Why Being Right Won’t Set You Free — Hard Knox with Amanda Knox

Episode Notes

Transcript

Michael Semanchik:

Welcome to For the Innocent. I’m Michael Semanchik, executive director of the Innocence Center. Today’s episode is a little different and a really meaningful one for me. This conversation originally aired on hard knocks hosted by Amanda Knox, and it’s titled Why Being Right Won’t Set You Free. I joined Amanda along with Scott McMahon to talk about a hard truth that anyone who spent time in the wrongful conviction space understands all too well. Innocence alone is often not enough to secure freedom. Scott’s story is a powerful reminder of how fragile justice can be, especially when systems value expedience money or appearances over truth. We talk about what it means to survive a system that doesn’t care whether you’re right and what it takes to keep going. Anyway, I’m grateful to Amanda for creating space for this conversation, and I’m really honored to share it for the innocent community. Here’s why being right won’t set you free.

Amanda Knox:

I’m Amanda Knox, and you’re listening to Hard Knock Today on hard knocks, I have my friend Mike Semantic and my new friend Scott McMahon. So Mike Semantic is the executive director of the Innocence Center, which is one of those amazing innocence organizations around the United States. The Innocence Center is based out of California, but does work throughout the United States and around the world as this case is a good example of. So Scott McMahon was an American living overseas in the Philippines when in 2011 he was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting his business partner’s former’s girlfriend. The accusation came after Scott accused her of harming his kids, and he had sued and won a civil judgment against her, which motivated the entire ordeal. And so this is a wrongful conviction story. It talks about what it takes to get justice done, how the different systems around the world work, and specifically the problems within the Philippines system. And we talk a lot about also just the cost. What is the cost of justice and what is the value of patience? So it’s a moving episode. Scott’s a really tough guy, but he lost a lot and I hope you all can, I don’t know, take away something from what was taken away from him. Welcome to Hard Knocks. I’m so excited. I feel like there should be full disclosure one, I’m on the board of the Innocence Center, which worked on your case, Scott,

And two we’re two Seattle homebodies.

Scott McMahon:

Know it.

Amanda Knox:

Okay, so let’s just jump into it. Right. All right. So Scott, what was going on in your life before the nightmare began?

Scott McMahon:

See, I’d been living in the Philippines. I’d been there about eight years already and never had a problem whatsoever. None whatsoever. I was having

Amanda Knox:

Why the Philippines?

Scott McMahon:

My uncle. So I spent a lot of time with my uncle growing up, and he been in that part of the world for 30 years. He was in Guam then Saipan, I lived with him in Saipan, came back to Seattle when I was about 20, 23, started a band and did that for quite a

Amanda Knox:

While.

Michael Semanchik:

Classic. Yeah, right.

Scott McMahon:

We did that with very

Michael Semanchik:

Seattle of them.

Scott McMahon:

Yeah, we put out a couple records with Howard Lee from Hart, produced them, and then we broke up. We were demoing for our major label and we broke up and I was pretty devastated, and I just said, you know what, I’m out of here. So my uncle said, why don’t you come to the Philippines? I got a friend that

Amanda Knox:

Has to. And you were like, what could go wrong?

Scott McMahon:

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I was like, yeah, yeah, I’m on my way. So I went.

Amanda Knox:

And what was your life like while you were there?

Scott McMahon:

It was cool. I did construction, worked project management for a company out of Manila, and it was great. We had a house made, I mean, life was good. Never didn’t have any problems living in a nice subdivision until one day. One day. So I met this Belgian guy in the subdivision, and I was the only white guy in the subdivision. So then I see this guy and I’m walking to the stores, there’s little stores. People take a bedroom and turn it into a store or a garage and turn it into a store. They call it a, sorry, sorry, store. And so he’s there drinking and he’s like, oh, hello my friend. And I’m like, oh, hey, I’m y Oh, hey Jan, I’m Scott. He says he just lives a couple streets over, so he says, let’s have a beer. I said, sure. So we have a few beers, and I see him the next day, he’ll come over and Scott, let’s have more beers.

And some beers. And he was married to this lady, Dolores, and Yan was a really smart guy. He was a mechanical engineer, but in some areas he just wasn’t too smart. And I told him one day, I said, let’s go to the mall. And he goes, well, he goes, let me ask Dolores. I said, okay. He goes, because I can’t leave without her permission. I go, well, why? He goes, because I can’t the subdivision without her permission because I’m not Filipino. And I’m like, yes, you can. He’s like, huh, come here. Watch this. And we walk out the gate and the guards salute us as we walk out because the guard’s there. And he just goes, wow. So then he starts telling me all this stuff. He goes, there’s something else that’s kind of strange. I said, what’s that? He said, there’s all these passports of girls in Dolores’s closet.

She has like 30 of them. That’s weird. And he goes, I don’t know what she’s doing. So I said, okay. And then he said, I said, where did you guys get married? He goes, oh, we got married here in Manila. And I said, oh, I, I heard that she was married before and there’s no divorce there, so you can’t divorce. There’s an annulment, but it takes years. And so we went down to the statistics office and sure enough, she was married. There was a marriage certificate for her and her husband of however many years. So it turns out that her marriage with him, it was all fake. There’s a place called Recto in Manila where you can get anything. You want to be a doctor, you can be a doctor, go down there and they’ll forge. They call it the forgery capital of the world, anything you want there. So she went down there, rented a little office for a half hour, got a fake priest and did a little ceremony, had all the paperwork, and then she even went and registered it with the NSO, with the statistics office. So she has two marriages on record.

Amanda Knox:

Okay. So you’re getting involved in this guy’s personal life with a con artist?

Scott McMahon:

Yes.

Amanda Knox:

Okay. What could go wrong?

Scott McMahon:

Yeah, I know, right?

Amanda Knox:

Okay.

Scott McMahon:

And me being me just, I wanted to help him. He was a nice guy and I had no idea that this was what it was going to turn into. He went and confronted her and then came to my house two days later and says, we’re finished. He goes, can I stay here for a while? And I said, sure. So he stay here. So he stays for a week and then they get everything worked out and he’s going to go back. And I’m just like, God, you’re dumb. Okay, yeah, have fun. And he goes back and he comes back a few days later and he’s like, no, I can’t do it anymore. So he’s staying with us again. And after about maybe a week or so, I’m gone a lot. I was gone. I’d leave at five in the morning to get home, nine 10 or night because traffic there is so bad. It takes two hours to get anywhere. So I come home one night and Y’s gone and Marelli and the kids are in the back room just freaking out crying. I’m like, what’s going on? And

Amanda Knox:

Your wife and your

Scott McMahon:

My kids? Yeah.

Amanda Knox:

Got

Scott McMahon:

It. What had happened was that week before Dolores had been threatening them and they never said anything to me about it, so I had no idea. And on this night, the police, national television in the Bureau of Immigration raided my house and arrested him because she went down and told him that he beats her and gets drunk and makes her mix cement and burns her head face with cigarettes, but she has no scars. And so they came and raided my house, national TV and arrested him. And she was just screaming and yelling at the kids. And the kids were just freaked out. My son was five, my daughter was two. So I said, why didn’t anybody tell me? Oh, it’s kind of Filipino thing. We don’t want to bother you.

So the next day I’m getting ready to take my son to school. And he’s like, I don’t want to go to school. I said, why? He goes, because the monster, the monster. He goes, the monster. And her sister lived right across the street from us, so that’s how she was harassing them. So she would just go to her sister’s house during the day and he didn’t want to go outside. He was freaked out. So I said, okay. So I called attorney and I took him to a clinical psychologist. This guy’s one of the best in the country. And we got in that day and we got there and I started to tell him what happened. He goes, no, no, I just want to talk to your son, just him. And I said, okay. So he talks to him from maybe like 45 minutes and he comes back out, brings me in, and he goes, what happened?

He goes, what’s with the monster? And I’m like, yeah. I go, well. So I told him, he goes, oh. And he started showing me these tests that he did with him, like the tree person test. He goes, this is a tree person test. Your son drew this big tree. And then he drew this little stick figure is him. And then this big figure above him is the monster who is Dolores. He goes, and this bigger figure in the back is you, and you’re the one that can save him, but you’re not there to save him.

Amanda Knox:

Oh,

Scott McMahon:

Dude,

Amanda Knox:

That feels horrible as a father Jesus.

Scott McMahon:

And so he says he’s got chronic post-traumatic stress disorder.

Amanda Knox:

And how was Dolores harassing them? Was that she was just yelling at them, what was she

Scott McMahon:

Doing? And she’d come over to the house and be like, you should have never gotten involved in my problems. Now you’re going to pay, you don’t know the people. I know this and that, this and that. So I got the paperwork and then I went and filed a case against her for child abuse. I figured that’s what right thing to do.

Amanda Knox:

Yeah. It’s like restraining order, just get this woman away from my children.

Scott McMahon:

And they found probable cause arrested her and she posted bail. And then we were just waiting for the trial to start, which is a year and a half later. And we were at the McDonald’s downstairs and the court was on the second floor and we see her walk in and she looks at us and she walks out. I’m like, okay, there she is. And then the door’s open and you see these bright lights and you see a camera crew, five cops, and they’re walking him. I looked at my wife, I was like, oh, wonder what they’re looking for? And they’re walking more towards us and they’re like, Scott’s McMahon. And I’m like, yeah, we have a warrant for your arrest. I said, for what? I said, we’re here at court already. He goes, I said, what’s the warrant for? He goes, rape. I said, and who did I rape? And there was Dolores with him. So they took me right then and there.

Amanda Knox:

Okay, so already this woman has a vengeance against you. She’s a con artist. What was your immediate reaction? Were you like, this is obviously going to pan out, or were you really concerned?

Scott McMahon:

I figured it all blow over a couple of days. I figured when we went out and they took me away and she’s standing out there and she’s at the car, at the police car. She goes, you think you can rape me? I couldn’t believe what was happening. So it was all kind of in slow motion then. So they take me to Camp Cromme, which is the main headquarters in Manila, two hours away from where they should have took me. And of course they want money. Let’s make a deal. Let’s make a deal. I said, I’m giving you guys any money. I didn’t have any to give imagine. And after a few hours they figured I wouldn’t pay. So they took me to the jail and I figured it would just take a hearing in front of a judge and we could tell her what happened, dah, dah, dah. And then I’d be gone, I’d be out. And that did not happen that way at all. Rape, no bail. And all the lady has to do is go, oh, he raped me. And that’s probable cause That’s considered strong evidence.

Amanda Knox:

So I want to pivot to you, Mike, because you were not, Scott obviously had local counsel eventually to talk to represent him, but when you came on the case, you noticed that there was some interesting issues with the way that how they do justice in the Philippines. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?

Michael Semanchik:

Yeah. So to start off one, with Scott being accused, when it came time for a bail motion, they didn’t consider any evidence from the defense. So he’s accused of this no bail crime, and she’s able to present her evidence and we were not able to present any evidence of his innocence or his defense to then try to get him bailed out. So for this whole period of time, he’s going to be in custody. So we knew that and we tried. We actually had petitioned the court. I think Scott, remind me, or correct me if I’m wrong, I think there were at least once or twice after the initial bail motion, we were trying to revisit bail. And the court was like, no thanks.

Scott McMahon:

They wouldn’t do it.

Michael Semanchik:

No three. And he was, yeah. So we knew he was going to be in custody, but that wasn’t the only thing that kind of jumped out at us. I mean, I think the most tragic thing about the Filipino system was just how slow it moves. So you go to court and you get about 20 minutes to present your evidence every couple of weeks, whenever the court can fit you in. So here in the United States, it’s like the court will carve out five days, the attorneys give estimates, this is how long my trial’s going to be. It’s five, seven days, 10 days, whatever. And the court will carve out a two week period for you and you get all your evidence done and the court, and if you have a jury, the jury makes that decision. After hearing all the evidence in one big thing in the Philippines, you have a judge, this judge will sit on your case, allocate 20 minutes every couple of weeks to hear 20 minutes of testimony. And that witness, most of the time, you’re not going to get through all of a witness’s testimony in that 20 minutes. So they have to keep coming back. And so it might take five visits to go through direct and then like five, six visits to go through cross. So finally you get through this one witness. It’s been months, right?

Amanda Knox:

Oh my God. I thought the Italian system was bad, where we would have one or two full days a week, but then the rest of the week is some other case. And so we would have to wait for the next week. So that’s why my trial lasted a whole year. But how long did Scott’s last?

Michael Semanchik:

It was over five years. By the time he was

Amanda Knox:

Just to have the trial. So he was being detained for five years without there even being a verdict in the case?

Michael Semanchik:

Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So his whole thing, incarceration was pretrial detention.

Amanda Knox:

Can we talk about the evidence or lack thereof? What was the supposed evidence in this case on the prosecution side,

Scott McMahon:

Her testimony, she said it happened six months prior.

Michael Semanchik:

So we’re in August when she makes the accusation, she says, yeah, Scott raped me in February of this year, six months ago. So that makes all kinds of problems for everybody like, well, you can’t do DNA testing six months later. You can’t go. How are you going to go track down witnesses that might’ve been across the street and heard screaming or something? It makes it incredibly challenging for both sides to try to piece together a case. So essentially it’s just her word against SCOs at the outset.

Amanda Knox:

Wild. You mentioned that you were not allowed to present any kind of evidence on the defense’s side to argue for bail or and all of that. So what ultimately were you able to obtain in terms of evidence in this case, and what did it take to obtain that evidence

Scott McMahon:

For bail? They wouldn’t let us present any evidence, and they didn’t give a decision for three and a half years. After three and a half years, they denied it. But on our side, we were gone on vacation at the time, we were 10 hours away. I was with my own family and I had the president of the subdivision knew we were gone. She didn’t even live in the subdivision anymore. When she said it happened, she moved out a month prior and we had the letter that she wrote to the homeowners association saying she was moving. We had the water bills was there was no water or electricity. We had security guard testimony saying that she did not live there anymore. They do roving patrols and the president of the subdivision was willing to testify. We had the vice president testify as well, and we had witnesses from the province where we were at, but they wouldn’t let us present any of it

Michael Semanchik:

For purposes of bail.

Amanda Knox:

For purposes of bail. So ultimately you were able to make that case in court, but in the meantime, again, you’re sitting in a jail cell for years just trying to make this case,

Scott McMahon:

900 square feet, 300 people.

Amanda Knox:

Oh my God, dude,

Scott McMahon:

Three 18 the day I walked out, two toilet bowls, 500 calorie a day diet. So if you didn’t have the guys that didn’t have food or medicine brought in by their family or from the outside would starve to death, and they were just, that’s gross. They just starved to death and nobody cares.

Amanda Knox:

Wow. I am just astonished. Just the fact. Can we try for a second to steal, man, the position of the prosecution? What were they thinking? What kind of case were they making? Why was it there was this presumption of your guilt from the outset. Why was it enough for this person who clearly had the courts already were aware of you filing charges against her for a different thing, she had motivation to seek revenge against you. Why was none of that considered by the police and by the prosecution in this case?

Scott McMahon:

They had a meeting. My uncle knew somebody who knew the husband of the judge, and they met with him and he basically said that she was told to convict me, that they didn’t say, I think they wanted to make an example of me be,

Michael Semanchik:

Yeah, I mean there was a lot of interesting things happening in the Philippines at the time. So the day that I landed, there was an arrest of an American Marine who had a, I think he also was named Scott,

Scott McMahon:

Name of Scott too.

Michael Semanchik:

And he was late at night hooking up with someone who he believed to be a female, only to discover it was a male and then turned around and killed the individual. And so there was a lot of anti-American sentiment the day that I landed. And that definitely was carrying over into Scott’s case. Scott’s case was on the news all of the time. They were burning American flags in the streets and it was like, get the US military out of here. Look at what they’re doing to our people and look at this other example of an American doing bad things in our country. We got to get the Americans out. So I think there was certainly some pressure from the media and just from the public just because of the fact that Scott was an American. So

Scott McMahon:

Mike, I’m going to say Mike has some interesting stories when he was there.

Amanda Knox:

Oh yeah. Around. Did that sort of prejudice sort of cast its shadow onto you?

Michael Semanchik:

Yeah, I mean, I was just hyper aware of everything because I was just nervous that somehow they knew that I was coming and supporting Scott, that I’m this American with an American passport. And so I did feel like, I just felt like I was feeling like they were trying to catch me in some way, doing something improper. And I stayed in Macte, which is a really nice financial district, nice part of the city in a nice, a boutique hotel. Nice. Certainly for the Filipino standards, and certainly it would’ve been a just fine hotel here. And I was coming down the elevator one day on the sixth floor. I got on the sixth floor elevator and the elevator stopped on the fifth floor, and this mom and daughter came onto the elevator and were asking me if I wanted to go back upstairs with them. And I was like, what? No, it was seven in the morning. I was going down to breakfast.

Amanda Knox:

Oh my

Michael Semanchik:

God, I like what? And I just hit the bottom of the elevator and I waited for them to get off first, and as soon as they got off, I hit the button, went back up to my room. I was like, I’m just going to stay in my room for the next hour and just make sure they’re not hovering outside my room trying to get me, entrap me in some sort of way. And it could have been nothing, right, of course. But I was just hyper aware because of this anti-American sentiment. And I did meet with folks in the state department that were, be careful, make sure you’re not out alone at night and just watch yourself here. So it wasn’t like a, yeah.

Amanda Knox:

So Scott, in any situation like yours, I feel like on the one hand it’s really reassuring that you have a super strong case for your innocence. You have all of these witnesses that are confirming your alibi when you actually investigate her claims, none of them stand up. So you have all of this strong innocence, strong evidence that’s proving your innocence, and yet the court is delaying your trial for years. How did that shape your understanding of what justice means,

Scott McMahon:

What lack of? It was really frustrating. It was really, it tore on the mental side is what tore on me because the embassy shows up and said, okay, well here’s a list of lawyers, here’s a couple magazines other than that, there’s nothing we can do for you. And I’m like, well wait, look at this. Look at this, look at this. I have all this evidence. And they said, sorry, we can’t get involved. And I was just like, that one’s like boom smack to the face.

Amanda Knox:

I actually had the same thing when I was in Italy where the embassy comes and they’re like, okay, so we have to let the local legal system run its course. And it’s like it’s taking forever. What are you talking about?

Michael Semanchik:

Yeah, they actually said if as long as Scott was not being treated differently because he was an American, there was nothing they could do.

Amanda Knox:

So even though the prison conditions were just utterly inhumane, as long as it’s inhumane for everybody, they can’t intervene.

Scott McMahon:

They had told my mom, they were like, why doesn’t he just pay her? Because I would get visits from cops like every six weeks saying, pretending they want to be my buddy, and they want a middleman a deal. Just you pay her and then she’ll drop the case against you and you drop your case against her and then you’re out. And I said, no, I couldn’t do it. Like saying I’m guilty. And the price they started at 5 million pesos was $125,000. And it would slowly go down, down in price. And every time I was just like, no. And mom met with someone at the State Department. They said, why don’t you just pay? Well for one, we didn’t have the money for two. Even if we did, he’s not going to do it. And they go, oh. She goes, so what are the chances now he’s going to fight it. What kind of chances he got? They go, we don’t know. We haven’t had anybody that’s won. So she goes back, go ahead.

Amanda Knox:

Well, I mean, I’m just astonished that it’s just the presumption is that the way you get justice in the Philippines as you just bribe people, that was just the established thing and you’re like, no, this is a justice system. The truth matters. And it sounds like because you are just not willing to pay your way out of prison, that they’re punishing you for that.

Scott McMahon:

Yeah, making it take longer. Yep. Yeah, they would’ve all got paid.

Amanda Knox:

Were you ever tempted to just be like, whatever, take money. I’m out of here. Just get your whole family out of the Philippines, anything like that?

Scott McMahon:

No, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t because I knew that if I was going to be in here and I was going to be away from my family and I was going to be away from my kids, I had to set an example for ’em of some sort. And that example was that if you’re innocent, you’re going to fight. And they didn’t understand what was going on at the time. They were five and two. After a few years, they figured it out, but

Amanda Knox:

Meanwhile, you’re missing their lives.

Scott McMahon:

Yeah, yeah, totally. I know. And I’ve had people say that I just would’ve paid. And I said, maybe that’s you. I don’t know. I just couldn’t do it because I wasn’t guilty. I’m just hardheaded that way. I wasn’t going to, and even though there was for a while, I was thinking, I’m going to get convicted. I still couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it.

Amanda Knox:

What made you think that you were going to get convicted?

Scott McMahon:

Just all the, they’d cancel my hearings. They wouldn’t let me present evidence. Then when my uncle met the judge’s husband and they’re like, sorry, that’s what she’s been told to come. She’s got to make an example of him even that I couldn’t pay. And then these cops had come in in about the fourth year, this one cop comes and they’re telling me, Scott, you got to call at the gate. So I go and there’s this little police guy and he’s like, oh, pot buddy, same deal. I’m like, Hey, I am like, let me guess you’re here to help me, right? He goes, yeah. He goes, yeah, man. You’ve been here a long time. Of course we’re doing all this in Tagalog, not English. I could speak really well. And so I’m saying, oh yeah. And he goes, yeah, you’ve been here a long time and this is going to take forever.

And I go, let me guess you want to help me? You’re going to Embroker a deal. He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They call it a regular. Then he says, you don’t have to pay her any money. You just drop your case against her and she’ll drop her case against you. And then you just give something. They call for the boys for them for facilitating the deal. And I go, oh. I go, okay. I go, you know what? You’re right. I’ve been here a long time. I go and I really miss my kids. I want to go home. Okay, I got an offer. I don’t know how much to pay. He goes, it’s up to you. Make an offer. And I said, okay. So I put my hand out theBar in front of him, and I go, one peso motherfucker. Fuck you. And he was just like,

Amanda Knox:

Mike, did you ever think about telling Scott to just pay just to get out?

Michael Semanchik:

I was trying to put myself in his shoes and try to understand where he was. And as he was kind of describing these interactions that he was having with the police, I was thinking, I can understand where he is coming from. He wants to maintain his innocence and doesn’t want to get pulled into the way they do business here. But hearing about the prison conditions, seeing that he had lost 25 pounds and seeing everybody else that was in the Courtroom, that certainly crossed my mind, but it was certainly not something that I ever said to him, you should just pay the money and get the heck out of here. I mean, I think there were some massive, obviously it’s an entirely different system, but there’s a lot of massive unknowns. As we were approaching the decision from the court. One main thing that to this day, I have a hard time wrapping my head around, is that in the Filipino system, they don’t believe in alibis.

Scott McMahon:

Yeah, it’s considered a weak,

Michael Semanchik:

It’s the weakest defense.

Scott McMahon:

Weak defense.

Michael Semanchik:

They just don’t really buy it. They’re like, if somebody,

Amanda Knox:

So they don’t believe in alibis in the sense that they don’t believe in witnesses who can confirm your alibi. Because clearly if you have video footage of you doing a chicken dance on TV, instead of raping somebody that would count, that would count as evidence, but they just don’t believe in witnesses as alibi evidence.

Michael Semanchik:

They don’t really give it much weight. They just instantly just assume that you’ve found some witnesses to pay off. And maybe it kind of leads. It’s because of the payoff system that they assume you can just go round up 20 people and pay him 50 bucks each to say you were at some party 10 hours south. So hearing that that was a defense that wasn’t going to be considered. It was like, alright, well then we need to come up with all of the other things, and if we don’t, then he’s in trouble. So I think that for me was a big thing where I was like, I’m concerned that we need to have the strongest possible case given this system of justice we’re working within.

Amanda Knox:

So you have to prove that what she’s saying is absolutely patently false. And you were able to do that by getting all those records from the facility. Okay. So at a certain point, how many years in does the United Nations office of the High Commissioner for human rights send a letter of concern?

Scott McMahon:

When was that? Three and a half years.

Michael Semanchik:

I was going to say 2014

Scott McMahon:

Right after bail got

Amanda Knox:

My research shows. 2015 actually. So four years into this, someone from the UN of Commission of Human Rights is finally pays attention to the fact that you are still being detained without a verdict for a crime that you didn’t commit.

Scott McMahon:

And the Philippine government didn’t even reply.

Amanda Knox:

No. Yeah, didn’t even matter them.

Scott McMahon:

They didn’t

Amanda Knox:

Care. Really?

Scott McMahon:

Yeah, they had care days. They didn’t even reply.

Amanda Knox:

Could the UN office do anything? Could they enforce anything or could they just wag their finger? What did that accomplish?

Michael Semanchik:

I don’t think it really accomplished much awareness, maybe. Yeah, I think we got a news story or two out of it, and that was about it.

Amanda Knox:

Okay. Was anyone aware of what was going on with you here in the us or was this mostly just covered in the Philippines?

Michael Semanchik:

We had a couple of stories run. We had a reporter in Seattle. The Seattle Times ran a few stories. There was a news station there, Scott, in Seattle. Do you remember? I don’t remember if you

Scott McMahon:

Chiro seven, Gary Hawker,

Michael Semanchik:

Chiro seven.

Scott McMahon:

He covered it for three years.

Michael Semanchik:

Yeah. Yeah. So we were getting every hearing we would report, we’d let the reporter know what had happened and try to get them to do more. It wasn’t really helping and it wasn’t moving the needle with the State Department. That never changed. But we were hopeful that maybe they would start to

Scott McMahon:

Try

Michael Semanchik:

To intervene

Scott McMahon:

Until the end that they started coming to the hearings.

Amanda Knox:

So what were you hoping that the State Department might do if you got their attention? What could the State Department have done to help you? Scott?

Scott McMahon:

I was hoping they could get me out of there because

Amanda Knox:

Just intervene up,

Scott McMahon:

Scott, you have no plug. Let’s pull ’em out. But then again, I’d never been in that situation before, so I didn’t know. But I thought that as an American in another country accused of something I didn’t do, I thought my government would help. And that was a big eyeopener. That’s the one thing. And as well, you go to a foreign country and something happens to you don’t expect your government to help you because it ain’t happening. And that’s sad.

Amanda Knox:

Have you, Mike, ever had cases where the State Department intervened in any meaningful way?

Michael Semanchik:

I remember John Kerry actually taking a meeting once on a case and thinking like, wow, that’s cool that the top official has been willing to lend an ear and hear what’s going on. Things have changed actually since Scott’s case a little bit. There’s this part of the state department that’s actually, they’re directly interacting with the president called SPI a. And SPI A essentially conducts these. It’s like they’re hostage negotiators. And mainly what they’re getting involved in is cases in countries where an American might just be picked up and used as leverage. And so Hawk can get involved and say, well, we have these Russians over here and you, those are Americans in Russia, so we can Embroker a deal. But

Amanda Knox:

Is that the Brittany Garner situation? That’s it,

Michael Semanchik:

Exactly. Yeah. Got it. Spi. So I’ve talked to them since they came on board, and SPI doesn’t have money to actually assist in the defense of these individuals. The Congress has never allocated funds to support innocent Americans abroad, which is something that I was interested in. I was like, look, if you guys have funds, I’ll go and support local counsel on the ground to prevent the wrongful conviction from happening in the first place, or to help in the post-conviction setting. We usually do here in the us. And they said, no, we don’t have the funds for that. The law doesn’t exist to allow us to give you any funds to go and do all of this work. So you’re going to have to keep getting people to donate to support this work. So that’s the current state. I mean, it is slightly better, I guess, because you could be part of a Embroker deal in a hostage negotiation like a trade. But a lot of those are, it’s like Iran, Russia, China. It’s the countries that might just arrest an American as a,

Amanda Knox:

Just because

Michael Semanchik:

Just to have a chip.

Amanda Knox:

So what ultimately tipped the scales in 2016?

Scott McMahon:

You know what? That’s a great question. Because we were finally able to get this trial to a close. They had changed the prosecutor and the prosecutor.

Amanda Knox:

The prosecutor retired in the middle of your exceedingly long trial.

Scott McMahon:

This guy was just out to get me from the get go, and they replaced him. And the new prosecutor was a friend of the local attorney that I had, and they talked and he basically said, listen, your boy’s not guilty, and I’m not going to sit here and press him. I’m going to leave it up to the judge. So

Amanda Knox:

He didn’t drop the charges, but

Scott McMahon:

He, when he came up to cross-examine me, he had a couple questions and that was it. And he says, I’m just going to leave it in the judge’s hands. And I don’t know what ever made the judge decide to equip me. And when she was told to make an example of me, I don’t know what happened. Maybe Mike does. No,

Michael Semanchik:

I don’t know what was going on in the judge’s mind. I just think though, that at that point we had presented, I thought we had presented pretty solid evidence that nothing she had said appeared to be true. She was caught in a ton of lies. And I think, I mean, it’s hard to know, but I think having the state department there, having folks there to actually be there, maybe had the judge having second thoughts about just agreeing to a conviction in the case. There was that pressure, the right pressure kind of forced justice in the case, but it’s hard to know. We haven’t talked about Scott, that the judge had the stroke halfway through

Scott McMahon:

All

Michael Semanchik:

These

Scott McMahon:

Proceedings. Oh, that’s right. Yeah, that’s right. And then they delayed everything for a year instead of giving us to a new judge, oh, we’re just going to wait until she gets better. Yeah, I forgot about that. That’s right.

Michael Semanchik:

Yeah. And what a stroke does to your memory and the way that what they were doing came

Scott McMahon:

Back. So kind of, yeah,

Michael Semanchik:

And the way that they were keeping track of what was said in each of the hearings was that kid with the big book, just handwriting everything. It was like

Scott McMahon:

He couldn’t translate for nothing. And the judge would be like, no, Andrew, that actually wasn’t correct. That was, oh, what a shit show. Yeah, that

Amanda Knox:

Was, oh my God,

Scott McMahon:

It was crazy.

Amanda Knox:

So what was the ultimate ruling? What did the judge decide?

Scott McMahon:

I was acquitted. I was found not guilty. And she even put in there, in her verdict, they call it a promulgation, that the lady was obviously lying and it was just revenge for the case. I’d filed against her. But when we went in for, and here’s the thing, it was August two was my promulgation, but she had already had the verdict prepared and signed since June 17th. So June 17th, I technically acquitted, but give you that one last stab. So we’ll wait, we’ll let him sit there a few more weeks. And we went in and there was nobody in the Courtroom. It was just me and a few people from the state department, my lawyers prosecutor. And she comes out and she says, okay, can you have your client stand up? And he goes, whatever happens. You tell the judge, thank you. I go, if she quits me, you want me to tell her thank you? He goes, yes. I go, no way. And so you stand up there and I’m standing there and she goes, Andrew, go to page eight and start reading. It’s like a 19 page thing. And he’s reading, reading, and I’m just standing there and memories from my childhood, everything just going through my head. I’m not really there, but I am. And all of a sudden I hear this not guilty, and I’m like, whoa, what? Whoa. Then I start paying attention again and boom,

Amanda Knox:

You’re having a life flashing before your eyes kind of moment because you were expecting the worst.

Scott McMahon:

I didn’t know what to expect. I was expecting I was 50 50. I knew it was 50 50. So I was thinking about everything was going. I’m standing up there, I’m going, God, you’re an idiot. Why didn’t you just pay to get out of here? But you kids, everything. And then you’re like, no, no, I’m doing the right thing. And it’s like I was in a dream, I think, and then I heard the not

Amanda Knox:

Guilty. So yeah. Here’s my question for you though, Scott. So in that moment you are questioning whether or not standing up for your principles, I’m an innocent man, was the right move and because in a way that cost you over five years of your life, was it worth it?

Scott McMahon:

It was. Because I can look at my kids and go, you know what? I didn’t wimp out. I did the right thing. And they know I did the right thing. Everybody’s different. A lot of people probably would’ve paid to get out. I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want my kids to see me like that while my dad got out because he paid. I wanted them to go, man, my dad got out. He was innocent and it was just a big thing for me. So they say, would you do it again? And I said, you know what? I said, maybe if more people would stand up to people like that and not pay after a while, they’re going to quit trying to get you to pay because they know people aren’t going to pay, but as long as they know you’re going to pay, they’re going to keep doing it. So someone’s got to start it. So figured why not do me?

Amanda Knox:

I have a question for the both of you, and it’s about patience because in your specific case, Scott, it took an absurdly long time for something that was very clear from the very beginning to be resolved. But also, Mike, you work in this field and here in the US it takes years if not decades, of working on cases to free innocent people. What do you think about patience and is it a value? What has it taught you or is it just torture?

Michael Semanchik:

I mean, certainly it does take years and years. And I think what it’s taught me is that the only way to get anything to happen in any of the cases in the us, and I think it’s God’s case too, is you just have to be tenacious while patient. You kind of just have to keep going and be that squeaky wheel a lot of times, and that person that’s going to commit to keep digging, otherwise you’re not, it’s not going to go well for you. But it’s certainly a challenge. I think it might be easier if there was only one case. If I had one case, if I had Scott’s case and Scott’s case only, and I was like, whatever, I’m going to move to the Philippines. We’re going to do this one case. We’re going to do it right, and I’m going to be there the whole time. And it’s like, we’re just going to move this through and we’re going to like this is going to, but that’s not reality. The reality is there’s like a thousand cases. So yeah, I don’t know. Patience is a requirement. I think in these types of cases,

Scott McMahon:

I had to learn patience. I didn’t have it much. And I would sit there and I would start, okay, I got this court date, this court date, this court, and I’d map everything out, okay, this is going to happen. This is going to happen, this happen. Then boom, I’m going to be free. And every time it wouldn’t happen. It just piss me off. And so my mental state was going like this, and the conditions, it didn’t help. But one day I just woke up and I said, all right. I said, all right, big guy. I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but if I did something wrong, okay, cool, but think about my kids. This isn’t fair to them. So whatever you need me to do, what do I ever I need to do? And that day I just said, you know what? I’m going to wake up now and go every day. I wake up. I’m one day closer to knowing I’m one day closer instead of trying to plan it all out and figure out. And when I did that, it was much, I won’t say much easier to deal with, but it helped the mental process. So I just took baby steps. Every day I wake up, I’d like, okay, I’m one day closer. One day closer.

Amanda Knox:

How long did it take you to get to do that mind switch? Because how many times? Yeah. Three years. Gosh, you’re stubborn,

Scott McMahon:

Dude. I know. I know. I know.

Amanda Knox:

How old were you when this happened?

Scott McMahon:

40. I was 40 when I went in.

Amanda Knox:

You were 40. Okay. So you had some years behind you to get super stubborn.

Scott McMahon:

Yeah.

Amanda Knox:

Okay. There’s a little crotchet to that. I hear. Oh my gosh. I mean, I think you’re right. You really make a compelling argument about motive. How do we stand up for an ideal justice world? And it’s not fair that someone can just accuse you just flip out of their teeth, and then you have to buy your way out of that predicament. If anything, someone committed a crime against you and you have to buy your just, that’s not a world we want to live. In a way, you’re right. The only way to not live in a world like that is to not give in, to not be bullied. But God damn it, what a price.

Michael Semanchik:

And it was pretty pervasive throughout Scott’s case too. We haven’t even talked about all of ’em, but the camera crew that came, she had some tie in to the news or something. So she paid the camera crew to show up that day. And then the Bureau of Immigration was the police force that came to make the arrest. And this wasn’t an immigration case, this was a rape case. But again, that was like she paid people to come and make this arrest and make this whole stink of it. And so it’s like all of it, the whole system is all based on how much money do you have to make a thing happen?

Scott McMahon:

Remember when I got out? So I got out two days later, my attorney calls me, I was at my uncle’s house. He goes, what are you doing? And I said, oh, I’m going to take the kids. We’re going to go up to the mall. I hadn’t seen the kids in a year, the last year and two months, they were back to the province. So he goes, no, you’re not. And I’m like, huh? I’m like, oh, shit. And he goes, listen, I have a student, former student that works for the Bureau of Immigration. You’re working visa expired while you were in prison. He goes, and they want $10,000 and they know where you are, and they’re on their way there to get you Now, get out of there, get your wife and kids out of there. And I’m just going, so my uncle had another house about half hour away, and I went there and we would get updated every time when they would find out where I was, they would call me because we would pay his former student. And that went on for a month.

Amanda Knox:

Why didn’t you just leave immediately? Was that just too hard? Yeah, it was too hard.

Scott McMahon:

It was blacklisted. They would’ve got me

Amanda Knox:

Wait, blacklisted. I

Scott McMahon:

Mean, what did they call it?

Michael Semanchik:

You didn’t have the proper visa paperwork to leave if you would’ve left their

Scott McMahon:

Right. And I didn’t have my

Michael Semanchik:

Passport. Immigration authorities, they would’ve just arrested him there at the airport. So that was another thing that we were trying to figure out was like, is this another one of those cases where we have to sneak him out of the country in some weird

Scott McMahon:

Cargo plane?

Michael Semanchik:

Yeah, like go find some XCIA agents who want to keep doing their old job and sneak ’em out. That was the or.

Amanda Knox:

But also just like what an impossible situation you were put in at every turn, someone is trying to extort whatever money they can get out of you because you’re at the mercy of the court system at that point.

Scott McMahon:

We did end up paying a thousand bucks what the visa extensions would’ve cost, but yeah.

Amanda Knox:

Okay. So at what point did you realize that you did need to, at what point in your imprisonment did you realize that you needed to get the hell out of the Philippines as soon as humanly possible?

Scott McMahon:

As soon as I got when I got out. But it was weird because when I was acquitted and I got back to the jail and they said, okay, you’re going to be out of here in two hours, get your stuff ready. And I was talking with the gang leader because this gang ran the inside there. And so him and I got to be pretty good friends. And I told him, I was like, I go, why don’t I just stay one more night and then I’ll leave tomorrow and we’ll just, we can hang out. And he’s like fucking crazy. Get out of here. But I was institutional. I was scared to go out. I fought all this time to get out. The time came to get out, and I was scared. Scared. I don’t know why. I think I was just institutionalized. I think I was scared to walk out everything. And it was hard to, a weird thing to come to grips with because you’re fighting the whole time. I’m going to get out of here. I’m going to get out here. I’m going to get out here. Time comes to get out and you’re going, I’ll just stay a little bit longer. Okay. And to realize that you’re scared to leave, it was wild. It was wild.

Amanda Knox:

Was it the relationships that you were going to leave behind or was it the responsibilities that you were going to take on in the free world? What was it that held you back?

Scott McMahon:

I think just scared of having to deal with the real world. I didn’t know what the real world was anymore, and that was my world. So I didn’t know what was coming. So it was strange. Really strange.

Amanda Knox:

What was it like to be with your kids again?

Scott McMahon:

Oh wow. That they were coming up and they were going to get in at midnight and we were going to video it when they got to the house and everything. It was going to be like this great big celebration. Hello? And what it was when they walked in, they saw me and they were like, my daughter’s like seven at the time. She’s just like, I remember she’s

Amanda Knox:

Biting her hands

Scott McMahon:

Like that and my son’s, and I’m like, come here, come here. Give me a hug. They’re like, come over. And I give ’em a hug. My, and I’m like, it wasn’t the way we thought it was going to be. They were scared. They didn’t know. Were their life’s been turned upside down.

Michael Semanchik:

They probably didn’t know you.

Scott McMahon:

Yeah, they didn’t. My daughter just turned 18 and we talk about it a lot. She doesn’t remember living with me. My son does, but my daughter doesn’t. She doesn’t remember. So

Amanda Knox:

She was eight years old by the time you got out.

Scott McMahon:

Yeah.

Amanda Knox:

And your son was 12.

Scott McMahon:

12. Yeah. Yeah. So I’ll tell her these things we used to do, man, when you were a kid, I go, you had the worst diapers. God, I hated changing those things. She’s like, but yeah, she didn’t remember. We had a couple family vacations we went on and she didn’t remember ’em. She remembers, she remember holidays and stuff like that, but she’s like, you were never in them. And we had to get, I think she’s still in therapy, but she had some real issues with abandonment issues that she dealt with because of them taking me away. Yeah. So

Amanda Knox:

What about you?

Scott McMahon:

Oh, I’ve got all kinds of issues. Yeah.

Amanda Knox:

Let me count the waves. Yeah. What’s going on?

Scott McMahon:

No, when I got back, let’s see, I started after about three years, I started just catching myself. I wouldn’t want to go outside. I was scared I was going to get arrested just one day, just boom. I’ve been out for three years and all of a sudden, just one day I’m like, fuck. I was on my way to the gym to train, and I was like, maybe I’ll go tomorrow. And I didn’t think nothing of it. But that was the start of this whole, I dunno what you call it, cycle of, I just freaked out. I thought I would hide in the basement and I have a little recording studio in the basement where I record music and stuff. So when I’m here, my wife, my daughter, they just leave me alone. They know I’m recording, whatever. So I could just sit down here and I’d be leaving for the gym at four.

I’d have to start hyping myself up at two by three, I’d be under the table. And then by four o’clock I’d be like, alright, you got this. You can go, you can go, you can go. And then I’d get upstairs and I’d open the door and boom, I was me again. Okay, cool. Yeah. Alright, I’ll see you guys later. Byebye, get in the car, drive out, get out to close the gate and go, no, I’m going back inside and I come back down to the basement and then hide. It was so weird. So then I started therapy and just started dealing with it all. And I was never really a therapy guy. Need therapy? Yes, I did. I did. And it’s the best thing I could have done. So now I’m okay. Some days are better than others. I still don’t sleep well. How about you? Having

Amanda Knox:

So sleep is my superpower. That’s actually a lot of the way that I was able to deal with some really tough emotions. If I was having just a really bad day, I would just be like, I’m done with this day. And I would just go to bed at 5:00 PM and I would sleep until the next day and I’d be like, I can deal with tomorrow. I can’t deal with today anymore. Sleep’s always been my superpower. But I understand that feeling of, for me, I wasn’t afraid that I was going to get arrested again in the us but what would happen, and this happened for a really long time, is I would be walking down the street in Seattle. And first of all, I was constantly paranoid that I was going to be recognized. I just hated the idea that someone would recognize me. So I was constantly just sort of keeping my head down.

And whenever I saw somebody coming towards me, I swear they looked exactly like a prison guard or somebody that I knew in the prison. I could have sworn that was that person. And they were walking towards me on the street and I’d be like, they’re not there. They’re not there. And then I would sort of give my head a shake and the person would be not that person. It was just a random person walking down the street. But my brain was so honed to recognize those same people. The only people that I saw over and over and over again for four years straight, didn’t see anyone else in the world. And I just was constantly seeing them everywhere and just feeling really paranoid constantly that I was being followed. And of course it didn’t help that I was actually being followed a lot of the time by people, paparazzi who were pretending to be guys skateboarding. And then all of a sudden out comes the camera and they’re taking pictures of me. So that kind of stuff was really hard for me. But yeah. What about you, Mike? Do you go to therapy?

Michael Semanchik:

I probably should.

Amanda Knox:

Yeah.

Michael Semanchik:

You could probably see the S skies that live on my eyelids.

Amanda Knox:

How do you emotionally process the responsibility of holding someone’s freedom in your hands?

Michael Semanchik:

Yeah, it’s not easy. Yeah, that’s a big responsibility. Everyone in our office does a lot of workouts and everyone has their thing that they like to do. So my current thing is I try to go and get rid of the stress by lifting or running. I run, I actually run now with my son faster than me. And

Scott McMahon:

How old is

Michael Semanchik:

He now? Not quite. He’s almost nine, but he’s faster than me.

Amanda Knox:

Oh damn. Oh damn.

Michael Semanchik:

So yeah, I just try to, and I don’t really love, I sw I’m in high school and college and I really get it back into it every once in a while. But what I’ve realized is that cardio allows me to detach from, I can just completely just be in a different place. As much as I hate doing cardio, it is a great thing to do to, you can just take your brain and put it in a different world and come out of that with clarity and kind of be re-energized and ready to go back at it. But I think we as the Innocence Network are the Ohio Innocence Project. I know has a person that’s come through and has done a lot of secondary trauma work. And that’s something that we probably could do better as a network is just all be more committed to just our own personal wellbeing. I’m a much better advocate when I’m taking care of myself.

Amanda Knox:

Sure. And there are only so many people who are willing to just do this kind of work. Yeah. It

Scott McMahon:

Takes a special,

Amanda Knox:

Oh, go ahead. No, I

Scott McMahon:

Say it takes a special person to do what you do. It’s amazing. And it means the world to people like me and like you to know that there’s someone like Mike, the comfort it gives you, it’s, Hey man, someone believes in me and we appreciate that man.

Michael Semanchik:

Yeah. The challenge for us is that we just can’t help everybody and we can’t do it fast enough. Those two things are the things that really weigh on everyone. It’s like, like I said, I wish I just had one case

Amanda Knox:

And I could just, what’s the source of the bottleneck? You just don’t have enough manpower, don’t have enough resources.

Michael Semanchik:

Both those things, those exact things. If we had more money for more lawyers to take more cases, then it wouldn’t be that each person has 15 cases and then we wouldn’t have a queue of a hundred waiting for lawyers to be assigned. We could spread that out. And these are just the cases for the ones that we’ve agreed to take in our little sphere, but we’ve talked, there’s no longer an Idaho Innocence project. That’s our next thing. That’s where we’re headed and we need to help the folks that are in Idaho. I mean, there’s an endless amount of work to do and a finite amount of resources. So how do you make it work? That’s the challenge.

Amanda Knox:

So question for both of you then. What are ways that everyday people could support, one, your work, Mike, but also two, your life. Scott, I don’t imagine that you came home to a nice gift basket from the State Department.

Scott McMahon:

When I was released the next day they called me down the State Department and my passport expires. They give me my passport and they said there’s like six of them. Oh, hey, we’re so happy you’re out. We’re so glad to out. I’m just thinking, thanks. Anything we can do for you, anything we can do for you. I said, yeah, as a matter of fact, you could get my girlfriend and my kids visa so they can come home with me. That’d be great. And they go, oh no, we can’t do that. And I go, well, where’s the ambassador? Ambassador is the representative of the United States, president of the United States of America. He could go and they’d be signed and we could be on our way. Oh, well, he’s not here. Oh, okay. So yeah, anything else? It’s

Amanda Knox:

Not like you’re going to leave without your kids.

Scott McMahon:

What were

Amanda Knox:

They?

Scott McMahon:

I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave because my kids were there, but I didn’t have a choice. So I thought that they would help and no, and my son is still not here yet. Can you believe that? He’s still not here. So when I got back, I petitioned them to come here and we had to take, so they make you take DNA tests for each kid and they charge a thousand bucks. A kid. I spent, I can’t tell you how much I spent on all that, but the DNA for my son and myself didn’t match

Amanda Knox:

And they

Scott McMahon:

Denied his petition. And I was here when I was already back here and I got the letter. I’m like, what? I was pretty fluid. Not that mattered to me. If anything, it probably made me love him more, but I knew that it was going to be a whole nother hurdle to get him over here. So I had to hire an attorney and we filed a petition to bring him here as my stepchild, and we had to prove that I was the only father he ever knew. And the mother abandoned him, and he lives with my wife’s parents down in the province, and it was just a big shit show. And

Amanda Knox:

Just now

Scott McMahon:

Three days ago, got all of his documentary documents that the state department wants, the NBC wants. They accepted them.

Amanda Knox:

Oh my God,

Scott McMahon:

Now,

Amanda Knox:

Congratulations. Oh my God.

Scott McMahon:

So now they’re, he’ll have his interview at the embassy with six weeks to six months is what they said.

Amanda Knox:

Wow.

Scott McMahon:

So hopefully in six months he can. He’s 21 now.

Amanda Knox:

Wow.

Scott McMahon:

Yeah, he’s

Michael Semanchik:

21.

Amanda Knox:

How long has it been since you’ve seen him?

Scott McMahon:

10 years.

Amanda Knox:

Oh my God.

Scott McMahon:

Almost 10 years. Yeah. We haven’t lived together as a family in since 20, I mean 2011. So yeah, that’s the thing that gets me. I really miss him.

Amanda Knox:

And you can’t get that time back.

Scott McMahon:

It’s gone. It’s gone. You can only move forward. So I just tell my daughter, I said, there’s only one thing in life I can guarantee you, sweetie. And that’s change. It’s all

Amanda Knox:

Why do you say that?

Scott McMahon:

Because it’s true. You don’t know what tomorrow. I mean, obviously we don’t know what tomorrow holds. I would’ve never thought that would happen to me, happened to me. I’m sure you thought what happened to you never would’ve happened. You know what I mean? So it really changes your outlook on life. At least it did for me. But yeah, change.

Michael Semanchik:

Scott, would you ever go back to the Philippines?

Scott McMahon:

When I got back, I’d been back for a couple weeks and I got a message, a messenger from a friend of mine, and it was a picture of him in a pair of boxer shorts from the waist down the back of his legs were beaten purple. And I’m like, it’s weird. And then it said, did this ever happen to you, Scott? And I didn’t reply, so I knew it wasn’t my friend. Right. A couple of days later, I got another message messenger message, and it was another picture and it was worse. And they said, yeah, I bet this did happen to you. And so I replied and I said, no, that didn’t happen to me. And they said, are you sure? I said, yeah. They said 50 K. So what they had done is went and arrested. My friend planted drugs on him. They didn’t know he was my friend.

And then they started looking through his friends list he got that we can get money from. Oh, here’s this white guy, do a little research. Oh wow, man. Okay, so 50 K. And I said, I didn’t reply. And then the phone rang and I answered the phone and it was my friend and he was in pain, dude. And he was like, bro, he’s like, please help me. And I’m like, hello, hello. Pretend like I couldn’t hear him. Hello. And I just hung up. I knew if I paid 50 K, which would’ve been a thousand dollars, they would’ve kept beating him. And then they said, oh, that’s not enough. We won a hundred K. It would’ve went on and on. So the best thing I could have done for him was what I did. He got beat again, but they let him go after that.

Amanda Knox:

Wow. That is brutal.

Scott McMahon:

Yeah.

Amanda Knox:

So a big no. Then I’m hearing a big no, no thank you.

Scott McMahon:

Then they said they were saying something. I’m like, you know what? Screw you guys. And they’re like, if you ever come back to the Philippines, you’re dead is what they said. And they said, well, you guys had five and a half years to figure it out. He knew where I was and someone asked me, they said, you’re dead if you went back there. Do you believe Michael? Hell yeah. I do believe him. So yeah, I don’t think I’ll be going back.

Amanda Knox:

Well, thank you so much both of you for sharing your story with me. Scott, I wish I could talk more, but I actually have to run. I’m late for my next meeting, so I’m going to salute you, sir. We should see each other since you are not far away from me,

Scott McMahon:

Right? Yes. Let’s do that. Seriously, I love

Amanda Knox:

That would be nice. Yeah.

Scott McMahon:

Okay.

Michael Semanchik:

Thanks so much for tuning in to For the Innocent. Be sure to go follow hard knocks. We’ll leave a link to the show in the description. Until next time, I’m your host, Michael Semanchik, and you’ve been listening to For The Innocent On Legal Talk Network in InfoTrack Company.

Continue Reading