Hi, listeners, I want to tell you about a podcast that we think
you'll enjoy called Suspect. Five Shots in the Dark. The latest season looks
at a case with two victims, one murdered in cold blood and one imprisoned
for a crying he didn't commit. It follows Leon Benson's story, a man
who spent more than half his life a total of twenty four years in an
Indiana state prison for the murder of Casey Shane, a man he never met.
Casey was murdered in the middle of an August night, shot point blank
while idling in his Dodge pickup truck in North Indianapolis. There was no physical
evidence, no known motive, and no one coming forward with information except one
woman who swears to this day she saw Leon Detroit Benson pull the trigger.
He was sentenced to sixty years in prison, all because one person swore they
saw something. But what if she was wrong? From Wondering and Campsite Media
comes season three of the hit podcast Suspect. This is a story of a
batched police investigation, the dangers of shaky eyewitness testimony in a community who feared
law enforcement with good reason. I'm about to play clip from Suspect five Shots
in the Dark while you're listening follow Suspect wherever you get your podcasts. You
can binge Suspect add free on Wondery Plus, find Wondery Plus in the Wondering
app or on Apple Podcasts. A long time ago, I remember watching an
episode of Oprah about eyewitness testimony. I actually I haven't been able to find
the episode in question online. This would have been like three decades ago,
when I was a kid home from school watching TV. It's entirely possible,
I imagine parts of it, but in my memory, Oprah, without telling
anyone, has this guy run on stage and snatch up a purse belonging to
one of the panelists. And then afterwards Opra asks everyone to identify the thief,
but no one can. Each person oper asks they've got a different answer
as to what the guy looked like. I don't remember how the show ended.
I probably went off and played some duck hunt, but it lodged in
my head. As I got older, started working in journalism and writing about
the criminal justice system, it would periodically pop back into my head, a
reminder of just how fallible the human eye and memory can be. So wait
let me just back up. Okay, tell me when you first noticed the
truck. Oh, probably like it was maybe a block and a half north
of there, but it was just driving down Pennsylvania, passed where I was
out of my Vehinder, Do you think it stopped and then went around again
or do you think it just went by? You went around and came back
around. The Oprah segment came to mind the first time I heard this tape,
which was recorded near Indianapolis in twenty twenty two. The details aren't really
important, not yet. For now. All you need to know is that
the first voice belongs to Laura Basilon. She's a law professor. The second
voice belongs to a woman named Christy Schmidt. And yeah, those are wind
chimes in the background. Nice right, Okay, So car stops, you
don't think about it. That's you hear something that sounds like firecrackers that turns
out to be gunshots. You look up, and what's the first thing you
remember seeing when you looked up? Just the gentleman outside the drug on the
sidewalk, Yeah, on the sidewalk on the passenger side. Can you describe
whatever you remember him looking like? You know, I really couldn't you know,
like anything that you remember? I would say, all I can really
remember probably blackmail, And I remember I believe it's black pants with white stripes
on him. This blackmail was about one hundred and fifty feet from Christy.
It was early morning, dark and misty. Still Later, Christy goes to
a police station and picks a face out of a photo array. There's the
shooter. She says, do you remember how you felt when you were looking
at the pictures? And what kind of a situation that was? Were you?
How are you feeling? Well? You know, I guess for lack
of better I don't know, nervous, uneasy, but you know, but
you know I don't and have never in twenty four years have I even thought
that I could have identified it wrong. And what makes you confident? You
know? I have to say that was one time that face literally jumped off
that paper at me. I mean, it was basically went right back to
that night. And I don't I don't doubt one bit that I that I
made a false accusation about it or anything else. Well, Christy's saying here
it sounds so unambiguous, so certain certain enough that it would lead to an
rest, an indictment, a guilty verdict, and a sentence of sixty years.
But here's the thing. It was almost certainly wrong. What interests me
most about that wrongness is not its rarity, but its commonness. Dig deep
enough into any questionable conviction, and you'll inevitably find small errors that, over
time have accrued their own terrible power, like a pellet of ice that becomes
a snowball that becomes an avalanche. This is a story about one of those
cases. But it's also a story about how difficult, how nearly impossible,
it can be to dig a person out again, even when nearly everyone involved
believes it's the right thing to do. Binge Suspect and Free on one Dry
plus, Find one plus in the one Dry app or on Apple podcasts