on this episode of "death row stories". >> a man accused of beating a 4-year-old girl to death and stuffing her body inside a tv box. >> an unthinkable crime. >> if this doesn't fit the death penalty, nothing does. >> lands the victim's neighbor on death row. >> this nightmare is finally over. >> when a secret deal is discovered. >> don't put your nose where it doesn't belong. >> and a confession is called into question. >> they went after the guy who was vulnerable. >> an execution date is set. >> they're going to kill this guy, and he's innocent. >> there's a body in the water. >> he was butchered and murdered. >> many people proclaim their innocence. >> in this case there's a number of things that stink.

>> this man is remorseless. >> the electric chair flashed in front of my eyes. >> get a conviction at all costs with the truth forward. >> i know that 85 or 90% of this country want to move on from peace to social justice at home so that we finally end the terrible pockmarks that have made america recite a pledge of allegiance to her flag for two centuries if with a footnote that says this is what we wish we were instead of what we are. >> my father al onestein was a political activists. >> he worked in the civil rights movement in the south. >> dad was 7th on nixon's enemy list so we had the fbi coming by and people picketing our house. >> they called him the viet congressman. it was a very active childhood. i was ten, and dad was working on ted kennedy's presidential

campaign, and he was sitting in new hampshire. he dropped me off in boston from that trip, and that was the last time i saw him. >> former congressman allard low lowenstein. >> on march 14th, 1980, aloen stein was killed. >> the guy went into my father's office, closed the door and stood over my father and shot him five times. he sat down and lit a cigarette and waited for the police to come. >> because of his mental illness, sweeney never faced trial. after 20 years he walked away from a mental facility a free man. >> they were just letting him pauline chiou, and there was nothi -- letting him out, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. >> what it felt like to me was

if someone kills your father and walks away from it and you don't kill them, then you don't exist. a human being doesn't allow that to happen to their father. >> there was a part where i was planning it and asked a friend of mine if he could get me a gun that couldn't be traced. i was probably 24 or 25 where i realized that i wasn't going to do it and had to accept that. >> in 2001 tom refocused his anger and started writing a book about the death penalty. tom set out to find a case where the killer was brought to justice and the victim's family given closure. >> there's 3,000 people on death row in this country, and most of them did it. i wanted to find cases where someone had been caught and tried and convicted and was going to be executed. when the system works, what's it like for everybody involved. >> tom wrote to inmates across the country and got a letter back from a man named walter ogrod who had been on pennsylvania's death row for five years. >> the letter didn't say what the crime was, but when i looked

it up and found what he did, i felt completely sick to my stomach, you know. it was terrible. >> on july 12th, 1988, in a working class northeast philadelphia neighborhood, john fayhe sent his 4-year-old stepdaughter barbara jean outside to play. >> and i just called for her, and she was like right there somewhere. i looked, and her toys were on the sidewalk and she never walked away from her toys ever. >> i was at work and john had called for me to come over. what do you mean you can't find her? he says sharon just come home. >> soon after police received a 911 call from one of the fay he's neighbors.

>> we got a call that there was a tv box up on st. vincent street. when i got there, the box was still on the sidewalk. i look in the box. the child was in a fetal position, and she was naked. she didn't have any clothes on. she looked like she was clean, like wet. she had her wet hair, wounds to her head, and there was a trash bag draping her. we knew deep down that that's probably the missing girl, and that was barbara jean. >> she had been killed by blows to the head. she had a couple of bruises on her back. she was wet in the box, which made them feel that someone had washed her to destroy evidence. it's just horrifying, the notion that your child could be out in front of your house playing and then just gone. >> four eyewitnesses had seen a man carrying the tv box, and

police posted a composite sketch throughout northeast philadelphia. >> we had hundreds and hundreds of tips. we worked a lot of hours on it. >> a $10,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest of barbara jean horn's murder. >> but after countless tips and false leads, the case went cold. >> you always want to do the best for her and her family, and resolve it as quickly as possible. but unfortunately we didn't. >> four years would pass before barbara jean's case was reopened by a special investigations unit led by veteran detective marty devlin. >> detective devlin is this big hot shot philadelphia homicide detective. he's the hardest working guy. he never lets a case go. >> devlin and his partner began reinterviewing the fahy's neighborhood including a 27-year-old truckdriver named walter ogrod who lived across

the street. >> according to detective devlin they start questioning him, and at that point he bursts into tears. for the next two hours and 45 minutes he confesses this entire thing, and it comes out to be a 16-page confession. >> they called and they said that they arrested somebody for the murder, and i said who was it, and they said walter ogrod. >> it was just the best news i could have ever heard that they found her killer. >> walter ogrod would face the death penalty. >> as long as he's not given the opportunity to hurt another child and do what he did to our family to another family, i really don't care what happens to walter ogrod. >> but tom would soon discover that despite walter's confession, walter's jury had been convinced of his innocence. >> when you start looking into it, it gets very difficult to work out how walter ogrod could

have done this. >> police escorted john fahy out of the courtroom in handcuffs. >> i think the guy might be innocent. but then, we were like. what are we doing? the nicodermcq patch helps prevent your urge to smoke all day. nicodermcq. you know why, we know how.

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right? but hurry offer ends soon. ♪ in 2001 tom lowenstein was writing a book about the death penalty when he began communicating with convicted child murderer walter ogrod. >> i had nothing to do with this, positively absolutely 100% nothing. i'm 100% innocent on this. >> walter told me early on that he was innocent, but i was intent on figuring the thing out for myself. >> tom learned that in 1993

philadelphia prosecutors had failed in their first attempt to convict walter. >> at city hall today, the trial of a man accused of beating a 4-year-old girl to death and stuffing her body inside a tv box. >> he let that poor little baby just lie there and die and then put her out in the trash. if that's not intent to kill, maybe i haven't seen it yet. >> early in the trial, prosecutor joseph casey presented the 16-page confession that walter had given to detective marty devlin. the confession said when barbara jean came to his door looking for her friend, walter took her to the basement and tried to force oral sex on her. when she screamed, walter killed her with a pull down bar from his weight set. >> it's a spur of the moment crime based on a desire to sexually abuse a child that goes terribly wrong, and that's why he ends up killing her. >> while no physical evidence

tied barbara jean to walter's basement, prosecutor casey presented the box she was found in and a replica of the pull-down bar. >> the problem is in the autopsy said that the murder weapon was probably flat, like a 2 by 4. so how could this pull-down bar possibly be the murder weapon? i just found the whole thing a little bit fishy. >> on the last day of trial, ogrod made an unusual choice and took the stand saying the detectives had coerced him into a false confession. >> ogrod testified, sir, i did not kill barbara jean horn. they told me what they believed happened. they kept putting pictures of a dead child in my face. after a while i was starting to believe them. >> there's no evidence to connect this guy to this crime that occurred, you know, five years ago except for this confession, and the confession is bogus. >> the jury deliberated for three days before reaching a verdict. >> the jury has come back. the slip gets handed up to the judge. the judge says have you reached

a verdict? yes, we have. and at that moment one juror stands up and says i'm not sure how i feel about this. >> juror alex swebeck stood up and said he did not agree with that verdict. >> there's chaos in the courtroom and people screaming and yelling. >> the judge immediately declared a mistrial, and seconds later the stepfather john fahy leaped out of his chair towards ogrod. >> and john just thought this is my chance, and he bolts out of his chair. >> rushed him. the sheriff's deputy was standing in my way, and i hit him and just threw him out of my way. >> i was like john, oh, my god. >> fahy was rushed out by deputies. >> at that moment, there's this uncertainty about what was the vote, what was the vote? walter came within one vote of

going home. >> i went through it again, and i knew i was right in my commission, that he was guilty and i was not going to let him go. >> what on earth could walter have said or done that could make a jury disbelieve a confession and a child murder. i needed to go sit and talk with him in person. i went out to waynesburg where walter is. it was the first time i had ever been in a prison, so that was a sort of out of body experience. you go through all this buzzing and beeping and steel doors, and there's walter. i looked him right in the eye, and i said, walter, did you kill barbara jean horn, and he looked at me, and he said no. and what i noticed fairly quickly was he was very concrete about things. i asked him what's it like being on death row? >> get up at 6:00. breakfast comes around 6:30.

they come to the door, open the lock, give you a tray, get about half an hour, take it. lunch comes around 10:00. they take the trace around 10:30. >> i'm trying to get this person to relate his life to me, and he just can't in the way that you or i would. if you ask walter what it was like for him when his parents got divorced, he couldn't really tell you much. >> my parents were living together until 1970, and my mother took us to live at her mother's place, 2310 aspen street, which is four blocks away. we lived at a place not too far away from her brother paul's apartment. >> i ended up visiting him about five or six hours a day for three days in a row. the last day i was there i didn't know how to say good-bye, so i put my fist against the glass, and walter didn't notice it. he just kept talking and

talking, and then he finally looked at it and didn't know what to do with it. by then i had to go. i remember going back to my hotel room thinking what is it about this guy? at the time i had a friend who worked with children on the autism spectrum, and i interacted with some of kids. it struck me. that's what it is, he's not just weird. there's a theme going on here. the key moment of the confession is he says to them please give me a minute. you have to understand how hard this is for me. i never meant to hurt that little girl. it is a flowing monologue of thought and process and description that walter ogrod is not capable of. i realized that he could not have given the confession. >> now intrigued by walter's case, tom set out to corroborate his observations with people who had known walter before his

arrest. >> walter, he didn't seem like a normal teenager. he just seemed -- it's hard to describe, like socially awkward. just very gullible. if we didn't have anything to do, we knew we could call walt up and say, hey, walt, you want to buy us a case of beer? and he wanted to please you and, you know, wanted friends, and and he'd be like, oh, yeah, yeayea yeah, i'll do that. he's not stupid, but he has no common sense whatsoever. >> after high school, walter joined the army, but his difficulty with social interactions soon led to a discharge. he then moved across the street from barbara jean. >> after the murder happened, you know, years and years went by and they never caught the guy. >> ogrod's confession to beating 4 1/2-year-old barbara jean horn. >> one day the news came on and they flashed a picture of walt on the screen. i was like, oh, my god.

i was like walt didn't do that. they had a 4-year-old unsolved homicide of a little girl, and they needed to solve it, and they decided to blame it on the neighborhood idiot. >> 28-year-old walter ogrod is charged with sexually assaulting. >> i immediately went to visit him. i said walt, why would you sign that confession? and he said i asked for a lawyer, and they told me that if i wanted to call my lawyer i'd have to wait in the holding tank, and you know what they do to child molesters down there. but if you sign this, we'll let you wait up here with us until your lawyer gets here. and then his lawyer got there, and he thought he was going home. he's like get me out of here, and his lawyer was like you signed a confession to murder. you're not going anywhere. that's what i mean by like he had no common sense. but while the jury had nearly

set walter free, tom would learn that it had actually been a second confession that had sent walter to death row. our mission is to provide complete, balanced nutrition... for strength and energy! whoo-hoo! great-tasting ensure.

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had serious doubts about how walter had landed on death row. >> the key point about the first trial is that walter testified, and it was from hearing walter talk, hearing how he expressed himself that the jury came to the belief that he couldn't have given the confession. and then you say, okay, well, what got him convicted at the second trial? >> this is the second time a jury has been charged with deciding the fate of walter ogrod. the first trial ended in a hung jury. >> in the 1990s, the philadelphia d.a.'s office sought the death penalty more than any other in the country. walter's second trial was assigned to prosecutor judy rubino. >> judy rubino was a legendary tough prosecutor in philadelphia. someone had told me jokingly that she had her own wing on death row. >> her case relied on jailhouse informant jay wochansky who said walter had confessed to him in prison. >> the motive for the crime was

that walter wanted to marry sharon fahy the little girl's mother. he's going to murder the little girl and he's going to do it in some way that police look at john fahy for the crime. sharon will be distraught and walter will go over and comfort her and they will fall in love and be married. >> he had lured the girl across the street and tried to penetrate her. this story convicted with walter's own confession. >> wolchansky took what what was a crime of opportunity, walter sees young girl, walter tries to molest young girl and makes it into a premeditated, month's long stalking by walter ogrod. >> not telling the police the entire truth he was trying to make it as good for himself as he could, and when he was in the prison he wasn't doing that, and he was sort of bragging to the inmate about what he had done, and that made the differences in the confession. >> it's frightening when you have two opposing contradictory

versions, especially from a jailhouse snitch who coincidentally happens to come out of nowhere after the first trial. >> after deliberating for just 90 minutes, a jury found walter guilty and sentenced him to death. >> if one jury's stupid doesn't mean the next one has to be. >> they convicted the wrong man. >> i feel he got exactly what he deserves and i'm happy with the jury's decision. >> i hope that animal is man enough to take the punishment the way it comes. >> having been through what i had gone through with my father, i had spent years hoping for a d.a. that was that tough so on the one hand i have this enormous admiration for judy rubino because she wins cases ask she puts murderers away. at the same time the story that the snitch tells at the trial has no relation to the confession, and even less relation to the actual evidence in the case. >> i wasn't an investigative

journalist, but i knew i was onto something, and i had to keep going. >> tom found clues that jay wolchansky's story may have actually been invented by a fellow inmate, an infamous snitch named john hall. >> john hall's specialty was to take murder cases for which there is no evidence and give the prosecution a conviction. there's this 1997 article in the daily news about john hall, who everybody calls the monsignor because he's heard more confessions than a priest. >> the article said john hall had spoken with police about walter. tom wanted to know why. >> just boggled my mind. the story that jay tells at walter's second trial, the john hall story. >> looking for answers, tom tracked down john hall's wife, phyllis. >> anything that you tell me is on the record. if you say this is off the record, it's off the record. >> most of everything i'm going to give you is going to be that way because the situation with

john. he confided everything in me. >> i said do you think that john lied in his cases? and she says, oh, yeah, john lied in his cases. i think he lied in about 30  cases. so i said do you think he lied in the walter ogrod case? >> i said yes because i helped him. i helped him put walter on death row. john worked on maybe five, six cases at a time so that the d.a. would give him leniency on his sentences. the homicide detectives and the district attorney fed john info. he would get some of the truth and he would sit in his cell and make up stories and he was darn good at it. >> hall was facing a 50-year sentence in 1994 for assaulting an officer after a high speed

car chase. he was soon moved to the philadelphia detention center where walter was awaiting trial. >> i believe the district attorney moved him there specifically to get information from walter, and he befriended walter. i spent a lot of time researching. i sent john everything that pertained to walter in the newspaper. >> and then john took all of that, and he formulated this story about the murder of barbara jean horn. >> when john hall was asked to testify in another case for rubino he passed walter's case to jay w oolchansky who was facg 30 years for burglary. >> they were making this plan. john said jay neetds to get out of here, he's in trouble. i'm going to give it to him like it's his case.

>> and john sat down with jay and he gave jay the story, and he helped jay write the letter to the d.a.'s office. at the trial, the prosecution told the jury that neither john hall or jay wo wilchansky got a teal for what they did. >> john wrote to me and said he got a sweet deal. john was looking at 50 years and the ogrod case got him off. jay wolchansky only got a few months. >> i had no idea that a d.a.'s office such as in philadelphia could use a snitch ring, you know, could use a guy like john hall over and over and over again. i have the paperwork. i have phyllis, and it's all fitting together. >> tom decided he now needed to confront the prosecutor who had put wolchansky on the stand, judy rubino. >> what are you trying to do? >> i'm trying to figure out what happened.

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. tom lowenstein blooefelieve found evidence that walter og d ogrod's confession has been fabricated by snitches to support judi rubino's case. >> when i went in to interview ju dee rubino, what are prosecutors allowed to do and not allowed to do. >> if i could prove to you that john hall fabricated that

statement and gave it to jay wolchansky to use against walter ogrod, what would that mean to you? >> i don't know how you can do that. >> i have now documented that that story was fabricated by john hall. >> no, you haven't and unless you have something from jay saying that none of that was told to him by walter and that he made it all up and hae's willing to testify to the fact that he committed perjury, that's something else. >> at one point she said to me i thought you were trying to write a book, not get the guy a new trial. >> i said i'm trying to find the truth of this. the notion that they're sending someone to death row based on this clearly fabricated snitch story is not okay. >> having lost his own father, tom now felt he owed it to barbara jean's parents, sharon and john fahy to share what he had discovered. >> my experience of losing someone to murder is you have days where it just destroys you as much as it ever did.

i couldn't bear to think that i was calling them on a day when they were fine and i was making it horrible, or that i was calling them on a day that was horrible and i was making it worse. >> tell you guys where i'm coming from on this. there are things about -- certain aspects of the case that bother me a lot. >> that's your opinion, you know, everybody has an opinion. >> there's no doubt in my mind. he killed the little girl, but we don't know what he stole from. she could have been the doctor that cured cancer, the president of the united states, you know, some world leader, you know. nobody knows. >> she was just a beautiful little girl. >> when i asked the fahy's what they thought about the death penalty? john said give me a baseball bat and a few minutes and i will really take care of this. that was actually one of the moments where i really connected with him. he had that anger and i felt it so many times in my own life.

i left their house feeling like i couldn't do it anymore. i couldn't be the one bringing this stuff up again for them. i can't imagine how i would feel if anyone were in touch with the guy who killed my father. every time i wanted to quit i thought about walter. what am i going to tell him. dear, walter it was really upsetting for me speaking to the fahy's. how do you tell a guy that? >> after three years working on walter's case, tom publish add two-part article detailing the snitch network used by the d.a.'s office in philadelphia, but in june 2005, the court set an execution date for walter. >> you know, my first date with my future wife get a call from walter that his appeal's been denied and they're going to execute him. you're sitting there on a first date going boy this is a lovely symphony and inside i'm freaking out. they're going to kill this guy. i know this stuff, but i can't get it to the right people. how do i do this? >> but tom's articles had been

noticed by a high powered law firm who signed onto walter's case pro bono. >> from what i had read, i thought it was clear that he deserved a new trial. . when the commonwealth of pennsylvania signed a death warrant for mr. ogrod, he was placed in the wing for folks who are awaiting execution. >> i called them, and they immediately went to court and filed the paperwork. >> walter and his lawyers immediately filed a motion to stay the execution, and for the time being walter's life was spared, but for a lasting decision, the lawyers knew they'd need to address walter's confession, so they turned to veteran homicide detective jim t tra trainum. >> most people think why would people confess to a crime they didn't commit. my answer to that is it's the way the interrogation is done,

the way we were trained. most of the interrogation schools out there teach the same approach, which is some form of the reed technique, what the reed technique does is it takes psychological manipulation and persuasion to convince the suspect that there's no doubt as to their guilt, that they're done, and the only way that they can receive any sort of help is by confessing. in looking at walter's case, it was like an oh, my god. i just threw my hands up. there was a lot of evidence of problematic interrogation tactics. >> like i testified, devlin was the one who was doing a lot of writing, a lot of questioning to ask me what have i heard about what happened. once i got up to go out the door, they shut the door on me, and devlin told me, you're not going anywheres because we believe you killed the girl, and you're blocking the memory and we're going to help you remember it. devlin kept on telling me that i

did it. they kept on putting the pictures of the child's body in my face. they said look what you did, all the blood when you hit her. i kept on denying it. i didn't do it. >> according to walter they not only fed him the story about the murder, but detectives lied to walter. >> devlin said you bring her right into your house. they said you killed this girl, you killed this girl over and over repeatedly. >> it's repetitive and it's overwhelming to be in that situation where you feel so trapped and you feel like these guys have all the cards, have all the evidence. all of that work to manipulate him to make him doubt his memory to the point where he felt that, well, maybe i did do something. and then when the detectives begin to suggest what he did, he just picks up on it and he runs with their narrative.

>> i'm like thoroughly awake at the time. they went over the statement a couple of times, kept on saying sign it, sign it. at the time i sign it, they had me believing that i killed her. >> we spoke with a number of psychiatric professionals who believe walter is particularly susceptible to wanting to please people, wanting to take direction, having a couple of detectives telling him we think you did it this way. we think you did it that way. he would not be able to withstand that. >> if walter's confession had been coerced, then barbara jean's killer was still at large, and jim rollins would learn about numerous alternate suspects, including one who had been convicted of raping and murdering another young girl. here we go.

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in analyzing walter's confession, jim trainer noticed multiple instances where walter's statements did not fit the evidence.

as a detective, i had a responsibility to once i got the confession, go back to re-interview people, re-examine the evidence and see if i can corroborate it. the detectives in this case just didn't do that. and there was a lot of red flags in there that they just chose to ignore. >> if the crime had occurred in his basement, the basement would have been a mess. it would have been covered in blood. and there is no testimony from anybody who was in the house that there was blood anywhere. >> there were like five people in the house. nobody saw walter with blood, nobody saw anything going on, nobody heard anything out of the ordinary. >> police also had access to numerous eyewitnesss who had seen a man carrying the tv box the day of barbara jean's murder. >> there was a witness in the alley. and he gave a statement to police that night. he said that a man came walking north up that alley carrying a box for a television. the box looked heavy and the guy was sweating and holding it with

both arms and his arms were straining. the guy asked him for a cigarette, rested the box on his knee, lit a cigarette and then kept walking up the alley. >> several eyewitnesss saw the guy carrying the box. they described him as about 5'8", 160 pounds, with either blonde or light brown sandy-colored hair. and he was smoking a cigarette. walt never smoked cigarettes. walt is over 6 foot tall, over 200 pounds, he's overweight. he has jet black hair. >> the detectives should have gone to these witnesses and to see if they could make an i.d. of walter and it just wasn't done. >> every single witness statement is to be compared to the forensic evidence and to other witness statements. that's how you determine reliability. if you do that in walter's case, it crumbles.

it just isn't there. none of the eyewitnesss have said that it was walter who was carrying that box. but we know that the philadelphia police department was focused on several alternative suspects. >> shortly after the murder, two eyewitnesss positively identified the man with the box as the fahy's neighbor, ross felice. >> police were following ross felice around for a number of months. he knew he was being followed. he had joked with his lawyer that they're basically living with me. look so much with the sketch. >> and police traced the television box to another possible suspect. >> the box had information on it, make, model, serial number, so eventually it was identified as a family on that same block as barbara jean that purchased that television. >> the family's youngest son, college student wesley ward, was home alone the day of the murder.

we were in there for almost an entire day. we had pieces of carpet taken up, pieces of wall removed, we had plumbers come in and go through traps and clean traps out. and we just thought that was it but it wasn't. >> while both ward and felice faced grand juries, neither would be indicted. but police had leads on yet another suspect. >> in 1987, a young girl named heather coffin was sexually assaulted and murdered by a game named raymond sheehan about a mile from barbara jean. and the main witness in the barbara jean murder identified raymond sheehan has the man carrying the box, positive identification. you have a positive i.d. of someone who murdered another little girl and you know it. as far as i know, the d.a. has done nothing. >> we believe there is additional material that we have not seen regarding the original investigation by the homicide unit, police department, and the

d.a. have taken positions consistently they believe that certain information need not be produced. >> rollins has argued for dna testing on fingernail scrapings from barbara jean and samples from inside the box she was found in to reveal her killer's true identity. >> the truth about what happened to that little girl is very possibly in the evidence vault right now in philadelphia and the d.a.'s office in fighting against testing it. are they interested in finding out who actually killed barbara jean? giorgio armani.

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by 2011, walter had been on death row for 15 years, and attorney jim rollins and his team filed an extensive argument to the pennsylvania courts for a new trial. >> we spent years re-investigating walter's case, literally thousands of hours, and we have before the court our full briefed post-conviction relief act petition, seeking a complete new trial on numerous grounds. federal constitutional grounds, state procedural grounds. but in the meantime, walter, who we believe is innocent, remains on death row.

>> the philadelphia district attorney asked the court to dismiss the entirety of rollins' petition and objected to full dna testing. >> there are fingernail scrapings. there is biological material from the box in which the victim was found, fingerprint evidence. we can't test it unless the court gives us an order allowing us to do it. >> if you're a prosecutor with any integrity, you would say, all right. we'll pull all the dna out and test it. let's be sure. and they won't do it. and they won't do it because they don't want to know if they made a mistake. even the fahys told me at the time that they were for dna testing. >> if there were dna to be tested against, would you -- >> of course. sure. now, would he be willing? >> oh, he insists on it. >> oh, does he? if for some reason he is not the person who killed barbara jean, well, then, i wouldn't want to

see him killed. >> when we took this case on 11 1/2 years ago, i don't think we expected to be sitting here today, waiting for a decision on just a discovery motion seeking access to testing materials that should be tested. >> rollins' petition includes a 2005 affidavit from jailhouse snitch john hall, admitting he gave walter's story to jay wolchansky. the d.a.'s office has argued that regardless of hall's statement, they still have walter's original confession. >> judy rubino told the jury at the second trial that the confession was a lie. so how they can now come back, trial "a" is confession. trial "b" is confession was a lie, snitch is true. appeals are snitch doesn't matter. confession was true. and somehow in all of that, they're saying walter said all of this. well, walter didn't say any of it.

>> we probably interrogate thousands of people -- who knows -- millions of people a year. the fact that these techniques that we used every single day have the possibility of getting inaccurate information and putting a man on death row and killing an innocent person, that's enough reason to look at other ways, better ways of doing this. >> this is our system. this isn't somebody else's responsibility. this is everybody's responsibility. you shouldn't be forgetting that somebody sitting in a prison somewhere is not your problem because everybody sitting in prison everywhere is everybody's problem for a whole host of reasons, especially when we've got them lined up to be killed.

>> in my opinion, the death penalty is 100% about revenge, which is a perfectly valid emotion. >> some people do such horrible things that, to me, do they deserve to die? sure. just not something i think the state should be in the business of because we become killers. and i think there's a real value in not becoming killers. >> all the pain that i went through brought me to this point where i wanted to do this book about how the system works, and i stumbled upon a case that taught me very clearly how badly it doesn't work sometimes and how intentionally not working it is because the truth is there, and there's a willfulness in not hearing it on the side of the people in power. when i stop and think of walter ogrod sitting on death row for all these years, it's a very hard thing to take.

>> i'm hoping there will be something they're holding back testing. but times, you know, i just worried about getting screwed worse by the court system, that they just don't care. they want to put someone away and they don't want to admit we screwed up bad. this has happened before to people all over the place. i just don't want to end up like them. >> walter was locked up when he was 26 years old. i mean he's 51 now. his hair is starting to get gray. they took his whole life away from him. i would think that the philadelphia police and the philadelphia d.a. would want the person who really killed this little girl in jail. so do it. find the person who killed her and let walt have the little bit of life left that he has to live.

on this episode of death row stories, a baby arrives at a hospital, dead on arrival. >> this was more than just a baby that quit breathing. >> and a teenage mother is sentenced to death. >> when a baby dies, people want to hold somebody accountable. >> but when a defense team raises doubts of guilt -- >> my impressions of the first trial is it was pretty much of a farce. >> -- the prosecution pushes for an execution. >> putting someone on death row, that's a terrible, egregious mistake. >> he said, i sentence you to die, and may god have mercy on your soul. there's a body in the water. >> he was butchered and murdered. >> many people proclaim their