Radiolab - The Alford Plea

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

In 1995, a tragic fire in Pittsburgh set off a decades-long investigation that sent Greg Brown Jr. to prison. But, after a series of remarkable twists, Brown found himself contemplating a path to freedom that involved a paradoxical plea deal—one that peels back the curtain on the criminal justice system and reveals it doesn’t work the way we think it does. Special thanks to John Lentini, Amanda Gillooly, Fred Buckner, Debbie Steinmeyer, Marissa Bluestine, Jason Hazlewood, Meredith Kennedy, Kristen Vermilya, Joshua Ceballos and Lauren Cooperman.We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moonEPISODE CREDITS:Reported by - Peter Smith and Matt Kielty Produced by - Matt Kielty Original music and sound design contributed by - contributed by Matt Kieltywith mixing help from - Arianne WackFact-checking by - Emily Kriegerand Edited by  - Becca BresslerEPISODE CITATIONS:Magazine Articles -More work by Peter Andrey Smith (https://zpr.io/wXfYn5GMM7dN) for Undark Magazine The Sniff Test (https://zpr.io/xkDzHsrrpFeR) for Science by Peter Andrey SmithBooks -"Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free" (https://zpr.io/wF8KtSFKTmwi), by Judge Jed S Rakoff“Smoke but No Fire” (https://zpr.io/C3NceBFmhJk4) by Jessica S. Henry“Punishment Without Trial” (https://zpr.io/AbqT5u5eqSy5) by Carissa Byrne Hessick ** The transcript of Greg Brown Jr.’s plea from 2022 has yet to be made public. Signup for the Radiolab Newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail] support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hey, this is Latif. Just quick fair warning. This episode is not for children. It's true crime-y, gets a little grisly. On to the show. Oh, wait, you're listening. Okay. All right.

Okay. All right. You are listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From WNYC. See? See? Yep. You're listening to Radiolab. Radiolab. From? WNYC.

Hey, I'm Lottev Nasser. This is Radiolab. No Lulu today. I hate record. I hate record. Instead, I'm going to be joined. All right. Here we go.

By reporter Peter Smith. So yeah, we go back a couple of years and maybe even a couple of years on this idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, like honestly, 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. Or just a more serendipitous reporter maybe.

So yeah, maybe I can tell you how I sort of like stumbled into this story. Do it, tell me. Okay, yeah. So I'm a reporter who covers forensics and science. And I spent a lot of time researching dogs. And I think you know that. You've pitched us so many stories about dogs. Like yeah, I was reporting on dogs for

probably more years than I'd like to admit. But this is not a story about dogs. And anyway, in the course of that reporting, I talked with an investigator. After our conversation, he forwarded me some documents, and I took a look at them, and I learned about this case, which seemed unusual and interesting for a lot of reasons.

I thought I would keep tabs on it. 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. Okay, that's the thing. That's the thing I've been obsessed about for years. The only thing I knew about it was that you had set some Google alerts for this Alfred plea. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I mean, I did it because when I first came across it, I couldn't believe it was a thing. I couldn't believe I had never heard of it before.

You get charged with a crime in the United States. There's only so many ways you can plead. You could say you're guilty. You could say you're not guilty. If you say nothing, that's called a no contest plea. But it turns out there's a fourth option, which is like completely strange and totally paradoxical. Right. No, I mean, the plea, this plea is the complete opposite of what you would hope

or expect from the justice system. 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 and I feel like this plea shows you at the heart of the system it actually doesn't do any of those things. Yeah, yeah. I probably got ahead of myself there, right? I mean, well, kind of, but. Eventually, I think eventually we'll get to the plea, but I first want to start with this

this case that led me to the plea great so about a year ago Okay, I went to Pittsburgh with Producer Mount keel tee. Okay, man. Everything's on a hill to meet the guy who's at the center of this case Hey, I'm Matt. Great. Nice to meet you. Great. Nice to meet you Greg Brown Jr. How you doing?

My brother's friend. Peter, nice to meet you. What's your name? Peter. Peter, nice to meet you, man. Nice to meet you, man. How you doing? How was your trip?

Greg is in his mid-40s. He's a short guy. He's wearing a Steelers shirt. No, I'm a Steelers guy. Uh-oh. Are those all your papers? That's all. That's my brother's, man.

I'm moving crap all the way, man. All right. We actually met your papers? That's all. That's my brother's, man. I'm moving crap all the way, man. All right. All right. We actually met Greg at his brother's house, and we all just took seats in the living room. All right. So Peter was going to record himself move this thing back and forth between us. Let's get right to it. So basically, this all starts the day before Valentine's Day, February 13th, 1995.

Right. I was at my cousin's house chilling. Playing some video games. Talking shit, you know. But it was late at night, it was a school night, Greg was 17. And it's freezing that night, icy out there. So he leaves his cousins, hurries home. About a 15, 20 minute walk, I got home.

And I'm in the process of cooking. His mom, Darlene, she's in the kitchen making a tuna salad. For a family repass. For a funeral. And I realized I the process of cooking. His mom, Darlene, she's in the kitchen making a tuna salad. For a family repass. For a funeral. And I realized I was short of ingredients. And she wants to finish the salad for the next morning,

but, you know, it's super late at night, like 1130, and it's not the safest neighborhood, so she decides to bring Greg with her and drive to the supermarket that's still open. We were only in there no longer than 20 minutes. We get back in the car. They drive home. You with me?

Yeah, so far. Okay, so they're driving back into their neighborhood. And you can see like, flash of lights. Smoke, fire trucks. But I'm joking, like, is that our house? They drive a little closer. It was our house. Now we're panicking, we wanna know if everybody's out the house.

My sister, her daughter, baby brother, stepdad. Greg just jumps out of the car, runs up this hill. To the back of the house. Darlene drove around to the front. 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 left my car up there,

and I just struck out running down the street. When she gets to the house, she sees the rest of her family. Everybody was safe. But since it's so cold out that night, they walk over to a neighbor's house and just like wait there. I was like, damn, now they gonna be able to say the house. Everything you got is in there.

Everything, you know, everything. And for the next couple of hours, they're just in their neighbor's living room. When eventually, this detective walks into the living room and he tells the family, three firefighters are dead. Oh my God. And it was just, I couldn't, it was just terrible. Around like three in the morning, someone comes in and tells them,

like you're gonna have to stay at a hotel, you can't go back to the house. So people gave us stuff. With mostly whatever they have on them. Pitched in and bought like under clothes and stuff like that. But right as they're doing that, as they're starting to pick up the pieces, a very different story about what actually happened that night

is starting to emerge. This is the accident investigation, fire investigation tape. So hours after the fire gets put out, one, two, test, test, test. the deputy fire chief, he shows up and does a walkthrough of the burnt-out house And he starts in the front hallway He and the cameraman start making their way down the hall Then descend this like collapsed flight of stairs,

which goes into the family room, where you can see like on the walls, the hand marks of the three firefighters who died in this room. I was there basically trying to feel their way out. And then they make their way down another flight of stairs, where they enter They make their way down another flight of stairs. Step out of the water. You all right? Yeah.

Okay, you ready? Yeah, go ahead. Where they enter. Okay, we're now in the basement. The basement. This is crazy. And the basement is like scorched. It's a mess.

There's like 16 inches of water on the floor. 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... You can see the heavy char on the ceiling beams in this area. It's almost like there's a big hole... Some of these beams have completely burned away. ...where these wooden beams used to be. Some are completely burned through.

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. Once I had some preliminary feelings, I called... 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. 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. To basically say like, okay, what in the world does we know it with the laws of physics and fire dynamics? Like, what, what in the world does we know it with the laws of physics and fire dynamics? Like what, what could have happened here? Saying inside this fence, this could happen. Outside the fence, it can't happen. And so, yeah, let's say God, we get a good shot to this furnace. Bill takes a look at the furnace and he pretty quickly rules that out as a potential cause.

He also notices that there's no damage that's consistent with a natural gas leak, which likely would have caused an explosion. And so, like, in order to put up his fence, he's got to, like, rely on... Flame height calculation. Mathematics, essentially. Mass burn rate and heat combustion rate. And basically, what Bill is trying to conceive of is, like, what could have been in this basement that burned? Laundry, chairs, books.

Yeah, anything that could burn. And anything that burns burns in a certain way. And when it does, it releases a certain amount of heat. So when you draw the fence. When 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 like... Gasoline. Gasoline. You have to have a product in this room that has the same characteristics as gasoline. According to Bill's calculations, it's not just like a little bit of gasoline. You 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. 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. This is an arson fire. And if it's an arson fire, that means the deaths of those three firefighters. That isn't just some horrible tragedy. It's also triple homicide. More in a minute after the break.

LUTF Radiolab, we're back with Peter. Okay, so we left off where an investigator had determined the fire was actually an arson. Yeah, investigators determined that this thing that looked like an accident was actually a crime. Once they tell me it's a crime, I'm moving. This is when federal agent Jason Wick gets pulled in. I start running down a road to try to figure out who did it. And we had a couple things going.

Not a whole lot, but a couple things. One were the holes in the basement window. So investigators had learned from the firefighters that when they first arrived, one of the basement windows had like two softball size holes in it. So it's possible that somebody had broken out the window and torched the place.

Like thrown in a Molotov cocktail kind of thing? Yeah, well not exactly that. I mean, the other things, 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. So they thought maybe that had been used as like a torch. The torch and the broken window.

We possibly have somebody introducing flame from the outside to the inside, into the basement. So we decided to go down that road, of course. 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? That was a theory.

But investigators never really found any evidence that Greg belonged to a gang. That path now comes to a dead end. What happens? Listen, we're kind of stuck. I mean, it happens. Investigations kind of cool off. This one did.

Where are we at probably in this? How far removed from the fire? I would say we're probably almost a year, eight months to a year, Bill. Yeah, I'd say eight months, easy. Yeah, eight months, eight months or so. When suddenly the investigation shifts to Darlene. Because investigators learned that a couple months before the fire she had been laid off from her job as a nurse. 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. 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 renter's most of her life. 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 renter's insurance on your contents, what you own inside the house, your furniture, your clothes, your jewelry, whatever. 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. The policy was for $20,000. 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, meaning... If your one-year-old dies, you collect a big sum of money.

Darlene would have received $10,000 for the death of the one-year-old. Whoa, that's weird. So- And that was also recent? Yeah, like not long before the fire. But when you get this information, you start the gears start turning, you're like, this is a possible motive?

Absolutely. Yeah, money motive, absolutely. As investigators see it, it's like Darlene is unemployed. They also learned that around that time, she's also apparently trying to buy a house. 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.

And all of this is happening like right before she took out these insurance policies. A coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, there's an old saying in investigation, there are no coincidences. 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. In a nutshell, what he says is, is he's at home that night. 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. And most importantly, is there were no fire or police haven't seen yet. And if you remember, Greg and Darlene's story is that they're driving back from the grocery store together. And you can see like flashing lights, fire trucks and stuff. But according to this neighbor, Greg is out there before any firefighters have arrived,

which means he wasn't at the grocery store with his mom before his fire began. We are breaking their alibi. We are breaking that story. And then another break. 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. I said, really? Jason figures that Greg isn't going to talk to him. So you look up cellmates of your target. They end up talking to a bunch of different kids and they finally find this 15 year old kid who had bunked with Greg. And he said that Gregory had bragged to him about setting a fire at his home in Pittsburgh

for his mother and that three fire heads were killed. I never heard that term before. You know, firemen were fire heads. And for setting the fire, Mom was supposed to buy him a Lexus, I believe, a car. And with that... I get a knock at my door. I'm like, well, you know, what's going on? Pittsburgh police arrest Darlene. I'm like, what? One day I get to school and they got all the doors closed. All the doors to the classrooms. Right. And two federal agents arrestene. I'm like, what? One day I get to school and they got all the doors closed. All the doors to the classrooms. Right. And two federal agents arrest Greg.

I knew what it was for though. I already knew it. Are arrested on charges of arson, insurance fraud, conspiracy, and triple homicide. Holy. 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 the state sort of pursues them and says, because this is a felony and three firefighters died, they're gonna be charged with second degree murder. And actually, this is not where the plea comes in at all. This is where they're brought to trial. Adam Lassner Oh, so they don't want to take a plea? Actually, the plea wasn't even an option. The prosecutors didn't even put a plea on the table. They didn't even offer them a deal. And so like for Greg and Darlene, who maintained their innocence, the only option-

Is to fight it. Right, to fight, to take a trial. And to prove, well actually not to prove, because at trial, the onus is on the state to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you did the crimes that they're accusing you of. 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, we didn't do that. And so the first thing the defense does is really, they go after the arson investigation. I mean, the long and the short of it is,

in this investigation, there's no science here. So I talked to this guy, Craig Byler. Technical Director Emeritus at Jensen News. He was later brought on as a defense expert. So Jensen News is a fire protection engineering consulting firm. It does anything to do with fire and then some. 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. You have to keep an open mind. You have to come from a place of not knowing. But Craig said when he looked through the investigative notes, when he looks at Bill Petritis, the Arson investigators report.

He didn't do an electrical investigation, he didn't do an investigation of the natural gas system or the appliances. He didn't interview the firefighters. Who saw the fire, fought the fire. He didn't interview the family. About how this room was configured, what was there, how it was used.

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. And he used some calculations to confirm his hunch. And that's not okay. 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. What do you think the right answer is?

I don't know. And neither does he. That was the right answer is I don't know. Yes. Based on the data they collected, the only thing you can say is it's undetermined. Okay. So you don't think this was arson? I think I already told you is it's undetermined. Okay. So you don't think this was arson? I think I already told you.

It's undetermined. So that's the argument against arson investigation. But there's also this question of motivation and of the insurance money. And so, like, if you look, wait, should I pull up the trial? Yeah, sure. So, yeah, if you look up the trial transcript, you can see that the insurance investigator is called to the stand. And he basically says that after the fire,

they talked to the family, they talked to Darlene. And they're also trying to determine the total value of everything that's inside the house, the contents of the house, how much was lost in damages. And so the thing that they come up with this number is like $52,000 worth of possessions were lost in the fire. And the insurance policy, I don't know if you remember this, but it was $20,000. So the defense's argument is like basically this doesn't really add up. Like why would you torture your own home if you end up like losing an enormous amount of money?

Sure, I can see that. But then what about there was the life insurance policy on the baby, which felt very suspicious. Yeah, I mean, so the life insurance didn't really come up at trial, but it is sort of like in there a little bit. And like the defense's argument is essentially like, you know, the one-year-old who had this life insurance policy, you know, she's still alive, she didn't die in the fire. And so there was no payment made. But I've never heard of someone insuring a one-year-old before. Has she said why she did that or what, like I've never even

heard of that. It does sound unusual. So I did end up calling Darlene so that I could talk to her and her husband Ron. Because Ron said Ron had insurance through his work, and over the years, 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 get life insurance for your whole family. Just so that in the event something happens, you can bury your loved one.

What I happen to do a go fund me. Well, I don't even know if they will go fund me. They wasn't even having to go fund me now or having to bag people for something that you as a family should be able to take care of yourself. But there is this other big thing which is Greg and Darlene's alibi. They claim they were at the grocery store that night. Remarkably, one thing that they submit as evidence is the receipt. Wow. That Darlene has kept from her trip to the grocery store.

So lucky. Yeah. But also maybe suspect, like why did she say this receipt and not all of her other receipts? But anyway, she has this receipt, it's timestamped and it's for $36.22 for the ingredients that she needed to make this salad. Green peppers, celery. Wow.

But at the same time, it's not like they paid cash, so it could have been somebody else. None of the security footage, the video tapes from that night of the grocery store, they never turned up. So there's nothing to confirm that Darlene and Greg were actually there. But it's not nothing, it's like something. It's saying somebody was there at that exact time. Yeah. Right.

But I think the question is, like, was Greg there? Right. So at the trial, the prosecution is also calling on their two key witnesses. And you have this neighbor guy who placed Greg at the scene of the crime. Then you have this 15-year-old kid from Juvie who said, he heard Greg bragging about setting this fire. First of all, who's bragging about setting fires in the black community?

I'm just being honest. Greg is like, who does that? Nobody does that. You understand what I'm saying? It's not even a cool crime. Name a rap lyric to anybody. Oh, that's a cool cram. I committed, I set a fire. But I'm saying, I can't say that in court. Who's the jury don't wanna hear that shit.

The defense says, you know, why are you gonna trust this kid? Like he's a juvenile delinquent, you know, like he's a jailhouse snitch. And also. Dude, like a fat awkward kid, we didn't, we just didn't, we didn't click. They sort of imply that Greg had bullied him.

So basically he's here to get revenge. Like it's payback or. Right, he's trying to get back at Greg for making fun of him while they were bunk mates. But the problem is the prosecutor asked the kid when he's testifying, they're like, you know, what brought you here today? Why are you testifying? And you know, he said it was, he'd talked to his mom about it.

He's doing it because his mom told him this is the right thing to do. The trial lasted like three weeks and at the end of it the jury deliberated for two days. And when they came back to jury foreman, he read out Darlene's verdict first. And it's like, you know, to wit, February 21st, 1997, we the jurors and the penal in the above case find the defendant Darlene Buckner as to arson, not guilty. Criminal conspiracy, not guilty. Then they read the three murder charges, not guilty. Criminal conspiracy. Not guilty. Then they read the three murder charges. Not guilty.

And then on the last charge, insurance fraud. Guilty. That was it. I said, they gonna get me. The jury foreman continues. Gregory Brown Jr. As to the charges of arson.

Guilty. Insurance fraud. Guilty. As to murder. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Insurance fraud. Guilty. As to murder. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. I was just numb. I can't, I wasn't there. I just, I just like blacked out. I didn't, I melted down. Darlene was eventually sentenced. Three years probation, 500 hours of community service, and a $5,000 fine. Greg was sentenced to life in prison, no chance of parole.

But the system spoke. The system spoke. Yeah. It made no sense. I knew it. My thing was, all this is irrelevant for me. You know, now it's just appeal. Yeah, I don't even know why I'm here.

Me personally, I don't even know why I'm even in the courtroom. For what? I'm not going to say nothing. Greg gets sent to a maximum security prison. To the biggest jail in the state. Cell blocks the length of a football field. Four or five hundred people to a block. You got to get nervous. You're just telling yourself you should be scared.

You see big dudes, they out on the tear, they walking around. Come to find out it wasn't that bad, because everybody in there is not bad. You know, the majority of people got the same goal. To get out. And so what happens next is... I started my appeals immediately. This first appeal is denied. So it's the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one. Rubber stamp, they just deny me.

Years drag by. My appeal rights are like dead. When in 2005. Voila. Sort of his legs like last gas, Hail Mary. Darlene. We start off with a letter with everyone. Sends a letter off to this guy.

Bill Moushy. I was an investigative reporter for 25 years in Pittsburgh. And he started this Innocence Institute in Pittsburgh. So I could teach kids how to do investigative reporting in the criminal justice system. And Darlene gave Bill the case is so massive, every single document she had relating to the case. I read volumes and volumes, you know, boxes full of stuff, records our students went through poured over stuff. But we couldn't get to the point of proving actual innocence, which that's what the project's motto was.

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. Right, but you did stick with this case. Well, I mean, Darlene was a convincing person, and frankly, I liked her. But also, Bill had gotten this tip. You want the whole thing?

A tip from Greg's lawyer. All right, my name is Al Lindsay. I represented Greg Brown back in 1997. 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... bribed to provide evidence implicating Greg Brown. 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. That's right. And the prosecution had always denied this.

Once we got the idea that they had paid witnesses. We just started sending letters. Matt Shroud was one of Bill's students. To Ibrahim Abdullah and Keith Wright. Keith Wright was the neighbor. Ibrahim Abdullah was the kid from the juvenile detention center. 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. And then one night after like spending the whole day knocking on doors, I was tired, started making dinner for my wife. And then I got a call from a number I didn't recognize. I picked it up. Hello? Mr. Ogdula.

And he said who it was. Yeah. OK, good. So what we needed to find out, first of all, is it all right if I record this conversation? You already was recording it. No, I got to let you know if I'm doing that. What we're trying to find out is who contacted you

from the ATF after that fire? It was Jason Wake, special agent Jason Wake. Okay, and that's who I basically dealt with the whole time. Okay, 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. And like, remember back in the trial, this sort of came up. Abraham was asked, like, were you given anything for your testimony?

And he's like, no, I just talked to my mom. Like, this is the right thing to do. But now... Were you paid a reward? Yeah. He admitted to it. What was the reward you were paid? It was supposed to be $15,000, but it was five thousand now what happened what happened in that situation?

I got it in cash. You got it in cash Who who showed up to give you the cat We hit the jackpot with that. One day Bill, this was him, all this 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 gonna want it. I'm like, all right, yeah.

Man. Greg opened the envelope and in it was a photocopy of two checks. One check for $5,000 and another check for $10,000. But they had the names blacked out, redacted. So you couldn't see who the checks had been written out to. But Ebrahim said that he'd gotten $5,000 and presumably Keith Wright, the neighbor, got 10,000. Something, holy shit, this is it. Yeah, man, I'm getting emotional thinking about it.

I couldn't believe it, because you just like, yeah, I shedded some tears, I didn't even, like, I was happy though, I didn't break down, I just, they just came, I was happy. Because to Greg, like like after 14 years of Being guilty of being found guilty. I said I got him now in his eyes. This was physical proof of his innocence It's over. I got they asked Got their ass but so just to be clear. Did you pay witnesses? When we talked to Jason Wick about this.

Oh, absolutely. He was like, yeah, of course we paid witnesses. We have receipts of us paying him. We're not trying to hide anything. But Jason says the payments got made well after the trial. And they were given essentially to the witnesses for a job well done. But, oh, they paid him.

So therefore, oh, he must have promised the money throughout or before the trial, right? It's an assumption. It's a false assumption. You're saying the possibility of payments didn't even come up in these conversations with these witnesses? Never. Not one time. I promised him no money. Listen, so let me pose a question to you guys, right? So that's a hypothetically I did, which I did not. Does that change the outcome of this case? Does it change what Ibrahim Abdullah said?

No. And in fact, neither witness, Keith Wright the neighbor or Ibrahim Abdullah, Did he say that he started that fire? ever recant their testimony. Man, that was 15 years ago. I'm not gonna even say that word. I can't remember most of it. Be honest with you.

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. But it wasn't, which meant. I looked over, he looked at me. In 2016, a guard tells Greg.

Come on, you're outta here. You're free to go home. God bless him in the time that he's gonna have with his family. Greg? After like 20 years of prison, Greg finally steps out, out into this like parking lot where he's greeted by, you know, lights, cameras, reporters,

and he's standing there with his lawyers, his arm around his mom. People in the firefighter community who still have strong feelings about this case and may think that you're still the guy. I would like to say, you know, thank the firemen for saving my, you know, my family. And I did a job, but I want everybody to know that I'm innocent, I'm happy to be out, innocent. Me and my family, nobody had nothing to do with this. As a matter of fact, it wasn't even the

crime community, it wasn't even the ar committee. It wasn't even the arson. And right here, this moment. That's all I'm saying. And at that point, because we have... His attorney cuts him off. Because prosecuting attorneys for the government have already filed a motion to retry the case. What? Why?

I think the argument is really that they believed that they got it right. And they got it right the first time. The jury got it right. Greg is guilty it right the first time the jury got it right. Greg is guilty and the sentence was life in prison and Greg belongs back in prison. Wow. But I guess like this time around is a little bit different because Greg is about

to find himself with this really unusual offer. And this offer will plant Greg like right in the middle of these two opposing versions of the truth and right between like guilt and innocence. All right we're gonna leave you in an in-between space for about a minute and a half, and then, yeah, come on back. I'm Lethif 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, but now is facing another trial.

And this isn't double jeopardy. This is a different, slightly different charge. Why is it not double jeopardy? Well, in Pennsylvania state courts, it might have been double jeopardy, but he's charged with a different crime in federal court. These are new charges, so it's not a retrial, technically. Right.

The summer of 21. Greg has been out of prison for about five years. Trying to start my life around family. I mean, I was a little straight and narrow, but long story short, so I met up with the attorneys. We had a meeting here. At Dave's office. Dave Fawcett was going to be Greg's lead attorney on this new trial.

I've been working three plus decades as a trial lawyer. 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. And the rooftop conversation was, what do you consider a plea? This is another one of Greg's attorneys, Liz DeLosa. Does that start with you all? So I can't go in too much to detail because plea negotiations are protected. This is the frustrating part about pleas.

They sort of exist in this black box. We don't know exactly what happened. And the prosecutors in this case declined to comment on the plea. 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? Yeah. Yeah. 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? So they all went around the table and see how they felt.

All the attorneys are going to the table. And they're nervous as hell. 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 there is a huge risk. I mean, they're basically telling him, like, look, you already lost at the first trial. 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.

And if you do, that probably means you're going to go back to prison for the rest of your life. Dude, do you want to go back? Do you want to prison for the rest of your life. Dude, do you wanna go back? Do you wanna risk this? Literally putting your life on the line. But, Dave... I was saying I'm gonna win this case. He didn't wanna take a deal. Dave is like, no, no, hell no. We are gonna win this case.

Either they drop the damn charges or we're gonna try... I wanted to try the case in the worst way. Right? And I was like that too. That's what Greg wanted to do. That's all I ever wanted to do, fight back. Hold the prosecutors accountable. Show them they wasn't gonna break me. And clear his name for good.

But. But then. As the conversations kept going around. Heard two things, one the federal defender, Lisa Freeland is her name, she said, Dave, when the prosecutor walks in the court and you 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.

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? And you know, I'm waiting to see what Dave's saying. Dave... I thought, damn. Dave just said, man, just it's too much of a risk. And you know, I'm waiting to see what Dave's saying. Dave. I thought, damn. Dave just said, man, just it's too much of a risk. Yeah. So I was like, damn, man.

And at this point, all of Greg's lawyers are essentially like, look, we know this isn't great. It's hard, but we think we can get you a deal where you walk, where you don't get any more prison time. And all of this would finally be done. And I'm like, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, never, I said I'm never going to admit that I did this. Greg was like, no, I would rather risk it all than have to say, I set the fire.

Say all or nothing. Then either I'm going to be free or I'm going to get convicted again. Here's where the story gets unusual in the extreme. 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, look, there's this other way out. Like you can plead guilty, but still say you're innocent. Like what? What the hell?

He's like, yeah, you're taking the deal, but you're maintaining total innocence. Right. Exactly. This is it. This is we are, we have arrived. This is what's known as an Alfred plea. And it always throws me actually, to be honest, even though I've like, I've been obsessed with this and thought about this so much, like it always is such a weird, it's like a little logic puzzle every time.

Yeah, it really is. 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. Wait a minute, how is this allowed? Like, is this a thing?

So I ended up calling a bunch of people, legal scholars and experts, and I was just trying to figure out, like, how does this plea make any sense? Starting with... I kind of vary it. Johanna. For a long time, I would just be like Joanna, but that's not my name.

Johanna Helgren, who has for years been researching this Alfred plea. Yeah. So could we just start, like, where did the Alfred plea, where did it even come from? Yeah. I mean, the way it came to be, this guy, Henry Alfred, was accused of first-degree murder. This is like the early 1960s.

So, first-degree murder meant he was facing the death penalty. But he took a plea for, I believe, second-degree murder. Which meant instead, he'd get life in prison. Yeah. 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. Hold on one second. He says, I just pleaded guilty because they said if I didn't, they'd gas me.

I'm just pleading because I don't want to get the death penalty, but I didn't do it. Then later he said, I'm not guilty, but I plead guilty. Right. Now, we have no way of knowing whether Alfred did or didn't do it. And then later he said, I'm not guilty, but I plead guilty. Right. Now we have no way of knowing whether Alfred did or didn't do it, whether he's actually guilty or not. But what we do know is that people plead guilty even when they're innocent. And we have, you know, the data is really imperfect.

We don't know how often, you know, innocent people plead guilty, but we know what happens. But like basically before Alfred, nobody had ever come out and blurted it out, I plead guilty, but I maintain my innocence. And up until that point, it wasn't even clear if the courts would accept that, if you could legally do that. Right. And so after a series of appeals and arguments and

sort of running up the food chain, the question eventually landed on the dock of the Supreme Court in 1970. 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. You can say whatever you want about whether you're guilty or innocent. As long as the two sides agree and the judge sort of sanctions that officially, go for it. 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 heel 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 prosecutors aren't just going to let everybody go. There needs to be some sort of pressure relief valve. And that is essentially the plea deal. Guilty pleas. But today, we're at the point where... —Plea bargaining accounts for about 97% of all cases.

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. This basically is the justice system now. Despite that, we, you know, the normal person would think legal system trial, right? Like two lawyers in court, the whole thing. But really, at this point, like the justice system is essentially like facilitating plea deals. It's essentially like lubricating pleas.

And Johanna says like, you can see the Alfred plea as just another tool in the toolbox to avoid going to trial. 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. At least I can still say that I'm innocent. Or it might be appealing to somebody who's actually guilty because they can also say they're innocent. But either way, according to Johanna.

Alfred pleas are actually more common than jury trials, which is pretty crazy. Crazy. Yeah. So really, Alfred pleas are more common? Yes, they are more common than jury trials. What? 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. And at the same time,

this thing that's totally unusual, like nobody's ever heard of Alfred. I mean, that seems like a contradiction. Right. It does feel like for me, like I almost see it like the plea deal became a shortcut for the trial. And then it almost feels like the Alfred deal became a shortcut for the trial and then it almost feels like the Alford plea became a shortcut for the plea deal. So it's like a shortcut to a shortcut. And now what we've weirdly created is a system where you have someone literally saying aloud, I'm innocent, and then they don't get a trial and they go, it's like go straight to jail. But they just said they're innocent.

It's an absurd thing. We've created that path in the system. And we should be horrified by that. So one of the other people we turned to was Ellie Mistal. He's a writer and thinker on legal matters, who we often turn to when we don't understand the legal issue. Right. So let's start here. 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. But why is it coercive if there is a chance in the trial that you won't be found guilty? Well, his own lawyers tell him, we're gonna lose. Ellie says, take Henry Alfred, for example. He was a black man, likely facing an all-white jury. And we can talk about systematic racism

and we can talk about all these things, but fundamentally, he's gonna lose. Like, how are you, the non-lawyer citizen, really in a position to be like, no, lawyer, you're wrong, I'm gonna go to trial, and if they kill me, they get me. But what, who does that? Right.

Right. Your actual lawyer is telling you and your lawyer is probably not wrong that they can't prove your case. And as much as we want, might want to talk about how like, Oh, well, he still gets to claim his innocence legally. He doesn't legally. The Alfred plea is a lie. 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. But never forget that the Alfred plea is the smart play, 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?

It's not people who have gotten unreliable advice of counsel. A lot of times they've gotten great advice of counsel, and that great advice is to fold, is to give up. Because the prosecutorial advantages are such. But that doesn't mean that they actually did. because the prosecutorial advantages are such, but that doesn't mean that they actually did. I was like, I gotta discuss this with my family.

I'm like, cause this is bigger than just me. And so for someone like Greg, who has always maintained his innocence 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 you should probably take this deal.

I called Fred, he works downtown. I'm like, I just met with the lawyers, I need to talk to you. Fred is Greg's little brother. So he said, it'll be over. He said, it'll be all the way over. You can just move on with your life. I was like, yeah. Then he Googled the alpha-plague. Right there with you? Yeah. Then I was like, yeah. And then he Googled the Alfred plea. And right there with you?

Yeah. And then he looked at it. He's like, yep, this is what it is. That move just, he like, I guess we just gotta get it over. Eventually, Greg does decide to go ahead and take the Alfred plea. And so yeah, they, they have this hearing before the judge. Obviously his conviction, guilty, stands on the record. But there are sort of other consequences or concessions that you make in sort of foregoing your constitutional right to a trial.

There's no chance that he can appeal this. He's never got a chance to dispute the science. There's all these things. Does Greg get to make a speech or anything like that? No, it's just basically yes or no questions. Do you agree? I mean, do you understand your rights? Do you agree to this plea?

And then both sides read into the record like what they believe is their version of the truth. And, you know, so, but 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, allows both sides to exist in this like weird, maybe not weird, but they allow both sides to tell their version of the truth. Coming back, you're pulling up some videos.

Yep. And these versions of the truth like continue to exist sort of in parallel, and they never get resolved. The first part about my presentation is the fire. So one of the federal investigators, this guy Matthew Raginton, he presents this case, Greg's case, at conferences for other fire investigators. And we put the heat flux data into simplified ignition correlations for wood surfaces.

Where he basically says, like, look, we got this right. The science is on our side. But I will say this until I can't talk anymore. And Jason will say this, and Bill will say this until I can't talk anymore, and Jason will say this, and Bill will say this, there are never two sides to the truth. And we have an absolute belief in what the truth is. That Greg is guilty. He committed a violent felony and three people died.

Now, like at the same time that Matt is giving these presentations, you just went to Arizona, right? Yes. That was last weekend? Yes. Greg, for the first time since 96, left Pennsylvania, flew to Arizona to this Innocence Network conference. It was amazing. I mean I met people from Montana, Michigan, all over the state. Hundreds of- His honorees. And Greg said it was fun. He was in his element, he felt like he totally belonged there.

But inwardly, this is something he told me and something his attorneys have told me. A lot of these other people have truly proven their innocence, at least in the eyes of the law. Like, they're exonerated. Whereas Greg took this plea. And that shit hurt. Cause some guys did, some people did fight it out.

They got exonerated. They got exonerated. Some people got compensation. Some people got money, yeah. Look like a friend told me, he said, he called me from jail. I said, I got mixed feelings. It's over, but it's not. He said, you know what it is? He said, you got a decision instead of the knockout. You wanted a knockout. I said, that's exactly how I felt.

And so if you pull up Greg's record, it will always show, technically on paper, that he is guilty. So yeah, it hurt. That's something I'll deal with the rest of my life. The rest of my life. This episode was reported by Peter Andre Smith and Matt Kielty, and produced by Matt Kielty. 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 Bresler and Pat Walters. Special thanks to John Lentini, Amanda Galulli, Fred Buckner, Debbie Steinmeier, Jason Hazelwood, Meredith Kennedy and Marissa Bluestein.

I'm glad you all now know about the Alfred plea and hopefully you will never have to use it. That's all for us. Thanks so much. Hi, I'm Rhian and I'm from Denny Godden Arden. I'm here at the Staff Credits. so much. Hi, this is Beth from San Francisco. Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, Assignment Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.

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