Speaker 1: Hi, This is Laura and I writer. Because of COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: Steve and I recorded this episode from our homes, not
Speaker 1: together in the studio. We might sound a little difference,
Speaker 1: but I think the story we tell is as inspirational
Speaker 1: as always be well and stay healthy. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer, and I'm Steve Drissen.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to tell you our last story of
Speaker 1: season one. It's about Peter Riley, one of the first
Speaker 1: modern day false confessors. In ninety three, police interrogated eighteen
Speaker 1: year old Peter until he started to believe he was
Speaker 1: guilty of murdering his own mother, but Peter's friends and
Speaker 1: neighbors believed in his innocence. Their small town campaign for
Speaker 1: Peter's freedom was eventually joined by a host of big
Speaker 1: name celebrities. Peter's story helped launch the movement against wrongful
Speaker 1: convictions and false confessions. It is buyers the work that
Speaker 1: Steve and I do to this day. You know, the
Speaker 1: Peter Riley case was my baptism in the world of
Speaker 1: false confessions. When I learned about Peter's case, it was
Speaker 1: really the first time that I even knew that it
Speaker 1: was possible for police officers, through their tactics, to get
Speaker 1: an innocent person to confess to a crime they didn't commit,
Speaker 1: and I was fascinated by it. I know the feeling.
Speaker 1: For me. It was thirty years later when I watched
Speaker 1: those tapes of Brendan Dacy's false confession. It's so easy
Speaker 1: to get hooked by these stories, these people, and you
Speaker 1: can't walk away. Peter Riley was about five or six
Speaker 1: years older than me, but we grew up in the
Speaker 1: same era in terms of the kind of music that
Speaker 1: we liked. Peter was very into classic rock, Pink Floyd
Speaker 1: Jethrow Toll, and Peter War's hair long very much in
Speaker 1: the same way that I wore my hair, so I
Speaker 1: felt a connection to Peter. I lived in a community
Speaker 1: not unlike Peter's, where people knew each other through Little
Speaker 1: League or the boy Scouts, where mothers watched out for
Speaker 1: each other's kids. And the more I learned about Peter's story,
Speaker 1: the more I began to understand that what happened to
Speaker 1: Peter very easily could have happened to me. In addition
Speaker 1: to these connections that I found with Peter, this was
Speaker 1: a case in a part of the country which was
Speaker 1: the birthplace of false confessions in the United States, the
Speaker 1: Salem Witch Trials. It sent me on an exploration, a
Speaker 1: lifelong explorer Asian, to try to figure out why it
Speaker 1: is that people would confess to crimes they didn't commit.
Speaker 1: Peter's story begins in Falls Village, Connecticut, a tiny community
Speaker 1: of five hundred people that's part of a larger town
Speaker 1: called Canaan. If you've been to New England, Falls Village
Speaker 1: is pretty classic, complete with rivers, horse farms, and covered bridges.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of place where no one locks their doors,
Speaker 1: where everyone looks out for each other. In September ninety three,
Speaker 1: leaves were turning color across Connecticut, and eighteen year old
Speaker 1: Peter Riley had just begun his senior year of high school.
Speaker 1: Peter was a skinny kid, just over a hundred pounds
Speaker 1: and an uninspired student whose real love was his rock band.
Speaker 1: He lived in Falls Village in a small cottage, just
Speaker 1: him and his mom, Barbara Giddins. Now, for lack of
Speaker 1: a better phrase, Barbara was the town eccentric. She was
Speaker 1: highly educated, well read, and well traveled, but she was
Speaker 1: also a single mother. Which was a big deal in
Speaker 1: nine and she was a heavy drinker. She had a
Speaker 1: reputation as someone who always spoke her mind, even if
Speaker 1: it rubbed some people the wrong way. But in Peter's eyes,
Speaker 1: his mother was someone brilliant who loved and protected him,
Speaker 1: just like he loved and stood up for her. It
Speaker 1: was the two of them against the world. On the
Speaker 1: evening of Friday, September, Peter attends a youth group meeting
Speaker 1: at the local church. He leaves at about nine pm
Speaker 1: and drives home, but when he walks in the door,
Speaker 1: his world is turned upside down. His mother is lying
Speaker 1: mostly unclothed, on the bedroom floor. Her throat has been
Speaker 1: cut so deeply she's nearly decapitated, and she's been stabbed
Speaker 1: and beaten so badly that both of her thigh bones
Speaker 1: are broken. Peter freezes, His instinct warns him not to
Speaker 1: disturb the scene by touching the body. Instead, he grabs
Speaker 1: the phone and makes a series of calls to paramedics, hospitals,
Speaker 1: and doctors. A hospital worker calls the police, and the
Speaker 1: cops show up within minutes. When the police arrive, Peter's
Speaker 1: in shock. He's just discovered his mother dead. But the
Speaker 1: officers think Peters being too calm and they begin to
Speaker 1: suspect him. They take him into a neighbor's home and
Speaker 1: strip searching. They're looking for scratches, cuts, bruises, any indication
Speaker 1: that Peter had taken part in a brutal struggle, but
Speaker 1: they find nothing. Peter's wearing jeans, a brown T shirt,
Speaker 1: and gold sneakers, and a witness from the church confirms
Speaker 1: that Peter has been wearing the same clothes all night.
Speaker 1: The police examination finds no blood anywhere on his body, clothing,
Speaker 1: or shoes, but the cops are still suspicious. They questioned
Speaker 1: Peter in the back seat of a squad car. Then
Speaker 1: they take him down to the station and hold him overnight.
Speaker 1: Peter doesn't sleep at all, but the next morning he
Speaker 1: has the presence of mind to ask for a polygraph.
Speaker 1: The police give him one, but they tell him that
Speaker 1: he failed the test, and when Peters told that he failed,
Speaker 1: he begins to doubt his own memory because he believes
Speaker 1: polygraphs are infallible. Before too long, Peter begins to wonder
Speaker 1: whether he might have killed his mother, but somehow doesn't
Speaker 1: remember it now believe it or not, police record the
Speaker 1: interrogation on an old reel to real machine, even though
Speaker 1: they weren't legally required to do so. In on tape,
Speaker 1: they egg Peter on and suggest that he might have amnesia.
Speaker 1: They tell him sometimes when people commit these crimes, the
Speaker 1: memories are so traumatic that people repressed them, and Peter
Speaker 1: Riley starts believing that he might be a murderer. I
Speaker 1: believe I did it now, he tells the police. But
Speaker 1: I don't remember. Peter says, over and over again, we
Speaker 1: gotta keep digging, digging, digging to get this information out
Speaker 1: of me, because he wants to know what this information is.
Speaker 1: He asks the police for truth serum, and at another
Speaker 1: point he even says, can you pound this out of me?
Speaker 1: The police praise Peter for being willing to admit he
Speaker 1: might be guilty. They tell him, we're not here to
Speaker 1: punish you. Maybe you'll go to a mental hospital for
Speaker 1: three months. Peter begins to feel like he's bonding with
Speaker 1: his interrogators, like they're all working together to fill in
Speaker 1: the blanks in his memory, and eventually their teamwork succeeds.
Speaker 1: Peter had a straight razor at home, a small blade
Speaker 1: that he used to make model airplanes. After hours of questioning,
Speaker 1: he eventually says that he could have used that razor
Speaker 1: to attack his mom. He adds that he could have
Speaker 1: broken her legs by jumping on them. In other words,
Speaker 1: he gives what we now call a persuaded false confession.
Speaker 1: These are a special subspecies of false confessions that are
Speaker 1: relatively rare, and what happens in these cases is the
Speaker 1: police interrogation tactics themselves cause a suspect to begin to
Speaker 1: doubt their own memory, and the suspect is persuaded that
Speaker 1: he or she must have committed the crime but can't
Speaker 1: remember it, and the interrogation becomes an exercise in reconstructing
Speaker 1: the suspects memories of the crime. But the memories aren't
Speaker 1: real their confabulations. Peter's confabulated story isn't realistic. A small
Speaker 1: razor wasn't capable of inflicting deep wounds like those on
Speaker 1: Barbara's neck, and Peter was a hundred and ten pound weakling.
Speaker 1: There's no way he could have broken his mother's thigh
Speaker 1: bones just by jumping on them, But police ignore those problems.
Speaker 1: After all, they've got a confession. By the end of
Speaker 1: the interrogation, Peter starts realizing that he has no family left.
Speaker 1: You're talking about someone who has just lost the only
Speaker 1: family member in his life. Peter never knew his father.
Speaker 1: His mother has now been murdered. They live alone in
Speaker 1: this small cottage, and he's thinking that he's got nowhere
Speaker 1: to go. And so Peter asks his interrogator, is there
Speaker 1: any chance that you might take me in? I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to impose, he adds, I'll do work around the house.
Speaker 1: I really would love to live with a family. I've
Speaker 1: never seen that before. Just a a complete dependence on
Speaker 1: one's interrogator and a complete sort of loss of understanding
Speaker 1: of the fact that this person is his adversary. It's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine anything more purely fucked up. It's the
Speaker 1: most disturbing thing about this interrogation. But Peter doesn't get
Speaker 1: to go live with the cops, even though he's done
Speaker 1: everything they asked. Instead, he's arrested and booked into jail.
Speaker 1: Once Peter is away from his interrogator's influence, he immediately
Speaker 1: realizes he didn't actually kill anyone, and he recants his confession,
Speaker 1: but it's too late. On September, Peter Riley is charged
Speaker 1: with the murder of his own mother. Barbara's murder and
Speaker 1: Peter's arrest shook Falls Village to its core. Everyone was
Speaker 1: following this tragedy, including one residence who would go on
Speaker 1: to become an important figure in Peter's story. My name
Speaker 1: is Donald Connery. Well, one thing I can claim for
Speaker 1: some distinction is that I probably am the only foreign
Speaker 1: correspondent who ever made a complete career shift overnight from
Speaker 1: reporting international affairs to investigating the criminal justice system. Don
Speaker 1: Connery was an esteemed journalist and the last thing on
Speaker 1: his mind was the subject of false confessions. But this
Speaker 1: murder was big news in this small town, and you
Speaker 1: couldn't help but be drawn into it. He began to
Speaker 1: start looking into the case himself, and later wrote a
Speaker 1: book about the case that was an absolutely essential text
Speaker 1: about what happened to Peter Riley. Don Connery is in
Speaker 1: his nineties now, but in three he had just moved
Speaker 1: to Falls Village with his wife and kids, and I thought,
Speaker 1: this is, uh, you know, a terrible event which will
Speaker 1: play out and will have nothing to do with me,
Speaker 1: except that the accused eighteen year old was a friend
Speaker 1: and classmate of my children, who went to the regional
Speaker 1: high school, and Peter was someone they talked about and
Speaker 1: know about. Now, something extraordinary happens after Peter's arrest is announced. Remember,
Speaker 1: people in this tiny town no Peter Riley, and they
Speaker 1: like him. This was in the age before social media,
Speaker 1: where communities were much more connected in a sense. They
Speaker 1: met each other through UH clubs, extracurricular activities at schools,
Speaker 1: church groups, boy Scouts, and the entire community knew who
Speaker 1: Peter was. From these various essential parts of the social
Speaker 1: fabric of False Village. Peter's arrest leads to a groundswell
Speaker 1: of support. Everyone starts defending his innocence. After reading the
Speaker 1: initial stories. My younger children, Carol and Julie kept saying
Speaker 1: Peter couldn't possibly have done this. The mothers of his
Speaker 1: high school classmates form a group called Canan Mothers, and
Speaker 1: they hold bake sales to raise money so that Peter
Speaker 1: can get released on bond before his trial. Some families
Speaker 1: even put their houses up as security. It was incredible
Speaker 1: mothers supporting the accused mother killer. They wanted to do
Speaker 1: everything in their power to help him. My kids said.
Speaker 1: Another neighbors said, you know, we don't think this is possible.
Speaker 1: There's no reason to think that he had any cause
Speaker 1: to harm his mother, and the word was in the
Speaker 1: community that yes, Peter it confess that nobody could understand
Speaker 1: why he would admit to something he didn't do, but
Speaker 1: their protests caught the attention of the media. A reporter
Speaker 1: named Joan Bartell hears about how the town of Falls
Speaker 1: Village is rallying behind an accused murderer. She listens to
Speaker 1: Peter's interrogation tapes and writes an explosive article in a
Speaker 1: magazine called New Times. The article questions Peter's guilt and
Speaker 1: includes many exerpts from his interrogation, exposing the CoP's manipulation
Speaker 1: of Peter. People around the state are horrified to read
Speaker 1: about a teenage boy made to believe that he killed
Speaker 1: his own mother. Donations flow in to the Canan mothers,
Speaker 1: and soon enough money is raised for Peter to post
Speaker 1: bond fifty thousand dollars. He's released and moves in with
Speaker 1: one of his friends families. Peter Riley is welcomed back
Speaker 1: into the Falls Village community. This so called killer went
Speaker 1: straight back to high school to complete his senior year,
Speaker 1: and it didn't seem to worry parents or teachers of
Speaker 1: the principal, who in fact supported him. One of the
Speaker 1: things that attracted reporters to this case, including Don Connery,
Speaker 1: was the idea that in order for these people to
Speaker 1: embrace Peter, they had to understand or at least believe,
Speaker 1: that this confession was false. And here they are taking
Speaker 1: this suspected confessed murderer into their own homes or being
Speaker 1: willing to do so um and to raise money for him,
Speaker 1: and to advocate for him and to fight for him.
Speaker 1: That's remarkable. Peter Riley was free on bond, but prosecutors
Speaker 1: were moving forward with his trial anyway. The community was
Speaker 1: confident that the trial in nine seventy four would quickly
Speaker 1: lead to an acquittal. They would be found innocent. But
Speaker 1: on April twelfth night, teen seventy four, Good Friday, Peter
Speaker 1: Riley was convicted of killing his own mother. It was
Speaker 1: a bombshell when the jury decided almost entirely in the
Speaker 1: basis of the confession, so called confession, that he was guilty,
Speaker 1: and he was sentenced to six to sixteen years for
Speaker 1: manslaughter and driven off at high speed to the high
Speaker 1: security penitentiary, even though he had just been convicted of murder.
Speaker 1: Peter only spent a few hours in prison. Amazingly, a
Speaker 1: court ruled that he could stay free during his appeal
Speaker 1: as long as he posted an additional bond ten thousand
Speaker 1: more dollars. His village raised the extra money and Peter
Speaker 1: was freed. But now Peter needed to pay for an appeal,
Speaker 1: and that would cost more than the Cane and mothers
Speaker 1: could raise. So that reporter from New Times, Joan Bartel,
Speaker 1: sent the article she wrote about Peter's case to another
Speaker 1: Connecticut residence, the famous play rights Arthur Miller. Arthur Miller
Speaker 1: was my favorite playwright. I remember reading all of his
Speaker 1: plays in high school in the nineties seventies. Death of
Speaker 1: a Salesman all my sons. I liked him not only
Speaker 1: because his plays moved me. I liked him because he
Speaker 1: was a public figure that cared deeply about justice. He
Speaker 1: was a playwright with a conscience. The Crucible, probably Miller's
Speaker 1: greatest play, had been motivated in part by the false
Speaker 1: accusations that went on in Salem in Massachusetts three hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, when people were falsely accused of Satanic activities
Speaker 1: and either hung or in one case, of being crushed
Speaker 1: to death. Executed, and Miller also personally had faced the
Speaker 1: House Out American Activities Committee accused of being a communist
Speaker 1: or worse, so he had every reason to feel that
Speaker 1: this is something that he should put right, and he
Speaker 1: invested a great deal of his time to do that.
Speaker 1: Arthur Miller read Jones article. He was appalled by the
Speaker 1: tragedy of Peter's confession, and he began to take a
Speaker 1: leading role in Peter's fight for vindication. Miller recruited other
Speaker 1: a list celebrities to donate money to Peter's defense, Jack Nicholson,
Speaker 1: Dustin Hoffman, Art Garfuncle, Candice Bergen, William Styron, Mike Nichols,
Speaker 1: even Elizabeth Taylor. Pretty Soon a powerful coalition of voices
Speaker 1: was gathering steam. Overnight. There was a remarkable amount of
Speaker 1: energy behind the effort to free Peter as soon as
Speaker 1: possible from what everyone, at least in Litchfield County saw
Speaker 1: as a wrong vol conviction. The first thing Peter needed
Speaker 1: was a lawyer to handle his appeal. Arthur Miller recruited
Speaker 1: Roy Daily, a former federal prosecutor, and as Roy started
Speaker 1: preparing Peter's appeal, Miller worked to raise the public profile
Speaker 1: of the case. The New York Times featured a two
Speaker 1: part series about Peter on the front page. Not long afterwards,
Speaker 1: Sixty Minutes covered the story too. Meanwhile, Peter's legal team
Speaker 1: pressed his case in court. Eventually a hearing was held
Speaker 1: to determine whether to grant him a new trial. Arthur
Speaker 1: Miller personally recruited some world renowned experts to testify. At
Speaker 1: that hearing, a forensic pathologist testified that if Peter had
Speaker 1: actually killed his mom, it would have been impossible for
Speaker 1: him to clean all the blood off his body and
Speaker 1: clothing before the police arrived. The pathologist also testified that
Speaker 1: there's no way a hundred and ten pound kid could
Speaker 1: break a woman's thigh bones by jumping on them, and
Speaker 1: a psychologist testified that Peter was suggestible and easily manipulated
Speaker 1: by authority figures. In other words, he was highly vulnerable
Speaker 1: to giving a false in fashion. This hearing took down
Speaker 1: both the medical evidence against Peter and his confession, and
Speaker 1: it led to a verdict by Judge Specially that a
Speaker 1: business carriage of justice had happened in his own courtroom,
Speaker 1: and he said that Peter deserved a new trial. It
Speaker 1: was March twenty five, a little more than two and
Speaker 1: a half years after Peter lost his mom. Peter was
Speaker 1: granted a new trial, but the prosecutor who had convicted
Speaker 1: him was up in arms. He believed Peter was guilty
Speaker 1: and vowed to take him to trial again, but that
Speaker 1: didn't end up happening. He delayed to a point where
Speaker 1: he dropped dead on a golf course. The prosecutor passed
Speaker 1: away of a heart attack at age fifty four, so
Speaker 1: a new prosecutor, a young man named Dennis sentaur To,
Speaker 1: takes over, and as he digs into the case files,
Speaker 1: he finds a piece of evidence that had never been
Speaker 1: disclosed to Peter's defense team. A police officer and his
Speaker 1: wife had reported seeing Peter in downtown Canaan the night
Speaker 1: of the murder as he was driving home from his
Speaker 1: church youth group. They'd seen him only a few minutes
Speaker 1: before Peter arrived home, found his mother's body, and started
Speaker 1: calling for help. It was an air tight alibi. Those
Speaker 1: few minutes didn't give Peter enough time to drive home
Speaker 1: and kill his mother before making those phone calls. Well,
Speaker 1: this was a so called exculpatory evidence which should have
Speaker 1: been turned over to the state and to the courts,
Speaker 1: and once it was revealed, it took only weeks before
Speaker 1: Peter Riley was fully exonerated. The state of Connecticut formally
Speaker 1: dropped all charges on November twenty four. Peter Riley's name
Speaker 1: was officially yard after Peter's exoneration. The state police never
Speaker 1: found Barbara's real killer and continued to insist that Peter
Speaker 1: was guilty. The case went into the legal anals as
Speaker 1: a classic false confession tragedy, and it was a prime
Speaker 1: example of these systems on willingness to admit error and
Speaker 1: most of these controversial cases. Don Connery eventually wrote a
Speaker 1: book about the case, Guilty until Proven Innocence, and he
Speaker 1: continued writing about cases of wrongful conviction. After the Peter
Speaker 1: Riley case, Don Connry became his own one man journalistic
Speaker 1: innocence project. He began taking cases in Connecticut and investigating
Speaker 1: them and writing about them, and he also began taking
Speaker 1: false confession cases from outside of Connecticut as well. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: to add insult to injury, Connecticut police actually stopped recording
Speaker 1: interrogations after Peter's case. Peter's interrogation tapes had made them
Speaker 1: look bad, and they didn't want to look bad again.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until two thousand thirteen that Connecticut adopted a
Speaker 1: law requiring interrogations to be recorded, and who testified before
Speaker 1: the state legislature in support of that bill Peter Riley.
Speaker 1: Peter said, Look, we shouldn't let law enforcement officers get
Speaker 1: away with not recording interrogations, because what it does is
Speaker 1: it makes it impossible for people like me to explain
Speaker 1: to a jury or to the general public how it
Speaker 1: is that I was made to confess to killing my
Speaker 1: own mother. Peter was a powerful advocate for recording and
Speaker 1: his testimony was critical on getting the bill passed in
Speaker 1: two Most importantly, Peter Riley's woke the world up to
Speaker 1: the problem of false confessions. This injustice was a rallying
Speaker 1: cry for so many people, including Steve and me. Peter's
Speaker 1: story epitomizes the profound humanity in so many wrongful conviction cases,
Speaker 1: from the tragedy of the crime, to the ugliness of
Speaker 1: false accusation, to the defendants struggle and perseverance, to the
Speaker 1: good people like Arthur Miller and the Cainan mothers who
Speaker 1: fight for the truth no matter what. The very first
Speaker 1: conference about false confessions took place in Hartford, Connecticut. Don
Speaker 1: Connery organized it, and the people who had helped exonerate
Speaker 1: Peter Riley spoke. Since then, hundreds of confessions have been
Speaker 1: proven false around the country, and we're just getting started.
Speaker 1: At the Hartford conference, Arthur Miller said at one point
Speaker 1: that the record of mankind. Mankind is full of confessions
Speaker 1: happened or to which the accused had little or no connection.
Speaker 1: After all, even Galileo confessed that the sun and all
Speaker 1: the stars revolved around emotionless Earth. Rather than face the
Speaker 1: wrath of the Church, which for centuries had taught the opposite.
Speaker 1: Confronted with great power against which one has only a
Speaker 1: fragile defense, confession can begin to look like the door
Speaker 1: to freedom. Confession can very readily turn into a kind
Speaker 1: of coin with which to buy one's way out of
Speaker 1: a frightening and painful situation. How then I will eat
Speaker 1: to indict the criminal? Is there a good substitute for
Speaker 1: confession as the mainstay of a prosecution case? For starters,
Speaker 1: I would suggest evidence wise words. We're not there yet,
Speaker 1: Mr Miller. We're not there yet, but we're getting close, sir.
Speaker 1: Every day, Hello Peter, how are you high? Steve doing
Speaker 1: pretty good if you really great to talk to you.
Speaker 1: What's your life like these days? Well, I'm sixty five,
Speaker 1: so I'm retired at this point, which just means that
Speaker 1: come up with a whole lot of work for myself
Speaker 1: that he'll get paid for it. I'm still an avid musician.
Speaker 1: I play every day. It's been something I've done since
Speaker 1: I saw the Beatles on that SOLIVM, so it's been
Speaker 1: a long time. I just play a lot of music.
Speaker 1: I do what's positive for me these days, and uh,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much it. What's your favorite song to play?
Speaker 1: I don't know anything by the Alma Brothers. You know,
Speaker 1: Steve and I are two lawyers who have the honor
Speaker 1: of standing up in courts and fighting for people we
Speaker 1: believe in, but we're also trying to change the world here.
Speaker 1: From the very beginning of my study of false confessions,
Speaker 1: have gone out into the world and tried to inform
Speaker 1: people about what I've learned. For the first, you know,
Speaker 1: ten years that I did this work, we went around
Speaker 1: the country trying to convince anybody who would listen that
Speaker 1: false confessions even existed, that this happened at all. And
Speaker 1: suddenly there's been this explosion of interest in understanding that
Speaker 1: false confessions can happen to anyone, that they could happen
Speaker 1: to you, they could happen to me, and to see
Speaker 1: the urgency for reform that hearing these stories produces. It's
Speaker 1: a sea change, and it's a very very welcome sea change.
Speaker 1: When I got started in this work, there were only
Speaker 1: two states that required electronic recording of interrogations, and now
Speaker 1: they're twenty seven. There should be fifty. We're getting to
Speaker 1: a point where I think that will happen in my lifetime.
Speaker 1: So in addition to electronic recording, one of the goals
Speaker 1: that Laura and I have is to actually change the
Speaker 1: way in which police officers interrogate suspects. I think that
Speaker 1: when people hear stories of grave injustice, there's a human
Speaker 1: need to identify the bad guy, and in some cases
Speaker 1: there are very clear bad guys. Police have physically abused suspects,
Speaker 1: police have tortured suspects, But in some cases police officers
Speaker 1: are following training that they don't know is problematic. That's
Speaker 1: where I see we can make a lot of change.
Speaker 1: Many other countries have developed new interrogation techniques that you
Speaker 1: don't have to use lies. You don't have to use
Speaker 1: false promises. You certainly don't have to use fact feeding.
Speaker 1: One of the most exciting developments recently has been the
Speaker 1: creation of these conviction integrity units in prosecutors offices, and
Speaker 1: in both Hugh Burton's case and David McCallum's case, we
Speaker 1: saw how effective these units can be in righting wrongful convictions.
Speaker 1: When prosecutors are interested in actually doing real justice instead
Speaker 1: of just closing cases, everything changes. One of the things
Speaker 1: that's always excited me about this work is that we
Speaker 1: get to rewrite history. When we exonerate somebody, we get
Speaker 1: to change their life narrative. That's part of what we're
Speaker 1: trying to do with this podcast is not only tell
Speaker 1: these stories, but change the legacies of people who falsely confessed.
Speaker 1: You're taking this false story that they've told about themselves
Speaker 1: and you have to change it to a true story,
Speaker 1: a story of innocence. In the wake of making a murderer,
Speaker 1: which certainly put both Laura and I on the map
Speaker 1: in a way that no other television show, or radio show,
Speaker 1: or or victory in court had done, I felt like
Speaker 1: we had an obligation to speak out on these issues
Speaker 1: that we care so deeply out. I guess I was
Speaker 1: channeling Arthur Miller. I mean I could see Donald Connery saying,
Speaker 1: I knew Arthur Miller. You're no Arthur Miller. But we
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to tell these stories, and I think
Speaker 1: we as lawyers have an obligation to do that. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be a lawyer to see the
Speaker 1: injustice here. You just have to be someone with a conscience.
Speaker 1: These are stories of great tragedy. They grip people, these
Speaker 1: stories unsettle people, and they move people to make change.
Speaker 1: This is a movement that draws from all walks of life,
Speaker 1: from ordinary folks who want to channel their outrage into action,
Speaker 1: to those with a powerful public platform, artists, musicians, writers, actors.
Speaker 1: We saw this in the Peter Riley case with Arthur Miller.
Speaker 1: We saw it in the West Memphis three case with
Speaker 1: Peter Jackson, Johnny Depp, Eddie Vetter, Natalie Mains, and we
Speaker 1: see it today with Brendan Dacy's case and all the
Speaker 1: people who are allying around him. These kinds of movements
Speaker 1: built on real people. They're unstoppable, and we're not going
Speaker 1: to stop until we can bring Brendan Dacy on this
Speaker 1: podcast as a freeman, I want to really thank the
Speaker 1: people that allowed us to tell their stories and allowed
Speaker 1: us to enter their lives. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's meant the world to bring to you twelve of
Speaker 1: the people whose cases we've worked on and whose lives
Speaker 1: have touched ours, their voices, their stories, and are good
Speaker 1: look to be the ones working for them. So back
Speaker 1: to work, Steve, Back to work. And that's the first
Speaker 1: season of Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. We'll see you in
Speaker 1: a few months back on this feed for season two.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, be well, stay safe, and never stop
Speaker 1: believing injustice. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to our executive producer Jason Flom and the
Speaker 1: team at Signal Company Number one Executive producer Kevin Wardace,
Speaker 1: Senior Producer and Pope and additional production and editing by
Speaker 1: Connor Hall. Special thanks to jog Hammer for additional script
Speaker 1: editing and for wrangling and writing like a madwoman. Our
Speaker 1: music was composed by j Ralph. You can follow me
Speaker 1: on Instagram or Twitter at Laura ni Writer and you
Speaker 1: can follow me on Twitter at s driven. For more
Speaker 1: information on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast dot com
Speaker 1: and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
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