Law enforcement

Opinion: America’s law enforcement problems run much deeper than brutality

And yet America’s law enforcement issues are far more sweeping than its occasional violent encounter between police and citizens. In an op-ed for The Times, Regent Law School professor James Duane writes about how police interrogation methods routinely elicit false confessions from innocent men and women.

When confronted with police officers and other government agents who suddenly arrive with a bunch of questions, most innocent people mistakenly think to themselves, “Why not talk? I haven’t done anything. I have nothing to hide. What could possibly go wrong?”

Well, among other things, you could end up confessing to a crime you didn’t commit. The problem of false confessions is not an urban legend. It is a documented fact. Indeed, research suggests that the innocent may be more susceptible than the culpable to deceptive police interrogation tactics, because they tragically assume that somehow “truth and justice will prevail” later even if they falsely admit their guilt. Nobody knows for sure how often innocent people make false confessions, but as Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski recently observed, “Innocent interrogation subjects confess with surprising frequency.”