Category Archives: False confessions

Settlement Costs from Wrongful Convictions: $250+ Million and Climbing in Illinois

Posted on April 9, 2013 by | 5 comments

In 2011 the Better Government Association in Illinois reported that wrongful convictions had cost taxpayers $214 million in settlements. An update (here) indicates that, since the 2011 investigation—which was done with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law—government agencies have agreed to pay another nearly $39 million to settle lawsuits resulting from persons wrongfully convicted, primarily of murder and other serious felonies.  And according to an ABC7 report (here), at least ten cases are currently pending in Illinois courts, which could soon move the cost of wrongful convictions to $300 million or more in the state of Illinois alone.

Of course, the settlement costs do not include the cost of incarcerating 85 innocent people for a total of 926 years since 1989, nor the human costs of wrongful incarceration, nor the costs of crimes committed by the real perpetrators who escaped apprehension while innocent persons languished in prison. Continue reading →

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Posted in Compensation/Exoneree compensation, Editorials/Opinion, False confessions, Police conduct (good and bad), Reforming/Improving the system

Wednesday’s Quick Clicks…

Posted on March 27, 2013 by | Leave a comment
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Posted in Compensation/Exoneree compensation, False confessions

More Detail on the David Ranta Exoneration

Posted on March 22, 2013 by | 11 comments

This is, sadly, all too typical.  False eyewitness identification, bogus lineup, jailhouse snitch, police tunnel vision.

Read the full CNN story here.  Below are some excerpts:

Since Ranta’s trial, another man’s widow has identified her now-dead husband as the killer; a onetime jail inmate has said he made up statements about Ranta to boost his own fortunes; and the man who, as a boy, picked him out of a lineup has come forward to say he was coached by a detective.

Menachem Lieberman was 13 years old when he identified Ranta in a lineup.  In 2011, he told investigators that he identified Ranta after being told by a detective to “Pick the guy with the big nose.”

Ranta’s attorney: “The detective work that was done on this case was at best shoddy and at worst criminal. And I don’t use that word lightly,” he told CNN. “But when a closer examination is done of the detective work … It becomes clear that there were so many leads that weren’t followed, there were so many notes that weren’t taken and just a general lack of attention to an investigation that required nothing but close scrutiny of the scene, of witnesses and so forth. That didn’t happen.”

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Posted in Exonerations, Eyewitness identification, False confessions, Police conduct (good and bad), Reforming/Improving the system

David Ranta Freed After More Than 2 Decades in Prison

Posted on March 21, 2013 by | 7 comments

Ranta

New York (CNN) — A New York man has been freed after serving more than two decades in prison for the killing of a rabbi during a botched diamond heist, with a judge calling his conviction a miscarriage of justice.

Interestingly, the police are “standing by” the arrest, and deny any claims that there was any “witness coaching.”

Read the full story here.

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Posted in Exonerations, Eyewitness identification, False confessions, Reforming/Improving the system

Arizona Woman on Death Row for Murder of Her 4-year-old Son has Conviction Overturned

Posted on March 14, 2013 by | 8 comments

Milke

Debra Milke was convicted of kidnapping, abusing and murdering her 4-year-old son. But a federal appeals judge says the prosecution was “unconstitutionally silent” on the “history of misconduct” of its key witness.

Read the full story here.

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Posted in Capital punishment, False confessions, Police conduct (good and bad)

Monday’s Quick Clicks…

Posted on March 11, 2013 by | Leave a comment
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  • Will Texas get an innocence commission?
  • Polygraphs and false confessions in Chicago
  • The North Carolina State Bar has released this proposed formal ethics opinion in response to a letter from Professor Jason Huber of Charlotte School of Law.  The proposed opinion addresses the question of whether a prosecutor who has come to believe that someone was wrongfully convicted can condition the initiation of a new proceeding or a dismissal on the convicted person’s release of civil claims against relevant law enforcement officials, including prosecutors.  The opinion says, “no,” concluding that a “prosecutor may not condition initiation of or cooperation in a proceeding to dismiss a conviction upon the convicted person’s release of civil claims against the prosecutor, law enforcement authorities, or other public officials or entities.”
  • PA Innocence Project has staff attorney position open
  • Oklahoma Justice Commission unveils proposals
  • House in State of Washington passes exoneree compensation bill

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Posted in Commissions/Innocence Commissions/Governmental Case Review Agencies, Compensation/Exoneree compensation, False confessions

Breaking News: Two Retrial Pleas Turned Down in Japan Today…

Posted on March 6, 2013 by | 2 comments

Unbelievable…… Kagoshima District Court and Nagoya High Court  both turned down the retrial plea of two cases (Ohsaki Case and Fukui Case) today. Read about the Ohsaki Case here, and Fukui Case here.

Here is an article about the Ohsaki case by mainichi.jp:

Court rejects appeal for retrial over 1979 murder case

KAGOSHIMA, Japan (Kyodo) — The Kagoshima District Court rejected on Wednesday an appeal for a retrial filed by a woman who was convicted and served a 10-year prison term for killing her brother-in-law in 1979 in Kagoshima Prefecture for insurance money.

The decision came after the district court had initially decided to reopen the case involving Ayako Haraguchi, now 85, in 2002, which was overruled by the Fukuoka High Court in 2004. The high court’s decision was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court.

The murder occurred in October 1979, when Kunio Nakamura, 42, was found dead in a cattle stable beside his home in the town of Osaki, Kagoshima. Continue reading →

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Posted in Asia, Eyewitness identification, False confessions, Inquisitional and adversarial systems of justice

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Court to Decide Whether to Retry a Case from 1979 on March 6, 2013– Ohsaki Case

Posted on March 4, 2013 by | 3 comments
Ms. Ayako Haraguchi. From 47news.

Ms. Ayako Haraguchi. From 47news.

The Kagoshima District Court will decide whether to opne a retrial for a  34-year-old case (so called Ohsaki/ Osaki Case) tomorrow. This is a case where confessions  were crucial pieces of evidence in determining the defendant’s guilt. Ayako Haraguchi, now 85 years of age, is seeking a retrial for the 2nd time. Will she get her day in court?

On October 15th 1979, the victim’s body was found in a barn in Ohsaki, Kagoshima Prefecture. The victim had been missing for 3 days. The police immediately suspected that the victim’s two older brothers, A and B, murdered him. After A and B confessed to the crime, they were arrested on the 18th. B’s son was also arrested on the 25th. On the 30th, A’s former wife, Ayako Haraguchi was also arrested, based on A and B’s confessions.

Haraguchi never confessed to the crime. However, the other three all confessed. They named Haraguchi as the principal, and admitted that they killed the victim by strangling him with a towel.

In March 1980, the Kagoshima District Court decided that Haraguchi was guilty of the murder. The sentence was 10 years in prison. Haraguchi lost the appeals, and served the time.

Haraguchi got out of prison in 1990, and petitioned to retry the case in 1995. Continue reading →

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Posted in Asia, False confessions, Inquisitional and adversarial systems of justice

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Monday’s Quick Clicks…

Posted on March 3, 2013 by | 2 comments
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Posted in Compensation/Exoneree compensation, False confessions

Time: Why Innocent Men Make False Confessions

Posted on March 2, 2013 by | 1 comment

From Time:

Following ongoing debates on the Daniel Taylor case, a write-up in Time by Adam Cohen (“Why Innocent Men Make False Confessions”, 11 February 2013) observes how false confessions are not an “strange anomaly”. Refers to recent studies confirming that they are among the common causes of wrongful convictions and usually involve young, uneducated, or mentally disabled accused persons who are frightened, unfamiliar with the criminal justice system, and often subject to police manipulation or pressure. Refers to documentaries on false confessions and wrongful convictions: West of Memphis and Central Park Five.

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Posted in False confessions, Police conduct (good and bad)

Japan: Write-up in The Economist about False Confessions, Police Interrogations, Imprisonment in Japan

Posted on March 2, 2013 by | Leave a comment

There is an interesting write-up in The Economist (“Japan’s Prisons: Eastern Porridge”, 23 February 2013) that examines the role of confessions and police interrogations in Japan’s criminal justice system, among others. Here is an excerpt:

“Criminal courts in Japan have long relied heavily on confessions for proof of guilt. Though the accused have a right to silence, failure to admit a crime is considered bad sport. Besides, police have strong incentives to extract a confession and, with up to 23 days to interrogate a suspect, the blunt tools to do so, as a stream of disturbing incidents has shown. Detectives tracking down an anonymous hacker extracted separate confessions from four innocent people before being forced in December into a humiliating apology. Court conviction rates are over 99%.”

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Posted in Asia, False confessions, Police conduct (good and bad)

Coerced Confessions Obscure Justice

Posted on February 26, 2013 by | 2 comments

Yesterday, Nicole Harris left the Dwight Correctional Center after serving seven years of a thirty year sentence. Her conviction in the death of her son, Jaquari, was overturned by a federal appeals court last October and earlier this month the 7th Court of Appeals ordered Harris’s release. Continue reading →

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Posted in Editorials/Opinion, False confessions, Uncategorized

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Court of Appeals Orders Release of Imprisoned Chicago Mother

Posted on February 22, 2013 by | 4 comments

As reported (here) in the Chicago Tribune, Nicole Harris will be freed no later than noon on Monday from Dwight Correctional Center as a result of two court actions. She’s served seven years of a 30-year sentence after being convicted of murder in the death of her four-year-old son, Jaquari.  As reported on this blog and the Chicago Tribune (here), last October a federal appeals court, ruling that Jaquari’s older brother, Dante—five at the time—should have been permitted to testify, reversed Nicole’s conviction. On Wednesday, the 7th Court of Appeals ordered Harris’s release from prison. Continue reading →

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Posted in Editorials/Opinion, False confessions

Why I Think the US Justice System is Broken – and Why It’s Not Getting Fixed

Posted on February 20, 2013 by | 32 comments

broken column 3I was recently made aware of a quote from the ancient Greek playwright, Euripides. “Ours is a universe in which justice is accidental, and innocence no protection.”  I often feel like this describes our current justice system exactly, but it’s not supposed to be that way, and it doesn’t HAVE to be that way.  As with any system established and run by “humans,” the justice system, including those who run it, is exposed to the entire gamut of human frailties – pride, ego, ambition, greed, envy, passion, deceit, prejudice, hate, intolerance, power, influence, and on and on.  The situation hasn’t really changed since ancient Greece, and I don’t see the nature of humanity changing radically any time in the next  few thousand years, but there are things that can be done to at least mitigate the effect of these human shortcomings on the justice system.  This post will be comprehensive and quite long – so, buckle up, and here we go.  I hope that those of  you who have the patience to read through to the end may find it interesting, enlightening, and hopefully thought provoking.

As you might guess from the title, this post will be “editorial” in nature.  I’ve been doing innocence work for five years now, and have worked with seven different Innocence Projects from across the US and one foreign country.  Over that time, I’ve been exposed to the fine details of over 40 different cases.  These are all post-conviction cases in which there is a belief by the associated Innocence Project in the actual innocence of the defendant, and thus belief of a “wrongful conviction” on the part of the justice system.  In addition, my research in these cases has exposed me to many other additional cases in which a wrongful conviction occurred.  Consequently, I’ve seen a lot of the things that can go wrong in the justice system, and have been able to make judgments about how they happen.  This post will coalesce my observations into statements about why I think the US justice system is broken.  I’m going to be painting a pretty dark picture, so keep in mind that my exposure has been to cases in which the justice system failed, but there are lots of them.  There really isn’t any substantiated data for how many wrongful convictions occur in the US every year, but recent data says it’s between 5,000 and 10,000 per year.  One is too many.  At the end of the post, we’ll talk about why it’s not getting fixed.

I’m not an attorney, and some may accuse me of being a naive, optimistic idealist (which I am) or of tracking muddy footprints through the hallowed halls of justice; but I am only reporting what I have observed.  And if you think I’m making some of this stuff up, I strongly recommend you read the book False Justice: Eight Myths That Convict the Innocent by Jim and Nancy Petro.  (It’s available from amazon.com for $16.)  Jim is a former Attorney General for the state of Ohio, and Nancy, in addition to being an author and advocate, is also a contributing editor to this blog.  Now, are there good and dedicated prosecutors and police out there who are absolutely committed to seeing that true justice is served?  Of course.  Are there qualified and capable attorneys who will do their utmost on behalf of their clients?  Of course.  Unfortunately, there are also “others.”

All that being said  ……..

Why I Think the US Justice System is Broken

(As a preview, we’ll touch upon Bad Lawyers, Prosecutors, Judges, Police, Juries, Junk Science Forensics, False Confessions, Shoddy Work by Medical Examiners, Testimony from Experts Who Aren’t Really Experts, Finality of Judgement, Highly Restrictive Rules for New Evidence, Eyewitness Identification, and Recantations.)

Continue reading →

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Posted in Defense lawyering (good and bad), Editorials/Opinion, False confessions, Forensic controls, Junk science, Police conduct (good and bad), Prosecutorial conduct (good and bad), Reforming/Improving the system

Scholarship Spotlight: Promoting Accuracy in the Use of Confession Evidence: An Argument for Pre-Trial Reliability Assessments to Prevent Wrongful Convictions

Posted on February 18, 2013 by | 1 comment
Professor Richard Leo

Professor Richard Leo


The all-star team of Richard Leo, Peter Neufeld, Steve Drizin and Andew Taslitz have posted the above-titled article on SSRN.  Download article here.  The abstract states:

This article argues that constitutional criminal procedure rules provide insufficient safeguards against the admissibility of false confession evidence that is the product of police contamination. We propose a specific framework, as well as several possible mechanisms, for courts to review and screen the reliability of confession evidence prior to trial. We also offer specific suggestions for how pre-trial reliability assessments for confession evidence could effectively and efficiently work in practice. Finally, we respond to several possible objections to the idea of pre-trial reliability assessments, underscoring that in a variety of contexts trial judges – consistent with their traditional gatekeeping role — already routinely prevent evidence with sufficient indicia of unreliability from going to the jury.

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Posted in False confessions, Scholarship

State’s Attorney’s Blind Eye to False Confession Raises Question of Conviction Integrity Sincerity

Posted on February 13, 2013 by | 2 comments

Center of Wrongful Convictions attorneys Karen Daniel and Judith Royal filed a petition for post-conviction relief (here) two weeks ago in the continuing saga of Daniel Taylor, imprisoned since 1992 for a double murder. The inconvenient conundrum is that Taylor and his lawyers have insisted that his confession was coerced, and official records support Taylor’s claim that he was in a police lockup at the time of the crime. That’s a particularly strong alibi, but thus far, it’s not been enough for Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez. Continue reading →

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Posted in Editorials/Opinion, False confessions, Police conduct (good and bad), Prosecutorial conduct (good and bad), Uncategorized

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How psychological research can decrease defective verdicts

Posted on January 26, 2013 by | 1 comment

The current issue of Scientific American has an excellent article, titled ”Your Brain on Trial,” about how psychological research can help prevent flawed verdicts. Unfortunately, authors Scott O. Lilienfeld and Robert Byron note, ”Many well-established psychological findings have yet to exert much influence on the legal system, in part because of a resistance to change and in part because of differing traditions. Whereas science tends to question common intuitions regarding human nature, the legal system tends to embrace them.”

Lilienfeld and Byron give many examples of how relatively minor reforms based on scientific research could help prevent wrongful convictions. Some of the reforms concerning eyewitness identification and false confessions have received a great deal of attention on this blog. One that hasn’t concerns the futility of a judge telling jurors to disregard inadmissible statements or questions.

Once the cat’s out of the bag, they write, the judge can’t put it back all that easily. ”False beliefs often persist long after they have been discredited,” they write. They say research has shown that such ”belief perseverance” is less likely to persist if the judge explains why the stricken statement is unfair to the prosecution or defense. But judges rarely do that.

Lilienfeld and Byron also point out that, while videotaping interrogations is a good thing, the way police set the cameras up to focus on the person being questioned ”engenders bias against the suspect, probably because observers are prone to attributing cause — and blame — to whatever is most visually salient.” They say that researchers at Ohio University found that ”broadening the camera angle to include both interrogator and suspect diminishes this bias.”

Simple reforms like these could help ensure valid verdicts. Unfortunately, nothing is simple when it comes to rigid criminal-justices systems. You can read the whole article here.

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Posted in Eyewitness identification, False confessions, Reforming/Improving the system, Scholarship

Breaking News…Ohio Judge Throws Out Murder Conviction in False Confession Case…

Posted on January 23, 2013 by | 7 comments

This morning, an Ohio judge tossed the conviction of longtime Ohio Innocence Project client Glenn Tinney, finding that he falsely confessed to the murder of Ted White, and that his conviction was a “manifest injustice.”  Tinney has spent more than 20 years in prison.

OIP staff attorneys Donald Caster and Karla Hall have handled the case for the OIP over the years, with Donald doing a superb job in the recent evidentiary hearing.

Decision here, first news accounts here.

More details to follow…

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Posted in False confessions

Friday’s Quick Clicks…

Posted on January 18, 2013 by | 1 comment
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Posted in Compensation/Exoneree compensation, False confessions, Forensic controls, Junk science

New Scholarship Spotlight: To Walk in Their Shoes: The Problem of Missing, Misunderstood, and Misrepresented Context in Judging Criminal Confessions

Posted on January 17, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Professors Richard Leo and Deborah Davis have posted the above-titled article on SSRN.  Download here.  The abstract states:

Focusing on failures to detect false confessions, this article addresses the issue of police contamination, which has been explored in previous work by the authors as well as in Brandon Garrett’s recent book, Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong. The authors review some of Garrett’s most important findings, considering them in light of the authors’ own model of seven pathways from false confession to wrongful conviction. The authors review these pathways (the biasing effects of confession evidence; tunnel vision and confirmation biases; motivational biases; emotional influences on thinking and behavior; institutional influences on evidence production and decision-making; incorrect relevant knowledge; and progressively constricting relevant evidence), which they argue have the effect of providing incomplete and/or inaccurate contextual information for evaluating the validity of confessions and thus interfere with the rational analysis of the information that is available. The authors conclude by arguing that the judicial system must take more care in evaluating defendants’ claims of contamination in false confessions.

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Posted in False confessions, Scholarship