Coerced Confessions

Coerced Confessions PDF Author: Susan Berk-Seligson
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110213486
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Get Book Here

Book Description
The book presents a discourse analysis of police interrogations involving U.S. Hispanic suspects accused of crimes. The study is unique in that it concentrates on interrogations involving suspects whose first language is not English and police officers who have a rudimentary knowledge of Spanish. It examines the pitfalls of using police officers as interpreters at custodial interrogations. Using an interactional sociolinguistic discourse analytical approach, the book offers a microlinguistic examination of interrogations involving persons accused of murder, child molestation, and kidnapping. Communication difficulties are shown to arise from suspects' limited proficiency in English and police officers' equally limited proficiency in Spanish, coupled with the unwillingness of these officers to remain in interpreter footing. The volume demonstrates how pidginization and asymmetrical communicative accommodation can emerge in such situations of highly unequal power relations. It also demonstrates how cultural factors such as acquiescence to interlocutors of greater authority and higher socioeconomic status can lead persons of certain Latin American backgrounds to engage in "gratuitous concurrence", answering "yes" to police questions even when it is clear that that these yes-tokens are not truly affirmative responses to those questions. In addition, the book provides evidence of the kinds of abuse that can result from police interrogations that are not electronically recorded. Coerced Confessions reviews appellate cases involving police interpreters spanning a thirty-four-year period, and concludes that the Miranda rights are placed in jeopardy when a police officer is assigned the role of interpreter at a custodial interrogation.

Coerced Confessions

Coerced Confessions PDF Author: Susan Berk-Seligson
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110213486
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Get Book Here

Book Description
The book presents a discourse analysis of police interrogations involving U.S. Hispanic suspects accused of crimes. The study is unique in that it concentrates on interrogations involving suspects whose first language is not English and police officers who have a rudimentary knowledge of Spanish. It examines the pitfalls of using police officers as interpreters at custodial interrogations. Using an interactional sociolinguistic discourse analytical approach, the book offers a microlinguistic examination of interrogations involving persons accused of murder, child molestation, and kidnapping. Communication difficulties are shown to arise from suspects' limited proficiency in English and police officers' equally limited proficiency in Spanish, coupled with the unwillingness of these officers to remain in interpreter footing. The volume demonstrates how pidginization and asymmetrical communicative accommodation can emerge in such situations of highly unequal power relations. It also demonstrates how cultural factors such as acquiescence to interlocutors of greater authority and higher socioeconomic status can lead persons of certain Latin American backgrounds to engage in "gratuitous concurrence", answering "yes" to police questions even when it is clear that that these yes-tokens are not truly affirmative responses to those questions. In addition, the book provides evidence of the kinds of abuse that can result from police interrogations that are not electronically recorded. Coerced Confessions reviews appellate cases involving police interpreters spanning a thirty-four-year period, and concludes that the Miranda rights are placed in jeopardy when a police officer is assigned the role of interpreter at a custodial interrogation.

Innocent Until Interrogated

Innocent Until Interrogated PDF Author: Gary L. Stuart
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816529248
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Get Book Here

Book Description
Recounts the events surrounding the murders of nine Buddhist temple members near Phoenix, Arizona, and the arrest of four men known as "The Tucson Four" who were coerced into confessing and held despite there being no physical evidence to connect them tothe crime, and discusses how the suspects were treated by the media, even after the real killers were discovered.

Interrogations, Confessions, and Entrapment

Interrogations, Confessions, and Entrapment PDF Author: G. Daniel Lassiter
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387385983
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 303

Get Book Here

Book Description
- Represents the latest advances of the role of psychological factors in inducing potentially unreliable self-incriminating behavior - Chapters are authored by a diverse group psychologists, criminologists, and legal scholars who have contributed significantly to the collective understanding of the pressures that insidiously operate when the goal of law enforcement is to elicit self-incriminating behavior from suspected criminals - Reviews and analyzes the extant literature in this area as well as discussing how this knowledge can be used to help bring about needed changes in the legal system

The Psychology of False Confessions

The Psychology of False Confessions PDF Author: Gisli H. Gudjonsson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119315670
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 552

Get Book Here

Book Description
Provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of the development of the science behind the psychology of false confessions Four decades ago, little was known or understood about false confessions and the reasons behind them. So much has changed since then due in part to the diligent work done by Gisli H. Gudjonsson. This eye-opening book by the Icelandic/British clinical forensic psychologist, who in the mid 1970s had worked as detective in Reykjavik, offers a complete and current analysis of how the study of the psychology of false confessions came about, including the relevant theories and empirical/experimental evidence base. It also provides a reflective review of the gradual development of the science and how it can be applied to real life cases. Based on Gudjonsson’s personal account of the biggest murder investigations in Iceland’s history, as well as other landmark cases, The Psychology of False Confessions: Forty Years of Science and Practice takes readers inside the minds of those who sit on both sides of the interrogation table to examine why confessions to crimes occur even when the confessor is innocent. Presented in three parts, the book covers how the science of studying false confessions emerged and grew to become a regular field of practice. It then goes deep into the investigation of the mid-1970s assumed murders of two men in Iceland and the people held responsible for them. It finishes with an in-depth psychological analysis of the confessions of the six people convicted. Written by an expert extensively involved in the development of the science and its application to real life cases Covers the most sensational murder cases in Iceland’s history Deep analysis of the ‘Reykjavik Confessions’ adds crucial evidence to understanding how and why coerced-internalized false confessions occur, and their detrimental and lasting effects on memory The Psychology of False Confessions: Forty Years of Science and Practice is an important source book for students, academics, criminologists, and clinical, forensic, and social psychologists and psychiatrists.

Anatomy of a False Confession

Anatomy of a False Confession PDF Author: Michael D. Cicchini
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538117169
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Get Book Here

Book Description
When Teresa Halbach went missing and was presumed dead, the police targeted Steven Avery for the crime. But Avery’s 16-year-old nephew Brendan Dassey told the police that he saw Halbach driving away from Avery’s property the day she supposedly was murdered. This version of events would be devastating to the state’s case if it ever reached Avery’s jury. The police decided to interrogate young Dassey again. For their next go-around they questioned him four times in 48 hours—each time without an adult present and often without reading him his Miranda rights. During this process, the interrogators not only coerced the learning-disabled child into changing his story, but they also got him to confess to participating in the murder! Even though Dassey’s so-called confession was contradicted by all of the physical evidence, the jury believed it and found him guilty. Now, more than a decade after the trial, the saga lives on. Although a federal district court reversed Dassey’s conviction, a flip-flopping federal appeals court eventually reversed the reversal. Dassey remains convicted and incarcerated; the Supreme Court of the United States is his last hope. Anatomy of a False Confession: The Interrogation and Conviction of Brendan Dassey answers several questions, including: Why did Dassey agree to talk to his interrogators in the first place? Why weren’t they required to read him his Miranda rights? Most significantly, how did the interrogators get Dassey to confess to a crime he did not commit? If Dassey was innocent, where did he get the details for his so-called confession? Why did the jury ignore the physical evidence and convict Dassey of murder? And why did the federal courts reverse Dassey’s conviction, only to reverse their own reversal? Anatomy of a False Confession takes the reader inside the interrogation room and inside the courtroom to expose the interrogators’ tricks, the prosecutors’ ploys, and the judicial sleight of hand that conspired to put Dassey behind bars—probably for the rest of his life. The book also discusses several ways that the law should be reformed to avoid future injustices.

Troubling Confessions

Troubling Confessions PDF Author: Peter Brooks
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226075869
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Troubling Confessions, Peter Brooks juxtaposes law and literature to explore the kinds of truth we associate with confessions, and why we both rely on them and regard them with suspicion. For centuries the law has considered confession to be "the queen of proofs," but it has also seen a need to regulate confessions and the circumstances under which they are made, as evidenced in the continuing debate over the Miranda decision. Western culture has made confessional speech a prime measure of authenticity, seeing it as an expression of selfhood that bears witness to personal truth. Yet the urge to confess may be motivated by inextricable layers of shame, guilt, self-loathing, and the desire to propitiate figures of authority. Literature has often understood the problematic nature of confession better than the law, as Brooks demonstrates in perceptive readings of legal cases set against works by Roussean, Dostoevsky, Joyce, and Camus, among others

Understanding Police Interrogation

Understanding Police Interrogation PDF Author: William Douglas Woody
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 147985736X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Uses techniques from psychological science and legal theory to explore police interrogation in the United States Understanding Police Interrogation provides a single comprehensive source for understanding issues relating to police interrogation and confession. It sheds light on the range of factors that may influence the outcome of the interrogation of a suspect, which ones make it more likely that a person will confess, and which may also inadvertently lead to false confessions. There is a significant psychological component to police interrogations, as interrogators may try to build rapport with the suspect, or trick them into thinking there is evidence against them that does not exist. Also important is the extent to which the interrogator is convinced of the suspect’s guilt, a factor that has clear ramifications for today’s debates over treatment of black suspects and other people of color in the criminal justice system. The volume employs a totality of the circumstances approach, arguing that a number of integrated factors, such as the characteristics of the suspect, the characteristics of the interrogators, interrogation techniques and location, community perceptions of law enforcement, and expectations for jurors and judges, all contribute to the nature of interrogations and the outcomes and perceptions of the criminal justice system. The authors argue that by drawing on this approach we can better explain the likelihood of interrogation outcomes, including true and false confessions, and provide both scholars and practitioners with a greater understanding of best practices going forward.

Troubling Confessions

Troubling Confessions PDF Author: Peter Brooks
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226075853
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Get Book Here

Book Description
Literature has often understood the problematic nature of confession better than the law, as Brooks demonstrates in perceptive readings of legal cases set against works by Roussean, Dostoevsky, Joyce, and Camus, among others."--BOOK JACKET.

Scripted and Staged

Scripted and Staged PDF Author: Safeguard Defenders
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781983743375
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 114

Get Book Here

Book Description
Scripted and Staged: Behind the scenes of China's forced televised confessions is a groundbreaking study that gives the reader a backstage pass to China's production and broadcast of coerced confessions by human rights lawyers, journalists, activists and even foreigners. These forced confessions, more high-profile since Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power, are reminiscent of Mao-era public struggle sessions and represent such a transgression of human rights that they are only practiced today by regimes such as North Korea and Iran. Using in-depth interviews, first person testimonies, and analysis of hours of broadcast confessions, Scripted and Staged exposes how the Chinese state uses threats and torture to force victims into confessing, how China's media collaborates in their recording, production, and broadcast across the nation and around the globe. The testimonies in this report expose how the Chinese police carefully choreograph the whole process, from dressing the victim in "costume," to writing the "script," to directing how the confession is delivered, and demanding retake after retake until the propaganda message is ready for airing, all with the collaboration of the media-mostly China's state broadcaster CCTV. And for the many foreign victims, their confessions are often exploited as a tool of Chinese foreign policy.

Executed on a Technicality

Executed on a Technicality PDF Author: David R. Dow
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 9780807044193
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book Here

Book Description
When David Dow took his first capital case, he supported the death penalty. He changed his position as the men on death row became real people to him, and as he came to witness the profound injustices they endured: from coerced confessions to disconcertingly incompetent lawyers; from racist juries and backward judges to a highly arbitrary death penalty system. It is these concrete accounts of the people Dow has known and represented that prove the death penalty is consistently unjust, and it's precisely this fundamental-and lethal-injustice, Dow argues, that should compel us to abandon the system altogether.