Making a Case for Innocence: True Stories of a Criminal Defense Investigator
So last week we took a look at what happened in Salem, 1692, where the prosecution held all the cards. This week, we’re looking at the defense side, where it becomes very clear the prosecution STILL holds all the cards, making this week’s book of the week Making a Case for Innocence: True Stories of a Criminal Defense Investigator by April Higuera.
So, as the title indicates, April Higuera is a criminal defense investigator. Now, anyone who has ever caught a rerun of Law & Order, Criminal Minds, or any of the CSI’s is aware that a crime happens, the police investigate and arrest, and then the prosecution has to prove the police’s investigation is correct. Prosecution has the burden of proof, so they have an enormous amount of state resources available to them to prove their case.
Except sometimes, the police and then the prosecutors go for the low hanging fruit, rather than the actual answer to who done it. And in a perfect world, the defense would ALSO have access to the same amount of state resources to prove their case. We do not live in a perfect world. Which frequently results in the low hanging fruit being an innocent person spending time in jail, and sometimes even dying at the hands of the state, because the police, prosecution, and courts, could not be bothered to do their jobs correctly. Additionally, as Higuera points out, “The entire defense investigation is hampered by limited access to important information that only the prosecution is allowed to obtain.” Basically, the police, the prosecutor, the forensics teams…. They are all on the same side. The defense is the opposition, the bad guys. So, they don’t help the defense at all…. unless defense investigators find a way to impeach their testimony.
Impeaching just means finding proof of a conflict of interest, or that “clearly proves that a witness is biased, mistaken, lying, or lacks knowledge.”
Now, Higuera is a consummate professional. She obliquely references possible corruption, and flat out states a statistic that 15% of law enforcement personnel will always do the right thing no matter what, 15% tend toward corruption no matter what, and the remaining 70% can be swayed either way based on circumstances. That is an absolutely fucking terrifying number. That means there is an up to 85% chance that if you are in the cross hairs of a police investigation, the pressure will be on from admin and prosecutors, to have the police close the case REGARDLESS OF YOUR GUILT OR INNOCENCE.
And that is where Higuera comes in. It’s her job, as an independent private investigator, to poke holes in the prosecutions case where she can. And she shared some of the cases she has investigated over her twenty-year career. She goes into detail on three, but I’m going to briefly recap two.
So, she starts with the Max Roybal, who was accused of killing Laura Cecere, who went missing from Fort Campbell, KY, and was only identified as deceased when her jawbone was mailed in to a local anchor newswoman. I don’t believe the rest of Cecera was ever located, but assuming she did not lose her jaw to toxic phosphorus, she is most assuredly presumed dead based on this. The local law enforcement focused on Roybal as their most likely suspect because he was Cecere’s husband. However, they had a marriage of convenience. Cecere was gay, and Roybal had married her to help mask this in a time when don’t ask don’t tell was the legal precedence in the military. However, Roybal was well aware of this, and he and Cecere had a close friendship. But he was the beneficiary of her life insurance policy, so the police claimed he did it out of jealousy and to claim the life insurance.
It did not help that Roybal’s former spouse had died at home, unattended, when she fell and hit her head. The prosecution actually dug up his first spouse, claimed she died as a result of blunt force trauma, and tried him for HER murder as well.
Interestingly, this was Higuera’s first case as a solo investigator. And she hit it out of the park. She read through all the reports provided in discovery on both cases, interviewed a ton of witnesses, provided multiple highly credible alternate theories, and Roybal’s defense attorney took all that field work and nailed it in court. Roybal was found not guilty on the death of his first wife. And the evidence Higuera uncovered on Cecere’s case actually had the judge throw the case out before it ever went to the jury, which is practically unheard of in modern American Jurisprudence.
And then the real tragedy of the American system of criminal justice reveals it’s ugly head. Even though Higuera managed to thoroughly destroy the prosecutions case, and provide several credible alternatives suspects, the prosecution stopped even looking. Rather than admit they arrested the wrong man, they just quietly ignored the case, leaving Cecere’s murder as one of the alarming statistics of unsolved murders. She remains unsolved, and her family still lacks closure on who killed their daughter. All because the police and prosecution refuse to admit they got lazy and arrested the wrong man.
The second case I want to recap is Sedley Alley and the murder of Suzanne Marie Collins. This one was tragic on so many levels. Collins was a marine, stationed at Naval base in Millington, TN, when she disappeared while jogging. She was found the next morning having been brutalized. Police immediately focused on Alley as the murder suspect, based solely on the fact that he was driving by the military base not long after she disappeared. Which, granted, sounds awful. But this wouldn’t have been half the book if that’s all there was to it.
Collins was seen jogging by two marines shortly before she disappeared. The marines reported seeing a brown station wagon with brown wood paneling shortly before hearing a woman scream. They ran towards the scream…because marines…running towards danger is what they do. By the time they got there, the woman and the car were gone. They IMMEDIATELY reported what had happened to the gate guard, who issued a BOLO…be on the lookout. Which was canceled after Alley was seen driving in his GREEN station wagon. Alley was literally under surveillance, sleeping off the night’s alcohol at home, at the time that Collins was murdered. Which we know because well after the fact, while working on Alley’s final plea before the death penalty was administered, Higuera found a notation to that effect on an autopsy report.
Alley was questioned for TWELVE HOURS, without benefit of counsel, before “confessing” that maybe he did. TWELVE HOURS! Fucking nuts. There was a great deal more to Higuera’s investigation into the Alley case, none of which mattered, because ultimately, the judge who heard the initial case, decided everything was kosher, and Alley was executed in 2006 by the state of Tennessee. This, despite a last-minute stay issued by the governor, and the Innocence Project stepping in and attempting to get testing on the DNA found at the scene of the crime. Even today, his daughter is trying to get the DNA tested to exonerate her father. I cried, when I read that. I really did.
Look, truth time. You may be as innocent as the child unborn, but if you are ever under arrested for even jay walking, GET A FUCKING LAWYER! It’s especially heartbreaking because those most likely to be falsely accused are indigent. But if you have any chance at all to get a lawyer, go into hock, mortgage your house, take out loans…. tap those credit cards….but get a god damn lawyer. Because no matter what you say, the police and prosecutors can and will twist it to their own ends to make you sound guilty. Part of the point of the Miranda Warnings is to let you know you have the right to an attorney. USE IT! Say absolutely nothing until you have YOUR attorney there.
Defense cases are just as expensive as the prosecution’s cases. The difference is that the prosecutor’s case is paid for by We the People. The defense case is paid for by the defendant. Which is why there is the belief that there are two sets of laws, one for rich people and one for poor people. Now…setting aside that anything that’s legal for a price, i.e. speeding, parking in a red zone, different penalties for crack vs cocaine, are certainly meant to penalize the poor, CRIMINAL law is not actually broken down that way. Criminal law does, theoretically, apply to everyone equally. Except the rich can actually afford the defense investigators needed to prove their innocence. The poor cannot. And the police and prosecutors know it. So, they leverage that inability to fight back to close their cases, and build public reputations as being tough on crime. Even if the actual criminals go uncaught and unpunished.
Ok, so that last bit was my own rant on the failures and foibles of our criminal justice system. I was a criminal justice major at UNR, I read all the textbooks, and have formed these opinions over the 20 years since I graduated. And Higuera’s book just confirmed it all. In heartbreaking, frustrating, detail.
I don’t know if she is still doing investigations, or if she’s retired, but I do believe she did good work when she was an investigator. I think defense investigators are a major check on prosecutorial misconduct, and I think there should be a line item in every state’s budget to allow for independent defense investigations to occur, ESPECIALLY if it’s a capital murder case, meaning one likely to result in the death penalty. The cards are too heavily stacked in favor of the prosecution, leaving the smallest minority in the world…that of the individual…standing out there on their own when they find themselves in the legal crosshairs.
This book was quite compelling, I read it in about three days and the only reason it took that long is that I had to work during the day. It was enjoyable, and I highly recommend it.
