#576 Jason Flom with Billie Allen - UPDATE

**Connor Hall** (0:05)
Hey, it's Connor Hall, the senior producer for Wrongful Conviction here with more updates and behind the scenes insights. Today, we're talking about pardon powers. Now, at the end of every presidency governorship, there's usually some number of pardons and commutations. Recently, a notable one was Leonard Peltier, who got the news just minutes before the end of the Biden administration. But why not day one? I guess the smart money is on the fact that so many Americans still believe in the infallibility of our legal system and that a guilty verdict delivered by it is unshakable. I mean, that appears to be the foundation of its power. In Leonard's case, I believe they made him part of an FBI training module as some kind of boogeyman for new FBI agents. So, of course, agents showed up en masse to derail his pardon efforts at the end of the Clinton administration. Generally, pardons and the like are perceived as having some sort of soft spot for alleged violent psychopaths, rather than as a critical fail safe for when the system gets it wrong, which our audience knows that happens not only frequently, but at times, it appears to be on purpose, as does the maintenance of those convictions through the appeals process. So our hope is that with greater awareness of this system, its flawed human operators, and its perverse incentives, like providing slave labor to American economic might that a political will might amass to give our elected officials the courage to use their pardon powers more often and throughout their terms, feeling instead that they are not spending political capital just to do the right thing, especially in actual innocence cases and in the most crucial scenarios involving capital punishment. Now we've covered plenty of state death penalty cases, most notably Ohio. Governor Duane, please do something. But I digress. On federal death row, we've only covered one, and that's Billie Allen. Now, other than three federal executions during the Bush administration, there hadn't been any before that since 1963, and then not again until a 13-execution spree starting in July 2020 under President Trump, who ironically now uses his pardon power pretty loosely. But I digress. Again, after the 13 executions in 2020, he later campaigned on the intention to execute the remaining 40 death row inmates if re-elected. So with the incoming second term, there was a sense of urgency around what folks, including Pope Francis, had been lobbying Biden for since 2021 And just two days before Christmas 2024, President Biden finally listened, commuting the sentences of 37 out of 40 of those on death row to life, including Billie Allen. The three that remain are two mass shooters caught at their scenes and the alleged Boston Marathon bomber. Brian Stevenson was quoted about it, saying, the death penalty is a torturous, flawed, expensive, and error-filled practice that must be abolished. I commend President Biden for this historic act, and hope that governors and state executives follow the president's lead at a time when many of our courts are abandoning their role to ensure fairness and reliability in criminal cases. Leadership by elected officials will be more critical than ever.
So, I'm grateful that Billie and others, some of whom may also be innocent, that they won't feel the terror they'd felt during that spree in late 2020 But I'm also resentful that when considering innocence cases like Billie's, that our elected officials are not more courageous with their pardon powers, considering the obstinance we often see from judges as well as district attorneys and attorneys general who sometimes use conviction integrity units, not as they are seemingly intended to find truth and justice and right the wrongs, but to hide the misconduct of their offices past.
In a conversation recently, a respected attorney commented to me that these integrity units have become the place where innocence cases go to die.
So stay vigilant, everybody, especially with your alleged progressive prosecutors.
Now, I'd like you all to consider this as you listen to Billie Allen's story. When a wrongful conviction is maintained and a prosecutor knowingly continues to pursue their bondage, a judge refuses to grant relief to an innocent person, how is that not violence?
And how is the silence or inaction of a governor or president not almost the same damn thing?

**Jason Flom** (5:24)
On March 17, 1997, two armed and masked men robbed a bank in St. Louis, Missouri and fatally shot a security guard named Richard Heflin in the process.
As part of their plan to destroy evidence and evade capture, they had pre-soaked the getaway van with gasoline. But before they got to switch from the van to a second getaway vehicle, the van caught fire. One assailant, Norris Holder, was arrested at the scene. But the second assailant escaped and was described as a black man about 5'9, with singed hair and an injured right hand. Norris Holder told investigators that the escapee was named John. But later changed that name to Bill.