Major funding for this podcast has been provided by Public Welfare Foundation and the Pulitzer Center.

Hey, y'all, this is episode three of a five-part series. So if you didn't start from the beginning, trust me. It'll all make a lot more sense if you stop right here and go back to episode one.

It's been rough. It's been rough.

They've frustrated after life without possibility of parole.

Seven and eight even two.

That is Ricky Kidd, who in 1997 was found guilty of first-degree murder

and then sentenced to four life terms without the possibility of parole.

Those were some dark time for me.

My whole world was turned upside down.

In America, the way our justice system is supposed to work is that whether you're rich or

you're poor, whether you're innocent or guilty, you get a fair shot when you're accused of a crime.

You get a lawyer who helps you make your case before a judge or a jury.

But what happens when the police conduct a bad investigation, or they miss clues, when a prosecutor charges the wrong person and then bends the rules to make her case?

And what happens when the defense lawyer, the person who's there to catch these things, doesn't have the bandwidth or the resources to do that?

When you have a bad investigation and a overzealous prosecution and a lame defense,

chances are you're going to get a wrongful conviction.

In the years since his conviction, Ricky has enlisted the help of an investigative journalist

turned private investigator.

It almost hurts me to go back over this case because this has been too long without any

resolution.

And a former public defender turned trailblazer in wrongful convictions.

A man who spent his career trying to fix the wrongs created by the public defender's system he used to work for.

...