Original subtitles

[♪♪♪]

PETER: Well, now, according to the Rocky Mountain News,

September 22nd 1981 article,

David Cortinaz was threatened by Tony D'Prero

to carry out the execution of Hal Levine.

MIKE: That's correct.

PETER: Yeah, and said that the money would come from Mike,

alluding to you.

MIKE: That's what D'Prero said.

PETER: Yeah.

MIKE: That's not what Cortinaz says.

PETER: What did Cortinaz say?

MIKE: Cortinaz says that he was forced

by Sergeant Cantwell on the threat of narcotics charge

to testify before the grand jury

involving my name.

PETER: You're saying they boxed him in.

MIKE: Not only did they box him in, they paid him off.

PETER: How much they pay?

MIKE: They gave him a thousand dollars in one hundred dollar bills.

PETER: Can you prove that?

MIKE: He's testified to this.

PETER: That's on the record?

MIKE: That's on the record and I have the transcript right here

in case you want to read it.

They gave him a thousand dollars in one dollar bills

and told him to get out of town.

[♪♪♪]

It wouldn't-- I can't remember,

but it wouldn't surprise me if we didn't agree to relocate him

and generally what relocation would consist of

would be rental of a van,

first month's rent and last month's rent,

and then maybe some other expenses

for food, long enough to eat,

long enough to get yourself on your feet.

ALAN: We tried to locate him because Cortinaz testified

in the grand jury that

D'Prero tried to hire him to kill Levine.

And, and further, D'Prero said

in his testimony that

Borrelli never asked him to do that.

So it was very, very important

exculpatory evidence for me.

Could never find the guy.

He was gone.

[♪♪♪]

PETER: Well, the problem I guess, I have,

on the whole, is,

a question that is only going to be rude

and I really don't mean it to be.

I just can't figure out another way to say it.

If not you, who?

MIKE: I have a newspaper article with me where Walter Gerash

for his client is Nunzio Saccone,

criticized the grand jury for failing to indict

one of the other corporate members.

And he brought evidence far, far greater

than the evidence that was against Mr. Nunzio Saccone.

And he mentions exactly who should have been indicted.

-PETER: Who is Mainardi? -MIKE: Mainardi.

MIKE: Mainardi, who was a director of the corporation.

PETER: Barry Mainardi.

MIKE: Who took out insurance policies.

MIKE: No one was more concerned than Mr. Barry Mainardi,

because he brought two corporate members

into the organization

who invested 100,000 dollars a piece in cash

into Hal Levine's Random House.

ALAN: One of the pieces of evidence that I don't think

the jury appreciated in, in either trial

was the fact that Mike Borrelli

had absolutely nothing to do with this key man

insurance policy.

He was, is not the one that wanted the policy taken out.

He thought it was an expenditure that

the company couldn't afford.

But there were, one of, one or two of the shareholders

were in the life insurance business.

And so they would garner big premiums

on this kind of policy.

A five million dollar policy might have

a 100,000 dollar premium.

So these other two individuals planted the seed that

they should have this amount of life insurance

and then the money that they would have gotten,

the 100,000 dollar premium which the company paid

the premium, was actually their investment.

And for a man that had no net worth,

he was living in a rental house,

he had no visible assets,

he had a furniture store that made no money,

and why would you have a five million dollar

key man insurance policy?

And why would an insurance company issue that kind of

policy without there being

tangible evidence of a net worth of the company?

Always intrigued me.

MIKE: The only way the investors could get their money back

was if Hal Levine died.

He was the only one who didn't sign a release and his money

went to the organization that want to split

between the directors.

If you assume that the insurance policy

is a motive for murder, all of them had an equal,

if not greater motive than Mike Borrelli

with respect to that insurance policy.

The prosecution never supplied us with any information

about those other individuals, their financial dealings.

They said they had nothing because those individuals

wouldn't talk to them.

Yet they had the power of the grand jury to subpoena them.

Perhaps they took the Fifth Amendment, I don't know.

But we never got any information, nor did we have

the ability to compel that information,

as did the prosecution.

So they just slid into the background and became

not a focus of the prosecution.

Of course, they were a focus to us.

[♪♪♪]

Whether they were sure that Mike

was guilty or not, they wanted him to be.

ALAN: These people wanted to further their career,

come hell or high water.

There were a few policemen that obviously were catering

to the media who were the, quote,

unidentified source of all of this information.

[♪♪♪]

FRANK: The stories that I wrote principally

were based on transcripts from the grand jury,

and the trick, of course, was getting the transcripts

which were not supposed to be provided,

but, I found a way to get them

and got them and wrote stories about them.

It was great fun.

We had the absolutely worst case scenario

of potential jurors reading testimony

that was given without any cross-examination,

purely for the purpose of indicting Mike Borrelli

and painting him as a terrible person and murderer.

I know it probably was difficult

to get a fair jury.

Some jurors, when we were questioning them,

did admit that they had read something about it.

But we were able to get a jury that was free from any taint

as a result of those articles.

That's absurd.

Everybody read this story every day

because it was in every newspaper,

every single week.

I remember part one, running on

page one of the Sunday newspaper

on Easter Sunday, so it was a pretty lurid topic

to have in very large page-one type.

I think the media acted

appropriately and, you know,

didn't try to jump in anything that they,

they weren't supposed to or to create

problems for the trial.

FRANK: Selfishly, I just knew what a great tale this was

and that I had it and nobody else did.

But I have to confess, I don't think I examined it

or my motives around it much, much harder than that.

As a 24-year-old ambitious newspaper reporter

it didn't get any better than that.

ALAN: Marty Raskin, there's another fiasco.

An article appeared in a paper that they felt that

Marty Raskin had been poisoned in the restaurant.

Jurors read that kind of garbage and the public reads that

kind of garbage and the judge reads that kind of garbage.

There was some suggestion that he was poisoned

at the restaurant, which, of course,

Borrelli was in charge of the restaurant

and so there's an implication that maybe he wanted him

out of the picture.

ALAN: Marty Raskin set up junkets to Las Vegas

for gamblers.

Pretty flamboyant guy as, as a promoter

of junket tours always would be.

Knew everybody in Denver.

Marty Raskin was in the club.

He had dinner and he was there with a young lady and they left.

And apparently they must have went to his or her apartment,

because while they were doing their thing,

Marty got a heart attack and he passed away.

SAM: Well, I was working the street in a patrol car there

and I got a call to headquarters and they said,

meet Cantwell at headquarters and I went,

oh brother, and I drove over there.

And that's when they told me they had reason to believe

my dad was poisoned.

I said, where'd you hear this?

It's hard to believe that somebody could come up

with such a foolish theory.

He died of natural causes.

There was a witness when he died

in the room.

He had a heart attack.

And then to, to try and get this over

into Mike Borrelli's case.

The illness came on so suddenly.

He was happy, healthy, went there,

and then all of a sudden he is sick and wants to go home.

Apparently, he wasn't sick enough to prevent

the sexual intercourse, but,

and then he dies.

SAM: Going in, knowing what Cantwell was like,

he was so, so ambitious.

SAM:I know one thing.

They were trying to justify

Organized Crime Strike Force funds at that time.

And he may have looked like a hero if he could have

pulled this off showing that there was an organized crime

behind all this, which was a joke, there,

there was no organized crime.

HUMPHREY: The body was exhumed.

Again, that was 1976

as opposed to 2016.

Dr. George Ogura, the forensic pathologist,

stated that due to the length of time that had passed between

death and exhumation, and the fact the body

had not been embalmed, prevented him

from being able to make a determination

one way or another.

The deterioration of the tissues was too great

to make a determination.

ALAN: How do you disprove that it did happen?

It's like me trying to prove a negative.

MIKE: They exhumed his body and all

this made the first, second page of

The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News.

He'd been a healthy, active man

and there was no reason for this sudden death to occur.

My dad had been a smoker, he quit,

but he was overweight,

probably did not eat the best things for him,

he did not exercise.

So to answer your question,

in today's standards, I would say he was a heart attack

waiting to happen.

HUMPHREY: I mean, at some point in time,

I certainly saw the autopsy report.

At this point in time, I can't remember

what the autopsy report said, other than the fact

that the doctor, and I assume it's in the autopsy report,

but I remember Dr. Ogura telling us that

due to the state of decomposition,

based upon the technology

that was available at the time, he could not determine

whether or not there were drugs--

there was, there was poison in the system-- had,

whether or not there had been poison in his system.

MIKE: When they re-examined him and found out that he died

of a heart attack, the article came out

on page 138 that he died

of a heart attack.

It was all a fallacy.

Well, looking at Borrelli

sitting in the courtroom every day,

he was a nice looking man and had black hair

and really fairly good looking,

I don't know if I'd call him a handsome man,

but pleasant to look at.

And I think, you know, the jurors probably felt that

he didn't look like a criminal.

Of course he looked Italian and some people

just automatically might,

suspect somebody who was Italian,

particularly back in that time

when there was a more possible connection between

Italians and crime than there is now.

So I just know from my own standpoint,

I didn't have any negative feelings when I looked at him.

He did look very pleasant,

and so I had nothing negative

that I perceived in looking at him.

LIZ: He came in shackled into the courtroom and when they,

when they said the sentence, I was screaming my head off,

screaming and screaming

and he just looked so--

[Whimpering]

PETER: How did you feel when you heard the verdict?

MIKE: I, I was stunned.

I couldn't believe that the jury believed

what D'Prero said,

because the entire case was based strictly on his testimony

and the jury knew he was lying.

Why they came back with a guilty verdict at that time

is something I still do not understand today.

[♪♪♪]

Mike and I were convinced that it would be an acquittal

and the jury comes back guilty,

and Mike took it very stoically.

I've never seen anybody react

with that composure.

I, I felt, upon reflection, that

I probably fell apart

more than he did.

I was very concerned about that jury.

REPORTER 1: So what now?

On July 5th we'll file our motion for a new trial.

And after that I'll request an appeal bond,

I'm sure, and it'll go to the Colorado Supreme Court.

REPORTER 2: How strong do you think the appeal can be?

Well, obviously, I think it's very strong.

I always believed in my client's innocence.

I think there were several very difficult evidentiary points

for the judge to take up.

There are some areas that there was no case law in

Colorado to guide us.

And I think there are very, very good grounds

for appeal in this entire matter.

I felt that it was a, it was a good jury,

in my opinion, that, that handled this case.

That jury was, the day they sat down,

they had decided the case against us

and there was no erasing what they had heard.

ALAN: The Denver godfather, the New York connection.

We've got to show that Denver can't be infiltrated

by the mob sending out hit squads.

There's, there's not a lot of things worse in life than

to be representing somebody that is innocent

and the jury convicts them.

I can never understand what it must be like

to sit there, knowing that this jury

who is just convicted you on absolutely

preposterous evidence is back in the jury room

deciding whether you'll live or die.

That has to be something to go through.

[♪♪♪]

BAILIFF: Would you please rise?

Courtroom 20, the Denver District Court

is now open and ready for the transaction of business,

the Honourable Robert P. Fullerton presiding.

Please be seated.

It was gut-wrenching, it was--

I don't know how I didn't have a nervous breakdown.

[♪♪♪]

MIKE: Absolutely.

There's been so much misconduct in this case,

and I know that I'll get my time to talk about it.

I was prepared to make a speech today.

I didn't know what the events were going to be.

I didn't know what was going to happen.

But I'll be prepared.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪]

BOB: There was a statement that the prosecutor made

in the closing of my trial.

"Let's send a message

to New York and California

and Chicago,

that we don't want their goons

coming in and messing up our town."

And I think that kind of statement appealed

to the mentality of the jury

and probably the mentality of Colorado.

Oh, yes, Denver at that time was, I guess we could call it

a cow town, you know, we were really,

still a small town,

not very sophisticated in a lot of ways.

They called to say the verdict was in

and all through the thing I didn't have a good feeling

in my stomach.

It was like sitting on pins and needles.

Like, what's going to happen to dad?

Is dad... are they going to put my father to jail.

Are they going to give him a death sentence?

What's going on?

We wanted to, because in Denver they had the death sentence.

BOB: After a lengthy trial,

the murder charge was dismissed.

I was found guilty of conspiracy.

[♪♪♪]

We don't believe he did the murder.

We don't believe he did the shooting.

But he must have done something wrong.

This is Denver, Colorado.

So we'll convict him of conspiracy.

That's what they did.

Bob Davis wouldn't have come here to do a murder like that.

He's an intelligent man, well-spoken,

a great career,

not a blemish on his career.

This would be so out of character.

And I'm not naive.

I've been a prosecutor and a defense lawyer

for 37 years.

To me, it's incomprehensible that Bob Davis

committed a murder.

I was sentenced to 30

to 45 years in prison.

[Taking deep breath]

Now, what was so hard about that, is that

[flashes]

at that particular time, a life sentence

in Colorado

was a 10-year sentence with the possibility

of parole after that.

So I said, wow, 30 to 45 years for conspiracy.

You have to understand when, when you're an attorney

representing people in these matters is that,

you know,

when it's all said and done, you get to get up and go home

and have dinner with your wife and kids and whatever.

But when that jury walks out

and renders a decision against, you know, your client,

the impact is so tremendous.

The jurors, they had a luncheon later

and invited me to the luncheon and I went.

And.

Just to talk about the case.

I just remembered a lot of,

dynamic things going on with the jury,

so that was a good experience.

At least for the lawyer.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪]

PETER: I guess probably the biggest nightmare any cop can have

is going to jail.

Do you feel that, that was

an outright attempt to put you away in a place

where nobody could hear from you again?

MIKE: Absolutely.

I was sent down to Cañon City for one reason.

I was sent down there to get killed.

I was sent down to die.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪]

MIKE: I did not know what to expect when we went behind the wall.

The fellow who welcomed us into the place

brought me into his office

and he says to me, says, look, we know about you.

We know that you're a police officer.

Do you want protective custody?

Protective custody is where they put all the informers,

where they put all the rats, where they put the worst people

in the world.

So I says to him, I says no.

I says I did nothing wrong.

I says, I want to be put in the population.

And that's where I'm going.

I don't want to be put with those guys.

He says you're going to have to sign a release.

I said, no problem, give me the release.

Protective custody was offered to me,

but I believed that I as a person,

innocent as I was,

had a right to stand up, hold my head up high

and not take that easy road out.

BOB: I was going to take whatever came

and fight it, whatever came.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪]

After my conviction, I was sent

to the maximum security prison.

MIKE: When you go to maximum security, you're in your cell 23

and a half hours a day.

You're out that half hour in the yard.

That's where all your violent prisoners are.

When Mike was convicted,

he was sent to the medium security prison.

MIKE: Medium, there's gates, guards, towers,

there's everything there,

but you have freedom of movement

and that's the difference between medium and maximum.

I'm convicted of conspiracy and at this time,

Mike's convicted of murder.

BOB: So the question came up again about

equality.

It was a mess, it was a mess.

NEWSCASTER: The wife of convicted murderer Michael Borrelli

broke her silence today.

Channel 9's Bertha Lynn was there.

I'm appearing before you today

because I was advised by legal counsel

from New York to do so,

because I have reason to fear for my husband,

Michael Borrelli's life if he is sent to prison

in Cañon City.

My reasons for this feeling of danger

came from reliable sources

within the political system of Colorado

who do not wish to become involved.

Mrs. Borrelli says she fears

Colorado law enforcement officers,

not just prison inmates, to try to kill her husband

before his conviction can be appealed.

LIZ: It was, it was like a nightmare.

It was a nightmare.

It wasn't like, it wasn't like that was me.

It was like another person, you know, it was like

this was happening to some, this was somebody else.

I said to myself, this is not a good sign.

Not a good sign.

BOB: In prison, things are cut up on racial lines.

White prisoners ride together.

Hispanic and Mexican-American prisoners ride together,

and African-American prisoners ride together.

If you ride alone,

you're going to get killed.

They had a conference

among the African-American prisoners

and a lot of them didn't want anything

to do with me.

I was, I guess, fair game.

MIKE: My gate opens up, the only one.

And I look out and the guard who was in the cubicle,

he says, "Mike, you're wanted downstairs in the barbershop."

Nobody else went to the barbershop.

I was wondering why they wanted me in the barbershop.

I go downstairs and who's the barber?

Richie Balls.

And Richie Balls says, "Mr. Borrelli,

we've been expecting you.

Sit down."

So I sat in this chair.

The chair went back and he put cotton balls on my eyes,

I says, holy shit.

The sweat must have been coming down my arms because

I says, this has to be it.

But you want to know something?

I got the smoothest shave I ever had in my life.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪]

MIKE: The inmates in there really, really thought that

I was involved with organized crime.

Some of the guys in prison,

they believed that hype.

One day I was sitting down at the table

and another inmate comes out, an Italian guy who was there

and he says, Mr. Borrelli,

I did some time in Leavenworth with Sonny Franzese,

do you know Sony Franzese?

I said no.

And the guy smiled and walked away.

I was telling him the truth,

but that's what you're supposed to do.

So the image gets bigger and bigger and bigger

and it got very big.

So I did not go in there as a, as a cop.

I went in there as an organized crime figure,

which they believed.

And I did nothing whatsoever to take that image away from them.

Meanwhile, being that I was a baker, they assigned me

to the kitchen and I started baking for all the inmates

and they pointed out to me,

who were the people that ran the penitentiary.

They pointed out a fellow by the name of Buddy Moore,

who all the rednecks looked up to.

They pointed out a fellow by the name of John Baca,

all the Chicanos admired

and did whatever he said.

Then they pointed out a guy by the name of D.C. Barker.

D.C. Barker was a fighter.

He was in for narcotics and all the blacks respected him.

They respected him because his claim to fame

was his fight with Leon Sphinx.

He's the one who knocked out Leon Sphinx's tooth.

So these were the three guys who literally ran

the penitentiary.

Three months went by.

And I'm sitting in the kitchen at a table all by myself,

and Buddy Moore comes over and he looks at me

and he says, Mr. Borrelli, can I sit with you?

I says, Of course, Buddy.

He says, oh, you know me, I says, yes.

He says, I want you to meet two people.

He called John Baca over and he called D.C. Barker over.

And he says, from now on, you run with one of us.

BOB: He got a crew of guys together

that he taught them how to bake.

So they did rolls and breads and

cakes and all types of things

that really made the kitchen staff look good.

And the administration couldn't believe

that a guy like John Baca or a guy like Buddy Moore

would be cooking and making cakes.

But they were very pleased that this happened

because it kept the problems down in the population,

because every time there was a problem, these are the people

who the administration would go to to quell it.

And for the next four years, these are the people I ran with.

MIKE: Bob was in maximum security

and there was no reason to keep him there.

Mike had pretty well established himself

because of his baking skills and culinary skills.

He was very valuable to the facility.

So I kind of had an in with the administration.

And I told them, I says, I'd like to have Bobby Davis here,

he does not belong there.

Part of the carrot of getting me to medium

security was that I would take Mike's job

doing the administrative work

and that would free him up to be the full-time baker.

MIKE: And they were able to move Bobby Davis from maximum

to medium security,

and he was given the same privileges

that I was given.

Everybody was watching out for him.

BOB: Their acceptance of him

made my acceptance a whole lot easier.

That's what kept me alive.

After the conviction, I didn't even know how to drive.

I learned to drive.

[Chuckles]

Being from New York City,

you know, you don't need a car

most of the time.

So I learned to drive, I says, I'll come down to see you.

MIKE: She bought a car and she came down to see me every week

and she brought my son.

After the second or third week, I says to her,

I says, look, Liz I says, they gave me a life sentence.

You know, I can't be a husband to you.

Can't be a father to the kid.

What I want you to do is go back to New York.

My husband had asked me for divorce

and I told him no, that I was there for him.

And that we will see through this and we'd get an appeal

and that I was there for him.

I'm staying, you know,

just take it one day at a time

and we'll see, we'll see.

MIKE: And we took it one day at a time.

And she came every week.

These long periods of incarceration

kind of tear families up,

and my family was no exception.

Family turned away, pushed away from us,

some friends pushed away.

It was hard, it was really hard.

We had to move from Queens

back into the Bronx.

MELODY: My mom's brother turned on her and told us that

we couldn't stay in the house anymore.

How are you going to pay your rent when Bobby's gone?

Who's going to pay the rent?

I need my money.

So we had to move from my uncle's house back to the Bronx

and it put a lot on my mom and us.

I started experimenting on crack cocaine and,

just to medicate my feelings.

That's just what I was doing, medicating my feelings.

I was angry.

I didn't talk to anybody about my anger, my feeling

and how I felt that they, they screwed us over.

They screwed my whole family over.

It was tough on my girls.

It was tough on my son.

BOB: It was tough on my wife.

She divorced me.

By that time, my mother was already bitter and angry.

MELODY: At one point, she washed her hands and after

he was sentenced and everything, she was done.

She was done.

But you got to keep going.

ALAN: After the first trial, we filed an appeal

and it took several years to get through the appellate system.

The appeal was based on three primary things.

Number one, hearsay evidence that was admitted.

The trial judge let in a hearsay statement,

that somebody made, that Hal Levine allegedly said

that Mike Borrelli was going to get me

and it was third party hearsay.

And I said, Judge, please don't let that in.

We'll be doing this case over again.

And the judge goes, nope, there's a basis for it.

The second thing was the court limited us with respect to

submitting some of the psychiatric material

on D'Prero.

While we were on appeal,

new information came to me regarding one of the juries.

I believe her name was Marguerite Webb.

Strange.

When I reviewed my notes, she was one of the last picks

and I put on my notes that this lady's not right.

She admitted in chambers, as I recall,

when asked if she had ever violated the law,

that she had smoked marijuana and that was about

the extent of it.

And she was asked about other drug use and she said,

no, no, I don't use any other drugs at all.

No, that's the only thing I've ever done.

Just a few months later, as I remember,

after the trial was over,

she committed suicide

and blamed her doctor

for over prescribing drugs.

ALAN: A fellow lawyer, who sued her psychiatrist,

called me and said, I've just gotten all the medical records

and this lady has taken every drug known to man

for the last 10 years.

And had she told us she was taking mind-altering drugs,

certainly we wouldn't have put her on there.

All we wanted, all Mike wanted and I wanted was

a fair trial.

MIKE: There was a convict down in Cañon City,

who knew that I framed.

He knew that I was doing time down there for somebody

else's crime.

And it wasn't until after the reversal came through

that he approached me and told me the story.

There was a reason why Buddy Moore was watching over me.

And I found out later on, that Buddy Moore,

when he was outside, he was one of the guys

who the bartender approached to do a hit for him,

which he refused.

He doesn't do that.

He said, let me tell you something.

I know more about this case than you do.

He says, I know where David Cortinaz is.

I says, where is he?

He says, "He's in a car dealership in Kansas City."

MIKE: Now, during my first trial, my attorney asked that

Dave Cortinaz be brought in.

Prosecution said they didn't know where he was

and we wanted him in because Mrs. Levine described

the second fellow as a very, very pasty-looking

with Mexican features.

We asked over and over again.

And again, they told us they didn't know where he was,

but I knew where he was and I got him in.

So I had a guy who befriended me in prison,

did me a favor, protected me, and now

he's helping me with my trial.

DIRECTOR: He got the second trial in part because

there was the juror who had been on drugs during the first trial.

I don't think in part, I think it was totally based upon that.

I think his other appeals had been denied.

But he got his new trial strictly on the issue

with the juror that had been using drugs.

ALAN: Mr. Humphrey's totally wrong.

I would direct his attention to the Court of Appeals opinion.

It was reversed on three grounds.

The jury misconduct,

that was one ground.

The other grounds were the admission of evidence that

was hearsay and should not have been admitted

and was very prejudicial.

Third, the psychiatric evidence against Terry D'Prero,

that he was a pathological liar.

He was psychotic.

He was a psychopath.

At the first trial, there were so many things that were hidden

from the defense that surfaced later

that really put the nail in the coffin for their case.

MIKE: And it was a big, different atmosphere,

the second time around.

I was able to tell my side of the story.

I wasn't able to do that during the first trial.

Mike had turned down a deal that would have let him walk out

of prison, that would have resulted in him

making an admission,

but not facing the risk of going back to prison.

In other words, a plea with time served

to conspiracy or something.

Mike said, I want no part of that.

You know, whether I'm, if I'm convicted again,

I'll go to prison and I'll face it

because I am not guilty.

Takes a lot of guts, a lot of guts to do that.

And as we were waiting again for the second time

for the verdict to come in, he takes off his ring.

[Sobbing]

He says, here, take them home.

I said, no, leave it on.

You're coming home.

He said are you sure?

I said I'm sure.

And the, the second time,

he came home.

MIKE: And then all the newspapers came around and they wrote,

Mike Borrelli found innocent and that

was the greatest thrill of all.

Innocent.

Not not guilty.

Not guilty means that they found something wrong,

but you're not guilty, you know.

Innocent.

And that was good.

He was found not guilty,

so legally he is not guilty.

That jury wasn't out a long time,

they were convinced unanimously.

It wasn't like a week of deliberation where some

of them thought he was guilty.

It was not guilty and out of there immediately.

Different time, different place.

He's a good attorney.

He came out the winner

in the second case.

[Chuckles]

[♪♪♪]

BOB: He was acquitted.

I was ecstatic.

At his murder trial, they implicated

he and I in this conspiracy.

That's why it was really, really so nice

when his case was overturned

and he was found not guilty.

Because where is that

so-called link that you're talking about?

Now that I was acquitted of conspiracy,

who did Bob conspire with?

This is the question.

Who did he conspire with?

What was he doing in jail?

All of these things came out that were not available

to me at my first trial.

We presented it in a new appeal for me.

I knew he was coming home.

I know my dad was coming home.

He was going to be found innocent, just like Mike was.

[♪♪♪]

MIKE: Two or three months went by and I started receiving

phone calls from guys who got out,

who were in the penitentiary.

One phone call I got

was from a guy named Harry

and I won't give his last name, but for Harry and he says,

Mike, he says, I got a truckload of tape recorders or something.

He says, can you help me unload it?

I says, look, I says to the guy, says, I'm being watched,

which I wasn't.

But as I'm being watched, I says, I can't get involved

into this anymore, I says.

And I'm staying out of everything.

Oh, oh, OK, I understand.

MIKE: My wife says, Mike, it's time to get out of Denver.

LIZ: We have to leave because I don't know if these guys

are going to bring stuff in here and we're going to,

you're going to be arrested.

I can't deal with this anymore.

He took the car and he left,

and it was a good thing.

[♪♪♪]

I was just amazed.

I couldn't believe it.

I was so pleased and,

I must say, surprised.

I met a fellow by the name of Ron Kavanaugh

and Ron Kavanaugh says to me, Mike, what are you doing?

He says, I'm working as a baker.

You want to be a cop again?

I says, how could I be a cop?

I says, all you have to do is look,

I did four years in prison.

Who's going to hire me?

I had looked into some of this paperwork

and course, you know,

you're not just going to go on somebody's word.

I asked him, I said, would you like to be a police officer?

And I think you're, he--,

a little overwhelmed with that, you know?

I thought he was joking,

because nowhere have I ever heard of a cop

who became a con four years, became a cop again.

It just doesn't happen.

MIKE'S SON: The day my dad became a police officer again,

I was in New York and he called me

and he told me that he'd gotten his certification

back as a police officer.

And if I tell you, that's one of the most amazing things

that I've ever heard of.

I don't believe there's anybody in the entire country,

anybody that I've ever known of, that that's happened to.

I just question their judgment

and why they would do that.

And so that was one of the biggest shocks of all,

is when I heard that.

I felt that that was as it should be, because that's what

he knew best and that's what he was good at

and he deserved it.

He had earned the right.

I became a police officer in the city of Parkland

and I loved it.

I'll tell you why.

Because putting on a gun and a shield again

reversed everything for me.

I was back in society.

It's a miracle, a miracle.

LIZ: It was like something was guiding us through, you know,

retribution or whatever you call it, I don't know.

But it would be nice to see his partner

also exonerated.

That would be another miracle.

[♪♪♪]

BOB: The court's response to it was one sentence.

We've reviewed this

new information that was not given

to Mr. Davis.

However, we don't think that it would have changed

the outcome of the decision.

That is how they summed it up.

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