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The Case of Greg Bright
📻 Episode #594
🎙️ Hosted by Jason Flom
📅 Oct 08, 2026
About This Episode
This week’s episode is a look back at the story of Greg Bright, as originally told to Lauren Bright Pacheco. Greg spent 27 and a half years in Angola for a murder he didn’t commit. He was a young man when he went in, and nearly 50 when he finally walked free in 2003. But…
The Case
This week’s episode is a look back at the story of Greg Bright, as originally told to Lauren Bright Pacheco. Greg spent 27 and a half years in Angola for a murder he didn’t commit. He was a young man when he went in, and nearly 50 when he finally walked free in 2003. But Greg’s story is also a reminder that exoneration doesn’t give you those years back. And right now in Louisiana, Greg is at the center of a fight over what the state owes innocent people after taking decades of their lives.
Louisiana caps compensation for wrongful imprisonment at $400,000. Greg has now hit that cap, and his payments have stopped — even though he spent nearly three decades wrongfully incarcerated and lost some of the most important earning years of his life. Earlier this year, Louisiana lawmakers unanimously passed a bill that would have raised the cap to $600,000 and extended compensation from 10 years to 15. Governor Jeff Landry vetoed it. Think about that. The state takes 27 and a half years from an innocent man, acknowledges that he was wrongfully convicted, and then decides there’s a limit on how much of that lost time it’s willing to compensate him for. Greg is now 70 years old and has said he may have to sell the home he bought after his release just to cover his living expenses.
Greg’s story matters just as much today as it did when we first told it, because getting out of prison is not the end of a wrongful conviction. For people like Greg, rebuilding a life after decades taken away can be another fight entirely.
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In Their Own Words — transcript excerpts
Short excerpts from the episode's official published transcript, with timestamps — listen from these moments, or read the full transcript via the podcast's own platforms.
00:07:09“Speaker 3: She would seem to have the words. Speaker 5: She would say just the right things that would put Speaker 5: me back and allow me to focus or concentrate. And Speaker 5: she was just a wonderful lady, someone that I had Speaker 5: missed tremendously after she had passed.”
00:29:37“Speaker 5: into other areas, like my reading and and comprehension. Once Speaker 5: I learned how to read, I mean, doors started opening Speaker 5: up that I didn't even know was there, and that Speaker 5: it kept me motivated, kept me interested, and I challenged Speaker 5: that energy into the legal aspect of this. It just”
00:50:52“Speaker 5: was just another part of the story, but it's part Speaker 5: of the story that hit home with me because I Speaker 5: can't help this situation, you know what I mean? I Speaker 5: could just try to be strong, and that's the only Speaker 5: advice I could give someone in that situation.”
Listen to the Episode
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