#570 Guest Host John Huffington with Elmer Daniels
Wrongful Conviction
Lava for Good Podcasts
4.4 • 5.8K Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2026
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On January 15, 1980, in Wilmington, DE, a 15-year-old girl, "G.S," reported she had been raped alongside the railroad tracks. The victim and her young male friend, "K.C.", said they were together on the tracks when a young black man approached them and assaulted G.S. After giving numerous inconsistent statements, K.C. told police he recognized the attacker from school and that his name was Elmer. 18-year-old Elmer Daniels was ultimately sentenced to life in prison for the rape despite scant physical evidence and a strong alibi that was corroborated by several witnesses.
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To hear the story of Guest Host John Huffington's own wrongful conviction listen to;
https://lavaforgood.com/podcast/052-jason-flom-with-john-huffington/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | January 15th, 1980 was Martin Luther King Day as the young folks with the day off from school in Wilmington, Delaware, threw a party. |
| 0:12.0 | At about 5 p.m., two white 15-year-olds, a male and a female, left the party and headed towards some training tracks. |
| 0:19.9 | There are some discrepancies between their accounts, |
| 0:22.2 | but according to both of them, a black man in tan pants and a green jacket chased the young |
| 0:27.4 | man away before raping the young woman. The young man said that the assailant was a former |
| 0:32.7 | classmate named Elmer, and the young woman identified 18-year-old Elmer Daniels from a photo array. |
| 0:39.7 | Then the search of Elmer's home turned up a tan pair of pants and a green jacket. |
| 0:45.1 | In addition to the ID and the items of clothing, an FBI agent testified a trial about hairs found on Elmer's pants and the young woman's undergarmas. |
| 0:53.4 | They constituted what he |
| 0:55.8 | called a double match but this is wrongful conviction. |
| 1:19.4 | Welcome back to wrongful conviction. I'm John Huffington, a former guest, and we'll have my episode linked in the bio. I spent 32 years in the Maryland Department of Correction, 10 of those |
| 1:24.4 | years were on death row. During that time, an FBI whistleblower exposed a fellow agent for testifying beyond the |
| 1:31.6 | limits of science in my case and many others, one of which we would be covering today. |
| 1:38.0 | I'm so honored to be filling in from my dear friend Jason Flum as we welcome Elmer Daniels. |
| 1:43.4 | Can you introduce yourself to the audience? |
| 1:45.5 | My name is Elmer Daniels and I'm a 2018 exonerate convicted in 1980 for a rape that never happened. |
| 1:53.1 | And before we unpack all that, I just want to introduce your attorney who's also joining us. |
| 1:57.1 | Emeka Igway, welcome to the show. Thank you. So, Elmer, before any of this happened to you, |
| 2:02.5 | I just kind of want to hear a little bit about your life growing up in Wilmington, Delaware. |
| 2:06.5 | Okay. I came from a two-parent household. I had my great grandparents, my grandparents, |
| 2:11.1 | my mom and dad, big family. I wasn't a bad kid. And I knew right from wrong, and I based all my |
| 2:16.5 | decisions on not getting an asswop. For real, I'm being honest. And I knew right from wrong and I based all my decisions on not getting the ass |
... |
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