#034 Jason Flom with Lamonte McIntyre

For this special edition of Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars, Jason Flom shines a light on the case of Lamonte McIntyre, who at the time was currently serving two life sentences at Lansing Correctional Facility, in advance of his upcoming court date on October 12th, 2017. On the afternoon of April 15th, 1994, two men were sitting in a powder-blue Cadillac in the Quindaro neighborhood of Kansas City, KS. A man dressed in black ran up to the passenger side, raised a shotgun and fired four rounds in what looked like a drug-related hit, killing the two passengers Doniel Quinn and Donald Ewing. Within six hours of the shooting, police detective Roger Golubski had begun the process of framing Lamonte McIntyre. Lamonte, who was 17 at the time, was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, he was found guilty by a jury after a trial that lasted only three days and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. At trial, the prosecutor did not establish a motive and relied on the testimonies of two eyewitnesses who identified Lamonte as the shooter. Ruby Mitchell claimed in an initial interview with police that she recognized the attacker and that his name was “Lamonte something” and had previously dated her niece. She stated after the trial that Lamonte McIntyre was not the man she was referring to and in a 2011 affidavit, Ruby Mitchell claimed that Golubski had made sexual advances towards her on the day of the crime, causing her to fear he was going to arrest her for solicitation. The other eyewitness who testified for the prosecution, Niko Quinn has since recanted, attesting that she realized that she misidentified Lamonte as soon as she saw him in the courtroom, but that when she told this to the prosecutor, Terra Morehead, Morehead threatened to take away custody of her children. Additional procedural misconduct during Lamonte’s trial includes an undisclosed sexual relationship between the judge and the prosecutor, Terra Morehead, and the failure to disclose to the defense that there were two witnesses who believed that Lamonte was not the shooter. Lamonte’s court-appointed attorney, Gary Long, was on supervised probation at the time of the trial for failing to diligently handle three prior cases. In 1997, he was suspended from legal practice for failure to adequately handle a separate criminal case, and he was disbarred in 1998. Several months after the trial, a juror contacted the prosecutor and stated his misgivings about the verdict. The family of the victims have steadfastly proclaimed their belief in Lamonte’s innocence. In June 2016, Cheryl Pilate, a Kansas City attorney working with the Centurion Project filed a motion for exoneration after seven years of gathering evidence. Listen to Jason Flom’s explosive interviews with Lamonte McIntyre, his attorney Cheryl Pilate and former FBI agent Al Jennerich as they unravel the case and expose the systematic flaws that led to this miscarriage of justice.

https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom

Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.