Bluhm Blog

Beatrice Six Fallout: No More Plea Bargains, says Prosecutor

In the wake of the Beatrice Six case, the wrongful convictions of six men and women in Beatrice, Nebraska in a 1985 murder and rape case (five of the defendants plead guilty, four of whom had falsely confessed), Gage County Attorney Randall Ritnour has come up with a solution. Beginning February 1, Ritnour has vowed that his office will no longer offer or accept plea bargains. Ritnour said he will not reduce or dismiss felony charges once they have been filed against a defendant in return for a guilty plea. The only reason he would accept a guilty plea to lesser charges would be if the evidence implicating the person changed in a significant way. Ritnour is sounding all of the right notes, selling this reform by promising to more carefully screen cases to prevent overcharging, one of the key problems with unfair plea bargaining but I can't help but think that this reform sidesteps the major lessons of the Beatrice Six case. The defendants in Beatrice did not plead guilty because of overcharging, they pled guilty because police officers and psychologists acting as agents for the police coerced four defendants into confessing to crimes they did not commit. These officers clearly fed details of the murder and rape to the suspects to make their confessions appear credible and then induced the suspects to confess by threatening them with the death penalty if they did not. In other words, the interrogations themselves were a form of plea-bargaining. There are many problems with plea bargaining, including prosecutorial abuse of the process by overcharging and harsh mandatory sentencing schemes that give guilty and innocence defendants little choice but to plead in order to minimize their exposure, but here's hoping that the Beatrice Six case causes Ritnour (who was not the prosecutor at the time of the confessions) to insist that all interrogations of suspects be electronically recorded (a new Nebraska law will require this in serious cases), that he and his deputies and local police officers receive training in the subject matter of false confessions, that he require that confessions be corroborated before charging defendants or proceeding to trial, and that he have a heart to heart with the officers who are investigating the cases about their interrogation tactics. One more thing to consider -- the threat of the death penalty was a key reason why some of these defendants falsely confessed (just as it was in the earlier Murdock, Nebraska false confession of Matthew Livers). Perhaps, Ritnour should consider supporting the abolition of the death penalty in Nebraska, or, at the very least, a policy forbidding police officers in the state from mentioning it during interrogations.

Innocence trumped by technicality

Many folks react with frustration upon hearing that a criminal has been released on a “technicality,” such as an illegal search or lack of a speedy trial. I find it much more infuriating, however, when innocent convicts cannot have their new evidence heard due to tortured legal reasoning (an even more insidious form of “technicality”).

For instance, the Illinois Post-Conviction Hearing Act permits a prisoner to challenge his conviction based on new evidence of actual innocence. But exactly what is “new evidence”?

Let’s take an example. John Q. Unfortunate is charged with an armed robbery that was actually committed by Larry, Curly, and Moe. John knows who the actual robbers were, but not surprisingly, they refuse to testify on his behalf. Larry flees the jurisdiction, Curly lies and says he wasn’t involved, and Moe takes the Fifth. John is convicted based on a mistaken identification and is sentenced to a long prison term.

Years later, however, Larry, Curly, and Moe have a change of heart and sign sworn affidavits admitting their own participation and exonerating John. Is this new evidence? Logically, one would assume so because their accounts weren’t heard at the original trial.

But logic does not always drive the law. Read what one Illinois appellate court panel recently wrote on the subject:

“[E]vidence is not newly discovered when it presents facts already known to a defendant at or prior to trial, though the source of these facts may have been unknown, unavailable or uncooperative.”

In other words, because our John Q. Unfortunate knew before trial who the real offenders were, the recent confessions of Larry, Curly, and Moe cannot be offered as new evidence. On the other hand, had John not learned their identities until after trial, he could now present the affidavits as “newly discovered” evidence and possibly win his freedom. Talk about a “technicality”!

No conceivable societal interest is furthered by the refusal to consider new proof of innocence. The aforementioned appellate court ruling is either blatantly incorrect (my view), or else the Illinois Post-Conviction Hearing Act should be amended so that new evidence of innocence may be offered at any time (also my view). Let us hope that our legislators will be brave enough to take this step without fear of being labeled soft on crime. Remember, for every innocent person locked up for a crime she did not commit, there is at least one unpunished criminal still at large.

Be careful where you are wrongfully convicted

Approximately half of the states, and the federal government, have laws on the books providing for compensation for persons who have been wrongfully convicted and imprisoned.  What is a year of wrongful imprisonment worth?  Those statutes that attempt to put a dollar amount on stolen freedom value it quite differently.  For instance, Florida's new legislation allows for up to $2 million in compensation for wrongful incarceration (although the law is extremely restrictive as to who qualifies).  New Hampshire, on the other hand, caps the amount at $20,000, no matter how many years of imprisonment were involved.  Other jurisdictions come out somewhere in between.

How do we measure up in Illinois?  Our compensation law was recently improved in many respects, and the amounts were slightly increased, but our cap is just $199,150.  That means that if Anthony McKinney (a Center on Wrongful Convictions client who has been locked up for 30 years and who recently petitioned for release based on actual innocence) were exonerated today, he would receive $6,638.33 for each year he spent behind bars as an innocent man.  You be the judge of whether that is adequate or fair.

Update: Bond Denied: "People Have Sex in the Woods" is Prosecutor's Explanation for Semen Found on Victim's Clothing and Body

Yesterday, armed with DNA test results showing that semen had been found on Laura Hobbs's clothing and inside her body, Hobbs's defense attorney appeared in court to ask that Jerry Hobbs (pictured above) be released on bond.  Charged with capital murder in the deaths of his 8-year old daughter Laura and her 9 year old friend Krystal Tobias, Hobbs has been locked up for over three years.  Bond was denied.  The result is not surprising given that prosecutors opposed bond, citing the fact that Hobbs's confession -- which is looking less and less reliable in the face of DNA evidence -- will be admissible at his trial.  But what is surprising is the explanation being offered by Lake County prosecutor Mike Mermel for why semen was found on one of the victims.  The amount of sperm found in the semen sample is too small to have come from sexual contact (but what if the assailant pulled out or used a condom), said Mermel.  Mermel then stated that she probably picked up the semen in a casual way by touching something she came into contact with: "People have sex in the woods."  Unbelievable. 

Unfortunately for Hobbs, the profile of the man whose semen was left on his daughter was not matched to someone in the state and national DNA databases.  Judge Fred Foreman ordered the State to resubmit the profile in the CODIS database and set the case for a status in late December, after the Christmas Holidays.

 

DNA test results suggest that Jerry Hobbs's confession is false

Who could forget this picture? Could Jerry Hobbs be innocent of capital murder?

More than three years ago, on Mother's Day, residents of Zion, Illinois in Lake County were shocked to learn that two little girls, Krystal Tobias, age 9, and Laura Hobbs, age 8, had been brutally murdered in Beulah Park, part of forest preserve.  Suspicion immediately focused on Laura Hobbs' father, Jerry Hobbs (pictured above) because Hobbs had found the girls' bodies in a remote area.  When police learned that Hobbs had a criminal background and had just been paroled from prison in Texas, their suspicions only deepened. 

Hobbs was taken into police custody at 10:00a.m. on May 9, 2005 and interrogated for at least 16 hours until police claim he confessed at 4:45 a.m. on May 10th. Hobbs had not slept the night before (he was out searching for his daughter) and did not sleep once in custody.  While in custody, he was subject to the full battery of psychological techniques by teams of detectives in a tag team fashion.  Hobbs's interrogation was not recorded (a new law requiring recording had passed in 2003 but would not become effective for a month or so), although police did prepare a typed statement which Hobbs signed. 

I've always had my suspicions about Hobbs's confession.  It is, to say the least, bizarre. He claims that he went looking for his daughter because she had been grounded and had left the house to play against his wishes. (He had however, been with her and her siblings flying kites earlier that day so why would he care if she went out?) When he found her, he grabbed her arm and she pulled away.  At this point, Krystal pulled a little knife ("a potato knife") on him (really? sounds like police suggested this "minimization" theme of self-defense to him)  He then snapped, took the knife from her, and repeatedly beat and stabbed Krystal.  He then went over to Laura and stabbed her in the face and the eyes and dragged the two girls into a grassy meadow opening about thirty feet off of the trail.  The confession closes with an apology for what happened, claiming that "things got out of hand." (police are trained to write such expressions of remorse into their statements). 

Throughout the time he was in custody, Hobbs's face was always on the news and reporters were talking about him as a "person of interest" or "being questioned by police" and detailing his criminal history.  The confession is the only evidence the police have against Hobbs.  There were no eyewitnesses to the crime and no murder weapon was recovered.  Although Hobbs was wearing the same clothes when arrested as when he found the girls, no blood was found on him, his clothes or his shoes.  Although some of the details in the confession are consistent with the wounds on the girls' bodies, without a recording of the interrogation, there is simply no way to know whether these details were suggested to Hobbs by the police during the questioning, whether he knew the information because he saw the girls when he found the bodies, or whether he knew the details because he was there when they were killed.

New evidence, however, suggests that Hobbs's confession is false and that police tunnelvision may have let the true killer or killers go free.  DNA testing has found semen on swabs taken from Laura Hobbs's body cavities as well as fabric on her jean skirt. The semen is not from Hobbs.  Hobbs is moving for a new bond and to have the DNA loaded into state and national databases to see if a match can be made to another perpetrator.  When called by Chicago Tribune reporter Steve Mills, Lake County prosecutor Mike Mermel disputed the results, claiming that none of the semen was found in Laura's body, and downplayed their significance:  "None of the sperm was found in a significant place."

Mermel's response is stunning.  Whether the semen was in her body cavity or not, it was found on a dead eight year old girl's body and it was not from the man the police believe killed her.  Morever, Hobbs's confession does not mention any sexual contact with either of the girls -- he describes an impulsive stabbing not a planned rape. 

If the semen is matched to a specific perpetrator and that perpetrator cannot be linked to Hobbs, Lake County prosecutors should admit their error and release Hobbs, rather than try to come up with a new theory to explain away the semen.  But don't count on it.  In the case of Juan Rivera, which Lake County prosecutors are taking to trial in February, DNA test results on semen found inside an 11 year old victim caused prosecutors to suggest that the 11 year old must have had consensual sex with another man or boy within hours or days of her rape and murder by Juan Rivera.  Maybe they'll suggest that 8 year old Laura Hobbs had consensual sex on the day of her murder?  Or perhaps they'll argue that some unknown man came upon the dead girl's body, excited himself, and left his DNA on her? 

Stay tuned. 

Six to be Pardoned in Nebraska False Confession Fiasco

DNA evidence collected from the 1985 murder of Beatrice, Nebraska native Helen Wilson has now been conclusively matched to Bruce Allen Smith. Smith died of AIDS in his home state of Oklahoma in 1992.  With him, also died at least one whopper of a secret, that six men and women had been wrongfully convicted of a brutal crime that he had committed.  Now, DNA has uncovered the secret and will soon lead to six pardons for the wrongfully convicted men and women, some of whom were pressured, under threat of the death penalty to implicate other innocent co-defendants.  All told, the DNA evidence here set a new record.  Six exonerations will come from this evidence, breaking the old record of five set by the Central Park Jogger case.  The six who will be pardoned include Thomas Winslow (confessed), Joseph White, Ada Joanna Taylor (confessed and pled guilty), Kathy Gonzalez (entered a no contest plea), Deb Shelden (confessed and pled guilty) and James Dean (confessed and pled guilty).   While I hope that there is further study of this case, perhaps by an Innocence-type Commission or an independent agency, already the Attorney General and defense counsel seem to be focusing on two sources of blame here -- "outdated and highly coercive interrogation techniques, including the use of a psychiatrist hired by the police to tell the suspects that they had repressed memories of the crime" and evidence that the police spoonfed details of the crimes to the suspects to give their confessions a ring of credibility.  The death penalty also may have corrrupted the search for truth here -- several defendants were threatened with it, including Taylor who was told that she would be the first woman to be executed by the State of Nebraska if she did not confess and cooperate. 

Four false confessions in Nebraska revealed by DNA evidence

                                                            

Joseph White talks to his mother as he waits to board a bus for Omaha after he  was released from the Nebraska State Penitentary on Wednesday October 15,2008
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Thomas Winslow being led from courthouse in Saline County, Nebraska.  He was freed  today, Friday, October 17, 2008.

Nineteen years ago, in 1985, four people described a horrific murder and rape of a 68 year old woman from Beatice, Nebraska.  Three of those witnesses Ada JoAnn Taylor, James L. Dean, and Deb Shelden told investigators that two men Thomas Winslow and Joseph White repeatedly took turns raping the victim while holding her down. Taylor even said she held a pillow over the victim's face during the assault, suffocating her.  These "confessions" led to six convictions.  White was sentenced to life in prison.  Winslow, fearing the death penalty, ultimately admitted to being present at the crime scene, and pled guilty to a reduced charge and was sentenced to 50 years.  Taylor was sentenced to 10 to 40 years for aiding and abetting second degree murder. Dean, Gonzalez and Shelden each pled guilty or entered no contest pleas and were  sentenced to 10 years. That's four confessions, six convictions, and five guilty pleas -- only White took his case to trial and lost.  Case closed, right?

Well, the case was closed for 19 years until earlier this week when new DNA test results, the first to lead to the release of a prisoner in Nebraska, opened the cell doors for Joseph White.  White walked out of prison a free man, proclaiming his innocence, something he had screamed for nearly two decades but which fell upon deaf ears.  Nebraska passed its post-conviction DNA law in 2001.  DNA test results of more than 40 samples submitted to three different crime labs (blood, semen, and hair)  found at the crime scene excluded both White and Winslow.  Based on the results, Saline County District Court Judge Vicky Johnson ruled that while neither man was exonerated by the evidence, both were entitled to relief -- she granted White a new trial and ordered his release, and set Winslow up for a new sentencing hearing.  Winslow is expected to be released later this week with a sentence of time-served. Barring some new evidence against White, a new trial is unlikely.

Earlier this summer, Ada Taylor, with a year left on her sentence came forward and recanted her confession and guilty plea, stating: “A lot of it was the fact that the county attorney and several others kept telling me they knew I had suffocated, they knew that I had used a pillow, and I told them that don’t remember any of it.” Taylor said.  Why did she lie about her co-defendants.  According to Taylor: “I was coerced into taking a plea bargain and coached into testifying to what I was coached to testify to.”

The final chapter in this story has yet to play out.  FBI Profilers at the time of the crime believed it was committed by a lone, white male, aged 17-24, who had committed a string of similar and earlier attacks on eldely women in the same neighborhood.  Authorities are retracing their steps and hope to be able to find a match to the true perpetrator in the CODIS database. If they do bring charges against the real perpetrator and there is no connection between him and those who have been convicted of the offense, this could be a record setting wrongful conviction.  The four false confessions would fall short of the five in the Central Park Jogger case but the five false guilty pleas would set a new mark.  Stay tuned.


 
 

Complete Vindication for False Confessor Jorge Hernandez

                                                                                      

This is not Jorge Hernandez.  It's Roberto Cruz Recendes, age 40, the man who actually raped and beat a 94 year old woman in Palo Alto, CA in 2002.  More than six years after wrongfully arresting and charging Hernandez, an 18 year old former soccer star at Gunn High School, Palo Alto detectives, working with the FBI finally tracked Recendes to a village in Mexico and succeeded in extraditing him back to the states to face trial.  DNA evidence proved to be both Hernandez's salvation and Recendes' doom.

Police arrested Hernandez with great fanfare after they obtained a "confession" from the young man during an interrogation, only part of which was videotaped.  The taped portion revealed that Hernandez was struggling to come up with details of the assault -- which supposedly occurred during a blackout while he was drunk -- but proved to be enough of a confession to get him arrested.  Three weeks after his "confession," DNA evidence proved he did not rape the victim who had only identified a single assailant.  Although charges against him were dropped, local authorities did not remove the cloud of suspicion from Hernandez, claiming that their investigation was still open and that he was still a suspect.

Recendes's downfall was that he was later arrested on charges of domestic violence and incarcerated in state prison.  He was paroled in 2006 and deported and required to give the state a sample of his DNA as a condition of his parole.  A few months after he left the country, the state Bureau of Forensic Services made the match to DNA left on a ring Recendes left at the crime scene.

The irony is that the ring is what led police to Hernandez in the first place.  The ring, which was engraved with the word "Edwin" and was decorated with a Quetzal, Guatemala's national bird, was reported as missing by Hernandez's brother Edwin who also drew police suspicion.   During Hernandez's interrogation, the police pitted one brother against the other and used Edwin to pressure Hernandez to confess to the crime. 

Tracking down Recendes was a major undertaking, requiring some heavy lifting by the FBI and then the cooperation of Mexican authorities who picked him up in December 2007.  Then the lengthy extradition process took its course, finally resulting in a decision by Mexican officials, after reviewing the evidence, to agree to his extradition.

All this was of course was news -- great news -- to Hernandez, now a 25 year old machinist living in Mountain  View California.  Quoted in the San Jose Mercury News, Hernandez was elated:

"Thank God they finally got the right person...I'm happy this is finally coming to an end. I'm finally able to get that nightmare off my back."

Hernandez's case was featured in a 2004 show on false confessions (which also featured yours truly) by 60 Minutes.  Hernandez sued authorities for his troubles, ultimately settling with them for $75,000.

DNA Review Clears Deceased Virginia Man Who Falsely Confessed to Brutal Murder and Rape

In Virginia, after Marvin Anderson   was exonerated in 2002 by DNA evidence in his case that was uncovered in the files of retired lab analyst Mary Jane Burton, who saved such evidence in all of her files, Gov. Mark Warner then ordered that 10% of her over 300 cases -- a random sample -- be tested for possible other wrongful convictions.  These tests exonerated two more men -- Phillip Leon Thurman and Willie Davidson. These shocking results -- a more than 6% error rate -- led Warner to order DNA testing of evidence found in all forensic case files that led to convictions from 1973 through 1988. 

It's taken quite a long time for testing to begin in these cases but results are starting to come in and the exonerations are likely to continue to mount.  Just this week test results appear to have cleared Curtis Jasper Moore of the murder and rape of an 88 year old Emporia woman named Eva King Jones.  Thomas Pope Jr. (pictured below) was charged with the murder and rape after DNA testing linked him to the crime.  Pope's profile was in a state database after he had been convicted of the abduction and rape of a 9 year old girl.

Thomas Pope Jr.

But what about Curtis Jaspar Moore?  Moore was arrested and convicted in the Virginia state courts based on a confession which two federal courts later tossed because it was the product of an unlawful arrest without probable cause and an un-Mirandized interrogation.   By reading the federal court opinions (both of which are published), Moore appears to have been the victim of a dragnet operation from desperate local police officers who hauled in dozens of local black men in the wake of the murder (the victim stayed alive long enough to tell police that her assailant was black).  Once at the police station, the severely mentally ill Moore, was grilled relentlessly by multiple detectives in an interrogation which was partially recorded on tape.  He repeatedly denied knowing anything about the crime but his denials were ignored.  The tapes of the interrogation are filled with highly coercive tactics, including repeated promises to Moore that he could go home once he confessed.  Detectives also suggested details of the crime to Moore and twice took him to the crime scene to help him "remember" these details.  Moore, who told the officers he had been released from a mental hospital, hummed and sang the theme song from the television show "Have gun will travel" throughout the interrogation. 

Tragically, Moore spent six years in a state mental hospital in the custody of the Department of Corrections before the federal courts tossed his conviction and prosecutors decided not to retry him.  Moore will never get to savor the taste of total vindication (which I hope will come shortly) -- he died four years ago.

For continuing updates about this story, check out articles by Frank Green in the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Robert Gonzales Exonerated: DNA matches to inmate in neighboring county

Robert Gonzales will be officially exonerated and released from prison after spending nearly three years in jail awaiting trial for the rape and murder of Victoria Sandoval in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  The DNA profile from hair and semen left at the crime scene was downloaded again in the CODIS database and hit to an inmate in a neighboring state.  More details to follow.

As reported by Scott Sandlin in the Albuquerque Journal, the DNA hit to Israel Diaz, a Mexican national arrested for a burglary.  Gonzales had falsely confessed to the slaying of Sandoval in 2005.  He was arrested on November 1, 2005 and released on June 28, 2008, meaning he spent nearly two years and eight months in prison for a crime he did not commit. 

In the wake of Gonzales's exoneration, the Journal editorial Board skewered local police and prosecutors in a scathing editorial which read, in part: 

"It's sickening such an injustice was done to 22-year-old Robert Gonzales. It's terrifying he could have been wrongly convicted. It's maddening the man now tied to the crime by physical evidence might never have faced prosecution. But all are outweighed bypolice and prosecutors' apparent blind, nightmarish determination to stick to a script of least resistance rather than search for real justice..... Thirty-two months is a long time for an innocent man — and he is presumed innocent until proven otherwise — to spend behind bars. This case cries out for review of how police interrogate suspects, especially the young and mentally retarded. The public must have confidence the system is searching for justice, not just churning out a story in which a vulnerable suspect becomes a vulnerable victim."