PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The murders in The Innocent Man are far and away more brutal than similar true crime series like Making a Murderer and Serial, as are the following miscarriages of justice. In 1982, someone broke into Carter's home, raped her, and strangled her to death with the cord of her electric blanket. An investigation brewed for five years before failed minor league baseball player Ron Williamson and widower Dennis Fritz were convicted of the crime. In 1988, Fritz got life in prison, and Williamson was sentenced to death. Unlike Carter, Haraway disappeared without a trace in 1984. The body was still missing when cops charged local miscreants Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot for her murder two years later. Both were sentenced to life in prison. The details of these murders seem wildly different at a glance, but director Clay Tweel weaves their eerie similarities together into a compelling web of injustice in his new six-part series based on John Grisham's 2006 non-fiction book. All four men initially insisted they were innocent, and maintained their innocence after the trial. All four were charged with little evidence besides admittedly spine-chilling taped confessions of the crimes. Both Ward and Williamson recounted dreams about killing the victims, which were used as proof of their guilt. And both later claimed that their confessions were coerced by the cops."
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SECOND PASSAGE OF THE DAY: From interview with Director Clay Tweel: "What have you learned about how false confessions work psychologically?What happens frequently is there's a long process of breaking down somebody in an interrogation room. Oftentimes when false confessions happened, they had been in there for a very long time. In Tommy's case it was ten hours before they turned the camera on. Police will be subliminally feeding you the narrative that they want and when you say right answers, they reward you or they promise you things. I don't think a lot of people know that. And I think that, in and of itself, would be terrifying. You hear that over and over again. And you just get tired."
BACKGROUND: (From the trailer): "Americans are finally paying attention to the deeply fucked up problem of cops coercing false confessions from innocent people—just one of many, many reasons you probably shouldn't talk to the fuzz without a lawyer. Part of that newfound awareness is thanks, in part, to the advent of true crime series like The Confession Tapes, Making a Murderer, and Amanda Knox. But before all those, there was John Grisham's book The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, detailing the true story of two men who were accused of beating, raping, and killing a 21-year-old waitress named Debra Sue Carter in Ada, Oklahoma, in 1982. After spending over a decade each in prison, Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz were exonerated by the Innocence Project through DNA evidence in 1999. Williamson was days away from being executed by the state when his death sentence was stayed. On Monday, Netflix dropped a trailer for a miniseries based on the book, which you can watch above. “If I wrote The Innocent Man as a novel, folks probably wouldn’t believe it,” Grisham says in the clip, which includes a mix of interviews, dramatic recreations, and footage of the actual coerced confessions—a kind of road map for what we can expect from the series. The whole thing looks harrowing—almost like a grittier, thornier Making a Murderer—that, yet again, promises to lay bare one of the most disturbing flaws in the American criminal justice system."
https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/bjed43/the-innocent-man-trailer-netflix-true-crime-show-john-grisham-vgtrn
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Related:
VICE: What is your goal as a director when you make a series like The Innocent Man that puts forward a narrative about an open case?Clay Tweel: Many times people said to me, "All a trial is, is a set of competing narratives." And I found it to be fascinating that it kept coming up over and over again. The goal of the series is to help the audience be aware of the different biases within the flaws of the criminal justice system. Individual people's biases can pervert and manipulate the process, whether that's a prosecutor or a defense attorney, or a police officer, or a juror. In a world of fake news and alternate facts, I hope we're thinking critically and taking into proper context what motive people might have.
Do you feel being in the dark headspace of this case has taken a toll on you?Being around this case and around these people who've had to experience has certainly changed me. But I was worried about having Debbie’s family having to relive it again, honestly. With having to talk to me on camera and then having to let the show come out at all. But they said to me that they think Debbie's legacy is to be a sort of beacon for criminal justice reform, because her case shows so clearly what can go wrong. They just think it had to have happened for a reason.
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What was Ada like before the murders, and how did these cases change the town?There was some factory work and it was a blue collar, rural town. And then, after the murders, people started to lock the doors and and have curfews for the kids. It really scared people because these are two young girls in the prime of their life and all of a sudden they were dead or presumed dead. They put a lot of pressure on the authorities to find somebody to quiet the terror of the town.
What does it look like when police have that kind of pressure from the community to solve a case?
The lead investigator, Dennis Smith's daughter was good friends with Debbie Carter, so I'm sure he was getting pressure from even within his own family. It's a small town. Everybody knows everybody. Some of Debbie's family went to the same church as Bill Peterson, the prosecutor. It's got to be sort of ever present in the authorities' lives. Their jobs are to to solve crimes and to keep people safe. And if people aren't feeling safe, I'm sure that it weighs on them.
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What's the most shocking thing you uncovered in reporting these stories?
There's a detail that I can't get over in one of the last episodes. I'm hesitant to give it away because it's such a spoiler. It's a pretty clear marker that the police were covering up for someone. It just stinks to high heaven to me, and I haven't gotten anybody to explain it. It has rubbed me the wrong way the entire time and has made me think that there are other shady practices that are happening amongst the authorities. I can only see so much smoke before I assume there's fire somewhere.
Has that changed how you interact with the law? I will never ever go and talk to a police officer without a lawyer present. That's our constitutional right. A lot of wrongful convictions can stem from people talking to authorities without their lawyers. So like, rule number one. And it further supports a somewhat skeptical view that I have of people in power. I battle all the time not to be too cynical; I want to believe the best of people. But when you see things like that, it's hard to forget.
How did the police in Ada respond to you guys are digging up the cases?
There was a little bit of tension. We talked to a couple police officers who were great, but we did have a couple random scenarios where we're just like out shooting b-roll at night, and then we have cop cars roll up on us because somebody thinks that we're doing something. I think that there was apprehension from the town and probably from some of the police, but at the same time, there were the few guys who were all about it.
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Decades of false confessions are only one part of the problem here. I want people aware of the ways in which prosecutorial misconduct, faulty scientific evidence, eye witness testimony, and coerced confessions can all work in concert with each other to put someone away for something that they didn't do. The confessions are just one component of it.
The Innocent Man will be available on Netflix on December 14, 2018."
The entire story can be read 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/
