Bluhm Blog

Daniel Gristwood Exonerated; Man Who Confessed to Murdering His Wife Now Free and Clear

It's taken almost 10 months, but Syracuse, NY prosecutors have finally agreed not to pursue further charges against Daniel Gristwood in the brutal attack of Gristwood's wife, Christina.  On January 12, 1996, a lone assailant entered the Gristwood home and beat Mrs. Gristwood about the head and the face with a clawhammer.  Daniel Gristwood came home from work and found his wife laying in a pool of blood.  Police focused on Daniel from the get- go and interrogated him relentlessly for at least 14 hours until they obtained a confession from him.  In September 1996, Gristwood was convicted and sentenced to 12.5 to 25 years.  After serving nine years in prison, Gristwood was freed in October, after a second man, Mastho Davis, came forward and confessed that he, and not Gristwood, was the assailant.  Because Davis' confession was rich in detail -- precisely the kind of details that only the true perpetrator could have known -  Supreme Court Justice John Brunetti vacated Gristwood's conviction in September. 

Why would Gristwood confess to beating his wife to within an inch of her life, a beating so vicious that it left her confined to a wheel chair, her left side paralyzed, and with permanent brain damage?  According to Gristwood, the 14 plus hour interrogation left him so confused that he actually came to believe that he must have attacked his wife, a belief which was fleeting, but which led nonetheless left him vulnerable to falsely confessing:

"I kept asking for a lawyer and they didn't give me one.  They had me so upset I was crying.  They kept telling me that noone else could have done this.  I asked six times for a lawyer but once they got it in their mind that they pointed a finger they weren't going to hear anything else.  [By the end], they had me believing  I did something I didn't do.  As soon as I got into the fresh air, I said I didn't do this but they said "Well you already confessed.  It doesn't matter anymore."

In agreeing to dismiss pending charges against Gristwood "in the interests of justice", Senior District Attorney Robert Duncanson was careful to say that the dismissal was "not because of a belief Daniel Gristwood is 'innocent'" but because he doesn't have sufficient evidence to convict Gristwood at a trial scheduled for July 31.  Two factors no doubt contributed to the delay. First,  Christina Gristwood' mother remains convinced that Gristwood was her attacker and that he and Davis cooked up a scheme for Davis to take the blame while they served time in county jail. Second, the statute of limitations prevented the DA's office from proceeding against Davis, who remains locked up for another crime.

http://www.9wsyr.com/mediacenter/?videoid=111108

Rarity: FBI Obtains False Confession to Murder from Female Suspect

Those of us who collect and analyze false confessions are often stunned when we discover a high profile false confession years after it was made.  Sometimes, we learn about these by tracking civil lawsuits and verdict, sometimes an attorney from a town where the local newspaper does not provide its stories to NEXIS or WESTLAW will tell us about it, and sometimes we learn about it when the true perpetrator is ready to go to trial.  When this happens, it makes us wonder how many other false confessions are out there waiting to be discovered.  Today I discovered  a beauty, one which did not turn up in my search for such confessions in preparation for my article documenting 125 proven false confessions with Richard Leo.  It's a beauty because it is an FBI interrogation induced false confession and it is the rare false confession to a murder from a woman.

An article written by Sarah Core of the Indiana Daily Student from October 25, 2006 tells the story of Wendy K. Owings, 32, of Bloomington, who testified Tuesday about her involvement in the Jill Behrman murder case, which stemmed from a false confession of murder. Owens was called by the prosecution to testify that her previous confession was false and that she did not know the man now on trial for murder --  John R. Myers II.

What did Owings confess to in 2002 and why did she confess?  Core writes (my comments are in parentheses):  "In 2002, Owings told police that she, along with Uriah Clouse and Alisha Sowders, were in Clouse's truck on May, 31, 2000, when they accidentally hit Behrman on her bike (a classic minimization tactic). Owings said they panicked (impulsive versus premeditated) , and Clouse threw Behrman, still alive, into the bed of the truck along with her bike. Clouse drove to Salt Creek, and after wrapping Behrman up in an off-white tarp and tying bungee cords around her, he stabbed her, Owings said. Clouse then forced Sowders and Owings to stab her ("you didn't mean to do it, you were forced to") also and then dumped her body into the water, Owings said.

Sounds like an open and shut case, right?  Not quite. Owings' confession prompted a massive search by police and FBI that involved building two dams to drain a 7,000-foot section of Salt Creek. But after Behrman's remains were discovered in 2003 in a wooded area near Paragon, Ind. Owings recanted her statement.

Why did she lie? Owings testified that she was pressured by investigators to disclose any  information she might know about the case and because she was afraid of the potential jail time hanging over her head at the time: "(I) had 86 years worth of felonies brought against me, and I thought if I didn't tell them ... I'd have all these felonies against me," Owings told the jury.  By confessing, she hoped to receive a lighter sentence for giving information.  Did she hope or was she told or made to think that a lighter sentence would follow with her cooperation?"I figured they would just believe what I said and let me go home," she said. (Again, something the investigators told her must have given her this impression)

Owings came under suspicion by the FBI in 2002 after she made a comment at a party stating she had killed Behrman.  On cross-examination, Myers' defense attorney suggested to the court that Owings wasn't telling the full truth this time either and asked her if she would really lie about killing someone to get out jail.

"To get out of 86 years, yes, I would, and yes, I did," Owings replied.

Interestingly, the case against Myers is largely circumstantial.  Myers never confessed, despite the FBI's use of a tactic straight out of the Marty Tankleff interrogation playbook.   During Myers' interrogation, the detective held up an envelope, suggesting it had a letter in it, and told Myers that "possibly his father had not taken the secret to the grave with him."  In other words, he claimed that Myers' father, before he died of cancer, wrote a letter telling police that Myers had killed Behrman.  For news about the Myers case, see

http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.php?id=38700&adid=news

Miami Judge Tosses Confession in Murder Case, Calls for Videotaping Interrogations

Liesbeth Boots, a Miami Public Defender, had a nightmare of a case on her hands. Her 18 year old client, Terric Jeffrey, had confessed to punching his girlfriend's son in the stomach, a blow that police believed had caused the boy's death.  Not only was Jeffrey charged with the boy's murder, but he was facing the possibility of the death penalty.  Instead of laying down and looking for a plea deal, as unfortunately, many defenders do,  Boots came out swinging and attacked both the reliability of the confession and its voluntariness. 

Boots turned up evidence that Jeffrey was mentally retarded and that officers used trickery to get him to confess.  She hired a medical expert who placed the time of death at a time when the boy was with his mother.  Her investigators got a statement from the mother (a recantation) in which she alibied Jeffrey during the time of the killing.  During a voluntariness hearing she hired false confession expert Richard Ofshe to talk about the way in which police officers manipulate suspects into confessing through the use of tactics that imply leniency to those who confess and threaten harm to those who do not.  She attacked the fact that the state did not electronically record the entire interrogation process and used the videotaped confession as evidence to support her claim that Jeffrey was compliant and suggestible.

After oral arguments, all that was left was the waiting.  Today, the wait is over.  Judge Robert Pineiro suppressed the confession of Jeffrey, holding that police had failed to meet their burden of proving the confession was voluntary.  Judge Pineiro's eighteen page order is a textbook example of how judges should assess confessions. Judge Pineiro attacked the credibility of the detectives who conflicted over whether or not they used the "accident scenario" to obtain the confession, he took the detectives to task for the fact that they  disagreed amongst themselves about who got the defendant to confess, and he lambasted the police for failing to follow-up on leads and other avenues of investigation once they obtained the confession, citing the old maxim of " first investigate, then interrogate." 

Judge Pineiro also analyzed the confession line by line and noted each instance where the defendant simply parroted back information given by the detective and highlighted the last line of the confession when the defendant asks the detective; "I did that right?" as evidence that the confession was scripted.  Perhaps the most important paragraph is the way in which this law and order judge describes how this case has changed his thinking about the need for videotaping the entirety of the interrogation process:

"Prior to this hearing, I was not convinced that it might be good police practice to videotape the entirety of a defendant's interrogation.  That it would not be practical. Given the evidence adduced at these hearings I have come to believe that, regardless of the practicality,  it might be imperative.  It would provide the court and jurors credible proof  of what takes place within the closed off environment of the interrogation cell. Perhaps this tragedy may have the salubrious effect of causing police departments to re-examine their interrogation policies."

Congratulations to Liesbeth Boots, her supervisor Stephen Harper, and the Miami Public Defender's Office for reminding us all of how to litigate a false confession in the pre-trial stages of a murder case.  Their work gave the judge all of the ammunition he needed to make what unfortunately today can only be described as a "courageous ruling."  Check out tomorrow's Miami Herald for more coverage of this decision.  The final paragraph of the judge's order are words that we so rarely hear but which are music to the ears of anybody who cares about the meaning of justice:

"[W]e cannot let our zeal and thirst for retribution lead us to the point where we end up cutting corners, bending the rules, perhaps stretching the truth to get to that suspect who our gut tells us must have done it. When we do so, not only do we face the possibility of wrongfully accusing the innocent and of letting the guilty off Scott free, but  of destroying that which makes our society worth protecting -- the rule of law.  Only when we are willing to accord the least of us, to those charged with the worst crimes, due process of law can we truly preserve our Creator endowed "inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Bravo!

No Lo Pleas and False Confessions

Once an innocent suspect confesses to a crime,  the chances that the suspect will be convicted increase exponentially.  As Richard Leo and Richard Ofshe have demonstrated, the consequences of a confession result in higher charges, higher bail, less generous plea offers, higher rates of conviction at trial, stiffer sentences (a suspect's recantation is viewed as a lack of remorse), less chance of prevailing on appeal, difficulty in getting post-conviction DNA testing in some jurisdictions, and great difficulty in winning a post-conviction hearing.  These obstacles sometimes lead attorneys to recommend and suspects to take Alford pleas or no lo contendere pleas which are treated as guilty pleas but enable the suspect to maintain innocence and preserve issues relating to the confession on appeal.  The pressures to enter such pleas may be even greater after a successful result on appeal or at post-conviction where the defendant's conviction is  reversed and he or she faces the prospect of a retrial.  Here the no lo plea allows the suspect to get out of jail and avoid trial (but essentially forfeit any civil suit against the police officers who coerced the false confession).  It is a deal with the devil but one that many wrongfully convicted are willing to take.  Having been burned by the criminal justice system once, few are willing to take the risk of being burned again.  One of the "innocence" related reforms that needs to be looked at is the use of no lo pleas in cases where the defendant is actually innocent.  I'm not yet sure what the solution is but it is a discussion that needs to take place.    

A recent Pennsylvania case illustrates the dilemma. Tiffany Pritchett, after serving 6 years in prison for a crime she maintains she did not commit, recently pled no contest to a third degree murder charge, a decision which enabled her to be released with time-served as opposed to waiting out appeals and a retrial in her case.  Pritchett's 1994 conviction for first degree murder was reversed after a trial court judge held that her attorney was ineffective for allowing her to take a polygraph exam while he went to a football game.  Ms. Pritchett's case was the subject of an investigative report by Bill Moushey and several of his journalism students at the Innocence Institute at Point Park in Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  http://www.postgazette.com/pg/06285/729303-58.stm      

Reid Interrogator Vouches For False Confession in Cry Rape Saga

I posted earlier about Bill Luedder's new book Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman's Harrowing Quest for Justice, which tells the story of how an ambitious detective, using psychological interrogation techniques designed for guilty suspects, coerced a rape victim to recant her claim that she had been raped and how the woman ("Patty") fought to make sure that justice was served in her case.  Having read the book, I can say it is a must read, a powerful indictment of how tunnelvision can lead police officers and prosecutors even to turn against crime victims in a desperate attempt to protect the system. 

One of the most fascinating sections of the book deals with the lengths to which the city of Madison were willing to go to defend their police officers against internal disciplinary action and a civil suit filed by the victim.  To free the lead detective from any blame, lawyers retained Joseph Buckley, President of John E. Reid & Associates in Chicago, to give an expert opinion as to whether the recantation of Patty was voluntary and reliable.  Buckley opined that the police had conducted "reasonable investigation" that Patty's interrogations were conducted in a "reasonable manner, and that her resulting confession "appears to be both a voluntary and truthful statement." 

Everything must have appeared reasonable to Mr. Buckley because the interrogation tactics used against Patty were textbook Reid techniques.  And for years, Mr. Buckley has trained interrogators that the Reid technique does not produce false confessions, in part, because the Reid technique is only used on guilty suspects.  But in Patty's case, the technique was used on an innocent victim and it produced a false recantation (one that was later proven false when DNA evidence identified a third party as the rapist).  The Cry Rape story thus undercuts two of the foundational premises of the Reid technique: 1) that investigators can tell by reading body language or verbal cues whether a suspect is lying; and 2) that the psychological techniques do not produce involuntary or false confessions.  In Patty's case, Buckley was wrong on both counts (as was the judge who ruled the confession voluntary).

Fortunately, future suspects in serious crimes who are interrogated by police officers in Wisconsin may be protected from psychological coercion by a  new law requiring that police electronically record all custodial interrogations.  But Cry Rape suggests that the lawmakers should think about extending the law to all interviews of witnesses and victims as well. The same pseudo-scientific judgements about truthfulness are often used to launch full scale interrogations against both witnesses and victims, a move which as Cry Rape demonstrates can have tragic results. 

No Remedy for Incompetent Possible False Confessor?

In 1993, in Anson County, a rural county 55 miles Southeast of Charlotte,  law enforcement officers arrested Floyd Brown for the beating death of a 80 year old Katherine Lynch.  The only evidence against Brown was a confession.  The confession was written down by a state law enforcement officer and signed by Brown.  Case closed?  Not quite.  Brown was not brought to trial because with IQ scores typically in the low 50s, he was deemed incompetent to stand trial.  He was sent to a state mental hospital where prosecutors hoped he could be restored to competence.  After his arrest, staffers at the hospital found Brown incompetent for trial and wrote that it was unlikely he would ever improve.  But in 2003, a decade after his arrest, hospital staff said Brown was now able to understand the charges and could stand trial.

Case open again, right? Not so fast.  Defense attorneys began to raise questions about the reliability of the confession and the officers who took the confession.   Other problems raised serious questions about the strength of the State's case and whether it would be fair to take Brown to trial thirteen years after his arrest:

• All physical evidence, kept at the Anson County Sheriff's Office, is missing, court records say.  Missing is physical evidence including fingerprint lifts, hairs, a phone and a window from Lynch's home, pieces of the floor taken for possible shoe prints, and clothing from Brown and Lynch. None of the items, when initially tested, linked Brown to the scene.

• The detectives who investigated the 1993 beating death later pleaded guilty to unrelated federal charges of soliciting thousands of dollars in bribes from suspects in other cases.He shouldn't have to stay there.  District Attorney Michael Parker should consider Mr. Brown's mental condition, his long hospitalization and the unlikelihood of conviction and drop the charges. 

At a 2005 hearing on whether to allow the confession in court, despite expert testimony that there was no way he could have given the confession detectives said he did, a judge held that the confession was admissible.  Case going to trial, right?

Not so fast.  With their case falling apart, prosecutors offered Brown a plea to voluntary manslaughter with credit for time served, a deal which would have allowed Brown to eventually be released.  But Brown was unable to understand the plea deal and incompetent to decide whether to accept it.  The judge agreed but denied a defense motion to dismiss the case because of the lost evidence.

So where does that leave Brown.  Apparently, he is stuck in a mental hospital for the rest of his life.  Prosecutors believe he is guilty, dangerous, but incompetent.  They are unwilling to dismiss the charges and let Brown go (even though they were willing to let him go early if he took the plea deal).

This situation is intolerable. A man who very well could be innocent is stuck in a mental hospital unable to prove his innocence and unable to go to trial. 

Stockelman's Fate: Katie's Revenge

In an earlier post, METH-MYTH FUELED FALSE CONFESSION (3/23/2006),  I wrote about the false confession case of Charles "Chuckie" Hickman whom Iniana state police and FBI agents coerced into falsely confessing to participating in the murder of a little girl named Katie Collman.  The false confession was exposed when DNA from cigarette butts and other evidence found near Katie's body linked Anthony Stockelman to the crime. Stockleman eventually pled guilty in exchange for a life sentence.  End of story. Right?

Wrong. News last week surfaced that inmates at the Indiana correctional facility had their own punishment waiting for Mr. Stockelman; he was literally branded by his fellow inmates for life.  They gave him a homemade tatoo on his forehead with the word "Katie's Revenge." (see picture below) I write this not to debate the whether Mr. Stockleman got his just deserts for killing and assaulting a child.  The point here is that there are large numbers of false confessions obtained in cases of child rapes and murders.  These cases bring incredible pressure on law enforcement and in their desperation officers may, in turn, cross the line when they interrogate suspects  Given the consequences of mistakes in these kinds of cases, law enforcement officers need to be especially careful not to arrest, charge and convict the wrong people based on false confessions.  Fortunately, Chuckie Hickman's false confession was exposed before he met a similar fate to Anthony Stockleman.