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#168 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - The Birmingham Six · Wrongful Conviction

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I
0:05
Speaker 1: writer and I'm Steve Drissen. Today's story is about a
0:09
Speaker 1: group of innocent Irish men known as the Birmingham Six.
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Speaker 1: They were accused of planting bombs inside two pubs in Birmingham,
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Speaker 1: England in nineteen seventy two, and they were tortured into
0:19
Speaker 1: giving false confessions. All six men were freed in nineteen
0:22
Speaker 1: ninety one, but the crime's never been solved. The public
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Speaker 1: is still demanding answers today about who really planted those bombs. Steve.
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Speaker 1: When we went on our speaking tour last year for
0:40
Speaker 1: Making a Murderer, one of my favorite places we visited
0:43
Speaker 1: was Belfast in Northern Ireland.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it was one of the highlights of our travels.
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Speaker 2: It was almost like coming home, coming to a place
0:53
Speaker 2: which understood the work I've been doing for most of
0:57
Speaker 2: my professional life.
0:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was something about false confessions that really resonated
1:02
Speaker 1: with that audience.
1:03
Speaker 2: It's a lived experience and it goes back to the
1:06
Speaker 2: way in which the Birmingham Six were treated by law enforcement.
1:10
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so here's the thing, right. The Birmingham Six
1:13
Speaker 1: was a case that arose from the fact that two
1:15
Speaker 1: pubs in Birmingham, England were bombed. It was one of
1:18
Speaker 1: the biggest mass murders to happen on British soil after
1:21
Speaker 1: World War Two. I mean, this is like the Oklahoma
1:23
Speaker 1: City bombing here in the United States. And the blame
1:27
Speaker 1: for this crime was placed on these six Irish guys
1:30
Speaker 1: who were living in England but who had deep roots
1:32
Speaker 1: in Belfast. The injustice of what happened to these guys
1:36
Speaker 1: is like almost nothing I've seen before.
1:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, a profound experience of police abuses and of torture
1:43
Speaker 2: in the interrogation rooms.
1:45
Speaker 1: Their story resonates for so many people in Northern Ireland
1:49
Speaker 1: because the whole place has this incredible history of conflict
1:53
Speaker 1: and struggle against power. I actually think that history is
1:57
Speaker 1: what brought so many people out last year to our talk.
2:00
Speaker 1: You know, I'd like to believe they came to see
2:01
Speaker 1: you and me, but they were probably there to hear
2:04
Speaker 1: about injustice and how to fight it. And that's a
2:07
Speaker 1: little bit better of a reason. I think our story
2:13
Speaker 1: today begins in Birmingham, England. It's the second largest city
2:17
Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom, with a population in the millions,
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Speaker 1: mostly English, but also hundreds of thousands of Irish. Like
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Speaker 1: any big city, Birmingham's got a thriving social scene. In particular,
2:28
Speaker 1: on almost every corner there's a pub. It's in two
2:31
Speaker 1: of those pubs that our story really begins, two ordinary
2:35
Speaker 1: places where people go after work to get a pint
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Speaker 1: of beer. On November twenty first, nineteen seventy four, two
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Speaker 1: Birmingham pubs became together the scene of Britain's deadliest mass
2:46
Speaker 1: murder in modern history. It all started at eight eleven
2:51
Speaker 1: in the evening, an anonymous man with an Irish accent
2:55
Speaker 1: placed a phone call to the Birmingham Post newspaper. There's
2:59
Speaker 1: a bomb planted in the Rotunda, he said, and there's
3:02
Speaker 1: a bomb in New Street. This, he added, is double X.
3:07
Speaker 1: Then silence he'd hung up. The Rotunda was a high
3:12
Speaker 1: rise office building in downtown Birmingham with a pub on
3:15
Speaker 1: its first floor called the Mulberry Bush. New Street. Around
3:19
Speaker 1: the corner was where the city tax office was. There
3:22
Speaker 1: was a pub on that building's first floor too, called
3:24
Speaker 1: the Tavern in the Town. And then, only six minutes
3:28
Speaker 1: after that anonymous phone call, it happened two huge explosions.
3:34
Speaker 1: The first was at the Mulberry Bush at eight seventeen pm.
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Speaker 1: A homemade bomb had been left in a leather bag
3:40
Speaker 1: somewhere near the back door. When the bomb exploded, the
3:43
Speaker 1: pub was packed with people and the damage was horrific.
3:47
Speaker 1: The ceiling collapsed, fire engulfed the place. People were crushed
3:51
Speaker 1: and burned to death. Others were impaled by falling beams.
3:56
Speaker 1: First responders arrived and began working desperately to rescue survivors.
4:00
Speaker 1: At the same time, police were frantically trying to evacuate
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Speaker 1: the tavern in the town, but they couldn't clear it
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Speaker 1: fast enough. At eight twenty seven pm, a second homemade
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Speaker 1: bomb exploded there again, the packed pub was destroyed. That
4:14
Speaker 1: explosion was so powerful that people were blown through the
4:17
Speaker 1: brick walls between the two pubs. Twenty one people died
4:22
Speaker 1: and one hundred and eighty two were injured. It was
4:25
Speaker 1: a coordinated attack that left Britain reeling. So why would
4:31
Speaker 1: anyone bomb pubs in Birmingham? The answer is politics and history.
4:37
Speaker 1: Here's our friend, doctor Hannah Quirk. She's a professor at
4:40
Speaker 1: King's College, London who studies wrongful convictions and, like a
4:44
Speaker 1: lot of folks in the United Kingdom, in Ireland. She
4:47
Speaker 1: had a front row seat to that history. When she's
4:50
Speaker 1: talking to people who are new to this part of
4:51
Speaker 1: the world, Hannah likes to start here.
4:53
Speaker 3: So there's obviously the famous U two song about Bloody Sunday.
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Speaker 1: That song's more than a pop anthem. It tells the
5:00
Speaker 1: story of the long running and sometimes violent conflict between
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Speaker 1: Ireland and Britain. And here's that story in a nutshell.
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Speaker 3: There's a long, complicated history in Ireland, hundreds of years
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Speaker 3: of history. But in nineteen twenty two there'd been a
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Speaker 3: civil war and the majority of Ireland was given independence
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Speaker 3: from Great Britain and formed the Irish Free State. But
5:22
Speaker 3: a deal was done to say that the six counties
5:25
Speaker 3: of Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom.
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Speaker 1: Not everyone was happy with this deal, though. People became
5:31
Speaker 1: intensely divided about whether Northern Ireland should be part of
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Speaker 1: the United Kingdom or join the Republic of Ireland, and
5:38
Speaker 1: those divisions often fell along religious lines.
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Speaker 3: Most Catholics were nationalists or Republicans. They wanted to be
5:45
Speaker 3: a united Ireland so the Island of Ireland would be
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Speaker 3: one country, and most Protestants were Unionists or loyalists. They
5:53
Speaker 3: wanted to remain part of Great Britain and be governed
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Speaker 3: from London.
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Speaker 1: Tensions simmered for years of Eventually anti Catholic sentiment started boiling,
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Speaker 1: especially in Northern Ireland.
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Speaker 3: Catholics were very discriminated against. They had far fewer job opportunities,
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Speaker 3: The housing was worse, so they were very overcrowded. They
6:12
Speaker 3: couldn't sit on juries for the most part because they
6:14
Speaker 3: didn't own property. Schools were divided on religious lines as well,
6:18
Speaker 3: so the Civil rights movement grew in the United States,
6:20
Speaker 3: and the Catholic population in Northern Ireland gradually began to
6:23
Speaker 3: protest about discrimination that they were facing. Two British troops
6:27
Speaker 3: had already gone into Northern Ireland to try and keep
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Speaker 3: the peace, and then Bloody Sunday in nineteen seventy two
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Speaker 3: British paratroopers opened fire on the protesters and killed thirteen
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Speaker 3: people and injured fifteen of them.
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Speaker 1: After Bloody Sunday, the violence really escalated on both sides.
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Speaker 1: People who wanted to end British rule in Northern Ireland
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Speaker 1: armed themselves and became active in a group called the
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Speaker 1: Irish Republican Army or the IRA.
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Speaker 3: That song people always said it was the best recruitment
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Speaker 3: thing the IRA could ever have had. Bloody Sunday, I
6:57
Speaker 3: think was a real tipping point. It got so much attention,
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Speaker 3: not only in Northern Ireland but in England as well,
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Speaker 3: these images of the army shooting unarmed protesters.
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Speaker 1: The IRA thought of themselves as freedom fighters and they
7:11
Speaker 1: used violence to make their points, even planting homemade bombs
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Speaker 1: all across Britain. The IRA targeted everything from government tax
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Speaker 1: offices to restaurants and pubs. By nineteen seventy four, two
7:23
Speaker 1: years after Bloody Sunday, Britain was experiencing an average of
7:27
Speaker 1: one attack every three days and British authorities were regularly retaliating.
7:32
Speaker 1: The conflict was pretty close to a war, and it
7:35
Speaker 1: became known as the Troubles.
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Speaker 3: I mean we called it the Troubles. When I was
7:39
Speaker 3: growing up, that was all I heard on the news
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Speaker 3: was the Troubles. And then the first time I went
7:43
Speaker 3: to Belfast, I realized no, actually this was this was
7:47
Speaker 3: like a war. They were appalling levels of casualties in
7:50
Speaker 3: those days as well, before the Internet, you'd get newsflashes
7:53
Speaker 3: on the television, so the screen would go black and
7:55
Speaker 3: they'd say we interrupt this program and it would be
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Speaker 3: a bomb had gone off for some kind of serious
8:01
Speaker 3: situation had taken place. For years, there's been no trash
8:03
Speaker 3: comes on public transport in London, just to stop people
8:07
Speaker 3: being able to hide bombs there. I was probably about
8:10
Speaker 3: eight or nine and my mom had taken me and
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Speaker 3: all my cousins and my little brother to buy school
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Speaker 3: uniforms and there was this announcement over the tannoy, please
8:19
Speaker 3: evacuate the store, and the alarms going off. We just
8:22
Speaker 3: thought it was a brilliant adventure because we were a
8:24
Speaker 3: bit too little to realize it could be quite dangerous.
8:27
Speaker 3: And my poor mum was just trying to grab about
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Speaker 3: eight children and get us out of the store, but
8:31
Speaker 3: it was all glass at the front, so she didn't
8:33
Speaker 3: know which way to take us and which was more dangerous.
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Speaker 3: So we just always laughed about how we all had
8:38
Speaker 3: nail marks in our arms from where she was digging
8:40
Speaker 3: her fingers in and dragging us out by the hair.
8:42
Speaker 3: And it seemed like a bit of an adventure at
8:44
Speaker 3: the time, but that kind of stuff was quite normal.
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Speaker 1: Here's just how normal these bombings had become. The IRA
8:51
Speaker 1: had rules and under its rules, IRA members who bombed
8:55
Speaker 1: as civilian target had to call British police and warned
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Speaker 1: them thirty minutes before the bomb went off. The idea
9:02
Speaker 1: was to give enough time for police to evacuate as
9:04
Speaker 1: many people as possible without sacrificing the bomb's political point.
9:09
Speaker 1: But the British police needed a way to make sure
9:11
Speaker 1: these anonymous phone calls were authentic not hoaxes. So the
9:15
Speaker 1: IRA and the police agreed on a codeword known only
9:19
Speaker 1: to them. If the caller used the codeword, you could
9:22
Speaker 1: be sure the bomb threat was real, and that codeword
9:25
Speaker 1: was double X. On the day the bombs went off,
9:29
Speaker 1: tensions between the IRA and the British were sky high.
9:32
Speaker 1: A week before, an IRA member named James McDade was
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Speaker 1: killed in Britain when a bomb he was placing went
9:39
Speaker 1: off prematurely. IRA sympathizers in Britain were planning a hero's
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Speaker 1: funeral with military processions and honor guards, but the British
9:47
Speaker 1: authorities quickly passed laws making those plans illegal instead. On
9:52
Speaker 1: November twenty first, mcdade's body was flown from Birmingham to
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Speaker 1: Belfast for burial. Only hours after the plane care his
10:00
Speaker 1: body took off. The bombs went off too. Between the
10:04
Speaker 1: timing of the bombings and the use of the double
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Speaker 1: X codeword, it didn't take long for the police and
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Speaker 1: the public to conclude that the IRA was responsible. Now,
10:13
Speaker 1: it's true the anonymous caller hadn't given the usual thirty
10:16
Speaker 1: minutes advanced warning, but that fact got ignored as a
10:20
Speaker 1: wave of anti Irish anger swept over Britain. The IRA
10:25
Speaker 1: issued a denial, but no one listened. The British public
10:28
Speaker 1: was terrified and the British authorities were enraged. There was
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Speaker 1: a thirst for justice and revenge. Within hours of the bombings,
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Speaker 1: police got a tip five Irish men had been seen
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Speaker 1: boarding a train that left Birmingham right before the explosion
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Speaker 1: at the Mulberry Bush. Four of them had tickets continuing
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Speaker 1: on to Belfast in Northern Ireland. Their names were Jerry Hunter,
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Speaker 1: Dick Macilkenny, John Walker, Billy Power and Patti Hill. They
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Speaker 1: were what the Irish call working class lads who didn't
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Speaker 1: have a lot of extra money. All five men were Catholic,
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Speaker 1: all were married and most of them had kids. None
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Speaker 1: of them was affiliated with the IRA. They were headed
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Speaker 1: to Belfast to attend James mcdade's funeral, but more out
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Speaker 1: of community obligation than for political reasons. For his part,
11:17
Speaker 1: Patty Hill borrowed his train fare from a nun. He
11:21
Speaker 1: promised to pay her back by doing some painting work
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Speaker 1: when he returned, but that debt would soon become the
11:26
Speaker 1: least of his problems.
11:36
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12:20
Speaker 1: For the first few hours, the train ride was uneventful,
12:22
Speaker 1: but when the train pulled up to Morecambe's station on
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Speaker 1: the evening of November twenty first, the police were waiting
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Speaker 1: a group of irishmen leaving Birmingham, just as the bombs
12:32
Speaker 1: went off, seemed suspicious. All five were arrested and brought
12:36
Speaker 1: to a nearby police department. That's where a forensic scientists
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Speaker 1: tested their hands for traces of nitroglycerin, a bomb ingredient.
12:44
Speaker 1: The hands of two men tested positive, the scientists said,
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Speaker 1: Billy Power and Patty Hill. That was enough for the police.
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Speaker 1: Not just justice, but revenge was suddenly possible. Within a day,
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Speaker 1: police arrested a sixth Irishman, Hugh Callahan, who had been
13:01
Speaker 1: with the other five before they boarded the train, and
13:04
Speaker 1: the interrogations endured by these six men, the Birmingham Six,
13:08
Speaker 1: were horrific. It started at the Morcambe Police department with
13:13
Speaker 1: John Walker. A group of police took John into a
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Speaker 1: back room where he was beaten, kicked, and burned with
13:19
Speaker 1: a cigarette while other officers held his arms back. The
13:23
Speaker 1: other men heard John's screaming, and then their turns came too.
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Speaker 1: For hours, they were all bloodied and beaten from head
13:30
Speaker 1: to toe. One of them, Billy Power, was kicked over
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Speaker 1: and over on his head, legs, and stomach. He was
13:36
Speaker 1: dragged by his hair and in one of the most
13:39
Speaker 1: sadistic moments of this interrogation, police stretched his scrotum.
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Speaker 2: During these interrogations, at least some of these guys were
13:47
Speaker 2: shown a letter, a letter that said that the torture
13:51
Speaker 2: they were experiencing was state sanctioned. It was a letter
13:55
Speaker 2: on government letterhead that basically told the police officers, you
13:59
Speaker 2: can do what whatever you need to do in order
14:03
Speaker 2: to get a confession from these men. To these guys,
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Speaker 2: the message was this pain, this torture is going to
14:10
Speaker 2: continue unless you confess.
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Speaker 1: By twelve fifty five pm the next day, November twenty second,
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Speaker 1: Billy had had enough. He signed a written confession prepared
14:21
Speaker 1: by police, admitting guilt in the Birmingham pub bombings. A
14:25
Speaker 1: few hours later, the men were transferred to the custody
14:28
Speaker 1: of another police unit, the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad,
14:32
Speaker 1: where the torture continued, beatings, burnings, stress positions, even mock executions.
14:39
Speaker 1: Patty Hill remembers having a pistol shoved into his mouth
14:42
Speaker 1: so brutally that it broke several of his teeth. With
14:46
Speaker 1: a cold metal barrel in Patty's mouth, his interrogators slowly
14:50
Speaker 1: counted to three and pulled the trigger three times. They
14:54
Speaker 1: did this each time Patty expected to die, only to
14:58
Speaker 1: discover that the chamber didn't contain a bo. The thing
15:01
Speaker 1: about torture is that it works, at least if your
15:04
Speaker 1: only goal is to find a scapegoat. On November twenty third,
15:08
Speaker 1: Hugh Callahan, Dick mckilkenny, and John Walker signed false confessions.
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Speaker 1: Like Billy, they claimed that they were IRA members and
15:15
Speaker 1: that they'd planted both pub bombs. Somehow, Patty Hill and
15:20
Speaker 1: Jerry Hunter were holdouts. They refused to sign confessions despite
15:24
Speaker 1: the torture. Police would later claim that Patty and Jerry
15:27
Speaker 1: verbally confessed, which Patty denies. The four written confessions were
15:31
Speaker 1: short and virtually detail free. In fact, one of the
15:34
Speaker 1: only details included was wrong. The confessions claimed that the
15:38
Speaker 1: bombs were left at the pubs in white plastic bags,
15:41
Speaker 1: but forensic analysis showed the bags had been leather. It
15:44
Speaker 1: didn't matter. Four of the Birmingham six had confessed, and
15:48
Speaker 1: all of them had been beaten within an inch of
15:50
Speaker 1: their lives. Revenge, it seemed, had been achieved.
15:55
Speaker 2: The last thing that you want interrogators to do when
15:58
Speaker 2: they go into an interrogation room is to be guided
16:02
Speaker 2: by a sense of vengeance, because what's going to happen
16:07
Speaker 2: is the interrogator is going to do everything in his
16:09
Speaker 2: power to quench that thirst for revenge, and the interrogation
16:15
Speaker 2: no longer becomes about the truth.
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Speaker 1: After the confessions, the six were charged with murder and
16:21
Speaker 1: transferred to Winston Green Prison, where guards continued the beatings.
16:25
Speaker 1: When the Birmingham Six were finally brought to court a
16:28
Speaker 1: week after the bombings, they'd been brutalized from head to foot.
16:33
Speaker 1: Patty Hill's wife was in the courtroom with their two
16:35
Speaker 1: year old son. When the little boy saw his dad's injuries,
16:38
Speaker 1: he was so traumatized that he needed medical attention. But
16:42
Speaker 1: authorities told the judge that they had done nothing wrong.
16:44
Speaker 1: The men had been attacked, they said, by other inmates.
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Speaker 2: We've seen excuses like that over and over again, even
16:52
Speaker 2: in the United States. When somebody is battered, the police
16:55
Speaker 2: changed the narrative from the beginning. They either blame it
16:58
Speaker 2: on somebody falling down the stairs, or they blame it
17:02
Speaker 2: on other inmates. But when these men appeared in court
17:05
Speaker 2: for the first time, everybody knew what had happened to them.
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Speaker 2: It was clear that they had been through an ordeal.
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Speaker 1: That ordeal was far from over. Based on the confessions
17:18
Speaker 1: and the nitroglycerin evidence. The Birmingham Six stood trial on
17:21
Speaker 1: June ninth, nineteen seventy five. A defense expert testified that
17:25
Speaker 1: the explosives testing had been faulty, and defense witnesses pointed
17:29
Speaker 1: out that no explosives had been found at any of
17:32
Speaker 1: the men's homes, But in short order that Birmingham Six
17:36
Speaker 1: were convicted. Each man was sentenced to twenty one life sentences,
17:41
Speaker 1: one for every person who died, and the people of Britain,
17:45
Speaker 1: all of whom thought it could have been them inside
17:48
Speaker 1: those pubs. They believed that justice had been done from
17:54
Speaker 1: behind bars. The Birmingham Six fought their convictions like furies
17:58
Speaker 1: and insisted the authorities acknowledge they'd been tortured, but for
18:02
Speaker 1: a while, it looked like the entire system was lined
18:05
Speaker 1: up against them. Eventually, fourteen prison officers were charged with
18:09
Speaker 1: assaulting the six, but despite plenty of evidence, those officers
18:13
Speaker 1: were all acquitted at trial. The six also tried to
18:17
Speaker 1: soothe their torturers, but a judge dismissed their lawsuit in
18:20
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty and he did it for reasons that you
18:23
Speaker 1: have to hear to believe. Just think what it would
18:26
Speaker 1: mean for Britain's legal system. The judge explained, if these
18:30
Speaker 1: men were allowed to prove they'd been tortured, it would
18:33
Speaker 1: mean that the police were guilty of perjury, that they
18:36
Speaker 1: were guilty of violence and threats, and that the convictions
18:39
Speaker 1: were erroneous. That was such an appalling vista. He declared,
18:45
Speaker 1: that every sensible person would say, it cannot be right
18:48
Speaker 1: that this lawsuit should go any further.
18:50
Speaker 2: You know, the appalling vista here is this paternalistic attitude
18:55
Speaker 2: of this judge that the public can't handle the truth,
18:59
Speaker 2: he said, saying that if this torture were allowed to
19:02
Speaker 2: be seen by them, if this injustice were allowed to
19:05
Speaker 2: be acknowledged, the entire system would crumble. The irony is
19:10
Speaker 2: that by suppressing the truth, by putting these allegations in
19:15
Speaker 2: evidence of torture in the closet, he is breaking the
19:20
Speaker 2: very system he claims to want to protect. Where are
19:25
Speaker 2: these men supposed to get justice if not in a
19:28
Speaker 2: court of law.
19:30
Speaker 1: But while the court system closed its eyes to this injustice,
19:33
Speaker 1: the world didn't. Journalist Chris Mullen, who would go on
19:37
Speaker 1: to become a member of Parliament, investigated the bombings with
19:41
Speaker 1: fresh eyes in nineteen eighty five, he retained two scientists
19:45
Speaker 1: who debunked the test that supposedly had found nitroglycerin on
19:49
Speaker 1: Patty and Billy's hands. A police officer also publicly confirmed
19:53
Speaker 1: that the Birmingham Six had been beaten by their interrogators.
19:57
Speaker 1: The next year, Chris Mullen published a book about the
19:59
Speaker 1: case called Error of Judgment. In the book, Mullen described
20:03
Speaker 1: meeting IRA members who admitted they were involved in the bombings,
20:07
Speaker 1: although he didn't disclose their names, and Mullen explained something
20:13
Speaker 1: that had been a mystery for years, why the double
20:16
Speaker 1: X collar hadn't given the full thirty minutes warning before
20:20
Speaker 1: the first explosion. Turns out, the bombers meant to give
20:23
Speaker 1: police thirty minutes, but the telephone booth they'd planned to
20:26
Speaker 1: use had been damaged by vandals. By the time they
20:29
Speaker 1: found another phone, only six minutes were left. The warning
20:33
Speaker 1: system wasn't as fool proof as they thought. That was
20:36
Speaker 1: how these bombings became one of the deadliest mass murders
20:39
Speaker 1: in modern British history. In nineteen eighty seven, advocates, including
20:55
Speaker 1: renowned civil rights lawyer Gareth Pearce, convinced a court to
20:59
Speaker 1: re examine the convictions of the Birmingham Six. At the hearing,
21:03
Speaker 1: police officers testified about watching their colleagues torture the six men.
21:08
Speaker 1: Evidence was also introduced about a handwritten chart that had
21:11
Speaker 1: been found in the police station. The interrogators apparently used
21:15
Speaker 1: this chart to line up the facts in the different
21:18
Speaker 1: men's statements and make sure they matched. Of course, those
21:21
Speaker 1: facts were actually lies.
21:24
Speaker 2: The discovery of this chart basically proved what the men
21:27
Speaker 2: had been saying all along, that we didn't confess to
21:31
Speaker 2: these crimes. These were stories that were scripted by the police,
21:36
Speaker 2: and we were tortured into saying what they wanted us
21:40
Speaker 2: to say.
21:41
Speaker 1: But despite this new evidence, relief was denied and the
21:44
Speaker 1: case stalled for four years until a second hearing was granted.
21:49
Speaker 1: There new evidence was introduced that further undermined the nitroglycerin
21:53
Speaker 1: testing on Patty and Billy's hands. But what finally tipped
21:56
Speaker 1: the balance, as Gareth Pierce later wrote it, it was
22:00
Speaker 1: the simplest of stupidities. Previously, police had testified that the
22:04
Speaker 1: men confessed freely, and that after they confessed, their stories
22:08
Speaker 1: never changed. But Pierce had found the notebooks on which
22:12
Speaker 1: the men's confessions had been written, sure enough. As the
22:15
Speaker 1: police wrote, edited, and rewrote the false confessions on notebook pages,
22:20
Speaker 1: their pens left indentations on the pages. Underneath those indentations
22:26
Speaker 1: revealed how the stories had evolved and been altered, and
22:29
Speaker 1: how the police's testimony had been false.
22:32
Speaker 2: These indentations were like track changes, you know, they were
22:37
Speaker 2: imprints on paper that were left because the police officers
22:42
Speaker 2: were writing and rewriting so furiously that they left a
22:46
Speaker 2: mark on the paper. Evidence that the confessions were scripted
22:50
Speaker 2: is evidence of police contamination. That the story didn't come
22:55
Speaker 2: from the defendants, it came from police officers.
23:00
Speaker 1: All six convictions were declared unsafe that's a British term,
23:04
Speaker 1: and thrown out. And on November twenty first, nineteen ninety one,
23:08
Speaker 1: the Birmingham Six walked out of prison after sixteen years
23:12
Speaker 1: behind bars.
23:14
Speaker 3: Still makes the hairs on the back of your neck
23:16
Speaker 3: stands on end, doesn't it. I remember it really vividly,
23:19
Speaker 3: that image of them walking out of the court onto
23:22
Speaker 3: the street, and builders hanging off scaffolding from the buildings
23:26
Speaker 3: across the road, people packed outside, these hundreds and hundreds
23:30
Speaker 3: of people, TV crews from around the world, and then
23:34
Speaker 3: that amazing image of them all coming out linked hands,
23:37
Speaker 3: holding them above their heads, with Chris Mullin, the journalist
23:40
Speaker 3: who had campaigned for them, and then Paddy grabbing the
23:43
Speaker 3: microphone and shouting how he'd spent sixteen years in prison
23:47
Speaker 3: for a crime he didn't commit. It was that really
23:50
Speaker 3: raw emotion, that was just so shocking.
23:53
Speaker 5: The police told us from the start that they knew
23:57
Speaker 5: we hadn't done it.
23:58
Speaker 2: They told me they didn't care do it.
24:01
Speaker 5: They told us that we were selected. I'm not going
24:04
Speaker 5: to frame us just to keep the people in their happy.
24:08
Speaker 5: Let's want a soul abid pics justice. I don't think
24:15
Speaker 5: them people enough got the intelligence, No, the honest in
24:18
Speaker 5: his spell award, never mind dispenses.
24:23
Speaker 1: The six won their freedom years ago, but even today
24:26
Speaker 1: real justice still seems illusory. There's never been a formal
24:31
Speaker 1: declaration of innocence or exoneration. Even the court decision throwing
24:35
Speaker 1: out their convictions still made veiled references to their possible guilt.
24:40
Speaker 1: The closest the Birmingham Six has come to justice was
24:42
Speaker 1: when they won a defamation lawsuit after a member of
24:46
Speaker 1: Parliament called them guilty. The British government has compensated them financially,
24:50
Speaker 1: but the amount doesn't come close to repaying them for
24:54
Speaker 1: days of torture and sixteen lost years.
24:56
Speaker 3: A psychiatrist assessed when they put in their claim for compensation,
25:02
Speaker 3: and he said they had post traumatic stress disorder that
25:05
Speaker 3: was on the level of somebody who had been in
25:06
Speaker 3: a war zone. I think what they'd been through was
25:09
Speaker 3: exceptional given the violence that they'd suffered, as well as
25:12
Speaker 3: the miscarriage of justice. I mean, they had been tortured,
25:15
Speaker 3: they'd had to fight and fight all the time in
25:18
Speaker 3: prison for their own safety and fight to prove their innocence.
25:23
Speaker 3: If you've had that level of adrenaline running through your
25:25
Speaker 3: system for sixteen years, that doesn't just disappear when you
25:29
Speaker 3: walk out of court.
25:30
Speaker 1: And as for the bombing, it's never been definitively solved.
25:33
Speaker 1: In fact, over the past few years, there's been an
25:36
Speaker 1: ongoing inquest in Birmingham to reinvestigate what happened that day.
25:41
Speaker 1: For years, Chris Mullen refused to name the men he
25:44
Speaker 1: said had accepted responsibility, citing his journalistic obligation to protect sources.
25:49
Speaker 1: Right before the inquest, Mullen finally published an article identifying
25:54
Speaker 1: two former IRA members who are now dead for its part.
25:58
Speaker 1: The IRA has never a fish admitted responsibility for the bombings.
26:02
Speaker 1: At the inquest, one former IRA member, identified only as
26:06
Speaker 1: Witness O, named the same perpetrators that Mullin had named,
26:09
Speaker 1: plus two others. Another witness testified that the high body
26:13
Speaker 1: count was accidental and described the bombings as an IRA
26:17
Speaker 1: operation that went badly wrong in some ways, though the
26:21
Speaker 1: system has tried to learn from its mistakes.
26:23
Speaker 3: If you were writing a history of the criminal justice
26:26
Speaker 3: system in this country, the Birmingham Six is a real
26:29
Speaker 3: tipping point. It wasn't about the politics of Northern Ireland.
26:33
Speaker 3: It was about the criminal justice system has done something
26:36
Speaker 3: terribly wrong. So there was a real sense at the
26:38
Speaker 3: time that the system was in crisis. People couldn't have
26:42
Speaker 3: confidence in the system because there were so many wrongful
26:44
Speaker 3: convictions happening. And on the day the Birmingham Six were
26:48
Speaker 3: released from prison, the Home Secretary stood up in Parliament
26:51
Speaker 3: and said, I'm ordering a commission to look into the
26:54
Speaker 3: criminal justice system.
26:55
Speaker 1: Based on that commission's recommendation, the UK created the Criminal
26:59
Speaker 1: Cases Review Commission in nineteen ninety seven.
27:02
Speaker 3: The Criminal Cases Review Commission is independent, but it's funded
27:06
Speaker 3: by the government to investigate cases likeness and to see
27:09
Speaker 3: where mischaracters of justice have happened. The CCRC isn't perfect,
27:14
Speaker 3: but it's a remarkable organization. It's one of the few
27:17
Speaker 3: places in the world where, to be honest, the government
27:20
Speaker 3: has been big enough to say things do go wrong
27:22
Speaker 3: and we need to create a way of putting this right,
27:26
Speaker 3: and every country should have one.
27:28
Speaker 1: In addition, the UK has adopted reforms around the way
27:31
Speaker 1: suspects are interrogated, outlying not only physical torture but also
27:35
Speaker 1: other tools of coercion like lying to suspects. These are
27:39
Speaker 1: reforms that we should be enacting in the United States.
27:42
Speaker 2: I always say that the UK is thirty five years
27:46
Speaker 2: ahead of where we are in the United States as
27:49
Speaker 2: far as interrogation reforms. They don't allow any confessions to
27:54
Speaker 2: be admitted into evidence that are obtained by oppression, and
27:59
Speaker 2: oppression does didn't mean just physical torture. It also means
28:04
Speaker 2: psychological torture and the use of tactics which are likely
28:10
Speaker 2: to render a confession unreliable. All of these reforms are
28:15
Speaker 2: aimed at getting the truth and not just getting a confession.
28:21
Speaker 1: The British legal system wasn't the only one to initiate
28:24
Speaker 1: meaningful change. Patty Hill used the compensation he got for
28:28
Speaker 1: his wrongful conviction to start a nonprofit, the Miscarriages of
28:31
Speaker 1: Justice Organization. Its mission is to help people recently released
28:35
Speaker 1: from prison to get back on their feet and to
28:38
Speaker 1: help them handle the pain and anger they'll probably carry
28:41
Speaker 1: for a long time.
28:42
Speaker 2: There's this incredible caring side to Patty. He talks about
28:47
Speaker 2: when people get out of prison, many of them seek
28:51
Speaker 2: him out, and at least pre COVID, he would welcome
28:54
Speaker 2: them in his home. And those are the people that
28:57
Speaker 2: give him the greatest comfort in life because they shared
29:01
Speaker 2: at least some of the experience that he had when
29:05
Speaker 2: he was in prison.
29:06
Speaker 1: You know, when I went back to Scotland last year,
29:09
Speaker 1: I went to visit Patti Hill.
29:11
Speaker 2: I'm so sad that I missed that opportunity.
29:14
Speaker 1: He's an incredible man, but also he is angry still
29:18
Speaker 1: and committed through that anger to improving the system. All
29:22
Speaker 1: he wants to do is remember what happened to him
29:27
Speaker 1: and then use that memory as fuel to change the system.
29:32
Speaker 1: For Patty, all of those physical wounds have long since healed,
29:36
Speaker 1: but the emotional wounds and the drive that he has
29:41
Speaker 1: to make sure this doesn't happen again. Those are there forever.
29:44
Speaker 2: We see that time and again with people who are exonerated.
29:47
Speaker 2: They want to tell their story. They want the world
29:51
Speaker 2: to know what happened to them, so it doesn't happen again.
29:58
Speaker 6: Hello, Hello, Patty Laura. How are you.
30:01
Speaker 5: Doing, Patty?
30:02
Speaker 6: I'm doing well?
30:03
Speaker 1: Oh good. So it was a year ago when I
30:07
Speaker 1: saw you in Glasgow at the Mojo offices.
30:12
Speaker 6: Yeah.
30:12
Speaker 1: When you work with families of other people who are
30:14
Speaker 1: in prison, is there anything to say to them to
30:16
Speaker 1: give them hope?
30:18
Speaker 6: I tell their families they're gonna have good moods, They're
30:21
Speaker 6: gonna have bad moods, you know, And I tell them
30:24
Speaker 6: you're not on your own. We can lessen the load
30:27
Speaker 6: in any way. That's the main thing, you know. You
30:30
Speaker 6: often hear that old cliche time is a great healer?
30:34
Speaker 1: Is it true?
30:35
Speaker 6: Believe me, time does not heal nothing. The only thing
30:39
Speaker 6: you can hope for is that every day, please God,
30:43
Speaker 6: you run down with a little bit better.
30:47
Speaker 1: Do you have a support system people to help you
30:50
Speaker 1: on those bad days?
30:52
Speaker 6: When I meet up with some of the guys from
30:53
Speaker 6: the Gium and one of the pubs and moving be
30:56
Speaker 6: there for five six hours, that's when the.
31:01
Speaker 1: You can be yourself, all yourself.
31:02
Speaker 6: Maybe exactly, yeah, yeah, you have a good time.
31:14
Speaker 1: And that's the story of the Birmingham Six. Join us
31:17
Speaker 1: next week when we'll tell you the story of a
31:19
Speaker 1: Virginia fisherman who got caught in a net of injustice.
31:23
Speaker 1: He didn't give up false confession during his interrogation, but
31:26
Speaker 1: the words he did say were still enough to put
31:29
Speaker 1: him in prison for thirty one years. Wrongful Conviction, False
31:36
Speaker 1: Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
31:39
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number one Special thanks to our
31:43
Speaker 1: executive producers Jason Flamm and Kevin Wardis. Our production team
31:48
Speaker 1: is headed by senior producer a Pope along with producers
31:51
Speaker 1: Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane. Our show is mixed by
31:54
Speaker 1: Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is our intrepid intern. Our music
31:59
Speaker 1: was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on
32:02
Speaker 1: Instagram or Twitter at Laura and I Wrider, and.
32:05
Speaker 2: You can follow me on Twitter at Sdrizzen.
32:08
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com.
32:12
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful
32:15
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