Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2287 - Josh Dubin & J.D. Tomlinson
Uploaded: 2025-03-11T17:00:25.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2287 - Josh Dubin & J.D. Tomlinson' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-03-11. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2287 - Josh Dubin & J.D. Tomlinson' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-03-11. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2287 - Josh Dubin & J.D. Tomlinson

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Josh Duber, my man, introduce your friend.
This is going to be wild.
This is J.D. Tomlinson, the former prosecuting attorney for Lorain County, Ohio.
And for the listeners, prosecuting attorney is similar to a D.A. in most
jurisdictions.
They just call it the prosecuting attorney.
He was the head attorney in Lorain County, Ohio, up until January.
So the reason why that's significant is the last time we were here, we were
talking about that case, the case of the Ohio 4.
So let's why don't you recap that for everybody, for people that didn't listen
to the previous podcast where we talked about this.
So the Ohio 4 are four gentlemen that were wrongfully convicted of a murder
they didn't commit.
And the last time I came on, we talked extensively about the case.
You could read about it at freetheohio4.com.
We have on that site my submission that I made to J.D. when he was the prosecuting
attorney and all the exhibits supporting it.
But what happened is this woman is murdered in the 90s.
And these four men become suspects actually before there's any evidence against
them whatsoever.
In two and a half decades of doing post-conviction work, I had never seen the
police put in an affidavit where they're—excuse me, not an affidavit, a
police report when they're investigating this murder, that these four men are
people we should look at.
Based on nothing other than there was a lot of commotion in the community,
understandably so, that there were people from out of town selling drugs.
No question, my client and these other three guys were involved in selling
drugs.
And they wanted drugs off the street in Lorraine.
So they immediately start looking at them.
This woman is found behind a shopping center, horribly, savagely murdered.
She is stabbed multiple times.
Her throat is cut.
Her name is Marsha Blakely.
She had been run over by a car.
It was obvious because there were tire marks on her body.
And several hours later that morning, someone that she lived with, a gentleman
by the name of Epps,
was found murdered in strikingly similar fashion.
So the police are investigating this crime and run into a dead end.
They have no leads.
They don't have any evidence.
And they're searching for the perpetrators.
So the Lorraine County Prosecutor's Office goes public with the offer of an
award.
They offer $2,500 to anybody that has information about this crime.
The next day, or a couple of days later, in walks a man named William Avery Sr.,
who was no stranger to the Lorraine County Police Department.
He had been a paid informant for them for a long time.
And he comes in and he speaks to detectives.
And they say, in essence, they say, everything you're telling us has been
public.
You know, you need to give us more information.
He then, that week, brings his son in, William Avery Jr., and his son claims to
have information about the case.
And they tell him, you know, you're not telling us enough.
He comes back about a week later and he says, well, I know the guys that did
this.
And he blames the murder on Al Cleveland, John Edwards, Lenworth Edwards, and
Benson Davis.
And he claims that Al Cleveland confessed it to him.
So they start investigating this man, William Avery Jr.'s account of what
happened.
And what he is telling them happened does not match the physical state of this
apartment where he claims this beating happened.
So this is like one of the telltale ways to tell if someone is falsely confessing
to you or falsely implicating others.
He tells them that there's this horrific beating of this victim that occurs in
an apartment.
And they go to the apartment.
I mean, chairs turned over, tables turned over, a bloody knockdown, drag out
fight for her life.
And they go to the apartment and take pictures.
And it's in the most pristine condition you can imagine.
Not a chair turned over, not a table.
And they immediately had reason to know that this guy was bullshitting.
Because he then comes and says to them, you know, I have other details.
And the more details he gives them, the less it's matching up with the evidence
that they have.
So they're trying these four men separately.
When the first trial happens, William Avery Jr. has an idea.
And his idea is, I'm going to extort these people for money.
He shows up at the trial and he tells the prosecutors, I want $10,000.
And the prosecutors say to him, what are you talking about?
You have to testify.
You got the reward money.
And he says, I'm not testifying.
They put him in jail for contempt.
And he says, I made the whole thing up anyways.
I did it for the reward money.
I made it up.
They should have known right then and there, before any of these four men were
tried, that this was someone that led them down the wrong path.
But instead of doing that, they keep him in jail.
I don't remember if it was for 30 days or 60 days.
And they let him cool his heels a little bit.
The judge in the trial calls a mistrial.
And when there's a mistrial, you can try someone again.
So, about a month goes by and William Avery Jr.'s story has now evolved.
He now no longer claims that Al Cleveland confessed to him.
He claims that he was a witness to it.
Oh, boy.
And what happens in that intervening month, I think people can draw their own
obvious conclusions about what happens.
But suffice to say, it's my opinion and my belief that they did a number on
this guy.
So, he goes on to testify at all four of their trials individually, during
which time the lead prosecutor gets a correspondence from the U.S. Secret
Service saying that,
We know you use this man, William Avery Jr., as an informant.
We have been using him as a paid informant in some food stamp sting.
And we just caught him in a lie.
And he's compromising our investigations because he is accepting reward money
and making things up.
And we're ceasing to use him as an informant.
And we are investigating him for crimes and giving us false information and
accepting reward money for it.
So, the prosecutor, you would think at that point, would say, all right.
It's over.
Obviously, it's over.
So, these guys all get sentenced and convicted to, I believe it was 25 years to
life.
That's right.
And I became involved in the case about two years ago, a year and a half ago,
and dissected the record.
And I was blown away by what I had seen.
And I've seen it all.
I found out that William Avery Jr. walked into the FBI in 2004.
And the FBI documents it.
And he says, look, I was a drug addict.
My father had threatened me.
He was a drug addict.
And he made me go in there and tell a lie about these men and falsely implicate
them in a murder that they didn't commit.
I'm now off drugs.
And I want to clear my conscience.
So, the FBI documents it and sends the report to the Lorain County prosecutors.
In 2006, Al Cleveland has an investigator searching for this man, William Avery
Jr., for years.
They couldn't find him.
They finally find him.
And they get an affidavit explaining William Avery Jr. explains how he made the
whole thing up.
He recounts what he told the FBI.
And post-conviction proceedings get scheduled.
And post-conviction proceedings is we're going to have a hearing as to whether
Al Cleveland is innocent.
So, the hearing is before a judge named Judge Roth Gary in Lorain County.
And what happens in essence is that William Avery Jr. shows up to testify.
And the judge tells him, before you testify, you should know your rights in
words or substance.
And he tells him that if you testify here that these men actually didn't do it,
there are potential consequences for making it up.
And if you're lying now and saying they didn't do it just to help them out,
there's consequences for that.
So, he's quickly told that he's going to be facing potential perjury charges.
So, he decides not to testify at that post-conviction hearing.
He walks out of the courthouse.
And reporters for the local paper ask him, look, why didn't you testify what
happened?
And he says, look, I made the whole thing up.
These guys didn't do it, but I'm not going to jail for 25 years.
So, that is the recap.
I was at that hearing.
So, this is crazy.
I found out from Al Cleveland.
Al Cleveland spent so much time in prison that he timed out and was paroled.
I think he spent close to 30 years in prison.
And he approached J.D. and he approached J.D. with his wife.
And it turned out that J.D. as a young lawyer was sitting at that hearing
watching it and knew as a young lawyer that there was something terribly wrong.
But back to just to get listeners and viewers up to speed on where we're at.
So, I came on the show in November, about a week before Thanksgiving.
And I laid the case out in finer detail than I just did.
And like I said, if you want more details, you could go to freetheohio4.com.
And my submission to J.D. and all the exhibits are there.
But that's basically the story as I told it.
Yeah.
So, I had been trying to get in touch with J.D. because he was running for re-election.
He had listed his cell phone number on the Internet.
So, I had a cell phone number.
And I was sending him text messages and emails and calling him.
And I was getting ghosted.
We had communicated for a little bit beforehand.
Is that true?
No, sir.
No.
No, sir.
So, I couldn't get in touch with him.
And then, as I'm trying to get in touch with him prior to my coming on the show
and speaking to you about it in November, J.D. gets indicted.
Oh, excuse me.
Charged by complaint.
No, he gets charged by complaint.
No grand jury.
They charge him with three felonies.
And I take a look and I see that he's running against someone.
And that person that he's running against is posting about the fact that he was
charged with three felonies.
And I'm like, all right, well, this seems like a political witch hunt.
I don't know much about it, but it seems like a tactic.
So, I came on the show and I said, look, I know this guy's up against it.
Hopefully, he now knows what it's like to be accused of something he didn't do.
And I said, he's either under so much stress or isn't tech savvy enough.
Both.
To know that every time I text him and say, please, I just need five minutes of
your time, I could see he's reading my text because he had his read receipts on
and he didn't know it.
Whoopsies.
I learned, Joe.
I learned.
So, I leave Austin, fly back to New York.
I'm in New York.
The episode aired, I think, at 12 p.m. or 1 p.m. Eastern time.
And at about 5.30, I see on my phone, J.D. Tomlinson.
And I said, I was about to teach my law school class of these kids at the Cardozo
Law School that take the Freedom Clinic at the Perlmutter Center for Legal
Justice.
They all know about the case.
They know what just happened.
And I was like, holy shit, this guy is trying to get in touch with me now.
And I picked up the phone.
I said, hello?
And he said, Josh, this is J.D. Tomlinson.
He's like, hey, man.
He said, I've been under a lot of stress.
There's people calling and emailing and flooding our office.
You've got to make this stop.
And I said, that's the joke.
In fact, there's no stopping what can't be stopped.
Inevitable.
It had its intended effect.
And J.D. and I got into a discussion right away.
And I had to quickly figure out a way to connect with him and tell him, I feel
your pain.
I hear what you're going through.
And he told me, listen, I'm fighting for my life over here.
These people have upended my life.
They're threatening my freedom.
I've been charged with crimes I didn't commit.
And I just quickly pivoted and I said, if you just give me a date, I want to
come down and I want to just show you, you now know what this is like.
These imagine going through this for 30 years.
So, I have to say in all my years of doing this, considering the circumstances
that he was in, for him to say, you know, he was wrestling with it on the call.
And he said, you know, I'll never forget what he said to me.
He said, you know, if I