DOUBT CAST ON OAKLAND POLICE ACTION

OAKLAND (AP) -- Kenneth Cowling told police he beat a retired man to death
so he could get $100 for a heroin fix. But not before 10 hours in the
interrogation room left him a man who later said he would have said
anything to get treatment for the painful wave of heroin withdrawal that
washed over him.

A jury acquitted Cowling of murder and robbery charges in February after
concluding Oakland police based their case on a false confession.

"I figured if I tell them something, I'll get to see a nurse. And then they
will investigate and find out it wasn't true. And then they will drop it,"
Cowling told the San Francisco Examiner of the 1998 interrogation. "I
started giving them what they wanted to hear."

The paper cast the story as a case in which the Oakland Police Department
- -- recently stung by rogue cop allegations against four officers -- may
have used questionable interrogation practices to target an innocent man.

The Examiner said the Cowling case is one of at least five murder
prosecutions in California that judges dismissed in the past two years
because of illegal or improper police interrogation tactics.

Police arrested Cowling, now 49, for the March 1998 bludgeoning death of
78-year-old James Carter after receiving a tip that a man living with
Cowling's parents had boasted of the murder. Cowling had cut Carter's lawn
for eight years and saw him as a father figure, the paper said.

Once in police custody, Cowling denied killing Carter. Only after hours of
interrogation, which police did not record, did Cowling say he was guilty.

Police and prosecutors maintain that a murderer walks free. They said
Cowling confessed because he killed Carter, not because he was desperate
for a fix.

Indeed, the paper said police investigators said Cowling never mentioned
needing medical attention.

"This is not a case of a false confession," said Jerry Curtis, then the
Alameda County deputy district attorney. "And this is certainly not an
innocent man."