Anatomy Of A False Confession

When Teresa Halbach went missing and was presumed dead, the police targeted Steven Avery for the crime. But Avery’s 16-year-old nephew Brendan Dassey told the police that he saw Halbach driving away from Avery’s property the day she supposedly was murdered. This version of events would be devastating to the state’s case if it ever reached Avery’s jury. The police decided to interrogate young Dassey again. For their next go-around they questioned him four times in 48 hours—each time without an adult present and often without reading him his Miranda rights. During this process, the interrogators not only coerced the learning-disabled child into changing his story, but they also got him to confess to participating in the murder! Even though Dassey’s so-called confession was contradicted by all of the physical evidence, the jury believed it and found him guilty. Now, more than a decade after the trial, the saga lives on. Although a federal district court reversed Dassey’s conviction, a flip-flopping federal appeals court eventually reversed the reversal. Dassey remains convicted and incarcerated; the Supreme Court of the United States is his last hope. Anatomy of a False Confession: The Interrogation and Conviction of Brendan Dassey answers several questions, including: Why did Dassey agree to talk to his interrogators in the first place? Why weren’t they required to read him his Miranda rights? Most significantly, how did the interrogators get Dassey to confess to a crime he did not commit? If Dassey was innocent, where did he get the details for his so-called confession? Why did the jury ignore the physical evidence and convict Dassey of murder? And why did the federal courts reverse Dassey’s conviction, only to reverse their own reversal? Anatomy of a False Confession takes the reader inside the interrogation room and inside the courtroom to expose the interrogators’ tricks, the prosecutors’ ploys, and the judicial sleight of hand that conspired to put Dassey behind bars—probably for the rest of his life. The book also discusses several ways that the law should be reformed to avoid future injustices.

Too young to prosecute, Charlie Zubryd was adopted after his confession and a brief stay in a mental ward. A childless couple gave Zubryd a new name and identity. It would be twenty years before Charlie Zubryd - now going by the name Chuck Duffy - would have any contact with his blood family. When Zubyrd/Duffy made an effort to get his real family back, he was rejected because his relatives still believed he had murdered his mother. Until Fisher began to investigate the case in 1989, Chuck Duffy was not sure he had not killed his mother during some kind of mental blackout.

Despite the rising number of confirmed false confession cases, most people have a hard time grasping why someone would confess to a crime they did not commit, or even why a guilty person would admit to something that could put them in jail for life. How the Police Generate False Confessions takes you inside the interrogation room, exposing the tactics that law enforcement uses to make confessions happen. James L. Trainum reveals how innocent people can become suspects and then confessed criminals even when they have not committed a crime. Using real stories, he looks at the inherent coerciveness of the interrogation process and why so many false confessions contain so many of the details that only the true perpetrator would know. More disturbingly, the book examines how these same processes corrupt witness and victim statements, create lying informants and cooperators, and induce innocent people to plead guilty. Trainum also offers recommendations for change in the U.S. by looking at how other countries are changing the process to prevent such miscarriages of justice. The reasons that people falsely confess can be complex and varied; throughout How the Police Generate False Confessions Trainum encourages readers to critically evaluate confessions on their own by gaining a better understanding of the interrogation process.

Coerced confessions have long been a staple of TV crime dramas, and have also been the subject of recent news stories. The complexity of such situations, however, is rarely explored even in the scientific literature. Now in softcover, Interrogations, Confessions, and Entrapment remains one of the best syntheses of the scientific, legal, and ethical findings in this area, uncovering subtle yet powerful forces that often compromise the integrity of the criminal justice system. Editor G. Daniel Lassiter identifies the exposure of psychological coercion as an emerging frontier in legal psychology, citing its roots in the "third degree" approach of former times, and noting that its techniques carry little scientific validity. A team of psychologists, criminologists, and legal scholars asks—and goes a long way toward answering—important questions such as: - What forms of psychological coercion are involved in interrogation? - Are some people more susceptible to falsely confessing than others? - What are the effects of psychological manipulation on innocent suspects? - Are coercive tactics ever justified with minors? - Can jurors recognize psychological coercion and unreliable confessions? - Can entrapment techniques encourage people to commit crimes? - What steps can law enforcement take to minimize coercion? Throughout this progressive volume, readers will find important research-based ideas for educating the courts, changing policy, and implementing reform, from improving police interrogation skills to better methods of evaluating confession evidence. For the expert witness, legal consultant, or student of forensic psychology, this is material whose relevance will only increase with time.

Collects thirty-eight articles describing how innocent men and women have been coerced into confessing to crimes they did not commit, revealing the questionable methods police officers use to get confessions from suspects.

Why do people confess to crimes they did not commit? And, surely, those cases must be rare? In fact, it happens all the time—in police stations, workplaces, public schools, and the military. Psychologist Saul Kassin, the world’s leading expert on false confessions, explains how interrogators trick innocent people into confessing, and then how the criminal justice system deludes us into believing these confessions. Duped reveals how innocent men, women, and children, intensely stressed and befuddled by lawful weapons of psychological interrogation, are induced into confession, no matter how horrific the crime. By featuring riveting case studies, highly original research, work by the Innocence Project, and quotes from real-life exonerees, Kassin tells the story of how false confessions happen, and how they corrupt forensics, witnesses, and other evidence, force guilty pleas, and follow defendants for their entire lives— even after they are exonerated by DNA. Starting in the 1980’s, Dr. Kassin pioneered the scientific study of interrogations and confessions. Since then, he has been on the forefront of research and advocacy for those wrongfully convicted by police-induced false confessions. Examining famous cases like the Central Park jogger case and Amanda Knox case, as well as stories of ordinary innocent people trapped into confession, Dr. Kassin exposes just how widespread this problem is. Concluding with actionable solutions and proposals for legislative reform, Duped shows why the stigma of confession persists and how we can reform the criminal justice system to make it stop.

Provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of the development of the science behind the psychology of false confessions Four decades ago, little was known or understood about false confessions and the reasons behind them. So much has changed since then due in part to the diligent work done by Gisli H. Gudjonsson. This eye-opening book by the Icelandic/British clinical forensic psychologist, who in the mid 1970s had worked as detective in Reykjavik, offers a complete and current analysis of how the study of the psychology of false confessions came about, including the relevant theories and empirical/experimental evidence base. It also provides a reflective review of the gradual development of the science and how it can be applied to real life cases. Based on Gudjonsson’s personal account of the biggest murder investigations in Iceland’s history, as well as other landmark cases, The Psychology of False Confessions: Forty Years of Science and Practice takes readers inside the minds of those who sit on both sides of the interrogation table to examine why confessions to crimes occur even when the confessor is innocent. Presented in three parts, the book covers how the science of studying false confessions emerged and grew to become a regular field of practice. It then goes deep into the investigation of the mid-1970s assumed murders of two men in Iceland and the people held responsible for them. It finishes with an in-depth psychological analysis of the confessions of the six people convicted. Written by an expert extensively involved in the development of the science and its application to real life cases Covers the most sensational murder cases in Iceland’s history Deep analysis of the ‘Reykjavik Confessions’ adds crucial evidence to understanding how and why coerced-internalized false confessions occur, and their detrimental and lasting effects on memory The Psychology of False Confessions: Forty Years of Science and Practice is an important source book for students, academics, criminologists, and clinical, forensic, and social psychologists and psychiatrists.

False confession research identified two important findings: who is most likely to falsely confess and which interrogation tactics most commonly lead to a false confession. It is generally accepted that false confession evidence is one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions (The Justice Project, 2007; Drizin & Leo, 2004). This study seeks to determine if the defendant's characteristics identified as being related to giving a false confession also increase the odds of a case ending in wrongful conviction or if crime-related attributes increase the odds. The sample consists of 122 interrogation-induced false confession cases that span from 1971 to 2002 taken from the dataset published by Dizen and Leo (2004). The study used chi-square analysis and logistic regression, finding that while the literature determines that juveniles are more likely to falsely confess, there is no statistically significant finding suggesting that they are more likely to be convicted once that confession occurs. Whereas having a low mental capacity does significantly increase the odds of a case ending in wrongful conviction. Additionally, cases that contain a co-defendant who also falsely confesses or that have multiple charges increase the odds of a case ending in conviction, while age of the victim and number of victims showed no significant findings.

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"A criminal defense attorney goes beyond the popular Netflix documentary to detail the legal nightmare that led to the conviction of Steven Avery"--