Marty Tankleff Blog

Grand Jury

Today Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office announced it has empaneled a grand jury and issued subpoenas in its investigation into the murders of Arlene and Seymour Tankleff. Since our understanding is that the grand jury can't be used to gather evidence against Marty, because he is already technically under indictment by another grand jury, and despite the airtight silence maintained by the AG's office, we take this as a sign that the first impartial investigation ever by a prosecutor into the murders is underway.

The AG also requested four more months to announce whether to dismiss the charges against Marty, to retry him, or to seek indictments against others in the murders. It's hard to argue with this request for more time. After all, the case is 20 years old and its record fills a room. So by all means, please, read everything. Be methodical so you can say you left no stone unturned. Interview witnesses, old and new, as well as experts in the fields of false confessions and wrongful convictions. Test anything testable. Follow the investigative report of the intrepid SIC to underscore the objectivity of your conclusions.

Then, as you promised, follow the evidence where it leads.

A case like this, in which something obviously has gone terribly wrong, and in which a gap in the system has been revealed, provides a tremendous opportunity for leadership. As Kathryn Grant Madigan, the president of the New York State Bar Association, wrote just today in an op-ed entitled "Videotape Interrogations, Confessions" in the Albany Times Union, "In appointing state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to investigate the 1988 murders of Seymour and Arlene Tankleff, Gov. Eliot Spitzer has taken an important step forward in the search for justice in this much-publicized case."

As has been mentioned here before, Tankleff supporters have the highest regard for Governor Mario Cuomo, whose response to a letter from Suffolk County Judge Stuart Namm led to the original SIC investigation. Now, a generation later, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has a historic opportunity not just to deliver justice for Arlene, Seymour and Marty Tankleff, but to guide and quicken tranformative change in our criminal justice system, and to restore faith in our system among the citizens of Suffolk County and all who are watching in New York State, across the nation and on five continents around the world. Godspeed!

Read the coverage in the Times and Newsday.

Hearing postponed until February 25th

Because of another trial's schedule, the Tankleff hearing has been postponed until Monday, February 25th, at 11:00 a.m.

At that time, according to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's lead trial attorney, Benjamin Rosenberg, we should hear about how they intend to proceed with the case.

Citing Tankleff and "The Confession Takers," Newsday Calls for Videotaping of Interrogations

Following last month's New York Times editorial calling for the videotaping of interrogations in New York, today a Newsday editorial did the same, calling it "a wise and overdue step forward." Both editorials cited Marty's case, illustrating they have no doubt Marty was wrongfully convicted based on a false confession.

Newsday also tied their call for taping interrogations, and Marty's conviction, to the era of "The Confession Takers," Newsday's outstanding series documenting Suffolk's excessive reliance on confessions around the time of the Tankleff murders:

"This comes more than two decades after a Newsday series showed that Suffolk police had relied excessively on confessions - and just a few weeks after an appellate court ordered a new trial for Martin Tankleff, whose unsigned and later repudiated confession led to his 1990 conviction for killing his parents."

"The Confession Takers" was written in 1986, concurrently with a New York State Investigation Commission probe into Suffolk County law enforcement, which began when Suffolk County Judge Stuart Namm wrote to then Governor Mario Cuomo about problems in murder cases he presided over. One of these was the 1985 Diaz case, in which, according to the SIC's 1989 report, Det. James McCready, who would go on to take Marty's "confession," committed perjury.

According to Newsday, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer "insists his department has grown beyond its past practices on confessions." But the SIC apparently believes actions speak louder than words. As Newsday reported in December, the SIC is in the middle of a new investigation of Suffolk County law enforcement's conduct not only in Marty's conviction, but in fighting to preserve it beginning in 2003:

"The commission will issue subpoenas in the next few weeks as investigators take a 'broad look' at the Suffolk police investigation that led to Tankleff's 1990 conviction for killing his parents, Seymour and Arlene Tankleff, and how [District Attorney Thomas] Spota's office dealt with the surfacing of new witnesses in 2003 who supported Tankleff's claims of innocence, said Alfred Lerner, chairman of the commission."

Among the incidents the SIC will presumably look into is alleged intimidation of Tankleff witnesses by the DA's agents, including the threat to Glenn Harris that if he testified, he could trade places with Marty Tankleff; and the threat to arrest 17-year-old Joseph Guarascio if he did not speak to the DA's investigators on the spot, without a lawyer.

The Confession Keepers?
The SIC is a "sunshine agency" with no enforcement powers, and following their incredibly damning 1989 report, reforms were conspicuously absent. With the SIC doing another investigation, it would be a logical time for Newsday to do another series in parallel, to explore just how much, if at all, things have changed in Suffolk County.

The Tankleff Effect and Suffolk County's Awkward Embrace of Technology

Toward the end of his State of the County address last week, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy announced that the county would begin videotaping interrogations:

"In law enforcement, videotaping interrogations has been an issue over the past few years. I have been discussing the matter with District Attorney Tom Spota and Police Commissioner Richard Dormer, and I am happy to announce tonight that they have agreed in concept to video recording the entire interrogations of those in custody in homicide squad investigations. This new protocol will afford the community at large, and our juries, with further transparency and heighten confidence in the criminal justice process."

On hearing this news, Steve Drizin of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern said, "The release of Martin Tankleff and his likely exoneration has already accomplished something that reformers who fought for his release for 18 years could not....If this reform comes to pass, it should be a catalyst for statewide reform. Suffolk has a sordid history with police abuses during interrogations and has resisted any reform in this area for nearly two decades." This echoed statements by the Innocence Project's Barry Scheck and NY Assemblyman Joseph Lentol about the importance of Marty's case in getting a stalled state bill passed mandating the recording of interrogations.

For the record, Spota told Newsday the impetus for the new policy was related to requests by unnamed jurors and had nothing to do with Marty's case, or, presumably, with the State investigation Commission (SIC) probe into Suffolk law enforcement's conduct in Marty's conviction, or with the SIC's damning 1989 report citing an eye-popping 94% confession rate in Suffolk County.

Whatever the precipitating event, we look forward to seeing if and how "in concept" becomes "in practice," and how "entire interrogations" is defined. Is it when the grilling starts or after Miranda warnings have been given and the subject has already been reduced to putty? Marty's grilling began at the scene of the crime when Det. James McCready showed up. When does an "interview" become an "interrogation?" Reforms need to be engineered based on how false confessions happen.

----------

Meanwhile, a 27-year veteran of the Suffolk County PD has been suspended without pay for using his office email account to communicate to a Newsday reporter his opinion on Marty's case. It may not surprise you to learn that Lieutenant Raymond Smith believes Tankleff is innocent. "He's allowed to believe that," a police source told Newsday. "He's not allowed to put those opinions forward as a lieutenant with the Suffolk County Police Department, outside the department." Not even now that Marty's conviction has been vacated, making him...innocent?

It appears Smith's expression of his opinions was considered conduct unbecoming an officer, while Smith, a lawyer by training, claims he was exercising his First Amendment rights. The scores of comments on the Newsday article, beginning with the very first one by RU Serious, provide perspective:

"You've got to be kidding me....A cop finally gets suspended without pay but not for abusing his power, selling drugs, stealing evidence, etc., but for emails??? So, I guess it's okay for a cop to abuse people and his power and he'll get suspended with pay, but send an email and that's it, you're out...."

Judge Namm's DVD to ship next week

Retired Judge Stuart Namm's 56-minute documentary on the Tankleff case--"A Question of Guilt?"--is expected to be ready for shipment next week to those who have already placed their orders.

To order a copy, send a check or money order for $33.95, which includes $4.00 for shipping, payable to Stuart Namm, to 101 Marshview Road, Hampstead, NC 28443, or pay by credit card through PayPal (as many have done) payable to RetJudgeS1.

For more on the DVD, click here.