Barbara Bradley Hagerty

So now, you know, Ben Spencer's been in prison for 30 years. I thought he was out. No, he's in for life.

Well, my story aired on NPR and was published in The Atlantic, and I thought naively that the attention would create kind of enough outrage that Ben might be freed. But you know what? Nothing happened, right? A radio or magazine story doesn't have any weight in a court of law. And so it was interesting, just like Jim McCluskey. Now I was haunted by Ben's story.

So I decided to write a book with absolutely no prospect of Ben's release. But then something finally went right for Ben Spencer. A new district attorney for Dallas County was elected in November of 2018. His name is John Crizzo. He's a And so Ben's legal team approached Crusoe and suggested that they wanted to try basically a new legal strategy.

Rather than trying to get Ben declared innocent, which had failed before, they wanted to prove that he didn't get a fair trial. And that is a much, much easier standard. So Crusoe agreed to assign one of his prosecutors, a woman named Cynthia Garza, to dig into the new evidence that Daryl and I had uncovered. And this prosecutor discovered even more evidence suggesting that Ben was innocent.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, people keep finding holes and Cynthia Garza discovered yet another hole. So as a prosecutor, she had access to all the police and prosecutor's files over the years, which, you know, journalists and defense attorneys don't have.

So when she went through the files, she found that not only had Gladys Oliver taken money from Crimestoppers — that's the reason the original conviction was vacated, if you'll recall — But she also received $5,000 to $10,000 from Ross Perot and lied about that too. This is how John Curzo put it.

And so finally, finally, finally, after all of these years, the district attorney said this man should be released. So on March 12, 2021... Ben Spencer walked out of his cell. He met up with Deborah, and the two of them walked into the main lobby of the jail. For some reason, the guards had allowed more than 200 people into the lobby of the jail. That never happens.

And they were cheering and high-fiving, and they went crazy when they saw Ben, right? It was this incredible scene. It was like a Disney movie, right? And then Ben and Deborah, they stopped, and then they looked at this crowd, and then they began to slowly thread their way through the crowd as if the seas parted.

Oh, my goodness. To be clear, like, this was a conditional release because at any moment, Ben could be sent back to prison for life. It all hinged on the same high court that had denied him in the past, the Court of Criminal Appeals. And this court... These appellate judges, they're all Republicans. Most of them are former prosecutors, and they waited another three years to make their decision.

But even with this Damocles sword hanging over Ben, he did his best to kind of move on with his life. He got a job from a man who believed he was innocent. He made up for lost time with his son who was, get this, 34 years old at that point. But the happiest thing he did was to remarry Deborah in January of 2022. Wow.

I know. I know. She had been his most loyal friend, supporter all this time. So I went to the wedding, Aisha. It was in the middle of COVID. But about 500 people came to the ceremony. Everyone masked, right? And it was held in Deborah's church, her Baptist church. And one scene is really etched in my mind. So I was standing at the back of the sanctuary and I was looking at the altar.

And Ben was in the tux and Deb was in a traditional white gown. And standing at the altar were five men, including Ben, who had spent years in prison. Ben knew them from prison. Of those five men, four of them had been wrongly convicted.

More than 100 years. In total, more than 100 years had been stolen from them and 30 from Ben. So finally, in May of this year, the Court of Criminal Appeals issued its ruling. And for the first time, it ruled in Ben Spencer's favor. It agreed that he had not received a fair trial. But it didn't exonerate him. It didn't clear him of the crime.

That decision was left to the district attorney, John Crizzo. And Crizzo set a hearing to announce his decision on August 29th of this year. And I was there, along with Jim McCluskey. And crowded into the courtroom to learn what Ben's fate was going to be. This was actually the same courtroom where Ben had been sentenced to life in prison 37 years earlier. Ben was at the front of the room.

He's 6'4". graying hair in his charcoal pinstripe suit and light gray tie. And Cynthia Garza stood up first. She's a prosecutor who had gone through all the case files and found the newest evidence. And she said that the state was dismissing the charges based on innocence.

And then her voice cracked when she said this, quote, I want to apologize to you for this grave injustice that was had upon you.

And she walked over to Ben and they hugged and they were both crying. And then the judge did something really unusual. She came down from the bench and she stood in front of Ben. And she said, Mr. Spencer, I want to be the first one to shake the hand of this individual that is now found innocent. Congratulations.

Yeah, well, so here's how he used his time. He stood up and he reminded everyone that he and his family were not the only victims of the justice system.

Well, it's complicated. And first, let me just say that Ben Spencer did receive compensation for the injustice. But, of course, he lost arguably the best years of his life, ages 22 to 56. The good news is the criminal justice system is getting better in some states. There's more understanding of the flaws, and some states are changing the law to prevent wrongful convictions. For example, Texas.

I mean, Texas has severely limited the use of jailhouse informants, and prosecutors have to turn over all their evidence to the defense. I mean, Texas actually has become the model in the country, and it's done this for a couple of reasons. First, it turns out that a lot of people have been wrongly convicted in Texas and later cleared.