Survivors Guide to Prison Page #10

If you took 1,000 people

off the street and put them

at Corcoran or Pelican Bay

or Soledad...

some huge number of them

would end up committing violence

because of the situation

that they've been placed in.

Five years into his sentence,

an older inmate

whose nickname was The Devil,

wanted Reggie to take the blame

for a knife the guards had

found in the yard.

But Reggie refused.

The Devil attacked Reggie

with a knife,

slashing his neck.

Reggie later would say

he knew then

either The Devil

was gonna kill him

or he had to kill The Devil.

About 15 minutes

after Reggie was attacked,

he jumped over

a correctional officer

and stabbed The Devil

with a prison shank.

I sit back every day,

and I second-guess myself.

Could I have went about

the situation any other way?

And no matter how many times

I tell myself,

this was the only thing

that could have happened,

it don't sit right

with me in my cell

because I should have never

been there in the first place.

I'm innocent, man,

and you turned me

into what y'all say I was.

Y'all been lying on me

this whole time,

and you turned me into

a murderer because I had to.

[Susan] After that,

they put Reggie

in solitary confinement,

and he went from

a life sentence

without possibility of parole

to facing the death penalty.

So he gets put on trial

in the death penalty case,

and his lawyer starts looking

into his original case

and gives me a call and says,

"You know,

I think this guy's innocent

of what he went to prison

for in the first place."

And the second reason

Reggie got out

besides the prison stabbing

was this miracle

of there happened to be a book

that had been put out

about the LA homicide division.

The author of the book

had documented a ride along

with the LAPD detective.

This homicide investigator's

first night

that she was on the job.

The very night

she investigated the murder,

she would ultimately arrest

Reggie for.

And we're flipping through

the book and reading it,

and there's

all this stuff in it

that was never disclosed

to the defense.

That's all documented

that all indicates

pretty clearly

that Reggie's innocent.

But it would still take

the Innocence Project 10 years

to get Reggie out of prison.

A grandmother doing life

for murder was released

from prison yesterday

after 17 years

when a judge said

she did not do it.

[Matthew] Susan Mellon recently

filed a lawsuit against

the detective who arrested her

for hiding evidence.

That detective is the same one

who arrested Reggie Cole.

[fire-engine siren wailing,

horn honking]

[sighs]

You know, we...

you know, as a society,

we see the bad guy

and the good guy.

Well, that's cops and robbers.

But when the cop becomes

the robber, the game is over.

The game is over.

That's corruption.

It was a horrific twist of fate

that led to Reggie's release.

Bruce was more fortunate.

His father's death

led to an unexpected turn.

Providence was his big thing,

and he had,

you know,

great life insurance.

It was 184,000 that my dad

left me,

and I was able to parlay

that up to about 236,

in the stock market,

and then it was just 100%

of my time dedicated to my case.

[Susan] And that enabled Bruce

to hire a private investigator.

We had, essentially,

a growing war chest of evidence

that I hadn't committed

the crime or at least

that all the evidence that was

presented was false evidence.

I had received

a complaint from Bruce Lisker.

I flew up to the state prison

where Bruce Lisker was.

I spoke to him.

When somebody is accused

of murder

or you're arrested for murder,

it's tape-recorded.

Everything is tape-recorded.

I couldn't find his tape.

It had been taken out

of evidence by Detective Monsue,

and it was never

put back into evidence.

[Matthew] Detective Monsue

had said the footprints

outside the house matched

the footprints on the inside.

Lieutenant Gavin found

the footprints

weren't actually looked at

by a scientist

or any qualified expert.

So he took matters

into his own hands.

So I contacted our people,

scientific investigative

division.

So he takes out

this big magnifying glass,

looks at it,

looks at the other one,

and he goes,

"These two don't match."

See this is a great

embarrassment

for any large organization

that you've convicted

somebody for murder and then

five, 10, 20 years later,

it turns out that

the person's actually innocent.

And this is what

my lieutenant said...

"That motherf***er

is not getting out of prison.

Do you understand me,

Sergeant Gavin?"

They will do everything

they can to stop you,

prevent you from coming forward

with the information you have.

[Susan] Upon reviewing

the comprehensive work

of the private investigator,

the LAPD Internal

Affairs Department

claimed Bruce's complaints

were unfounded

and that no misconduct

had occurred.

You can't have

an internal investigation

where we all investigate

ourselves.

Tha... that's like a joke.

I'm not against the authorities

or anything like that.

I'm just against the system

that has no checks and balances.

Who the f*** his checking y'all?

I believe that internal affairs

should be separate

from the police department.

There is no way that

a Police Department

can investigate themselves.

Currently, there are

no independent organizations

whose job it is to

investigate police misconduct.

And there's no oversight

of prosecutors, either.

Prosecutorial misconduct

is a major factor

of wrongful convictions.

It's a single thread

that runs through

almost all of

the wrongful-conviction cases.

[Matthew] Jeff Deskovic has

a Master's in criminal justice,

specializing

in wrongful convictions.

He's also a survivor

of prosecutorial misconduct.

I spent 16 years in prison.

I was wrongfully convicted

at 17.

I emerged at 32.

Jeff eventually won a lawsuit

against Putnam County,

New York,

for his conviction,

which enabled him

to start his own foundation.

And I'm the founder

and executive director

of the Jeffrey Deskovic

Foundation for Justice.

There's no deterrence.

There's no oversight.

There's no punishment

for prosecutors.

So they can break the law.

They don't face

criminal penalties,

even when they engage

in withholding

evidence of innocence,

threatening witnesses,

coercing witnesses.

No matter how serious

the misconduct is,

if the prosecutor commits that

after an arrest has been made,

they have what's called

prosecutorial immunity.

They're above the law.

We need prosecutors

to really uphold

what's become just words,

which is, you know,

they're there to do justice.

They're there

to do the right thing.

It becomes more like

"we're there to win,"

especially when

prosecutor's offices

actually keep statistics

on conviction rates.

Well, you should be credited

that you looked at a case

where the police thought

they had a good case

but a good prosecutor

looked at it and said,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes