I must embark briefly on a writing assignment - but will be back in action soon.
In the interim, please keep in touch as usual with leads on issues, cases, developments, comments, whatever, with respect to the subject matter of this Blog at:
PS: Last words for now: Please mark Wednesday July 17 on your calender. That's when Chris Tapp - this Blog has been following the twists and turns of his case for years - should finally be exonerated, as set out in the following story by reporter Cynthia Sewell, in the Idaho Statesman. (Such a slow, painful process this has been. Follow the story on the Statesman site, at:
STORY: "Prosecutor: Chris Tapp ‘convicted of a crime he did not commit’ in Angie Dodge case," by reporter Cynthia Sewell, published by The Idaho Statesman on July 12, 2019.
GIST: On March 22, Chris Tapp was released early from prison after
serving 20 years for the rape and murder of Angie Dodge in Idaho Falls
in 1996. Following nearly 30 hours of interrogation, Tapp confessed to
assisting in the crime. Even though DNA coll
By Darin Oswald After spending nearly half of his life in prison for a crime he said he did not commit, and then getting released early from prison but still tagged with a murder-related conviction, Chris Tapp finally might get exonerated. Tapp’s attorney and the prosecuting attorney are asking the court to vacate Tapp’s conviction. “There exists clear and convincing evidence that
(Tapp) was convicted of a crime he did not commit,” Bonneville County
Prosecuting Attorney Daniel Clark wrote in a court filing. “Therefore,
the state moves that the court grant post-conviction relief ... set
aside the jury verdict and vacate the judgment of conviction and dismiss
(the) case.” In May 1998, an Idaho Falls jury convicted Tapp
for aiding and abetting in the murder and rape of Angie Dodge in 1996.
Tapp was sentenced to life with a minimum of 20 years for aiding the
murder and a minimum of 10 years for aiding the rape. He would be
eligible for parole in 2027. While incarcerated, Tapp maintained his innocence
— his DNA did not match the DNA collected at the crime scene — and
filed with the court five unsuccessful petitions for post-conviction
relief. Eventually, on March 22, 2017, Tapp was released
from prison after reaching a deal with prosecutors, but his
murder-related conviction remained on his record. On Wednesday, his attorney filed a sixth petition “based on new evidence that Christopher Tapp is actually innocent.” “New evidence has been discovered which negates
the conviction” of Tapp, Bonneville County public defender John Thomas
wrote in the court filing. The day after Tapp’s attorney filed the petition, Clark filed a post-conviction relief motion on behalf of Tapp with the court. “The basis for this motion is that new, credible material evidence has been discovered by law enforcement,” Clark wrote. So, what is that new, credible evidence both sides are citing? On May 16, Idaho Falls police announced that they had arrested Brian Leigh Dripps in the rape and murder of Dodge. Following decades of dead ends, a nationally renowned genetic genealogist linked DNA from the Dodge crime scene to Caldwell resident Dripps, who lived across the street from Dodge when she was killed. “During his confession to the rape and murder of
Angie Dodge, Dripps admitted that he acted alone. Furthermore, Dripps
told investigators that he did not know Tapp and nor had he ever met
Tapp,” Tapp’s attorney wrote. Tapp’s post-conviction relief hearing is set for 1 p.m. Wednesday, July 17, in Idaho Falls before Judge Alan Stephens."
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/crime/article232606462.html-------------------------------------------------------------- More last, last words. The Halifax Examiner continues to publish informative stories on the Glen Assoun case - what should prove to be one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in Canadian history. I suggest that our readers check out the publication's site - at the link below - for some of the informative follow-ups that are already appearing. https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/Kudos to Innocence Canada (formerly known as The Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted AKA AIDWYC ) for the amazing representation it has provided to Mr. Assoun over the years - and in particular to lawyers Sean MacDonald, Phil Campbell and Jerome Kennedy. (And, as always, the organization's non-lawyer heart and soul, Win Wahrer. Bravo to them all! Check out the excellent Innocence Canada website at: https://www.innocencecanada.com/(I was a member of AIDWYC'S Board for several years until I had to resign in order to avoid a conflict of interest with my reporting responsibilities at the Toronto Star. I hate to think of all of the innocent people, like Glen Assoun, would still be in prison if this organization did not exist. HL);---------------------------------------------------------------- Well, not quite done yet: Check out the recently released National Registry of Exonerations 1918 report: the Death Penalty Information Center analysis at the link below is a good place to start: "DNA evidence helped to exonerate 14 of those wrongfully convicted of
homicide in 2018, accounting for only 20.1% of homicide exonerations.
The prosecution presented perjured testimony or false witness
accusations in all of the murder cases involving DNA, and police and/or
prosecutorial misconduct was also present in more than 60% of those
cases. DNA helped to rebut false or misleading forensic evidence presented by the prosecution in five of the homicide exonerations." https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/dpic-reports/dpic-special-reports/dpic-analysis-2018-exoneration-report-shows-official-misconduct-and-perjury-remain-leading-causes-of-wrongful-homicide-convictionsSee also the Crime Report's analysis at the link below - under the very apt heading: "The price of wrongful convictions - 1639 years behind bars."https://thecrimereport.org/2019/04/10/the-price-of-wrongful-convictions-1639-years-behind-bars/-------------------------------------------------------------- PUBLISHER'S
NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles
Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous
employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable
effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his
protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric
pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on
recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles
Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of
interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold
Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This Blog is interested in false confessions because of the disturbing number of exonerations in the USA, Canada and multiple other jurisdictions throughout the world, where, in the absence of incriminating forensic evidence the conviction is based on self-incrimination (as well as false identification and jailhouse informants) – and because of the growing body of scientific research showing how vulnerable suspects (especially juveniles) are to widely used interrogation methods such as the notorious ‘Reid Technique."
PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "He also began to wonder how often those confessions were
genuine, after he learned about the Reid interrogation technique, the
near-universal method taught to police. Its training manual—now in its
fifth edition—was first published in 1962 by John Reid, a former Chicago
detective and lie detector expert, and Northwestern University law
professor Fred Inbau. "I was horrified," Kassin says. "It was just like
Milgram's obedience studies, but worse." Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University and one of
Kassin's heroes, had conducted studies in the 1960s in which subjects
were encouraged to give electric shocks to other subjects who were not
learning their lessons quickly enough. The volunteers, who didn't know
the shocks they gave were fake, were disturbingly willing to inflict
pain when someone in authority told them to. A Reid interrogation looks different at first. It starts with a
behavioral assessment, in which the officer asks questions—some
irrelevant and some provocative—while watching for signs of deception,
such as looking away, slouching, or crossing the arms. If the suspect is
thought to be lying, the investigator moves on to phase two, the formal
interrogation. Now, they amp up the questioning—repeatedly accusing the
suspect, insisting on hearing details, and ignoring all denials.
Meanwhile, the investigator offers sympathy and understanding,
minimizing the moral (but not legal) dimension of the crime and easing
the path to confession. (Example: "This never would have happened if she
didn't dress so provocatively.") That phase, with an authority figure applying psychological pressure,
reminded Kassin of Milgram's infamous experiments. But whereas Milgram
got someone to "harm" another person, the Reid technique gets people to
harm themselves by admitting guilt. Kassin suspected that the pressure
might sometimes lead to false confessions. To find out, he decided in the early 1990s to model the Reid
technique in the lab, with student volunteers."
STORY: "This psychologist explains why people confess to crimes they didn’t commit," by reporter Douglas Starr, published by Science Magazine, 0n June 13, 2019. (Douglas Starr, co-director of the Boston University Science Journalism
Program, is a veteran science, environment, and medical writer. He is the author of The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science (Knopf, 2010).
GIST: At 16, Huwe Burton confessed to killing his mother. He was
still in shock from discovering her body when New York City police began
to interrogate him. After hours of being threatened and cajoled, he
told the police what they wanted to hear. He soon recanted, knowing he
was innocent and hoping the justice system would clear him. Burton was convicted of second-degree murder in 1991 and received a sentence of 15 years to life. After 20 years in prison, he was released
on parole, but he never could shake the stigma of the conviction.
Attorneys from several organizations worked for more than a decade to
clear him. They produced facts that contradicted the confession and
showed evidence of prosecutorial misconduct. But for the Bronx District
Attorney's Office, Burton's confession outweighed all other evidence;
after all, who would admit to a crime they did not commit? Finally, last
summer Burton's attorneys brought in Saul Kassin, a psychologist at the
John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City who is one of the
world's leading experts on interrogation. "I went in prepared to make a 15-minute presentation, but the
attorneys started asking some really good questions," Kassin says.
"Before you knew it, we had a discussion that lasted almost 2 1/2
hours." Kassin explained that false confessions are not rare: More than a
quarter of the 365 people exonerated in recent decades by the nonprofit
Innocence Project had confessed to their alleged crime. Drawing on more
than 30 years of research, Kassin told the legal team how standard
interrogation techniques combine psychological pressures and escape
hatches that can easily cause an innocent person to confess. He
explained how young people are particularly vulnerable to confessing,
especially when stressed, tired, or traumatized, as Burton was.
Huwe Burton falsely confessed to killing his mother. Nearly 30 years passed before he was exonerated.
Kassin's presentation helped open the prosecutors' eyes to the
emerging science of interrogation and false confession. Six months
later, on 24 January, Judge Steven Barrett of the Bronx Supreme Court
vacated Burton's 3-decade-old conviction, citing such work as the basis
of his decision. "Having Dr. Kassin come in and give a master class on
the science of false confessions was a turning point," says Steven
Drizin, co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at
Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, who led the team that
pursued Burton's exoneration. Although scores of people have been cleared of false confessions
since DNA evidence entered U.S. courtrooms, the Burton case was the
first time someone had been exonerated on the basis of the scientific
analysis of interrogation. As such, it marks the coming of age of
research that is profoundly affecting the justice system. Confessions
are being questioned as never before—not just by defense lawyers, but by
lawmakers and some police departments, which are reexamining their
approach to interrogation. Kassin is part of a cadre of scientists who have flipped conventional
wisdom about confessions—and about the perception of truth. His
cleverly designed experiments have probed the psychology that leads to
false confessions. In more recent work, he has shown how a confession,
true or not, can exert a powerful pull on witnesses and even forensic
examiners, shaping the entire trial. "Saul Kassin is one of the godfathers of the innocence movement,"
says Rebecca Brown, policy director of the Innocence Project in New York
City. Drizin has his own metaphor: "If there was a Mount Rushmore to
the study of false confessions, Dr. Kassin's face would be on it."
“Overpowering influences”
Confessions have always been the "gold standard" indicator of guilt,
even though some proved spectacularly misleading. For example, a man who
had admitted to a murder in 1819 narrowly escaped hanging when his
supposed victim was found living in New Jersey. The first scientific red
flag came from Hugo Münsterberg, a renowned Harvard University
psychologist, who in 1908 warned about "untrue confessions … under the
spell of overpowering influences." But it took several shocking false
confession cases in the late 1980s and the introduction of DNA evidence
to the justice system for the extent of wrongful convictions to
emerge—and with it how often false confessions played a role. Kassin was not surprised, having spent years studying police
interrogation techniques. In person he projects a kind of affable
intensity, with piercing brown eyes and a conversational style that
lends urgency to even a casual chat. Raised in a working-class
neighborhood of New York City, he got his bachelor's degree at Brooklyn
College in New York (tuition: $53 per semester) and his Ph.D. at the
University of Connecticut in Storrs, both in psychology. As a postdoc at
the University of Kansas in Lawrence, he studied how juries make
decisions and was struck by the power of a confession to practically
guarantee a guilty verdict.
Saul Kassin is one of the godfathers of the innocence movement.
He also began to wonder how often those confessions were
genuine, after he learned about the Reid interrogation technique, the
near-universal method taught to police. Its training manual—now in its
fifth edition—was first published in 1962 by John Reid, a former Chicago
detective and lie detector expert, and Northwestern University law
professor Fred Inbau. "I was horrified," Kassin says. "It was just like
Milgram's obedience studies, but worse." Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University and one of
Kassin's heroes, had conducted studies in the 1960s in which subjects
were encouraged to give electric shocks to other subjects who were not
learning their lessons quickly enough. The volunteers, who didn't know
the shocks they gave were fake, were disturbingly willing to inflict
pain when someone in authority told them to. A Reid interrogation looks different at first. It starts with a
behavioral assessment, in which the officer asks questions—some
irrelevant and some provocative—while watching for signs of deception,
such as looking away, slouching, or crossing the arms. If the suspect is
thought to be lying, the investigator moves on to phase two, the formal
interrogation. Now, they amp up the questioning—repeatedly accusing the
suspect, insisting on hearing details, and ignoring all denials.
Meanwhile, the investigator offers sympathy and understanding,
minimizing the moral (but not legal) dimension of the crime and easing
the path to confession. (Example: "This never would have happened if she
didn't dress so provocatively.") That phase, with an authority figure applying psychological pressure,
reminded Kassin of Milgram's infamous experiments. But whereas Milgram
got someone to "harm" another person, the Reid technique gets people to
harm themselves by admitting guilt. Kassin suspected that the pressure
might sometimes lead to false confessions.
To find out, he decided in the early 1990s to model the Reid
technique in the lab, with student volunteers. In what Kassin called the
computer crash paradigm, he had students take rapid-fire dictation on
computers. He warned them that the system had a glitch and that hitting
the Alt key would trigger a crash. That part was a fib: The computers
were programmed to crash regardless of which keys were hit. The
experimenter then accused the students of hitting the Alt key. At first, none confessed. Then, Kassin added variables based on what
he and other researchers had learned about actual police interrogation
tactics. Sometimes, for example, police falsely tell a suspect they have
witnesses to the crime—causing a suspect to doubt their own version of
events. (Under U.S. law, police are permitted to lie.) In one of the
most striking examples, Marty Tankleff, a Long Island teenager, came to
breakfast one morning in 1988 to find his parents stabbed on the kitchen
floor, his mother dying and his father in a coma. Detectives thought
Tankleff was not sufficiently grief-stricken, so he became their prime
suspect. After hours of getting nowhere, a detective said he had called
Tankleff 's father at the hospital and that the injured man said
Tankleff had committed the crime. (In truth, his father died without
regaining consciousness.) Shocked beyond reason, Tankleff confessed. He
spent 19 years in prison before a growing body of evidence set him
free.
… confessions that look real can actually be false, even if they’re corroborated by informants and forensic science.
Kassin could never simulate that kind of trauma in the lab, but
he could set up a variation of the computer crash experiment in which a
confederate claimed to have seen the student hit the wrong key. Those
students confessed at more than double the rate of students paired with
witnesses who said they hadn't seen anything. Under some circumstances,
nearly every student facing a false witness confessed. Some students ended up believing they really had caused the crash,
coming up with explanations such as, "I hit the wrong key with the side
of my hand." So deeply had they internalized their guilt that some
refused to believe Kassin when he told them the truth.
Another detective told Kassin that during an interrogation, he didn't
actually lie about the evidence in hand, but said he expected new,
potentially incriminating evidence to come in. For example, an
interrogator might tell a suspect that they were waiting for lab results
on DNA from the crime scene. You might think that doing so would get
the innocent to deny the crime more vehemently because they expected the
results to absolve them. Kassin, however, had interviewed exonerated
men who said the prospect of new evidence had a surprising effect. Some
confessed just to get out of the stressful situation, figuring that the
evidence would later clear them. "They think their innocence is their
ticket out of there," he says. Kassin and a colleague tested such police "bluffs" in a variation of the computer crash experiment.
This time, in addition to accusing the students, the experimenter said
that all the keystrokes had been recorded on the server and would soon
be examined. The false confession rate soared. Postexperiment
questionnaires revealed that many of the bluffed students, like the men
Kassin had interviewed, signed a confession to get out of the room and
assumed they'd later be cleared. In that sense, Kassin says, belief in
one's innocence and faith in the justice system can themselves be risk
factors.
Deception detection
Social scientists worldwide have repeated variations of the computer
crash experiments, with similar results. But critics have questioned
Kassin's findings because the "crimes" his subjects were charged with
could have been simple acts of carelessness, committed unwittingly, and
because confessing bore no serious consequences. Joseph Buckley,
president of John E. Reid and Associates Inc. in Chicago, the company
that copyrighted the Reid technique in the early 1960s, adds that
Kassin's studies lack validity because they were not conducted using
professional interrogators. Buckley says false confessions occur only
when interrogators don't closely follow procedures. In a January report,
Buckley said the Reid technique isn't meant to force a confession.
Instead, he wrote, its goal "is to create an environment that makes it
easier for a subject to tell the truth." Work by other researchers has answered some of those criticisms.
Social psychologist Melissa Russano at Roger Williams University in
Bristol, Rhode Island, designed an experiment in which volunteers were
asked to solve a set of logic problems—some working in groups and some
alone. The researchers stipulated that under no circumstances should
anyone assist the students working alone. Beforehand, however, a few
students were coached to become visibly upset. That prompted some of
their classmates to help, in violation of the rules. In those experiments, the helpers could not have committed the
"crime" without knowing, and confessing carried some consequence because
cheating violated the college's honor code. But, just as Kassin found,
accusatory questioning often provoked false confessions. Russano also
tested another component of standard interrogations—the "minimization"
technique that lowers the emotional barrier to confessing. She and
colleagues would say things such as, "You probably didn't realize what a
big deal this was." That technique increased false confession rates by
35%.
Other researchers, including Gísli Guðjónsson, a former Icelandic
detective who became an eminent psychologist at King's College London,
have shown how some individuals are especially susceptible to such
pressure. Factors such as mental impairment, youth, and substance
addiction make people quicker to doubt their own memory and, under
pressure, to confess, Guðjónsson found. Law professor Richard Leo of the
University of San Francisco in California reported that fewer than 20%
of U.S. suspects invoke their Miranda rights against self-incrimination,
perhaps hoping to appear cooperative. He and social psychologist
Richard Ofshe, then at the University of California, Berkeley, also
described "persuaded" confessions in which a suspect, worn down by hours
of interrogation, goes into a fugue and begins to believe their own
guilt. The problem is especially pronounced among adolescents like
Burton, who are both impressionable and cowed by authority. Much of the Reid technique involves watching for verbal and nonverbal
signs of deception, something many police investigators think they are
skilled at doing. Kassin put that confidence to the test more than a
decade ago. He recruited the best liars he could find—a group of
prisoners at a Massachusetts penitentiary. For a small fee he asked half
to tell the truth of their crimes on video and the other half to lie,
saying they had committed someone else's crime. He showed the videos to
college students and police. Neither group did particularly well at
truth detection (the average person is right about half the time), but
the students performed better than the police. Yet the police felt more
certain about their conclusions. "That's a bad combination," Kassin
says. "Their training makes them less accurate and more confident at the
same time."
The power of a confession
A poster in Kassin's office at John Jay College shows 28 faces: men,
women, adults, adolescents, white, black, Hispanic. "Look at how many
different types of people there are—all of humanity," Kassin says. "And
what they have in common is that they all gave false confessions.
There's no one kind of person who can give a false confession. It can
happen to anybody." Kassin has helped many of them. Defense lawyers and human rights
organizations around the world often call on him to analyze confessions
or testify about the nature of interrogation—sometimes as a paid
consultant or witness, sometimes pro bono. One face on the poster
belongs to Amanda Knox, the U.S. college student studying in Italy who
was coerced into confessing to the murder of her roommate. Kassin's
reports to Italian courts were involved in getting her freed. He
testified for John Kogut, a Long Island man who after an 18-hour
interrogation falsely confessed to raping and murdering a 16-year-old
girl. DNA evidence had won Kogut's release after he spent 18 years in
prison, but prosecutors retried him on the basis of the confession.
Kassin's 2005 testimony helped acquit him.
“There’s no one kind of person who can give a false confession.
It can happen to anybody,” says Saul Kassin, who keeps a photo gallery
of innocent people convicted after false confessions in his office.
DREW GURIAN
Then there was Barry Laughman, a man with the mental capacity
of a 10-year-old, who in 1987 confessed to raping and murdering an
elderly neighbor after police falsely told him they found his
fingerprints at the scene. After his confession, the police disregarded
all other evidence. Neighbors who offered alibis for Laughman were told
they must be mistaken. His blood was type B, but the only blood at the
crime scene was type A. So the forensic expert proposed a novel theory:
that bacterial degradation could have changed the blood type from B to
A. Laughman spent 16 years in prison until DNA evidence finally cleared
him. (Kassin later testified when Laughman sued the state.) To Kassin, Laughman's case showed that confession doesn't just trump
other evidence, but can corrupt it as well. After a confession, alibis
are recanted, witnesses change stories, police ignore exculpatory
evidence, and forensic scientists reinterpret material. In Huwe Burton's
case, for example, police had caught a neighbor with a history of
violence driving the dead mother's stolen car, but they did not consider
him a suspect because Burton had confessed. The magnitude of the effect emerged in 2012, when Kassin and
colleagues published an analysis of 59 false confession cases from the
Innocence Project. Forty-nine of those also involved other mistakes,
such as eyewitness errors and mistaken forensics—a far higher proportion
than in nonconfession cases. In 30 of those cases, the confession was
the first piece of evidence collected. In other words, once the police
had a confession, all the other evidence lined up to support it. That
has an ironic effect: Even when confessions have turned out to be false,
appeals courts have ruled that the other evidence is strong enough to
support the conviction, Kassin says. "The courts completely missed out
that the other evidence was corrupted." Other groups have shown experimentally how a narrative can shape
forensic evidence. One dramatic example came in 2011, when U.K.
psychologist Itiel Dror and U.S. DNA expert Greg Hampikian tested the
people you would least expect to be affected by bias—DNA specialists.
Dror and Hampikian obtained the printed DNA results from a rape case in
which a man was found guilty. The original genetic analysts had been
told that police had a suspect in custody; the forensic experts then
determined that the suspect's DNA was part of the crime scene sample. To
see whether knowledge of the arrest caused bias, Dror and Hampikian
gave the printouts to 17 experts unconnected with the case and told them
nothing about the suspect. Only one of them matched the suspect's DNA
to the crime sample. Such findings support the increasingly popular idea
that all forensic science should be "blinded"—conducted without any
knowledge about the suspects. Sometimes a confession will override even untainted DNA evidence. In
the infamous "Central Park Five" case dramatized in a new Netflix
series, five teenagers in 1989 confessed after hours of interrogation to
brutally beating and raping a female jogger in New York City. They
quickly recanted, and none of the DNA recovered from the victim was
theirs. Yet two juries convicted them after the prosecutor explained
away the contradiction. She came up with a theory that a sixth
unidentified accomplice had also raped the victim and was the only
person to ejaculate. (The "unindicted co-ejaculator" theory has been
used in other wrongful convictions as well.) Thirteen years later, the
man whose DNA matched the sample—a convicted serial rapist and murderer
serving a life sentence—confessed that he alone had committed the crime. How could such an injustice occur? Kassin and a colleague published a study in 2016 in which they simulated the situation
with mock jury experiments. When presented with a simple choice between
a confession and DNA, people would choose DNA. But if the prosecutor
offered a theory as to why the DNA contradicted the confession, the
juries overwhelmingly sided with the confession—an insight, he says,
into the power of story to influence judgment.
New approaches
Change is coming. By 2010, the evidence about how interrogations can
go wrong had become so compelling that Kassin and several colleagues
from the United States and United Kingdom wrote an American
Psychological Association white paper warning about the risk of
coercion. They suggested several reforms, such as prohibiting lying by
police, limiting interrogation time, recording all interrogations from
start to finish, and eliminating the use of minimization. They also said
the practice of seeking confessions was so inherently damaging that it
might be necessary to "completely reconceptualize" the tactic and come
up with something new. One model comes from England, where police did away with their
Reid-style interrogation system in the early 1990s after several false
conviction scandals. Police there now use a system designed to identify
deception based not on visible signs of emotional stress, but on
"cognitive load," which can lead liars to stumble as they try to keep
their stories straight. English police conduct the kind of open-ended
interviews that journalists might use and are encouraged not to go after
confessions. Several other countries including New Zealand and
Australia, along with parts of Canada, have adopted the new method. They
also record the entire interrogation to make the process transparent,
something that 25 U.S. states have also adopted. Two years ago, one of the largest U.S. interrogation trainers,
Chicago-based Wicklander-Zulawski and Associates Inc., stopped
teaching accusatory interviews and embraced the nonconfrontational
methods Kassin and his colleagues advocate. The company was influenced
by the proliferation of research and a desire to minimize false
confessions, says Dave Thompson, vice president of operations. "We
realized there's a better way to talk to people today than the way we
talked to people 20 or 30 years ago." Kassin sees progress, too. In March, he spoke to a group that until
recently might have been hostile to his message: 40 district attorneys
from around the country who want to learn to avoid wrongful convictions.
"My point with them was that they are going to be fooled—that
confessions that look real can actually be false, even if they're
corroborated by informants and forensic science," he says. "I wanted to
let them know that alarm bells should go off when they see a confession
case.""
PUBLISHER'S
NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles
Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous
employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable
effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his
protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric
pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on
recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles
Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of
interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold
Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: "Prosecution Witnesses: The evidence given
by these five witnesses, and the results of Innocence Canada's
investigation into their testimony, are detailed in the Memorandum on
Behalf of Glen Eugene Assoun, submitted in 2013 under s.696.1 of the
Criminal Code to the federal Minister of Justice which is being released
today by the Nova Scotia Supreme Court. This Memorandum, and the
Preliminary Assessment of the case by Mark Green, of the Department of
Justice’s Criminal Conviction Review Group (CCRG), dismantle the
prosecution case presented at trial, and expose evidence that was based
on collusion, perjury, undisclosed particulars of a deal with a
jailhouse informant, and a witness prone to relating her "psychic
visions" as evidence to the police."
PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Finally, in 2004, Jerome Kennedy, a distinguished criminal
lawyer from Newfoundland and Labrador, was appointed to act for him. Mr.
Kennedy began by trying to acquire fresh evidence. One of his
primary strategies was to attempt to identify Brenda Way’s real killer.
He made requests for disclosure from the Crown for information about
criminal profiling of the murder by the RCMP ViCLAS Unit, which worked
cooperatively with the Halifax Regional Police on major murder
investigations. He posed direct questions to the Crown about ViCLAS’s
work regarding a possible suspect, Michael McGray, who had recently been
exposed as a prolific serial killer based in Nova Scotia with victims
in four
provinces. It is clear that incomplete and misleading answers were
provided to these requests for disclosure, specifically with respect to
the inquiries about the police investigation of Michael McGray. Without
significant evidence establishing anyone else as the killer, and with
his legal arguments rejected by the Court of Appeal, Glen Assoun’s
appeal was dismissed on April 20, 2006. The Supreme Court of Canada
declined to hear a further appeal on September 14, 2006. Glen had been
in custody for eight years by this point."
PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "Innocence Canada spent years re-examining the physical evidence,
re-interviewing the key trial witnesses, attempting to uncover
previously undisclosed documentation and looking for the real killer of
Brenda Way. The investigation by Innocence Canada led to compelling
evidence that convicted serial killer Michael McGray was likely the real
killer. For example, at the time of the murder, he lived just a few
houses from the location where Brenda's body was found, on Jackson Road,
the neighbouring street. He told his own family that he attacked
prostitutes for his own amusement and would “leave them for dead”.
Beating, stabbing and throat-cutting were prominent among his modes of
murder. In a police interview, while denying that he had killed Brenda,
he admitted that he had been personally acquainted with her.Significantly,
one of the trial witnesses, a young, vulnerable prostitute, who had
recounted at trial being attacked in a remote industrial park by a man
who admitted that he had killed Brenda, subsequently expressed doubts
about whether Glen Assoun was the man who assaulted her. She testified
that she had seen the arrest of Glen Assoun on television, and initially
told the police that Glen was the man who had attacked her and boasted
about Brenda's murder. McGray, like Glen Assoun, broadly fit the
description of her attacker—the man who had admitted killing Brenda.
McGray, however, was a much bigger man than Glen. She recollected in a
subsequent interview that during her testimony in court she had felt
that Glen was smaller than her assailant. The most striking aspect of
her original description of her attacker to the police was that, in the
winter, with snow covering the ground, her attacker had been wearing
socks and sandals on his feet. This very distinctive form of footwear,
multiple witnesses confirmed, was characteristic of Michael McGray."
PASSAGE FOUR OF THE DAY: "The
determined inquiries of Mr. Green, on behalf of the Minister,
ultimately revealed that the reason behind this was that the digital
files recording Moore's work had been deliberately deleted by his ViCLAS
colleagues, on order of their superiors, and his hard copy files had
been destroyed or irretrievably lost. Given the passage of time, the
information he acquired during his extensive investigation into McGray
has become permanently unrecoverable and we will never know everything
Constable Moore uncovered in his ViCLAS analysis and his follow-up
investigation. This systematic destruction of files (hard copies and
digital) was directly contrary to ViCLAS policy; some of the analysts
directed to do it protested at the time. It was also a tragic loss to
the administration of justice—Constable Moore told Mark Green that he
believed he would have solved Brenda’s murder if permitted to keep
working on it. Unfortunately, he was not.
While Mr. Kennedy was
seeking disclosure of ViCLAS information related to McGray from the
outside, Constable Moore was imploring his RCMP and HRP superiors to
share his analysis from the inside. Rather than making the information
available, however, his superiors told him that he was "wasting his
time". He was directed to stop working on Brenda's murder. He took his
concerns up the RCMP chain of command and eventually to Inspector Leo
O’Brien, the head of ViCLAS in Ottawa. No one authorized disclosure of
his work, nor of the fact that it had been deleted and destroyed.
Glen’s
lawyer and the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal were deliberately denied
highly probative information, from an objective expert analyst, about a
brutal serial killer, acquainted with the victim and living in her
neighbourhood at the time of her murder – despite diligent efforts by
appellate counsel to acquire exactly that information. If the Court of
Appeal had known in 2006 about the profiling of Michael McGray (and
Avery Greenough), it would never have upheld Glen’s conviction and life
sentence. As it was Glen remained in custody for eight more years
following an appeal that ought to have freed him. The RCMP have
attempted, since the CCRG investigation, to distance themselves from
Constable Moore with challenges to his character and competence. He was
moved out of ViCLAS in 2004 after a negative performance appraisal. This
occurred, however, when it was clear that Constable Moore's work on
McGray and Brenda Way was going to be very awkward for the Crown and
police on the pending appeal."
PASSAGE FIVE OF THE DAY: "Responsibility for the decisions made during the
initial police investigation and the subsequent decision-making
regarding the destruction of Constable Moore's work and the failure to
make disclosure of it upon request lies with both Halifax Regional
Police and RCMP officers. It extended to senior officers in the two
agencies. Suppression of the information collected by Constable Moore
occurred in the face of specific requests by the defence for the very
information that had been destroyed. The impact of this outrageous
behavior distorted and subverted the judicial process. For Glen
Assoun, the effects were catastrophic. He and Innocence Canada are
grateful for the efforts of the individuals whose commitment to the
pursuit of justice assisted in his exoneration. These include the CCRG
for their highly professional and comprehensive investigation, former
Minister of Justice Peter MacKay who oversaw the investigation at its
most critical point, current Minister of Justice David Lametti for
immediately recognizing the gravity of the injustice and taking swift
and decisive action to remedy it, and Justice James Chipman for
judicially restoring the integrity of the process. The quest for
accountability should not, however, end with the release of the court
file today............" Today,
Justice Chipman, on application by the CBC, Canadian Press and the
Halifax Examiner, has opened to the public the previously sealed files
of the court which set out at length the information summarized here. It
is hoped that today marks the conclusion of legal proceedings involving
Glen Assoun and the beginning of a searching examination by the public
and the agencies involved of how his case led to such a terrible and
prolonged injustice. It is long past time for a proper investigation
into the murder of Brenda Way to identify and bring to justice her
murderer. This
is also a day for those responsible for upholding the administration of
justice in Canada and in Nova Scotia to reflect on how Glen Assoun can
be fairly and quickly compensated for the wrongs done to him. He is
unable to work, his health is poor, he lives in near-penury, and the
blame lies squarely with those who are responsible for the failings of
the police and Crown from the time of Brenda’s murder in 1995 until
today."
MEDIA BACKGROUNDER: Released by Innocence Canada today, July 12, 2019, following the release of previously sealed files from the Nova Scotia Supreme Court in the case of R. v. Glen Assoun.
GIST: "Today,
Mr. Justice James Chipman of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court ordered the
release of the Court’s previously sealed files respecting an application
for bail made on behalf of Glen Assoun in 2014. In the files are
documents which tell an extraordinary story about a failed police
investigation, the suppression of exculpatory evidence, and a profound
miscarriage of justice.
Specifically, Justice Chipman’s order allows
for public review of the Application for Ministerial Review under
s.696.1 of the Criminal Code filed on behalf of Glen Assoun in 2013,
which contains details of the new evidence discovered during Innocence
Canada’s investigation of this case, and the Preliminary Review by the
Criminal Cases Review Group (CCRG) of the federal Department of Justice. Justice Chipman also lifted a five-year-old publication ban which has prevented this story from being told until today Glen
Assoun is an innocent man whose case represents one of the most
disturbing examples of wrongful conviction in Canadian history. From
1995 when he was first interviewed by police, through his arrest in 1998
and his ultimate exoneration, 21 years later in March 2019, he has
steadfastly asserted his innocence. His case represents a shocking
failure of accountability on the part of many individuals and
institutions. The Murder of Brenda Way: In the early morning hours
of November 12, 1995, Brenda Way was brutally murdered and her body
disposed of in a parking lot behind an apartment building at 109 Albro
Lake Road in Dartmouth. She had been repeatedly stabbed, her throat had
been sliced and she had been viciously beaten. Brenda, age 28, had been a
crack addict supporting her habit through street prostitution. The Police Investigation: Glen
Assoun was Brenda’s estranged boyfriend. When the police spoke to Glen
later that day, he gave them an account of his whereabouts the night
before that was confirmed by a friend, Isabel Morse, and her two
housemates. Glen had recently been charged with assaulting Brenda,
though they remained in contact after the charge was laid. No physical
evidence, at the time or since, has tied Glen Assoun to Brenda's murder. The
original detectives on the case concluded that Glen Assoun was not a
viable suspect in the murder and turned their attention elsewhere.
In
the summer of 1996, however, two new investigators were assigned to the
file and began attempting to collect evidence against Glen Assoun. They
eventually came up with five witnesses whose evidence constituted the
entire Crown case against Glen Assoun at his 1999 trial. Glen agreed to
meet with police in 1998 and was immediately arrested and detained in
custody, where he remained until released on bail in 2014. The Trial: Glen
defended himself without a lawyer at his trial which ran from April to
September 1999. He was unable to obtain a lawyer and was not able to get
legal aid. He lacked the education and skill to act as his own counsel
at a murder trial against two experienced prosecutors. Following his
conviction on September 17, 1999 for second degree murder, he was
sentenced to life imprisonment without eligibility for parole for 18 1/2
years. Evidence of the Prosecution Witnesses: The evidence given
by these five witnesses, and the results of Innocence Canada's
investigation into their testimony, are detailed in the Memorandum on
Behalf of Glen Eugene Assoun, submitted in 2013 under s.696.1 of the
Criminal Code to the federal Minister of Justice which is being released
today by the Nova Scotia Supreme Court. This Memorandum, and the
Preliminary Assessment of the case by Mark Green, of the Department of
Justice’s Criminal Conviction Review Group (CCRG), dismantle the
prosecution case presented at trial, and expose evidence that was based
on collusion, perjury, undisclosed particulars of a deal with a
jailhouse informant, and a witness prone to relating her "psychic
visions" as evidence to the police. The Appeal: Despite the
weakness of the evidence against him, and several significant grounds of
appeal, Glen Assoun struggled to obtain counsel to represent him on
appeal. Finally, in 2004, Jerome Kennedy, a distinguished criminal
lawyer from Newfoundland and Labrador, was appointed to act for him. Mr.
Kennedy began by trying to acquire fresh evidence. One of his
primary strategies was to attempt to identify Brenda Way’s real killer.
He made requests for disclosure from the Crown for information about
criminal profiling of the murder by the RCMP ViCLAS Unit, which worked
cooperatively with the Halifax Regional Police on major murder
investigations. He posed direct questions to the Crown about ViCLAS’s
work regarding a possible suspect, Michael McGray, who had recently been
exposed as a prolific serial killer based in Nova Scotia with victims
in four
provinces. It is clear that incomplete and misleading answers were
provided to these requests for disclosure, specifically with respect to
the inquiries about the police investigation of Michael McGray. Without
significant evidence establishing anyone else as the killer, and with
his legal arguments rejected by the Court of Appeal, Glen Assoun’s
appeal was dismissed on April 20, 2006. The Supreme Court of Canada
declined to hear a further appeal on September 14, 2006. Glen had been
in custody for eight years by this point. The Investigation by Innocence Canada; With
his appeals exhausted, his case was taken up by Innocence Canada (at
the time, the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted – AIDWYC).
Innocence Canada spent years re-examining the physical evidence,
re-interviewing the key trial witnesses, attempting to uncover
previously undisclosed documentation and looking for the real killer of
Brenda Way. The investigation by Innocence Canada led to compelling
evidence that convicted serial killer Michael McGray was likely the real
killer. For example, at the time of the murder, he lived just a few
houses from the location where Brenda's body was found, on Jackson Road,
the neighbouring street. He told his own family that he attacked
prostitutes for his own amusement and would “leave them for dead”.
Beating, stabbing and throat-cutting were prominent among his modes of
murder. In a police interview, while denying that he had killed Brenda,
he admitted that he had been personally acquainted with her.
Significantly,
one of the trial witnesses, a young, vulnerable prostitute, who had
recounted at trial being attacked in a remote industrial park by a man
who admitted that he had killed Brenda, subsequently expressed doubts
about whether Glen Assoun was the man who assaulted her. She testified
that she had seen the arrest of Glen Assoun on television, and initially
told the police that Glen was the man who had attacked her and boasted
about Brenda's murder. McGray, like Glen Assoun, broadly fit the
description of her attacker—the man who had admitted killing Brenda.
McGray, however, was a much bigger man than Glen. She recollected in a
subsequent interview that during her testimony in court she had felt
that Glen was smaller than her assailant. The most striking aspect of
her original description of her attacker to the police was that, in the
winter, with snow covering the ground, her attacker had been wearing
socks and sandals on his feet. This very distinctive form of footwear,
multiple witnesses confirmed, was characteristic of Michael McGray.
Meanwhile, the evidence at trial showed Glen had been living in British
Columbia when the young prostitute was attacked in Halifax. New evidence
collected by Innocence Canada disproved the Crown’s speculation about
how he might have made it to Nova Scotia to commit the attack.
During
the course of Innocence Canada’s investigation, two people who had
known McGray in prison came forward to say he had admitted to them that
he killed Brenda Way. Matters of new significance submitted to the Minister of Justice by Innocence Canada pursuant to s. 696.1 of the Criminal Code Innocence
Canada’s Memorandum was submitted to the Minister of Justice on April
14, 2013 along with a multi-volume application record. It quickly became
the subject of an investigation spearheaded by Mark Green, of the
Minister’s Criminal Conviction Review Group.
During the CCRG
investigation, an extraordinary story began to emerge. Initially Glen
Assoun’s lawyers thought the additional new evidence regarding serial
killer Michael McGray was extremely cogent and provided sufficient
grounds for overturning Glen Assoun's conviction. At the time they
submitted the application to the Minister, however, they had no reason
to believe that any police agency had seriously investigated McGray as a
possible suspect in Brenda’s murder, much less developed any grounds to
believe he had killed her. The position of the Crown at the 2006 appeal
had been that McGray denied his culpability in Brenda's murder and was
not regarded as a suspect by the officer-in-charge of the case,
Constable Dave MacDonald. The CCRG’s Preliminary Assessment by Mr.
Green sets out in detail the requests made by Jerome Kennedy to the
Crown during the 2004-2006 appellate process. It also documents internal
discussions by the RCMP and HRP about how to address these inquiries
and makes clear that they never contemplated providing all of the
relevant information. The truth was that a criminal profiling
specialist in the ViCLAS Unit, RCMP Constable Dave Moore, had concluded
in 2002-03, while looking into behavioural patterns in the murders of
Michael McGray, that McGray was the top suspect in Brenda's murder even
though by that time Glen Assoun had been tried and convicted for the
crime and had been in custody since 1998. Constable Moore had conducted
an independent and wide-ranging investigation, going beyond the ViCLAS
mode of analysis, and communicating by mail with McGray personally. He
had produced an in-depth investigative digital file alongside boxes of
hard copy evidence that charted McGray’s movements, associates and
patterns of behaviour. In the course of his inquiries, Constable
Moore also developed other potential suspects in Brenda's murder, one of
whom – Avery Greenough – he came to view as a very strong candidate for
having committed the crime. Evidence uncovered by Constable Moore
suggested that Greenough, a violent sexual predator, had Brenda in his
truck on the evening of her death. However, despite the specific
request by Mr. Kennedy for disclosure of ViCLAS information in general,
and information about Michael McGray in particular, none of Constable
Moore's work was provided to the Crown or defence, or to the Court of
Appeal, during the appellate process. The
determined inquiries of Mr. Green, on behalf of the Minister,
ultimately revealed that the reason behind this was that the digital
files recording Moore's work had been deliberately deleted by his ViCLAS
colleagues, on order of their superiors, and his hard copy files had
been destroyed or irretrievably lost. Given the passage of time, the
information he acquired during his extensive investigation into McGray
has become permanently unrecoverable and we will never know everything
Constable Moore uncovered in his ViCLAS analysis and his follow-up
investigation. This systematic destruction of files (hard copies and
digital) was directly contrary to ViCLAS policy; some of the analysts
directed to do it protested at the time. It was also a tragic loss to
the administration of justice—Constable Moore told Mark Green that he
believed he would have solved Brenda’s murder if permitted to keep
working on it. Unfortunately, he was not.
While Mr. Kennedy was
seeking disclosure of ViCLAS information related to McGray from the
outside, Constable Moore was imploring his RCMP and HRP superiors to
share his analysis from the inside. Rather than making the information
available, however, his superiors told him that he was "wasting his
time". He was directed to stop working on Brenda's murder. He took his
concerns up the RCMP chain of command and eventually to Inspector Leo
O’Brien, the head of ViCLAS in Ottawa. No one authorized disclosure of
his work, nor of the fact that it had been deleted and destroyed.
Glen’s
lawyer and the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal were deliberately denied
highly probative information, from an objective expert analyst, about a
brutal serial killer, acquainted with the victim and living in her
neighbourhood at the time of her murder – despite diligent efforts by
appellate counsel to acquire exactly that information. If the Court of
Appeal had known in 2006 about the profiling of Michael McGray (and
Avery Greenough), it would never have upheld Glen’s conviction and life
sentence. As it was Glen remained in custody for eight more years
following an appeal that ought to have freed him. The RCMP have
attempted, since the CCRG investigation, to distance themselves from
Constable Moore with challenges to his character and competence. He was
moved out of ViCLAS in 2004 after a negative performance appraisal. This
occurred, however, when it was clear that Constable Moore's work on
McGray and Brenda Way was going to be very awkward for the Crown and
police on the pending appeal. His performance appraisal in 2003, when he
was working on McGray and the Brenda Way case, was highly favourable
and commended him specifically for this work. While Constable Moore was
known for going beyond the strict confines of ViCLAS computer-based
methodology (as he did in this case) he was widely regarded among fellow
analysts as a talented and committed behavioral profiler. Innocence
Canada believes that much more remains to be discovered about this case.
Starting in 1998, police tunnel vision fixated on Glen Assoun leading
to a seriously flawed initial police leading
ultimately to the deliberate destruction and non-disclosure of relevant
information – one of the most serious breaches of public trust that it
is possible to imagine. Responsibility for the decisions made during the
initial police investigation and the subsequent decision-making
regarding the destruction of Constable Moore's work and the failure to
make disclosure of it upon request lies with both Halifax Regional
Police and RCMP officers. It extended to senior officers in the two
agencies. Suppression of the information collected by Constable Moore
occurred in the face of specific requests by the defence for the very
information that had been destroyed. The impact of this outrageous
behavior distorted and subverted the judicial process.
For Glen
Assoun, the effects were catastrophic. He and Innocence Canada are
grateful for the efforts of the individuals whose commitment to the
pursuit of justice assisted in his exoneration. These include the CCRG
for their highly professional and comprehensive investigation, former
Minister of Justice Peter MacKay who oversaw the investigation at its
most critical point, current Minister of Justice David Lametti for
immediately recognizing the gravity of the injustice and taking swift
and decisive action to remedy it, and Justice James Chipman for
judicially restoring the integrity of the process. The quest for accountability should not, however, end with the release of the court file today.
In
September 2014, counsel for Innocence Canada, representing Glen,
brought before Justice James Chipman, of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court,
both their original Memorandum to the Minister of Justice, establishing
the unreliability of the trial evidence, and the findings of the
Preliminary Assessment by the CCRG. They argued that Glen should be
released from custody. On November 24, 2014, Justice Chipman agreed and
Glen stepped out of the cells at the Halifax Courthouse for the first
time since 1998. After his release, the Ministerial Review process
continued. On February 28, 2019, the Minister of Justice, David
Lametti, signed a brief order quashing the 1999 conviction and directing
a new trial for Glen. The Minister noted that “there are new matters of
significance as well as relevant and reliable information that was not
disclosed to Mr. Glen Assoun during his criminal proceedings." Today,
Justice Chipman, on application by the CBC, Canadian Press and the
Halifax Examiner, has opened to the public the previously sealed files
of the court which set out at length the information summarized here. It
is hoped that today marks the conclusion of legal proceedings involving
Glen Assoun and the beginning of a searching examination by the public
and the agencies involved of how his case led to such a terrible and
prolonged injustice. It is long past time for a proper investigation into the murder of Brenda Way to identify and bring to justice her murderer. This
is also a day for those responsible for upholding the administration of
justice in Canada and in Nova Scotia to reflect on how Glen Assoun can
be fairly and quickly compensated for the wrongs done to him. He is
unable to work, his health is poor, he lives in near-penury, and the
blame lies squarely with those who are responsible for the failings of
the police and Crown from the time of Brenda’s murder in 1995 until
today."
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: We now understand why the authorities fought so hard to suppress documents relating to the Assoun case - to keep them out of the public eye: The newly released documents reveal, according to Halifax Examiner Editor Tim Bousquet, that the RCMP, Canada's national police force, "deleted, destroyed , and lost information which suggested that serial killer Michael McGray was the actual killer of Brenda Way - and that Glen Assoun, who was convicted of the murder, was innocent. Kudos to Investigative Reporter Bousquet, and his feisty, fearless publication for his role in bringing this shocking case to the attention of the public. Keep an eye on this developing story which is expected to be up-date at the link below.
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
-----------------------------------------------------------
STORY: "RCMP destroyed information that would have suggested serial killer Michael McGray murdered Brenda Way; that destroyed information likely would have cleared Glen Assoun in the murder," by Tim Bousquet, published by The Halifax Examiner on Juy 12, 2019.
Newly unsealed court documents in the Glen Assoun case reveal that:
The actual killer: Serial killer Michael McGray was the likely killer of Brenda Way.
The RCMP deleted, destroyed, and lost information that linked McGray to the Way murder
• RCMP Constable David Moore worked in the RCMP’s Violent Crime
Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS) division. ViCLAS is a national database
for tracking violent offenders and the offences they commit. Moore was
looking for more murders that may have been committed by McGray. Because
Moore didn’t fully trust the system, he expanded his search of the
database to include “solved” murders — that is, murders for which there
was a conviction — and came upon the murder of Brenda Way.
• Moore believed that McGray had killed Way. In 2004, Moore related
his suspicions to his superiors at the RCMP — Ken Bradley and Dick
Hutchings — but they told Moore “he was wasting his time” as “the matter
had been decided by the Supreme Court and it was not worth pursuing.”
• Despite this, Moore continued to investigate the Way murder because
he thought it likely that Assoun had been wrongly convicted.
• Moore went to RCMP inspector Andy Lathem, the head of the major
crimes section of the RCMP. Moore told Lathem of his suspicion that
McGray, not Assoun, killed Way. Lathem asked Moore to put together a
timeline of events. Moore was intending to put together the timeline,
but on return from a two-week vacation in March 2004, Moore found that
he had been transferred out of the ViCLAS section. He was not given a
reason for his transfer.
• After he was transferred out of the ViCLAS section, all Moore’s
work on the Way murder was erased from the ViCLAS system. Additionally,
“hundreds of documents” Moore had kept in boxes, work sheets, and
timelines went missing. The missing material includes information about
other cases Moore had worked on.
• The deletion of ViCLAS information goes against RCMP policy.
• When federal Justice Department lawyer Mark Green was investigating
Assoun’s case in 2014, he learned that RCMP Sergeant Dick Hutchings had
ordered the “review” of Moore’s work in 2004. Green found that the
review violated RCMP policy, as the review should have been conducted by
an independent analyst.
• In his report, Green bolded and underlined the following paragraph: Why was Constable
Moore’s ViCLAS information not disclosed to your [Assoun’s] legal
counsel when [Assoun’s lawyer Jerome] Kennedy made his requests [for
information about McGray’s possible involvement in the Way murder]? Had
Moore’s ViCLAS information already been deleted, destroyed or lost by
the time Kennedy made his first request in September, 2004? Is there a
correlation between Kennedy’s request for McGray/Brenda Way ViCLAS
information and the destruction of Moore’s ViCLAS files? Would this
information have made any difference with respect to the decision of the
Court of Appeal [which ruled against Assoun’s appeal]? -------------------------------------------------------------------
Assoun passed polygraph tests:
Although not admissible in court, the responses Assoun gave to
questions during two polygraph tests were judged by two different
analysts to be the responses of an innocent man. This is an ongoing investigative news story.
The entire story - to be up-dated later today, can be read and followed at the link below:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Do
you know how many people touched that piece [of] evidence? Starting
from the crime scene, to the laboratory, to the courtroom, lawyers,
juries, everybody touched the evidence,” Lee said. Lee
went on to say that the sneakers may not only have been mishandled, but
stored improperly over these years. It is also possible that after all
the lab tests, there was no blood left on the sneakers, according to
Lee. “Of course no blood was
found. Already used up. You cannot say 30 years ago it wasn’t there.
That doesn’t make any sense because early days everything we used bare
hand, we removed the sample,” Lee said. Lee asked that the public
remember that investigators found the victim’s credit card in Hasan’s
toilet bowl."
STORY: "Dr. Henry Lee Defends Work in 1985 Murder Case," published by NBC Connecticut on July 11, 2019.
PHOTO CAPTION: "Famed
forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee is defending his work in a 1985 murder
case that helped send a man to prison, by reporter, published by on July 11,
2019."
GIST: "Famed
forensic scientist, Dr. Henry Lee, who testified on thousands of trails
from O.J. Simpson to JonBenet Ramsey, is once again being challenged on
his previous testing and testimony. In
June, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled his testimony was incorrect
in the 1985 murder of Everett Carr. That testimony led to the conviction
of two men, Sean Henning and Ralph Birch in 1989. They have both since
been released from prison and ordered to have new trials. In
the 1984 murder of Joyce Stochmal, her convicted killer, David
Weinberg, was also released from prison based on newly tested evidence
that refuted Dr. Lee’s findings. Now,
a third convicted murderer, Wendal(l) Hasan, is asking the court to review
his case based on a key piece of evidence that Dr. Lee testified about.
Hasan has been in prison since 1986 for the murder of George Tyler in
his Darien home. At
the time, Dr. Lee said he tested a pair of Puma sneakers and found the
victim’s blood. When the sneakers were retested in July of 2014, the
state police forensic lab found the stains were not blood. On Thursday, Dr. Lee said he stands by his testing and testimony. “Do
you know how many people touched that piece [of] evidence? Starting
from the crime scene, to the laboratory, to the courtroom, lawyers,
juries, everybody touched the evidence,” Lee said. Lee
went on to say that the sneakers may not only have been mishandled, but
stored improperly over these years. It is also possible that after all
the lab tests, there was no blood left on the sneakers, according to
Lee. “Of course no blood was
found. Already used up. You cannot say 30 years ago it wasn’t there.
That doesn’t make any sense because early days everything we used bare
hand, we removed the sample,” Lee said. Lee asked that the public remember that investigators found the victim’s credit card in Hasan’s toilet bowl. “I
feel sorry for all those victims’ families. If the person really [is]
innocent, definitely we should set them free. If [they are] just trying
to smear my reputation, they shouldn’t do that.” During
the news conference, Dr. Lee also urged the state to set up a review
committee where convicted felons can request the committee look at their
case. He also said he feels anyone directly involved with the case should have access to the files."
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This Blog is interested in false confessions because of the disturbing number of exonerations in the USA, Canada and multiple other jurisdictions throughout the world, where, in the absence of incriminating forensic evidence the conviction is based on self-incrimination (as well as false identification and jailhouse informants) – and because of the growing body of scientific research showing how vulnerable suspects (especially juveniles) are to widely used interrogation methods such as the notorious ‘Reid Technique.’"
PASSAGE OF THE DAY: " Indeed, the technique has been rejected — at least by one firm that trains investigators in how to interview suspects. Wicklander-Zulawski and Associates, Inc., stopped
teaching the Reid technique, as well as any other technique falling
under the umbrella of confrontational methods of interrogations, in
2017. The consulting group had been teaching the Reid technique since
1984, but now trains investigators with alternatives, in light of recent
research findings. “It wasn’t just the obvious misuse of this technique that has
resulted in so many wrongful convictions and false confessions,”
Wicklander-Zulawski and Associates VP David Thompson told Oxygen,
speaking about confrontational methods as a whole, “but, really, the
amount of our … that were asking for different measures, because of
their discomfort and knowledge of the possible dangerous outcomes of
using such methods.”
PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Thompson
agreed that, if the Reid technique was in fact used to some degree, it
was misused. Regardless of whether confrontational interrogations are
being used exactly as taught or twisted from their original intentions,
Thompson told Oxygen.com that evidence proves confrontational
interrogations can yield false confessions. He pointed to Brendan
Dassey, of “Making a Murderer” fame.
That documentary suggested that investigators took advantage of
Dassey’s limited intellect and a confrontational interrogation to coax
him into confessing."
GIST: "While the average person may not know the term “Reid
technique,” they probably would recognize some of the tactics involved.
It and other controversial methods have been used to extract confessions
from suspects for decades. Some believe it may have been used — or,
rather, misused — in getting the suspects to confess in the
controversial “Central Park 5” case.” “When They See Us," Ava DuVernay's four-part Netflix film, revisits a
painful chapter in the New York City’s history, one in which five teens
of color were wrongfully accused, convicted and imprisoned for the
brutal 1989 rape of a white woman jogging in Central Park. It
illuminates the questionable tactics used by investigators and
prosecutors to elicit confessions from the boys at the time. The boys, now men, say they were coerced into confessing to a rape
that they didn’t commit. The new series depicts authorities promising
the boys that they can go home if they confess, all without adults
present; they are also deprived of food and bathroom visits. In both
the series and reality, all five were exonerated of the crime after the
real rapist came forward. If the depictions of the interrogations are
indeed accurate, they cast some police interrogation techniques in a
pretty unfavorable light. “It shows you the errors of police investigation — of manipulative Reid technique interrogation,” Criminal defense attorney and blogger Scott H. Greenfield told Oxygen.com. “The Reid technique has been universally rejected,” the character
based on Detective Michael Sheehan, who interrogated the boys, is told
after the real rapist confesses in Part Four of the series. Indeed, the technique has been rejected — at least by one firm that trains investigators in how to interview suspects. Wicklander-Zulawski and Associates, Inc., stopped
teaching the Reid technique, as well as any other technique falling
under the umbrella of confrontational methods of interrogations, in
2017. The consulting group had been teaching the Reid technique since
1984, but now trains investigators with alternatives, in light of recent
research findings. “It wasn’t just the obvious misuse of this technique that has
resulted in so many wrongful convictions and false confessions,”
Wicklander-Zulawski and Associates VP David Thompson told Oxygen,
speaking about confrontational methods as a whole, “but, really, the
amount of our … that were asking for different measures, because of
their discomfort and knowledge of the possible dangerous outcomes of
using such methods.” In “When They See Us,” Sheehan’s character argues he didn’t even know
what the Reid technique was when he is questioned, arguing that he was
just doing what he was taught to do.What exactly is the Reid technique?: Consultant and polygraph expert John Reid, who runs the private practice John E. Ried and Associates,
developed the technique as a way of extracting information from
unwilling suspects. The firm offers seminars and training programs to
law enforcement. The technique involves a three-phase process, the first two steps
being Fact Analysis and Behavior Analysis Interview. The third step,
which is what is usually referenced when the Reid technique is
discussed, is the Reid Nine Steps of Interrogation. Those nine steps, as described in the 2001 book “Practical Aspects of Interview and Interrogation,” are:
Direct confrontation. Advise the suspect that the evidence has
led the police to the individual as a suspect. Offer the person an early
opportunity to explain why the offense took place.
Try to shift the blame away from the suspect to some other
person or set of circumstances that prompted the suspect to commit the
crime. That is, develop themes containing reasons that will
psychologically justify or excuse the crime. Themes may be developed or
changed to find one to which the accused is most responsive.
Try to minimize the frequency of suspect denials.
At this point, the accused will often give a reason why he or
she did not or could not commit the crime. Try to use this to move
towards the acknowledgement of what they did.
Reinforce sincerity to ensure that the suspect is receptive.
The suspect will become quieter and listen. Move the theme of
the discussion towards offering alternatives. If the suspect cries at
this point, infer guilt.
Pose the "alternative question", giving two choices for what
happened; one more socially acceptable than the other. The suspect is
expected to choose the easier option, but, whichever alternative the
suspect chooses, guilt is admitted. As stated above, there is always a
third option, which is to maintain that they did not commit the crime.
Lead the suspect to repeat the admission of guilt in front of
witnesses and develop corroborating information to establish the
validity of the confession.
Document the suspect's admission or confession and have him or her prepare a recorded statement (audio, video or written).
Was the Reid technique used with the Central Park Five? While the technique is alleged to have led to false confessions, John E. Reid President Joseph P. Buckley told Oxygen.com
that he disputes that. Buckley claims that false confessions are not
the result of the Reid technique, but of the abuse or misuse of the
technique. His firm has stated that the process does not create false confessions. In a 53-page John E. Reid document entitled “Clarifying
Misrepresentations About Law Enforcement Interrogation Techniques”
obtained byOxygen.com, the firm states that the
minimization of legal consequences is something “we teach never to do.”
If the investigators on the Central Park 5 case interrogated the boys,
as depicted in “When They See Us,” they promised them fewer legal
consequences if they gave the authorities what they wanted. They also
threatened the boys if they did not comply. That, in theory, led to the
false confessions. In
an email, Buckley wrote, “If the investigators in this case had
followed the Core Principles of the Reid Technique and the Best
Practices that we teach ... [the] end result would have been very
different.” Among those Core Principles: “Do not threaten the subject
with any
physical harm or inevitable consequences” and “Do not conduct
interrogations for an excessively lengthy period of time.” Thompson
agreed that, if the Reid technique was in fact used to some degree, it
was misused. Regardless of whether confrontational interrogations are
being used exactly as taught or twisted from their original intentions,
Thompson told Oxygen.com that evidence proves confrontational
interrogations can yield false confessions. He pointed to Brendan
Dassey, of “Making a Murderer” fame.
That documentary suggested that investigators took advantage of
Dassey’s limited intellect and a confrontational interrogation to coax
him into confessing. Thompson said there are three things that could go wrong in an
interrogation room and lead someone to falsely confess:
Misclassification, coercion and contamination. Coersion, and explicit
threats and promises made to Dassey by law enforcement, Thompson said,
were obvious in the video of his interrogation. As for
misclassification, he believes that law enforcement may have
misclassified the body language and behavior of Dassey, who has
developmental challenges, as indications of guilt. He said the tactics
mirrored what happened in the depiction of the Central Park 5 suspects
in “When They See Us,” adding that misclassification can also occur when
it comes to racial and age bias. He said that such “heartbreaking” high-profile cases prompted his firm to stop teaching confrontational interrogations.What is being taught to law enforcement now? While Thompson couldn’t give an exact number on how many police
departments still use confrontational techniques, or have stopped doing
so since 2017, many have been receptive to using alternate approaches to
interviewing suspect, he said. “There should never be a one-size-fits-all approach to conducting an interview or interrogation,” he said. It should be noted that the John E. Reid and Associates website noted
that Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates was only licensed to teach
their material as it existed in 1984, and that they haven’t been allowed
to teach or use any of their material or advancements since then. They
have stated “we teach never to engage in the coercive tactics.” John E. Reid and Associates still offers one to three-day training programs for the Reid technique. Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates now teaches non-confrontational
methods only. They offer several types of fact and information-gathering
techniques, including one called the participatory method, the goal of
which “is to detect as much information as possible to potentially
eliminate any explanations for that evidence,” according to Thompson. He
said that, based on the evidence gathered in those types of interviews,
“if there is a decision to make an accusation we use a
non-confrontational approach to that conversation. We offer
investigators multiple options which depends on the crime and suspect.” Thompson said Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates urges electronic
recording of everything — the interview process from from start to
finish, and not just the confessions. In the Central Park 5 case, only
the confessions were videotaped. Thompson said that many law enforcement officials he has spoken to
are relieved to change methods. Even though Wicklander-Zulawski &
Associates only stopped teaching confrontational techniques to law
enforcement about two years ago, they stopped teaching them to their
non-law enforcement clients, like human resource departments, decades
ago. “It’s already been kind of acknowledged for decades that many of our
clients don’t like to talk to some of our clients using those methods,”
Thompson said, adding, “about two years ago, we decided if we are
leaders in the [law enforcement] industry we have to take a stand.” He said that “When They See Us” does a great job of depicting interrogations gone wrong. “I’m hoping that it’s inspiring for people to advocate for change, to
learn how to do things the right way, and to take a stand, even when
you are in a position where it might be difficult to do so,” he said.""
PUBLISHER'S
NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles
Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous
employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable
effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his
protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric
pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on
recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles
Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of
interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold
Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
My interest in forensic pathology began with my Toronto Star investigative reporting into once famed since disgraced former doctor Charles Smith. I began this Blog after retiring from the Star in 2006 in order to follow the aftermath into the independent Goudge inquiry into many of Smith's cases. I have now begun to focus on cases involving flawed forensic science no matter where they occur (the recent Amanda Knox prosecution in Italy, for example) and am fascinated by the interest in the Blog from people in countries throughout the world. In another development, my interest in "junk science" "pseudo-experts" and the miscarriages of justice they all too often cause has drawn me deeply into the on-going U.S. death penalty debate where so many troubling cases involve issues relating to DNA and other developments in the world of forensic science. For all of this I rely on my experience as a reporter at the Toronto Star, my work as a lawyer in Ontario's criminal courts, and my abhorrence of injustice. Please send cases and developments which may be of interest to this Blog to hlevy15@gmail.com. Read on! Harold Levy.
