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#171 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Walter Ogrod · Wrongful Conviction

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer.
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Speaker 2: And I'm Steve Drisen.
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Speaker 1: Today we'll bring you to Philadelphia for the story of
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Speaker 1: Walter Ogrod. Walter was sent to death row for a
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Speaker 1: murder who didn't commit by an old school Philly justice
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Speaker 1: system that was better known for injustice. Walter spent decades
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Speaker 1: in prison until a new wave of reform minded prosecutors
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Speaker 1: went looking for the truth behind his conviction. Walter's story
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Speaker 1: gives Steph and me hope that real reform is really possible.
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Speaker 2: So I was born and raised in Philadelphia, and a
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Speaker 2: few years ago Laura and I took a trip there
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Speaker 2: for work. I'm very proud of Philadelphia and I like
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Speaker 2: to show off the city. And there was this place
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Speaker 2: that I had to take Laura too. It's not Constitution.
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Speaker 1: Hall, okay, not the Liberty Bell.
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Speaker 2: It's the Eastern State Penitentiary.
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Speaker 1: So you drive me to downtown Philly and there's this
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Speaker 1: rundown relic of a prison that's crumbling. It's covered in cobwebs.
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Speaker 1: It's almost like a haunted house in the middle of
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Speaker 1: downtown Philadelphia. It's not used any longer.
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Speaker 2: It was built in eighteen twenty nine, but it's.
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Speaker 1: Been preserved there as this incredible monument against mass incarceration.
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Speaker 2: It's my favorite place to go because it fits the
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Speaker 2: city's personality and history so well. This is the city
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Speaker 2: with an unbelievable history of injustice, mass incarceration, and corruption
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Speaker 2: within the criminal justice system. And this history of injustice
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Speaker 2: it peaked when I was a child in the sixties
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Speaker 2: and nineteen seventies. This was the time when Frank Rizzo
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Speaker 2: was the police chief and then he was the mayor.
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Speaker 2: He controlled the city and he sent out a message
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Speaker 2: that when police officers coerced confessions, he had their best.
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Speaker 1: You know, just like Eastern State Penitentiary. Frank Rizzo has
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Speaker 1: become this symbol for the heaviest of hands in the
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Speaker 1: criminal justice system, for the way it can just come
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Speaker 1: down on the backs of people, especially people without power.
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Speaker 1: And that's exactly what we see in today's story, the
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Speaker 1: story of Walter Ogrod. Today's story starts in Northeast Philadelphia.
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Speaker 1: It's a working class part of Philly. The side streets
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Speaker 1: are lined with bungalows and the main drags are lined
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Speaker 1: with discount big box stores. The Northeast is an outlying
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Speaker 1: area pretty far from downtown where the courthouses and police
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Speaker 1: department are found. It even tried to secede once from
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Speaker 1: the rest of the city. But when it comes to
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Speaker 1: criminal justice, the Northeast is Philadelphia through and through. It's
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Speaker 1: a full participant in the city's policing machine. When our
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Speaker 1: story starts in nineteen eighty eight, that machine was notoriously
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Speaker 1: harsh and way too often couldn't deliver real justice. It's
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Speaker 1: July nineteen eighty eight, and on one of Northeast Phillies'
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Speaker 1: side streets lived the family of a little girl, four
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Speaker 1: year old Barbara Jeane Horn. On the twelfth of July,
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Speaker 1: Barbara Jane went missing sometime around two o'clock that afternoon.
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Speaker 1: By five point thirty, a neighbor peeked inside a discarded
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Speaker 1: television box that was sitting outside on a curb next
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Speaker 1: to some trash cans. Inside the box was Barbara Jean
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Speaker 1: and she was dead. She was unclothed, her hair was wet,
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Speaker 1: and she'd been struck five times on the head. It
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Speaker 1: was a horrendous crime. Police swarmed the block and found
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Speaker 1: four eyewitnesses who'd seen a man earlier that afternoon dragging
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Speaker 1: a cardboard box down the sidewalk. The eyewitnesses all gave
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Speaker 1: roughly the same description. They'd seen a man with brown hair,
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Speaker 1: around thirty years old, somewhere between five six and five nine,
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Speaker 1: with a medium build. It was a pretty good description,
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Speaker 1: but police weren't able to generate any real leads. After
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Speaker 1: several months, Barbara Jean's murder was featured on the TV
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Speaker 1: show Unsolved Mysteries and a police tip line was set up.
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Speaker 1: Close to a thousand tips were phoned in, but police
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Speaker 1: still couldn't solve the case after almost four years. In
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Speaker 1: early nineteen ninety two, the case was reassigned to a
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Speaker 1: new group of Philly detectives, and these new cops seemed
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Speaker 1: to have no difficulty picking a suspect, a twenty three
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Speaker 1: year old man named Walter Ogrod. Walter was a round shoulders,
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Speaker 1: thick glasses kind of guy who lived across the street
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Speaker 1: from Barbara Jean's family. He was black haired, six foot one,
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Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty pounds, not exactly the short, slim
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Speaker 1: man who'd been seen dragging that box. Walter had no
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Speaker 1: criminal record at all, but he did have a record
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Speaker 1: of profound learning disabilities over the years, professionals who evaluated
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Speaker 1: him used words like extreme dependency and social inadequacy. His
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Speaker 1: teachers said that Walter was no troublemaker. He'd only ever
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Speaker 1: get in trouble because he was in the wrong place
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Speaker 1: at the time. For Walter Ogrod, the wrong place at
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Speaker 1: the wrong time was a Philadelphia interrogation room on April fifth,
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Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two. That morning, police called Walter's house and
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Speaker 1: left a message asking him to come in for questioning
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Speaker 1: about Barbara Jeane. He wasn't a suspect, they said, he
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Speaker 1: was an informational witness.
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Speaker 2: This happens all the time. But this is a ruse.
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Speaker 2: There's already a plan afoot. Police officers don't view that
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Speaker 2: person as a witness. They view that person as a suspect.
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Speaker 2: It's a ruse because it creates a context in which
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Speaker 2: the confession is going to be viewed as voluntary. He
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Speaker 2: drove down to the police station on his own accord.
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Speaker 2: We told him that the door is open and he
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Speaker 2: can leave at any time that he wants. All of
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Speaker 2: these tactics we see over and over again, and oftentimes
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Speaker 2: it's the first step down the road to a false confession.
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Speaker 1: Walter was to help first chance he got At about
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Speaker 1: one thirty that afternoon, Walter drove himself to the Philadelphia
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Speaker 1: Police Administration Building. It's an imposing, severe nineteen sixties era
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Speaker 1: complex that Philadelphians call the Roundhouse.
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Speaker 2: The confession was one of police officer's main tools to
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Speaker 2: solve cases that were still open.
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Speaker 1: There were experts in breaking people, and the Roundhouse is
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Speaker 1: where the breaking happened.
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Speaker 2: It's the seat of police power in the city.
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Speaker 1: Walter showed up to the Roundhouse ready to cooperate, but
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Speaker 1: wiped out. He had just finished an eighteen hour shift
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Speaker 1: driving a bakery truck around a three hundred mile delivery route,
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Speaker 1: and he'd been awake for twelve hours.
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Speaker 2: Before that, he had been up for like thirty hours.
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Speaker 2: He was exhausted. He came into the interrogation room expecting
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Speaker 2: to be providing information that was helpful to the police,
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Speaker 2: and he got hit with an avalanche.
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Speaker 1: At the Roundhouse, police put Walter into a back room
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Speaker 1: where the table and chairs were bolted to the floor.
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Speaker 1: That's where he'd face fourteen hours of interrogation.
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Speaker 2: If you go without sleep for some period of time,
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Speaker 2: it clouds your ability to make rational decisions and leads
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Speaker 2: people to agree to things that they otherwise would never
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Speaker 2: agree to. And Walter had cognitive disabilities too, so these
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Speaker 2: twin issues made him an easy mark.
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Speaker 1: Now, the interrogation wasn't recorded, so we have no objective
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Speaker 1: record of what happened in the room. But Walter has
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Speaker 1: given a very detailed account of the interrogation. So here
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Speaker 1: we go. According to Walter, police started by asking where
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Speaker 1: he'd been four years ago on the day Barbara Jean disappeared.
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Speaker 1: He went to work, he said. After he got home,
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Speaker 1: he remembered seeing Barbara Jean's stepfather going door to door
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Speaker 1: looking for her. But these answers didn't seem to satisfy
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Speaker 1: the police. Walter started to feel strange. Why were the
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Speaker 1: cops so interested in him? He stood up tried to
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Speaker 1: leave the room, but he says, his interrogators blocked the door.
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Speaker 1: The police handcuffed Walter to the chair and started showing
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Speaker 1: him photos of Barbara Jean's dead body in the cardboard box.
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Speaker 1: We think you did this, they said, Walter says. Police
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Speaker 1: told him witnesses had identified him as the perpetrator, even
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Speaker 1: though no one actually had, and when Walter insisted he
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Speaker 1: was innocent, the police told him he must be blocking
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Speaker 1: memories of the murder. They wrote down a description of
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Speaker 1: how they thought Walter had committed the crime. If you
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Speaker 1: don't sign this confession, they said, we're going to take
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Speaker 1: you downstairs and we're going to put you in a
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Speaker 1: cell with a bunch of black people. We're going to
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Speaker 1: tell them you killed a bunch of black children, and
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Speaker 1: then we're going to see what happens, except, of course,
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Speaker 1: they didn't use the word black.
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Speaker 2: This is the old school police department, the department built
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Speaker 2: by Frank Rizzo, who was an unabashed racist. I mean,
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Speaker 2: when he ran for mayor, he would hand out buttons
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Speaker 2: to his supporters that said vote white. It's no surprise
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Speaker 2: in this context that Walter Ogrod's interrogation was saturated with racism.
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Speaker 1: By three point thirty in the morning, Walter had had enough.
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Speaker 1: He signed each page of a sixteen page confession, all
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Speaker 1: of which had been written out by the police. According
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Speaker 1: to the confession, Walter lured Barbara Jean into his basement,
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Speaker 1: where he tried to molest her. When she resisted, he
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Speaker 1: flew into a rage and hit her on the head
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Speaker 1: with a two foot long metal bar from his weight
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Speaker 1: set he rinsed off her body, hit her clothes in
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Speaker 1: a crawl space, and put her in the cardboard box.
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Speaker 1: It was a brutal statement enough to get Walter booked
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Speaker 1: into jail and charged with murder, but by seven am
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Speaker 1: Walter was recanting. He called an atturn from jail totally
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Speaker 1: distraught and said that police were telling him that he'd
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Speaker 1: killed a little girl and had a mental block about it.
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Speaker 1: Walter said he didn't do it. When the lawyer asked
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Speaker 1: why he hadn't called earlier, Walter explained that he had
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Speaker 1: requested a lawyer during the interrogation, but the police had
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Speaker 1: said they'd have to put him in jail until the
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Speaker 1: lawyer came, and in the meantime the inmates would kill him.
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Speaker 1: That was more than enough to dissuade Walter.
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Speaker 2: You might be asking yourself, how can they do that?
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Speaker 2: Aren't they supposed to stop when a suspect asked for
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Speaker 2: the right to counsel? And the answer to that question
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Speaker 2: is yes, that's the one bright line rule of interrogation.
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Speaker 2: Suspect asked for a lawyer, police officers shut up until
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Speaker 2: a lawyer comes into the room. But they could get
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Speaker 2: away with it because there's no recording of this transaction.
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Speaker 2: Police officers are going to say he never asked for
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Speaker 2: a lawyer, and in Philadelphia in a court of law
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Speaker 2: during this time, nobody's going to believe Walter Ogrid.
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Speaker 1: Walter's trial for first degree murder began in October nineteen
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Speaker 1: ninety three. The only evidence against him was his confession,
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Speaker 1: and there was plenty of reason to disbelieve it. The
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Speaker 1: confession claimed that Walter had hidden Barbara Jean's clothes in
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Speaker 1: his crawl space, but Walter's defense pointed out that no
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Speaker 1: clothes had been found there. A psychiatrist testified about Walter's
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Speaker 1: limitations and said the confession wasn't written in Walter's style
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Speaker 1: of speaking, and when Walter took the stand to proclaim
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Speaker 1: his own innocence, it was pretty clear the confession was
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Speaker 1: written in words he'd never use. On November fourth, nineteen
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Speaker 1: ninety three, the jury announced its verdict not guilty.
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Speaker 2: The jury acquitted Walter Ogrid.
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Speaker 1: Let's say that one more time. The jury found Walter
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Speaker 1: not guilty. I mean, we almost never see this in
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Speaker 1: confession cases.
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Speaker 2: He is a rare event. It's like a total eclipse
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Speaker 2: of the sun.
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Speaker 1: For a moment. It looked like Walter was going home,
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Speaker 1: but as soon as the acquittal was announced, one juror
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Speaker 1: changed everything. He stood up and announced, I do not
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Speaker 1: agree with the verdict. The courtroom erupted and the judge
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Speaker 1: declared a mistrial. In the end, the jury had hung
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Speaker 1: eleven in favor of acquittal, one in favor of conviction.
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Speaker 1: After the trial, one of the eleven jurors who believed
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Speaker 1: in Walter's innocence told the media that he saw gaping
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Speaker 1: holes in the prosecution's case. I didn't put much stock
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Speaker 1: in the confession, he said, I wanted to see evidence.
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Speaker 1: Walter was retried in nineteen ninety six, and this time
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Speaker 1: the prosecutors filled the holes in their case. They had
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Speaker 1: recruited a notorious jailhouse snitch, a man named John Hall,
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Speaker 1: who was locked up in the same jail as Walter.
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Speaker 1: Hall had a miles long track record of claiming to
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Speaker 1: overhear other inmates confess to their crimes and at least
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Speaker 1: twelve different homicide cases. He told the authorities about these
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Speaker 1: supposed confessions in exchange for benefits like reductions in his
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Speaker 1: sentence for his apparently priest like ability to hear confessions.
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Speaker 1: Hall was nicknamed the Monseignor.
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Speaker 2: He would read newspaper articles about these stories and then
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Speaker 2: claim that this suspect confessed to him, and he did
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Speaker 2: it because he was getting something in return, he would
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Speaker 2: get a cut. In his sentence, he was a con man,
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Speaker 2: he was a liar, and the fact that prosecutors were
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Speaker 2: willing to use this man over and over again speaks
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Speaker 2: volumes about this unholy alliance between police officers and prosecutors
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Speaker 2: in Philadelphia.
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Speaker 1: This partnership with such a prolific snitch had helped the
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Speaker 1: Philly DA's office win a steady stream of convictions, but
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Speaker 1: by the time of Walter Ogrod's second trial, the monster
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Speaker 1: had accumulated such a reputation that even prosecutors realized he
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Speaker 1: had no credibility left.
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Speaker 2: The baggage around John Hall was so heavy that the
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Speaker 2: prosecutors couldn't use him in this case. So what did
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Speaker 2: Hall do? Hall trained another inmate in the details of
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Speaker 2: Walter's story and used that inmate to be the snitch.
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Speaker 1: He wasn't the only priest there to take confessions.
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Speaker 2: That's right. He turned the jail and prison system in
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Speaker 2: Pennsylvania into a seminary.
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Speaker 1: For Walter's second trial. Prosecutors got around their usual star
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Speaker 1: witnesses credibility problem by calling a different inmate to testify.
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Speaker 1: Ja Wolchansky was an acolyte of John Hall, and Jay
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Speaker 1: was all too happy to take the monseignor's place on
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Speaker 1: the witness stand. At trial, Jay testified that Walter had
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Speaker 1: confessed to him in jail. For good measure, Jay added
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Speaker 1: a story about Walter, describing what happened when his own
15:02
Speaker 1: mom asked if he'd killed Barbara Jean. According to Jay,
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Speaker 1: Walter told his mom, damn right, I did, and if
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Speaker 1: you know what's best for you, you'll keep quiet.
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Speaker 2: Believe it or not.
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Speaker 1: This is enough. Based on Jay's snitch testimony and on
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Speaker 1: the confession, Walter Ogrod was convicted of the murder of
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Speaker 1: Barbara Jane Horn on October eighth, nineteen ninety six. The
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Speaker 1: next day, it took this jury less than ninety minutes
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Speaker 1: to sentence Walter Ogrod to death and off Walter went
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Speaker 1: to death row. Walter's case went through years of appeals
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Speaker 1: to no avail. Eventually, a team of lawyers from the
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Speaker 1: Federal Community Defender Office in Philadelphia, along with attorneys from
15:46
Speaker 1: a local law firm, began to reinvestigate Walter's case. In
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Speaker 1: twenty eleven, they filed a post conviction petition with some
15:53
Speaker 1: blockbuster pieces of evidence attached. First, the petition took down
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Speaker 1: the snitches. It included an affid david from the Monseigneur himself,
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Speaker 1: John Hall, who said that his buddy Jay wol Chansky
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Speaker 1: never really talked to Walter in any detail at all. Instead,
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Speaker 1: the Monseigneur had told Jay what to say about Walter.
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Speaker 2: The Monseigneur finally had his come to Jesus moment, he
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Speaker 2: admitted that he had lied about Walter Ogrod.
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Speaker 1: After the Monseigneur died, his widow also submitted an affidavit
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Speaker 1: spilling details about the snitch scheme. Turns out she was
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Speaker 1: an accomplice in fabricating the Monseigneur's confessions. It was her
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Speaker 1: newspaper research that served as the basis for his stories.
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Speaker 1: But when it came to Walter's case, she couldn't find
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Speaker 1: much information in the papers, so she wrote Walter a letter,
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Speaker 1: pretending to be a stripper, asking for information about his case. Walter,
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Speaker 1: of course, never confessed anything to her. The story of
16:51
Speaker 1: his guilt was all made up. As for Walter's confession.
16:55
Speaker 1: The lawyers pointed out that Barbara Jean didn't have the
16:57
Speaker 1: kind of skull fracture as you'd expect if she had
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Speaker 1: actually been hit over the head with a weight bar.
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Speaker 1: The confession just didn't match the facts of the case,
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Speaker 1: and it seemed there was a reason for that. The
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Speaker 1: same officer who interrogated Walter had been implicated in at
17:13
Speaker 1: least two other false confession cases. One involved a man
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Speaker 1: who'd confessed to raping a seventy seven year old woman,
17:20
Speaker 1: and another involved a man who confessed to killing a
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Speaker 1: local businessman. For closing those cases, the Philly police gave
17:26
Speaker 1: this officer the nickname Detective Perfect. Thankfully, both of these
17:31
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted men were later exonerated, and Detective Perfects record
17:36
Speaker 1: was deservedly tarnished.
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Speaker 2: The detective who took Walter Ograd's confession was a golden
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Speaker 2: boy in the Philadelphia Police Department, and he claimed to
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Speaker 2: have a ninety five percent success rate in getting confessions
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Speaker 2: to close cases.
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Speaker 1: There's a great quote from a journalist who followed this
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Speaker 1: case very closely, man named Tom Lowenstein, who said, you know,
17:59
Speaker 1: having a ninety five percent clearance rate for a homicide
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Speaker 1: detective is kind of like Mark maguire hitting seventy five
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Speaker 1: home runs. You got to ask, did he do it
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Speaker 1: honestly exactly?
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Speaker 2: When you see detectives claiming to have that high of
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Speaker 2: a confession rate, you know there's a lot of false
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Speaker 2: confessions in that mix.
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Speaker 1: The post conviction lawyers had presented a pretty compelling case
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Speaker 1: for Walter's innocence. Nonetheless, seven years later, in twenty seventeen,
18:28
Speaker 1: the court still had not issued a ruling. But while
18:31
Speaker 1: Walter's case was stalled, Philadelphia began to change. In twenty seventeen,
18:37
Speaker 1: the people of Philadelphia elected a new unlikely district attorney,
18:42
Speaker 1: Larry Krasner. Larry was a civil rights lawyer who made
18:46
Speaker 1: his name suing the Philadelphia police for misconduct. He was
18:50
Speaker 1: elected on a wave of neighborhood activism led by Philadelphians
18:54
Speaker 1: of color who were angry at the authorities for years
18:57
Speaker 1: of abuse and neglect. Larry Krasner quickly came to define
19:01
Speaker 1: a new vision of what it meant to be a prosecutor.
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Speaker 1: He did not believe in the death penalty, he did
19:07
Speaker 1: not believe in knee jerk mass incarceration, and he did
19:11
Speaker 1: not believe in keeping innocent men and women in prison.
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Speaker 1: Here's our friend Carrie Wood, who works in the part
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Speaker 1: of Larry Krasner's office dedicated to overturning wrongful convictions. Before
19:23
Speaker 1: she joined his office, she was a wrongful conviction lawyer
19:26
Speaker 1: like us who worked at the Ohio Innocence Project.
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Speaker 3: Larry Krasner was really thinking about the system differently and
19:34
Speaker 3: wanting to return to her role of truth seeker and
19:39
Speaker 3: representing the whole community, not just a particular swath of it.
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Speaker 3: That was really something that made me change my mind
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Speaker 3: about wanting to work in a DA's office.
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Speaker 1: Carrie has crossed over to the prosecution side with the
19:52
Speaker 1: goal of changing it, and we're pretty proud of her.
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Speaker 3: Unfortunately, one of the biggest roadblocks to getting justice were
19:59
Speaker 3: often secutor's offices. I thought that coming to a DA's office,
20:04
Speaker 3: I might actually be able to make a difference to
20:07
Speaker 3: right past wrongs and to use those past wrongs to
20:10
Speaker 3: point to practices that needed to change.
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Speaker 1: After Carrie began working in the Philadelphia Conviction Integrity Unit,
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Speaker 1: one of the first cases assigned to her was Walter Ogrod.
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Speaker 3: Walter's attorneys had pointed out that Barbara jen Horn didn't
20:25
Speaker 3: have any skull fractures, and Walter's initial confession was that
20:29
Speaker 3: he had a hit her over the head with a
20:31
Speaker 3: large weight bar. That was certainly something that sounded worth investigating.
20:37
Speaker 1: Carrie and her colleagues dove into Walter's case and what
20:41
Speaker 1: they found was revealing.
20:43
Speaker 3: We began to identify documents that looked like they had
20:47
Speaker 3: not been turned over to defense counsel at the time
20:49
Speaker 3: of the original trial. One of the things that really
20:53
Speaker 3: jumped out at me was notes from the prosecutor about
20:59
Speaker 3: what the actual tries cause.
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Speaker 2: Of death was.
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Speaker 3: In those notes, it says Barbara Jane Horn had not
21:06
Speaker 3: died from a blow to the head. The most likely
21:08
Speaker 3: scenario was that she had been suffocated. So that particular
21:12
Speaker 3: note in the file, once we came across it, was
21:16
Speaker 3: a pretty big deal.
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Speaker 1: The state had known all along that Walter's confession, which
21:22
Speaker 1: didn't mention smothering once, was not true, even as it
21:26
Speaker 1: sought to execute him. In fact, a new review of
21:29
Speaker 1: the autopsy revealed that whatever did strike Barberaging in the
21:32
Speaker 1: head was light weight and thin in profile. It definitely
21:35
Speaker 1: wasn't the heavy weight bar that Walter's confession described. That
21:39
Speaker 1: was enough for Carrie and the Conviction Integrity Unit to
21:42
Speaker 1: do DNA testing on the liquid that the morgueuld use
21:46
Speaker 1: to wash Barbara Jean's body.
21:47
Speaker 3: What else can Barbara gen tell me about what happened
21:50
Speaker 3: to her that maybe was missed at the time.
21:53
Speaker 1: The result they found a full male DNA profile. That
21:56
Speaker 1: profile didn't match anyone in the state or national DNA atabases,
22:01
Speaker 1: but one thing was clear. The DNA definitely did not
22:04
Speaker 1: belong to Walter Ogrod. And unlike in so many of
22:07
Speaker 1: the stories we tell on this podcast, these prosecutors understood
22:11
Speaker 1: what a DNA exclusion like this meant. It was undeniable
22:15
Speaker 1: proof that Walter had been wrongfully convicted. On February twenty eighth,
22:20
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, Carrie and her team filed a motion to
22:23
Speaker 1: throw out Walter's conviction. The evidence used to convict him,
22:27
Speaker 1: she wrote, was false, unreliable, and incomplete. Instead, she stated
22:32
Speaker 1: Walter Ogrod was very likely innocent. For Walter to win
22:38
Speaker 1: exoneration and leave death row, though it wasn't enough for
22:42
Speaker 1: the DA's office to declare him innocent, the judge had
22:45
Speaker 1: to agree to exonerate him or Walter wasn't going anywhere.
22:49
Speaker 1: This judge was a former prosecutor herself. She'd tried homicide
22:53
Speaker 1: cases alongside another prosecutor who later became the judge who
22:56
Speaker 1: presided over Walter's conviction. These two judges epitomized Philadelphia's old Guard,
23:02
Speaker 1: both its harshness and its cronyism. So when the office
23:06
Speaker 1: of Larry Krasner, that new reformer DA declared Walter Ogrod innocent, well,
23:12
Speaker 1: the case encountered some major resistance.
23:15
Speaker 3: Once we had concluded our investigation, we were originally scheduled
23:20
Speaker 3: to have a hearing in front of the judge, but
23:22
Speaker 3: unfortunately COVID happened.
23:35
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen hit Pennsylvania only a few weeks after prosecutors
23:39
Speaker 1: asked the court to throw out Walter's conviction. Court operations
23:43
Speaker 1: slowed way down. The judge had scheduled a March twenty
23:46
Speaker 1: seventh hearing on Walter's case, but halfway through March she
23:50
Speaker 1: canceled it. She was too busy. Her clerk informed Walter's lawyers,
23:55
Speaker 1: and Walter's case was no more important than any other.
23:58
Speaker 2: It is more important and then any other. This is
24:00
Speaker 2: a case where the district attorney is saying, we believe
24:04
Speaker 2: this man is innocent that almost never happens. She put
24:09
Speaker 2: Walter's life at risk. Prisons are a peatri dish for
24:13
Speaker 2: this virus. COVID should have been a reason for fast
24:18
Speaker 2: tracking this, not an excuse for delaying it.
24:22
Speaker 1: But while the judge was delaying the hearing, Walter Ogrod,
24:25
Speaker 1: then fifty five years old, was falling ill. According to
24:30
Speaker 1: his lawyers, Walter spiked one hundred and three degree temperature
24:33
Speaker 1: and developed breathing problems that made him feel like he
24:36
Speaker 1: was inhaling through a wet sponge. In mid March, Walter
24:40
Speaker 1: was isolated in his cell and left to battle his
24:43
Speaker 1: symptoms alone.
24:44
Speaker 3: The prison where Walter was was a huge hotspot for COVID.
24:50
Speaker 3: You become concerned that, well, you know, is this COVID?
24:55
Speaker 3: Will he die in prison before he is able to
24:58
Speaker 3: be exonerated.
24:59
Speaker 1: Walter's lawyer were terrified that he wouldn't live to see freedom.
25:03
Speaker 1: On March nineteenth, they filed an emergency request to get
25:06
Speaker 1: him tested for COVID and treat it at an outside hospital.
25:09
Speaker 1: The DA agreed, but the judge again delayed ruling for days.
25:14
Speaker 2: This is not the time for a power struggle. Give
25:18
Speaker 2: the guy the fucking test, Oh, yeah, there are other
25:21
Speaker 2: people who want to be tested too, but nobody else
25:25
Speaker 2: has been locked up for two decades or more for
25:28
Speaker 2: a crime they didn't commit.
25:32
Speaker 1: Walter ended up fighting whatever virus he had in his
25:35
Speaker 1: cell alone. After many days of sickness, he recovered. Walter's
25:40
Speaker 1: health crisis had passed, But what about his freedom? Walter's
25:44
Speaker 1: lawyers kept pressing. They begged the judge for ten minutes
25:47
Speaker 1: of her time, got to wait until June was the reply. Finally,
25:52
Speaker 1: June fifth rolled around. In true twenty twenty fashion, the
25:55
Speaker 1: court hearing on Walter's release unfolded virtually on Zoom. Appeared
26:00
Speaker 1: in orange prison clothing and a disposable face mask. At
26:04
Speaker 1: the hearing, Prosecutor Carrie would tearfully apologized both to Barbara
26:09
Speaker 1: Jean's mother, Sharon Fahe and to Walter.
26:13
Speaker 3: I spent a lot of time with Sharon and saw
26:16
Speaker 3: the huge impact that this case had on her life
26:19
Speaker 3: for decades, and worked really hard to see if I
26:23
Speaker 3: could answer the questions for her and then came up short.
26:27
Speaker 3: One of the hardest things for me to do is
26:29
Speaker 3: to tell her that I wasn't sure if I was
26:32
Speaker 3: going to be able to find the person that did
26:34
Speaker 3: to her little girl, and that it was the mistakes
26:36
Speaker 3: of this office that resulted in that. You know, you
26:42
Speaker 3: can't begin to fix anything until you identify or admit
26:47
Speaker 3: that you have a problem, you apologize for it, and
26:50
Speaker 3: you begin to work to make things better.
26:53
Speaker 1: And Carrie also had something to say to Walter, something
26:56
Speaker 1: so beautiful that I'm going to read it to you now.
26:58
Speaker 1: I am sorry it twenty eight years for us to
27:01
Speaker 1: listen to what Barbara Jean was trying to tell us,
27:04
Speaker 1: that you are innocent and that the words on your
27:06
Speaker 1: statement of confession came from Philadelphia Police detectives and not you.
27:12
Speaker 1: Not only did this misconduct result in twenty eight years
27:15
Speaker 1: of your life being stolen, but you were also threatened
27:18
Speaker 1: with execution based on falsehoods.
27:22
Speaker 3: Having worked on a number of cases that have resulted
27:25
Speaker 3: in exonerations even before I came to the office, one
27:29
Speaker 3: of the things that the innocent person had often commented
27:33
Speaker 3: on was did they ever apologize? And most often the
27:40
Speaker 3: answer was no, someone who's innocent, it's the thing they
27:44
Speaker 3: most often wanted to hear. I did a lot of
27:47
Speaker 3: work to try to rectify what I could, but for
27:52
Speaker 3: the things that I couldn't fix that had caused harm.
27:56
Speaker 3: Of course, you apologize.
28:00
Speaker 1: It was finally enough, after months of delay, the judge
28:04
Speaker 1: granted the DA's motion to throw out Walter's conviction and
28:07
Speaker 1: death sentence. Walter Ogrod walked out of prison that same
28:11
Speaker 1: day after spending almost three decades behind bars.
28:16
Speaker 3: You know, wrongful convictions don't make people safer. You just
28:19
Speaker 3: slowly try to push forward and improve things so that
28:23
Speaker 3: more wrongful convictions like mister Ogrod's don't happen. It's really
28:28
Speaker 3: hard for people to admit mistakes. The hope is that
28:31
Speaker 3: more folks will be willing to step up and say
28:34
Speaker 3: I got it wrong. What I tend to focus on
28:38
Speaker 3: is can identify a problem and how can I fix it?
28:42
Speaker 3: What can I do to fix this for mister Ogrod?
28:45
Speaker 3: And then what can we do to make it better
28:47
Speaker 3: for the citizens of Philadelphia. That's why I do the
28:50
Speaker 3: work that I do. That's why I work in a CiU.
28:57
Speaker 2: The truth is the single most important thing a prosecutor
29:01
Speaker 2: needs to be concerned with, because without truth, there can
29:04
Speaker 2: be no justice.
29:05
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of courage to face the truth,
29:07
Speaker 1: especially when that means someone with power has to admit
29:10
Speaker 1: they made a mistake.
29:11
Speaker 2: These are the prosecutors that bring nobility to the profession.
29:17
Speaker 2: These are the prosecutors that place seeking justice ahead of
29:21
Speaker 2: preserving convictions. You know, the ghost of Frank Rizzo still
29:29
Speaker 2: haunts the city of Philadelphia.
29:31
Speaker 1: There was a statue of Frank Rizzo erected as a
29:34
Speaker 1: monument to the city's law enforcement.
29:36
Speaker 2: That statute was a symbol of injustice. It became a
29:41
Speaker 2: rallying point for all of the activists seeking change to
29:46
Speaker 2: policinc in Philadelphia. And finally the Mayor of Philadelphia, using
29:53
Speaker 2: a crane, lifted it from its moorings and removed Rizzo's ste.
30:00
Speaker 1: That monument to the old, unjust ways of doing things
30:04
Speaker 1: came down just a few days before Walter Ogrod walked
30:07
Speaker 1: out of prison.
30:08
Speaker 2: To me, it's this sort of final fitting end to
30:13
Speaker 2: a kind of policing and a kind of law enforcement
30:17
Speaker 2: that plagued Philadelphia for years. It's the sign that change
30:22
Speaker 2: is here now and hopefully that it will endure.
30:26
Speaker 1: Out with the old, in with the new. And that's
30:31
Speaker 1: the story of Walter Ogrod. Next week, we'll tell you
30:34
Speaker 1: about a California man named Ricky Davis who came home
30:37
Speaker 1: from a party to find his housemate had been murdered.
30:41
Speaker 1: The case went cold until fourteen years later when detectives
30:44
Speaker 1: coerced Ricky's ex girlfriend into implicating him. Police thought they'd
30:49
Speaker 1: found the killer, but it took nineteen more years for
30:52
Speaker 1: this cold case to finally be solved. Right Wrongful Conviction,
30:58
Speaker 1: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
31:02
Speaker 1: in association with Signal Company Number one Special thanks to
31:06
Speaker 1: our executive producers Jason Flamm and Kevin Wardis. Our production
31:10
Speaker 1: team is headed by Senior producer and Pope, along with
31:13
Speaker 1: producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane. Our show is mixed
31:16
Speaker 1: by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is our intrepid intern. Our
31:21
Speaker 1: music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me
31:24
Speaker 1: on Instagram or Twitter at Laura and I Wrider, and
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Speaker 1: you can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen. For
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