The Innocents (1964)
by Edward D. Radin

Excerpt on

Geither Horn
 

Police need not beat a prisoner to force a false confession out of him. Geither Horn had served twenty-four years for a murder he did not commit when he presented evidence in 1959 that he had confessed to the slaying of an itinerant farm hand in a Pasco, Washington, labor camp because three officers had taken him to an open grave and told him they were going to bury him alive unless he confessed. He was freed by a federal judge on a writ of habeas corpus. In 1963 the Washington legislature awarded Horn $6,000 for his false imprisonment to be paid at the rate of $250 a month. That same year an insurance company settled out of court a suit Horn had brought against the three officers involved. A newspaper in that state ran a curious headline over the story. It read: "Ex-convict Drops Suit Against Arresting Trio." The suit had been dropped because the insurance company paid the claim for false arrest.


APPENDIX

GEITHER HORN, Franklin County, Washington
Trial, November, 1935, Pasco Superior Court; convicted by jury, first-degree murder. Freed on writ of habeas corpus, U. S. District Court, June, 1959. Imprisoned 24 years. False-arrest suit settled out of court, 1963. Compensation, state legislature, $6,000.