Manipulation by Psychologists and 6 innocents go to prison

Published Saturday November 29, 2008
Psychologist had dual role in confessions of Beatrice 6
BY PAUL HAMMEL
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU
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What were the stories of the Beatrice 6?
RELATED

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LINCOLN — How could so many people admit in vivid detail to a horrendous crime
that they didn't commit?

That was the question after the Central Park 5.

After the Norfolk 4.And now, the Beatrice 6.

The murder case out of Beatrice, Neb., in which six people were wrongfully convicted
in 1989 of the slaying of a 68-year-old woman, is a new national record for the most people
exonerated in one case by DNA evidence.

Types of false confessions

Voluntary: Without prompting from police, people profess guilt to crimes
they didn't commit for attention, to protect someone else or because
they suffer from delusions.

Compliant: A suspect confesses falsely to avoid punishment,
escape from a stressful interrogation or gain an implied reward.

Internalized: Vulnerable suspects, due to young age, mental problems
and other factors, exposed to highly suggestive interrogation tactics,
not only confess but grow to believe that they committed a crime.

Sources: Saul Kassin, psychology professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice;
World-Herald files
Two national experts who study false confessions said the Beatrice case
appears to fit patterns of other cases: The suspects were young people with low-esteem
or mental problems who were abusing alcohol or drugs.
They were easily influenced, easily confused and worn out by aggressive
questioning.But Saul Kassin, a professor of psychology at the John Jay College
of Criminal Justice in New York City, and Richard Leo, a law professor at the
University of San Francisco, said the Beatrice case had an unusual aspect:
the role played during interrogations by a police psychologist who previously
had served as private therapist to some of those being questioned.

In general, false confessions, even by several people in the same case, are not that unusual,
Kassin said. About 25 percent of the cases where DNA evidence has led to exonerations
involve false confessions.

Some prior cases with multiple defendants include the four sailors who admitted
to the 1997 rape and murder of a colleague's wife in Norfolk, Va., though later DNA
tests led to the real killer, and the five New York City teenagers who confessed to a
1989 gang rape of a jogger in Central Park, a case later linked by DNA to a single, serial rapist.
In the Beatrice 6 case, five of the defendants acknowledged their guilt,
and at least four gave detailed statements about who was involved and
why they would brutally attack, sexually assault and murder Helen Wilson.
On Nov. 7, authorities announced that DNA from the case matched that of a
now-deceased Oklahoma City man, Bruce Smith.

The state is seeking pardons for five of the defendants and has declined
to seek a new trial for the sixth, whose conviction was overturned after
the new DNA findings.

Kassin and Leo said that a psychologist acting in the dual role of trusted
therapist and criminal interrogator would have had a powerful place of trust
and persuasion over suspects."That is a wide open target," Leo said,
of the involvement of Wayne Price, a licensed psychologist
who consulted with the Gage County Sheriff's Office on criminal behavior.
Price, reached several times recently, said he could not comment because
he is still a part-time sheriff's deputy in Beatrice.

Price did say he didn't recall much from the Wilson case,
which began with the murder in 1985 and ended in 1989
with the arrest and convictions of the six.

Court records indicate that he warned those he interviewed in 1989
that anything they said would be passed on to investigators.
When questioned about his conflicting roles during a pretrial deposition
in 1989, Price said, "What I find, I find. It makes no difference to me. . . .
When I have an emotional involvement or vested interest and can't do it objectively,
I will say so."The prosecutor in the Beatrice 6 case, former Gage County Attorney
Dick Smith, defended Price's involvement, saying it was mainly to have a
trained witness in case defendants sought to have themselves declared
mentally unfit to stand trial.Price, Smith said, was a sworn deputy
for the Gage County Sheriff's Office and there was nothing improper
with allowing him to do some interrogations.

Smith said he's still unsure if the 1989 confessions were completely false.
He presented other scenarios: Bruce Smith, the DNA-linked rapist,
might have arrived after the six others had assaulted Helen Wilson;
or might have been with the six others, who may not have left evidence;
or that evidence was missed."I can't say 100 percent sure they didn't do it," he said.

Experts Kassin and Leo said safeguards against false confessions include requiring
videotaping of police interviews in their entirety — the Nebraska Legislature passed
such a law limited to certain felonies last spring — and making sure that confessions
match facts known only to police.

Confessions are powerful tools in criminal trials, viewed as the "gold standard"
of evidence by legal scholars, according to Kassin.

In the Beatrice 6 case, only one of the defendants, Joseph White,
then a 26-year-old drifter out of Alabama, refused to confess.

He testified that he had nothing to do with the slaying but was found guilty
by a jury of first-degree murder. The verdict hinged mostly on the testimony
of three co-defendants who faced reduced charges in exchange for testimony
and guilty pleas.

Those three were: Ada JoAnn Taylor, 25, Deb Shelden, 31, and James Dean, 25.

Two other defendants pleaded no-contest to reduced charges:
Thomas Winslow, 23, and Kathy Gonzalez, 29.

One of White's attorney's in 1989, Toney Redman, recalled arguing in court
that those testifying were "so weak-minded" that their stories could not be trusted.

"I'm fully convinced now," he said this week, "that the police, if they wanted to,
could get any borderline personality person, who has alcohol and drug issues,
and scare them to death and get them to confess to anything."

The testimony of the main witnesses changed over time as they "remembered"
details.Taylor, for instance, in a videotaped interrogation session, initially said
that she couldn't recall much because she had memory problems.
She denies telling anyone she had committed a murder, and says
police told her she was at the crime scene.

Taylor eventually tells them that she and White and another man drove
in a light blue car to a house where an older lady was assaulted.
But an investigator questions the story, asking if she was "confused"
about the location.

"Yeah," Taylor responds, mentioning her personality disorder,
diagnosed by Price years earlier.

Later, after the videotape is turned off for 19 minutes,
Taylor comes back and implicates Winslow, describes his large brown and beige car
— the car police had believed was used in the crime —
and says she might have told others she was involved.

She also then tells investigators that she remembers that the location
was a red brick apartment building.

Sam Stevens, an investigator for the Beatrice Police Department,
also asks Taylor if she remembers "a struggle in the bedroom,
do you remember the light in the bedroom, was there blood on the sheets,
was there blood on the walls?"

"Yeah, yeah I do," Taylor responds.
Leading questions and feeds about crime-scene information
are common in false confessions, Kassin and Leo said.

Interrogators also are trained in a controversial questioning style,
called the Reid technique, to confront a suspect,
minimize any statements of innocence and
suggest morally justified reasons why the person committed the crime.

Suspects also are sometimes told that it's natural
to "block" or suppress memories of such gruesome events.

According to court records, Kathy Gonzalez in 1989 repeatedly denied
that she was involved in the Wilson case and told Price that
she didn't even know Winslow.

"You apparently don't want to," replies Price,
telling Gonzalez there was a good chance, based on statements
by others, that she was at the crime but blocked it from her memory.

He added that he could "work with" her on memory problems.
Winslow's attorney in 1989, John Stevens Berry, said his client
decided to plead no contest after White was found guilty by a jury
that deliberated only 2½ hours.

Berry said White's defense attorneys, Redman and Alan Stoler,
cross-examined the four co-defendants who testified against White,
questioning whether they really witnessed the events,
dreamed about them or were fed information.

Berry said that today, people are "scratching their heads"
over the mistaken convictions.•

Contact the writer: 402-473-9584, paul.hammel@owh.com
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