Transcripts For RT Documentary 20210309 : vimarsana.com

and going to exist i don t see how that strategy will be successful very critical time to sit down and talk. this is credible. it s true they need to actually physically pulled it out of the ground you would have well well well well well. there s a lot of money with the oil and with that comes. a lot of a lot of people from all over the country. if you don t make a $100000.00 a year. as a minimum there s an issue. here maybe. they were told $60.00 a day hard work will work it s not easy work and so they want to relieve their stress of how do they relieve their stress these men move that outlet these men that comfort these men that. people have been murdered up here people been raped there are massive drug issues up here you have a boom you have everything else that comes along with money. i was. you were a police were one of the 2 homes i think you re talking about a murder case you re really into. you leave that up. i just sat there watching 5 minutes. you re not going home i can guarantee they. won t come back to wrongful conviction what you say today we re going to be doing a deep dive into an issue that is fascinating exhibits to our founding which is the phenomenon of false confessions and my guest today is going to be jane fisher are you also and was currently working on more cases involving false confessions and each is fascinating its own way so jane while some confession and jane is an attorney who is an expert on false confessions and so jane how did you get into this work i was a public defender in manhattan here in new york city for about 3 years and we saw a lot of police misconduct you know we were doing arraignments up until 1 am in the morning and you see people beat up or you know people whose cases get dismissed who get no compensation so my husband and i left the legal aid society with the hopes of doing civil rights work. my name is sean castle and the distinguished professor of psychology at john jay college of criminal justice once a false confession was taken the case was closed nobody really can tell the difference between a good confession and one that is a problem with all of this is that your tactics that can be used to get innocent people and i don t just mean vulnerable innocent people i mean people who are sitting around in this room to confess to crimes they didn t commit. anytime you do an exoneration case where there s been a false confession it s like trying to write a trice. everybody s already against you the person s been convicted by a jury the judge thinks he s guilty the jury thinks he s guilty now you have to convince everybody that they re wrong. so a case that you re deeply rested and is a case of a nail age who has been in prison for 20 years renee lynch. was a case we took about 2 and a half now maybe 3 years ago now and she was accused and convicted of killing her landlord in buffalo new york in 1900. and it s also obviously a false confession case the police are going crazy and they can t solve it 18 months go by and renee s connection to the victim was that it was her landlord and so they are start looking into renee who at the time was heavily addicted to drugs crack cocaine and because she gets arrested for something else and they start interrogating her and she confesses to killing her landlord with this guy karim so she says kareem and i went to my landlord s house we were going to rob her the robbery goes bad and karim stabs her so if she s a good century it can make it a felony murder being present during the commission. a crime and somebody gets killed we started sort of doing you know just regular google searches on the players names and detectives and everything in this t.v. show women behind bars comes up and they ve done an episode on days case where they got in the in the prison and interviewed her and then interviewed this joseph was the cop on the case the way her body. when she decided to go he just saw it was time to go in truth. i believe her confession is kind of nonsense there s inconsistency between the physical evidence and what she says and during the show he says well i mean we knew that corinne walker was in florida at the time of our crime. karim was of the tribe of our. i guess they knew karim walker was in florida at the time the crime then rene s confession can t possibly be true because she s confessing to going to rob the landlord with kareem and the defense been able to put that on her confession would have made no sense but the defense was never told. the whole thing is so full of holes and so bogus i can t put my finger out and say like you know this is the thing but i think if we dug in it we could find that thing that could get her out because it s all. it s just all of it so it s messed up how do they record this confession and didn t know i mean did they make you know they typed it up and then read it to her and made her so there is a type of confession is the only version of the confession there s no like original notes they have or something that we have. to wonder about. she says details about the crime scene because they showed her photos of it. that she you know how the body was lying be shown her those photos. of some kind of new evidence. didn t exist at the time of the trial. or didn t know didn t exist at the time of the trouble it wasn t known right and it wasn t presented during the trial and then we have to show that if it had been could have been a different outcome. i think we can but it s going to be hard. our goal is of course to get renee out of prison but it can take a really long time sometimes many years and one of the 1st things we do in cases like this is to comb through the confession and find all the consistencies to clearly show that the confession. there s a cream walker drove me to 90 long. the plan was i was going to go into the front door and karim was going to come up the back door. he was going to tie her up with a piece of white extension cord that he brought with him at babson time kareem hit louise in the side of the face fell to the floor and kind of went out if that happened he would be standing punching her here right. on cream head here in the face he knocked the wig off a wig landed on the floor in the kitchen literally the kitchen. he tried to tie louise up with the plastic already had then carry comes from behind louise he stabbed her at least twice however we know it s 8 times. louise fell to the floor again it was a large amount of blood on the floor next to her body so the only thing she gets right is that the witness knocked off that there s a plastic cord involved in this case that s correct and the phone cord is where the extra d.n.a. is. ringback. i m missin the it s gene fisher byron nelson rene lynch s attorney i have a call with her this morning. oh good things. how. i. oh oh. oh i quite well. i i. i i oh i know it s hard. prior. to trial she testified. very incoherent way she was high during the trial. you know it was she was not a good witness for her so she recanted right away afterwards and her confession is that is it was a coerced when i talk about this they re like well i would never say contests when people say i ve been talking about this for 30 years and that s the 1st thing everybody says or would happen today it s not one kind of person that gives a false confession we are all into the circumstance of interrogation we all know there have been some train detectives i ve spoken to who say i can get anybody to press today and many of them will boast that they have a 95 percent confession rate. and see a lesser of a lesser near perfect and identifying the perpetrator that is every suspect you identify is the perpetrator right if you ve got a confession rate at that level you re producing a whole lot of false confessions when i talk to her about it she explains to me. i was so shocked that they convicted me she said because there was no evidence of a confession so powerful it can stand alone so here s the jury on the one hand they ve got the confessions of the one they know they ve got. the confessions trumped the d.n.a. changes everything is sometimes not like in the final product of a confession hollywood production is scripted by the police theory of the case is rehearsed and lights action camera ready to go. and that s what the jury sees they don t see the whole production they just see the final i don t see how the judge or jury can look past a false confession if they don t see the presence and. we have a number of documented cases in which the person who falsely confessed actually came to believe the lie that they were told about their own behavior. which is. a whole nother level of insanity and some of them believe it for a long time afterwards. you can see there you. see here. in the melted thompson case we had he was a danish inturn who came. he was a danish he was a college student studying to become a teacher and he came and interned at i.p.s. which is really you know like a $20000.00 a year preschool up by the u.n. and it was a code teacher who accuses him of molesting all the kids in the class. and he s on the cover of the daily news they do and they go arrest him in the morning and bring him into the station and they have a female cop interrogate him she tells him while you know we have video of you molesting these kids which they had videos but he s not molesting anybody so they had this woman who accused him had taken videos of him in the classroom interacting normally with children and so either the cops had watched it or they had watched it and were blatantly lying to him but there was no video of him molesting kids but he hears that right and he thinks holy well if i m on video i must have done it right they let him continue to believe this lie that he s caught red handed on tape molesting these kids and i think that that you know he started you could tell through the hole when they finally are recording him he s doubting himself you know he s he s wondering did i do this. the world is driven by shaped by. things. we dare to ask. mr thompson. can you tell me why. you have. a mirror in the door. for inappropriate. behavior with kids. so why don t you tell me. privately and how this started what happened you know what. you know well and feel what i can remember just had to go down just a few moments about. it and then. i had taken. its. place and going around. to a story on my shorts. you know short of going forward in that or question where you were going. and so what when you think if you pleasure at one time that the central. of it would have to be. i don t know you know. a member of a dislike. of it if you read out a statement and it was your handwriting and it just waiting over briefly doesn t look like it s been changed in any way. and that s your signature. because you re at this hour earlier today you re going to show the camera. i don t even think people in the u.s. really get that the police are allowed to lie to you i think most people would think that if i am speaking to a police officer he s telling me the truth but now times i mean in denmark it s illegal for the police to lie to you so he really i think was was you know really says extra susceptible to something like that it took us filing the civil rights suit to even get access to these tapes the district attorney wouldn t give it to us when the criminal case was pending we asked the court we moved for a court order to get at the judge just wouldn t give it to us but they sat on these tapes for 8 months he had this case hanging over his head and they knew that there was nothing in the tapes right. there was the only evidence there was yes luckily melted never got convicted right we were able to stop it before that happened but it took i mean it almost killed him. there. sexual abuse involving very young children were brought to the attention. of the district attorney s office. to thoroughly investigate and. interview children particularly in this instance for use for some at preschool. ages and one. of the things in just this case after. gather in our tents. we have to have. you know have you ever seen anybody use like a piece of a foam cork to prop up the waves or put it up. just the way forward to i don t know if i have a case where there is a piece of foam cord found inside of why would you have a phone cord and. lay it on your head to give them a little too for a little. weeks if they re flat. because if there is some koofi in the hair like it s. like just like a 3 to 4 inches of phone cord. case we re trying to get permission to test all the old evidence for d.n.a. but to do that we have to collect as much information about her innocence as we possibly can. go back and interview all the witnesses. documents go back to the crime scene. i keep coming back to this thing that the cops knew he was in florida and kept going with the story that they did together like wife if they know he s in florida why don t they like. your lives. they re lying to us because he s and we know he s in florida why don t they are confronted by hearsay that how can they be permitted to go forward with a serious of a case that they know is not true name names and trial basically matter. so that s why the trickery and the only way to convict somebody of this was to do it that way yes. it just makes me so jaded and really disgusted with the district attorney s offices that i feel like you know the you know they re supposed to be at the top of the chain right there is supposed to be the ones making sure the cops made mistakes or people below the cops made mistakes then they re the ones who are responsible for fixing it why not do d.n.a. testing think why not they were all we re not infallible we can all make mistakes why not check i mean her name s going to be in prison for the rest of her life why not just check you know they can never answer that question so you just end up in court with you know them opposing your motions for d.n.a. testing and unending ability gating instead of working together in rene s case it s especially frustrating because i mean they certainly believe that this was done not the stabbing was not done by her right so there is a set of the i mean they re basically admitting that they have a cold case and there s a murder out there and they still don t want to do it you know it s did 2 people either 2 people or somebody other than renee committed that crime and that person is out and about and d.n.a. contesting could show who they are but. they re still posing as. am. you know the central park jogger case was my 1st interaction with confessions our firm represented corey wise on his civil rights case way to start i mean you re diving right into the bed there you know. the circumstances that play in that case were huge amount of pressure on the police and the authorities to make arrests and make them step. forward. 7 years in prison. with one of the most notorious crimes in the history of new york city it was a crime in which a woman who was a wealthy upper east side investment banker was out jogging at dusk and was dragged into the woods in central park and almost beaten to death and there was front page news every day everywhere and they are out to get arrests and they got him. when you get to the false confessions in that case it was a classic you know. mismatch they were totally overmatched underrepresented if represented at all i don t know if you could the core even have anyone in the room with now is going to be 16 so he was considered an adult sadly and so his mom was not allowed in there and they you know had given them lawyers they all waived their their miranda rights. rights. where you live christine. says. that it s. this is very very serious in this neighborhood we don t know at this. point a. way to use an example we do say. that after seeing those pictures i m sure you can see where this point is. it is hard for people to understand how this can. help out the produce a confession something they didn t too and there really is a complicated set of stories there is no one really so. you know corey was confessed to get out of this bad situation he was under pressure from many many hours he was likely be told that others were giving stories and that to to cooperate in order to go home and it is very telling in the central park 5 case that every one of them every one of the boys and every one of the parents who were present were surprised the boys were arrested after their statements every one of the time i was going home right well you know what that sounds crazy right here thought you were going or confess to a rape and go home right but you know that one false confessors were interviewed afterward and they ve been exonerated and the 1st question everybody wants those i don t understand why don t you confront the most typical response because i want to go home. innocent people often say afterwards you know i was. tired i was so stressed i figured let s sign this confession it ll all work itself out in the end the detectives often say you know we have d.n.a. we re going to send them to the last. 3 they think that claiming they have t.n.a. bluff is a way to scare the criminal into submission it may be right but if the person you re talking to is not the criminal but an innocent person that the law becomes a promise of future exoneration paradoxically makes it easier to confess right let him take credit we re going to do some tests we re actually quite samples from a lot of different people for the right and i just want to know that if we do that we will probably get an order to take a sample from you. very because you re in a position now where you know that there s an end of the match. day even better off tell us about it now or the stairs instead of saying something that s natural or this is. one of the things i think they made you say was that you cut her on the legs and where did you how did you come up with that i don t know. came from no i don t know if you ve made it up i don t know i came from no i don t know. the chief puts the blame on. fresh. america. as a member of the. ultimately paving the way.