Douglas Elliman Director of Luxury Sales Dean Bloch joins Innocence International Director and Loretta Rafay in visiting Atif Rafay.
On September 10th, Andrei Schiller-Chan paid a visit to Atif Rafay. Schiller-Chan is a voice coach, theatre director, wrongful convictions scholar, and boxing instructor based in London. He was also a personal friend and mentee of the late Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, and continues to work with Innocence International director Ken Klonsky on exoneration efforts for the wrongfully convicted. Schiller-Chan has just completed a master’s thesis comparing vocal attributes of wrongfully convicted prisoners with those of the general prison population. While on the North American West Coast, Schiller-Chan also attended the September 9th showing of “Miyoshi” at the Vancouver Fringe Festival, where actors Kai Bradbury, Cheryl Mullen, Rodney Decroo are performing the actual RCMP transcript of Jimmy Miyoshi’s interrogation with unnerving authenticity.
Miyoshi: An RCMP Interrogation plays out the transcript of an actual RCMP interrogation at the Vancouver Fringe Festival. Two interrogators attempt to manipulate Miyoshi into turning on his friends, Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns, both accused and later wrongly convicted of the murder of Rafay’s family.
Tickets available here.
The performance on September 10 is half-price!
Although the Supreme Court of Canada has imposed restrictions on admissibility of RCMP Mr. Big stings, these ethically questionable entrapment techniques continue to be used by RCMP undercover officers. We hope that Mr. Big’s days are numbered, since a growing number of Mr. Big targets are asking for their cases to be reopened. See here for a news story on the Kevin Simmonds case. Also, read through our growing list of documented Mr. Big cases, and let us know if we are missing any. Thank you again to all of our supporters! Check out the Current Appeal Status for updates.
The True Crime Brewery podcast episode on the Rafay-Burns case provides a helpful overview of the case for those wishing to learn more. Available on your podcast app or here.
On March 12, Ken Klonsky, director of Innocence International, visited Atif Rafay at Monroe Correctional Complex. Visits from committed advocates are extremely important for the morale of the wrongfully convicted.
In this photo (left to right): Mary Ellen Belfiore, Loretta Rafay, Atif Rafay, and Ken Klonsky
On
September 26th, in response to both concern and outrage from the
public after viewing the Netflix series “The Confession Tapes”, the King County
Prosecuting Attorney’s office issued a press release. The episode referred to deals with the 2005
convictions of both Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns for the murder of Rafay’s
family.
The
press release claims that the documentary is unfair and inaccurate without
pointing to any specific instances of inaccuracy or unfairness. The release represents
yet another attempt to justify the wrongful convictions in the absence of forensic
evidence. At the end of the document the prosecutor states: “The Confession Tapes” recounts some but not
all of the forensic evidence linking Burns and Rafay to the murders. The
episode recounts no forensic evidence against Burns and Rafay because there was
none. Had there been forensic evidence implicating them in this crime, no
innocence project would have taken up this case.
The
press release states that “The Confession
Tapes” strongly suggests confessions to these crimes made by both Burns and
Rafay are false. This statement is in the eye of the beholder since the
program has no outside narrative. Police Detective Bob Thompson and James
Konat, the prosecutor, are given more time on screen than anyone else. The fact
that the program “strongly suggests” the innocence of the defendants is
predicated on the weakness of the case against them.
The jury, which
heard all of the evidence during a six-month trial, rejected this defense and
convicted Burns and Rafay.
That they were convicted is true. That the jury heard all the evidence is
demonstrably false. The judge did not allow the jury to hear any alternative
theories to the crime, despite the fact that a validated FBI informant identified
the murder weapon prior to its being published and stated unequivocally that
the crime was committed by someone else; despite the fact that an RCMP
informant tipped the Bellevue police beforehand that a hit was planned on a
South Asian family recently moved to Bellevue; despite the fact that a
detective in the Bellevue Police Department received a call from the
intelligence unit of the Seattle Police Department indicating that the homicides
were possibly associated with an Islamist terrorist group that targets Muslims
“who do not practice the faith or interpret the Koran as they do. They punish
these unfaithful persons by bombing, stabbing and murdering.”
The
trial judge also refused to allow Richard Leo, an expert on false confessions,
to testify. The reason given, that a jury is qualified to decide who is lying
and who is telling the truth, is specious. In fact, any cursory glance at
scientific knowledge in this area will show that the average person is not
qualified to do anything of the sort. An FBI authority on sting operations,
Michael Levine, was also denied witness status at the trial on the ground that
he was not an expert.
The
Prosecuting Attorney’s Office accuses Netflix of selectivity: most of the confessions are neither played
nor described. The RCMP and the prosecutors are the ones guilty of
selectivity. Most of the initial conversations between Burns and the undercover
officers were not recorded. Sections of the tapes that do not support the
convictions and that jurors never saw have been destroyed or disposed of.
The
prosecutor’s press release makes the claim that Burns, far from being intimidated
by the officers [the RCMP play acting as mobsters], sought them out. Why did
Burns continue to seek out the mobsters and engage in petty criminal acts at
their behest? The scurrilous implication in the current press release by the
Prosecuting Attorney’s office—the same as at the trial—is that Sebastian Burns
had a criminal mind and actually reveled in the doings of the crime world. In
fact, Burns was psychologically conditioned by the RCMP. Every time he
committed an illegal act, he was given money. That is why he sought them out. One
of the purposes of the trial was to prejudice the jury by making Burns appear
to be a criminal when, in reality, he is no different than the rest of us.
The
Prosecuting Attorney’s Office relies heavily upon the 2012 Court of Appeals
decision. Firstly, as part of the post-conviction apparatus in the state, the
Court of Appeals is not, as stated, an ‘independent panel’. The decision was made
by elected—not independent—judges. We wish to make it clear that the court of
appeals’ first order of business is to find reasons to sustain the convictions.
In the instance referred to in the press release, the court’s reasons were not
based on legal issues but on unsubstantiated perception:
–
“The
trial court was therefore able to view the defendant’s demeanor and body
language during the entire confessions, including their jovial delight in
revealing certain details…”
–
It
bears repeating that there is no scientific basis for the court’s observations.
A person’s inner thoughts, his candidness or lack thereof, cannot be
apprehended by observing his or her body language or demeanor, especially in a
situation like this where the defendants, two fronting adolescents plied with
alcohol, believed they were talking to mobsters. The only knowable lie is the
RCMP mobsters lying about who they really were. That both the appeals court and
the current prosecutor allow this kind of ‘evidence’ to bear legal weight is
outrageous. They know better.
Finally,
the issue of Jimmy Miyoshi must be addressed. The reason that Miyoshi stated
that he knew of the murders being planned beforehand is seriously in doubt because
the transcripts show him resisting both the RCMP mobsters and, later, the
police who pressured him unrelentingly to make incriminating statements against
his friends.
What
we have in our possession is the entire interrogation of Miyoshi after Burns
and Rafay were arrested in 1995. What is
most egregious, and left out in the press release, is that the RCMP threatened
Miyoshi with 99 years in prison, and even a suggestion of the death penalty in
Washington, if he didn’t give evidence against his friends. And that during
this psychologically brutal interrogation that made constant use of the Reid
Technique (police denying what they didn’t want to hear), Miyoshi repeatedly
said that “They never did” discuss the murders beforehand. This time he was
talking to people he knew to be the police.
What
is also beyond doubt, and what the Netflix series points out, is that after
Miyoshi returned to Japan, he was threatened by the loss of his job by his
Japanese employer if he did not testify against his friends. His testimony,
therefore, was coerced, because the absence of forensic evidence and the fear
that the so-called confessions garnered from an illegal sting operation would
be thrown out of court made the case against Burns and Rafay paper thin.
Finally,
what forensic evidence there was pointed in opposite directions to the one
taken by the prosecutors. The Bellevue Police and the King County Prosecutor
initially asserted that a pubic hair found in Mr. Rafay’s bed was certainly
left there by the killer. After it was found not to match any of the Rafays nor
Sebastian Burns, they dismissed it as a ‘stray’. It didn’t belong to Sebastian,
ergo it was irrelevant. “If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.”
That is the essence of tunnel vision and that is the source of the wrongful conviction
of two young men who have now been imprisoned for 22 years.
Our
conclusion is that the press release issued by the office of the Prosecuting
Attorney represents either disingenuous or willful blindness at best, in almost
all respects. Justice has not been done in this case; “The Confession Tapes”
now makes justice a possibility.
-Ken
Klonsky, Director: Innocence International
A broken justice system is one in which interrogators pull
confessions like rabbits out of hats, rather than seeking truth, yet it does
not “shock the conscience of the court”. A broken justice system is one in which excessively confident interrogators believe they are experts on legitimate expressions of grief and conflate theatrics of sorrow with actual innocence. (Never mind that crocodile tears are the very thing
an actually guilty criminal mastermind would perform for the public.) When suspects are reserved about showing emotions following a traumatic loss, “we call it a very flat affect,”
says polygraph witch doctor John Palmatier in an interview with
#theconfessiontapes director Kelly Loudenberg. By this assessment, innocent suspects ought to publicly broadcast remorse for
what they DID NOT DO according to an accepted formula of expressing sorrow. There is no allowance for silent shock or attempts to distract oneself from profound emotional pain by engaging in some familiar mundane activity.
The bookend episodes of The Confession Tapes feature innocent
defendants who were condemned by the media and public for not performing
formulaic theatrics of sorrow. Rafay, Burns, and DeLisle grieved over
tragic losses in their own way, but the public did not view their form
of grief as legitimate.
This emboldened interrogators to pull rabbits out of hats and secure
groundless convictions. How many media witch-hunts and coerced
confession tapes will it
take to shock the conscience of the North American courts?
People are asking how to help the defendants featured in #theconfessiontapes . To help Burns and Rafay, there are two things you can do. Write the prosecutor and help us fund legal and investigative expenses. Write to King County prosecutor, Dan Satterberg, and ask him to consider revisiting this case:
King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg
W554 King County Courthouse
516 Third Ave. Seattle, WA 98104
USA
dan.satterberg@kingcounty.gov
Twitter: @DanSatterberg
In 2011 The Innocence Network filed an amicus brief on behalf of Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay during direct appeal. Revisiting this case is long overdue. #theconfessiontapes
Interrogator
is often not shown on screen.
Undercover
police have given the suspects alcohol prior to videotaping, so they appear
relaxed.
Conversations
that take place prior to interrogation are not shown on video, giving no
indicator of what power dynamics may have been established.
Suspects
appear to willingly incriminate themselves.
Sebastian Burns #theconfessiontapes
Atif Rafay as a child. #theconfessiontapes