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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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Moses advocates for the use of recorded interrogations and double-blind lineups, in which officers who lack knowledge of the potential suspect present photos to crime witnesses or victims. Critics charge that the single-blind system, whether deliberately or unintentionally, could steer a witness to identify someone who the police already deemed to be a potential suspect. A single-blind lineup was used in Moses’ case and — along with the signed confession statement — contributed to his wrongful conviction. In 2013, two witnesses who originally testified against Moses recanted their testimonies. One wrote that a detective pressured him to select Moses’ photo out of the lineup, and the other wrote that she had never identified anyone in the lineup, and had only said that one person “looked familiar.” Following the affidavits and a sworn statement from another individual stating that he was the actual shooter, the state of New York threw out Moses’ conviction in 2018, five years after his parole. As he prepared to go on parole in 2013, Moses vowed to do everything he could to support wrongfully incarcerated individuals."
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STORY: "Sundhe Moses: From a convicted murderer to a “symbol of hope” for the wrongly incarcerated," by Reporter Harper Barnowski, published by 'The Sentinel, on July 3, 2023. (This story was written while reporting for The School of The New York Times.)
GIST: On December 3, 2013, Sundhe Moses walked out of New York’s Bare Hill Correctional Facility, a free man for the first time in 18 years.
He had just been granted parole for the 1995 fatal shooting of four-year-old Shamone Johnson after multiple witnesses who offered evidence against him recanted, and another man confessed to the crime.
Moses had been in jail for almost half of his life, and he didn’t know how to use a MetroCard, search Google, or even take the train.
Moses was born in Brooklyn, New York as the youngest of eight siblings.
At the age of 19, Moses was the father of an 8-month-old and was attending community college. While he didn’t know what he wanted to do when he grew up, he wanted it to be “something great.”
But whatever dream he envisioned for himself was destroyed the moment he was arrested. Charged with murder, Moses was put on trial, convicted, and received a 24-year-to-life sentence.
Unfortunately, Moses’ experience isn’t unique. Wrongful convictions are a national dilemma, including in Maryland — where 50 people have been exonerated since 1968.
“It’s a very broken system when you look at all of the components,” Moses said. “The reality is that you have some innocent people that will never get out.”
Moses blames several procedures within the current justice system that wrongly implicated him in the 1990s, especially interrogations and lineups.
According to a 2021 report by the Maryland Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention, Youth, and Victim Services, 76.1% of interrogation rooms in the state are equipped with audio or visual recording technology.
However, 65.6% of agencies with at least one interrogation room reported that neither audio nor visual recording devices were used during interrogations.
During his interrogation, Moses describes being beaten, choked, and forced to strip by detectives. But none of this conduct was recorded.
“They just wanted a confession,” Moses said. “They would do anything, and I started to see that.”
Louis Scarcella, one of the officers who Moses accuses of beating, choking, and stripping him, has been involved in numerous convictions thrown out for irregularities in police conduct, including allegedly acquiring false witnesses and confessions.
To escape his abuse, Moses falsely confessed. Moses believed that he could simply tell the judge that he was forced into signing his name, but the jury was not convinced. He now harbors an intense distrust towards the police force, he said.
“There are many situations where the trust of a cop or the trust of a public servant was betrayed,” Moses said. “For every person that is wrongfully convicted, the real perpetrator goes free and can commit another crime.”
After witnessing numerous decades-old wrongful incarcerations come to light, Shahabuddeen Ally, a supervising judge in the New York City Civil Court, and a former criminal court judge, believes that identifying suspects out of lineups is crucial in criminal cases, but also problematic — as an alarming number of cases that have been reinvestigated in recent years have shown.
“You can’t find five guys who are bald [like the perpetrator], so you put little ski caps on,” Ally said, explaining some of the techniques used. “It happens all the time.”
Moses advocates for the use of recorded interrogations and double-blind lineups, in which officers who lack knowledge of the potential suspect present photos to crime witnesses or victims.
Critics charge that the single-blind system, whether deliberately or unintentionally, could steer a witness to identify someone who the police already deemed to be a potential suspect.
A single-blind lineup was used in Moses’ case and — along with the signed confession statement — contributed to his wrongful conviction.
In 2013, two witnesses who originally testified against Moses recanted their testimonies.
One wrote that a detective pressured him to select Moses’ photo out of the lineup, and the other wrote that she had never identified anyone in the lineup, and had only said that one person “looked familiar.”
Following the affidavits and a sworn statement from another individual stating that he was the actual shooter, the state of New York threw out Moses’ conviction in 2018, five years after his parole.
As he prepared to go on parole in 2013, Moses vowed to do everything he could to support wrongfully incarcerated individuals. In the years since, he has opened a restaurant in Brooklyn and has received a multi-million dollar settlement from the city of New York.
But to this day, he continues to share his story with others to spread awareness about the reality of wrongful convictions.
“There were many times where I doubted that I would ever come out,” Moses said. “I feel that if I can spread the word and educate people about how wrongful convictions can happen, somewhere in this country, someone will be spared of the experience of what I had to go through.”
The entire story can be read at:
article_14069b22-19b5-11ee-bd93-fb6ade9bf640.html
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For excellent background, read author Maurice Possley's National Registry of Exonerations entry at the link below.
GIST: On August 27, 1995, three men, one dribbling a basketball, strolled up to a public housing project in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Two of the men opened fire with handguns, killing four-year-old Shamone Johnson, who was roller-skating. Four others were wounded: 8-year-old Alfonso Harris, 13-year-old Charrie Mitchell, 16-year-old Lamont Moore, and 19-year-old Alex Moore.
The two gunmen got into a car where a third man was waiting and sped off.
Police focused their investigation on two 19-year-old men—Terrence Morgan and Sundhe Moses. Both were charged with second-degree murder and four counts of assault, as well as criminal possession of a weapon. They went to trial separately in Kings County Supreme Court. Morgan was acquitted of all but the weapons charge. Moses, however, was convicted of all charges and sentenced to 24 1/3 years to life in prison.
Moses was suspected after Larry Cole who lived in the housing project where the shooting occurred, told police he had had heard on the street that Moses was involved. Cole had a history with Moses, who lived in the same housing project. In 1989, Cole tossed boiling water on the then-13-year-old Moses, causing burns on his abdomen and arm. Moses’s mother got an order of protection against Cole. Cole was also ordered to pay restitution, although he never did.
On August 30, 1995, three days after the shooting, New York police detective Robert Schulman showed a photographic array containing Moses’s photo to Sharron Ivory, a witness to the shooting. Schulman reported that Ivory identified Moses as one of the two gunmen. Schulman also reported that Octavia Moore, another eyewitness, selected Moses’s photograph as well.
On September 1, 1995, Schulman conducted a live lineup and reported that Octavia Moore identified Moses again. Moore’s brother, Lamont, who had been wounded, also viewed the lineup, but did not identify anyone. Schulman conducted a separate lineup that same day for Ivory and Alex Moore, who was Lamont’s brother and who had been wounded as well. Schulman said Ivory identified Moses, but Alex Moore identified a filler.
Detective Joseph Falcone said that by the end of the day, Moses had confessed to being one of the gunmen. As a result, Moses was charged with second-degree murder, four counts of assault, and criminal possession of a weapon.
Moses went to trial in April 1997. Octavia Moore testified that she identified the gunman as the person in the #1 spot in the lineup—which was Moses. However, when asked if she saw the gunman in court, she said she did not. She testified that that the person she identified was a light-skinned black man, unlike Moses, who had dark skin.
When Ivory testified, he also said he did not see the gunman in the courtroom.
Detective Falcone testified that he and his partner questioned Moses, who initially denied involvement in the shooting and claimed he was at the home of a friend, Raynelle Clinkscale, playing video games at the time of the shooting. Falcone testified that about 30 to 40 minutes into the interrogation, however, Moses admitted that he, Morgan, and third man he did not know went to the housing project and committed the crime. He said that he and Morgan fired the shots while the third man drove a getaway car.
Moses testified that at the time of his arrest, he was enrolled in community college. He said that he was at Raynelle’s house at the time of the crime. After he appeared in the lineups, he was taken to an interrogation room where, during the course of the day, at least five different detectives took turns questioning him.
Moses said that after repeatedly denying involvement, Detective Louis Scarcella struck him in the face. Other detectives held Moses down while Scarcella choked him. Moses said he was terrified because he did not know what else the detectives might do, so he ultimately admitted to the crime. He said that when he signed the statement—which he had not prepared—he tried to smudge his signature as a way of signaling that he was not acting voluntarily.
Detective Scarcella testified that his only involvement in the case was to arrest Moses on the orders of his superiors. He claimed he left the station around 11 a.m. that day and was not present when Moses signed the statement.
Clinkscale’s mother, Renee Flowers, testified that she came to her father’s apartment that day and found Clinkscale and Moses playing video games. She made dinner and they all left the apartment shortly after 10 p.m.—hours after the shooting had occurred.
On April 14, 1997, the jury convicted Moses and he was sentenced to 24 1/3 years to life in prison.
His appeals were unsuccessful. However, in May 2013, the Kings County District Attorney’s Office wrote to Sundhe that his conviction was under review by the office’s conviction review unit because of Scarcella’s involvement.
The exoneration in March 2013 of David Ranta for a Brooklyn murder triggered the investigation of Scarcella and about 70 murder cases connected to him. Evidence showed that Scarcella had coerced witnesses to falsely identify Ranta as the killer. After Ranta was released, The New York Timespublished an article accusing Scarcella, who retired in 1999, of misconduct in many investigations, including fabricating evidence, coercing witnesses, and concealing evidence of defendants’ innocence.
On December 3, 2013, Moses was released on parole, despite his refusal to admit involvement in the crime. Moses’s lawyers, Ron Kuby and Leah Busby, presented the evidence of Scarcella’s involvement as well as recantations by Octavia Moore and Sharron Ivory to the parole board.
Moore signed an affidavit saying that contrary to her testimony at trial, she never identified anyone positively. Rather, she had said one of the men in the lineup “looked familiar.” When she got to court, she realized that the man she said was familiar was not Moses.
Ivory also signed an affidavit saying that when he was shown the photographic lineup, he did not see either of the gunmen. However, the detective pointed to Moses and told him to pick him out. Ivory said that when he came to court, he refused to identify Moses because he felt he was no longer under the control of the police or prosecution.
Over the next two years, the prosecution’s review of other Scarcella cases resulted in the dismissal of murder convictions of Shabaka Shakur, Roger Logan, Derrick Hamilton, Robert Hill, Alvena Jennette, Darryl Austin, and Carlos Davis.
In July 2015, Kuby filed motion to vacate Moses’s convictions, citing the evidence of Scarcella’s misconduct as well as the recantations of Sharron Ivory and Octavia Moore. In addition, Terrence Morgan provided a sworn statement admitting that he was involved in the shooting and that Moses was not involved. Morgan said that the other gunman was a man he knew as “JuJu,” who had been murdered a few years after the shooting.
Morgan said the shooting was in retaliation for the murder of Benjamin “Killer Ben” O’Garro on August 17, 1995—10 days earlier. O’Garro was fatally shot standing at a pay phone in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. According to Morgan, O’Garro was murdered because he stole jewelry from rapper Notorious B.I.G at an awards ceremony.
In 2016 and 2017, two more people convicted of murders in which Scarcella played a role—Vanessa Gathers and Jabbar Washington—were exonerated following re-investigations by the Kings County Conviction Review Unit.
In January 2018, Kings County Supreme Court Justice Dineen Riviezzo granted the motion for a new trial and vacated Moses’s convictions. The judge ruled that had the evidence of Scarcella’s misconduct been presented to the jury in Moses’s trial, he might have been acquitted.
Justice Riviezzo cited the ruling by another judge in the Shakur case that noted Scarcella “had a propensity to embellish or fabricate statements.”
On February 16, 2018, the prosecution dismissed the charges. Moses was the 11th Scarcella-related dismissal.
In May 2018, John Bunn and Rosean Hargrave became the 12th and 13th exonerations connected to Scarcella.
In July 2018, Shawn Williams became the 14th exoneration connected to Scarcella.
Moses received a $3.7 million settlement from the City of New York in 2019. He also filed a claim in the New York Court of Claims which he settled in 2020 for $3,500,000.
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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/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
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.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
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