COMMENTARY: "'What does Mississippi owe a 13-year-old who falsely confessed to murder?, by Radley Balko, published by The Washington Post on May 17, 2017. (Radley Balko blogs about criminal justice, the drug war and civil liberties for The Washington Post. He is the author of the book "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces.")
GIST: NBC News has published a long story
about Tyler Edmonds, a Mississippi man convicted in the 2003 murder of
his half sister’s husband. Edmonds and his half sister Kristi Fulgham
were both convicted of the crime. The NBC News story is mostly a
look at the limits of the laws states have passed to compensate the
victims of wrongful convictions. Most of these laws prohibit victims who
contributed to their own convictions from getting compensated, a
stipulation that tends to ensnare people convicted because of false
confessions. (Edmonds initially confessed, then retracted his confession
a few days later.) This sort of exception to compensation laws
is really unfair. It discounts all of the coercion and manipulation that
can go into a false confession. In fact, there’s some evidence that
innocent people are especially likely to confess under
conditions such as prolonged interrogation, sleep deprivation and
threats of additional charges. This is because in the moment, they
calculate that a confession will at least end the interrogation, and because they’re innocent, the evidence will eventually exonerate them. But
Mississippi’s refusal to compensate Edmonds is particularly troubling
for a few reasons.........Edmonds
in particular checked off a lot of boxes of the factors that can lead
to false confessions. He was a minor who had been coerced by a family
member whom he trusted and admired. He was also a minor who had just
been separated from a parent. He was emotionally and physically immature
for his age, also common among false confessors. Edmonds also quickly
recanted his confession, common among the innocent. And his confession
itself contained inconsistencies, included falsehoods and fell short of
taking complete responsibility for the crime. These, too, are all
factors common among people who falsely confess. His
teachers, his relatives, the parents of his classmates and his school
counselor all testified that he was gentle and good-natured. He got good
grades, rarely got into trouble and had never been prone to
violence. All of this should have cast doubt on Edmonds’s confession
from the beginning. But even if prosecutors really believed that Edmonds
helped Kristi Fulgham kill her husband, the most likely scenario was
that he was a fragile kid who had been emotionally manipulated by a
sociopathic sister he adored and saw as a maternal figure. This was no
coldblooded killer. And then there was Steven Hayne. Regular readers of The Watch will recognize that name......... At Edmonds’s trial, the
prosecutor (Allgood himself didn’t prosecute Edmonds) asked Hayne
whether he had viewed Edmonds’s videotaped confession. He had. She then
asked whether, in light of that confession, he had considered the
position of Joey Fulgham’s body. He said he had. She then asked, “based
on the path of the projectile and everything that was viewed,” whether
Hayne thought “the defendant’s version of the events is consistent with
what you found in Mr. Fulgham?” In other words, were the wounds in Joey
Fulgham’s body consistent with Edmonds’s videotaped confession — the one
in which he said he and his sister held and fired the gun
simultaneously? It was a preposterous question. No medical
examiner can tell by the bullet wounds in the body if the gun that fired
those bullets was being held by one person or two. Edmonds’s attorney
object. This brings up another issue we’ve explored often here
at The Watch — the inability of the courts to keep bad science out of
criminal trials. Edmonds’s defense team likely knew that Hayne would be
getting this question — the prosecutor said as much in her opening
statement. “You’re going to hear how
Kristi stood behind him and held him and you’re going to hear how they
both put their finger on the trigger and you’re going to hear how they
both shot and killed Joey Fulgham.” The defense
requested a Daubert hearing on the matter. A Daubert hearing is named
for the trio of Supreme Court cases in which justices laid out how
federal courts should assess the credibility of expert testimony. In the
hearing, the trial court judge listens to evidence from both sides
about whether proposed testimony from an expert witness is reliable and
supported by scientific research. In Edmonds’s case, the defense wanted
to argue that there’s no scientific research to suggest that a medical
examiner can give an opinion on how many people were holding a gun based
on the bullet wounds inflicted by that gun. Incredibly, the judge
denied the hearing. Just to be clear: The judge didn’t hold a hearing
and then rule against the defense. The judge refused to hold a hearing at all. He didn’t think the “two hands on the gun” theory was even controversial enough to merit discussion. The
prosecutor then asked the question again. Did Hayne find the crime
scene evidence, his autopsy and the other forensic evidence to be
consistent with Edmonds’s videotaped confession (as opposed to his
recantation story, which suggested that his sister acted alone)? At this
point, a conscientious medical examiner might have answered something
like, “You’re asking me to speculate on something that’s not only
outside my area of expertise but that really couldn’t be determined by
anyone.” Instead, Hayne answered, “Within a reasonable medical
certainty, it’s consistent with the scenario provided to me and would be
in compliance with the facts I saw.” But
the state’s transgressions against Edmonds didn’t end there. Later in
the trial, his attorneys attempted to call their own expert witness,
Allison Redlich, an experimental psychologist who has done extensive
research into false confessions. Redlich was prepared to testify what
this post has already discussed — that Edmonds exhibited many
characteristics often found in people who falsely confess. The
prosecution objected and requested its own Daubert hearing. The judge
not only granted the request but also set aside an entire day to hold
the hearing. After a day of testimony, the trial judge
ruled that Redlich’s testimony wasn’t scientifically reliable. The jury
would hear no expert testimony about false confessions. The judge’s
Daubert analysis is really a case study in how inept courts can be at
assessing the validity of scientific evidence.......... Today,
it’s well accepted in the scientific community that false confessions
occur and that they’re especially likely among children. Today, it’s
also well accepted in the scientific community that you can’t look at
bullet wounds and draw opinions about how many people were holding the
gun. Yet for Edmonds’s trial, the state of Mississippi argued that the
former was scientifically dubious and that the latter didn’t even
deserve a hearing. And the trial judge agreed. Edmonds
was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Kristi Fulgham was also
convicted. She was sentenced to death, which was later reduced to a life
sentence. Four years later, the Mississippi Supreme Court threw out
Edmonds’s conviction, finding that Hayne’s testimony about the gun
wasn’t scientifically reliable. Edmonds was retried in 2008, this time
without that testimony. The jury acquitted......... Today,
Mississippi argues that because Edmonds confessed to the crime, he
contributed to his own conviction and, therefore, is ineligible for
compensation. The state is also arguing that an acquittal is not an
exoneration and that, therefore, Edmonds hasn’t really been proved
innocent; he has only been found “not guilty” by a jury. Both
arguments ignore the great lengths to which the state of Mississippi
went to put a 13-year-old boy in prison for a crime it now seems highly
unlikely that he committed. The state interrogated him away from his
mother. The police used his sister to coerce him. The state then brought
in its long-favored expert to offer quack testimony wholly outside the
realm of science, not to mention common sense, all while successfully
suppressing testimony from an expert who planned to cite documented
research showing that someone like Edmonds was a prime candidate for a
false confession. As demonstrated in the subsequent trial, had Hayne not
been permitted to give that testimony, the jury probably wouldn’t have
convicted. Had the judge ruled correctly with respect to both experts,
acquittal seems a near-certainty. Mississippi state
officials not only have refused to conduct a thorough review of the
cases in which Hayne has testified to see whether there might be other
wrongful convictions but also still defend Hayne and the convictions won
in part or primarily due to his testimony. In short,
as the state of Mississippi steadfastly refuses to take responsibility
for mistakes made by its public officials that sent who knows how many
innocent people to prison (we don’t know the number, because the state
won’t conduct a review), the same state of Mississippi is demanding that
Edmonds be held accountable for the mistaken confession he made … as a
13-year-old boy."
The entire commentary can be found at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/c
