thousand and eighty four of the two thousand and seventeen cases were involved officer misconduct the find there is instances involving police prosecutors or other government officials who significantly in abuse their an artist activist volunteer and a facilitator at the fortune society and a person exonerated in january of this year for crime he never committed soon as susan is a staff attorney at the  the average day for me was pretty much just training for the marathon and also being a fortune helping out with the music program so that's taken a lot of time and something i really feel  am one of the staff attorneys at the innocence project we are a not for profit organization that works to correct and prevent wrongful convictions and so you know how i got involved in hugh's case is back in tw thousand and nine seeking assistance but because there wasn't any d n a in his case that we could that we thought would be probative we recommended that he reach out to steve and as i said he is a national expert on false confessions and then they kind of you know they did a situation because it kind of use my heart because i know that not only were you falsely accused back then can you tell you what they accused you of and i was i was accused of my mother's murder and i think that that is one of the things that is so hard to deal with not just the fact that i'm wrong for the convicted but wrongfully convicted of those circumstances so it's it's i don't know if i would have been able to deal with that so i just want to say that i think you're a very strong individual thing and i'm proud of you thank you and i know you for a long time and i've just seen you stay strong throughout the whole entire thing but i remember talking to you one day and you said that as years went by and like you went to like the parole board and they asked you to actually say that yeah how did how did that happen that for me going to the parole board is something that put me right back in the precinct when i was sixteen and like the parole board being in that precinct at the time the only thing that i wanted to do was get out of the precinct in the you just they make me feel as if you cannot go anywhere and if you don't do what they want you to do or say what they want you to say this is not going to go well for you same thing with the poor old board they want you to go in there and it because by not admitting guilt they're saying that you have no responsibility for your actions or you don't know the weight of what you've done and the hardest thing was trying to i didn't you know so going to a poor boy is very very hard it's just like being in that precinct again i mean where you were you able to get out and say hey ok i'm going to say this to please people here or that was that was probably one of the dollars things that i had to do i've but time is a little bit different when you've been here this long and i said but i'm not going to go because they want you to go in and add guilt that's the st thing and i feel if you don't do that there's going to deny parole and i told him i wasn't subject myself to that treatment and he said he listened to me for a while and he says well we know the truth why do you care what they think  but although he was in it with me it's still something different when you have to wear it that you know you know it's just it's just feels different but i understood totally what he was saying and that was the only reason i went to the st board that i went to in two thousand and four fishkill pride and i wasn't going and will be the results i was denied in two thousand and four i was sent back in two thousand and six i was denied in two thousand and six i was given twelve months so you know when you get a twelve month hit the expectation of the at least the next time is is great i went to that next board in seven they said they don't care what the last board said where we deny the parole they gave me twenty four months hired a lawyer at that time and she got was you need to know so by the time it was all said and done that was my six parole board in july of nine that i actually went through and came home and september and then they give you a reason why they were told that you weren't suitable because i did because to release me to release me at this time and i would undermine respect for the law so that that was the reason and what are you fighting for what results you want to see i would love to see more oversight with police interrogations not when the person they've got the person to confess and it's ok will bring the cameras and let's videotape the whole still whole process and you know i wish that would have been done for me thankfully haven't been in an interrogation so i don't know what on video they had the whole entire thing and how it changed and they felt a certain way in a beginning and just the whole tight thing and it still is still turned out bathtub so susan do you think things like this is still happening today so one of the things that the conviction integrity unit found so we had engaged in a two year investigation with the bronx conviction integrity unit and one of the findings and the basis for hugh's exoneration was that they found that the police were using psychologically co e techniques that induced his false confession and the truth is that these techniques continue to be used by law enforcement here in new york city and all across the nation today last year in april they did pass a law in new york requiring recording of all interrogations a requirement requiring recording of interrogations for i think it's all violent felony is but that is you know it's a new law on the books and not every single  state has such a law so it's great that new york finally has it but as you said you know specially nine hundred and eighty nine it didn't make a difference very central park five and in part it's because you know confession evidence is so powerful and so hard to overcome and many people jurors and the general public don't understand what it's like to be in that interrogation room and don't understand how someone can come to confess to a crime that they didn't commit to do you think  confession i think in the in the last few years especially but you know over the last you know couple decades we've had a ton of research done on police interrogations and we've learned a lot and i think that i getting out into the public and people are learning more about it but you know i'm i meet people every single day that are surprised to hear about false confessions and have difficulty believing that they exist so i think we've come a long way but we still have a long way to go as well so even when i was younger before all of this happened school was becoming something i was becoming disinterested in however music was something becoming something that i wanted to do all day and unfortunately when of this happened that was the only thing that i had to carry through you know in terms of busy myself with things and it's just the ability to create music and bring people around me to create music so what is it about art and music that touches you so much that i hope you get through and still to this day you stuck with it interesting i felt for years when i was in that i was just screaming at the top of my lungs  city but nobody was listening i found that music was a way that i can get people to listen and sometimes us or you wouldn't want people to just just listen so they're making music you get people helped me i was able to express i was able to let it out do you have any special song that you have arenas said this is about this and i'm never going to probably let anyone hear this i to use put on the side so it's interesting that you think you know so do you think you ever let anyone in your life say he'd get that close to you to say almost you'd hear this this is part of me i've never gave to anyone i'm getting to the point because i'm like really really full on that doing music the way that i've always wanted to and i think that at this age now i can use some of my experiences and put it in music i'm not really afraid to tell it anymore you know i mean you know and i think that people are going to hear it you know so we'll see what happens so you've been working at the fortune society recently about that right so you'll be working with the young adults and a lot of people who have dreams and goals of being a musicians in our it is so how does that make you feel seeing the young people strive towards that at this at that's just at this stage you know what's so interesting is that i looked at all those kids that were in them and i saw us in a different music wombs when we were growing up inside it and i'm looking at what if we had a lot of the stuff at our disposal you know that we c do different things we have been something different what if we would add someone who had the ability to teach us how to use the stuff so when i walked in there when i st got there i was like this is what i want this is what i need to be and i want to give them something that is of value that they don't have to just using music you can take it with you throughout life because it seems like everyone is there is at risk so if we're able to put ourselves in the position where we can intervene in that and if i can use music as that medium to express that then that's me talking and everybody hearing you know so so i hear a lot of people say hey when i was younger i got in trouble because i didn't have that person that cared enough to really relate to or not father figure so do you have any of those thoughts when you come to the suits and sort of what is a society and to help the younger people absolutely because there was i think even more so than we were kids things that kids are faced with that is so much out there much more than we were growing up method is there's a lot of different things that could drive them in this direction or drive them in that direction so in looking at a lot of it you have to say to yourself ok what can i do to help navigating to the way they supposed to go because  it's it seems like there is less and less value placed in our kids you know also so like you if you find if it just is as an activist and then you also try to give back to the young people yet so they can live a better life absolute so how is that going to balance out for you well everything you can have a balance with in terms of being an advocate and being an advocate you helping so and being an advocate for justice and things like that i would use my story to tell a lot of them that you know listen through music you know everybody is not in jail guilty of a crime you don't have to have done something to find yourself in  so i think if people have got to draw from you're able to say like you know it can happen i don't have to be out here doing anything in the street when i was younger when i was their age the only thing i wanted to do was just you know go to low parties and stuff like that  i realize that this happened to me so if it happened to me it can really really happen to anybody and these kids now have so much more things that they have to look out for than when we were younger so if you have to tell somebody young people some advice or something that you experienced that you don't want them to go through during your incarceration what would it be learn your rights learn your rights when if you do not understand your rights you will be in a very very bad position in life so do you have anything else you would like to share anyone any money you think i should like to add or share doing this episode those who may be who may find themselves or those who have family members who are in the same position that  then please tell your loved ones if you noticed and loved ones innocent and try to fight stand with them fight with them don't let them make their journey bottom south make sure that they know that there is someone there to support them and they can move mountains if they know that the a people that are going to be there for them so don't give up on your people the saloon has claims of innocence and find out what it is and those who are in there don't really you can't lay down and there were days you could have done and just lay down and you might have done less how does how does that feel to not just i'm just never going to give up and that that's one of the things that feels great to you know to not give up but i think for me not giving up was knowing what i was fighting for you know they're fighting for my money and trying to hold down all my fault because he's a wreck and he start to hold it down for me and things i didn't know what happened did you feel like you were treated a certain way at some time some point that you feel like they saw you because of what they don't you are yeah i am not as much from the guys i was in with some new some didn't some didn't care those who knew me well i'm not i don't believe that i don't know what the circumstances of what that i don't  believe so for me it i had more problems with that female staff because of the gravity of circumstances you know and usually when you're inside or things like your packages in your legal usually women are in control of those areas and you know sometimes it would it would get bad really  when you say really good bad you mean like maybe your stuff will be missing your writings things really come through our writings in probably the right way i was told that things that i could have you know you can't have this you have are you going to donated or are you going to throw it out or you want to do these things were going on for why my father would send money and he knew he could only send money every now and so he would send a lot we could and i would get question at legal mail who is this and why is he sending that day when a said huber in is exonerated knew at that time i was given my day my just due but there was still much more work i needed to do towards the memory of my parents but it felt like i was  nice so if you were to say someone someone right now is going to a similar situation and they attempted to say you know what maybe if i easy for if you allow people to make you say something you didn't do it will sit which it will sit well which is spirit especially with these circumstances you know it w speaking of spiritual writing so i've known that you never seen the whole time that i've known you you never seemed like a miserable guy i try to smile you're always doing something you know you just found positive ways to keep yourself occupied when you think that strength came from the people around me i have always from from kept me going because now i found myself helping my friends out that way and they didn't know what i was going through but i saw what they were going through so from that relationship will form and we gained a lot of strength from just just out of curiosity what was your initial his initial reaction just tick tick the st conversation to say that this is going they say and he knew that that was nonsense especially for the reasons why and his whole thing was let's get to the bottom of i don't know i don't know how to go in and talk to these people but i know that that's nonsense let's get to the bottom of these so do we think that all of the people who are fighting two and i think back then the idea that someone who's innocent would be incarcerated is just beyond you know comprehension like no one believed it and certainly now over twenty five years later we've learned so much we've learned about the contributing factors wrongful convictions including false confessions eyewitness misidentification bad science bad forensics and government misconduct so we've we've learned a lot we also have passed you know d n a statutes in all fifty states we have a ton of initiatives that are ongoing in all fifty states if you want to learn more about our policy work on the things that we're doing to prevent wrongful convictions you can go to the innocence project website so you know we've we've we've learned a lot we've come a long way but as i said before we still have a lot more work to do so you know that type of work is appreciated because it is just so necessary for for someone to say we're going to stand up to this and we're going to not let this happen and what do you that's a great great way to look at it so just just been going back and looking at everything and see how you for it through all of these hardships you had what do you think joining us as we critically look at both sides in a bars