Chris Tapp: Idaho: False confession. A marvellous feature article by writer Gareth Evans published by The BBC which explains why a mother fought for her daughter's killer to be freed..."He was jailed for killing her daughter. Then she feared the police had the wrong man."...Tapp trusted the police officers - one of them had worked at his high school - and so he continued to co-operate. Over three weeks, he was interrogated nine times and forced to take seven lie detector tests. His lawyers would later say that he spent more than 100 hours under intense police questioning. Video of those interrogations show an exhausted Tapp, his boyish face in his hands, crying and barely able to speak. "I was broken," Tapp said years later. "There is no other way to explain it. I was just broken and confused and scared. I just wanted to get away from them."
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.’ As all too many of this Blog's post have shown, I also recognize that pressure for false confessions can take many forms, up to and including physical violence, even physical and mental torture.
BACKGROUND: From an Idaho Press story by reporter Tommy Simmons which ran on May 24, 2019. For full background, including the incredible role played by Dr. Greg Hampikian and his colleagues at the then fledgling Idaho Innocence Project read the entire story at the link below: "Sometime between 12:45 a.m. and 1:15 a.m. June 13, 1996, police believe, a man broke into Angie Dodge’s apartment in Idaho Falls and fatally cut her throat. There was also evidence he’d raped her. At the time, officers hypothesized multiple people had been involved in the crime, according to a recent statement from the Idaho Falls Police Department. In January 1997, they began to believe Chris Tapp, then 20 years old, was one of them. Brian Dripps lived across the street from Angie Dodge. He had told police he’d been so drunk on the night of her murder he couldn’t remember any of the people or vehicles he may have seen or interacted with, according to an affidavit, but he was not investigated further. Police kept investigating Tapp, even when they learned his DNA did not match that found at the scene. They still believed he may have been involved in the crime, because they thought it had been committed by multiple people. Tapp confessed his involvement in January 1997 — a confession he later tried to rescind and later said was coerced. Police asked him for the names of other people who may have been involved. None of the information he gave them led to any viable suspect, according to the affidavit. With a withdrawn confession and a lack of a DNA match, a Bonneville County jury in May 1998 convicted Tapp of the rape and murder of Dodge. A key witness in the case against Tapp — who had been 18 years old at the time — recanted her testimony this week, claiming she, too, was coerced by police and fed information, according to the Post Register. In December 1998, a judge sentenced Tapp to prison for 30 years to life and ruled he would be eligible for parole after 20 years. The Idaho Falls Police Department had never matched the DNA evidence taken from Angie Dodge’s apartment on the night she died. All that officers knew was that it did not belong to Tapp. About 12 to 13 years ago, an attorney working with a Boise State student on another Idaho Innocence Project case suggested they look into Tapp's case, Hampikian said. The Idaho Innocence Project was still in its infancy and working on its first cases — that of Sarah Pearce, who was convicted in a brutal attack of a Canyon County motorist and later released after the project got involved. Tapp's case became the Idaho Innocence Project's second. None of the DNA evidence in the case was tested at Boise State, for legal reasons, Hampikian said, but the project worked with the Idaho Falls Police Department nonetheless. The department contracted with a private company, Parabon NanoLabs, ultimately using the genealogical techniques project members told them about, in order to secure Dripps’ arrest. The technique is a new one, and it's controversial, but it has been effective at solving cold cases across the country. Hampikian said the Idaho Falls Police Department was the first department to use it. Scientists use the DNA evidence to build a profile of the suspect. They then cross-reference that profile with other records, such as Census data, vital data, newspaper archives, and information publicly available through ancestry websites, according to the Idaho Falls Police Department. Once they pinpoint a likely ancestor of the DNA sample's owner, they build a family tree using more records. That, eventually, creates a pool of suspects. After that, police collected evidence "surreptitiously" — in this case, they waited until Dripps tossed a cigarette out a car window, then tested the DNA on the cigarette butt. It matched the DNA collected in 1996 from Angie Dodge's apartment..................Meanwhile, Tapp remained in prison. Back then, in Idaho, as long as they had an “actual claim of innocence,” an inmate could ask for additional DNA testing to help prove their innocence — but only if they did so within a year of their conviction. Tapp hadn’t done that, and since he started his sentence in 1998, forensic DNA had evolved. Additionally, Idaho, alongside Mississippi, had some of the most restrictive laws governing post-conviction DNA tests. Such cases are why current Ada County Commissioner Rick Visser, who was then serving as the Idaho Innocence Project’s legal director, wanted to change the law......... Gov. Butch Otter signed it into law the first day it appeared on his desk. That law, Visser said, “would open the door for Chris Tapp to make that claim (for DNA testing) 17, 18 years after the murder.”..............Prosecutors offered to reverse the rape charge against Tapp, because the DNA evidence from the rape kit did not belong to him. They also asked the judge to amend Tapp’s sentence to “time served” — meaning he’d served the appropriate amount of time in prison — but they did not drop the murder conviction.For a prisoner, being confronted with such a deal is “mind-blowing,” Hampikian said.At the time prosecutors offered Tapp the deal, he had been in prison for about two decades. Dripps had not been arrested, and there were no DNA matches in the case.Tapp took the deal and was released in March 2017.
STORY: Why a mother fought for her daughter's killer to be freed," by Broadcast Journalist Gareth Evans published by BBC News, on March 12, 2020.
SUB-HEADING: "He was jailed for killing her daughter. Then she feared the police had the wrong man."
ORGANIZATION:
CHAPTER 1: THE KILLING;
CHAPTER 2: THE CONFESSION;
CHAPTER 3: A MOTHER'S SEARCH;
CHAPTER 4: GETTING OUT;
CHAPTER 5: THE HUNT;
CHAPTER 6: JUSTICE;
GIST: (A section related to Chris Tapp's false confession...The entire article deserves to be read in its entirety. Bravo to Writer Gareth Evans and to the BBC. It is a fitting tribute to Carol Dodge - a mother extraordinaire and great human being. And the DNA angle in the case that led to Chris Tapp's exoneration marks a pivotal moment in forensic science. Read on!)..."January 1997, seven months after the murder of Angie Dodge. In neighbouring Nevada, Christopher Tapp's best friend, Benjamin Hobbs, was arrested for raping a woman at knifepoint. Investigators thought this crime resembled the killing of Angie. Hobbs, who was from Idaho Falls and knew her well, became their number one suspect. The police tried to build a case around him and Tapp was asked to come in for questioning.
"I instantly said: I don't know anything. I can't help you. I have no idea what you guys are talking about'," Tapp said. He told them he had been with a girl on the night Angie was murdered.But the detectives, who had initially just wanted to ask him about Hobbs, came to believe both men had been involved in the killing. They wanted to see if Tapp had any information implicating his friend, although Tapp continued to deny all knowledge of the crime. Tapp trusted the police officers - one of them had worked at his high school - and so he continued to co-operate. Over three weeks, he was interrogated nine times and forced to take seven lie detector tests. His lawyers would later say that he spent more than 100 hours under intense police questioning. Video of those interrogations show an exhausted Tapp, his boyish face in his hands, crying and barely able to speak. "I was broken," Tapp said years later. "There is no other way to explain it. I was just broken and confused and scared. I just wanted to get away from them." The detectives offered him full immunity - meaning he could not be jailed - as long as he told the truth. When he continued to deny all knowledge of the crime he was told by a polygraph examiner he was failing the tests. "The machine never lies," the examiner said. He told investigators what he thought they wanted to hear. He said Hobbs had murdered Dodge. Then, after further polygraphs and interrogations, and after one detective threatened him with the "gas chamber", he said he had been in the apartment with Hobbs when Angie was killed. He told six different stories. "I just gave them whatever information they wanted because I thought it would get me out of the situation," Tapp said. But there was a problem. DNA tests on Tapp and Hobbs came back negative - it was not their semen at the crime scene. The detectives, now on the back foot, suggested a third man may have been involved. Tapp implicated another friend, a man called Jeremy Sargis, but his DNA test was also negative. The detectives claimed Tapp had been untruthful and voided his immunity agreement completely. During a polygraph test on 30 January 1997, Tapp denied eight times that he had stabbed Angie Dodge. The police told him he was facing the death penalty and could get a more lenient sentence if he said he had feared for his life during the attack. Tapp was told he needed to admit this to save his life.
Detective: If you were forced to do it in fear of your own life, that's a different story. We could go with a different charge rather than life imprisonment or death. I'm a cop, I shouldn't be saying this, but I'm kinda close to you. You gotta save your life, period. You got forced into doing something you didn't want to do. Protect your own ass. You got trapped.
Tapp: Alright.
Detective: Did Ben Hobbs force you to cut Angie Dodge across the right breast with a knife or he said he would kill you?
Tapp:Yes.
After this apparent admission, Tapp asked how he had performed and the detective shook his hand. Hobbs and Sargis were both released, but Tapp, to his surprise, and despite the fact that no physical evidence linked him to the scene, was charged with murder and rape. "I tried to save myself and just continued to put myself further and further down the rabbit hole," he said. "Then they actually charged me. It was heartbreaking. I knew that this might be the end."
Christopher Tapp plans to sue the city of Idaho Falls and that action is ongoing. His story has inspired a new bill that aims to ensure wrongfully convicted people in Idaho are fairly compensated by the state.
Carol Dodge has launched a fundraising project, 5 for Hope, which is raising money to solve cold cases around the US. The challenge is enormous. Between 1980 and 2008, there were an estimated 185,000 cases of murder and manslaughter that remained unsolved.
The entire article can be read at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51759981
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.htmlPlease 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;
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;