Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog:
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GIST: "Hosted by reporter Maurice Chammah, "Smoke Screen: Just Say You're Sorry" takes listeners inside Texas Ranger James Holland's questionable interrogation tactics, which elicited a murder confession from a man who claimed to have no memory of committing the crime. The podcast debuts on May 1, but the trailer is out and you can listen to new episodes each Monday wherever you get your podcasts or on our website."
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Read 'Marshall Project' backgrounder on this new podcast at the link below. It's by Maurice Chammah - and contains a link to a transcript of the first episode:
In a Texas Cold Case, a
Potential Murder Witness
Slowly Realizes He’s a Suspect
In ‘Just Say You’re Sorry,’ a new Marshall
Project podcast, we meet a famed Texas Ranger
and a prisoner who says he was railroaded:
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“Would you confess to a crime you didn’t commit?
It’s hard to imagine. But what if the police told you they had proof of your involvement in a decade-old cold case? And what if they suggested you just didn’t remember committing the crime?
A couple of years ago, I learned about the case of Larry Driskill, who claimed that a Texas Ranger had manipulated him — through lies and other coercive tactics — into a false confession to the murder of Bobbie Sue Hill, a 29-year-old mother of five.
Pretty quickly I learned that Driskill, a 52-year-old Air Force veteran, had not confessed to just any detective. Texas Ranger James Holland was famous for eliciting confessions, especially from serial killers.
He’d been credited with obtaining dozens of confessions from a California prisoner named Samuel Little, whom the Federal Bureau of Investigation was calling the “most prolific” murderer in U.S. history.
In the summer of 2021, I drove out to a remote prison to interview Driskill. I immersed myself in hours of audio and video from the interrogation room, and called psychologists to help me understand what I was hearing. I called up dozens of people connected to the case and Holland’s career — including Holland himself, who declined to be interviewed.
This all led to a story called “Anatomy of a Murder Confession,” which I published last year. But in a new podcast from The Marshall Project, Somethin’ Else, and Sony Music Entertainment, we go deeper.
In Episode 1, “Not That I Recall,” I describe how I first encountered Larry Driskill, and how he first encountered the Texas Ranger who would change the course of his life.
Listen to new episodes each Monday, through the player at the top of this page, or wherever you get your podcasts."
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/05/01/texas-rangers-cold-case-murder-suspect
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. 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;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
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