February 26, 2020 • 33 mins
What can I say I did to get me out of this?
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin use real interrogation audio to tell the shocking story of Robert Davis, a Virginia teenager who in 2003 falsely confessed to a double murder after enduring an interrogation complete with death threats, lies about the evidence, and fact-feeding, only to tell investigators, "I’m lying to you, full front to your face."
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This episode includes story line about and clips from Dateline NBC: In the Shadow of Justice
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And I'm Steve Drison.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
In our previous episode, we talked about how the interrogation
room works.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Today we're going to show you.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Steve and I are going to tell you about a
young man named Robert Davis. This is a frightening story
of a murder investigation that went horribly wrong. Roberts was
one of the first false confession cases I worked on,
and I'll never forget it because it taught me how
easily an ordinary person can get caught up in a
web of injustice. We first learned about Robert Davis back
(00:45):
in twenty eleven. The story came from a local newspaper
out of Charlottesville, Virginia.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I was in a space at the time where I
was looking for false confessions wherever I could find them,
and one day an article about Robert's case turned up
in my newsfeed. And when I read the article, I
was attracted to it for a number of reasons. One
was that there was a recording of the entire interrogation process,
(01:16):
and that's sort of the gold that everybody was looking for.
Can you see how police manipulate an innocent suspect into
confessing to a crime they didn't commit.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, I mean, so many people think that's only for
extremely young children, that's only for intellectually limited people. But
Robert Davis is every man's us. He's a normal, normal
guy in every sense, you know, to the extent there
is a normal person. Robert Davis could be your neighbor,
he could be your kid's friend. And there's no better
(01:50):
illustration of the power of the interrogation room, the way
these techniques work, the way they can transform the innocent
into the guilty in a matter of hours than this case.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
After receiving the interrogation video, I knew I had to
get involved in this case, and I knew I had
to work on it with Laura.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Robert Davis's case was my first case where I became
involved as an expert. The interrogation video it's one of
the most coercive videos I've ever seen. It speaks for itself.
It's horrible to watch, and it calls out for action.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
In many ways. Robert's case was an early incarnation of
the kind of clemency campaign that Laura and I recently
mounted in the case of Brendan Dacy. Using clips from
the interrogation to tell what had happened him, bringing in
experts from different fields, including law enforcement, to weigh in
(02:44):
on what was wrong with that interrogation, and helping to
personalize Robert through the media.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Robert Davis's story begins in Crozy, Virginia, a middle class
suburb of Charlottesville. Robert lived in a small house with
his mom, and they were really close. In the winter
of two thousand and three, he was a senior in
high school and with graduation just a few months away,
Robert was looking forward to the next phase of his life.
But on the night of February nineteenth, a terrible tragedy
(03:17):
happened on Robert's block. Fire broke out in a neighboring house,
the home of a young mother and her three children.
The fire department is called. They arrive at the scene.
It's a snowy night right snowflakes are coming down fast
and furious firefighters get there. They battle through the snow.
They put out the fire, and once the fire is subdued,
they go upstairs to one of the bedrooms, which is
(03:40):
where they find the body of the homeowner, a forty
one year old woman named Nola Charles, and when they
turned Nola's body over, they saw a knife in her back,
and suddenly it became very clear that this fire had
been set to cover up a murder.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Then the firefighters walked down a hallway to look in
some of the other bedrooms. This is a very small house,
so it was just a short walk and under some
debris they found the body of Nola's young son, Thomas Charles,
and he had died of smoke in elation. You know,
(04:16):
this was a horrific crime anyway you slice it. You know,
the murder of a mother, the death of a small child, stabbings,
an arson to try to cover up the crime. This
is something that would have been unheard of in Crose
and just would have been a complete and total shock
(04:40):
to the entire community.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
An investigation starts and pretty soon the police identify some
likely suspects. It's actually two other teenagers. Their names are
Rocky and Jessica Fugit. Rocky was nineteen. He was also
a senior in high school, like Robert Davis, but he
was somebody who had a really troubled past. He'd struggled
with drug addiction, with alcoholic and he'd gotten in trouble
(05:02):
with the police for doing things like leaving dead birds
in church sanctuaries. His sister, Jessica was fifteen, and she
had struggled her whole life with mental illness, delusions, hallucinations.
She was somebody who really grappled with her own demons,
and she was friends with Nola Charles's teenage daughter, Wendy,
(05:23):
but Jessica didn't like Wendy's mom. Jessica was known to
have a grudge against Nola Charles, and so based on
all this information, the police picked up Rocky and Jessica
within only a few days of this fire, and they
bring them down to the police station for questioning, and
soon enough, the two of them confess that they were
involved in the killing of Nola Charles and the setting
of the house on fire. After they confessed, Jessica led
(05:45):
the police to a snowy field behind Nola charles home
where she and Rocky had buried an iron bar that
had been used to bludgeon Nola Charles before she was stabbed,
and that iron bar still had Nola's DNA all over it,
So Jessica was able to lead the police to this
new evidence that they didn't know about that corroborated her confession.
(06:05):
The confession's true. Rocky and Jessica are guilty. They've never
said otherwise. Case closed. And if this was the end
of the story, right, we wouldn't be telling it to you.
But it's not the end of the story. Because the
police were convinced that Rocky and Jessica had not acted alone,
and they each started rattling off a list of names
(06:26):
other kids in their high school. The police determined that
each one of these other high schoolers had an ironclad
alibi until the last name on the list, which is
Robert Davis. Robert had been at home alone asleep, not
a very good alibi, so the police decided to bring
(06:47):
him in for questioning.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Two Now, from the get go, Robert Davis and Jessica
and Rocky being together in the same space committing a
horrific cry maiden no sense at all. These two kids
picked on Robert, especially Rocky. The idea that Robert would
(07:08):
be with them and would commit a murder was absurd
and it didn't take a lot of smarts to see that.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
But nonetheless, right the police go and pick up Robert Davis.
They bring him in for questioning. In the middle of
the night. Now, before we hear what happens next, I
want to stop for a minute and talk to you
about how interrogations work. Obviously, the goal is to get
the suspect to confess to the crime, but how does
(07:37):
that happen exactly? In the last episode, Steve and I
shared some of what we've learned from watching many hours
of interrogation tapes. But as shocking as what we described is,
you should know that interrogations used to be even worse.
One hundred years ago, it was common for police to
use physical violence. Innocent and guilty suspects alike were beaten,
(07:59):
hung from window, and otherwise tortured until they confessed just
to escape the suffering. Then, starting in the nineteen forties
and fifties, reform was in the air. Physically abusive practices
were thrown out. Police were trained to use words instead
of fists, and this change seemed like a progressive one
at the time. But now we know that psychological interrogation
(08:21):
techniques can also be highly problematic. They're very good at
persuading actual criminals to admit guilt, but they can also
produce false confessions. The manipulation begins with the interrogation room itself.
Like Steve said, these rooms are designed to make the
suspect feel isolated, cut off from all sources of support
(08:42):
or help. This is the type of room where police
brought Robert Davis on February twenty second, two thousand and three,
at about one o'clock in the morning. He's by himself.
He's eighteen years old, and he's sitting in there alone,
not knowing what's happening now terrifying circuit stances. And then
(09:02):
all of a sudden, with the video camera rolling, the
police come into the interrogation room, two officers, big burly guys,
and they say to him.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Robert, which murder Thoma Charles, of Thomas Charles, you're when
we talked with the attempted murder of the two Charals daughters,
Katie and Wenney. Now it's really gotten serious.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
This has exactly right.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And literally, you know, when you watch Robert react to
being accused of murder, you can feel the fear and
the panic and the anxiety just radiating off this video
and you could just watch his mind spin.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
What can I do?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
What can I do to convince these guys they've got
the wrong person? And so Robert says to them, what
any of us I think in that situation would say,
I swear.
Speaker 5 (09:56):
To out all my life right now that I did
not do nothing oh this matter, I have nothing to
do with this. I will take a polygraph test right
now to prove to you that I did not have
nothing to do with this.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Interrogation trainers teach law enforcement officers that if a suspect
affirmatively asks for a polygraph exam, that that's one indicator
of innocence. It's not rock solid proof that somebody is innocent,
but it's a powerful statement that they have nothing to
(10:29):
fear and that they're willing to put their innocence to
the test.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
And the officers shut them down. They tell them, no,
we don't have a polygraph, even though they actually have
one in the room next door. Now, why are they
refusing to listen to Robert as he's asserting dozens of
times his innocence. Well, that's how officers are trained to interrogate.
(10:53):
Interrogation is basically a two staged process. The goal of
the first stage, which we've just heard a little bit of,
is to bring the suspect down to hopelessness. This officer
is telling Robert that it's pointless to say he's innocent
because they already know he's guilty. An interrogator's job is
to make the suspect feel trapped, using every tool available,
(11:15):
and as many people don't realize, these tools can include lying.
Speaker 6 (11:19):
Underskin.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
It is the worst saying.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
The world was for the dust.
Speaker 7 (11:23):
Can you see it?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
They say to him, we found your DNA in the
house from your skin cells that just shed naturally off you.
And of course this is false, right. The house have
gone up in flames, there was no forensic evidence whatsoever
recovered from the scene.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
It's a complete lie.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
But in the United States, police are allowed to lie
during interrogations. And again you can see radiating off this
videotape the terror in Robert's face. Right, how can this be?
I've never been in that home.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
And then the officer says something I have never seen
in any other interrogation, and I've seen that thousands of
hours of interrogations.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
I can't lie about the evidence.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I can't lie about the evidence, Robert. I mean, talk
about a whopper. Not only can he lie during the interrogations,
but he can lie about the evidence. And he's lying about.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
A lie exactly, talk about a mind fux.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
We'll just drop the F word, drop the F bomb.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
It's appropriate in this case, right, I mean, this is
the psychological game that twists the world for people in.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
The box, and it works.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Now, let's take a moment to remember that Robert is
going through this ordeal completely alone. At eighteen years old,
he's legally an adult, but even if he were younger,
in most states, it's perfectly legal to question a child
without notifying their parent or guardian. This is a desperate situation,
and like anyone would, Robert asks for the best protector
(12:53):
he has. He asks for his mom, but that request
is turned around and used to break him down even further.
Speaker 7 (13:01):
I will talk to mom, please, I'd do that, but
ALI will cooperations.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Then they do something especially insidious. The lead investigator says
that he had just had a phone call with Robert's
mother and his mother was crying hysterically on the phone.
You know, And this investigator tells Robert, your mom wants
you to cooperate. Your mom is saying, Robert, you know,
(13:34):
tell the truth so that I can help you to
go on with your life, right.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
To save your life exactly, And of course, that's all
made up, right. He didn't actually have this conversation with
the mother at all. It's horrible to watch the police
twist a mother child relationship into a bludgeon to be
used in the interrogation room. It's a disgusting ploy, deeply manipulative,
and it's it's.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Very hard to watch.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
There are other moments that are just you know, classic
threats of punishment and promises of leniency and the calculated
choice of words on the part of this officer have
always intrigued me.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
And I'm trying to keep you from that must ultimate
the punishments you can get and you're not in.
Speaker 7 (14:18):
Healthyly help you.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
He refuses to say death penalty. He uses the words
ultimate punishment as if that's somehow less direct a threat.
You know, it's an effort to dance around something that
everybody knows is true, which is Robert is fighting for
his life in this interrogation room.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
This is the moment when all of these psychological techniques,
all of this mind fuck, finally takes hold, and Robert
looks up at these officers from the corner of the
interrogation room.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
And he says, I did to get out of.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
This that's the climax of the entire interrogation. What can
I say I did to get me out of this?
Once the suspect has been brought down a hopelessness, once
their will has been broken, that's when the second stage
(15:17):
of interrogation begins. This is the moment when the suspect
is offered a choice. What's going to happen if they
don't confess, and what will happen if they do. For Robert,
option number one looks pretty terrible. The ultimate punishment or
best case scenario, ninety years in prison. But on the
other hand, the police tell Robert that if he confesses
(15:39):
his involvement in the crime, if he cooperates, the judge
will go easy on him. He might get as few
as five to ten years in prison, and at the
very least, they tell him he'll save his own life.
The interrogators have finally achieved their goal to make confessing
look like the best choice Robert has.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
So you can see Robert breaking down. But he has
a problem. He's never been in that house, he's never
been with these people. He doesn't know who the people
are that are accusing him of these crimes. Even if
he wants to confess to this crime. He has no
idea of what happened.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
So now the game becomes not convincing Robert that he
has to confess, but rather simply telling him what to say.
And so that's how the final few hours of this
interrogation are spent. Robert starts out not even knowing who
his accomplices are, and they have to give him the
names Rocky and Jessica. Okay, so Robert adopts those. Yes,
I was there with Rocky and Jessica, and we went
(16:42):
in the back door of the home.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
No.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
In fact, the evidence of the scene was that the
entry had occurred through the front door, so the officers
have to correct that. No, Robert, the three of you
went through the front door. Then he's telling a story
in which he and Rocky and Jessica are down on
the first floor of the home and he Robert stays
down there during the attack. But of course Nolah Charles's
body was found in an upstairs bedroom. He's getting it
wrong again. So again, no, no, Robert, you were upstairs.
(17:07):
We know you were upstairs. You have to say you
were upstairs.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
And this goes on and on and on.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
I got somebody else Cluverner, you did another act.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
You know what that act is?
Speaker 2 (17:19):
You stabbed that one.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And the amazing thing is that while the officers are
feeding Robert all of this information correcting his mistakes, while
they're doing it, there's a level of self awareness because
they say to him, Robert, you realize that if I
have to tell you what you did, that defeats the purpose,
and then they do it anyway. After Robert creates this
confession and seals his own fate, he looks up at
(17:44):
these officers and he says, do you think by me
telling you all this, it's going to get me home?
And the officer looks at him and says, no, you're
not going to go home. You'll see a judge on Monday.
And Robert looks at him.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
And says, this to just.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Sun, I'm lying to you about all of this. It
is the clearest recantation I have ever seen.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
And the most immediate. I mean, he hasn't left the
interrogation room yet.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
He thought he's going to go home, back to his mom,
back to his high school life, and instead he is
handcuffed and led out of that room to a jail
cell where he's booked for double murder and arson, and
where in fact he's staring at decades in prison. Robert
(18:37):
Davis couldn't afford to hire a lawyer, so the court
appointed one for him. And when that happens, some people
get a lawyer like Lynn Kachinsky, the guy who botched
Brendon Dazzy's case in Wisconsin.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
But for Robert this was a.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Moment when he finally got some amazing luck because the
lawyer appointed to defend him was a man who's dedicated
his life to fighting for people without a voice.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
My name's Stephen Rosenfield, been practicing law for forty three years.
I'm a civil rights lawyer.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Steve Rosenfield is one of my heroes.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Mine too. And when Steve looks at the tape, he
sees everything that we've just talked about. He sees that
police officers browbeat a teenager into confessing to a crime
that he didn't even know how to describe, and that
they were the ones who scripted this confession.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Steve threw himself into this case with the passion of
a father who saw how worthless this confession was, but
who also saw the stakes. The real stakes here were
the rest of this eighteen year old's life.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
So the job of a good lawyer, when faced with
a confession is to try to do everything in their
power to keep that evidence out of the trial and
to argue that that confession was involuntary and unreliable. And
that's exactly what Steve did.
Speaker 6 (20:03):
Our goal was to keep the confession out because it
was coerced and did not reflect what really happened on
the night of the murders.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Steve litigated this case, fought hard for Robert hired a
psychological expert to talk about the tactics that were used
by police officers, and he pointed out all of the
highlights that we've been talking about.
Speaker 6 (20:28):
I was able to call our expert witness, and he
went through the kinds of factors that lend themselves toward
false confessions. Why a young man, having been threatened with
a death sentence might say that he had done something
when in fact he had not.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
And if you want to understand the problem of false confessions,
why this happens so much, Why people are convicted on
the basis of confessions like this one, it's because too
many judges believe that the law does not clearly prohibit
even threats that someone will face death if they don't
confess right, even cases where they have to be told
exactly what to say by their interrogators. This judge didn't
(21:07):
think the law prohibited that and allow this confession to evidence.
And when that happened, of course, then Robert Davis had
a horrible choice to make.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Knowing Steve, he was very clear and honest with Robert
about what the options were and what the chances are
of his being convicted.
Speaker 6 (21:25):
Confessions are powerful. There was a more than likely chance
of him being convicted, and with a conviction surely would
have come a very hefty sentence. We were guessing that
it would have been a huge number of years or
life sentences for the killing of the child and the mother.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Do I go to trial and risk being sent to
prison for the rest of my life for something I
didn't do? Or do I accept an offer that the
prosecution has made to me if I plead guilty to
one count of murder, I will be said to twenty
three years. Robert was eighteen years old when he was arrested,
(22:07):
so that would mean that he could get out at
the age of forty one. He would still have a
life half a life half a life. He could have
a family, he could have some future.
Speaker 6 (22:20):
Right.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
It's a horrible choice, but it's the kind of choice
that defendants face in courtrooms around the country every single day.
Robert chose the deal. He entered a plea of guilty
in exchange for those twenty three years, a horribly difficult,
deeply unjust decision that he was forced to make, but
also one that I can't fault inform the slightest. I
(22:42):
think any of us in that position would probably do
the same thing.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
But what Steve said to Robert is I will not
give up on you. I will continue to investigate this case.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Steve Rosenfield promised Robert Davis that he would walk with him,
that he would stay with him, he would visit him
in prison. You wouldn't forget him.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
And Steve also said to him, look, I know you
didn't commit this crime, and I know you don't want
to say an open court that you did. There is
something called an Alford plea that will enable you to
save face.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
You've got someone proclaiming their innocence, but who doesn't have
the power of resources, ability, legal standing to fight the
evidence against them. So they cry, uncle, I'm innocent, but
I can't fight this. That's what an Alfred plea is.
We've seen it in many other wrongful conviction cases, most
prominently in the West Memphis three case.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
One of the consequences is that you can't sue the
state for violating your civil rights. The Alfred plea disqualifies
you from recovering any compensation for the years, sometimes decades,
you've spent in prison.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
It's a tool of injustice.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Should not exist, but it does, and that's the tool
that was used to secure Robert Davis's twenty three year
prison sends. Steve Rosenfield kept his promise even while Robert
served his time. Steve continued pounding the pavement looking for
(24:12):
new evidence of Robert's innocence. He even reached out to
family members of Rocky and Jessica Fugit, who were both
serving life.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Sentences in prison.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Steve never gave up hope that one day Rocky and
Jessica might come forward and tell the truth. And then
one day that hope arrived in the mail.
Speaker 6 (24:31):
After about eight years, I received a letter from the
boy who said that his conscience was bothering him and
would I come down and visit him and he told
us the truth. He told us that he and his
sister were the only two present. He came up with
the idea of framing Robert because he thought it could
(24:51):
help at his sentencing if the prosecutor was pleased with
his cooperation.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
It was like manna from heaven. Right, the accuser of
Robert Davis recants and says, I was wrong. I feel
terrible about it. Help me make this right.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
The only hope that Robert had was if the governor
of Virginia would step in and issue a pardon. And
so that's Steve Rosenfield's plan. Let's go to the governor,
Let's tell him about Rocky's recantation, and let's highlight all
the problems with this interrogation. Now, a local Charlottesville newspaper
called The Hook wrote an article about steve clemency campaign
for Robert. And that's the article that showed up in
(25:33):
your newsfeed.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Right, Steve, exactly. I read that story and I reached
out to Steve and I said, what can we do
to help? And as we talked, I noticed that Steve
had hired a psychological expert for Robert's case, but he
didn't have an expert who could really look at the
interrogation and say, these are the kinds of tactics that
(25:55):
lead to coerced and unreliable confessions. I volunteered our assistance
in doing that. I had done some expert work, and
I wanted Lara to start doing some expert work. So
I assigned Lara the lead role in analyzing this interrogation.
But we also offered Steve other ways in which to
(26:19):
publicize and highlight Roberts's plight. I had worked with a
number of producers on NBC's Dateline Show, and I reached
out to them and I said, this is gold. We
have a videotaped interrogation from start to finish. You can
actually see on this tape how someone confesses to a
(26:41):
crime they didn't commit. And we also reached out to
other experts in the law enforcement field to look at
Robert's interrogation and to weigh in on all the things
that police officers did wrong.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
I mean, that's the thing, right.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
We knew that we needed to elevate Robert's story and
bring a community of different people to get to push
all in their different ways against a system that's designed
to keep people in prison.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
We knew that.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Public opinion would rally around Robert Davis. Once people saw
this story, we knew that people inside Virginia would care
about the way interrogations were being conducted in their state
and would hopefully press the governor to do the right
thing in Robert's case. And then one more.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Thing happened, more manna from heaven.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
It was Jessica Fujet.
Speaker 6 (27:26):
I received a letter from her saying that she knew
that she had done wrong by framing Robert and that
she wanted to make amends for that.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
That's when we started to really believe there was a
chance of getting Robert Davis out of prison.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
I met with Governor mccaulliffe. We talked for about forty minutes.
I suggested to him that he grant at least a
conditional pardon and then revisit the case in a year,
and that was the grounds under which Governor mccaulliff agreed
to release Robert, deciding that with the statements of the
two kids, there was a much better likelihood that he
(28:06):
would have been found not guilty.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
It's been twelve years of incarceration for Robert, and suddenly,
a few days before Christmas, he's allowed to go home.
It's an incredible moment where you can you can hear
the joy in his voice and in his mother's voice
as they embrace for the first time after Robert is freed.
It was beautiful, just beautiful.
Speaker 8 (28:31):
Right.
Speaker 5 (28:38):
I'm home, man like I can reach out and not
touch nothing. I don't see no gates now, I don't
see no fences.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
As a part of dayline documenting Robert's release, they go
and speak to the chief of the Albemarle County Police
Department and they ask him how he feels about Robert
Davis's release.
Speaker 8 (28:56):
I will say this, I believe that the confession is
an unreally viable confession. Using terms like the ultimate punishment,
length of the interview, those kinds of things would be
clearly not done today.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
He was embarrassed by what he saw, and this was
somebody from the same police department in the same community,
reflecting back on what he saw when he looked at
the tape.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
And with that admission of a mistake, the Governor of
Virginia a year later granted Robert that full pardon based
on actual innocence. He exonerated him.
Speaker 6 (29:36):
Robert and I have maintained a close relationship all these years,
he's just such a great kid at go the kid
in mid thirties. Now he has an extended family, wonderful friends.
He has highly thought of in the community. He's a
sweet guy with a big heart. He's very optimistic about
the future. And this has been in spite of having
(29:59):
spent his form of years in prison. So by and large,
he uses every day to enjoy and put behind him
some of that ugly past.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
That's the thing.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I mean, we'd watched on that interrogation video Robert be
transformed from just an innocent member of the community into
a confessed murderer, and now, thirteen years later, we could
watch him be transformed back and it was a beautiful
thing to watch, the retelling of the story the right way. Hello, Hey, Robert,
(30:34):
it's Flora. How are you doing.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
I'm doing well. How are you?
Speaker 3 (30:38):
I'm good.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
You just got off work today?
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Hunh.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
What are you doing for a job?
Speaker 2 (30:41):
He days?
Speaker 5 (30:41):
I'm doing electrically working for the five days.
Speaker 7 (30:45):
Amazing, fantastic.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
I heard you got engaged recently to congratulations.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
And she's got a daughter here, so you're a stepdad.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Yeah, that's a lot of responsibility.
Speaker 5 (30:55):
It is a lot of responsibility, but I definitely enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
The one question we're always asked in our work is
why would anyone confess to a crime that they didn't commit?
And when you watch the video of Robert Davis, it's
the perfect answer to the question, why would anyone confess
to a crime they didn't commit? The answer is because
they're interrogated like this. When you're fighting a wrongful conviction,
(31:23):
what you are doing, at the end of the day
is trying to rewrite the story that's been told about
your client.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
You're rewriting history, right, You're.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Changing the legacy of what happened.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
And the story that led to the conviction is a
story of guilt, a story of harm, of damage, of pain,
and of someone who, at the end of the day,
deserves to be locked up in a cage for the
rest of their life. That's the story that when you
fight a wrongful conviction.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
That you have to change.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Thanks so much for joining us. I hope you'll come
back next week when we'll be telling the story of
Chicago's own Central Park jogger case, known as the Dixmore Five.
The Dixmore five were a group of teenage boys who
confessed to the rape and murder of their own classmate
and were convicted despite some of the strongest evidence of
innocence imaginable. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of
(32:17):
Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One.
Special thanks to our executive producer Jason Flamm and the
team at Signal Company Number one. Executive producer Kevin wardis
Senior producer and Pope, and additional production and editing by
Connor Hall.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura Nyrider,
and you can follow me on Twitter at s Drizsen.
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
Twitter at wrong Conviction
Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And I'm Steve Drison.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
In our previous episode, we talked about how the interrogation
room works.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Today we're going to show you.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Steve and I are going to tell you about a
young man named Robert Davis. This is a frightening story
of a murder investigation that went horribly wrong. Roberts was
one of the first false confession cases I worked on,
and I'll never forget it because it taught me how
easily an ordinary person can get caught up in a
web of injustice. We first learned about Robert Davis back
(00:45):
in twenty eleven. The story came from a local newspaper
out of Charlottesville, Virginia.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I was in a space at the time where I
was looking for false confessions wherever I could find them,
and one day an article about Robert's case turned up
in my newsfeed. And when I read the article, I
was attracted to it for a number of reasons. One
was that there was a recording of the entire interrogation process,
(01:16):
and that's sort of the gold that everybody was looking for.
Can you see how police manipulate an innocent suspect into
confessing to a crime they didn't commit.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, I mean, so many people think that's only for
extremely young children, that's only for intellectually limited people. But
Robert Davis is every man's us. He's a normal, normal
guy in every sense, you know, to the extent there
is a normal person. Robert Davis could be your neighbor,
he could be your kid's friend. And there's no better
(01:50):
illustration of the power of the interrogation room, the way
these techniques work, the way they can transform the innocent
into the guilty in a matter of hours than this case.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
After receiving the interrogation video, I knew I had to
get involved in this case, and I knew I had
to work on it with Laura.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Robert Davis's case was my first case where I became
involved as an expert. The interrogation video it's one of
the most coercive videos I've ever seen. It speaks for itself.
It's horrible to watch, and it calls out for action.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
In many ways. Robert's case was an early incarnation of
the kind of clemency campaign that Laura and I recently
mounted in the case of Brendan Dacy. Using clips from
the interrogation to tell what had happened him, bringing in
experts from different fields, including law enforcement, to weigh in
(02:44):
on what was wrong with that interrogation, and helping to
personalize Robert through the media.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Robert Davis's story begins in Crozy, Virginia, a middle class
suburb of Charlottesville. Robert lived in a small house with
his mom, and they were really close. In the winter
of two thousand and three, he was a senior in
high school and with graduation just a few months away,
Robert was looking forward to the next phase of his life.
But on the night of February nineteenth, a terrible tragedy
(03:17):
happened on Robert's block. Fire broke out in a neighboring house,
the home of a young mother and her three children.
The fire department is called. They arrive at the scene.
It's a snowy night right snowflakes are coming down fast
and furious firefighters get there. They battle through the snow.
They put out the fire, and once the fire is subdued,
they go upstairs to one of the bedrooms, which is
(03:40):
where they find the body of the homeowner, a forty
one year old woman named Nola Charles, and when they
turned Nola's body over, they saw a knife in her back,
and suddenly it became very clear that this fire had
been set to cover up a murder.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Then the firefighters walked down a hallway to look in
some of the other bedrooms. This is a very small house,
so it was just a short walk and under some
debris they found the body of Nola's young son, Thomas Charles,
and he had died of smoke in elation. You know,
(04:16):
this was a horrific crime anyway you slice it. You know,
the murder of a mother, the death of a small child, stabbings,
an arson to try to cover up the crime. This
is something that would have been unheard of in Crose
and just would have been a complete and total shock
(04:40):
to the entire community.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
An investigation starts and pretty soon the police identify some
likely suspects. It's actually two other teenagers. Their names are
Rocky and Jessica Fugit. Rocky was nineteen. He was also
a senior in high school, like Robert Davis, but he
was somebody who had a really troubled past. He'd struggled
with drug addiction, with alcoholic and he'd gotten in trouble
(05:02):
with the police for doing things like leaving dead birds
in church sanctuaries. His sister, Jessica was fifteen, and she
had struggled her whole life with mental illness, delusions, hallucinations.
She was somebody who really grappled with her own demons,
and she was friends with Nola Charles's teenage daughter, Wendy,
(05:23):
but Jessica didn't like Wendy's mom. Jessica was known to
have a grudge against Nola Charles, and so based on
all this information, the police picked up Rocky and Jessica
within only a few days of this fire, and they
bring them down to the police station for questioning, and
soon enough, the two of them confess that they were
involved in the killing of Nola Charles and the setting
of the house on fire. After they confessed, Jessica led
(05:45):
the police to a snowy field behind Nola charles home
where she and Rocky had buried an iron bar that
had been used to bludgeon Nola Charles before she was stabbed,
and that iron bar still had Nola's DNA all over it,
So Jessica was able to lead the police to this
new evidence that they didn't know about that corroborated her confession.
(06:05):
The confession's true. Rocky and Jessica are guilty. They've never
said otherwise. Case closed. And if this was the end
of the story, right, we wouldn't be telling it to you.
But it's not the end of the story. Because the
police were convinced that Rocky and Jessica had not acted alone,
and they each started rattling off a list of names
(06:26):
other kids in their high school. The police determined that
each one of these other high schoolers had an ironclad
alibi until the last name on the list, which is
Robert Davis. Robert had been at home alone asleep, not
a very good alibi, so the police decided to bring
(06:47):
him in for questioning.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Two Now, from the get go, Robert Davis and Jessica
and Rocky being together in the same space committing a
horrific cry maiden no sense at all. These two kids
picked on Robert, especially Rocky. The idea that Robert would
(07:08):
be with them and would commit a murder was absurd
and it didn't take a lot of smarts to see that.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
But nonetheless, right the police go and pick up Robert Davis.
They bring him in for questioning. In the middle of
the night. Now, before we hear what happens next, I
want to stop for a minute and talk to you
about how interrogations work. Obviously, the goal is to get
the suspect to confess to the crime, but how does
(07:37):
that happen exactly? In the last episode, Steve and I
shared some of what we've learned from watching many hours
of interrogation tapes. But as shocking as what we described is,
you should know that interrogations used to be even worse.
One hundred years ago, it was common for police to
use physical violence. Innocent and guilty suspects alike were beaten,
(07:59):
hung from window, and otherwise tortured until they confessed just
to escape the suffering. Then, starting in the nineteen forties
and fifties, reform was in the air. Physically abusive practices
were thrown out. Police were trained to use words instead
of fists, and this change seemed like a progressive one
at the time. But now we know that psychological interrogation
(08:21):
techniques can also be highly problematic. They're very good at
persuading actual criminals to admit guilt, but they can also
produce false confessions. The manipulation begins with the interrogation room itself.
Like Steve said, these rooms are designed to make the
suspect feel isolated, cut off from all sources of support
(08:42):
or help. This is the type of room where police
brought Robert Davis on February twenty second, two thousand and three,
at about one o'clock in the morning. He's by himself.
He's eighteen years old, and he's sitting in there alone,
not knowing what's happening now terrifying circuit stances. And then
(09:02):
all of a sudden, with the video camera rolling, the
police come into the interrogation room, two officers, big burly guys,
and they say to him.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Robert, which murder Thoma Charles, of Thomas Charles, you're when
we talked with the attempted murder of the two Charals daughters,
Katie and Wenney. Now it's really gotten serious.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
This has exactly right.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And literally, you know, when you watch Robert react to
being accused of murder, you can feel the fear and
the panic and the anxiety just radiating off this video
and you could just watch his mind spin.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
What can I do?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
What can I do to convince these guys they've got
the wrong person? And so Robert says to them, what
any of us I think in that situation would say,
I swear.
Speaker 5 (09:56):
To out all my life right now that I did
not do nothing oh this matter, I have nothing to
do with this. I will take a polygraph test right
now to prove to you that I did not have
nothing to do with this.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Interrogation trainers teach law enforcement officers that if a suspect
affirmatively asks for a polygraph exam, that that's one indicator
of innocence. It's not rock solid proof that somebody is innocent,
but it's a powerful statement that they have nothing to
(10:29):
fear and that they're willing to put their innocence to
the test.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
And the officers shut them down. They tell them, no,
we don't have a polygraph, even though they actually have
one in the room next door. Now, why are they
refusing to listen to Robert as he's asserting dozens of
times his innocence. Well, that's how officers are trained to interrogate.
(10:53):
Interrogation is basically a two staged process. The goal of
the first stage, which we've just heard a little bit of,
is to bring the suspect down to hopelessness. This officer
is telling Robert that it's pointless to say he's innocent
because they already know he's guilty. An interrogator's job is
to make the suspect feel trapped, using every tool available,
(11:15):
and as many people don't realize, these tools can include lying.
Speaker 6 (11:19):
Underskin.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
It is the worst saying.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
The world was for the dust.
Speaker 7 (11:23):
Can you see it?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
They say to him, we found your DNA in the
house from your skin cells that just shed naturally off you.
And of course this is false, right. The house have
gone up in flames, there was no forensic evidence whatsoever
recovered from the scene.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
It's a complete lie.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
But in the United States, police are allowed to lie
during interrogations. And again you can see radiating off this
videotape the terror in Robert's face. Right, how can this be?
I've never been in that home.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
And then the officer says something I have never seen
in any other interrogation, and I've seen that thousands of
hours of interrogations.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
I can't lie about the evidence.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I can't lie about the evidence, Robert. I mean, talk
about a whopper. Not only can he lie during the interrogations,
but he can lie about the evidence. And he's lying about.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
A lie exactly, talk about a mind fux.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
We'll just drop the F word, drop the F bomb.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
It's appropriate in this case, right, I mean, this is
the psychological game that twists the world for people in.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
The box, and it works.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Now, let's take a moment to remember that Robert is
going through this ordeal completely alone. At eighteen years old,
he's legally an adult, but even if he were younger,
in most states, it's perfectly legal to question a child
without notifying their parent or guardian. This is a desperate situation,
and like anyone would, Robert asks for the best protector
(12:53):
he has. He asks for his mom, but that request
is turned around and used to break him down even further.
Speaker 7 (13:01):
I will talk to mom, please, I'd do that, but
ALI will cooperations.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Then they do something especially insidious. The lead investigator says
that he had just had a phone call with Robert's
mother and his mother was crying hysterically on the phone.
You know, And this investigator tells Robert, your mom wants
you to cooperate. Your mom is saying, Robert, you know,
(13:34):
tell the truth so that I can help you to
go on with your life, right.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
To save your life exactly, And of course, that's all
made up, right. He didn't actually have this conversation with
the mother at all. It's horrible to watch the police
twist a mother child relationship into a bludgeon to be
used in the interrogation room. It's a disgusting ploy, deeply manipulative,
and it's it's.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Very hard to watch.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
There are other moments that are just you know, classic
threats of punishment and promises of leniency and the calculated
choice of words on the part of this officer have
always intrigued me.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
And I'm trying to keep you from that must ultimate
the punishments you can get and you're not in.
Speaker 7 (14:18):
Healthyly help you.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
He refuses to say death penalty. He uses the words
ultimate punishment as if that's somehow less direct a threat.
You know, it's an effort to dance around something that
everybody knows is true, which is Robert is fighting for
his life in this interrogation room.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
This is the moment when all of these psychological techniques,
all of this mind fuck, finally takes hold, and Robert
looks up at these officers from the corner of the
interrogation room.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
And he says, I did to get out of.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
This that's the climax of the entire interrogation. What can
I say I did to get me out of this?
Once the suspect has been brought down a hopelessness, once
their will has been broken, that's when the second stage
(15:17):
of interrogation begins. This is the moment when the suspect
is offered a choice. What's going to happen if they
don't confess, and what will happen if they do. For Robert,
option number one looks pretty terrible. The ultimate punishment or
best case scenario, ninety years in prison. But on the
other hand, the police tell Robert that if he confesses
(15:39):
his involvement in the crime, if he cooperates, the judge
will go easy on him. He might get as few
as five to ten years in prison, and at the
very least, they tell him he'll save his own life.
The interrogators have finally achieved their goal to make confessing
look like the best choice Robert has.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
So you can see Robert breaking down. But he has
a problem. He's never been in that house, he's never
been with these people. He doesn't know who the people
are that are accusing him of these crimes. Even if
he wants to confess to this crime. He has no
idea of what happened.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
So now the game becomes not convincing Robert that he
has to confess, but rather simply telling him what to say.
And so that's how the final few hours of this
interrogation are spent. Robert starts out not even knowing who
his accomplices are, and they have to give him the
names Rocky and Jessica. Okay, so Robert adopts those. Yes,
I was there with Rocky and Jessica, and we went
(16:42):
in the back door of the home.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
No.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
In fact, the evidence of the scene was that the
entry had occurred through the front door, so the officers
have to correct that. No, Robert, the three of you
went through the front door. Then he's telling a story
in which he and Rocky and Jessica are down on
the first floor of the home and he Robert stays
down there during the attack. But of course Nolah Charles's
body was found in an upstairs bedroom. He's getting it
wrong again. So again, no, no, Robert, you were upstairs.
(17:07):
We know you were upstairs. You have to say you
were upstairs.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
And this goes on and on and on.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
I got somebody else Cluverner, you did another act.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
You know what that act is?
Speaker 2 (17:19):
You stabbed that one.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And the amazing thing is that while the officers are
feeding Robert all of this information correcting his mistakes, while
they're doing it, there's a level of self awareness because
they say to him, Robert, you realize that if I
have to tell you what you did, that defeats the purpose,
and then they do it anyway. After Robert creates this
confession and seals his own fate, he looks up at
(17:44):
these officers and he says, do you think by me
telling you all this, it's going to get me home?
And the officer looks at him and says, no, you're
not going to go home. You'll see a judge on Monday.
And Robert looks at him.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
And says, this to just.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Sun, I'm lying to you about all of this. It
is the clearest recantation I have ever seen.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
And the most immediate. I mean, he hasn't left the
interrogation room yet.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
He thought he's going to go home, back to his mom,
back to his high school life, and instead he is
handcuffed and led out of that room to a jail
cell where he's booked for double murder and arson, and
where in fact he's staring at decades in prison. Robert
(18:37):
Davis couldn't afford to hire a lawyer, so the court
appointed one for him. And when that happens, some people
get a lawyer like Lynn Kachinsky, the guy who botched
Brendon Dazzy's case in Wisconsin.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
But for Robert this was a.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Moment when he finally got some amazing luck because the
lawyer appointed to defend him was a man who's dedicated
his life to fighting for people without a voice.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
My name's Stephen Rosenfield, been practicing law for forty three years.
I'm a civil rights lawyer.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Steve Rosenfield is one of my heroes.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Mine too. And when Steve looks at the tape, he
sees everything that we've just talked about. He sees that
police officers browbeat a teenager into confessing to a crime
that he didn't even know how to describe, and that
they were the ones who scripted this confession.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Steve threw himself into this case with the passion of
a father who saw how worthless this confession was, but
who also saw the stakes. The real stakes here were
the rest of this eighteen year old's life.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
So the job of a good lawyer, when faced with
a confession is to try to do everything in their
power to keep that evidence out of the trial and
to argue that that confession was involuntary and unreliable. And
that's exactly what Steve did.
Speaker 6 (20:03):
Our goal was to keep the confession out because it
was coerced and did not reflect what really happened on
the night of the murders.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Steve litigated this case, fought hard for Robert hired a
psychological expert to talk about the tactics that were used
by police officers, and he pointed out all of the
highlights that we've been talking about.
Speaker 6 (20:28):
I was able to call our expert witness, and he
went through the kinds of factors that lend themselves toward
false confessions. Why a young man, having been threatened with
a death sentence might say that he had done something
when in fact he had not.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
And if you want to understand the problem of false confessions,
why this happens so much, Why people are convicted on
the basis of confessions like this one, it's because too
many judges believe that the law does not clearly prohibit
even threats that someone will face death if they don't
confess right, even cases where they have to be told
exactly what to say by their interrogators. This judge didn't
(21:07):
think the law prohibited that and allow this confession to evidence.
And when that happened, of course, then Robert Davis had
a horrible choice to make.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Knowing Steve, he was very clear and honest with Robert
about what the options were and what the chances are
of his being convicted.
Speaker 6 (21:25):
Confessions are powerful. There was a more than likely chance
of him being convicted, and with a conviction surely would
have come a very hefty sentence. We were guessing that
it would have been a huge number of years or
life sentences for the killing of the child and the mother.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Do I go to trial and risk being sent to
prison for the rest of my life for something I
didn't do? Or do I accept an offer that the
prosecution has made to me if I plead guilty to
one count of murder, I will be said to twenty
three years. Robert was eighteen years old when he was arrested,
(22:07):
so that would mean that he could get out at
the age of forty one. He would still have a
life half a life half a life. He could have
a family, he could have some future.
Speaker 6 (22:20):
Right.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
It's a horrible choice, but it's the kind of choice
that defendants face in courtrooms around the country every single day.
Robert chose the deal. He entered a plea of guilty
in exchange for those twenty three years, a horribly difficult,
deeply unjust decision that he was forced to make, but
also one that I can't fault inform the slightest. I
(22:42):
think any of us in that position would probably do
the same thing.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
But what Steve said to Robert is I will not
give up on you. I will continue to investigate this case.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Steve Rosenfield promised Robert Davis that he would walk with him,
that he would stay with him, he would visit him
in prison. You wouldn't forget him.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
And Steve also said to him, look, I know you
didn't commit this crime, and I know you don't want
to say an open court that you did. There is
something called an Alford plea that will enable you to
save face.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
You've got someone proclaiming their innocence, but who doesn't have
the power of resources, ability, legal standing to fight the
evidence against them. So they cry, uncle, I'm innocent, but
I can't fight this. That's what an Alfred plea is.
We've seen it in many other wrongful conviction cases, most
prominently in the West Memphis three case.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
One of the consequences is that you can't sue the
state for violating your civil rights. The Alfred plea disqualifies
you from recovering any compensation for the years, sometimes decades,
you've spent in prison.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
It's a tool of injustice.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Should not exist, but it does, and that's the tool
that was used to secure Robert Davis's twenty three year
prison sends. Steve Rosenfield kept his promise even while Robert
served his time. Steve continued pounding the pavement looking for
(24:12):
new evidence of Robert's innocence. He even reached out to
family members of Rocky and Jessica Fugit, who were both
serving life.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Sentences in prison.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Steve never gave up hope that one day Rocky and
Jessica might come forward and tell the truth. And then
one day that hope arrived in the mail.
Speaker 6 (24:31):
After about eight years, I received a letter from the
boy who said that his conscience was bothering him and
would I come down and visit him and he told
us the truth. He told us that he and his
sister were the only two present. He came up with
the idea of framing Robert because he thought it could
(24:51):
help at his sentencing if the prosecutor was pleased with
his cooperation.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
It was like manna from heaven. Right, the accuser of
Robert Davis recants and says, I was wrong. I feel
terrible about it. Help me make this right.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
The only hope that Robert had was if the governor
of Virginia would step in and issue a pardon. And
so that's Steve Rosenfield's plan. Let's go to the governor,
Let's tell him about Rocky's recantation, and let's highlight all
the problems with this interrogation. Now, a local Charlottesville newspaper
called The Hook wrote an article about steve clemency campaign
for Robert. And that's the article that showed up in
(25:33):
your newsfeed.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Right, Steve, exactly. I read that story and I reached
out to Steve and I said, what can we do
to help? And as we talked, I noticed that Steve
had hired a psychological expert for Robert's case, but he
didn't have an expert who could really look at the
interrogation and say, these are the kinds of tactics that
(25:55):
lead to coerced and unreliable confessions. I volunteered our assistance
in doing that. I had done some expert work, and
I wanted Lara to start doing some expert work. So
I assigned Lara the lead role in analyzing this interrogation.
But we also offered Steve other ways in which to
(26:19):
publicize and highlight Roberts's plight. I had worked with a
number of producers on NBC's Dateline Show, and I reached
out to them and I said, this is gold. We
have a videotaped interrogation from start to finish. You can
actually see on this tape how someone confesses to a
(26:41):
crime they didn't commit. And we also reached out to
other experts in the law enforcement field to look at
Robert's interrogation and to weigh in on all the things
that police officers did wrong.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
I mean, that's the thing, right.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
We knew that we needed to elevate Robert's story and
bring a community of different people to get to push
all in their different ways against a system that's designed
to keep people in prison.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
We knew that.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Public opinion would rally around Robert Davis. Once people saw
this story, we knew that people inside Virginia would care
about the way interrogations were being conducted in their state
and would hopefully press the governor to do the right
thing in Robert's case. And then one more.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Thing happened, more manna from heaven.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
It was Jessica Fujet.
Speaker 6 (27:26):
I received a letter from her saying that she knew
that she had done wrong by framing Robert and that
she wanted to make amends for that.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
That's when we started to really believe there was a
chance of getting Robert Davis out of prison.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
I met with Governor mccaulliffe. We talked for about forty minutes.
I suggested to him that he grant at least a
conditional pardon and then revisit the case in a year,
and that was the grounds under which Governor mccaulliff agreed
to release Robert, deciding that with the statements of the
two kids, there was a much better likelihood that he
(28:06):
would have been found not guilty.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
It's been twelve years of incarceration for Robert, and suddenly,
a few days before Christmas, he's allowed to go home.
It's an incredible moment where you can you can hear
the joy in his voice and in his mother's voice
as they embrace for the first time after Robert is freed.
It was beautiful, just beautiful.
Speaker 8 (28:31):
Right.
Speaker 5 (28:38):
I'm home, man like I can reach out and not
touch nothing. I don't see no gates now, I don't
see no fences.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
As a part of dayline documenting Robert's release, they go
and speak to the chief of the Albemarle County Police
Department and they ask him how he feels about Robert
Davis's release.
Speaker 8 (28:56):
I will say this, I believe that the confession is
an unreally viable confession. Using terms like the ultimate punishment,
length of the interview, those kinds of things would be
clearly not done today.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
He was embarrassed by what he saw, and this was
somebody from the same police department in the same community,
reflecting back on what he saw when he looked at
the tape.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
And with that admission of a mistake, the Governor of
Virginia a year later granted Robert that full pardon based
on actual innocence. He exonerated him.
Speaker 6 (29:36):
Robert and I have maintained a close relationship all these years,
he's just such a great kid at go the kid
in mid thirties. Now he has an extended family, wonderful friends.
He has highly thought of in the community. He's a
sweet guy with a big heart. He's very optimistic about
the future. And this has been in spite of having
(29:59):
spent his form of years in prison. So by and large,
he uses every day to enjoy and put behind him
some of that ugly past.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
That's the thing.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I mean, we'd watched on that interrogation video Robert be
transformed from just an innocent member of the community into
a confessed murderer, and now, thirteen years later, we could
watch him be transformed back and it was a beautiful
thing to watch, the retelling of the story the right way. Hello, Hey, Robert,
(30:34):
it's Flora. How are you doing.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
I'm doing well. How are you?
Speaker 3 (30:38):
I'm good.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
You just got off work today?
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Hunh.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
What are you doing for a job?
Speaker 2 (30:41):
He days?
Speaker 5 (30:41):
I'm doing electrically working for the five days.
Speaker 7 (30:45):
Amazing, fantastic.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
I heard you got engaged recently to congratulations.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
And she's got a daughter here, so you're a stepdad.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Yeah, that's a lot of responsibility.
Speaker 5 (30:55):
It is a lot of responsibility, but I definitely enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
The one question we're always asked in our work is
why would anyone confess to a crime that they didn't commit?
And when you watch the video of Robert Davis, it's
the perfect answer to the question, why would anyone confess
to a crime they didn't commit? The answer is because
they're interrogated like this. When you're fighting a wrongful conviction,
(31:23):
what you are doing, at the end of the day
is trying to rewrite the story that's been told about
your client.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
You're rewriting history, right, You're.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Changing the legacy of what happened.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
And the story that led to the conviction is a
story of guilt, a story of harm, of damage, of pain,
and of someone who, at the end of the day,
deserves to be locked up in a cage for the
rest of their life. That's the story that when you
fight a wrongful conviction.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
That you have to change.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Thanks so much for joining us. I hope you'll come
back next week when we'll be telling the story of
Chicago's own Central Park jogger case, known as the Dixmore Five.
The Dixmore five were a group of teenage boys who
confessed to the rape and murder of their own classmate
and were convicted despite some of the strongest evidence of
innocence imaginable. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of
(32:17):
Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One.
Special thanks to our executive producer Jason Flamm and the
team at Signal Company Number one. Executive producer Kevin wardis
Senior producer and Pope, and additional production and editing by
Connor Hall.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura Nyrider,
and you can follow me on Twitter at s Drizsen.
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
Twitter at wrong Conviction
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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