From the day the FBI arrested him in 2003 and told him the government was seeking the death penalty, Benjamin Frandsen labored fiercely for his release. His case was overturned twice on appeal (his third trial will likely be overturned again this year), and he was found suitable for parole three times in a row. Five separate times he beat LIFE in California. After 18 years fighting a sentence that began as Life Without the Possibility of Parole, the Parole Board finally released him on December 10, 2021
This week on the Ben Free podcast, Ben interviews Vernon Robinson. author of All Men Are Created: The Painful Odyssey of a Wrongfully Convicted Man. The day of Vernon's arrest was a day like any other, until flash-bang grenades exploded in his living room and the Los Angeles S.W.A.T. officers burst into his home and hauled him off to jail. The nascent AFIS fingerprint registry had. according to LAPD, selected Vernon as the killer in a high-profile murder case. What they didn't mention was that it had also selected 9 other possible suspects, and Vernon was far away, training in the Naval Training Center at the time of the murder. How could this happen? Tune in with Ben and Vernon to find out how, and what needs to be done to stop travesties like this from happening again.