evildave
2nd March 2004, 12:25 AM
This is an interesting little article:
*429 THE CONSEQUENCES OF FALSE CONFESSIONS: DEPRIVATIONS OF LIBERTY AND
MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE IN THE AGE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERROGATION (http://www.wm3.org/html/ofshe/ofshe1_1.html)
A Google search for 'false confession' (http://www.google.com/search?q=False+Confession) search turns up lots of other cool stuff.
Anyway, it seems that it happens quite a lot. 25 hour non-stop interrogations that result in a confession that basically is total crap... but HEY! We have a confession, so why keep investigating?
In these cases, perhaps the incompetent, negligent, even WILLFUL practice of police really ought to result in a conviction: against the morons who thought it was more important to force a confession out of some poor dupe than to go out and collect evidence and find the actual criminals.
Get a weak willed, strung out, self-destructive or even mentally handicapped kid into a locked room, brow-beat them constantly for days at a time with a whole team of interrogators who can take breaks, go home and sleep, etc., while the victim is kept from sleeping, and you can have an 'open-and-shut' case for the prosecutor and yet another 'attaboy' from the boss for "solving" a tough case. Videotape of of the victim parotting what you told them. A piece of paper with the story you told them. Their signature on it. What jury could fail to be moved to convict? If it even comes to that. "Plea bargain, that's the ticket my boy! You'll only get fourteen years instead of forty!"
Sure beats that messy, tedious investigative stuff they show on TV thursday nights. You'd need an education and a funny kind of an attitide of wanting justice and the truth and to get the right guy, instead of any old body you can make a bunch of charges stick to, in order to do that.
Anyway, if you're upset about what happens in Guantanamo Bay, at least be comforted that the techniques and practices they use there have been perfected and practiced on American citizens for decades, and anything that's being done there could be done to you or your children someday, so we're really only treating those 'foreigners' like any American can be treated.
Just remember 'Miranda'. Confession is good for the soul, but bad for your freedom.
Added: www.religioustolerance.org (http://www.religioustolerance.org/false_co.htm) has another good article.
*429 THE CONSEQUENCES OF FALSE CONFESSIONS: DEPRIVATIONS OF LIBERTY AND
MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE IN THE AGE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERROGATION (http://www.wm3.org/html/ofshe/ofshe1_1.html)
A Google search for 'false confession' (http://www.google.com/search?q=False+Confession) search turns up lots of other cool stuff.
Anyway, it seems that it happens quite a lot. 25 hour non-stop interrogations that result in a confession that basically is total crap... but HEY! We have a confession, so why keep investigating?
In these cases, perhaps the incompetent, negligent, even WILLFUL practice of police really ought to result in a conviction: against the morons who thought it was more important to force a confession out of some poor dupe than to go out and collect evidence and find the actual criminals.
Get a weak willed, strung out, self-destructive or even mentally handicapped kid into a locked room, brow-beat them constantly for days at a time with a whole team of interrogators who can take breaks, go home and sleep, etc., while the victim is kept from sleeping, and you can have an 'open-and-shut' case for the prosecutor and yet another 'attaboy' from the boss for "solving" a tough case. Videotape of of the victim parotting what you told them. A piece of paper with the story you told them. Their signature on it. What jury could fail to be moved to convict? If it even comes to that. "Plea bargain, that's the ticket my boy! You'll only get fourteen years instead of forty!"
Sure beats that messy, tedious investigative stuff they show on TV thursday nights. You'd need an education and a funny kind of an attitide of wanting justice and the truth and to get the right guy, instead of any old body you can make a bunch of charges stick to, in order to do that.
Anyway, if you're upset about what happens in Guantanamo Bay, at least be comforted that the techniques and practices they use there have been perfected and practiced on American citizens for decades, and anything that's being done there could be done to you or your children someday, so we're really only treating those 'foreigners' like any American can be treated.
Just remember 'Miranda'. Confession is good for the soul, but bad for your freedom.
Added: www.religioustolerance.org (http://www.religioustolerance.org/false_co.htm) has another good article.