PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "In an interview in 1998, Milke told a reporter for the Arizona Republic that she loved her son, had nothing to do with his murder, and that Saldate had made up the confession. She insisted she had never said the things that appeared in his report. Milke, prematurely gray at 34, was isolated in a women’s prison, where other inmates screamed “baby killer” at her whenever she left her cell.“It would be a lot easier to wash the egg off their faces than my blood off their hands after they execute me,” she told the reporter. “They should let me go.” It would take another 17 years, but the state would eventually see things her way. In 2015, a federal appeals court kicked out her conviction, citing misconduct by police, prosecutors, and, especially, the detective who said she had offered a confession although he had no recordings or witnesses to verify his report."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: (From Registry of Exonerations entry):
"The prosecution’s primary evidence against Milke was the testimony of Saldate, who claimed that during the interrogation, Milke flashed her breasts at him and offered sex if he would not arrest her. Saldate said Milke admitted she conspired with Styers and Scott to kill the boy to obtain the insurance money. Prior to trial, the defense subpoenaed Saldate’s personnel file in an attempt to discover if there was any evidence that could be used to impeach his testimony. The police department and the prosecution examined Saldate’s file and filed a motion to quash the subpoena. The motion was granted. No forensic or physical evidence linked Milke to the murder. Milke denied to the jury that she confessed and accused Saldate of concocting the admissions he testified to..........In vacating Milke’s convictions and sentence and ordering a new trial, the Court of Appeals held that the prosecution had violated Milke’s constitutional right to a fair trial by failing to turn over the evidence of Saldate’s misconduct. The court said the "egregious misconduct" was a "severe stain on the Arizona justice system.” “This includes a five-day suspension for taking ‘liberties’ with a female motorist and then lying about it to his supervisors; four court cases where judges tossed out confessions or indictments because Saldate lied under oath; and four cases where judges suppressed confessions or vacated convictions because Saldate had violated the Fifth Amendment or the Fourth Amendment in the course of interrogations,” the Appeals Court said. “And it is far from clear that this reflects a full account of Saldate’s misconduct as a police officer. All of this information should have been disclosed to Milke and the jury, but the state remained unconstitutionally silent.”
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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 – and because of the growing body of scientific research showing how vulnerable suspects are to widely used interrogation methods such as the notorious ‘Reid Technique.’"
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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STORY: "Phoenix mom wrongfully convicted for killing 4-year-old son spent two decades on death row," by Mara Bovson, published by The
In one moment on Dec. 3, 1989, Debra Milke, 25, of Phoenix, Ariz., learned that her 4-year-old son, Christopher, was dead and that she was under arrest for his murder. Phoenix homicide detective Armando Saldate Jr. delivered the news at the start of an interrogation in which, he said, Milke confessed to plotting to kill the boy because she hated his father. In notes written three days after the interrogation, Saldate, known for his bare-knuckle style of questioning, said the divorced single mom told him it would be better for the boy to be dead than like his dad, who had a history of crime, drugs and alcohol abuse. There were no witnesses, recording of the interrogation, or even notes taken at the time. Still, Saldate’s recollections of the conversation on seven single-spaced typed pages were enough to get her a death sentence, wrote Gary Stuart in his book on the case, “Anatomy of a Confession.” Milke was the daughter of a U.S. Air Force member based in Berlin and a woman he met and married in Germany. The marriage was unstable and fell apart after the family moved to Arizona. Debra was a shy, intelligent girl who did well in school but dropped out of college in 1983 when she met Mark Milke. They married in 1984 and had a child, Christopher, in October 1985. Through their courtship and marriage, Mark was in and out of jail on drug charges. In 1988, after Mark was behind bars again on a DWI charge, Debra filed for divorce. Mark responded with hostility and threats, so Debra got a restraining order and went looking for a safe place to live. She thought she found it in the home of a friend, James Styers, 42, who offered her a room in his apartment. Styers, a troubled Vietnam veteran, lived alone with his daughter, who was about Christopher’s age. He suffered from PTSD and experienced terrifying combat flashbacks. Two months after Christopher’s fourth birthday, Styers and a friend, Roger Scott, 41, offered to take him to a mall to see Santa. Scott was a high-school dropout who had trouble holding jobs and had a history of arrests for petty crimes, drugs, and DWI. Milke dressed her son up in new jeans and cowboy boots and sent him off with the two men. Around 2:30 pm, Phoenix police received a call about a missing person from Jim Styers. Chris had vanished, Styers said, when the two stopped for a bathroom break in the mall. Store employees and security helped Styers search for awhile, but there was no sign of the child. Police took up the search, interviewing Milke, Scott, Styers, and friends and family. After a grueling night-and-day interrogation, Scott broke down and described the events leading up to the killing. He also gave police the location of the child’s corpse. He said they had driven Chris to a desert wash near a place called Happy Valley Road and told him they were about to embark on an activity that would delight any little boy — catching snakes. Then, Scott said, Styers shot the child three times in the back of the head. Scott said the motive was pure hatred. He quoted Styers as saying, “The kid has to go. I just can’t stand him anymore.” Milke, Scott said, also made no secret of wanting to get away from Chris. She had a $5,000 life insurance policy on him, he recalled. After they found the body, Saldate turned his strong-arm interview techniques on Milke and quickly had a confession. “I’m not a malicious person, I just wanted God to take care of him,” Saldate quoted her saying. Milke was the first of the trio to face a jury. Her attorneys tried to get the confession barred, contending she did not understand her rights against self-incrimination when she made the statements. But they were unsuccessful. “Mother convicted of son’s murder,” was the headline of the Arizona Republic on Oct. 13, 1990. Juries reached the same verdict for Styers and Scott. Milke became the third Arizona woman to receive the death penalty. Styers and Scott were also sentenced to death. They are still on death row. In an interview in 1998, Milke told a reporter for the Arizona Republic that she loved her son, had nothing to do with his murder, and that Saldate had made up the confession. She insisted she had never said the things that appeared in his report. Milke, prematurely gray at 34, was isolated in a women’s prison, where other inmates screamed “baby killer” at her whenever she left her cell. “It would be a lot easier to wash the egg off their faces than my blood off their hands after they execute me,” she told the reporter. “They should let me go.” It would take another 17 years, but the state would eventually see things her way. In 2015, a federal appeals court kicked out her conviction, citing misconduct by police, prosecutors, and, especially, the detective who said she had offered a confession although he had no recordings or witnesses to verify his report. The courts also determined that a retrial would be double jeopardy. She was set free to rebuild her life, and filed a wrongful conviction lawsuit against the city, Saldate, and other defendants. Today she travels around the country to speaking engagements where she talks about her decades on death row."
The entire story can be read at:
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Read the Registry of Exonerations entry (by Maurice Possley) at the link below:
On Saturday, December 2, 1989, 42-year-old James Styers asked 25-year-old Debra Milke, who had moved into Styers’ apartment with her four-year-old son, Christopher, following her divorce, if he could borrow her car to do some errands and go to a shopping mall in Phoenix, Arizona.
Christopher, who had been to the mall the previous day and visited the mall’s Santa Claus, asked if he could go with Styers to see Santa again. Since Styers, a family friend, had babysat for Christopher in the past, Milke agreed and stayed home to do laundry.
Shortly before 3 p.m., Styers telephoned Milke and said that he had lost Christopher at the mall. He said he was working with security guards there to find the child and would call the police. After an hour passed and Milke heard nothing further, she called police herself. Police came to the apartment and arranged for a trap and trace on the telephone in the apartment in case the boy had been kidnapped and a ransom call was made.
At the mall, police questioned Styers about how he lost the boy. They also questioned Roger Scott, a friend of Styers, who showed up at the mall while the search for the boy was continuing.
By the next morning, Milke, who was distraught, went to stay with her father in Florence, Arizona with the consent of the police. That same morning, Phoenix police called in Detective Armando Saldate, Jr., to question Styers and Scott. Saldate had a reputation for being able to solve cases through interrogations that resulted in confessions.
Saldate questioned Scott aggressively, threatening to send police to the home of Scott’s elderly mother and conduct a search. Scott, a chronic alcoholic who had several previous head injuries that left him with brain damage and caused frontal lobe seizures, eventually told Saldate that he knew the location of Christopher’s body.
Scott led police into the desert about 20 miles from the mall where they found Christopher, who had been shot three times in the head. Saldate later claimed that Scott implicated Styers and Milke and said the boy was killed to cash in on a $5,000 insurance policy on his life.
Saldate traveled by helicopter to Florence to question Milke. He later claimed that Milke confessed. Although his supervisor had ordered him to tape record the interrogation, Saldate did not do so. Milke was charged with capital murder, conspiracy to commit murder, child abuse and kidnapping. She was taken to Phoenix, where she was subjected to further questioning by other detectives and was shocked to hear that Saldate said that she had confessed. Milke denied confessing and accused Saldate of fabricating her supposed statements.
Milke went to trial in September 1990. Styers, who had told police that Milke was not involved, and Scott, who rejected a prosecution offer to plead guilty to second-degree murder in return for his testimony against Milke, were still awaiting trial.
The prosecution’s primary evidence against Milke was the testimony of Saldate, who claimed that during the interrogation, Milke flashed her breasts at him and offered sex if he would not arrest her. Saldate said Milke admitted she conspired with Styers and Scott to kill the boy to obtain the insurance money. Prior to trial, the defense subpoenaed Saldate’s personnel file in an attempt to discover if there was any evidence that could be used to impeach his testimony. The police department and the prosecution examined Saldate’s file and filed a motion to quash the subpoena. The motion was granted.
No forensic or physical evidence linked Milke to the murder.
Milke denied to the jury that she confessed and accused Saldate of concocting the admissions he testified to.
On October 12, 1990, the jury convicted Milke of all the charges and she was sentenced to death.
Styers and Scott admitted taking part in the abduction and murder, although who actually shot the boy was never completely clear. Styers claimed that Scott was the shooter. Both Styers and Scott were also convicted of capital murder, conspiracy to commit murder, child abuse and kidnapping. Both also were sentenced to death.
In 1993, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld Milke’s convictions and sentence. Over the next nearly four years, attorneys, researchers and investigators for Milke spent almost 7,000 hours going through criminal court records on microfiche from 1982 through 1990 searching for Saldate’s name. The research revealed considerable impeachment evidence against Saldate, including judicial findings of misconduct in eight separate cases.
Despite the findings, Milke was unsuccessful in state post-conviction proceedings and in 1998, she filed a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The writ was denied by a federal district court judge, but in March 2013, the U.S Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted the petition.
In vacating Milke’s convictions and sentence and ordering a new trial, the Court of Appeals held that the prosecution had violated Milke’s constitutional right to a fair trial by failing to turn over the evidence of Saldate’s misconduct. The court said the "egregious misconduct" was a "severe stain on the Arizona justice system.”
“This includes a five-day suspension for taking ‘liberties’ with a female motorist and then lying about it to his supervisors; four court cases where judges tossed out confessions or indictments because Saldate lied under oath; and four cases where judges suppressed confessions or vacated convictions because Saldate had violated the Fifth Amendment or the Fourth Amendment in the course of interrogations,” the Appeals Court said. “And it is far from clear that this reflects a full account of Saldate’s misconduct as a police officer. All of this information should have been disclosed to Milke and the jury, but the state remained unconstitutionally silent.”
When the Maricopa County District Attorney’s office said it would retry Milke, her attorneys, Michael Kimerer and Lori Voepel, filed a motion to dismiss the charges because the prosecutor's conduct was so egregious that a second trial would violate the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy.
In January 2014, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Rosa Mroz denied the motion, ruling that she did not believe that the evidence of Saldate’s misconduct was intentionally concealed or that the original prosecutor, Noel Levy, acted in bad faith.
Meanwhile, in September 2013, Milke was released on bond. In December 2014, the Arizona Court of Appeals, reversed Mroz’s ruling and ordered the charges against Milke dismissed.
In finding that a retrial would violate Milke’s constitutional protection against double jeopardy, the appeals court said, “We are unable to conclude that the long course of (...) violations in this case are anything but a severe stain on the Arizona justice system.”
The prosecution appealed to the Arizone Supreme Court, but in March 2015, the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal. On March 23, Judge Mroz dismissed the charges against Milke. Attorneys for Milke filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Saldate, who had retired, as well as numerous other Phoenix police officers, and the Maricopa County District Attorney’s Office.
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=4660
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;
