PW-Philadelphia Weekly, PA
09-20-06
“My Other Grandson Did It”
A Northwest Philadelphia grandmother claims two of her grandchildren await trial
for something they didn't do.
by Steve Volk
Priscilla Cobb has been calling anyone who'll listen, but she says some just
won't. “I tried to tell the police,” she says. “But they don't want to hear it.”
Police deny Cobb's statement, as well as her claim that her two grandsons
Tracey Cobb and Curtis Adams couldn't have committed the six armed robberies
for which they await trial. “They were home with me,” she says. “All night.”
Being home with grandma might seem flimsy as alibis go, but Cobb has been
pointing at two suspects ever since April 8, when police approached her
grandsons on their front stoop and arrested them. “My other grandson did it,” she
says, “with some kid from up the street.”
In the last few weeks PW spoke to several witnesses. Maxine Cobb, another
grandchild, says she allowed Charles Cobb Jr. and a young neighbor to sit in her
car the evening of the robberies to listen to the radio. But this time they drove off
in her car, which was later identified as the getaway vehicle.
Neighbor Kevin Smith says he saw Charles Jr., a cousin of the two boys who
were arrested, drive off with another kid who lives nearby. “It was Charles in that
car,” he says. “Them other boys couldn't have done it.”
Charles Cobb Jr.'s father and namesake also says his son committed the crimes.
The senior Charles Cobb was in jail at the time of the robberies for making
terroristic threats.
How does he know?
“'Cause I talked to my son and his friend,” he says. “I know. I don't want my son
to go to jail behind this. This is so hard. But my nephews didn't do this.”
Other neighbors interviewedalsobelieve Tracey Cobb and Curtis Adams didn't
commit the robberies. “We all know who did it,” says Curtis' mother Tina Adams.
“Everyone on this block know—because these boys still be out doing shit.”
“We've looked into the claims made by the family,” says Philadelphia police
spokesperson Ben Naish. “We feel confident we have the right suspects, and the
next step is for the case to be heard in a court of law.”
Just one business day after police responded with this statement, Priscilla Cobb
says a Philadelphia police detective contacted her.
The district attorney's office, meanwhile, issued the following statement through
spokesperson Cathie Abookire: “The police and the district attorney have made
themselves available and provided several opportunities for family members to
come forward and give us information, but they have not done so. Our evidence
for trial is very strong, and we are still available to listen to any evidence that
anyone cares to present.”
At this stage it seems likely the two sides will meet at trial. The defense figures to
be handicapped. The Cobbs are hardly strangers to the justice system. Even
Priscilla Cobb, the 71-year-old grandmother, was convicted in 1991 of a public
assistance violation. She received a sentence of one year's probation. “[Another
woman] was receiving food stamps for the same grandchild,” says Cobb. “I didn't
know it.”
Because she fell behind on restitution payments, she was resentenced to
another year of probation earlier this year. Normally, if a former defendant has
finished a sentence 10 years or more before taking the witness stand, their past
violation can't be brought out at trial. But this recent flurry of activity means her
15-year-old arrest could be introduced. And there's a lot at stake.
For starters, the defendants are juveniles. Tracey Cobb is 15. Curtis Adams is
17. The district attorney's office wants to try both as adults. Charles Cobb Jr. and
his alleged accomplice are also juveniles. (PW spoke to the parents of all three
juveniles named in this story. We're not publishing the name of the fourth child
because we were unable to speak to him or his parents.) The case has already
been through a preliminary hearing and is being held for trial.
According to relatives, the defendants have never been arrested before this. Not
so for Charles Cobb Jr. “He's been arrested before,” says the senior Cobb, “for
strong-armed robbery. That's why I'm so scared for him. They ain't gonna cut him
any deals. He keeps thinking this is a game, and I keep trying to tell him this ain't
no game.”
Family matters: Priscilla Cobb (from left) and the mothers of Tracey Cobb and
Curtis Adams think cops got the wrong kids.
Cobb Jr.'s mother says she's aware her son's name keeps getting dragged into
the robberies. “I know they're saying it,” says Cathy Cobb. “But I don't know
anything about who did it. I don't believe my son did it. But I believe he knows
who did.”
What she also knows, she says, is that Tracey Cobb and Curtis Adams are
innocent. “They was in their grandmother's house,” she says. “I ain't never seen
them leave it. They barely ever leave this block, and they didn't leave it that
night.”
According to court records, Philadelphia police tied Cobb and Adams to six
robberies that took place within approximately half an hour of each other at 5400
Morris St. and at the corner of Markle and Boone streets in Manayunk. At that
second location four victims encountered one young man wielding a handgun
and another carrying a .30-caliber sawed-off rifle.
One of the complainants chased after the young men and got the license plate
number of their car. Priscilla Adams claims at the times of these robberies—listed
as 9:58 p.m. and 10:24 p.m.—her grandsons were already asleep upstairs.
“They had been playing some video games in the evening, and they got tired of
that, and they went to bed around 8:30 p.m.,” she says. “They go to bed early all
the time because they lazy.”
The two boys both came back downstairs, she says, when Charles Cobb Jr.
came in at what she remembers as a little after 10 p.m. “Charles took the keys to
the Cadillac,” she says, “and he threw them on the table, and Tracey picked them
up. He said, ‘What you doing with my sister's car keys?' He didn't even know the
car had been gone.”
All the boys went back upstairs. When police arrived around midnight, Curtis,
Tracey and his twin brother all gathered downstairs. Charles Cobb Jr., she says,
remained behind. “I found out later,” she says, “he was hiding in a crawl space
upstairs.”
The three boys came outside to see why the police had come to their block. The
police then asked all three boys to stand under a streetlight and face a car
parked maybe 30 yards away. They complied.
The next thing Cobb and Adams knew, they were under arrest. Since then, life
has taken a decidedly odd turn.
Almost all these family members live on the same block, in three homes directly
beside and across from each other. Curtis Adams was unable to make bail and
awaits trial at the House of Corrections, and Tracey Cobb is back home and
under house arrest—right across the street from Charles Jr.
“I talked to Charles about what happened,” says Tracey Cobb. “He said at first he
would turn himself in, but he hasn't.”
Were Tracey Cobb and Curtis Adams victims of an all too common error in the
criminal justice system—the false eyewitness identification?
At their preliminary hearing one eyewitness identified them. But it was stated that
four eyewitnesses supplied a post-incident identification. That could mean all four
victims of that second robbery, who were walking together in Manayunk, had
been sitting in that same squad car Cobb and Adams faced on West Reger
Street, a narrow Northwest Philadelphia roadway a couple of blocks from
Germantown Avenue.
Defense attorney Joel Krantz says neither boy has ever been picked from a
lineup. Police spokesperson Ben Naish declined to comment on how the boys
were identified.
According to an expert on eyewitness memory issues, police procedure that night
may have been faulty. “What they appear to have done is called a ‘show-up,'”
says Iowa State University psychology professor Gary Wells. “A show-up
produces about twice the risk of error as a regular lineup. So if a regular lineup
produces a mistaken ID rate of 10 to 15 percent, a show-up doubles that rate to
20 to 30 percent.”
The difference is stark. For a lineup, police test eyewitnesses by placing potential
suspects among people they know didn't commit the crime.
“The reason for that is obvious,” says Wells. “This way, if they pick a guy you
know didn't do it, you know you've got a bad witness.”
For a show-up, police position a witness or witnesses somewhere out of sight—
like within a squad car—and bring out a suspect or suspects. In this case,
according to observers at the scene, they showed their witnesses three people
standing under a street light between 20 and 30 yards away. “And what they do
there,” says Wells, “is create a situation where the eyewitness can't be wrong.
Because there's no control group of people they know to be innocent.”
The procedure is also highly suggestive. The mere production of suspects under
such circumstances can lead to a potentially false ID. Wells goes on to say that if
all the eyewitnesses were in the same car, it's potentially the worst-case scenario
for the cops. “It would be profoundly improper not to separate the witnesses,”
says Wells. “Because if one person says, ‘That's the guy,' the other witnesses
will just agree. And if that's what they did, they effectively ruined [four] potential
eyewitnesses. Because if they were wrong once, you really can't use them
again.”
Wells has been studying false-eyewitness identifications and working with police
departments for years to adopt better practices, making headway with reluctant
law enforcement officials largely through the weight of science. According to
Wells, studies of men whose convictions were overturned by DNA evidence
show roughly 80 percent were falsely convicted on the strength of inaccurate
eyewitness testimony.
“The problem is that eyewitness testimony is highly convincing at trial,” says
Wells. “But it's more persuasive than it's reliable.”
Prosecutors figure to have plenty of evidence they haven't presented yet, and
what they have could be enough to convict. But for now the family says it isn't
interested in a guilty plea.
This is a family that knows trouble. Priscilla Cobb is not only Tracey Cobb's
grandmother but also his legal guardian. His birth mother has been clean now for
more than 18 months, but her life so far has been filled with prisons and drug
rehabilitation programs.
And then there's Charles Cobb Sr., a convict who's fighting his own wrenching
personal situation. “You wrote down everything else I said,” he says. “So make
sure to print this too. I don't want to testify against my son. I won't testify against
him. I don't want to send him to jail, but I don't want my nephews locked up for
something they didn't do.”
What he does do is take his son outside and start hollering at him, his love
showing in his anger. “You better do somethin',” he tells his son as he confronts
him in the narrow street. “You keep acting like this is a game.”
The boy, a tall, lean kid, scowls and goes back inside. It's gotten that hot on West
Reger Street. Because the people who love each other most know each other
best.