As parents, we teach our children to trust and respect the police. We tell them if they are lost, an officer can help get them home. We tell them if they are in danger, a cop will protect them. We preach to them about obeying officers’ commands when they out.
We’re not wrong to teach our children these things, but we should teach our children one more rule: the rights afforded to them by the Miranda ruling.
In 1966, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the case of Miranda vs. Arizona that everyone has the right to remain silent when questioned by police, the right to have an attorney present during questioning and, if cost is a prohibiting factor in obtaining counsel, the state will provide them with a public defender.
This rule applies to adults as well as children. We, as parents, are responsible for teaching our children to remember this Constitutional right and how to invoke it should they be questioned by police. We should reassure our children that seeking counsel is not an implication of guilt, but an intelligent decision in self-protection.
Do you think I’m wrong? Especially if a child is innocent of the crime? Then, please, allow me to share a story that is sure to change your mind.
January 21, 1998
On the morning of January 21, 1998, Stephen and his wife Cheryl Crowe awoke to a nightmare. Their 12-year-old daughter, Stephanie Ann Crowe, lay dead on her bedroom floor. She had been viciously murdered as her family slept in nearby bedrooms.
The Crowes frantically called 911 and police quickly arrived. A cursory inspecion of the Crowe home found no forced open windows or doors, only a couple of sliding glass doors that were unlocked but covered by heavy aluminum blinds, so detectives quickly drew the conclusion this was an inside job.
From that point on, Escondido, California, police would break the number one rule of good investigating: theory should never develop the evidence; allow the evidence to develop the theory.
Because investigators developed the theory before they really had the evidence, the Crowe family was about to enter into a second nightmare.
Creating Evidence to Fit the Theory
Officers asked that Stephanie’s family, including her 14-year-old brother Michael Crowe and 9-year-old sister Shannon Crowe, come to the police department to give a statement, hoping they could provide any detail that would help catch Stephanie’s killer.
What they didn’t tell Mr. and Mrs. Crowe, however, is that they, after first considering Stephen as a suspect, now believe the killer is Mike and aren’t looking much beyond anything that will confirm their suspicions. Upon the family’s arrival at police headquarters, the parents are separated from the children, despite Stephen’s protestations, and Mike and Shannon are taken to a county children’s shelter until police were ready to talk with them.
As Stephanie’s parents are questioned, police continue to search for evidence. Soon they learn that Mike and two of his friends, Aaron Houser and Joshua David Treadway, are frequent players of the popular role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons and fans of heavy metal music like that of Motley Crue. Additionally, investigators believe that a hair found in Stephanie’s bloody hand is very similar to Mike’s and they recall that the boy appeared “distant and preoccupied” when they were still at the scene of the murder.
When Mike is brought to the station for questioning, police confront him with these facts along with a few fictitious claims such as they had found blood in his bedroom. Over the next 27 hours, detectives question the young teen; tossing accusations and made-up evidence in an effort to get a confession.
Separated from his parents for more than a day, still unsure of what exactly had happened to his little sister, suffering from a case of the flu, and terrified by the officers’ accusations but reassured by the detectives’ promises that he can go home once he tells the truth, Mike relents and confesses to killing Stephanie.
“I’m only saying this because it’s what you want to hear.”
During the questioning of Michael Crowe, he’d been asked to take a lie detector test and agreed to do so. When pressed about why, even with an affirmative answer, he seemed reluctant, Mike said, “I feel like I just..․ I spent all day away from my family. I couldn’t see them․ I feel like I’m being treated like I killed my sister, and I didn’t. It feels horrible, like I’m being blamed for it. Everything I own is gone ․ Everything I have is gone. Everything. You won’t even let me see my parents. It’s horrible.”
Detectives then introduced a voice stress analyzer test they said “was controlled by the government for a long time…because it was so accurate” then proceeded to ask him a series of yes and no questions.
In a conversation between two homicide detectives in the presence of Mike, one of the investigators told the other he was certain Mike was guilty of murdering his sister. As the accusing investigator left the room, Mike began to cry and say, “God. God. Why? Why? Why? Oh, God. God. Why? Why? I don’t deserve life. I don’t want to live. I can’t believe this. Oh, God. God. Why? Why? How could I have done this? I don’t even remember if I did it.” As the interview resumed, Mike asked “How can I not remember doing something like that? That’s not possible.”
Question after question was tossed at the teen and his response time and time again was “I don’t know.” Finally, after this portion of questioning had went back and forth for several hours, Mike finally said, “How am I supposed to tell you an answer that I don’t have? I can’t-it’s not possible to tell you something I don’t know.” Then he told detectives, “You keep asking me questions I can’t answer. What do you want me to do? Make something up? Lie to you?”
Asking leading questions such as “How is a knife used to kill someone?,” Mike responded, “Maybe stab them.” And so it went, until the investigators had forced a vague confession from Mike that was riddled with the man-child saying, “I’m only saying this because it’s what you want to hear.”
Mike was officially charged with the murder of his little sister.
Joshua and Aaron
Unbeknownst to Mike, his friends Joshua and Aaron had also been brought to the police station for questioning and, even as Mike finally gave the investigators the confession they wanted, his pals were undergoing the same intense interrogations.
After Aaron was asked many of the same leading questions as Mike and encouraged to give a hypothetical scenario of how Stephanie’s murder had occurred, he too was arrested for the murder of Stephanie Crowe.
The same pattern followed with Joshua. This time investigators would illicit a more detailed and thorough “confession,” that would later be proved to be filled with obvious inconsistencies – many of which police were aware of at the time of questioning. Additionally, Joshua wasn’t Mirandized until after his statement.
Detectives had spent hours using any and all tactics that came to mind to coerce the young men into confessing, but now they were about to find out just how it feels to be in the hot seat.
Confessions Tossed
The three boys were held in a juvenile prison as their parents, shocked and stunned, obtained legal counsel on their behalf. Stephen and Cheryl Crowe were particularly stunned and outraged that their son had been accused of killing his sister.
At the first preliminary hearing since a grand jury had returned indictments against the trio, the boys’ statements to police were introduced as well as the video tape made of same. Although the confessions came under intense scrutiny by the media, it wouldn’t be until December 1998, that Mike’s “confession” was suppressed and the Court gave the detectives a proverbial tongue-lashing when it said they “commenced a coercive scheme, whether intentional or unintentional; it culminated in the adoption of what we have come to refer to as the ‘good Michael, bad Michael’ approach. Where, in essence, the defendant, Mr. Crowe, was told if he confessed, if he provided information, he would receive treatment.”
Aaron and Joshua’s confessions were also suppressed, based both on the tactics used in obtaining the confession and the failure to give them the Miranda warning.
Who Is Richard Raymon Tuite?
On the evening of January 20, 1998, police had been called to the same neighborhood where Stephanie was later murdered in response to 911 calls reporting a man acting strangely, screaming at various houses (including the Crowe’s home), and peering into windows. When police arrived in the area, they found Richard Raymond Tuite, a 28-year-old mentally ill homeless man.
After Stephanie’s body was discovered the next morning, police questioned Tuite about the crime and collected articles of his clothing. However, once they focused in on Michael Crowe and friends as suspects, the clothing was filed away until October 27, 1998, when they were sent to a lab at the request of Joshua Treadway’s attorney. In February 1999, DNA testing revealed that Stephanie’s blood was on Tuite’s clothing.
As a result of this new evidence and the suppressed confessions, the state of California dismissed the charges against Michael Crowe, Joshua Treadway, and Aaron Houser on February 25, 1999.
It wasn’t until May 15, 2002, more than four years after Stephanie’s murder and three since her blood was found on his clothing, that Tuite was arrested. Following a trial in which it was disclosed that Tuite suffered from Schizophrenia, a claim reinforced by Tuite’s sudden flight from the courtroom during proceedings, a jury returned a verdict of voluntary manslaughter on May 26, 2004. Tuite was sentenced to thirteen years in prison.
On September 8, 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned Tuite’s conviction stating in its opinion, “Given the lack of evidence tying Tuite to the crime, the problems with the DNA evidence, the jury’s deadlock and compromise verdict, and the weight and strategic position of McCrary’s testimony, this case is one of those ‘unusual’ circumstances in which we find ourselves ‘in virtual equipose as to the harmlessness of the error.’ O’Neil v. McAninch, 513 U.S. 432, 435 (1995). We must treat the error as affecting the verdict, and we are compelled to grant the writ.”
As of this writing, Tuite remains incarcerated in the medical ward at the Mule Creek Correctional Facility in Ione, California. His anticipated release date, if any, or a possible retrial date is unknown.
The Price Paid For Overaggressive Investigating
Soon after the charges against the teenagers was dismissed, they, along with their families as co-plantiffs, filed a civil suit against the cities of Escondido and Oceanside, as well as the detectives and several others, for violating their civil rights.
Although the case has been a rollercoaster ride through the judicial system, in November 2011, the Crowes agreed to a $7.25 million settlement to be paid by the Escondido insurance carrier AIG. The settlement came just days into a trial in the matter when fatigue from years of court battles brought it’s toll… and Michael Crowe, 28 and now living in Oregon, decided it was time to lay it all to rest before the arrival of his first child this year.
Michael told the North County Times, “There is not any price that would make what they did right, but in the end, the price was just fair enough for us to accept. … It’s unfortunate, but we came to realize that the police would never admit they were wrong.”
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