Barbara Bradley Hagerty

That theory, by the way, has since been debunked. And on top of it all, the Supreme Court started making it really, really hard to appeal convictions. But on the other hand, it was the best of times, right? There was an incredible technological development that happened. The DNA revolution. DNA started proving beyond a doubt that people had been wrongly convicted.

And this is this is also the time that there was this new legal organization that was founded was called the Innocence Project. Right. And they use DNA to exonerate person after person after person.

A man who spent three decades in prison for rape is cleared of the crime.

And suddenly, you know, average Americans started to see how deeply flawed the criminal justice system really was.

So DNA didn't help Ben. There was no DNA in his case to test. So Ben did appeal his conviction, but of course, Aisha, he lost.

Yeah, but here's the thing. Without DNA or some other kind of major mind-blowing evidence, appellate courts almost never, never contradict jury verdicts. They always affirm them. because they don't want to second-guess a jury. They're like, well, you know what? We weren't there to assess the evidence or the witnesses, so we are just going to affirm this jury verdict.

And so basically, Ben was stuck.

Amazingly, he did not give up hope. I mean, one thing was he had his faith and a belief that truth would eventually come out. But also another prisoner gave him the name and address of a group that would reinvestigate dubious convictions. Now, this was before the Innocence Project. Do you remember we talked about Jim McCluskey?

He's the former seminarian who dedicated his life to the wrongly convicted. So he also got me onto this story. He had started this little nonprofit called Centurion Ministries, and Ben began writing them But Jim said, you know, it was really hard to take his case because Centurion, which was the only game in town, was flooded, flooded with hundreds of requests a year. And this is what Jim told me.

And then one day in 2001, Jim McCluskey shows up at Cofield Unit, He spent an hour talking to Ben through this plexiglass divide in the visitor's room, which I have seen too. So they spent an hour together. And this is what Jim said.

He was just really happy when he saw Jim McCluskey at Cofield Unit.