it's a wrongful conviction. what you say today we're going to be doing a deep dive into an issue that is fascinating experience to our founding, which is the phenomenon of false confessions. and my guest today is going to be jane fisher already also was currently working on 4 cases involving false confessions and each is fascinating its own way. so jane, while some confession and jane is an attorney who is an expert on false confessions jane, how did you get into his work? i was a public defender in manhattan here in new york city for about 3 years. and we saw a lot of police misconduct, you know, we were doing arraignments up until 1 am in the morning and you see people beat up or, you know, people whose cases get dismissed, who get no compensation. so my husband and i left the legal aid society with the

hopes of doing civil rights work. my name's distinguished professor of psychology at john jay college of criminal justice. once a false confession is taken, the case is closed, nobody really can tell the difference between a good confession and one that is a problem with all of this is that your tactics that can be used to get innocent people and i don't just mean vulnerable, innocent people, i mean people who are sitting around in this room to confess to crimes. they didn't commit last century since you anytime you do an exoneration came, there's been

a confession. it's like trying to write a trice. everybody's already against you. the person's been convicted by a jury. the judge thinks he's guilty. the jury thinks he's guilty. now you have to convince everybody that they're wrong. so your is a case over in a way who has been in prison for 20 years? renee lynch was a case we took about 2 and a half now maybe 3 years ago now. and she was accused and convicted of killing her landlord in buffalo, new york in 1905. and it's also obviously a false confession cases. the police are going crazy and they can't solve it. 18 months go by. and bernie's connection to the victim was that it was her landlord.

and so they are start looking into renee, who at the time was heavily addicted to drugs crack cocaine. and because she gets arrested for something else and they start interrogating her. and she confesses to killing her landlord with this guy karim. so she says kareem and i went to my landlord's house, we were going to rob her. the robbery goes bad and karim stabs her, so it can make it a felony, murder being present during the commission of a crime, and somebody gets killed. we started sort of doing, you know, just regular google searches on the players' names and detectives and everything. and women behind bars comes up and they've done an episode case where they got in the, in the prison and interviewed her. and then interviewed this choice of law court was the cop on the case. the way her body when she decided to go, you just saw,

it was time to tell the truth. i believe her confession is kind of nonsense. there's inconsistency between the physical evidence and what she says. and during the show, he says, well, i mean, we knew that corinne walker was in florida at the time of our crime are going to have kareem was afforded the time of our i guess they knew karim walker was in florida at the time the crime then rene's confession can't possibly be true because she's confessing to going to rob the landlord with kareem and the defense been able to put that on her confession would have made no sense. but the defense was never told the whole thing is so full of holes and so bogus. i can't put my finger out and say like, you know, this is the thing. but i think if we dug in it, we could find that thing that could get her out because it's all, it's just all of it. so it's messed up. how do they record this confession?

and didn't know, i mean, did they make her a statement? they typed it up and then read it to her and made her so. and so there is a type of confession is the only version of the confession. there's no like original notes. they have or something that we have to wonder about. she says she knew details about the crime scene because they showed her photos of it. details that she, you know how the body was lying, and being shown her those photos. you have to find some kind of new evidence that didn't exist in the time of the trial or didn't, didn't exist at the time, but it wasn't known right? and it wasn't presented during the trial. and if we have to show that if it had been could have been a different outcome, i think we can, but it's going to be hard. goal is of course to get renee out of prison.

but it continues a really long time. sometimes many years. and one of the 1st things we do in cases like this is to comb through the confession and find all that in consistencies. to clearly show that the confession there's a cream walker drove me to the plan was i was going to go into the front door and karim was going to come up the back door. he was going to tie her up with a piece of white extension cord. that he brought with him at babson time, kareem hit louise in the side of the face, fell to the floor and kind of went out. if that happened, he would be standing punching her here right here in the face. the way the wiggle landed on the floor in the kitchen,

the kitchen. he tried to tie louise up with the plastic or he had then comes from behind louise. he stabbed her at least twice. however, we know it's times louise fell to the floor again. it was a large amount of blood on the floor next to her body. so the only thing she gets right is that the witness knocked off. that there's a plastic cord involved in this case. that's correct. and the phone cord is where the extra d.n.a. is. just in the it's jean fisher byron nelson. renee lynch's attorney. i have a call with her this morning. oh good thinks oh oh oh

oh, i think quite well . i know it's hard. she testified very incoherent. during the trial was she was not a good witness for herself. she recanted right away afterwards and her confession is that it was coerced. i would never people talking about this for 30 years, and that's the 1st thing or would happen today. it's not the person that gives

a false confession. we are all under the circumstance of interrogation. we are all trained to say i can get anybody from any of the boats that they have a 95 percent. confession rate, the less you're a less perfect the perpetrator, that is every suspect you identify is the perpetrator, right? if you've got a confession or false confessions, when i talked to her about it, she explained to me. i was so shocked they convicted me. she said because there was no evidence of a confession so powerful it can stand alone. so here's the jury. on the one hand, they've got the confessions, the limit the d.n.a. changes. everything is sometimes on the final product of a confession. would production is scripted by the police theory of the case is

rehearsed and ready to go and that's when the jury sees him see the whole production. they just see the final. i don't see how the judge or jury can look past the false confession. is that also we have a number of documented cases in which the person who falsely confessed actually came to believe the lie that they were told about their own behavior. which is a whole nother level of insanity. and some of them believe it for a long time afterwards. right

there. here in the melted thompson case we had he was a danish inturn who came he was a danish, he was a college student studying to become, a teacher. and he came and interned at i.p.s., which is really, you know, like a $20000.00, a year preschool up by the u.n. . and it was a code teacher who accuses me of molesting all the kids in the class. and he's on the cover of the daily news. they take his focus, his facebook profile pictures, him with his niece on his shoulders. so they put that on the cover of the daily news and write sex monster. and they go arrest him in the morning and bring him into the station and they have a female cop interrogate him. she tells him while, you know, we have video of you molesting these kids, which they had videos,

but he's not molesting anybody. so they had this woman who accused him, had taken videos of him in the classroom, interacting normally with children. and so either the cops had watched it or they had watched it and were blatantly lying to him, but there was no video of him molesting kids, but he hears that right. and he thinks holy, well, if i'm on video, i must have done it right. they let him continue to believe this lie that he's caught red handed on tape molesting these kids. and i think that, that, you know, he started, you could tell through the hole when they finally are recording him. he's doubting himself. you know, he's, he's wondering, did i do this during

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or remain in the shallows. mr. thompson, can you tell me why? yes. i'm here because in order for inappropriate behavior, it was ok. so why don't you tell me privately and how this started, what happened? you know, what you know, well, and remember, just had to go down just a few moments ago and then proceed to me of

a missing person. and, you know, i had taken its place and playing around to the story of my shorts and you know, short of going forward in that or question what you would call it. and so what, when you say gave him pleasure at one time without a central or as an individual to have to be i don't know, you know, my memory of it. it's like, is this none of it? if you read out the statement i did as your handwriting and it just waiting over briefly, doesn't look like it's been changed in any way. and

that's your signature on the range. you're at this hour here today, they're going to show you the camera. i don't even think people in the us really get that the police are allowed to lie to you. i think most people would think that if i am speaking to a police officer, he's telling me the truth. but now times i mean in denmark, it's illegal for the police to lie to you. so he really, i think, was, was, you know, really says extra susceptible to something like that. it took filing the civil rights suit to even get access to these tapes. the district attorney wouldn't give it to us when the criminal case was pending. we asked the court, we moved for a court order to get it. the judge just wouldn't give it to us. but they sat on these tapes for 8 months. he had this case hanging over his head and they knew that there was nothing in the tapes. right. there was the only evidence there was yes, luckily mel to never got convicted right. we were able to stop it before that

happened. but it took, i mean, it almost killed him there sexual abuse involving very young children, were brought to the attention to the special victims and district attorney's office. to thoroughly investigate and involving children, particularly in this instance used for peaceful people are willing to dismiss this case after carol and gather in our extensive investigation. we have to have

you know, have you ever seen anybody use like a piece of a full court to prop up the waves or put it just all the way forward to? i don't know if i have a case where there is a piece of foam cord found inside of a week, why would you have just laid it on your head to give the league a little for

a little better if they're flat. because if there is some clue feed, then the hairs i can see they look just like a 3 to 4 inches of phone cord. trying to get permission to test all the old evidence for d.n.a. . but to do that, we have to collect as much information about her innocence as we possibly can. and go back and interview all the witnesses documents, go back to the crime scene. i keep coming back

to this thing that the cops knew. he was in florida and kept going with the story that they did together like wife, if they know he's in florida, why don't they like your lives? they're lying to us because he's and we know he's in florida. why don't they are confronted by hearsay? that how can they be permitted to go forward with a serious of a case that they know is not true. name names and trial basically matter. so that's why that's as trickery. and the only way to convict somebody of this was to do it that way. yes. it just makes me so jaded and really disgusted with the district attorney's offices. and i feel like, you know, you know, they're supposed to be at the top of the chain right there is supposed to be the ones making sure the cops made mistakes or people below the cops made mistakes. then they're the ones who are responsible for fixing it. why not do d.n.a. testing?

think why not? they were all, we're not infallible. we can all make mistakes. why not check? i mean, her name is going to be in prison for the rest of her life. why not just check? you know, they can never answer that question. so you just end up in court with, you know, them opposing your motions for d.n.a. testing and ending ability gaining instead of working together. in rene's case, it's especially frustrating because, i mean they certainly believe that this was done. not the stabbing was not done by her. right. so there is a set of the, i mean they're basically admitting that they have a cold case and there's a murder out there and they still don't want to do it. you know, it's did 2 people either 2 people or somebody other than renee, committed that crime. and that person is out and about, and d.n.a. contesting could show who they are, but they're still posing as am

you know, the central park jogger case was my 1st interaction with false confessions our firm represented corey wise on his civil rights case way to start i mean, you're diving right into the deep end there. you know, the circumstances at play in that case were huge amount of pressure on the police and the authorities to make arrests and make them step forward 7 years in prison.

with one of most notorious crimes in the history of new york city, it was a crime in which a woman who was a wealthy investment banker was out jogging at dusk and was dragged into the woods in central park and almost beaten to death. and there was front page news every day, everywhere, and they are out to get arrests. and i got him when you get to the false confessions, in that case it was a classic, you know, mismatch. they were totally overmatched, underrepresented, if represented at all. i don't know what you could do, corey, even have anyone in the room without his consent is 16. so he was considered an adult, sadly. and so his mom was not allowed in there, and they, you know, had, given the lawyers, they all waived their,

their miranda rights rights where you live. chris says that it's this is very, very serious in this neighborhood. we don't hear or their way in any case that we do say after seeing those pictures, i'm sure you can see why it

is hard for people to understand how this can help produce a confession, something they didn't do. and there really is a complicated set of stories. there is no one really. so you know, for a while is confessed to get out of this bad situation. he was under pressure from many, many hours. he was likely be told that others were giving stories and that to, to cooperate in order to go home. and it is very telling in the central park 5 case that every one of them, every one of the boys and every one of the parents who were present were surprised . the boys were arrested after their statements. every one of them i was going home, right? well, you know what, it sounds crazy right here. thought you were going or confess to a rape and go home. right. but you know that one false confessors were interviewed afterward and they've been exonerated. and the 1st question, everybody wants those,

i don't understand why don't you confirm the most typical response? because i want to go home. because people often say after wards, you know, i was so i'm tired. i was so stressed, i figured let me sign this confession. it'll all work itself out. in the end. the, detectives often say, you know, we have d.n.a.,, we're going to send them to the lab 3. they think that claiming they have d.n.a., blood is a way to scare the criminal into submission. it may be right. but if the person you're talking to is not the criminal but an innocent person, then the law becomes a promise of future exoneration. paradoxically makes it easier to confess, right? we're going to do some tests. we're going to take blood samples from a lot of different people. i just want to know that if we do that, we will probably get an order to take a sample from you. and then we'll compare it to tests. are

very because you're in a position now where if you know that there's and it be a match, you better off. tell us about it now or the stairs instead of saying something that's natural or this is one of the things i think they made. you say was that you cut her out of the legs and where did you, how did you come up with that? i don't know. came from no, i don't know. made it up. i don't know. i came from. i don't know.

you know, those will sleep. we'll wish each sure what we do w. . sure. who keep the board. it doesn't actually matter. vegetable would've been murdered by you got to go with us because all of those who knew the story could be game we will soon be confused with it would seem obvious, but is the most severe. some of what is in your speech. come on and used the 20th century was thinking of revolution, the great depression and world war, the 21st century of mental illness. those aren't my words. that's what surfaced. some psychologists tell us, the only question is, should we accept it as

a fact use in the stories that shaped the way care nothin. historic peace deal brokered by moscow was signed by armenia and azerbaijan, ending almost 2 months of bloodshed in a corner. cutting back russian military personnel are in the region to ensure that fighting does not start. the ma, i mean, is, have been taking to the streets of their capital, accusing the country's prime minister of betrayal, and branding truce accumulating defeat also to come. russia suggests that opposition leader alexina boundary could have been poisoned in germany, or on the way their spokesperson also gave an exclusive interview to r.t. commenting on berlin's refusal to cooperate. in the case.