"Lost and Found" Episode 15: "If I did it..

Five teenagers were wrongfully convicted of a rape in Central Park in 1989. Despite flimsy evidence and inconsistent confessions, they were found guilty. Years later, the real perpetrator confesses and DNA evidence clears the five. The false confessions were a result of psychological pressure and interrogation techniques used by the police. The vulnerability of juveniles and lack of legal representation also contributed to the false convictions. In this Science of Crime podcast series, we look at the constantly changing rules of the hide-and-seek game that investigators play to heat up cold cases, navigating through several stories that illustrate how the evolution and crowdsourcing of forensic science act as a compass in the quest for closure and justice. Welcome to Lost and Found. My name is Brady, and this is episode number 15, If I Did It. Do you really know me? April 17, 1989. New York City. Investment banker Tricia Maile decides to go for a run after work. It's dark out, and she decides to run through Central Park. She's going in a leisurely pace through the park when, wham! She is smacked in the back of the head with a tree branch. The attacker or attackers bring her to a secluded area of the park and beat and rape her. Eventually she is found by police with 80% of her blood lost, broken bones, no clothes, and on the brink of death. They immediately rush her to the hospital where she lays in a coma for several days. She wakes up with no memory of the events of that night. During this time, police have rounded up Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Antron McCray, Corey Wise, and Yusef Salam in connection with the rape. These five boys were in Central Park on the night of the rape. They were with a large group of teenagers who had mugged and beaten other joggers at the same time as the attack on Tricia Maile. Due to these attacks, police had brought in Richardson and Santana, but following the rape, they apprehended more kids who were there that night, including McCray, Wise, and Salam. They were interrogated, and all five confessed to committing the crime, and less than a year later, they were all convicted and sent to prison. Despite their confessions, the evidence that connected them to the crime was extremely flimsy. First of all, the confessions were actually inconsistent with the facts of the case. Four of the five didn't correctly locate where the crime had happened in their confessions. Only Wise was able to, which makes sense, as he was the only one brought to the scene of the crime by investigators. They also were all incorrect about Maile's clothes at the time of the attack. That's not all. The cops at the scene of the crime used a rape kit and collected samples of semen from two different parts of Maile's body. In the trials, the FBI revealed during cross-examination that during testing of the DNA, they actually found that the five boys on trial are excluded from being amassed with the semen found on Maile. What this means is that in comparing DNA results between the boys and the semen, as discussed in previous episodes, there's no matching at all. This means that those five could not have been the ones who left the semen on that body. This was huge, too, because the prosecution had said that the DNA analysis had been inconclusive, meaning that they could not rule out those five, despite this obviously being false. This obviously poked a huge hole in the prosecution's argument. Even despite all this evidence, like I said, the kids were convicted of the rape. The confessions were too powerful in the eyes of the jurors. They don't really hear the inconsistencies of their stories or really understand DNA very well in the 1980s. All they needed to hear was that they said, I did it. This clearly was a very flawed trial and case, and it eventually was overturned and the five were exonerated. Except, it wasn't set off by any of this clear evidence. The exoneration of this headlining case came just due to random chance. In 2002, Corey Wise was the only one of the five still in jail. He was the only one who was 16 at the time of the attack, so he got an adult sentence, while the others got a juvenile sentence because they were under 16. While in jail, Wise ran into a man named Matias Reyes. Reyes was a convicted rapist, serving 33 to life for multiple different rapes and a murder. Wise had explained his story to Reyes, which was miraculous because Reyes was the real perpetrator of the events on April 17th of 1989. He then felt guilty for Wise and the others who served time and being labeled as rapists for something he did. While this might be surprising that a rapist and murderer would feel bad for not getting caught for a different rape, he actually attributed remission for this guilt. He then confessed to authorities to solely committing the rape and the assault. They then compared his DNA to that of the semen from the rape kit, and they matched. In addition to this, he named much more specific details about the case that the five had not been able to name in their confessions. This then was finally enough to overturn the five's convictions and get them exonerated. Hearing all of the evidence that convicted them, it is very obvious that the boys were actually innocent. They were excluded from providing the only physical evidence of the crime, and the confessions were all wrong and inconsistent, so it should surprise no one listening that there was a different and real perpetrator found. With that being said, there still remains a big question in the case. Why did these kids admit to a crime that they actually were completely innocent of? And to answer this, we need to look at modern psychology. Faulty confessions really start and end in the interrogation room, so that is the most important place to look here. First thing to look at is the five involved in the case were all 14, 15, and 16. Obviously this is a very young age. They were subjected to hours upon hours of interrogation by full-grown adult New York police officers. They were also given no food, no water, and had no sleep. They were then told that they could go home if they just admitted to doing it. Just try to imagine that for a second. Imagine you are 15 years old, and the police bring you in and tell you, not ask you, that you violently beat and sexually assaulted a woman. They are the authority figures. At 15, they are really scary. They yell at you for hours, telling you to just admit that you did it. Just tell them you did it. You are hungry, you are thirsty, you are exhausted, and you are scared, so you can't think straight. They give you an opportunity to make it all stop and go home, just if you tell them you did it. All you are thinking is just making it stop, so you give in. No one listening can tell me that you would be able to resist that forever, whether you committed the crime or not. This pressure is no accident. It is exactly what the techniques used by police are designed to do. It is actually a proven psychological strategy that is used by investigators, known as the Reid Technique. This is a super common method that is used in the U.S. by police, and is basically designed to make confessing the only outcome in an interrogation. Police will basically tell suspects that they know they are guilty, sometimes lying about the evidence, and cut off any denial. This is known as maximization. They then will try to appeal to a suspect by minimizing the severity of the crime and telling them that things will be better if they just confess, and this is known as minimization. This technique, according to recent studies, makes confession rates, both true and false, increase dramatically, because they are designed to put pressure on a suspect and make confession the easiest outcome. Research has also shown that people, police included, are extremely bad at telling whether a confession is real or not. This makes it very hard for confessions extracted by the Reid Technique to be trusted, because it is so good at extracting both types of confessions, and then it is hard to figure out if it is real or not. However, this isn't the only thing that contributes to false confessions. Juveniles being interrogated have also been found to be a consistent factor in many false confessions. This makes sense, as the susceptibility of kids to predatory practices is something that is very well known in the legal profession. I interviewed Officer Mark Long of the Lake Forest Police Department, who is actually a juvenile officer. He describes to me the large number of juvenile laws, procedures, and training that they take in order to help kids through the legal process. He also describes how, in interrogations, their policy is... And their parent isn't there, or their guardian is not there. I go in there as their advocate. So Detective Y reads them their rights. Before they sign off on this, I look at them and say, hey, do you fully understand this? Do you understand what they're asking here? Do you understand that you do not have to answer any of these questions? And I really break it down for them and make sure that they're good. This clearly illustrates how the legal system today is designed to help kids, as without someone there to clearly lay down their rights, it is way more likely that they will be taken advantage of or not know the repercussions of their actions. Police take all of these extra precautions because they know the more vulnerable position kids are in without them. Non-interrogations are another thing that have been found to be a major consistent variable in false confessions. Officer Long, although admitting that he isn't a homicide detective, says that... Any time that I interview somebody recently, it's like, you know, it was, this person was a victim, but it was, we were in the room for three hours, we take breaks, make sure that they are given an opportunity to go to the bathroom, ask what they want, water, snacks, all sorts of stuff that we use, but... All of the consistent variables that I have mentioned before in false confessions are clarity factors in the Central Park Five case. These kids were interrogated alone for around 24 hours and were all 16 or under. They also were told by the police that they could go home if they confessed, also known as the minimization part of the Reed Technique, and then pressured by police heavily into making the confession, also known as the maximization part of the Reed Technique. And this makes the integrity of the confessions extremely flimsy. Just when he thought it couldn't get any worse, specifically with Youssef Salaam, there were even more questionable practices done to extract his confession. Officers lied to him and told him that they had his fingerprints on the jogger's pants, so it didn't matter whether he admitted to the crime or not. Although technically legal, this practice is so sketchy and predatory that now it is outlawed in some places, like Illinois. You cannot lie to a juvenile. You cannot, like, come up with, you know, we got this DNA on you, and we're just going to match it up to yours, so do you want to confess to this now? We can't do that at all. They also illegally delayed his mom from coming and helping him in the interrogation, which should have been allowed as he was under 16. This again illustrates the maximization of the Reed Technique, where they lie about the evidence, and shows that they did things to illegally extract the confession, again lending credence to the idea that the confessions could be false. It is clear that the Confessions of the Five contain almost all of the indicators that come with false confessions. A long interrogation, juvenile suspects, the Reed Technique, and predatory practices like lying, blocking parental intervention, and depriving the suspects of food, water, and sleep. From this, we can see that a modern psychological understanding of police interrogations and pressures has finally allowed the answer to the biggest question of the case to be found. The question of why five kids would admit to the brutal attack of someone that they had nothing to do with. My name is Brady, and thank you for listening.