Ira Todd’s Mission To Free The Wrongfully Convicted

FAQs

• Why was Ira Todd charged with murder in 1993?

  While Todd was working the gang squad, he saw a man reaching as the man approached his partner, then heard a shot and saw his partner fall, so he fired at the man, who died. No gun was found on the man, and it came out at trial that the shot Todd heard came from his partner’s own gun during a struggle. Todd was charged with murder in 1993 and acquitted.

• How did Ira Todd help free Davontae Sanford?

  Todd said that after he helped track down hitman Vincent Smothers and got about nine confessions from him, guns that Smothers’s wife led them to matched the quadruple murder for which Davontae Sanford had been locked up at 14. Smothers said he did that murder and had never met Sanford. Todd said prosecutors and police fought it; Sanford’s appellate attorney asked him to be an expert, and it took about four years from the confession until Sanford got out.

• How did Ira Todd help exonerate David Beaks?

  After someone kept writing him letters saying David Beaks was innocent of killing his girlfriend, Todd reviewed the file, reinvestigated and got a confession from the man he identified as the real killer. When prosecutors said a confession wasn’t enough, he found clothes the man had stored at his girlfriend’s house, and testing matched. Todd said they then had to fight to get Beaks’s conviction set aside, with help from a defense attorney working pro bono; Beaks had served about ten years.

• What is Ira Todd's approach to getting confessions from suspects?

  Todd said the key is listening. He believes everybody is good and that people who do something wrong want to tell you, so he talks to them like human beings, advises them of their rights, and tries to find out where things went wrong, talking to the nine-year-old they were before. He said he used to keep toothbrushes, washcloths and soap in his desk to help people clean up first.

• What is Ira Todd's Starz show 'Wrong Man' about?

  On Wrong Man, Todd and fellow investigator Joe Kennedy look at cases of people who say they were wrongfully convicted. In the case of Evaristo Salas, who was charged with murder at 14, Todd spent about three months getting the informant who had testified to talk; with his face blacked out and voice changed, the informant admitted he had lied, and Mike Morse noted he then passed a polygraph. Todd said the show had zero scripting.