01x03 - Mental Evidence

[bunniefuu]

SPEAKER: When you walk
into the detective's office

at the Austin Police Department,

these are
the first things they see.

Detectives will not
allow themselves to forget.

♪ [PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYS] ♪

For years, I've wondered,
what would she be like
if she was grown up,

and what would she be like
if she had kids?

SPEAKER 2:
You would think after 30 years

that we would have been
a lot further along.

SPEAKER 3:
We were asking for any tip.

-People started calling in.
-[PHONE RINGS]

SPEAKER 4: So many of my friends
were targeted,

had SWAT teams bust
into their houses.

It was just a sign
how desperate they were.

SPEAKER 5: Hector Polanco
knew interrogation.

But he don't use it right.

REPORTER: Hector Polanco
has been reassigned

amid allegations that he coerced
a suspect into a confession.

SPEAKER 6:
They had come up with suspects

and acted like, "This is them,"

and it turns out it's not them.

JOHN JONES:
When the new group took over,

Huck and I were pretty much
shut out.

SPEAKER 7:
I started going over the case.

And then we got
the Maurice Pierce tip.

The Maurice tip
involved four people.

♪ [MUSIC CONCLUDES] ♪

Sure.

CLAIRE: So, go ahead.

-Oh, just go ahead, and...?
-CLAIRE: Yeah. Sure.

The way memory works
is basically to play back,

so to speak, but not
in a video recorder sense,

to report
to someone else what it is

that we have seen
or heard or who we saw.

Now you say,
"Well, why wouldn't it

just be as simple
as pushing a little switch

and playing back
a tape like a VCR?

Well, because playback
is not really accurate.

What we really do is construct.

You have some puzzle pieces,
you put them down on the table,

but there are a lot of gaps.

[OVER VIDEO]
Well, memory abhors these gaps.

You don't want
an incomplete puzzle.

So basically from inferences,
from assumptions,

from incorporation
of information

from other people,

these pieces are
literally created

and they fill in the gaps.

I knew I wasn't
going to make a film

about the whole case
because it was too big.

ROBERT SHOMER:
The next time around
when somebody asks you,

what did you see
or what do you remember seeing,

all the pieces are there.

The ones you saw,
the ones you created.

We were trying to make
a documentary

about false confession.

JOE SAWYER: I think the country
is learning that confessions

aren't what we thought they were
or what we wanted them to be.

Right. Yeah.

And it should bother us

that there are guys in prison

who are there wrongly
and you are one of them.

CLAIRE: There are
some hurdles to that,

which is convincing a viewer

that these are false confessions
to begin with.

You know, having that question,

how does a person confess
to a crime they didn't commit?

Why not ask the person
who confessed?

♪ [MUSIC CONCLUDES] ♪

♪ [SOFT GLOOMY MUSIC PLAYING] ♪

PAUL JOHNSON:
When I started this case,

I came up with
about 2000 separate tips.

And so we needed
to look into them.

So in 1999,

we started working
on the Maurice Pierce tip.

There's things that were just
unresolved about Maurice.

And when Maurice got arrested
back in 1991

at the mall with the g*n,

roughly ten days
after the murders,

sometime during the night,

Hector Polanco brought Maurice

to an interview room
to interview him.

At the beginning
of the recording,

it says something like,

"Let's go over
what we've been talking about."

JOHNSON: That interview,

which probably started
around midnight,

goes on till the day shift
starts coming in.

John Jones, the main person
assigned to the case,

Polanco comes out and says,
"Okay, this is Maurice.

He's acknowledging
some involvement

in the yogurt shop case."

So John Jones takes
a separate written statement

from Maurice Pierce.

♪ [MUSIC TURNS OMINOUS] ♪

JOHNSON:
When I was looking at this case,

I saw that statement
that John Jones took.

And when I was digging through

the rest of the evidence,
I find this recording.

And I listened to the recording
of what Maurice Pierce had said

just before John Jones
took Maurice's statement.

And it's not the same.

JOHNSON: His written story
involves only meeting
with Forrest

in the parking lot
of Northcross Mall.

But in that recording,

the story involves...
the creek people.

JOHNSON: It involves him
being in his car with Forrest

over in an apartment complex

where right down
from that parking lot is a place

in the creek
where people hang out.

And we just call them
the creek people

because they hang out
at the creek.

KEVIN PARLIN: It was just
a spot to get away

from everybody, to hide.

Uh, it was a place we could do

our ill*gal underage drinking
and not get caught.

That was the-- the hangout,
and that's-- that's what we did.

You know, 15, 16, what-- what--
however old I was at, uh...

We did way too much drinking...
[CHUCKLES] ...for our age.

But that was where we were
hanging out that night.

♪ [OMINOUS MUSIC CONTINUES] ♪

JOHNSON: John Jones
justifies not thinking

Maurice is a suspect

because even Hector Polanco
couldn't get him to confess.

And Polanco
can get people to confess

even if they're innocent.

Maurice doesn't confess himself
on the tape,

but he does say Forrest told him

very specific things
that were happening

during the commission
of the crime.

JOHNSON: And he doesn't say
those things to John Jones

when Jones
is taking a statement.

Evidently, John Jones
never knew the story

that Maurice told
to Hector Polanco.

And Hector Polanco
never bothered

to look at this
written statement

and see that it's different
than the story he had heard.

Any time you get
somebody telling a story,

and they tell one story,

and then they tell
another story,

you don't stop and get--
until you get it resolved

why their stories are different.

You know, Hector Polanco had,
at some point,

kind of gotten a bad reputation.

And I'm not sure
Jones even cared

what Maurice told
Hector Polanco.

I get the impression
he wouldn't have

trusted anything
Polanco said anyhow.

If I had been investigating,

I think anybody
would have wanted to know

if he's telling you
a different story

than he just told somebody else.

And, you know,
they wired Maurice up,

they say something like
"Forrest didn't know

what he was talking about,
had no idea what was going on."

And they also interviewed

Robert Springsteen
and Michael Scott

because they were
along in the car.

MARGARET BROWN:

No.

Okay.

MARGARET:

I'm just like...

[CHUCKLES]

MARGARET:

Okay. Um...

You're assuming
some things there that--

MARGARET:

Well, nobody called him Mace.

MARGARET:

[SIGHS] Uh...

I-- I-- Yeah.
I'm trying to think how to...

Well, I-- I-- so for--

for Maurice and--
and bringing my name up,

I mean, I-- you know,
of course...

I-- because I doubt that he...

really knew any of our names,

uh, back then...

Um... And then obviously--
Yet my name is Mac

and that's pretty much
the only name I went--

I didn't go by Mace.

I don't know
where that came from,

but, um, we were easy targets.

People knew
we hung out down there

and him not knowing my name

or names of some of the other
people down there...

you know, but, you know,
there's a group of people--

tho-- those were the one--
Uh, it's a deflection...

I don't...

Yeah.

Maurice's story has always been,
Forrest took his g*n,

and Forrest probably did it.

♪ [PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING] ♪

JOHNSON:
But I thought it was more likely

that Maurice was actually
the one doing the murders.

I thought it was
a bit suspicious.

We had these
conflicting statements,

the one of the recording
that I had already heard,

and then the one
that he had written out in 1991.

And I wanted to get...

whatever he claimed
the truth to be... right now.

So I talked to him at his house.

♪ [GRIPPING MUSIC PLAYING] ♪

So, in addition to Forrest,

he says he was with Michael Scott
and Robert Springsteen that night.

I ended up contacting
each of them by phone,

and I asked them, just,
"What did you do that day?"

And they each told me a story,

and they all involved
the other three people,

and they were all different things
about what they did.

I could not clear them.
I could not take their alibi.

Their alibis were each other,
and they were all different.

But they each talked
about going to San Antonio

the night after the murders happened.

They were all together
in that stolen Pathfinder.

And each one of them remembered

stopping somewhere along the way
and buying a newspaper.

And as they're driving,
somebody reading the article

about the yogurt shop murders.

Teenagers in a stolen car,
driving to see some girlfriend,

stopping to get the Sunday paper
in the first place,

is kind of suspicious to me.

So we started working to find out
everything we could about these guys.

John Jones described them
as dudes without dates,

who would hang out at Northcross Mall
and, you know-- watching girls, basically.

I thought it was weird that they all four
were hanging out in the first place.

I mean, they might have known each other,
but I never thought of them hanging out.

I didn't know them as a group.

I wouldn't have made
those connections ever.

Not until I met Forrest later
that I knew he had hung out with Maurice.

Forrest, he was just kind of a quiet guy.

He liked to work.
He liked to work on cars.

Anything you needed, he would help.

He always came off as a sweet guy.

Really non-assuming, just a nice dude.

He was the only one
who had a stable home environment,

but he was a follower.

And the person he followed was Maurice.

We thought we were the coolest kids
in the neighborhood.

Maurice and his guys thought they were
the coolest kids in the neighborhood.

And yeah, we did not like each other.

Maurice Pierce was always thought of
as the ringleader.

He always had access to a car.

Didn't he have, like--
It was an old police car

-and had the spotlight on it?
-Yeah.

Yeah. I thought it was real cool.

He was like a grifter.

He was the kind of guy
that would steal someone's dog,

wait a while, and then return it to him
for a f*cking reward.

-Just no moral... anything, like--
-I was afraid of him.

I'm afraid of nobody,
but I was a little afraid of him.

Then there were
Michael Scott and Rob Springsteen.

They had broken family lives.

They were kids who wanted to be
special in some way,

and the only way
they could manage it was to be bad.

I met Michael Scott
my first year of high school.

He was like, you know,
T-shirt and jeans and long hair,

like, pothead dude.

His mother didn't live too far away,
and she was working during the day,

so I'd skip school and go smoke dope
at his mom's house.

And then there was Robert.
Robert was creepy.

-Creepy as f*ck.
-Creepy as f*ck.

Really just outlier of the outliers.

Really...

I'd sell him mushrooms.

-Did you?
-Yeah.

He looked like somebody, like,

that would try to show you
his d*ck in a parking lot.

Yes! He did.

-Sorry. But he did.
-He did.

It is hard to make the leap to see them
carrying something like this off.

Now, there's a thing about what kind of...

appearance people make
and who could commit this m*rder.

It's really dangerous to get off

into who could commit a crime,

any kind of crime,
but particularly, a m*rder.

Our plan was to talk to people
that were in the creek that night

to see if they confirmed
seeing Maurice up there,

seeing his car, seeing him do some things

that he had told
Hector Polanco he had done.

So we brought them in one at a time.

When I got the phone call to--
"Hey, can you help us out with this?

You know, we know you were in the area.
Maybe you had seen something."

And you know, me being, "Well, yeah, sure.

Whatever I can do to help,
I'll come down."

My first thought is,
"What took you so long

and why did you not question us?"

We were local young punk kids.
We hung out in that area all the time.

Since we were able to kind of confirm
the story Maurice told Polanco,

we moved on to Forrest Welborn.

I'll be back with you in about 15 minutes.

Okay.

I always hoped this case would be solved.

And sometimes you never know
if it's going to be solved

until you actually solve it.

I never had the feeling
we were on the right track

until after Michael Scott's
first day of interview.

As soon as we got the investigator
starting to write up his confession,

we sent some investigators
to West Virginia

to try to talk to Robert Springsteen.

He had gone back to West Virginia
like two or three weeks after the murders

to live with his mother.

So we went and talked to him
at the local police department there.

All the interviews with Michael Scott
and the interview with Robert Springsteen

were voluntary interviews.

They were free to leave at any time.

The Austin Police Department
and the Travis County DA's office

say their investigation
has ended in sweet success.

Now, after nearly eight years,
police have arrested four suspects.

These are the words
thousands here in Austin

have been waiting to hear
for nearly eight years.

On December 6th, 1991,
we as a city lost our innocence.

Today, as a community, we can hopefully
finally begin the process of healing.

I have to tell you
that I am extremely proud

of the members
of this police department.

These arrests culminate
nearly eight years of hard work,

but it's an effort that won't end

until the jury comes back
with the guilty verdict.

This is not the end of what
we have been trying to do,

but only the beginning.

It is also important
that these four people

are allowed to have a fair and good trial.

We've all talked about it. We felt
like our lives were just now beginning

to get back
to a somewhat normal state,

not like it was for so many years.

But now it's going
to start all over again.

We're going to start
December 6th, '91, all over again.

If you could stop time
and get back to basics...

Right after those girls were k*lled...

we come up with suspects,
the four guys.

I go right back.

Those guys that we got...

they did it.

It sounded good.
I mean, I dug the shirt out.

All right. And then Huck and I
were talking.

He goes, "Well,
all I got is a confession."

I go, "That's it?"

"Yeah. From just two of them."

It's a confession.
That's like a two-legged stool.

It ain't going to stand.
You need that third leg.

Evidence.

After eight years and no physical evidence
to tie any of the four men to the murders,

why did the Austin police focus on them?

As adults, all four have led quiet lives
with jobs and families.

Maurice Pierce's sister.

-It's hard to talk about this, isn't it?
-Why? Tell me.

Because they've taken his life away.

Sometimes I think about
the death penalty and what--

I won't let myself believe
he could possibly be convicted.

-How long have you been here now?
-Two months.

Did you ever think you'd be in here?

No.

The only thing we ever had
on Forrest was a party

to an aggravated robbery.

We didn't have a case to even suspect

that he had an intention
to be a party to a m*rder.

-In a surprise move...
-Any comment, Forrest?

...the judge lets Forrest go home on bail.

It's okay.

Trying not to get too excited
about not getting indicted

because I never know
what's going to happen in the future.

Forrest Welborn was offered a deal,
and they would have left him alone

if he would testify
against the other three guys.

And he said, "No, I'm not going to.

You know, I'm not going to lie."
That's what he goes.

"I'm not going to lie
about something like that."

A grand jury indicts
Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott,

and Maurice Pierce.

All three will be tried
for first degree m*rder.

If convicted, Springsteen and Scott
face the death penalty.

My understanding is that you all
have contacted your own attorney.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

With a death penalty case,
there is always the tremendous burden

because a great deal depends
on your representation.

Will he live? Will he die?

Will you do the job right?
Will you make a mistake?

And with Robert,

because of the nature of his confession,
the statements he makes,

I had real doubt as to whether
we could ever push

for a finding of not guilty...

...when it's the words
of the accused himself

saying, "I did this."

And he's saying it into a video camera.

But I want you to, just for a moment,

imagine the stress he was under
when he was making that statement.

The fear, the uncertainty, the suddenness,

all contributed
to Springsteen's statement.

I've always tried to be very detached

so that when I would get a case
in front of me,

I try and strip away any emotion
and anything like that.

I mean, our job is to just figure out
what the facts are.

With Michael, what I started with
was his written confession.

I started to read it,
and I remember getting

maybe to about page three
or four, and it was too much for me.

It was overwhelming
to read this horrific detail

of raping these girls and k*lling them.
I couldn't read it objectively.

My biased viewpoint at the time was

people don't confess
to something they did not do.

I had to put that aside
just to objectively review this case.

So I put it away for about a month.

I mean, I learned everything I could
about the crime scenes.

I come back to it.

As I started to read it,
it was like, "Okay, wait a minute.

That didn't happen. That didn't happen.
That's totally inaccurate.

Why is he getting so many things wrong?"

This confession clearly
does not match this crime scene.

Interrogation practice,
there's a book. I have them all.

So this is Criminal Interrogations
and Confessions, fourth edition.

This is considered
the bible of interrogation practice

in the United States.

Through extended research
and years of experience,

John Reed and Associates has developed
a nine-step interrogation process.

These guys are criticized
by social psychologists,

because they're saying,

"Look, the method that they're teaching
in here can lead to false confessions."

Step number two and step number seven

are the most essential steps
of the interrogation process.

Give the suspect
psychological justification

for committing the crime.

Suggest to the suspect
a good reason and a bad reason

so that we make it easy for them
to make that first admission of guilt.

Michael's biggest problem
was he trusted the police.

He says, "Guys, either I don't remember
or two, I'm lying."

Well, there was a third option.
What's the third option?

Yes.

But he didn't consider it
because he doesn't believe they lie.

Even Springsteen said,

"Guys, I could've sworn I went
to Rocky Horror Picture Show."

"Well, I guess I was wrong."

"No, actually you weren't.
You were right. They lied to you."

Which is what this guy say
it's okay to do, is to lie.

That's the problem with this method.

The police are using techniques
they have no idea how powerful they are.

Because if you've got
a subject that believes you

when you lie to them--
"You're the authority figure.

I believe you're telling me the truth.
Why would you lie to me?"

That is what happened
to Michael Scott, but that's not all.

Reed would say they used
some tactics from us,

but they did all the stuff
we told them not to do.

I don't--

Aside from the nine steps,
there's a couple of things it says.

It says, "Don't do these things,
because if you do these things,

that could lead to a false confession.

You cannot threaten people.

Don't promise anything to people.
Do not feed false theories of memory."

First of all, you have to understand
about how memory works.

Memory abhors gaps.
You don't want an incomplete puzzle.

So, basically from inferences,
from assumptions,

from incorporation
of information from other people,

which you've come
to believe is reasonable,

these pieces are literally created
and they fill in the gaps.

So, for example, they tell him,
"There's something in your mind, Michael,

that's called revivification."

You can replay it if you want to.

We can extract it from your mind.

He believes it,
so it becomes this exercise

in trying to extract memories
that he believes he has.

"Hey, Michael, you were telling me
that you thought

the girls might have been tied up."

"You thought." The key word is "thought."

The jump
from "you think they were tied up" to...

It's a very subtle suggestion,
but it's there nonetheless.

And so Mike starts to say,
"Yeah, I think maybe shoelaces."

"Oh, come on, Mike,
you know it wasn't shoelaces.

Come on, what was it?"

He finally hits on the one
that it was correct.

"There you go, Mike. There you go."

And so what happens?
He starts to commingle these memories.

Now the mind does not know
which is false and what is not.

And that's the problem.

That's how you create false memories.

That could lead to a false confession.

Good evening. Thanks for joining us.

Robert Springsteen's
capital m*rder trial is underway.

Evidence was introduced today in court.

There was a ring that one of the girls
was wearing, as well as a belt buckle.

The most difficult thing to see
was a crime scene photo of Amy Ayers.

It showed her lying face down
inside the yogurt shop.

Family members looked away.

DA's office was telling us,
"Well, on such and such day,

they're going
to show them crime scene photos."

And we just told him,
"We're going to be there."

Usually, protocol
is the parents aren't there.

I said, "Well, we will be."

There was 14 people on the jury.

If they got to sit there and take it,
well, I just figured we could too.

Not only did they strangle her,

they p*stol-whipped her
and they shot her twice.

That is a cold, cold person.

They could do that to a kid,

and they feel like part of that
is because Amy was trying to get away.

So then the thing is, was she first?
Was she last?

I mean, you know, all of that
runs through your mind.

And I know worse things
happen to people...

but they're not mine.

I did go to the trials.

It was a very strange experience

'cause I remember looking and thinking,
"That just looks like a person."

You know, you have this image that

somebody with horns is going to walk in.

And instead, this sort
of homely-looking person walks in.

I looked at him and he looked at me
and there was nothing there. It was ice.

It was clear.
I'm telling you, his eyes were like ice.

And I just, I got-- I had chills.

And that's the first time I saw the evil.

I'm going to be reading from a journal
I kept during this capital m*rder trial.

I guess I kept it because I kind
of wanted some sort of history.

But more than that,
it was kind of therapeutic.

"The yogurt shop case has created
a level of tension and scrutiny,

extreme even for a death penalty case."

There's gonna be graphic evidence.

Gonna be stuff you don't wanna hear.

There's gonna be things
you don't want to look at.

There is not a shred
of physical evidence

to connect Mr. Springsteen
to have commissioned this crime.

The only evidence
that was even close to saying,

"Well, maybe Michael did something,"
was one witness who came in saying,

"Yeah, he said words
to the effect of 'I did it.'"

One of the days of going to court,
there was this young woman.

She had a big tattoo
from shoulder to shoulder

and a strapless top on.

I was like, "Who is this girl?"

Mike Scott's friend had been
this 13-year-old

kind of punk rock kid
back in 1991 and she testified.

The way I remember it
is Michael was pacing around

our living room and I was like,

"Dude, you can talk to me,
like, I'm your friend."

And we're both staring out into the yard.

He goes, "I did it."

She said that Mike said to her,
"We r*ped 'em and we k*lled 'em,

blah, blah, blah,
and it was just crazy, blah, blah, blah."

She was a little,
I would call, on the fringes.

But when she spoke on the stand,
she was articulate.

He confessed to her. That's powerful.

This is one girl
eight years after the fact,

and they didn't have
anything to match up.

What's the detail?
"Did it." What do you mean?

"He said he did it." That's not much.

If you look at the evidence
against these men,

the prosecution
really didn't have anything.

"The defense attempted
to introduce expert testimony

from a memory expert concerning
how memory works and how persuasion

and suggestion under some circumstances

can get people to remember things
they didn't actually experience.

The defense wanted the jury to hear

how a reasonably normal person
could be convinced

through regular police interrogation

that he had committed a horrific act
despite being absolutely innocent.

However, the memory expert
wanted to testify

to more than I thought the law allowed."

So I tried to find a point
where he could be helpful

without going over the line.

I think, maybe, I felt like
I wanted to give him more

but shouldn't under the law.
So I guess that bothered me.

How do you know it's a true confession
or a false confession?

You don't. That's why we have juries.

And juries have to make that judgment.

But juries should know
how these things work.

They should know
that there are certain techniques,

certain procedures that the police use

that increase the probability
of false confessions.

They should know that.

I did think for a while that I had
something to do with this crime.

It's weird, 'cause even now,
one still questions himself,

"Did I have something to do with it?"

They really screwed me over.

The approach that I was taking
from the beginning

with this false confession idea
is that Mike was someone

who became convinced
that he had m*rder*d these girls.

We talked to some experts
who said this is--

This case with Michael Scott
is one of those cases

that will keep you up at night.

Because that is not
how these interrogation techniques

should work, but they are powerful
and they do elicit results like this.

They also elicit a less interesting,
less psychologically interesting result,

which is that you will also get
another kind of false confession,

and that's just the confession
to get the hell out of the room.

Needless to say,
I wouldn't ever do it again.

It was a really absolutely jackass,
stupid thing to do,

but it was the only thing
that I could think of to do at that time.

The thing that kept
effectively running through my head was,

"Okay, these guys have got
something really screwed up somewhere.

I've got to get out of this room.

I've got to get to an attorney.
I've got to talk to an attorney

and get all this stuff straightened out."
They kept telling me I could leave,

but they were sitting
in front of the door.

When that has been brought up,

that the confessions were coerced,
so they're not true.

That's not
how I authenticate a confession.

What determines if the confession is true
is that they reveal some information

that they would not have known otherwise

and there was no other way
for them to find out that information.

He indicated the position of Amy's body.

Body position has never been out
to anyone anywhere,

and nobody knows that
unless they were there.

You couldn't even describe it
to somebody else to act out.

In addition to that,
each confession confirms things

from the other's confession.

Okay, this is nothing like it used to be.

So this is the area,
just inside the back door,

where there's shelves and the bodies

were kind of right next to the shelves.

This wall wasn't here.
All this has completely changed.

But that's not how the fire started.

The fire did not start on these bodies.

That would have been
practically impossible.

What APD knew in 1991
was that this fire started on the shelves.

Fire makes patterns when it burns.
So there's something called a V pattern.

Looks like that. So the fire burns here.

If it's next to a wall,
you'll see a big old V.

And so this V pattern is on the wall
of this freezer and on this sidewall.

The fire investigator
had told them back in 1991.

The fire started on the shelves.

Now, after all this interrogation,

Michael Scott makes the fire
start on the girls.

Well, that does not fit.

Paul Johnson knows this.

So they went and got this A*F fire guy

to come and tell the jury
that the fire started on the girls.

Every time you get something,
a confession,

that isn't quite
like you thought it was...

you go back and see, could it be true?

So we went to our expert
and he came back with a report

that the fire not only could have,

but I think he would say
it definitely did start on the bodies.

And then as it increased
from where their bodies were,

caught the things
on the shelves on fire.

Saying we changed it
to match the confessions...

No.

We're just checking out, could it be true?

"In addition to the factual issues
for the jury,

there were several
significant legal issues for the court.

Foremost, the admissibility
of the defendant's own statement.

The more difficult question involved

the admissibility
of the co-defendant's statements."

In this case, Springsteen was on trial.

Scott had taken the Fifth Amendment.
He hadn't had his trial yet.

He wasn't about to get on the stand

in Springsteen's case
and answer any questions.

And the defense would say,

"I can't cross-examine Scott
about this statement.

Therefore, it should not come in."

You can't use these confessions
against each other

because you have the Fifth Amendment right

to not incriminate yourself
and not testify.

You have the Sixth Amendment right
to confrontation.

So if you accuse me of a crime,
then you have to come into court by God

and look me in the face and testify
about why you think I did this.

Robert had the right not to testify,
and we can't call Scott to the stand

because he has the Fifth Amendment right
to remain silent.

So that's blatant constitutional error.

So what I did was whittle everything out
that referred to anybody else

except what Scott
was admitting that he did.

In the statement I allowed in,
there was absolutely no reference

to any other individual
involved in this crime.

So it was just Scott saying,
I did this and I did this, and I did that.

"After studying the law, I think
I made the soundest decision I could.

If it turns out to be wrong
in the eyes of a higher court

looking back, then so be it."

I made no secret of telling the judge
that I thought the trial had been unfair

at virtually every turn.

When Mike Scott's redacted confession
came in on a Friday afternoon,

Robert leaned toward me and whispered,
"I'm a dead man, aren't I?"

And I said, "Yes, Robert, you are."

Could the defendant please rise.

"We, the jury, find the defendant,
Robert Springsteen IV,

guilty of the offense of capital m*rder."
Signed by the foreperson of the jury.

And at this time, Mr. Springsteen,
the court sentences you to death.

It was one of the worst days
of my life as a lawyer.

It was awful.

You'd think it would be great.
It was awful.

I was in the courtroom.

Me and my mother
were trembling and shaking.

And crying, not because
I like these people, I don't,

but he's going to die.

He's going... This man's going to die.

And now we have blood
on our hands, too.

-No, not right now.
-I'm sorry.

-It's over.
-Is this what you wanted, Barbara?

Well, we want some kind of ending.

It's...

How do you feel?

Like it's a step in the right direction
to bring these boys to justice.

It took the Travis County jury
less than three hours today

to sentence Michael Scott
to life in prison.

We asked the jury
to consider the death penalty.

They heard the evidence and decided
that a life sentence was appropriate.

When the verdicts came down,
I was very happy.

Of course, the verdicts in a criminal case
has to be unanimous,

so there was nobody

among those 24 jurors that had any doubt

that these were the right suspects.

Maurice was the third one,

so we were going to try Maurice next.

But that never happened.

The Travis County
District Attorney announced

he will not seek a m*rder trial
in the investigation of Maurice Pierce.

What led District Attorney Ronnie Earl
to give up even before the trial began?

The evidence shows Maurice Pierce's guilt.

We just don't have enough
to prove his guilt

beyond reasonable doubt.

I didn't think we had enough evidence
to assure a conviction

because Maurice never confessed.

Surrounded by his wife
and ten-year-old daughter,

Maurice Pierce is free,
no longer waiting for his day in court.

"When I was detained and arrested,
I proclaimed that I was innocent

of all the charges
that were filed against me,

and I am standing here today
with that same proclamation."

Maurice Pierce, you're a free man.

-How do you feel to be out now?
-Happy.

Austin police released a statement
emphasizing that Pierce was not exonerated

and that their investigation continues.

Remember, their initial investigation
focused on Maurice Pierce.

Their belief
was that he was the ringleader,

the mastermind behind all of this.

The only reason Michael and Robert

come into play
is because of Maurice Pierce.

He's the central focus of all of this.

When he was released,
it was always with the intention

of we're going to still go after him.

We do not have the evidence
to convict him right now.

But life is long.

I think there's more evidence out there.
I believe that there are other people

that know very specific things
about what happened

in and around the yogurt shop
that night

that we have not developed yet.

March of 2008,
we get a call from the judge's office

saying, "Hey, can you come
and meet right now?"

When we got there,

prosecutors said,
"We've been doing more DNA testing

and we have found a full profile."

Our evidence includes DNA from one male
whose identity is not yet known to us.

Questions.

The DNA doesn't belong to Michael.
It doesn't belong to Robert Springsteen.

It is not any one of these four boys.

So you have to then explain,
where does it come from?

Well, it comes from the k*ller.