Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer,
Speaker 1: and I'm Steve Drisan. Steve and I co direct the
Speaker 1: Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University in Chicago. It's
Speaker 1: one of the oldest organizations in the country dedicated to
Speaker 1: exonerating innocent people who have been convicted of crimes they
Speaker 1: didn't commit. Over its twenty years, the center has freed
Speaker 1: more than forty innocent men, women, and children, and it's
Speaker 1: our privilege to work there. Some of you may know
Speaker 1: me and Steve from the Netflix show Making a Murderer,
Speaker 1: which exposed the unjust case against our client, Brendan Dascy,
Speaker 1: or you may have heard me on an episode from
Speaker 1: last season's Wrongful Conviction with Jason flam where Brendan told
Speaker 1: his own story for the first time. On this podcast series,
Speaker 1: Steve and I are going to bring you into our world,
Speaker 1: the world of False Confessions. We're going to tell you
Speaker 1: about cases we've worked on, innocent people we've fought for,
Speaker 1: and our passion for making justice a reality. Today, we'll
Speaker 1: start with the big question, why would anyone confess to
Speaker 1: a crime they didn't commit? Then we'll take you inside
Speaker 1: the interrogation room to show you how false confessions happen,
Speaker 1: and finally a little backstory how Steve and I each
Speaker 1: became obsessed with the problem of false confessions and how
Speaker 1: we're not going to quit until this problem gets solved.
Speaker 1: Most people assume that when someone confesses, it's because they're
Speaker 1: guilty and because they have some sort of inner need
Speaker 1: to unburn themselves of their guilt and the story that
Speaker 1: they're clinging onto. But what we have discovered is that
Speaker 1: confessions aren't always true. That in fact, we know of
Speaker 1: hundreds of cases where someone is brought into an interrogation room,
Speaker 1: questioned by the police, sometimes for hours, ends up confessing
Speaker 1: to a crime, often a very brutal crime, a rape
Speaker 1: or murder or something like that, and they're convicted on
Speaker 1: the basis of that confession, sent away to prison for years,
Speaker 1: decades sometimes, and then an organization like our Center on
Speaker 1: Wrongful Convictions comes along and does DNA testing and discovers,
Speaker 1: beyond the shadow of a doubt that the confession is false.
Speaker 1: We know hundreds of cases like this, and that really
Speaker 1: gives the lie to this belief that confessions are always true.
Speaker 1: I think people understand that if you were tortured or
Speaker 1: you're subjected to the kinds of tactics we saw in
Speaker 1: Abu Grabe and Guantanamo that under those kinds of physical, abusive,
Speaker 1: extreme sleep deprivation kind of tactics, yeah, you might say
Speaker 1: some things, including confessed to some serious crimes you didn't commit.
Speaker 1: But most today's modern psychological interrogation techniques are all about
Speaker 1: talking and words, and so the job of the lawyer
Speaker 1: or the expert is to try to explain the psychology
Speaker 1: of interrogations to lay people, to bring them inside the
Speaker 1: interrogation room so that they can feel the same pressure
Speaker 1: that the suspect is under and maybe come to understand
Speaker 1: why they themselves might confess to a crime they didn't commit. Exactly.
Speaker 1: Every one of us has a breaking point, and what
Speaker 1: you see in these false confession cases is the power
Speaker 1: of the interrogation room, which is focused on identifying that
Speaker 1: breaking point for the person being interrogated. It's an incredibly
Speaker 1: powerful space. It's really good at getting true confessions, but
Speaker 1: also really good at getting false confessions. The first thing
Speaker 1: that is essential to any interrogation is isolation. Depriving a
Speaker 1: suspect from a lifeline. Two loved ones, friends, attorneys, and
Speaker 1: so police officers take suspects in a room, a specially
Speaker 1: designed room. It's usually a very small room. It's cramped
Speaker 1: to the extent there is furniture in the room. It's
Speaker 1: usually just a couple of chairs, maybe a table pushed
Speaker 1: to the side, because you don't want the table between
Speaker 1: the suspect and an interrogator because it can provide a
Speaker 1: sense of comfort for the suspect and it can minimize
Speaker 1: the ability of the interrogator to get into the suspect's face. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's no natural light in these rooms, no clocks, no telephones,
Speaker 1: The walls are basically barren, and usually the suspect is
Speaker 1: positioned in a corner or in a place where getting
Speaker 1: up and leaving requires the suspect to literally go through
Speaker 1: the two interrogators who are blocking the pathway to the door.
Speaker 1: These rooms have been around for many, many decades, but
Speaker 1: we're only getting a glimpse into them for the first time. Recently,
Speaker 1: as more and more confessions have been proven false by
Speaker 1: d NA, states are starting to require video cameras in
Speaker 1: interrogation rooms for the first time. Four states still don't
Speaker 1: require any kind of real time documentation, but because of
Speaker 1: those states that now require some sort of video camera
Speaker 1: or audio recording inside the room, we're getting a look
Speaker 1: for the first time, and what we're seeing is chilling.
Speaker 1: So once you have this sense of isolation, what that
Speaker 1: does is it fosters a dependence. Suspect becomes obliged to
Speaker 1: do what the interrogator asks him to do, and part
Speaker 1: of that dependence is built during the early part of
Speaker 1: an interrogation, which involves some kind of attempt to build
Speaker 1: trust between the interrogator and the suspect, something that suggests
Speaker 1: that the interrogator is here to help the suspect. In fact,
Speaker 1: the interrogator is the only person between the suspect and
Speaker 1: perhaps a life sentence or a prosecutor who's going to
Speaker 1: charge him or her with the death penalty. When people
Speaker 1: see what happens inside the interrogation room, they're horrified. The
Speaker 1: techniques that are used. Sure, they're psychological, very few cops
Speaker 1: um use physical abuse any longer. But these psychological techniques
Speaker 1: distort the world so much that suddenly it starts to
Speaker 1: make sense that you should confess even if you're innocence.
Speaker 1: And to watch that mind game in real time on
Speaker 1: these videos is absolutely appalling. What I find interesting is
Speaker 1: that many people we show these tapes too, they're accepting
Speaker 1: of the need to use some of these tactics to
Speaker 1: get true confessions. But what they find offensive is the
Speaker 1: way in which police officers feed facts two suspects and
Speaker 1: actually construct a narrative that isn't really the suspects confession
Speaker 1: at all. It is the suspect affirming a preconceived theory
Speaker 1: of the police that is shaped and constructed by the police.
Speaker 1: It's almost like like rehearsing a play, you know, like
Speaker 1: scripting a story that this person has to rehearse and
Speaker 1: get perfect and then perform for the final confession. And
Speaker 1: this process, amazingly enough, when we show it to some audiences,
Speaker 1: they laugh because, you know, if the goal of all
Speaker 1: of this of interrogation, our justice system is to find truth,
Speaker 1: this is such a distortion of truth that people laugh
Speaker 1: at the absurdity of it. And that's heartbreaking. Yeah, absolutely heartbreaking,
Speaker 1: because you're watching these people's lives be ruined in real
Speaker 1: time on these videos. All right, I'm just gonna come
Speaker 1: out and ask you who shot her in the head?
Speaker 1: Why didn't you tell us that second? When an entire
Speaker 1: gator says to Brendan Dascy, all right, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: come out and tell you who shot her in the head.
Speaker 1: It's heartbreaking because there are supposed to be checks and
Speaker 1: balances in this process, other police officers looking at the
Speaker 1: tape saying you can't do that. He has to come
Speaker 1: up with these facts on his own. And then there
Speaker 1: are prosecutors who, in reviewing these cases for trial, should
Speaker 1: know that this confession is unreliable. And then there are judges.
Speaker 1: They should see these confessions and they should say I'm
Speaker 1: not letting this go before a jury. This is not
Speaker 1: the suspects confession. It's constructed by the interrogators. And then
Speaker 1: there's the jury who also has an opportunity to weigh
Speaker 1: in on this. But time and time and time again,
Speaker 1: it's the power of the confession itself that ends up
Speaker 1: convicting these people. Too often, their fate is sealed because
Speaker 1: the systems check that should prevent false confessions from resulting
Speaker 1: in wrongful convictions don't work. So literally, when you're watching
Speaker 1: these videos at the interrogation room, you're watching acts of
Speaker 1: legal suicide, and in the worst cases, you're watching acts
Speaker 1: of psychological torture. I mean, there's a class of false confessions.
Speaker 1: They're called either coerced persuaded, or coerced internalized. But these
Speaker 1: are cases where police officers attack a suspect's confidence in
Speaker 1: their own memory of events. The suspect knows they're innocent,
Speaker 1: but police officers tell them perhaps they committed the crime
Speaker 1: in a blackout, or were under the influence of drugs
Speaker 1: or alcohol, or maybe that the trauma of killing a
Speaker 1: loved one was so painful that they repressed the memory
Speaker 1: of what they actually did. All of this crashes the
Speaker 1: suspects confidence in their own memory, and then police officers
Speaker 1: give them an explanation or a reason for why they
Speaker 1: might have committed the crime and not remembered it. At
Speaker 1: the end of the day, some suspects can't tell the
Speaker 1: difference between their real memories and their imagined memories, and
Speaker 1: the imagine memories have been shaped by the interrogator's questioning exactly.
Speaker 1: There are cases in which suspects are told that they
Speaker 1: must have split personalities and the good you doesn't remember
Speaker 1: what the bad you did. There have been cases where
Speaker 1: kids children have been falsely told that their loved ones
Speaker 1: on their deathbeds accused their own children of killing them. Then,
Speaker 1: of course they believe that their parents would never say
Speaker 1: such a thing unless it was true, so they begin
Speaker 1: to construct a narrative that accounts for what they think
Speaker 1: the parents had happened. The cases in which children confessed
Speaker 1: to killing their parents, parents confessed to killing their children,
Speaker 1: husbands confessed to killing their wives, siblings confessed to killing
Speaker 1: their siblings. These are these are the hardest ones to why,
Speaker 1: just because not only are these suspects being accused of
Speaker 1: one of the worst crimes imaginable in society, not only
Speaker 1: are they struggling with trying to remember something that they
Speaker 1: can't remember, but they're suffering from incredible grief, trauma and trauma.
Speaker 1: I mean, when someone close to you is is killed,
Speaker 1: especially if they've been murdered, and you're being interrogated within
Speaker 1: hours of discovering the body, you are so vulnerable to suggestion,
Speaker 1: so vulnerable to manipulation, desperate for help, desperate for a friend,
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what the interrogator wants you to think
Speaker 1: he is, and that's exactly, of course, what he's not.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're seeing the distortion of a mind in
Speaker 1: the interrogation room. The poisoning of a memory, the twisting
Speaker 1: of a world, and the creation of a profound injustice.
Speaker 1: The tactics, they're basically the same across all of these
Speaker 1: false confession videos that we have. You see a suspect
Speaker 1: being brought into an interrogation room, confronted with an accusation,
Speaker 1: and then it's the job of the interrogators to communicate
Speaker 1: to them, beyond the shadow of a doubt, we know
Speaker 1: you're guilty, and there's nothing you can say or do
Speaker 1: to convince us otherwise. And sometimes it takes hours of
Speaker 1: relentless accusation to bring this aspect down to a place
Speaker 1: of hopelessness. Then it's the job of the interrogators to
Speaker 1: offer confession as an out, as a way to cut
Speaker 1: your losses somehow and cling to some shred of hope.
Speaker 1: So you'll see interrogators say things like, look, there are
Speaker 1: two kinds of people in this world. There's someone who
Speaker 1: would commit a horrible crime like this one. Maybe someone
Speaker 1: who's done this before and is going to go do
Speaker 1: it again, right, a real monster. We all know what
Speaker 1: happens to people like that. They're never going to see
Speaker 1: the light of day again. But then there are other
Speaker 1: kinds of people in this world, people just like you
Speaker 1: or me, regular ordinary, good folks just trying to live
Speaker 1: their life, trying to do the right thing. People who
Speaker 1: maybe they just make a bad decision, a bad choice,
Speaker 1: they snap in a moment of stress or frustration. Um,
Speaker 1: we've all made mistakes. I've made a mistake in my life,
Speaker 1: haven't you. And we all know what happens to good
Speaker 1: people who just make mistakes. Right, people want to help them.
Speaker 1: If you just made a mistake, here, the judge will
Speaker 1: look at you and want to help you. The prosecutor
Speaker 1: will understand you better. You have a reason to hope.
Speaker 1: So which one is it? Are you the monster or
Speaker 1: are you the person who just made a mistake. That's
Speaker 1: the choice that the person in the interrogation room has,
Speaker 1: and every single one of us will choose to tell
Speaker 1: a story of miss ache in the hopes that it
Speaker 1: will result in help. And of course, when you confessed
Speaker 1: to that time you didn't commit in the hopes that
Speaker 1: everyone will want to help you, it doesn't help you
Speaker 1: at all. It seals your fate. In October of two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, I got a phone call on the
Speaker 1: other end of the line were several attorneys who I
Speaker 1: knew and respected, and they said to me, do you
Speaker 1: know about the case of Brendan Dassy? And I said, yes,
Speaker 1: of course I know about the case. Stephen Avery was
Speaker 1: the first person exonerated by DNA evidence in Wisconsin. It
Speaker 1: was huge news. And then he got charged with the
Speaker 1: murder of photographer named Teresa Halbach in two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: And he had a nephew named Brendan Dassy, a sixteen
Speaker 1: year old nephew who had confessed to participating in that
Speaker 1: crime with his uncle Stephen, and both of them had
Speaker 1: been convicted and sentenced to life. And so I knew
Speaker 1: the basic background of the case. And they said to me,
Speaker 1: would you represent Brendan Dassy on appeal? And this is
Speaker 1: the kind of work that I was called to do.
Speaker 1: It was the kind of work that I was doing.
Speaker 1: But I said to them, send me the interrogation videos.
Speaker 1: So when the tapes arrived, I looked at them and
Speaker 1: I decided I was going to get involved. But I
Speaker 1: wanted a gut check. I wanted someone else to tell
Speaker 1: me what they saw. I had worked with one student
Speaker 1: before on a false confession case, and I assigned her
Speaker 1: to look at these recordings, and that student was Laura,
Speaker 1: and I writer, that's right. This is about twelve years
Speaker 1: ago or so, and my last year of law school,
Speaker 1: I decided on a whim to sign up for your
Speaker 1: class Stave on Unwrongful Convictions. Tell the truth. It wasn't
Speaker 1: You didn't sign up from my class. Thought I was
Speaker 1: signing up for someone else's class on wrongful Convictions. But
Speaker 1: I ended up in your class, and I decided to
Speaker 1: stick around because it got interesting real fast. Right And
Speaker 1: about a month in, Steve, you know, you called me
Speaker 1: into your office and you said, I've just gotten involved
Speaker 1: in this case out of Wisconsin involving a sixteen year
Speaker 1: old boy with intellectual limitations who confessed to a murder
Speaker 1: that I don't think he committed. And you handed me
Speaker 1: the interrogation videos of Brendan Dascy, the same videos that
Speaker 1: like eight years later would go on to be featured
Speaker 1: in Making a Murderer. And I watched them from start
Speaker 1: to finish, and my heart broke. We know he did
Speaker 1: something else? To what else did he do? It? Her
Speaker 1: extremely extremely important to tell us this. Trust to believe you,
Speaker 1: because I saw two seasoned adult interrogators questioning a sixteen
Speaker 1: year old, intellectually limited boy manipulating him into confessing to
Speaker 1: a murder that he couldn't even describe. Did you see
Speaker 1: whether cell phone of hers? Oh? Do you know whether
Speaker 1: she had a camera? Oh? I couldn't shake the feeling
Speaker 1: of wanting to jump into the video screen and get
Speaker 1: myself between Brendan and those interrogators who were manipulating him
Speaker 1: into confessing to a crime he so clearly didn't commit.
Speaker 1: That was literally a life changing moment for me. I
Speaker 1: graduated from law school and within months I was back
Speaker 1: at Northwestern working alongside Steve to build the Center on
Speaker 1: Wrongful Convictions and to help represent Brendan and other kids
Speaker 1: just like him. Ever since, you know, every once in
Speaker 1: a while you come across a student, and Laura was
Speaker 1: a brilliant writer. I mean, let's just be honest, she
Speaker 1: was a better writer than I was. Gonna get that
Speaker 1: into writing again, But she really didn't know a lot
Speaker 1: about the subject of false confession. She was, in a sense,
Speaker 1: like an uneducated jury member looking at that tape for
Speaker 1: the first time, and she was hooked from that point on.
Speaker 1: By the way, I only told Steve like two years
Speaker 1: ago that I had mistakenly signed up for his class
Speaker 1: broke my heart. Um No, I mean, what can I say?
Speaker 1: This is all totally clean slate for me. I really
Speaker 1: did know nothing about criminal law, and and what I
Speaker 1: saw broke everything I thought I knew about our justice system.
Speaker 1: And as I continued working with Steve over the years,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, there's no there's no better mentor
Speaker 1: on the planet than Steve Drisen. He lifts others around
Speaker 1: him up, that's what he does. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: little by little, as I learned from him, as I
Speaker 1: absorbed his passion for justice and his seven dedication to
Speaker 1: speaking for people without a voice, you know, I was
Speaker 1: the fortunate beneficiary of his mentorship and it's something I'll
Speaker 1: be forever grateful for. You know, I think it's important
Speaker 1: to note Laura had a brilliant legal mind, But for me,
Speaker 1: it was when she met Brendon for the first time
Speaker 1: and there was a sort of instant connection between the
Speaker 1: two of them that sealed the deal. For me. I
Speaker 1: knew that I needed to keep her on this case
Speaker 1: whatever I could do, because that connection, the ability to
Speaker 1: relate to a client under these circumstances, is so important. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the thing. It's one thing to watch
Speaker 1: the videotape, but it's another thing to actually meet the
Speaker 1: person whose life you saw being dismantled, and to hear
Speaker 1: the stories of suffering and to understand them not just
Speaker 1: as a character in a in a in a video
Speaker 1: or a case, um, but as a full human with
Speaker 1: a life and a family and friends and dreams and
Speaker 1: hopes and the kinds of plans that all of us have.
Speaker 1: When you meet someone like that and you're the lawyer
Speaker 1: and it's your job to help them, you can't walk
Speaker 1: away from that. You just can't do it, um. And I,
Speaker 1: you know, haven't walked away since. One of the questions
Speaker 1: people ask us all the time is how we and
Speaker 1: others like us have the strength to continue fighting these
Speaker 1: injustices day in and day out. Colleagues in our office,
Speaker 1: many of them are doing similarly gut wrenching work, and
Speaker 1: so when our office is functioning at its best, there
Speaker 1: is a lot of support there. Our office also is
Speaker 1: often a home and a place of solace for our clients.
Speaker 1: So we see some of our success stories walking around
Speaker 1: and that helps prop us up, you know, but it's
Speaker 1: it's hard. So for me as a sort of therapeutic
Speaker 1: way to rid myself of some of these cases, but
Speaker 1: more importantly to educate others. Was to do two things.
Speaker 1: To write about them and then to speak publicly and
Speaker 1: to spread this knowledge around as much as possible. And
Speaker 1: that's what I've been doing for the past twenty or
Speaker 1: twenty five years, and that's what Laura has been doing
Speaker 1: since she's been involved in this work. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the work is hard, and of course it's stressful,
Speaker 1: but it's the victories that keep us going. Right, There's
Speaker 1: no better feeling than watching someone you personally have believed
Speaker 1: in and fought for, usually for years. No better feeling
Speaker 1: in the world than watching them walk out of prison
Speaker 1: finally here I mean shod guilty feeling of giving birth,
Speaker 1: of giving life back, helping this person rediscover and recapture
Speaker 1: the life that's been taken unjustly from them. It's an
Speaker 1: incredible feeling, um, and that's that's what keeps us going.
Speaker 1: I think the times we're able to do that, those
Speaker 1: moments will stick with you for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: False confession stories are life changing to hear. I mean literally,
Speaker 1: it was a story of a false confession that changed
Speaker 1: the course of my life, transformed my own personal trajectory,
Speaker 1: and that's what I want to do with this podcast.
Speaker 1: I want to share these stories because there's no better
Speaker 1: way to understand the need to reform the system than
Speaker 1: to hear about these injustices and to get fired up
Speaker 1: to view this as a call to action. I've been
Speaker 1: telling these stories for twenty years and trying to reach
Speaker 1: larger and larger audiences. So for me, that's what this
Speaker 1: is about. It's another opportunity to try to prevent someone
Speaker 1: else from suffering where Brendan Dascy has suffered exactly. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the amazing things is after making a murder
Speaker 1: came out, all of a sudden, people around the globe
Speaker 1: started caring about the criminal justice system for the first time,
Speaker 1: I mean millions of people. We want to amplify those feelings.
Speaker 1: We want to keep that energy flowing because it's already
Speaker 1: starting to result in important reforms around the United States
Speaker 1: and around the globe. We got to keep that going.
Speaker 1: These stories are powerful vehicles for justice, and that's why
Speaker 1: we're here telling these stories today. We can fix this,
Speaker 1: but we need to fix it together. The first story
Speaker 1: we're going to tell in this podcast is the story
Speaker 1: of a Virginia man named Robert Davis. When I first
Speaker 1: learned about Robert Davis's case, Laura had just come back
Speaker 1: into the fall to Northwestern Law School, and she was
Speaker 1: beginning to show signs of being a rising star in
Speaker 1: this field. And one of the things I wanted to
Speaker 1: do is to not only give her the Robert Davis tapes,
Speaker 1: but to let her run with them, let her analyze
Speaker 1: this case as an expert. A lot of people, I think,
Speaker 1: watched Making a Murderer and thought that's a Manitowa County problem.
Speaker 1: That's something that just happened to Brandon, And that's not
Speaker 1: the case. This has happened to hundreds of people around
Speaker 1: the country that we know of, and surely there are
Speaker 1: thousands that we don't know of. And we wanted to
Speaker 1: start with Robert Davis because Robert's an everyday ordinary guy
Speaker 1: right comes from a stable family and a good home
Speaker 1: and got caught up in the same forces of interrogation
Speaker 1: that Brendon Dancy did and ended up confessing to an
Speaker 1: equally serious, heinous crime that he, like Brendan, didn't commit.
Speaker 1: There's no better illustration of the point that we all
Speaker 1: can be broken by interrogation than Robert Davis's story. So
Speaker 1: join us next week and thanks for listening. Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 1: in association with Signal Company Number One. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: our executive producer Jason Flom and the team at Signal
Speaker 1: Company Number one Executive producer Kevin Wardace, Senior Producer and Pope,
Speaker 1: and additional production and editing by Connor Hall. Our music
Speaker 1: was composed by j Ralph. You can follow me on
Speaker 1: Instagram or Twitter at Laura ni Rider and you can
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen. For more information
Speaker 1: on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast dot com and
Speaker 1: be 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