False confessions not a thing of the past

By Mark Prothero

Attorney at law,

Kent

Thanks to Kent Police Chief Strachan for his article on the Miranda decision and its impact on law enforcement and the criminal justice system in the United States. I applaud the chief’s efforts and intentions in opening up the communication and dialogue with the people of our community and in maintaining a professional police department. However, I have a different perspective on the Miranda decision and its impact on law-enforcement practices and policies.

I have represented people who have confessed to crimes they didn’t commit. I know this goes against conventional wisdom. Why would anyone confess to a crime if they hadn’t actually committed it? There are a wide variety of answers to that question, most emanating from the psychological recesses of vulnerable people in high stress situations: Youth, mental impairment, fear of and/or desire to please authority figures, ignorance of the law or legal situation, being lied to by the police about the evidence, the law, or the legal situation, saying whatever they believe may be necessary to be released, and threat of the death penalty are among the main reasons behind false confessions.

Suffice to say, because of advances in forensic DNA technology, we know the phenomenon of “false confessions” exists today and is a very real impediment in the search for the truth. Guantanamo notwithstanding, it is fair to say that psychological coercion and manipulation has replaced physical coercion for the most part in U.S. law enforcement. But psychological coercion is an intentional police tactic designed to elicit confessions from the guilty which may also cause an innocent person to confess to a crime they did not commit.

Because of advances in DNA technology and through the work of the Innocence Project, since 1992, 218 people have been exonerated of crimes for which they were wrongly accused, convicted, and imprisoned. These 218 exonerees spent an average of 12.5 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. While approximately 70 percent of these wrongful convictions were based on faulty eyewitness identification, over 25 percent involved incriminating statements, confessions and guilty pleas from someone later proven to be innocent by forensic DNA. Police officers are taught the “Reid technique” on how to utilize all the psychological tools to obtain confessions. They utilize techniques from a textbook (“Criminal Interrogations and Confessions,” by authors Inbau & Reid) that has been a standard text for most police agencies in the U.S. since the 1960s.

Like all professions – lawyers, doctors, teachers, police officers – you have individuals who range from exceptionally good to good to average to below average to exceptionally bad. Unfortunately, some officers trained in these interrogation methods are more interested in obtaining the confession than in finding the truth.

An infamous example: Some readers may remember the Wenatchee “sex scandal”/witchhunt. Many, many men and women confessed to sex crimes against children that they did not commit. Nearly everyone who confessed was vulnerable to the police coercion because they were illiterate, developmentally disabled, poor, or spoke little or no English. All of these folks were subsequently cleared by the courts of any wrongdoing through the work of the Innocence Project Northwest.

Unfortunately, rogue cops exist in all police departments. Our community is not immune. King County Sheriff Deputy Brian Bonnar messed with the people of south King County for years. He was recently indicted by a federal grand jury for his unlawful behavior while wearing the badge. Allegations included unlawful arrests, excessive use of force, picking on the vulnerable, and violating the rights of the accused and wrongly accused. Eventually, his behavior got too outrageous to continue to be ignored or covered-up by his fellow officers. It remains unknown as to how many innocent people may have confessed to crimes they did not commit while in the custody of Bonnar.

The Miranda decision, written in 1966, is indeed so engrained in the criminal justice system that it is part of the popular culture. However, people must not be complacent and think that bad cops or physical and psychological coercion are a bygone from another, less-enlightened era. People must be aware that false confessions can still occur at the hands of the police.

Many jurisdictions have adopted reforms to minimize the occurrence of false confessions. The primary idea is mandatory electronic recording of any custodial interrogation before a confession could be used in court. Three states have adopted this by law. Many police agencies across the nation have voluntarily implemented this as policy and all have expressed positive results, describing it as a powerful and efficient law-enforcement tool.

The Kent Police Department has had great leadership in the past with former Chief Crawford. I’m confident that with Chief Strachan’s leadership and vision, the Kent Police Department will look to adopt electronic recording of all custodial interrogations as the most progressive and efficient method to avoid the possibility of an innocent person confessing to a crime they did not commit.