#077 Jason Flom and Lara Bazelon with Tony Wright

Wrongful Conviction

Lava for Good Podcasts

True Crime

4.4 • 5.8K Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2018

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In her new book Rectify: The Power of Restorative Justice After Wrongful Conviction, Lara Bazelon makes a powerful argument for adopting a model of restorative justice as part of the innocence movement so exonerees, crime victims, and their communities can come together to heal. Tony Wright is one of those exonerees. Tony endured two trials and 25 years in prison before a jury found him not guilty for the rape, sodomy, and murder of Louise Talley, a 77-year-old woman in Philadelphia. He was only 20 years old when he was arrested in 1993, signed a confession after being beaten and threatened by the interrogating detectives, and was sentenced to life in prison—he narrowly escaped the death penalty after the jury voted against it 7 to 5. Later DNA testing of the rape kit not only excluded Tony as a suspect, but also identified Ronnie Byrd as the real assailant. On August 23, 2016, Tony Wright was exonerated, and he became the 344th DNA exoneree in the nation.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I've never been a trouble in my life. I didn't even have a park in ticket. I was brought up like cops or the good guys.
0:09.0	I didn't know what was going to happen, but I do know that everything was stacked against me. Everything, like everything.
0:17.0	This isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do with this.
0:25.0	How is this possible?
0:28.0	I grew up trusting the system. I grew up believing that every human being should do the right thing.
0:33.0	And that's why even though I knew I was dealing with corrupt people, I wasn't going to brave anyone to get me out of prison.
0:39.0	Because I wouldn't live with the fact that I brave my way out of my wife's death.
0:43.0	I'm not innocent to prove I'm guilty. I'm guilty until I prove my innocence and that's absolutely what happened to me.
0:50.0	Our system since I've been out 10 years has come a little ways, but it's still broken.
0:56.0	I totally lost trust in humanity after what happened to me.
1:01.0	This is a wrongful conviction.
1:07.0	Hi, I'm Ellie Kemper. And I'm Scott Eckerd. And we're here to talk to you about the things we love on our new podcast, Born to Love.
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1:45.0	Rose, Fran, how do we make it to the second season of our podcast and we still have all these opinions?
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1:58.0	Hacked, hooked the glasses off her face, put them on America and those are Betty Blasco.
2:04.0	Yeah!
2:06.0	In our second season, we'll be covering topics like David Lynch, Fanfiction, Golden Girls, and Star Wars with guests including Harry Neff, Frankie Grande, Bobby Finger, and Marcindellic Otto.
2:17.0	Like a Virgin is proud to be a part of the Outspoken Network from iHeart Podcasts.
	...

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