Original subtitles

- Kalief Browder, held on Rikers Island

for three years, accused of stealing a backpack.

- I'm not sure that you can get three years for a backpack

had he been found guilty.

- This is how it goes on, day in and day out.

- There were problems in DA Robert Johnson's office,

especially with wrongful convictions.

- It was a bull[bleep] case.

- With a witness who's given different statements

in the police paperwork

about when this robbery actually happened.

May 1, May 2, May 8,

and then at some point they knew that victim was gone,

and that victim was back in Mexico.

- Failure to tell that to the defense

amounts to a serious ethical violation.

It also reveals the judges are responsible

because they let the case go on.

- There were nine judges over the course

of dozens of appearances.

We looked at the records,

and it turned out he appeared in your courtroom

six different times.

Do you feel any sense of responsibility

for what happened in this case?

- I think we all share some type of responsibility

that-- because no young person--

- But only one person was on the bench as the judge.

- Well, but I'm not the only judge that was on there.

- She's feisty. - Oh, jeez.

- She's quick. - Turn that phone off.

- She's real.

- What do you do with your life?

Nothing, right?

- She's a bully.

- Pleas are DiMango's specialty.

- You want me plead guilty to something I didn't do?

- Come on.

- It didn't matter to her where the victim was.

It didn't matter what was happening in Rikers.

If anyone was going to get Kalief to break,

it was Patricia DiMango.

- Yes or no?

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[radio fuzz]

[ominous music]

♪ ♪

- When I was on Rikers Island

and I would receive a court date,

all I ever thought was about that court date.

It takes forever to come

because all you think about is going home.

All you wanna do is go home.

You don't wanna be there,

you don't wanna be around none of that stuff.

Then they tell you your next court date is

two, three months away.

Then those three months go by and you go back to court,

and you find out that they're not ready for trial,

and it's just--

it's just--it's just heartbreaking and it's like--

I felt like they was just playing with my life.

♪ ♪

- Kalief was going through this vicious cycle

of solitary confinement and this vicious cycle in court

where he's shackled by the hands and feet,

put on a bus.

- They stick you in the basement of a courthouse

and you sit there till at least 10:00 in the morning,

which is when they first start bringing "the bodies" up.

"Is the body up?

Bring the body up. Bring the body up."

- There's all kinds of implicit biases

that we are dealing with and to have a person of color,

you know, show up shackled in a jumpsuit of some sort

plays right into the implicit biases

of a judge who's making determinations

about motions and release decisions.

- Go down to any hall of justice

in any city in America,

and what you're gonna see is poor black and brown people

lined up, going off to prison for doing stuff

that rich people are doing every day.

- And then he's put back on that bus

knowing that he's not going home to his family, again.

♪ ♪

- Let's say he stole a backpack.

I mean, so what?

So what? This man did not deserve to be in prison

three years and in solitary confinement.

- His time in solitary,

that lack of human contact

turned to despair.

- Did you ever go to a clinic to visit

with a mental health professional?

- No. I barely seen a psychiatrist.

Sometimes they would come to my cell.

- Would they come into your cell?

- No, they would just knock on my door.

- And stand outside? - Yes.

- And what would you say?

- I'll tell them I'm stressed out.

I told them I didn't sleep right.

I told them I was being starved,

I was not being put in the shower,

and I'm feeling suicidal.

- Kalief Browder was put in solitary confinement

for an enormous amount of time.

I'm gonna tell you as somebody that's witnessed it personally.

Solitary confinement is a mind-altering experience.

All you want is to get out of that cell.

- Former chief of the New York City Police Department,

he also ran Rikers Island for years,

and as a convicted felon,

he spent time in solitary confinement.

- As someone that spent 60 days inside solitary confinement,

it creates paranoia, it makes you insane.

There's people out there that say,

"You do the crime, you have to do the time."

I don't think those people understand

what that really means.

Solitary confinement doesn't make anybody better.

♪ ♪

It makes them worse.

[rhythmic music]

It creates enormous anxiety.

You have no conception what's going on

in the world around you,

and there are times when you go into your deepest depression.

♪ ♪

I can remember thinking, like, "What would I do to end this?"

You know, "How can I get out of here?"

♪ ♪

And there was actually a time that I actually--

[chuckles] I actually timed the COs

walking their tours, 'cause they would

look in the cells to check on us, you know.

Could I hang up and get it over by the time they came back?

♪ ♪

Would I have done it? I don't know,

but I'm confident... that everybody--

anybody that's in solitary that goes through that,

they think about it at least once, if not more.

- Suicide attempts on Rikers Island

are very common.

It's nothing like the outside world

where someone would be treated

with a sense of urgency and alarm.

On the inside these are everyday situations.

[dramatic music]

- You would run into self mutilation.

It would start with the cutting of arms,

picking at skin, then it would escalate.

- I'd go on these binges

where I can cut for weeks to a month.

The feeling is almost like freedom,

'cause I control it.

- It's just shifting pain.

You create a new obstacle, a new pain for yourself.

- I went from a psychological phase

where I was hanging up every day,

and it became addictive.

And it was to the point where I didn't care

if it worked or didn't work.

- I think 80% of inmates probably think about suicide

at some point or another.

I've thought about it many times.

I've tried it.

- It was just a matter of...

all the stress and everything I was going through.

Being in solitary confinement that long

without talking to anybody,

I felt like that maybe had something to do with it.

I felt like I was losing my sanity.

- When did you formulate the plan

to try to commit suicide?

- Well, I was actually thinking about it two, three weeks.

- Did you tell anyone you were going to do this?

- No.

- And in March of 2012, he attempted suicide.

[ominous music]

He's literally in a noose, hanging off the ground.

They came in and started beating him down.

He ran out of the cell to get in the hallway

'cause he knew there were cameras there.

You know, he started fighting back,

he was [bleep] crazy at that point.

Could you blame him?

And they "restrained" him.

He attempted suicide, wasn't cared for properly.

He wasn't even taken for psychiatric treatment.

Did you know that he had attempted suicide?

- No. - He never said that to you.

He never talked about that. - No.

- Did they ever tell you? - No.

- Did they ever call you and say, "Miss Browder,

"by the way, your son just attempted suicide,

we just wanted to let you know"?

He was 17. I don't know why they didn't contact his family.

- And you never saw any mental health

following this incident?

- No. It was never reported.

- Kalief's suicide attempt was never considered

to be a suicide attempt.

It was considered to be what's called

a goal-directed action to remove himself

from solitary confinement.

Another term would be "malingering."

- They know he's desperate to get out of solitary,

so they say he's doing it to achieve that goal.

He's a manipulator.

The mental health response for attempting suicide,

it's very callous.

These mental health staff become so preoccupied

with trying to find evidence that the person's malingering

that they miss the real story.

[droning music]

- Corizon was the hired contractor

to deliver care.

Their truthfulness, you know, gets questioned.

♪ ♪

- We began finding cases at Rikers Island.

One in particular was an inmate who had swallowed

a highly caustic ball of detergent

and was left to die in his cell despite asking for help

from medical personnel, from guards passing by.

- He killed himself.

There's no lie about killing yourself.

There's no hustle in that.

- And if what you're willing to do is try to kill yourself,

to try and hang yourself, you're desperate.

♪ ♪

- When he was in jail,

and he would go to court and expect to go home that day,

having those expectations and not leaving--

well, he just couldn't take it anymore.

Those were the days he tried to kill himself.

There was a parallel here.

These prosecutors continued this whole song and dance

about not being ready and asking for more time.

The judges let it go.

[clock ticking]

Kalief's defense attorney let it go.

[clock ticking]

All the district attorney had to dhein t case

was bring one victim forward.

This wasn't a complex racketeering case

or a case where, like, five or ten people got arrested

under drug conspiracy

with loads of paperwork and wiretaps.

This was one witness.

♪ ♪

- I started researching this story.

I couldn't find the man whose book bag

he was said to have stolen.

Some people even said that that man doesn't even live

in the country anymore.

[woman yelling indistinctly]

[phone ringing]

[both speaking Spanish]

[dial tone]

- Well, me and my friend, we came from a party

on 3rd Avenue in the Bronx.

I seen the flashing sirens.

I was thinking it was a search-and-frisk routine,

but they told us, no, there was a guy

in the police car saying that we robbed him.

I looked in the car, I couldn't really see a good look at him,

but, you know, he didn't look familiar at all.

I don't even know to this day, I don't even know how he looks.

[both speaking Spanish]

[ominous music]

♪ ♪

- [speaking Spanish]

- When you left the party at 2:00 a.m.,

where were you intending to go?

- Back home.

- How far of a distance was the party from where you lived?

- I would say about three blocks.

- [speaking Spanish]

- Late at night, it was, you know, real dark.

The lights--the lights-- there weren't really

any streetlights on that block at the time.

- After they searched us and they realized

we didn't have anything on us,

they went back to the police car

and they came back and they said that

the guy is saying that we tried to rob him,

and then another police officer came about five seconds later,

he said that the guy is saying

that we robbed him two weeks ago now.

And the next thing you know, they putting the cuffs on me.

I don't even know this dude.

- I could see if Kalief was caught committing a crime.

But he was just walking home from a party.

- I blame the DA for not scrutinizing

and being more diligent with this victim.

There was no evidence at all except for the victim saying,

"It was that kid and his friend."

I mean, did he just pick the first two black kids he saw

on the street?

- When that police officer arrested Kalief,

he acted as judge, jury, and executioner.

- Sometimes, you know, I feel like I'm never going home.

- The citizens place their trust in elected officials.

They expect fair governance

and efficient deliverance of services.

- But our investigation has discovered

that many of these people shouldn't even be here.

- There were problems in DA Robert Johnson's office,

especially with wrongful convictions.

Do you think he was a good DA?

- I worked for him for ten years,

I think that he--you know, the community liked him,

he got reelected over and over and over again.

- National registry of exonerations,

they say that from January, '89, through December, 2013,

the Bronx had 29 exonerations, and that per capita,

that's the highest rate in the state

and the fifth nationwide.

- How it happened was not under my watch, Darryl.

- Okay, so--all right. - So therefore, I couldn't do

anything about that. - Well, let me ask you

about something that did happen under your watch.

We've talked on this program about Kalief Browder,

the young man who was held, accused of stealing a backpack,

held on Rikers Island for three years.

- Yes. - They had no witness,

they had no evidence, they had no case.

Um, we looked at the records,

and it turned out he appeared in your courtroom

six different times from late 2011 to mid 2012.

Now, that would've been the middle

of his incarceration.

He was in your courtroom November 4, 2011.

- You could've made a motion sua sponte, right?

You could've just on your own said, "Release this person

from jail, he's been here for two years."

- Oh, no, no. I don't--I don't--

not necessarily you can do a sua sponte.

- This has nothing to do with you?

- I didn't say it had nothing to do with me. I think that--

- Do you feel any sense of responsibility

for what happened in this case?

- Mm...

I think we all share some type of responsibility.

- I just looked at her and I couldn't believe her.

Every time you turn around, the prose--

"Oh, your honor, we need another week.

"We need another two weeks. Oh, so-and-so is on vacation,

we need to, you know, have more time."

- I know, it was a joke.

- Where was the victim for three years?

- It was a bull[bleep] case to begin with.

The DAs did not subject their witness

to any kind of scrutiny that would've passed,

you know, anybody's laugh test.

- What normally happens in a situation such as this,

detectives would be notified and they may come down

to enhance this arrest right at that time,

but I cannot see that any detectives responded

and enhanced that case on that night.

The only paperwork from a detective that I see

was an interview conducted six days after the arrest.

- Detective Caraballo met with the victim

after Kalief got arrested.

She reopened the case and there's a reason

why they reopened the case briefly.

- Why? - I don't know.

- Now, the job of going back to speak with the super

or the owner of the building would've fallen

on the detectives conducting the follow-up investigation,

but a police officer or a detective is not required

to go out and find information

to exonerate the person they just arrested.

That said, a police officer's past

may come into play at a trial

if the officer was accused of any wrongdoing in the past.

- I was just about ready to sit down

and watch the Yankee game.

I get a knock on the front door here

and it was a police--

plainclothes police officers, asking for me.

- They asked him, "Hey, can you come with us

"down to the 48th precinct?

We have to talk to you about something."

Mr. Johnson was then put in a lineup,

and Detective Yvette Caraballo was with the 9-year-old boy

who had his bike stolen.

She was just very forceful in picking Michael Johnson

and telling the boy to select him out of the lineup.

Mr. Johnson was the subject of intense ridicule

from the "New York Post."

His entire family thought

that he had robbed a bicycle from a nine-year-old boy.

Then there was a video that fully exonerated Mr. Johnson,

that it wasn't him. it just happened to be

some other African-American bald man.

That video was not shown to his defense counsel

till after he had been remanded to Rikers Island.

- That Detective Caraballo,

I kind of think she knew the video existed.

- Only thing on my mind was, "I gotta go home,

I didn't do this."

And, you know, it was scary, because, you know...

I'm being held accountable for something I didn't do.

I don't even know this guy.

- This guy flees the country.

Meanwhile, the DA leaves Kalief in Rikers to rot.

They just presumed him guilty,

that he was just another [bleep] black kid from the Bronx

that did something wrong.

He's already in jail.

He's gonna end up taking a plea,

so they didn't give a [bleep], and they just let it go.

- During this period of time, Kalief,

did you have any other altercations

with other corrections officers?

- Yes. His name was...Grinnage.

There was a lot of tension between us.

- Can you tell me what happened?

- Just arguments.

- What would you argue over?

- The phone, the shower, soap, toilet paper, stuff like that.

Whenever I needed tissues so I could use the bathroom

he would say, "All right, I got you,"

and then he would never give it to me.

Then an hour later I would be screaming out my door,

"I need tissue!"

And it eventually led to the incident.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

- Tell me what happened on that date.

- He came to my cell and he told me

he was gonna beat me up once I got in the shower.

♪ ♪

- Do you know why?

- Because in the shower there are no cameras.

♪ ♪

- So what did you do in response to that?

- To be honest, I didn't really think he was gonna do anything.

- So describe what happened.

♪ ♪

- He opened up my cell.

He started to escort me to the shower.

He said something,

and I said something back to him, and...

he slammed me to the floor.

♪ ♪

[ominous music]

- Somebody help!

Please! Please! Somebody help me!

- I couldn't do anything, because my hands was

cuffed to the back, and it's scary.

[dramatic music]

- Why did you slam my brother to the floor?

What did my brother say

that would provoke that type of action?

He didn't touch you.

He wasn't fighting nobody else.

Another guard runs.

To do what?

To help the defenseless guard that's on top of my brother?

Or because he thought my brother was gonna get up

and beat him up?

How, if my brother's in handcuffs?

What he gonna do?

♪ ♪

Why did they allow this treatment to continue?

- According to the Use of Force report,

Kalief tried to get away from him,

he was aggressive towards the officer,

and that he was restraining Kalief.

You know, "The officers,

"they were trying to do the right thing

in restraining him," and this and that.

I'm like, "bull[bleep]."

- Did you have any injuries from this?

- I had an injury to my face.

- What happened to your face?

- It was a bruise.

- This is the statement

from the correctional health services.

"Kalief admits to hitting his face into a shower wall."

That doesn't even make sense.

You know, like, it could not have happened

that Kalief slammed his own head into a shower.

You know, these officer probably know

some of these doctors or nurses,

and they're falsifying documents.

These guys are--they're in cahoots with the officers,

'cause no one's gonna challenge this.

- One of the big problems at Rikers is a code of silence.

All the officers, practically, will lie

or look the other way for the bad people,

and that creates a culture of brutality.

- This event happened in full view of the cameras.

All the inmates know exactly where the cameras are,

and he knew it was just so brazen

that it had been captured on film.

- Kalief's like, "I want to go to the hearing this time.

"I want to go to the proceeding and tell the judge

that there's a video of that and that officer slammed me down."

But they never had a hearing.

It rarely ever happens, you know?

As long as Kalief is still standing

and his skull isn't fractured,

these officers aren't getting charged with any crime.

You know, the district attorney's office

only opens investigations if--

you know, if someone's basically in a coma.

And then he was brought back to court.

You know, it's just, like, an ongoing pattern,

but at this point, it's just completely out of control.

- The DA had an obligation to honestly state

whether or not he or she was ready for trial,

and in order to be ready for trial

a witness has to be reachable and available.

- If the prosecutors knew that they did not have a witness,

then their failure to tell that to the defense lawyer,

in my view, amounts to a serious ethical violation.

- These prosecutors knew or should've known

that there was no case here,

and they have obligations to investigate,

especially when at the outset it appears

that something stinks to high heaven.

- In the district attorney's notes

you see that they're indicating to each other

that they don't have witness, they can't find the witness.

[dramatic music]

- I just--I still--I can't--

I-I just don't-- I-I don't remember everything.

♪ ♪

- How could they prosecute a case

if the witness isn't there to testify?

- Do you know the case of Kalief Browder?

- They knew that victim was gone.

They continued this whole song and dance

about not being ready and asking for more time,

and the judges just let it go.

- And then you try and make him admit that he's guilty.

To what?

[ominous music]

♪ ♪

- At that time, I felt like that was the right thing to do,

fight my case, even though I knew

sometimes things happen and some people are found guilty

of things they didn't do,

but that was a risk I was willing to take.

- From the day he got arrested, they try and get him

to plead guilty to something he didn't do,

but Kalief stood his ground, he wouldn't do it.

- And that's when Judge DiMango got involved.

- Good morning, thank you.

- She's feisty. - Oh, jeez.

- She's quick. - Turn that phone off.

- She's real.

- I mean, it is prison.

- Pleas are DiMango's specialty.

On this day, nearly half of the more than 30 defendants

who appeared before her took them.

It's why she's here in the Bronx,

to help with a huge backlog of cases,

some of which date back years

and is seen as an embarrassment across the state.

- How many cases did you do a day?

- I did anywhere from 30 to 70 felony cases a day.

- You were a closer.

- I was a closer. I was the Mariano Rivera

of the court system. - [laughs]

- I have to make a full disclosure

before I talk about Patricia DiMango. Okay?

She's an archenemy of mine, okay?

I think she's-- she's a bully.

- What do you do with your life? Nothing, right?

- She had a certain style where she pressed

these defendants into taking a plea.

- Plea here or take your chances,

because if you lose at trial on these cases,

you may end up with much more than a year and a half.

[dramatic music]

- It didn't matter to her where the victim was.

It didn't matter what was happening to Kalief in Rikers.

Even fact that this guy's backpack

kept Kalief in jail for three years,

she didn't give a [bleep].

She was going to get him to plea. That's what she does.

- Yes or no? Yes or no?

♪ ♪

[droning music]

- Whether Kalief Browder took the backpack or not

is insignificant.

It holds no weight to the story, you know?

This man deserved justice

under the current laws of our system,

and the system failed him.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- Every time I went to court there was always

that side of me that--telling me, like, "You gonna go home."

But then I tried not to hype myself up,

'cause it hurts when you think you going home

and then you don't go home.

- In March of 2013,

they brought in Patricia DiMango to clear up

the court congestion in the Bronx.

- Do community service, it'll help you.

- The DA's all over the place, they can't find the witness.

Then that's when they came back with the misdemeanors

to just try to get rid of it, you know, for their stats.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- The first thing that came to my head is,

"For them to offer me something like that,

they have to know they wrong,

so if they know they wrong, there's no point in taking it."

- DiMango pressed him to take a plea,

and he refused it.

He said no. "I didn't do it.

I'll go to trial."

DiMango says to him, "Okay, no sweat off my back."

And so the DA states

that they're still not ready for trial.

They request two weeks, and the case is adjourned.

DA had made the representation to the court at that point

that they're in contact with the victim,

but that he's in Mexico, and that they were gonna

fly him "up to the Bronx" for the trial.

I mean, give me a break.

Then they come back in April.

Of course, they weren't ready, they didn't have the witness,

but at this point it's just completely out of control,

and it became, like, more apparent

that they didn't have a witness at all.

They were still trying to do it

for as long as they could get away with it.

- The judge told me that if I plead guilty

of time served, and I had about 33 months in at that time,

that I would be released-- I would be released from jail

that same day without any probation,

and my felony would be dropped down to a misdemeanor.

And, you know, it sounded good,

because it was right before summertime

and I really wanted to go home, but I didn't do it,

you're not gonna-- you're not gonna make me say

I did something just so I could go home.

And she told Kalief, "The district attorney has been

"in contact with the victim.

"Could go to jail for up to 15 years.

You have a lot to lose here."

[dramatic music]

- Where do you go, what do you do?

- She said, "Now, are you sure you want to go to trial,

or you want to go home today?"

I told her, "I didn't do it. I'm not--I'm not taking--

I'm not taking this-- I'm not taking the deal."

- That meant he had to go

back to that hellhole that he came from.

But he did it to take a stand.

- It was the most difficult decision

I ever had in my life,

but I had to maintain my innocence, so I had--

I had to just stay in there and--and fight it.

- I know he thought about it.

How could he not think about it? That was his life, you know.

He didn't know when he was getting out of there.

- It was a lot mentally, because half of you wants

to get out of there, and then the other half

don't want to leave just over the strength of principle.

I said "Yo, what if I made a mistake?"

- I'm a little on the both side of admiring him for his bravery

and wanting to punch him in the face

for staying in there.

Nobody wants to be in a room by yourself.

If you could get out, you would do anything to get out.

- And he's-- he's a better person than me,

'cause I probably would've said, "Okay, I'm guilty,"

just to go home.

- It was--it was--it-- to be honest, it was--

it was the anger towards the way the system was running.

I didn't--I didn't think it was fair.

- The courage that Mr. Browder showed

is one of the most remarkable things about this case,

because I guarantee, 99 out of 100 people

will plead guilty to something they didn't do

when they are forced into the situation

Mr. Browder was forced into.

- Dudes in there, they used to tell me,

"Kalief, why? Just take it, go home."

They would call me all types of names,

"You're dumb, you're stupid.

If that was me I would've said I did it, went home."

And I'm not gonna lie. I mean, it did get to me, I--

when they used to talk like that I used to go

to my cell and lay down and think, like,

"You know, maybe I am crazy, or maybe I am going too far,"

but I just did what I felt was right.

- To stand up for your rights under the worst circumstances,

this is an unbelievable guy.

You don't find that many people like him,

and he deserves to be taken seriously.

- Of course he's not there,

and I think at that point, DiMango realized,

"Hey, the DA's never been ready on this case.

It's like all the lights went on.

- Eventually, the district attorneys

have to admit that they don't really have a case,

the witness that they felt that they had

was no longer in the country.

- We don't have a witness. We know we can't make the case.

We know for a fact that if judge says

we're starting the trial, we'd have to dismiss.

There's no question about it.

- She pressed the DA.

She demanded that they either bring their witness in

or dismiss this case.

- And I overheard the prosecutor.

She told another lawyer, "I'm not putting my job

"on the line. I don't know where he is

and I don't know when he coming back."

But you let my son rot in there for three years.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- They had to release him.

♪ ♪

- I felt relieved.

I felt like that was the best feeling

I ever had in my life.

[laughs]

- But by then, the damage had been done.

- The paranoia, the memories, it was just too much.

- 911 emergency. - [screams]