When DNA Unlocks a Prison Door

What happens when the justice system gets it wrong—devastatingly wrong?

In this riveting episode of Fill To Capacity, attorney Chris Renz shares the harrowing story of how his legal team at Chestnut Cambronne—working with the Great North Innocence Project—helped exonerate Robert “Bobby” Bintz, who spent 25 years behind bars for a brutal crime he didn’t commit. Through persistence, forensic genealogy, and a relentless pursuit of truth, they uncovered the real killer and set Bobby free.

This is a story about perserverance, dead ends, and finally, breakthrough. It’s about a broken system, human error, and the tireless search for truth. This isn’t just about overturning a conviction—it’s about honoring a life lost, restoring a life stolen, and proving that even against the odds, justice is still worth fighting for.

Trigger warning: This episode contains discussion of sexual assault and murder.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Bobby Bentz's Case
• 5:24 Case Background: Sandra Lyson's Murder
• 8:48 Chris Joins the Case via Innocence Project
• 16:52 Discovering Flaws in the Prosecution's Theory
• 21:33 Forensic Genealogy: The Game-Changer
• 30:12 Finding William Hendricks: The Real Killer
• 36:07 Exoneration Day in Court
• 40:44 Justice System Reflections and Life After Prison

Transcript

Pat:

Fill To Capacity where heart grit and irreverent humor collide. A podcast for people too stubborn to quit and too creative not to make a difference.

Pat:

Hi, I'm Pat Benincasa, and welcome to Fill To Capacity. Today, episode 103. "When DNA Unlocks A Prison Door. " You know, some stories stay with you, not because they're easy, but because they matter. And before we begin, I want to let you know that this episode includes discussion of a brutal crime, including sexual assault and murder. Now our focus is on the fight for justice and the process that finally set an innocent man free. And we'll be covering the facts of the case. But if this isn't the right time for you to listen, that's okay. Fill To Capacity will be back next time. Take care.

Pat:

Okay. Today we're talking about justice, perseverance, and the power of science to right. A devastating wrong. My guest is Chris Renz, a partner at Chestnut Cambronne in Minneapolis. He is an experienced trial attorney with a background in both civil law and criminal law. In addition to his work in areas like real estate, class actions and employment disputes, he also served as the chief prosecuting attorney for the Metropolitan Airports Commission. His practice spans jury trials, court hearings, appeals, arbitration in both state and federal courts. Chris led the legal team that helped free Robert (Bobby) Bintz, who spent 25 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. This is the story of how Chestnut Cambronne, and the Great North Innocence Project joined forces to uncover the truth. Now, this isn't just a legal story, this is a human one. And before I bring Chris on, I just wanna give you case facts.

Pat:

In 1987, Sandra Lison, single mother of two small daughters, was found murdered in a forest north of Green Bay, Wisconsin. She was strangled and sexually assaulted. She was reported missing for a few days following her closing shift at the Good Times Bar in Green Bay. After a lengthy investigation with 3000 pages of police reports, no killer was found. Two brothers, Robert (Bobby) and David Bintz were questioned early on because they bought beer from her that night. But there was no evidence and the case went cold. 10 years later, a jailhouse informant claimed David confessed in his sleep. He was in prison on a different charge at the time. David was convicted of her murder. Robert Bintz appeared before the same judge and was also convicted in 2000. Both brothers were found guilty despite no physical evidence linking them and the DNA that ruled them out. They were convicted and sentenced to life. Years later, new DNA testing showed male blood and semen from the same source, but not theirs. But the courts refused to act. Then in 2019, the Great North Innocence Project used forensic genealogy to identify the real killer William Hendricks, a convicted rapist with a history of violence. His exhumed, DNA matched the crime scene on September 25th, 2024. The Vince brothers were finally exonerated after 25 years in prison. Well, that's the background. So Chris, welcome to filter capacity. It's really something to have you on and talk about this case. Thank you.

Chris:

Thank you, Pat. It's a pleasure to be here.

Pat:

So Chris, let's start at the beginning. Who is Stuart Bear and how did you first get connected to this case?

Chris:

So Stuart Bear is a partner of mine here at the firm, Chestnut Cambronne. And he is also the president of our law firm. And one of the things about Stuart is he, he thinks very highly of this firm's capabilities. That's something I agree with him on. And he was at a temple service, at the temple that he attends. And the Great North Innocence Project, which was known by a slightly different name, then came and gave a presentation and talked about their partnership with some of the larger firms in town. And Stuart being Stuart, thought one that that sounded like a very worthy cause, and two, if they can do it, so can we. And reached out to the person who had presented and the Innocence Project, I think it was maybe a year later, uh, when they had a, a project that had a need reached back out to us. And that was in 2019. That's when we initially became connected with both their organization and the Bintz case.

Pat:

So I'm, I'm curious what made you say yes?

Chris:

Well, me personally, I, I mean, I have a general interest in justice in the broader sense. This kind of case is something I've kind of waited to have come along. I found it interesting. So I grew up the son of a nurse and a pastor and uh, and kind of service professions. And this was a great opportunity to do something that had a service component. And frankly, it was extremely interesting.

Pat:

Okay.

Chris:

Although, I will tell you at the beginning, a host of us on this case were prosecutors as part of our practice. And when it initially came in, it wasn't clear that we really had a, a winner of a case. It just, we certainly were gonna do everything we could to review it and make sure that the right things had been done, and if not, try to correct them. But it wasn't immediately clear who was right, who was wrong. It was kind of brought to us raw.

Pat:

Okay. But somehow it sounds like you felt there was enough there to at least look at it. Is that right?

Chris:

That's right. Okay. That's right. There was enough there, particularly in the fact it was something you mentioned in your introduction, the fact that the victim, Ms. Lison was found with what were clear signs of sexual assault and a semen sample, and then subsequently a blood sample on her dress that had DNA that matched neither of the convicted Bintz brothers was really the thing that, you know, how could we not try and work on this and how could we not try and investigate what the right outcome should have been and how we can get help the Bintz brothers get there.

Pat:

Yeah. So when you began digging into the evidence, the details as you were finding them, basically, I think I saw you quoted "something is seriously wrong here."

Chris:

Right. And I think that goes back to, well, there, there are a couple issues. First issue, and let me, and let me go back to say I love appearing on this podcast, but it was hardly just me. I mean, this firm, there are four of us in particular that spent kind of the whole span. But there were attorneys and paralegals that, I mean, we started in 2019, which was, you know, six years ago that took place and aren't even at our firm anymore. So, just to be clear, I love talking about this case, but there were, there were a lot of people that put their, their time and their heart in this. But yet, you know, going back to the DNA issue, but also the, the biggest issue I think really is the changing theory by law enforcement and the prosecutors in order to fit the Bintz brothers.

Chris:

It's one thing to have a case that presents itself as showing that a person with these qualifications or characteristics or it set, et cetera, fit what had occurred and what the crime was. But they had that initially, they couldn't figure it out. As you mentioned, you know, a case went cold for 10 years. They had done, they interviewed hundreds of people. The Green Bay Police Department did not lay down on us. They really went to town when this initially happened in 87 and in 88, even I think in the 89, and interviewed a whole host of people, looked through everything they could find, and the case went cold. Then when David Bintz allegedly confessed in his sleep, they figured out quite quickly that the DNA from the semen deposit at the time did not match either Bintz brothers. And instead of saying, well, then it wasn't them, they changed what their theory of the case was.

Chris:

What had previously been a sexual assault, murder became just a murder. And they spent time in both the prosecuting and the investigation to explain that away by saying that that must have been a consensual encounter of, uh, Ms. Lison, the victims. And that had nothing to do with the murder, which was silly for at least two reasons. One, quite clearly there was a sexual assault that had occurred when they found the victim. There were debris, there was debris between herself and her underwear. She had been, her clothing had been removed, all the signs of a sexual assault. And second, they knew from interviews of her closest confidants and friends, that she was not having a relationship at the time. In fact, her, the interviews indicated that she was done with men for the time. She was focused on the raising of her two daughters. So putting this all together, the idea that she happened to have a consensual encounter that no one knew about, and that it had nothing to do with all the evidence that this was a sexual assault and rape from the crime scene is the second big reason that there was something seriously wrong, uh, with how this case had had continued through.

Chris:

And then, I guess the third thing, actually, as I think about it, is that it is a hard pill to swallow that David Bintz was convicted in front of a jury in a trial overseen by Judge Zuidmulder in Brown County, Wisconsin. And then Robert, I'll call him Bobby throughout. Bobby's lawyer, looked at that and said, alright, we'll do a court trial in front of the same judge, not even a jury with a jury. You at least have the possibility that some jurors will latch onto some evidence, have some sympathies, the prosecution has to have 'em all in the bag in order to get a conviction with a judge. You only need the judge to do it. And he had just convicted the brother. What is he gonna do? Of course he's gonna convict. And I, I still to date, don't understand that rationale. So I guess all those three things made this seem like something was happening that shouldn't have happened.

Pat:

You know, you're talking about different roadblocks. In this case, one of the things I found really peculiar in Wisconsin, the same judge oversees everything. So if the judge convicts and if there's a motion for retrial or anything the same, it goes to the same judge. It feels like there's no oversight in that, uh, system.

Chris:

There is oversight in the sense that you can then appeal that judge's decision. But the problem is that the court of appeals gives great deference to those district court judges. That's what happened in this case, right? They figured out, okay, well, at the time of the trial, the semen DNA didn't match, but years later, the technology had caught up to the extent that they could see that the blood on her dress matched the semen. Neither match the DNA of the Bintz Brothers brought that to Zuidmulder. He said, that isn't enough. And they appealed that to the Court of Appeals and they said, well noted, but the district court has a lot of discretion, so we're gonna let that decision stand. And so that, you know, that is an issue. And, and there is the fact that you have to go before the same judge. So if you get a, a draw of a judge that maybe, you know, sees the world differently, and that is always going to be the judge to which you have to turn, including with new evidence, et cetera, that makes it a very long day out for the defense.

Pat:

Chris, how did you and your team stay motivated when the odds seemed so stacked against you?

Chris:

Well, and I will tell you, Pat, there were some lulls. I mean, there was about a year or two where, I mean, we were running down all these roads and no, nothing was leading anywhere. I mean, we were getting pretty desperate. We were looking at semi similar murders in outstate, Minnesota that seemed similar. Did they have leads that we could cross? We worked with an excellent forensic investigation team that's private here in the cities. You know, I think more than anything, uh, there was one, it, it continued to be interesting and two, you know, this is a pretty, you never say die lot. So we weren't just gonna let this, let this pass. We were gonna drive it to some conclusion. Yeah, whatever that ion was. And there were a number of times that we discussed internally about whether we will get right eventually to the point that we got the DNA locked in, but be, before we knew whose DNA it was, we also tested all sorts of items from the crime scene hairs on her back, a blood stain on her shoe, all sorts of things to see if anything matched our person or matched somebody else.

Chris:

None of it matched. And so at one point we had thought about, gosh, if we aren't getting any closer, maybe we just take a run at the judge with what we got and say, judge, I know you denied this before, but we have now tested all the things and none of them match are, that's impossible that our people were involved, the two Bintz brothers and nothing matches them. That's just not possible. And try and see if he would come along, but based on how he had ruled before, that was a dubious proposition.

Pat:

Now for the next part of our discussion, I wanna explain, uh, to our listeners, we're gonna be talking about forensic genealogy. And that is the use of DNA to trace family trees and find potential suspects. It's the same method that helped catch the Golden State Killer. In Bobby's case, forensic genealogy was used for the defense. It was a game changer. So forensic genealogy cracked this case wide open. Now, Chris, can you walk us through that turning point, the moment you knew you found the real killer?

Chris:

Yeah, it's a very interesting background. So let me start with, when we first got on the case, the first thing we did was to ensure that the DNA from the crime scene, the semen and the blood was being run in the CODIS database, C-O-D-I-S, which is the database that the law enforcement like the CIA and FBI maintained for people who have sexual assault convictions, so that if they have another crime, you can match to it. So if you're convicted, you have to give your DNA sample. They were submitting it, the law enforcement had been submitting it, but it had no matches. So then we turned to forensic genealogy, which is you described is really the use of what has become a very popular idea, which is finding your relatives using, you know, popular sites, some to name a few, right? Our ancestry.com or 23 and me, those are headline sites that people use to find out, interestingly, where you came from, who you're related to, et cetera.

Chris:

Well, as you mentioned, this has been used recently to try to find people who are connected to a DNA sample. And so in this case, we worked with a lab out of, uh, Virginia called Bode, B-O-D-E. They are a big-time forensic laboratory. They helped sort the remains from 911. I mean, they're very astutely recognized in the field and they had a forensic genealogist. And what we did is we took the DNA from the crime scene and we made up a fake profile on one of these databases. We called them "Mason." And we went to see who was related to Mason on there. And the genealogist helped us. We had to make some assumptions about where the person was likely located. Killers don't often travel. You know, they're usually kind of from around there and about what the age was, and likely a male.

Chris:

But between that and the relatives, we ended up with two big family trees that were related in some way to the killer that were located in the Green Bay area. But we had a whole mess of people. It could have been, and this is where we stalled out for a while, we could not locate of a, among them who they might be. We thought about asking the court to require samples, but there were so many people that we knew Judge Zuidmulder wouldn't require 40 to 50 people in the Green Bay area to come line up and give their DNA samples. So we asked a couple people that we knew were key in that area to try, and if they'd voluntarily give their sample, we had some success. We were able to dwindle it down a little bit. But that's where we sat. And interestingly, Jim Mayer, who is one, an outstanding attorney and two, the leader of the Great North Innocence Project, and actually a law school classmate of mine.

Chris:

We hadn't seen each other since law school, which was fun. He ran into at a, some kind of conference on this stuff, an outfit out in New Jersey called Ramapo College. And they have a forensic genealogy or forensic unit that is part of what their college does. And it's not a club, it's more formal than that, a program that they run on forensic genealogy. He talked to them about this case and they seemed interested, but then when they learned who we were working with for our genealogists, they kind of said, gosh, you've got one of the best in the business. We probably can't do much more if that's where you are. Well, it turned out that not long after that, our genealogist left the lab and we were starting over, uh, with forensic genealogists. And we reconnected through Jim and through this Ramapo College with these folks.

Chris:

And they said, Hey, listen, we have a program that we run every summer. We bring our alums back who are super interested in this program, and we have 'em go to on one or two cases all week. And these people go 24 7. They're just looking at leads. They're digging up microfiche, they're doing all the things. This is what they really turns their crank. We'd be willing to have your case as one of 'em. And we said, well, that, that would be outstanding. And we had always been told by our genealogist that if you could ever figure out how those two families and those family trees from Wisconsin crossed, you'd find your killer. And she could never do it. And I'll never forget it. I was up, actually, I was in Alaska with my family, and we got a call that one of the people in this annual clinic get together had figured out how the two families crossed, and they knew that it was one of three brothers in the Green Bay area. So once they knew that they were able, which all started by this forensic genealogy, inserting it into one of these databases, we were able to determine that it was one of three brothers from the Green Bay area.

Pat:

You know, now that it's one of the three brothers. But you don't know which, or if there was a combination, what did you do next?

Chris:

Well, we started looking into these brothers, and one of them became very interesting. David and Gary and William are the three Hendricks brothers from the Green Bay area. And one of them, and I, as I sit here, actually, I can't remember if it was David or Gary was deceased, but William in particular was of interest. He was a convicted rapist. He threatened his victims of strangulation. Ms. Lison was found to have marks from strangulation. He was released from prison six months prior to the murder of Sandra Lison. He was living in Green Bay at the time. Her body was found between Green Bay and this place where he grew up. And he had ultimately been put into a mental institution in Brown County. And he was no longer living. But the other thing is, his rape conviction was just before CODIS got put together. So that database I described earlier,

Pat:

The FBI's combined DNA index system, CODIS, bringing together fragmented state and local DNA data into one master database officially started in 1994.

Chris:

So had he committed his rape later, we would've connected her, him the semen from the crime scene immediately with William Hendricks. But he had just flown under the radar. We thought we had our person. So once we figured this out, Jim and I drove to Green Bay and met in person with the Brown County attorney and their office and said, we want you to join with us in a request to the court to investigate these three brothers. And I will say this, the, the Green Bay County Attorney's Office, compared to what a lot of prosecutors would do, have always been open to us. They have provided evidence. They have always said that they wanted the right outcome. Have they moved as fast as we always wanted? No. Have they had to jump through some hoops? Yeah, but I, I must give some credit to them for the way in which they handled this.

Chris:

And ultimately they decided, look William Hendricks, in order to know whether it's him, we gotta find his DNA. Nobody had his DNA elsewhere, but he was buried in Fort Howard Memorial Cemetery in Green Bay. But what they didn't wanna do is put the family or the community through an exhumation of a body without figuring out if the other two brothers had done it. So we were able to quickly eliminate them. The living brother came in voluntarily gave his DNA, it wasn't him, the son of the deceased brother came in. We were able to eliminate him, which left only William Hendricks. Eventually the Brown County prosecutor's office was willing to agree that William Hendricks's body was to be exhumed so we could get the DNA.

Pat:

That's quite a process. So you got his DNA and when it was tested, what was the moment that you knew you found the real killer? What was that like?

Chris:

It was moving, no doubt. I mean, we had been at this for so long. The other thing is Bobby always maintained his innocence. Neither Bobby nor David will strike you, as you know, they're great. I'll just speak for Bobby. I don't really know. David. Bobby is great. He's a nice guy, but he does not pick up on all the things. His mental acuity is not what other people's are. And that was one of the issues I think in this whole process is he didn't have someone, you know, it's hard for you to defend yourself if that's who you are, but we always knew from him, he had always said he was innocent. And so to get the news that day, in fact, I again, was out of town with my family, which makes me think I should take more vacations. 'cause it always get good news when I'm gone to get the call from Bodhi, the lab. Long story. But we ultimately had to get the confirmation from our private lab versus the Wisconsin authorities. But to get that confirmation to be told, we have it, it's William Hendricks. And the odds are, you know, I can't remember what it is, but it is unbelievably clear that it's him.

Pat:

Wasn't it one in 329 million chances that it could possibly be wrong?

Chris:

Right. It was extraordinarily moving. It was extraordinarily moving being able to tell Bobby and being able to tell Bobby's sister, we finally, we had it and they were gonna have to let him out. What was interesting, so once we had that, we basically said, you gotta let 'em out. And they said, not yet. That was a point where we got a little, not crossed, not sideways with them, but we saw it very differently. Their concern was from a prosecutor's perspective, they wanted some other confirmation that it was not done. And we took issue with that. We went ahead and set a hearing and they said, we can appreciate if you need to just go ahead and set a hearing. So we set a hearing in the beginning of October with the court, and they went ahead and continued more investigation.

Chris:

And what they found was that, not only did they find William Hendricks fingerprints on the cash box from the bar that night, but they went back in the police reports. And one thing that was out of the ordinary, this is the Good Times bar in Wisconsin, I don't think a lot of travelers or visitors come in in the mid eighties to the, the Good Times bar. So everyone knows who everybody is. Everybody knows what cars are supposed to be in the parking lot and what aren't. And there a number of people had remarked about a strange orange red car that was uncommon to the parking lot. Turns out that, uh, William Hendricks was pulled over on a DWI year and a half after the murder in an orange red car. So with those two things, that's when the police called us and said, we're ready to go. We contacted the court, moved the hearing up. I mean, basically the day after the police called us and we actually appeared by Zoom because it was so sudden that we couldn't get over there, as did our clients.

Pat:

So let me ask you, did you have to go back to the same judge?

Chris:

Yes, Judge Zuidmulder .

Pat:

Okay. So you're standing before the same judge who convicted Bobby. What was going through your mind in the courtroom that day?

Chris:

In my mind, I was wondering what was going through his mind, because he had to know in his head however he wanted to think about it, he did in fact convict and sentence two people who did not commit the crime, who then spent a quarter century of their life behind bars. And my main concern was that he do do what he should do regardless of what he had done. And he did do this, a a funny aside from the hearing, Bobby will s speak, he'll just say whatever's on his mind, uh, all the time. He doesn't have much of a filter, which is fine when I'm talking to him. Both Jim, uh, from the Great North Innocence Project and I were a little concerned about what might come out of Bobby's mouth during the hearing. So we had asked him, we had begged him, you really just need to close your mouth during the hearing. We'll do the speaking for you. It's gonna be okay. And you could see the judge came out and gave a big speech. And basically his speech was that humans are mortal and only God knows true, true justice. And so sometimes humans make mistakes and yeah, and I thought, okay, and I saw Bobby getting antsy and I got worried he was gonna say something as he announced, uh, convictions were vacated and overturned. Bobby said out loud, "thank Jesus!" And Judge Zuidmulder said "Amen" and walked off the bench. That's how the hearing ended.

Pat:

Sometimes reality is more potent than fiction.

Chris:

True,

Pat:

Coming full circle to all that you've experienced in this case, how has this case reshaped your personal view of the justice system? And the second question is, has the use of DNA and court cases changed since this case? So let's start with you first

Chris:

In terms of my, like my view of the justice system?

Pat:

Yeah, your personal view. I mean, you went through ups and down stops and starts and it feels like procedural resistance that would frustrate most people. So how did this reshape your personal view of the justice system? Or did it

Chris:

It it did. I think what it, what it told me is that I, in my own view, and I think everybody needs to be more open to, to these possibility that there have been and continue to be a number of mistakes made and that the result of those mistakes can be very severe. And so just because somebody has been charged or just because somebody's convicted or be and behind bars does not mean it's not worth another look. Now there are obviously scores of people who have been absolutely correctly and rightfully convicted and are aware they should be for the crimes that they've committed. That's how we work with that situation in society. But when there are questions raised with some legitimacy behind them, people need to be open to revisiting the record. And that's where, as I mentioned, the Brown County attorney, David Lasee was good about being willing to submit the evidence and, and give us access to things and have us in touch with detectives.

Chris:

This is the first case I've had like this, but in talking to Jim from the Innocence Project, that is not how a lot of prosecutors' offices work. They most of the time get resistance. If you want it, you can go to the court and we will probably oppose you. And I cannot imagine how long that takes. This took way longer than I ever wanted it to take. And we had a relatively cooperative prosecution office also interesting. David Lasee, who is the Brown County attorney, his dad was the Brown County attorney at the time that these brothers were convicted. He wasn't the prosecutor that tried the case, but he was the main, the head county attorney. So interesting.

Pat:

Chris, do you think that the use of DNA in court cases will have a, a powerful effect in terms of overturning cases and finding the appropriate people that are really guilty?

Chris:

I do. I think that's true for past cases. And I also think for present cases we're already seeing it. It is the ultimate decider. Right? Yeah. You mentioned the number odds number that it wasn't him. It is incontrovertible and there are a few things in the world that are incontrovertible as proof or evidence. And the fact that there is one is fantastic both to make sure that the right person gets their justice and, and and right to, I mean, guilty and that the people who are innocent get their justice too. I mean, DNA is beautiful in that it can do both.

Pat:

Yeah. Now, Wisconsin's compensation law offers so little to the wrongfully convicted. What does real justice look like for somebody like Bobby after a release?

Chris:

Yeah. Well, a couple points on that one. Yes. In Wisconsin it's a thousand dollars a year for your, you know, wrongful imprisonment capped at 25 years. And Bobby, through counsel, who do that kind of work, is pursuing that compensation and may pursue greater compensation in a civil lawsuit. What I think you, you can never replace what Bobby lost, that was the prime of his life, that ruined family relationships, relationship with his daughter. Those are things that can never be put together, certainly not fully. So I don't know what the right compensation is, but it's not insignificant. But the second part of your question was kind of what people like this do when they're released. The kind of, the, one of the ironies, and I did not know this before this case, is if you, not you pat, but let's say a person committed a crime.

Chris:

Let's say they, they robbed a bank and they went to prison for 10 years and they got out, they did the crime, they did the time. We have a lot of resources for those people appropriately. We have housing assistance, we have job training, we have all sorts of things to get them back into society because of course we want them to be a functional part of society. And not to the contrary, but if you are wrongfully convicted and they cut you loose, that's it. We walked Bobby out of that prison and he had the documents and stuff he came in with and his prison ID card. There is no training. There is none of that. Now, thankfully, there are some really amazing outfits after innocence in San Francisco is the one that helped Bobby and, and is connected with the Great North Innocence project that have people whose sole job is to help you get connected with social security and, you know, basic medical insurance through the county housing, try and get an apartment if you have no credit history and no rental history because you've been in prison for 25 years, that is not easy.

Pat:

That's a kind of a bleak outcome for someone who has suffered wrongful incarceration.

Chris:

Yes.

Pat:

When I was reviewing the facts of this case and reading about it, and I think I told you before we got on, one of the things that really surprised me was after reading everything, how you shared this journey with your kids. And I thought, that's it. This guy has to come on. Okay. And so you did share this journey with your kids. What did you hope they would take away from watching their dad fight for justice?

Chris:

Yeah, my kids are older teenagers, so at the time they were high, mainly in junior high and high school. I, I wanted a couple things. One, I wanted them to know that they're, it's easy as a lawyer to get lost in cases that at least to a kid, I'm not sure that they always think that dad's doing justice, not a lack of justice. But you know, the commercial real estate dispute doesn't exactly ring in their ears as some kind of great justice seeking measure, et cetera. So one, it was nice to show them that there is meaningful work that their dad does, but the second and more important thing was letting them know one, that you need to seek justice no matter how hard she finds herself. You have to look for her and you've gotta keep at it. And it may take a long time, but you can't, you can't fold on that kind of thing, that there is gold at the end of the rainbow and that it's worth looking for her. And so I just, I thought it was important for my kids to see that and what we just talked about a little bit ago, which is you need to be open to the fact that what you think happened may not have been what happened, it may have been, but you need to look into that yourself and be open to the fact that your mind might change. Those were all important.

Pat:

You know, as you're talking, it makes me think that the rule of law is so fragile because we're human. I mean it's real and nowadays it feels even more fragile. And the search for justice for Bobby in this case is one thing. But I couldn't help but think, Chris, the search to honor the dead, to honor Sandra Lison who was murdered. It's like a duty to honor the dead and find the truth. Freeing Bobby is one thing, and then you have this other piece of honoring the truth of what happened to her.

Chris:

I think that is important. You're right. I mean, not only is the rule of law under assault right now, but I think truth in some ways is under assault. And so that there is an importance in truth itself. I did feel, not guilt but sympathy for Sandra Lison's family. I'm sure that this was put away and to the extent one even can in their minds. And we brought it all back up. But I also hope per what you said, that they find some solace in the fact that the correct outcome ultimately was achieved.

Pat:

Yeah. I'm so careful about what I put on filter capacity, the guests that I bring on. And I gotta say, honestly, when I read this, I thought, whoa, I can't, I can't do this because it's such a, a brutal crime. But I kept thinking about truth matters. It matters and the rule of law, it matters. And the fact that you can go into a system, yeah, it's flawed. But what you did and your team, all of you at Chestnut Cambronne and the Innocence Project, all the players, it's like at the heart of it, the search for what happened, what truly happened, it matters. And so no matter what the news says and what's going on, there are some things that will never change. And that is truth matters, justice matters. And I have to say, Chris, I'm so deeply moved by what you and your team has, uh, what you, what you all did. And I wanna thank you for coming on today. This is a story we truly needed to hear. Thank you so much.

Chris:

Thanks Pat. It is, it's a pleasure to share. I love sharing the story, and I appreciate you mentioning the rest of the people 'cause there were, there were a lot of, a lot of folks that this took.

Pat:

It sounds like it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well listeners, thank you for joining us today and take care. Bye.