The Long Road to Freedom

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Speaker 1 Will a wrong be made right?

Speaker 3 Will a family be made whole?

Speaker 1 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 4 Something is wrong here.

Speaker 4 The system doesn't want to acknowledge that they made a mistake, but you made a mistake.

Speaker 5 A detective was like, You gonna tell us you did this? And I'm like, Man, I ain't did nothing. You hear the judge say guilty.
Everything just froze.

Speaker 1 Two brothers convicted of murder fight back against the justice system.

Speaker 6 Twice is a pattern, a pattern of how to gain a conviction.

Speaker 4 I knew they were innocent, and the question was: do we have enough?

Speaker 3 You've got several witnesses saying their testimony was coerced. Can they all be lying?

Speaker 5 If I have to die in this situation, let it be said that I would die trying to prove it that I was innocent, man. Never that I gave up.

Speaker 5 Never.

Speaker 1 Here's Craig Melvin with The Long Road to Freedom.

Speaker 3 Tulsa, Oklahoma. Look at a list of top places to live and you'll often find it a city of promise of a new kind of energy, as its motto says.

Speaker 3 But look a bit closer,

Speaker 3 just over the railroad tracks that separate the north from the south side, and you'll find the city divided,

Speaker 3 segregated.

Speaker 3 And if you walk deeper into North Tulsa, past the boarded-up houses and the broken basketball hoops,

Speaker 3 you'll hear a story that's all too familiar.

Speaker 5 The truth is, man, I've had to deal with the pain, I've had to deal with the anger, the frustration,

Speaker 5 the sadness,

Speaker 5 the misery, you know.

Speaker 3 Like the families of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, and hundreds of other young African Americans whose names are being chanted in protests nationwide, Malcolm Scott wants his story told.

Speaker 5 Because if we don't know that it exists, how can we do anything about it?

Speaker 3 His story starts like so many other black lives that have struggled to matter. Raised in poverty under the watchful, suspicious eye of the police, and destined to a life of run-ins with the law.

Speaker 3 But at its heart, it's a story about two brothers, Malcolm and Corey, and a bond that could not be broken, not even in the face of unimaginable odds.

Speaker 3 What was it like growing up in North Tulsa?

Speaker 5 Oh, you felt like you were always home, you know, familiar faces always around you.

Speaker 3 Large family, too, as I understand it.

Speaker 5 Twelve brothers and sisters. 12.
Yeah, so yeah, it was crowded.

Speaker 5 I was really big into sports. Like I love, you know, me getting hold of a football in my hand and running was like, you know, life.

Speaker 3 Malcolm caught the football bug from Corey, who was his older half-brother and best friend.

Speaker 5 We have a beautiful relationship. My mama would tell me, you know, he's crazy about you, you know.
He do everything you do.

Speaker 3 As a young teenager, Malcolm dealt with a father who struggled with alcohol addiction and sometimes abused him. Corey was his safe haven.

Speaker 5 I had to protect him.

Speaker 3 Did he kind of start to play the role of dad?

Speaker 5 I could better relate to him. I didn't fear him, and I felt kind of safe with him.

Speaker 3 Feeling safe was rare in North Tulsa. This was where the poorest of the poor lived, a place with very few few social services, but lots of crack cocaine and gang violence.

Speaker 3 The night of August 3rd, 1990, was typical. On the corner of Atlanta and 4th, a gun was fired.
Corey says he happened to be driving through.

Speaker 5 I looked to where the shot came from and I seen the dude fall. And as we got right there, and I looked and seen his chest was still moving, he was still breathing.

Speaker 5 And I was like, man, somebody called Amelia's for him.

Speaker 3 When police arrived, they found 29-year-old James Lane, a small-time drug dealer, dead on the sidewalk. He'd been shot once in the chest and robbed.
Police stopped Corey at the scene.

Speaker 3 Some of his friends were known gang members, and police thought Corey was too, but he had no criminal record.

Speaker 5 And they ordered us out the car and they searched my car down and searched us down

Speaker 5 and let us go.

Speaker 3 Investigators were not able to develop any leads and the case went cold. But six months after Lane's death, a 16-year-old named Doni Thomas told police he saw the shooter.
It was Corey.

Speaker 3 Police arrested Corey and charged him with first-degree murder.

Speaker 5 I was taken to the homicide division and a detective was like, you gonna tell us you did this?

Speaker 5 And I'm like,

Speaker 5 man, I ain't did nothing.

Speaker 3 At trial, Doni Thomas became the prosecution's star witness, and prosecutors had more evidence.

Speaker 3 They played an interrogation video of Corey's friend, Ben King, who was with him that night, in which he too told detectives that Corey was the killer.

Speaker 3 Corey took the stand in his own defense and testified he tried to help the victim, not kill him.

Speaker 5 I can remember the DA, he said, you know, if they don't believe you, you're going to the penitentiary for the rest of your life.

Speaker 5 And I just, and I said, yeah, but the truth going to come out.

Speaker 3 The jury did not believe him and found Corey guilty. On June 25th, 1991, he was sentenced to life and shipped off to a maximum security prison.
Just like that, he was out of Malcolm's life.

Speaker 5 Corey left when I was no more than 13.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 that was hard.

Speaker 3 To fill the void, Malcolm started to hang out more with DeMarco Carpenter, a lanky basketball player and neighborhood jokester.

Speaker 5 I was going to be a comedian. You know, I used to think I was so funny.
You know, I was tell jokes and get the girls and make them laugh.

Speaker 3 But in North Tulsa, fun could easily turn tragic in a split second. Malcolm and DeMarco were at a party spot late one night in December 1993 when a drive-by shooter hit the place.

Speaker 3 Malcolm was grazed, but DeMarco was badly injured. He was rushed to the hospital, Malcolm by his side.

Speaker 5 He said, just hang in there, keep your eyes open. You know, and he was holding my hand and I remember him squeezing, hold on, hang in there.

Speaker 3 Losing his brother to prison, then seeing his friend almost die, hardened Malcolm. He inched a bit closer to the streets.

Speaker 3 In fact, police caught him with a handgun, something he says probably would not have happened if Corey had been around.

Speaker 5 He's always been the one that said, man, no,

Speaker 5 you don't need to be involved with none of that. You need to be in school, or you can go get that football.

Speaker 3 Malcolm had always wanted to follow in his brother's footsteps, and he was about to.

Speaker 3 When we come back, another Tulsa murder at another shock for young Malcolm.

Speaker 1 Fingers are pointed at him and his friend.

Speaker 7 These witnesses said that they saw Malcolm and DeMarco there, they saw the shooting, they identified them.

Speaker 5 Everything just froze. It was like time just suspended for a second.

Speaker 1 When dateline continues.

Speaker 3 Here's an inescapable fact of growing up in a violence-ridden, low-income community like North Tulsa then

Speaker 3 and now.

Speaker 3 If you're a 17-year-old black teenager like Malcolm was in 1994, you're on the police's radar whether you're in a gang or not.

Speaker 7 I frequently heard complaints from kids about being arrested for no reason, being hassled, being stopped, being labeled gang members when they may have worn a certain color.

Speaker 3 Ziva Brandstetter was an investigative crime reporter for the Tulsa World Newspaper for 22 years.

Speaker 7 I think the vast majority were good cops doing the job, trying to keep up, going from call to call. But there are other reports of,

Speaker 7 you know, indiscriminate arrests.

Speaker 3 Brandstedter says that what she saw in Tulsa reflected the stark reality all across the country.

Speaker 7 Tulsa was roughly 10%

Speaker 7 African-American, but the arrest rate among African Americans is about 43%.

Speaker 3 If you were a kid back then, it was easier to grow up in South Tulsa than North Tulsa.

Speaker 7 Absolutely. I raised two kids in South Tulsa, and I didn't have to worry about my boys being pulled over for no reason.
I didn't worry about, you know, the safety of my sons.

Speaker 3 How bad was the gang problem in Tulsa then?

Speaker 7 The gang problem was bad. People were afraid.
There were reports regularly about Crips and Bloods warring.

Speaker 7 The Tulsa Police Department was trying to deal with a very high violent crime rate, a lot of guns on the street.

Speaker 3 September 10th, 1994 was just that kind of day in North Tulsa.

Speaker 3 Another drive-by shooting, another senseless death.

Speaker 5 This time,

Speaker 3 it was 19-year-old Karen Summers, the mother of a baby boy, who was gunned down at 2.30 in the morning as she was hanging with friends at a party.

Speaker 7 Frankly, this kind of case, while it did involve a tragic loss of life of a young mother who was an innocent victim, it was not highly unusual in Tulsa.

Speaker 3 The murder had all the signs of a gang crime, and lots of Crips were at the party.

Speaker 3 So a day later, Tulsa homicide investigator Mike Huff paid a visit to Michael Wilson, a well-known member of the Bloods. Huff noticed a maroon sedan parked in Wilson's driveway.

Speaker 3 It matched the description of the drive-by car.

Speaker 7 Mike Huff says, hey, I want to talk to you about this shooting. What do you know? And Michael is trying to hide a gun.
Puff sees the gun and takes the gun.

Speaker 7 Ballistic tests showed that that was the gun that, you know, was used to kill Karen Summers.

Speaker 3 It seemed damning, but Wilson told detectives he was hiding the gun for Malcolm's friend, DeMarco, and had given DeMarco the bullets.

Speaker 3 Wilson was arrested for holding the gun, but his story lined up with what police were hearing from two eyewitnesses. Malcolm and DeMarco killed Karen Summers.

Speaker 7 These witnesses said that they saw Malcolm and DeMarco there, they saw the shooting, they identified them.

Speaker 3 Suddenly, Malcolm was in almost the same situation his brother had been in three years before and telling a Tulsa homicide detective exactly the same thing. I'm innocent.

Speaker 5 I'm like, whoever, you know, is telling you this,

Speaker 5 they're obviously mistaken. I didn't have nothing to do with it.

Speaker 3 But despite the fact that no physical evidence pointed to Malcolm and DeMarco, prosecutors believed they were the shooters. So, they cut a deal with Michael Wilson.

Speaker 3 They allowed him to plead guilty to a lesser charge in exchange for testifying against Malcolm and DeMarco.

Speaker 3 At trial, the prosecution presented the two eyewitnesses and what Wilson had told them.

Speaker 3 Then, DeMarco said the prosecutor approached him about a deal, say that Malcolm did it, and we'll cut you a break.

Speaker 5 I thought that he was insane for even asking me that.

Speaker 3 You didn't even consider it.

Speaker 5 No, definitely not. Like, why would I do that? Why would I throw him under the bus?

Speaker 3 DeMarco turned down the deal. But just nine hours later, he stood horrified as the jury delivered its verdict.
The two friends were both found guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 5 I couldn't hear nothing. I seen faces and people was crying, but I didn't hear nothing.

Speaker 3 A judge sentenced Malcolm and DeMarco to life in prison plus 170 years.

Speaker 5 Everything just froze. It's like

Speaker 5 time just suspended for a second.

Speaker 3 Malcolm thought of his older brother, Corey. Now, they were both serving life.
for murders they said they did not commit, but they were determined to stay strong and to help each other.

Speaker 5 We basically had made a pact with each other. We said, man, whoever we get out of here first,

Speaker 5 better come get the other one.

Speaker 3 The odds Malcolm and Corey could keep that promise were next to impossible. The road to freedom, if it ever came, would be long, filled with unexpected twists and revelations.

Speaker 1 Coming up, a private investigator tracks down one of the eyewitnesses who ID'd Malcolm and DeMarco as the killers.

Speaker 8 He said, man, I've been carrying around a burden. Those boys didn't do that.

Speaker 1 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 3 Corey Acheson had been in prison for 28 years when I sat down with him. He said he spent almost every day of it trying to prove his innocence.

Speaker 3 But he had exhausted his appeals and been denied parole five times. Was there a point over the last 20 plus years where you thought,

Speaker 5 I'm gonna die here? Times when you get denied in court,

Speaker 5 you feel low. You just wanna say give sometimes.

Speaker 3 So what was your lowest point?

Speaker 5 It would probably have been in situations when I

Speaker 5 wanted to be out there with my daughter and help her, and I couldn't.

Speaker 3 Corey's daughter Courtney was born a couple of months after her father started his life sentence.

Speaker 5 They sent me paperwork trying to forfeit my custody saying I was unfit because I was in prison and

Speaker 5 it felt like

Speaker 5 I was failing her.

Speaker 5 And it felt like it wasn't even my fault.

Speaker 3 Corey felt that sense of failure and helplessness again when he heard about Malcolm. What did you think when you'd heard that your

Speaker 3 younger brother was convicted?

Speaker 5 At first I was like, this is my fault because he followed in my footsteps. I felt like this is my child

Speaker 5 being taken away.

Speaker 3 Did you know that your brother told us that he feels partly responsible for you going to prison?

Speaker 5 I mean, there's no blame on my brother at all. And I definitely definitely can't hold him responsible, Boo, for something that I didn't even do myself.

Speaker 3 When Malcolm entered prison, he thought he'd get out as soon as he filed his first appeal. Then, his second and third.
Denied.

Speaker 3 Denied. Denied.

Speaker 3 So, Malcolm and his friend DeMarco started writing letters. Who would you write to?

Speaker 5 Anybody in the legal field that you could think.

Speaker 3 What would you say in these letters?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm an innocent man.

Speaker 5 You know, I just need somebody to look at this case and they will see.

Speaker 3 They wrote thousands of letters day after day for 11 years.

Speaker 3 Finally, in 2006, private investigator Eric Cullen, the son of a Tulsa homicide detective, took on the case.

Speaker 8 I kind of described Malcolm and DeMarco's letters as kind of scratches on a wall. I just kind of imagine what it it must be, you know, to be dropped in a hole 30 feet deep and good luck getting out.

Speaker 8 There's no such thing as a criminal justice system. It's just a system.
It's not always fair and it's not always right.

Speaker 3 Cullen tracked down the first eyewitness who had identified Malcolm and DeMarco as the killers.

Speaker 8 And he couldn't even look me in the eye. He said, man, I got...

Speaker 8 I've been carrying around a burden. Man, those boys didn't do that.

Speaker 3 The man told Cullen he shot at the drive-by car as it sped away and claimed that detectives threatened to put him behind bars for firing his weapon if he didn't testify against Malcolm and DeMarco.

Speaker 8 He says that they told him he could be charged with felony murder for firing that gun and that it might have been him that killed Karen Summers. Who knows?

Speaker 3 Now that he was making progress, Cullen needed help.

Speaker 3 So he turned to someone who's been a champion against wrongful convictions for years, Tiffany Murphy, then the director of the Oklahoma Innocence Project.

Speaker 3 It wasn't the first time a Tulsa case had landed on Murphy's desk.

Speaker 4 I was seeing a lot of cases where there were no facts that supported what I was seeing on these convictions.

Speaker 4 When you're seeing that lack over time involving the same departments, sheriff's office, police department, prosecutor's office, that's what really bothered me.

Speaker 3 Cullen and the innocence team tracked down the second eyewitness who testified he had seen Malcolm and DeMarco. But police records showed he had been shot in the buttocks and his back was turned.

Speaker 8 Common sense tells you if you got shot in the butt and you're running away, you're not able to see anything.

Speaker 12 The eyewitness recanted and he claimed detectives had coerced his testimony too.

Speaker 4 This is a kid who got pressured into saying something he did not see. I was just watching him and I could tell this was a man who was remembering something that was extremely traumatic.

Speaker 4 And as a black woman, I get that. I understand that.
You know,

Speaker 4 the fear of the police is a real thing.

Speaker 3 Now, only one of the prosecution's key witnesses remained. Michael Wilson.

Speaker 4 Michael is it. Whatever he had to say had to kind of tie everything together.

Speaker 3 And the team knew exactly where to find Michael Wilson on death row.

Speaker 11 Coming up: Michael Wilson's jaw-dropping admission: I wasn't trying to shoot Karen Summers, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Speaker 13 And what he has to say about the police: all I know is I had a murder weapon on me, and they let me go.

Speaker 1 When Dateline continues

Speaker 3 By 2013, Malcolm had been in prison for 19 years, his brother Corey, for 22.

Speaker 12 You ready to go, mom?

Speaker 3 You ready to go? The days when their mom Ruthella came to visit helped them hold on. The brothers drew strength from her.

Speaker 5 Man, that lady been right there.

Speaker 5 I never had to wonder if she still cared or if she was still fighting for me, still believing in me, still praying on me.

Speaker 3 And Malcolm was hopeful his mom's prayers would be answered two prosecution witnesses had told his investigative team that their testimony was a lie that left michael wilson the man who told police he'd given demarco bullets and hid the murder weapon for him if he recanted too malcolm thought they had a chance But Michael Wilson refused to talk, and he had a good reason.

Speaker 3 He was on death row for the 1995 murder of a convenience store manager.

Speaker 3 Wilson, seen here in the surveillance video while he committed the crime, was appealing, hoping he'd get a lesser sentence of life without parole.

Speaker 4 If Michael had been executed without talking to us, we don't have a case. We don't have enough with what we've got so far to win.

Speaker 14 I'm hoping that someone can help me.

Speaker 3 But DeMarco wasn't ready to give up.

Speaker 14 Shout out to President Obama, Russell Simmons, Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin, Ice Cube, Shaquille O'Neal.

Speaker 3 So you started making videos from in prison. Yes.

Speaker 3 Last I checked, you weren't supposed to have cell phones in prison.

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 5 But I had to do what I had to do to try to regain my freedom. I felt like I had to take this risk.

Speaker 3 While Malcolm and DeMarco waited, Wilson lost his final appeal on January 2nd, 2014. He was set set to die by lethal injection a week later.
And then the phone rang. It was Wilson's lawyer.

Speaker 4 And so she said to us, if you want to talk to him,

Speaker 4 this is the window you've got. And it was literally, I think, 48 hours before his execution.

Speaker 13 My name is Mike Hale L.

Speaker 1 Lee Wilson.

Speaker 3 When Murphy met with Wilson in a death row visiting room, a video camera was rolling.

Speaker 4 I was incredibly nervous because I knew it was on the line for Malcolm and DeMarco.

Speaker 3 Now, what might be their last chance at freedom came down to whether a condemned man would decide to come clean. Within minutes, he did.

Speaker 11 I wasn't trying to shoot Karen Summers. I was just, she was

Speaker 11 one of those type of things, you know, and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Speaker 3 Wilson confessed to killing Karen Summers. and even said he thought it was all over when police actually caught him with the gun he used.

Speaker 11 It kind of blew me away that I got caught with a gun and they just let me go.

Speaker 13 All I know is I had a murder weapon on me and they let me go.

Speaker 3 Wilson said, it seemed the detective had already made up his mind that Malcolm and DeMarco were the killers and he just pleaded along.

Speaker 11 All I had to do was ask the question yes or no. Did I give some bullets to Malcolm, I mean, to Demarco Carpenter? I said yes.

Speaker 15 Did DeMarco give you a gun?

Speaker 13 No.

Speaker 11 He didn't give me a gun. He asked me, did DeMarco Carpenter give you a gun? I said, yes.
That's what I had to say, and that's,

Speaker 11 they let me out.

Speaker 3 And that's why he was free to kill that convenience store manager. A murder that never would have happened had Wilson been in jail and charged with Karen Summers' death.

Speaker 4 You have people who would be alive, families, not affected, not destroyed by this horrible crime. That doesn't happen if he's arrested for this.

Speaker 3 Malcolm got the call soon after Wilson's confession. It was all there, captured on video.

Speaker 11 DeMarco Carpenter and Malcolm Scott is innocent. They didn't do this crime.

Speaker 3 The words he had ached to hear for 20 long years.

Speaker 9 I stood on my faith.

Speaker 5 I stood on my faith.

Speaker 3 You never lost that faith.

Speaker 5 I refuse to let it go.

Speaker 3 The team presented its evidence to a judge, judge, but police and prosecutors denied they coerced any witnesses and insisted that what Wilson had said on that video

Speaker 3 was a lie.

Speaker 7 The police, from their standpoint and the prosecutors, say, this guy's going to die. So if he goes out and helps two of his, you know, neighborhood friends, what has he got to lose?

Speaker 3 Would Malcolm and DeMarco have a shot at freedom? It was all up to the judge now.

Speaker 1 Coming up, a fresh look at Corey's case, including new evidence from three eyewitnesses.

Speaker 6 They all described someone 5'7-ish. That was an aha moment.
Because Corey Acheson's 6'2.

Speaker 6 No one is going to misinterpret Corey Acheson for being 5'7 ⁇ , okay?

Speaker 1 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 5 I'm Julio Vaqueiro, anchor of Noticias Telemundo. You can watch Daidline, the hit true crime series on Telemundo.

Speaker 5 And now, you can listen to Deadline as a podcast: stories of love and betrayal, of secrets revealed, of the men and women who stand between evil and justice.

Speaker 5 Every twist and turn can now be heard in Spanish, with new mysteries arriving every week. Just search Deadline in Español, wherever you get your podcasts, and start listening.

Speaker 3 Tulsa County Courthouse, May 9th, 2016, a day almost 22 years in the making. The last time Malcolm and DeMarco faced a judge here, they were sentenced to life in prison.

Speaker 3 Now, they hoped another judge would set them free.

Speaker 5 If I have to die in this situation, let it be said that I would die trying to prove it that I was innocent, man.

Speaker 5 Never that I gave up.

Speaker 5 Never.

Speaker 3 The judge agreed with Malcolm and DeMarco that police pressured witnesses and that Wilson's video confession was credible.

Speaker 13 They didn't do this crime.

Speaker 3 Malcolm and DeMarco, she declared, were actually innocent of the murder of Karen Summers.

Speaker 3 You remember that morning you got out?

Speaker 5 I remember the skies was beautiful.

Speaker 5 I looked up and it was right there, the sun.

Speaker 5 It was finally beaming on me.

Speaker 3 The first thing Malcolm did as a free man, he says, was to let go of his anger.

Speaker 5 I had to free my mind. I had to free my heart.
That felt good.

Speaker 1 20 years later, what do you do now?

Speaker 1 Oh, man.

Speaker 5 I'm not sure yet.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but I know I'm going to go get in the jacuzzi.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Actually, before he did anything, he called his brother Corey.

Speaker 5 He said, bro, it's over with. And I cried like tears of joy.
I felt like I was getting released. It's like a burden being off my shoulders.

Speaker 5 Even if

Speaker 5 it don't ever happen for me,

Speaker 5 you know, I'm happy that it happened for him.

Speaker 3 Remember, they had a pact. First one out gets the other one out.

Speaker 5 When I talk to my attorneys off the top, now what can we do about getting my brother out? They're like, man, you haven't even enjoyed being home yourself.

Speaker 5 I won't be completely able to.

Speaker 5 I need him home.

Speaker 3 Private investigator Eric Cullen was now working on Corey's case.

Speaker 3 And as he poured over police and court records, he noticed that just like with Malcolm, there were several allegations of coercing witnesses.

Speaker 8 Most investigators don't believe in coincidence, and I did not believe that was a coincidence.

Speaker 3 Cullen teamed up with defense lawyer Joe Norwood, and he discovered a 15-year-old testifying at a preliminary hearing, claimed police had threatened him with jail time if he did not say Corey was the shooter.

Speaker 6 Partway through his testimony, he goes, you know what?

Speaker 9 I can't do this.

Speaker 6 What I just testified to isn't the truth. I was told to say it by these detectives.
I didn't see Corey do anything.

Speaker 3 Next, Norwood tracked down the prosecution's star witness, Doni Thomas, and he told him he had lied too when he identified Corey as the killer.

Speaker 6 Doni Thomas's claim is that the police pressured him to say it, and then the prosecutor, Tim Harris, got him through the trial, getting him to say it.

Speaker 3 Then there was Corey's friend who'd been with him the night of the shooting, Ben King, the one who said on that interrogation video that Corey did it.

Speaker 3 But King said he had told police twice before that Corey did not do it.

Speaker 18 I kept telling him, we didn't do it, we didn't do it, Corey didn't do it. They didn't want to hear that.
They didn't want to hear the truth.

Speaker 3 And when police brought him in a third time and pressured him again, King said he'd had enough and just wanted to leave.

Speaker 18 And wouldn't let me go. And I didn't have an attorney or nothing.
After being down there nine, ten hours all day, I thought, well, I've been telling the truth. He didn't do it.

Speaker 18 So I thought, well, I'll tell him a lie and

Speaker 18 go home.

Speaker 3 King said that when prosecutor Tim Harris asked him to testify against Corey at trial he refused.

Speaker 18 Tim Harris kept trying to get me to say he did it and I wouldn't do it so then that's they that's when they went in there and brought that tape in there and played it and I told them that was a lie it was a lie it was police's words not mine it was co-hers

Speaker 6 to Norwood the parallels between Malcolm's and Corey's cases were unmistakable These teenagers were threatened with being charged themselves if they didn't say what they detectives wanted them to say.

Speaker 6 You know, once,

Speaker 6 twice is a pattern.

Speaker 1 A pattern of conduct, a pattern of how to gain a conviction.

Speaker 3 But in Corey's case, it wasn't just allegations of coercion. Norwood found three different eyewitnesses who told police someone else was the shooter.
None of them testified at Corey's trial.

Speaker 6 They all described the exact same physical appearance of someone, 5'7-ish, 150-ish.

Speaker 6 That was an aha moment because Corey Acheson's 6'2.

Speaker 9 He's a big dude.

Speaker 6 No one is going to misinterpret Corey Acheson for being 5'7-150, okay?

Speaker 3 Given all this new evidence, Malcolm thought his brother finally had a chance to get out of prison. Hey, bro.
What's up, bro?

Speaker 5 What's up, Wiki? Every time I talk to you, like

Speaker 5 when we were talking about you, you coming home, I'm like, I was just on the other side. You know what I'm saying? When you locked up on it, it's like you buried in a casket under the ground.

Speaker 5 This car will be terminated in two minutes. You've got a crown of bottom there, so don't give up.
Yeah, that's what it is. One little piece at a time, man.

Speaker 5 And every little step we take it, it's going to get us to that final, that big goal. You know what I mean? To that big one that we're reaching for.

Speaker 3 Will Corey and Malcolm finally reunite

Speaker 1 coming up? The DA in Corey's case faces some tough questions.

Speaker 3 But you could see how someone would say you've got several witnesses, all saying their testimony was coerced. Can they all be lying?

Speaker 1 When Gateline continues.

Speaker 5 Is this, is it going to happen this time? Just thinking about everything.

Speaker 3 It's one day before a judge will decide whether 47-year-old Corey Acheson becomes a free man

Speaker 3 or spends the rest of his life in prison.

Speaker 3 But even if Corey gets out, life will not be easy.

Speaker 3 Take DeMarco. What's it been like being on the outside?

Speaker 5 It's been a struggle.

Speaker 5 You know, I'm still trying to figure out who I am and what I want to do. You know, I missed out on so much.

Speaker 3 Malcolm, on the other hand, has adjusted well. He lives in Texas where he works as a personal trainer and

Speaker 3 he's in love. But Malcolm said his life would not be complete until the judge said those same words to Corey that she said to him.

Speaker 5 When she finally makes that final decision, you're a free man,

Speaker 9 I feel like

Speaker 1 that's when it's there, man.

Speaker 3 Hey,

Speaker 3 Mama Roo.

Speaker 1 How are you?

Speaker 6 I'm waiting for this table.

Speaker 12 I've been waiting for a long time.

Speaker 5 I've been praying for this.

Speaker 3 Family and friends assembled at the Tulsa Tulsa County Courthouse. No cameras were allowed inside the courtroom, but I was there to hear the judge's words.

Speaker 3 She declared there had been a fundamental miscarriage of justice and found there was clear and convincing evidence that Corey Acheson did not commit this crime.

Speaker 3 His daughter Courtney, 28 years old, apparent herself, was overjoyed. When you heard the judge say, Corey Acheson, you're a freeman,

Speaker 3 what did you think?

Speaker 19 It is no words to explain. Like, I'm just so happy.
I'm just ready for him to come home and be there for me and my baby.

Speaker 3 Dateline repeatedly asked the Tulsa Police Department to respond to the allegations it threatened teenage witnesses in both Malcolm's and Corey's cases.

Speaker 3 We also asked the DA's and the mayor's office for interviews. They all declined.

Speaker 3 But we did speak to Tim Harris, Tulsa's former district attorney, who prosecuted Corey and who Doni Thomas said coerced him into lying that Corey was the shooter.

Speaker 20 I said, the allegations are patently false, untrue, they're lies.

Speaker 20 I says, as an elected district attorney in this community for 16 years, I've never coerced, I've never forced, and I've certainly never presented false testimony, not only of Mr.

Speaker 20 Thomas, but in any case in my career.

Speaker 3 What about Ben King?

Speaker 5 I can't remember what Mr. King said.

Speaker 6 That was 28 years ago.

Speaker 3 But you know there are also other witnesses who

Speaker 3 recanted.

Speaker 20 I don't know that, okay?

Speaker 6 I don't know who said what.

Speaker 3 But you could see how someone who's looking at this case from the outside,

Speaker 3 who would say,

Speaker 3 you've got several witnesses, all saying their testimony was coerced. Can they all be lying?

Speaker 20 I don't know what they said, okay?

Speaker 20 But if they're present at the scene and they're saying Mr. Acheson was not the shooter, then tell me who is.

Speaker 20 All I know is I've presented the evidence that was presented to me at a jury trial and 12 citizens listened to all the evidence and decided that Mr. Acheson was guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 3 Although the judge today said had those same 12 jurors listened to all of the evidence, they would have likely reached a different conclusion.

Speaker 20 You know, that's her opinion. I respect it.
I certainly disagree with it.

Speaker 4 The system doesn't want to acknowledge that they made a mistake, but you made a mistake. You made a horrible mistake.
And the fact that it happened twice in the same family is

Speaker 1 there are no words.

Speaker 3 In 2020, the Oklahoma Innocence Project worked on a staggering 145 potential wrongful conviction cases in Tulsa.

Speaker 4 There is a problem here, and it continues to be a problem.

Speaker 3 And of course it is a national problem especially for African Americans.

Speaker 3 A 2017 study of the National Exoneration Registry showed that innocent black people were about seven times more likely to be convicted of murder than innocent white people and that police misconduct was 22% more likely to play a role in their exoneration than with white defendants.

Speaker 4 Now people are saying, how can we fix it? But very few people on the state side want to sit down and have an honest conversation of how did we get here.

Speaker 12 In June 2020, just weeks after George Floyd's murder, a Tulsa police major said that the police are not systematically racist, citing crime statistics, he said, showed police are shooting African Americans, quote, 24% less than we probably ought to be based on the crimes being committed.

Speaker 12 Tulsa's first African-American police chief and its mayor criticized those remarks.

Speaker 21 What came out of his mouth is

Speaker 21 in no way reflective of what we're trying to accomplish in the city of Tulsa or in the Tulsa Police Department.

Speaker 3 Then, this body cam video of Tulsa police forcefully arresting a black teenager in North Tulsa for jaywalking went viral.

Speaker 13 Why are you putting your hands on him?

Speaker 3 Meanwhile, Malcolm and DeMarco are suing the city of Tulsa and two police police officers. They claim coerced testimonies used to convict them.
The city and the officers have denied the claims.

Speaker 3 Malcolm says he's not looking for blame, he wants to provoke change.

Speaker 5 Because my heart is strong about every single one of those people that's going through that fight and that struggle to prove their innocence. I know the pain.
I know the hurt.

Speaker 5 That's what this is about for me:

Speaker 5 giving that next man a chance

Speaker 3 Corey's struggle to prove his innocence is done my ugly guy right here

Speaker 3 Malcolm their mom family and friends get ready to welcome Corey as he takes his first steps as a free man in 28 years.

Speaker 3 I would imagine that you spent many a night thinking about how this is gonna go.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had this dream.
I remember I woke up with tears in my eyes and one of my partners came in my cell. He said, what's up? I said, man, I'm going home.

Speaker 1 Here you come. Here you come.

Speaker 3 A little over a year after his release, Corey Acheson sued the state of Oklahoma for wrongful conviction. In June of 2021, the state settled the claim.

Speaker 3 While denying liability, officials paid Corey $175,000, the maximum allowed under Oklahoma law. That's roughly $6,250 for each of his 28 years behind bars.

Speaker 3 From 2016 to 2020, 374 people wrongfully convicted of murder, 61% African Americans, have reunited with their families. Together, they spent over 6,000 years in prison.
Years they will never get back.

Speaker 3 That's all for now.

Speaker 1 I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.

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