#184 Jason Flom with Larry DeLisle

Published Feb 10, 2021, 5:12 AM

After a hot summer day - August 3rd, 1989, the DeLisle’s took their 4 children for ice cream along the Detroit River. A mechanical defect in their car caused the night to take a deadly turn that sent Larry DeLisle to prison for what should have been seen as a tragic accident.


Learn more and get involved at:
https://www.change.org/p/gretchen-whitmer-free-larry-he-lost-all-4-of-his-children-due-to-a-fatal-accident-is-falsely-in-prison
https://www.netflix.com/title/80161702
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom


Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

On August third, nine, after a long, hot summer day, Larry at Sue Delisle took their four children out for ice cream and to watch the boats passed by on the Detroit River. When Larry pulled out on the street that had ended at the river, a mechanical defect in their station wagon caused the accelerated to stick. The car sped off uncontrollably, and Larry and suss panicked. Efforts could not save them from launching into the Detroit River. Larry and Sue narrowly survived, but their children, Brian, Melissa, Kate, and Emily tragically did not. When the water locked wreck was pulled from the river, the accelerators stuck again during testing, an issue raised by hundreds of others about that very make and model station wagon. It was a tragic accident, but that wasn't good enough for the police, the media, or the people of down River, Michigan. After eighteen hours of interrogation and the usual tricks, Larry tacitly agreed to hypotheticals posed by the interrogator. This couldn't pass muster as a confession for a court of law, but it was quickly submitted to the court of public opinion when the police chief went on TV and said that Larry Delisle had confessed, effectively poisoning the entire jury pool. Larry was convicted of four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, despite Sue Delile's unwavering account of his actual innocence. This tragic accident stole their four children, and the state compounded that loss by stealing what has become over three long decades of Larry's life. This is wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom. Welcome back to wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam. That's me, of course, I'm your host, and today my heart is heavy because of the story you're about to hear and the man you're about to meet. I'm proud to call him a friend, and I'm proud to be part of the team that's helping to try to bring justice long delayed to this awful, awful case. So, without further ado, Larry Delisle, Welcome to rona Eviction. I'm sorry you have to be here, but I'm glad you're here, humble and honored to be here with you today. And Larry is calling us from prison um in Michigan, where where exactly are you, Larry. I'm in Coldwater, Michigan, which is a Lakeland correctional facility. And what you've gone through is surely unimaginable to almost anyone. UM. You know, the multiple tragic aspects of this case include obviously the loss of your family, UM, but also the persecution that was wrongfully inflicted upon you by people that really should have known better. UM. And of course you're wrongful incarceration now for over three decades is another thing that nobody could even begin to imagine. But I want to go back to the beginning. Did you grow up in Michigan? If my grandparents raised me from age two years old, I mean, your childhood was haunted by a tragedy, A separate tragedy, right. I mean, I don't know how much one person is supposed to take in their life, and I don't even know if you want to talk about that, but it does come into focus with this case as this as this goes on, you're talking about my father committing suicide. Yes, of course, I got a call in the middle of the night that my father had committed suicide. He drove down somewhere by the river and put a gun to his head, ironically in the same vehicle that ended up being the central figure in this awful tragedy to be felt your family. Most people would not have wanted to drive the vehicle. I didn't want to drive the vehicle. But my father's wife, she wanted to give us something because my sister and I find away our rights to his house, because we didn't want her to have to remortgage or have to move, So she gave me the car the option of keeping it or selling it. At the time, we had a brand new Ford aero started. We had just bought to go to Disneyland November seven, when my father had committed suicide. We were talking about getting rid of the aerostar, getting a cheaper vehicle so we can knock our bills down to a point where we can afford to buy a house. Well, when my father committed suicide the place that I worked for retirement, God bless him, they had taken the vehicle. They had it completely cleaned on the inside. Now, when I went there that night to drive the vehicle, I had mixed in oceans. When I got in, I started crying right away, but after a few minutes I felt calm. Because my father had taken me everywhere with him when I was younger and older in the station wagon. He loved station wagon. I think that was the second or third one. So when I drove the vehicle, I felt at peace. Now it was up to my wife. She drove it. She loved it because it had a lot of power. It just happened to have an intrinsic value as far as helping us to achieve our goals, which would have been to get a house for our children, to get a house for us. Right, well, with four kids, you have obviously in your mechanic, and Larry is known in the prison as someone who can fix basically anything. But even still raising four kids on that salary, it can't be an easy task. And this case was featured in the Netflix documentary series of Confession Tapes by the wonderful Kelly Loudenberg, and encourage everyone to watch that episode. But let's go back to the night of this awful accident, and we're talking about the evening of August third, ninety degree hot summer day and the hottest part of the summer. This this was a very very hot day and it was a very busy day. I worked close to ten hours that day running around on my feet. I got out of there as quickly as I could, got the kids in the car, and away we went. Larry and his wife and the children, Brian, Melissa, Katie and Emily had gone for ice cream, and we're watching the boats along the Detroit River, which I know the kids enjoy doing that. You had issues with your legs. I was just not properly hydrated, and it caused my muscles to cramp up at different points. I've had problems most of my youth with cramping in my legs. It actually happened to me in the gym this morning when I was stretching. So it's not an uncommon thing, especially when you're dehydrated, like on a hot summer day, which was what this situation was with you. But there are a number of things that played into this unspeakable disaster. And what really happened was as you were leaving to go home, you were on Eureka Road, which dead ends at the river. You stepped on the gas, your leg cramped right up, the car shot off in pain. You reached down to pull your foot off the gas, but the car continued to accelerate. Now, you didn't know it at the time, but there was a defect that caused your accelerated to jam, propelling the car with the six of you inside, terrified and screaming through the barricade at the end of Eureka Road right into the Detroit River. That mean must have relived that thousands of times in your head now trying not to still painful today. When the accelerator stuck, it threw me off. I didn't know what was stuck. I got my foot off the gas. My foot was off. My wife even testified my foot was off. She saw that my foot was off, but the car did not slow down. Before I could even do anything further, she reached over in an attempt to help me. It was an inadvertent act, but it startled me for a second and I froze, and before I could decide what I was going to do, we ran out of street. The whole thing took seven to ten seconds, according to officials. Seven to ten seconds. We're talking about a section of the street that was long. We've already talked about the fact that the car had a powerful engine and it wouldn't take any car very long to cover. It's basically just a little bit further than a football field. So add to I mean, all the other elements of pure panic and terror, the fact that the kids are in the car. I'm sure they're screaming, wife's grabbing the wheel, etcetera, etcetera. You're staring at the water, and on top of that, you didn't know how to swim, right, No, I can't. I can tread the water thanks to my high school coach. But that's about it. But in the impact itself, I was thrown forward, top of my head, hit around the visor area. There was a bright light shot of pain from my neck all the way down my spine. So I was disoriented once I was in the water. I don't even know how I got out of the car. Well, I mean, you know, it's impossible to probably imagine. And the fact is that this particular vehicle had known issues. There were over a hundred people who had reported the accelerator jamming on this exact make and model station Wagon. It was a seventy seven Ford Ltd. Station Wagon four six cube against four barrel carburetor. There was the mechanic who examined the car, Jim Colquell, and he had identified three separate defects, any one of which could have caused this uncontrolled acceleration. One was a kink in the accelerated cable that caused the cable to stick. Secondly, the throttle plates could be heard scraping inside the carburetor. And thirdly, the engine mount was broken in this vehicle, which caused the tilt of the engine, and the tilting pulled at the accelerator cable. So the combination of these factors turned deadly. And as it turns out, they chose to ignore their own tests because when they tested the vehicle after it was pulled out of the river, in one of the times when they test drove it, the accelerator did in fact jam. Yes, when they were testing the vehicle and the accelerator had stuck. You had two mechanics there, one for the state who actually was just a bus mechanic who couldn't even start the vehicle for testing. We had an a s C certified master mechanic for us who is the one who found all the problems with the vehicle, had to start it for them before they could even test it in an engineer. They were all there to day to test. Happened when the accelerator stuck. The arresting officer. He was sitting next to the State trooper sergeant during their tests, and they're testing it with his foot on the accelerator, testing the brakes to see how long it would take to stop the vehicle. And I imagine it would be quite a long ways with only manual brakes work. And you don't have the power assist, because when you're accelerating, you don't have power assist. Your power brakes don't work. You have to stand on them to get it to stop. Into the State trooper sergeant, and he had to do that so hard they broke the seat. Any case, the arresting officer, he's taking notes. He wrote across the top of his notepad in bold letters, accelerators sticking, then swore under oath when he was up on the witness stand. He had no idea why. He wrote that there was nothing wrong with the car when the accelerator stuck. The mechanic to master mechanic and an engineer. They came running over to the vehicle, according to my lawyer, and the state trooper wave him away. He said, no, no, the problems inside the car you have engineers and mechanics there to confine it, get out of the car, let him find out what's sticking right now, And he refused to do it because the arresting officer probably didn't want them to find it, because if they found a problem, it would approve what I've been saying from the very beginning and what my wife had been saying from the very beginning. The accelerator stuck, because it did for you. He shut it off. He testified that he shut it off because it startled him. He's six four or three pounds and it startled him. Do you expect it to remain calm. Yes, I'm expected to remain calm. He said. He was going to start the vehicle back up and put it in gear and see how fast it would go. At that point, all you have to do is put it in gear. When he shut it off, avoided the test, and they never got a chance to test it again because by the time they gave it over to the sense the engine had been sold roughly treated during their acceleration test that the engine blew up. End of testing them and of proving beyond reasonable doubt that there was a problem with the station wagon. This episode is brought to you by Stand Together. Stand Together is a philanthropic community dedicated to helping people improve their lives. For more than twenty years, Stand Together and its partners have been on the front lines of criminal justice reform. By empowering people to take action, supporting nonprofits, and working with businesses, Stand Together tackles the root causes of problems in our communities and empowers those closest to the problems to drive solutions. Solutions like reducing unjust prison sentences through the First Step Act, empowering community based programs and help people re enter society, and now working to bridge divide in our communities. To learn how you may get involved, visit stand together dot org slash conviction. In a tragedy like this, community members have a very difficult time reconciling the fact that these type of tragic accidents happen. When a child is lost, it's easier psychologically for people to assign blame to someone because the randomness of it is too terrifying, especially for people with children to imagine. And in this case, I think that as well as other sort of confirmation biases took hold. You were targeted by the media. They hounded you and basically set up camp outside the house of grieving parents until you agree to give an interview, and then it becomes And we've seen this in so many cases, whether it's Amanda Knots are so many others where the media or the authorities feel you're either too sad or not sad enough, or too hysterical or too calm. I don't think that people are aware of the fact that that first interview I did in the backyard, that I had had a couple of volumes given to me by a family member, and I don't even remember the interview. All I remember was an airplane going over the top. So if I didn't show emotion for people, uh, it just makes me angry that they're going to point to the fact that I'm not classical as far as how I was supposed to react to losing my children being hounded by the press. I'm sorry, it's just very upsetting. Well, let's move on from there. This is a false confession case that has all of the hall marks that we see again and again. Just to paint a picture for everyone, A week after this un imaginable loss, the police picked you and sue your wife up at seven am and incharrogated you till one in the morning, So that's eighteen hours. And we know that when this process goes on interminably, eventually everybody has a breaking point. And even though you told him again and again, Larry, I didn't do this, etcetera, etcetera, they just wouldn't listen. Is that right? The continue to tell me that I wasn't telling him everything he wanted to hear, and I didn't understand what he meant at that point because I was answering all of his questions. I can't leave alone the idea that they were expecting you to recite over and over again exactly what happened when you didn't actually know what happened. In fact, you could not have known that this car was defective, or you wouldn't have been driving the damn thing. He was asking what could have happened? Why the accelerator had stuck? And I didn't know. I had my shoes off to the shoe gets stuck in there was the accelerator sticking. Why wasn't it slowing down? Would you take your foot off? The guest? But it's supposed to slow down, period, Let's face it. There was no explanation that you could have provided that would have satisfied them. Because this is a very high profile case. The media is all over it, and everyone had already come to their own conclusions that you must have done this. So then it gets to the point where they give you a polygraph. And polygraphs are wildly inaccurate anyway, but they're effective in terms of getting people to false the confess I'm Dr Michael Abramsky. I am a clinical and forensic psychologist. At the time of the Wild case, I was studying false confessions and I was retained by the court to examine the confession. So I was provided with the video tape of the entire interrogation, the first half an hour to forty five minutes. The police officer, Pommitteer built himself as as an expert and infallible, and he also did the same thing with a polygraph. He said the polygraph could read minds. It was infallible, it's never wrong. It gives Delial the test, which only consists of a few questions, and he leaves the room and he comes back with his head shaking and says to Delile, you know you failed the polygraph. You're lying The technique is to make the defendant feel that their situation is totally hopeless. So basically, you set up a dilemma. Since the polygraph is infallible, you think you're telling the truth. It puts you into a state of cognitive dissonance. You have to find an explanation that entails both of those things. So Pomitteer spends hours pumping him, and largely it's not asking questions, it's telling him scenarios, telling him why he did this, That you're tired and families are a burden, and I know how hard your life is. So he is empathic with him, tells him he understands, implies that you know you're not a bad person for this. Lots of people are under stress, they do something rash, and the people will be understanding. Basically, what he's trying to do is get Larry to make incriminating statements, and the implication is always that you know you're not going to suffer bad punishment for this. Some of the things that this man was saying we're actually disturbing to hear. He would try to convince me that he liked to scare his wife. He said he'd drive up really fast behind parked cars and flam on the brakes just to scare her. And he asked me if I ever wanted to do that. He even talked about he gets so mad at his kids, he'd want to stick him in a garbage big and throw him in a closets, that you ever want to do that? And I got angry at him for even the suggesting something that heinous to be done to any child. I never said I wanted to do that. But then later on and interrogation, somehow he had me parriting him. But they were not confessions. They were brought about by this man instilling guilt in me. Made me feel that I was responsible above and beyond the mechanical problems on there. Palmitt He keeps on trying scenarios where Larry will implicate himself and he doesn't, And finally he tries out of scenario that makes Larry bite. He basically says to Larry, do you know about the unconscious? And Larry does not. He tells him that unconscious means that we do certain things that we don't really know that we've done them. You know, even though you did it, you're not really responsible. Is your unconscious that did it, and that starts getting in Larry an explanation, and so at some point he makes an equivocal statement such as you think that could have happened, or he starts questioning pommits here, and he never says that he did it, but he starts questions mean and implying that maybe that did happen. And then the interrogation is over because what he's done is accepted committeers theory that he did drive the car into the river and that he did want to hurt someone. He just didn't know it at the time. But you know, under the law, that doesn't make any difference. The police chief himself went on the news and proclaimed that Larry Delisle has confessed. At that point they almost really needed trial. To his credit, the judge did actually suppress the confession, and people are probably hearing that saying, oh good. But the fact that it didn't matter at that point because they refused to change the venue. So it's very important to understand the psychological atmosphere was occurring. First, the news stations had a stock shot of the car being lifted out of the river by a crane, and everybody knew there were four dead children in there, and night after night that was playing. People then started gathering down by the river, demanding justice for these four kids. And then after he was questioned, they announced that he had confessed to the crime, which of course he had not, but you put that in the crowd's mind, it's almost impossible to reverse. The next thing that happened was, of course, the suppression hearing, and that's where I testified that the confession was involuntary. I described the techniques that were used and why what he said was not voluntary. Judge Colombo ruled in Delisle's favor, and he throughout the confession, except the problem was that it had already been in the newspaper, and the retractions from the newspaper said things like Lawrence Delisle's statements that he intentionally killed his family cannot be used in court against them. And when you try to tell people that it's invalid, they believe, oh no, the guy just just realized that he got himself into trouble. He's just denying it now. So they never believe the confession is false. They believe the denial of confession as false. I mean, I don't know if they have caves in why I thought that you could have found someone who didn't own a TV or read the newspaper. But short of that, you're looking at jurors who are unaware of the tactics that we used to elicit that confession, and who can't reconcile the idea that anyone we confess to kind and commit. But it happens all the damn time, and they charged you with four counts of murder one kind of attempt at murder. Prosecutor was a guy named Kevin Samowski. He painted you as a guy who was overwhelmed by debt. The fact of the matter is I was not overwhelmed with debt. I owned less than thirteen five and made over thirty tho dollars a year. I just got a house that they didn't have to make any payments on for an entire year. And I take great offense every time they keep trying to bring up, oh, hen was deeply in debt. As a matter of fact, the headlines wanted to point out, oh, he was trying to get rid of his burdens. Well, the police were trying to say, my debt was my burdens, but the people looked at it as my children with my burdens. That's how we're trying to convict me. And here's a very very important thing to me. Your wife, Sue. Now she's gone through the same horrendous loss that you have. And I think it's fair to say that maybe went in her position. If they had even a sneaking suspicion that you might have done it on purpose, she would have been the number one witness for the prosecution. She in fact, was the only witness to the crime except for some woman that was out in her balcony on the eleventh floor across the street. Let's not even go there. But she didn't turn on you. She was there, she knows exactly what happened. She saw my foot off there. She tried to help. She was actually demonized by the public for years. She had to move away from down River because they were harassing her. Somebody tried to break into the house. Somebody would call on the phone and leaving threatening messages. She couldn't get a job anywhere because of her last name. Oh, because she wouldn't turn on you, even though she was doing the right thing. So the jury deliberated for nine hours over two days. They came back originally tended to. The judge sent them back. They came back the next day, even one he threatened to keep them through the weekend if they didn't come back with a decision. We know that in those jury rooms extreme pressure is exerted by people who want to go home. But you can send a note to the judge. You're allowed to do that and just say, your honor, I'm not budging. I'm done here. I'd say, people serving juries don't even know you can do that. You just send a note to the judge and say I'm done, I'm not voting to convict, and then the judge has the decision to make the idea that so many people like you, Larry, are spending the rest of their lives in prison because somebody needed to get home, back to their job. This is not a unique thing, and it's something that needs to be addressed. When they filed back in, what were your thought? I could tell when they came in. Some of them were smiling, but some of them had their arms crossed and I stood up, and when they said guilty, I I couldn't stand anymore. I had to sit down or I would just pass out. I was just so much shock. If this were a boxing match. We won every single day. To prosecutor helped prove our case, even when the accelerators stuck and the police officers waived the mechanics away, saying, oh no, the problems in the car. He had a problem was sitting next to you taking notes. He wrote, specifically across the top of his notepad, accelerators sticking. Then swore under oath, I had no idea why I wrote that there was nothing wrong with the car. Bullshit. You knew that if mechanics an engineer that was there, would have found the problem, it would have proved that I was innocent. The big mistake to me, among all the other mistakes, was the judge not allowing a change of avenue, because you know, maybe you could have gotten a fair trial. But what was disheartening too, is that there was a problem with that vehicle. That Ford did recall that engine, but only on the pickup trucks, not on our station wagon. For that year. My lawyer tried to enter it into trial at the time, and to judge said that because it was not the pickup truck recalled, he wouldn't allow him to enter in evidence until the trial was over with so the jury never got to hear it. MM. So you've been in prison of for thirty years. I know you recently survived COVID on top of everything else, but can you explain that the prison experience, Wow, that wasn't there for my wife at a funeral for our children. My grandparents who raised me passed away while I was in here. These are just the emotional ones there. This has nothing to do with the pain that I went through dealing with all these people in the beginning that I could tell you that the first hang years were horrible. A matter of fact, the first five I have had more death threats, evil stairs, things thrown at me every day, NonStop for five years. I'm surprised I even survived it. And then the next five years, instead of being daily, it would be once or twice a week, and then eventually once or twice a month, and then finally down to once or twice a year. Now I can go several years before I hear a discouraging word from somebody. But I have, over the last two decades made a lot of good friends in here. You are the company you keep, so I try to keep company with people I would have as my friends. And neighbors out in the world. Can you describe, you know, a ray of light that you know you can identify five. The best thing that's ever happened to me was getting on maintenance twenty two years ago. I've had the opportunity to learn so much about things that I never knew before, so much about repairing buildings, clients, repair heating, air conditioning, electrical I spent hundreds of dollars on books and thousands of hours studying to get as good as I am now. I'm very good at what I do today. You've had appeals over the years, but it hasn't resulted in any relief. Can you explain why that process is dragged on for so long? Well, my lawyer, Frank Eamon, did an excellent job throughout the entire process. I owe him everything. The system itself is very slow. The courts don't care if you're innocent or not. They just care. Didn't get a fair trial. I didn't get a fair trial, and I went through the federal courts where they split politically eight to seven. I don't remember for his Democrats Republicans Republicans Democrats. Years is to be impartial. You're supposed to vote your conscious what you see. You're like a referee in a football game. You're supposed to judge everything by what you have before you. Every one of the judges said that they are disappointed in the state of Michigan for allowing suppressed evidence to be released to the media before trial. You would think that would get you to the United States Supreme Court, but it didn't. I guess some clerk putting in there in my case doesn't warrant going before the highest court in the land. My life, my constitutional rights violated, and that doesn't go before the highest court in the land. There's still one remedy left for clemency from Governor Whitmer. You've recently submitted your clemency petition. You know, clemency is to me something that I've been telling anyone who would listen, including people in power, that this is an underused power that is given very deliberately to governors and presidents because they are meant to serve as the last sort of stop gap to prevent injustices from being allowed to stand. And your case cries out for it, as I think anyone who's just listened to this podcast agrees. So is there anything people can do to help generate momentum for your clemency petition. You could write the pro board, try to contact the governor. I've got thousands of signatures on this petition begging her to hear my case to show clemency. Visit the petition website sign a petition. If she can hear that people are concerned, she may do something. We're going to put a link to the petition in the show notes. Please use your voice. Let's help bring Larry home together. This nightmare has gone on for far too long. Larry. We have a section of the show that is my favorite part each episode. First of all, I thank you for being here and for your courage and for sharing your story. So thank you, Larry Delisle. You know our thoughts are with you, and we're gonna build momentum for you with this podcast. This actually the show is called Closing Arguments, and this is where I turn my microphone off. I'm going to kick back, close my eyes and just listen to your words. First off, I would like to say that I am so proud of so many activists out there who are protesting both social and racial injustice, the protesting against wrongful convictions. You have to salute our heroes on the front line in healthcare who are taking everyone who has COVID nineteen. All these tragic deaths that are happening in everyone's family. My heart goes out to you. I would like to thank Ashley Ross and Carla Beck for everything they've done to get to this point. They have been very staunch supporters. They started the petition, they've supported the petition, and I love them to death. There are so many people that have written me since the Netflix documentary came out. Bless you all. Thank you very much. Please please stay safe out there. Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music on the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Action podcast Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one

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