They didn’t remain silent: How false confessions happen

The right to remain silent is worth talking about.

It’s easy to take for granted. But what you’ve heard is right — anything you say can and will be used against you.

Even if you were tricked into a confession, and it’s false, it can be used.

As Saul Kassin’s “Duped” illustrates, the consequences can be life-changing.

Kassin’s book, the full title explains, is about “Why Innocent People Confess – and Why We Believe Their Confessions.” The short answer is that once you’re arrested, police legally may do almost anything to get you to say you did it — even if you didn’t.

“Over the course of my career, I have collected some shocking research data and I’ve witnessed some horrible miscarriages of justice,” writes Kassin, a psychologist, and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “I’ve witnessed scandalous dirty little secrets that wind their way from the interrogation room into the crime lab, the DA’s office, and the courtroom, all of which can put you and your loved ones at risk – whether you did anything wrong or not.”

“Duped” recounts many stories, and most come down to people confessing to crimes they didn’t commit. It’s the result of two different but equally dangerous assumptions.

The first is a suspect’s belief that the police must tell them the truth. The second is the police’s conviction that they can look at a person and know if they’re telling the truth.

However, courts have ruled that cops can lie outright in interrogations and even confront suspects with faked evidence. While police pride themselves on their gut instincts, Kassin cites studies that maintain cops accurately predict when someone is being dishonest 54% of the time, odds that don’t exactly scream justice.

Kassin has spent years studying false confessions.

“I’ve done battle – in court, on stage, and in print – with those who train detectives in the kinds of trickery and deceit that con innocent people to confess,” he writes.

There was the West Memphis Three, Arkansas teens charged with the murder of three boys in 1993. No evidence linked them to the crime, and the only suspect who confessed was mentally challenged. But all three were convicted, and one was sent to Death Row.

Only their agreement to an Alford plea – a legal strategy that let them assert their innocence while acknowledging the state would win any retrial – finally won them their release after 18 years.

Closer to home was the infamous Central Park Jogger case. An appalling attack in 1989 left a young woman raped and beaten nearly to death. Within three days, police had their suspects. Five boys, all 14 to 16, confessed, including one who did so after police lied to him about his fingerprints being found at the scene.

The crime outraged the city. Former President Donald Trump bought an ad in the city’s newspapers saying criminals like these “should be forced to suffer” and complaining New York no longer had the death penalty. They received sentences of 5 to 15 years.

Thirteen years later, another man confessed to the rape. DNA evidence proved he was telling the truth.

Trump still insists he was right.

Other cases received less attention but were equally unjust. In 1973, Peter Reilly, 18, returned home from a church event to discover his mother’s nude, mutilated corpse. Connecticut police decided the Litchfield County senior was guilty, although “Reilly had no history of violence, no mental illness, no conflict with his mother,” Kassin writes. “To all of Reilly’s friends and neighbors, the idea was inconceivable.”

But then the interrogations began. After over 25 hours of questioning – interrupted by a sloppily administered lie detector test, which police told the boy he failed – a confused Reilly admitted: “It looks like I did it.” He confessed and was sentenced to 6 to 16 years in prison. It was only when he appealed and won a second trial that it turned out his alibi was solid. Witnesses had seen two men running out of the Reilly house that night. Reilly was released.

As in many of the cases Kassin cites, the real murderer was never caught.

Another high-schooler, Martin Tankleff of Belle Terre, Long Island, endured a similar nightmare. Waking up early for the first day of senior year in 1988, he found his mother dying, lying in bed in a pool of blood. His father was in the study, also bloodied and barely breathing. The 17-year-old Tankleff called 911. Before the morning was over, the boy was at the police station and the prime suspect.

During nearly six hours of interrogation, the police lied to Tankleff. They said one of his hairs had been found on his mother’s body. They said his father had emerged from his coma and identified him as the assailant. This wasn’t true. In fact, both of the boy’s parents had died without regaining consciousness. But Tankleff wondered, had he somehow blacked out? He confessed, was tried, and convicted.

“Thanks to new witnesses and evidence, his conviction was vacated in 2008,” Kassin writes. “At that point, he had spent more than half of his life in prison.”

Although minors may be the most vulnerable to coercion, adults are at risk, too. Kassin tells the story of Anthony Wright, 20, a Philadelphia construction worker arrested in 1991 for the rape and murder of a 77-year-old woman. The police produced the bloody clothes they said he was wearing. They threatened, Wright claimed, to rip his eyes out if he didn’t sign a confession. Wright signed. He was convicted and sentenced to life.

More than 20 years later, the Innocence Project took up Wright’s case and secured a new trial. The clothing, it turned out, had been planted. Eyewitnesses who placed him at the scene were lying. DNA found on the victim wasn’t his. Wright was released.

It’s not just the American justice system that’s flawed, either. Amanda Knox went through hell in Italy in 2007. There for her junior year abroad, the college student was arrested after one of her roommates was murdered. Interrogated for four days, Knox was slapped, shouted at, and falsely told that physical evidence placed her at the scene. She signed a confession.

Tried and found guilty, she appealed and was acquitted. The prosecutor, allowed under Italian law to try her again, did just that. She was re-convicted. She appealed a second time – and was acquitted a second time. Finally, in 2015, Italy’s Supreme Court ruled that the case against her was “wholly without foundation.” She was finally exonerated.

So how do we stop false and coerced confessions? What’s the answer? After years of study, Kassin has a few suggestions.

One, pass legislation banning police from using deception or false evidence to persuade suspects to confess. Two, stop “minimization” – giving people vague assurances they would be in less trouble if they just confessed now or wrote a letter of apology to their victims. And three, require recording of interrogations from start to finish – not just the confessions that might come at the end, after hours of bullying.

But undoubtedly, the most critical advice he offers? If you ever, for any reason, hear the words “You have the right to remain silent…”

Take it.