Speaker 1: This call is from a correction facility, and it's subject
Speaker 1: to monitoring and recording contact even.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 3: And it hasn't been easy one hundred years. That's man,
Speaker 3: I'm a kid.
Speaker 4: I didn't do anything, you know, and uh, you know
Speaker 4: that was ah, that was real painful, man, No, because
Speaker 4: my life was discarded as if you know, like I
Speaker 4: was a piece of trash or something, you know, a
Speaker 4: hundred years and I had dreams I wanted to do
Speaker 4: things I wouldn't committing crimes.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: I was a very good young man.
Speaker 6: That is what happens in so many cases. The cops
Speaker 6: have a hunch because they're so smart at the scene,
Speaker 6: they have a hunch, and once they act on that hunch,
Speaker 6: they sort of developed tunnel vision and they take off
Speaker 6: marching in the wrong direction. And that happens in so
Speaker 6: many of these wrongful convictions.
Speaker 1: The opening to sell door and I walk downstairs, and
Speaker 1: I actually walked downstairs to be outside. It felt very
Speaker 1: strange to be, like I said, to be walking without
Speaker 1: no shackles on my feet. I thought it was a dream,
Speaker 1: but did again it wasn't a dream.
Speaker 3: This is wrongful conviction. On March eighteenth, two thousand, and one.
Speaker 3: Jamie Pennich, an American exchange student in South Korea, was
Speaker 3: brutally murdered in her motel room after a night of
Speaker 3: partying with friends from the program. Her bloodied, nude body
Speaker 3: was found on the floor. She had been stomped to death,
Speaker 3: and her face was covered with a black fleece jacket.
Speaker 3: Kenzie Snyder, a nineteen year old exchange student from Marshall
Speaker 3: University in West Virginia, was one of the friends that
Speaker 3: Jamie was with. About a half dozen exchange students had
Speaker 3: traveled from campus into the city, where they celebrated Saint
Speaker 3: Patrick's Day in a bar filled with locals and US soldiers.
Speaker 3: Korean police and army investigators were unable to solve this
Speaker 3: horrific crime. But a year later, in February two thousand
Speaker 3: and two, FBI agents contacted Kenzie out of the blue.
Speaker 3: She was back at school by now in West Virginia
Speaker 3: and they wanted to talk alone. She met with three
Speaker 3: agents on three consecutive days for several hours, and the
Speaker 3: sessions were grueling. When it was done, Kenzie had confessed
Speaker 3: she murdered her friend. She said in the context of
Speaker 3: a drunken sexual encounter. Kenzie was promptly arrested, incarcerated in
Speaker 3: a local jail for ten months, and extradited to Korea
Speaker 3: to stand trial. There, she spent another six months in
Speaker 3: jail until a panel of judges found her not guilty,
Speaker 3: but the prosecutor appealed to verdict, and months later an
Speaker 3: appeals court confirmed not guilty. In two thousand and six,
Speaker 3: five years after the crime, in response to yet another appeal,
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court of Korea once again affirmed not guilty.
Speaker 3: That was eighteen years ago. Today we know a whole
Speaker 3: lot more than we did then about false confessions. Kenzie
Speaker 3: Snyder has been fully acquitted in court, yet her confession
Speaker 3: haunts her and us, and it leads some people still
Speaker 3: to question her actual innocence. Kensey Snyder Brown is here
Speaker 3: with us today to tell her story. Welcome back to
Speaker 3: Wrongful Conviction. Today is going to be a really interesting
Speaker 3: day here in the studio at Wrongful Conviction Headquarters because
Speaker 3: we have a number of firsts and one second, which
Speaker 3: is that I'll go to the second first. We have
Speaker 3: the distinguished professor of psychology and world renowned expert on
Speaker 3: false confession, Saul Cassen, with us today so i'll welcome,
Speaker 3: pleasure to be here. We also have as a special
Speaker 3: treat a PhD student of his, Patty Sanchez, a PhD
Speaker 3: student of John Jay who amazingly is studying the effect
Speaker 3: of podcasts on jurors and on public opinion, right, and
Speaker 3: so I'm super excited to have Patty Sanchez here to
Speaker 3: learn from you. So Patty welcome, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: And the star of our show who has an incredible
Speaker 3: story to tell, the first case we've certainly ever had
Speaker 3: from well even from the far East, but from Korea,
Speaker 3: but not the first false confession case by far, but
Speaker 3: the first case of this kind, and a really interesting
Speaker 3: person in her own right, Kenzy Snyder.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Hello, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: So, Kenzie, this is a crazy, crazy case. I mean,
Speaker 3: they're all crazy, but yours is so nuts. And we're
Speaker 3: going back eighteen years now, two thousand and one. You
Speaker 3: were a nineteen year old girl in a far away
Speaker 3: land who was accused of brutally beating and stomping your friend,
Speaker 3: your roommate, to death. And you don't look like somebody
Speaker 3: who would stomp a fly to death. I mean, and
Speaker 3: don't judge a book by its cover.
Speaker 2: But I mean, I'm not I'm not that kind of person.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you seem like a pretty gentle soul to me.
Speaker 3: But let's go back to the beginning and Saul jump
Speaker 3: in whenever you want. I mean, obviously you've been involved
Speaker 3: in this case and so many others like it. Do
Speaker 3: you want to go back and give us a little
Speaker 3: of the history.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, eighteen years ago, people really knew nothing
Speaker 5: about false confessions. But Kenzie's case caught my attention for
Speaker 5: a few reasons. One, she was a college student, as
Speaker 5: you say, you know, halfway round the world, and the
Speaker 5: case made no sense to come back to her. A
Speaker 5: year later, the case was unsolved, pressure was on the
Speaker 5: law enforcement and the FBI to solve it, and they
Speaker 5: came back to Kenzie to interrogate her. And when I
Speaker 5: read that she confessed, what caught my interest was not
Speaker 5: just that she agreed to sign a confession. She actually
Speaker 5: came to believe in her own guilt. She had formed
Speaker 5: a memory that they enabled, that they facilitated using police
Speaker 5: interrogation tactics that are highly suggestive and at lawfel in
Speaker 5: the United States. And so my interest in this case
Speaker 5: started with the fact that there She was a college
Speaker 5: student twenty years old at the time that the FBI
Speaker 5: came and interrogated her free agents in a motel room
Speaker 5: in West Virginia, asking her to come alone, and for
Speaker 5: three consecutive days they interrogated her. They lied to her
Speaker 5: about the evidence, they tinkered with her memory. And so
Speaker 5: what caught my attention was the fact that not only
Speaker 5: did she confess, she internalized the belief in that confession,
Speaker 5: which makes it very, very hard for people later to
Speaker 5: get past it.
Speaker 3: So, Kenzy, you are an American person on home soil
Speaker 3: in West Virginia. Didn't get too much more American than that.
Speaker 3: I guess you could say, right, hardland stuff. But you
Speaker 3: were being interviewed on your home turf by people who
Speaker 3: you would have I think thought would have your back.
Speaker 3: Like was there even an extradition treaty in place? Like?
Speaker 3: How did this it happened?
Speaker 2: The extradition treaty itself was brand new. It had just
Speaker 2: been I think formulated between the two countries in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight. And so the crime itself happened in Korea,
Speaker 2: and all the suspects were Americans, and so the US
Speaker 2: and Koreans were trying to work together. It wasn't going
Speaker 2: very well, and that's why the FBI became a liaison.
Speaker 5: And Jason Kenzie Snyder became the first American ever extradited
Speaker 5: to Korea wow.
Speaker 2: Brand new extradition treaty in nineteen ninety eight. I am
Speaker 2: the first. I believe I am the only, but I
Speaker 2: don't know that for sure.
Speaker 3: What a dubious distinction that is.
Speaker 5: It's important to recognize there's a political context to this story.
Speaker 5: When the Korean police and army investigators failed to solve
Speaker 5: the crime. You know, there is a victim, and the
Speaker 5: victim was American. Her name was Jamie Pennach and she
Speaker 5: was from Pennsylvania, and her parents, as you can imagine
Speaker 5: I can't even begin to imagine, were incredibly upset and
Speaker 5: wanted this crime solved. Senator orl Inspector of Pennsylvania met
Speaker 5: with Korean authorities to pressure them to solve this crime.
Speaker 2: Because they're you know, there is that Americans, and we're
Speaker 2: supposed to be in this together to solve the crime
Speaker 2: of another American victim.
Speaker 5: And I don't know what they knew about the details
Speaker 5: of the case, but in my view, I think they
Speaker 5: believe they were acting on behalf of the family of
Speaker 5: the victim.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Kenzie, I mean, mess have been surreal first
Speaker 3: of all, like, who would ever think that, you know,
Speaker 3: your roommate would turn up as a corpse, right, and
Speaker 3: in such a brutal fashion. That alone is a real
Speaker 3: life nightmare. But then you're back in West Virginia, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm sure dealing with some trauma related to this, but
Speaker 3: moving on with your life, and along come these three
Speaker 3: FBI agents out of nowhere. And I can't imagine at
Speaker 3: that age, when your brain's not even fully formed, right,
Speaker 3: you're still we know, the adolescent brain doesn't fully switch over,
Speaker 3: so to speak, right until you're around twenty five. What
Speaker 3: was going through your head?
Speaker 2: I had come back to West Virginia and I was
Speaker 2: working with troubled youth and I was just trying to
Speaker 2: get my feet back underneath me again, because as you said,
Speaker 2: it is a traumatic experience. And then the FBA called
Speaker 2: me and asked if I could help them further the investigation.
Speaker 2: So I had gone to the hotel room that day
Speaker 2: to talk to them to help them, not realizing what
Speaker 2: they had planned.
Speaker 3: So yeah, okay, that's a common thing too. And you know, Patty,
Speaker 3: I want you to jump in here whenever you want,
Speaker 3: because I know you're knowledgeable about this case and about
Speaker 3: this subject. That's sort of a common thing as well
Speaker 3: that we hear in these wrongful conviction cases is that
Speaker 3: when the interrogation, whether it's local police or FBI agents
Speaker 3: or whatever, often they don't tell you that you're a suspect, right,
Speaker 3: And this way you're more inclined to be open. And
Speaker 3: as Kensey was, she wanted to be helpful. Anyone would
Speaker 3: want to be helpful, but that instinct can really lead
Speaker 3: you astray for.
Speaker 7: Sure, especially when you're not even at a police station
Speaker 7: or anything like that.
Speaker 2: So she was at a hotel.
Speaker 7: Tell, so the lines are blurred even further as to
Speaker 7: the purpose of my even talking to these agents. You know,
Speaker 7: she was never even realized that she was a suspect
Speaker 7: until she had already been talking for at least a day. So, yeah,
Speaker 7: it is a problem that it's not always clear to
Speaker 7: a suspect that they're a suspect, and then they can
Speaker 7: invoke their right to a lawyer if you don't know
Speaker 7: you're being questioned as a suspect.
Speaker 3: So, and some people listening would probably wonder whether that's
Speaker 3: legal for them to take her to a hotel or
Speaker 3: motel room. I mean it sounds at a minimum unusual, right, yes,
Speaker 3: And I don't know if it's more or less disorienting
Speaker 3: than being in one of those rooms that you always
Speaker 3: see on TV, right, the interrogation rooms, the window lists.
Speaker 3: You know, it just seems odd. I mean a motel room,
Speaker 3: there's a bed, there's a TV. It's like, it seems odd.
Speaker 5: Yes, it feels odd, and all of the red flags
Speaker 5: that normally would go up. She's not technically in custody,
Speaker 5: so they don't have to mirandize her.
Speaker 3: So I'm trying to picture this, Kenzie. You're interrogated for
Speaker 3: that first day for hours and hours I assume.
Speaker 2: Right, it wasn't an interrogation. It was just questioning and
Speaker 2: getting together and seeing how your day was, how was
Speaker 2: your year, trying to see how I'd been sleeping, you know,
Speaker 2: if I'd had any repercussions from seeing her body, and
Speaker 2: just trying to be my friend.
Speaker 5: It was your sense that they cared about you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they wanted to see how I was doing. It
Speaker 2: had been a year no one had checked up on me,
Speaker 2: and they were just checking up on me. At one
Speaker 2: point one of the investigators said that he thought of
Speaker 2: me like a sister.
Speaker 3: And then the second day did it become clear to
Speaker 3: you that they had a different idea or motive or
Speaker 3: what I want to call it.
Speaker 2: Part Way through the second day, the second day still
Speaker 2: started with friendly conversation. I brought ice cream because I
Speaker 2: thought they were my friends, and we had ice cream
Speaker 2: and talked about they'd asked me to do a homework
Speaker 2: assignment when I left the first day, writing out everything
Speaker 2: that I had gone through that night, the sequence of events,
Speaker 2: and then we were just reading that and having ice
Speaker 2: cream when we first got there in the hotel room
Speaker 2: on the second day.
Speaker 3: That's sort of weirdly chilling to me, I mean, and
Speaker 3: chilling no pun intended, but even still, I mean, it
Speaker 3: feels a little sick, right, the idea of you bringing
Speaker 3: the ice cream and ice cream having you know, it's
Speaker 3: not something you do with people that you aren't well
Speaker 3: acquainted with in general. Right, it reminds us all of
Speaker 3: our youth, right on my trips at Baskin Robbins and whatnot.
Speaker 3: But that's beside the point. So, Saul, what do you
Speaker 3: think was really going on here? Like this was this
Speaker 3: all scripted? Did they come in? This was scripted, So
Speaker 3: they had the idea before they went in the first day,
Speaker 3: we're going to gain her trust, right.
Speaker 5: We're going to be friendly, we're going to establish rapport.
Speaker 5: We're going to gain her trust. That sounds like a
Speaker 5: very reasonable tactic for an interrogator to use, and it is.
Speaker 5: But now look at the nefarious side of establishing rapport
Speaker 5: in that way and gaining her trust as a predicate
Speaker 5: for what will happen on day two. So if you
Speaker 5: think of day one as just a friendly interview, she
Speaker 5: come back into day two, They ask her to return,
Speaker 5: and she does alone. She comes back day two with
Speaker 5: ice cream. But what she doesn't realize is day two
Speaker 5: is not going to be an interview anymore. It's going
Speaker 5: to be an accusatory interrogation. And it's going to be
Speaker 5: the kind of interrogation where they accuse her with certainty,
Speaker 5: we know you did this. They're going to lie about evidence,
Speaker 5: they're going to point to apparent contradictions, and they're going
Speaker 5: to tinker with her memory. From a psychological perspective, here's
Speaker 5: the problem. They gained her trust and then they exploited
Speaker 5: that trust. That they gained because when you have somebody's trust,
Speaker 5: you become a credible source. So when somebody you trust
Speaker 5: becomes credible and that person of credibility starts to lie
Speaker 5: about the evidence, you almost have no choice but to
Speaker 5: believe the lie and wonder, well, I don't know how
Speaker 5: I can reconcile that information you just gave me with
Speaker 5: the fact that I don't remember things that way. So
Speaker 5: they gain their her trust on day one as a
Speaker 5: predicate for manipulating her on day two, And of course
Speaker 5: at some point on day two when it becomes clear
Speaker 5: that she's not a witness but a suspect, it would
Speaker 5: seem to me at some point the alarm bells would
Speaker 5: go off and you'd realize I need help.
Speaker 2: In the second day, shortly after we got there, after
Speaker 2: we'd read the statement and had our ice cream, we'd
Speaker 2: gone over the statement a little bit, and they asked
Speaker 2: if they could show me something, and they showed me
Speaker 2: some like a little video of the hotel room and
Speaker 2: walked around in it so I could see it better.
Speaker 2: And then they had like a photo album of some
Speaker 2: of the crime scene photos, and when we're looking at them,
Speaker 2: they were saying, I can't remember the phrasing. But at
Speaker 2: one point I asked, are you saying I did it?
Speaker 2: And they just kind of looked at me and shrugged.
Speaker 2: And at that point I knew that I needed to
Speaker 2: get out of the room. I asked them if I
Speaker 2: could leave, and I went out of the hotel room
Speaker 2: and I was only gone a few seconds and I
Speaker 2: came back in and I asked, said, do I need
Speaker 2: to get a lawyer? That's what I asked, And they said,
Speaker 2: if you get one, we can't say that you cooperated.
Speaker 3: Wow. That's some reverse psychology there, too, isn't it. Right?
Speaker 3: That was a very well chosen phrase. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: not in terms of justice, but in terms of if
Speaker 3: for what the goal was that they were trying to get,
Speaker 3: which was a confession, that would be the perfect thing
Speaker 3: to say, because now you're disoriented. You don't know. There's
Speaker 3: no right answer to that, right, I mean, and we
Speaker 3: see this in false confessions, right. They sort of create
Speaker 3: this trap with words where there is no door that's open,
Speaker 3: and so you have to choose between bad options, like
Speaker 3: which kind of cancer do you want? Right? Right, I'm
Speaker 3: actually sitting there like I want to go back in
Speaker 3: time and pull you away and say don't go back there, right, like,
Speaker 3: don't go.
Speaker 2: Well, I wish I could have. When I left the room,
Speaker 2: I understand that they were afraid that I wouldn't come
Speaker 2: back in because it would have been over for them.
Speaker 2: So I wish I wouldn't have gone back in the room.
Speaker 2: But when I did, you know, they said, if you
Speaker 2: get a lawyer, then we can't say that you cooperated.
Speaker 2: Then we sat down and I was sitting in like
Speaker 2: the easy chair in the hotel room, so a comfortable seat,
Speaker 2: and I was tired from work the day before and
Speaker 2: then staying up late doing the homework assignment that they
Speaker 2: asked for and waking up early and to go to
Speaker 2: work before this. So I was sitting in the chair
Speaker 2: and they brought in an FBI agent who specialized in
Speaker 2: this field, and he said, we can do this two ways.
Speaker 2: We can either do it the hard way or the
Speaker 2: easy way. And I said, well, let's do it the
Speaker 2: easy way, and that way you'll know I didn't do
Speaker 2: this and we can get on with our day. So
Speaker 2: he said, well, let's go through the events and emotionally
Speaker 2: talk about how we feel when we were, you know,
Speaker 2: at the bar and when you were drinking, and how
Speaker 2: did you feel when you're walking home with Jamie on
Speaker 2: your arm? And then we got to the part where
Speaker 2: where she was undressed and to take a shower when
Speaker 2: I left her, and they were trying to get into
Speaker 2: how I felt about that, and I was like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm fine. I said, I was helping her out. Now
Speaker 2: I'm leaving. And they said, well, this isn't working. Let's
Speaker 2: do it the hard way. And so they would ask
Speaker 2: me these questions, like direct questions. So what was she
Speaker 2: wearing when you left her? And I said that she
Speaker 2: was in her brawn or underwear to take the shower,
Speaker 2: and they said, no, that's not right. And I remember
Speaker 2: sitting there and I'm like, but she was like, I
Speaker 2: have memories of her. I have memories of what she
Speaker 2: was wearing when I left her.
Speaker 3: She's me.
Speaker 2: And they said, no, that's wrong. And I remember referencing
Speaker 2: back to the photos that they had shown me, and
Speaker 2: one of them was her pants with her underwear inside
Speaker 2: of them, and I was like, well, in my head,
Speaker 2: I said, well, obviously she did take them off at
Speaker 2: some point. So I said in the bathroom, because that's
Speaker 2: where the picture was taken, and her underwear was in
Speaker 2: her pants, so obviously it had happened, even though that's
Speaker 2: not what she looked like when I left her. But
Speaker 2: it was like this wedge that opened up the floodgates
Speaker 2: of me doubting the memories that I had had and
Speaker 2: replacing them with this like multiple choice questioning that they
Speaker 2: were giving me. And if I gave them an answer
Speaker 2: that they didn't like, then they'd say, no, that didn't happen.
Speaker 2: They'd asked me a new question, they didn't like that answer. No,
Speaker 2: that's not how it happened. And I kept kind of
Speaker 2: like winding my way through their questions, trying to make
Speaker 2: all I'd spent a week in the police station in
Speaker 2: Korea after this crime, seeing all of all the crime
Speaker 2: scene photos. I had seen the crime scene itself. We'd
Speaker 2: stayed in the hotel room, and so all these pieces
Speaker 2: had been put together for me to recreate what they
Speaker 2: wanted me to be saying, So.
Speaker 3: Day three, you end up signing this false confession.
Speaker 2: Well, the second day they had the confession, and so
Speaker 2: that night, I know it sounds crazy, I started like
Speaker 2: making it more mine, or making it more real, or
Speaker 2: making it more believable, eve into myself. And so on
Speaker 2: the third day we met back and they want led
Speaker 2: me to narrate that confession, and they wrote it down,
Speaker 2: still guided a little bit with their assistance, like we
Speaker 2: didn't you say something about I think there was a rag?
Speaker 2: Didn't you say something about a rag? And so then
Speaker 2: I would fill that in and then I signed that
Speaker 2: confession and that's the one that they submit it for
Speaker 2: me to be arrested.
Speaker 3: It sounds to me like there's elements here of Stockholm
Speaker 3: syndrome too.
Speaker 5: Now, yes, they didn't just manipulate her compliance, they manipulated
Speaker 5: her memory. It's form of brainwashing.
Speaker 3: And you know, I.
Speaker 5: Think what happened here is the hardest type of false
Speaker 5: confession for anybody to understand. It's one thing to argue
Speaker 5: that I can coerce you by stress, by promises, by
Speaker 5: threats real or implied, to agree to confess to something
Speaker 5: you didn't do. It's a whole other game to argue
Speaker 5: that I cannot only get you to confess, I can
Speaker 5: get you to believe in your guilt. And yet those
Speaker 5: internalized false confessions throughout history, there are several high profile
Speaker 5: cases like it. When I heard what was done to
Speaker 5: Kenzi and the way she internalized the belief in her
Speaker 5: guilt to a point where I read an account Kenzi
Speaker 5: where you said it was like, I have two memories.
Speaker 5: One I think is the real one in color with voices,
Speaker 5: and the other is kind of a black and white film.
Speaker 5: I think was how you put it, yeah.
Speaker 2: Like still's being put together, whereas the other one, like
Speaker 2: you have the emotions attached to them, you know what,
Speaker 2: it felt like, it's more colorful. The other one had
Speaker 2: like clouds around it. As I said, still images being
Speaker 2: put together, like photos. The images that I had in
Speaker 2: my head from what they had worked their way through.
Speaker 2: The confession didn't feel like something. It still didn't feel
Speaker 2: like something that I would ever do. But I didn't
Speaker 2: understand how could I confess to something that I didn't do.
Speaker 3: I gotta ask when in between day one and day two,
Speaker 3: or day two and day three, or at what point
Speaker 3: did you call your dad or your mom or somebody
Speaker 3: that you trust and say, this is going crazy? What's
Speaker 3: I don't know what to do here? I need your help.
Speaker 2: My father and I didn't have the best relationship, but
Speaker 2: he was in Florida and my mom was in Thailand.
Speaker 2: I didn't have anyone to call.
Speaker 3: Well, so you're really all alone. I mean, that's it's
Speaker 3: a tough thing to face, no matter how much support
Speaker 3: you have. But that I think that obviously contributed to it,
Speaker 3: because I have to believe that if you had, especially
Speaker 3: you know, parents, you know, who were educated as you did,
Speaker 3: I would certainly hope that they would have intervened. But
Speaker 3: this is really the perfect storm.
Speaker 5: And did they ask you not to talk to anyone
Speaker 5: between days or after?
Speaker 2: On the third day after the confession, they asked me
Speaker 2: not to talk about it to anyone because they didn't
Speaker 2: even know if I could be if anything could happen
Speaker 2: with this. The FBI, they then had to go to
Speaker 2: Korea with a confession and say, hey, we have a confession.
Speaker 2: What do you want to do with this? Do you
Speaker 2: want this person to come back to Korea to go
Speaker 2: to trial to possibly face you know, time for a
Speaker 2: crime that was committed on your soil. Come to find out,
Speaker 2: they didn't really even have permission to come and speak
Speaker 2: with me. It was still a Korean case and they
Speaker 2: shouldn't have been talking to me. So after the confession,
Speaker 2: that's why it took me about three weeks to get
Speaker 2: arrested because everything took so long, asking for permission, coming
Speaker 2: back and saying well, why were you even talking to her?
Speaker 2: And so I wasn't arrested until February twenty eight, even
Speaker 2: though this interrogational questioning happened February sixth.
Speaker 5: And in that time, you didn't talk to parents, friends,
Speaker 5: counselor lawyer.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 5: So all those external reality cues that will normally rerain
Speaker 5: you in she didn't have those.
Speaker 2: No, my friends knew that I was upset. I mean
Speaker 2: after the confession, they gave me a bottle of water
Speaker 2: and a Snickers bar, and so I'm holding on this
Speaker 2: Snicker for hours, and I went to a friend's house
Speaker 2: and I was just sitting on their couch. But I
Speaker 2: couldn't tell them.
Speaker 3: I mean, here, you are a young girl nineteen, right,
Speaker 3: overwhelmed with three FBI agents, right, And when you say FBI,
Speaker 3: I think all of us feel like WHOA Like FBI's
Speaker 3: still carries that connotation, even while we know they're flawed
Speaker 3: human beings like everyone else, but their FBI agents. We
Speaker 3: want to believe in the FBI. We want to believe
Speaker 3: that they are you know, good, Yeah, you know, like honorable,
Speaker 3: higher standard everything else. Right, But we know from when
Speaker 3: Saul and I were talking, we were all talking about
Speaker 3: this before we came in the studio. We know from
Speaker 3: examples like the Madrid bombing and others that important to
Speaker 3: note that in the Madrid bombing case, and they ended
Speaker 3: up arresting a lawyer from Oregon and the FBI claimed
Speaker 3: they had their man and the fingerprints, manch and all
Speaker 3: this other stuff, and turnouty'd never been to Madrid and
Speaker 3: he was acquitted. They can be as dead wrong as anyone.
Speaker 3: And there's tons of proof of this now. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's that study that came out of several years ago,
Speaker 3: right about the hair analysis. Yes, and do you want
Speaker 3: to talk about that for a second, because I think
Speaker 3: while we're on the subject of a FBI, let's get
Speaker 3: that off our chest. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, it's interesting when when police, including the FBI,
Speaker 5: form a judgment a presumption of guilt, it biases the
Speaker 5: way they view other kinds of evidence. And in fact,
Speaker 5: there's a whole lot of research now that psychologists have
Speaker 5: done in the laboratory and in the field showing that
Speaker 5: when you bring forensic examiners in and insert a presumption
Speaker 5: of guilt or presumption of innocence into their analysis, whether
Speaker 5: that analysis is to make a handwriting judgment or a
Speaker 5: fingerprint judgment, or a judgment about tire tracks or bite marks.
Speaker 5: You can alter their judgment by giving them contextual information.
Speaker 5: Do those two stimulus patterns match well? If the suspect
Speaker 5: confess they did? And so what happened in Kenzie's case,
Speaker 5: in some ways is even worse. There was no physical
Speaker 5: evidence that linked her. In fact, there was every indication
Speaker 5: that there were one or two men involved in this murder.
Speaker 5: Male voices were heard screaming at about the time of
Speaker 5: the murder, A male was seen running from the motel
Speaker 5: with blood on his pants at about that time. There
Speaker 5: was every indication that this was a crime, and a
Speaker 5: man to go back to Kenzi a year later because
Speaker 5: they failed to solve the crime just made no sense.
Speaker 5: There was no physical evidence. When you look at the
Speaker 5: photos of the crime scene and how bloody it was,
Speaker 5: it's inconceivable that that could have happened and not a
Speaker 5: trace of that blood remained on her clothing. Inconceivable.
Speaker 2: I was in the exact same clothes while I was
Speaker 2: in the police station in Korea, from the night before.
Speaker 2: It was in the same clothes, and I didn't have
Speaker 2: any blood on my pants, or I wouldn't have been
Speaker 2: able to leave Korea in the first place. Not to
Speaker 2: mention my shoes, I only had one pair of shoes
Speaker 2: with me in Korea, and I was wearing them the
Speaker 2: entire time. I was in the police station and with
Speaker 2: the Army CID, and they still let me leave the country.
Speaker 2: And only a year later did they come back and
Speaker 2: talk to me.
Speaker 5: So there was no physical evidence, There were no witnesses.
Speaker 5: Kenzie had no background of violence. She was a class
Speaker 5: A student aspiring to be a teacher. There was absolutely
Speaker 5: no basis for suspicion when they called her out of
Speaker 5: the blue to talk to her in West Vine, Virginia.
Speaker 3: And not only was there I mean we say there's
Speaker 3: absence of evidence, there actually was evidence in the opposite direction, right,
Speaker 3: I mean you could say that if there's no blood
Speaker 3: on your clothes and you're accused of beating someone to death,
Speaker 3: that should be dispositive, right, that should actually be like, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: let's rule her out and keep it moving and go
Speaker 3: find out who did this.
Speaker 5: And just for the record, Korean police working with Army
Speaker 5: investigators because there were a lot of military guys in
Speaker 5: the bars that night and nearby that motel. So the
Speaker 5: army investigators became involved along with Korean police, and they
Speaker 5: did dismiss Kenzie as a suspect. It was over when
Speaker 5: she went home. It was one year later when the
Speaker 5: FBI became involved that suddenly everything changed.
Speaker 3: Do you think that anyone, or all three or none
Speaker 3: of the FBI agents believed going into that room that
Speaker 3: she was guilty?
Speaker 5: The human mind is an interesting thing. I'm not a
Speaker 5: mind reader. I don't know whether they were coldheartedly closing
Speaker 5: a case without any regard for the truth, or whether
Speaker 5: they had convinced themselves through their investigation that, in fact,
Speaker 5: she must be the culprit. I don't know the same
Speaker 5: mechanisms you described earlier that led the FBI to misidentify
Speaker 5: fingerprints in the Madrid bomber case led these agents to
Speaker 5: misidentify her as their suspect. And once a presumption of
Speaker 5: guilt kicks in, what happens next is anybody's guests. They
Speaker 5: can make that reality their own.
Speaker 3: And Kenzie, I know this is difficult for you to
Speaker 3: talk about even now, eighteen years later, and I mean,
Speaker 3: I can understand that as well as someone can understand
Speaker 3: it who hasn't been through it. But you were then
Speaker 3: arrested three weeks later and taken to jail.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 3: Here you are one day, you're working with troubled kids,
Speaker 3: making your way in the world, dealing with the normal
Speaker 3: stresses of a twenty year old. I'm sure you know
Speaker 3: doing good, right, more so than I was in your age.
Speaker 3: And the next thing you know, you're in jail for
Speaker 3: something you didn't do, but you don't even know if
Speaker 3: you did it anymore. I mean, what And you were
Speaker 3: there for ten months, right?
Speaker 2: I was there for ten months, which allowed me to
Speaker 2: It was a long time, but it allowed me to
Speaker 2: kind of separate those memories from and get more confident
Speaker 2: in the fact that I know that the memories that
Speaker 2: I had going into that hotel room that day are
Speaker 2: the real memories. And I was able to separate a
Speaker 2: little bit from that confession, but it still wasn't complete.
Speaker 2: Even by the time of the extradition hearing, I still
Speaker 2: hadn't completely removed that understanding that the confession wasn't real.
Speaker 2: And I think at my hearing, I think I said
Speaker 2: something along the lines of not by the memories that
Speaker 2: I hold true when they asked me if the confession
Speaker 2: was real, so I still had some cloud around it.
Speaker 3: And so the.
Speaker 2: Extradition hearing itself that happened actually in October of that year,
Speaker 2: was basically just asking was Kinsey Snyder in Korea at
Speaker 2: the time, so it's not even a guilt or innocence. Yes,
Speaker 2: I was in Korea. So then you are sent over
Speaker 2: to Korea itself and then you go through their legal proceedings.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't until I went back to Korea now
Speaker 2: after the extradition, and they wanted me to reenact some
Speaker 2: of the images. The Korean police wanted me to go
Speaker 2: back to the hotel room and reenact the confession. And
Speaker 2: I walked into the hotel room, and at that point
Speaker 2: I knew one hundred percent that that confession was completely wrong,
Speaker 2: and I didn't do it because none of the still
Speaker 2: images that I had in my head matched that hotel
Speaker 2: room in the way that confession worked out didn't make
Speaker 2: any sense anymore. And so at that point I felt
Speaker 2: a lot more empowered, a lot more confident again, a
Speaker 2: lot stronger. And the Korean police didn't like that so
Speaker 2: much because they were really hoping I would reconfess in Korea,
Speaker 2: and they got mad at me because you had a
Speaker 2: ten day period where you were talking to the police
Speaker 2: again and they were going over the evidence again and reinterviewing,
Speaker 2: and they really wanted a confession then, and they kept
Speaker 2: asking me, well, when did you do this? And I
Speaker 2: said I didn't. I did not kill Jamie. And at
Speaker 2: one point one of the police officers said, well, quld
Speaker 2: say that? Say something different? Because I was as I said,
Speaker 2: I felt more in control again at that point, and
Speaker 2: I refused, even though they told me that if I
Speaker 2: confessed again at this point, it would be easier on
Speaker 2: me and I would probably only be looking at seven
Speaker 2: or eight years versus looking at the death penalty if
Speaker 2: I went to trial and I lost. But I didn't
Speaker 2: want to lose that control again. I have to look
Speaker 2: at myself every day in the mirror, and I couldn't
Speaker 2: lie again, and I knew that confession was a lie.
Speaker 3: So were you in custody in South Korea? Yes, And
Speaker 3: that's got to be I.
Speaker 2: Can't imagine it's not being in jail in the United States.
Speaker 2: We don't treat our inmates like their people, and so
Speaker 2: when I got to go to Korea while it was different,
Speaker 2: and that's something I would want to do again. There's
Speaker 2: still a sense of humanity in their prisons, in their jails.
Speaker 3: Interesting, Yeah, that's well said. We don't treat our inmates
Speaker 3: like their people. We flip a switch. As soon as
Speaker 3: you're in the system. You're no longer human.
Speaker 2: You're just a number now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's weird because if that's the right way
Speaker 3: to do it, then we have to ascribe to the
Speaker 3: theory that Americans are worse people than any other people
Speaker 3: in the world, right, that were among the most evil
Speaker 3: people in the world, and that we need to be
Speaker 3: treated like subhumans. But it starts before you're convicted.
Speaker 2: Well, it even starts in the jails. If we believe
Speaker 2: that you're innocent and to proven guilty, then if you
Speaker 2: want to treat people like they're not people, that should
Speaker 2: be in prisons, if you're going to do it at all,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying you should. But in jail, supposedly you're innocent.
Speaker 2: So then why are we starting then.
Speaker 3: Well, you shouldn't. It should never start.
Speaker 2: You shouldn't start.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think there's more and more awareness of
Speaker 3: that now and there's a lot of movement with correction
Speaker 3: officials going to European countries and learning about how they
Speaker 3: did over there, and there's a reason why their recidivism
Speaker 3: rate is a tiny fraction of arts. It's because they
Speaker 3: treat their people who are incarcerate over there like human
Speaker 3: beings and they come out and what do you know,
Speaker 3: they adapt better and they end up not reoffending. And yeah,
Speaker 3: but that's, like I said, that's a whole other subject.
Speaker 3: So it's interesting that you went back to the room
Speaker 3: where this gruesome crime occurred and that's what really crystallized
Speaker 3: in your mind that you could not have done this.
Speaker 3: It's just fascinating as to how the brain works. And
Speaker 3: doesn't you know. I'm reading this wonderful book called Burned.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's wonderful. It's terrible also, but it's an
Speaker 3: amazing book by Pulitzer Prize winning author and Them Humes,
Speaker 3: and it's about an arson case, terrible case Juliane Taylor
Speaker 3: in California. But in it he talks about memory and
Speaker 3: how it can be manipulated. And you know, one of
Speaker 3: the things I read was either there in New Yorker
Speaker 3: story about the Nebraska case. Recently where six people falsely
Speaker 3: confessed to the brutal rape and murder of an old woman,
Speaker 3: and many of them, I think all but one, actually
Speaker 3: came to believe that they did it, even though DNA
Speaker 3: proved with an error rate. They said in the article
Speaker 3: of one to nine hundred and fifty one quintillion that
Speaker 3: the actual killer was a serial rapist murderer. But there's
Speaker 3: a couple of them that's still even after an apology,
Speaker 3: an official apology from the Attorney General of Nebraska, which
Speaker 3: those are hard to come by, some of them still
Speaker 3: believe that they had something to do with this because
Speaker 3: they've been so totally brainwashed. But what I did read
Speaker 3: is that I think they said that some statistic like
Speaker 3: seventy percent of people can be manipulate. I don't know
Speaker 3: how they figured this out into believing that a false
Speaker 3: memory is real. You know, that's a scary number.
Speaker 5: Under the right or wrong circumstances, you can get almost
Speaker 5: anybody to do that. You know, you're referring to the
Speaker 5: beatro six case, which is dramatic for a a whole
Speaker 5: different reason. Kenzi eventually gave up on that memory, and
Speaker 5: I think it's interesting as to how it happened, but
Speaker 5: eventually she came to grasp reality again in the Beatrice six,
Speaker 5: as you said, right on through being exonerated and receiving
Speaker 5: an apology. There was a precious quote when that first
Speaker 5: happened from one of those exoneries. She said something like, Wow,
Speaker 5: I guess I didn't do this, because right to that
Speaker 5: moment she continued to believe that she did it. And
Speaker 5: so that's how powerful that process can be. And when
Speaker 5: you look at a case like Kenzie's, they were drinking
Speaker 5: that night, there was a lot going on. It was confusing.
Speaker 5: It was a year ago now, and then the FBI
Speaker 5: comes in and they start to mischaracterize the evidence and
Speaker 5: it's confusing to her and she can't find a way
Speaker 5: to bridge their version of reality, their version of the facts,
Speaker 5: with her lack of memory of their version. She has
Speaker 5: a different memory. And I believe they actually assisted you
Speaker 5: in terms of how to bridge their version of the
Speaker 5: facts with your memory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they said, the person who had done this may
Speaker 2: have been feeling really guilty, but they may not have
Speaker 2: any memory of it because it was too traumatic and
Speaker 2: so the brain would have suppressed it. So to help
Speaker 2: them let go of that guilt, and feel better. They
Speaker 2: should confess.
Speaker 3: That's what they did. In the Beatrix six case. Many
Speaker 3: of those people the accused had been abused as children,
Speaker 3: and they said, you're blocking it out the same way
Speaker 3: you blocked out the abuse. I mean, they played on that.
Speaker 3: That's a really sick way to go, right, to sort
Speaker 3: of re traumatize. I mean, I don't even know what
Speaker 3: the word is from that, but yeah, it's crazy because
Speaker 3: I think most people listening at home or probably over
Speaker 3: in their cars whatever, probably like, well, I could see
Speaker 3: confusing or having a memory lapse or you know about
Speaker 3: some mundane type of thing. But it's really crazy to
Speaker 3: think how someone could be led to believe that they
Speaker 3: someone who's never done anything violent in their life, could
Speaker 3: be led to believe that they beat and stomped their
Speaker 3: roommate to death. That is really scary. And we know
Speaker 3: the malleability of memory and the influence. What you were
Speaker 3: talking about before, which I think is such an important
Speaker 3: point and why we need to have, you know, objective
Speaker 3: analysts at every phase of testing, forensic testing, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera, is that we know from every area of life,
Speaker 3: right if you even when it comes to like I
Speaker 3: saw a movie about wine. I think it was Bottle
Speaker 3: Shock or something right, where they did that test where
Speaker 3: they blindfolded something well famous somoliers, and they gave them
Speaker 3: like seven dollars wine and they gave them like the
Speaker 3: top wine from Italy or France, and they couldn't tell
Speaker 3: which was which. Someone couldn't tell if it was white
Speaker 3: or red with the blindfold because they told them. And
Speaker 3: so we know that that wine tastes. And I'll get
Speaker 3: letters from the the Vintnor's Association, right, But we know
Speaker 3: that wine taste about as good as you expected to write.
Speaker 3: And we know that tilanol works better than regular aspirin
Speaker 3: if you know it's tilanol, right, And here I come
Speaker 3: with another loss, so you'll have to defend me anyway.
Speaker 3: So two of the most persuasive pieces of quote unquote
Speaker 3: evidence that can be and are presented in courtrooms thousands
Speaker 3: and thousands cents one thousand times a day, are confessions
Speaker 3: and even more so I was identification. That's not the
Speaker 3: case here, Ironically, those are two of the most unreliable
Speaker 3: forms of evidence that there can be. So I guess
Speaker 3: what I want to ask is for everyone that's listening,
Speaker 3: and people have heard me say this before. Everyone that's
Speaker 3: listening to us right now, at some point in the
Speaker 3: future is going to get a jury duty notice, and
Speaker 3: after they get over the initial grumpiness about having received
Speaker 3: that thing in the mail, they're going to hopefully go
Speaker 3: and show up and do their duty. And we know
Speaker 3: that there have been cases like Jeffrey Dskovics, where there
Speaker 3: were jurors who were swayed by his false confession so
Speaker 3: much so that they disregarded scientific proof that was presented
Speaker 3: at his original trial that proved without any doubt that
Speaker 3: he could not have committed this brutal rape and murder
Speaker 3: of a fifteen year old girl, and they convicted him anyway.
Speaker 3: So that's an extreme case. But four jurors, when they're
Speaker 3: in a courtroom and there's a confession, and they're up
Speaker 3: there and they're saying nothing else, this defense attorney says
Speaker 3: matters because this person is confessed, and therefore you have
Speaker 3: to convict. How can somebody who's not a psychologist or
Speaker 3: a trained expert in criminal justice, how can they interpret
Speaker 3: that information? How can they make a better decision.
Speaker 5: They need to understand what the sound and sight of
Speaker 5: a false confession really is. For example, here's one single
Speaker 5: statistic that should scare the hell out of everybody, and
Speaker 5: it is the fact that ninety five percent of known
Speaker 5: false confessions taken right out of the DNA exoneration case
Speaker 5: files of the Innocence Project, ninety five percent of known
Speaker 5: fault confessions contained facts about the crime that were spot
Speaker 5: on accurate that the public didn't know about. And so
Speaker 5: what happens when a jury comes into the courtroom and
Speaker 5: they've got a defendant who said I'm innocent. They coerced
Speaker 5: my statement. The jury can understand the notion of coercion,
Speaker 5: but they ultimately come down to this question, Well, he
Speaker 5: says he's innocent, but then how did he know those things? Well,
Speaker 5: you know what, they don't know how he knowed those
Speaker 5: things unless they can see an entire recording from start
Speaker 5: to finish of every transaction between the police and the suspect.
Speaker 5: In Kenzie's case, the FBI agent's account of what happened
Speaker 5: in those three days neglected to mention that they told
Speaker 5: her about repression and blacking things out. They neglected some
Speaker 5: of the details that a jury would need to know
Speaker 5: to evaluate that statement. So I think a jury needs
Speaker 5: to know that unless you're watching the entire process, not
Speaker 5: just the final production that is scripted and re hearst
Speaker 5: for public consumption. But unless they see the hours and
Speaker 5: hours off camera that preceded that, they can't possibly competent
Speaker 5: to make a judgment of that confession. They need to
Speaker 5: demand everything. And if police in one of those states
Speaker 5: that requires or doesn't require recording had failed to record
Speaker 5: the interrogation, the jury should react with an ultra degree
Speaker 5: of suspicion. They need to ask themselves, why don't I
Speaker 5: see this process? If the police are proud to show
Speaker 5: their interrogation work, why don't I get to see how
Speaker 5: that statement was crafted? Because unless the jury can see
Speaker 5: the whole thing, they're just not in a position to
Speaker 5: evaluate the statement.
Speaker 3: They're just not right. And we see that in the
Speaker 3: amazing Netflix series Now The Innocent Man, where Tommy Ward
Speaker 3: and kral Font and I are still in prison over
Speaker 3: three decades later, and we only see the part of
Speaker 3: the confession that they want us to see exactly. But
Speaker 3: we know what went on now. We know it's too
Speaker 3: late to help them, unfortunately, but it happens too often.
Speaker 3: And you know, New York State resisted for the longest
Speaker 3: time recording interrogations. They said it was too expensive, expensive expensive.
Speaker 3: It's free, it's free, It's literally free. But you just
Speaker 3: hear these things and you.
Speaker 5: Go, I know, we're in an audio only situation. But
Speaker 5: my impulse was to pull my phone out of my pocket,
Speaker 5: put it on the table and say there, we can
Speaker 5: do it now.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know there's that movie as well, False Confessions,
Speaker 3: that both Saul and I are in which I encourage
Speaker 3: people to look up it profiles for false confession cases,
Speaker 3: and it really shows you, down and dirty, how terribly
Speaker 3: flawed this process is. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: if you don't know, you have to acquit because it
Speaker 3: says so in the Constitution, not because I think so,
Speaker 3: but because it says so in the Constitution. They have
Speaker 3: to prove guilt without a reasonable doubt. That's not the
Speaker 3: standard that we hold anymore. It doesn't seem like that,
Speaker 3: it doesn't hold up in the justice system. And you know,
Speaker 3: and of course there's that quote, wasn't it Benjamin Franklin
Speaker 3: that said it is better than one hundred guilty men
Speaker 3: go free, than that an innocent should suffer. William Blackstone, Oh,
Speaker 3: William Blackstone, damn I quoted that in the podcast before
Speaker 3: William Blackstone said that, yeah, so yeah, and it's certainly
Speaker 3: again with Kenzie here living proof that it can happen
Speaker 3: to anyone. I mean, strangely enough, fortunately for you, the
Speaker 3: Korean justice system functioned. We can't prove this, but probably
Speaker 3: better than ours would have. So now we get to
Speaker 3: the vindication. Right, and you had three of those, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, they just kept stamping your thing like nope, nope,
Speaker 3: nope that I mean, and I mean, how did that feel?
Speaker 3: And you know, and how did it feel coming home?
Speaker 2: And it felt great to get the you know, the
Speaker 2: first hearing, the judge was saying it and I had
Speaker 2: to wait for the translator. So the people in the
Speaker 2: courtroom had reacted, but I didn't know how or why
Speaker 2: they were reacting, like is this in my favor or not?
Speaker 2: And then I heard the translator said innocent and it
Speaker 2: wasn't even they did. She didn't say not guilty, she
Speaker 2: said innocent. And I don't know if that's a translation error,
Speaker 2: but it felt so good to hear that those words,
Speaker 2: but I still my mom came rushing at me. She
Speaker 2: was able to be there in Koree at the time.
Speaker 2: And I went to her and we got a hug,
Speaker 2: but the courtroom, the bailiff kind of had to separate
Speaker 2: us because I still had to go back to the jail,
Speaker 2: this time not in handcuffs, but I wasn't really free
Speaker 2: for another twelve hours. They had to wait for a
Speaker 2: fax from the courthouse. So when I got back to
Speaker 2: the jail after my innocence verdict, everyone was asking me, well,
Speaker 2: how long did you get how And I said, no,
Speaker 2: I'm going home, And they're like, what do you mean
Speaker 2: You're going home. People don't go home from here. People
Speaker 2: shouldn't be in jail. They didn't do a crime. Why
Speaker 2: you mean you're going home? And I said, I didn't
Speaker 2: do it. I get to go home, and so I
Speaker 2: got to say goodbye to the people that i'd spent
Speaker 2: spent about four and a half months in a room
Speaker 2: with fifteen other women and so formed some bonds and
Speaker 2: we got say goodbye to them. And then at ten
Speaker 2: or four pm on June nineteenth, I got out.
Speaker 3: So there were three separate verdicts, though were you held
Speaker 3: in between those verdicts?
Speaker 2: I was not held in between, but I didn't I
Speaker 2: technically didn't have a visa I wasn't allowed to work,
Speaker 2: and I was in limbo. The prosecutor when I hadn't
Speaker 2: appealed the case. I think it's they're just expected to.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's an honor thing. I said.
Speaker 2: I wasn't allowed to work. My mom did come to
Speaker 2: the country during that time, and so she got a
Speaker 2: work visa and I had There was a pastor who
Speaker 2: would visit me on Tuesdays. Every day. We had seven
Speaker 2: minutes visits and he would come in every Tuesday and
Speaker 2: we would talk. And when I got out, he was
Speaker 2: really really supportive, he and his family, and he found
Speaker 2: someone who donated an apartment to us, donated our rent.
Speaker 2: Otherwise I would be an immigration in jail. And then
Speaker 2: October I got another innocent verdict, and then it was
Speaker 2: appealed to the Supreme Court. And at that point I'm
Speaker 2: still in Korea. They had my passport, I didn't have
Speaker 2: permission to leave, and my brother was getting married at
Speaker 2: the end of December, and I asked permission if I
Speaker 2: could go home, and they said if I would sign
Speaker 2: a letter that would waive extradition if I was found guilty,
Speaker 2: they would let me go home. So I wrote that letter,
Speaker 2: and then it was still almost three years later that
Speaker 2: I finally got the official Supreme Court of South Korea
Speaker 2: said that I was innocent. So weird, I mean limbo
Speaker 2: all that.
Speaker 3: Time you were in limbo in South Korea.
Speaker 2: For I was in limbo for about six months in
Speaker 2: South Korea and then went back home and was still
Speaker 2: in limbo in the States, waiting on a verdict, not
Speaker 2: knowing if I would have to go back to Korea.
Speaker 2: I had a gap in my work histories. The finding
Speaker 2: a job was incredibly hard. All of my credit cards
Speaker 2: had defaulted, maxed out and defaulted. Student loans had.
Speaker 3: Defaulted, right, so there was more trouble waiting you. And yeah,
Speaker 3: then that is a very strange state of being in
Speaker 3: the Twilight zone, right, You're over there in this eastern
Speaker 3: country where you can't work, so you can't make money,
Speaker 3: and you can't go home, and you can't do anything.
Speaker 2: And I was an efficial tourist. Yeah that's all I
Speaker 2: could do.
Speaker 3: But you would have had to sleep on the streets. So,
Speaker 3: like you said, go to immigration and jail. If not
Speaker 3: for the fact of the kindness of strangers and the
Speaker 3: fact that your mom was able to be supported the
Speaker 3: way she was before we get to the closing, and
Speaker 3: I want to hear about what you're doing now and
Speaker 3: how you're doing now, and you know all that stuff.
Speaker 3: But I want to ask Saul and Patty. When I
Speaker 3: started doing this podcast, my goal was to help to
Speaker 3: prevent as many wrongful convictions going forward as I can
Speaker 3: by teaching people or educating people, I should say as
Speaker 3: to how and why they happen, and to give people
Speaker 3: an idea of what to look for if they're on
Speaker 3: a jury, and what some of the dos and don'ts
Speaker 3: if you're arrested or even picked up and not arrested
Speaker 3: as Kenzie was. So you know, being that we have
Speaker 3: two experts in the room, I would love to get
Speaker 3: your take on both of those two topics, and together
Speaker 3: we can hopefully prevent the next Kenzie from going through
Speaker 3: what she did. So, if you want.
Speaker 5: To go first, sure, I think that's a noble and
Speaker 5: very important mission. I think one thing we learned from
Speaker 5: Kenzie's case, and this gets at a strength of the
Speaker 5: Korean justice system that in contrasts to a serious weakness
Speaker 5: of the American system. She had the surge of relief
Speaker 5: when they took her back to the crime scene. She
Speaker 5: looked and she said, WHOA, that's not the memory they
Speaker 5: gave me. That doesn't fit. In Korean law, if a
Speaker 5: suspect confesses to police and recant the confession and won't
Speaker 5: reenact it and won't restate it to the prosecutor, it
Speaker 5: didn't happen. And yet in the US, when behind closed
Speaker 5: locked doors without recording, police claimed that a suspect confessed
Speaker 5: and then that suspect immediately recance the confession and won't
Speaker 5: restate it and won't plead guilty and won't re enact it,
Speaker 5: that suspect has done already the damage that will get
Speaker 5: him or her convicted. And so I think there is
Speaker 5: buried in this story about comparing two systems. Problem with
Speaker 5: the American system. The only way Kenzie could have stepped
Speaker 5: out of that situation intact was to invoke her right
Speaker 5: to silence, to invoke her right to an attorney. That's
Speaker 5: all she could have done, because once she is alleged
Speaker 5: to have confessed, even if she recants it and will
Speaker 5: not restate it, the damage has been done.
Speaker 7: Well, I'll touch on the other topic about what should
Speaker 7: we do to make people aware. I'm trying to figure
Speaker 7: that out out and I'll report back in a year
Speaker 7: with concrete findings. But I think just telling more stories
Speaker 7: like this so that number one people accept that it's
Speaker 7: a thing that happens more often than you probably think,
Speaker 7: and just focusing on the person. I think, on a
Speaker 7: person to person basis rather than on trends, because it
Speaker 7: becomes clear once you hear each individual story, It's a
Speaker 7: lot more clear as to how that confession happened than
Speaker 7: speaking in statistics and things. So I think focusing on
Speaker 7: the individual stories is really important.
Speaker 2: That's my hypothesis.
Speaker 3: It's a scary system, and you know, we're here to
Speaker 3: try to, you know, help turn the tide, and media
Speaker 3: plays an important part in it. You're studying that. Now,
Speaker 3: what have your studies so far shown about the effective
Speaker 3: podcasts on an opinion of civilians.
Speaker 7: We're just starting, so we started off looking at Netflix documentaries,
Speaker 7: but so far we are seeing that that there is
Speaker 7: a certain type of person that's number one likely to
Speaker 7: watch these kinds of documentaries to begin with and also
Speaker 7: know more about interrogations. We're trying to figure out as
Speaker 7: to whether these people are just more knowledgeable and then
Speaker 7: they watch these documentaries or whether the documentaries are doing
Speaker 7: the educating, so podcasts is the next step. So I
Speaker 7: don't know yet. And actually you brought up my exact
Speaker 7: dissertation question earlier. In that question, you posed about why
Speaker 7: is it that people can be presented with scientific findings
Speaker 7: or logic but still kind of hold on to that
Speaker 7: gut reaction towards a confession. So you can tell someone
Speaker 7: and I maybe there's research where you give them all
Speaker 7: the information about wrongful convictions and it makes them more
Speaker 7: critical of evidence, but it doesn't necessarily change their overall
Speaker 7: verdict decisions. So I'm trying to figure out why.
Speaker 3: Well, it's good that you're doing the work, and you know,
Speaker 3: I think too we should mention that, you know studies.
Speaker 3: My friend Josh Dubin was involved in the study. It
Speaker 3: showed that there's an inherent bias among normal people who
Speaker 3: become jurors that if they see someone present it to
Speaker 3: them as a defendant, whether it's in the box or
Speaker 3: whatever it is, eighty percent of people have a natural
Speaker 3: assumption that they're guilty or they wouldn't be there. And
Speaker 3: we have to correct that because there shouldn't be any presumption.
Speaker 3: You should come in as a blank slate in understanding
Speaker 3: how often these things go wrong. So before we turn
Speaker 3: to closing remarks, Kenzie, how are you? What's going on now?
Speaker 3: How are you doing? You seem like like a little
Speaker 3: orb of light. But I, you know, think I'm not
Speaker 3: a minder. I'm not even a psychologist. I'm going with here.
Speaker 2: That isn't overall I'm good. I'm good. I do have
Speaker 2: hard days and hard times year February and March with
Speaker 2: the confession and the murder itself, that's a hard time
Speaker 2: a year, But overall I'm good. I'm a mom. Now.
Speaker 2: I have a six year old.
Speaker 3: Boy, what's his name?
Speaker 2: His name is Garrik. I get emotional talking about him
Speaker 2: because I think about how this could affect him, how
Speaker 2: my past still to this day, eighteen years later, will
Speaker 2: still like bump into things. People will hear about it
Speaker 2: or google it, or they'll see it. Sometimes the show's
Speaker 2: on syndication, and it'll affect how people treat me. And
Speaker 2: some friendships have been lost because of it, and sometimes
Speaker 2: there's some trickle down effect to him. But overall good.
Speaker 2: It's hard trying to rebuild and people will have difficulty
Speaker 2: getting past the confession. Even if I was found innocent,
Speaker 2: That doesn't matter. They still think why would you have
Speaker 2: said said you did something that you didn't do, especially
Speaker 2: why did you kill your friend? And so it kind
Speaker 2: of follows you around like you have to monitor your
Speaker 2: behavior all the time. You can never get too angry,
Speaker 2: you can never get too upset. You have to when
Speaker 2: do you tell this with new people that you've met,
Speaker 2: Like you you have to gauge your relationship with them.
Speaker 2: Am I going to see them again? Do they need
Speaker 2: to know about this? If you wait too long, then
Speaker 2: they feel like you violated their trust, because why didn't
Speaker 2: you tell this to me before? Before you came into
Speaker 2: my house, before I saw you every day at school.
Speaker 2: So you're always having to monitor your reactions and your relationships.
Speaker 5: When I first talked to you about whether you want
Speaker 5: to come out and do this, you said something about
Speaker 5: your son and the loss of a play date. Can
Speaker 5: you say something about that, because in a funny way,
Speaker 5: I think that just says so much.
Speaker 2: It was one of the things I had arranged a
Speaker 2: play date, and so my son had gone over to
Speaker 2: their house and they were playing, and it's you know,
Speaker 2: gauging when do I tell this to someone? And now
Speaker 2: I was in their home, and I felt that I
Speaker 2: know if someone came into my house, I would want
Speaker 2: to know who is coming into my home. So I
Speaker 2: had shared this story a little bit, and that person
Speaker 2: was no longer available for play dates, just wouldn't return
Speaker 2: phone calls or texts or messages, just stopped.
Speaker 3: I actually have one more question, Are you better?
Speaker 2: I'm not. I think life is too short to be bitter.
Speaker 2: I do get angry at times that they feel that
Speaker 2: they have the right to do this to someone's life,
Speaker 2: because it's not just my life that's affected. That's also
Speaker 2: the Penwick family who hasn't gotten the proper closure that
Speaker 2: they need. This is a person out there who has
Speaker 2: killed someone and is not in jail or prison for
Speaker 2: having committed that crime. And I think I'm not bitter.
Speaker 2: I get angry about it, though, but I'm not letting
Speaker 2: what they did to me ruin the rest of my life.
Speaker 3: We'll glad you're doing well and wish you all the
Speaker 3: best for the future. And now we come to my
Speaker 3: favorite part of the show, which is and you're familiar
Speaker 3: with this since you listen to the show, so you're ready.
Speaker 3: A lot of people come on and never heard it,
Speaker 3: so this takes them by surprise. But this is a
Speaker 3: part of the show where I thank each of you,
Speaker 3: Kenzie of course, Kenzie Schnyder, and Patty Sanchez and Professor
Speaker 3: saulkass And for being here and taking your time and
Speaker 3: sharing your thoughts. And now I get to stop talking
Speaker 3: and listen. And so I'm going to go in order.
Speaker 3: I guess we'll start with Patty and Saul, and then
Speaker 3: you can Zie for just final thoughts.
Speaker 7: Final thoughts, understand that humans are flawed, and you are normal,
Speaker 7: no less flawed than general people. I've noticed there's a
Speaker 7: lot of people consuming these things saying like, oh yeah,
Speaker 7: I would always be able to tell a part something,
Speaker 7: or like I'd be able to tell true and false.
Speaker 7: And I think we all just humble ourselves a little
Speaker 7: bit and admit that we're all vulnerable and we're all
Speaker 7: susceptible to being manipulated and being okay with that and
Speaker 7: understand it, and so that we can be aware and
Speaker 7: always get a lawyer.
Speaker 5: All that's good, You always get a lawyer. Part I
Speaker 5: would have led with. But you know, false confessions. I've
Speaker 5: been looking at them for god knows how long. I'm
Speaker 5: not going to tell you because I don't want to
Speaker 5: reveal my age. But it wasn't that long ago when
Speaker 5: people said doesn't happen, and I would say never, never,
Speaker 5: doesn't happen. I would never confess to a crime I
Speaker 5: didn't commit. Now I think some of that is changing.
Speaker 5: The problem is that what people see and hear a confession,
Speaker 5: what they're seeing and hearing is a story. It's a narrative.
Speaker 5: This is what I did, this is how I did it,
Speaker 5: this is why, this is what it felt like, this
Speaker 5: is what the victim may have looked like or said.
Speaker 5: It's a story from start to finish. Kenzie's is no exception.
Speaker 5: If you read her so called confession, it is a
Speaker 5: narrative from start to finish. It's chronology, that is the
Speaker 5: sight in the sound of a false confession. And so
Speaker 5: it's very important for people to understand that absent corroborating
Speaker 5: evidence taken independent of that confession, and absence seeing the
Speaker 5: process by which that confession was taken, you are in
Speaker 5: no position to make a judgment. And the reason I
Speaker 5: think that's important is Kenzie's case illustrates something disturbing. Eighteen
Speaker 5: years ago, she gave a confession. She was then acquitted,
Speaker 5: She was then acquitted again, She was then acquitted again.
Speaker 5: The fact that eighteen years later she is feeling the
Speaker 5: effects of the stigma that has not detached itself from her.
Speaker 5: She gave a confession, but she has never been convicted
Speaker 5: of a crime. It doesn't matter to some people. She
Speaker 5: is guilty by virtue of the fact that she confessed,
Speaker 5: and they will never see her actual innocence. People need
Speaker 5: to get past it, people, And that's why I think
Speaker 5: Patty's proposed studies looking at whether or not a podcast,
Speaker 5: for example, can raise public awareness and make people more
Speaker 5: discerning jurors, is so important because we're flailing a bit
Speaker 5: trying to find ways to raise public awareness. I've been
Speaker 5: working top down, trying to convince the courts, the judiciary
Speaker 5: to reform the system in ways that makes sense. But
Speaker 5: you know what, that's just too slow, and there are
Speaker 5: more victims every day, and so maybe what we need
Speaker 5: to do is work from the bottom up and create
Speaker 5: a ground swell of public awareness and a ground swell
Speaker 5: of support. You know, I think making a Murderer, the
Speaker 5: Central Park five, The Confession Tapes, Demand, the Knox documentary,
Speaker 5: your podcast series on wrongful convictions, those are I think
Speaker 5: essential tools for raising public awareness and making people more
Speaker 5: critical consumers of their criminal justice system.
Speaker 3: Canzi.
Speaker 2: I was hesitant to do this podcast because of how
Speaker 2: it could affect my life now, but Saul had mentioned
Speaker 2: something and he said maybe a future juror would hear this,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to help someone keep them from this
Speaker 2: happening to them. I think that's important. The biggest thing
Speaker 2: that I would say is get a lawyer. I know
Speaker 2: everyone thinks it's a false confession. That would never confess
Speaker 2: to something that I didn't do, And I know it
Speaker 2: sounds crazy, but no one goes into the room with
Speaker 2: law enforcement expecting to leave with a confession to a
Speaker 2: crime they didn't commit. So get a lawyer. Law enforcement agents,
Speaker 2: they are doing their job. They're not your friend. Don't
Speaker 2: trust them. Make sure you have a lawyer on your sign.
Speaker 3: And before we close, Saul, I want to do sadly,
Speaker 3: I want to do an immemoriam because there's a case
Speaker 3: that was profiled in the movie that you and I
Speaker 3: both appeared in, called False Confessions, and can you talk
Speaker 3: a little bit about because it actually has an eerie
Speaker 3: resemblance to Kenzie's case, and that he was never convicted.
Speaker 3: He was actually in jail for almost exactly the same
Speaker 3: amount of time in America. Anyway, He was an exchange student. Yes,
Speaker 3: and he died you know recently. You know, you could
Speaker 3: say he died of a broken heart. But can you
Speaker 3: talk about that case a little bit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, his name was Multi Thompson. He was twenty or
Speaker 5: twenty one years old when he came to the US
Speaker 5: to New York to work as a teacher in a preschool,
Speaker 5: a high end preschool near the United Nations. He came
Speaker 5: from a family of teachers and educators just Kenzie was
Speaker 5: aspiring as well to be a teacher, and some way
Speaker 5: through the school year, another employee went to the school
Speaker 5: and said they saw him touching the children inappropriately, which
Speaker 5: seemed inconceivable given the layout of the room and the
Speaker 5: fact that there are always multiple adults at any given moment.
Speaker 5: But they watched for a while and saw absolutely nothing.
Speaker 5: Turns out that the person who accused him of that
Speaker 5: had made similar allegations earlier in the year about others,
Speaker 5: so the school proceeded to dismiss her. She went to
Speaker 5: the police department and she reported it. The police ended
Speaker 5: up in Malta Thompson's door early one morning, about six am,
Speaker 5: picked him up, interrogated him for seven or eight hours,
Speaker 5: and took from him a confession. The interrogation was not
Speaker 5: courted on audio or on video, and the result of
Speaker 5: that seven or eight hours of off camera interrogation was
Speaker 5: that they convinced Malti Thompson to go to the district
Speaker 5: Attorney's office and give a videotape statement. And the opening
Speaker 5: of his videotape statement, I'm paraphrasing, but it's something like
Speaker 5: it has come to my attention that I've done a
Speaker 5: bad thing. Apparently they told him falsely that they had
Speaker 5: surveillance video footage of him touching the children inappropriately. That
Speaker 5: was a lie. But he's from Denmark and he doesn't
Speaker 5: know that police are allowed to lie, because in Denmark,
Speaker 5: as in most other Western civilized countries, police are not
Speaker 5: allowed to lie.
Speaker 3: But he was.
Speaker 5: Delivered that lie, and so, like Kenzie, he had to
Speaker 5: presume that this must be true. I don't recall doing it,
Speaker 5: and so he gave a confession to the district attorney
Speaker 5: on camera. He was sent to Rikers Island for several
Speaker 5: months while the case worked its way through the system.
Speaker 5: Nobody would corroborate, none of the children would corroborate, and
Speaker 5: they had to ultimately drop the charges. He went home
Speaker 5: to Denmark. He had a lawyer who settled with the
Speaker 5: city for some I don't know what the settlement figure was.
Speaker 5: And you and I saw him in the film. If
Speaker 5: you see the film, what you will see as an
Speaker 5: individual who is depressed. And this was years later, and
Speaker 5: so the fact that he died recently according to the family,
Speaker 5: he died of a heart attack, as at twenty seven
Speaker 5: years old, is just sad beyond belief. But you can
Speaker 5: see in the movie he can't even break open a smile.
Speaker 5: This affected him and had never left six seven years later.
Speaker 5: I don't know what was going through his mind. I
Speaker 5: don't know what goes through Kenzie's mind, but I know
Speaker 5: that people who are induced into giving confessions to crimes
Speaker 5: they didn't commit are constantly self reflecting. What was I thinking,
Speaker 5: what was I doing? How could that have happened? And
Speaker 5: that's what makes these stories so important to tell.
Speaker 3: Rest in peace. Thank you everyone for listening to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 3: We'll see you next week. Don't forget to give us
Speaker 3: a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps.
Speaker 3: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and
Speaker 3: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
Speaker 3: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
Speaker 3: to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and
Speaker 3: get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
Speaker 3: Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is
Speaker 3: by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure
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Speaker 3: is a production a Lava for Good Podcasts and association
Speaker 3: with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 2: Then The Blinding That Word m