Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer.
Speaker 2: And I'm Steve Drissen.
Speaker 1: So far, we've told you the story of Robert Davis
Speaker 1: in Virginia and the Dixmore five in Chicago, two cases
Speaker 1: that show how the interrogation room works and how racial
Speaker 1: biases can script false confessions. Today's episode is about how
Speaker 1: interrogation tactics designed for seasoned adult criminals are often used
Speaker 1: on the most vulnerable among us. We're going to take
Speaker 1: you to Camden, Arkansas, where a twelve year old boy
Speaker 1: is left to fend for himself against grown ups who
Speaker 1: suspect him of murder. The interrogation tape is bad enough,
Speaker 1: but the worst parts happened off camera. This is the
Speaker 1: story of Thomas.
Speaker 2: Cogdal I do a lot of searches online to try
Speaker 2: to keep up to date about cases involving false confessions
Speaker 2: and juveniles, and this case came on my radar screen.
Speaker 2: When I saw these interrogation tapes, I was absolutely floored.
Speaker 2: You know, Robert Davis was eighteen, he was well over
Speaker 2: six feet tall. But Thomas Cogdell, he was a boy.
Speaker 2: He hadn't started shaving yet.
Speaker 1: This is the first video I had seen where adult
Speaker 1: tactics were being used on someone as young as Thomas
Speaker 1: twelve years old. I'm a mom. I've got kids not
Speaker 1: much younger than Thomas, and the way the cops railroaded
Speaker 1: this child, it brings me to tears when I hear this.
Speaker 2: You have two boys, I have three boys. I remember
Speaker 2: what my boys were like when they were twelve years old,
Speaker 2: and they reminded me very much of Thomas.
Speaker 1: Cogdele and that the climax of this interrogation they turn
Speaker 1: off the camera, that's when the heat really gets turned up.
Speaker 2: What happened off camera? I wanted to know what happened.
Speaker 1: Thomas's story starts in Camden, Arkansas, a small town about
Speaker 1: twelve thousand people one hundred miles south of Little Rock.
Speaker 1: Now Camden's 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's been losing jobs, residents,
Speaker 1: and morale. Now, at the beginning of the summer in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, Thomas and his family had moved
Speaker 1: into a tidy, little gray house on Waco Street. They
Speaker 1: live there, just the three of them. It's Thomas who's twelve,
Speaker 1: his eleven year old sister Kayley, and their mom, Melody Jones.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you a little about Thomas. He's one
Speaker 1: of those whiz kids. It's 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, Kaylee. She was
Speaker 1: as immature in some ways as Thomas was mature. She
Speaker 1: wasn't as good as he was at reading, so he'd
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time helping her learn her words
Speaker 1: and remembered. They were new on the block, which unfortunately
Speaker 1: meant that Kaylee was in for some bullying. But when
Speaker 1: other kids would pick on her, Thomas would literally launch
Speaker 1: himself at them, chubby cheeks and all. He was the
Speaker 1: big brother, it was his responsibility he felt to defend.
Speaker 2: The two of them got along well for the most part,
Speaker 2: but like all children, they had their spats, and it
Speaker 2: usually occurred when Kaylee would interrupt something that Thomas was
Speaker 2: working on or listening to, or video game he was playing,
Speaker 2: and that would frustrate him. But that happens in every family.
Speaker 1: So let's fast forward to the morning of August seventh,
Speaker 1: two thousand and six. It was Monday morning, but school
Speaker 1: was out, so the kids had stayed up really late
Speaker 1: the night before. Kayley had gone to bed at about
Speaker 1: two point thirty in the morning, and Thomas had stayed
Speaker 1: up even later than her until about five am, eating
Speaker 1: em and m's and reading a spooky children's book in
Speaker 1: his room.
Speaker 2: He fell asleep with the book still open to the
Speaker 2: page that he had left it at.
Speaker 1: And then the morning comes at about eleven forty five
Speaker 1: or so, both Melody and Thomas are awake. Melody later
Speaker 1: said she went to check the mail that morning found
Speaker 1: a letter for Kaylee, who was still in her bedroom.
Speaker 1: Melody asks Thomas to come with her to surprise Kaylee
Speaker 1: with her letter, but they're met with a horrible Kaylee's
Speaker 1: in the bedroom. Her hands are tightly bound with a
Speaker 1: red dog leash, and her feet are loosely bound with
Speaker 1: a cloth measuring tape, the kind of thing you'd use
Speaker 1: to measure out and cut fabric. And there's a plastic
Speaker 1: bag over her head. Melody removed the bag and it
Speaker 1: was immediately clear Kayley was dead. Melody's screamed. She screams
Speaker 1: so loudly that the neighbors hear her. She becomes hysterical.
Speaker 1: Thomas has the presence of mind to call nine one one.
Speaker 1: An ambulance arrives. The neighbors are gathering outside everybody's concern,
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 that kayleie
Speaker 1: Cogdal had been found dead.
Speaker 2: When police arrived at a crime scene, they look for
Speaker 2: evidence of forced entry, and they didn't see any evidence
Speaker 2: of forced entry. That means that either somebody in the
Speaker 2: home had let the murderer in, or that the murder
Speaker 2: had been committed by somebody who was in the home
Speaker 2: at the time of the crime.
Speaker 1: Kayley 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 had thought the time
Speaker 1: of death was about six to eight hours before the
Speaker 1: body had been discovered. Working back from eleven forty five,
Speaker 1: that would have placed the murder around three forty five
Speaker 1: to five forty five in the.
Speaker 2: Morning, and because Thomas had said that he was awake,
Speaker 2: still reading a book at the time, suspicion began to
Speaker 2: focus on him.
Speaker 1: The police bring both Melody and Thomas in for questioning
Speaker 1: later in the day, and it's melodies turn to go first.
Speaker 1: The mom Now, she's questioned at about four thirty pm
Speaker 1: for about an hour, and long story short, she denies
Speaker 1: doing anything to Kayley, and in fact spends most of
Speaker 1: that interview answering questions about Thomas. At the end of
Speaker 1: that interview, the end of the hour, she gives the
Speaker 1: police permier to question Thomas. Now, this is interesting and problematic, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, Melody's a suspect as well as Thomas, and
Speaker 1: she's the one who is giving the police consent to
Speaker 1: question her son, the other suspect.
Speaker 2: It's totally inappropriate.
Speaker 1: But the police relied on that consent that they'd gotten
Speaker 1: from Melody, from Thomas's mom, plowed ahead with questioning Thomas
Speaker 1: all by himself, no lawyer, no parent, no nothing, starting
Speaker 1: at about five thirty PM.
Speaker 2: So Thomas, a twelve year old boy who had never
Speaker 2: had any contact with law enforcement, is left to fend
Speaker 2: for himself against seasoned homicide detectives.
Speaker 1: All of the beginning of Thomas's interrogation is captured on videotape,
Speaker 1: And when you watch this tape, you see a small
Speaker 1: boy sitting in a chair at a table in a
Speaker 1: small room with no windows, no clock. Thomas is about
Speaker 1: to undergo about five hours of questioning at age twelve,
Speaker 1: by himself. Now, the first segment of this tape runs
Speaker 1: from about five thirty in the afternoon to sixty five,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to watch.
Speaker 2: It's brutal. It literally gutted me and caused me to cry.
Speaker 1: Exactly I mean. At first, Thomas keeps his cool. You
Speaker 1: can see the honor Roll student in him, trying to
Speaker 1: be the big man who helps the police. He calls
Speaker 1: his interrogators sir. He answers them quickly and politely. The
Speaker 1: only way you can tell he's nervous is by the
Speaker 1: way he's wringing his hands over and over again, almost
Speaker 1: non stop. 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 3: In the bottom line on me is nobody broke in
Speaker 3: that house last night. There's no indication of any break here.
Speaker 3: So your sister died and there was only two people
Speaker 3: in the house that could have killed him. Okay, that's
Speaker 3: the only way he can.
Speaker 1: Make boy, understand you or your mother. That's the only
Speaker 1: way it can be, boy, There ain't no other way.
Speaker 1: And again, did your mother kill her? Not that I
Speaker 1: know of. They say, why would you kill your sister?
Speaker 1: And he says, I wouldn't, but they've continued to press
Speaker 1: you had to have killed her, because if your mother didn't,
Speaker 1: that just leaves you that she had.
Speaker 2: If your mother didn't, I just leave she. Thomas begins
Speaker 2: to cry, actually wail, and the sound of his high
Speaker 2: pitch wailing is what caused me the greatest distressed because
Speaker 2: it sounded almost like the way an animal would sound,
Speaker 2: a baby animal if their foot were caught in a
Speaker 2: bear trap or an animal trot. One of the detectives
Speaker 2: says to him, why are you crying, Thomas, And Thomas says,
Speaker 2: because you're accusing me of something I didn't do. He
Speaker 2: had the presence of mind to articulate exactly what he
Speaker 2: was feeling.
Speaker 1: Is unbelievable from a twelve year old little and a
Speaker 1: twelve year old who had just gone through this this
Speaker 1: 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 2: And the detective he's not yelling, he's not screaming, but
Speaker 2: he's pressing the point it had to be you, boy.
Speaker 1: So Thomas right is a smart kid. He's an Honoraal student,
Speaker 1: and you can see his mind starts spinning. He's trying
Speaker 1: to figure a way out of this horrific situation, and
Speaker 1: he asks the officers, is there any way I can
Speaker 1: prove to you that I didn't do this?
Speaker 2: In no way want to okay, personally okay, A moment
Speaker 2: he woke me up.
Speaker 1: Ahead my lap, and his idea for proving his own
Speaker 1: innocence is this heartbreakingly childlike idea. He fell asleep that
Speaker 1: night at five am with a book in his lap,
Speaker 1: and he tells the officers that if he had woken
Speaker 1: up and killed his sister, the book would have fallen
Speaker 1: off his lap and be on the floor of his bedroom.
Speaker 1: And he says, go back and look in my bedroom.
Speaker 1: You'll see that there's no book on the floor, which
Speaker 1: proves I didn't do this. The officers reject this theory, right,
Speaker 1: and instead they tell Thomas he had no choice but
Speaker 1: to confess. You're going to have to tell us everything.
Speaker 1: Thomas keeps denying his guilt as the pressure is turned
Speaker 1: up dozens of times over and over. He tells him
Speaker 1: he didn't kill his sister, and of course it's the
Speaker 1: officer's job to cut through those denials to make him
Speaker 1: believe the case against him is rock solid to bring
Speaker 1: him down to that point of hopelessness. So they lie
Speaker 1: to twelve year old Thomas. They lie, They say to him,
Speaker 1: their investigation is going to find his fingerprints on the
Speaker 1: plastic bag that was over Kaylee's head, and his fingerprints
Speaker 1: are going to be at a certain angle that somehow
Speaker 1: indicates that he had held the bag over his sister's head.
Speaker 2: And then they offer inducements to get him to confess. Thomas,
Speaker 2: you're twelve years old. If you confess, we're here to
Speaker 2: help you and your mother, You've got to be flat
Speaker 2: honest with us so that we can help you. You're
Speaker 2: going to need some help to get rid of this guilt.
Speaker 4: We're here to help you and your.
Speaker 3: Mother, Okay, But you've got to be flat honest with
Speaker 3: us so we can help you. Okay. Return.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's the help theme again versus punishment. We're here
Speaker 2: to help you, that's what we want to do, Temas.
Speaker 1: And it's at this point during the interrogation that the
Speaker 1: officers introduce their theory of the crime. In other words,
Speaker 1: they start telling Thomas what it is they want him
Speaker 1: to say. Could it have been an accident? They asked Thomas,
Speaker 1: even though the crime is scene obviously indicates that what
Speaker 1: happened to Kayley was was clearly no accident, and Thomas,
Speaker 1: who's crying and scared out of his mind, says, this
Speaker 1: possibility and I don't, well, it's a possibility. It could
Speaker 1: have been an accident. And I don't remember it.
Speaker 2: Do you remember tomorrow?
Speaker 4: You knows.
Speaker 1: This goes on, Okay, it goes on for more than
Speaker 1: an hour, and by the end it culminates in this
Speaker 1: horrible ten minute segment where Thomas is left alone. The
Speaker 1: officers step out of the room, but the camera is
Speaker 1: still running, and he starts rocking back and forth in
Speaker 1: his seat and muttering to himself. It's like halfway distinguishable gibberish.
Speaker 2: Nobody came, so I didn't do it?
Speaker 1: Why she wanted to do it? Why mom wouldn't do this.
Speaker 1: She loves her daughter, doesn't she? She loves me. I
Speaker 1: didn't do it, that's the bottom line. But they don't
Speaker 1: believe me. Help. I'm scared.
Speaker 2: We've seen cases where people are reduced to a place
Speaker 2: where they're crawled up in a fetal position on the
Speaker 2: 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 2: There's no excuse for that. I think what they began
Speaker 2: to realize was that this was awful what they were
Speaker 2: recording on tape, and Thomas had reached a place where
Speaker 2: he was having a breakdown and he still would not
Speaker 2: confess to this crime. So they needed some time to
Speaker 2: try to work on him outside of the interrogation room
Speaker 2: with the.
Speaker 1: Camera off exactly, and outside of this camera which was
Speaker 1: recording this trail of emotional destruction that would turn off
Speaker 1: any judge, any jury, any listener in America. So they
Speaker 1: turned off the camera for what they later called a
Speaker 1: break questioning r a break that ended up lasting about
Speaker 1: three and a half hours. Now, it's perfectly legal for
Speaker 1: them to turn off the camera, right That's the thing
Speaker 1: there was, and in fact, there still is no law
Speaker 1: in Arkansas requiring interrogations to be recorded in full.
Speaker 2: We need to have the truth, the whole truth, and
Speaker 2: nothing but the truth of what happens in the interrogation room.
Speaker 2: We can't allow law enforcement officers to have the discretion
Speaker 2: on when depressed the stop button.
Speaker 1: Later, when the state was prosecuting this case, it said
Speaker 1: that all that happened during this break was that the
Speaker 1: deputy prosecutor sat with Thomas while he had something to eat, right,
Speaker 1: And during that break, while he was eating, the prosecutor
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 2: And this is a common refrain that we hear from
Speaker 2: law enforcement officers, the spontaneous confession. And why is it common? Well,
Speaker 2: if someone blurts out at confession without any prompting or
Speaker 2: persuasion by the police, police officers don't need to read
Speaker 2: them their miranda rights.
Speaker 1: It's not until ten twenty pm that officers turn the
Speaker 1: video camera back on. We're back now in the same
Speaker 1: interrogation room with Thomas sitting in the same seat as
Speaker 1: in the earlier session. But what we now see and
Speaker 1: hear is a very different Thomas Coddle.
Speaker 2: Right, Cole H, I am to actually feel good and
Speaker 2: good and you know, it's like a completely different person
Speaker 2: in that interrogation room. He is calm, he is cool,
Speaker 2: he is collected. He seems to be eager to want
Speaker 2: to help police officers. And it's as if someone presses
Speaker 2: the play button and he starts telling a story that
Speaker 2: involves and implicates him in his sister's death.
Speaker 1: Exactly. He's almost cheerful while he's reciting the story, one
Speaker 1: that sounds really rehearsed and practiced. He tells a story
Speaker 1: in which Kaylee had been in her bed, apparently sleeping,
Speaker 1: and 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 being 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 Kaylee'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.
Speaker 3: You shit bags and one more bags?
Speaker 2: Why did you used to because the other one had
Speaker 2: a hole in it? Okay, so she's charged.
Speaker 4: You've gone. You've got these things to tie.
Speaker 2: Her wrists and to tie her legs, and you.
Speaker 3: Do that for fear that she's gonna wake up and
Speaker 3: come hurt you.
Speaker 2: That's what you're telling us. Then what do you do?
Speaker 4: And I turn onto TV as I said, leave home
Speaker 4: and go back to me, and then I false lea.
Speaker 1: And it's this story, this concession, that leads to Thomas's
Speaker 1: arrest and being charged in juvenile court with his own
Speaker 1: sister's murder.
Speaker 2: But it's still not quite the end of the story,
Speaker 2: because as soon as Thomas gives this strangely calm confession,
Speaker 2: the police bring in his mother, Melody.
Speaker 1: They're probably hoping that Thomas is gonna confess to his
Speaker 1: mom and then they'll have another piece of evidence that
Speaker 1: they can use against Tom. But what does Thomas say, Well,
Speaker 1: he leans over and he whispers to his mother something
Speaker 1: that he's obviously trying to say without the camera picking
Speaker 1: it up. Thomas whispers to his mom not to worry,
Speaker 1: just go along with it. He didn't really do it
Speaker 1: and they won't find his fingerprints on the bag. The
Speaker 1: interrogators want to know what he whispered to his mother,
Speaker 1: so they ask her when they have her alone again,
Speaker 1: what did he whisper to you?
Speaker 2: Did he go along with what he said because he said.
Speaker 3: He didn't do it and that y'all wouldn't find his fingerprints?
Speaker 1: What does he mean? Thomas knows his fingerprints aren't on
Speaker 1: the bags that were found over his sister's head because
Speaker 1: he never touched those bags. He believes that the absence
Speaker 1: of his fingerprints will prove his confession false and set
Speaker 1: him free. And then he appears to think that, having
Speaker 1: done as he was told, after having confessed to the
Speaker 1: murder of his own sister, he's going to walk out
Speaker 1: of that room and go to his cousin's house. Instead,
Speaker 1: police come back in place Thomas under arrest and charge
Speaker 1: him with the murder of his own sister.
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about Thomas's confession. One
Speaker 2: of the best ways to measure the reliability of a
Speaker 2: confession is to look at the evidence that corroborates it,
Speaker 2: and in Thomas's case, there was no corroboration linking Thomas
Speaker 2: to this crime. They took that cloth measuring tape and
Speaker 2: they sent it to the lab for DNA testing. Thomas's
Speaker 2: DNA wasn't on that cloth measuring tape. Instead, another male's
Speaker 2: DNA was on that tape. And the story didn't account
Speaker 2: for other findings that the medical examiner had made. Caylee
Speaker 2: had bruising on her forehead, suggesting that there was some
Speaker 2: beating or some kind of a struggle before she had
Speaker 2: been killed, and Thomas's confession said nothing about a beating
Speaker 2: or a struggle.
Speaker 1: There's such a lack of corroboration of Thomas's story and
Speaker 1: the psychological tactics that were used to extract this story,
Speaker 1: including fact feeding, including threats and promises. This confession bears
Speaker 1: so many red flags. But let's talk for a minute though,
Speaker 1: about that three and a half hour period when the
Speaker 1: video camera was turned off. I mean, you look at
Speaker 1: this and it just stinks to high heaven when they
Speaker 1: press that stop button and then somehow Lo and Behold
Speaker 1: come back with a confession and a completely different child.
Speaker 1: What happened during that time. How did Thomas turn from
Speaker 1: this panicked child having an emotional breakdown to a cool, calm, confident,
Speaker 1: confessed murderer.
Speaker 2: To hear it from Thomas, this was no spontaneous outburst
Speaker 2: suggesting that he was guilty the whole time. This was
Speaker 2: part of an interrogation process that actually was ramped up
Speaker 2: during that three and a half hour period.
Speaker 1: Thomas has said that the interrogation continued after he had
Speaker 1: that emotional breakdown and was taken out of the room
Speaker 1: that off camera, the police had continued telling him that
Speaker 1: it was either going to be you or your mother,
Speaker 1: and that he needed to stand up and be a
Speaker 1: man and admit what he did and if he did
Speaker 1: then he'd be able to go home. Right That's why
Speaker 1: he later thought he was going to be able to
Speaker 1: go back to his cousin's house after confessing to the
Speaker 1: murder of his own sister. And Thomas also told his
Speaker 1: court appointed psychologist that they told him that if he
Speaker 1: didn't confess, he a twelve year old, would be charged
Speaker 1: as an adult and could get the death penalty.
Speaker 2: Or his mother could get the death penalty if he
Speaker 2: didn't confess, because there are only two people who could
Speaker 2: 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 to Thomas 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.
Speaker 2: Thomas is convicted despite the heroic efforts of a very
Speaker 2: good attorney who Laura and I met for the first
Speaker 2: time in this case. Thomas's attorney was a public defender
Speaker 2: named Dorsey Corbin.
Speaker 4: My name is Dorsey Corbin, and I represented Thomas Cogdaal
Speaker 4: from seven months after he was charged with murder until
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court handed down its opinion on May six,
Speaker 4: twenty ten.
Speaker 2: She had challenged the confession aggressively before trial and lost,
Speaker 2: and she had tried this case very effectively.
Speaker 1: Confessions are one of the most powerful forms of evidence,
Speaker 1: and it can be incredibly hard to unwind these cases.
Speaker 1: After the fact, eighty one percent of false confessors who
Speaker 1: took their case to trial were convicted even though they
Speaker 1: were factually innocence of these crimes.
Speaker 4: Okay, can I talk about things that don't make sense
Speaker 4: in this whole case. The police, they originally thought that
Speaker 4: Kaylee must have died somewhere between two thirty or three thirty,
Speaker 4: and that was the time frame that Thomas used in
Speaker 4: his confession. Lividity is the process which after death, your
Speaker 4: blood settles because of basically gravity. So if you're laying
Speaker 4: on your back, you're going to have red marks on
Speaker 4: the back where the blood settles. The medical exammeinter tests
Speaker 4: that lividity stops after six to eight hours. However, the
Speaker 4: pictures taken at the crime scene at twelve oh two
Speaker 4: pm in the afternoon and at one fifty in the
Speaker 4: afternoon showed continuing lividity, the time of death being six
Speaker 4: to eight hours before two pm. In the afternoon, is
Speaker 4: well after the time Thomas had gone to sleep, and
Speaker 4: the police never made him change that part of his story.
Speaker 4: He didn't do this in his sleep and somehow managed
Speaker 4: to leave no fingerprints, no DNA. It just didn't happen
Speaker 4: at the hands of Thomas. The judge had heard all
Speaker 4: of the evidence from the very beginning, but the.
Speaker 2: Power of the confession again was so strong that the
Speaker 2: juvenile court judge believed the confession.
Speaker 4: Very few people can understand how or why anyone would
Speaker 4: admit to a crime they didn't commit.
Speaker 1: So Thomas has sent off to a juvenile detention facility
Speaker 1: in Texarkana, where he was sentenced to stay there until
Speaker 1: his eighteenth birthday. Dorsey Corbin, meanwhile, his public defender, continued
Speaker 1: fighting his case. She took Thomas's case to the Arkansas
Speaker 1: Court of Appeals and argued about the confession there lost,
Speaker 1: and then she decided to take the case to the
Speaker 1: Arkansas Supreme Court. And that's when we got involved. When
Speaker 1: we first heard about Thomas's case, it was right when
Speaker 1: we were getting ready for Brendan Dassi's post conviction hearing
Speaker 1: in Manitoba, Wisconsin, and we reached out to Dorsey Corbin,
Speaker 1: and when she learned that the Arkansas Supreme Court had
Speaker 1: agreed to hear Thomas's case, she asked us to file
Speaker 1: an amicus brief. Write a brief from experts explaining the
Speaker 1: problem of false confessions and explaining how kids like Thomas
Speaker 1: are more likely to falsely confess than adults, believe it
Speaker 1: or not. When you're in the part of the appeals
Speaker 1: process called a direct appeal, you can't file it based
Speaker 1: on whether the confession is true or false. Instead, the
Speaker 1: only argument that you can make is whether the confession
Speaker 1: was coerced or forced, and whether there were any problems
Speaker 1: with the way in which police read the defendant his
Speaker 1: Miranda rights. These are the right to remain silent, the
Speaker 1: right to have a lawyer with you during questioning.
Speaker 2: The defendant has to knowingly and intelligently waive his Miranda rights.
Speaker 2: So if the suspect, because of his or her vulnerabilities,
Speaker 2: doesn't understand those rights, that's another way to attack the confession.
Speaker 1: What was Dorsey doing in this case? For Thomas? Here
Speaker 1: we have a twelve year old in the interrogation room
Speaker 1: who's being told that he has a constitutional right to
Speaker 1: silence and a lawyer, all these difficult concepts. They tell
Speaker 1: him he has these rights and then they ask him,
Speaker 1: do you agree to waive these rights?
Speaker 2: Well, you sign a waiver. And this is where inquisitiveness
Speaker 2: saved the day for Thomas. The detective asks him to
Speaker 2: sign a waiver, and Thomas said, what's a waiver? You know,
Speaker 2: a waiver is a legal term exactly. You know, every
Speaker 2: time you go bungee jumping, you have to sign a
Speaker 2: waiver to protect the business from getting sued.
Speaker 1: Here's Thomas about to go off the cliff, right, I
Speaker 1: mean a different kind of cliff.
Speaker 2: So the detective freezes and he's never been asked that question.
Speaker 1: He says, well, this simply states that what you were doing,
Speaker 1: you were doing of your own free will. That's not
Speaker 1: what a waiver means. That that's not what it means
Speaker 1: to give up your rights. This is the issue that
Speaker 1: Dorsey Corbyn, Thomas's lawyer, brought before the Arkansas Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and it was the issue that we supported her with
Speaker 1: by writing an amicus brief that not only talks about
Speaker 1: how insane it is the twelve year olds like Thomas
Speaker 1: are allowed to waive their constitutional rights without any adult
Speaker 1: advising them, but that also highlighted all of the reasons
Speaker 1: why this confession we thought was not worth the tape
Speaker 1: it was recorded on, and it worked.
Speaker 2: The Arkansas Supreme Court held that the detective's explanation of
Speaker 2: what a waiver was was wrong, and that as a result,
Speaker 2: Thomas did not knowingly and intelligently wave his Miranda rights.
Speaker 2: The confession was out and the conviction was overturned.
Speaker 4: It angers me so much that police officers lie to children,
Speaker 4: isolate children, and do all the terrible things that they
Speaker 4: did to Thomas in this interrogation, and God only knows
Speaker 4: what they did to him for the three and a
Speaker 4: half hours that they didn't bother to put the tape on.
Speaker 1: Because he was an honor roll student, he wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure he understood this new he hadn't heard before waiver.
Speaker 1: That's what freed him. How many other Thomas Cogdals are
Speaker 1: there out there, children twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old, who
Speaker 1: were interrogated in just this way, but who didn't have
Speaker 1: that moment of good fortune in a way to be
Speaker 1: able to ask what a word means, As.
Speaker 4: The captain of the police force said at the time
Speaker 4: of trial, had we known at the interview. What we
Speaker 4: know now, we would have conducted the interview differently. That
Speaker 4: speaks volumes. They focused in on Thomas, they had tunnel vision,
Speaker 4: and their sole goal was to get a confession out
Speaker 4: of a scared twelve year old boy. Congratulations, they did it.
Speaker 1: No one else has ever been charged with the murder
Speaker 1: of Kaylee Cogdal.
Speaker 4: Thomas deserves closure, and equally importantly, Thomas's sister deserves justice.
Speaker 1: Melody never confessed to this crime. And the bottom line
Speaker 1: is police and prosecutors made a judgment that there wasn't
Speaker 1: enough evidence pointing to an alternative suspect. We weren't there
Speaker 1: on the scene. We can't tell you what the evidence
Speaker 1: on the scene shoulder who had pointed to. But what
Speaker 1: we do know is that Thomas's confession is false. Two
Speaker 1: weeks or so after the Arkansas Supreme Court, throughout his conviction,
Speaker 1: Thomas was free living with his grandparents.
Speaker 4: When he was younger, his mother had taken Thomas and
Speaker 4: his sister to the Department of Human Services and basically said, here,
Speaker 4: take these kids. I can't deal with them anymore. I
Speaker 4: suspect that when Thomas came back he felt somewhat of
Speaker 4: a burden to be more of a caretaker for both
Speaker 4: his mother and for his sister after the murder.
Speaker 1: I think it was very.
Speaker 4: Important for Thomas to live with people who would take
Speaker 4: care of him, nurture him, and love him. He found
Speaker 4: that with his grandparents, and they were so very happy
Speaker 4: to have him their home.
Speaker 1: Despite the ordeal of trial and conviction, everything that Thomas
Speaker 1: went through after he was released, he still had dreams.
Speaker 1: He wants to be an astronomer, and he wants to
Speaker 1: go where people don't know him. Thomas, wherever you are,
Speaker 1: we wish you all the best.
Speaker 2: My friend and Dorsey, thank you so much for allowing
Speaker 2: us to play a role in this case.
Speaker 1: It's a great honor to be able to work with
Speaker 1: people like Dorsey to fight for the freedom of kids
Speaker 1: like Thomas. But there are larger questions here. What can
Speaker 1: we do to prevent these kinds of cases from happening again?
Speaker 1: What kinds of reforms are needed. One of the laws
Speaker 1: that Steve has been fighting for is a law requiring
Speaker 1: lawyers in the interrogation room for kids like Thomas, not
Speaker 1: allowing them to give up their rights to a lawyer,
Speaker 1: but rather insisting that they have someone there by their
Speaker 1: side to advise.
Speaker 2: Them, and they need help in understanding what the Mirianda
Speaker 2: warnings are and understanding what the consequence witz are of
Speaker 2: giving them up. That's why you need lawyers to be
Speaker 2: an advocate for that child in the interrogation room.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Thomas Cogdell's story. Next week, we'll
Speaker 1: take you to a small farmtown in Nebraska that was
Speaker 1: racked by a double murder, a false confession, and a
Speaker 1: surprising twist that sounds like it's right out of a
Speaker 1: Tarantino movie. Until then, thanks for listening. Wrongful Conviction, False
Speaker 1: Confessions is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number One. Special thanks to our
Speaker 1: executive producer Jason Flamm and the team at Signal Company
Speaker 1: number one. Executive producer Kevin wardis Senior producer and Pope,
Speaker 1: and additional production and editing by Connor Hall. Our music
Speaker 1: was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on
Speaker 1: Instagram or Twitter at Laura Nyrider and you.
Speaker 2: Can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast
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