the seven monson is sentenced to fifty years of criminal imprisonment for the murder of kristina brown. only one element was used against him the confession that he signed. on and believe that this is going to be. my fish and that i would not want to be in prison on my that's something that i wouldn't wish him off worst enemy just being processed for you to go into a sale on the whole process of of this stone i'm comfortable. you feel like your freedom is being siphoned away from you. and tell you one thing about them are. i think that the last time he saw his

daughter they were looking occurred to me. but everything he told me to do for her . in the matters and in his. everything he do for her she never had a word for anything because the father was not around. and she was upset and angry her mother too was because the mar was in here to help her train is daughter. and they could but he had the best interests in the world for his. he just wasn't here to do it so i did it. and like us is good in the world for nothing but missing of. twenty years later a single event changes the course of lamar monson's life just around the time that

bill proctor the journalist who followed his case is getting ready to retire he receives a call from an unexpected witness who claims to know the real identity of christina brown's murder. two months before i retired after thirty three years in terms of and she called me on the phone it was one of the more shocking calls i'd ever taken. as an investigator you get many but this woman said to me on the phone . and me even if you don't remember that murder that you covered back then on boston you got it wrong. you got it wrong and i said ok i'm listening. and she explained that she was with the person who did the murder but the person in prison was not the killer that he wasn't there but she was with the man who did the killing and came back from the event dripping in blood and confessed to her that he

had killed the. ad the character life for twenty years twenty plus years and carried. and the native annie say i'm outta here me i'm tellin om i'm not on hall and that. at the time of the offense shalane a bentley resides in the building where the crime takes place she shares her life with a certain mr robert louis both of them were regular crack users on the day of the crime show in a claims to have seen lewis return from kristina brown subpart meant covered in blood the end. and then they let in a t.v. of my door open and the local m.p.

is on them now go away and blood is in the blood. boots and. he is the most blood and. blood and the nails. they he just killed. very important to me that. you know wrong as it is. whatever else he was charged with. i feel like eighteen year he is. that with too much. i'm the one that told that girl was not fair she was beat. they had and he. no he didn't he beat her. sure lena bentleys witness statement changes everything a team of lawyers and students from the university of michigan decide to reopen

lamar monson's case they are part of a national network of dozens of american universities who fight against judicial errors over the course of a year they retraced the police investigation step by step trying to prove lamar monson's innocence the big problem right away with this confession was that it didn't match the crime scene so at the time they interrogated lamar and then extracted this false confession got him to sign this false confession the police believe that christina brown had been stabbed to death they believe that because near her body in the bathroom sink there was a bloody knife and she had been stabbed so they extracted a confession or i wrote out a confession for lamar in which he says he stabs her to death the problem was is that she wasn't stepped but the police did know that time so a few days later when the autopsy report comes out it reveals that she had superficial stab wounds but actually she'd been bludgeoned to death with

a heavy object. it does not take the lawyers long to find the heavy object that allegedly killed the victim on the photos in the case file they notice that the toilet tank lid is not in the right place. the likely murder instrument was the ceramic toilet tank with a heavy ceramic tile exactly that had blood all over it that was found in the bedroom not too far from christina brown's print. after this the lawyers are convinced lamar monson did not kill christina brown as such he could not have written the confession himself the team from the university of michigan then asked the judge in charge of the case for access to the objects that were present at the scene of the crime twenty years earlier. and in september two thousand and sixteen two students and i went to the to the prosecutor's office where the toilet was brought there and it was unwrapped and it

was still covered in blood and amazingly though it was it covered in blood but there were bloody fingerprints all over it nobody had ever bothered to test and so the student you know saying hey look there's a bloody fingerprint right there and so i whipped out my i phone and i took photos of some of the bloody fingerprints on my i phone. and then brought them back and blew them up and we could see that they weren't we had comparison samples of art and they look a lot like robert louis is fingerprints. this can state police have new technology and they found none. and all of them belonged to robert louis and none of them belonged to the months and i was ecstatic because i know the power of forensic testimony improves vs what

someone might say because one is irrefutable the other can always be cut down by a nasty prosecutor. he couldn't do anything with this you should have seen the prosecutors struggle to answer the forensics that came from no less than the mistaken state police crime lab. it was powerful stuff and it was a day for celebration. in the northern. plains. and we need to find. a new. thanks to this new evidence more monson is granted a new trial in january two thousand and seventeen after a one day hearing the court decides to exonerate lamar monson. surreal for me because these things i've been playing and asked for and seeing things develop in before my eyes witness come for five to twelve years evidence.

despite phil event the cape it in my spirit you know no feeling good. i don't know the truth but now everybody knows the truth and so that was a blessing you know people still back me. feel good for them because now people know that they still. me and they were right to do so. lamar months and is out on bond and heads right over to his family and supporters at the wayne county jail. i have prayed and i pray. and i ask. please let me live in them or come. in with february first. twenty seventeen and i was there and he was released. on holiday in credit. and i credit my

son is free at last. i just knew was called to ask for is something being we've been waiting or something we've been up to supreme for the longest finally came and. i can only give the glory to go does the field your mom always say she was in waiting to get that hold your mom right now. or words to express is one of been a mark on all my life a little more life and i'm just glad she finally got some help to be happy about. oh it's a wonderful feeling. i've had now. twenty two of these cases all together seventeen since we started six i think and i had five before and it's never gets old it's so wonderful when the person actually comes out of the door and

they're met by their family and friends and. the students who work on the case who work on the case. the country has gone into a nihilistic fever i think and hit the road and get out to traveling across america in the find what makes america the charlatans the genius of this place especially american hero this is it we found a point around which element is done something we always are on the brightest and. called culture is really important because. we're starting last with is the beginning heading east into the swamp we're going into the belly of the beach and i think i want to leave now doesn't get any more gondo

than this it may be a completely different industry. they're bred for a single purpose. they have a supermoon. they start training very young. they months of intensive schooling. rats. and they save lives. as a spy you'll have to really split your own personality into to you that is the committed jihad this that was still alive within me and then that is the son who wanted to counter everything they want to do and then try and dismantle everything they were doing so you have to really become a good doctor and noted that to pull them you have to follow your own family in

order to pull the. perfect there's someone else living inside of me or controlling my body. the byproduct of. that drug. the cause like severe depression. because a little you need him into a zombie is crazy. you know we don't have to do anything it's not our fault she's crazy and all that. the fears traumatic time we get. them are monson's name is cleared for good. robert louis the man whose fingerprints were found at the scene as to this day still not

been indicted. you have his ex-girlfriend saying he did it and then all the people in the world whose fingerprints could be on that toilet in blood it's him that's pretty good evidence i mean that's that's a case where i think the the dumbest prosecutor in the world could win a conviction pretty easily. but. they made it clear they're not going to charge him because charging him would be admitting that they got it wrong with him armand's. christina brows been dead now for twenty two years but she still deserves justice and her family still deserves justice and they won't get it because the prosecution is stubborn. feel free want to know well and they

know that he's guilty so what does that tell you about the. system don't care about me. i'm a taxpayer i've lived in this city in this world over fifty years. they don't care . all they want to do. as get away and keep. that tragic scene families together at separate or it doesn't matter how out. the country is i'm sure. we live with certain notions of justice. of what the lost as what we all believe in our hearts. that the person really responsible for something as innocent as the murder of a twelve year old girl should answer for that crime. yet over and over and

over again i have been party to evaluating cases where there are innocence claims and the person responsible is known and named in the very police department the made the mistake does nothing to go back and capture and charge the person who was really responsible because it's difficult. because it takes extra work because it takes new witnesses because it takes a harder examination of what really happened and that examination would show that the initial group of police investigators that only failed but walked away from certain facts they didn't finish.

can you put a price on twenty years spent behind bars for a crime he did not commit. this man received a figure and the subsequent compensation of twenty million dollars. one rivera has just received twenty million dollars twenty million dollars for twenty years of imprisonment for a crime he did not commit one rivera was also forced to sign a confession. in one nine hundred ninety seven he confessed to the rape and murder of an eleven year old girl. turn is that the same decided to you know settle i would as i was asked by the news media you know is the twenty million that is enough and i'll tell you as i tell them you know when

you keep talking in my twenty's back i miss my son he's a bring a minister my nieces and nephews a mother was at the time my father was i'm lost my grandparents you know there's a lot of things that i miss and is family. and i can never get back no matter how much money i get you know they can offer me a hundred million dollars when they come from yes it has given me confidence but they. i think in my years it doesn't give me the news that often lost the memories that often lost i mean to this day if you ask my parents for any of my childhood photos she would say she has them because the court has them another three trials and so i'm going to try nordstrom is the one new photos you want to show you humans . i don't have no records of my upbringing because they took. my life bonded january sixteenth two thousand and twelve that's when my life

started that's when i have a record of who i am. surrounded by family members and cameras want ribeiro walked out of state bill correctional center a free man all i want to do is enjoy my time with my family but it's been twenty years of separation and this is a new beginning for me so this may be one of those. not a few last month. during the conviction that added to the water. so. twenty billion dollars is not enough it never will be enough nor any amount because again it is the memories that mean that. not the money. one rivera is barely nineteen years old when his life turns into a nightmare on the seventeenth of august one thousand nine hundred two the chicago police force accuses him of the rape and murder of holly staker an eleven year old

babysitter who was stabbed twenty seven times the case makes headlines across the country. in the space of a few hours the chicago police turns one into a publicly hated monster. i had a different sentence that's because then yes i was an innocent person going to prison this is a natural a sense is for something that is new so that was this added bonus to my him going into prison first of all i'm going to an environment that is a nexus unknown and very very scary. second i'm going into for murder. her. name for eleven years so as i got three strikes against him in prison they don't like me. but they do i got them twice when i was in prison. two it's embraced on me of course i had to

fight them off thank god then i defy them off. in prison records this is what i had so we do it when i was interesting. rivera was not far from being sent to the electric chair these years of violence in prison these years spent on the margins of society have forever destroyed his trust in others and in the system. for me to hear at that time and they were willing to kill in one thousand year old kid and. understand what the hell was going on shows you the character of mankind you know i'm. to this day i still have difficulties in trusting him because he was willing to kill me then i miss him i'm not willing to kill me now when i get death threats. are going to live my life by smiling and watching my back because people still want to hurt me just as in that i know that because they do it in me constantly while i'm walking in the

streets and i get in the branches the general approach is that you know what if i have a chance to kill you i will because you don't deserve to be alive i have free when i think you killed and there is also this is what i want to live with but still yet i got to smile. in two thousand and fifteen the results of d.n.a. analyses allowed want to be exonerated for good holly staker is a real killer still roams free and no police officer seems to be searching for him out of the twenty million dollars that one rivera received two million dollars were paid in by reed following a legal agreement in spite of this compensation not a single police officer has been personally sanctioned. all the officers. that worked in my case as well it's attorneys if all retired with pension pension there was no repercussions no rich and usually no criminal charges nothing i see

exceeded into job they need to hire and major tenants to his is very mike wallace retired and they gave him a plaque for good job. there's a culture of. unaccountability and police officers know that they can engage in misconduct that has nothing to do with solving their crime and everything to do with. pointing the finger at perhaps the easiest person to point the finger at and there will be no consequence and so it happens over and over and over again and states. oh yeah it goes a victim. having clothes they did is still open for me i might get credit i have credibility but what about her family do they even care no they're not even

searching for the person they get these early because they thought and they still feel that i'm guilty. in this theory our criminal justice system is designed to correctly identify perpetrators and bring them to justice where fails and where fails because of misconduct. the reaction of the criminal justice system is really the opposite of what it should be the criminal justice system tries to cover up the failure. and retain its legitimacy instead of admitting its mistakes and finding the real perpetrators the law gives police officers what is called qualified immunity for their actions which means it's very difficult to sue their. after the fact for their roles in obtaining false confessions and prosecutors have what's called

absolute immunity. so unless they become part of the police investigative process they are not going to be held responsible for their role in wrongful convictions. and no one should be above the law. and police officers themselves should not be above the law. reed has not responded to any of our interview requests however the firm has informed us that their training procedures now take the risk of false confessions into account. for its part the supreme court of the united states still allows police officers to lie during the interrogation stage. i mean we're asking. a couple of these guys depositions why they thought telling a lie was going to get the truth and they didn't have an answer for me they just said well that's what we do that's the way interrogations go we're allowed to lie

to them and i again ask why do you think lying to someone is going to get a truthful answer in response in they just couldn't answer it and for the life of me i don't understand why someone would think that lying to someone is going to get a truth response back so it's a horrible practice that goes on all the time and in the us it's just it doesn't really serve it doesn't serve justice at all. what state does the american judicial system find itself in today with corrupt cops and untouchable magistrates the american justice system is continuously producing more inequalities and more impunity in a country that is more divided than ever. us

veterans who come back from war often tell the same stories. were going after the people who were killing civilians they were not interested in the wellbeing of their own soldiers either there are already several generations of them so i just got this memo from a certain branch office says we're going to attack and destroy the government and seven countries in five years americans pay for the wars with their money others with their lives if we were willing to go into harm's way and willing to risk being

killed for a war then surely we can risk some discomfort for an easy nurse for peace. if you should are always telling us oh we can't have everything at the same time we can't have peace and democracy blah blah blah in a cost conflicts situation i know war situation that's not true is that instead of telling people what you can't have everything and then failing to deliver on it everything are we should be fabric here and say ok you can have like some kind of basic and have some kind of democracy you can have some kind of justice in the short term but unfortunately we cannot feel everything at the same time and so someone has to make a choice. it's. when

i came back from iraq oh mary was her was cocaine methamphetamine see anything that's altering trying to get us out of. that bad mindset using a chemical that would be self medicating. i want to be drinking and drink enough i want to end up just killing myself by drinking alcohol links drink to get drunk alcoholics drink to feel normal. that's why it's that's why a drug addicts do what they do a shot while still running their. star cool under which these guys are blowing through to it it just means to. reduce need to be hoped and good pushed on by the v.a.'s are as drugs go and stuff they need to be built. and they've really shouldn't be looked at like numbers they should be looked at like people if they go to a veteran center for health issues be considered as someone who really needs attention

. what politicians do. they put themselves on the line and they get accepted or rejected. so when you want to express injury. or some one of us. have to do like to be for us this is what the full story of the morning can't be good that i'm interested always in the waters of how. things should. go all i. see is a ninth successive weekend of yellow best protests with thousands of demonstrators clashing with police.