The Alford Plea

Transcript

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Speaker 12 It's 1972. A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes.
Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

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Speaker 7 Hey, this is Lattev. Just quick, fair warning: this episode is not for children.
It's true crimey, gets a little grisly.

Speaker 7 Onto the show.

Speaker 14 Wait, you're listening.

Speaker 16 You are listening

Speaker 16 to Radio Lab.

Speaker 17 Lab. Radio Lab.
From

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Speaker 7 Hey, I'm Leftov Nasser. This is Radiolab.

Speaker 3 No Lulu today.

Speaker 19 I hit record.

Speaker 7 I hit record. Instead, I'm going to be joined

Speaker 21 by reporter Peter Smith.

Speaker 24 So, yeah, we go back a couple of years and maybe even a couple of years on this idea.

Speaker 7 Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, like, honestly,

Speaker 7 I've been waiting to do this story. And I couldn't do it myself.
And it took you, Peter, a superior reporter to me.

Speaker 37 or just a more serendipitous reporter maybe so yeah maybe i can tell you how i sort of like stumbled into this story just right there tell me okay yeah so i'm a reporter who covers forensics and and science and i spent a lot of time researching dogs and i think you know that you pitched us so many stories about dogs like yeah i was i was reporting on dogs for probably more years than i'd like to admit but this is this is not a story about dogs and yeah and anyway in the course of that reporting i talked with an investigator and after our conversation, he forwarded me some documents and I took a look at them and I learned about this

Speaker 44 case, which seemed like unusual and interesting for a lot of reasons.

Speaker 46 And I thought I would, you know, keep tabs on it.

Speaker 35 And so I flagged it and eventually I got this update that the case had settled out of court with a plea called an Alfred plea.

Speaker 7 Okay, that's the thing. That's the thing I've been obsessed about for years.

Speaker 18 The only thing I knew about it was that you had set some some Google alerts for this alternative.

Speaker 29 That's right.

Speaker 7 I mean, I did it because when I first came across it, like, I couldn't believe it was a thing. I couldn't believe I had never heard of it before.

Speaker 7 Like, you get charged with a crime in the United States. Like, there's only so many ways you could plea.
You could say you're guilty. You could say you're not guilty.

Speaker 7 If you say nothing, that's called a no contest plea.

Speaker 7 But it turns out there's a fourth option,

Speaker 7 which is

Speaker 7 like completely strange and totally paradoxical.

Speaker 40 Right. No.

Speaker 50 I mean,

Speaker 51 this plea is the complete opposite of what you would hope or expect from the justice system.

Speaker 53 We expect the justice system to be able to separate like truths from lies and to like show us who's guilty and show us who's innocent.

Speaker 39 And I feel like this plea shows you at the heart of this system, it actually doesn't do any of those things.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 30 I probably got ahead of myself there, right?

Speaker 7 I mean, well, kind of, but

Speaker 55 I think eventually we'll get to the plea, but I first want to start with this case that led me to the plea.

Speaker 22 Great.

Speaker 35 So,

Speaker 14 about a year ago,

Speaker 28 I went to Pittsburgh with producer Mount Kielty.

Speaker 30 Okay.

Speaker 7 Man, everything's on a hill.

Speaker 27 To meet the guy who's at the center of this case.

Speaker 57 Hey, I'm Matt.

Speaker 58 Great. Nice to meet you, Greg.

Speaker 56 Peter, nice to meet you.

Speaker 59 Greg Brown Jr. How you going? My brother Fred.

Speaker 35 Peter, nice to meet you.

Speaker 41 What's your name? name? Peter. Peter, nice to meet you.

Speaker 35 How are you going? I'm in the tricks.

Speaker 25 Greg is in his mid-40s.

Speaker 53 He's a short guy.

Speaker 43 He's wearing a Steeler shirt.

Speaker 63 No, I'm a Steeler guy.

Speaker 35 Uh-oh.

Speaker 41 Are those all your papers?

Speaker 64 That's my brother's, man.

Speaker 65 I'm moving crap out of the way, man.

Speaker 35 All right.

Speaker 33 We actually met Greg at his brother's house, and we all kind of just took seats in the living room.

Speaker 57 All right, so Peter was going to record himself.

Speaker 35 I'll just move this thing back and forth between us.

Speaker 63 Let's get right to it.

Speaker 33 So basically, this all starts the day before before Valentine's Day, February 13th, 1995.

Speaker 63 Right. I was at my cousin's house chilling.

Speaker 66 Playing some video games. Talking shit, you know.

Speaker 61 But it was late at night.

Speaker 38 It was a school night.

Speaker 67 Greg was 17.

Speaker 63 And it's freezing that night. Icy out there.

Speaker 24 So he leaves his cousins, hurries home.

Speaker 63 About a 15, 20 minute walk.

Speaker 68 I got home. And I'm in the process of cooking.

Speaker 24 His mom, Darlene, she's in the kitchen making a tuna salad.

Speaker 68 For a family repass.

Speaker 63 For a funeral.

Speaker 68 And I realized I was short of ingredients.

Speaker 53 And she wants to finish the salad for the next morning, but you know, it's super late at night, like 11.30, and it's not the safest neighborhood, so she decides to bring Greg with her and drive to the supermarket that's still open.

Speaker 63 We were only in there no longer than 20 minutes.

Speaker 68 They get back in the car.

Speaker 33 And they drive home.

Speaker 35 You with me? Yeah, so far.

Speaker 22 Okay, so they're driving back.

Speaker 70 into their neighborhood.

Speaker 63 And you can see like flashing lights.

Speaker 42 Smoke.

Speaker 71 Fire trucks.

Speaker 63 But I'm joking.

Speaker 16 Like, is that our house?

Speaker 53 The drive a little closer.

Speaker 59 It was our house.

Speaker 63 Now we're panicking. We want to know if everybody's out the house.
My sister, her daughter, baby brother, my stepdad.

Speaker 69 Greg just jumps out of the car, runs up this hill.

Speaker 63 To the back of the house.

Speaker 44 Darlene drove around to the front.

Speaker 68 But it was blocked off. And I told the firefighters or police, whoever was there.
I said, hey, that is my. I said, something's going on at my house.
And then,

Speaker 68 left my car up there. And I just struck out running down the street.

Speaker 67 When she gets to the house, she sees the rest of of her family.

Speaker 68 Everybody was safe.

Speaker 18 But since it's so cold out that night, they walk over to a neighbor's house and just like wait there.

Speaker 63 Now it's like, damn, now they're gonna be able to save the house. Everything you got is in there.

Speaker 68 Everything, you know, everything.

Speaker 52 And for the next couple of hours, they're just in their neighbor's living room.

Speaker 55 When eventually,

Speaker 27 this detective walks into the living room and he tells the family three firefighters are dead.

Speaker 15 Oh my god.

Speaker 68 And it was just, I couldn't,

Speaker 68 it was just terrible.

Speaker 69 Around like three in the morning, someone comes in and tells them, like, you're going to have to stay at a hotel.

Speaker 19 You can't go back to the house.

Speaker 68 So people gave us stuff.

Speaker 4 With mostly whatever they have on them.

Speaker 68 Pitched in and bought like underclothes and stuff like that.

Speaker 67 But Right as they're doing that, as they're starting to pick up the pieces,

Speaker 30 a very different story about what actually happened that night is starting to emerge.

Speaker 73 This is the

Speaker 73 accident invested fire investigation tape.

Speaker 4 So, hours after the fire gets put out,

Speaker 26 the deputy fire chief shows up and does a walkthrough of the burnt out house.

Speaker 46 And he starts in the front hallway.

Speaker 61 He and the cameraman start making their way down the hall,

Speaker 61 then descend this like collapsed flight of stairs, which goes into the family room where you can see like on the walls

Speaker 4 the handmarks of the three firefighters who died in this room.

Speaker 23 They were basically trying to feel their way out.

Speaker 73 Oh man, them poor guys.

Speaker 78 And then

Speaker 18 they make their way down another flight of stairs.

Speaker 73 Step out of the water. You alright? Yeah.

Speaker 73 Okay, you ready? Yeah, go ahead, Nate.

Speaker 8 Where they enter.

Speaker 73 Okay, we're now in the basement.

Speaker 8 The basement.

Speaker 73 This is crazy.

Speaker 66 And the basement is like scorched.

Speaker 46 It's a mess.

Speaker 67 There's like 16 inches of water on the floor.

Speaker 69 And the first thing that they notice is that, and this is something that becomes a real focal point of the investigation, is that if you look up at the ceiling.

Speaker 73 You can see the heavy char on the...

Speaker 73 the ceiling beams in this area.

Speaker 55 It's almost like there's a big hole.

Speaker 73 Some of these beams have completely burned away.

Speaker 25 Where these wooden beams used to be.

Speaker 73 Some are completely burned through.

Speaker 69 And what it tells them is there must have been a fire that started on the floor and reached these ceiling beams about eight feet high and essentially burned them all away.

Speaker 80 Once I had some preliminary feelings, I called.

Speaker 18 So the person who got called in to figure this out, to figure out how the fire had gone from the floor to the ceiling, was a federal investigator named Bill Petritis.

Speaker 79 So it's not our first.

Speaker 25 We could only talk to him over the phone, over speakerphone, but he explained that when he showed up at the scene that morning, his job was to draw a fence around reality.

Speaker 27 To basically say like, okay, what in the world as we know it with the laws of physics and fire dynamics, like what could have happened here?

Speaker 80 Saying inside this fence, this could happen. Outside the fence, it can't happen.

Speaker 73 And so, yeah, let's see if Carl can get some good shots at this furnace as far as we're rolling.

Speaker 65 Bill takes a look at the furnace, and he pretty quickly rules that out as a potential cause.

Speaker 30 He also notices that there's no damage that's consistent with a natural gas leak, which likely would have caused an explosion.

Speaker 27 And so, like, in order to put up his fence, he's gotta like rely on

Speaker 19 mathematics, essentially.

Speaker 80 Mass burn rate and the heat combustion rate.

Speaker 65 And basically, what Bill is trying to conceive of is like what could have been in this basement that burned.

Speaker 50 Laundry, chairs, books, yeah, anything, anything that could burn, and anything that burns burns in a certain way.

Speaker 67 When it does, it releases a certain amount of heat.

Speaker 4 So, when you draw the fence, and you start to do these mathematical calculations, what those calculations show is that, like, whatever material was in this room prior to the fire, there's no way in the world any of that stuff could get a fire to reach those wood ceiling beams and even dream of igniting them unless you added something

Speaker 80 like gasoline, Gasoline.

Speaker 80 You have to have a product in this room that has the same characteristics as gasoline.

Speaker 30 According to Bill's calculations, it's not just like a little bit of gasoline.

Speaker 30 You'd need like a whole gallon of gasoline to get a fire that's that big, that can burn that hot for that long to burn out that ceiling.

Speaker 16 And to Bill, it's clear that like a gallon of gas spread across the middle of the basement floor in the middle of the night, like this fire could not have been an accident.

Speaker 80 This is an arson fire.

Speaker 46 And if it's an arson fire, that means the deaths of those three firefighters.

Speaker 19 That isn't just some horrible tragedy.

Speaker 17 It's also triple homicide.

Speaker 7 More in a minute after the break.

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Speaker 7 Luttheff Radio Lab, we're back with Peter.

Speaker 7 Okay, so we left off where an investigator had determined the fire was actually an arson.

Speaker 16 Yeah, investigators determined that this thing that looked like an accident was actually a crime.

Speaker 106 Once they tell me it's a crime, I'm moving.

Speaker 33 This is when federal agent Jason Wick gets pulled in.

Speaker 21 I start running down the road to try to figure out who did it.

Speaker 106 And we had a couple things going. Not a whole lot, but a couple things.
One were the holes in the basement window.

Speaker 25 So investigators had learned from the firefighters that when they first arrived, one of the basement windows had like two softball-sized holes in it.

Speaker 24 So it's possible that, you know, somebody had broken out the window and torched the place.

Speaker 7 Like thrown in a Molotov cocktail kind of thing.

Speaker 70 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 40 Well, not exactly that.

Speaker 35 I mean, the other thing is like pretty early on, investigators were searching an alleyway next to the house, and they found this sort of rolled up newspaper, and part of it was like singed.

Speaker 33 So they thought maybe that had been used as like a torch.

Speaker 69 The torch and the broken window.

Speaker 106 We'd possibly have somebody introducing flame from the outside to the inside.

Speaker 44 into the basement.

Speaker 106 So we decided to go down that road, of course.

Speaker 106 Okay, we had learned through some interviews that Greg Brown was possibly involved in gang activity. So, could this be an attack from the outside to their home for some reason?

Speaker 21 That was a theory.

Speaker 33 But investigators never really found any evidence that Greg belonged to a gang.

Speaker 57 That path now comes to a dead end.

Speaker 70 What happens?

Speaker 106 Listen, we're kind of stuck. I mean, it happens.
Investigations kind of cool off.

Speaker 21 This one did.

Speaker 57 Where are we at, probably, in this? Like, how far removed from the fire?

Speaker 21 I would say we are

Speaker 106 probably almost a year, eight months to a year, Bill.

Speaker 36 Yeah, I'd say eight months. Easy.

Speaker 106 Yeah, eight months, eight months or so.

Speaker 24 When suddenly the investigation shifts to...

Speaker 21 Darlene.

Speaker 65 Because investigators learned that a couple of months before the fire, she had been laid off from her job as a nurse.

Speaker 106 And we're getting insurance information back now. So what comes back from the insurance company is she was a renter for most of her life.

Speaker 43 And of course, when you rent, you can't buy insurance on the home because you don't own the home, but you can buy.

Speaker 106 renter's insurance on your contents, what you own inside the house, your furniture, your clothes, jewelry, whatever.

Speaker 106 And after years of renting your home, for the first time in her life, not long after getting laid off, she took out a renter's insurance policy and then received the confirmation of that policy three weeks before this fire.

Speaker 23 The policy was for $20,000.

Speaker 34 On top of that, Darlene has also taken out a life insurance policy on her one-year-old step-granddaughter, who was in the house at the time of the fire.

Speaker 106 Meaning, if your one-year-old dies, you collect a big sum of money.

Speaker 24 Darlene would have received $10,000 for the death of the one-year-old.

Speaker 7 Whoa, that's weird.

Speaker 7 And that was also recent?

Speaker 24 Yeah, like not long before the fire.

Speaker 61 But when you get this information, you, you start, the gears start turning.

Speaker 24 You're like, this is a possible motive.

Speaker 70 Absolutely.

Speaker 106 Yeah, money motive. Absolutely.

Speaker 25 You know, as investigators see it, it's like Darlene is unemployed.

Speaker 42 They also learned that around that time, she's also apparently trying to buy a house.

Speaker 106 But it was divulged to her what closing costs would look like, how much she would need to put down to buy this home and did not have it.

Speaker 34 And all of this is happening like right before she took out these insurance policies.

Speaker 106 A coincidence?

Speaker 106 Maybe, maybe not. I mean, there's an old saying in investigation, there are no coincidences.

Speaker 29 And just as they're sort of like figuring out the possible motive, investigators also got this tip that a neighbor says he has information about this fire.

Speaker 107 In a nutshell, what he says is, is he's at home that night.

Speaker 106 He hears a noise, looks out his window, notices smoke in the street, sees Greg Brown, his neighbor. He says his neighbor kid from two doors down is on the street looking at the house.

Speaker 106 And most importantly, is there were no fire police haven't seen yet.

Speaker 33 And if you remember, Greg and Darlene's story is that they're driving back from the grocery store together.

Speaker 63 And you can see like flashing lights, fire trucks and stuff.

Speaker 23 But according to this neighbor, Greg is out there before any firefighters have arrived.

Speaker 24 Which means he wasn't at the grocery store with his mom before his fire began.

Speaker 106 We are breaking their alibi. We are breaking that story.

Speaker 78 And then another break.

Speaker 106 And one day I receive a phone call that, hey, listen, Greg Brown has been arrested for possessing a gun and drugs, and he is in a juvenile detention center in eastern Pennsylvania.

Speaker 17 I said, really?

Speaker 27 Jason figures that Greg isn't going to talk to him.

Speaker 106 So you look up cellmates of your target.

Speaker 46 They end up talking to a bunch of different kids and they finally find this 15-year-old kid who had bunked with Greg.

Speaker 106 And he said that Gregory had bragged to him about setting a fire at his home in Pittsburgh for his mother and that three fireheads were killed. I never heard that term before.

Speaker 106 You know, firemen were fireheads. And for setting the fire, mom was supposed to buy him a Lexus, I believe, a car.

Speaker 68 And with that, I get a knock at my door. I'm like, well, you know, what's going on?

Speaker 18 Pittsburgh police arrest Darlene.

Speaker 63 I'm like, what? One day I get to school and they got all the doors closed.

Speaker 30 All the doors to the classrooms. Right.

Speaker 33 And two federal agents arrest Greg.

Speaker 63 I knew what it was for, though. We already knew it.

Speaker 4 They're arrested on charges of arson insurance fraud conspiracy and triple homicide

Speaker 61 and you know at this point greg and darlene maintain their innocence they say they're totally innocent we had nothing to do with this fire we were at the grocery store at the time of the fire but you know the state sort of pursues them and says you know because this is a felony and three firefighters died um they're going to be charged with second-degree murder And actually, this is like not where the plea comes in at all.

Speaker 30 Like, this is where they're brought to trial.

Speaker 14 Oh, so

Speaker 7 So they don't want to take a plea.

Speaker 28 Actually, the plea wasn't even an option.

Speaker 38 The prosecutors didn't even put a plea on the table. They didn't even offer them a deal.
And so for Greg and Darlene, who maintain their innocence, the only option

Speaker 14 to fight, to take it to trial. Right.

Speaker 16 And to prove.

Speaker 42 Well, actually, actually not to prove.

Speaker 24 Because at trial, the onus is on the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you did the crimes that they're accusing you of.

Speaker 42 And so the defense's job, your job as a defendant is to undermine that case, the argument against you, and sort of present the story that says, no,

Speaker 42 we didn't do that.

Speaker 62 And so the first thing the defense does is really they go after the arson investigation.

Speaker 112 I mean, the long and the short of it is in this investigation, there's no science here.

Speaker 27 So I talked to this guy, Craig Byler.

Speaker 112 Technical director emeritus at Jensen News.

Speaker 18 He was later brought on as a defense expert.

Speaker 112 So Jensen News is a fire protection engineering consulting firm. It does anything to do with fire and then some.

Speaker 26 And Craig explained that a hallmark of the scientific method and indeed a cardinal rule of like fire arson investigation is that when you walk into a scene, you have to collect as much data as possible.

Speaker 46 You have to keep an open mind.

Speaker 33 You have to come from a place of not knowing.

Speaker 19 But Craig said when he looked through the investigative notes, when he looks at Bill Petritis, the arson investigator's report.

Speaker 112 He didn't do an electrical investigation. He didn't do an investigation investigation of the natural gas system or the appliances.

Speaker 22 He didn't interview the firefighters who saw the fire, fought the fire.

Speaker 112 He didn't interview the family about how this room was configured, what was there, how it was used.

Speaker 33 Craig says what Bill did is when he went into the basement and saw those burned out ceiling beams, he developed this hunch that likely gasoline was involved.

Speaker 66 And he used some calculations to confirm his hunch.

Speaker 58 And that's not okay.

Speaker 112 Any fool, you know, can multiply a couple numbers together and come up with an answer. That's not science.
It's not how you get the right answer. And he didn't get the right answer.

Speaker 33 What do you think the right answer is?

Speaker 16 I don't know.

Speaker 33 And neither does he.

Speaker 18 That was the right answer. I don't know.
Yes.

Speaker 112 Based on the data they collected, the only thing you can say is it's undetermined.

Speaker 35 Okay.

Speaker 61 So you don't think this was arson?

Speaker 112 I think I already told you it's undetermined.

Speaker 25 So that's the argument against the arson investigation.

Speaker 51 But there's also this question of motivation and of the insurance money.

Speaker 22 And so, like, if you look, wait, should I pull up the trial?

Speaker 14 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, if you, if you look up at the trial transcript, you can see that the insurance investigator is called to the stand and he basically like says that, you know, you know, after the fire, they, they talk to the family, they talk to Darlene, and they're also like trying to determine the total value of everything that's inside the house, the contents of the house, how much was lost in damages.

Speaker 24 And so the thing that they come up with this number is like $52,000 worth of possessions were lost in the fire.

Speaker 33 And the insurance policy,

Speaker 33 I don't know if you remember this, but it was $20,000.

Speaker 35 Right, right.

Speaker 33 And so the defense's argument is like, basically, this doesn't really add up.

Speaker 38 Like, why would you torch your own home if you end up like

Speaker 24 losing an enormous amount of money?

Speaker 59 Sure, I can see that.

Speaker 7 But then what about there was the life insurance policy on the baby, which felt very suspicious.

Speaker 54 Yeah, I mean, so the life insurance didn't really come up at trial, but

Speaker 25 it is sort of like in there a little bit.

Speaker 38 And like the defense's argument is essentially like, you know, the one-year-old who had this life insurance policy,

Speaker 81 you know, she's still alive.

Speaker 24 She didn't die in the fire.

Speaker 42 And so there was no payment made.

Speaker 24 But I've never heard of someone insuring a one-year-old before.

Speaker 113 Has she said why she did that or what i like i've never even heard of that it does sound unusual so okay i did end up calling darlene peter ron and i as a speaker so that i could talk to her and her husband ron because ron said basically everybody in the house had life insurance except my granddaughter ron had insurance through his work and over the years like he and darlene had basically decided to take out policies for everybody else in their family that's just something that you do we do is you you know, you get life insurance for your whole family just so that in the event something happened, you know, you can bury your loved one without having to do a go fund me.

Speaker 113 Well, I don't even know if they would go fund me.

Speaker 113 They wasn't even having a go fund me now or having to beg people, you know, for something that you as a family should be able to take care of yourself.

Speaker 37 But there is this other big thing, which is Greg and Darlene's alibi.

Speaker 33 They claim they were at the grocery store that night.

Speaker 24 And sort sort of remarkably, one thing that they submit as evidence is the receipt

Speaker 69 that Darlene has kept from her trip to that grocery store.

Speaker 7 So lucky. Yeah.

Speaker 39 But also maybe suspect.

Speaker 81 Like, why did she save this receipt and not all of her other receipts?

Speaker 33 But anyway, she has this receipt.

Speaker 66 It's time stamped.

Speaker 33 And it's for $36.22 for the ingredients that she needed to make this salad.

Speaker 81 Green peppers, celery.

Speaker 35 Wow.

Speaker 40 But at the same time, it's not like

Speaker 33 they paid cash, so it could have been somebody else.

Speaker 24 None of the security footage, the videotapes from that night of the grocery store, they never turned up.

Speaker 70 So there's nothing to confirm that Darlene and Greg were actually there.

Speaker 7 But it's not nothing. It's like something.
It's saying somebody was there at that exact time.

Speaker 16 Yeah. Right.

Speaker 62 But I think the question is, like, was Greg there?

Speaker 28 Right.

Speaker 24 So at the trial, the prosecution is also calling on their two key witnesses.

Speaker 33 And you have this neighbor guy who placed Greg at the scene of the crime.

Speaker 24 And then you have this 15-year-old kid from Juvie who said he heard Greg bragging about setting this fire.

Speaker 63 First of all, who's bragging about setting fires in the black community? I'm just being honest.

Speaker 43 Greg is like, who does that?

Speaker 70 Nobody does that.

Speaker 63 You understand what I'm saying? It's not even a cool crime. Like, name a rap lyric to anybody.

Speaker 15 Oh, that's a cool crime.

Speaker 34 I committed.

Speaker 36 I set a fire.

Speaker 63 But I'm saying, I can't say that in court.

Speaker 63 And then who's the jury don't want to hear that shit?

Speaker 28 The defense says, you know,

Speaker 32 why are you going to trust this kid?

Speaker 53 Like, he's a juvenile delinquent, you know, like he's a jailhouse snitch.

Speaker 78 And also,

Speaker 63 like a fat, awkward kid. We didn't, we just didn't, we didn't click.

Speaker 18 They sort of imply that Greg had bullied him.

Speaker 28 So basically, he's here to get revenge.

Speaker 7 Like it's payback.

Speaker 66 Right. He's trying to get back at Greg for making fun of him while they were bunk mates.

Speaker 66 But the problem is that the prosecutor asked the kid when he's testifying, they're like, you know, what brought you here today?

Speaker 33 Why are you testifying?

Speaker 67 And, you know, he said it was he'd talked to his mom about it.

Speaker 63 He's doing it because his mom told him this is the right thing to do.

Speaker 19 The trial lasted like three weeks, and at the end of it, the jury deliberated for two days.

Speaker 69 And when they came back, the jury foreman, he read out Darlene's verdict first.

Speaker 65 And it's like, you know, to wit, February 21st, 1997, we, the jurors and penalties and above case, find the defendant Darlene Buckner as to arson, not guilty.

Speaker 45 Criminal conspiracy, not guilty.

Speaker 31 Then they read the three murder charges, not guilty.

Speaker 19 And then on the last charge, insurance fraud, guilty.

Speaker 36 That was it.

Speaker 63 I said they gonna get me.

Speaker 46 The jury foreman continues.

Speaker 40 Gregory Brown Jr.

Speaker 46 as to the charges of arson, guilty.

Speaker 26 Insurance fraud, guilty.

Speaker 30 As to murder, guilty, guilty, guilty.

Speaker 63 That was just numb.

Speaker 63 I can't, I wasn't there. I just, I just like blacked out.

Speaker 68 I melted it down.

Speaker 26 Darlene was eventually sentenced, three years probation, 500 hours of community service, and a $5,000 fine.

Speaker 48 Greg was sentenced to life in prison.

Speaker 53 no chance of parole.

Speaker 64 But the system spoke.

Speaker 14 System spoke. Yeah.

Speaker 63 It made no sense.

Speaker 63 knew it my thing was just all this is irrelevant for me. You know, now it's just appeal.

Speaker 63 Yeah, I don't even know why I'm here. Me personally, I don't even know why I'm even in the courtroom.

Speaker 63 What? I'm not going to say nothing.

Speaker 33 Greg gets sent to a maximum security prison.

Speaker 63 The biggest jail in the state.

Speaker 33 Cell blocks the length of a football field.

Speaker 63 Four or five hundred people to a block. You got to get nervous.
You're just telling yourself you should be scared. You're saying big dudes.
They out on the tear. They walking around.

Speaker 63 Come to find out it wasn't that bad because everybody in there is not bad. You know, majority of people got the same goal

Speaker 7 to get out.

Speaker 54 And so what happens next is...

Speaker 63 I started my appeals immediately.

Speaker 67 This first appeal is denied.

Speaker 65 So is the next one and the next one and the next one and the next one.

Speaker 63 Rubber stabbed. They're just denying me.

Speaker 16 Years drag by.

Speaker 63 My appeal rights are like dead.

Speaker 24 When in 2005, voila.

Speaker 65 Sort of is like last gas. Hail Mary.

Speaker 69 Darlene.

Speaker 68 We start off with a letter with everyone.

Speaker 26 Sends a letter off to this guy.

Speaker 115 Bill Mushi, I was an investigative reporter for 25 years in Pittsburgh.

Speaker 40 And he started this Innocence Institute in Pittsburgh.

Speaker 16 So I could teach kids how to do investigative reporting in the criminal justice system.

Speaker 19 And Darlene gave Bill

Speaker 81 every single document she had relating to the case.

Speaker 16 I read volumes and volumes.

Speaker 68 You know, boxes full of stuff.

Speaker 16 Records our students went through, poured over stuff, but

Speaker 115 we couldn't get to the point of proving actual innocence, which that's what the project's motto was.

Speaker 16 It wasn't reasonable doubt, it was actual innocence. And if we can't prove actual innocence, then we're not going to do anything with it.

Speaker 28 Right, but you did stick with this case.

Speaker 16 Well, I mean, Darlene was a convincing person, and frankly, I liked her.

Speaker 32 But also, Bill had gotten this tip.

Speaker 35 You want the whole thing?

Speaker 18 A tip from Greg's lawyer.

Speaker 109 All right, my name is Al Lindsay. I represented Greg Brown back in 1997.

Speaker 21 And basically like Al told Bill that during Greg's trial, he had always had this hunch that somehow, as improbable as it sounded, I thought that these witnesses, the two key witnesses who testified against Greg, the neighbor and the kid from Juvie, were actually paid,

Speaker 109 bribed to provide evidence implicating Greg Brown.

Speaker 46 And this is because he had heard from one of Greg's friends that he was offered $7,000 for any information that tied Greg to the fire.

Speaker 69 And the prosecution had always denied this.

Speaker 115 Once we got the idea that they had paid witnesses, we just started sending letters.

Speaker 65 Matt Stroud was one of Bill's students.

Speaker 78 Ibrahim Abdullah and Keith Wright.

Speaker 18 Keith Wright was the neighbor.

Speaker 69 Ibrahim Abdullah was the kid from the juvenile detention center.

Speaker 116 But we didn't get anything in response to any of those letters. And so Bill and I went driving all over creation, just knocking on doors, trying to find people.

Speaker 78 And then one night, after like spending the whole whole day knocking on doors, I was tired, started making dinner for my wife, and then

Speaker 116 I got a call for a number I didn't recognize.

Speaker 65 I picked it up. Hello?

Speaker 117 Mr. O'Duma.

Speaker 78 And he said who it was.

Speaker 78 Yeah. Okay, good.

Speaker 78 So

Speaker 117 what we needed to find out, first of all, is it alright if I record this conversation?

Speaker 82 You already was recording it.

Speaker 117 No, I gotta let you know if I'm doing that.

Speaker 117 What we're trying to find out is who contacted you from the ATF after that fire?

Speaker 82 It was Jason Wake,

Speaker 82 Special Agent Jason Wake. Okay.
And that's who I basically dealt with the whole talk.

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 117 And the other thing we're trying to find out is we've heard that there was a reward offered to people who were willing to speak out in this case.

Speaker 38 And like, remember, back in the trial, this sort of came up.

Speaker 69 Ibrahim was asked, like, were you given anything for your testimony?

Speaker 54 And he's like, no, I just talked to my mom. Like, this is the right thing to do.

Speaker 59 But now, were you paid a reward?

Speaker 53 He admitted to it.

Speaker 117 What was the reward you were paid?

Speaker 82 It was supposed to be $15,000, but it was $5,000.

Speaker 117 Now,

Speaker 117 what happened in that situation?

Speaker 82 I got it in cash.

Speaker 117 You got it in cash?

Speaker 82 Yeah, they just showed up one day out of the booth. I didn't even know they were coming.

Speaker 113 Who showed up?

Speaker 82 to give you the cash jason wick jason with somebody else

Speaker 15 and um

Speaker 15 we hit the jackpot with that.

Speaker 63 One day, Bill, this was in August was like in the summer of 2010. I'm on the phone with him one day.
He said, he said, Greg, I got some mail coming. You're going to want it.

Speaker 71 I'm like, all right, yeah.

Speaker 16 Man.

Speaker 69 Greg opened the envelope and in it was a photocopy of two checks.

Speaker 63 One check for $5,000. and another check for $10,000, but they had the names blacked out, redacted.

Speaker 22 So you couldn't see who the checks had been written out to.

Speaker 19 But Ibrahim said that he'd gotten $5,000.

Speaker 43 And presumably Keith Wright, the neighbor, got $10,000.

Speaker 63 Some of my holy shit.

Speaker 35 This is it.

Speaker 15 Yeah, man.

Speaker 63 I'm getting emotional thinking about it. I couldn't believe it.
Cause you just like.

Speaker 63 Yeah, I shed it some tears. I didn't even know like I was happy though.
I didn't break down. I just, they just came.
I was happy.

Speaker 69 Because to Greg, like after 14 years of being guilty, of being found guilty.

Speaker 63 That's it. I got him now.

Speaker 54 In his eyes, this was physical proof of his innocence.

Speaker 63 It's over. I got they ass.

Speaker 63 Gapped their ass.

Speaker 109 But so just to be clear, did you pay witnesses?

Speaker 107 When we talked to Jason Wick about this.

Speaker 21 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 28 He was like, yeah, of course we paid witnesses.

Speaker 107 We have receipts of us paying him.

Speaker 106 We're not trying to hide anything.

Speaker 16 But

Speaker 41 Jason says the payments payments got made well after the trial and they were given essentially to the witnesses for a job well done.

Speaker 106 But, oh, they paid him. So therefore, oh, he must have promised the money throughout or before the trial, right?

Speaker 106 It's an assumption.

Speaker 54 It's a false assumption.

Speaker 45 So you're saying the possibility of payments didn't even come up in these conversations with this witness?

Speaker 35 Never, not one time.

Speaker 106 I promised him no money.

Speaker 60 Listen, so let me let me pose a question to you guys, right?

Speaker 106 So that's hypothetically, I did, which I did not. Does that change the outcome of this case? Does it change what Ibrahim Abdullah said?

Speaker 35 No.

Speaker 18 And in fact, neither witness, Keith Wright the neighbor, or Ibrahim Abdullah

Speaker 25 ever recant their testimony.

Speaker 118 Man, that was 15 years ago. I'm not going to even say that was,

Speaker 118 I can't remember most of it, to be honest with you.

Speaker 64 But in 2014, these payments, this whole issue of paying witnesses, was basically the focus of a mini trial where the judge ultimately ruled there was a, quote, avalanche of evidence, unquote, that showed these witnesses knew they were going to get paid and that information should have been given to the defense.

Speaker 119 But it wasn't, which meant I looked over, he looked at me.

Speaker 63 In 2016, a guard tells Greg, come on, you out of here.

Speaker 53 You're free to go home.

Speaker 58 God bless him and the time that he's going to have with his family.

Speaker 58 Greg?

Speaker 30 After like 20 years of prison, Greg finally steps out into this like parking lot where he's greeted by lights, cameras, reporters, and he's standing there with his lawyers, his arm around his mom.

Speaker 56 People in the firefighter community who still have strong feelings

Speaker 56 about this case and may

Speaker 56 think that you're still the guy.

Speaker 63 I would like to thank the fireman for saving

Speaker 63 my family. And I did a job, but I want everybody to know that I'm innocent.
I'm happy to be out. I'm innocent.
Me and my family, nobody had nothing to do with this.

Speaker 63 Matter of fact, it wasn't even a crime committed. It wasn't even the arson.

Speaker 42 And right here, this moment.

Speaker 17 Yes, I would say.

Speaker 58 And at that point, because we are...

Speaker 29 The attorney cuts him off

Speaker 27 because prosecuting attorneys for the government have already filed a motion to retry the case.

Speaker 29 What? Why?

Speaker 61 I think the argument is really that they believe that they got it right.

Speaker 25 And they got it right the first time. The jury got it right.

Speaker 23 Greg is guilty.

Speaker 24 And the sentence was life in prison.

Speaker 30 And Greg belongs back in prison. Wow.

Speaker 22 But I guess like this time around is a little bit different because Greg is about to find himself with this

Speaker 16 really

Speaker 81 unusual offer.

Speaker 38 And this offer will plant Greg like right in the middle of these two opposing versions of the truth and

Speaker 36 right between

Speaker 69 like guilt and innocence.

Speaker 7 All right, we're going to leave you in an in-between space for about a minute and a half. And then,

Speaker 7 yeah, come on back.

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Speaker 7 I'm Alet Nasser, this is Radiolab. We're here with Peter Smith telling us the story of Greg Brown Jr., who after nearly 20 years in prison has been let out,

Speaker 7 but now is facing another trial.

Speaker 38 And this isn't Double Jeopardy.

Speaker 61 You know, this is a different,

Speaker 26 slightly different charge.

Speaker 7 Why is it not Double Jeopardy?

Speaker 81 Well, in Pennsylvania state courts, it might have been double jeopardy, but he's charged with a different crime in federal court.

Speaker 7 These are new charges, so it's not a retrial, technically. Right.

Speaker 63 So the summer of 21.

Speaker 32 Greg has been out of prison for about five years.

Speaker 63 Trying to start my life. I'm around family.
I mean, I was straight and arrow. But long story short, so I met up with the attorneys.
We had a meeting here. At Dave's office.

Speaker 62 Dave Fawcett was going to be Greg's lead attorney on this new trial.

Speaker 121 I've been working three plus decades as a trial lawyer.

Speaker 61 So Greg goes to meet Dave and all the other attorneys at Dave's, you know, fancy law firm on the rooftop on this patio.

Speaker 122 And the rooftop conversation was, would he consider a plea?

Speaker 61 This is another one of Greg's attorneys, Liz DeLosa.

Speaker 4 Does that start with you all?

Speaker 122 So I can't go in too much to detail because plea negotiations are protected.

Speaker 54 This is the frustrating part about pleas.

Speaker 18 They sort of exist in this black box.

Speaker 33 We don't know exactly what happened.

Speaker 34 And the prosecutors in this case declined to comment on the plea.

Speaker 16 But the best we can tell is they were like, you know, we've been gearing up to take this to trial and just putting this out there, like, would you ever consider a deal where Greg agrees to plead guilty?

Speaker 107 Yeah.

Speaker 40 Yeah.

Speaker 122 That just, that started us, you know, saying to Greg, you have to start to think about whether it's even something that you would consider. And if so, what would that look like?

Speaker 63 So they all went around the table and said how they felt.

Speaker 18 All the attorneys are going around the table.

Speaker 63 And they're nervous as hell.

Speaker 122 Yeah. Like the criminal justice system is flawed.
And we can't guarantee that if we go back to trial, we will win. And so we, there is a huge risk.

Speaker 42 I mean, they're basically telling him, like, look, you already lost at the first trial.

Speaker 33 And if we go back to trial, even if there's this new evidence, there's still this chance that you're going to lose.

Speaker 14 And if you do, that probably means you're going to go back to prison for the rest of your life.

Speaker 63 Dude, do you want to go back? Do you want to risk this?

Speaker 122 Literally putting your life on the line.

Speaker 121 But Dave. I was saying I'm going to win this case.

Speaker 66 He didn't want to take a deal.

Speaker 63 Dave is like, no, no, hell no.

Speaker 121 We are going to win this case.

Speaker 63 Either they dropped the damn charges or we're going to trial.

Speaker 121 I wanted to try the case in the worst way.

Speaker 63 Right? And I was like that, too.

Speaker 43 That's what Greg wanted to do.

Speaker 63 That's all I ever wanted to do, fight back, hold the prosecutors accountable, show them they wasn't going to break me, and clear his name for good.

Speaker 33 But then, as the conversations kept going around, I heard two things.

Speaker 121 One, the federal defender, Lisa Freeland is her name.

Speaker 121 She said, Dave, when the prosecutor walks into court and you've got a black guy sitting in a chair and the prosecutor says he's guilty, you're 99% of the way there, regardless of what the evidence shows.

Speaker 121 And Jason, my partner, who I respect highly, his view was, if there's any chance, any chance of a conviction, why the hell wouldn't you take a deal?

Speaker 63 And but, you know, I'm waiting to see what Dave say. And Dave, I thought, damn, Dave just said, man, just, it's too much of a risk.

Speaker 29 Yeah.

Speaker 63 So I was like, damn, man.

Speaker 45 And at this point, all of Greg's lawyers are essentially like, look, we know this isn't great.

Speaker 42 It's hard, but we think we can get you a deal where you, where you walk, where you don't get any more prison time, and all of this would finally be done.

Speaker 63 And I'm like,

Speaker 63 I'm not never, I said, I'm never going to admit that I did this.

Speaker 28 Greg was like, no, I would rather risk it all than have to say, I set the fire.

Speaker 63 Say all or nothing. And then either I'm going to be free or I'm going to get convicted again.

Speaker 16 And here's where the story gets unusual in the extreme.

Speaker 24 I mean, we don't know the exact back and forth, but eventually one of Greg's attorneys must have said to him something like,

Speaker 29 look, there's this other way out.

Speaker 22 Like, you can plead guilty, but still say you're innocent.

Speaker 69 I'm like, what?

Speaker 16 What the hell?

Speaker 63 He was like, yeah, you're taking the deal, but you're maintaining total innocence.

Speaker 97 Right, exactly.

Speaker 29 This is it. This is, we are, we have arrived.

Speaker 69 This is what's known as an Alfred plea.

Speaker 7 This always throws me, actually, to be honest, Even though

Speaker 7 I've been obsessed with this and thought about this so much,

Speaker 7 it always is such a weird, it's like a little logic puzzle.

Speaker 30 Yeah, it really is.

Speaker 66 I mean, you're getting a conviction because the person is pleading guilty, but at the same time, you get a conviction where the defendant is standing up and saying, I'm not guilty.

Speaker 110 Wait a minute. How is this allowed?

Speaker 104 Like, is this a thing?

Speaker 24 So I ended up calling a bunch of people, legal scholars and experts, and I was just trying to figure out, like,

Speaker 43 how does this plea make any sense?

Speaker 110 Starting with I kind of I kind of vary it Johanna. For a long time I would just be like Joanna, but it's not that's not my name.

Speaker 23 Johanna Helgren who has has for years been researching this Alfred plea.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 81 So could we just start like

Speaker 42 where did the Alfred plea where did it even come from?

Speaker 123 Yeah, I mean the the way it came to be this guy Henry Alford was accused of first degree murder.

Speaker 42 This is like the early 1960s.

Speaker 61 So first degree murder meant he was facing the death penalty.

Speaker 123 But he took a plea for, I believe, second degree murder.

Speaker 27 Which meant instead he'd get life in prison. Yeah.

Speaker 25 But when he gets up to enter his plea in front of the judge, Alfred says, and I'll quote from the transcript right here.

Speaker 35 Hold on one second.

Speaker 107 He says, I just pleaded guilty because they said if I didn't, they'd gas me.

Speaker 123 I'm just pleading because I don't want to get the death penalty, but I didn't do it.

Speaker 107 And then later he said, I'm not guilty, but I plead guilty.

Speaker 26 Right.

Speaker 18 Now, we have no way of knowing whether Alfred did or didn't do it, whether he's actually guilty or not.

Speaker 39 But what we do know is that people plead guilty even when they're innocent.

Speaker 19 And we have the, you know, the data is really imperfect.

Speaker 39 We don't know how often, you know, innocent people plead guilty, but we know it happens.

Speaker 114 But like basically before Alfred, nobody had ever come out and like blurted it out. Like, I plead guilty, but I'm.

Speaker 24 I maintain my innocence.

Speaker 33 And like up until that point, it wasn't even clear if, you know, if the courts would accept that, if if you could legally do that.

Speaker 19 Right.

Speaker 67 And so, so, after a series of like appeals and arguments and, you know, sort of running up the food chain, the question eventually landed on the dock of the Supreme Court in 1970.

Speaker 123 And they were essentially like, listen, you can say whatever you want. We don't need you to say that you're guilty because they were basically like, whatever.

Speaker 111 You can say whatever you want about whether you're guilty or innocent as long as the two sides agree and the judge, you know, sort of sanctions that officially.

Speaker 35 Fine.

Speaker 16 Go for it.

Speaker 39 But in the 1970s and actually for a while now the criminal justice system had been starting to pivot from the system of trials into something else entirely basically what happens between 1970 and today is you get all these things good evening tonight there's something special to talk about you get drugs are menacing our society the war on drugs i have one goal one objective rockefeller laws and that is to stop the pushing of drugs you get mandatory sentencing life sentence for pushers you get street level drug dealing the prostitution the graffiti broken windows policing kids that are called super predators this theory of super predators first we have to bring them to heal and take back our streets from crime gangs and drugs and all of this means more and more people are getting arrested so much so that the system can't handle it like if all these cases went to trial the system would collapse and and prosecutors aren't just gonna like let everybody go there needs to be some sort of pressure relief valve.

Speaker 60 And that is essentially the plea deal.

Speaker 51 Guilty pleas.

Speaker 51 But today, we're at the point where...

Speaker 123 Plea bargaining accounts for about like 97% of all cases.

Speaker 123 Very interesting to me when you hear people talk about kind of high-profile cases and it's like, oh, he took a plea. He's like copping out.
It's like, no, that's what everyone does.

Speaker 28 This basically is the justice system now.

Speaker 123 Despite that, we, you know, the normal normal person would think legal system, trial, right? Like two lawyers in court, the whole thing.

Speaker 16 But really,

Speaker 41 at this point, like the justice system is essentially like facilitating plea deals. It's essentially like lubricating pleas.

Speaker 52 And Johanna says, like, you can see the Alfred plea as just another tool in the toolbox.

Speaker 53 to avoid going to trial.

Speaker 123 Legal scholars have argued that the Alfred plea increases the number of innocent people taking pleas because where the traditional plea where you have to admit guilt might be enough of an obstacle for some innocent people to say, no, I'm not going to plead, the Alfred plea could, you know, get some people over that and be like, okay, fine.

Speaker 123 At least I can still say that I'm innocent.

Speaker 23 Or it might be appealing to somebody who's actually guilty because they can also say they're innocent.

Speaker 110 But either way, according to Johanna.

Speaker 123 Alfred pleas are actually more common than jury trials, which is pretty crazy.

Speaker 14 Crazy. Yeah.

Speaker 19 So really, Alfred pleas are are more common?

Speaker 110 Yes.

Speaker 123 They are more common than jury trials.

Speaker 110 What?

Speaker 30 Despite the fact that you think this thing that's totally usual, the trial, the trial by jury, I mean, I feel like that's written into the Constitution.

Speaker 21 And at the same time, this thing that's totally unusual, like nobody's ever heard of Alfred.

Speaker 66 I mean, that seems like a contradiction. Right.

Speaker 7 It does feel like for me, the...

Speaker 7 Like, like, I almost see it like the plea deal became a shortcut for the trial, and then it almost feels like the Alfred plea became a shortcut for the plea deal.

Speaker 7 So it's like a shortcut to a a shortcut. And now what we've weirdly created is a system where you have someone literally saying out loud, I'm innocent.

Speaker 7 And then they don't get a trial and they go, it's like go straight to jail. Like, but they just said they're innocent.
Like, like it's an absurd thing.

Speaker 7 Like, it's like we've created that path in the system.

Speaker 119 And we should be horrified by that.

Speaker 7 So one of the other people we turned to was Ellie Mistahl. He's a writer and thinker on legal matters who we often turn to when we don't understand a legal issue.

Speaker 22 Right. So let's start here.

Speaker 119 An Alford plea is fundamentally a form of coercion because it's basically telling a person, admit to this crime or else we'll kill you.

Speaker 7 But why is it coercive if there is a chance in the trial that

Speaker 7 you won't be found guilty?

Speaker 75 Well, his own lawyers tell him we're going to lose.

Speaker 46 Ellie says, take Henry Alfred, for example.

Speaker 38 Here was a black man, likely facing an all-white jury.

Speaker 119 And we can talk about systematic racism and we can talk about all these things, but fundamentally, he's going to lose.

Speaker 119 Like, how are you, the non-lawyer citizen, really in a position to be like, no, lawyer, you're wrong.

Speaker 71 I'm going to go to trial.

Speaker 63 And if they kill me, they get me.

Speaker 119 But what? Who does that?

Speaker 14 Right.

Speaker 71 Your actual lawyer is telling you, and your lawyer is probably not wrong, that they can't prove your case.

Speaker 119 And as much as we might want to talk about how, like, oh, well, he still gets to claim his innocence.

Speaker 71 Legally, he doesn't. Legally, the Alford plea is a lie.

Speaker 119 When you take an Alfred plea, you lose your legal right to appeal. Legally speaking, it does not preserve the legal points of maintaining your innocence.

Speaker 119 But never forget that the Alford plea is the smart play, that the that it is the rational play, that it's not, for the most part, it's not people who have been tricked or duped by attorneys, right?

Speaker 119 It's not people who have gotten unreliable advice of counsel.

Speaker 119 A lot of times they've gotten great advice of counsel, and that great advice is to fold, is to give up

Speaker 119 because the prosecutorial advantages are such, but that doesn't mean that they actually did.

Speaker 63 I was like, I got to discuss this with my family. I'm like, because this is bigger than just me.

Speaker 40 And so, for someone like Greg, who has always maintained his innocence

Speaker 81 and essentially spent 20 years trying to prove that he's innocent, he's in this place where he's being told by his legal counsel, like,

Speaker 23 you should probably take this deal.

Speaker 63 I called Fred, he works downtown. I'm like, bro, I gotta just met with the lawyers.
I need to talk to you.

Speaker 30 Fred is Greg's little brother.

Speaker 63 So he said, it'll be over. He said, it'll be all the way over.
You can just move on with your life.

Speaker 63 I was like, yeah. And then he googled the alpha plate.

Speaker 18 Right there with you?

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 63 And then

Speaker 63 he's like, yep, this is what it is.

Speaker 63 Damn, just

Speaker 63 he like, I guess we just got to get it over.

Speaker 22 Eventually, Greg does decide to go ahead and take the Alfred plea.

Speaker 41 And so, yeah, they have this hearing before the judge.

Speaker 61 Obviously, his conviction guilty, you know, stands on the record.

Speaker 111 But there are sort of other consequences or concessions that you make in sort of foregoing your constitutional right to a trial.

Speaker 19 There's no chance that he can appeal this.

Speaker 53 He's never got a chance to dispute the science.

Speaker 25 You know, there's all these things.

Speaker 7 Does Greg get to make a speech or anything like that?

Speaker 53 No.

Speaker 111 No, it's just basically yes or no questions.

Speaker 45 Do you agree? I mean, do you, do you understand your rights?

Speaker 109 Do you, are you, do you agree to this plea?

Speaker 19 And then like both sides read into the record like what they believe of this version of their, their version of the truth.

Speaker 72 And,

Speaker 19 you know,

Speaker 24 so I don't know. I guess for me, it's like, if you believe that, like, courts are this place where people come to tell the whole truth and nothing, but in the end, like, the Alfred Plea allows,

Speaker 28 allows both sides to exist in this like weird,

Speaker 28 maybe not weird, but they allow both sides to tell their version of the truth.

Speaker 57 Coming back. You're pulling up some videos.

Speaker 56 Yep.

Speaker 24 And these versions of the truth like continue to exist sort of in parallel and they never get resolved.

Speaker 64 The first part about my presentation is the fire.

Speaker 33 So one of the federal investigators, this guy Matthew Reagan,

Speaker 22 he presents this case, Greg's case, at conferences for other fire investigators.

Speaker 64 And we put the heat flux data into simplified ignition correlations for wood surfaces. Now this is where he basically says, like,

Speaker 28 look, we got this right.

Speaker 54 The science is on our side. But I will say this

Speaker 7 until I can't talk anymore.

Speaker 64 And Jason will say this, and Bill will say this.

Speaker 27 There are never two sides to the truth.

Speaker 69 And we, we

Speaker 64 have an absolute belief in what the truth is.

Speaker 22 That Greg is guilty.

Speaker 64 He committed a violent felony and three people died.

Speaker 24 Now, like at the same time that Matt is giving these presentations.

Speaker 32 You just went to Arizona, right? Yes.

Speaker 65 That was last weekend? Yes.

Speaker 47 Greg,

Speaker 66 for the first time.

Speaker 63 Since 96.

Speaker 16 Left Pennsylvania, flew to Arizona to this Innocence Network conference.

Speaker 63 It was amazing. I mean, I met people from Montana, Michigan, all over the state.
Hundreds of honorees.

Speaker 65 And Greg said it was fun.

Speaker 45 You know, he was in his element.

Speaker 69 He felt like he totally belonged there.

Speaker 43 But, like, inwardly,

Speaker 69 this is something he told me, and something his attorneys have told me: like, a lot of these other people have truly proven their innocence, at least in the eyes of the law.

Speaker 30 You know, like

Speaker 22 they're exonerated.

Speaker 39 Whereas Greg took this plea. and um

Speaker 63 that shit hurt because some guys did some people did fight it out

Speaker 63 and and and um

Speaker 59 they got exonerated they got exonerated some people got money yeah

Speaker 63 like a friend told me he said uh he called me from jail and he glad I said I got missed feelings it's over but it's not and he said you know what it is he said you got a decision instead of the knockout

Speaker 63 you wanted a knockout I said that's like exactly how i felt

Speaker 22 and so if you pull up greg's record

Speaker 35 it will always show

Speaker 59 technically on paper

Speaker 63 that he is guilty so yeah it hurt that's something i'll deal with the rest of my life

Speaker 63 the rest of my life

Speaker 7 This episode was reported by Peter Andre Smith and Matt Kielty and produced by Matt Kielty.

Speaker 7 Original music and sound design contributed by, once again, Matt Kielty with mixing help from Jeremy Bloom, fact-checking by Emily Krieger, edited by Becca Bressler and Pat Walters.

Speaker 7 Special thanks to John Lentini, Amanda Galluli, Fred Buckner, Debbie Steinmeier, Jason Hazelwood, Meredith Kennedy, and Marissa Bluestein.

Speaker 7 I'm glad you all now know about the Alfred Plea and hopefully you will never have to use it.

Speaker 7 That's all for us. Thanks so much.

Speaker 17 Hi, I'm Rianne.

Speaker 124 and I'm from Donegal in Ireland and here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soreen Wheeler.
Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts.

Speaker 124 Drinkief is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Akedi Foster Keys, W.

Speaker 124 Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Cuteris, Sindhu Naanisambadan, Matt Keelty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Saru Kari, Valentina Powers, Sarah Sambach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster.

Speaker 124 Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Kelly, Emily Krieger, Natalie Middleton.

Speaker 125 Hi, this is Beth from San Francisco.

Speaker 125 Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, Assignments Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Speaker 125 Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.