Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out He Finds Music Stars. Now He's Helping Us Save the Life of a Wrongfully Convicted Man About this episode He used his instinctual superpower to sign an all-star roster of everyone from Stone Temple Pilots and Katy Perry to, yes, Kid Rock. Now, record executive Jason Flom (with a little help from the spirit of Muhammad Ali) is performing a different kind of miracle, with his obsession to get innocent people out of prison. This is why the unbroken, indomitable grace of Charles Flores is far from alone inside our shocking American system — and how you can help, too.
• Sign the petition to stop the execution of Charles Flores https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/charles
• Previously on PTFO: We Visited Death Row for the Super Bowl. You Can Help Save This Fan's Life. https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/Njk4MjRlODE3NWNkMzU2MzU3NGJhZTE3
• Subscribe to "Wrongful Conviction" with Jason Flom https://pod.link/1151670380
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Transcript 9,754 words · 13 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.
0:06 Speaker 01 If you do get picked up and you're suspected of a crime, just say your name, your address, and then say the following words: "I want a lawyer." And then, "Shut the [bleep] up."
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2:35 Speaker 00 I have lots of people on this show who have absurd resumes. You might be a gold medalist in this category.
2:42 Speaker 01 Wow, I'm, uh, I'm rarely speechless, but that introduction has left me at a loss for words.
2:48 Speaker 00 Jason Flom, thank you for being here, by the way.
2:50 Speaker 01 Of course, I'm thrilled to be here, actually.
2:52 Speaker 00 I'm thrilled to have you hopefully help me understand what it is that you do in your current act. But act one, can we just start there with music?
3:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, of course.
3:02 Speaker 00 You're the guy who personally discovered and/or signed, I mean, how should we do the list? Do you want to give me the chronology here?
3:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, if you want to do it in chronological order, it depends how old your listeners are, but it goes back to, wow, the 80s. The first artist I ever signed was a band called Zebra. Big points to anyone who remembers them.
3:29 Speaker 01 Twisted Sisters, Skid Row, Stone Temple Pilots, White Lion, Jewel.
3:43 Speaker 01 We're going way back, I mean, the Memory Machine, Tori Amos. Then I ended up, and I'm leaving some out, of course, just because memory, whatever, Escape Club, that was a funny one, Wild, Wild West. Then I started my own company, which was Lava Records, and Lava Records, which was a division of Atlantic at the time, because I started at Atlantic. And Lava had a great run with Matchbox 20.
4:11 Speaker 01 And Kid Rock, and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and Simple Plan, and The Chorus, and so many different acts, Porcupine Tree, et cetera, et cetera. And Edwin McCain.
4:29 Speaker 01 And then ultimately, I ended up running Atlantic Records for a little while. I signed Paramore back then. And then we move on to Virgin Records. I left Atlantic and went to Virgin, where I was the 44-year-old Virgin. And then during that time, Virgin in capitals, Katy Perry.
4:56 Speaker 01 And a bunch of other acts, 30 Seconds to Mars. And then ultimately left there to join the number one company in the music business. Republic Records, still number one to this day. And I've been with them ever since and have signed in the partnership with Republic, acts like Jesse J. and Lorde and Greta Van Fleet and many others. We have one called The Warning that's blowing up right now.
5:27 Speaker 01 Which is really exciting. So, yeah, so it's been, the music business has been very good to me. I left out a lot of names. If you're listening and you're one of those names, forgive me. My memory's not what it used to be. I've been very, very, very lucky in the music industry, let's say that.
5:39 Pablo Torre? You have a sense of taste and a skill, clearly, that I want to understand. Like, why are you good at this? But before we get to that, I do need to acknowledge that the artist that has the most current-day, present resonance is Kid Rock. And that is the sound of a man who knows where I'm going with this.
6:02 Speaker 01 Yeah. I don't even know what to say. I mean, it's...
6:06 Pablo Torre? He name-checked you in a song.
6:09 Speaker 01 The seminal album, Double Without a Cause, he name-checked me in the song, "I Got One For Ya," where he says, "Hey, Flum, you want to hit money? Ha, ha, ha."
6:22 Speaker 01 It was a very, very difficult process trying to break him because he didn't fit into any sort of real established box. But it was fun for that reason. And we knocked it out of the park, you know? Now...
6:40 Speaker 01 Now, I don't know. Um, I don't know what to say.
7:05 Pablo Torre? I need you to imagine that you're me for a second. And it's last December, and you're at this upscale holiday party in New York. And you randomly get introduced to this guy you've never met before, who's wearing a hoodie and glasses. And he kinda looks like John Chituro. And he kinda sounds like Ray Romano. And the first thing this guy starts telling you about is his former life and obsession with sports.
7:30 Speaker 01 Having been to rehab and then AA, I ended up in GA as well. Gamblers Anonymous makes Alcoholics Anonymous look like a picnic in the park with, you know, the glee club. It's not to minimize the problems that come from alcoholism and drugs, but Gamblers Anonymous, you really get a sense of how dark it can get when you're trapped in the throes of a gambling addiction. When I walked into the first meeting, they would ask the newcomers 20 questions. Have you ever, you know, lost a thing, this with that? All the things that gambling takes away from you. And the only question I answered no to is,
8:14 Speaker 01 have you ever considered killing yourself as a result of gambling? And I think almost everybody else in that room had gone 20 for 20.
8:21 Pablo Torre? When did you know that when it came to sports betting, you had a problem?
8:26 Speaker 01 When I walked into GA, I think I owed bookies $35,000. And this was like, you know, in the late 80s, right? Where that was a lot of money. And I didn't have money. I had nothing in the bank.
8:36 Pablo Torre? What were you betting on?
8:38 Speaker 01 Mostly baseball, but also basketball, football. And I was betting $1,000 a game. You know, it was only because I'm a huge Mets fan that, you know, I stayed alive in 86 because the Mets won over 100 games that year on the World Series. But, you know, I was betting more money than I had on those World Series games. And now, you know, I just don't do it.
8:59 Pablo Torre? Now, instead, Jason Flom's time is spent making bets of a different kind. One of his portfolios, as you already heard, is in music. He's this insanely prolific talent scout and the head of Lava Records. And in the music industry, Jason believes, his superpower can be basically summarized in one word.
9:20 Speaker 01 And that word is instinct. Now, of course, Pablo, it's become a business that is driven by data to a meaningful degree. And it's very sophisticated data. When I started the industry, we didn't have access to any of that kind of stuff. Although, I used to call record stores just to ask, like, are there any local acts that kids are looking for? Is anybody... I'd call clubs. I'd call anybody that might know about something that was brewing.
9:51 Pablo Torre? Which is how his all-star roster of prospects includes everyone from Lorde to the dude who performed at the Turning Point USA Super Bowl halftime show last week, to a young hit band like The Warning.
10:03 Speaker 01 These three sisters from Monterrey, Mexico, who just, they played like Metallica. I was like, what are they doing? It was nuts.
10:11 Pablo Torre? But the night Jason Flom first scouted The Warning, it turns out, takes us straight to this whole other set of calls that he spends his time making. Calls about his most important prospects at this point. And lately, ours.
10:32 Speaker 01 And here's where the worlds collide, Pablo. This particular night, and it was, I think, maybe six years ago. A woman named Devin O'Connor, who works at Lava for me, she had said to me, "You gotta go to the Mercury Lounge tonight." It was the middle of the winter. This band called The Warning is playing. You gotta go check them out. I knew nothing about them. But I said, "Okay, I'll go." And it was a frigid night in New York City. But on the way down there, I got a call from a guy who I had been trying to help. Because he had come to me for help because his father was scheduled to be executed for murdering his mother. So here's this guy who reached out to me and said, the dad's name was Donnie Cleveland Lance.
11:17 Speaker 05 They were just kids when their father, Donnie Lance, was convicted of brutally killing their mother. As adults, Jesse Lance and Stephanie Cape say their dad has always played a big part of their life, despite being behind bars. "We have always included daddy in every major decision in our lives. We are closer to our father in prison than a lot of our friends are to their fathers who live near them," the two wrote in a letter to the state parole board. "But the relief they sought didn't come. On Tuesday, the board denied Lance's request for clemency. His execution is scheduled for Wednesday night."
11:51 Speaker 01 But I wasn't aware that this was the particular night that he was scheduled to be executed. And that night, I got a call on my way down to the Mercury Lounge from Jesse, this is his son, who said, "They executed my dad tonight." And he said, "They dumped his last meal on the floor."
12:09 Speaker 01 I mean, even now, I'm getting chills thinking about it. Like, six years ago, I was like, "They did what?" And he goes, "Yeah," you know, "he tried to pick up some fries and stuff, but that was all he got to eat." And I was like, I was so disgusted. I was so [bleep] angry. And, you know, I get to the Mercury Lounge and, truth be told, I think I did a shot in his honor. I don't do shots. I mean, I can't remember the last time I did one other than that. But I just was like, I had to do something. And so I took one shot of tequila. Didn't want to be there at all. I didn't want to be anywhere, honestly, after that.
12:46 Pablo Torre? That was in the state of Georgia. I'm looking at the article now.
12:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:49 Pablo Torre? The state of Georgia did that.
12:50 Speaker 01 Right, so it was Georgia. So both of the children, both of his children, who lost their mother, had begged the parole board not to kill their father. And the parole board didn't care. People sometimes say to me, "Don't you think that victims' families should have some say in the sentence if they think a death penalty, or this, or that, or..." And I'm like, well, they don't have any say when it's the other way around. No one listens to them. This is, I've seen so many cases where the family has begged for an execution not to go forward, even if a guy was guilty.
13:22 Pablo Torre? Hmm.
13:22 Speaker 01 Right, but they don't want to see somebody else die. They don't want that. And the state, no matter which state it is, is like, [BLEEP] off. We don't care about your feelings. But we should care about your feelings only if you agree with us that we should dole out the harshest punishment possible in almost every case. So I'm like, it's gotta cut both ways. And Donny's is an extreme case because it's the children who lost their freaking mother and, and wanted their dad not to be executed for not killing their mother and wanted the state to go find who actually did it. But none of those things are ever gonna happen. He's dead.
13:56 Pablo Torre? But what you just said in that story, which I didn't know anything about, that is what your brain is like now.
14:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:03 Pablo Torre? You are on your way to sign hit musical acts, it turns out, while also managing an inbox that has become your current act. And I wanna understand when you started taking an interest in Wrongful Conviction, which is the name of your show, as well as your passion. When did that become apparent to you? I need to find a way to do this over here. I'm gonna find the next Tori Amos and also I need to talk to Donny Cleveland Lance because no one else is giving a [BLEEP].
14:36 Speaker 01 This phase of my life began in a very unexpected and sort of sudden way in 1993, when I saw an article in the New York Post of all places. The New York Post, a newspaper that I probably never bought until that day and have never bought again and no one should ever buy. But the, I'm sorry, what can I say? But anyway, but this particular day, the other newspapers were sold out. So I bought the New York Post because I was getting in a taxi.
15:03 Pablo Torre? It'd be crushed that you're disavowing the New York Post at this point, but I digress.
15:07 Speaker 01 So I was getting in the taxi and I wanted something to read. But this was when we didn't have phones to distract us constantly while we were sitting in the back of a taxi, 1993. So I bought the Post and there was a story that I was obviously meant to read. And the story was a story about a kid named Stephen Lennon. Who had just been denied clemency by Governor Mario Cuomo. In spite of the fact that the sentencing judge, the warden, and even Geraldine Ferraro, and some of you will remember her, she was the first woman to ever receive a nomination for vice president from one of the two major political parties in this country. So she had even written a letter on his behalf, and yet this kid had been turned down for parole. What was he in for? Well, he was doing 15 to life on a nonviolent first offense cocaine
15:49 Speaker 01 possession charge in a maximum security prison in New York State. He was in Dannemora. And he had gotten, you know, a college degree or two in prison, and he had done all these different things. He was 32, I was 32. He had been in prison for eight years. I had been sober by this point for almost eight years. And I was like, I'm an atheist, but there but for the grace of something higher than me goes I, right? So I felt like I gotta do something about this, because it very well could have been me. And I knew it. And so I decided to just try. And I called his mother, Shirley, because her name was in the phone book. She lived in Rome, New York. I offered my help. I said, I don't have a lot of money, which I didn't,
16:34 Speaker 01 but I'll send you what I can in order to help you get a new lawyer. I don't know how this stuff works. I'm not a lawyer. Everyone thinks I am. I'm a high school graduate. So I called the only criminal defense lawyer I knew at the time, a guy named Bob Colina. He represented Skid Row and Stone Temple Pilots. His partner was their music lawyer. And they were getting busted frequently back.
16:54 Pablo Torre? I was gonna say, this feels like a useful person to have if you're...
16:58 Speaker 01 Between Scott Weiland and Sebastian Bach, he was on speed dial.
17:02 Pablo Torre? I like that Sebastian Bach was one of the dominos that tipped over to get you.
17:06 Speaker 01 I know, it's kind of perfect. So I love Sebastian. Anyway, so I called Bob. I said, what can be done? He goes, nothing. There's nothing you can do. He goes, it's the Rockefeller drug laws. And it just is what it is. There's thousands of cases like this. And I said, well, Bob, do me a favor. Talk to Shirley on the phone, will you? Because it's really bugging me. So he came to my office, talked to her on the phone. He said, look, I'll read the transcripts of the trial. So he calls me up a month later and he says, you know, I found a loophole.
17:34 Speaker 01 An angle, it's not gonna work. But I've been meaning to take a case pro bono anyway, so I'll try it. I go, great. Six months later, we end up in Malone, New York, in the courthouse. And I'm sitting there, holding Mrs. Lennon's hand. Her husband Stan was on the other side of her. The judge was this old guy with white hair. I thought, this is not gonna go well. And they bring Stephen in in shackles, right? His legs are chained together, his hands are chained to his waist. I'm like, didn't it say in the paper, nonviolent first offender? I'm like, doesn't that seem a little extreme? Oh, whatever. So the arguments go back and forth. I literally have no idea what anyone's talking about. I still had a mullet and purple Doc Martens, okay?
18:18 Speaker 01 So that's what we're talking about here. And I have pictures to prove it.
18:22 Pablo Torre? I don't like the odds of anything is about to happen.
18:24 Speaker 01 No. So the judge, after hearing whatever everybody had to say, bangs the gavel down and says, the motion is granted. And so Bob, chubby Bob in his three-piece suit, the lawyer comes scurrying over. And I'm like, Bob, what happened? And he goes, we won. And I was like, we what? I don't know, he was more surprised than I was. He's like, we won. And I was like, holy [bleep]. That's the best thing I've ever heard. And so I decided then and there that if this was my superpower, then I was gonna use it for as long as I could, as often as I could. And so that led me to join the Board of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which I read about in Rolling Stone Magazine. I became the first board member there.
19:08 Speaker 01 And then soon after that, I saw something on TV about a case that the Innocence Project had won, where they had gotten a guy who was scheduled to be executed. They had found the DNA, these two geniuses, Barry Scheck and Peter Newfeld, with their law books and their microscopes.
19:23 Pablo Torre? The founders of the Innocence Project.
19:25 Speaker 01 Correct, right. So I joined the Innocence Project Board. And ever since, I've been obsessed with helping people get out of prison. And you just met one of them who came home 10 days ago. So it's just what I do. Luckily, I'm good at it.
19:43 Pablo Torre? And you're referring to Avi, who is behind the glass of a podcast studio now, which is a fantastic revelation to meet him. And so the question of...
19:54 Pablo Torre? When you were looking at, is this person gonna be a star? Is this a prospect worth signing? And now, your self-imposed responsibility is, I gotta figure out which cases I can turn my attention to and platform in the way that I am. You're a record executive in a different way. Still dealing with records. Different kind of executive. Was there any skill in what you used to do and still do and what you're doing with Wrongful Conviction?
20:24 Speaker 01 Well, this is why your show is one of my favorite shows to listen to. Because you're only the second person that's ever drawn that connection. And it was Jeff Kempler, my partner and great friend of over 30 years, who's the COO of Lava Media, my company. So he runs the podcast, The Wrongful Conviction, and the whole Lava for Good podcast platform. And he said that it's a similar instinct that allows you to identify not just cases, but also causes. And I'm very proud that I've been able to identify future leaders in the criminal justice reform space, who I've been able to provide some seed funding for,
21:05 Speaker 01 or other assistants who've gone on to help move the needle dramatically in the fight to end the disastrous failed social policy and wildly expensive social policy known as mass incarceration. So, of course, my wife, Kalia, who is the daughter of Muhammad Ali, who's on your T-shirt today, which is so great.
21:31 Pablo Torre? I didn't plan. My Thriller Manila shirt has been featured many times on this show, never with one of his in-laws.
21:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:38 Pablo Torre? Because we are here today.
21:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, so she works with me on this stuff, day in and day out. You know, the day after our wedding, we went to Texas to try to help prevent the execution of Robert. Roberson.
21:50 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
21:51 Speaker 01 On our first anniversary, we were on death row in Texas, visiting a guy who's innocent, has been in for 30 years. And we're hoping we're going to be able to help him come home. Another horrible case. So, yeah, it's just, it's a big part of our life and it, we wouldn't have it any other way. And I'm just so lucky that she is her father's daughter in every conceivable way. She has her father's spirit and she has his courage. And she walks into these places and it's almost like the Seize Park. And of course, she's also super helpful because, you know, she can, it's gotten to the point, Pablo, so funny where, you know, I, when my phone rings, it's, most of the time, it's somebody calling me from prison or someone who's recently been freed.
22:34 Speaker 01 Many of the people who we're advocating for were if they call my phone and I don't pick up, they just call her phone or vice versa. Right?
22:40 Pablo Torre? But with the question of you could have a life that does not require you to go into these places and take these calls. And many people work their entire lives to specifically avoid the very thing that you're running towards. And having now been a person who met you in a way that only reflects my ignorance. Cause I was like, oh, wait a minute, you're the wrongful conviction guy. Oh, wait a minute. And you're wearing, of course, your own merch. And I'm like, slow on the uptake at this fancy Apple podcasts, like, party event cocktail, past hors d'oeuvre sort of a thing. And I'm like, my show, we just started looking into the thing that it turns out you've done 560 plus
23:24 Pablo Torre? [bleep] episodes about with the story of Charles Don Flores.
23:29 Speaker 01 The Charles Don Flores case. It's so crazy that in our crazy life, where we're immersed in this stuff day in and day out. And each time I think I've heard it all, right? And I'm always like, that's it. Like, I, I can't anymore. This is, it's too nuts, right? But now I've heard everything. And then, of course, the next one comes. And of course, Kalia, we're together almost all the time. We travel together, we do everything together. We go to prisons together, we go to wherever we go. And during our recent snowstorm we're having, I was watching the video on my laptop on the couch on the opposite side of the room from where she was. And I didn't even think she was paying attention. And 15 minutes in, because she was working on whatever she was working on. 15 minutes in, Kalia goes.
24:16 Speaker 01 This guy's gotta be at the top of our priority list. Like, this is insane. And so, I hope everybody has that same reaction. I hope everybody watches that episode that you did and hears our voices today and wants to get involved. Because this case, this man, it's all just...
24:40 Speaker 01 It's beyond.
24:41 Pablo Torre? What jumped out to you about his case? Again, you've seen it all. What stuck out to you about him?
24:47 Speaker 01 So, this is a really easy story to tell. His presence is... I mean, he's an ethereal guy, right? I mean, he... Yeah, he can talk football with the best of them and...
25:00 Pablo Torre? He is our Dallas Cowboys correspondent.
25:02 Speaker 01 He's dialed in on NFL stuff, way more so than I could ever be. But that's beside the point. He has this aura, right?
25:14 Speaker 06 I started hearing a bunch about meditation. I was reading about meditation. I was hearing about meditation on the radio. Everywhere I turned, it seemed like meditation was coming at me. And I was like,
25:28 Speaker 06 "I wanna learn how to meditate." And I did. And with the help of friends and people sending me books and that kind of thing, that was the key. That was the key of putting space between the awareness that is me and my ego, which is pride, which is anger, which is all of those things, right? And the more you meditate, the more the space is in between that, right? And that was what gave me the handle on controlling. Does that make sense?
26:01 Pablo Torre? It's frankly the only thing that explains how you could be a Cowboys fan this long.
26:09 Speaker 01 It's like a grace, you know, and again, I'm not a religious guy, but he is. And he doesn't come across that way either. He just has this spirit that is unbroken. Not only unbroken, but it's indomitable. It's whatever you want to call it. He is transcending his circumstances. So much so that even though you're watching him in this, and I've been to death row in Texas four times.
26:32 Pablo Torre? Right, the Polanski unit in Livingston.
26:34 Speaker 01 I've been in that room that you were in, right, with the vending machines and the whole thing?
26:37 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
26:38 Speaker 01 It's shocking how many innocent people are on death row in Texas or all over the country, or in other states where they have the death penalty still. But Charles, it's not unique because there are others that have this almost unreal ability to transcend their circumstances and their surroundings. But then when you get into the circumstances of his case and you go, "What?", like, and so what I mean by that, for people who haven't heard your episode already, I will summarize it very succinctly. So in the late 90s, a woman named Betty Black, 64-year-old woman that lived outside of Dallas,
27:20 Speaker 01 had her home broken into and she was killed during this, I guess it was a botched robbery. Two guys drove away, one witness saw the two guys. And she described them as white guys with long, Jesus-y type of hair, whatever, right?
27:38 Pablo Torre? Tall, white guys, long, dark hair.
27:39 Speaker 01 Right. Charles is not a tall, white guy with long, dark hair, never was.
27:44 Pablo Torre? Not even close.
27:45 Speaker 01 Not even close. Charles Don Flores. Look him up.
27:47 Pablo Torre? Look him up. He's always been more of a lineman than a wide receiver.
27:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, so they knew who the shooter was. He pled guilty to being the shooter. And there was no evidence connecting Charles to the crime, and he had alibis. So all of this presents for a very difficult case to make against him.
28:07 Pablo Torre? If the thing that you're wondering is, should this guy be killed by the state?
28:15 Pablo Torre? He didn't kill the woman, no physical evidence at the scene, and doesn't match the description from the eyewitness. So far, it would seem logical to say probably shouldn't [bleep] kill this guy.
28:26 Speaker 01 Shouldn't convict him, shouldn't sentence him, and shouldn't kill him.
28:30 Pablo Torre? All of it.
28:32 Speaker 01 Right, so here you have the actual killer, who I understand his father is a cop. Is that correct?
28:38 Pablo Torre? Yes, there is a depth to this story, yes, that we don't even have enough time to even get into. But there is much more.
28:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, which makes it very similar to the Rob Will case, by the way, which is another innocent guy on death row in Texas, right down the hall from Charles. But so, so the state decided that they would allow Richard to take a plea, but they still had this problem of how the hell they were going to convict Charles with no evidence whatsoever. Well, they solved that problem by hypnotizing the witness.
29:15 Pablo Torre? And you were familiar with forensic hypnosis before this whole thing?
29:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen that before. In fact, one of the earliest episodes we ever did was a guy named Keith Allen Harward, Newport News case, Virginia, and he was, he ended up doing 34 years, narrowly avoided the death penalty. And it was the same thing, they hypnotized the witness. But in this case, they use this forensic hypnosis technique.
29:41 Pablo Torre? And there's a video, which we play in the episode. You can see these cops in Texas, like, do the, basically the "you're getting sleepy." Like, it's not that far off from that.
29:53 Speaker 07 Have you ever seen the documentary film, like, on TV, like, the, with the Animal Kingdom show, or, you know? What we're gonna do is, is when we get you into a deep state of hypnosis, we're gonna take you to a theater. It's gonna be your own private theater. And basically what it is, you're gonna be seeing in the documentary. And you're gonna be seeing the film of the events that occurred on that day, on that morn. Go ahead.
30:19 Pablo Torre? And you're like, this is scientifically and legally allowed, or was?
30:25 Speaker 01 And that's another thing, so. Using this dubious is too kind of a word, but using this junkiest of junk science. And we did a whole season of wrongful conviction, where we call it wrongful conviction junk science, where each week we delved into a different one of the junk sciences. Which ones, you ask? Well, we did everything from arson to blood spatter to boot print analysis to forensic odontology, which is teeth marks, hair analysis. They're pure junk. And so, but they're none more junky than the forensic hypnosis, which of course is just, it would be funny if it wasn't so sick and so devastating. If the consequences were so devastating in this case.
31:10 Speaker 01 So they hypnotized this woman. You can watch it yourself. A week after she had initially not identified Charles, and they managed to induce her, I would say, into identifying a guy who wasn't there. And sure enough, using that technique, they were able to secure his conviction. Well, fast forward to he's on death row. He brings a suit. The Texas courts, they said, this can no longer be an accepted practice, forensic hypnosis in Texas criminal cases. The crazy thing is, and this is not the only time I've seen this, not by a stretch, they refused to make this change retroactive.
31:55 Pablo Torre? That part.
31:56 Speaker 01 That part.
31:56 Pablo Torre? Like the Dallas Morning News, they do a long investigative series about forensic hypnosis. They mentioned Charles Flores. This is part of the impetus to effectively shame the state of Texas into changing what is on the books, which is to say, they officially rule that you can't use forensic police hypnosis in a criminal trial. You can't do it anymore. But it does not apply if it's already happened. And that is, is, is so illogical to me.
32:29 Speaker 01 It happens a lot in our criminal legal system. It's really weird how you can say.
32:37 Speaker 01 That if you did the same thing that we're now saying, like for instance with sentencing, you see this time to time. Well, we'll reform sentencing laws, but we won't make them retroactive. It's like the old saying, how'd you like to be the last guy to die in an unjust war? How'd you like to be the last guy sentenced under the old sentencing laws? For instance, the old crack cocaine sentencing laws. And I was, you know, I was a big advocate for reforming those back when they used to be 100 to 1. In 2010, they were rolled back to make them 18 to 1, but they weren't made retroactive. The Republicans wouldn't allow it to be made retroactive. So those guys who are unlucky enough to be convicted under the old laws were just left there to languish while some other guy would come into the same prison with a new conviction for the same crime that they committed,
33:19 Speaker 01 but be sentenced to 82% less time because they made it, they changed it from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1, the crack cocaine disparity. Again, that was the best deal that could be made with the Republicans at that time. They didn't want that law changed. There's no way to make sense out of it. Both things can't be true, that it was okay before, but not okay now, or the other way around, whatever it is. And as these changes are made in practices like this very welcome change to the forensic hypnosis practice in Texas, they absolutely should be done retroactively. It should be an automatic cause for relief, or a new trial, or something.
33:58 Pablo Torre? A new trial, right? And so all Charles has been fighting for is, can you hear my story?
34:03 Speaker 06 With regards to my case, man, I just want a fair review. I just want a fair shot. The Dallas County Prosecution Office, the Dallas DA, they have a convictions integrity unit.
34:19 Speaker 06 And I want them to look at my case. I want them to review the case. Give it a look. Let the evidence speak for itself.
34:27 Pablo Torre? Can we go back into court and we can now with the light of day after more than a quarter century of, again, almost entirely solitary confinement, can we allow me to get a new hearing?
34:41 Speaker 01 And let us not forget that the actual killer was paroled in 2016, right?
34:46 Pablo Torre? So he's been out for 10 years.
34:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, while Charles has been sitting in a, you know, tiny cell, a dungeon effectively, on Texas death row, where sometimes for a year or more, they don't even see sunlight, not even allowed outside. You can't help but wonder how he maintains, how he hasn't lost his mind and the noise and the this and the terrible food and the, you know, just like the loneliness, the total lack of any type of appropriate human contact, right? You can't, even visits from family are done through bulletproof glass. If you're lucky enough to have any family that visits you, right?
35:25 Pablo Torre? Right, right. And the resentment, which I would imagine is a necessary condition of all of this. Just like Richard Childs is out, the guy who killed this woman, and I'm in here because also, by the way, another wrinkle on the legal system in Texas is that there is the law of parties, which means that if you were there allegedly, if you were there and were convicted to have been there, an accessory to this crime, you are treated, sentenced as if you yourself committed capital murder.
35:52 Speaker 01 It's shocking to a lot of people and it should be shocking to everyone. The idea that the state can say, "We know you didn't kill anybody, but we're gonna execute you anyway."
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37:58 Pablo Torre? What would people be surprised most by if they hadn't spent more than the time they've taken to listen to this episode about just how this system works?
38:10 Speaker 01 The fact is that 97% of felony convictions in this country, around 97%, are a result of guilty pleas. The reason why so many people keep guilty, even if they're innocent, is because they're smart enough to recognize that the odds are stacked against you. And when I say that,
38:30 Speaker 01 first of all, everybody watches these shows like Law & Order, and they get this impression that everything works fine. The authorities are doing their level best. They're gonna get all the bad guys off the street. The bad guys are really bad. The good guys are really good. The scientists are great. The witnesses are great and courageous and brave, and everything's perfect, more or less, right?
38:48 Pablo Torre? Sometimes the cops are very horny, but we allow that because they're solving mysteries just like Sherlock Holmes.
38:54 Speaker 01 So unfortunately...
38:57 Speaker 01 That is a very, very far stretch from the truth. Then you add to that the fact that the overwhelming majority of the public are assigned public defenders. And they relatively quickly come to find out that that person doesn't have time to visit them in jail, where they're most likely being held before trial because they're too poor to post bail, which is unconstitutional, but that's a separate story. Because judges have to, by virtue of the Constitution, they have to post bail according to your ability to pay it, but that's almost never adhered to. So there you are, sitting in jail for a year, two years, more. And jails in many places, including New York, are worse than prisons.
39:40 Speaker 01 They're more chaotic, there's no recreation, it might not be a law library, a toxic mixture of the most violent people, with the innocent people, with people who couldn't pay parking tickets, to you name it and everything in between. And so, there's no sort of, there's no sort of order at all. And most people will do anything to get out of that environment. And you've got to figure, a lot of the people in jails, a higher percentage of people in jails are innocent than people in prisons. But, so now, your lawyer maybe shows up to visit you, maybe never does. It's a big schlep for them to go to the jail, go through the processing, it's a whole day, right? Basically, they make it difficult on purpose. Yep.
40:22 Speaker 01 So if you do get to visit your lawyer, you may quickly come to realize that even they may be doing their level best, but they're juggling a hundred or more cases, and that's not hyperbole. They're also juggling figuring out how to pay rent. You know, in New York City, Legal Aid has many attorneys who drive Uber at night, or DoorDash, or they do whatever they do to make ends meet, because they can't make ends meet on the salary that they're being paid. They're overworked, they're underpaid, they're exhausted, they're juggling a lot of cases. And they may tell you that your best chance is to plead guilty. You're gonna be also looking at a situation where the state,
41:05 Speaker 01 Avi was just telling me this morning about a guy that he was in prison with in New Jersey, I think is still there, who was offered three years and is serving 45. Messiah Johnson, who I spoke to this morning from Virginia, he was offered three years and got sentenced to 130.
41:20 Speaker 09 132 years in prison for a beauty salon robbery on 35th Street in Norfolk. No one was killed or hurt, and there was no physical evidence connecting Johnson to the crime. And there was also conflicting testimony at trial. Before leaving office in January, Governor Terry McAuliffe said, "There is credible evidence that support Mr. Johnson's claims of being innocent."
41:41 Speaker 01 A lot of people will say, you know what, I don't have a snowball's chance in hell against the state and its infinite resources, witnesses that may be incentivized to lie, cops, prosecutors who may be playing fast and loose, and that's probably a polite way of putting it.
41:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
41:58 Speaker 01 And so they take the plea. So I think people really need to understand that if, you know, first of all, this could happen to you, it could happen to anyone. It normally happens to people who are poor, people of color, people who are disenfranchised, but it does happen to others as well, and it can happen to anyone. Wrong place, wrong time, big problems. Most important thing to know, and I'm so glad we got a chance to tell your audience this, is if you do get picked up and you're suspected of a crime, just say your name, your address, and they say the following words, "I want a lawyer," and then "Shut the [bleep] up." Because nothing you can say, it doesn't matter if you're innocent.
42:42 Speaker 01 And most people, ironically, most innocent people waive their Miranda rights because they think, "Why would I need my Miranda rights? I'm innocent. I'll tell the truth, and just like on TV, I'll go home." Well, you know what? That's your first mistake, and it may be your last mistake. Because once they start talking to you, they have all sorts of ways of getting you to say stuff that you would never imagine that you would have gone and said because you didn't know, because you're up against forces that you cannot control. And they may not be smarter than you, but they certainly are more experienced than you are. And they want one thing, which is to solve this case.
43:19 Pablo Torre? The thing you keep on discovering over 550-plus episodes, right, is that it seems there are these incentives to convict. There are incentives to find guilty people. And there is no countervailing structural protection against what is the gravity of the state.
43:41 Speaker 01 That's very well said, and I talk about that a lot. How it is that we have
43:51 Speaker 01 reverse and even perverse incentives for people to close the case. You know, an attorney who's been practicing for over 40 years, a defense attorney in California, told me that he'll often, at the end of his closing argument, he'll say to the jury, when the prosecutor goes back to his office, no one's going to ask him, did you get justice? They're going to say, did you win? And we're in the culture in this world of winning. And when you think about it, they're getting pressure from their boss, who might be getting pressure from their boss, who's going, Pablo, clean this shit up. It's getting hot, right?
44:34 Speaker 01 I don't, I got a reelection coming, whatever it is.
44:40 Speaker 01 Do this. And this is very common for police, prosecutors, whoever. At the end of the day,
44:50 Speaker 01 most cases don't get solved, right? When you get up to murder, it's still 50% of cases that are solved nationally. And then even of the cases that they do solve, many of them are solved wrong. And when you solve the case wrong, and someone ends up on my podcast as a result, who's innocent, I think something that people don't think about, maybe it's uncomfortable to think about it, but when there's a violent crime, murder or otherwise.
45:25 Speaker 01 In which there's an actual victim. And you go and railroad an innocent person. You are working in service of the guilty person. Whoever the second perpetrator was in the Charles Don Flores case was probably at the club popping bottles when he got convicted. Because they know. They're done. They're no longer. They're not looking for anybody else. They got their conviction. I'm straight. Now, who else are we going to go rob tonight? You know?
45:55 Pablo Torre? Whatever your view is on prosecutors and public defenders, and I have friends who became prosecutors and friends who became public defenders, and I like to think that everybody's in service of justice, of the truth, right? That's the best version of a system. There is a balancing act between a defense and a prosecution. And in that pursuit, we get to the closest thing we can get as flawed meat sacks towards accountability. For those who did wrong. The problem is that if you don't understand how unfair that fight is. When it comes to people without resources especially.
46:35 Pablo Torre? You are not doing something resembling truth seeking. You are servicing money.
46:43 Speaker 01 Hmm.
46:44 Pablo Torre? And that is where I'm like, Charles Flores is a guy without resources, clearly. And the question becomes. How do you begin to give him what the state will not grant him as we sit here today? Which is a hearing. Both a consideration in general for the human suffering they've already enacted upon him. But also something resembling the pursuit of justice. And because of how we have outlined this whole story at the end of that. Freedom. Like, you have answered this in 550 plus episodes.
47:29 Pablo Torre? You're going to tell stories and interview people.
47:33 Pablo Torre? I don't know how else to help beyond telling people that you should take some time to listen to this man's voice and listen to the story that the state of Texas does not really give a [bleep] about that you need to hear.
47:53 Speaker 01 Well, look, the one thing that we've learned is that Lorenzo Johnson, who was a dear friend of Kalia's and mine, who was wrongfully convicted twice in Pennsylvania, served 22 years of a life sentence. And when he was in prison, he decided he was gonna get as much attention brought to his case as he could. He was gonna get the newspapers writing about it, he was gonna get TV, he was gonna get whatever. And his lawyer's like, "No, no, no, that's gonna piss everybody off. Don't do that." And he was like, "I'm doing it, like, cuz I'm stuck here, I'm doing it." And you know what? He got himself out. I mean, there were many people who helped him, but he got himself out. And he always says one thing they don't like is tomorrow's headlines.
48:31 Speaker 01 And so what we've learned is that when you're able to bring attention to these cases, oftentimes, stuff starts to change. When they're allowed to exist in darkness, nothing seems to change. And of course, there's exceptions. But others who have created media around these cases have brought pressure to bear that, you know, oftentimes, causes the authorities to act, or at least look into stuff, which can then start a domino effect, or it leads to another outlet publishing a thing, or a newspaper. And so, the reason I say this is,
49:16 Speaker 01 you who are listening now are not powerless. You may know of somebody who is wrongfully convicted, over-sentenced, unfairly tried, et cetera. And... By speaking up about it on social media, talking about it in any forum that you can get, talking about it in the diner, anywhere, you never know who's listening. And stuff starts to change. And it's amazing when it does. You know, you may know somebody who knows somebody. Maybe you can get a meeting with your local congressperson. Or you can, who knows? Maybe you have a distant relation who knows the governor of whatever state you're in. And, you know, you gotta try.
49:59 Speaker 01 I mean, my story is a series of these type of miracles. I didn't know what the [bleep] I was doing, but I got Stephen Lennon out, and he's never gone back to prison. And he's had a great life, raised a family, paid a lot of taxes, built a business, you know? Like, he didn't need to be in prison. We need to take a different approach. We incarcerate people in America at a rate that is five times the rate of Western Europe or the rest of the Western world, 14 times the rate of Japan. What we do know is that what works locally is that if you devote a tiny fraction of the resources that we spend on these awful practices,
50:43 Speaker 01 over surveilling people, brutalizing them, if you take a tiny fraction of that money and build a community center, or much less than that, you just pick the garbage up off the streets in the area where the violence is most concentrated. Every city has an area of probably two or three blocks where it's most concentrated, square blocks. If you fix the streetlights, if you put a taco stand, a little green space, it's amazing, crime falls. We've known this for a long, long time. And my whole theory on Pablo is it's very freaking simple. What causes crime is desperation. Prove me wrong, okay? Desperation, and people say, oh, what about mental illness? That's desperation.
51:28 Speaker 01 Untreated mental illness causes desperation, extreme poverty. But, okay, what prevents crime is a much smaller word, hope.
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52:25 Pablo Torre? If you are going to wield the power of execution, as our government does, as certain states still do in this country, you would imagine that they would wield it so carefully. And yet, when I listen to Charles Flores, and when I go and read more about this, and these are just cases that are not even in dispute anymore, right? We're in the middle of the fight with Charles, but on the other side of it, there are so many cases. The Innocence Project has established how often it happens. The state doing it with our money to people who are innocent. It's, it's... And I just don't think people understand
53:08 Pablo Torre? how broken, let alone perverse, that concept actually is.
53:14 Speaker 01 Wasn't it Scalia who issued the opinion of the US Supreme Court that actual innocence is not a valid reason for a new trial? And that executions can proceed? And by the way, no other Western country has had the death penalty in generations, none.
53:28 Pablo Torre? It's one of those deeply American things that we consider, oh, because it's in movies, we're used to it. But it's not normal.
53:37 Speaker 01 We kill people to show that killing people is wrong. Make it make sense. At least one in 10 people that have been executed in this country have been innocent.
53:46 Pablo Torre? Which is wild. It's just unbelievable.
53:48 Speaker 01 The great Brian Stevenson says if one out of every 10 planes that took off crashed, nobody would fly. But we don't even do any forensic analysis of these things. We don't even like, when there's a plane crash, you don't have a whole slew of people that come in with all sorts of fancy titles and degrees and they analyze every single thing and they figure out what went wrong. No, none of that happens here. And we know that states that have the death penalty have always had higher murder rates than states that don't. So clearly, the death penalty is not a deterrent.
54:16 Pablo Torre? So I want to just get to the end here by returning to Charles, right? Because Charles is now, for us here at Pablo Torre Finds Out in our audience, the human face on a larger issue, clearly. But insofar as we can do anything, we would like to help him because time is running short. And so one of the things that I'm so glad to tell our audience is that you're also trying to get down there to see him.
54:46 Speaker 01 We're planning on doing an episode of wrongful conviction as quickly as we can of the podcast, probably hosted by Maggie Freeling, who's this Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist based in Texas and just an amazing, amazing investigative journalist. So most likely, she'll be the one going in to visit Charles.
55:02 Pablo Torre? Tremendous.
55:03 Speaker 01 But we're working on it now and I'm going to do everything I can to bring as much attention to this case as we possibly can because he deserves it and his case cries out for it.
55:12 Pablo Torre? Whenever I listen, from now on, to not just wrongful conviction, but to Tori Amos and Matchbox Twenty and Skid Row and Stone Temple Pilots and Twisted Sister and Katy Perry and Lord and, you know, The Warning and also still somehow Kid Rock, I'm also going to think about Charles Flores. And it's an honor, really, to spend time with you and to make sure that both of us are making sure that people hear his story.
55:37 Speaker 01 Every one of my records gone number one or been big hits, whatever, they have all given me, you know, a great deal of satisfaction, happiness. You know, it's great ego boost. When you're a kid and you have a record before your friends do and you play it and then it becomes popular and it gives you social currency. I get to do the grown-up version of that. It can be a lot of happiness.
55:59 Speaker 01 But none of those number one records compares to walking one person out of prison. And that's the difference between happiness and joy. So, you know, go find your happiness. Do whatever you do. My dad told me and my brother, do whatever you do, whatever you want to do. Try to be the best at it, but just make the world a better place. And ultimately, hopefully, if you're lucky, like I was lucky to find a cause that really touched my heart, then you can ultimately find the same joy. And it makes me feel good to have Avi come over for breakfast and know that he's not, you know, calling me and, you know, from a freezing cell or, you know, horrible circumstances. And that he's now going to be out here making a difference in the world. It's why we're here, man.
56:44 Speaker 01 And so, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
56:45 Pablo Torre? It's been a long time coming.
56:47 Speaker 01 Let's do it again soon.
56:57 Pablo Torre? And just one quick postscript. Because the day after our last episode with Charles published, Charles Flores's legal team did, in fact, file their Hail Mary cert petition at the US Supreme Court. And we will monitor that as it makes its way through the highest court in the land. But there is also a different kind of petition that we still hope you can personally sign. It's at actionnetwork.org/petitions/charles. And we'll put that link in the show notes, too. This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, produced by Metalark Media. And we'll talk to you next time.
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