LAPD sent an innocent man to PRISON for 30 YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Artwork

Ben Free Podcast

They told them they had LIFE, and they were never coming home. Now they are home through overturned convictions and survived sentences. Recently coming home himself after 18 years in prison, Benjamin Frandsen leads us on weekly interviews through the emotions, thoughts and processes of those who have survived their heavy handed sentences. When Benjamin Frandsen was only ten months old, his mother would sit him up on the kitchen counter so she could chat with him, not in baby-talk lexicon but rather like a small university colleague. After witnessing this phenomenon one day, her friend exclaimed, “Why do you talk to that baby like he’s Winston Churchill?” “Because,” she fired back, “if I wanted him to saying nothing but woodjy-goodgy- gaga all the time, I’d talk to him like that. I want him to use his words!” And use them he did. At the age of ten, he delighted her with a homemade book of his original poetry. Basking in the light of her proud face, he felt as if the course of his life were being set, like tumblers in a lock clicking into place. He knew then what he wanted to be when he grew up—a wordsmith. Since then, he’s written environmental impact report, copywriting for Barbie™, and a professional contract screenplay. His publications have included several editorials, flash-fiction and essay pieces in Columbia University’s exCHANGE magazine, poetry in Iconoclast, and memoir excerpts through the Vera Institute of Justice. He has won prizes and honorariums for screenplays, websodes, poetry, and essays through PEN America and has been published in their annual anthologies for three years running. Last year his essay earned him PEN’s prestigious L’Engle-Rahman Prize for Mentorship, and this year he is launching his career in professional public speaking, writing and developing scripts forThe Coin studio, and hosting his own show called the Ben Free podcast. Recently, his close friend cautioned him, “You can’t just do everything!” Ben simply grinned and said, “Watch me.”

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Ben Free Podcast

LAPD sent an innocent man to PRISON for 30 YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

February 21, 2022 • Benjamin Frandsen • Season 1 • Episode 5

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.

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Benjamin Fransen

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