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Want to get more from American Scandal? Subscribe to Wondery for early access to new episodes, ad, free listening and exclusive content you can't find anywhere else. Join Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. From Wondery. I'm Lindsey Graham and this is American Scandal. In May of 1993, three 8 year old boys were murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas and within only weeks police had their suspect, three teenagers accused of carrying out a satanic ritual killing. There was no physical evidence linking them to the crime, but under pressure to solve the case, police obtained a confession from one of the boys and that was enough. Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jesse Misskelley were convicted and sent to prison for a crime they did not commit. Thirty years later, the story of the West Memphis three has become a haunting example of how moral panic, media pressure and tunnel vision can conspire to put innocent people behind bars. Today we're joined by someone who has spent his career confronting exactly those kinds of injustices. David Moran is a retired professor at the University of Michigan Law School. He co founded the Michigan innocence clinic in 2009, which has helped free dozens of wrongfully convicted people. We'll talk about how wrongful convictions happen even in the face of evidence to the contrary, what these cases can teach us about the dangers of certainty and the the cost of getting it wrong. Our conversation is next. American Scandal is sponsored by AT&T. Who wants you to remember that hearing a voice can change everything. So make the gift of your voice one you're giving to your loved ones this holiday season. Because that conversation is a chance to say something you'll hear forever. AT&T. Connecting changes everything.
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Mom and dad, mom and mom, dad and dad, whatever parents are you about to spend five hours in the car with your beloved kids this holiday season? Driving Old Granny's house, I'm setting the scene. I'm picturing screaming, fighting back to back hours of the K Pop Demon Hunter soundtrack on repeat. Well, when your ears start to bleed, I have the perfect thing to keep you from rolling out of that moving vehicle. Something for the whole family. He's filled with laughs. He's filled with rage. The OG Green Grump. Give it up for me. James Austin Johnson as the Grinch. And like any insufferable influencer these days, I'm bringing my crew of lesser talented friends along for the ride. With a list guests like Gronk, Mark Hamill and the Jonas Brothers, whoever they are. There's a little bit of something for everyone. Listen to Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.
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A
Dave Moran, welcome to American Scandal.
- [03:22]
C
Thanks for having me.
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A
So do you remember where you were in your career when you first heard about the West Memphis case? Were wrongful convictions on your radar at that point?
- [03:33]
C
So about the same time that I first heard of the Memphis Three case, I was working at the state Appellate Defender office, taking cases from around Michigan. And I had a number of cases that resulted in exonerations without DNA evidence that featured some of the same types of shoddy police work that you see in the West Memphis Three case.
- [03:53]
A
Of those early cases that you were working on, are there any that stand out in particular? What were the similarities that you. You discovered to the West Memphis case?
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C
One of those cases was a man named Curtis Showers. Curtis was convicted of robbing a Hungry Howie's pizza store in suburban Detroit. A black man, who the two employees described as short, fat, and about 18 years old, came in and said that he was a Satanist and waved a gun around and robbed the store. And the two witnesses, both of whom were white young people, gave pretty consistent descriptions that the robber was short, fat, and around 18 years of age. And those descriptions did not match Curtis Showers. Curtis showers was about 6ft tall. He was in his 30s, not 18 years old. But despite all of that, the witnesses, by the time of trial changed their descriptions and said, yes, yes, it was Curtis Showers who robbed the store, and he was convicted and sentenced to life. And we were suspicious of a lot of things about this case. One of the things was, why did Curtis become a suspect in the first place? And the sole reason was somebody called the pizza store about 40 minutes before closing and ordered a pizza, and they never came and picked it up. And so the police became interested in that phone number. And that phone number was registered to Curtis Showers. And so that's how he became the sole suspect in the case. But what we discovered was that the phone number was registered to Curtis Showers, but it was actually in an apartment where his girlfriend, ex girlfriend, lived. They had broken up. Curtis had taken out the landline, and the landline was still in his name, but he wasn't living in an apartment anymore. And it turned out that the girlfriend, ex girlfriend, had a new boyfriend who was a short, heavyset, young black man who perfectly fits a description. And we did a little more research and discovered that that guy had robbed another restaurant in suburban Detroit, where he came in and announced that he was a Satanist, just like the robber of the Hungry Howie had done. But despite all that, that wasn't enough to Win the case. What did win the case was the victims had pointed that out to the police. The robber had come behind the counter and leaned against the pizza oven in order to reach a bag of cash. And at trial, the Livonia police officer testified that they lifted that print, that palm print, and it was just too smudged. They couldn't do anything with it. So we hired a ex cop to go in there to see what that fingerprint or palm print really looked like. And he reported back to us that the palm print wasn't smudged at all. It was clear as could be. And. And it didn't match Curtis Showers, and it didn't match any of the store employees. And even with all of that, the prosecution wasn't willing to give in, and we had to fight them all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court. But the Michigan Supreme Court ordered a new trial. And then very quickly, the prosecution dropped the charges because there was no way they could win a retrial against Curtis with all that new evidence. And so Curtis was exonerated.
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A
So in the Showers case, in the West Memphis case and others like it, it seems that there is a willingness to just explain away what seems like obvious inconsistencies or even contradictions. Is this a common pattern in wrongful conviction cases?
- [07:18]
C
Absolutely. In case after case that we've handled in Michigan Innocence Clinic, we see the most convoluted efforts to explain away evidence that does not fit the narrative. And I'll give you one example of a case that we have not won to date. We represented a man named Temujin Kinsu, and he was convicted of a murder that occurred in November 1986, and he's still in prison today. And that murder happened in Port Huron, Michigan. But at trial, the defense established through nine alibi witnesses that Temujin was in Escanaba, Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. And he interacted with all these people. He interacted with a waiter at a Big Boy restaurant. He bought a car part for his car. He interacted with three people who were in a car karate studio. And several of these people had documents proving that the interaction occurred on that particular day, which was the same day that a young man was shot and killed in Port Huron, Michigan, at 9am so it was physically impossible for him to have been the murderer. And in response to that, the prosecution said, well, okay, fine. He must have chartered a plane to get from Escanaba to Port Huron and back, because the alibi witnesses established that he was in Escanaba five and a half hours, six and A half hours before the murder, and he was in Escanaba three hours after the murder. Therefore, it's a simple matter. He must have chartered a plane and they called a pilot who, unbeknownst to the defense, had actually been the pilot for the prosecutor when the prosecutor ran for statewide office the year before. And the pilot testified that you could just walk into an airplane hangar in a small airport like in Escanaba or Port Huron, and find somebody who would be willing to fly you back and forth for a few hundred bucks, no questions asked, and not file a flight plan. But there was absolutely zero evidence that had happened. It is just risible that the prosecution presented that theory and got a jury.
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A
To buy is, for anyone listening, astonishing the contortions that the prosecution and the police go through. Jesse Misskelley's defense attorney, Dan Stidham, said that he came to believe that the prosecutors were actually evil because he couldn't otherwise explain their behavior. What's your take on why the prosecutors, the police, can be so determined to pursue a guilty verdict despite a lack of evidence?
- [09:39]
C
Well, I think it's not evil in most cases. I think it's a simple matter of human frailty. And the frailty is tunnel vision. The typical wrongful conviction case involves the police coming to a conclusion very early because they want to solve the case as quickly as they can. And then once they reach that conclusion, they become incapable of considering fairly other evidence that points in the other direction. So in Temujin Kinsu's case, they contacted the murder victim's fiance and asked her who might have wanted to kill your fiance. And the only name she could come up with was that of Temujin Kinsu, whom she had dated about five months earlier. And they had had a bad breakup. And she told the police that she thought Timujinkinsu was a jealous and violent man. And so he became the prime suspect, even though after the breakup he took up with another woman and moved way up north in the upper peninsula of Michigan to the Escanaba area. And he had made no contact with his ex girlfriend nor her new fiance in the five months between when they broke up and when the fiance was murdered.
- [10:51]
A
I want to dig into that because I can understand having found your theory, applying your expertise and your training properly. You come across some evidence that leads you to a suspect, and it might be difficult to reverse your opinion to keep an open mind, especially if you've exerted yourself. But in the examples that we are talking about today, there hardly seems like any exertion. It Seems like that is pure laziness.
- [11:16]
C
Well, I agree, because the last thing that the police want to do after solving, in quotes, a murder case is reopen and start over again because a lot of hours have gone into it. They've done interrogations, forensics, scene visits. And as humans, it's discouraging to be told that all the work that you've done is crap. It's wrong. The person has a rock solid alibi, or the person doesn't fit the description, or the person in Kuroshower's case doesn't live in the apartment anymore where the phone call was made from. And so they cling to it. It's a natural reaction to want to cling to your preexisting theory. And it leads people to ignore really powerful evidence.
- [11:56]
A
The West Memphis case hinged almost entirely on Jesse Misskelley's false confession. And most people find it hard to believe, even today, that someone would confess to something they never did. But it does happen more often than we think. How is it possible?
- [12:10]
C
About a fifth of all exonerations that have been documented by the National Registry of Exonerations and a similar proportion of ours here at the Michigan Innocence Clinic have featured false confessions. Many people think, there's no way that I could falsely confess to something as serious as murder if I didn't do it. And the fact is that just about anybody's vulnerable to it. And some of the people that we've had, whose cases that we've taken and cases we've won are not people you would expect to be likely false confessors. They're not people with mental defects. They're not people who are young or intoxicated or senile. They're people who don't have much experience with the criminal justice system and panic under a relentless assault, being told over and over again that we know you did it. And eventually they cave because they come to believe that the only way out is to tell the officer what they want to believe. In some cases, they will tell the officer what the officer wants to hear, thinking that this won't stick because there'll be physical evidence that will show it wasn't me. And oftentimes there is no such physical evidence.
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A
Also, an influence on the West Memphis free case was the hysteria of the Satanic panic. How do external pressures, media attention, public fear of this or that affect cases?
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C
There was a belief before DNA exonerations came around that while wrongful convictions may be a thing, they're much more likely to happen in low stakes cases. You know, a routine burglary or a theft than they are in a case like a murder or a multiple murder. A high profile case. And the theory was is that the system will provide so much more in a big case like that. You can get a better lawyer to defend the murder case. You're going to have top flight investigation in a murder case instead of a rookie cop. And it turns out that none of that's true. That what the exonerations have taught us is that you're actually more likely to have wrongful conviction in a high profile case because of the pressure, because the police are under pressure to solve the cases. Now here in Michigan. About half of all felony convictions in Michigan come from Wayne county, which is where Detroit and the Detroit police were for many years. Completely out of control and under tremendous pressure to solve as many homicides as they could. And what they started to do was to take unconstitutional shortcuts. They would go to the scene and they would arrest the witnesses, and then they would hold the witnesses in filthy rat infested cells until they agreed to implicate somebody. And then they would go after that person on the basis of the confession from somebody who oftentimes would come to trial and recant the confession and say, I only sign that statement, not a confession. I only find that statement implicating this other guy because the police told me that I was going to be locked up and possibly charged with the murder unless I did. And in case after case after case, we've seen the Michigan Innocence Clinic, the prosecution would then roll their eyes at trial in response to this testimony and say, oh, yeah, sure, right. That you honestly believe, ladies and gentlemen, the jury, that the detective here is going to risk his career to get somebody falsely convicted for this crime. He's going to force somebody to implicate a random person. And it turns out that's exactly what they were doing. And eventually the Justice Department obtained a consent decree against the Detroit police to stop them from unconstitutionally arresting and coercing witnesses to make them confess.
- [15:42]
A
American scandal is sponsored by AT&T, who believes hearing a voice can change everything. It's why we love a good podcast or save voicemails from loved ones, because we appreciate the sound of a familiar voice. That's why when you need a recharge, you call your best friend. And when you want some comfort, it's your mom or advice from dad, or just the sound of family talking together. AT&T wants everyone to share their voice over the holidays. So send a voice note, leave a voicemail, call someone, because that conversation is a chance to say something they'll hear forever. Happy holidays from AT&T. Connecting changes everything Hello American Scandal listeners. I have an exciting announcement. I'm going on tour and coming to a theater near you. The very first show will be at the Granada theater in Dallas, Texas on March 6th. It's going to be a thrilling evening of history, storytelling and music with a full band behind me as we look back to explore the days that made America. And they aren't the days you might think. Sure, everyone knows July 4, 1776. But there are many other days that are maybe even more influential and certainly more scandalous. So come out to see me live in Dallas or for information on tickets and upcoming dates, go to americanhistorylive.com that's americanhistorylive.com Come see my days that Made America tour live on stage. Go to americanhistorylive.com. An additional frustration for the West Memphis three was that prosecutors and judges were resisting allowing new DNA testing even as recently as 2021. Why would a state block more advanced testing in any case, especially one that's already so controversial?
- [17:27]
C
The only answer I can give to that comes straight out of A Few Good Men. You can't handle the truth. That's why in some cases, the prosecution will try to block testing of forensic evidence. Now, my clinic is primarily a non DNA innocence Project, but we've run into this sort of thing with testing fingerprints. So there's fingerprints from the crime scene that don't match our client, and we'd like them to run through aphis, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, to see if they match other people who have criminal histories and therefore have fingerprints on file. And time and time again, the prosecution resists that. They don't want to know. Now, of the 45 cases that my clinic has won since 2009, one of them was a DNA case. And that was a case where at the time of trial, they knew that the DNA didn't match the defendant. But after he was convicted some 30 years ago, more advanced DNA testing came online. And so there were repeated efforts to have the DNA tested. And time and time again, the prosecution made bogus, fabricated arguments against the testing, saying, for example, that the DNA is probably contaminated by now, which just simply isn't true. It's not the way the DNA works. And there's no way the prosecution could believe that. They just did not want to have this conviction overturned. In this particular case, our client was convicted of murdering an elderly woman, raping her orally, and vaginally and then murdering her by stuffing her in the trunk of her own car in her garage and turning the car on and leaving. It's a horrific, terrible crime in a small town in northern Michigan. And they obtained a confession from our mentally impaired client, Jamie Peterson, even though the DNA didn't match. And so they just theorized that, well, Jamie must have had an accomplice. And so you would think that if that's their theory, you think that when more advanced DNA testing comes available, they would definitely want to retest the evidence and see if they can identify the supposed accomplice. But they fought it successfully for nearly 20 years. And we were able to obtain that testing only after the prosecutor died. And we got a new prosecutor who agreed to the testing. And right away, the testing hit on a young man who had been a suspect at the time of the killing, but had been dismissed. And there was zero evidence that that man ever met Jamie Peterson. So the accomplice theory fell apart. I will say that after Jamie Peterson was exonerated, the prosecution did charge and convict that man of the murder.
- [19:55]
A
What gets me most is that the prosecutor and the investigators, whose job is to find the perpetrator, their resistance to test new evidence necessarily means they are aiding and abetting the actual person who committed the crimes. Even as horrible as the murder of the elderly woman you just described.
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C
Right? Exactly. The prosecutor in that case would rather leave a person who at least participated in the murder and rape of an elderly woman out on the streets, then admit that they may be wrong about Jamie Peterson. To his credit, the new prosecutor rejected the position of his predecessor and agreed to the testing, though he didn't agree for a while that the testing exonerated Jamie Peterson. He initially took the position that it just showed who Jamie Peterson's accomplice was. But a state police investigation confirmed that these two people had never even met.
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A
Now, speaking of exoneration, that is actually not what happened to the three men convicted in the. In the West Memphis Three case. They entered an Alford plea. But just in the last few months, a judge did rule to finally allow DNA testing to move ahead. And the defense argues that this could definitively exclude all three men from the crime. What would it mean legally, though, for these three men, given that they've already entered their Alford plea?
- [21:15]
C
I don't know. Because the laws from state to state vary about the effect of an Alford plea. In Michigan, it's possible to overcome a plea. Two of the 45 victories that we've had in the Michigan Innocence Clinic were people who pled, in one case no contest, and in the other case guilty. And in both cases, we were able to show why they made it a rational decision to enter a plea even though they were not guilty. But it is a much higher burden to overcome. And in some states, as I understand it, you can overcome it. Even the most impeccable new evidence is not enough to overcome the effect of a guilty or Nolo contender or Alford plea. The only thing in those states that can be done is to get a pardon from the governor.
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A
I know your work doesn't focus on DNA, but we often regard DNA evidence as a ultimate truth teller. In criminal justice, it is chemical evidence. How has this technology changed the landscape of innocent work in general, and are there limits to it?
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C
Well, DNA was foundational to the innocence movement. DNA came on the scene in the late 1980s as a way to solve crimes. And almost right away, participants in the system realized that you could use it as a retrospective way to test the veracity and validity of previous convictions. And almost as soon as that kind of testing started, we started to see the parade of DNA exonerations. Now, a DNA exclusion does not always mean innocence. There are sometimes situations where there are explanations for why DNA not belonging to the defendant could be found. But in many, many, many cases, it is dispositive guilt or innocence. So it is a great tool. And once we started to see these parade of DNA exonerations, we started to realize that the criminal justice system was not as reliable as we thought. There was a paradigm that existed before DNA testing that we have an extremely reliable criminal justice system that, yes, wrongful convictions sometimes occur, but it's really rare. It's like getting hit by a meteor. It's not something we really have to worry about, especially, as I said earlier in big, high profile cases, because the system will bring its best behavior to bear to find the right person and give that person every right to defend themselves before convicting them of a serious crime like a murder. And we just know it's not true that actually those are the crimes where wrongful convictions are most likely to occur because of the pressure to solve.
- [23:44]
A
So I suppose the new DNA technology, as you indicated, changed the perception of the American criminal justice system and revealed that it's far more fallible than first thought. And that's perhaps why your Michigan clinic focuses on exonerating people where there is no DNA evidence. Just the fact that DNA evidence doesn't exist doesn't mean that these same problems didn't occur in their cases.
- [24:08]
C
Right. And that's the lesson I learned from my eight years in the state appellate defender office in Detroit. I had these five exonerations, none of which involved DNA. And I came to realize that there's no reason to think that the same problems that cause false convictions in cases where there is DNA to test wouldn't also be present in situations where there is no DNA to test. And experience I had proved it. And so I realized that in the vast majority of cases, there is no DNA. The vast majority of cases where there is a DNA exoneration involve sexual assault. And so if it's not a sexual assault, it's unlikely that there will be DNA to test. I mean, after all, the typical American homicide is committed by a person with a gun. And shooting somebody to death from a distance does not leave behind any DNA evidence. Now, other kinds of murder are likely to leave behind DNA evidence, for example, strangulation. But most homicides don't leave behind DNA evidence. Most robberies don't leave behind DNA evidence, and many other crimes don't leave behind DNA evidence. And so my intuition was that we need to have a clinic that will take the non DNA cases. And the National Registry of Exonerations confirms there are far more innocent people who don't have DNA than do. It's about a 10 to 1 ratio right now of the number of people who've been exonerated without DNA versus those who have.
- [25:37]
A
American Scandal is sponsored by AT&T, who believes that hearing a voice can change everything. And if you love podcasts, you get it. The power of hearing someone speak is unmatched. It's why we save those voicemails from our loved ones. They mean something, right? That's why when you need a one on one holiday boost, you know who to call. Maybe it's mom, dad, your older brother, or younger sister. That one voice that always feels like home. And when you need to get hyped for something big, it's your best friend. Their voice gives you that lift that you didn't know you needed. AT&T knows the holidays are the perfect time to share your voice too. So if it's been a while since you've called someone who matters, now's the time. Because it's more than just a conversation. It's a chance to say something they'll hear forever. So spread a little love with a call this season. Happy holidays from AT&T. Connecting changes everything. The West Memphis Three were in prison for nearly 30 years, and it's hard to imagine what that would be like. But you might. Do you have a sense from the people that you've helped that how does someone get back on their feet after that kind of experience?
- [26:48]
C
Everyone is different. The average length of time that our clients whose cases we've won in the Michigan Innocence Clinic served is about 16 years. The longest is 46 years. Richard Phillips, who was convicted of a 1971 murder in Detroit, where he was framed by the real murderer. But Richard is doing spectacularly well. His case and his work as an artist have been covered by CNN and CBS Evening News. And he's had a thriving career as a brilliant watercolorist ever since he got out of prison in 2018. But other people struggle, people who serve much less time than 46 years. Many of them come out, they've lost contact with their families, they've lost contact with their communities. They don't know what to do. So one of the priorities that we had at the Michigan Innocence Clinic was getting a decent compensation law passed so that at least our clients would have some money that could help get them back on their feet. And we got the Michigan legislature and the governor in a very bipartisan effort to pass a decent compensation law, and so that our clients, when they're exonerated, are entitled to $50,000 per year of wrongful incarceration, which is not enough, but it certainly is better than nothing, which is what they were getting before.
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A
Speaking of your clients, how do you decide which cases to take?
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C
It is a three step process that we have. So we created a questionnaire, and when somebody writes us and says, help, I'm a Michigan prisoner. We only take cases from Michigan and I'm innocent. Then we send them the questionnaire, they fill it out. Then we have two law students, because after all, the law students do the lion's share of the work in the Michigan Innocence Clinic. This is a law school clinic. And they'll go online and learn everything they can about the case. They'll read prior judicial opinions, news articles, whatever, and they each write memos independent of each other about is this a case where there is a plausible chance the person is innocent? And if so, could we plausibly expect to find evidence that might prove it? And if the answer to those two questions is yes, then we will go ahead and investigate the case. We call it further investigate. Only about 10% of the 7,000 applications we received have passed that first step. So we've had about 700 further investigations. And then we will then assign the case to a team of two students, usually not the same two who did the initial inquiry. And those two students then will work up the case. So they'll read the transcripts of the trial, they'll talk to the prior attorneys, maybe they maybe go visit the crime scene, may file FOIAs to get physical evidence, they may talk to experts in various forensic fields. And ultimately the goal there, and this can take months, sometimes years, is for them to come to us and say that we are now firmly convinced that this person is actually innocent, didn't commit the crime, didn't participate in the crime, and that we have the evidence that can prove it. And if we get to that stage where we can answer those questions, yes, then we take the case. And again, it's only about 1 in 10. So we've taken about 70 cases since the clinic opened and 145 of them.
- [30:06]
A
So far, but that's 1 in 10 of the 1 in 10 from the original 7,000 applications.
- [30:12]
C
That's right. So 7,000 applications became about 700 further investigations became about 70 cases, became about 45 victories so far.
- [30:22]
A
So that 1%, is that because that is the number of persons who are truly innocent or that are the numbers of persons whose circumstances you can probably prove the latter.
- [30:34]
C
Many, many of the further investigation cases we've closed, the 90% that we've closed, we think the person is probably innocent. We just can't prove it. Maybe the new evidence, the best new evidence, has already been found and it's been rejected by the courts. And so there's nothing more we can do. We can't just go back to the court and say, hey, the jury got it wrong or you got it wrong on a prior post conviction motion. We have to go back with something new. But if we do believe somebody is innocent, we'll try really hard to find new evidence to support it. But sometimes we can't. And those cases really, really are tough where we have to tell somebody we can't help you even though we think they're innocent.
- [31:13]
A
Working on this season about the West Memphis Three, and you can probably hear my tone in this interview, it's astonishing. It's aggravating. It's frustrating beyond measure to learn of these cases of wrongful conviction. But how do you feel about it after having done this work for so many years?
- [31:29]
C
Well, there are many very frustrating moments in this work, but the victories are very, very sweet. They really make it possible to do this work. Because if we did this work and we just lost case after case after case, it would be hard to do it for very long. But once we started Winning cases When clinic opened Michigan Anderson's clinic opened in 2009. We won a few cases, but we lost a bunch of cases because there was so much skepticism amongst the prosecutors and the judges, and they would come up with all kinds of crazy reasons to rule against us. But as we started to win more and more cases and we publicized the victories, I think the judiciary in particular started to see that we are selective. We're not just, you know, picking any. Any person who says, help, I'm innocent. We're doing a very thorough investigation before we take the case. And so we started to win more and more. And so, on balance, the joys of this work, I think, far outweigh the frustrations.
- [32:24]
A
Earlier in our conversation, you said that most people don't believe that they would be compelled to make a false confession, but it happens. So let's say that I'm arrested for a crime that I didn't commit. What can I do to ensure that I don't utter a false confession, that I'm not convicted?
- [32:42]
C
Well, as I've taught my students here at Michigan Law School and before that, Wayne State Law School for years, ask for a lawyer over and over again. Absolutely. Clearly. Don't say, maybe I should get a lawyer. Do you think I should get a lawyer? Say, I want a lawyer. I want a lawyer. I want a lawyer. I'm reminded of an episode of Better Call Saul, I believe it was, where Mike, who's a former police officer himself, is brought in and the police start to question him and he says, lawyer, and ask him another question. He says, lawyer. That's what you should do. You may be innocent. You may be eager to explain to the police the proof that you're innocent. You know, you know where you were at the time of the crime, and you want the police to understand that you have an airtight alibi. But you need to wait. You need to wait until you have a lawyer. You can tell the lawyer about the evidence of your innocence and then have the lawyer go to the police and hopefully persuade them that they're barking up the wrong tree. Don't try and do it yourself is my advice.
- [33:38]
A
You've retired from the clinic and you are retiring from teaching. What is the future of innocence work?
- [33:46]
C
I think that the DNA projects and then the increasing use of other forms of investigation in the non DNA projects have transformed the criminal justice system, and I don't see them going away. There was a time early on in when the DNA exoneration era started where the thinking was, well, new cases will there'll be DNA testing. So there's just this finite universe of old cases where there was no DNA testing. And the innocence projects will work on those cases and will free all those innocent people, and that'll be the end of it. But what happened is the DNA exoneration showed that there were these serious problems with the criminal justice system, and those problems extended to the great majority of cases where there is no DNA to test. And so there's endless work for projects. When we started in 2009, we were the nation's first exclusively non DNA innocence project. Now there are many, many projects that do a mix of DNA and non DNA work, and many of them do mostly non DNA work now. And so I think that unfortunately, this work will, will never end. But on the other hand, you know, the criminal justice system can't be perfect. We can argue for reforms. We can try and make the criminal justice system more accurate than it was before, but there will always be these problems. There will always be human problems. Problems like tunnel vision are going to be very, very hard to stamp out. And so there will always be a need for projects, clinics, organizations to do this kind of innocence work.
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A
Well, Dave Moran, thank you so much for talking with me on American Scandal.
- [35:18]
C
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
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A
That was my conversation with Dave Moran, a law professor and co founder of the Michigan Innocence Clinic, which has helped exonerate nearly 50 wrongfully convicted people. From Wondery. This is episode five of our series on the West Memphis three for American Scandal. In our next series, a fan favorite. In 1974, wealthy heiress Patricia Hearst was kidnapped from her home by a group of radical political activists. The crime was already a national sensation, but it would take an even more dramatic turn when Hearst apparently joined her captors. She'd go on to commit armed robbery, prompting debate about whether Hearst was a victim trying to save her own life or whether she had become a hardened criminal. If you're enjoying American Scandal, you can unlock exclusive seasons on Wondery binge new season first and listen completely ad free when you join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts or Spotify. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a survey@wondry.com survey. American Scandal is hosted, edited and executive produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship. Audio editing and sound design by Gabriel Gould. Music by Thrum. This episode was produced by John Reed, managing producer Emily Burke, development by Stephanie Jens, senior producer, Andy Becker. Executive producers are William Simpson for Airship and Jenny Lauer Beckman and Marshall Louie for wondering.