Investigator Jim McElhatton published an article in the Washington City Paper about how the D.C. police lost a surreptitiously recorded confession to a murder and how a man convicted of that murder (not the person on the missing tape) is trying to find it in hopes of exonerating himself.
Quoting a Geore Washington University law professor interviewed for the story, Jim wrote:
“Regardless of whether there’s a legal violation, it’s an embarrassment to the [Metropolitan Police Department] and to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and I can imagine a judge saying, ‘I want to get to the bottom of this. A confession in a murder case is something I want to know more about and why it is you don’t have the confession?'”
Asked why he’s so sure the tape will exonerate him, Wilson said he recalls walking up on a conversation between Roberson and Capies around the time when the police memo said the confession took place. He said he only caught the end of the conversation, but Roberson had been drinking, and he was telling Capies that he drove himself and killed Middleton in retaliation for the killing of a friend.
At this point, [David] Wilson has little to lose by lying. Credible or not, he says he is not asking to be believed—he’s just asking for the tape because he deserves to listens to it. He insists that once he has it, though, he’ll be cleared.
It’s a confession David Wilson may spend decades wondering if he can ever hear.
Jim worked on the story wholly independent of his work at our firm, and none of our firm’s records or other resources aided the story. This is significant since a former investigator at our firm was involved in the investigation of this case prior to trial.