Hello and welcome, I am John Cryer and this is the Undisclosed Addendum.

In this episode we are discussing the shocking revelations of the final episode of the state versus Sean Thomas of in premeditated we learned more about the true nature of Domingo's murder and the seemingly calculated machinations of law enforcement officials to railroad Sean resulting in his decades long incarceration for a crime he couldn't possibly have committed.

Returning with us today is one of the hosts of Undisclosed, Robbie at Chaudry. How you doing, Robbie? Good, how are you, John? I'm great, I'm great.

Also we have James Fagorski, Jim was a Philadelphia police officer for 25 years after he graduated from law school Jim volunteered to assist the Pennsylvania Innocence Project to evaluate cases for merit where he came upon the case of Sean Thomas. Thank you and welcome back to the show Jim.

Hi John, well thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me back.

Also with us today is Marissa Boyer's Blue Stein. She's been with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project since its inception in April 2009 beginning as the project's legal director. She was made executive director in 2017. Marissa, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's great to be here.

Marissa, so this is your first time on the show. Can you tell us a little bit about the Pennsylvania Innocence Project and how it coalesced and came to be in Pennsylvania?

Just about 10 years ago, there was a group of lawyers here in Philadelphia who had been kind of meeting in a form of a working group to say, you know, this is a phenomenon that's going on.

Philadelphia doesn't have a project like this. We should really look into it. And then Barry Shek came down to Philadelphia with Peter Newfeld and a journalist out in Pittsburgh named Bill Mushi kind of came here and yelled at all of them and said, you know, we have to pick up the slack for you guys.

We had an Innocence Project going. So the working project did exactly that was able to raise some money, formed a nonprofit. And I was actually the first staff member that was hired back in April 2009. I had been at the Public Defender's Office for about 10 years before that.

Got it. So it came together mostly because Barry Shek was super mean. Yeah, well, I wouldn't say mean, but.

Now most Innocence Projects are based on DNA exonerations, but it sounds like you guys have branched out a bit. How did that decision come about?

It wasn't really decision at all. I mean, most of the cases that we saw when we first started had nothing to do with DNA. There would never be a possibility for DNA.

So we knew that if we were really going to be able to reach the approximately four or five percent of our 40,000 state inmates who are factually innocent, we would have to look beyond that as challenging as it is as difficult as it is.

We knew that we'd have to be more than just a DNA project. So today we have about 26 cases in litigation all across the Commonwealth.

And I think only about five of those even have the specter of DNA as a possibility.

26 cases requires an enormous amount of manpower. How many people are in the Pennsylvania Innocence Project?

Well, I'm one quarter of the legal staff. Okay.

So happy big.

But to people like Jim, who work at firms and are dedicated to these issues, we co counsel with law firms and lawyers all across the state.

We've increased the person power 100 fold. We have hundreds of volunteers, law students and community members and attorneys who help the screen the cases.

And then once we actually get into litigation, we have just the best, most incredible pro bono partners and the best of the moral courses, Jim.

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