Inclusion Daily Express -- Earl Washington Argues Officer Pressured Him To Confess

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Earl Washington Argues Officer Pressured Him To Confess
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
April 27, 2006

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA--Earl Washington, Jr. has been back in court this week, this time to convince a federal jury that a police investigator manipulated him into confessing to a crime that landed him in jail for 18 years and brought him to within a few days of execution before he was pardoned.

Washington, who is described as having mild mental retardation, was sentenced to receive the death penalty after confessing to the 1982 rape and murder or Rebecca Lynn Williams. He came within nine days of execution in 1993 before questions about the evidence cast enough doubt into his guilt that then-Governor L. Douglas Wilder commuted his sentence to life in prison. In February 2001, further DNA analysis caused then-Governor Jim Gilmore to pardon Washington and order his release.

The DNA evidence gathered at the crime scene pointed to Kenneth W. Tinsley, who is currently serving two life terms in prison for an unrelated rape. Tinsley has not been charged in the Williams case. Investigators have not removed Washington as a suspect.

Washington, 45, is suing the estate of State Police Special Agent Curtis Wilmore, who died in 1994. Washington and his attorney, Peter Neufeld, claim that in 1983, Wilmore asked him leading questions and pressured him to confess. They point out several inconsistencies in the confession, including Washington's statements that 19-year-old Williams was black, that he stabbed her twice, and that they were alone when he killed her. The white woman was actually stabbed 38 times in front of two of her children.

"I'd like people to know, like I been saying all these years, that I am an innocent man," Washington told the Times-Dispatch earlier this week. "I want to see the jury do the right thing. I know I was wronged."

On Tuesday, criminal psychologist Richard Leo testified that children and people who have disabilities like Washington's are easily manipulated by authority figures, such as police officers, in order to please them and to lessen the stress of the interrogation process.

Leo also said such people often try to hide the fact that they do not understand what the long-term consequences of their confessions might be.

William G. Broaddus, who represents Wilmore's estate, suggested that Washington was somewhat responsible for at least initially going along with the confession.

Washington is by no means the only person with intellectual disability to be convicted of capital crimes but later cleared by DNA technology or other evidence. Those include former death row inmates in Illinois, Louisiana, Florida, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania. Opponents of the death penalty point to those as good reasons to abolish the practice.

"If we can prove the state police fabricated a confession to put a man on death row, it will raise serious questions about the legitimacy of other confessions in other cases," Neufeld, who founded the Innocence Project with famous O.J. Simpson attorney Barry Scheck, told the Times-Dispatch. "So the stake is high."

The civil trial is expected to continue into next week.

Related:
" Lawyer faults police" (Times-Dispatch)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/06/red/0427a.htm
"Lawyer defends investigator's actions in case" (Times-Dispatch)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/06/red/0427b.htm
"Freed man’s lawsuit says confession was coached" (Virginian-Pilot)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/06/red/0427c.htm
"Ex-prosecutor defends handling of case" (Times-Dispatch)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/06/red/0427d.htm
"Earl Washington, Jr." (Inclusion Daily Express Archives)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/laws/earlwashington.htm

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