#164 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Tyra Patterson

Welcome to Wrongful Conviction False Confessions. I'm Laura Nyrider. And I'm Steve Trison. In today's episode, we'll take you to Dayton, Ohio to tell you about Tyra Patterson. Nineteen-year-old Tyra falsely confessed to stealing a necklace, but an obscure law turned her false confession to robbery into something far worse. Warnings at my house would be impossible without AirTasker. Mom! Two kids can't find their shoes and the sink decides it's leaking. So I post on AirTasker to get help with the to-do list. Next thing I know, the sink's fixed and a Tasker installs a robot litter box, my cat hates. Which means, I'm spending less time juggling chores and back to juggling my kids. Go to airtasker.com or download the app. AirTasker. Get anything done. But if your soda actually did something for you, introducing Skypop Protein Soda. Skypop Protein Soda has 10 grams of complete protein, zero sugar, and real delicious soda taste. Skypop Protein Soda. Reach for the sky. Get your Skypop Protein Soda now at Target. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive casually insurance company and affiliates, potential savings will vary, not available in all states. I was sitting in my office one day in the phone rank, and on the other end of the call was David Singleton, the director of a group called the Ohio Justice and Policy Center. David was looking for somebody who could assist him in a case that involved a false confession. It was Tyra Patterson's case. We've told a lot of stories about people who falsely confessed to murders last season. But the crazy thing is this is a case where a false confession to robbery is converted into a false conviction for murder, and it's all because of an obscure or cake rule called the felony murder doctrine. The felony murder leads to people going down for murders who never killed anyone. When most people think about people in prison who they've been convicted of murder, they think of truly bad people, you know, scary folks, but there are a lot of people in prison for murder who never touched a gun or a murder weapon at all. The prisons are filled with people convicted of felony murder, people like Tyra Patterson. Today's story starts in Dayton, Ohio. It was a manufacturing town back in the day, but those jobs left in the 80s and 90s and never came back. Now, Dayton's claim to fame is that the guys who invented the airplane used to live there, Wilbur and Orville Wright. In fact, our story starts in a part of town named after the Wright brothers, a lower income mixed race neighborhood called Wrightview. It was just after midnight on a Tuesday in Wrightview, September 20th, 1994, Tyra Patterson was awake and bored. Tyra was 19 and smart as hell with a sunny personality. She was full of promise, but there weren't many open doors in front of her. Tyra's home life was really tough. Her dad was an alcoholic who hit her mom when he'd been drinking. He left when Tyra was just a kid and they got evicted when her mom couldn't pay the bills. Tyra dropped out of school in sixth grade. She was tired of the other kids bullying her about being poor. She got a job at a fast food restaurant and they put her at the register because she was so friendly. But Tyra hadn't learned enough math to make change. She was humiliated every time someone handed her a 20 and quit the job. By the time Tyra reached her late teens, the family had found an apartment to live in again, but Tyra had lost her way. She smoked a lot of weed and tried not to think about how her life could have been different. It was around 2am on September 20th when Tyra's boring night started getting a little too interesting. Tyra and her friend Rebecca were hanging out at Tyra's place and they decided to go for a walk. Outside, they ran into five other young people from Wrightview. Tyra barely knew most of them, but she and Rebecca stuck around anyway. The group was mixed gender and mixed race. Five were black, including Tyra and two were white, including Rebecca. To keep things clear in our story, we're going to call all of them the Wrightview group. Sometime after 2am, a gray Chevrolet rolled into an alley near where the group was hanging out. The Chevy was filled with five teenagers, all white girls from another part of town. They'd driven to Wrightview to steal stuff from people's garages. In the alley, two of these would-be thieves got out of the Chevy to steal a radio. They were gone about 10 minutes before they returned to the car in a hurry. Following them on foot were three members of the Wrightview group, Lashana, Angie and Joe. And on a leash, Joe had a pit bull. Before the girls in the Chevy can drive away, another car pulls up in front of them blocking the alley's exit. It's the other four members of the Wrightview group, and crammed into a corner of that car, wondering what she's gotten herself into, is Tyra Patterson. Tyra's friend, Rebecca, gets out of the car and heads for the Chevy, along with the other Wrightview people. Not knowing what else to do, Tyra gets out too, but she's not prepared for what happens next. There's a confrontation. Everyone starts yelling. One of the Wrightview girls, not Tyra, calls the girls in the Chevy white bitches. Two other Wrightview girls join in, still not Tyra, and start telling the girls in the Chevy to check it in. That means throw your money and jewelry on the ground. The girls in the Chevy don't immediately comply, and that's when things really escalate. Tyra hangs back, but three of the Wrightview girls open the car doors, and start landing punches. Joe lets his pit bull into the car and orders it to attack. Now it's a melee. Some of the girls in the Chevy do check it in, throwing their jewelry onto the ground. Tyra's not used to this kind of stuff. She doesn't have a record, and she has no interest in violence. She tries to calm the situation down, but no one listens. As the punches intensify, Tyra and her friend, Rebecca, starts slipping away. They want no part of this, but as they leave, Tyra spots a necklace on the ground. Costumed jewelry, a cheap gold cross. She's never owned that kind of jewelry, and it seems valuable to her. Tyra picks up the necklace, puts it in her pocket, and keeps walking away. When Tyra picked up that necklace, at worst, it was a theft. It might not even have been a crime. Picking up a necklace off the ground is not something that prosecutors are interested in. It's not something that people go to prison for, and it's certainly not murder. It is Tyra's walking away, she hears words being yelled, yelled maybe to her, by one of the girls in the Chevy, 18-year-old Hollylay. Please make them stop Holly calls, we don't have anything! Before Tyra can respond, a gunshot rings out. Lashana Keeney, part of the right view group, had pulled out a gun and fired into the car. The bullet went straight into the temple of Michelle Le, Holly's 15-year-old sister. Michelle died instantly. Later on, another one of the right view girls, Angie, expressed bewilderment that it all happened so fast. "We just meant to punk them out," she said. Within minutes though, punking out turned into murder. The moment the shots rang out, everyone scattered. Most members of the right view group fled to a nearby motel, but Tyra ran to her apartment only a few hundred feet away, where she panicked and flushed the necklace down the toilet. She was afraid it would connect her to a shooting she didn't commit. For her part, Hollylay got out of the Chevy and started banging on doors, pleading desperately for someone anyone to call an ambulance, help her sister. Eventually, someone did call 911. It was Tyra. Please only needed about 12 hours to figure out who'd been there when Michelle Le was shot. The girls from the Chevy gave some pretty good descriptions of both their assailants and the pit bull. Police found the dog sitting outside its owner's house, and when the owner matched the girl's descriptions of Joe, police knew they'd found one of the right view group. Pretty soon, several people had been rounded up, and the police were knocking at Tyra's door, too. Before long, Tyra Patterson found herself in an interrogation room. This episode is sponsored by AIG, a leading global insurance company, and Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Morton, and Garrison, a leading international law firm. The AIG pro bono program provides re-legal services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need. And recently, they announced that working to reform the criminal justice system will become a key pillar of the program's mission. Paul Weiss has long had an unwavering commitment to providing impactful pro bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable members of our society and in support of the public interest, including extensive work in the criminal justice. The police were angry, this shooting was tragic, and they wanted to nail as many people as possible for murder, not just Lashana who pulled the trigger, but the others too. But how do you get someone who didn't kill anyone to go down for murder? Well, one tool that police and prosecutors have is that felony murder rule we mentioned earlier. This little known law can be the source of enormous injustice. In its purest form, the felony murder rule is felony plus death equals first degree murder. So if you commit a felony and during the course of that felony, someone dies. You are convicted of first degree murder. Even though you never intended to kill somebody, even though you couldn't have foreseen that somebody would have died, it is the intent to commit that felony that substitutes for the intent to kill. They didn't coerce Tyra into confessing to murder because they knew before the interrogation, who the murderer was. It was Lashana Keeney. All they needed to do was get Tyra to say that she grabbed a necklace by force from one of the girls in the car. That's a robbery. They could get her for the same murder that Lashana Keeney committed. So getting Tyra to say she snatched the necklace instead of picking it up is what this interrogation is all about. Now like all interrogations that aren't fully recorded, there are two stories about what happened in the room. There is the official story told in police reports, and then there's the story told by the defendant. They almost always diverge. In Tyra's case, the police story goes like this. Tyra admitted to being there, but she denied being involved in the robbery, assault, or shooting. But as she was being booked, Tyra spontaneously announced that she wanted to tell the truth and admitted reaching into the car and grabbing the necklace off one of the girls. That's when police captured her confession on videotape. No coercion, no drama. But according to Tyra and her lawyer, she confessed after a very different sequence of events. Here's David Singleton, that lawyer who called Steve about this case. David has represented Tyra for the past eight years. Tyra calls very clearly the detective screaming at her, saying she's a murderer, that she's gonna be locked up for the rest of her life, cursing at her, telling her she's an effing liar. Because Tyra was saying I didn't rob anybody, I didn't shoot anybody. Eventually, the detective takes Tyra out of the interrogation room and walks her past where Tyra could see Rebecca sitting in a police car about to go home. And Tyra's like, well, you know, Rebecca's going home, why am I not going home? The detective said, well, she gave us a videotape statement. And Tyra said, well, I'll give you a videotape statement. The detective said, well, you don't have anything to tell us. And Tyra said, well, I picked up a necklace from the ground and the detective smiled and took her back in to try and charge her. The police tell Tyra, she just needs to change one thing in her story about the necklace. She didn't pick it up off the ground, instead she robbed it from the girls. After all, they say, wouldn't it be better to go down for a robbery than for murder? Getting caught up in a murder is what Tyra's been terrified of all along. So this is what breaks her. She falsely admits to snatching the necklace off one of the girls in the Chevy. Now she's confessed to robbery and the cops have their felony. It's only at this point that the video camera gets turned on. Describe the necklace. Not good, it's pretty necklace. Is it a gold necklace? Fake. Fake gold? I wouldn't wear it down a long time ago. And from which girl in the back seat did you take that necklace? The driver is on the back. Okay, the person behind the driver, okay, yeah. What struck me about Tyra's appearance in that video is she did look tired. She also looked scared. At one point, you hear somebody screaming in another room and she's just terrified. And at another point, I recall very vividly, she's looking to detective for an answer. I mean, she was trying to satisfy what he wanted because she thought that was her ticket to go back home and continue on with her life. And the minute that she finished the video and the camera was turned off, she said, do I get to go home now? And he said, no, I'm booking you from murder. That's when the nightmare truly began. How is Tyra to know that one little change in her story was enough to charge her not just with robbery, but with felony murder? That one little change made Tyra as liable for Michelle Leigh's death as the murderer herself. You know, there's a huge irony in this case. They needed Tyra to confess to a robbery, not a theft. And the way they did it was they told her it's better to go down for a robbery than it is for a murder. And she accepted that explanation. She believed that premise. Everybody believes that because they don't understand the felony murder rule. We've seen police officers lie before, but this is a particularly dangerous lie because it sets somebody up for murder charges. There's actually a second irony in this case too because here you have the felony murder rule being applied to Tyra Patterson. She didn't have a weapon with her that night. She didn't know the people who did come to that scene with weapons. She tried to intervene and stop the fight. She tried to de-escalate as things were getting more serious and more violent. And when she couldn't stop the fight, she walked away. After the gunshot, she called 911. Tyra is a hero here. She's not a murderer, she's the one, though, who ends up going down. Tyra Patterson's only crime, if it even was a crime, was picking up a necklace from the ground. But suddenly, somehow, she was on trial for murder and facing life in prison. And like too many murder trials, Tyra's was a shit show. So Tyra was represented by attorneys in the local public defender office. The problem was that they were overwhelmed and didn't have the resources to defend Tyra appropriately. The primary evidence against Tyra was her confession, but her attorneys never argued that it was false or coerced. In fact, no one, not the judge or the jury, ever heard Tyra's account of her interrogation. Her attorneys actually advised her not to testify in her own defense, not to tell her side of the story. And why not? They said that she was too unsophisticated and talked too much like she was from the ghetto, that she'd be eaten alive by the prosecutors. And I think that Tyra got ridden off in that way. The jury did hear, though, from Holly Lay, who testified that she'd seen Tyra reaching into the car. A few other girls from the Chevy testified the same way. Other stories went unchallenged by Tyra's lawyers, even though they could have called Rebecca to testify that Tyra never snatched a necklace off anyone. The lawyers didn't even play Tyra's 911 call, which would have showed that she was trying to help. We were able to find out by talking to the jurors years later that that 911 call would have made a difference had they heard it. When I played it for them, they were like, we never would have convicted her had we known that she'd called 911. But the defense gave the jurors nothing to work with, nothing. And that's how Tyra Patterson, the woman who never touched a gun or robbed anyone, was convicted of one count of aggravated murder and four counts of aggravated robbery. When the jury announced it's verdict, she stood up and shouted in disbelief, but I didn't do it. It didn't matter. She was sentenced to 43 years to life that's 13 more years than LaShana, who actually pulled the trigger. And in December 1995, Tyra Patterson became Ohio Department of Corrections inmate, number 3-7-7-3-7. Mornings at my house are impossible, two kids can't find their shoes and the sink starts leaking. So I post my tasks on AirTasker. Soon, the sink's fixed and a Tasker installs a robot litter box, my cat hates. AirTasker. Get anything done. What if your soda actually did something for you? Introducing Skypop Protein Soda. Skypop Protein Soda has 10 grams of complete protein, zero sugar and real delicious soda taste. Skypop Protein Soda. Reach for the sky. Get your Skypop Protein Soda now at Target or King Supers. This message is brought to you by Kruger. If you're listening for a laugh or a fresh take on everyday life, you know it's often the little things that make everything more enjoyable and easier. And even on busy nights, Kruger has easy meal solutions ready to go, so dinner doesn't turn into a whole situation when you already have enough going on. on. Order online and get groceries delivered in as little as one hour. Kruger, Texas Proud since 1955. Fast forward to 2011, Tyra Patterson had been in prison for just over 16 years, not even halfway through her sentence, when she got her first break. Ohio Governor Ted Strickland learned about her case. He thought it was unfair that her sentence was more severe than the shooters. So he issued what's called a commutation. Tyra tried to stop this from happening. She walked away before the shots were fired. All she did was pick up a necklace off of the ground. Lachana Kinney brought the gun to this event, and she pulled the trigger that led to Michelle Lay's death. It is grossly unfair for Lachana to be sentenced to 30 years and for Tyra to be sentenced to 43 years. And that's why the governor commuted Tyra's sentence to 16 years to life, which made her immediately eligible for parole. But Tyra's hopes of freedom were dashed a few months later. The Ohio parole board denied her request for parole, and they said she had to wait up to seven years before asking again. They said her crime was too severe. That's when David Singleton got involved. He'd heard about her case from a friend, and he decided to go meet Tyra Patterson. When David met Tyra in prison, she was different from that 19 year old girl whose future looked like a broken promise. Behind bars, Tyra had redeemed her own promise. She'd gained skills in prison, working as a porter, a food service worker, a maintenance person. She'd gone from an illiterate sixth grade dropout to someone who earned her GED. She'd participated in more than 200 self-improvement programs, and most importantly, she was becoming an incredible advocate for herself and for justice. When she told David she was innocent, he believed her, and he set out to prove it, enlisting Steve Drizzan's help in the process. There's no DNA miracle for people like Tyra, and for most of the people who are locked up in prison. I mean, DNA is only present in maybe 10% of all cases. Well, that's the thing. Even if the shooter had left DNA on the gun, everybody already knew that Lushanakini was the one who pulled the trigger. This is not a case where DNA testing is going to exonerate Tyra Patterson. As David and Steve dove into the case against Tyra, they found some major cracks. First, David discovered that the victim's sister, Holly Lay, had testified at the trial of another one of the right few girls, a year before Tyra's trial. Back then, Holly had testified that Tyra wasn't the one who reached into the car and snatched the necklace. It had actually been someone else. Second, David uncovered the very first statements the girls in the Chevy gave to police right after Michelle Lay was shot. And when he and Steve reviewed those early statements, well, it was revealing. Remember, some of these were given within an hour or two of the crime, so the memories were fresh for the witnesses. And Tyra was like a ghost. The two people who were mentioned far less than everybody else in all of these accounts were Tyra and Becca. And so that's squared with Tyra's story. Third, David talked to some of the other right view girls, the ones who were born involved in what went down that night. Three of them signed affidavits supporting Tyra's innocence, including Lashana Keeney. Lashana confirmed that far from participating, Tyra had actually tried to stop the confrontation from escalating. Before long, Tyra's case was attracting attention among some pretty influential people. Ohio State Senator Peggy Lainer visited Tyra in prison. And she was so compelled by Tyra's story that she got four other state senators to back Tyra's efforts for release. Celebrities and advocates also began getting involved. Everyone from actor Elfrey Woodard to madman creator Matthew Weiner. They began tweeting and posting in support of Tyra using the hashtag, I am Tyra Patterson. This I am Tyra Patterson campaign, the hashtag, what it meant was they were in solidarity with her. People were saying, we're there for you. We see you. We hear you. And that was a powerful message. You know, I think the first time I heard the name Tyra Patterson was when I opened up my Twitter feed one day and there I see a video of Steve giving us speech and holding a poster that says in big black letters, I am Tyra Patterson. That was take five of that video because the first take went along what I thought was really well. And then I picked up the sign. I am holding it upside down. Great, great. The point of the campaign was to demonstrate that anybody could falsely confess if pressured by the police. And I am Tyra Patterson. To me was making that message loud and clear. I could have been Tyra Patterson or my child could have been Tyra Patterson. That's how Tyra became, in my view, her best advocate. It was exposing people to her so that they could see her as a living, breathing, daughter, sister, and person who was going to shine in the community if we could get her free. One person this message reached was the victim's sister. 2016 is when Holly Lay got in touch with me and her husband said Holly wants to meet you at Michelle's grave on Michelle's birthday. So I showed up. I didn't think they were going to come. I was like, this cannot be happening. Holly said, you know, Tyra didn't do this. And in fact, that night Tyra walked by as we were talking to the police and the police officer looked and said is that one of the ones who was involved and we all said no. On the night of the crime, Holly had seen one of the other girls snatch the necklace, not Tyra. But when she heard about Tyra's confession, Holly figured she must have been mistaken. After all, who would confess to a crime they didn't commit. Years later, Holly learned about false confessions and she realized Tyra must have given one. Holly's memory had been right all along. Tyra was innocent and Holly agreed to support Tyra's release. In 2017, Tyra Patterson was granted parole after 21 years behind bars. On Christmas morning she walked out of prison, bent down and kissed the winter snow. It wasn't exoneration, but at last she was free. To quote Shawshank Redemption, Tyra Patterson got busy living. She's my colleague now at the Ohio Justice and Policy Center. She's soaring in her job as our community relations expert. She speaks multiple times a week to different community groups, mentoring young people, not just in our community, but in places across the country. Tyra basically runs Cincinnati, everybody knows her. She is the brains behind this social justice mural that is going up in downtown Cincinnati, featuring women who have spent a long time in prison and have come home and are doing well and her face is one of the ones up there. It's just sad that her life was interrupted for 23 years, but now she's living. And it's a beautiful thing to see. Hello Tyra. Hey Steve, how are you? Hey Tyra. It's Laura. Hey Laura. How are you? I'm great. Are you at home? I am. So Tyra was living in an apartment for a while and now she's a homeowner. Yes. What was it like to have you in place after being in prison so long? Oh my god, the privacy. No yelling, no screaming, no arguing. It was beautiful. I slept like a baby. I just felt alive. And if I were you first thing I would have done is like stood in the shower for three hours. There's nothing like a long shower. No Laura. I didn't even do that. I stayed in a bathtub for three hours because you know, in prison we didn't get to take a bath. So all I ever wanted to do was just come home and take a bubble bath. I'm going to go take a bubble bath in your honor. I think I am too. Actually, Steve, I love you. Tyra hasn't given up on exoneration. She and her legal team are still fighting to clear her name. If you want to follow Tyra's case and send her a message of support, look her up on Instagram at tyra.imani.777. She inspires Steve and me every day. That's the story of Tyra Patterson. Join us next week when we'll tell you about Ronald Kitchen who was tortured by Chicago police into falsely confessing to murder. And it turns out he was far from the only one. We'll talk about how Ronald got his freedom and how the city's police torture scandal got exposed. Wrongful conviction false confessions is a production of lava for good pie. podcasts in association with Signal Company number one. Special thanks to our executive producers, Jason Flom and Kevin Wartus. Our production team is headed by senior producer Ann Pope, along with producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane. Our show is mixed by Jeannie Montalvo. John Colbert is our intrepid intern. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura Nyrider. And you can follow me on Twitter at S Drizen. For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at wrongfulconviction, on Facebook at wrongfulconvictionpodcast, and on Twitter at wrongconviction. I decided to do some cleaning this weekend. Step one, open the closet. Step two, immediately regret opening the closet. Behind the coats? Wedding gifts we still haven't sorted. Our wedding was three years ago. So I posted a task on airtasker. A tasker organized the closet, tackled the garage, and even hand-wrote the thank you notes. Post your task, set your budget, and choose the tasker who's right for you. Airtasker, get anything, gun. Wait, this is a soda, yeah, and it has protein, 10 grams, no sugar, zero. And it actually tastes good, it's Skypop. Skypop protein soda delivers the refreshing taste you want from a real soda. Chris and delicious with 10 grams of complete protein, zero sugar, and just 45 calories. So you're not choosing between great taste and real benefits. You're getting both in every sip. Skypop protein soda, reach for the sky. Get your Skypop protein soda now at Target or Walmart. This message is brought to you by Kroger. If you're into entertainment podcasts, you know it's all about the details that pull you in and keep you engaged. The right details make everything feel seamless. And even when plans change, Kroger makes it easy to shift dinner. So you can still get something on the table and keep the rest of your night on track. Kroger. Texas Proud since 1955.