The Truth About True Crime

carl allen fontenot was born on august

10

1964 in ada oklahoma

for more than 35 of his 56 years on

earth he’s been better known as oklahoma

department of corrections inmate number

148909 the state of oklahoma convicted

phone to know

in 1985 of raping and killing a young

woman named donna haraway

police interrogated fontenot upon his

arrest in 1984

for nearly two hours then they switched

on a video recorder

the investigators urged phone to know on

as he confessed to abducting haraway

with two other men

in this videotaped portion of fontenot’s

interrogation

he confessed that the three men first

took hair away to an abandoned house

there they raped and murdered her before

burning her body

i’ll tell you more about phone in a

moment but let me step back

when each of us is presented with any

type of media or communication

our minds take cognitive shortcuts or

leaps

and judgment making so we can decide how

to react

these are sometimes called biases as

communicators relying on storytelling to

share ideas

we frame people like carl phone to know

not as proven guilty beyond a reasonable

doubt

we frame him as a character and a story

and each character in a story

has a role to play the hero the victim

the perpetrator

carl has been each of these characters

for us now

first he was the villain defendant in

the 1980s in local tv and newspaper

media

over time his case was extensively

documented across three books

a netflix series and true crime podcast

episodes

what he hasn’t been is treated fairly by

our democratic institutions

in order for there to be a crusader of

justice and popular entertainment

there must be a corresponding villain in

order for us to perceive law enforcement

as inherently good

news reporters are responsible for

considering the perspective of everyone

across the spectrum of a given story

yet we rely on storytelling shortcuts

every day

suspense conflict drama to convey

important information to our audiences

we do this all while trying our best not

to frame people like carl fontenot

is the good guy or the bad guy and much

of the time journalists fail miserably

at this task

you may have heard the expression

perception is everything

it is we must seek to become more

intelligent consumers of media

and messages by understanding how

framing

and media biases cloud our perceptions

when fontenol was sentenced to death in

1985 oklahoma authorities had not found

the body of donna haraway

there was no physical evidence at all in

fact linking phone to note 2 or killing

no one could say for certain when he was

convicted that haraway had been murdered

in the first place

juries in oklahoma nonetheless

determined on two occasions that

fontenot was guilty beyond a reasonable

doubt

of taking heroine’s life

i wanted to know more so i studied

functional’s case

a lot he hardly had a chance to develop

emotionally between a horrific

upbringing in ada and decades in prison

he roamed the streets of veda with no

real home or family until his arrest in

1984 and for years

he received virtually no visitors other

than legal representatives

much of the remainder of his life has

been spent the most unforgiving of

oklahoma’s correctional institutions

carl fontenot’s story has been told many

times now in popular culture

but it remains a story that’s full

meaning has escaped us all along

there’s nothing sinister about our love

of true crime entertainment in fact

we’re hardwired to love it

but it’s critical to know how we

perceive characters in a story

when their lives are at stake

we can do this and still love true crime

drink wine and be in bed by night

part of what attracted me so much to the

story of carl fontenot

is that from a distance he didn’t seem

to cleanly fit the cultural framework

we’ve assembled for ourselves

of wrongfully convicted people

despite the books and netflix series and

podcast episodes

it remained difficult to tell if he was

a victim or a villain

fontenot didn’t easily meet our needs as

storytellers

but he did tell an important story about

fairness

in order for criminal justice to work in

the united states and here in oklahoma

whether karl fonsino neatly fits as a

character in his own drama

does it matter if so many people now

question his conviction

and that list of critics includes a

federal judge in his case

fontenot was sentenced to death twice

before being re-sentenced

to life in prison the oklahoma innocence

project took up funtinel’s case when the

law clinic was first formed at oklahoma

city university in 2011.

and by 2019 oklahoma police and

prosecutors had admitted

that they never found any evidence to

corroborate what fontenot described in

his confession

in fact newly discovered evidence that

was previously withheld from fontenot by

oklahoma law enforcement

contradicts his own confession

according to the federal judge this new

evidence provides quote solid

proof of mr fontenot’s probable

innocence in the judge’s nearly 200-page

ruling

one statement reaches to the heart of

carl’s case quote

no rational juror who was able to set

aside the tragedy of miss haraway’s

death

could find beyond a reasonable doubt

that mr fontenot should be convicted by

his own words

that extraordinary statement only

occurred after fontenot had exhausted

his appeals in oklahoma

i’m not trying to dissuade you today

from consuming true crime entertainment

we rely upon storytelling and loosely

shared understandings to simplify

and act upon media messages and events

in our lives

but the courts we also share are not

responsible for assigning tv roles to

each of us

they’re responsible for ensuring that

each of us is granted fairness

due process and equal protection under

the law

fontenot was released from prison in

december of 2019 after being declared

innocent of the crimes for which he was

accused almost 40 years ago now

but his time on the outside could be

short-lived

even now he has never been exonerated by

the state of oklahoma

oklahoma attorney general mike hunter

has appealed the federal judge’s ruling

and maintains the phone to know as

guilty and not entitled to a new trial

he must return to an oklahoma courtroom

and could wind up in prison

all over again perhaps for the rest of

his life

so while the netflix series and the

books and the podcast episodes

are over now for us carl fontenot’s

horror story

never ends for him thank you