The Case of John Huffington

📻 Episode #52
🎙️ Hosted by Jason Flom
📅 Apr 09, 2018

◆ EPISODE PROFILE

About This Episode

The Case

John Huffington spent 32 years in the Maryland Prison System—10 of which were on death row—after being wrongfully convicted of a 1981 double murder. Previously, juries twice convicted John of first-degree murder in the deaths of Diane Becker and Joseph Hudson. The first trial, in 1981, occurred in Caroline County and John was later granted a new trial due to evidence improperly introduced by the State. The second trial took place in Frederick County in 1983. He faced the death penalty after both convictions, but his sentence was later commuted to two life terms in prison. Since his first trial, John had filed multiple appeals at the state and federal levels, challenging the state’s case against him. In 2013, as the result of newly discovered DNA evidence that demonstrated that hairs discovered at the crime scene were not John’s, the Circuit Court for Frederick County, MD, granted him a Writ of Actual Innocence and vacated his murder convictions, and John Huffington was released from prison on bond. The faulty evidence came from an FBI lab that has been forced to acknowledge widespread mismanagement and false testimony. Flawed forensic testimony was given in 257 of the 268 trials in which hair evidence was used, and John Huffington’s trial was one of them. Since his release from prison, John Huffington has been a tireless advocate for the re-entry community, and his work has been recognized by Baltimore City leaders, including State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby. He is now serving as the Director of Workforce Development for Living Classrooms Foundation, where he manages the workforce development department and its programming with 18 staff members and a $2 million budget. As part of his role, he manages Project SERVE, the same job-training program in which he enrolled upon being released from incarceration.

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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.

00:08:06
“Speaker 3: a knife and wanted to go kill and rob these people. Again, Speaker 3: I don't find this out till years later in his trial. Speaker 3: Like that witness never testified at one of my trials. Ever, Speaker 3: it wasn't my witness, stayed witness. Speaker 4: And again, you had never personally known him to be”

00:29:05
“Speaker 4: spiritual thing that led you to be able to not Speaker 4: only maintain your physical health, so I mean as best Speaker 4: you could, but also eventually find a way to get Speaker 4: out and be sitting right here right now. I mean, Speaker 4: what can you tell us?”

00:49:14
“Speaker 4: the point that they're useless when we tested, So this Speaker 4: really you talked about Hail Mary, this is it, but Speaker 4: it ain't a football game. Speaker 3: No, you know. Luckily, they did it as a peer review, Speaker 3: so it's like a surgeon operating with other surgeons watching”

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Also on the podcast: #55 John Moss · #85 Jason Flom, John Grisham and Chip Harding with Jens Soering · #86 John Grisham