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“I was expecting a lot of guilt,” writes death row investigator and ‘The Talking Bone’ author Rene Denfeld. “I did not expect to find so much innocence.”
The first time a man in prison cried in front of me, I knew this job would not be what I had expected.
I was expecting a lot of guilt.
I did not expect to find so much innocence.
I had become a licensed investigator, taking on death row cases, helping trafficking victims and working with the accused. My background as an investigative reporter seemed perfect for the job. As a woman of a certain age, no one had hit me with the naïve stick. Going into this work, I knew that I was going to have men profess innocence that didn’t exist. Crocodile tears didn’t move me — I was a mother.
But I soon learned something else.
There is an epidemic of false convictions in this country.
Some innocents are coerced into false confessions, like what happened to the Central Park Five. Others are convicted on the basis of debunked junk “sciences,” like microscopic hair analysis and blood splatter analysis, which have put so many innocents behind bars. Some get judges who commit legal errors by not letting the jury hear important testimony that might lead to an acquittal. Others are convicted on the basis of flimsy or circumstantial evidence. Many have defense attorneys who want them to take a plea deal for a crime they never committed. In my world, these attorneys are called dump trucks, because they dump innocents into the system.
Over 90% of all criminal cases end in plea deals. Many of these are innocent people who don’t want to roll the dice and go away for decades instead of years, or face an execution. They soon learn, though, that signing a plea deal means they cannot appeal the sentence. Once those prison doors shut, they do not open.
As a private investigator, it’s my job to find the truth: full stop. I want to know what happened, so justice can be served. I want to sleep peacefully at night, knowing I did my part to ensure a fair and righteous system.
In almost 20 years of doing this work, I’ve learned that our system seems more invested in securing convictions than in preventing crime or helping victims. We have an incarceration machine, processing thousands of people into prison. Once you’ve been fed into the machine, your chances at getting freed plummet, no matter how innocent you are.
One teenage client of mine spent months in jail on charges he never committed. He missed his graduation. He became deeply depressed and was terrified in custody. The public assumed he was guilty. A few weeks before trial, his attorney hired me. It didn’t take me long to discover the police had missed critical evidence. The proof was right there, but no one had looked.
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He was released. But there are no do-overs for being traumatized in jail or having people believe you are guilty.
That teenage kid got lucky. His attorney didn’t have to hire me. There’s no constitutional right to a private investigator. Most defendants never get an investigation, outside of whatever the state has provided. If the police work was inadequate, if witnesses lied or someone hid evidence, it’s likely never coming to light.
This is the hardest part of the work. I’m often the only person standing between an innocent person and a false conviction. If I fail to find the truth, my failure could mean an innocent person spends their life behind bars. Or die.
I’m often the only woman in the room — in the prison visiting room, in the police evidence viewing, in the courthouse hallway. It surprises people that I’m not very big. They expect a hardboiled gumshoe. What they get is a petite woman with tired but friendly eyes, a notepad and 20 years of knowing where to look.
Outside of the investigative work, I’m the happy mom to now-adult kids from foster care. I love to write, and walk my dog. I have a sweet tooth, but I don’t drink or smoke or do any of the detective tropes you see on television. I probably laugh a lot more than you’d expect — I’m a joyful person.
I’ve developed an arsenal of skills over the years, from finding records to taking a DNA swab, but my greatest ability comes naturally. I love people. I love humanity. Talking to others, knocking on doors in strange neighborhoods or crawling under an overpass to find an unhoused witness, I feel at home. I feel like an adventurer in search of the greatest gift: understanding.
It’s an exciting job, maybe even more exciting than what you see on television or read in books, because every day is different, and I get to be there when justice arrives.
Seeing an innocent person freed doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like justice came too late. You see the damage done. You know how easily it happens.
When I exonerate someone, it’s another wound for the victim’s family. It means whoever committed the crime is still out there, walking free. That part haunts me.
I wish our system gave every crime the attention it deserves. I wish victims were truly supported. I wish police were highly trained and funded to solve crimes. I wish district attorneys were rewarded for upholding the highest ethical standards, not for how many convictions they secure. I wish every accused had access to an investigator to guard against injustice.
The tears, I learned, are often real.
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Rene Denfeld’s new book, The Talking Bone, is available now.
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