Josh Dubin is the Executive Director of the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice, a criminal justice reform advocate, and civil rights attorney. https://cardozo.yu.edu/directory/josh-dubin J.D. Tomlinson is a lawyer and was previously Lorain County Prosecutor in Ohio. https://www.freetheohio4.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who are Josh Dubin and J.D. Tomlinson?
And what he is telling them happened does not match the physical evidence. state of this apartment where he claims this beating happened. So this is like one of the telltale ways to tell if someone is falsely confessing to you or falsely implicating others. He tells them that there's this horrific beating of this victim that occurs in an apartment. And they go to the apartment.
I mean, chairs turned over, tables turned over, a bloody knockdown, drag out fight for her life. And they go to the apartment and take pictures. And it's in the most pristine condition you can imagine. Not a chair turned over, not a table. And they immediately had reason to know that this guy was bullshitting. Because he then comes and says to them, you know, I have other details.
And the more details he gives them, the less it's matching up with the evidence that they have. So they're trying these four men separately. When the first trial happens, William Avery Jr. has an idea. And his idea is, I'm going to extort these people for money. He shows up at the trial and he tells the prosecutors, I want $10,000. And the prosecutors say to him, what are you talking about?
You have to testify. You got the reward money. And he says, I'm not testifying. They put him in jail for contempt. And he says, I made the whole thing up anyways. I did it for the reward money. I made it up. They should have known right then and there before any of these four men were tried that this was someone that led them down the wrong path. But instead of doing that, they keep him in jail.
I don't remember if it was for 30 days or 60 days. And they let him cool his heels a little bit. The judge in the trial calls a mistrial, and when there's a mistrial, you can try someone again. So about a month goes by, and William Avery Jr. 's story has now evolved. He now no longer claims that Al Cleveland confessed to him. He claims that he was a witness to it.
And what happens in that intervening month, I think people can draw their own obvious conclusions about what happens. But suffice to say, it's my opinion and my belief that they did a number on this guy. So he goes on to testify at all four of their trials individually. During which time the lead prosecutor gets a correspondence from the U.S.
Secret Service saying that we know you use this man, William Avery Jr., as an informant. We have been using him as a paid informant in some food stamp sting, and we just caught him.
in a lie and he's compromising our investigations because he is accepting reward money and making things up and we're ceasing to use him as an informant and we are investigating him for crimes and giving us false information and accepting reward money for it. So the prosecutor you would think at that point would say, all right, it's over. Obviously it's over.
So these guys all get sentenced and convicted to, I believe it was 25 years to life. That's right. And I became involved in the case about two years ago, a year and a half ago, and dissected the record, and I was blown away by what I had seen, and I've seen it all. I found out that William Avery Jr., Walked into the FBI in 2004, and the FBI documents it, and he says, look, I was a drug addict.
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Chapter 2: What is the Ohio Four case and why is it significant?
Well, you're going to get to that. The way that J.D. made enemies in Ohio and that town is because he had the audacity. He had the nerve to say, I see two innocent people in another case and I'm going to exonerate them. And that is the beginning of his issues in Ohio. So, I mean, if you want to hear from J.D.
's perspective, because what ensued and what has happened in the months since has been one of the most shocking events. disturbing, frankly, disgusting displays of what I think is ego and abuse of the system, in my opinion, that two of these four men are still in prison.
And two of them are only out because they paroled out, but they're on parole as convicted murderers for a crime they didn't commit. So, I mean, I don't know. It'd be interesting to hear J.D. 's perspective on that call. And I then met with him right before Thanksgiving and we had a big rally. In Ohio, Derek Hamilton, who's the deputy director of the Perlmutter Center, was there.
We organized a bunch of folks in the community, a lot of coverage on local news. And then the next day I met with J.D. and his team and presented essentially about a two-hour, three-hour closing argument where I showed him all the evidence in the case.
J.D., what was the whole experience like for you, like starting from the first contact with Josh and, you know, how your situation unfolded where you were getting wrongfully accused?
It all really started is because I had developed a relationship with a woman in my office who I had known for many years. And that was a mistake on my part. And it was contentious. It was really beautiful for a long time, like many relationships are. And then it started to entangle, disentangle. Shocker. Yeah, right. And it was all my fault, Joe.
I mean, I'm really contrite about the situation because I'm very aware of my mistakes. And I've made amends with her. And thankfully, she has accepted my apologies because I put her in a position where she should have never been in. as being an employee of mine. But I had known her for 19 years. I had never really been the head of such a big office. I mean, it's about 100 people.
So for me, it was a really big thing. And there's a romance that goes with kind of winning an election and coming in trying to make a difference. I think it swept us up and we really genuinely cared about each other. But then it started to kind of fail and it was my fault. And I brought a lot of toxicity to the relationship that I, and I don't like the word toxic. I don't know why I don't.
Well, it's compromised today. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is.
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Chapter 3: How did the wrongful convictions of the Ohio Four unfold?
and that she didn't intend for them to, and that she kind of wanted some help with the media about how can we kind of help a little bit with the PR. And my partner and my chief of staff, Jim Burge, who's a legend unto himself, he's the best writer I've ever seen.
So he wrote a statement, and it was supposed to be prepared for her lawyers if they wanted to review it and see if they agreed with it or change it or anything like that. And to prove that that's what occurred was I have text messages from her on the day that – Jim wrote the statement that says, you know, I trust Jim and his magic pen because she knew how good of a writer he was.
And then the next day, when I'm supposed to be intimidating him, according to the state, when I'm supposed to be intimidating her, according to the state, you know, I received a text message apologizing to this situation that we're in because we both were just really... It was dramatic to have your personal life right in even a small town like that. It was dramatic. So that's really what happened.
But what they alleged was they alleged that we had created this false narrative, this false document, and then intimidated her into adopting it. That was the allegation, which is completely, completely false. And and we had all the evidence to prove it. So I was fairly confident in my case because I'm a lawyer. I've defended I was a defense attorney for 15 years before I took office.
So I'm fairly knowledgeable about what constitutes a good case or not. And I had a great case. But the stress to put on my family and my mother and my father. Just awful. You know, I have nieces and nephews. I'm a bachelor, but I've got nieces and nephews with my last name, and that really bothered me. And so while I'm battling with this, the interesting thing, I'm charged on October 1st.
On October 4th, and they had, once we broke up in 23, they had kind of been courting her because they knew that she was my weakness.
um that the contentious relationship and i think they were hoping that they would turn her on me um and so they did as much as to exploit and try to try to utilize our relationship against me in fact the lead detective that was investigating her us uh was attempting to sleep with her at the same time attempting to sleep with i have text messages asking for nude photographs um asking just go over her house this is while he's investigating me joe he's trying to sleep with my girlfriend
Saying stuff like, you should get back at him. You should get back at him. How dumb is this guy to make this in text messages? I couldn't believe it when she showed it.
You want to think the people that are evil, that are manipulating people and falsely trying people, they're like evil geniuses.
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