PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "We took a break around midnight. They gave me some food. We took a couple flights upstairs to the room equipped to take fingerprints. They take five, six sets of fingerprints. They kept throwing pictures of her body in my face. “You’re sick, we want to get you help,” they said. Toward the end, toward the signing, I say I want an attorney. They were trying to get me to sign a paper waiving my rights. They said they’d get me an attorney but you gotta sign this first. They were messing with my head real bad. They said, “If you don’t sign this confession, we’re going to take you downstairs and put you with a bunch of n****** and say you killed a bunch of n***** children, and see what happens.” A few times I had managed to try to get out to try to use the phone but they grabbed me. I’m so out of it and all, I’m just, by that time I must have been up 48 hours straight. They kept on badgering, badgering. They kinda had me believing it. My autism, my Asperger’s, I had no sleep. I did not get out until 7 the next morning. I was thrown in the holding cells."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "I want to do advocacy, to abolish the death penalty in Pennsylvania. It needs to be done, especially in Pennsylvania. After 28 years, you have no idea how much is still burning in me. I want to see everyone connected to my case, the detectives, especially the DAs and the coroner, I want to see them punished. I want to go after everyone that had a part in this. I want to make it so expensive for the city that this has to change. It’s painful, but I gotta use this pain to help other people."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "I want to do advocacy, to abolish the death penalty in Pennsylvania. It needs to be done, especially in Pennsylvania. After 28 years, you have no idea how much is still burning in me. I want to see everyone connected to my case, the detectives, especially the DAs and the coroner, I want to see them punished. I want to go after everyone that had a part in this. I want to make it so expensive for the city that this has to change. It’s painful, but I gotta use this pain to help other people."
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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.’ 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.
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog:
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BACKGROUND: "Four years after the naked and battered body of Barbara Jean Horn was found in a trash bag in Philadelphia, the police had made no arrests despite having a series of suspects. Ogrod was not considered a suspect in the 1988 murder of 4-year-old Barbara Jean Horn until three years after her body was found. He had no criminal record and didn’t match the physical description of the man seen carrying the box Horn was found in. There were no signs of sexual assault on her body. Ogrod was described by acquaintances as unable to make decisions for himself and easily manipulated due to a mental disability. He confessed to the murder and attempted assault after an unrecorded interrogation by detectives Martin Devlin and Paul Worrell, who obtained false confessions that led to exonerations in at least two other cases. His retrial (the first ended in a mistrial) included a notorious jailhouse informant known as “the Monsignor” due to his apparent knack for hearing confessions. Ogrod was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996. (Patricia) Cummings (Supervisor Conviction Integrity Unit) wrote Saturday that Devlin and Worrell “utilized inherently coercive tactics and inaccurate information to obtain a false and unreliable confession from Ogrod; and jailhouse informants colluded to provide false and unreliable testimony against Ogrod in an effort to procure favorable treatment in their own criminal prosecutions.” No credible evidence remains that can prove Ogrod killed Horn, which means Horn’s real murderer remains unknown and may have committed other crimes, Cummings wrote.
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STORY: "Exoneree Walter Ogrod in his own words," by John Seasley, published by Injustice Watch on July 9, 2020. (John Seasly (reporter) has served as a reporter on the investigative team at The Record in North Jersey, a staff writer at the Dubois County Herald in southern Indiana and a graduate fellow at Medill Watchdog. At Watchdog, John was part of the team that produced the award-winning multimedia series "Harsh Treatment," the most comprehensive look ever at youth residential treatment in America, done in collaboration with the Chicago Tribune.)
GIST: "Walter Ogrod walked out of prison on June 5. Ogrod, 56, spent nearly a quarter-century on death row for the 1988 killing of 4-year-old Barbara Jean Horn, which remains unsolved. His trial involved a false confession, jailhouse informants and evidence withheld from his defense attorney. Ogrod was one of 25 people profiled in Injustice Watch’s “Unrequited Innocence” series, which examined cases where people who were likely innocent were sentenced to death and have not been exonerated. Ogrod is so far the only subject of that series to be exonerated. In one of his first interviews since he was released, he spoke with Injustice Watch about his interrogation, his experience in prison, and his new life as a free man.
On the police interrogation that ended in a false confession:
I had been up since 8 [a.m.] that Saturday. Maybe just before noon on Sunday I called the detectives–see they came to my house a few days earlier. The landlord got the card from them. They said it was only going to take an hour. I got there at 1:30 [p.m.], they told me to sit in the little waiting area. I must have been waiting there at least an hour. I start drifting off. I say I’m going, that I’m sleepy and I don’t want to crash on my way home. They put me in the interrogation room, detectives Martin Devlin and Paul Worrell. They start, at least for the next hour, asking for basic information. Where I live, why’d you move. They asked me what did I remember about the case, what did I remember happening that day. [This was almost four years after Barbara Jean’s body was found.] I told them I came back from work, I didn’t see no kids. I see Mrs. Green who lived there. I asked why it was so quiet. She said the older kids, they took all the young kids to the local rec center for the pool out there, which they usually do. I told them I went to the store, came back. Some time later, I seen Mr. Fahy come to the door asking if I’d seen Barbara Jean. He was in a panic. He said maybe she was at a friend’s house. They asked a lot about her stepfather, how he was to the mother and the child. I thought he was her actual father, I didn’t know. They said they heard she didn’t want her daughter coming to the house. The Greens were like vagabonds, they were unkempt, they were selling drugs.They asked what did we hear. I told them we heard about the box being found, but they’re not sure if the child was her. Later on that night we heard it was her. Then they start asking what do you remember reading in papers and on TV. Something seemed unusual, but then again, they wanted to know what was going on, what I had known. I got a weird feeling, but it wasn’t until after they said the interview was done, I go for the door, and they slam it shut on me. They said, “We believe you done it. We’re keeping you here all night.” They kept locking the door. They handcuffed me to the chair. I asked for a phone call for a lawyer. I said I have a right to a phone call, they said no, no, we’ll get to it later. It went all night like that. They started putting pictures of her body in front of my face. They didn’t go like in order, they kept skipping from one part to another. Devlin, he was the creative one. Worrell was sometimes making suggestions, like “How could this happen when you said this earlier?” I’m dozing off all the time. They shake me awake, give me coffee. They made a sketch of the alley to my house [near where Barbara Jean’s body was found.] “The person was supposed to go this way,” he said. He takes my hand, goes straight down the alley and makes a right. “This is the way.” If they’d seen me, why not arrest my ass earlier? Devlin was getting mad. “Then you went down this way.” I was so dead tired I didn’t know what was going on. Then they were asking questions about the body, or how I got it in the house. Mrs. Green was in the house, then she wasn’t. “You can’t decide whether someone’s in the house or not,” they said. They asked me what’d I do with the blood. There was no blood spatter in that house. They claimed I wanted to take her downstairs and wanted to play doctor with her. In those homes out there, you could easily hear everything. You could hear every sound through the vents. They said I made her kneel so she could give me a blowjob. They said she started crying so I took this weight bar and swung it. Impossible. If you put your arm up, you’d hit the rafters an inch above your wrist. There’s no way I could have swung a bar going down the way they have it. No possible way. Even if I’m on the first floor, I still couldn’t do it there. We took a break around midnight. They gave me some food. We took a couple flights upstairs to the room equipped to take fingerprints. They take five, six sets of fingerprints. They kept throwing pictures of her body in my face. “You’re sick, we want to get you help,” they said. Toward the end, toward the signing, I say I want an attorney. They were trying to get me to sign a paper waiving my rights. They said they’d get me an attorney but you gotta sign this first. They were messing with my head real bad. They said, “If you don’t sign this confession, we’re going to take you downstairs and put you with a bunch of n****** and say you killed a bunch of n***** children, and see what happens.” A few times I had managed to try to get out to try to use the phone but they grabbed me. I’m so out of it and all, I’m just, by that time I must have been up 48 hours straight. They kept on badgering, badgering. They kinda had me believing it. My autism, my Asperger’s, I had no sleep. I did not get out until 7 the next morning. I was thrown in the holding cells."
On hearing the jury sentence him to death:
When they said death I kind of like, just froze there holding the table, thinking I was going to fall over. It hit me, but I didn’t feel nothing. It took me awhile. Then I thought, just get it over with. I don’t feel like waiting 20-something years like some of these people who lose their appeal.
On life on death row at State Correctional Institution – Greene:
Over the years, different superintendents always take out their frustrations on us. In ’98 we called it ‘the massacre of ourselves.’ One superintendent had us strip ourselves of everything. All our legal work was shipped off or destroyed. You’re in your cell 22 hours a day. You get two hours out Monday through Friday. A dog kennel gets more space than what we got for exercise. The guards were complete assholes. There were some decent ones, but mostly complete assholes. Charles Graner, [who was convicted of war crimes at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq] he was a guard at Greene. He beat prisoners.
On the long wait of his appeal:
I thought, if anything is going to happen, I thought I was going to get life. Some attorneys, they just want to get you life and that’s it, for their resume. It’s too slow. You sit in your cell doing nothing. You just go nuts. It feels like the walls are closing in on you. At the time making a phone call, the charge was outrageous and to reverse charges it’s double that. My friend had a $5,000 phone bill.
On the June 5 hearing that led to his release and exoneration:
When [assistant district attorney Carrie Wood] started crying, that kind of got to me. She got my case the day she was hired there and she’s been on it since day one. To hear it like that… When she was continuing to cry it just felt weird. I can’t even really describe it, to hear a DA crying to any exoneree. I don’t think any DA has ever done anything like that. That wasn’t some phony thing. She was really, it was getting to her, all the stuff she’s seen. How dare they do this to an innocent man, how dare they do this to this mother. I just wanted to talk to her and tell her to calm down and all.
On walking out of prison:
I loved it. I loved it. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I just had to get out of there. After the hearing, I went back to my cell on my block. The superintendent had called down and told them to get me the fuck out of there. I had an hour and a half. I had to rush. I tried to leave some stuff for someone to use, a typewriter. I’m still getting used to this iPhone, that’s for sure. I’m way behind putting stuff on my Facebook. I’m behind. I got a bum leg. If I walk for a while the pain goes into the other leg. A lot of the pain went away when I got the bed I’m sleeping on. I want to get rid of [the pain] so I can enjoy what’s left of the summer. I want to do advocacy, to abolish the death penalty in Pennsylvania. It needs to be done, especially in Pennsylvania. After 28 years, you have no idea how much is still burning in me. I want to see everyone connected to my case, the detectives, especially the DAs and the coroner, I want to see them punished. I want to go after everyone that had a part in this. I want to make it so expensive for the city that this has to change.
It’s painful, but I gotta use this pain to help other people."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.injusticewatch.org/news/2020/exoneree-walter-ogrod-in-his-own-words/
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;
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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;
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