DETROIT (WXYZ) — Detroit police officers that interrogated and later arrested a woman for credit card fraud may have violated her constitutional rights during her interrogation, according to two independent legal experts.
The woman, Sandra Wilson, was later acquitted after facing two felony charges and spending three days in lockup. The judge over her case called the charges against her “absurd” and the police investigation “not thorough.”
Wayne County's prosecutor defends the interrogation, saying it was proper because the woman was not considered in custody at the time.
Sandra Wilson was arrested in June and faced four years in prison for a crime she says—and video shows—she did not commit.
She was charged with two felonies after police accused her of helping to steal a credit card left behind at a Detroit gas station. Her crime, they claim, was handing it to a woman who, Wilson says, told her it was hers.
The card belonged to a different customer at the gas station that night, police say, and the woman who fraudulently used it has never been apprehended.
Wilson first learned she was a suspect in the theft when family members alerted her that her picture was being shared by Detroit Police on Twitter, then on the popular Crime News in the D Instagram page.
Both claimed she was wanted for using another woman’s credit card.
Hoping to clear her name, Wilson showed up to DPD’s 7th precinct without an attorney. While there, a detective brought her back to her desk to conduct an interrogation.
Quickly, Wilson was told she was “the focus of the investigation” and that the officer intended to read her her Miranda rights. Almost immediately, Wilson asked that she have a lawyer present.
The recorded interrogation shows that she asked multiple times—but her questioning did not stop. Rather, it continued for another 30 minutes.
7 Action News showed the interrogation to two different legal experts: Wolf Mueller, an attorney who specializes in wrongful imprisonment cases, and Carl Marlinga, a former judge and former prosecutor.
Both said the interrogation should have stopped as soon as Wilson requested an attorney.
“Right at this point, it should have been clear. There shouldn’t have been any more discussion,” said Mueller, referencing Wilson’s first request for a lawyer.
Marlinga agreed.
“If you say lawyer or attorney, every experienced police detective knows after that, questioning has to cease,” he said.
But the interrogation continued, even as Wilson openly sobbed and grew exasperated with the detectives.
“Ms. Wilson, would you like to provide me with a voluntary statement?” asked one of the officers.
“I don’t know what you all want me to tell y’all!” Wilson said through tears. “I just walked in the gas station and you all took a picture of me and ruined my life.”
Eventually, as her interrogation dragged on, Wilson said something that officers believed was evidence of her guilt.
“Who do you give that card do?” asked one of the officers, who refused to show Wilson the surveillance video from that night.
“I gave the card to the man behind the counter,” Wilson said, contradicting the video that showed her hand the card to another customer.
Not long after that, Wilson was arrested. At her criminal trial, the detective who interrogated her would use that statement against her.
But Wilson’s attorney, Brandon McNeal, says the contradiction is innocently explained.
“This is Sandra’s local gas station,” McNeal said, adding that she visits the station sometimes multiple times a day. “This could have been from any day that she went to the gas station.”
Had officers agreed to play the surveillance video for Wilson, rather than showing her still photos of her standing inside, she would have been better able to recall the moment in question.
“Because she says that she gives the card to the clerk—just guessing at what she would do in that situation—they take that as evidence that somehow she’s in cahoots with the woman who used the card illegally,” McNeal said.
McNeal says Wilson’s interrogation violated her constitutional rights. Judge Paul Cusick never had to rule on whether it did because he threw the case out on its merits.
“I don’t think the victim was well served in this case and I certainly don’t believe this was fair to Ms. Wilson,” he said, granting a motion for a directed verdict.
Still, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy's office is defending how the officers handled the interrogation, saying through a spokesperson that because Wilson wasn’t yet in custody when she was being interrogated, her right to an attorney did not apply.
The experts we talked to disagree.
“While she may not have been in custody in handcuffs when she came in, she is being detained here,” Mueller said, adding that it was unlikely Wilson felt she could freely leave the precinct. “You don’t have to be in handcuffs before your constitutional rights start.”
Through a spokesperson, DPD says Wilson’s interrogation is now under investigation
Sandra Wilson and her attorney are preparing a civil lawsuit against DPD. It’s the only way, she says, the department will learn from what it did to her.
“It could happen to you, because it happened to me,” she said, “and I lost.”
Contact 7 Investigator Ross Jones at ross.jones@wxyz.com or at (248) 827-9466.
