May 27, 2020 • 29 mins
In July of 1996, Damon Thibodeaux was visiting family, when his 14 year-old step cousin, Crystal, walked to the grocery store and never came back. When Crystal’s mother Dawn began to worry, Damon went looking for her daughter. Soon, neighbors and emergency workers would join the search that ended under the Huey P Long Bridge with a partially nude Crystal strangled to death.
However, even before the body was found, the police already had their sights on Damon for what they thought was a rape and murder. Returning guest Innocence Project Senior Staff attorney Vanessa Potkin and death row exoneree Damon Thibodeaux tell Jason this unbelievable tale of triumph over tragedy.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This interview was recorded pre COVID nineteen at a fundraiser
for the Innocence Project in front of a live studio audience.
It was July nine six, while on leave from his
job as a river barge deckand twenty two year old
Damon Thibodeaux visited his relatives to Champagne's around noon on
July nineteenth. Their fourteen year old daughter, Damon's step cousin, Crystel,
(00:23):
walked to a nearby grocery store and never came back.
Damon joined what eventually became the entire neighborhood on a
frenzied search for crystal that lasted through the night and
into the next day. When he returned home for some
much needed sleep, the sheriff came knocking at the door. Inexplicably,
Damon had become a suspect and what would turn into
(00:44):
a rape and homicide investigation when they found Crystel's partially
nude body strangled to death with a red extension cord.
Damon maintained his innocence, agreeing to a polygraph, which interrogators
would tell him he had failed. Now, if you've listened
to our series about false confessions with Laura and I
writer and Steve Drisen. A lot of the elements of
Damon's story will sound familiar. The polygraph ploy, the false
(01:08):
fed facts followed by a false confession, in this case,
to the rape and murder of an underage family member,
even with no physical evidence connecting him to the crime,
the wild disparity between his confession to her rape and
the fact that she hadn't been raped at all, among
a host of other inconsistencies, Damon Thibodeaux was nevertheless convicted
(01:30):
and sentenced to death. With the help of the Innocence Project,
DNA testing, and a surprisingly cooperative district attorney, Damon was
exonerated on September two, thousand twelve. This is Wrongful Conviction
with Jason Flom. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. Today's episode
(01:59):
is an very interesting when we're recording in front of
a live audience, But today is particularly special because I
have Vanessa Potkin, who was the first staff attorney at
the Instance Project and as a senior staff attorney now
and has been on the show before. So Vanessa, welcome back.
It's great to be back. And with Vanessa is Damon Thibodeaux,
(02:20):
who was sentenced to death for a brutal crime that
we now know he didn't commit. So damon, as I
always say, I'm glad you're here, but I'm sorry you're here.
Thanks for inviting me, Jason. Um, let's go back to
the time that all this stuff happened. Um, you were
twenty two years old, and what was your life like?
You were from Louisiana, right, I'm from Louisiana. Um, spent
(02:43):
most of my time in Texas. I moved back to
Louisiana and I got a job as a decand working
off shore. Got my job, you know. It was three
weeks into the job, took some short leave to pay
some bills and things like that, and your step cousin disappeared. Right, Yes,
was sitting at the dining room table. Her father was
(03:04):
sitting across from me. He left to go do something.
I was working on his watch. He couldn't put the
band on, so I said, I'll put it on for you,
and she asked me to take her to the store.
I told her I couldn't do it without your parents permission,
and she said, no, I need you to take me down.
I said, no, I can't do it, and she left
(03:25):
and that was the last time I saw her. Wow,
what time was that? More or less just afternoon I
believe and she was fourteen, right, yes, and so that
was noon. When did you start to become concerned? And
how did the whole thing unfold? And how did you
find out that she was missing? And when did the
search start? Of me, we want to know everything. Well,
her mother was the one who started to panic. What time,
(03:48):
uh maybe two three o'clock? She started making calls to
try to find out where she is because she had
never done anything like this before, She never disappeared like that,
you know. She started calling people to help her look
for and offered to help her out, you know, driving
around the neighborhoods and help them look for So how
many people went out, I mean I'm envisioning like a
(04:09):
large group like you see on TV A hold the
whole neighborhood. They had the Coast Guard helicopter there as
well by nightfall, flying around the neighborhood with their light
trying to help the search teams in the wooded areas.
And they had fire trucks out there with all their lights,
and the police were out there and there was a
wooded area behind the apartment complex where they lived, and
everybody in the neighborhood just went walking through it and
it was like almost side by side. We had all
(04:32):
driven around the neighborhood, some of the places that she'd
hang out in, some of the friends that she would
hang out with, none of them had seen her. After
searching all night long and having been up for the
previous thirty five hours as well, Damon finally went home,
planning to rejoin the search after getting some much needed rest,
But just as he was about to lay down, there's
(04:54):
a knock at the door. It's the police. Damon wants
to help in any way you can't, and so he
agrees to go with them. But while at the police station,
everything would change. I was in the interrogation room when
they found the body, so they had already identified you
as a suspect. Yes, why you? I still don't know
to this day. Do you have any theories on the evidence.
(05:16):
The state's theory was that his cousin goes missing, she
walks out to the store. She's going to the Win
Dixie and when her mother starts to worry about her.
About an hour later and there's a search party that
Damon actually leaves the house and encounters her, and it's
at that point that he decides to have sex with
her and kill her, and then comes back, you know,
to be seen and to be part of a search party.
(05:39):
So it never really added up, but they did, you know,
take him into custody and start interrogating him. And initially
they were interrogating him about a missing person, right, and
then during that questioning her body is found, and so
it turns into an interrogation about what happened to this
girl who's missing too. Now you're a suspect and a homicide.
And when she was found, the initial thought was that
(06:03):
she had been sexually assaulted. That's correct, because she was
partially nude, and she had been strangled with a chord, right,
an electrical chord. And so they interrogated you for almost
half a day on no sleep. And they can, and
they did, play all sorts of dirty tricks in the
interrogation room. UM. In America, unlike England and many other countries,
(06:26):
they can lie to you and the interrogation room as
much as they want. They are allowed to watch you,
and they did. Um. They gave you a fake polygraph test,
among other things. UM, there's a thing actually was developed
in Chicago about fifty years ago, right, the read technique,
which is a psychological protocol that's designed to elicit confessions,
be they false or true. So what what happened in
(06:47):
the interrogation, Banessa, Because you've studied this obviously you worked
on the case, and you've got him out, I mean
fifteen years and death row. But he's here, he's not dead,
which is great, right, Um. In essence, project worked on
the case. You know, it was a huge monumental effort
to get to the point where Damon was released. When
we looked at the confession evidence. Um, you know, Damon
was brought in and he is, you know, interrogated under,
(07:10):
as you pointed out, less than ideal circumstances. You know,
the night before she went missing, he had been out
hanging out with friends and so he didn't get a
lot of sleep. And then of course she goes missing
and there's a search party, and so he's not getting
sleep that night either. And then the following day he's
after about thirty five hours of being up, he's brought
in and interrogated, and for the first five hours, Damon
(07:32):
is adamant about his innocence. Right, You brought up the
read technique, and you know, in the US we went
from a time where it was permissible to be confessions
out of people, and then we became more enlightened and said, no,
you can't physically coerce the confession. But that coercion turned
to mental coercion, and so the read technique really is
about using different coercive techniques to elicit a confession, and
(07:56):
many times it is an accurate confession, and a lot
of times at also work so well that it will
get people who are completely innocent to confess. So for
the first five hours, Damon is saying, I'm innocent. I
had nothing to do with this. But part of the
re technique is to not accept the denial. So when
you know the suspect denies that they were involved, they
keep saying, we know you're lying, and they will not
(08:17):
accept innocence as an answer. So they did that to
Damon and the ultimately they told him the only way
you can prove your innocence is for you to take
a polygraph. So he agrees, right, But the polygraph, as
you pointed out, Jason, was a sham and it was
really employed just to advance the interrogation, and so he
takes what he believes to be a polygraph um and
(08:38):
they come back and they say, you failed, and we
now know you're lying because you failed. So hearing that
you know you failed, and if you have any belief
in a polygraph test and you're twenty two, you know,
they keep questioning him, how could this happen, and ultimately,
you know, get him to say, well, I had a
dream and a dream, you know, I saw my cousin
(08:59):
who was killed, or I saw a girl who was killed.
And then ultimately, you know, they keep questioning him. And
you know, what we've seen in so many false confession
cases is that through questioning, with leading questions, details of
the crime are conveyed. That then, under pressure, when you know,
somebody like Damon, nine ten hours into the interrogation just
has had enough and feels their only way out is
(09:20):
to give the police what they want, they incorporate those
details that now have been you know, either consciously or
unconsciously conveyed to them by the detectives who are asking
the questions. And so ultimately he gives a statement. But
as we you know, would would come to learn looking
at the statement, many of the details that he gave
about the crime matched what the police believed to be
(09:42):
true at the time they were doing the interrogation, but
later turned out to be details that were inconsistent with
the known facts of the crime. Right, they're feeding him
information is not even the right information. All he's doing
is repeating what they're saying to him. And if we
know that a false confession is the worst possible thing
in the eyes of a jury, they don't know it's
false obviously. And what I've seen is that false confessions
(10:05):
typically happen after long, long interrogations like yours, because someone
who's guilty would prefer not to sit in there in
that airless room that we've all seen on TV for
hours and hours on end, in a very hostile environment
with no food and no drink and no nothing, so
they might as well just spit it out. I mean,
if it's just incredible, innocence is actually a risk factor
(10:27):
for making a false confession, because an innocent person under
that pressure feels like, let me just give them what
they want to hear. And once I get out of here,
the system is gonna work and it's going to sort
itself out, and people are going to realize that, you know,
as they further investigate, as they do their police work
that they should do, they're going to see that they
got the wrong person. And here in addition to you know,
(10:48):
telling Damon that he failed a polygraph, they also threatened
him and said, look, if you don't admit this, you know,
there's gonna be a media circus and you're gonna be ranted,
you know, a pedophile, and you're going to die by
lethal injection. Of course, by confessing, you know, he didn't
save himself from the death penaltakes, that's exactly what he got.
(11:10):
And we know also that they interrogated youth Damon for
nine hours, but they only recorded fifty four minutes of it, right,
so we know how that works too, right, They left
all the various stuff out. Well, the polygraph came up
missing as well. They can't find it. They don't, no
one knows where it's at. But this was the premise
for them to keep going with their investigations. The police
(11:32):
used the polygraph as a ploy to coerce Damon's false
confession to having raped, beaten, and strangled Crystal with a
white or gray speaker wire from his car however, the
victim was strangled with a red extension cord. He also
said that he ejaculated both in and on the victim,
but the medical examiner found no semen whatsoever, and that
(11:53):
she hadn't even been raped. Given these inconsistencies, prosecutors got
very creative to salvage their case. So basically in the
confession statement, they had Damon saying that he, you know,
had sex with the victim and ejaculated on her stomach
and inside of her. But as Jason said, there was
no seaman evidence recovered. And so, uh, you know, as
(12:17):
wrongful convictions go, you know, a detective takes the stand
and has asked, how can you explain? How can you
account for this? And he says, well, there were maggots
on the body, and so the maggots ate the sperm,
and the jury bought it. The Corners report says she
hadn't even been raped, right, So it's just how they
found her, and they just went off to that conclusion
(12:39):
while she was raped. In the case, there is no
case I was. I was getting copies of whatever my
lawyer at the time was getting from the crime labs.
You know, I had copies of the same thing. I'm like, Okay,
there's no way they're going to convict me, you know,
but it just didn't turn out that way. So you
went to trial, and can you explain to us what
(12:59):
that was. I mean, you sit there and you watch
as your life falls apart, and there's nothing you can
do about it. You're a spectator on the sideline. You're
now in someone else's life. I mean, who who, whoever
did this was supposed to be sitting in that seat,
not me. Now I'm sitting in that seat. So now
(13:20):
I'm in this individual's life. I have no idea who
it is. And it's just you're speechless. And when the
jury went out, did you think for a minute that
they would convict you. No, I didn't. I'm like, okay,
they see the evidence put in front of them, you know,
they're gonna look at this and say, okay, there's no
(13:41):
way he did this. But it's like they didn't even
pay attention to what was being presented. And most juries don't.
They don't pay attention to the evidence that's in front
of them. Like, like you said, they hear a false
confession and they think, oh, that's it. Okay, I'm not
gonna con fest is something I didn't do, so obviously
(14:02):
he did it. And that's just not true, right. I mean,
we know that in the first what was the first
hundred and fifty DNA generations, almost a quarter of them
involved false confessions. Right, that's how common it is, right,
And the numbers just growing. So now we have three
hundred and sixty five DNA generations and we're up to
have involved false confessions. It is one of the leading
(14:26):
causes of wrongful convictions. And yet it's very hard for
the public and judges and lawyers even to understand how
you would confess to a rape or murder that you
didn't commit. With a false confession, you're almost certain to
be convicted. And more often people then will take a
guilty plea because the chance of a conviction despite innocence
(14:50):
is almost certain. So the jury comes back and they
declare you guilty on all accounts. I mean, I can't imagine. Well,
I mean, there's not a whole lot you can do. Now.
Your life is not yours anymore. You now belong to
the state. You are the property of the state. That's
(15:12):
why they give you a number. You know, they took
me to Angola took all of my identification and destroyed
it everything, gave me a little prison I d with
a prison number on it and that's it. Put me
in the cell, and then gold just to paint a picture.
Is formerly the slave Plantation. The reason it's called Angola
because the slaves were brought over from Angola and it
was once the bloodiest prison in the country. And there
(15:36):
you were. How did you deal with it? And how
did you even find the strength to survive and ultimately
reach out and get ahold of the Innocence Project and
and you know, how how are you even here? It's amazing. Well,
for the first three years, I contemplated whether or not
I wanted to be part of the monkey show? What's
(15:57):
the monkey show? The execute? I actually thought about um
dropping my appeals and having them carry out the execution
and just be done with it. They make a spectacle
when they execute someone, as everyone knows, you know, it's
all it's all on the media. You know, it's the
taking of a life, and they've turned it into some
(16:19):
kind of sport. You know, everybody's like, oh, I can't
wait to kill this guy. And I did not want
to be part of that. Things are a little different
now because now they're looking at things while they're trying
to look at it more humanely. But it doesn't matter.
How you kill someone is still an inhumane act. And
(16:42):
with all the exonerations in the country today, I have
to ask the question, how many more is it gonna
take before we abolish it? Before we bolish it? How
many more you already know you've killed innocent people? How
many more? Twenty three hours a day no contact with anyone,
(17:07):
twenty three hours a day in the cell, but no
human contact. How do you deal with it? How did
you deal with it? Like? How did you not lose
your mind? You find things to do, like what whatever?
You can play cards, exercise, clean the cell. I actually
scrubbed myself with a toothbrush just to stay busy, just
to stay busy. So ultimately you ended up somehow or
(17:31):
other finding out about the Innis's Project reaching out. Well,
Denise le buff had comes to see me one day.
This was, you know, long before I had written the
Innocence Project. We'll get to that in a minute. And
this is the first time I had met Denise. Everyone
calls her Danny. I call her Denise. It's a respect thing.
I don't know, but she's sitting down in front of
(17:52):
me and she's like, Okay, look, you didn't do this.
I know your first lawyer wasn't all that good, but
give me a chance. And that point on, I made
it a point to at least attempt in existence, I suppose,
instead of just giving up on it. And um, you know,
I had heard about the Innocence Project and I actually
wrote them a letter. I gave them my lawyer's information,
(18:15):
my information and the case number, and I sent it
to him and I got a response back saying, Okay,
this is the only correspondence we're going to have because
until they actually pick up a case. That's how it works,
because you know, obviously there are guilty guys out there
who are writing the Innocence Project trying to find a loophole.
(18:35):
And that's the type of letter that I got. Next thing,
I know, you know, there's this law firm in Minnesota
who's down there taking my case. There's the Innocence Project.
Barry and Vanessa show up one day and I'm like, okay,
what does that like. It's like the Avengers write again
or something. Right now now you look at it, Yeah,
here comes thor with the hammer, you know, but still here,
(18:56):
I am, what six seven years into this death sentence,
and it takes another three or four years before they're
ready to go talk to the district attorney. You know,
Steve calls me Steve Kaplan, he's one of the lawyers
from Frederickson and bron who handled my case, and he's like, Okay,
(19:17):
how do you want to do this? You want to
just go to court and you you want to talk
to the district attorney. I said, talk to the district
attorney first, and everyone was was against the idea. It's
not gonna work. You know who he is. He's he's
a product of Paul Connick and they just want to
kill people. And I said, well, what do I have
to lose? You know, it's either another ten twenty year
(19:40):
fight or maybe just by luck, he'll talk to you.
So they set up a meeting and he agreed to
reinvestigate my case and you're you're in that meeting. Yeah,
So this wasn't you know. Now, there's a lot of
talk about conviction review units, you know, being established throughout
the country, but this was several years go, and so
(20:01):
you know, we arranged a meeting to go talk to
the d A. Paul Konic and who was the cousin
of Harry Connick. So he's the good cousin, and um,
he is the d A. M. Jefferson Parish. And you know,
big team there. They had an investigator, Vince Lammy on
the room and uh Steve Wimberley the first assistant. So
they assembled a big team and we basically went through
(20:22):
a presentation of the confession of the timeline which just
virtually made it impossible for Damon to have been involved.
So when we walked through and we did a presentation,
they did acknowledge that there were enough problems in the
case that they should undertake an investigation. And it was
quite a massive undertaking. Um, every piece of evidence that
(20:43):
existed was sent out for DNA testing, and because he
had been arrested that night, they had taken a male
rape kit from him. I mean there was not one
piece of physical evidence to suggest that he had anything
to do with the crime. And in fact, the victim
had been strangled with a piece of wire and um
it had been burned off of a wire that was
hanging in a tree. So the perpetrator burned it off
(21:06):
and then took it to strangle the victim, and we
were able to get some bloods and DNA on that
wire at the scene that that excluded Damon. So you know,
there was years of a joint reinvestigation with the district
attorney's office to get to the point where they acknowledged
that Damon was innocent and they had convicted and sent
an innocent man to death row. How often is it
(21:28):
that a district attorney that's prosecuted a case is the
same district attorney that comes back and releases that individual.
It's rare. So kind of did something in Louisiana that
was pretty much unheard of and it could have hurt him.
You know, he took that chance to step out there
(21:48):
and say, okay, wait, we got a problem. I'm glad.
I'm glad he got out of his comfort zone and
decided to take a step in a new direction. So
now it comes to the good part of the story, right,
the moment right when you found out that you were
(22:10):
actually going to go home. How did you find out?
What was it like? It was a phone call on
a Wednesday. I think it was. Everything was agreed to.
They had set something up to have the judge and
the district attorney signed everything. But the thing they were
trying to get everything done before Friday because that's when
the prison office is closed. So this was all done
(22:32):
on a Friday, and they had everything faxed over to
the prison and the sergeant comes down to the to
the cell. He says, pack your stuff. You're going home,
but first we have to take you over to the
hospital to have you checked out. So I mean, I'm
I'm in a full jumpsuit and change and I go
to the hospital and the ranking officers there is like
by s and a jumpsuit and chains. Where's his property? Well,
(22:55):
he's it's everything's back to the the cell where he's going home.
He's he's not supposed to be going at So they
had to take me back to death Row, take me
out of the jumpsuit, and I gotta put my clothes
on and grab my stuff. So you know, it's kind
of it's not real until you walk out the gate.
And after you worked on this case for all those years,
what was it like for you? Well, um, it was amazing.
(23:19):
I personally wasn't there because I was basically nine months
pregnant and I couldn't get on a plane, so I
missed that moment of seeing Damon Um. But it was
you know, Barry Scheck was there, Steve Kaplan from the
law firm, Danny Labuff from the Capitol Resource Center in Louisiana,
(23:39):
and it just you know, I don't even know what
the estimate is of Steve's hours. Steve, I mean, he
he was so instrumental in helping me out while while
I was there, and post release, he helped me out
in ways that you know, you just can't repay. You know,
this man, he flew down here and drove me back
to Minnesota because I had decided to move to Minnesota
(24:02):
after I was released to start things over, and I
lived with him until November of that year, got my
own place, and he actually the Innersence Project helped me
get a car, helped me with my rent, and Steve
helped me out with that as well. And you know,
I can't repay him for what he's done. So Damon,
(24:23):
I have to ask you, and it's beautiful to hear
you say that. UM, have you been compensated? No, so
you've got nothing. I've got nothing. There is current litigation, um, right,
but if you know you're having to make ends to
me on your own. Yeah. I mean, if I don't
do nothing, I'm gonna lose my mind. You know, there
are things I want to do, places I want to go.
You know. I like that juicy steak, you know, Uh,
(24:44):
but you gotta pay for it, right, So you're out there,
So you know, I'm out there doing my job, and
you know, if it comes through, then hey, I'm all
for it. But if not, then you know I've got
a job to do. So look, I think, Damon, it's
a it's a terrible story. It's a remarkable story. You're
a remarkable guy. You're out there now driving a truck
(25:05):
and living life and seeing the country and experiencing freedom.
And that's awesome and we're really proud of you. And
now we get to my favorite part of the show,
which is that I actually get to stop talking and
just listen. And so before I do that, I want
to thank you both again for coming and being on
(25:27):
the show. Vanessa Popkin, Senior staff attorney at The Innocence Project,
badass lawyer and human being and uh and Damon Thibodeaux
Death row Ax honoree and inspirational character. So um, i'
gonna think We're gonna save the best for last, and
that's you, Damon. So with all due respect that we're
gonna turn it over to you, Vanessa for your closing thoughts. Well,
(25:49):
we've talked about, you know, the number of people in
prison and the US leading in terms of our prison
population leading the world. Um, and you know when it
comes to and what the error rates are and how
many people that means are innocent in prison today, and
when you take a look just at death row in itself,
we have about people on death row. There have been
(26:10):
conservative estimates that four four or four point one percent
of people on death row are actually innocent, and so
that would mean there are hundred and nine people incarcerated
today on death row facing execution um for crimes that
they didn't commit. David, Well, Um, you know, being where
I am now as opposed to where it was six
(26:33):
years ago. You know, a lot of guys in my
position they don't have anything when they walk out, and
it's sometimes years before they get compensation. I had a
lot of help getting where I am. You know, the
reason why I'm driving in truck is because I'm at
a guy at the Minneapolis Auto Show, guy named Bill
(26:53):
Collins Fronds of truck driving school. Uh he was, you know,
at the auto show. He drives, you know, stock cards
as well as a hobby. And he asked me one day,
he said, what do you think about driving truck? And
I said it's okay. He said, well, I want to
pay for you to go through my school and get
your CDL. I'm sitting here thinking, okay, I have the
(27:14):
Innocence Project doing this, I have Steve doing this, and
now here's this guy here. He's he's offering to pay
for me to go to schools to get this license.
You know. Here here I am today. I'm pretty much
paid to see the country, you know. But it takes
a lot to give someone their life back. And I
don't mean life as breathing. I mean we walk out.
(27:37):
We have no job, we have no soil of security,
we have no retirement we have we don't have a license,
we don't have an idea. I had to fight to
get my birth certificate with my name on it. And
if not for the Innocence Project and other lawyers involved,
then I don't know where I'd be right now. More
(28:00):
programs need to be put in place for exonorees because
someone who actually gets out on parole has more resources
at their disposal than someone like myself, and you know
that should not be the case. You know. Being where
I am now is is it's a blessing, you know,
(28:21):
And coming from where I've been, will but reduced said
it best. My worst day out here is better than
my best day in prison. So I think, I think
everybody for helping me out every day. I try. I
try every day to do it right, So don't forget
(28:52):
to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts.
It really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the
Innocents Project that I really hope you'll join me in
supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future
wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn
how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank
our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music
(29:15):
on the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful
Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts. In association with signal Company number one
This interview was recorded pre COVID nineteen at a fundraiser
for the Innocence Project in front of a live studio audience.
It was July nine six, while on leave from his
job as a river barge deckand twenty two year old
Damon Thibodeaux visited his relatives to Champagne's around noon on
July nineteenth. Their fourteen year old daughter, Damon's step cousin, Crystel,
(00:23):
walked to a nearby grocery store and never came back.
Damon joined what eventually became the entire neighborhood on a
frenzied search for crystal that lasted through the night and
into the next day. When he returned home for some
much needed sleep, the sheriff came knocking at the door. Inexplicably,
Damon had become a suspect and what would turn into
(00:44):
a rape and homicide investigation when they found Crystel's partially
nude body strangled to death with a red extension cord.
Damon maintained his innocence, agreeing to a polygraph, which interrogators
would tell him he had failed. Now, if you've listened
to our series about false confessions with Laura and I
writer and Steve Drisen. A lot of the elements of
Damon's story will sound familiar. The polygraph ploy, the false
(01:08):
fed facts followed by a false confession, in this case,
to the rape and murder of an underage family member,
even with no physical evidence connecting him to the crime,
the wild disparity between his confession to her rape and
the fact that she hadn't been raped at all, among
a host of other inconsistencies, Damon Thibodeaux was nevertheless convicted
(01:30):
and sentenced to death. With the help of the Innocence Project,
DNA testing, and a surprisingly cooperative district attorney, Damon was
exonerated on September two, thousand twelve. This is Wrongful Conviction
with Jason Flom. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. Today's episode
(01:59):
is an very interesting when we're recording in front of
a live audience, But today is particularly special because I
have Vanessa Potkin, who was the first staff attorney at
the Instance Project and as a senior staff attorney now
and has been on the show before. So Vanessa, welcome back.
It's great to be back. And with Vanessa is Damon Thibodeaux,
(02:20):
who was sentenced to death for a brutal crime that
we now know he didn't commit. So damon, as I
always say, I'm glad you're here, but I'm sorry you're here.
Thanks for inviting me, Jason. Um, let's go back to
the time that all this stuff happened. Um, you were
twenty two years old, and what was your life like?
You were from Louisiana, right, I'm from Louisiana. Um, spent
(02:43):
most of my time in Texas. I moved back to
Louisiana and I got a job as a decand working
off shore. Got my job, you know. It was three
weeks into the job, took some short leave to pay
some bills and things like that, and your step cousin disappeared. Right, Yes,
was sitting at the dining room table. Her father was
(03:04):
sitting across from me. He left to go do something.
I was working on his watch. He couldn't put the
band on, so I said, I'll put it on for you,
and she asked me to take her to the store.
I told her I couldn't do it without your parents permission,
and she said, no, I need you to take me down.
I said, no, I can't do it, and she left
(03:25):
and that was the last time I saw her. Wow,
what time was that? More or less just afternoon I
believe and she was fourteen, right, yes, and so that
was noon. When did you start to become concerned? And
how did the whole thing unfold? And how did you
find out that she was missing? And when did the
search start? Of me, we want to know everything. Well,
her mother was the one who started to panic. What time,
(03:48):
uh maybe two three o'clock? She started making calls to
try to find out where she is because she had
never done anything like this before, She never disappeared like that,
you know. She started calling people to help her look
for and offered to help her out, you know, driving
around the neighborhoods and help them look for So how
many people went out, I mean I'm envisioning like a
(04:09):
large group like you see on TV A hold the
whole neighborhood. They had the Coast Guard helicopter there as
well by nightfall, flying around the neighborhood with their light
trying to help the search teams in the wooded areas.
And they had fire trucks out there with all their lights,
and the police were out there and there was a
wooded area behind the apartment complex where they lived, and
everybody in the neighborhood just went walking through it and
it was like almost side by side. We had all
(04:32):
driven around the neighborhood, some of the places that she'd
hang out in, some of the friends that she would
hang out with, none of them had seen her. After
searching all night long and having been up for the
previous thirty five hours as well, Damon finally went home,
planning to rejoin the search after getting some much needed rest,
But just as he was about to lay down, there's
(04:54):
a knock at the door. It's the police. Damon wants
to help in any way you can't, and so he
agrees to go with them. But while at the police station,
everything would change. I was in the interrogation room when
they found the body, so they had already identified you
as a suspect. Yes, why you? I still don't know
to this day. Do you have any theories on the evidence.
(05:16):
The state's theory was that his cousin goes missing, she
walks out to the store. She's going to the Win
Dixie and when her mother starts to worry about her.
About an hour later and there's a search party that
Damon actually leaves the house and encounters her, and it's
at that point that he decides to have sex with
her and kill her, and then comes back, you know,
to be seen and to be part of a search party.
(05:39):
So it never really added up, but they did, you know,
take him into custody and start interrogating him. And initially
they were interrogating him about a missing person, right, and
then during that questioning her body is found, and so
it turns into an interrogation about what happened to this
girl who's missing too. Now you're a suspect and a homicide.
And when she was found, the initial thought was that
(06:03):
she had been sexually assaulted. That's correct, because she was
partially nude, and she had been strangled with a chord, right,
an electrical chord. And so they interrogated you for almost
half a day on no sleep. And they can, and
they did, play all sorts of dirty tricks in the
interrogation room. UM. In America, unlike England and many other countries,
(06:26):
they can lie to you and the interrogation room as
much as they want. They are allowed to watch you,
and they did. Um. They gave you a fake polygraph test,
among other things. UM, there's a thing actually was developed
in Chicago about fifty years ago, right, the read technique,
which is a psychological protocol that's designed to elicit confessions,
be they false or true. So what what happened in
(06:47):
the interrogation, Banessa, Because you've studied this obviously you worked
on the case, and you've got him out, I mean
fifteen years and death row. But he's here, he's not dead,
which is great, right, Um. In essence, project worked on
the case. You know, it was a huge monumental effort
to get to the point where Damon was released. When
we looked at the confession evidence. Um, you know, Damon
was brought in and he is, you know, interrogated under,
(07:10):
as you pointed out, less than ideal circumstances. You know,
the night before she went missing, he had been out
hanging out with friends and so he didn't get a
lot of sleep. And then of course she goes missing
and there's a search party, and so he's not getting
sleep that night either. And then the following day he's
after about thirty five hours of being up, he's brought
in and interrogated, and for the first five hours, Damon
(07:32):
is adamant about his innocence. Right, You brought up the
read technique, and you know, in the US we went
from a time where it was permissible to be confessions
out of people, and then we became more enlightened and said, no,
you can't physically coerce the confession. But that coercion turned
to mental coercion, and so the read technique really is
about using different coercive techniques to elicit a confession, and
(07:56):
many times it is an accurate confession, and a lot
of times at also work so well that it will
get people who are completely innocent to confess. So for
the first five hours, Damon is saying, I'm innocent. I
had nothing to do with this. But part of the
re technique is to not accept the denial. So when
you know the suspect denies that they were involved, they
keep saying, we know you're lying, and they will not
(08:17):
accept innocence as an answer. So they did that to
Damon and the ultimately they told him the only way
you can prove your innocence is for you to take
a polygraph. So he agrees, right, But the polygraph, as
you pointed out, Jason, was a sham and it was
really employed just to advance the interrogation, and so he
takes what he believes to be a polygraph um and
(08:38):
they come back and they say, you failed, and we
now know you're lying because you failed. So hearing that
you know you failed, and if you have any belief
in a polygraph test and you're twenty two, you know,
they keep questioning him, how could this happen, and ultimately,
you know, get him to say, well, I had a
dream and a dream, you know, I saw my cousin
(08:59):
who was killed, or I saw a girl who was killed.
And then ultimately, you know, they keep questioning him. And
you know, what we've seen in so many false confession
cases is that through questioning, with leading questions, details of
the crime are conveyed. That then, under pressure, when you know,
somebody like Damon, nine ten hours into the interrogation just
has had enough and feels their only way out is
(09:20):
to give the police what they want, they incorporate those
details that now have been you know, either consciously or
unconsciously conveyed to them by the detectives who are asking
the questions. And so ultimately he gives a statement. But
as we you know, would would come to learn looking
at the statement, many of the details that he gave
about the crime matched what the police believed to be
(09:42):
true at the time they were doing the interrogation, but
later turned out to be details that were inconsistent with
the known facts of the crime. Right, they're feeding him
information is not even the right information. All he's doing
is repeating what they're saying to him. And if we
know that a false confession is the worst possible thing
in the eyes of a jury, they don't know it's
false obviously. And what I've seen is that false confessions
(10:05):
typically happen after long, long interrogations like yours, because someone
who's guilty would prefer not to sit in there in
that airless room that we've all seen on TV for
hours and hours on end, in a very hostile environment
with no food and no drink and no nothing, so
they might as well just spit it out. I mean,
if it's just incredible, innocence is actually a risk factor
(10:27):
for making a false confession, because an innocent person under
that pressure feels like, let me just give them what
they want to hear. And once I get out of here,
the system is gonna work and it's going to sort
itself out, and people are going to realize that, you know,
as they further investigate, as they do their police work
that they should do, they're going to see that they
got the wrong person. And here in addition to you know,
(10:48):
telling Damon that he failed a polygraph, they also threatened
him and said, look, if you don't admit this, you know,
there's gonna be a media circus and you're gonna be ranted,
you know, a pedophile, and you're going to die by
lethal injection. Of course, by confessing, you know, he didn't
save himself from the death penaltakes, that's exactly what he got.
(11:10):
And we know also that they interrogated youth Damon for
nine hours, but they only recorded fifty four minutes of it, right,
so we know how that works too, right, They left
all the various stuff out. Well, the polygraph came up
missing as well. They can't find it. They don't, no
one knows where it's at. But this was the premise
for them to keep going with their investigations. The police
(11:32):
used the polygraph as a ploy to coerce Damon's false
confession to having raped, beaten, and strangled Crystal with a
white or gray speaker wire from his car however, the
victim was strangled with a red extension cord. He also
said that he ejaculated both in and on the victim,
but the medical examiner found no semen whatsoever, and that
(11:53):
she hadn't even been raped. Given these inconsistencies, prosecutors got
very creative to salvage their case. So basically in the
confession statement, they had Damon saying that he, you know,
had sex with the victim and ejaculated on her stomach
and inside of her. But as Jason said, there was
no seaman evidence recovered. And so, uh, you know, as
(12:17):
wrongful convictions go, you know, a detective takes the stand
and has asked, how can you explain? How can you
account for this? And he says, well, there were maggots
on the body, and so the maggots ate the sperm,
and the jury bought it. The Corners report says she
hadn't even been raped, right, So it's just how they
found her, and they just went off to that conclusion
(12:39):
while she was raped. In the case, there is no
case I was. I was getting copies of whatever my
lawyer at the time was getting from the crime labs.
You know, I had copies of the same thing. I'm like, Okay,
there's no way they're going to convict me, you know,
but it just didn't turn out that way. So you
went to trial, and can you explain to us what
(12:59):
that was. I mean, you sit there and you watch
as your life falls apart, and there's nothing you can
do about it. You're a spectator on the sideline. You're
now in someone else's life. I mean, who who, whoever
did this was supposed to be sitting in that seat,
not me. Now I'm sitting in that seat. So now
(13:20):
I'm in this individual's life. I have no idea who
it is. And it's just you're speechless. And when the
jury went out, did you think for a minute that
they would convict you. No, I didn't. I'm like, okay,
they see the evidence put in front of them, you know,
they're gonna look at this and say, okay, there's no
(13:41):
way he did this. But it's like they didn't even
pay attention to what was being presented. And most juries don't.
They don't pay attention to the evidence that's in front
of them. Like, like you said, they hear a false
confession and they think, oh, that's it. Okay, I'm not
gonna con fest is something I didn't do, so obviously
(14:02):
he did it. And that's just not true, right. I mean,
we know that in the first what was the first
hundred and fifty DNA generations, almost a quarter of them
involved false confessions. Right, that's how common it is, right,
And the numbers just growing. So now we have three
hundred and sixty five DNA generations and we're up to
have involved false confessions. It is one of the leading
(14:26):
causes of wrongful convictions. And yet it's very hard for
the public and judges and lawyers even to understand how
you would confess to a rape or murder that you
didn't commit. With a false confession, you're almost certain to
be convicted. And more often people then will take a
guilty plea because the chance of a conviction despite innocence
(14:50):
is almost certain. So the jury comes back and they
declare you guilty on all accounts. I mean, I can't imagine. Well,
I mean, there's not a whole lot you can do. Now.
Your life is not yours anymore. You now belong to
the state. You are the property of the state. That's
(15:12):
why they give you a number. You know, they took
me to Angola took all of my identification and destroyed
it everything, gave me a little prison I d with
a prison number on it and that's it. Put me
in the cell, and then gold just to paint a picture.
Is formerly the slave Plantation. The reason it's called Angola
because the slaves were brought over from Angola and it
was once the bloodiest prison in the country. And there
(15:36):
you were. How did you deal with it? And how
did you even find the strength to survive and ultimately
reach out and get ahold of the Innocence Project and
and you know, how how are you even here? It's amazing. Well,
for the first three years, I contemplated whether or not
I wanted to be part of the monkey show? What's
(15:57):
the monkey show? The execute? I actually thought about um
dropping my appeals and having them carry out the execution
and just be done with it. They make a spectacle
when they execute someone, as everyone knows, you know, it's
all it's all on the media. You know, it's the
taking of a life, and they've turned it into some
(16:19):
kind of sport. You know, everybody's like, oh, I can't
wait to kill this guy. And I did not want
to be part of that. Things are a little different
now because now they're looking at things while they're trying
to look at it more humanely. But it doesn't matter.
How you kill someone is still an inhumane act. And
(16:42):
with all the exonerations in the country today, I have
to ask the question, how many more is it gonna
take before we abolish it? Before we bolish it? How
many more you already know you've killed innocent people? How
many more? Twenty three hours a day no contact with anyone,
(17:07):
twenty three hours a day in the cell, but no
human contact. How do you deal with it? How did
you deal with it? Like? How did you not lose
your mind? You find things to do, like what whatever?
You can play cards, exercise, clean the cell. I actually
scrubbed myself with a toothbrush just to stay busy, just
to stay busy. So ultimately you ended up somehow or
(17:31):
other finding out about the Innis's Project reaching out. Well,
Denise le buff had comes to see me one day.
This was, you know, long before I had written the
Innocence Project. We'll get to that in a minute. And
this is the first time I had met Denise. Everyone
calls her Danny. I call her Denise. It's a respect thing.
I don't know, but she's sitting down in front of
(17:52):
me and she's like, Okay, look, you didn't do this.
I know your first lawyer wasn't all that good, but
give me a chance. And that point on, I made
it a point to at least attempt in existence, I suppose,
instead of just giving up on it. And um, you know,
I had heard about the Innocence Project and I actually
wrote them a letter. I gave them my lawyer's information,
(18:15):
my information and the case number, and I sent it
to him and I got a response back saying, Okay,
this is the only correspondence we're going to have because
until they actually pick up a case. That's how it works,
because you know, obviously there are guilty guys out there
who are writing the Innocence Project trying to find a loophole.
(18:35):
And that's the type of letter that I got. Next thing,
I know, you know, there's this law firm in Minnesota
who's down there taking my case. There's the Innocence Project.
Barry and Vanessa show up one day and I'm like, okay,
what does that like. It's like the Avengers write again
or something. Right now now you look at it, Yeah,
here comes thor with the hammer, you know, but still here,
(18:56):
I am, what six seven years into this death sentence,
and it takes another three or four years before they're
ready to go talk to the district attorney. You know,
Steve calls me Steve Kaplan, he's one of the lawyers
from Frederickson and bron who handled my case, and he's like, Okay,
(19:17):
how do you want to do this? You want to
just go to court and you you want to talk
to the district attorney. I said, talk to the district
attorney first, and everyone was was against the idea. It's
not gonna work. You know who he is. He's he's
a product of Paul Connick and they just want to
kill people. And I said, well, what do I have
to lose? You know, it's either another ten twenty year
(19:40):
fight or maybe just by luck, he'll talk to you.
So they set up a meeting and he agreed to
reinvestigate my case and you're you're in that meeting. Yeah,
So this wasn't you know. Now, there's a lot of
talk about conviction review units, you know, being established throughout
the country, but this was several years go, and so
(20:01):
you know, we arranged a meeting to go talk to
the d A. Paul Konic and who was the cousin
of Harry Connick. So he's the good cousin, and um,
he is the d A. M. Jefferson Parish. And you know,
big team there. They had an investigator, Vince Lammy on
the room and uh Steve Wimberley the first assistant. So
they assembled a big team and we basically went through
(20:22):
a presentation of the confession of the timeline which just
virtually made it impossible for Damon to have been involved.
So when we walked through and we did a presentation,
they did acknowledge that there were enough problems in the
case that they should undertake an investigation. And it was
quite a massive undertaking. Um, every piece of evidence that
(20:43):
existed was sent out for DNA testing, and because he
had been arrested that night, they had taken a male
rape kit from him. I mean there was not one
piece of physical evidence to suggest that he had anything
to do with the crime. And in fact, the victim
had been strangled with a piece of wire and um
it had been burned off of a wire that was
hanging in a tree. So the perpetrator burned it off
(21:06):
and then took it to strangle the victim, and we
were able to get some bloods and DNA on that
wire at the scene that that excluded Damon. So you know,
there was years of a joint reinvestigation with the district
attorney's office to get to the point where they acknowledged
that Damon was innocent and they had convicted and sent
an innocent man to death row. How often is it
(21:28):
that a district attorney that's prosecuted a case is the
same district attorney that comes back and releases that individual.
It's rare. So kind of did something in Louisiana that
was pretty much unheard of and it could have hurt him.
You know, he took that chance to step out there
(21:48):
and say, okay, wait, we got a problem. I'm glad.
I'm glad he got out of his comfort zone and
decided to take a step in a new direction. So
now it comes to the good part of the story, right,
the moment right when you found out that you were
(22:10):
actually going to go home. How did you find out?
What was it like? It was a phone call on
a Wednesday. I think it was. Everything was agreed to.
They had set something up to have the judge and
the district attorney signed everything. But the thing they were
trying to get everything done before Friday because that's when
the prison office is closed. So this was all done
(22:32):
on a Friday, and they had everything faxed over to
the prison and the sergeant comes down to the to
the cell. He says, pack your stuff. You're going home,
but first we have to take you over to the
hospital to have you checked out. So I mean, I'm
I'm in a full jumpsuit and change and I go
to the hospital and the ranking officers there is like
by s and a jumpsuit and chains. Where's his property? Well,
(22:55):
he's it's everything's back to the the cell where he's going home.
He's he's not supposed to be going at So they
had to take me back to death Row, take me
out of the jumpsuit, and I gotta put my clothes
on and grab my stuff. So you know, it's kind
of it's not real until you walk out the gate.
And after you worked on this case for all those years,
what was it like for you? Well, um, it was amazing.
(23:19):
I personally wasn't there because I was basically nine months
pregnant and I couldn't get on a plane, so I
missed that moment of seeing Damon Um. But it was
you know, Barry Scheck was there, Steve Kaplan from the
law firm, Danny Labuff from the Capitol Resource Center in Louisiana,
(23:39):
and it just you know, I don't even know what
the estimate is of Steve's hours. Steve, I mean, he
he was so instrumental in helping me out while while
I was there, and post release, he helped me out
in ways that you know, you just can't repay. You know,
this man, he flew down here and drove me back
to Minnesota because I had decided to move to Minnesota
(24:02):
after I was released to start things over, and I
lived with him until November of that year, got my
own place, and he actually the Innersence Project helped me
get a car, helped me with my rent, and Steve
helped me out with that as well. And you know,
I can't repay him for what he's done. So Damon,
(24:23):
I have to ask you, and it's beautiful to hear
you say that. UM, have you been compensated? No, so
you've got nothing. I've got nothing. There is current litigation, um, right,
but if you know you're having to make ends to
me on your own. Yeah. I mean, if I don't
do nothing, I'm gonna lose my mind. You know, there
are things I want to do, places I want to go.
You know. I like that juicy steak, you know, Uh,
(24:44):
but you gotta pay for it, right, So you're out there,
So you know, I'm out there doing my job, and
you know, if it comes through, then hey, I'm all
for it. But if not, then you know I've got
a job to do. So look, I think, Damon, it's
a it's a terrible story. It's a remarkable story. You're
a remarkable guy. You're out there now driving a truck
(25:05):
and living life and seeing the country and experiencing freedom.
And that's awesome and we're really proud of you. And
now we get to my favorite part of the show,
which is that I actually get to stop talking and
just listen. And so before I do that, I want
to thank you both again for coming and being on
(25:27):
the show. Vanessa Popkin, Senior staff attorney at The Innocence Project,
badass lawyer and human being and uh and Damon Thibodeaux
Death row Ax honoree and inspirational character. So um, i'
gonna think We're gonna save the best for last, and
that's you, Damon. So with all due respect that we're
gonna turn it over to you, Vanessa for your closing thoughts. Well,
(25:49):
we've talked about, you know, the number of people in
prison and the US leading in terms of our prison
population leading the world. Um, and you know when it
comes to and what the error rates are and how
many people that means are innocent in prison today, and
when you take a look just at death row in itself,
we have about people on death row. There have been
(26:10):
conservative estimates that four four or four point one percent
of people on death row are actually innocent, and so
that would mean there are hundred and nine people incarcerated
today on death row facing execution um for crimes that
they didn't commit. David, Well, Um, you know, being where
I am now as opposed to where it was six
(26:33):
years ago. You know, a lot of guys in my
position they don't have anything when they walk out, and
it's sometimes years before they get compensation. I had a
lot of help getting where I am. You know, the
reason why I'm driving in truck is because I'm at
a guy at the Minneapolis Auto Show, guy named Bill
(26:53):
Collins Fronds of truck driving school. Uh he was, you know,
at the auto show. He drives, you know, stock cards
as well as a hobby. And he asked me one day,
he said, what do you think about driving truck? And
I said it's okay. He said, well, I want to
pay for you to go through my school and get
your CDL. I'm sitting here thinking, okay, I have the
(27:14):
Innocence Project doing this, I have Steve doing this, and
now here's this guy here. He's he's offering to pay
for me to go to schools to get this license.
You know. Here here I am today. I'm pretty much
paid to see the country, you know. But it takes
a lot to give someone their life back. And I
don't mean life as breathing. I mean we walk out.
(27:37):
We have no job, we have no soil of security,
we have no retirement we have we don't have a license,
we don't have an idea. I had to fight to
get my birth certificate with my name on it. And
if not for the Innocence Project and other lawyers involved,
then I don't know where I'd be right now. More
(28:00):
programs need to be put in place for exonorees because
someone who actually gets out on parole has more resources
at their disposal than someone like myself, and you know
that should not be the case. You know. Being where
I am now is is it's a blessing, you know,
(28:21):
And coming from where I've been, will but reduced said
it best. My worst day out here is better than
my best day in prison. So I think, I think
everybody for helping me out every day. I try. I
try every day to do it right, So don't forget
(28:52):
to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts.
It really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the
Innocents Project that I really hope you'll join me in
supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future
wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn
how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank
our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music
(29:15):
on the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful
Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts. In association with signal Company number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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