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CounterPunch
December
21, 2002
The
False Confessions in the Central Park Jogger Case:
How They Happened
and How to Stop Similar Injustices in the Future
by ELAINE CASSEL
On December 5 of this year, the Manhattan district
attorney's office made a rare move: It asked a judge to dismiss
all charges against five men it had earlier prosecuted.
As teenagers, the men had been convicted
and incarcerated for raping a jogger in Central Park in 1989,
and they had since served years of jail time for the crimes.
Now, however, the actual perpetrator, an older man named Matias
Reyes, has been linked to the victim with DNA evidence--after
confessing to the rape and assault earlier this year.
What went wrong, and why? Why were the
boys convicted in the first place? There is plenty of blame to
go around. But their false confessions played a large role, and
the circumstances of how those confessions came about are worth
a long, close look.
The Jogger
Case and Its Miscarriage of Justice
In April 1989, in New York City, violent
crime rates--murders, rapes, and robberies--were out of control,
and people were afraid to walk city streets. The Central Park
jogger case set a record (and served as a symbol) for brutality--it
was a violent rape in which the victim was also badly beaten,
leading to a lengthy hospitalization.
Five teenagers, ranging in age from 14
to 16 years, who had been implicated in a separate series of
muggings, were questioned about the rape. The boys were black;
the victim was white. Some say that things began to go wrong
right there--that the race factor trumped a search for the truth.
The idea of a roving gang of black boys brutally beating and
raping a white woman fit the schema of the public's fear of African-Americans
and of teenage gangs.
All of the boys made statements to the
police, though not one of them admitted to actually having intercourse
with the victim. The search for the perpetrator stopped.
Meanwhile, the real perpetrator, Reyes--who
had committed a rape a few days before the jogger's, and would
go on to rape and kill--remained out there. Even at the time,
it was clear that his modus operandi matched the assault and
rape of the jogger, but prosecutors did not follow leads relating
to Reyes.
Why, when no physical evidence linked
the five boys to the crime and their confessions were implausible
and mutually contradictory, were the boys convicted?
In part, because a defendant's confession
is considered by judges and juries to be compelling and unequivocal
evidence. Indeed, the power of a confession is so strong, according
to McCormick's treatise on evidence, as to make other aspects
of the trial superfluous. As demonstrated in this case, a confession
can even override strong physical evidence to the contrary.
Moreover, at the same time that confessions
are viewed as virtually incontrovertible, police are allowed
to use a number of wrongful tactics to get them. These tactics
greatly increase the possibility of false confessions, and go
a long way towards explaining why they occur.
Some Current,
Psychologically Coercive Interrogation Tactics Should Not Be
Permitted
The Supreme Court limits the admissibility
of confessions that are coerced or given without the requisite
Miranda warnings. But what counts as coercion?
Torture and beatings are obviously coercive,
and were ruled to be so as early as 1936 in Brown v. Mississippi.
Fortunately, they are largely a thing of the past. (However,
in the past couple of years there has been a resurgence of reported
violence perpetrated during interrogations in New York City,
Los Angeles, and Prince Georges' County, Maryland).
In contrast, psychological coercion,
under current rules, does not automatically count as coercion;
rather, psychological tactics must be proven to be coercive under
a "totality of circumstances" test, as the Supreme
Court held in Haynes v. Washington.
As a result, officers are indoctrinated
into the psychological methods of interrogation designed to get
a suspect to confess. Manuals tell investigators, for instance,
to use the physical environment to law enforcement advantage,
by creating small, starkly furnished, and brightly lit interrogation
rooms; they instruct in how to get in a defendant's face and
invade his personal space. Officers learn how to conduct long
interviews that may span three or four days, with little respect
for a suspect's need for sleep, food, or bathroom breaks.
The purpose of all these tactics, of
course, to break down recalcitrant suspects. The problem is that
they tend to break down vulnerable and innocent people as well
as--or perhaps even better than--the hardened and guilty recidivist.
Deceptive Tactics,
In Particular, Often Induce False Confessions
Deceptive tactics are also encouraged.
Investigators are taught to minimize the likely results of suspects'
confessions, and to suggest to suspects that they will get a
better "deal" if they talk than if they remain silent.
They pretend to identify with the suspects and to offer "rationalizations"
for suspects' alleged crimes, suggesting the crimes were not
so bad, and thus confessing them wouldn't be so bad, either.
Interrogators are allowed to tell suspects
that if they take a polygraph and "pass," they will
be released--which is not always the case. Then, once the polygraph
has been taken, investigators may lie about its results if they
think that would be helpful--telling a defendant falsely that
he failed.
Consider, for instance, the case of an
Egyptian man who was wrongfully charged with lying to the FBI
in post-September 11 investigations. He falsely confessed because
he was told he had "failed" a polygraph, and that if
he did not confess, the government would make life for his family
in Egypt "hell." His conviction has been overturned,
but not until he served 31 days in solitary confinement.
Similarly, interrogators are encouraged
to falsely tell suspects they believe them to be guilty, and
that another suspect or physical evidence has implicated them.
That was what happened in the Central Park jogger case: The boys
were told that hairs linked them to the victim's body, which
turned out not to be true.
These lies can be very harmful, since
the suspect can, through repetition, be induced by the investigator
to believe them. Studies show that some people who falsely confess
do so because they internalize the repeated suggestions and scenarios
of questioners. Nevertheless, offering scenarios for the suspect
to buy into, is still a common tactic of investigators.
Indeed, a popular text of investigative
techniques explains how to offer alternative explanations for
how and why a crime occurred, and encourage the subject to pick
"a," "b," or "c." Once the subject
makes his choice, the questioner is told to help the subject
"fill in the blanks," often falsely.
A case in point is the infamous false
confession of Paul Ingram, a highly suggestible person who confessed
to totally incredible allegations of ritualistic sexual abuse
against his daughters (subsequently proved to be totally false).
Ingram is still serving out a 25-year sentence, because he confessed.
Accusation after accusation was thrown
at Ingram, with the encouragement to "think about it,"
even "pray over it," and refresh his memory. He did
even more--"confessing" to bizarre, baseless details.
Amazingly, as long as deceptive tactics
like these are not deemed by a court to be coercive under the
totality of the circumstances, the confessions they induce remain
admissible. This is true even though statistics show that false
confessions are second only to false eyewitness identification
in being responsible for wrongful convictions.
Other Factors
that Were At Work in the Central Park Jogger Case Interrogations
Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's
report supporting reversal of the convictions reveals other troubling
aspect of the five suspects' confessions--besides investigator's
lies that physical evidence linked the boys to the victim's body.
First, none of the boys admitted actually
raping (that is, penetrating) the victim. Second, their tales
of time and location of the rape were inconsistent not only with
each other, but with statements of reliable witnesses.
Third, the suspects' conflicting and
confusing statements, taken together, made no sense. It seemed,
the report notes, as if the boys were talking about different
crimes. It also seemed that each expected that talking would
enhance his chances of become a witness against others, not a
defendant in his own case.
Thus, each of the suspects' statements
minimized their own involvement, while placing more blame on
one or more of their buddies. Together, however, the statements
(though contradictory) were taken by prosecutors, at the time,
to amount to a sort of group confession. They were seen that
way even though some of the boys refused to admit any guilt on
their own part. (Ironically, they served longer sentences as
a result of insisting on their innocence).
Playing suspects off against one another,
like the other psychologically coercive tactics noted above,
is entirely legal, even though it also predictably leads to false
confessions. Research shows that some people will say whatever
a questioner wants to hear, in order to improve their status
at the expense of their partner in crime.
Investigators take advantage of this
psychological fact (known as "The Prisoner's Dilemma");
they split up and during breaks, caucus with each other and returned
to their suspects armed with information gained from the other.
And they may begin plea-bargaining early--suggesting suspects
should confess to one crime in exchange for not having to face
more serious charges.
Meanwhile, that teens--some of them young
teens--were involved heightened the coercive environment of the
interrogation. The younger boys may not fully have understood
the Miranda warnings. Behavioral science research has shown that
teenagers (and many adults) generally don't; they may not understand
what is meant by "waiver," and despite the warnings'
language, most persist in thinking they will get to go home if
they simply cooperate with the authorities.
In addition, teenagers--especially antisocial
kids like these--are also egocentric and like to put themselves
into the stories they tell (as I discussed in a column about
the youthful sniper suspect, John Lee Malvo). At times, they
lie; often, they exaggerate. A boy who ran away from the scene,
for instance, might not admit it since his flight would not seem
macho or manly.
Here, one of the teens also seemed to
display borderline mental retardation and perhaps a psychotic
mental disorder. In some of his statements, he referred to flying
around the park in a blue bus. People with mental retardation
are much more likely to tell any questioner what he or she wants
to hear, and people who are delusional are too far out of touch
with reality, of course, to make reliable statements.
Despite all these problems, the prosecutors--eager
for a conviction--still went forward.
How To Stop
It From Happening Again
How can we stop other cases like this
from occurring? A number of simple measures could prevent many
false confessions like these.
First, children, teenagers, and people
with mental deficiencies should not be questioned outside the
presence of a competent guardian or legal representative. In
this case, none of the boys' parents were present when their
children made the most damaging statements against their interests.
Second, all interrogations ought to be
videotaped. In this case, the taping did not begin until after
the boys had been questioned for hours. As a result, the film
shows only the statements, not the psychological and environmental
pressures that preceded them. Jurors could certainly get a false
impression of the "confessions," viewing them outside
the context of law enforcement tactics.
Third, all statements offered as confessions
should not be admissible unless they are corroborated by credible
and, when possible, physical evidence. Fortunately, most states
do have laws that require corroboration of admissions. Unfortunately,
the qualitative standard for how good the corroboration must
be is quite low. Circumstantial evidence may suffice. Worse,
even the statement of an accomplice, as in the Central Park jogger
case, is deemed to be enough--despite the accomplice's obvious
incentive to escape responsibility by placing the lion's share
of blame on someone else.
Fourth, there should be strict, carefully-enforced
time limits on interrogations. Questioning that goes beyond three
or four hours begins to be coercive; questioners intensify their
techniques, and subjects become fatigued, confused, even disoriented.
In the jogger case, the interrogations--which ranged from fourteen
to thirty hours--clearly crossed the line from questioning into
coercion.
Fifth, contrary to current Supreme Court
standards, law enforcement lies to suspects should be forbidden.
As noted above, the "confessions" such lies prompt
are often highly unreliable.
Sixth, and finally, prosecutors should
be held to their duty to do justice. Because they are immune
from suit, they are unaccountable--except to voters--for negligence
and fraud. Requiring them to vouch for the evidence produced
by their investigators and law enforcement, might make them think
twice about putting on any evidence and hoping it sticks.
Defense attorneys can lose their licenses
for putting on false and misleading evidence, even though their
duty is to defend zealously. Prosecutors, on the other hand,
often do so with impunity, even though their duty is to serve
justice, not to convict. That needs to stop. Prosecutors should
be held as closely accountable for what they do as are defense
attorneys.
The Cost of
False Confessions
Some observers have expressed little
sympathy for the falsely convicted boys, who seem to have been
muggers, even if they were not rapists. But of course, a mugging
is a world away from a rape, for which they were incarcerated.
And more fundamentally, the Constitution guarantees that the
punishment fit the crime--not some other, worse crime one did
not commit.
In any case, one need not have an excess
of sympathy for the boys in order to condemn the injustice done
here. One need only have sympathy for the next woman whom the
real perpetrator, Reyes, went on to rape and murder, and for
the jogger-victim, who did not get justice for 13 years.
They deserved much better. So did the
boys, and so do we all.
Elaine Cassel
practices in Virginia and the District of Columbia. She also
teaches law and psychology and is the author of Criminal
Behavior (Allyn & Bacon, 2001). She is a contributer
to CounterPunch and FindLaw
Writ, where this column originally appeared. Cassel can
reached at cassel@counterpunch.org.
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