Selwyn Days - Perjury / False Confession

Days, Selwyn; murder; NRE: perjury/false accusation, false confession, inadequate legal defense, prosecutor misconduct, police officer misconduct, misconduct that is not withholding evidence, misconduct in interrogation of exoneree

Suggestibility issues

[817:535]; 2nd Dept. 7/11/06; affirmed

"The trial court providently exercised its discretion in precluding expert testimony as to [Days'] susceptibility to police interrogation techniques..."

[906:72]; Westchester Cty. Ct. 12/31/09; reversed, due to ineffective assistance of counsel

"Shortly after noon on November 21, 1996, the bodies of 79-year-old Archie Harris and 35-year-old Betty Ramcharan were discovered inside of Harris' Eastchester home. Harris had been beaten, bludgeoned and stabbed to death, while Ramcharan had been strangled and suffocated and her throat had been slit. A bloody kitchen knife was found lying near Ramcharan.

"The crux of [Days'] claim that he was denied the effective assistance of counsel rests on the purported failure of his trial counsel to fully investigate and then present the jury an alibi defense.

"In support of his alibi claim, [Days] proffered...the testimony of four witnesses at the hearing...[T]he Court finds that each was credible...[Days] maintains that those witnesses, along with others, established that he was in Goldsboro, North Carolina at the time the double homicide was committed: November 19, 1996, to November 21, 1996. [FN1:] Archie Harris was last seen alive on November 19, 1996, and his body, along with that of Betty Ramcharan, was discovered on November 21, 1996, thus fixing the time of death somewhere between those two dates. [The prosecution maintains] that the evidence permits a further refinement of the date on which the victims were killed to November 19, 1996." "According to [Christopher] Chan [Days' trial attorney], the primary evidence against [Days] consisted of [his] confession; and there were also admissions that [he] allegedly made to Cherilyn Mayhew. At [Days'] first trial, the defense argued that there was insufficient evidence to establish [Days'] guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. While [Days] also endeavored to elicit evidence that a third party was responsible for the murders, the trial court severely limited that effort, if not denying it altogether. Nevertheless, the jury could not reach a verdict...At [Days'] retrial, the defense predominantly argued a murder-suicide theory..."

"[T]here was absolutely no forensic evidence linking [Days] to the crimes.

"[Stella] Days [Selwyn's mother] had once worked as an aide for Archie Harris [one of the murder victims] and..she had accused him of sexually assaulting her. Indeed, she had filed a criminal complaint and commenced a civil lawsuit against Mr. Harris as a result. In essence, avenging his mother was [Selwyn's alleged] motive in the slaying..."

"[T]he jury was not told that there was DNA from a third party on the murder weapon."

from NRE synopsis (by Maurice Possley):

"Harris was wealthy and known to talk about keeping large amounts of cash in the house. Although numerous suspects were investigated, no arrests were made and the case went cold.

"Nearly four years later, on February 15, 2001, police arrested 36-year-old Selwyn Days in Mt. Vernon...for violating an order of protection obtained by his ex-girlfriend, Cherilyn Mayhew. While Days was in custody, Mayhew called police anonymously and said he was responsible for two murders years earlier in Eastchester. The murders of Harris and Ramcharan were the only unsolved murders in Eastchester.

"After they received the call, police questioned Days -- a highly suggestible man with a low IQ and a history of mental illness that included psychotic episodes -- from at least 5:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. that day. During that time, he said nothing to implicate himself in the murders.

"After a break, questioning resumed. The police did not start videotaping the interrogation until 1:42 a.m., after -- according to detectives -- Days started making admissions about the murders. The tape showed an exhausted Days answering leading questions from three different detectives, all of whom had intimate knowledge about the crime. An analysis of the confession would later show that the detectives already knew all relevant crime facts in Days's confession. Everything that Days offered spontaneously and that police did not already know could not be corroborated.

"Days also provided demonstrably false facts about the crime, including confabulated events that occurred in his life years before the murder. At the time, Days was taking Haldol, an anti-psychotic drug. Almost immediately afterward, Days recanted and said he had nothing to do with the murders."

"In December 2009, Days was granted a new trial based on the failure of his lawyer to call the alibi witnesses. By that time, new testing on the knife detected DNA evidence from two unidentified individuals and excluded Days.

"Before the third trial, after hearing the alibi testimony, the prosecution amended the charges to say that the victims had been killed as early as November 18, 1996 -- a day before the witnesses said Days was in North Carolina. Days went on trial a third time in early 2011. The trial ended in a mistrial when the jurors reported that they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict, voting 9 to 3 for acquittal.

"Days was convicted at a fourth trial on October 26, 2011."

"In September 2015, the Appellate Division...overturned the conviction. The court held that the trial judge in the fourth trial had erroneously barred the defense from calling an expert witness to testify about false confessions.

"The court also criticized the prosecution for arguing at the fourth trial (for the first time, after 10 years and three trials) that the murders could have occurred as early as November 18, 1996, because they knew the defense would be unable to provide an alibi for that time.

"In August 2017, Days went on trial for a fifth time. This time the defense was finally permitted to present a false confession defense expert. Dr. Richard Leo, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and a leading false conviction expert, testified that Days's lengthy interrogation was marked by leading questions from the detectives. The nearly eight hours of interrogation, coupled with Days's mental limitations, he testified, created a 'heightened risk' of a false confession.

"Dr. Jessica Pearson, a psychologist, also testified for the defense that there were seven factors that made Days particularly susceptible to making a false confession. These included his low IQ, his history of mental illness, the medication he was taking, the leading questions, the hours of interrogation during normal sleeping hours, and that he was a highly suggestible person. Pearson said that Days accepted and agreed to what detectives told him about having committed the murders.

"On September 12, 2017, after a day of deliberations, the jury acquitted Days and he was released.

"Days subsequently filed a compensation claim in the New York Court of Claims. In December 2018, he filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Eastchester and Westchester County and numerous police officers."

[All emphases added unless otherwise noted.]