WEBVTT - #131 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - David McCallum 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:03.400 Hi, This is Laura and I writer. Because of COVID nineteen, 0:00:03.640 --> 0:00:06.560 Steve and I recorded this episode from our homes, not 0:00:06.640 --> 0:00:09.800 together in the studio. We might sound a little difference, 0:00:10.039 --> 0:00:12.560 but I think the story we tell is as inspirational 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:19.040 as always be well and stay healthy. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:21.480 False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer. 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:22.599 And I'm Steve Drissen. 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:26.360 Today we'll tell you the story of David McCallum, one 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:29.520 of two New York teens wrongfully convicted of murder in 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:33.800 nineteen eighty six. Luckily for David, he had incredible allies 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:38.000 in his corner, the famous boxer Reuben Hurricane Carter and 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:42.360 a district attorney, Ken Thompson, who was dedicated to real justice. 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:45.680 Here comes the story of the DA and the Hurricane 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:56.400 and one of the men they saved. 0:00:59.480 --> 0:01:01.880 So it was two thousand and six and I had 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:06.360 just become the legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:10.480 and my colleague Rob Warden came into my office and 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:14.560 handed me a VHS tape. On the tape there were 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:20.280 confessions from David McCallum and Willie Stuckey. And Rob told me, 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:24.160 he said, Ruben Hurricane Carter would like you to look 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:27.800 at this. You know, when Rubin Hurricane Carter asked you 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:30.600 to do something, you do it. 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:35.000 At the time, Ruben Carter was the most famous person 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:38.399 who'd ever been wrongly convicted. In the nineteen sixties, he 0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:42.640 was a prize winning professional boxer, nicknamed Hurricane for his 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:46.360 record of early round knockouts, but in nineteen sixty six 0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:49.640 he was convicted of a triple murder he didn't commit. 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:55.080 After twenty years behind bars, Ruben was exonerated. He dedicated 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:57.480 the rest of his life to advocating for others he'd 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:01.240 been wrongly convicted too. In nineteen seventy six, Bob Dylan 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:04.520 wrote the song Hurricane as a tribute to Ruben Carter. 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:07.280 You know, I had met Rubin a couple years before 0:02:07.680 --> 0:02:11.760 Rob handed me that tape. Ruben was at Northwestern he 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:15.400 was at a conference to honor dozens of people who 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:18.480 had been exonerated off of death row, and for me 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:21.400 it was now there was a little bit of hero 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:24.560 worship on my part. I was eager to meet him 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:29.959 because I was so impressed with the way he remade himself, 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:34.320 you know, from a brawler to a deep thinker. 0:02:34.720 --> 0:02:36.760 To be honest. You need both of those skills to 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:39.960 work on cases of wrongful conviction, and you need plenty 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:40.880 of perseverance. 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:44.960 I got hooked on a ten year struggle to represent 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:47.520 David after watching that tape. 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:55.919 Today's story begins in Queens, New York, in South Ozone Park, 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:59.920 a working class neighborhood next to JFK Airport. It's phil 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:04.000 with single family homes, storefronts, and the sound of jetplanes 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:07.920 circling overhead. It's three point thirty on a Sunday afternoon, 0:03:08.120 --> 0:03:12.320 October twentieth, nineteen eighty five. Twenty year old Nathan Blenner 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:16.080 is behind the wheel of his nineteen seventy nine black 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:19.799 Buick Regal. It's parked on a neighborhood street, and he's 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:22.680 trying to get the car to start. A couple kids 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:25.560 playing in a nearby yard were the only witnesses to 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:29.240 what happened next. According to the kids, Nathan is fiddling 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:32.919 with the ignition when two men approach him from behind. 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:35.840 They're about to pass the car when they turn around, 0:03:36.280 --> 0:03:39.400 go to the driver's side and tell Nathan to move over. 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:43.440 The men push him into the backseat, get in manage 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:46.640 to start the car. And drive off. It's over in 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:49.840 the blink of an eye. A carjacking and a kidnapping. 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:55.160 Police from the local precinct and Queen's canvass the neighborhood 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:58.320 looking for leads. About a block away, they find a 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:02.760 woman who says she'd been outside washing Herbuick Regal a 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:06.520 red one when two men walked by, clearly checking out 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:10.800 her vehicle. One of them said nice car, She answered, 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:13.920 if it goes missing, I'll know where to look. The 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:17.560 two men didn't say anything else. Instead, they kept on 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:22.000 walking in the direction of Nathan Blenner. The woman gave 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:24.920 a description to the police. Both men were black and 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:28.520 in their twenties. They were also of noticeably different heights. 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:32.040 One was around five foot six and the taller guy 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:35.920 who had braided hair was five foot ten. But this 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:39.560 car theft and kidnapping soon got even more serious. The 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:43.279 next day, October twenty first, police in Brooklyn get a 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:47.640 phone call a doa dead on arrival in a wooded 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:52.000 area near a cemetery, Nathan Blenner's body had been found. 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:55.560 He was lying face down with a single gunshot wound 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:58.520 to the back of his head, and two days after 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:02.320 the carjacking, Brooklyn police were called to Fulton Street, about 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:05.640 a mile from where they discovered Nathan's body. A car 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:09.240 had been set on fire. It was Nathan's Buick Regal 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:14.080 Police douse the flames, search the car and find fingerprints, 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:18.760 along with some cigarette butts in the ashtray. Brooklyn cops 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:22.479 get in touch with NYPD Central Robbery. They learned there's 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:25.920 been a string of eight car thefts in Queen's over 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:29.640 the two days leading up to Nathan's kidnapping. In every case, 0:05:29.760 --> 0:05:34.039 the offenders were described as two black men around age twenty, 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:37.680 one five foot six, the other five foot ten, and 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:41.200 armed with a gun. This was a two man car 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:45.880 theft crime spree that culminated in Nathan Blenner's murder, and 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:49.520 police were feeling intense pressure to stop it in its tracks. 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:54.200 A few days later, on October twenty fifth, two Brooklyn men, 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:58.520 Terence Hayward and Herman Mumford are arrested for snatching a 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:01.800 chain off a subway rider. One of these guys was 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:05.039 five foot six, the other one who had braided hair, 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:08.960 was five foot ten. Both were black. In other words, 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:13.120 they matched the car thief descriptions pretty well. Police question 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.640 Hayward and Mumford about the string of car thefts and 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:20.720 about Nathan's death. Now will never definitively know whether these 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:25.080 two were involved in anything. They didn't confess and police 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:29.880 stop investigating them pretty soon. That's because Hayward deflects attention 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:33.599 away by telling the cops he knows about a gun 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:37.080 that had been used in a murder. Now stick with 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:40.000 me here, because like a lot of police investigations, this 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:43.840 gets messy. Hayward told the police that his friend James 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:47.080 Johnson knew more about the gun. It turns out that 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:50.359 James was a suspect in a grocery store robbery in 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:53.760 which a gun had been used. When police interviewed James, 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:56.120 he said that he'd given the grocery store gun to 0:06:56.200 --> 0:06:58.520 his aunt Lottie, who then gave the gun to a 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:03.120 man named Jamie, and then, shortly before Nathan's murder, Jamie 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:06.440 supposedly gave the gun to a sixteen year old Brooklyn 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:08.680 teenager named Willy Stucky. 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:12.040 What kind of story is that you got James's and 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:15.200 Jamie's and Lotties and who are all these people? 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:18.400 No kidding? This is a ridiculous story, And it's even 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:20.920 worse because it's coming from two guys who match the 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:24.800 descriptions of the carthieves. It's never clear whether this opposed 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:27.440 grocery store gun had anything to do with the car 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:30.800 thefts or Nathan Blenner, and there's no record of police 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:35.240 ever speaking to Aunt Lottie or Jamie. Instead, police goes 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:38.400 straight for Willy Stucky. For some reason, they jump to 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:41.880 the conclusion that Willy used that gun to kill Nathan. 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:46.840 At about seven pm on October twenty seventh, police pick 0:07:46.920 --> 0:07:49.800 up sixteen year old Willy Stucky and bring him to 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:53.440 the eighty third Precinct in Brooklyn for questioning, and within 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:56.720 a few hours police also pick up Willy's sixteen year 0:07:56.720 --> 0:08:00.280 old buddy, David McCallum and bring him in for questioningo. 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:04.760 Willy and David were longtime friends who played handball together 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:07.800 at a local park. Now, Willy had never been in 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:10.520 trouble with the law before, but for David it was 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:14.400 a different story. David's family had moved from South Carolina 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:17.160 to Brooklyn when he was just seven years old, and 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:19.120 the culture shock had been pretty severe. 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:22.400 You know, he went from a very rural environment where 0:08:22.920 --> 0:08:26.840 he would play in the fields and go fishing and 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:32.280 not have that many worries in his life. But once 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:34.640 he hit the streets of Brooklyn, he took on this 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:38.400 sort of aura of a big tough guy because he 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:43.800 needed that to survive, and he began to act out 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:48.400 on the street in ways to fit his profile. But 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:50.839 it was really more bravado than anything else. 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:57.720 Police feel like they're hot on the trail and they 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:02.680 begin interrogating Willy and David separate rooms at the police station. Now, 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:05.880 neither one of their interrogations was recorded, so we'll never 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:08.480 have a perfect record of what happened inside the box, 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:12.880 but suffice to say that the detectives described the interrogations 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:18.880 very differently than Willi and David did. In court, the 0:09:18.960 --> 0:09:23.239 lead detective testified that both Willia and David voluntarily confessed 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:27.040 to killing Nathan Blenner after just a few questions. But 0:09:27.200 --> 0:09:31.360 Willie testified that police handcuffed him and then hit him 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:36.160 three or four times. David also testified that police hit 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:38.720 him in the mouth hard enough to drop blood and 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:40.720 they threatened to use a chair next time. 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:43.800 You know, the confession, when I first looked at it 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:48.280 had a very rehearsed quality to it. It was very short, 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:53.600 but There's one moment it gave me pause. It's when 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:58.920 David McCallum looks with a moment of sheer terror at 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:02.120 the police officer who's not on the screen but is 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:05.680 clearly sitting in the room. And it was a look like, 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:10.960 am I doing okay? Am I telling the story the 0:10:11.000 --> 0:10:14.520 way the story needs to be told? And I remember 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:21.640 Freeze framing that one frame of terror, and that suggested 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:23.800 to me that what David was saying in terms of 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:26.320 getting hit was probably true. 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:30.320 Both David and Willie testified that after they agreed to confess, 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:34.800 the police rehearsed a story with them. Willy in particular, 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:39.559 testified that police fed him details about the perpetrator's conversation 0:10:39.760 --> 0:10:42.920 with that woman washing her red Bwick Regal. But the 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:46.280 police claimed that all the information in Willy and David's 0:10:46.280 --> 0:10:48.720 confessions came straight from them. 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:52.280 This is exactly why you need to record the entire 0:10:52.400 --> 0:10:57.079 interrogation process. If you don't do that, it's the police 0:10:57.320 --> 0:11:00.440 versus the suspects. The suspects are never going to be 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:04.480 found more credible by a judge or a jury. Police 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:08.520 officers are professional witnesses. They testify in court on a 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:12.680 regular basis, and Willy and David were just kids. They 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:15.240 never stood a chance on cross examination. 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:19.280 But David and Willy's confessions were both really problematic. The 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:23.600 stories they told didn't match the actual evidence. Willie said 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:26.880 Nathan had been shot three times, when in fact he'd 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:30.240 only been shot once. Both Willy and David said the 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:33.360 shooting happened at night, but the medical examiner said the 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:36.599 murder happen during the day, probably right after the carjacking. 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:39.560 Willie told the police that he'd hidden the gun under 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:42.800 his mattress, but when police went to Willy's home and looked, 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:46.480 they couldn't find any gun. There were other problems too, 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:49.520 Like a lot of New York City kids, David and 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:53.680 Willie didn't know how to drive, making them unlikely suspects 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:57.440 for a car theft ring, and most importantly, they didn't 0:11:57.480 --> 0:12:01.120 match the descriptions of the car thieves. David and Willie 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:04.920 were sixteen years old, not twenty something, neither one of 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:08.560 them had braids, and both were short, nowhere near five 0:12:08.559 --> 0:12:13.839 foot ten. But despite all this, Willy and David were 0:12:13.920 --> 0:12:17.319 charged with the murder of Nathan Blenner based on their 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:22.240 confessions and nothing else. Both were convicted on October twenty seventh, 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:26.720 nineteen eighty six. Each was sentenced to twenty five years 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:40.000 to life. The story fast forwards now more than eighteen 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:44.200 years to two thousand and four. David McCallum was thirty 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:48.520 four years old. He'd transformed from an insecure teenager into 0:12:48.559 --> 0:12:52.199 a man known by other prisoners for his unshakable integrity. 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:56.760 David had always maintained his innocence, but he'd lost all 0:12:56.800 --> 0:13:01.120 his appeals and was running out of options. Tragically, Willie 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:03.960 Stuckey had died in two thousand and one at the 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:06.959 age of thirty one, from what the prison said was 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:10.480 a heart attack. So this was David's fight now, and 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:13.440 for too long he'd been fighting alone. 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:16.439 By two thousand and four, David had written over six 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:20.400 hundred letters. He wrote to lawyers, he wrote to TV stations, 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:25.079 radio stations, he wrote to anybody, and he always insisted 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:28.160 that he was innocent, But all he got back were 0:13:28.200 --> 0:13:32.480 rejections until one of those letters made its way to 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:34.000 Ruben Hurricane Carter. 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:37.559 Remember Ruben Carter was the famous boxer who'd spent twenty 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:39.880 years in prison for a triple murder. He didn't commit. 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:43.600 Whose long fight to clear himself was immortalized by Bob 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:48.120 Dylan in the song Hurricane Now. Rubin wasn't exonerated until 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:51.840 nineteen eighty five, the same year that David and Willie 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:55.320 went down for Nathan Blenner's murder. When he got out, 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:59.440 ruben was malnourished from decades of prison food, and he'd 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:02.520 lost sight in one eye from a botched prison surgery. 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:06.600 He couldn't fight for the middleweight crown any longer, so 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:11.240 instead he started fighting for the wrongfully convicted. After working 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:15.480 for one of North America's leading innocence organizations, Rubin founded 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:18.000 his own group, Innocence International. 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:25.160 Rubin recognized that he was probably the most well known 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:31.000 figure who had been wrongfully convicted, and that if he 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:35.360 didn't use his voice in some way to be a 0:14:35.440 --> 0:14:40.160 champion for the wrongfully convicted, that it would be a 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:41.160 terrible waste. 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:49.480 For twenty years, I was incarcerated as a racist, triple murderer, 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:54.080 condemned by history, repudiated by the courts, and sentenced to 0:14:54.240 --> 0:15:01.600 die amid the squalor and despair and of a maximum 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:06.880 security prison. And tonight I am standing here at the 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:14.240 United Nations making this address. Now, if that's not miraculous. 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:16.040 Then I don't know what it is. 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:22.760 I don't know what is. David was at his wits end. 0:15:23.640 --> 0:15:28.560 His best friend had died, and every day was a 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:32.600 struggle for him because he didn't see a way out. 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:36.120 In February two thousand and four, David McCallum read a 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:40.160 magazine interview with Reuben Hurricane Carter, and he sent a 0:15:40.240 --> 0:15:43.400 letter asking for help to the author, a man named 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:47.320 Ken Klonsky. Ruben and Ken had started working together on 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:51.080 wrongful conviction cases, and today Ken is the director of 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:52.320 Innocence International. 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:56.040 David sent me a letter and he explained his case 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.200 and the situation he was in. Now, I have no 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:02.840 legal background, and I had no background in wrongful convictions, 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:06.600 so I just thought, well, here's a person sounds honest, 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:12.560 and I'll just tell Ruben about him. And Ruben at 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:16.320 first he took it in and he said at some point, well, 0:16:16.400 --> 0:16:18.560 let's go visit the brother and see what he's like. 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:22.000 Both Ken Klonsky and Ruben Carter read up on David's 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:24.200 case and came to visit him in prison. 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:27.520 This was a prison in New York called Eastern Correctional. 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:30.720 When we visited, first of all, I'd never been in 0:16:30.760 --> 0:16:34.320 a prison in my life, and the place itself was enormous. 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:36.680 It looked like a medieval castle. 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:40.200 In a visiting room, Reuben and David sat on opposite 0:16:40.200 --> 0:16:44.440 sides of the table, silently studying each other. Later David 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:48.040 would remember feeling like Ruben was reading him, and David 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:49.840 refused to break the silence. 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:55.040 The eye contact was like love at first sight. And 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:59.880 they had a conversation which David started going on about 0:16:59.880 --> 0:17:02.520 it case, and Ruben interrupted and says, you know what, 0:17:02.600 --> 0:17:05.320 I'm not interested right now in your case. I want 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:06.200 to know who you are. 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:10.919 Ruben was a tough interviewer. He grilled David about you know, 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:13.800 if I get involved in your case, I don't want 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:16.879 you to come out of prison and act like a 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:21.680 fool and I'm wasting my time. And he got from 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:25.280 David the sense that this was somebody who was going 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:31.000 to make him proud, and Rubin left that meeting knowing 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:33.399 that he was going to do everything in his power 0:17:33.840 --> 0:17:36.360 to get David McCallum out of prison. 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:41.760 I think we were there about two hours, and I 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:45.680 remember us getting up and leaving and I look back 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:50.960 at that enormous prison and I said Rubin. Really, who's 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:52.160 going to get him out of there? 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:57.199 Rubin and Ken hired a defense lawyer, Oscar Michelin, and 0:17:57.280 --> 0:17:59.640 in two thousand and six, the three of them sent 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:03.080 the confession tapes to the Center on Wrongful Convictions for 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:06.760 Steve to review. Now, David had read about your work, Steve, 0:18:07.000 --> 0:18:09.679 and I'm going to out you here. He considers you 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:12.480 the Lebron James of false confessions. 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:17.439 Look, Laura, we're in Chicago, and out of respect for 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:21.040 the greatest basketball player of all time, I think we 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:24.320 should go with the Michael Jordan of false confessions. 0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:27.480 Slow down, Steve. First of all, you're from Philly, that's right. 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:30.480 So actually, the more I think about it, I prefer 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:34.080 to be known as the Doctor j of false confessions, 0:18:34.359 --> 0:18:37.160 as in, the doctor is in the house. Oh see, 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:40.920 the doctor makes house calls. The doctor is on the case. 0:18:41.240 --> 0:18:44.480 Okay, Doctor j you analyze these confessions and you found 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:48.200 a pretty revealing error what we call a false fed fact. 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:48.960 I did. 0:18:49.440 --> 0:18:52.800 A false fed fact is a fact that comports with 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:57.919 the police theory at the time of the interrogation, and 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:01.719 it's adopted by the suspect in his or her confession, 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:05.960 but the fact later turns out to be false, and 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:09.640 if it is in the suspects confession, then you know 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:13.280 that the police fed that fact to the suspects. And 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:15.119 that's exactly what happened here. 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:18.399 At the time of the interrogations, the police believed that 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:21.080 Willy and David were the ones who had talked to 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:24.200 that woman with the red Buick regal just before going 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:27.840 around the block and attacking Nathan Blenner. And sure enough, 0:19:28.240 --> 0:19:32.000 right there in Willie Stucky's confession is a story about 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:34.679 talking to that woman and saying nice car. 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:38.919 But David and Willie didn't match their description. Remember, the 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:42.600 woman had described two guys five feet six and five ten, 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:46.640 one with braids. Now David and Willie were both five 0:19:46.800 --> 0:19:49.640 six and neither of them had braids. 0:19:49.840 --> 0:19:52.119 They couldn't have been the guys who talked to that woman. 0:19:52.560 --> 0:19:55.960 And by the time of trial even the state agreed 0:19:56.359 --> 0:19:59.080 that David and Willie were not the ones she'd seen. 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:03.439 So how did story get into Willie's confession? It must 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:05.320 have been fed by the police. 0:20:05.480 --> 0:20:08.280 That was enough to make Steve join the team right 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:09.680 then and there, and. 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:13.320 I decided to recruit Laura Cohen, a law professor and 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:17.200 an attorney at Rutgridge University to join our defense team. 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:21.280 Laura, Cohen and Steve approached the Brooklyn DA's office and 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:24.399 got them to agree to do forensic testing on the 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:28.480 cigarette butts and fingerprints found in Nathan Blenner's car, and 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:32.119 the results the cigarette butts had DNA on them that 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:36.480 excluded both David and Willie. Instead, the DNA matched a 0:20:36.640 --> 0:20:41.200 different Brooklyn teenager they had no connection to. The fingerprints 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:44.960 also excluded David and Willie. They matched yet another Brooklyn 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:48.520 teenager who had been killed years before in an altercation 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:49.320 with the police. 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:54.400 This was more powerful evidence of both Willie and David's innocence, 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:59.159 and the whole team, including Rubin, was very excited. 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:03.800 But this evidence still wasn't enough to persuade the Brooklyn 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:11.280 DA to exonerate David, not yet. Then two big things happened. First, 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:15.800 an election in twenty thirteen, a new Brooklyn DA was elected, 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:19.720 a reformer named Ken Thompson who had campaigned on a 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:24.880 platform of rooting out wrongful convictions. David's legal team immediately 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:27.720 contacted Thompson and told him about the case. 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:32.239 We used every bit of our connections to try to 0:21:32.280 --> 0:21:37.440 get David's case on Ken Thompson's radar screen, and it worked. 0:21:39.600 --> 0:21:42.439 The second big thing that happened was a terrible blow 0:21:42.560 --> 0:21:46.919 to the whole team. In twenty fourteen, Rubin announced that 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:50.280 he had prostate cancer and it was spreading fast. 0:21:50.840 --> 0:21:51.040 You know. 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:54.960 When Rubin announced that he had cancer, he and I 0:21:55.040 --> 0:21:59.560 were kind of at odds with one another. Rubin was 0:22:00.240 --> 0:22:05.560 upset with me because he thought that we coddled the 0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:09.560 DA instead of looking for an opportunity to land a 0:22:09.640 --> 0:22:14.919 knockout blow with new evidence. So Ruben's answer to us was, 0:22:15.080 --> 0:22:19.560 stop fiddling around with the DA's office, stop dealing with 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:23.359 state court. You need to go to federal court in 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:27.240 order to get David out of prison. And we told 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:31.160 Ruben that's just not going to work. And it created 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:35.520 a tension between Rubin and me at this point in time. 0:22:36.200 --> 0:22:40.280 But the announcement that he had prostate cancer was devastating 0:22:40.400 --> 0:22:45.080 because even though we were at odds, I had tremendous 0:22:45.160 --> 0:22:49.800 respect for Ruben and I knew that his voice was 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:52.359 going to be crucial if we were ever going to 0:22:52.400 --> 0:22:53.160 win this case. 0:22:53.600 --> 0:22:57.240 Ruben was very sick and quickly got much sicker, but 0:22:57.320 --> 0:23:01.240 he was still the ultimate fighter. On his deathbed, With 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:04.800 ken Klonsky's help, Ruben wrote an op ed for the 0:23:04.840 --> 0:23:08.720 New York Post urging the New Brooklyn DA to exonerate 0:23:08.880 --> 0:23:11.919 David McCallum. It was one of the last things he 0:23:12.000 --> 0:23:15.760 did with his life. Here's some of what Reuben Hurricane 0:23:15.800 --> 0:23:16.800 Carter wrote. 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:20.440 My single regret in life is that David McCallum is 0:23:20.480 --> 0:23:24.760 still in prison. My aim in helping this fine man 0:23:24.920 --> 0:23:27.639 is to pay it forward, to give the help that 0:23:27.800 --> 0:23:31.840 I received as a wrongfully convicted man to another who 0:23:31.920 --> 0:23:36.439 needs such help. Now now I'm looking death straight in 0:23:36.480 --> 0:23:39.600 the eye, Ruben wrote, He's got me on the ropes, 0:23:40.200 --> 0:23:43.720 but I won't back down. And then Ruben asked the 0:23:43.800 --> 0:23:47.640 New Brooklyn DA to look straight into the eye of truth, 0:23:48.000 --> 0:23:52.200 a tougher customer than death, and not to back down either. 0:23:52.840 --> 0:23:56.280 To this day, ken Klonsky remembers helping Ruben write that 0:23:56.320 --> 0:23:56.680 op ed. 0:23:59.320 --> 0:24:03.280 We wrote a look utter together and it didn't have 0:24:03.960 --> 0:24:08.840 a proper ending, And finally I hit on something. To 0:24:08.880 --> 0:24:11.800 live in a world where truth matters, and just as 0:24:11.920 --> 0:24:16.640 however late still happens, that world would be heaven enough 0:24:16.680 --> 0:24:17.080 for us. 0:24:17.119 --> 0:24:18.280 All. 0:24:18.560 --> 0:24:23.080 So it was out there that Ruben was dying and 0:24:23.119 --> 0:24:27.840 that Ruben had made a last wish. 0:24:27.280 --> 0:24:31.480 That op ed was the knockout blow that we were 0:24:31.520 --> 0:24:32.120 looking for. 0:24:42.680 --> 0:24:46.680 Ruben's dying plea, combined with the new DNA evidence, made 0:24:46.840 --> 0:24:50.919 the difference. A few months after Ruben passed away, the 0:24:50.960 --> 0:24:55.119 Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson announced that he was going to 0:24:55.240 --> 0:25:01.399 exonerate David McCallum and posthumously exonerate Willie Stuck too. And 0:25:01.440 --> 0:25:05.240 while this news was incredibly welcome, the way ken Thompson's 0:25:05.280 --> 0:25:08.720 office handled the exonerations was extraordinary. 0:25:09.000 --> 0:25:12.560 I had never seen so much grace in an exoneration. 0:25:12.680 --> 0:25:15.920 And let me explain what I mean by that. When 0:25:15.920 --> 0:25:19.199 we exonerate people, most of the time, it's after a 0:25:19.320 --> 0:25:23.280 hard fought legal battle that brings the state down to 0:25:23.400 --> 0:25:29.320 its knees, and the state reluctantly gives up, and on 0:25:29.400 --> 0:25:34.800 the day of exoneration it's oftentimes a kind of anticlimactic moment. 0:25:35.640 --> 0:25:39.879