Ref. El País: http://www.elpais.com/articulo / internacional/carcel/nada/elpepuint/20081004elpepuint_10/Tes One sister reported. A detective forced a false confession. He was convicted and a judge sent him to prison. After 20 years of nightmare in the U.S., Marty Tankleff is freed and innocent
Rico, handsome and strong. It was the youthful image of the American dream. He had just turned 17 years and this morning was to begin the new school year. But Marty Tankleff never arrived at school. His parents had been attacked with a hammer and slashed overnight. And when it came down to breakfast found in the living room of their home bloodied his mother dead and her father, who died a few weeks later, unconscious, dying.
"If you're innocent, Marty, hire me "he told a private investigator. "If not, do not waste my time"
was just the beginning of a nightmare that would last 20 years. The Kafkaesque in the dark fate that sank Tankleff, and the newly emerged, showing that foreign prisoners at Guantanamo are not the only ones who suffer the injustices of U.S. punitive
apparatus. Themselves citizens of the country-even the seemingly privileged as Marty, live subject to their whims.
"The terrible lesson of my case," Tankleff said in an interview with El Pais in New York, "is that this can happen to anyone, that there is adequate protection for persons who are perfectly innocent when the system insists that they are guilty. " Tankleff's father, Seymour, was an astute businessman. The mother, Arlene, a passionate orchid. Marty was not his biological child. They had adopted newborn. They lived in a luxurious mansion overlooking the sea on Long Island in the State of New York, which had cost a million dollars and that today would be worth much more.
The date of the double murder was the September 7, 1988. Almost immediately, the Suffolk County police decided that Marty was the prime suspect. For two reasons: he had reacted to the death of his parents with a strange, stunned quiet, and his half-sister who no longer lived with the family, convinced the detective handling the case, James McCready, that Marty was murderer.
Tankleff was convicted, the jury found him guilty and the judge sentenced him to 50 years in prison. The sister, Shari Rother, was all the heritage and some of the money, her husband opened a bar with Detective McCready. After 17 years in prison in late 2007, Tankleff was released. The Supreme Court of the State of New York said July 22 that had never been legal grounds to sue him for the death of their parents.
The original investigation of the case was based solely on a "confession" that Detective McCready of the traumatized teenager managed to extract the day of the murder. "After hours of interrogation, McCready came up with the brilliant idea of \u200b\u200bpretending that there talked on the phone with my father and he told him that I was the one who attacked them, "says Tankleff, now 37 years old and looks, despite the horror of the story told, a surprisingly good mood." Era lie, because my father never regained consciousness, but I did not know at that time. And the problem was that at the time of my life trust the police, just as I trusted my father. "
McCready When he told the young man with an air of triumph the alleged details of the fake call, it sank. "Will I be possessed?" he said, puzzled, as if remembering a movie of terror. "Will I suffered a mental blackout?". And then he confessed. A verbal confession, that was not recorded, which is retracted and refused to sign. However, the detective's testimony was enough to convince the jury.
"I had erased from the memory the memory of the moment in which the court found me guilty, but now I've seen on video," said Tankleff. "I began to mourn and the room erupted in screams. My family, my uncles, siblings of my parents and my cousins \u200b\u200bwere hysterical. Felt anger and pain. No one could believe that such injustice was possible in our country."
Tankleff was fortunate that a social worker took pity on him and helped him installed in a relatively quiet section of the prison, not where you would have received, along with hardened criminals. Perhaps this explains in part why today anyone who deals with him for the first time that has passed imagine what happened. Burly and muscular, looking younger than his 37 years corresponds to, exudes the vibrancy and optimism of the young trouble-free average American. He smiles easily, much gesticulating with his hands, his eyes shining. Do not betray any resentment, even to his sister or Detective McCready friend, and it seems to have forgotten that has spent half of life in prison, he lost his youth. He feels he has much to do and that their future will be happy.
When he talks about his case, almost as if talking about someone else, like a lawyer talking about his client. In a way, that's what I became, and who devoted his life behind bars, with the tireless help of family and friends, to promote a new research study, as documented on your country's legal system. Its purpose now, in addition to sue the State of New York, is studying law and fight professionally for the countless cases that are similar to yours. "I estimate that 5% of prisoners are innocent," he says, drawing on data from a U.S. organization called the Innocence Project, which maintains that a quarter of convicted prisoners who are later acquitted, after taking DNA tests had been tricked by police into confessing.
For Tankleff was not necessary to resort to DNA. The visible facts of the case bluntly pointed to his innocence, or at least their not guilty. It is extraordinary, as pointed out daily from the likes of The New York Times
, which has been so long in jail without anyone at the institutional level did nothing to get it.
There are more solid evidence of criminality against Detective McCready that against Tankleff. As repeatedly said the attorney, "McCready is the reason why this case is rotten. Any investigation must include, by definition, a detective investigation." The reality is that yes McCready was investigated. A state commission concluded in 1989 that the detective had committed perjury during a trial in 1985, it had given "false testimony, knowing that was "against another man accused of murder. The same commission investigators found that among Suffolk County police had become habitual perversely false confessions and lying in court. However, a year later, in 1990, the findings of the commission does not have any bearing on Tankleff's trial. Nor did any weight on the fate of an extraordinary young-and more plausible-alternative version of the facts that McCready chose to ignore.
the night of his death , Tankleff's parents had been playing poker with friends until three in the morning. This was a weekly routine at home. One of those present was Jerry Steuerman, a former business partner of Seymour Tankleff who owed it over $ 500,000. That same week I had to have paid 50,000. According to others involved in the game that night, Steuerman was the last to leave.
A week after the murder, Steuerman faked his own suicide, shaved his beard, took a bus to Atlantic City and from there, went by taxi to the airport in Newark, where he bought a ticket plane under a false name, flew to California and into a remote
spa.
Marty Tankleff insisted from the outset that Steuerman was the prime suspect, not him. Why McCready apparently chose not to follow this fruitful avenue of research? Tankleff's lawyer has suggested an explanation: that the detective and Steuerman had, as stated much later, from a personal relationship before the murder.
"That could have killed the case," Tankleff notes, "but the other great lesson from this is the value of perseverance. Never quit." Their perseverance and their relatives, especially siblings of his parents, who always believed in him and he never gives up in trying to get to the bottom of the case. But there was also a bit of luck.
A woman named Karlene Kovacs, who had no connection to the Tankleff family or the court case, heard a story during a dinner on a Sunday in 1991 that shock. One guest, Joseph Creedon, was suddenly on the table that had participated in the murder of Arlene and Seymour Tankleff, who's son, Marty, had nothing to do, he had an accomplice in the crime called Jerry Steuerman.
Fearing, Mrs. Kovacs took three years to tell a retired police officer friend. ("It kills me to think that I let so much time," he says now.) This was the turning point, what you put into motion a sequence of events that eventually, many years later, Tankleff's release. Joined the case several lawyers, some of whom work pro bono
,
and a whole cohort of volunteers. And finally, in 2001, after a contact established by Tankleff's aunt, joined, as befits any good thriller (Tankleff going to write a book about his experiences, and does not rule out making a film), a seasoned private investigator.
Jay Salpeter, aware of the details case was filed Tankleff in jail and said: "If you're innocent, Marty, hire me. If not, do not waste my time." The prisoner said he was innocent and, to convince, was given a lie detector test, which has passed. Salpeter, a retired police officer from New York City, studied the case, interrogated Tankleff family and decided to start pulling the thread which had provided Ms. Kovacs. He learned that Joseph Creedon, the dinner guest, had been in jail several times and began to search for offenders who were his accomplices. The first with found was a certain Glen Harris, who admitted being the driver who had been the scene Creedon to the Tankleff's murder. He refused to repeat under oath, but following more tracks, Salpeter tracked down a priest who told him that Harris had confessed their involvement in the murder. Another of the many witnesses who were located Salpeter said that Steuerman, the former partner who owed money to Seymour Tankleff, had told her once-in-bully plan that had killed two people.
Salpeter's work, along with the growing support team Tankleff (all gathered in
web page
martytankleff.org) failed to reopen the case and to proceed to prosecute Steuerman and his alleged accomplices. However, it was enough to begin to appear Articles in New York newspapers and radio and television programs in which they demanded justice for Tankleff. Until, finally, the enormous and sometimes inhuman machine judiciary had no choice but to handle your request and acknowledge that he had made a calamitous error.
Towards the end of two hours of interviews with Tankleff in a dispatch from New York City, it opens a briefcase and pulls out a laptop. It turns on and enters a file that has photos of the day the party that celebrated his release, having gone before the cemetery to visit the graves of their parents. Must have seen hundreds of times the photos, which are automatically one after the other, but look again, gawking like a child with a permanent smile on his lips. Sometimes laughs, sometimes he says, startled, people for whom he feels a special affection. "Look, look, my Aunt Marianne!". "My friend Paul!". "Jay!". It's as if she had just believe it is free, as if he needed those undeniable eye tests to make sure it's true. the photos are finished and, with some resignation (Because if I had been alone, I surely would have wanted to re-review), closes the file. But soon smile again. The jail has failed to steal, despite the efforts of Detective McCready and
judicial apparatus, a certain youthful naivete. Rather, it is as if those 17 years had frozen his adolescence at the time, as if with the death of his parents had stopped the clock. Tankleff says today, looking forward: "There is no time to lose, you have to catch up." Hurry to start and finish his law studies. "Too many people in the same situation where I have been myself, and my task now is to do everything in my power to help, just as so many people, to my great fortune, helped me. "
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