Yesterday Marty Tankleff appeared before a New York State Senate Task Force on Criminal Justice Reform, at a public forum entitled "Preventing Wrongful Convictions in New York State: Systematic Reforms to convict the Guilty and Protect the Innocent."
The task force, chaired by Senator Eric Schneiderman (who invited Marty) and including Senators Eric Adams, Bill Perkins, John Sampson, Velmanette Montgomery and Assemblyman Charles Lavine, chose Suffolk County as the venue for the forum because it's where the Tankleff case took place. Among the reforms being considered by the state legislature are the mandatory recording of interrogations, preservation of DNA testing, and changes in eyewitness identification procedures.
First to testify was Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project, who cited several instances in which the real culprits had committed additional crimes, including murder, while the wrong person was in prison, and he talked about how Marty's conviction came out of the problems in Suffolk County law enforcement cited by the State Investigation Commission's report in 1989.
The senators seemed genuinely grateful for Marty's appearance, despite the fact that Marty didn't speak, on the advice of his lawyers, since he remains under indictment pending Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's investigation. Marty did, however, offer a written statement, in which he calls for mandatory recording of the entire interaction between police and suspects:
"Every part of the interview and interrogation needs to be recorded. I know had my entire interrogation been recorded, I would not have served 17-plus years for crimes I am innocent of. From the moment a person speaks to law enforcement, their conversations should be recorded. With today’s technology, there is no excuse not to record everything."
As Marty sat silently at the table, Lonnie Soury and this writer, Eric Friedman, read a separate statement and answered questions from the senators. In the spirit of the proceedings, the emphasis was on the lessons that should be drawn from Marty's case and what can be done to avoid similar miscarriages of justice:
"While presumption of innocence is considered a bedrock principle of our criminal justice system, police interrogations actually begin with a presumption of guilt. As false confession expert Professor Saul Kassin of John Jay and Williams College has shown, police interrogation techniques are based on the Reid nine-step process, the first step of which is to 'confront the suspect with unwavering assertions of guilt.' Add to this the fuzzy process by which an 'interview' becomes an 'interrogation,' and you're left with the judicial system depending on the good will, honesty and competence of the detective doing the interrogating in any given case. If the truth matters, record police questioning from beginning to end."
The reason the videotape should start rolling as soon as the suspect enters the interrogation room was powerfully demonstrated by Nicholas A. Gravante, Jr., the lawyer for a kid named Frank Esposito in an arson case. Gravante began by showing a videotape of Esposito's tearful and absolutely convincing "confession" to burning down a friend's barn. What the video didn't show was the police coercion that had taken place all night as Esposito thought about how his mother must have been worried sick, as police had refused to allow him to call her. (You have a right to call a lawyer, but no right to call a family member.) The only problem was that Esposito was later proven to have been elsewhere when he supposedly set the fire, and was acquitted at trial.
Gravante also took care of the argument that implementing mandatory recording is too expensive, simply by pointing out that it's not nearly as expensive as mounting trials of innocent people.
Also testifying was well-known false-confession exoneree Jeffrey Deskovic;Thomas Sullivan, an attorney and author who described how and why most police support recording of interrogations once their jurisdictions adopt the practice; and a representative from Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy's office, who stated, in very general terms, that Suffolk County would be implementing some sort of recording policy at some point in time.
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To read more about how false confessions happen, click here.
Once again, thanks for your excellent recap of an extremely important event. The other attendees and I were heartened that Marty attended. I agree that his mere presence bolstered by his written statement will have a profound effect on getting necessary reforms implemented in New York State.
As a retired police investigator, I think the one theme that really struck me was that when innocent people are wrongfully convicted, confined or executed that not only is it an injustice, but the guilty people who escape prosecution are free to murder, rape and commit serious violent felonies. long after the time they should have been apprehended. Who do the victims of those crimes hold accountible?
How can any prosecutor or police agency be "tough on crime" when their malfeasance actually fosters more death and destruction?
Posted by: Robert L. Olson | April 12, 2008 at 09:07 AM