Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I
Speaker 1: writer and I'm Steve Drissen. So far, we've told you
Speaker 1: the story of Robert Davis in Virginia and the Dicks
Speaker 1: Moore five in Chicago, two cases that show how the
Speaker 1: interrogation room works and how racial biases can script false confessions.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is about how interrogation tactics designed for seasoned
Speaker 1: adult criminals are often used on the most vulnerable among us.
Speaker 1: We're going to take you to Camden, Arkansas, where a
Speaker 1: twelve year old boy is left to fend for himself
Speaker 1: against grown ups who suspect him of murder. The interrogation
Speaker 1: tape is bad enough, but the worst parts happened off camera.
Speaker 1: This is the story of Thomas Cogdal. I do a
Speaker 1: lot of searches online to try to keep up to
Speaker 1: date about cases involving false confessions and juveniles. In this
Speaker 1: case came on my radar screen. When I saw these
Speaker 1: interrogation tapes, I was absolutely floored. You know, Robert Davis
Speaker 1: was eighteen, he was well over six ft tall. But
Speaker 1: Thomas Cogdal, he was a boy. He hadn't started shaving yet.
Speaker 1: This is the first video I'd seen where adult tactics
Speaker 1: were being used on someone as young as Thomas twelve
Speaker 1: years old. I'm a mom, I've got kids not much
Speaker 1: younger than Thomas, and the way the cops railroaded this child,
Speaker 1: it brings me to tears when I hear this. You
Speaker 1: have two boys, I have three boys. I remember what
Speaker 1: my boys were like when they were twelve years old,
Speaker 1: and they remind me very much of Thomas Cogdale. And
Speaker 1: that the climax of this interrogation they turn off the camera,
Speaker 1: that's when the heat really gets turned up. What happened
Speaker 1: off camera? I wanted to know what happened. Thomas's story
Speaker 1: starts in Camden, Arkansas, a small town about twelve thousand
Speaker 1: people a hundred miles south of Little Rock. Now Camden
Speaker 1: is a beautiful place, but like too many smaller towns,
Speaker 1: modernity has been hard for Camden. Once upon a time,
Speaker 1: it was home to a naval ammunition depot that employed
Speaker 1: a lot of people, and it was even known for
Speaker 1: being the home of the man who invented gray Pet
Speaker 1: soft drinks, which were really popular in the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 1: But gray Pet fizzled out and the ammunition depot closed
Speaker 1: at the end of the Cold War, and ever since
Speaker 1: the late eighties early nineties, Camden has been losing jobs, residents,
Speaker 1: and morale. Now, at the beginning of the summer in
Speaker 1: two thousand six, Thomas and his family had moved into
Speaker 1: a tidy, little gray house on Waco Street. They live there,
Speaker 1: just the three of them. It's Thomas who's twelve, his
Speaker 1: eleven year old sister Kaylee, and their mom, Melody Jones.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you a little about Thomas. He's one
Speaker 1: of those whiz kids, to the kind of kid who
Speaker 1: racks up all a's in school and then comes home
Speaker 1: and dives straight into a book. He's well mannered, polite, quiet,
Speaker 1: small for his age, with these chubby cheeks that made
Speaker 1: him look even younger than his age. And at twelve,
Speaker 1: he still spoke with a lisp, this really childlike lisp
Speaker 1: that was incredibly endearing. Now, in many ways, Thomas shouldered
Speaker 1: a lot of the responsibility around the house. Melody was
Speaker 1: on Social Security disability because of mental illness, and the
Speaker 1: family got by on her monthly check and food stamps.
Speaker 1: Thomas had a sister who was eleven, Kayley. She was
Speaker 1: as immature in some ways. As Thomas was mature, she
Speaker 1: wasn't as good as he wasn't reading, so he'd spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time helping her learn her words and
Speaker 1: remember they were new on the block, which unfortunately meant
Speaker 1: that Kayley was in for some bullying. But when other
Speaker 1: kids would pick on her, Thomas would literally launch himself
Speaker 1: at them, chubby cheeks and all. He was the big brother,
Speaker 1: it was his responsibility, he felt to defend her. The
Speaker 1: two of them got along well for the most part,
Speaker 1: but like all children, they had their spats, and it
Speaker 1: usually occurred when Kaylee would interrupt something that Thomas was
Speaker 1: working on or listening to, or video game he was playing,
Speaker 1: and that would frustrate him. But that happens in every family.
Speaker 1: So let's fast forward to the morning of August seven,
Speaker 1: two thousand six. It was Monday morning, but school was out,
Speaker 1: so the kids had stayed up really late the night before.
Speaker 1: Kaylee had gone to bed at about two thirty in
Speaker 1: the morning, and Thomas had stayed up even later than
Speaker 1: her until about five am, eating M and m's and
Speaker 1: reading a spooky children's book in his room. He fell
Speaker 1: asleep with the book still open to the page that
Speaker 1: he had left it at and then the morning comes
Speaker 1: at about forty five or so, both Melody and Thomas
Speaker 1: are awake. Melody later said she want to check the
Speaker 1: mail that morning found a letter for Kayley, who was
Speaker 1: still in her bedroom. Melody asks Thomas to come with
Speaker 1: her to surprise Kaylee with her letter, but they're met
Speaker 1: with a horrible sight. Kayley's in the bedroom. Her hands
Speaker 1: are tightly bound with a red dog leash, and her
Speaker 1: feet are loosely bound with a cloth measuring tape, the
Speaker 1: kind of thing you'd use to measure out and cut fabric.
Speaker 1: And there's a plastic bag over her head. Melody removed
Speaker 1: the bag and it was immediately clear Kayley was dead.
Speaker 1: Melody's screamed. She screamed so loudly that the neighbors hear her.
Speaker 1: She becomes hysterical. Thomas has the presence of mind to
Speaker 1: call an ambulance arrives. The neighbors are gathering outside. Everybody's concerned,
Speaker 1: but no one's being brought out to that ambulance for treatment. Slowly,
Speaker 1: word is beginning to spread among the neighbors. The Kayleie
Speaker 1: Cogdal have been found dead. When police arrive at a
Speaker 1: crime scene, they look for evidence of forced entry, and
Speaker 1: they didn't see any evidence of forced entry. That means
Speaker 1: that either somebody in the home had let the murderer in,
Speaker 1: or that the murder had been committed by somebody who
Speaker 1: was in the home at the time of the crime.
Speaker 1: Kaylee had not been sexually assaulted. Instead, she'd been smothered
Speaker 1: to death. The absence of any sexual attack meant that
Speaker 1: both Thomas and his mother, Melody were suspects. Now at
Speaker 1: this point in the investigation, police have thought the time
Speaker 1: of death was about six to eight hours before the
Speaker 1: body had been discovered. Working back from five, that would
Speaker 1: have placed the murder around three forty five to forty
Speaker 1: five in the morning, and because Thomas had said that
Speaker 1: he was awake, still reading a book at the time,
Speaker 1: suspicion began to focus on him. The police bring both
Speaker 1: Melody and Thomas in for questioning later in the day,
Speaker 1: and it's Melodies turned to go first. The mom. Now,
Speaker 1: she's questioned about four thirty PM for about an hour
Speaker 1: and long story short, she denies doing anything that Kaylee,
Speaker 1: and in fact spends most of that interview answering questions
Speaker 1: about Thomas. At the end of that interview. The end
Speaker 1: of the hour, she gives the police per mission to
Speaker 1: question Thomas. Now this is interesting and problematic, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: Melody is a suspect as well as Thomas, and she's
Speaker 1: the one who is giving the police consent to question
Speaker 1: her son, the other suspect. It's totally inappropriate. But the
Speaker 1: police relied on that consent that they've gotten from Melody
Speaker 1: from Thomas's mom, plowed ahead with questioning Thomas all by himself,
Speaker 1: no lawyer, no parents, no nothing, starting at about five thirty.
Speaker 1: So Thomas, a twelve year old boy who had never
Speaker 1: had any contact with law enforcement, is left to fend
Speaker 1: for himself against seasoned homicide detectives. All of the beginning
Speaker 1: of Thomas's interrogation is captured on videotape, and when you
Speaker 1: watch this tape, you see a small boy sitting in
Speaker 1: a chair at a table in a small room with
Speaker 1: no windows, no clock. Thomas is about to undergo about
Speaker 1: five hours of questioning at age twelve, by himself. Now,
Speaker 1: the first segment of this tape runs from about five
Speaker 1: thirty in the afternoon to six and it's hard to watch.
Speaker 1: It's brutal. It literally gutted me and caused me to
Speaker 1: cry exactly. I mean. At first, Thomas keeps his cool.
Speaker 1: You can see the honor Roll student in him, trying
Speaker 1: to be the big man who helps the police. He
Speaker 1: calls his interrogators sir. He answers them quickly and politely.
Speaker 1: The only way you can tell he's nervous is by
Speaker 1: the way he's wringing his hands over and over again,
Speaker 1: almost NonStop. But it gets awful, and it gets awful quickly.
Speaker 1: The police start out by telling Thomas that he has
Speaker 1: to choose between incriminating himself and incriminating his own mother.
Speaker 1: In the bottom line is nobody broke in that house
Speaker 1: last night. There's no indication of any break here. So
Speaker 1: your sister died and there was only two people in
Speaker 1: the house. It could have killed you. That's the only
Speaker 1: way he can be. Boy, no other way, you or
Speaker 1: your mother. That's the only way it can be. Boy.
Speaker 1: There ain't no other way. And again, did your mother
Speaker 1: kill her? Not that I know of. They say, why
Speaker 1: would you kill your sister? And he says I wouldn't,
Speaker 1: But they've continued to press you had to have killed her,
Speaker 1: because if your mother didn't, that just leaves you had
Speaker 1: to your mother didn't just leave she Thomas begins to cry,
Speaker 1: actually wail, and the sound of his high pitch whailing
Speaker 1: is what caused me the greatest distressed because it sounded
Speaker 1: almost like the way an animal would sound, a baby
Speaker 1: animal if their foot were caught in a bear trap,
Speaker 1: or an animal try it had. One of the detectives
Speaker 1: says to him, why are you crying, Thomas, And Thomas says,
Speaker 1: because you're accusing me of something I didn't do. He
Speaker 1: had the presence of mind to articulate exactly what he
Speaker 1: was feeling. Unbelievable from a twelve year old little and
Speaker 1: a twelve year old who had just gone through this
Speaker 1: this level of trauma. I mean to be that self aware.
Speaker 1: I'm crying because you're accusing me of something I didn't do.
Speaker 1: And the detective he's not yelling, he's not screaming, but
Speaker 1: he's pressing the point it had to be you boy.
Speaker 1: So Thomas, right as a is a smart kid. He's
Speaker 1: an honor roll student, and you can see his mind
Speaker 1: starts spinning. He's trying to figure a way out of
Speaker 1: this horrific situation, and he asks the officers, is there
Speaker 1: any way I can prove to you that I didn't
Speaker 1: do this way personally, he woke and his idea for
Speaker 1: proving his own innocence is this heartbreakingly childlike idea. He
Speaker 1: fell asleep that night at five am with a book
Speaker 1: in his lap, and he tells the officers that if
Speaker 1: he had woken up and killed his sister, the book
Speaker 1: would have fallen off his lap and be on the
Speaker 1: floor of his bedroom. And he says, go back and
Speaker 1: look in my bedroom. You'll see that there's no book
Speaker 1: on the floor, which proves I didn't do this. The
Speaker 1: officers reject this theory, right, and instead they tell Thomas
Speaker 1: he had no choice but to confess. You're going to
Speaker 1: have to tell us everything. Thomas keeps denying his guilt
Speaker 1: as the pressure is turned up dozens of times. Over
Speaker 1: and over. He tells him he didn't kill his sister,
Speaker 1: and of course it's the officer's job to cut through
Speaker 1: those denials, to make him believe the case against him
Speaker 1: is rock solid, to bring him down to that point
Speaker 1: of hopelessness. So they lie to twelve year old Thomas.
Speaker 1: They lie. They say to him, their investigation is going
Speaker 1: to find his fingerprints on the plastic bag that was
Speaker 1: over Kayley's head, and his fingerprints are going to be
Speaker 1: at a certain angle that somehow indicates that he had
Speaker 1: held the bag over his sister's head. And then they
Speaker 1: offer inducements to get him to confess. Thomas, you're twelve
Speaker 1: years old. If you confess, we're who are here to
Speaker 1: help you and your mother. You've got to be flat
Speaker 1: honest with us so that we can help you. You're
Speaker 1: gonna need some help to get rid of this guilty,
Speaker 1: but you've got to be flat honest with us so
Speaker 1: we can help you. Okay, what's the help theme again
Speaker 1: versus punishment? We're here to help you, that's what we
Speaker 1: want to do. Tell us. And it's at this point
Speaker 1: during the interrogation that the officers introduce their theory of
Speaker 1: the crime. In other words, they start telling Thomas what
Speaker 1: it is they want him to say. Could it have
Speaker 1: been an accident? They asked Thomas, even though the crime
Speaker 1: scene obviously indicates that what happened to Kayleie was with
Speaker 1: clearly no accident, And Thomas, who's crying and scared out
Speaker 1: of his mind, says he and I don't remember. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: it's a possibility it could have been an accident, and
Speaker 1: I don't remember it. This goes on, okay, it goes
Speaker 1: on for more than an hour, and by the end
Speaker 1: it culminates in this horrible ten minutes segment where Thomas
Speaker 1: has left alone. The officers step out of the room,
Speaker 1: but the cameras still running, and he starts rocking back
Speaker 1: and forth in his seat and muttering to himself. It's
Speaker 1: like halfway distinguishable gibberish. So I didn't. Oh, you want
Speaker 1: why mom wouldn't do this. She loves her daughter, doesn't
Speaker 1: she She loves me. I didn't do it, that's the
Speaker 1: bottom line. But they don't believe me. Help. I'm scared.
Speaker 1: We've seen cases where people are reduced to a place
Speaker 1: where they're crawled up in a fetal position on the
Speaker 1: floor from these tactics, and they're working their magic on Thomas.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so hard to watch. This is psychological torture,
Speaker 1: and this moment, the emotional breakdown of Thomas. This is
Speaker 1: the moment when police decide to turn off the video camera.
Speaker 1: There's no excuse for that. I think what they began
Speaker 1: to realize was that this was awful what they were
Speaker 1: recording on tape and Thomas had reached a place where
Speaker 1: he was having a breakdown and he still would not
Speaker 1: confess to this crime. So they needed some time to
Speaker 1: try to work on him outside of the interrogation room
Speaker 1: with the camera off. Exactly an outside of this camera
Speaker 1: which was recording this trail of emotional destruction that would
Speaker 1: turn off any judge, any jury, any listener in America.
Speaker 1: So they turned off the camera for what they later
Speaker 1: called a break in questioning, right, a break that ended
Speaker 1: up lasting about three and a half hours. Now, it's
Speaker 1: perfectly legal for them to turn off the camera, right,
Speaker 1: That's the thing there was, and in fact, there still
Speaker 1: is no law in Arkansas requiring interrogations to be recorded
Speaker 1: in full. We need to have the truth, the whole truth,
Speaker 1: and nothing but the truth of what happens in the
Speaker 1: interrogation room. We can't allow law enforcement officers to have
Speaker 1: the discretion on when depressed the stop button. Later, when
Speaker 1: the state was prosecuting this case, it said that all
Speaker 1: that happened during this break was that the deputy prosecutor
Speaker 1: sat with Thomas while he had something to eat, right,
Speaker 1: And during that break, while he was eating, the prosecutors
Speaker 1: said that Thomas just spontaneously decided to blurt out a
Speaker 1: confession to killing his sister, right, not being questioned, not
Speaker 1: being pressured, not being manipulated, not being lied to. He
Speaker 1: just blurts it out in the middle of eating this hamburger.
Speaker 1: And this is a common refrain that we hear from
Speaker 1: law enforcement officers, the spontaneous confession. And why is it common. Well,
Speaker 1: if someone blurts out a confession without any prompting or
Speaker 1: persuasion by the police, police officers don't need to read
Speaker 1: them their miranda rights. It's not until ten PM that
Speaker 1: officers turn the video camera back on. We're back now
Speaker 1: in the same interrogation room with Thomas sitting in the
Speaker 1: same seat as in the earlier session. But what we
Speaker 1: now see and here is a very different Thomas Condolt
Speaker 1: I am to Actually, it's like a completely different person
Speaker 1: in that interrogation room. He is calm, he is cool,
Speaker 1: he is collected, he is seems to be eager to
Speaker 1: want to help police officers. And it's as if someone
Speaker 1: presses the play button and he starts telling a story
Speaker 1: that involves and implicates him in his sister's death. Exactly.
Speaker 1: He's almost cheerful while he's reciting the story one that
Speaker 1: sounds really rehearsed and practiced. He tells a story in
Speaker 1: which Kaylee had been in her bed, apparently sleeping, and
Speaker 1: Thomas had tied her hands and feet to slower down.
Speaker 1: He says when she got out of bed, he didn't
Speaker 1: mean to hurt her, and then he described putting a
Speaker 1: plastic bag over her head, leaving the room, then going
Speaker 1: back and loosening it so that air could get in there.
Speaker 1: But even this story, right, this confession to be involved
Speaker 1: in the death of his sister, it develops inconsistencies. The
Speaker 1: police have him go through it a second time, and
Speaker 1: this time they have him take out the part where
Speaker 1: it was an accident. On the second go round, Thomas
Speaker 1: said he put two bags on Kayley's head because the
Speaker 1: first one had a hole in it, and he said
Speaker 1: he held the bags there until she started twitching. In
Speaker 1: this account, he says he tied her up after she
Speaker 1: was smothered. Bangs more more bags. Why don't you use
Speaker 1: to because the other one had a hole in it. Okay,
Speaker 1: so she's jarred, You've gone. You've got these things to
Speaker 1: tie her risks and to tie her legs, and you
Speaker 1: do that for figure that she's gonna wake up and
Speaker 1: come hurt you. So what you're telling us, damn, what
Speaker 1: do you do? And turn onto TV? As I said,
Speaker 1: live and go back to me falsely. And it's this story,
Speaker 1: this confession, that leads to Thomas's arrest and being charged
Speaker 1: in juvenile court with his own sisters murder. But it's
Speaker 1: still not quite the end of the story because as
Speaker 1: soon as Thomas gives this strangely calm confession, the police
Speaker 1: bring in his mother, Melody. They're probably hoping that Thomas
Speaker 1: is going to confess to his mom and then they'll
Speaker 1: have another piece of evidence that they can use against
Speaker 1: tom Us. But what does Thomas say, Well, he leans
Speaker 1: over and he whispers to his mother something that he's
Speaker 1: obviously trying to say without the camera picking it up.
Speaker 1: Thomas whispers to his mom not to worry, just go
Speaker 1: along with it. He didn't really do it, and they
Speaker 1: won't sign his fingerprints on the bag. The interrogators want
Speaker 1: to know what he whispered to his mother, so they
Speaker 1: asked her when they have her alone again, did go
Speaker 1: along with what he says? He said he didn't do it,
Speaker 1: and then he wouldn't find his fingerprints, What does he mean?
Speaker 1: Thomas knows his fingerprints aren't on the bags that were
Speaker 1: found over his sister's head because he never touched those bags.
Speaker 1: He believes that the absence of his fingerprints will prove
Speaker 1: his confession false and set him free. And then he
Speaker 1: appears to think that, having done as he was told,
Speaker 1: after having confessed to the murder of his own sister,
Speaker 1: he's going to walk out of that room and go
Speaker 1: to his cousin's house. Instead, police come back in, placed
Speaker 1: Thomas under arrest and charge him with the murder of
Speaker 1: his own sister. So let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: Thomas's confession. One of the best ways to measure the
Speaker 1: reliability of a confession is to look at the evidence
Speaker 1: that corroborates it, and in Thomas's case, there was no
Speaker 1: corroboration linking Thomas to this cry. They took that cloth
Speaker 1: measuring tape and they sent it to the lab for
Speaker 1: DNA testing. Thomas's DNA wasn't on that cloth measuring tape. Instead,
Speaker 1: another male's DNA was on that tape, and the story
Speaker 1: didn't account for other findings that the medical examiner had made.
Speaker 1: Kayley had bruising on her forehead, suggesting that there was
Speaker 1: some beating or some kind of a struggle before she
Speaker 1: had been old, and Thomas's confession said nothing about a
Speaker 1: beating or a struggle. There's such a lack of corroboration
Speaker 1: of Thomas's story and the psychological tactics that were used
Speaker 1: to extract this story, including fact feeding, including threats and promises.
Speaker 1: This confession bears so many red flags. But let's talk
Speaker 1: for a minute though, about that three and a half
Speaker 1: hour period when the video camera was turned off. When
Speaker 1: you look at this and it just stinks to high heaven,
Speaker 1: when they pressed that stop button and then somehow low
Speaker 1: and behold come back with a confession and a completely
Speaker 1: different child. What happened during that time? How did Thomas
Speaker 1: turn from this panicked child having an emotional breakdown to
Speaker 1: a cool, calm, confidence, confessed murderer. To hear it from Thomas,
Speaker 1: this was no spontaneous outburst, suggesting that he was guilty
Speaker 1: the whole time. This was part of an interrogation process
Speaker 1: that actually was ramped up during the three and of
Speaker 1: our period. Thomas has said that the interrogation continued after
Speaker 1: he had that emotional breakdown and was taken out of
Speaker 1: the room that off camera, the police had continued telling
Speaker 1: him that it was either going to be you or
Speaker 1: your mother, and that he needed to stand up and
Speaker 1: be a man and admit what he did and if
Speaker 1: he did, then he'd be able to go home. Right
Speaker 1: That's why he later thought he was going to be
Speaker 1: able to go back to his cousin's house after confessing
Speaker 1: to the murder of his own sister. And Thomas also
Speaker 1: told his court appointed psychologist that they told him that
Speaker 1: if he didn't confess, he a twelve year old, would
Speaker 1: be charged as an adult and could get the death penalty,
Speaker 1: or his mother could get the death penalty if he
Speaker 1: didn't confess, because there were only two people who could
Speaker 1: have been guilty of this crime, Thomas or his mother.
Speaker 1: So we have these two different stories of what happened
Speaker 1: during this three and a half hour period. Off camera,
Speaker 1: the prosecutor says Thomas is eating and he spontaneously confesses.
Speaker 1: But tom Mus has a story of continuing pressure, continuing manipulation,
Speaker 1: all occurring off camera. So how do we weigh those
Speaker 1: two accounts well? During Thomas's break in questioning Melody, the
Speaker 1: mom is reinterviewed a second time on video camera, and
Speaker 1: during that second interview of Melody, you can hear a loud,
Speaker 1: deep male voice yell Thomas, I'm not going to ask
Speaker 1: you again. Thomas is being questioned. That much is really clear,
Speaker 1: and he's being yelled at. That horrible process that we
Speaker 1: saw earlier is still happening just off camera. Thomas is
Speaker 1: convicted despite the heroic efforts of a very good attorney
Speaker 1: who Laura and I met for the first time in
Speaker 1: this case. Thomas's attorney was a public defender named Dorsey Corbin.
Speaker 1: My name is Dorsey Corbin, and I represented Thomas Cogdale
Speaker 1: from seven months after he was charged with murder until
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court handed down its opinion on May six two.
Speaker 1: She had challenged the confession aggressively before trial and lost,
Speaker 1: and she had tried this case very effectively. Confessions are
Speaker 1: one of the most powerful forms of evidence, and it
Speaker 1: can be incredibly hard to undwind these cases after the
Speaker 1: fact of false confessors who took their case to trial
Speaker 1: were convicted even though they were factually innocence of these crimes. Okay,
Speaker 1: can I talk about things that don't make sense in
Speaker 1: this whole case. The police they originally thought that Kaylee
Speaker 1: must have died somewhere between two thirty or three thirty,
Speaker 1: and that was the time frame that Thomas used in
Speaker 1: his confession. Lividity is the process of which after death,
Speaker 1: your blood settles because of basically gravity, So if you're
Speaker 1: laying on your bike, you're gonna have red marks on
Speaker 1: the back where the blood settles. The medical examiner test
Speaker 1: of FID that lividity stops after six to eight hours. However,
Speaker 1: the pictures taken at the crime scene at twelve o
Speaker 1: two pm in the afternoon, and it won fifty in
Speaker 1: the afternoon showed continuing lividity. The time of death being
Speaker 1: six to eight hours before two pm in the afternoon
Speaker 1: is well after the time Thomas had gone to sleep,
Speaker 1: and the police never made him change that part of
Speaker 1: his story. He didn't do this in his sleep and
Speaker 1: somehow managed to leave no fingerprints, no DNA. It just
Speaker 1: didn't happen at the hands of Thomas. The judge had
Speaker 1: heard all of the evidence from the very beginning. The
Speaker 1: power of the confession again was so strong that the
Speaker 1: juvenile court judge believed the confession. Very few people can
Speaker 1: understand how or why anyone would admit to a crime
Speaker 1: they didn't commit. So Thomas is sent off to a
Speaker 1: juvenile detention facility in Texarcana, where he was sentenced to
Speaker 1: stay there until his eighteenth birthday. Dorsey Corbin, meanwhile, his
Speaker 1: public defender, continued fighting his case. She took Thomas's case
Speaker 1: to the Arkansas Court of Appeals and argued about the
Speaker 1: confession they're lost, and then she decided to take the
Speaker 1: case to the Arkansas Supreme Court. And that's when we
Speaker 1: got involved. When we first heard about Thomas's case, it
Speaker 1: was right when we were getting ready for Brendan d
Speaker 1: Ass's post conviction hearing in Manitoua, Wisconsin, and we reached
Speaker 1: out to Dorsey Corbin, and when she learned that the
Speaker 1: Arkansas Supreme Court had agreed to hear Thomas's case, she
Speaker 1: asked us to file an amicus brief. Write a brief
Speaker 1: from experts explaining the problem of false confessions and explaining
Speaker 1: how kids like Thomas are more likely to falsely confess
Speaker 1: than adults believe it or not. When you're in the
Speaker 1: part of the appeals process called a direct appeal, you
Speaker 1: can't file it based on whether the confession is true
Speaker 1: or false. Instead, the only argument that you can make
Speaker 1: is whether the confession was coerced or forced, and whether
Speaker 1: there were any problems with the way in which police
Speaker 1: read the defendant his Miranda rights. These are the right
Speaker 1: to remain silent, the right to have a lawyer with
Speaker 1: you during questioning. The defendant has to knowingly and intelligently
Speaker 1: waive his Miranda rights. So if the suspect, because of
Speaker 1: his or her vulnerabilities, doesn't understand those rights, that's another
Speaker 1: way to attack the confession. What was Dorsey doing in
Speaker 1: this case? For Thomas? Here we have a twelve year
Speaker 1: old in the interrogation room who's being told that he
Speaker 1: has a constitutional right to silence and a lawyer, all
Speaker 1: these difficult concepts. They tell him he has these rights,
Speaker 1: and then they ask him, do you agree to waive
Speaker 1: these rights? Well, you sigh a waiver And this is
Speaker 1: where inquisitiveness saved the day for Thomas. The detective asks
Speaker 1: him to sign a waiver and Thomas said, what's a waiver?
Speaker 1: You know, waiver is a legal term exactly. You know,
Speaker 1: every time you go bungee jumping you have to sign
Speaker 1: a waiver to protect the business from getting sued. Here's
Speaker 1: Thomas about to go off the cliff, right, I mean
Speaker 1: a different kind of cliff. So the detective freezes and
Speaker 1: he has never been asked that question. He says, well,
Speaker 1: this simply states that what you were doing, you were
Speaker 1: doing of your own free will. That's not what a
Speaker 1: waiver means. That that's not what it means to give
Speaker 1: up your rights. This is the issue that Dorsey Corbin,
Speaker 1: Thomas's lawyer, brought before the Arkansas Supreme Court, and it
Speaker 1: was the issue that we supported her with by writing
Speaker 1: an amicus brief that not only talks about how insane
Speaker 1: it is the twelve year olds like Thomas are allowed
Speaker 1: to waive their constitutional rights without any adult advising them,
Speaker 1: but that also highlighted all of the reasons why this
Speaker 1: confession we thought was not worth the tape it was
Speaker 1: recorded on, and it worked. The Arkansas Supreme Court held
Speaker 1: that the detectives explanation of what a waiver was was wrong,
Speaker 1: and that as a result, Thomas did not knowingly and
Speaker 1: intelligently waive his miranders. The confession was out and the
Speaker 1: conviction was overturned. It angers me so much that police
Speaker 1: officers lie to children, isolate children, and do all the
Speaker 1: terrible things that they did to Thomas in this interrogation,
Speaker 1: and God only knows what they did to him for
Speaker 1: the three and a half hours that they didn't bother
Speaker 1: to put the tape on. Because he was an honor
Speaker 1: roll student, he wanted to make sure he understood this
Speaker 1: new word he hadn't heard before, waiver. That's what freed him.
Speaker 1: How many other Thomas Cogdals are They're out there, children
Speaker 1: twelve fourteen years old who were interrogated in just this way,
Speaker 1: but who didn't have that moment of good fortune in
Speaker 1: a way to be able to ask what a word means.
Speaker 1: As the captain of the police foresaid at the time
Speaker 1: of trial, had we known at the interview what we
Speaker 1: know now, we would have conducted the interview differently. That
Speaker 1: speaks volumes. They focused in on Thomas, they had tunnel
Speaker 1: vision and their sole goal was to get a confession
Speaker 1: out of a scared twelve year old boy. Congratulations, they
Speaker 1: did it. No one else has ever been charged with
Speaker 1: the murder of Kayleie Cogdal. Thomas deserves closer, and equally importantly,
Speaker 1: Thomas's sister deserves justice. Melody never confessed to this crime.
Speaker 1: And the bottom line is police and prosecutors made a
Speaker 1: judgment that there wasn't enough evidence pointing to an alternative suspect.
Speaker 1: We were there on the scene. We can't tell you
Speaker 1: what the evidence on the scene Shower who had pointed to.
Speaker 1: But what we do know is that Thomas's confession is false.
Speaker 1: Two weeks or so after the Arkansas Supreme Court, throughout
Speaker 1: his conviction, Thomas was free living with his grandparents. When
Speaker 1: he was younger, his mother had taken Thomas and his
Speaker 1: sister to the Department of Human Services and basically said, here,
Speaker 1: take these kids. I can't deal with him anymore. I
Speaker 1: suspect that when Thomas came back he felt somewhat of
Speaker 1: a burden to be more of a caretaker for both
Speaker 1: his mother and for his sister after the murder. I
Speaker 1: think it was very important for Thomas to live with
Speaker 1: people who would take care of him, nurture him, and
Speaker 1: love him. He found that with his grandparents, and they
Speaker 1: were so very happy to have him their home. Despite
Speaker 1: the ordeal of trial and conviction, everything that Thomas went
Speaker 1: through after he was released, he still had dreams. He
Speaker 1: wants to be an astronomer, and he wants to go
Speaker 1: or people don't know him. Thomas, wherever you are, we
Speaker 1: wish you all the best. My friend and Dorsey, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for allowing us to play a role
Speaker 1: in this case. It's a great honor to be able
Speaker 1: to work with people like Dorsey to fight for the
Speaker 1: freedom of kids like Thomas. But there are larger questions here.
Speaker 1: What can we do to prevent these kinds of cases
Speaker 1: from happening again? What kinds of reforms are needed. One
Speaker 1: of the laws that Steve has been fighting for is
Speaker 1: a law requiring lawyers in the interrogation room for kids
Speaker 1: like Thomas, not allowing them to give up their rights
Speaker 1: to a lawyer, but rather insisting that they have someone
Speaker 1: there by their side to advise them. And they need
Speaker 1: help in understanding what the Miranda warnings are and understand
Speaker 1: what the concepts is are of giving them up. That's
Speaker 1: why you need lawyers to be an advocate for that
Speaker 1: child in the interrogation room. Thanks for listening to Thomas
Speaker 1: Cogdle's story. Next week, we'll take you to a small
Speaker 1: farm town in Nebraska that was racked by a double murder,
Speaker 1: a false confession, and a surprising twist that sounds like
Speaker 1: it's right out of a Tarantino movie. Until then, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to our executive producer Jason Slam and the
Speaker 1: team at Signal Company Number one Executive producer Kevin Wardace,
Speaker 1: Senior Producer and Pope, and additional production and editing by
Speaker 1: Connor Hall. Our music was composed by j Ralph. You
Speaker 1: can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura night
Speaker 1: Rider and you can follow me on Twitter at s Driven.
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast
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