Holding Me Captive is project on the makings of New Haven’s wrongful conviction crisis by Yale’s Investigatie Reporting Lab.
AboutCase ProfilesLaw-Enforcement Tactics ExplainedStudent ReportingHolding Me Captive is project on the makings of New Haven’s wrongful conviction crisis by Yale’s Investigatie Reporting Lab.
AboutCase ProfilesLaw-Enforcement Tactics ExplainedStudent ReportingLaw-Enforcement Tactics Explained
As Yale’s English 480 students reviewed court documents, scrutinized police records, and interviewed dozens of impacted community members, striking similarities emerged in their investigations of individual cases — identical tactics of misconduct employed by police and prosecutors. Seven such tactics, each present in multiple cases highlighted on this site, are illuminated here.
This interactive tool is intended to showcase the systemic nature of New Haven’s wrongful conviction crisis, but it is not exhaustive. These tactics and allegations of abuse have affected more than the eight individuals highlighted here. Indeed, more than a dozen Black and Latino men from New Haven have been exonerated after showing that their cases were tainted by law-enforcement misconduct. Many more continue making similar allegations from behind bars, insisting on their innocence as they serve out life sentences. (The overlapping tactics mapped below come from our analysis of hundreds of pages of legal claims, but hardly cover the full terrain of alleged abuses in each case; additional accounts of coercion and harm not made visible here are not only possible, but likely.)
The need to reexamine these cases, and all others affected by police and prosecutorial misconduct, is urgent — for those who remain incarcerated and those who have been released but not fully exonerated.
In all eight cases highlighted here, incarcerated individuals argued that law enforcement coerced witnesses to make false statements to incriminate them. One widely-practiced form of witness coercion in the New Haven Police Department was the “pre-interview,” wherein police officers coached witnesses before turning on a recording device (or stopped and started a recording to redirect a witness). Many of the coerced witnesses were young people, people with their own criminal cases, and people struggling with mental health issues and drug addiction.
In at least four of the eight cases highlighted here, incarcerated individuals argued that their wrongful convictions were the result, in part, of incorrect eyewitness identification. Research shows that eyewitness identification—especially cross-racial eyewitness identification, wherein the person asked to identify a suspect is of a different race than the suspect they identify—has a high rate of error. Research also shows that police officers have great power to sway eyewitnesses based on the way they present potential suspects, including the number of individuals presented and the manner of the presentation (e.g. photo array, in-person lineup).
In at least three of the eight cases highlighted here, incarcerated individuals argued that the legal representation they received from public defenders did not meet constitutional standards and left them disadvantaged in court. The Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright mandates that an effective attorney be provided to any criminal defendant who cannot afford one. But public defenders are systematically underfunded and overburdened. Incarcerated individuals have shown that their lawyers failed to respond to calls and letters for months at a time and even that they neglected to investigate alibis. (Arguably, all of the cases outlined here were touched in some way by this problem.) Ineffective defense counsel reduces the likelihood that unlawful law-enforcement tactics will be surfaced, or zealously presented, in a defendant's criminal case.
In at least five of the eight cases highlighted here, incarcerated individuals argued that their wrongful convictions resulted from police officers failing to conduct a constitutionally-adequate investigation of the crime. If a thorough investigation had taken place, these men argue, police would have quickly discovered evidence pointing away from them as suspects. Investigations that privilege prejudice, personal animosities, or haste over thoroughness are not legally adequate.
In at least four of the eight cases highlighted here, incarcerated individuals argued that illegal conduct by police officers went unchecked or ignored by senior police officials, including the chief of police, as well as by prosecutors. By neglecting to report witness coercion and suppression of evidence (or failing to catch such illegal practices), these senior officials created a culture of impunity and a pattern and practice of misconduct.
In at least five of the eight cases highlighted here, incarcerated individuals argued that law enforcement suppressed, manipulated, or destroyed evidence that would have pointed to their innocence or discredited the case against them. This evidence includes police officer notes, analysis of forensic evidence, and even confessions by third-party individuals. Called a Brady violation, a prosecutor’s failure to disclose relevant exculpatory material to a defendant or defense counsel can be grounds for a new trial.
In at least five of the eight cases profiled here, incarcerated individuals argued that prosecutors relied on statements from witnesses who later recanted, or “took back,” those statements, or else, from jailhouse informants who were offered reduced sentences in exchange for their testimony (sometimes without proper disclosure of this perverse incentive). In some cases, prosecutors presented recorded statements at trial that witnesses had already recanted. In others, witnesses testified at trial but recanted afterward. Connecticut law allows prosecutors to use recanted testimony in court without disclosing the recantation to the jury. Furthermore, a post-trial recantation does not automatically entitle a defendant to a new trial. Overall, the effect is that statements tainted by police coercion of witnesses, or by undisclosed plea bargains offered to informants, become etched into the record.
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