LegalMatch: Criminal Law

Why do Innocent People Confess to Crimes?

If someone is in prison because they confessed to a crime, you can be pretty sure that they’re actually guilty, right? Statistically, that’s probably a safe bet.

However, a surprising, and disturbingly-high, number of people have been exonerated (almost always through DNA evidence) years after having been convicted, with the only evidence against them being their own confession. Since 1976, at least 40 people in prison based on their own confessions have been proven innocent, according to a New York Times story. And that’s just the number of confirmed cases. The actual number is almost certainly much higher.

How can this be? What could possibly drive an innocent person to doom themselves to years in prison by confessing to a crime they didn’t commit?

Well, there are some obvious explanations: if a defendant is very young, mentally ill, or mentally impaired, inducing them to confess might be quite easy, and interrogators might even induce false confessions unintentionally in cases like this. However, a large number of these cases involved adults of at least average intelligence, with no obvious susceptibility to suggestion.

To be a skilled interrogator, one has to be very good at psychological manipulation. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. However, an interrogator must be careful to ensure that they’re manipulating the subject into to telling the truth, not what the interrogator wants to hear. Sometimes, even the interrogator might not be consciously aware of which is which.

In getting a confession, the first thing the interrogator has to do is convince the suspect to start talking. After all, when you’re arrested, you’re under absolutely no legal obligation to answer the questions of your interrogator, and you have a right to have an attorney present during questioning. However, when a suspect invokes this right, the police typically don’t bother with an interrogation, since the presence of an attorney makes interrogation much more difficult. So, the first thing the interrogator has to do is get the defendant to waive this right. Usually, it’s not very difficult.

The interrogator will tell the suspect something like “well, you could get a lawyer, that’s certainly your right, but if you do, we won’t be able to talk anymore, and I’ll have to write it up like I see it, without getting your side of the story.”

“You made a smart choice, kid. Now, if you could just sign here, indicating that you voluntarily waive your right to remain silent, we can get started…” And so it begins.

The suspect has agreed to talk. Why don’t they just explain where they were when the crime was committed, and, knowing they’re telling the truth, assume that the evidence will bear this out? Well, if an interrogator is convinced that they’ve got the right person, they probably don’t want to be proven wrong (just as nobody likes being proven wrong). According to the New York Times story, one suspect simply told the interrogator what he thought he wanted to hear, just to end the hours of intense questioning, which had become nearly unbearable. Still, many of these false confessions contain details about the crime that prosecutors tell juries only the perpetrator could have known.

In the case of false confessions, this is caused by interrogators dropping certain hints about the details of the crime to the suspect, either intentionally or unintentionally. This is known as “contamination.” Just like a crime scene needs to be tightly controlled to prevent outside materials from mixing with evidence left by the perpetrator, interrogators must be very careful to not give the suspect any information about the crime that only the perpetrator should know. This way, if the suspect slips and lets on that they know some of these details, you can be pretty sure that they were in some way involved in the crime. But if the interrogator accidentally lets some of this information slip, this method immediately becomes unreliable.

According to the Wall Street Journal Law Blog (also reported here) criminal defense attorneys are taking note. It used to be that an admissible confession was the final nail in a coffin for a criminal defense. Nowadays, defense attorneys are paying much closer attention to confessions, and going to a much greater effort to ensure that confessions are reliable. After all, defense attorneys don’t simply take witnesses for the prosecution at their word, and of course they shouldn’t. They generally expect the prosecutor to present some evidence backing up the statements of witnesses, and if none exists, they make sure the jury knows it.

While it’s certainly good that defense attorneys are getting wise to this phenomenon, some serious changes should be made in police procedure to mitigate the problem of false confessions. For example, perhaps interrogations should be videotaped in all cases involving major crimes, not just capital cases.

And this might be a common theme that’s emerging in my posts, but it always seems to be what I take away from stories like these: the general public needs to be better-educated on the basics of the substantive law that governs their actions and, perhaps more importantly, the legal system that actually carries out those laws.

A citizenry that’s educated about their legal rights will be far less likely to waive them. And if you find yourself suspected of a crime you didn’t commit, waiving your right to have an attorney present during your questioning is just about the last thing you would want to do.

By: Rusty Shackleford

Don’t Spam Your Presiding Judge

The line between physical and virtual reality is blurring.  Ok, maybe that was a little dramatic but I just watched the Matrix  and there is simply no denying that the internet has drastically changed the way we live.  From online shopping to email to paying bills there is very little that has to be done in-person these days. 

Recently a Chicago radio personality was found to be in contempt of court when he asked his local radio audience to send emails to the judge presiding over his pending case.  And email they did.  Hundreds of emails were sent to U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman urging him to rule in favor of their beloved DJ – so many that the judge's blackberry froze.  He “replied” to the emails by placing the prankster in contempt of court and sentencing him to jail. 

So what exactly does it mean to be held in contempt of court? Contempt of court is any willful disobedience, or disregard, of a court order or any misconduct in the presence of a court; any action that interferes with a judge's ability to administer justice or that insults the court. Contempt is punishable by fine or imprisonment or both and as you can see from the definition, it is a very discretionary finding.

There are two basic types of contempt based on the nature of the case: criminal and civil contempt.  Finding a plaintiff and/or defendant in contempt is more common than one may initially think.  Also in the news right now is the much-discussed John Edwards sex tape. Former aid Andrew Young and his wife, Cheri were held in contempt of court for not turning over a sex tape allegedly featuring Edwards and possibly showing his mistress, Rielle Hunter.  Although now safe in the hands of the judge, the couple was warned that they would be punished with fines or prison time if the tape mysteriously “leaked” to the press. 

The controversy surrounding Judge Gettleman's response is essentially whether contempt of court can be found in the world of a “virtual court.”  Just going off of the basic definition, I have no doubt that encouraging his listeners to essentially spam a judge was both disrespectful and a major disruption to his ability to “administer justice.”  In my opinion, just because the medium may be different from the more traditional disobedience of a court order (failure to appear, failure to pay child support, etc) that does not mean that the definition should not be able to mold to the new circumstances. 

By: Violet Petran

Have Something To Say To Your Judge? Let Your Lawyer Do the Talking

The U.S. Constitution entitles criminal defendants to an attorney to assist the defendant in his or her defense. That wording is important, and rests on the idea that it’s actually the defendant who will be defending himself, and his lawyer will simply be helping him along in the process. Perhaps this was actually how it worked when the Constitution was drafted – court procedure may have been much more simple back then. These days, however, the notion that a criminal defendant actually conducts his own defense is (except when the defendant is representing himself) a legal fiction.

Generally, it is the lawyer who takes the lead role in a defense, or any other legal proceeding, and with good reason: lawyers understand court procedure, and what does and doesn’t fly in a courtroom. When non-lawyers try to take the reins, we sometimes get hilarious results.

Other times, however, the results are just sad and vaguely disturbing (more details here). In that story, from the ABA Journal, a man was suing a police department, alleging that he had been wrongfully arrested and detained. So far, so good. Every once in a while, wrongful arrests happen, and it’s great that we live in a country where people can seek redress for such injustices.

But this person didn’t choose to exercise his rights wisely. After the judge in his case issued a ruling that he didn’t like, he sent an email to the judge threatening to kill him, and other judges in the area.

He was convicted of threatening a federal judge, and attempting to corruptly influence a judge’s decisions, and now faces up to 15 years in federal prison.

I’ve said before in this blog that litigation can be an emotionally and financially draining process. Sometimes, when a case doesn’t go a party’s way, the temptation can be to lash out, and blame anything, other than the merits of the case itself. When a person feels they’ve been wronged, it can be like a kick in the gut to have a judge tell them that, no, they haven’t been. Unfortunately, sometimes the law doesn’t nicely dovetail with everybody’s feelings of what the law should be.

If you really have a problem with something that a court has done, it’s best to make your concerns known through your attorney. There are many, many reasons for this.

First of all, your attorney will be able to tell you right off if your concern is one that the court can actually do something about. Judges often expect litigants to resolve minor procedural disputes amongst themselves, and really don’t like it when they’re forced to decide such issues. They rightfully view it as a waste of the court’s limited time. Your lawyer might suggest another way to go about getting what you want that doesn’t involve getting on the judge’s bad side.

Second, your lawyer will be able to frame your objection, request, or other concern with the court in a manner that is most likely to be successful, without doing anything improper that might land you in jail. Most people consider not being in jail a good thing.

Finally, and most importantly, your lawyer will be able to make the best possible argument on your behalf. At the very least, it will be more effective than a death threat sent to the judge.

By: Rusty Shackleford