False confession expert testifies in NC innocence case

By MARTHA WAGGONER - Associated Press - Tuesday, August 20, 2019

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - An expert in false confessions testified in an innocence hearing Tuesday that police used a man’s mental illness against him and pretended to be his friend in order to obtain his confession to a 1979 slaying in a North Carolina dormitory.

Allison Redlich testified Tuesday at the three-judge hearing for James Blackmon, 66. Blackmon is serving a life sentence for second-degree murder in the death of a student at what’s now St. Augustine’s University in Raleigh.

Both Blackmon’s attorneys and the prosecutors agree that Blackmon is mentally ill. During police interrogations, he sometimes wore a Superman-like cape, compared himself to Dracula and said he could cause earthquakes and hurricanes.

Detectives interviewing Blackmon had his mental health records and used his illness to manipulate him, said Redlich, a professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Redlich said “police really capitalized on Mr. Blackmon’s delusions and, I would argue, interrogate him, using his delusions as a basis” for their questions. ” The professor added, “And bringing in the bad James or the other James, allowing James to take responsibility even when he has no recollection of committing the crimes and allowing the blame, the responsibility to be put on bad James.”

In November, the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission found sufficient evidence of Blackmon’s innocence to send his case to the three-judge panel for review. The hearing is the final step in North Carolina’s innocence process, where the state-funded commission staff investigates claims of innocence and then forwards them to the commission members.

The commission recommends the cases that it finds credible to a judicial panel.

Helena Payton, who was stabbed in the neck in a bathroom stall of a St. Augustine’s dorm, died about a month after the September 1979 attack. The case went cold until 1983, when police received a tip from a confidential informant who said someone at a Raleigh mental hospital had confessed to killing women.

In 1988, Blackmon entered an Alford plea, which allows a defendant, without admitting guilt, to acknowledge prosecutors have enough evidence to win conviction.

At one point, police took Blackmon to the crime scene in a visit that, unlike most interviews, was not recorded on camera. In their investigative notes, police said that when they took Blackmon to the bathroom where Payton was killed, he pushed open the door of the last stall and said, “This is where it happened.” When police asked what happened, he responded: “I was there and she was there.” He washed his hands and said, “This is what I did.”

Redlich said it was impossible to determine the veracity of the notes, which she said leave unanswered questions, such as whether Blackmon also pointed to other stalls.

In his opening statement, defense attorney Jonathan Broun said no physical evidence implicates Blackmon and an eyewitness didn’t identify Blackmon in a lineup. Also, there’s no evidence that Blackmon, who had been living in New York, was even in North Carolina when Payton was killed, he said.

“This is not a case where the police threatened or intimidated the suspect into confessing,” he said. “But it is a case where the police questioning led to a completely false confession.”

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman emphasized that the case is 40 years old and that previous rulings upheld Blackmon’s competency to stand trial.

“This is not a case like we have in other exoneration instances where there is clear DNA evidence that leads to a conclusion,” she said. “Disturbing the outcome of a case 40 years following its conclusion is a matter to be carefully considered, even more so when issues raised by the defendant were considered upon and ruled on at the time.”