BOOKS: ​“The Trials of Walter Ogrod” Chronicles Pennsylvania Possible Innocence Case

Walter Ogrod was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Philadelphia in 1996 for the 1988 mur­der of a 4‑year-old girl, whose body was found in a dis­card­ed tele­vi­sion box. Ogrod, who is devel­op­men­tal­ly dis­abled, has long main­tained his inno­cence, but despite sig­nif­i­cant irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the case and amidst alle­ga­tions of offi­cial mis­con­duct, local pros­e­cu­tors have fought efforts to obtain DNA test­ing of the phys­i­cal evi­dence and to inves­ti­gate the role a dis­cred­it­ed prison infor­mant played in implicating Ogrod. 

A new book, ​“The Trials of Walter Ogrod,” by Tom Lowenstein chron­i­cles the crime, the tri­al, and the fail­ures of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in Ogrod’s case. The book tells how a Philadelphia homi­cide detec­tive inter­ro­gat­ed the intel­lec­tu­al­ly lim­it­ed Ogrod for more than 14 hours before Ogrod signed a 16-page con­fes­sion that was writ­ten by the detec­tive and that was filled with emo­tion­al­ly-laden lan­guage Ogrod — with an autism spec­trum dis­or­der — would not have used. 

Ogrod’s court pro­ceed­ings have been con­tro­ver­sial from the out­set. The jury in Ogrod’s 1993 tri­al vot­ed to acquit, but as the ver­dict was being read, one juror called out that he had changed his mind, caus­ing a mis­tri­al. Before the sec­ond tri­al, Ogrod was placed with a prison cell­mate named John Hall, a snitch so noto­ri­ous for pro­duc­ing con­fes­sions that he was nick­named ​“The Monsignor.” Hall claimed that Ogrod had con­fessed to him, giv­ing a sto­ry that was com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from the writ­ten con­fes­sion extract­ed by detec­tives and used in the first tri­al. Hall also intro­duced Ogrod to a sec­ond infor­mant, who received lenien­cy in his own case after claim­ing Ogrod had made a con­fes­sion sim­i­lar to the sto­ry Hall had reported. 

Ogrod did not match wit­ness descrip­tions of the like­ly per­pe­tra­tor and no phys­i­cal evi­dence linked him to the crime, but a jury con­vict­ed him in a retri­al in 1996 based upon the infor­mant tes­ti­mo­ny. A year lat­er, Hall was dis­cred­it­ed after being caught fab­ri­cat­ing a con­fes­sion in anoth­er high pro­file Philadelphia murder case. 

Ogrod’s lawyers have sought DNA test­ing of fin­ger­nail scrap­ings tak­en from the vic­tim, but pros­e­cu­tors and courts have blocked their efforts. Philadelphia is in the midst of a cam­paign for District Attorney, and Lowenstein believes the next per­son elect­ed to that office should take anoth­er look at Ogrod’s case and sev­er­al oth­ers like it, in which pros­e­cu­tors used jail­house snitch­es and high-pres­sure inter­ro­ga­tions to obtain convictions. 

“What I would like to see is the next DA in Philadelphia do a thor­ough review of death-penal­ty and life-impris­on­ment cas­es from the 1990s,” he said. ​“There was a sys­temic prob­lem with how that DA’s office was prosecuting people.”