LATIF NASSER: Hey, this is Latif. Just quick, fair warning: this episode is not for children. It's true crime-y, gets a little grisly. Onto the show.

[RADIOLAB INTRO]

LATIF: Hey, I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab. No Lulu today.

PETER SMITH: I hit record. I hit record.

LATIF: Instead, I'm gonna be joined ...

PETER: All right. Here we go.

LATIF: ... by reporter Peter Smith.

PETER: So yeah, we go back a couple of years, and maybe even a couple of years on this idea.

LATIF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, like, honestly, I've been waiting to do this story, and I couldn't do it myself, and it took you, Peter, a superior reporter to me.

PETER: [laughs] Or just a more serendipitous reporter, maybe.

LATIF: Maybe.

PETER: So yeah, maybe I can tell you how I sort of like stumbled into this story.

LATIF: Sure. Tell me.

PETER: Okay, yeah. So I'm a reporter who covers forensics and science, and I'd spent a lot of time researching dogs. And I think you know that.

LATIF: [laughs] you've pitched us so many stories about dogs.

PETER: Yeah, I was reporting on dogs for probably more years than I'd like to admit, but this is—this is not a story about dogs.

LATIF: Yeah.

PETER: And anyway, in the course of that reporting, I talked with an investigator. And after our conversation, he forwarded me some documents. And I took a look at them and I learned about this case which seemed, like, unusual and interesting for a lot of reasons, and I thought I would, you know, keep tabs on it. And so I flagged it, and eventually I got this update that the case had settled out of court with a plea called an Alford plea.

LATIF: Okay. That's the thing. That's the thing I've been obsessed about for years.

PETER: The only thing I knew about it was that you had set some Google alerts for this Alford plea.

LATIF: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. I mean, I did it because when I first came across it, like, I couldn't believe it was a thing. I couldn't believe I had never heard of it before. Like, you get charged with a crime in the United States, like, there's only so many ways you can play it. You can say you're guilty, you can say you're not guilty. If you say nothing, that's called a no contest plea. But it turns out there's a fourth option, which is, like, completely strange and totally paradoxical.

PETER: Right. No, I mean, the plea—this plea is the complete opposite of what you would hope or expect from the justice system. We expect the justice system to be able to separate, like, truth from lies and to, like, show us who's guilty and show us who's innocent. And I feel like this plea shows you at the heart of the system it actually doesn't do any of those things.

LATIF: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

PETER: I probably got ahead of myself there, right?

LATIF: I mean, well kind of. But eventually ...

PETER: No, I think eventually we get to the plea, but I first want to start with this—this case that led me to the plea.

LATIF: Great.

PETER: So ...

[car door slams]

PETER: ... about a year ago ...

MATT KIELTY: Da da da da da. Okay.

PETER: ... I went to Pittsburgh with producer Matt Kielty.

MATT: Okay. And everything's on a hill.

PETER: To meet the guy who's at the center of this case.

MATT: Hey, I'm Matt.

GREG BROWN JR.: Greg.

MATT: Nice to meet you, Greg.

PETER: Peter. Nice to meet you.

GREG BROWN JR.: What's up, Pete?

PETER: Greg Brown Jr.

GREG BROWN JR.: How you doin'?

PETER: All right.

GREG BROWN JR.: My brother Fred.

PETER: Peter. Nice to meet you.

FRED BUCKNER: What's your name?

PETER: Peter.

FRED BUCKNER: Peter. Nice to meet you.

GREG BROWN JR.: Nice to meet you, man. How you doing?

PETER: Good. Good.

PETER: Greg is in his mid-40s. He's a short guy. He's wearing a Steelers shirt.

GREG BROWN JR.: You know, I'm a Steelers guy. [laughs]

PETER: Uh oh, are those all your papers?

GREG BROWN JR.: That's all my brother's, man. I'll move some crap out of the way.

PETER: We actually met Greg at his brother's house, and we all kind of just took seats in the living room.

MATT: All right, so Peter was gonna record himself. I'll just move this thing back and forth between us.

GREG BROWN JR.: All right. Let's get right to it.

PETER: So basically, this all starts the day before Valentine's Day, February 13, 1995.

GREG BROWN JR.: Right. I was at my cousin's house chilling.

PETER: Playing some video games.

GREG BROWN JR.: Talking shit, you know? [laughs]

PETER: But it was late at night. It was a school night, and Greg was 17.

GREG BROWN JR.: And it's freezing that night. Icy out there.

PETER: So he leaves his cousin's, hurries home.

GREG BROWN JR.: About a 15-20-minute walk. I get home.

DARLENE BUCKNER: And I'm in the process of cooking.

PETER: His mom Darlene, she's in the kitchen making a tuna salad.

DARLENE BUCKNER: For a family repast.

GREG BROWN JR.: For a funeral.

DARLENE BUCKNER: And I realized I was short of ingredients.

PETER: And she wants to finish the salad for the next morning but, you know, it's super late at night, like 11:30. And it's not the safest neighborhood, so she decided to bring Greg with her and drive to a supermarket that's still open.

GREG BROWN JR.: We were only in there no longer than 20 minutes.

DARLENE BUCKNER: We get back in the car.

PETER: And they drive home. You with me?

LATIF: Yeah, so far.

PETER: Okay, so they're driving back into their neighborhood.

GREG BROWN JR.: And you can see, like, flashing lights.

PETER: Smoke. Fire trucks.

GREG BROWN JR.: But I'm joking, like, "Is that our house?"

PETER: They drive a little closer.

DARLENE BUCKNER: It was our house.

GREG BROWN JR.: We're panicking. We want to know if everybody's out of the house—my sister, her daughter, my baby brother, my stepdad.

PETER: Greg just jumps out of the car, runs up this hill.

GREG BROWN JR.: To the back of the house.

PETER: Darlene drove around to the front.

DARLENE BUCKNER: But it was blocked off. And I told the firefighters or police, whoever was there—I said, "Hey, that is my—" I said, "Something's going on at my house," and then left my car up there. And I just struck out, running down the street.

PETER: When she gets to the house, she sees the rest of her family.

DARLENE BUCKNER: Everybody was safe.

PETER: But since it was so cold out that night, they walk over to a neighbor's house and just, like, wait there.

GREG BROWN JR.: And I was like, "Damn, now they won't be able to save the house. Everything you got is in there."

DARLENE BUCKNER: Everything, you know? Everything.

PETER: And for the next couple of hours, they're just in their neighbor's living room, when eventually this detective walks into the living room and he tells the family three firefighters are dead.

LATIF: Oh my God!

DARLENE BUCKNER: And it was—I couldn't—it was just terrible.

PETER: Around, like, three in the morning, someone comes in and tells them, like, you're gonna have to stay at a hotel. You can't go back to the house.

DARLENE BUCKNER: So people gave us stuff.

PETER: With mostly whatever they have on them.

DARLENE BUCKNER: Pitched in and bought, like, underclothes and stuff like that.

PETER: But right as they're doing that, as they're starting to pick up the pieces, a very different story about what actually happened that night is starting to emerge.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: So this is the active invest—fire investigation tape.]

PETER: So hours after the fire gets put out ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Check one two. Test, test, test.]

PETER: ... the deputy fire chief, he shows up and does a walkthrough of the burned-out house.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Test, check check.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Okay, we're in the hallway now.]

PETER: And he starts in the front hallway.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: You can see where the fire came up through the walls and scorched the sides of the walls up there.]

PETER: He and the cameraman start making their way down the hall.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Towards the steps.]

PETER: Then descend this, like, collapsed flight of stairs which goes into the family room, where you can see, like, on the walls ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Those are hand marks on the wall. Yeah, right here.]

PETER: ... the hand marks of the three firefighters who died in this room as they were basically trying to feel their way out.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Oh, man. You poor guys.]

PETER: And then they make their way down another flight of stairs.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Step out of the water. You all right?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Okay, ready?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Yeah. Go ahead.]

PETER: Where they enter ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Okay, we're now in the basement.]

PETER: ... the basement.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: This is crazy.]

PETER: And the basement is, like, scorched. It's a mess. There's, like, 16 inches of water on the floor, and the first thing that they notice is that—and this is something that becomes a real focal point of the investigation is that if you look up at the ceiling ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: You see the heavy char on the ceiling beams in this area?]

PETER: ... it's almost like there's a big hole ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Some of these beams are completely burned away.]

PETER: ... where these wooden beams used to be.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Some of them are completely burned through.]

PETER: And what it tells them is there must have been a fire that started on the floor and reached these ceiling beams about eight feet high and essentially burned them all away.

BILL PETRAITIS: Once I had some preliminary feelings, I called ...

PETER: So the person who got called in to figure this out, to figure out how the fire had gone from the floor to the ceiling was a federal investigator named Bill Petraitis.

BILL PETRAITIS: So it's not our first ...

PETER: We could only talk to him over the phone, over speaker phone, but he explained that when he showed up at the scene that morning, his job ...

BILL PETRAITIS: Was to draw a fence around reality.

PETER: To basically say, like, okay, what in the world as we know it, with the laws of physics and fire dynamics, like, what could have happened here?

BILL PETRAITIS: Saying inside this fence this could happen, outside this fence it can't happen.

PETER: And so ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Let's see if we can get some good shots of this furnace.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: All right. We're rolling.]

PETER: ... Bill takes a look at the furnace, and he pretty quickly rules that out as a potential cause. He also notices that there's no damage that's consistent with a natural gas leak, which likely would have caused an explosion. And so, like, in order to put up his fence, he's gotta, like, rely on ...

BILL PETRAITIS: Flame height calculation.

PETER: ... mathematics, essentially.

BILL PETRAITIS: Mass burn rate and the heat combustion rate.

PETER: And basically what Bill is trying to conceive of is, like, what could've been in this basement that burned? Laundry, chairs ...

LATIF: Books.

PETER: Yeah, anything that could burn. And anything that burns burns in a certain way, and when it does it releases a certain amount of heat.

BILL PETRAITIS: So when you draw the fence ...

PETER: When you start to do these mathematical calculations.

BILL PETRAITIS: ... what those calculations show ...

PETER: Is that, like, whatever material was in this room prior to the fire ...

BILL PETRAITIS: There's no way in the world ...

PETER: ... any of that stuff could get a fire to reach those wood ceiling beams.

BILL PETRAITIS: And even dream of igniting it.

PETER: Unless you added something like ...

BILL PETRAITIS: Gasoline.

PETER: ... gasoline.

BILL PETRAITIS: You have to have a product in this room that has the same characteristics as gasoline.

PETER: According to Bill's calculations, it's not just like a little bit of gasoline. You'd need, like, a whole gallon of gasoline to get a fire that is that big and can burn that hot for that long to burn out that ceiling. And to Bill, it's clear that, like, a gallon of gas spread across the middle of the basement floor in the middle of the night, like, this fire could not have been an accident.

BILL PETRAITIS: This is an arson fire.

PETER: And if it's an arson fire, that means the deaths of those three firefighters, that isn't just some horrible tragedy, it's also triple homicide.

LATIF: More in a minute after the break.

LATIF: Latif. Radiolab. We're back with Peter.

PETER: Mm-hmm.

LATIF: [laughs] Okay, so we left off where an investigator had determined the fire was actually an arson.

PETER: Yeah. Investigators determined that this thing that looked like an accident was actually a crime.

JASON WICK: Once they tell me it's a crime I'm moving.

PETER: This is when federal agent Jason Wick gets pulled in.

JASON WICK: I start running down a road to try to figure out who did it. And we had a couple of things going—not a whole lot, but a couple things. One were the holes in the basement window.

PETER: So investigators had learned from the firefighters that when they first arrived, one of the basement windows had, like, two softball-sized holes in it.

LATIF: Hmm.

PETER: So it's possible that, you know, somebody had broken out the window and torched the place.

LATIF: Oh, like thrown in a Molotov cocktail kind of thing?

PETER: Yeah—yeah well, not exactly that. I mean, the other thing is, like, pretty early on, investigators were searching an alleyway next to the house, and they found this sort of rolled-up newspaper, and part of it was, like, singed. So they thought maybe that had been used as, like, a torch.

JASON WICK: The torch and the broken window. We possibly have somebody introducing, you know, flame from the outside to the inside into the basement. So we decided to go down that road, of course. Okay, we had learned through some interviews that Greg Brown was possibly involved in gang activity. So could this be an attack from the outside to their home for some reason? That was a theory.

PETER: But investigators never really found any evidence that Greg belonged to a gang.

MATT: That path now comes to a dead end. What happens?

JASON WICK: Listen, we're kind of stuck. I mean, it happens. Investigations kind of cool off. This one did.

MATT: Where are we at, probably, in this? Like, how far removed from the fire?

JASON WICK: I would say we are probably almost a year, eight months to a year, Bill?

BILL PETRAITIS: Yeah, I'd say eight months, easy.

JASON WICK: Yeah, eight months. Eight months or so.

PETER: When suddenly the investigation shifts to ...

JASON WICK: Darlene.

PETER: Because investigators learned that a couple months before the fire, she had been laid off from her job as a nurse.

JASON WICK: And we're getting insurance information back now. So what comes back from the insurance company is she was a renter for most of her life. And of course when you rent, you can't buy insurance on the home because you don't own the home. But you can buy renters insurance on your contents, what you own inside the house—your furniture, your clothes, your jewelry, whatever.

PETER: And after years of renting her home ...

JASON WICK: For the first time in her life ...

PETER: ... not long after getting laid off ...

JASON WICK: ... she took out a renters insurance policy, and received the confirmation of that policy three weeks before this fire.

PETER: The policy was for $20,000.

LATIF: Hmm.

PETER: On top of that, Darlene has also taken out a life insurance policy on her one-year-old step granddaughter, who was in the house at the time of the fire. Meaning ...

JASON WICK: If your one-year old dies, you collect a big sum of money.

PETER: Darlene would have received $10,000 for the death of the one year old.

LATIF: Whoa! That's weird!

PETER: So ...

LATIF: And that was also recent?

PETER: Yeah, like not long before the fire.

PETER: But when you get this information, you start—the gears start turning. You're like, this is a possible motive?

JASON WICK: Absolutely. Yeah, money motive. Absolutely.

PETER: You know, as investigators see it, it's like Darlene is unemployed. They also learn that around that time, she's also apparently trying to buy a house.

JASON WICK: But it was divulged to her what closing costs would look like, how much she would need to put down to buy this home and did not have it.

PETER: And all of this is happening, like, right before she took out these insurance policies.

JASON WICK: A coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, there's an old saying in investigation: there are no coincidences.

PETER: And just as they're sort of like, figuring out the possible motive, investigators also got this tip that a neighbor says he has information about this fire.

JASON WICK: In a nutshell, what he says is he's at home that night.

PETER: He hears a noise. Looks out his window.

JASON WICK: Notices smoke in the street. Sees Greg Brown, his neighbor. He says, "his neighbor kid" from two doors down is on the street looking at the house.

PETER: And most importantly ...

JASON WICK: Is there were no fire or police on the scene yet.

PETER: And if you remember, Greg and Darlene's story is that they're driving back from the grocery store together.

GREG BROWN JR.: And you could see, like, flashing lights, fire trucks and stuff.

PETER: But according to this neighbor, Greg is out there before any firefighters have arrived, which means he wasn't at the grocery store with his mom before this fire began.

JASON WICK: We are breaking their alibi. We are breaking that story.

PETER: And then another break.

JASON WICK: And one day I receive a phone call. "Hey, listen. Greg Brown has been arrested for possessing a gun and drugs, and he is in a juvenile detention center in eastern Pennsylvania." I said, "Really?"

PETER: Jason figures that Greg isn't gonna talk to him.

JASON WICK: So you look up cellmates of your target.

PETER: They end up talking to a bunch of different kids. And they finally find this 15-year-old kid who had bunked with Greg.

JASON WICK: And he said that Gregory had bragged to him about setting a fire at his home in Pittsburgh for his mother, and that three "fireheads" were killed. I never heard that term before, firemen were "fireheads." And for setting the fire, mom was supposed to buy him a Lexus, I believe. A car.

PETER: And with that ...

DARLENE BUCKNER: I get a knock on my door. I'm like, well you know, "What's going on?"

PETER: ... Pittsburgh police arrest Darlene.

DARLENE BUCKNER: I'm like, what?

GREG BROWN JR.: One day I get to school, and they got all the doors closed.

MATT: All the doors to the classrooms?

GREG BROWN JR.: Right.

PETER: And two federal agents arrest Greg.

GREG BROWN JR.: I knew what it was for, though. I already knew it.

PETER: They're arrested on charges of arson, insurance fraud, conspiracy and triple homicide.

LATIF: Oh!

PETER: And, you know, at this point, Greg and Darlene maintain their innocence. They say, "We're totally innocent. We had nothing to do with this fire. We were at the grocery store at the time of the fire." But, you know, the state sort of pursues them and says, you know, because this is a felony and three firefighters died, they're gonna be charged with second-degree murder. And actually, this is like not where the plea comes in at all.

LATIF: Huh!

PETER: Like, this is where they're brought to trial.

LATIF: Oh, so they—because they—so they don't want to take a plea?

PETER: Actually, the plea wasn't even an option. The prosecutors didn't even put a plea on the table. They didn't even offer them a deal. And so, like, for Greg and Darlene who maintain their innocence, the only option ...

LATIF: Is to fight it.

PETER: Right. To fight, to take it to trial.

LATIF: Right.

PETER: And to prove—well actually, not to prove. Because at trial, like, the onus is on the state to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you did the crimes that they're accusing you of. And so defense's job, your job as a defendant is to undermine that case, the argument against you and sort of present the story that says, "No, we didn't do that." And so the first thing the defense does is really—they go after the arson investigation.

CRAIG BEYLER: I mean, the long and the short of it is in this investigation there's no science here.

PETER: So I talked to this guy, Craig Beyler.

CRAIG BEYLER: Technical director emeritus at Jensen Hughes.

PETER: He was later brought on as a defense expert.

CRAIG BEYLER: So Jensen Hughes is a fire protection engineering consulting firm. It does anything to do with fire and then some.

PETER: And Craig explained that the hallmark of the scientific method, and indeed a cardinal rule of, like, fire/arson investigation is that when you walk into a scene, you have to collect as much data as possible. You have to keep an open mind. You have to come from a place of not knowing. But Craig said when he looked through the investigative notes, when he looks at Bill Petraitis, the arson investigator's report ...

CRAIG BEYLER: He didn't do an electrical investigation. He didn't do an investigation of the natural gas system or the appliances.

PETER: He didn't interview the firefighters.

CRAIG BEYLER: Who saw the fire, fought the fire.

PETER: He didn't interview the family.

CRAIG BEYLER: About how this room was configured, what was there, how it was used.

PETER: Craig says what Bill did is when he went into the basement and saw those burned-out ceiling beams, he developed this hunch that likely gasoline was involved, and he used some calculations to confirm his hunch.

CRAIG BEYLER: And that's not okay. Any fool, you know, can multiply a couple of numbers together and come up with an answer. That's not science. It's not how you get the right answer, and he didn't get the right answer.

PETER: What do you think the right answer is?

CRAIG BEYLER: I don't know, and neither does he.

PETER: That was the right answer, is "I don't know?"

CRAIG BEYLER: Yes. Based on the data they collected, the only thing you can say is it's undetermined.

PETER: Okay. So you don't think this was arson?

CRAIG BEYLER: I think I already told you it's undetermined.

PETER: So that's—that's the argument against the arson investigation. But there's also this question of motivation and of the insurance money. And so, like, if you look—wait, should I pull up the trial?

LATIF: Yeah, sure.

PETER: So yeah, if you look up the trial transcript, you can see that an insurance investigator is called to the stand and he basically, like, says that, you know, after the fire they talked to the family, they talked to Darlene and they're also, like, trying to determine the total value of everything that's inside the house, the contents of the house. How much was lost in damages? And so the thing that they come up with is this number. It's like $52,000 worth of, you know, possessions were lost in the fire. And the insurance policy—I don't know if you remember this, but it was $20,000. So ...

LATIF: Right. Right.

PETER: So the defense's argument is, like, basically this doesn't really add up. Like, why would you torch your own home if you end up, like, losing an enormous amount of money?

LATIF: Sure, I can see that. But then what about—there was—there was the life insurance policy on the baby, which felt very suspicious.

PETER: Yeah. I mean, so the life insurance didn't really come up at trial. But it is sort of like, in there a little bit. And, like, the defense's argument is essentially, like, you know, the one year old who had this life insurance policy, you know, she's still alive. She didn't die in the fire, and so there was no payment made.

LATIF: But I've never heard of someone insuring a one year old before. Has she said why she did that or what—like, I've never even heard of that.

PETER: It does sound unusual, so ...

DARLENE BUCKNER: Okay.

PETER: ... I did end up calling Darlene ...

DARLENE BUCKNER: Peter. Ron and I are on speaker.

PETER: ... so that I could talk to her and her husband Ron. Because Ron said ...

RON BUCKNER: Basically, everybody in the house had life insurance except my granddaughter.

PETER: Ron had insurance through his work. And over the years, like, he and Darlene had basically decided to take out policies for everybody else in their family.

DARLENE BUCKNER: That's just something that you do—we do—is, you know, you get life insurance for your whole family, just so that in the event something happens, you know, you can bury your loved one without having to do a GoFundMe.

RON BUCKNER: Well, I don't even know if there was GoFundMe.

DARLENE BUCKNER: That wasn't even happening, GoFundMe. No. Or having to beg people, you know, for something that you as a family should be able to take care of yourself.

PETER: But there is this other big thing, which is Greg and Darlene's alibi. They claim they were at the grocery store that night, and sort of remarkably, one thing that they submit as evidence is the receipt ...

LATIF: Wow!

PETER: ... that Darlene has kept from her trip to that grocery store.

LATIF: Whoa! So lucky.

PETER: Yeah. But also, maybe suspect? Like, why did she save this receipt and not all of her other receipts?

LATIF: Fair.

PETER: But anyway, she has this receipt that's time stamped, and it's for $36.22 for the ingredients that she needed to make this salad: green pepper, celery.

LATIF: Wow!

PETER: But at the same time, it's not like—they paid cash, so it could've been somebody else. None of the security footage, the videotapes from that night of the grocery store, they never turned up, so—so there's nothing to confirm that Darlene and Greg were actually there.

LATIF: But it's not nothing. It's, like, something. It's saying somebody was there at that exact time. Yeah.

PETER: Right. But I think the question is, like, was Greg there?

LATIF: Right.

PETER: So at the trial, the prosecution is also calling on their two key witnesses. And you have this neighbor guy who placed Greg at the scene of the crime. And then you have this 15-year-old kid from juvie who said he heard Greg bragging about setting this fire.

GREG BROWN JR.: First of all, who's bragging about setting fires in the Black community? I'm just being honest.

PETER: Greg is like, "Who does that? Nobody does that."

GREG BROWN JR.: You understand what I'm saying? It's not even a cool crime. Like, name a rap lyric, Tupac, anybody. "Ooh, that's a cool crime I committed. I set a fire!" But I'm saying I can't say that in court. The jury don't wanna hear that shit.

PETER: The defense says, you know, "Why are you gonna trust this kid? Like, he's a juvenile delinquent. You know, like, he's a jailhouse snitch." And also ...

GREG BROWN JR.: He was like a fat, awkward kid. We didn't—we just didn't click.

PETER: ... they sort of imply that Greg had bullied him. So basically he's here to get revenge.

LATIF: Like, it's payback. Or ...

PETER: Right. He's trying to get back at Greg for making fun of him while they were bunkmates. But the problem is that the prosecutor asked the kid when he's testifying—they're like, you know, "What brought you here today? Why are you testifying?" And, you know, he said it was—he had talked to his mom about it.

GREG BROWN JR.: He's doing it because his mom told him this is the right thing to do.

PETER: The trial lasted, like, three weeks, and at the end of it the jury deliberated for two days. And when they came back, the jury foreman, he read out Darlene's verdict first. And it's like, you know, to wit, "February 21, 1997, we the jurors empaneled in the above case find the defendant Darlene Buckner, as to arson, not guilty, criminal conspiracy, not guilty." Then they read the three murder charges. Not guilty. And then on the last charge, insurance fraud, guilty.

GREG BROWN JR.: That was it. I said, "They gonna get me."

PETER: The jury foreman continues, "Gregory Brown Jr., as to the charges of arson, guilty. Insurance fraud, guilty. As to murder, guilty, guilty, guilty."

GREG BROWN JR.: I was just numb. I can't—I wasn't there.

DARLENE BUCKNER: I just ...

GREG BROWN JR.: I just, like, blacked out.

DARLENE BUCKNER: No, I did. I melted down.

PETER: Darlene was eventually sentenced: three years' probation, 500 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine. Greg was sentenced to life in prison, no chance of parole.

MATT: But the system spoke.

JASON WICK: The system spoke. Yeah.

GREG BROWN JR.: It made no sense. My thing was just, all this is irrelevant for me. You know, now it's just appeal.

PETER: Appeal?

GREG BROWN JR.: Yeah, I don't even know why I'm here. Me, personally, I don't even know why I'm even in the courtroom. For what? I'm not going to say nothing.

PETER: Greg gets sent to a maximum-security prison.

GREG BROWN JR.: To the biggest jail in the state.

PETER: Cellblocks the length of a football field.

GREG BROWN JR.: Four or five hundred people to a block. You gotta get nervous. You're just telling yourself you should be scared. [laughs] You seeing big dudes out on the tear, they walking around. Come to find out it wasn't that bad. Because everybody in there's not bad. You know, majority of people got the same goal, to get out.

PETER: And so what happens next is ...

GREG BROWN JR.: I started my appeals immediately.

PETER: His first appeal is denied. So is the next one and the next one and the next one and the next one.

GREG BROWN JR.: Rubber stamped. They just denied them.

PETER: Years drag by.

GREG BROWN JR.: My appeal rights are, like, dead.

PETER: When in 2005 ...

BILL MOUSHEY: Voila! [laughs]

PETER: Sort of as like a last gasp, Hail Mary, Darlene ...

DARLENE BUCKNER: We start off with a letter with everyone.

PETER: ... sends a letter off to this guy.

BILL MOUSHEY: Bill Moushey. I was an investigative reporter for 25 years in Pittsburgh.

PETER: And he started this Innocence Institute in Pittsburgh.

BILL MOUSHEY: So I could teach kids how to do investigative reporting in the criminal justice system.

PETER: And Darlene gave Bill ...

DARLENE BUCKNER: The case is so massive.

PETER: ... every single document she had relating to the case.

BILL MOUSHEY: I read volumes and volumes.

DARLENE BUCKNER: You know, boxes full of stuff.

BILL MOUSHEY: Records our students went through. Pored over stuff. But we couldn't get to the point of proving actual innocence, which that's what the project's motto was. It wasn't reasonable doubt, it was actual innocence. And if we can't prove actual innocence, then we're not gonna do anything with it.

PETER: Right, but you did stick with this case.

BILL MOUSHEY: Well I mean, Darlene was a convincing person, and frankly I liked her, you know? [laughs]

PETER: But also, Bill had gotten this tip.

AL LINDSAY: You want the whole thing?

PETER: A tip from Greg's lawyer.

AL LINDSAY: All right. My name is Al Lindsay. I represented Greg Brown back in 1997.

PETER: And basically, like, Al told Bill that during Greg's trial, he had always had this hunch.

AL LINDSAY: That somehow, as improbable as it sounded, I thought that these witnesses ...

PETER: The two key witnesses who testified against Greg, the neighbor and the kid from juvie ...

AL LINDSAY: ... were actually paid, bribed to provide evidence implicating Greg Brown.

PETER: And this is because he had heard from one of Greg's friends ...

AL LINDSAY: That he was offered $7,000.

PETER: For any information that tied Greg to the fire.

BILL MOUSHEY: That's right.

PETER: And the prosecution had always denied this.

BILL MOUSHEY: Once we got the idea that they had paid witnesses ...

MATT STROUD: We just started sending letters.

PETER: Matt Stroud was one of Bill's students.

MATT STROUD: To Ibrahim Abdullah and Keith Wright.

PETER: Keith Wright was the neighbor. Ibrahim Abdullah was the kid from the juvenile detention center.

MATT STROUD: But we didn't get anything in response to any of those letters. And so Bill and I went ...

BILL MOUSHEY: Driving all over creation.

MATT STROUD: Just knocking on doors, trying to find people. And then ...

PETER: One night after, like, spending the whole day knocking on doors ...

MATT STROUD: I was tired. Started making dinner for my wife. And then ...

[phone rings]

MATT STROUD: ... I got a call from a number I didn't recognize. I picked it up.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ibrahim Abdullah: Hello?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Matt Stroud: Mr. Abdullah?]

MATT STROUD: And he said who it was.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ibrahim Abdullah: Yeah.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Matt Stroud: Okay, good. So what we—what we needed to find out—first of all, is it alright if I record this conversation?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ibrahim Abdullah: You already was recording it.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Matt Stroud: No, I gotta let you know if I'm doing that.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ibrahim Abdullah: Okay.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Matt Stroud: What we're trying to find out is who contacted you from the ATF after that fire?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ibrahim Abdullah: It was Jason Wick. Special Agent Jason Wick.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Matt Stroud: Okay. And ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ibrahim Abdullah: And that's who—that's who basically I dealt with the whole time.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Matt Stroud: Okay. And the other thing we're trying to find out is we've heard that there was a reward offered to people who were willing to speak out in this case.]

PETER: And, like, remember back in the trial this sort of came up. Ibrahim was asked, like, "Were you given anything for your testimony?" And he's like, "No. I just talked to my mom. Like, this is the right thing to do." But now ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Matt Stroud: Were you paid a reward?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ibrahim Abdullah: Yeah.]

MATT STROUD: He admitted to it.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Matt Stroud: What was the reward you were paid?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ibrahim Abdullah: It was supposed to be $15,000 but it was $5,000.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Matt Stroud: Now what happened—what happened in that situation?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ibrahim Abdullah: I got it in cash.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Matt Stroud: You got it in cash?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ibrahim Abdullah: Yeah. They just showed up one day out of the blue. I didn't even know they were coming.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Matt Stroud: Who—who showed up to give you the cash?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ibrahim Abdullah: Jason Wick. Jason Wick and somebody else.]

BILL MOUSHEY: And we hit the jackpot with that.

GREG BROWN JR.: One day, Bill—this was in—this was, like, in the summer of 2010. I'm on the phone with him one day, he said—he said, "Greg. You got some mail coming. You're gonna want it." I'm like, "All right. Yeah." And then ...

PETER: Greg opened the envelope, and in it was a photocopy of two checks.

GREG BROWN JR.: One check for $5,000 and another check for $10,000. But they had the names blacked out, redacted.

PETER: So you couldn't see who the checks had been written out to. But Ibrahim said that he'd gotten $5,000. And presumably Keith Wright, the neighbor, got $10,000.

GREG BROWN JR.: So I'm like, "Holy shit, this is it!" Yeah, man. I'm getting emotional thinking about it. I couldn't believe it because it's just like—yeah, I shedded some tears. I didn't even look like—I was happy, though. I didn't break down, I just—they just came. I was happy.

PETER: Because to Greg, like, after 14 years of being guilty, of being found guilty ...

GREG BROWN JR.: I said, "I got 'em now."

PETER: In his eyes, this was physical proof of his innocence.

GREG BROWN JR.: It's over. I got their ass. Got their ass.

PETER: But ...

PETER: So just be clear, did you pay witnesses?

PETER: ... when we talked to Jason Wick about this ...

JASON WICK: Oh, absolutely.

PETER: ... he was like, "Yeah, of course we paid witnesses."

JASON WICK: We have receipts of us paying him. We're not trying to hide anything.

PETER: But Jason says the payments got made well after the trial. And they were given essentially to the witnesses for a job well done.

JASON WICK: But oh, they paid him. So therefore, oh, he must have promised them money throughout or before the trial, right? It's an assumption. It's a false assumption.

PETER: So you're saying the possibility of payment didn't even come up in these conversations with these witnesses?

JASON WICK: No. Never. Not one time. I promised them no money. Listen, so—so let me pose a question to you guys, right? So let's say hypothetically I did—which I did not. Does that change the outcome of this case? Does it change what Ibrahim Abdullah said? No.

PETER: And in fact, neither witness, Keith Wright, the neighbor, or Ibrahim Abdullah ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Matt Stroud: Did he say that he started that fire?]

PETER: ... ever recant their testimony.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ibrahim Abdullah: Man, that was 15 years ago. I'm not gonna even say that was—I can't remember most of it, to be honest with you.]

PETER: But in 2014, these payments, this whole issue of paying witnesses was basically the focus of a mini trial, where the judge ultimately ruled there was a quote, "avalanche of evidence" unquote, that showed these witnesses knew they were going to get paid, and that information should have been given to the defense, but it wasn't. Which meant ...

GREG BROWN JR.: I looked over. He looked at me.

PETER: ... in 2016, a guard tells Greg ...

GREG BROWN JR.: "Come on, you out of here."

PETER: ... "You're free to go home."

[NEWS CLIP: God bless him and the time that he's going to have with his family. Greg?]

PETER: After, like, 20 years of prison, Greg finally steps out into this, like, parking lot, where he's greeted by, you know, lights, cameras, recorders. And he's standing there with his lawyers, his arm around his mom.

[NEWS CLIP: There are people in the firefighter community who still have strong feelings about this case and they think that you're still the guy.]

[NEWS CLIP, Gregory Brown, Jr.: I would like to thank the firemen for saving my—you know, my family. And I did a job, but I want everybody to know that I'm innocent. I'm happy to be out. I'm innocent. Me and my family, nobody had nothing to do with this. Matter of fact, there wasn't even a crime committed. It wasn't even arson.]

PETER: And right here, this moment ...

[NEWS CLIP: And at that point, because we have ...]

PETER: ... the attorney cuts him off because prosecuting attorneys for the government have already filed a motion to retry the case.

LATIF: What? Why?

PETER: I think the argument is really that they believe that they got it right, and they got it right the first time. And the jury got it right. Greg is guilty and the sentence was life in prison, and Greg belongs back in prison.

LATIF: Wow!

PETER: And I guess, like, this time around is a little bit different because Greg is about to find himself with this really unusual offer. And this offer will plant Greg, like, right in the middle of these two opposing versions of the truth and right between, like, guilt and innocence.

LATIF: All right, we're gonna leave you in an in-between space for about a minute and a half, and then yeah.

PETER: Come on back.

LATIF: I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab. We're here with Peter Smith, telling us the story of Greg Brown Jr., who after nearly 20 years in prison has been let out, but now is facing another trial.

PETER: And this isn't double jeopardy. You know, this is a different, slightly different charge.

LATIF: Why is it not double jeopardy?

PETER: Well, in Pennsylvania state courts it might have been double jeopardy, but he's charged with a different crime in federal court.

LATIF: These are new charges so it's not a retrial, technically.

PETER: Right. So ...

GREG BROWN JR.: The summer of '21 ...

PETER: ... Greg has been out of prison for about five years.

GREG BROWN JR.: I'm trying to start my life. I'm around family. I mean, I was on the straight and narrow. But long story short, so I met up with the attorneys.

DAVE FAWCETT: We had a meeting here.

GREG BROWN JR.: At Dave's office.

PETER: Dave Fawcett was going to be Greg's lead attorney on this new trial.

DAVE FAWCETT: I'd been working three-plus decades as a trial lawyer.

PETER: So Greg goes to meet Dave and all the other attorneys at Dave's, you know, fancy law firm, on the rooftop on this patio.

LIZ DELOSA: And the rooftop conversation was would he consider a plea?

PETER: This is another one of Greg's attorneys, Liz DeLosa.

MATT: And how does it—does that start with you all?

LIZ DELOSA: So I can't go in too much detail because plea negotiations are protected.

PETER: This is the frustrating part about pleas. They sort of exist in this black box. We don't know exactly what happened, and the prosecutors in this case declined to comment on the plea, but the best we can tell is they were like, "You know, we've been gearing up to take this to trial, and just putting this out there, like, would you ever consider a deal where Greg agrees to plead guilty?"

DAVE FAWCETT: Yeah.

LIZ DELOSA: Yeah. That just—that started us, you know, saying to Greg, "You have to start to think about whether it's even something that you would consider, and if so what would that look like?"

GREG BROWN JR.: So they all went around the table and said how they felt.

PETER: All the attorneys are going around the table?

GREG BROWN JR.: Yeah. And they're nervous as hell.

LIZ DELOSA: Yeah. Like, the criminal justice system is flawed, and we can't guarantee that if we go back to trial we will win. And so there is a huge risk.

PETER: I mean, they're basically telling him, like, “Look, you already lost at the first trial, and if we go back to trial, even if there's this new evidence, there's still this chance that you're gonna lose. And if you do, that probably means you're gonna go back to prison for the rest of your life."

GREG BROWN JR.: "Dude, do you want to go back? Do you want to risk this?"

LIZ DELOSA: Literally putting your life on the line.

PETER: But Dave ...

DAVE FAWCETT: I was saying, "I'm going to win this case."

PETER: ... he didn't want to take a deal.

GREG BROWN JR.: Dave was like, "No, no. Hell, no."

DAVE FAWCETT: We are gonna win this case.

GREG BROWN JR.: "Either they drop the damn charges or we're going to trial." [laughs]

DAVE FAWCETT: I wanted to try the case in the worst way.

GREG BROWN JR.: Right? And I was like that too.

PETER: That's what Greg wanted to do.

GREG BROWN JR.: That's all I ever wanted to do: fight back.

PETER: Hold the prosecutors accountable ...

GREG BROWN JR.: Show them they wasn't going to break me.

PETER: ... and clear his name for good. But ...

DAVE FAWCETT: But then ...

PETER: ... as the conversations kept going around ...

DAVE FAWCETT: I heard two things. One, the federal defender, Lisa Friedland is her name, she said, "Dave, when the prosecutor walks into court and you've got a Black guy sitting in a chair and the prosecutor says, 'He's guilty,' you're 99 percent of the way there, regardless of what the evidence shows." And Jason, my partner who I respect highly, his view was, "If there's any chance, any chance of a conviction, why the hell wouldn't you take a deal?"

GREG BROWN JR.: And, you know, I'm waiting on to see what Dave's saying. Dave's ...

DAVE FAWCETT: I thought, "Damn!"

GREG BROWN JR.: Dave just said, "Man, I just—it's too much of a risk." So I was like, "Damn, man!"

PETER: And at this point all of Greg's lawyers are essentially like, "Look, we know this isn't great. It's hard. But we think we can get you a deal where you—where you walk, where you don't get any more prison time, and all of this would finally be done."

GREG BROWN JR.: And I'm like, "I'm not—I'm not—never," I said, "I'm never gonna admit that I did this."

PETER: Greg was like, "No, I would rather risk it all than have to say I set the fire."

GREG BROWN JR.: I said, "All or nothing. Either I'm gonna be free or I'm gonna get convicted again."

PETER: And here is where the story gets unusual in the extreme. I mean, we don't know the exact back and forth, but eventually one of Greg's attorneys must have said to him something like, "Look, there's this—this other way out. Like, you can plead guilty but still say you're innocent."

GREG BROWN JR.: I'm like, "What? What the hell?" He's like, "Yeah, you're taking the deal, but you're maintaining total innocence."

LATIF: Right. Exactly.

PETER: This is it.

LATIF: This is—we are—we have arrived.

PETER: This is what's known as an Alford plea.

LATIF: This always throws me, actually, to be honest. Even though I'm—like, I've been obsessed with this and thought about this so much—like, it always is such a weird—it's like a little logic puzzle every time.

PETER: Yeah, it really is. I mean, you're getting a conviction because the person is pleading guilty, but at the same time, you get a conviction where the defendant is standing up and saying, "I'm not guilty."

JOHANNA HELLGREN: "Wait a minute. How is this allowed? Like, what? Is this a thing?"

PETER: So I ended up calling a bunch of people, legal scholars and experts, and I was just trying to figure out, like, how does this plea make any sense? Starting with ...

JOHANNA HELLGREN: I kind of—I kind of vary it.

PETER: Johanna.

JOHANNA HELLGREN: For a long time I would just be like, "Joanna," but it's not—that's not my name.

PETER: Johanna Hellgren, who has for years has been researching this Alford plea.

JOHANNA HELLGREN: Yeah.

PETER: So could we just start—like, where did the Alford plea—where did it even come from?

JOHANNA HELLGREN: Yeah, the way it came to be was this guy, Henry Alford, was accused of first-degree murder.

PETER: This is, like, the early 1960s. So first degree murder meant he was facing the death penalty.

JOHANNA HELLGREN: But he took a plea for, I believe, second-degree murder.

PETER: Which meant instead he'd get life in prison.

JOHANNA HELLGREN: Yeah.

PETER: But when he gets up to enter his plea in front of the judge, Alford says—and I'll quote from the transcript right here, hold on one second, he says, "I just pleaded guilty because they said if I didn't they'd gas me."

JOHANNA HELLGREN: "I'm just pleading because I don't want to get the death penalty, but I didn't do it."

PETER: And then later he said, "I'm not guilty, but I plead guilty."

JOHANNA HELLGREN: Right.

PETER: Now we have no way of knowing whether Alford did or didn't do it, whether he's actually guilty or not. But what we do know is that people plead guilty even when they're innocent, and we have—you know, the data is really imperfect. We don't know how often, you know, innocent people plead guilty, but we know it happens. But, like, basically before Alford, nobody had ever come out and, like, blurted it out, like, "I plead guilty but I'm—I maintain my innocence." And, like, up until that point, it wasn't even clear if—you know, if the courts would accept that, if you could legally do that.

JOHANNA HELLGREN: Right.

PETER: And so, like, after a series of, like, appeals and arguments and, you know, sort of running it up the food chain, the question eventually landed on the docket of the Supreme Court in 1970.

JOHANNA HELLGREN: And they were essentially like, "Listen, you can say whatever you want. We don't need you to say that you're guilty because ..."

PETER: Yeah, they were basically like, "Whatever. You can say whatever you want about whether you're guilty or innocent, as long as the two sides agree and the judge, you know, sort of sanctions that officially."

JOHANNA HELLGREN: Fine.

PETER: "Go for it." But in the 1970s, and actually for a while now, the criminal justice system had been starting to pivot from this system of trials into something else entirely. Basically, what happens between 1970 and today is you get all these things.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ronald Reagan: Good evening. Tonight, there's something special to talk about.]

PETER: You get ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ronald Reagan: Drugs are menacing our society.]

PETER: ... the War on Drugs.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nelson Rockefeller: I have one goal and one objective.]

PETER: Rockefeller laws.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nelson Rockefeller: And that is to stop the pushing of drugs.]

PETER: You get mandatory sentencing.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nelson Rockefeller: Life sentence for pushers.]

PETER: You get ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Street level drug dealing, the prostitution, the graffiti.]

PETER: ... broken windows policing.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Hillary Clinton: Kids that are called super-predatory.]

PETER: This theory of super-predators.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Hillary Clinton: First we have to bring them to heel and take back our streets from crime, gangs and drugs.]

PETER: And all of this means more and more people are getting arrested, so much so that the system can't handle it. Like, if all these cases went to trial, the system would collapse. And prosecutors aren't just gonna, like, let everybody go. There needs to be some sort of pressure relief valve. And that is essentially the plea deal—guilty pleas. But today, we're at the point where ...

JOHANNA HELLGREN: Plea bargaining accounts for about, like, 97 percent of all cases.

LATIF: Wow.

JOHANNA HELLGREN: Very interesting to me when you hear people talk about kind of high-profile cases and it's like, "Oh, he took a plea. He's, like, copping out." It's like, no, that's what everyone does.

PETER: This basically is the justice system now.

JOHANNA HELLGREN: Despite that, we—you know, the normal person would think—legal system, trial, right? Like, two lawyers in court, the whole thing. But ...

PETER: But really at this point, like, the justice system is essentially, like, facilitating plea deals. It's essentially, like, lubricating pleas. And Johanna says, like, you can see the Alford plea as just another tool in the toolbox to avoid going to trial.

JOHANNA HELLGREN: Legal scholars have argued that the Alford plea increases the number of innocent people taking pleas, because where the traditional plea where you have to admit guilt might be enough of an obstacle for some innocent people to say, "No, I'm not going to plead," the Alford plea could, you know, get some people over that and be like, "Okay, fine. At least I can still say that I'm innocent."

PETER: Or it might be appealing to somebody who's actually guilty, because they can also say they're innocent. But either way, according to Johanna ...

JOHANNA HELLGREN: Alford pleas are actually more common than jury trials, which is pretty crazy.

LATIF: Crazy!

JOHANNA HELLGREN: Yeah.

PETER: So really, Alford pleas are more common?

JOHANNA HELLGREN: Yes. They are more common than jury trials.

LATIF: What?

PETER: Despite the fact that you think the thing that's totally usual, the trial—the trial by jury—I mean, I feel like that's written into the Constitution. And at the same time, this thing that's totally unusual—like, nobody's even ever heard of Alford. I mean, that seems like a contradiction.

JOHANNA HELLGREN: Right.

LATIF: It does feel like for me the—like, I almost see it like the plea deal became a shortcut for the trial, and then it almost feels like the Alford plea became a shortcut for the plea deal. So it's like a shortcut to a shortcut. And now what we've weirdly created is a system where you—you have someone literally saying out loud, "I'm innocent," and then they don't get a trial and they go—it's like, go straight to jail. Like—but they just said they're innocent. Like, it's an absurd thing. Like, it's like we've created that path in the system.

ELIE MYSTAL: And we should be horrified by that!

LATIF: So one of the other people we turned to was Elie Mystal. He's a writer and thinker on legal matters who we often turn to when we don't understand a legal issue.

ELIE MYSTAL: Right. So let's start here: an Alford plea is fundamentally a form of coercion, because it's basically telling a person, "Admit to this crime or else we'll kill you."

LATIF: But why is it coercive if there is a chance in the trial that you—that you won't be found guilty?

ELIE MYSTAL: Well, his own lawyers tell him, "We're gonna lose."

PETER: Elie says take Henry Alford, for example. He was a Black man, likely facing an all-white jury.

ELIE MYSTAL: And we can talk about systematic racism, and we can talk about all these things.

LATIF: Right, right, right.

ELIE MYSTAL: But fundamentally, he's gonna lose. Like, how are you, the non-lawyer citizen, really in a position to be, like, "No, lawyer. You're wrong! I'm gonna go to trial, and if they kill me they get me." What? Who does that, right?

LATIF: Right, right, right.

ELIE MYSTAL: Your actual lawyer is telling you—and your lawyer is probably not wrong—that they can't prove your case. And as much as we might want to talk about how, like, "Oh, well he still gets to claim his innocence," legally he doesn't. Legally, the Alford plea is a lie. When you take an Alford plea, you lose your legal right to appeal. Legally speaking, it does not preserve the legal points of maintaining your innocence. But never forget that the Alford plea is the smart play, that it is the rational play. That it's not—for the most part it's not people who have been tricked or duped by attorneys, right? It's not people who have gotten unreliable advice of counsel. A lot of times they've gotten great advice of counsel, and that great advice is to fold, is to give up, because the prosecutorial advantages are such. But that doesn't mean that they actually did it.

GREG BROWN JR.: I was like, "I've gotta discuss this with my family." I'm like, "Because this is bigger than just me."

PETER: And so for someone like Greg, who has always maintained his innocence, and essentially spent 20 years trying to prove that he's innocent, he's in this place where he's being told by his legal counsel, like, "You should probably take this deal."

GREG BROWN JR.: I called Fred. He works downtown. I'm like, "Bro, I got to—just met with the lawyers. I need to talk to you."

PETER: Fred is Greg's little brother.

GREG BROWN JR.: So he said, "It'll be over." He said, "It'll be all the way over. You can just move on with your life." I'm like, "Yeah." And then he googled "the Alford plea."

MATT: Right there with you?

GREG BROWN JR.: Yeah. And he's like, "Yup, this is what it is." He's like, "I guess we just gotta get it over with."

PETER: Eventually, Greg does decide to go ahead and take the Alford plea. And so yeah, they have this hearing before the judge. Obviously, his conviction, guilty, you know, stands on the record, but there are sort of other consequences or concessions that you make in sort of foregoing your ...

LATIF: Yeah.

PETER: ... constitutional right to a trial. There's no chance that he can appeal this. He's never got a chance to dispute the science. You know, there's all these things.

LATIF: Does Greg get to make a speech or anything like that? No.

PETER: No. It's just basically yes or no questions. "Do you agree?" I mean, "Do you understand your rights? Do you agree to this plea?" And then, like, both sides read into the record, like, what they believe is their version of the truth. And, you know, so I don't know. I guess for me it's like, if you believe that, like, courts are this place where people come to tell the whole truth and nothing but, in the end the Alford plea allows—allows both sides to exist in this, like, weird—maybe not weird, but they allow both sides to tell their version of the truth.

MATT: Coming back. You're pulling up some videos?

MATTHEW REGENTIN: Yep.

PETER: And these versions of the truth, like, continue to exist sort of in parallel, and they never get resolved.

MATTHEW REGENTIN: The first part about my presentation is the fire.

PETER: So one of the federal investigators, this guy Matthew Regentin, he presents this case, Greg's case, at conferences for other fire investigators ...

MATTHEW REGENTIN: And we put the heat flux data into simplified ignition correlations for wood surfaces. Now this ...

PETER: ... where he basically says, like, "Look, we got this right. The science is on our side."

MATTHEW REGENTIN: But I will say this until I can't talk anymore, and Jason will say this, and Bill will say this. There are never two sides to the truth. And we—we have an absolute belief in what the truth is.

PETER: That Greg is guilty.

MATTHEW REGENTIN: He committed a violent felony and three people died.

PETER: Now, like, at the same time that Matt is giving these presentations ...

PETER: You just went to Arizona, right?

GREG BROWN JR.: Yes.

PETER: That was last weekend?

GREG BROWN JR.: Yes.

PETER: ... Greg, for the first time ...

GREG BROWN JR.: Since '96.

PETER: ... left Pennsylvania, flew to Arizona to this Innocence Network conference.

GREG BROWN JR.: It was amazing. I mean, I met people from Montana, Michigan, and all over the States.

PETER: Hundreds of ...

GREG BROWN JR.: … exonerees.

PETER: And Greg said it was fun. You know, he was in his element. He felt like he totally belonged there. But, like, inwardly—this is something he told me and something his attorneys have told me—like, a lot of these other people have truly proven their innocence, at least in the eyes of the law. You know, like, they're exonerated. Whereas Greg took this plea.

GREG BROWN JR.: And that shit hurt, because some guys did—some people did fight it out. And—and ...

PETER: They got exonerated?

GREG BROWN JR.: They got exonerated.

PETER: They got compensation.

GREG BROWN JR.: Some people got money, yeah. Like a friend told me. He said—he called me from jail. I said, "I got mixed feelings. It's over but it's not." And he said, "You know what it is?" He said, "You got a decision instead of the knockout. You wanted the knockout." I said, "That's right." That's exactly how I felt.

PETER: And so if you pull up Greg's record, it will always show, technically on paper, that he is guilty.

GREG BROWN JR.: So yeah, it hurt. That's something I'll deal with the rest of my life. The rest of my life.

LATIF: This episode was reported by Peter Andrey Smith and Matt Kielty and produced by Matt Kielty. Original music and sound design contributed by, once again, Matt Kielty, with mixing help from Jeremy Bloom. Fact-checking by Emily Krieger. Edited by Becca Bressler and Pat Walters.

LATIF: Special thanks to John Lentini, Amanda Gillooly, Fred Buckner, Debbie Steinmeyer, Jason Hazlewood, Meredith Kennedy and Marissa Bluestine.

LATIF: I'm glad you all now know about the Alford plea, and hopefully you will never have to use it. That's all for us. Thanks so much.

[LISTENER: Hi, I'm Rhianne, and I'm from Donegal in Ireland. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Ekedi Fausther-Keeys, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Valentina Powers, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.]

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Beth from San Francisco. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

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