WEBVTT - #368 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Birmingham Six 0:00:06.600 --> 0:00:07.720 Hey guys, Laura here. 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:08.320 Now. 0:00:08.360 --> 0:00:10.280 Most of the stories we bring you focus on the 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:13.720 American criminal justice system, but this one takes place in 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:17.919 the UK. The case revolves around in IRA bombing in 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:22.200 nineteen seventy two and six innocent irishmen who were tortured 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:25.000 into falsely confessing to the crime. One of the people 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:28.400 working to prove their innocence was a reporter named Chris Mullen. 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:31.640 Through his reporting, he found the people he says were 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:35.280 the actual IRA members responsible for the bombing, but he 0:00:35.400 --> 0:00:38.239 refused to give up their names to the police and 0:00:38.280 --> 0:00:41.640 the matter went to court in March twenty twenty two. 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:44.400 The court decided that Mullen did not have to name 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:47.040 his source, and even though we want to know who 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:50.280 actually committed these crimes, this ruling protects one of the 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:54.000 key tenets of journalism. It was only with the promise 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:56.960 of anonymity that Mullen was able to get the evidence 0:00:57.000 --> 0:01:00.400 against the people he says really committed this crime. Keeping 0:01:00.440 --> 0:01:03.960 those protections in place will help journalists to expose present 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:16.559 and future wrongful convictions. Welcome to wrongful conviction, False confessions. 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:21.720 I'm Laura, and I writer, and I'm Steve Drisen Steve. 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:23.760 When we went on our speaking tour last year for 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:26.760 Making a Murderer, one of my favorite places we visited 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:28.680 was Belfast in Northern Ireland. 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:32.240 Yeah, it was one of the highlights of our travels. 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:36.280 It was almost like coming home, coming to a place 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:40.880 which understood the work I've been doing for most of 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:42.200 my professional life. 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:45.040 Yeah, there was something about false confessions that really resonated 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:45.759 with that audience. 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:49.640 It's a lived experience and it goes back to the 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:53.280 way in which the Birmingham Six were treated by law enforcement. 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:56.640 Well, okay, so here's the thing, right. The Birmingham Six 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:58.640 was a case that arose from the fact that two 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:01.800 pubs in Birmingham were bombed. It was one of the 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:04.760 biggest mass murders to happen on British soil after World 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:07.160 War Two. I mean, this is like the Oklahoma City 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:10.400 bombing here in the United States. And the blame for 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:13.359 this crime was placed on these six Irish guys who 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.600 were living in England but who had deep roots in Belfast. 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:19.320 The injustice of what happened to these guys is like 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:20.639 almost nothing I've seen before. 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:26.280 Yeah, a profound experience of police abuses and of torture 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:28.280 in the interrogation rooms. 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:33.640 Their story resonates for so many people in Northern Ireland 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:37.880 because the whole place has this incredible history of conflict 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:42.000 and struggle against power. I actually think that history is 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:44.519 what brought so many people out last year to our talk. 0:02:44.919 --> 0:02:45.080 You know. 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:46.800 I'd like to believe they came to see you and me, 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:49.680 but they were probably there to hear about injustice and 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:52.280 how to fight it. And that's a little bit better 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:52.840 of a reason. 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:53.679 I think. 0:03:04.919 --> 0:03:08.239 Our story today begins in Birmingham, England. It's the second 0:03:08.320 --> 0:03:11.000 largest city in the United Kingdom, with a population in 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:15.440 the millions, mostly English, but also hundreds of thousands of Irish. 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:18.920 Like any big city, Birmingham's got a thriving social scene. 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:23.239 In particular, on almost every corner there's a pub. It's 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:25.800 in two of those pubs that our story really begins, 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:29.120 two ordinary places where people go after work to get 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:33.040 a pint of beer. On November twenty first, nineteen seventy four, 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:37.880 two Birmingham pubs became together the scene of Britain's deadliest 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:42.800 mass murder in modern history. It all started at eight 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:46.160 eleven in the evening, an anonymous man with an Irish 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:50.120 accent placed a phone call to the Birmingham Post newspaper. 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:54.120 There's a bomb planted in the Rotunda, he said, and 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:58.200 there's a bomb in New Street. This, he added, is 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:04.320 double X. Then silence he'd hung up. The Rotunda was 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:07.160 a high rise office building in downtown Birmingham with a 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:10.680 pub on its first floor called the Mulberry Bush. New Street. 0:04:10.720 --> 0:04:13.240 Around the corner was where the city tax office was. 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:16.120 There was a pub on that building's first floor too, 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:20.119 called the Tavern in the Town. And then only six 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:25.680 minutes after that anonymous phone call, it happened two huge explosions. 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:29.520 The first was at the Mulberry Bush at eight seventeen pm. 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:32.440 A homemade bomb had been left in a leather bag 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:35.359 somewhere near the back door. When the bomb exploded, the 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:38.919 pub was packed with people and the damage was horrific. 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:43.680 The ceiling collapsed, fire engulfed the place. People were crushed 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:47.480 and burned to death. Others were impaled by falling beams. 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:51.800 First responders arrived and began working desperately to rescue survivors. 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:54.920 At the same time, police were frantically trying to evacuate 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:57.479 the Tavern in the town, but they couldn't clear it 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:01.280 fast enough. At eight twenty seven pm, a second homemade 0:05:01.279 --> 0:05:06.240 bomb exploded there again, the packed pub was destroyed. That 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:09.719 explosion was so powerful that people were blown through the 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:13.799 brick walls between the two pubs. Twenty one people died 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:17.080 and one hundred and eighty two were injured. It was 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:23.640 a coordinated attack that left Britain reeling. So why would 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:28.880 anyone bomb pubs in Birmingham? The answer is politics and history. 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:32.520 Here's our friend, doctor Hannah Quirk. She's a professor at 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:36.320 King's College, London who studies wrongful convictions and like a 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:38.919 lot of folks in the United Kingdom, in Ireland, she 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:41.920 had a front row seat to that history. When she's 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:43.599 talking to people who are new to this part of 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:45.440 the world, Hannah likes to start here. 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:48.919 So there's obviously the famous U two song about Bloody Sunday. 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:51.880 That song's more than a pop anthem. It tells the 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:55.520 story of the long running and sometimes violent conflict between 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:58.760 Ireland and Britain. And here's that story in a nutshell. 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:03.000 There's a little implicated history in Ireland, hundreds of years 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:06.640 of history, but in nineteen twenty two there'd been a 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:10.680 civil war and the majority of Ireland was given independence 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:14.359 from Great Britain and formed the Irish Free State, but 0:06:14.440 --> 0:06:17.640 a deal was done to say that the six counties 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:20.360 of Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom. 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:23.679 Not everyone was happy with this deal, though. People became 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:27.160 intensely divided about whether Northern Ireland should be part of 0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:30.359 the United Kingdom or join the Republic of Ireland, and 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:33.240 those divisions often fell along religious lines. 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:36.880 Most Catholics were nationalists or Republicans. They wanted to be 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:40.000 a United Ireland so the island of Ireland would be 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:45.400 one country, and most Protestants were Unionists or Loyalists. They 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:48.279 wanted to remain part of Great Britain and be governed 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:48.840 from London. 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:54.960 Tensions simmered for years, and eventually anti Catholic sentiment started boiling, 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:56.760 especially in Northern Ireland. 0:06:57.040 --> 0:06:59.720 Catholics were very discriminated against. They had for fewer job 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:03.360 of unities. The housing was worse, so they were very overcrowded. 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:06.240 They couldn't sit on juries for the most part because 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:09.040 they didn't own property. Schools were divided on religious lines 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:11.560 as well, so the civil rights movement grew in the 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:15.360 United States and the Catholic population in Northern Ireland gradually 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:18.000 began to protest about discrimination that they were facing. Two 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:20.920 British troops had already gone into Northern Ireland to try 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:23.080 and keep the peace, and then Bloody Sunday in nineteen 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:26.640 seventy two British paratroopers opened fire on the protesters and 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:29.920 killed thirteen people and injured fifteen of them. 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:33.960 After Bloody Sunday, the violence really escalated on both sides. 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:37.360 People who wanted to end British rule in Northern Ireland 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:40.320 armed themselves and became active in a group called the 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:42.720 Irish Republican Army or the IRA. 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:46.240 That song people always said it was the best recruitment 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:49.320 thing the IRA could ever have had. Bloody Sunday I 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:51.800 think was a real tipping point. It got so much attention, 0:07:52.240 --> 0:07:54.679 not only in Northern Ireland but in England as well. 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:58.880 These images of the army shooting unarmed protesters. 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:02.600 The IRA they thought of themselves as freedom fighters and 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:05.960 they used violence to make their point, even planting homemade 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:10.480 bombs all across Britain. The IRA targeted everything from government 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:14.720 tax offices to restaurants and pubs. By nineteen seventy four, 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:18.720 two years after Bloody Sunday. Britain was experiencing an average 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:22.840 of one attack every three days, and British authorities were 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:26.520 regularly retaliating. The conflict was pretty close to a war, 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:29.040 and it became known as the Troubles. 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:31.600 I mean we called it the Troubles. When I was 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:33.360 growing up, that was all I heard on the news 0:08:33.440 --> 0:08:35.679 was the Troubles. And then the first time I went 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:39.440 to Belfast, I realized no, actually this was this was 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:42.440 like a war. They were appalling levels of casualties in 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:45.160 those days as well, before the internet, you'd get newsflashes 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:47.040 on the television, so the screen would go black and 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:49.720 they'd say we interrupt this program, and it would be 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:52.079 a bomb had gone off, or you know, some kind 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:55.360 of serious situation had taken place. For years, there's been 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.320 no trush comes on public transport in London, just to 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:01.640 stop people being able to hide bomb. I was probably 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:04.320 about eight or nine and my mom had taken me 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.520 and all my cousins and my little brother to buy 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:10.840 school uniforms and there was this announcement over the tannoy 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:14.640 please evacuate the store, and the alarms going off. We 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:16.280 just thought it was a brilliant adventure. Because we were 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:18.960 a bit too little to realize it could be quite dangerous, 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:21.280 and my poor mum was just trying to grab about 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:23.440 eight children and get us out of the store, but 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:25.160 it was all glass of front, so she didn't know 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:27.160 which way to take us and which was more dangerous. 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:30.120 So we just always laughed about how we all had 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:32.320 nail marks in our arms from where she was digging 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:34.520 her fingers in and dragging us out by the hair. 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:36.720 And it seemed like a bit of an adventure at 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:39.520 the time, but that kind of stuff was quite normal. 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:43.280 Here's just how normal these bombings had become. The IRA 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:47.040 had rules, and under its rules, IRA members who bombed 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:50.520 a civilian target had to call British police and warned 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:53.920 them thirty minutes before the bomb went off. The idea 0:09:54.120 --> 0:09:56.520 was to give enough time for police to evacuate as 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:00.679 many people as possible without sacrificing the bombs pltical point, 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:03.280 but the British police needed a way to make sure 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:07.640 these anonymous phone calls were authentic not hoaxes. So the 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:11.360 IRA and the police agreed on a codeword known only 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:14.440 to them. If the caller used the codeword, you could 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:17.520 be sure the bomb threat was real, and that codeword 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:20.880 was double X. On the day the bombs went off, 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:24.439 tensions between the IRA and the British were sky high. 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:28.320 A week before, an IRA member named James McDade was 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:31.200 killed in Britain when a bomb he was placing went 0:10:31.240 --> 0:10:35.840 off prematurely. IRA sympathizers in Britain were planning a hero's 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:39.760 funeral with military processions and honor guards, but the British 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:44.440 authorities quickly passed laws and making those plans illegal instead. 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:47.959 On November twenty first, mcdade's body was flown from Birmingham 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:51.960 to Belfast for burial. Only hours after the plane carrying 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:56.560 his body took off, the bombs went off too. Between 0:10:56.600 --> 0:10:58.360 the timing of the bombings and the use of the 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:01.480 double X codeword, it didn't take long for the police 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:05.600 and the public to conclude that the IRA was responsible. Now, 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:08.680 it's true the anonymous caller hadn't given the usual thirty 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:12.520 minutes advanced warning, but that fact got ignored as a 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:16.880 wave of anti Irish anger swept over Britain. The IRA 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:20.440 issued a denial, but no one listened. The British public 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:24.240 was terrified and the British authorities were enraged, there was 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:30.760 a thirst for justice and revenge. Within hours of the bombings, 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:34.200 police got a tip five Irish men had been seen 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:37.559 boarding a train that left Birmingham right before the explosion 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:40.720 at the Mulberry Bush. Four of them had tickets continuing 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:44.600 on to Belfast in Northern Ireland. Their names were Jerry Hunter, 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:50.040 Dick Mackilkenny, John Walker, Billy Power and Patti Hill. They 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:53.360 were what the Irish call working class lads who didn't 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:56.160 have a lot of extra money. All five men were Catholic, 0:11:56.559 --> 0:11:59.360 all were married, and most of them had kids. None 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:02.480 of them was affiliated with the IRA. They were headed 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:05.760 to Belfast to attend James mcdade's funeral, but more out 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:09.560 of community obligation than for political reasons. For his part, 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:12.800 Patty Hill borrowed his train fare from a nun. He 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:15.320 promised to pay her back by doing some painting work 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:18.480 when he returned, but that debt would soon become the 0:12:18.559 --> 0:12:26.000 least of his problems. 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:32.760 This episode is sponsored by AIG, a leading global insurance company, 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:36.760 and Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison, a leading international 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:40.360 law firm. The AIG pro Bono program provides free legal 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:45.280 services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:48.320 most in need, and recently they announced that working to 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:51.080 reform the criminal justice system will become a key pillar 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.640 of the program's mission. Paul Weiss has long had an 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:58.920 unwavering commitment to providing impactful, pro bono legal assistance to 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:02.000 the most vulnerable memory of our society and in support 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:05.680 of the public interest, including extensive work in the criminal 0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:06.400 justice area. 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:15.680 For the first few hours, the train ride was uneventful, 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:18.920 but when the train pulled up to Morecambe's station on 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:22.120 the evening of November twenty first, the police were waiting 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:25.520 a group of irishmen leaving Birmingham just as the bombs 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:29.680 went off, seemed suspicious. All five were arrested and brought 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:33.319 to a nearby police department. That's where a forensic scientist 0:13:33.440 --> 0:13:37.320 tested their hands for traces of nitroglycerin, a bomb ingredient. 0:13:37.880 --> 0:13:40.960 The hands of two men tested positive, the scientists said, 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:45.520 Billy Power and Patty Hill. That was enough for the police. 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:50.439 Not just justice, but revenge was suddenly possible. Within a day, 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:54.520 police arrested a sixth Irishman, Hugh Callahan, who had been 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:57.200 with the other five before they boarded the train, and 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:00.959 the interrogations endured by these six men, the Birmingham Six, 0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:06.240 were horrific. It started at the Morcambe Police Department with 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:09.520 John Walker. A group of police took John into a 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:12.720 back room where he was beaten, kicked, and burned with 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:16.200 a cigarette while other officers held his arms back. The 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:19.960 other men heard John screaming, and then their turns came too. 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:23.800 For hours, they were all bloodied and beaten from head 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:27.000 to toe. One of them, Billy Power, was kicked over 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:30.000 and over on his head, legs, and stomach. He was 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:32.640 dragged by his hair and in one of the most 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:37.120 sadistic moments of this interrogation, police stretched his scrotum. 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:40.600 During these interrogations, at least some of these guys were 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:44.280 shown a letter, a letter that said that the torture 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:48.240 they were experiencing was state sanctioned. It was a letter 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:52.480 on government letterhead that basically told the police officers, you 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:56.200 can do whatever you need to do in order to 0:14:56.240 --> 0:15:00.560 get a confession from these men. To these guys, message 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:05.640 was this pain, this torture is going to continue unless 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:06.320 you confess. 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:10.800 By twelve fifty five pm the next day, November twenty second, 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:15.000 Billy had had enough he signed a written confession prepared 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:18.960 by police, admitting guilt in the Birmingham pub bombings. A 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:21.400 few hours later, the men were transferred to the custody 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:25.320 of another police unit, the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad, 0:15:25.600 --> 0:15:32.080 where the torture continued. Beatings, burnings, stress positions, even mock executions. 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:35.640 Patty Hill remembers having a pistol shoved into his mouth 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:39.440 so brutally that it broke several of his teeth. With 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:43.680 a cold metal barrel in Patty's mouth, his interrogators slowly 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:47.320 counted to three and pulled the trigger three times. They 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:51.320 did this each time Patty expected to die, only to 0:15:51.360 --> 0:15:54.520 discover that the chamber didn't contain a bullet. The thing 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:57.480 about torture is that it works, at least if your 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:00.720 only goal is to find a scapegoat. A November twenty third, 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:05.600 Hugh Callahan, Dick Mcelekenny, and John Walker signed false confessions. 0:16:06.200 --> 0:16:09.040 Like Billy, they claimed that they were IRA members and 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:13.120 that they'd planted both pub bombs. Somehow, Patty Hill and 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:17.320 Jerry Hunter were holdouts. They refused to sign confessions despite 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:20.280 the torture. Police would later claim that Patty and Jerry 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:24.800 verbally confessed, which Patty denies. The four written confessions were 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:27.800 short and virtually detail free. In fact, one of the 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:31.480 only details included was wrong. The confessions claimed that the 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:34.240 bombs were left at the pubs in white plastic bags, 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:37.840 but forensic analysis showed the bags had been leather. It 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:41.440 didn't matter. Four of the Birmingham six had confessed, and 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:43.680 all of them had been beaten within an inch of 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:47.320 their lives. Revenge, it seemed, had been achieved. 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:51.280 The last thing that you want interrogators to do when 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:55.200 they go into an interrogation room is to be guided 0:16:55.320 --> 0:17:00.000 by a sense of vengeance, because what's going to happen 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:02.520 and is the interrogator is going to do everything in 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:07.760 his power to quench that thirst for revenge, and the 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:10.679 interrogation no longer becomes about the truth. 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:14.520 After the confessions, the six were charged with murder and 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:18.400 transferred to Winston Green Prison, where guards continued the beatings. 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:21.639 When the Birmingham Six were finally brought to court a 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:25.600 week after the bombings, they'd been brutalized from head to foot. 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:28.440 Patty Hill's wife was in the courtroom with their two 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:31.840 year old son. When the little boy saw his dad's injuries. 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:35.159 He was so traumatized that he needed medical attention. But 0:17:35.240 --> 0:17:38.159 authorities told the judge they had done nothing wrong. The 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:41.359 men had been attacked, they said, by other inmates. 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:45.240 We've seen excuses like that over and over again, even 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:48.560 in the United States. When somebody is battered, the police 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:51.960 changed the narrative from the beginning. They either blame it 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:55.320 on somebody falling down the stairs, or they blame it 0:17:55.359 --> 0:17:59.040 on other inmates. But when these men appeared in court 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:02.680 for the first time, everybody knew what had happened to them. 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:06.520 It was clear that they had been through an ordeal. 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:11.159 That ordeal was far from over. Based on the confessions 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:14.919 and the nitroglycerin evidence, the Birmingham Six stood trial on 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:19.000 June ninth, nineteen seventy five. A defense expert testified that 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:22.840 the explosives testing had been faulty, and defense witnesses pointed 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:25.639 out that no explosives had been found at any of 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:29.600 the men's homes, but in short order that Birmingham Six 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:34.200 were convicted. Each man was sentenced to twenty one life sentences, 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:38.480 one for every person who died, and the people of Britain, 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:41.119 all of whom thought it could have been them inside 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:47.480 those pubs. They believed that justice had been done from 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:51.240 behind bars. The Birmingham Six fought their convictions like furies 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:55.520 and insisted the authorities acknowledged they'd been tortured, but for 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:58.680 a while it looked like the entire system was lined 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:03.040 up against them. Eventually, fourteen prison officers were charged with 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:06.760 assaulting the six, but despite plenty of evidence, those officers 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:10.560 were all acquitted at trial. The six also tried to 0:19:10.680 --> 0:19:14.040 soothe their torturers, but a judge dismissed their lawsuit in 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:16.439 nineteen eighty and he did it for reasons that you 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:19.880 have to hear to believe. Just think what it would 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:23.280 mean for Britain's legal system. The judge explained, if these 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:26.680 men were allowed to prove they'd been tortured, it would 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:29.679 mean that the police were guilty of perjury, that they 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:33.040 were guilty of violence and threats, and that the convictions 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:37.840 were erroneous. That was such an appalling vista. He declared 0:19:38.359 --> 0:19:41.520 that every sensible person would say, it cannot be right 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:43.600 that this lawsuit should go any further. 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:48.160 You know, the appalling vista here is this paternalistic attitude 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:52.159 of this judge that the public can't handle the truth 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:55.320 he's saying that if this torture were allowed to be 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:59.720 seen by them, if this injustice were allowed to be acknowledged, 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:03.960 the entire system would crumble. The irony is that by 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:09.199 suppressing the truth, by putting these allegations in evidence of 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:14.480 torture in the closet, he is breaking the very system 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:18.800 he claims to want to protect. Where are these men 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:22.760 supposed to get justice if not in a court of law. 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:26.800 But while the court system closed its eyes to this injustice, 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:30.840 the world didn't. Journalist Chris Mullen, who would go on 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:34.040 to become a member of Parliament, investigated the bombings with 0:20:34.160 --> 0:20:38.200 fresh eyes. In nineteen eighty five, he retained two scientists 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:42.080 who debunked the test that supposedly had found nitroglycerin on 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:46.240 Patty and Billy's hands. A police officer also publicly confirmed 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:49.400 that the Birmingham Six had been beaten by their interrogators. 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:52.719 The next year, Chris Mullen published a book about the 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:56.800 case called Error of Judgment. In the book, Mullen described 0:20:56.840 --> 0:21:00.680 meeting IRA members who admitted they were involved in the bombings, 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:06.399 although he didn't disclose their names, and Mullen explained something 0:21:06.480 --> 0:21:09.520 that had been a mystery for years why the double 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:13.240 X caller hadn't given the full thirty minutes warning before 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:16.920 the first explosion. Turns out the bombers meant to give 0:21:16.960 --> 0:21:19.879 police thirty minutes, but the telephone booth they'd planned to 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:23.080 use had been damaged by vandals. By the time they 0:21:23.080 --> 0:21:26.840 found another phone, only six minutes were left. The warning 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:30.080 system wasn't as fool proof as they thought. That was 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:33.040 how these bombings became one of the deadliest mass murders 0:21:33.040 --> 0:21:49.840 in modern British history. In nineteen eighty seven, advocates, including 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:54.000 renowned civil rights lawyer Gareth Pearce, convinced a court to 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:57.639 re examine the convictions of the Birmingham Six. At the hearing, 0:21:57.720 --> 0:22:02.240 police officers testified about why their colleagues torture the six men. 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:06.120 Evidence was also introduced about a handwritten chart that had 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:09.920 been found in the police station. The interrogators apparently used 0:22:09.920 --> 0:22:12.679 this chart to line up the facts in the different 0:22:12.720 --> 0:22:16.359 men's statements and make sure they matched. Of course, those 0:22:16.440 --> 0:22:18.159 facts were actually lies. 0:22:18.680 --> 0:22:21.880 The discovery of this chart basically proved what the men 0:22:21.920 --> 0:22:25.560 had been saying all along, that we didn't confess to 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:30.960 these crimes. These were stories that were scripted by the police, 0:22:31.119 --> 0:22:35.320 and we were tortured into saying what they wanted us 0:22:35.600 --> 0:22:36.080 to say. 0:22:36.520 --> 0:22:39.560 But despite this new evidence, relief was denied and the 0:22:39.600 --> 0:22:43.520 case stalled for four years until a second hearing was granted. 0:22:44.080 --> 0:22:47.640 There new evidence was introduced that further undermined the nitroglycerin 0:22:47.720 --> 0:22:51.399 testing on Patty and Billy's hands. But what finally tipped 0:22:51.440 --> 0:22:54.960 the balance, as Gareth Pierce later wrote, it was the 0:22:55.040 --> 0:22:59.600 simplest of stupidities. Previously, police had testified that the men 0:22:59.640 --> 0:23:03.760 confessed freely and that after they confessed, their stories never changed. 0:23:04.359 --> 0:23:07.359 But Pierce had found the notebooks on which the men's 0:23:07.359 --> 0:23:12.080 confessions had been written. Sure enough, as the police wrote, edited, 0:23:12.119 --> 0:23:16.000 and rewrote the false confessions on notebook pages, their pens 0:23:16.160 --> 0:23:21.360 left indentations on the pages. Underneath those indentations revealed how 0:23:21.400 --> 0:23:24.480 the stories had evolved and been altered, and how the 0:23:24.480 --> 0:23:26.560 police's testimony had been false. 0:23:27.119 --> 0:23:31.840 These indentations were like track changes, you know. They were 0:23:32.080 --> 0:23:36.760 imprints on paper that were left because the police officers 0:23:36.800 --> 0:23:40.840 were writing and rewriting so furiously that they left a 0:23:40.920 --> 0:23:44.720 mark on the paper. Evidence that the confessions were scripted 0:23:45.280 --> 0:23:49.959 is evidence of police contamination. That the story didn't come 0:23:50.040 --> 0:23:54.080 from the defendants. It came from police officers. 0:23:54.760 --> 0:23:58.400 All six convictions were declared unsafe that's a British term, 0:23:58.720 --> 0:24:02.760 and thrown out, and on November twenty first, nineteen ninety one, 0:24:03.160 --> 0:24:07.400 the Birmingham Six walked out of prison after sixteen years 0:24:07.440 --> 0:24:09.159 behind bars. 0:24:09.160 --> 0:24:10.680