Barbara Bradley Hagerty

The terms of the peace must send a message that aggression does not pay. Is the U.S. breaking with its friends?

The terms of the peace must send a message that aggression does not pay. Is the U.S. breaking with its friends?

The terms of the peace must send a message that aggression does not pay. Is the U.S. breaking with its friends?

And the terms of the peace must send a message that aggression does not pay. This is why there can be no equivalence between Russia and Ukraine in how this council refers to this war.

And the terms of the peace must send a message that aggression does not pay. This is why there can be no equivalence between Russia and Ukraine in how this council refers to this war.

And the terms of the peace must send a message that aggression does not pay. This is why there can be no equivalence between Russia and Ukraine in how this council refers to this war.

That's right, Aisha. And on top of this, in the 1990s, Ben suffered a lot of personal losses. I mean, think about it. He lost his freedom. He lost his future. He lost his family. When Ben was arrested, his wife was seven months pregnant. So he lost the chance to raise his son. But for him, the worst thing was the toll that his life sentence took on his wife, Deborah.

I talked to her, and she told me it was simply agonizing.

So in 1993, he asked Deborah to divorce him so that she could move on with her life. And after a couple of years of resisting, she did. Ben said she finally agreed.

Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, despite the divorce, Deborah remained his most loyal and faithful friend. And, you know, they stayed in touch.

Well, not really. I mean, he had friends, but one by one, they were paroled or exonerated. And he had his faith, but there wasn't actually very much good happening in his life. That is, not until May 20, 2001, when he gets a visitor, Jim McCluskey at Centurion Ministries.

As I said, Ben had started writing to this ministry in 1989, but until this day, no one had actually come to talk to him in person. And Jim left the prison convinced that Ben was innocent. If you remember, this is how I put it.

Jim goes to work, right? Boots on the ground. He and another investigator began interviewing anyone even remotely connected to the case. 200 people, actually, about 200 people. And Jim's goal was just to persuade a judge to consider new evidence in what's called an evidentiary hearing. And guess what, Aisha?

He does indeed find new evidence that shows how flawed the investigation was and how flawed the trial was. Okay, so tell me more about that. Yeah. So first, there is a forensic visual scientist. Now, that's a guy who's an expert on what people are... physically able to see in different lighting conditions.

And he showed that Gladys Oliver and the two teenagers could not possibly physically identified anyone that night from so far away. And then second, the jailhouse informant. So at trial, Danny Edwards, the informant, had said that he never received a deal in exchange for his testimony. In fact, he told the jury that he testified out of moral outrage at Ben's alleged crime.

But Jim McCluskey found evidence that the informant had received a deal to dramatically reduce his sentence. He was facing 25 years. He walked out after 14 months. Mm-hmm. But then Jim found something else. He found that police had ignored a far more likely suspect, one that they actually knew about way back in 1987 before either of Ben's trials.

Remember, Aisha, I told you about tunnel vision, and that's when police or prosecutors have a suspect, and that kind of closes their minds to other options. Well, here's your example.

Yeah. Yeah, his name is Michael Hubbard, and during his reinvestigation, Jim McCluskey talked to two of Hubbard's friends, and they told him that Hubbard had confessed to robbing and killing Jeffrey Young. He described the entire assault. In fact, in the 1990s, Harper used a strikingly similar M.O. to attack other victims.

He would wait outside of the office for these businessmen to come out on weekends or on nights. He would hit them over the head with a bat, steal the cash and jewelry. In fact, he was actually called the Batman. And Hubbard eventually landed in prison for those later attacks. He attacked 10 men. And he got a life sentence. And he's still in prison.

And so Jim gathered all of this evidence and presented it to a Dallas judge.