June 26, 2023 • 29 mins
The prisons are filled with people convicted of murder who never killed anyone.
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin take us to Dayton, Ohio where a young woman’s false confession to robbery gets turned into a false conviction for murder. There are two profound lies at work in the legal system here.
This updated episode shares with listeners the incredible work Tyra has been doing in recent years.
To learn more and get involved, visit:
https://ohiojpc.org/staff/tyra-patterson/
https://www.representjustice.org/about/ambassadors/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, it's Laura and I writer. This week on False Confessions,
we're bringing you the deeply compelling story of Tira Patterson,
a young woman who was coerced into confessing to a robbery,
but then who ended up with a murder conviction. The
reasons for this include archaic rules, teenage drama, and plenty
of dirty police tactics. It's a story too good for
(00:26):
me to spoil before you get to the episode. But
this week we wanted to bring you an update on
Tyra and the incredible impact her story and her work
has made on the community. She's still working with the
Ohio Justice and Policy Center as a community outreach strategist,
and she recently joined represent Justice, a project that turns
stories like hers into change in the system. In twenty
(00:50):
twenty one, Ohio State Representative Jean Schmidt proposed a bill
that would abolish the death penalty in Ohio. She cited
her meeting with Tyra as a catalyst for the new bill. Tyra,
you're a rock star and a change maker. Keep doing
what you're doing, but there's still more to come. Late
last year, filming wrapped up on a documentary film about
(01:12):
Tyra's life and work. We're so excited for its twenty
twenty three release and so excited to see what Tyra
will accomplish. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura,
and I writer, and I'm Steve Dressing. In today's episode,
(01:33):
will take you to Dayton, Ohio to tell you about
Tyra Patterson. Nineteen year old Tira falsely confessed to stealing
a necklace, but an obscure law turned her false confession
to robbery into something far worse.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I was sitting in my office one day in the
phone rank and on the other end of the call
was David Singleton, the director of a group called the
Ohio Justice and Policy Center. David was looking for somebody
who could assist him in a case that involved a
false confession. It was Tyra Patterson's case. We've told a
(02:24):
lot of stories about people who falsely confessed to murders
last season, but the crazy thing is, this is a
case where a false confession to robbery is converted into
a false conviction for murder. And it's all because of
an obscure, archaic rule called the felony murder doctrine. The
(02:44):
felony murder leads to people going down for murders who
never killed anyone.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
When most people think about people in prison who had
been convicted of murder, they think of truly bad people,
you know, scary folks. But there are a lot of
people in prison for murder who never touched a gun
or a murder weapon at all.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
The prisons are filled with people convicted of felony murder,
people like Tyra Patterson.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Today's story starts in Dayton, Ohio. It was a manufacturing
town back in the day, but those jobs left in
the eighties and nineties and never came back now. Dayton's
claim to fame is that the guys who invented the
airplane used to live there, Wilbur and Orville Wright. In fact,
our story starts in a part of town named after
the Wright brothers, a lower income, mixed race neighborhood called
(03:40):
Right View. It was just after midnight on a Tuesday
in Right View, September twentieth, nineteen ninety four. Tyra Patterson
was awake and bored. Tyra was nineteen and smart as
hell with a sunny personality. She was full of promise,
but there weren't many open doors in front of her.
Tyra's home life was really tough. Her dad was an
(04:01):
alcoholic who hit her mom when he'd been drinking. He
left when Tyra was just a kid, and they got
evicted when her mom couldn't pay the bills. Tyra dropped
out of school in sixth grade. She was tired of
the other kids bullying her about being poor. She got
a job at a fast food restaurant, and they put
her at the register because she was so friendly. But
Tyra hadn't learned enough math to make change. She was
(04:23):
humiliated every time someone handed her at twenty and quit
the job. By the time Tyra reached her late teens,
the family had found an apartment to live in again,
but Tyra had lost her way. She smoked a lot
of weed and tried not to think about how her
life could have been different. It was around two am
on September twentieth when Tyra's boring night started getting a
(04:43):
little too interesting. Tyra and her friend Rebecca were hanging
out at Tyra's place, and they decided to go for
a walk outside. They ran into five other young people
from right View. Tyra barely knew most of them, but
she and Rebecca stuck around anyway. The group was mixed
gender and mixed. Five were black, including Tyra, and two
were white, including Rebecca. To keep things clear in our story,
(05:06):
we're going to call all of them the Right View Group.
Sometime after two am, a gray Chevrolet rolled into an
alley near where the group was hanging out. The Chevy
was filled with five teenagers, all white girls from another
part of town. They'd driven to Right View to steal
stuff from people's garages in the alley. Two of these
would be thieves got out of the Chevy to steal
(05:28):
a radio. They were gone about ten minutes before they
returned to the car in a hurry. Following them on
foot were three members of the Right View Group, Lashawna, Angie,
and Joe, and on a leash. Joe had a pitbull.
Before the girls in the Chevy can drive away, another
car pulls up in front of them, blocking the alley's exit.
It's the other four members of the Right View Group,
(05:50):
and crammed into a corner of that car. Wondering what
she's gotten herself into is Tira Patterson. Tyra's friend. Rebecca
gets out of the car and heads for the Chevy
along with the other Right View people. Not knowing what
else to do. Tyra gets out too, but she's not
prepared for what happens next. There's a confrontation. Everyone starts yelling.
(06:11):
One of the right View girls, not Tyra, calls the
girls in the Chevy white bitches. Two other right View
girls join in, still not Tyra, and start telling the
girls in the Chevy to check it in. That means
throw your money and jewelry on the ground. The girls
in the Chevy don't immediately comply, and that's when things
really escalate. Tyra hangs back, but three of the right
(06:33):
View girls open the car doors and start landing punches.
Joe lets his pit bull into the car and orders
it to attack. Now it's a melee. Some of the
girls in the Chevy do check it in, throwing their
jewelry onto the ground. Tyra's not used to this kind
of stuff. She doesn't have a record, and she has
no interest in violence. She tries to calm the situation down,
(06:56):
but no one listens. As the punch is intensify, Tyra
and her friend and Rebecca starts slipping away. They want
no part of this, but as they leave, Tyra spots
a necklace on the ground. Costume jewelry, a cheap gold cross.
She's never owned that kind of jewelry, and it seems
valuable to her. Tyra picks up the necklace, puts it
(07:17):
in her pocket, and keeps walking away.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
When Tyra picked up that necklace, at worst it was
a theft. It might not even have been a crime.
Picking up a necklace off the ground is not something
that prosecutors are interested in. It's not something that people
go to prison for, and it's certainly not murder.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Right as Tyra's walking away, she hears words being yelled,
yelled maybe to her by one of the girls in
the chevy. Eighteen year old Holly Lay. Please make them stop.
Holly calls, we don't have anything. Before Tyra can respond,
a gunshot rings out. Lashawn Aa Keeney, part of the
Right View group, had pulled out a gun and fired
(07:58):
into the car. The bullet went straight into the temple
of Michelle Lay, Holly's fifteen year old sister. Michelle died instantly.
Later on another one of the Right View girls, Angie,
expressed bewilderment that had all happened so fast. We just
meant to punk them out, she said. Within minutes, though,
(08:18):
punking out turned into murder. The moment the shots rang out,
everyone scattered. Most members of the Right View Group fled
to a nearby motel, but Tyra ran to her apartment
only a few hundred feet away, where she panicked and
flushed the necklace down the toilet. She was afraid it
(08:39):
would connect her to a shooting she didn't commit. For
her part, Holly Lay got out of the Chevy and
started banging on doors, pleading desperately for someone, anyone to
call an ambulance help her sister. Eventually, someone did call
nine one one. It was Tyra. A Police only needed
(09:05):
about twelve hours to figure out who'd been there when
Michelle Lay was shot. The girls from the Chevy gave
some pretty good descriptions of both their assailants and the pitbull.
Police found the dogs sitting outside its owner's house, and
when the owner matched the girl's descriptions of Joe, police
knew they'd found one of the Right View Group. Pretty soon,
(09:26):
several people had been rounded up and the police were
knocking at Tyra's door. Two before long, Tyra Patterson found
herself in an interrogation room.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
This episode is sponsored by AIG, a leading global insurance
company and Paul Weiss Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison, a leading
international law firm. The AIG pro Bono program provides free
legal services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and
in individuals most in need, and recently they announced that
working to reform the criminal justice system will become a
(10:05):
key pillar of the program's mission. Paul Weiss has long
had an unwavering commitment to providing impactful pro bono legal
assistance to the most vulnerable members of our society and
in support of the public interest, including extensive work in
the criminal justice area.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
The police were angry. The shooting was tragic, and they
wanted to nail as many people as possible for murder,
not just Lashana who pulled the trigger, but the others too.
But how do you get someone who didn't kill anyone
to go down for murder. Well, one tool that police
and prosecutors have is that felony murder rule. We mentioned earlier.
(10:47):
This little known law can be the source of enormous injustice.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
In its purest form, the felony murder rule is felony
plus death equals first to go. So if you commit
a felony and during the course of that felony, someone dies,
you are convicted of first degree murder, even though you
never intended to kill somebody, even though you couldn't have
(11:13):
foreseen that somebody would have died. It is the intent
to commit that felony that substitutes for the intent to kill.
They didn't coerce Tyra into confessing to murder because they
knew before the interrogation who the murderer was. It was Lashawnakini.
All they needed to do was get Tyra to say
(11:34):
that she grabbed a necklace by force from one of
the girls in the car. That's a robbery. They could
get her for the same murder that Lashawna Keeney committed.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
So getting Tyra to say she snatched the necklace instead
of picking it up is what this interrogation is all about. Now,
like all interrogations that aren't fully recorded, there are two
stories about what happened in the room. There is the
official story told in police reports, and then there's the
story told by the defendant. They almost always diverge. In
(12:08):
Tyra's case, the police story goes like this. Tyra admitted
to being there, but she denied being involved in the robbery,
assault or shooting. But as she was being booked, Tyra
spontaneously announced that she wanted to tell the truth and
admitted reaching into the car and grabbing the necklace off
one of the girls. That's when police captured her confession
(12:28):
on videotape. No coercion, no drama. But according to Tyra
and her lawyer, she confessed after a very different sequence
of events. Here's David Singleton, that lawyer who called Steve
about this case. David has represented Tyra for the past
eight years.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Tyra recalls very clearly the detective screaming at her, saying
she's a murderer, that she's going to be locked up
for the rest of her life, cursing at her telling
her she's an effing liar, was saying I didn't rob anybody,
I didn't shoot anybody. Eventually, the detective takes Tyra out
(13:07):
of the interrogation room and walks her past where Tyra
could see Rebecca sitting in a police car about to
go home. And Tyra's like, well, you know Rebecca's going home.
Why am I not going home? The detective said, well,
she gave us a videotape statement, and Tyra said, well,
I give you a videotape statement. The detective said, well,
(13:29):
you don't have anything to tell us, and Tyra said, well,
I picked up a necklace from the ground, and the
detective smiled and took her back in to try and
charge her.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
The police tell Tyra she just needs to change one
thing in her story about the necklace. She didn't pick
it up off the ground. Instead, she robbed it from
the girls. After all, they say, wouldn't it be better
to go down for a robbery than for murder? Getting
caught up in a murder is what Tyra's been terrified
of all along, so this is what breaks her. She
(14:02):
falsely admits to snatching the necklace off one of the
girls in the chevy. Now she's confessed to robbery and
the cops have their felony. It's only at this point
that the video camera gets turned on.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Describe the necklace? Is it a gold necklace?
Speaker 1 (14:27):
I wouldn't have web, I don't know why I grab it, okay?
Speaker 4 (14:30):
And from which girl in the back seat did you
take that? Next the driver? Okay, from the person behind
the driver okay?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
What struck me about Tyra's appearance in that video is
she did look tired she also looks scared. At one point,
you hear somebody screaming in another room and she's just terrified.
And another point I recall very vividly, she's looking to
(15:01):
the detective for an answer. I mean, she was trying
to satisfy what he wanted because she thought that was
her ticket to go back home and continue on with
her life. And the minute that she finished the video
and the camera was turned off, she said, do I
get to go home now? And he said no, I'm
(15:22):
booking you for murder. That's when the nightmare truly began.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
How is Tyra to know that one little change in
her story was enough to charge her not just with robbery,
but with felony murder, That one little change made Tira
as liable for Michelle Lay's death as the murderer herself.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
You know, there's a huge irony in this case. They
needed Tyra to confess to a robbery, not a theft,
and the way they did it was they told her
it's better to go down for a robbery than it
is for a murder, and she accepted that explanation.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
She believed that premise.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Everybody believes that, of course, because they don't understand the
felony murder rule. We've seen police officers lie before, but
this is a particularly dangerous lie because it sets somebody
up for murder charges.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
There's actually a second irony in this case too, because
here you have the felony murder rule being applied to
Tyra Patterson. She didn't have a weapon with her that night.
She didn't know the people who did come to that
scene with weapons. She tried to intervene and stop the fight.
She tried to de escalate as things were getting more
serious and more violent, and when she couldn't stop the fight,
(16:36):
she walked away. After the gunshot. She called nine to
one to one. Tyra is a hero here. She's not
a murderer. She's the one, though, who ends up going down.
Tyra Patterson's only crime, if it even was a crime,
was picking up a necklace from the ground. But suddenly,
somehow she was on trial for murder and facing life
(16:59):
in prison. And like too many murder trials, Tyra's was
a shit show.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
So Tyra was represented by attorneys in the local Public
Defender office. The problem was that they were overwhelmed and
didn't have the resources to defend Tyra appropriately.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
The primary evidence against Tyra was her confession, but her
attorneys never argued that it was false or coerced. In fact,
no one, not the judge or the jury, ever heard
Tyra's account of her interrogation. Her attorneys actually advised her
not to testify in her own defense, not to tell
her side of the story, and why not.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
They said that she was too unsophisticated and talked too
much like she was from the ghetto, that she'd be
eaten alive by the prosecutors. And I think that Tyra
got ridden off in that way.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Did hear though from Holly Lay, who testified that she'd
seen Tyra reaching into the car. A few other girls
from the Chevy testified the same way. Their stories went
unchallenged by Tyra's lawyers, even though they could have called
Rebecca to testify that Tyra never snatched a necklace off anyone.
The lawyers didn't even play Tyra's nine one call, which
(18:20):
would have showed that she was trying to help.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
We were able to find out by talking to the
jurors years later that that nine to one one call
would have made a difference had they heard it. When
I played it for them. They were like, we never
would have convicted her had we known that she had
called nine one one. But the defense gave the jurors
nothing to work with.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Nothing, And that's how Tira Patterson, the woman who never
touched a gun or robbed anyone, was convicted of one
kind of aggravated murder and four counts of aggravated robbery.
When the jury announced its verdict, she stood up and
shouted in disbelief. But I didn't do it. It didn't matter.
(19:03):
She was sentenced to forty three years to life. That's
thirteen more years than Lashawna, who actually pulled the trigger.
And in December nineteen ninety five, Tira Patterson became Ohio
Department of Correction's inmate number three seven seven three seven.
(19:35):
Fast forward to twenty eleven, Tira Patterson had been in
prison for just over sixteen years, not even halfway through
her sentence. When she got her first break. Ohio Governor
Ted Strickland learned about her case. He thought it was
unfair that her sentence was more severe than the shooters,
so he issued what's called a commutation.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Tyra tried to stop this from happening. She walked away
before the shots were fired. All she did was pick
up a necklace off of the ground. Lashawna Keeney brought
the gun to this event and she pulled the trigger
that led to Michelle Lay's death. It is grossly unfair
(20:15):
for Lashawna to be sentenced to thirty years and for
Tyra to be sentenced to forty three years, and that's
why the governor commuted tyra sentence to sixteen years to life,
which made her immediately eligible for parole.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
But Tyra's hopes of freedom were dashed a few months later.
The Ohio Parole Board denied her request for parole, and
they said she had to wait up to seven years
before asking again. They said her crime was too severe.
That's when David Singleton got involved. He'd heard about her
case from a friend and he decided to go meet
(20:52):
Tira Patterson. When David met Tyra in prison, she was
different from that nineteen year old girl whose future looked
like a broken promise behind bars. Tyra had redeemed her
own promise. She had gained skills in prison, working as
a porter, a food service worker, a maintenance person. She'd
gone from an illiterate sixth grade dropout to someone who
earned her ged, she'd participated in more than two hundred
(21:15):
self improvement programs, and most importantly, she was becoming an
incredible advocate for herself and for justice. When she told
David she was innocent, he believed her, and he set
out to prove it, enlisting Steve Drison's help in the process.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
There's no DNA miracle for people like Tyra and for
most of the people who are locked up in prison.
I mean, DNA is only present in maybe ten percent
of all cases.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Well, that's the thing. Even if the shooter had left
DNA on the gun, everybody already knew that Lashana Kini
was the one who pulled the trigger. This is not
a case where DNA testing is going to exonerate Tira Patterson.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
What she needed here was a reinvestigation, an advocacy.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
As David and Steve dove into the case against Tyra,
they found some major cracks. First, David discovered that the
victim's sister, Holly Lay, had testified at the trial of
another one of the Right View girls a year before
Tyra's trial. Back then, Holly had testified that Tyra wasn't
the one who reached into the car and snatched the necklace,
it had actually been someone else. Second, David uncovered the
(22:22):
very first statements the girls in the chevy gave to
police right after Michelle Lay was shot. And when he
and Steve reviewed those early statements, well it was revealing.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Remember some of these were given within an hour or
two of the crime, so the memories were fresh for
their witnesses, and Tyra was like a ghost. The two
people who were mentioned far less than everybody else in
all of these accounts were Tyra and Becca, and so
(22:54):
that's squared with Tyra's story.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Third, David talked to some of the other Right View girls,
the ones who were born involved in what went down
that night. Three of them signed affid David supporting Tyra's innocence,
including Lashawna Keeney. Lashawna confirmed that far from participating, Tyra
had actually tried to stop the confrontation from escalating. Before long,
Tyra's case was attracting attention among some pretty influential people.
(23:20):
Ohio State Senator Peggy Lanner visited Tyra in prison, and
she was so compelled by Tyra's story that she got
four other state senators to back Tyra's efforts for release.
Celebrities and advocates also began getting involved, everyone from actor
Elfrey Woodard to mad Men creator Matthew Weener. They began
tweeting and posting in support of Tyra, using the hashtag
(23:43):
I Am Tyra Patterson.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
This I Am Tyra Patterson campaign the hashtag. What it
meant was they were in solidarity with her. People were
saying We're there for you, we see you, we hear you,
and that was a powerful message.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
You know, I think the first time I heard the
name Tira Patterson was when I opened up my Twitter
feed one day and there I see a video of
Steve giving a speech and holding a poster that says,
in big black letters, I am Tyra Patterson.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
That was take five of that video, because the first
take went along what I thought was really well, and
then I picked up the sign I am holding it
upside down. Great. Great. The point of the campaign was
to demonstrate that anybody could falsely confess if pressured by
(24:39):
the police, and I am Tyra Patterson to me, was
making that message loud and clear. I could have been
Tira Patterson, nor my child could have been Tyra Patterson.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
That's how Tyra became in my view her best advocate.
It was exposing people to her so that they could
see her as a living, breathing daughter, sister, and person
who was going to shine in the community if we
could get her free.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
One person this message reached was the victim's sister.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Twenty sixteen is when Holly Lay got in touch with
me and her husband said, Holly wants to meet you
at Michelle's grave on Michelle's birthday. So I showed up.
I didn't think they were going to come. I was like,
this cannot be happening. Holly said, you know, Tyra didn't
do this. And in fact, that night, Tyra walked by
(25:36):
as we were talking to the police, and the police
officer looked and said, is that one of the ones
who was involved? And we all said no.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
On the night of the crime, Holly had seen one
of the other girls snatch the necklace, not Tyra. But
when she heard about Tyra's concession, Holly figured she must
have been mistaken. After all, who would confess to a
crime they didn't commit. Years later, learned about false confessions
and she realized Tyra must have given one. Holly's memory
(26:06):
had been right all along. Tira was innocent. And Holly
agreed to support Tyra's release. In twenty seventeen, Tira Patterson
was granted parole after twenty one years behind bars. On
Christmas morning, she walked out of prison, bent down and
kissed the winter snow. It wasn't exoneration, but at last
(26:30):
she was free. To quote Shashank Redemption, Tira Patterson got
busy living.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
She's my colleague now at the Ohio Justice and Policy Center.
She's soaring in her job as our community relations expert.
She speaks multiple times a week to different community groups,
mentoring young people, not just in our community, but in
places across the country. Tira basically runs Cincinnati. Everybody knows her.
(26:58):
She is the brains behind this social justice mural that
is going up in downtown Cincinnati featuring women who have
spent a long time in prison and have come home
and are doing well. And her face is one of
the ones up there. It's just sad that her life
was interrupted for twenty three years, but now she's living
(27:20):
and it's a beautiful thing to see.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Hello Tira, Hey, Steve, how are you, Hey Tyra?
Speaker 3 (27:32):
It's Laura.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Hey, Laura, how I'm great?
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Are you at home? I am So Tyra was living
in an apartment for a while and now she's a homeowner.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yes, what was it like to have you in place
after being in prison so long?
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Oh my god, the privacya no yelling, no strimon no arguing.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
It was beautiful. I slept like a baby. I speke alive.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Man, if I were you, first thing I would have
done is like stood in the shower for three hours.
There's nothing like a long shower.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
No, Laura, I didn't even do that. I stayed in
a bathtub for three hours. Yes, you know, President, we
didn't get to take a bath.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
So all I ever wanted to do was just come
home and take a bubble bath.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
I'm gonna go take a bubble bath in.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Your honor.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
To see if I love you.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Tyra hasn't given up on exoneration. She and her legal
team are still fighting to clear her name. If you
want to follow Tyra's case and send her a message
of support, look her up on Instagram at Tyra dot
Imani dot seven seven seven. She inspires Steve and Me
every day. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of
(28:55):
Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number
one special thanks to our executive producers Jason Flamm and
Kevin Wardis. Our production team is headed by Senior producer
and Pope, along with producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane.
Our show is mixed by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is
our intrepid intern. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
(29:18):
You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura
and I Wrider, and.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
You can follow me on Twitter at s Drizsen.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com.
Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
wrong Conviction
Hey, it's Laura and I writer. This week on False Confessions,
we're bringing you the deeply compelling story of Tira Patterson,
a young woman who was coerced into confessing to a robbery,
but then who ended up with a murder conviction. The
reasons for this include archaic rules, teenage drama, and plenty
of dirty police tactics. It's a story too good for
(00:26):
me to spoil before you get to the episode. But
this week we wanted to bring you an update on
Tyra and the incredible impact her story and her work
has made on the community. She's still working with the
Ohio Justice and Policy Center as a community outreach strategist,
and she recently joined represent Justice, a project that turns
stories like hers into change in the system. In twenty
(00:50):
twenty one, Ohio State Representative Jean Schmidt proposed a bill
that would abolish the death penalty in Ohio. She cited
her meeting with Tyra as a catalyst for the new bill. Tyra,
you're a rock star and a change maker. Keep doing
what you're doing, but there's still more to come. Late
last year, filming wrapped up on a documentary film about
(01:12):
Tyra's life and work. We're so excited for its twenty
twenty three release and so excited to see what Tyra
will accomplish. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura,
and I writer, and I'm Steve Dressing. In today's episode,
(01:33):
will take you to Dayton, Ohio to tell you about
Tyra Patterson. Nineteen year old Tira falsely confessed to stealing
a necklace, but an obscure law turned her false confession
to robbery into something far worse.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I was sitting in my office one day in the
phone rank and on the other end of the call
was David Singleton, the director of a group called the
Ohio Justice and Policy Center. David was looking for somebody
who could assist him in a case that involved a
false confession. It was Tyra Patterson's case. We've told a
(02:24):
lot of stories about people who falsely confessed to murders
last season, but the crazy thing is, this is a
case where a false confession to robbery is converted into
a false conviction for murder. And it's all because of
an obscure, archaic rule called the felony murder doctrine. The
(02:44):
felony murder leads to people going down for murders who
never killed anyone.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
When most people think about people in prison who had
been convicted of murder, they think of truly bad people,
you know, scary folks. But there are a lot of
people in prison for murder who never touched a gun
or a murder weapon at all.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
The prisons are filled with people convicted of felony murder,
people like Tyra Patterson.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Today's story starts in Dayton, Ohio. It was a manufacturing
town back in the day, but those jobs left in
the eighties and nineties and never came back now. Dayton's
claim to fame is that the guys who invented the
airplane used to live there, Wilbur and Orville Wright. In fact,
our story starts in a part of town named after
the Wright brothers, a lower income, mixed race neighborhood called
(03:40):
Right View. It was just after midnight on a Tuesday
in Right View, September twentieth, nineteen ninety four. Tyra Patterson
was awake and bored. Tyra was nineteen and smart as
hell with a sunny personality. She was full of promise,
but there weren't many open doors in front of her.
Tyra's home life was really tough. Her dad was an
(04:01):
alcoholic who hit her mom when he'd been drinking. He
left when Tyra was just a kid, and they got
evicted when her mom couldn't pay the bills. Tyra dropped
out of school in sixth grade. She was tired of
the other kids bullying her about being poor. She got
a job at a fast food restaurant, and they put
her at the register because she was so friendly. But
Tyra hadn't learned enough math to make change. She was
(04:23):
humiliated every time someone handed her at twenty and quit
the job. By the time Tyra reached her late teens,
the family had found an apartment to live in again,
but Tyra had lost her way. She smoked a lot
of weed and tried not to think about how her
life could have been different. It was around two am
on September twentieth when Tyra's boring night started getting a
(04:43):
little too interesting. Tyra and her friend Rebecca were hanging
out at Tyra's place, and they decided to go for
a walk outside. They ran into five other young people
from right View. Tyra barely knew most of them, but
she and Rebecca stuck around anyway. The group was mixed
gender and mixed. Five were black, including Tyra, and two
were white, including Rebecca. To keep things clear in our story,
(05:06):
we're going to call all of them the Right View Group.
Sometime after two am, a gray Chevrolet rolled into an
alley near where the group was hanging out. The Chevy
was filled with five teenagers, all white girls from another
part of town. They'd driven to Right View to steal
stuff from people's garages in the alley. Two of these
would be thieves got out of the Chevy to steal
(05:28):
a radio. They were gone about ten minutes before they
returned to the car in a hurry. Following them on
foot were three members of the Right View Group, Lashawna, Angie,
and Joe, and on a leash. Joe had a pitbull.
Before the girls in the Chevy can drive away, another
car pulls up in front of them, blocking the alley's exit.
It's the other four members of the Right View Group,
(05:50):
and crammed into a corner of that car. Wondering what
she's gotten herself into is Tira Patterson. Tyra's friend. Rebecca
gets out of the car and heads for the Chevy
along with the other Right View people. Not knowing what
else to do. Tyra gets out too, but she's not
prepared for what happens next. There's a confrontation. Everyone starts yelling.
(06:11):
One of the right View girls, not Tyra, calls the
girls in the Chevy white bitches. Two other right View
girls join in, still not Tyra, and start telling the
girls in the Chevy to check it in. That means
throw your money and jewelry on the ground. The girls
in the Chevy don't immediately comply, and that's when things
really escalate. Tyra hangs back, but three of the right
(06:33):
View girls open the car doors and start landing punches.
Joe lets his pit bull into the car and orders
it to attack. Now it's a melee. Some of the
girls in the Chevy do check it in, throwing their
jewelry onto the ground. Tyra's not used to this kind
of stuff. She doesn't have a record, and she has
no interest in violence. She tries to calm the situation down,
(06:56):
but no one listens. As the punch is intensify, Tyra
and her friend and Rebecca starts slipping away. They want
no part of this, but as they leave, Tyra spots
a necklace on the ground. Costume jewelry, a cheap gold cross.
She's never owned that kind of jewelry, and it seems
valuable to her. Tyra picks up the necklace, puts it
(07:17):
in her pocket, and keeps walking away.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
When Tyra picked up that necklace, at worst it was
a theft. It might not even have been a crime.
Picking up a necklace off the ground is not something
that prosecutors are interested in. It's not something that people
go to prison for, and it's certainly not murder.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Right as Tyra's walking away, she hears words being yelled,
yelled maybe to her by one of the girls in
the chevy. Eighteen year old Holly Lay. Please make them stop.
Holly calls, we don't have anything. Before Tyra can respond,
a gunshot rings out. Lashawn Aa Keeney, part of the
Right View group, had pulled out a gun and fired
(07:58):
into the car. The bullet went straight into the temple
of Michelle Lay, Holly's fifteen year old sister. Michelle died instantly.
Later on another one of the Right View girls, Angie,
expressed bewilderment that had all happened so fast. We just
meant to punk them out, she said. Within minutes, though,
(08:18):
punking out turned into murder. The moment the shots rang out,
everyone scattered. Most members of the Right View Group fled
to a nearby motel, but Tyra ran to her apartment
only a few hundred feet away, where she panicked and
flushed the necklace down the toilet. She was afraid it
(08:39):
would connect her to a shooting she didn't commit. For
her part, Holly Lay got out of the Chevy and
started banging on doors, pleading desperately for someone, anyone to
call an ambulance help her sister. Eventually, someone did call
nine one one. It was Tyra. A Police only needed
(09:05):
about twelve hours to figure out who'd been there when
Michelle Lay was shot. The girls from the Chevy gave
some pretty good descriptions of both their assailants and the pitbull.
Police found the dogs sitting outside its owner's house, and
when the owner matched the girl's descriptions of Joe, police
knew they'd found one of the Right View Group. Pretty soon,
(09:26):
several people had been rounded up and the police were
knocking at Tyra's door. Two before long, Tyra Patterson found
herself in an interrogation room.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
This episode is sponsored by AIG, a leading global insurance
company and Paul Weiss Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison, a leading
international law firm. The AIG pro Bono program provides free
legal services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and
in individuals most in need, and recently they announced that
working to reform the criminal justice system will become a
(10:05):
key pillar of the program's mission. Paul Weiss has long
had an unwavering commitment to providing impactful pro bono legal
assistance to the most vulnerable members of our society and
in support of the public interest, including extensive work in
the criminal justice area.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
The police were angry. The shooting was tragic, and they
wanted to nail as many people as possible for murder,
not just Lashana who pulled the trigger, but the others too.
But how do you get someone who didn't kill anyone
to go down for murder. Well, one tool that police
and prosecutors have is that felony murder rule. We mentioned earlier.
(10:47):
This little known law can be the source of enormous injustice.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
In its purest form, the felony murder rule is felony
plus death equals first to go. So if you commit
a felony and during the course of that felony, someone dies,
you are convicted of first degree murder, even though you
never intended to kill somebody, even though you couldn't have
(11:13):
foreseen that somebody would have died. It is the intent
to commit that felony that substitutes for the intent to kill.
They didn't coerce Tyra into confessing to murder because they
knew before the interrogation who the murderer was. It was Lashawnakini.
All they needed to do was get Tyra to say
(11:34):
that she grabbed a necklace by force from one of
the girls in the car. That's a robbery. They could
get her for the same murder that Lashawna Keeney committed.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
So getting Tyra to say she snatched the necklace instead
of picking it up is what this interrogation is all about. Now,
like all interrogations that aren't fully recorded, there are two
stories about what happened in the room. There is the
official story told in police reports, and then there's the
story told by the defendant. They almost always diverge. In
(12:08):
Tyra's case, the police story goes like this. Tyra admitted
to being there, but she denied being involved in the robbery,
assault or shooting. But as she was being booked, Tyra
spontaneously announced that she wanted to tell the truth and
admitted reaching into the car and grabbing the necklace off
one of the girls. That's when police captured her confession
(12:28):
on videotape. No coercion, no drama. But according to Tyra
and her lawyer, she confessed after a very different sequence
of events. Here's David Singleton, that lawyer who called Steve
about this case. David has represented Tyra for the past
eight years.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Tyra recalls very clearly the detective screaming at her, saying
she's a murderer, that she's going to be locked up
for the rest of her life, cursing at her telling
her she's an effing liar, was saying I didn't rob anybody,
I didn't shoot anybody. Eventually, the detective takes Tyra out
(13:07):
of the interrogation room and walks her past where Tyra
could see Rebecca sitting in a police car about to
go home. And Tyra's like, well, you know Rebecca's going home.
Why am I not going home? The detective said, well,
she gave us a videotape statement, and Tyra said, well,
I give you a videotape statement. The detective said, well,
(13:29):
you don't have anything to tell us, and Tyra said, well,
I picked up a necklace from the ground, and the
detective smiled and took her back in to try and
charge her.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
The police tell Tyra she just needs to change one
thing in her story about the necklace. She didn't pick
it up off the ground. Instead, she robbed it from
the girls. After all, they say, wouldn't it be better
to go down for a robbery than for murder? Getting
caught up in a murder is what Tyra's been terrified
of all along, so this is what breaks her. She
(14:02):
falsely admits to snatching the necklace off one of the
girls in the chevy. Now she's confessed to robbery and
the cops have their felony. It's only at this point
that the video camera gets turned on.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Describe the necklace? Is it a gold necklace?
Speaker 1 (14:27):
I wouldn't have web, I don't know why I grab it, okay?
Speaker 4 (14:30):
And from which girl in the back seat did you
take that? Next the driver? Okay, from the person behind
the driver okay?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
What struck me about Tyra's appearance in that video is
she did look tired she also looks scared. At one point,
you hear somebody screaming in another room and she's just terrified.
And another point I recall very vividly, she's looking to
(15:01):
the detective for an answer. I mean, she was trying
to satisfy what he wanted because she thought that was
her ticket to go back home and continue on with
her life. And the minute that she finished the video
and the camera was turned off, she said, do I
get to go home now? And he said no, I'm
(15:22):
booking you for murder. That's when the nightmare truly began.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
How is Tyra to know that one little change in
her story was enough to charge her not just with robbery,
but with felony murder, That one little change made Tira
as liable for Michelle Lay's death as the murderer herself.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
You know, there's a huge irony in this case. They
needed Tyra to confess to a robbery, not a theft,
and the way they did it was they told her
it's better to go down for a robbery than it
is for a murder, and she accepted that explanation.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
She believed that premise.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Everybody believes that, of course, because they don't understand the
felony murder rule. We've seen police officers lie before, but
this is a particularly dangerous lie because it sets somebody
up for murder charges.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
There's actually a second irony in this case too, because
here you have the felony murder rule being applied to
Tyra Patterson. She didn't have a weapon with her that night.
She didn't know the people who did come to that
scene with weapons. She tried to intervene and stop the fight.
She tried to de escalate as things were getting more
serious and more violent, and when she couldn't stop the fight,
(16:36):
she walked away. After the gunshot. She called nine to
one to one. Tyra is a hero here. She's not
a murderer. She's the one, though, who ends up going down.
Tyra Patterson's only crime, if it even was a crime,
was picking up a necklace from the ground. But suddenly,
somehow she was on trial for murder and facing life
(16:59):
in prison. And like too many murder trials, Tyra's was
a shit show.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
So Tyra was represented by attorneys in the local Public
Defender office. The problem was that they were overwhelmed and
didn't have the resources to defend Tyra appropriately.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
The primary evidence against Tyra was her confession, but her
attorneys never argued that it was false or coerced. In fact,
no one, not the judge or the jury, ever heard
Tyra's account of her interrogation. Her attorneys actually advised her
not to testify in her own defense, not to tell
her side of the story, and why not.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
They said that she was too unsophisticated and talked too
much like she was from the ghetto, that she'd be
eaten alive by the prosecutors. And I think that Tyra
got ridden off in that way.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Did hear though from Holly Lay, who testified that she'd
seen Tyra reaching into the car. A few other girls
from the Chevy testified the same way. Their stories went
unchallenged by Tyra's lawyers, even though they could have called
Rebecca to testify that Tyra never snatched a necklace off anyone.
The lawyers didn't even play Tyra's nine one call, which
(18:20):
would have showed that she was trying to help.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
We were able to find out by talking to the
jurors years later that that nine to one one call
would have made a difference had they heard it. When
I played it for them. They were like, we never
would have convicted her had we known that she had
called nine one one. But the defense gave the jurors
nothing to work with.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Nothing, And that's how Tira Patterson, the woman who never
touched a gun or robbed anyone, was convicted of one
kind of aggravated murder and four counts of aggravated robbery.
When the jury announced its verdict, she stood up and
shouted in disbelief. But I didn't do it. It didn't matter.
(19:03):
She was sentenced to forty three years to life. That's
thirteen more years than Lashawna, who actually pulled the trigger.
And in December nineteen ninety five, Tira Patterson became Ohio
Department of Correction's inmate number three seven seven three seven.
(19:35):
Fast forward to twenty eleven, Tira Patterson had been in
prison for just over sixteen years, not even halfway through
her sentence. When she got her first break. Ohio Governor
Ted Strickland learned about her case. He thought it was
unfair that her sentence was more severe than the shooters,
so he issued what's called a commutation.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Tyra tried to stop this from happening. She walked away
before the shots were fired. All she did was pick
up a necklace off of the ground. Lashawna Keeney brought
the gun to this event and she pulled the trigger
that led to Michelle Lay's death. It is grossly unfair
(20:15):
for Lashawna to be sentenced to thirty years and for
Tyra to be sentenced to forty three years, and that's
why the governor commuted tyra sentence to sixteen years to life,
which made her immediately eligible for parole.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
But Tyra's hopes of freedom were dashed a few months later.
The Ohio Parole Board denied her request for parole, and
they said she had to wait up to seven years
before asking again. They said her crime was too severe.
That's when David Singleton got involved. He'd heard about her
case from a friend and he decided to go meet
(20:52):
Tira Patterson. When David met Tyra in prison, she was
different from that nineteen year old girl whose future looked
like a broken promise behind bars. Tyra had redeemed her
own promise. She had gained skills in prison, working as
a porter, a food service worker, a maintenance person. She'd
gone from an illiterate sixth grade dropout to someone who
earned her ged, she'd participated in more than two hundred
(21:15):
self improvement programs, and most importantly, she was becoming an
incredible advocate for herself and for justice. When she told
David she was innocent, he believed her, and he set
out to prove it, enlisting Steve Drison's help in the process.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
There's no DNA miracle for people like Tyra and for
most of the people who are locked up in prison.
I mean, DNA is only present in maybe ten percent
of all cases.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Well, that's the thing. Even if the shooter had left
DNA on the gun, everybody already knew that Lashana Kini
was the one who pulled the trigger. This is not
a case where DNA testing is going to exonerate Tira Patterson.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
What she needed here was a reinvestigation, an advocacy.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
As David and Steve dove into the case against Tyra,
they found some major cracks. First, David discovered that the
victim's sister, Holly Lay, had testified at the trial of
another one of the Right View girls a year before
Tyra's trial. Back then, Holly had testified that Tyra wasn't
the one who reached into the car and snatched the necklace,
it had actually been someone else. Second, David uncovered the
(22:22):
very first statements the girls in the chevy gave to
police right after Michelle Lay was shot. And when he
and Steve reviewed those early statements, well it was revealing.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Remember some of these were given within an hour or
two of the crime, so the memories were fresh for
their witnesses, and Tyra was like a ghost. The two
people who were mentioned far less than everybody else in
all of these accounts were Tyra and Becca, and so
(22:54):
that's squared with Tyra's story.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Third, David talked to some of the other Right View girls,
the ones who were born involved in what went down
that night. Three of them signed affid David supporting Tyra's innocence,
including Lashawna Keeney. Lashawna confirmed that far from participating, Tyra
had actually tried to stop the confrontation from escalating. Before long,
Tyra's case was attracting attention among some pretty influential people.
(23:20):
Ohio State Senator Peggy Lanner visited Tyra in prison, and
she was so compelled by Tyra's story that she got
four other state senators to back Tyra's efforts for release.
Celebrities and advocates also began getting involved, everyone from actor
Elfrey Woodard to mad Men creator Matthew Weener. They began
tweeting and posting in support of Tyra, using the hashtag
(23:43):
I Am Tyra Patterson.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
This I Am Tyra Patterson campaign the hashtag. What it
meant was they were in solidarity with her. People were
saying We're there for you, we see you, we hear you,
and that was a powerful message.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
You know, I think the first time I heard the
name Tira Patterson was when I opened up my Twitter
feed one day and there I see a video of
Steve giving a speech and holding a poster that says,
in big black letters, I am Tyra Patterson.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
That was take five of that video, because the first
take went along what I thought was really well, and
then I picked up the sign I am holding it
upside down. Great. Great. The point of the campaign was
to demonstrate that anybody could falsely confess if pressured by
(24:39):
the police, and I am Tyra Patterson to me, was
making that message loud and clear. I could have been
Tira Patterson, nor my child could have been Tyra Patterson.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
That's how Tyra became in my view her best advocate.
It was exposing people to her so that they could
see her as a living, breathing daughter, sister, and person
who was going to shine in the community if we
could get her free.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
One person this message reached was the victim's sister.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Twenty sixteen is when Holly Lay got in touch with
me and her husband said, Holly wants to meet you
at Michelle's grave on Michelle's birthday. So I showed up.
I didn't think they were going to come. I was like,
this cannot be happening. Holly said, you know, Tyra didn't
do this. And in fact, that night, Tyra walked by
(25:36):
as we were talking to the police, and the police
officer looked and said, is that one of the ones
who was involved? And we all said no.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
On the night of the crime, Holly had seen one
of the other girls snatch the necklace, not Tyra. But
when she heard about Tyra's concession, Holly figured she must
have been mistaken. After all, who would confess to a
crime they didn't commit. Years later, learned about false confessions
and she realized Tyra must have given one. Holly's memory
(26:06):
had been right all along. Tira was innocent. And Holly
agreed to support Tyra's release. In twenty seventeen, Tira Patterson
was granted parole after twenty one years behind bars. On
Christmas morning, she walked out of prison, bent down and
kissed the winter snow. It wasn't exoneration, but at last
(26:30):
she was free. To quote Shashank Redemption, Tira Patterson got
busy living.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
She's my colleague now at the Ohio Justice and Policy Center.
She's soaring in her job as our community relations expert.
She speaks multiple times a week to different community groups,
mentoring young people, not just in our community, but in
places across the country. Tira basically runs Cincinnati. Everybody knows her.
(26:58):
She is the brains behind this social justice mural that
is going up in downtown Cincinnati featuring women who have
spent a long time in prison and have come home
and are doing well. And her face is one of
the ones up there. It's just sad that her life
was interrupted for twenty three years, but now she's living
(27:20):
and it's a beautiful thing to see.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Hello Tira, Hey, Steve, how are you, Hey Tyra?
Speaker 3 (27:32):
It's Laura.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Hey, Laura, how I'm great?
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Are you at home? I am So Tyra was living
in an apartment for a while and now she's a homeowner.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yes, what was it like to have you in place
after being in prison so long?
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Oh my god, the privacya no yelling, no strimon no arguing.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
It was beautiful. I slept like a baby. I speke alive.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Man, if I were you, first thing I would have
done is like stood in the shower for three hours.
There's nothing like a long shower.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
No, Laura, I didn't even do that. I stayed in
a bathtub for three hours. Yes, you know, President, we
didn't get to take a bath.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
So all I ever wanted to do was just come
home and take a bubble bath.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
I'm gonna go take a bubble bath in.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Your honor.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
To see if I love you.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Tyra hasn't given up on exoneration. She and her legal
team are still fighting to clear her name. If you
want to follow Tyra's case and send her a message
of support, look her up on Instagram at Tyra dot
Imani dot seven seven seven. She inspires Steve and Me
every day. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of
(28:55):
Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number
one special thanks to our executive producers Jason Flamm and
Kevin Wardis. Our production team is headed by Senior producer
and Pope, along with producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane.
Our show is mixed by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is
our intrepid intern. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
(29:18):
You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura
and I Wrider, and.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
You can follow me on Twitter at s Drizsen.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com.
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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