Coerced "confession."

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Moral of the story, do not say anything if you are arrested/detained/minding your own business to a police officer without a lawyer.

...Well, maybe also "I do not consent to being searched" - then call your lawyer.

P.S. I cannot imagine this man's anguish after having lost his daughter and reputation. Her murderer is still out there, and the police have let the trail go cold by harassing te wrong person. That is the other side of improper interrogations.
 
There was a case in central Ohio that just ended a little while back. Guy was arrested for murder, confessed, and gave some details about the crime that weren't in the paper. Defense attorney asked for DNA exam of the murder weapon. Turns out there were two samples of human blood, and neither belonged to the Defendant. Investigation was re-opened, and they found where the victim's credit cards had been used two and three days after her death, while the Defendnat was in jail for the murder. They eventually found the match for the DNA, tied him to the credit card use, and convicted him of the murder. What was interesting was that the Chief of Police testified on behalf of the second Defendant, standing behind his interview of the first Defendant taht got the confession.
 
What the Supreme Court unwittingly did was to place the burden of the protection of our right against compelled testimony upon the shoulders of the accused. That’s not where it should be. The burden of protecting our rights is on the government.
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Yep. Well said.
 
...the most recently famous case being Kobe Bryant. A man with less fame and money would be serving a prison term right now.
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More to the point, rich and famous murderers and rapists walk among us. :fire: :cuss: :banghead:
 
Someone asked why the cops "sat on DNA samples for six months."

Well, I don't know, but I can make a suggestion: you see, the Illinois State Police Lab had a backlog much longer than that not so long ago. The state threw some extra money at the lab and brought in some private contractors (I think) to clear the backlog, and they just announced that the backlog has been eliminated a few weeks ago. The time frame seems to match up.

In other words, he's lucky the ISP finally decided they needed to clear that backlog, or he might still be in jail. :eek:
 
Being jailed is something you can be compensated for through a lawsuit. Once you're dead, you're dead.
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No, this is this whole problem. The government has made itself immune from lawsuits over this sort of thing. You can be locked in jail for 30 years and then they realize you're innocent and you still cant get a penny from them even though they took the best years of your life and you no longer have any family or friends left in the world. It has happened a lot of times and is the rule rather than the exception.

This sort of "lesser tyranny" comes with the territory of having an established government and a peaceful and prosperous country. When there are no real problems that you can make a name by solving, pawns are sacrificed for this purpose. And there will always be pawns at the bottom of society. A 25 percent rate of complete illiteracy assures that the net never comes up empty.

Anyone else remember how Janet Reno went around to all the daycare centers and used some nazi (and I do not use this word lightly) interrogation tactics to get people to confess (through the use of torture and hypnosis). Most of her victims were finally freed after serving multi-year portions of their sentences. Some are still rotting in jail with multi century sentences for child molestation. Which wouldnt be a big deal except they are obviously innocent men.

Unfortunately the only way to get rid of it is often to bring the whole mess crashing down. Which usually causes even worse problems.
 
Anyone else remember how Janet Reno went around to all the daycare centers and used some nazi (and I do not use this word lightly) interrogation tactics to get people to confess (through the use of torture and hypnosis).
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Really? She personally went around to the thousands and thousands of daycare centers and personally hypnotized and tortured each and every daycare worker? :what: How did she ever find time to attack our 2nd Amendment rights? The woman's phenominal! We need to put her in charge of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden post haste! :evil: :evil: :evil:
 
No, it was mostly the miami area. She did personally interrogate some of the prisoners I've heard. She failed horribly in her first few attempts to convict people because the children werent credible witnesses and it was too easy for the defense to focus on a single witness and find exculpatory evidence.

Finally she find that having a ton of uncredible child witnesses actually cancels out the uncredibility if an expert testifies that children can never make up the truth. Once she got it down to a routine it was a matter of time before people started getting locked up for long periods of time. Some have had their convictions overturned, some have not.

Its entirely true. This was in the late 80s early 90s, just before clinton.
 
Ah yes...

"Children don't lie."

Where was that bit of truth when my father was forcibly extracting confessions in the wood shed? :evil:
 
I just don't understand what you can do to a father to make him admit to beating, raping and drowning his own daughter.

I understand that everyone cracks under torture, but are we really suggesting the boys in blue put 'tricity to his nads?

Seriously, within reason, what on earth would make a father say that?
 
I wonder that myself, but without actually seeing exactly what he said, we're left to wonder what he actually "confessed" to. Perhaps he made an incriminating statement or two without actually coming out and saying "I did it." What I want to know is what other evidence existed. I doubt that they just picked the father and essentially made him the tergat of the investigation from the first moment without something else pointing at him.
 
And that, right there, is an argument against the death penalty, even in the most heinous cases.
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That's the realization I've come to, as well. Morally, philosophically, I'm all for it. But until we stop convicting innocent people of capital offenses, it's just not right.

My proposal for the compensation of the wrongly convicted is this: A salary shall be paid equal to the amount of money earned by the plaintiff in the year prior to his conviction, plus 25% the first year incarcerated, plus 10 percent every year after that. The minimum salary for any single year shall be $50,000.
 
Janet Reno proved that you CAN convince people to confess falsely to child abuse.

. . . . and it's not as hard as you might think. In the most egregious and famous case, she convinced the wife in a husband-and-wife pair of daycare operators that her husband had forced her to help in all sorts of bizarre and improbable ritual abuses. The wife was subjected to nude solitary confinement and worse--essentially, the same sort of thing we use at Guantanamo and that a lot of Reno's best political friends say constitute torture.

The couple in question was the Fusters. The wife's name was Ileana. You can google it yourself (or Teoma, or whatever.) Here are a few links to get you started:
Quick and dirty overview:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/ARTICLES/RENO.html

Detailed overview of the case:
http://www.oranous.com/innocence/FrankFuster/factsevents.htm


The "Ritual Satanic Abuse" scandals of the time were quite bizarre, and they sound even more bizarre today, but innocent people ABSOLUTELY got arrested, tried and convicted of incredible (used in the traditional sense) acts of abuse. If you want a much more detailed and well-researched look at a specific case, I suggest Remembering Satan.

Here's a good review of the book from Amazon:
"Remembering Satan" is an account of one of the more prominent and tragic cases of alleged child abuse and satanic ritual abuse (SRA). Author Lawrence Wright makes it clear that he does not believe the majority of the allegations, and how could he? What started as "mere" allegations of sexual abuse soon developed into allegations of a widespread satanic cult that included many members of the investigating police force, lawyers, judges, and many others.

The allegations started when Ericka and Julie Ingram accused their father, Paul Ingram, of molesting them. Paul Ingram was a deputy sheriff and deeply religious man in Olympia, Washington. He soon admitted to the allegations and began naming others as participants in all manner of rapes, orgies, and satanic rituals. The problem with the case, though, was that the allegations kept growing. Soon the alleged participants were talking about photographs, sacrifices of animals and human babies, and much more--none of which could be verified by any physical evidence. Further, the stories were often contradictory or patently false.

Wright attempts to combine in a relatively slim volume the successful prosecution of Paul Ingram (who confessed), the destruction of a family and the lives of many others, and the hysteria surrounding the search for satanic cults. He locates these events within the larger context of repressed memories and the television talk-show dominated landscape of 1980s' America. There are problems in this approach as the subject matter seems to be one that cannot be captured in the book's approximately 200 pages, but Wright does an extraordinary job in presenting the material he has chosen to include.

For those who have trouble crediting the outlandish claims of those who advocate widespread SRA, this book should be a fascinating read. For those who find themselves on the other side of the fence and believe fully in the validity of repressed memories, "Remembering Satan" will probably seem to be a slap in the face or just another part of the conspiracy. Either way, the Ingram case itself, which is the focus of this book, is a fascinating study in a modern-day witch hunt and the credulity of the investigators--and the accused.
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The most important things to take away from Remembering Satan about Ritual Satanic Abuse/Recovered Memory Therapy are:
  • "Torture" is really not necessary; recovered memory therapists are capable of helping their subjects create any memory, no matter how bizarre. The subject then believes the memory absolutely even if it contradicts clear evidence.
  • "Repressed memories" aren't only applied to "victims." By the time they were done working Ingram over, he absolutely believed in his own guilt. He found "confessing his crimes" a huge relief and it was even a bigger relief to name all his "co-conspirators" and make even wilder allegations about them. Before he was done, he had most of his sheriff's office and a large number of his community under suspicion.
  • The severity of the charges, NOT the nature of the evidence, is what matters in these cases. In the Remembering Satan case, Ingram and 40-50 others were alleged to have murdered hundreds of infants, forced the children to do despicable acts with elephants, LEVITATED BY MAGIC . . . . . and this was all brushed off in the rush to convict somebody, anybody, for the children.
 
Mental browbeating in an enclosed space when you can't move or speak unless spoken to, when the only things you're allowed to say have to agree in some way with what the controllers want you to say? To a father who actually IS feeling guilty since he "should have been able to keep her safe"?

A good interrogator doesn't have to lay a hand on you. Once they have a hook of guilt, any guilt, to get you to first break on the little things you'll eventually start going along with the program.

That's why physical torture isn't necessary, per LEO and military manuals. It can actually be counter-productive.

It's quite the science and can be horribly misused.
 
The answer is real simple. If a prosecutor omits evidence or otherwise obtains a conviction with shady dealings the prosecutor serves the same amount of time as the convicted. If it is a death penalty case and the defendant is later found innocent after the sentance is carried out the prosecutor gets the same.
 
The problem is, how many innocent people are you willing to accept being murdered by the state? 1 out of 10 people on death row? 1 out of 100? 1 out of 1000? out of 10,000?
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How many innocent people are we willing to accept being put in a pen for years on end, to be raped repeatedly, to have their lives destroyed? Where is the line?

The argument against the death penalty works just as well against prison itself. You CANNOT compensate someone enough to make up for being convicted and tortured for years.

Getting the death sentence is your best bet if you're innocent but wrongly convicted. You'll be segregated from general population, have far more appeal opportunities, and you'll get all the support you need from the anti-death penalty groups (who strangely don't seem to worry or invest their time and resources in freeing innocent people from prison who are serving life sentences or less).

Personally, the best bet is to everyone involved criminally liable if an innocent person is wrongly convicted based on negligence or intentional misrepresentations. It's possible to get a wrongful conviction without such action (bad defense counsel, problems caused by the defendant's own acts or omissions), but it's hard. Of course, such liability will never happen because it will destroy the judicial system. No one will want to get involved at any level.
 
She personally went around to the thousands and thousands of daycare centers and personally hypnotized and tortured each and every daycare worker?
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Rent the movie "Capturing the Friedmans". Once you're done :barf:ing you'll have your answer.

How did she ever find time to attack our 2nd Amendment rights?
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She was witchhunting as FL AG, she roasted kids as US AG.
 
I understand that everyone cracks under torture, but are we really suggesting the boys in blue put 'tricity to his nads?
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Don't need to. Just keep repeating "if you sign/say this, you can go home." Do that for a few hours straight, and it takes a very strong person to hold out. Combine that with the trauma of a parent having lost a child and the guilt/feelings of failure that automatically go with it, and you've got your confession.
 
And any worthwhile prosecutor or defense attorney will destroy a case based upon confession alone, especially one without corrobrative facts, absent other evidence to support the confession. Which again makes me wonder what else was involved here...

THat's also why I like taped interviews. If you can hear the person's voice, you can tell a lot about the nature of the interview/interrogation.
 
Agreed on the taped confessions. Just like e-mail, you loose so much from not being able to hear the questions and answers.
 
And, from the prosecutor's side of the coin, you gain so much by being able to play a good tape for the jury. Things like tone of voice, expressions, and even anger, are conveyed by the tape in ways no other testimony can match. Video can be even better.
 
beerslurpy, I am aware of the horrendous state of compensation for those falsely imprisoned. I was not speaking of how it is today, but how it could be. We could change the system to more highly compensate those falsely imprisoned, but we could never bring people back from the dead.
 
The "Ritual Satanic Abuse" scandals of the time were quite bizarre, and they sound even more bizarre today, but innocent people ABSOLUTELY got arrested, tried and convicted of incredible (used in the traditional sense) acts of abuse. If you want a much more detailed and well-researched look at a specific case, I suggest Remembering Satan.
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Yea, the 'recovered memory' shrinks screwed up more than a few folks.

But I'd like to point out there have been more than a few cases were child molesters pretended to be Satanists in order to make the stories told by the victims so outlandish, no jury would buy it.


Mental browbeating in an enclosed space when you can't move or speak unless spoken to, when the only things you're allowed to say have to agree in some way with what the controllers want you to say? To a father who actually IS feeling guilty since he "should have been able to keep her safe"?

A good interrogator doesn't have to lay a hand on you. Once they have a hook of guilt, any guilt, to get you to first break on the little things you'll eventually start going along with the program.

That's why physical torture isn't necessary, per LEO and military manuals. It can actually be counter-productive.
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Yep. A good interrogator can crack a detainee by just smiling and talking, also by controlling the environment.

Of course, one can crack a not so good police interrogator by singing "Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall" or "Badger, Badger, Badger, MUSHROOM, MUSHROOM!" for a few hours. :neener:

(I fully deny doing that, BTW.)
 
Lemme see if I got it right

--Because we don't have a perfect system of determining guilt we should therefore not implement extreme punishment? Is that it??

--Where else in human endeavour do we demand absolute perfection or we just don't do it?

--If we can say it is an injustice to execute someone wrongly, can we not also say to not execute someone deserving execution to be an injustice as well?
 
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