The Pursuit of Justice: John Raley and the Case That Changed Texas

Welcome to the Wayne Watson Podcast, where Grammy nominee and multiple-dub award-winning artist Wayne Watson engages in lively conversation with remarkable people from every walk of life. Artists to healthcare professionals, athletes, and leaders to everyday believers whose stories reflect the power of faith at work in the world. Join us as we go beyond the spotlight and into the heart of what it means to live with purpose and conviction, diving into real conversations about the moments that shape us, the faith that sustains us, and the God who inspires it all. Now, here's your host, Wayne Watson. Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining me again for the podcast. My guest today is a longtime friend of mine named John Raley. He is a criminal trial attorney here in Houston and spends most of his time these days, he tells me, in mediation. And some of the subject matter here might be a little disturbing. So I would just give you that heads up before we go on. I hope you'll enjoy this interview with John Raley. This is my longtime friend through all kinds of dialogues, John Raley, law practice for 38 years. I wanted to introduce you as the Honorable John Raley, but I think that's reserved for judges. It is. Not all judges are honorable. And. That's correct. From what I know of you, you certainly are honorable. So I would tongue-in-cheek call you Honorable John Raley, but law practice for 38 years, a graduate of— 41 now, I think. 41. We need to update our website, don't we? Sorry. I think I got that on Wikipedia, but maybe it was— Maybe we have your website. A well-known graduate of Oklahoma University. Is that the way to say it, or is it the University of Oklahoma? It's formally the University of Oklahoma, but people say OU. OU, I know. Every time I see OU come up on basketball, football, baseball, I think of you. You are the poster boy for OU, all things OU. Well, thank you. Not really, but thank you. Well, anyway, I just have... Always appreciated you and what you stand for. So let's just get into it. Talk to me about early days. Did you grow up here in Texas, in Houston? What took you to OU in the first place? I was born at an early age in Oklahoma. I grew up in—I went to high school in Ponca City, Oklahoma, I attended the University of Oklahoma. I was a letters major, which is not ABC. It's history, literature, and philosophy, and Wow. I walked on the football team my sophomore year. Okay. And I thought I was finished with football because I wasn't recruited by OU, and I had a scholarship, an academic scholarship to OU, so I went there. But then I just found that I really missed it, and so I walked on, and... It was kind of a crazy idea at the time, but somehow I lived and had a wonderful experience being part of that program. And continued my studies, went to law school at the University of Oklahoma, came to Houston to join Fulbright and Jaworski Law Firm. I was with them 17 years, was a partner there. I think I started wanting to be a trial lawyer when I was in high school reading To Kill a Mockingbird. And I thought that would be a great opportunity to try to do something to help someone who is deprived of justice. I saw you in a theatrical performance in a theater here in Houston. Was that a... performance of To Kill a Mockingbird? Or was that something else? You might have seen me in To Kill a Mockingbird. When the kids grew up and moved away, I asked Kelly if I could go back into acting, which I'd done in high school and in college. And she said, okay, honey, I guess there are less wholesome things men could get into, I see, you know, and more dangerous things men could get into. And so I guess that was pretty safe. Not a lot of people know this and certainly wouldn't believe it, but I was actually quite shy until my junior year of high school. I was friends with the guys on the football team. I was friends with people for my classes, but I was not the kind of guy that would walk into a room and meet new people or, heaven forbid, speak to a crowd or, And on a lark, I took high school theater, and Sally Richardson, she rest in peace, gave me the part of, based on Clarence Darrow, Inherit the Wind, about the Scope Smokey trial in Tennessee where the high school teacher was prosecuted for teaching evolution in the 1920s. Real life trial with Clarence Darrow versus William Jennings Bryan, who was a candidate for president of the United States. They broadcast it live on the radio. The whole nation listened to it. It's kind of an O.J. Simpson trial of its day. And there's a play called Inherit the Wind based on that. And I was, she asked me to play the Clarence Darrow character. And I said, I cannot do this. And she said, yes, you can. And I said, no, I cannot. And I'll never forget, she said, I see something in you you don't see in yourself. I know you can do it. And I would not be a lawyer. I'd certainly not try a lawyer if it had not been for my high school theater teacher. And so every time I meet one, I thank them. Because all teachers can have a tremendous impact. Anyway, so I played that role. I finally got to play the same role at age appropriate a few years ago. I've been in other lawyer productions. men, now juror, of course. And I got to play the juror number eight, the Henry Fonda role a few times. Spencer Tracy played Clarence Darrow in here at The Wind. And so I'm kind of checking the boxes on the lawyer roles. And we did Witness for the Prosecution, which is British. But I'd always been begging the same person who runs the theater company, Judge Christine Weems, to do To Kill a Mockingbird for years. And, you know, there's trouble getting the rights to the play. And there's a new version, which is on Broadway, and which rights can you use and that sort of thing. But finally... Last year, I made my annual January phone call to beg Christine Weems to do To Kill a Mockingbird so that I could play Atticus one time in my life. And she said, you're too old to play Atticus. And I said, I will shave. I will dye my hair. And I will lose weight. And she said, you're still too old. And I said, Jeff Daniels, who plays his role on Broadway, is older than me. And she said, you're no Jeff Daniels. Now, she was totally pulling my leg because she already decided to do it. And so she was just kidding me the whole time. When I started getting, you know, apoplectic, she just started laughing. She says, of course we'll do it, you know. So we did. Last summer. Have you seen it on Broadway? Have you seen that? I did ask Kelly for a present. I said, look, all I want for my birthday and Christmas combined is to see Jeff Daniels play this role on Broadway. And so we did a few years ago. And when we were rehearsing our play here, I thought I was doing okay in rehearsal. And then about a week before the show... And the director came up to me and said, you don't have enough of an Alabama accent. And I said, first, I wish you told me that a little sooner. But my Oklahoma accent is not sufficient. And she said, needs to be more accurate. you know, deep Alabama. You're in a little town in Alabama. I will try. And she said, you just can't get Gregory Peck out of your head, can you? And I went, yes, I can. She said, no, you can't. But you can't have everybody around you have an accent and you not. So I went home and I was actually quite depressed because I didn't know that I'd be able to. I mean, I'd learn the play normally. And the closing argument is, several pages long. And Kelly saved the day by saying, don't you remember when we saw Jeff Daniels play this role? I go, yeah, it was a few years ago. And she goes, well, don't you? Oh, here, let me play you a YouTube excerpt of it. And he had the thickest Alabama accent you could imagine. Yeah, it was not Gregory Peck at all. And so I thought, well, if Jeff Daniels could do that, maybe I can too. So that kind of got me to a place where psychologically where I could do it. But look, that book is the reason I'm a lawyer. The lines of that book buzzed in my head for 40 years. five years and, uh, to have a chance to sit and say those lines publicly that, uh, it was extremely meaningful to me. The, the only thing I'd abide by mature majority rule is someone's conscience. Things like that, that just kind of glow. Um, um, Scout, by nature of the profession, every lawyer gets at least one case that affects him personally. This one's mine, I guess. What was your childhood, teenager, what were they like that took you that direction? Well, my dad was a small-town lawyer, so I saw it being done, and he, you know, had done a lot of— When you're a small-town lawyer, you kind of do lots of different things. Right. But, again, I was shy until high school theater. Now, when you say small-town lawyer, what are you talking about small? Well, Ponca City, okay, my wife's hometown in Oklahoma has 3,000 people. They got a stoplight when she was in high school. That's truly small. Ponca City, Oklahoma, from whence I come— It is about 20,000, but it's the only—so it's much larger than Kelly's, but it's the only thing any direction for 100 miles. We're virtually in the middle of a wheat field that goes 100 miles around it. Wichita, Tulsa, Oklahoma City are all hours away, so Twister was filmed around our hometown, if that gives you any idea. Both of them. When I hear someone describe small town, I grew up in a small town in Louisiana, 1500. We had one epic light that hadn't changed if someone ran over the strip that intersected with the highway that came through town. The light would not change unless somebody ran over the strip to change the lights. Did you have a McDonald's? No. Are you kidding? Yeah. That was a big deal when we got a McDonald's. When I was in high school, I mean, that was a huge event. We had nothing. We had a little ice cream stand. Yeah. As someone who's been politically active and legally engaged throughout your career, one of the most poignant things I remember about the little ice cream stand growing up in the late 50s, 60s, was at the front of the ice cream stand, it said white only. And I remember as a child thinking, if you wanted vanilla ice cream, you went to the front. And if you wanted chocolate ice cream, you went to the side. And we were so naive, and obviously that's not what it meant, but there was a little movie theater, and we were not allowed to sit in the balcony. That was reserved for other people. I thought, well, that's a great place up there. I'd love to go. You know, it was such a different— When you're a little kid, you don't understand. No. Had no idea. And we lived across the street from the high school. One night, I saw flames reflecting off my bedroom wall, and I looked out, and there was a cross burning in the high school yard, hoods and garb. And, of course, I didn't understand it then. But, you know, in a lot of ways, I want to get to some of the cases you've talked about. In a lot of ways, we think we've come a long way. And in a lot of ways, we've not come very far. Well, let's talk openly about that issue, though, before we move on. I was blessed to have parents that gave me good values in that regard. Not everybody has that blessing. I know a lot of people who didn't have that blessing and had to find humanity on their own. And some never really did, too. But I lived in Oklahoma City until I was nine. My father was an assistant U.S. attorney. was another assistant U.S. attorney, a man named John Green. And he was a Greek guy. And both of them had been appointed by John F. Kennedy to represent the United States of America in federal court. The only difference between them, John Green couldn't get a meal in downtown Oklahoma City. Mm-hmm. So he and dad would usually go to the YMCA and play handball over lunch and grab a sandwich. Or sometimes they'd just go into a restaurant and flash their federal badges and say, what are you going to do about it? But it was in my lifetime that that happened. And so dad modeled for me friendship, friendship. I mean, John Green was with us when my grandfather died, and Dad was with him when his father died. And then I remember playing high school football, and Mom was saying, so who are your black friends on the team? And I'd say, well, Willie and James. And she'd go, why don't you invite them over to dinner and spend the night? And I'd say, okay. And... This was Littletown, Oklahoma in the mid-70s, where that was not a thing that was done. So both mom and dad showed me a good way. And I think from that, it came from a good place. My grandfather, when he was a... And then we can go on after this, but I do want to tell you this because you mentioned the Ku Klux Klan. And in the 1920s and throughout the South... They were incredibly powerful. They had a couple of rises in the 20s and also in the 50s. My grandfather was a ministry student at Baylor University. He was 19 years old. He came off the farm picking cotton, you know, what? went to Baylor with $13 and worked three jobs and worked his way through school. But he came home one weekend. He was from Rosebud, which is near Temple, which is not far from Waco. And his dad, in addition to being a farmer, was deputy sheriff. And they got a phone call, and an innocent black man was about to be lynched. My grandfather answered the phone. He didn't know where his father was, no cell phones in those days. And so my grandfather grabbed his father's rifle and rode to the man's house and was trying to get him to come out. What had happened was the man was driving his carriage, his cart through town, and he splashed mud on a white girl. and as the Ku Klux Klan spread the news, he'd run her down. She was fine. She had mud on her. Right. And he checked to make sure she was okay before she went on and apologized. Completely innocent. She'd stepped into the street, you know, in a place where it had rained and there was a mud flow. Anyway, so my grandfather was trying to get him to come out, and he was, of course, scared to come out, and my grandfather turned around, ropes and whips and guns. And they said, step aside, boy. And he said, in my father's absence, thinking very quickly, in my father's absence, I am. I have assistant deputy sheriff, but I've come to arrest this man and take him into custody. And they said, he's been tried and convicted boy. Step aside. Wow. And, uh, this is the moment where life goes one way or another way. It, or this is the moment where your life may end because he looked at them and he said, you'll have to kill me first. And, uh, Then he said, I can think of nothing else to do but pray to God for guidance. And he took off his hat and he lowered his head and he started to pray. And these guys who claimed to be Christians knew that this 19-year-old redheaded 5'7 kid was a ministry student at Baylor. He probably knew some of them. He couldn't see behind the hoods. Yeah. Little town. But somehow they didn't kill him. And somehow he got the man on the horse behind him and rode it out through the crowd and took him home. And then he and his dad let all of the town know that he was completely innocent. But so that's part of our family's heritage. You know, my folks, maybe we were naive, but I saw nothing but kindness from my family. family. Now, how it was received and how it was processed on the black community in our little town, I don't know. But it was very peaceful and there was kindness and there was compassion. But I'm sure there was some hierarchy that was implied through it all. I've read about the Klan, you know, I think as a Southerner, it always bothered me a little bit that it was the Klan moniker was attached to the South when there was a lot of Klan activity in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana throughout the country. And, you know, racism knows no reason. Yeah. Racism is all over the country. Was and is. And, yeah, there was a bunch of it in the South, but also there was a bunch of it in the North, too. And so, you know, nobody's innocent in this. But, yeah, you wanted to talk about cases and stuff. I'm happy to. I'm here for you. I notated that you have argued cases in front of the Texas Supreme Court, the federal. Texas Supreme Court, Federal Court of Appeals. You've been interviewed on CNN, Texas Monthly, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. 60 minutes. You're leaving out the most important one. Okay. Wayne Watson. Wow. Well, that could be a watershed moment in this podcast. You know, I love doing this. I am not smart enough to have gone to law school, but I do like to talk. One night I was doing a concert and I tend to be a little wordy between songs sometimes. I remember there was a little girl sitting with her mother on the front row and I was telling a story and she said very loudly, when's he going to sing again? You have to love the honesty and candor of children. What would we do without that? Tell me about it. I'm a civil trial lawyer. So my first criminal case was when I was 40. How that happened is something that a lot of people don't. don't know. People know that I got a call from the New York Innocence Project to handle a murder case pro bono here to help exonerate a man that they were innocent and had been in prison at the time for 18 years. But how I got that call was kind of interesting. Backing up, I'm going to say, Before I got that call, I was blessed to spend a day representing Maya Angelou as her counselor, and I spent a day alone in the conference room with her just talking about life. It was a mediation of a case she was involved in. And I remember vividly... that Dr. Angelo said, we have a duty as human beings to give back to humanity. And she was approaching it from a Christian perspective. I've never met anyone who knew more Scripture than Dr. Angelo and was so intensely spiritual and brilliant at the same time. But she said, to whom, quoting the verse, much is given, much shall be required. Okay. And then she looked me squarely in the eye and she said, and Mr. Reilly, I know that an opportunity is coming for you very soon. And I think she was just so tuned in spiritually, like other people we know, like Jim Jackson, that she knew. And not long after that, I got a call from the Essence Project, and I wondered why. Because, I mean, I genuinely thought they were dialing the wrong number. I mean, it was flattering, but I'd never had a criminal case and I was 40. And if you think I was going to go into that area, I would have done something before then, maybe start out with traffic court or something and kind of work my way up. But what had happened was there was a woman working at our law firm, um, Hannah Lieber Dershowitz. And Hannah was from New York City. Yes, that same Dershowitz family. She was married to a nephew of Alan. And she was an associate. I was a young partner at the firm. She came in with tears in her eyes. And I said, what's wrong, Hannah? And she said, well, a friend of mine is a high school English teacher. And he wrote a book about being a punk rocker. And he was giving out his book on the street, and they gave him a $500 fine, and he doesn't have $500. And I said, what is the rest of the story? She goes, well, here's the book. And the policeman opened it just randomly to a chapter saying pretty harsh things about police officers. And I won't say the words on your podcast, but it's why cops. And there's an F word. So the cop basically, obviously content based violation of the first amendment. And, uh, so I told Hannah, uh, we won't charge him a dime. We'll set it for trial. We'll plead not guilty. We'll go down and try the case, tell him not to pay any money. So he went down there and the, the, uh, the sweet city attorney was horribly overworked. And I walked up to him and I said, do you really want me to cross examine the police officer on the first amendment to the United States of America? And he went, no, no. I said, you sure are the constitution? It's kind of important. We could talk about it today. He goes, no, no, don't want to do that. I go, okay, well, that's the correct answer. He goes, well, I'll dismiss the case then. And so we walked out. I mean, it's, it's, not that big a deal. It wasn't that good a lawyering. It's kind of something anybody could do, but he was happy and Hannah was happy. And then Hannah saw me try brain damage, the case that took several weeks to try. And then she went back to New York City and the people at the Incest Project said, look, we've got this case with forensic scientific evidence. The, the, a woman was murdered and, bludgeoned to death in her bed by a blunt instrument. The husband said he was at work when that happened. So that means it had to be an intruder, a burglar or something. And his prosecution was that she died before he left. And... ...pologist who had no idea what he was doing. None whatsoever. He'd never timed death before or since because he didn't know how, admittedly. And he didn't see the body for two days. And so he couldn't do the standard means of timing death. And still he got on the stand and testified. He said, this is not a scientific opinion, but it's my opinion. You tell me why that came into evidence. And even after all of that, his first opinion was late enough for the murderer to watch Michael Morton, is the man's name, leave his house, go to work, hop the back privacy fence where there was a footprint in the mud, come in through the unlocked sliding glass door where there were strange fingerprints, and find Christine Morton in her bed and beat her to death with a blunt instrument. and put luggage in and a wicker basket on her corpse, see their little three-and-a-half-year-old boy, and think, heck with it, decide not to go through with the burglary, grab a few things, and leave through the front door. which is exactly what happened. So when the prosecutor saw that he could not get a conviction with this evidence, he asked the pathologist to ratchet up the testimony earlier in time and time the death before Michael left. Again, the pathologist said that's not a scientific opinion. Um, but the judge who was a former prosecutor led it into evidence. And then on closing argument on rebuttal, after it was too late for the defense to say anything, the prosecutor said scientific evidence proves Michael Morton is guilty time of death. And he said it five times in about 10 minutes. And that's why the jury sent an innocent man to prison for 25 years. And, uh, Anyway, so I got the call on that because they knew I'd done medical malpractice work, and they also knew I'd done pro bono because of the English teacher. So, I mean, the battle was joined on that case. I had no idea when I took it that it would take seven years. None whatsoever. I thought I would file a motion and we'd get it heard and who could actually— oppose an honest search for truth? Who could oppose it? What happened was the murderer, a man named Mark Ellen Norwood, after he beat Christine Morton to death with probably a two by four from the construction area out behind the house, he had a blue bandana and he carried it in his front right pocket with just the corner of it tucked out. There are pictures of him on construction crews doing that. And he took the bandana and he wiped her blood from his face and hands, stuck it back in the pocket and ran. And in Miracle of Miracles, the blue bandana was found the next day. Right. But no DNA testing was available in 85 and 86. So I was just sitting there like a time capsule. So when I got the call in 2005, looking at the case evidence, I see that the pathologist's testimony is balderdash. It's alchemy. It's not really consistent with anything scientific. So I knew that Michael didn't have a fair trial. That didn't mean he was innocent. That means he didn't get a fair trial. There's no evidence against him. And so the first thing we wanted to do was... The main thing we wanted to do was test the bloody bandana, thinking it might have the blood of the murder victim and the sweat and skin cells of the murderer. And if we run that through the federal data bank, that DNA profile, we might have a hit on a known felon, which after seven years of fighting, three times to the court of appeals, once to federal court of appeals, We finally got the DNA test, and that's exactly what it showed. Where was the bandana all this time? It was in the sheriff's department file in a baggie. And, you know, the district attorney fought us every step of the way as hard as he could. And that was hard for me. Did they want to try to— placate the community so they felt safe? No. It's deeper and wider than that. Kelly figured this out, my wife, who's a crackerjack lawyer and a good researcher. For 40 or 50 years in Williamson County, Texas, the assistant district attorney becomes the district attorney who becomes a judge. And so the judge who tried Michael's case in, 1987 had been district attorney. The district attorney who tried Michael's case later became a judge. But before he did, he raised up a young assistant district attorney to take his place. Wow. So the district attorney I was negotiating with to try to get his just agreement that we could test the bloody bandana for DNA findings and That district attorney had been trained by and mentored by the man who put Michael Morton in prison and let the murderer go free to kill again, which is exactly what he did less than two years later. He killed another young mother, this one in Austin, Texas, same MO, beaten to death in her bed with a blunt instrument, No signs of forced entry. That time he went in through a window that was unlocked. Didn't burglarize much. Put luggage on her corpse. Both petite, attractive brunettes in their early 30s. Both on the 13th of the month. Was there ever a motive other than some vague burglary sort of appearance? He was a burglar, and he was convicted many times of burglary. But what he tended to do was sometimes kill the people in the house that he was burglarizing. But I also think that he was actually stalking women of a certain age who had small children. And then it gets really weird because his wife was that age when she left them with their with their small son. So maybe he's killing his wife over and over. Also, he lived with his mother wherever he went. He was in three states and convicted of felonies in three states. And yeah, so there's that. Michael was in prison for 25, 26? 25 years. Yes, sir. You met him after 18 years. Yes, it was a seven-year fight. I read the file, and I realized there's no real evidence against him, but I wanted to meet him in person. And so I drove to meet him in person, and, you know, I don't claim to have psychic power, but I cross-examined people for a living, and there was nothing about him that didn't come from a place of honesty and integrity and honor, and I came home to Kelly. who I take advice from when I'm smart, and said, my God, he's innocent. We have to get him out. And she looked me squarely in the eye and she said, then do it. And she knew more than I did than what I was going to be up against, the corrupt political machine I was up against. And that was her way of blessing it and saying, I know this is going to be hard, but you have my support. And she was also a crackerjack researcher, too. She did a nationwide search for women that had been bludgeoned to death in their beds with blood instruments. And she found this cold case at Austin, which was two decades old and had never been solved. And this sweet blog by the daughter of the woman that was murdered. And the woman's name was Deborah Jan Baker. Um, and, uh, just a sweet, sweet blog. If anybody knows what happened to my mother, please tell me. But that was before we won after six and a half, seven year fight, we finally got DNA testing permitted. The court of appeals of course had to rule it, but we got the hit. The first results were the blood was creams, the blood of the murder victim. but there's also sweat and skin cells of a man, not a woman, who is not Michael Morton. That DNA profile was run through the Federal Databank, and it led to a direct hit on Mark Allen Norwood. And it was almost... 25 years to the day that Christine was murdered. And I later found out that Michael and Christine sent Eric. Michael hadn't seen his son in a decade. He was raised to believe that his, he was raised by his mother's sister to believe that his father killed his mother. Right. Because she brought to what the district attorney was telling him. But Eric and his new wife, were at the mother's graveside, and it had been raining, and the sun suddenly came out. And they both believed that that was Christine saying, the truth is going to come to light. And so we got the hit on Norwood, and now we know Christine's blood, the DNA of a known felon with a 30-year record, for most people, That's enough to release Michael from prison, but not for district attorney John Bradley. He was still saying that the bandana didn't matter. And he had crazy things like maybe Michael killed Christine and, um, And they went outside and found a bandana, brought it in, dipped her blood in, took it back out and dropped it. Or this one is really my favorite. Christine was outside the day before and she cut herself and she picked up this bandana she found on the ground and dabbed her blood with it. Because that's exactly what you would do if you cut yourself outside, right? You'd pick up a bandana on the ground. Yeah, because bacteria doesn't exist. You know, so just crazy, crazy stuff. So I moved to strike him because of his bias, but of course that wasn't granted either. It was around this time that our Freedom of Information Act request for the district attorney's file was granted. And we got to see the file and I went through it and I pulled out this document that was an interview, a transcript of an interview with Christine's mother. Little Eric told his grandmother about seeing his mother killed. He told her one time about it on the day of his mother's funeral. You can imagine how traumatic it was. He told her. Sealed it off, but he said the monster came into the house. And he hit Mommy, and Mommy's crying. Now Mommy's stopped. The monster's mad. His hands are red. You know what that is? Sometimes the blood on his hands. He put a blue suitcase on Mommy. He went out the front door. Where was Daddy? Eric? Was Daddy home? No. Mommy and Eric was home. So the grandmother wrote this down verbatim. She called the deputy. He made a tape recording. It's a transcript. This was in the district attorney's file. They had an eyewitness account of the murderer being someone other than the accused. Then the tape goes on, and the deputy tries to persuade her that maybe it was Michael in disguise. He was wearing a scuba suit from the garage because he liked to scuba dive and, like, kid wouldn't recognize his own father. Besides, he described him as a big man with a big mustache. Norwood's over six feet and Michael's about five-six. I mean, it's just, it's... And then they also had sightings of an old green van in the neighborhood the days before the murder, and this strange man would get out and look over the Morton's fence into the Morton's yard from back behind the house. That was Norwood casing the house for burglary. I mean, They had the leads to have the murderer within days. They didn't take a plaster cast of the footprint. They didn't run the fingerprints. I mean, anyway, they let Norwood go free, and then less than two years later, he killed Deborah Jan Baker. When we... Got the hit on Norwood. We started investigating Norwood, and we found out where he lived at different places and times. And some people in my office, Kelly and some others, checked where Deborah Jan Baker lived at the moment she was murdered and found it was only a block or so from where Norwood lived at that time. And we thought, we have to tell somebody. We don't trust the law enforcement of Williamson County, but let's go to Travis County. Let's go to Austin. Let's tell their, their, and their police. So we went and told them and said, look, we've got this DNA testing on case. The same MO for Deborah Jen Baker's case. It's, it's a cold case. Would you be interested in, We'll give you our evidence. Maybe you can use it. And they said, yes, we're very interested. Thank you. And so they ran the DNA in Deborah Jan Baker's case and found Norwood's DNA there. So now that cold case is now salty. He's now serving two life sentences back to back for both murders. And as a closure, the— The DA who concealed the evidence of Michael's innocence, who was, by the time we figured that out, a sitting district judge, was removed from the bench, disbarred from the practice of law in Texas, and served time in jail. Not that long, a few days, but the fact that he did it at all It's the only one we know of in America where a DA went to jail for concealing evidence. Could he have any possible motive for railroading, Michael? Thank you for asking that question because I have struggled with that the whole time. Since 2012, I've struggled with that. And I think there's only two possibilities. One is he's unspeakably evil and intentionally put an innocent man in prison. I don't want to believe that. It's possible. Another possibility, which is probably more likely, is, because I've seen this in other wrongful conviction cases I've worked on, he made a snap decision that Michael was guilty. From his perspective, there was no sign of forced entry. There wasn't much taken in the burglary. I think when Norwood saw little Eric, he just grabbed Michael's Custom 45 and Christine's purse and left. He later may or may not have tried to use her credit card, but that's another thing. But he saw no signs of forced entry. He saw a wife beaten to death. And also, I forgot to tell you, the night before was Michael's birthday. They went to dinner at the city grill together. And it was a wonderful evening. They put Eric to bed. Being Michael's birthday, he wanted to be amorous. Christine kissed him. She said she was very tired. She said, tomorrow night, babe. And she went to bed. Michael left a note for her before he left for work that morning, taped it to the mirror of the bathroom. One of the things that gives him some comfort is she never saw the note. And the note said, I didn't want to have an argument with you about sex, but you left me hanging on my birthday. I'll see you tonight. And so they saw that note, and they decided that Michael killed Christine in a sex-filled rage on his birthday. Oh, I forgot to tell you, there was a little bit of, tiny little bit of marijuana in the house they were saving for a special occasion. And so obviously he's a murderer, right, because of weed. This is the way these people feel. think or thought. I mean, to borrow from Field of Dreams, which is one of the greatest movies ever, they didn't have a 1960s in Williamson County. They had two 1950s and went straight into the 1970s. So the idea of a weed in the house was obviously he's a killer. So they jumped to that conclusion, I think. And then having made that decision, they interpreted it. Everything else they learned about the case in light of the decision they'd already made through that filter. Right. Right. So things that weighed in support of that decision that he's guilty, they weighed more heavily. And things that worked against it that tended to show his innocence, they discounted because they've decided he's guilty. The prosecutor's job is to seek justice. But instead, he'd already become the judge and the jury, and his goal is to convict the man that he believes is guilty. So, as Jim Jackson says, no one would sin unless they persuaded themselves that it was a good thing, right? If you think about that, that's true. The rationalization is, I can't let this man I've decided is guilty see this evidence because he might use it to get off. and get an acquittal. We don't want this guilty man to get off. So it's a good thing for me to conceal the evidence of his innocence in violation of constitutional law. As far as you know, there was no personal vendetta from the prosecutor. No, he didn't know Michael, but he was a young prosecutor who was trying to make his career on this case. It was in the news every day. Right. And he wanted a straight face. That's heady stuff. No, I think he just wanted to win. He decided Michael was guilty. He thought if Michael's lawyer saw this evidence, the prosecutor might lose the case. He didn't want that. He wanted to put this guy he was convinced was guilty away at all costs. So it was a horrible injustice. When they came to arrest Michael, they literally took his son out of his arms. Michael's last, that was the last time he was alone with his son for 25 years. And he remembers looking back and seeing this little boy that just lost his mother, now losing his father, and saying, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, as Michael was led away in handcuffs. So Michael had to learn to survive in prison. The prosecutor said to the media that he should have gotten the death penalty. An old convict told Michael, keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. Michael had to learn how to fight. Sure. This guy that worked at Safeway. Because the predators know who to come for. Another old convict told him, to survive, you have to see yourself doing something outside of prison. And keep that in your mind. He says, I know what it is for you. It's your son. You want to be with your son again. Well, I know you'll want to tune back in for the last part, part two of this remarkable story with John Raley. So we'll invite you to come back. Thanks for listening to the Wayne Watson Podcast, where stories of faith, purpose, and everyday life meet and continue to uplift hearts around the world. Be sure to follow, leave us a review, and share this episode with a friend. To learn more about Wayne's music, ministry, and upcoming projects, visit waynewatson.com. Every journey of faith begins with a story, and every heart finds its rhythm in the Lord. Until next time, go well, and may you keep walking in step with His song flowing through you.