November 7, 2016 • 35 mins
Marty Tankleff had just turned 17 when he was arrested for murdering his parents, Seymour and Arlene Tankleff in September 1988. Based on an unsigned “confession" extracted from him following many long hours of interrogation by notorious Suffolk County detective K. James McCready, Marty was convicted and sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. After serving 17 years, Marty's conviction was vacated by the New York State Appellate Division, Second Department, in December of 2007. On July 22, 2008, a judge signed off on a motion by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to dismiss all charges against Marty. Marty recently passed the bar exam and is pursuing a career as an attorney, advocating criminal justice reform and wrongful convictions.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Of all the hundreds of Axonorees that I've had the
privilege to meet, none have touched my heart anymore profoundly
than Marty tank Cliff. And his case is profiled, by
the way, in one of the most incredible books I've
ever read. It's called A Criminal Injustice, A True Crime,
a False Confession, and the Fight to Free Marty Tankliff.
(00:24):
It's by Richard Firstman and J. Saw Peter. It reads
like a John Grisham novel, but it's all true. Marty
is an incredible human. Since his episode originally aired on
November seven, sixteen, a number of amazing developments of habit
in Marty's life. He received in two thousand eighteen and
ten million dollars settlement, which, by the way, you can
(00:47):
put another zero on it, still wouldn't make up for
what he went through. Marty passed the Bar exam, and
he's pursuing a career as an attorney, advocating criminal justice
reform and fighting to right wrongful convictions. And if that
wasn't enough for you, Marty is now a professor at
Georgetown University, leading a class with Professor Mark Howard that
(01:09):
is helping to resolve wrong for conviction cases. They already
had their first win in the case of Valentino Dixon,
who's been on my show, Marty tank Cliff a profile encourage,
an unbelievable story that you have to hear, So please
listen to my interview with Marty tank Cliffe. I came
(01:33):
from a beautiful neighborhood, had a beautiful life. I went
to sleep because September seven was the first day of
my high school year. I was gonna be a senior
at twenty two, I was set to start college. I
woke up and my life was never the same again.
Cops came out with guns drawn, and I never saw
(01:53):
freedom ever ever since after that. It's like Roach Motta.
Once you get in, you and I caett now this
is wrongful conviction. With Jason Flamm. I'm very excited today
because I have two people who I consider heroes of
(02:13):
mine for different sets of reasons, on the show. Marty
tank Cliff is here today. Marty is an exonoree who
was wrongfully convicted of murdering his parents, um, which I
get the chills just hearing myself say that. UM. And
he's going to share his remarkable story of going through
what could be considered one of the most traumatic experiences
(02:36):
that any human being could ever endure, and his subsequent
triumph post exoneration. You will be amazed at at what
he's been able to accomplish and overcome. We also have
today Saul Casson, and I'm gonna embarrass all a little
bit by reading part of his resume, because it's quite extraordinary.
Saul is a is a true hero of the innocence movement. Uh.
(02:59):
He's a just English professor of psychology at John J
College of Criminal Justice in New York and Massachusetts professor
emeritus at Williams College. He's received his PhD at the
University of Connecticut. Moreover, I saw pioneered in the eighties
the scientific study of false confessions by introducing a taxonomy
that distinguished between three types of false confessions, voluntary, compliant,
(03:21):
and internalized that is universally accepted today. He has recently
studied forensic confirmation biases and the impact that confessions have
on judges, juries, lay witnesses, forensic science examiners, and the
plea bargaining process. He is widely considered the foremost expert
on false confessions. So welcome both of you. Thanks for
(03:42):
coming in and joining us today. Um, Marty, let's start
with you. So let's go back to you grew up
in Long Island. I grew up in an efflam area
of called Beltian, New York, which is a little hamlet
and portraits in New York north Shore, Suffolk County. Um.
I was lived in a kind of a wonderful area.
(04:04):
I went to porttres in high school, where the norm
was we drove nice cars, we went on boats. Um.
And what happened to me was not something myself or
anyone in my neighborhood could have ever imagined. No, no
one could imagine it. Um. You had a happy childhood,
a nuclear family, right, you and your sister. Your parents idyllic,
(04:25):
A little bit more idyllic because I was adopted, so
my parents were older. So a lot of what we
did growing up, my father lived vicariously through me because
he didn't have a very good childhood. So you know,
we had the boats, the a t v s, We
traveled a lot, so it was very It was a
great childhood. And he was the bagel king, right he
(04:47):
What he did was is my father was an entrepreneur
who invested with Jerry Stewarman, who was then known as
the bagel King of Long Island. Right, So everything's fine,
everything's good until one really terrible, fateful day. And let's
talk about that, um. And we're gonna get to you
saw in a minute when we get into the deeper
(05:07):
issues surrounding what happened to Marty Um. But first I
want to set the stage. So you're you're at home, right,
typical day, you wake up in the morning, walk us
through this. Let me give you a little background. My
father was partners with Jerry Struman, had invested over a
half million dollars with Jerry and his bagel stores and horses,
(05:28):
and in the summer of their relationship significantly deteriorated. What
I later learned was is that we believe my father
learned what Jerry's business was really about. Um. Jerry's son, Todd,
was a drug dealer, and we believe my father kind
of realized that the bagel businesses may have been a
money wandering operation for Todd's drug dealing business. And we're
(05:50):
talking hard drugs, hard drugs. Todd was arrested, went to
prison for possession of cocaine, marijuana, and other drugs, and
he of time in New York State prisons. Um. But
my father was a tough older man. Nothing would stop him.
And one of the things that he was involved with
was is there was a weekly poker game, and on
(06:13):
September six was his night to hold the weekly poker game.
And one of the members at that game was Jerry Struman.
And my father was the type of man it didn't matter,
you know, how much threatening Jerry Struman did. And there
were threats. We later learned about two weeks before September six,
Jerry Struman threatened to cut my father's tongue out. Um.
(06:35):
And it got so bad that my father was even
looking into buying a shotgun because he was fearful. Right,
So it seems crazy that he would still allow him
into his house. But as he said, your dad was
a tough guy. He didn't really fear anyone. And now
we've set the stage. There's the poker game, right, there's
obviously it's a tense environment, right with the two of
him in the room. Um. And but you went to sleep.
(06:57):
I went to sleep because September seven, who is the
first day of my high school year. You were gonna
be a senior. I was gonna be a senior, right.
And I woke up and my life was never the
same again. So you woke up in the morning, and
the situation was that I woke up that morning, UM,
noticed that the lights were on in my house. The
house wasn't locked up. UM. Walked through the house and
(07:19):
were upstairs. It's a ranch house. It's a very long
ranch house. Where the bedrooms were in one end of
the house. UM, where the card game was was in
the complete opposite end of the house. Right, So you
wouldn't have heard any would have heard anything. UM. And
I discovered my father who was still sitting in his
office chair. UM. And he was alive. UM. And he
(07:39):
was bleeding, bleeding profusely. Yes, UM, And what you do?
I called nine one one, UM, and I followed their
instructions and eventually law enforcement showed up. Right. They told
you to wrap them as best you could, gave you
some medical tips whatever, try to stop the bleeding. That
kind of stuff, right, UM, And within a shure a
(08:00):
period of time, law enforcement showed up at the house.
Where's your mom? I ended up My mother was actually
in her bedroom. Cops come and immediately they removed me
from the house. Um, And what what I kind of
can say now is that the process of questioning me,
trying to find out what happened started almost immediately. Even
(08:21):
when I had family members show up that morning, there
was this immediate separation. Um. I was told consistently I
was being taken to the hospital. Unfortunately I was never
taken to the hospital. I ended up being taken to
police headquarters. So they took you to police headquarters because
and obviously this whole sort of pattern is emerging right
where they wanted to They had an agenda. Yeah, I
(08:44):
mean you know at that day, I didn't know that.
When I was seventeen years old, my father was the
police commissioner of our little community. I was raised to
trust law enforcement, believe in them. Law enforcement wouldn't lie
to you, they wouldn't deceive you. Unfortunately, that's everything that
they did that morning. Right, And you're in an extremely
fragile state, and you need help, right, you need someone
(09:04):
to help you. You're seventeen years old, right, I mean
it's uh and and still a child, basically still a child.
And every time a family member showed up or friends
showed up, they were ripped away again that morning. So
when my brother in law showed up. He was ripped away.
When my godfather, who was also the family attorney, showed up,
I saw him. He never saw me. But McCready, who
(09:26):
was the lead detective. His name is Kay James McCready
was the lead detective on the case, ran to him
and basically told him I was already on the way
to the hospital. I wasn't at the house, even though
I was at the house. Right. So there's a pattern
of deception and and maneuvers that are disingenuous at best,
let's say. But the fact is, at this point, were
(09:47):
you aware that your mom had been killed? Um? So
you're in a state of total shock panic. How can
you even describe it? Words can't describe it. I mean, people,
it's you were close to your parents. I they were
my parents, I mean, to do everything I was not
before I was born. They're the parents, the only parents
(10:08):
I ever knew. Um, they have the most amazing childhood.
I mean there was nothing I didn't have growing up. Um.
You know, people used to joke that I was a
spoiled kid, and I was, but my father instill amazing
work values in me. I was working since I was
probably eleven or twelve years old. Um, but I traveled
with my with my parents. I mean, I did everything
(10:30):
with them. So let's get to the the derogation and
the false confession in prison and the whole Saturday you
used to ended up serving six thousand and three and
in thirty eight days, which is about seventeen and a
half years. What I tell people, as I said, imagine,
you know, seventeen years. What you know, from the time
you're born to the time you're seventeen, losing the entire period,
(10:53):
we're losing your tire, twenties, your thirties, from seven to well,
you know, the first few years you don't even know
what's going on. But the fact is from seventeen to
thirty four, that's when you're building your life. That's really
you know, those are the formative years for anybody to
establish relationships. Uh, you know, both personal, sexual, business, Uh, college,
(11:17):
all that stuff out the window. So let's I mean,
you're obviously very familiar with Mary's case. You've known Marty
since all right, Oh, you've known of each other, he has.
He started writing letters to me from prison right at
ninety three. What were you doing? I was a professor
Williams College, studying the psychology of false confessions. I had
just become interested in false confessions, and I was doing
(11:39):
some research and publishing that research. How did you get
interested in it? Actually? I got interested because I came
out of graduate school and social psychology interested in how
juries make decisions. And after collecting some initial data for
the first several months of a post s talk I
was at the University of Kansas, UH, it became clear
to me that every time I had a case in
(11:59):
which there was a confess, shouldn't evidence all variability of
juror's responses dropped out? Everybody voted guilty. Confession evidence was
perfect in the minds of the average juror. It's is
it the most powerful evidentiary tool that there is? Yes?
And Trump's d n A or I mean, we've seen cases, uh,
and you've obviously seen so many of them in which
(12:21):
a jury is presented at the same time with a
false confession and d n A that proves scientifically, without
any doubt that it could not have been the person
who gave the confession. And they will choose which one
they will choose. They will they will vote guilty on
the basis of that confession, and they will explain away.
They will find ways to explain away the d n A. Right,
(12:41):
so you're presented with a thing that shows I mean
because in a violent crime, if there's physical contact, then
there's blood, and there's the if it's a rape, if
there's an assault, if there's a stabbing, there's d n A.
And if your DNA is not there, you weren't there.
Nobody's ever been able to figure out how to people
and not be there. At the same there are cases
on record we're not only the DNA exclude the confessor
(13:02):
at the point of trial, but it identified the perpetrator
and still the confessor was convicted. Right, So people can
and I know this too from my own experience, it's
very very difficult for people to wrap them in. Mine
is anecdotal um, but it's very hard for people to
wrap around the idea of anybody would confess. We know
that with juveniles it's much more common because they're more
(13:24):
impressionble and in many cases they can be actually coaxed
into or coerced into believing that they actually did it.
Is that right, which is really another level of go
go into any audience of late people and ask the question,
would you ever confess to a serious crime you didn't commit?
Not a single hand will go up. Short of sometimes
you get an occasional hand it will go up and
(13:45):
someone will say, well, if you had a gun to
my head. But short of that, uh, no normal person
of sound mind would confess to a crime they didn't commit.
And people use that personal belief about themselves as the
frame of reference. And so it's very, very unlikely that
you can get people easily to believe that an innocent
person was induced to confess to something they didn't do,
(14:06):
and not just something the highest stakes crime in the system, murder. Right,
So let's talk about this as it relates specifically to
what happened with Marty in the interrogation room. So here's
Marty in a state of as we talked about, in
a state of panic and shock and grief and uh,
(14:27):
you know, just spinning right. And as we discuss, he's
still a child, um. And the fact is a teenager,
a young teenager, um. And so what happened? I mean,
how did you know? Because his confession it's different than
any of the other ones I've studied, right, because it
may or may not have ever even actually happened. Right,
(14:48):
Usually they actually get somebody to say something on video,
or they'll get a written statement or something. But in
Marty's case, it's much more. It's it's much more highly nuanced,
isn't it? Yes? And in Marty's a something that almost
all of these cases have in common. You've got to
ask yourself the first question, why did Marty, seventeen year old,
without a criminal record, without a history of violence, with
(15:10):
good parents and good relationships in an affluent community, why
would Marty kill his parents in a brutal way, in
a brutal in the in the most brutal of ways.
And you have to ask yourself the question, how in
God's name did he become their suspect? Well, we haven't
talked about that, but Marty, your parents were beaten to death?
Is that right? There was a bludgeon instrument uh and
(15:31):
a knife um and to this day neither one has
been discovered. And there was some forensic evidence which I
can talk about. There was glove prints, so whoever did
do this, we're wearing gloves um that they still haven't
found the gloves. So, I mean, there's all these little
things that actually the jury was aware of, but as
you said, they chose just to ignore. So yeah, so
(15:52):
we should believe that you killed your parents in the
most vicious way at night and then went to sleep
and then wait until the morning, then called nine one one,
and you know, most people said, well, you know he
did it for the money, because they thought my parents
were affluent. The way the wills were structured, I would
have gotten everything. Um. And we later learned that law
enforcement never really understood the way the wills. They never
(16:13):
looked into the way the wills were structured. But the
way the wills were structured was that I wasn't going
to benefit financially until I was twenty five and I
was seventeen. So you know, as one of my aunts said,
what was he supposed to do from sevent live on
the streets. So Marty's in the interrogation room, we know
that they have misled, is it not probably a nice
way to put it? His uh, his family guardian at
(16:34):
this point, right, your godfather, who was also the only
lawyer that was available to you at this time. They
kind of mislike everybody though. I mean I had other
cousins and aunts and uncles who were at the hospitals,
and they were live to too. They were told, Marty's
on the way to the hospital. Mary's on the way
to the hospital. Right. So they're basically doing everything they
can to prevent you from having any responsible guardian or
legal representative from being there to be able to help you,
(16:59):
uh in in the situation, to be able to that
might be able to stand in the way of them
getting the conviction that they wanted, regardless of truth. They
weren't after the truth. There was no truth seeking here.
I mean, you have a man who was business partners
with my father, half a million dollars involved, was there
the night before. My father also had in the weeks prior,
(17:20):
had demanded he had two notes fifty dollars. Back in
the days after the murders, Jerry Steerman cleaned out a
joint bank account. He faked his death, He fled to California.
He had a hair weave back then, and he went
to a club that he wasn't a member from um.
He had five or six different aliases at that moment um.
(17:44):
But law enforcement never considered a suspect. And every time
I tell people, you know, the average person would say, well,
how is he not a suspect. I mean, you could
have stopped that. He faked his own death right there.
If this was a TV show, people are changing the channel.
They're like, okay, this is done. I don't need to
watch them. I said, this is our guy. We got him.
(18:07):
So there he is in the interrogation room, alone, alone,
not street wise, never been in trouble before. I never
had to worry about how do you behave when you
get picked up by police? Couldn't he have just said no, no, no,
no no no. I mean, how could what happened in
his brain? And what I can tell you very simply
what happened in his brain? He had done nothing wrong.
(18:28):
And the funny thing about innocent, innocent people is even
if even if they had read him as Miranda rights,
he would have waved those rights. He would have waived
those rights. And he did nothing wrong. He did nothing wrong,
So why would he worry about whether he had nothing
nothing to hide? He had nothing wrong, and so Miranda
becomes not a safeguard that's particularly effective at this point.
He is now, and keep in mind, they've got him
(18:50):
in police headquarters. The whole family is with his father,
who is dying but still alive, in the hospital. That's
where Marty wants to be. If you're looking for, what
is it to incentivize him to cooperate so that he
can get out of there and get to the hospital.
That'says incentive. He wants to be at the hospital. So
he's already in a state where he's motivated to cooperate.
(19:11):
And they started asking him questions about what he saw,
how he saw it, what had happened, and he gives
them answers, and the answers are consistent. They don't believe him.
They tell him they don't believe him. They asked for
the story to be told again, and he was asleep.
He woke up, he went down the hall, he found him.
He called nine one one, he held the towel, he
called instructions. Actually, not only did any do anything wrong,
he did anything right exactly. And they're searching for inconsistencies,
(19:33):
and they're calling him a liar and they're not believing
the story that he keeps telling over and over again,
and then they switch gears at some point. Now keep
in mind, I'm presenting this as if it's a chronology,
But I have no idea, nobody has any idea. What
really happened because they didn't record the process. That's that
we have. The Innocence Projects have been advocating for it
(19:54):
for years. Every interrogation should be recorded. There's no reason
why shouldn't be, and every reason why it should be
if in fact, what we're looking for is the truth exam.
And this raises a very important and too often invisible
point about the Innocence Project and the innocence community and
the concern about innocence and wrongful convictions. If your concern
(20:16):
is law and order, this should concern you because from
a law and order standpoint, every time you get a
confession from an innocent person and that person is then
prosecuted and convicted, there is a criminal creating new victims
out there, and that is on them. And we do
know from our exonerations uh and the studies that we've
done that in a very large percentage of the cases
(20:39):
in which we've exonerated the innocent person and identified the
actual perpetrator, that perpetrator has gone on to commit other
heinous crimes that had law enforcement acted properly and done
their job, that that person would have been in prison
appropriately and those other victims never would have had to
suffer and and often it turns out often that suspect
(21:00):
that that suspect turned criminal was in the crosshairs of
police at the time. But once you take a confession,
and this is what some of the research shows, once
police take a confession, they engage a process of tunnel vision.
They shut down the case. What the innocent person doesn't realize,
because one of the odd things about innocent people confessing
is sometimes they get so stressed out and so worn down.
(21:23):
They get to a point where they think, Okay, what
do I gotta do to get out of here? And
in the back of their mind they're thinking, you know what,
I didn't do anything wrong. When they get to do
the investigation, when they get other evidence, they'll see I
didn't do this. So where do I sign to get
myself out of a bad situation with the promise impossible?
And and and they have in their head the promise
(21:43):
of a future exoneration because after all, they did nothing wrong.
What the innocent person in that situation thinking that way
doesn't realize is their confession doesn't open the case, it
closes the case. In Marty's case, here he is Marty
didn't actually really confess, did he well, we again, we
don't fully know what happened. Here's here's the story as
(22:05):
I understand it from from the evidence that's available. They
break him down, they bring him in. He wants to
be at the hospital, and it's clear that the only
exit for that to happen is for him to cooperate.
But it still doesn't work, and they're they're challenging every denial.
But then they shift gears, and they shift gears toward
a procedure now where they start to lie about the evidence. Now,
(22:28):
the average American doesn't know this. The average American doesn't
realize that in the United States, police are allowed to
bring in a suspect and lie about the evidence. They're
allowed to say to the suspect, we have your fingerprints
on the murder weapon, even if that's not true. What
happened in Marty's case is they bring him in, they say, well,
(22:48):
you know, it appears that your mother was in a
struggle and there's hair in her grasp and it turns
out it's your hair. We did the analysis. That's your hair,
and that confused Marty wasn't true, but he got confused
as to how that was possible. And then because it
was such a bloody scene. It was too bloody scenes.
It just wasn't enough blood on Marty to account for that. Uh.
(23:10):
They suggested to him that he had showered before calling.
He said, no, I didn't use the shower. They came
back and said, well, we did a humidity test in
your bathroom and we found that the shower had been
used that morning. A humidity test. I don't believe, even
on c side, they've given us a humidity test um
and he's in something of a twilight zone. And so
now now they have delivered two lies, and then the
(23:31):
detective delivers the ultimate lie. He leaves the room. There
are two detectives and they're the lead detective. MacCready leaves
the room. Stage is a phone call and comes back
and comes back to deliver the news to Marty. Marty,
I've got good news and I got bad news. I
just spoke to the folks at the hospital. The good
news is your father has come out of his coma.
(23:52):
He's regained consciousness. The bad news is he said you
did it. Now think about this from sick. It's insane.
You've got a seventeen year old and you're now delivering
one lie. After another, culminating in a lie that to Marty,
the person he trusts most in his life has just
(24:12):
said he committed this crime. And not only did Marty
of course, had no choice but to believe that that evidence,
because he doesn't believe police would lie to him. Certainly,
not like that. Even McCready's partner said he believed it.
That is, McCready's partner believed that presentation. So what choice
(24:33):
does Marty have now but to wonder, how is it
possible that they have this kind of objective evidence. My
father doesn't lie, he said, and that lie just broke
Marty down. Marty said, my father doesn't lie, which they
then took to me. So maybe this is true, Maybe
I actually did this. Marty has almost no cognitive choice
(24:53):
but to accept that information because he's got two things right.
His father doesn't lie and the cops don't lie. Right,
These are the two things that he believes exactly. So
those things lead to one conclusion, one conclusion, I must
have done it. And so where does the conversation turn.
It turns in the direction of, well, how can you
explain the fact that I don't think I did it,
(25:13):
I don't remember having done it. And yet there's all
this unimpeachable objective evidence of my guilt. How is that possible?
And the conversation turns to memory consciousness, the possibility of
sleepwalking and doing it without awareness the next morning, waking
up and having not realized what had happened. Now, there
are different categories, different types of false confessions. One of
(25:36):
those types is it's It's not the most common type
by any means, but it happens. The first time I
laid eyes on one, it shocked me. I've now seen
several of them, and the script is always the same.
It this is the internalized false confession, where not only
do the police use stress tactics to break a suspect
down to to give a compliant confession and to agree
(25:59):
to sign the statement, but they actually get the suspect
to believe he committed this crime. They actually confused the
suspect enough so that they don't even trust their own
memory anymore. Because you've handed them this objective evidence, they
somehow need to reconcile that evidence with what they can't remember.
And what happened in Marty's cases, like you see, happens
in a number of these cases. They start to talk
(26:21):
about memory and consciousness and generate theories from Marty to
explain how come you don't remember doing this. So we
know that that was the nature of the conversation. We
know that for some degree of transient time, Marty became
confused about even his own innocence. And this goes back
to what we're talking about before, which is that the
(26:42):
it all is the perfect storm, because had Marty had
a guardian or a lawyer in the room, they would
have certainly said to a Marty, they can they're lying,
they can be lying to you, and we can be
making this up right. But there's no grown up there.
There's nobody there to protect you in the situation in
life in which you most protection. Now, we should stop
to realize something about this tactic. As pernicious as it sounds,
(27:05):
people should know that it's lawful that. In nineteen sixty nine,
the U. S. Supreme Court addressed that in a in
a case they address the issue of our police allowed
to deceive a suspect about the evidence, and they concluded that, yes,
that that tactic does not put an innocent person at risk. Well,
I'm sorry, the courts need to revisit that issue. Lying
(27:26):
about evidence, and there is now ample research, actual cases,
laboratory studies, field studies. We now know and one hundred
plus years of basic psychology tells us when you lie
to people about evidence, when you lie to people about reality,
you can change their perceptions, you can change their memories,
you can change just about every aspect of their cognitive function.
What happened to Marty is psychologically very understandable. It is
(27:50):
when you when you take all these things into into it,
it is his confession was a handwritten statement, handwritten by
the detective that I can tell you summarize everything I
know about the case file is inaccurate as a description
of the crime. It doesn't complete itself. It's actually ends
in mid sense, and it is unsigned. Now people do
(28:12):
a double take when they hear, what do you mean?
It was unsigned? This confession, the so called confession, was
written by the detective and not signed by Marty. And
yet that allegation of that confession is the one and
only piece of evidence that he was that was used
to convict him. People need to become better consumers of
confession evidence. They need to understand also that because there's
(28:37):
a misconception. The misconception is this I'd know a false
confession if I saw one. No, you wouldn't. We've done
those studies. We've done that research. We've taken true confessions
false confessions. People can't tell the difference. Cops can't tell
the difference. Let's go back for one moment the trial.
(29:03):
You want to go back to the trial. I want
to go back to the trial because I remember seeing
that picture of your face at the moment of conviction,
and uh, you know the the amount of pain that's
in that picture is Um, you feel like you're in
the shoes of that person. You're at trial. You still
believe that justice is going to be at trial? Still
(29:26):
believe it. I mean, this is what the lawyers are
telling me. The system works. Um, I was innocent. I
testified on my own behalf. And you know, this was
a long trial. It was probably about ten to twelve
weeks long. What's interesting about my case is that you know,
it was my penetra murdered and my entire family supported me.
(29:47):
And that's what made this case very difficult, because many
prosecutors said it was the most difficult case they had
to prosecute because the victims family and the defense family
were the same family. And I can't tell you how
often my family would say, don't you see there's something
wrong here, you know, with the with the victims family
and with the defendant's family, and we know morning senencent
(30:07):
and we believe in mourning, you know, but you're just
you just don't care. And what enforcement didn't care? Back then?
They just were focused on me and that was it.
So you're a trial. All the testimony has been heard
ten of twelve. We trials a long trial. Everyone's fatigued
by this point, nobody more than you. The deliberations wasn't
a one day, two day, three days. This was eight days.
(30:30):
Torture prosecuses has tried me with intentional murder and depraved
indifference murder. So when we got called back in, the
first verdict that was read was not guilty, and that
all of a sudden, the second one was guilty. The
one thing I vividly remember is the walk after they
read the guilty verdicts over to the county. Jaikes, I
(30:51):
have these tunnel systems, and I remember just I felt
like I was being led like a dog because I
was just listening. And I remember getting to the property
room and I remember the property or mosting, what are
you doing here, Marty? And I go why else would
I be here? And then everything else went blank for
about the next six or seven days. But I remember
(31:12):
that moment and it was just this level of shock
between the both of us that he's looking at me,
going you could have been guilty, and I kind of said, well,
why else would I be standing here in front of
you at the property room. The most common story about
innocent people when they hear their guilty verdict red is
they're shocked. Even if they're the only person in the
courtroom who's shocked, they're shocked they expected to be acquitted. Marty,
(31:35):
I want to talk about this for a minute. And
now you're thrown into this environment. You're in maximum security prison.
Is that right? Yeah? I was went from Downstack Correctional Facility,
which is a reception facility, to over In correctional facility,
which is another maximum security facility. Um. And you know,
people think when you went from it was in four prisons.
Primarily everyone was a maximum security facility. Everyone as hell, um,
(31:58):
and everyone everyone at this all as you Basically every
day it's a fight for your life because you never
know a maximum security facilities. What could happen, whether it
be the gang's going to war with each other, the
officers taking you know there are aggression out on you,
or just the random attacks that occur just for no
reason whatsoever. Right, I mean, we know that people are
(32:18):
being killed every day in prisons in America. UM, sometimes
by guards. Even absolutely for me as stranger that sounds
is when I went through downstair, which was a reception facility.
My case was very high profile, so prisoners knew about
the case. Guards knew about the case. UM. And I
had a guy come up to me and he'silicit. He goes,
if you want to survive, he says, don't do drugs,
(32:40):
don't get involid drugs, don't get involved homosexuality, don't get
involved in gambling, um, gangs, he said. And work your
way into the college program or the law library. He said.
You're innocent, he said, And one of the hardest things
is once you're innocent, is getting out, he said. But
you'll figure out a way to do it. But work
yourself into the law library. The prisoners were really the
(33:01):
best judges of character because the guys who were career criminals,
they knew who were innocent who weren't um and very
early on even the guards. I mean, to this day,
I am still in touch with some prison guards who
saw that I was innocent, and you know, I found
it years later at Oban Correctionously, there was one guard
who actually used to quot unquote look out for me,
(33:24):
make sure I was okay, because he knew I was innocent.
So now we're six thousand, three hundred something days into
this horrible Kafka esque trip through the maximum security prison
system of New York State. Um, and you are now
at a point where you know you have a new
hearing coming up. Right. My lawyers said, okay, what's never
(33:46):
been done here before? And we started a full investigation.
And that's when I started looking for private investigators and
ended up hiring Jason Peter. And one of the things
that Jay said to me was, if you're innocent, hired me.
If you're guilty, don't. I said, I'm in it, sent
I'll hire you. I just find the truth giant. And
it took years. Um, it took years for him to
(34:06):
track down people. But what he did was whenever when
nobody else did, who benefited financially for my conviction Stewarman.
So you started with the Stewman's and just started branching
out UH and the ended up finding the individual bay
name of Glenna Harris, who was the getaway driver. UM
for people we've identified as the murderers, you were sentenced
to fifty years to life, fifty years of My first
(34:30):
opportunity to appear to parole board was so we're in
so would have been my first chance for release. Don't
forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get
your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud donor
(34:52):
to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join
me in supporting this very important cause and helping to
prevent future wrong for victions. 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 Awardis.
The music on the show is by three time OSCAR
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
(35:14):
Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
for Good Podcasts in association with signal company number one
Of all the hundreds of Axonorees that I've had the
privilege to meet, none have touched my heart anymore profoundly
than Marty tank Cliff. And his case is profiled, by
the way, in one of the most incredible books I've
ever read. It's called A Criminal Injustice, A True Crime,
a False Confession, and the Fight to Free Marty Tankliff.
(00:24):
It's by Richard Firstman and J. Saw Peter. It reads
like a John Grisham novel, but it's all true. Marty
is an incredible human. Since his episode originally aired on
November seven, sixteen, a number of amazing developments of habit
in Marty's life. He received in two thousand eighteen and
ten million dollars settlement, which, by the way, you can
(00:47):
put another zero on it, still wouldn't make up for
what he went through. Marty passed the Bar exam, and
he's pursuing a career as an attorney, advocating criminal justice
reform and fighting to right wrongful convictions. And if that
wasn't enough for you, Marty is now a professor at
Georgetown University, leading a class with Professor Mark Howard that
(01:09):
is helping to resolve wrong for conviction cases. They already
had their first win in the case of Valentino Dixon,
who's been on my show, Marty tank Cliff a profile encourage,
an unbelievable story that you have to hear, So please
listen to my interview with Marty tank Cliffe. I came
(01:33):
from a beautiful neighborhood, had a beautiful life. I went
to sleep because September seven was the first day of
my high school year. I was gonna be a senior
at twenty two, I was set to start college. I
woke up and my life was never the same again.
Cops came out with guns drawn, and I never saw
(01:53):
freedom ever ever since after that. It's like Roach Motta.
Once you get in, you and I caett now this
is wrongful conviction. With Jason Flamm. I'm very excited today
because I have two people who I consider heroes of
(02:13):
mine for different sets of reasons, on the show. Marty
tank Cliff is here today. Marty is an exonoree who
was wrongfully convicted of murdering his parents, um, which I
get the chills just hearing myself say that. UM. And
he's going to share his remarkable story of going through
what could be considered one of the most traumatic experiences
(02:36):
that any human being could ever endure, and his subsequent
triumph post exoneration. You will be amazed at at what
he's been able to accomplish and overcome. We also have
today Saul Casson, and I'm gonna embarrass all a little
bit by reading part of his resume, because it's quite extraordinary.
Saul is a is a true hero of the innocence movement. Uh.
(02:59):
He's a just English professor of psychology at John J
College of Criminal Justice in New York and Massachusetts professor
emeritus at Williams College. He's received his PhD at the
University of Connecticut. Moreover, I saw pioneered in the eighties
the scientific study of false confessions by introducing a taxonomy
that distinguished between three types of false confessions, voluntary, compliant,
(03:21):
and internalized that is universally accepted today. He has recently
studied forensic confirmation biases and the impact that confessions have
on judges, juries, lay witnesses, forensic science examiners, and the
plea bargaining process. He is widely considered the foremost expert
on false confessions. So welcome both of you. Thanks for
(03:42):
coming in and joining us today. Um, Marty, let's start
with you. So let's go back to you grew up
in Long Island. I grew up in an efflam area
of called Beltian, New York, which is a little hamlet
and portraits in New York north Shore, Suffolk County. Um.
I was lived in a kind of a wonderful area.
(04:04):
I went to porttres in high school, where the norm
was we drove nice cars, we went on boats. Um.
And what happened to me was not something myself or
anyone in my neighborhood could have ever imagined. No, no
one could imagine it. Um. You had a happy childhood,
a nuclear family, right, you and your sister. Your parents idyllic,
(04:25):
A little bit more idyllic because I was adopted, so
my parents were older. So a lot of what we
did growing up, my father lived vicariously through me because
he didn't have a very good childhood. So you know,
we had the boats, the a t v s, We
traveled a lot, so it was very It was a
great childhood. And he was the bagel king, right he
(04:47):
What he did was is my father was an entrepreneur
who invested with Jerry Stewarman, who was then known as
the bagel King of Long Island. Right, So everything's fine,
everything's good until one really terrible, fateful day. And let's
talk about that, um. And we're gonna get to you
saw in a minute when we get into the deeper
(05:07):
issues surrounding what happened to Marty Um. But first I
want to set the stage. So you're you're at home, right,
typical day, you wake up in the morning, walk us
through this. Let me give you a little background. My
father was partners with Jerry Struman, had invested over a
half million dollars with Jerry and his bagel stores and horses,
(05:28):
and in the summer of their relationship significantly deteriorated. What
I later learned was is that we believe my father
learned what Jerry's business was really about. Um. Jerry's son, Todd,
was a drug dealer, and we believe my father kind
of realized that the bagel businesses may have been a
money wandering operation for Todd's drug dealing business. And we're
(05:50):
talking hard drugs, hard drugs. Todd was arrested, went to
prison for possession of cocaine, marijuana, and other drugs, and
he of time in New York State prisons. Um. But
my father was a tough older man. Nothing would stop him.
And one of the things that he was involved with
was is there was a weekly poker game, and on
(06:13):
September six was his night to hold the weekly poker game.
And one of the members at that game was Jerry Struman.
And my father was the type of man it didn't matter,
you know, how much threatening Jerry Struman did. And there
were threats. We later learned about two weeks before September six,
Jerry Struman threatened to cut my father's tongue out. Um.
(06:35):
And it got so bad that my father was even
looking into buying a shotgun because he was fearful. Right,
So it seems crazy that he would still allow him
into his house. But as he said, your dad was
a tough guy. He didn't really fear anyone. And now
we've set the stage. There's the poker game, right, there's
obviously it's a tense environment, right with the two of
him in the room. Um. And but you went to sleep.
(06:57):
I went to sleep because September seven, who is the
first day of my high school year. You were gonna
be a senior. I was gonna be a senior, right.
And I woke up and my life was never the
same again. So you woke up in the morning, and
the situation was that I woke up that morning, UM,
noticed that the lights were on in my house. The
house wasn't locked up. UM. Walked through the house and
(07:19):
were upstairs. It's a ranch house. It's a very long
ranch house. Where the bedrooms were in one end of
the house. UM, where the card game was was in
the complete opposite end of the house. Right, So you
wouldn't have heard any would have heard anything. UM. And
I discovered my father who was still sitting in his
office chair. UM. And he was alive. UM. And he
(07:39):
was bleeding, bleeding profusely. Yes, UM, And what you do?
I called nine one one, UM, and I followed their
instructions and eventually law enforcement showed up. Right. They told
you to wrap them as best you could, gave you
some medical tips whatever, try to stop the bleeding. That
kind of stuff, right, UM, And within a shure a
(08:00):
period of time, law enforcement showed up at the house.
Where's your mom? I ended up My mother was actually
in her bedroom. Cops come and immediately they removed me
from the house. Um, And what what I kind of
can say now is that the process of questioning me,
trying to find out what happened started almost immediately. Even
(08:21):
when I had family members show up that morning, there
was this immediate separation. Um. I was told consistently I
was being taken to the hospital. Unfortunately I was never
taken to the hospital. I ended up being taken to
police headquarters. So they took you to police headquarters because
and obviously this whole sort of pattern is emerging right
where they wanted to They had an agenda. Yeah, I
(08:44):
mean you know at that day, I didn't know that.
When I was seventeen years old, my father was the
police commissioner of our little community. I was raised to
trust law enforcement, believe in them. Law enforcement wouldn't lie
to you, they wouldn't deceive you. Unfortunately, that's everything that
they did that morning. Right, And you're in an extremely
fragile state, and you need help, right, you need someone
(09:04):
to help you. You're seventeen years old, right, I mean
it's uh and and still a child, basically still a child.
And every time a family member showed up or friends
showed up, they were ripped away again that morning. So
when my brother in law showed up. He was ripped away.
When my godfather, who was also the family attorney, showed up,
I saw him. He never saw me. But McCready, who
(09:26):
was the lead detective. His name is Kay James McCready
was the lead detective on the case, ran to him
and basically told him I was already on the way
to the hospital. I wasn't at the house, even though
I was at the house. Right. So there's a pattern
of deception and and maneuvers that are disingenuous at best,
let's say. But the fact is, at this point, were
(09:47):
you aware that your mom had been killed? Um? So
you're in a state of total shock panic. How can
you even describe it? Words can't describe it. I mean, people,
it's you were close to your parents. I they were
my parents, I mean, to do everything I was not
before I was born. They're the parents, the only parents
(10:08):
I ever knew. Um, they have the most amazing childhood.
I mean there was nothing I didn't have growing up. Um.
You know, people used to joke that I was a
spoiled kid, and I was, but my father instill amazing
work values in me. I was working since I was
probably eleven or twelve years old. Um, but I traveled
with my with my parents. I mean, I did everything
(10:30):
with them. So let's get to the the derogation and
the false confession in prison and the whole Saturday you
used to ended up serving six thousand and three and
in thirty eight days, which is about seventeen and a
half years. What I tell people, as I said, imagine,
you know, seventeen years. What you know, from the time
you're born to the time you're seventeen, losing the entire period,
(10:53):
we're losing your tire, twenties, your thirties, from seven to well,
you know, the first few years you don't even know
what's going on. But the fact is from seventeen to
thirty four, that's when you're building your life. That's really
you know, those are the formative years for anybody to
establish relationships. Uh, you know, both personal, sexual, business, Uh, college,
(11:17):
all that stuff out the window. So let's I mean,
you're obviously very familiar with Mary's case. You've known Marty
since all right, Oh, you've known of each other, he has.
He started writing letters to me from prison right at
ninety three. What were you doing? I was a professor
Williams College, studying the psychology of false confessions. I had
just become interested in false confessions, and I was doing
(11:39):
some research and publishing that research. How did you get
interested in it? Actually? I got interested because I came
out of graduate school and social psychology interested in how
juries make decisions. And after collecting some initial data for
the first several months of a post s talk I
was at the University of Kansas, UH, it became clear
to me that every time I had a case in
(11:59):
which there was a confess, shouldn't evidence all variability of
juror's responses dropped out? Everybody voted guilty. Confession evidence was
perfect in the minds of the average juror. It's is
it the most powerful evidentiary tool that there is? Yes?
And Trump's d n A or I mean, we've seen cases, uh,
and you've obviously seen so many of them in which
(12:21):
a jury is presented at the same time with a
false confession and d n A that proves scientifically, without
any doubt that it could not have been the person
who gave the confession. And they will choose which one
they will choose. They will they will vote guilty on
the basis of that confession, and they will explain away.
They will find ways to explain away the d n A. Right,
(12:41):
so you're presented with a thing that shows I mean
because in a violent crime, if there's physical contact, then
there's blood, and there's the if it's a rape, if
there's an assault, if there's a stabbing, there's d n A.
And if your DNA is not there, you weren't there.
Nobody's ever been able to figure out how to people
and not be there. At the same there are cases
on record we're not only the DNA exclude the confessor
(13:02):
at the point of trial, but it identified the perpetrator
and still the confessor was convicted. Right, So people can
and I know this too from my own experience, it's
very very difficult for people to wrap them in. Mine
is anecdotal um, but it's very hard for people to
wrap around the idea of anybody would confess. We know
that with juveniles it's much more common because they're more
(13:24):
impressionble and in many cases they can be actually coaxed
into or coerced into believing that they actually did it.
Is that right, which is really another level of go
go into any audience of late people and ask the question,
would you ever confess to a serious crime you didn't commit?
Not a single hand will go up. Short of sometimes
you get an occasional hand it will go up and
(13:45):
someone will say, well, if you had a gun to
my head. But short of that, uh, no normal person
of sound mind would confess to a crime they didn't commit.
And people use that personal belief about themselves as the
frame of reference. And so it's very, very unlikely that
you can get people easily to believe that an innocent
person was induced to confess to something they didn't do,
(14:06):
and not just something the highest stakes crime in the system, murder. Right,
So let's talk about this as it relates specifically to
what happened with Marty in the interrogation room. So here's
Marty in a state of as we talked about, in
a state of panic and shock and grief and uh,
(14:27):
you know, just spinning right. And as we discuss, he's
still a child, um. And the fact is a teenager,
a young teenager, um. And so what happened? I mean,
how did you know? Because his confession it's different than
any of the other ones I've studied, right, because it
may or may not have ever even actually happened. Right,
(14:48):
Usually they actually get somebody to say something on video,
or they'll get a written statement or something. But in
Marty's case, it's much more. It's it's much more highly nuanced,
isn't it? Yes? And in Marty's a something that almost
all of these cases have in common. You've got to
ask yourself the first question, why did Marty, seventeen year old,
without a criminal record, without a history of violence, with
(15:10):
good parents and good relationships in an affluent community, why
would Marty kill his parents in a brutal way, in
a brutal in the in the most brutal of ways.
And you have to ask yourself the question, how in
God's name did he become their suspect? Well, we haven't
talked about that, but Marty, your parents were beaten to death?
Is that right? There was a bludgeon instrument uh and
(15:31):
a knife um and to this day neither one has
been discovered. And there was some forensic evidence which I
can talk about. There was glove prints, so whoever did
do this, we're wearing gloves um that they still haven't
found the gloves. So, I mean, there's all these little
things that actually the jury was aware of, but as
you said, they chose just to ignore. So yeah, so
(15:52):
we should believe that you killed your parents in the
most vicious way at night and then went to sleep
and then wait until the morning, then called nine one one,
and you know, most people said, well, you know he
did it for the money, because they thought my parents
were affluent. The way the wills were structured, I would
have gotten everything. Um. And we later learned that law
enforcement never really understood the way the wills. They never
(16:13):
looked into the way the wills were structured. But the
way the wills were structured was that I wasn't going
to benefit financially until I was twenty five and I
was seventeen. So you know, as one of my aunts said,
what was he supposed to do from sevent live on
the streets. So Marty's in the interrogation room, we know
that they have misled, is it not probably a nice
way to put it? His uh, his family guardian at
(16:34):
this point, right, your godfather, who was also the only
lawyer that was available to you at this time. They
kind of mislike everybody though. I mean I had other
cousins and aunts and uncles who were at the hospitals,
and they were live to too. They were told, Marty's
on the way to the hospital. Mary's on the way
to the hospital. Right. So they're basically doing everything they
can to prevent you from having any responsible guardian or
legal representative from being there to be able to help you,
(16:59):
uh in in the situation, to be able to that
might be able to stand in the way of them
getting the conviction that they wanted, regardless of truth. They
weren't after the truth. There was no truth seeking here.
I mean, you have a man who was business partners
with my father, half a million dollars involved, was there
the night before. My father also had in the weeks prior,
(17:20):
had demanded he had two notes fifty dollars. Back in
the days after the murders, Jerry Steerman cleaned out a
joint bank account. He faked his death, He fled to California.
He had a hair weave back then, and he went
to a club that he wasn't a member from um.
He had five or six different aliases at that moment um.
(17:44):
But law enforcement never considered a suspect. And every time
I tell people, you know, the average person would say, well,
how is he not a suspect. I mean, you could
have stopped that. He faked his own death right there.
If this was a TV show, people are changing the channel.
They're like, okay, this is done. I don't need to
watch them. I said, this is our guy. We got him.
(18:07):
So there he is in the interrogation room, alone, alone,
not street wise, never been in trouble before. I never
had to worry about how do you behave when you
get picked up by police? Couldn't he have just said no, no, no,
no no no. I mean, how could what happened in
his brain? And what I can tell you very simply
what happened in his brain? He had done nothing wrong.
(18:28):
And the funny thing about innocent, innocent people is even
if even if they had read him as Miranda rights,
he would have waved those rights. He would have waived
those rights. And he did nothing wrong. He did nothing wrong,
So why would he worry about whether he had nothing
nothing to hide? He had nothing wrong, and so Miranda
becomes not a safeguard that's particularly effective at this point.
He is now, and keep in mind, they've got him
(18:50):
in police headquarters. The whole family is with his father,
who is dying but still alive, in the hospital. That's
where Marty wants to be. If you're looking for, what
is it to incentivize him to cooperate so that he
can get out of there and get to the hospital.
That'says incentive. He wants to be at the hospital. So
he's already in a state where he's motivated to cooperate.
(19:11):
And they started asking him questions about what he saw,
how he saw it, what had happened, and he gives
them answers, and the answers are consistent. They don't believe him.
They tell him they don't believe him. They asked for
the story to be told again, and he was asleep.
He woke up, he went down the hall, he found him.
He called nine one one, he held the towel, he
called instructions. Actually, not only did any do anything wrong,
he did anything right exactly. And they're searching for inconsistencies,
(19:33):
and they're calling him a liar and they're not believing
the story that he keeps telling over and over again,
and then they switch gears at some point. Now keep
in mind, I'm presenting this as if it's a chronology,
But I have no idea, nobody has any idea. What
really happened because they didn't record the process. That's that
we have. The Innocence Projects have been advocating for it
(19:54):
for years. Every interrogation should be recorded. There's no reason
why shouldn't be, and every reason why it should be
if in fact, what we're looking for is the truth exam.
And this raises a very important and too often invisible
point about the Innocence Project and the innocence community and
the concern about innocence and wrongful convictions. If your concern
(20:16):
is law and order, this should concern you because from
a law and order standpoint, every time you get a
confession from an innocent person and that person is then
prosecuted and convicted, there is a criminal creating new victims
out there, and that is on them. And we do
know from our exonerations uh and the studies that we've
done that in a very large percentage of the cases
(20:39):
in which we've exonerated the innocent person and identified the
actual perpetrator, that perpetrator has gone on to commit other
heinous crimes that had law enforcement acted properly and done
their job, that that person would have been in prison
appropriately and those other victims never would have had to
suffer and and often it turns out often that suspect
(21:00):
that that suspect turned criminal was in the crosshairs of
police at the time. But once you take a confession,
and this is what some of the research shows, once
police take a confession, they engage a process of tunnel vision.
They shut down the case. What the innocent person doesn't realize,
because one of the odd things about innocent people confessing
is sometimes they get so stressed out and so worn down.
(21:23):
They get to a point where they think, Okay, what
do I gotta do to get out of here? And
in the back of their mind they're thinking, you know what,
I didn't do anything wrong. When they get to do
the investigation, when they get other evidence, they'll see I
didn't do this. So where do I sign to get
myself out of a bad situation with the promise impossible?
And and and they have in their head the promise
(21:43):
of a future exoneration because after all, they did nothing wrong.
What the innocent person in that situation thinking that way
doesn't realize is their confession doesn't open the case, it
closes the case. In Marty's case, here he is Marty
didn't actually really confess, did he well, we again, we
don't fully know what happened. Here's here's the story as
(22:05):
I understand it from from the evidence that's available. They
break him down, they bring him in. He wants to
be at the hospital, and it's clear that the only
exit for that to happen is for him to cooperate.
But it still doesn't work, and they're they're challenging every denial.
But then they shift gears, and they shift gears toward
a procedure now where they start to lie about the evidence. Now,
(22:28):
the average American doesn't know this. The average American doesn't
realize that in the United States, police are allowed to
bring in a suspect and lie about the evidence. They're
allowed to say to the suspect, we have your fingerprints
on the murder weapon, even if that's not true. What
happened in Marty's case is they bring him in, they say, well,
(22:48):
you know, it appears that your mother was in a
struggle and there's hair in her grasp and it turns
out it's your hair. We did the analysis. That's your hair,
and that confused Marty wasn't true, but he got confused
as to how that was possible. And then because it
was such a bloody scene. It was too bloody scenes.
It just wasn't enough blood on Marty to account for that. Uh.
(23:10):
They suggested to him that he had showered before calling.
He said, no, I didn't use the shower. They came
back and said, well, we did a humidity test in
your bathroom and we found that the shower had been
used that morning. A humidity test. I don't believe, even
on c side, they've given us a humidity test um
and he's in something of a twilight zone. And so
now now they have delivered two lies, and then the
(23:31):
detective delivers the ultimate lie. He leaves the room. There
are two detectives and they're the lead detective. MacCready leaves
the room. Stage is a phone call and comes back
and comes back to deliver the news to Marty. Marty,
I've got good news and I got bad news. I
just spoke to the folks at the hospital. The good
news is your father has come out of his coma.
(23:52):
He's regained consciousness. The bad news is he said you
did it. Now think about this from sick. It's insane.
You've got a seventeen year old and you're now delivering
one lie. After another, culminating in a lie that to Marty,
the person he trusts most in his life has just
(24:12):
said he committed this crime. And not only did Marty
of course, had no choice but to believe that that evidence,
because he doesn't believe police would lie to him. Certainly,
not like that. Even McCready's partner said he believed it.
That is, McCready's partner believed that presentation. So what choice
(24:33):
does Marty have now but to wonder, how is it
possible that they have this kind of objective evidence. My
father doesn't lie, he said, and that lie just broke
Marty down. Marty said, my father doesn't lie, which they
then took to me. So maybe this is true, Maybe
I actually did this. Marty has almost no cognitive choice
(24:53):
but to accept that information because he's got two things right.
His father doesn't lie and the cops don't lie. Right,
These are the two things that he believes exactly. So
those things lead to one conclusion, one conclusion, I must
have done it. And so where does the conversation turn.
It turns in the direction of, well, how can you
explain the fact that I don't think I did it,
(25:13):
I don't remember having done it. And yet there's all
this unimpeachable objective evidence of my guilt. How is that possible?
And the conversation turns to memory consciousness, the possibility of
sleepwalking and doing it without awareness the next morning, waking
up and having not realized what had happened. Now, there
are different categories, different types of false confessions. One of
(25:36):
those types is it's It's not the most common type
by any means, but it happens. The first time I
laid eyes on one, it shocked me. I've now seen
several of them, and the script is always the same.
It this is the internalized false confession, where not only
do the police use stress tactics to break a suspect
down to to give a compliant confession and to agree
(25:59):
to sign the statement, but they actually get the suspect
to believe he committed this crime. They actually confused the
suspect enough so that they don't even trust their own
memory anymore. Because you've handed them this objective evidence, they
somehow need to reconcile that evidence with what they can't remember.
And what happened in Marty's cases, like you see, happens
in a number of these cases. They start to talk
(26:21):
about memory and consciousness and generate theories from Marty to
explain how come you don't remember doing this. So we
know that that was the nature of the conversation. We
know that for some degree of transient time, Marty became
confused about even his own innocence. And this goes back
to what we're talking about before, which is that the
(26:42):
it all is the perfect storm, because had Marty had
a guardian or a lawyer in the room, they would
have certainly said to a Marty, they can they're lying,
they can be lying to you, and we can be
making this up right. But there's no grown up there.
There's nobody there to protect you in the situation in
life in which you most protection. Now, we should stop
to realize something about this tactic. As pernicious as it sounds,
(27:05):
people should know that it's lawful that. In nineteen sixty nine,
the U. S. Supreme Court addressed that in a in
a case they address the issue of our police allowed
to deceive a suspect about the evidence, and they concluded that, yes,
that that tactic does not put an innocent person at risk. Well,
I'm sorry, the courts need to revisit that issue. Lying
(27:26):
about evidence, and there is now ample research, actual cases,
laboratory studies, field studies. We now know and one hundred
plus years of basic psychology tells us when you lie
to people about evidence, when you lie to people about reality,
you can change their perceptions, you can change their memories,
you can change just about every aspect of their cognitive function.
What happened to Marty is psychologically very understandable. It is
(27:50):
when you when you take all these things into into it,
it is his confession was a handwritten statement, handwritten by
the detective that I can tell you summarize everything I
know about the case file is inaccurate as a description
of the crime. It doesn't complete itself. It's actually ends
in mid sense, and it is unsigned. Now people do
(28:12):
a double take when they hear, what do you mean?
It was unsigned? This confession, the so called confession, was
written by the detective and not signed by Marty. And
yet that allegation of that confession is the one and
only piece of evidence that he was that was used
to convict him. People need to become better consumers of
confession evidence. They need to understand also that because there's
(28:37):
a misconception. The misconception is this I'd know a false
confession if I saw one. No, you wouldn't. We've done
those studies. We've done that research. We've taken true confessions
false confessions. People can't tell the difference. Cops can't tell
the difference. Let's go back for one moment the trial.
(29:03):
You want to go back to the trial. I want
to go back to the trial because I remember seeing
that picture of your face at the moment of conviction,
and uh, you know the the amount of pain that's
in that picture is Um, you feel like you're in
the shoes of that person. You're at trial. You still
believe that justice is going to be at trial? Still
(29:26):
believe it. I mean, this is what the lawyers are
telling me. The system works. Um, I was innocent. I
testified on my own behalf. And you know, this was
a long trial. It was probably about ten to twelve
weeks long. What's interesting about my case is that you know,
it was my penetra murdered and my entire family supported me.
(29:47):
And that's what made this case very difficult, because many
prosecutors said it was the most difficult case they had
to prosecute because the victims family and the defense family
were the same family. And I can't tell you how
often my family would say, don't you see there's something
wrong here, you know, with the with the victims family
and with the defendant's family, and we know morning senencent
(30:07):
and we believe in mourning, you know, but you're just
you just don't care. And what enforcement didn't care? Back then?
They just were focused on me and that was it.
So you're a trial. All the testimony has been heard
ten of twelve. We trials a long trial. Everyone's fatigued
by this point, nobody more than you. The deliberations wasn't
a one day, two day, three days. This was eight days.
(30:30):
Torture prosecuses has tried me with intentional murder and depraved
indifference murder. So when we got called back in, the
first verdict that was read was not guilty, and that
all of a sudden, the second one was guilty. The
one thing I vividly remember is the walk after they
read the guilty verdicts over to the county. Jaikes, I
(30:51):
have these tunnel systems, and I remember just I felt
like I was being led like a dog because I
was just listening. And I remember getting to the property
room and I remember the property or mosting, what are
you doing here, Marty? And I go why else would
I be here? And then everything else went blank for
about the next six or seven days. But I remember
(31:12):
that moment and it was just this level of shock
between the both of us that he's looking at me,
going you could have been guilty, and I kind of said, well,
why else would I be standing here in front of
you at the property room. The most common story about
innocent people when they hear their guilty verdict red is
they're shocked. Even if they're the only person in the
courtroom who's shocked, they're shocked they expected to be acquitted. Marty,
(31:35):
I want to talk about this for a minute. And
now you're thrown into this environment. You're in maximum security prison.
Is that right? Yeah? I was went from Downstack Correctional Facility,
which is a reception facility, to over In correctional facility,
which is another maximum security facility. Um. And you know,
people think when you went from it was in four prisons.
Primarily everyone was a maximum security facility. Everyone as hell, um,
(31:58):
and everyone everyone at this all as you Basically every
day it's a fight for your life because you never
know a maximum security facilities. What could happen, whether it
be the gang's going to war with each other, the
officers taking you know there are aggression out on you,
or just the random attacks that occur just for no
reason whatsoever. Right, I mean, we know that people are
(32:18):
being killed every day in prisons in America. UM, sometimes
by guards. Even absolutely for me as stranger that sounds
is when I went through downstair, which was a reception facility.
My case was very high profile, so prisoners knew about
the case. Guards knew about the case. UM. And I
had a guy come up to me and he'silicit. He goes,
if you want to survive, he says, don't do drugs,
(32:40):
don't get involid drugs, don't get involved homosexuality, don't get
involved in gambling, um, gangs, he said. And work your
way into the college program or the law library. He said.
You're innocent, he said, And one of the hardest things
is once you're innocent, is getting out, he said. But
you'll figure out a way to do it. But work
yourself into the law library. The prisoners were really the
(33:01):
best judges of character because the guys who were career criminals,
they knew who were innocent who weren't um and very
early on even the guards. I mean, to this day,
I am still in touch with some prison guards who
saw that I was innocent, and you know, I found
it years later at Oban Correctionously, there was one guard
who actually used to quot unquote look out for me,
(33:24):
make sure I was okay, because he knew I was innocent.
So now we're six thousand, three hundred something days into
this horrible Kafka esque trip through the maximum security prison
system of New York State. Um, and you are now
at a point where you know you have a new
hearing coming up. Right. My lawyers said, okay, what's never
(33:46):
been done here before? And we started a full investigation.
And that's when I started looking for private investigators and
ended up hiring Jason Peter. And one of the things
that Jay said to me was, if you're innocent, hired me.
If you're guilty, don't. I said, I'm in it, sent
I'll hire you. I just find the truth giant. And
it took years. Um, it took years for him to
(34:06):
track down people. But what he did was whenever when
nobody else did, who benefited financially for my conviction Stewarman.
So you started with the Stewman's and just started branching
out UH and the ended up finding the individual bay
name of Glenna Harris, who was the getaway driver. UM
for people we've identified as the murderers, you were sentenced
to fifty years to life, fifty years of My first
(34:30):
opportunity to appear to parole board was so we're in
so would have been my first chance for release. Don't
forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get
your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud donor
(34:52):
to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join
me in supporting this very important cause and helping to
prevent future wrong for victions. 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 Awardis.
The music on the show is by three time OSCAR
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
(35:14):
Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
for Good Podcasts in association with signal company number one
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