max s. gerber(the latest shot)

in the summer of 1998, in a small town in ohio, a 5 year old girl was killed, stabbed in the throat. anthony harris was twelve years old at the time, one of very few african american kids in town. after a couple weeks of searching for the girl’s killer, police arrested anthony and interrogated him. they used a technique meant for adults, meant to elicit confessions in cases where there was already significant evidence. it’s also commonly known that this technique can elicit false confessions in children. so anthony confessed. he was scared, confused and tired. but he wasn’t the killer.

the forced confession was all the evidence the prosecutor had against him, but it was enough. he was sentenced to prison where he spent two years waiting for his lawyers to overturn the conviction. the original prosecutor and judge remained convinced of anthony’s guilt despite acknowledging that the confession was coerced. but he was a free man, he rejoined his family, he went to high school. when he tried joining the marines his past was dug up and he was denied. a year later he tried joining the army and was again denied. in the meantime there was a civil suit ongoing. eventually this was settled for over three and a half million dollars. anthony’s name was cleared, finally. he joined the marines in 2006, has served one tour in iraq, and when i went to meet him he was expecting to head to afghanistan sometime in the near future.

i met up with anthony in his hotel room in san diego. he was on leave for the weekend, seeing a girlfriend, looking to buy a house with some of his settlement money. he didn’t talk much about the case, which i can understand. sometimes when you spend your whole life trying to put something behind you the last thing you want to do is keep explaining it to people. we set up the shots while anthony went to drive his girlfriend home, though somehow that short trip ended up taking him over two hours. ordinarily this kind of behavior annoys me, but really, there are some people who deserve to be cut a little slack. he’s got to be one of them, right?

my thanks to corporal bennett for his gracious assistance, and to the incomparable maggie soladay at the american lawyer magazine for picking a really unconventional shot for the opener. that’s really cool, maggie, and i very much appreciate it.

see the whole story here.