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SIGN THE PETITION HERE:
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SUB-HEADING: "This is one of the most tragic cases I've come across in my 40-year career."
"Melissa Lucio’s case is one of the most tragic I have come across in my 40-year career as a clinical forensic psychologist. It is an extraordinarily potent example of how a vulnerable person can be psychologically manipulated into falsely implicating themselves in a crime in response to interrogative pressure.
Today, forensic evidence suggests the child’s head trauma was probably caused by a fall from a flight of stairs two days before her death, witnessed by one of her siblings. But the investigators refused to accept that a fall had happened, or that the head trauma was caused by anything other than physical abuse. So, before an autopsy or any real investigation had even been conducted, the officers focused their attention and suspicions on Lucio.
The expert evaluation of the relevant evidence in the case, a detailed analysis of the video recorded interrogation, and recent psychological testing by a psychologist indicated profound problems with the so-called confession that investigators ultimately extracted from Lucio after hours of relentless interrogation.
So, what went wrong? First, the investigators misinterpreted Lucio’s apparently controlled demeanor in reaction to her daughter’s tragic death as a guilty conscious. Without any scientific basis, they interpreted her body language and behavior as evidence that Lucio had murdered her daughter. This was a fundamental error that drove the guilt-presumptive interrogation.
Second, the interrogators used the controversial Reid interrogation technique, which is guilt-presumptive, uses psychological manipulation to coerce confessions, and has been linked to countless false confessions. The two main components of the Reid technique involve the maximization of the suspect’s anxiety (here, this involved threats, rejections of Lucio’s repeated insistence in her innocence, and repeatedly forcing Lucio to look at photographs of her daughter’s dead body) and minimization of the act (here, expressing apparent understanding of and justification for “beating” her daughter). The interrogators refused to accept that Lucio was innocent and presented her with a forced choice: either she caused her daughter’s death accidentally — a less serious option that, if she admitted it, would result in lenient treatment by the justice system — or she was a “cold-blooded killer” who would undoubtedly face capital punishment.
It’s important to note here that there is a meaningful difference between the US and UK in terms of what investigators are allowed to do legally to obtain a confession. In the US, unlike in the UK, interrogators are, generally, allowed to deceive and manipulate suspects’ vulnerabilities, despite scientific evidence that such tactics place suspects at risk of false confession. The five interrogators in Lucio’s case used the US law to their full advantage to manipulate Lucio until she ultimately acquiesced to their demands.
Third, the investigators failed to show compassion and understanding of Lucio’s shock, grief, sleep deprivation, and exceptional vulnerabilities to false confession (including her below-average IQ, abnormally high levels of compliance and suggestibility, and her history of childhood trauma). Instead, officers played on her vulnerabilities by relentlessly accusing her of having abused and beaten her daughter to death and being a bad mother. Officers shouted at her and repeatedly pointed to photographs of her daughter’s dead body, until she acquiesced and started to incriminate herself using vague language — saying, for example, “I guess I did.”
Finally, officers forced her to enact the alleged beatings on a doll, with one of the investigators instructing her to hit the doll harder and harder, until she complied. By the end of the five hours, in apparent distress, Lucio told officers she wished she was dead.
The admissions that Lucio eventually made were tentative and inadvertent. When implicating herself, she repeated the words and narrative that officers had suggested to her for hours. And there was no tangible confession to murder. Nevertheless, her inadvertent admissions appear to have been exaggerated by the prosecution at her trial and used to convict her of a capital offense.
The salience, severity, and number of risk factors here were exceptional, creating a very high risk of false confession. Having carefully reviewed this case, I have serious doubts about the reliability of Lucio’s admissions and would urge a careful reconsideration of her case to prevent an irreversible miscarriage of justice.
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.independent.co.uk/author/gisli-h-gudjonssonPUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
