In the summer of 1989, a 19-year-old Waverly woman,
Melissa Koontz, disappeared late at night after leaving work on the far
west-side of Springfield. What followed was a series of events in which
Donald “Goose” Johnston and Danny Pocklington, both mildly
retarded, confessed to being present when Koontz was killed.
Every major detail Johnston and Pocklington gave
about the crime conflicted with the known facts of the case. Nevertheless,
nearly a year later, police were able to gain the confession of Gary
Edgington, who was toldthat his friend “Goose” Johnston was now telling
police that Edgington was also involved in the murder.
The same ploy was used to attempt to elicit a
confession from Tom McMillen, but he steadfastly maintained his innocence.
McMillen and Edgington were placed under arrest and charged with capital
murder. They were both convicted and remain in prison serving life
sentences. The question looms: How can it happen that individuals would
falsely confess to participating in crimes they did not commit?
A foremost expert on false confessions, Richard Leo,
wrote a fascinating new book with Tom Wells,
The Wrong Guys: Murder, False Confessions, and The Norfolk Four, that helps us understand the answer to this question. The
book tells the chilling story of the heinous rape and slaying of Michelle
Bosco in her home in Norfolk, Va., in 1997. In that case a group of
“ordinary” individuals who were at some point in the Navy
together were enticed by authorities to go to the police station, respond
to hours of questioning without an attorney present, and eventually to
falsely confess to participating in the murder.
Leo’s description of the lengthy and harsh
interrogation of each of the sailors by police borders on the unbelievable,
but has been documented as common practice in many law enforcement
jurisdictions. Indeed, the recent indictment of Chicago police commander
Jon Burge reminds us why Chicago has been labeled “the false
confession capital of the United States.” What emerges from the book
is a tale of how police officers intent on building a case gain
confessions. As one of the sailors describes it: “I never thought I
could confess to something I didn’t do…until I went through it.
By the end of the interrogation your head’s so messed up that
you’ll say absolutely anything just to get the man away from
you…. They keep yelling at you and telling you to just say it and
it’ll all stop. And eventually you do.”
The book weaves a tale of “tunnel vision”
by police and prosecutors and the victim’s family that leads to the
pursuit of seven individuals. The case is based on a web of false
accusations, without any hard evidence that they actually perpetrated the
crime. When faced with the lack of scientific evidence, police merely
pushed the individuals harder to coerce corroboration of their suspicions.
When faced with the one confession by the individual who most likely
committed the crime by himself, a confession that called into question
their entire case, police radically changed their theory to include those
they already believed committed the crime. They continued to prosecute
those individuals instead of admitting their original view might have been
wrong.
An examination of the nation’s 222 DNA
exonerations by the national Innocence Project reveals that almost 25
percent of those cases involved a person who had falsely confessed to the
crime. This makes false confessions the second leading cause of wrongful
convictions, behind mistaken eyewitness identification. Social science
research, led by Dr. Leo and described in this book, shows that those with
mental disabilities are particularly vulnerable to police authority and
coercive interrogation tactics.
So would you or anyone you know confess to a
crime you did not commit? After reading this book, we have to wonder how
any one of us might respond in similar circumstances. And to ensure justice
has been done, we have to be willing to reexamine cases such as the
convictions of Thomas McMillen and Gary Edgington.
Dr. Richard Leo will appear in Springfield on Monday,
Nov. 10, at a free lecture open to the
public at 7 p.m. in the Great Room of Lincoln
Residence Hall at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Preceding the
lecture, at 5:30, there will be a fundraising reception on behalf of the
Downstate Illinois Innocence Project in the PAC Restaurant. For further
information, call 206-6569 or 206-7989.
Larry Golden is an Emeritus Professor of Political
Studies and Legal Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. He
continues to teach an annual class on wrongful conviction while
co-directing the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project
at UIS.
This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2008.
