SUB-HEADING ‘After ‘Making a Murderer’ and ‘The Keepers,’ Netflix’s reign over the true-crime genre continues with ‘The Confession Tapes.’
GIST: (SPOILERS WARNING - but maybe not so relevant in a documentary. HL;): "That
anyone would actually admit to a crime they didn’t commit—to police,
and on the record—is a notion that naturally inspires more than a bit of
skepticism. No matter the situation of the individual being questioned,
or the pressure placed upon them by outside forces, the idea that
someone would throw away their life over something they had nothing to
do with—and which may have been a tragedy for them as well—seems so
implausible that to convince people that such a thing has occurred
becomes an immediate uphill battle. Yet in six stories
told over the course of seven episodes, each bolstered by copious
footage of the police interrogations that led individuals to point the
fingers at themselves (thus earning them life sentences behind bars),
The Confession Tapes makes
a cogent, compelling argument that, under the right circumstances, a
declaration of guilt isn’t worth more than the videotape on which it’s
recorded. “Say
it and be done with it,” an investigator tells Buddy Woodall—a man
thought to have been involved with the execution of his uncle and
another man—in Episode 6 (“The Labor Day Murders”) of
The Confession Tapes. It’s a plea found, in one form or another, in all of the cases addressed by Loudenberg’s show. The
pattern quickly becomes obvious: Law enforcement officials decide,
early on, upon their main suspects; home in on them at the expense of
exhaustively following up other leads and theories; and then
psychologically wear them down through 5-10 hour interrogations. In
those marathon sessions, detectives and polygraph experts employ all
sorts of mind games designed to elicit an “I did it.” They present
possible scenarios for how the crimes may have played out, and repeat
them ad nauseam. They claim that they have (non-existent) evidence
implicating the accused. They intimate that the crimes may have been
committed in a subconscious-driven dream state, thus making the
“killers” unaware of their own actions. And they depict themselves as
their targets’ only hope for a lighter sentence, or at least for relief
from moral anguish—and, of course, from the misery of the interrogations
themselves.
The Confession Tapes’
various tales feature recordings of men and women denying
responsibility for hours on end, only to eventually succumb to the
narratives fed to them by cops. That, in almost every instance, there’s
no corroborating evidence to back up these statements—save for
circumstantial tidbits that hardly rise to a “reasonable doubt”
standard—means that these people have been put away for crimes based
solely on their own admissions. It’s a portrait of dubious law
enforcement methods resulting in legal railroading, and one whose
outrageousness is amplified by the fact that, after the verdict, there’s
very little recourse to be undertaken on behalf of the convicted. Loudenberg’s
first two episodes (“True East”) concentrate on Atif Rafay and
Sebastian Burns, two friends from Bellevue, Washington, who were pinned
for the 1994 slaughter of Atif’s father, mother, and mentally disabled
sister. Though they had strong alibis and little motive, they found
themselves in the crosshairs of both domestic police and—because Atif
and Sebastian were both Canadian citizens—the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police. The latter elicited a confession from the duo after executing a
ruse known as “Mr. Big”—in which undercover agents pretended to be
gangsters eager to help the suspects—that’s illegal here in the States
(and now also in Canada, thanks to a recent Supreme Court ruling). In
surreptitious tapings of Sebastian and Atif’s meetings with these
faux-mobsters, we see the teens struggle mightily to concoct lucid
admissions. Meanwhile, law enforcement diligently ignores a conflicting,
far-from-unbelievable theory: The Rafay clan was assassinated by a
terrorist Muslim group that disliked Dr. Rafay’s public proclamations of
his belief that mosques were having members pray toward Mecca in the
wrong direction. A similar picture emerges in later
episodes, which tackle a man who confesses to setting his girlfriend on
fire in a bar while black-out drunk; a mother who agrees that she burned
her daughter alive during a waking dream; a group of young
African-African men coaxed into impugning each other for a heinous
rape-murder that was probably committed by a local sadist; and a father
who comes to believe that a “demon” drove him to drive his car into a
Detroit-area river, killing his four children, rather than it being the
result of an automotive malfunction.
The Confession Tapes’
horror stories are distinct, and yet tethered together by the same
threads: poor, minimally educated individuals; little to no evidence to
support confessions; competing hypotheses that are largely discarded by
investigators and prosecutors; multi-hour interrogations conducted
without a lawyer present, in which the accused eventually succumb to
rigorous pressure to say what police want to hear; and, ultimately,
guilty verdicts. To recount these cases, Loudenberg
marries her grainy VHS confession tapes to archival footage, new
interviews with primary players and evocative dramatic imagery (a tour
through a crime-scene garage, close-ups of broken glass, a bloody dollar
bill, and a polygraph machine scribbling lines on a piece of paper).
It’s a style that diligently follows the
Errol Morris book of true-crime filmmaking,
and yet its lack of formal adventurousness is offset by the precision
of the director’s technique, as well as by an overarching air of
despair. Even though it raises as many questions as it provides
definitive answers—and, in one account, falters a bit in suggesting a
person’s innocence—
The Confession Tapes is a bracing
compendium of injustices, at once indignant over the way in which these
subjects were manipulated into damning themselves, and sorrowful over
their subsequent powerlessness to right a clear wrong."
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/netflixs-the-confession-tapes-your-new-true-crime-tv-obsession
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.