On the night of July, twenty thirty two thousand seven, Jamal Truelove was hanging out in a common area of San Francisco's Sunnydale project with his younger brother, Joshua, Jamal's friend Sal drove up intoxicated, ripping off the side view mirror from Joshua's car. Jamal got between cell and his brother, then gunfire in the air, which then cell into an alcohol fuelled rage in search of a gun himself. Jamal tried to console again, pushed him away and punched another man, frustrated and fed up.

Jamal left the scene only to turn in time to witness his friend's cell being gunned down in the street. Now, since snitching is a surefire way to be sent to the same fate, Jamal kept his mouth shut. Cels cousin Priscila the while Imago would go downtown to identify the shooter she claimed to see from her second story window, only to pass over Jamal's mug shot that was in plain sight. Police pressured her to name Jamal so they could coerce the identity of the shooter from them.

Either he would name the killer or he'd go down to the player himself. Jamal would receive 50 years to life. The prosecutor's closing argument would point to lalala Marga's bravery in light of the supposed threat of Jamal Truelove. This comment, unsupported by evidence and unobjective to by counsel, would ultimately lead to a new trial in which Jamal's new lawyers would be able to successfully argue that ballistic evidence and the autopsy report proved that the shooter was out of the well.

Among his second story view, Jamal was finally set free in twenty fifteen. This is wrongful conviction with Jason Pflaum. If you'd like to help support us as we continue to tell these stories of triumph over tragedy, unequal justice and actual innocence each week, you can do it now with the purchase of a I mean, it's really nice. Trust me, you can get a brand new wrongful conviction podcast, T-shirt, coffee mug or reusable water bottle. Go to wrongful conviction podcast dotcom.

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This episode is sponsored by the AIG pro bono program. AIG is a leading global insurance company and the AIG pro bono program provides free legal services, as well as other support to many non-profit organizations, as well as individuals who are most in need.

And they recently announced that working to reform the criminal justice system will become a key pillar of the program's mission. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom, that's me. I'm your host, and today I'm very excited because this is a story I've wanted to tell for quite some time. And that's primarily because of the person who survived this incredible ordeal. Jamal Truelove. He is the best name on top of everything else. So, Jamal, welcome. Hi.

Thanks for having me. Just like I always say, I'm sorry you have to be here, but I'm really happy that you are here. So, Jamal, this story touches me on a personal level because you were in the entertainment business before this horrible misidentification and all the other things that went wrong happened to you. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because you grew up in San Francisco, right? Yes, I grew up in San Francisco.

Sunnydale projects always wanted to get into entertainment within, you know, music and acting.

And the ball was starting to bounce your way, so to speak. Right. Because at the time of this incident, you had been recently featured on a reality TV show, a popular show called I Love New York, too. Right. You were just a kid from the projects with no connections, but you were making it happen anyway.

How did you do that? Well, initially I was recording music. My friend had a studio, which he will lend me some time to get in to actually record. And then I had an opportunity to audition for this character for this show called I Love New York too. So I figured if I could get on the show and put a name to a face, then I will get the exposure that I need to channel to my music and to ultimately get into film.

And sure enough, you had now gone and shot this show, which did a shoot in L.A.. Yeah, it was based in L.A. And so this was like an exciting time for you. How old were you at the time, Jamal?

Well, I started recording music when I was 16 years old. When I ended up landing on the show, I was freshly 21.

So a kid with big dreams and aspirations and the ability to really manifest those things. And I think people that meet you now still see that same spark it makes in a certain way. It makes this wrongful conviction more tragic. So, Jamal, your life took a terrible turn because of events that occurred around 11 p.m. on July 20, 3rd of 2007. And, of course, you know what I'm referring to. But it was that night that 28 year old Selcuk was a resident in your housing project, was shot nine times.

How did this happen? How did you find out about it? And how did you get misidentified as the shooter?

We were all kicking it in the projects in the area that we typically chill out. And the incident happened between Selcuk and my little brother, Joshua Sale was intoxicated driving up the street where he came real close to my brother's car that ripped off his side mirror. And, you know, I seen it but didn't think too much of it. Then somebody else there to me that there was some type of altercation between him and my brother. So I come through to diffuse the situation.

I seen how my brother was contorted, his face sales. One of my good friends is just liquor. And I'm so, you know, he's ramped up. He's not trying to take no blame and they're getting closer to each other where it's going to end up turning into a fight. So I intervened, you know, I told him to chill, relax. Sayle was hyped up. This start being kind of a crowd, people looking on. And next thing you know, we hear gunshots going off, kind of like, I guess, in the air.

And I think that feud sale that much more to feel some type of way. Then he started heading down saying that he was going to go get a gun.

So me, I remember some of my other friends used to kind of contain this anger where he's in this type of state. So me trying to prevent anything from escalating, I kind of followed him and he was asking somebody, one of our other friends, to give him a gun and tell them, oh, like Brown ain't no reason for all of that. But he like, you know, MMFs out here shooting. And I'm like, that ain't got nothing to do with us on this situation.

And so I got, like, close up on him. I, like, held him like kind of bear hug and he's like way bigger than me. I'm probably like 150 pounds soaking wet at that point. He's like two, 20 to 30. At least he's listening. But you could definitely tell that he's kind of truck that he kind of bust out of my my bearhug an angry type of way. And at that point, it felt like, you know, he wasn't trying to hear me or calm the.

So I ended up leaving across the street, which I had my car inside the parking lot, I had a female friend inside the car up and down to let her know that we're about to get up out of here. By the time I stood up from the side of the car, I see cell skipping around the building right there from off of the street. And I seen the perpetrator already holding the gun in the shooting position before I could say, stop those shots, I already Randolph.

So I just got down to all the gun shots was wood. And typically in situations like this, in the project, regardless if you did something, you didn't do it, you just hightail it out of there. So that's what I ended up doing.

So I'm going to ask you point blank, did you know at the time who who the actual shooter was? Yes, I did. And there were a lot of witnesses, 30 or more witnesses were there because, as you described, it was a street scene. A lot of people hanging out. Of course, in a scene like this, a lot of people are going to be scared to come forward. Nobody wants to be labeled a snitch because I know what that actually means.

Something happened to me, my family, but one woman did come forward and she became a key part of this whole awful scenario. Right. And this woman's name was Priscilla Lual Almagor. And she claimed to have seen the whole thing from her second story window already. My Spidey senses start tingling because it's 11 o'clock at night. It's dark. It sounds like a pretty dicey scenario to think that she's going to identify somebody. But OK, so she told police that her distant relative was the deceased Celica was chasing another man around a car who she identified as your brother, Joshua.

And then she further claimed that while chasing Joshua, Cookham bumped into a knock down another man who got up, chased him down the street, slowing down hill and opened fire at close range. So this is where she gets taken to a police station and shown thirty four mug shots that were set up on a bulletin board. And she recognized many of the mug shots as faces from her neighborhood, understandably. But then in the two hours she was in that room with the bulletin board of mug shots, she didn't recognize your face.

Correct. Which was immediately above Joshua Bradley's mug shot. So that's even weirder, right? It was right there in front of her face and she still didn't recognize it, OK? Correct. So two days later, the cops come to her workplace and take us from there.

Two days later, the police came to her workplace. But the day before that is real interesting that they actually came to her house showing her a mug shot picture, which we believe to have been me. And they denied that it was me, that it was side by side to what ultimately ended up coming out when it comes down to the line up in the mug shot. So they told her that if we were to bring a photo lineup with the person who did it inside that lineup, would you be able to identify?

So the next day they went to our job.

They brought a six pack lineup with really me wearing an orange jumpsuit and everybody else in plain clothes. But she had already identified other people, you know, not being the person in people that she already knows.

It's even worse than that. Right. Because of the fact that she said that you, quote unquote, looks like the guy who could have shot Kouka. Right. So that's pretty damn weak.

The six pack lineup had to stand out because it had me inside of an orange jumpsuit. And then it also had the dates that came off of the system when they brought up the mug shots where my date was dated, different than the other dates that came off of the system because they had me down as the shooter on day one.

Why do you think the detectives had it out for you or they just like whoever we just got to close the case? It doesn't matter.

I wasn't somebody that was out there. I was always trying to do something positive. I was doing music. You know, I'll hang around, of course. But with my name coming up on the day that it actually happened, whether they wanted questions from me or them saying, oh, it was the guy that Jamal was with, they was like, OK, this is how we go get them, we'll go pressure. So either tell on the person who did it or we're going to make sure that he goes down for this.

And then no weapon was recovered, but eight shell casings were found down from the body and the trail leading up to the body, which means that what she said was false because she said the shooter was chasing Kouka downhill. So now we know and they should have known that she didn't know what the fuck she was talking about.

So to be honest, right. Her representation of what actually happened, if anything, she could have only seen what was on the side of that building.

She can see when the person was actually shooting, she told police that Celica was chasing another man around a car and then Kuga bumped into and knocked down another man who got up, chased him down the street and slowing down the hill and opened fire at close range.

It wasn't me who had knocked down. What was her agenda here?

Do you know her whole thing in the family, which I was deeply connected to, felt like they weren't scared of me. They're scared of the person who actually did it right. So by way of throwing me in there, they felt that I was going to tell on the person who actually did it.

Wow. So that's the big boom right there.

And then things take another crazy turn right, because the TV show airs the show that you were in, which should have been a cause for celebration. She happens to see the TV show. Right. And then she comes back and says, oh, now I know it's definitely him. Yeah.

So they were getting her closer and closer to that. It was me one hundred percent. And then on top of her saying that she talked to her cousin and then on top of the detectives really trying to get somebody to go to jail for this, you know, that's what brought up to what that ultimately ended up being. But even still, that didn't work well, ultimately ended up happening was I say about fourteen months later, the police did a traffic stop with this other woman named Leticia, who had a gun in her lap, crack cocaine on her baby in the back, had her boyfriend, who was on parole in the passenger seat, pulled over.

She's going to jail. She goes down, they basically say. If you could tell us X, Y and Z about this case, everybody basically goes free. She initially tells them that it was daylight in this altercation happened. And then she says she looked through the window and looked all the way down. The block is seen that this happened. It just threw my name in there. So there was a lot of things wrong with that. Right, as a first.

She says that she's seen it for 50 yards away on a silent hill in the daylight. When it did it happened in the daytime. It happened that night. But what got the arrest warrant was the write up that detectives had wrote up. They were guiding her the whole way, making everything like it was a clear record. And they wrote at the bottom extremely credible. So now when they take that to the D.A., now they feel they have two witnesses saying the same exact thing.

So this is a crazy timeline, too, because the crime we know happens in two thousand seven. You don't get brought in and arrested until two thousand eight over a year later. And then the trial doesn't happen until 2010. Correct.

So during that time, were you in jail? Did you bail out? How did how did that unfold after you were arrested?

Well, after I was arrested, they wanted to question me. Obviously, there's two things you can do. You can give up information, but never mind that, because in that situation, which is taught in the streets is, you know, is not to snitch, not to give up information. Something happened to me. My family, you know, saw balance that were also knowing that it's not my duty to put somebody else in jail. That's for them to actually get it right.

And that was my way of going at it. So it actually took me about a year and a half to go to trial. It was hard trying to get the 30 people that was out there to actually come in, you know, not say who did it, you know, but to say I didn't do it. I wasn't trying to put nobody in a situation where I was trying to have somebody else tell on the assailant because I wasn't going to do anything like that.

Then I have to go what hide for the rest of my life or something. That's just not my job. That's up to the system to do so.

Nobody would want to be in that situation, but you were in it and you're still just a young guy without resources. And so you roll with it and you go to trial. Yes.

So we fought the case out of the identity case. But, you know, I didn't testify. We didn't call nobody to testify or whatever. So it took three days and then it took five days of deliberation. Ultimately, that came back with a murder one conviction. It was it was definitely tough. I stayed optimistic because I know I didn't do it at the end of the day. And that's what ultimately kept the wheels turning in my mind. Or how do I figure this some?

And you were convicted, of course, and you were sentenced to 50 years in prison.

So I want you to understand this right before I get into the 15 year life I'm inside of my cell because we're doing a retrial motion, right, to ask for a retrial before sentencing. I'm come back from church, come aside as a 12 man like take in this kid by the name of Oliver Barcenas comes up to me. Now, I don't know who this kid is. He comes up to me and he asks me, like, you know, is your last name love?

And I say, yes. He said, Did you go to jail like in 07? I'm like, no, but that's what my case. He said, yes, I remember being in a police station at the time where some, like some more girl is. Some detectives came in and she was crying and they were pointing at a picture saying, Are you sure there's something something TRUELOVE? And I'm like, whoa, you know?

And it blows my mind that it just so happens that I run into this guy. And he had just been transported from San Bruno jail to San Francisco County on his way to prison. And he's seen in the newspaper when he was in San Bruno about my case and he remembered the last day that was the first spark. Then when he ended up in a cell with me, I heard the name again. That's where he actually approached me and told me these things.

So I called my attorney immediately and tell my attorney about him. And my attorney came up and, you know, talk to you. His statement, it kind of find out he was at the police station at the exact same time that little a mugger came to the police station. He was a 16 year old kid cuffed to the bench watching all of this unfold. So what he ended up saying was big in my case, because reminds you that that photo, that photo and the six pack light up that had the date that was different from everybody else's, which we called into question, made that much more sense because they had me down as the shooter on day one.

And what made more sense from his testimony is why she never pointed at my picture on the wall, because on day one, she was saying that it wasn't me. Even on day two, she was saying it wasn't me. Now, this is newly found evidence. There was no way that we could have knew that this kid was inside the police station. So there's no way we could have called him. Now, just in the heat of that time, what was going on in San Francisco, you got, you know, Kamala Harris, who's going to try to be attorney general.

You have another case which got overturned and then you have a big drug scandal that's happening in San Francisco also at the exact same time. So in the retrial motion hearing, when we put him on the stand to testify, Linda Allen, the city's attorney, attacked. Oh, that he was a gang member. He's trying to do this for a favor for the blacks, like some prison politics type stuff. And neither one of us have ever been to prison and we just don't know each other at all.

So in this moment, though, that this is new discovered evidence, I feel like I was politicked out because if they were to grant me a retrial, that would have been two murder cases with convictions granted a retrial before conviction and plus the drug scandal that was national attention. So ultimately, even Oliver Barcenas, they still denied my pre-trial motion. That's when I got sentenced to 15 to life in prison. Yeah, I mean, it's important to look at the role that politics played in this because there was a lot going on and now things are really looking a lot better in San Francisco with the new D.A. Chase, somebody who is doing incredible, incredible things, probably the most impactful six months of any new prosecutor in the history of this country, I would say, in terms of what he's been able to accomplish.

But that's a separate issue. Miss Harris at the time does not come out. I mean, we can't sugarcoat it. I mean, she was one of the villains in this story, in your story and in too many other stories that took place around this time.

Yeah, the thing about Kamala Harris as a senator, she talks a lot of things that point towards the African-American community. And, you know, it is good. Like if I didn't go through the experience that I went through, then I will probably be on the side of what Kamala Harris actually talks about. And that's if I didn't find out about me. But when we talk about being a progressive prosecutor, I think of Chase Aboudi, Kamala Harris at the time she had opportunity to alleviate this case and dive into it, especially a murder charge.

Any head D.A. is overlooking any murder charge that's happening inside of their city, but also just no politics at that time. I know for people who went to jail innocently for murders, every single one of them got convicted. They call it a street sweep. Once elections come up, they come through and they switch any case that they had. They say arrest them, arrest them. And look, I went to jail right before elections. And one of the detectives my dad had ran into before I went to trial, Kevin Noble had told my dad, my dad was like, yo, why are you my son?

And he said, oh, you know how it is during election time. You know, Jesus, they just come and sweep everybody up. Any case that they got it. See if they can pressure people into taking deals. Because they offered me a deal before I went to trial my first time, I was like, no, you can plead out and take voluntary manslaughter and take 13 years under her watch. So my feeling, Kamala Harris being in that position, being African-American, coming from the Bay Area and being hard on crime the way that she was and how many people that was going to jail for marijuana charges, that one of the highest rates in the country, you know, played a big part of mass incarceration and also to gentrification in San Francisco.

So I cannot unfiled that or see that, ah, when I get a sentence, you know, are my convictions. She's in there smiling, you know, proud of what this is with this conviction is and what it means to her career. And then right after I lose my case, she wins, you know, attorney general. So that all tells a story, you know, just within itself.

And what a sick thing to say to your father. I mean, it's I mean, it's as cold as it gets. It's your father, for fuck's sake.

So Kevin Noble, before I went to trial and this was not turned over to us, Kevin Noble actually came in with a confidential informant saying that somebody else did it. So he was out there investigating and he found somebody saying that this person did it and they took it and they tucked it under the rug. You know, they felt like they had their God that there was actually sold or doing it. If you could talk about for a minute, we're going to get to the to the retrial and, of course, your exoneration because you were fully exonerated.

That being said, can you tell us when you were in prison?

Was there a best moment when I was waiting for the courts to give their opinion on if I was going to get a retrial or not? And they initially I came back and I'm on the phone at the same time with my appellate attorney, Mark Smith, and they did not well, they didn't deny they changed the conviction for first degree murder to second degree murder, which I would have for 50 years. I would have went down to 40 years to life.

And I'm like, whoa, like, you know what I mean? And my at the time was like, that's good. I mean, they're really looking at it now. Mind you, I'm in prison for three years before I even get this opinion from the appellate courts. But I knew that it till I get another decision, I will be in prison for at least another two to three years, because that's the time that it typically takes. So then my attorney put in a motion to review.

So with this strategy at the same time, I ended up getting two witnesses to sign an affidavit testifying to what happened that day without saying the person who did it. And we filed the habeas corpus through the appellate court so it could go across Judge Klein, the table at the exact same time as our review was to say that there's two more witnesses saying that he didn't do it. So 90 days later, we got the opinion back that the judge said, you know what, you're right.

And they granted a new retrial. It was a crying moment. You know, I cried like a baby, you know, inside that cell.

Yeah. I don't think anyone who's ever been through that could possibly even imagine such a transformative I mean, you get your life back.

Well, that's the crazy part about it is like in that moment, you feel excited. Right. But come to find out, once you get back to the county jail, you just know that you don't have the life sentence no more, but you still have a whole nother fight. And that's potentially going to trial, are them coming to you and offer you a deal where you're almost close to want to take that deal just so you don't have to go to trial and lose again?

Because at that point, you know, you don't I don't believe in a system, you know, I just got convicted of a crime I didn't do. Like you ask anybody who has a life sentence right now, innocent or not innocent, if they had a deal on the table right now to take it and they get to come home in two years, they're taking it.

So let's get to the good stuff because we don't have a ton of time left. But I do want to, of course, talk about how you managed to finally get some measure of justice. And by that I mean, of course, the retrial and your exoneration.

When I got back to county, it took me a year to go back to trial. I had two extraordinary lawyers, Kate Chatfield, Alex Reisman, the way that we fought the case, we asked for the original homicide file and the judge granted it to us. What helped us was that they were tampering with the evidence. So when we looked at the original homicide file, we see that the detectives was writing a pen pencil in marker. So the ballistics of the trajectory of the bullets did a fit Lula mugger's testimony of the bullets going from the left to the right.

The trajectory of the bullets went from the right to the left, and that made more sense if the shooter was coming up from the bottom and the top of the hill. So what they did was race because they wrote in pencil. They erased everything that the autopsy lady has said about the trajectory of the bullet wounds. So they knew that that was an issue. Also, a gun shoots off the shell casings from the right and sort of rear ninety eight percent of the time.

So is she saying that this murder happened coming from this way? Then the shell casings will be in the street and not in a straight line in the grass from where the shell casings landed?

And it made more sense that the shooter was coming from the bottom into the top. So it did not match with what the mother actually said.

So you were able to undermine the police's theory of the crime because the autopsy and ballistics findings pointed to the gunman approaching Selca from down hill, which was out of the parliament's view. Now, what about the deliberation?

Every day with the deliberation you get to choose if you want to stay downstairs, inside the to take or you can stay upstairs until they come back with a verdict. I chose to stay downstairs because the deliberation room was right next to the hotel and I'm in there panicking. I'm stresser pacing. You know, I'm thinking about what I'm going to do if I win. I'm thinking about what I'm going to do if I lose. So five days later, they finally end up coming back.

What would a verdict? So I come downstairs. I didn't have no opportunity to call my family. They were living in the East Bay. So when I come downstairs for the verdict, the only people that are sitting on my side is my attorneys loved ones. And it's also traceable. Did say somebody I don't know which somebody is at that point. Right. But on the other side, the whole DA's office, all Gascoine was the D.A. at that point.

Right. So they're all in there waiting for the verdict. And the clerk reads off in the case of Jamal Truelove of first degree murder, not guilty.

And I break out in tears of crying. I look at my attorney and I'm just crying my eyes out. I can't believe I really break it down. And then my attorney says, oh, wait, you got to listen for second degree murder. I said, oh, no, because I thought I won at that point. So, oh, man, it was I felt the sweat just coming down my face. And then I said, in the case of Jamal Truelove of second degree murder, we find the defendant not guilty.

And I'm literally feeling that right now. I'm trying not to get emotional. But when I looked over to the jury, that was the first time that they could actually show an expression on their faces. You see them over there crying. They're giving me prior heads. They're sending kisses at me, you know, and all of these things. And I'm you know, I'm just crying my eyes out. You know, I look back and see all the district attorneys just leaving, you know, upset.

And I'm just crying. I'm just crying my eyes out and even going back up to the sixth floor where I was being held and telling everybody on the line, which everybody knew I was innocent. And I told everybody, you know, I got found not guilty. The whole floor of the whole jail erupts. Even some of the deputies that were, you know, cool, even the ones that was foul as fuck this halophiles, she was trying to clap their hands and stuff like that.

So it's a good feeling. And I went home that day. I was able to surprise my mother. And you know, my family, which they didn't know if I won or not, but I popped up on them and they you know, they see me. They couldn't believe it. It was more tears shed. It was the most exhilarating feeling to know that I'm free again today.

You've been out for how long? I've been out five years and I've seen you around and I know you're making the most of every minute of it. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what you're working on now? And then we're going to get to the closing of the show. I know, suing the police, they try to offer me some money to shut up. Ultimately, I held them accountable and I won my civil case. I was awarded ten million dollars that ended up drowning out to be thirteen point one million, which obviously to get all the money but from there on.

So what's ironic is before I won my civil case, three days before that, I landed a role in this movie called The Last Black Man in San Francisco, which I got the opportunity by volunteering at a non-profit called United Players. Rudy Corpuses as my mentor and you know, the marches it takes to save the hood. So they were coming there to get some kids for the rock, though scene. Here comes that opportunity. I say, look, I know how to act.

I'm acting all my life, you know, trying to fit in the city where I stand out here. And I think that was the line that got me the opportunity to read Joe Talbot. Jimmy Fails. Call me back two times after I got it, three days later when my civil case from there on, I took on what I believe my life was meant to be.

And before all of that, I went to school for psychology, Africana studies at state and after one semester identified that much more of what my life was supposed to be. So when you say a manifestation, I run my life or, you know, manifest destiny, if you can manifest it and you can see the steps that you got to take to actually get there, then you take what's the tangible right in front of you and you make sense of it or how you ultimately get to that next platform.

Also led on a roll on this upcoming animation film called The Pigeon Hawk, which has Whoopi go where Kenan Thompson, Howie Mandel and of course, myself and a slew of other names producing this film called Black and White. It's about the USC seventy two football team and working on another project launched my production company, one of my good friends and business partners at Twilit Holga called True Narrative, also launching a record label. I have my son and a few other artists that's coming up that I plan on.

Put it out there with the music and I'll do a lot of activism. I use my platform to to speak on social issues and to bring the Enlightenment to my community about what we need to be doing with the body and letting our voices be heard by, you know, systemic racism behind all these police involved shootings. You know, I campaigned for Jason Buddied now before. I would have never in my life be campaigning for D.A. because the D.A. is looked at as basically the police.

But once I got the understanding that there's going to be a D.A. regardless and don't you want it to be the right one? So that's what I start personal to my people to understand that there's going to be a D.A. regardless and we have a say so who the D.A. actually is. So get out and vote.

So that's everything in a nutshell. That's a pretty damn good nutshell. And I've got to say, I was a big supporter of Jason Wu Dean's campaign as well. And I'm super proud of everything he's been doing. You know, the truth is we need to clone that guy and put the clones of him in D.A. offices all over the country.

And while we're on the subject of dismantling systemic racism and all the other things that we've managed to talk about in this brief time we've had together, we can't leave out the young man who testified for you about what he saw in the police station. Right. And that was the guy who talked about the police coercing Lual Imago. His name, of course, was Oliver Barcenas, and he was actually shot in the back by the police right out of a Barcenas.

The story is really that much like we will have to have two hours because the police shot him after he testified against me the first time San Francisco Police Department, right where he went to prison, came home within 60 days. They shot him in the back while he was running. He had a gun on them. Right. He goes to jail. He does three years come home around the same time I come home and then he stays home. Three years, get on probation.

We go to trial. We actually use him to testify. In my civil case, he testifies in my civil case. And within two months, again, PD against shoots him in the back while he's running. It tries to literally kill. Which he doesn't die. They had it on camera and he actually, just two weeks ago settled for less than five hundred thousand dollars in a civil suit. And the media has not connected these at all, both cases, but what I what I know what they ended up doing because we know this shit is crooked.

They gave believe like a dope fiend or somebody is called a chipped gun. So a drop a drop gun to make sure that this gun's gets in this person's hands so they could go ahead and Trelew ultimately to go to take them down. And when they go in and take them down, there's only two things I could do. So if they run and they got the gun on them, then all they got to do is kill them. And then they're going to say, oh, well, he had a gun on them.

I see the gun and blah, blah. Oliver, he didn't die both times.

OK, wait, wait, wait. A chipped gun, like with GPS or something?

Yes, that's what they do. Right. So you know how when I do, like, set up cars, they'll put a car right there with the keys and stuff like that, kind of like lure you, but they already got it all set up. Same thing with a gun. And they was doing this in the 90s, right? That's how I know about it. It's called a job gun. So they'll chip the gun, right. And they'll get this dolphin or something like that that that'll go up to a specific person or if not a specific person in a crowd and be like, we're going to give you this.

Go sell this gun for one hundred dollars. If you go to any project, any good with a Delfi, with a gun saying that he's selling it for one hundred dollars, somebody is going to buy it in case. That's what I believe they did, because the same scenario happened twice in the second time. It just so happened that they have footage on the day the Warriors won the championship, they first championship, they pull out on a group of five Latinos, one can a beer talking about, oh, what are you guys doing here?

And they're like, where's this war? We just die. Oh, well, you got to open a can of beer. And it's like now at that moment, you see Oliver kind of like teste a little bit and then next, you know, he takes off running as soon as he takes off running. The officer already pulled out his gun and start running with the gun before the officer could see even if he had a gun on him or not.

The officer already starts shooting bla bla bla bla dropsonde with three of them and they shoot an extra three of a while. He's on the floor, said, get down, get down. And he still lives this is the thing, though, right, that same officer. Killed a 14 year old boy in south San Francisco just three years prior. Wow, you're right, and we would need at least a few more hours, and I'm not even sure that would be enough to cover all of this stuff that's coming out now.

But, you know, at this point, let's go to our closing argument. This is the part of the show where everyone I think there's a part of the show that everybody looks forward to. I know I do. We call it closing arguments. This is where I get to. First of all, thank you for for being here, sharing your incredible story and and doing it so beautifully. And and then I get to turn my microphone off and just kick back of my chair, leave my headphones on and listen to you for any closing thoughts that you have about anything you want to talk about.

My philosophy that I've got out of all of this, that that I've been through is that I don't stand for nothing because I find understanding and everything. And what that is, just find a mediation. You can have an opinion, you can have an opinion on how you look at things, but also knowing that there's somebody else's opinion and you have to look at it from their lenses, identify why they're looking at it like that.

Cause in mediation, mediation is peaceful.

So if people can always look at what they're going through, are their ideology of how they see things and compare it to somebody else's understanding in that within if it's a negative or positive, then you'll be able to come to a common ground to understand why you're going through what you go through and why the opposite person looks at something the way that they look at it.

And that leads me to a knowing that there will not be a positive for you in this life without a negative, you have to accept every negative. Then you'll understand that me being in this positive situation right now, there's no way I get here. I can predict that I get anywhere else in life without going through the most horrific thing that somebody could actually go through. And that's being put in jail and given a death sentence that you have to live the rest of your life until you actually die.

And that leads me to the end. And that's knowing your past can better predict the future of the planet. For if you know the decisions that you made that led to a positive and the ones that led to a negative, then you will better identify where your future is actually going towards knowing that we all have to plan for sure.

But not putting a plan so far ahead are so heavy on your shoulders. So when you fail, you don't find understanding of why you fail, but then you'll understand it that much more by knowing why you failed before.

Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcast, it really helps. And you know, I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and in so doing, helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. It's easy. Go to Innocence Project, Doug, to learn how to donate and get involved. I want to thank our amazing producers, engineers and editors, Connor Hall and Kevin Amortise.

The music in the show is my three time Oscar nominated composer, DJ Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at wrongful conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Loba for Good podcast in association with Signal Company No. One, Northparkes. For NPR ex.