Excerpt from:

FALSE POSITIVES IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE PROCESS – AN ANALYSIS OF FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH WRONGFUL CONVICTION OF THE INNOCENT

A dissertation submitted to the
Division of Research and Advanced Studies
Of the University of Cincinnati

In partial fulfillment of the
Requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (PH.D.)

In the Division of Criminal Justice
of the College of Education

2003

by

Robert J. Ramsey

B.A. Miami University 1989
M.S. University of Cincinnati 1994

 

Confessions from Three Innocent Men –
 The Cases of Joseph Broderick, George Bigler and Rudolph Sheeler

Philadelphia patrolman James T. Morrow was murdered while tracking down a suspected robber who had been terrorizing the northeast section of the city. Philadelphia police, in efforts to solve the murder, arrested and extracted confessions from three different innocent men over a several year period – two of who were convicted and sentenced to life in prison before being exonerated.

During the first few months of the investigation following Morrow’s murder, police arrested Joseph Broderick and quickly extracted a confession from him. A few days later Broderick recanted. When it became evident to police officials that the confession was coerced, Broderick was released. Approximately one year later Philadelphia arrested another suspect, Bigler, for Morrow’s murder. Bigler then became the second man to confess to Morrow’s murder. In his confession Bigler implicated a Philadelphia patrolman as an accomplice in the murder. At his trial Bigler repeated his confession and the jury promptly found him guilty of first-degree murder and recommended that he receive the death penalty. However, the case against the patrolman Bigler had implicated quickly fell apart and that trial ended in an acquittal. The judge in Bigler’s trial then became suspicious of the confession and ordered a new trial for Bigler. At the second trial Bigler again pled guilty and the judge had no alternative but to sentence him; still unsure of the “confession”, the judge sentenced him to life in prison instead of death. Two years later the same type of robbery that had been attributed to Bigler began to reoccur in northeast Philadelphia. Police received a tip that the robber was a known criminal named Jack Howard. When police tracked Howard down, they mortally wounded him in a gunfight. In Howard’s possession was the murder weapon that had been used to kill Officer Morrow. Although police had no reason to believe that Howard had an accomplice, they staked out the hospital room of a friend of his, Elizabeth Morgan, to see if any of Howard’s acquaintances might visit her. When Morgan’s brother, Rudolph Sheeler, came to visit his sister he was immediately arrested and taken to police headquarters. Sheeler became the third man to confess to Officer Morrow’s murder after he was beaten for hours at a time over a two-week period and finally confessed to aiding Howard in the murder. At trial Sheeler pled guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. Bigler, who by this time had spent two years in prison was pardoned and transferred to a mental hospital.

Twelve years passed until proof surfaced that Sheeler was at work hundreds of miles away at the time of officer Morrow’s murder. A judge reviewed the case and found that key details of the case were contradicted by his confession, and that his confessions and court statements contradicted each other. The judge concluded that Sheeler had been forced to confess because police were eager to free Bigler and therefore clear the reputation of the officer he has implicated – even though that officer had been acquitted. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, calling the case “a black and shameful page in the history of the Philadelphia police department” (Yant 1991: 49), overturned Sheeler’s conviction and ordered his immediate release. Four detectives and two superior officers were suspended for their roles in Sheeler’s coerced confession.