Author and longtime defense attorney Donald E. McInnis has a unique perspective on our criminal justice system. He has served as both a prosecutor and a defender. He understands how the other side ticks.
That background served him well as he represented 15-year-old Aaron Houser, one of three boys accused and later cleared in the 1998 stabbing death of 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe. Her grandmother found her body in her Escondido, Calif., bedroom.
McInnis’ new book, “She’s So Cold,” details the killing and subsequent interrogations and arrests of Aaron; Stephanie’s 14-year-old brother, Michael Crowe; and Michael’s 14-year-old best friend, Joshua Treadway. McInnis said investigators zeroed in on Michael and his friends because police didn’t find any signs of forced entry at the home and Stephanie’s brother didn’t react the same way to the crime as other members of his family.
In his book, McInnis uses police and crime lab evidence reports, as well as transcripts from the interrogation recordings, to detail how two of the three boys, Michael and Joshua, ended up confessing to a crime they never committed, and all three ended up facing charges.
“She’s So Cold” takes you through the boys’ long hours in the cramped interrogation room as they slowly deviate from the truth, blame each other or project what “could have happened,” with interrogators often encouraging them or threatening consequences.
McInnis says the Reid Technique of Interrogation, which is commonly used by investigators to psychologically break down suspects and lead to confessions, can result in false confessions when used with deceit and trickery. The boys’ Miranda rights were not made clear to them, McInnis argues. The boys were questioned without their parents or lawyers present, McInnis says, and initially, Joshua was questioned without having his Miranda rights read to him.
The boys never went to trial, but the threat of prosecution hung over them.
In May 2012, 14 years after the killing, San Diego County Superior Court Judge Kenneth So made a rare ruling, declaring Aaron, Michael and Joshua “factually innocent” beyond a reasonable doubt. The judge cleared their names. But their childhoods were long gone.
McInnis is now pushing to enact a simpler Children’s Miranda Warning and Children’s Bill of Rights to prevent other children and families from enduring a similar experience. His proposals include child-friendly language to notify minors that they have the right to have a parent and/or an attorney with them during all questioning.
FURTHER READING: Oregon Legislature passes juvenile justice reforms, overturns parts of Measure 11
As for finding Stephanie Crowe’s real killer, the case remains unsolved. Richard Tuite, a transient man who had been in the area of the Crowe home the night of the killing, was prosecuted. He was initially found guilty, but a court ruled he got an unfair trial and threw out the verdict. Tuite was acquitted in a retrial.
Street Roots spoke with McInnis about his book, the Crowe case and his next steps.
Libby Dowset: Why did you publish this book?
Donald E. McInnis: I published it because Summer Stephan, who was the prosecutor, the deputy D.A. assigned to prosecute the three boys, ran for re-election after being appointed by the county board of supervisors for district attorney, and Cheryl Crowe (Michael’s mother) came down here to San Diego to campaign against her. Unfortunately, it was too little too late. She didn’t affect the election, and Summer Stephan won.
I wanted the people of San Diego and the rest of the country to know exactly what took place when those three boys were interrogated and why they gave the statements that they did.
I wanted everyone to know the role of the District Attorney’s Office, and who was really responsible for it. Summer Stephan, there’s a section in the book where she explains why she is prosecuting the case, and I think anyone who reads that section walks away shaking their head, wondering why in the world she is doing it.
The buffer that’s supposed to exist – that thin line that’s supposed to say, no, we’re not going to prosecute this case because it isn’t a good case, the confessions weren’t good, they were coerced – that was the District Attorney’s Office, and the District Attorney’s Office failed to do that and make that stand.
Dowset: The interviews go on for hours and hours, and that’s hard to portray in a book. But the transcripts repeat the same type of questions over and over and, in turn, helped me, the reader, feel some of the exasperation that the boys must have felt.
McInnis: I don’t know how Aaron did as well as he did. Joshua valiantly fought so long not to roll over and tell the cops what they wanted him to say. But then, his father told him to cooperate.
Dowset: It seemed to me the meeting you had with the district attorney (and Aaron’s family) was the first time in the book that someone intervened and had one of the boys walk out on law enforcement. Before that, no one had stood by their side and said, “We’re out of here.”
McInnis: They didn’t have an attorney by their side.
The boys were held incommunicado. The Crowes didn’t know their son, Michael, was being interrogated. The Treadways did, but Mr. Treadway was a local locksmith, and he was the one police would ask to come lock up a house after they had a raid. So he trusted them. That’s why he told his son to go along with the police. The police never really told him what the consequence would be for going along. That’s the sad part.
Dowset: But Mr. Houser told Aaron to avoid saying anything more without him, or a lawyer, in the room.
McInnis: Yeah, but that was later on. Much later on.
By the way, the uniqueness of the killing of Stephanie Crowe, and the prosecution of the three boys, is that these families were white, middle-class families who believed the police were there to protect them, not to persecute their children.
They weren’t black families like the Central Park Five.
So, the parents wanted to go along. They wanted to cooperate. Little did they know the consequences of what was going on.
Dowset: Your book is timely with the popularity of the Netflix show “When They See Us,” which portrays the so-called Central Park Five incident in 1989, in which five children were wrongly convicted in the attack of a female jogger in Central Park.
McInnis: My book had nothing to do with the Central Park Five, but I saw the Netflix movie. The sections they portrayed of the actual interrogations were right out of the textbook for the Reid Technique of Psychological Interrogation. I’m sure, if I read those transcripts, I could tick off line-by-line where Reid was being used.
With Miranda, in a 2004 Drexel University study, they looked at race, gender, age and the ability of a child to comprehend the Miranda rights, and it’s an abysmal failure. The children do not comprehend their rights, even if they’re a minority or have had extensive contact with police. They still go along for some reason and talk to the police.
That’s why my Children’s Bill of Rights is so important. It brings the attorney into the conversation at a very early stage, before they actually begin talking to the police.
Dowset: Something that kept hitting me over the head while reading your book was how soon you need that attorney. When the interrogators put off a parent or attorney coming into a room, it was amazing how much information they were able to get before.
McInnis: The police are very adroit at getting information.
When Miranda v. Arizona (the 1966 Supreme Court ruling that established the requirements of the Miranda warning) first came out, everyone said, “Oh my God, the police are going to be handicapped and won’t be able to get the information they need to make an arrest,” but lo and behold, they found out, all the jurists, all the attorneys found out, (that) the police had very sophisticated ways of getting around the requirements of Miranda.
You will note in this book that the police, when they are interrogating Joshua, they do not read his rights to begin with. They sent him home because there’s a law that says if the person is sent home and later brought back, you can take his statement again, then Mirandize him, and then take a third statement, and that third statement comes in – which is exactly what the court ruled in the Crowe murder case.
There were three interrogations.
Dowset: So, it didn’t really matter they didn’t do it the first time?
McInnis: That’s right. The police have found all these ways of getting around Miranda rights, such as the person isn’t in custody. If they’re not in custody, they don’t have to be read their Miranda rights. Police also will have all sorts of ways of getting around my simplified Miranda rights for children, where the child would always be asked if they want to talk to a parent.
Dowset: But it would be better than it is now?
McInnis: At least then the parent is being injected into the interrogation early, and the parent is going to be advised of the same rights as the child. They’re going to realize they have the right to a free attorney, and they’re going to turn around and tell the child to ask for an attorney.
Dowset: When did that come to mind for you, to create Miranda rights for children?
McInnis: The (Children’s) Bill of Rights and simplified Miranda rights came out of the Crowe murder case. If you look at every segment of that case, you can see why I came up with them. I want the Crowes to know that these bill of rights and this book is dedicated to them, and hopefully out of that, legislation will come instituting the reforms I talk about.
Dowset: But police will still get around these rights?
McInnis: I’m an ex-prosecutor, in two counties in northern California. I know how the police work. They will find a way to get around them. But that’s what the advocacy of the defense bar is. It’s up to defense attorneys to make sure they don’t get away with it.
Dowset: In the book, you mentioned you thought it was going to be an uphill battle to represent Aaron Hauser. What were those first thoughts when you were contacted by the family?
McInnis: I had a confession to overcome. Confessions are the strongest weapon there is for the conviction of an individual. How do I overcome it?
The unwritten story is I was having some construction work done at my house. I have a large theater where I project movies, and I had the interrogation tapes up on screen. While I was deeply engrossed with the tape, I didn’t hear three construction guys walk into the room and stand there and watch. When I realized they were there, I saw one was crying, one had clenched fists and the other was shaking his head. They saw the child abuse. That’s when I knew I had a chance to win.
Dowset: They recognized it right away?
McInnis: Those grown men recognized what the police were doing to the boys. I was playing the section of the interrogation tape of Michael Crowe where they were telling him there was an evil Michael and a good Michael.
Dowset: I was thinking at that point, that must have been difficult to convince him of that, because I have a son that age. I can’t imagine him believing that, but maybe if these were grown men and officials telling him that.
McInnis: What police were doing to these boys was psychological manipulation and interrogation. Even the interrogation room is windowless, small and claustrophobic. They leave people in there sometimes up to an hour or hour and a half before they go in to talk to them. It’s all part of the steps of interrogation.
It’s very powerful.
At the heart of the interrogation process is psychology, and the wearing down of the individual.
They didn’t tell Michael early in his interrogation that he had an evil side. It was toward the end when he was worn down. It was after they had lied to him about the evidence. It’s all a part of the process.
Dowset: Are there rules against lying during an interrogation?
McInnis: Police can lie. They can give you a lie detector test, or in the Crowe case, they gave them a computerized voice stress analyzer test, and they lied about the results. The police are allowed to lie.
Dowset: Can you lie about a real lie detector test?
McInnis: Absolutely. They are allowed to lie.
Dowset: They can fake evidence?
McInnis: Yes. But you see what happens, when the defense gets ahold of all of this, they destroy the case the prosecutors are trying to make, so police intentionally hedge their bets because they know there will be a defense attorney who will be jumping all over this.
Dowset: Saying you lied about this and that?
McInnis: That’s correct. They have courses they take on how to do this. The Reid Technique is actually a manual.
Dowset: As a reader, I was telling myself this doesn’t happen today.
McInnis: You’re wrong. It happened in 1989 with the Central Park Five, it happened in 1999 with the Crowe folks, and it’s going on currently.
Dowset: Do you know how the boys are now?
McInnis: I believe Michael moved to Oregon years ago. Joshua might still be in the L.A. area, and I don’t know where Aaron is. I know they’ve all started families.
Dowset: Two of them, Michael and Aaron, received settlements?
McInnis: That’s what I am told.
Dowset: What was it like getting to know Aaron, which I know you do with all your clients, but what was your impression of him in particular?
McInnis: When I first met Aaron, he was so battered by and distrusting of police authority and authority in general that it took me three different sessions before he trusted me. He was an extraordinarily brilliant young man. I hope this terrible experience of being prosecuted for this horrendous crime did not deviate him from being a successful professional. He would be a great scientist. He had an analytical mind that was unbelievable.
Dowset: Like a lawyer?
McInnis: Yep. Police just didn’t know how to interrogate him. They treated him with kid gloves because he was so smart. That’s why they labeled him the killer, the monster. He was so intelligent they didn’t know how to relate to him.
Dowset: It’s amazing that he held up so well during his interrogation. He was able to withstand the pressure.
McInnis: But police had tipped their hand. In an undercover call from Joshua, Aaron became suspicious and walked away from that knowing something was up. But police turned around and got him to describe how he would kill someone with a knife. If you go back and read that carefully, you can see how they’re leading him to make statements that are similar to how Stephanie was killed with a knife.
Dowset: Reading your book, I was thinking, no way this case would go forward.
McInnis: Even when the judge said she would not convict these boys and released them to go home, the deputy D.A., Summer Stephan, went right down to the adult superior court, where they were now committed to stand trial, to have their bail revoked.
That’s when the community gathered together, and put their homes up, to raise money so the boys could come home.
I called it Aaron’s Army. I had about 50 people that were supporting Aaron Houser. We befriended people at the Treadways’ church. We brought all three families together, and that’s one of the reasons Joshua Treadway did not take one of the three offers that were offered by prosecutors through his attorney to turn state’s evidence. They even made an offer where he would never see a jail, but he turned them down. He was not going to lie again. It was ungodly. It was against his faith.
Dowset: What did you learn while writing this book?
McInnis: I got angry. And I got even more angry because I went over it and over it and over it. As an ex-deputy D.A., I couldn’t believe the San Diego District Attorney’s Office would prosecute this case.
It was a release for me because all this has been pent up for years. When I saw Cheryl Crowe down here pleading her heart out on television, criticizing Summer Stephan, that was what forced me to write the book.
I now have a Law Review article coming out on the history of the juvenile justice system and my Children’s Bill of Rights.
Dowset: Do Aaron, Joshua and Michael know about the book?
McInnis: I don’t know. I have not intentionally reached out to them or sent them a copy. This is 20 years later, and if they read this book, they may have flashbacks, and I didn’t want to cause that by sending them copies.
Remember, everything in the book is taken out of court proceedings and transcripts. All of the interrogations are word for word, so it is very realistic, and I don’t know what those kids would do if they, as adults, started to read them.
I still get letters in the mail saying this is child abuse.