PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This Blog is interested in false confessions because of the disturbing number of exonerations in the USA, Canada and multiple other jurisdictions throughout the world, where, in the absence of incriminating forensic evidence the conviction is based on self-incrimination – and because of the growing body of scientific research showing how vulnerable suspects (especially young suspects) are to widely used interrogation methods such as the notorious ‘Reid Technique.’ As all too many of this Blog's post have shown, I also recognize that pressure for false confessions can take many forms, up to and including inducement, deception, (read ‘outright lies,) and even physical and mental torture.
COMMENTARY: "Police deception during interrogations too often leads to false confessions. Ban the tactic," by Laura Nirider, Rebecca Brown and Lauren Kaeseberg, published by The Chicago Tribune on April 14, 2021. (Laura Nirider is a clinical professor of law and co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Rebecca Brown is the director of policy at the Innocence Project. Lauren Kaeseberg is the legal director of the Illinois Innocence Project.)
GIST: "In 2003, a little-known Illinois state senator named Barack Obama sponsored first-of-its-kind legislation aimed at addressing the problem of false confessions — one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions.'
The new law required certain custodial interrogations to be electronically recorded, so that judges and juries could glimpse inside the interrogation room and see for themselves how police obtained confessions — from both the guilty and the innocent.
Thanks to this simple but revolutionary law, lawyers and researchers now better understand why, to date, hundreds of people around the country are known to have confessed to crimes they didn’t commit.
The videotapes revealed officers using deceptive — but legal — interrogation techniques that can mislead even innocent suspects into believing that confessing is in their best interest.
Consider the case of Trevon Y. of St. Clair County, Illinois. In 2013, Trevon was a 17-year-old Black teenager with no criminal history but with developmental disabilities that rendered his mental functioning akin to a much younger child. After a tipster implicated someone named “Trevon” in a local armed robbery, police brought Trevon Y. in for questioning.
The ensuing hourslong interrogation was captured on tape — and what the tape shows is disturbing. Even though Trevon tearfully asserted his innocence more than 35 times, detectives relentlessly insisted that they “knew” he was involved.
At least 40 times, they falsely told Trevon that witnesses had identified him as the perpetrator.
He was trapped, the police insisted, and the only way out was to confess. Indeed, the investigators falsely promised that if Trevon confessed, he would be viewed as “just a young kid who made a bad decision” and avoid incarceration.
Relying on his interrogators’ assurances, Trevon agreed to confess and repeated the story officers fed him about the crime.
He spent nine months in jail, facing the possibility of a decadeslong armed robbery sentence, before prosecutors watched his interrogation video, realized his confession was false and dropped the case.
Trevon is hardly alone: Illinois has been home to more than 100 false confessions across the state — tragic miscarriages of justice that have sent the most unlucky false confessors to prison for life.
And Illinois isn’t alone either; false confessions are a national problem that have prompted, to date, more than half the states to require at least some interrogations to be electronically recorded.
Indeed, readers will remember several false confessions that have become notorious through media coverage, such as that of Wisconsin 16-year-old Brendan Dassey. Brendan’s halting confession to murder — the product of a deceptive interrogation and widely understood to be false — disturbed audiences, and inspired reform, across the globe after his interrogation videotape was shown in the hit Netflix series “Making a Murderer.”
Tragically, Dassey still remains in prison, in part because courts held that the deceptive interrogation tactics used against him were not clearly illegal at the time. (One of us, Laura Nirider, is an attorney for Dassey.)
Now, a new wave of leaders is taking further action to prevent false confessions. Recently, Illinois state Sen. Robert Peters, D-Chicago, introduced Senate Bill 2122, which embodies the next generation of confession reform: it bans the use of deceptive interrogation tactics against juveniles like Trevon.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is in support of that legislation, an unprecedented and welcome action from a prosecutor. The Illinois Senate Criminal Law Committee approved the bill Tuesday, meaning that the full Illinois Senate will soon consider it.
On the national scene, Oregon state Sen. Chris Gorsek — a former law enforcement officer — and New York state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, both Democrats, introduced similar legislation earlier this year.
Importantly, these lawmakers are working hand-in-hand with law enforcement to make these changes a reality. These bills follow long-standing recommendations of groups such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which has discouraged the use of deception during juvenile interrogations.
Indeed, global police training organizations such as the firm Wicklander-Zulawski have developed new interrogation techniques that reject the use of deception and reduce the risk of false confessions while still enabling police officers to obtain reliable confessions and solve crimes.
Decades of research and experience have shown that deceptive tactics like those used on Trevon are particular risk factors for false confessions.
These states are well-positioned to lead on interrogation reform: between New York and Illinois alone, nearly 150 innocent people have been wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit based on false confessions.
New York’s most notorious case, of course, is the Central Park Five (now known as the Exonerated Five); Illinois is home not only to Trevon, but also the Englewood Four, the Marquette Park Four, the Dixmoor Five, the Uptown Seven and many others. It’s well past time to stop these numbers from continuing to add up. Banning deception in the interrogation room is the best way to do just that."
The entire story can be read at:
