Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #092 Jason Flom with Kenzi Snider

Transcript

#092 Jason Flom with Kenzi Snider · Wrongful Conviction

0:00
Speaker 1: This call is from a correction facility, and it's subject
0:03
Speaker 1: to monitoring and recording contact even.
0:15
Speaker 2: There.
0:16
Speaker 3: And it hasn't been easy one hundred years. That's man,
0:21
Speaker 3: I'm a kid.
0:21
Speaker 4: I didn't do anything, you know, and uh, you know
0:25
Speaker 4: that was ah, that was real painful, man, No, because
0:29
Speaker 4: my life was discarded as if you know, like I
0:32
Speaker 4: was a piece of trash or something, you know, a
0:34
Speaker 4: hundred years and I had dreams I wanted to do
0:37
Speaker 4: things I wouldn't committing crimes.
0:39
Speaker 3: You know.
0:40
Speaker 5: I was a very good young man.
0:42
Speaker 6: That is what happens in so many cases. The cops
0:45
Speaker 6: have a hunch because they're so smart at the scene,
0:49
Speaker 6: they have a hunch, and once they act on that hunch,
0:52
Speaker 6: they sort of developed tunnel vision and they take off
0:55
Speaker 6: marching in the wrong direction. And that happens in so
0:58
Speaker 6: many of these wrongful convictions.
1:00
Speaker 1: The opening to sell door and I walk downstairs, and
1:04
Speaker 1: I actually walked downstairs to be outside. It felt very
1:09
Speaker 1: strange to be, like I said, to be walking without
1:12
Speaker 1: no shackles on my feet. I thought it was a dream,
1:14
Speaker 1: but did again it wasn't a dream.
1:17
Speaker 3: This is wrongful conviction. On March eighteenth, two thousand, and one.
1:34
Speaker 3: Jamie Pennich, an American exchange student in South Korea, was
1:37
Speaker 3: brutally murdered in her motel room after a night of
1:40
Speaker 3: partying with friends from the program. Her bloodied, nude body
1:43
Speaker 3: was found on the floor. She had been stomped to death,
1:46
Speaker 3: and her face was covered with a black fleece jacket.
1:49
Speaker 3: Kenzie Snyder, a nineteen year old exchange student from Marshall
1:53
Speaker 3: University in West Virginia, was one of the friends that
1:55
Speaker 3: Jamie was with. About a half dozen exchange students had
1:58
Speaker 3: traveled from campus into the city, where they celebrated Saint
2:01
Speaker 3: Patrick's Day in a bar filled with locals and US soldiers.
2:04
Speaker 3: Korean police and army investigators were unable to solve this
2:07
Speaker 3: horrific crime. But a year later, in February two thousand
2:10
Speaker 3: and two, FBI agents contacted Kenzie out of the blue.
2:13
Speaker 3: She was back at school by now in West Virginia
2:16
Speaker 3: and they wanted to talk alone. She met with three
2:19
Speaker 3: agents on three consecutive days for several hours, and the
2:22
Speaker 3: sessions were grueling. When it was done, Kenzie had confessed
2:27
Speaker 3: she murdered her friend. She said in the context of
2:29
Speaker 3: a drunken sexual encounter. Kenzie was promptly arrested, incarcerated in
2:33
Speaker 3: a local jail for ten months, and extradited to Korea
2:36
Speaker 3: to stand trial. There, she spent another six months in
2:40
Speaker 3: jail until a panel of judges found her not guilty,
2:43
Speaker 3: but the prosecutor appealed to verdict, and months later an
2:46
Speaker 3: appeals court confirmed not guilty. In two thousand and six,
2:51
Speaker 3: five years after the crime, in response to yet another appeal,
2:55
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court of Korea once again affirmed not guilty.
3:00
Speaker 3: That was eighteen years ago. Today we know a whole
3:03
Speaker 3: lot more than we did then about false confessions. Kenzie
3:06
Speaker 3: Snyder has been fully acquitted in court, yet her confession
3:09
Speaker 3: haunts her and us, and it leads some people still
3:12
Speaker 3: to question her actual innocence. Kensey Snyder Brown is here
3:16
Speaker 3: with us today to tell her story. Welcome back to
3:18
Speaker 3: Wrongful Conviction. Today is going to be a really interesting
3:23
Speaker 3: day here in the studio at Wrongful Conviction Headquarters because
3:26
Speaker 3: we have a number of firsts and one second, which
3:31
Speaker 3: is that I'll go to the second first. We have
3:35
Speaker 3: the distinguished professor of psychology and world renowned expert on
3:39
Speaker 3: false confession, Saul Cassen, with us today so i'll welcome,
3:43
Speaker 3: pleasure to be here. We also have as a special
3:47
Speaker 3: treat a PhD student of his, Patty Sanchez, a PhD
3:51
Speaker 3: student of John Jay who amazingly is studying the effect
3:54
Speaker 3: of podcasts on jurors and on public opinion, right, and
3:59
Speaker 3: so I'm super excited to have Patty Sanchez here to
4:04
Speaker 3: learn from you. So Patty welcome, thank you very much.
4:07
Speaker 3: And the star of our show who has an incredible
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Speaker 3: story to tell, the first case we've certainly ever had
4:15
Speaker 3: from well even from the far East, but from Korea,
4:18
Speaker 3: but not the first false confession case by far, but
4:21
Speaker 3: the first case of this kind, and a really interesting
4:24
Speaker 3: person in her own right, Kenzy Snyder.
4:25
Speaker 2: Welcome, Hello, thank you for having me.
4:28
Speaker 3: So, Kenzie, this is a crazy, crazy case. I mean,
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Speaker 3: they're all crazy, but yours is so nuts. And we're
4:37
Speaker 3: going back eighteen years now, two thousand and one. You
4:40
Speaker 3: were a nineteen year old girl in a far away
4:43
Speaker 3: land who was accused of brutally beating and stomping your friend,
4:48
Speaker 3: your roommate, to death. And you don't look like somebody
4:51
Speaker 3: who would stomp a fly to death. I mean, and
4:53
Speaker 3: don't judge a book by its cover.
4:55
Speaker 2: But I mean, I'm not I'm not that kind of person.
5:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, you seem like a pretty gentle soul to me.
5:03
Speaker 3: But let's go back to the beginning and Saul jump
5:07
Speaker 3: in whenever you want. I mean, obviously you've been involved
5:10
Speaker 3: in this case and so many others like it. Do
5:13
Speaker 3: you want to go back and give us a little
5:15
Speaker 3: of the history.
5:16
Speaker 5: Well, you know, eighteen years ago, people really knew nothing
5:18
Speaker 5: about false confessions. But Kenzie's case caught my attention for
5:22
Speaker 5: a few reasons. One, she was a college student, as
5:25
Speaker 5: you say, you know, halfway round the world, and the
5:29
Speaker 5: case made no sense to come back to her. A
5:32
Speaker 5: year later, the case was unsolved, pressure was on the
5:35
Speaker 5: law enforcement and the FBI to solve it, and they
5:38
Speaker 5: came back to Kenzie to interrogate her. And when I
5:41
Speaker 5: read that she confessed, what caught my interest was not
5:44
Speaker 5: just that she agreed to sign a confession. She actually
5:48
Speaker 5: came to believe in her own guilt. She had formed
5:50
Speaker 5: a memory that they enabled, that they facilitated using police
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Speaker 5: interrogation tactics that are highly suggestive and at lawfel in
6:00
Speaker 5: the United States. And so my interest in this case
6:04
Speaker 5: started with the fact that there She was a college
6:07
Speaker 5: student twenty years old at the time that the FBI
6:10
Speaker 5: came and interrogated her free agents in a motel room
6:15
Speaker 5: in West Virginia, asking her to come alone, and for
6:19
Speaker 5: three consecutive days they interrogated her. They lied to her
6:23
Speaker 5: about the evidence, they tinkered with her memory. And so
6:27
Speaker 5: what caught my attention was the fact that not only
6:30
Speaker 5: did she confess, she internalized the belief in that confession,
6:34
Speaker 5: which makes it very, very hard for people later to
6:37
Speaker 5: get past it.
6:38
Speaker 3: So, Kenzy, you are an American person on home soil
6:43
Speaker 3: in West Virginia. Didn't get too much more American than that.
6:45
Speaker 3: I guess you could say, right, hardland stuff. But you
6:48
Speaker 3: were being interviewed on your home turf by people who
6:52
Speaker 3: you would have I think thought would have your back.
6:55
Speaker 3: Like was there even an extradition treaty in place? Like?
6:58
Speaker 3: How did this it happened?
7:01
Speaker 2: The extradition treaty itself was brand new. It had just
7:05
Speaker 2: been I think formulated between the two countries in nineteen
7:07
Speaker 2: ninety eight. And so the crime itself happened in Korea,
7:12
Speaker 2: and all the suspects were Americans, and so the US
7:16
Speaker 2: and Koreans were trying to work together. It wasn't going
7:20
Speaker 2: very well, and that's why the FBI became a liaison.
7:23
Speaker 5: And Jason Kenzie Snyder became the first American ever extradited
7:27
Speaker 5: to Korea wow.
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Speaker 2: Brand new extradition treaty in nineteen ninety eight. I am
7:31
Speaker 2: the first. I believe I am the only, but I
7:34
Speaker 2: don't know that for sure.
7:35
Speaker 3: What a dubious distinction that is.
7:37
Speaker 5: It's important to recognize there's a political context to this story.
7:42
Speaker 5: When the Korean police and army investigators failed to solve
7:46
Speaker 5: the crime. You know, there is a victim, and the
7:48
Speaker 5: victim was American. Her name was Jamie Pennach and she
7:51
Speaker 5: was from Pennsylvania, and her parents, as you can imagine
7:54
Speaker 5: I can't even begin to imagine, were incredibly upset and
7:57
Speaker 5: wanted this crime solved. Senator orl Inspector of Pennsylvania met
8:03
Speaker 5: with Korean authorities to pressure them to solve this crime.
8:07
Speaker 2: Because they're you know, there is that Americans, and we're
8:10
Speaker 2: supposed to be in this together to solve the crime
8:12
Speaker 2: of another American victim.
8:14
Speaker 5: And I don't know what they knew about the details
8:16
Speaker 5: of the case, but in my view, I think they
8:19
Speaker 5: believe they were acting on behalf of the family of
8:21
Speaker 5: the victim.
8:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Kenzie, I mean, mess have been surreal first
8:25
Speaker 3: of all, like, who would ever think that, you know,
8:27
Speaker 3: your roommate would turn up as a corpse, right, and
8:30
Speaker 3: in such a brutal fashion. That alone is a real
8:35
Speaker 3: life nightmare. But then you're back in West Virginia, you know,
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Speaker 3: I'm sure dealing with some trauma related to this, but
8:42
Speaker 3: moving on with your life, and along come these three
8:46
Speaker 3: FBI agents out of nowhere. And I can't imagine at
8:51
Speaker 3: that age, when your brain's not even fully formed, right,
8:53
Speaker 3: you're still we know, the adolescent brain doesn't fully switch over,
8:57
Speaker 3: so to speak, right until you're around twenty five. What
9:00
Speaker 3: was going through your head?
9:01
Speaker 2: I had come back to West Virginia and I was
9:04
Speaker 2: working with troubled youth and I was just trying to
9:08
Speaker 2: get my feet back underneath me again, because as you said,
9:11
Speaker 2: it is a traumatic experience. And then the FBA called
9:14
Speaker 2: me and asked if I could help them further the investigation.
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Speaker 2: So I had gone to the hotel room that day
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Speaker 2: to talk to them to help them, not realizing what
9:22
Speaker 2: they had planned.
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Speaker 3: So yeah, okay, that's a common thing too. And you know, Patty,
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Speaker 3: I want you to jump in here whenever you want,
9:29
Speaker 3: because I know you're knowledgeable about this case and about
9:31
Speaker 3: this subject. That's sort of a common thing as well
9:34
Speaker 3: that we hear in these wrongful conviction cases is that
9:37
Speaker 3: when the interrogation, whether it's local police or FBI agents
9:41
Speaker 3: or whatever, often they don't tell you that you're a suspect, right,
9:45
Speaker 3: And this way you're more inclined to be open. And
9:48
Speaker 3: as Kensey was, she wanted to be helpful. Anyone would
9:51
Speaker 3: want to be helpful, but that instinct can really lead
9:53
Speaker 3: you astray for.
9:54
Speaker 7: Sure, especially when you're not even at a police station
9:57
Speaker 7: or anything like that.
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Speaker 2: So she was at a hotel.
10:00
Speaker 7: Tell, so the lines are blurred even further as to
10:03
Speaker 7: the purpose of my even talking to these agents. You know,
10:07
Speaker 7: she was never even realized that she was a suspect
10:10
Speaker 7: until she had already been talking for at least a day. So, yeah,
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Speaker 7: it is a problem that it's not always clear to
10:17
Speaker 7: a suspect that they're a suspect, and then they can
10:21
Speaker 7: invoke their right to a lawyer if you don't know
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Speaker 7: you're being questioned as a suspect.
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Speaker 3: So, and some people listening would probably wonder whether that's
10:28
Speaker 3: legal for them to take her to a hotel or
10:30
Speaker 3: motel room. I mean it sounds at a minimum unusual, right, yes,
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Speaker 3: And I don't know if it's more or less disorienting
10:38
Speaker 3: than being in one of those rooms that you always
10:40
Speaker 3: see on TV, right, the interrogation rooms, the window lists.
10:43
Speaker 3: You know, it just seems odd. I mean a motel room,
10:46
Speaker 3: there's a bed, there's a TV. It's like, it seems odd.
10:49
Speaker 5: Yes, it feels odd, and all of the red flags
10:52
Speaker 5: that normally would go up. She's not technically in custody,
10:56
Speaker 5: so they don't have to mirandize her.
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Speaker 3: So I'm trying to picture this, Kenzie. You're interrogated for
11:01
Speaker 3: that first day for hours and hours I assume.
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Speaker 2: Right, it wasn't an interrogation. It was just questioning and
11:07
Speaker 2: getting together and seeing how your day was, how was
11:09
Speaker 2: your year, trying to see how I'd been sleeping, you know,
11:14
Speaker 2: if I'd had any repercussions from seeing her body, and
11:19
Speaker 2: just trying to be my friend.
11:21
Speaker 5: It was your sense that they cared about you.
11:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, they wanted to see how I was doing. It
11:25
Speaker 2: had been a year no one had checked up on me,
11:27
Speaker 2: and they were just checking up on me. At one
11:29
Speaker 2: point one of the investigators said that he thought of
11:31
Speaker 2: me like a sister.
11:35
Speaker 3: And then the second day did it become clear to
11:37
Speaker 3: you that they had a different idea or motive or
11:40
Speaker 3: what I want to call it.
11:41
Speaker 2: Part Way through the second day, the second day still
11:43
Speaker 2: started with friendly conversation. I brought ice cream because I
11:47
Speaker 2: thought they were my friends, and we had ice cream
11:50
Speaker 2: and talked about they'd asked me to do a homework
11:52
Speaker 2: assignment when I left the first day, writing out everything
11:56
Speaker 2: that I had gone through that night, the sequence of events,
12:00
Speaker 2: and then we were just reading that and having ice
12:02
Speaker 2: cream when we first got there in the hotel room
12:04
Speaker 2: on the second day.
12:05
Speaker 3: That's sort of weirdly chilling to me, I mean, and
12:08
Speaker 3: chilling no pun intended, but even still, I mean, it
12:11
Speaker 3: feels a little sick, right, the idea of you bringing
12:13
Speaker 3: the ice cream and ice cream having you know, it's
12:16
Speaker 3: not something you do with people that you aren't well
12:18
Speaker 3: acquainted with in general. Right, it reminds us all of
12:21
Speaker 3: our youth, right on my trips at Baskin Robbins and whatnot.
12:24
Speaker 3: But that's beside the point. So, Saul, what do you
12:26
Speaker 3: think was really going on here? Like this was this
12:29
Speaker 3: all scripted? Did they come in? This was scripted, So
12:31
Speaker 3: they had the idea before they went in the first day,
12:33
Speaker 3: we're going to gain her trust, right.
12:35
Speaker 5: We're going to be friendly, we're going to establish rapport.
12:38
Speaker 5: We're going to gain her trust. That sounds like a
12:41
Speaker 5: very reasonable tactic for an interrogator to use, and it is.
12:46
Speaker 5: But now look at the nefarious side of establishing rapport
12:50
Speaker 5: in that way and gaining her trust as a predicate
12:54
Speaker 5: for what will happen on day two. So if you
12:56
Speaker 5: think of day one as just a friendly interview, she
12:59
Speaker 5: come back into day two, They ask her to return,
13:02
Speaker 5: and she does alone. She comes back day two with
13:05
Speaker 5: ice cream. But what she doesn't realize is day two
13:08
Speaker 5: is not going to be an interview anymore. It's going
13:10
Speaker 5: to be an accusatory interrogation. And it's going to be
13:13
Speaker 5: the kind of interrogation where they accuse her with certainty,
13:17
Speaker 5: we know you did this. They're going to lie about evidence,
13:20
Speaker 5: they're going to point to apparent contradictions, and they're going
13:24
Speaker 5: to tinker with her memory. From a psychological perspective, here's
13:28
Speaker 5: the problem. They gained her trust and then they exploited
13:33
Speaker 5: that trust. That they gained because when you have somebody's trust,
13:37
Speaker 5: you become a credible source. So when somebody you trust
13:42
Speaker 5: becomes credible and that person of credibility starts to lie
13:45
Speaker 5: about the evidence, you almost have no choice but to
13:49
Speaker 5: believe the lie and wonder, well, I don't know how
13:52
Speaker 5: I can reconcile that information you just gave me with
13:56
Speaker 5: the fact that I don't remember things that way. So
13:59
Speaker 5: they gain their her trust on day one as a
14:02
Speaker 5: predicate for manipulating her on day two, And of course
14:06
Speaker 5: at some point on day two when it becomes clear
14:09
Speaker 5: that she's not a witness but a suspect, it would
14:12
Speaker 5: seem to me at some point the alarm bells would
14:14
Speaker 5: go off and you'd realize I need help.
14:16
Speaker 2: In the second day, shortly after we got there, after
14:19
Speaker 2: we'd read the statement and had our ice cream, we'd
14:24
Speaker 2: gone over the statement a little bit, and they asked
14:25
Speaker 2: if they could show me something, and they showed me
14:27
Speaker 2: some like a little video of the hotel room and
14:30
Speaker 2: walked around in it so I could see it better.
14:32
Speaker 2: And then they had like a photo album of some
14:34
Speaker 2: of the crime scene photos, and when we're looking at them,
14:38
Speaker 2: they were saying, I can't remember the phrasing. But at
14:42
Speaker 2: one point I asked, are you saying I did it?
14:46
Speaker 2: And they just kind of looked at me and shrugged.
14:47
Speaker 2: And at that point I knew that I needed to
14:50
Speaker 2: get out of the room. I asked them if I
14:52
Speaker 2: could leave, and I went out of the hotel room
14:55
Speaker 2: and I was only gone a few seconds and I
14:58
Speaker 2: came back in and I asked, said, do I need
15:00
Speaker 2: to get a lawyer? That's what I asked, And they said,
15:03
Speaker 2: if you get one, we can't say that you cooperated.
15:06
Speaker 3: Wow. That's some reverse psychology there, too, isn't it. Right?
15:11
Speaker 3: That was a very well chosen phrase. I mean, you know,
15:15
Speaker 3: not in terms of justice, but in terms of if
15:17
Speaker 3: for what the goal was that they were trying to get,
15:19
Speaker 3: which was a confession, that would be the perfect thing
15:21
Speaker 3: to say, because now you're disoriented. You don't know. There's
15:23
Speaker 3: no right answer to that, right, I mean, and we
15:25
Speaker 3: see this in false confessions, right. They sort of create
15:28
Speaker 3: this trap with words where there is no door that's open,
15:32
Speaker 3: and so you have to choose between bad options, like
15:34
Speaker 3: which kind of cancer do you want? Right? Right, I'm
15:37
Speaker 3: actually sitting there like I want to go back in
15:39
Speaker 3: time and pull you away and say don't go back there, right, like,
15:42
Speaker 3: don't go.
15:43
Speaker 2: Well, I wish I could have. When I left the room,
15:44
Speaker 2: I understand that they were afraid that I wouldn't come
15:46
Speaker 2: back in because it would have been over for them.
15:49
Speaker 2: So I wish I wouldn't have gone back in the room.
15:51
Speaker 2: But when I did, you know, they said, if you
15:53
Speaker 2: get a lawyer, then we can't say that you cooperated.
15:56
Speaker 2: Then we sat down and I was sitting in like
15:58
Speaker 2: the easy chair in the hotel room, so a comfortable seat,
16:01
Speaker 2: and I was tired from work the day before and
16:04
Speaker 2: then staying up late doing the homework assignment that they
16:07
Speaker 2: asked for and waking up early and to go to
16:10
Speaker 2: work before this. So I was sitting in the chair
16:13
Speaker 2: and they brought in an FBI agent who specialized in
16:16
Speaker 2: this field, and he said, we can do this two ways.
16:19
Speaker 2: We can either do it the hard way or the
16:21
Speaker 2: easy way. And I said, well, let's do it the
16:23
Speaker 2: easy way, and that way you'll know I didn't do
16:25
Speaker 2: this and we can get on with our day. So
16:27
Speaker 2: he said, well, let's go through the events and emotionally
16:30
Speaker 2: talk about how we feel when we were, you know,
16:33
Speaker 2: at the bar and when you were drinking, and how
16:35
Speaker 2: did you feel when you're walking home with Jamie on
16:37
Speaker 2: your arm? And then we got to the part where
16:41
Speaker 2: where she was undressed and to take a shower when
16:43
Speaker 2: I left her, and they were trying to get into
16:45
Speaker 2: how I felt about that, and I was like, well,
16:48
Speaker 2: I'm fine. I said, I was helping her out. Now
16:50
Speaker 2: I'm leaving. And they said, well, this isn't working. Let's
16:53
Speaker 2: do it the hard way. And so they would ask
16:55
Speaker 2: me these questions, like direct questions. So what was she
17:00
Speaker 2: wearing when you left her? And I said that she
17:03
Speaker 2: was in her brawn or underwear to take the shower,
17:05
Speaker 2: and they said, no, that's not right. And I remember
17:08
Speaker 2: sitting there and I'm like, but she was like, I
17:11
Speaker 2: have memories of her. I have memories of what she
17:17
Speaker 2: was wearing when I left her.
17:21
Speaker 3: She's me.
17:24
Speaker 2: And they said, no, that's wrong. And I remember referencing
17:27
Speaker 2: back to the photos that they had shown me, and
17:30
Speaker 2: one of them was her pants with her underwear inside
17:33
Speaker 2: of them, and I was like, well, in my head,
17:36
Speaker 2: I said, well, obviously she did take them off at
17:38
Speaker 2: some point. So I said in the bathroom, because that's
17:41
Speaker 2: where the picture was taken, and her underwear was in
17:44
Speaker 2: her pants, so obviously it had happened, even though that's
17:48
Speaker 2: not what she looked like when I left her. But
17:51
Speaker 2: it was like this wedge that opened up the floodgates
17:54
Speaker 2: of me doubting the memories that I had had and
17:58
Speaker 2: replacing them with this like multiple choice questioning that they
18:03
Speaker 2: were giving me. And if I gave them an answer
18:05
Speaker 2: that they didn't like, then they'd say, no, that didn't happen.
18:08
Speaker 2: They'd asked me a new question, they didn't like that answer. No,
18:11
Speaker 2: that's not how it happened. And I kept kind of
18:12
Speaker 2: like winding my way through their questions, trying to make
18:17
Speaker 2: all I'd spent a week in the police station in
18:20
Speaker 2: Korea after this crime, seeing all of all the crime
18:25
Speaker 2: scene photos. I had seen the crime scene itself. We'd
18:28
Speaker 2: stayed in the hotel room, and so all these pieces
18:30
Speaker 2: had been put together for me to recreate what they
18:33
Speaker 2: wanted me to be saying, So.
18:36
Speaker 3: Day three, you end up signing this false confession.
18:40
Speaker 2: Well, the second day they had the confession, and so
18:43
Speaker 2: that night, I know it sounds crazy, I started like
18:50
Speaker 2: making it more mine, or making it more real, or
18:52
Speaker 2: making it more believable, eve into myself. And so on
18:56
Speaker 2: the third day we met back and they want led
19:00
Speaker 2: me to narrate that confession, and they wrote it down,
19:04
Speaker 2: still guided a little bit with their assistance, like we
19:07
Speaker 2: didn't you say something about I think there was a rag?
19:10
Speaker 2: Didn't you say something about a rag? And so then
19:12
Speaker 2: I would fill that in and then I signed that
19:14
Speaker 2: confession and that's the one that they submit it for
19:17
Speaker 2: me to be arrested.
19:18
Speaker 3: It sounds to me like there's elements here of Stockholm
19:21
Speaker 3: syndrome too.
19:22
Speaker 5: Now, yes, they didn't just manipulate her compliance, they manipulated
19:27
Speaker 5: her memory. It's form of brainwashing.
19:30
Speaker 3: And you know, I.
19:31
Speaker 5: Think what happened here is the hardest type of false
19:35
Speaker 5: confession for anybody to understand. It's one thing to argue
19:38
Speaker 5: that I can coerce you by stress, by promises, by
19:42
Speaker 5: threats real or implied, to agree to confess to something
19:47
Speaker 5: you didn't do. It's a whole other game to argue
19:51
Speaker 5: that I cannot only get you to confess, I can
19:53
Speaker 5: get you to believe in your guilt. And yet those
19:56
Speaker 5: internalized false confessions throughout history, there are several high profile
20:02
Speaker 5: cases like it. When I heard what was done to
20:05
Speaker 5: Kenzi and the way she internalized the belief in her
20:08
Speaker 5: guilt to a point where I read an account Kenzi
20:11
Speaker 5: where you said it was like, I have two memories.
20:16
Speaker 5: One I think is the real one in color with voices,
20:19
Speaker 5: and the other is kind of a black and white film.
20:21
Speaker 5: I think was how you put it, yeah.
20:23
Speaker 2: Like still's being put together, whereas the other one, like
20:26
Speaker 2: you have the emotions attached to them, you know what,
20:28
Speaker 2: it felt like, it's more colorful. The other one had
20:31
Speaker 2: like clouds around it. As I said, still images being
20:35
Speaker 2: put together, like photos. The images that I had in
20:38
Speaker 2: my head from what they had worked their way through.
20:41
Speaker 2: The confession didn't feel like something. It still didn't feel
20:44
Speaker 2: like something that I would ever do. But I didn't
20:46
Speaker 2: understand how could I confess to something that I didn't do.
20:50
Speaker 3: I gotta ask when in between day one and day two,
20:53
Speaker 3: or day two and day three, or at what point
20:55
Speaker 3: did you call your dad or your mom or somebody
20:58
Speaker 3: that you trust and say, this is going crazy? What's
21:01
Speaker 3: I don't know what to do here? I need your help.
21:04
Speaker 2: My father and I didn't have the best relationship, but
21:06
Speaker 2: he was in Florida and my mom was in Thailand.
21:08
Speaker 2: I didn't have anyone to call.
21:11
Speaker 3: Well, so you're really all alone. I mean, that's it's
21:15
Speaker 3: a tough thing to face, no matter how much support
21:18
Speaker 3: you have. But that I think that obviously contributed to it,
21:20
Speaker 3: because I have to believe that if you had, especially
21:24
Speaker 3: you know, parents, you know, who were educated as you did,
21:27
Speaker 3: I would certainly hope that they would have intervened. But
21:30
Speaker 3: this is really the perfect storm.
21:31
Speaker 5: And did they ask you not to talk to anyone
21:34
Speaker 5: between days or after?
21:36
Speaker 2: On the third day after the confession, they asked me
21:38
Speaker 2: not to talk about it to anyone because they didn't
21:40
Speaker 2: even know if I could be if anything could happen
21:42
Speaker 2: with this. The FBI, they then had to go to
21:45
Speaker 2: Korea with a confession and say, hey, we have a confession.
21:49
Speaker 2: What do you want to do with this? Do you
21:51
Speaker 2: want this person to come back to Korea to go
21:54
Speaker 2: to trial to possibly face you know, time for a
21:57
Speaker 2: crime that was committed on your soil. Come to find out,
22:01
Speaker 2: they didn't really even have permission to come and speak
22:03
Speaker 2: with me. It was still a Korean case and they
22:05
Speaker 2: shouldn't have been talking to me. So after the confession,
22:09
Speaker 2: that's why it took me about three weeks to get
22:12
Speaker 2: arrested because everything took so long, asking for permission, coming
22:15
Speaker 2: back and saying well, why were you even talking to her?
22:18
Speaker 2: And so I wasn't arrested until February twenty eight, even
22:21
Speaker 2: though this interrogational questioning happened February sixth.
22:24
Speaker 5: And in that time, you didn't talk to parents, friends,
22:28
Speaker 5: counselor lawyer.
22:29
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
22:30
Speaker 5: So all those external reality cues that will normally rerain
22:33
Speaker 5: you in she didn't have those.
22:36
Speaker 2: No, my friends knew that I was upset. I mean
22:39
Speaker 2: after the confession, they gave me a bottle of water
22:41
Speaker 2: and a Snickers bar, and so I'm holding on this
22:43
Speaker 2: Snicker for hours, and I went to a friend's house
22:45
Speaker 2: and I was just sitting on their couch. But I
22:48
Speaker 2: couldn't tell them.
22:50
Speaker 3: I mean, here, you are a young girl nineteen, right,
22:53
Speaker 3: overwhelmed with three FBI agents, right, And when you say FBI,
22:57
Speaker 3: I think all of us feel like WHOA Like FBI's
23:00
Speaker 3: still carries that connotation, even while we know they're flawed
23:02
Speaker 3: human beings like everyone else, but their FBI agents. We
23:06
Speaker 3: want to believe in the FBI. We want to believe
23:08
Speaker 3: that they are you know, good, Yeah, you know, like honorable,
23:12
Speaker 3: higher standard everything else. Right, But we know from when
23:16
Speaker 3: Saul and I were talking, we were all talking about
23:18
Speaker 3: this before we came in the studio. We know from
23:20
Speaker 3: examples like the Madrid bombing and others that important to
23:24
Speaker 3: note that in the Madrid bombing case, and they ended
23:26
Speaker 3: up arresting a lawyer from Oregon and the FBI claimed
23:29
Speaker 3: they had their man and the fingerprints, manch and all
23:31
Speaker 3: this other stuff, and turnouty'd never been to Madrid and
23:33
Speaker 3: he was acquitted. They can be as dead wrong as anyone.
23:37
Speaker 3: And there's tons of proof of this now. I mean,
23:40
Speaker 3: there's that study that came out of several years ago,
23:43
Speaker 3: right about the hair analysis. Yes, and do you want
23:46
Speaker 3: to talk about that for a second, because I think
23:47
Speaker 3: while we're on the subject of a FBI, let's get
23:48
Speaker 3: that off our chest. Yeah.
23:50
Speaker 5: Well, you know, it's interesting when when police, including the FBI,
23:54
Speaker 5: form a judgment a presumption of guilt, it biases the
23:58
Speaker 5: way they view other kinds of evidence. And in fact,
24:00
Speaker 5: there's a whole lot of research now that psychologists have
24:04
Speaker 5: done in the laboratory and in the field showing that
24:06
Speaker 5: when you bring forensic examiners in and insert a presumption
24:11
Speaker 5: of guilt or presumption of innocence into their analysis, whether
24:14
Speaker 5: that analysis is to make a handwriting judgment or a
24:17
Speaker 5: fingerprint judgment, or a judgment about tire tracks or bite marks.
24:22
Speaker 5: You can alter their judgment by giving them contextual information.
24:26
Speaker 5: Do those two stimulus patterns match well? If the suspect
24:30
Speaker 5: confess they did? And so what happened in Kenzie's case,
24:35
Speaker 5: in some ways is even worse. There was no physical
24:38
Speaker 5: evidence that linked her. In fact, there was every indication
24:41
Speaker 5: that there were one or two men involved in this murder.
24:45
Speaker 5: Male voices were heard screaming at about the time of
24:49
Speaker 5: the murder, A male was seen running from the motel
24:53
Speaker 5: with blood on his pants at about that time. There
24:57
Speaker 5: was every indication that this was a crime, and a
25:00
Speaker 5: man to go back to Kenzi a year later because
25:03
Speaker 5: they failed to solve the crime just made no sense.
25:06
Speaker 5: There was no physical evidence. When you look at the
25:09
Speaker 5: photos of the crime scene and how bloody it was,
25:12
Speaker 5: it's inconceivable that that could have happened and not a
25:16
Speaker 5: trace of that blood remained on her clothing. Inconceivable.
25:20
Speaker 2: I was in the exact same clothes while I was
25:23
Speaker 2: in the police station in Korea, from the night before.
25:25
Speaker 2: It was in the same clothes, and I didn't have
25:27
Speaker 2: any blood on my pants, or I wouldn't have been
25:29
Speaker 2: able to leave Korea in the first place. Not to
25:32
Speaker 2: mention my shoes, I only had one pair of shoes
25:34
Speaker 2: with me in Korea, and I was wearing them the
25:36
Speaker 2: entire time. I was in the police station and with
25:38
Speaker 2: the Army CID, and they still let me leave the country.
25:41
Speaker 2: And only a year later did they come back and
25:43
Speaker 2: talk to me.
25:44
Speaker 5: So there was no physical evidence, There were no witnesses.
25:47
Speaker 5: Kenzie had no background of violence. She was a class
25:50
Speaker 5: A student aspiring to be a teacher. There was absolutely
25:54
Speaker 5: no basis for suspicion when they called her out of
25:58
Speaker 5: the blue to talk to her in West Vine, Virginia.
26:00
Speaker 3: And not only was there I mean we say there's
26:02
Speaker 3: absence of evidence, there actually was evidence in the opposite direction, right,
26:06
Speaker 3: I mean you could say that if there's no blood
26:08
Speaker 3: on your clothes and you're accused of beating someone to death,
26:10
Speaker 3: that should be dispositive, right, that should actually be like, Okay, well,
26:14
Speaker 3: let's rule her out and keep it moving and go
26:16
Speaker 3: find out who did this.
26:17
Speaker 5: And just for the record, Korean police working with Army
26:21
Speaker 5: investigators because there were a lot of military guys in
26:24
Speaker 5: the bars that night and nearby that motel. So the
26:27
Speaker 5: army investigators became involved along with Korean police, and they
26:31
Speaker 5: did dismiss Kenzie as a suspect. It was over when
26:34
Speaker 5: she went home. It was one year later when the
26:37
Speaker 5: FBI became involved that suddenly everything changed.
26:40
Speaker 3: Do you think that anyone, or all three or none
26:45
Speaker 3: of the FBI agents believed going into that room that
26:49
Speaker 3: she was guilty?
26:54
Speaker 5: The human mind is an interesting thing. I'm not a
26:57
Speaker 5: mind reader. I don't know whether they were coldheartedly closing
27:03
Speaker 5: a case without any regard for the truth, or whether
27:07
Speaker 5: they had convinced themselves through their investigation that, in fact,
27:12
Speaker 5: she must be the culprit. I don't know the same
27:17
Speaker 5: mechanisms you described earlier that led the FBI to misidentify
27:23
Speaker 5: fingerprints in the Madrid bomber case led these agents to
27:28
Speaker 5: misidentify her as their suspect. And once a presumption of
27:32
Speaker 5: guilt kicks in, what happens next is anybody's guests. They
27:36
Speaker 5: can make that reality their own.
27:39
Speaker 3: And Kenzie, I know this is difficult for you to
27:41
Speaker 3: talk about even now, eighteen years later, and I mean,
27:44
Speaker 3: I can understand that as well as someone can understand
27:46
Speaker 3: it who hasn't been through it. But you were then
27:50
Speaker 3: arrested three weeks later and taken to jail.
27:53
Speaker 2: Correct.
27:54
Speaker 3: Here you are one day, you're working with troubled kids,
27:57
Speaker 3: making your way in the world, dealing with the normal
28:00
Speaker 3: stresses of a twenty year old. I'm sure you know
28:02
Speaker 3: doing good, right, more so than I was in your age.
28:05
Speaker 3: And the next thing you know, you're in jail for
28:08
Speaker 3: something you didn't do, but you don't even know if
28:09
Speaker 3: you did it anymore. I mean, what And you were
28:12
Speaker 3: there for ten months, right?
28:13
Speaker 2: I was there for ten months, which allowed me to
28:17
Speaker 2: It was a long time, but it allowed me to
28:19
Speaker 2: kind of separate those memories from and get more confident
28:25
Speaker 2: in the fact that I know that the memories that
28:27
Speaker 2: I had going into that hotel room that day are
28:29
Speaker 2: the real memories. And I was able to separate a
28:32
Speaker 2: little bit from that confession, but it still wasn't complete.
28:34
Speaker 2: Even by the time of the extradition hearing, I still
28:36
Speaker 2: hadn't completely removed that understanding that the confession wasn't real.
28:41
Speaker 2: And I think at my hearing, I think I said
28:43
Speaker 2: something along the lines of not by the memories that
28:46
Speaker 2: I hold true when they asked me if the confession
28:47
Speaker 2: was real, so I still had some cloud around it.
28:51
Speaker 3: And so the.
28:51
Speaker 2: Extradition hearing itself that happened actually in October of that year,
28:57
Speaker 2: was basically just asking was Kinsey Snyder in Korea at
29:00
Speaker 2: the time, so it's not even a guilt or innocence. Yes,
29:03
Speaker 2: I was in Korea. So then you are sent over
29:06
Speaker 2: to Korea itself and then you go through their legal proceedings.
29:09
Speaker 2: And it wasn't until I went back to Korea now
29:12
Speaker 2: after the extradition, and they wanted me to reenact some
29:16
Speaker 2: of the images. The Korean police wanted me to go
29:19
Speaker 2: back to the hotel room and reenact the confession. And
29:22
Speaker 2: I walked into the hotel room, and at that point
29:24
Speaker 2: I knew one hundred percent that that confession was completely wrong,
29:27
Speaker 2: and I didn't do it because none of the still
29:31
Speaker 2: images that I had in my head matched that hotel
29:34
Speaker 2: room in the way that confession worked out didn't make
29:38
Speaker 2: any sense anymore. And so at that point I felt
29:42
Speaker 2: a lot more empowered, a lot more confident again, a
29:45
Speaker 2: lot stronger. And the Korean police didn't like that so
29:48
Speaker 2: much because they were really hoping I would reconfess in Korea,
29:52
Speaker 2: and they got mad at me because you had a
29:54
Speaker 2: ten day period where you were talking to the police
29:56
Speaker 2: again and they were going over the evidence again and reinterviewing,
30:00
Speaker 2: and they really wanted a confession then, and they kept
30:04
Speaker 2: asking me, well, when did you do this? And I
30:06
Speaker 2: said I didn't. I did not kill Jamie. And at
30:08
Speaker 2: one point one of the police officers said, well, quld
30:11
Speaker 2: say that? Say something different? Because I was as I said,
30:14
Speaker 2: I felt more in control again at that point, and
30:17
Speaker 2: I refused, even though they told me that if I
30:19
Speaker 2: confessed again at this point, it would be easier on
30:22
Speaker 2: me and I would probably only be looking at seven
30:24
Speaker 2: or eight years versus looking at the death penalty if
30:26
Speaker 2: I went to trial and I lost. But I didn't
30:30
Speaker 2: want to lose that control again. I have to look
30:35
Speaker 2: at myself every day in the mirror, and I couldn't
30:37
Speaker 2: lie again, and I knew that confession was a lie.
30:50
Speaker 3: So were you in custody in South Korea? Yes, And
30:53
Speaker 3: that's got to be I.
30:56
Speaker 2: Can't imagine it's not being in jail in the United States.
31:00
Speaker 2: We don't treat our inmates like their people, and so
31:04
Speaker 2: when I got to go to Korea while it was different,
31:07
Speaker 2: and that's something I would want to do again. There's
31:09
Speaker 2: still a sense of humanity in their prisons, in their jails.
31:13
Speaker 3: Interesting, Yeah, that's well said. We don't treat our inmates
31:16
Speaker 3: like their people. We flip a switch. As soon as
31:18
Speaker 3: you're in the system. You're no longer human.
31:21
Speaker 2: You're just a number now.
31:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's weird because if that's the right way
31:26
Speaker 3: to do it, then we have to ascribe to the
31:29
Speaker 3: theory that Americans are worse people than any other people
31:33
Speaker 3: in the world, right, that were among the most evil
31:36
Speaker 3: people in the world, and that we need to be
31:38
Speaker 3: treated like subhumans. But it starts before you're convicted.
31:42
Speaker 2: Well, it even starts in the jails. If we believe
31:45
Speaker 2: that you're innocent and to proven guilty, then if you
31:47
Speaker 2: want to treat people like they're not people, that should
31:49
Speaker 2: be in prisons, if you're going to do it at all,
31:51
Speaker 2: I'm not saying you should. But in jail, supposedly you're innocent.
31:54
Speaker 2: So then why are we starting then.
31:57
Speaker 3: Well, you shouldn't. It should never start.
31:58
Speaker 2: You shouldn't start.
31:59
Speaker 3: I mean, I think there's more and more awareness of
32:01
Speaker 3: that now and there's a lot of movement with correction
32:04
Speaker 3: officials going to European countries and learning about how they
32:07
Speaker 3: did over there, and there's a reason why their recidivism
32:09
Speaker 3: rate is a tiny fraction of arts. It's because they
32:11
Speaker 3: treat their people who are incarcerate over there like human
32:14
Speaker 3: beings and they come out and what do you know,
32:17
Speaker 3: they adapt better and they end up not reoffending. And yeah,
32:21
Speaker 3: but that's, like I said, that's a whole other subject.
32:24
Speaker 3: So it's interesting that you went back to the room
32:27
Speaker 3: where this gruesome crime occurred and that's what really crystallized
32:30
Speaker 3: in your mind that you could not have done this.
32:33
Speaker 3: It's just fascinating as to how the brain works. And
32:38
Speaker 3: doesn't you know. I'm reading this wonderful book called Burned.
32:41
Speaker 3: I mean, it's wonderful. It's terrible also, but it's an
32:43
Speaker 3: amazing book by Pulitzer Prize winning author and Them Humes,
32:48
Speaker 3: and it's about an arson case, terrible case Juliane Taylor
32:51
Speaker 3: in California. But in it he talks about memory and
32:56
Speaker 3: how it can be manipulated. And you know, one of
32:58
Speaker 3: the things I read was either there in New Yorker
33:00
Speaker 3: story about the Nebraska case. Recently where six people falsely
33:05
Speaker 3: confessed to the brutal rape and murder of an old woman,
33:08
Speaker 3: and many of them, I think all but one, actually
33:11
Speaker 3: came to believe that they did it, even though DNA
33:14
Speaker 3: proved with an error rate. They said in the article
33:16
Speaker 3: of one to nine hundred and fifty one quintillion that
33:20
Speaker 3: the actual killer was a serial rapist murderer. But there's
33:24
Speaker 3: a couple of them that's still even after an apology,
33:26
Speaker 3: an official apology from the Attorney General of Nebraska, which
33:29
Speaker 3: those are hard to come by, some of them still
33:32
Speaker 3: believe that they had something to do with this because
33:34
Speaker 3: they've been so totally brainwashed. But what I did read
33:37
Speaker 3: is that I think they said that some statistic like
33:40
Speaker 3: seventy percent of people can be manipulate. I don't know
33:43
Speaker 3: how they figured this out into believing that a false
33:46
Speaker 3: memory is real. You know, that's a scary number.
33:49
Speaker 5: Under the right or wrong circumstances, you can get almost
33:54
Speaker 5: anybody to do that. You know, you're referring to the
33:57
Speaker 5: beatro six case, which is dramatic for a a whole
34:00
Speaker 5: different reason. Kenzi eventually gave up on that memory, and
34:04
Speaker 5: I think it's interesting as to how it happened, but
34:06
Speaker 5: eventually she came to grasp reality again in the Beatrice six,
34:11
Speaker 5: as you said, right on through being exonerated and receiving
34:15
Speaker 5: an apology. There was a precious quote when that first
34:18
Speaker 5: happened from one of those exoneries. She said something like, Wow,
34:22
Speaker 5: I guess I didn't do this, because right to that
34:25
Speaker 5: moment she continued to believe that she did it. And
34:28
Speaker 5: so that's how powerful that process can be. And when
34:32
Speaker 5: you look at a case like Kenzie's, they were drinking
34:36
Speaker 5: that night, there was a lot going on. It was confusing.
34:39
Speaker 5: It was a year ago now, and then the FBI
34:42
Speaker 5: comes in and they start to mischaracterize the evidence and
34:47
Speaker 5: it's confusing to her and she can't find a way
34:50
Speaker 5: to bridge their version of reality, their version of the facts,
34:55
Speaker 5: with her lack of memory of their version. She has
34:58
Speaker 5: a different memory. And I believe they actually assisted you
35:02
Speaker 5: in terms of how to bridge their version of the
35:05
Speaker 5: facts with your memory.
35:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, they said, the person who had done this may
35:09
Speaker 2: have been feeling really guilty, but they may not have
35:12
Speaker 2: any memory of it because it was too traumatic and
35:14
Speaker 2: so the brain would have suppressed it. So to help
35:16
Speaker 2: them let go of that guilt, and feel better. They
35:19
Speaker 2: should confess.
35:21
Speaker 3: That's what they did. In the Beatrix six case. Many
35:23
Speaker 3: of those people the accused had been abused as children,
35:25
Speaker 3: and they said, you're blocking it out the same way
35:27
Speaker 3: you blocked out the abuse. I mean, they played on that.
35:30
Speaker 3: That's a really sick way to go, right, to sort
35:34
Speaker 3: of re traumatize. I mean, I don't even know what
35:37
Speaker 3: the word is from that, but yeah, it's crazy because
35:41
Speaker 3: I think most people listening at home or probably over
35:43
Speaker 3: in their cars whatever, probably like, well, I could see
35:46
Speaker 3: confusing or having a memory lapse or you know about
35:50
Speaker 3: some mundane type of thing. But it's really crazy to
35:55
Speaker 3: think how someone could be led to believe that they
35:59
Speaker 3: someone who's never done anything violent in their life, could
36:01
Speaker 3: be led to believe that they beat and stomped their
36:04
Speaker 3: roommate to death. That is really scary. And we know
36:07
Speaker 3: the malleability of memory and the influence. What you were
36:10
Speaker 3: talking about before, which I think is such an important
36:12
Speaker 3: point and why we need to have, you know, objective
36:16
Speaker 3: analysts at every phase of testing, forensic testing, et cetera,
36:20
Speaker 3: et cetera, is that we know from every area of life,
36:24
Speaker 3: right if you even when it comes to like I
36:26
Speaker 3: saw a movie about wine. I think it was Bottle
36:29
Speaker 3: Shock or something right, where they did that test where
36:31
Speaker 3: they blindfolded something well famous somoliers, and they gave them
36:34
Speaker 3: like seven dollars wine and they gave them like the
36:37
Speaker 3: top wine from Italy or France, and they couldn't tell
36:41
Speaker 3: which was which. Someone couldn't tell if it was white
36:43
Speaker 3: or red with the blindfold because they told them. And
36:46
Speaker 3: so we know that that wine tastes. And I'll get
36:49
Speaker 3: letters from the the Vintnor's Association, right, But we know
36:52
Speaker 3: that wine taste about as good as you expected to write.
36:55
Speaker 3: And we know that tilanol works better than regular aspirin
36:58
Speaker 3: if you know it's tilanol, right, And here I come
37:00
Speaker 3: with another loss, so you'll have to defend me anyway.
37:04
Speaker 3: So two of the most persuasive pieces of quote unquote
37:08
Speaker 3: evidence that can be and are presented in courtrooms thousands
37:11
Speaker 3: and thousands cents one thousand times a day, are confessions
37:15
Speaker 3: and even more so I was identification. That's not the
37:17
Speaker 3: case here, Ironically, those are two of the most unreliable
37:20
Speaker 3: forms of evidence that there can be. So I guess
37:24
Speaker 3: what I want to ask is for everyone that's listening,
37:29
Speaker 3: and people have heard me say this before. Everyone that's
37:31
Speaker 3: listening to us right now, at some point in the
37:34
Speaker 3: future is going to get a jury duty notice, and
37:37
Speaker 3: after they get over the initial grumpiness about having received
37:40
Speaker 3: that thing in the mail, they're going to hopefully go
37:43
Speaker 3: and show up and do their duty. And we know
37:46
Speaker 3: that there have been cases like Jeffrey Dskovics, where there
37:50
Speaker 3: were jurors who were swayed by his false confession so
37:54
Speaker 3: much so that they disregarded scientific proof that was presented
37:58
Speaker 3: at his original trial that proved without any doubt that
38:03
Speaker 3: he could not have committed this brutal rape and murder
38:05
Speaker 3: of a fifteen year old girl, and they convicted him anyway.
38:09
Speaker 3: So that's an extreme case. But four jurors, when they're
38:14
Speaker 3: in a courtroom and there's a confession, and they're up
38:17
Speaker 3: there and they're saying nothing else, this defense attorney says
38:21
Speaker 3: matters because this person is confessed, and therefore you have
38:26
Speaker 3: to convict. How can somebody who's not a psychologist or
38:31
Speaker 3: a trained expert in criminal justice, how can they interpret
38:35
Speaker 3: that information? How can they make a better decision.
38:38
Speaker 5: They need to understand what the sound and sight of
38:41
Speaker 5: a false confession really is. For example, here's one single
38:45
Speaker 5: statistic that should scare the hell out of everybody, and
38:49
Speaker 5: it is the fact that ninety five percent of known
38:52
Speaker 5: false confessions taken right out of the DNA exoneration case
38:56
Speaker 5: files of the Innocence Project, ninety five percent of known
38:59
Speaker 5: fault confessions contained facts about the crime that were spot
39:04
Speaker 5: on accurate that the public didn't know about. And so
39:08
Speaker 5: what happens when a jury comes into the courtroom and
39:11
Speaker 5: they've got a defendant who said I'm innocent. They coerced
39:14
Speaker 5: my statement. The jury can understand the notion of coercion,
39:19
Speaker 5: but they ultimately come down to this question, Well, he
39:22
Speaker 5: says he's innocent, but then how did he know those things? Well,
39:26
Speaker 5: you know what, they don't know how he knowed those
39:28
Speaker 5: things unless they can see an entire recording from start
39:32
Speaker 5: to finish of every transaction between the police and the suspect.
39:37
Speaker 5: In Kenzie's case, the FBI agent's account of what happened
39:41
Speaker 5: in those three days neglected to mention that they told
39:44
Speaker 5: her about repression and blacking things out. They neglected some
39:47
Speaker 5: of the details that a jury would need to know
39:49
Speaker 5: to evaluate that statement. So I think a jury needs
39:53
Speaker 5: to know that unless you're watching the entire process, not
39:56
Speaker 5: just the final production that is scripted and re hearst
40:01
Speaker 5: for public consumption. But unless they see the hours and
40:04
Speaker 5: hours off camera that preceded that, they can't possibly competent
40:10
Speaker 5: to make a judgment of that confession. They need to
40:13
Speaker 5: demand everything. And if police in one of those states
40:17
Speaker 5: that requires or doesn't require recording had failed to record
40:21
Speaker 5: the interrogation, the jury should react with an ultra degree
40:25
Speaker 5: of suspicion. They need to ask themselves, why don't I
40:28
Speaker 5: see this process? If the police are proud to show
40:31
Speaker 5: their interrogation work, why don't I get to see how
40:34
Speaker 5: that statement was crafted? Because unless the jury can see
40:38
Speaker 5: the whole thing, they're just not in a position to
40:40
Speaker 5: evaluate the statement.
40:41
Speaker 3: They're just not right. And we see that in the
40:44
Speaker 3: amazing Netflix series Now The Innocent Man, where Tommy Ward
40:48
Speaker 3: and kral Font and I are still in prison over
40:50
Speaker 3: three decades later, and we only see the part of
40:53
Speaker 3: the confession that they want us to see exactly. But
40:56
Speaker 3: we know what went on now. We know it's too
40:59
Speaker 3: late to help them, unfortunately, but it happens too often.
41:03
Speaker 3: And you know, New York State resisted for the longest
41:05
Speaker 3: time recording interrogations. They said it was too expensive, expensive expensive.
41:11
Speaker 3: It's free, it's free, It's literally free. But you just
41:14
Speaker 3: hear these things and you.
41:15
Speaker 5: Go, I know, we're in an audio only situation. But
41:19
Speaker 5: my impulse was to pull my phone out of my pocket,
41:21
Speaker 5: put it on the table and say there, we can
41:23
Speaker 5: do it now.
41:24
Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know there's that movie as well, False Confessions,
41:27
Speaker 3: that both Saul and I are in which I encourage
41:29
Speaker 3: people to look up it profiles for false confession cases,
41:32
Speaker 3: and it really shows you, down and dirty, how terribly
41:38
Speaker 3: flawed this process is. And at the end of the day,
41:42
Speaker 3: if you don't know, you have to acquit because it
41:45
Speaker 3: says so in the Constitution, not because I think so,
41:48
Speaker 3: but because it says so in the Constitution. They have
41:50
Speaker 3: to prove guilt without a reasonable doubt. That's not the
41:53
Speaker 3: standard that we hold anymore. It doesn't seem like that,
41:56
Speaker 3: it doesn't hold up in the justice system. And you know,
41:58
Speaker 3: and of course there's that quote, wasn't it Benjamin Franklin
42:00
Speaker 3: that said it is better than one hundred guilty men
42:02
Speaker 3: go free, than that an innocent should suffer. William Blackstone, Oh,
42:05
Speaker 3: William Blackstone, damn I quoted that in the podcast before
42:08
Speaker 3: William Blackstone said that, yeah, so yeah, and it's certainly
42:14
Speaker 3: again with Kenzie here living proof that it can happen
42:19
Speaker 3: to anyone. I mean, strangely enough, fortunately for you, the
42:22
Speaker 3: Korean justice system functioned. We can't prove this, but probably
42:26
Speaker 3: better than ours would have. So now we get to
42:28
Speaker 3: the vindication. Right, and you had three of those, right,
42:34
Speaker 3: I mean, they just kept stamping your thing like nope, nope,
42:39
Speaker 3: nope that I mean, and I mean, how did that feel?
42:43
Speaker 3: And you know, and how did it feel coming home?
42:47
Speaker 2: And it felt great to get the you know, the
42:51
Speaker 2: first hearing, the judge was saying it and I had
42:54
Speaker 2: to wait for the translator. So the people in the
42:57
Speaker 2: courtroom had reacted, but I didn't know how or why
43:00
Speaker 2: they were reacting, like is this in my favor or not?
43:02
Speaker 2: And then I heard the translator said innocent and it
43:06
Speaker 2: wasn't even they did. She didn't say not guilty, she
43:08
Speaker 2: said innocent. And I don't know if that's a translation error,
43:10
Speaker 2: but it felt so good to hear that those words,
43:13
Speaker 2: but I still my mom came rushing at me. She
43:16
Speaker 2: was able to be there in Koree at the time.
43:18
Speaker 2: And I went to her and we got a hug,
43:20
Speaker 2: but the courtroom, the bailiff kind of had to separate
43:23
Speaker 2: us because I still had to go back to the jail,
43:25
Speaker 2: this time not in handcuffs, but I wasn't really free
43:28
Speaker 2: for another twelve hours. They had to wait for a
43:30
Speaker 2: fax from the courthouse. So when I got back to
43:34
Speaker 2: the jail after my innocence verdict, everyone was asking me, well,
43:37
Speaker 2: how long did you get how And I said, no,
43:39
Speaker 2: I'm going home, And they're like, what do you mean
43:41
Speaker 2: You're going home. People don't go home from here. People
43:43
Speaker 2: shouldn't be in jail. They didn't do a crime. Why
43:45
Speaker 2: you mean you're going home? And I said, I didn't
43:47
Speaker 2: do it. I get to go home, and so I
43:50
Speaker 2: got to say goodbye to the people that i'd spent
43:54
Speaker 2: spent about four and a half months in a room
43:56
Speaker 2: with fifteen other women and so formed some bonds and
43:59
Speaker 2: we got say goodbye to them. And then at ten
44:03
Speaker 2: or four pm on June nineteenth, I got out.
44:07
Speaker 3: So there were three separate verdicts, though were you held
44:12
Speaker 3: in between those verdicts?
44:14
Speaker 2: I was not held in between, but I didn't I
44:17
Speaker 2: technically didn't have a visa I wasn't allowed to work,
44:21
Speaker 2: and I was in limbo. The prosecutor when I hadn't
44:25
Speaker 2: appealed the case. I think it's they're just expected to.
44:28
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's an honor thing. I said.
44:31
Speaker 2: I wasn't allowed to work. My mom did come to
44:32
Speaker 2: the country during that time, and so she got a
44:34
Speaker 2: work visa and I had There was a pastor who
44:37
Speaker 2: would visit me on Tuesdays. Every day. We had seven
44:40
Speaker 2: minutes visits and he would come in every Tuesday and
44:43
Speaker 2: we would talk. And when I got out, he was
44:45
Speaker 2: really really supportive, he and his family, and he found
44:48
Speaker 2: someone who donated an apartment to us, donated our rent.
44:51
Speaker 2: Otherwise I would be an immigration in jail. And then
44:54
Speaker 2: October I got another innocent verdict, and then it was
44:58
Speaker 2: appealed to the Supreme Court. And at that point I'm
45:01
Speaker 2: still in Korea. They had my passport, I didn't have
45:03
Speaker 2: permission to leave, and my brother was getting married at
45:06
Speaker 2: the end of December, and I asked permission if I
45:09
Speaker 2: could go home, and they said if I would sign
45:12
Speaker 2: a letter that would waive extradition if I was found guilty,
45:15
Speaker 2: they would let me go home. So I wrote that letter,
45:17
Speaker 2: and then it was still almost three years later that
45:21
Speaker 2: I finally got the official Supreme Court of South Korea
45:24
Speaker 2: said that I was innocent. So weird, I mean limbo
45:26
Speaker 2: all that.
45:27
Speaker 3: Time you were in limbo in South Korea.
45:29
Speaker 2: For I was in limbo for about six months in
45:32
Speaker 2: South Korea and then went back home and was still
45:34
Speaker 2: in limbo in the States, waiting on a verdict, not
45:38
Speaker 2: knowing if I would have to go back to Korea.
45:41
Speaker 2: I had a gap in my work histories. The finding
45:43
Speaker 2: a job was incredibly hard. All of my credit cards
45:46
Speaker 2: had defaulted, maxed out and defaulted. Student loans had.
45:49
Speaker 3: Defaulted, right, so there was more trouble waiting you. And yeah,
45:53
Speaker 3: then that is a very strange state of being in
45:57
Speaker 3: the Twilight zone, right, You're over there in this eastern
46:00
Speaker 3: country where you can't work, so you can't make money,
46:03
Speaker 3: and you can't go home, and you can't do anything.
46:05
Speaker 2: And I was an efficial tourist. Yeah that's all I
46:07
Speaker 2: could do.
46:08
Speaker 3: But you would have had to sleep on the streets. So,
46:10
Speaker 3: like you said, go to immigration and jail. If not
46:11
Speaker 3: for the fact of the kindness of strangers and the
46:13
Speaker 3: fact that your mom was able to be supported the
46:15
Speaker 3: way she was before we get to the closing, and
46:31
Speaker 3: I want to hear about what you're doing now and
46:33
Speaker 3: how you're doing now, and you know all that stuff.
46:37
Speaker 3: But I want to ask Saul and Patty. When I
46:41
Speaker 3: started doing this podcast, my goal was to help to
46:44
Speaker 3: prevent as many wrongful convictions going forward as I can
46:49
Speaker 3: by teaching people or educating people, I should say as
46:53
Speaker 3: to how and why they happen, and to give people
46:58
Speaker 3: an idea of what to look for if they're on
47:01
Speaker 3: a jury, and what some of the dos and don'ts
47:05
Speaker 3: if you're arrested or even picked up and not arrested
47:09
Speaker 3: as Kenzie was. So you know, being that we have
47:15
Speaker 3: two experts in the room, I would love to get
47:18
Speaker 3: your take on both of those two topics, and together
47:22
Speaker 3: we can hopefully prevent the next Kenzie from going through
47:27
Speaker 3: what she did. So, if you want.
47:29
Speaker 5: To go first, sure, I think that's a noble and
47:32
Speaker 5: very important mission. I think one thing we learned from
47:35
Speaker 5: Kenzie's case, and this gets at a strength of the
47:39
Speaker 5: Korean justice system that in contrasts to a serious weakness
47:44
Speaker 5: of the American system. She had the surge of relief
47:46
Speaker 5: when they took her back to the crime scene. She
47:48
Speaker 5: looked and she said, WHOA, that's not the memory they
47:51
Speaker 5: gave me. That doesn't fit. In Korean law, if a
47:56
Speaker 5: suspect confesses to police and recant the confession and won't
48:01
Speaker 5: reenact it and won't restate it to the prosecutor, it
48:05
Speaker 5: didn't happen. And yet in the US, when behind closed
48:11
Speaker 5: locked doors without recording, police claimed that a suspect confessed
48:15
Speaker 5: and then that suspect immediately recance the confession and won't
48:19
Speaker 5: restate it and won't plead guilty and won't re enact it,
48:23
Speaker 5: that suspect has done already the damage that will get
48:27
Speaker 5: him or her convicted. And so I think there is
48:30
Speaker 5: buried in this story about comparing two systems. Problem with
48:35
Speaker 5: the American system. The only way Kenzie could have stepped
48:37
Speaker 5: out of that situation intact was to invoke her right
48:41
Speaker 5: to silence, to invoke her right to an attorney. That's
48:44
Speaker 5: all she could have done, because once she is alleged
48:46
Speaker 5: to have confessed, even if she recants it and will
48:49
Speaker 5: not restate it, the damage has been done.
48:52
Speaker 7: Well, I'll touch on the other topic about what should
48:55
Speaker 7: we do to make people aware. I'm trying to figure
48:59
Speaker 7: that out out and I'll report back in a year
49:02
Speaker 7: with concrete findings. But I think just telling more stories
49:07
Speaker 7: like this so that number one people accept that it's
49:10
Speaker 7: a thing that happens more often than you probably think,
49:13
Speaker 7: and just focusing on the person. I think, on a
49:16
Speaker 7: person to person basis rather than on trends, because it
49:21
Speaker 7: becomes clear once you hear each individual story, It's a
49:26
Speaker 7: lot more clear as to how that confession happened than
49:29
Speaker 7: speaking in statistics and things. So I think focusing on
49:33
Speaker 7: the individual stories is really important.
49:36
Speaker 2: That's my hypothesis.
49:37
Speaker 3: It's a scary system, and you know, we're here to
49:40
Speaker 3: try to, you know, help turn the tide, and media
49:44
Speaker 3: plays an important part in it. You're studying that. Now,
49:46
Speaker 3: what have your studies so far shown about the effective
49:50
Speaker 3: podcasts on an opinion of civilians.
49:52
Speaker 7: We're just starting, so we started off looking at Netflix documentaries,
49:58
Speaker 7: but so far we are seeing that that there is
50:01
Speaker 7: a certain type of person that's number one likely to
50:06
Speaker 7: watch these kinds of documentaries to begin with and also
50:10
Speaker 7: know more about interrogations. We're trying to figure out as
50:13
Speaker 7: to whether these people are just more knowledgeable and then
50:17
Speaker 7: they watch these documentaries or whether the documentaries are doing
50:21
Speaker 7: the educating, so podcasts is the next step. So I
50:27
Speaker 7: don't know yet. And actually you brought up my exact
50:29
Speaker 7: dissertation question earlier. In that question, you posed about why
50:34
Speaker 7: is it that people can be presented with scientific findings
50:38
Speaker 7: or logic but still kind of hold on to that
50:40
Speaker 7: gut reaction towards a confession. So you can tell someone
50:43
Speaker 7: and I maybe there's research where you give them all
50:46
Speaker 7: the information about wrongful convictions and it makes them more
50:50
Speaker 7: critical of evidence, but it doesn't necessarily change their overall
50:55
Speaker 7: verdict decisions. So I'm trying to figure out why.
51:00
Speaker 3: Well, it's good that you're doing the work, and you know,
51:02
Speaker 3: I think too we should mention that, you know studies.
51:05
Speaker 3: My friend Josh Dubin was involved in the study. It
51:07
Speaker 3: showed that there's an inherent bias among normal people who
51:11
Speaker 3: become jurors that if they see someone present it to
51:14
Speaker 3: them as a defendant, whether it's in the box or
51:16
Speaker 3: whatever it is, eighty percent of people have a natural
51:19
Speaker 3: assumption that they're guilty or they wouldn't be there. And
51:21
Speaker 3: we have to correct that because there shouldn't be any presumption.
51:24
Speaker 3: You should come in as a blank slate in understanding
51:27
Speaker 3: how often these things go wrong. So before we turn
51:30
Speaker 3: to closing remarks, Kenzie, how are you? What's going on now?
51:35
Speaker 3: How are you doing? You seem like like a little
51:38
Speaker 3: orb of light. But I, you know, think I'm not
51:40
Speaker 3: a minder. I'm not even a psychologist. I'm going with here.
51:42
Speaker 2: That isn't overall I'm good. I'm good. I do have
51:46
Speaker 2: hard days and hard times year February and March with
51:50
Speaker 2: the confession and the murder itself, that's a hard time
51:53
Speaker 2: a year, But overall I'm good. I'm a mom. Now.
51:56
Speaker 2: I have a six year old.
51:57
Speaker 3: Boy, what's his name?
52:00
Speaker 2: His name is Garrik. I get emotional talking about him
52:03
Speaker 2: because I think about how this could affect him, how
52:06
Speaker 2: my past still to this day, eighteen years later, will
52:10
Speaker 2: still like bump into things. People will hear about it
52:14
Speaker 2: or google it, or they'll see it. Sometimes the show's
52:18
Speaker 2: on syndication, and it'll affect how people treat me. And
52:23
Speaker 2: some friendships have been lost because of it, and sometimes
52:26
Speaker 2: there's some trickle down effect to him. But overall good.
52:32
Speaker 2: It's hard trying to rebuild and people will have difficulty
52:36
Speaker 2: getting past the confession. Even if I was found innocent,
52:39
Speaker 2: That doesn't matter. They still think why would you have
52:42
Speaker 2: said said you did something that you didn't do, especially
52:45
Speaker 2: why did you kill your friend? And so it kind
52:48
Speaker 2: of follows you around like you have to monitor your
52:51
Speaker 2: behavior all the time. You can never get too angry,
52:53
Speaker 2: you can never get too upset. You have to when
52:56
Speaker 2: do you tell this with new people that you've met,
52:58
Speaker 2: Like you you have to gauge your relationship with them.
53:01
Speaker 2: Am I going to see them again? Do they need
53:03
Speaker 2: to know about this? If you wait too long, then
53:06
Speaker 2: they feel like you violated their trust, because why didn't
53:10
Speaker 2: you tell this to me before? Before you came into
53:12
Speaker 2: my house, before I saw you every day at school.
53:16
Speaker 2: So you're always having to monitor your reactions and your relationships.
53:24
Speaker 5: When I first talked to you about whether you want
53:26
Speaker 5: to come out and do this, you said something about
53:29
Speaker 5: your son and the loss of a play date. Can
53:33
Speaker 5: you say something about that, because in a funny way,
53:35
Speaker 5: I think that just says so much.
53:38
Speaker 2: It was one of the things I had arranged a
53:39
Speaker 2: play date, and so my son had gone over to
53:42
Speaker 2: their house and they were playing, and it's you know,
53:44
Speaker 2: gauging when do I tell this to someone? And now
53:47
Speaker 2: I was in their home, and I felt that I
53:48
Speaker 2: know if someone came into my house, I would want
53:51
Speaker 2: to know who is coming into my home. So I
53:54
Speaker 2: had shared this story a little bit, and that person
53:59
Speaker 2: was no longer available for play dates, just wouldn't return
54:02
Speaker 2: phone calls or texts or messages, just stopped.
54:07
Speaker 3: I actually have one more question, Are you better?
54:12
Speaker 2: I'm not. I think life is too short to be bitter.
54:15
Speaker 2: I do get angry at times that they feel that
54:18
Speaker 2: they have the right to do this to someone's life,
54:20
Speaker 2: because it's not just my life that's affected. That's also
54:22
Speaker 2: the Penwick family who hasn't gotten the proper closure that
54:26
Speaker 2: they need. This is a person out there who has
54:29
Speaker 2: killed someone and is not in jail or prison for
54:31
Speaker 2: having committed that crime. And I think I'm not bitter.
54:36
Speaker 2: I get angry about it, though, but I'm not letting
54:40
Speaker 2: what they did to me ruin the rest of my life.
54:43
Speaker 3: We'll glad you're doing well and wish you all the
54:46
Speaker 3: best for the future. And now we come to my
54:50
Speaker 3: favorite part of the show, which is and you're familiar
54:52
Speaker 3: with this since you listen to the show, so you're ready.
54:54
Speaker 3: A lot of people come on and never heard it,
54:56
Speaker 3: so this takes them by surprise. But this is a
54:58
Speaker 3: part of the show where I thank each of you,
55:02
Speaker 3: Kenzie of course, Kenzie Schnyder, and Patty Sanchez and Professor
55:07
Speaker 3: saulkass And for being here and taking your time and
55:11
Speaker 3: sharing your thoughts. And now I get to stop talking
55:14
Speaker 3: and listen. And so I'm going to go in order.
55:18
Speaker 3: I guess we'll start with Patty and Saul, and then
55:22
Speaker 3: you can Zie for just final thoughts.
55:24
Speaker 7: Final thoughts, understand that humans are flawed, and you are normal,
55:33
Speaker 7: no less flawed than general people. I've noticed there's a
55:38
Speaker 7: lot of people consuming these things saying like, oh yeah,
55:42
Speaker 7: I would always be able to tell a part something,
55:45
Speaker 7: or like I'd be able to tell true and false.
55:48
Speaker 7: And I think we all just humble ourselves a little
55:51
Speaker 7: bit and admit that we're all vulnerable and we're all
55:54
Speaker 7: susceptible to being manipulated and being okay with that and
56:00
Speaker 7: understand it, and so that we can be aware and
56:04
Speaker 7: always get a lawyer.
56:06
Speaker 5: All that's good, You always get a lawyer. Part I
56:08
Speaker 5: would have led with. But you know, false confessions. I've
56:13
Speaker 5: been looking at them for god knows how long. I'm
56:15
Speaker 5: not going to tell you because I don't want to
56:17
Speaker 5: reveal my age. But it wasn't that long ago when
56:20
Speaker 5: people said doesn't happen, and I would say never, never,
56:25
Speaker 5: doesn't happen. I would never confess to a crime I
56:27
Speaker 5: didn't commit. Now I think some of that is changing.
56:30
Speaker 5: The problem is that what people see and hear a confession,
56:34
Speaker 5: what they're seeing and hearing is a story. It's a narrative.
56:38
Speaker 5: This is what I did, this is how I did it,
56:41
Speaker 5: this is why, this is what it felt like, this
56:44
Speaker 5: is what the victim may have looked like or said.
56:48
Speaker 5: It's a story from start to finish. Kenzie's is no exception.
56:51
Speaker 5: If you read her so called confession, it is a
56:54
Speaker 5: narrative from start to finish. It's chronology, that is the
56:57
Speaker 5: sight in the sound of a false confession. And so
57:00
Speaker 5: it's very important for people to understand that absent corroborating
57:05
Speaker 5: evidence taken independent of that confession, and absence seeing the
57:10
Speaker 5: process by which that confession was taken, you are in
57:13
Speaker 5: no position to make a judgment. And the reason I
57:16
Speaker 5: think that's important is Kenzie's case illustrates something disturbing. Eighteen
57:21
Speaker 5: years ago, she gave a confession. She was then acquitted,
57:25
Speaker 5: She was then acquitted again, She was then acquitted again.
57:29
Speaker 5: The fact that eighteen years later she is feeling the
57:31
Speaker 5: effects of the stigma that has not detached itself from her.
57:35
Speaker 5: She gave a confession, but she has never been convicted
57:38
Speaker 5: of a crime. It doesn't matter to some people. She
57:42
Speaker 5: is guilty by virtue of the fact that she confessed,
57:45
Speaker 5: and they will never see her actual innocence. People need
57:48
Speaker 5: to get past it, people, And that's why I think
57:50
Speaker 5: Patty's proposed studies looking at whether or not a podcast,
57:54
Speaker 5: for example, can raise public awareness and make people more
57:57
Speaker 5: discerning jurors, is so important because we're flailing a bit
58:01
Speaker 5: trying to find ways to raise public awareness. I've been
58:05
Speaker 5: working top down, trying to convince the courts, the judiciary
58:09
Speaker 5: to reform the system in ways that makes sense. But
58:12
Speaker 5: you know what, that's just too slow, and there are
58:14
Speaker 5: more victims every day, and so maybe what we need
58:18
Speaker 5: to do is work from the bottom up and create
58:20
Speaker 5: a ground swell of public awareness and a ground swell
58:22
Speaker 5: of support. You know, I think making a Murderer, the
58:26
Speaker 5: Central Park five, The Confession Tapes, Demand, the Knox documentary,
58:30
Speaker 5: your podcast series on wrongful convictions, those are I think
58:33
Speaker 5: essential tools for raising public awareness and making people more
58:38
Speaker 5: critical consumers of their criminal justice system.
58:40
Speaker 3: Canzi.
58:41
Speaker 2: I was hesitant to do this podcast because of how
58:44
Speaker 2: it could affect my life now, but Saul had mentioned
58:47
Speaker 2: something and he said maybe a future juror would hear this,
58:51
Speaker 2: and I wanted to help someone keep them from this
58:55
Speaker 2: happening to them. I think that's important. The biggest thing
58:58
Speaker 2: that I would say is get a lawyer. I know
59:01
Speaker 2: everyone thinks it's a false confession. That would never confess
59:04
Speaker 2: to something that I didn't do, And I know it
59:05
Speaker 2: sounds crazy, but no one goes into the room with
59:08
Speaker 2: law enforcement expecting to leave with a confession to a
59:11
Speaker 2: crime they didn't commit. So get a lawyer. Law enforcement agents,
59:15
Speaker 2: they are doing their job. They're not your friend. Don't
59:17
Speaker 2: trust them. Make sure you have a lawyer on your sign.
59:21
Speaker 3: And before we close, Saul, I want to do sadly,
59:26
Speaker 3: I want to do an immemoriam because there's a case
59:30
Speaker 3: that was profiled in the movie that you and I
59:32
Speaker 3: both appeared in, called False Confessions, and can you talk
59:36
Speaker 3: a little bit about because it actually has an eerie
59:39
Speaker 3: resemblance to Kenzie's case, and that he was never convicted.
59:42
Speaker 3: He was actually in jail for almost exactly the same
59:44
Speaker 3: amount of time in America. Anyway, He was an exchange student. Yes,
59:48
Speaker 3: and he died you know recently. You know, you could
59:52
Speaker 3: say he died of a broken heart. But can you
59:54
Speaker 3: talk about that case a little bit.
59:56
Speaker 5: Yeah, his name was Multi Thompson. He was twenty or
59:58
Speaker 5: twenty one years old when he came to the US
1:00:01
Speaker 5: to New York to work as a teacher in a preschool,
1:00:05
Speaker 5: a high end preschool near the United Nations. He came
1:00:07
Speaker 5: from a family of teachers and educators just Kenzie was
1:00:10
Speaker 5: aspiring as well to be a teacher, and some way
1:00:14
Speaker 5: through the school year, another employee went to the school
1:00:18
Speaker 5: and said they saw him touching the children inappropriately, which
1:00:21
Speaker 5: seemed inconceivable given the layout of the room and the
1:00:24
Speaker 5: fact that there are always multiple adults at any given moment.
1:00:29
Speaker 5: But they watched for a while and saw absolutely nothing.
1:00:32
Speaker 5: Turns out that the person who accused him of that
1:00:35
Speaker 5: had made similar allegations earlier in the year about others,
1:00:39
Speaker 5: so the school proceeded to dismiss her. She went to
1:00:43
Speaker 5: the police department and she reported it. The police ended
1:00:47
Speaker 5: up in Malta Thompson's door early one morning, about six am,
1:00:51
Speaker 5: picked him up, interrogated him for seven or eight hours,
1:00:55
Speaker 5: and took from him a confession. The interrogation was not
1:01:00
Speaker 5: courted on audio or on video, and the result of
1:01:04
Speaker 5: that seven or eight hours of off camera interrogation was
1:01:07
Speaker 5: that they convinced Malti Thompson to go to the district
1:01:11
Speaker 5: Attorney's office and give a videotape statement. And the opening
1:01:15
Speaker 5: of his videotape statement, I'm paraphrasing, but it's something like
1:01:19
Speaker 5: it has come to my attention that I've done a
1:01:21
Speaker 5: bad thing. Apparently they told him falsely that they had
1:01:27
Speaker 5: surveillance video footage of him touching the children inappropriately. That
1:01:30
Speaker 5: was a lie. But he's from Denmark and he doesn't
1:01:33
Speaker 5: know that police are allowed to lie, because in Denmark,
1:01:35
Speaker 5: as in most other Western civilized countries, police are not
1:01:39
Speaker 5: allowed to lie.
1:01:41
Speaker 3: But he was.
1:01:42
Speaker 5: Delivered that lie, and so, like Kenzie, he had to
1:01:44
Speaker 5: presume that this must be true. I don't recall doing it,
1:01:48
Speaker 5: and so he gave a confession to the district attorney
1:01:51
Speaker 5: on camera. He was sent to Rikers Island for several
1:01:55
Speaker 5: months while the case worked its way through the system.
1:01:58
Speaker 5: Nobody would corroborate, none of the children would corroborate, and
1:02:02
Speaker 5: they had to ultimately drop the charges. He went home
1:02:05
Speaker 5: to Denmark. He had a lawyer who settled with the
1:02:08
Speaker 5: city for some I don't know what the settlement figure was.
1:02:12
Speaker 5: And you and I saw him in the film. If
1:02:15
Speaker 5: you see the film, what you will see as an
1:02:17
Speaker 5: individual who is depressed. And this was years later, and
1:02:23
Speaker 5: so the fact that he died recently according to the family,
1:02:27
Speaker 5: he died of a heart attack, as at twenty seven
1:02:30
Speaker 5: years old, is just sad beyond belief. But you can
1:02:33
Speaker 5: see in the movie he can't even break open a smile.
1:02:36
Speaker 5: This affected him and had never left six seven years later.
1:02:41
Speaker 5: I don't know what was going through his mind. I
1:02:43
Speaker 5: don't know what goes through Kenzie's mind, but I know
1:02:47
Speaker 5: that people who are induced into giving confessions to crimes
1:02:50
Speaker 5: they didn't commit are constantly self reflecting. What was I thinking,
1:02:55
Speaker 5: what was I doing? How could that have happened? And
1:02:58
Speaker 5: that's what makes these stories so important to tell.
1:03:02
Speaker 3: Rest in peace. Thank you everyone for listening to Wrongful Conviction.
1:03:06
Speaker 3: We'll see you next week. Don't forget to give us
1:03:18
Speaker 3: a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps.
1:03:22
Speaker 3: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and
1:03:25
Speaker 3: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
1:03:28
Speaker 3: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
1:03:32
Speaker 3: to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and
1:03:35
Speaker 3: get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
1:03:38
Speaker 3: Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is
1:03:41
Speaker 3: by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure
1:03:45
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1:04:00
Speaker 2: Then The Blinding That Word m