Conviction and Innocence: Peter Reilly, Donald Connery, Andrew Schneider

Questions and comments for this evening's guests:

• When asked why Arthur Miller didn’t write about the Barbara Gibbons case, he said it, “offered a vision of man so appalling unredeemable as to dry up the pen.”
• 6/10/94 Litchfield County Times
  Arthur Miller: “There is one sphere in which we too often operate on a kind of faith, and that is when interrogations of criminal suspects are carried out in police stations or other official offices. In Ct. someone from the State’s Attorney’s office is supposed to be present, but he or she isn’t always, nor is a stenographic record of the questions and answers necessarily kept. A video record would even be better but only Alaska requires this. Why is this an issue? The heart of any legal system, it seems to me, is its protection of the innocent.”
• 9/19/05 Register Citizen
  Marc Simont noted, “that the defense table was rather conservative, with a minimum of discussion,” while, “the prosecutors indulged in conspiratorial whispers…And there was very loud clothing. Bianchi had a lot of flair.”
• Peter Reilly (same article): “It is more important than ever that young people know their rights. They shouldn’t feel that asking for an attorney would be an admission of guilt. That was something they tried to make me feel, and it is very important for young people not to be embarrassed or afraid to ask for one if things are running out of control…You need a lawyer even if you’re innocent –especially if you’re innocent.”
• William Styron – Introduction to Joan Barthel’s A Death in Canaan (1976): “If it is true that the law is the best institution human beings have devised to mediate their own internal discord, this must not obscure the fact that the law’s power is too often invested in the hands of mortal men who are corrupt, or, if not corrupt, stupid, or if not stupid then devious or lazy, and all of them capable of the most grievous mischief…But rather triumphantly, and perhaps most importantly, A Death in Canaan demonstrates the will of ordinary people, in their ever astonishing energy and determination, to see true justice prevail over the law’s dereliction.”

• Andrew: How do we protect ourselves from this kind of Kafkaesque experience? Shouldn’t everyone knowing their rights, students, children etc be part of our educational curriculum?
• Peter: Were you ever able to forgive Sergeants Kelly and Shaw, and our ineffective system for the way you were manipulated into the confession? It was a horrific experience reading the transcript and the way they coerced you was despicable. I was angry beyond words!
  Peter: In the transcript of A Death in Canaan you say “I must have…” “I might as well confess…” “It could be…” “I may as well say I did it….” You went 25 hours without food and hardly any sleep. The lies of Sergeant Kelly were hard to read. At one point you said, “I didn’t think a cop would lie to me.”
• Peter: Arthur Miller called what the police did to you a “sustained psychological assault.” How did you move away from this tragedy? Do you have much faith in our justice system now?
• Donald: in your book Guilty Until Proven Innocent, you said of Peter, “Indeed, his openness was his undoing,” and about the prosecutor, John Bianchi, “he concealed evidence and twisted circumstantial evidence.” What made you write your book since Barthel’s book was published the year before?
• All: Arthur Miller said in the A&E film “A Son’s Confession” that “in the briefcase of the prosecutor was the evidence he (Peter) was innocent.” It was Finney’s statement which was eventually revealed after being withheld the whole time.
• All: Perhaps someone can explain why “deception” is allowable as an interrogation technique?
• Peter: Did you ever consider writing a memoir – not about your ordeal during the trials, but about how your spirit and that of the community triumphed over our  marred justice system?
• Andrew: What can we do to protect ourselves as citizens from the Kafkaesque experience that Peter and many others endure? Many of us, like Peter, were raised to see the policeman on the corner, especially in small towns, as a friend. However, it seems that in a way not dissimilar to business, police work is interested mostly in “closing the deal /case.” Intimidation and the appearance of guilt when being questioned, though we may be innocent, are walls in front of the average citizen. How do we prepare for being stopped, questioned, searched?
  
• Donald: can you speak briefly to the wider concept of “convicting the innocent”?
• Peter: My understanding is that once you were exonerated, the “Peter Reilly case” was closed but the “Barbara Gibbons case” is unsolved. Is that correct?
• Peter: how you have stayed focused, endured and built a new life for yourself?