Deaf inmate says fingerprint proves his innocence
By JEFF CARLTON (AP)
July 14, 2010
DALLAS — Through a sign-language interpreter at the Dallas County Jail,
Stephen Brodie cops to all sorts of crimes save the one that put him behind
bars for 10 years: sexual assault of a 5-year-old girl.
He insists he is innocent, and there’s support for his claim.
A fingerprint at the crime scene matches another man convicted in the sexual
assault of a child. Brodie’s confession came during 18 hours of questioning
and included admissions to fictitious crimes made up by investigators to
test his credibility. Also, Brodie is deaf and doesn’t speak clearly, but
police didn’t use an interpreter for about half of their interviews.
“I want people to know that I’m not a bad person,” said Brodie, 38,
straining to be understood as he signed and spoke in a recent interview. “I
want to be a law-abiding citizen.”
He soon may get the chance. The Dallas County District Attorney’s office has
a unit that focuses on possible exoneration cases, and it is investigating
whether Brodie is innocent. His new attorney, Michelle Moore, is a public
defender known for helping to free the wrongly convicted. She acknowledged
she is close to finishing key documents seeking his release.
These actions could lead to a hearing where a judge would decide whether to
set aside Brodie’s conviction.
“If they find me not guilty and I’m exonerated,” said Brodie, “I’m getting
out of Texas.”
The injustices in Brodie’s life began early. Spinal meningitis when he was 1
1/2 left him permanently deaf, and when he was 5, his mother abandoned him
at a bus station.
In 1991, Brodie was a teenager and petty criminal in the Dallas suburb of
Richardson when police arrested him for stealing quarters from a soda
machine. But during questioning, their focus shifted to a more serious
matter: the unsolved sexual assault of a 5-year-old girl.
A man had entered her room through a bedroom window and forced her to leave
with her blanket and pillow. He later assaulted her, according to a police
report.
The case was one of about a dozen similar sexual assaults terrorizing the
Dallas area in the early 1990s. The newspapers labeled the unknown criminal
the “North Dallas Rapist.”
After nearly 18 hours of questioning over about 14 days, Brodie confessed to
assaulting the little girl, court documents show. Brodie told The Associated
Press that he felt intimidated. While he finally admitted committing the
assault, he also repeatedly denied it.
“It was a lot of stress, because (the detective) was asking me so many
questions over and over again,” Brodie said. “I got fed up. I gave up. It’s
easy to give up.”
His adoptive father, Steve Brodie, says his son was “being hounded by the
Richardson Police Department” and made a scapegoat because of pressure over
the unsolved sexual assaults.
“There was such a hue and cry because of these molestations,” Steve Brodie
said.
Richardson police officials did not respond to several AP interview
requests.
Brodie’s propensity for admitting to made-up crimes and his lack of
knowledge about the actual crimes convinced Dallas Detective Steven Nelson
that the teenager was not behind the Dallas sexual assaults. Nelson, in an
affidavit, said he informed Richardson police Brodie was not a suspect.
But Richardson police were convinced they had their man. They charged Brodie
with sexual assault of a child even though neither a hair found on her
blanket nor a fingerprint on the girl’s window were a match. There was no
physical evidence linking Brodie to the crime.
When a judge ruled the confession was admissible at trial, Brodie and his
attorney figured a guilty verdict, punishable by up to 99 years, was all but
certain. So they cut a deal — pleading guilty to assaulting the girl in
exchange for a five-year prison sentence. After serving that sentence, he
served two more totaling an extra five years for twice failing to register
as a sex offender.
While Brodie was in prison, Richardson police made a critical discovery.
There was a fingerprint on the girl’s window, the perpetrator’s point of
entry, that matched Robert Warterfield, according to court documents and
police records.
Warterfield was never charged in the string of sexual assaults on children
in the early 90s. But Dallas police said he was the man responsible for six
sexual assaults and five attempted assaults in the North Dallas area
involving girls ages 7 to 19, according to reports in The Dallas Morning
News at the time.
A man would break into homes through windows, force the victims at
knifepoint to leave with him and assault them, Dallas police said.
In April 1994, Warterfield pleaded guilty to the sexual assault of a
15-year-old girl and received 10 years probation. He eventually was
sentenced to 10 years in prison for violating his probation. He is now free
and works for a yard service in Stephenville, according to the Texas sex
offender registry.
He did not return a message left by The AP. A man who answered the phone at
his home said Warterfield would not speak to the media and declined to
identify his attorney.
Richardson police say Warterfield’s print is a coincidence, that he “somehow
touched the frame when he was wandering around in the neighborhood four days
prior to this offense,” according to police records.
In a 1994 appeal, Brodie’s attorney cited the fingerprint on the window. But
a judge denied the appeal, ruling that Brodie’s confession outweighed the
fingerprint evidence.
If he is freed, Brodie would be the second exoneration case in two years
involving Richardson police. The first was Thomas McGowan, who was freed in
2008 after serving 23 years of a life sentence for a rape he did not commit.
“This should never have happened,” said Steve Brodie, his voice breaking. “I
know he didn’t do it. That’s not Stephen.”