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images so vivid that even fleeting moments become indelible memories. but how reliable are those memories? are the colors true? would you stake your life on it? >> it's showtime. >> and is it possible for imagination and memory to mix in the mind of a child? >> this did not ever happen. i am an innocent person. these allegations are not true. and i'm -- i mean, i don't know how else to explain it. i did not do this. i am not a child molester. >> but that is exactly what nancy smith was accused of in the spring of 1993. >> it was a nightmare, and it began one day and it never ended and it's still a nightmare today. >> nancy had been born and raised in lorraine, ohio, a once booming industrial town on lake erie. she stayed out of trouble and grew up with modest aspirations. >> i always knew that i'd probably want to grow up and be a mother. you know, get married and be a wife, you know, have children, have a house, you know, what everybody dreams of. >> of course, she never dreamed that a divorce would leave her with four children to raise alone and she never imagined that factories that had employed workers in lorraine for generations would shut down. driving a school bus was the best job nancy could find. it offered health insurance and by all accounts, she was good at it. but then on a monday morning in may, 1993, nancy smith's life changed forever. >> i went to the bus garage to get my bus, and my boss come up and said that they needed to talk to me downtown, and then that is when they told me that a mother had made an allegation against me on friday. >> did they tell you much about this mother? >> no, they would not give me no names. they really left me in the dark. >> a 4-year-old was at the heart of it, a little girl who had been riding nancy's bus all year had suddenly blurted out something strange to her mother the previous friday. >> she goes, you know what, mommy, she goes since the school was closed before we got there so we just went to nancy's house again. i said what? >> the mother's name was margie gronzen. she told police the bus driver had taken her daughter and some classmates home and exposed them to a pedophile named joseph. >> she says all of us kids take off our clothes and then joseph plays with us. >> the play which the little girl said took place in a messy basement went way beyond dolls. she described explicit sexual acts. >> so then, you know, she said he stuck it inside of her. >> upon hearing her little girl may have been violated with a stick, the mother took her to the emergency room for a full examination. that's when the police were called. >> the officers took the report at the hospital, and the detectives doing follow-up on the investigation. >> when detective tom cantu got the case he immediately went to see the girl and their mother to ask what else they knew about this joseph. >> she was saying that he got on the bus with nancy smith several times, and he was described as either a black male with white spots or a male with discolored skin areas on his face. >> the girl also told her mom that this spotted black man had blue eyes, and that he would sometimes urinate on her and other children after nancy served them milk and cookies. the detective brought nancy smith in for questioning. >> okay, nancy, you have the right to remain silent. i told her what the complaint was and the possible charges. of course she broke down. she says "i did nothing like that. i love the kids." >> yes, i do, all the time, we are not allowed to run our buses without an aide. we are not to pull away without one. that friday, sherry hagernan was on my bus. >> the detective noted the name of sherry hager maman but didn't ask any more about her. he was interested in finding joseph. >> they talked to me about a guy named joseph. who is joseph? >> i have no idea. there's nobody who works with me named joseph. >> i asked nancy smith, would you like to take a polygraph? not a problem. >> before that polygraph could be done detective cantu was summoned to the mayor's office. marge ye grondon was there. >> this woman is screaming for justice, going to the mayor screaming for justice, the mayor is screaming for someone to be arrested when the investigation had just begun. >> he had to call in the chief of investigations, saul rivera. >> they were screaming at each other, a lot of profanity. i walked in, told everybody to calm down. >> the mayor cooled his heels and let us do our investigation but on the other hand the mother kept off shooting her mouth. >> the accusing mom turned up the heat, took the heat public. >> one of the bus drivers drove them to a house where the alleged molesting took place. it was publicized on the tv and newspapers. >> she organized a meeting of the parents involved. >> all of a sudden more children are coming forward saying they were molested by the same person. >> overnight it was as if a sickening fear had blown in off lake erie. the parents and children of nancy smith's bus were panicked and calling the police with panic of their own. >> it mushroomed into a circus act. >> when we come back, police finally find the mysterious joseph, and it doesn't look good for nancy smith. >> he had a group of juvenile runaways he were harboring amount his home and had sex with. >> when "haunted memories" continues. out saving money. this is bobby. say hello bobby. hello bobby. do you know you could save hundreds on car insurance over the phone, online or at your local geico office? tell us bobby, what would you do with all those savings? hire a better ventriloquist. your lips are moving. geico®. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. the news hit lorain, ohio, like a firebomb. trusted school bus driver nancy smith and a mysterious man named joseph allegedly engaged in the repeated sexual molestation of preschoolers. after the media got involved, more parents came forward with their children's claims of abuse. >> when i started, you know, asking them questions, about his, you know -- that his butt was burning after it came out in the newspaper. >> they told me a game where they put them all on the wall and made them undress. >> with more children came more details. most of the abuse took place at joseph's house. joseph had a messy basement and he stuck them with needles. >> joseph told them to lie about everything. >> we also had a medical report at that time that showed two of the kids might have had a sexual disease. but there was also another report of another child who had scars indicating child abuse. >> but additional medical testing failed to support those findings, and police were still struggling to build a case. even as questions from the media and the public were mounting. >> i know that everybody thinks a lot of pressure is put on us by the media. that just goes with the turf. that goes with every case, but we don't frame people to get the media off our backs. >> but then in october, five months after the first allegations, detectives finally got the lucky break they had been looking for. a man named joseph suddenly appeared on their radar. >> the reason he came to the attention of the detectives to begin with was the fact that he had a group of young juvenile runaways that he was harboring at his home, and that he had sex with. >> his full name was joseph allen, and he had done time for murder and child rape. though his home didn't have a basement that the children mentioned, a search turned up toys and other items like these that the cops thought suspicious for a 40-year-old man who lived alone. a line-up was hastily arranged and seven of the accusing kids and their parents were brought in to get a good look at this joseph. >> we didn't have any equipment at the time. one guy went home and got his own video camera so there would no question as to how the line-up was actually done. >> joseph allen didn't have blue eyes or white spots that some children had described, but he did have white spots elsewhere on his body. police say several of the children were frightened when they saw allen standing before them wearing a green shirt. >> the green shirt. >> but two quickly picked him out and one boy's mother, who used to work for head start, told police she had seen allen hanging around the head start school. >> he and i had a run-in. my son broke free from my grasp, and he was standing by nancy's bus and i told him to get away from my son and stay away from him. >> police were sure they had their man. the next day his arrest was front page news. and nancy smith said that was the first time she laid eyes on joseph allen. >> i guess at that point they claimed he was my boyfriend. i had never met joseph allen, never seen joseph allen. i had no idea who he was. seen his picture in the newspaper. >> total stranger? >> total stranger. >> that evening when nancy saw police cars outside her parents' home, she knew they were coming for her. >> they knocked on the door, my parents let them in, arrested me, handcuffed me in front of my children, and took me to jail. >> it was a wrenching moment to be sure. but in lorain, there was little sympathy to be had for accused child molesters. >> cast rate them and shove it down his throat or i could take him to my house and torture him and her a little at a time like they did these kids. >> yeah, cut him up. >> for anyone watching all this play out in the media, this case seemed to be a continuation of a sickening nationwide trend involving child care workers and the child abuse of children. >> it seems as though every passing day brings more stories about child sexual abuse in this country. >> it was against this backdrop in the summer 1994 that nancy smith and joseph allen went on trial. everyone it seemed wanted to protect the children from further trauma. so to that end, the judge ordered that smith and allen be tried together. that way, the children would not have to testify twice. >> they wanted a separate trial for nancy, and one of the reasons is because joseph had a prior conviction. >> jack bradley was nancy smith's attorney. >> just sitting them in the same courtroom together would automatically give a connection. not a connection that could be established through evidence, but just because they were sitting at the same table together. >> the prosecution of the head start case was assigned to jonathan rosenbaum. an assistant prosecutor with a reputation for being tough. >> john rosenbaum he was a good man to have on your side when you were prosecuting a case. he was like a pitbull. very aggressive. >> rosenbaum declined our requests for an interview, but in e-mails he says the case was strong, highlighted by the testimony of five children and their parents. >> so the prosecutor would tell the jurors, just go back to the children, listen to what the children say. that is where you determine this case. >> what the children said to the jury was shocking. according to four of the kids, nancy smith had repeatedly taken them to joseph allen's house, where they had been tortured, and sexually assaulted and threatened with death if they told. the parents testified that in the months before the scandal came to light their children had been acting out sexually with children and stuffed animals. jack bradley said this graphic personal testimony seemed to hit home with the jury, even though no medical evidence was presented. >> it didn't matter in this case. it always went back to the children and the perception that the jurors had about the children. >> at the end of the trial, nancy smith took the stand, still insisting that she had been wrongly accused. >> i don't even know how to explain my emotions. i was devastated that anybody would even make these allegations against me. i am ea mother. why would somebody do that to me? >> but the prosecutor got nancy to admit that on occasion, she may have been briefly alone with the chirp on the bus. that, he argued, gave nancy smith and joseph allen ample opportunity to abuse the children and the prosecutor said the children were too young to make up graphic stories of sexual abuse. after six hours of deliberation, the jury returned its verdict. >> we, the jury, find the defendant guilty. >> i thought i was going to pass out. i couldn't believe it. i could not believe these people found me guilty. i did not commit this crime. i don't even know that man. i have never, ever seen that man before. >> a short time later, nancy smith was sentenced to 30 to 90 years in prison. >> 45372. >> i've never seen this man. >> her co-defendant, joseph allen, got five consecutive life sentences. >> they took me straight to the county jail. your kids are standing there, and i didn't know when i was ever going to see them again. >> coming up, what the jury didn't hear, from the original detective on the case. >> nothing matched. nothing. >> and from the aide on nancy's bus. >> i never got to speak to anybody about anything. >> when "dateline" continues. graduate, now that your journey begins, you're going to need a powerful connection ! felicidaaaadeeeees ! with this droid 4 by motorola on verizon 4g lte, you can stay in touch on skype with your loved ones. staying connected with your family... ... in more places, on america's largest 4g lte network. that's real value ! get $100 off any motorola 4g lte smartphone, like the droid 4. hurry, offer ends june 17th. verizon. felicidades ! oh, my god. you know i didn't do this. they all know i didn't do this. >> that is how nancy smith and joseph allen began serving their sentences as convicted sex offenders. >> don't have nothing to do with it. >> tears could be expected from someone like nancy, who with no prior criminal record, was looking at a 30- to 90-year prison term. but for the most part, the citizens of lorain county seemed satisfied that justice was done. >> it's real sickening in a sense that any time you see children that are 4 or 5 victimized, it makes it, you know, pretty sick. >> she's going to be okay now. >> because he's in jail. >> he's going to be in jail for a long time. >> though stunned by the verdicts, nancy's attorney was determined to fight on. >> i met with nancy's family after the trial, and i said i'm not going to give up on this case. i'm not going to quit trying to do whatever i can to secure her release. >> jack bradley was convinced that the jury had been swayed by the powerful testimony of the children and their parents, but he also felt the prosecution had failed to answer one big question. >> nobody ever explained how the children would then leave joseph's house after being urinated on, stuck with needles, abused, sexually assaulted in unimaginable ways and go back to their head start classroom and the teacher would just bring them in and say oh, gee, you were gone for a couple hours. glad you're back. you know, any problems? no. >> bradley thought that defied logic, and that the children's inconsistent statements showed their stories may have been contaminated by the repeated questioning of parents, police, and prosecutors. >> i never got the children's recorded statements until the second day of trial, when the prosecutor realized that they contained all type of exculpatory information. i asked the judge to play the tapes to the jury, because they would certainly realize once they heard those tapes that these children had been manipulated. that was denied. >> detective tom cantu, the first investigator on the case, says he suspected from day one that the children may have been manipulated. >> when i went to the house to interview the victim, the child victim, the mother wouldn't let the child answer any questions. the mother kept on answering for the child. then when i would ask the child is that right? i don't remember. i don't know. >> cantu says his doubts about the case only grew when he couldn't find any physical evidence to corroborate that child's story. none of the houses that kids pointed out as places where they were abused, checked out. and though the kids said they were abused together, head start records show they were never absent or late for school on the same days. >> no one saw a school bus parked in any neighborhood in the city. that would be like a sore thumb. put a school bus in the middle of any neighborhood. people would have seen it. >> in 20 years as a cop, cantu says he had never seen anything like it. he recommended the case be dropped and thought it had been, but because a promotion which took him off the case, he says he didn't know that new detectives had been assigned. cantu said those detectives never spoke to him about his findings, and he was never asked to testify at trial. >> angers me to this day that i was never called to testify, being the initial investigator. i think i could have influenced the jury. >> did you call jack bradley and say put me on the stand? >> i just figured if they thought my investigation was that was important, they could have called me. >> another person that thought they could have helped nancy's defense is sherri hagerman. >> i don't remember any officers asking me what happened. >> hagerman is the bus aide that worked with nancy smith on the day that the victims said nancy took their kids to joseph to molest their daughter. >> we took these kids to their homes or the school. >> hagerman says what's jaw-dropping is that nancy's attorney knew her story but never called her to testify. >> i was supposed to go and testify on her behalf, and i never did. why, i don't know. >> hagerman isn't the only bus aide who wanted to testify on nancy's behalf. sue coates had also been her aide during the months that the kids claim the abuse was taking place. >> i begged bradley every day, put me on the stand, please. i was her aide. i know how she behaved. >> then there was eddie soto, another coworker of nancy's. he wanted the jury to hear about the night that margie grondin told him a secret. >> margie did come to my house, knock on my door. she did told me in the beginning of the investigation that the little girl was saying, no, that didn't happen. i said, margie if this is -- this is serious. she's changing the story. you need to -- you need to speak up. >> the prosecutor, however, objected, and the judge threw that testimony out. >> they said, no, this is hearsay stuff. we don't want to hear this. as a matter of fact, i think i was, i got kicked out of that bench so fast that it -- i -- it wasn't, it wasn't right. >> so much monday morning quarterbacking, regret, and recrimination, and yet as it turned out, perhaps the most potent piece of evidence available to defense attorneys had been literally hiding in plain sight all along. >> when we come back, at a lineup, the children were asked to point out their alleged abuser, but why was this parent doing all of the pointing? >> anybody else you want to take a closer look? >> him. >> when "haunted memories" continues. you want to save money on car insurance? no problem. you want to save money on rv insurance? no problem. you want to save money on motorcycle insurance? no problem. you want to find a place to park all these things? fuggedaboud it. this is new york. hey little guy, wake up! aw, come off it mate! geico. saving people money on more than just car insurance. 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[ female announcer ] only from aveeno. the ohio reformatory for women in marysville casts a forbidding shadow over the surrounding countryside. a sign in a farmer's field shouts an eternal warning for all the world traveling to meet here. for nancy smith, this prison was hell and home for the foreseeable future. what were the first few days, weeks, like there? >> i know that i cried every night, and i just probably kept to myself. i mean you know, it's a pretty scary situation. you don't know what you're walking into. you don't know the people. >> after her conviction in 1994, nancy's four children, ranging in age from 12 to 18, were split up. one daughter, amber, lived out of town with grandparents. >> i was 14 when it started, and i probably could have dealt with it, but like i said, they really sheltered me from a lot of that. >> the children grew up without their mom, graduations, marriages, births, and deaths, nancy missed them all. >> i wasn't there when amber lost her twins, and i remember talking to her on the phone and she said, "mom, i need you," and i couldn't even be there for my own daughter. when she needed me the most. >> the future could not have been bleaker. both nancy and joseph allen had exhausted their appeals, and yet outside the prison's razor wire, public opinion was changing. several similar convictions from the '80s and '90s had been recently overturned and journalists examining the lorain head start case were turning up evidence that had not been presented at trial. most remarkable of all was the tape of that police lineup that led to joseph allen's arrest. >> number one. number two. >> released to a newspaper in 1997, the tape shows margie grondin's daughter hesitated when asked to identify the person who abused her. >> look at their faces one at a time. >> for eight long minutes, the girl stares at the men before her, reluctant to point out anyone, until finally, her mother margie grondin literally takes matters into her own hand. >> him. >> you want him to step forward? >> yes. >> the jury never saw that. because the prosecution didn't show it, and the defense team simply missed it. >> that information seemed to be somewhat hidden in the discovery and that may have just been overlooked. >> but that was not the only revelation on that tape this boy's mother, emily oliver, claimed she saw joseph allen near nancy smith's bus. at the lineup, she claimed joseph allen had grabbed her son, william, by the arm. >> do you recognize his voice and stuff? >> yeah, i did. >> but on the day of the lineup, william did not pick him out. >> look at each one. >> at trial, emily oliver testified that william was so afraid of joseph allen he left the room in tears. but the lineup tape shows that was clearly not the case. had the jury seen this, emily oliver's credibility may well have been called into question. >> i don't remember anything happening to me. >> william oliver is all grown up now and currently doing time in an idaho prison for burglary. joseph never grabbed your arm? >> nope. >> you never saw joseph and nancy together? >> the only time i saw them close was on a piece of paper with their pictures on it. >> in your world, this is fiction? >> yeah. >> william says emily oliver had a lifelong struggle with prescription drug addiction. she died two years ago. >> i think in retrospect it was emily trying to cheat the system to maybe even to the extent collect money for herself so she can support her habit. >> it turned out another mother who testified at trial also had a history with drugs, margie grondin herself. court records show a few years before she accused nancy smith, she pleaded guilty to dealing cocaine out of her apartment. that was something jack bradley should have known about. since he briefly represented marge ea mar margie's boyfriend and co-defendant in this case. >> i never completed that case. substitute attorney took over that case. >> you don't remember her -- >> no. >> -- turning against your client? >> no. >> these post-trial discoveries attracted the attention of a law professor at the university of cincinnati and director of the ohio innocence project. >> it was bizarre that charges were brought in the first place, once you start looking at the stories of the children just changed constantly. >> no medical records. >> right. >> the deeper gotzi and his team of lawyers dug into the case, the more they were convinced nancy needed a new trial. the evidence had been overlooked, critical witnesses like bus aide sherri hagerman were never called. that particular bus aide was never in called by you? >> yes. >> why didn't you? >> i can't tell you why i didn't. probably in hindsight i would want to do that. >> if it turns out that her being cleared on these charges is based on ineffective counsel, are you okay with that? >> yes. as an attorney, i practice law, and when i make a mistake, i'll admit it. and i'll try to rectify an injustice that's done, because that's my job as a defense attorney. >> but petitioning for a new trial will take time, maybe years, and even then the innocence project lawyers could not guarantee success. nancy's family was not sure how much longer she could hang on. >> i had went to visit her and it was actually one of the hardest ones, almost like she couldn't take it anymore. >> it was during that prison visit in 2007 that nancy smith and her daughter, amber, hatched an audacious plan to get her out. >> i wasn't going to give up, but i didn't know where it was going to take me. >> coming up, he helped put nancy smith behind bars, can he now help her daughter set her free? >> he gave me a hug and started crying. >> when "haunted memories" continues. ♪ [ male announcer ] nothing will keep you from magnum. silky vanilla bean ice cream and rich caramel sauce all covered in thick belgian chocolate. magnum ice cream. for pleasure seekers. more than 50 times a day? so brighten your smile a healthy way with listerine® whitening plus restoring rinse. it's the only rinse that makes your teeth two shades whiter and two times stronger. ♪ listerine® whitening... power to your mouth. more than ten years behind bars had been hard on nancy smith. she wanted out. but in 2007, she told a parole officer she would never exchange her honor for freedom. >> she basically said why did you not take the sex offender class, and i said because i'm not a sex offender. and i didn't feel that i needed to take that class. and she said even if it meant you going home? and i said even if it means me going home, i will sit here. >> her resolve was strong, but nancy's daughter, amber, said there was something in her mother's eyes that worried her. >> i had looked at her, and almost like she couldn't take it anymore. and i said what can i do? is there anyone i can call? she said call anyone you can. she's like i don't know where to start, and i didn't know where to start either. >> so she started with the phone book. that's where her finger found the number for lorain's police chief, salary vera. >> i left my name, amber, nancy smith's daughter. within minutes he called back, and set up a meeting for the next day. >> for amber, it was a random call. but within seconds of entering rivera's office, she knew it was the right call. >> he gave me a hug and started crying. >> you didn't know his involvement? >> i didn't know his involvement. he never really mentioned what involvement he had. >> remember back in 1993, salary vera oversaw the head start investigation. that's him running the lineup. amber says the chief told her privately that police had felt pressured by the media, the parents, and the prosecutor's office to make arrests in this case, arrests that, in hindsight, amber says the chief regrett regretted. >> he said that he was sorry and that he believed that there was an injustice made. he wanted to do anything he could to help, to bring her home. >> so a cop who had helped put nancy smith in prison volunteered to help get her out. he taught amber how to use a tiny tape recorder and sent her out to get one of the now grown kids who testified against her mother to say none of it had ever actually happened, on tape. >> i remember him always saying we only need one, we only need one kid to say that. >> but that was a tall order. even if she could get them to talk, what would they remember? >> when i went to one of the girl's work and told her who i was and asked her if she would talk to me, and she said, of course. i asked her if it happened and she basically said she doesn't remember it. >> did she say anything more convincing than i don't remember or i don't know? she said she could give me her cell phone number and maybe talk outside of her job. unfortunately, the next day when i called, her mother answered and kind of hung up the phone. >> there may have been a reason for that. after the criminal trial, margie grondin and the parents of thee other head start children won multimillion-dollar documents against head start's operator. the case was later settled for an undisclosed amount. the parents involved have not responded to "dateline's" request for an interview and are apparently bound by confidentiality provisions. one of their lawyers told us "all that i or my clients can say to you about the case is that the case is settled." you think that was the driving force behind this whole saga? >> i think so. >> money. >> um-hum. i think that's why now nobody will tell the truth, because they were awarded the money. >> reporter: with the odds of a dramatic confession unlikely, amber and the chief changed tactics. >> i said look, there's another option. it's clemency. i made the calls for her, i downloaded the forms for her. i gave her the forms, and said this is what you have to do. >> for months, they met, mostly on saturday mornings to strategize. the chief and the daughter of a woman he helped put in jail. then one day, amber says the chief stopped returning phone calls. >> there was about three months, where i hadn't heard anything from him, and i had told one of our attorneys, mark gotzi, the things that he had been saying and mark gotzi talks to him, and he basically denies everything i told mark. like he never said anything out of it. and out of the blue, i get another e-mail from him to come and meet with him. >> amber says this time she wanted proof that the chief believed in her mother's innocence. so she brought along that tiny tape recorder that the chief had taught her to use. >> some of the things the kids said are bizarre. >> and are you nervous? >> i think i was the first couple of times. but even when he was denying to my attorneys he never said any of that, i still had trust in him. >> it just wasn't a good case. we weren't even sure he was going to prosecute. >> chief rivera told "dateline" that his department was not pressured to make an arrest, but to the lawyers working to get nancy a new trial, amber's secret recordings seemed like a smoking gun. >> i think amber's tapes are significant. this is the chief of police now admitting essentially that we knew this was not reliable. and this was not a good case. her testimony will eventually be, will show that they acted in bad faith and with political motivation. >> and the political motivation being? >> the parents were going and raising hell to the media. >> it was only a matter of time before word of the rivera recordings put the case back in the news and lorain's chief of police in an awkward spot with the county prosecutor's office. >> i was very disappointed and very upset when i found out she had taped me, because i genuinely was trying to help her. i have not had contact with her since then. >> in the end, however, none of it mattered. in 2009, the case took a dramatic and unexpected turn, when a new actor suddenly took center stage, and this time it was someone who would actually do something. >> it wasn't that i had a hunch they were innocent. i knew it. our cloud is not soft and fluffy. our cloud is made of bedrock. concrete. and steel. our cloud is the smartest brains combating the latest security threats. it spans oceans, stretches continents. and is scalable as far as the mind can see. our cloud is the cloud other clouds look up to. welcome to the uppernet. in 2008, jack bradley was a haunted man. haunted by a case that he thought never should have gone to trial. could any of this possibly have happened and the jury actually got it right? >> absolutely not. it was a -- a witch hunt from day one. >> after 14 years, hope was flaking away like old paint, but then bradley discovered an opening. because of a clerical error in nancy's sentencing documents, a new judge would have to resentence her. it was the second chance bradley had been longing for. >> and based upon that, i filed a motion with judge burge. >> that might have been the single most important thing nancy's lawyer ever did for her. because judge james burge was no rubber stamp jurist. >> i wanted to put my own signature on the sentence and not simply reimpose what had been done. >> the judge reviewed trial transcripts and pretrial interviews and medical evidence that were never presented in court. >> in a child, age 4, tells me she has been vaginally assaulted with a stick, and for there to be no evidence of it, would indicate that the story, of course, is impossible. as i got into the pretrial interview tapes, it occurred to me that there were no victims, other than the children that had been led to believe that they had been abused. >> at the end of that process, the judge says he arrived at one inescapable conclusion. >> it wasn't that i had a hunch they were innocent, i knew it. and once i reviewed the file and i knew it, i was going to acquit them. it was that simple. >> so nancy smith had yet another day in court. >> we're convened today in the matter of the state of ohio versus nancy smith. >> i really get confused when they start talking all of their legal lingo. >> i have absolutely no confidence these verdicts are correct, and, therefore -- >> i was kind of following it, but i was kind of confused a little bit. you know? >> -- discharged and entering a judgment of acquittal on behalf of the defendants smith and the defendant allen in this matter. >> and just like that, nancy's nightmare seemed to be over. >> i was just stunned. that's all i can say. i -- we were just so excited. [ applause ] i just wanted to kiss that ground. i always had hope, but i never really knew if i would ever go home. >> after nearly 15 years in prison, nancy smith was free. free to be a grandmother. >> good girl. >> free to once again drive the streets of her hometown. >> that st. joe's was open when i went to prison, it's been -- shut down now. >> and life was as sweet as it had ever been. judge, some people will call you a hero. do you accept that label? >> no. >> why? >> it isn't a question of heroism. i took a set of facts, i applied real world experience and the law, and i know these people are innocent. if i were to overlook that, i would never get over it. >> but the judge's ruling, it turned out, was not final. the current lorain county prosecutor was as determined to defend the convictions as his predecessors had been. he appealed to the ohio supreme court, arguing that judge burge had overstepped his authority. last year, the court agreed and ordered the judge to resentence nancy smith and joseph allen. the supreme court basically ordered you to send these people back to prison. >> that's correct. >> why didn't you? >> shortly after i received that, the chief assistant prosecutor and attorney bradley asked me on this case not to do anything unless i heard from someone, and no one has asked me to do anything. my belief is that they are trying to come to a resolution. >> and that's where it has stood for more than a year. nancy smith and joseph allen are still living their lives in limbo, neither in prison, nor exonerated, and just one bang of a gavel away from returning to prison. >> i carry a lot of stress obviously. i carry in the back of my mind that there's -- you know, that i could possibly go back to prison. >> tonight, nancy smith's future is in the hands of this man, ohio governor john kasich. in april, lawyers for the ohio innocence project filed a formal clemency petition with the governor's office in columbus. it's not known when or if the governor will rule on it. >> it's our hope the governor of the state of ohio will look at this particular case and say 15 years is enough. i'm sure no one will ever admit that a mistake was made, but hopefully they'll say 15 years is enough. >> lorain's police chief cel rivera agrees and said so publicly for the first time to "dateline" in april. >> i think so many questions have been raised, she's not deserving to go back to prison and she needs to be released and joseph's allen case, although all but forgotten, also needs to be reviewed. >> of course, there are still people in lorain county that think nancy smith and joseph allen are guilty as charged, chief among them, attorney rosenbaum, in an e-mail he said, "the real question that should be asked in this case is why are the most heinous sex offenders in this county has ever seen are still at large after the ohio supreme court has ordered their return to prison?' in the end, both sides can agree in this case the system failed. either guilty people are free or innocent people have been wrongfully denied their freedom. >> am i ashamed of the system? yes, because i'm a part of it, and the way our rules work, this isn't supposed to happen. we can't repay plps smimrs. smi mr. allen for what we've taken from them. >> formancy smith, every day spent outside of prison is priceless. too priceless to waste thinking about the life that might have been. are you bitter, angry? >> you know what, there was a time when i was bitter and there was a time when i was angry. but you know what? this is about me and my freedom and this is about my innocence. can i forgive and move on? absolutely. because somebody has to forgive them. so why not start with me?

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