The Central Park Five case demonstrates some of the problems with police interrogation techniques, and also the policies and procedures applied to juveniles. In every case, law enforcement uses criminal interrogation as a primary means of data collec Continue Reading...
As Neuschatz, Jones, McClung and Wetmore (n.d.) note, secondary confessions are viewed as “extremely persuasive evidence” (p. 2) even though they are the “leading cause of wrongful convictions in capital cases” (p. 3). What th Continue Reading...
Juvenile Interrogations and the Exonerated Five: An Examination of Wrongful ConvictionsThe Exonerated Five, formerly the Central Park Five, exemplifies the dire consequences of wrongful juvenile interrogations. In 1989, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Sant Continue Reading...
These individuals are at risk of either confessing to crimes they did not commit or otherwise compromising their rights by virtue of inappropriate police interrogation techniques (Gudjonsson, 2003), a fact that has increasingly been recognized by th Continue Reading...
Other constitutional protections such as profiling are equally susceptible to manipulation and circumvention in the field by creative articulation on police reports.
How common is wrongful conviction in our criminal justice system?
Despite all the Continue Reading...
False Confessions in America
What factors do you see as relative to the increasing number of false confessions in America?
The literature on police investigations is clear on four points: 1) Investigators are overconfident in their abilities to mak Continue Reading...
DNA Exonerations: John Kogut
The Path To Exoneration: John Kogut
The Path to Conviction
When 16-year-old Teresa Fusco left work at 9:45 PM on November 10, 1984 she became one among several young girls reported missing over the past several years [ Continue Reading...
Corrections/Police - Criminal Justice
Innocents Project Exoneration
On November 19, 1991, 14-year-old Cateresa Matthews left her great-grandmother's house in Dixmoor, Illinois. She was not seen again until December 8, 1991, when her body was found Continue Reading...
The 2012 Ken Burns documentary entitled The Central Park Five offers disturbing insight into institutionalized racism and the criminal justice system. Co-produced by Sarah Burns and David McMahon, The Central Park Five is about five children of color Continue Reading...
He quotes the claims that they customarily begin with the demand "If you know what's good for you, you'll confess," and cites various experts in criminal law enforcement who state that police "con" and "bull*****" their suspects, that they use coerc Continue Reading...
The court ruled that the police impaired her free choice by going beyond the evidence connecting her to the crime and introducing a completely extrinsic consideration in the form of an empty but plausible threat to take away something to which she a Continue Reading...
Research Question DevelopmentCriminal psychology is one of the most exciting fields in the social sciences, partly because of the potential to make a difference in public policy and the criminal justice system. A criminal psychologist provides import Continue Reading...
eye witness testimony and the use of lineups have long been considered reliable mainstays of prosecutorial evidence, misidentification has been the "greatest contributing factor to wrongful convictions," according to the Innocence Project. As many a Continue Reading...
Over 1,000 Chinese witnesses came forth to testify in the trials which lasted until February of 1947 after the Chinese government posted notices in Nanking regarding the need for credible witnesses, (Chang 1997:170). Unlike the Nuremburg Trials, how Continue Reading...