Proven innocent: Franky Carrillo's story

Brut America

Franky Carrillo spent 20 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. This is how he was exonerated.   The Netflix documentary series "The Innocence Files" explores wrongful convictions, and how they were overturned thanks to the Innocence Project.

Transcript

00:00I have to start with the fact that I was a boy. I was a naive 16-year-old boy who didn't understand

00:04the gravity that I was in. You know, when I heard the judge say, you will be in prison for 30 years

00:11to life plus life, you know, when you're a child, you can't even comprehend what that even means.

00:16You're still working on a very like week to week basis or month to month. You can't even foresee

00:21a year in your life at that age. But eventually when I got to, you know, the institution that

00:28was being held in, it became very real at that point. Luckily for me, I realized that I couldn't

00:33accept this. I couldn't just sit around and say, well, this is it. This is the end of my story.

00:38And so I began advocating for myself.

00:41The evidence used to convict me was an eyewitness who testified that they had seen me commit the

01:04crime. And the way that came about was they were showing a photographic lineup

01:09and it was just six pictures. And the witness was asked to pick one of the photographs. And so

01:15they did. And I was arrested for it.

02:08I see him as a victim as well. You know, having no power to say, no, I don't want to play along

02:18or having no influence on his own life to say, like, I didn't say anything. Instead, he was just

02:24doing what they wanted him to do. And so I've met with him. He and I, Scott Turner, he and I are,

02:30are, you know, not the best of friends, but, you know, we might have lunch every so often.

02:35And, you know, I think that he's also just one of the victims

02:40that was taken advantage of by the system.

03:04So

03:34I think the single biggest surprise to me in my story and or in the stories I directed about Frankie

03:49was that the general public, myself included, all raised on crime stories, movies, books,

03:58having an incredible misperception of the value of eyewitness testimony.

04:02And we are raised to think from years of watching shows about it and movies about it and just

04:08thinking about it and talking about it, that if someone stands or sits in a jury box in a courtroom

04:13and says, I saw him, he did it. He's the one that that's incontrovertible evidence. And how could

04:18that person be wrong? And the person that they're pointing to must be guilty. And the percentage

04:24of times that that's flawed and the reasons that it's flawed were really, really surprising to me.

04:42I think the work of the Innocence Project has been life changing for obviously for me,

04:47but also for a lot of people. When I, when I was first arrested, there was no Innocence Project.

04:52You know, there was that organization didn't exist. I think most people run away from

04:57big problems like this involving wrongful convictions, involving all the elements,

05:03the court, the constitution, law enforcement, witnesses, all the emotional components as well.

05:10But for these people to run towards it and to say we're going to defend these people is amazing.

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