<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

It Is Written

John Bradshaw

Not Guilty

Coming up next, please stay tuned for It Is Written, presented by Pastor John Bradshaw.

Maybe the greater part of the tragedy is that this story is not entirely unique, but this is also the story of redemption, vindication, and Ultimately, victory.

There are roughly 1.4 million people in prison in the United States of America.

There are another 3 quarters of a million in American jails.

That's well over 2 million people incarcerated.

1 quarter of all the incarcerated people in the world are in the United States.

There's no question people want and deserve safe communities.

Those who fall foul of the law should pay their debt to society.

But what about those who are wrongfully convicted?

Those who are sentenced to prison when they should not have been?

In the 1960s, professional boxer Reuben Hurricane Carter was convicted twice of a triple murder and spent 19 years in prison.

Kevin Strickland was imprisoned in 1979 after being found guilty of a triple murder.

In 2021, he spent 42 years in prison for a crime the justice system says he did not commit.

Now that's not to say the justice system always gets it wrong.

And that it happens is a tragedy In the beginning I had no idea why Gil was in prison you really don't ask people that while are in prison sometimes I'll volunteer it I had no idea why he was there or how long he was going to be in there.

But as things unfolded, I learned that he had, at 22 years of age, had been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

In June of 1988, an Oakland County employee was murdered after he left a bar, and there were a handful of individuals in the bar that said he left with an unknown individual.

They got descriptions from witnesses, they put composite drawings in the newspaper, they solicited information, interviewed witnesses, but none of that investigation led to a suspect and the case went cold basically in July or August.

So within a month or 2 of the murderer, they had no further leads.

Poole was living in Pontiac, Michigan in June of 1988, and he left the state shortly thereafter.

He moved to North Carolina with his then-girlfriend, Connie Cook, and it was Miss Cook who then, in November of 1988, reached out to the North Carolina police and told them that her boyfriend had confessed a murder to her that occurred in Pontiac.

He was subsequently arrested, extradited to Michigan.

The detectives in the case solicited the assistance of a forensic odontologist by the name of Dr.

Alan Warnick who took dental impressions of Mr.

He compared those impressions to what appeared to be a bruise or a bite mark.

To this day, we don't know for sure if it was even a bite mark, but certainly a mark on the victim's arm.

Warnick concluded that the mark on the victim's arm was made by Mr.

So that was the second piece of evidence that was used against Mr.

And then finally, the girlfriend obviously came to trial, testified about the so-called confession, and witnesses in the bar who, again, had never, to this day, we have no reason to believe they've ever seen Mr.

Poole in court as the individual who left the bar with the victim Gilbert thanks so much for joining me.

Thank I'm glad to be here You're 22 years old.

You're minding your own business living in North Carolina You'd been in Michigan.

There's a Knock at the door of your life You are suspected of the murder of a man.

You'd never met What does that do to you?

Yeah, it takes you back, but at the time I had faith in the judicial system and figured it's going to be alright because the truth will come out and I'll be released.

Yeah, I think it's pretty understandable you might have had faith in the judicial system, which thankfully works a lot of the time, but here's 1 of those times it failed spectacularly.

You weren't at the bar where the unfortunate man had been, you'd not met him.

And what goes through your mind when you hear the judge say, guilty and we're sentencing you to life without the possibility of parole?

You know, It's like the world stopped turning at that point.

I did not have anybody in the courtroom because there was no possibility I was going to be convicted.

So I was standing alone, a long ways away from home, and I just couldn't believe it.

There was no possibility I was going to be convicted.

Well, Gilbert Poole couldn't have been more wrong.

But he did have the right to appeal his conviction.

So what happened when an innocent man appealed?

There is nothing in this world more precious than a meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ.

Today's free offer, Steps to Christ, is 1 of the best books ever written on how to build a successful relationship with Jesus that will see you through to eternity.

To receive your free copy, call 800-253-3000 or visit us online at iiwoffer.com.

Get Steps to Christ today, 800-253-3000 or online at iiwoffer.com.

Charged with a crime he didn't commit, Gilbert Poole was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

We're going to learn that while he was in prison, Mr.

Poole had a miraculous conversion experience which ultimately helped change the course of his life.

But of course, this was not the end of the story.

He still had the appeals process to work through.

Well, the appeals process was, in my mind, a joke because every step of the way it failed.

His appeal that he was forced to file afterwards was lackluster at best.

The courts would not address my issues that I was presenting.

Specifically as I was addressing them, they should be given leeway because it's a prisoner making his own pleadings at this point.

But it just seemed like all my points were ignored and They were using circular logic.

It was just absolutely frustrating, and I don't know how anybody can navigate that without an attorney.

Marla Mitchell-Sachon was the director of the Western Michigan University Cooley Law School Innocence Project.

She spent 20 years working with Gilbert Poole on his case.

Poole wrote to us in 2002, about a year after our clinic was started here at Cooley Law School.

And our clinic was designed to do post-conviction work to assist prisoners who were claiming factual innocence.

And the tool that we used at that time to prove innocence was post-conviction DNA testing.

I've screened probably thousands of cases myself to try to hone in on do these individuals meet our criteria?

Back to Menu

Not Guilty

Transcript

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

Jesus On Religion

Jesus on Scripture

52m

Fresh Manna by Steven Conway

An Unexpected Turn

40m

Through the Bible

Daniel: God is My Judge

46m

Sound Doctrine