Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
Winter 1998
THE CONSEQUENCES OF FALSE CONFESSIONS: DEPRIVATIONS OF LIBERTY AND
MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE IN THE AGE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERROGATION
Richard A. Leo
I. Introduction
A. DEFINING THE PROBLEM
Because a confession
is universally treated as damning and compelling evidence of guilt, [FN1] it is likely to
dominate all other case evidence and lead a trier of fact to convict the
defendant. [FN2] A false confession
is therefore an exceptionally dangerous piece of evidence to put before anyone
adjudicating a case. In a criminal
justice system whose formal rules are designed to minimize the frequency of
unwarranted arrest, unjustified prosecution, and wrongful conviction,
police-induced false confessions rank amongst the most fateful of all official
errors.
As many
investigators have recognized, the problems caused by police-induced false
confessions are significant, recurrent, and deeply troubling. [FN3] Police elicit false
confessions so frequently that social science researchers, legal scholars, and
journalists have discovered and documented numerous case examples in this
decade alone. [FN4]
Yet no one knows
precisely how often false confessions occur in the
Until these
methodological obstacles are overcome, no one can authoritatively estimate the
rate of police-induced false confessions or the annual number of wrongful
convictions caused by false confessions. [FN6] The lack of such
information also prevents researchers from estimating the full magnitude of
personal and social harm that police-induced false confessions cause: the days
and months innocent persons spend in pre-trial incarceration; the resources,
time, and dollars wasted prosecuting and defending them; the months and years
defendants languish in prison after wrongful conviction; and the additional
crimes carried out by the true perpetrators.
Although it is
presently not possible to estimate the magnitude of harm caused by false
confessions, this article sheds light on another dark corner of the problem by addressing
the following questions: What is the impact of demonstrably unreliable
confession evidence on criminal justice officials? What are the consequences of
false confessions on defendants as they move through the criminal justice
system? And how much influence does a
false confession alone exert on the decision-making of jurors?
B. FALSE CONFESSIONS
AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Following Edwin
Borchard's pioneering study of miscarriages of justice, [FN7] a series of
investigators [FN8] have documented numerous cases
of wrongful arrest and conviction of the innocent in the
We suggest that
confessions are regarded as the most damning and persuasive evidence of guilt
simply because most suspects who confess are guilty, and because most
confessions are corroborated by additional evidence. Under these conditions, however, it is
impossible to isolate the effect of the defendant's "I did it"
admission [FN12] on the
decision-making of criminal justice officials and juries because the confession
co-varies with inculpatory witness or physical evidence. The research reported here isolates the
effect of a defendant's "I did it" statement on the decision-making
of criminal justice officials and juries by studying only cases in which the
defendant's confession is not supported by any physical or reliable inculpatory
evidence. The research design thus
allows measurement of the effect of an untrue admission when a detective,
prosecutor, judge or jury is required to weigh the admission against evidence
that would ordinarily establish the defendant's innocence.
This article
explores whether contemporary American psychological interrogation practices
continue to induce false confessions like the third degree methods that preceded them. This article also analyzes how likely
police-induced false confessions are to lead to the wrongful arrest,
prosecution, conviction, and incarceration of the innocent. And this article examines with field data [FN13] whether
confession evidence substantially biases a trier of fact even when the
defendant's statement was elicited by coercive methods. [FN14] We explore this
issue with cases in which the defendant's statement has not only been coerced
but is also demonstrably unreliable, and in which other evidence proves or
strongly supports the defendant's innocence.
Part II of this
article discusses the selection and classification of the sixty disputed
confession cases under study. [FN15] Part III describes
the findings of our research. Part IV
analyzes the deprivations of liberty and miscarriages of justice associated
with the sixty cases described in this article.
Finally, Part V discusses the import of this research and offers some
concluding remarks.
II.
Method
A. SELECTION AND CLASSIFICATION
Cases of disputed confessions
were identified through multiple sources: electronic media database searches;
directly from case files; [FN16] and from secondary
sources. The sixty cases discussed below
do not constitute a statistically adequate sample of false confession
cases. Rather they were selected because
they share a single characteristic: an individual was arrested primarily
because police obtained an inculpatory statement that later turned out to be a
proven, or highly likely, false confession.
Based on the
information that we obtained and reviewed, all of the cases studied satisfy the
following conditions: no physical or other significant and credible evidence
indicated the suspect's guilt; [FN17] the state's evidence consisted of little or nothing more
than the suspect's statement "I did it;" and the suspect's factual
innocence was supported by a variable amount of evidence--often substantial and
compelling--including exculpatory evidence from the suspect's post-admission
narrative. [FN18] For every case included in this study, there was no
credible evidence corroborating the defendant's "I did it" admission or
supporting the conclusion that he was guilty. [FN19]
Based on the
strength of the evidence indicating a defendant's probable innocence, each case
was classified into one of three categories: proven false confession; highly
probable false confession; or probable false confession.
For the thirty-four
cases classified as proven false confessions, the confessor's innocence was
established by at least one dispositive piece of independent evidence. [FN20] For example, a defendant's confession was classified as proven false if the murder victim
turned up alive, the true perpetrator was caught and proven guilty, or
scientific evidence exonerated the defendant.
Not only was the confessor definitively excluded by dispositive
evidence, but the confession statement itself also lacked internal indicia of
reliability. Any disputed confession
case that fell short of this standard--no matter how questionable the
confession and no matter how much direct or circumstantial evidence indicated
the suspect was innocent--was excluded from this category.
For the eighteen
cases classified as highly probable false confessions, the evidence
overwhelmingly indicated that the defendant's confession statement was false. [FN21] In these cases, no credible independent
evidence supported the conclusion that the confession was true. Rather, the physical or other significant
independent evidence very strongly supported the conclusion that the confession
is false. In each of these cases, the
confession lacked internal reliability.
Thus, the defendant's statement is classified as a highly probable false
confession because the evidence led to the conclusion that his innocence was
established beyond a reasonable doubt.
For the eight cases
classified as probable false confessions, [FN22] no physical or other significant credible evidence
supported the conclusion that the defendant was guilty. There was evidence supporting the conclusion
that the confession was false, and the confession lacked internal indicia of reliability.
Although the evidence of innocence in these cases was neither conclusive
nor overwhelming, there were strong reasons--based on independent evidence--to
believe that the confession was false.
Cases are included in this category if the preponderance of the evidence
indicated that the person who confessed was innocent.
We recognize that
for any case that could not be classified as a proven false confession, there
is a possibility that our classification of the case might be in error. Despite strong evidence supporting the
conclusion that the confession is false, it remains theoretically possible that
one or more of the defendants we classify as false confessors may have
committed the crime. Nevertheless, we believe that the disputed confessions
discussed in this article would be judged false by an overwhelming majority of
neutral observers with access to the evidence we reviewed. [FN23]
B. POST-ADMISSION
NARRATIVE ANALYSIS
When evaluating the
likelihood that a person committed a crime, investigators should first consider
witness statements, biological evidence linking the suspect to the crime
(fingerprint, DNA, hair, etc.), and alibi evidence. The identification by an eyewitness, the
identification of the person as the donor of one or more type of biological
material found at the crime scene, and the lack of an alibi all point to
guilt. By contrast, an opposite pattern
of evidence (e.g., no match with eyewitness
descriptions, exculpating biological evidence, and the existence of an
unimpeachable alibi) all support innocence.
In addition to
these traditional sources of evidence, the defendant's post-admission narrative
of the crime may provide helpful evidence of guilt or innocence, assuming
contamination [FN24] has
been eliminated. If a suspect has made
an "I did it" admission and given a post-admission narrative of a
crime, the fit--or lack thereof--between the contents of the narrative and the
crime scene facts provides evidence of guilt or innocence. Evaluation of the fit can reveal that a
suspect possesses the sort of accurate, personal knowledge of the specifics of
the crime that the perpetrator would be expected to have, or it can demonstrate
the suspect's ignorance of the crime because his answers about the crime scene
evidence are grossly incorrect. [FN25]
The fit between the
specifics of a confession and the crime facts determines whether the "I
did it" admission should be judged as reliable or unreliable
evidence. There are at least three
indicia of reliability that can be evaluated to reach a conclusion about the
trustworthiness of a confession. Does the statement: (1) lead to the discovery
of evidence unknown to the police? (e.g., location of a missing weapon that can
be proven to have been used in the crime, location of missing loot that can be
proven to have been taken from the crime scene, etc.); (2) include
identification of highly unusual elements of the crime that have not been made
public? (e.g., an unlikely method of
killing, mutilation of a certain type, use of a particular device to silence
the victim, etc.); or (3) include an accurate description of the mundane
details of the crime scene which are not easily guessed and have not been
reported publicly? (e.g., how the victim was clothed, disarray of certain furniture
pieces, presence or absence of particular objects at the crime scene, etc.).
If, for example, a
suspect's post-admission narrative either leads the police to missing evidence,
or reveals that the suspect knew precisely how the victim was bound and
mutilated, or which window was jimmied open with what sort of unlikely tool,
then the suspect possesses actual knowledge of the crime that would reasonably
be expected of the perpetrator.
Therefore, the suspect's confession should be deemed reliable. If, on the other hand, the suspect is unable
to provide police with accurate information revealing evidence not already
known to them (e.g., where to locate the murder weapon or the loot), is
demonstrably wrong about the method of killing, or is demonstrably inaccurate
about the specifics of the crime scene, then the statement should be judged
unreliable and, if anything, treated as evidence of innocence. Therefore, the statement should be seen as
lacking evidence of actual knowledge--something to be expected of a false
confessor who has not been contaminated by the police or due to leakage of
information into the community.
When the police
elicit a post-admission narrative from a suspect, they typically seek only information about major crime
elements (e.g., location of the missing weapon, type of mutilation, etc.). However, a suspect's report about the mundane
(but unique or improbable) details of the crime and the crime scene is of great
value in establishing a suspect's guilt or innocence. [FN26] This is true, in
part, because the suspect's knowledge of mundane details is less likely to be
the result of contamination by the police.
Mundane details are less likely to have been mentioned during off-tape
conversations or during the pre-admission phase of an unrecorded interrogation.
A suspect's
post-admission narrative need not demonstrate indicia of reliability in each
category for it to reveal personal knowledge of the crime. It is generally accepted
that one or more aspects of a crime may be so heinous that a guilty party may
refuse to state them even while admitting to other major components of the
crime. For example, Richard Allen Davis,
who admitted to kidnapping and killing a child, was not willing to admit that he also raped her. [FN27] Nevertheless, if a
defendant has been properly and thoroughly debriefed, his personal knowledge of
the crime should allow him to supply sufficiently detailed information to prove
a confession's reliability by demonstrating his specific knowledge of what
happened (e.g., the circumstances of the kidnapping, the child's clothing, the
location of the killing ground, the description of the killing scene, etc.),
even if he resists confessing to certain particularly heinous acts.
C. POLICE-INDUCED FALSE CONFESSION
Police-induced
false confessions arise when a suspect's resistance to confession is broken
down as a result of poor police practice, overzealousness, criminal misconduct
and/or misdirected training. [FN28] Interrogators
sometimes become so committed to closing a case that they improperly use
psychological interrogation techniques to coerce or persuade a suspect into giving
a statement that allows the interrogator to make an arrest. Sometimes police become so certain of the
suspect's guilt that they refuse to even-handedly evaluate new evidence or to
consider the possibility that a suspect may be innocent, even when all the case
evidence has been gathered and overwhelmingly demonstrates that the confession
is false. Once a confession is obtained,
investigation often ceases, and convicting the defendant becomes the only goal
of both investigators and prosecutors.
As the investigative process progresses, some interrogators, who
overstepped procedural boundaries to obtain a false confession, engage in
criminal conduct to cover up their procedural violations (e.g., coerce false
witness statements, suborn perjured testimony from snitches, or perjure
themselves at suppression hearings or at trial). Furthermore, some prosecutors who are
determined to convict obstruct justice by withholding exculpatory evidence from
the defense. [FN29]
American police are poorly trained about the
dangers of interrogation and false confession.
Rarely are police officers instructed in how to avoid eliciting
confessions, how to understand what causes false confessions, or how to
recognize the forms false confessions take or their distinguishing
characteristics. [FN30] Instead, some interrogation manual writers
and trainers persist in the unfounded belief that contemporary psychological
methods will not cause the innocent to confess [FN31]--a fiction so thoroughly contradicted by all of the
research on police interrogation [FN32] that it can be
labeled a potentially deadly myth. This
fiction perpetuates the commonly held belief that only torture can cause an
innocent suspect to confess, and it allows some police to rationalize accepting
coerced and demonstrably unreliable confession statements as true. [FN33]
D. FALSE CONFESSION
CASES
* * * *
III. Findings
A. PROVEN FALSE CONFESSIONS
There are four
sub-types of proven false confessions: the suspect confessed to a crime that
did not happen; the evidence objectively demonstrates that the defendant could
not possibly have committed the crime; the true perpetrator was identified and
his guilt established; or the defendant was exonerated by scientific evidence.
1.
The Suspect Confessed to a Crime That Did Not Happen
Police interrogators
may extract a confession to a crime that did not, in fact, occur. In
2.
The Defendant Could Not Have Committed The Crime
Police may extract
a confession from an individual who could not have committed the crime. In 1987,
The cases in this
study reveal many reasons why someone could not have committed the crime to
which he confessed. In 1973, Connecticut
State Police elicited a confession from Peter Reilly to killing and mutilating
his mother. [FN143] After a jury trial, conviction, and then
reversal by an appellate court, the prosecutor handling the second trial
discovered that the former prosecutor's files contained documents showing that
Reilly arrived at the scene of the murder only minutes before the police and
thus could not have committed the crime. [FN144]
In 1982, James
Harry Reyos confessed in
In 1995, in
3.
The True Perpetrator Was Identified and His Guilt Established
Police may elicit a
confession that is proven false when the true perpetrator is identified. Sometimes this occurs fortuitously when
police encounter the perpetrator in connection with another crime and obtain a
demonstrably reliable confession. In
1979, after twenty-one hours of interrogation by West Virginia State Police,
Paul Reggetz confessed to murdering his wife and two children. [FN154] Reggetz spent
eleven months in pre-trial incarceration before one of his neighbors confessed.
[FN155] In 1990,
In one of the century's most dramatic and disturbing false confession
cases, prosecutors dismissed charges against three false confessors after
routine detective work identified the true killers. [FN164] In 1991, during interrogations that lasted up
to twenty-one hours, Maricopa County Sheriffs in
Garcia not only
confessed to the nine
To make matters
even worse, Maricopa County Sheriffs had also extracted a confession to
Cameron's murder from George Peterson, a mentally ill adult, during a sixteen
hour interrogation. [FN170] When Garcia
admitted to the Cameron murder fourteen months later, Peterson was awaiting
trial for capital murder for the same crime. [FN171]
4.
The Defendant Was Exonerated By Scientific Evidence
Police may elicit a
confession that is conclusively proven false by scientific
evidence. In 1996, police in
Notwithstanding the
numerous examples of proven false confessions reported in this article, it is
difficult to establish conclusively that a defendant's confession is false even
when the evidence of innocence is compelling.
Once a suspect has confessed, it is
rare for the crime to evaporate, for the true perpetrator to be apprehended,
for police or prosecutors to discover that the defendant could not have
committed the crime, or for scientific evidence to exonerate him. The standard for inclusion into the proven
false category--established innocence--is a formidable barrier.
B. HIGHLY PROBABLE
FALSE CONFESSIONS
While our research
has unearthed numerous examples of highly probable false confessions, only a
small number of these cases are reported here.
1.
Bradley Page
In 1984,
Page's
post-admission narrative did not fit the known crime facts. Page stated that Lee died after he slapped
her with the back of his hand, [FN185] causing her to fall and become unconscious as a trickle of
blood came from her nose. [FN186] It was not until
days after the interrogation that the coroner determined that Lee had three
large breaks at the base of the skull, causing considerable bleeding. [FN187] At the time of
Page's interrogation the police did not know the extent of Lee's skull
fractures, nor apparently did Page. [FN188] Page also stated that he made love to the
dead body on a blanket taken from his vehicle; [FN189] in fact, the blanket contained no evidence of sexual
activity, [FN190] no blood stains from Lee's massive head wounds, [FN191] no signs of having been washed, [FN192] and the hairs
found on the blanket were not Lee's. [FN193] Page guessed that he used a spare hubcap that
was in his vehicle in an attempt to bury Lee, [FN194] but the fibers and soil from the hubcap did not match
either the fibers of Lee's clothing or the soil where her body was found. [FN195] Page also stated that he dragged Lee's body
more than 100 yards before burying it. [FN196] Had this happened there would have been a
trail of blood [FN197] that surely
would have been found by the various search and rescue and dog tracking teams
that, beginning the day after her disappearance, spent hundreds of hours combing
the area where Lee's body was eventually found. [FN198]
In addition to the
numerous discrepancies between Page's post-admission narrative and the facts of
the crime, police ignored eyewitness evidence pointing to another suspect. [FN199] In 1994 CBS News identified Michael Ihde--whose appearance was consistent
with the reported eyewitness evidence and whose DNA and pattern of killing
linked him to other local area murders--as Lee's murderer. [FN200] Ihde was in prison
in
2.
Tom Sawyer
In 1986,
3.
Martin Tankleff
After five-and-one-half
hours of accusatory interrogation in 1988,
[FN212]
4.
Richard Lapointe
In 1989, two years
after the murder of Bernice Martin,
An analysis of the
fit between Lapointe's post-admission narrative and the facts of the crime
reveals that it would have been virtually impossible for Lapointe to have
committed the crime in the time available to him. In an interview with his wife immediately
following Lapointe's arrest (an interview police chose to record), [FN231] Mrs. Lapointe
recounted her husband's activities on the day of her grandmother's death. Her account provided Lapointe with an alibi
for all but thirty to forty-five minutes of the day. [FN232] In that brief period Lapointe would have had
to have walked ten minutes to Bernice Martin's apartment, have coffee with her,
rape her, bind her, stab her, set fire to the apartment and walk back to his
residence. [FN233] Yet, when he
returned after his walk Lapointe did not appear sweaty or disheveled. [FN234] Lapointe confessed
to killing the victim at the location in her apartment where the police
believed she had been stabbed, on the couch. [FN235] However, medical testimony established that
she was not killed while on the couch. [FN236] Lapointe admitted to an erroneous police
theory of the victim's death, manual strangulation with both hands, [FN237] but the medical examiner reported that the victim died
from strangulation by compression (i.e., a blunt object had been pushed against
the right side of her neck). [FN238] Lapointe confessed to moving the victim's
body (the police theory of the crime at the time of the interrogation), which
weighed 160 pounds. [FN239] However, Lapointe,
suffers from Dandy-Walker Syndrome [FN240] and has shunts
surgically inserted in his head that render him incapable of lifting more than
fifty pounds. [FN241] Lapointe confessed to the sexual assault
theory of the crime held by the police--rape with his penis. In fact, the victim was raped with a blunt
instrument. [FN242] The killer's gloves were left behind at the
crime scene, but they were too large to fit Lapointe's tiny hands. [FN243] Eyewitnesses saw a
large man who did not match Lapointe's description running away from the crime
scene; [FN244] they insisted that this man was not Lapointe. [FN245]
5.
Jessie Misskelley, Jr.
In 1993
6.
Gary Gauger
In 1993, after
eighteen hours of confrontational, intense and highly deceptive interrogation in
7.
Edgar Garrett
In 1995, police in
Garrett's confession
expressed the theory the police held at the time of the interrogation--that
Michelle was clubbed to death. [FN285] It was not until
weeks later, when her body was recovered, that the police and Garrett learned
that Michelle had been stabbed thirty-four times. [FN286] Michelle's head showed no evidence of blunt force trauma,
and, not surprisingly, the axe handle Garrett supposedly used to kill her
carried no traces of her hair or blood. [FN287] At trial, the jury acquitted Garrett of
capital murder. [FN288]
8.
Douglas Warney
In 1996,
C. PROBABLE FALSE
CONFESSIONS
1.
Tammy Lynn Harrison
In 1979, following
several days of intensive interrogation by Duncanville, Texas police Lieutenant
Robert Moore, Tammy Lynn Harrison, a seventeen-year-old, signed a confession to
stabbing her mother to death. [FN306]
2.
Barry Lee Fairchild
In 1983,
3.
Jane Bolding
In 1985, after
twenty-three hours of continuous interrogation,
4.
Delbert Ward
In 1990, New York
State Police interrogated Delbert Ward, a fifty-nine-year-old illiterate and
mentally handicapped farmer. Ward
eventually signed a confession admitting that he had murdered his brother,
William, by putting his hand over William's nose and mouth. [FN330] Ward reported that he had been intimidated
into confessing, [FN331] and thereafter
steadfastly maintained his innocence. [FN332] When the Assistant Medical Examiner of
Onondaga County, Dr. Humphrey Germaniuk, filled out William Ward's death
certificate and turned the body over to the funeral home, he did not believe
that a homicide had occurred. [FN333] However, immediately after learning of Delbert Ward's confession, Dr. Germaniuk
re-classified William Ward's death as a homicide. [FN334]
There was no
credible evidence linking Delbert Ward to his brother's death. Instead, the evidence supported the
conclusion that William Ward died of natural causes, not of asphyxiation. Four common and telltale signs that should
have been present if William Ward had died of asphyxia were not there: (1)
William Ward's nose and mouth were free of trauma or blood; (2) there was no
evidence of regurgitation; (3) there was no thinning of the blood; and (4)
there was not a bluish or purple appearance to the skin. [FN335] At the same time, William Ward's enlarged
heart, clogged coronary and pulmonary arteries, and
his fluid-filled lungs supplied clear evidence that he had died of natural
disease. [FN336] Nevertheless, at
trial, Dr. Germaniuk testified for the prosecution that William Ward died of
asphyxiation, [FN337] while the forensic
pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht testified for the defense that William Ward died of
natural causes. [FN338] After almost nine hours of deliberation, the
jury acquitted Ward of murdering his brother. [FN339] Two days after the
trial, the investigator who had elicited Ward's false confession "was
reprimanded and ended up taking an early retirement in
5. Luis
Roberto Benavidez
In 1992, in
6.
Linda Stangel
In 1995, Oregon
State Police coerced Linda Stangel into confessing to shoving her boyfriend,
David Wahl, off a trail 320 feet above the
Yet there was no
evidence linking Stangel to the crime.
Stangel's several different accounts of her panic response were
inconsistent with one another and all failed to describe physical circumstances
that would have caused Wahl to fall from the cliff--even if Stangel had
panicked and pushed him. Moreover, the
state never produced any evidence that a crime occurred, since Wahl's body did
not wash up for weeks, [FN357] and thus no cause of death could be determined. [FN358] Based solely on the
contents of her coerced and unreliable confession, [FN359] a jury convicted Stangel
of second degree manslaughter, [FN360] and she was
sentenced to more than six years in prison. [FN361]
IV.
False Confessions and Case Outcomes
* * * *
B. CLASSIFYING CASE
OUTCOMES
In general, false
confession cases can be usefully divided into two categories: those that result
in pre-trial deprivations of liberty (Type I cases); and those that result in
miscarriages of justice and wrongful deprivation of many years of liberty
and/or of life (Type II cases). Type I cases occur when police, prosecutors, trial
judges or juries correct the initial error of relying on a questionable
confession. There are multiple points in
the trial process at which the criminal justice system has the potential to be
self-correcting. Indeed, the rules of
American criminal procedure are structured to allocate the risk of error so as
to minimize the possibility of convicting the innocent.
1.
Type I Cases: False Confessions That Do Not Lead to Conviction (52%)
a. General
Sometimes police
extract a confession from an innocent suspect that they initially believe to be
true, but either they or the prosecutors realize is false before the filing of
charges. In other instances, police and
prosecutors realize that an innocent suspect has confessed because it is
physically impossible for the suspect to have committed the crime. Sometimes officials do not come to the
realization that the confession is false until after another suspect has confessed
to the crime. And sometimes police and
prosecutors never come to this realization even though the confession is
demonstrably not true (i.e., contradicts the known facts of the crime).
The Type I false
confession cases described above include: Billy Gene Davis' confession that he
killed his ex-girlfriend (who turned up alive); [FN373] Ruben Trujillo's, [FN374] Pedro Delvillar's, [FN375] Jose Soto
Martinez's [FN376] and Ivan Reliford's [FN377] confessions to
crimes which were committed when all were in custody; Christina Mason's
confession to killing her child, who died of natural causes; [FN378] and Martin Salazar's confession to a crime that scientific
evidence proved he did not commit. [FN379]
b.
Confessions From The True Perpetrator
Often police or
prosecutors only discover and acknowledge their error in eliciting a false
confession or charging an innocent defendant prior to conviction because they
have accidentally or unintentionally obtained a reliable confession from the
true perpetrator(s) of the crime. [FN380] Several such cases described above include: Paul Reggetz,
who was cleared of murdering his wife when a neighbor confessed to the crime; [FN381] Anthony Atkinson, who confessed to murder and sodomy but
was released when two other men confessed to the crime; [FN382] Guy Lewis, who confessed to killing his girlfriend, but
was released when the real killers confessed; [FN383] Robert Moore, whose confession to capital murder and
robbery was disregarded when the true killer confessed and identified his two
co-perpetrators; [FN384] and Donald
Shoup, whose capital murder charges were dropped after the true killer
confessed. [FN385]
Though it appears
to happen relatively infrequently, prosecutors sometimes drop charges against a
defendant who has confessed because the confession does not match the facts of
the crime and the prosecutor thus recognizes that it is of no evidentiary
value. In 1991,
d.
Judicial Suppression
Sometimes
prosecutors are forced to drop charges after a judge suppresses a confession
because there is no physical or even uncompromised testimonial evidence to
implicate the defendant. In 1983, using
a guided visualization and relaxation based hypnotic induction,
Though judges can
prevent Type I cases from developing into Type II cases if they suppress the
confession prior to trial, [FN393] they may also vacate a conviction both prior to and after
sentencing. This happened to the charges
against Lavale Burt in 1985.
e.
Jury Acquittals
If police fail to
detect that a confession is unreliable, prosecutors fail to dismiss charges and the judge fails to suppress
the confession, [FN398] the
defendant may still be able to persuade a jury of his innocence. Though juries tend to regard confessions as
the most probative and damning evidence of guilt possible, [FN399] they sometimes acquit defendants who have confessed
falsely. [FN400] For example, in
1986 after almost ten hours of interrogation, [FN401] police in
2.
Type II Cases: False Confessions That Lead to Wrongful Conviction and
Imprisonment (48%)
a. General
Type II cases are those
in which miscarriages have occurred and the justice system has clearly failed:
not only have innocent individuals been made to confess to crimes they did not
commit, but they have also been wrongly prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned. False confessions may lead to wrongful
conviction either when a suspect pleads guilty to avoid an anticipated harsher
punishment or when a judge or jury convicts at trial. Following Type II errors, some suspects are
eventually released and exonerated; some are released after serving a prison
term but are never exonerated; and some false confessors are sentenced to life
terms and remain incarcerated to this day.
Several false confessors in this study were sentenced to death, and in
one case the defendant was executed.
Confession evidence
is sufficient to produce wrongful arrests, convictions and incarceration. In practice, criminal justice officials and
lay jurors often treat confession evidence as dispositive, so much so that they
often allow it to outweigh even strong evidence of a suspect's factual
innocence. All of the police-induced false confessions documented here resulted
in some deprivation of liberty.
Fifty-two percent of the false confessors' wrongful deprivation of
liberty ended before conviction, while 48% of the defendants suffered
miscarriages of justice.
b.
Plea Bargains
If it seems counter-intuitive that an
innocent person would confess falsely, the specter of an innocent false
confessor pleading guilty seems fantastic. Yet this is not uncommon. [FN412] As Table B2 indicates, in 12% (7) of the
cases reported here, the false confessor chose to plead guilty to avoid an
anticipated harsher punishment--typically the death penalty.
i. Jack Carmen
In 1975 Jack
Carmen, a mentally retarded twenty-six-year-old, confessed to the kidnapping,
rape and murder of a fourteen-year-old girl in
ii. David Vasquez
In 1984, David
Vasquez, who is also mentally retarded, [FN417] confessed three times [FN418] and
subsequently pled guilty to the murder of Carolyn Hamm, for which he was
sentenced to thirty-five years in prison. [FN419] In Vasquez's case,
the police also subsequently identified the true
murderer, a serial killer, [FN420] and Vasquez
was released from prison after serving almost five years of his sentence. [FN421]
iii. Johnny Lee Wilson
Vasquez was
fortunate compared to Johnny Lee Wilson, another mentally retarded adult. [FN422] In 1986,
iv. Paul Ingram
In 1988, police in
Olympia, Washington extracted from Paul Ingram a highly probable false confession
to numerous fictitious crimes [FN426]--including sexually molesting his two daughters, [FN427] supervising the gang rape and bondage of his daughters and
wife on numerous occasions, [FN428] and being a
demon-possessed member of a satanic cult [FN429] that allegedly
committed murders, [FN430] performed
coathanger abortions, [FN431] signed loyalty
oaths in blood, [FN432] engaged in bestiality, [FN433] and dismembered,
sacrificed and cannibalized small children. [FN434] The prosecution was able to save face by
getting Ingram to enter a guilty plea to six counts of third degree rape. [FN435] Though the
sensational and bizarre circumstances of Paul Ingram's case remain unique in
the annals of American interrogation history, the outcome of his case is
not. Despite compelling evidence that
his guilty plea was predicated upon a false confession, [FN436] Ingram remains incarcerated. [FN437]
v. William Kelley
In
1990 William Kelley, a mentally handicapped adult, [FN438]
confessed and then pled guilty to the murder of a twenty-five-year-old woman
whose body was found in a landfill. [FN439] He was sentenced to
ten to twenty years in prison but was released two years later when the police
in
vi. Christopher Smith and Ralph Jacobs
In 1991 Christopher
Smith and Ralph Jacobs, also mentally handicapped adults, both falsely
confessed, and pled guilty to, the murder of a New Castle, Indiana drug dealer.
[FN443] Smith was sentenced to thirty-eight years and
Jacobs to eight. [FN444] Both had served
eighteen months in prison when police arrested the true killer, who was linked
to the crime by physical evidence (unlike Smith and Jacobs) and eventually
convicted. [FN445]
c.
Jury Convictions
i. General
The history of
criminal justice in
. . . The false confession cases documented here produce a
generally consistent outcome, whether the false confessor's innocence is proven
or classified as highly probable or probable.
Not surprisingly,
the false confessors who are ever going to be proven innocent are likely to
have this proof come to light shortly after their confession. Slightly over half (53%) of the proven false
confessors have charges dismissed prior to trial, while 47% of proven false
confessors must make a decision about pleading to an offer of lesser punishment
or undergoing trial. The high percentage
of pre-trial dismissals is likely due to proof of a confessor's innocence
coming to light early in the pre-trial discovery process (e.g., when scientific
test results become available) or when the defense establishes the defendant's alibi (e.g., the
alibi the police ignored when the defendant offered it during interrogation) or
for other strong reasons (e.g., the victim turns up alive).
Absent the
discovery of evidence dispositively proving the defendant's innocence, only 19%
of defendants classified as highly probable or probable false confessors are
spared having to choose to undergo trial or to plead guilty. The vast majority (81%) of these false
confessors find themselves having to choose either to plead guilty to a crime
they did not commit or go to trial and risk the harshest possible punishment.
[T]here is a strong
likelihood that a miscarriage of justice will occur if a false confessor
undergoes a trial. It is alarming that
about three-quarters (73%) of all false confessors who went to trial were
convicted. [W]hen proven and classified
confession cases (i.e., highly probable + probable) are separated there is a
27% higher level of risk of conviction at trial for those whose innocence will
be proven much later. Further, while 63%
of the classified false confessors are convicted at their trials, 90% of the
defendants who would someday be proven innocent are convicted when their false
confessions are brought into court.
If tried, 37% of
those classified as false confessors are acquitted, while only 10% of those
belatedly proven innocent are acquitted.
It appears that at the time of trial the exculpatory evidence favoring
those who were destined to someday be proven innocent was weaker than the
exculpatory evidence supporting those who even today can only be classified as
false confessors. Some of those who were later proven to be false confessors
were only saved from their sentences of
execution or life imprisonment by new scientific developments such as DNA
analysis or a true perpetrator's long-delayed decision to confess. [FN458]
ii.
Case Illustrations
a. Officially Exonerated After Conviction
The list of false
confessors wrongfully convicted by juries is long. After Bradley Cox confessed to two rapes, he
was convicted by a jury in 1980 and sentenced to fifty to 200 years in prison
based on a now-proven false confession. [FN459] He served nearly
two years before the true perpetrator confessed. [FN460] The so-called "dream
confession"
In 1979 in
b.
Convicted and Never Officially Exonerated
Some false
confessors are not as fortunate as Cox, Linscott, Purvis, Parker, Reynolds, and
Pavlinac--all of whom were eventually released and exonerated of their wrongful
convictions. Some innocent individuals
who confess falsely are convicted by juries and never released from
prison. For example, Earl Washington, a mentally retarded
adult who confessed to rape and capital murder, was convicted by a jury and
sentenced to death. [FN480]
Like LaPointe,
Misskelley, Tankleff, and Washington, there are many individuals
who were induced to confess falsely, and in the absence of any other evidence,
are convicted by a jury and sentenced to long prison terms. Other false
confessors, however, serve their sentences but are never exonerated. Bradley Page was convicted of involuntary
manslaughter after two trials and sentenced to six years in state prison. [FN486] Although new evidence identified an already
convicted serial murderer as the true killer, the Alameda County, California
District Attorney's Office refused to acknowledge that Page (whose record was
spotless and whose life had been exemplary) was innocent and refused to reopen
the case. [FN487] James Harry Reyos
confessed to a murder and was sentenced to thirty-eight years and served twelve years in prison, even though the
appellate prosecutor conceded that it was physically impossible for Reyos to
have committed the crime. [FN488] Though he was
released, Reyos was never exonerated.
In 1973,
In 1979,
In Waukegan,
Illinois in 1993, Juan Rivera, a mentally handicapped twenty-year-old, [FN512] underwent
approximately thirty-three hours [FN513] of unrecorded
interrogation over four days, [FN514] and signed two
police-written confession statements admitting
that he raped, stabbed and murdered eleven-year-old Holly Staker. [FN515] The confessions
contained the types of corrections of spelling and grammatical errors [FN516] that interrogators are trained to work into written
confessions to demonstrate that the suspect reviewed the statement before
signing it. [FN517] However, it would have been difficult, if not
impossible, for Rivera to have actually detected these errors since he reads at
a third grade level. [FN518] The veracity of Rivera's confession was
further undermined by the fact that he was wearing an electronic leg monitor
that showed he was at home the night of the crime, [FN519] and that none
of the 350 pieces of physical evidence linked Rivera to the crime. [FN520] DNA tests of more
than a dozen items from the crime scene failed to match Rivera's blood, [FN521] semen, [FN522] fingerprints [FN523] or hairs. [FN524] Nevertheless, a
jury convicted Rivera of first-degree murder, [FN525] and a judge sentenced him to life in prison without the
possibility of parole. [FN526] In November, 1996, an Illinois Appellate
Court reversed Rivera's conviction. [FN527] However, Rivera remains incarcerated,
[FN528] and
V.
Conclusion
This article has
documented that American police continue to elicit false confessions even though the era of third degree
interrogation has passed. This study has
also demonstrated with field data what Kassin and Wrightsman have established
in the laboratory: [FN530] that confession evidence substantially biases the trier of
fact's evaluation of the case in favor of prosecution and conviction, even when
the defendant's uncorroborated confession was elicited by coercive methods and
the other case evidence strongly supports his innocence. [FN531] With near
certainty, false confessions lead to unjust deprivations of liberty. Often they also result in wrongful conviction
and incarceration, sometimes even execution.
For those concerned
with the proper administration of justice, the important issue is no longer
whether contemporary interrogation methods cause innocent suspects to
confess. Nor is it to speculate about
the rate of police-induced false confession or the annual number of wrongful convictions
they cause. [FN532] Rather, the important question is: How can
such errors be prevented? If police and prosecutors wish to prevent
wrongful deprivations of liberty and miscarriages of justice, they must
acknowledge the reality of false confessions, seek to understand their causes
and consequences, and work to implement policies that will both reduce the
likelihood of eliciting false confessions and increase the likelihood of
detecting them.
The sixty false
confessions described in this article dispel the myth promoted by interrogation
manual authors and police trainers that the psychological
interrogation methods they advocate do not cause suspects to confess to crimes
they did not commit. [FN533] In fact, the
opposite is true. Our analysis almost
always reveals evidence of shoddy police practice and/or police
criminality. Shoddy police practice
derives in large part from poor interrogation training. Influential manuals such as Criminal
Interrogation and Confessions [FN534] and Practical
Aspects of Interview and Interrogation [FN535] teach police
to use tactics that have been shown to be coercive and to produce false confessions.
[FN536] Such texts also
mislead interrogators into believing that a suspect's guilt can be inferred on
the basis of pseudoscientific claims about the meaning of demeanor and behavior
analysis, and they fail to educate police about the social psychology, variety
and distinguishing characteristics of interrogation-induced false confessions. [FN537]
Police criminality (e.g.,
coercing false witness statements, suborning perjured testimony from snitches,
perjury at suppression hearings or at trial and/or obstruction of justice by
withholding exculpatory evidence) often stems from ill-conceived efforts to
save prosecutions that never should have commenced. The blood sport attitude
that often develops in high profile criminal prosecutions--"get the guilty
party no matter what"--sometimes causes significant harm to innocent
individuals who police and prosecutors have identified as guilty solely because
they were coerced or persuaded to make a false
confession. During the investigation and
prosecution of every wrongful conviction documented in this article, police and
prosecutors should have realized that the confession was almost certainly, if
not demonstrably, false.
The American
criminal justice system has not yet developed adequate safeguards to prevent
police-induced false confessions from leading to the wrongful deprivation of
liberty and conviction of the innocent.
False confessions threaten the quality of criminal justice in
False confessions
are likely to lead to unjust deprivations of liberty and miscarriages of
justice because criminal justice officials and lay jurors treat confession
evidence with such deference that it outweighs strong evidence of a defendant's
innocence. It bears emphasizing that in
none of the disputed confessions documented
in this article was there any reliable evidence corroborating the defendant's
confession, and in most of these cases there was compelling, if not
overwhelming, evidence establishing his innocence. Nevertheless, criminal
justice officials treated these confession statements as the most probative
evidence of the defendant's guilt and permitted the "I did it"
statement to override evidence of his innocence. Absent the uncorroborated and unreliable
statement, none of these individuals would likely have been arrested, charged,
convicted, incarcerated, or executed.
The risk of harm
caused by false confessions could be greatly reduced if police were required to
video- or audio-record the entirety of their interrogations. Presently, only
Taping also allows
third parties to resolve the courtroom "swearing contests" that arise
when the suspect and the police offer conflicting testimony about what occurred during interrogation. In disputed confession cases the
discrepancies between police officers' and defendants' accounts clearly
indicate that one of the parties is either lying or mistaken. Of course, interrogators are sometimes
falsely accused of deviant conduct. In
the usual case, however, the police officer's testimony is treated as far more
credible than the citizen's, whose reputability is compromised by his status as
a criminal defendant. [FN543] In many of the
cases documented in this article, however, the interrogator claimed that the
confessor supplied information that only the perpetrator could have known--only
to have the suspect subsequently proven innocent and his ignorance of the crime
facts revealed. To more accurately
resolve whether the interrogator used coercion, whether the suspect knew the
facts of the crime, and/or whether he was made to confess falsely, one conclusion
is inescapable: interrogations must be recorded in their entirety.
The cases discussed
above also illustrate the compelling need for police, prosecutors, judges and
juries to carefully scrutinize and evaluate a suspect's post-admission
narrative against the known facts of the crime.
Confessions should be evaluated on the basis of the quality of the
post-admission narratives they produce, and police should be trained to
recognize that it is this information--not the words "I did it"--that
discriminates between the innocent and the guilty. In investigations in which hard evidence
linking a person to a crime is missing, only
the analysis of the suspect's post-admission narrative provides a basis for
objectively assessing his personal knowledge of a crime (assuming contamination
is eliminated). In each of the recorded
false confessions studied here, the account the suspect offered after saying
the words "I did it" was significantly at odds with the crime facts
and indicated that the suspect was ignorant of information the true perpetrator
would have known.
When police are
trained to seek both independent evidence of a suspect's guilt and internal
corroboration for every confession before making an arrest; when state's
attorneys demand that "I did it" statements be corroborated by the details
of a suspect's post-admission narrative before undertaking a prosecution; when
courts insist on a minimal indicia of reliability before admitting confession
statements into evidence; and when legislators mandate the recording of
interrogations in their entirety, the damage wrought and the lives ruined by
the misuse of psychological interrogation methods will be significantly
reduced. The sixty cases discussed in
this article illustrate that when there is no independent evidence against a
defendant and only a factually inaccurate confession, the risk of justice
miscarrying is so great that the case should never be allowed to proceed to
trial.
[FN1]. See Saul M.
Kassin & Lawrence S. Wrightsman, Confession Evidence, in The Psychology of
Confession Evidence & Trial Procedure 67, 67-68 (Saul M. Kassin &
Lawrence S. Wrightsman eds., 1985) [hereinafter Kassin & Wrightsman,
Confession Evidence]; 3 John Henry Wigmore, Wigmore on Evidence § 815 (1972); David Simon, Homicide: A Year On
The Killing Streets (1991); Richard A. Leo, Inside
the Interrogation Room, 86 J. Crim. L.
& Criminology 266, 298 (1996) [hereinafter
Leo, Inside the Interrogation Room].
[FN2]. See Kassin &
Wrightsman, Confession Evidence, supra note 1, at 67; Saul M. Kassin & Lawrence S. Wrightsman,
Coerced Confessions, Judicial Instructions, and Mock Juror Verdicts, 11 J. of
Applied Social Psychology 489, 489 (1981) [hereinafter Kassin & Wrightsman,
Coerced Confessions]; Saul M. Kassin & Lawrence S. Wrightsman, Prior Confessions
and Mock Juror Verdicts, 10 J. of Applied Social Psychology 133, 133 (1980)
[hereinafter Kassin & Wrightsman, Prior Confessions].
[FN3]. See Donald S.
Connery, Convicting the Innocent: The Struggle of a Murder, A False Confession,
and the Struggle to Free a "Wrong Man" ix-xii (1996); C. Ronald Huff
et al., Convicted But Innocent: Wrongful Conviction and Public Policy xxi-xxiii
(1996); Lawrence S. Wrightsman & Saul M. Kassin, Confessions in the
Courtroom 2-3 (1993); Gisli Gudjonsson, The Psychology of Interrogations,
Confessions and Testimony (1992); Martin Yant, Presumed Guilty: When Innocent
People are Wrongly Convicted 11-14 (1991); Robert Perske, Unequal Justice 11-12
(1991); Jerome Frank & Barbara Frank, Not Guilty (1957); Edward Radin, The
Innocents 11-12 (1964); Edwin M.
Borchard, Convicting the Innocent: Errors of Criminal Justice vii (1932);
National Comm'n on Law Observance and Enforcement, Report on Lawlessness in Law
Enforcement 11 (1931) [hereinafter The Wickersham Comm'n Report]; Welsh S.
White, False
Confessions and the Constitution: Safeguards Against Untrustworthy Confessions,
32 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 105, 109 (1997);
Kassin & Wrightsman, Confession Evidence, supra note 1, at 68; Hugo Adam Bedau & Michael L.
Radelet, Miscarriages
of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases, 40 Stan. L. Rev. 21, 22 (1987).
[FN4]. See Edward
Connors et al., Convicted by Juries, Exonerated by Science: Case Studies in the
Use of DNA Evidence to Establish Innocence After Trial (1996); Huff et al.,
supra note 3; Connery, supra note 3; Roger Parloff, Triple Jeopardy: A Story of
Law at its Best--and Worst (1996); Kevin Davis, The Wrong Man: A True Story
(1996); Jim Fisher, Fall Guys: False Confessions and the Politics of Murder
(1996); Paul Mones, Stalking Justice (1995); Steven Linscott, Maximum Security
(1994); Gudjonsson, supra note 3; Yant, supra note 3; Robert Mayer, The Dreams
of Ada (1991); Perske, supra note 3.
See also Richard J.
Ofshe & Richard A. Leo, The Decision
to Confess Falsely: Rational Choice and Irrational Action, 74 Denv. U. L. Rev.
979 (1997) [ [ [hereinafter Ofshe & Leo, The
Decision to Confess Falsely]; Richard J. Ofshe & Richard A. Leo, The Social
Psychology of Police Interrogation: The Theory and Classification of True and
False Confessions, 16 Stud. in L., Pol., & Soc'y 189 (1997) [hereinafter
Ofshe & Leo, Social Psychology]; Gail Johnson, False
Confessions and Fundamental Fairness: The Need for Electronic Recording of
Custodial Interrogations, 6 B.U. Pub. Int. L.J. 719 (1997); Saul M. Kassin, The Psychology of Confession Evidence, 52
Am. Psychol. 221 (1997); White, supra note 3; Michael Radelet et al., Prisoners
Released From Death Rows Since 1970 Because of Doubts About Their Guilt, 13
T.M. Cooley L. Rev. 907 (1996); T.N. Thomas,
Polygraphy and Coerced-Compliant False Confession: Serviceman E' Redevivus, 35
Sci. & Just. 133 (1995); Mickey McMahon, False Confessions and Police
Deception: The Interrogation, Incarceration and Release of An Innocent Veteran,
13 Am. J. Forensic Psychol. 5 (1995); Paul Hourihan, Earl
Washington's Confession: Mental Retardation and the Law of Confessions, 81 Va.
L. Rev. 1471 (1995); Wrightsman & Kassin,
Confessions in the Courtroom, supra note 3; Richard J. Ofshe, Inadvertent
Hypnosis During Interrogation, 40 Int'l J. Clinical & Experimental Hypnosis
125 (1992) [hereinafter Ofshe, Inadvertent Hypnosis].
See generally Lack of Evidence Leads to Sitka
Murder Acquittal, Anchorage Daily News,
June 25, 1997, at B4 [hereinafter Lack of Evidence]; Tom Held, Justice Gets 2nd
Chance in Murder Case: Victims' Son Wants Fair Trial, No Death Penalty Threat
for Accused Outlaws, MilwaukeeJ. & Sentinel, June 12, 1997, at 1; Bryan
Smith, Suspects' Confessions May Hide Truth, Oregonian, Feb. 23, 1997, at D1;
Bob Herbert, Prosecutor's Prize, N.Y. Times, Jan. 29, 1996, at A5; Mike Folks,
Man Charged With Murder Released; Fingerprints Didn't Match Ones Found at
Scene, Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Oct. 12, 1996, at B1; Barry Siegel, A
Question of Guilt When Taunja Bennett was Killed in 1990; Portland, Oregon
Prosecutor Jim McIntyre Thought He Had a Rock-Solid Case Against Laverne
Pavlinac and John Sosnovske; Then Someone Started Writing Anonymous Letters Claiming Credit for
the Murder, L.A. Times, Sept. 1, 1996 (Magazine), at 15 [hereinafter Siegel, A
Question of Guilt]; Mark Sauer, Some Strange Cases Examined of Innocents Who Confess
to Murder, San Diego Union & Trib., July 27, 1996, at B10; John Holland,
Break Killing Suspect Cleared: Shoup Among 4 Held in Canadian's Death, Daytona
News J., July 31, 1996, at 1A; William Booher, Wrongly Imprisoned Man Will Get
$605,000, New Castle, Henry County and State Must Pay for 18 Months Behind
Bars, Indianapolis Star, Mar. 21, 1995, at C1; Robert P. Sigman, The Tragedy of
False Confessions, Kan. City Star, June 19, 1995, at B4; Marc Perrusquia,
"Confessor" to Murder Says He Was Coerced, Comm. Appeal, Jan. 16,
1995, at A1; Joseph P. Shapiro, Innocent, But Behind Bars; Another Man
Confessed to Murder; Why is this Retarded Man in Prison?, U.S. News & World
Rep., Sept. 19, 1994, at 36; Michael Granberry, Charges Dropped in Laguna Arson
When "Confession" Is Proved Bogus; Courts: O.C. Prosecutors Admit
They Were Duped, Verify Suspect Was in Mexican Jail During Last Year's
Firestorm, L.A. Times, Oct. 6, 1994, at A1; Joe Darby, Prosecutors Reject
Murder Confession, New Orleans Times-Picayune,
Feb. 4, 1994, at B2; June Arney, Joseph M. Giarratano; Bloody Boot
Prints Led Him To Doubt His Own Confession, Virginian-Pilot & The Ledger
Star, June 26, 1994, at A1; Glen Chase, Expert Picks at Confession Says Errors
Suggests Misskelley Lied, Ark. Democrat-Gazette, Feb. 2, 1994, at 1A; Ginny
Carroll, True Confessions--Or False?; In
1982 a New Mexico Man Said He Killed a
Priest; Now, There's Strong Evidence He
Didn't, Newsweek, Sept. 13, 1993, at 41; Pete Shellem, Jailed Man Set Free
After False Confession; Proof of Innocence Approved at Hearing, Harrisburg
Patriot, Jan. 9, 1993, at A1 [hereinafter Shellem, Jailed Man Set Free]; David
Rossmiller & Glen Creno, City to Probe Police on False Confession; Mom's
Other Sons Returned to Family, Phoenix Gazette, Mar. 31, 1993, at B4; Roger
Parloff, False Confessions: Standard Interrogations by Arizona Law Enforcement
Officials Led to Four Matching Confessions to the Murders of Nine People at a
Buddhist Temple; But All Four Suspect
Were Innocent, Am. Law., May 1993, at 58 [hereinafter Parloff, False
Confessions]; Carlos V. Lozano, Ex-Ranch Foreman Acquitted of Murder Despite a
Confession Crime: A Jury Official Says the Prosecution Failed to Provide
"Separate Evidence to Substantiate" the Charge Stemming from the 1988
Simi Valley Slaying, L.A. Times, July 24, 1992, at B5; Carolyn Colwell,
Defense, DA: Scrap Murder Indictment, Newsday, May 1, 1991, at 23; Jolayne
Houtz, Murder Confessions False; Man Released, Seattle Times, Apr. 23, 1991, at
B1; Rob Warden, Guilty Until Proven Innocent: The Criminal Justice System Does
Not Protect the Innocent, Chi. Times Mag. 34 (1990); Barry Siegel, A Peek at
Back Alley Justice, L.A. Times, Aug. 16, 1990, at 1 [hereinafter Siegel, A Peek
At Back Alley Justice]; Jim Phillips, Man Who Said He Killed Friend Gets
Probation for Scaring Her, Austin Am. Statesman, Nov. 9, 1990, at B3; Mark
Paxton, Nightmare of Confession Continues;
Two Claimed Responsibility for Murders, Tulsa World, Feb. 11, 1990, at C26;
Jack Page, A Question of Justice: A Father's Plea for Bradley Page, East Bay
Express, Oct. 12, 1990, at 1; Claire Cooper, False Confessions Ring True Under
Questioning, Suspects Fall Victim to Their Own Imaginations, Sacramento Bee,
Jan. 7, 1990, at A1.
[FN5]. See, e.g., Mones,
supra note 4; Mayer, supra note 4; Terry J. Ganey,
[FN6]. In their study of
350 miscarriages of justice in capital (and potentially capital) cases in the
twentieth century, Bedau and Radelet identified false confession as the leading
cause of wrongful convictions attributable to police misconduct. Of the cases they studied, 14% resulted from
coerced or persuaded false confessions.
See Bedau & Radelet, supra note 3, at 58.
[FN7]. Borchard, supra
note 3.
[FN8]. See, e.g., Huff
et al., supra note 3; Yant, supra note 3; Radin, supra note 3; Frank & Frank,
supra note 3; Radelet et al., supra note 4.
[FN9]. The leading contemporary research in this tradition is
Bedau and Radelet's landmark study of miscarriages of justice. See Bedau & Radelet, supra note 3; see also
Michael L. Radelet et al., In Spite of Innocence: Erroneous Convictions in
Capital Cases (1992). In total, they
identified 416 cases since 1900 in which innocent defendants were wrongfully
convicted of capital or potentially capital crimes.
[FN10]. In little more than
a half century, American interrogation practices have undergone a remarkable
change. See generally Richard A. Leo,
From Coercion to Deception: The Changing Nature of Police Interrogation in
In response, the
Supreme Court turned its attention from constitutional questions raised by
physical coercion to the problems raised by psychologically oriented
interrogation practices. In a series of
decisions between 1940 and 1963, the Court analyzed the conditions under which
psychological methods produce involuntary confessions. See, e.g., Haynes
v. Washington, 373 U.S. 503 (1963); Lynumn
v. Illinois, 372 U.S. 528 (1963); Culombe
v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568 (1961); Rogers
v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534 (1961); Spano
v. New York, 360 U.S. 315 (1959); Fikes
v. Alabama, 352 U.S. 191 (1957); Leyra
v. Denno, 347 U.S. 556 (1954); Watts
v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49 (1949); Malinski
v. New York, 324 U.S. 401 (1945); Ashcraft
v. Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143 (1944); Chambers
v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940).
In 1966, in Miranda
v.
Miranda marked the
end of third degree interrogations and the establishment of a new era of psychological
interrogation techniques and strategies.
Even though interrogation practices today are psychologically-oriented,
American police sometimes resort to third degree methods. See 20/20: Confession at Gunpoint? (ABC News
Television Broadcast, Mar. 29, 1991) [hereinafter
Confession at Gunpoint?]. While the
In the 31 years
since Miranda, American police have developed, extended, and refined
psychological methods of interrogation.
As a consequence, interrogation practices have become increasingly
subtle and sophisticated. Leo, From Coercion to Deception,
supra, at 36-37. Interrogators
may have become more effective at obtaining confession statements than they
were in the prior era of third degree interrogation. See id.
With contemporary psychological methods, police now routinely elicit
true confessions from the guilty without
resorting to physical or psychological coercion; sometimes coerce false
confessions from the innocent without resorting to force; and, less commonly,
elicit false confessions from the factually innocent by persuading them they
committed crimes about which they have no recollection. See generally Ofshe
& Leo, The Decision to Confess Falsely, supra note 4.
[FN11]. See Ofshe &
Leo, Social Psychology, supra note 4, at 191-94.
[FN12]. For analytic
purposes we distinguish between an admission ("I did it") and a
confession. The post-admission narrative is the statement the suspect gives to
police after making the "I did it" admission. A confession is a full description of a
person's participation in a crime.
[FN13]. See Kassin
& Wrightsman, Coerced Confessions, supra note 2, at 492- 504; Kassin &
Wrightsman, Prior Confessions, supra note 2, at 136-45.
[FN14]. Kassin, supra
note 4, at 221.
[FN15]. Due to the
difficulty of directly obtaining case materials-- especially in lesser known
cases--all social science and legal research on miscarriage of justices relies
on both primary and secondary source materials. See,
e.g., Yant, supra note 3; Huff et al., supra note 3; Bedau &
Radelet, supra note 3. The research
reported here is no different. By
necessity, we rely on a variety of sources to document our assertions of
fact. Where possible, we have tried to
draw directly on interviews, police transcripts, and trial records, but in many
instances we were only able to obtain newspaper and magazine accounts,
appellate court opinions, academic journal articles, and/or books.
[FN16]. The authors
obtained case file materials (either substantial or selected portions) directly
from the attorney(s) representing the confessor in 17 cases (nos. 2, 3, 16, 17, 18, 21, 28, 34,
35, 40, 43, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 58). See
infra Part II.D (describing and numbering the cases studied in this
article). The confessors' attorneys
typically requested consultation at a suppression hearing and/or criminal
trial, during the post-conviction appeal, or in a civil proceeding following
the termination of criminal charges. In
one case, a governor requested consultation in connection with a pardon under
consideration.
[FN17]. In many of the
cases identified in this paper, the suspect supposedly also confessed to
so-called "jailhouse snitches"--at the same time that he was busy
recanting his uncorroborated confession to everyone else. Because jailhouse snitches stand to gain
material concessions and sentence reductions, we do not regard their testimony
as credible. See Report of the 1989-90
Los Angeles County Grand Jury, Investigation of the Involvement of Jail House
Informants in the Criminal Justice System in Los Angeles County (June 26,
1990); Clifford Zimmerman, Toward
A New Vision of Informants: A History of Abuses and Suggestions for Reform, 22
Hastings Const. L.Q. 81, 93-97 (1994); Mark
Curriden, No
Honor Among Thieves, 75 A.B.A. J. 52, 54-56 (1989).
[FN18]. The defendant's
post-admission narrative of the crime is the actual detailed confession
statement that follows the "I did it" admission. See infra notes 26-29 and accompanying
text. For a fuller discussion of the
post-admission narrative, see Ofshe & Leo, The Decision to Confess Falsely,
supra note 4, at 990-97.
[FN19]. The amount of
information on these cases varies. The
analysis of some cases was based on access to virtually the entire case file,
while the analysis of other cases was limited to journalists' accounts or
published appellate court opinions.
Based on the available sources, no credible evidence supporting the
confessor's guilt was discovered in any of the cases reported in this
article. Some investigations, however,
involved questionable evidence that later proved to be unreliable.
[FN20]. See infra text accompanying notes 34-88, 136-80.
[FN21]. See infra text
accompanying notes 89-122, 181-305.
[FN22]. See infra text accompanying
notes 123-35, 306-61.
[FN23]. See also Bedau
& Radelet, supra note 3, at 27-56, for a similar
discussion of their method and classification of miscarriages of justice.
[FN24]. Contamination
is the process whereby police suggest facts to the suspect that he did not
already know, or the suspect learns facts about the crime from newsmedia or
information leaked, rumored or disseminated in the community.
[FN25]. For an in-depth
discussion of the fit between the post-admission narrative and the crime scene
facts, see Ofshe & Leo, The Decision to Confess Falsely,
supra note 4, at 990-97.
[FN26]. For example,
the answer to a question about whether a body was face up or face down has
little value since a guess will be correct half the time. Correctly describing how the victim was bound,
however, has more value since there are a large number of possibilities. Finally, assuming there is no contamination,
if a defendant's post-admission narrative correctly describes a bedroom crime
scene in which the sheet--but not the mattress cover--was stripped off the bed,
one panel of a window drape was torn down, and a table lamp was found on the
floor in the northeast corner of the room, he has proven his actual knowledge
of the crime by accurately describing unusually mundane details of the scene.
[FN27]. See Michael
Dougan, Polly Klaas Case Marked Participants' Lives Forever; A Year After Killer Was Sentenced,
Memories of Crime, Trial Remain Fresh, S.F. Examiner, Sept. 26, 1997, at A4.
[FN28]. See Ofshe &
Leo, The Decision to Confess Falsely, supra note 4, at 986-88, 1088-106,
1114-22; Ofshe & Leo, Social Psychology, supra note 4, at 191-93, 206-07;
Gudjonsson, supra note 3, at 47-49, 232-33; Kassin & Wrightsman, Confession
Evidence, supra note 1, at 72-76.
[FN29]. For example, an
For example, one
month prior to trial, Buckley's attorney fortuitously discovered that the County Crime Lab had ruled
out Buckley's boots--the primary and only evidence against him--as a match with
the boots that had kicked in the Nicarico's door. A&E, Presumed Guilty,
supra. Yet the sheriffs had
retrieved Buckley's boots from the lab and instructed the laboratory technician
not to file a report, causing the County Crime Laboratory Director to
resign. Eventually, the FBI conclusively
demonstrated that the killer's bootprint left on the Nicarico door did not come
from Buckley.
With no evidence
against Cruz, Hernandez or Buckley, prosecutors relied on a parade of witnesses
to whom they had given reward money or reduced sentences for perjured testimony
that Cruz had made self-incriminating statements. See Hernandez,
521 N.E.2d at 30-31; Gera-Lind Kolarik, DNA,
Changed Testimony Gain Acquittal: Special Prosecutor, FBI Investigation
Controversial Illinois Murder Prosecution, 82 A.B.A. J. 34 (1996). In addition, in
1985, only four days before the trial, prosecutors announced for the first time
that sheriff's detectives Dennis Kurzawa and Thomas Vosburgh had elicited a
"dream-vision" statement from Hernandez a year and a half earlier in
May, 1983, in which Cruz had reported
details only known by the police and the true perpetrator. See Cruz,
521 N.E.2d at 19; Kolarik, supra. Police and prosecutors claimed the "dream-vision"
statement was tantamount to a confession.
A&E, Presumed Guilty, supra. Yet sheriff's detectives Kurzawa and Vosburgh
had not tape-recorded Cruz's alleged "dream-vision" statement, they
had not written a report about it at the time it had allegedly been given, and,
perhaps most curiously, they had not followed-up on this key piece of evidence
the next day in a recorded interview with Cruz.
Nevertheless,
Kurzawa and Vosburgh testified that they told their boss, Lieutenant James
Montesano, about the "dream-vision" statement as proof that it had
occurred, and Montesano corroborated their testimony in Court. See Cruz,
643 N.E.2d at 641-42; Jeffrey Bils, Cops Unshaken
On Cruz Vision, Chi. Trib., Oct. 28, 1995, at 1. Kurzawa and Vosburgh also testified that
former
Shortly after
Cruz's and Hernandez's capital convictions in 1985, Brian Dugan, a convicted
child-rapist and murder, confessed that he alone had raped and killed Jeanine
Nicarico. Terry,
supra. There was considerable
evidence implicating Dugan. See Cruz,
643 N.E.2d at 644-52; James Touhy, The DuPage
Cover-Up: The Authorities Know That Brian Dugan Killed Jeanine Nicarico; They
Know They've Put the Wrong Men on Death Row; They Don't Care, Chi. Lawyer, May
1996, at 9; A&E, Presumed Guilty, supra.
First, Dugan had also raped and killed seven-year-old Melissa Ackerman
and 27-year-old Donna Schnor, both with the same modus operendi as the
perpetrator of the Nicarico crime--abducting the victim, taking her to a remote
nature cite, raping and sodomizing her, and then killing her. See Cruz,
643 N.E.2d at 644-52; Touhy, supra; A&E,
Presumed Guilty, supra. Second,
eyewitnesses placed Dugan in the Nicarico neighborhood on the day of the
abduction. See Cruz,
643 N.E.2d at 648; Touhy, supra; A&E,
Presumed Guilty, supra. Third, Dugan knew many of the crime details that had
not been made public. See Cruz,
643 N.E.2d at 647; Touhy, supra; A&E,
Presumed Guilty, supra. Nevertheless, both police and prosecutors refused to
accept the validity of Dugan's confession, insisting that Cruz and Hernandez
were guilty. See Cruz,
643 N.E.2d at 644-52; Touhy, supra; A&E,
Presumed Guilty, supra. Skeptical observers at the time insisted that
prosecutors knew that Dugan had committed the crime but ignored his confession
because they could not admit that they had sent two innocent men to death
row. See Touhy, supra.
In 1988, the
Illinois Supreme Court reversed the convictions against Cruz and Hernandez
because the prosecution had deliberately misused both Hernandez's and Cruz's
statements against one another. See Cruz,
521 N.E.2d at 23- 24; Hernandez,
521 N.E.2d at 33-35. Based on his alleged "dream-vision"
statement and the perjured testimony of numerous questionable witnesses, Cruz
was convicted again at his second trial in 1990 of abducting, raping and
murdering Nicarico, and resentenced to die by lethal injection. Cruz,
643 N.E.2d at 639; A&E, Presumed Guilty,
supra. Hernandez's second trial ended in
a hung jury, but at his third trial in 1991 he was convicted and sentenced to
80 years in prison. Jeffrey Bils &
Maurice Possley, Judge Rules Cruz Innocent; Nicarico Case Still Open After 12
Years, Chi. Trib., Nov. 4, 1995, at 1; A&E, Presumed Guilty, supra.
In 1995 DNA
exonerated Cruz, Hernandez and Buckley.
See Connors et al., supra note 4, at 44-46. At the same time, DNA testing revealed that
there was only a 3/100th of 1% chance (i.e., 3/10,000) that Brian Dugan was not
the source of the semen found in Jeanine Nicarico's body. Ted Gregory & Peter Gorner, Cruz Didn't
Rape Nicarico, DNA Expert Says; But Prosecutors Not Moved by New Tests,
Chi. Trib., Sept. 23,
1995, at 1. Undeterred by this
exculpatory evidence, prosecutors in 1995 brought Cruz to trial and sought the
death penalty for a third time. A&E, Presumed Guilty, supra. However, this time Lieutenant Montesano
recanted his earlier sworn testimony that Detectives Kurzawa and Vosburgh had
told him about Cruz's alleged "dream-vision" confession statement
immediately after it had been obtained. Kolarik, supra. Admitting that he had lied under oath in his
earlier testimony, Montesano testified that he had been in another state the
day that Kurzawa and Vosburgh had supposedly phoned him and therefore could not
have spoken to them about any
"dream-vision" confession statement.
Kolarik, supra.
As a result, Judge Ronald Mehling immediately acquitted Cruz and sharply
criticized police and prosecutors for their sloppy and unethical conduct,
forcing prosecutors to dismiss charges against Hernandez, who had been awaiting
his fourth trial. Bils
& Possley, supra, at 1. Both
Cruz and Hernandez had each spent nearly 12 years in prison. Cruz had spent 10 years on death row, and
Hernandez had spent three years on death row.
A&E, Presumed Guilty, supra.
In December 1996, an
Illinois Special Prosecutor charged four
[FN30]. Police
interrogation training courses and seminars (including the introductory and
advanced courses put on by the Chicago-based firm Reid & Associates)
rarely, if ever, even mention the subject of false confessions. Leo, Police
Interrogation in
[FN31]. See, e.g.,
Inbau et al., supra note 30, at 147; Jayne & Buckley, supra note 30, at 66.
[FN32]. See, e.g.,
Gudjonsson, supra note 3; Ofshe & Leo, Social Psychology, supra note 4;
Kassin, supra note 4.
[FN33]. For example,
[FN34]. See Colwell,
supra note 4, at 23.
[FN136]. Phillips,
supra note 4, at B3.
[FN137]. Rossmiller
& Creno, supra note 4, at B4.
[FN138].
[FN139]. Feldman,
supra note 44, at B1.
[FN140].
[FN141]. Granberry,
supra note 4, at A1.
[FN142]. Man Lied
About Sex Killing, supra note 71, at 40.
[FN143]. See Connery, supra
note 3, at 20; Barthel, supra note 70; see also Reilly
v. State, 355 A.2d 324, 328 (Conn. Super. Ct. 1976).
[FN144]. Joseph O'Brien, Mother's Killing Still Unresolved, But
Peter Reilly Puts Past Behind; 20 Years After Trial, Reilly Puts Past Behind,
[FN145]. Carroll,
supra note 4, at 41.
[FN146].
[FN147].
[FN148]. Swindle,
supra note 75, at 1A.
[FN149].
[FN150]. Smith, supra
note 4, at D1.
[FN151].
[FN152].
[FN153].
[FN154]. See Yant,
supra note 3, at 90-91; Paxton, supra note 4, at A2.
[FN155]. See Yant, supra note 3, at 90-91.
[FN156]. Colwell, supra note 4, at 23; Demoretchky, supra note 35, at 7.
[FN157]. Demoretchky,
supra note 35, at 7.
[FN158]. Perrusquia,
supra note 4, at A1.
[FN159].
[FN160]. Herbert,
supra note 4, at A5; Dwyer, State's Unjust Blood Lust, supra note 55, at 6.
[FN161]. Herbert,
supra note 4, at A5; Dwyer, State's Unjust Blood Lust, supra note 55, at 6.
[FN162].
[FN163].
[FN164]. See Kimball
& Greenberg, False Confessions, supra note 37; see also Kimball &
Greenberg, Revelations, supra note 37; Kimball & Greenberg, Trials and
Tribulations, supra note 37; Parloff, False Confessions, supra note 4, at
58-62.
[FN165]. See Kimball
& Greenberg, False Confessions, supra note 37.
[FN166].
[FN167].
[FN168].
[FN169].
[FN170].
[FN171]. Kimball &
Greenberg, False Confessions, supra note 37; see generally Parloff, supra note
4; McMahon, supra note 4.
[FN172]. See Ofshe
& Leo, Social Psychology, supra note 4, at 242; Folks, supra note 4, at
B1. After Salazar's case was dismissed,
the state eventually located an expert who, contrary to the Florida Department
of Law Enforcement, said that while Salazar was not a match, he could not be
excluded. The state then re-indicted
Salazar. See Grand Jury Indictment of
Martin Salazar for First Degree (Palm Beach County Ct., Oct. 7, 1997) (No.
97-11428CFA02).
[FN173]. See Connors
et al., supra note 4, at 64-65; Linscott, supra note 4, at 210.
[FN174]. During this
interrogation,
[FN175].
[FN176]. Sitka Murder,
supra note 36.
[FN177].
[FN178].
[FN179].
[FN180].
[FN181]. Interrogation Transcript of Bradley Page,
[FN182].
[FN183]. See Alix
Christie, The Strange Confession of Bradley Page: Bibi Lee's Lover Imagined a
Crime But Did He Commit It?, 27 Berkeley Monthly 21, 46 (1986) ("[w]hen the laboratory analyses
came back from the F.B.I., it became obvious that his 'confession' was all that
connected Brad page to the Crime"); see also Melanie Thernstrom, The Dead
Girl 247 (1990) ("[t]here was, after all, apart from the confession no
evidence at all").
[FN184]. See generally
Page, supra note 4.
[FN185]. Page,
Interrogation Transcript, supra note 181, at 3 (tape #2).
[FN186].
[FN187]. Page, supra
note 4, at 12. See also Thernstom, supra
note 183, at 179 ("Found in a hallow grave by search dogs ... nose broken,
eye orbit shattered, three separate blows to the head with some heavy sharp-edged
instrument, assumed to be a rock ... [was a] skull cracked open").
[FN188]. Page,
Interrogation Transcript, supra note 181.
[FN189].
[FN190]. Page, supra
note 4, at 12; see also Christie, supra note 183, at 46.
[FN191]. Page, supra
note 4, at 12.
[FN192].
[FN193]. See Page,
supra note 4, at 12; see also Thernstrom, supra note 183, at 237 (eight hairs
were found on the blanket, none of which matched Bibi Lee's); Christie, supra
note 183. Police interrogators at times
seem to be obsessed with weird sex. One
soft indicator of a false confession is that a suspect who has no known or
discoverable history of aberrant sexual obsessions includes in his confession a
report of a bizarre sexual act (such as necrophilia as in the Page confession,
biting off the victim's nipple as in the Abney confession or anal rape as in
the Sawyer case) which turns out not even to be a fact of the crime. If the
confession itself is the result of the interrogator's influence over the
suspect, then it is likely that reports of bizarre crime elements that did not
happen are also traceable to influence from the interrogator.
[FN194]. Page,
Interrogation Transcript, supra note 181, at 8 (tape #2).
[FN195]. Page, supra note 4, at 12. See also Thernstrom, supra note 183, at 237;
Christie, supra note 183, at 46.
[FN196]. Page,
Interrogation Transcript, supra note 181, at 7-8 (tape #2).
[FN197]. The
pathologist at trial testified that the kind of head injury that the victim sustained
would have produced a fair amount of blood.
See Thernstrom, supra note 183, at 383.
[FN198]. See Page,
supra note 4, at 12, 14-15; see also Thernstrom, supra note 183, at 81. The massive hunt for the body of the victim,
Bibi Lee, began the day after her disappearance, November 5, 1984.
[FN199]. Page, supra
note 4, at 14-15. See also Thernstrom,
supra note 183, at 197, 383;
see also Eye To Eye with Connie Chung: Confession (CBS News
Television Broadcast, Jan. 13, 1994) [hereinafter CBS News, Confession].
[FN200]. CBS News,
Confession, supra note 199. See also Don
Martinez, Killer Tied to E. Bay Slaying Authorities also Investigation
Convict's Connection to 3 Killings from a Decade Ago, S.F. Examiner, Jan. 11,
1994, at A1.
[FN201].
[FN202]. The jury in the
first trial acquitted Page of second degree murder but deadlocked 8-4 on the
charge of voluntary manslaughter. The
jury in the second trial found Page guilty of voluntary manslaughter after six
days of deliberations, and he was sentenced to six years in prison. See Page, supra note
4, at 20-21; Pratkanis & Aronson, supra note 112, at 176-77.
[FN203]. Page was
released after serving two years and eight months of his six year
sentence. See Page Free After Doing 2
1/2 Years for 1984 Killing of His Girlfriend, S.F. Examiner, Feb. 11, 1995, at
A5.
[FN204]. Interrogation Transcript of Tom Sawyer,
[FN205]. Ofshe,
Coerced Confessions, supra note 90, at 12.
[FN206]. Ofshe & Leo, Social Psychology, supra note 4, at 237.
[FN207]. Interrogation
Transcript of Tom Sawyer, supra note 204, at 231.
[FN208]. Ofshe &
Leo, Social Psychology, supra note 4, at 237.
[FN209].
[FN210]. See Sawyer,
561 So. 2d at 297.
[FN211]. Ofshe &
Leo, Social Psychology, supra note 4, at 238.
[FN212]. BNA Crim. Prac.
[FN213].
[FN214].
[FN215].
[FN216].
[FN217].
[FN218].
[FN219].
[FN220].
[FN221].
[FN222].
[FN223].
[FN224].
[FN225]. Carolyn
Colwell, Tankleff's Family: Jury Goofed Relatives Say "Poker Face" Hurt Teen in Murder
Trial, Newsday, July 3, 1990, at 6.
[FN226]. Carolyn Colwell, Tankleff Appeal: Murder Trial Unfair,
Newsday, Aug. 16, 1992, at 21. Convicted
in June of 1990, Tankleff continues to serve his sentence of fifty years to
life at the Clinton Correctional Facility in
[FN227]. See Connery, supra note 3, at 1-2.
[FN228]. Confession Statements of Richard Lapointe,
[FN229]. See Tom
Condon, Reasonable Doubt, in Connery, supra note 3, at 28 ("The confession has so many inconsistencies
that it is almost as if Lapointe confessed to the wrong crime").
[FN230]. Connery,
supra note 228, at 35.
[FN231]. Alex Wood,
Does Police Lying Compromise Society's Search for Justice, J. Inquirer, Jan. 9, 1995, at 4-5.
[FN232]. Condon, supra
note 229, at 25.
[FN233].
[FN234].
[FN235]. Tom Condon,
Lapointe Case Pinpoints Need for Reforms, Hartford-Currant, Sept. 19, 1995, at
A3.
[FN236]. Condon, supra
note 229, at 29.
[FN237].
[FN238].
[FN239]. Autopsy
Report of Bernice Martin by Arkady Katsnelson, Medical Examiner, State of
[FN240]. Dandy Walker Syndrome is a congenital brain malformation
in which cysts form on the brain from a buildup of fluid on the skull. As a result, Lapointe is missing connective
tissue between the hemispheres in the cerebella area. See Perske, supra note 108, at 323; see also
Stephen Greenspan, There is More to Intelligence than IQ, in Connery, supra
note 3, at 136-51.
[FN241]. Perske, supra
note 108, at 323.
[FN242].
[FN243]. 60 Minutes:
Richard Lapointe: Did He Do It? (CBS News Television
Broadcast, June 30, 1996).
[FN244].
[FN245].
[FN246]. Ofshe, I'm
Guilty if You Say So, supra note 109, at 101-02.
[FN247]. Interrogation Transcript Nos. 1 & 2 of Jessie Misskelley, Jr.,
[FN248]. Interrogation
Transcript No. 1 of Jessie Misskelley, supra note 247,
at 17.
[FN249]. See
Bartholomew Sullivan & Marc Perrusquia, Relatives, Lawyers Dispute Account
By Misskelley in Slayings of Boys, Com. Appeal, June 8, 1993, at A1. The briefly recorded portion of Misskelley's
interrogation revealed that the interrogator manipulated Misskelley to place
the killings at the correct time by raising the issue eight times and producing
a series of shifts in Misskelley's response.
See Interrogation Transcript Nos. 1 & 2 of Jessie Misskelley, supra
note 247.
[FN250]. Interrogation
Transcript No. 2 of Jessie Misskelley, supra note 247,
at 4.
[FN251]. Glen Chase,
Toss Out Statement on Killing of 3 Boys, Lawyer Asks Judge,
[FN252]. See Marc
Perrusquia, "Rowdy Rebel" Says Misskelley Was on Mat, Not at Death Site,
Com. Appeal, Feb. 2, 1994, at A6; Glen Chase, Friends Challenged on Misskelley Alibi, Ark. Democrat-Gazette,
Feb. 1, 1994, at A1.
[FN253]. Lynda
Natalki, Dropout Found Guilty in Deaths of 3 Boys; Crime: Jessie Lloyd
Misskelley Jr., 18 Is Sentenced to Life in Prison for the Brutal Slayings; Two
Other Defendants Await Trial in Arkansas, L.A. Times, Feb. 5, 1994, at A21.
[FN254].
[FN255]. Brief for the
Appellant at 20, People v. Gauger (Ill. App. Ct. Oct 18, 1994) (No. 2-94-1199).
[FN256].
[FN257].
[FN258].
[FN259].
[FN260].
[FN261]. Charles Mount, Doubt Told in Murder Conviction;
Confession Coerced, Gauger Lawyer Says, Chi. Trib., Feb. 7, 1996, at 1.
[FN262].
[FN263].
[FN264]. Appellant's
Brief at 17, Gauger (No. 2-94-1199).
[FN265]. See Becker
& Martin, supra note 33, at 1.
[FN266].
[FN267].
[FN268].
[FN269]. Ray
Quintanilla, Son Convicted of Murders Sees Freedom at Cell Door, Chi. Trib.,
Mar. 13, 1996, at 1.
[FN270]. Ray Quintanilla, High Court is Asked
to Uphold Murder Conviction, Chi. Trib., May 27, 1996, at 1.
[FN271].
[FN272]. Ray
Quintanilla,
[FN273]. See Ray
Quintanilla & Meg Murphy, 17 Indicted in Trail of Violence by Biker Gang; Gauger
Slayings Linked to Robbery by the Outlaws, Chi. Trib., June 11, 1997, at 1; see
also Carolyn Starks, Wisconsin Crime Led to Biker Suspects; Police Saw
Similarities Between 1995 Burglary and Richmond Killings, Chi. Trib., June 12,
1997, at 1.
[FN274]. Interrogation Transcript of Edgar Garrett,
[FN275]. Ofshe &
Leo, Social Psychology, supra note 4, at 231.
[FN276]. Interrogation Transcript of Edgar Garrett, supra note
274.
[FN277]. Ofshe &
Leo, Social Psychology, supra note 4, at 234.
[FN278].
[FN279]. Ofshe &
Leo, Social Psychology, supra note 4, at 234.
See also BNA Crim. Prac.
[FN280]. Ofshe &
Leo, Social Psychology, supra note 4, at 234
[FN281].
[FN282].
[FN283].
[FN284].
[FN285].
[FN286].
[FN287].
[FN288].
[FN289]. Dwyer, Slay
Confession, supra note 55, at 8.
[FN290].
[FN291]. Dwyer,
State's Unjust Blood Lust, supra note 55, at 6.