WEBVTT - #382 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Walter Ogrod 0:00:05.519 --> 0:00:07.520 Hey there, it's Laura and I writer. I am here 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:09.360 with an update on a case we shared with you 0:00:09.520 --> 0:00:13.680 back in season two about Walter Ogrod. He's a Philadelphia 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:16.520 man who is wrongly convicted because of the dirty tactics 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:20.600 used by the infamous Philadelphia Police. For decades, the Philly 0:00:20.640 --> 0:00:25.119 Police to use brutality, lies, and corruption to rack up convictions, 0:00:25.440 --> 0:00:28.480 and as we now know, many of those were innocent people. 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:31.319 But recently there's been an effort to right some of 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:34.920 those wrongs. In the last two elections, the city voted 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:39.159 for District Attorney Larry Krasner, who's committed to reforming the 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:42.479 police department and letting innocent people out of prison. He 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:46.040 established a Conviction Integrity Unit, which has accomplished more than 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:50.520 twenty exonerations since it was formed in twenty eighteen. We've 0:00:50.560 --> 0:00:53.239 featured some of those stories on wrongful conviction, and the 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:57.200 good work of Larry Krasner and the Philadelphia CiU continues. 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:01.040 In February twenty twenty three, a young woman named India 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:05.600 Spelman was exonerated after spending thirteen years behind bars. That 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:10.319 makes her the first black woman exonerated in Philadelphia. Exoneration 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:13.959 stories like Walter's and like India's, remind us we need 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:17.160 big reforms to our system. To do that, we need 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:20.679 brave attorneys and politicians who are willing to confront the 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:24.600 old ways of doing things. That's why your voice matters, 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:27.840 why your vote matters, because together we can support the 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:37.160 changes that will bring real justice to the legal system. 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:40.199 Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:42.720 I'm Laura and I writer, and I'm Steve Drison. 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:46.360 Today we'll bring you to Philadelphia for the story of 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:49.280 Walter Ogrod. Walter was sent to death row for a 0:01:49.360 --> 0:01:52.640 murder who didn't commit by an old school Philly justice 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:56.800 system that was better known for injustice. Walter spent decades 0:01:56.800 --> 0:02:00.720 in prison until a new wave of reform minded esecutors 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:04.880 went looking for the truth behind his conviction. Walter's story 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:08.840 gives step and me hope that real reform is really possible. 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:23.760 So I was born and raised in Philadelphia, and a 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:26.799 few years ago Laura and I took a trip there 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:31.040 for work. I'm very proud of Philadelphia and I like 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:34.120 to show off the city. And there was this place 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:38.320 that I had to take Laura to. It's not Constitution. 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:39.880 Hall, Okay, not the Liberty Bell. 0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:42.560 It's the Eastern State Penitentiary. 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:45.440 So you drive me to downtown Philly and there's this 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:50.160 rundown relic of a prison that's crumbling. It's covered in cobwebs. 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:51.840 It's almost like a haunted house in the middle of 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:54.480 downtown Philadelphia. It's not used any longer. 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:57.399 It was built in eighteen twenty nine. 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:01.200 But it's been preserved there as this incredible monuments against 0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:02.080 mass incarceration. 0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:05.240 It's my favorite place to go because it fits the 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:10.040 city's personality and history so well. This is the city 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:15.760 with an unbelievable history of injustice, mass incarceration, and corruption 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:19.400 within the criminal justice system. And this history of injustice 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:22.119 it peaked when I was a child in the sixties 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:25.560 and nineteen seventies. This was the time when Frank Rizzo 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:27.720 was the police chief and then he was the mayor. 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:31.240 He controlled the city and he sent out a message 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:35.920 that when police officers coerced confessions, he had their backs. 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:38.960 You know, just like Eastern State Penitentiary. Frank Rizzo has 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:41.880 become the symbol for the heaviest of hands in the 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:44.000 criminal justice system, for the way it can just come 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:47.160 down on the backs of people, especially people without power, 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:49.960 and that's exactly what we see in today's story, the 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:58.400 story of Walter Ogrod. Today's story starts in Northeast Philadelphia. 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:01.080 It's a working class part of Philly. The side streets 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:03.720 are lined with bungalows and the main drags are lined 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:07.040 with discount big box stores. The northeast is an outlying 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:10.040 area pretty far from downtown, where the courthouses and police 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:13.280 department are found. It even tried to secede once from 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:15.560 the rest of the city. But when it comes to 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:19.760 criminal justice, the Northeast is Philadelphia through and through. It's 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:23.640 a full participant in the city's policing machine. When our 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:27.640 story starts in nineteen eighty eight, that machine was notoriously 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:36.640 harsh and way too often couldn't deliver real justice. It's 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:39.159 July nineteen eighty eight, and on one of Northeast Phillies' 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:42.240 side streets lived the family of a little girl, four 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:45.520 year old Barbara Jean Horn. On the twelfth of July, 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:48.960 Barbara Jane went missing sometime around two o'clock that afternoon. 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:52.720 By five point thirty, a neighbor peeked inside a discarded 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:56.080 television box that was sitting outside on a curb next 0:04:56.080 --> 0:04:59.800 to some trash cans. Inside the box was Barbara Jane, 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:04.080 and she was dead. She was unclothed, her hair was wet, 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:08.480 and she'd been struck five times on the head. It 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:12.080 was a horrendous crime. Police swarmed the block and found 0:05:12.120 --> 0:05:15.480 four eye witnesses who'd seen a man earlier that afternoon 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:19.680 dragging a cardboard box down the sidewalk. The eyewitnesses all 0:05:19.720 --> 0:05:22.760 gave roughly the same description. They'd seen a man with 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:26.679 brown hair, around thirty years old, somewhere between five six 0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:29.960 and five nine, with a medium build. It was a 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:33.359 pretty good description, but police weren't able to generate any 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:37.359 real leads. After several months, Barba Jeane's murder was featured 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:40.960 on the TV show Unsolved Mysteries and a police tip 0:05:41.000 --> 0:05:43.960 line was set up. Close to a thousand tips were 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:47.440 phoned in, but police still couldn't solve the case after 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:51.440 almost four years. In early nineteen ninety two, the case 0:05:51.560 --> 0:05:55.000 was reassigned to a new group of Philly detectives, and 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:58.400 these new cops seemed to have no difficulty picking a suspect, 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:03.000 a twenty three year old man named Walter Ogrod. Walter 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:05.680 was a round shoulder's thick glasses kind of guy who 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:08.719 lived across the street from Barbara Jean's family. He was 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:12.000 black haired, six foot one, two hundred and twenty pounds, 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:15.400 not exactly the short, slim man who'd been seen dragging 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:18.479 that box. Walter had no criminal record at all, but 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:22.400 he did have a record of profound learning disabilities over 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:26.279 the years. Professionals who evaluated him used words like extreme 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:30.840 dependency and social inadequacy. His teachers said that Walter was 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:33.880 no troublemaker. He'd only ever get in trouble because he 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:36.760 was in the wrong place at the wrong time. For 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:39.480 Walter Ogrod, the wrong place at the wrong time was 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:43.159 a Philadelphia interrogation room on April fifth, nineteen ninety two. 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:47.480 That morning, police called Walter's house and left a message 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:50.120 asking him to come in for questioning about Barbara Jean. 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:54.920 He wasn't a suspect, they said, he was an informational witness. 0:06:55.520 --> 0:06:58.839 This happens all the time. But this is a ruse. 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:02.560 There's all already a plan a foot. Police officers don't 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:06.280 view that person as a witness. They view that person 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:11.080 as a suspect. It's a ruse because it creates a 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:14.600 context in which the confession is going to be viewed 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:18.520 as voluntary. He drove down to the police station on 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:21.800 his own accord. We told him that the door is 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:24.440 open and he can leave at any time that he wants. 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:28.600 All of these tactics we see over and over again, 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:32.800 and oftentimes it's the first step down the road to 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:33.880 a false confession. 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:37.560 Walter was happy to help first chance he got. At 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:41.000 about one point thirty that afternoon, Walter drove himself to 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:46.200 the Philadelphia Police Administration Building. It's an imposing, severe nineteen 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:50.400 sixties era complex that Philadelphians call the Roundhouse. 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:54.840 The confession was one of police officer's main tools to 0:07:54.960 --> 0:07:57.080 solve cases that were still open. 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:01.040 There were experts in breaking people, and the Roundhouse is 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:02.280 where the breaking happened. 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:05.920 It's the seat of police power in the city. 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:09.160 Walter showed up to the Roundhouse ready to cooperate, but 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:13.040 wiped out. He had just finished an eighteen hour shift 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:16.880 driving a bakery truck around a three hundred mile delivery route, 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:20.480 and he'd been awake for twelve hours. Before that, he. 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:23.800 Had been up for like thirty hours. He was exhausted. 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:28.920 He came into the interrogation room expecting to be providing 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:32.440 information that was helpful to the police, and he got 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:35.160 hit with an avalanche. 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:38.520 At the roundhouse, police put Walter into a back room 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:41.400 where the table and chairs were bolted to the floor. 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:45.480 That's where he'd face fourteen hours of interrogation. 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:48.720 If you go without sleep for some period of time, 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:55.439 it clouds your ability to make rational decisions and leads 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:59.920 people to agree to things that they otherwise would never 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:06.120 agreed to. And Walter had cognitive disabilities too, so these 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:09.319 twin issues made him an easy mark. 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:14.040 Now, the interrogation wasn't recorded, so we have no objective 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:17.040 record of what happened in the room. But Walter has 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:20.240 given a very detailed account of the interrogation. So here 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:24.120 we go. According to Walter, a police started by asking 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:27.080 where he'd been four years ago on the day Barbara 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:30.880 Jean disappeared. He went to work, he said. After he 0:09:30.920 --> 0:09:34.600 got home he remembered seeing Barbara Jean's stepfather going door 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:37.960 to door looking for her. But these answers didn't seem 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:42.160 to satisfy the police. Walter started to feel strange. Why 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:45.079 were the cops so interested in him? He stood up 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:48.679 tried to leave the room, but he says his interrogators 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:52.880 blocked the door. The police handcuffed Walter to the chair 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:56.120 and started showing him photos of Barbara Jean's dead body 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:59.920 in the cardboard box. We think you did this, they said. 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:03.760 Walter says. Police told him witnesses had identified him as 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:07.480 the perpetrator, even though no one actually had, and when 0:10:07.520 --> 0:10:10.800 Walter insisted he was innocent, the police told him he 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:14.400 must be blocking memories of the murder. They wrote down 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:17.840 a description of how they thought Walter had committed the crime. 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:21.080 If you don't sign this confession, they said, we're going 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:23.400 to take you downstairs and we're going to put you 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:26.240 in a cell with a bunch of black people. We're 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:28.640 going to tell them you killed a bunch of black children, 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:32.400 and then we're going to see what happens. Except, of course, 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:34.000 they didn't use the word black. 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:39.120 This is the old school police department, the department built 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:43.040 by Frank Rizzo, who was an unabashed racist. I mean, 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:46.480 when he ran for mayor, he would hand out buttons 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:50.760 to his supporters that said vote white. It's no surprise 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:56.920 in this context that Walter Ogrod's interrogation was saturated with racism. 0:10:57.240 --> 0:10:59.800 By three point thirty in the morning, Walter had had enough. 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:03.800 He signed each page of a sixteen page confession, all 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:07.079 of which had been written out by the police. According 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:10.520 to the confession, Walter lured Barbara Jean into his basement, 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.800 where he tried to molest her. When she resisted, he 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:15.959 flew into a rage and hit her on the head 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:19.560 with a two foot long metal bar from his weight set. 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:22.480 He rinsed off her body, hid her clothes in a 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:26.200 crawl space, and put her in the cardboard box. It 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:28.960 was a brutal statement enough to get Walter booked into 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:32.280 jail and charged with murder, but by seven a m. 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:36.480 Walter was recanting. He called an attorney from jail totally 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:39.120 distraught and said that police were telling him that he'd 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:41.520 killed a little girl and had a mental block about it. 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:45.240 Walter said he didn't do it. When the lawyer asked 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:48.360 why he hadn't called earlier, Walter explained that he had 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:51.719 requested a lawyer during the interrogation, but the police had 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:54.040 said they'd have to put him in jail until the 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:57.760 lawyer came, and in the meantime the inmates would kill him. 0:11:57.960 --> 0:11:59.959 That was more than enough to dissuade Walter. 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:03.760 You might be asking yourself, how can they do that? 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:07.120 Aren't they supposed to stop when a suspect asked for 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:09.800 the right to counsel? And the answer to that question 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:13.960 is yes. That's the one bright line rule of interrogation. 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:18.000 Suspect asks for a lawyer, police officers shut up until 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:21.400 a lawyer comes into the room. But they could get 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:24.640 away with it because there's no recording of this transaction. 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:28.120 Police officers are going to say he never asked for 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.720 a lawyer. And in Philadelphia, in a court of law 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:35.600 during this time, nobody's gonna believe Walter. 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:47.160 Ogrid Walter's trial for first degree murder began in October 0:12:47.240 --> 0:12:51.079 nineteen ninety three. The only evidence against him was his confession, 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:54.240 and there was plenty of reason to disbelieve it. The 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:57.640 confession claimed that Walter had hidden Barber Jean's clothes in 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:00.880 his crawl space, but Walter's defense pointed out that no 0:13:00.960 --> 0:13:05.080 clothes had been found there. A psychiatrist testified about Walter's 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:08.880 limitations and said the confession wasn't written in Walter's style 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:12.400 of speaking, and when Walter took the stand to proclaim 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:15.800 his own innocence, it was pretty clear the confession was 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:20.000 written in words he'd never use. On November fourth, nineteen 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:24.240 ninety three, the jury announced its verdict not guilty. 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:28.360 The jury acquitted Walter Ograd. 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:31.079 Let's say that one more time. The jury found Walter 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:34.080 not guilty. I mean, we almost never see this in 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:35.000 confession cases. 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:37.880 This is a rare event. It's like a total eclipse 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:38.400 of the sun. 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:40.800 For a moment, it looked like Walter was going home. 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:44.120 But as soon as the acquittal was announced, one juror 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:47.760 changed everything. He stood up and announced, I do not 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:52.040 agree with the verdict. The courtroom erupted and the judge 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:55.319 declared a mistrial. In the end, the jury had hung 0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:59.280 eleven in favor of acquittal, one in favor of conviction. 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.040 After the trial, one of the eleven jurors who believed 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:06.160 in Walter's innocence told the media that he saw gaping 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:10.040 holes in the prosecution's case. I didn't put much stock 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:13.280 in the confession, he said, I wanted to see evidence. 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:17.640 Walter was retried in nineteen ninety six, and this time 0:14:17.760 --> 0:14:20.960 the prosecutors filled the holes in their case. They had 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:25.840 recruited a notorious jailhouse snitch, a man named John Hall, 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:28.000 who was locked up in the same jail as Walter. 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:32.000 Hall had a miles long track record of claiming to 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:35.800 overhear other inmates confess to their crimes in at least 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:39.920 twelve different homicide cases. He told the authorities about these 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:44.640 supposed confessions in exchange for benefits like reductions in his sentence. 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:49.240 For his apparently priestlike ability to hear confessions, Hall was 0:14:49.360 --> 0:14:50.920 nicknamed the Monseigneur. 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:56.840 He would read newspaper articles about these stories and then 0:14:57.080 --> 0:15:01.640 claim that this suspect confus to him, and he did 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:05.080 it because he was getting something in return. He would 0:15:05.080 --> 0:15:08.880 get a cut in his sentence. He was a con man, 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:12.640 he was a liar, and the fact that prosecutors were 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:17.600 willing to use this man over and over again speaks 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:23.960 volumes about this unholy alliance between police officers and prosecutors 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:24.920 in Philadelphia. 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:28.320 This partnership with such a prolific snitch had helped the 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:32.120 Philly DA's office win a steady stream of convictions, but 0:15:32.240 --> 0:15:35.680 by the time of Walter Ogrod's second trial, the Monseignor 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:39.960 had accumulated such a reputation that even prosecutors realized he 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:41.080 had no credibility. 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:47.520 Left the baggage around John Hall was so heavy that 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:52.120 the prosecutors couldn't use him in this case. So what 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:57.440 did Hall do? Hall trained another inmate in the details 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:03.080 of Walter's story and used that inmate to be the snitch. 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:06.520 He wasn't the only priest there to take confessions. 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:09.880 That's right. He turned the jail and prison system in 0:16:10.160 --> 0:16:12.360 Pennsylvania into a seminary. 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:16.600 For Walter's second trial, prosecutors got around their usual star 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:20.800 witnesses credibility problem by calling a different inmate to testify. 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:25.040 Ja Wolchansky was an acolyte of John Hall, and Jay 0:16:25.200 --> 0:16:27.720 was all too happy to take the monseignor's place on 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:31.280 the witness stand. At trial, Jay testified that Walter had 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:34.600 confessed to him in jail. For good measure, Jay added 0:16:34.600 --> 0:16:37.720 a story about Walter, describing what happened when his own 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:41.320 mom asked if he'd killed Barbara Jean. According to Jay, 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:44.280 Walter told his mom, damn right, I did, and if 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:48.320 you know what's best for you, you'll keep quiet, believe it 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:52.080 or not. This is enough. Based on Jay's snitch testimony 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:55.680 and on the confession, Walter Ogrod was convicted of the 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:59.280 murder of Barbara jen Horn on October eighth, nineteen ninety six. 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:02.920 The next day, it took this jury less than ninety 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:06.639 minutes to sentence Walter Ogrod to death and off Walter 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:14.240 went to death row. Walter's case went through years of 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:17.800 appeals to no avail. Eventually, a team of lawyers from 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:21.520 the Federal Community Defender Office in Philadelphia, along with attorneys 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:25.040 from a local law firm, began to reinvestigate Walter's case. 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:28.560 In twenty eleven, they filed a post conviction petition with 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:32.960 some blockbuster pieces of evidence attached. First, the petition took 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:37.640 down the snitches. It included an affidavit from the monseigneur himself, 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:41.359 John Hall, who said that his buddy Jay Wolchansky never 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:44.639 really talked to Walter in any detail at all. Instead, 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:47.480 the Monseigneur had told Jay what to say about Walter. 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:52.159 The Monseigneur finally had his come to Jesus moment, he 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:55.480 admitted that he had lied about Walter Ogrod. 0:17:55.960 --> 0:18:00.000 After the Monseigneur died, his widow also submitted an affidavit's 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:03.720 spilling details about the snitch scheme. Turns out she was 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:07.600 an accomplice in fabricating the monsigneur's confessions It was her 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:11.040 newspaper research that served as the basis for his stories, 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:14.280 but when it came to Walter's case, she couldn't find 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:17.080 that much information in the papers, so she wrote Walter 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:21.400 a letter, pretending to be a stripper, asking for information 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:25.480 about his case. Walter, of course, never confessed anything to her. 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:29.240 The story of his guilt was all made up. As 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:32.480 for Walter's confession, the lawyers pointed out that Barbara Jean 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:35.520 didn't have the kind of skull fractures you'd expect if 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:37.439 she had actually been hit over the head with a 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:40.560 weight bar. The confession just didn't match the facts of 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:43.879 the case, and it seemed there was a reason for that. 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:48.560 The same officer who interrogated Walter had been implicated in 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:52.320 at least two other false confession cases. One involved a 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:55.480 man who'd confessed to raping a seventy seven year old woman, 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:58.359 and another involved a man who confessed to killing a 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:02.120 local businessman. Were closing those cases, the Philly police gave 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:06.360 this officer the nickname Detective Perfect. Thankfully, both of these 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:11.199 wrongfully convicted men were later exonerated, and Detective Perfects record 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:12.560 was deservedly tarnished. 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:16.920 The detective who took Walter Ograd's confession. Was a golden 0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:21.959 boy in the Philadelphia Police department, and he claimed to 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:26.400 have a ninety five percent success rate in getting confessions 0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:27.480 to close cases. 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:30.399 There's a great quote from a journalist who followed this 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:34.399 case very closely, man named Tom Lowenstein, who said, you know, 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:37.240 having a ninety five percent clearance rate for a homicide 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:40.760 detective is kind of like Mark maguire hitting seventy five 0:19:40.800 --> 0:19:43.040 home runs. You got to ask, did he do it? 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:44.600 Honestly exactly? 0:19:44.720 --> 0:19:48.679 When you see detectives claiming to have that high of 0:19:48.720 --> 0:19:51.679 a confession rate, you know there's a lot of false 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:53.200 confessions in that mix. 0:19:56.119 --> 0:19:59.160 The post conviction lawyers had presented a pretty compelling case 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:03.840 for Walter's innocent. Nonetheless, seven years later, in twenty seventeen, 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:07.200 the court still had not issued a ruling. But while 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:13.000 Walter's case was stalled, Philadelphia began to change. In twenty seventeen, 0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:17.320 the people of Philadelphia elected a new unlikely district attorney, 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:21.720 Larry Krasner. Larry was a civil rights lawyer who made 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:25.639 his name suing the Philadelphia police for misconduct. He was 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:29.840 elected on a wave of neighborhood activism led by Philadelphians 0:20:29.880 --> 0:20:32.879 of color who were angry at the authorities for years 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:36.520 of abuse and neglect. Larry Krasner quickly came to define 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:39.440 a new vision of what it meant to be a prosecutor. 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:42.880 He did not believe in the death penalty, he did 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:46.600 not believe in knee jerk mass incarceration, and he did 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:49.959 not believe in keeping innocent men and women in prison. 0:20:51.200 --> 0:20:53.800 Here's our friend Carrie Wood, who works in the part 0:20:53.840 --> 0:20:58.560 of Larry Krasner's office dedicated to overturning wrongful convictions. Before 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:01.080 she joined his office, she he was a wrongful conviction 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:04.640 lawyer like us who worked at the Ohio Innocence Project. 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:09.879 Larry Krasner was really thinking about the system differently and 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:14.600 wanting to return to a role of truth seeker and 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:19.080 representing the whole community, not just a particular swath of it. 0:21:19.600 --> 0:21:22.200 That was really something that made me change my mind 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:24.520 about wanting to work in a DA's office. 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:27.720 Carrie has crossed over to the prosecution side with the 0:21:27.720 --> 0:21:30.640 goal of changing it, and we're pretty proud of her. 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:34.800 Unfortunately, one of the biggest roadblocks to getting justice were 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:39.679 often prosecutors' offices. I thought that coming to a DA's office, 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:42.959 I might actually be able to make a difference to 0:21:43.119 --> 0:21:46.119 right past wrongs and to use those past wrongs to 0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:48.240 point to practices that needed to change. 0:21:48.760 --> 0:21:52.359 After Carrie began working in the Philadelphia Conviction Integrity Unit, 0:21:52.760 --> 0:21:56.200 one of the first cases assigned to her with Walter Ogrod. 0:21:56.640 --> 0:22:00.280 Walter's attorneys had pointed out that Barbara Jean Horne didn't 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:04.600 have any skull fractures, and Walter's initial confession was that 0:22:05.080 --> 0:22:06.920 he had a hit her over the head with a 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:12.480 large weight bar. That was certainly something that sounded worth investigating. 0:22:12.960 --> 0:22:16.320 Carrie and her colleagues dove into Walter's case, and what 0:22:16.400 --> 0:22:17.840 they found was revealing. 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:22.320 We began to identify documents that looked like they had 0:22:22.320 --> 0:22:24.840 not been turned over to defense counsel at the time 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:28.760 of the original trial. One of the things that really 0:22:28.840 --> 0:22:33.760 jumped out at me was notes from the prosecutor about 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:38.400 what the actual true cause of death was. In those notes, 0:22:38.680 --> 0:22:42.359 it says Barbara Jane Horn had not died from a 0:22:42.400 --> 0:22:44.919 blow to the head. The most likely scenario was that 0:22:45.000 --> 0:22:48.320 she had been suffocated. So that particular note in the file, 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:53.080 once we came across it was a pretty big deal. 0:22:53.480 --> 0:22:57.320 The state had known all along that Walter's confession, which 0:22:57.400 --> 0:23:01.240 didn't mention smothering once, was not true, even as it 0:23:01.320 --> 0:23:04.439 sought to execute him. In fact, a new review of 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:07.480 the autopsy revealed that whatever did strike Barbaraging in the 0:23:07.480 --> 0:23:11.119 head was light weight and thin in profile. It definitely 0:23:11.200 --> 0:23:14.879 wasn't the heavy weight bar that Walter's confession described. That 0:23:15.080 --> 0:23:17.760 was enough for Carrie and the Conviction Integrity Unit to 0:23:17.800 --> 0:23:20.960 do DNA testing on the liquid that the Morgue had 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:22.800 used to wash Barbera Jane's body. 0:23:23.119 --> 0:23:25.560 What else can Barbara Jane tell me about what happened 0:23:25.600 --> 0:23:28.040 to her that maybe was missed at the time. 0:23:28.480 --> 0:23:32.200 The result they found a full male DNA profile. That 0:23:32.280 --> 0:23:35.960 profile didn't match anyone in the state or national DNA databases, 0:23:36.320 --> 0:23:39.560 But one thing was clear. The DNA definitely did not 0:23:39.720 --> 0:23:43.040 belong to Walter Ogrod And unlike in so many of 0:23:43.040 --> 0:23:47.200 the stories we tell on this podcast, these prosecutors understood 0:23:47.240 --> 0:23:50.920 what a DNA exclusion like this meant. It was undeniable 0:23:51.000 --> 0:23:55.920 proof that Walter had been wrongfully convicted. On February twenty eighth, 0:23:55.960 --> 0:23:58.920 twenty twenty, Carrie and her team filed a motion to 0:23:59.000 --> 0:24:02.280 throw out Walter's conveytion. The evidence used to convict him, 0:24:02.320 --> 0:24:07.280 she wrote, was false, unreliable, and incomplete. Instead, she stated 0:24:07.560 --> 0:24:13.880 Walter Ogrod was very likely innocent. For Walter to win 0:24:13.920 --> 0:24:17.359 exoneration and leave death row, though it wasn't enough for 0:24:17.400 --> 0:24:20.640 the DA's office to declare him innocent, the judge had 0:24:20.640 --> 0:24:24.399 to agree to exonerate him or Walter wasn't going anywhere. 0:24:24.960 --> 0:24:28.800 This judge was a former prosecutor herself. She'd tried homicide 0:24:28.840 --> 0:24:32.200 cases alongside another prosecutor who later became the judge who 0:24:32.200 --> 0:24:37.600