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"I Did It"

By Steve Hall

That's the title of a lengthy examination of false confessions in the current issue of New York Magazine.  It's subtitled, "Why do people confess to crimes they didn?t commit?"  It's written by Robert Kolker.  Here's a brief excerpt from this must-read: In the criminal-justice system, nothing is more powerful than a confession. Decades of research on jury verdicts has demonstrated that no other form of evidence?not eyewitnesses, not a video record of the crime, not even DNA?is as convincing to a jury as a defendant who says ?I did it.? The police, of course, understand the power of confessions and rely on interrogation techniques to produce them quickly so they can clear their cases. This is the stuff of countless TV procedurals?the small interrogation room with a bare table and two-way mirror; the good-cop-bad-cop routine; the deployment of outright lies like ?You failed the polygraph? or ?Your prints are on the knife...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on October 06, 2010 (boomark / email).