False confessions are a strange animal. Most people just can’t conceive of why anyone would ever confess to a crime they didn’t commit, particularly serious crimes like homicide or rape. But when you look closely at the many cases where exactly that has happened, you see a familiar recurring pattern: defendants in custody are simply worn down after marathon interrogations by teams of police officers and eventually they just yield to end the torture. It’s a well documented phenomenon and it could be avoided completely by simply recording the interrogation for independent review.

A blue-ribbon panel in California has been studying the issue and has just issued its findings, joining the many others who have looked at the matter and come to the same conclusion that technology can help. I’ve written on this topic before and, unlike that bill in Florida that was opposed by cops who were concerned that it wouldn’t be sufficiently funded by the legislature, this time no one is opposing the idea.

Testifying before the panel were two people who falsely confessed to crimes they could not have committed and together did over 30 years in prison as a result. Their stories are typical of others who could not resist the force of coercive custodial interrogations at the hands of interrogators more interested in closing cases then catching bad guys. It’s about time someone started reviewing their “work”.

Read the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice’s Tentative Recommendations Regarding False Confessions here.

Read the full story here.

RP

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 29th, 2006 at 4:09 pm and is filed under Cool Science, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.