Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I
Speaker 1: Rider and I'm Steve Drisen. Today we'll tell you the
Speaker 1: story of Hugh Burton. When he was sixteen years old,
Speaker 1: he was charged with the murder of his own mother
Speaker 1: at his family's home in the Bronx. Forget blind justice.
Speaker 1: This is a classic case of tunnel vision because even
Speaker 1: as Hugh was bulldozed into a false confession, the real
Speaker 1: killer was living in the apartment just one floor below.
Speaker 1: When I was asked to look into Hugh Burton's case
Speaker 1: by the Innocence Project, Laura and I were just beginning
Speaker 1: the process of setting up the Center on Wrongful Convictions
Speaker 1: of Youth, which was a project focus on false confessions
Speaker 1: taken from young people. Children and teenagers are between two
Speaker 1: and three times more likely than adults to falsely confess,
Speaker 1: and we were seeing a particularly disturbing pattern multiple cases
Speaker 1: of young people falsely confessing to the murders of their
Speaker 1: own family members. When Hugh's story came to us, it
Speaker 1: fit that pattern to a t. What is it that
Speaker 1: could make someone confessed in the most horrific crime imaginable?
Speaker 1: The murderer of a parent or a loved one. Hughes
Speaker 1: story begins in the Wakefield neighborhood of the Bronx, a
Speaker 1: working class section of New York City that's home to
Speaker 1: a thriving Jamaican American community. In when our story starts,
Speaker 1: Hugh was sixteen years old and in tenth grade. He
Speaker 1: was the only child of two Jamaican immigrants, Kauziah and
Speaker 1: Raphael Burton. Kauziah was a nurse and Raphael was a
Speaker 1: successful building contractor, so successful that the family was able
Speaker 1: to buy real estate, a red brick apartment building three
Speaker 1: stories tall on Eastchester Road. The Burtons moved into the
Speaker 1: second floor and rented out the rest of the building.
Speaker 1: Hugh was a good kid, and his parents were proud
Speaker 1: of him at sixteen. He was smart, soft spoken, good looking.
Speaker 1: He did love the emerging rap scene, and he'd cause
Speaker 1: his old school parents no end of worry by hitting
Speaker 1: the dance clubs till closing time. But the family was close,
Speaker 1: loving and prosperous. An American success story. It's January third,
Speaker 1: nine nine. Raphael Burton was out of the country. He'd
Speaker 1: gone back to Jamaica to check on relatives who'd been
Speaker 1: hit by Hurricane Gilbert a few months earlier. It's a Tuesday,
Speaker 1: and Hugh gets home from school at two thirty. No
Speaker 1: sign of his mom, but he does notice that the
Speaker 1: TV's on his mom's car is gone and her pocketbook
Speaker 1: had been dumped out on the living room floor, but
Speaker 1: Hugh doesn't think too much about it. He had plans
Speaker 1: to hook up with a girl after school, and off
Speaker 1: he went to her place. At five thirty. Hugh comes
Speaker 1: back home and makes a horrible discovery. His mom, Kaziah,
Speaker 1: is lying on the bed in the master bedroom. A
Speaker 1: telephone cord is wrapped around her wrist and her underwear
Speaker 1: has been pulled down. A serrated steak knife is lying
Speaker 1: next to her on the bed, and there's a gaping
Speaker 1: knife wound in her neck. Hugh called in a panic
Speaker 1: and tells them I think my mother has been murdered.
Speaker 1: The police arrive and pronounced Kaziah Burton dead. They soon conclude, though,
Speaker 1: that she hasn't actually been raped. Instead, her underwear has
Speaker 1: been pulled down to make it look like a rape.
Speaker 1: The real motive seems to be robbery. The attacker made
Speaker 1: off with her brand new Honda Accord. When the police
Speaker 1: came to the crime scene. They took notice of a
Speaker 1: couple of things. One of the things was that Hugh
Speaker 1: was sitting outside and to then he appeared to calm,
Speaker 1: too cool, too collected. They had heard his frantic nin
Speaker 1: one call, and his lack of emotion or apparent lack
Speaker 1: of emotion at the crime scene was a red flag
Speaker 1: to them. I mean, this is a kid who had
Speaker 1: just come across his mother's stabbed body and he is
Speaker 1: panicking on that nine one one call. But by the
Speaker 1: time the police arrived, shock had set in, which they
Speaker 1: read as remorselessness. So as the police are at the scene,
Speaker 1: they decided to question Hugh about his mom's murder, and
Speaker 1: that evening he agreed to go down with police to
Speaker 1: the forty seven Precinct for questioning. Even while his dad,
Speaker 1: who was still in Jamaica, was catching the first flight
Speaker 1: back to New York. He had nothing to worry about.
Speaker 1: This is what he wanted to do. He wanted to
Speaker 1: find out who had killed his mother, and so he
Speaker 1: went down there to do anything he could do to
Speaker 1: help the police find and catch her killer. The police
Speaker 1: question Hugh and he gives them every detail of his
Speaker 1: activities from putting in a full day at school to
Speaker 1: meeting up with a girl in the afternoon, right up
Speaker 1: until he discovered his mother's body in the evening. After
Speaker 1: they finished questioning, he spends the night at his godmother's
Speaker 1: house because his dad hasn't gotten back to New York yet.
Speaker 1: The next day, Hugh returns to the precinct and the
Speaker 1: same three detectives questioned him again for hours. Now we
Speaker 1: don't have a videotape of the whole interrogation. Police only
Speaker 1: turned on the cameras at the end to capture Hugh's
Speaker 1: final confession, but Hugh says he remembers what happened in
Speaker 1: that room. Hugh says he confessed because of a threat.
Speaker 1: Remember the girl whose house he'd gone to that afternoon, Well,
Speaker 1: she was fourteen, and under New York law, Hugh was
Speaker 1: potentially liable for statutory rape, even though they were consenting classmates.
Speaker 1: The police told him he'd go down for murder plus
Speaker 1: statutory rape and be sent to write her his island
Speaker 1: unless he confessed. Now, Hugh didn't know exactly what statutory
Speaker 1: rape was, but he knew the word rape was really bad,
Speaker 1: and he knew well enough what Riker's Island was a
Speaker 1: notorious New York jail with a reputation for horrific violence.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, the police told him that if
Speaker 1: he confessed, he would go to family court where his
Speaker 1: dad could pick him up in a few days, which
Speaker 1: is a blatant lie. It's total bullshit. The police also
Speaker 1: tell Hugh that they talked to his teacher and her
Speaker 1: records didn't confirm that he was at school during first period.
Speaker 1: How is that possible? He knew he had been there
Speaker 1: all day, but it was starting to be clear the
Speaker 1: detectives didn't believe him. They were developing their own theory
Speaker 1: of Casiah's murder with Hugh as the killer. And of
Speaker 1: course the police said to Hugh, it was an accident
Speaker 1: and everybody will see that it was an accident. So
Speaker 1: your options are murder and statutory rape and Riker's Island,
Speaker 1: or admitting to an accident, being sent to family court
Speaker 1: and being picked up by your father within a few
Speaker 1: hours of your first court appearance. And over time, he
Speaker 1: realized the only way for him to get out of
Speaker 1: that room was to cop to these charges. So by
Speaker 1: the early morning of January five, Hugh Burton found himself
Speaker 1: signing a confession to the murder of his own mother.
Speaker 1: And let me tell you, this confession is weird. It's
Speaker 1: written in stilted formal language, and the story it tells
Speaker 1: is all about crack cocaine. I Hugh Burton, known individual
Speaker 1: by the name of Bugs, who I owed two hundred
Speaker 1: dollars to for some crack I received from him to sell.
Speaker 1: Instead of selling the crack, I kept it for my
Speaker 1: own personal use. The confession goes on to describe Hugh
Speaker 1: getting high on crack the night before his mom died.
Speaker 1: He comes home, gets into a quote stat with his mother,
Speaker 1: and wakes up the next morning still high stimulated on trunks.
Speaker 1: Who uses the word stimulated? Ow you say I was high?
Speaker 1: I walked to the kitchen, the confession continued, NiFe and
Speaker 1: I came back. She then asked, are you going to
Speaker 1: kill me? And she went to smell me and I'm moved.
Speaker 1: That's when I accidentally stabbed my mother in her neck.
Speaker 1: It wasn't planet purpose, you know, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: scare a little bit see what she was going to do.
Speaker 1: According to the confession, He washes off the knife, leaves
Speaker 1: it on the bed, and gives his mom's car to bugs.
Speaker 1: This was no accident because I have Burton had been
Speaker 1: stabbed twice in the neck, very deep, violent stab wounds.
Speaker 1: And there were other parts of this confession that made
Speaker 1: no sense whatsoever. Got a call from the person who
Speaker 1: old money too? And who's that personal books? Do you
Speaker 1: know his round name? You couldn't tell the police anything
Speaker 1: about books, who he was, where he lived, or even
Speaker 1: what he did with the car. Any telephone number that
Speaker 1: would have been, I don't know. Back in the day,
Speaker 1: the Jamaican immigrant community didn't use the banks a lot,
Speaker 1: and use parents were no different. They kept little pockets
Speaker 1: of cash in secret places throughout their home places that
Speaker 1: Hugh as a kid knew about. Who gives a ten
Speaker 1: tho dollar car to somebody to settle a two hundred
Speaker 1: dollar debt. If you needed two hundred dollars, he could
Speaker 1: have found that money in a jiffy. So none of
Speaker 1: this is making any sense. He also was not known
Speaker 1: to use crack, much less run up debts with dealers,
Speaker 1: or behaved in a sort of depraved way that would
Speaker 1: lead a crack addict to attack his own mom. This
Speaker 1: us He wasn't Hugh Burton, But it's the story of
Speaker 1: the confession school. So where did this whole crack theme
Speaker 1: come from? It came from the late nineteen eighties culture
Speaker 1: of fear about the New York City drug epidemic. Between
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six and three, that time frame, New York
Speaker 1: was averaging two thousand murders a year and police were
Speaker 1: attributing a significant percentage of them to crack cocaine. And
Speaker 1: think about it from the police perspective. Here you have
Speaker 1: a kid who's got no criminal background by all accounts.
Speaker 1: He has a deep and abiding love for both of
Speaker 1: his parents. He's a respectful kid when it comes to
Speaker 1: his parents, and all of a sudden he snaps and
Speaker 1: stabs his mother to death over two hundred dollars that
Speaker 1: she would have gladly given him. The crack theme came
Speaker 1: from the police, not from Hugh. And there it is
Speaker 1: in the very first lines of this confession that word once.
Speaker 1: This story is about a kid using crackers, selling crack.
Speaker 1: Nothing else matters off. Sure enough, Hugh is arrested and
Speaker 1: the media headlines go from maximum shock value, crack craze,
Speaker 1: teen stabs mom to death. Hugh is charged with second
Speaker 1: degree murder and he sent not to family court. But
Speaker 1: to the place he feared most, Riker's Island. Those promises
Speaker 1: the cops made to him were nothing but lies. From
Speaker 1: the minute that Hugh was charged with his offense, his
Speaker 1: father knew that Hugh was innocent. He just knew it.
Speaker 1: He knew his son, his whole family stood by him,
Speaker 1: but it was too late. He'd confessed. From the depths
Speaker 1: of his jail cell. He writes a eulogy for his
Speaker 1: mom and mails it to a relative so it can
Speaker 1: be read out loud at her funeral, and then he
Speaker 1: grieves alone. Let's stop for one second, Laura. You know
Speaker 1: when the police were questioning who they did what all
Speaker 1: police officers do. Do you know anybody who who might
Speaker 1: have wanted to hurt your mother? Can you give us
Speaker 1: any leads as to who might have done this? And
Speaker 1: Hugh came up blank. He said, I don't know anybody
Speaker 1: who would want to hurt my mother. But I think
Speaker 1: what you need to be focused on is what happened
Speaker 1: to my mother's car. The person who had taken my
Speaker 1: mother's car, that's the person who probably killed her. Fast
Speaker 1: forward to January eleven, six days after Hugh confessed and
Speaker 1: was arrested on the evening of January eleven, police in
Speaker 1: Mount Vernon, New York, pull over a car for running
Speaker 1: a stop sign. It turns out that car was Kaziah
Speaker 1: Burton's missing gray Honda Accord. So who was the driver.
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Green was the first floor tenant in the Burtons
Speaker 1: apartment building. He just moved in there with his girlfriend Stacy.
Speaker 1: Emmanuel was twenty two years old, five ft eleven pounds.
Speaker 1: You should see the body on this guy. He was cut,
Speaker 1: totally ripped. This guy could bench you, Steve. And he
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly a choir boy. He'd done time for a
Speaker 1: knife point rape and attempted robbery. In fact, Emmanuel Green
Speaker 1: was on parole at the time that Kaziah was murdered,
Speaker 1: and only a month before he'd been arrested for assaulting
Speaker 1: his previous landlord, Hugh Burton. Only new Emmanuel Green in passing.
Speaker 1: Their lives were in completely different places. Emmanuel Green was
Speaker 1: a bouncer at a club who worked late shift and
Speaker 1: slept during the day, and he was in school during
Speaker 1: the day and at home most nights and on the weekends.
Speaker 1: If he went out with his friends clubbing, he went
Speaker 1: to New Jersey, not where Emmanuel Green was. These were
Speaker 1: complete strangers. After police catch Emmanuel in cause Iiah Briton's car,
Speaker 1: they bring him in for questioning and he's interrogated by
Speaker 1: the same officers who questioned Hugh Burton. After only a
Speaker 1: few hours, Emmanuel goes on videotape to make a statement
Speaker 1: of his own. He says that on the morning of
Speaker 1: the murder January three, Hugh had knocked on his door
Speaker 1: downstairs in the first floor apartment, and Hugh had told
Speaker 1: Emmanuel that he planned to steal his mom's Honda Accord,
Speaker 1: and he asked Emmanuel if he knew how to get
Speaker 1: rid of a stolen car. I'll take care of my mother,
Speaker 1: Hugh was supposedly said, and the two of them agreed
Speaker 1: to split the cash. Emmanuel claimed that Hugh then went
Speaker 1: back upstairs by himself and Moost. Immediately, Emmanuel said, I
Speaker 1: heard arguing, screaming, and a thumping noise. He said he
Speaker 1: overheard Hugh yelling you won't give me the money, Fuck
Speaker 1: you bitch, I'll kill you and take it. A few
Speaker 1: minutes later, he reappeared outside Green's apartments, supposedly distraught, and
Speaker 1: he confesses to a Manuel, I killed my mother. I
Speaker 1: stabbed her. I stabbed her. Emmanuel continues, my criminal mind
Speaker 1: took over and I said, let's make it look like
Speaker 1: a robbery. He claimed to have gone back upstairs with
Speaker 1: Hugh to the Burton family apartment. They stole two hundred
Speaker 1: dollars from Kaziah's pocketbook, and Emmanuel told Hugh to get
Speaker 1: rid of the knife somewhere outside. Then Emmanuel took off
Speaker 1: with Kaziah's car. So we have two statements, one of
Speaker 1: them from a slick talking bouncer with a history of
Speaker 1: rape and robbery and attacks on his landlord's the guy
Speaker 1: who was actually found with Casiah Burton's car, and the
Speaker 1: other one from a sixteen year old with no criminal history.
Speaker 1: The train had already left the station for Hugh Burton
Speaker 1: after his arrest. The detectives who were involved in the
Speaker 1: interrogation leaked information about the case to the press, and
Speaker 1: they were quoted widely in newspaper articles that graced the
Speaker 1: front page of the New York Times, at the Post
Speaker 1: in the Daily News. And so when Emmanuel Green shows
Speaker 1: up with Kaziah Burton's car, these police officers needed to
Speaker 1: figure out a way to reconcile these two very different stories. Remember,
Speaker 1: he was confession never mentions Emmanuel Green his downstairs neighbor
Speaker 1: at all, and Green's confession never mentions crack, cocaine or
Speaker 1: any drug debt. The confession of Emmanuel Green was cooked
Speaker 1: up in the interrogation room in Mount Vernon by the
Speaker 1: same detectives who took the confession of Hugh Burton. So
Speaker 1: the case against Huburton plowed forward, and before too long
Speaker 1: he found himself convicted of the murder of his own
Speaker 1: mother and sentenced to life in prison. For his part,
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Green was never charged with Causiah's murder. He was
Speaker 1: only ever charged with crimes relating to the theft of
Speaker 1: her automobile, but he was never convicted. Before his trial,
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Green was stabbed to death as part of a
Speaker 1: dispute arising out of a lover's triangle. So when the
Speaker 1: case came across my desk, it was sometime in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight early two thousand and nine I was sent
Speaker 1: a letter from Hugh Burton and some materials related to
Speaker 1: his case by a woman at the Innocence Project at
Speaker 1: the Center on Wrongful Convictions. We get referred false confession
Speaker 1: cases a lot, but When Steve looked at Hugh's case,
Speaker 1: he realized it was different than a lot of the
Speaker 1: other cases we've told you about on this podcast. DNA
Speaker 1: testing wasn't an option here. There was no evidence left
Speaker 1: at the crime scene that, if did could lead to
Speaker 1: a different outcome. It was really all about the confession
Speaker 1: and all about trying to prove the guilt of the
Speaker 1: true perpetrator and Manual Green. As soon as we took
Speaker 1: the case. In two thousand nine, Hugh, thank goodness, was
Speaker 1: released on parole after almost two decades behind bars. And
Speaker 1: this was a wonderful thing. Having your client out is
Speaker 1: a blessing, even before they are exonerated. We want to
Speaker 1: get them out because when they're out, they can help
Speaker 1: us with our investigation. It's easier to represent someone who's free.
Speaker 1: You can call them whenever you need to, and you
Speaker 1: can meet with them face to face without glass or
Speaker 1: guards or prison walls between the two of you. For
Speaker 1: his part, Hugh was able to begin a new life
Speaker 1: on the outside. He's always been a runner, but instead
Speaker 1: of doing laps around the prison yard, he started running
Speaker 1: long distances in the free air. And, as Hugh said,
Speaker 1: his sites on the new York City Marathon. His legal
Speaker 1: team embarked on its own marathon investigation, because even though
Speaker 1: Hugh was free, he was still a convicted murderer who
Speaker 1: needed his name cleared. Steve invited Laura Cohen, an attorney
Speaker 1: and professor at Rutgers University, to join the team, and
Speaker 1: we got to work pretty soon. We discovered powerful evidence
Speaker 1: of Hugh's innocence. Hugh had described killing his mom with
Speaker 1: a serrated stake knife found on the bed. That was
Speaker 1: the theory embraced by police at the time of the interrogation.
Speaker 1: But after Hugh's interrogation, the autopsy showed that Kaziah Burton
Speaker 1: had actually been stabbed with a smooth edged blade. The
Speaker 1: stake knife wasn't the murder weapon. The fact that Hugh's
Speaker 1: confession incorporated an error that police believed was true at
Speaker 1: the time, that's a red flag. The police were feeding
Speaker 1: Hugh their own theory of the crime. Emmanuel Green, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, had known that the stake knife wasn't
Speaker 1: the murder weapon. He described using a different blade, one
Speaker 1: that he told Hugh to dispose of outside. This was
Speaker 1: information only the real perpetrator would know. Months of investigation
Speaker 1: turned into years, and we were gathering evidence slowly but surely,
Speaker 1: and then finally we got a couple of lucky breaks.
Speaker 1: You see, in twenty sixteen, a new DA got elected
Speaker 1: in the Bronx and we saw a new opportunity to
Speaker 1: have a conversation about Hugh's case. So we got in
Speaker 1: touch with our friends at the Innocence Project in New York,
Speaker 1: Susan Friedman and Barry Shack. Susan's a rock star attorney
Speaker 1: at the Innocence Project, and Barry co founded the project
Speaker 1: with Peter Nufeld. He's one of the real o g
Speaker 1: s in the exoneration movement. And before long, Barry was
Speaker 1: able to put us in touch with a special new
Speaker 1: division of the Bronx DA's office, the Conviction Integrity Unit.
Speaker 1: Here's very now. One of the things that the Innocence
Speaker 1: Project and myself in particular have been involved in a
Speaker 1: lot is the creation of what are known as conviction
Speaker 1: integrity units. The whole point of a conviction integrity process
Speaker 1: is to have a non adversarial search for the truth
Speaker 1: where you set up an investigative plan that both sides
Speaker 1: agree to go forward with it, and you develop a
Speaker 1: process where you share information and go back and forth.
Speaker 1: You just forget about the legal technicalities and you just
Speaker 1: look at the evidence and investigated together and see where
Speaker 1: it leads. And for the next three years we worked
Speaker 1: in collaboration with the Conviction Review Unit. It was an
Speaker 1: extremely cooperative experience. We shared documents, we interviewed witnesses together.
Speaker 1: We brought in experts to educate them about all of
Speaker 1: the changes that had taken place with regard to false
Speaker 1: confessions and new understandings from the science. As we started
Speaker 1: working with the Bronx Conviction Integrity Unit, that's when we
Speaker 1: really got lucky. We'd all huddle at the offices of
Speaker 1: the Bronx defender, who were giving us a place to stay,
Speaker 1: and Steve google one last time for something about the
Speaker 1: officers involved in this case. Detectives who obtained false confessions
Speaker 1: are often serial offenders. I typed in the names of
Speaker 1: these detectives in a search for other cases, and I
Speaker 1: hit gold. All of a sudden, he hit, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: we don't know, an opinion that appeared in the New
Speaker 1: York Law Journal by Judge Steve Barrett that was quite incredible.
Speaker 1: What Steve found was shocking. A court decision describing how
Speaker 1: the same cops who interrogated Hugh had coerced a false
Speaker 1: confession out of another man in a completely different case.
Speaker 1: And by sheer chance, the evening before we're going in
Speaker 1: to talk to the conviction Integrity Unit, we found it.
Speaker 1: Finding that these detectives had been involved in another false
Speaker 1: confession just three months earlier than you. Burton's case began
Speaker 1: to raise questions about who these detectives were and whether
Speaker 1: we could trust their accounts of what happened in that
Speaker 1: interrogation room. In the end, this may not have all
Speaker 1: happened if it weren't for Dennis Coss's courage. Dennis Coss
Speaker 1: is the man who had falsely confessed at the hands
Speaker 1: of the same interrogators just three months before they questioned Hugh.
Speaker 1: So Steve and Barry arranged a meeting with Dennis, and
Speaker 1: the story he told them was heartbreaking. We brought him
Speaker 1: in to our office at the Innocence Project late at night,
Speaker 1: and we began asking Dennis to recount for us what
Speaker 1: happened when he gave this confession and talk about post
Speaker 1: traumatic stress disorder. I am telling you that this poor
Speaker 1: man went into almost a fugue state he began shaking
Speaker 1: and sweating when he described what happened and how they
Speaker 1: scared the living hell out of him, and they co
Speaker 1: worced him and they wouldn't let his family come up,
Speaker 1: and it was unbelievable. I mean, you could just see
Speaker 1: him reliving it, and he was just terrified of these
Speaker 1: cops and what they did to him, same cops that
Speaker 1: frame you Burton. The investigation uncovered one other piece of
Speaker 1: evidence too. Remember that teacher who said that Hugh wasn't
Speaker 1: in school the morning his mom was killed, well, the
Speaker 1: day before Emmanuel Green was caught with Kaziah Burton's car.
Speaker 1: That teacher told the police that she had made a mistake.
Speaker 1: Hugh actually had been in school that morning, but it
Speaker 1: seems police never shared that information with Hugh's defense team.
Speaker 1: So it's like a soup, right, You bring in new
Speaker 1: evidence and at a certain point in time, you reach
Speaker 1: a critical mass where it becomes clear that the person
Speaker 1: who was convicted of this crime was innocent. And in
Speaker 1: our case, it became clear that Emmanuel Green was guilty.
Speaker 1: The case against Hugh Burtons should have fallen apart when
Speaker 1: the teacher retracted her mistake and the real killer was
Speaker 1: caught with a car, but instead police doubled down on
Speaker 1: their case against Hugh. It took thirty more years until
Speaker 1: that case finally disintegrated. In the end, the tipping point
Speaker 1: for the Bronx Conviction Integrity Unit was when Hugh came
Speaker 1: in for an interview and the prosecutors actually met him,
Speaker 1: And when they saw Hugh separated from that sixteen year
Speaker 1: old on the video tape outside the heat of a
Speaker 1: trial in the tagline of a crack craze team, when
Speaker 1: they saw who he was and how much he loved
Speaker 1: and respected and revered his parents, they knew that he
Speaker 1: couldn't have committed this crime. When Hugh was in prison,
Speaker 1: he had developed a nickname. They called him wise. He
Speaker 1: had a sort of peacefulness that helped him survive in
Speaker 1: prison but also helped him to keep other inmates on track.
Speaker 1: And that wisdom, that decency, that aura of his innocence
Speaker 1: is what really tipped the scales in his case. When
Speaker 1: you meet Hugh, you just know this is a good man,
Speaker 1: and these prosecutors saw that, they saw the human being,
Speaker 1: not the accusation. I'm sure you realized this already, that
Speaker 1: you is quite an extraordinary individual. But one of the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project conferences, he got up and he told the
Speaker 1: story that was astonishing about his father. So you know
Speaker 1: his father, he always stood by you when he would
Speaker 1: always come up to the visits. So the week leading
Speaker 1: up to the visit, I'm excited. I couldn't wait to
Speaker 1: tell him everything that I've been doing, how I've been
Speaker 1: developing with the case. I wanted to let him know
Speaker 1: how good I had gotten with playing my piano, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to hear everything that was going on with him.
Speaker 1: I finally spot him in the visit room and I
Speaker 1: make a bee line towards him. We embraced, I hold
Speaker 1: him for a long time, and we finally sit down.
Speaker 1: He came with my cousin. She brought him up. As
Speaker 1: I'm asking him questions I'm getting these kind of clothes
Speaker 1: ended answers, so everything was yes, no, and I realized,
Speaker 1: I said something is wrong, and then he began to
Speaker 1: refer to me as my brother. And I think that
Speaker 1: was the first time that I realized that because of
Speaker 1: the Alzheimer's, my dad didn't know who I was. The
Speaker 1: guy who was in every court room, every visit room,
Speaker 1: my guy. He didn't know who I was, but still
Speaker 1: I was just glad he was there. So as the
Speaker 1: as it went on, he wanted to smoke, he wanted
Speaker 1: a cigarette, but I know he knew that if he
Speaker 1: went out to smoke, that the visit was terminated. You
Speaker 1: can't come in and out, it's not an in and
Speaker 1: out policy. But he kept asking for the cigarette. And
Speaker 1: I didn't know why it was bothering me that he
Speaker 1: was asking for it, but then I realized it. It
Speaker 1: reminded me of a book that I had read. Um
Speaker 1: Man searched for meaning a book by Victor Frankel and
Speaker 1: which he details being in concentration camps, and in the
Speaker 1: concentration camps, cigarettes were a medium of exchange. So he
Speaker 1: would notice that when people would smoke their cigarettes is
Speaker 1: when they had lost the desire to live. And it's
Speaker 1: right in that moment that I realized that he couldn't
Speaker 1: go on anymore. I knew that when he left that
Speaker 1: visit room that day, that was going to be the
Speaker 1: last day that I saw him, and it was. Thankfully, however,
Speaker 1: um I was exonerated this year January, thank you, and
Speaker 1: and although he didn't live to see all of this
Speaker 1: come to fruition. Um, I am glad that he's watching
Speaker 1: and making sure that the job was done and done good.
Speaker 1: Thank you. In January accord. Finally throughout Hugh Burton's convictions,
Speaker 1: that is a priory. That was Burton's pedion peer in Hill,
Speaker 1: the require that you talk for this all right, for
Speaker 1: my apologize, Mr Burton on the Hill fulfilled. The courtroom
Speaker 1: seats were filled with other New Yorkers who had been
Speaker 1: failed by the system too, who had also been wrongly
Speaker 1: convicted as teenagers in false confession cases. They were there
Speaker 1: in solidarity. We brought in you sat Slab the Central
Speaker 1: Park five. Nineteen eighty nine, we had in the front
Speaker 1: row Jet Deskovic in Westchester gave a false confession to
Speaker 1: murdering a high school classmate, Marty Tankleff. Again in nineteen
Speaker 1: nine coerced into confessing to killing both of his parents.
Speaker 1: And then, of course right there with them was Dennis Coss.
Speaker 1: That tells you all you need to know. It sure does.
Speaker 1: After a thirty year or deal, Hugh joined their ranks
Speaker 1: as an exonoree, and he stood up in court and
Speaker 1: dedicated his exoneration to the memory of his mother. And
Speaker 1: that's the story of Hugh Burton. Next week we'll tell
Speaker 1: you about Chris Tapp and Idaho man whose confession was
Speaker 1: proven false thanks to the perseverance of an unlikely champion,
Speaker 1: the victim's mother. Until then, thanks for listening to Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: False Confessions. Ye Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production
Speaker 1: of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company
Speaker 1: Number One. Special thanks to our executive producer Jason Slam
Speaker 1: and the team at Signal Company Number one executive producer
Speaker 1: Kevin Wardace, Senior producer and Pope, and additional production and
Speaker 1: editing by Connor Hall. Special thanks to jog Hammer for
Speaker 1: additional script editing and for wrangling and writing like a madwoman.
Speaker 1: Our music was composed by j Ralph. You can follow
Speaker 1: me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura ni Rider and
Speaker 1: you can follow me on Twitter at s Drisen. For
Speaker 1: more information on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast dot
Speaker 1: com and be sure to follow the show on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction