Witnesses and suspects say detectives threatened, assaulted, and coerced them to get statements. Detectives say those are lies by fearful witnesses who need an excuse to recant.
Philly’s murder exonerations raise questions about decades of homicide investigations — and whether the misconduct alleged in those cases was part of a pattern that led to many more wrongful convictions.
According to Crawley, who first made those claims in a civil lawsuit, Detective Angela Gaines kept her for hours and would not let her leave or speak to her mother. “Sit there and think about what could happen to your daughter,” she said the detective threatened. Gaines did not respond to requests for comment.
The allegations cast new light on what has been a startling wave of exonerations: 19 murder convictions tossed since 2018, most of them hinging on some alleged misconduct by homicide detectives or prosecutors.in the country, making the per capita rate here 25 times higher than the nation as a whole. Philadelphia also is, after Chicago, in exonerations of death-row inmates over the last half-century.
“Now, we have to ask the person. It’s not a situation where you can basically utilize your presence to convince that individual to come down and cooperate with the investigation,” said Capt. Jason Smith, who oversees the roughly 70 detectives in Homicide. He said all investigative units saw clearance rates dip as a result, though he said he likes the directive. “We shouldn’t strong-arm individuals to gain their cooperation.
An equally huge problem, she said, is that Pennsylvania courts — unlike the federal court system and many other states — permit prior statements to be introduced as evidence in court, even if the witness has recanted the statement or claims it’s fabricated. “That literally gave a license to a bad cop, saying we can convict somebody based on a supposed statement that they gave to the cops to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone has committed a crime.
“There’s only a couple of columns they can pick from: ‘I was forced into signing it.’ ‘I didn’t really see it.’ They can’t say ‘I lied’ because then they’re subjected to perjury or false police reports,” he said. Himebaugh and a handful of other lawyers who specialize in post-conviction work have also begun presenting that pattern-and-practice argument to the court.
One man, Dwayne Thorpe, was exonerated in 2019 after his lawyer, Todd Mosser, brought in 10 people to testify about Pitts’ alleged abuse. “What no one wants is for these cases to see the light — because once you start to open this can of worms, there are a lot of worms,” she said. To Chitwood, the homicide detective holds a unique post, on the front line of a lonely war on violent crime. “Except the victim’s family, no one cares about who dies or doesn’t die. It’s a sad commentary about the city we live in. I also believe, from day one, the only people that really cared were homicide detectives. And sometimes, we did things we probably should not have done.”
“It was like, if we get somebody arrested for this, the means kind of don’t matter,” she said. “People who did these things are training the next generation of people and mentoring them, so you have these practices that are handed down over time.” “What kind of prosecutors would let these cops stay on the force? They didn’t get censured. They didn’t get disciplined.”A higher-profile example was the prosecution of Herbert Haak and Richie Wise, both of whom signed confessions that they killed Kimberly Ernest, a 26-year-old paralegal who became known as the Center City Jogger after she was murdered on her morning run.It started, he said in an interview, when a detective smacked him across the face and told him to strip naked.
Saul Kassin, an expert on false confessions and a professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said physically and verbally abusive interrogation practices are not only illegal, but also render any statements gathered less reliable. to remind witnesses they were free to leave. He introduced procedures like “double-blind” photo arrays — that is, administered by an officer who does not know which photos are fillers — to improve the reliability of eyewitness identifications. He limited the time suspects could be held to 36 hours, and required a supervisor’s approval to go past 12. Most controversially, he began requiring video of homicide suspect interrogations.
James Trainum, a retired Washington, D.C., homicide detective who’s now a consultant, reviewing alleged wrongful convictions and developing police training, said far more — and different — training is needed. He argues police should abandon the accusatory approach to interrogations, which creates a climate in which suspects feel compelled to say what the detective wants to hear.on video. It does allow for independent review, but he said that too must be more critical.
At the same time, she said, people need to be able to have faith in the convictions. “Even before, there might have been a 90% clearance rate. But if now they’re getting overturned, you didn’t have a 90% clearance rate. You had a large rate of creating destruction.” The loss of trust has ongoing consequences, according to community organizers like Kendra Van de Water, the executive director of YEAH Philly, a group that works with young people to mediate the beefs that often lead to gun violence.
To Van de Water, though, it’s a lack of confidence in the official response that enables the code of the street, and the cycle of retaliatory violence, to prevail. The way to change that, she believes, is by building relationships and respect between police and community.
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