True Crimes False Confessions

Jumping back into the past, Gregory Orr tells the incident when he and a group of five hundred of men, women, teenagers, and old folks assemble in Jackson, Mississippi. In Jackson for a peaceful demonstration, Gregory Orr and the rest of the group were arrested and taken away “to the county fairgrounds” (128, 1). Where they was beaten by officers of the law, Orr stated, “I emerged into the outdoors and the bright sunlight and saw them-two lines of about fifteen highway patrolmen on either side. I was ordered to walk, not run, between them. Again I was beaten with nightsticks, but this time more thoroughly, as I was the only target” (129, 2). Once freed from his captors, Gregory Orr gets in his car to head back north, but on his way back he was pulled over by flashing lights. Thinking it was the police; Gregory Orr pulled over and was approached by two white men. One of the white men said, “Get out, you son of a bitch, or I’ll blow your head off” (133, 3). The two white men takes Gregory Orr’s wallet and tell him to follow them, Scared for his life, Gregory Orr did exactly what the two men told him to do. After following the two men, Gregory Orr is back in jail in Hayneville. “Already depressed and disoriented by the ten days in jail in Jackson, I was even more frightened in Hayneville,” (136, 1) stated by Gregory Orr.

In one of the most well known cities of the United States, New York City was the central focus in the 1980’s. Five minority youths aged 14 to 16 were arrested and convicted of rape, sexual assault, and almost murdering 28-year old white female investment banker, Trisha Meili, as she was jogging through Central Park on the night of April 19th, 1989. These innocent Latino and African American five young men— Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, and Yusef Salaam—were exonerated in 2002 after serving 6-13 years in prison until the condemned murderer, Matias Reyes confessed to the rape of Trisha Meili, where his DNA was discovered to match the evidence

From the summer of 1979 to the summer of 1981, at least twenty-eight people were abducted and killed during a murder spree in Atlanta, Georgia; these killings would come to be known as the Atlanta Child Murders. While the victims of the killings were people of all races and genders, most of the victims of the Atlanta Child Murders were young African-American males. These murders created great racial tension in the city of Atlanta, with its black population believing the murders to be the work of a white supremacist group. (Bardsley & Bell, n.d., p. l) However, when police finally apprehended a suspect in the case, they found it was neither a white supremacy group, nor a white person at all; it was a 23 year-old African-American man named

In the video “The Confessions” presented by Frontline, a murder of a women that was committed by one man, quickly resulted into a false gang murder-rape scene committed by eight men. The victim, Michelle Bosko, was seen to be raped and killed in her apartment in Norfolk, Virginia. From the video, it has been proven that seven out of the eight men that confessed were innocent, but somehow they all received an unequal punishment. Because the innocent men admitted to a murder that they didn’t commit out of fear, they were all sentenced to some time in prison. The head detective, Glenn Ford, intimidated the men so much that they either were convinced that they were at the crime scene or they told him every detail that he wanted to hear.

When this Central park case was made public, the New York Police Department and District Attorney office’s main focus was to solve the case as quickly as possible. When the five teenagers were found “wilding” in the park the night of the women’s death, the police believed they had found the suspects. The police were so confident of the teenager’s guiltiness, the five boys were interrogated of their involvement in the crime. The police used their authority and persuasion to get the boys to confess and promise them that they would go home if they talked. Through strenuous and intense interrogation, the five boys confessed to the killing and rape of the young women on videotape. These confessions were given even though

The risk to benefit ratio regarding interrogation techniques that are associated with false confessions in my opinion is the investigators may get the benefit of a confession and a conviction of their suspect, but once it is known that the confession is false; they run the risk of several things, the convection will be tossed out, the suspect will be set free, the officers as well as their department might be sued and the biggest risk of all is the actual perpetrator is free to commit another crime. I am between using them and not using them; the interrogation techniques because to me the fact is yes the investigators may sometimes get a true confession but running the risk of getting a false confession is pretty high. I do however think that

A very significant case in Cook County Courts was the Bridgeport case, known as a “heater” case because of the publicity that surround it, and the racial overtones (Bogira 181). The Bridgeport case involved three white teenagers, Michael Kwidzinski, Jasas, and Caruso that were accused of brutally beating two young black boys who were riding their bikes in the predominantly white neighborhood. The entire summary of the case, in Courtroom 302, was based around the fact that one of the boys, Michael Kwidzinski, was most likely innocent. The question then turns to the boy himself, Michael Kwidzinski; if he was innocent, why did hid then accept a guilty plea bargain?

Can anyone truly be sure if what a person is saying is the truth if there isn’t proof to show it? This question is one of the many jurors have to ask themselves while making decisions in cases with purely circumstantial evidence. On March 25th 1931, Haywood Patterson, Clarence Norris, Andy Wright, Roy Wright, Ozzie Powell, Willie Roberson, Charles Weems, Eugene Williams, and Olen Montgomery- also known as the Scottsboro boys, were charged with rape by Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. The girls claimed to have been raped by the Scottsboro boys after fighting broke out between them and a group of white men. The alleged crime happened on a train, during that time period hoboing- travelling by train in search of jobs, was incredibly popular. Key witnesses to this trial were the Scottsboro boys, the 15 white men on the train, Dr. R. R. Bridges- the doctor who examined the women after the alleged rape, and the eyewitness Ory Dobbins. The final verdict in the trial let four of the Scottsboro free while four were sentenced to serve in prison for a long period of time and one was sentenced to death (The Trials of "The Scottsboro Boys": An Account, Linder). The Scottsboro boys trial was unfair and biased due to public, media, jury bias, incorrect trial proceedings, and finally witness bias.

Police interrogate suspects on a daily basis, but how can they tell if the confession is real? We have all heard, at one time or another of someone confessing to a crime they didn’t commit. Then your next thought is “I would never confess to something I didn’t do”. The only way you can be a 100% sure of that is if you have been through an interrogation before. This paper is going to define “confession” and tell how an innocent person will confesses to a crime they didn’t commit. This paper will also show the history of interrogations.

During the Scottsboro Boys Trial, nine african american boys were accused of raping two white women.(The Trials of “The Scottsboro Boys”: An Account) They had four trials for the case and for the first trial they spent two years in jail.( The Trials of “The Scottsboro Boys”: An Account) Local newspapers were making accusations about the Scottsboro Boys before the trial started.( The Trials of “The Scottsboro Boys”: An Account )While they were in jail, they would only be released from their cell once or twice a week.(The Trials of “The Scottsboro Boys”: An Account) The nine Scottsboro Boys were pending an appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court but while that was going on, the girls admitted that they were not raped by the Scottsboro boys.(The Scottsboro Case: A Timeline) By the time this trial was coming to an end, the all of the Scottsboro boys passed away.(The Scottsboro Case: A

With no amount of proof, the police believed the girls accusations simply because they were white and the boys were black. The newspaper headlines read: “ALL NEGROES POSITIVELY IDENTIFIED BY GIRLS AND ONE WHITE BOY WHO WAS HELD PRISONER WITH PISTOL AND KNIVES WHILE NINE BLACK FIENDS COMMITTED REVOLTING CRIME.” This article highlights how brutal the people were towards the boys. Another example of the horrendous racism is when the only lawyers given to the boys, were the worst lawyers in town. The court decided that the boys were worth so little that they would give them the lawyers that hadn’t won a case in decades. Despite having no real evidence, no real witnesses or a case at all. Over the course of the two decades eight out of the nine boys were sentenced to death, the last, youngest boy was sentenced to a life in

During the Christian era, authors such as Saint Augustine, Dante, and Marie de France focused on the importance and significance of God enacting true and ultimate justice upon people based on the circumstances that they are in. Authors like this allow the origins of justice to have a true beginning, and there is less debate about it being right because people believe that God’s motives are always pure and true. A person has to allow God to enter and be the focus of their life, in order to believe that situations where just action is necessary. This motion of getting closer to God is the way that people are then able to fully understand justice. This is because God is justice in the world, and He places in one’s life so that they have the capability to find it. In Confessions, it takes Saint Augustine time to progress to a state where he has been instilled with justice, and it is only then that he realizes God’s true justice. When people are put in situations that they have no control over, God is who they turn to because he will always make the right choices, and take the right action that is just and necessary. Therefore, people rely on God to be, and carry out, the justice that they want to see in their lives.

Darryl Hunt is an African American born in 1965 in North Carolina. In 1984, he was convicted wrongfully of rape and murder of Deborah Sykes, a young white woman working as a newspaper editor. This paper researches oh his wrongful conviction in North Carolina. Darryl Hunt served nineteen and a half years before DNA evidence exonerated him. The charges leveled against him were because of inconsistencies in the initial stages of the case. An all-white bench convicted the then nineteen-year-old Hunt, even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime. A hotel employee made false claims that he saw Hunt enter the hotel bathroom, and later emerge with bloodstained towels. Other witnesses also fixed Hunt to the case.

Four kids, each under the age of 18 were sentenced as adults for 6-11 years in prison before DNA evidence proved them all innocent. You all probably remember Trayvon Martin, who was walking home, pursued by a neighborhood watch captain for having a “suspicious” appearance, and then fatally shot. You might know of Philando Castile, who was pulled over for a broken tail light, and was also shot by police while reaching for his ID, his death then broadcast live over facebook as he bled out. Now chances are that if you turn on your TV, you will see a black man being paraded across your screen accompanied by a police officer. This is

“Everybody lies” is a statement most people would not dispute; it is arguably the most accepted trait of human nature and not really in the public interest to deal with legally most of the time. Because of this, there has been much debate on the criminalisation of lying and deception as it crosses over from a moral problem to a legal one. What happens when a lie is so great it has a deep negative impact on the victim or it effects the judgment of an individual in situations such as consenting to sex? Can we then say it becomes a legal issue and one for the courts? Questions like these make the “the criminalisation of deception in sexual contexts and the specific scope of s.76...the subject of considerable, and at times heated, academic debate.”