#474 Maggie Freleng with Andre Causey

On a hot day in June, I drove to a quiet residential neighborhood just outside of Austin, Texas to visit Andre Causey. Although the house is large and spacious, Andrea doesn't need much to be happy. He enjoys the little things in life, like his fish aquarium.

As a matter of fact, I got that fish aquaria off side road.

The aquarium sits right at the entrance of his house. You'll probably hear it bubbling throughout our interview. It's adorned with artificial plants and a little sign that says no fishing.

The big one in that goldfish is the first one that I got there my wife. When it got they didn't want to set it to her because she said I was going to try to see if they were going to live. And they say, oh, we can't see you, no fish if you can't kill them. But yeah, but I got damn And when we ended up going back and buying some more, I got some more. Allergy's my first fish to quaid. So I think I'm doing pretty good today.

Andre is doing pretty good. He takes pride in raising his fish. He's nicknamed them his grand babies. Since he doesn't have any of his own yet because a.

Solid grandkids we have yeah, all the grand kids we have our cheers and doesn't have any kids.

Andre spent decades in prison for murder. He told me on beautiful days like today, he'd look outside and daydream about a life like this, one simple with the people and fish he loves.

Yeah. My name is Alan Andre Causey, and I was convicted of fifty years for this crime. I end up doing thirty one years and four months before released on.

Parole from love of for Good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today, Andre Causey and Andre Cousey, who goes by Andre was born on March twenty sixth, nineteen sixty five.

I got four brothers and a sister. I'm the third oldest out of six kids. It's five boys and one girl.

At an early age, Andre's parents divorced and his mom moved the kids to Austin, Texas.

We come up here in seventy three, so seventy three out by eight years old. Because I was born in sixty five, I used to go back home and stay a year six months and spend time down there with I was still one of my mama's sisters and spend time with my daddy and all of them on that end down there. But you know, me and my dad

You know, Austin was very different from his home in Louisiana. Not better or worse, just more to do well.

I mean, if we were young, so you know, it was just it was all new, but you know, if we had a more wide and broad space to move around, you know, and we met friends, and you.

Know, Andre's mom was a beautician and worked hard to support five kids. Eventually she opened up her own shop, leaving Andre and his siblings exploring the new city on their own. Andre says they eventually made friends and met a particularly influential older lady.

We met this old lady. Her name was missus Johnna, but we called a honey, but she told us a lot.

Honey was sort of a stand in mom.

What were some things that you remember her teaching you well, you know, she taught us to always work for what we want, you know, don't expect nobody to just give you in and you know, give you something, you know, always you know, work, you know, people gonna people gonna help you if you're trying to help yourself.

Andre says that Honey initially hired him and his siblings to help her out with things like yardwork.

She had a garage were she do garage sales, and she go around to other garage and buy stuff, and Brian to hers, and she taught us how to get around also and all that.

And Honey treated the kids as her own.

We would ever wear at her favorite place that heat was long John silbl So that's why I'm not crazy about lawn John Sila, because that's all she fed us. Wow.

Andre was a hard worker from an early age. It was really all he knew. When Andre was in tenth grade, he dropped out of high school and started working a variety of jobs, he says, including at ut Austin in the kitchen as a dishwasher. He also did some construction work. Andres's life was simple, just how we liked it.

You know, because I was just I having fun.

What was having fun?

I just like to go out and just enjoy people and have fun. You know people that I knew. You know, we sit around, drank beer and just have fun.

No, were you getting in any kind of trouble, No, ma'am, No run into the law.

Andre says, around eighteen or nineteen, he got a girl pregnant.

At that time that we were doing our thing. It was just a lust thing on both our behalves, you know, So it wasn't any.

Feelings, Andre says, because the relationship wasn't serious, you know, no feelings. He wasn't allowed in his son's life.

Last time I seen him was like maybe two days before I got arrested, and he was like three or four years old. Then.

Andre never had a relationship with his own son.

I don't know if he knows me. I don't know what his mama told me about him.

But a few years later he became a step dad to a baby girl with a woman he'd love for decades to come.

How would you describe him?

Sexy?

He was sexy.

This is DeLanda, DeLanda Harold Consey, and I'm the wife of Alan Andre Consey.

How do y'all meet?

We met in some apartment compact on the East Side I used to go be to Miami in the summertime and I met Andrew.

Anna stayed next door to my mother, and that's how we met. As matter of fact, my little brother bandon me is married to her first cousin.

Oh way.

Yeah, they used to come visit her. That's how we met.

What stood out to you, like, did you just see him across the college? Was cute.

He was cute and he knew and I always told him, I know, you know, you're cute. He was just an outgoing person. He had some little bow legs, he was fine, had Woch's wet shorts, and he played basketball at the basketball court. So I would sit up there and watch him on the steps.

DeLanda watched Andre for years.

When I first met him, I was like fifteen sixteen. Oh wow, Yeah, I was still in high school, you know, during the summer time, like when I would come home or go over to him see my aunt and visit her. I would always see him. But then I left him, went to college, and then I came back. And then when I actually graduated from college, I think that's when we really got seriously. I came out of the beauty shop one.

Day Andre's mom was actually DeLanda's beautician. So she comes out of the beauty shop one day to Andrea.

And he's like, my wife, I'm not your wife. And then we just connected and been together ever since.

DeLanda had just given birth to her daughter, Rhonesha, when they got serious, and.

He came in and stepped in and was a father figure to my daughter. I say, he had my daughter more than I had her. And he just came in and it became a help meet to me.

That's amazing. So he was a good dad.

He's very good with kids.

I always been a family type of person. I love being with family. I love spending time with my family.

Unfortunately, DeLanda and Andrea would never be able to have their own kid together. Just about a year after they officially started dating, Andrea would be arrested for murder. On Monday evening, August twelfth, nineteen ninety one, Andre was at home with his nine month old daughter and DeLanda was cooking dinner.

She feel to fixed some talk I never we'll forget it. She fixed some tacos. That was my last meal. And I was sitting outside talking to some of the guys that stay while in the same apartments, and we were just talking and listening to music and two guys walk up in suits and we looking and they said, well they walk up, they look at the back of the car and we just looked at them. They said, well, whore driving this car? I said, I am sir.

It was a maroon Oldsmobile Toronado.

And he said, well, we need to talk to you. I said, okay, Well let me take my daughter in the house.

DeLanda asked what was going on?

She asked, he said, who is that? I say, it's the police. They wanted to talk to me, so they said, well, can you go down to the police station. I say yes.

Officers Mike Huckabay and Bruce Boardman took Andre to the station.

He was taken in for questioning and endured a seven hour coercive interrogation by a Huctor Polonko led Austin Police Department Homicide Unit.

This is Jesse Freud, senior staff attorney at the Innocence Project of Texas.

Forty five minutes into what they initially call an interview, two officers tell him that they don't believe this story he gives about why he's driving this car.

Remember when the police showed up at Andre's house. They asked him about a car parked outside a maroon Oldsmobile Toronado. That's because at a taped up murder scene in Andre's apartment complex the day before, a bystander had told the police they'd seen the exact car rubbernecking or driving past the crime scene, apparently acting suspiciously. So the police tracked the car down and it led them to Andre.

And pretty quickly they are asking him to retell the story over and over and over again.

Over and over. Andre told the police he'd borrowed the car from a friend. He went out that night and on the drive home, he slowed down at the crime scene because he was curious. There were cops and bystanders, so he just looked and drove away. The police weren't having it, and every time he gives a version, they tell him, we don't like that version. We think you're lying. Tell it to us again, and were you You've never been in trouble with the law. I feel like that's like the Twilight Zone.

It was.

I could tell me I didn't do nothing, Andre insisted. The night they were asking about, he'd been with DeLanda's brother, Bobby Harold junior partying at a nearby apartment, but that same night someone had been brutally killed nearby. Twenty one year old Anita Buyington. So she was a college student.

She lived in I believe San Marcus, which is just south of Austin, and she was in town with two of her girlfriends, one of whom was her cousin, and they met up with a group of three guys that they had recently met to go out on Sixth Street and go drinking, and she had called it a night a little bit earlier than the rest of the group, leaves.

The bar, goes to her car, and from there we don't know for sure what happened, but in the early morning hours of Sunday, August eleventh, nineteen ninety one, Anita was found beaten to death with a heavy slab of concrete. Her car, a nineteen eighty nine brown Honda, was found parked five miles away. A day later, Andre was taken in for what was initially billed as a police interview.

And then from there the interview when I'm using quotes, I don't nobody can see me, but I'm using quotes quickly transitions to an interrogation and that becomes a very extended, about six to six and a half hour overnight process of going in and having two officers eventually one officer interrogate him back and forth, then leave him alone for a long period of time, not letting him really sleep, though having somebody come back in and out.

Often these are common tactics meant to break people down. They also brought in to Landa's brother who'd been hanging out with Andrea the day of the murder, and questioned him to.

Their interviewing him in another room, coming back in and telling him, hey, your brother in law is saying the alibi that you're giving us isn't true. Your mom's denying it. We call that he wouldn't have known this at the time, but we call that in this field false evidence ploise. So that's making a suspect think that something is true when it's not, to gauge the reaction, and then of course to try and get them to confess to what they think is going on.

But Andre kept saying he had no idea what was going on.

And then as Andre testified to a trial, there was a really critical part of the interrogation where he is alone with one of the main officers who threatens him with the death penalty. Was that Polanco or that was Polanco?

Hector Polanco. Hector Polanco was an Austin Police Department patrolman and homicide detective with a reputation for getting a confession. After more than six hours of interrogation at the hands of Hukkabe, Boardman and Polanco, they typed up a statement and handed it to Andre at the time.

Did you know what that was?

No?

I didn't. They told me. They said, well, this is your alibi. You signed this, you can go on leave and go home. That's what I was, and that's what I did.

He signed the document what he thought was his ticket home.

He had been partying over the weekend, so he's exhausted and he just wanted to end the madness and get it over with.

But the statement wasn't Andrea's alibi, as police had told him. What it actually said was that Andrea and DeLanda's brother had beaten Anita to death after a drug deal gone wrong.

Did you ask them to read it to you?

I didn't even think about it. No, I didn't.

You just trusted them.

So he signed without reading the document.

Because my reason was poor at the time. There poor. I had to take special classes and reason was my worst.

So you signed it and then you can't go home, and I.

Can't go home. They locked me up tried me with a murder.

Andre went to trial on July fourteenth, nineteen ninety two.

There were two prosecutors. One was Terry Keel and the second was a gentleman by the name of Reuben Young, and their trial theory was that the victim had approached Andrea's brother in law for drugs and that they were about to trade drugs for sex before the victim quote unquote cheats him out of drugs and proceeds to get away, at which point, the statement says, Andre's brother in law tells him, Hey, she just tried to beat me for drugs, Let's go get her, and that Andrea subdues her, and

Was there any evidence of this?

There also wasn't any evidence that Anita Byington had any history of drug use. At trial, Andre testified that he'd been tricked into signing a false confession, but the prosecutor said he was a liar and a criminal, and they put law enforcement on the stand to back their theory up, cops who Andre says he'd never met before Anita's murder.

It was crazy. It was really crazy. The picture they pleasure of me was really crazy. What was that picture? We had a police sauce center uniform that took the stands and so he stated my full name, and he'd asked, well, how did you know him? And he said, well, I know him from drug gang banging and all type of things. And I'm like, nah my, you look at me and said that's not true. I said, that's not true. I ain't never had no run in with the cops. No.

The other witnesses for the prosecution were people who said they'd seen Andre at the crime scene, driving the oldsmobile suspiciously, rubbernecking.

Driving by slowly looking interested.

As a normal person probably would when there's police around.

But literally every single person does in traffic when they see a car accident that causes you know, miles of backup for no reason, literally human nature. So he has a human reaction to seeing law enforcement and a big crowd of folks at a place that doesn't seem like that would be happening for any reason he's aware of, so.

He looks that along with Andre's signature on a confession written by police. Sealed his conviction. Andre was sentenced to fifty years in prison for the murder of Anita Buyington. He was shocked.

Yeah, I wouldn't do that. I'm the type of person that I don't believe and nobody hurt nobody, especially women. I'm not if i'm I'm not gonna let you. I'm not just gonna let you hurt no one. I'm not gonna do that. That's not right.

His family and friends were too. DeLanda couldn't believe her Andre had been convicted of murder.

Cause he didn't have an angry bone in his body. That couldn't be possible. I was like, how could that possibly happen? So, yeah, it was hard.

Now, prosecutors didn't just charge Andre. Remember, they'd accused him and DeLanda's brother, Bobby Harold, of killing Anita Byington. But almost nine months after Andre's conviction, prosecutors dropped the chargers against Bobby because they didn't have the evidence to take him to trial. Yet there was Andre convicted of being Bobby's accomplice, staring down a natural life sentence for a crime he said from day one he didn't commit.

When did it feel real?

When I got the prison, When I got the prison, when I got off that bus in Midway, Texas?

Yeah, what was that like?

It was like, Man, I'm in I'm in a world that I know nothing about. I'm dying here for something I didn't do. I don't know what the outcome or what I'm faced with right now because I don't even know what I'm walking into. Most people, you got to be down with a gang. You gotta be down with this, you gotta be down with that, you gotta do this.

But but Andre says he was lucky. He got sent to a unit with a lot of young people. At twenty seven, he was one of the oldest there.

It was a relief because they looked they when they found out how old I was, they all respected me. They all start calling me on and all this said in that day, I'll respect me. I don't worry about that.

Man.

We got you. You ain't got you, Just do you.

Andre kept to himself and passed the time working and talking to DeLanda.

How come you chose to stay with him? After the conviction. I mean, you could have moved on with your life and not dealt with any of this.

Well, I know he was innocent, and I know he needed a support system, and I know I could give him that support. So I just stayed in that fight with him. I know he was innocent.

In the years Andre was in prison, DeLanda had a child with another man, but her heart was always with Andrea, and just like he'd done with her daughter, Andre would go on to love her little boy as his own. In two thousand Andrea and DeLanda got married, and Andre eventually got his ge D. After teaching himself how to read and write.

I would go to the to the library and get a palm books and stuff like that.

He would copy love poem and send them to DeLanda, but I wouldn't.

Cop them identical. I would try to make it my own. I would try it best I could.

Andre also tried the best he could to be a dad to his kids.

Every Christmas, we had this thing called Angil Tree down in prison, and as long as your kids was under sixteen, you can always you put the application in and a local church work supplme Christmas presents and stuff, and that's what I would do every year.

As the years went on, Andre fought to get back home to his family, but he was denied parole at least fifteen times, and every time he'd think of DeLanda.

Yeah, I just had to be strong for her. Every time I got to set off, I'd tell her it's gonna be alright. It's gonna be alright. You know, we just got to keep moving forward. You know, we're not in control. You know, eventually we're gonna get what we deserve. You know, we just got to keep going. No, but you know, it was rough. I wanted to be home, and you know, like days like this and I'd be looking outside of the grasses pridging. Grien, You're like, man,

I need to be at home.

This is a beautiful day. You know, we all sit there and we'd be just sitting at the talk of my man. We said, what would you be doing if you was at home? I said, I'd be with my family.

In twenty eighteen, Andre wrote the Innocence Project of Texas, and a year later they wrote him back, I got it.

He got a lot of back, like the fourth or the fifth of twenty nineteen cent it had sept at the case and I just, you know, I like, thank you Lord.

So what stood out to you guys?

The fact that there was nothing else besides the confession, I think was the first really big thing. Secondly, also, a client with no criminal history that you know, just all of a sudden is accused of murder, convicted of murder, and has a true narrative of innocence. Of course, once we get into it, we also start to learn about

Law enforcement officers like Hector Polanco, the detective I mentioned earlier. Polonco had been with the APD since the seventies and eventually became one of the department's star homicide investigators. But by the early nineties, several of his infamous case solving confessions were coming under scrutiny. They just seemed too good to be true, and city officials started asking, Hey.

What's going on at APD homicide. They're getting some really inexplicable quote unquote confessions from people where it's the only evidence, and then we're going back to check them and they don't look right.

In one case, Polonko interrogated a guy for two days and got him to confess to killing his girlfriend, except the woman showed up alive a few days later. She'd just been away. Two more of those infamous false confessions were elicited during the investigation of the quadruple homicide of four teenage girls in an Austin yogurt shop, the so called Yogurt Shop Murders of nineteen ninety one.

One of the yogurt shop purported confessions is what ended up leading to the formation of the task force that ultimately revealed what was going on at the time. The thread between all of these are you have Polanco getting these confessions from murder suspects and there's no other evidence to support that this person's confession is a true confession.

Jesse says that task Force uncovered.

Extended interrogations, false evidence, Ploise authorizing other officers to role play to confuse suspects, and essentially trick suspects into thinking that they're circumstances are something different than they are. Threatening suspects with in custody, sexual assault saying, also, when we throw you in prison for the rest of your life, we're going to make sure there's somebody there to turn you out. Making threats of the death penalty to suspects.

This is one of those suspects, Chris Ochoa.

That was the if you know who did it and you don't tell us, you can get to death penalty. That was I mean, I was like, immediately within ten minutes, the death penalty. You get the death penalty. If you know any scene you don't tell us, then we're going to go for the death penalty.

He was interrogated by Polanco in nineteen eighty eight.

It was a good cop back cooper team. The bad cop came in and grabbed my arm and kept the bain. Oh my, so this is where the needle's going to go up. You don't cooperate and tell us like this is I'm going to make sure I'm there to watch.

Ochoa spoke to the Innocence Project in twenty seventeen, and he'd eventually testify at one of Andre's evidentiary hearings. Jesse says most of what happened to suspects like Ochoa happened to Andre.

We now know from the other cases that we now know about where innocent murder suspects were coerced by this unit to confess. We know that that was APD's pattern in practice at the time, which was Polanka would get a suspect alone and then magically, you know, after that person is alone with him, quote unquote confess. In Andre's case, his confession is ultimately given by his signature.

Believing in Andre's innocence, the team went back to the beginning the evidence. There were three prints in Anita's car and semen found on her shirt and underwear. It didn't match Andre, but there was one person who couldn't be eliminated, a.

Member of the male group named Kevin Harris.

Remember, Anita was with her girlfriends having fun on Sixth Street, one of Austin's known partying strips. They were also hanging with some guys. One of them was Kevin Harris, reportedly the last person to see her alive. Was he a person of interest from the beginning, So.

He was, but he was very very responsible in terms of he knew not to interact with law enforcement without a lawyer, so he went to the police department lawyered up which was obviously very different from Andrea's circumstances. He goes in three lawyers deep and gives a narrative that essentially accounts for what would otherwise make him look like he is the person who did this. He gives an

We reached out to Kevin Harris through his attorney, who says Harris fully cooperated with the investigation thirty years ago, and he respectfully declines a request for comment. Jesse says, instead of doing the actual legwork and investigating such an obvious suspect in Anita's murder, the police honed in on the easiest target.

What did you think about the police at the.

Time, may I just thought they was there to help the people, you know, to do the right things. I just thought they was there to do what they supposed to do, you know, get the bag guys, you know, but they they are to just solve a case in a way they can.

While looking into Harris as the possible killer of Anita, Jesse and her team discovered that in nineteen ninety nine, he had been arrested for burglary with the intent to commit assault against another woman, and in that file was the name of a witness his on and off again girlfriend, so they contacted her.

They had a pretty toxic relationship that ultimately escalated to an abusive relationship, and during that period where she was trying to break it off but they were kind of coming back together, he had contacted her overnight and asked her for help moving a car, and she was able

With all of this evidence pointing away from Andrea, a judge ordered an evidentiary hearing. One of the world's foremost experts on false confessions, Richard Leo, testified that Andrea's confession was quote extremely likely a false confession. He also noted that Andrea has a low IQ, making him susceptible to manipulation. With that and the pattern of misconduct by the APD, particularly of Hector Polanco, Andre was released on parole in October of twenty twenty two.

My first knew when I got out was it tacos begar was tacos? Yes, it tacos. That's what I wanted, tacos.

He just loved my touch and cook.

And that's what it is. That's great.

Although her husband is out, it's bittersweet for DeLanda, who has spent years defending Andre.

People need to hear his side and the story because you've tried to scandalize his name and he's been innocent all the time.

I imagine that doesn't feel great to have your husband's name.

No, it doesn't, and it doesn't, but you know what, we smile with grace and keep moving and you know, we do feel sorry for the Bias and family, but they have the wrong person and at some point you're gonna have to accept it and move on. And I think they owe you an apology.

But Andre just wants to focus on the things he's most cared about all along, his family. Andre tried to reach out to his biological son, who was four when he went to prison, but he hasn't heard back.

So my wile said, we don't worry about it. Just gets yourself together and then time, you know, you'll try it later on and reach out, said, and that's what I've just been waiting for the right time.

In the meantime, he puts his love in the family he has.

June sixteenth, which was on a Friday, we renewed our vows our wedding valve because when we first got married, we got got married at the courthouse and I wanted to have my dream wedding and she did.

Everybody, thank you so much for being here. On the evening as we were coming together to witness.

The vale of this amazing color.

On their twenty third wedding anniversary, Andre and DeLanda had their dream wedding for.

Where you go, I will go, Where you live, I will live.

Well, we just do a lot of family things, you know. We go to a lot of her family togetherers. We go to a lot of my family gatherings. And since we moved here, we start having family dinners and family days, you know, just enjoying the family and the fish firs.

The grand babies, yeah, I'm the grand babies.

Because of people like Andre, the Texas Innocence Project helped pass a state law in twenty seventeen making sure the police always record interrogations for cases like murder. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in the episode description to see how you can help. This episode was written by me Maggie Freeling, with story editing and mixing by senior producer Rebecca Ibada. Our producer is