people that you think are beyond your reach.

[00:16:08]16 years you survived before your name was cleared.

[00:16:15]DNA identified you, the real killer of the victim in your case.

[00:16:21]And as you have said in this, you have told many audiences, whether it was police trainees or students, people who already are reconditioned to believe your story.

[00:16:43]The real murderer had already gone on to murder somebody else. That's an innocent life that would have already been a life still alive had had the right things been done and justice achieved.

[00:16:58]You went and did one of the one of the always amazing things, and you're sitting next to my mom, whose dream had always been for me to be a lawyer.

[00:17:06]All I can do was produce a paralegal certificate, but she's getting all that from you, so thank you.

[00:17:16]Um I I think it's extraordinary that you go before police academies, and that you don't, as a matter of course, demonize all police. Because just like in any profession, there are good ones, and the good ones are the best ones, and I have to point out my good friend John Felucci here, You go with the police academies and and lecture on wrongful convictions in classrooms filled with people who wear the same law enforcement uniform as the men who broke you. Wait a minute, they didn't break you. They made you who you are.

[00:17:58]>> [cheering] [applause] >> When people ask me it in a in a resigned way, "Well, what can I do to help? It doesn't seem like this is ever going to change. How could I do anything?"

[00:18:14]I just say behold Jeff's example, and live every day with the zeal and the urgency and the belief of a man who has just regained his freedom after X number of years. Go fill in the blank of every one of the exonerees in this room. I honor each and every one of you. You're here, you're alive, you survived, and you're having an impact on people who you believe might be beyond your reach.

[00:18:41]Thanks to all of you.

[00:18:44]>> [applause] >> Jeff Deskovic's life commands common cause.

[00:18:57]Okay, that's the easy part.

[00:19:00]Because the tough stuff comes it lies in the very reason that wrongful convictions take so long to overturn in the first place.

[00:19:09]And you know what I'm talking about.

[00:19:11]It's the act of admitting when you're wrong, and then doing something to fix the systemic systemic problems at play.

[00:19:24]And I'm going to practice what I preach.

[00:19:28]I told you 30 years ago that coaching prison pickleball is the last place I'd ever imagined myself to be.

[00:19:36]Back then, in the mid-1990s, I was a gung-ho young editorial writer and a columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News, which was a like the conservative alternative to the big paper in town, which was the LA Times, okay? So, we're in the little San Fernando Valley providing diversity of opinion.

[00:19:59]Um, and at the time, California, believe it or not, was a red state.

[00:20:06]And Ronald Reagan, can you imagine that?

[00:20:09]Um, I was writing fire and brimstone editorials championing the very popular at the time three strikes you're out law, uh, which mandated harsh sentences for repeat offenders. And look, citizens were justifiably upset at the time.

[00:20:27]Uh, those of you lived long enough might remember that, uh, there was a murder case, uh, involving a 12-year-old girl named Polly Klaas. Yeah. And, uh, very sensational case.

[00:20:41]It did expose serious flaws in the in the handling and, uh, catch and release policies at the time of career criminals like Polly Klaas's murderer, Richard Allen Davis.

[00:20:52]So, our newspaper went full blast on the criminal justice system's uh, real and perceived laxity.

[00:21:01]At the time, believing every word I said, I even blasted TVs and gyms in prison as luxuries for coddled prisoners. I did.

[00:21:19]And looking back now, I suppose I could try to explain away my views by pointing to youth and experience.

[00:21:27]But the bigger picture involves a kind of ideological blindness to constitutional hypocrisy.

[00:21:34]And I'm going to say this loud and I'm going to say it slow because my audience isn't just here. I'm putting this on all my social media, which is followed mostly by people on my side of the aisle, on the right.

[00:21:48]The American conservative movement claims to revere the highest laws of the land.

[00:21:54]Every election Republican carries their pocket US Constitution and waves it in your face. I know.

[00:22:01]Okay.

[00:22:02]Every college Republican claims to have read read and to revere the the Federalist Papers.

[00:22:10]And then as soon as a man in an orange jumpsuit and chains walks into the frame, the switch flips and suddenly the Fourth Amendment is a I think Halloween.

[00:22:21]And the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments are lawyer trickery.

[00:22:25]And the Sixth is a nuisance nuisance that's wasted on guilty people.

[00:22:29]The Eighth Amendment, who cares? Hang them high.

[00:22:33]Hang them high, right? Well, who cares?

[00:22:36]I care.

[00:22:39]Constitutional conservatism that does not recognize or rectify wrongful convictions committed by the government is performative.

[00:22:49]And as you all know, it's not just theater.

[00:22:53]It's a horrific [ __ ] show doing daily commensurable damage to actual American citizens on American soil under American flags on American farmers.

[00:23:11]So, >> [applause] >> this is for my conservative audience. If you believe that the government is too incompetent to to deliver your mail, run the DMV, or build a website, That's true.

[00:23:26]but you also believe that the same government is competent enough to decide who gets the needle, you are not a constitutionalist.

[00:23:38]You're a fan.

[00:23:40]You're a fan of an outcome and you're a fan of a team, not of principles.

[00:23:47]Yeah. Conservatives, the people that I consider my tribe, are supposed to be the ones who distrust state power.

[00:23:59]Yet too many of them blindly outsource their judgment to the badge and to the gavel.

[00:24:06]I was one of them.

[00:24:08]You know who continues to be one of them?

[00:24:12]A former colleague of mine in media.

[00:24:15]Her name is Jeanine Pirro.

[00:24:18]Oh, hold on. No, no.

[00:24:21]She was a DA who fought Jeff's pleas to retest the DNA in his case.

[00:24:29]Jeanine Pirro was the one who fought his appeals every step of the way.

[00:24:36]Alexander Pope said, "To err is human, to forgive divine."

[00:24:43]To refuse to admit wrongdoing after all these years while wrapped in the Constitution is a clown show. That's a spectacle.

[00:24:53]Jeanine, do the right thing.

[00:24:56]The cost of this theater was paid not just by Jeff, but by so many of you sitting at these tables tonight. Paid in years, paid in decades, paid in birthdays missed and parents worried, buried, and children grown without you, or children never had.

[00:25:13]To borrow a phrase, there is no refund window long and wide enough.

[00:25:20]So, to my conservative friends and listeners and viewers whose at 1:50 is proudly sport, quote, "The government is the problem, not the answer" bumper stickers, I remind you tonight that prosecutor is government.

[00:25:39]Crime lab supervisor is government. The medical examiner is government. The forensic chemist is government. And if you don't trust government to weigh your weed or check your gas pump, why on God's green earth would you trust it unaudited and unchallenged and unaccountable to weigh a human life?

[00:26:03]>> [applause] >> By the way, it's a result of the work that I've done over the the last 10 years that I truly, sincerely, and thoroughly renounce my prior oath to the death penalty.

[00:26:21]Um, and keep your minds open, but there is an incredible book that was written by, keep your minds open, none other than Mark Furman on the operation of the death penalty machine in Oklahoma. One of the reasons I focus on that red state is because neither liberals nor conservatives in in Oklahoma who are in power have done enough not only to stop the death penalty machine, but to rectify nearly half century of wrongful convictions under both Republicans and Democrats.

[00:27:03]>> [clears throat] >> Okay.

[00:27:05]You ready?

[00:27:08]On the other side of the aisle, first let me say this.

[00:27:12]Some of the smartest, kindest, bravest people I have been blessed to know, Oscar Michelen I count as one of the next to Jeff Deskovic as as a hero of mine, are on the opposite side of the political spectrum, shall we say.

[00:27:31]But when we are on the same side of the court together, focusing on the same ball, nothing else matters.

[00:27:48]>> [applause] >> From the left, whatever that means anymore, established the foundation of the innocence movement, the Innocence Project, the the the joy that I've had, um, getting to know and and and work alongside Jason Flom, the legal aid offices, the public defenders, and pro bono lawyers who lose money every year doing the work no one else will do.

[00:28:15]The journalists on the other side of the aisle who have done the same thing I've done, use open records act and FOIA to file records requests one time, two times, five times, 10 times, denied and denied, but we keep coming back. These are the people who built the wrongful conviction movement. And the vast majority of you sit on the left of the aisle.

[00:28:40]Wherever we identify ourselves in this movement, we are eternally indebted to the foremothers and forefathers of the innocence movement. I thank you. I thank you for for letting me speak in front of you and bring cases to your attention and tap your knowledge and tap your expertise.

[00:29:03]But there are reflexes on that side of the aisle as well. And and we couldn't have this this evening of commanding common cause without speaking to some of them.

[00:29:15]And the hardest one is the assumption that racial demographics alone of a defendant should drive the analysis of the case.

[00:29:24]I'm not saying that there are are no racial disparities. Don't get me wrong.

[00:29:31]The data on race and wrongful conviction is real and it is grim.

[00:29:35]But I am asking all of us to resist the temptation to let the demographic do the ana- do the little bit of work that the case file is supposed to do. The evidence. Not every accuser is telling the truth. You all know that.

[00:29:52]Not every minority defendant is innocent. You all know that. Not every officer in a controversial case is lying or guilty. You all know that. And not every prosecution that ends in a conviction was illegitimate.

[00:30:07]The minute we all start deciding what the file says before we read the file, we're doing the same thing that the hang 'em high right does when it assumes the cop, the prosecutor, and a new swinging judge must be right. We can't pick sides before we hear the evidence.

[00:30:29]>> [applause] >> Wrongful conviction doesn't have a complexion.

[00:30:34]Right?

[00:30:35]Jeff Wood's story makes that clear.

[00:30:39]A coerced confession coerced confession doesn't stop coercing because the suspect happens to be white.

[00:30:47]Suppressed DNA evidence works as cruelly against a white college kid or half-Asian cop as it does against a black football player or a migrant worker.

[00:31:00]A Brady violation is a Brady violation.

[00:31:03]A destroyed rape kit is a destroyed rape kit. Structural injustice has to be solved structurally and structural means evidence and procedure and law, not demographic prosecution and not demographic exoneration.

[00:31:18]What is exemplary about Jeff Deskovic's work and the foundation's work is are your clients white and black and Latino and immigrant and native born urban rural rich poor.

[00:31:28]Innocence is not a demographic and a coalition that builds itself around assumptions about demographic demographic narratives rather than around evidence is going to find its work weaponized against her the moment a different attorney general takes on The frame is only going to survive an election if it is focused on evidence, not narrative.

[00:31:58]That is a frame that maintains enduring integrity.

[00:32:02]Narrative is what kept Jeff Deskovic in a cell for 16 years after his DNA had come back negative.

[00:32:11]The prosecutorial narrative that put the Central Park Five in adult prison was embedded and not resisted unfortunately by a mob press that wanted the story to be true.

[00:32:23]And it was narrative an anti-cop one racialized in a different way and also fueled by the Me Too movement that put Daniel Holtzclaw in prison.

[00:32:33]Narrative gets people locked up.

[00:32:36]Evidence gets them out.

[00:32:39]Both tribal on left and right have a story that they would prefer to tell about American criminal justice.

[00:32:45]Sometimes the stories are dead on.

[00:32:49]Sometimes they're fables serving preconceived notions and not justice.

[00:32:55]The work of the Deskovic Foundation reaching across the aisle and beyond who and what we might consider unreachable is the work that commands common cause.

[00:33:10]So, let's roll up our collective sleeves.

[00:33:14]I've been working as Jeff mentioned on a podcast series that's called Crooked Cop on Wrongful Conviction.

[00:33:21]And the patterns of his conduct and corruption that Jeff and his team are fighting here in New York are the same in Oklahoma.

[00:33:31]I want to share a few of the shocking developments that I've uncovered because the patterns are deep and wide across political affiliations, race, and socio-economic status, and they have application to the work that you are doing.

[00:33:45]This one is unbelievable and Oscar knows it.

[00:33:48]In 2017 an Oklahoma County District Judge held a series of secret hearings in the appeal of Daniel Holtzclaw's case. He had been convicted of of rape in the midst of a media frenzy despite the zero corroborating witnesses, no photo lineups, botched DNA analysis, and drug-impaired or mentally unstable accusers with long rap sheets who received countless inducements by detectives who falsely told them that they had been tipped off to a crime against them.

[00:34:19]Inducements by lying police officers to create false narratives.

[00:34:24]Sound familiar?

[00:34:26]Pattern recognition is everything.

[00:34:29]Well, the hearings were on the work of our forensic analyst in Daniel's case and they were and they remain today completely sealed in America.

[00:34:38]The motions were sealed. The defendant was excluded. His public defenders were excluded and were not even notified of the proceedings until after they happened. The original prosecutor, who was the same man whose conduct the appeal was challenging, was permitted to walk and waltz into that closed courtroom with his entire trial team and dominate the proceedings. And the only reason anyone outside the building found out about what happened is because two local journalists got their hands on surveillance tape of the courtroom with its papers taped up to cover the windows.

[00:35:16]There was a former head of the ACLU in Oklahoma, 30 years practicing criminal law in that state, who said publicly that he had never seen anything resembling it in his entire life.

[00:35:29]This is not normal. This is not constitutional. This is un-American. And I've called it Pyongyang on the prairie.

[00:35:37]It's what it is.

[00:35:38]But as you know, these things don't just happen in Oklahoma. And the architecture of secrecy permeates. It metastasizes.

[00:35:50]Detective Louis Scarcella Brooklyn North Homicide through the 1980s.

[00:35:58]He had a profile, celebrity. He was on Dr. Phil.

[00:36:02]Right? The rotten work that he did in those years has now led to more than 17.

[00:36:08]17 >> [clears throat] >> exonerations and counting.

[00:36:13]And the men he helped convict served somewhere over 400 years combined for crimes they didn't commit. And the city of New York has paid out close to 150 million dollars.

[00:36:26]The techniques are always the same, right? A coerced confession.

[00:36:31]A witness told privately before any identification that the police already have a guy.

[00:36:37]Sound familiar? Pattern recognition is everything.

[00:36:42]Single photograph instead of a lineup.

[00:36:44]The same crack-addicted woman testifying for the prosecution case after case with her contradictions buried in a file that the defense was never shown. Sound familiar? Pattern recognition is everything. Police lying to induce false accusations.

[00:37:01]Same in Oklahoma, same in New York.

[00:37:04]Pattern recognition is everything. So, now what? We have to act and support those who are driving the engine of change. The technique that put those men in prison apart where the officer from the rooms committed to lie to the suspect about evidence in order to elicit a statement is still legal here in New York.

[00:37:23]What do we know? April 2026?

[00:37:26]There is a bill in Albany.

[00:37:27]You're working on it.

[00:37:29]What is the bill? It's a It's called the Youth It's called the Police Deception Bill. Yes.

[00:37:35]And and so it's the kind of bill that a constitutional conservative ought to support without being asked twice.

[00:37:45]Without feedback.

[00:37:46]This seventh amendment was designed precisely to prevent the construction of a confession out of a state-sanctioned lie. What do we do? What do we do to change? Support Jeff Foundation and push this thing into law.

[00:38:02]Legislative missions like this one command common cause. And it shouldn't just be adopted in New York, it should be adopted in every one of the freaking 50 states in the United States of America.

[00:38:20]I know my time is limited.

[00:38:22]I've done a lot of work on forensic fraud and many of you in this room will recognize the name Joyce Gilchrist.

[00:38:31]Pretty much every law journal article about forensic fraud includes this woman who was a terror on the Oklahoma City Police Department Crime Lab.

[00:38:45]She was dubbed Black Magic and she appeared on 60 Minutes bragging about the name the pet name that was given to her by the white district attorney hang 'em high prosecutor Bob Macy.

[00:39:01]They put many many people to death.

[00:39:03]There have been a number of exonerations, but the frame wreck of prosecutorial misconduct, forensic misconduct, police investigations that were biased from the beginning is unfinished business and it continues today and it's subject of the secret hearings in Daniel's case. A reckoning has to be had.

[00:39:28]I'm I'm going to skip ahead here because there's another important aspect of the work that Jeff does that doesn't get as much attention as it should. And that is fighting for the men that almost nobody else fights for.

[00:39:45]And many of you are in this room or connected tied to men who were not given a capital sentence. There's a huge lobby for justifiably so for men who've been sentenced to death.

[00:40:02]But there's a virtual death sentence that so many get.

[00:40:07]Life sentences without parole and little chances uh to pursue post-conviction appeal.

[00:40:16]Stat sentences consecutively served multiple multiple sentences while people are waiting to get out of jail.

[00:40:28]And the foundation works that population deliberately taking the cases that other organizations won't take. The ones that are too old or too cold too procedurally complicated too inconvenient for the moment's political weather.

[00:40:44]You are now at goal. And I want everybody to know this is in the next year to squeeze in 150 new requests for help.

[00:40:53]That's 150 letters and 150 files and 150 people who've been told by no one else that their case could be taken. And that number is where the dollars can make the difference.

[00:41:09]State can't pay those stolen years back.

[00:41:12]There's no court order that returns a 35th birthday or statute that returns the daughter's wedding that her father walked down the aisle for.

[00:41:21]Calling that a wrong wrong wrong conviction makes it sound procedural.

[00:41:26]That's theft. That's criminal and it has to be rectified.

[00:41:32]Uh I'm going to be honest with you.

[00:41:34]It is often difficult to to step into a a room like this knowing that there are a lot of ideological agendas on the table.

[00:41:52]I do this work now mostly behind the scenes instead of in front of the camera.

[00:42:00]And I will continue to do it until all the people that I've come to know and love are free.

[00:42:06]And I will continue to support Jeff and his work for as long as I am humanly as humanly possible and and able to to give my heart and soul to the work that you do.

[00:42:20]It was a brave thing for you to ask me here. I've been banned, I've been canceled and my husband and I can't even rent an Airbnb believe it or not uh simply for talking to people that I'm not supposed to be talking to. That also includes those of you in this room tonight believe it or not.

[00:42:40]Um I'm grateful for every day that I have life. I'm grateful to my mom and dad for the sacrifices they made to come to this country to try and achieve the American dream.

[00:42:52]And it's been a a huge inflection point in my journey to realize that they sacrificed to come to a country that is not living up to its ideals.

[00:43:07]It is often difficult to embrace the platform that I had for for so many years where I would joke that my pronouns are USA.

[00:43:19]Um Patriotism means nothing if we can't come together in common cause.

[00:43:36]And reject selective enforcement of the law selective application of constitutional rights.

[00:43:49]I can't look away at it anymore.

[00:43:52]And I hope that those who are watching me will find the work of the Deskovic Foundation and do what we need to do and march like I coach my pickleball players at the correct facility in Florida to join hands and keep focused on the ball and anticipate [clears throat] our enemies' next moves.

[00:44:21]Stay focused, always be prepared and never give up. Thank you.

[00:44:27]>> [applause] [applause] >> So our exonerated Sahar asked you two minutes. Please keep it to two minutes but please share share something up there. It's been a long night so keep it to two and we'll make an announcement after the the raffle and then we're done.

[00:44:58]Okay, I'm going to take the first 10 seconds to say that you should buy another ticket. If you bought one, you should buy another. It's a very nice trip.

[00:45:08]And if you can buy one yet, you should buy the first And hopefully in the next minute and 30 seconds I can give you a good reason why. So I'm one of the exonerated that Jeff helped get out. And a quick quick recap my story. Uh similarly I was wrongly convicted when I was a kid.

[00:45:27]Um I ended up deciding to go to law school too to get myself out. That was my plan.

[00:45:33]Uh after I got convicted uh came up with that in prison.

[00:45:38]When I got out and I I I did it I did that. Went to a very good law school graduated never got to practice got to practice law.

[00:45:46]But I ran into a bunch of attorneys. I started uncovering all of this like all this evidence that had been withheld and all this other stuff. All right?

[00:45:54]And I ran into a bunch of attorneys eventually that like I would try and get to help me get exonerated.

[00:46:00]Uh I had some big names big big firms involved.

[00:46:05]Um most of them would tell me that I didn't have a case because uh they they didn't fit into they they have one way of doing case and you you don't fit that it doesn't work. Anyways Jeff was the first person besides myself that really believed in me that actually helped.

[00:46:26]I got myself exonerated but it wouldn't have happened without Jeff. Jeff is a brother and Jeff is not Jeff is not a regular attorney.

[00:46:36]>> [applause] >> And to see I've known Jeff for years now and to see his his growth as an attorney as an attorney as a leader is amazing.

[00:46:55]I encourage you to watch his documentary.

[00:46:58]Um quick plug on that. Gia the director is also here. It's amazing you're going to cry.

[00:47:05]Um and uh What I'm trying to say is that Jeff Jeff was a little kid. You got to see Jeff when he was first put inside.

[00:47:15]He's similar to me like I was actually like 120 lbs. But I remember my I asked one of my friends I got to one of the witnesses like I asked him "Oh do you remember me when I was going in? What did you think was going to happen to me when I went to prison?" And he's like "You're going to die."

[00:47:28]Um because that's how I looked and that's how Jeff looked too.

[00:47:32]But I'll you got to see Jeff's also I encourage you to see Jeff's interview when he gets out of prison.

[00:47:37]What he said he was going to he points out and I've never heard a better speech about the system and about all the issues and about what needs to be done.

[00:47:46]And Jeff said all that right after literally he gets out of prison. He comes out and drops like the best speech I've ever heard.

[00:47:54]And then he's living it right now through this.

[00:47:57]So I encourage you if you actually want your money to go to something that's actually going to do the work Jeff when he says 50 to 60 hours it's more than that. He works more than that. But he needs help.

[00:48:10]Uh so please please donate. Uh it's a really good cause. Um and last thing I'll say Michelle you you're absolutely right.

[00:48:20]Um it's not a political thing. I think we all are should be in favor of justice. And we should all also one one one quick plug consideration for the conservative angle is I tried to approach it is I thought we're in favor of fiscal responsibility.

[00:48:35]You understand? So I'm I'm suing for millions of dollars. I none of us want this but we wouldn't it be better to not [ __ ] throw me in prison wrongfully for years and then [ __ ] not have to pay ME MILLIONS OF DOLLARS AFTERWARDS?

[00:48:51]Isn't that fiscally responsible?

[00:48:55]What's fiscally responsible is buying a ticket to and going on a trip to El Salvador for like $25.

[00:49:06]>> [laughter] >> Raffle results. Don't waste it.

[00:49:14]Hey whoever's