In December 1986, prosecutors in Pinellas County, Florida faced a problem. He failed to get the death penalty against Jack Piercey in the 1985 murder of 14-year-old Shelley Boggio.
The night before her naked body was found floating in the Intracoastal Waterway with 31 stab wounds, Shelley had spent time with Piercey, his girlfriend, and his two male roommates, drinking and smoking marijuana. Piercey, 31, who had an extensive history of violence against women and who stalked Shelley in the months before her death, eventually gave a complex and contradictory confession that placed most of the blame on one of her roommates.
Although jurors found Piercey guilty of first-degree murder, they recommended life imprisonment rather than the death penalty sought by prosecutors – “a huge blow,” as journalist Pamela Colloff describes it. Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception and Injustice on the Gulf CoastHis entertaining and damning book on the matter. Securing the death penalty in first-degree murder cases was the primary goal of prosecutors in Pinellas County at the time, where the country’s Reagan-era tough-on-crime ethos found its indifference. Florida led the nation in carrying out the death penalty during this period. “But even by Florida standards, Pinellas County stood out,” Colloff writes. “Prosecutors sought the death penalty in almost every first-degree murder case that came before the state attorney’s office.”
But the state had one more chance to secure the death penalty – against Piercey’s roommate, 40-year-old James Daly. Daly, a Vietnam War veteran who struggled with alcoholism, had no relation to Shelley and maintained his innocence. Investigators had no physical evidence to link him to the case, only Piercey’s self-serving statements. So lead detective John Holliday turned to a strategy the state had used repeatedly: finding a jailhouse witness who would testify that Daly had confessed to them.
Fortunately for Holliday, Koloff writes, the detective with whom he had helped secure death sentences in the past had recently returned to the Pinellas County Jail: Paul Skalnik, a con man who had become “one of the most prolific, and most effective, jailhouse witnesses in American history.” Over several years, Skalnik was repeatedly in and out of prison on aggravated burglary charges and testified against or provided information about 27 inmates.
As Koloff compellingly explains in full detail catch the devilProsecutors in Florida had found the unlikely stories Skalnik and fellow prisoners told about freeing themselves from the burden “useful” to him. She writes, “He was the state’s closest, closest witness whose words led jurors to choose death.” “Where there was room for doubt, Skalnik eliminated it.” In return, though Skalnik and the state always denied it, he received extraordinary leniency in sentencing and parole hearings, allowing him to avoid long prison terms — and re-offending, Koloff writes. The book reports that Skalnik once again fabricated a story that would work to the state’s advantage, claiming that as he passed by Daly’s cell, Daly confessed in false words.
Colloff claims, “A prosecutor’s decision to rely on a jailhouse witness is usually a red flag, a tacit admission that the state’s evidence is more shaky than it is.” Yet in Daly’s case, it was Skalnik’s testimony that not only secured a guilty verdict of first-degree murder, but also secured the death penalty that prosecutors wanted. And as Daley has spent nearly 40 years on death row, Skalnik’s testimony continues to hinder his appeals. Colloff explains, “Once a witness like Skalnik takes the stand and gives his testimony, it’s almost impossible to untie the bell.” This is thanks to the machinations of our legal system: “In the eyes of the courts, testimony given under oath and challenged through cross-examination has been properly scrutinized, so it weighs more – whether or not the process actually reveals the truth.”
In catch the devilColloff’s cinematic tale of this horrific case serves to highlight the potentially deadly consequences of a criminal legal system that is more concerned with determining the truth and ensuring conviction than delivering justice. Daly is not the only person claiming innocence who has been sentenced to death based on the word of a jailhouse witness. Koloff highlighted a 2024 report from the National Registry of Exonerations that found that one-quarter of the 142 people acquitted in death penalty cases were sentenced with the help of a jailed informant.
It shines a light on the systemic issues that underlie Daly’s plight—and Skalnik’s deception—that sets catch the devil apart. Although this is Colloff’s first book, he has spent decades reporting on the criminal justice system, first as a staff writer. texas monthly and most recently in a joint role as a senior reporter at ProPublica and staff writer The New York Times Magazinewhich co-publishes its investigative features. Those features, which blend careful reporting and engaging storytelling, have proven Colloff unique in demonstrating the tragic cost of flaws in the criminal legal system.
catch the devil Developed from the author’s 2019 ProPublica-Times Speciality “false witness,” which won a National Magazine Award, among other honors. While “False Witness” begins with Skalnik’s role in the Bogio case, Shelley’s murder does not appear until a quarter of the way through the book. Instead, Koloff moves chronologically from Skalnik’s first stint as a jailhouse witness in the spring of 1978, when he was locked up in Houston on misdemeanor theft charges for passing a bad check. The extensive investigation into Skelnick’s crimes in and out of prison allows Koloff to demonstrate the alarming pattern he observed for investigators and prosecutors in Texas for years before sentencing Daley to death. Repeatedly, state representatives decided that Skelnick’s crimes – which also included sexual assault of minors – mattered less than securing convictions in fabricated cases against alleged perpetrators of violent crimes. Keep.
At the end of the book, Koloff outlines how Skalnik was only able to cause such damage because of powerful allies. She writes, “What made him so dangerous was not his intelligence or cunning, but how readily the institutions that were supposed to enforce the law and protect the most vulnerable promoted his lies.” “These institutions embodied his pathologies, granting him power and influence that he could never have achieved on his own, effectively giving him license to commit major crimes. Without them, Skalnik would have been nothing more than a small-time swindler.” This is a sobering indictment that should inspire long-needed reforms to prison practices in the criminal legal system – and, perhaps, ultimately free James Daley.
