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#115 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Origin Story · Wrongful Conviction

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer,
0:05
Speaker 1: and I'm Steve Drusen. Steve and I co direct the
0:08
Speaker 1: Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University in Chicago. It's
0:12
Speaker 1: one of the oldest organizations in the country dedicated to
0:15
Speaker 1: exonerating innocent people who've been convicted of crimes they didn't commit.
0:19
Speaker 1: Over its twenty years, the center has freed more than
0:22
Speaker 1: forty innocent men, women, and children, and it's our privilege
0:26
Speaker 1: to work there. Some of you may know me and
0:29
Speaker 1: Steve from the Netflix show Making a Murderer, which exposed
0:32
Speaker 1: the unjust case against our client, Brendan Dassy, or you
0:36
Speaker 1: may have heard me on an episode from last seasons
0:39
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flomm, where Brendan told his own
0:42
Speaker 1: story for the first time. On this podcast series, Steve
0:47
Speaker 1: and I are going to bring you into our world,
0:49
Speaker 1: the world of false Confessions. We're going to tell you
0:52
Speaker 1: about cases we've worked on, innocent people we've fought for,
0:56
Speaker 1: and our passion for making justice a reality. Today, we'll
1:11
Speaker 1: start with the big question, why would anyone confess to
1:14
Speaker 1: a crime they didn't commit? Then we'll take you inside
1:17
Speaker 1: the interrogation room to show you how false confessions happen,
1:21
Speaker 1: and finally a little backstory how Steve and I each
1:24
Speaker 1: became obsessed with the problem of false confessions and how
1:28
Speaker 1: we're not going to quit until this problem gets solved.
1:35
Speaker 1: Most people assume that when someone confesses, it's because they're
1:39
Speaker 1: guilty and because they have some sort of inner need
1:42
Speaker 1: to unburden themselves of their guilt and the story that
1:45
Speaker 1: they're clinging on too. But what we have discovered is
1:49
Speaker 1: that confessions aren't always true. That in fact, we know
1:52
Speaker 1: of hundreds of cases where someone is brought into an
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Speaker 1: interrogation room, questioned by the police, sometimes for hours, ends
2:00
Speaker 1: up confessing to a crime, often a very brutal crime,
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Speaker 1: a rape or a murder, something like that, and they're
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Speaker 1: convicted on the basis of that confession, sent away to
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Speaker 1: prison for years, decades sometimes, and then an organization like
2:12
Speaker 1: our Center on Wrongful Convictions comes along and does DNA
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Speaker 1: testing and discovers, beyond the shadow of a doubt that
2:19
Speaker 1: the confession is false. We know hundreds of cases like this,
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Speaker 1: and that really gives the lie to this belief that
2:25
Speaker 1: confessions are always true.
2:27
Speaker 2: I think people understand that if you were tortured or
2:32
Speaker 2: you're subjected to the kinds of tactics we saw in
2:36
Speaker 2: Abu Grabe and Guantanamo that under those kinds of physical, abusive,
2:43
Speaker 2: extreme sleep deprivation kind of tactics, yeah, you might say
2:49
Speaker 2: some things, including confessed to some serious crimes you didn't commit.
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Speaker 2: But most of today's modern psychological interrogation techniques are all
2:58
Speaker 2: about talking words, and so the job of the lawyer
3:04
Speaker 2: or the expert is to try to explain the psychology
3:09
Speaker 2: of interrogations to lay people, to bring them inside the
3:14
Speaker 2: interrogation room so that they can feel the same pressure
3:20
Speaker 2: that the suspect is under and maybe come to understand
3:24
Speaker 2: why they themselves might confess to a crime they didn't commit.
3:28
Speaker 1: Exactly. Every one of us has a breaking point, and
3:31
Speaker 1: what you see in these false confession cases is the
3:33
Speaker 1: power of the interrogation room, which is focused on identifying
3:36
Speaker 1: that breaking point for the person being interrogated. It's an
3:38
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful space. It's really good at getting true confessions,
3:41
Speaker 1: but also really good at getting false confessions.
3:45
Speaker 2: The first thing that is essential to any interrogation is isolation.
3:51
Speaker 2: Depriving a suspect from a lifeline to loved ones, friends' attorneys,
3:59
Speaker 2: and so police officers take suspects in a room, a
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Speaker 2: specially designed room. It's usually a very small room. It's
4:07
Speaker 2: cramped to the extent there is furniture in the room.
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Speaker 2: It's usually just a couple chairs, maybe a table pushed
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Speaker 2: to the side, because you don't want the table between
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Speaker 2: the suspect and an interrogator because it can provide a
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Speaker 2: sense of comfort for the suspect and it can minimize
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Speaker 2: the ability of the interrogator to get into the suspect's face.
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Speaker 2: There's no natural light in these rooms, no clocks, no telephones,
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Speaker 2: The walls are basically barren, and usually the suspect is
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Speaker 2: positioned in a corner or in a place where getting
4:47
Speaker 2: up and leaving requires the suspect to literally go through
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Speaker 2: the two interrogators who are blocking the pathway to the door.
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Speaker 1: These rooms have been around for many, many decades, but
5:00
Speaker 1: we're only getting a glimpse into them for the first
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Speaker 1: time recently, as more and more confessions have been proven
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Speaker 1: false by DNA, states are starting to require video cameras
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Speaker 1: in interrogation rooms for the first time. Twenty four states
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Speaker 1: still don't require any kind of real time documentation, but
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Speaker 1: because of those twenty six states, that now requires some
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Speaker 1: sort of video camera or audio recording inside the room.
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Speaker 1: We're getting a look for the first time, and what
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Speaker 1: we're seeing is chilling.
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Speaker 2: So once you have this sense of isolation, what that
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Speaker 2: does is it fosters a dependence. The suspect becomes obliged
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Speaker 2: to do what the interrogator asks him to do, and
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Speaker 2: part of that dependence is built during the early part
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Speaker 2: of an interrogation, which involves some kind of attempt to
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Speaker 2: build trust between the interrogator and the suspect, something that
5:55
Speaker 2: suggests that the interrogator is here to help the suspect.
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Speaker 2: In fact, the interrogator is the only person between the
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Speaker 2: suspect and perhaps a life sentence or a prosecutor who's
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Speaker 2: going to charge him or her with the death penalty.
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Speaker 1: When people see what happens inside the interrogation room, they're horrified.
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Speaker 1: The techniques that are used. Sure, they're psychological, Very few
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Speaker 1: cops use physical abuse any longer. But these psychological techniques
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Speaker 1: distort the world so much that suddenly it starts to
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Speaker 1: make sense that you should confess even if you're innocent,
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Speaker 1: And to watch that mind game in real time on
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Speaker 1: these videos is absolutely appalling.
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Speaker 2: What I find interesting is that many people we show
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Speaker 2: these tapes to, they're accepting of the need to use
6:51
Speaker 2: some of these tactics to get true confessions. But what
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Speaker 2: they find offensive is the way in which police officers
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Speaker 2: feed facts to suspects and actually construct a narrative that
7:06
Speaker 2: isn't really the suspects confession at all. It is the
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Speaker 2: suspect affirming a preconceived theory of the police that is
7:16
Speaker 2: shaped and constructed by the police.
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Speaker 1: It's almost like like rehearsing a play, you know, like
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Speaker 1: scripting a story that this person has to rehearse and
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Speaker 1: get perfect and then perform for the final confession. And
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Speaker 1: this process, amazingly enough, when we show it to some audiences,
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Speaker 1: they laugh because, you know, if the goal of all
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Speaker 1: of this of interrogation our justice system is to fine truth,
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Speaker 1: this is such a distortion of truth that people laugh
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Speaker 1: at the absurdity of it.
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Speaker 2: And that's heartbreaking.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely heartbreaking, because you're watching these people's lives be
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Speaker 1: ruined in real time on these videos. All right, I'm
7:51
Speaker 1: just going to come.
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Speaker 2: Out and ask you who shot her in the hat
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Speaker 2: he did? Why didn't you tell us that when an
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Speaker 2: entrergator says to Brendan Dacy, all right, I'm just going
8:03
Speaker 2: to come out and tell you who shot her in
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Speaker 2: the head. It's heartbreaking because there are supposed to be
8:11
Speaker 2: checks and balances in this process, other police officers looking
8:17
Speaker 2: at the tape saying you can't do that. He has
8:20
Speaker 2: to come up with these facts on his own. And
8:23
Speaker 2: then there are prosecutors who, when reviewing these cases for trials,
8:27
Speaker 2: should know that this confession is unreliable. And then there
8:31
Speaker 2: are judges. They should see these confessions and they should say,
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Speaker 2: I'm not letting this go before a jury. This is
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Speaker 2: not the suspect's confession. It's constructed by the interrogators. And
8:43
Speaker 2: then there's the jury who also has an opportunity to
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Speaker 2: weigh in on this. But time and time and time again,
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Speaker 2: it's the power of the confession itself that ends up
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Speaker 2: convicting these people.
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Speaker 1: Too often, their fate is sealed because the systems check
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Speaker 1: that should prevent false confessions from resulting in wrongful convictions
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Speaker 1: don't work. So literally, when you're watching these videos at
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Speaker 1: the interrogation room, you're watching acts of legal suicide.
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Speaker 2: And in the worst cases, you're watching acts of psychological torture.
9:16
Speaker 2: I mean there is a class of false confessions. They're
9:19
Speaker 2: called either coerced persuaded, or coerced internalized. But these are
9:24
Speaker 2: cases where police officers attack a suspect's confidence in their
9:30
Speaker 2: own memory of events. The suspect knows they're innocent, but
9:34
Speaker 2: police officers tell them perhaps they committed the crime in
9:37
Speaker 2: a blackout, or were under the influence of drugs or alcohol,
9:43
Speaker 2: or maybe that the trauma of killing a loved one
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Speaker 2: was so painful that they repressed the memory of what
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Speaker 2: they actually did. All of this crashes the suspect's confidence
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Speaker 2: in their own memory, and then police officers give them
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Speaker 2: an explanation or a reason for why they might have
10:01
Speaker 2: committed the crime and not remembered it. At the end
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Speaker 2: of the day, some suspects can't tell the difference between
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Speaker 2: their real memories and their imagined memories, and the imagined
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Speaker 2: memories have been shaped by the interrogator's questioning exactly.
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Speaker 1: There are cases in which suspects are told that they
10:21
Speaker 1: must have split personalities and the good you doesn't remember
10:24
Speaker 1: what the bad you did. There have been cases where kids'
10:28
Speaker 1: children have been falsely told that their loved ones on
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Speaker 1: their deathbeds accuse their own children of killing them. Then,
10:35
Speaker 1: of course they believe that their parents would never say
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Speaker 1: such a thing unless it was true, so they begin
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Speaker 1: to construct a narrative that accounts for what they think
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Speaker 1: the parents had happened.
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Speaker 2: The cases in which children confess to killing their parents,
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Speaker 2: parents confessed to killing their children, husbands confessed to killing
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Speaker 2: their wives, siblings confessed to killing their siblings, these are
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Speaker 2: these are the hardest ones to whty, just because not
11:02
Speaker 2: only are these suspects being accused of one of the
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Speaker 2: worst crimes imaginable in society, not only are they struggling
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Speaker 2: with trying to remember something that they can't remember, but
11:15
Speaker 2: they're suffering from incredible grief trauma. Yeah, and trauma. I mean,
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Speaker 2: when someone close to you is killed, especially if they've
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Speaker 2: been murdered, and you're being interrogated within hours of discovering
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Speaker 2: the body, you are so vulnerable to suggestions, so vulnerable
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Speaker 2: to manipulation.
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Speaker 1: Desperate for help, desperate for a friend, And that's exactly
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Speaker 1: what the interrogator wants you to think he is, and
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Speaker 1: that's exactly, of course, what he's not. I mean, you
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Speaker 1: are seeing the distortion of a mind in the interrogation room,
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Speaker 1: the poisoning of a memory, the twisting of a world,
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Speaker 1: and the creation of a profound injustice. The tactics, they're
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Speaker 1: basically the same across all of these false confession videos
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Speaker 1: that we have. You see a suspect being brought into
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Speaker 1: an interrogation room, confronted with an accusation, and then it's
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Speaker 1: the job of the interrogators to communicate to them, beyond
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Speaker 1: the shadow of a doubt, we know you're guilty, and
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Speaker 1: there's nothing you can say or do to convince us otherwise.
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Speaker 1: And sometimes it takes hours of relentless accusation to bring
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Speaker 1: the suspect down to a place of hopelessness. Then it's
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Speaker 1: the job of the interrogators to offer confession as an out,
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Speaker 1: as a way to cut your losses somehow and cling
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Speaker 1: to some shred of hope. So you'll see interrogators say
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Speaker 1: things like, look, there are two kinds of people in
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Speaker 1: this world. There's someone who would commit a horrible crime
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Speaker 1: like this one. Maybe someone who's done this before and
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Speaker 1: is going to go do it again, right, real monster.
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Speaker 1: We all know what happens to people like that. They're
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Speaker 1: never going to see the light of day again. But
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Speaker 1: then there are other kinds of people in this world,
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Speaker 1: people just like you or me, regular ordinary, good folks,
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Speaker 1: just trying to live their life, trying to do the
13:14
Speaker 1: right thing. People who maybe they just make a bad decision,
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Speaker 1: a bad choice, they snap in a moment of stress
13:21
Speaker 1: or frustration. We've all made mistakes. I've made a mistake
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Speaker 1: in my life, haven't you. And we all know what
13:29
Speaker 1: happens to good people who just make mistakes. Right, people
13:33
Speaker 1: want to help them. If you just made a mistake here,
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Speaker 1: the judge will look at you and want to help you.
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Speaker 1: The prosecutor will understand you better. You'll have a reason
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Speaker 1: to hope. So which one is it? Are you the
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Speaker 1: monster or are you the person who just made a mistake.
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Speaker 1: That's the choice that the person in the interrogation room has,
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Speaker 1: and every single one of us will choose to tell
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Speaker 1: a story of mistake in the hopes that it will
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Speaker 1: result in help. And of course, when you confess to
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Speaker 1: that crime you didn't commit in the hopes that everyone
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Speaker 1: will want to help you, it doesn't help you at all.
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Speaker 1: It seals your fate.
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Speaker 2: In October of two thousand and seven, I got a
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Speaker 2: phone call on the other end of the line were
14:23
Speaker 2: several attorneys who I knew and respected, and they said
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Speaker 2: to me, do you know about the case of Brendan
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Speaker 2: Dacy And I said, yes, of course I know about
14:34
Speaker 2: the case. Stephen Avery was the first person exonerated by
14:37
Speaker 2: DNA evidence in Wisconsin. It was huge news. And then
14:42
Speaker 2: he got charged with the murder of a photographer named
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Speaker 2: Teresa Holbach in two thousand and five. And he had
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Speaker 2: a nephew named Brendan Dassi, a sixteen year old nephew
14:54
Speaker 2: who had confessed to participating in that crime with his
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Speaker 2: uncle Stephen, and both of them had been convicted and
15:01
Speaker 2: sentenced to life. And so I knew the basic background
15:05
Speaker 2: of the case. They said to me, which you represent
15:09
Speaker 2: Brendan Dacy on appeal. And this is the kind of
15:13
Speaker 2: work that I was called to do. It was the
15:17
Speaker 2: kind of work that I was doing. But I said
15:20
Speaker 2: to them, send me the interrogation videos. So when the
15:23
Speaker 2: tapes arrived, I looked at them and I decided I
15:28
Speaker 2: was going to get involved, but I wanted a gut check.
15:31
Speaker 2: I wanted someone else to tell me what they saw.
15:35
Speaker 2: I had worked with one student before on a false
15:37
Speaker 2: confession case and I assigned her to look at these recordings,
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Speaker 2: and that student was Laura, and I writer, that's right.
15:46
Speaker 1: This is about twelve years ago or so, and my
15:50
Speaker 1: last year of law school. I decided on a whim
15:54
Speaker 1: to sign up for your class, Steve, un wrongful Convictions.
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Speaker 2: Tell the truth? Was it? You didn't I sign up
16:00
Speaker 2: for my class?
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Speaker 1: I thought I was signing up for someone else's class
16:02
Speaker 1: on wrongful convictions. But I ended up in your class.
16:05
Speaker 2: Thank god.
16:05
Speaker 1: I decided to stick around because it got interesting real fast.
16:08
Speaker 1: Right And about a month in Steve, you know, you
16:12
Speaker 1: called me into your office and you said, I've just
16:16
Speaker 1: gotten involved in this case out of Wisconsin involving a
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Speaker 1: sixteen year old boy with intellectual limitations who confessed to
16:24
Speaker 1: a murder that I don't think he committed. And you
16:28
Speaker 1: handed me the interrogation videos of Brendon Dacy, the same
16:31
Speaker 1: videos that like eight years later would go on to
16:34
Speaker 1: be featured in Making a Murderer. And I watched them
16:38
Speaker 1: from start to finish, and my heart broke.
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Speaker 2: We know he did something else to her? What else
16:43
Speaker 2: did he do with her?
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Speaker 1: Extremely extremely im poor you tell us this for USh
16:47
Speaker 1: to believe you? Because I saw two seasoned adult interrogators
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Speaker 1: questioning a sixteen year old, intellectually limited boy, manipulating him
17:00
Speaker 1: into confessing to a murder that he couldn't even describe.
17:04
Speaker 2: Did you see whether a cell phone of hers? Oh?
17:08
Speaker 2: Do you know whether she had a camera? Oh?
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Speaker 1: I couldn't shake the feeling of wanting to jump into
17:14
Speaker 1: the video screen and get myself between Brendan and those
17:16
Speaker 1: interrogators who were manipulating him into confessing to a crime
17:20
Speaker 1: he so clearly didn't commit. That was literally a life
17:23
Speaker 1: changing moment for me. I graduated from law school and
17:25
Speaker 1: within months I was back at Northwestern working alongside Steve
17:28
Speaker 1: to build the Center on Wrongful Convictions and to help
17:32
Speaker 1: represent Brendan and other kids just like him. Ever since, you.
17:36
Speaker 2: Know, every once in a while you come across a student,
17:40
Speaker 2: and Laura was a brilliant writer. I mean, let's just
17:42
Speaker 2: be honest, she was a better writer than I was.
17:46
Speaker 1: Can I get that in writing again?
17:49
Speaker 2: But she really didn't know a lot about the subject
17:52
Speaker 2: of false confession. She was, in a sense, like an
17:55
Speaker 2: uneducated jewelry member looking at that tape for the first time,
18:01
Speaker 2: and she was hooked from that point on.
18:03
Speaker 1: By the way I only told Steve like two years
18:05
Speaker 1: ago that I had mistakenly signed up for his class.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely, it broke my heart.
18:10
Speaker 1: No, I mean, what can I say, This is all
18:12
Speaker 1: totally clean slate for me. I really did know nothing
18:14
Speaker 1: about criminal law, and what I saw broke everything I
18:20
Speaker 1: thought I knew about our justice system. And as I
18:24
Speaker 1: continued to working with Steve over the years, you know,
18:26
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no there's no better mentor on the
18:29
Speaker 1: planet than Steve Drisen. He lifts others around him up,
18:33
Speaker 1: that's what he does. And you know, little by little
18:36
Speaker 1: as I learned from him, as I absorbed his passion
18:39
Speaker 1: for justice and his twenty four to seven dedication to
18:43
Speaker 1: speaking for people without a voice, and I was the
18:47
Speaker 1: fortunate beneficiary of his mentorship and it's something I'll be
18:50
Speaker 1: forever grateful for.
18:51
Speaker 2: You know, I think it's important to note Laura had
18:53
Speaker 2: a brilliant legal mind, but for me, it was when
18:58
Speaker 2: she met Brendan for the first time and there was
19:01
Speaker 2: a sort of instant connection between the two of them
19:05
Speaker 2: that sealed the deal.
19:06
Speaker 1: For me.
19:07
Speaker 2: I knew that I needed to keep her on this
19:10
Speaker 2: case whatever I could do, because that connection, the ability
19:15
Speaker 2: to relate to a client under these circumstances is so important.
19:19
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, that's the thing. It's one thing to
19:21
Speaker 1: watch the videotape, but it's another thing to actually meet
19:23
Speaker 1: the person whose life you saw being dismantled, and to
19:26
Speaker 1: hear the stories of suffering and to understand them not
19:29
Speaker 1: just as a character in a video or a case,
19:34
Speaker 1: but as a full human with a life and a
19:37
Speaker 1: family and friends and dreams and hopes and the kinds
19:41
Speaker 1: of plans that all of us have. When you meet
19:44
Speaker 1: someone like that and you're the lawyer and it's your
19:49
Speaker 1: job to help them, you can't walk away from that.
19:52
Speaker 1: You just can't do it. And I haven't walked away since.
20:05
Speaker 1: One of the questions people ask us all the time
20:08
Speaker 1: is how we and others like us have the strength
20:11
Speaker 1: to continue fighting these injustices day in and day out.
20:14
Speaker 2: Colleagues in our office, many of them are doing similarly
20:18
Speaker 2: gut wrenching work, and so when our office is functioning
20:23
Speaker 2: at its best, there is a lot of support there.
20:27
Speaker 2: Our office also is often a home and a place
20:31
Speaker 2: of solace for our clients. So we see some of
20:36
Speaker 2: our success stories walking around and that helps prop us up.
20:41
Speaker 2: But it's hard, so for me as a sort of
20:45
Speaker 2: therapeutic way to rid myself of some of these cases,
20:53
Speaker 2: but more importantly to educate others, was to do two things.
20:58
Speaker 2: To write about them and then to speak publicly and
21:02
Speaker 2: to spread this knowledge around as much as possible. And
21:06
Speaker 2: that's what I've been doing for the past twenty or
21:09
Speaker 2: twenty five years, and that's what Lara has been doing
21:12
Speaker 2: since she's been involved in this work.
21:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, the work is hard, and
21:16
Speaker 1: of course it's stressful, but it's the victories that keep
21:18
Speaker 1: us going. Right, There's no better feeling than watching someone
21:23
Speaker 1: you personally have believed in and fought for, usually for years.
21:27
Speaker 1: No better feeling in the world than watching them walk
21:30
Speaker 1: out of prison.
21:36
Speaker 2: I can't believe him finally hear this is unbelieved. I mean,
21:42
Speaker 2: steal shot, leave that you're you finally.
21:44
Speaker 1: Defended, not guilty of feeling of giving birth, of giving
21:53
Speaker 1: life back, helping this person rediscover and recapture the life
21:56
Speaker 1: that's been taken unjustly from them. It's an incredible feeling
22:00
Speaker 1: and that's what keeps us going. I think the times
22:03
Speaker 1: we're able to do that, those moments will stick with
22:06
Speaker 1: you for the rest of your life. False confession stories
22:17
Speaker 1: are life changing to hear. I mean literally, it was
22:20
Speaker 1: a story of a false confession that changed the course
22:22
Speaker 1: of my life, transformed my own personal trajectory. And that's
22:25
Speaker 1: what I want to do with this podcast. I want
22:27
Speaker 1: to share these stories because there's no better way to
22:30
Speaker 1: understand the need to reform the system than to hear
22:33
Speaker 1: about these injustices and to get fired up to view
22:36
Speaker 1: this as a call to action.
22:37
Speaker 2: I've been telling these stories for twenty years and trying
22:42
Speaker 2: to reach larger and larger audiences. So for me, that's
22:47
Speaker 2: what this is about. It's another opportunity to try to
22:51
Speaker 2: prevent someone else from suffering what Brendan Dacy has suffered exactly.
22:56
Speaker 1: You know. One of the amazing things is after making
22:59
Speaker 1: a murder came out, all of a sudden, people around
23:03
Speaker 1: the globe started caring about the criminal justice system for
23:07
Speaker 1: the first time, I mean millions of people. We want
23:10
Speaker 1: to amplify those feelings. We want to keep that energy
23:12
Speaker 1: flowing because it's already starting to result in important reforms
23:15
Speaker 1: around the United States and around the globe. We got
23:18
Speaker 1: to keep that going. These stories are powerful vehicles for justice,
23:21
Speaker 1: and that's why we're here telling these stories today. We
23:23
Speaker 1: can fix this, but we need to fix it together.
23:31
Speaker 1: The first story we're going to tell in this podcast
23:33
Speaker 1: is the story of a Virginia man named Robert Davis.
23:36
Speaker 2: When I first learned about Robert Davis's case, Lara had
23:40
Speaker 2: just come back into the fall to Northwestern Law School,
23:44
Speaker 2: and she was beginning to show signs of being a
23:48
Speaker 2: rising star in this field. And one of the things
23:51
Speaker 2: I wanted to do is to not only give her
23:54
Speaker 2: the Robert Davis tapes, but to let her run with them,
23:58
Speaker 2: let her analyze this case as an expert.
24:02
Speaker 1: A lot of people, I think, watched Making a Murderer
24:04
Speaker 1: and thought, that's a Manitoac County problem. That's something that
24:08
Speaker 1: just happened to Brendan, And that's not the case. This
24:11
Speaker 1: has happened to hundreds of people around the country that
24:14
Speaker 1: we know of, and surely there are thousands that we
24:16
Speaker 1: don't know of. And we wanted to start with Robert
24:19
Speaker 1: Davis because Roberts an everyday ordinary guy right comes from
24:24
Speaker 1: a stable family and a good home and got caught
24:28
Speaker 1: up in the same forces of interrogation that Brendan Dancy
24:30
Speaker 1: did and ended up confessing to an equally serious heinous
24:34
Speaker 1: crime that he, like Brendan, didn't commit. There's no better
24:37
Speaker 1: illustration of the point that we all can be broken
24:40
Speaker 1: by interrogation than Robert Davis's story. So join us next
24:46
Speaker 1: week and thanks for listening. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is
24:54
Speaker 1: the production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
24:57
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number One. Thanks to our executive producer Jason
25:01
Speaker 1: Flamm and the team at Signal Company Number One. Executive
25:05
Speaker 1: producer Kevin wardis senior producer and Pope, and additional production
25:09
Speaker 1: and editing by Connor Hall. Our music was composed by
25:13
Speaker 1: Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter
25:16
Speaker 1: at Laura Nyrider, and you can follow me on Twitter.
25:19
Speaker 2: At s Drizzen.
25:22
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
25:26
Speaker 1: and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
25:28
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
25:33
Speaker 1: Twitter at wrong Conviction