Surviving Justice

Check out excerpts from the new McSweeney’s book that tells the stories of 13 Americans who were wrongfully convicted.

Hundreds of men and women—including 120 on death row—have been released from America’s prisons in the last several years after incontrovertible proof of their innocence emerged. In Surviving Justice: America’s Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated, just out from McSweeney’s, 13 exonerees describe their experiences—the events that led to their convictions, their years in prison, and the challenges facing them as they embark on their new lives outside. Each narrative is a stark account of our criminal-justice system’s unforgivable flaws.

Now I Question Everything

In 1992, Beverly Monroe was accused and convicted of murdering her longtime companion, Roger Zygmunt de la Burdé. He had actually killed himself. Though de la Burdé’s death was originally treated as a suicide, a police detective named David Riley was intent on charging Monroe with his murder. He succeeded, and Monroe spent seven years in jail fighting to prove her innocence. She was exonerated in 2003, but not before she had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees, lost her home, and missed out on seven years of her life. Here Monroe describes the meeting with Riley that led to her indictment.

[Riley] started writing out this so-called statement to the suicide—a hypothetical. He had about three or four sentences down before I said, “What are you writing?” and he said, “Oh, don’t worry about this, this is just a hypothetical.”

He starts writing this down as though I have said it already—that I was there asleep on the couch and that I remember this. And I said, “I don’t remember this, I don’t think it can possibly be true. I remembered leaving, and I remember him telling me goodbye. I wasn’t asleep, he wasn’t asleep.” But he wouldn’t listen to any of it. He just kept writing. And then he asked me about picking up the gun. He said, “What did you have on?” He never went to a question directly. He just said, “What did you have on?” So I’m thinking, OK, “What did I have on? I had on a long-sleeved sweater.” And he said, “Would you have used that to wipe off the gun?”

We’d been in that car a little over two hours, and he says, “You have to sign this.” And I said, “But it’s not true.” That’s when he got really ugly. His face turned red and he was very angry. He said that all he had to do was pick up the telephone and by that afternoon it would be all in the papers. I would lose my job, I would be arrested, I would not be able to speak to my family, he would drag my family through the mud. That made me realize if I didn’t do what he said that my life was going to be over, my life as I knew it. This person has the ability to destroy you and they’re threatening to destroy your life and your family. I wouldn’t have a chance to talk to my boss, explain anything. I’m the person that’s responsible for my family. I’m a single mother with three kids in college, and what do you do? It’s like someone holding a gun to you and saying you have to do it, you have no other way to go. He basically said that he was either taking me or that piece of paper. What do you do? So I signed it.

I thought I would be able to get away, to get back to my office, to be able to think. He said, “Wait here.” We got out of the car [around noon] and he went to his car and he got his gun, a huge gun, and he stuck it in his belt, and he walked me around through the woods. Almost all of that time he was trying to get me to take some kind of plea. He was just threatening me again. It was not till 4:30 that he brought me back to where the cars were.

I remember I asked him what would he do then. He said he would take this to the prosecutor but that I could go back to my office. He said he would call me. This is how strange it all was. You’d think if you really thought someone was a murderer you would arrest them.

The Cavalry is Not Coming

I went to the women’s prison, where they have two cells for Powhatan County at the end of Cottage Three, which is this antique dungeonlike place. It was cold. I was hungry. There was only one slot in my cell door. If I looked at just the right angle out of my little slot, down the hall to a door that had another slot, then I could see at certain times the river. The James River.

It was where we used to go canoeing. Roger and some friends of ours used to go. At times, I could actually see the water. And seeing those trees and that water and that serenity was like looking at a master painting that you knew was real. And I cannot tell you how restoring that was.

What I kept thinking right before Christmas was that the cavalry was coming. And that’s a strange way to put it, but it’s this thing that somebody’s going to come out to that prison, a whole group of my friends and family. Somebody’s going to come. You know, it’s totally unrealistic. And not an intelligent thought.

I was there from November to mid-February. Then I was put in this basement. It was an absolute firetrap. A basement with chains on the exit doors and in front of that about fifty folding chairs. Filled with cigarette smoke, and I was on the top bunk. I could reach the ceiling from my bunk. All the smoke collects up there.

That room held about thirty-five or forty women. At this end were the black women, and at the other end were all the white women. And I was the only white person at this end. I didn’t notice that at first. I was sitting with the women that I’d become friend with, and one of the women, I don’t remember her name, but her nickname was Red, she had kind of reddish hair. I was sitting on the top bunk and she sad, “Miss Beverly, I have a question for you.” And I said, “What?” She said, “How come you’re down here with us? And how come you laugh at our jokes?” What could I say? I hadn’t noticed. I said, “They’re funny.”

Maybe if it were men, they’re more challenging with each other. But women aren’t like that. They were more resilient. They had a sense of humor.

I had just been there a few months. In the evenings we had to mop the floor. And you had to take turns mopping the floor. These women would take my turn so I could work on my case. And they would say – it was noisy as all get-out, unbelievable noise – “Be quiet, Miss Beverly is working on her case.” This will stick with me for the rest of my life.

A Gun to your Head

In late 1988, during a two-day interrogation, Christopher Ochoa was persuaded by police to confess to a rape and murder he did not commit. Threatened with a death sentence, Ochoa also implicated his co-worker Richard Danziger in the crime. He was released in 2001 based on DNA evidence after serving twelve years in prison.

Let’s say you sit at a bus stop, and an hour earlier somebody just robbed a bank and left a big bag of money there. A bad guy.

It’s under the bench at the bus stop. Somebody else found it—it’s gone.

He goes back to get his money. He says, “Where’s my money?”

What is he talking about? You don’t know.

He’s got a gun, and he puts it to your head, but what you don’t know is that this gun has no bullets.

“Tell me where the money is or you’re dead.”

You tell him, “No, no, no, no. I don’t know.”

You’re just like shaking, because you don’t know. If you knew, you would tell him, because you don’t want to die. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” you’re thinking, “I don’t want to die; I got to think of something.”

“Where is it at? Where is it at?”

And then you’re like, “Okay, somebody took it from here. I saw somebody running away from here. He went that way.” Knowing darn well you didn’t ever see anything.

Then the guy pulls away his gun and for some reason you see that it doesn’t have any bullets, and you feel like such an idiot. But you didn’t know. And that’s how I felt.

If There’s Anybody You Can Trust, it’s a Cop

I grew up in El Paso, Texas. From what I remember, I was always a good kid. One time, when I was a kid, a cop scared us. A mean neighbor, she said that we cussed her out and she called the cops. We’re like ten years old at that time. The cop came into our house illegally. He had no probable cause; he just went in and scares the living daylights out of us. “You know I can take you to jail for this?” he said.

And then I called my uncle, and my uncle got on the cop: “What the hell are you doing scaring little kids? Isn’t your job to try to be friends with them?” And the cop really didn’t know what to say. That was the only run-in that I had. I trusted them. You’re a kid, the cops give you candy.

I was a patrol boy in high school. They gave me a coupon, a little certificate: “We’re here to protect you, just call us.” If there’s anybody you can trust, it’s a cop. And I did, and there it happens.

When I went to high school, I was playing sports, I was studying. For some reason I became a C-student, and then I went back to being an honor student. I was the assistant editor of a literary magazine. I took some law class; we did a mock trial. I was the prosecutor and I won the case. And it felt good. Maybe I could do this law thing. Either a lawyer or a major-league baseball player. That’s really what I wanted to do. But things happened.

Suspicious Characters

On the morning of October 24, 1988, Nancy DePriest, a twenty-year-old Pizza Hut manager and mother, was raped and murdered at the Reinli Street Pizza Hut in Austin (a different Pizza Hut than the one where Ochoa worked). After the attacker sexually assaulted the victim, he handcuffed her to the restroom counter and shot her in the back of the head with a .22 caliber pistol. Before leaving, he flooded the restaurant in order to destroy any physical evidence he might have left behind.

October of ‘88, there was a murder in another Pizza Hut—a robbery, a rape, and a murder. A young woman was opening the store. I had seen her at managers meetings, but I didn’t know her personally. The murder was one of those with virtually no leads, and they closed the restaurant for a couple of weeks. Everybody was shocked. All the Pizza Hut employees in the city were shocked about what happened to that young woman.

A couple weeks later they reopened the restaurant. My roommate Danziger was taking me home from somewhere. He wanted to stop by the Pizza Hut where the murder occurred. And I really didn’t. He was curious about the scene, and I found that kind of weird. He was driving, so I had no choice. He drove up to Pizza Hut. I was in the car, and we were outside in the parking lot and I didn’t want to go in. We were arguing and arguing, and I said, “Fine, let’s just go in.”

We go in. He ordered a beer. The whole time I was nervous. I’ve always been the kind of person that wants to follow the rules. In high school, I went to the principal’s office once. Once. Never went again. Well, there was a Pizza Hut policy you couldn’t drink beer at any other restaurant, so we’re drinking beer there. He’s only eighteen, I’m twenty-one.

And then he wants to look at the scene of the crime. I go, “I don’t understand.” He [also wants to] make a toast and I toast, but you know, I didn’t feel comfortable. I wanted to leave. We left shortly after, but as we were walking out, my roommate stopped to talk to a security guard, and asked him a lot of questions about the crime scene. I don’t know what he asked him—I was at the car when he was asking questions.

And we drove off. Apparently, the police officers—the detectives that were investigating this crime—had talked to the Pizza Hut employees. They said, “Whoever did it might come back. And if they come back, if you see anybody suspicious, call us.” So that looked suspicious, toasting, and you put it all together, we looked like suspicious characters.

A couple days later, on Friday morning, I was working and two detectives asked for me, and they said they wanted to ask me questions about a burglary. And they asked me if I wanted to go down to the station and answer them, and I said yes. They said I could drive my car or I could go with them; if I went with them they’d bring me back or whatever.

Of course, they never brought me back.

This is the first book in the Voice of Witness series, which will illustrate human rights crises through the voices of their victims. To read more about Surviving Justice and Voice of Witness, visit www.voiceofwitness.com.

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