How One Man's Faith Moved Him to Fight for A Wrongly Imprisoned Man

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For me, if I have to buy it on a credit card, if I can't pay that card at the end of the month, I can't afford it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Learn more at es.statefarm.com. State Farm is a proud partner of the Michael Tura Podcast Network. Hey, this is Lance Bass from Frosted Tips. So my husband Michael and I just took an amazing road trip to the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Vegas. And thanks to Hyundai, we were able to record a special episode just for you guys along the way. We're so excited to take you on this journey with us. You're not going to want to miss this one, right, babe? No, you won't. Here's a quick preview.

You can listen now wherever you get your podcasts. I loved being on the tour bus. I don't sleep better than when I'm on a bus. But I also had to share a bus with Joey Fatale. But the good thing is eventually when we made it, we had a bus at a shower on it.

This episode is brought to you by the all-electric Hyundai IONIQ 5 and IONIQ 6. And we continue with our American stories. Up next, we have a story from Jim McCluskey, co-author of the book entitled When the Truth is All You Have.

We start off with Jim sharing a bit about his childhood and early adult life. My brother and I were made to go to Sunday school. But mom and dad were completely unchurched. And so they would just drop us off and pick us up. So one day when I was in fourth grade, I said to dad, how come Rich and I have to go to Sunday school and you and mom don't even go to church?

Well, that stung him, I guess. Maybe mom and dad were feeling a little guilty before that, but I provoked them by that question. And then they started going to the same church that I was going to Sunday school. They became stalwart and very active members of the Bethany Presbyterian Church in Hammertown.

Dad became a very important lay leader of the church. When I was in grade school, my Christian faith was very important to me. I was in fourth, fifth and sixth grade. I was fearless at that time because of my Christian faith. In other words, I wouldn't go along with the crowd. I wouldn't peer pressure didn't faze me in grade school. But once I hit junior high, then I fell into that wanting to please my peers and their values became my values. My faith was really compromised.

When I was in high school, I'll never forget this. I saw a short documentary on the nightlife in Tokyo with all the bars and the beautiful Japanese women in their kimonos and gated shoes, walking the streets and all the lights. I was just fascinated with that mysterious city. And that's where I wanted to go. I wanted to go to Tokyo. I wanted to be a quote unquote international businessman. I always had this obsession to work overseas, international.

I thought that was, again, a great way to live a life. But I didn't know specifically what I wanted to do. So I decided, well, I'm going to join the Navy. And so I went to Officer Kennedy Training School in Newport, Rhode Island in the summer of 64. While at OCS, when you're nearing graduation, which I did in November of 64, you fill out what they call a dream sheet. My first choice that I put on my dream sheet was shore duty Japan. And that's exactly what I got.

That in and of itself is a miracle. The Navy gave me what I wanted. And they assigned me to the communication station in Yokosuka, Japan, which is about an hour's train ride south of Tokyo along with Tokyo Bay. As a commissioned 22-year-old Navy officer, I'm on my way to the land that I've always wanted to go to, Japan. Three years later, then I was separated from the service. And now I'm going to the American Graduate School for International Management in Glendale, Arizona, to get a degree to return to Tokyo in a business capacity.

I graduated from the American Graduate School for International Management in October of 68. You know, I wanted to go to Japan, but I couldn't find a company willing to send me to Japan, in Tokyo in particular. So, I borrowed $1,200 from my parents as a stake. And I flew to Tokyo without a job, no prospects for a job. But I did have the name of a man by the name of Bud Inglesby, who had started up this management consulting firm and market research firm called Coral. And he hired me. And so, I worked for Bud for three or four years.

As it turned out, unbeknownst to me or the staff of Coral, Inglesby secretly sold Coral to a joint venture between the Fuji Bank of Japan and, in those days, the First National City Bank of New York, now Citicorp. And it became readily apparent to me that I had no future in that firm. I decided it's time to go home to Philadelphia. Now, here we are in the summer of 1974.

I've come back from Japan disillusioned, disheartened, feeling betrayed by Inglesby. But now I'm looking for a whole new career. And I wrote a letter to 25 different consulting firms, including a local international management consulting firm called Hay, H-A-Y, Hay Associates. Hay was the only company who was interested in hiring me.

So, I was one for 25, but I struck gold with the one, Hay Associates. Now, at the same time, during those five years, I felt that an important part of my earlier life, my boyhood life, if you will, I had gone completely off track. I had left the church. I had nothing to do with the church. When I came home from Bucknell in my freshman year, I said to Dad, Dad, I'm never going to church again. And so I didn't darken the church doorstep from when I was 19 until I'm now working for Hay in the 70s.

I'm now working for Hay in the 70s, in my early 30s. But I felt the need to go back to church and rekindle my faith, because I felt that my lifestyle was not a good one. My moral compass had gone south. So I joined the Paley Presbyterian Church, which was very close to my house in Paley, Pennsylvania. And the minister there was Dick Streeter, with whom I'm still close with today.

His message was to wash the other's feet, to give of yourself, to help the other, to follow the gospels of Christ. And that started to really take hold within me. I was starting to become disillusioned, even though things were going well, with the corporate life. I felt I was leading a shallow, superficial, self-centered life. And in reading the words of the gospels where Jesus talks about what it means to be a disciple and to follow him, now I felt I was a hypocrite, leading one life in darkness, at the same time steeped in the scriptures.

So this was a battle going on within me. And finally I decided, after consulting only with Dick Streeter, that I think Christ was calling me to leave the business world and become a ordained Presbyterian church pastor. Which I saw that Dick Streeter, the minister of this large congregation, he was touching the hearts and souls and life-changing way of a lot of his parishioners and even people in the community. I wasn't touching anybody's heart or soul.

I wasn't serving anyone except myself. And this really started to bother me deeply. And I wanted a life where I felt I was serving others in a purposeful, authentic, meaningful way. And I felt the church pastor was the way to do it, just like Streeter. In 79 I decided to leave, not only leave, hey, but leave the business world and go to Princeton Theological Seminary.

And when I told my boss, Bill Dinsmore, who was the second top executive in the firm, I said, Bill, there's something I need to tell you. His first words were, Jim, I didn't even know you went to church. So I was still leading two different lives. It was time for me, not that they cared all that much, but to tell the world who I really am, what's really important to me. So off to the seminary I went. So for the next three years, I'm going to be at the seminary to earn that degree. Two of those three years, all of those students, all of us, were required to do field education work in the seminary. Hospitals, churches. I chose Trenton State Prison. It was just a matter of curiosity. I've never been in a prison.

I had no experience in any regard, in any way, with the criminal justice system. But who are these people? Who are these inmates? And so I said, I'm going to join the program as a student chaplain. And you're listening to Jim McCluskey tell the story of his journey from businessman, international businessman, to pastor. And in the end, returning to his youth and that connection between the soul, his heart, and the rest of his life. When we come back, we're going to join Jim on that journey, the journey of becoming a pastor.

More of Jim McCluskey's story here on Our American Story. Stay farm is committed to being your top choice when ensuring the things that matter to you. My cultura podcast host, Dramos, also believes in the power of financial knowledge.

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Those words earlier in that segment. And in his story, my moral compass had headed south. And that was the swing and determining factor in this big pivot. We left off with Jim deciding to return to church and reignite the faith he'd had as a boy. Going back to church inspired him to leave the business world and pursue a seminary degree. While there, he had to choose required field education work. And he chose, of all places, Trenton State Prison.

Let's pick up where we last left off. I was assigned to the maximum security unit. He assigned me to two different cell blocks, each containing 20 men in their cells 24 seven. Our role was to go cell to cell, two afternoons a week, every Tuesday and Thursday, from one to four o'clock in the afternoon, and just be their friend.

Talk to them, not to evangelize, just talk about whatever they wanted to talk about. One of the 40 men there, he was assigned to the maximum security unit. One of the 40 men there was a man by the name of Jorge De Los Santos, nickname Chiefy. He was the only one who was telling me that he was an innocent man. He did not do what he was convicted for, and that he was serving a life sentence for a Newark, New Jersey murder. Now, we were forewarned, do not under any circumstances, get involved in either their personal or legal problems, situation.

And if you do, you're out, you're out of here, never to come back again. Up until my tenure as a student chaplain, that had been strictly enforced and obeyed by all those who came before me in years before. Chiefy, when I arrived at his cell, which was midway down one cell block, all he would talk about was that he's innocent, he got framed by the prosecutors and the police in Newark, he never killed anybody, and he was in prison for life, for the botched armed robbery attempt of a used car lot in Newark, where whoever did this shot and killed the proprietor of that used car lot. Now, at that point, I'd never been a juror, I'd never been in a courthouse, I had absolutely zero connection or experience with our criminal justice system. I believed at that time that if you were convicted, and certainly you were guilty, that the police and prosecutors would never countenance supporting perjury or in any way presenting anything other than credible, substantial evidence of guilt, that they were as honest as the day is long. And yet here this man is, now, he was 28 years old when he was convicted, he's 34, 35 by the time I encounter him, and he was very honest and open with me about his lifestyle.

He was a heroin addict of Puerto Rican descent, raised in the harshest of housing projects in Newark, New Jersey. Two witnesses convicted him and sent him away. One was an eyewitness who claimed that when he was driving his tow truck by the used car lot, he heard gunshots, and then he looked in his rear view mirror and he saw, he claimed to have seen Chiefy and another man, who he identified as Lamont Harvey, fleeing the crime scene. The second evidence used against Chiefy was a man by the name of Richard Della Sante, who claimed that while he and Chiefy were in the Essex County Jail, Chiefy awaiting trial based only on the eyewitness account, Della Sante claimed that Chiefy confessed the crime to him. Both witnesses against Chiefy were drug addicts.

Della Sante, in particular, had an extensive criminal record, although that was misrepresented at trial. As I said to Chief, I said, come on, are you telling me, you're telling me not only that you're innocent, but that the prosecutors framed you? Now, why in the world would they frame you, Chiefy?

You're, you were a junkie, you were basically a throwaway. And why would they conjure up and go to all that trouble to frame somebody like you? He said, that's just the point. The police convinced the eyewitness to identify me and Harvey because that helped them clear a case. That's all they care about, clearing cases. The prosecutors, when you're a prosecutor, you want to get convictions. And if you don't get convictions and you go to trial, then when you come back to the prosecutor's office, you're not coming back with what you were there for in the first place, a conviction.

So I had a very difficult time believing that. Over time, three months, September, October, November, I finally said to Chief, I said, look, I'm not supposed to do this, but I'm going to get your trial transcripts. I want to read what the state has to say.

So I did. I was able to get his trial transcripts. And I read them over the Thanksgiving holiday of 1980.

Some 2,000 pages of documents. And basically what I learned in reading the transcripts was essentially what Chiefy had confirmed. And then I learned that Richard Della Sante had not only given a false, given a jailhouse confession against Chiefy, but he did the same thing against his first cousin, Danny Della Sante. He claimed at Danny's trial that Danny confessed the crime to him. And Danny got convicted based on Richard Della Sante's jailhouse confession and sent away to life. So I read the transcripts and now I come back from Thanksgiving.

Now we're in early December. And Chiefy says to me, he said, look, you've asked me a million questions and I've answered every question that you've posed as truthful as possible. Now I have a question for you, Chiefy said to me. I said, what's that? He said, do you believe I'm innocent? And I said, well, yeah, I do believe you're innocent. Then he threw out the $64,000 question. Well, what are you going to do about it? He says to me, I said, Chiefy, what do you mean?

What am I going to do about it? Well, there's nothing I can do. You know, this is way beyond my 37 years of experience in life. I don't know anything about murder.

I don't know anything about trials and criminal justice and DAs and police. I know nothing about, that's a whole new world for me. He said, well, Jim, I've been on my hands and knees, praying to God for someone to believe in me and work to free me. Whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not, you're that man. God brought you to my cell to work, to free me and bring me home to my wife, Alina, who was stuck by me all these years, even in my drug addiction days. What are you going to do? He said, go back to your nice, safe, little secure seminary and pray that somebody will help free Chiefy, will help rescue him from this wrongful conviction that you believe occurred.

I said, well, yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking about doing. He said, if you leave me behind knowing that I'm believing I'm innocent, then you're not really a man of faith. How can you square that with God? And you've been listening to Jim McCloskey tell one heck of a tale, and it gets me to thinking about the two questions in the Bible. The first question God ever asks man, which, of course, he asks Adam, where art thou? And the first question that man ever asks God, and that's Cain saying, Am I my brother's keeper? And here is Jim on his faith journey in seminary, trying to fashion an answer to both of those questions, God's and man's.

We continue with this remarkable story, Jim McCloskey story here on Our American Stories. State Farm is committed to being your top choice when ensuring the things that matter to you. Michael Dura podcast host dramas also believes in the power of financial knowledge. That's why he makes sure to share his financial tips on his podcast, Life as a Gringo. Do you personally have your own sort of calculator as far as mentally when you want to treat yourself to something?

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Your actual range will vary. And we return to our American stories. We've been listening to Jim McCloskey, author of When the Truth is All You Have and founder of Centurion, an innocence project dedicated to freeing the wrongly convicted. Jim had begun his seminary field work in prison when he was confronted by a man who claimed to be innocent. And that's Chiefy. Jim was challenged on what he was going to do next.

Let's return to Jim McCloskey. And that shook me up, it struck me right to the core of my heart and soul. This man was confronting me with who am I? What do I really believe? What does God expect of me? So, I went back to the seminary, quite disturbed by this challenge. I prayed, I read scripture, then I came across the book of Isaiah chapter 59 and Isaiah says in this chapter, no one goes to law honestly. They lie and spin their web of deceit. We look for justice, but there is none.

Truth has fallen from the public squares. The Lord saw this and was upset and wondered why there was no one to intervene in seeking justice. And I looked at that word intervene and I said I wonder if this is God's sign to me to intervene on behalf of Chiefy.

And I felt that it was. And so I went into prison the next week, actually a little before Christmas, and I told him I have a Christmas present for you and Elena. And so I said Chiefy, I'm going to take a year off and I'm going to do what I can, move the ball forward to try and free you. I'm going to start that in a month or so after we finish our final exams. I believe that I was called by God to do this.

So I'm doing it and we'll see how it works out. We embraced through the cell bars and silently tears coming down. We were both moved by what was going to take place. I decided to do this investigation myself. I'm 38 years old. I've been around the world. I know a little bit about how the world works.

Nevertheless, I was a greenhorn. The first thing I did, I went to Newark and stood at the exact same spot where Pat Pusilo said he was when he heard the gunshots and saw these two men flee the scene of the crime through the rear view mirror of his tow truck in darkness. And I determined very easily and quickly, it was impossible for him to have seen what he said he saw based on darkness and distance.

Number one. So he's out as a credible witness. It took 10 minutes, which by the way, Chiefy's lawyer never did. Now I'm going to investigate Richard De La Sante, the jailhouse confession person. Richard said he had only been arrested. He had only been convicted of two crimes when in fact he had been arrested 40 times as a habitual criminal and had testified in other cases.

When at Chiefy's trial under direct examination by the trial prosecutor, Kevin Kelly, he claimed he had never testified in any other case at all. That was a lie. And I had the documents to prove that was a lie. Then I would write Richard De La Sante letter after letter. It took a year before he finally agreed to meet with me. I got a call from him in February of 1982.

No amenities. He says, I know who you are. I know what you've been doing. I got your letters. I'm in the Hudson County jail in Jersey City.

If you want to talk to me, come on up. Later that week, I spent two full days visiting with Richard De La Sante and he told me the whole story and I was taping all his conversations with me. So we had a whole rich treasure full of conversations and his confessions about all the wrongdoing he had done in Chiefy's case and Danny's case and other cases on behalf of this crooked, corrupt Essex County prosecutor's detective who was his handler. And I met with the prosecutor, Kevin Kelly, and told him all this information. I was naive. I still believed at that time that Kevin Kelly, although he mistakenly, he honestly mistakenly convicted a innocent man, when he hears this new evidence that establishes that, he might even help me free Chiefy.

That was so naive and so dumb. And when I told Kevin Kelly what I had, and then I telephoned him. When I telephoned him months later, when I learned even more, he hung up on me and said, Jim, I don't give a darn if 10 people come forward and confess to this crime, you know, Chiefy's good for this and he hung up on me. One of the most important things I did, and I got lucky, is I need a lawyer.

I can't do this by myself. Paul Castellaro began work on this case with me. We were a team in late 1981. Paul was able to draw up a very compelling writ of habeas corpus and we got a hearing in federal court for the federal district judge to, to consider and review all the documented evidence as well as witness testimony, post-conviction witness testimony. We put Kevin Kelly on the stand. He had to account for what we knew to be his subordination of perjury.

And I almost felt sorry for him by the time Paul got through with him, but I didn't. On July 6th, 1983, three or four months after the hearing, Honorable District Judge Frederick B. Lacey reversed the conviction and found as a fact that de la Sante lied to stay out of prison and that the prosecutor knew that he had lied and supported perjury. And on July 26th, 1983, several weeks later, Paul Castellaro and I went down to Trenton State Prison and picked Chiefy up, a free and exonerated man, and brought him home to his wife in Newark that glorious day. Up until that point, it was the best day by far of my entire life. Now, during the two and a half years I was working for Chiefy, I had met three other New Jersey lifers who I had come to believe were also innocent, that all three were asking me to please do for them what I had done for Chiefy after we freed them.

Now we come to another crossroads, which is in July of 1983, Chiefy's freed. I had finished my Master of Divinity degree program, that was completed at the same time. But at that time, I was broke. However, just at that time, now I have a choice to make, am I going to now go on and get ordained as a church pastor, or what am I going to do with these three other men? Just when I'm struggling with that decision, I received a $10,000 tax-free gift from my mother and father.

They had come into some extraordinary income from an old investment they had made years before and they gave each of us three kids a $10,000 tax-free gift. I looked at that as matter from heaven and seed money to begin what I later called Centurion Ministries. I decided to establish a nonprofit organization called Centurion Ministries, and I named it Centurion after the Centurion. In the Gospel of Luke, the Centurion, standing at the foot of the crucified Christ, looks up and says, surely this one was innocent.

That's where the name comes from. Then I began work, I started to work on those three cases. Eventually, we freed all three. Renee Santana was freed in February of 86, Nate Walker was freed in November of 86, and Damaso Vega was freed in November of 1989.

And a terrific job on the storytelling and production by Faith Buchanan and Robbie Davis. And a special thanks to Jim McCluskey for his work with Chiefy and with so many others. Centurion has freed 67 men and women serving life sentences, and all again because he answered God's calls. Who am I? he asked. What do I believe and what does God require of me when challenged by Chiefy? And Isaiah chapter 59 provided the answer for him. God had sent a sign to me, he said.

That word intervene just kept calling at me. And by the way, you can get to Jim's organization Centurion at centurion.org. Jim McCluskey's story here on Our American Story.

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