"Oh! What a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive."  Sir Walter Scott

Too Many Cases Decided on
the Basis of False Confessions

           When a final reversal in the Central Park jogger case in 2002 revealed that false confessions were the key to the sensational convictions, the national consciousness and conscience were aroused in regard to the ongoing issue.  Fifteen years ago, Antron McCrae, Kharey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Yousef Salaam, and Raymond Santana were each convicted of the brutal rape and near-death beating of a young woman in New York City's Central Park.  All, the oldest of whom at the time was 17, had confessed.  Twelve years later, all – having served their sentences of from 5 1/2 to 13 years – were exonerated by a state supreme court judge, vacating the original decisions in the case.  A year previously, a convicted rapist and murderer confessed and his DNA matched the sample taken from the jogger.

           How could this happen?

           "The scary thing to me is that it's not unique," said Saul M. Kassin, a professor of psychology at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, who has made the matter of false confessions his area of expertise.  "This is just the tip of the iceberg, though what makes it stand out is that we had five false confessions in one fell swoop."

           Perhaps what's almost more interesting than the false confessions in this case is the fact that the boys' stories didn't match the evidence and that each story of the event was different in detail.  Moreover, the boys' DNA samples didn't match the sample taken from the victim.

           So, in addition to the psychology of the false confession, we're confronted with the psychology of prosecutors' lack of objectivity as related to the forensics.

           "They confessed in graphic detail and one boy even physically enacted the incident," Kassin noted. "When you look at the tapes, it's compelling, but there had to be a moment when the prosecutors and police faced that they had not one molecule of objective evidence."

           Kassin doesn't blame the prosecutors, however, and said that he is sure they fully believed the boys were guilty. "Our minds have ways of producing support for what we believe."  Still, he did add that, "Sometimes the absence of evidence can scream as loud as evidence can.  That should have told them something."

           As for the jury, they didn't see the videotapes.  In fact, not all of the interrogation was even taped.  "That's like doctors asked to do an autopsy without the body."

           In Kassin's view, videotaping of both interrogations and confessions is one measure that will help prevent such egregious errors within the legal system.  And more of us would believe him, save for one instance where visible proof of a fallible process didn't help: the Lacresha Murray case.

           Eleven-year-old Lacresha Murray "confessed" to the murder of two-year old Jayla, for whom she was babysitting in Travis County, Texas.  Lacresha was convicted not once, but twice, on the basis of her confession, although anyone viewing the videotape with a soupcon of intelligence would see that her confession was inadvertent, unwitting, and untrue.

           When asked if both juries had, indeed, seen the tape, Barbara Taft, who founded the grassroots People of the Heart to fight for Murray's release, said, "Yes, the juries saw the videotape, with her having no shoes on her feet, and heard the prosecution say she stomped the child with her shoes on.  They heard the audio tape with them threatening everyone in her family, with them yelling and screaming and banging on the table and telling her to just say she accidentally dropped her and she could go home."

           Kassin tries to understand the process.  "It's difficult to get people to see past a confession," he said.  "People inherently believe that we wouldn't confess to a crime we didn't commit."

           But what makes people confess when they are not actually guilty?  In the two above-cited cases, the defendants were all juveniles.  Other cases of false confessions by juveniles exist, such as a case in Chicago in which two tots admitted to throwing a young girl off the roof.  Semen evidence found on her clothing led police to realize that an adult was, instead, involved.

           Mental retardation is also seen as a risk factor for the false confession, people with this disability being more used to being wrong and to being compliant.

           But the primary factors in Kassin's view are more universal and apply to the many instances of normal adult false confessions, as well.

           "Although an adult is somewhat less vulnerable, and the breaking point might not be arrived at so easily, everyone does have a breaking point at which people come to feel despair," he said.  "They are then shown the escape hatch.  Confess."

           The process of bringing someone to that state of collapse is partly a function of time itself.  In the case of young Lacresha Murray, she was held for four days of interrogation by police without being allowed access to her relatives or an attorney, a reason that ultimately won the girl her freedom.

           The boys in the Central Park jogger case were all questioned for from 14 to 30 hours straight.

           Sleep deprivation is a significant key to giving false confessions, Kassin added.  In fact, several of the Central Park jogger case confessions were made at the hours of from one to five in the morning.  "People who are sleep-deprived have a short-term focus as to what will be in their best interests," he said.  In that condition, what they want is simply to sleep.

           But even if they weren't tired by the time they confess, the duration of their interrogation is itself an impetus to confess.  "If 14 to 30 hours of denial doesn't result in freedom, then they try something else," said the psychologist.  The courts have handed down no hard-and-fast rules as to what length of interviewing of suspects is the limit beyond which any confession might be considered coerced.

           But the most significant factor in the obtaining of false confessions, Kassin has found, is the presentation of false evidence.  "This can put those who are innocent over the edge.  They see that they've lost and they want to cut their losses," he commented.  Just as the guilty will confess under such circumstances, so will the innocent.

           And, the factor of torture of prisoners, not often considered in understanding false confessions, reared its shocking head with the pardon of four death row inmates by former Illinois Governor Ryan.  "I have reviewed these cases and I believe a manifest injustice has occurred," Ryan said at the time.  "I have reviewed these cases and I believe these men are innocent."  The four pardoned inmates had all confessed, after, they said, being variously threatened with a gun, beaten, suffocated, and handcuffed to a wall ring and choked.   Ryan then commuted the sentences of 163 other death row prisoners.

           Kassin has thought deeply about what he would decide if he were a justice on the Supreme Court.  "A time rules has to be established," he said.  "People can't make reasonable decisions in their own best interest if they are in an interrogation for 20 hours."   But, beyond that, he would like to see a commission appointed to hash out these issues.  Members would include people from law enforcement, from the defense bar, and from the bench, as well as researchers who have data indicating what puts people at risk – including social influence.

           But primarily Kassin would rely on videotaping all of the interrogation done, not just some.  "By turning on the camera, you will inhibit the police from using their more aggressive techniques, but you'll also deter defense attorneys from making frivolous claims that their clients were coerced.  Judges and juries will be in a better position to make decisions."  As it stands now, because all of the Central Park jogger suspect interrogations weren't taped, the argument continues as to whether guardians were present for every conversation or not – and what occurred.

           Another expert on the question of false convictions, Richard A. Leo, Ph.D., J.D., an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine, agrees that videotaping all interrogations may be the only means of eliminating and correcting the risk of false confessions.  He noted that change has to be imposed on the police from the outside, that "they don't know what coercion is" and that they are resistant to reform.

           In a study Leo did on the topic, he determined that, of the false confessors whose cases proceeded to trial, 73% were convicted and only 27%  were acquitted – despite the absence of any credible evidence supporting the confession.

           In addition to better training, Leo said, what would also help to reduce the problem of false confessions would be better standards for evaluating evidence.  Leo added that "it's important that these cases are not seen as anomalies," but that a media blitz should be sustained to effect a change.

           Last summer, after a young mentally retarded boy of 15 was exonerated due to a false confession and conviction in Broward County, Florida, Leo was invited to train detectives there as to what creates a false confession.  Although the judge in the case scolded the police, saying that this would not have happened had the interrogations been videotaped, he stopped short of mandating that suspect interviews be taped, as did the new sheriff.

           Instead, the Broward Sheriff's Office added procedures for questioning those believed to be mentally impaired.  Two detectives are required to be present during the interrogation; police must speak clearly and slowly, using concrete terms and ideas.  A supervisor must monitor the interview.  And suspects will not be left unattended in an interview room.

           To date, only two states require videotaping of all interrogations – Minnesota and Alaska.  In Minnesota, the requirement for video- or audiotaping interrogations is not law, but part of a 1994 ruling by the state supreme court.  So far, prosecutors there have been pleasantly surprised, according to an article in the Christian Science Monitor.  Amy Klobuchar, district attorney of Minnesota's Hennepin County, is quoted as saying that taping may actually be "a protection against defense claims of police coercion."

           She added that it's also valuable for jurors to see a suspect soon after arrest, when they can look quite different from the way they come to court after being coached by their attorneys.  Sometimes, the unintended revelations can be of interest, too, such as with the videotaping of a Hennepin County suspect who claimed to be blind.  When officers left the room, the man, not knowing he was being taped, flipped around a piece of paper to read it better.

           Contrary to the contention that videotaping all interrogations will be expensive, videotaping is actually not a high-priced technology.   Equipment and tapes are not expensive and certainly cost less than the large awards sometimes paid for wrongful convictions.

           But is videotaping the real answer?  Certainly it will help in many cases, with a fair-minded jury.  But witnessing a naïve young Lacresha Murray try to placate detectives by saying she might have dropped the baby somehow and might have kicked her did not seem to faze her two Texas juries who, evidently, could not see beyond the color of her brown skin.

           Thirty-five years ago, many of us may be surprised to learn, the United States Supreme Court ruled thus in a majority finding: “We have learned the lesson of history, ancient and modern, that a system of criminal law enforcement which comes to depend upon the ‘confession’ will, in the long run, be less reliable and more subject to abuses than a system which depends on extrinsic evidence independently secured through skillful investigation.”

           Those words were written before the technology of today – the forensics of DNA and our amazing ability to examine minute portions of trace evidence.

"Oh! What a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive."  Sir Walter Scott