Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer,
Speaker 1: and I'm Steve Drusen. 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've been convicted of crimes they didn't commit.
Speaker 1: Over its twenty years, the center has freed more than
Speaker 1: forty innocent men, women, and children, and it's our privilege
Speaker 1: to work there. Some of you may know me and
Speaker 1: Steve from the Netflix show Making a Murderer, which exposed
Speaker 1: the unjust case against our client, Brendan Dassy, or you
Speaker 1: may have heard me on an episode from last seasons
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flomm, where Brendan told his own
Speaker 1: story for the first time. On this podcast series, Steve
Speaker 1: 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 unburden themselves of their guilt and the story that
Speaker 1: they're clinging on too. But what we have discovered is
Speaker 1: that confessions aren't always true. That in fact, we know
Speaker 1: of hundreds of cases where someone is brought into an
Speaker 1: interrogation room, questioned by the police, sometimes for hours, ends
Speaker 1: up confessing to a crime, often a very brutal crime,
Speaker 1: a rape or a murder, something like that, and they're
Speaker 1: convicted on the basis of that confession, sent away to
Speaker 1: prison for years, decades sometimes, and then an organization like
Speaker 1: our Center on Wrongful Convictions comes along and does DNA
Speaker 1: testing and discovers, beyond the shadow of a doubt that
Speaker 1: the confession is false. We know hundreds of cases like this,
Speaker 1: and that really gives the lie to this belief that
Speaker 1: confessions are always true.
Speaker 2: I think people understand that if you were tortured or
Speaker 2: you're subjected to the kinds of tactics we saw in
Speaker 2: Abu Grabe and Guantanamo that under those kinds of physical, abusive,
Speaker 2: extreme sleep deprivation kind of tactics, yeah, you might say
Speaker 2: some things, including confessed to some serious crimes you didn't commit.
Speaker 2: But most of today's modern psychological interrogation techniques are all
Speaker 2: about talking words, and so the job of the lawyer
Speaker 2: or the expert is to try to explain the psychology
Speaker 2: of interrogations to lay people, to bring them inside the
Speaker 2: interrogation room so that they can feel the same pressure
Speaker 2: that the suspect is under and maybe come to understand
Speaker 2: why they themselves might confess to a crime they didn't commit.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Every one of us has a breaking point, and
Speaker 1: what you see in these false confession cases is the
Speaker 1: power of the interrogation room, which is focused on identifying
Speaker 1: that breaking point for the person being interrogated. It's an
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful space. It's really good at getting true confessions,
Speaker 1: but also really good at getting false confessions.
Speaker 2: The first thing that is essential to any interrogation is isolation.
Speaker 2: Depriving a suspect from a lifeline to loved ones, friends' attorneys,
Speaker 2: and so police officers take suspects in a room, a
Speaker 2: specially designed room. It's usually a very small room. It's
Speaker 2: cramped to the extent there is furniture in the room.
Speaker 2: It's usually just a couple chairs, maybe a table pushed
Speaker 2: to the side, because you don't want the table between
Speaker 2: the suspect and an interrogator because it can provide a
Speaker 2: sense of comfort for the suspect and it can minimize
Speaker 2: the ability of the interrogator to get into the suspect's face.
Speaker 2: There's no natural light in these rooms, no clocks, no telephones,
Speaker 2: The walls are basically barren, and usually the suspect is
Speaker 2: positioned in a corner or in a place where getting
Speaker 2: up and leaving requires the suspect to literally go through
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 1: time recently, as more and more confessions have been proven
Speaker 1: false by DNA, states are starting to require video cameras
Speaker 1: in interrogation rooms for the first time. Twenty four states
Speaker 1: still don't require any kind of real time documentation, but
Speaker 1: because of those twenty six states, that now requires some
Speaker 1: sort of video camera or audio recording inside the room.
Speaker 1: We're getting a look for the first time, and what
Speaker 1: we're seeing is chilling.
Speaker 2: So once you have this sense of isolation, what that
Speaker 2: does is it fosters a dependence. The suspect becomes obliged
Speaker 2: to do what the interrogator asks him to do, and
Speaker 2: part of that dependence is built during the early part
Speaker 2: of an interrogation, which involves some kind of attempt to
Speaker 2: build trust between the interrogator and the suspect, something that
Speaker 2: suggests that the interrogator is here to help the suspect.
Speaker 2: In fact, the interrogator is the only person between the
Speaker 2: suspect and perhaps a life sentence or a prosecutor who's
Speaker 2: going to charge him or her with the death penalty.
Speaker 1: When people see what happens inside the interrogation room, they're horrified.
Speaker 1: The techniques that are used. Sure, they're psychological, Very few
Speaker 1: cops 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 innocent,
Speaker 1: And to watch that mind game in real time on
Speaker 1: these videos is absolutely appalling.
Speaker 2: What I find interesting is that many people we show
Speaker 2: these tapes to, they're accepting of the need to use
Speaker 2: some of these tactics to get true confessions. But what
Speaker 2: they find offensive is the way in which police officers
Speaker 2: feed facts to suspects and actually construct a narrative that
Speaker 2: isn't really the suspects confession at all. It is the
Speaker 2: suspect affirming a preconceived theory of the police that is
Speaker 2: 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 fine truth,
Speaker 1: this is such a distortion of truth that people laugh
Speaker 1: at the absurdity of it.
Speaker 2: And that's heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely heartbreaking, because you're watching these people's lives be
Speaker 1: ruined in real time on these videos. All right, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to come.
Speaker 2: Out and ask you who shot her in the hat
Speaker 2: he did? Why didn't you tell us that when an
Speaker 2: entrergator says to Brendan Dacy, all right, I'm just going
Speaker 2: to come out and tell you who shot her in
Speaker 2: the head. It's heartbreaking because there are supposed to be
Speaker 2: checks and balances in this process, other police officers looking
Speaker 2: at the tape saying you can't do that. He has
Speaker 2: to come up with these facts on his own. And
Speaker 2: then there are prosecutors who, when reviewing these cases for trials,
Speaker 2: should know that this confession is unreliable. And then there
Speaker 2: are judges. They should see these confessions and they should say,
Speaker 2: I'm not letting this go before a jury. This is
Speaker 2: not the suspect's confession. It's constructed by the interrogators. And
Speaker 2: then there's the jury who also has an opportunity to
Speaker 2: weigh in on this. But time and time and time again,
Speaker 2: it's the power of the confession itself that ends up
Speaker 2: convicting these people.
Speaker 1: Too often, their fate is sealed because the systems check
Speaker 1: that should prevent false confessions from resulting in wrongful convictions
Speaker 1: don't work. So literally, when you're watching these videos at
Speaker 1: the interrogation room, you're watching acts of legal suicide.
Speaker 2: And in the worst cases, you're watching acts of psychological torture.
Speaker 2: I mean there is a class of false confessions. They're
Speaker 2: called either coerced persuaded, or coerced internalized. But these are
Speaker 2: cases where police officers attack a suspect's confidence in their
Speaker 2: own memory of events. The suspect knows they're innocent, but
Speaker 2: police officers tell them perhaps they committed the crime in
Speaker 2: a blackout, or were under the influence of drugs or alcohol,
Speaker 2: or maybe that the trauma of killing a loved one
Speaker 2: was so painful that they repressed the memory of what
Speaker 2: they actually did. All of this crashes the suspect's confidence
Speaker 2: in their own memory, and then police officers give them
Speaker 2: an explanation or a reason for why they might have
Speaker 2: committed the crime and not remembered it. At the end
Speaker 2: of the day, some suspects can't tell the difference between
Speaker 2: their real memories and their imagined memories, and the imagined
Speaker 2: 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 kids'
Speaker 1: children have been falsely told that their loved ones on
Speaker 1: their deathbeds accuse 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.
Speaker 2: The cases in which children confess to killing their parents,
Speaker 2: parents confessed to killing their children, husbands confessed to killing
Speaker 2: their wives, siblings confessed to killing their siblings, these are
Speaker 2: these are the hardest ones to whty, just because not
Speaker 2: only are these suspects being accused of one of the
Speaker 2: worst crimes imaginable in society, not only are they struggling
Speaker 2: with trying to remember something that they can't remember, but
Speaker 2: they're suffering from incredible grief trauma. Yeah, and trauma. I mean,
Speaker 2: when someone close to you is killed, especially if they've
Speaker 2: been murdered, and you're being interrogated within hours of discovering
Speaker 2: the body, you are so vulnerable to suggestions, so vulnerable
Speaker 2: to manipulation.
Speaker 1: Desperate for help, desperate for a friend, And that's exactly
Speaker 1: what the interrogator wants you to think he is, and
Speaker 1: that's exactly, of course, what he's not. I mean, you
Speaker 1: are seeing the distortion of a mind in the interrogation room,
Speaker 1: the poisoning of a memory, the twisting of a world,
Speaker 1: and the creation of a profound injustice. The tactics, they're
Speaker 1: basically the same across all of these false confession videos
Speaker 1: that we have. You see a suspect being brought into
Speaker 1: an interrogation room, confronted with an accusation, and then it's
Speaker 1: the job of the interrogators to communicate to them, beyond
Speaker 1: the shadow of a doubt, we know you're guilty, and
Speaker 1: there's nothing you can say or do to convince us otherwise.
Speaker 1: And sometimes it takes hours of relentless accusation to bring
Speaker 1: the suspect down to a place of hopelessness. Then it's
Speaker 1: the job of the interrogators to offer confession as an out,
Speaker 1: as a way to cut your losses somehow and cling
Speaker 1: to some shred of hope. So you'll see interrogators say
Speaker 1: things like, look, there are two kinds of people in
Speaker 1: this world. There's someone who would commit a horrible crime
Speaker 1: like this one. Maybe someone who's done this before and
Speaker 1: is going to go do it again, right, real monster.
Speaker 1: We all know what happens to people like that. They're
Speaker 1: never going to see the light of day again. But
Speaker 1: then there are other kinds of people in this world,
Speaker 1: people just like you or me, regular ordinary, good folks,
Speaker 1: just trying to live their life, trying to do the
Speaker 1: right thing. People who maybe they just make a bad decision,
Speaker 1: a bad choice, they snap in a moment of stress
Speaker 1: or frustration. We've all made mistakes. I've made a mistake
Speaker 1: in my life, haven't you. And we all know what
Speaker 1: happens to good people who just make mistakes. Right, people
Speaker 1: want to help them. If you just made a mistake here,
Speaker 1: the judge will look at you and want to help you.
Speaker 1: The prosecutor will understand you better. You'll have a reason
Speaker 1: to hope. So which one is it? Are you the
Speaker 1: monster or are you the person who just made a mistake.
Speaker 1: That's 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 mistake in the hopes that it will
Speaker 1: result in help. And of course, when you confess to
Speaker 1: that crime you didn't commit in the hopes that everyone
Speaker 1: will want to help you, it doesn't help you at all.
Speaker 1: It seals your fate.
Speaker 2: In October of two thousand and seven, I got a
Speaker 2: phone call on the other end of the line were
Speaker 2: several attorneys who I knew and respected, and they said
Speaker 2: to me, do you know about the case of Brendan
Speaker 2: Dacy And I said, yes, of course I know about
Speaker 2: the case. Stephen Avery was the first person exonerated by
Speaker 2: DNA evidence in Wisconsin. It was huge news. And then
Speaker 2: he got charged with the murder of a photographer named
Speaker 2: Teresa Holbach in two thousand and five. And he had
Speaker 2: a nephew named Brendan Dassi, a sixteen year old nephew
Speaker 2: who had confessed to participating in that crime with his
Speaker 2: uncle Stephen, and both of them had been convicted and
Speaker 2: sentenced to life. And so I knew the basic background
Speaker 2: of the case. They said to me, which you represent
Speaker 2: Brendan Dacy on appeal. And this is the kind of
Speaker 2: work that I was called to do. It was the
Speaker 2: kind of work that I was doing. But I said
Speaker 2: to them, send me the interrogation videos. So when the
Speaker 2: tapes arrived, I looked at them and I decided I
Speaker 2: was going to get involved, but I wanted a gut check.
Speaker 2: I wanted someone else to tell me what they saw.
Speaker 2: I had worked with one student before on a false
Speaker 2: confession case and I assigned her to look at these recordings,
Speaker 2: and that student was Laura, and I writer, that's right.
Speaker 1: This is about twelve years ago or so, and my
Speaker 1: last year of law school. I decided on a whim
Speaker 1: to sign up for your class, Steve, un wrongful Convictions.
Speaker 2: Tell the truth? Was it? You didn't I sign up
Speaker 2: for my class?
Speaker 1: I thought I was signing up for someone else's class
Speaker 1: on wrongful convictions. But I ended up in your class.
Speaker 2: Thank god.
Speaker 1: I decided to stick around because it got interesting real fast.
Speaker 1: Right And about a month in Steve, you know, you
Speaker 1: called me into your office and you said, I've just
Speaker 1: gotten involved in this case out of Wisconsin involving a
Speaker 1: sixteen year old boy with intellectual limitations who confessed to
Speaker 1: a murder that I don't think he committed. And you
Speaker 1: handed me the interrogation videos of Brendon Dacy, the same
Speaker 1: videos that like eight years later would go on to
Speaker 1: be featured in Making a Murderer. And I watched them
Speaker 1: from start to finish, and my heart broke.
Speaker 2: We know he did something else to her? What else
Speaker 2: did he do with her?
Speaker 1: Extremely extremely im poor you tell us this for USh
Speaker 1: to believe you? Because I saw two seasoned adult interrogators
Speaker 1: questioning a sixteen year old, intellectually limited boy, manipulating him
Speaker 1: into confessing to a murder that he couldn't even describe.
Speaker 2: Did you see whether a cell phone of hers? Oh?
Speaker 2: Do you know whether she had a camera? Oh?
Speaker 1: I couldn't shake the feeling of wanting to jump into
Speaker 1: the video screen and get myself between Brendan and those
Speaker 1: interrogators who were manipulating him into confessing to a crime
Speaker 1: he so clearly didn't commit. That was literally a life
Speaker 1: changing moment for me. I graduated from law school and
Speaker 1: within months I was back at Northwestern working alongside Steve
Speaker 1: to build the Center on Wrongful Convictions and to help
Speaker 1: represent Brendan and other kids just like him. Ever since, you.
Speaker 2: Know, every once in a while you come across a student,
Speaker 2: and Laura was a brilliant writer. I mean, let's just
Speaker 2: be honest, she was a better writer than I was.
Speaker 1: Can I get that in writing again?
Speaker 2: But she really didn't know a lot about the subject
Speaker 2: of false confession. She was, in a sense, like an
Speaker 2: uneducated jewelry member looking at that tape for the first time,
Speaker 2: 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 2: Absolutely, it broke my heart.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, what can I say, This is all
Speaker 1: totally clean slate for me. I really did know nothing
Speaker 1: about criminal law, and what I saw broke everything I
Speaker 1: thought I knew about our justice system. And as I
Speaker 1: continued to working with Steve over the years, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no there's no better mentor on the
Speaker 1: planet than Steve Drisen. He lifts others around him up,
Speaker 1: that's what he does. And you know, little by little
Speaker 1: as I learned from him, as I absorbed his passion
Speaker 1: for justice and his twenty four to seven dedication to
Speaker 1: speaking for people without a voice, and I was the
Speaker 1: fortunate beneficiary of his mentorship and it's something I'll be
Speaker 1: forever grateful for.
Speaker 2: You know, I think it's important to note Laura had
Speaker 2: a brilliant legal mind, but for me, it was when
Speaker 2: she met Brendan for the first time and there was
Speaker 2: a sort of instant connection between the two of them
Speaker 2: that sealed the deal.
Speaker 1: For me.
Speaker 2: I knew that I needed to keep her on this
Speaker 2: case whatever I could do, because that connection, the ability
Speaker 2: to relate to a client under these circumstances is so important.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, that's the thing. It's one thing to
Speaker 1: watch the videotape, but it's another thing to actually meet
Speaker 1: the person whose life you saw being dismantled, and to
Speaker 1: hear the stories of suffering and to understand them not
Speaker 1: just as a character in a video or a case,
Speaker 1: but as a full human with a life and a
Speaker 1: family and friends and dreams and hopes and the kinds
Speaker 1: of plans that all of us have. When you meet
Speaker 1: someone like that and you're the lawyer and it's your
Speaker 1: job to help them, you can't walk away from that.
Speaker 1: You just can't do it. And I haven't walked away since.
Speaker 1: One of the questions people ask us all the time
Speaker 1: is how we and others like us have the strength
Speaker 1: to continue fighting these injustices day in and day out.
Speaker 2: Colleagues in our office, many of them are doing similarly
Speaker 2: gut wrenching work, and so when our office is functioning
Speaker 2: at its best, there is a lot of support there.
Speaker 2: Our office also is often a home and a place
Speaker 2: of solace for our clients. So we see some of
Speaker 2: our success stories walking around and that helps prop us up.
Speaker 2: But it's hard, so for me as a sort of
Speaker 2: therapeutic way to rid myself of some of these cases,
Speaker 2: but more importantly to educate others, was to do two things.
Speaker 2: To write about them and then to speak publicly and
Speaker 2: to spread this knowledge around as much as possible. And
Speaker 2: that's what I've been doing for the past twenty or
Speaker 2: twenty five years, and that's what Lara has been doing
Speaker 2: since she's been involved in this work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, the work is hard, and
Speaker 1: of course it's stressful, but it's the victories that keep
Speaker 1: us going. Right, There's no better feeling than watching someone
Speaker 1: you personally have believed in and fought for, usually for years.
Speaker 1: No better feeling in the world than watching them walk
Speaker 1: out of prison.
Speaker 2: I can't believe him finally hear this is unbelieved. I mean,
Speaker 2: steal shot, leave that you're you finally.
Speaker 1: Defended, not guilty of feeling of giving birth, of giving
Speaker 1: life back, helping this person rediscover and recapture the life
Speaker 1: that's been taken unjustly from them. It's an incredible feeling
Speaker 1: and that's what keeps us going. I think the times
Speaker 1: we're able to do that, those moments will stick with
Speaker 1: you for the rest of your life. False confession stories
Speaker 1: are life changing to hear. I mean literally, it was
Speaker 1: a story of a false confession that changed the course
Speaker 1: of my life, transformed my own personal trajectory. And that's
Speaker 1: what I want to do with this podcast. I want
Speaker 1: to share these stories because there's no better way to
Speaker 1: understand the need to reform the system than to hear
Speaker 1: about these injustices and to get fired up to view
Speaker 1: this as a call to action.
Speaker 2: I've been telling these stories for twenty years and trying
Speaker 2: to reach larger and larger audiences. So for me, that's
Speaker 2: what this is about. It's another opportunity to try to
Speaker 2: prevent someone else from suffering what Brendan Dacy has suffered exactly.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the amazing things is after making
Speaker 1: a murder came out, all of a sudden, people around
Speaker 1: the globe started caring about the criminal justice system for
Speaker 1: the first time, I mean millions of people. We want
Speaker 1: to amplify those feelings. We want to keep that energy
Speaker 1: flowing because it's already starting to result in important reforms
Speaker 1: around the United States and around the globe. We got
Speaker 1: to keep that going. These stories are powerful vehicles for justice,
Speaker 1: and that's why we're here telling these stories today. We
Speaker 1: can fix this, but we need to fix it together.
Speaker 1: The first story we're going to tell in this podcast
Speaker 1: is the story of a Virginia man named Robert Davis.
Speaker 2: When I first learned about Robert Davis's case, Lara had
Speaker 2: just come back into the fall to Northwestern Law School,
Speaker 2: and she was beginning to show signs of being a
Speaker 2: rising star in this field. And one of the things
Speaker 2: I wanted to do is to not only give her
Speaker 2: the Robert Davis tapes, but to let her run with them,
Speaker 2: let her analyze this case as an expert.
Speaker 1: A lot of people, I think, watched Making a Murderer
Speaker 1: and thought, that's a Manitoac County problem. That's something that
Speaker 1: just happened to Brendan, And that's not the case. This
Speaker 1: has happened to hundreds of people around the country that
Speaker 1: we know of, and surely there are thousands that we
Speaker 1: don't know of. And we wanted to start with Robert
Speaker 1: Davis because Roberts an everyday ordinary guy right comes from
Speaker 1: a stable family and a good home and got caught
Speaker 1: up in the same forces of interrogation that Brendan Dancy
Speaker 1: did and ended up confessing to an equally serious heinous
Speaker 1: crime that he, like Brendan, didn't commit. There's no better
Speaker 1: illustration of the point that we all can be broken
Speaker 1: by interrogation than Robert Davis's story. So join us next
Speaker 1: week and thanks for listening. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is
Speaker 1: the production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number One. Thanks to our executive producer Jason
Speaker 1: Flamm and the team at Signal Company Number One. Executive
Speaker 1: producer Kevin wardis senior producer and Pope, and additional production
Speaker 1: and editing by Connor Hall. Our music was composed by
Speaker 1: Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter
Speaker 1: at Laura Nyrider, and you can follow me on Twitter.
Speaker 2: At s Drizzen.
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
Speaker 1: and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
Speaker 1: Twitter at wrong Conviction