Last night the PBS Frontline show, The Confessions, was about the Norfolk Four -- four guys who had a casual association while in the Navy and who got caught up in a murder/rape investigation in Norfolk, Virginia.
The fact that makes the case unique is that all four, Derek Tice, Danial Williams, Eric Wilson , and Joseph Dick, confessed to the crime but recanted their confessions. Did they do it? Most viewers of the show probably came away believing that the homicide detective who interrogated them obtained false confessions.
So why would someone confess to a crime he/she didn't commit? If the interrogation process is long and arduous enough and it wears down the suspect, the suspect tells the interrogator what he wants to hear just to make the ordeal end. After all, if there's anything we learned from the CIA water-boarding saga it's that torture works. However, the torture victims will lie to make it stop, so it would take some skill to separate the lies from the truth. But if the interrogator is trying to prove an erroneous narrative, then all he gets is someone willing to give him what he wants.
While the Norfolk detective didn't use waterboarding, the physical ordeal of an 8 to 10 hour intense interrogation by intimidating detectives apparently wore these men down. And they repeated back the narrative they were given, rehearsing it several times to get it "right" before the recorder was turned on.
Amazingly, DNA crime scene evidence was obtained, but it didn't match the first guy, so the conclusion of law enforcement was that there was more than one perpetrator. So they kept roping in suspects for a total of seven. Charges were eventually dropped against the three who didn't succumb to the pressure to confess.
By sheer luck, the real murderer was found to be a black serial rapist named Omar Ballard whose DNA matched the evidence. He said he acted alone and didn't know the other guys. The prosecution was faced with either admitting they jailed innocent people or concocting a narrative that included the black guy. So they came up with the theory that the white guys wanted to rape and kill the girl but couldn't get into the apartment. They ran into this black guy in the parking lot, explained to him what they wanted to do, and the black guy joined up with them to break into the apartment to rape and kill the girl.
It was a bizarre theory, but the juries believed the taped confessions and convicted those who didn't take a plea bargain.
They all went to prison, Wilson was released after he served the time given, and Tice, Williams, Dick were released only after a public outcry resulted in a conditional pardon from the governor. But they are convicted felons classified as sex offenders which subjects them to all sorts of conditions. Lawyers are working pro bono to get them cleared, and no doubt there is a civil suit coming.
As for the detective who got the confessions, he's Robert Glenn Ford, and he was convicted last month of extorting thousands of dollars from criminal defendants in exchange for promises of a break in court. Source: HamptonRoads.com which adds that Detective Ford "was responsible for solving nearly 200 homicides."
It's infuriating. Every case Detective Ford "solved" should be reexamined by competent investigators independent of any Virginia law enforcement agency.
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