Dispatches from the Culture Wars

This is an astonishing story that someone emailed me. Six people in Nebraska were recently exonerated by DNA evidence in a murder case where 5 of the 6 had confessed to the crime and 4 of those 5 had given detailed statements of how and why they did it:

In the Beatrice 6 case, five of the defendants acknowledged their guilt, and at least four gave detailed statements about who was involved and why they would brutally attack, sexually assault and murder Helen Wilson.

On Nov. 7, authorities announced that DNA from the case matched that of a now-deceased Oklahoma City man, Bruce Smith. The state is seeking pardons for five of the defendants and has declined to seek a new trial for the sixth, whose conviction was overturned after the new DNA findings.

It will probably surprise most people to hear that people confessed to a crime they did not commit. It shouldn't. This is actually very common:

In general, false confessions, even by several people in the same case, are not that unusual, Kassin said. About 25 percent of the cases where DNA evidence has led to exonerations involve false confessions.

So why do people confess to crimes they didn't commit? The article notes three types of false confessions:

Voluntary: Without prompting from police, people profess guilt to crimes they didn't commit for attention, to protect someone else or because they suffer from delusions.

Compliant: A suspect confesses falsely to avoid punishment, escape from a stressful interrogation or gain an implied reward.

Internalized: Vulnerable suspects, due to young age, mental problems and other factors, exposed to highly suggestive interrogation tactics, not only confess but grow to believe that they committed a crime.

In this particular case, it appears to be the latter:

Two national experts who study false confessions said the Beatrice case appears to fit patterns of other cases: The suspects were young people with low-esteem or mental problems who were abusing alcohol or drugs. They were easily influenced, easily confused and worn out by aggressive questioning.

But here's where the obvious misconduct comes in. Involved in the interrogations was a police psychologist who had previously treated several of the suspects:

But Saul Kassin, a professor of psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, and Richard Leo, a law professor at the University of San Francisco, said the Beatrice case had an unusual aspect: the role played during interrogations by a police psychologist who previously had served as private therapist to some of those being questioned...

Kassin and Leo said that a psychologist acting in the dual role of trusted therapist and criminal interrogator would have had a powerful place of trust and persuasion over suspects.

"That is a wide open target," Leo said, of the involvement of Wayne Price, a licensed psychologist who consulted with the Gage County Sheriff's Office on criminal behavior...

One of White's attorney's in 1989, Toney Redman, recalled arguing in court that those testifying were "so weak-minded" that their stories could not be trusted.

"I'm fully convinced now," he said this week, "that the police, if they wanted to, could get any borderline personality person, who has alcohol and drug issues, and scare them to death and get them to confess to anything."

The testimony of the main witnesses changed over time as they "remembered" details.

Taylor, for instance, in a videotaped interrogation session, initially said that she couldn't recall much because she had memory problems. She denies telling anyone she had committed a murder, and says police told her she was at the crime scene.

Taylor eventually tells them that she and White and another man drove in a light blue car to a house where an older lady was assaulted.

But an investigator questions the story, asking if she was "confused" about the location.

"Yeah," Taylor responds, mentioning her personality disorder, diagnosed by Price years earlier.

Later, after the videotape is turned off for 19 minutes, Taylor comes back and implicates Winslow, describes his large brown and beige car -- the car police had believed was used in the crime -- and says she might have told others she was involved.

She also then tells investigators that she remembers that the location was a red brick apartment building.

Sam Stevens, an investigator for the Beatrice Police Department, also asks Taylor if she remembers "a struggle in the bedroom, do you remember the light in the bedroom, was there blood on the sheets, was there blood on the walls?"

"Yeah, yeah I do," Taylor responds.

Leading questions and feeds about crime-scene information are common in false confessions, Kassin and Leo said.

Interrogators also are trained in a controversial questioning style, called the Reid technique, to confront a suspect, minimize any statements of innocence and suggest morally justified reasons why the person committed the crime.

Suspects also are sometimes told that it's natural to "block" or suppress memories of such gruesome events.

According to court records, Kathy Gonzalez in 1989 repeatedly denied that she was involved in the Wilson case and told Price that she didn't even know Winslow.

"You apparently don't want to," replies Price, telling Gonzalez there was a good chance, based on statements by others, that she was at the crime but blocked it from her memory.

He added that he could "work with" her on memory problems.

Someone's license needs to be yanked. This is crystal clear misconduct.