Speaker 1: Of all the hundreds of xuneries that I've had the
Speaker 1: privilege to meet, none have touched my heart any more
Speaker 1: profoundly than Marty Tankliffe. And his case is profiled, by
Speaker 1: the way, in one of the most incredible books I've
Speaker 1: ever read. It's called A Criminal Injustice, A True Crime,
Speaker 1: a False Confession, and the Fight to Free Marty Tankliff.
Speaker 1: It's by Richard Firshman and J. Saltpeter. It reads like
Speaker 1: a John Grisham novel, but it's all true. Marty is
Speaker 1: an incredible human. Since his episode originally aired on November seven,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, a number of amazing developments have happened in
Speaker 1: Marty's life. He received in twenty eighteen a ten million
Speaker 1: dollars settlement, which, by the way, you could put another
Speaker 1: zero on it still wouldn't make up for what he
Speaker 1: went through. Marty passed a Bar exam, and he's pursuing
Speaker 1: a career as an attorney, advocating criminal justice reform and
Speaker 1: fighting to write wrongful convictions. And if that wasn't enough
Speaker 1: for you, Marty is now a professor at Georgetown University,
Speaker 1: leading a class with Professor Mark Howard that is helping
Speaker 1: to resolve wrong for conviction cases. They already had their
Speaker 1: first win in the case of Valentino Dixon, who's been
Speaker 1: on my show. Marty Tankliffe a profile and courage, an
Speaker 1: unbelievable story that you have to hear, so please listen
Speaker 1: to my interview with Marty Tankliffe.
Speaker 2: I came from a beautiful neighborhood.
Speaker 3: I had a beautiful life.
Speaker 2: I went to sleep because September seventh was the first
Speaker 2: day of my high school year. I was going to
Speaker 2: be a senior.
Speaker 3: At twenty two, I was set to start college.
Speaker 2: I woke up and my life was never the same again.
Speaker 3: Cops came out with guns drawn, and I never saw
Speaker 3: freedom ever since after that. It's like roach mode, Tom,
Speaker 3: once you get in and I can't now.
Speaker 1: This is wrongful conviction. With Jason Flumm. I'm very excited
Speaker 1: today because I have two people who I consider heroes
Speaker 1: of mine for different sets of reasons on the show.
Speaker 1: Marty Tankleff is here today. Marty is an exonery who
Speaker 1: was wrongfully convicted of murdering his parents, which I get
Speaker 1: the chills just hearing myself say that, and he's going
Speaker 1: to share his remarkable story of going through what could
Speaker 1: be considered one of the most traumatic experiences that any
Speaker 1: human being could ever endure, and his subsequent triumph post exoneration.
Speaker 1: You will be amazed at what he's been able to
Speaker 1: accomplish and overcome. We also have today, Saul Cassen, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to Embarrassaul a little bit by reading part
Speaker 1: of his resume, because it's quite extraordinary. Saul is a
Speaker 1: true hero of the Innocent's movement. He's English Professor of
Speaker 1: psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New
Speaker 1: York and Massachusetts Professor emeritus at Williams College. He's received
Speaker 1: his PhD at the University of Connecticut. Moreover, Saul pioneered
Speaker 1: in the eighties the scientific study of false confessions by
Speaker 1: introducing a taxonomy that distinguished between three types of false confessions, voluntary, compliant,
Speaker 1: and internalized that is universally accepted today. He has recently
Speaker 1: studied forensic confirmation biases and the impact that confessions have
Speaker 1: on judges, juries, lay witnesses, forensic science examiners, and the
Speaker 1: plea bargaining process. He is widely considered the foremost expert
Speaker 1: on false confessions. So welcome both of you. Thanks for
Speaker 1: coming in and joining us today.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having us.
Speaker 1: Marty. Let's start with you. So let's go back to
Speaker 1: you grew up in Long Island.
Speaker 2: I grew up in an affluent area called Beltan, New York,
Speaker 2: which is a little hamlet in Port Jeffice in New
Speaker 2: York North Shore, Suffolk County. I was lived in a
Speaker 2: kind of a wonderful area. I went to Portreffson High School,
Speaker 2: where the norm was we drove nice cars, we went
Speaker 2: on boats. And what happened to me was not something
Speaker 2: myself or anyone in my neighborhood could have ever imagined.
Speaker 4: No, no one could imagine it.
Speaker 1: You had a happy childhood, a nuclear family, right, you
Speaker 1: and your sister.
Speaker 2: Your parents idyllic, A little bit more idyllic because I
Speaker 2: was adopted, so my parents were older. So a lot
Speaker 2: of what we did growing up, my father live viciously
Speaker 2: through me because he didn't have a very good childhood.
Speaker 2: So you know, we had the boats, the ATVs, we
Speaker 2: traveled a lot, so it was very It was a
Speaker 2: great childhood.
Speaker 4: And he was the bagel king, right he What.
Speaker 2: He did was is my father was an entrepreneur who
Speaker 2: invested with Jerry Steuerman, who was then known as the
Speaker 2: bagel King of Long Island.
Speaker 1: Right, So everything's fine, everything's good until one really terrible,
Speaker 1: fateful day. And let's talk about that. And we're going
Speaker 1: to get to you, Saul in a minute when we
Speaker 1: get into the deeper issues surrounding what happened to Marty.
Speaker 1: But first I want to set the stage. So you're
Speaker 1: at home, right, typical day, you wake up in the morning,
Speaker 1: walk us through this.
Speaker 2: Let me give you a little background. My father was
Speaker 2: partners with Jerry Struman, had invested over a half a
Speaker 2: million dollars with Jerry in his bagel stores and horses,
Speaker 2: and in the summer of nineteen eighty eight their relationship
Speaker 2: significantly deteriorated. What I later learned was is that we
Speaker 2: believe my father learned what Jerry's business was really about.
Speaker 2: Jerry's son, Todd, was a drug dealer, and we believe
Speaker 2: my father kind of realized that the bagel businesses may
Speaker 2: have been a money wandering operation for Todd's drug dealing business.
Speaker 4: And we're talking hard drugs, now, hard drugs.
Speaker 2: Todd was arrested, went to prison for possession of cocaine, marijuana,
Speaker 2: and other drugs, and he of time in New York
Speaker 2: State Prisons. But my father was a tough older man.
Speaker 2: Nothing would stop him. And one of the things that
Speaker 2: he was involved with was is there was a weekly
Speaker 2: poker game, and on September sixth was his night to
Speaker 2: hold the weekly poker game. And one of the members
Speaker 2: at that game was Jerry Struerman. And my father was
Speaker 2: a type of man. It didn't matter, you know, how
Speaker 2: much threatening Jerry Struman did. And there were threats. We
Speaker 2: later learned about two weeks before September sixth, Jerry Steuerman
Speaker 2: threatened to cut my father's tongue out, and it got
Speaker 2: so bad that my father was even looking into buying
Speaker 2: a shotgun because he was fearful.
Speaker 1: Right, So it seems crazy that he would still allow
Speaker 1: him into his house. But as you said, your dad
Speaker 1: was a tough guy. He didn't really fear anyone. And
Speaker 1: now we've set the stage. There's the poker game, right,
Speaker 1: there's obviously a tense environment right with the two of
Speaker 1: them in the room.
Speaker 4: And but you went to sleep.
Speaker 2: I went to sleep because September seventh was the first
Speaker 2: day of my high school year.
Speaker 4: You were going to be a senior.
Speaker 2: I was going to be a senior. Right, and I
Speaker 2: woke up and my life was never the same again.
Speaker 4: So you woke up in the morning, and the.
Speaker 2: Situation was that I woke up that morning, noticed that
Speaker 2: the lights were on in my house. The house wasn't
Speaker 2: locked up.
Speaker 4: Walked through the house and they were upstairs.
Speaker 2: It's a ranch house. It's a very long ranch house.
Speaker 2: Where the bedrooms were in one end of the house,
Speaker 2: where the card game was was in the complete opposite.
Speaker 4: End of the house, right, So you wouldn't have heard any.
Speaker 2: Would have heard anything. And I discovered my father who
Speaker 2: was still sitting in his office chair, and he was alive,
Speaker 2: and he was.
Speaker 4: Bleeding, bleeding profusely, profusely. Yes, and what'd you do?
Speaker 2: I called nine one one and I followed their instructions,
Speaker 2: and eventually law enforcement showed up.
Speaker 1: Right. They told you to wrap them as best you
Speaker 1: could give you, gave you some medical tips whatever, try
Speaker 1: to stop the bleeding, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Right, And within a short period of time, law enforcement
Speaker 2: showed up.
Speaker 4: At the house. Where's your mom?
Speaker 2: I ended up My mother was actually in her bedroom.
Speaker 2: Cops come and immediately they removed me.
Speaker 4: From the house.
Speaker 2: And what I kind of can say now is that
Speaker 2: The process of questioning me, trying to find out what
Speaker 2: happened started almost immediately. Even when I had family members
Speaker 2: show up that morning, there was this immediate separation. I
Speaker 2: was told consistently I was being taken to the hospital.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately I was never taken to the hospital. I ended
Speaker 2: up being taken to police headquarters.
Speaker 1: So they took you to police headquarters because and obviously
Speaker 1: this whole sort of pattern is emerging right where they
Speaker 1: wanted to They had an agenda.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know at that day, I didn't
Speaker 2: know that. When I was seventeen years old, my father
Speaker 2: was the police commissioner of our little community. I was
Speaker 2: raised to trust law enforcement, believe in them. Law enforcement
Speaker 2: wouldn't lie to you, they wouldn't deceive you. Unfortunately, that's
Speaker 2: everything that they did that morning.
Speaker 1: Right, and you're in an extremely fragile state, and you
Speaker 1: need help, right, you need someone to help you. You're
Speaker 1: seventeen years old, right, I mean it's and still a child, basically.
Speaker 2: Still a child. And every time a family member showed
Speaker 2: up or a friend showed up, they were ripped away
Speaker 2: again that morning. So when my brother in law showed up,
Speaker 2: he was ripped away. When my godfather, who was also
Speaker 2: the family attorney, showed up. I saw him. He never
Speaker 2: saw me. But McCready, who was the lead detective. His
Speaker 2: name is Kay James McCready was the lead detective on
Speaker 2: the case, ran to him and basically told him I
Speaker 2: was already on the way to the hospital. I wasn't
Speaker 2: at the house, even though I.
Speaker 4: Was at the house, right.
Speaker 1: So there's a pattern of deception and maneuvers that are disingenuous.
Speaker 4: At best, let's say.
Speaker 1: But the fact is, at this point, were you aware
Speaker 1: that your mom had been killed. Yes, So you're in
Speaker 1: a state of total shock panic. How can you even
Speaker 1: describe it?
Speaker 2: Words can't describe it.
Speaker 4: I mean, people, it's you were close to your parents.
Speaker 2: They were my parents, I mean adopted you and everything
Speaker 2: I was not before I was born. That the parents
Speaker 2: the only parents I ever knew. They I have the
Speaker 2: most amazing childhood. I mean there was nothing I didn't
Speaker 2: have growing up. You know, people used to joke that
Speaker 2: I was a spoiled kid, and I was, but my
Speaker 2: father instilled amazing work values in me. I was working
Speaker 2: since I was probably eleven or twelve years old, but
Speaker 2: I traveled with my with my parents. I mean, I
Speaker 2: did everything with them.
Speaker 1: So let's get to the interrogation and the false confession
Speaker 1: in prison and the whole saga you used to ended
Speaker 1: up serving.
Speaker 2: Six three hundred and thirty eight days, which is about
Speaker 2: seventeen and a half years. What I tell people is,
Speaker 2: I said, imagine, you know, seventeen years. What you know,
Speaker 2: from the time you're born to the time you're seventeen,
Speaker 2: losing the entire period, or losing your entire twenties, your thirties.
Speaker 1: From seventies, well, you know, the first few years you
Speaker 1: don't even know what's going on. But the fact it is,
Speaker 1: from seventeen to thirty four, that's when you're building your life.
Speaker 1: That's really you know, those are the formative years for
Speaker 1: anybody to establish relationships, you know, both personal, sexual, business, college,
Speaker 1: All that stuff's out the window. So all let's I mean,
Speaker 1: you're obviously very familiar with Mary's case. You've known Marty
Speaker 1: since nineteen ninety three, is all right? Oh, you've known
Speaker 1: of each other.
Speaker 3: He started writing letters to me from prison.
Speaker 4: In ninety three.
Speaker 1: In ninety three, right in ninety three, what were you doing.
Speaker 3: I was a professor at Williams College studying the psychology
Speaker 3: of false confessions. I had just become interested in false confessions,
Speaker 3: and I was doing some research and publishing that research.
Speaker 4: How'd you get interested in it?
Speaker 3: Actually? I got interested because I came out of graduate
Speaker 3: school in social psychology interested in how juries make decisions.
Speaker 3: And after collecting some initial data for the first several
Speaker 3: months of a post STOC I was at the University
Speaker 3: of Kansas, it became clear to me that every time
Speaker 3: I had a case in which there was a confess
Speaker 3: and evidence, all variability of juror's responses dropped out. Everybody
Speaker 3: voted guilty. Confession evidence was perfect in the minds of
Speaker 3: the average juror.
Speaker 1: Is it the most powerful evidentiary tool that there is?
Speaker 4: Yes? And there is Trump's DNA or yes.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've seen cases and you've obviously seen so
Speaker 1: many of them in which a jury is presented at
Speaker 1: the same time with a false confession and DNA that
Speaker 1: proves scientifically yes, without any doubt, that it could not
Speaker 1: have been the person who gave the confession. And they
Speaker 1: will choose which one.
Speaker 3: They will choose. They will they will vote guilty on
Speaker 3: the basis of that confession, and they will explain away
Speaker 3: they will find ways to explain away the DNA, right, So.
Speaker 1: You're presented with a thing that shows I mean because
Speaker 1: in a violent crime, if there's physical contact, then there's blood.
Speaker 1: And if it's a rape, if there's an assault, if
Speaker 1: there's a stabbing, there's DNA, right. And if your DNA
Speaker 1: is not there, you weren't there. Right. Nobody's ever been
Speaker 1: able to figure out how to and not be there
Speaker 1: the same.
Speaker 3: There are cases on record where not only the DNA
Speaker 3: exclude the confessor at the point of trial, but it
Speaker 3: identified the perpetrator and still the confessor was convicted.
Speaker 1: Right, So people can and I know this too from
Speaker 1: my own experience, it's very very difficult for people to
Speaker 1: wrap them and mine is anecdotal, but it's very hard
Speaker 1: for people to wrap around the idea of anybody would confess.
Speaker 1: We know that with juveniles it's much more common because
Speaker 1: they're more impressionable. In many cases, they can be actually
Speaker 1: coaxed into or or coerced into believing that they actually
Speaker 1: did it.
Speaker 4: Is that right? Yes, which is really another level of Yeah.
Speaker 3: Go into any audience of late people and ask the question,
Speaker 3: which ever confess to a serious crime you didn't commit,
Speaker 3: not a single hand will go up. Short of sometimes
Speaker 3: you get an occasional hand it will go up and
Speaker 3: someone will say, well, if you had a gun to
Speaker 3: my head, right, But short of that, no normal person
Speaker 3: of sound mind would confess to a crime they didn't commit.
Speaker 3: And people use that personal belief about themselves as the
Speaker 3: frame of reference. And so it's very, very unlikely that
Speaker 3: you can get people easily to believe that an innocent
Speaker 3: person was induced to confess to something they didn't do,
Speaker 3: and not just something the highest stakes crime in the system, murder.
Speaker 1: Right, So let's talk about this as it relates specifically
Speaker 1: to what happened with Marty in the interrogation room. So
Speaker 1: here's Marty in a state of as we talked about,
Speaker 1: in a state of panic and shock and grief and
Speaker 1: you know, just spinning right, And as we discussed, he's
Speaker 1: still a child, and the fact is a teenager, a
Speaker 1: young teenager. And so what happened, I mean, how did
Speaker 1: you know? Because his confession it's different than any of
Speaker 1: the other ones I've studied, right, because it may or
Speaker 1: may not have ever even actually happened. Right, Usually they
Speaker 1: actually get somebody to say something on video, or they'll
Speaker 1: get a written statement or something. But in Marty's case,
Speaker 1: it's much more. It's much more highly nuanced, isn't it.
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yes, And in Marty's something that almost all of these
Speaker 3: cases have in common. You've got to ask yourself the
Speaker 3: first question, why did Marty, a seventeen year old without
Speaker 3: a criminal record, without a history of violence, with good
Speaker 3: parents and good relationships and an affluent community, why would
Speaker 3: Marty kill his parents in a brutal way, in a
Speaker 3: brutal in the most brutal of ways. And you have
Speaker 3: to ask yourself the question, how in God's name did
Speaker 3: he become their suspect.
Speaker 1: Well, we haven't talked about that, but Marty, your parents
Speaker 1: were beaten to death, is that right?
Speaker 2: There was a bludgeon instrument and a knife, and to
Speaker 2: this day neither one has been discovered. And there was
Speaker 2: some forensic evidence which I can talk about. There was
Speaker 2: glove prints, so whoever did do this were wearing gloves
Speaker 2: that they still haven't found the gloves. So I mean,
Speaker 2: there's all these little things that actually the jury was
Speaker 2: aware of, but as you said, they chose just to ignore.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so we should believe that you killed your
Speaker 1: parents in the most vicious way at night and then
Speaker 1: went to sleep, and then waited till the morning and
Speaker 1: then called nine one.
Speaker 2: And you know, most people said, well, you know, he
Speaker 2: did it for the money, because they thought my parents
Speaker 2: were affluent. The way the wills were structured, I would
Speaker 2: have gotten everything. And we later learned that law enforcement
Speaker 2: never really understood the way the wills and never looked
Speaker 2: into the way the wills were structured. But the way
Speaker 2: the wills were structured was that I wasn't going to
Speaker 2: benefit financially until I was twenty five and I was seventeen.
Speaker 2: So you know, as one of my aunts said, what
Speaker 2: was he supposed to do from seventeen to twenty five?
Speaker 2: Live on the streets.
Speaker 1: So Marty's in the interrogation room, we know that they
Speaker 1: have misled, as a probably nice way to put it,
Speaker 1: his his family guardian at this point, right, your godfather,
Speaker 1: who was also the only lawyer that was available to
Speaker 1: you at this time.
Speaker 2: They kind of mislet everybody though. I mean I had
Speaker 2: other cousins and aunts and uncles who were at the
Speaker 2: hospitals and they were live too, too. They were told
Speaker 2: Marty's on the way to the hospital, Marty's on the
Speaker 2: way to the hospital, right.
Speaker 1: So they're basically doing everything they can to prevent you
Speaker 1: from having any responsible guardian or legal representative from being
Speaker 1: there to be able to help you in the in
Speaker 1: the situation, to be able to that might be able
Speaker 1: to stand in the way of them getting the conviction
Speaker 1: that they wanted. Regardless of truth.
Speaker 4: Yes, they weren't after the truth.
Speaker 2: There was no truth seeking here. I mean, you have
Speaker 2: a man who was business partners with my father, half
Speaker 2: a million dollars involved, was there the night before. My
Speaker 2: father also had in the weeks prior, had demanded he
Speaker 2: had two notes fifty thousand dollars. Back in the days
Speaker 2: after the murders, Jerry Struman cleaned out a joint bank account.
Speaker 2: He faked his death. He fled to California. He had
Speaker 2: a hair weave back then, and he went to a
Speaker 2: club that he wasn't a member for. He had five
Speaker 2: or six different aliases at that moment. But law enforcement
Speaker 2: never consider him suspect. And every time I tell people,
Speaker 2: you know, the average person would say, well, how is
Speaker 2: he not a suspect?
Speaker 1: I mean, you could have stopped that he faked his
Speaker 1: own death right there. If this was a TV show.
Speaker 1: People are changing the channel. They're like, Okay, this is done.
Speaker 1: I don't need to watch the is this is our guy.
Speaker 1: We got him, so Saul. There he is in the
Speaker 1: interrogation room.
Speaker 3: Alone, alone, seventeen, not street wise, never been in trouble before,
Speaker 3: never had to worry about how do you behave when
Speaker 3: you get picked up by police?
Speaker 1: And couldn't he have just said no, no, no, no
Speaker 1: no not me? How could I what happened in his brain?
Speaker 3: And what oh, I can tell you very simply what
Speaker 3: happened in his brain. He had done nothing wrong. And
Speaker 3: the funny thing about innocent, innocent people is even if
Speaker 3: he even if they had read him as Miranda rights,
Speaker 3: he would have waived.
Speaker 4: Those rights right most people do.
Speaker 3: He would have waived those rights.
Speaker 4: And he did nothing wrong. He did nothing wrong, So
Speaker 4: why would he worry about whether he had nothing?
Speaker 3: He had nothing to hide, He had nothing wrong, and
Speaker 3: so Miranda becomes not a safeguard that's particularly effective at
Speaker 3: this point. He is now, and keep in mind, they've
Speaker 3: got him in police headquarters. The whole family is with
Speaker 3: his father, who is dying but still alive in the hospital.
Speaker 3: That's where Marty wants to be if you're looking for,
Speaker 3: what is to incentivize him to cooperate so that he
Speaker 3: can get out of there and get to the hospital.
Speaker 3: That's his incentive. He wants to be at the hospital.
Speaker 3: So he's already in a state where he's motivated to cooperate.
Speaker 3: And they start asking him questions about what he saw,
Speaker 3: how he saw it, what had happened, and he gives
Speaker 3: them answers, and the answers are consistent. They don't believe him,
Speaker 3: they tell him they don't believe him. They asked for
Speaker 3: the story to be told again.
Speaker 1: Right, he was in sleep, he woke up, he went
Speaker 1: down the hall, he found him, He called nine one one,
Speaker 1: he held the towel, he followed instructions. Actually, not only
Speaker 1: did any do anything wrong, he did anything right exactly.
Speaker 3: And they're searching for inconsistencies and they're calling him a liar,
Speaker 3: and they're not believing the story that he keeps telling
Speaker 3: over and over again, and then they switch gears at
Speaker 3: some point. Now keep in mind, I'm presenting this as
Speaker 3: if it's a chronology, but I have no idea, nobody
Speaker 3: has any idea what really happened because they didn't record
Speaker 3: the process.
Speaker 1: That's something that we at the NIS's Project have been
Speaker 1: advocating for it for years. Every interrogation should be recorded.
Speaker 1: There's no reason why shouldn't be, and every reason why
Speaker 1: it should be if in fact what we're looking for
Speaker 1: is the truth exactly.
Speaker 3: And this raises a very important and too often invisible
Speaker 3: point about the Innocence Project and the innocence community and
Speaker 3: the concern about innocence and wrongful convictions. If your concern
Speaker 3: is law and order, this should concern you because from
Speaker 3: a law and order standpoint, every time you get a
Speaker 3: confession from an innocent person and that person's then prosecuted
Speaker 3: and convicted, there is a criminal creating new victims out there,
Speaker 3: and that is on them.
Speaker 1: And we do know from our exonerations and the studies
Speaker 1: that we've done that in a very large percentage of
Speaker 1: the cases in which we've exonerated the innocent person and
Speaker 1: identified the actual perpetrator, that perpetrator has gone on to
Speaker 1: commit other heinous crimes that had law enforcement acted properly
Speaker 1: and done their job, that person would have been in
Speaker 1: prison appropriately and those other victims never would have had
Speaker 1: to suffer.
Speaker 3: And often it turns out often that's suspect that suspect
Speaker 3: turned criminal was in the crosshairs of police at the time.
Speaker 3: But once you take a confession, and this is what
Speaker 3: some of the research shows, once police take a confession,
Speaker 3: they engage a process of tunnel vision. They shut down
Speaker 3: the case. What the innocent person doesn't realize, because one
Speaker 3: of the odd things about innocent people confessing is sometimes
Speaker 3: they get so stressed out and so worn down. They
Speaker 3: get to a point where they think, Okay, what do
Speaker 3: I got to do to get out of here? And
Speaker 3: in the back of their mind they're thinking, you know what,
Speaker 3: I didn't do anything wrong. When they get to do
Speaker 3: the investigation, when they get other evidence, they'll see I
Speaker 3: didn't do this. So where do I sign to get
Speaker 3: myself out of a bad situation? With the promise impossible?
Speaker 3: And they have in their head the promise of a
Speaker 3: future exoneration because after all, they did nothing wrong. What
Speaker 3: the innocent person in that situation, thinking that way doesn't
Speaker 3: realize is their confession doesn't open the case. It closes
Speaker 3: the case.
Speaker 1: And Marty's case here he is Marty didn't actually really confess.
Speaker 3: Well, again, we don't fully know what happened. Here's the story.
Speaker 3: As I understand it from the evidence that's available. They
Speaker 3: break them down. They bring him in. He wants to
Speaker 3: be at the hospital, and he's clear that the only
Speaker 3: exit for that to happen is for him to cooperate.
Speaker 3: But it still doesn't work, and they're challenging every denial.
Speaker 3: But then they shift gears, and they shift gears toward
Speaker 3: a procedure now where they start to lie about the evidence. Now,
Speaker 3: the average American doesn't know this. The average American doesn't
Speaker 3: realize that in the United States, police are allowed to
Speaker 3: bring in a suspect and lie about the evidence. They're
Speaker 3: allowed to say to the suspect, we have your fingerprints
Speaker 3: on the murder weapon, even if that's not true. What
Speaker 3: happened in Marty's case is they bring him in, they say, well,
Speaker 3: you know, it appears that your mother was in a
Speaker 3: struggle and there's hair in her grasp and it turns
Speaker 3: out it's your hair. We did the analysis. It's your hair,
Speaker 3: and that confused Marty wasn't true, but he got confused
Speaker 3: to to how that was possible. And then because it
Speaker 3: was such a bloody scene, it was two bloody scenes,
Speaker 3: there just wasn't enough blood on Marty to account for that.
Speaker 3: They suggested to him that he had showered before calling
Speaker 3: nine to one one. He said, no, I didn't use
Speaker 3: the shower. They came back and said, well, we did
Speaker 3: a humidity test in your bathroom and we found that
Speaker 3: the shower had been used that morning. A humidity test.
Speaker 3: I don't believe, even on CSI, they've given us a
Speaker 3: humidity test. And he's in something of a twilight zone.
Speaker 3: And so now now they've delivered two lies. And then
Speaker 3: the detective delivers the ultimate lie. He leaves the room.
Speaker 3: There are two detectives in there. The lead detective McCready
Speaker 3: leaves the room, stages a phone call, and comes back
Speaker 3: and comes back to deliver the news to Marty. Marty,
Speaker 3: I've got good news and I got bad news. I
Speaker 3: just spoke to the folks at the hospital. The good
Speaker 3: news is your father has come out of his coma.
Speaker 3: He's regained consciousness. The bad news is, he said, you
Speaker 3: did it. Now think about this for him.
Speaker 1: Fucking sick.
Speaker 4: It's sane.
Speaker 3: You've got a seventeen year old and you're now delivering
Speaker 3: one lie after another, culminating in a lie that to Marty,
Speaker 3: the person he trusts most in his life has just
Speaker 3: said he committed this crime. And not only did, Marty
Speaker 3: of course, had no choice but to believe that evidence,
Speaker 3: because he doesn't believe police would lie to him. Certainly,
Speaker 3: not like that. Even McCready's partner said he believed it.
Speaker 3: That is, McCready's partner believed that presentation. So what choice
Speaker 3: does Marty have now but to wonder, how is it
Speaker 3: possible that they have this kind of objective evidence. My
Speaker 3: father doesn't lie, he said, and that lie just broke
Speaker 3: Marty down.
Speaker 1: So Marty said, my father doesn't lie, which they then
Speaker 1: took to me. So maybe this is true, maybe I
Speaker 1: actually did this.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, Marty has almost no cognitive choice but to
Speaker 3: accept that information.
Speaker 1: Well, because he's got two things right. His father doesn't
Speaker 1: lie and the cops don't lie. These are the two
Speaker 1: things that.
Speaker 4: He believes exactly. So those things lead to one conclusion.
Speaker 3: One conclusion, I must have done it. And so where
Speaker 3: does the conversation turn. It turns in the direction of, well,
Speaker 3: how can you explain the fact that I don't think
Speaker 3: I did it, I don't remember having done it, and
Speaker 3: yet there's all this unimpeachable objective evidence of my guilt.
Speaker 3: How is that possible, And the conversation turns to memory, consciousness,
Speaker 3: the possibility of sleepwalking and doing it without awareness the
Speaker 3: next morning, waking up and having not realized what had happened. Now,
Speaker 3: there are different categories, different types of false confessions. One
Speaker 3: of those types is It's not the most common type
Speaker 3: by any means, but it happens. The first time I
Speaker 3: laid eyes on one, it shocked me. I've now seen
Speaker 3: several of them, and the script is always the same.
Speaker 3: This is the internalized false confession, where not only do
Speaker 3: the police use stress tactics to break a suspect down
Speaker 3: to give a compliant confession and to agree to sign
Speaker 3: the statement, but they actually get the suspect to believe
Speaker 3: he committed this crime. They actually confuse the suspect enough
Speaker 3: so that they don't even trust their own memory anymore.
Speaker 3: Because you've handed them this objective evidence, they somehow need
Speaker 3: to reconcile that evidence with what they can't remember. And
Speaker 3: what happened in Marty's case is like you see happens
Speaker 3: in a number of these cases. They start to talk
Speaker 3: about memory and consciousness and generate theories from Marty to
Speaker 3: explain how come you don't remember doing this, So we
Speaker 3: know that that was the nature of the conversation. We
Speaker 3: know that for some degree of transient time, Marty became
Speaker 3: confused about even his own innocence.
Speaker 1: Right, And this goes back to what we were talking
Speaker 1: about before, which is that it all is the perfect storm,
Speaker 1: because had Marty had a guardian or a lawyer in
Speaker 1: the room, they would have certainly said to Marty, they
Speaker 1: can lie, they're lying, they can be lying to you. Yes,
Speaker 1: we can be making this up right, But there's no
Speaker 1: grown up there. There's nobody there to protect you in
Speaker 1: the situation in life in which you most need protection.
Speaker 3: Now, we should stop to realize something about this tactic.
Speaker 3: As pernicious as it sounds, people should know that it's
Speaker 3: lawful that. In nineteen sixty nine, the US Supreme Court
Speaker 3: addressed that in a case they address the issue of
Speaker 3: are a police allowed to deceive a suspect about the evidence,
Speaker 3: and they concluded that, yes, that that tactic does not
Speaker 3: put an innocent person at risk. Well, I'm sorry, the
Speaker 3: courts need to revisit that issue lying about evidence. And
Speaker 3: there is now ample research, actual cases, laboratory studies, field
Speaker 3: studies we now know and one hundred plus years of
Speaker 3: basic psychology tells us when you lie to people about evidence,
Speaker 3: when you lie to people about reality, you can change
Speaker 3: their perceptions, You can change their memories, you can change
Speaker 3: just about every aspect of their cognitive function. What happened
Speaker 3: to Marty is psychologically very understandable.
Speaker 1: It is when you take all these things into.
Speaker 3: It is his confession was a handwritten statement, handwritten by
Speaker 3: the detective that I can tell you summarize everything I
Speaker 3: know about the case file. Is inaccurate as a description
Speaker 3: of the crime. It doesn't complete itself. It's actually ends
Speaker 3: in midsense, and it is unsigned. Now people do a
Speaker 3: double take when they hear, what do you mean? It
Speaker 3: was unsigned? This confession, the so called confession, was written
Speaker 3: by the detective and not signed by Marty. And yet
Speaker 3: that allegation of that confession is the one and only
Speaker 3: piece of evidence that that was used to convict him.
Speaker 3: People need to become better consumers of confession evidence. They
Speaker 3: need to understand also that because there's a misconception. The
Speaker 3: misconception is this, I'd know a false confession if I
Speaker 3: saw one.
Speaker 4: No, you wouldn't.
Speaker 3: We've done those studies. We've done that research we've taken
Speaker 3: true confessions false confessions. People can't tell the difference. Cops
Speaker 3: can't tell the difference.
Speaker 4: Let's go back for one moment the trial.
Speaker 2: You want to go back to the trial.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to the trial because I
Speaker 1: remember seeing that picture of your face at the moment
Speaker 1: of conviction, and.
Speaker 4: You know the amount of pain.
Speaker 1: That's in that picture is you feel like you're in
Speaker 1: the shoes of that person.
Speaker 4: You're at trial.
Speaker 1: You still believe that justice is.
Speaker 2: Going to be on at trial, still believe it. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is what the lawyers are telling me. The system works.
Speaker 2: I was innocent. I testified on my own behalf. And
Speaker 2: you know, this was a long trial. It was probably
Speaker 2: about ten to twelve weeks long. What's interesting about my
Speaker 2: case is that, you know, it was my parchra were murdered,
Speaker 2: and my entire family supported me. And that's what made
Speaker 2: this case very difficult, because many prosecutors said it was
Speaker 2: the most difficult case they had to prosecute because the
Speaker 2: victim's family and the defendants family were the same family.
Speaker 2: And I can't tell you how often my family would say,
Speaker 2: don't you see there's something wrong here? You know, with
Speaker 2: the victims family and with the defendant's family, and we
Speaker 2: know mornings and it's it, and we believe in morning,
Speaker 2: you know, But you're just you just don't care, and
Speaker 2: law enforcement didn't care back then. They just were focused
Speaker 2: on me.
Speaker 1: And that was it. So you're a trial, all the
Speaker 1: testimonies been heard, ten or twelve week trials, a long trial.
Speaker 1: Everyone's fatigued by this point, nobody more than you.
Speaker 2: The deliberations wasn't a one day, two day, three days.
Speaker 2: This was eight days torture. Prosecus had charged me with
Speaker 2: intentional murder and depraved indifference murder. So when we got
Speaker 2: called back in, the first verdict that was read was
Speaker 2: not guilty, and then all of a sudden, the second
Speaker 2: one was guilty. The one thing I vividly remember is
Speaker 2: the walk after they read the guilty verdicts over to
Speaker 2: the county jails. They had these tunnel systems, and I
Speaker 2: remember just I felt like I was being led like
Speaker 2: a dog because I was just listening. And I remember
Speaker 2: getting to the property room and I remember the property
Speaker 2: remolts saying what are you doing here, Marty? And I go,
Speaker 2: why else would I be here? And then everything else
Speaker 2: went blank for about the next six or seven days.
Speaker 2: But I remember that moment and it was just this
Speaker 2: level of shock between the both of us that he's
Speaker 2: looking at me, going you couldn't have been found guilty,
Speaker 2: and I kind of said, well, why else would I
Speaker 2: be standing here in front of you at the property room.
Speaker 3: The most common story about innocent people when they hear
Speaker 3: their guilty verdict red is they're shocked. Even if they're
Speaker 3: the only person in the courtroom whos shocked, they're shocked
Speaker 3: they expected to be acquitted.
Speaker 4: Marty, I want to talk about this for a minute.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: You're thrown into this environment. You're in maximum security prison.
Speaker 4: Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I went from Downstair Correctional Facility, which is a receptional facility,
Speaker 2: to Orburn Correction Facility, which is another maximum security facility.
Speaker 2: And people think when you went from it was in
Speaker 2: four prisons. Primarily everyone was in maximum security facility. Everyone
Speaker 2: is hell and everyone everyone at this you basically every
Speaker 2: day it's a fight for your life because you never
Speaker 2: know in maximum security facilities what could happen, whether it
Speaker 2: be the gangs going to war with each other, the
Speaker 2: ulcers taking you know, they're aggression out on you. Or
Speaker 2: just the random attacks that occur just for no reason whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, we know that people are being killed
Speaker 1: every day in prisons in America, sometimes by guards.
Speaker 2: Even absolutely for me, as strange as it sounds, is
Speaker 2: when I went through Downstair, which was a reception facility.
Speaker 2: My case was very high profile, so prisoners knew about
Speaker 2: the case. Guards knew about the case. And I had
Speaker 2: a guy come up to me and he said, Lilizen,
Speaker 2: he goes, if you want to survive, he says, don't
Speaker 2: do drugs, don't get involved in drugs, don't get involved homosexuality,
Speaker 2: don't get involved in gambling, gangs, he said. And work
Speaker 2: your way into the college program or the law library.
Speaker 2: He said. You're innocent, he said, And one of the
Speaker 2: hardest things is once you're innocent, is getting out, he said.
Speaker 2: But you'll figure out a way to do it. But
Speaker 2: work yourself into the law library. The prisoners were really
Speaker 2: the best judges of character because the guys who are
Speaker 2: career criminals, they knew who were innocent who weren't, And
Speaker 2: very early on, even the guards. I mean, to this day,
Speaker 2: I am still in touch with some prison guards who
Speaker 2: saw that I was innocent. And you know, I found
Speaker 2: out years later at Auburn Correctist there was one guard
Speaker 2: who actually used quote unquote look out for me make
Speaker 2: sure I was okay, because he knew I was innocent.
Speaker 1: So now we're six three hundred and something days into
Speaker 1: this horrible Kafka esque trip through the maximum security prison
Speaker 1: system of New York State, and you are now at
Speaker 1: a point where you know you have a new hearing
Speaker 1: coming up.
Speaker 2: Right. My lawyers said, okay, what's never been done here before?
Speaker 2: And we said a full investigation. And that's when I
Speaker 2: started looking for private investigators and ended up hiring jsal Peter.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that Jay said to me was,
Speaker 2: if you're innocent, hire me. If you're guilty, don't. I said,
Speaker 2: I'm in it. I'll hire you. I just find the truth, Jai.
Speaker 2: And it took years. It took years for him to
Speaker 2: track down people. But what he did was, whenever nobody
Speaker 2: else did, who benefited financially from my conviction, Steuwerman. So
Speaker 2: he started with the Steermans and just started branching out
Speaker 2: and they ended up finding the individually name of Glenna Harris,
Speaker 2: who is the getaway driver for people we've identified as
Speaker 2: the murderers.
Speaker 4: You were sentenced to fifty years to life.
Speaker 1: Fifty years to life.
Speaker 2: My first opportunity to appear to parle Board was twenty
Speaker 2: forty twenty forty, so we're in twenty sixteen, so twenty
Speaker 2: forty would have been my first chance for release.
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Speaker 1: thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The
Speaker 1: music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated
Speaker 1: composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
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Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one