Clifton Yarborough, one of the eight men convicted in the murder of Catherine Fuller nearly 30 years ago, told a D.C. judge on Monday he was abused and coerced into confessing to one of the city’s most horrific killings. Yarborough, then 16, said D.C. police detectives threw him around, threatened him and held his face over a flushing toilet. One detective ripped two tank top T-shirts off his own chest in anger and told Yarborough he was going to kill the teen if he didn’t tell them what happened. They coached him for two hours before they brought him into another room for a taped confession.
“I was scared so I pretty much was going to do whatever [the detectives] wanted me to do at the time,” Yarborough testified.
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Yarborough and his attorney painstakingly reviewed Yarborough’s confession on Monday. Yarborough said much of his confession was not true and that often the detectives had told him what to say.
Yarborough was the first to testify at a hearing to determine whether the men were wrongfully convicted more than two decades ago.
Six of the men, including Yarborough, were shuffled into the courtroom Monday in orange jumpsuits and shackles. A seventh defendant, Christopher Turner, who was released from prison after 25 years, wore a brown suit. An eight defendant has since died in prison.
The unusual hearing was called after defense attorneys said they found evidence the government withheld information that could have proven their clients’ innocence.
Notes from a prosecutor show that witnesses described another man, James McMillan, running from the alley where Fuller was attacked. McMillan had been charged with assaulting and robbing two women the same month of Fuller’s murder. Prosecutors never disclosed this information.
Eight years later, McMillan was convicted of killing and sodomizing Abbey McClosky in an alley five blocks from Fuller’s slaying. Both McClosky and Fuller were sodomized with a pole.
“Common sense tells us that there weren’t two people capable of doing something like this living in the same neighborhood,” said Rob Cary, Yarborough’s attorney.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Sweeney said detectives suspected McMillan in 1985 and showed his photo to eyewitnesses, but no one could link him to Fuller’s killing.
