Pod Insights Burden of Guilt A Fait Accompli | EP 2 | Season 2 About this episode Jermaine Hudson’s life was shaped by instability, loss, and early encounters with police. When he became a father in 1999, it felt like a second chance. Instead, a traffic stop set off an injustice that tore him from his family and sent him to one of America’s harshest prisons for life.
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Transcript 6,479 words · 18 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:31 Speaker 05 I will never forget riding on that bus coming down this road. It was like, wow, this is the road that lets you know you are going into a prison. Angola at that.
2:46 Nancy Glass? The drive to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, is long and sobering.
2:54 Nancy Glass? You pass through the small town of St. Francisville before the road narrows and begins to twist through backwoods.
3:02 Nancy Glass? There's nothing to look at, nothing to distract you. Just a blur of trees and the steady rise of that knot in your stomach, knowing the road ends at a prison with a brutal history.
3:20 Speaker 05 It's like everybody on the bus was quiet. Everybody was just looking out the window. What my life is about to be like going to this place. I had so many thoughts running through my mind, so many thoughts.
3:38 Speaker 05 The ultimate thought was, am I ever going to leave this place? Am I ever going to get a chance to travel back down this road going home to my family?
3:52 Speaker 05 And it becomes a reality once that bus stopped.
3:59 Speaker 05 And they transfer you off the bus.
4:04 Speaker 05 How you walking into the prison, shackled up, feet shackled, hands shackled. And they took me out and told me, okay, you're ready. You're ready. And they put me in population.
4:22 Speaker 05 And life just started from there.
4:39 Nancy Glass? This is season two of Burden of Guilt. Episode two, A Fate Accompli.
4:48 Nancy Glass? So here's where we left you in the last episode. 21-year-old Jermaine Hudson was tried and convicted for the armed robbery of Bobby Gumpwright. And in this episode, what you're going to hear is not what you would expect. But first, I want to tell you more about the verdict. The trial lasted just a few hours, and after 37 minutes of deliberation, Jermaine's fate was decided. He was found guilty by a jury who voted to convict 10 to 2. Now, that's called a non-unanimous jury. They were legal, and with a non-unanimous jury, only 10 people had to agree to convict or acquit a charged person.
5:35 Nancy Glass? A few weeks later, on April 12, 2000, Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years in the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola. The crime was stealing between $75 and $100. No shots were fired. The victim, Bobby Gumpwright, wasn't physically harmed.
6:00 Speaker 07 99 years in the Department of Corrections without parole, probation, or suspension of sentence.
6:08 Speaker 07 When I tell you my heart dropped, I was like, no, this can't be real. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I got to be dreaming or something. This can't be real.
6:25 Nancy Glass? When his sentence was read, Jermaine reflexively looked to the courtroom window, to the world he would never be a part of again. And out the window, he saw something he considered a sign.
6:38 Speaker 07 The only thing I can remember was two doves sitting on that window, two white doves, after I got found guilty. And then when I looked up at them two doves, I could just see them. When they knew they got my attention, they just flew away.
6:54 Nancy Glass? Jermaine kept replaying the events in his mind. What had happened? What had he done to be sentenced to life in prison? How did he end up here?
7:06 Speaker 07 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?
7:15 Nancy Glass? And here's the thing. Jermaine had an alibi for March 1, 1999, the night of the crime. It was an alibi never heard in court. We'll tell you about that later in the episode. But even without an alibi, how in the world could a judge possibly sentence him to 99 years? The punishment was very disproportionate to the crime.
7:41 Speaker 07 Well, in the state of Louisiana, they got this thing called judging you off of your past.
7:49 Speaker 07 They used my juvenile conviction to say that I was in need of incarceration,
7:58 Speaker 07 that I was a minister of society, and that I didn't deserve to be among civilized people.
8:07 Nancy Glass? The court did rely on Jermaine's past criminal record, and he had a rough start in life. His childhood was chaotic, and most days were simply about survival.
8:19 Speaker 07 As a baby, my mom was on drugs.
8:25 Nancy Glass? Jermaine Hudson grew up in the West Bank of New Orleans in the Fisher Housing Projects. The Fisher, as it was known, was a low-income housing project adjacent to the Great Mississippi River.
8:39 Speaker 07 My mom couldn't raise me. She wasn't in the mother frame of mind.
8:46 Nancy Glass? Jermaine was a toddler when she disappeared from his life. He wouldn't see her again until he was a middle-aged man.
8:55 Speaker 07 I was also dealing with the situation from my biological father because he was murdered when I was a baby. You know, I never got a chance to see him, never got a chance to see his face, never got a chance to even meet nobody on his side of the family. Right now, I couldn't even tell you if I had siblings on his side of the family. I still don't know nobody on his side of the family.
9:16 Nancy Glass? Fortunately, another relative stepped in to help Jermaine. His uncle, Thomas Robinson, and his wife, Sunshine, took him into their home. But eventually, Thomas and Sunshine separated.
9:29 Speaker 07 And she ended up adopting me, and I've been in that family ever since.
9:34 Nancy Glass? Sunshine provided him with a real family: two brothers and six sisters who adored the shy young boy. For a while, Jermaine felt safe.
9:47 Nancy Glass? His adopted family soon faced their own tragedy. Sunshine, the matriarch and soul of the Robinson family, died suddenly from a heart attack in 1985. Jermaine was just six years old.
10:03 Speaker 07 Even though she adopted me, she loved me like she gave birth to me.
10:11 Speaker 07 But after she passed away, I was bounced around from family to family.
10:22 Nancy Glass? When you're in the second grade, you're six years old. Most kids' lives are about their friends, sports, cartoons. But for Jermaine, living in the Fisher Projects...
10:33 Speaker 07 I'm stepping over by this, witnessing by this, coming on from elementary school. You got police, ambulance, fire engines, you know, because somebody was murdered. And you're witnessing that as a child, and it traumatizes you.
10:51 Nancy Glass? Jermaine tried to circumvent the violence and embrace sports, but trouble seemed to find him. His first encounter with police was in middle school. A few older boys in his neighborhood saw him walking home from basketball practice after dusk, and they offered him a ride.
11:09 Speaker 07 I was like, "No," but they were like, "Man, come on, man. It's dark out here. Let us drop you off." And soon as I get in that car, the police end up pulling us over.
11:22 Speaker 07 I don't know this car stolen.
11:27 Nancy Glass? The other boys jumped out and took off, but Jermaine, he froze.
11:33 Speaker 07 Me and two more guys end up getting arrested for joyriding in a stolen vehicle.
11:40 Nancy Glass? Jermaine was 14 years old and looking at the inside of a jail cell.
11:47 Speaker 07 When you're a kid like that and you're entering a prison, something you've never seen in your life before.
11:57 Speaker 07 It was like being in that cell and you're in there by yourself as a kid and you're caged in.
12:08 Speaker 07 It does something to you. It does something to your brain cells.
12:15 Nancy Glass? He stayed in that jail cell over the weekend.
12:20 Speaker 07 We was arrested that Friday, so I came home that Monday on probation. Went back to school. Still was playing ball, but something inside of me wasn't right.
12:35 Speaker 07 It did something to me.
12:38 Speaker 07 And my life just changed quickly.
12:46 Nancy Glass? Even though Jermaine was only 14, the charge followed him. He recalls being sentenced to three years probation for riding in a stolen car. We tried to confirm the exact charge, but we've been unable to secure the records, possibly because Jermaine was a minor. Jermaine figured his record would ruin any shot at an athletic scholarship to college. He suddenly felt like he had no future, no path to follow, and there wasn't a parent pointing him in the right direction.
13:20 Speaker 07 My behavior changed. Started hanging out a lot, started hanging with the wrong crowd. Started smoking weed, started using drugs, started selling drugs as a child. I'm already living in the projects. I'm around these same kids every day. I'm growing up with these kids.
13:40 Nancy Glass? Then, there was the lure of fast money. Quick cash, selling drugs on the corner was better than earning minimum wage somewhere. So Jermaine became a low-level high school drug dealer on the streets, running around with friends who were like him.
13:57 Nancy Glass? Two years after the arrest for riding in a stolen car, Jermaine found himself in trouble with the law again, but this time, the consequences were far worse. Here's what happened. Jermaine was walking down the block when he came upon a crime in progress.
14:17 Speaker 07 A friend of the family. He was getting carjacked. He was getting robbed and carjacked by a few guys that I grew up with.
14:29 Speaker 07 I just so happened to come through the alleyway. I just really walked into it.
14:36 Nancy Glass? Normally, Jermaine would have minded his own business and not gotten involved.
14:40 Speaker 07 And when I seen who he was, I instantly changed that situation.
14:47 Nancy Glass? It turns out, Jermaine knew the driver of the car that was getting carjacked, Tyrone Hills. And Jermaine knew the guys who were in the middle of stealing it.
14:57 Speaker 07 And when I seen who it was, I'm like, no, y'all don't do that. He's a friend of the family.
15:03 Nancy Glass? Jermaine tried to step in. But when police arrived on the scene, Jermaine was arrested.
15:11 Nancy Glass? But he maintains he wasn't involved in that crime. I want to stop here for just a moment. This is the second time Jermaine ends up in trouble, but says he wasn't involved in the crime. I wouldn't blame anyone for wondering about Jermaine's story. He says he didn't know the car he rode in was stolen when he was 14. And then, he says, he literally walked into a carjacking in progress two years later. The truth about what happened in these two incidents matters because they were both essential in determining Jermaine's 99-year prison sentence in the armed robbery of Bobby Gumpright. So, our team went to work, trying to verify Jermaine's story.
15:57 Nancy Glass? Was he actually just in the wrong place at the wrong time, twice? We decided to do some digging. And as I mentioned, we couldn't access the records from the joyriding incident a few years earlier. But we were able to get in touch with the victim of the carjacking. The victim, Mr. Hills, confirmed two things for us. He was a family friend. And the second detail he confirmed is that he never saw Jermaine do anything other than walk onto the scene while the carjacking was happening. Nevertheless, Jermaine was charged as one of the carjackers.
16:38 Speaker 07 When that took place, I wasn't no angel. I'm the type of man that can understand. When you're playing in those streets, there is no rules to the game.
16:52 Nancy Glass? Even though he says he wasn't involved, on the advice of his attorney, Jermaine took a plea deal for the carjacking charges because risking a trial could have been catastrophic.
17:05 Speaker 07 I ended up pleading guilty to a four-year prison sentence. I did two years on those four years.
17:14 Nancy Glass? Prison changed him, but Jermaine was determined to make it a change for the better.
17:20 Speaker 07 Them two years passed so fast. It was really a growth for me because I took the time out to see, this is what you can't do no more, and this is what you need to do moving forward.
17:33 Nancy Glass? While he was incarcerated, he was introduced to Kristen Motley, a girl who would become an important part of his life.
17:43 Speaker 08 I was actually friends with his niece. And one day, we were sitting down for lunch. We were just were talking, and she said, "I have somebody for you." And I was like, "Who?"
17:56 Nancy Glass? Jermaine was only 17 when he was sentenced for carjacking, and Kristen was still in high school.
18:03 Speaker 08 I think we were just so mature for our age. And the conversation, it just, it felt natural, it felt real. He came home in 98. The first thing, he came to see me.
18:17 Speaker 08 From that day forward, we were inseparable.
18:22 Nancy Glass? Kristen and Jermaine truly connected. The relationship became intimate, and she became pregnant with a baby girl. When she told Jermaine...
18:32 Speaker 08 It was that like, oh, my God. He was there literally in like five minutes. Oh, I'm serious. He was so excited.
18:43 Nancy Glass? He stayed by her side and was there when the baby was born. Kristen's mother was there, too. She remembers how Jermaine fell in love with his baby girl.
18:55 Speaker 08 From the time she came in the world, that was his baby. Even if we would see Jermaine walking with the baby, I'd say, "Give me my baby." She'd say, "Uh-uh, that's my baby."
19:07 Nancy Glass? Jermaine understood the responsibility of being a parent. Kristen wouldn't tolerate him being around drugs or running around with the wrong guys. And he took that seriously.
19:18 Speaker 08 He went gotten two jobs. Like, we were on the right path. I started working. You know, we were trying to figure out how we can get out on apartment.
19:31 Speaker 07 After my daughter was born, that changed me. Because I'm like, I have something to live for. I have responsibilities on my hand now.
19:42 Speaker 07 So the best thing for me to do is go find me a job, save my money, have confidence and faith in what I'm doing, and raise this little girl like she's supposed to be raised.
19:56 Speaker 07 I could not go a day without being with her.
20:01 Nancy Glass? But a few months after his daughter was born, Jermaine was picked up by police during a traffic stop. It turns out, the cops had been looking for him since Bobby Gumpwright identified him in a photo lineup of possible suspects.
20:19 Speaker 09 And they said, "Do you recognize any of these men as the one who robbed you?"
20:28 Speaker 09 I pointed at one and I said, "That's him. That looks like him."
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22:58 Nancy Glass? Jermaine Hudson didn't have an easy start in life. He grew up moving between family members. As a teenager, he got into trouble and served time in prison for carjacking. But his fortune and direction were changing. He was in love with Kristen Motley and a new father to their baby girl. And just when things were going well.
23:22 Speaker 07 On April 15, 1999, I was arrested for a traffic violation. It was speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, and no driver license.
23:34 Nancy Glass? According to Jermaine, as one officer was writing a ticket, another officer arrived and decided to arrest him. Once in custody, police recognized him. This was the same man Bobby Gumpwright identified in the photo lineup as the man who robbed him at gunpoint while he was heading home from work.
23:56 Nancy Glass? The traffic violation suddenly became a minor issue. He was wanted for a far more serious crime. Neither Jermaine nor Kristen knew he had been tied to the robbery of Bobby Gumpright. Kristen still believed she'd get him home that same day. So she drove down to the police station where Jermaine was being held. She waited there to post his bail until finally...
24:21 Speaker 07 Prison official told her that whoever is waiting on Jermaine Hudson, y'all can go home.
24:28 Nancy Glass? Jermaine couldn't understand why Kristen hadn't bailed him out. So he called her from jail. And that's when he learned for the very first time why the police were holding him.
24:41 Speaker 07 She's crying and she's like, "We did come. The people told us we can leave because you got a robbery charge pending on you in the computer." I dropped the phone. I literally dropped the phone and was like, "Wow. For real?" She said, "Yeah." "That's not who I am. I don't do those things."
25:07 Speaker 07 I knew it was a mistaken identity.
25:11 Nancy Glass? And while Kristen could have posted bail for a traffic violation, an armed robbery was a totally different story.
25:21 Nancy Glass? Bail for Jermaine was set at $100,000 and nobody he knew could post that bail.
25:29 Speaker 08 There was nothing we could do.
25:35 Speaker 07 My life took a total change during those events. To go from a traffic violation,
25:47 Speaker 07 about to be released on that traffic violation, to telling you and telling your family that you will not be released because you had an armed robbery charge pending.
26:01 Nancy Glass? Jermaine and Kristen had begun building a life together. They had a six-month-old daughter Kristen could never have imagined.
26:11 Speaker 08 We wouldn't see him for 22 years after that.
26:23 Nancy Glass? Jermaine couldn't afford a lawyer, so he was assigned a public defender named Don Donnelly. And you heard some of the trial in the last episode. It was a trial Donnelly never wanted to have. He told Jermaine he should take a plea in exchange for a guaranteed five-year sentence.
26:43 Speaker 07 I refused because I didn't do it. I didn't do it, and I didn't want that on my record.
26:53 Nancy Glass? But Jermaine's public defender wasn't listening. He was adamant that he should take the plea deal.
27:00 Speaker 07 He tried his best to convince me to take those five years. He even sent a young lady that was a court reporter, clerk, back there where I was dressing, waiting to go to trial.
27:15 Speaker 07 He sent her back there to talk to me.
27:20 Speaker 07 She told me, she said, "Jermaine, these people is not playing. I don't want to see you get your life thrown away. Man, take them five years." I said, "Are you going to help me do five years?"
27:32 Speaker 07 She couldn't answer that question. I said, "Man, get out of here. Don't let them people come back. I'm not going to change my mind for nothing," and I didn't.
27:41 Nancy Glass? It isn't uncommon for a public defender to urge a client to take a plea deal. Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the country, and that's why Don Donnelly was recommending the plea. If Jermaine went to trial and lost, he would face far more than five years. But Jermaine held firm.
28:04 Nancy Glass? He knew this was a case of mistaken identity, and he could prove it. He had an alibi for the night Bobby Gumpwright was robbed.
28:15 Speaker 00 When we found out he went to jail and they stayed the charges and what happened, I was like, that's impossible because he was at the house sick with the flu.
28:23 Nancy Glass? That's Kristen's younger sister, Dwan. She was 14 at the time. She lived in the Motley family home with Kristen, Jermaine, and the couple's new baby. She and Jermaine were both certain they were together at home on the night of March 1st, 1999. They knew it because Jermaine had come down with the flu. His girlfriend Kristen was at work that night. So with Jermaine sick, someone needed to stay back and take care of their baby. So Dwan decided to stay home and she stepped up to help care for the baby and look after Jermaine. And to this day, she remembers how sick Jermaine was that night. It was a kind of sick where you don't have the energy to lift your head off the pillow.
29:09 Speaker 00 He just was in the bed. He was sick, just feeling bad, you know, with the cold flu, just like down, laying down, drinking orange juice.
29:19 Speaker 00 And I told that to the detectives who came to the house. For some reason, he was adamant about Jermaine doing it. And I was like, that's not true. How could he be at two places at one time? If you sick with the flu inside, like you're about to die, how you supposedly be at a bus stop robbing somebody out of a chain?
29:40 Nancy Glass? Her testimony would be critical to proving Jermaine's innocence. She was with him all night.
29:48 Speaker 00 He was inside, sick with the flu. I am a witness to this. I would testify to this.
29:55 Nancy Glass? When the trial began, Dwan waited to be called as a witness.
30:00 Speaker 00 Me and my sister and my niece, we was going to court for Jermaine. And I kept on telling his attorney, I need to testify.
30:09 Speaker 00 But he say I couldn't testify and I kept asking him why and he couldn't give me a valid reason why.
30:17 Nancy Glass? We reached out to public defender Don Donnelly. His wife picked up the phone and said he declined to participate. But we wanted to talk to him because there are some glaring inconsistencies between what we've heard in our reporting and what the jury was allowed to hear in Jermaine's trial. The biggest one is the fact that DeJuan's alibi was never mentioned in court. When it was almost time for the defense to rest, public defender Donnelly acknowledged there was a witness that Jermaine wanted to call. But instead of calling the witness, he asked for a sidebar with the judge. There's a transcript of that sidebar. A voice actor reenacts that moment.
31:01 Speaker 12 The defendant wants me to call a witness who I don't feel comfortable calling for the simple reason I know the witness not to be telling the truth. I know this from an independent investigation.
31:14 Nancy Glass? Donnelly never referenced Kristen's sister, DeJuan. The defense rested without calling her to the stand. It made me wonder about the independent investigation public defender Donnelly conducted. Jermaine sat at the defense table, wondering the exact same thing.
31:34 Speaker 07 How you know that from independent investigation? When you never talk to my witness now, day I went to trial. Now time I was facing those charges, you never talked to my witnesses.
31:51 Nancy Glass? The judge took Donnelly at his word when he said he'd found Jermaine's alibi witness not credible. He didn't ask Jermaine's lawyer a single question about this independent investigation. The prosecutor seemed delighted.
32:08 Speaker 13 Thank you, Mr. Donnelly, for being so truthful and honest.
32:13 Nancy Glass? Jermaine's alibi witness, Dewan, said she talked to a police detective. If that happened, it should be in the police file. So we reached out to the New Orleans Police Department to get a copy of that file. We wanted to see who they talked to and read notes from the investigation. But the police department informed us that the case file is no longer available. It had been lost in a cyber hack in 2019. So back to the trial. In the end, no witnesses testified for Jermaine, not even himself. His attorney had advised him against it.
32:57 Speaker 07 He said, "Look, do not testify. I advise you not to take the stand on your own behalf because they're going to bring up your criminal history and it will make you look bad enough." So me sitting there and not, really not putting up a fight for my life because of what my attorney influenced me not to do, it made me look even better.
33:19 Speaker 07 And now that I really look back on it, I'm like, my criminal history ain't got nothing to do with what I'm going on trial for today. They have nothing to do with that.
33:30 Nancy Glass? Jermaine was 21 at the time. He knew what it meant to be a black man in a Louisiana courtroom. His attorney was white. So was the judge, the prosecutor, the victim, and most of the jury.
33:46 Nancy Glass? Jermaine took his attorney's advice and stayed quiet.
33:52 Nancy Glass? The whole trial was over in the course of an afternoon. Guilty by a vote of 10 to 2.
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35:01 Speaker 11 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.
35:12 Speaker 15 AI now moves from somebody operating a system to the technology actually making decisions. So you have to have a much better visibility of what AI is touching, data it is accessing, and where.
35:28 Speaker 11 Hear the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.
35:36 Nancy Glass? Jermaine's case was tried and prosecuted within a day. When the verdict came down, guilty, his family was stunned. Dewan Motley didn't think much of the public defender's performance.
35:51 Speaker 00 He didn't do nothing. He didn't fight for Jermaine at all. He didn't. He didn't fight for Jermaine at all, and I told him that. He didn't put up no fight.
36:01 Nancy Glass? The guilty verdict was almost a fait accompli. But the sentence? That was a different story entirely.
36:10 Nancy Glass? On April 12, 2000, Jermaine and his attorney, Donnelly, appeared for sentencing.
36:17 Speaker 16 What is Mr. Hudson's criminal history?
36:20 Nancy Glass? Here's Sidney Woods, who represented the state.
36:23 Speaker 10 Your Honor, Mr. Hudson has two counts of prior armed robberies.
36:28 Speaker 16 You're alleging multiple bills.
36:30 Speaker 10 Yes, we are, Your Honor.
36:33 Nancy Glass? Multiple bill refers to the habitual offender statute. If you've ever heard of the three-strikes law, it's the same theory: increase sentencing to keep repeat offenders out of society by imposing increasingly severe penalties for each felony conviction.
36:52 Nancy Glass? In Jermaine's case, the armed robbery of Bobby Gumpright was treated as his final strike. Don Donnelly objected to the habitual offender classification to no avail.
37:09 Speaker 13 No further questions, Your Honor.
37:12 Nancy Glass? Minutes later, the judge delivered his sentence.
37:17 Speaker 16 Mr. Hudson, you've been found guilty by a jury of the offense of armed robbery. 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.
37:46 Speaker 07 I was so angry because I was like, "How can my life end like this?"
37:54 Nancy Glass? Kristin Motley, the woman Jermaine had found love with, started a family with, was sitting in the courtroom in a state of shock.
38:05 Speaker 08 Only thing I really heard was 99 years.
38:10 Speaker 08 I don't think I heard nothing else that they said in that court work. I looked at my sister, you know, and we just was crying. She was screaming.
38:21 Nancy Glass? Kristen says this was the worst moment of her life. She looked over at the attorneys and then she realized for them it was just another Wednesday.
38:35 Speaker 08 They were actually standing there, cracking jokes, talking about golfing. And they just ripped my heart out. They just took Jermaine away from me, just like that. And I can remember him looking out that window. He didn't have any expression on his face, any, like, any expression. I think we just all was numb.
39:03 Nancy Glass? For Kristen's little sister, Dwan, the case was personal. She knew Jermaine hadn't done it.
39:12 Speaker 00 They sentenced him to 99 years. And I was like, this is some bullshit.
39:18 Nancy Glass? Dwan was only 14, and maybe it was because of that, because she wasn't hardened to the world, that she decided to say something to Bobby Gumpright, the man who said Jermaine Hudson robbed him.
39:32 Speaker 00 So when we was leaving, we interacted with Bobby because me and my sister and the baby was walking, and he was walking too. And I say, hey, you. And I put my niece in his face. And he went to shaking and all this, like he wanted to cry. And I said, why would you do that? You just took my niece's daddy away from her.
39:54 Speaker 00 He said he had to put somebody away. He told me this out his own mouth.
40:06 Nancy Glass? As far as the court and the jury were concerned, justice was served. They didn't know, they couldn't know, that the star witness had developed a strategy to win the courtroom over.
40:25 Speaker 09 The best lie is, is partial truth, right? That's what I learned after lying for so long, is always include a little bit of truth in your lie, and it's more plausible.
40:37 Speaker 09 The truth was, it was my job to remember faces as a bartender, so I was good at it.
40:44 Speaker 09 The lie was that I didn't remember his face, because it never happened.
40:50 Nancy Glass? Just take a minute to let that sink in. The robbery, at gunpoint, Bobby made the whole thing up. The crime itself never occurred. Well, you may be asking yourself the same thing. I asked myself, why did he create such an elaborate lie? A lie that would put someone away for 99 years? Well, Bobby had a secret.
41:20 Speaker 09 I met a guy who did and dealt cocaine, and so tried it, and immediately was an addict. I needed it, like, I wanted it.
41:31 Nancy Glass? It was his addiction that he needed to keep from the world, especially his father.
41:37 Speaker 09 My family has a good reputation. They're, they're good people. And so, for me to be the drug addict of the family, it was embarrassing. The lie was the only thing that was going to protect me from them finding out the truth, which was even scarier.
41:55 Nancy Glass? He picked Jermaine Hudson out of that photo lineup at random. And Jermaine Hudson was sentenced to life in prison for a crime that never happened at all. He would spend 22 years in Angola prison before the truth finally came to light.
42:18 Nancy Glass? Coming up on Burden of Guilt, how did Bobby conceive the story of a fake crime? And why did he do it?
42:27 Speaker 09 I just rolled it through my mind and said, that sounds plausible.
42:34 Speaker 09 So now that the story's developed, now I have to go home and get into character and act scared.
42:42 Nancy Glass? And Jermaine loses hope.
42:44 Speaker 07 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.
42:59 Nancy 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. 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, 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.
43:43 Nancy Glass? Our story editor is Monique LeBord. Our associate producer is Jade Abdul Malik. Our production manager is Kristen Melkury. Our iHeart team is Ally Perry and Jessica Kryncheck. Thank you to our voice actors, Brian Balthazar, Todd Gans, and Trey Morgan. Audio editing by Dean Welsh, mixed and mastered 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 Gumpwright. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeart Radio app or Apple Podcasts.
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