Wrongful Conviction 11

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Posted 9/3/11

THE “WITCHES” OF WEST MEMPHIS

Outraged citizens called them killers. They were wrong.

For Police Issues by Julius (Jay) Wachtel. On August 19, eighteen years after their conviction for the gruesome murders of three eight-year old boys, three not quite middle-aged men walked out of an Arkansas prison. Two, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, had been doing life. The third, Damien Echols, the reputed leader of a local witches’ cabal, was on death row, awaiting the same end that befell his forerunners in Salem some three centuries earlier.

The bodies were found on May 6, 1993, in and next to a creek in West Memphis. James Moore, Steven Branch and Christopher Byers had been missing for a day. Each bore the marks of a savage beating. They were lying naked, in fetal positions, their wrists bound with shoelaces, their bodies covered in wounds. One child’s genitals were missing.

The unspeakable crime carried all the hallmarks of a ritual killing. Really, it could be nothing else. Who in the deeply religious community of 27,000 could do such a thing?

In 2008 the actor Sean Penn produced “Witch Hunt,” a feature-length documentary about one of the most remarkable miscarriages of justice in modern American history. During the early 1980’s authorities in Kern County, California became convinced that uneducated transplants from the Ozarks had been engaging in the most unsavory practices. During a frenzied, two-year period prosecutors filed charges accusing forty-six defendants with raping and molesting as many as sixty children.

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In the first case, in 1983, ten defendants, including two couples, Alvin and Debbie McCuan and Brenda and Scott Kniffen were accused of sexually abusing and torturing the McCuan’s two girls, going so far as to rent them out to producers of kid porn movies. Based on the children’s testimony the Kniffens and McCuans were convicted. They got 240 years.

Cabals of child molesters were turning up everywhere. John Stoll, the film’s central character, fell into the whirlpool when he failed to make child support payments. An inquisitive social worker asked his ex-wife if she thought that he could be one of those horrible abusers. Her reply, that it was possible, led authorities to interrogate six kids, including Stoll’s son. Stoll and three acquaintances were charged with a variety of unspeakable acts, including sodomy. Stoll was convicted. He drew 40 years. In a similar case Jeff Modahl and six others were convicted on the testimony of his two daughters, aged ten and twelve. One tried to recant after the trial but to no avail. She first attempted suicide two years into her father’s 48-year sentence.

In short order authorities had uncovered eight rings of molesters and sent thirty adults to prison. And still they weren’t done. In 1985 deputies opened an investigation into the alleged ritual murder of twelve children by an 80-strong Satanic cult. They searched everywhere but couldn’t find the bodies. Finally the state attorney general stepped in and the madness abated.

For a while there was no helping Stoll and the others. But as the children started passing into young adulthood the prosecutors’ house of cards began to crumble. Former “victims” offered devastating, heart-rending accounts of the pressures placed on them by investigators. “I was scared they were going to take my mom away,” said one. “They kept pushing and pushing until they got the answers they wanted.”

Appeals courts eventually ruled that the accounts of abuse had been implanted into the minds of scared and impressionable kids. Nearly every conviction was reversed, but not before some of the defendants had served long terms. The Kniffens and McCuans did twelve years; Modahl, fifteen. Stoll, the last one released, was in for nearly twenty. Settlements and jury awards followed. Scott and Brenda Kniffen got $275,000. Modahl and his codefendants shared $4.75 million. Stoll got $700,000 from the state, then in 2009, $5 million from Kern County.

A decade later it was déjà vu all over again. During 1994-95 forty-three persons were charged with sexually abusing sixty children in Wenatchee, Washington. Among the accused were pastor Robert Roberson and his wife Connie; Honnah Sims, a Sunday-school teacher; and parishioners Harold and Idella Everett. Many including the Robersons and Sims held fast and were acquitted. But seventeen were convicted. Most were poor, uneducated or, like the Everetts, mentally retarded, thus easy prey for police and prosecutors. Harold pled guilty and got 23 years; his wife, four.

Just like Bakersfield, the “facts” were produced by suggestive interviewing. Some of the children were patients in a psychiatric hospital. One, a 16-year old girl with suicidal tendencies would later ask, “Why did almost all my treatment...deal with me having to remember sexual abuse that never happened?” (Her parents, originally charged with 1,000 counts of rape, were each convicted of one. Each got ten years.) Another girl, whose parents sent her to be treated for behavioral problems, complained that police and caseworkers pressed her to say that “my parents did things to me and to my sisters...and if I didn’t, I wouldn’t get out...They had their own ideas of what happened in my family. When I disagreed and said they were wrong, they said I was lying...I was a prisoner....”

Her father, a bipolar man, confessed and was sentenced to 47 years. His wife got forty-six.

Appellate courts soon stepped in, and within five years every conviction had been overturned. Threatened with retrial, a few of the more susceptible defendants pled guilty to minor, unrelated charges and walked away with nothing beyond a shattered life and a prison record. Others who fought back got sizable settlements. Among the largest was $3 million to Sims in 2001 and $700,000 to Robert Robeson in 2007.

Bakersfield and Wenatchee weren’t the only examples. At the time of the killings in West Memphis hysteria about child abuse was sweeping the country. It was no surprise that suspicion fell on Echols, whose Wiccan tendencies and fondness for dressing in black had raised plenty of eyebrows.

Police interviewed Echols and his best friend Baldwin but both steadfastly denied any involvement. Authorities offered a reward. Soon two youths stepped forward. One said that he actually saw Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley kill the boys. But he couldn’t identify the suspects from photographs. Still hoping to cash in, his mother secretly taped a meeting with Echols. He said nothing of interest. Another youth told police that Echols confessed while drunk. But he later recanted.

Determined to make their case, detectives turned to Misskelley, a developmentally disabled youth who was close to Echols. After twelve hours of relentless interrogation the cops had what they needed. Misskelley admitted belonging to a cult that mutilated animals and held orgies in the woods. He, Echols and Baldwin had enticed the victims to the creek, forced them to commit sex acts, then killed and mutilated them.

What happened next was widely reported. There have been two documentary films, the widely-acclaimed “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills” and a follow-up, “Paradise Lost 2: Revelations.” A third is supposedly in the works. At least two websites specialize on the case. A nonprofit, wm3.org, is funded by the defendants’ vast contingent of supporters. A second, sponsored by TruTV offers an exhaustive account of the investigation and trial.

We’ll use the latter to summarize. Misskelley was tried separately. He had already recanted his confession, but it was nonetheless admitted as evidence. Two defense experts took the stand to convey what seemed obvious – that police manipulated a frightened, intellectually challenged youth into making implausible admissions that were riddled with inconsistencies. But the judge disallowed their most pertinent criticisms. Lacking that, Misskelley’s conviction was virtually assured.

Echols and Baldwin were tried together. They had a rough go of it. Three witnesses testified seeing them at the crime scene; three more swore that they confessed. Defense lawyers poked holes into each account. What they didn’t learn until later was that one of the witnesses to whom Echols supposedly confessed had only learned of the case from his counselor at juvenile hall. (Horrified at the boy’s testimony, the man volunteered to testify. He was turned away.)

Indeed, prosecutors brought in a great deal of questionable evidence. Common fibers present in a wide variety of clothing were used to place the defendants at the scene. A medical examiner testified that the boys’ wounds could have been caused by a serrated knife that was found in a lake near the home of Baldwin’s parents. Echols, a witness said, had a similar knife. But perhaps the most damaging testimony came from a self-styled cult “expert” who concluded that the murders were part of a Satanic ritual that was consistent with Echols’ pagan beliefs.

And that’s not all. During deliberations the foreman made sure that jurors knew Misskelley had confessed. That wasn’t known until recently, when an attorney who once represented the foreman let it out of the bag.

Thanks to the films and a devoted retinue of skeptics the convictions gained a lot of notoriety. Highly qualified lawyers came in pro-bono to take over the appeals. Forensic experts re-examined the physical evidence. They concluded that the killings didn’t take place where the bodies were found and that the victims’ wounds were caused by animals. Such views, of course, are fundamentally at odds with Misskelley’s confession.

Advances in DNA also made it possible to analyze two hairs from the scene, one stuck in the bindings that secured the wrists of victim James (Michael) Moore, and another found on the ground. Neither was consistent with the defendants’ DNA. However, one hair was consistent with the DNA of Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of victim Steven Branch, and the other was consistent with the DNA of David Jacoby, a friend of Hobbs. A new witness has also come forward to say that despite Terry Hobbs’ past denials, he had in fact met with the boys on the afternoon of their disappearance.

Considering all the new evidence, the Arkansas Supreme Court ordered that an extraordinary hearing be conducted this December to determine whether to hold a new trial. As of two weeks ago those plans are off. Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley entered “Alford” guilty pleas, in which accused maintain their innocence while agreeing that there is sufficient evidence to convict. They were resentenced to time served plus ten years of unsupervised parole. (Interestingly, Alford pleas had also been used in the Wenatchee cases, where the only crimes that took place were in the imagination.)

For prosecutors it was a win-win situation. A negotiated plea dodged the huge embarrassment that an acquittal would bring and protected the state from paying immense damages. The defendants also got something. Had they failed to win a retrial, much of their leverage would have disappeared, and along with it their prospects of release. If they went to trial there was always a chance that critical witnesses or key evidence might have become unavailable. And who can predict what jurors might do?

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These are not risks to be taken lightly. Yet one nonetheless wishes that the West Memphis 3 would have rolled the dice. Indeed, that’s what Jason Baldwin said he would have done. But the deal was for all or none, and his friend Echols had already been in solitary confinement for ten years.

As for the D.A., he seems desperate to slam the doors shut on a case that is destined to occupy a prominent spot in the annals of miscarriages of justice, right alongside the Dreyfus affair. “We don’t think there is anybody else,” he insists.

No one, that is, but the killers of three eight-year old boys.

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Fewer Can Be Better Accidentally on Purpose Is a Case Ever Too “Cold”?

Wrongful and Indefensible False Confessions Don’t Just “Happen” House of Cards

Can We Outlaw Wrongful Convictions?

RELATED WEBSITES

West Memphis 3: wm3.org TruTV Arkansas Times

Wenatchee: Religious Tolerance 48 Hours Mystery (forthcoming) Bakersfield: Religious Tolerance

Other cases: PBS Frontline (“Little Rascals,” etc.)

Posted 8/12/11

FALSE CONFESSIONS DON’T JUST “HAPPEN”

When expediency is the more important value, tragedy follows

For Police Issues by Julius (Jay) Wachtel. Forget C.S.I. Confession is the grease that keeps the wheels of American justice turning. Really, it’s hard to imagine how our bursting-at-the-seams criminal justice system could function without it. What it can do without are false confessions. Yet these have been more commonplace than one might think. Where does the blame lie? Read on.

In a recent journal article University of Virginia law professor Brandon L. Garrett examined the cases of thirty-nine innocent persons who falsely confessed. Each was convicted and subsequently exonerated by DNA. Douglas Warney was a typical example. A sometime psychiatric inpatient with an IQ of 68, he confessed to a 1997 murder and got twenty-five years to life. Nine years later DNA from the scene was matched to the real killer. He confessed, truthfully. Warney was turned down for compensation because he wasn’t physically threatened or abused during interrogation and had contributed to his own problems by confessing.

Warney appealed. New York’s high court recently ruled in his favor. Police subjected Warney to “calculated manipulation,” which considering his mental disability was unduly coercive. He was also fed intimate details about the crime. During oral arguments a justice pointedly asked the state’s attorney how Warney could have known that the killer used a twelve-inch serrated knife and stabbed the victim fifteen times. “He may have been asked a leading question,” the lawyer conceded.

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Professor Garrett discovered that in all but two cases the confessions were full of insider information, making the accused look guilty as sin. That didn’t happen by accident.

It’s human nature to trust confessions. Why would someone falsely admit to a crime? Indeed, the law considers confessions and other “statements against interest” so credible that they are exceptions to the hearsay rule. Few know this better than Jeffrey Deskovic. Ten years into a life term for a rape/murder to which he falsely confessed, he finally got a lawyer to petition for a habeas hearing in Federal court. Alas, the attorney let a key deadline pass. A two-judge panel – one member was future Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor – ruled that the error (the document was filed six days late) was insufficiently “extraordinary” and turned Deskovic away. It would take another six years before DNA would identify the real killer.

Deskovic was sixteen when police picked him up. He confessed after hours of intensive interrogation because officers had promised to let him go home if he did.

“Extraordinary” aptly describes what happened to Earl Washington. Questioned in 1982 about the rape/murder of a Virginia woman, he eagerly confessed to the crime and several others. He also implicated another innocent man. Washington’s good work earned him the death penalty. Three years later he was within a few days of being executed when a team of pro-bono lawyers got him a last-minute stay. It thankfully turned permanent. But Washington would serve another fourteen years before DNA finally identified the guilty party.

Oh, yes. Washington’s IQ was only 69. Why did he confess? He was trying to help the police.

More than a few defendants have falsely confessed because they feared rolling the dice by going to trial. In 2005 two victims of a carjacking identified California man James Ochoa as the culprit. A bloodhound supposedly followed the scent from a baseball cap left in the vehicle to Ochoa’s residence. Police found DNA on the cap and in the car’s interior, but it wasn’t his. Five family members also swore that Ochoa was nowhere near the crime scene. But he had a drug record, and when a judge threatened him with twenty-five years should a jury find him guilty he pled guilty and got two. Ten months later another man was arrested for another carjacking. Yes – the DNA on the cap and in the car was his. He confessed and Ochoa was released.

Here are some recent news clips about false confessions:

July 2011: A hearing will be conducted to determine whether DNA evidence exonerates three Arkansas men, known as the West Memphis Three, who have been imprisoned since 1993 for murdering three boys. A judge will also consider whether the confession of one, a low-IQ youth who was tried separately (he recanted, to no avail) was improperly used in finding the others guilty.
May 2011: Seven Chicago men who were imprisoned as teens in the 1990s for two unrelated rape/murders have been tentatively cleared by DNA tests that connect others to the crimes. One match has a record for sexual assault and armed robbery; the other, who is deceased, was reportedly involved in a string of assaults and murders. Prosecutors, though, are objecting to the release of the seven, as all confessed. [See 11/4/11 update below.]
September 2010: A Mississippi judge released and exonerated Phillip Bivens, 59, and Billy Ray Dixon, 53. They had served thirty years for murder. Bivens, Dixon (he describes himself as a “slow learner”) and a third defendant, who died in prison nine years ago, confessed and implicated each other, supposedly after threats by police. As for the real killer, who was recently identified through DNA, he’s already doing life for another rape.
August 2010: An extensive investigation by the Raleigh News-Observer accuses North Carolina Bureau of Investigation agents of extracting false confessions from innocent persons. “SBI agents have cut corners, bullied the vulnerable and twisted reports and court testimony when the truth threatened to undermine their cases.” The state crime lab also caught blame for biasing its findings in favor of prosecutors.
May 2010: Up to 12,000 persons arrested by Chicago police during 1999-2008 will share in a $16.5 million settlement. Their claim alleged that police arrested persons without adequate cause, then used “soft torture” techniques such as withholding food and water and denying bathroom breaks to get suspects to confess.
April 2010: New York resident Frank Sterling was freed after DNA proved that the murder to which he confessed in 1982 was in fact committed by the original suspect, Mark Christie. Sterling’s confession was extracted through a relentless twelve-hour interrogation session that included the use of hypnosis. Christie was easy to find, as he is in prison for another murder that he committed two years after Sterling’s arrest.

Cops, prosecutors and judges have manipulated and bullied vulnerable persons to get them to confess. But confirmed modern-day instances of beating confessions out of people seemed rare. That is, until last year. That’s when the Feds convicted former Chicago police commander Jon Burge, 62, of perjury for falsely denying in an earlier civil suit that in the 1980s he and his officers extracted confessions through beatings, electric shocks and suffocation.

Michael Tillman was one of Burge’s victims. Freed in January 2010 after spending 23 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, he collected his certificate of innocence and promptly sued. Only a few days ago fifteen current Illinois inmates petitioned the state supreme court for evidentiary hearings. Their claim, which is backed by affidavits from current and former prosecutors, is that Burge and his brutal cops beat false confessions out of them, too.

Officers learn in the academy that when interviewing victims and witnesses they should avoid being suggestive or offering details that only the perpetrator would know. Yet when it comes to suspects the gloves come off, at least figuratively. How to get people to confess is an accepted component of advanced police training. One of the best known methods, the “Reid” technique, urges officers to come up with “themes or reasons that allow the suspect to salvage self-respect while confessing.” There are tips for overcoming denials, getting suspects to “bond” with police, “stimulating” confessions, and crafting questions that essentially trap persons into confessing.

Reid asserts that his approach is equally useful in exonerating the innocent. But academic experts disagree. After studying 125 cases of false confession, professors Richard Leo and Steven Drizin concluded that methods such as Reid’s are psychologically coercive and can induce false confessions, especially in juveniles and the mentally challenged.

To make arrests as expeditiously and economically as possible police have adopted interrogation techniques that, while perhaps legal, risk inducing innocent persons to confess. That may reflect a lack of technical knowledge (meaning that cops need to be retrained), a moral lapse (meaning that they ought to be reeducated), or perhaps a bit of both.

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As for training, professors Leo and Drizin urge that police receive instruction on the causes of false confession, abandon pseudoscientific approaches that try to intuit deception from nonverbal cues, learn how to properly assess the reliability of confessions, and become adept at interviewing juveniles and the mentally ill.

On the other hand, if one believes that false confessions are the end result of a misguided moral crusade (e.g., the West Memphis Three; Chicago PD Commander Burge and his disciples) then something of a higher order may be called for. One could begin with your blogger’s favorite all-purpose solution: a quality-oriented approach to the craft of policing.

UPDATES (scroll)

1/17/24 In 1988 an off-duty Albion (MI) cop reported seeing Louis Wright in the area five hours before an 11-year old girl was raped. Within a day Mr. Wright had confessed. No, it wasn’t recorded, and he didn’t sign anything. State police rejected a bootprint as not his, and a recovered fingerprint didn’t match. Mr. Wright nonetheless pled no contest and was convicted. But in 2023 the Cooley innocence project had DNA analysis done, and the results excluded Mr. Wright. He was exonerated after serving 35 years. Michigan recompensed him $1.75 million. That’s $50,000 per year, as set by state law.

10/2/23 After a protracted interrogation, 18-year old L.A.-area man Gerardo Cabanillas agreed to confess to a 1995 robbery and sexual assault in exchange for probation. But the promise wasn’t kept, so he denied involvement and went to trial. Although there was no physical evidence, Cabanillas was ultimately convicted and imprisoned. But in 2023, after he had served twenty-eight years, DNA proved that the crime was committed by a serial sexual assailant presently serving a sentence for murder.

9/22/23 A study published in Criminology & Public Policy examined wrongful convictions to discern the relationship between false confessions, prosecutorial misconduct, withholding evidence, and false guilty pleas. According to its authors, false confessions made it more likely that prosecutors would engage in misconduct and withhold evidence. But when prosecutorial misconduct and withholding evidence happened, false confessions became less a factor in convictions obtained through pleas than at trial.

4/17/23 Former Chicago D.A.’s Nick Trutenko and Andrew Horvat face prosecution for lying about a material issue connected with the 2020 retrial of Jackie Wilson, who had been imprisoned, along with his brother Andrew, for murdering two Chicago police officers in 1982. That investigation was one of many tainted by allegations that detectives working under notorious ex-cop Jon Burge had coerced confessions. Andrew Wilson was retried, reconvicted, and died in prison in 2007. But in October 2020, after serving 36 years, Jackie Wilson was exonerated. (Note: Indictments have been returned charging both former prosecutors with offenses including perjury, official misconduct and obstruction.)

6/11/22 In 1966 Idaho Falls man Christopher Tapp, 20, was twenty when a friend, Brian Dripps Sr., raped and murdered an 18-year old woman. But police came to suspect Tapp because he was friendly with a man who committed another rape. During a long series of interrogations, police persuaded Tapp to slowly involve himself in the crime, and ultimately to confess. He spent 21 years in prison until DNA and its genetic trail led to Dripps. He confessed, and Tapp was exonerated. He will receive $11.7 million.

5/20/22 In 1992 Chicago man Daniel Taylor signed an elaborate confession admitting that he and seven others committed a double murder. But in 2013 lawyers from the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University proved that Taylor was actually in police custody for a disturbance when the murders occurred. It turns out that officers covered up evidence that Taylor wasn’t released until an hour after the killings. Chicago has agreed to pay Taylor $14.25 million for his two decades behind bars.

4/23/22 Every challenged conviction - with forty-four just tossed, the number is now two-hundred twelve - “related” to the work of corrupt former Chicago P.D. Sergeant Ronald Watts has been dismissed. Several of his victims were present when a Cook County judge vacated their convictions. In 2012 an FBI sting led to Watts’ conviction for extorting drug dealers and residents of a housing project and pressing phony charges. He served 22 months in prison. One colleague was also convicted. But several officers who knew of Watt’s wrongdoing remain on the job, although without police powers.

3/9/22 In the wake of the recent false confession by a 15-year old to a shooting, and his wrongful arrest and detention, Waukegan (IL) police will no longer detain minors at school nor question them outside the presence of a “parent, guardian or attorney.” Officers will no longer take on the role of a minor’s “advocate” during investigations, as State law permits (see 2/24 entry).

2/24/22 Nearly two weeks after a local store clerk was shot in the face, Waukegan (IL) police pulled a 15-year old teen from class, plied him with fast food, and kept him incommunicado for hours to get him to confess. And when a promise to release him drew what they wanted, they booked him into juvenile hall. Problem is, he’s innocent. A video supplied by his sister proved that Martel Williams was playing in a basketball game twenty miles away when the shooting took place. Police now concede they had the wrong guy. But Illinois barred lying to juveniles to get a confession last July (see 3/9/entry).

2/17/22 Ex-Chicago cop Ronald Watts left Federal prison in 2015, but the exonerations of those he and his corrupt colleagues arrested on phony drug charges keep coming. Last summer lawyers for 88 defendants petitioned for the dismissal of 100 convictions. Nineteen were just granted, bringing the total to 59. Prosecutors are doing individual reviews, and more dismissals are likely (see 12/16/20 update).

1/22/22 Chicago is considering a $14 million settlement to compensate Kevin Bailey and Corey Batchelor, two wrongfully convicted men who spent decades in prison for a 1989 murder that was investigated by associates of disgraced former detective Jon Burge. Their convictions were tossed out in 2018. Burge died that year after serving 4 1/2 years in Federal prison and home confinement.

7/1/21 After serving thirty-six years for killing a police officer, Jackie Wilson was awarded a certificate of innocence. His exoneration came after three trials, most recently last fall. In the end, defenders proved that Wilson’s brother was the culprit, and that Jackie Wilson’s confession was extorted by a gang of cops led by notorious police commander Jon Burge. Wilson, who was released in 2018, is preparing a massive lawsuit. A special investigation into alleged prosecutorial misconduct has been ordered.

3/6/21 Gary Johnson, 46, George Bell, 44, and Rohan Bolt, 59 served twenty-four years for the 1996 murders of two men at a New York City check-cashing store. Yesterday they were released. An inquiry by the conviction integrity unit established by the Queens Borough’s new D.A. revealed that evidence linking known gangsters to the crime had been withheld from the defense and strongly suggested that the confessions were coerced. After upbraiding authorities, a judge dismissed the case.

3/2/21 Another likely victim of dishonored Chicago PD Commander Jon Burge has been exonerated. Freed from prison in October after serving 33 years, Robert Smith, 72, is suing the prosecutor and the officers, all “proteges of Burge,” who allegedly beat and threatened him into falsely confessing that he murdered two relatives. He refused to sign a statement and recanted, but was nonetheless convicted.

12/16/20 In 2012 an FBI sting led to the arrest and conviction of former Chicago police Sgt. Ronald Watts and Officer Kallatt Mohammed, who during a “decade of corruption” extorted drug dealers and residents of a housing complex and allegedly pressed phony charges. Their activities led to the exoneration of fifteen persons in 2017 alone. So far eighty persons convicted through their testimony have had their charges dismissed, with the most recent eight coming yesterday.

3/29/20 In their new book, “Understanding Police Interrogation: Confessions and Consequences,” Woody and Forrest argue that false confessions can be caused by psychological manipulations; for example, techniques that “build rapport” with suspects and tricks that fool them into believing they’ve been incriminated by (non-existent) evidence.

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When Should Cops Lie? Accidentally on Purpose Wrongful and Indefensible

The Tip of the Iceberg The Witches of West Memphis House of Cards

Can We Outlaw Wrongful Convictions? Labs Under the Gun The Usual Suspects

Would You Bet Your Freedom on a Dog’s Nose?

RELATED BOOKS, ARTICLES, WEBSITES, REPORTS

Juan Rivera case USA Today article on why suspects falsely confess “Convicting the Innocent”

The Substance of False Confessions The Problem of False Confessions in the Post-DNA World

“The Craft of Policing” Innocence Project on false confessions False confessions website

Reports of New York State Task Force on Wrongful Convictions: Preliminary Final

Posted 7/29/11

RUSH TO JUDGMENT (PART II)

By now, every cop knows that witness ID can be chancy. Right?

For Police Issues by Julius (Jay) Wachtel. Coming only three weeks after asserting that LAPD “absolutely” had the responsible party, Chief Charlie Beck’s explanation that “we would have been derelict had we not made the arrest” of what turned out to be an absolutely innocent man left more than a few heads shaking.

In Rush to Judgment we assumed that detectives had arrested Giovanni Ramirez (left photo) without a warrant because the D.A.’s office never filed charges. According to Chief Beck, though, a warrant had indeed been issued. That’s surprising as the evidence was frightfully thin. It was only through happenstance that Ramirez’s parole officer told cops that his client resembled the artist’s sketch that had been plastered on billboards. There was no evidence that Ramirez went to the game. (He turns out not to be a fan. Go figure.) Search warrants yielded zip: no evidence of Dodger regalia, of being at the stadium, of having a grudge against the victim.

LAPD wound up where they started, with virtually nothing but eyewitnesses. Then an LAPD insider confirmed what many already suspected, that the identification of Ramirez was “weak and tentative.” If the two now charged in the beating are truly guilty, that makes perfect sense. One of them is on the right. He’s Louie Sanchez, 29 (the other is an Anglo.) Other than being Hispanic and having a neck tattoo, he looks little like Ramirez, whom he outweighs by a large margin.

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Maybe the judge who signed off on Ramirez’s arrest warrant (and on search warrants for his two crash pads) knew something more. Or maybe he was oversold by detectives, a possibility that Chief Beck speculated might have skewed his own view of things.

After exonerating Martinez LAPD set out its new case, which seems far more compelling. Photographs reportedly depict Sanchez and his buddy Marvin Norwood, 30, a bulky white guy, sitting in the same section as the victim. Spectators described the pair as belligerent and assaultive. Police allege that they bragged about the beating to coworkers, and when confronted pointed fingers at each other. And that’s not all. Sanchez’s sister, who was also at the game, reportedly implicated both in the assault.

“Probable cause” can be an elastic concept, and all the more so when police are under pressure to solve a high-profile crime. Fortunately the D.A. came through and forced the department to reassess. And to its credit it did. Consider how things might have turned out had the eyewitnesses expressed certainty about Ramirez. “Yes, officer, that’s the guy. I swear it!” Can you spell w-r-o-n-g-f-u-l c-o-n-v-i-c-t-i-o-n?

For just such an example look no further than the sad case of Thomas Haynesworth. During the first two months of 1984 five Richmond, Virginia women were abducted and sexually assaulted. Fortunately all survived. One of the victims later spotted Haynesworth on the street (left photo.) Convinced that he was the one, she called police. They displayed his picture to the others. Three more identified him.

Haynesworth, then 18 and with no criminal record, insisted that his accusers were mistaken. He went to trial. He was convicted in three sexual assaults and acquitted of one. His cumulative sentence: 74 years.

Fast-forward to 2005. Troubled by a series of wrongful convictions, Virginia’s governor ordered a review of past cases. It took four years, but DNA conclusively proved that one rape for which Haynesworth was convicted, and the one for which he was acquitted, had in fact been committed by Leon W. Davis (right photo.) Davis was already in prison, doing hard time for a string of sexual assaults that took place after Haynesworth’s arrest.

By this time the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project had taken up Haynesworth’s defense, and after a protracted investigation even prosecutors agreed that he was innocent – of everything. Unfortunately, the two remaining cases lacked DNA, and one victim still insisted that Haynesworth was her assailant. So to date he has not been fully exonerated (a motion is pending.) A judge nonetheless granted Haynesworth parole in March, on his forty-sixth birthday.

He had been locked up twenty-eight years.

Haynesworth clearly resembles Davis. Interestingly, Ramirez (left) and Sanchez (right), who don’t look that much alike, both resemble the artist’s rendering of the perpetrator. It’s little wonder that eyewitness misidentification is considered the primary cause of wrongful conviction, figuring in three out of four DNA exonerations.

Of course, detectives usually go well beyond photo lineups. But sometimes they don’t dig deep enough, while at other times information is simply scant. That’s when virtually any circumstance can be interpreted as an indicator of guilt, and the more the merrier. Consider Ramirez. Violent background? Check. Gangster appearance? Check. Neck tattoo? Check. Hispanic descent? Check. Present at the game? Well, can’t say, but an ex-girlfriend supposedly was there. Hey, maybe she was the getaway driver! Check! Really, who needed the parole agent? Cruising the seedier parts of L.A. would have yielded any number of individuals who resembled the artist’s sketch and matched or bettered Ramirez’s profile. In the end what kept him from getting hammered for something he didn’t do was concern over the ID’s and a skeptical prosecutor.

Haynesworth wasn’t as fortunate. Not only did he look a lot like the perpetrator, but a series of similar crimes had occurred. One misidentification led to more, lulling detectives into overconfidence. Certain that they had the right perp for each crime, they quit investigating. The upshot was that an innocent man spent the cream of his adulthood in prison while the real evildoer continued victimizing others.

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What’s the moral to these stories? It’s really quite simple. Don’t just go on appearances. Focus on corroboration. And be sure it’s quality stuff. Remember that a pile of junk is still that.

UPDATES (scroll)

4/29/22 In 2007, after being identified from lineups by two teenage victims, Detroit resident Terance Calhoun pled no contest to sexual assaults and drew 15 to 30 years in prison. But in January 2019 it was discovered that the DNA on a condom he allegedly used was not his. That information, though, was never disclosed to his lawyer. The DNA was then linked to a known rapist. After spending fifteen years in prison, Calhoun, whose “cognitive difficulties” reportedly led to his plea, was fully exonerated.

8/30/21 Virginia Governor Ralph Northam recently granted full pardons to three wrongfully convicted men. Each - Bobbie Morman, Jr., Joseph Carter and Emerson Stevens - had served decades in prison before lawyers at the University of Virginia law school innocence were able to secure their parole. Sloppy police work was blamed in each case. Junk “hair science” also helped seal Stevens’ fate, while mistaken witness ID played a substantial role in the convictions of Carter and Stevens.

3/18/19 Seven years after a New York City jury convicted Otis Boone, a black man, of robbing two white persons, the State’s high court ruled that juries must be informed of the frailties of cross-racial ID. According to jurors at his second trial, held one month ago, that and other weaknesses in the case led to Boone’s acquittal. But prosecutors still insist that Boone was guilty, and an expert who testified at the first trial says it’s not race but witness certainty about ID that really matters.

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