The Memory Room

The Dallas Morning News
04/08/2020

In popular culture, hypnosis is merely a stage act. But in Texas, it is a matter of life and death.

“The Memory Room,” a two-part investigative series, revealed how Texas police and prosecutors have turned to hypnosis to help send dozens of people to prison — and some to their deaths. Investigative hypnosis, in which law enforcement officers guide witnesses into a hypnotic trance to better recall a crime, is banned in many states because its use has led to wrongful convictions. But Texas has rejected this trend, remaining the top destination for police hypnosis in the country.

The News filed more than 100 public record requests with federal, state and local agencies for this project. The Texas Department of Public Safety and Texas Rangers refused to release data and video recordings of hypnosis sessions their officers conducted. The News appealed and, in an unusual decision, the Texas attorney general agreed the information should be public.

As a result, The News obtained and published never-before-seen footage of Texas Rangers using hypnosis. After several more unsuccessful tries, The News also obtained 40 years of Rangers internal reports on hypnosis and built an interactive database that showed when and how it was used.

The News also pursued less conventional means of accessing records. Reporters obtained hypnotists’ records from the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, and became the first members of the media allowed to attend a meeting of the Texas Association of Investigative Hypnotists in Huntsville — likely the only extant group of its kind in the country. Records obtained from other agencies showed more than 800 Texas officers have been certified as hypnotists since 1980.

Yet no agency regulates their use of hypnosis. The News found Texas has executed at least 11 men on whose cases investigators used hypnosis. At least four men remain on death row. One of the men whose life was irreparably changed by hypnosis is Danny Ray King. A Black police trainee with no criminal history, King sentenced to 60 years for breaking into a Dallas woman’s apartment. The strongest evidence against him was an identification made after the victim underwent hypnosis.

The case became the series’ main storyline. After denying King’s release for three decades, the state set him free amid questions from The News, which King attributes at least in part to The News’ inquiries. Two state lawmakers have since filed bills this session to ban evidence gleaned during a hypnosis session.

Then, in January, the Texas Department of Public Safety quietly shuttered its hypnosis program after 40 years. The decision came less than a year after the News’ investigation ran and means the state’s most prolific hypnotists will no longer use this dubious method to investigate crimes.

“The Memory Room” combined compelling storytelling with shoe-leather reporting, records requests, data analysis and legal research to shed light on a dangerous police practice that remained in the shadows for decades.

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Submitted by Chelsea Watkins.