Robert Jones Spent 24 Years in Prison After Wrongful Conviction

Robert, can you explain some of the, um, what you ended up finding out was hidden from you? What was the exculpatory evidence? Well, um... There was a hell that, uh... First of all, maybe I can explain the crimes, right? There was a spree of crime that happened in the French waters, in New Orleans. Um... There was, I think, three armed robberies, uh... A rape and a kidnapping. And a murder was tied to that. They took all these crimes and said it was a part of a spree. All right, they had a car that was involved in the crime and... They eventually, over the period of, well, over the couple of weeks after the crime happened, maybe... Um... They found out who the car that was involved. And during the time when they was doing the investigation, my name came up as an anonymous tip came in, right? So what they did was they eventually arrested me and connected me to the car that was actually using all these sprees of crime, including the murder, the robbery, the kidnappings, and the rape. And years later, they eventually found out that another guy got arrested for the murder and was connected. In his possession, he had possessed a jury and articles of evidence from each crime spree. From each of the victims. He had jewelry from the woman that was robbed. He had clothing from one of the other women, I think the woman that was raped. And they never turned this over to him. Right. And so, yeah, they would have held that from me. How did they connect you with the car? That's what my mother explained. They connected me to the car. How they connected me with the car? The prosecutor, Derek, was that when they arrested this guy, they got him to say that me and him was friends. And he allowed me to use the car. Right. At times, the committed crime. But all they ever did suggested it differently. And so at trial, what they did was they charged, he got convicted of the actual murder. Right. He got convicted of murder and they separated him from the other crimes. And they charged me with the other crimes. Right. But unbeknownst to me, on the day of trial, that I was for the rape, kidnapping, and the armed robberies. That he told the prosecutor that I had nothing to do with none of the crime, that I never used a car, none of that. Right. But when I went to trial, the prosecutors said something totally opposite. They prosecuted me on the theory that me and this guy was best friends. He allowed me to use the car. Did you know him? I didn't know him at all. Never seen him a day in my life. And the short answer to your question, Joe, about what they had connecting him to the car, a driver's license, you would think a driver's license, a registration, insurance, someone that had seen them in the car. The answer is they had absolutely nothing. They had the word of a guy that had been accused and tied to these murders who was looking to put it on someone else. How did he put it on you, though? He found out that there was a tip implicating him. Right. Mm. Right. Absolutely. And so he tried to be a snitch to get the heat off of him and put it on you. Absolutely. And they let that happen. Yup. Even though they knew. Right. And it goes deeper than that. So after I get convicted, I'm still charged with the murder of the British tourist, right? I'm still actually charged with it, even though I haven't been going back and forth to court with it at this time. After I get convicted, and I knew I was going to get a life sentence for the rape, the kidnapping of three young robbers, so the district attorney made an offer to my defense attorney and eventually brought to me on the day of my sentence and said that, we could give him 25 years, 21 years for the murder, give him a manslaughter, right? And I don't know what type of stuff that happens out of my presence between my attorney and district attorney, but I was scared as shit. I just received a life sentence. I know I was about to give sentence to life for the rape, and 25 or whatever, maybe 99 years for every own robbery. I was scared that shit. So I took the 21-year plea, but I never meditated anything, right? And a part of the evidence was that the guy who we're talking about that was initially trying to involve me, he was found guilty of the murder already. He was already found guilty of the murder. They were trying you for a crime they already had convicted someone for. Absolutely. How is that possible? It happened. Because what they were trying to say is that if two people are in a car and you're both out committing crimes, right? You're both responsible. You're both responsible. There's something called the felony murder rule, and the felony murder rule is that if you're in the commission of a crime and somebody dies, you and I went and robbed a bank, and I go in and start shooting up at the tellers and kill two tellers, you're responsible for the murder also. So the theory of Robert's prosecution was that they were friends, they were on this crime spree together, and that even though he was convicted of the murder, he was still responsible and guilty of murder. It's no different than the James Daly case, which I've talked about before. They convicted one guy, Jack Piercy, and then they tried my client after that. One guy got sentenced to life, one guy got sentenced to death. It's crazy that they don't have to have any evidence whatsoever that you even friends with that guy. Right. Right. It had his word. Right. Wasn't his word enough? And the piece of evidence, another article of evidence that was held is a report that when he made a statement like the money on my trial, as I said, that I didn't have anything to do with the murder. He never knew me and different things of that nature. And they withheld that. And they withheld that. And that was so important to change the outcome of my trial because they took me to trial on the theory that we were friends and that I knew him and that I had a connection to him through the car. But had I ever had that piece of information that interjecting my trial, I wasn't never proud of got found guilty to that extent. And they also withheld various different statements and evidence as it relates to the witnesses that was very inconsistent and that was very favorable to me. And that could actually turn it back to the guy who was actually convicted of the murder and attached to all those other spree of crimes. Yeah. So it just was a lot of stuff, man, that they withheld that almost made it impossible for me to unravel and to obtain my freedom. And I'd like to say that that's uncommon too, but it's not. So in other words, when prosecutors are working on one theory, full steam ahead, right? And they then are met with you might be wrong. We might have been wrong all along. The instinct 99 times out of 100 is to plow ahead and rationalize why the true perpetrator in Robert's case, why did he all of a sudden say Robert had nothing to do with it? Oh, well, maybe he is making this up because he feels guilty that he implicated his friend who really wasn't his friend. I've and Clemente Aguirre's case, which we've talked about in your listeners know about the true killer confessed. She confessed over and over again to friends, to neighbors, drunk, not drunk to police in denying him post conviction relief. Now, this is a judge. The judge chalked it up as survivor's guilt. So in other words, whether it's a prosecutor's judges, they'll make an excuse to protect the prosecution because it's all about winning or losing. Let's talk about that. What is that? Is that human nature? Is it like do people just want to confirm their initial suspicions and they rationalize all sorts of reasons why what they initially thought was right and this new evidence that shows that it's not right is wrong. Like what is it? They don't just don't want to be. They don't want to lose. I think it's a fundamental flaw that we have as human beings that I share as a Taurus. I especially share it. How dare you bring up astrology. But I am stubborn. But I think as I see this time and time again and watching juries deliberate because I do mock trials and focus groups are speaking to people post verdict. But you can apply it to politics and to anything. I think one fundamental flaw we have as mammals is our inability to be flexible in our reasoning. And I think that once we make a decision about something, it's very, very difficult to get people to reconsider. I see that in really intelligent people too. And it makes me sad. It's maddening. It drives me crazy because it's like you aren't part of the problem, I think, with police, with prosecutors, with the whole legal system, is that it becomes a game. And I don't mean a game like it's a joke. I mean a game like you're trying to win. And whenever someone is involved in something where they're trying to win, they do whatever the fuck they can. People cheat. They move golf balls, right? They do whatever the fuck they can. Don't look at Jamie. I watch people moving those fucking things. They do. They teach you. They're right here, golf balls. Well, people cheat, man. They find ways to pretend that they didn't do something when they did it. They find ways to justify the things they did do. They find ways to pass the buck and put it on. If they can score that W, right, and you see cops do it, they plant evidence on someone they think was probably guilty, but they don't have enough evidence on them. They find rationalizations, and it's because there's a game going on. It's a win or lose, and it becomes a real problem. And not only that, with a lot of cops, there's quotas. Like, you literally have to arrest a certain amount of people, which is insanity. Like, what the fuck do they do if no one commits a crime? What do they do if no one speeds? If you have a quota where you have to arrest 100 people for speeding, what the fuck do you do if everybody makes an agreement? You have to go to Facebook and we say, hey, let everybody drive the fucking speed limit for the next 60 days, and let's crush the legal system. Because these cops have to – they have to make a certain amount of pullovers. They have to pull a certain amount of people over and write a certain amount of tickets. They have quotas. If you don't meet those quotas, they get in trouble. So what the fuck kind of game is that? I would say a lot of that, a lot of – just like we have structural racism, right? And when I say structural racism, I mean like institutional things that set up through regulation rules and policies. Like redlining. Right. And you just have, like, flawlessness in a variety of different systems. They got people that work for companies. They got a lot of flawlessness. And they don't really understand that you're employed in a system that treats people unfair, calls people home, and you can't even see it. And some people can be a part of a system, a part of a program, or part of an organization that have that win mentality. Right? That win-win by all cause mentality. And they lose their empathy for people. Right. And when people lose their empathy, when we define those things, and a lot of people don't like to hear this type of shit, but when you lose your empathy for people, you become technical a social path.