Speaker 1: Hi, listeners, I want to tell you about a podcast
Speaker 1: that we think you'll enjoy called Suspect. Five Shots in
Speaker 1: the Dark. This latest season looks at a case with
Speaker 1: two victims, one murdered in cold blood and one in
Speaker 1: prison for a crime he didn't commit. It follows Leon
Speaker 1: Benson's story, a man who spent more than half of
Speaker 1: his life a total of twenty four years in an
Speaker 1: Indiana state prison for the murder of Casey Shane, a
Speaker 1: man he never met. Casey was murdered in the middle
Speaker 1: of an August night, shot point blank while idling in
Speaker 1: his Dodge pickup truck in North Indianapolis. There was no
Speaker 1: physical evidence, no known motive, and no one coming forward
Speaker 1: with information except one woman who swears to this day
Speaker 1: she saw Leon Detroit Benson pull the trigger. He was
Speaker 1: sentenced to sixty years in prison, all because one person
Speaker 1: swore they saw something. But what if she was wrong?
Speaker 1: From Wondery and Campside Media comes season three of the
Speaker 1: hit podcast Suspect. This is a story of a botched
Speaker 1: police investigation, the dangers of shaky eyewitness testimony, and a
Speaker 1: community who feared law enforcement with good reason. I'm about
Speaker 1: to play a clip from Suspect five Shots in the
Speaker 1: Dark while you're listening follow Suspect wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can binge Suspect add free on Wondery Plus, find
Speaker 1: Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2: A long time ago, I remember watching an episode of
Speaker 2: Oprah about eyewitness testimony. Actually haven't been able to find
Speaker 2: the episode in question online. This would have been like
Speaker 2: three decades ago when I was a kid home from
Speaker 2: school watching TV. It's entirely possible, I imagine parts of it,
Speaker 2: but in my memory, Oprah, without telling anyone, has this
Speaker 2: guy run on stage and snatch up a purse belonging
Speaker 2: to one of the panelists. And then afterwards Oprah asks
Speaker 2: everyone to identify the thief, but no one can. Each
Speaker 2: person Oprah asks they've got a different answer as to
Speaker 2: what the guy looked like. I don't remember how the
Speaker 2: show ended. I probably went off and played some duck hunt,
Speaker 2: but it lodged in my head. As I got older,
Speaker 2: started working in journalism and writing about the criminal justice system,
Speaker 2: it would periodically pop back into my head, a reminder
Speaker 2: of just how fallible the human eye and memory can be.
Speaker 3: So wait, let me just back up. Okay, tell me
Speaker 3: when you first noticed the.
Speaker 4: Truck, eh, probably liked it was maybe a block and
Speaker 4: a half north up there, but it was just riding
Speaker 4: down something in the past where I was out of my.
Speaker 1: Hind of LA.
Speaker 3: Do you think it stopped and then went around again
Speaker 3: or do you think it just went by you went
Speaker 3: around and came back around.
Speaker 2: The Oprah segment came to mind the first time I
Speaker 2: heard this tape, which was recorded near Indianapolis in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two. The details aren't really important, not yet. For now.
Speaker 2: All you need to know is that the first voice
Speaker 2: belongs to Laura Basilon. She's a law professor. The second
Speaker 2: voice belongs to a woman named Christy Schmidt. And yeah,
Speaker 2: those are wind chimes in the background.
Speaker 3: Nice right, Okay, So car stops, you don't think about it.
Speaker 3: That's you hear something that sounds like firecrackers that turns
Speaker 3: out to be gunshots. You look up, and what's the
Speaker 3: first thing you remember seeing when you looked up?
Speaker 4: Just the gentleman outside the truck on the sidewalk, Yeah,
Speaker 4: on the sidewalk on the passenger side. Can you describe
Speaker 4: whatever you remember him looking like? You know, I really couldn't.
Speaker 2: You know anything that you remember?
Speaker 4: I would say, all I can really remember probably blackmail,
Speaker 4: And I remember I believe it was black pants with
Speaker 4: white stripes on him.
Speaker 2: This black mail was about one hundred and fifty feet
Speaker 2: from Christy. It was early morning, dark and misty. Still. Later,
Speaker 2: Christy goes to a police station and picks a face
Speaker 2: out of a photo array. There's the shooter.
Speaker 3: She says, do you remember how you felt when you
Speaker 3: were looking at the pictures? And what kind of a
Speaker 3: situation that was?
Speaker 4: Were you?
Speaker 3: How are you feeling?
Speaker 4: Well? You know, I guess for lack of better I
Speaker 4: don't know, nervous, uneasy, but you know, but you know
Speaker 4: I don't and have never in twenty four years have
Speaker 4: I even thought that I could have identified it wrong.
Speaker 3: And what makes you confident?
Speaker 4: You know? I have to said that was one time
Speaker 4: that face literally jumped off that paper at me. I mean,
Speaker 4: it was basically went right back to the And I
Speaker 4: don't doubt one bit that I made a false accusation
Speaker 4: about it or anything else.
Speaker 2: Well, Christy's saying here it sounds so unambiguous, so certain,
Speaker 2: certain enough that it would lead to an arrest, an indictment,
Speaker 2: a guilty verdict and a sentence of sixty years. But
Speaker 2: here's the thing. It was almost certainly wrong. What interests
Speaker 2: me most about that wrongness is not its rarity, but
Speaker 2: its commonness. Dig deep enough into any questionable conviction, and
Speaker 2: you'll inevitably find small errors that, over time have accrued
Speaker 2: their own terrible power, like a pellet of ice that
Speaker 2: becomes a snowball that becomes an avalanche. This is a
Speaker 2: story about one of those cases. But it's also a
Speaker 2: story about how difficult, how nearly impossible, it can be
Speaker 2: to dig a person out again, even when nearly everyone
Speaker 2: involved believes it's the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: Binge suspect add free on Wondery Plus. Find Wondery Plus
Speaker 1: in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.