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The Three Errors: Pathways To False Confession And Wrongful Conviction, Richard A. Leo, Steven A. Drizin
The Three Errors: Pathways To False Confession And Wrongful Conviction, Richard A. Leo, Steven A. Drizin
Richard A. Leo
Research has demonstrated that false confessors whose cases are not dismissed before trial are often convicted despite their innocence. In order to prevent such wrongful convictions, criminal justice officials must better understand the role that false confessions play in creating and perpetuating miscarriages of justice. This chapter examines police-induced false confessions and analyzes three sequential errors that occur in the social production of every false confession: investigators first misclassify an innocent person as guilty; they next subject him to a guilt-presumptive, accusatory interrogation that invariably involves lies about evidence and often the repeated use of implicit and/or explicit promises and …
Interrogating Guilty Suspects: Why Sipowicz Never Has To Admit He Is Wrong, George C. Thomas Iii, Richard A. Leo
Interrogating Guilty Suspects: Why Sipowicz Never Has To Admit He Is Wrong, George C. Thomas Iii, Richard A. Leo
Richard A. Leo
On the television police drama NYPD Blue, Andy Sipowicz and his colleagues often use threats of physical violence and psychological interrogation tactics to extract confessions from "guilty suspects." Sipowicz is portrayed as a white knight who serves a nobler ideal than respecting the physical integrity of suspects: obtaining justice for innocent victims. Although the television show is fictional, it has implications regarding real-life interrogation tactics used by the police. In this chapter, the authors analyze scenes from NYPD Blue in which the detectives use physical violence, threats of violence, and negative and positive incentive techniques to induce confessions from suspects. …
The Third Degree And The Origins Of Psychological Interrogation In The United States, Richard Leo
The Third Degree And The Origins Of Psychological Interrogation In The United States, Richard Leo
Richard A. Leo
This chapter describes and analyzes third degree interrogation in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. The chapter begins with a detailed description and analysis of the various kinds and types of third degree interrogation, describing both the physical and psychological components of the third degree. Next, the chapter discusses how the ideology and practice of so-called "scientific" lie detection and psychological interrogation came to replace the third degree following the Wickersham Commission's Report in the 1930s. Although the third degree is, for the most part, a relic of the distant past, its demise represents a crucial turning point in the history …