Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #127 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Huwe Burton

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#127 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Huwe Burton · Wrongful Conviction

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer,
0:05
Speaker 1: and I'm Steve Drisen. Today we'll tell you the story
0:08
Speaker 1: of Hugh Burton. In nineteen eighty nine, when he was
0:12
Speaker 1: sixteen years old, he was charged with the murder of
0:14
Speaker 1: his own mother at his family's home in the Bronx.
0:18
Speaker 1: Forget blind justice. This is a classic case of tunnel
0:22
Speaker 1: vision because even as Hugh was bulldozed into a false confession,
0:26
Speaker 1: the real killer was living in the apartment just one
0:29
Speaker 1: floor below.
0:41
Speaker 2: When I was asked to look into Hugh Burton's case
0:44
Speaker 2: by the Innocence Project, Laura and I were just beginning
0:47
Speaker 2: the process of setting up the Center on Wrongful Convictions
0:50
Speaker 2: of Youth, which was a project focus on false confessions
0:56
Speaker 2: taken from young people.
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Speaker 1: Children and teenagers are between two and three times more
1:02
Speaker 1: likely than adults to falsely confess, and we were seeing
1:05
Speaker 1: a particularly disturbing pattern multiple cases of young people falsely
1:10
Speaker 1: confessing to the murders of their own family members. When
1:14
Speaker 1: Hugh's story came to us, it fit that pattern.
1:17
Speaker 2: To a t. What is it that could make someone
1:21
Speaker 2: confessed to the most horrific crime imaginable? The murderer of
1:26
Speaker 2: a parent or a loved one.
1:29
Speaker 1: Hugh's story begins in the Wakefield neighborhood of the Bronx,
1:33
Speaker 1: a working class section of New York City that's home
1:35
Speaker 1: to a thriving Jamaican American community. In nineteen eighty nine,
1:39
Speaker 1: when our story starts, Hugh was sixteen years old and
1:43
Speaker 1: in tenth grade. He was the only child of two
1:46
Speaker 1: Jamaican immigrants, Kaziah and Raphael Burton. Kaziah was a nurse
1:51
Speaker 1: and Raphael was a successful building contractor, so successful that
1:55
Speaker 1: the family was able to buy real estate, a red
1:58
Speaker 1: brick apartment building three stories tall on Eastchester Road. The
2:03
Speaker 1: Burtons moved into the second floor and rented out the
2:06
Speaker 1: rest of the building. Hugh was a good kid, and
2:09
Speaker 1: his parents were proud of him at sixteen. He was smart,
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Speaker 1: soft spoken, good looking. He did love the emerging rap scene,
2:17
Speaker 1: and he'd cause his old school parents no end of
2:20
Speaker 1: worry by hitting the dance clubs till closing time. But
2:23
Speaker 1: the family was close, loving and prosperous. An American success story.
2:31
Speaker 1: It's January third, nineteen eighty nine. Rafael Burton was out
2:34
Speaker 1: of the country. He'd gone back to Jamaica to check
2:37
Speaker 1: on relatives who'd been hit by Hurricane Gilbert a few
2:40
Speaker 1: months earlier. It's a Tuesday, and Hugh gets home from
2:43
Speaker 1: school at two thirty. No sign of his mom, but
2:46
Speaker 1: he does notice that the TV's on his mom's car
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Speaker 1: is gone and her pocket book had been dumped out
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Speaker 1: on the living room floor, but Hugh doesn't think too
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Speaker 1: much about it. He had plans to hook up with
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Speaker 1: a girl after school, and off you went to her place.
3:03
Speaker 1: At five point thirty, Hugh comes back home and makes
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Speaker 1: a horrible discovery. His mom, Kaziah, is lying on the
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Speaker 1: bed in the master bedroom. A telephone chord is wrapped
3:13
Speaker 1: around her wrist and her underwear has been pulled down.
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Speaker 1: A serrated steak knife is lying next to her on
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Speaker 1: the bed, and there's a gaping knife wound in her neck.
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Speaker 1: Hugh called nine to one one in a panic and
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Speaker 1: tells them, I think my mother's been murdered. The police
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Speaker 1: arrive and pronounce Kaziah Burton dead. They soon conclude, though,
3:35
Speaker 1: that she hasn't actually been raped. Instead, her underwear has
3:39
Speaker 1: been pulled down to make it look like a rape.
3:42
Speaker 1: The real motive seems to be robbery. The attacker made
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Speaker 1: off with her brand new nineteen eighty eight Honda Accord.
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Speaker 2: When the police came to the crime scene, they took
3:52
Speaker 2: notice of a couple of things. One of the things
3:56
Speaker 2: was that Hugh was sitting outside and to then he
4:00
Speaker 2: appeared too calm, too cool, to collected. They had heard
4:05
Speaker 2: his frantic nine one one call, and his lack of
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Speaker 2: emotion or apparent lack of emotion at the crime scene
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Speaker 2: was a red flag to them.
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Speaker 1: I mean, this is a kid who had just come
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Speaker 1: across his mother's stabbed body, and he is panicking on
4:18
Speaker 1: that nine one one call. But by the time the
4:20
Speaker 1: police arrived, shock had set in, which they read as remorselessness.
4:26
Speaker 1: So as the police are at the scene, they decide
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Speaker 1: to question Hugh about his mom's murder, and that evening
4:32
Speaker 1: he agreed to go down with police to the forty
4:35
Speaker 1: seventh Precinct for questioning. Even while his dad, who was
4:38
Speaker 1: still in Jamaica, was catching the first flight back to
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Speaker 1: New York.
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Speaker 2: He had nothing to worry about. This is what he
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Speaker 2: wanted to do. He wanted to find out who had
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Speaker 2: killed his mother, and so he went down there to
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Speaker 2: do anything he could do to help the police find
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Speaker 2: and catch her killer.
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Speaker 1: The police questioned Hugh, and he gives them every detail
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Speaker 1: of his activities, from putting in a full day at
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Speaker 1: school to meeting up with a girl in the afternoon,
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Speaker 1: right up until he discovered his mother's body in the evening.
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Speaker 1: After they finished questioning, he spends the night at his
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Speaker 1: godmother's house because his dad hasn't gotten back to.
5:16
Speaker 3: New York yet.
5:17
Speaker 1: The next day, Hugh returns to the precinct and the
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Speaker 1: same three detectives question him again for hours. Now, we
5:27
Speaker 1: don't have a videotape of the whole interrogation. Police only
5:30
Speaker 1: turned on the cameras at the end to capture Hugh's
5:33
Speaker 1: final confession, but Hugh says he remembers what happened in
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Speaker 1: that room. Hugh says he confessed because of a threat.
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Speaker 1: Remember the girl whose house he'd gone to that afternoon, Well,
5:44
Speaker 1: she was fourteen, and under New York law, Hugh was
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Speaker 1: potentially liable for statutory rape, even though they were consenting classmates.
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Speaker 1: The police told him he'd go down for murder plus
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Speaker 1: statutory rape and be sent to Write Island unless he confessed. Now,
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Speaker 1: Hugh didn't know exactly what statutory rape was, but he
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Speaker 1: knew the word rape was really bad, and he knew
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Speaker 1: well enough what Riker's Island was, a notorious New York
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Speaker 1: jail with a reputation for horrific violence. On the other hand,
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Speaker 1: the police told him that if he confessed, he would
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Speaker 1: go to family Court where his dad could pick him
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Speaker 1: up in a few days.
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Speaker 2: Which is a blatant lie.
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Speaker 1: It's total bullshit. The police also tell Hugh that they
6:30
Speaker 1: talked to his teacher and her records didn't confirm that
6:33
Speaker 1: he was at school during first period. How is that possible?
6:37
Speaker 1: He knew he had been there all day, but it
6:40
Speaker 1: was starting to be clear the detectives didn't believe him.
6:44
Speaker 1: They were developing their own theory of Keziah's murder with
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Speaker 1: Hugh as the killer.
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Speaker 2: And of course the police said to Hugh, it was
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Speaker 2: an accident and everybody will see that it was an accident.
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Speaker 2: So your options are murder and statutory rape and Riker's
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Speaker 2: Island or admitting to an accident, being sent to family court,
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Speaker 2: and being picked up by your father within a few
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Speaker 2: hours of your first court appearance.
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Speaker 1: And over time, Hugh realized the only way for him
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Speaker 1: to get out of that room was to cop to
7:19
Speaker 1: these charges. So by the early morning of January fifth,
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Speaker 1: Hugh Burton found himself signing a confession to the murder
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Speaker 1: of his own mother.
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Speaker 2: And let me tell you, this confession is weird.
7:33
Speaker 1: It's written in stilted formal language, and the story it
7:37
Speaker 1: tells is all about crack cocaine. I, Hugh Burton, know
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Speaker 1: an individual by the name of Bugs, who I owed
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Speaker 1: two hundred dollars to for some crack I received from
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Speaker 1: him to sell. Instead of selling the crack, I kept
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Speaker 1: it for my own personal use. The confession goes on
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Speaker 1: to describe Hugh getting high on crack the night before
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Speaker 1: his mom died. He comes home, gets into a quote
8:02
Speaker 1: stat with his mother, and wakes up the next morning
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Speaker 1: still high.
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Speaker 4: This time stimulated on drugs.
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Speaker 2: Who uses the word stimulated? How you say I was high?
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Speaker 1: I walked to the kitchen, the confession continued.
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Speaker 4: I got a kitchen steak knife and I came back
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Speaker 4: into the room.
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Speaker 1: She then asked, are you going to kill me?
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Speaker 4: And I said and if I was, she went to
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Speaker 4: smack me and I moved.
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Speaker 1: That's when I accidentally stabbed my mother in her neck.
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Speaker 4: It wasn't planet purposely, you know, I just wanted to
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Speaker 4: scare a little bit, see what she was going to do.
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Speaker 1: According to the confession, Hugh washes off the knife, leaves
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Speaker 1: it on the bed, and gives his mom's car to bugs.
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Speaker 2: This was no accident because iad Burton had been stabbed
8:49
Speaker 2: twice in the neck, very deep, violent stab wounds. And
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Speaker 2: there were other parts of this confession that made no
8:58
Speaker 2: sense whatsoever.
9:00
Speaker 4: Got a call from person to old money too? And
9:03
Speaker 4: who's that personal? Bugs? Do you know his name?
9:06
Speaker 2: No?
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Speaker 4: I don't.
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Speaker 2: You couldn't tell the police anything about books, who he was,
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Speaker 2: where he lived, or even what he did with the car.
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Speaker 4: Any telephone number that would have been help, I don't know.
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Speaker 2: Back in the day, the Jamaican immigrant community didn't use
9:23
Speaker 2: the banks a lot and used parents were no different.
9:26
Speaker 2: They kept little pockets of cash and secret places throughout
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Speaker 2: their home, places that you, as a kid, knew about.
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Speaker 4: It was two hundred.
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Speaker 2: Who gives a ten thousand dollars car to somebody to
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Speaker 2: settle a two hundred dollars debt? If you needed two
9:44
Speaker 2: hundred dollars, he could have found that money in a jiffy.
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Speaker 1: So none of this is making any sense. You also
9:50
Speaker 1: was not known to use crack, much less run up
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Speaker 1: debts with dealers or behave in a sort of depraved
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Speaker 1: way that would lead a crack addict to attack his
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Speaker 1: own mom. He wasn't Hugh Burton, But it's the story
10:04
Speaker 1: of the.
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Speaker 4: Confession school and I left.
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Speaker 1: So where did this whole crack theme come from? It
10:11
Speaker 1: came from the late nineteen eighties culture of fear about
10:14
Speaker 1: the New York City drug epidemic.
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Speaker 2: Between nineteen eighty six and nineteen ninety three. That time frame,
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Speaker 2: New York was averaging two thousand murders a year, and
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Speaker 2: police were attributing a significant percentage of them to crack cocaine.
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Speaker 2: And think about it from the police perspective. Here you
10:35
Speaker 2: have a kid who's got no criminal background by all accounts.
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Speaker 2: He has a deep and abiding love for both of
10:43
Speaker 2: his parents. He's a respectful kid when it comes to
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Speaker 2: his parents, and all of a sudden, he snaps and
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Speaker 2: stabs his mother to death over two hundred dollars that
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Speaker 2: she would have gladly given him.
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Speaker 1: The crack theme came from the police, not from Hugh.
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Speaker 2: And there it is in the very first lines of
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Speaker 2: this confession that word once this story is about a
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Speaker 2: kid using cracker, selling crack. Nothing else matters.
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Speaker 1: Well, that's are off. Sure enough, Hugh is arrested and
11:18
Speaker 1: the media headlines go for maximum shock value.
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Speaker 2: Crack craze teen stabs mom to death.
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Speaker 1: Hugh is charged with second degree murder, and he's sent
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Speaker 1: not to family court but to the place he feared most,
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Speaker 1: Riker's Island. Those promises the cops made to him were
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Speaker 1: nothing but lies.
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Speaker 2: From the minute that Hugh was charged with his offense,
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Speaker 2: his father knew that Hugh was innocent. He just knew it.
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Speaker 1: He knew his son, his whole family stood by him,
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Speaker 1: but it was too late. He'd confessed. From the depths
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Speaker 1: of his jail cell, Hugh writes a eulogy for his
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Speaker 1: mom and mails it to a relative so it can
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Speaker 1: be read out loud at her funeral, and then he
12:02
Speaker 1: grieves alone.
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Speaker 2: Let's stop for one second, Laura. You know when the
12:16
Speaker 2: police were questioning Hugh, they did what all police officers do.
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Speaker 2: Do you know anybody, Hugh who might have wanted to
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Speaker 2: hurt your mother? Can you give us any leads as
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Speaker 2: to who might have done this? And Hugh came up blank.
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Speaker 2: He said, I don't know anybody who would want to
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Speaker 2: hurt my mother. But I think what you need to
12:37
Speaker 2: be focused on is what happened to my mother's car.
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Speaker 2: The person who had taken my mother's car, that's the
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Speaker 2: person who probably killed her.
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Speaker 1: Fast forward to January eleventh, six days after Hugh confessed
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Speaker 1: and was arrested. On the evening of January eleventh, police
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Speaker 1: in Mount Vernon, New York, pull over a car for
13:01
Speaker 1: running a stop sign. It turns out that car was
13:05
Speaker 1: Kaziah Burton's missing nineteen eighty eight gray Honda Accord. So
13:10
Speaker 1: who was the driver. Emmanuel Green was the first floor
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Speaker 1: tenant in the Burtons apartment building. He just moved in
13:18
Speaker 1: there with his girlfriend Stacy. Emmanuel was twenty two years old,
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Speaker 1: five foot eleven, two hundred and thirty pounds.
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Speaker 2: You should see the body on this guy.
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Speaker 1: He was cutting totally ripped. This guy could bench you, Steve.
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Speaker 1: And he wasn't exactly a choir boy. He'd done time
13:35
Speaker 1: for a knife point rape and attempted robbery. In fact,
13:38
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Green was on parole at the time that Kaziah
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Speaker 1: was murdered, and only a month before he'd been arrested
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Speaker 1: for assaulting his previous landlord, Hugh.
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Speaker 2: Burton, only knew Immanuel Green in passing. Their lives were
13:54
Speaker 2: in completely different places. Emmanuel Green was a bouncer at
13:58
Speaker 2: a club who worked the late shift and slept during
14:02
Speaker 2: the day, and Hugh was in school during the day
14:05
Speaker 2: and at home most nights, and on the weekends if
14:08
Speaker 2: he went out with his friend's clubbing, he went to
14:11
Speaker 2: New Jersey, not where Emmanuel Green was. These were complete strangers.
14:17
Speaker 1: After police catch Emmanuel in Kezi Burton's car, they bring
14:20
Speaker 1: them in for questioning, and he's interrogated by the same
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Speaker 1: officers who questioned Hugh Burton. After only a few hours,
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Speaker 1: Emmanuel goes on videotape to make a statement of his own.
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Speaker 1: He says that on the morning of the murder January third,
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Speaker 1: Hugh had knocked on his door downstairs on the first
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Speaker 1: floor apartment, and Hugh had told Emmanuel that he planned
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Speaker 1: to steal his mom's nineteen eighty eight Honda Accord, and
14:46
Speaker 1: he asked Emmanuel if he knew how to get rid
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Speaker 1: of a stolen car, I'll take care of my mother,
14:51
Speaker 1: Hugh supposedly said, and the two of them agreed to
14:54
Speaker 1: split the cash. Emmanuel claimed that Hugh then went back
14:57
Speaker 1: upstairs by himself and all almost immediately. Emmanuel said, I
15:02
Speaker 1: heard arguing, screaming in a thumping noise. He said he
15:05
Speaker 1: overheard Hugh yelling you won't give me the money. Fuck
15:09
Speaker 1: you bitch, I'll kill you and take it. A few
15:12
Speaker 1: minutes later, he reappeared outside Green's apartments, supposedly distraught, and
15:16
Speaker 1: he confesses to a manual. I killed my mother. I
15:20
Speaker 1: stabbed her. I stabbed her. Emmanuel continues, my criminal mind
15:26
Speaker 1: took over and I said, let's make it look like
15:30
Speaker 1: a robbery. He claimed to have gone back upstairs with
15:33
Speaker 1: Hugh to the Burton family apartment. They stole two hundred
15:36
Speaker 1: dollars from Kaziah's pocket book, and Emmanuel told Hugh to
15:40
Speaker 1: get rid of the knife somewhere outside. Then Emmanuel took
15:44
Speaker 1: off with Kaziah's car. So we have two statements, one
15:50
Speaker 1: of them from a slick talking bouncer with a history
15:53
Speaker 1: of rape and robbery and attacks on his landlords, the
15:56
Speaker 1: guy who was actually found with Kaziah Burton's car, and
15:59
Speaker 1: the other one from a sixteen year old with no
16:01
Speaker 1: criminal history.
16:03
Speaker 2: The train had already left the station for Hugh Burton
16:07
Speaker 2: after his arrest. The detectives who were involved in the
16:11
Speaker 2: interrogation leaked information about the case to the press, and
16:14
Speaker 2: they were quoted widely in newspaper articles that grace the
16:19
Speaker 2: front page of the New York Times and the Post
16:22
Speaker 2: in the Daily News. And so when Emmanuel Green shows
16:26
Speaker 2: up with Keziah Burton's car, these police officers needed to
16:32
Speaker 2: figure out a way to reconcile these two very different stories.
16:36
Speaker 1: Remember, h Was confession never mentions Immanuel Green his downstairs
16:41
Speaker 1: neighbor at all, and Green's confession never mentions crack, cocaine
16:45
Speaker 1: or any drug debt.
16:46
Speaker 2: The confession of Emmanuel Green was cooked up in the
16:50
Speaker 2: interrogation room in Mount Vernon by the same detectives who
16:54
Speaker 2: took the confession of Hugh Burton.
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Speaker 1: So the case against Huburton plowed forward, and before too long,
17:00
Speaker 1: Hugh found himself convicted of the murder of his own
17:03
Speaker 1: mother and sentenced to life in prison. For his part,
17:08
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Green was never charged with Keziah's murder. He was
17:12
Speaker 1: only ever charged with crimes relating to the theft of
17:15
Speaker 1: her automobile, but he was never convicted. Before his trial,
17:20
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Green was stabbed to death as part of a
17:22
Speaker 1: dispute arising out of a lover's triangle.
17:26
Speaker 2: So when the case came across my desk, it was
17:28
Speaker 2: sometime in two thousand and eight early two thousand and nine.
17:32
Speaker 2: I was sent a letter from Hugh Burton and some
17:36
Speaker 2: materials related to his case by a woman at the
17:38
Speaker 2: Innocence Project.
17:40
Speaker 1: At the Center on Wrongful Convictions, we get referred false
17:42
Speaker 1: confession cases a lot, but when Steve looked at Hugh's case,
17:47
Speaker 1: he realized it was different than a lot of the
17:49
Speaker 1: other cases we've told you about on this podcast. DNA
17:53
Speaker 1: testing wasn't an option here.
17:55
Speaker 2: There was no evidence left at the crime scene that
17:59
Speaker 2: if ten could lead to a different outcome. It was
18:02
Speaker 2: really all about the confession and all about trying to
18:07
Speaker 2: prove the guilt of the true perpetrator and Manuel Green.
18:11
Speaker 1: As soon as we took the case in two thousand
18:13
Speaker 1: and nine, Hugh, thank goodness, was released on parole after
18:17
Speaker 1: almost two decades behind bars. And this was a wonderful thing.
18:22
Speaker 2: Having your client out is a blessing, even before they
18:26
Speaker 2: are exonerated. We want to get them out because when
18:29
Speaker 2: they're out they can help us with our investigation.
18:33
Speaker 1: It's easier to represent someone who's free. You can call
18:36
Speaker 1: them whenever you need to, and you can meet with
18:38
Speaker 1: them face to face without glass or guards or prison
18:42
Speaker 1: walls between the two of you. For his part, Hugh
18:47
Speaker 1: was able to begin a new life on the outside.
18:50
Speaker 1: He's always been a runner, but instead of doing laps
18:53
Speaker 1: around the prison yard, he started running long distances in
18:57
Speaker 1: the free air. And, as Hughes said his sites on
19:00
Speaker 1: the New York City Marathon, his legal team embarked on
19:03
Speaker 1: its own marathon investigation because even though Hugh was free,
19:08
Speaker 1: he was still a convicted murderer who needed his name cleared.
19:12
Speaker 1: Steve invited Laura Cohen, an attorney and professor at Rutgers University,
19:17
Speaker 1: to join the team, and we got to work pretty soon.
19:30
Speaker 1: We discovered powerful evidence of Hugh's innocence. Hugh had described
19:35
Speaker 1: killing his mom with a serrated steak knife found on
19:38
Speaker 1: the bed. That was the theory embraced by police at
19:41
Speaker 1: the time of the interrogation, But after Hughes interrogation, the
19:45
Speaker 1: autopsy showed that Keziah Burton had actually been stabbed with
19:49
Speaker 1: a smooth edged blade. The steak knife wasn't the murder weapon.
19:54
Speaker 1: The fact that Hugh's confession incorporated an error that police
19:58
Speaker 1: believed was true at the time. That's a red flag.
20:01
Speaker 1: The police were feeding Hugh their own theory of the crime.
20:06
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Green, on the other hand, had known that the
20:08
Speaker 1: steak knife wasn't the murder weapon he described, using a
20:12
Speaker 1: different blade, one that he told Hugh to dispose of outside.
20:16
Speaker 1: This was information only the real perpetrator would know. Months
20:22
Speaker 1: of investigation turned into years, and we were gathering evidence
20:25
Speaker 1: slowly but surely, and then finally we got a couple
20:29
Speaker 1: of lucky breaks. You see, in twenty sixteen, a new
20:33
Speaker 1: DA got elected in the Bronx and we saw a
20:36
Speaker 1: new opportunity to have a conversation about Hugh's case. So
20:40
Speaker 1: we got in touch with our friends at the Innocence
20:42
Speaker 1: Project in New York, Susan Friedman and Barry Sheck. Susan's
20:47
Speaker 1: a rock star attorney at the Innocence Project, and Barry
20:50
Speaker 1: co founded the project with Peter Neufeld. He's one of
20:54
Speaker 1: the real ogs in the exoneration movement. And before long,
20:58
Speaker 1: Barry was able to put us in touch with a
21:00
Speaker 1: special new division of the Bronx DA's office, the Conviction
21:05
Speaker 1: Integrity Unit. Here's very now.
21:07
Speaker 3: One of the things that the Innocence Project and myself
21:11
Speaker 3: in particular, had been involved in a lot is the
21:15
Speaker 3: creation of what are known as conviction integrity units. The
21:18
Speaker 3: whole point of a conviction integrity process is to have
21:23
Speaker 3: a non adversarial search for the truth, where you set
21:27
Speaker 3: up an investigative plan that both sides agree to go
21:31
Speaker 3: forward with it, and you develop a process where you
21:35
Speaker 3: share information and go back and forth. You just forget
21:38
Speaker 3: about the legal technicalities and you just look at the
21:41
Speaker 3: evidence and investigate it together and see where it leads.
21:45
Speaker 2: And for the next three years we worked in collaboration
21:49
Speaker 2: with the Conviction Review Unit. It was an extremely cooperative experience.
21:55
Speaker 2: We shared documents, we interviewed witnesses together, brought in experts
22:01
Speaker 2: to educate them about all of the changes that had
22:04
Speaker 2: taken place with regard to false confessions and new understandings
22:09
Speaker 2: from the science.
22:11
Speaker 1: As we started working with the Bronx Conviction Integrity Unit,
22:14
Speaker 1: that's when we really got lucky.
22:16
Speaker 3: We'd all huddled at the offices of the Bronx Defender,
22:19
Speaker 3: who were giving us a place to stay, and Steve
22:22
Speaker 3: googled one last time for something about the officers involved
22:27
Speaker 3: in his case.
22:28
Speaker 2: Detectives who obtained false confessions are often serial offenders. I
22:34
Speaker 2: typed in the names of these detectives in a search
22:38
Speaker 2: for other cases, and I hit gold.
22:41
Speaker 3: All of a sudden, he hit for whatever reason, we
22:45
Speaker 3: don't know. An opinion that appeared in the New York
22:48
Speaker 3: Law Journal by Judge Steve Barrett that was quite incredible.
22:52
Speaker 1: What Steve found was shocking a court decision describing how
22:56
Speaker 1: the same cops who interrogated Hugh had coerced a false
23:00
Speaker 1: confession out of another man in a completely different case.
23:04
Speaker 3: And by sheer chance, the evening before we're going in
23:08
Speaker 3: to talk to the conviction Integrity unit, we found it.
23:11
Speaker 2: Finding that these detectives had been involved in another false
23:15
Speaker 2: confession just three months earlier than you. Burton's case began
23:20
Speaker 2: to raise questions about who these detectives were and whether
23:24
Speaker 2: we could trust their accounts of what happened in that
23:27
Speaker 2: interrogation room.
23:28
Speaker 3: In the end, this may not have all happened if
23:31
Speaker 3: it weren't for Dennis Kossa's courage.
23:33
Speaker 1: Dennis koss is the man who'd falsely confessed at the
23:36
Speaker 1: hands of the same interrogators just three months before they
23:40
Speaker 1: questioned Hugh. So Steve and Barry arranged a meeting with Dennis,
23:45
Speaker 1: and the story he told them was heartbreaking.
23:48
Speaker 3: We brought him in to our office at the Innocents
23:51
Speaker 3: Project late at night and we began asking Dennis to
23:56
Speaker 3: recount for us what happened when he gave this confession
24:00
Speaker 3: and talk about post traumatic stress disorder. I am telling
24:06
Speaker 3: you that this poor man went into almost a fugue state.
24:10
Speaker 3: He began shaking and sweating when he described what happened
24:15
Speaker 3: and how they scared the living hell out of him,
24:17
Speaker 3: and they coerced him and they wouldn't let his family
24:19
Speaker 3: come up, and it was unbelievable. I mean, you could
24:23
Speaker 3: just see him reliving it, and he was just terrified
24:28
Speaker 3: of these cops and what they did to him, same
24:31
Speaker 3: cops that frame you Burton.
24:34
Speaker 1: The investigation uncovered one other piece of evidence too. Remember
24:38
Speaker 1: that teacher who said that Hugh wasn't in school the
24:40
Speaker 1: morning his mom was killed, well the day before Emmanuel
24:44
Speaker 1: Green was caught with Keziah Burton's car. That teacher told
24:48
Speaker 1: the police that she'd made a mistake. Hugh actually had
24:52
Speaker 1: been in school that morning, but it seems police never
24:55
Speaker 1: shared that information with Hugh's defense team.
24:58
Speaker 2: So it's like a soup, right. You bring in new
25:01
Speaker 2: evidence and at a certain point in time, you reach
25:06
Speaker 2: a critical mass where it becomes clear that the person
25:10
Speaker 2: who was convicted of this crime was innocent. And in
25:13
Speaker 2: our case, it became clear that Emmanuel Green was guilty.
25:18
Speaker 1: The case against Hugh Burton should have fallen apart when
25:21
Speaker 1: the teacher retracted her mistake and the real killer was
25:24
Speaker 1: caught with a car, But instead police doubled down on
25:28
Speaker 1: their case against Hugh. It took thirty more years until
25:32
Speaker 1: that case finally disintegrated. In the end, the tipping point
25:38
Speaker 1: for the Bronx Conviction Integrity Unit was when Hugh came
25:42
Speaker 1: in for an interview and the prosecutors actually met.
25:45
Speaker 2: Him, And when they saw Hugh separated from that sixteen
25:49
Speaker 2: year old on the videotape outside the heat of a trial,
25:54
Speaker 2: in the tagline of a crack crazed team, When they
25:58
Speaker 2: saw who he was and how much he loved and
26:02
Speaker 2: respected and revered his parents, they knew that he couldn't
26:08
Speaker 2: have committed this crime. When Hugh was in prison, he
26:13
Speaker 2: had developed a nickname. They called him wise. He had
26:18
Speaker 2: a sort of peacefulness that helped him survive in prison,
26:22
Speaker 2: but also helped him to keep other inmates on track.
26:27
Speaker 2: And that wisdom, that decency, that aura of his innocence
26:33
Speaker 2: is what really tipped the scales in his case.
26:36
Speaker 1: When you meet Hugh, you just know this is a
26:39
Speaker 1: good man. And these prosecutors saw that. They saw the
26:43
Speaker 1: human being, not the accusation.
26:46
Speaker 3: I'm sure you've realized this already, that you is quite
26:49
Speaker 3: an extraordinary individual. But one of the Innocence Project conferences,
26:53
Speaker 3: he got up and he told the story that was
26:56
Speaker 3: astonishing about his father. So you know his father. I
27:00
Speaker 3: always stood by you, and he would always come up
27:02
Speaker 3: and visit him.
27:03
Speaker 5: So the week leading up to the visit, I'm excited.
27:06
Speaker 5: I couldn't wait to tell him everything that I've been doing,
27:08
Speaker 5: how I've been developing with the case.
27:11
Speaker 2: I wanted to let.
27:11
Speaker 5: Him know how good I had gotten with playing my Pimo,
27:15
Speaker 5: and I wanted to hear everything that was going on
27:17
Speaker 5: with him. I finally spot him in the visit room
27:20
Speaker 5: and I make a b line towards him. We embraced,
27:23
Speaker 5: I hold him for a long time and we finally
27:25
Speaker 5: sit down. He came with my cousin. She brought him up.
27:28
Speaker 5: As I'm asking him questions, I'm getting these kind of
27:31
Speaker 5: close ended answers, so everything was yes, no, and I realized,
27:36
Speaker 5: I said something is wrong, and then he began to
27:38
Speaker 5: refer to me as my brother. And I think that
27:42
Speaker 5: was the first time that I realized that, because of
27:45
Speaker 5: the Alzheimer's, my dad didn't know.
27:48
Speaker 2: Who I was.
27:49
Speaker 4: The guy who was in every courtroom, every visit.
27:51
Speaker 5: Room, my guy. He didn't know who I was. But
27:57
Speaker 5: still I was just glad he was there. So as
27:59
Speaker 5: the as it went on, he wanted to smoke. He
28:03
Speaker 5: wanted a cigarette, but I know he knew that if
28:05
Speaker 5: he went out to smoke, that the visit was terminated.
28:08
Speaker 4: You can't come in and out. It's not an in
28:09
Speaker 4: and out policy.
28:12
Speaker 5: But he kept asking for this cigarette, and I didn't
28:14
Speaker 5: know why it was bothering me that he was asking
28:16
Speaker 5: for it, But then I realized it reminded me of
28:19
Speaker 5: a book that I had read, Man's Search for Meaning,
28:22
Speaker 5: a book by Victor Frankel in which he details being
28:26
Speaker 5: in concentration camps, and in the concentration camps, cigarettes were
28:30
Speaker 5: a medium of exchange. So he would notice that when
28:33
Speaker 5: people would smoke their cigarettes is when they had lost
28:37
Speaker 5: the desire to live. And it's right in that moment
28:40
Speaker 5: that I realized that he couldn't go on anymore. I
28:43
Speaker 5: knew that when he left that visit room that day,
28:45
Speaker 5: that was going to be the last day.
28:46
Speaker 2: That I saw him, and it was.
28:50
Speaker 5: Thankfully, however, I was exonerated this year January twenty fourth.
28:57
Speaker 2: Thank you.
28:59
Speaker 4: And although he didn't live.
29:03
Speaker 5: To see all of this come to fruition, I am
29:07
Speaker 5: glad that he's watching and making sure that the job
29:12
Speaker 5: was done and done good.
29:14
Speaker 2: Thank you.
29:18
Speaker 1: In January twenty nineteen, a court finally threw out Huburton's conviction.
29:23
Speaker 3: I vacated provision the culvers in Burton, and is a
29:27
Speaker 3: trimedy that mister Burton's pension playing here in jail to require.
29:30
Speaker 4: That A to cot from there.
29:32
Speaker 3: For this, I offer my apologize, mister Burton, of the
29:36
Speaker 3: heal of the Systom failed.
29:38
Speaker 1: In the courtroom, seats were filled with other New Yorkers
29:42
Speaker 1: who'd been failed by the system too, who'd also been
29:45
Speaker 1: wrongly convicted as teenagers in false confession cases. They were
29:49
Speaker 1: there in solidarity.
29:51
Speaker 3: We brought in Usat Salam the Central Park five nineteen
29:56
Speaker 3: eighty nine, Xener eighty five, we had in the front
29:59
Speaker 3: row Jet Deskovic in Westchester gave a false confession to
30:04
Speaker 3: murdering a high school classmen, Marty Tankliff. Again in nineteen
30:08
Speaker 3: eighty nine, co werced into confessing killing both of his parents,
30:12
Speaker 3: and then, of course right there with them was Dennis Koss.
30:16
Speaker 3: That tells you all you need to know.
30:17
Speaker 1: It sure does. After a thirty year ordeal, Hugh joined
30:22
Speaker 1: their ranks as an exonery and he stood up in
30:26
Speaker 1: court and dedicated his exoneration to the memory of his mother.
30:42
Speaker 1: And that's the story of Huberton. Next week we'll tell
30:45
Speaker 1: you about Chris Tapp and Idaho man whose confession was
30:49
Speaker 1: proven false thanks to the perseverance of an unlikely champion,
30:53
Speaker 1: the victim's mother. Till then, thanks for listening to Wrongful Conviction,
30:58
Speaker 1: False Confessions. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of
31:09
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One.
31:13
Speaker 1: Special thanks to our executive producer Jason Flamm and the
31:17
Speaker 1: team at Signal Company Number one. Executive producer Kevin wardis
31:21
Speaker 1: Senior producer and Pope, and additional production and editing by
31:24
Speaker 1: Connor Hall. Special thanks to Jogi Hammer for additional script editing,
31:29
Speaker 1: and for wrangling and writing like.
31:30
Speaker 4: A mad woman.
31:32
Speaker 1: Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow
31:35
Speaker 1: me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura Nightwriter, and you.
31:38
Speaker 2: Can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
31:42
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
31:46
Speaker 1: and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
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Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
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Speaker 1: Twitter at wrong Conviction