False Confessions in 2013

Steve Drizin at the 

Center on Wrongful Convictions

 at Northwestern University School of Law has posted an excellent roundup on the Huffington Post of progress made in 2013 on false confessions. In his post, he details the cases of many people who were cleared after falsely confessing to crimes they didn’t commit. 

 

Chicago is still dealing with the misconduct of its disgraced former Police Commander Jon Burge. In December, Stanley Wrice’s conviction was reversed and he was released after serving 31 years for a rape which Wrice confessed to while being tortured by two detectives under Burge. 

 

Drizin also notes that much progress was made in requiring police agencies to electronically record interrogations, which help to false confessions.  According to Drizin:

“In March, Michigan’s state law requiring recording in cases of serious felonies took effect and in August, Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois signed into law an expansion of Illinois’s recording statute to include most serious felonies. In October, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation requiring that all homicide interrogations involving juvenile suspects be recorded. In New York, the legislature doled out $700,000 in grant money to police agencies to increase their capacity to record. And as the year ended, Philly’s top cop Charles Ramsey announced that the City of Brotherly Love will start to record interrogations in 2014.”

Drizin also highlights some of the excellent journalism on false confessions last year. 

 

You can read the full roundup 

here

.