Why Young People Falsely Confess to Police

"I said I did it but I didn't do it," the 11-year-old convicted murderer told me when I first met him in January of 1995. "Why did you confess to murdering your 83-year-old neighbor," I asked the boy, "if you didn't do it?"

The boy's response chilled me to the bone: "They told me that God would forgive me, that they found my fingerprints on the knife, and that I could go home to my brother's birthday party if I just said I did it." It took me nearly a decade to get the boy's murder conviction vacated, but I am still haunted by his words.

In the nearly fifteen years since that fateful meeting, I have seen dozens of cases in which youthful defendants have falsely confessed to murder and other heinous crimes. Whether it's the West Memphis Three (Arkansas), the Central Park Jogger Five and Marty Tankleff cases (New York City), Lacresha Murray (Texas), or the Ryan Harris case (Illinois), or any of the many other children whose cases have not captured national attention, all have one thing in common: their confessions were unreliable, wrung from children by police officers using sophisticated tactics designed to manipulate guilty adults into confessing but which when used on innocent children often lead them to falsely confess.

Over the years, I've seen police lie to children in all manner of ways, telling them they had failed lie detector tests, telling one child that his dead sister's blood was found in his bedroom and a different boy that his father had awakened from a coma after a shot of adrenaline and told police the boy was his assailant. I've seen detectives suggest to children they can go home if they just confess, promise that they will "go to bat" for them when their cases go to court, and that only they can make sure the children get the "help" they need instead of going to prison.

And it's not just juvenile suspects who have given false statements under police pressure. Earlier this year, 30-year-old Thaddeus Jimenez walked out of an Illinois prison into my arms after serving over 16 years for a murder he did not commit. Arrested at age 13, Jimenez is the rare child who refused to confess when interrogated. But it didn't matter. Chicago police officers pressured a 14-year-old eyewitness to identify Jimenez. The very same tactics used to obtain false confessions from suspects also produce false identifications from witnesses and even crime victims.

I've seen too many parents shed tears over their decision to let police interview their children alone while they sat in the lobby or, even worse, sat next to their children and pressured them along with the police. These parents have had to carry with them the guilt of their complicity as their children have grown up behind bars.

To prevent such tragedies from recurring, courts or legislatures can start by mandating that all interviews of children be electronically recorded, whether the child is a victim, a witness, or a suspect. Recording has been a "best practice" when interviewing child victims for years and needs to be universally applied. Without such recordings, it cannot be known whether the police coerced the child into confessing or whether the statement is the child's account or an agreed-to version of a pre-conceived story told by the child's interrogators.

Parents must be better informed but this alone will not protect children from falsely confessing. In cases or where children face adult punishments and perhaps others, children need to be given access to lawyers.

Merely reading a child his Miranda rights must not be enough to admit the child's confession. Miranda rights need to be rewritten in language that children can understand, explained to them and their parents patiently, and officers must ask the child and parent to explain what each right means in their own words.

Finally, police and experts must design new techniques for interviewing children, techniques that lessen the chance of false confessions without reducing the frequency of true confessions.

My colleagues and I are tired of having our dreams haunted by these cases. On Oct. 8, 2009, we are launching the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth ("CWCY"), the first project solely devoted to representing and advocating for wrongly convicted youth. The CWCY is a joint project of the law school's renowned Center on Wrongful Convictions and Children and Family Justice Center.

The launch at Northwestern's law school will feature a panel discussion and statements from several juvenile exonerees, including Marty Tankleff, who spent 19 years in prison before being exonerated of his parents' murders, Barney Brown, who spent 38 years in a Florida prison for a rape before he was declared innocent and released, and Bruce Lisker, who was exonerated only a few weeks ago after spending 26 years in a California prison for the murder of his mother.

Please join us. With your support, the CWCY hopes to increase the accuracy of all youthful convictions -- the innocent and the guilty -- by insisting upon reliable evidence.

To help launch the CWCY, we made a short video about the wrongful convictions of youth. Please watch it, and share it with your friends and family.

For more information about this event, please visit the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth's website, or contact Toni Curtis at [e-mail].

Follow Steve Drizin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/innocencespeaks

Comments

[saevander]

"Finally, police and experts must design new techniques for interviewing children, techniques that lessen the chance of false confessions without reducing the frequency of true confessions." How about new techniques for adults? The entire system is flawed. Or better yet, someone should reform the investigative process used before the suspect, adult or child, is arrested. The only thing law enforcement cares about is closing a case; It doesn't matter whether the suspect is guilty or not.

[mcohen719]

Juvenile justice is an under reported and important issue that I've been following. I interviewed a former prisoner who now helps at-risk kids. For more info click here:
http://blogs.journalism.cuny.edu/interactive2010/2009/10/09/whats-up-with-nys-youth-prisons/
My interviewee however was not falsely convicted like the subjects of this article.

[exfedemp]

Why children falsely confess to the police, especially young poor children, is not a great mystery. Our traditional teachings that "officers are your friends" (Officer Friendly) coupled with the prohibtions against lying in especially to adults (since adults by definition are right) make children an easy mark for false confessions. The pressure....the societal pressure...on police to show quick results in the solution of serious crimes leads them to take shortcuts and rely on the "system" to sort it out later. The goal is not justice (how naive) but tallying another statistical bean.
However, the focus on this issue, or other issues of concern (eg. inmate healthcare, wrongfl conviction, post-prison employment, the list is endless) reminds me of the story of the six blind hindus assigned to describe an elephant based only on the part they could touch. Focusing on specific pieces of the system that need fixing is ultimately futile because the system as a whole is flawed. And few are willing to admit that, starting with our ideas of criminality, much of the system is no longer viable. Much like the debate on health care, few want to consider other models or disturbe the vested interests (even within government) that wish only to perserve the status quo.

[naschkatze]

The same thing happening to children is happening to adults. Due process is disappearing purportedly in the interest of saving the state money by not going to trial by judge and jury. Prosecutors are in effect getting to decide who is guilty and who is not and to use any means to make them plead guilty or implicate others by plea bargaining. It is a very disturbing trend in American justice. Of course this is terrible when the accused is really innocent, but due process should also continue for those who seem very likely to be criminals. I got a little understanding of the oppressive pressure the state can apply to an individual when Christopher Kelly, co-defendant and potential witness against Blagojevich, committed suicide.

[steppenwolfsayshi]

Kudos. A very good campaign! The use of unreliable child witnesses against themselves or others has been a well-known problem for 30 years.
It is a huge problem in the conviction of child sex abusers. Better procedures will ensures more justice for everyone.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

A reason why some young people falsely confess to police is that they were never taught how to stand on principles and stand up to bullies.

[Jaywalkker]

Good luck.

I definitely believe any interviews with a minor that provides evidence for prosecution should be recorded and preferably videotaped for a jury to see as opposed to being read from a statement.