This commentary is by exoneree Christopher Tapp, who testified before the Vermont Senate Judiciary Committee this year on behalf of S.6, legislation that would restrict use of controversial deceptive interrogation tactics by law enforcement on juveniles 21 and under.
I spent nearly half my life in prison for a rape and murder I did not commit. That’s 20 years and 53 days in prison while the real rapist and murderer walked free.
This year, the Vermont Legislature decided to learn from stories like mine by passing S.6 to protect innocent people from being tricked into confessing to a crime they didn’t commit. This is why I was shocked to see Gov. Scott veto this good bill — the first governor to do so after seven other states recently enacted similar laws.
I urge you to tell your legislator to not let this veto stand.
When I was 20, I was wrongfully convicted in Idaho after falsely confessing due to intense pressure and deceit detectives used against me. In their eyes, I was guilty until proven innocent. Over more than 60 hours of interrogation, they lied about how they could help me if I just confessed, fed me information about the case and coaxed me to speak about how I would hypothetically commit the crime so I would repeat the details as if they were from my own memory, and threatened me with the death penalty.
The detective who interrogated me had been my school resource officer in junior high and high school. Our relationship spanned years and I knew him very well. I trusted him, and that trust was used against me to manipulate me into falsely confessing.
The detectives did not seem to care whether or not I had actually committed the crime — they had a narrative, and they used any means necessary to get me to say what they wanted to hear.
With the help of a wide community of advocates, including the mother of the woman who was murdered, I was finally set free six years ago this past March. Ever since then, I have shared my story across the country to try to fix a broken system that took decades away from me.
I want to inspire change so that no other individual has to go through what I had to go through. For 20 years and 53 days, I had no voice. Now I am the voice for the voiceless — for anyone in Vermont, and throughout the country, who had an experience similar to mine.
Through this work, I have found so many other people with stories just like mine, including the well-known case of the Exonerated 5 in New York, who were tricked by the police into falsely confessing through lies about evidence and leniency.
I testified before the Vermont Senate Judiciary Committee in January about my story. You see, in Idaho, before my case came to light, there were no recorded false confessions. It was assumed there was no problem with techniques like these, despite the science showing they are unreliable, because all the problems had happened elsewhere.
It is true that, as of now, there are no known cases of false confessions in Vermont. It was so important to me to advocate here for the passage of S.6 because I wanted Vermont to act to protect people before they needed help being freed for a crime they didn’t commit, and to ensure justice for victims instead of finding a quick way to close a case.
Amazingly, the Legislature listened and S.6 passed both the House and the Senate but was vetoed by the governor, in part because the legislation applied to children between the ages of 18 to 22 — children like me who apparently don’t need the same protection in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Remember, I was 20 years old when this happened to me. I was still a kid.
The Legislature has the opportunity to override the governor’s veto on June 20 and I hope you will join me in urging it to do just that. I hope there is no one in Vermont sitting in prison with a story like mine, waiting for their case to come to light, but it’s unfortunately all too likely. Don’t wait for someone else to lose their freedom and a horrible crime to go unsolved before you act.
