Bluhm Blog

Pete Shellem: Saving the world one innocent person at a time

"If you save the life of one person, it is as if you saved the world," the Talmud teaches us.  If this is true, then Pete Shellem, a journalist for the Patriot News (based out of Harrisburg, Pa). has saved the world at least four times and is now working on his fifth. 

Patty Carbone.

Steven Crawford.

Barry Laughman.

David Gladden.

These four were wrongly convicted of homicides they did not commit.  All told they had served 66 years in prison.  They would have likely died there if not for Shellem and his solid investigative reporting. For an article describing Shellem and his good works, check out Mario Cattabiani's piece entitled "The Sleuth" in the American Journalism Review at www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4341

After "The Sleuth" ran, Shellem published his most recent piece on May 27, 2007, "In a case of look-alikes, was the wrong man convicted?"  available on the Patriot News website for
free (as are all of Shellem's stories).  The story raises serious questions about the guilt of Charles T. "Ted" Dubbs who was convicted of two sexual assaults of women on jogging trails in Lancaster County in May 2002 on the basis of photo idnetifications.  New evidence, namely a confession by Wilbur Cyrus Brown II, a serial rapist who assaulted two other women on the same part of the jogging trails and 11 other similar attacks across the state, has to date failed to persuade the local prosecutor of Dubbs' innocence despite the fact that the crimes are nearly identical in all respects, particularly in the words used by the assailant and the nature of the sexual assault.  First District Attorney Heidi Eakin has an explanation for why Brown is lying -- he's a copycat criminal who is trying to get back at her for insisting that the cases in Lancaster County be prosecuted instead of allowing him to plead guilty to all of the crimes in Dauphin County.  After reading Shellem's story, this seems far-fetched.  Is this another case of prosecutorial tunnelvision, a refusal to accept the fact that an innocent man was convicted?  Stay tuned.  A hearing on Dubb's post-conviction petition is set for July 9th.

Making Criminals Out of Victims in Rape cases

In an earlier post, I discussed several cases in which police officers did not believe claims of sexual assault victims and then turned their interrogation tactics on the victims in an attempt to get them to recant.  The two most dramatic such cases involved teen victims from the Minneapolis area.  A detective in White Bear Lake, MN, was caught on tape interrogating aggressively a teenage girl who had claimed she was raped.  He didn't believe her and tried to get her to recant; she did not and it later turned out she had been telling the truth.  A video surveillance camera from a mall parking lot captured her assailant when he dropped her off after the abduction. Here's a snapshot of that case -- http://www.truthinjustice.org/abduction.htm  This was followed by a second case from Inver Grove Heights, MN where officers were successful in coercing a teenage victim to recant her claims she had been sexually assaulted.  http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_311142618.html

The parents of the teen in the White Bear Lake case insisted that police keep investigating the case.  They were so persuasive that a new task force took over the case and did DNA testing on the blindfold used by the perp.  A complete profile was developed and prosecutors filed a "John Doe" complaint in the case in order to keep open the option of bringing charges when or if the perp's identity was discovered. http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_116211636.html

Just last week, news broke of the arrest of a man in connection with yet another assault of a teen (a 12 year old) in nearby Coon Rapids. The man, whose DNA was not in the state database, fit the description given by the White Bear Lake teen.  The arrestee's DNA is now being compared with the profile of the John Doe perp to see if there is a match.  If there is, the parents persistence would have paid off.  For more on this developing story, see http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_128194044.html

Compare the picture of the arrestee with the description provided by the White Bear Lake teen.

      

Chris Mitchell, 46

ARRESTEE IN COON RAPIDS

                                    

Sketch of abduction suspect in White Bear Lake case. The suspect is described as a white male between 40 and 50 years old with gray hair. He is around 5'9" tall and 200 pounds. He had a mustache and goatee at the time of the abduction

             

"Have you ever had a cop in your face?" Using YouTube to educate public about false confessions

The use of websites to inform and educate the public about specific cases involving false confessions has been a very effective means of advocacy.  Some of the best websites out there include www.martytankleff.org and www.norfolkfour.com and www.wm3.org  These websites are chock full of information about the cases and also provide general background information about the problem of false confessions. 

As effective as these websites are, however, they do not take the reader inside the interrogation room to see exactly what kinds of police tactics can cause false confessions.  In this regard, the website of the Committee to Free Ryan Ferguson, a Columbia Missouri teen who was convicted of the murder of  Kent Heitholt, a local sportswriter in 2005, breaks new and exciting  ground.  Ryan Ferguson's support team has posted nearly ten minutes of live video of the interrogation of his co-defendant, Chuck Erickson, on YouTube. (The video can also be seen at www.freeryanferguson.com)  The video, entitled "Have You Ever Had A Cop in Your Face", comes complete with commentary which highlights the problematic police interrogation tactics used to get Erickson to confess and which aims to convince viewers that Erickson's confession is false, has received over two thousand hits on YouTube to date and the numbers are growing.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCyKnc1BVV8.

The video makes a compelling case that Erickson's confession is false. Erickson's confession is the only evidence linking Ferguson to the crime.  The crime remained unsolved for two and one-half years until Erickson told a friend he had a dream that he had killed Heitholt.  Police questioned Erickson who implicated Ryan Ferguson.  The video (or at least the excerpts on the web) shows that Erickson did not know non-public details of the crime (like what was used to strangle the victim) and made numerous errors when he guessed at other details (like the number of times the victim was beaten with a blunt object). It also shows Erickson claiming that he fabricated the confession and that he was basing his confession on information he gleaned from newspaper articles.

Ryan's conviction is on appeal. The appeal has been argued before the Missouri appellate court and a ruling is due any day now.  Stay tuned.