lessons on false confessions

it often boggles my mind why all interrogations are not videotaped or at least audio taped in the united states of america. wrongful convictions are a very real and terrifying epidemic and a lot of these wrongful convictions are caused by false confessions. recording interrogations would almost completely and fully eliminate this problem, so why don't they do it in the US? they do it here...

Freed Man Gives Lesson on False Confessions - Los Angeles Times: "Freed Man Gives Lesson on False Confessions
An ex-inmate tells a California panel how Texas police coerced him into admitting to murder.
By Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writer
June 21, 2006

Seventeen years ago, Christopher Ochoa told a Texas jury exactly how he and a friend repeatedly raped 20-year-old Nancy DePriest and then shot her dead at the Pizza Hut where she worked.

The details were so gruesome that DePriest's mother, Jeanette Popp, fled the courtroom and threw up in a bathroom. Ochoa and his co-defendant, Richard Danziger, who steadfastly maintained his innocence, both received life sentences.

But Ochoa's story was a lie - a total lie.

He had been threatened with the death penalty by a police detective if he did not admit that he and Danziger murdered DePriest; he also had to testify against Danziger. The two young men worked at a different pizza place and came under suspicion after they toasted DePriest's memory with beers at the scene of the murder.

But the fact that Ochoa confessed falsely did not come to light until 2000, four years after the real killer, already serving three life terms for other crimes, told police in Austin, Texas, that he was responsible for the young woman's death.

read more...

but hey, they've started at least talking about it in california. that's a start:

Panel Urges Videotaping of Suspects' Confessions - Los Angeles Times: "Panel Urges Videotaping of Suspects' Confessions
By Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writer
June 22, 2006

A blue-ribbon commission that is examining California's criminal justice system was urged Wednesday to recommend that police videotape all interrogations of crime suspects in custody.

posted by Courtney at 2:27 p.m.

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