Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #356 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Peter Reilly

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#356 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Peter Reilly · Wrongful Conviction

0:04
Speaker 1: Hey there, it's Laura and I writer. I am here
0:06
Speaker 1: with an update on a case we shared with you
0:08
Speaker 1: back in season one of False Confessions. The subject is
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Speaker 1: Peter Riley, whose really unusual case marks the starting point
0:16
Speaker 1: of the modern movement to expose false confessions. It's a
0:20
Speaker 1: case that's had a profound impact on my own work
0:22
Speaker 1: and the work of my co host Steve Drissen. Now,
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Speaker 1: the case of Peter Riley is in some ways a
0:27
Speaker 1: classic false confession story. It involves a young and vulnerable suspect,
0:32
Speaker 1: questionable police tactics, and a series of investigative errors. But
0:37
Speaker 1: in other ways this case stands out is pretty odd.
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Speaker 1: Perhaps most noticeably, the famous playwright Arthur Miller became Peter's champion.
0:46
Speaker 1: He raised the profile of the case and raised the
0:48
Speaker 1: funds for Peter's bail and defense. Arthur Miller wrote powerfully
0:52
Speaker 1: about the phenomenon of false confessions, invoking Galileo and even
0:56
Speaker 1: the subject of his famous play The Crucible, bring national attention.
1:01
Speaker 2: To the issue.
1:02
Speaker 1: It's in that spirit that Steve and I continue our
1:04
Speaker 1: work today, both in the course of justice and the
1:07
Speaker 1: courts of public opinion. Welcome to wrongful conviction, False Confessions.
1:16
Speaker 1: I'm Laura and I writer, and I'm Steve Tersen. Today
1:20
Speaker 1: we're going to tell you our last story of season one.
1:23
Speaker 1: It's about Peter Riley, one of the first modern day
1:26
Speaker 1: false confessors. In nineteen seventy three, police interrogated eighteen year
1:31
Speaker 1: old Peter until he started to believe he was guilty
1:35
Speaker 1: of murdering his own mother. But Peter's friends and neighbors
1:39
Speaker 1: believed in his innocence. Their small town campaign for Peter's
1:43
Speaker 1: freedom was eventually joined by a host of big name celebrities.
1:48
Speaker 1: Peter's story helped launch the movement against wrongful convictions and
1:52
Speaker 1: false confessions. It inspires the work that Steve and I
1:55
Speaker 1: do to this day.
2:06
Speaker 3: You know, the Peter Riley case was my baptism in
2:09
Speaker 3: the world of false confessions. When I learned about Peter's case,
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Speaker 3: it was really the first time that I even knew
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Speaker 3: that it was possible for police officers, through their tactics,
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Speaker 3: to get an innocent person to confess to a crime
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Speaker 3: they didn't commit. And I was fascinated by it.
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Speaker 1: I know the feeling for me. It was thirty years
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Speaker 1: later when I watched those takes of Brendan Dacy's false confession.
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Speaker 1: It's so easy to get hooked by these stories, these people,
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Speaker 1: and you can't walk away.
2:44
Speaker 3: Peter Riley was about five or six years older than me,
2:48
Speaker 3: but we grew up in the same era in terms
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Speaker 3: of the kind of music that we liked. Peter was
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Speaker 3: very into classic rock, Pink Floyd, Jethro Toll and Peter
3:01
Speaker 3: wore his hair long, very much in the same way
3:05
Speaker 3: that I wore my hair, so I felt a connection
3:09
Speaker 3: to Peter. I lived in a community not unlike Peter's,
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Speaker 3: where people knew each other through Little League or the
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Speaker 3: boy Scouts, where mothers watched out for each other's kids.
3:23
Speaker 3: And the more I learned about Peter's story, the more
3:27
Speaker 3: I began to understand that what happened to Peter very
3:30
Speaker 3: easily could have happened to me. In addition to these
3:34
Speaker 3: connections that I found with Peter, this was a case
3:39
Speaker 3: in a part of the country which was the birthplace
3:44
Speaker 3: of false confessions in the United States, the Salem witch Trials.
3:49
Speaker 3: It sent me on an exploration, a lifelong exploration, to
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Speaker 3: try to figure out why it is that people would
3:58
Speaker 3: confess to crimes they didn't commit.
4:05
Speaker 1: Peter's story begins in Falls Village, Connecticut, a tiny community
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Speaker 1: of five hundred people that's part of a larger town
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Speaker 1: called Canaan. If you've been to New England, Falls Village
4:15
Speaker 1: is pretty classic, complete with rivers, horse farms, and covered bridges.
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Speaker 1: It's the kind of place where no one locks their doors,
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Speaker 1: where everyone looks out for each other. In September nineteen
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Speaker 1: seventy three, leaves were turning color across Connecticut, and eighteen
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Speaker 1: year old Peter Riley had just begun his senior year
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Speaker 1: of high school. Peter was a skinny kid, just over
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Speaker 1: one hundred pounds and an uninspired student whose real love
4:42
Speaker 1: was his rock band. He lived in Falls Village in
4:44
Speaker 1: a small cottage, just him and his mom, Barbara Gibbons. Now,
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Speaker 1: for lack of a better phrase, Barbara was the town eccentric.
4:54
Speaker 1: She was highly educated, well read, and well traveled. But
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Speaker 1: she was also a single mother, which was a big
5:00
Speaker 1: deal in nineteen seventy three, and she was a heavy drinker.
5:05
Speaker 1: She had a reputation as someone who always spoke her mind,
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Speaker 1: even if it rubbed some people the wrong way. But
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Speaker 1: in Peter's eyes, his mother was someone brilliant who loved
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Speaker 1: and protected him, just like he loved and stood up
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Speaker 1: for her. It was the two of them against the world.
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Speaker 1: On the evening of Friday, September twenty eighth, Peter attends
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Speaker 1: a youth group meeting at the local church. He leaves
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Speaker 1: at about nine thirty pm and drives home, but when
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Speaker 1: he walks in the door, his world is turned upside down.
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Speaker 1: His mother is lying mostly unclothed on the bedroom floor.
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Speaker 1: Her throat's been cut so deeply she's nearly decapitated, and
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Speaker 1: she's been stabbed and beaten so badly that both of
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Speaker 1: her thigh bones are broken. Peter freezes, His instinct warns
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Speaker 1: him not to disturb the scene by touching the body. Instead,
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Speaker 1: he grabs the phone and makes a series of calls
6:00
Speaker 1: to paramedics, hospitals, and doctors. A hospital worker calls the police,
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Speaker 1: and the cops show up within minutes. When the police arrive,
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Speaker 1: Peter's in shock. He's just discovered his mother dead. But
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Speaker 1: the officers think Peter's being too calm, and they begin
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Speaker 1: to suspect him. They take him into a neighbor's home
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Speaker 1: and strip searcheim. They're looking for scratches, cuts, bruises, any
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Speaker 1: indication that Peter had taken part in a brutal struggle,
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Speaker 1: but they find nothing. Peter's wearing jeans, a brown T shirt,
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Speaker 1: and gold sneakers, and a witness from the church confirms
6:40
Speaker 1: that Peter's been wearing the same clothes all night. The
6:43
Speaker 1: police examination finds no blood anywhere on his body, clothing,
6:48
Speaker 1: or shoes, but the cops are still suspicious. They question
6:53
Speaker 1: Peter in the back seat of a squad car. Then
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Speaker 1: they take him down to the station and hold him
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Speaker 1: over an Peter doesn't sleep at all, but the next
7:04
Speaker 1: morning he has the presence of mind to ask for
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Speaker 1: a polygraph. The police give him one, but they tell
7:10
Speaker 1: him that he failed the test, and when Peter's told
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Speaker 1: that he failed, he begins to doubt his own memory
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Speaker 1: because he believes polygraphs are infallible. Before too long, Peter
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Speaker 1: begins to wonder whether he might have killed his mother
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Speaker 1: but somehow doesn't remember it now, believe it or not,
7:33
Speaker 1: police record the interrogation on an old reel to reel machine,
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Speaker 1: even though they weren't legally required to do so in
7:40
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three. On tape, they egg Peter on and
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Speaker 1: suggest that he might have amnesia they tell him sometimes
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Speaker 1: when people commit these crimes, the memories are so traumatic
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Speaker 1: that people repress them, and Peter Riley starts believing that
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Speaker 1: he might be a murderer. I believe I did it now,
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Speaker 1: he tells the police. But I don't remember.
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Speaker 3: Peter says, over and over again, we got to keep digging, digging,
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Speaker 3: digging to get this information out of me. Because he
8:13
Speaker 3: wants to know what this information.
8:15
Speaker 1: Is, he asks the police for truth serum, and at
8:19
Speaker 1: another point he even says, can you pound this out
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Speaker 1: of me? The police praise Peter for being willing to
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Speaker 1: admit he might be guilty. They tell him, we're not
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Speaker 1: here to punish you. Maybe you'll go to a mental
8:32
Speaker 1: hospital for three months. Peter begins to feel like he's
8:39
Speaker 1: bonding with his interrogators, like they're all working together to
8:43
Speaker 1: fill in the blanks in his memory, and eventually their
8:46
Speaker 1: teamwork succeeds. Peter had a straight razor at home, a
8:51
Speaker 1: small blade that he used to make model airplanes. After
8:55
Speaker 1: hours of questioning, he eventually says that he could have
8:58
Speaker 1: used that razor to attack his mom. He adds that
9:02
Speaker 1: he could have broken her legs by jumping on them.
9:06
Speaker 1: In other words, he gives what we now call a
9:09
Speaker 1: persuaded false confession.
9:11
Speaker 3: These are a special subspecies of false confessions that are
9:15
Speaker 3: relatively rare, And what happens in these cases is the
9:20
Speaker 3: police interrogation tactics themselves cause a suspect to begin to
9:26
Speaker 3: doubt their own memory, and the suspect is persuaded that
9:32
Speaker 3: he or she must have committed the crime but can't
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Speaker 3: remember it, and the interrogation becomes an exercise in reconstructing
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Speaker 3: the suspect's memories of the crime. But the memories aren't real,
9:48
Speaker 3: they're confabulations.
9:50
Speaker 1: Peter's confabulated story isn't realistic. A small razor wasn't capable
9:56
Speaker 1: of inflicting deep wounds like those on Barbara's neck, and
10:00
Speaker 1: Peter was one hundred and ten pound weekly there's no
10:03
Speaker 1: way he could have broken his mother's thigh bones just
10:06
Speaker 1: by jumping on them. But police ignore those problems. After all,
10:11
Speaker 1: they've got a confession. By the end of the interrogation,
10:17
Speaker 1: Peter starts realizing that he has no family left.
10:21
Speaker 3: You're talking about someone who has just lost the only
10:25
Speaker 3: family member in his life. Peter never knew his father.
10:29
Speaker 3: His mother has now been murdered, they live alone in
10:34
Speaker 3: this small cottage, and he's thinking that he's gotten nowhere
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Speaker 3: to go, and.
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Speaker 1: So Peter asks his interrogator, is there any chance that
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Speaker 1: you might take me in? I wouldn't want to impose,
10:46
Speaker 1: he adds, I'll do work around the house. I really
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Speaker 1: would love to live with a family.
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Speaker 3: I've never seen that before. Just a complete dependence on
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Speaker 3: one's interrogator and a complete sort of loss of understanding
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Speaker 3: of the fact that this person is his adversary.
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Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine anything more purely fucked up.
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Speaker 3: It's the most disturbing thing about this interrogation.
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Speaker 1: But Peter doesn't get to go live with the cops,
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Speaker 1: even though he's done everything they asked. Instead, he's arrested
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Speaker 1: and booked into jail. Once Peter is away from his
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Speaker 1: interrogator's influence, he immediately realizes he didn't actually kill anyone,
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Speaker 1: and he recants his confession, but it's too late. On
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Speaker 1: September twenty ninth, nineteen seventy three, Peter Riley is charged
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Speaker 1: with the murder of his own mother. Barbara's murder and
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Speaker 1: Peter's arrest shook falls village to its core. Everyone was
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Speaker 1: following this track, including one residence who would go on
12:02
Speaker 1: to become an important figure in Peter's story.
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Speaker 2: My name is Donald Connery. Well, one thing I can
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Speaker 2: claim for some distinction is that I probably am the
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Speaker 2: only foreign correspondent who ever made a complete career shift
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Speaker 2: overnight from reporting international affairs to investigating the criminal justice system.
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Speaker 3: Don Connery was an esteemed journalist, and the last thing
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Speaker 3: on his mind was the subject of false confessions. But
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Speaker 3: this murder was big news in this small town, and
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Speaker 3: you couldn't help but be drawn into it. He began
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Speaker 3: to start looking into the case himself and later wrote
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Speaker 3: a book about the case that was an absolutely essential
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Speaker 3: text about what happened to Peter Riley.
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Speaker 1: Don Connery's in his nineties. But in nineteen seventy three,
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Speaker 1: he had just moved to Falls village with his wife
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Speaker 1: and kids, and I.
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Speaker 2: Thought, this was a terrible event which will play out
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Speaker 2: and will have nothing to do with me, except that
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Speaker 2: the accused eighteen year old was a friend and classmate
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Speaker 2: of my children who went to the regional high school,
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Speaker 2: and Peter was someone they talked about or knew about.
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Speaker 1: Now, something extraordinary happens after Peter's arrest is announced. Remember,
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Speaker 1: people in this tiny town know Peter Riley and they
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Speaker 1: like him.
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Speaker 3: This was in the age before social media, where communities
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Speaker 3: were much more connected in a sense. They met each
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Speaker 3: other through clubs, extracurricular activities at schools, church groups, boy Scouts,
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Speaker 3: and the entire community knew who Peter was. From these
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Speaker 3: various essential parts of the social fabric of Falls village.
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Speaker 1: Peter's arrest leads to a groundswell of support. Everyone starts
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Speaker 1: defending his innocence.
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Speaker 2: After reading the initial stories. My younger children, Carol and
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Speaker 2: Julie kept saying Peter couldn't possibly have done this.
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Speaker 1: The mothers of his high school classmates form a group
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Speaker 1: called Canaan Mothers, and they hold bake sales to raise
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Speaker 1: money so that Peter can get released on bond before
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Speaker 1: his trial. Some families even put their houses up as security.
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Speaker 1: It was incredible mothers supporting the accused mother killer.
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Speaker 3: They wanted to do everything in their power to help him.
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Speaker 2: My kids said, and other neighbors said, you know, we
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Speaker 2: don't think this is possible. There's no reason to think
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Speaker 2: that he had any cause to harm his mother. And
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Speaker 2: the word was in the community that yes, Peter. It
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Speaker 2: confessed that nobody could under then why he would admit
15:02
Speaker 2: to something he didn't do, but their protests caught the
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Speaker 2: attention of the media.
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Speaker 1: A reporter named Joan Bartel hears about how the town
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Speaker 1: of Falls Village is rallying behind an accused murderer. She
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Speaker 1: listens to Peter's interrogation tapes and writes an explosive article
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Speaker 1: in a magazine called New Times. The article questions Peter's
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Speaker 1: guilt and includes many excerpts from his interrogation, exposing the
15:28
Speaker 1: CoP's manipulation of Peter. People around the state are horrified
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Speaker 1: to read about a teenage boy made to believe that
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Speaker 1: he killed his own mother. Donations flow in to the
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Speaker 1: Canaan mothers, and soon enough money is raised for Peter
15:44
Speaker 1: to post bond fifty thousand dollars. He's released and moves
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Speaker 1: in with one of his friend's families. Peter Riley is
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Speaker 1: welcomed back into the Falls Village community.
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Speaker 2: This so called killer went straight back to high school
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Speaker 2: to complete his senior year, and it didn't seem to
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Speaker 2: worry parents or teachers of the principal, who in fact
16:06
Speaker 2: supported him.
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Speaker 3: One of the things that attracted reporters to this case,
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Speaker 3: including Don Connery was the idea that in order for
16:16
Speaker 3: these people to embrace Peter, they had to understand or
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Speaker 3: at least believe that this confession was false. And here
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Speaker 3: they are taking this suspected, confessed murderer into their own
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Speaker 3: homes or being willing to do so, and to raise
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Speaker 3: money for him, and to advocate for him and to
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Speaker 3: fight for him. That's remarkable.
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Speaker 1: Peter Riley was free on bond, but prosecutors were moving
16:43
Speaker 1: forward with his trial anyway.
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Speaker 2: The community was confident that the trial in nineteen seventy
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Speaker 2: four would quickly lead to an acquittal. He would be
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Speaker 2: found innocent.
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Speaker 1: But on April twelfth, nineteen seventy four, Good Friday, Peter
16:58
Speaker 1: Riley was convicted of killing his own mother.
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Speaker 2: It was a bombshell when the jury decided almost entirely
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Speaker 2: in the basis of the confession, so called confession, that
17:11
Speaker 2: he was guilty, and he was sentenced to six to
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Speaker 2: sixteen years from manslaughter and driven off at high speed
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Speaker 2: to the high security penitentiary.
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Speaker 1: Even though he'd just been convicted of murder, Peter only
17:25
Speaker 1: spent a few hours in prison. Amazingly, a court ruled
17:29
Speaker 1: that he could stay free during his appeal. As long
17:33
Speaker 1: as he posted an additional bond ten thousand more dollars.
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Speaker 1: His village raised the extra money and Peter was freed.
17:41
Speaker 1: But now Peter needed to pay for an appeal, and
17:44
Speaker 1: that would cost more than the Canaan mothers could raise,
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Speaker 1: so that reporter from New Times, Joan Bartel, sent the
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Speaker 1: article she wrote about Peter's case to another Connecticut resident,
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Speaker 1: the famous playwright Arthur Miller.
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Speaker 3: Arthur Miller was my favorite playwright. I remember reading all
18:04
Speaker 3: of his plays in high school in the nineteen seventies
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Speaker 3: Death of the Salesman all my sons. I liked him
18:12
Speaker 3: not only because his plays moved me. I liked him
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Speaker 3: because he was a public figure that cared deeply about justice.
18:23
Speaker 3: He was a playwright with a conscience.
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Speaker 2: The Crucible, probably Miller's greatest play, had been motivated in
18:31
Speaker 2: part by the false accusations that went on in Salem
18:34
Speaker 2: and Massachusetts three hundred years ago, when twenty one people
18:39
Speaker 2: were falsely accused of satanic activities and either hung or
18:44
Speaker 2: in one case of being crushed to death executed. And
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Speaker 2: Miller also personally had faced the House of American Activities
18:53
Speaker 2: Committee accused of being a communist or worse. So he
18:58
Speaker 2: had every reason to that this is something that he
19:01
Speaker 2: should put right, and he invested a great deal of
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Speaker 2: his time to do that.
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Speaker 1: Arthur Miller read Jones article. He was appalled by the
19:09
Speaker 1: tragedy of Peter's confession, and he began to take a
19:13
Speaker 1: leading role in Peter's fight for vindication. Miller recruited other
19:18
Speaker 1: a list celebrities to donate money to Peter's defense, Jack Nicholson,
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Speaker 1: Dustin Hoffman, Art Garfunkel, Candice Bergen, William Steyren, Mike Nichols,
19:29
Speaker 1: even Elizabeth Taylor. Pretty Soon a powerful coalition of voices
19:33
Speaker 1: was gathering steam.
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Speaker 2: Overnight. There was a remarkable amount of energy behind the
19:39
Speaker 2: effort to free Peter as soon as possible from what everyone,
19:43
Speaker 2: at least in Litchfield County saw as a wrongful conviction.
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Speaker 1: The first thing Peter needed was a lawyer to handle
19:49
Speaker 1: his appeal. Arthur Miller recruited Roy Daily, a former federal prosecutor,
19:55
Speaker 1: and as Roy started preparing Peter's appeal, Miller worked to
19:59
Speaker 1: raise the public profile of the case. The New York
20:03
Speaker 1: Times featured a two part series about Peter on the
20:06
Speaker 1: front page. Not long afterwards, sixty Minutes covered the story too. Meanwhile,
20:12
Speaker 1: Peter's legal team pressed his case in court. Eventually a
20:16
Speaker 1: hearing was held to determine whether to grant him a
20:18
Speaker 1: new trial. Arthur Miller personally recruited some world renowned experts
20:23
Speaker 1: to testify. At that hearing, a forensic pathologist testified that
20:28
Speaker 1: if Peter had actually killed his mom, it would have
20:30
Speaker 1: been impossible for him to clean all the blood off
20:33
Speaker 1: his body and clothing before the police arrived. The pathologist
20:37
Speaker 1: also testified that there's no way one hundred and ten
20:41
Speaker 1: pound kid could break a woman's thigh bones by jumping
20:45
Speaker 1: on them, and a psychologist testified that Peter was suggestible
20:49
Speaker 1: and easily manipulated by authority figures. In other words, he
20:53
Speaker 1: was highly vulnerable to giving a false confession. This hearing
20:59
Speaker 1: took down both the medical evidence against Peter and his confession, and.
21:04
Speaker 2: It led to a verdict by George Speziale that a
21:08
Speaker 2: bus carriage of justice had happened in his own courtroom,
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Speaker 2: and he said that Peter deserved a new trial.
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Speaker 1: It was March twenty fifth, nineteen seventy six, a little
21:18
Speaker 1: more than two and a half years after Peter lost
21:21
Speaker 1: his mom. Peter was granted a new trial, but the
21:34
Speaker 1: prosecutor who'd convicted him was up in arms. He believed
21:39
Speaker 1: Peter was guilty and vowed to take him to trial again,
21:42
Speaker 1: but that didn't end up happening.
21:44
Speaker 2: He delayed to a point where he dropped dead on
21:47
Speaker 2: a golf course.
21:48
Speaker 1: The prosecutor passed away of a heart attack at age
21:51
Speaker 1: fifty four, so a new prosecutor, a young man named
21:55
Speaker 1: Dennis Santour, takes over, and as he digs into the
21:59
Speaker 1: case files, he finds a piece of evidence that had
22:02
Speaker 1: never been disclosed to Peter's defense team. A police officer
22:07
Speaker 1: and his wife had reported seeing Peter in downtown Canaan
22:12
Speaker 1: the night of the murder as he was driving home
22:14
Speaker 1: from his church youth group. They'd seen him only a
22:17
Speaker 1: few minutes before Peter arrived home, found his mother's body,
22:21
Speaker 1: and started calling for help. It was an air tight alibi.
22:26
Speaker 1: Those few minutes didn't give Peter enough time to drive
22:29
Speaker 1: home and kill his mother before making those phone calls.
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Speaker 2: Well, this was a so called exculpatory evidence which should
22:37
Speaker 2: have been turned over to the state and then to
22:40
Speaker 2: the courts, and once it was revealed, it took only
22:44
Speaker 2: weeks before Peter Riley was fully exonerated.
22:48
Speaker 1: The state of Connecticut formally dropped all charges on November
22:52
Speaker 1: twenty fourth, nineteen seventy six. Peter Riley's name was officially cleared.
23:00
Speaker 1: After Peter's exoneration, the state police never found Barbara's real
23:05
Speaker 1: killer and continued to insist that Peter was guilty.
23:09
Speaker 2: The case went into the legal annals as a classic
23:13
Speaker 2: false confession tragedy, and it was a prime example of
23:18
Speaker 2: these systems on willingness to admit error in most of
23:21
Speaker 2: these controversial cases.
23:24
Speaker 1: Don Connery eventually wrote a book about the case, Guilty
23:27
Speaker 1: until Proven Innocent, and he continued writing about cases of
23:31
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction.
23:32
Speaker 3: After the Peter Riley case, don Conry became his own
23:36
Speaker 3: one man journalistic innocence project. He began taking cases in
23:42
Speaker 3: Connecticut and investigating them and writing about them, and he
23:48
Speaker 3: also began taking false confession cases from outside of Connecticut
23:53
Speaker 3: as well.
23:54
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, to add insult to injury, Connecticut police actually stopped
23:58
Speaker 1: recording interrogation after Peter's case. Peter's interrogation tapes had made
24:04
Speaker 1: them look bad, and they didn't want to look bad again.
24:07
Speaker 1: It wasn't until twenty thirteen that Connecticut adopted a law
24:12
Speaker 1: requiring interrogations to be recorded, and who testified before the
24:16
Speaker 1: state legislature in support of that bill Peter Riley.
24:21
Speaker 3: Peter said, Look, we shouldn't let law enforcement officers get
24:27
Speaker 3: away with not recording interrogations, because what it does is
24:31
Speaker 3: it makes it impossible for people like me to explain
24:37
Speaker 3: to a jury or to the general public how it
24:41
Speaker 3: is that I was made to confess to killing my
24:44
Speaker 3: own mother. Peter was a powerful advocate for recording, and
24:49
Speaker 3: his testimony was critical on getting the bill passed in
24:53
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen.
24:54
Speaker 1: Most importantly, Peter Riley's case woke the world up to
24:58
Speaker 1: the problem of false confessions. This injustice was a rallying
25:03
Speaker 1: cry for so many people, including Steve and me. Peter's
25:08
Speaker 1: story epitomizes the profound humanity in so many wrongful conviction cases,
25:14
Speaker 1: from the tragedy of the crime, to the ugliness of
25:17
Speaker 1: false accusation, to the defendant's struggle and perseverance, to the
25:22
Speaker 1: good people like Arthur Miller and the Canaan mothers who
25:25
Speaker 1: fight for the truth no matter what. In nineteen ninety five,
25:30
Speaker 1: the very first conference about False Confessions took place in Hartford, Connecticut.
25:35
Speaker 1: Don Connery organized it, and the people who'd helped exonerate
25:40
Speaker 1: Peter Riley spoke. Since then, hundreds of confessions had been
25:44
Speaker 1: proven false around the country and were just getting started.
25:49
Speaker 2: At the Hartford conference, Arthur Miller said at one point
25:54
Speaker 2: that the record of mankind is full of confessions of
25:57
Speaker 2: events that either never happened.
26:00
Speaker 4: Or to which the accused had little or no connection.
26:03
Speaker 4: After all, even Galileo confessed that the sun and all
26:07
Speaker 4: the stars revolved around the motionless earth. Rather than face
26:11
Speaker 4: the wrath of the Church, which for centuries had taught
26:16
Speaker 4: the opposite. Confronted with great power against which one has
26:20
Speaker 4: only a fragile defense, confession can begin to look like
26:25
Speaker 4: the door to freedom. Confession can very readily turn into
26:29
Speaker 4: a kind of coin with which to buy one's way
26:32
Speaker 4: out of a frightening and painful situation. How then I
26:37
Speaker 4: will eat to indict the criminal? Is there a good
26:40
Speaker 4: substitute for confession as the mainstay of a prosecution case?
26:46
Speaker 4: For starters, I would suggest evidence.
26:51
Speaker 1: Wise words. We're not there yet, mister Miller. We're not
26:55
Speaker 1: there yet, but we're getting closer every day.
26:59
Speaker 5: Hello Peter Howard, and High State do them pretty good.
27:04
Speaker 1: It's really great to talk to you. What's your life
27:07
Speaker 1: like these days?
27:09
Speaker 5: While I'm sixty five, so I'm retired at this point,
27:12
Speaker 5: which just means I come up with a whole lot
27:13
Speaker 5: of work for myself that.
27:15
Speaker 3: Don't get paid for it.
27:19
Speaker 5: I'm still an avid musician. I play every day. It's
27:22
Speaker 5: been something I've done since I saw the Beatles on
27:24
Speaker 5: that Sullivan, so it's been a long time. I just
27:26
Speaker 5: play a lot of music. I do what's positive for
27:29
Speaker 5: me these days, and that's pretty much it. What's your
27:33
Speaker 5: favorite song to play? I don't know anything by the
27:36
Speaker 5: Alma Brothers.
27:41
Speaker 1: You know, Steve and I are two lawyers who have
27:44
Speaker 1: the honor of standing up in courts and fighting for
27:47
Speaker 1: people we believe in. But we're also trying to change
27:51
Speaker 1: the world here.
27:52
Speaker 3: From the very beginning of my study of false confessions,
27:56
Speaker 3: I have gone out into the world and to inform
28:02
Speaker 3: people about what I've learned.
28:04
Speaker 1: For the first ten years that I did this work,
28:07
Speaker 1: we went around the country trying to convince anybody who
28:10
Speaker 1: would listen that false confessions even existed, that this happened
28:13
Speaker 1: at all. And suddenly there's been this explosion of interest
28:17
Speaker 1: in understanding that false confessions can happen to anyone, that
28:20
Speaker 1: they could happen to you, they could happen to me,
28:22
Speaker 1: and to see the urgency for reform that hearing these
28:25
Speaker 1: stories produces. It's a sea change, and it's a very
28:29
Speaker 1: very welcome sea change.
28:30
Speaker 3: When I got started in this work in nineteen ninety five,
28:34
Speaker 3: there were only two states that required electronic recording of interrogations,
28:40
Speaker 3: and now they're twenty seven. There should be fifty. We
28:44
Speaker 3: are getting to a point where I think that will
28:46
Speaker 3: happen in my lifetime. So in addition to electronic recording,
28:51
Speaker 3: one of the goals that Laura and I have is
28:54
Speaker 3: to actually change the way in which police officers gate suspects.
29:01
Speaker 1: I think that when people hear stories of grave injustice,
29:06
Speaker 1: there's a human need to identify the bad guy, and
29:10
Speaker 1: in some cases there are very clear bad guys. Police
29:12
Speaker 1: have physically abused suspects, police have tortured suspects, But in
29:16
Speaker 1: some cases police officers are following training that they don't
29:20
Speaker 1: know is problematic. That's where I see we can make
29:22
Speaker 1: a lot of change. Many other countries have developed new
29:25
Speaker 1: interrogation techniques that you don't have to use lies. You
29:28
Speaker 1: don't have to use false promises. You certainly don't have
29:31
Speaker 1: to use fact feeding.
29:33
Speaker 3: One of the most exciting developments recently has been the
29:37
Speaker 3: creation of these conviction integrity units in prosecutors' offices.
29:41
Speaker 1: When prosecutors are interested in actually doing real justice instead
29:45
Speaker 1: of just closing cases, everything changes.
29:49
Speaker 3: One of the things that's always excited me about this
29:53
Speaker 3: work is that we get to rewrite history. When we
29:58
Speaker 3: exonerate somebody, we get to change their life narrative. That's
30:04
Speaker 3: part of what we're trying to do with this podcast
30:08
Speaker 3: is not only tell these stories, but change the legacies
30:14
Speaker 3: of the people who falsely confessed.
30:17
Speaker 1: You're taking this false story that they've told about themselves
30:20
Speaker 1: and you have to change it to a true story,
30:22
Speaker 1: a story of innocence.
30:23
Speaker 3: In the wake of making a murderer, which certainly put
30:27
Speaker 3: both Laura and I on the map in a way
30:31
Speaker 3: that no other television show or radio show or victory
30:36
Speaker 3: in court had done. I felt like we had an
30:40
Speaker 3: obligation to speak out on these issues that we care
30:43
Speaker 3: so deeply about. I guess I was channeling Arthur Miller.
30:48
Speaker 3: I mean, I could see Donald Connery saying I knew
30:52
Speaker 3: Arthur Miller. You're no Arthur Miller, but we had the
30:56
Speaker 3: opportunity to tell these stories, and I think we as
30:59
Speaker 3: lawyers have an obligation to do that.
31:03
Speaker 1: You know, you don't have to be a lawyer to
31:05
Speaker 1: see the injustice here. You just have to be someone
31:08
Speaker 1: with a conscience. These are stories of great tragedy. They
31:12
Speaker 1: grip people, these stories unsettle people, and they move people
31:16
Speaker 1: to make change. This is a movement that draws from
31:19
Speaker 1: all walks of life, from ordinary folks who want to
31:23
Speaker 1: channel their outrage into action, to those with a powerful
31:27
Speaker 1: public platform, artists, musicians, writers, actors. We saw this in
31:31
Speaker 1: the Peter Riley case with Arthur Miller. We saw it
31:34
Speaker 1: in the West Memphis three case with Peter Jackson, Johnny Depp,
31:38
Speaker 1: Eddie Vetter, Natalie Mains, and we see it today with
31:41
Speaker 1: Brendan Dacy's case and all the people who are rallying
31:44
Speaker 1: around him. These kinds of movements built on real people.
31:49
Speaker 1: They're unstoppable, and we're not going to stop until we
31:52
Speaker 1: can bring Brendon Dacy on this podcast as a free man.
32:00
Speaker 1: Conviction False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good
32:03
Speaker 1: Podcasts in association with Signal Company number One. Special thanks
32:07
Speaker 1: to our executive producer Jason Flamm and the team at
32:10
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one. Executive producer Kevin wardis Senior producer
32:15
Speaker 1: and Pope and additional production and editing by Connor Hall.
32:19
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Jogi Hammer for additional script editing and
32:22
Speaker 1: for wrangling and writing like a mad woman. Our music
32:25
Speaker 1: was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on
32:29
Speaker 1: Instagram or Twitter at Laura.
32:31
Speaker 3: Nywriter and you can follow me on Twitter at s Drisen.
32:35
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
32:39
Speaker 1: and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
32:42
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
32:46
Speaker 1: Twitter at wrong Conviction