Rikers Island; 30 years on death row; Eyewitness testimony reliability | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

there has been a lot of talk about Criminal Justice Reform in America and it would be hard to find a place more in need of Reform than Rikers Island the most important jail in New York City located in the middle of the East River Rikers holds about 10 000 inmates it's a volatile mix some have been convicted of minor crimes but as many as 80 percent are awaiting trial many are there because they can't make bail and in a trend that reflects a growing National problem Rikers holds a rising number of mentally ill inmates the mentally ill now make up more than 40 percent of the population correction officers are not adequately trained to deal with this population the result is a disturbing pattern of neglect and excessive force that is the focus of our story tonight it has led the U.S attorney preet bharara to intervene I mean what you really have we found was it was a culture of violence on top of a Code of Silence and that is a deadly combination and I mean that literally as we found in in a number of cases that we have brought in connection with Rikers Island concerned by those deaths and a stream of alarming reports about Rikers Island preet bharara who is the U.S attorney for the southern district of New York launched a two-year investigation into the jail complex we found in an alarming number of cases there was no discipline with respect to officers at all that you had an officer who had dozens of complaints against him and was never disciplined once or maybe just one time and then that's something that has to change people have to understand that there are consequences for their actions not just the inmates but the the officers as well how long has this been going on years and years too long Rikers is a 400 acre Island just off the tarmac of LaGuardia Airport in the shadows of Manhattan skyscrapers one Bridge leads in and out it's surrounded by its own moat the inmate population has come down dramatically from a high of twenty thousand to ten thousand but despite the decrease city data shows violence has gone up over the last decade because of the U.S attorney's findings and unusual collaboration was formed bharara the prosecutor teamed up with plaintiff's lawyers The Legal Aid Society and private attorney Jonathan abadi in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of a dozen Rikers inmates the number of facial fractures of traumatic brain injury have broken bones of serious physical injury is just out of control compounding the problems at Rikers is that increase in the number of mentally ill inmates and that just complicates issues relating to violence and issues relating to care and issues relating to discipline so it's a problem what was captured on this video obtained by 60 Minutes helps illustrate what U.S attorney bharara is talking about it has not been seen in public before Bradley Ballard who was schizophrenic and diabetic was brought to Rikers in 2013 on charges of violating parole for an assault conviction in the video he was observed twisting his shirt into a phallic symbol and making lewd gestures and then was taken back to his cell according to an investigation by the New York State Commission of correction he was placed in the functional equivalent of solitary confinement they put him in a Cell they locked the cell and they basically threw away the key abadi represents Ballard's family in a pending wrongful death suit against the city the commission's report found that Ballard was locked in his cell for six days prior to his death and was denied access to his life-supporting prescription medications and that day after day officers supervisors and clinicians walked by observed his deteriorating state but failed to help him after repeated floodings of Ballard's toilet a maintenance worker turned off the water running into Ballard cell the report found that Ballard was lying in his own waist he sprang a deodorizer yes the reports are that Corrections Officers were bringing aerosol cans from home because the stench was so bad coming from that cell here an inmate who delivered a food tray pulled his shirt up over his nose the report found the videotape indicated Ballard cell was grossly unsanitary finally on the sixth day medical workers were called according to the report an officer asked Ballard if he could get up on his own I need help Ballard said inmate workers carried him out of his cell and put him on a gurney records show Ballard went into cardiac arrest soon after he died hours later they watched him languish for seven days as he died and they did nothing it was the functional equivalent of torture they killed him the city's medical examiner declared Ballard's death a homicide according to the commission report it called Ballard's medical and custodial treatment from the time he entered Rikers so incompetent and inadequate as to shock the conscience the Department of Correction issued a statement that it adjusted its practices to ensure that a similar tragedy doesn't happen again but to this day no criminal charges have been filed against any of the officers supervisors or health workers involved it's impossible to know if anyone stepped forward but if they did it wasn't enough to help Bradley Ballard that's inhumane in my opinion that that should never have happened Norman Seabrook is president of the Union that represents the correction officers but not the higher ranking supervisors we showed him the Ballard video who's responsible the supervisor what about your officers the officers followed the instructions of the supervisor in another incident captured on surveillance video inmate Jose Bautista tried to hang himself he had been arrested on domestic charges and was awaiting trial he couldn't post the 250 bail when he jumped up Suddenly officers beat him so severely he suffered a perforated bowel and needed emergency surgery according to case records Batista's case was one of 129 serious injuries over an 11-month period documented in a revealing report by the New York City Department of Health and mental hygiene that was intended for internal use only but 60 Minutes managed to get a copy the report found 77 percent of the injuries involved mentally ill inmates and their injuries were severe enough to require care beyond the capacity of jail medical doctors it could take a third of the 77 percent and say that okay it was the inmates who was just being violent and needed to be subdued but 77 percent is I think tells the story it's a problem Dr Daniel selling who is now in private practice was the executive director of mental health at Rikers for five years until he left in 2014. is it fair to say that Rikers is a mental institution sure it's by one of the largest mental institutions in the nation if not the largest can you tell me about the case of Bradley Ballard what does that say about how things work on Rikers probably the worst case that I have experienced been a part of that was a a case in which all systems failed selling said the staff of the private medical contractor failed to do the required daily rounds and never informed him about Ballard's deteriorating condition contract with the private medical firm was not renewed Bradley Ballard is not the only mentally ill inmate to have died in custody in recent years in 2014 U.S attorney preet bharara filed the first criminal civil rights case in a decade against a Riker's officer or supervisor in connection with the poisoning of mentally ill inmate Jason echeverria who died after ingesting toxic soap while in solitary confinement as seen in this video that was entered into evidence echeveria a robbery suspect who was also awaiting trial was escorted to a cell where he swallowed the toxic soap that was given to him for cleaning his cell his father Ramon told us he believes he ate the soap in a desperate effort to get out of solitary confinement my son was screaming because he was burning up inside he's dying he's dying few hours later according to court documents correction officer Raymond Castro alerted unit supervisor Captain Terence Pendergrass that echeveria needed medical attention according to Castro's testimony Captain Pendergrass said don't call me if you have live breathing bodies only call me if you need a cell extraction or if you have a dead body another correction officer Angel lazarte testified as to what happened next a pharmacy technician on her rounds said echeveria could die he then approached Pendergrass and Pendergast told him to write an injury report you can see on the tape Pendergast then went to look into echeveria's cell himself he returned and interrupted the writing of the report Pendergrass LED lazarte away from the desk after they talked lazarte pocketed the report according to court records the report was never filed echeveria was discovered dead the next morning the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide due to neglect and denial of Medical Care he saw him he was he was in pain and everything why couldn't you just call an ambulance fam okay he's a prisoner he's an inmate he's a human being he's a human being it both breaks your heart and it makes your blood boil because you're thinking to yourself here's somebody who had responsibility for making sure that peace was enforced but also responsible for the safety and protection of those under his charge and that report was never filed you know one of the conclusions we found in our investigation was that in case after case after case sometimes you would have individuals who would witness things and they would get together and they would coach each other into what their response should be which makes it very difficult to hold anyone accountable that culture you're describing seems so entrenched that the officers felt almost comfortable behaving like that even with the cameras running I was just what what does that say to you about that culture it says that the culture is broken it says that the institution is broken Captain Pendergrass was convicted in December 2014 a jury found that Pendergrass violated Jason echeveria's constitutional rights by deliberately ignoring his pleas for help and depriving him of urgent medical care leaving echeveria to die alone in his cell Pendergrass was sentenced to five years in prison officers Castro and lazarte have since been fired absolutely Union president Norman Seabrook said his officers don't have the training to deal with mentally ill inmates like Jason echeveria and Bradley Ballard your men are not trained and women no they're not true men and women are not trained to deal with mental illness not at all we asked Norman Seabrook about the internal report showing the vast majority of excessive force cases involving mentally ill inmates at the end of the day shouldn't a question be why didn't these individuals receive their medication so they wouldn't attack a correction officer if you're talking about an inmate that has a mental health problem then certainly something set this person off Seabrook says it's not just an issue of the mentally ill Rikers is a dangerous place and many of his officers are assaulted every year Seabrook wanted to show us the conditions his officers have to contend with but when he took us out to Rikers Department of Corrections staffers stopped us from going inside with our cameras to see the problems Seabrook is talking about this is as far as we got walking around the perimeter of one of the buildings with him we wanted to talk to the commissioner of the correction department about the problems at Rikers but our three scheduled interviews all were postponed City recently initiated a number of policy changes like installing more cameras and reducing the use of solitary confinement a federal monitor was appointed to ensure the reforms are implemented U.S attorney bharara is going to hold the city to it is there a decrease in violence you know it remains to be seen how much that decrease will be over time I think the training will take some time and is happening as we speak it's taken some time to build up this culture of violence yes it has how long do you think it will take to unravel it I'm not going to put a clock on it but I will say that we're we're impatient people and we like to see results that's what we got involved in the first place there may be no greater miscarriage of Justice than to wrongfully convict a person of murder and sentence him to death but that's exactly what happened to Glenn Ford he spent nearly 30 years on death row in solitary confinement in Louisiana's notorious Angola prison until New Evidence revealed he did not commit the murder he was one of 149 inmates freed from Death Row since the U.S Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976 in all those exonerations you have likely never heard a prosecutor admit his role and apologize for his mistakes in sending an innocent man to death row but tonight a prosecutor's confession Marty Stroud speaks of an injustice he calls so great it destroyed two lives Glenn Ford's and his own I ended up without anybody else's help putting a man on death row who didn't belong there I mean at the end of the day beginning in Middle whatever you want to call it I did something that was very very bad it was 1983 Shreveport Louisiana and 32 year old prosecutor Marty Stroud was assigned his first death penalty case a local jeweler Isadora Roseman had been robbed and murdered quickly Stroud zeroed in on Glenn Ford Ford had done yard work for Roseman and was known to be a petty thief and he admitted he had pawned some of the stolen jewelry all that was enough to make him the primary suspect Stroud knew a conviction would boost his career I was arrogant narcissistic caught up in the culture of winning when regardless the facts the truth looking back on it yes there was a question about other people's involvement I should have followed up on that I didn't do that why didn't you I think my failure to say something can only be described as cowardness I was a coward Stroud now admits the cards and the system were stacked against Ford from the beginning his court appointed lawyers had never practiced criminal law what kind of law did they practice one individual had General civil practice and another one did succession wills and Estates you know here they were trying to murder trial in Louisiana where a man was on trial for his life and at the time I saw nothing wrong with that in fact I snickered from time to time saying that you know this was going to be we want to get through this case pretty quickly Stroud's case wasn't strong there was no physical evidence linking forward to the crime the main witness incriminating Ford admitted in court she'd been coerced by police to make up her testimony but what was more important to Marty Stroud was the composition of the jury there were no African-Americans on the jury was that by Design at the time of the case we excluded African-Americans because we've I felt that they would not consider a death penalty where you had a black defendant and a white victim I was a person that made the final call on occasion with respect to jurors and I was I was wrong Caddo Parish Louisiana is predominantly white yet 77 percent of those given the death penalty here in the last 40 years have been black so when Glenn Ford walks into that courtroom he's got a count of oh and two against him and a fast boss coming right at his head for strike three it took the jury less than three hours to find Glenn Ford guilty afterwards Stroud and his legal team went out and celebrated sending Ford to death row I had drinks I slapped people on the back we sang songs that was utterly disgusting you know you see mother Justice sometimes and statute and she has a blindfold over her eyes she was crying that night because I wasn't Justice that wasn't Justice at all Ford was put in solitary confinement in one of the most infamous lock-ups in America Angola the Maximum Security Prison has a well-earned reputation for Harsh penalties and harsher conditions summer temperatures on death row commonly exceed 104 degrees death row you have maybe a five by seven foot cell you in there every day you get out one hour a day to walk around and you come back in you do that day after day year after year and that's it he was basically thrown into a cell and forgotten Ford would become one of the country's longest serving death row inmates Stroud went on to a successful legal career but all that changed when one of the initial suspects a man named Jake Robinson told a police informant he had killed the Jeweler three decades earlier Robinson is now in prison for another murder a court review of the new information found there was credible evidence Glenn Ford was neither present at nor a participant in the robbery and murder of Isidore Roseman Stroud's reaction when he was told Ford was innocent I thought I was going to throw up nauseous as in and I felt my face was just turning like a fever but then the horror of knowing that Yours Truly had caused him all this pain last year Ford was exonerated and released from Angola pictures of his first free moments captured a rainbow in the sky and a smile on his face what was it like to step outside the walls of that prison I step it in a brand new world like breathing fresh air for the first time I felt good but that good feeling didn't last shortly after being released Ford learned he had stage four lung cancer doctors told him he only had a few months to live when we met Glenn Ford he was living in New Orleans in a home for released prisoners and that hurt just to swallow water I feel like a flame you were on death row for 30 years yes did you ever come close to an execution date came within a week because the judge said he was retiring and he wanted to put a death date on me did Mr Ford get Justice in this case I think he has gotten delayed Justice Dale Cox the acting district attorney of Caddo Parish got Glenn Ford released after receiving the informance information as he sees it the justice system worked and no one including Marty Stroud did anything wrong I don't know what it is he's apologizing for I think he's wrong in that the system did not fail Mr Ford it did not it did not in fact how can you see that because he's not on death row and that's how I can say it getting out of prison after 30 years is Justice well it's better than dying there and it's better than being executed there may be no more controversial prosecutor in the U.S than Dale Cox between 2010 and 2014 his Caddo Parish Office put more people on death row per capita than anywhere else in the country I think Society should be employing the death penalty more rather than less but there have been ten other inmates on death row in Louisiana who have been exonerated clearly the system is not Flawless are you sure that you've gotten it right all the time I'm reasonably confident that that I've gotten it right reasonably confident am I arrogant enough am I narcissistic enough to say I couldn't make a mistake of course not but until this information came out the state was convinced that Mr Ford was guilty yes he could have been killed yes and it would have been a mistake yes it sounds like you're saying that's just a risk we have to take yes if I had gotten this information too late all of us would have been a grieved Beyond description uh we don't want to do this to people who are not guilty of the crime they're charged with according to Louisiana law Glenn Ford was entitled to 330 thousand dollars about eleven thousand dollars for every year of wrongful imprisonment but the state is denying him the money why in the original trial prosecutors said Ford knew a robbery of roseman's jewelry shop was going to take place but he didn't report it Ford was never charged with that crime but the state says that's reason enough to deny him do you believe he should be compensated for the time he spent in prison no I think we need to follow the law and the statute does not require that you be charged or convicted or arrested for any of these other crimes the statute only requires that Mr Ford proved he didn't do these other crimes so he's guilty until proven innocent in this case no because it's not a question of guilt or innocence it's a question of whether he's entitled to money taxpayer money which you see he has to prove yes that he's innocent of these other charges these other crimes for which he's never been charged for which he's never been tried that's correct he has to prove that he's innocent of them in order to get the compensation that's correct I'm trying to understand he was punished for something that he might have done that doesn't seem fair you want fairness isn't the law supposed to provide fairness it is supposed to provide Justice you don't think he deserves compensation I think that the law must be followed I had never heard of such about where it says it's okay to do what he did to me without any type of conversation there was some compensation Glenn Ford was given a twenty dollar gift card the day he left Angola prison he gave me a card for twenty dollars and said wish you luck how long did that last you one yeah I had some fried chicken tea and the french fries came with it I had four dollars in change left after 30 years in prison you're right 30 years on death row in in solitary confinement and the state of Louisiana releases Mr Ford with a 20 gift card you're trying to portray the state of Louisiana as some kind of monster I got him out of jail as quickly as I could that's what the obligation of the state is and that's the end of the state's obligation as far as I'm concerned what about compassion have you no compassion for what Mr Ford has been through well you don't know me at all do you and but you have no problem asking that question I'm asking because I'm seeking an answer I'm not in the compassion business none of us as prosecutors or defense lawyers are in The Compassion business I think the ministry is in the compassion business we're in the legal business so to suggest that somehow what has happened to Glenn Ford is abhorrent yes it's unfair but it's not illegal and it's not even immoral it just doesn't fit your perception of fairness I would say in this case many many many people would see this as unfair I agree I I can't disagree with that for his part Marty Stroud says Glenn Ford deserves every penny owed him he went to see Ford to apologize how do you apologize to someone for taking 30 years of his life from him well there's no books you can read to do that I just went in and apologized you forgive him no he didn't only take from me he took for my whole family so it sounds like you don't think you could ever forgive him well I don't but I'm still trying though do you think you deserve his forgiveness no if somebody had done that to me I don't know if I could forgive them you say you destroyed his life sounds like this incident destroyed your life too I've got a hole in me through which the North Wind Blows it's a sense of coldness it's a sense of I've just discussed there's just nothing out there that can fill in that hole it says I want it's all right well it's not all right it's not all right after we met him Glenn Ford died penniless his final months he lived off charity donations covered the cost of his funeral there was a tragic outcome and these tragic outcomes happen all the time in life it's not like the Glenn Ford case is the only tragedy you will ever see or I'll ever see in our lifetime the question is was there anything illegally done improperly done that led to this and and I can comfortably say based on the review of the record no there was not in Glenn Ford's will he directs that any state money he might receive go to his ten grandchildren so they can have a better chance than he did and Marty Stroud he has asked the Louisiana Bar Association to discipline him for his role in the Ford case it was a trying to Injustice and I was the engineer Glenn Ford will be a part of me until the day I die it's a cliche of courtroom dramas that moment when the eyewitnesses asked do you see the person who committed the crime here in this courtroom before you well it happens in real courtrooms all the time and to jurors that point of the Finger by a confident witness is about as damning as evidence can get but there is one type of evidence that's even more persuasive and that of course is DNA there have been 233 people exonerated by DNA in this country and now a stunning pattern has emerged more than three quarters of them were sent to prison at least in part because an eyewitness pointed a finger an eyewitness who we now know was wrong [Music] it was hot and humid in Burlington North Carolina on the night of July 28 1984. Jennifer Thompson then a 22 year old college student had gone to bed early in her off-campus apartment as she slept a Man Shattered the light bulb near her back door cut her phone line and broke in I remember kind of waking up and turning my head to the side and saying who's there who is it and I saw the top of someone's head kind of sliding beside my mattress and I screamed and I felt a blade go to my throat a knife a knife and he told me to shut up where he was going to kill me her first thought was to offer him anything she had to go away you can have my credit card you can have my wallet you can have anything in the apartment you can have my car and he looked at me and said I don't want your money and I knew what was getting ready to happen she vowed to stay alert and study him so that if she lived she could help put him away forever what is his voice does he have an accent does he have a scar is there a tattoo he's raping you and you're studying his face it was just trying to pay attention to a detail that if I survived and that was my plan I'd be able to help the police catch him after about half an hour Jennifer tricked the rapist into letting her get up and fix him a drink and she ran out the back door he fled and raped a second woman half a mile away Detective Mike galden met Jennifer at the hospital the first comment I remember her making was that I'm gonna get this guy that did this to me she said I took the time to look at him I will be able to identify him if I'm given an opportunity detective galden worked with Jennifer to make a composite sketch pouring over eyes noses ears lips trying to recreate the face she had seen that night the sketch went out and tips started coming in one of those tips was about a young man named Ronald cotton who worked at a restaurant near the scene of both rapes and had a record a guilty plea to breaking and entering and as a teenager to sexual assault three days after the rape Mike Alden called Jennifer in to do a photo lineup he lay these six pictures down on the table said the perpetrator may or may not be one of them and told her to take her time does she say immediately that's him no she studied each photograph I can remember almost feeling like I was an s.a.t test you know we start narrowing down your choices you can discount A and B and I like multiple choices exactly according to the police report Jennifer studied the pictures for five minutes she picked up Ron's photograph and said thanks Amanda rape me and you must have said are you sure and she said yes oh yes certainly Ronald cotton heard the news from his mother's boyfriend he told me to run he said police are looking for you and I said for what he told me for real my son commit such a crime like that did you panic I didn't Panic I'm trying to figure out you know why he comes in and gives me a very detailed uh account of where he was who he was with that night as it turns out that was a false alibi I realized later that I got my weekends confused and so therefore I gave them the reason to think that I was lying this was August 1st 1984. right you go in to clear yourself when did you actually leave I didn't he was locked up and Days Later put in a physical lineup I'm number five you scared I was very scared nervous I was so nervous I was trembling you know I felt my body just shaking they were asked to step forward and speak and step back I can remember looking to the detective and saying it's between four and five gonna have them do it again and then she knew it was number five Ronald cotton did you feel absolutely certain absolutely certain did anybody say to you good job well what was said to me afterwards was that's the same person you picked out in the photo lineup so in my mind I thought bingo I did it right I did it right in a week-long trial the jury heard about Ronald Cotton's faulty Alibi his clothing that matched Jennifer's description and a piece of foam found on her floor that seemed to come from one of his shoes and most powerfully they heard from Jennifer when they ask you do you recognize the man who did this to you did you point to him Cotton what's he called me ain't pulling a finger and I saw that's all it takes it seemed like what did that feel like it felt like someone pushing a knife through me it took the jury just 40 minutes the verdict guilty on all counts and he was sentenced to life in 50 years and it was for me that moment that you know the justice system works because I am the victim and he's a horrible person and he will never ever be free again Ronald cotton was handcuffed Shackled and taken to North Carolina's Central Prison he was 22 years old you notice they grow men and cry by us a lot you know I grabbed my pillow many times and hugged it wasn't I was hugging my mom my dad sister brother I wish it didn't have to be this way [Applause] he started working in the prison kitchen singing in the choir and writing letter after letter to his attorneys hoping to get a new trial then one day as he watched a new inmate being brought in he had a strange feeling that's excuse me I said I said you look for me I said where are you from yes I'm from Burlington as I am too I said you kind of resembling the drawing of a suspect in a crime in which I'm false from prison for did you commit this crime and he told me no he did not wait a sec you saw him and thought of that composite drawing his name was Bobby Poole and he was in for rape he started working in the prison kitchen too and the stewardess were calling me Pooh instead of cotton they were calling you by his name yes in other words people were mistaking the two of you yes exactly then a fellow inmate told him that he'd heard Bobby Poole admit to raping Jennifer and the other woman that night Ronald cotton won a new trial and his lawyers call Bobby Poole to the stand with Jennifer sitting right there it was the moment Ronald cotton had been hoping for Bobby Poole is in the courtroom you look over there what happens inside you nothing nothing nothing as a matter of the strongest emotion I felt was anger at the defense because I thought how dare you how dare you question me how dare you try to paint me as someone who could possibly have forgotten what my rapist looked like I mean the one person you would never forget how dare you Ronald cotton was convicted again this time given two life sentences back in prison seven years later he and everyone else was riveted by a big news story The Trial of O.J Simpson that would get my radio put my earplugs and go outside sit in a corner and listen to the trial yes he was intrigued by something he had never heard of DNA he wrote to his new attorney law professor Rich Rosen Rosen warned him that there probably wasn't any evidence left to test and if there was DNA could cut both ways understand if the DNA comes back and shows that you did this crime whatever legal issues we have don't make any bit of difference you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison he warned you that if it comes up positive you're sunk all right tell him to put his foot down and go with it pat away on the shelves of the Burlington Police Department was 10 year old evidence from the two rapes that night inside one of the rape kits was a fragment of a single sperm with viable DNA it proved what Ronald cotton had been saying all along he was innocent and the rapist was Bobby Poole within days Ronald cotton was back in court you're walking out here today as free man this time to be released so not only do you find out that Ron didn't do the crime you find out Bobby Poole did it was just utter shock really disbelief I mean by this time this is 11 years later and you know I know that I've been involved in a case of the man has lost 11 years of his life and uh I just I was so sad for him and his family in the years since Ronald Cotton's conviction Jennifer had married and had children are you the one that tells her yeah yeah her reaction no it can't be true it's not possible you know I know Ronald cotton raped me there's no question in my mind it was like someone had just taken my life and like turned it upside down she cried oh she cried she broke down I mean she took it all on herself you know the guilt you know I did this to that man shame shame terrible shame suffocating debilitating shame but when she thought or dreamed about that night it was still Ronald Cotton's face she saw to get past it she asked if he would meet with her at a local church I remember him walking into the church and I physically could not stand up she was nervous scared I started to cry immediately and I looked at him and I said Ron if I spent every second of every minute every hour for the rest of my life telling you how sorry I am it wouldn't come close to how my heart feels I'm so sorry and Ronald just leaned down he took my hands oh gosh and he looked at me he said I forgive you I told her I said Jennifer I forgive you I want you to look over your shoulder that I just want us to be happy and move on in life the minute he forgave me it's like my heart physically started to heal and I thought this is what grace and mercy is all about this is what they teach you in church that none of us ever get and here is this man that I had hated with I mean I used to pray every day of my life during those 11 years that he would die that he would be raped in prison and someone would kill him in prison that was my prayer to God and here was this man who with grace and mercy just forgave me that is overwhelming it's overwhelming how wrong I was and how good he is how is it that Jennifer could have studied her rapist so carefully and still made this mistake and how could she have failed to recognize Bobby Poole the actual rapist when he sat right in front of her in the courtroom three years later that part of the story when we come back now the DNA has exonerated more than 230 men mostly in sex crimes and murder cases criminologists have been able to go back and study what went wrong in those investigations what they've honed in on is faulty eyewitness testimony over 75 percent of these innocent men were convicted in part because an eyewitness fingered the wrong person at the heart of the problem is the fragility of memory as one researcher told us we now know that memory is not like a videotape recorder you don't just record an event and play it back instead memory is malleable full of holes easily contaminated and susceptible to suggestion as in the case of Jennifer Thompson and Ronald cotton before this case did you think that there were a lot of innocent people put away no you didn't no I didn't innocent people aren't convicted of crimes they didn't commit I believed that what do you think now oh I know better I mean well over 200 cases nationally we've had a half dozen and this state alone the first of course was my case and as these innocent men have been freed in one state after the next we've learned something else that in all the cases where eyewitnesses were wrong the real perpetrator was not in the initial lineup when you're sitting in front of a photo lineup you just assume one of these guys is the suspect it's my job to find it and Jennifer did her job she found the suspect's photo problem is the suspect Ronald cotton was not the rapist Bobby Poole's photograph was not in the photo lineup right he was not in the physical lineup when the real perpetrator is not in the set is is none of them Witnesses have a very difficult time being able to recognize that Gary Wells a professor of psychology at Iowa State University has been studying eyewitness memory for 30 years he says when the real guy isn't there Witnesses tend to pick the person who looks most like him I think that Ronald cotton and Bobby Poole look very much alike they have very similar lips shape of their eyes their eyebrows kind of go up in a look of surprise yes without him in the lineup Ronald cotton was the one who was in Jeopardy well says eyewitness testimony has two Key Properties one it's off often unreliable and two it is highly persuasive to jurors I can see why it's so persuasive someone says I was there you'd believe that person you believe that person because they have no reason to lie yeah the legal system is set up to kind of sort between liars and Truth tellers and it's actually pretty good at that but when someone is genuinely mistaken the legal system doesn't really know how to deal with that and we're talking about a genuine error here he walked us through what went wrong some of it counter-intuitive when Jennifer spent five minutes studying the photographs she and detective galden thought she was being careful I didn't want to come across I don't think as somebody who's like that's the one I really wanted to be sure well says no good recognition memory is actually quite rapid so we find in our studies for example that if somebody's taking longer than 10 15 seconds it's quite likely that they're doing something other than just using a reliable recognition memory so you're saying if she really recognized a guy it would have been almost instantaneous quite quick yes he says a better way would have been to show Jennifer line up photos or people one at a time so that she would compare each one directly to her memory rather than to one another Well showed me a study in which more than 300 subjects were shown deliberately shaky videotape of a simulated crime you look out a window and you see some suspicious Behavior what happens is we tell them later than this person that you saw right there put a bomb down that down the air shaft there then subjects are shown a lineup and asked to identify the bomber that would be so hard I just saw it and of course you're particularly cautious right now you know now after we've talked probably not to pick anyone no no actually I know I actually know who it is because if I had yeah who has come upon that I think it's this guy Am I Wrong Am I me wrong yeah I'm wrong yeah okay so there you go and I'm already saying how hard it is it's none of them it's not and it's so it's so and you know what that's bizarre you know about this we've talked about this so so this is the difficult this is what makes it so what you just did to me I'm mortified I feel like Jennifer well says in real life the mistake is often compounded by what happens next remember the seemingly innocent information Jennifer says she got from police after she picked Ronald cotton out of the physical lineup that's the same person he picked out in the photo lineup so in my mind I thought bingo and I did it right well studied what that reinforcement does after half his subjects did what I did picked an innocent person from this lineup he told them nothing then ask them questions about what they had seen very few felt highly confident about their choice only about four percent are saying they had a great view which is good because we gave him a lousy view only about three percent are saying they make out details of the face that also is good because they they really couldn't but he told a second group of subjects after they made the same incorrect choices good you pick the suspect now what happens is uh 40 almost 45 percent of witnesses now report that they were positive or nearly positive notice that over one-fourth of them now say they had a great View this is really what happened to Jennifer it is what happened with Jennifer what this seems to be saying is that a reinforcement Alters memory it does dramatically it does he says the solution is to have someone independent administer the lineup someone who doesn't even know who the suspect is and certainly not the detective on the case you shouldn't have been there I shouldn't have been there but nobody did anything wrong I mean that was that was a common practice then it was it was the tradition it was how it was done then law enforcement wasn't schooled in memory we weren't schooled in protecting memory treating it like a crime scene where you're very careful methodical about what you do and how you use it I mean we weren't we weren't taught that in those days but none of these errors explains perhaps the most puzzling part of this story how it is that Jennifer could see Bobby Poole in the courtroom and not realize her mistake you're looking into the face of the man who raped you whose face you had studied so intently and there's no flicker nothing between you and and Bobby Poole nothing nothing and I've gone back there many times trying to think was there was there ever a moment did I ever look at him and think and I didn't Elizabeth Loftus is a professor of psychology and law at the University of California Irvine and an expert in memory she showed me an experiment she says might help explain Jennifer's mistake she asked me to study these faces then after a few minutes she gave me a memory test which of these two phases do you recognize right okay you picked right left you picked left okay I said left but I wasn't 100 sure and then the tricky part oh well I'll tell you why I'm stymied because I just picked this one on the left two seconds ago but now I'm not sure because those two look very much alike to me but I'm going to tell you the left but I was wrong it was the one on the right Loftus explained how I had been duped you saw this face then I gave you a test where I presented you with an altered face along with a novel one so I pretty much induce you to pick a wrong face because I don't even have the real guy there it's an altered version and later on when you now have a choice between the altered one and the real one you stuck with your altered left choice this is exactly what happened to Jennifer this can help us understand why Jennifer can be sitting in a courtroom and be looking at Bobby Poole the original rapist and looking at Ronald cotton and saying saying no it's not pool it's cotton because she has been picking him yeah all along I begin to wonder whether there should ever be eyewitness testimony in Trials well because of the tricks that memory plays yeah I think what's important though is is to understand that know that know it as a police officer as an investigator as attorneys we need eyewitnesses I mean if we couldn't convict based on an eyewitness that's giving a lot of comfort to criminals we have no choice we have to find ways to make this evidence uh better and that's something Jennifer has tried to do ever since by telling her story to prosecutors police defense attorneys and she's had some success her estate North Carolina was the first in the country to mandate reforms by law showing victims lineup photos one at a time and emphasizing that the right answer may be none of the above having lineups conducted by a person who doesn't know who the suspect is or Not by a person at all the person who committed the crime may or may not be one system now used in a handful of cities is computer software my galden helped develop to have a laptop conduct photo lineups does this person but law professor Rich Rosen says that in the vast majority of places there's been no reform and that needs to change this is something that police officers can and should be in favor of because you're you're not getting the real guy off the street yeah Bobby Poole raped other women because they went after Ron cotton so Ron is not the only person who suffered from this mistake Ronald cotton now 47 years old has worked hard to rebuild his life he works the late shift in a factory he's been married for 12 years and has a 10 year old daughter they live in a house paid for with money North Carolina paid him in restitution ten thousand dollars for each of the 11 years he spent in prison when he can he joins Jennifer in her campaign for reforms one of the most amazing things to have come out of this miscarriage of justice is the most unlikely of friendships Jennifer and Ron say they speak on the phone about once a week they're families of friends they say they have a shared bond that is hard for most people to Fathom have people ever met you for the first time when you're together and said kind of cheerily hey how did you two meet yeah they handed it on the airplane a lot oh yes we're traveling and I usually just have you tell them what do you say we look at each other and laugh you know and finally we go ahead and tell him and they have recently co-authored a book in hopes that their story can inform and Inspire others today when you treat think about what happened to that night when you were 22 years old whose face is there nobody's oh my that's that's that to me is one of the most beautiful things is I don't have a face Bobby pulls dead I don't ever have to worry about him ever hurt another woman he died in prison and Ronald cotton is my friend

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 1,328,582

Keywords: prison documentary, real crime, true crime, juvenile justice, new york city, new york, rikers island, eyewitness testimony

Id: wYLWtFKR0xk

Length: 56min 1sec (3361 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 29 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/yulDD]

Cant watch. Not available in my country