Innocent suspects confess under pressure

[pazarus]

A new study finds some people under interrogation will confess to crimes they did not commit, either to end the questioning or because they become convinced they did it.

An unrelated study last year found it is fairly easy to create false memories in people in a lab setting.

Lack of sleep and isolation contribute to false confessions, the scientists say in the new study, announced today. A suspect's mental status and lack of education play roles.

MSNBC link

Just in time to shut the face of anyone who regards torture and other harsh interrogation tactics as a successful method of information-gathering. Cheney is trying to convince Congress right now and Bush threatens to veto the new guidelines for prisoner treatment.

He will try to convince you, to play on the emotions of angry people, and he will make the case despite any evidence or scientific findings.

The administration that sanctioned torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib has no understanding of how it works, how people will say and do anything to get out of it, how their information can't be reliable. Innocent people are tortured, and sometimes they even confess. Guilty people still lie.

There are reasons we don't as a country support torture and brutal interrogation techniques. We need to remind people that it's more than just our big hearts and our values, its also common sense and decency that separate Americans from the terrorists.

[Kelvin Mace]

1. The study confirms a couple dozen

prior studies saying the same thing.

The torture will continue regradless.

[Lerkfish]

2. ..until the attitude improves

beatings will continue.

[damntexdem]

20. Please: "the floggings will continue."

One needs to get the language correct about these things. Next thing, you'll be calling it torture when the prisoner doesn't even die.

[Lerkfish]

41. please sir, may I have another?

:)

seriously, thanks for the correction.

[pazarus]

3. It's old news, and yet

half the country or more still approves of treating terrorists much more harshly than other prisoners, and that it's ok to 'be a little rough' with them.

Every study confirms this one, but people keep thinking it's effective. It's part of our human nature to think it works. The appeals to anger or fear make it possible for Cheney and gang to override any expert opinion.

[XemaSab]

4. No comment.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050726/ap_on_re_us/prisoner_abuse_dogs

[pazarus]

7. must have been a couple bad apples

Those bad apple privates guarding the prisoners. I'm sure nobody asked them to psychologically break down the prisoners. And they certainly weren't given dogs for the task. And their commanders didn't see a thing either, so now the privates face a possible 29.5 years in jail.

Can't they commute that up the chain of command?

[XemaSab]

11. right

and you know that in the military people are always required to perform tasks like guarding prisoners totally unsupervised. put 50 privates in a place and hijinx are bound to transpire.

[pazarus]

17. especially organized hijinks

with all the tools necessary and the poor military leadership none the wiser. Also--the same hijinks happen in different prisons, which is a coincidence. Also, all their stories are likely to be the same because they all are privates, not because the same orders came from higher up.

[XemaSab]

26. Privates are all interchangeable.

I've seen MASH, I know how it is.

[jayctravis]

13. If this tree keeps producing bad apples

then we need to chop it down and replace it with one whose apples don't play sick games about scaring prisoners to urinate on themselves.

[damntexdem]

22. No, no -- it was a few bad puppies.

How could those poor guards have known that their attack dogs would actually bite?

[redqueen]

5. Our society loves bullies... hates common sense and *real* values.

Only the faux, two-dimensional "no thought required" values are popular here.

[rocktivity]

6. Winner of this month's "You Call This NEWS?" award

That has ALWAYS been the "down" side of torture, DUH! And it was figured out QUITE A FEW wars ago, dont'cha know??????

:banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead:
rocknation

[pazarus]

9. yup, but nobody believes it yet.

Especally not in the upper echelon of the country's leadership right now.

[rocktivity]

10. The "award" isn't directed at you personally, by the way

It's for the story, not who posted it. It's a habit I've developed when I read something in LBN that's ridiculously obvious or the MSM has picked up on weeks after we DU-ers have!

:headbang:
rocknation

[pazarus]

12. oh i know

at first I was all like "hey!", then i realized you were talking broader than this little addition the LBN.

[louis-t]

8. Happened to a friend's kid.

Pizzeria slaying, 3 local teens charged, 2 confessed under duress, turns out 2 other guys did it, 5 years later, real perps are on trial for multi-state robbery and murder spree.
edit: Forgot to mention, cops told kid "if you confess and you didn't do it, it'll come out in court and you'll go free, now confess and you can go home."

[Kelvin Mace]

14. One of the things that the police

cannot get through their damn head:

Lying like this is wrong no matter the reason.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

36. It happened to me.... almost

I say 'almost', but it was a very close call. I was young, 18, at my first real job (I SO want to name the company, but let's just say it it was a major chain drugstore that has been in the news for other things lately). The tills were coming up short, they brought in a former cop to get to the bottom of it. Had me in the back room for 2 hours, asking me the same questions over and over, threatening to bring in a lie detector (when I said go ahead, I'll take it, he stopped threatening to. That should have tipped me off). By the time I got out of there, he almost had me convinced I had had taken money and not remembered it. The only thing that saved me was my lovely mother-in-law. She knew how broke we were, she asked me - "don't you think you would remember if you suddenly had more money than you thought you did?" She was right. We were pinching every penny, $5 extra would have been very memorable. It still took me years to get over it, and to this day I am scared to death of being accused of wrongdoing - I have to stop myself from thinking... Maybe I did do it. It was a horrible experience, and I'm sure it was illegal, but I was just a kid. I just wanted to forget the whole thing ever happened. I wish I could say I can't imagine being accused of something worse, but I can.

edited to add : I must not be over it yet, cause just telling you guys has me feeling it all over again, and this was very minor compared to what they are doing to those prisoners. At least I got to go home.

[kestrel91316]

38. A very dear friend of mine .....................

who is one of the most honest people I have EVER known was, many years ago, falsely accused of stealing money from the cash drawer of the grocery chain where he worked. He was eventually exonerated, but the experience traumatized him terribly. He developed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder from the constantly checking and rechecking his cash drawer out of paranoia that he would get accused again. It evolved into a more generalized obsessive compulsive problem that eventually left him virtually unable to get in his car and drive even around the block without fearing he had run over somone. He is much better now since he has gone on medication and had therapy, but the overblown treatment he got at work has changed him forever.

[neweurope]

15. A "new study"? We've been knowing this since the middle ages, for crying

out loud!

I know I would confess to anything. Just get near my face with a hot iron... ANYTHING I would confess.

------------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[reBel_gyrl]

16. Nothing works.

Sleep deprivation doesn't work. Physical pain doesn't work. Sexual humiliation doesn't work. Scary dogs don't work. Berating and belittling don't work. None of these "interrogation methods" or "torture methods" work to get prisoners talking, yet all of them piss the American people off. Can some one please tell me, what IS an effective way to get a detainee to speak, and to tell the truth? Is there ANYTHING we can do to get information with out stepping on Americans' delicate sense of right and wrong, of what is appropriate and what is not?

[pazarus]

18. It's not just American people

we're pissing off. It's Iraqis, it's Europeans, it's the Islamic world, it's Jews, it's the pope--it's every country in the world and half of our own. The only people it makes happy are the right-wing nutjobs and otherwise normal people who are very angry and not thinking straight.

There is no reliable way, period. If there were, the world would have discovered it by now. Maybe its a new truth serum in the future. Torture and intimidation, however, have the worst possible outcome.

[Misunderestimator]

29. "Americans' delicate sense of right and wrong" Oh.. Delicate is it?

Which is why Americans can just sit back and sanction the killing of tens of thousands of innocent strangers and then vote back the man who caused it. Delicate.... more like barbaric.

[sojourner]

32. If it is not effective, why should it be used? And why should

people be so up in arms about the fact that science (not to mention history) shows it ineffective? Could it be that people just plain WANT it to work, because without it they feel helpless?

Do you think that if it's only shown effective in say, 20% of the cases, that you would justify it (used on 100% of people so as to achieve that 20% "effectiveness" rate? --- not a real number BTW, just an example). And wouldn't the justification for doing so really be more for giving an illusion of control over a terrifyingly uncontrollable situation?

So the gov't can say...see, we're doing EVERYTHING that we can to keep you safe. And, being Americans, more subject than most to the "need for control" will accept the illusion of control as a suitable substitute for effective action (namely getting rid of our dependence on oil and letting the mideast take care of its own problems).


edited for spelling

[kestrel91316]

39. "Americans' delicate sense of right and wrong" ................

oh, as opposed to Nazi Germany's firm sense of might makes right????

[damntexdem]

19. Off with their heads!

Convict them all, including the study participants! Ready, fire, aim!

Oops, sorry -- I've been around American jurisprudence too long, I guess.

[AngryAmish]

21. Ethics aside - torture does work

What one does is break the individual's will. Sleep deprivation is the easiest way to do it, but just beating the shit out of them also works. One guy in a hundred don't break.

When a person is subjected to torture the torturer must not accept their words at face value. It is not just enough to beat someone then become a stenographer. Every fact must be double checked and verified, and if there is anythng slightly wrong the person must be tortured again.

This is monsterous and wrong but these are the facts of life.

(I do agree that people falsely confess all the time. Police are LOOKING for a false confession. But in a military-type torture session the truth must be sought.)

[damntexdem]

23. Well, actually, with the Dubya Administration ...

the value of truth has been downgraded, even in military situations. They're much happier with what fits the ideology than they are with truth, particularly truth that doesn't fit the ideology, no matter what the consequences for the troops on the ground.

[pazarus]

25. well, except that it doesn't.

when they 'break', as you mention, it's time to discern the amount of truth in what they say.

Problem is, they'll say anything. Anything. If they can gather what you want from the questioning, they'll say that. Every study shows that. That's just how it is, no matter how many times you watch season two of 24. That torture works is one of the most popular misconceptions. It's reinforced everywhere as a last resort and a sure-fire way to get something out of someone.

But every single study shows the opposite. This is just one of many, and how timely it is.

[Eloriel]

24. Very nice post. NOMINATED!!

C'mon, people.

[pazarus]

27. thanks!

this is something I feel very strongly about. I wish this article was huge news even though it is really old news for most of us.

The more people who can get past the misconception that torture works, the better.

[Az_lefty]

28. This sounds too much like the Spanish Inquisition

[keroro gunsou]

42. *SLAM!*

*sound of feets shuffling*

NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!

Serioudly, this is no laughing matter.

Like a prior poster, my former workplace that shall not be named had cash and inventory problems. So the district manager called in some cop friends of his to interrogate the staff. At first it was pretty nice, the cops did the good cop thing for a awhile, and I guess they were smart enough to realize I was lacking the big three elements (means, motive, opportunity), they wished to move on, but my store manager told them to have me take a lie detector (my store manager and I never got along... cupid stunt that she was). After I agreed to lie detector, they went elsewhere, realizing that I'd pass. Turns out it was the store manager that was copping the stuff for personal use. They never thought to question the person that was complaining the most about the problem.

[dsharp88]

30. NO KIDDING, OF COURSE!!!!!!

Confessions are the LEAST reliable evidence possible even though most people think it's the most important. It's easy to coerce false confessions and false memories into someone. That's why we have due process guaranteed in both the 5th and 14th amendments so that no governmental entity could ever get away with torture of prisoners, right???

Confessions are almost MEANINGLESS, and, in fact, ARE meaningless without corroborating evidence (which is given far more weight).

[arikara]

31. I think that they must know that it doesnt work

and they don't care. They have other reasons for doing it, but all I can think of is their sick jollies.

This information needs to be out there. Nominated.

[pitohui]

33. central park jogger case was one of these

some of the boys confessed, all went to prison, the real rapist later confessed and dna proved the real rapist was telling the truth

there was no group sex thing, no boys piling on, just one man who attacked and raped and left the woman for dead and was happy to see others punished until he was past the statute of limitations for the crime


these boys' lives ruined for nothing, to make a political point about boys running wild, i still want to know who made up the whole story there, a lot of people colluded to make up the whole "wilding" story

i don't blame the victim, she lost 80 percent of her blood and has no memory of the crime and accused no one

the police and prosecutors did this and i don't see how it could have been done unknowing

"a death in canaan" was another such case from the 70s, police have known how to extract false confessions this way for a very long time

[Sam_Lowry]

34. Tarantino nailed this in "Reservoir Dogs"

"If you beat this pr1ck long enough, he'll tell you he started the Chicago fire! Now that doesn't necessarily MAKE IT F*CKIN SO! C'mon, man, THINK!"

I read the following piece in a course reader years ago, where an intelligent argument is made in favor of torture in time-sensitive situations. There's no date on this website, but I remember reading it around 95-96, so it predates much of the recent events in this area.

http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/torture.html

My counter is simlilar to the quote above. Those under such stress and pain will say anything to stop it (Orwell's desription of the first blows Winston receives in the Ministry of Love are also a good view on this). An "obviously guilty" (Levin's phrase) man is expected to speak the truth about where the bomb is when he breaks? Why not send the authorities a block away and let them go up in the fireball. Stop the pain and laugh as your enemies die.

Torture is wrong under any circumstances. If we fail to torture and die because of it, so be it. We die as men, not animals. The repukes claim that by granting rights to our enemies, we raise them to our level. I argue that by torturing them, by treating them as vermin, we lower ourselves to theirs.

[pazarus]

40. And Eastwood in Mystic River (Spoiler)

It wasn't torture, but the threat of death at gunpoint. Poor guy confesses to a murder he didn't commit just so he can see his son again, and as soon as the confession is out he is shot dead.

It's just a movie, but he nailed it.

[Gyre]

35. They don't care if they understand "how it works".

They're only interested in torture, degradation and covering their sick impotent asses. Huh. Not much different than what caused the Salem Witch trials is it?


Gyre

[daleo]

37. Torture doesn't work?

So there weren't really tens of thousands of witches? Incredible.