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Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Welcome Decision
Last week's decision by the Supreme Court, holding that a high school
student's Fourth Amendment rights were violated by a strip search (based on allegations that she was using proscribed medication),
is welcome. The decision was a no-brainer, but we should applaud whenever the Court protects our rights against
overzealous law enforcement.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Unfortunate Decision
The Supreme Court ruled today (by a 5-4 vote) that
a convicted prisoner does not have a constitutional right to obtain access to the evidence against him in order to subject
it to DNA testing. This decision will deprive numerous wrongly-convicted persons the opportunity to establish their
innocence.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
New Justice
The process of confirming Sonia Sotomajor to the Supreme Court will be
the occasion for debate over constitutional issues. The rights of those suspected and accused of crimes should be part
of the discussion. No doubt Judge Sotomajor will be asked her views on torture and the treatment of suspected
terrorists. She should also be asked about interrogation practices routinely used domestically, as well as
other law enforcement practices that contribute to the punishment of the innocent.
Monday, May 4, 2009
The Torture Resolution
Americans feel increasingly disturbed by our government's torture
of suspected terrorists, but it's unclear what will come of that reaction. Ideally, it will lead to reconsideration and
eventually abandonment of the interrogation methods routinely used in domestic law enforcement. The danger
is that these methods will come to be seen as more acceptable because they seem tame compared to physical torture such as
waterboarding. In fact, psychologically coercive interrogation techniques have similar effects to physical torture, stripping
individuals of dignity and producing false confessions.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Torture Revisited
This important article in the New York Review of Books discusses, among other
things, the tendency of "enhanced interrogation techniques" to produce false confessions.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
The High Court Takes Notice
In an opinion earlier this week, the Supreme Court noted the "mounting
empirical evidence that [interrogation] pressures can induce a frighteningly high percentage of people to confess to crimes
they never committed." Given this recognition, perhaps the Court will reconsider its lamentable holding that a confession
may still be admissible even when police lied to the suspect about evidence allegedly implicating him. This tactic
is among the leading causes of false confessions.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Prosecutorial Misconduct
Kudos to Attorney General Eric Holder for dismissing charges against
former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens. Stevens' conviction on charges stemming from corruption was reversed because the prosecution
withheld important evidence. Such misconduct must be punished if it's to be deterred.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Fourth Amendment
Today's New York Times describes a pending Supreme Court case revolving
around a school's strip search of a 13 year old girl -- based on the flimsiest suspicion. So goes the war on drugs and
the war on the Fourth Amendment.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Death Penalty Repealed
Good news from New Mexico, where Governor Bill Richardson has signed
legislation repealing the state's death penalty. Better still, Richardson gave as his reason the risk of executing
the innocent. He noted that many people on death row were eventually exonerated (which include a number who were convicted
based on false confessions).
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Irreversible Punishment
Yesterday's New York Times reports that Europe is debating the propriety
of castration as punishment for sex crimes. The many false confessions to sex crimes constitute a major reason to avoid this
irreversible punishment.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Civil Liberties
In a recent speech, Attorney General Eric Holder said that "too often
over the past decade, the fight against terrorism has been viewed as a zero-sum battle with our civil liberties. Not only
is that school of thought misguided, I fear that in actuality it does more harm than good."
Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to interrogation methods.
Some of the most inhumane methods also produce unreliable information and false confessions. This is the case not only
with respect to the torture of suspected terrorists, but also of the psychologically coercive interrogation methods routinely
used by law enforcement on American citizens.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Beyond Torture
Last night President Obama unequivocally declared that the U.S. will
not engage in torture. That's welcome. Torture is bad policy for several reasons, including its tendency to produce false
confessions. But we must not get the idea that anything short of torture is a legitimate interrogation tool. To the contrary,
modern interrogation techniques, relying on bullying and deception, cause false confessions. It's good that we will no
longer be torturing suspected terrorists. But we need to change the way we interrogate all suspects.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Numbers Update
The Innocence Project reports 232 cases of post-conviction DNA exoneration,
including 5 already this year. In roughly 25% of those cases, the person wrongly convicted made incriminating admissions,
pled guilty, or gave an outright false confession.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Wisdom In New York
Earlier this month, the New York State Bar Association released a report
based on study of 53 overturned convictions. The study found the usual causes of wrongful conviction, including
faulty identification, mishandling of forensic evidence, and reliance on false confessions. Critically, the report calls for
electronic recording of all interrogations of felony suspects.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Corruption Of Evidence
This discusses an important collateral problem of false confessions – they corrupt
other evidence.
Send a comment
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
False Accusations
As the cases of perjury against baseball stars Barry Bonds and Roger
Clemens move forward, it's worth keeping in mind that ideally the presumption of innocence extends beyond the court of law
and to the court of public opinion. Just as there are many false confessions, there are many false accusations, and often
for the same reason -- pressure from law enforcement authorities.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Disappointing Decision
The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided that when the police arrest someone
based on a withdrawn warrant that was mistakenly left in the computer, the evidence found during the arrest should not be
excluded at trial. Especially as we learn about the extent of wrongful convictions (stemming from false confessions and other
causes), the last thing we should be doing is encouraging sloppiness by law enforcement.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Two Good Announcements
It's been a good week. On the national level, Barack Obama announced
that his administration will not engage in waterboarding. On a local level, officials in Nassau County, New York announced
that they will join the ranks of jurisdictions that videotape all interrogations related to major felonies. Both
of these actions will help reduce the number of false confessions.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Body Language
In a recent case where I served as a false confessions expert, at the
suppression hearing the interrogating officer explained that he knew the defendant was guilty based on her body
language. At one point he said that, when the defendant denied her guilt, she was crying, and "the two don't add up.
If she had nothing to do with it and she was being honest about it, the emotions wouldn't have been coming out."
This is nonsense, but it's dangerous nonsense. Police are taught that
they can reliably make these kinds of assessments, but studies show that neither they nor anyone else can determine
whether someone is telling the truth based on assessments of behavior or body language.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Death In Georgia
There's a movement afoot in Georgia to eliminate the requirement of jury
unanimity for imposition of the death penalty. The last thing we should be doing is making it easier to execute people, especially
now that DNA testing has exonerated so many people wrongly convicted of crimes. A number of them, including some
who had given false confessions, had been on death row.
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