The Norfolk Four

In 1997, a rape-murder crime was committed against a woman named Michelle Bosko. Four men were wrongly convicted of the crime. They were each convicted based off of false confessions that were forced out of them by the lead detective, Robert Ford. Ford interrogated each of the men for anywhere from six to nine hours straight without a break, wearing them down physically and mentally. After many hours each of them "confessed" to the crime on tape in a confession that was crafted by Ford himself. It eventually led to seven (all seven were a part of the US Navy and many of them had no criminal record) men in all being convicted of the rape and murder of Michelle.Three of the men were eventually dropped of all charges from the case.

Here is where it all gets unbelievable, there was not a single piece of evidence found in the entire case that pointed to any of the men who were sent to trial. This was even brought to trial and all four of the original men were convicted and sent to prison. Three of the men were sent to prison for life charged with rape and murder and the other was sent to prison for less than 10 years, only charged with rape. Every single one of them was found guilty purely because they had falsely confessed to the crime. The jury ignored that there was not one single piece of DNA or other evidence to place any of them at the crime. To make matters even more bizarre, a man named Omar Ballard admitted that he raped and killed Michelle and did so alone. His DNA was even found at the crime scene. Still the police rejected this evidence and were solely convinced that the four men had committed the crime. Detective Ford even tried to interrogate Ballard into making up a false story, like he did with each of the four men, putting the men at the crime scene. Ballard did not crack like the others and to this day still admits that he raped and murdered Michelle and did it alone.

In the end eight total men had charges against them at one point in the case, but only one could be connected to the crime by any form of evidence and he confessed under oath that he did it alone. Today the four who were convicted are trying diligently along with a team of lawyers to receive clemency for theirs crimes and let free so they do not have to spend the lives (just three of them were convicted to life) in prison for a crime they did not commit. To this day the case is still up to the governor of Pennsylvania, Timothy Kaine.

My question to all of you is what do you think of this? Are you surprised by how poor our system treated this case? (You can really take these questions into consideration more effectively if you watch the documentary below!!!)

If you want a much more compelling and in depth summary of the story I highly encourage you visit the site devoted to the case and freeing and clearing all of the men of the crime at:
http://www.norfolkfour.com/

And I encourage you all even more to watch the PBS Frontline documentary on the entire case. I first heard about this whole case in my CJS 101 class. You can view it here at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-confessions/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=grid&utm_source=grid