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Onetime suspect: Police scared him into confessing to girl's murder
By Harriet Ryan
SAN DIEGO, California (Court TV) -- Joshua Treadway insisted Thursday that he had nothing to do with Stephanie Crowe's murder and said his detailed confession five years ago was the work of police bullies and "a 15-year-old little boy" trying to pacify them. "I was a deer looking right into the headlights and they were saying 'Tell me what I want to hear or I'm going to put my foot on the gas,'" Treadway testified during a preliminary hearing for Richard Tuite, the man now charged with Stephanie's fatal stabbing. Treadway, one of three teens originally accused of the 1998 crime, concluded three days on the witness stand with six hours of tough cross-examination by Tuite's attorney. Defense lawyer Brad Patton, who claims the teenagers are the real killers, confronted Treadway with the account he gave investigators five years ago and suggested he repeatedly deceived officers about a variety of subjects, some not related to Stephanie's death, long before the questioning became coercive. Treadway, now a 20-year-old college student, acknowledged lying about his theft of a knife apparently unrelated to the stabbing as well as other details, and said he had no explanation for the lies. "I was extremely upset at the time and cannot fully explain my logic," he said. Both he and Michael Crowe, Stephanie's 14-year-old brother, confessed to officers during lengthy interrogations. They later recanted, and a judge deemed large portions of the statements coerced and inadmissible in court. On the eve of their 1999 trial, defense DNA tests showed Stephanie's blood on a shirt worn by Tuite, a 33-year-old drifter seen wandering in the neighborhood. Treadway said exhaustion, hunger and fear of prison made him willing to say "whatever it took to get home." "If they would have said, 'Where's Jimmy Hoffa buried,' I would have told them," he said. During his cross-examination, Patton accused Treadway of cooperating with the prosecution of Tuite to advance a multimillion-dollar suit against law enforcement agencies. Patton pointed to new testimony by Treadway that he was awake and talking with his brother at 1 a.m. on Jan. 21, 1998, the time he was supposedly standing lookout at Stephanie's murder. "For you and your family to be successful in this civil suit that has been filed in this case it is important for you to have an alibi for the time frame," Patton charged. Treadway acknowledged previously saying he went to bed at 11 p.m., but said he changed his account after family members jogged his memory and not to help his case. On Friday, Richard Leo, a criminology professor and expert in false confessions, will testify for the prosecution. He has called the case a textbook example of police coercion.
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