Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I
Speaker 1: writer and I'm Steve Drissen. Today's story is about a
Speaker 1: group of innocent Irish men known as the Birmingham Six.
Speaker 1: They were accused of planting bombs inside two pubs in Birmingham, England,
Speaker 1: in two and they were tortured into giving false confessions.
Speaker 1: All six men were freed in but the crime has
Speaker 1: never been solved. The public is still demanding answers today
Speaker 1: about who really planted those bombs. Steve. When we went
Speaker 1: on our speaking tour last year for Making a Murderer,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite places we visited was Belfast in
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland. Yeah, it was one of the highlights of
Speaker 1: our travels. It was almost like coming home, coming to
Speaker 1: a place which understood the work I've been doing for
Speaker 1: most of my professional life. Yeah, there was something about
Speaker 1: false confessions that really resonated with that audience. It's a
Speaker 1: lived experience and it goes back to the way in
Speaker 1: which the Birmingham Six were treated by law enforcement. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so here's the thing, right. The Birmingham Six was a
Speaker 1: case that arose from the fact that two pubs in Birmingham,
Speaker 1: England were bombed. It was one of the biggest mass
Speaker 1: murders to happen on British soil after World War Two.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like the Oklahoma City bombing here
Speaker 1: in the United States, and the blame for this crime
Speaker 1: was placed on these six Irish guys who were living
Speaker 1: in England but who had deep roots in Belfast. The
Speaker 1: injustice of what happened to these guys is like almost
Speaker 1: nothing I've seen before. Yeah, a profound experience of police
Speaker 1: abuses and of torture in the interrogation rooms. Their story
Speaker 1: resonates for so many people in Northern Ireland because the
Speaker 1: whole place has this incredible history of conflict and struggle
Speaker 1: against power. I actually think that history is what brought
Speaker 1: so many people out last year to our talk. You know,
Speaker 1: I'd like to believe they came to see you and me,
Speaker 1: but they were probably there to hear about injustice and
Speaker 1: how to fight it. And that's a little bit better
Speaker 1: of a reason. I think our story today begins in Birmingham, England.
Speaker 1: It's the second largest city in the United Kingdom, with
Speaker 1: a population in the millions, mostly English, but also hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of Irish. Like any big city, Birmingham's got
Speaker 1: a thriving social scene. In particular, on almost every corner
Speaker 1: there's a pub. It's in two of those pubs that
Speaker 1: our story really begins. Two ordinary places where people go
Speaker 1: after work to get a pint of beer. On November
Speaker 1: twenty one, to Birmingham pubs became together the scene of
Speaker 1: Britain's deadliest mass murder in modern history. It all started
Speaker 1: at eight eleven in the evening, an anonymous man with
Speaker 1: an Irish accent placed a phone call to the Birmingham
Speaker 1: Post newspaper. There's a bomb planted in the Rotunda, he said,
Speaker 1: and there's a bomb in New Street. This, he added,
Speaker 1: is double X. Then silence he'd hung up. The Rotunda
Speaker 1: was a high rise office building in downtown Birmingham with
Speaker 1: a pub on its first floor called the Mulberry Bush.
Speaker 1: New Street. Around the corner was where the city Tax
Speaker 1: office was. There was a pub on that building's first
Speaker 1: floor to called the Tavern in the Town. And then
Speaker 1: only six minutes after that anonymous phone call, it happened
Speaker 1: two huge explosions. The first was at the Mulberry Bush
Speaker 1: at eight pm. A homemade bomb had been left in
Speaker 1: a leather bag somewhere near the back door. When the
Speaker 1: bomb exploded, the pub was packed with people and the
Speaker 1: damage was horrific. The ceiling collapsed, fire and gulfed the place.
Speaker 1: People were crushed and burned to death. Others were impaled
Speaker 1: by falling beams. First responders arrived and began working desperately
Speaker 1: to rescue survivors. At the same time, police were frantically
Speaker 1: trying to evacuate the tavern in the town, but they
Speaker 1: couldn't clear it fast enough. At p m a second
Speaker 1: homemade bomb exploded there again, the packed pub was destroyed.
Speaker 1: That explosion was so powerful that people were blown through
Speaker 1: the brick walls between the two pubs. Twenty one people
Speaker 1: died and a hundred and eighty two were injured. It
Speaker 1: was a coordinated attack that left Britain reeling. So why
Speaker 1: would anyone bomb pubs in Birmingham. The answer is politics
Speaker 1: and history. Here's our friend, Dr Hannah Quirk. She's a
Speaker 1: professor at King's College, London who studies wrongful convictions and
Speaker 1: like a lot of folks in the United Kingdom in Ireland,
Speaker 1: she had a front row seat to that history. When
Speaker 1: she's talking to people who are new to this part
Speaker 1: of the world. Hannah likes to start here. So there's
Speaker 1: obviously the famous You two song about Bloody Sunday. That
Speaker 1: song is more than a pop anthem. It tells the
Speaker 1: story of the long running and sometimes violent conflict between
Speaker 1: Ireland and Britain. And here's that story in a nutshell.
Speaker 1: There's a long, complicated history in Ireland, hundreds of years
Speaker 1: of history. But in n two there's been a civil
Speaker 1: war and the majority of Ireland was given independence from
Speaker 1: Great Britain and formed the Irish Free State. But a
Speaker 1: deal was done to say that the six counties of
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom. Not
Speaker 1: everyone was happy with this deal, though. People became intensely
Speaker 1: divided about whether Northern Ireland should be part of the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom or joined the Republic of Ireland, and those
Speaker 1: divisions often fell along religious lines. Most Catholics were nationalists
Speaker 1: or Republicans. They wanted to be a United Ireland so
Speaker 1: the island of Ireland would be one country, and most
Speaker 1: Protestants were Unionists or loyalists. They wanted to remain part
Speaker 1: of Great Britain and be governed from London. Tensions simmered
Speaker 1: for years and of eventually anti Catholic sentiment started boiling,
Speaker 1: especially in Northern Ireland. Catholics were very discriminated against. They
Speaker 1: had for fewer job opportunities, the housing was worse, so
Speaker 1: they were very overcrowded. They couldn't sit on juries for
Speaker 1: the most part because they didn't own property. Schools were
Speaker 1: divided on religious lines as well, so the Civil rights
Speaker 1: movement grew in the United States and the Catholic population
Speaker 1: in Northern Ireland gradually began to protest about discrimination that
Speaker 1: they were facing. Two British troops had already gone into
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland to try and keep the peace, and then
Speaker 1: Bloody Sunday in two British paratroopers opened fire on the
Speaker 1: protesters and killed thirteen people and injured fifteen of them.
Speaker 1: After Bloody Sunday, the violence really escalated on both sides.
Speaker 1: People who wanted to end British rule in Northern Ireland
Speaker 1: armed themselves and became active in a group called the
Speaker 1: Irish Republican Army or the i r A. That song
Speaker 1: people always said it was the best recruitment thing there
Speaker 1: could ever have had. Bloody Sunday I think was a
Speaker 1: real tipping point. It got so much attention, not only
Speaker 1: in Northern Ireland but in England as well, these images
Speaker 1: of the army shooting unarmed protesters. The ira A thought
Speaker 1: of themselves as freedom fighters and they used violence to
Speaker 1: make their points, even planting homemade bombs all across Britain.
Speaker 1: The ira A targeted everything from government tax officers to
Speaker 1: restaurants and pubs. By nine four, two years after Bloody Sunday,
Speaker 1: Britain was experiencing an average of one attack every three days,
Speaker 1: and British authorities were regularly retaliating. The conflict was pretty
Speaker 1: close to a war, and it became known as the Troubles.
Speaker 1: I mean we called it the Troubles. When I was
Speaker 1: growing up, that was all I heard on the news
Speaker 1: was the Troubles. And then the first time I went
Speaker 1: to Belfast, I realized, no, actually this was this was
Speaker 1: like a war. They were appalling levels of casualties in
Speaker 1: those days as well, before the internet, you get news
Speaker 1: flashes on the television, so the screen would go black
Speaker 1: and let's say we interrupt this program and it would
Speaker 1: be a bomb had gone off. For you know, some
Speaker 1: kind of serious situation had taken place for years there's
Speaker 1: been no trush comes on public transport in London, just
Speaker 1: to stop people being able to hide bombs there. I
Speaker 1: was probably about eight on nine, and my mom had
Speaker 1: taken me and all my cousins and my little brother
Speaker 1: to by school uniforms and there was this announcement over
Speaker 1: the tanno, I please evacuate the store, and the alarms
Speaker 1: going off. We just thought it was a brilliant adventure
Speaker 1: because we were a bit too little to realize it
Speaker 1: could be quite dangerous, and my poor mom was just
Speaker 1: trying to grab about eight children and get us out
Speaker 1: of the store, but it was all glass up front,
Speaker 1: so she didn't know which way to take us which
Speaker 1: was more dangerous. So we just always laughed about how
Speaker 1: we all had nail marks in our arms from where
Speaker 1: she was digging her fingers in and dragging us out
Speaker 1: by the hair. And it seemed like a bit of
Speaker 1: an adventure at the time, but that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: was quite normal. Here's just how normal these bombings had become.
Speaker 1: The IRA had rules, and under its rules, IRA members
Speaker 1: who bombed as a villion target had to call British
Speaker 1: police and warned them thirty minutes before the bomb went off.
Speaker 1: The idea was to give enough time for police to
Speaker 1: evacuate as many people as possible without sacrificing the bomb's
Speaker 1: political point. But the British police needed a way to
Speaker 1: make sure these anonymous phone calls were authentic not hoaxes.
Speaker 1: So the IRA and the police agreed on a code
Speaker 1: word known only to them. If the caller used the
Speaker 1: code word, you could be sure the bomb threat was real,
Speaker 1: and that code word was double X. On the day
Speaker 1: the bombs went off, tensions between the IRA and the
Speaker 1: British were sky high. A week before, an IRA member
Speaker 1: named James McDade was killed in Britain when a bomb
Speaker 1: he was placing went off prematurely. IRA sympathizers in Britain
Speaker 1: were planning a hero's funeral with military processions and honor guards,
Speaker 1: but the British authorities quickly passed laws making those plans
Speaker 1: illegal instead. On November twenty one, mcdade's body was flown
Speaker 1: from Birmingham to Belfast for burial. Only hours after the
Speaker 1: plane care his body took off, the bombs went off too.
Speaker 1: Between the timing of the bombings and the use of
Speaker 1: the double X code word, it didn't take long for
Speaker 1: the police and the public to conclude that the i
Speaker 1: r A was responsible. Now, it's true the anonymous collar
Speaker 1: hadn't given the usual thirty minutes advanced warning, but that
Speaker 1: fact got ignored as a wave of anti Irish anger
Speaker 1: swept over Britain. The ira A issued a denial, but
Speaker 1: no one listened. The British public was terrified and the
Speaker 1: British authorities were enraged. There was a thirst for justice
Speaker 1: and revenge. Within hours of the bombings, police got a
Speaker 1: tip five Irish men had been seen boarding a train
Speaker 1: that left Birmingham right before the explosion at the Mulberry Bush.
Speaker 1: Four of them had tickets continuing on to Belfast in
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland. Their names were Jerry Hunter, Dick mcilkenny, John Walker,
Speaker 1: Billy Power and Patty Hill. They were what the Irish
Speaker 1: call work class lads who didn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: extra money. All five men were Catholic, all were married
Speaker 1: and most of them had kids. None of them was
Speaker 1: affiliated with the I r A. They were headed to
Speaker 1: Belfast to attend James mcdaide's funeral, but more out of
Speaker 1: community obligation than for political reasons. For his part, Patty
Speaker 1: Hill borrowed his train fare from a nun. He promised
Speaker 1: to pay her back by doing some painting work when
Speaker 1: he returned, but that debt would soon become the least
Speaker 1: of his problems. This episode is sponsored by a i G,
Speaker 1: a leading global insurance company, and Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Morton
Speaker 1: and Garrison, a leading international law firm. The A i
Speaker 1: G pro Bono Program provides free legal services and other
Speaker 1: support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need,
Speaker 1: and recently they announced that working to reform the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system will become a key pillar of the program's mission.
Speaker 1: Paul Weiss has long had an unwavering commitment to providing
Speaker 1: impactful pro bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable members
Speaker 1: of our society and in support of the public interest,
Speaker 1: including extensive work in the criminal justice area. For the
Speaker 1: first few hours, the train ride was uneventful, but when
Speaker 1: the train pulled up to Morekham's station on the evening
Speaker 1: of November one, the police were waiting a group of
Speaker 1: irishmen leaving Birmingham just as the bombs went off seemed suspicious.
Speaker 1: All five were arrested and brought to a nearby police department.
Speaker 1: That's where a forensic scientists tested their hands for traces
Speaker 1: of nitroglycerin, a bomb ingredient. The hands of two men
Speaker 1: tested positive, the scientists said, Billy Power and Patty Hill.
Speaker 1: That was enough for the police. Not just justice, but
Speaker 1: revenge was suddenly possible. Within a day, police arrested a
Speaker 1: sixth Irishman, Hugh Callahan, who had been with the other
Speaker 1: five before they boarded the train, and the interrogations endured
Speaker 1: by these six men, the Birmingham Six, were horrific. It
Speaker 1: started at the more Coham Police department with John Walker.
Speaker 1: A group of police took John into a back room
Speaker 1: where he was beaten, kicked, and burned with a cigarette
Speaker 1: while other officers held his arms back. The other men
Speaker 1: heard John screaming, and then their turns came to For hours,
Speaker 1: they were all bloodied and beaten from head to toe.
Speaker 1: One of them, Billy Power, was kicked over and over
Speaker 1: on his head, legs, and stomach. He was dragged by
Speaker 1: his hair and in one of the most sadistic moments
Speaker 1: of this interrogation, police stretched his scrotum. During these interrogations,
Speaker 1: at least some of these guys were shown a letter,
Speaker 1: a letter that said that the torture they were experiencing
Speaker 1: was state sanctioned. It was a letter on government letterhead
Speaker 1: that basically told the police officers you can do whatever
Speaker 1: you need to do in order to get a confession
Speaker 1: from these men. To these guys, the message was this pain,
Speaker 1: this torture is going to continue unless you confess PM.
Speaker 1: The next day, November twenty two, Billie had had enough.
Speaker 1: He signed a written confession prepared by police, admitting guilt
Speaker 1: in the Birmingham pub bombings. A few hours later, the
Speaker 1: men were transferred to the custody of another police unit,
Speaker 1: the West Midland's Serious Crime Squad, where the torture continued, beatings, burnings,
Speaker 1: stress positions, even mock executions. Patty Hill remembers having a
Speaker 1: pistol shoved into his mouth so brutally that it broke
Speaker 1: several of his teeth. With a cold metal barrel in
Speaker 1: Patty's mouth, his interrogators slowly counted to three and pulled
Speaker 1: the trigger three times. They did this each time Patty
Speaker 1: expected to die, only to discover that the chamber didn't
Speaker 1: contain a it. The thing about torture is that it works,
Speaker 1: at least if your only goal is to find a scapegoat.
Speaker 1: On novembery Hugh Callahan, Dick mcilkenny, and John Walkers signed
Speaker 1: false confessions. Like Billy, they claimed that they were I
Speaker 1: ra A members and that they planted both pub bombs. Somehow,
Speaker 1: Patty Hill and Jerry Hunter were holdouts. They refused to
Speaker 1: sign confessions despite the torture. Police would later claim that
Speaker 1: Patty and Jerry verbally confessed, which Patty denies. The four
Speaker 1: written confessions were short and virtually detail free. In fact,
Speaker 1: one of the only details included was wrong. The confessions
Speaker 1: claimed that the bombs were left at the pubs in
Speaker 1: white plastic bags, but forensic analysis showed the bags had
Speaker 1: been leather. It didn't matter. Four of the Birmingham six
Speaker 1: had confessed, and all of them had been beaten within
Speaker 1: an inch of their lives. Revenge, it seemed, had been achieved.
Speaker 1: The last thing that you want interrogators to do when
Speaker 1: they go into an interrogation room is to be guided
Speaker 1: by a sense of vengeance, because what's going to happen
Speaker 1: is the interrogator is going to do everything in his
Speaker 1: power to quench that thirst for revenge, and the interrogation
Speaker 1: no longer becomes about the truth. After the confessions, the
Speaker 1: six were charged with murder and transferred to Winson Green Prison,
Speaker 1: where guards continued the beatings. When the Birmingham Six were
Speaker 1: finally brought to court a week after the bombings, they
Speaker 1: had been brutalized from head to foot. Patty Hill's wife
Speaker 1: was in the courtroom with their two year old son.
Speaker 1: When the little boy saw his dad's injuries, he was
Speaker 1: so traumatized that he needed medical attention. But authorities told
Speaker 1: the judge that they had done nothing wrong. The men
Speaker 1: had been attacked, they said, by other inmates. We've seen
Speaker 1: excuses like that over and over again, even in the
Speaker 1: United States. When somebody is battered, the police changed the
Speaker 1: narrative from the beginning. They either blame it on somebody
Speaker 1: falling down the stairs, or they blame it on other inmates.
Speaker 1: But when these men appeared in court for the first time,
Speaker 1: everybody knew what had happened to them. It was clear
Speaker 1: that they had been through an ordeal. That ordeal was
Speaker 1: far from over. Based on the confessions and the nitroglycerin evidence,
Speaker 1: the Birmingham Six stood trial on June nine. A defense
Speaker 1: expert testified that the explosives testing had been faulty. And
Speaker 1: defense witnesses pointed out that no explosives had been found
Speaker 1: at any of the men's homes, But in short order
Speaker 1: that Birmingham Six were convicted. Each man was sentenced to
Speaker 1: twenty one life sentences, one for every person who died,
Speaker 1: and the people of Britain, all of whom thought it
Speaker 1: could have been them inside those pubs. They believed that
Speaker 1: justice had been done from behind bars. The Birmingham Six
Speaker 1: fought their convictions like furies and insisted the authorities acknowledged
Speaker 1: they've been tortured, but for a while it looked like
Speaker 1: the entire system was lined up against them. Eventually, fourteen
Speaker 1: prison officers were charged with assaulting the six, but despite
Speaker 1: plenty of evidence, those officers were all acquitted at trial.
Speaker 1: The six also tried to soothe their torturers, but a
Speaker 1: judge dismissed their lawsuit in and he did it for
Speaker 1: reasons that you have to hear to believe. Just think
Speaker 1: what it would mean for Britain's legal system. The judge explained,
Speaker 1: if these men were allowed to prove they'd been tortured,
Speaker 1: it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury,
Speaker 1: that they were guilty of violence and threats and that
Speaker 1: the convictions were erroneous. That was such an appalling vista.
Speaker 1: He declared that every sensible person would say, it cannot
Speaker 1: be right that this lawsuit should go any further. You know,
Speaker 1: the appalling vista here is this paternalistic attitude of this
Speaker 1: judge that the public can't handle the truth, he said,
Speaker 1: saying that if this torture were allowed to be seen
Speaker 1: by them, if this injustice were allowed to be acknowledged,
Speaker 1: the entire system would crumble. The irony is that by
Speaker 1: suppressing the truth, by putting these allegations and evidence of
Speaker 1: torture in the closet, he is breaking the very system
Speaker 1: he claims to want to protect. Where these men supposed
Speaker 1: to get justice, if not in a court of law.
Speaker 1: But while the court system closed its eyes to this injustice,
Speaker 1: the world didn't. Journalist Chris Mullen, who would go on
Speaker 1: to become a member of Parliament, investigated the bombings with
Speaker 1: fresh eyes. He retained two scientists who debunked the test
Speaker 1: that supposedly had found nitroglycerin on Patty and Billy's hands.
Speaker 1: A police officer also publicly confirmed that the Birmingham Six
Speaker 1: had been beaten by their interrogators. The next year, Chris
Speaker 1: Mullen published a book about the case called Error of Judgment.
Speaker 1: In the book, Mullen described meeting i RA members who
Speaker 1: admitted they were involved in the bombings, although he didn't
Speaker 1: disclose their names, and Mullen explained something that had been
Speaker 1: a mystery for years, why the double X coller hadn't
Speaker 1: given the full thirty minutes warning before the first explosion.
Speaker 1: Turns out the bombers meant to give police thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: but the telephone booth they'd planned to use had been
Speaker 1: damaged by vandals. By the time they found another phone,
Speaker 1: only six minutes were left. The warning system wasn't as
Speaker 1: fool proof as they thought. That was how these bombings
Speaker 1: became one of the deadliest mass murders in modern British history.
Speaker 1: In seven, advocates, including renowned civil rights lawyer Gareth Pierce,
Speaker 1: convinced a court to re examine the convictions of the
Speaker 1: Birmingham Six. At the hearing, police officers testified about watching
Speaker 1: their colleagues torture the six men. Evidence was also introduced
Speaker 1: about a handwritten chart that had been found in the
Speaker 1: police station. The interrogators apparently used this chart to line
Speaker 1: up the facts in the different men's statements and make
Speaker 1: sure they matched. Of course, those facts were actually lies.
Speaker 1: The discovery of this chart basically proved what the men
Speaker 1: had been saying all along, that we didn't confess to
Speaker 1: these crimes. These were stories that were scripted by the police,
Speaker 1: and we were tortured into saying what they wanted us
Speaker 1: to say. But despite this new evidence, relief was denied
Speaker 1: and the case stalled for four years until a second
Speaker 1: hearing was granted. Their new evidence was introduced that further
Speaker 1: undermined the nitroglycer in testing on Patty and Billy's hands.
Speaker 1: But what finally tipped the balance, as Gareth Pierce later wrote,
Speaker 1: it was the simplest of stupidities. Previously, police had testified
Speaker 1: that the men confessed freely, and that after they confessed,
Speaker 1: their stories never changed. But Pierce had found the notebooks
Speaker 1: on which the men's concessions had been written. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: as the police wrote, edited, and rewrote the false confessions
Speaker 1: on notebook pages, their pens left indentations on the pages.
Speaker 1: Underneath those indentations revealed how the stories had evolved and
Speaker 1: been altered, and how the police's testimony had been false.
Speaker 1: These indentations were like track changes, you know, they were
Speaker 1: imprints on paper that were left because the police officers
Speaker 1: were writing and rewriting so furiously that they left a
Speaker 1: mark on the paper. Evidence that the confessions were scripted
Speaker 1: is evidence of police contamination. That the story didn't come
Speaker 1: from the defendants, that came from police officers. All six
Speaker 1: convictions were declared unsafe that's a British term, and thrown out.
Speaker 1: And on November one, the Birmingham Six walked out of
Speaker 1: prison after sixteen years behind bars. It still makes the
Speaker 1: hairs on the back of your neck stand on end,
Speaker 1: doesn't it. I remember it really vividly, that image of
Speaker 1: them walking out of the court onto the street, and
Speaker 1: builders hanging off scaffolding from the buildings across the road,
Speaker 1: people packed outside, these hundreds and hundreds of people, TV
Speaker 1: crews from around the world, and then that amazing image
Speaker 1: of the mall coming out, linked hands holding them above
Speaker 1: their heads, with Chris Mullen, the journalists who had campaigned
Speaker 1: for them, and then Patty grabbing the microphone and shouting
Speaker 1: how he'd spent sixteen years in prison for a crime
Speaker 1: he didn't commit. It was that really raw emotion that
Speaker 1: was just so shocking. The police traw us from the start,
Speaker 1: but they knew we hadn't done it. They probably they
Speaker 1: didn't care we've done it. They told us that we
Speaker 1: were selected and we're gonna frail us just to keep
Speaker 1: with people in the appy. Let's want it's all about justice.
Speaker 1: Why don't think them people enough got the intelligence nor
Speaker 1: the honest Finnish Fell Award, never mind dispenses. The six
Speaker 1: won their freedom years ago, but even today real justice
Speaker 1: still seems illusory. There's never been a formal declaration of
Speaker 1: innocence or exoneration. Even the court decision throwing out their
Speaker 1: convictions still made veiled references to their possible guilt. The
Speaker 1: closest the Birmingham Six has come to justice was when
Speaker 1: they won a defamation lawsuit after a member of Parliaments
Speaker 1: called them guilty. The British government has compensated them financially,
Speaker 1: but the amount doesn't come close to repaying them for
Speaker 1: days of torture and sixteen lost years. A psychiatrist desist
Speaker 1: the Musis when they putting their claim for compensation, and
Speaker 1: he said they had post traumatic stress disorder that was
Speaker 1: on the level of somebody who had been in a
Speaker 1: war zone. I think what they've been through was exceptional
Speaker 1: given the violence that they had suffered, as well as
Speaker 1: the miscarriage of justice. I mean, they had been tortured,
Speaker 1: they'd had to fight and fight all the time in
Speaker 1: prison for their own safety and fight to prove their innocence.
Speaker 1: If you've had that level of adrenaline running through your
Speaker 1: system for sixteen years, that doesn't just disappear when you
Speaker 1: walk out of court. And as for the bombing, it's
Speaker 1: never been definitively solved. In fact, over the past few years,
Speaker 1: there's been an ongoing inquest in Birmingham to reinvestigate what
Speaker 1: happened that day. For years, Chris Mullen refused to name
Speaker 1: the men he said had accepted responsibility, citing his journalistic
Speaker 1: obligation to protect sources. Right before the inquest, Mullen finally
Speaker 1: published an article identifying two former IRA members who are
Speaker 1: now dead. For its part, the IRA has never a
Speaker 1: fish the admitted responsibility for the bombings. At the inquest,
Speaker 1: one former IRA member, identified only as a witness OH
Speaker 1: named the same perpetrators that Mullen had named, plus two others.
Speaker 1: Another witness testified that the high body count was accidental,
Speaker 1: and described the bombings as an IRA operation that went
Speaker 1: badly wrong in some ways, though the system has tried
Speaker 1: to learn from its mistakes. If you were writing a
Speaker 1: history of the criminal justice system in this country, the
Speaker 1: Birming six is a real tipping point. It wasn't about
Speaker 1: the politics of Northern Ireland. It was about the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system has done something terribly wrong. So there was
Speaker 1: a real sense at the time that the system was
Speaker 1: in crisis. People couldn't have confidence in the system because
Speaker 1: there were so many wrongful convictions happening. And on the
Speaker 1: day the Birmingham Six were released from prison, the Home
Speaker 1: Secretary stood up in Parliament and said, I'm ordering a
Speaker 1: commission to look into the criminal justice system. Based on
Speaker 1: that commission's recommendation, the UK created the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Speaker 1: The Criminal Cases Review Commission is independent, but it's funded
Speaker 1: by the government to investigate cases likeness and to see
Speaker 1: where mischaraches of justice have happened. The CCRC isn't perfect,
Speaker 1: but it's a remarkable organization. It's one of the few
Speaker 1: places in the world where, to be honest, the government
Speaker 1: has been big enough to say things do go wrong
Speaker 1: and we need to create a way of putting this right,
Speaker 1: and every country should have one. In addition, the UK
Speaker 1: has adapted reforms around the way suspects are interrogated, outlying
Speaker 1: not only physical torture but also other tools of coercion
Speaker 1: like lying to suspects. These are reforms that we should
Speaker 1: be enacting in the United States. I always say that
Speaker 1: the UK is thirty five years ahead of where we
Speaker 1: are in the United States as far as interrogation reforms.
Speaker 1: They don't allow any confessions to be admitted into evidence
Speaker 1: that are obtained by oppression, and oppression does mean just
Speaker 1: physical torture. It also means psychological torture and the use
Speaker 1: of tactics which are likely to render a confession unreliable.
Speaker 1: All of these reforms are aimed at getting the truth
Speaker 1: and not just getting a confession. The British legal system
Speaker 1: wasn't the only one to initiate meaningful change. Patty Hill
Speaker 1: used the compensation he got for his wrongful conviction to
Speaker 1: start a nonprofit, the Miscarriages of Justice Organization. Its mission
Speaker 1: is to help people recently released from prison to get
Speaker 1: back on their feet and to help them handle the
Speaker 1: pain and anger they'll probably carry for a long time.
Speaker 1: There's this incredible caring side to Patty. He talks about
Speaker 1: when people get out of prison, many of them seek
Speaker 1: him out, and at least pre COVID, he would welcome
Speaker 1: them in his home. And those are the people that
Speaker 1: give him the greatest comfort in life because they shared
Speaker 1: at least some of the experience that he had when
Speaker 1: he was in prison. You know, when I went back
Speaker 1: to Scotland last year, I went to visit Patty Hill.
Speaker 1: I'm so sad that I missed that opportunity. He's an
Speaker 1: incredible man, but also he is angry still and committed
Speaker 1: through that anger to improving the system. All he wants
Speaker 1: to do is remember what happened to him and then
Speaker 1: use that memory as fuel to change the system. For Patty,
Speaker 1: all of those physical wounds have long since healed, but
Speaker 1: the emotional wounds and the drive that he has to
Speaker 1: make sure this doesn't happen again, those are there forever.
Speaker 1: We see that time and again with people who are exonerated.
Speaker 1: They wanted to tell their story. They want the world
Speaker 1: to know what happened to them so it doesn't happen again. Hello, Hello, Patty,
Speaker 1: Old Laura, how are you doing? Patty? I'm doing well.
Speaker 1: Oh good. So it was a year ago when I
Speaker 1: saw you in Glasgow at the Mojo offices. Yeah. When
Speaker 1: you work with families of other people who are in prison,
Speaker 1: is there anything to say to them to give them hope?
Speaker 1: I tell the families they're going to have good moods
Speaker 1: to going to have bad moods, you know. I tell
Speaker 1: them love, you're not on your own, that we can
Speaker 1: mess in the loads in any way. That's the main thing.
Speaker 1: You know. You often hear that all cliche time is
Speaker 1: a great healer? Is it true? Leave me time does
Speaker 1: not hear nothing. The only thing you can hope for
Speaker 1: is that every day, please God, you run down with
Speaker 1: a little bit better. Do you have a support system
Speaker 1: people to help you on those bad days? When I
Speaker 1: meet up with some of the guys from the zeal
Speaker 1: And one of the pubs and movie be there for
Speaker 1: five six hours, that's when the you can be yourself,
Speaker 1: all yourself. Maybe yes, yes, you have a good time.
Speaker 1: And that's the story of the Birmingham Six. Join us
Speaker 1: next week when we'll tell you the story of a
Speaker 1: Virginia fisherman who got caught in a net of injustice.
Speaker 1: He didn't give a false confession during his interrogation, but
Speaker 1: the words he did say we're still enough to put
Speaker 1: him in prison for thirty one years. Wrongful Conviction False
Speaker 1: Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number one Special thanks to our
Speaker 1: executive producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wardis. Our production team
Speaker 1: is headed by Senior producer and Pope, along with producers
Speaker 1: Josh Hammer and Jess Shane. Our show is mixed by
Speaker 1: Jeannie Montalvo. John Colbert is our intrepid intern. Our music
Speaker 1: was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on
Speaker 1: Instagram or Twitter at Laura ni Writer and you can
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at s driven. For more information
Speaker 1: on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast dot com. Be
Speaker 1: sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction