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Excerpts from pages 155-158
Psychologists and sociologists recognize three distinct
types of false confession. A voluntary false
confession occurs when a suspect falsely confesses to a
crime without influence from others. The most common
situation that explains voluntary false confessions is
mental abnormality. Mentally defective individuals tend
to offer confessions in countless high-profile crimes.
Another type of false confession, called
“coerced-compliant,” usually occurs when the suspect
feels he must avoid duress or seeks to benefit from the
confession. Long interrogations conducted late at night
or on the promise of a favorable plea bargain account
for many coerced-compliant false confessions.
The third type of voluntary false confession, the
“coerced-internalized false confession,” invariably
involves police coercion. Instead of confessing to get
out of an undesirable situation or to tie down a lenient
plea bargain, the suspect unconsciously incorporates
into his own memory the information given to him during
police interrogation. Consequently, the suspect comes to
believe he is truly responsible for the crime,
notwithstanding the fact that no initial memory of the
crime ever existed. The psychology literature suggests
that these coerced-internalized memories can last for
days or weeks, depending on the length of police
interrogation.
False confessions derive from several psychological
conditions. A suspect may feel guilty about something he
has done or failed to do, something completely unrelated
to the crime in question. A suspect’s ability to reason
may be impaired by drug addiction, or he may be unduly
frightened of the police or possess a disordered or
inadequate personality. Some suspects simply can’t
resist the notoriety they know will result from
confessing to a high-profile crime.
The frequency of false confessions is a vigorously
debated question in the legal world. An even more
complicated question arises in trying to determine how
many wrongful convictions are based on false
confessions. Estimates range from a low of 35 to a high
of 840 annually.
In August of 1991 nine bodies were discovered inside the
Wat Promkunaram Buddhist Temple in the desert near
Phoenix. The victims, including six Buddhist monks, lay
face down in a circle, each shot in the head. Based on
forensic science, the Maricopa County sheriff’s
department quickly identified the murder weapon as a
Marlin Model 60, .22-caliber rifle. The rifle was not
found but the make, model, and caliber were clear from
crime-scene evidence.
A few weeks later, in September 1991, an anonymous tip
implicated four young Tucson men. The Maricopa County
sheriff’s office immediately arrested them and subjected
each one to lengthy questioning. All four confessed, in
writing, to the Temple murders. Then they talked to
their parents and their lawyers. The next day they
recanted their confessions and professed their
innocence.
In October 1991, while the men, now dubbed the “Tucson
Four” were still in jail, Maricopa County sheriff’s
deputies located the murder weapon in Phoenix. Its owner
identified it as such, but denied involvement in the
crime, and told the deputies that two young Phoenix men
had borrowed his rifle shortly before the murders.
One of the young men, a seventeen-year-old juvenile, was
advised of his Miranda rights but told the
deputies he wanted to talk to them without an attorney
and without his parents present.
His interrogation began at 9:25 in the evening. Two and
one-half hours later, he made “inculpatory statements,
and after approximately four more hours of questioning,
admitted to being at the temple on the night of the
murders.”
His interrogation lasted for almost thirteen consecutive
hours without significant breaks. He implicated four
other Phoenix juveniles, but not the Tucson Four
already in custody.
It was ultimately revealed that the sheriff’s focus on
the Tucson Four had begun when one of them, a mental
patient, called the police and falsely confessed. The
other three young men, actually innocent, had broken
down under interrogation and confessed to the killings.
The prosecutor described the investigation of the Tucson
Four as “bungled” by the sheriff’s office.
The Tucson Four, having recanted their confessions and
professed their innocence, were released after three
months of incarceration. They promptly filed
wrongful-arrest civil suits against the sheriff’s
office. In September 1994, the Tucson Four accepted a
$2.8 million dollar out-of-court settlement offered by
Maricopa County.
One of the Phoenix juveniles accepted a plea bargain
that saved him from the death penalty, conditioned on
his agreement to testify against the man who had
implicated him in the first confession.
Following a media-intensive trial, the 17-year old
defendant who confessed after waiving his rights was
convicted of felony murder, but the jury rejected the
charge of premediated murder. He appealed his conviction
on multiple grounds, including that his confession was
coerced and that, like those given by the Tucson Four,
was false. He also argued that his confession was false
because it had been extracted by the same interrogators,
who had used on him the same technique that they had
used to extract false confessions from the Tucson Four.
His conviction and sentence of 281 years in the Arizona
State Penitentiary were affirmed by the Arizona Court of
Appeals. Arizona’s Supreme Court denied review and the
United States Supreme Court rejected his petition for a
writ of certiorari on June 16, 1997.
In the Temple Murder case, the interrogators secured six
confessions from juveniles after securing waivers of
their Miranda rights. All six recanted their
confessions. Four of those confessions were indisputably
false. Of course, not all false confessions are the
product of police misconduct. However, when police
misconduct cases are evaluated on a national scale, it
appears that 42 percent of the cases involve allegations
of undue suggestiveness in pretrial identification
procedures and coerced confessions arising out of
custodial interrogation.
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