Freedom Is Everything | BONUS | Season 2

Burden of Guilt introduces Glenn Davis and Larry Delmore—two men wrongfully convicted of murder in Louisiana and sentenced to life at Angola for a crime they didn’t commit. What follows is a harrowing story of survival, buried evidence, and the years-long battle to expose a wrongful conviction. You can reach out to the Burden of Guilt team at [email protected]. For more Burden of Guilt, follow us on Instagram @glasspodcasts. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:34Speaker 01

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• 1:32Nancy Glass?

  Hi, I'm Nancy Glass. In season two of Burden of Guilt, we heard Jermaine Hudson's story. But his wrongful conviction was not an anomaly in the Louisiana justice system. Today, we're going to introduce you to men who shared similar experiences. These are men who maintained their innocence from the very beginning. They were eventually exonerated. They got their names cleared. They got their records expunged. But they would never get back the years of their lives they lost to a system that got it wrong. In this bonus episode, we hear their stories, what happened in the courtrooms that convicted them, the years they spent fighting to prove their innocence, and what it took to finally walk free.

• 2:20Nancy Glass?

  In 1992, Glenn Davis's grandmother got a knock on her door.

• 2:25Speaker 04

  The homicide division in Jefferson Parish bum rushed my grandma's house. And she said when she opened the door, one of the detectives had his gun pointing at her.

• 2:36Nancy Glass?

  They were asking where Glenn was, and they used the name the neighborhood knew him by, Chocolate.

• 2:42Speaker 04

  What Chocolate, what Chocolate, you know, that's my nickname. And she said, well, what you looking for him for? You're not here. And said they wanted to question me about a murder.

• 2:53Nancy Glass?

  An alleged drug dealer was shot in a drive-by, and detectives were looking for Glenn and his two cousins, Larry Delmore and Terrence Myers.

• 3:02Speaker 04

  At the time, you know, we had these beepers, pagers. And my daddy paged me. And he was like, man, homicide just left from my mama's house looking for you. He was like, what's going on? You kill somebody? And I was like, nah, man, I don't know nothing about a murder.

• 3:21Nancy Glass?

  A murder? No way. Glenn was a good kid. He stayed out of trouble. He had been an athletic superstar in high school.

• 3:30Speaker 04

  I grew up playing sports, football, basketball, run track, baseball, year-round. My aspirations was definitely to hopefully become one of those athletes, because, you know, that was like the biggest, most safest opportune way for somebody to elevate up out of that community.

• 3:55Nancy Glass?

  Glenn knew that a murder accusation would change everything. His dad suggested they go to the homicide bureau together to clear his name.

• 4:05Speaker 04

  I was like, all right, cool. Come on, let's go clear this up. When I got to the homicide bureau, you know, they put me in the interrogation room.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  And I could remember it like it was yesterday. Detective Thurman, he went to talking about the murder. I was like, man, I don't know nothing about no murder. I didn't commit a murder. Then he asked me, he said, do you mind signing these papers? And speaking in this tape recorder?

• 4:34Nancy Glass?

  An alarm went off in Glenn's head.

• 4:36Speaker 04

  It was like, man, if I sign those papers, I'm admitting to this murder that Detective Thurman's talking about. They can doctor the tape recorder and make it say, yeah, I committed it, even after me saying, no, I didn't commit it. So I just pushed it all on the floor.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  I'm thinking, there's only so much that, you know, that they can do to me. They're not gonna be able to abuse me and beat on me and all of that. So I told him, I was like, look, cut the chase. It's either one or two things gonna happen. You guys gonna either take me to the parish jail over here in Gretna, or you gonna let me walk out of this door?

• 5:24Nancy Glass?

  Police took him to the parish jail. He and his two cousins, Larry and Terrence, were arrested for murder. The three young men were prosecuted on the say-so of one eyewitness, someone who said they saw them shooting out of a car window.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  I'm 18 years old, man. This the time for me to be transitioning from a boy to a man. But I got to figure out a way to not go to prison for the rest of my life and grow from a boy to a man.

• 6:00Nancy Glass?

  The three of them were tried together, and they were all found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola. Glenn's cousin, Larry Delmore, who had also been wrongfully convicted of the murder, vividly remembers the day he was sentenced.

• 6:21Speaker 04

  I went off on the judge. They handcuffed me and they put me in a bed to tape my hands in.

• 6:36Speaker 05

  Make me hear that sentence. And I refused to hear that sentence. And I'm like, you know, we didn't do this. And I'm cursing and they're cursing. And it is like, it was a big old outburst. And my mother's crying and our family's support that's crying. And it was like, take him out the court.

• 6:59Nancy Glass?

  Court personnel needed to restrain him. But who could blame him for his outburst? He knew he was innocent and that his cousins were innocent too.

• 7:08Speaker 05

  When I came back in the courtroom, they grabbed my head and it was like, you're gonna hear this sentence? And...

• 7:20Speaker 05

  Did you hear his sentence? That's the life. And it was like,

• 7:26Speaker 05

  you took my fucking life?

• 7:30Speaker 05

  You know how I feel to be convicted of murder? You know, they were shot, nobody, your fucking life.

• 7:41Nancy Glass?

  More than 20 years later, you can hear how much this moment still affects Larry Delmore. When he got to Angola, he felt broken. He didn't see the point of living.

• 7:52Speaker 05

  I used to just ask God to take my life because it's like, I'm not asking you for no forgiveness for something. I do, I lost all my faith. So it seemed like soon as I got through all of that, it was like, I don't care about nothing no more.

• 8:13Nancy Glass?

  Glenn and Larry were put to work at Angola. You've heard about the hard labor and farm lines there. The cousins endured this labor while knowing they didn't belong there.

• 8:25Speaker 04

  I was an innocent man, thrusted in the land. It was like I was thrown in a time warp.

• 8:34Speaker 04

  And I was thrown back like 400 years ago in slavery. Because that's what it depicted. That's what it signified. It signified slavery. Being innocent and having to pick cotton and having to take a garden hoe and scrape the grass down to the dirt, down pathways that run for miles, digging ditches, run for miles. I mean, I had to do what I had to do because I didn't want to crash out to the point to where I couldn't help myself. So I had to stand back and observe.

• 9:18Nancy Glass?

  Glenn realized he would have to take matters into his own hands if he and his cousins were ever going to be exonerated for the crime they didn't commit.

• 9:30Nancy Glass?

  After a few years in prison, Glenn started spending more time in the law library.

• 9:36Speaker 04

  I applied to work in the law library as an inmate counsel, which is a jailhouse lawyer. And based upon my record, they granted it to me.

• 9:48Speaker 04

  My job was to assist guys with their cases. I didn't have to go out and pick cotton no more. I didn't have to go cook grits in the morning. And that's when I was able to really dig. Because all my time was right there in the law library.

• 10:08Nancy Glass?

  Rifling through law books and learning from other inmates armed Glenn with a wealth of information. And then, one friend who also worked in the law library looked at Glenn's records and noticed they were incomplete. He said, "Buddy, I only gave you a partial police report."

• 10:27Speaker 04

  He said, "Man, your police report could be 500 pages." He said, "All they gave you was those 20." He said, "Bro, write a letter to the custodian of the records room down there in Gretna." So I wrote that letter and asked them for every document pertaining to my case number. And lo and behold, they sent me a box.

• 10:53Nancy Glass?

  That box was over a foot tall, filled to the brim with hundreds and hundreds of pages relevant to this case.

• 11:00Speaker 04

  It was full of pages, page after page after page. Man, I never saw none of this. I never knew none of this stuff existed. So, you know, I'm sitting there and I'm just going through the pages after page. And I'm like, "Man, I got to read this stuff with a fine two comb."

• 11:19Nancy Glass?

  It took Glenn weeks to go through the evidence that had never been presented by his lawyer at the trial.

• 11:26Speaker 04

  I caught the chills because if we had these documents at trial, we could have showed the jury like I was an innocent man.

• 11:35Nancy Glass?

  This was a turning point. Glenn finally had something that could prove his innocence. He just needed someone who would listen.

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• 12:24Speaker 06

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• 12:37Speaker 07

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• 13:12Speaker 06

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• 13:25Speaker 08

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• 13:39Speaker 09

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• 13:50Speaker 08

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• 13:55Speaker 10

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• 14:01Speaker 08

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• 14:23Nancy Glass?

  While working at the Angola Prison Law Library, Glenn Davis taught himself about the legal appeal process. He requested evidence from his case and spent weeks combing through documents he believed proved his innocence. And it wasn't just about overturning his conviction, but also the convictions of his two cousins.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  I filed my post-conviction relief application and like as soon as they got it, they just denied it. They didn't open it, read it, just denied it and sent a letter. You've been denied. I was my own representation at the time. I had to take it up to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. And same thing, denied. It took them two weeks. So I took my post conviction up to Louisiana Supreme Court, and it took them about 18 months to deny me.

• 15:17Nancy Glass?

  But he wasn't giving up. He escalated the appeal to a higher court.

• 15:23Speaker 04

  That's where the turnaround came in. Now, I was just getting in contact with the Innocence Project in New Orleans.

• 15:31Nancy Glass?

  Glenn heard about the Innocence Project from another inmate.

• 15:34Speaker 04

  He telling me about, man, look, I went, you know, met with these lawyers, and he telling me the criteria. And I just took it and wrote them a letter.

• 15:43Nancy Glass?

  Glenn didn't wait for a reply. He was in the middle of filing another appeal himself. And for the first time, a judge replied with something that wasn't a denial.

• 15:55Speaker 04

  And the federal judge, her exact words in that order was, "You have merit." When she said, "I have merit," I thought I had won the lottery. And I sent that order to the Innocence Project, and one of the attorneys at the time came to visit me. And her exact word to me was, "Man, you hit the lottery."

• 16:24Nancy Glass?

  Once Glenn started to work with the Innocence Project, he made sure his cousin was on board, too. Here's Larry.

• 16:31Speaker 04

  He was like, "Look, I'm doing all this law work. I'm an inmate counsel now. I done learned the law. Let me handle it, and I'll bring you home."

• 16:41Nancy Glass?

  Here's what the lawyers found. The state's key eyewitness, the one they'd built their entire case around, he wasn't even close enough to see the shooting. That brought his whole testimony into question. But that was just the beginning. Hidden in the files were statements pointing to another suspect, a man named Derek Richardson, who had allegedly told people he was responsible for the murder. Derek drove a car that matched the one witnesses described leaving the scene that night. And the lawyer for Glenn, Larry, and Terrence was also the lawyer for Derek on another case, a clear conflict of interest. The Innocence Project was able to uncover all of this.

• 17:24Speaker 04

  When they told me that they had been investigating and they had went, and when they said they had talked to a few of the victim families and this and that, I knew it was serious.

• 17:40Nancy Glass?

  In October 2004, an appeals court ordered a hearing, a chance to reexamine the convictions. It took four years for that hearing to finally happen. At that point, Glenn and his two cousins had been in prison for 14 years.

• 17:58Speaker 04

  I felt like I was gonna die there. But you know the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other shoulder? The angel put me in the chokehold and he was like, "Look, you've come too far and it's gonna happen for you. Just be patient." And that's what I did.

• 18:16Nancy Glass?

  And when that hearing finally got underway four years later, the judge found the evidence pointing to Glenn's innocence had been withheld. On February 16, 2007, that judge reversed Glenn Davis's conviction.

• 18:35Nancy Glass?

  Glenn's cousins Larry Delmore and Terrence Myers filed their own post-conviction petitions based on the same evidence, and their convictions were reversed a year later. All three men received $480,000 in compensation from the state. Unfortunately, cousin Terrence died nearly two years after his exoneration. Glenn wants more than money. He wants the state to do better.

• 19:04Speaker 04

  The state doesn't give apologies. They don't. I haven't seen it yet. Nobody apologized to me. I don't even care though. They can keep their apology. I'm just elated at the fact that I'm alive and I'm free.

• 19:22Nancy Glass?

  His cousin Larry shares the same sentiment, the absolute joy of getting his freedom back. He's traveled the world and he's been able to reconnect with family.

• 19:34Speaker 05

  When you see all of these people that you love and you respect, and they see the man that you've become, that gives you the joy, and now I'm healing.

• 19:48Nancy Glass?

  But even in his happiest moments, Larry still struggles with what's been taken from him. Trauma resonates.

• 19:56Speaker 05

  I put myself back in that prison, and that's that mental prison. And then at times, I done been so depressed. After I've been doing good, I've been feeling good, and it'd be like, "Man, I wish God would take me now, where I could go before I get into depression or get into things, and I start being a non-believer." But my faith in God, I wouldn't do it. I done embraced so many people because so many people embraced me. And I got a list of people I can call late at night if I need to talk.

• 20:40Nancy Glass?

  Glenn is enjoying his life, but he's always on the lookout for anything that would threaten his freedom.

• 20:47Speaker 04

  Freedom is everything. Just to be able to go abroad, you know, freedom is I can go open my refrigerator when I want. Freedom is I don't have to vote on my TV. It's mine. I watch what I want. With your freedom, you're able to branch out. You're able to, you know, be that octopus. I can do this and I can do that. That's what freedom is for me. And anybody who try to do anything to put me in a position where my freedom gonna be relinquished, I promise to never talk to them ever again.

• 21:52Speaker 11

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• 22:49Speaker 02

  Network freedom and flexibility, that's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.