he ignored the case. as close to zero as there is. that was the amount of work that went into the fact investigation for randy steidl s case. i would challenge him when the witnesses were taking the stand against me that, you need to talk to so-and-so to impeach them. that s a lie. and he patted me on the back and said, don t you know what my job is? and i said, yeah, prove my innocence. no. no. my job is to create a reasonable doubt. once he said that, before i was convicted, i realized, i m done. there s not much to say. the jury ruled against us. i didn t think they would, and that s that. tomorrow morning we have a hearing on the death sentence. in 1999, after years of appeals in the illinois courts, metnick finally had a break through in randy s case.
do you swear that the testimony you re about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god? i do. proceed. thank you, mrs. reinboldt, my name is michael metnick. and i am the attorney for randy steidl. do you understand that? yes, i do. why is it that you re here today? because there were some things that didn t weren t truthful in the testimonies and were you there? at the rhoads house the night they were killed? no. that s when i was done with the state s case. she was either there or she wasn t. who s she lying to? in either way, she s not credible. why did you mention randy steidl? why did i? yes. at that point? yes. because that s who everybody was saying did it.
affidavit and analysis. what board certifications do you have? three areas of pathology. anatomical pathology, pathological pathology, forensic pathology. there was a hilt on the knife. there would have had to been a hilt mark. i felt like, wow, i had this evidence that these two men are innocent. they re going to finally be freed. we re going to be able to actually conduct an investigation and try and find out who the real killers are. randy s incarceration had torn his family apart. randy s brother, state trooper rory steidl believed randy was guilty. randy s mother wanted to see for herself, so she visited him behind bars. you see your mother s eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks. sets down, she said you look at
me right now. did you have anything to do with this at all? i looked her right in her eyes. and i said, mom, i ve done some bad things in my life, but i ve never done anything like this. you know i m not capable of doing anything like this. as soon as i got that out of my mouth, she was up and out of that visiting booth, slammed the door. when we left, she said he didn t do that, rory. i said, well how do you know? and she said by the way he answered my question. i looked him right in the eye. i know when he s lying to me. despite their mother s belief in randy s innocence, only hard evidence could shake rory s faith in the system. that evidence was about to come from an unlikely source. my epiphany came when i got the call from randy s attorney that said i just received a letter from debbie reinboldt that says your brother wasn t there. and that he had nothing to do with it, and that she s willing to speak to me.
why risk all the turmoil, just turn your back to it, as long as you re not the one doing it. in 2008, mike callahan s $700,000 award was officially overturned. knowing that i m free to walk out that door anywhere i want to go, that gave me a lot of peace. i think it s supposed to be 80 today. randy puts a lot of value on our family and on family relationships. and i m glad that he s able to enjoy his life now and that i m a part of it. the reason i m here today are the people that would stand up and risk everything. everything they worked for. because of what s right.