This time, the prosecution produced one of the kids Staker had babysat as an eyewitness. All four men claimed that they only confessed and pleaded guilty after being threatened with the death penalty. The justices should review the case and reaffirm the importance of carefully evaluating confessions, especially when it involves our society’s most vulnerable individuals. He eventually came to believe the police’s assertion that he had blacked out and forgotten he committed the murder, so he signed a confession. 7 Voluntary False Confession – a false confession knowingly given in response to little or no police pressure. He was questioned for four straight days and reached the point where he experienced a psychotic episode and started banging his head against the wall. The federal judge who heard his habeas petition, and then two judges from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, all agreed the confession was involuntary. With the exception of Salaam, they would each make videotaped confessions to the crime. Washington had an IQ of 69 and was coerced into making all his confessions. Ferguson was charged and given a 40-year sentence for the murder while Erickson received 25 years. You need more than a confession." Voluntary false confessions arise when innocent people offer self-incriminating statements without pressure from police (often to protect someone else or to gain attention in high-profile crimes, as when 200 people confessed to the 1,932 kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s baby son). The Juan Rivera case is a prime example of how much weight a false confession can carry. These are most often prompted by a psychiatric disorder that warp’s a suspect’s sense of reality. Take the case of Henry McCollum, whose confession was found voluntary in a brief statement by the North Carolina Supreme Court. Her body was discovered by her 16-year old son, Peter Reilly, but police were suspicious by his supposed lack of emotion and immediately brought him in for questioning. Often the factual circumstances manifest the purpose underlying false confessions. After interrogating Washington for two straight days, he eventually confessed to five different crimes, including Williams’ murder. When Dassey got the answers wrong during the interrogation, police corrected him and gave him answers that they wanted. Not only did officers contaminate the interrogation by using leading questions to tell Dassey critical information they knew, but they repeatedly told Dassey that they would help him and that he would be treated leniently if he confessed. The case remained cold until 2004 when a young man named Chuck Erickson told police he believed he had repressed memories of having committed the murder with his friend, Ryan Ferguson. The jogger case is notorious but not unique. Take the case of Henry McCollum, whose confession was found voluntary in a brief statement by the North Carolina Supreme Court. More:How liberal courts help conservatives states stay free: David Boaz, More:What Supreme Court victory for sports gambling means for marijuana, sanctuary cities. Still used today, this classification scheme has provided an important Voluntary false confessions. Lying by interrogators, which occurs in virtually all false confession cases, should be strictly limited. Dr. Richard Leo, a false confessions expert who testified in the Beatrice 6 case, which is discussed below, has identified three types of false confessions. Voluntary or Involuntary Confessions Why the five boys confessed isn't known, Kassin says, but the police interrogation may have played a role. The jogger case is notorious but not unique. 8 Researchers and psychologists suggest that innocent suspects may voluntarily tender false confessions for a variety of reasons, including a … © 2020 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, LLC. More:Supreme Court decision says my faith is welcomed back in America: Cake artist Jack Phillips, POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media, The Seventh Circuit’s ruling flies in the face of decades of law emphasizing that courts must take “special care” in evaluating the confessions of juveniles. High-profile rulings have affirmed now-infamous false confessions because they failed to properly analyze whether they were voluntary. The “Paradise Lost” series, a trilogy of documentaries about the case, garnered national exposure for the West Memphis Three and much outrage about their convictions. Acting on an eyewitness tip, police were eventually led to a 20-year old resident named Johnny Lee Wilson and after being interrogated for nearly four hours, he confessed to the crime. There was no DNA or physical evidence to link the suspects to the crime scene, and more compelling evidence seemed to point towards Steve Branch’s stepfather, Terry Hobbs. Most voluntary false confessions are the result of the person wanting to become famous. Sometimes, the suspect does not even have the mental faculties to understand the ramifications of what they’re doing. More than 1 out of 4 people exonerated by DNA evidence had made a false confession or incriminating statement prior to being convicted. On September 28, 1973, 51-year old Barbara Gibbons was found murdered at her home in Canaan, Connecticut. It was not until DNA testing proved he wasn’t the perpetrator that Washington was finally granted a full pardon and released after serving 17 years. She was killed in her home in Boulder, Colorado, in 1996. The separate confessions of the Norfolk Four all seemed to contradict each other in their details, and naval logs showed that Dick was serving on the U.S.S. Who shot her in the head? It’s bad enough when a coerced confession sends an innocent person to prison, but it’s especially horrific when it sends them to death row and almost costs them their life. On the other hand, a spontaneous or voluntary false confession involves a person confessing to a crime he or she did not commit, absent police interrogation. The West Memphis Three were soon charged and found guilty of the murders, with Echols being sentenced to death. These are cases, and they often happen in high-profile cases that are in the news, where people come out of the woodwork and volunteer confessions to crimes that are in the news that they didn’t commit. 3. However, all five youths would recant their confessions and claim they had been coerced and intimidated by the police. Hopefully, the Supreme Court has learned from cases like McCollum’s and will use the Dassey case as an opportunity to reaffirm that the Constitution requires special care when vulnerable people are interrogated. Brendan Dassey’s “confession,” which has become widely known as a textbook example of an involuntary confession, is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. The details about the murder were clearly fed to him and he seemed unaware of what he was doing when entering his plea in court. On the other hand, a spontaneous or voluntary false confession involves a person confessing to a crime he or she did not commit, absent police interrogation. Then, in December, the entire Seventh Circuit reversed itself in a closely split 4-3 decision, concluding that there was not “physical coercion or intimidation.” The dissenting judges wrote that it was “a profound miscarriage of justice” to sentence a juvenile to life in prison based on an involuntary confession. An inmate named Omar Ballard eventually confessed to committing the murder on his own and his DNA was present at the crime scene. McCollum is one of many innocent people who have had judges deny relief on voluntariness claims, wrongly calling false confessions reliable. A valid false confession only occurs if the confession was obtained by force. Juveniles are extremely vulnerable to pressure. The other four confessions were thrown out, but he was still sentenced to death for killing Williams. Officer: All right, I’m just gonna come out and ask you. Robin Warder is a budding Canadian screenwriter who has used his encyclopedic movie knowledge to publish numerous articles at Cracked.com. ... classified known false confession cases into three categories. This type of false confession happens a lot in high-profile cases. Coerced-compliant false confessions are those in which a suspect confesses to police in order to escape an aversive interrogation, avoid an explicit or implied threat, or gain a promised or implied reward. Dassey confessed to murdering a woman, in association with his uncle, after being questioned by police four times over a period of 48 hours. However, Misskelley quickly recanted his confession, which was filled with inconsistencies. Even though there is no longer any evidence to tie Ryan Ferguson to the murder, all attempts to secure him a new trial have been unsuccessful and he remains in prison. Since 2014, The Marshall Project has been curating some of the best criminal justice reporting from around the web. At her funeral, police noticed that one of her fellow students, 17-year old Jeffrey Deskovic, was crying profusely and became suspicious when they discovered he’d been absent from school during the time Correa went missing. There are three main types of coerced or false confessions in the criminal justice system. A confession can serve as powerful evidence of a suspect’s guilt, but criminal defendants have a constitutional right against self-incrimination. His initial confession to the Williams murder was filled with inconsistencies and he got many key details wrong, including the race of the victim and the location of the crime. Police investigated a neighbor named John Purvis, who suffered from schizophrenia and was looked upon as the town “weirdo”. On June 4, 1982, 19-year old Rebecca Lynn Williams was raped and stabbed to death 38 times inside her Culpeper, Virginia apartment. False confessions can be categorized into three general types, as outlined by American Saul Kassin in an article for Current Directions in Psychological Science: Voluntary false confessions are those that are given freely, without police prompting. Like the Juan Rivera case, prosecution pushed the theory that the victim had consensual sex with someone else before she was murdered. Even though they are now free, they have never been officially exonerated and the real killer of the three boys remains unpunished. One month later, police brought in 17-year old Jessie Misskelley, Jr. for questioning, and he eventually confessed that he and two other teens, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin, had murdered the three boys as part of a satanic ritual. JonBenet Ramsey Case – JonBenet Ramsey was a 6-year-old beauty queen. Wilson also had an alibi for the time the murder took place and the eyewitness who implicated him was another mentally challenged man who later admitted to lying. The key to establishing an involuntary con… Voluntary false confessions are self-incriminating statements that are offered to police without external pressure. A tip from an informant eventually led authorities to 19-year old Juan Rivera, who had an IQ of 79 and was in custody on a burglary charge. In 1994, Washington would receive clemency from the governor of Virginia and had his sentence commuted to life in prison. Here are ten controversial cases where a conviction was made possible by a very questionable confession. The classic case of an involuntary confession is a police officer questioning a suspect who is in pain and in the intensive care unit after suffering serious injuries; the officer continues the interrogation despite the defendant’s request for an attorney. The Supreme Court has long emphasized that “admissions and confessions of juveniles require special caution.”. Voluntary false confessions are self-incriminating statements that are offered to police without external pressure. Beginning with the Salem witch trials of 1692, numerous false confessions surfaced when it was later discovered that the confessed crime had not been committed (e.g., the alleged victim turned up alive) or that it was physically impossible (e.g., the confessor was demonstrably elsewhere) or when the real perpetrator was apprehended (e.g., by ballistics evidence). In 1998, Rivera received a retrial because his first trial was littered with procedural errors. Even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, Purvis would eventually confess to the murder and was sentenced to life in prison. The real killer of Rebecca Lynn Williams has never been found. On November 8, 1983, a Fort Lauderdale woman named Susan Hamwi was found stabbed to death with a butcher knife in her home. On July 8, 1997, a Norfolk, Virginia woman named Michelle Moore-Bosko was found raped and murdered at her residence. The judge decided to clear Reilly of all charges and criticized the authorities’ handling of the case. The cases of Brendan Dassey and Steven Avery are not isolated events, but have help raised awareness of the flaws with our criminal justice system. The attack left her in a coma and she had no memory of the incident after she recovered. However, the Norfolk Four remained incarcerated since police still maintained that they acted as Ballard’s accomplices. His exoneration, over 20 years later, would never have occurred. However, the confession strong enough to garner a guilty verdict from the jury and Deskovic received a sentence of 15 years to life in prison. By that time, the Central Park Five had already served their sentences and been forced to register as sex offenders after being released. In studies of DNA exonerations, I have found that juveniles accounted for a third of all false confessions and another third were intellectually disabled or mentally ill. Tellingly, Dassey asked police when he would be returned to school, after he had just confessed to murder. vation for confessions of guilt is a natural desire to tell the truth and ease the consci nce, but other stimuli may overpower this human tendency. The next time they brought Purvis in for questioning, they made sure mother wasn’t present and he was coerced him into making a taped confession. One of the biggest causes of wrongful convictions is the false assumption that no one would ever confess to a crime they didn’t commit. The Juan Rivera case is a prime example of how much weight a false confession can carry. The investigation was not reopened until 1992 when evidence came to light that Hamwi had been murdered by two hitmen who were hired by her ex-husband. After being interrogated for six hours, Deskovic finally confessed to the murder. In 1996, Johnny Lee Wilson was finally granted a pardon by Missouri governor Mel Carnahan and released after serving nine years. This category of also includes people who cannot differentiate between fantasy and reality, or who have self-destructive tendencies. Beginning with the Salem witch trials of 1692, numerous false confessions surfaced when it was later discovered that the confessed crime had not been committed (e.g., the alleged victim turned up alive) or that it was physically impossible (e.g., the confessor was demonstrably elsewhere) or when the real perpetrator was apprehended (e.g., by ballistics evidence). The Central Park Five were all tried and found guilty and given sentences ranging from five to thirteen years. (1985) introduced a taxonomy of false confessions that distinguished among three types: voluntary, coerced-compliant, and coerced-internalized (see Kassin, 1997a; Wrightsman & Kassin, 1993). Williams, Tice and Dick were sentenced to life imprisonment while Wilson received 8 ½ years. Under to the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, due process requires that all confessions obtained by the police must be voluntary. Some have been Supreme Court cases. Here is the exchange at that crucial moment: Officer: What else happens to her in her head? The popular Netflix documentary Making a Murderer told a compelling story with several unexpected twists. He was threatened and intimidated by police during his interrogation and thought he would be allowed to go home if he confessed. Violations of this due process rights will make the confession statement inadmissible as evidence in … Brandon Garrett is the Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. To make things even more tragic, her 18-month old daughter, Shane, died of dehydration in her crib after being neglected for several days. Dassey’s case follows the script of false confessions. Even though Reilly would later recant his confession, he was still convicted of first degree manslaughter and received a sentence of 6 to 16 years in prison. When law enforcement officials are under great pressure to solve a case, finding the right perpetrator can become a secondary priority and if necessary, they will use coercion and intimidation to obtain a confession from a suspect. There are three types of false confessions: 'voluntary', 'pressured-compliant' and 'pressured-internalized'. On November 15, 1989, Angela Correa, a 15-year old resident from Peekskill, New York, went missing while on her way to class. This is a high standard and a difficult one for a defendant to meet. Instrumental voluntary false confessions are ones in which an individual comes forward on his/her behalf and confesses to the crime. In the early morning hours of November 1, 2001, sports editor Kent Heitholt was beaten and strangled to death with his belt in the parking lot of the Daily Tribune in Columbia, Missouri. But in other cases, despite the confession, factual justification In 2014, DNA tests conducted on the evidence by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission cleared McCollum and his intellectually disabled and sixteen-year-old brother Leon Brown, and instead implicated a man who had committed a similar rape and murder in the same town. 9 High-profile crimes, such as the Lindbergh kidnapping in the 1930s, the Black Dahlia murder in the 1940s, and the JonBenet Ramsey and Nicole Brown Simpson murders in the 1990s, tend … After failing a polygraph test, the exhausted Reilly was interrogated for several hours. New York City experienced one of its most infamous crimes on April 19, 1989 when a 28-year old woman named Trisha Meili was raped and severely beaten while jogging through Central Park. He authored an amicus brief in the Dassey case, in support of U.S. Supreme Court review. The only other piece of evidence was the testimony of a janitor named Jerry Trump, who claimed he saw Ferguson and Erickson in the parking lot that night. A person may, for example, provide a voluntary false confession out of a desire to aid and protect the real criminal, 35 to provide an alibi for a different crime or norm violation, 36 or to get revenge on another person. He is also the co-owner of a pop culture called The Back Row. A neighbor named Danial Williams and his roommate Joseph J. Dick, Jr. were soon brought in for questioning and confessed to the crime. Eventually, the case went to the New York Court of Appeals. Even though he was only two years old at the time the murder took place, his testimony helped convict Rivera a second time. A voluntary confession is a confession that is given out of a suspect’s own free will, and has not been obtained by force, coercion, or intimidation. However, because of his schizophrenia, Purvis had trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. Such rulings happen over and over again in DNA exoneration cases. They told him key facts — including the central piece of physical evidence they had gathered: that the victim had been shot in the head. He had an IQ of 72 and appeared to have details of the crime fed to him during 12 hours of interrogation. Remarkably, he was found guilty again because the prosecution claimed that Staker had consensual sex with someone else that night… even though she was only 11 years old! On the basis of Reyes’ confession, their convictions were officially vacated. Since no trace of their DNA was found at the scene, police were forced to look for other suspects, and Dick eventually named two more accomplices, Derek Tice and Eric C. Wilson, who subsequently confessed to being involved. These confessions most often happen when the suspect has an underlying mental or psychological condition that distorts reality. In these records you will find the most recent and the most authoritative articles on the topics, people and events … convicted on voluntary false confessions). A tip from an informant eventually led authorities to 19-year old Juan Rivera, who had an IQ of 79 and was in custody on a burglary charge. An involuntary confession that was coerced by a police officer cannot be used against a defendant in court, regardless of whether it was true. Yet false confessions have been amply documented -- as in recent cases in which new DNA evidence exonerated convicted confessors, some on death row. (pause) We know, we just need you to tell us. More than 200 people came forward to confess that they had kidnapped the baby of the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh. Brendan: He did. How liberal courts help conservatives states stay free: David Boaz, What Supreme Court victory for sports gambling means for marijuana, sanctuary cities, Supreme Court decision says my faith is welcomed back in America: Cake artist Jack Phillips, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. In 1977, Reilly was granted a new trial after evidence was uncovered that a state trooper had seen him driving his car five miles away at the time the murder was supposedly taking place. After being interrogated, Erickson was eventually coerced into making a full confession. His execution was ultimately halted when a fellow death row inmate named Joseph Giarrantano contacted a law firm to file a habeas corpus petition on Washington’s behalf. The town of West Memphis, Arkansas was shaken on May 6, 1993 when the naked bodies of three murdered boys—Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Steve Branch—were found in a drainage ditch. Indeed, as more and more wrongful convictions are discovered, often as a result of newly av… The first time he was questioned, Purvis’ mother broke up the interrogation when she saw detectives attempting to intimidate her son. One year later, police turned their attention to a farmhand named Earl Washington Jr., who was in custody for another crime. Even when there is no other evidence that a suspect committed the crime, a confession can still be enough to compel a jury to vote “guilty”. One – there is a category of false confessions known as voluntary false confessions. In most cases, confessors usually recant these confessions quickly after the interrogation ends. Those exonerations provide a powerful caution that courts should not only examine the voluntariness and reliability of vulnerable people’s confessions, but that courts must do so quite carefully. Sometimes they may be sacrificial, to divert attention from the actual person who committed the crime. Lying is presently permitted under 1969 Supreme Court decision known as Frazier v. Cupp. This case is one in which Mr. Johnson, a college graduate, confessed to a serious crime he did not commit. Examples of Voluntary False Confession. In 2005, DNA tests excluded Rivera as the perpetrator and he was granted a third trial. Five Harlem youths – Anton McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, and Kharey Wise—had been in the park the night of the attack and were brought in for an interrogation. LegalMatch provides legal insights in their online law library to help you with your case. He reads on a second-grade level.”. She had been beaten and burned alive when the killer set her home ablaze. On August 17, 1992, an 11-year old girl named Holly Staker was raped and murdered while babysitting in Waukegan, Illinois. Almost without exception, in DNA exoneration cases, false confession statements were contaminated with details that supposedly only the culprit could have known. 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