Interrogation Tactics

What is and what is not allowed in an interrogation

I would like to take a moment to try and explain ‘interrogation tactics’ if I can, so just bear with me. I’m not the brightest of people but will just give you my understanding of what I think they are.

The United States Supreme Court (USSC) has set the guidelines for what is and what is not allowed in an interrogation. They have also said that ‘trickery’ is allowed to get a suspect or witness to talk. What constitutes trickery is anyone’s guess. But the cops and/or detectives can pretty much tell you anything they want to trick you into talking. Such things as:

• your DNA was found at the crime scene
• you were seen leaving the crime scene
• people have identified you

So pretty much any lie they want to tell you is allowed. But what is not allowed is physical and mental torture. Depriving one of sleep, food, or using force such as hitting, slapping, shock, burning or any inflictions of pain are not allowed. These are called ‘physical torture’ tactics.

Yet there are other forms of torture like ‘mental torture’ which can be just as harmful as physical torture. Examples:

• threats of death
• threats of physical abuse
• holding a gun to someone’s head loaded or unloaded.

Threats like, "I will make sure you get the death penalty", or "that you are beaten or raped in jail and prison". Threats that they will make your life in jail a living hell, or threats of locking a loved one up (your mom, your dad, sister/brother, wife, kids) or threats of having your kids taken away from you, etc. are all forms of’ 'mental torture’ and are not allowed. Yet time and time again, cops do this on a daily basis

Cases whereby illegal interrogation tactics were used

Listed here are just a few cases I have come across, but I am sure you can find tons of them on the internet on those legal websites. They can give you a far better understanding than I ever could as to what mental torture actually is.

Rodgers V. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534 (1961)

In this case the highest court in the land said that Rodgers' confession was a product of fear that would lead police to take his wife and kids into custody.

Peole V. Trout, 54 cal 2nd 576 (1960)

Here the courts reversed a confession case due to threats of locking up his wife.

People V. Rand, 202 cal app 668

Here yet another case reversed due to threats of the wife and kids being locked up.

Harris V. State of South Carolina, 338 U.S. ct 68 (1949)

Threats to arrest his mother.

People v. Steger, 16 cal 3d 539 (1976)

Threats to the man’s relatives [were made]. In this case I believe that they actually held his relatives in jail until he gave a confession.

All of these cases were reversed. As I stated and you’ll see by reading them, mental or psychological torture and threats are not allowed. The USSC has made it very clear that no confession or admission of an accused is admissible unless made freely and voluntary and not under the influence of promise or threats.

"The fact that a confession was procured by employment of some artifice or deception does not exclude the confession if it was not calculated, that is to say, if the artifice or deception was not calculated to produce untrue statement. The motive of a person in confessing is of no importance provided that particular confession did not result from threats, fear or promises made by person in actual or seeming authority. The object of evidence is to get at the truth and a trick or device has no tendency to produce a confession except one in accordance with the truth does not render the confession in admissible. The rule which surrounds the use of a confession is designed and put into operation because of the desire expressed in the law that the confession is used is probably a true confession.”

Here is a Texas case (Texas judiciary online -html opinion)

Saul Contreras V. State of Texas, no. PD-0490-90 Threats to jail wife. This case also quotes

Harris V. S. Carolina 33r U.S.S.CT 68 (1949)

Illegal tactics used to elicit my false confession

My reasoning for telling you about all of these cases is because it leads me to talk about my case. I want to make it very clear, Merry Alice was not my wife, however we were engaged to be married, therefore she was my fiancée. She actually asked me to marry her. I said yes. She and I were together before her son was born, so in my mind and heart she was to be my wife and he my son. They were my family, period.

All throughout the interview I was under the impression that Merry and Chris (the baby) were going to be taken home as was told to me by the detectives who drove me to the police station and by Sgt. Waymon Allen as I was being placed in the police car. When I asked him: “Where are they going?” as I saw them walking her to a different car with her son. I told him:”She can stay here” [at the house where I lived]. He informed me that they were taking her home at her request. So I thought nothing else of it. I really believed that she was being taken home.

So now I am at homicide division at Houston Police Department (HPD) as Sgt. Allen is questioning me. I repeatedly tell him I don’t know anything about any murder. I didn’t do anything and I don’t know what he is talking about. But he is not having any of that. He just keeps at me.

Now when I am escorted to the rest room, I thought I heard the sound of a baby and on my way back I thought I heard it again. I realized that is Chris the baby and Merry. We walk a bit further and I just stopped walking and asked Sgt. Allen: “Is that them?” He tells me: “Let’s just go back to the office and finish talking”. I asked him again: “Is that them?” He then puts his hand on my arm and tries to pull me toward his office. I start to pull away and he tells me not to do that. “Let’s just finish talking”. I realized now that they lied to me about taking her home and it was by pure chance I found out they were even there. I don’t know if he planned to use them to get me to confess once they realized I wasn’t about to say anything about what I knew absolutely nothing about. But now the cat was out of the bag, and I knew for sure that they were holding her and the baby. He saw how that effected me. My whole demeanor changed, all I kept asking him from that point on was: “Why are they here?”

I truly believe that he saw that at that point he could use them to his advantage, which he did, and how he got me to falsely confess to a murder I kept telling him I knew nothing about. A crime I flat out did not do. A crime where there was someone else's blood DNA found underneath Mrs. Franklin’s fingernails and that conclusively proves that I did not murder Mrs. Franklin. That blood was not mine or her's or her grandson's who were the only males that had regular contact with her.

The TCCA in their opinion stated that the confession makes no sense, that it doesn’t fit the facts of the case. (See TCCA opinion Raby V. State of TX no. AP 74,930 at pg 14)

We have this detective telling me that she was taken home, yet there she was with a new born baby right there with me. Now he is telling me they ‘could’ put her in jail and take her son away from her. They even told her the same thing.

So at this point my mind is full blown with worry of her going to jail and losing the baby. She would have to endure all the bullshit they would put her through, fingerprints, strip search etc, and the worst part she would not be able to take the baby with her; Sgt. Allen made that very clear to me.

And he would have kept her there until I confessed. Even file some petty charges against her. That is what they would have done. Once the cops have you in their sight they will do what they want, whatever it takes, even knowing their antics are illegal.

Tell me if that is the very definition of mental torture. Those of you who have loved ones locked up know exactly what I am talking about. You naturally worry, worry is all you do. You know where I am coming from.

For me it was my loved ones that they had there. She wasn’t just a ‘girlfriend’, she was very special to me, so was the baby. Sgt. Allen made it very clear that they ‘could’ charge her. But if I started telling them what they wanted to hear they would let her and the baby go home where they should had been from the very start.

When I say ‘they’ I mean they as a whole, but ‘it was only Sgt. Allen talking’ to me. Sgt Allen just wanted to hear me say “I did it”. True or not, that is all he wanted from me, and in the end by using them against me he got what he wanted. I knew by confessing she and the baby would be free to go. And all I wanted was her and the baby out of there and at home.

Yes I was being mentally tortured. They had no right to have her and the baby there, and surely no right to threaten me with talk or “well you know we could charge her and take the baby away, you don’t want that, right?”

Right there he knowingly broke the rules of interrogation set by the USSC and as a detective, Sgt. Allen knew damn well he wasn’t supposed to make those kind of threats. Hell, all he had to do was say they were questioning her which would have been allowed. But once he saw how it effected me to have her and the baby there, he knew he had me and wasted no time in pouncing to force me to confess.

The Jeffley case: another Sgt. Allen case showing he violated the law during interrogation

There is another case where Sgt. Allen was lead detective and it involved a teenage girl named Jennifer Jeffley. The University of Texas School of Law did a study on it by Robert D. Dawson. (Jeffley v. State s.w.3D No. 14-97 -01403-cr, 2001 WL 123976). It clearly shows, at least to me, that Sgt. Allen once again showed total disregard for the rules of law as set by the state of Texas and USSC. Jennifer Jeffley was 16 years old, a juvenile. The laws surrounding the questioning of a juvenile are very clear. Law enforcement cannot talk with a juvenile suspect

1. without a parent or legal guardian present.
2. without permission from a legal guardian to question the juvenile alone. Or
3. without an attorney present.

A juvenile should have an attorney present. Yet Sgt. Allen, a veteran detective, knowingly violated the rule of law by questioning an unsupervised juvenile. And in the end, he got a confession out of her.

Unfortunately Jeffley's attorneys, who did her direct appeal, dropped the ball and didn’t even bring up the confession error in her appeal. So now Jeffley is procedurally barred. However due to the latest ruling in the Trevino case, she may be able to get past the procedural bar and hopefully win a new trial (See Trevino v. Thaley 133 S CT 1911 (2013).

I don’t know if Jeffley committed this crime or not, but it is very clear that she was messed over by her appeal attorneys with a big helping hand from Sgt. Waynon Allen. Sgt. Allen had blatant and total disregard towards the laws governing interrogation tactics. Yet in the eyes of the courts and Harris County District Attorney’s Office, he was a model police detective who did nothing wrong and always followed the rule of law. In Jeffley's case and mine, it is clear that he violated the law and both of our rights. As with Jeffley being barred from bringing up her confession so am I even though the TCCA has repeatedly talked about how my confession doesn’t match the facts and the evidence of the case: ‘statement contradicts the physical evidence’ (see TCCA opinion at Raby v. State of TX no. AP-74,930 at pg 14)

What is messed up about young Jeffley’s case, is that the TCCA said in their opinion she would have had ground for relief on the confession due to Sgt. Allen's violation of her rights, except that her rotten attorney didn’t even attempt to bring it up. If he had brought up the confession, she would had won a whole new trial.

As I said I too hope that with the latest Supreme Court ruling in the Trevino case that when we file my next set of appeals, which will be 1107.3, that we will able to bring up the coerced confession and bring it back into play. By doing so I hope to prove that my confession was coerced and absolutely false. Hopefully young Jeffley will get some relief as well. I do wish her the best. I know how hard it will be. I kind of feel a connection to her, it’s a shame it has to be through some dirty cop who showed total indifference towards the rules of law that he should have known and followed.

No video or audio recordings of interrogations by Sgt. Allen Oh, by the way I just recalled something else young Jeffley and I have in common. It seems that Sgt. Waymon Allen didn’t record her confession/interrogation either. Why is that? I have a theory. To record it would have shown he was violating her rights and the rule of law by questioning a juvenile without a legal guardian or providing her with an attorney as is required by law. In my case? It would had shown just how worried I was about Merry and the baby and most importantly how he was threatening me with locking her up and taking her new born son away from her as well as feeding me information about a crime I knew nothing about.

A video, or at the very least an audio recording, of the interrogation would have shown how he conducted himself. I wasn’t even taken into the interrogation room. Instead we were in his private office, and then in two other offices because we kept getting ‘interrupted’. (See police report at 1027, 1028, 1002, 1003 and 1.001). I’d really like to know what y’all think of all this. Can you see what I see? I see a pattern of abuse by Sgt. Allen.

If I had to guess, there were or had to have been more than ten different recording devices in that area. Why not just stop the interview, if for nothing else to cover his ass and make it a bullet proof confession? I mean at first I kept telling him I didn’t do anything and didn’t know anything about any murder. So right there when I do start ‘talking’ you would think any reasonable thinking officer would want this on some kind of tape to protect themselves and an air tight statement. But at the time I was arrested, recording a confession was not a mandatory requirement as it is today in capital murder cases. Yet it seems like everyone I have talked to here from Houston dating back to the 80’s had their statements recorded. Even small towns were doing it throughout TX. Yet he didn’t record mine or Jeffley’s. My attorney touches on this in my DNA motion (pg 14 at 000144).

I didn’t kill Mrs. Franklin. I do not know who did. My confession was false and was made due to threats of locking Merry up and taking away the baby, and the promise that she would go home if I confessed. Blood collected from Mrs. Franklin’s fingernails is not mine based on blood type and DNA.

What my jury never got to evaluate My jury never got to hear the true story about how Sgt. Waymon Allen got me to falsely confess. Nor have they heard about any of the new DNA testing that proves it wasn’t my DNA that was found underneath Mrs. Franklin’s fingernails. The jury didn't know that Joseph Chu lied to them when he stated that the blood typing results were inconclusive. It is clear that the results were conclusive and that the blood did not belong to me. They don’t know how Chu has been known to ‘doctor’ results and flat out lie to help obtain convictions throughout his whole career at the Houston Police Department.

Nor was the jury aware that the district attorney (DA) Roberto Gutierrez who convicted me withheld Chu's lab report from my attorney. And DA Gutierrez knew the blood typing results showed I was not at the crime scene and yet he failed to do his duty and correct Chu’s false testimony. The DA sponsored knowingly false testimony and that is a clear violation of the law. (See Napa v. Illinois 360 U.S. 264 (1954), Giglio v. U.S 150 (1972, Estrada v. State 313 S.W. 3d (TX 2010). It is written in the code of ethics that conviction DAs have a duty to not only seek out justice for the victims, but also have a professional and moral duty to protect the rights of the accused. To me this speaks values about the DA's character. He would do anything to win ,such as withhold important evidence and allow false testimony.

My trial attorney Felix Cantu, whom I have the world of respect for, although I think he could have done a far better job, wrote an affidavit for me. He stated that ‘had he been aware of this lab report, his whole outlook on the trial would had been different’. And that he never saw the lab report until my current attorney’s brought it to his attention. That is because DA Gutierrez intentionally withheld it from us. These are all facts, not something I am just making up to make people believe me. I have the paper work to back everything I am saying up. What do they have? A false confession and blood found underneath Mrs. Franklin’s nails that is not mine. That’s it.

What I would really like to know is how many times has Roberto Gutierrez has been accused of withholding evidence. I know of one other, but I cannot remember the details of the case. I know it was a case involving a car seat and I want to say it was a death penalty case as well. But I am not real sure. More importantly I would really like to find out just how many times DA Gutierrez actually worked with Joseph Chu and if he questioned Chu about lab reports in other cases. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to do that.