The Crimes of Margo Freshwater | 6. The Reckoning
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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The Binge.
Margo Freshwater was finally recaptured in Ohio in 2002. Now she's in prison here in Tennessee. But Freshwater says she didn't do the crime that landed her a 99-year sentence, and she has the evidence to prove it.
The Memphis newscasters made it sound like her lawyers could just fight their way back into court.
Lawyers for Freshwater say this could be the breakthrough that they're looking for. Evidence could be presented that was never heard before. Evidence that is a jailhouse statement from an informant saying that Freshwater is not the killer. And her lawyers say if this doesn't work, they will continue to fight.
Fighting was easy. Getting a judge to even open the door was the trickier part. Tanya had new evidence, the confession from Glenn Nash that he alone killed Hillman Robbins Sr. But evidence means nothing if there's no legal way to show it to anyone.
I had to figure out a creative way to get it back into court.
That's Stephen Ross Johnson, one of Tanya's lawyers.
Because, you've got to remember, it's been 32 years since she escaped.
Once the deadlines and statutes of limitations have passed, that kind of proof is basically locked out.
In Tennessee in general, any newly discovered evidence, you've got to present in post-conviction proceedings, but you have to file that one year after your conviction has become final.
Post-conviction law doesn't give you much room to work with. You can only raise constitutional issues. And luckily, Stephen had one, a Brady violation. The prosecutor had withheld evidence that supported Tanya's claim of innocence in a death penalty trial, which is about as serious as it gets. But even with that, they were decades past the deadline to file it.
So we decided, let's file a quorum nobis claim
It's used when somebody has already been convicted, has no appeals left, and then new evidence surfaces that couldn't have been found earlier and might have changed the outcome. Think of it like going back to the judge and saying, if you had known this back then, things could have turned out differently. And here's the proof. It's rare, and it succeeds even more rarely. And in the spring of 2003, Tanya was brought back into a Tennessee courtroom for the first time since the world was being rocked by Woodstock. Steven Ross Johnson and Bob Ritchie showed up with a bold claim that the 32-year delay should have been forgiven because the state had caused it. Tanya didn't know about Nash's confession. Her trial lawyer didn't know.
But the prosecution had a simpler answer, one they thought ended the conversation before it began.
John Campbell's position was on its face, it should be denied because it's out of time.
John Campbell, you heard his voice in our first episode. Today, he's a judge on the Court of Criminal Appeals in Tennessee, but in 2003, he was the assistant district attorney for Shelby County.
And my first reaction when I saw this filing was, you know, she had escaped for 32 years. And it seemed to me kind of a stretch to believe that she could still prosecute a claim after she had absent herself for so many years.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–7:03
2
What evidence could potentially free Tanya Freshwater?
7:03–10:32
3
How did new evidence change the legal battle for Tanya?
10:32–12:49
4
What challenges did Tanya face in presenting new evidence?
12:49–18:50
5
How did the legal system respond to Tanya's claims of innocence?
18:50–42:50