Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I
Speaker 1: Ritter and I'm Steve Drissy. In our previous episode, we
Speaker 1: talked about how the interrogation room works. Today we're gonna
Speaker 1: show you. Steve and I are going to tell you
Speaker 1: about a young man named Robert Davis. This is a
Speaker 1: frightening story of a murder investigation that went horribly wrong.
Speaker 1: Roberts was one of the first false confession cases I
Speaker 1: worked on, and I'll never forget it because it taught
Speaker 1: me how easily an ordinary person can get caught up
Speaker 1: in a web of injustice. We first learned about Robert
Speaker 1: Davis back in two thousand eleven. The story came from
Speaker 1: a local newspaper out of Charlottesville, Virginia. I was in
Speaker 1: a space at the time where I was looking for
Speaker 1: false confessions wherever I could find them, and one day
Speaker 1: a an article about Robert's case turned up in my
Speaker 1: news feed. And when I read the article, I was
Speaker 1: attracted to it for a number of reasons. One was
Speaker 1: that there was a recording of the entire interrogation process,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of the gold that everybody was looking for.
Speaker 1: Can you see how police manipulate an innocent suspect into
Speaker 1: confessing to a crime they didn't commit. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: so many people think that's only for extremely young children,
Speaker 1: that's only for intellectually limited people. But Robert Davis is
Speaker 1: every man. He's us. He's a normal, normal guy. Um
Speaker 1: in every sense, you know, to the extent there is
Speaker 1: a normal person. Robert Davis could be your neighbor, he
Speaker 1: could be your your kid's friend. And there's no better
Speaker 1: illustration of the power of the interrogation room, the way
Speaker 1: these techniques work, the way they can transform the innocent
Speaker 1: into the guilty in a matter of hours than this case.
Speaker 1: After receiving the interrogation video, I knew I had to
Speaker 1: get involved in this case, and I knew I had
Speaker 1: to work on it with Laura. Robert Davis's case was
Speaker 1: my first case where I became involved as an expert.
Speaker 1: The interrogation video, you know, it's one of the most
Speaker 1: coercive videos I've ever seen. It speaks for itself. It's
Speaker 1: horrible to watch, and it calls out for action in
Speaker 1: many ways. Robert's case was an early incarnation of the
Speaker 1: kind of clemency campaign that Laura and I recently mounted.
Speaker 1: In the case of Brendan Dacy, using clips from the
Speaker 1: interrogation to tell what had happened him, bringing in experts
Speaker 1: from different fields, including law enforcement, to weigh in on
Speaker 1: what was wrong with that interrogation, and helping to personalize
Speaker 1: Robert through the media. Robert Davis's story begins in crows A, Virginia,
Speaker 1: a middle class suburb of Charlotte's film. Robert lived in
Speaker 1: a small house with his mom, and they were really close.
Speaker 1: In the winter of two thousand three, he was a
Speaker 1: senior in high school and with graduation just a few
Speaker 1: months away, Robert was looking forward to the next phase
Speaker 1: of his life. But on the night of February a
Speaker 1: terrible tragedy happened on Robert's block. Fire broke out in
Speaker 1: a neighboring house, the home of a young mother and
Speaker 1: her three children. The fire department is called. They arrive
Speaker 1: at the scene. It's a snowy night right snowflakes are
Speaker 1: coming down fast and furious firefighters get there. They battle
Speaker 1: through the snow. They put out the fire, and once
Speaker 1: the fires subdued, they go upstairs to one of the bedrooms,
Speaker 1: which is where they find the body of the homeowner.
Speaker 1: A forty one year old woman named Nola Charles. And
Speaker 1: when they turned Nola's body over, they saw a knife
Speaker 1: in her back, and suddenly it became very clear that
Speaker 1: this fire had been set to cover up a murder.
Speaker 1: Then the firefighters walked down the hallway to look in
Speaker 1: some of the other bedrooms. This is a very small house,
Speaker 1: so it was just a short walk, and under some
Speaker 1: debris they found the body of Nola's young son, Thomas Charles,
Speaker 1: and he had died of smoke inhalation. You know, this
Speaker 1: was a horrific crime anyway you slice it. You know,
Speaker 1: the murder of a mother, the death of a small child,
Speaker 1: stabbing an arson to try to cover up the crime.
Speaker 1: This is something that would have been unheard of in
Speaker 1: CROs A and just would have been a complete and
Speaker 1: total shock to the entire community. An investigation starts and
Speaker 1: pretty soon the police identify some likely suspects. It's actually
Speaker 1: two other teenagers with her names are Rocky and Jessica Fugit.
Speaker 1: Rocky was nineteen. He was also a senior in high school,
Speaker 1: like Robert Davis, but he was somebody who had a
Speaker 1: really troubled past. He'd struggled with drug addiction with alcohol
Speaker 1: action um and he'd gotten in trouble with the police
Speaker 1: for doing things like leaving dead birds in church sanctuaries.
Speaker 1: His sister, Jessica was fifteen, and she had struggled her
Speaker 1: whole life with mental illness, delusions, hallucinations. She was somebody
Speaker 1: who really grappled with her own demons, and she was
Speaker 1: friends with Nola charles teenage daughter Wendy, but Jessica didn't
Speaker 1: like Wendy's mom. Jessica was known to have a grudge
Speaker 1: against Nola Charles, and so based on all this information,
Speaker 1: the police picked up Rocky in Jessica within only a
Speaker 1: few days of this fire, and they bring them down
Speaker 1: to the police station for questioning, and soon enough the
Speaker 1: two of them confess that they were involved in the
Speaker 1: killing of Nolah Charles at the setting of the house
Speaker 1: on fire. After they confessed, Jessica led the police to
Speaker 1: a snowy field behind Nola charles home where she and
Speaker 1: Rocky had buried an iron bar that had been used
Speaker 1: to bludgeon Nola Charles before she was stabbed, and that
Speaker 1: iron bar still had Nolah's DNA all over it, so
Speaker 1: Jessica was able to lead the police to this new
Speaker 1: evidence that they didn't know about that corroborated her confession.
Speaker 1: The confessions true. Rocky and Jessica are guilty. They've never
Speaker 1: said otherwise. Case closed, And if this was the end
Speaker 1: of the story, right, we wouldn't be telling it to you.
Speaker 1: But it's not the end of the story. Because the
Speaker 1: police were convinced that Rocky and Jessica had not acted alone,
Speaker 1: and they each started rattling off a list of names
Speaker 1: other kids in their high school. The police determined that
Speaker 1: each one of these other high schoolers had an ironclad
Speaker 1: alibi until the last name on the list, which is
Speaker 1: Robert Davis. Robert had been at home alone asleep, not
Speaker 1: a very good alibi, so the police decided to bring
Speaker 1: him in for questioning too. Now, from the get go,
Speaker 1: Robert Davis and Jessica and Rocky being together in the
Speaker 1: same space committing a horrific crime maiden no sense at all.
Speaker 1: These two kids picked on Robert, especially Rocky. The idea
Speaker 1: that Robert would be with them and would commit a
Speaker 1: murder was absurd and it didn't take a lot of
Speaker 1: smarts to see that. But nonetheless, right the police go
Speaker 1: and pick up Robert Davis. They bring him in for
Speaker 1: questioning in the middle of the night. Now, before we
Speaker 1: hear what happens next, I want to stop for a
Speaker 1: minute and talk to you about how interrogations work. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the goal is to get the suspect to confess to
Speaker 1: the crime, but how does that happen exactly. In the
Speaker 1: last episode, Steve and I shared some of what we've
Speaker 1: learned from watching many hours of interrogation tapes. But as
Speaker 1: shocking as what we described is, you should know that
Speaker 1: interrogations used to be even worse. A hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: it was common for police to use physical violence. Innocent
Speaker 1: and guilty suspects alike were beaten, hung from winds, and
Speaker 1: otherwise tortured until they confessed just to escape the suffering. Then,
Speaker 1: starting in the nineteen forties and fifties, reform was in
Speaker 1: the air. Physically abusive practices were thrown out. Police were
Speaker 1: trained to use words instead of fists, and this change
Speaker 1: seemed like a progressive one at the time, But now
Speaker 1: we know that psychological interrogation techniques can also be highly problematic.
Speaker 1: They're very good at persuading actual criminals to admit guilt,
Speaker 1: but they can also produce false confessions. The manipulation begins
Speaker 1: with the interrogation room itself. Like Steve said, these rooms
Speaker 1: are designed to make the suspect feel isolated, cut off
Speaker 1: from all sources of support or help. This is the
Speaker 1: type of room where police brought Robert Davis on February
Speaker 1: twenty two, two thousand three, at about one o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning. He's by himself, He's eighteen years old, and
Speaker 1: he's sitting in there alone, not knowing what's happening, terrifying
Speaker 1: circum stances. And then all of a sudden, with the
Speaker 1: video camera rolling, the police come into the interrogation room
Speaker 1: to officers, big burly guys, and they say to him,
Speaker 1: murg on Ola, Charles, Thomas, Charles, you let me charge
Speaker 1: with the attempted murder? How the two Charles daughters, Katie
Speaker 1: and Windy. Now it's really got serious? Has this right?
Speaker 1: And literally? You know when you watched Robert react to
Speaker 1: being accused of murder, you can feel the fear and
Speaker 1: the panic and the anxiety just radiating off this video
Speaker 1: and you could just watch his mind spin. What can
Speaker 1: I do? What can I do to convince these guys
Speaker 1: I've got the wrong person. And so Robert says to them,
Speaker 1: what any of us I think in that situation, would
Speaker 1: say us out all my life right now that I
Speaker 1: do not know oh this matter, I had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with this. I will tell you the polygraph test
Speaker 1: right now to prove to you that I did not
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with this. Interrogation trainers teach law
Speaker 1: enforcement officers that if a suspect affirmatively asks for a
Speaker 1: polygraph exam, that that's one indicator of innocence. It's not
Speaker 1: rock solid proof that somebody is innocent, but it's a
Speaker 1: powerful statement that they have nothing to fear and that
Speaker 1: they're willing to put their innocence to the test. And
Speaker 1: the officers shut them down. They tell them, no, we
Speaker 1: don't have the polygraph, even though they actually have one
Speaker 1: in the room next door. Now, why are they refusing
Speaker 1: to listen to Robert as he's asserting dozens of times
Speaker 1: his innocence. Well, that's how officers are trained to interrogate.
Speaker 1: Interrogation is basically a two staged process. The goal of
Speaker 1: the first stage, which we've just heard a little bit of,
Speaker 1: is to bring the suspect down to hopelessness. This officer
Speaker 1: is telling Robert that it's pointless to say he's innocent
Speaker 1: because they already know he's guilty. An interrogator's job is
Speaker 1: to make the suspect feel trapped using every tool available,
Speaker 1: and as many people don't realize, these tools can include
Speaker 1: lying is the worst dust. They say to him, we
Speaker 1: found your DNA in the house from your skin cells
Speaker 1: that just shed naturally off you. And of course this
Speaker 1: is false, right. The house have got up in flames,
Speaker 1: there was no forensic evidence whatsoever recovered from the scene.
Speaker 1: It's a complete lie. But in the United States, police
Speaker 1: are allowed to lie during interrogations. And again you can
Speaker 1: see radiating off this videotape the terror in Robert's face. Right,
Speaker 1: how can this be? I've never been in that home.
Speaker 1: And then the officer says something I have never seen
Speaker 1: in any other interrogation, and I've seen thousands of hours
Speaker 1: of interrogations. I can't lie about the evidence, Robert. I mean,
Speaker 1: talk about a whopper. Not only can he lie during
Speaker 1: the interrogations, but he can lie about the evidence. And
Speaker 1: he's lying about a lie exactly, talk about a mind fuck.
Speaker 1: Let's just drop the F word, drop the it's appropriate
Speaker 1: in this case, right, I mean, this is the psychological
Speaker 1: game that twists the world for people in the box,
Speaker 1: and it works. Now, let's take a moment to remember
Speaker 1: that Robert is going through this ordeal completely alone. At
Speaker 1: eighteen years old, he's legally an adult, but even if
Speaker 1: he were younger, in most states, it's perfectly legal to
Speaker 1: question a child without notifying their parents or guardian. This
Speaker 1: is a desperate situation, and like anyone would, Robert asks
Speaker 1: for the best protector he has. He asks for his mom,
Speaker 1: but that request is turned around and used to break
Speaker 1: him down, even for their co operation coation. Then they
Speaker 1: do something especially insidious. The lead investigator says that he
Speaker 1: had just had a phone call with Robert's mother and
Speaker 1: his mother was crying hysterically on the phone, you know,
Speaker 1: And this investigator tells Robert, your mom wants you to cooperate.
Speaker 1: Your mom is saying, Robert, you know, tell the truth,
Speaker 1: so that I can help you to go on with
Speaker 1: your life, all right, to save your life exactly. And
Speaker 1: of course that's all made up, right. He didn't actually
Speaker 1: have this conversation with a mother at all. It's horrible
Speaker 1: to watch the police twist a mother child relationship into
Speaker 1: a bludgeon to be used in the interrogation room. It's
Speaker 1: a disgusting employ deeply manipulative, and it's it's very hard
Speaker 1: to watch. There are other moments that are just you know,
Speaker 1: classic threats of punishment and promises of leniency and the
Speaker 1: calculated choice of words on the part of this officer
Speaker 1: have always intrigued me. And I'm trying to keep you
Speaker 1: from the most ultimate punishment and you're not helping. He
Speaker 1: refuses to say death penalty. He uses the words ultimate
Speaker 1: punishment as if that's somehow less direct a threat. You know,
Speaker 1: it's an effort to dance around something that everybody knows
Speaker 1: is true, which is Robert is fighting for his life
Speaker 1: in this interrogation room. The moment when all of these
Speaker 1: psychological techniques, all of this mind funk finally takes hold
Speaker 1: and Robert looks up at these officers from the corner
Speaker 1: of the interrogation room and he says, that's the climax
Speaker 1: of the entire interrogation. What can I say I did
Speaker 1: to get me out of this. Once the suspect has
Speaker 1: been brought down to hopelessness, once their will has been broken,
Speaker 1: that's when the second stage of interrogation begins. This is
Speaker 1: the moment when the suspect is offered a choice. What's
Speaker 1: going to happen if they don't confess, and what will
Speaker 1: happen if they do. For Robert, option number one looks
Speaker 1: pretty terrible. The ultimate punishment or best case scenario ninety
Speaker 1: years in prison. But on the other hand, the police
Speaker 1: tell Robert that if he confesses his involvement in the crime,
Speaker 1: if he cooperates, the judge will go easy on him.
Speaker 1: He might get his few as five to ten years
Speaker 1: in prison, and at the very least, they tell him
Speaker 1: he'll save his own life. The interrogators have finally achieved
Speaker 1: their goal to make confessing look like the best choice
Speaker 1: Robert has. So you can see Robert breaking down. But
Speaker 1: he has a problem. He's never been in that house,
Speaker 1: he's never been with these people. He doesn't know who
Speaker 1: the people are that are accusing him of these crimes.
Speaker 1: Even if he wants to confess to this cry, he
Speaker 1: has no idea of what happened. So now the game
Speaker 1: becomes not convincing Robert that he has to confess, but
Speaker 1: rather simply telling him what to say. And so that's
Speaker 1: how the final few hours of this interrogation are spent.
Speaker 1: Robert starts out not even knowing who his accomplices are,
Speaker 1: and they have to give him the names Rocky and Jessica. Okay,
Speaker 1: so Robert adopts those. Yes, I was there with Rocky
Speaker 1: and Jessica, and we went in the back door of
Speaker 1: the home. No. In fact, the evidence of the scene
Speaker 1: was that the entry had occurred through the front door,
Speaker 1: so the officers have to correct that. No, Robert, the
Speaker 1: three of you went through the front door. Then he's
Speaker 1: telling a story in which he and Rocky and Jessica
Speaker 1: are down on the first floor of the home and
Speaker 1: he Robert stays down there during the attack. But of
Speaker 1: course Nola Charles body was found in an upstairs bedroom.
Speaker 1: He's getting it wrong again. So again, no, no, Robert,
Speaker 1: you were upstairs. We know you were upstairs. You have
Speaker 1: to say you were upstairs. And this goes on and
Speaker 1: on and on. I got somebody else, Cluverner, you didn't
Speaker 1: know that you that one. And the amazing thing is
Speaker 1: that while the officers are feeding Robert all of his information,
Speaker 1: correcting his mistakes. While they're doing it, there's a level
Speaker 1: of self awareness because they say to him Robert, you
Speaker 1: realize that if I have to tell you what you did,
Speaker 1: that defeats the purpose, and then they do it anyway.
Speaker 1: After Robert creates this confession and seals his own fate,
Speaker 1: he looks up at these officers and he says, do
Speaker 1: you think by me telling you all this, it's going
Speaker 1: to get me home? And the officer looks at him
Speaker 1: and says, no, you're not going to go home. You'll
Speaker 1: see a judge on Monday. And Robert looks at him
Speaker 1: and says, I'm lying to you. Upon all of this,
Speaker 1: it is the clearest recantation I have ever seen, and
Speaker 1: the most immediate. I mean, he hasn't left the interrogation
Speaker 1: room yet. He thought he's going to go home, back
Speaker 1: to his mom, back to his high school life, and
Speaker 1: instead he is handcuffed and led out of that room
Speaker 1: to a jail cell, where he's booked for double murder
Speaker 1: and arson, and where in fact he's staring at decades
Speaker 1: in prison. Robert Davis couldn't afford to hire a lawyer,
Speaker 1: so the court appointed one for him. And when that happens,
Speaker 1: some people get a lawyer, like Lynn Kachinsky, the guy
Speaker 1: who botched Brendon Daisy's case in Wisconsin. But for Robert,
Speaker 1: this was a moment when he finally got some amazing
Speaker 1: luck because the lawyer appointed to defend him with a
Speaker 1: man who's dedicated his life to fighting for people without
Speaker 1: a voice. My name is Steven Rosenfield, been practicing law
Speaker 1: for forty three years. I'm a civil rights lawyer. Steve
Speaker 1: Rosenfield is one of my heroes nine two. And when
Speaker 1: Steve looks at the tape, he sees everything that we've
Speaker 1: just talked about. He sees that police officers browbeat a
Speaker 1: teenager into confessing to a crime that he didn't even
Speaker 1: know how to describe, and that they were the ones
Speaker 1: who scripted this confession. Steve threw himself into this case
Speaker 1: with a passion of a father who saw how worthless
Speaker 1: this confession was, but who also saw the stakes. The
Speaker 1: real stakes here were the rest of this eighteen year
Speaker 1: old's life. So the job of a good lawyer, when
Speaker 1: faced with a confession is to try to do everything
Speaker 1: in their power to keep that evidence out of the
Speaker 1: trial and to argue that that confession was involuntary and unreliable.
Speaker 1: Ball and that's exactly what Steve did. Our goal was
Speaker 1: to keep the confession out because it was coerced and
Speaker 1: did not reflect what really happened on the night of
Speaker 1: the murders. Steve litigated this case, fought hard for Robert
Speaker 1: hired a psychological expert to talk about the tactics that
Speaker 1: were used by police officers, and he pointed out all
Speaker 1: of the highlights that we've been talking about. I was
Speaker 1: able to call our expert witness, and he went through
Speaker 1: the kinds of factors that lend themselves towards false confessions.
Speaker 1: Why a young man, having been threatened with a death
Speaker 1: sentence might say that he had done something when in
Speaker 1: fact he had not. And if you want to understand
Speaker 1: the problem of false confessions, why this happened so much
Speaker 1: white people are convicted on the basis of confessions like
Speaker 1: this one, it's because too many judges believed that the
Speaker 1: law does not clearly prohibit even threats that someone will
Speaker 1: face death if they don't confess right, even cases where
Speaker 1: they have to be told exactly what to say by
Speaker 1: their interrogators. This judge didn't think the law prohibited that
Speaker 1: and allow this confession of evidence. And when that happened,
Speaker 1: of course, then Robert Davis had a horrible choice to make.
Speaker 1: Knowing Steve, he was very clear and honest with Robert
Speaker 1: about what the options were and what the chances are
Speaker 1: of his being convicted. Confessions are powerful. There was a
Speaker 1: more than likely chance of him being convicted, and with
Speaker 1: a conviction surely would have come a very half day sentence.
Speaker 1: We were guessing that it would have been a huge
Speaker 1: number of years or life sentences for the killing of
Speaker 1: the child and the mother. Do I go to trial
Speaker 1: and risk being sent to prison for the rest of
Speaker 1: my life for something I didn't do? Or do I
Speaker 1: accept an offer that the prosecution has made to me.
Speaker 1: If I plead guilty to one count of murder, I
Speaker 1: will be to twenty three years. Robert was eighteen years
Speaker 1: old when he was arrested, so that would mean that
Speaker 1: he could get out at the age of forty one.
Speaker 1: He would still have a life, half a life, half
Speaker 1: a life. He could have a family, he could have
Speaker 1: some future. Right. It's a horrible choice, but it's the
Speaker 1: kind of choice that defendant's face in courtrooms around the
Speaker 1: country every single day. Robert chose the deal. He entered
Speaker 1: a plea of guilty in exchange for those twenty three
Speaker 1: years horribly difficult, deeply unjust decision that he was forced
Speaker 1: to make, but also one that I can't fault him
Speaker 1: for in the slightest I think any of us in
Speaker 1: that position would probably do the same thing. But what
Speaker 1: Steve said to robertuce I will not give up on you.
Speaker 1: I will continue to investigate this case. Steve Rosenfield promised
Speaker 1: Robert Davis that he would walk with him, that he
Speaker 1: would stay with him, he would visit him in prison,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't forget him. And Steve also said to him, Look,
Speaker 1: I know you didn't commit this crime, and I know
Speaker 1: you don't want to say an open court that you did.
Speaker 1: There is something called an Alfred plea that will enable
Speaker 1: you to save face. You've got someone proclaiming their innocence,
Speaker 1: but who doesn't have the power of resources, ability, legal
Speaker 1: standing to fight the evidence against them. So they cry, uncle,
Speaker 1: I'm innocent, but I can't fight this. That's what an
Speaker 1: Alfred plea is. We've seen it in many other wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction cases, most prominently in the West Memphis three case.
Speaker 1: One of the consequences is that you can't sue the
Speaker 1: state for violating your civil rights. The Alfred plea disqualifies
Speaker 1: you from recovering any compensation for the years, sometimes decades,
Speaker 1: you've spent in prison. It's a tool of injustice. Should
Speaker 1: not exist, but it does, and that's the tool that
Speaker 1: was used to secure Robert Davis's twenty three year prisons ends.
Speaker 1: Steve Rosenfield kept his promise even while Robert served his time.
Speaker 1: Steve continued pounding the pavement looking for new evidence of
Speaker 1: Robert's innocence. He even reached out to family members of
Speaker 1: Rocky and Jessica Fugit, who were both serving life sentences
Speaker 1: in prison. Steve never gave up hope that one day
Speaker 1: Rocky and Jessica might come forward and tell the truth.
Speaker 1: And then one day that hope arrived in the mail.
Speaker 1: After about eight years, I received a letter from the
Speaker 1: boy who said that his conscience was bothering him and
Speaker 1: would I come down and visit him? And he told
Speaker 1: us the truth. He told us that he and his
Speaker 1: sister were the only two present. He came up with
Speaker 1: the idea of framing Robert because he thought it could
Speaker 1: help at his sentencing if the prosecutor was pleased with
Speaker 1: his cooperation. It was like manna from heaven right the
Speaker 1: accuser of Robert Davis. We can'ts and says I was wrong.
Speaker 1: I feel terrible about it. Help me make this right.
Speaker 1: The only hope that Robert had was if the governor
Speaker 1: of Virginia would step in and issue a pardon. And
Speaker 1: so that's Steve Rosenfield's plan. Let's go to the governor,
Speaker 1: Let's tell him about Rocky's recantation, and let's highlight all
Speaker 1: the problems with this interrogation. Now, a local Charlottesville newspaper
Speaker 1: called The Hook wrote an article about steve clemency campaign
Speaker 1: for Robert. And that's the article that showed up in
Speaker 1: your news feed, right, Steve exactly. I read that story
Speaker 1: and I reached out to Steve and I said, what
Speaker 1: can we do to help? And as we talked, I
Speaker 1: noticed that Steve had hired a psychological expert for Robert's case,
Speaker 1: but he didn't have an expert who could really look
Speaker 1: at the interrogation and say, these are the kinds of
Speaker 1: tactics that lead to coerced and unreliable confessions. I volunteered
Speaker 1: our assistance in doing that. I had done some expert work,
Speaker 1: and I wanted Laura start doing some expert work. So
Speaker 1: I assigned Laura the lead role in analyzing this interrogation,
Speaker 1: but we also offered Steve other ways in which to
Speaker 1: publicize and highlight Robert's plight. I had worked with a
Speaker 1: number of producers on NBC's Dateline Show, and I reached
Speaker 1: out to them and I said, this is gold. We
Speaker 1: have a videotaped interrogation from start to finish. You can
Speaker 1: actually see on this tape how someone confesses to a
Speaker 1: crime they didn't commit. And we also reached out to
Speaker 1: other experts in the law enforcement field to look at
Speaker 1: Robert's interrogation and to weigh in on all the things
Speaker 1: that police officers did wrong. I mean, that's the thing right.
Speaker 1: We knew that we needed to elevate Robert's story and
Speaker 1: bring a community of different people to get other to
Speaker 1: push all in their different ways against a system that's
Speaker 1: designed to keep people in prison. We knew that public
Speaker 1: opinion would rally around Robert Davis once people saw this story.
Speaker 1: We knew that people inside Virginia would care about the
Speaker 1: way interrogations were being conducted in their state and would
Speaker 1: hopefully press the governor to do the right thing in
Speaker 1: Robert's case. And then one more thing happened more men
Speaker 1: from Heaven. It was Jessica fu Jets. I received a
Speaker 1: letter from her saying that she knew that she had
Speaker 1: done wrong by framing Robert and that she wanted to
Speaker 1: make amends for that. That's when we started to really
Speaker 1: believe there was a chance of getting Robert Davis out
Speaker 1: of prison. I met with Governor mccaulliff. We talked for
Speaker 1: about forty minutes. I suggested to him that he grant
Speaker 1: at least a conditional pardon and then revisit the case
Speaker 1: in a year, and that was the grounds under which
Speaker 1: Governor mccaulliff agreed to release Robert, deciding that with the
Speaker 1: statements of the two kids, there was a much better
Speaker 1: likelihood that he would have been found not guilty. That's
Speaker 1: been twelve years of incarceration for Roberts and suddenly, a
Speaker 1: few days before Christmas, he's allowed to go home. It's
Speaker 1: an incredible moment where you can you can hear the
Speaker 1: joy in his voice and in his mother's voice as
Speaker 1: they embrace for the first time after Robert is freed.
Speaker 1: It was beautiful, just beautiful. I'm home, like I can
Speaker 1: reach out and not touch nothing. I don't see no
Speaker 1: gates now, I don't see no fences. As a part
Speaker 1: of dateline documenting Robert's release, they go and speak to
Speaker 1: the chief of the Albemarle County Police Department and they
Speaker 1: asked him how he feels about Robert Davis's release. I
Speaker 1: will say this, I believe that the confession is an
Speaker 1: unreliable confession. Using terms like the ultimate punishment, length of
Speaker 1: the interview, those kinds of things would be clearly not
Speaker 1: done today. He was embarrassed by what he saw, and
Speaker 1: this was somebody from the same police department, um in
Speaker 1: the same community, reflecting back on what he saw when
Speaker 1: he looked at the tape, and with that admission of
Speaker 1: a mistake, the Governor of Virginia a year later granted
Speaker 1: Roberts that full pardon based on actual innocence. He exonerated him.
Speaker 1: Robert and I have maintained a close relationship all of
Speaker 1: these years. He's just such a great kid. I called
Speaker 1: the kid mid thirties now, he has an extended family,
Speaker 1: wonderful friends. He's highly thought of in the community. He's
Speaker 1: a sweet guy with a big heart. He's very optimistic
Speaker 1: about the future. And this has been in spite of
Speaker 1: having spent his form out of years in prison, So
Speaker 1: by and large he uses every day to enjoy and
Speaker 1: put behind him some of that ugly past. That's the thing.
Speaker 1: I mean. We'd watched on that interrogation video Robert be
Speaker 1: transformed from just an innocent member of the community into
Speaker 1: a confessed murderer, and now thirteen years later we could
Speaker 1: watch him be transformed back and it was a beautiful
Speaker 1: thing to watch, the retelling of the story the right way. Hey,
Speaker 1: Robert and Laura, how are you doing. I'm doing well.
Speaker 1: How are you? I'm good, I'm good. You just got
Speaker 1: off work today, Hunt, what are you doing for a
Speaker 1: job you day? I'm doing electric work, working for the
Speaker 1: five days. Amazing, fantastic. I heard you got engaged recently
Speaker 1: to your congratulations so much. And she's got a daughter.
Speaker 1: I here, so you're the stepdad. That's a lot of responsibility.
Speaker 1: It is a lot of responsibility, but I definitely enjoy
Speaker 1: it great. The one question we're always asking our work
Speaker 1: is why would anyone confess to a crime that they
Speaker 1: didn't commit? And when you watch the video of Robert Davis,
Speaker 1: it's a perfect answer to the question, why would anyone
Speaker 1: confess to a crime they didn't commit. The answer is
Speaker 1: because they're interrogated like this. When you're fighting a wrongful conviction,
Speaker 1: what you are doing, at the end of the day
Speaker 1: is trying to rewrite the story that's been told about
Speaker 1: your clients. You're rewriting history, right, You're changing the legacy
Speaker 1: of what happened. And the story that led to the
Speaker 1: conviction is a story of guilt, a story of harm,
Speaker 1: of damage, of pain, and of someone who at the
Speaker 1: end of the day deserves to be locked up in
Speaker 1: a cage for the rest of their life. That's the
Speaker 1: story that when you fight a wrongful conviction, that you
Speaker 1: have to change. Thanks so much for joining us. I
Speaker 1: hope you'll come back next week when we'll be telling
Speaker 1: the story of Chicago's own Central Park jogger case, known
Speaker 1: as the Dicks Moore five. The Dicks Moore five were
Speaker 1: a group of teenage boys who confess to the rape
Speaker 1: and murder of their own classmate, and we're convicted despite
Speaker 1: some of the strongest evidence of innocence. Imaginable 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 Drizen. 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