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Fairchild was convicted of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a 22-year-old Marjorie “Greta” Mason.  Mason was a white Air Force nurse and a former homecoming queen.  Six days after the rape and after the media had reported many details of the crime, the police received a tip from an unnamed informant, a man described in police files as inaccurate about half the time, with a tendency to exaggerate.  He named Barry Lee Fairchild as one of the culprits.

Fairchild, a functionally illiterate and mentally retarded black man, was unarmed outside his house and fell on the ground when surrounded by Pulaski County Sheriff's deputies.  The deputies released their dog on him and Fairchild was badly bitten on the neck, side, and head.  He required nine stitches to close the gash on his head.

After treatment at a hospital, Fairchild gave two confessions, neither of which agreed with the facts.  In one he gave a police supplied name of his supposed accomplice, but that man was later known to be in Colorado at the time.  The facts of the crime did not fit Fairchild.  Fairchild had blood type A, while the semen found inside Mason showed her assailant had blood type O.

During his trial, Fairchild recanted his confessions, saying that he had been threatened and beaten by Sheriff Tommy Robinson and Major Larry Dill.  He testified that when he told the police he knew nothing of the crime, Robinson hit him on the head with the barrel of a shotgun, and Dill kicked him in the stomach repeatedly.  He said he had been rehearsed for twenty minutes on what to say.  (At one point on the videotape, he is asked how many times Mason was raped.  He pauses, looks behind the camera, waits with his mouth open, then finally raises two fingers.  He looks back at the camera and says, “Two, two times.”)

Fairchild was convicted and sentenced to death.  Seven years later Fairchild's lawyers found out that at least five other “suspects” were brought in to confess to Mason's murder.  “All but one were beaten... several were bloodied... they were threatened with guns, often thrust into their faces, and they were kicked.  All were pushed, shoved, and knocked around.  And they were all told, ‘We know you were involved; we know you raped and killed that nurse; we're gonna' do to you what you did to her if you don't tell us what happened.’”  A number of these suspects testified at an evidentiary hearing, but some were too afraid to speak publicly.

In 1990, thirteen men publicly disclosed that, like Fairchild, they too had been detained for questioning about the Mason murder and were tortured.  One of these men, Michael Johnson, reported that he heard sheriffs in the next room torture Fairchild into confessing.  Two former Pulaski County Sheriff Deputies, Frank Gibson and Calvin Rollins, have admitted that physical assault and abuse were common interrogation tactics at the time of Fairchild's arrest.

Fairchild apparently gave into the brutality and confessed because unlike the others, he was mentally retarded.  At a hearing in 1991, Fairchild's conviction and death sentence were upheld.  Fairchild was executed on Aug. 31, 1995.  After Fairchild's conviction, Sheriff Tommy Robinson became a U.S. Congressman from 1985 to 1991.  After Fairchild was executed, Robinson ran for Congress as a major party candidate in 2002.  (DPIC)  [8/05]

Jones, a black man, was convicted of the sniper killing of white police officer Thomas Szafranski, 28, and sentenced to death.  The main witness against Jones later recanted.  Two key officers in the case had left the Jacksonville Police Department under a cloud, and allegations that one of them beat Jones before he supposedly confessed had gained credence.

A retired police officer, Cleveland Smith, came forward and said Officer Lynwood Mundy had bragged that he beat Jones after his arrest. Smith, who described Mundy as an "enforcer," testified that he once watched Mundy get a confession from a suspect by squeezing the suspect's genitals in a vise grip. He said Mundy unabashedly described beating Jones.  Smith waited until his 1997 retirement to come forward because he wanted to secure his pension.

More than a dozen people had implicated another man as the killer, saying they either saw him carrying a rifle as he ran from the crime scene or heard him brag he had shot the officer.  Even Florida Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw, who formerly headed a division of the state attorney's office, wrote that Jones' case had become "a horse of a different color."  Newly discovered evidence, Shaw wrote, "casts serious doubt on Jones' guilt."  Shaw and one other judge voted to grant Jones a new trial.  But a five-judge majority ruled against Jones.  Jones was executed one week later in the electric chair on March 24, 1998.  (DPI)  [11/05]

Wilbert Lee and Freddie Pitts, both blacks, were convicted of the robbery and murders of two white gas station attendants.  While no physical evidence linked them to the deaths, the prosecution used their own confessions, which were beaten out of them, and they also used the testimony of an alleged eyewitness.  The defendants also suffered from having incompetent defense counsel.

A few weeks after they were sentenced to death, a white man, Curtis "Boo" Adams Jr., was arrested for killing a Fort Lauderdale gas station attendant during a robbery.  Adams subsequently confessed to the murders for which Lee and Pitts were convicted.  When he learned of this confession, the local sheriff, Byrd Parker, wanted nothing to do with it, saying, "I already got two niggers waiting for the chair in Raiford for those murders."  A polygraph examiner who had heard Adams confess took the matter to the press, and soon a new trial was ordered, at which Lee and Pitts were again convicted.

Some time after the second conviction, the alleged eyewitness recanted her testimony and the state attorney general admitted that the state had unlawfully suppressed evidence.  The defendants were released in 1975 when they received a full pardon from Governor Askew, who stated he was "sufficiently convinced that they were innocent."  The ordeal of Lee and Pitts is detailed in the book Invitation to a Lynching by Gene Miller.  In 1998, the Florida Legislature awarded the defendants $500,000 each in compensation.  (FLCC) (Time)  [7/05]

After Thomas Revels, an off-duty deputy sheriff, was murdered during a robbery of Luke’s Grocery store, Tallahassee police charged five black men from Quincy, Florida with the crime.  One of these men, David Keaton, was an 18-year-old star football player with plans to enter the ministry.  Although he had an alibi, Keaton was held in custody for more than a week.  During that time he maintained he had been threatened, lied to, and beaten until he confessed.  He believed that despite his confession, no jury would convict him when they heard his alibi.  He was wrong.  At trial his coerced confession was buttressed by the false testimony of five eyewitnesses.  Keaton was convicted and sentenced to death.  In his confession Keaton implicated Johnnie Frederick, who was “clean as a whistle,” in the belief that a judge and jury would see that his confession was false.  Frederick was convicted as well and sentenced to life in prison.

David Charles Smith and two other Quincy defendants still awaited trial.  In the meantime, a witness arose, Benjamin Franklin Pye, who knew the actual men who committed the crime.  The men were from Jacksonville, not Quincy, though Pye knew only their street names.  But he knew the motel where they had stayed, the dates, and the rental car they drove.  He was with them when they cased Luke's to rob it later.  Pye gave this information to his attorney, who in turn relayed it to Smith’s attorney, Will Varn.  Varn was a former U.S. attorney, and he was able to get funds from the judge to hire an investigator who came up with names to fit Pye’s story.  The names also fit the crime scene fingerprints that had not matched any of the Quincy Five.  The three Jacksonville men were tried and convicted.

Despite the new evidence, the state continued to insist the Quincy Five were guilty as well.  When Smith came to trial, five white eyewitnesses swore he was guilty.  But Varn had the conflicting fingerprints and convictions, Pye's testimony, and a good alibi for Smith.  An all-white jury acquitted him.  The Florida Supreme Court took note and ordered new trials for Keaton and Frederick.  The prosecution soon dropped charges against Keaton and Frederick, as well as against the remaining two Quincy defendants.  Keaton and Frederick were released in 1973.  (SP Times) (TWM) (FLCC)  [3/07]

Lt. Jon Burge and his fellow detectives at the Area 2 & 3 Police Station on the Southside of Chicago tortured at least 60 persons between 1973 and 1993.  The types of tortures used included Russian roulette, cigarette burns, electrical shocks, suffocation, radiators, telephone books, sticks, beatings, cattle prods, and threats.  It took the specific case of Andrew Wilson in 1982 to finally bring the truth to light.  Jon Burge and his detectives had gone overboard by leaving obvious signs of bruises all over Andrew Wilson's body.  An OPS investigation led to the Goldston Report, which stated and confirmed a systematic pattern of torture and abuse by detectives under the supervision of Jon Burge.  In 1993, Burge was allegedly fired and two detectives were suspended.  However, Burge receives his full pension and benefits.

Those tortured include the Death Row 10:  Madison Hobley, Leonard Kidd, Aaron Patterson, Andrew Maxwell, Stanley Howard, Derrick King, Ronald Kitchen, Reginald McHaffey, Leroy Orange, and Jerry McHaffey.  Frank Bounds is an 11th death row inmate tortured but he is now deceased.  Gov. Ryan has pardoned four of the Death Row 10.  (CCADP)  [9/05]

Baldwin, a black man, was convicted of the murder of Mary Lee Peters, the godmother of Baldwin’s child.  Peters, an 84-year-old West Monroe woman, was beaten to death during a robbery of her home.  After the trial, defense lawyers found a hotel receipt proving that Baldwin was hundreds of miles away in another state on the night of the murder.  In response, the prosecution claimed that he had driven to the hotel in order to establish an alibi and then returned to Louisiana to commit the murder.  If Baldwin staged his alibi, the prosecution did not explain why he did not have the receipt available for trial.

The main witness against Baldwin was his girlfriend, Marilyn Hampton, who received a life sentence, rather than the death penalty, for her part in the murder. The prosecution claimed that Hampton waited outside in a car while Baldwin committed the murder.  Baldwin allegedly had confessed to the crime and was convicted by an all-white jury.  The judge, the prosecutor, and Baldwin's own court-appointed attorney used racially derogatory language during the trial.  Baldwin was executed in the electric chair on Sept. 10, 1984.  Shortly before the execution, a former sheriff's deputy swore in a statement that Baldwin had been beaten and tortured into a confession by white officers.

Howard Marsellus, the chairman of the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Parole, was troubled that he may have allowed an innocent man to be put to death.  The governor had appointed Marsellus and Marsellus felt he had to go along with the governor wishes that there be no recommendation for clemency in any capital case.  The governor visited Hampton in prison before signing Baldwin’s death warrant.  Marsellus believed the purpose of the visit was to induce Hampton to maintain her original testimony.  Two months later the Board of Pardons and Paroles received Hampton's file marked "Expedite."  Seven years into a life sentence for first-degree murder Hampton was freed.  (JusticeDenied)  [2/07]

Philadelphia patrolman James T. Morrow was murdered while tracking down a suspected robber who had been terrorizing the northeast section of the city.  Police, in efforts to solve the murder, arrested and extracted confessions from three different men over a several year period.  Two of the men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison before being exonerated.

During the first few months of the investigation, police arrested Joseph Broderick and quickly extracted a confession from him.  A few days later Broderick recanted.  When it became evident to officials that the confession was coerced, Broderick was released.

Approximately one year later police arrested another suspect, George Bilger, for Morrow’s murder.  Bilger then became the second man to confess to Morrow’s murder.  In his confession Bilger implicated a Philadelphia patrolman as an accomplice in the murder.  At his trial Bilger repeated his confession and the jury promptly found him guilty and recommended that he receive the death penalty.  However, the case against the patrolman Bilger had implicated quickly fell apart and that trial ended in an acquittal.  Bilger’s trial judge then became suspicious of the confession and ordered a new trial for Bilger.  At the second trial Bilger again pleaded guilty and the judge had no alternative but to sentence him; still unsure of the “confession”, the judge sentenced him to life in prison instead of giving him the death penalty.

Two years later the same type of robbery that had been attributed to Bilger began to reoccur in northeast Philadelphia.  Police received a tip that the robber was a known criminal named Jack Howard.  When police tracked Howard down, they mortally wounded him in a gunfight.  In Howard’s possession was the murder weapon that had been used to kill Officer Morrow.  Although police had no reason to believe that Howard had an accomplice, they staked out the hospital room of a friend of his, Elizabeth Morgan, to see if any of Howard’s acquaintances might visit her.  When Morgan’s brother, Rudolph Sheeler, came to visit his sister, he was immediately arrested and taken to police headquarters.  He was beaten for hours at a time over a two-week period.  He finally confessed to aiding Howard in the murder.  At trial Sheeler pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.  Bilger, who by this time had spent two years in prison, was pardoned and transferred to a mental hospital.

Twelve years passed until proof surfaced that Sheeler was at work hundreds of miles away at the time of Morrow’s murder.  A judge reviewed the case and found that key details of the case were contradicted by his confession, and that his confessions and court statements contradicted each other.  The judge concluded that Sheeler had been forced to confess because police were eager to free Bilger and therefore clear the reputation of the officer he had implicated – even though that officer had been acquitted.  The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, calling the case “a black and shameful page in the history of the Philadelphia police department,” overturned Sheeler’s conviction and ordered his immediate release.  Four detectives and two superior officers were suspended for their roles in Sheeler’s coerced confession.  (Ramsey Dissertation) (Time)  [10/07]

Wilkinson, a mildly retarded man, was convicted in 1976 of the arson murders of five people.  At 3:25 a.m. on Oct 5, 1975 someone used a Molotov cocktail to firebomb the home of Radamas Santiago.  The Santiagos, who lived at 4419 North 4th Street, were then asleep in their home.  Radamas and one of his sons, Carlos, survived.  Radamas' wife, three of his children, and Luis Caracini, a guest in the house, perished in the fire.  At the time of the firebombing, 14-year-old Nelson Garcia, a friend of the Santiagos, was sleeping on their front porch.  His hair aflame, Garcia fled from the house, looking for a fire alarm. Garcia saw Robert Wilkinson in an automobile stopped near the Santiago home.  Because Wilkinson was the first person he saw, Garcia assumed that Wilkinson had thrown the firebomb.  He accused Wilkinson, who police then arrested.  Garcia later elaborated that he had seen Wilkinson throw a bottle with a burning cloth onto the Santiago porch.

Wilkinson was beaten into confessing to the crime, but the confession was barred from trial on the ground that Wilkinson did not understand the Miranda warning given him.  In addition to Wilkinson, the police were alleged to have threatened and physically coerced other suspects and witnesses.  Wilkinson was released in 1977 after being exonerated by new evidence.  He was reindicted in 1977, but the indictments were dismissed three months later.  A federal court ruled prosecutor David Berman ignored, withheld, and/or destroyed exculpatory evidence.  In dismissing Wilkinson's later indictment, the court ruled the prosecution was being maintained in bad faith.  Several Philadelphia police officers were convicted of civil rights violations arising from their "brutal and unlawful" mistreatment of Wilkinson.  These convictions were sustained on appeal.  Wilkinson was later awarded damages of $325,000.

Wilkinson was aided by the homicide squad investigations of Philadelphia Inquirer reporters Jonathan Neumann and William Marimow.  These investigations led to the overturning of Wilkinson’s conviction and to the reporters receiving a 1978 Pulitzer Prize.  In 2000, a TV movie, The Thin Blue Lie, was made that was loosely based on the investigations and on Wilkinson’s case.  [10/07]

William "Junior" Pierce was convicted of raping and murdering Margaret "Peg" Cuttino, 13, the daughter of a state senator.  Cuttino was reported missing on Dec. 18 and her body was found on Dec. 30.  Pierce, who had an IQ that "barely broke 70" and who was a known serial confessor, confessed to this murder apparently after being tortured by Sheriff "Red" Carter.  A document supports Pierce's contention that his confession was coerced by physical abuse consisting of burns, bruises, and cuts to his "privates."

In order to convict Pierce the prosecution theorized that Cuttino was murdered on Dec. 18, but when her body was found, the sperm evidence was not much degraded and this evidence implied that she was not killed before Dec. 25.  Public disagreement with the verdict arose starting with an uncalled witness who allegedly saw Cuttino on the afternoon of Dec. 19.  The county coroner joined the opposition.  Because of new evidence that arose following the conviction, it is highly likely that Pierce would be acquitted if he could get a retrial, but getting a retrial because of new evidence is very difficult under South Carolina law.  New technology raised the possibility of DNA testing, but the authorities contend Hurricane Hugo destroyed the biological evidence in 1989.

Pierce is not a glamorous defendant, having been convicted, after confessing, to three murders in Georgia, perhaps because of techniques similar to those used by Sheriff Carter.  Public opposition to the verdict seems surprising since an acquittal would do little to free Pierce, but physical evidence that Cuttino was killed much later than Dec. 18 seems compelling and such a finding would exonerate Pierce.  (CrimeLibrary)  [9/05]

Coney was convicted of robbing a Safeway supermarket of $2,000.  He was sentenced to life imprisonment.  Police tortured Coney into confessing by crushing his fingers between the bars of his holding cell.  Judge David Wilson wrote that the former Angelina County sheriff, Leon Jones, and his deputies "were known for obtaining confessions by physical force." One of his tactics, he wrote, "was to get a prisoner's fingers on either side of a jail cell bar and squeeze those fingers until a prisoner confessed."  The lawyer who was called in to oversee Coney’s predetermined guilty plea stated, "That sheriff was the most terrible sheriff we ever had."  Coney was imprisoned for 42 years before his conviction was vacated in Aug. 2004.  Four of his fingers are still deformed.  (NY Times) (Google)

On Aug. 21, 1910, in the small town of Osa de la Vega, in the province of Cuenca, José María Grimaldos, known as “El Cepa,” was seen for the last time.  He was on a road to the nearby village of Tresjuncos.  His family feared foul play and reported his disappearance to the Civil Guard (police).  During the investigation the family and others expressed their suspicions that two shepherds, Gregorio Valero and León Sánchez had killed him for his money.  This investigation was closed in Sept. 1911 without any indictments.

In 1913 a new judge by the name of Isasa arrived.  Influenced by the local boss and right-wing politician, the judge reopened the case. The two suspects were arrested by the Civil Guard and, under torture, they confessed they killed Grimaldos, cut his body up, and fed it to pigs.  The ''fiscal'' (DA) asked for the death penalty.  The case took its time in the court system, but on May 25, 1918 a popular jury convicted the defendants of murder.  They both were sentenced to 18 years in prison.  Both were released on account of a general pardon on Feb. 20, 1924 after serving eleven years of imprisonment.

Two years later, in early 1926, it was discovered that Grimaldos was alive after he applied for the necessary papers to marry.  He had been living in a nearby town.  With much legal difficulty, the case was reopened and, after much delay, Valero and Sanchez’ convictions were overturned.

In 1979, a movie entitled “El crimen de Cuenca” (The Crime of Cuenca) was made based on the case.  The movie was initially banned in Spain, because the torture scenes in it are depicted in great detail and crudity.  However, in 1981, the movie was allowed to be shown in Spain and became a box office success.  (FJDB)  [11/07]

Shimada Tatsuhiro and his common law wife, Aoki Keiko, were both sentenced to life imprisonment for the arson murder of Keiko’s daughter.  On the day of the alleged crime, Tatsuhiro filled the gas tank of his van before returning to his home in the Higashi-Sumiyoshi ward of Osaka.  Ten minutes later he smelled smoke and noticed a small fire in the garage under his van.  Tatsuhiro searched for a fire extinguisher, but the fire quickly grew and spread.  Keiko’s daughter died in the fire after being overcome by smoke in a first floor bathroom.  Keiko had 15 million yen life insurance policies on both her children.  Life insurance on children was not uncommon, but 5 million yen and 10 million yen policies were more typical.  The couple had no financial difficulties at the time of the blaze.

The fire investigation produced no suspicious findings, although police found out that Tatsuhiro was a Korean, a possibly discriminatory fact that was not even known to Keiko’s father.  On Sept. 10, six weeks after the fire, the police separately interrogated both Tatsuhiro and Keiko and demanded that they confess to arson, murder, and insurance fraud.  Police hit Tatsuhiro’s head, kicked his knees, and applied chokeholds.  Keiko was subjected to similar treatment.  Both broke down and signed written confessions.  Unlike other industrialized nations, interrogations have a unique importance in Japan as suspects have no right to summon legal counsel.  In a Japanese magazine, a foreigner who had problems with the law advised revealingly, "If you did it, confess.  If you didn't, fight."  Despite police reliance on confessions, the Japanese Constitution prohibits convictions based solely on confessions.  Nevertheless, 99.5% of defendants brought to trial are convicted.

Police alleged that on the day of the fire, Tatsuhiro stopped in a local store and bought a plastic pump of the kind used for kerosene heaters in the winter. Upon arriving home, police alleged he parked the van, pumped out six or seven liters of gasoline, laid the pump under the van, and ignited the fire with a disposable lighter.  To support their theory, police commissioned a reenactment blaze, but the results differed from the actual blaze.  All evidence showed that the actual blaze started small and gradually grew in size.

In a report, an investigator stated what he thought was the most probable cause of the blaze.  He suggested that the overfilled van leaked gas from a crack in the fuel line, which was then ignited by sparks from an air compressor that was in the garage.  Manufacturers had recalled the air compressor for the spark problem in 1991.  The storeowner who allegedly sold Tatsuhiro the plastic kerosene pump did not remember him buying one nor, for that matter, of any customer ever requesting one in the middle of summer.  (Source)  [6/07]