Background

Sometimes, Innocent People confess to crimes they didn't commit.

It's a dirty secret in law-enforcement that all confessions are not created equal. No other piece of evidence is as damning or persuasive as an admission of guilt, yet no other aspect of the investigation is as susceptible to misinterpretation of the evidence or personal intimidation as the interrogation that produces it.

Why Would Anyone Confess to Something He Didn't Do?

It's counter-intuitive, yet hundreds of people have been cleared of all wrong-doing from crimes to which they'd confessed.

I'm not talking about people who are just found not guilty after the fact, I mean actual innocents, people who were coerced, misled or convinced of their own culpability into taking the blame by police for crimes definitely committed by others.

These people are often young and impressionable or mentally impaired or chemically dependant. Sometimes false confessors are convinced of their own culpability despite having no recollection of the crimes they're accused of because they defer to the authority figures who profess absolute certainty. Or they're intimidated by police mischaracterizations of the evidence of their guilt and they try to mitigate the consequences by "coming clean."

The Goal of an Interrogation is a Confession. Period.

Police enter the interrogation room with the single-minded purpose of eliciting an admission of guilt. To that end, interrogators will lie: about non-existent evidence or witnesses, the burden of proof, courtroom prospects, their own ability to influence the judiciary or any other aspect of the process in order to elicit that confession.

Deception is not the the exception to the rule, it is the routine, and the danger is that police techniques are so persuasive that when employed on weak-willed people or when based on flawed hunches, innocent victims are incarcerated while guilty people still roam the streets.

Who Are These Innocent Victims of Police Coercion?

People like Chris Ochoa a high-school honor student who confessed to the rape and murder of a co-worker at an Austin, Texas Pizza Hut, even though he had nothing to do with it.

Brow-beaten for hours and threatened with lethal injection if he didn't confess, Ochoa not only admitted to the crimes but implicated his room-mate and friend Richard Danzigger, as well. No physical evidence directly implicated the two men, but police pursued them on the flawed theory that the killer had entered the establishment with a master key and must have been an employee.

Years later the actual perpetrator, Achim Marino, came forward after a religious conversion and confessed to the rape and murder. He led police officers to where he'd stashed objects taken from the scene and provided information that only someone present during the commission of the crime could have known. Yet even after these extraordinary admissions, it took police three years to act on his tips and retest the DNA evidence. That DNA positively excluded Danzigger and Ochoa and incriminated Marino.

Ochoa was released after 12 years behind bars, however, Danzigger is still in custody because he suffered acute brain damage in a prison assault and now requires constant medical care.

There are dozens of other examples: Michael Crowe, a 14-year old, was persuaded that he must have murdered his little sister even though the police had a mentally disturbed drifter in custody who had Michael's sister's blood on his sweat-shirt. Only they didn't realize it and thought the murderer was a family member. They told Michael that his sister's blood was found in his room though that was patently untrue and convinced him that the nightmares he had on the night of the killing were incriminating evidence. Though the drifter, Richard Tuite, was eventually convicted, Micahel was jailed for nine months and insists he no longer knows precisely what happened, his perception of events having been so fundamentally altered by his interactions with police.

Or James Reyos an alcoholic, closeted homosexual who'd maintained an affair with a Catholic priest. When the Catholic priest was murdered, Reyos insisted he was to blame despite the fact that he was hundreds of miles away when the crime occurred. Reyos is still serving a life-sentence for that homicide, even though the Eccles County Assistant DA responsible for fighting against Reyos' appeals has said, "it was physically impossible for Mr. Reyos to have committed the crime for which he was convicted."

The list of known false confessors who have been freed goes on...

But these cases have come to light only with the advent of DNA Testing, which begs the question how many more men and women suffer behind bars for crimes they didn't commit with no prospect of freeing themselves.

What can Be done?

First, we can let people know this problem exists. Innocent people are going to jail while actual killers and rapists are still on the loose.

Second, we can advocate interrogation reforms like mandatory video-taping of all police interviews, which are only required in two U.S. states, at present.

Lastly, we can tell these stories over and over, which is what we hope to do with "Four Degrees." By showing people how wrong justice can go, they will hopefully insist on greater accountability and fairness for all.