HINTON 1

Melissa Hinton
CJUS 2050
Dr. Anna Netterville
10/15/13

Norfolk Four
In the cases of the Commonwealth of Virginia v. Daniel Williams; v. Joe Dick; v Eric
Wilson; v. Derrick Tice all of the men were bullied into confessions by Detective Glenn Ford.
All of these defendants also took polygraphs and of those only one was directly notified of his
failure, Danial Williams. The results of the other defendants were never released. Williams had
in fact passed his polygraph, but was not made aware of this by Ford. Instead, like the other
men, with the impending threats of the death penalty Williams was coerced into signing
confessions based on psychiatric intimidation over the course of several hours. No lawyers were
present throughout each of the interrogations and their constitutional rights were violated.
During these interrogations, each of these men were shown photographs and given
detailed information about the scene. Due to the privy of information provided by Detective
Ford, the defendants had details about the crime scene that only the killer(s) would know. So,
when their confessions were finally taped, they were able to weave an intricate lie placing them
at the scene of the rape and murder of Michelle Bosko. There was not a complete recording of
the defendants entire interrogation, only the confession was recorded. Their confessions
changed time and again to fit the crime and to benefit the prosecution through the coercive
scripting by Detective Ford.
DNA samples were taken from all of the involved parties, however all of their samples
were ruled out as not being the perpetrators of the rape and murder of Bosko. A break in the case
soon came when a man by the name of Omar Abdul Ballard confessed in a letter to a female
acquaintance:

Nobody know what im going through so don't try and understand me, And one
last thing you remember that night I went to mommies house and the next
morning Michelle got killed guess who did that, Me HA, HA. It wasn't the first
time. Im good aint i. I don't give a f*** about nobody (Tice)

Even with the written confession, the prosecution insisted that these men were all in the
crime together. Ballard admitted to investigators that hed acted alone with no help from any of
the defendants in the case. Yet, the men were denied their freedom. They were, in fact,
convicted of the crimes. The jury could not be persuaded by their court testimonies. It seemed
they were only interested in the taped confessions. Due to this admission of guilt, these men

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spend numerous years behind bars. They were eventually released on conditional paroles,
however they must still register as sex offenders until their lawyers have the convictions
overturned and expunged from their records. Throughout the entire case the prosecution as well
as Detective Ford never admitted any wrongdoing in the case. The evidence was clearly not in
the favor of the people, yet the prosecution adamantly pursued the cases against the innocent
men.

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Works Cited
Tice, Larry. A Sordid Tragedy of Coerced Confession--The Derek Tice Injustice Story. n.d. 15 10
2013. <http://www.justicedenied.org/derektice.htm>.