The Front Gate | EP 3 | Season 2

Bobby Gumpright finally explains the lie he told on March 1, 1999—and how he crafted a story that cost Jermaine Hudson decades of freedom. Jermaine describes surviving his years in Angola. And a closer look at courtroom testimony exposes Bobby’s manipulation of the jury. You can reach out to the Burden of Guilt team at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. For more Burden of Guilt, follow us on Instagram @glasspodcasts https://www.instagram.com/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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• 2:07Nancy Glass?

  When Jermaine Hudson talks about his time spent in Angola, he doesn't sulk about what happened behind bars. But he mourns what his life came to be, all because of a lie.

• 2:19Speaker 07

  I had a hard heart toward the situation that I was in. I had a hard heart because I wasn't being heard. I wasn't believed.

• 2:33Nancy Glass?

  He entered prison as a young father with so much life ahead of him. Once a 99-year sentence sealed his life away, he had to focus on survival. And survival meant shutting down, letting go of what mattered most.

• 2:49Speaker 07

  It was like out of sight, out of mind. I never called home complaining about anything. I never cried about anything. I took it in stride.

• 3:01Nancy Glass?

  Taking it in stride was how Jermaine got around the pain. But no matter how much he braved his circumstances, there was no outrunning his reality.

• 3:11Speaker 07

  The most painful part of my existence there was knowing that I was serving a 99-year sentence for something that I didn't do.

• 3:31Nancy Glass?

  I'm Nancy Glass. This is Season Two, A Burden of Guilt. Episode Three, The Front Gate. Earlier this season, we told you that an enormous lie put a young man, Jermaine Hudson, in prison for 99 years. In this episode, we're going to break it down. Jermaine's 99-year sentence was in one of the worst prisons in the United States, Louisiana's Angola Prison. We obtained the transcript of his sentencing. The judge's words are read by a voice actor. Mr. Hudson, you've been found guilty by a jury of the offense of armed robbery.

• 4:15Nancy Glass?

  And considering Mr. Hudson's prior criminal history, it is the sentence of this court that... You serve 99 years in the Department of Corrections at hard labor without the benefit of probation, parole, or suspension of sentence.

• 4:36Nancy Glass?

  Jermaine was led out of the courtroom while his girlfriend Kristin watched in shocked silence. Those 99 years were also a life sentence for Kristin and their daughter.

• 4:48Speaker 00

  They just took my life away from me just like that.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  I was numb after that.

• 4:54Nancy Glass?

  When Jermaine was first sentenced, Kristin held out hope that he would win his case on appeal and come back home. She missed him every day.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  His touch, the comfort, the friend, the respect and the protection. Like, he made me feel loved, seen, beautiful. And he gave me wisdom. He taught me a lot. He taught me a lot. I went into depression after he left. I gained a lot. I gained like three sizes in less than three months.

• 5:32Nancy Glass?

  And as time passed, Jermaine missed milestones in his daughter's life.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Him not being there, missing out on a lot of my first steps.

• 5:45Speaker 00

  And then she just remind me of him every single day. I just try to remind her when she got old enough to understand that, you know, she had a great father.

• 5:57Nancy Glass?

  For Kristin, visiting Jermaine in Angola was heartbreaking. Every time she did it, she would leave emotionally destroyed.

• 6:07Speaker 00

  It was just hard to go see him, knowing he wasn't coming home.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  I had to block him out.

• 6:15Nancy Glass?

  Or I think it would have just been harder for me to do it.

• 6:25Nancy Glass?

  Jermaine wanted Kristen to move on while he was in prison. He wanted her to find happiness and focus on raising their daughter.

• 6:35Speaker 07

  I told her to go on with her life.

• 6:38Speaker 07

  Because there was nothing I can do for you. I'm not about to be a burden on you. All I ask you to do is make a promise to me. Make a promise to me that you will not allow my daughter to get in them streets. Keep her in school and raise her the right way. And keep me in touch with her. That's all I ask you to do.

• 7:01Speaker 07

  I was a father. I was a young kid, but I was a father.

• 7:10Nancy Glass?

  His daughter Jeremia grew up knowing her father mostly as a story. I knew I had a dad. I knew he was the active dad. They let me know what kind of man he was, how he always had me. Everywhere he went, he just loved his daughter. So they just always kept his name alive. They just always kept his memories alive. Whenever she did visit him in Angola with her mom, it just made her miss him more. I feel like I'm about to cry.

• 7:41Nancy Glass?

  Because I hate talking about it. Because it still affects me. And sometimes I don't realize. It still affects me to this day.

• 7:53Nancy Glass?

  Jermaine says the pain of being separated from his child with no way to get to her was almost too unbearable.

• 8:03Speaker 07

  I tried to keep my mind off of society. I tried to do my best to not worry about what's going on on the outside world. Because that can play a big factor into your mental state.

• 8:22Nancy Glass?

  If Jermaine let himself think about his family, he would go to a very dark place. So instead, he focused on something that felt within his control: surviving Angola.

• 8:37Speaker 07

  You got to be, by the grace of God, to leave out of that place, healthy. Everything about Angola is filthy. It's contaminated.

• 8:47Nancy Glass?

  This isn't just Jermaine's opinion. Angola, also known as the Louisiana State Penitentiary, has a long, well-documented history of disgusting living conditions, legal challenges over inadequate medical care, and a high number of deaths compared with other US prisons.

• 9:08Speaker 07

  The spoons was like somebody been chewing on them. The plates got cracks in them. Old food in them, they not properly washing it. When I really realized that, I didn't go back to that kitchen no more.

• 9:21Nancy Glass?

  According to lawsuits filed on behalf of inmates, many of these issues, such as delayed or denied medical treatment, have been described in court rulings and independent reporting as preventable, the result of systemic failures at Angola.

• 9:38Speaker 07

  Lot of guys died in there. Cancer, stomach cancer, hepatitis. When I say Angola is horrible, it's horrible living condition.

• 9:54Nancy Glass?

  There are only two ways out of Angola: out the front, meaning release or transfer, or by being wheeled to the morgue and usually buried on site. One former warden said, "We bury more people than leave out the front gate."

• 10:13Speaker 07

  I came here to do one thing and one thing only, to leave this place the same way I came. I was at that front gate.

• 10:20Nancy Glass?

  But death is a constant presence at the prison. Week after week, Jermaine watched friends and people who kept him sane take their last breath.

• 10:32Speaker 07

  They got a prediction rate that 85% of the inmates is going to die there. They have like six, seven cemeteries in that place. For you to die there and no one's coming to get your body, that mean you get buried on prison grounds. So that mean you not free. Your soul is still incarcerated.

• 10:59Nancy Glass?

  After Jermaine's trial in 2000, he held some hope that his 99-year sentence would be overturned. His attorney, public defender Don Donnelly, filed a motion for an appeal. Jermaine couldn't afford a private attorney, so a nonprofit called The Louisiana Appellate Project took over his representation. The appeal was based on three issues where Jermaine and his appellate lawyer felt the court had erred. The first was Donnelly never put Jermaine's alibi witness on the stand. Remember what Kristen's sister, Dwan, said in the last episode?

• 11:35Speaker 02

  He said, "I couldn't testify." And I kept asking him why, and he couldn't give me a valid reason why.

• 11:41Nancy Glass?

  Donnelly didn't even meet Jermaine's alibi witness, Dwan, until the morning of the trial, and then refused to call her, telling the judge he knew the alibi witness would lie on the stand. The second was a discrepancy in Bobby's ID of Jermaine. Bobby claimed he got a good look at Jermaine's face up close. Here's some of the court testimony read by voice actors.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  From the time you pull up to this person who asked you when the bus passes, until you're no longer looking at his face, how long is this period? A minute, two minutes. A minute or two minutes you're focusing.

• 12:23Nancy Glass?

  On his face? Yes, sir. Considering that this was an armed robbery, that's a lot of time. Enough time to notice that Jermaine had some distinguishing features, like 12 gold teeth and a noticeable scar under his eye that he's had since he was a kid. But Bobby didn't mention any of these features when he described the attack to the police. And that discrepancy never came up at trial. And finally, the appeal argued, the 99-year sentence was grossly disproportionate to the crime of stealing $100 at gunpoint. While Bobby was afraid and even traumatized, he wasn't hurt.

• 13:09Nancy Glass?

  Despite those arguments, Jermaine's appeal was denied. And after that, no one would take on his appeal again.

• 13:21Nancy Glass?

  There's one more thing about Jermaine's appeal that we want to share with you. It was a shocking mistake in the records that we saw with our own eyes. And that mistake may have had devastating consequences.

• 13:36Speaker 07

  They put charges in my record that I've never even been arrested for, that never existed.

• 13:43Speaker 07

  They said that I was found guilty of two first-degree murders that was later dropped down to manslaughter.

• 13:51Nancy Glass?

  Jermaine is right. We got a copy of this record, a miraculous feat considering how many in this case were destroyed or missing. But on those documents we found, we saw two counts of first-degree murder dropped down to a plea bargain for manslaughter. But here's the thing. That didn't happen. The charges are printed on the page in black and white, but at some point, someone circled them in pen and hand-wrote on the margins, "Does not apply to Mr. Hudson."

• 14:25Nancy Glass?

  I don't know about you, but this just blows my mind. How is it possible that someone accidentally has two manslaughter convictions on their record? We wondered, not only how was this mistake made, but when was it caught? Did the appeals court know this was wrong? Why not write a separate memo retracting that information? Instead, there's a handwritten note on the side of the page, "Does not apply to Mr. Hudson." No date, no signature, no explanation. If Jermaine had actually killed two people, a 99-year sentence might begin to make sense. But he hadn't. Those convictions didn't exist.

• 15:08Speaker 07

  I know that was one of the biggest reasons why I couldn't really get my case reviewed because they had this in my records.

• 15:17Nancy Glass?

  We contacted both prosecutors in Jermaine's case. Neither was willing to talk to us. It's difficult to imagine how a mistake this consequential could have been made.

• 15:29Speaker 07

  I tried my best to get those answers. I never got those answers.

• 15:37Nancy Glass?

  After his appeal was denied, Jermaine was determined not to give in to despair. His goal was to stay alive.

• 15:47Speaker 07

  My first three to four years there, I was stressing a lot. You know, I was frustrated and I found myself getting into a lot of trouble. But then I calmed myself down. I say, "You're not gonna go home like that. You gonna eat the end up crazy in a body bag. You gotta swap it up." So I started going to church, and Angola was the first place I got baptized.

• 16:20Nancy Glass?

  He was actually baptized twice.

• 16:22Speaker 07

  The first time I got baptized, I got out that water and I told the pastor, I said, "I don't feel this." I said, "Give me a year. I still got some things I need to figure out, man."

• 16:38Speaker 07

  He said, okay. Came back that next year and got baptized. I said, okay, now I'm ready.

• 16:45Nancy Glass?

  Jermaine had a goal in sight. And with that clarity, he changed how he approached life inside prison.

• 16:53Speaker 07

  I started educating myself, getting myself in educational vocational programs, generator school, welding school. I've learned how to rebuild generators. I learned how to do plumbing. I've learned HVAC. When I started to educate myself, everything was a change. It kept my mind at ease.

• 17:19Nancy Glass?

  But as hard as Jermaine tried, there would be moments where the reality of his situation was just overwhelming.

• 17:29Speaker 07

  I used to run the yard a lot, but I just stopped in the middle of the yard and I screamed. I'm like, ah, what is going on? I'm like, Lord, please send me a sign. This can't be the end of my life. This can't be my final destination. This can't be. As the years start passing, I'm like, Lord, I didn't do this and you know I didn't do this. What can I possibly have done to deserve this?

• 18:07Speaker 07

  I know I didn't do anything that heinous to deserve this kind of pain.

• 18:15Nancy Glass?

  He hadn't done anything to deserve this sentence in this notoriously harsh prison.

• 18:21Speaker 07

  I lost my life for nothing.

• 18:27Nancy Glass?

  While Jermaine was in prison in Angola, he knew he was innocent. The law got the wrong guy. The person behind the crime, the real perpetrator, was still out there. What he didn't know was that everything was a fabrication, a lie, a story concocted by a young man named Bobby Gumpright.

• 18:49Speaker 03

  I thought that it sounded logical that I got held up.

• 18:56Speaker 03

  That somebody stopped me and took my money. And I felt like that was a plausible story. You know, I had already been lying for so long.

• 19:14Speaker 02

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• 20:00Speaker 01

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• 20:43Speaker 01

  I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly. It's fast, reliable, affordable. So over time, more and more of your operations rely on it. Then one day, the terms change. What once felt flexible now

• 21:05Nancy Glass?

  Feels difficult to leave. Moving to another provider or bringing those capabilities back under your own control could take years, cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all sorts of third-party systems: cloud platforms, data pipelines, AI models, software tools. Most days, these systems operate quietly in the background. But when something changes, like costs go up or rules shift, organizations are forced to confront how much control and flexibility they actually have.

• 21:45Nancy Glass?

  So to understand the challenge up close, I traveled to Paris to speak with IBM's Anapaula Assis and Access CIO Giovanni Daniele, two people who think about these questions every day. Hear the full conversation at ibm.com/smarttalks or wherever you get your podcasts. In the first episode of this podcast, we heard Bobby Gumpwright's story of how he was robbed at gunpoint. He told us what happened, the same way he told his parents and the police. But that isn't what actually happened that night. That was a story he made up.

• 22:30Nancy Glass?

  So I asked him, what really happened in March of 1999 when he was bartending at Applebee's Restaurant? Bobby, we know you weren't robbed the night you said Jermaine held you up at gunpoint. What happened to the money you made bartending? The money you claim was stolen?

• 22:48Speaker 03

  Met a guy who did and dealt cocaine, and so tried it and immediately was an addict.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  I don't even think it was a week and I needed it. Like, I wanted it.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  I was just taking every dollar I had and buying what I could.

• 23:09Nancy Glass?

  So you're going home with no money. Why did that matter so much?

• 23:14Speaker 03

  My dad had a habit of asking how my money was. How much money did I have? You know, that was just a normal question. I mean, he's trying to figure out if I'm taking care of my finances, you know? I'm 18, still living at home with my parents. And he's trying to make sure that I was stewarding things properly.

• 23:35Nancy Glass?

  Okay, but why come up with that kind of lie?

• 23:38Speaker 03

  Because I know the question that's gonna come. I know that the question is gonna be, how much money do you have? How much did you make this week? And I didn't have an answer, right? Because it was all gone. And like, I'm high on cocaine at this moment when I'm riding home. And my mind is racing and I'm just trying to figure out what I can say to get through the night without him finding out that's where my money's going.

• 24:09Nancy Glass?

  So, take me back. What was your thought process? How were you trying to pull this off?

• 24:14Speaker 03

  You know, we lived on the West Bank. The West Bank had a reputation for not being the safest sometimes. So I thought that it sounded logical that I got held up, that somebody stopped me and took my money. And I felt like that was a plausible story. You know, I had already been lying for so long. I knew what sounded reasonable and what wouldn't sound reasonable, right? Like, back to when I was eight years old and the cop walks me out there and tells me, this is why your story isn't reasonable.

• 24:50Nancy Glass?

  Wow, so you really thought about that?

• 24:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. I spent my time figuring out, okay, what can they ask? How can this not make sense? So I'm trying to figure out the best way to tell the lie. You know, that was what I did.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  I remember stopping on my bike. And I remember thinking, okay. If somebody stopped me right here. Why, why would I stop? Number one, right? Why would I just stop for some random person? And he asked me what time it was.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  So that's why I stopped. And as I'm looking at my watch, that's when he pulls the gun.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  And he rips my chain off my neck. And tells me to lie down on the ground. And rifles through my bag and takes my money.

• 25:45Speaker 03

  And tells me not to get up until he's gone.

• 25:50Speaker 03

  I just rolled it through my mind and said.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  That sounds plausible.

• 25:59Nancy Glass?

  What else did you do to make your story more believable?

• 26:03Speaker 03

  So I took, I took my chain and I actually threw it away. Well, why would he leave me with a necklace? If he's really robbing me, why would he leave me with a chain on my neck? Even though the chain was like. Not an expensive chain. It wasn't a chain that somebody would really rob you of. It was a St. Christopher medallion with a very small, you know, silver chain. But to me, I was like, well, that makes it more plausible that he took my chain.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  So now that the story's developed, now I have to go home and get into character and act scared. Which I was, you know, I was scared to death that somebody would find out the truth. And, you know, find out that I was lying. So it was kind of easy to fall into that frame of mind and, and acting like that because I was scared. I wasn't scared of what had just happened. I was scared that people would find out that I was lying.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  But the lie was the only thing that was gonna protect me from them finding out the truth. Which was even scarier.

• 27:10Nancy Glass?

  The truth being, you were addicted to drugs. That's what you spent all your money on?

• 27:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 27:17Nancy Glass?

  But you could've said that you just lost your money. You could've said you didn't make any good tips, right?

• 27:23Speaker 03

  I could've said that. I could've said 100 different things. But I settled on the robbery story. And I can't tell you why that made the most sense to me at the time. And, once I grasped it, once I had it in my mind, it was locked in there. And then as soon as I told it, now it's done.

• 28:02Nancy Glass?

  How did your parents react? What did your dad do?

• 28:08Speaker 03

  He immediately calls the police, which I don't, I don't know if in my mind, I even got to that point where I saw him doing that. But I was high. It wasn't rational thought.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  So, he called the police. Police showed up. I gave him a very vague, nondescript description, you know? In my mind, could've been anybody.

• 28:34Nancy Glass?

  What description did you give to the police?

• 28:37Speaker 03

  Guy about my height, black. I think I gave him a clothing description, maybe a white t-shirt and jeans or something like that. It was very, very basic.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  I think he asked me if I ever saw him again, if I would know if it was him, and I think I did say yes.

• 28:56Speaker 03

  But at that point, I was just trying to stay above water with the lie. Like, anything he asked me, it was just real quick, you know, thought process of, okay, what's the best answer here?

• 29:08Speaker 03

  So he took his report and left.

• 29:13Speaker 03

  It was super quick, like, wow.

• 29:16Nancy Glass?

  You've made up this big story, you've filed a report. What did you do after the police left?

• 29:22Speaker 03

  I went to my room. I didn't go to bed. I mean, at that point, the adrenaline is just out of control. But, um, I just went back to my life, you know, I just carried on like nothing had happened. And, okay, got away with that one. I guess I need to be more careful and save some of my money and not spend it all on drugs. I continued working at Applebee's. I thought it was gone and done with. I didn't think twice about it after that. And I was like, okay, nothing's ever gonna come of it.

• 30:00Speaker 03

  A couple of months later, I'm in the back of the restaurant and somebody comes in and says, hey, there's two New Orleans city detectives out there wanting to talk to you.

• 30:12Nancy Glass?

  The detectives had six pictures of black men who fit the basic description Bobby gave police. In reality, Bobby hadn't seen any of these men before.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  They showed me this lineup. And they said, do you recognize any of these men as the one who robbed you?

• 30:34Nancy Glass?

  So here's where Bobby could have said no. He could have come clean, but he didn't.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  I pointed at one and I said, he looks familiar.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  I don't know why I pointed at him. I still, to this day, can't tell you why I decided to point at anybody on that piece of paper. But as soon as I said, that's him, that looks like him, they said, that's who we thought it was.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  And as soon as they said that, it felt like the rest of it made sense for me. Because then I felt like I was doing something that was supposed to be done. I had convinced myself at that moment that this was a bad guy. Because they told me that they had been trying to get him and they weren't able to. And, you know, college dropout, military dropout, living in my parents' house, you know, a drug addict. My life was not very good at that time. And I just, I saw maybe a glimpse of, hey, I can be somebody.

• 31:51Nancy Glass?

  The idea of helping the police made him feel important. And he liked the attention he got when he told people he had been robbed at gunpoint.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  I liked it when people felt sorry for me. Felt like I was getting love when people felt sorry for me.

• 32:09Nancy Glass?

  When Bobby pointed at a photo in the lineup, he wasn't thinking about what would happen to the man he identified.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  I didn't think this is a human being just living his life.

• 32:20Nancy Glass?

  After Bobby identified Jermaine Hudson, he was arrested during a traffic stop. And then the police had one more important question for Bobby.

• 32:30Speaker 03

  They said, "We haven't had anybody that would testify. Would you be willing to testify?" I never had one thought of how much time he would get or what would happen.

• 32:44Nancy Glass?

  The trial was Bobby's last chance to stop the lie. Maybe say he made a mistake, but he didn't do that. He would take the stand to tell his story to a jury, and he decided to double down and make himself the perfect victim.

• 33:19Speaker 02

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• 34:02Speaker 02

  Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. B21.

• 34:07Speaker 00

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  Join over a million happy riders at guardianbikes.com. That's guardianbikes.com. Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with IBM's Ana Paula Assis about what digital sovereignty actually means in the age of AI. AI now moves from somebody operating a system to the tech.

• 35:16Nancy Glass?

  technology actually making decisions. So you have to have a much better visibility of what AI is touching, data it is accessing and where. Hear the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.

• 35:34Nancy Glass?

  Reading the trial transcript is illuminating. You can see why Bobby Gumpright was so believable. He was young, emotional, and detailed on the stand. And everyone, from the prosecutors to the jury, hung on every word. But now, knowing Bobby lied about the whole thing, I want to revisit his testimony. Once you know the truth, it all looks different, calculated even. Let's start with the prosecutor's direct examination of Bobby. The prosecutor asked, when Jermaine pulled out the gun, what happened?

• 36:13Speaker 03

  He had the gun up to my face. I mean, with some profanity, he basically just told me not to look at him. And then, and then he ripped my, I had a Saint Christopher medallion that I had since I was born. And he ripped it off my neck.

• 36:32Speaker 03

  Just popped the chain and told me to get off the bike.

• 36:35Nancy Glass?

  Bobby doesn't use profanity when recalling the sequence of the crime, implying he doesn't approve of bad language. He can't even repeat those words in court. His reaction makes him appear respectable, upright. Then he explains that Jermaine ripped off his Saint Christopher medallion, a religious symbol that he's had since he was a baby. The truth is that when or how he received the medallion isn't relevant to the crime. It just makes his story better. It's like Jermaine ripped off a piece of his childhood and a piece of the church in a very religious part of the country.

• 37:16Nancy Glass?

  Let me give you another example. The prosecutor asked Bobby, what went through your head when he put the gun up to your face?

• 37:26Speaker 03

  The past 19 years of my life, my dad, I mean, just.

• 37:33Nancy Glass?

  His entire life flashed before him. He was a victim of a crime that could have cut his life short even before it really began, and he references his father, indicating that he's a loving and loyal son. There was another opportunity Bobby used to convey his credibility. It was subtle, maybe even unconscious. During the cross-examination, public defender Don Donnelly asked Bobby to describe the gun used in the robbery.

• 38:05Speaker 03

  I'm not very, I'm not a very big gun person, but as close as I could say, it resembled a 9mm. You see, I was in the Coast Guard, and I used a 9mm while I was in the Coast Guard.

• 38:19Nancy Glass?

  As you heard in episode 1, Bobby was in the Coast Guard for less than a year. He was discharged due to unsuitability for military life. But in his answer, he communicated that he served in the armed forces, and we have reverence for people who serve. It elevates them. Then came the charm when the prosecutor asked Bobby about the photo lineup. Bobby had picked Jermaine out of six photos as the perpetrator. But two months had passed between the robbery and the time police officers brought the photo lineup for Bobby to view. So the prosecutor asked Bobby, "You said you bartended. Would you consider yourself good with names and faces?"

• 39:02Speaker 03

  That's my business. That's how I make money. I make money by remembering people's first names and their faces. Basically, we want to give the impression, you want to be their friend. The better friend you are, the better tips you get.

• 39:19Nancy Glass?

  It's a subtle nod to Bobby's work ethic. He's out at Applebee's hustling, working hard, and memorizing faces to make a buck. Who wouldn't like that guy?

• 39:30Nancy Glass?

  Never mind that Bobby failed to describe Jermaine's distinctive scar or 12 gold teeth in his original statement to police. But Bobby never mentioned seeing either of those features. And that discrepancy in the identification was never brought up by Jermaine's defense. Bobby told us he'd chosen Jermaine's photo out of the lineup because of a scar on Jermaine's face. He used it as a way to remember who he identified.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  I remember that the one thing that kind of drew me to Jermaine was that he has a scar underneath his right eye. And that was kind of different. I don't know, it was just something that kind of stood out to me.

• 40:14Nancy Glass?

  Then, there was pointing out Jermaine in the courtroom. The prosecutor asked Bobby if this was the same man that he identified in the lineup, the man who robbed him. Bobby confirmed it was the man sitting at the defense table, Jermaine Hudson.

• 40:32Speaker 05

  Are you 100% certain that this man, right here, put a gun to your head and robbed you?

• 40:40Speaker 03

  110% certain.

• 40:44Nancy Glass?

  He was so sure, more than 100%. I wanted to hear from the jurors in this case. One of our producers, Jade Abdul Malik, was able to reach some of the jurors by phone. Now Jade, you said you were able to get a hold of some jurors. What happened there? Nancy, we're talking about a trial that was over 25 years ago. Some jurors had passed away, some didn't even remember the trial, and others didn't want to speak, but I did talk with a few. What was the overwhelming response? What did they want to say? We had to do a lot of memory jogging.

• 41:28Nancy Glass?

  And a lot of them didn't really remember much from being a juror on this case.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  They just remembered this case being very open and shut. And the defendant was obviously guilty.

• 41:40Nancy Glass?

  Okay.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Bobby was incredibly convincing. He was tearful, emotional, and really shaken up on the stand. They believed him, at least for the 10 jurors who voted guilty.

• 41:53Nancy Glass?

  Right, right. It was a 10 to 2 verdict. And I don't think it's widely known that we had non-unanimous juries in some states. So for the two who voted not guilty, did you get any insight as to why they felt differently? Since most jurors thought Bobby was telling the truth?

• 42:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the recollection I heard was it didn't make sense that someone would stop on a bike late at night the way he did to answer a question about the bus. That just seemed suspect.

• 42:23Nancy Glass?

  Did the jury know that Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years in prison?

• 42:28Speaker 02

  No, none of the jurors I spoke to said they had any idea Jermaine would be sentenced 99 years for armed robbery. Uh, when I told them that, it was a complete, total surprise.

• 42:46Nancy Glass?

  After the verdict, the jurors were discharged from the courtroom.

• 42:52Nancy Glass?

  Jermaine was led away in handcuffs to await his sentencing hearing.

• 42:57Nancy Glass?

  And Bobby walked out. Mission accomplished.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  So I was there as an actor.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  To tell the story that I needed to tell, to make people approve of what I was doing and feel sorry for me. That was a big part, you know, and the validation that I needed.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Everybody around me was just playing a part in my world.

• 43:29Nancy Glass?

  One juror told our producer Jade that Bobby came over and personally thanked him for finding Jermaine guilty. Bobby doesn't remember that interaction. And he didn't go to the sentencing hearing where Jermaine received a 99-year sentence.

• 43:48Nancy Glass?

  Bobby, when you heard what the verdict was and the sentence was, what did you think?

• 43:55Speaker 03

  I thought, he must have been really bad.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  He must have had a lot of stuff in his background.

• 44:05Speaker 03

  99 years. I couldn't have imagined that.

• 44:10Speaker 03

  I still, you know, even then, I couldn't wrap my mind around 99 years.

• 44:18Nancy Glass?

  As he got older, Bobby found it harder to convince himself that he had done a good thing. It became more difficult to block out the thoughts of Jermaine languishing in prison.

• 44:31Speaker 03

  You know, over the years, it would come into my mind and I would look him up online. I knew he had gone to Angola. So I was like, well, I wonder if he's still there. I wonder, maybe he got out. Maybe they let him out. So I would look every once in a while and...

• 44:51Speaker 03

  He was still there.

• 44:54Speaker 03

  I was a monster. I took somebody's life away.

• 45:04Nancy Glass?

  On the next episode of Burden of Guilt,

• 45:08Nancy Glass?

  Bobby sets out to right his wrong.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  I just told them that I was gonna tell the truth and that I was pretty sure that it was gonna be nationwide news. You might see my picture on the front page of the New York Times as this horrible monster. But I gotta do this.

• 45:26Nancy Glass?

  And Louisiana comes to Jermaine with an offer he can't refuse.

• 45:31Speaker 07

  I was actually going to plead guilty to that crime because the laws hadn't changed.

• 45:47Nancy Glass?

  Thank you for listening. If you're enjoying Burden of Guilt, subscribe, rate and review the series with five stars. Yay! It helps other people find our show. So are you curious about what the people involved in this look like? Do you want to hear bonus content? Just check out our Instagram account @glasspodcast, where we recap each episode with show notes that include people, places, and even court records. You can reach out to the Burden of Guilt team at [email protected]. That's [email protected]. Burden of Guilt is a production of Glass Podcasts,

• 46:32Nancy Glass?

  a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series is executive produced and hosted by me, Nancy Glass. This episode was written and produced by Carrie Hartman, also produced by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunning. Our story editor is Monique Leboard. Our associate producer is Jade Abdul Malik. Our production manager is Kristin Melkury. Our iHeart team is Ally Perry and Jessica Krychek. Thank you to our voice actors, Brian Balthazar, Todd Gans, Trey Morgan, and Ben Reed. Audio editing by Dean Welsh and Zach Cruteau,

• 47:14Nancy Glass?

  with additional editing and mastering by Anna McLean. The Burden of Guilt theme is composed by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by MyB Music. And we want to give our special thanks to Jermaine Hudson and Bobby Gumpright. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeart Radio app or Apple Podcasts.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Halloween's almost here and I've got plans. My first stop is Total Wine & More for cold beer, ready to drink cocktails, and a bottle of wine to share. And I know I'm getting the lowest prices. Get the fun started at Total Wine & More. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly, P21.

• 47:57Speaker 03

  With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. Whether you're leading a big project, planning an elaborate trip, or trying to balance work and life, ChatGPT can help. Give it a goal, plus things like files, notes, or project plans. Develop a trip itinerary with daily updates or create a prioritized schedule so you can spend less energy sorting out the details and more on bringing your biggest ideas to life. Get started at ChatGPT.com.

• 48:25Speaker 00

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• 49:10Speaker 00

  That's GuardianBikes.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.