[What follows is a reply brief submitted by Bill Lueders to the Madison Police and Fire Commission on Nov. 12, 1998.]

BEFORE THE BOARD OF THE FIRE AND POLICE COMMISSIONERS
OF THE CITY OF MADISON

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BILL LUEDERS,
Complainant
vs.
LT. DENNIS GEORGE RILEY,
Respondent,

_________________________________________________________

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The Respondent advances several arguments in support of the contention that Lt. Riley had no reason to lie in his comments to me on Feb. 5, 1998, and therefore should be taken at his word that he simply forgot about the existence of letters he had received three months earlier. Yet none of these arguments is as reasonable, plausible or credible as the explanation that Lt. Riley told a deliberate untruth.

Respondent claims Lt. Riley would have had no particular reason to remember the letters of complaint he received from Patty. Professedly, it would have been just one more piece of paper to cross the desk of Lt. Riley, whose "supervisory caseload amounted to between 2,000 and 2,500 felony cases for calendar 1997." (Transcript, P. 179-180, Respondent's Brief, P. 16.) Professedly, "The letters, from his perspective, were unremarkable." (Brief, P. 18.) Professedly, "A suspect recanting a confession, and...claiming that the police acted inappropriately in extracting the confession is not unusual." (Brief, P. 18.) Professedly, "As was clear from his testimony, Lt. Riley does not believe, and has never believed, that [Patty’s] letters were a complaint." (Brief, P. 20.) Professedly, for Riley to deny knowledge of the letters if in fact he remembered them "makes no sense." (Brief, P. 21, 22.) Professedly, he had "no logical reason to lie" in disclaiming knowledge of the letters, "given that his supervisor agreed with his decision to file them in the first place." (Brief, P. 22.) Professedly, Lt. Riley's actions after our phone call are consistent with his claims of forgetfulness (Brief P. 8 to 14, P. 20.)

None of these contentions is supported by the available evidence. In fact, in each case, there is substantial evidence to the contrary. Let's take them in turn.

Lt. Riley would have no reason to remember Patty's letters because his "supervisory caseload amounted to between 2,000 and 2,500 felony cases in 1997." (Transcript, P. 179-180, Respondent's Brief, P. 16.) This claim is, on its face, highly questionable. The Madison Police Department, in its internal record-keeping, does not distinguish between felony and misdemeanor cases, since charging decisions are the purview of prosecutors, not police. But it does show that the department as a whole made just 7,514 arrests for all crimes in 1997; this is for offenses committed by juveniles as well as adults, in two crime categories--Part 1 offenses (including murder, forcible rape, burglary, larceny) and Part II offenses (including forgery, fraud, driving under the influence). Indeed, the number of felony investigations Lt. Riley, one of 18 lieutenants on the Madison Police Department, claims to have supervised approximates the total number of felony referrals (2,984 in 1997) received by the Dane County District Attorney's office from Madison and every other jurisdiction in the county in all of 1997.

The DA's office received more than twice as many misdemeanor referrals (6,623 in 1997) as felony referrals. If Lt. Riley oversaw 2,000 to 2,500 felony cases, one would logically conclude he oversaw at least as many cases that, like Patty's, involved misdemeanor offenses. Let's say there were only as many misdemeanor cases as felony ones; that's a total of 4,000 to 5,000 cases on Lt. Riley's plate. Assuming he did nothing but work on these cases, he would be about to devote, on average, less than a half-hour to each.

If this is true, or even if Lt. Riley's caseload is not as huge as his numbers suggest, it's clear from Lt. Riley's own testimony that the case involving Patty occupied a far greater share of his time than the average case he supervised. Not only did he make the assignment and maintain contact with detectives during the investigation, he discussed the case with Capt. LaMar, read Det. Woodmansee's 49-page police report, and reviewed the entire case record prior to and during detailed discussions with Jill Poarch and Colleen O'Brien. Clearly, this case occupied much more of Lt. Riley's time and attention than the average misdemeanor case. Thus, it is reasonable to believe he would be more likely to remember this case than the average case.

Add to this the fact that Lt. Riley was aware that a reporter was asking questions about the Patricia [last name redacted] case, presumably for a newspaper article. He knew the department had taken the highly unusual if not unprecedented step of issuing a press release accusing an alleged rape victim of having made the whole thing up. He knew she had responded to the resulting newspaper article by sending two letters to himself making extremely serious allegations about the conduct of detectives. In every way, the case involving Patty was unusual, atypical and out-of-the-ordinary. If Lt. Riley is able to clearly recall any of the thousands of cases he supervised in 1997, he should have remembered this one.

"The letters, from his perspective, were unremarkable." (Respondent's Brief, P. 18.) Again, the available evidence, and Lt. Riley's own behavior, clearly contradicts this contention. These letters were remarkable enough that Lt. Riley wrote a note to the investigating detective, "Det. Woodmansee, see me on this, Lt. Riley," and later met with Woodmansee to discuss the letters contents. Lt. Riley also surprised his supervisor, Capt. LaMar, by bringing him the letter from Patty addressed "Dear Supervisor" on an especially hectic workday. Capt. LaMar also testified that he understood the letter had not come through the mail but rather in a manner that was unusual. This fact had apparently impressed Lt. Riley enough that he mentioned it to Capt. LaMar, who gave him specific instructions as to what should be done with these letters. Lt. Riley knew, or should have known, these instructions were not followed.

"A suspect recanting a confession, and...claiming that the police acted inappropriately in extracting the confession is not unusual." (Brief, P. 18.] The Respondent, in support of this claim, cites the testimony of Deputy District Attorney Jill Karofsky, who testified, "It happens all the time." (Transcript, P. 137.) As the Commission knows, I was prevented from following up on this line of questioning with questions of my own, even though the Respondent had explored this area. In fact, this claim is wholly inaccurate when applied to the issue at hand. I submit that if I had not been subjected to restrictions that were not consistently applied to the Respondent, I would have established what Karofsky admitted in an interview with me on Feb. 12, 1998--that this was the first and only case she is aware of in which an alleged rape victim has accused police of coercing her confession and then been criminally prosecuted in Dane County for recanting. This was, in all respects, an extraordinary prosecution--as Lt. Riley must have realized when he learned that a reporter was asking questions about the case both of people in the Police Department and other professionals.

"As was clear from his testimony, Lt. Riley does not believe, and has never believed, that the [Patty] letters were a complaint." (Brief, P. 20.) In fact, this statement is expressly contradicted by Lt. Riley's own testimony. Asked what he understood the nature of Patty's letters to be, Lt. Riley stated: "I understood the nature of the correspondence to be a person who was being told that she was going to be charged venting about the fact that she had a complaint about the officers that did the interview." (Transcript, P. 203, emphasis added.) Lt. Riley clearly understood that Patty was attempting to voice a complaint, and has never explained why he did not treat it accordingly.

In fact, as Lt. Malloy testified, it would have been appropriate for Lt. Riley to have passed these letters on to the Professional Standards Unit (Transcript, P. 75); that's why Lt. Malloy told Lt. Riley that he wished he had known earlier about the letters' existence. (Transcript. P. 53.) In fact, the letters from Patty are similar to many of the 30 citizen complaints the Police Department acknowledged receiving in 1997 and treated accordingly. These include a letter from a jail inmate addressed to "Police Chief Willy Williams" (97-15) in which the inmate apologizes for swearing at the officer who arrested him because he's black, and another that asks police to provide, by way of remedy, "the names and addresses and phone numbers of the of the young ladies who falsely accused me of following them...." (97-23) The only thing that makes Patty's letters different from other letters the department considered to be complaints is that the allegations they level are significantly more serious. In fact, at no point in this proceeding has the Respondent refuted my characterization of these letters as being easily the most serious complaint lodged against a Madison police officer by a citizen in all of 1997.

Patty's letter addressed "Dear Supervisor" alleges that "your detectives" interrogated her at length and that it was her belief they were not going to let her leave "until they heard what they wanted to hear." It says she asked to leave the room and was told she could not. It says she now knows "everything these people said in that room was a lie." It says that whereas she previously would have urged a sexual assault victim to go to the police, her advice now would be: "Prepare to be victimized again."

The accompanying letter to the newspaper, dated Oct. 22, says the detectives, in getting the complainant to admit she made a false report, made "many threats," including: "If you think I was good working for you, you should see me working against you." It says she was told the matter would go away quietly if she confessed; otherwise the media, her boyfriend and the man she suspected of raping her would be notified. (All these actions were in fact taken.) The letter concludes, "The investigating detective on my case was not only unprofessional, but may have put myself as well as other women in danger by not taking my complaint seriously. He is sending out the message that we are not to be believed."

For Riley to deny knowledge of the letters if in fact he remembered them "makes no sense." (Brief, P. 21, 22.) Actually, given what Lt. Riley knew and when he knew it, it makes enormously sense that he would not want to admit the truth. When I called Lt. Riley on Feb. 5 and asked him about these letters, I did not immediately volunteer that I had these letters or that I knew these letters were in the department's possession. At this point, Lt. Riley did not know what I did and didn't know. He knew I had been asking questions about the Patricia [last name redacted] case, which he had supervised. He knew from his conversations with Colleen O'Brien and Jill Poarch that questions had been raised about the representations of the investigating detective. But he did not know from these conversations that I had obtained a copy of the letter from Patty. Maybe I was asking about the case even though I didn't know about or have the letters.

When I spoke to Lt. Riley on Feb. 5, 1998, I asked whether he had received letters of complaint from Patty [last name redacted] and said, "Not to my knowledge." Then I read the letters to him, for the first time revealing that I apparently had copies of these letters. He responded by claiming not to remember them--indeed, Lt. Riley said nothing to even indicate he was aware of an investigation involving a person named Patricia [last name redacted]. At the time, I did not know for certain that Lt. Riley had gotten Patty's letters, or even that he supervised this investigation. Then I told Lt. Riley, for the first time, that I was aware someone in the department had received these letters, since spokesperson Tom Snyder had indicated he had seen one of them. Only then would Lt. Riley have realized that, not only did I have the letters, I knew the department had them too. No wonder he was upset when he got off the phone; he knew he had lied, and that there was a way the whole thing might unravel, which is what happened.

Lt. Riley had "no logical reason to lie" in disclaiming knowledge of the letters, "given that his supervisor agreed with his decision to file them in the first place." (Brief, P. 22.) Wrong. He had every reason to lie. Lt. Riley knew, from his review of the case file in response to concerns raised by O'Brien and Poarch, that Patty's letters were not in the records department case file, where his supervisor had instructed him to make sure they were placed. He would have known that, aside from his failure to follow department policy in not forwarding what he recognized was an attempt to complain, he also failed to fulfill his supervisor's directive. Respondent argues that Det. Woodmansee "misunderstood Lt. Riley's direction" (Brief, P. 18) by instead placing these letters in his personal file. If so, Lt. Riley would have had occasion, just prior to my call, to realize that this misunderstanding had occurred, since the letters were not in the file he reviewed.

Lt. Riley's actions after our phone call are consistent with his claims of forgetfulness. (Brief P. 8 to 14, P. 20.) Sorry, they are not. Instead, they are fully consistent with the theory that Lt. Riley, not knowing what I knew, was intentionally deceitful in claiming not to know what he knew, and that he realized his mistake toward the end of our call when I told him that Officer Snyder had seen one of the letters. After all, if I was able to direct Lt. Riley ("Dear Supervisor" himself) to someone within the department who had seen the letters, I could direct Lt. Malloy to this person as well. The letter would come to light, as would the fact that it had been received, reviewed and buried by Lt. Riley. He set out immediately to control the damage--by calling Lt. Malloy (or responding to Lt. Malloy's call) and then going to Det. Woodmansee to retrieve the letter. Notice, that Lt. Riley did not go to the same record source to which he had turned a few days ago to in response to inquiries from O'Brien and Poarch. Rather, he went right to where he knew the letters he had supposedly forgotten about were. Then, after the letters were "recovered," Lt. Riley made it a point to report to Asst. Chiefs Ballistreri and Cowan, to inform them of events. At no time did Lt. Riley attempt to publicly set the record straight--the one action that would have demonstrated his genuine commitment to honesty. This despite the fact that Lt. Riley has in the course of his career consented to interviews with reporters, had no prior contact with myself and no particular reason to distrust me, is unable to identify any instance in which my reporting on police issues has been unfair or inaccurate, and was aware of a nearly identical, contemporaneous situation in which corrective information resulted in my issuing a prompt apology to another Madison Police supervisor.

Finally, I would like to take issue with the statement advanced by the Respondent that "Lueders presented no testimony indicating that anyone in authority with the MPD or the district attorney's office feels that either Det. Woodmansee or Lt. Riley did anything wrong in the [Patty] investigation." (Brief, P. 21.) As the Respondent knows, these areas were explicitly closed to inquiry by his motions in limine; otherwise, I would have been able to establish that there were many problems with Det. Woodmansee's investigation--up to and including the fact that it led to the filing of charges that were later dismissed, when forensic evidence substantiated Patty's initial report that she was sexually assaulted. But even given the constraints under which I had to present my case, I believe ample evidence has been presented that Lt. Riley did not do what he was supposed to do either on receipt of the letters or in response to the instruction he received from his supervisor.

 Dated this [12^th] day of November 1998 by