Adrian Thomas - False Accusation
Thomas, Adrian; murder; NRE: false confession, no crime, false/misleading forensic evidence, police officer misconduct, misconduct that it is not withholding evidence, misconduct in interrogation of exoneree
Suggestibility issues
[941:722]; 3rd Dept. 3/22/12; affirmed
"On Sunday, September 21, 2008, [Thomas's] wife, Wilhelmina Hicks, woke around 9:00 A.M. in their two-bedroom apartment...to find their four-month-old son Matthew was unresponsive and not breathing regularly...A CAT scan disclosed what treating physicians determined to be subdural hematomas on both sides of his brain consistent with severe head trauma resulting from rapid acceleration, and then sudden deceleration of the head, causing the brain to move back and forth inside the skull. Matthew also exhibited signs of sepsis, an overwhelming systemic infection...[I]t was determined that Matthew was brain dead; two days later he was removed from life support and died.
"Interviewed by detectives...at length, [Thomas] ultimately confessed that he had thrown Matthew onto a box spring located -- without a bed frame -- directly on the floor in [Thomas's] bedroom, three times in the four days preceding the 911 call. [Thomas] also admitted that he had unintentionally hit the infant's head against the side of his crib several times, including after the 911 call...Matthew, who weighed just 15 pounds and had been born two months premature, had been ill and experiencing fevers, diarrhea and vomiting in the days preceding his death.
[* The 'detectives' involved in this case, all of whom worked for the City of Troy, were: Adam R. Mason, Ronald Fountain, and Tim Colaneri. ]
"A plethora of highly credentialed medical specialists were called by both sides, offering two sharply conflicting opinions regarding the primary cause of death...[Thomas], in his trial testimony, disavowed his confession as false, and denied throwing Matthew or hitting his head against the crib.
"[W]e find that [Thomas]...voluntarily confessed during noncustodial interviews in which police employed permissible strategies aimed at eliciting the truth of what had occurred leading up to Matthew's death.
"[T]he strategies and tactics employed by the officers during these interviews were not of a character as to induce a false confession..."
[And yet, the NRE lists false confession, police officer misconduct, and misconduct in interrogation of exoneree as contributing to this wrongful conviction, where, in fact, no crime had even occurred.]
[985:193]; Court of Appeals 2/20/14; reversed, and motion to suppress statements granted
"Inasmuch as we conclude that [Thomas's] inculpatory statements were not demonstrably voluntary, we reverse...grant [Thomas's] previously denied motion to suppress those statements, and direct a new trial.
"The premise of the interrogation was that an adult within the Thomas-Hicks household must have inflicted traumatic head injuries on the infant. Indeed, one of the interrogating officers told [Thomas] that he had been informed by Matthew's doctor that Matthew had been 'slammed into something very hard. It's like a high-speed impact in [a] vehicle. This baby was murdered...[T]his baby is going to die and he was murdered.' These interrogators, however, repeatedly assured [Thomas] that they understood Matthew's injuries to have been accidental. They said they were not investigating what they thought to be a crime and that once [Thomas] had told them what happened he could go home. He would not, they reassured over and over again, be arrested. When, however, [Thomas] continued to deny having hurt Matthew, even accidentally, the officers falsely represented that his wife had blamed him for Matthew's injuries and then threatened that, if he did not take responsibility, they woud 'scoop' Ms. Hicks out from the hospital and bring her in, since one of them must have injured the child.
"What transpired during [Thomas's] interrogation was not consonant with, and, indeed, completely undermined, [his] right to incriminate himself -- to remain silent."
[The same was true of Nickel's interrogation. But a major difference between the two cases is that Nickel's interrogation was not recorded; thus, it was essentially impossible for Nickel to show that his statement/confession had been coerced. (See Videotaped Interviews section of this site.)]
"Most prominent among the totality of circumstances in this case is the set of highly coercive deceptions. They were of a kind sufficiently potent to nullify individual judgment in the ordinarily resolute person and were manifestly lethal to self-determination when deployed against [Thomas], an unsophisticated individual without experience in the criminal justice system."
[And yet, all the Third Department 'justices' on Thomas's panel thought all of these practices were absolutely fine. Not even one of the five dissented. By contrast, all seven members of the state Court of Appeals voted to reverse Thomas's conviction. (Unfortunately, this latter Court refused to even hear Nickel's appeal.) (It should also be noted that, like Thomas, Nickel was 'an sophisticated individual without experience in the criminal justice system.')]
293 F.Supp.3d 282; N.D.N.Y. 3/22/18; civil suit
"In May 2014, [Thomas] was re-tried on the murder of Matthew...[T]he defense proved that Matthew suffered no recent acute trauma and instead died of septic shock caused by a bacterial infection...The jury in the re-trial acquitted [Thomas] on June 2, 2014."
NRE synopsis (by Maurice Possley):
"The treating physician [at Albany Medical Center -- Dr. Walter Edge ] believed there was a cranial fracture* and concluded tnat the baby was a victim of blunt force trauma.
[As we shall see below, this turned out to be incorrect. However, it appears to have set the entire investigation on a 'wild goose chase,' resulting in both a false, coerced confession and subsequent wrongful conviction.]
"Police went to Thomas's home and removed the [six] other children to child protective services. Thomas was taken to the police station for questioning. After about two hours, Thomas expressed suicidal thoughts and was taken to a hospital. He was returned to the police station 15 hours later, on September 22, and police resumed questioning him.
"By the time the second portion of the interrogation began, Matthew had died. The detectives, however, told Thomas that Matthew was alive and that the only way to save Matthew's life was for him to tell them what he had done to Matthew. When Thomas said he had accidentally dropped Matthew five or six inches into his crib about 10 to 15 days earlier, a detective entered the interrigation room and said that based on his experience with head injuries in the military in Operation Desert Storm, he knew that Thomas was lying. The detective said that the child's head injuries were consistent with the type of injuries suffered in a high-speed auto collision.
"After that detective left, other detectives suggested to Thomas that perhaps he had been depressed, emotionally overwhelmed, upset after his wife berated him for chronic unemployment and acted out of frustration and hurled the child to the mattress. Eventually, Thomas was persuaded to re-enact what the police believed he did, using a clipboard to stand in for the baby.
"Thomas was charged with murder on September 22nd, based on his statement during the seven-hour interrogation that he slammed Matthew down on a mattress on three occasions, including the day before Matthew died. Almost immediately after he was charged, Thomas recanted to his defense attorney, saying he did not harm Matthew.
"Prior to trial, Thomas's attorney filed a motion to suppress the confession on the ground that it was coerced. The trial judge denied the motion and Thomas went to trial in Rensselaer County...Court in October 2009.
"The medical examiner who performed Matthew's autopsy [ Michael Sikirica, Medical Diector for Rensselaer County], an expert on child abuse, and the treating physicians at Albany Medical center testified for the prosecution. They cited radiologic and post-mortem findings of subdural fluid collections, brain swelling and retinal hemorrhhaging as the cause of Matthew's death. According to their testimony, the initial finding of a cranial fracture was incorrect -- there was no fracture. The prosecution played portions of Thomas's videotaped interrogation, during which Thomas, who weighed more than 300 pounds, demonstrated how he raised Matthew above his head and forcefully threw him down onto a low mattress.
"A pathologist and an infectious disease physican testified for the defense that based on their examination of the medical records, Matthew, who was born prematurely, had died of sepsis -- a bacterial infection that invades the entire body."*
[* In stark contrast to the prosecution experts, the defense experts turned out to be 100% correct.]
"On October 22, 2009, a jury convicted Thomas of murder. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
"In March 2012, filmmakers Blue Hadeagh and Grover Babcock released a documentary film that critically examined the interrogation of Thomas and went on to win numerous awards." ,P. "In February 2014, the New York Court of Appeals vacated Thomas's conviction and ordered a new trial.
"[The Court of Appeals noted that] Thomas was told 67 times that what had been done to the baby was an accident, 14 times that he would not be arrested and eight times that he would be going home."
[Again, all of this was known only because Thomas's (false) confession had been videotaped, which did not happen in the Nickel case.]
"Thomas went to trial a second time in May 2014. Without the confession or the testimony of the detectives who interrogated Thomas, the prosecution relied primarily upon the testimony of the physicians who said the baby had suffered blunt force trauma.
"The defense presened the pathologist and infectious disease physician who had testified in the first trial and, for the first time, the testimony of Patrick Barnes, a Stanford University physician who has testified extensively about brain trauma in children. Barnes examined the radiologic reports and concluded that the trauma that prosecution physicians diagnosed as recent based on brain bleeding was in fact not recent and was consistent with a diagnosis of sepsis.
"On June 12, 2014, the jury acquitted Thomas and he was released. In June 2016, Thomas filed a claim for compensation with the New York Court of Claims."
[All emphases added unless otherwise noted.]