Source: http://pcjc.blogs.pace.edu/tag/false-confession/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 18:59:24+00:00

Document:
BY: Signe Skov Thomsen, Producer Assistant at the Good Company Pictures.
Would you confess to a crime you didn’t commit?
In the Closed Room is a documentary, currently in production with an anticipated completion date at the start of 2018, which is dedicated to the vital subject of false confessions. It is intended to raise awareness of the perpetual injustice caused by false confessions, to generate a vibrant debate that can ignite and lead to change, and to contribute to the much needed fight for a more transparent and just interrogation process.
For over two years Emmy-nominated director Katrine Philp has been following the defense attorney, Jane Fisher-Byrialsen (Korey Wise’s lawyer from the Central Park Jogger Case), as she fights to exonerate the wrongfully convicted and to raise awareness of the coercive and manipulative techniques that are being used during police interrogations.
The coerced confession of Brendan Dassey documented in the Netflix series Making a Murderer outraged the viewers. But, Dassey’s case is far from unique. According to the Innocence Project, 25% of overturned cases involve some kind of a false confession. Through three of defense attorney Jane Fisher-Byrialsen’s cases this documentary focuses on and uncovers the widespread phenomenon of false confessions.
Why do so many people admit to horrible crimes they did not commit? Why don’t they maintain their innocence? Those who broke under the pressure during interrogation shared that trained interrogators can get anybody to confess to anything – and often people get convicted with no other evidence than their own false confession.
Although I believe that lawyers can do amazing things when they are willing to fight for their clients, I don’t always think that it is enough to make the larger changes that we need in society. Therefore I agreed to participate in this documentary in the hopes that it would raise awareness around the problem of false confession.
This important new documentary will help to spread understanding of the very real phenomenon of false confessions and help us to understand why they happen and what we can do about them.
The creators of the documentary kindly ask anyone who believes in this project and in the importance of bringing the issue of false confessions to the forefront of our criminal justice discussion, to please support the making of the documentary as every small or large amount makes a difference.
“Making a Murderer,” the Netflix series about Steven Avery, who may or may not have murdered Theresa Halbach in a rural Wisconsin town, has created a healthy controversy. Everybody is asking: “Did he do it? Or was he framed by the police?” Avery served eighteen years in jail for a crime he did not commit until he was exonerated by DNA evidence in 1999. His multi-million dollar lawsuit against the county, he alleges, is the motive for the police charging him with murder. Avery, along with his nephew Brendan Dassey, a mentally-challenged teenager, were convicted in separate trials.
The 10-part series is controversial. The documentarians are accused of biased reporting intended to prove the defendants are innocent. But that’s unfair; ultimately, the series demonstrates something true and more important: that despite the guilty verdicts we really do not know who killed Halbach, how, or why. The prosecution presented a strong circumstantial case, but this evidence is carefully dissected, and a viewer can readily believe that what little there was had been planted by the police. Moreover, Dassey’s “confession” in which he “guessed” at what the police wanted to hear, and later repeatedly recanted, is utterly uncorroborated by anything the police could find and appears to be the unreliable product of well-known unsavory police interrogation tactics.
We should broaden the debate beyond guilty or not guilty, because “Making a Murderer” raises several fundamental questions about the criminal justice system.
First, what is the goal of our system? Is the goal to yield results that society is willing to accept? To be sure, we hope the adversary system and the use of juries lead to reliable results. But we know that, as the documentary shows, tragic mistajes are made, eyewitnesses are mistaken, and that the most we can ever hope for is uncertainty. Is that enough?
Does the criminal adversary system really produce a fair fight? Avery’s retained lawyers worked incredibly hard, were unstintingly loyal, and were highly effective. Dassey was indigent and was assigned an attorney who, from the beginning, believed and announced that his client was guilty despite Dassey’s protests of innocence, and in fact, handed the prosecution evidence to use against him. After this attorney was removed, new counsel was appointed and did the best he could. But once again we revisit the age-old maxim that the quality of justice depends on how much money you have.
Did the prosecutors perform their constitutional duty to be “ministers of justice”? Whether one buys the claim that Avery was framed, it’s clear that the prosecutor accepted whatever came from the police without any independent reflection. Even after the court ordered the local police to stay out of the investigation, they stayed deeply involved and produced the only “evidence” of guilt. The prosecutors believed Dassey’s fantastic tale of bloodthirsty sexual assault even though not a drop of blood or any other forensic evidence could be found to support it. Moreover, disregarding his ethical obligations, the prosecutor repeatedly made highly prejudicial statements to the media revealing extensive inflammatory details about the crime.
A few other thoughts. The absence of any racial issues – everyone involved is Whites – simplifies the legal and policy questions raised by the film. This is an excellent opportunity. But in their place we see issues of class and culture at play in a small rural community in middle America, a culture we really can’t penetrate. How do rumor, personal history, kinships, friendships, and resentments impact the quality of justice here?
In the final analysis, nobody really knows why or how Theresa Halbach died. Avery may be innocent, a degenerate, or a predator; Dassey may be no more than an immature, mentally-deficient teenager. They may have killed her, or maybe they did not. The title alone raises the provocative question: did the police “make” a murderer by framing a case against Avery? Or did society “make” a murderer by wrongly imprisoning a young man for eighteen years on the basis of a single mistaken identification? One can always fault the messengers, but the series raises important questions.
Monica Davey, ‘Making a Murderer’ Town’s Answer to Netflix Series: You Don’t Know, New York Times (Jan. 28, 2016).
Jack Shepherd, Making a Murderer: Steven Avery Defence Lawyer Dean Strang Responds to Netflix Documentary’s Critics, Independent (Jan. 29, 2016).
Creating an electronic record will ensure that we have an objective account of key investigations and interactions with people who are held in federal custody. It will allow us to document that detained individuals are afforded their constitutionally protected rights.
The new policy will require federal law enforcement agencies to record interactions with a detained suspect during the time between the suspect’s arrest and initial appearance before a judge. Notably, the new policy also suggests that officials should consider using electronic recording devices during other investigative situations, including witness interviews.
This is a stark change from the Department’s prior policy, which expressively prohibited the use of recording equipment by law enforcement agencies when conducting interviews with suspects. The Justice Department was previously concerned that the use of recording devices would undermine investigative techniques of federal agencies, and would discourage suspects from talking. The Department also once expressed that jurors may frown upon FBI interviewing techniques, and have “unfavorable impressions of agents” had they heard verbatim accounts of such interrogations.
Mr. Holder discounted these concerns, explaining that federal officials should be more committed to a process that exemplifies evenhanded enforcement of the law, and the new policy would “provide verifiable evidence that our words are matched by our deeds.” He noted that it is of great importance for federal agencies to ensure that the statements of suspects are accurately recorded, and that suspects are afforded their constitutional rights during interrogations with federal agents.
protects the accused against police misconduct, protects law enforcement against false allegations, and protects public safety by ensuring a verbatim record of the interrogation process and any statements.
Mr. Holder has already begun the implementation of the new policy, and has instructed United States attorneys and agency field offices to begin training sessions. As of July, the new policy will apply to the FBI, DEA, ATF and U.S. Marshals Service.
Michael S. Schmidt, In Policy Change, Justice Dept. to Require Recording of Interrogations, New York Times (May 22, 2014).
Ryan J. Reily, Eric Holder: ‘Sweeping’ New FBI Recording Policy Will Protect Both Suspects, Agents, Huffington Post (May 22, 2014).
Dennis Wagner, DOJ Reverses No-Recording Policy for Interrogations, USA Today (May 21, 2014).
Yet, the rule of law determining the voluntariness of a confessor’s statement, when such statements are adduced by police subterfuge, has remained a vital and perplexing issue within our criminal justice system. The admissibility of such confessions has been a hotly debated topic among criminal defense practitioners and prosecutors, irrespective of recent case studies proving the fallibility of such confessions. In spite of recent findings, prosecutors have continued to hold the upper hand when arguing that such confessions are voluntary and admissible at trial, relying on the proposition that certain police ruses are essential to conducting meaningful interrogations of suspects, and vital to the police’s ability to expeditiously solve certain crimes. Under this guise, the Courts have heeded to the government’s “demands” and have consequently become more laxed in uprooting such questionable police tactics –noting that confessions are “essential to society’s compelling interest in finding, convicting, and punishing those who violate the law.” McNeil v. Wisconsin, 501 U.S. 171, 181 (1991). As such, courts around the nation have routinely accepted that “deceit and subterfuge are within the ‘bag of tricks’ that police may use in interrogating suspects.” State v. Schumacher, 37 P.3d 6, 13-14 (Idaho Ct. App. 2001); See also United States v. Bell, 367 F.3d 452, 461 (5th Cir. 2004) (observing that deception is “not alone sufficient to render a confession inadmissible”).
In New York, however, it appears that the courts are becoming less reluctant to address this significant legal issue , and more inclined than many of their sister state courts to fully determine on a case by case determination whether a confession could be deemed involuntary when police misrepresentations work to overcome a confessor’s will. See N.Y. Criminal Procedure Law § 60.45 [b][i] (treating as “involuntarily made” a statement of a defendant that was elicited “by means of any promise or statement of fact, which promise or statement creates a substantial risk that the defendant might falsely incriminate himself”).
Notably, the New York Court of Appeals has recently made clear that not all police subterfuge is acceptable during the interrogations of suspects. People v. Thomas, 2014 WL 641516 (N.Y. 2014). In Thomas, the defendant had been prodded by police to take responsibility for injuries suffered by his four-month-old son, who died from intracranial injuries purportedly caused by abusively inflicted head trauma, in order to save his wife from arrest. The Court held that the defendant’s confession, admitting that he had inflicted traumatic head injuries on the infant, was involuntary as a result of “[t]he various misrepresentations and false assurances used [by] [police] to elicit and shape [the] defendant’s admissions.” Id. The court explained that the police officers false representations to the defendant had manifestly raised a substantial risk of false incrimination. The Court was extremely troubled by police lying to the defendant “that his wife had blamed him for [their] [son’s] injuries and then threatened that, if he did not take responsibility, they would “scoop” Ms. Hicks out from the hospital and bring her in, since one of them must have injured the child.” Id. The Court also observed that “there [was] not a single inculpatory fact in defendant’s confession that was not suggested to him. He did not know what to say to save his wife and child from the harm he was led to believe his silence would cause.” Id.
The New York Court of Appeals also recently affirmed the Second Department’s decision in People v. Aveni, 100 A.D.3d 228 (2d Dep’t 2012) where the appellate court had also found that the defendant’s confession was coerced as a result of the police repeatedly deceiving the defendant about the status of his girlfriend’s health condition. In Aveni, the defendant had been prompted by police to make incriminating statements about the herion overdose of his girlfriend. During interrogation, the police had falsely told the defendant that his girlfriend was still alive, “and implicitly threaten[ed] him with a homicide charge if he remained silent.” The court explained that the police made the defendant believe that “the consequences of remaining silent would lead to the [girlfriend’s] death, since the physicians would be unable to treat her, which “could be a problem” for him.” Id. In upholding the Second Department’s decision, the NY Court of Appeals observed that “[t]he false prospect of being severely penalized for remaining silent, raised by defendant’s interrogators, was, in the court’s view, incompatible with a finding that defendant’s confession was voluntary beyond a reasonable doubt.” People v. Aveni, 2014 WL 641511 (N.Y. 2014). It noted that “the Appellate Division used the correct legal standard in its reversal, [and] [i]ts determination that the potential to overwhelm defendant’s free will was realized was plainly one of fact.” Id.
Elizabeth Barber, How much can police lie to suspects? N.Y. rulings suggest there’s a limit, The Christian Science Monitor (February 21, 2014).
Innocence Project, Understand the Causes: False Confessions, (last visited March 24, 2014).
People v. Aveni, 100 A.D.3d 228 (2d Dep’t 2012).
People v. Aveni, 2014 WL 641511 (N.Y. Feb. 20, 2014).
People v. Thomas, 2014 WL 641516 (N.Y Feb. 20, 2014).
United States v. Bell, 367 F.3d 452 (5th Cir. 2004).
McNeil v. Wisconsin, 501 U.S. 171 (1991).
State v. Schumacher, 37 P.3d 6 (Idaho Ct. App. 2001).
N.Y. Crim. Proc. Law § 60.45 [b][i] (McKinney 2009).
Information about the Task Force, its mission and members, as well as its recommendations, can be found here.
recording can aid not only the innocent, the defense and the prosecution, but also enhances public confidence in the criminal justice system by increasing transparency as to what was said and done during the interrogation. Indeed, among its many benefits, recording helps identify false confessions; provides an objective and reliable record of what occurred during an interrogation; assists the judge and jury in determining a statement’s voluntariness and reliability; prevents disputes about how an officer conducted himself or treated a suspect, and serves as a useful training tool to police officers.
Certainly recording of interrogation could have prevented the wrongful conviction of Jabbar Washington, whose case is discussed once again in the New York Times this morning.
But legislation to require recording of police interrogation is being blocked in New York by the recalcitrance of the NYC District Attorneys. Why don’t our district attorneys join collective efforts to improve the criminal justice system? Why shouldn’t New York be in the forefront of criminal justice reform? Why are we lagging behind?

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