The Innocence Files (2020) s01e07 Episode Script

[electronic beep]
[female voice] To accept this free call,
press one. To
[call disconnects]
If you have any concern
that the person you are speaking with
is in mental health crisis or suicidal,
call the state correctional institution
immediately.
You may start the conversation now.
[man 1] Hello?
[man 2] Hello?
- Hi, Chester.
- How's it going?
- Good, man.
- How you doing?
[man 1] So we've finally connected. I know
it hasn't been easy for you to get
- Yeah.
- to the phone. [chuckles]
[Chester Hollman III] This is definitely,
I think, one of the better spots
if you had to do time,
I think this is probably
one of the better spots,
as opposed to where I've been.
The area, if you take away the, uh
[chuckles]
the barbed wire and the fences,
it's a beautiful area,
because it's, like, in a
It's in a valley,
so there's mountains on all sides.
And then we have the Susquehanna River
right out here.
It's, like, 200 yards, maybe,
from where I am.
It's been my goal, you know,
all these years,
I want to get across that bridge.
[man 1]
I want to ask you a couple of things,
because things seem to be percolating
in your case.
What should people know about your case?
[Chester] I don't know if we have
enough time for that one.
First of all,
before all this happened to me,
if someone would have said
that this is possible,
I never would've believed it. It's just
Almost 28 years of my life.
I mean, this is more than half of my life.
I don't have any animosity
towards the police.
I don't think every prosecutor is bad,
you know,
but I just think the ones
that I ended up with,
the tactics that they used,
it was just arrest, convict
and move on to the next.
They were doing everything they could
to close a case
without trying to seek out
the actual truth.
I happened to be a casualty
in the mix of it.
[opening theme music playing]
[man] My name is Alan Tauber.
I have represented Chester Hollman
since 2005.
This is a case
where I'm representing a person
who, in my mind, is clearly innocent,
who has clearly been a victim
of some of the worst parts
of the criminal justice process.
It's a case that is significant enough
to me that shortly after I met his family,
and Chester Hollman,
I decided I would do this for free.
There was no cost or expense that
I would spare to try to exonerate him.
Hello?
- [muffled speech through phone]
- Chester?
[Chester] Yes. How you doing?
- Hey, it's Alan. How are you?
- I'm good.
[Alan Tauber] There essentially were three
appeals in this case that were denied.
We are working on the fourth appeal,
and this really is probably Chester's
last, best chance at getting released.
Chester, one thing I wanted to ask you,
how did you feel the interview went
with Patricia?
Naturally, I was nervous.
This is an opportunity, you know,
you just don't get.
DAs don't come in prisons
with anything positive, you know?
So naturally, of course I'm going to be
a little nervous but at the same time
she was very straightforward,
there was no negativity, I mean
I told her I was thankful, you know,
for her taking the time
to come up and see me.
Right.
Well, she was very impressed by you,
I'll just tell you that.
So you guys are going to let me
sit at the head of the table.
- Well, we've been here 45 minutes.
- [laughter]
[woman] I think we're just gonna
jump right into it.
This is one of the first cases that
we really had a good sit-down presentation
with the lawyers involved in it
and actually I've brought my notes
A conviction integrity unit
is a place in a prosecutor's office
where you have one person, or ten,
who are trying to figure out if,
in our criminal justice system,
we have gotten things wrong.
It's funny. You don't want
to be looking at these cases, really,
from how your gut feels,
but this is one
where I just can't ignore the fact
that the feeling in my gut was, "Oh, my."
[Alan] Patricia Cummings has a history
of doing this work in Texas.
She is a complete pro,
enormously experienced.
She reviewed Chester Hollman's case
and saw that this could be
a real issue of innocence.
The Pennsylvania Innocence Project
and Alan Tauber represent Chester Hollman,
and we all sat down together in April,
when they made their pitch to me
that this case had problems
and that it was worthy of another look.
Okay, so this is an old case.
The basic facts are
Chester Hollman was arrested
for a robbery-homicide
that happened in 1991.
One man has been charged
in the early morning murder
of a 24-year-old Penn student.
Police say the student
was walking a friend home
about 1:00 in the morning.
Two men came up to them
at 22nd and Chestnut and demanded money.
Police say the student refused
and then was shot in the chest.
Police are still looking
for the second suspect,
also a woman who drove the getaway car.
[Sal Genestra]
I remember being out with my wife.
We only lived a couple blocks away.
We saw the young man lying on the ground.
His girlfriend was crying
and, uh, very hysterical.
[man] Two exchange students
were walking up 22nd Street.
It was about 1:00 a.m.
They were walking from her apartment
on Arch Street
to his apartment on Walnut
and they got approximately to this area,
where they were accosted by two men,
knocked to the ground,
both of them were knocked to the ground.
One of the perpetrators held the victim
by his legs,
the other one stood over him
and put the pistol to his chest,
close to his body,
and shot and killed him.
[Sal] And we seen this guy
come running towards us,
and he had a hood on, of course,
and looked like he was
concealing something where his hand was.
He ran right by us.
Next thing you know, there was, like,
a white vehicle near the corner,
and he jumped into that,
and, uh, they took off.
[Patricia Cummings]
A white Chevy Blazer is the actual vehicle
that the people
that are committing this act are in.
From all accounts,
there are four people in the car.
Two men and two women.
[Alan] The getaway car was followed,
for a short period of time, by a cab.
The cab follows the getaway car
for several blocks
and then loses it in traffic.
The cab gets a partial tag,
Y-Z-A, the letters.
Does not get the numbers.
That happened so quickly
that the police are able to put that out,
and the police see a white Chevy Blazer
heading towards the scene,
which is kind of odd.
They pull him over.
[Chester] That particular night,
with my friend, Deirdre Jones,
we were going to south-west Philadelphia.
It was my first day of vacation,
and we're in a nice truck,
a White Chevy Blazer
that my roommate had rented.
So I went all the way down Broad Street.
When we turned into Lombard Street,
it was like
I've never seen Philly like it,
it was like a ghost town.
We didn't see people, we didn't see a car,
so I thought it was a little strange.
I had the music turned up a little bit.
After we maybe got three blocks,
we saw a cop car going north.
Another one was going south.
I'm at the red light.
Once the light turned green,
I see the one that was going north
back up
and come onto Lombard.
Next thing you know, the lights flash on.
So we both said,
"What's this about? What did we do?"
And I pulled over,
and they jumped out with guns drawn.
We just put our hands up.
We was just, like, stunned.
It doesn't take but a few seconds
for the police
to be treating them
as if they are the doers of this crime.
[Alan] I think the police describe him
as sweating, his heart's pounding.
[Chester]
Then some more police officers showed up.
Then they said, "Take them to the scene."
[Patricia] You have the police,
immediately after pulling Chester over,
taking him back to the crime scene
and allowing the witnesses
to see these individuals,
and then asking the witnesses if,
in fact, these are the same people.
[Chester] They went up to the crowd.
I know the one black guy,
which I know now is Andre Dawkins,
said, "I don't think that's him."
He said, "Where's the other guy?"
None of them, none, were able to identify
either Chester Hollman or Deirdre Jones
as having been involved,
but what's really significant
is Junko Nihei, who's the victim's friend,
who was standing next to him
when he was robbed and killed,
she cannot identify Chester Hollman.
She stood next to the victim
and witnessed this entire incident
minutes before
he was brought back to the scene,
but more importantly,
she says he was wearing red shorts.
When Chester Hollman's
brought back to the scene,
he's wearing aquamarine,
essentially green, sweatpants.
[Patricia] There's also problems with
what it is they're finding in the car.
The most obvious one
is there's not four people.
There's two people.
There's no gun, but it doesn't seem
to be a big issue to law enforcement.
[Chester] From there, they took us,
well, took me to the Roundhouse.
I was put in a cell,
and I heard over the police radio,
as I was walking into the cell
I heard them say,
"Transport him to Homicide. The guy died."
So I think that's the first moment I
[stammers]
I learned that I was being arrested
for homicide.
[Alan]
So Chester's brought to the Roundhouse.
The Roundhouse was a bad place.
I mean, it was a place when
If you're brought to the Roundhouse,
if you're brought to the homicide division
in the '80s and '90s,
you could likely experience
some rough treatment.
[Chester] They put me in a room,
handcuffed me to a chair.
Detective Piree, he came in
and punched me in the mouth.
Dead in the mouth. Like a quick pop.
And he says,
"You want to kill people in my city?
Which caught me off-guard.
And, uh, I said,
"I've been trying to call my family."
You know, I was naive back then.
They kept telling me the phones were busy.
You know, once a phone opened up,
I could call,
but I never got to call.
[Chester Hollman II]
You feel the moments where
Chester was just outside,
riding the lawn mower
running around, playing football and
baseball, everything.
He was a good kid,
and we just enjoyed life back then.
We're a tight-knit family,
Christian family.
- Hey, Dad.
- Hey.
[gasps]
- [laughs softly]
- Good to see you.
- Did he call you today?
- Not yet, but
No. I know he'll probably call
a little later on.
- He's trying to stay upbeat
- Yeah.
but he has that doubt.
[phone rings]
[Mr. Hollman] Alright.
[female voice]
This is a prepaid collect call from
- [Chester] Chester.
- [phone beeps]
Hey. Hey, son.
- Hello?
- Hey.
- What's up?
- Nothing much.
Everything alright?
- Yeah, we got
- Yeah.
- Got the whole family here.
- Yeah.
- [Deanna Hollman] Did you get my message?
- No, I just got back from work.
- I know
- Everything alright?
Yeah, I just know that things are
You know, you're a little worried
about what's
You know,
the upcoming things that are happening,
but, um, I know they're gonna work out.
It concerns me a little bit,
because I know what they've done
in the past
and how difficult it's been.
- Right.
- You remember what Pop-Pop said, right?
- I know what he said.
- Keep hope alive, right?
Yeah, man, but it's a lot different
when you're walking the halls,
walking these halls.
This is all I've known for,
you know, 27 and a half years.
[Deanna] I know.
I don't
I just try not to cross that line.
I know I gotta be here right now
- I understand.
- today.
Yeah.
So this is what I focus on,
getting through today. I mean
[Deanna] Without a question,
I knew he didn't do it.
That's not how we were raised up.
That's not the kind of family
we come from.
I mean,
there is no need to want to hurt somebody.
My brother's the kind of person
It used to snow around here,
and the neighbors would have You know,
just like they would help with us,
he would go over there
and shovel their driveways.
That's the kind of person he was.
He wasn't the kind of person
to do something like that.
[Chester] As long as you're alright,
I'm alright.
- You know I'm alright.
- Oh, yeah, believe me. I know.
You still think you're 25.
[Deanna chuckles]
- [laughs] No, I don't.
- [Deanna] Yeah.
[Mr. Hollman]
Hey, I bought us some, uh
twin snow shovels.
One for you and one for me, okay?
[Chester laughs] Dad, I got a hernia.
Better get your money back on that one.
[laughing]
[Mr. Hollman] Me and my wife
made sure these kids didn't have to
steal or borrow anything. We
That's why I worked two jobs,
to keep them going.
We went the whole nine yards
to make these kids have something to do,
without running the streets.
They have memories to remember,
growing up, Chester and Deanna.
[funky music playing]
[Chester] Growing up in the suburbs
the majority of my life,
I didn't know my way around the city
that much,
but I knew enough areas
to find my way back to the apartment.
All the lights and driving down
through Center City and so forth.
We would go to a club called Limelight.
I think Naughty by Nature
had just come out.
OPP, how can I explain it? ♪
I'll take it frame by frame it ♪
[Chester] Coming from where I grew up,
in the suburbs,
I don't know, I wanted something more,
a little faster pace.
I just wanted to get out on my own
and, uh, get life jump- started.
In Philadelphia, when I moved up there,
you know, I had a good job,
and I was not in the heart of the city,
but I was in the good area near Temple,
so, you know,
I figured as long you did the right thing,
then trouble wouldn't find you.
[Mr. Hollman] His girlfriend called,
"Put on Channel Three!
Chester's on Channel Three."
They said,
"A person involved in a homicide."
I said, "What?"
Me and my wife, we don't know what to do.
So we end up going to the Roundhouse,
and nobody would tell us where he was.
Not a soul.
They said, "You better get a lawyer."
The most vicious of all
the detectives I dealt with was
Detective Piree, and Baker.
I'm handcuffed to the chair for hours.
They didn't want to hear
anything I had to say.
This is the story that we have,
so this is what you did, so
we're not going to deviate from this.
Chester Hollman maintains,
throughout his interview,
that he doesn't know
what they're talking about,
he doesn't know anything about the crime,
he did not commit the crime.
[Chester] So I told him I worked
for Brooks Armored Car,
and I gave my supervisor's name
and so forth.
He did have a weapon,
but it was a weapon for Brooks.
It was registered to Brooks.
I mean, it was registered to him,
but it was under Brooks,
it wasn't like his weapon.
[Chester] My supervisor,
they had already [scoffs]
I guess, assumed that I was guilty
because they were telling me to cooperate.
I said I was.
I told them I was cooperating.
Meanwhile, as that's going on,
you've also got law enforcement
or the homicide detectives
questioning/interrogating
the female passenger.
[Chester] Detective Piree, some hours
later, he came in and said, "We got you."
He told me that,
"Well, she said you did it."
I said, "Well, that's a lie."
[Patricia]
The female passenger purportedly said
that Chester Hollman is indeed
the person who committed the crime.
Within 24 hours,
the police department thinks they have
at least two of the people
that committed this crime.
[Alan]
Chester Hollman's charged with the crime.
What they tell Deirdre:
that Chester Hollman's a dangerous man,
that he's involved
in the Junior Black Mafia,
uh, that he's friends with a lot of people
who could do her harm,
and that it would be in her interest,
having now given a statement against him,
to leave town.
[Chester]
My first night in Holmesburg Prison,
that's when everything
started getting real.
When I get on the block,
you had to go through two gates,
and I can see a TV
right in the middle of the block,
and I see my picture on the TV.
So when I come on the block,
everybody turns around,
and two officers pull me into this
It's like a room,
with all these old desks and chairs,
and they just got in my face,
and they just basically told me, uh,
that whatever I did on the street,
they're not gonna have this shit
on the block.
I started crying.
So I guess that kind of softened them up,
so he said, "Listen"
I kept telling them, "I didn't do it."
He said, "You'll get your day in court."
He gave me a few minutes
and said, "Look, get yourself together.
Don't let them guys see you crying."
After I got myself together,
they took me out,
put me in a cell in the back,
and there was a bed
right in the middle of the floor,
and I went there, and I started crying.
[Mr. Hollman] When we saw him
for the first time at Holmesburg Prison,
uh, he was shaken and scared,
because he'd never been
in that kind of environment.
[man] I was contacted by his parents.
I then went to visit with Chester.
He was very insistent
that he was completely innocent.
I do remember
a deal being put in front of me
to present to Chester.
The district attorney said
that if he was willing to take a plea,
in other words, admit his guilt,
he would recommend to the court
a sentence of five years,
which is a fantastic deal.
[Chester] They offered me a five to ten,
but he said he wanted the name of, uh,
a shooter and a driver.
He said, "Give us the name
of the shooter and driver and testify."
[Alan] The police had convinced themselves
that Chester knew who the gunman was.
The district attorney said,
"If you provide us
with the name of the gunman,
you'll go on with your life."
[Chester] So my mom was, like
She said, "Did you do it?"
I said, "No, Ma."
She said,
"Well, we're not taking no deal."
[Gerald Stein] I thought that
there were enough inconsistencies,
enough contradictions,
enough weaknesses in the case
that we had a pretty good shot
at winning the case.
[Chester] I was scared, initially,
but at the same time, I was excited.
I said, "This could potentially be over.
This is the beginning of the end,"
because I just knew
we were gonna prove that I was innocent.
[Patricia]
The prosecutor assigned to the case
was a prosecutor
by the name of Roger King.
He was a phenomenon.
[Roger King] You should look at him
not in sorrow, but in scorn,
and that scorn being
And you should stand up and look at him,
and look at him
for the despicable human being that he is,
the mad dog that he is,
and say, "For what you did,
why you did it, how you did it,
for what you did, you should die!"
[Gerald] Roger was an orator.
I didn't always understand
what his oration meant
in relation to the case
that we were trying,
but he was pretty good at orating.
He was also the kind of prosecutor
that you'd always want to
keep your eye on what he was doing.
[Chester] They told me I had Roger King.
A lot of the guys told me about him.
They said, "Man, he's vicious."
They kept saying, "He's rotten,"
that he was the worst one they had
in the district attorney's office.
[Mr. Hollman] Roger King,
when he first came in the courtroom,
he had his bodyguards around him.
So I'm saying,
"This guy can't be a good guy."
[Gerald] At trial,
Andre Dawkins was one of
the principle eyewitnesses in the case.
Dawkins claimed to have been
approximately a city block away
from where the scene
of the actual robbery was
and also claimed that he was able
to make an identification in the case.
Andre Dawkins is identified
by the police at the scene.
He's brought to the district,
to the homicide division.
Ultimately identifies Chester
as having been involved in the crime.
He, at the time, was on probation
and had lots of reasons to want
to be cooperating with the police.
[Chester] When Dawkins came in there,
and he was all cleaned up,
and he's trying to talk all articulate
and so forth,
and I said,
"They're going to see through this."
[Gerald] Deidre Jones was the witness
that came across
as the most reliable witness in the case.
She was pretty steadfast about her story,
as I recall it,
during the course of the trial.
[Chester] I'm the type of person,
I always believe in good.
So, at that point,
when I saw her coming out,
I said,
"Okay, she's away from the police.
She's in a court of law,
a judge is here, there's a jury."
I said,
"Okay, even though she's told these lies,
she's going to get in the stand
and see me
and know that we didn't do this
and tell the truth."
When Roger King started questioning her
and so forth,
I saw the leading questions,
and so here's your opportunity
to tell the truth.
And she didn't take it.
That was
You know, I was angry.
It was frustrating.
Deidre Jones' testimony at trial was
the most significant evidence at trial.
The only other evidence
against Chester Hollman
was his being in a vehicle that matched
the description of the getaway car.
[Chester] That was maybe
a week and a half, I think, we had trial.
I was a little disappointed
that Mr. Stein didn't let me testify
because I really wanted to,
but he was so concerned about Roger King,
and Roger King was gonna tear me apart
and so forth.
[man] Speaking of Roger King,
I went through his closing argument,
and I found a few things
that I just want to read to you
- and get your sort of reaction.
- [Chester] Okay.
[man]
And he's talking about the statement
that you allegedly said
about Deidre Jones.
"'I told that dumb bitch
to keep her mouth shut.'
What do you think that meant,
ladies and gentlemen?
Were those the words of a man who'd got
his hands caught in the cookie jar?
Are those the words of a man
who'd finally realized
that his pants were about to fall
and the game was up?
I would submit to you that it is."
[Chester] Yeah, I do remember it.
When he said it,
I knew what he was trying
The picture he was trying to paint,
it wasn't a good look, you know,
but that's not what I said.
[Patricia] So, back in the day,
the Philadelphia Police Department
didn't record interviews,
neither audio or video.
Instead, they would write out, verbatim,
every single question and then the answer.
And at the end of the statement,
Chester signs off.
Towards the end of the statement,
there's this odd kind of blank in the page
and then there's this written in,
Chester Hollman supposedly says,
"I told that bitch
to keep her mouth shut."
[Chester] I would have never
signed anything like that.
Detective Jeff Piree, he asked me
if there was any more I wanted to say,
and I said, "No."
And I signed the bottom of that page,
but at the time he had his hand
on the top of the statement,
so I didn't really see the top.
Then, like I said, the last page,
there was no
That part where it said I told
It was never there.
[Patricia] That becomes
an essential part of this case
because the prosecutor's office
look at that as transformative.
[man reads] "It was you, Chester Hollman,
who explained to Deirdre Jones
what it meant to take somebody
or rush somebody.
It was you that held him down helpless,
while somebody else pumped a bullet
through his heart.
It was you who said,
when confronted with all this,
'I told that dumb bitch
to keep her mouth shut, shit!'
Now it's up to you,
ladies and gentlemen of the jury.
Use your common sense.
You know when you hear it
and don't take too long."
[Chester] He knew what he was doing
was wrong, but his job is to convict.
I didn't see anything that could
prove beyond a reasonable doubt
that, you know,
that I was guilty of anything.
I was just hoping that
the jury would be able to see past it.
and see, you know,
the evidence for what it was.
[Patricia]
I think the jury grappled with it.
You know, the jury sent back questions,
and, you know,
at least one of the questions
was they were struggling
with reasonable doubt.
[Chester] They went and deliberated,
I think it was the next day
they deliberated.
When they reached a verdict,
when they came back in,
they didn't really look at me the same.
And they read the verdict,
it was just, like,
you know, I just turned around
and I saw my mom, and
Like, my heart just fell for my mom
immediately.
I don't know why,
it wasn't so much myself,
it was just my mom.
And I turned around,
and I saw her face, and my dad.
[Mr. Hollman] We couldn't believe it.
No evidence
that points to him as being
part of this crime, no DNA or nothing.
Guilty.
[Alan] Roger King had the confession
of a co-conspirator,
of course, corroborated by Andre Dawkins.
I'm not sure there's a lawyer in the world
who could've overcome that.
Chester Hollman ends up getting convicted
of second-degree homicide
and, of course,
is serving a life sentence without parole.
[Mr. Hollman] It was really hard.
Me and my wife said,
"What are we gonna do?"
- She was tireless, on the phone every day.
- [Deanna] Mmm.
- Writing letters. Yeah.
- Calling the law Writing letters, and
trying to find some way to get him out.
My release was always
talking to my mom.
I talked to my mom every day.
I called her every day.
So whatever I had going on
I would call her and let it all out
and I'd go back,
go through all the shit
I had to go through in there
and then I'd call her the next day.
That was my release, it was my mom.
[Mr. Hollman]
He said, "Mom, I can't make it.
I can't make it in here, Mom."
And she grabbed him by his collar,
pulled him down to her,
- "Yes, you can!"
- She's about my height. So [chuckles]
- "You hear me? Snap out of it!"
- Yeah.
- [Mr. Hollman] And that was his strength.
- [Deanna] Mm-hmm.
[Deanna] My mom was ill.
She was on dialysis for 27 years.
[Mr. Hollman] Yeah.
[Deanna] My mom was a great mom.
You wouldn't have known she was sick.
Never.
So I feel like even with my brother
in this situation,
I feel like he has gotten
that piece of her and said,
"Okay, if she could do what she did
all that time,
gave me a great life as a kid growing up,
then I can't fail her.
I gotta press forward.
I gotta keep going."
And I had just talked to my mom
that Thursday night.
Where at, Friday, the 26th of April,
1999,
I was at work.
And they said, "You have a visit."
My sister came in, and then my, my father,
and then my grandmother,
and my uncle, and the rest,
rest of my family.
Um.
I was just looking for my mom.
[Deanna]
He couldn't even go to her funeral.
I think that's in him,
and kind of it's in me:
I will not allow you to beat me.
I'm gonna keep fighting and fighting
and fighting, with everything I have.
Now, how he's doing it in there,
I don't know,
but that drive
just not to give up or quit,
I think that's That's my mom.
[Patricia] What I want to do
before we break for the day
is I want to just kind of
talk about big things that,
you know, are screaming out at you.
Is anything specific
sticking out in your mind
that maybe is not on our radar?
I think it's important that
what the taxi driver said.
Because he said he lost him at 20th.
[woman 1] So he followed them
for about seven blocks.
[Kevin] He Yes.
- The first 911 call is at 1:01 a.m.
- Mm-hmm.
So this all apparently happens within
under three minutes,
because they pick him up at 1:04 a.m.
[woman 2]
I was gonna ask about the time frame.
[woman 3] What's interesting
is that Hollman's vehicle is stopped
four minutes after the 911 call went in,
and when the cab driver is following them,
nobody's jumping out of the car.
You know, in other words, there's supposed
to be four people in the car.
- Right.
- Right.
And there should've been
a female driving that vehicle, right?
I think it's probably pretty difficult
to get from, like, 20th and Walnut
to that area in four minutes.
You know, you have this time frame.
You should sort of drive these things
and time them and see.
[Patricia] We're thinking that
there's a lot that can be accomplished
by going out to the scene,
driving it, timing it,
but in the way
the Commonwealth thought it happened.
[Alan] So you never lived in a cold city
before you came here?
[Patricia] No.
Um, you know, Dallas.
- I think Dallas counts
- Yeah.
Dallas has got
the weirdest weather in the world
because it's, like, all extremes,
you know?
[man laughs]
You're laughing at me 'cause
you don't think Dallas is cold?
Traditionally, when anybody's
looking at the criminal justice system,
when you talk about a prosecutor
and a defense team,
you are talking about adversaries.
They're in adversarial roles by the nature
of how the criminal justice system works.
The kind of work we're doing with Alan,
I think, is very, very different
than that traditional role
What matters to me more than anything
is just the route and the timing.
Yeah.
because the goal is the same,
figuring out the truth,
and if the truth is
Chester Hollman is innocent,
we need to do what we can
to try to right the wrong.
[Alan] This would be the spot, right here.
Give me a "go," and I'll hit it.
[man] Alright, you got, like,
three, two, one, and go!
So the taxi cab driver
The dispatcher's first 911 call
was at 1:01,
and that's prior to the turn
onto 21st Street.
[Alan] Okay, we're right at the
- [Kevin] Right at that time.
- [Alan] Yeah, right.
So this would be the first run,
up to Locust.
There's another block to 20th.
One of the interesting questions
which we'll never have an answer to is,
what's with the route?
You know, it's a snakelike route.
Did they realize
the cab was following them,
they're trying to lose him?
I don't get it.
[Kevin] So he would have lost him
and taken a right here?
[man]
So he loses him in traffic, I think, yeah.
[Kevin] Right.
[Alan]
So, I have four minutes and 15 seconds.
I mean, the thing I've always felt
was dubious was that they would get out
in Center City somewhere.
Why would they drop two people off in
[Patricia]
Somewhere fairly close to the scene.
[Alan] It just makes no sense.
And then there's also this part where
they would have had to have stopped
- to switch drivers.
- [Patricia] Yeah.
- [Kevin] And change clothes.
- [Alan] Yeah, and change clothes.
So here's Lombard.
[Patricia] The question would be why
they would have turned right on Lombard
when they could have turned left
on any of the other streets.
- Or just kept going south
- Yeah.
and got away, right?
[man] So wherever that cop is
pulled over up there is probably
- where we're about to pull over.
- [Kevin] Yeah.
[Alan] Essentially coming back
to the scene of the crime.
- Right.
- Yeah.
[Alan] This would be Van Pelt here.
So we're at eight minutes, essentially.
[Patricia]
I just don't think there's any way
Chester can have committed the crime
and been stopped where he was
in the time period
from the crime and the stop.
It just seems impossible,
and, in a lot of ways,
that's kind of affirming to me
because it tells me people seem
to be having the same reaction
to the case that I did,
which is it just doesn't add up.
The way cases were investigated
in Philadelphia back then
and the kind of evidence that was used
to obtain convictions,
in my mind, seems very thin.
I mean, you have a witness
who has mental health issues,
and chemical dependency issues,
and criminal issues.
You ought to be scratching your head,
saying, "Hmm."
This is the deposition of Mr Andre Dawkins
in the case of the Commonwealth
versus Chester Hollman III
[Alan] Fast forward,
Chester Hollman's family has
an investigator track down Andre Dawkins,
who recants his testimony.
At what point did you give
a false statement in this case?
[Andre breathes deeply]
From the very beginning.
[man] Okay.
Where were you when the police
came to you?
I was sweeping the lot.
- You were sweeping a lot - where?
- Yes.
On 22nd and Chestnut.
What did this detective say to you?
He scared me, man. He just said to me,
"If you want to go to jail,
we've got everything on you."
"Cooperate with us."
That's when he showed me my rap sheet.
And it scared the heck out of me.
At the present time, I was on drugs.
And I was a car thief.
I've got warrants.
I've got cases, open cases.
He gave me the directions to state that
whatever the guy's name was,
'cause he gave me his name -
"You saw him running away from the scene
of the crime, and you saw his face."
That's when I went to talk to the DA.
The DA also threw a rap sheet
in front of me and scared me a little bit.
The relationship between police
and prosecutors in Philadelphia
was so tight.
As soon as they arrest
somebody like Mr Hollman,
the detectives meet in advance,
and have a sense of what "the story" is
that they're looking for,
and so the statements are probably
going to neatly fit into that story.
Meanwhile, there's a dialogue
between the lead detectives
and the district attorney's office,
who's constantly being updated
about what these other people are saying
in their interviews.
Um, it's a very symbiotic relationship,
and one that almost invites misconduct.
What else did Roger King say to you?
He said that we can give you
this amount of time.
Trying to scare me a little bit,
telling me I'll get six years.
Six years, and that, uh
if I would help him crack this case,
he would be lenient on me.
Long after the trial was over,
I discovered Mr Dawkins had
a much more extensive criminal record
than that which was disclosed to me
during the trial.
[Alan] Andre Dawkins,
because he was such a fraudster,
managed to get two police photo numbers,
'cause he would give different identities
when he was arrested.
The one that had not been disclosed
at the time of trial
showed that Andre Dawkins
had been in trouble
for making false reports to the police.
There were post-trial hearings about this,
at which Mr King represented to the court
that the failure to turn over
the complete criminal record
was basically
a good-faith mistake that happened.
Roger King is essentially saying
to the judge,
"You know, look, we know that
the criminal history's more extensive,
but none of us knew about it
at the time of trial
that this particular witness
had two PPN numbers.
You know, there's no way
we could have figured this out."
Ultimately, the courts say
the prosecutor can't engage in misconduct
in terms of failing to disclose
that information,
if, in fact,
they didn't have it available to disclose.
Okay, so this came from the trial file,
the prosecutor's trial file.
When's the trial?
- [Patricia] April
- [man] April '93.
We believe that the information was
in the prosecutor's possession.
That's why we called you.
Can I put you on speaker phone?
Okay.
- [Patricia] Hey, Alan.
- [all] Hi, Alan.
- [Alan] Hey!
- [Andrew] So, Alan,
I have two printouts
that Patricia gave me.
They are both printed out on 4/26/93.
[Alan] In Roger King's file,
there were printouts
that showed both police photo numbers.
They're time stamped April 26th, 1993,
so Roger King knew before trial
that Andre Dawkins had two ID numbers.
He turns over the record with
the least criminal history to Gerry Stein.
There's a huge problem,
not just in Philadelphia,
but all over the country,
with prosecutors relying
on incentivized witnesses
to make their case,
yet failing to disclose those incentives
to the defense.
Without that kind of early disclosure,
and complete disclosure,
the defense is at a huge,
unfair disadvantage.
So you've got that, and then let's look
at the other individual
that the Commonwealth relied on
to convict Chester,
and that was somebody,
if you believe what she said,
was actually a conspirator
and party to the crime.
But, amazingly, she was never arrested
or charged with the crime.
I was forced under threats of my personal
safety to testify in a murder trial.
The defendant in the trial
was Chester Hollman III.
My testimony was forced, inaccurate,
and given under duress.
I would like to set the record straight,
but I am still concerned with my safety
and feel threatened if I tell the truth.
[Alan] The Hollmans' investigator obtains
a recantation of Deirdre Jones.
She was initially reluctant
to come forward,
out of fear that
she could be charged with this case,
which, of course, she could be.
There's no statute of limitations
on murder.
What kind of threats were made to you?
Like, uh
did they threaten to charge you
with a crime if you
- Yes.
- didn't sign a statement?
They were saying
I was gonna be charged with murder.
[woman]
I think one of the worst travesties
that is ever committed
in the justice system
is when a wrongfully convicted person
is put in jail.
I personally think the justice system
just is not fair
on so many different levels.
and so I'm an advocate for reform
on pretty much every possible thing
with the justice system.
And so I ended up volunteering
for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project,
and it just so turns out
that Chester Hollman
is a Pennsylvania Innocence case.
So I did a lot of case review for them,
trying to find patterns
of anything that would show
that this could be a wrongful conviction.
[Alan] Celeste, you know, aside from
providing, you know, great moral support
to him and his family, she has become,
essentially, a private investigator.
I've been interested in trying
to speak with Deirdre for a while now
to kind of understand a little bit better
what her experience was like,
um, with the police
and the district attorney back then.
Why wouldn't you want
to be on camera with us?
[Deirdre]
That's just me. I didn't talk to anybody.
I have a family.
[Celeste] As far as Chester's case goes,
first of all, what was Chester like?
You know, back then.
[Deirdre] He was hilarious.
I mean, he was a gentleman.
I considered him like a brother.
That night, I was standing outside,
Chester pulled up,
he asked, "Come take a ride!"
So we're driving down the street,
we're laughing, talking, and
as soon as we made a right turn,
police cars came from everywhere.
They had guns drawn. "Get out the car!"
They put handcuffs on me,
and they put me in the back seat.
So we get to the Roundhouse
and they was like,
"Well, you was involved in a murder."
And I was like, "No, that wasn't us."
[Celeste] So you had two detectives
that were involved, right?
- Yes.
- That were there?
Detective Witcher, uh,
Detective Baker, right?
[Deirdre] Yes. They didn't want
to listen to nothing I said.
They held me and help me,
they had me handcuffed to the chair.
I'm sitting there,
and I'm, like, kinda claustrophobic.
I can't move, I'm like,
"Can you keep the door open?
I can't breathe in here."
So they come back,
"Well, Chester said y'all did it."
And I said,
"Well, why the hell would he say that?"
And then I said, "Well, I need a lawyer."
"Guilty people need a lawyer."
So I said, "Oh, well, then I don't need
a lawyer, 'cause I'm not guilty."
I don't know no better,
I'm 19, I'd never been in trouble.
We named Detective Baker as a defendant
in the lawsuit brought by Tony Wright.
Tony Wright was another guy
from Philadelphia
who had been wrongly convicted
back in the '91-'93 era,
the same time as Hollman,
and Baker freely admitted to us,
under oath,
that it was a practice
in the Philadelphia Police Department
to threaten the use of force
when questioning witnesses and suspects
back at the Roundhouse.
It's not whether you were there.
That's bullshit.
I'm not asking if you were there.
I know you were there.
I'm asking you if you want
to tell the truth about it,
or do you want to play dumb?
[Peter Neufeld] He's also a person
who has been disciplined
for failing to allow defendants
to see their lawyer.
Ms. Jones swore to two things.
One, that he threatened me
with physical force.
Two, okay,
that he wouldn't let me see a lawyer.
Detective Baker.
[Peter] He's a bad actor.
He's a proven bad actor.
[Deirdre] And the next thing you know,
they typed everything up.
[Celeste]
So, everything in your statement,
- they wrote and you signed?
- [Deirdre] Mm-hmm.
And then the tears
was rolling down my eyes
as I was reading it because that's not me
and that's not what happened.
Then they said, "Well
we're gonna put you
under protective custody.
We're gonna be sending you away.
Don't talk about it, don't tell nobody."
They needed to protect their story,
so they sent her away
and so, when she came back to testify,
she testified to her statement.
So when did you first come into contact
with Roger King?
- [Deirdre] He walked me over.
- [Celeste] You mean to testify?
- Yes.
- Okay.
[Deirdre] He just said, "Don't be nervous.
Just try to remember
what happened that night."
And I'm like, "I can't say
what happened that night,
because that's not
what was on the piece of paper."
She did not want to,
but she had to,
because she had given a sworn statement
to the police.
[Deanna] I blame Deirdre Jones.
I mean, I blame the police,
but I blame her
for not just sticking to the truth
and just saying, "No, I wasn't there."
And I understand being young
and being coerced into them saying,
"We're gonna take your kids away.
You're gonna go to jail for life.
You just gotta work with us."
But still, just reading it,
it just gets me.
[Chester] I know what I went through,
I know what they put me through.
So I can just imagine
what they put her through,
and I can see her folding
and agreeing to anything they said
because that's how she is.
She's a very candid person.
Never loud, she didn't drink.
She was always talking about her kids.
That's why I didn't hold any anger to her.
I just, more or less, like I said,
I've been disappointed
because she knew
what was going to happen to me.
[Alan]
We get Deirdre Jones' recantation in 2005.
That becomes the source of a new appeal.
That case goes through
the appellate courts,
the district attorney fights us
tooth and nail.
Um, eventually we're granted a hearing
that's not until, I think, almost 2011
that we actually are able to present
that testimony at court.
When I first met Alan,
he said, "I gotta tell you
about this Chester Hollman thing."
He had a hearing involving Deirdre Jones.
She was coming forward,
he was bringing her in,
so I made arrangements
to be in the courtroom that day.
[Celeste] What was that like,
knowing that you were going
into a courtroom again
to say that what you testified about
all those years before was not the truth?
[Deirdre] So all these years,
I didn't say anything.
I didn't talk about it, I had nightmares.
It was heavy. It was real heavy,
because it's like,
I have a friend in jail,
that he didn't do it.
This can't go on no longer.
There was a video screen
that was wheeled in on a cart,
and that's where Chester
was actually broadcast in
from the prison where he was staying,
and then there was Deirdre.
She looked different.
You know, she was a little,
naturally she was older.
But listening to her talking, explaining,
it brought a lot of things to light
that I wasn't truly aware of.
Hearing what they had done to her.
[John Martin]
Here was this woman who came in
to basically say
that the police were confusing her
and telling her
that he was a violent person,
maybe even connected to the mob,
and that she could be in danger,
that her child could be in danger
and that she should cooperate.
So she gave this testimony, and
It's seven years later,
it's still pretty vivid in my mind
watching Chester,
because Chester, on the screen
The guy collapsed. He was
[sighs]
Into his I mean, he just literally
collapsed with his head in his hands,
as if it was a moment
he'd been waiting for,
for years and years and years.
Then there was the detective.
My recollection of the detective
was it was
very short, very curt,
very "didn't happen the way she said it."
Defensive.
And he was on and off the stand
in ten minutes, tops.
Detective Baker, seeing him was, uh
I hate to ever say that I am angry.
Because I don't know
if I'm actually angry.
I'm hurt more than anything else.
But to see him get up there and
continue to lie all these years later.
I'm just like, damn
I'm looking at him and you know,
I wanted to punch him in the face.
That's what you want to do.
I mean, that's your first thought,
just punch him in the face.
He's the one,
him and that Detective Piree
are the guys that really caused all this
for me and my family.
I left that courtroom, thinking,
"Wow, this judge has a decision to make."
And it was later that day,
I either called Alan, or he called me.
I said, "So what's the next step?"
And he said, "She ruled."
I said, "What are you talking about?"
He said,
"Right from the bench. She ruled,"
which, to me, was just shocking.
[Alan] Courts, by and large, tend to view
recantations with great skepticism.
We can't just have convictions set aside
because someone's willing to come forward
and change their story
at any particular time.
So the judge basically
makes the determination
that she doesn't believe Deirdre Jones.
It points out, with a guy like Baker,
just how fundamentally flawed
the whole system is,
from arrest,
through grand jury presentation,
through trial, um,
through post-conviction relief.
Because if he admits
that he did something wrong,
he's lost his job,
and he could be prosecuted.
So once people lie,
they commit to the lie.
And there's no incentive
for them to give that up.
And once they shut
that evidentiary hearing down,
I kind of figured it was over for me.
And when I talked to Alan,
he said that unless we find
newly discovered evidence,
this was kind of like the end of the line.
And that was just like
you know
I can't describe it.
It's just hard, you know?
Like I said, the fact that
there's been so many let downs.
It's hard to really see
anything beyond here.
I try to, and like I said,
and then time to time,
I do envision myself outside of here.
But it's just really hard to do that.
[Deanna] You feel helpless,
that's what you feel like.
You feel helpless,
you don't know what to do.
I mean, when I say "feel helpless,"
every time we thought we were there,
we got a decline,
a denial of another appeal.
[John] Here we are in 2014, 2015,
and I became an editor.
One of the things that we talked about
was the idea that
Chester's case deserves scrutiny.
It's a 25-year-old murder in Philadelphia.
It's not a murder
that was super high profile at the time,
so we had to find a way to actually
make it about something bigger,
so I decided that Emilie Lounsberry
was the best person to do it
and then, Michaelle was a new reporter,
I like the idea of
getting reporters together
when the opportunity's there
and then, over the course
of the next year and a half,
they worked on the story.
[woman] Myself and my colleague,
Michaelle Bond,
we went to a lot of places.
The first time I met Andre,
it took a while to find him
and he just sat down and he said,
"You know, I just have felt guilty
about this case
for a long time."
It's hard to sleep, knowing
that you took somebody's life away.
I actually took that boy's life.
I'm sorry. I'd like to tell him,
personally, I'm sorry.
What I did was wrong.
[Emilie Lounsberry]
And we also interviewed Deirdre Jones.
[woman] This is Deirdre Jones.
Her testimony in 2012, when she recanted,
was the same as what she was telling us,
and so we found her to be credible
and, at least, sincere.
We knew that we had to talk
to Detective David Baker
because he was such a central figure.
He did sound He was a little defensive,
especially when I brought up
what Deirdre had said about what happened
and so that really grabbed me as,
you know, who do you believe, and when?
A lot of it was going back to our archives
in the Inquirer
and just kind of reading up
on how things were then.
[chatter over police radio]
[man]
In one week in the city of Philadelphia,
we've had 42 shootings
and 18 homicides.
[woman] The city of Philadelphia
is literally bleeding,
and it's not bleeding just because
of people with guns in their hands.
[Michaelle Bond]
The year that Chester Hollman was arrested
for Tae Jung Ho's murder,
there were 444 homicides that year.
This case was number 301.
[Emilie]
In the late '80s and into the '90s,
the crack epidemic hit very hard
and there were
all sorts of repercussions to that.
Crime went up, homicide detectives
were under immense pressure
to close cases.
- [man 1] Lying mother
- [man 2] You're too nice.
[man 1] Yeah?
Well, what do you expect me to do,
out here in front of all these people
at the Nazareth Hospital?
[Alan] It was an era that police tactics
were more brutal, more unexamined.
There was not as much oversight.
There was a tradition in Philadelphia,
particularly with homicides,
that there were abusive tactics
by the police.
The district attorney's office
had a very zero-sum policy,
which was, "We're gonna win at all costs."
[Emilie] Prosecutors rely on the police.
The police rely on the prosecutors.
[man] Hundreds of cases are in jeopardy,
because of police corruption.
[Emilie] In some of those cases,
there were accusations of efforts
to coerce witnesses into testifying.
You know,
there were false confessions.
No one wants to believe
that a prosecutor would ever
try to convict an innocent person.
[man] The accountability starts
in the police department,
but every one of these cases,
in which people were wrongfully accused
and imprisoned,
had to go through the judicial process,
and, unfortunately,
the mentality among too many judges
and too many district attorneys
is the same as the police:
the ends justify the means.
To the extent
when you talk about systemic,
there were pieces in place,
and you talk to experts and they say,
"There are potentially thousands of people
who are locked up, who are framed,
who are unjustly put away."
And it was in the process
of editing that story,
I think it was Emilie
who introduced the idea,
"Let's frame it around testilying,"
which is a word that's been bandied about
the courthouses for years
Lying goes on all the time
in the courthouse.
[Emilie]
One of the problems in the justice system
is how judges deal with recantation.
If you look at it
from the judge's point of view,
when someone recants their testimony,
it means that that person
has committed perjury in their presence,
because they either lied
at the first go-round,
or they're lying
when they change their story.
- This was the start of it.
- [man] Yeah.
This was the
This was the key, right here.
- Yeah, that started it.
- Once this started,
that was it. People started to listen.
We needed people to see this
for them to realize
there's an innocent person sitting in jail
and I think this was the start,
right here.
[Chester] When I saw it, first of all,
to see my picture on the front page was
You know, I said, "Okay,
now we're getting somewhere, finally."
I was thankful
to have the case put out there
for people to actually
start to really see,
because there were inmates here
that got the paper, the staff here,
so the conversation had begun.
That's when my hope was restored
a little bit.
And, you know,
it's just opened, you know,
a number of doors since then.
[Peter]
All of our cases are, people write to us.
We receive about 4,000 requests a year.
[woman] Good morning.
- [Alan] Hey, how are you?
- I'm good.
[Peter] In the Hollman case, you have
the Pennsylvania Innocence Project,
which has been working on the case
for some period of time,
and they worked with local lawyers
who had been working
on Mr. Hollman's behalf even longer.
I mean, as you know,
we have a lot of cases with the CIU
that we're working on, but Chester's case
is a little bit different for us,
um, partly because
of the strength of the evidence.
So it would be, as far as I know,
the first case that they've stood behind
and stood up and said,
"Yes, this is a wrongful conviction."
Right, and we went
to prior district attorneys, okay?
Two different administrations
and presented the same case, essentially.
Essentially the same case,
and one of them, you know,
I didn't even get a response from.
[Marissa] No, it was worse.
- The DA called me
- Okay.
and said, "Marissa, this is just
a run-of-the-mill recantation."
- Okay.
- "I don't understand
what the big deal is."
"A what? A run-of-the-mill"
Did you read this?
[Peter] One of the interesting things,
also, about the Hollman case
is if you did this kind of
root cause analysis,
you would see that
the district attorney's office didn't say,
"Wow, two people have recanted.
Maybe we should now
independently re-investigate
to see if there's any merit here."
But that's not the default
of the old office.
The default of the old office was,
"They're our adversaries!
We're gonna knock them down,
we're gonna beat them in court."
So what makes it clear
that this was the political
No matter what I have done
to try to exonerate Chester,
nothing has prevailed,
and there was one thing missing,
and it was something I could not create,
and that was politics.
The election of Larry Krasner,
and him honoring his commitment
to looking at cases like this
is what's made all the difference.
We cannot have a system where it's okay
for police to be unaccountable,
where it's okay for DAs
to be unaccountable.
What I see is another day
of mass incarceration.
I was a public defender,
state and federal,
and then I was
a criminal defense civil rights attorney
for 25 years after that,
so 30 years of doing trial work in Philly,
and the candidates who were running
were people I knew who did not represent
anything that would fix the situation,
so I thought, at 56 years of age,
it was worth a try.
Typically, a candidate like Larry Krasner:
zero chance of prevailing.
But because there was
a very divided field,
Larry generated enormous energy
within the progressive
political community.
He prevailed.
This is a mandate for a movement
that is loudly telling government
what it wants,
and what it wants
is criminal justice reform.
[man] Newly-elected district attorney
Larry Krasner
is speaking out for the first time
since firing 31 of his
assistant district attorneys last week.
He's decimated the Philadelphia
District Attorney's Office.
He has a great disdain and dislike
for law enforcement.
He let go of many prosecutors
his first week in.
All that while we're out there
trying to protect the community.
You know, I kind of think
the old guard dug its own grave,
because what they did
is they treated people so badly
and so unfairly.
I understand fear.
I understand concern.
I understand it better than most.
[Larry Krasner] Lynne Abraham
was district attorney for 19 years.
Her national reputation was
as the "Queen of Death."
She was in love with the death penalty.
It's a vindication of society's right
to exact the ultimate penalty
against those who would try
to bring society to its knees.
[Larry] She was the archetype
of the political prosecutor,
and that is not far
from the fascist ideal,
which is the strongman,
or, in her case, the strongwoman,
who, single-handedly,
is going to stop crime
and is going to do so
by any means necessary.
You know, this is Judge Dredd.
I dealt with Lynne Abraham,
I dealt with the Williams administration,
and these were people who just said,
you know, "Lock them up.
Seek the longest possible sentence.
Let's put as many people on death row
as we can."
That is an attitude that I saw,
over and over.
I saw it with some judges,
I saw it with prosecutors,
especially the ones
who were the most aggressive,
who really valued the conviction,
which is what the office valued,
so they were willing to cut corners,
and they were willing to push hard
and be coercive and get the answers
that they wanted to get.
I remember hearing a conversation
between an attorney
who was trying to talk to Roger King
about how he believes
his client was innocent,
and Roger responded,
as I'm sure he did many other times,
by just saying,
"They must be separated from society."
"They," whatever "they" are,
which probably means you're poor,
and might very well mean you're black,
or maybe "they"
are people who've had any contact
with the criminal justice system
in the past.
You know, whether it's a judge
or whether it's a jury,
uh, my job is the same.
[Alan] Roger King was the kind of
prosecutor who viewed his role
almost entirely
as an advocate for conviction.
He knew what he did,
and we'll be going with all that we have
for the death penalty.
[Larry] The oath is to seek justice.
For some people, justice has meant
maximizing charges, years and convictions,
but that's not what justice means.
Justice means that you try to do things
that are proportional,
and you try to do things
that are accurate.
If you're trying to do things
that are accurate,
that means you do not want
the guilty person who got away
to continue to get away,
and you also don't want
the innocent person to stay in jail.
'Cause that ain't right. I mean
Duh!
Yeah, we think it's good
if the system puts guilty people in jail,
and innocent people don't go to jail.
It's kind of basic, right?
So there used to be a thing here
called the conviction review unit.
What they actually did
is they looked at convictions
and said there was never a problem.
We wanted to go a different direction,
and so I got Patricia Cummings,
who had been the chief
of a conviction integrity-type unit
in Dallas.
We persuaded her
to be the head of our unit here.
One of the issues I'm having with Hollman
is I want to spend a little bit more time
dealing with the recantation issue for
the female passenger that was in the car.
[Larry] There are a lot of things
that are troubling
about the Chester Hollman case.
One of the difficulties
is the system values finality.
If we accept the notion that the mere fact
of recantation makes you a liar,
and that if you are a liar,
therefore you are not to be trusted,
so we will stick
with what we already have,
which is a conviction,
then what you're really doing
is you are incentivizing coercing
a witness into lying the first time.
And once you've achieved that,
you've achieved permanency.
I wonder, is there any more information
that could be provided to the judge now
than there was back then?
[Patricia] I've found some evidence
I don't think the defense had,
I don't think the judge had.
If, ultimately, it's something
that we decide we want to present,
I think it's super important
to make that very clear.
[Larry] It's kind of the point
of the whole case.
- Decisions were made on insufficient info.
- Right. Yeah.
I mean, I think she would certainly
want to hear additional information.
What we'll do is we'll pass this around
for everybody to just look at this.
As it turns out, Chester Hollman's vehicle
that he was in was a rental car,
but there was also
a bunch of other rental cars
that had been rented out
in the Philadelphia area
that were white Chevy Blazers,
the same year, and the first three letters
of the license plate were YZA.
I went to the courthouse to try to find
Chester Hollman's court file,
and one of the things I found
were multiple records
from Alamo Car Rental, one of which
I saw the name Denise Combs
on the rental agreement,
and she returned that Blazer
very, very shortly after this crime
at, like, five o'clock in the morning,
which I think is very odd,
and then I noticed
that Denise Combs had actually
been picked out of a photo array
as the possible driver.
This woman had a modus operandi
of renting cars for the purpose
of using them to commit crimes.
So we are at the Philadelphia Airport,
which is where both Blazers were rented.
And so I looked at the rest of
the Alamo records and Denise Combs' name
and it seems as though she had a history
of renting multiple cars from Alamo
and returning them damaged.
Something shady was probably going on
at the time.
So I went to talk to her, actually.
I showed up at her house one day
and I just wanted to know,
"Hey, is there a chance that you actually
were the person driving this car?"
I had police come to my house.
Yeah?
They came to my house about a homicide.
- Right.
- And they, uh, checked my vehicle.
They took the license plate down
and said somebody had my license plate
that was in a homicide.
And they took it, and that was it.
Do you know what cop that was?
I have no idea.
Right. And that was the end of it.
It was the end of it.
That was the end of it.
I was blown away.
We didn't know that the police
had actually gone to her house.
And so that was the first time
that I thought,
"Wait a minute, like,
there's gotta be something missing here."
Less than 24 hours after the murder,
the Philadelphia Police Department
received a tip
on their anonymous tip line.
The tip said, "The person involved
in the murder at 22nd and Chestnut
resides at 2114 Natrona Street."
Who resides at 2114 Natrona Street?
Denise Combs.
The detectives get this anonymous tip.
They go to her house.
They interview her.
They interview the other people
in the house,
all of whom deny any involvement
in the case.
They then take her photo
and show it to Andre Dawkins
in a photo array, and he identifies her.
Law enforcement had a lot of information
that they could have run down
to get to the truth.
And to me, what could be the smoking gun
is the fact that
the tipster doesn't mention anything
about a white Chevy Blazer.
He just says,
"These are the people who are involved,
this is the address to go to."
So when the detectives then go out
and speak to Combs,
they also investigated her connection
to a white Chevy Blazer.
And so they knew, okay,
independently of the tipster,
that this was a corroboration.
They had it,
but they didn't do anything with it,
because they were already wedded
to the first phony story
involving Hollman.
When you coerce a witness like Jones,
then you're stuck with it,
and it's inconceivable
that the investigation that ensued
was not completely brought to
the attention of the prosecuting attorney.
It was evidence that absolutely,
by Supreme Court rule,
Gerry Stein was entitled to have.
If I had had that information,
could've brought Denise Combs in,
could've questioned Denise Combs,
could've questioned the detective
on the witness stand
about that lead that they have.
And Andre Dawkins,
who's a stranger to Denise Combs,
identifies her picture.
We didn't have that information.
When they first told me
about Denise Combs,
I just knew that it was
too much of a coincidence.
They had already had me arrested so,
to turn around and say
these might be the potential suspects,
it just
that makes you, uh,
extremely mad.
I just think about my family, you know?
My mom and
they were actually out there
fighting for me
and these people knew
that these people were
probably the suspects.
That's the part that makes me so mad.
They had to go through that with me.
One of the things that we find
at the Innocence Project
is that there are certain prosecutors
or detectives
um, who engage in serial misconduct.
If we were a bank,
instead of the criminal justice system,
and we caught a teller embezzling funds
in a transaction,
they launch an audit, an investigation
into his other transactions.
That's what you'd do.
In industry, that's what you'd do,
in aviation and transportation,
that's what you'd do in all other
important avenues in our society,
except criminal justice.
And in the case of the prosecutor
in the Hollman case,
they already have evidence
of his misconduct in other cases.
[Alan] We've got these lists of cases
that Roger King did,
and it's about 100 cases
that we've been able to identify.
And I'm going through them
and looking for any similar situations
where there is misconduct.
- Yeah.
- Unfortunately.
Absolutely. I mean,
he got away with all kinds of things
that led to all of these
wrongful convictions
and, yeah, he was "win at all costs."
[Roger King] You have a witness
who's rather smug
and comfortable in the position,
so what you wanna do is
upset his sense of balance.
In other words, get in his face.
Raise my voice after him.
Challenge.
Challenge his masculinity a little bit.
Make him respond to me.
I remember a particular event
between Roger and myself
in a homicide case.
Roger was handling it,
and it was only a few days after Roger had
kind of pulled a trick on the taxpayer
by going into the DROP program,
meaning he got
a whole bunch of money to retire
because it was going
to save the city money in the long run,
and then he was re-hired the next day.
And so I started chewing on him
in this court hearing,
and when we got into it pretty good
in front of the judge,
he stated, on the record, something about,
"I had better up my life insurance."
He said it kinda like that too,
'cause he was very much
the gravelly-voiced preacher.
But his reputation was
for having no regard for the truth,
uh, having no regard for the rules,
because if there was a trick
he could pull, he would pull it.
[Celeste] He prided himself
in his conviction record,
especially the death row cases.
He was basically pegged as
the prosecutor of black defendants
in Philadelphia under Lynne Abraham.
I think Lynne Abraham,
we know her history,
and knowing that she had
a black prosecutor in her office,
who was willing to go
to all of these lengths
to put people behind bars, you know,
I think that she used Roger King
in that way,
- and he certainly was fine with that.
- Yeah.
[Celeste] So the Jimmy Dennis case
is a really good case
to talk about Roger King
and what he did.
This actually happened in 1991.
He was arrested,
same thing as Chester Hollman,
um, and as far as his case goes,
he was sentenced to death,
and he spent 25 and a half years
on death row,
and finally Judge Brody said that,
yeah, Roger King withheld
multiple pieces of evidence
that would have led
to a difference outcome in trial.
[Alan] In the Lex Street case,
wasn't there a coerced confession?
[Celeste]
There was a coerced confession,
and then there was
some faulty eyewitness testimony
and so that's similar.
I sent a freedom of information request
to the FBI about Roger King.
The FBI was notified in 1987
that Roger King had a pattern
of prosecutorial misconduct
and involved specific detectives in this,
but the investigation was closed,
and so this was a couple years
before Chester Hollman was arrested.
I think he felt like
he was completely untouchable
and so that's why he continued
to do exactly what he did,
because he was getting
all of these accolades,
all of these awards,
and even when he passed,
you know,
all the obituaries are so positive.
I think it's important for us
to have this list,
because when we see the judge,
we want her to know
that this is not a debatable thing.
I know the Lord says forgive,
but
I want to forgive him,
but I can't forgive him
for what he's done to my son.
[Deanna] I mean, there's been
so much stripped from our family,
because of their deeds,
what they've done to my brother.
I mean, my mom passed away,
my brother wasn't able to be here to see,
didn't even go to the funeral.
His grandparents passed away,
he couldn't go to the funeral.
My son passed away,
he couldn't go to the funeral.
I just, like There's just so much
just so much that he's just taken.
[gospel blues song playing]
- And I want ♪
- I wanna ♪
- I wanna ♪
- ♪I wanna be free ♪
- And I want ♪
- I wanna ♪
- ♪I wanna ♪
- I wanna be free ♪
- Loose my shackles ♪
- Loose my shackles ♪
- Off my feet ♪
- Off of my feet ♪
- Because ♪
- I just wanna ♪
- Wanna ♪
- Wanna be free ♪
Tell some judge ♪
- I wanna ♪
- I wanna be free ♪
- Talk to the DA ♪
- I wanna ♪
- Just tell him ♪
- I wanna be free ♪
♪that it's time ♪
- I wanna ♪
- I wanna ♪
I wanna be free ♪
- And I'm gonna ♪
- I'm gonna ♪
- I'm gonna ♪
- I'm gonna be free ♪
When you dig one ditch ♪
- I wanna be free ♪
- ♪you better dig two ♪
'Cause the trap you set ♪
Might be for you ♪
- And I want ♪
- I wanna ♪
- I wanna ♪
- I wanna be free ♪
- Well, I'm gonna ♪
- I'm gonna ♪
- I'm gonna ♪
- I'm gonna be free ♪
I believe in my heart ♪
I'm gonna ♪
Gonna be free ♪
As we stand here before you tonight,
we just wanna talk to you,
from a family, but also for my brother,
being his voice, 'cause he can't be here.
My brother has been in jail for 28 years.
And he thought, "Nobody's gonna hear me.
It's like the coffin is closed.
I'm done."
And now look at it.
You're sitting here today,
you're hearing us, you know?
The appeals are in a status of,
"About to be reviewed."
Twenty-eight years
We have so much momentum behind us,
people supporting us.
Not just family,
I mean, like, legal people,
and we know that by keeping
his story alive, keeping it out there,
he's gonna come home.
Life is not over
until it's over.
As long as there's breath in my body
[voice breaks]I promised my wife
that I will fight,
'cause she said, "Don't give up.
Bring him home."
[cheers from crowd]
That's what we've been living on. Faith.
Because that [sighs]
[whispers] It's all right, Dad.
I never thought this day would come
It's coming.
- but it's coming.
- It's coming.
- He's coming home.
- It's coming.
[Deanna]
Thank you, everybody. Thank you.
[Alan] A lot's sort of happened
in the last couple days.
I wanted to kind of bring you up to date.
We spent a lot of time
going over the record
and going over the evidence,
including the evidence
from the alternative suspects.
But we didn't stop there.
One other thing that happened
really recently,
Patricia Cummings learned that
there's a box of evidence
that was preserved.
She got that from
the police evidence locker
and found that there was nail clippings
from the victim.
A lot of times,
in the course of a struggle,
the victim scratches somebody
and gathers that person's
biological matter, their skin or whatever,
which can be tested for DNA.
- [Deanna] Right.
- So in this case,
the police actually preserved
the nail clippings of the victim.
So when Patricia got that, she sent it
to the Philadelphia police lab
to be tested, to see if there was DNA,
and they found DNA,
and they found a sufficient amount of it.
Part of it was the victim's,
which is not surprising
- [Mr. Hollman] Mmm.
- but part of it was a third person.
And as a result of that test,
they were able
to exclude Chester from that DNA.
It's powerful evidence.
And it's objective evidence.
It's scientific evidence.
- Right.
- [Alan] Okay?
So it really can't be attacked.
[Deanna] Mm-hmm.
- And we came up with a set of facts, um
- [phone rings]
- That's him.
- [Alan] Oh.
[woman's voice] To accept charges,
press one.
Hey, son.
[Chester] What's up?
Nothing much,
we're at the lawyer's office.
[Alan] Chester?
- Yes?
- It's Alan.
- It's perfect timing.
- Okay.
- [Deanna] It is.
- [Mr. Hollman] Yeah.
Hey, how much time we got?
I got a lot to tell you.
- Uh, I've got a few minutes, I think.
- So, listen, we filed
Patricia Cummings, the prosecutor,
filed the answer to the petition.
In the answer,
what Patricia says is the following:
"Based upon our investigation,
we believe
there's a significant likelihood
that Chester Hollman is innocent."
Okay? So that is the district attorney's
filing with the court and the judge.
That's the first paragraph of her answer.
Alright?
Um, so that's pretty strong.
It doesn't get much stronger than that.
And then we saw the judge today.
So she said
that there's a lot for her to review.
She scheduled a decision date
for July 30th,
um, when she'll make a ruling.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
I missed the big moment
of you coming out, huh!
- [Chester] Yeah!
- Oh, my God!
Let's go! Let's go!
- [indistinct chatter]
- [man] Let's go home.
We've got to go across the bridge.
[Alan]
There you go, the view from this side.
[Chester] Oh, man, it's great.
Well, if you stand over this way
a little bit and look through the trees,
that's where my cell was.
Look straight across, it was right there.
[Chester sighs]
Yeah, we made it, didn't we?
- [chuckles]
- Yeah, we did.
Yeah.
- [Chester sighs happily]
- [Deanna] Very much.
It's outside!
- [Chester sniffs]
- [Deanna] It's alright.
- It's alright.
- It's okay.
I'm fine, Dad, come on. I'm fine.
It's done.
[Chester sighs]
Done.
Talk about the feeling that you have,
walking out for the first time?
If I'm completely honest,
I was scared, nervous, you know.
Unsure of what, you know,
what lies ahead for me, you know.
There's a lot of things
that I'm unaware of out here, you know.
To be here, it just felt like, you know,
"Finally," you know.
I'm just very happy and thankful,
and, you know, looking forward to, uh,
starting the rest of my life, you know?
[Chester laughs]
Hey, Aunt Sandy, how you doing?
- How you doing?
- I'm good. I'm good now.
- Great now.
- Oh, I'm so glad to see you.
You too. We're going over there, right?
We'll be there soon, right? Yeah,
we're coming. We'll be there soon.
- Okay, I can't wait to hold you.
- Alright.
[laughter]
Alright, Aunt Sandy!
For so long, you know,
I just felt like no one believed in me,
and these people came along
and they fought so hard for me,
and here I am.
I don't know how to repay
a debt like that.
What you guys did for me, I just
[Alan] This is what needs to be done.
Just doing what needs to be done.
[Chester]
I'm gonna make something of my life
and I'm gonna make these people proud,
you know, that they fought for me,
I can promise you that.
They're gonna be proud.
I promise you that.
- [laughter]
- [man] Runs in the family!
I just said to myself, I just don't want
the time that I've done to be for nothing.
I just don't wanna go home
and sit on a couch
and just, you know,
say, "Okay, now I'm out."
So I gotta figure out something to do.
Somebody gonna take this man home?
- [man] Yeah!
- [laughs] Like
[man] Yes.
[Chester] All the years I've lost, I want
to try to do something going forward,
whatever it is, to bring awareness
to the injustices, you know.
It happens more often than people think.
I know I just have to,
you know, keep going.
Like I said, I don't wanna
let this be for nothing.
[closing theme music playing]