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Season Five Home for the Holidays 12
142 Plays10 days ago
In Today’s Episode, we put together our Home for the Holiday cases.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Introduction and Case Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:22
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
00:00:28
Speaker
Okay, so we're like halfway through the home for the holidays cases. And I wanted to pick one that personally felt kind of out of place in time, which is funny, because I know when you were looking at this one, you said you felt like it should have happened a long time ago, right? Yeah, based on the characteristics of it, it doesn't seem like it would have been possible to have happened in 1980, the early 80s, right? Yeah, this is one of those that like, at different points in time, I pulled up the entire appeal documents and looked through. And it made the list for last year. And I felt like it was a little dark. And then I moved on from it.
00:01:15
Speaker
But I put it back on the list this year because we were covering some cases that, in in all honesty, there are a little more out there.
Case Details and Wrongful Conviction
00:01:22
Speaker
When you get deep into wrongful conviction cases and exoneration cases, um sometimes you can find yeah cases that for lack of a better word, like you question how they exist at all. And when that happens, sometimes I get like to the end of it and I really don't know what happened. And I don't like to cover a lot of those cases, but I i did this year. And with this particular case, it wasn't like the results or the crime that like I didn't understand how it happened.
00:01:57
Speaker
i do It just left me a little shocked. So it's the sources for today are the court documents um themselves related to this case. um There's a Wikipedia article on it. I pulled a couple of Texas monthly articles that I had read over time. There's actually a book out there that I read a little bit of, but it didn't feel like it added tons to it. The obvious sources for all of these cases are the University of Michigan's ah Exoneration or Registry of Exonerations.
00:02:26
Speaker
And I thought we would use that to sort of tell this story. Now, for us giving like the profile at the top of a case, this is a Texas case, which I think some of the elements about it for the time period won't shock people as much knowing that and kind of knowing the reputation that Texas has in today in 2024. But this comes out of Montgomery County. it is ah it This is a sexual assault and murder case. The crime itself takes place in 1980.
00:02:57
Speaker
and the conviction takes place in 1981. The sentence in this case is death, and the ethnicity of the ah exonerated is he is a blackmail for ethnicity and gender. He was 29 years old at the time that this happened. Now, contributing factors to this were false or misleading forensic evidence,
00:03:17
Speaker
Perjury or a false accusation and official misconduct and they always ask on these profiles the DNA evidence contribute to the exoneration in this instance. The answer is no and this case does tie back to Centurion Ministries, which we've mentioned kind of in detail in this Home for the Holiday series.
Investigation and Bias Concerns
00:03:40
Speaker
For the crime itself, we're going to go to Conroe High School in Conroe, Texas. On August 23rd of 1980, two custodians
00:03:50
Speaker
find the body of a 16-year-old girl named Cheryl D. Ferguson in a loft above the auditorium at Conroe High School. She had been raped and strangled. This case happens in a pretty small area, so they have a Texas ranger named Wesley Stiles who comes in to help lead the investigation.
00:04:12
Speaker
Soon after the body had been found, he focused in on those two custodians. There are quotes for him on the National Registry of Exonerations that he said to them, one of you is going to have to hang for this. And Henry Peace was not black, but Clarence Brandley was. And allegedly, Wesley Stiles turned to him and said, since you're the n-word, you're elected. There are five custodians at this school, and Clarence Branley was the only black guy. He was also a military veteran. If you go back through and read about his early life, he is seemingly the most nonchalant guy you could find. Now, the police go in and interview all the custodians and of the five, four of them make statements that implicate Clarence Branley in this murder. Two of them claimed that they had actually seen him follow Cheryl Dee Ferguson up the stairs into the loft and that they did not see him again until
Trial and Conviction Issues
00:05:18
Speaker
the search for her had begun. To clarify, like upfront, there is no physical evidence linking
00:05:25
Speaker
Clarence Bramley to this crime. There was bodily fluid that was recovered from her body, but it was inexplicably destroyed. In December 1980,
00:05:37
Speaker
Clarence Brantley goes on trial in front of an all white jury. One juror found the evidence insufficient to establish guilt. So the judge in that trial declared it of his trial. So in February, 1981, before another all white jury, Clarence Brantley second trial began. A medical examiner testified that the marks on the victim's neck could have come from Clarence Branley's belt. And a man named John Sessom, who was one of the original witnesses and was a custodian of the school, he was not called because he no longer was willing to support the other custodian's version of events. In closing arguments of the second trial, the district attorney mentioned
00:06:23
Speaker
that Clarence Brantley had a second job. This second job was working at a funeral home. So in the closing arguments, this prosecutor suggested that he thought it was possible Clarence Brantley was a necrophiliac.
00:06:40
Speaker
and had sexually assaulted the victim after she was dead. The defense objected to this as inflammatory, but they were overruled. On February 13th of 1981, Clarence Ranley was convicted of sexual assault and murder in the case of Cheryl D. Ferguson and sentenced to death. About 11 months later, his appellant lawyers are working on how to appeal Clarence Ranley's case. And they discovered that in addition to semen from the crime scene, there was other potentially exculpatory evidence that had disappeared from the custody of the prosecution. One of the things that had been photographed but could no longer be found was a Caucasian pubic hair and other hairs that, according to the evidence at trial, could not be linked to either the victim
00:07:34
Speaker
or Clarence Brantley. Shortly thereafter, they discover that photographs taken on the day of the crime showed that Clarence Brantley was not wearing the belt the prosecution had surmised had been the murder weapon. Clarence Brantley's appeal emphasizes basically the willful destruction and disappearance of multiple pieces of potentially exculpatory evidence. But that does not sway the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
00:08:02
Speaker
and they end up affirming the conviction and they affirm the death sentence without mentioning anything about the destruction of the evidence. A woman named Brenda Medina, she sees a television broadcast about the Clarence Bramley case,
Appeal Efforts and New Evidence
00:08:19
Speaker
and she contacts the prosecutor to tell him that her former live-in boyfriend had told her in 1980 that he had committed a similar crime. But the prosecutor's office found Brenda Medina's testimony to be unreliable. As far as what he files in paperwork down the road, he says he had no obligation to inform Clarence Branley's attorneys at any point in time of this information. However, a private attorney that Brenda Medina gets in touch with then puts her in contact with the defense team.
00:08:59
Speaker
The defense team obtains Medina's sworn statement and they go back to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and they request a writ of habeas corpus. The court orders an evidentiary hearing. In addition to Medina, John Sessom, one of the custodians, is now put on the stand. His claim, his claim,
00:09:21
Speaker
is that he actually saw a different custodian, a man named Gary Ackerman, follow Cheryl Ferguson up a staircase leading to the auditorium, and then he heard Cheryl Ferguson screaming. Gary Ackerman had warned John Sessom not to tell anyone what he had seen, but Sessom did tell someone. Sessom had told Ranger Wesley Stiles. Stiles responded by threatening him with a rest if he told a story that was inconsistent with Gary Ackerman's. Hearing all of this and hearing about the live-in boyfriend of Brenda Medina at the time, a man named Dexter Robinson, the Texas court of criminal appeals denies Clarence Brandley a new trial. At this point in time Centurion Ministries in Princeton, New Jersey that we've talked about before, they had taken on this case and they were working with a private investigator
00:10:17
Speaker
who was able to obtain a videotape statement from Gary Ackerman stating that the live-in boyfriend of Brenda Medina, Dexter Robinson, had actually killed Cheryl Ferguson. Now, Gary Ackerman, even though he's on video, he soon recants that video statement. However, two new witnesses come forward And they swear that they heard Gary Ackerman say he knew who had killed Cheryl Ferguson and that it was not Clarence Brantley. Based on these statements and this package that's put together six days before Clarence Brantley is scheduled to be executed, Brantley is granted a stay of execution.
Flawed Investigation and Racial Bias
00:11:03
Speaker
All right, what do you think about that? There's so much wrong with this case. Yeah.
00:11:09
Speaker
Of course, this is like, you know, looking back from now back to then, but it doesn't even seem like they were trying to get justice at like a certain point.
00:11:20
Speaker
Right? Oh, either that or their their definition of the word justice may not match reality. Well, you know, from the very beginning, essentially, like, what I was thinking was like, you know, why are there five ah school custodians who immediately come under scrutiny here, right? No kidding.
00:11:40
Speaker
that's what I started thinking and then like I don't think in a an organic situation I don't think you're going to have like in this case there's five custodians one of which is the purported perpetrator and I think was there three or either three or four of them had seen what was happening, at least in the first trial, they testified about it, and then one refused to testify again. But doesn't that scream, this is made up? Yeah, oh yeah, of course it does. It screams that to me. Yes, I agree. Because in normal, like, organic development of, like, the narrative of cases, you're not gonna hit a jackpot like that. It's just not gonna be the situation where you've got these ready-willing witnesses who all saw the perpetrator with the victim in the place that they found the body. Right. And, you know, you and I have, over the years, we have dug deep into the Texas Rangers. And I say that because
00:12:50
Speaker
They had different parts of our journey. They had very different reputations. There was a point in time where they're almost mythical. um You and I dealt with them from the perspective of how they could have been involved in the Otis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas case and some of the problems that were coming out then about the Texas Rangers, this would have been around that same time. And I think that some of the things that happened when a 1980s high school custodian is being interviewed by a 1980s Texas Ranger are sort of lost on the rest of the world. I don't think it would happen today. No, it wouldn't happen today. That's why I like clarify the time. Like, I can remember a time when the way people speak to police today, whether it's like, like, forget whether or not it makes sense or it's appropriate in the moment. Like, there was just a point in time where you didn't talk to cops, let alone rangers.
00:14:04
Speaker
like you had something to say that they weren't going to agree with. And if they were pointing you in the direction of trying to get a story together about this guy that they're pretty sure did it, even if they don't know that he did it and they're just using a tactic, there's a really good chance that you could get the average person saying exactly what that ranger wanted them to say. no No question, no question, or at least not going against it. Right. And I think, I think that's largely what happened here. You know, what's so interesting about like what you just said is like the underlying psychology that comes along with a case set up the way that this one was set up with regard to what we know of it, which is they made the determination pretty much on the spot that this guy was going to get blamed for it no matter who did it. Right. Right.
00:14:56
Speaker
and they started building the court case from there. No physical evidence be damned, we are taking this guy down. And that stems from a place of insecurity, psychologically, with the investigators. Because you only would concoct a case if, like, deep in your subconscious you were like, I'll never solve this, right? Yeah. That's the only reason you would concoct the case, which that mindset directly contradicts what the perception of the Rangers was at this time. It does. It really does. Isn't that fascinating though? it's but It's fascinating for a number of reasons. Yeah. And to think about, of course, We're looking back on it all these years later, but I find that, well, and maybe I'm giving them too much credit because it I just, I feel like it would go against everything in every human being ever to be like, I'm just going to do this out of spite for the person. I want to be the perpetrator, even though they're not the perpetrator, but I really believe that they, they have to solve it. And this is how they do that. Well, I have to look at it from the perspective of like hindsight now, because part of me thinks the same thing you're thinking there. And you and I have a pretty good ability to put ourselves in different places in time and to draw on what we know from that time, how things could look a little different, especially if it's outside of our own.
00:16:20
Speaker
ah lifetime but I think in this instance we have a couple things going on and and one of these things has been kind of shared over multiple episodes now and like I keep the conversation steered to the topic at hand but like one of the things that keeps coming up and it's kind of infuriating for me is hair and fiber evidence and how it was treated at one point in time versus now they have this hair evidence that like doesn't match what they're thinking for a suspect therefore can't be relevant and ends up, in this case, literally being destroyed. Now, 2024 me, looking back on all of that, I know that the DNA could be pulled from that. But I also know that at multiple points in time, hair and fiber evidence and the way it was taught and the way it was used in court has been discounted as being inaccurate. So like, I have all this benefit of it being 24, 44 years later,
00:17:16
Speaker
and Being 2024 and I can look back on that that still doesn't explain how arrogant you have This range of behaving his behavior here Particularly if if these slurs are accurate and that's the way He like treated these custodians at the time is like lesser life forms and then focused in on the black guy of the group That's atrocious. And then knowing that this guy has to face multiple all white juries in this largely white area of Texas in 1980 is it's infuriating for me. Well, right. And it's almost unbelievable now to think that um it came up recently. I'm not sure if it was in the home for the holidays or a different case, but I found it hard to believe that
00:18:11
Speaker
there was an all white jury. um It seems like that would be a no brain. I mean, I'm not saying that there can't ever be an all white jury. It's just, it shouldn't be part of the criteria to aim for that, right? Yeah. And it's interesting how that can happen today would happen very differently than how it might've happened 50 years ago. And it that's the other thing I had to remind myself in this case is that it was almost 50 years ago.
00:18:40
Speaker
It was 44 years ago.
Circumstantial Evidence and Testimonies
00:18:42
Speaker
That's insane, right? I mean, yeah I guess if you look at it a couple of different ways, i it makes sense that this sort of, because I feel like the the jury was all white, at least in retrospect, and it was a racist move, right? It wasn't just that, like, that too is available for the jury, right? Correct.
00:19:03
Speaker
okay And to me, it doesn't seem like in the 80s that should have been happening. But I do realize that not far back on the show, we had other cases that the exact same thing was happening around the exact same time. So I feel like any prosecutor, defense attorney, judge, anybody that's sitting at a trial like this with a... He was 29 years old at the time of the crime.
00:19:33
Speaker
Correct. And a military veteran, by the way. I don't know if I mentioned that, but he was. A military veteran, right. He was working as a school custodian. and He was a complete, there was nothing about this guy that I, that I'm aware of that would make him more likely we to have committed this crime than anybody else. Right. Nothing but a racist attitude. Exactly. Which is, again, is nothing. There's nothing. Right. And so because of that,
00:20:00
Speaker
I think that I have to believe that like today, any side of this situation, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, the judge, somebody would say, yeah, so like, we're not going to do an all white jury, right right? I don't know why nobody said that at that point. It doesn't seem like it would be like that far out of the realm of thinking. but It's strange, right? Yeah. Okay. I pulled a couple of things to to look into that. And if you pull the court records on this on Justia, they do now have the whole thing up. The best document to look at is the 1985 Texas Court of Criminal Appeals document.
00:20:41
Speaker
And there are a couple of different things I wanted to point out. This short version of this, kind of the quote facts of the case, this girl was the manager of the girls' volleyball team. That's how she comes to be at school that day.
00:20:53
Speaker
All the evidence that that we have in this case is what would be called circumstantial. None of it's direct at all. If you read the document of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, it says, the victim was a 16 year old manager for the Belleville High School girls volleyball team. She, the players and the coach had arrived at Conroe High School at 9, 10 a.m. on Saturday, August 23rd, 1980 for a scrimmage.
00:21:20
Speaker
They had entered an MX gym to begin warming up before their scheduled match. The victim put down the volleyball to scorebook in her purse and she left out of the gym. Her body was found in the loft area above the stage in the auditorium about 1130 a.m. So they arrive at 910 and she is missing and then found at 1130 a.m. She had been determined to have been raped and strangled. Gary Ackerman, Henry Peace, John Sessom, and Sam Martinez were janitors who worked at Conroe High School on this day, on this Saturday. John Sessom does not testify. So that means this appeals document is based only on the second trial, because the mistrial happening on the first trial, we're only looking at the second trial.
00:22:04
Speaker
The other three janitors testified to substantially the same facts. So that's Henry Peace, Sam Martinez, and Gary Ackerman. Now, the other janitor here, just so you guys can follow this, is Clarence Ranley. It's the defendant in this case. They had all arrived at the school close to 7.30 a.m.
00:22:22
Speaker
Their supervisor was Clarence Brantley. He arrived about 10 minutes late around 740. He unlocked the doors to the main building and he directed all of the janitors except for Henry Peace to set up chairs in the cafeteria. Clarence told Henry Peace to spray buff the teacher's lounge.
00:22:40
Speaker
and clearance helped him carry the piece of equipment they call the buffer up to the lounge acreman sesame martinez finish setting up the chairs between nine and nine thirty they left the cafeteria and they waited for clearance brandy in the hallway between the auditorium in the cafeteria while there. They saw a girl that match the victim's description come from the gym area walk up the stairs and go into the restroom near the auditorium. I'm bringing all of this up to give you the janitor's story. And then I want to talk about these circumstances. Clarence Branley, according to these three, had followed behind the girl by a few minutes. He was carrying rolls of toilet paper in his hands. And as he started up the stairs towards the restroom, Ackerman told him there was a girl inside. Branley said that he was not going to go in and told the other three janitors to get Henry Peace and go across the street to the vocational building. He'd be there in a little while.
00:23:35
Speaker
Branly then entered a Janitor's closet that was close to the restroom. So the janitors said they all left. They met up with Henry P since he was coming out of the teacher's lounge, having buffed and sprayed the lounge. And all four walked across the street to this vocational building, but the building was locked. So they waited for Clarence Branly, who would have the keys. After about 45 minutes, they said that Clarence Branly appeared at one of the doors of the main building with a white towel draped around his neck.
00:24:04
Speaker
He called over to Henry Peace to come get the keys from him, saying that he had something to take care of. The janitors then set up the chairs in the vocational building, taking between 30 minutes and an hour. Clarence Brantley then arrived to check on their work a little after 11 a.m. Brantley told Acreman and martinez that they could go home and that they would be paid for a full day's work. Henry Peace was to give Clarence Branley a ride home, so he walked back to the main building with Clarence Branley, who checked to make sure the doors were locked. Peace went with Branley while he checked the teacher's lounge and the cafeteria to be sure that they were set up satisfactorily.
00:24:38
Speaker
At this point in time, they heard some girls calling someone's name and they walked out into the hallway. Clarence Branley asked the girls who they were looking for. They described the victim and Clarence Branley told Peace that they should look for her. Peace noted that an outside door near the auditorium and a door leading into the auditorium were opened. Branley suggested that they look inside the auditorium. At this point in time, Clarence told Peace to look in a loft above the stage where props were stored. He said that he would look around in the seats.
00:25:07
Speaker
Peace went up, looked around half-heartedly, and came back down. Clarence asked Peace if he had checked it out real good. He told him to go up and look again, so Peace complied, moved a few things around, but found nothing. The two then left the auditorium area and looked in other places. Clarence suggested that they look in the auditorium again, and for the third time, he told Peace to go up to the loft area and to look.
00:25:30
Speaker
This time, however, Clarence accompanied Peace to the loft to help him look around. Once in there, Clarence told Peace to look real good, and when Peace picked up a piece of plywood leaning up against the door to the roof, he saw the nude body of the victim on the floor.
00:25:49
Speaker
Peace screamed and called for Clarence who told him to stay there and said that he would get the police. Clarence left and later returned with police officers. Peace testified that the police searched his car and in his car they found a pistol, a paring knife, a zip cut knife used to cut bandages, and a wooden club that some students had made for him. He testified that in the first trial he had lied when he stated that he had shown a picture of his pistol to another person when he had in fact shown that person the gun itself. He also testified that he had a card with his picture that indicated he was a narcotics officer. So he's got this fake ID.
00:26:33
Speaker
Peace then said that he had a bunch of these cards made up at a flea market and he used them in a play world, which he had set up at home to play with his nieces and nephews. All right, I'm stopping there for a minute. So that gives you the scenario that the janitors present at trial. Right. You've got multiple people testifying that basically Clarence Branley seemed like he was up to something.
00:27:00
Speaker
Right. But I would say we don't know what the first, so this is the trial that he was found guilty, right? Correct. This was not the mistrial. Right. And doesn't end up being overturned either. Right. Which I would say the linchpin and the testimony is the fact that like he insisted he look harder in the loft. Right. Yeah.
00:27:24
Speaker
It's weird that he's not finding her with the premise that he knows that Clarence knows she's up there, right? But it's just he said, he said, right? Right. We have no idea if any of that actually happened. We also have no, and now I don't know what is factoring in here. Like it's weird that this guy had a gun at school and a club at school and had fake narcotics badge cards or whatever. i am just I'm just laying out what they have what they have put together. I'm not sure like where that's going. right I do know the result of this isn't that they overturn it and give him a new trial. so i you know The picture of the gun versus showing them the gun.
00:28:06
Speaker
So you know again, this is a situation listening to what you just said. I'm hearing the narrative of premised with the fact that we know from other sources that basically the way this went down was after the young lady, it doesn't sound like there were that many people around.
00:28:27
Speaker
after the victim was found, law enforcement arrives and basically they're like, okay, so one of y'all did it, right? Yeah, and it all happens really fast in terms of from the moment she is arriving at the school that morning with everyone else to the moment that her body is found and then the school is marked a crime scene, like this all takes place in basically a single day.
00:28:51
Speaker
Well, right. And so, you know, this is a little bit different than the third, the three perpetrators, you know, situation that we talked about. Right. Right. Where, where they're like, Hey, your friend, you know, and then it's not quite there. And they're like, okay, one more person. Right. I don't know for certain, but I would say the one that's the most eager to help should probably be looked at harder. Right. Yeah. I also think, Where those situations get confusing for me, it does apply the same rules as the three perpetrator situation. Whereas anybody that doesn't seem to want to play along with you as a bad investigator, you imply that they're involved. Well, right. But to me, OK, so and I don't know what the situation is, but so we've got a young black man. He's twenty nine. He is their supervisor. And this is the early 80s. We have like the sort of blatant racist remark, like you're black. You're going to be the guy that takes the fall for this. Right. Yes. And that cut that's coming from law enforcement.
00:29:58
Speaker
I do see where like custodians out of high school, even grown men, they're not going to be going back against ah like a Texas Ranger or other law enforcement because it could just as easily be them on the receiving end of that.
00:30:13
Speaker
yes The story comes together there really quick, right? And, you know, Sussum's not mentioned here at all. So I would love to hear what his testimony initially was. He testifies in the first trial, which we don't, and is not involved in what you read from the opinion. ah This is the second trial because the first trial was a hung jury, a mistrial. And he said,
00:30:37
Speaker
I'm not going to testify in the second trial. Well, that sends up all kinds of flags for me, right? Of course, the jury doesn't know that it's happening, right? Right. They have no idea that there was another witness who has, he didn't recant his testimony because a recantation is where you say, like, I said this and I lied, or I'm, I was mistaken and I'm taking it back now. It just mysteriously disappeared, right? From the whole situation.
00:31:05
Speaker
That that was probably guilt, though, like guilt in throwing someone under the bus. Right. Yeah. So there was a and I'm just going to interject for one second. There was a book that I read on a lot of death penalty cases a while back called In Spite of Innocence. And it was about errors that occur in convictions and capital cases. It's written by Michael Radlett.
00:31:29
Speaker
Hugo Biddo and Constance Patnam. They mention a couple of things in here that you might find helpful. So the first thing they mention in terms of this story, it's not it's not a book about this case, by the way. and It's a good book to read. It's either errors and convictions or erroneous convictions and capital cases. Good book to read. um The statements they made were that During the grand jury testimony, we got these same
Analysis of Trial Evidence and Bias
00:32:00
Speaker
statements from all of the janitors and it was very powerful and that included Job Sussum. So when he testified at the grand jury, he sounded like the other janitors telling a story in sync.
00:32:12
Speaker
And one of the things they pointed out there that Clarence, ah Clarence actually came in before the the grand jury, which doesn't always happen, but, and and again, this was an all white grand jury. It convened on August 28th of 1980 to consider charges in this case. This is five days after the crime. And Clarence Brantley came in and he said he was innocent. The story he told didn't line up with the story the other janitors had been putting together with the ranger. He said that he had disappeared.
00:32:41
Speaker
Even though like some of the other stuff was contradictory, he said he went up to the custodian's office and he was smoking cigarettes and listening to music. And he did there was a witness at the at the time that was able to corroborate that, but was never asked about it at trial by the defense of the prosecution.
00:33:00
Speaker
And he had also testified that he was not the only person in the school with master keys. He just happened to be the one that day in their story that was going around and opening all of the doors. I don't think that necessarily helped this case. Cause when you think about throwing Sussum in the mix, you then, so John Sussum, Sam Martinez, Gary Ackerman, and Henry Peace, they're all telling the same story in front of the grand jury.
00:33:28
Speaker
That is a believable thing, in my opinion. Whether the story is accurate or not is kind of irrelevant for the moment. When he gets indicted, that was the basis of the indictment itself. The believable story, though, being put forth the way it was, like, there's no indication he murdered that girl. No, no, there's not any indication that he murdered that girl. and it it just it's more convenient that if it were him right yeah so in terms of the second trial they then bring on some high school students and some different folks from the school there's a high school student who testified that he had been working that summer as in a program with the janitors and he testified that
00:34:13
Speaker
one of the days that they were cleaning, he was cleaning with Clarence Brandley, and that Clarence Brandley had made a remark that if he ever got one of the high school girls alone, there's no telling what he might do when a group of high school girls walked by. There were several witnesses that were called about the different ways they could get into and out of the auditorium. The assistant principal was called and they came in to say that They frequently would check that particular door, not because of the loft itself, but because it was an access to the roof of the auditorium and students would go out there to smoke cigarettes and cut class. So they would check it during the week. I felt like.
00:34:59
Speaker
That was a little out of place in terms of the testimony for the trial. But I will point out once again, this is all taking place on a Saturday. So everything that we heard about had either happened in the previous summer or it the testimony of all the people related to the school, it ends on Friday, August 22nd, the day before this happened. They did have the chief medical examiner for Harris County come in. So he's a medical examiner in a different county.
00:35:29
Speaker
And that doctor came in and testified that the victim had been raped and strangled, that he had tested for and found seminal fluid in and around the vaginal area. He testified there was a depression in her neck that was one and a quarter inch wide. And in his opinion, the medical examiner said it was consistent with the use of a strap belt or towel. That's another thing that comes up throughout this story that we haven't really honed in on. um It's the white towel that was around his neck. And they use that later on because they erroneously bring up this belt.
00:36:05
Speaker
So they kind of switch from the belt over to this. right But that's like writing fiction. It is fiction. it is it is It is all fiction. And if you read the trial testimony and you read the appellate documents,
00:36:17
Speaker
it they there They speak ah in a lot of probabilities that I don't think the average juror in Montgomery or or Harris County, Texas in 1980 would understand the probabilities that they're talking about don't mean he did it. Well, and and so i I realized that, right? I realized that and I realized i realize that at the end of the day, we're talking about a young girl or a teenage girl that was murdered at school. Correct. and ah a very strong desire to get justice for her and to solve this and to put the perpetrator to death, ultimately, right? And I have no question that
00:36:59
Speaker
Well, I shouldn't say that. We really have no idea what happened that day. None of the testimony that was given, all it did was create an opportunity correct for clearance in their words right now. In the event that they were relying solely on what they were saying, why did Sessom refuse to talk later?
Emergence of New Suspects
00:37:19
Speaker
Well, it's interesting Sessom doesn't really get brought up here. Well, because he didn't testify.
00:37:25
Speaker
Right. The gist of what had happened was it's not even based on Sessom's words, actually. Like, Sessom ends up in a weird situation where Acerman, one of the other custodians, has said, well, I didn't see Clarence go up there. I saw someone else go up there. And the ranger told him to shut it.
00:37:47
Speaker
And Sessom decided he can't do either thing. He can't stand up and say that something else must have happened here, and that they were coerced into all telling the same story. But at the same time, he can't testify under oath to this story anymore, because he feels bad about it. So it was Akerman who said that? Akerman was the one who said he had seen someone else.
00:38:15
Speaker
Ackerman actually ends up implicating Medina's boyfriend, the the woman who saw it on a television show. She implicates that man. yeah and um Okay, so that so that's part of the story that, um you know, it has to have a whole lot more explaining. Yeah, well, let me get to that part here. I'll just give you the rest of the quote evidence.
00:38:40
Speaker
One of the officers from the Conroe Police Department testified that two days after this happened, he searched the dumpsters behind the high school before they were taken away. He found a yellow plastic garbage bag that is, you know, the janitor bags from the trash cans that they swap out throughout the school. It contains the victim's shoes, belt, panties, shirt, jeans, and part of her bra.
00:39:08
Speaker
And in the blue jeans pocket, there were strands of mop string that were similar to the mops that the janitors used, like the strings that come from the head of the mop. So that's one piece of the evidence that comes in into play here.
00:39:24
Speaker
And then they bring in from the state lab in Austin, they bring in a chemical toxicologist named Tony Arnold. He testifies that he's experienced in the identification and analysis of hairs and fibers. He testifies he could exclude donor persons whose hair does not match the characteristics to samples that he's comparing. Which is what I talked about, right? Right. They talk about hairs that were found on the victim in her clothing and whether or not they were similar to the appellants or not similar. There were a few hairs that he had said could potentially be consistent with Clarence Branley's hair. um But the the evidence with regard to hair samples in general and to hair samples at this time and and place with what Tony Arnold would have been working with, it would have been inconclusive. And it's not that
00:40:21
Speaker
It's not that they ah overstated what he did. I don't think the jury understood that what he was stating didn't implicate Clarence Brantley conclusively. I think that that is a problem in a lot of cases.
00:40:39
Speaker
Yeah, so the the appellate courts look at all of this and they say that's a lot of evidence. I don't think it is, but they say that's a lot of evidence and we feel like ah this evidence means that the jury could reasonably have found him guilty. so course the yeah It supports the hypothesis. So that's the 1985 court documents.
00:41:02
Speaker
Basically, everything that you could read there concludes with this line. No reasonable hypothesis is presented by the evidence to even suggest that there could be someone other than Clarence Brantley who committed this crime. That's the Brantley v. Texas holding. That is the sentence they used to shut this down.
00:41:21
Speaker
Now, this is where Brenda Medina enters the picture. Brenda Medina lived in the nearby town of Cutinshoot, Texas, and she was just watching the news given overview of this case. Later on, she said she didn't know about this case, but that she had told a neighbor that this guy who lived with her previously, James Dexter Robinson, had told her that back in 1980, he did this.
00:41:50
Speaker
Here was the kicker. James Dexter Robinson had previously worked as a janitor at Conroe High School. Medina said that when Robinson brought this information to her back in 1980, she didn't believe him. But when she heard the story laid out,
00:42:12
Speaker
it suddenly clicked for her and gave her that sinking feeling that she knew something about it. So she talks to this attorney who originally sends her over to the district attorney, who's a guy named Peter Spears III. He's not the district attorney that was on Clarence Ramley's case, but he's the person who took their place. The person who was trying Clarence Brandy originally had long been promoted out of his job up onto the Texas bench. So he was a district court judge at that time. Peter Spears listens to Medina and can't get it out of his mind that she's really just mad at James Dexter Robinson.
00:42:58
Speaker
He thinks that at this point in time, the trials have all gone on, the Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled on this. There is no reason for him to hand this information off to Clarence Branley's attorneys.
00:43:13
Speaker
So Brenda Medina feels weird about this. She feels a little slighted that she would still be like stuck on James Dexter Robinson like that. She goes back to the attorney and just tells him the results. She just says, well, they didn't think anything of it. And this attorney that she had talked to says, that doesn't seem right. So at that point in time, he actually calls the defense attorneys and makes arrangements for Brenda Medina to go in and talk to them. And that's when they take this sworn statement that we talked about. And that's what makes them petition for rid of habeas corpus. It's enough to get the attention of the court and they order this evidentiary hearing yet again.
00:44:02
Speaker
Now, they bring in Brenna Medina, she testifies. They also bring in Edward Payne. Edward Payne is a father-in-law of Gary Aikerman. That's another one of the school custodians who had testified at both of Clarence's trials. The defense now suspects that Robinson did it and that Gary Aikerman was his lookout or was involved.
00:44:28
Speaker
Edward
Activism and Legal Support
00:44:29
Speaker
Payne testifies that Gary Agerman told him where the victim's clothing was Saturday night. It didn't line up with the fact that the officer who had testified at Clarence's trial didn't find the clothing until Monday. So with these details, they bring in John Sessom and they ask him the same thing that you would have. Why didn't you testify at the second trial? And he says, that wasn't the story. Here's what happened. And his statements were that he had seen Gary Ackerman follow the victim up a staircase leading into the auditorium and then heard her scream, no, don't. Later that day, Gary Ackerman in this version of John Sessom's story, he tells Sessom
00:45:28
Speaker
not to tell anyone what he had seen. And Sessom thinks about it, he weighs his relationship with the school and with Aikerman, and he decides he's gonna tell Wesley Stiles, and he does. And Stiles tells him that if he doesn't come up with the same story the rest of them have, he's gonna arrest him as being part of it.
00:45:55
Speaker
Okay, so this was all in front of Ernest Coker, who was a district court judge. He denies Brantley a new trial, a new execution data set. The Court of Criminal Appeals accepts Coker's ruling on December 22nd of 1986, but a bunch of civil rights activists, they get together. And one of them is Jude Don Boney Jr.
00:46:21
Speaker
He is a politician and a sexist and activist who has gotten involved in a lot of things over the year related to civil rights. In this instance, he raises about $8,200,000 to help finance further legal and investigatory efforts on behalf of Clarence Brantley. At the time, he becomes the chairman of the Coalition to Free Clarence Brantley.
00:46:50
Speaker
And if you go back and listen to this, it all sounds like crazy conspiratorial nonsense, the way that the media covers it. But one of the things that happens is James McCloskey is interested in the case. And that's when they come down and they get everybody's statements on video, including Ackerman statements. Now, Ackerman talking on video doesn't last long. As I said, he recanted, but It's enough that Coker takes a second look at it and he says, you know what, maybe I'm wrong on this. He grants a stay and sends it up to the Court of Criminal Appeals. All the while that's going on Centurion Ministries being involved
00:47:38
Speaker
particularly ah Jim McCloskey, starts working in Clarence Brownlee's favor. They petition for another evidentiary hearing, and this time, in June 30th of 1987, they get in front of the special state district judge Perry Pickett. They bring in multiple people to testify for the prosecution. They bring in the Ranger, they bring in an Acreman, they actually bring in Robinson.
00:48:06
Speaker
the Dexter Robinson. He admits on the stand that he told Brenda Medina in 1980 that he had killed a young woman in Conroe, but he
Judicial Intervention and Brandley's Release
00:48:14
Speaker
claimed that they were going through something at the time that he wanted to frighten Medina. Brenda Medina had told him that she was pregnant and he wanted her to go away. Gary Ackerman tells the exact same story he told in front of the grand jury at the first trial and the second trial, but he admits that on the morning of this murder, Dexter Robinson had been at Conroe High School. Now, there's evidence here that's been established by Centurion Ministries by this point that proves that both Dexter Robinson and Gary Ackerman, unlike Clarence Ramley, have type A blood. Type A blood is one of the only things that they get out of the evidence that's gone missing and disappeared. There was type A blood on the victim's blouse.
00:49:07
Speaker
Now, Ranger Stiles for his part, he gets on the stand and he admits. He didn't interview anybody. He wasn't interested in anything. Clarence Brantley was his only suspect.
00:49:20
Speaker
When he is pressed about why he hadn't obtained some kind of sample from Acrement to compare with pubic hairs that were found at the scene and other hairs that were found on the victim, Stiles screws up and says, let's say I didn't do it, it wasn't done, and why it wasn't done, I don't know, it wasn't my responsibility. What? He couldn't give a good reason. So,
00:49:46
Speaker
Judge Pickett, looking at all of this, says, something's not right here. And here's what he declares on October 9, 1987. The litany of events graphically described by these witnesses in front of me, some of it is chilling and shocking. It leads me to the conclusion, the pervasive shadow of darkness has obscured the light of fundamental decency and human rights.
00:50:08
Speaker
No case has presented a more shocking scenario of the effects of racial prejudice, perjured testimony, witness intimidation, and did an investigation of which the outcome was predetermined.
00:50:22
Speaker
and he tells the court of criminal appeals that Clarence Brantley needs a new trial. So 14 months later, because why not? December 13th, 1989, the court of criminal appeals has gone back and forth on how to punt this football somewhere else and they can't. So they end up having an ex parte Brantley hearing about Clarence Brantley's case in Bong. So everybody's here.
00:50:52
Speaker
They have a sharply split decision, meaning they don't agree, but they realize they have to accept what Judge Perry Pickett points out. And they give Clarence Bramley a new trial. That's Christmas of 1989.
00:51:15
Speaker
Everything moves slow that time of year, not usually this slow, but the state appeals. And they say that delaying disposition of this case is ridiculous. we want to We want rulings from above because we want to execute this guy. And it takes 10 months. On October 1st of 1990, the US Supreme Court denies their appeal.
00:51:42
Speaker
So they're not even gonna hear it. They deny, actually, they don't deny their appeal. They den deny their writ of so petition for writ of Satoria to hear the case. So they're not gonna do it. So they're just declining it. Correct. So they drop all the charges. And at that point in time, Clarence Ranley is released from state prison in October of 1990. And they
Post-Release Challenges and Unresolved Issues
00:52:06
Speaker
jumped right on to find the real killer, right?
00:52:08
Speaker
Man, it it doesn't get better, unfortunately. Do you want to hear sort of the wrap up on all of this? Sure. He gets out of state prison. A few months later, he's ordained as a Baptist minister based on his education being continued while he was in prison. He filed multiple lawsuits against multiple agencies involved here, and he was denied every chance to get any kind of compensation for those agencies. In 2011, Texas rebuilt their ah compensation for wrongful convictions into statute, and he was also denied under that. The sad part is he ends up dying September 2nd of 2018 when he was 66 years old. He never received any compensation for anything that he had done.
00:52:57
Speaker
ah In January of 2018, the same year after police chief of Conroe died, family members found the boxes that contained all the missing evidence in his garage, ah mismarked and hidden away from the public.
00:53:15
Speaker
Nothing was ever done about that either. Clarence, if you want to put a little icing on this cake, upon his release, it was declared that he owed more than $50,000 in child support back child support. ah This had all accumulated while he had been in prison.
00:53:34
Speaker
A ah federal law known as the Bradley um Amendment, not Brantley, but Bradley, it stipulates that once a child support order has been established, money owed cannot be retroactively reduced or forgiven, even in cases where the debtor was imprisoned and presumably incapable of pay. In 2011, one report indicated that Clarence Brantley's wages were still being garnished.
00:54:01
Speaker
And by then, the debt still stood around $13,000. So this is interesting, right? All of it is interesting. This is a weird case. Well, the child support, like, I mean, it's just whatever. It is what it is. I mean, I feel like a lot of things. I don't know how I feel about that. i And I would feel differently if he was guilty than I do that he wasn't. and The fact that he didn't get compensated, it was because the charges were dropped pending a new trial, but they never tried him again. That's why he didn't get compensated. It's not like he was ever found innocent. Right. I don't know which is worse. I'm going to put this out here as like probably equally bad, but the injustice here is
00:54:49
Speaker
At some point, all these people involved in the investigation and the witnesses against Clarence, everybody had to have made the realization that I made, which was who the actual killer was. Right.
00:55:05
Speaker
My point is, now he hasn't been charged or convicted or whatever, but at some point, when does it become that they're just covering up for this guy, right? Yeah. When somebody starts feeding information like Ackerman was doing, I know who killed her and it wasn't Brandy. I mean, of course he knows who killed her. It was him.
00:55:28
Speaker
And then the fact that the girlfriend came forward with Robinson was just a a complete coincidence, I think, honestly. But either way, why weren't they following the evidence, right? It was just because they had made up their mind. yeah This is blatant racism because they went... so they went after the black guy but here's the other part of it and I said I was going to put this out there equally because I don't know which one is worse.
00:56:00
Speaker
There's a young girl here who was murdered. yeah And they didn't care enough about that to put the person who did it away. They went out of their way to commit another injustice against an innocent man that I would say the only thing that he did be wrong that day was not be a very good supervisor and make sure that his employees weren't raping and murdering the teenage girls at the school. But with that in view, what were any of these people doing in any position of authority? They could have blamed anybody else they wanted to, but at some point it becomes crystal clear that Clarence is not responsible for this. yeah
00:56:46
Speaker
And they don't care. They don't care to fix it. And it goes through so many layers of not caring. I do think one thing I'm going to do here, because I noticed a couple of places I've talked about this case, and they all seem to miss that last little tidbit where the evidence was sitting in the dead police chief's garage. There's no reason to do that unless you are trying to manipulate the case. Well, they now have it. They got it when he passed away. They really should close that case out.
Systemic Failures in Justice
00:57:15
Speaker
The case will never be closed. I don't think they can in terms of chain of evidence. Like I've looked at how they might be able to do that. But like, I think if he secreted it away, technically is still in law enforcement's custody and control. Or just for the knowledge of whose hair that is. like Yeah, just for the knowledge of the hair and the blood. yeah that It shouldn't be there, right? Yep.
00:57:38
Speaker
is to hide the evidence that goes beyond, it it becomes malfeasance, right? It's not just like incompetent, it's malfeasance because they're purposely, and now it would be a Brady violation. And, you know, at different points, we have various degrees of that happening here, but they're willing to put this man to death. A lot of times we don't have the benefit of having the information about the perpetrator right there.
00:58:09
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. And I see it in this case very clearly. And at some point, it becomes a switch where I wouldn't say that the theory that one of these men was responsible for this crime was a bad one to start with, right? Yeah. Under the circumstances, it was a pretty good guess.
00:58:30
Speaker
At some point, though, they had to have like willfully said, like, I just don't care who gets we want it solved. And then like, we're already on this track and like to admit, you know, that, oh, you're wrong. Well, that takes, you know, that that's going to give their ego a hit.
00:58:50
Speaker
yeah And we all know that, like, most law enforcement can't handle that. So, you know, this no longer becomes about justice. It doesn't matter anymore that I was trying to see how old but to 16 Cheryl D Ferguson, who was 16 years old and had gone to do a completely normal high school girl thing, right? She was a manager. Yep. She was just there to manage the volleyball team. her She went to a school that was visiting Conroe High School. Right. So it wasn't even her school. Right. They were just scrimmaging against, they were there was ah there was a match between her school and Conroe. Right. And so she was probably lost, which is how she ended up running into whoever she ran into.
00:59:39
Speaker
and it It's insane that this is where we're at because that all the resources got diverted to getting him not to be executed. And her case just is out there. and Yeah, it gets forgotten.
00:59:55
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. She has a fine degree about there under her name, Cheryl D Ferguson. her Her last name is spelled slightly different than the normal Ferguson. ah It's F-E-R-G-E-S-O-N. Someone has put their book report on it, which reads like it's been pulled from all these same documents of what I was just... talking
Tributes and Podcast Conclusion
01:00:14
Speaker
about, but it does have a few details that I didn't mention if you guys want to go on and check that out. There is a little further reading there. um it's It's a college student writing about this case and then it's still a good read. A lot of people have left
01:00:31
Speaker
information out, you know, ah about her on the Internet. But this case, like, find a grave is where people go to put, like, kind of memorials. And this particular ah young lady has a bunch of pretty touching little attributes to her on there. It's it's worth reading if it's just something you wanted to do. You know, it's middle of December. It's kind of holiday season. So I know that sometimes people like to do things that, ah you know, aren't just sexual assault and murder cases and whether or not someone did it.
01:01:00
Speaker
um I don't have a lot more on this one. I'm like you. i want to I really want to reach out to these people and basically say, hey, you know you guys could really easily test that evidence now. um It bothered me that like that hasn't been done.
01:01:15
Speaker
It would say a lot to undo the injustice, not just, I mean, what happened to Clarence was an injustice that eventually got, I mean, to some extent worked out he was not put to death. But it would say a lot at this point in time to have authorities want to actually solve the case.
01:01:35
Speaker
Yeah, and there's a guy Brett Ligon that could do that. He's a district attorney in Montgomery County in Texas. He has um he has a custody of all the evidence and and the local police have it. So it would be very easy for him to simply test the blood that they know was in the chain of custody, or they can test the hairs and they could get a pretty good idea of who killed her from this little list that that Meg and I have been talking about.
01:02:00
Speaker
Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabratiCreations.com. If you have a moment in your favorite app, please go on and give us a review or a five-star rating. It helps us get noticed in the crowd. This is True Crime XS.
01:04:07
Speaker
One day it will be my baby and me
01:05:00
Speaker
True Crime XS is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.
01:05:26
Speaker
This is just a reminder that we are part of the Zincaster Creator Network. And I've put a link in the show notes if you guys want to check it out for your own podcasting needs. um I've always enjoyed using Zincaster. Their quality is great. And we we were able to join their Creator Network at kind of a key time in in their history. um I have enjoyed it. You know, I've considered a lot of other ah places to record and a lot of other ways to put together and host and distribute our podcasts. But I've stuck with Zincaster the longest. We've been with them for hundreds of episodes now. And I'm putting a link in the show notes where you can check out ah what they have to offer and see if it's something you would want to use.