Zavion’s Story

Episode Notes

Transcript

Michael Semanchik:

Imagine you’re a new parent, caring for a baby girl. You feed her, bathe her, and protect her from the elements. Every day is new and full of wonder. It’s tiring round the clock work. But in the truest sense, building a family is a labor of love. It is also a labor of worry. Caring parents are always on the lookout for danger. And despite the best safeguarding and utmost efforts, children still find ways to hurt themselves. Accidents happen to everyone. Thankfully. Most of the time they’re not serious. Bruises, scrapes and skinned knees are part of growing up. Mom’s band-aids are magic and dad’s jokes make the pain go away. Children fall down, cry, and get right back up every day. So what happens when they don’t? What happens when a minor fall becomes serious? It’s extremely rare, but small falls can be deadly, and it doesn’t just happen to children with Cronin health problems.

It’s been documented on video and verified by eyewitnesses. Small falls regularly kill healthy children like a lightning bolt On a clear day, what seems impossible suddenly becomes tragic. Imagine losing your child like that. It’s lottery odds going in the wrong direction. And for some parents, that wasn’t the end of it. The worst day of their life would also mean criminal charges. The state would falsely accuse them of murdering their own child before they could grieve. They would be convicted and sent away to prison for the rest of their lives. Think this couldn’t happen to you. Think again. I’m Michael Semanchik, executive director for the Innocence Center, and you’re listening to Zavion’s story.

Speaker 2:

Spent most of my life in prison, chasing our dream, chasing the dream. Want somebody please? My want somebody, please set me free.

Zavion Johnson:

My name is Zavion Johnson. I’m the oldest sibling of seven. I’m native of Sacramento, and throughout high school I played football and then I had a job for the California Caltrans in the office. My grandmother hooked me up with a job there. And then pretty much leading forward to my 18th birthday. Shortly after that, I fell into a situation or a circumstance that led to my false imprisonment, false accusation, and me being taken away from my family. For nearly 17 years,

Michael Semanchik:

Zavion Johnson was about to be arrested for under the theory of Shaken baby syndrome. We’ll talk more about this during our junk science episodes, but basically, shaken baby syndrome was an incorrect medical theory that was used as forensic evidence in criminal prosecutions. Essentially, the theory stated that if a certain combination of injuries were present in a dead child at an autopsy, it indisputably proved that a parent shook them to death. Shaken baby syndrome grew to prominence in the 1980s and nineties in large part because it was easy to explain to juries. The big flaw, which was not known at the time, is that those same injuries could be caused by things other than shaking. And unfortunately, many innocent parents went to prison for something they didn’t do.

Zavion Johnson:

So the day that I was arrested was after my daughter’s funeral. So during the funeral proceedings, I noticed there were a whole lot of people there, or at least some people there that didn’t look like me, didn’t look like my family, and so I was just wondering like, dang, who are these people? What’s going on? Didn’t fully understand. Got outside and still seen people that didn’t look like me and weren’t part of my family or the child’s mother’s family. Kissed everyone goodbye. Were supposed to be back at my mother’s house. Just do something that we call a repas where families gather and we eat and kind of just have a remembrance. And when I get into the car, we drive maybe about a mile or two, and next thing you know, the undercover car pulls us over into a parking lot and then another car, pull up another car, pull up another car, pull up, and I’m looking down six barrel of guns from undercover police officers. I didn’t know what to do. I was just like, whoa. Freaked out. They had me exit out the car, put me on the hood of the car, handcuffed me and told me I was under arrest for murder.

Michael Semanchik:

Zavion’s baby daughter had an accident while they were getting cleaned up to visit his great-grandmother. During the shower, she slipped from his grasp and fell hitting her head on the tub. He immediately checked her for injuries but did not see anything. There was no blood or bumps or bruising, and so he assumed she was okay. What Zavion did not realize is that his daughter was fatally injured, even though she appeared totally normal.

Zavion Johnson:

I was showering with her getting ready for a visit to go visit my great-grandmother, and she slipped from my hands and hit her head on a tub. And pretty much not knowing, not being medical inclined or not realizing or seeing anything as far as blood bumps or bruises, we kind of just went on with getting her dressed. Kind of went on with trying to prepare us to get ready to go to my great-grandmother’s house. And during that time, things kind of took a turn for the worst. Her color changed, and that’s when we proceeded to get medical attention. Paramedics came. I attempted CPR and tried my best, keep her revived, and upon getting to the hospital, that’s when everything kind of just came to a head. Yeah.

Michael Semanchik:

So then she spent some time in the hospital or did she pass away pretty soon thereafter? How did that happen

Zavion Johnson:

As a result of that accident? She passed away. Two days later, they removed her off life support. Yeah, that right there was just something. I remember waking up on a gurney. I remember holding her until she pretty much turned color, and I guess that’s when she officially lost life. And then I recall waking up on a gurney and they had me hooked up to an EKG machine and just all this different type of stuff. And I still didn’t fully realize or understand what was going on.

Michael Semanchik:

Zavion had passed out from the trauma of losing his daughter. The doctors hooked him up to an EKG machine to monitor his health until he could come too. But the reality of her death would not set in until later.

Zavion Johnson:

Yeah, I passed out, took place for me holding her. The doctors pretty much, I guess they were trying to take her and do whatever. But yeah, I remember bits and pieces of it, but I remember holding her until she pretty much turned colors. And then I remember being on a gurney, being rushed down somewhere with an EKG machine and just all this different type of stuff being hooked up to me. My mom and whoever else pretty much told me, yeah, my baby was gone.

Michael Semanchik:

As was so common with these cases, falsely accused parents don’t get a chance to mourn the loss of their child before they suddenly have to fight for their freedom. Oftentimes, they are in a fragile state when law enforcement comes knocking. Needless to say, they are not at their best. And for most, this is a time of great confusion.

Zavion Johnson:

After the ride downtown, I got back to whatever the interrogation room, and the same detective that had talked to me at the hospital, he came in and he was like, do you have anything to tell me now? And just like I was informed there at the hospital how many days prior, I told him the same thing. I have nothing to talk to you about until I speak to my attorney. And he was like, oh, well, you’re going down for this. And then they just pretty much took me from there and stuck me in a holding tank. Wow. Inside of the holding tank. I seen everyone picking up this phone. I’m like, oh, they could use the phone. So I went and picked up the phone and I recall calling my mom or whoever it was that I could get in contact with, they pretty much just said, baby, hold on. We’re coming down to get you. We’re going to bail you out. And hours and hours went by. And then we get this paper, I guess with our charges and bail and all that stuff on it. And I’m asking some of the gentlemen around, where’s my bail amount? Where’s my bail amount? They was like, you don’t have no bail. And so I didn’t fully understood what that mean, and I didn’t see my family or being able to embrace my family until nearly 17 years later. After that, pretty much

Michael Semanchik:

Zavion was denied bail, and it would still be a little while before the full picture of what he was being accused of came into focus. His legal team believed him, but they were up against a very tough case. Back in those days, shaken baby accusations were a real challenge for defense teams. Zavion was in big trouble.

Zavion Johnson:

So my trial attorney, like I said, he did everything that he could and he was just telling me, I don’t believe they’re going to convict you and your loving father. You’re a standup guy. I had 13 plus lay witnesses or character witnesses, people that worked for my job, people that knew me throughout my life, the mother of the child, also, me not being in trouble before. So there was just a whole lot of things that were a testament to my character. And so we went in with it. And I testified too, a lot of times people don’t testify. I testified and I went with what I felt in my heart. I went with the truth. I went with me being innocent, and I just thought that the eyes of justice would see that somebody would listen, somebody would understand it, but I went up against medical experts or whatever they claim to be, and I couldn’t combat their expertise or lack of expertise.

Michael Semanchik:

So at the trial, they alleged shaken baby syndrome that you had shaken your daughter to the point where she died. Yeah. Had you heard of that before?

Zavion Johnson:

No. Didn’t even know what that was. And I was just like, huh, what is that? I didn’t know how to get into medical literature and I wasn’t a doctor, didn’t know any doctors, didn’t know anybody that could combat it. We brought our own expert witness there, and he pretty much said yes, yes, and yes to everything. And so I just wonder why the jury decided to go with what they decided to go with.

Michael Semanchik:

So talk to us about the moment the jury comes back and renders their verdict.

Zavion Johnson:

Oh man, I still don’t, still don’t really remember it. It was like a blur. But I did all that I could. Like I said, I got on the stand. I testified, I presented all of my facts, all of my truth, and for them to come back and still to feel as though I was guilty, I lost trust in the system. I lost trust in people that didn’t look like me, people that didn’t live the life that I lived. And I’ve been around kids. Like I say, I’m the oldest of seven, and my mom raises to the best of her ability, but she had her strongholds addiction and verbal abuse and whatever else. So the ages go from me and my sister are six years apart, then 11, 13, 15 to 17 years. So I’ve been around kids. I had to step up and be a father figure, changing diapers, trying to learn how to cook, meals, cleaning, you name it. So I’ve walked this walk for many years and I never walked out on them, never abused them, never. So the list of things can go on and on.

Michael Semanchik:

Zavion was convicted and sentenced to life. He had never been in trouble with the law before and was very young when he went away to prison. Zavion was barely 18 and a small person at that. Although he started in protective custody, he would eventually be moved into general population, a horrifying place full of dangerous men. Needless to say, this was a terrifying experience for him.

Zavion Johnson:

I was with all the grown, grown men like big dudes, and I was a hundred and what, maybe 25 pounds. So yeah, very small, very little. I’m not tall. But yeah, they had me with everybody pretty much as adults.

Michael Semanchik:

How scary was that

Zavion Johnson:

Beyond? Yeah, I look back at it and I don’t know how I made it, how I went through it knowing any day, any moment, anytime anybody found out anything, it was going to pretty much be lights out. They was not going to care about how much of a standup guy I was, how much they liked me just reading and understanding what they wanted to read on paper, pretty much, yeah, it was going to be lights out for me.

Michael Semanchik:

What Zavion is talking about here is keeping his alleged offense a secret. As we’ve talked about in past episodes, when a person is new, his fellow prisoners want to know what he’s in there for. Zavion was falsely accused of murdering his daughter, and that’s one of the offenses that potentially gets you killed behind bars. Prisoners have their own brand of justice. Zavion was in real danger, and so he had to keep all of his paperwork a secret.

Zavion Johnson:

A lot of stuff didn’t get sent to me. And then when I did get questioned, answered like, what you in it for? I’m in here for a crime I didn’t commit. And they asked, why? You got so much time, the course messed up. And so it just kind of turns into that as far as my story. And then I had to do a lot of different stuff that was outside of my character to have a facade on or to pretty much like a puffer fish. So like I said, there was a lot of different things that went against moral values, my character, but it was all done to pretty much survive. Yeah, man, it was crazy.

Michael Semanchik:

As you can imagine, these were dark days for Zavion. He lost his daughter to a tragic accident. He was falsely accused and convicted of murder, and now he was going to spend the rest of his life in a dangerous place surrounded by violent criminals. It is truly amazing how our clients maintain hope through these years. Faith is a powerful ally,

Zavion Johnson:

Man. I never felt as abandoned. I never felt as alone. My mind went to so many different places. I even pretty much contemplated suicide just to see my daughter again, just to not be in a situation that I was in. And so my faith in depth coming to save me, my faith in depth, coming to direct me. And that’s the only thing that I could really say about that. As far as them, a guardian angel, I seen so much stuff happen in front of me on the side of me and behind me, and I was pretty much unscathed.

Speaker 4:

Try as you might some never,

Michael Semanchik:

Like so many others, Zion’s journey to freedom would begin inside the prison’s law library where information and knowledge penetrate even the thickest walls of incarceration. He would learn as much as he could until he found the people who would be his guide, the Northern California Innocence Project.

Zavion Johnson:

So me trying to just figure out what it is that I could do, I would turn to the law library and I win as much as I could. Then I found a couple people who might be able to help me. And then you just hear a little bit of stuff here, like a favorite sports team, or if you hear about something that’s coming on TV and you hear about things like this that happened, not my case, but just people being in jail innocently or convicted, and they’re innocent. And so I heard about them and I think I seen something on the TV in another state where somebody got released. And so that right there was another light that turned on, and it was also a guiding light at the end of my tunnel. And so I wrote to them numerous times. So at first they told me they couldn’t help me.

I had to go through my initial pill process with the turn that I had, and then I didn’t realize how many people write to them. I didn’t realize how heavy their caseload was. So it took a little bit. It took a little bit. But like I say, I maintained my innocence and pretty trying to be a model prisoner inside. Yeah, I did get into stuff, but it was pretty much all me defending myself, me all. So there’s certain things in prison. You can’t shy away from racial riots. You can’t shy away from defending your manhood. You can’t really shy away from allowing someone to take something from, you can’t really shy away from. But me just being out there like Billy, bad guy know. So therefore, I was a model prisoner in that aspect. And I was at some of the most toughest prisons pretty much in California from high desert to Calip path to Ciella, just to name a few.

Michael Semanchik:

And as your case started to proceed, and NCIP is working on your case, did you start to have some hope that maybe this nightmare would come to an end? Or what were your thoughts as they were kind of diving into your case?

Zavion Johnson:

So pretty much as it started to go and proceed, when I first met Paige, I think I had been down 12 or 13 years, I don’t know exact date, but she came and met me and she didn’t promise me anything. She just wanted to come and talk to me and kind of meet me, get a gauge of my character.

Michael Semanchik:

Paige Canab is the legal director at the Northern California Innocence Project. She’s been with them since 2007 to date. She’s personally helped to free 14 innocent people from prison for crimes they did not commit.

Zavion Johnson:

It wasn’t until I met at least two other people on the staff. And then when I met the big law firm, Ecker and Van Ness, people that came, that’s when I was like, wait a minute, whoa. Stuff is starting to really, really steamroll and take a good, good turn. And still, like I said, it still wasn’t any promises, but just to have a voice that was bigger than mine and people wanted to listen, people wanted to understand. I ended up with six people that were invested into me, into my story, into my life. So regardless of however it turned out, it just felt good to, like I say, finally be heard and have a voice.

Michael Semanchik:

Zavion Johnson was arrested on December 4th, 2001, and convicted on December 12th, 2002. He would spend more than 16 years behind bars before being released on December 8th, 2017. On January 18th, 2018, the state of California would finally exonerate him closing the darkest chapter of his life.

Zavion Johnson:

Oh man. So 2017 that year was kind of crazy. So I can’t really fully remember the whole beginning of it, right? I just know when they filed my paperwork, it might’ve been in, I don’t know, March, april, somewhere in there, they filed my paperwork. Then we hear back from the courts right around my birthday, I believe. So fast forwarding up to December 8th, I got a few more visits from Paige and them, and they were just telling me everything that you want to send home sent home and everything else, just leave it here. And I still couldn’t wrap my mind around that. I got nearly 17 years of my whole life inside this cell. So from Saturday to Tuesday, I’m sitting here. I really sent all my pictures home. I really sent all this home. And so now when I leave from here, is it true and I’m not coming back.

So it didn’t really sit with me until I really sat down with that judge. So I finally got back to the county jail on I think that Tuesday night, and I had a court date on Friday morning. So that Wednesday, that Thursday, I didn’t eat no food. I didn’t fully, I didn’t go outside of my cell. I was in the county jail. I just had it in my mind that I’m going home. And so fast forward to that Friday morning, December 8th, 2017. I went sat in front of the judge. I seen Paige, I seen coach, and I seen a couple people in the back part, and there was no one there to oppose me coming home. There was no one there that felt like they had pitchforks. The DA was even nicer this time. The judge told me a whole lot of nice stuff this time, and I don’t remember everything he said, but I just remember him saying, good luck, Mr. Johnson, and you’re going to be released on your or. And I was just like, whoa. So I went to court that day and got released that day. Wow. And that doesn’t always happen. It does not always happened. So yeah, man.

Michael Semanchik:

So you process out, where’s the first place that you go? Do you all go out to eat somewhere or what happens next?

Zavion Johnson:

So the whole time, I kind of had told Paige beforehand, and she was like, what do you want your first meal to be? Popeye’s chicken and strawberry soda? I couldn’t wait. And I wanted a hot bath. So I didn’t know what they had in the store for me. I didn’t know what they had planned. And they picked me up right at the jail, took me there to NBC suites, and I’d never been in a room like this before. It was big. It was I exclusive, had my chicken, had my strawberry soda. I had a nice hot bath and a good shave. My sister ended up coming, my mom and eventually ended up coming. But it was just a quiet moment and time for me and my team to reflect. And I’ll never forget too, was the fresh air, the smell of fresh air. It smells different when there’s trees around, when there’s fresh bushes around instead of just dirt. So the air, I can’t get that out of my mind, and still to this day, I’ll get up in the middle of the night and I’ll just walk outside just because, just to get that fresh air smell again, that was pretty cool just to smell that fresh air.

Michael Semanchik:

Shaken baby syndrome cases are devastating for those who are falsely convicted. They lose everything. First. They experience the crippling loss of a child. Next, they lose the fight for their freedom. Frequently they lose a spouse and have to face incarceration all alone. For the lucky ones who eventually make it back home, the scars can take a lifetime to heal. The process demands a lot from the people close to them.

Zavion Johnson:

So my life, life now is I got to thrive. I got a new kickstart. I got a lot of my old self back. I love, I dot on my daughter. I love her, but it comes with hesitation holding her. It comes with hesitation, just doing all the normal stuff that parents do. So I’m thankful and fortunate enough to have a fiance that already has kids, so she kind of knows how to do this, how to do that. So I had to relearn how to change diapers, had to relearn how to make bottles again and all that stuff. So I hold her, but I hold her over something or I’m sitting down. I don’t really too much walk around with her. I don’t really damn sure don’t shower with her at all. So I live that all up to her mother to do. So. Like I say, the joys is still there, but still comes with hesitation in certain aspects. So that’s the only thing.

Michael Semanchik:

This post-conviction, fear is fairly common with shaken baby syndrome, exonerees. These types of fatal accidents can happen to anyone at any time. Admittedly, I experienced a little anxiety with my kids after we handle one of these cases. It’s not an easy thing to get over, especially when you’ve been wrongfully convicted and are now raising a family again.

Zavion Johnson: