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The Case of Rodney Roberts
📻 Episode #561
🎙️ Hosted by Jason Flom
📅 Feb 12, 2026
About This Episode
Rodney Roberts was arrested in 1996 in Newark, NJ, after an altercation with a friend. After several days in custody, he found himself charged with the kidnapping and rape of a 17-year-old girl. His court appointed attorney advised him to plead guilty or spend the rest of his life in prison. Rodney had a good…
Case status as carried in this site's original 2026 profiles. Independent record verification is rolling out episode by episode — statuses are being re-checked against court and registry sources and date-stamped as verified.
The Case
Rodney Roberts was arrested in 1996 in Newark, NJ, after an altercation with a friend. After several days in custody, he found himself charged with the kidnapping and rape of a 17-year-old girl. His court appointed attorney advised him to plead guilty or spend the rest of his life in prison. Rodney had a good job and had recently moved with his young son into a new apartment. Hoping to get back to his son as soon as possible, Rodney pleaded guilty to the crime in exchange for a seven-year sentence. He would end up spending 18 years in custody before DNA evidence excluded him as a perpetrator and he was exonerated and released in 2014.
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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.
00:06:17“Speaker 5: as they're equal, that can be very intoxicating and can Speaker 5: lead you down the road that you don't really know Speaker 5: you're going because you're blinded, right because you're thinking that Speaker 5: you're in with the cool squad or whatever. Speaker 3: So what happened, Well, what happened was, first I hid”
00:24:33“Speaker 3: threw me in myself. Speaker 4: For you what I was in my cell, I was Speaker 4: standing in myself. Speaker 3: I flushed myself off and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, Speaker 3: at least I stood up for three seconds. And I Speaker 3: lived in that three second moment for years. But as”
00:42:53“Speaker 3: commercials with them, and me doing other work with them. Speaker 3: And Jeffrey Desker had the Jeffrey Desker found brought me Speaker 3: in and helped me school me in a way with Speaker 3: you know, this is what you need to be saying, Speaker 3: and this is how you should present and this is”
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← #560 Vanessa Gathers #562 Rafael Madrigal →
Also on the podcast: #54 Rodney Roberts · #102 Rodney Reed · #250 Rodney Lincoln