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- [00:01]
Major Garrett
I'm CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett, and you're invited to the takeout. No reservations required. Every weeknight, our podcast serves up a balanced menu of politics, policy and pop culture. The day's happenings with curiosity, informality and humor. Serious discussion, but we don't take ourselves too seriously. Follow and listen to the takeout with.
- [00:24]
Pat Fanning
Me, Major Garrett, on the Free Odyssey.
- [00:27]
Major Garrett
App or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:32]
Jed Lipinski
On WhatsApp, no one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat or trading those late night voice messages that could basically become a podcast, your personal messages stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone.
- [01:08]
Major Garrett
In late December of last year, in one of his last actions as president, Joe Biden commuted The sentences of 37 federal death row inmates. Their sentences were converted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. You'd think the death row inmates would have appreciated the gesture, but not all of them were happy about it. A week after the announcement, two inmates who'd received the commutation filed emergency motions to block it. One of them was Len Davis. Len is arguably the most corrupt police officer in New Orleans history. He was known as the Desire Terrorist for the years he spent terrorizing residents of the city's Desire housing projects. Len was sentenced to death in 1996 for orchestrating the murder of Kim Groves, a 32 year old mother of three who'd filed an internal affairs complaint against him. But he's always professed his innocence. In the motion he filed against his commutation, Len argued that since death penalty cases receive closer scrutiny, staying on death row gave him a better chance at getting his conviction overturned. Unfortunately for Len, his motion was denied. A Supreme court ruling in 1927 says that a convict's consent is not required for the president to grant reprieves and pardons. In other words, if the president wants to prevent your execution, you're powerless to stop him. Len Davis is now reluctantly serving a life sentence. Which is interesting, because prior to the commutation, Len had already been serving a separate life sentence for his involvement in a drug protection racket during his days as a cop. Biden just gave him another one. I knew about Len Davis reputation from my years as a reporter in New Orleans, but to be honest, I was foggy on the specifics of what he'd actually done and why? To learn more about who Len Davis really was, I spoke with longtime New Orleans criminal defense attorney Pat Fanning. Pat represented Len during his federal drug trial in 96 and maintained a relationship with him for years afterward. He seemed uniquely positioned to help me understand the mind of New Orleans most corrupt cop. I'm Jed Lipinski. This is Gone South. Years before he represented Len Davis, Pat Fanning worked as an assistant district district attorney under Harry Connick, father of the musician Harry Connick Jr. But he found his calling as a defense attorney. You may remember Pat from an earlier episode of this show about a wealthy Louisiana man named Harold Landry, known as H, who stabbed his wife to death in the uk Pat did not know Len Davis before Len became the poster child for corruption inside the New Orleans Police Department. But Pat did know that the NOPD was corrupt long before Len Davis became a cop.
- [04:12]
Pat Fanning
Well, I think there was always an atmosphere, a culture in the New Orleans PD where rules were broken on a regular basis. But then there was a shift. And I think what happened is the hiring standards went down significantly. And so you'd have cops that came in from old New Orleans families from old New Orleans neighborhoods, and they'd get a high school education, and then their daddy was a cop or their uncle was a cop, and so they'd become cops. And there were these rules about, you know, if you grabbed a dope deal and he had 5,000 in his pocket, you took 4,000 and gave him a thousand back for two reasons. One, so he wouldn't be quite so mad at you. And second, because if you went and ratted you out, you say, well, how stupid is that? If I was going to steal from him, I would have taken a whole five, wouldn't I? And so there was that culture. And I used to hear those stories. But then as the city got more violent and as the drug dealing got more entrenched and significant, it was just a perfect storm for a bad situation to develop.
- [05:12]
Major Garrett
Len Davis was born in Chicago, but he moved to New Orleans with his mother as a boy before joining the NOPD in the mid-80s. At 22, he'd already had a few brushes with the law, including a battery charge. But the department was facing staffing shortages, and they lowered their recruitment standards to let people with criminal histories join the force. After graduating from the academy, Len was assigned to the fifth District, the highest crime area in the city at the time. Len quickly developed a bad reputation. Between 1987 and 1992, he was suspended at least six times and faced over a dozen Citizen complaints, including allegations of brutality and intimidation. But the police department dismissed most of the complaints. In fact, Len was awarded the NOPD's Medal of Merit, a significant honor given to officers who demonstrate exceptional bravery beyond the call of duty. In the early 1990s, the crack epidemic and turf wars among local gangs triggered a surge in violence. In 1994, New Orleans recorded 424 murders, the highest in its history, earning it the title of murder capital of America. The vast majority of those murders went unsolved. But 1994 was also the year the law finally caught up with Len Davis. He was charged with two separate federal first, for hiring a drug dealer to kill Kim Groves, and second, for participating in a large scale drug protection racket with a group of other cops. Len was convicted of the first crime in 1996 and sentenced to death. But even though he was on death row, the justice department opted to try him again on the protection racket charges. This time, they were seeking a life sentence. That's when Pat Fannin got a call from a federal judge. He asked Pat to represent Len at his upcoming trial.
- [07:10]
Pat Fanning
I get a call from the judge with the drug case, Judge Feldman, and he calls me and says, this guy ran crazy in his last trial and cursed out the judge at the sentencing and cursed out his lawyers and stuff. And he's already fired two lawyers here. And so I'm thinking, boy, what a big asshole this guy is. And your name came to mind, Pat, about representing him. Well, thank you, judge. I'm glad that you put me in a category with Len Davis. But he said, I just figured you could handle him because you've been around so long and, you know, you kind of know how to do these things. And so I said, well, you know, it's a federal judge. I got cases in his court. I'm not going to tell him no.
- [07:49]
Major Garrett
New Orleans is a small town. Word quickly spread that Pat Fanning was representing the notorious Len Davis. Soon after his meeting with the judge, Pat got a call from the warden of the jail where Len was locked up.
- [08:01]
Pat Fanning
And I think we went to lunch or whatever. And he said, man, you got Len Davis or something? I said, why? He said, when he goes out in the yard, he said, I was worried a former cop, we would have to segregate him out and put him in isolation and stuff. He said, man, he mixes in with those guys out there. A couple of them say something to him. He gets in fights in the yard and everything. He said, he fits in perfectly with our population here in the jail.
- [08:25]
Major Garrett
Pat had defended a lot of tough characters in his career. But Len seemed particularly irascible. As the judge noted, he'd fired all of his previous attorneys. But the judge had appointed Pat for a reason. He wasn't like other defense attorneys.
- [08:40]
Pat Fanning
I'm not afraid of a guy like that. Some lawyers get in there with these big tough guys and they kind of delicate with them. You know, I was raised in a blue collar neighborhood and, you know, my daddy wasn't a lawyer or anything. And so I knew a lot of cops. A lot of cops came from my neighborhood, a lot of Irish cops. And so we came from. I don't want to say we came from a similar background, but, you know, I wasn't some blue blood in there appointed to represent him from some big firm or something.
- [09:10]
Major Garrett
Pat had another advantage over Len Davis previous lawyers. And that was the simple fact that Len was doomed. He'd already been sentenced to death. He was now facing a mountain of damning evidence in the federal drug case, including wiretap recordings and fellow cops willing to testify against him. In other words, Pat had nothing to lose. Len's main gripe about his past attorneys was that they'd prevented him from playing an active role in his defense. Pat decided to take the opposite approach.
- [09:39]
Pat Fanning
And so what I did was whatever he wanted. Sure, Lynn showcase. And we did it. And so he and I got along famously.
- [09:50]
Major Garrett
Before the trial began, the judge asked Pat for what are known as voir dire questions. These are questions posed to potential jurors to weed out bias or conflicts of interest. Normally, Pat would write his own voir dire questions, but in this case, he asked Len to write them. Pat then gave them to the judge.
- [10:08]
Pat Fanning
And so the judge calls us over for the conference where we go through these questions and he tells us what she's going to ask. And when I get in there, he says, Mr. Fanning, have you fallen on your head recently? I was like, what's the matter? He said, these questions are ridiculous. I said, those questions come straight from my client. You want me to tell him no and he'll fire me? And the judge was like, oh, no, I'll tell him no. And so I go back and say, look, I tried. Here's my motion. And I filed. And the judge and said he loved me.
- [10:36]
Major Garrett
The rest of New Orleans had written Lenoff as evil incarnate. But through his attorney client relationship with Len, Pat got to know him on a personal level. Their conversations would give Pat a window not only into Len's life, but into the city of New Orleans. During its most turbulent years. Hi, this is Jed, host of Gone South. I want to share some news about one of the finest true crime podcasts out there, bone Valley. Bone Valley's first season was released in 2022 to worldwide critical and commercial acclaim. It told the story of Leo Schofield, who was wrongfully convicted of killing his wife. This season, the man who confessed to the murder, Jeremy Scott, is fighting to prove that Leo is innocent. The state doesn't believe either Leo or Jeremy. This is the story of the people who do.
- [11:34]
Pat Fanning
Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season one. I just knew him as a kid. Long silent voices from his past came forward and he was just staring at me. And they had secrets of their own to share. Gilbert King I'm the son of Jeremy Lyn Scott. I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it. Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil. I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.
- [12:12]
Major Garrett
If the cops and everything would have done their job properly, my dad would.
- [12:15]
Pat Fanning
Have been in jail. I would have never existed. I never expected to find myself in this place. Now I need to tell you how I got here.
- [12:24]
Major Garrett
At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.
- [12:27]
Pat Fanning
Bone Valley Season 2 Jeremy, Jeremy, I want to tell you something. Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to hear the entire new season ad free with exclusive content. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.
- [12:49]
Emma Greed
I'm Emma Greed and I've spent the last 20 years building, running and investing in some incredible businesses. I've co found a multi billion dollar unicorn and had my hand in several other companies that have generated hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. The more success I've had, the more people started coming to me with questions. How do you start a business? How do you raise money? How do I bounce back from failure? So it got me thinking, why not just ask the people I aspire to the most? How did they actually do what they do? I'm so incredibly lucky to know some of the smartest minds out there. And now I'm bringing their insights and along with mine unfiltered, directly to you on my new podcast, Aspire with Emma Greed. I'll dive into the big questions everyone wants to know about success in business and in life through weekly conversations. You'll get the tangible tools, the real no BS stories, and undeniable little hacks that actually help you level up. Listen to and follow Aspire with Emma Greed and Odyssey Podcast. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
- [13:56]
Major Garrett
In the months before Len Davis trial on federal drug charges, Pat Fanning visited Len every week at the Orleans Parish House of Detention, the notoriously dangerous and overcrowded jail where pretrial detainees are held. They met at night and talked about Len's case. But Len often veered off topic to share stories about his days patrolling New Orleans fifth District.
- [14:19]
Pat Fanning
Very high crime housing projects, big giant housing projects. Lots of drug dealing, lots of murders, lots of violence. I mean, there was a place named Eddie's on Desire and Love. It was a bar room and I was an assistant da and they said, you gotta take me over to this place. I said, I wanna meet Eddie. I said, eddie, you must have the biggest bathroom in the world because you have one murder a week in your bar. And when the cops come, everybody was in the bathroom. Nobody saw anything. So that was the reputation of that area. It was disastrous.
- [14:49]
Major Garrett
The Fifth District sits between the French Quarter and a predominantly white suburb of New Orleans called Chalmette, which meant that kids from Chalmette who wanted to party in the Quarter had to drive through the 5th district late at night to get home. Len said he used this fact to meet his monthly ticket quota.
- [15:06]
Pat Fanning
Len said they'd pull up and then get to a red light and they'd be all nervous because they were in such a bad neighborhood and they'd look around and they'd run the light when nothing was coming. At 2 o' clock in the morning, he'd light them up and say, well, I have fun with them out there in the Fifth dealing with these little white preppies coming from the French Quarter coming through my neighborhood.
- [15:25]
Major Garrett
In his conversations with Pat, Lent harped on the hypocrisy of those who complained about his aggressive tactics. In 1994, the 5th district was practically a war zone. Len believed his tactics were justified.
- [15:38]
Pat Fanning
No, I mean, we would talk about his record and his problems before with disciplinary things, and he'd say, look, you know, they put me in the baddest part of town and tell me to go arrest drug dealers. What you think? I mean, I'm not dealing with altar boys out there. Yeah, sometimes we get in fights and I smack them around. So sometimes they resist and I gotta use force. I mean, he would tell me stuff like that, but he never talked about going out and beating people up around. You know, just for no reason.
- [16:05]
Major Garrett
Patrolling New Orleans most dangerous neighborhoods was hard work, and the cops who did it made next to nothing. In 1993, new officers in the NOPD were paid just $18,000 per year, or just under 40,000 today, making it one of the lowest paid metropolitan police departments in the country. Corruption was basically inevitable. Len explained that in 1994, a drug dealer turned informant came forward. He told the feds that a group of NOPD officers led by Len Davis were taking bribes to protect drug dealers. That summer, the FBI launched Operation Shattered Shield to expose corruption inside the NOPD's ranks. Working with the informant, the agent devised an elaborate sting. They set up a warehouse full of fake cocaine that enlisted willing officers to protect it.
- [16:56]
Pat Fanning
And so the FBI swoops in on the scene, and they set up this warehouse and they bring this undercover agent from out of town in with a gang of guys. The undercover agent went to lan and said, listen, I'm having trouble getting you sometime, and I don't know what's the problem, why you're not answering the phone. How about I give you and all you guys cell phones to using this protection that you're giving us? You know, since you're working with us now, you know, you can imagine those phones, how hot they were, they were so wired up. And so Len called all his guys and said, hey, man, we got a perk. You know, we're getting employee benefits here. Everybody gets a free cell phone.
- [17:33]
Major Garrett
As a result, the FBI captured hundreds of conversations between Len and his team of crooked cops. These recordings were the centerpiece of the government's case. But the evidence wasn't limited to wiretaps. They also had plenty of video surveillance, thanks to the undercover agent.
- [17:50]
Pat Fanning
Apparently, he just travels all over the country doing these undercover operations, one after another after another. His name was jj. That was what they called him, jj. There's an interesting video at the Hilton Hotel in New Orleans. The FBI provided the room, and of course, they wired it up and had cameras in it. And so when they got there, Len says, all right, now you guys ain't cops or anything. Y' all not wired up. And he went like to pat him down or something like that, you know, and so they said, yeah, all right, stupid. And they put their hands up and let them pat them down. And then JJ says, well, you know what, Len? You're pretty goddamn stupid yourself. He says, what? He says, if that's all you're going to do, I don't know if I want to do business with you. I said, what you mean? He says, that's all you're going to do to try to figure out if we cops? You don't think we could hide a microphone on us if we were cops? And the guy had a lot of confidence in how the FBI had hidden everything. I said, what you mean? He says, you ought to make us drop our pants and take our shirts off and check the rest of the room for cameras and all. And then said, you know, you're right. I will. And the guy said, well, you got to do it, too, though. I want to make sure you ain't wired up on us. So everybody drops their pants down to their knees, and they're all looking at each other. And there was a video camera in the TV some kind of way. And so Len's walking around like he's this expert electronic guy, and he walks right up to the television, stares right into the camera like that, and comes back, says, all right, everything's clean. And I'm thinking to myself, you dumbass.
- [19:17]
Major Garrett
The video seemed to speak for itself. But in his jailhouse chats with Pat Fanning, Len insisted that he was working undercover.
- [19:25]
Pat Fanning
Len's argument, and he posited this as his defense, was that he was working undercover and he was going to ultimately bust all these guys. And so he was helping them. And as the deals got bigger and bigger, he was going to finally, when they got really big, he was going to put them all in jail. And he was working this unauthorized undercover operation. And so that's sort of what we had to go with.
- [19:51]
Major Garrett
As we mentioned earlier, before Pat took over as Len's attorney, Len had already been sentenced to death for orchestrating the murder of a woman named Kim Groves. Len claimed he was innocent of that crime, too, and he was actively appealing his conviction. But Pat had read the newspaper reports and court filings, and it didn't look good for Len. On October 11, 1994, Len and his partner, a cop named Sammy Williams, allegedly beat up a teenage boy they mistook for a suspect in a police shooting. Kim Grove saw it happen. She bravely filed a brutality complaint with the NOPD's internal affairs division. News of the complaint got back to Len within hours. Len had hatched a plan to kill her. FBI wiretaps captured a conversation Len had with a local drug dealer named Paul Hardy. In the recordings, Lent can be heard describing Groves and ordering Hardy to, quote, get her. He also mentions that he has a 30 to take care of police radio code for a homicide. Here's a clip from the recording. Brown skin with light Brown eyes. I got the phone on and the radio. After it's done, go straight uptown and call me later. At 11pm the next day, Hardy and a getaway driver pulled up to Groves address. After spotting Groves, Hardy walked up and shot her once in the head at point blank range. Once the hit was carried out, Len was caught radioing the confirmation. NAT, short for necessary action taken. Len's former partner later testified that upon hearing that Groves had been killed, Len started jumping up and down in joy. Despite the overwhelming evidence against him, Len told Pat Fanning he had nothing to do with Kim Groves murder. And just to be clear, like, what did Len say happened if he wasn't involved? What was his argument?
- [21:48]
Pat Fanning
He just said anything about it. I wasn't involved in that. Didn't have anything to do with that lady getting killed. They just trying to pin everything on me.
- [21:56]
Major Garrett
Len claimed that Kim Groves had lied in her internal affairs complaint. It was his partner Sammy who'd beaten the kid up, not him.
- [22:03]
Pat Fanning
He says, Sammy smacked the kid around and she makes a complaint on me.
- [22:07]
Major Garrett
At the time of the shooting, Operation Shattered Shield was building toward a major takedown of corrupt New Orleans cops. But after Groves death, agents shut the sting down. They arrested Len, his accomplices in the murder, and a dozen other officers involved in the cocaine distribution scheme. Len was charged in two separate federal cases, one for the murder, one for the drugs. The murder trial took place first and ended in a guilty verdict, with a jury unanimously recommending the death penalty. It marked one of the first times in American history that a police officer was sentenced to death for killing a private citizen. That was in April of 1996. Eight months later, Len's drug trial began. Attorney Pat Fanning found himself in the unusual position of defending a man who, win or lose, was going to wind up on death row anyway. Still, Pat had a job to do. His client may have been doomed, but Pat was prepared to give him the strongest defense he could. Federal trials are time consuming and expensive. That's why more than 97% of federal criminal cases end in plea deals. The government will almost always avoid rolling the dice unless they have to. So why did the government decide to take Len Davis to trial a second time after he'd already been sentenced to death? The reason, according to his defense attorney, Pat Fanning, is that the feds thought Len's death penalty could always get reversed, and they wanted to ensure that Len remained locked up. In mounting his defense, Pat Fanning faced a slew of obstacles, not least of which was that everyone in New Orleans knew Len Davis as a homicidal cop.
- [24:00]
Pat Fanning
There was an A and E documentary about him that showed repeatedly over and over in the New Orleans area. And so he became the poster child for police corruption in New Orleans.
- [24:12]
Major Garrett
To make matters worse, the murder of Kim Groves was followed just months later by another horrific police involved shooting. On March 15, 1995, NOPD Officer Antoinette Frank and an accomplice shot and killed three innocent people during an armed robbery of a Vietnamese restaurant in New Orleans East. Frank left the scene after the murders, but returned shortly after posing as a responding officer. Her goal was to eliminate any remaining witnesses. But one of the Victim's family members ID'd her as the killer. She too was sentenced to death, making Antoinette Frank the only woman currently on Louisiana's death row. As a result, New Orleans opinion of their local police force was at an all time low. They were hungry to see someone pay for the NOPD's crimes. Pat's first move was to file a motion to try the case in Houston or some other city where people were less likely to have heard of Len Davis. But the judge denied it. The trial would happen in New Orleans.
- [25:11]
Pat Fanning
After all, when we picked the jury in Len's case, the judge brings in like 50 prospective jurors. The first question is, have any of you ever heard of Len Davis? And like 49 hands went up. And the last one, I said, we better get rid of him because he lives in a cave somewhere. You know, you don't know anything about anything. And so you ask each one individual, what do you know? Well, I know he got the death penalty because he had that lady killed, blah, blah, blah. Well, would you be prejudice against them? And of course they all say, oh, no, I'll be fair. And so, you know, we had that going in. I mean, you got one foot in the grave, another foot on a banana peel. You know, how are you going to get a fair jury?
- [25:50]
Major Garrett
The prosecution, as expected, mounted a devastating case, complete with wiretaps, video surveillance, and Len's former partner testifying about the leadership role Len had played in the protection racket. Still, Pat launched a colorful defense that, if nothing else, served to embarrass both the FBI and the NOPD at Len Davis murder trial. Months earlier, the feds had argued that wiretap recordings clearly showed that Len was planning a murder. But as Pat pointed out during the drug trial, FBI agents had been listening to those wiretaps in real time and they'd done nothing to stop the murder from happening. In Pat's view, there were two possible explanations for this one was that what Len said on the wiretaps was more ambiguous than the FBI claimed. The other was that the FBI was either too lazy or too stupid to realize that Len had been actively plotting a murder.
- [26:43]
Pat Fanning
So the FBI takes credit for coming down here and uncovering this corruption. But, you know, remember FBI? Remember what it stands for? Famous but incompetent.
- [26:52]
Major Garrett
Pat also highlighted the hypocrisy of the government's claim that Len was a dangerous cop, when in truth, the NOPD had given Len multiple commendations for his police.
- [27:01]
Pat Fanning
Work during the trial, during some pretrial hearings, when they would get on there and say what a horrible cop he was, and then we would present his plaques and things that he got and say, well, you got this commendation and that commendation. Now you want to say he was the worst cop that ever lived. And so it was sort of an interesting scenario there. But, you know, he was a tough guy. And so did he arrest some bad guys? Yeah. And did he have to use some force to do it? And was he in danger when he did? Yeah, so he got awards for that.
- [27:30]
Major Garrett
In the end, though, the evidence against Len was overwhelming. The jury found him guilty of running a cocaine protection racket. Later that month, Len was brought back to court for sentencing. The judge was the same one who'd appointed Pat to Len's case. When he saw Pat walk into the courtroom, he called him into his chambers.
- [27:49]
Pat Fanning
And he and I got along well. We had a good relationship. We were friends. And he said, pat, you got to help me with this guy, man. He said, when he showed up for his first sentence and he MF'd everybody and cut it up, created a scene, he said, can you get him to calm down out there? You know, I was like, well, judge, he's got the death penalty, and you're giving him life today. You're the district judge, the federal judge. If you can't control him, I mean, what's he got to lose? What can I do to control him? He said, well, he likes you. I said, well, all right, let me talk to him.
- [28:18]
Major Garrett
So Pat privately conferred with Len. If you disagree with the judge's ruling, he told him, do it in a professional way. Try not to get upset. Len nodded in agreement.
- [28:28]
Pat Fanning
And when the sentencing started, the judge started dressing him down for what a horrible guy he was. And he then said, is there anything you'd like to say? And Len said, yeah, I don't think you gave me a fair trial, and I think you're a racist. Something like that. So Feldman, who was a smart guy, but I didn't agree with what he did. Then he took the bait and he said, I'm not a racist. I'll have you know all these organizations I belong to, yada yada. And it degenerated into Len motherfucking the judge and all that stuff, you know. And so I'm sitting there standing next to Lynn, listening to all this, and when he gets finished, judge says, is there anything else you want to say? And he says, yeah, I want to say one more thing. I'm like, oh, Lord, I'm going to put my finger in my ears or something. He says, you did one good thing for me. There was only one thing you did that I really appreciate you doing for me. And the judge said, yeah, what's that? He said, you've appointed this great lawyer for me, Mr. Fanning, right here. He's a really good lawyer and did a fine job for me. That's the only, only good thing you did for him. And I looked up to the judge and the judge was like, looking at me like, you son of a bitch.
- [29:35]
Major Garrett
The judge gave Len a life sentence plus five years for the drug conviction to run concurrently with his existing death sentence. When Pat read the news in December that Len Davis had rejected Biden's commutation so that he could stay on death row, he said he wasn't surprised. Pat knew how strongly Len believed he would one day get his conviction overturned. But he suspected Len's reasons for wanting to remain on death row were simpler than that.
- [30:03]
Pat Fanning
Len Davis has been on death row now for almost 20 years. More than 20 years, right. And so that's part of the problem is that these guys stay on death row so long that they don't think they're ever going to be executed. Because after all, I've been here for more than 25 years and the conditions on death row are much better than they are in gen pop general population. And so Len says, either I can stay in a nice one man cell with nice meals and it's quiet and I don't have to worry about getting shanked, or they can put me in general population. And I'm getting old now and I got to fight my way through this. And so he decided he'd rather stay where he was. And that doesn't surprise me coming from Len.
- [30:43]
Major Garrett
Len Davis motion to block Biden's commutation was officially denied in January of 2025. He's now 60 years old and serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. If you have information, story tips or feedback you'd like to share with the Gone south team, please email us@gonesouthpodcastmail.com that's gonesouthpodcastmail.com and for bonus content, you can follow us on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram @ Gone South Podcast. You can also sign up for our newsletter on substack. Gone south with Jed Lipinski Gone south is An Odyssey original podcast. It's created, written and narrated by me, Jed Lipinski. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss Berman, Maddy Sprung Kaiser, Tom Lipinski, Lloyd Lockridge, and me. Our story editors are Tom Lipinski, Maddie Sprunkheiser and Joel Lovell. Gone south is edited by Chris Basel and Perry Crowell. It's mixed and mastered by Chris Basel. Production support from Ian Mont and Sean Cherry. Special thanks to J.D. crowley, Leah Rhys, Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Schuff.
- [32:20]
Jed Lipinski
Imagine if you could ask someone anything you wanted about their finances. How much do you make? Who paid for that fancy dinner? What did your house actually cost? On every episode of what We Spend, a different guest opens up their wallets, opens up their lives, really, and tells us all about their finances. For one week. They tell us everything they spend their money on.
- [32:43]
Pat Fanning
My son slammed like $6 worth of blueberries in five minutes.
- [32:47]
Jed Lipinski
This is a podcast about all the ways money comes into our lives and then leaves again. Which of course we all have a lot of feelings about.
- [32:55]
Pat Fanning
I really want these things.
- [32:56]
Emma Greed
I want to own a house, I.
- [32:57]
Pat Fanning
Want to have a child. But this morning I really wanted a coffee.
- [33:00]
Jed Lipinski
Because whatever you are buying or not buying or saving or spending, at the end of the day, money is always about more than your balance. I'm Courtney Harrell and this is what we spend, listen to and follow what We Spend. An Odyssey original podcast available now. Wherever you get your podcasts.