The Case of False Confessions - Birmingham Six

📻 Episode #368
🎙️ Hosted by Jason Flom
📅 Jun 19, 2023

◆ EPISODE PROFILE

About This Episode

The thing about torture is that it works, at least if your only goal is to find a scapegoat.

The Case

The thing about torture is that it works, at least if your only goal is to find a scapegoat.

Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin take us to Birmingham, England. In 1972, two pubs were bombed, and six innocent Irish men were tortured into giving false confessions. The Birmingham Six were freed in 1991, but the crime’s never been solved. To this day, the public demands to know who really planted those bombs.

This update shares the March 2022 court decision protecting one of the key tenants of journalism – anonymity.

We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Their Own Words — transcript excerpts

Short excerpts from the episode's official published transcript, with timestamps — listen from these moments, or read the full transcript via the podcast's own platforms.

00:04:04
“Speaker 1: a high rise office building in downtown Birmingham with a Speaker 1: pub on its first floor called the Mulberry Bush. New Street. Speaker 1: Around the corner was where the city tax office was. Speaker 1: There was a pub on that building's first floor too, Speaker 1: called the Tavern in the Town. And then only six”

00:15:25
“Speaker 1: where the torture continued. Beatings, burnings, stress positions, even mock executions. Speaker 1: Patty Hill remembers having a pistol shoved into his mouth Speaker 1: so brutally that it broke several of his teeth. With Speaker 1: a cold metal barrel in Patty's mouth, his interrogators slowly Speaker 1: counted to three and pulled the trigger three times. They”

00:27:11
“Speaker 1: an IRA operation that went badly wrong in some ways, Speaker 1: though the system has tried to learn from its mistakes. Speaker 4: If you were writing a history of the criminal justice Speaker 4: system in this country, the Birmingham Six is a real Speaker 4: tipping point. It wasn't about the politics of Northern Ireland.”

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← #367 Sidney Holmes #369 Kwame Ajamu →

Also on the podcast: #115 False Confessions - Origin Story · #116 False Confessions - Robert Davis · #117 False Confessions - Dixmoor 5