Ken Armstrong, Steve Mills and Maurice Possley, Tribune Watchdog Investigation: Cops and Confessions. Chicago Tribune, 16 December 2001. 6-Part Series, December 2001-January 2002. Part 1: Coercive and illegal tactics torpedo scores of Cook County murder cases. “Substituting interrogation for thorough investigation, police in Chicago and Cook County have repeatedly closed murder cases with dubious confessions that imprison the innocent while killers go free.” Part 2: Veteran detective’s murder cases unravel. “Some statements cop has extracted stand out for way they fall through.” Part 3: Officers ignore laws set up to guard kids. “Detectives grill minors without juvenile officers or parents present.” Part 4: When jail is no alibi in murders. “Just as [Daniel Taylor] was going to be formally charged with two counts of murder [to which he had previously confessed], Taylor protested to detectives that he could not have committed the crimes because he had been in police custody when they occurred.” Part 5: DNA voids murder confession. By Kirsten Scharnberg and Steve Mills. “In the first case of a videotaped murder confession unraveling in Cook County, a man who was recorded saying he stabbed his mother was freed on Friday after DNA tests linked another man to the crime.” Part 6: Cops urged to tape their interrogations. By Steve Mills and Michael Higgins. “Chicago videotapes only confessions.”
Winner of the 2001 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism.
Part 1: Coercive and illegal tactics torpedo scores of Cook County murder cases.
Substituting interrogation for thorough investigation, police in Chicago and Cook County have repeatedly closed murder cases with dubious confessions that imprison the innocent while killers go free.
In the first investigation of its kind, the Tribune examined thousands of murder cases filed in Cook County since 1991 and found at least 247 where police obtained incriminating statements that were thrown out by the courts as tainted or failed to secure a conviction.
Some crimes offer little in the way of physical evidence or eyewitnesses and would go unsolved were it not for a confession. But the newspaper’s investigation revealed case after case in which confessions were untrustworthy or unconvincing in the eyes of jurors and judges. And these cases only hint at the depth of the problems involving one of law enforcement’s most potent tools.
Police have obtained confessions from men who, according to records, were in jail when the crime occurred. They have obtained confessions refuted by DNA evidence. They have obtained confessions that contradicted the facts of the crime….
In the past 10 years, Chicago police have obtained confessions from three people who produced records showing they were in jail when the murder occurred. In addition, 14 other people confessed to the murders — and said one of the men with a jail alibi committed it with them.
Two of the men with jail alibis were set free. But Daniel Taylor was convicted and sentenced to life without parole. A Tribune investigation of that murder has turned up new evidence, including crucial social service records and police reports, that bolsters Taylor’s alibi and undercuts the prosecution’s case.
While the paper found numerous examples of defendants who appeared to have been wrongly charged through a false confession, it is likely that some defendants were guilty. But by making illegal arrests, resorting to improper interrogation tactics or failing to investigate other evidence aggressively, police contributed to them going free….
Over the years, appeals courts have tried to provide guidelines governing police interrogations, but few clearly delineate between improper techniques and permissible ones.
When police arrest a suspect, they must give him his Miranda warning, which includes the right to remain silent and the right to have an attorney present. If a suspect invokes either right, questioning must cease. In addition, police must not use force or the threat of force to obtain a confession.
But beyond those principles lies a world of gray. Promises of leniency are generally forbidden — but not always. Lying to a suspect is generally allowed — but not always.
The overarching rule is that a confession must be voluntary. To determine that, courts look at “the totality of the circumstances” to decide whether a suspect’s will was overcome. That means evaluating each case individually, matching the interrogation techniques used against a particular suspect’s background and vulnerabilities. Techniques deemed proper in one case might be condemned in another….
Many defendants have accused police of extracting confessions with physical force. This year, a judge threw out the murder confession of a man who alleged Chicago police beat him and used a stun gun on his genitals.
Murder suspects in Cook County have claimed that they signed false confessions because they had been deprived of food, sleep or use of a bathroom, or held for so long they simply gave in. Some said they were coerced with promises of being released or with threats such as having their children taken away….
Part 2: Veteran detective’s murder cases unravel.
A Tribune investigation of thousands of murder cases filed in Cook County from 1991 through 2000 found that Boudreau and other city detectives had been involved in a wide range of cases that ultimately collapsed even though police obtained a confession.
One veteran detective has been assailed by defense attorneys and questioned by judges for getting a string of questionable confessions from juveniles. One recently retired detective played a part in at least eight cases in which police obtained a murder confession but the courts ruled the arrest was illegal–often a precursor to a disputed confession.
But Boudreau stands out not only for the number of his cases that have fallen apart, but for the reasons.
In those cases, Boudreau has been accused by defendants of punching, slapping or kicking them; interrogating a juvenile without a youth officer present; and of taking advantage of mentally retarded suspects and others with low IQs….
Part 3: Officers ignore laws set up to guard kids.
Putting pressure to confess on the most vulnerable of suspects, police in Chicago and Cook County have repeatedly flouted the law while interrogating juveniles, disregarding decades-old safeguards and building murder cases that later fall apart.
Since 1991, police from Cook County law enforcement agencies have obtained at least 71 murder confessions from suspects age 16 and under that were so unconvincing or improper that the courts threw them out, prosecutors dropped the charges or the juveniles were acquitted at trial, a Tribune investigation has found….
Recognizing the vulnerability of youth–that minors are more likely to forfeit rights and confess to crimes they did not commit–lawmakers and judges have directed police to provide juvenile suspects with more protection than adults, particularly in the high-pressure confines of the interrogation room….
The Tribune review of murder cases shows that police detectives have frequently failed to notify youth officers before interrogating juveniles. Often, court records show, detectives contacted a youth officer only after getting a confession–too late for the officer to provide counsel on constitutional protections against self-incrimination.
Two years ago, the Illinois Appellate Court spelled out the duties of a youth officer.
When police detain a juvenile, a youth officer should make sure the juvenile knows his rights and that his parents know he is in custody. If a parent or guardian wants to confer with the juvenile, a youth officer should see to it that questioning ceases until they can meet. A youth officer should also make sure the juvenile is treated properly, that he is fed, allowed to rest, and allowed to use the bathroom.
But rather than protect a juvenile’s rights, some youth officers have violated them, playing an antagonistic role hardly distinguishable from any other police officer….
Part 4: When jail is no alibi in murders.
Early on a December morning in 1992, a 17-year-old gang member named Daniel Taylor sat in a windowless police interrogation room and confessed to a double murder committed two weeks earlier in the Uptown neighborhood….
But the case built upon Taylor’s confession, like others examined in a Tribune investigation, was not as airtight as it seemed.
Just as he was going to be formally charged with two counts of murder, Taylor protested to detectives that he could not have committed the crimes because he had been in police custody when they occurred.
Within days, police found an arrest report that showed Taylor was locked up for disorderly conduct at 6:45 p.m. on Nov. 16, the night of the murders. A copy of a bond slip showed he had not been released from the Town Hall District lockup until 10 p.m.
The murders occurred at 8:43 p.m., according to police.
But instead of releasing Taylor and questioning how he came to confess, detectives gathered evidence putting Taylor on the street when the murders occurred and casting doubt on his arrest records….
The fact that a jury chose to believe Taylor’s confession over the police records that documented his arrest and his time in the lockup illustrates the remarkable potency of confessions in the criminal justice system. Taylor’s conviction also shows just how difficult it can be for a defendant to disavow his confession, even when he has an alibi supported not by relatives or friends, but by police records.
A Tribune investigation of Taylor’s case has uncovered new evidence that supports Taylor’s version of events and his contention that his confession was false….
Part 5: DNA voids murder confession.
In the first case of a videotaped murder confession unraveling in Cook County, a man who was recorded saying he stabbed his mother was freed on Friday after DNA tests linked another man to the crime.
Corethian Bell, 25, walked out of Cook County Jail, where he had been held for 17 months, after prosecutors dropped murder charges against him in a brief hearing before Circuit Court Judge Daniel P. Darcy.
“I feel OK,” Bell said as he left in a car with attorney Herschella Conyers.
Bell’s case was detailed in the Tribune series, “Cops and Confessions,” an investigation of how Chicago police and other Cook County law enforcement agencies obtain murder confessions. The series, which examined thousands of murder cases filed since 1991, found that police, particularly Chicago detectives, repeatedly close murder investigations with dubious confessions….
Part 6: Cops urged to tape their interrogations.
Nearly 2 1/2 years after Chicago police and Cook County prosecutors began videotaping murder confessions, the unraveling of a murder case with a taped confession underscores why some lawmakers and advocates have called for further reform, including recording entire interrogations.
Although police in Chicago and elsewhere have vigorously opposed taping interrogations, some legal experts said the case–in which a man who had been held for 50 hours falsely confessed to killing his mother–exposes the limits of taping only the confession.
“If you don’t see the interrogation, you’re missing almost everything,” said Welsh White, law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “You don’t see the questions the police ask, the tactics they use, the pressures they might exert.”…
Maurice Possley, How Two Newspaper Reporters [Steve Mills and Maurice Possley] Helped Free an Innocent Man [Daniel Taylor]. The Atlantic, 29 August 2013. “Daniel Taylor didn’t commit murder–and the author, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, proved it in The Chicago Tribune [in 2001]. But it took the justice system more than a decade to catch up.”
During nearly 25 years as a reporter at the Chicago Tribune, I received hundreds of requests for help from convicted defendants. None was more compelling than the hand-printed letter from Daniel Taylor [summer 2001], a 25-year-old inmate at Stateville Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois. In neat block letters, Daniel explained that he was serving a life sentence without parole for a double murder in Chicago in 1992. Even though Daniel had given a court-reported confession, he said he was innocent and he had police records that proved it.
The letter was addressed to Steve Mills, my reporting partner on numerous stories about wrongful conviction. When Steve brought it to my desk, I was as intrigued—and skeptical—as he was. Why had this man confessed? How had he been convicted? Was he delusional about what the police records really showed?
But Daniel’s timing was fortuitous. It was the summer of 2001, and Steve and I, along with fellow reporter Ken Armstrong, were deep into an investigation of false and coerced confessions in the city of Chicago. Perhaps, we thought, Daniel’s case would provide a window into a world we suspected—and later proved—existed: a world where defendants were said to have confessed to crimes they did not commit.
And so, in December 2001, the Tribune published our five-part series, “Cops and Confessions.” Daniel’s case was the subject of an entire installment. We had uncovered strong evidence of Daniel’s innocence—evidence that he was actually in jail at the time of the crime and that his confession was false.
I had never been so confident of a convicted defendant’s innocence. And I never imagined nearly 12 years would pass before Cook County prosecutors would admit the truth and dismiss his conviction. But it finally happened. On June 28, 2013, Daniel, who was arrested at age 17, was released at age 38, having spent more than 20 years behind bars….