(Cross posted by author from Oh My News International)
But in the end, it appears that in the rush to convict law enforcement officials used inappropriate interrogation techniques that led to what are called coerced confessions, apparently obtained from each of the accused in the Central Park Jogger case.
It would take years before the shameful second tragedy of the Central Park case would play out, under less media scrutiny than the highly publicized horror of that night in spring.
by CODY LYON
On April 19, 1989, joggers, cyclists and other New Yorkers sought refuge from the stress of urban life in the city's backyard, Central Park. But, as the night sky grew dark, a series of menacing incidents rattled the calm of an otherwise beautiful spring evening.
Reports of random violence began to trickle in to the Central Park precinct of the New York City Police Department.
But, it was a chilling report from the wee hours of the morning that would shatter the tranquility of Central Park and divide an entire city.
At around 1:30 a.m. a late night runner discovered a severely beaten woman lying in a puddle of mud on a wooded footpath in the northern tier of the park. The young woman, an employee of a downtown bank and an accomplished musician, was close to death. Police say she had been repeatedly raped; her skull was crushed with what appeared to be a rock or brick.
The victim was 29-year-old Patricia Meili. At the time, her identity hidden, she became known to New York City residents as simply the Central Park Jogger. When details of her attack became public, tensions were soon boiling as much of the city found itself enraged over the senseless and vicious nature of the violent attack. To many, the senseless crime symbolized what they saw as an out of control city.
According to blaring tabloid headlines, five Black and Latino teenage boys had been accused of gang raping Meili and then beating her head and body to a bloody pulp with a rock. Allegedly, the teenagers had engaged in marauding behavior called "wilding" during the hours before the attack her. Police revealed videotaped confessions that captured the young men offering details of the crime during an interrogation session at a police station in the park.
The press ran with the story, showing pictures of the young men under headlines like "wilding pack of teens" in Central Park. The resulting collective race, class and fear based tensions brought chills to the city in spring.
But in the end, it appears that in the rush to convict law enforcement officials used inappropriate interrogation techniques that led to what are called coerced confessions, apparently obtained from each of the accused in the Central Park Jogger case.
It would take years before the shameful second tragedy of the Central Park case would play out, under less media scrutiny than the highly publicized horror of that night in spring.
The Central Park Jogger case is just one example of what some say has proven over the years to be a significant national problem. There are estimates saying that improperly obtained confessions could number in the hundreds or even thousands, splashing an ugly stain on a fundamental principal of the American justice system.
According to Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, "coerced confessions wholly undermine the criminal justice system and violate the constitutional rights of defendants."
There are a number of widely known missteps by law enforcement where an alleged perpetrator's rights may have been violated, resulting in what could be seen as a technically coerced confession.
The most common misstep is a violation of the Miranda law, when police officers do not inform the accused of his or her right to attorney, or the right to silence.
The 1966 Miranda law advises suspects of their Fifth Amendment rights. Miranda is meant to protect a suspect from self-incrimination upon being arrested, and to make sure that any statements made during interrogation are indeed voluntary.
But what goes on behind closed doors in interrogation rooms is more complex, being private and less open to scrutiny by observers.
Interrogation rooms are meant to be intimidating places where suspects are coaxed to talk. But, according to some, on rare occasions, in order to get a suspect to say what the interrogator needs to indict, misleading tricks, lies or other techniques often enter the picture. In the end, when this occurs, problems for prosecutors can emerge later in court if effectively challenged by the defense.
Ultimately, unless interrogation sessions are recorded, there is no tangible record to verify what takes place or is said during interrogations. And, because there is no uniform set of federal or state guidelines as to when cameras or tape recorders roll, there is no way to know what was said, or perhaps even rehearsed, before a suspect's confession is made.
In a 2002 letter to New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, the New York Civil Liberties Union urged the NYPD to begin taping all interrogations from start to finish.
The letter alleged that in several high profile cases, primarily reacting to the Central Park Jogger case, law enforcement had obtained inappropriate, perhaps questionable, confessions in criminal cases.
Often, cases where confessions were proven false have involved situations where a suspect is tricked into believing that there is existing evidence of guilt, or perhaps assurance that a confession will result in a lighter sentence.
But with the advent and acceptance of DNA science as a source of evidence in court, a new factor has come into play and a number of convictions, some allegedly obtained through questionable coerced confessions, have been overturned in the end.
In fact, nationwide, around 180 inmates have been released over the past few years, thanks to the introduction of DNA evidence. DNA trails are capable of directly connecting or erasing physical connections between a suspect and a crime scene or victim.
Still, there is room for caution in calling for a wholesale re-examination of the nation's criminal convictions.
Speaking from his home in Graham, N.C., Alamance County District Attorney Robert Johnson, a 31-year veteran of the criminal justice system, cautioned that the number of coerced confessions are fairly small when compared with the overall number of successful criminal convictions obtained in part through law enforcement interrogations.
But he still admits that one wrongful conviction obtained through a coerced conviction, is one too many.
Johnson stressed that in seeking a conviction, a confession should be just one element, sort of the icing on the cake of evidence needed to find the truth. Johnson noted that in most criminal cases physical evidence is essential in court.
Most legal experts agree that without physical evidence any conviction is open for doubt.
"Evidence is essential," said Pamela Bucy, a professor of law at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
Bucy also says that coercion is usually not necessary during interrogations because guilty suspects usually start to talk anyway. She says that when confronted with the evidence, suspects often admit guilt.
In North Carolina, Johnson has seen firsthand the importance of using DNA evidence to obtain a confession from a suspect.
Ultimately, that evidence was used to obtain a confession from one suspect, and then fully exonerate a wrongfully convicted man who had served a number of years in jail for a crime that it turned out he did not commit.
In 1984, Ronald Cotton had been convicted of the rape of Jennifer Thompson, after she had mistakenly identified him as her attacker. Cotton served the next 10 years in a North Carolina Prison.
Despite Cotton's conviction, police had long suspected another man, Bobby Poole who by then was serving time for a similar crime.
In 1995, police obtained DNA samples from Poole that provided necessary evidence linking Poole, not Cotton, to the crime.
Once verified, Johnson sent his detectives to interview Poole in prison.
"During the first hour of interrogation, one of my detectives came out and said that he'd made an incriminating statement," recalled Johnson.
But Johnson said he wanted to be sure. He told the officer questioning Poole that he needed specific details of the crime scene directly from Poole.
"I told him that's not good enough, go back in there and get clothing and location, all details," said Johnson.
The point being "we didn't just want someone confessing to this crime, we wanted necessary evidence, the detailed information that only Poole would have known about," noted Johnson in his quest for a solid case and exoneration.
Eventually the DNA evidence, as well as Poole's detailed admission proved that Cotton was not the man who had raped Thompson, thus paving the way for Cotton's exoneration. Johnson says that although they felt sure of Cotton's innocence once they had the DNA evidence, they also needed the confession from Poole to fully secure Cotton's freedom.
But such a full and forthcoming admission of guilt from Poole, a confession that would be fully admissible and believable in a court of law, took patience and perseverance and not coercion based on purely suspect behaviors.
Johnson says interrogators must be careful in their attempts to get the details like those he needed to convict the correct suspect in the North Carolina case. He says that oftentimes, right after a particularly high-profile heinous crime, there is a rush or sense of urgency in the need to convict and that may lead interrogators to engage in the inappropriate tactics involved in what might be called a forced coercion.
He also cautioned that those doing the questioning must not employ tactics that might be seen as inhumane.
"When interrogating someone, an officer has to be mindful, and not deny food, drink, water support and respite," said Johnson.
Defense attorneys often use charges of coercion as a tactic in court.
Johnson said that often a defense attorney will ask for a suppression of a statement. In other words, a suspect wants to recount or deny what was said during a confession.
Still, proving that a statement was coerced involves meeting the satisfaction of the court, meeting a burden of proof that is challenging at best.
Johnson says that most false confessions usually involve matters of illness, mental incapacity, injury and fear beyond the trauma of being in an interrogation room.
A complaint filed by the original Central Park Jogger suspects charged that maximization techniques were the tools used by interrogators that night back in the spring of 1989.
The Central Park Jogger crime occurred in a time before the seeds of DNA evidence had taken root as tools of evidence in the United States judicial system. And some say New York Law Enforcement authorities needed a suspect to appease the public's outrage over the brutality of the incident that night in the park.
In the case of the Central Park Jogger, the original group of suspects easily fit the psyche of local tabloids and what was clearly a traumatized and apparently divided city.
But as history has shown, in the thirst to obtain a shut and close case, justice was in fact denied on three fronts.
In May 2002, another man, Matias Reyes, a serial rapist and convicted murderer, confessed to the horrific 1989 attack on Meili.
Later, DNA evidence positively linked Reyes to the crime.
That same year, after serving 5 to 13 years each, the five men, now ranging in age from 28 to 30, saw a judge dismiss the charges that had vilified them before an entire city. The five had spent a large portion of their lives in prison based on what some now say was a coerced confession and no forensic evidence.
According to a $50 million complaint against the New York City Police Department and the New York district attorney's office, the confessions that had sent the five teenagers to jail was improperly coerced.
The complaint says that the recorded statement used to convict the young men and stoke the flames of media hysteria was in fact rehearsed.
The complaint says that the police exploited the young age of the suspects and the lack of experience they and their parents had with the criminal justice system. The interrogation methods allegedly included coercion, isolation, intimidation, manipulation, suggestiveness, deceit, false promises, sleep deprivation, actively shaping the content of the statements before they were formerly given, telling the plaintiffs to put their statements in writing and withholding certain information from suspects and family members about the true intent behind the questioning.
The New York district attorney's office and the lawyers bringing the case could not comment on the closed case.
Questions were raised about the New York City police culture and about how widespread similar techniques were in other cases. As North Carolina's Johnson cautions, an effective and fair interrogator must be properly trained and very disciplined.
Ultimately, Johnson says that our adversarial judicial system has become antagonistic. He said that has led to an adrenalin driven pattern of behavior throughout the nation's legal system.
But, Johnson also blames public expectations of law enforcement that have risen beyond reality. He says that there is a great deal of pressure from the public to solve crimes quickly, as if real life mirrors the rapidity in crime solving that takes place in one hour television programs like CSI.
Johnson said that unfortunately the expectations often put much greater pressure on police to obtain confessions in crimes and that can contribute to a way of thinking that has the potential to lead to police misconduct.
Many agree, that ultimately, the quest for instant gratification can lead to instances of flawed legal administration in a court system that is meant to dispense justice and not a conviction at any cost.
But, it was a chilling report from the wee hours of the morning that would shatter the tranquility of Central Park and divide an entire city.
At around 1:30 a.m. a late night runner discovered a severely beaten woman lying in a puddle of mud on a wooded footpath in the northern tier of the park. The young woman, an employee of a downtown bank and an accomplished musician, was close to death. Police say she had been repeatedly raped; her skull was crushed with what appeared to be a rock or brick.
The victim was 29-year-old Patricia Meili. At the time, her identity hidden, she became known to New York City residents as simply the Central Park Jogger. When details of her attack became public, tensions were soon boiling as much of the city found itself enraged over the senseless and vicious nature of the violent attack. To many, the senseless crime symbolized what they saw as an out of control city.
According to blaring tabloid headlines, five Black and Latino teenage boys had been accused of gang raping Meili and then beating her head and body to a bloody pulp with a rock. Allegedly, the teenagers had engaged in marauding behavior called "wilding" during the hours before the attack her. Police revealed videotaped confessions that captured the young men offering details of the crime during an interrogation session at a police station in the park.
The press ran with the story, showing pictures of the young men under headlines like "wilding pack of teens" in Central Park. The resulting collective race, class and fear based tensions brought chills to the city in spring.
But in the end, it appears that in the rush to convict law enforcement officials used inappropriate interrogation techniques that led to what are called coerced confessions, apparently obtained from each of the accused in the Central Park Jogger case.
It would take years before the shameful second tragedy of the Central Park case would play out, under less media scrutiny than the highly publicized horror of that night in spring.
The Central Park Jogger case is just one example of what some say has proven over the years to be a significant national problem. There are estimates saying that improperly obtained confessions could number in the hundreds or even thousands, splashing an ugly stain on a fundamental principal of the American justice system.
According to Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, "coerced confessions wholly undermine the criminal justice system and violate the constitutional rights of defendants."
There are a number of widely known missteps by law enforcement where an alleged perpetrator's rights may have been violated, resulting in what could be seen as a technically coerced confession.
The most common misstep is a violation of the Miranda law, when police officers do not inform the accused of his or her right to attorney, or the right to silence.
The 1966 Miranda law advises suspects of their Fifth Amendment rights. Miranda is meant to protect a suspect from self-incrimination upon being arrested, and to make sure that any statements made during interrogation are indeed voluntary.
But what goes on behind closed doors in interrogation rooms is more complex, being private and less open to scrutiny by observers.
Interrogation rooms are meant to be intimidating places where suspects are coaxed to talk. But, according to some, on rare occasions, in order to get a suspect to say what the interrogator needs to indict, misleading tricks, lies or other techniques often enter the picture. In the end, when this occurs, problems for prosecutors can emerge later in court if effectively challenged by the defense.
Ultimately, unless interrogation sessions are recorded, there is no tangible record to verify what takes place or is said during interrogations. And, because there is no uniform set of federal or state guidelines as to when cameras or tape recorders roll, there is no way to know what was said, or perhaps even rehearsed, before a suspect's confession is made.
In a 2002 letter to New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, the New York Civil Liberties Union urged the NYPD to begin taping all interrogations from start to finish.
The letter alleged that in several high profile cases, primarily reacting to the Central Park Jogger case, law enforcement had obtained inappropriate, perhaps questionable, confessions in criminal cases.
Often, cases where confessions were proven false have involved situations where a suspect is tricked into believing that there is existing evidence of guilt, or perhaps assurance that a confession will result in a lighter sentence.
But with the advent and acceptance of DNA science as a source of evidence in court, a new factor has come into play and a number of convictions, some allegedly obtained through questionable coerced confessions, have been overturned in the end.
In fact, nationwide, around 180 inmates have been released over the past few years, thanks to the introduction of DNA evidence. DNA trails are capable of directly connecting or erasing physical connections between a suspect and a crime scene or victim.
Still, there is room for caution in calling for a wholesale re-examination of the nation's criminal convictions.
Speaking from his home in Graham, N.C., Alamance County District Attorney Robert Johnson, a 31-year veteran of the criminal justice system, cautioned that the number of coerced confessions are fairly small when compared with the overall number of successful criminal convictions obtained in part through law enforcement interrogations.
But he still admits that one wrongful conviction obtained through a coerced conviction, is one too many.
Johnson stressed that in seeking a conviction, a confession should be just one element, sort of the icing on the cake of evidence needed to find the truth. Johnson noted that in most criminal cases physical evidence is essential in court.
Most legal experts agree that without physical evidence any conviction is open for doubt.
"Evidence is essential," said Pamela Bucy, a professor of law at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
Bucy also says that coercion is usually not necessary during interrogations because guilty suspects usually start to talk anyway. She says that when confronted with the evidence, suspects often admit guilt.
In North Carolina, Johnson has seen firsthand the importance of using DNA evidence to obtain a confession from a suspect.
Ultimately, that evidence was used to obtain a confession from one suspect, and then fully exonerate a wrongfully convicted man who had served a number of years in jail for a crime that it turned out he did not commit.
In 1984, Ronald Cotton had been convicted of the rape of Jennifer Thompson, after she had mistakenly identified him as her attacker. Cotton served the next 10 years in a North Carolina Prison.
Despite Cotton's conviction, police had long suspected another man, Bobby Poole who by then was serving time for a similar crime.
In 1995, police obtained DNA samples from Poole that provided necessary evidence linking Poole, not Cotton, to the crime.
Once verified, Johnson sent his detectives to interview Poole in prison.
"During the first hour of interrogation, one of my detectives came out and said that he'd made an incriminating statement," recalled Johnson.
But Johnson said he wanted to be sure. He told the officer questioning Poole that he needed specific details of the crime scene directly from Poole.
"I told him that's not good enough, go back in there and get clothing and location, all details," said Johnson.
The point being "we didn't just want someone confessing to this crime, we wanted necessary evidence, the detailed information that only Poole would have known about," noted Johnson in his quest for a solid case and exoneration.
Eventually the DNA evidence, as well as Poole's detailed admission proved that Cotton was not the man who had raped Thompson, thus paving the way for Cotton's exoneration. Johnson says that although they felt sure of Cotton's innocence once they had the DNA evidence, they also needed the confession from Poole to fully secure Cotton's freedom.
But such a full and forthcoming admission of guilt from Poole, a confession that would be fully admissible and believable in a court of law, took patience and perseverance and not coercion based on purely suspect behaviors.
Johnson says interrogators must be careful in their attempts to get the details like those he needed to convict the correct suspect in the North Carolina case. He says that oftentimes, right after a particularly high-profile heinous crime, there is a rush or sense of urgency in the need to convict and that may lead interrogators to engage in the inappropriate tactics involved in what might be called a forced coercion.
He also cautioned that those doing the questioning must not employ tactics that might be seen as inhumane.
"When interrogating someone, an officer has to be mindful, and not deny food, drink, water support and respite," said Johnson.
Defense attorneys often use charges of coercion as a tactic in court.
Johnson said that often a defense attorney will ask for a suppression of a statement. In other words, a suspect wants to recount or deny what was said during a confession.
Still, proving that a statement was coerced involves meeting the satisfaction of the court, meeting a burden of proof that is challenging at best.
Johnson says that most false confessions usually involve matters of illness, mental incapacity, injury and fear beyond the trauma of being in an interrogation room.
A complaint filed by the original Central Park Jogger suspects charged that maximization techniques were the tools used by interrogators that night back in the spring of 1989.
The Central Park Jogger crime occurred in a time before the seeds of DNA evidence had taken root as tools of evidence in the United States judicial system. And some say New York Law Enforcement authorities needed a suspect to appease the public's outrage over the brutality of the incident that night in the park.
In the case of the Central Park Jogger, the original group of suspects easily fit the psyche of local tabloids and what was clearly a traumatized and apparently divided city.
But as history has shown, in the thirst to obtain a shut and close case, justice was in fact denied on three fronts.
In May 2002, another man, Matias Reyes, a serial rapist and convicted murderer, confessed to the horrific 1989 attack on Meili.
Later, DNA evidence positively linked Reyes to the crime.
That same year, after serving 5 to 13 years each, the five men, now ranging in age from 28 to 30, saw a judge dismiss the charges that had vilified them before an entire city. The five had spent a large portion of their lives in prison based on what some now say was a coerced confession and no forensic evidence.
According to a $50 million complaint against the New York City Police Department and the New York district attorney's office, the confessions that had sent the five teenagers to jail was improperly coerced.
The complaint says that the recorded statement used to convict the young men and stoke the flames of media hysteria was in fact rehearsed.
The complaint says that the police exploited the young age of the suspects and the lack of experience they and their parents had with the criminal justice system. The interrogation methods allegedly included coercion, isolation, intimidation, manipulation, suggestiveness, deceit, false promises, sleep deprivation, actively shaping the content of the statements before they were formerly given, telling the plaintiffs to put their statements in writing and withholding certain information from suspects and family members about the true intent behind the questioning.
The New York district attorney's office and the lawyers bringing the case could not comment on the closed case.
Questions were raised about the New York City police culture and about how widespread similar techniques were in other cases. As North Carolina's Johnson cautions, an effective and fair interrogator must be properly trained and very disciplined.
Ultimately, Johnson says that our adversarial judicial system has become antagonistic. He said that has led to an adrenalin driven pattern of behavior throughout the nation's legal system.
But, Johnson also blames public expectations of law enforcement that have risen beyond reality. He says that there is a great deal of pressure from the public to solve crimes quickly, as if real life mirrors the rapidity in crime solving that takes place in one hour television programs like CSI.
Johnson said that unfortunately the expectations often put much greater pressure on police to obtain confessions in crimes and that can contribute to a way of thinking that has the potential to lead to police misconduct.
Many agree, that ultimately, the quest for instant gratification can lead to instances of flawed legal administration in a court system that is meant to dispense justice and not a conviction at any cost.
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