Subscribe Via RSSDr. Phil Explores False Confessions
In January, television personality Dr. Phil devoted an entire hour-long show to the topic of false confessions. What happens behind closed doors to make an innocent person suddenly confess to a crime that he didn’t commit? What factors can make an innocent person confess? During the show, Dr. Phil explored these issues by focusing on two specific cases involving false confessions. The first was the case of Justin Mello, accused of the execution style murder of an acquaintance. But Justin and his friend were at a party the night of the murder, nowhere near the pizza parlor where the crime was committed. As they were questioned, both consistently stated they had not committed the crime. Justin was interrogated for hours with the police repeatedly insisting that he was guilty. They suggested to him over and over that he had been drugged and then committed the act, thus explaining why he didn’t remember having done it. When Justin’s mother called to find out why he was in the police station, she was told he was assisting the police and was fine. When Justin requested to speak to his mother, he was told that she knew what he had done and didn’t want to see him. After more than eight hours of interrogation, alone, unable to speak to anyone for support, he finally came to believe what he was being told. He confessed, ending the interrogations and his isolation. Justin spent 178 days in jail, convicted of this murder, until the real killers were found. Justin was freed but still faces public ostracism. The general public believe that he must somehow have been involved in the murder. He has had difficulty finding a job and his family is constantly faced with judgmental citizens. Family members of the victim hold him responsible for the delay in finding the real criminals and publicly speak out against him. He has been victimized twice, first by the system that elicited the false confession and now by his community, unwilling to forgive or forget. Marty Tankleff was 17 when he was convicted of murdering his parents, based on his confession. But was the confession coerced? Marty, at 17, had no one at his side during hours of interrogation. In spite of his continuous denial, the police persisited in accusing him of the crime during. Marty finally confessed when he was told his father had briefly come out of his coma and named Marty as the murderer. Knowing that his father never lied and believing that the police never lied, he confessed. But the police did lie. The story about his father was concocted as a means to an end — that end being his confession. The confession that was entered into evidence at the trial was not written or signed by Marty. In fact, his statement is that he had never seen or read the confession until it came out in the trial. And Marty’s surviving family members, an aunt and a cousin, attended the trial and reported that the facts in the confession are not consistent with the evidence presented. Regardless, Marty has spent 18 years in jail for a crime he did not commit. Recent developments in this case indicate that there is strong evidence, apart from Marty's word, that Marty did not commit the crime. There is even evidence pointing to the true murderers. Nevertheless, the detective who interrogated Marty stands firm that he arrested the right man, regardless of the new evidence. Marty’s family is pursuing this evidence, hoping to finally free Marty. As Dr. Phil points out, there is no law in the states in which these crimes were committed to keep the police from lying, stretching the truth, or creating false evidence in order to elicit a confession. Typically, detectives doing an interrogation believe that they have the guilty person, and their job is to work until that person confesses. They thus feel justified in doing whatever is necessary to get a confession. But what happens when the police have the wrong person? Eliciting a false confession stops the process of finding the true criminals. Dr. Phil talked with Steven Drizin, the Director of the Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University in Chicago. As Drizin pointed out, a big concern of Innocent Projects nationwide is that the interrogation process is often not recorded for presentation in court. The only people who can describe the experience are the interrogating police officers and the accused. When questioned, the police have a strong motivation to sanitize the process, so that no one is aware of what the accused was subjected to prior to confessing. While the confessor may describe the conditions of interrogation, that person's description is discredited by the very fact that he was accused and, especially, that he confessed to the crime. There are currently bills being considered in several states, including Maryland, to require police to record interrogations in some cases. To learn more about the Maryland bill and how you can support it, please visit our "Take Action" page. For more information on false confessions, including descriptions of cases in our region in which false confessions have led to wrongful convictions, please refer to the "Facts" and "Case Profiles" section of our web site. To visit Dr. Phil's web site, which contains a more detailed description of this show and links to other sites discussing false confessions and wrongful convictions in general, click here.
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February 4th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
It’s even worse when your attorney, the prosecutor and the judge conspire to squeeze the plea from the citizen… for 1# no other attorney wants to look at the case because of the collusive nature behind it. We are presently speaking w/ the feds regarding a RICO charge since the innocense project has previously had no interest in Jeff’s injustice.Our packet to TIP is almost finished and will be in the mail by the end of this week.
September 4th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
I just came accross this blog this evening. I just wanted to let the writer know. Justin Mello was the poor young man who was killed. He was the Victim, not the accused. The young man who was falsely accused and appeared on the show with his mother and sister, was Jonathon Kaled. But I personally feel poor these youths were victims. I know, I am Jon Kaled’s mother. And I was on the show with Jon and my daughter, and prof. Drizin.
September 4th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
My name is Cheryl Stepnioski. 7 years ago my 18 year old son, Jon, was arrested along with two of his friends, for a murder they did not commit. We live in a small lakeside community outside of Detroit. There hadn’t been anything like that here in 30 years. It was highly publicized here and around the US. You may or may not, have heard about it. It was in New Baltimore, Michigan. A 16 year old young man was shot execution style, in a walk in cooler at a local Pizza Shop in town.
A week later they arrested our son and his two friends. It was the very worst time of my life to say the very least. The thing that got me through it was the other two mothers of my son’s friends. Originally I did not know either of them. And I was afraid they would hate me. But from the first court hearing we three became almost like sisters. Without them I’m not sure I could have survived. The community treated our families horribly. I have 7 children and had 4 grandchildren at the time. Three of my children and one grandchild were still in school here and one child was in college. They were all harassed and mostly by the the school staff not the other students. We lost friends and family over it.
They raided our homes looking for the gun and any evidence linking our sons to the horrible crime. All my children were home it was 6:00am in the morning. The FBI, the COMET team, the Sheriffs dept., two local Police depts. And I believe the ATF. They took bags and bags of things, mostly my other childrens clothing. They found nothing though that linked them at all.
The things the media said and printed in the papers were so hurtful. The media tried and convicted our sons. It was like a Modern Day Witch Hunt. The first time I saw my son after his arrest, was on TV. While they were still here in my home searching it. Only one of us was allowed to leave to go to his arraignment. My husband went. I stayed with my other children. It was the most horrible sight. I’ll never forget it. He and his two friends being led into court in bullet prouf vests, stripe uniforms, with shackles and chains. Surounded by press and people. He had tears in his eyes. The news called my son a ‘cold hearted killer’. I cry even now when I think of it.
Although, one other thing that will always stand out in my mind. And in the mist of such pain and persecution…was that when we went to our sons pretrial. I had fully believed that there would be a crowd of people screaming at us. There was a crowd, but they were raising there fists and saying that our sons were innocent. It was like the last scene in the movie "Billy Jack". I cried. I did alot of crying then.
We all had to remortgage our homes to get good Lawyers. We knew our sons were innocent.
There had been a murder in Florida that was identical to the one here right down to the very time frame. One of the other mothers had found the story on the Internet and brought it to me. We took it to our lawyers. Our lawyers brought it to the courts attention to no avail.
During the Pretrial, the judge let the 16 year old go at that time. There was no evidence and he had not signed a confession. But the judge made a horrible speech when he released Matthew. Saying he fully believed he was as guilty as his two co hearts, and would be back soon sitting next to them. He called all three of our sons miscreants. (The judge was later reprimanded for his comments) Mathew’s mother fainted at my feet. It was horrible.
You see the police had coerced a false confession from my son and the other young man, Frank. My son had just turned 18, Frank was 19. Mathew was only 16. By Michigan Law… anyone 16 years or younger had to have their parents present during questioning. Mathew’s parents were there and they couldn’t bully him in to a false confession. Though they did try to get him to sign a blank confession his parents would not let him. And they did not tape any of it.
During their interrogations, I was pounding on the door of the police station trying to get in, but they wouldn’t let me in. An officer had told me on the phone earlier, that my son was being very helpful to their investigation, and I should be very proud of him. That he was a fine young man. That they would be giving him a ride to his home personally. In the mean time while my son was crying and asking for me. That same officer and his "Co Hearts", were telling him that I didn’t want to see him. That I knew what he had done, and I was ashamed of him. The FBI, and two Local Police depts. took turns interrogating the boys.
My son then asked for a lawyer, but they continued to ask questions. That was one of their fatal mistakes. Which later helped us to win lawsuits. Anyways, they wore them down after hours and hours. They told them what to write. They told them not to worry if they didn’t do anything then there would be no evidence and they would go home.
There never was any evidence, Ever. But what neither Frank nor my son or ourselves knew then, was that by signing the confessions it was like signing their own Death Warrant’s. Like a binding contract. And it was next to impossible to ever retract it.
Jon and Frank were held over for trial.
During all this, two men from our own town, who knew and worked with the young man who was killed. Were arrested in Kentucky. They had gone on a 37 state crime spree of mayhem and murder. They were charged with the murder of a 64 year old gun shop clerk in Virginia, and then the murder of the young man that was killed, in Florida. The very same murder story that we had taken to our lawyers earlier. We knew then, that these two men were the murderers of the young man our son’s were accused of killing. We knew our boys were coming home. What we didn’t know is we were in for the fight of our lives, for our sons lives.
Our lawyers tried to get the confessions Thrown out. But the prosecutor wouldn’t hear of it. Even though three of the Prosecutor’s own witnesses turned on them and said the police also coerced them into testifying against our sons. All three of their witnesses claimed that the police made them say things that were not true. One of their witnesses was prosecuted later for drug charges for not testifying. We spoke with his parents later. And a reporter wrote a story on the tactics of the local police and how they harassed many teens and their families trying to get anything they could to implicate our sons. There never was any evidence of any kind putting our boys at the crime scene. Not finger prints, no DNA, no witnesses…Nothing.
What made the police go after our sons in the first place you might ask. Well a statement made by a young man who was a friend of the other two men now being held in Virginia. That young man had also worked with the young man who had been killed. But had been fired a week before the murder. This young man was in the parking lot the night of the murder. Questioned and released.
Our boys were at a bon fire the night of the murder. No where near town. We had 15 signed sworn statements. From our witnesses. But the police actually told 3 of them that they were interfering with a Federal investigation. And if they didn’t want to be put in a jail cell next to our sons and charged as accessories then they better stop and go home.
When the murder weapon was then found on the two that were arrested in Kentucky. We again thought our boys would be coming home. But the prosecutor kept saying that he felt he had the right boys in jail, and would not hear anything else.
There was a "Walker Hearing" to show the validity of the confessions and to show that there was reasonable doubt.
Now the two down south when arrested, had 13 guns, all loaded, and had price tags still on them. They had stolenthese guns from a gun shop in Virginia. Where they had killed the clerck. They also had a backpack filled with bloody clothes and two bloody hunting knives, false ID’s and utensiles to make more, a road atlas with their route clearly marked, showing they had come back to Michigan, and red dots on all the places where they had murdered some one. One of those marks was on New Baltimore. The prosecutor said that the reason they had a red dot on our town was because it was their home town? The judge told the prosecutor to get a copy of the atlas. But he never did. And the judge let the charges against our boys stand. To our dissmay. They were going ahead with a murder trial against our sons.
At that point all three of us Moms decided to take things into our own hands. And for the first time we felt we were in some sort of control. We got a hold of a reporter who we trusted and we got donations from family and friends and we went on a road trip down south to get the evidence we knew was there ourselves.
The reporter, her photographer, and us three Moms, all went in one car, to Kentucky and then to Virginia. We were able to speak with the Prosecutor and the defense lawyers of the two boys down south. We found out that the Kentucky and Virginia Authorities had tried several times to get Michigan Authorities to come there and look at the evidence they had showing that their suspects very likely had committed the murder here, and that Michigan had the wrong people in jail. We also learned the the Prosecutor here had gotten a statement from one of the boys down south, heard by an FBI agent that would’ve gotten our sons released. It was "Exculpatory Evidence". And he got it in ..his was now April. They also had the wallet of the young man who had been killed here. That the Prosecutor tried to say my son had stolen the night of the crime. (During the interrogation of my son. The police had my son describe a wallet.) My son described his own wallet.
What we didn’t know about the two young men down south, was that their trial was to start a day or so after we left. And that they were going to confess to the murder here. I’m sure the prosecutor knew this. But wasn’t letting it out up here. The reporter found out and stayed behind to cover the trial.
We held a press conference ourselves when we returned. Telling everyone what we had found out. The prosecutor and the police chief here berated us and our trip, on TV. And denied all our claims. A week later after spending 178 days in jail. Our son’s were released. A week after that the charges were dropped, "Without Prejudice". We took a trip with our sons to our State Capital a week later, to speak on the need to "Video Tape All interrogations and subsequent confessions." Only three States have made it mandatory. Our county Prosecutor also spoke on the need. It was the first time we were on the same side. Had their interrogations and confessions been taped I might not be writing this now.
It’s been 7 years since. And I can say our lives will never be the same. I am a diferent person now. I trust no one. I see so many flaws in our Judicial System. But this is my story, and that of my son, his friends and their familes. I’m sorry it was so long. I actually condensed it quite a bit. I could tell you so much more of what I consider to be a conspiracy against our sons and our families. And the still on going problems we are all experiencing.
The worst is Frank, the young man who was in Jail 178 days with my son Jon. Was he himself, murdered. Shortly after they filed a law suit against the Authorities here. It was on the very date of their arrest one year later. And the things we learned pertaining to his murder are in themselves frightening. If I wrote everything I’d end up writing a book.
This story is now Our story. It is a part of me. It is a part of my life, but not the end of it. We go on.
And it is true…."What Does Not Kill You.. Will Make You Stronger".
October 5th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Hi Cheryl. I just want to say that my heart goes out to you and my family and that you are in my prayers. I wish I could do more for Jon and your family. How are things going now since the show?