In 1992, an eleven-year-old girl in Illinois was raped and stabbed to death while babysitting. The suspect police brought in for questioning had been home on the night in question–he had made a call to his mother in Puerto Rico and was wearing an ankle bracelet while awaiting trial for theft. It would seem that he couldn't possibly have committed the crime. Nevertheless, after four days of questioning during which he slept no more than four hours, he confessed. By that time, he had torn off a patch of his skull and was shackled in a padded cell.
Thirteen years later, DNA evidence showed the semen found in the victim was not his. He won a new trial–and was convicted again. He appealed. Twenty years after the conviction, in 2012, he was released–even though the ankle bracelet and phone call should have proved he wasn't guilty. (Yes, he's suing.)
That's just one of several chilling episodes Douglas Starr recounts in a disturbing story in the Dec. 9 issue of The New Yorker. He carefully walks us through the problem of false confessions and the research that's been done to show how easily they can happen.
I don't often have the feeling when I've finished a story that I wish I would have read more–but I could easily have stuck with this relatively short story if it were twice the length it is.
Starr is co-director of the graduate science journalism program at Boston University, he's studied an interviewing technique he blames for eliciting false confessions, and his most recent book is The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science.
If you run into him, be very, very careful. Above all, don't let him ask you any questions.
-Paul Raeburn
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