Daniel Gristwood - False Confession, Officer Misconduct

Gristwood, Daniel; attempted murder; NRE: false confession, police officer misconduct, misconduct that is not withholding evidence, misconduct in interrogation of exoneree

Suggestibility issues

G26 [66] "Daniel Gristwood became a suspect soon after his wife was attacked with a hammer and nearly killed in Onondaga...in January 1996. He confessed after he was held for 34 hours without food or sleep and questioned for 16 hours straight."

2013 WL 1975649; Court of Claims 4/14/13; civil suit

[A different person confessed to the assault. Gristwood spent 9+ years in prison before his conviction was vacated in 2005.]

from Records and Briefs:

[6] "This case arises from an incident on January 12, 1996, when police were called to the Gristwood residence at approximately 3:12 a.m....Moments earlier, Gristwood had found his wife badly beaten about the head in their darkened bedroom, and had placed a 911 call, after first calling his aunt. Earlier the previous afternoon and evening, Gristwood had worked his regular shift...until 11:45 p.m., and then went with his co-workers to play pool at a local tavern until closing time. He then went directly home, where he discovered his wife.

"What followed was a nightmare for Gristwood that has not ended with his release from prison. From the moment police arrived at the scene, he cooperated with them, agreeing to everything they asked of him...He gave a detailed statement, underwent a polygraph, and remained in their custody for well over fourteen hours before they finally broke him...By that point, he had been up for over thirty-four hours, experienced a horrific crime scene involving his wife of [7] ten years, was sweating, crying, had been screamed at, bullied, berated, and had begun to believe what investigators had accused him of -- that he had committed a crime...Investigators fully admitted to employing these techniques.

"At 6:42 p.m., Gristwood was presented with a much shorter, second statement to sign by the New York State Police investigators...It was obtained after they employed a variety of investigation techniques, and reduced Gristwood to a state where he was sweating, crying, and believing he had done something wrong...This statement contained no meaningful details of the crime or crime scene, but was expressed in the following language, suggesting it was phantasmic and not a real occurence:

'I also remember seeing my arm and my fist going towards her head and I remember seeing the hammer on a pillow on the floor next to head (sic). . .I realize that what I had done up in the bedroom when I could see my arm and fist going towards my wife's head and that I was hitting her in the head.'"

"Such words evince a dream-like recounting, more like a third-person's view of the crime rather than the actual perpetrator's. More significantly, the statement does not say Gristwood hit his wife in the head with the hammer, or how many times -- indeed, there is a reference to his arm and fist going towards his wife's head.

[8] "Up until this point in time, after hours of investigation and interrogation, there was no evidence connecting Gristwood to the crime. The facts in his original statement, which was very detailed, had been checked out and determined to be accurate...There was no physical evidence from the crime scene that implicated Gristwood...His clothes, which he had been wearing since he went to work the day before, were free of blood spatter, notwithstanding the very bloody nature of the crime and the scene, and there were no fingerprints on the suspected weapon...None of the interrogation that day had been videotaped,* despite the fact that such equipment was readily available to the New York State Police to record interrogations and confessions."

[* Also true of Nickel's interrogation.]

"Gristwood proclaimed his innocence throughout the day, up to the point he signed his police-induced statement...Following his arrest, Gristwood continued to maintain his innocence...The prosecutor from the criminal trial has acknowledged that without a second, police-induced statement, there would have been no case...Upon questioning by the court, the lead investigator admitted that the only evidence tying Gristwood to the crime, aside from the second statement, was a witness [Kimberly Lumpkin] (wife of a New York State trooper), whose testimony was discredited as fabricated at the criminal trial...The New York State Police never investigated any lead or suspect other than Gristwood."

[9] "Gristwood...had married his childhood sweetheart ten years earlier, and together they had five children ranging in age from one to nine years...The day before, January 11, 1996, he awoke at his usual time, around 9 a.m., spent time with his kids, and left for his shift at work, which began at 2:15 p.m. He punched out later that night, at 11:45 p.m. He and a few co-workers went to the Crossroads Tavern on 7th North Street, staying until closing time, around 2:15 to 2:30 a.m....He arrived home around 3 a.m., watched a little television, and went upstairs.

"Gristwood came upon a horrific scene in his darkened bedroom. He found his wife in their bed, with her head covered in blood...In a panic, he called his aunt, asking her what to do, and to come help with the kids. He then called 911...Police and medical personnel arrived on the scene. From that point on, Gristwood was separated by police from his children and his family, and was in police custody. He was taken to the North Syracuse New York State Police barracks at around 4:15 in the morning...He cooperated with the police, and tried to help them in every way he could." >p> "He signed a voluntary statement for investigator [Matthew] Tynan around 8:05 a.m....Everything in the statement was subsequently verified by law enforcement to be true...After he signed the statement, police investigators began yelling at [10] him, accusing him of lying, and telling him that there were inconsistencies in his statement. They also told him that he was 'sick' and 'needed help.' They suggested that he was lying and that he needed to take a polygraph to establish his innocence."

"Gristwood agreed to the polygraph, 'because I don't have nothing to hide.'...He never expected the polygraph to take four to six hours, and recalled that during the exam, he could hardly keep his eyes open, was having anxiety pains in his chest, and was falling asleep at the end of it. He recounted that the polygraph administrator, [John] Fallon, stated, 'I don't believe you neither. You're lying to us.'...At that point, Gristwood tried to get up and leave. The polygraph administrator used a ruse of asking him to return to sign some necessary paperwork, and maintained him in police custody for further questioning...According to Gristwood, investigators told him that if he did not sign the papers, they could not help him, and his kids would be taken away forever."

[11] "Gristwood learned in 2005 that a man by the name of Mastho Davis confessed to the assault on his wife."

"Nicholas DiMartino...was the [ADA] who prosecuted the criminal case against Gristwood. He had been involved in the case from its earliest stages, beginning on the morning of January 12, 1996, when he arrived at the crime scene at approximately 4:30 a.m....DiMartino confirmed that the primary New York State police Investigators were Matthew Tynan...Norman Ashberry...and Frank J. Jerome..."

[14] "[U]p until the time when Gristwood signed the second, police-induced statement, the only thing that could have arguably placed him at the scene of the crime was a statement obtained from the wife of a state trooper, Mrs. [Kimberly] Lumpkin, which was subsequently established to be false."

from NRE synopsis (by Maurice Possley):

"Gristwood came under suspicion when a neighbor told police that between 10:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. she saw Gristwood's car parked in front of the home -- she had worried about hitting it when she backed out to take her babysitter home."

"Kimberly Lumpkin, the neighbor who [supposedly] saw Gristwood's car across the street around 11 p.m., gave a different story when Gristwood's lawyer, James Hopkins, called her as a defense witness in the trial.

"Lumpkin said her police statement was wrong* -- she actually saw the car somewhere between midnight and 8 a.m."

[* What does that mean? That she herself was wrong about the time, or that the detectves had put down the wrong time?] "Christina Gristwood [the victim] could not testify. She was in an assisted living facility, paralyzed on one side and brain-damaged."

"Two months after the Gristwood beating, 24-year-old Mastho Davis attacked a 28-year-old woman in her apartment in Syracuse. He beat her, choked her and threatened to kill her. He later pled guilty to attempted murder and was sentenced to five years in prison.

"Shortly after his release, in 2002, Davis was accused of accosting a woman in the basement laundry room of an apartment building while he was naked. While in jail, he told sheriff's deputies that he wanted to talk about a murder he committed years earlier. He said that he had attacked Christina Gristwood and, mistakenly, believed that he had killed her.

"When he appeared in Onondaga County Court, he told Judge Athony Aloi that he wanted to admit to a murder. Aloi told him to talk to his lawyer, who could talk to prosecutors. But nothing happened.

"Finally, in August of 2003, he walked into the Syracuse Police department headquarters and said he wanted to confess. Police finally took a six-page statement from him in which he admitted the hammer assault.

"Davis told police, as well as a private investigator working for Gristwood named Thomas Wiers, that he had wandered accidentally into the Gristwood apartment, thinking it was the place where he was staying.

"He gave a detailed description of items in the home and where the five Gristwood children were sleeping. He said he saw a hammer on top of a fruit basket that was next to the microwave and began thinking of how his life had gone wrong. He said he went upstairs, saw Gristwood in bed and attacked her. The fruit basket could be seen on a crime scene video exactly where Davis said it was located and the basket was exactly as Davis described. Moreover, Davis said he almost stepped on a cat. The cat was a stray that Gristwood's children brought home on the day of the crime and its existence had never been made public.

"Over the next two years, Gristwood's defense lawyer gathered evidence and obtained a hearing on the new evidence.

"In August 2005, Judge Brunetti vacated Gristwood's conviction, saying that there was 'unassailable corroboration' of Davis' confession.

"Gristwood was freed on bond in August 2005. The charges were dismissed on July 15, 2006."

[Thus, the prosecution left Gristwood 'hanging' for nearly a year, before finally dropping all charges.]

"Subsequently, Wiers would help two other men -- Dan Lackey and Skippy Woolson -- get exonerated.

"Davis, who coud not be charged with attacking Christina Gristwood because the statute of limitations had expired, was later convicted of beating and raping a 75-year-old woman in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. He was sentenced to life in prison.

"On May 1, 2013, the New York Court of Claims ordered the State of New York to pay Gristwood $5.5 million in damages. The state appealed the award, but ultimately lost the appeal. In September 2014, the State paid Gristwood $7.5 million dollars (the original $5.5 million plus interest accumulated since the original verdict).

"Four months later, in January, 2015, Gristwood died of lung cancer."

[All emphases added unless otherwise noted.]