On False Confessions

[reedus23]

Does everyone realize that a false confession does not have to be the result of waterboarding or some other form of torture?

 

[UdbCrzy2]

How is it illegal to investigate a minor?

I agree 100% with you. I know that you have a familiarity with many criminal cases as I am. So, it doesn't come as a surprise to us that a minor would be investigated at all. Someone who isn't very familiar with criminal cases may be surprised by that.

Misskelley appealed to the Supreme Court of AR and it was denied. In the documents below it tells about why - if anyone is interested in finding that out.



Supreme Court of Arkansas

Opinion delivered February 19, 1996
http://web.archive.org/web/20000824033611/http://courts.state.ar.us/opinions/1996/cr94-848.html


SUPPLEMENTAL OPINION ON DENIAL OF REHEARING

APRIL 1, 1996
http://web.archive.org/web/19991104104201/http://courts.state.ar.us/opinions/1996/cr94-848a.html

 

[UdbCrzy2]

Does everyone realize that a false confession does not have to be the result of waterboarding or some other form of torture?

Maybe some are not aware that he gave one of the confession to his own attorney. I doubt that his own attorney would have allowed a coerced confession.

What seems odd to me is that the trial was thrown out and the WM3 gave guilty pleas. Would you consider those to have been false confessions or coerced confession too? It surprises me because they claimed to have evidence to prove they are innocent and were preparing for a hearing to prove that.

That's all gone.

 

[Ausgirl]

Whatever the law is in that regard, LordYAM has otherwise pretty much summed up the laundry list of problems with the interview.

If there was -one- single problem with the confession, on top of that, I'd be saying 'well, this looks very wrong', but the fact is there are --multiple-- instances where Jessie flubbed the details, and got things half right (thanks to the leading questions immediately preceding).

It was an AWFUL interview. Jessie's confessions get better at accuracy with every telling, which smacks of either coaching or learning the true details as he goes..

I am seriously confused as how to ANYone could view all this, and still think, 'Oh yes, this 100% proves guilt, nothing wrong with all that, clearly this is solid evidence'.

Because... no. Just no. :no:

 

[Ausgirl]

Maybe some are not aware that he gave one of the confession to his own attorney. I doubt that his own attorney would have allowed a coerced confession.

There's some reading material I've linked previously regarding the fact that not all false confessions are coerced. And despite that in at least one of Jessie's confessions the interview process is heavily tainted, I see his confessions as less coerced than voluntary, which is same dog, different leg.

It doesn't matter if he confessed to the pope, if it's false it's false.

 

[UdbCrzy2]

There's some reading material I've linked previously regarding the fact that not all false confessions are coerced. And despite that in at least one of Jessie's confessions the interview process is heavily tainted, I see his confessions as less coerced than voluntary, which is same dog, different leg.

It doesn't matter if he confessed to the pope, if it's false it's false.

Funny how his 'false' confession got a lot of things right especially considering that he had been drinking that night.

Also, you cannot forget the note Prosecutor received well after his conviction about him lying to police to throw them off and most importantly that 'they were going to blame a parent' for the murders.

Then to top it off, when they have a chance for a hearing they plea guilty just a couple of months before that. So, it's really over for them.

I cannot believe that they keep producing movie after movie and blaming the parents just like Misskelley said they would.

 

[kyleb]

Also worth noting is the earliest known incarnation of the blaming a parrent scheme, as told by Echols' jailmate Jesse Hurst less that three weeks after the three were arrested, which starts out:

jesse: he would always like, i’d say you, you know what happened
don’t you, you just saying you don’t, he would always say no i don’t
know what happened, i wasn’t there, then one night we got to
talking in my cell and i said you know what happened don’t you?
and he said yes i know and we got to talking he told me that

ridge: alright, your saying he, we are talking about damien?

jesse: damien, right, he said him and jason were in the woods and that
he saw jason kill one of the boys and he saw this boys, one of the
boys stepfathers, he had long blonde hair in a ponytail.

 

[Ausgirl]

Funny how his 'false' confession got a lot of things right especially considering that he had been drinking that night.

Well, sure. But it's a bit shortsighted to disallow for the -fact- that there were leading questions and coaching going on. And that he also got a lot of thing -wrong-.

I've already mentioned the scholarly article I linked, in which it's said that many solidly proven false confessions actually contain snippets of accurate information, even information the confessor should not have known unless guilty. These are people cleared soundly by DNA evidence. So how'd they come up with those details, if they ---weren't there---?

The article explains how. It's not convoluted. They simply overheard those details from various sources including police, were coached towards them, or surmised them because surmising them wasn't difficult to do.

Now, the note to the prosecutor is a different matter. I'll have to go ponder it carefully. You very well may have a good point, right there.

But I am, and remain, highly dubious about the veracity of those confessions.

 

[UdbCrzy2]

Also worth noting is the earliest known incarnation of the blaming a parrent scheme, as told by Echols' jailmate Jesse Hurst less that three weeks after the three were arrested, which starts out:

Wow!

It says in that document that Echols told him that the rape would not have showed up if the boys were already dead too.

I wonder about that - if damage would not show if the boys were already deceased when they were raped.

 

[kyleb]

I suspect you missread talk of there having been no anal rape, but if not please quote it here.

 

[Ausgirl]

I wonder about that - if damage would not show if the boys were already deceased when they were raped.

I wonder - how they continued to struggle after being raped, if they were already deceased.

 

[LordYAM]

according to the
Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong

most of the false confessions had info only the police knew. And you still didn't explain the rather obvious edit in the tape, or that they were asking leading questions. Given that Jesse was mentally handicapped (or at the very least very close too) I wouldn't be surprised if he honestly believed it. Beat it into his head (figuratively speaking) and they'd honestly think they were guilty.

Damian had issues, but the fact is they weren't the killers. The real reason that most people think they are guilty is because they are woefully unqualified to examine evidence, would rather believe that the police did their job right and that the right people were punished and that people of respectable backgrounds (Hobbs was from an economically comfortable background and certainly more of a respected member of the community than any of the WM3) would never do something so horrible, or are completely oblivious to the fact that false confessions can occur multiple times, that the state really can have its head up its own *advertiser censored* when it refuses to ever admit corruption (the dreyfus affair was a similar case when the military ignored blatantly obvious evidence to cover its own *advertiser censored*), or most importantly just do not have the qualifications to accurately assess evidence (I believe they were animal wounds because the people who conducted the test are more qualified experts than I can ever hope to be, while very few are willing to buy into the knife nonsense.

Trenchreynolds, blink on crime, and all those other sites that spout about their guilt are guilty of all of the above. They ignore nuance and go with the the more comforting idea that the police were competent, that the confession was simply a confession rather than a series of contradictory statements that could easily be explained as either desperation and confusion or lies that the individual believed due to the low intelligence, tiredness, desperation, and relative uncertainty.

At the end of the day, it's more comforting to think that they are guilty. It means that everything is hunky dory, and that the police were good wholesome people who were perfectly proper and confident in their jobs. Innocence means that there is a lot more murkiness and darkness, and it also means accepting some rather ugly truth about the justice system and society.

 

[kyleb]

And you still didn't explain the rather obvious edit in the tape

Were exactly can one find this edit you allude to?

 

[LordYAM]

There was at least one case where it stopped, and than when it picked up there was already someone speaking (they fast forwarded and cut out out part of the tape). the link i posted can pinpoint the exact spot (the part edited out was when the officer said "let's correct this" or something like that).

 

[Cappuccino]

Funny how his 'false' confession got a lot of things right especially considering that he had been drinking that night.

Also, you cannot forget the note Prosecutor received well after his conviction about him lying to police to throw them off and most importantly that 'they were going to blame a parent' for the murders.

Then to top it off, when they have a chance for a hearing they plea guilty just a couple of months before that. So, it's really over for them.

I cannot believe that they keep producing movie after movie and blaming the parents just like Misskelley said they would.

Michael Johnson's letter was sent to Brent Davis in October 1994. Long after it was public knowledge that JMB had been put forward as an alternative suspect by the defense. Which is one of several reasons why viewing Johnson's letter as in any way credible is a bit of a reach, to put it mildly.

 

[kyleb]

There was at least one case where it stopped, and than when it picked up there was already someone speaking (they fast forwarded and cut out out part of the tape). the link i posted can pinpoint the exact spot (the part edited out was when the officer said "let's correct this" or something like that).

OK this page you posted claims:

[[[ The following portion was cut out – Watergate Style – from the statement played for the jury. It is not yet known whether the jury had an accurate transcript that included the next, critical portion wherein Jessie is told they are “correcting” his statement ]]]

JESSIE: They were at the bottom.

RIDGE: On which side?

JESSIE: Memphis side

RIDGE: They were on the Memphis side.

JESSIE: I was on

RIDGE: Alright, we're going to correct that even further, that's the east side, Memphis side is the east side and you were standing at the top of the bank on the west side, were you looking down at what was going on?

JESSIE: I was looking down, and after I seen all of that, I took off

(“We're going to correct that”??? They’re not even TRYING to make this look like a legitimate interrogation! They switch the side of the creek he was on from BB to Memphis)

(Jessie leaves again and again he is guided to give more details after he says he left)



[[Tape omission / blank 20 seconds jumps to here]]

And while that provides a recording which does have that section and a bit more cut, it doesn't provide any evidence to support the claim that the jury was given such an edited recording, and the unedited recording is freely available at Callahan for anyone to listen to for themselves. Furthermore, "we're going to correct that" is in reference to clarifying the fact that the "Memphis side" which Misseklley identified as the side of the creek he was on is the "east side" as Ridge noted. There's no leading in that, Ridge didn't make the Memphis side of the creek the east side, that's just how it is, and the notion that Ridge identifying such a simple matter of fact is some foul play that was hidden from the jury is flatly absurd. The same goes for many of the other arguments further up that page, which is while I'd dismissed the page as nonsense long before you posted it here.

Michael Johnson's letter was sent to Brent Davis in October 1994. Long after it was public knowledge that JMB had been put forward as an alternative suspect by the defense. Which is one of several reasons why viewing Johnson's letter as in any way credible is a bit of a reach, to put it mildly.

Nonsense. If people stating publicly available information discredited them, nobody could be considered credible.

 

[Cappuccino]

Nonsense. If people stating publicly available information discredited them, nobody could be considered credible.

Michael Johnson's letter is not credible at all. And the continued attempts of some on the non side to pretend that it contains some foresight, some inside information, when it wasn't written till long after these very publicised trials were over is a tad pathetic.

 

[UdbCrzy2]

I suspect you missread talk of there having been no anal rape, but if not please quote it here.

I looked and cannot find the post here, but the poster was dismissing the rape because there wasn't enough penetration for them to think it was rape - no tearing.

 

[UdbCrzy2]

I wonder - how they continued to struggle after being raped, if they were already deceased.

I don't think I said that they did struggle especially if they were deceased.

I thought that the reason behind the boys being naked was sexual. In an earlier post somewhere on the WM3 threads recently someone said they didn't think there was any rape because there wasn't enough damage to the anus.

I looked for the post, but I didn't look at every post and it's not really important.

 

[UdbCrzy2]

Michael Johnson's letter was sent to Brent Davis in October 1994. Long after it was public knowledge that JMB had been put forward as an alternative suspect by the defense. Which is one of several reasons why viewing Johnson's letter as in any way credible is a bit of a reach, to put it mildly.

Yes, I agree the witness does seem to be a little all over the place, but this could be because of his source or the transcriber too. What really struck me as being weird is that he's blaming Mark Byers and that was one of the stars in the movies as being the perp. I understood this note to be before the movie.

That's what's weird about it, the note about blaming a parent just like Jessies note was before the movies were made.

I am just trying to use a little common sense here.