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Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that law enforcement in the United States must warn a person of their constitutional rights before interrogating them, or else the person's statements cannot be used as evidence at their trial. Specifically, the Court held that under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the government cannot use a person's statements made in response to an interrogation while in police custody as evidence at the person's criminal trial unless they can show that the person was informed of the right to consult with a lawyer before and during questioning, and of the right against self-incrimination before police questioning, and that the defendant not only understood these rights but also voluntarily waived them before answering questions.
Albert Henry DeSalvo was an American murderer and rapist who was active in Boston, Massachusetts, in the early 1960s. He is known to have confessed to being the "Boston Strangler", a serial killer who murdered thirteen women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964. Lack of physical evidence supported his confession, and he was only prosecuted in 1967 for a series of unrelated rapes, for which he was convicted and imprisoned until his death in 1973. His confessing to having murdered multiple women was disputed, and debates continued regarding which crimes he truly had committed.
The murder of Wendy Sewell was committed on 12 September 1973. Wendy Sewell, a 32-year-old legal secretary from Bakewell, Peak District in Derbyshire was found beaten, sexually assaulted and murdered. In 1974, 17-year-old Stephen Downing was convicted of the murder of Sewell. Following a campaign by a local newspaper led by Don Hale, in which Sewell was purported to be promiscuous, Downing's conviction was overturned in 2002. The case is thought to be the longest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, and attracted international media attention.
A forced confession is a confession obtained from a suspect or a prisoner by means of torture or other forms of duress. Depending on the level of coercion used, a forced confession is not valid in revealing the truth. The individuals being interrogated may agree to the story presented to them or even make up falsehoods themselves in order to satisfy the interrogator and discontinue their suffering.
The Guildford Four and Maguire Seven were two groups of people, mostly Northern Irish, who were wrongly convicted in English courts in 1975 and 1976 for the Guildford pub bombings of 5 October 1974, and the Woolwich pub bombing of 7 November 1974. All the convictions were eventually quashed after long campaigns for justice, and the cases, along with those of the Birmingham Six, diminished public confidence in the integrity of the English criminal justice system.
Sture Ragnar Bergwall, also known as Thomas Quick from 1993–2002, is a Swedish man previously believed to have been a serial killer, having confessed to more than 30 murders while detained in a mental institution for personality disorders. Between 1994 and 2001, Quick was convicted of eight of these murders. However, he withdrew all of his confessions in 2008. As a result, his murder convictions were quashed, the final one in July 2013, and he was released from hospital. The episode raised issues about how murder convictions could have been obtained on such weak evidence, and has been called the largest miscarriage of justice in Swedish history. Journalists Hannes Råstam and Jenny Küttim and Dan Josefsson published TV documentaries and books about the murder cases; they claimed that bad therapy led to false confessions. Dan Josefsson claims that a "cult"-like group led by psychologist Margit Norell manipulated the police and talked Sture Bergwall into false confessions.
Michael Stone was convicted of the 1996 murders of Lin and Megan Russell and the attempted murder of Josie Russell. He was sentenced to three life sentences with a tariff of 25 years for the Russell killings.
Within the criminal justice system of Japan, there exist three basic features that characterize its operations. First, the institutions—police, government prosecutors' offices, courts, and correctional organs—maintain close and cooperative relations with each other, consulting frequently on how best to accomplish the shared goals of limiting and controlling crime. Second, citizens are encouraged to assist in maintaining public order, and they participate extensively in crime prevention campaigns, apprehension of suspects, and offender rehabilitation programs. Finally, officials who administer criminal justice are allowed considerable discretion in dealing with offenders.
A false confession is an admission of guilt for a crime which the individual did not commit. Although such confessions seem counterintuitive, they can be made voluntarily, perhaps to protect a third party, or induced through coercive interrogation techniques. When some degree of coercion is involved, studies have found that subjects with highly sophisticated intelligence or manipulated by their so-called "friends" are more likely to make such confessions. Young people are particularly vulnerable to confessing, especially when stressed, tired, or traumatized, and have a significantly higher rate of false confessions than adults. Hundreds of innocent people have been convicted, imprisoned, and sometimes sentenced to death after confessing to crimes they did not commit—but years later, have been exonerated. It was not until several shocking false confession cases were publicized in the late 1980s, combined with the introduction of DNA evidence, that the extent of wrongful convictions began to emerge—and how often false confessions played a role in these.
Eric Edgar Cooke, nicknamed the Night Caller and later the Nedlands Monster, was an Australian serial killer who terrorised the city of Perth, Western Australia, from September 1958 to August 1963. Cooke committed at least 20 violent crimes, eight of which resulted in deaths.
The conviction of Liverpool F.C. supporter Michael Shields resulted from the attempted murder of Bulgarian citizen Martin Georgiev on 30 May 2005 with a paving slab in the Black Sea resort of Golden Sands, Bulgaria, following Liverpool F.C.'s 2005 UEFA Champions League win. Shields was arrested and subsequently convicted for the attack. Shields launched two appeals against his conviction amid a high-profile campaign, in 2005 and 2006, but they both failed and the original verdict was affirmed. His prison term was reduced from 15 to 10 years after the second appeal – but with an increase in fine. With parole, he would have been due for release in 2010.
Richard Jason Ofshe is an American sociologist and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his expert testimony relating to coercion in small groups, confessions, and interrogations.
The murder of 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe took place in her bedroom inside her home at Escondido, California, sometime between late night January 20, 1998, to early morning January 21, 1998. Stephanie's parents and grandmother found her body on the floor of her bedroom on the morning of January 21, 1998. She had been stabbed eight times. There was no sign of forced entry. Stephanie's window was found unlocked, but a screen was in place and there was no disturbance of accumulated grime and insect traces. A sliding glass door in her parents' bedroom was also unlocked. No knives were found at the scene that seemed consistent with the murder weapon, and no bloody clothing was found despite an exhaustive search.
Amy's Law is a Georgia state law passed in response to outrage generated when a twelve-year-old boy convicted of murdering Amy Yates was sentenced to two years in juvenile prison, the maximum penalty allowed for minors in Georgia at the time. Unanimously passed by the Georgia Senate in 2006, Amy's Law permits sentencing juveniles to incarceration until age 21 if convicted of murder.
The Norfolk Four are four former United States Navy sailors: Joseph J. Dick Jr., Derek Tice, Danial Williams, and Eric C. Wilson, who were wrongfully convicted of the 1997 rape and murder of Michelle Moore-Bosko while they were stationed at Naval Station Norfolk. They each declared that they had made false confessions, and their convictions are considered highly controversial. A fifth man, Omar Ballard, confessed and pleaded guilty to the crime in 2000, insisting that he had acted alone. He had been in prison since 1998 because of violent attacks on two other women in 1997. He was the only one of the suspects whose DNA matched that collected at the crime scene, and whose confession was consistent with other forensic evidence.
Teresa Elena De Simone was murdered in Southampton, England, in 1979. Her murder led to one of the longest proven cases of a miscarriage of justice in English legal history. The murder occurred outside the Tom Tackle pub and was the subject of a three-year police investigation which resulted in the arrest of Sean Hodgson. Hodgson was convicted of the murder by a unanimous jury verdict in 1982 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. After serving 27 years in prison he was exonerated and released in March 2009. DNA analysis of semen samples that had been preserved from the original crime scene showed that they could not have come from him.
Mr. Big is a covert investigation procedure used by undercover police to elicit confessions from suspects in cold cases. Police officers create a fictitious grey area or criminal organization and then seduce the suspect into joining it. They build a relationship with the suspect, gain their confidence, and then enlist their help in a succession of criminal acts for which they are paid. Once the suspect has become enmeshed in the criminal gang, they are persuaded to divulge information about their criminal history, usually as a prerequisite for being accepted as a member of the organization.
Andrew Evans is an English soldier from Longton, Staffordshire who was wrongfully convicted and served 25 years in jail after confessing to the 1972 murder of Judith Roberts, a 14-year-old schoolgirl from a village close to the northern outskirts of nearby Tamworth. Evans was stationed at Whittington Barracks near Lichfield – an army base in close proximity to Tamworth – when Judith was dragged from her bicycle and battered to death in June 1972. He later confessed to the crime after seeing the girl's face in a dream.
The murder of Tair Rada, a 13-year-old Israeli schoolgirl, was committed in 2006, in the girls' bathroom of her school in Katzrin. Roman Zdorov, a Ukrainian national residing in Israel and working at the school as a floorer, was convicted of the murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment on September 14, 2010. His prosecution and conviction have been a source of controversy, receiving much media coverage, as well as being the focus of an Israeli documentary TV series called Shadow of Truth that has gained worldwide attention on Netflix. On August 26, 2021, Zdorov was released from prison to house arrest after many appeals.
George Whitmore Jr. was an African American man who was charged but later cleared of the infamous Career Girls Murders that occurred in New York City in 1963. "The Supreme Court cited Mr. Whitmore’s case as 'the most conspicuous example' of police coercion when it issued its 1966 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, establishing a set of protections for suspects, like the right to remain silent."
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Criminal Cases Review Commission website Archived 2007-06-06 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ innocent.org.uk Archived 2006-11-28 at the Wayback Machine