SAN DIEGO — Everyone knows Dr. Phil McGraw, he's a TV icon. He's been giving out bare-knuckle advice wrapped up in a folksy manner for close to two decades now on his syndicated talk show. But, before his career in television, he had a successful career in trial consulting or, as he prefers, trial sciences.
McGraw co-founded a company called Courtroom Sciences, Inc., which helped clients with everything from jury selection to refining testimony, to running actual mock trials. The company was very successful and was also the venue for his introduction to Oprah Winfrey, opening the door to his career on the screen.
His time in trial sciences would also serve as inspiration for the hit CBS show, "Bull," which he helped create and is an executive producer for.
Decades after his consulting career ended, Dr. Phil has his eye on the legal system again, this time taking a hard look at wrongful convictions. He thinks that Rodney Reed, a Texas death row inmate, was wrongfully convicted, and has taken a position in the fight for Reed's freedom. He even went to Texas to sit down with Reed.
"I went there. I looked him in the eye. I'm very well versed in deception detection. I gave him every trap, everything I know about finding someone in lie behavior. He passed every test I gave him that he can't possibly know what they are. And I believed he was telling the truth," Dr. Phil said.
Soon after Dr. Phil got involved, Rodney Reed's execution was stayed.
Cases like Reed's do bring into question, though, why juries so often get it wrong? Why do juries convict innocent men?
Dr. Phil says it's not necessarily the jury's fault.
"Jurors decide on what they're presented. And if someone doesn't do a good job of presenting the facts - if a public defender is overworked, understaffed, underpaid, and they don't do a good job of presenting what the jury needs to hear to understand this person didn't do the crime, then the jury is going to respond to what they are presented," said Dr. Phil.
Adam Riojas understands that all too well. He says his defense was shoddy, at best, and that the prosecution's case was very flawed.
"I did lineups. Nobody picked me out of lineups," Riojas said. "I found out later that a single picture was shown to an individual who said he saw me pick up this guy at a bar. A single picture was shown to him, [he] goes, 'Yeah. That's the guy.'"
He spent 13 years locked up for a murder he didn't commit.
Rioja's time behind bars wasn't a complete waste, though, it's where he said he found his Christian faith.
"Jesus found me in a very dark place. I didn't find him. He found me in a dark place," he said.
That faith carried him through the years in prison and to a new life on the outside. He leads At the Cross church in Oceanside and is married with two beautiful young daughters. None of that would've been possible if he was still behind bars and none of it would have happened without a lot of help.
That help came from the California Innocence Project, based at the California Western School of Law in San Diego. Alex Simpson is the associate director of the Innocence Project and worked on Adam's case, getting his release in 2004. Simpson said some convictions are tougher than others to overturn.
"If you have a case that's based almost entirely on eyewitness identification, it is next to impossible to reverse that conviction," he said.
One problem with eyewitness testimony, according to Simpson, is that they can be prompted to mistakenly identify someone as a suspect through suggestive questioning by police.
"People, when they are eyewitnesses, they're trying to get it right. They're trying to please the police officer. And the police officer may subconsciously or unconsciously point to an individual in a photo array. And that's what happened in Adam's case," Simpson said.
Dr. Phil agrees with Simpson, when it comes to problems with eyewitness testimony.
"Eyewitness testimony is very unreliable... it's really about a coin toss to tell the truth," he said.
Bad eyewitness testimony and other faulty evidence and legal procedures are what the Innocence Projects dig through to find the keys of freedom for its clients.
Adam Riojas' case was a little different and had a very big twist. It turns out his father confessed to several people that he committed the murder that Riojas was convicted for. It was a deathbed confession that Riojas got word of in prison. The Innocence Project used that and the witness identification procedures to fight successfully for his release.
Riojas had no money or resources to fight for his own freedom, something he has in common with the dozens of Innocence Project exonerees. The Innocence Project charges nothing to its clients. The organization's service is something that people like Dr. Phil admire and find invaluable to our society.
For Riojas, even though he's not living on a TV show, there seems to be a happy ending. He's not bitter about what happened to him, but he does want people to know that our system isn't perfect.
"You know, I love our system. I love our laws throughout the land, but it's flawed. There's things that are still flawed," he said. "We're not perfect. We're by far the best country in the world, but we have flaws."
News 8's Carlo Cecchetto spoke with Riojas and asked him if, after spending 13 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, he ever worried about being sent back to prison, if he worries about having his new life taken away from him.
This was his response:
"I don't think I fear that it can be taken away from me. But you asked an interesting question. Nobody's ever asked me that. I'm going to say no. And it's because there's still a stigma that I was in prison. I was in there for a very long time. And it's really interesting how we're speaking now because the Innocence Project is about to take me back to court. I think when the court says 'exonerated,' it changes everything. I don't think my brain will ever comprehend that because it's a lot of time to be in prison."
Riojas also shared more about his spiritual awakening in prison. He said before he was locked up, he didn't have any kind of real faith. He said that changed within months of incarceration:
"It wasn't until I fully recognized something crazy that Jesus was God. I've always been a leader because growing up without a father, I wanted to lead. I wanted to to be the best that I could. And I was always a team captain for football soccer track.
I still have a record, like I was telling you. And so in order for me to submit to something that seems beyond anything I could comprehend, that person had to be greater than me.
I never looked at anybody as greater than me. You never do that when you're a jock. You're always very competitive. And I think, you know, you're a soccer player. And so it was very difficult for me. And it wasn't until I understood this guy is God. He died for me. It was probably about four to six month of being incarcerated that my life changed drastically."