Under Oath
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Hi, it's Phoebe. We're heading back out on tour this fall, bringing our 10th anniversary show to even more cities. Austin, Tucson, Boulder, Portland, Oregon, Detroit, Madison, Northampton, and Atlanta, we're coming your way. Come and hear seven brand new stories told live on stage by me and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spohr. We think it's the best live show we've ever done. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com slash live. See you very soon.

I grew up in West Baltimore, Sandtown. I come from three different neighborhoods, Sandtown, Harlem Park, and what we call the Avenue. I grew up one of nine kids, hardworking father, very loving family. We were very close, and we're still close today. This is Ron Bishop. He's the youngest of all of his siblings, and he has a twin brother named Don.

He remembers sometimes people wouldn't be able to tell them apart and just called both of them Rondon. I just think of my childhood as having fun all the time. And there were times when my father would get laid off.

And, you know, he never missed a beat. A lot of things we didn't have, but I would always tell people that we never considered ourselves poor because we were happy. And as kids, you just, there were things you couldn't have, but I could say, you know, didn't miss it because you had fun. You grew up in a neighborhood full of kids. What kind of things would you do with kids in the neighborhood? Were you always outside playing? All the time, yes. Like, um...

You know, this is for any major city. If you have, if you grow up in a row home, just in a one block radius, you will have kids, you'll have maybe 10 to 30 kids in one block radius. So my block, we had at least 20 of us. And we became like that whole Sandtown, Harlem Park family. So there's always someone to run around with.

All the time. All the time. And back then, kids used to look for other kids to play with. And let's say you might meet a kid for the very first time, and then that particular kid would end up being your best friend for a long time. When did you meet DeWitt Duckett? Oh, gosh. It's making me laugh because I met DeWitt Duckett first grade. So that would put us at 1975, I think.

And he sat beside me. He was a very quiet kid. Actually, he was the tallest kid in the class. And we didn't say much to each other. We just, like, he would ask to borrow a pencil. But he was a really nice guy. Over the years, Ron and DeWitt got to know each other better. They'd play at the playground, even after DeWitt transferred to a different school nearby.

When Ron was in eighth grade, his oldest brother, George, was in the Army. He returned home just before Christmas in 1982. One night in January, George had plans to meet up with friends at Shake and Bake, a complex that had a roller skating rink. And he told us, he told my sister, I'll be back. And maybe an hour later, we got a phone call. Actually, I took the phone call. And when I answered the phone, it was a family friend. And he just right away just told me that he got shot.

George died. He was 22 years old. Ron later learned that George had accidentally bumped into someone. And when he went to say excuse me, the guy really didn't accept it well. And my brother said, what was told to me, he said, hey, I just said excuse me. But the guy just couldn't accept the apology. So one word led to the other. My brother said, well, forget it. So as he walked away, that's when he shot him in the back.

And, you know, when we heard that news, we were like, "Wait a minute. The way we grew up, what my father taught us, like, you walk away from situations, you don't argue with people, and when you say what you have to say, just keep it moving." So to hear that my brother was a peacemaker, and when he walked away, and how the gods just shot him for no reason, it was very bad for us. Ron started ninth grade the fall after his brother died.

He was surprised to see his old friend, DeWitt Duckett, back at the same school as him. When he popped up in my ninth grade class, I'm like, whoa, what are you doing here? He looked at me like, as if he didn't remember me. I'm like, come on, man, you know who I am. And that was, he was, you know what, he was a jokester too. He would try to downplay things and be sort of silly, like almost had like that Mr. Bean or Benny Hill type of humor.

So you totally reconnected? Oh, yes, right away. Ron says their school, Harlem Park Junior High, was tough. And a lot of kids who graduated, moved on, or just dropped out would come back and hang out at the school. So there was always this potential for, like, bullies or getting into fights. Did you and DeWitt spend a lot of time together? Did you try to stay away from all of that?

all the time. We took a hallway, myself, DeWitt, and another friend of ours from the neighborhood. We used to take this hallway, this empty, lonely hallway, just to avoid the crowds.

because you always get caught up in some stuff in the hallways. And back then, some kids would not use their manners and say, excuse me, you can get bumped. And back then, if you got bumped, then that was a sign of aggression. And if the person didn't say, excuse me, then there's the potential to get in a fight. So we would like to avoid all of that stuff by just taking this other hallway. One day that fall, when it was a little cooler outside,

DeWitt came to school wearing a Georgetown basketball starter jacket. I'm like, whoa, what are you doing with that? That's a pretty good jacket. And, you know, back then if you had like a starter jacket, you know, you were looked upon as like a really cool guy. So for him to even have a Georgetown, actually he was the first one I saw with a Georgetown jacket. And we were all amazed that he had it. Explain what a Georgetown jacket was. What did it look like and why were they so special? See, Georgetown, let me see.

Because back then, no one really never heard of Georgetown. And when Georgetown basketball team came to prominence, they had an almost all-black team. But what made Georgetown special was they had two local Baltimoreans on their team, Reggie-

Williams and David Wingate. When they're in Georgetown, they're representing Baltimore, East Baltimore, or Baltimore. So that was a special thing for us because, hey, it's like, hey, these are local guys, and they're playing on a national championship team or soon-to-be national championship team. DeWitt was wearing his Georgetown jacket one day that November when he, Ron, and a friend of theirs were walking to lunch. As usual, they took the quiet hallway. It was empty that day.

And that's when someone came up from behind us and he grabbed the wit by the back, but he had the gun in my, as I turned, he had the gun in my face. So the gun was within like a few inches of my face. So that's when the gun went, he took the gun and then he put it in the back of DeWitt's neck. I tried to get the attention from our friend. That's when he saw the guy with the gun.

And then he started running and I started running behind this friend. And so as we're running, we're approaching the C unit hallway and their stairwell. So as soon as we go through the double doors and down the stairs, that's when we hear the gunshot.

So as we go downstairs and we enter the cafeteria, that's when we see Mr. English, the unit principal. And so we went straight to him and said, hey, we think DeWitt got shot. And he said, what? Like that. And as soon as we told Mr. English, we're standing in the middle of the cafeteria. As soon as we told Mr. English, that's when DeWitt came through the double doors of the cafeteria and said,

He ran, he saw us right there standing, so he ran to us. And by the time he got to us, he collapsed in Mr. English's arms. And that's when he got the attention from other students who were sitting. And, you know, you're talking about a cafeteria that might have 300 students at that time. And when he collapsed, that's when you hear the gasp, like, students saying, and then that's when Mr. English walked him out. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

When DeWitt ran into the cafeteria, could you tell that he was bleeding, that he had been shot? Yeah, because he was holding his neck and he was sort of like, um, like he was sort of running but limping. And he was, put it this way, he was struggling to run. After DeWitt was taken out of the cafeteria, Ron and his friend had no idea what to do next. So we just said, you know what, let's just leave school. Ron's friend lived across the street from the school.

But Ron lived about a mile away. He asked his friend to walk home with him. And we waited a while, and then a Baltimore City Patrol car pulled up, and an officer got out, and he started talking to us, and then he asked me, or he asked us, to go down to what we call the main police station, downtown Baltimore. So when we get to the police station...

The police, the patrol officer walked us up to the homicide department. And when we get there, we sit in the lobby. And then eventually, I think I meet Donald Kincaid. He seemed like a very nice man. Donald Kincaid was the detective assigned to the case.

And, you know, he introduced himself while the patrol officer was sitting there with us. I have to point this out. Out of nowhere, the patrol officer told Donald Kincaid this. He said the big one, meaning me, told the smaller one, the other witness that was with us, that I told him not to say anything. And that just blew me away because I never said that.

So when the patrol officer left the room, I told Donald Kincaid, like, hey, I never said that. I don't know why the officer told you that. I never told the other witness to not say anything. Donald Kincaid took Ron into an interview room. Ron told him what he could remember about the person who shot DeWitt, which wasn't much. He'd been wearing a gray hoodie and had dark skin and a faint mustache. During the interview...

Donald Kincaid, he left, came back a few minutes. That's when he told me that DeWitt didn't make it. And I'm looking at him like, what do you mean he didn't make it? Because when I saw him, it looked like he was okay. Even though he was shot, it didn't seem like it was a big deal because, you know, he had enough strength to run and get to us in the cafeteria. So, you know, my mind is racing. And I'm getting this empty feeling like I got when...

when my brother got shot. So when Donald Kincaid told me, I'm experiencing my brother's death all over again. And I'm like, what is happening? And you know, you're in a state of shock. You don't know what to do. You're just sitting there. And of course, you have to sit through this interview to answer more questions. How long did they keep you? I would say several hours.

I can't give you like a distinct like two, three hours. I know it was several hours. By the time I left out of homicide department, it was nighttime. The same patrol officer who had picked Ron up earlier drove him home.

And this officer, he never dropped me off at my house. He sort of dropped me off a block away and told me, you know, I had to get out and walk. And I'm like, huh? He said, you can get out right here and walk. And I'm like, okay.

And as I'm walking down to the house, you know, sort of like you're paranoid, you're seeing things, you don't know if someone's going to come out of the alley behind the car and shoot you. So by the time I, you know, knocked on the door, my mother was there, and she asked me what happened. I had to go through everything, and they were just, you know, they was heartbroken to know that a classmate, a good friend of mine, was shot. And she treated his death as like my brother's death.

DeWitt Duckett's death made the front page of the Baltimore Sun the next day. According to the school's security chief, it was the first time that a student had been murdered inside a Baltimore public school. The Sun reported, the victim's two companions told police that a teenage boy came up from behind, grabbed the collar of the Duckett youth's coat, waved a gun and said, give me your jacket.

Police also said that there had been no other students nearby when the shooting happened. What was it like to go to school? I mean, was everyone in the school talking about what had happened and who had done it? No one knew. No one knew who'd done it. But everyone was, I mean, the whole school was shocked.

And you see students crying or talking about it, like, "Why would someone do this to him?" Because he was a nice guy. He didn't have not a bad reputation at all. And when we got to class,

In my homeroom class, we had my homeroom teacher who was Mr. Dozier. And so as soon as we all sat down, he looked at us and he said, "You know what? I'm sorry to hear about what happened to DeWitt." Something like that. And he said, "Things like this happened unfortunately." And then he started crying. When he cried, almost the whole class started crying. So it was a very emotional thing for us.

DeWitt's mother, Franzelle Duckett, told the Baltimore Evening Sun that the Georgetown jacket had been one of DeWitt's prized possessions and that it was the first thing he bought when he got his first paycheck from a summer job. He'd bought it for $75. She said DeWitt bought a lot of his own clothes and wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer when he grew up. She was divorced from DeWitt's father, and DeWitt had always told her he'd take care of her when he was older.

In the days after the shooting, Detective Kincaid stopped by Ron's house several times to question him further. He would show Ron a collection of Polaroid photos of teenagers and ask Ron if any of them had been involved in the shooting. Ron recognized some of the boys, three 16-year-olds named Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins, and Andrew Stewart. Ron told Detective Kincaid it wasn't any of them.

They were all guys I knew from the neighborhood. And not only that, they also attended Harlem Park Elementary Junior High. I mean, Andrew and I, we go back to at least maybe six or seven, and we used to play at a playground. We called it the Curry Street Playground. What made that playground so special was they had a tire swing, and Andrew and I would take time swinging each other.

Andrew Alfred and Ransom were two years older than Ron, but they'd been seen at the school the day DeWitt was shot by some staff members, who reported seeing a group of older teenagers hanging out and goofing around in the hallways. But Ron said it wasn't them. Detective Kincaid kept coming by. Once he showed up twice in one day. The second time, past midnight, Ron's mother had to wake him up.

And Donald Kincaid, you know, he's this smooth, tall guy at the moment, or at that time, very nice guy. But then I could tell when I told him, no one, I don't recognize anyone that was involved in DeWitt's shooting in those pictures. And he looked very tired and frustrated. That I do remember. And then he left. The next day, Ron went to DeWitt's funeral. And, you know, at the same time,

It's like I'm reliving my brother's funeral as well. So it was the most strangest, emptiest feeling ever. I'm like, this is just a few months apart, and I'm back at someone else's funeral again. I'm like, this is so sad. Later that evening, a patrol car showed up at Ron's house. Detective Kincaid wanted to speak with him again, this time at the police headquarters. Some officers picked him up without checking in with Ron's parents. This time when I get there...

You know, Donald Kincaid, he's sort of like, you know, flat. He's all business. He's serious this time. Ron remembers Detective Kincaid showed him the Polaroid photo lineup again and again asked Ron who shot DeWitt. I'm like, well, none of these people or none of the persons here are recognized as the shooter. He said, oh, yes, you do.

So he and I go back and forth. We kept going back and forth. How long this lasted, I don't know. But what I really remember is...

he made a statement of um you know what you're not going to leave here your ass is not going to leave here if i have to i'm going to keep your ass here the whole night and i told him well i guess you're going to have to keep me here the whole night because i don't know what you're talking about and it went back and forth and that's where his voice escalated he got really tense clenched fists all this stuff and then he said well i think what it was

I ought to put your goddamn head through that wall or the window. I know you mentioned wall or window. So I'm like, well, I guess you're going to have to put my head through this wall or window because I don't know what you're talking about. We went back and forth and you could tell he was super frustrated, angry. So he said, you're going to pick tonight. You're going to pick. And I told him I'm not picking anything. And then he started making gestures to his gun.

And when you grow up in an all-Black neighborhood and you see what officers do to, like, people in my neighborhood, like innocent people, not just criminals, but innocent people, then you know you can't trust this officer. Ron says he was feeling more and more scared. He started pointing to different Polaroids in front of him. According to Ron, after the first few photos, Detective Kincaid would say, "'No, keep going.'"

And when I pointed to Alfred Chestnut, he said, oh, he was the shooter, right? And I'm like, I don't know. He said he was the shooter. Then I realized that's who he wants me to say. He wants me to say Alfred is the shooter. Ron says slowly, Detective Kincaid also guided him to Andrew Stewart and Ransom Watkins, who he seemed to think were Alfred's accomplices. And then he placed a statement in front of Ron to sign. Ron didn't feel like he had a choice.

And as I'm signing the statement, all that frustration or anger, it goes to happiness. He's like overjoyed, like, oh, I solved this case. I mean, you must have felt terrible but also been relieved because you had been so terrified about what Detective Kincaid was going to do to you. Yeah, actually, I just felt terrible. Ron wasn't the only witness who'd identified the three teenagers.

Earlier that day, police had spoken with a 13-year-old, whose school security had called a possible witness. She also identified Alfred, Ransom, and Andrew. That's when Ron was brought to police headquarters. Two more students, one of them was the student who'd been with Ron in DeWitt in the hallway the day of the shooting, were also brought in. None of them were accompanied by a parent. One of the kids' mothers showed up at the police station to find him, and she said,

He could hear her from the interrogation room yelling, let him out. By the end of that night, the police had four witnesses, including Ron, who all identified Alfred, Ransom, and Andrew. We'll be right back. Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins, and Andrew Stewart were arrested very early on Thanksgiving morning, 1983, and charged with first-degree murder.

A police spokesperson told the Baltimore Sun they issued warrants after they, quote, finally came up with some more eyewitnesses. Police had found a Georgetown starter jacket in Alfred Chestnut's room when they arrested him, but his mother told the Sun that she'd bought it for him and that she had a receipt to prove it. Alfred Ransom and Andrew, who had become known as the Harlem Park Three, would be tried as adults. They were 16. Ron was 14.

I thought of them like, oh my God, I'm putting them in the worst situation possible. They're juveniles, they're basically teenagers, but they're going to an adult prison. So, you know, that stayed in my mind all the time. Like, how are they going to survive in prison? A date was set for the trial. Ron met with the prosecutor, a man named Jonathan Shoup, to prepare to testify. The three other witnesses were there too, as well as Detective Donald Kincaid.

And Donald Kincaid was right there in the state's attorney's or prosecutor's office. And he was, you know, there to monitor, supervise, to make sure our word or the statements we gave him coincide with what the prosecutor wanted us to say. So...

as we're rehearsing, and that's all it was. It was scripted. And the prosecutor is telling us, okay, this is what happened. And I couldn't even really say it because these are all lies. So I'm stumbling. I can't get my words together because you want me to lie. And eventually, I sat down, and the other three witnesses, they got up, they knocked it out. They had everything. Ron remembers Jonathan Shoup praising the three other witnesses.

But he was confused, because he suspected two of them hadn't even seen the shooting.

So when Donald Kincaid left the room, that's when I approached Jonathan Shoup and said, you know what? And I had to be careful on how I phrased my words. I said, you know what, Mr. Shoup, the stuff you're all saying in this room, it really didn't go this way. It didn't really go this way. I couldn't come out and tell him like, hey, Donald Kincaid is lying. So I told him like, hey, you know, it really didn't go this way. That's when he said, okay, just go over there and sit like no big deal.

Ron didn't really know what else to do. You know, you don't approach, you know, my frame of mind back then, these are two white men. And they're, you know, one is an attorney and the other one is a detective. The day of the trial, Ron says he wanted to get up on the stand and tell the truth. He says he'd been told he'd be the first witness to testify. But when he got there, he realized he would actually be the last. The three other witnesses had already testified. Ron says he felt a little thrown off by that.

and that when he got up on the witness stand, he remembers it already felt like a done deal. The jury seemed tired and unfocused. So in the end, Ron told the same story the witnesses before him had. At one point, a defense attorney brought up the fact that Ron's testimony went against a written statement he'd given on November 18th, the day of the murder, that only one person had attacked DeWitt, but it didn't matter.

After three hours of deliberation, the jury found Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins, and Andrew Stewart guilty. They were sentenced to life in prison. What did you think? I'm like, oh, this is the cause, you know, of me. You know, I'm sending these guys to prison. But at the same time, I've been set up, framed, to frame these guys, to send them to prison. So you're feeling guilty, you know.

You know, for one, you lose a good friend, and at the same time, you're sending three other black kids to prison for the rest of their lives. Something else had happened at the trial that Ron couldn't stop thinking about. As Detective Kincaid had walked him through the hall of the courthouse right before testifying, someone he knew from around the neighborhood came up to them. His name was Michael Willis. He was 18. He asked Ron if he was going to testify,

And then, according to Ron, Michael Willis looked at Detective Kincaid, and Detective Kincaid winked at him. Tell me a little bit about who he was.

He was well-known in the neighborhood, but more so well-known just being no good. Like someone who's always starting trouble, someone who hangs out with a group of guys who bully and start trouble with, you know, younger kids and all that stuff. And just had a no-good reputation. Ron had had another odd encounter with Michael Willis a few days after DeWitt was shot.

He'd seen Michael outside his school, and Michael had called out to him, using the nickname people called Ron and his twin brother. He said, Ron, Don, if anyone try and take your jacket, just let me know. I'll take care of them for you. And I'm looking at him like, what are you talking about? Ron thought it was strange. He didn't really know Michael Willis that well, and it seemed like he was referencing DeWitt's Georgetown starter jacket.

But Ron says he hadn't really told anyone that he'd been with DeWitt when he was killed. And I never made it, it took me a while to make the connection. I'm like, why would he tell me this? And how would he know? Ron says that back on the night Detective Kincaid was showing him Polaroids in the interrogation room, saying, nope, keep going, Michael Willis' photo had been in the stack. But Ron says he didn't think anything of it at the time.

During the trial, Michael Willis' name briefly came up when a school security guard testified that he'd seen Michael on school grounds the day DeWitt was shot. In the months after the trial, Ron thought more and more about Michael Willis. He'd sometimes see him wearing a Georgetown starter jacket. And Ron says he couldn't stop thinking about what he'd said on the witness stand. But he didn't think there was anyone he could go to at this point. Who could I tell? Secret Service?

write a letter to back then Ronald Reagan. Like, who, if you can't trust a detective and you can't trust a prosecutor, a state's, an assistant state's attorney, who can you trust? For the rest of the school year, Ron didn't return to the hallway where the shooting happened until the day of his junior high graduation. He walked through the hall and said a little prayer for DeWitt. Ron started high school

But he struggled to stay focused in class. I realized when I would take quizzes or tests, my mind would wander off and I'd get stuck into the depth of my brother, the width, the whole trial. So, you know, you can get overwhelmed. So I learned how to just block it all off. Always stayed on my mind, but I learned how to block it out. Ron joined the football track and wrestling teams in school.

and eventually went to Coppin State University in Baltimore. He majored in psychology and became a counselor. He got married and had two kids. He got divorced. He often had jobs working with kids who had learning difficulties or behavioral issues. He still lived in Baltimore and kept in touch with people from his childhood. And then, in 2002, he heard Michael Willis had been shot and killed. We'll be right back.

For decades, Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins, and Andrew Stewart maintained their innocence in prison. Alfred Chestnut spent a lot of time trying to get a hold of the police reports about DeWitt Duckett's murder. During the trial, the prosecutor kept some of the reports from the defense attorneys. But 34 years into their life sentences in 2018, through a public information request, Alfred finally got them.

He sent them to the state's attorney's office, where they were reviewed by Lauren Lipscomb, who leads the Conviction Integrity Unit. And reviewing those police records, what struck me was that there was another person that had been identified by several witnesses in the police records. A person is like another suspect? Yes. The suspect was Michael Willis.

who had died in the years since DeWitt's death. So for the first time, you were reading that there had at one time not been such a clear-cut answer to who had done this. Right.

In the reports, Lauren read that one young woman the police had interviewed after DeWitt's murder said that she heard Michael Willis had been at the school that day and that he, quote, had a gun and threw the gun down and ran away with some other boys. Someone else told the police they heard that Willis took the Georgetown jacket and wore the jacket to the skating rink at Shake and Bake.

But Lauren couldn't find anything to show that the police had followed the leads about Michael Willis. And that presented a conflict that was really glaring. And that is really what caused me to initiate a full-blown investigation into this case.

Lauren Lipscomb had also read through the trial transcripts. One of the things that I noticed about the testimony of the four kids was that it seemed that it was very similar, that their testimonies were similar to each other. And it struck me that they didn't seem to be able to answer any detail questions. Lauren started reaching out to the witnesses.

Ron Bishop hadn't heard anything about the case in years, but always thought about it. Then I get a letter from the state's attorney's office, and I'm reading it. It says Alfred Chestnut et al., and they want to see me immediately, and they want to reinvestigate this case, so they need my input, so they want to schedule an interview. So I just, for a few days, I didn't respond immediately.

And then eventually I did. And I, you know, I kind of prepared myself. I'm like, I don't know what I'm getting into. This might be a trap because my experience as a 14-year-old, it was so horrendous. Ron didn't know exactly why Lauren was reinvestigating the case. He didn't know why she wanted to see him. So at first, he didn't reply. I think that our contact was really jarring for him.

And I find this in most of the investigations that we undertake. He was very concerned about being in touch with the state. You know, we are the state's attorney's office, and so that, you know, we're a law enforcement agency, and so there's a certain amount of anxiety that a lot of people have in talking to our office. He worried that he would get in trouble for lying on the stand 35 years earlier.

So I prepared myself. I said, well, either whatever I have to say, I'm going to be honest. And if I have to go to jail over this, I have to go to jail because, you know, those guys should never have been in prison. Ron told Lauren everything. He told her that only one person had attacked DeWitt, not three. He said he lied in court. He said he felt threatened and pushed to identify Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins, and Andrew Stewart.

In his describing that to us, what was striking was that he didn't seem to really appreciate the gravity of that. It seemed as though, from what he described, it seemed as though the police and the prosecutor told him that this is the way it's done.

We tell you what to say when you take the stand and we tell you how to testify on the stand. And you will get in trouble if you don't do it this way. What did you think when you heard this? I mean, as a prosecutor yourself, what did you think? Anger actually comes to mind. It was a foreign set of feelings.

from my own experience being a prosecutor. And so I would even say a little bit of incredulousness that this actually happened because I am cognizant of the fact that the case occurred about 36 years prior. And so there was a certain amount of incredulousness of just over, you know, was this how things were done before?

36 years ago. This is completely unacceptable. So those are the kinds of things that were going through my mind. Lauren and Ron visited the hallway where the shooting happened. Ron hadn't been back since the day of his junior high graduation. Ron told us it was strange and hard to relive things, but also that the whole thing made him feel hopeful. If someone like Lauren was looking this deeply into the case, he would be able to tell us

He thought maybe it meant that Alfred, Ransom, and Andrew would be able to come home soon. By the time he was done telling us, you know, giving us information and answering our questions, he had cried a bit and ultimately was very thankful for, and that actually struck me, was that he thanked us for,

for persisting and bringing him in so that he could, in fact, get this off of his chest. It was almost like a cathartic moment or something for him. He was very sorry about just everything. It seemed as though he would have been carrying around a lot of guilt. And what...

struck us was that at some point during this interview when we said, well, who shot the victim? Do you know who shot the victim? And he said, yes, Michael Willis. And the part of you that thought, you know, well, if this did happen, were you thinking, we've got a big problem here? Absolutely. It became a full-blown emergency to get Michael

Lauren was able to track down the three other witnesses, the boy who had been with DeWitt and Ron in the hallway, and the two other classmates who Ron suspected hadn't even seen the shooting.

They all said the same thing, that they were told what to say, they were told to get with the program, and were threatened that, you know, if they weren't going to say what they were supposed to, you know, that they would be in trouble if they didn't say exactly what they were told to say. They all talked about that. And none of them have been in touch with each other since school.

Lauren Lipscomb decided she was going to do everything in her power to get Alfred, Ransom, and Andrew out of prison by Thanksgiving 2019, exactly 36 years since their arrest. She began working on a report to submit to Marilyn Mosby, the state's attorney at the time in Baltimore. And then she submitted it. About a week later, I got notice that we were going to agree to release Alfred.

Six days before Thanksgiving, Lorne and state attorney Marilyn Mosby visited Alfred, Ransom, and Andrew in prison to let them know that they'd be going home. I would say that each of them shared a similar reaction, which was sort of a look of disbelief. It was almost like a surreal look of disbelief. Three days later, the three of them were brought to a Baltimore courthouse.

It was the first time Alfred and Ransom had seen each other in almost 25 years. And then the judge began the proceedings to send the three men home. What was the reaction in the courtroom? You could hear a pin drop. It was very quiet while I read through the highlights of the investigation. And the court, the judge, was clearly shocked by what he heard and asked,

let the courtroom know and apologized to Mr. Stewart, Mr. Watkins, and Mr. Chestnut. I mean, is it cases like this where you think to yourself, oh, thank God he wrote in, you know, that thank God I took that, read that letter? Yes. I don't know that I can really fully wrap my head around how significant of a

Horror story, that is, for everyone involved, to include the victim's family, who did not get justice served. For everybody involved, Mr. Bishop, our other witnesses, Mr. Chestnut, Mr. Watkins, Mr. Stewart, and for the victim's family, justice was not served in this case. How did this whole thing happen? I mean, how—what failed?

It really is impossible years later. It is impossible to definitively assign blame to any particular person,

It's not just one person. It's not one police officer. It's not one police detective. It's not even one prosecutor because we have other prosecutors. We've got team captains. We've got supervisors who are reviewing the material that's going to the grand jury. And so you've got multiple eyes along the way. And so what becomes critical is really going kind of back to

Looking at the police reports and wondering, why did they not investigate the Michael Willis identification that had been made by several people? Why did not that does that not appear to have been investigated fully? That was not tracked down. That was not followed for whatever reason. Do you understand why Ron did what he did?

I do. What we know now about the psychology and the brain science as to just human brain development is such that I can only imagine that as a teenager being, you know, having multiple meetings with adults and he, to a certain extent, is trusting adults.

What the detectives are saying, what the prosecutor is saying, he doesn't want to get into any trouble. And if they're telling him this is what you're supposed to do, he, I believe in good faith, is trusting what they say. That, yes, he is supposed to say what they tell him to say. That's the way it's done in court. In March 2020, the state of Maryland decided to award Alfred, Ransom, and Andrew $2.9 million each.

And in August that year, the three men filed a lawsuit against the Baltimore Police Department, specifically naming Detective Donald Kincaid. In the lawsuit, their attorneys write, quote, At 108 combined years, the Harlem Park Three collectively served more years stemming from a wrongful conviction than any other case in American history.

Last year, the city of Baltimore approved a $48 million settlement to Alfred Ransom and Andrew. The chief legal counsel for the Baltimore Police Department said that the number could have been even higher than that. Quote, these are men who went to jail as teens and came out as young grandfathers. We reached out to the Baltimore Police Department and to Detective Kincaid, who's now retired and haven't heard back.

In 2021, reporter Jennifer Gonnerman wrote a story about Ron for The New Yorker. She met with Alfred Ransom and Andrew to interview them and beforehand asked Ron if there was anything he wanted her to pass along. He wrote several paragraphs. And what I told him was, you know, I'm sorry this happened. I remember them when we were kids.

And, you know, I talked about Andrew, he and I, you know, racing each other and pushing me on the swing. Ron wrote, And I did say, well, you know, if one day, if you all want to, I can sit down with you all and, you know, apologize in person. Jennifer Gonnerman shared what Ron wrote with Alfred Ransom and Andrew after Ransom said,

For me, that's everything. Sometimes in life, that's all you want. You just want people to recognize that, man, I messed up. And for that, I apologize. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Gabrielle Burbey. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti.

Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com slash newsletter. We hope you'll join our membership program, Criminal Plus. Once you sign up, you can listen to Criminal episodes without any ads. And you'll get bonus episodes with me and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spohr, too. On our latest episode out this week, we talk about a murder in Chicago that police couldn't solve.

And then a doctor came forward and said his wife seemed to know things about the case that she couldn't possibly know. To listen to that bonus episode and sign up for Criminal Plus, go to thisiscriminal.com slash plus. We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show and Instagram at criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast.

Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. ♪