False Confessions & Interrogation Science | True Crime Case Study

[00:00:00]We're very excited to be here. We have um uh some things to show you visually that we obviously could not do in a podcast. We've also got um a very smart expert on false confessions here who I could talk to for hours about this. And in fact, we we've already done that, but we're going to do a bit more of it tonight. Um but um we're also going to take some of your questions at the end.

[00:00:23]Um, but I wanted to start first um with a story just because I like to do that.

[00:00:35]It's a true crime story about two brothers in Vermont in 1812, Jesse and Steven Bourne.

[00:00:45]Jesse and Steven Bourne did not like their brother-in-law.

[00:00:50]One day, the brother-in-law disappeared.

[00:00:53]The Bourne brothers became prime suspects.

[00:00:58]Witnesses began to say they'd heard the Bourne brothers threatened to kill their brother-in-law.

[00:01:04]Then items that purportedly belonged to the brother-in-law were found in the Bourne brothers seller.

[00:01:11]Then bones were discovered in the Bourne brothers field.

[00:01:16]The Bourne brothers were arrested. A jail house informant said one of the brothers confessed to him. And then Jesse and Steven Bourne both themselves confessed to authorities in detail. They described murdering their brother-in-law with a club, burying his body, and then excavating and moving the remains twice.

[00:01:44]The Bourne brothers were convicted.

[00:01:48]Steven Bourne was scheduled to be executed on January 28th, 1820.

[00:01:55]And that's when the brother-in-law arrived in town alive.

[00:02:01]The Bourne brothers had confessed to a murder that never happened.

[00:02:06]In retrospect, the signs were all there.

[00:02:08]The bones in the field were actually dog bones. The jailhouse informant had a powerful incentive to lie. The confessions from the Borne brothers did not match with known facts.

[00:02:23]But confessions are uniquely powerful as evidence goes. Most often we believe them as truth.

[00:02:34]And for a very long time, it took something like this to exonerate someone who had falsely confessed. A kind of miracle. The victim had to come back to life.

[00:02:47]The Bourne brothers case, it's the first known wrongful conviction in the United States, the two of them. They're also the first known false confessions in the United States.

[00:03:03]But for a long time, for many years, it seemed like false confessions like this were very rare, a kind of freak accident.

[00:03:11]From 1820, when the Bourne brothers were set free, were saved from execution.

[00:03:17]From 1820 to 1989, just 61 people in the US were exonerated after falsely confessing.

[00:03:25]That is 61 known false confessions in 169 years.

[00:03:32]And we stop at 1989 because that's the year another kind of miracle happened.

[00:03:38]The first DNA exoneration.

[00:03:43]In 1989, for the first time, a DNA test proves someone's innocence after they were convicted and freed them from prison.

[00:03:52]This red line marks uh a new era of exonerations.

[00:04:00]It was the beginning of groups like the Innocence Project.

[00:04:05]Since 1989, there had been over 3,300 exonerations.

[00:04:13]414 of those people falsely confessed.

[00:04:18]That is 414 known false confessions in just 34 years.

[00:04:24]For those 414 people, on average, 16 years passed between the day they were convicted and the day they were exonerated.

[00:04:35]Some of them were sentenced to death.

[00:04:38]About half of them were black.

[00:04:43]What's maybe most terrifying is that we really don't know the full extent of the problem. Is this 50% of the proven number? 414 confessions. Those were false confessions that were discovered and proven in court.

[00:05:01]But is 414 false confessions 5% of the true number or 50% of the true number?

[00:05:07]We just don't know.

[00:05:10]I think about the red line on this graph a lot. To me, it's a a boundary between two worlds.

[00:05:19]To the left of the line is a place of intuition and common sense, which tells us that no one would confess to a crime they didn't commit, especially something like a murder.

[00:05:30]To the right of the line is a growing body of unequivocal proof that our intuition is wrong. False confessions do happen and we believe them at an alarming rate.

[00:05:46]We now have more than 30 years of research and psychology on what causes people to falsely confess. And we have the lived experience of now hundreds of exoneres who can tell us firsthand how and why it happens.

[00:06:01]But what does all this mean for people who are in prison today who claim they're there because of a false confession that was maybe taken on this side of the line before the explosion in our knowledge took place in the second season of Bearbrook? We asked that question in the case of Jason Carroll.

[00:06:26]This is Jason here um at around 17 or 18 with a necklace and um his mug shot which was taken at age 19 when he was arrested in 1989. Just as that revolution in our knowledge of false confessions was beginning, Jason Carroll confesses to the murder of Sharon Johnson. It is the only evidence against him.

[00:06:52]Jason recantss his confession, but police, prosecutors, judges, and eventually jurors believe it. Jason's convicted, and he remains in prison to this day, where he maintains his innocence with the support of the New England Innocence Project.

[00:07:16]Today, Jason's lawyers argue that if you look at his confession through a modern lens, the confession that once damned him actually becomes evidence of his innocence.

[00:07:29]Are they right?

[00:07:32]Well, it helps to understand just what it is we've learned about false confessions in the last 30 years. And that's what I'm excited to talk about tonight with Butler University professor of psychology and expert on confession testimony, Fabiana Alcest.

[00:07:49][Applause] Thanks for coming all this way, Fabi. Of >> course. Thank you for having me.

[00:08:00]>> Um, could you explain a little bit more about your background, what it is you do?

[00:08:05]>> Sure. Uh, so I'm a psychology professor at Butler University in Indianapolis.

[00:08:10]Uh, when I was an undergrad, I got a double major in psychology and criminology. Uh, and then I moved on to a PhD at John J College of Criminal Justice in New York City, uh, in psychology. So, I teach classes in psychology, basic, you know, psychological statistics and things like that. But I do a lot of research, experimental and survey research on uh police interrogation tactics and false confessions.

[00:08:39]>> And you're also occasionally tap to testify in in trials as an expert on false confessions, right?

[00:08:44]>> That's right. I've done that a couple of times.

[00:08:47]>> What made you want to do this?

[00:08:49]>> Um it it's actually kind of a funny story. Uh I had a friend in my undergraduate uh class or in a linguistics class that I took and we really liked each other. we wanted to uh keep taking classes together. He signed up for psychology of law and I signed up for psychology and law which are two different classes at the University of Florida. Um and first day we were ready and oops Ian's not here. Uh so I ended up taking psychology and law with a psychologist who was teaching in the criminology department and uh fell in love like from the moment I sat down in her class. Um, we learned about the way that eyewitnesses remember seeing things uh when they witness a crime. We learned about how juries make decisions, what happens when people come together and they are all listening to the same thing, but they're not all making decisions in the same way. Uh, and we learned about what happens in interrogation rooms when you have a suspect in front of you and you need to know whether or not they they did this.

[00:09:55]Um, we learned about false confessions.

[00:09:57]We learned about American interrogation tactics and I could simply could not believe the way that many of my students now simply cannot believe what is allowed in an interrogation room in the United States. Uh and I learned about false confessors and I read some of their profiles and just could not I could not allow it to stand. So I did a little bit of uh research with her and the rest is kind of history.

[00:10:24]>> Yeah. Now you're in podcasts. And now I'm on a podcast, The Dream.

[00:10:29]>> Well, let's talk about false confessions. Um, there's a lot of places to start, but one thing that has always fascinated me um about them is that they they are stories that people tell.

[00:10:40]They're not just these simple admissions of guilt like, okay, I did it. They're like they're stories. They're detailed narratives. And I thought um for all of us it would be helpful to actually illustrate this by looking at an actual proven false confession. So we're going to do that now. We'll come back to Jason Carroll's case later, but for now we're going to talk about the confession and interrogation of Hugh Burton, which if you listen to this season 2, you'll remember that name. Uh Hugh confessed the same year as Jason, 1989. He was 16 years old. He got home from school one day and he found his mother Kazaya Burton murdered in their home in the Bronx and within a few days the the police were accusing him of the murder. Um it's a a nightmare that's hard to imagine. Uh police bring Hugh to the station. They interrogate him alone until the early hours of the morning and it culminates in in this confession that we're going to watch a bit of. And I just want to say before we watch this clip, we are showing it here with Hugh's permission.

[00:11:44]Um, so let's watch this. It's about two minutes long and then we'll talk about it.

[00:11:49]>> Okay. Understanding all your rights as I've explained them. Now, do you want to tell me what happened on the, uh, day of January 3rd, 1989?

[00:11:58]>> Starting from the morning.

[00:12:00]>> Yes. Starting from the morning.

[00:12:01]>> All right. Well, uh, start from the night before. Okay.

[00:12:05]>> All right. My mother, we're having an argument and she's telling me there some, you know, some things you should have did that I didn't do.

[00:12:13]and we were arguing about that. So, she let the argument cease and I went to sleep. I got back up in the morning about 7:20 and picked up the argument again.

[00:12:29]This time I was getting ready for school and she was still arguing. We were by we were in the back back where my room my father's room is at.

[00:12:40]At this time was stimulated on drugs and didn't really know what I was doing.

[00:12:50]So was arugging with me.

[00:12:54]I went in, I got a knife from the kitchen.

[00:12:58]I came back into the room where she was at and she noticed knife in my hand and she asked me what was I doing with it and said was, you know, was I going to kill her? And I said, "And if I was," she went to smack me and I moved. And as I moved, I went, I stabbed my mother in the neck.

[00:13:20]She fell onto the bed.

[00:13:22]I realized what I did. And you know, I went into the bathroom to wipe the knife off. I wiped it off, put the toilet, put the paper in the toilet, flushed the toilet, came back in.

[00:13:37]and so on and um dropped a knife.

[00:13:42]I try to make it seem as if it was a rape or something else rather than what happened. So I removed one of our bottom garments and I wrapped a blue telephone cord around our right wrist.

[00:14:00]So Bobby, we know this is a false confession.

[00:14:05]You're familiar with this case. you see in this video. Um, this is a very detailrich narrative. There's dialogue, there's movements, there's specific actions. If this is a this is a false story and we know it is, where does all that detail come from? How does that story get created?

[00:14:24]Well, if we know it's not coming from Hugh's memory because this is an event that never happened the way that he explained it, the only other source is from the interrogating officers, right?

[00:14:37]Uh and so this phenomenon of leaking these specific and accurate crime details during an interrogation, we call this contamination. The interrogators basically contaminated Hugh's memory and knowledge of what their what their investigation found, maybe what their theory was. Um, and something specific to Hugh's case, which does happen in other cases, is this is not a spontaneous confession, right? They didn't question him for 5 minutes and then turn the videotape on. They questioned him for hours and within that time he is learning and learning and internalizing all of these details that the police are dropping one by one in their questions, correcting him when he gets something wrong. Uh, you know, objecting when he says that he didn't do it. And finally, when Hugh and other, this happens all the time, but when Hugh in this specific case gave a confession, well, that first confession probably wasn't good enough. The cops can't go to their the prosecutor with that first confession. So, what do they do? They Okay, let's try it one more time. Let's go over all the details. Try one more time. One more time. It's a rehearsal.

[00:15:54]It's like it's lights, camera, action, right? You you rehearse. You figure out what you're going to say. you get your story straight and then that's when okay, let's set it up. Let's get the camera on. Let's put this nice clock in front of you. Uh, and that's when the camera turns on. And that is the only thing that gets recorded. So, of course, a jury, that's the only thing they see.

[00:16:15]They don't see the contamination. They don't see the rehearsal, but that's where all of that is coming from.

[00:16:20]>> Yeah. Well, there's actually another clip we have that I think illustrates well um clues of that rehearsal taking place. So, let's let's hear another one.

[00:16:30]of these clips. This is Hugh actually describing to the district attorney um oh sorry this is this is Hugh des um describing a different part of the uh the confession and listen you can hear in the specific um uh words he's using.

[00:16:49]Just listen carefully in this clip. I then came back upstairs after I went down and got my things for school and I left then proceeded up East Chester Road to Boston Road and got on the 30 bus 7:45 750 got to school about 8:05 I went through for first through the end of 7th period and then had a conversation around school few of my friends proceeded northward up Bronxwood to come home.

[00:17:28]Reached home about 2:47 in the afternoon.

[00:17:36]>> What do you What do you hear in there?

[00:17:39]>> I hear a lot of words that normal 16-year-olds don't use. I proceeded northward.

[00:17:45]I've never heard anyone other than a police officer say that. Uh, in the previous one he says, "I removed her undergarments." Nobody talks about their mother's underwear like that. Um, that's all the police language that presumably was incorporated into his questioning that he is now paring back in the recorded confession.

[00:18:08]>> Hugh is, you know, he's only 16 in this interrogation, this confession. How much of a of a factor is that?

[00:18:17]Well, it's kind of easy to think about how minors are susceptible to a lot of things that maybe adults wouldn't be susceptible to. False confessions and police interrogations are not really a thing that only vulnerable people are uh are more vulnerable to give a a confession. Um, everyone has everyone is vulnerable to the process of an interrogation. Everyone is vulnerable to the pressure that this kind of situation creates. But adolescents and minors are even more vulnerable, right? So adolescence are socialized from birth to obey authority figures. Um, yes ma'am, no ma'am, may I please go to the restroom? They are socialized that the authority figure is in the room, the adult is the person that you need to listen to and you have to obey them.

[00:19:12]Um, that's just socially.

[00:19:15]Additionally, adolescence are less likely than adults to know what their rights are and to know how legal processes work. A lot of adults don't know how legal processes work.

[00:19:26]Adolescence even less so.

[00:19:28]Neurologically, there's a lot of research showing that the developmental processes that develop as you get older, some of them develop in different ways.

[00:19:37]So for example, the cognitive processes that help you develop your restraint, your decision-m, your judgment, those kinds of uh like logical cognitive thinking processes develop in a linear fashion. So when you're 16, you're better at doing that than when you're 10. When you're 10, you're better at doing that than when you're five. But the social emotional processes develop a little bit differently. When you're a child, there are things that motivate you, but social and emotional rewards, physical rewards are not necessarily the thing that's going to get you there.

[00:20:15]When you're 15, 16, 17 years old, you're at the peak of the sensitivity that you feel for those emotional rewards, right?

[00:20:24]16-year-old is going to be much more motivated by some kind of social fast acting reward than uh a 5-year-old. and additionally than a 25-year-old. Right?

[00:20:36]So those social co social emotional processes develop in this inverted U-shaped pattern while the cognitive processes are in this linear pattern. At adolescence, you have not yet fully developed the cognitive kind of uh impulse restraint development like uh skills that you need in order to perhaps not give a false confession. and you are at the peak of your vulnerability to, hey, I need to get out of here right now. So, I'm going to do something that perhaps is not in my best interest right now uh or in the long run, but it is in my best interest right now because I need to get out of here. So, those short-sighted decision-making uh strategies, those impulsive uh behaviors are really flooded. the the cognitive skills are just are no match for that risk-seeking and that uh impulsive behavior that is at the peak in adolescence.

[00:21:35]>> It's interesting to think about adolescence as a even as a particularly vulnerable time like you're even more vulnerable then than maybe you would be when you're younger a younger child.

[00:21:44]>> Yes.

[00:21:45]>> I want to I want to ask it what about the interrogation practices? How does that play into uh what we're talking about? you know, the the ways that police have been trained to interrogate.

[00:21:58]What why is what do we know about that and why is that important when it comes to false confessions?

[00:22:03]>> We know a lot about the uh interrogation tactics that are used in the United States. You can just buy police interrogation training manuals um anywhere. Uh so it's not exactly a secret. Um, American interrogation tactics are basically uh the cornerstone of them are two interrogation tactics that work in tandem together. One is called maximization and one is called minimization. Maximization tactics are designed to make it really really difficult for a suspect to continue to deny their involvement in the crime. So, these are things like confronting the suspect with a really aggressive accusation, confronting them with evidence of their guilt, whether that evidence is real or not real. Um, doing things like communicating how harshly they will be punished if they do not cooperate with the police. So, things that make it really difficult to deny your involvement in a crime.

[00:23:03]Minimization is the opposite side of that coin where uh now we're making it easier. We're reducing people's anxiety associated with giving a confession. Uh so minimization specifically is providing the suspect with some kind of moral face- saving justification for why they may have committed the crime.

[00:23:24]You're not a bad person. It was a spur-of-the- moment situation. You didn't plan this in cold blood. You know, you were just doing what anyone else would have done. you were peer pressured into this. It was an accident.

[00:23:35]They love the accident theme. Uh because we don't prosecute people for accidents.

[00:23:39]We don't treat people the same way when they have committed an error than when they have planned to commit, you know, a deviant act. So using minimization and maximization together, making it harder for people to deny, making it easier for them to confess. We know this from anecdotes. We know it from archival studies. We know it from observational studies. And importantly, we know it from experimental studies in the lab.

[00:24:03]Using these two tactics together increases the risk of a false confession from an innocent person.

[00:24:11]>> I want to I want to talk about the way that minimization specifically can also lead people to draw certain uh inferences or conclusions about the consequences. But there's another um excerpt of Hugh's um confession that I think really gets to this. So, why don't we watch it first and then we'll talk about it. So, this is Hugh um in his confession actually describing to the district attorney um how the police treated him during the interrogation.

[00:24:41]>> Finally, treated me with respect and understanding to my situation and they gave me all the help they could and they assured me that I would be help. They said, "We're going to get rid of your problem." They said, "We're going to help you get back on your right track."

[00:24:54]They told me, they said, "Just, you know, tell us everything you know." And they said, "Tomorrow."

[00:25:01]So, you start over fresh and we'll start getting you help from there.

[00:25:07]So, I told them everything I knew.

[00:25:11]>> So, we're going to get rid of your problem. We're going to get you back on the right track.

[00:25:18]Tell us what you know tomorrow you start over fresh. What what is it seems obvious but how is this you know impacting Hugh's um calculations about what is in his interest?

[00:25:33]>> He's taking these minimization tactics at face value. So he is believing them when they say we're here to help you.

[00:25:43]And the implication is you need to help us first, right? we need we need something from you and then we will be able to get you to start over fresh. So police are not allowed to explicitly say things like if you confess to this crime we will give you a lower sentence. That is even the courts agree that is coercive and any confession elicited under those circumstances would be thrown out. Um but we don't always need something to be that explicit for us to take meaning from it. Um, and this is called pragmatic implication. We infer information from conversations that that we have with people that are more than just explicitly what is said. Actually, you know what? Does anyone have a pen?

[00:26:32]Does anyone have a pen?

[00:26:34]>> Thank you so much.

[00:26:37]>> Why did you give me this pen?

[00:26:40]>> Did I ask you for a pen?

[00:26:44][Music] I said, "Does anyone have a pen?" Thank you so much.

[00:26:53]>> That is not an explicit request for a pen. It's merely is there is the presence of a pen somewhere here in this room, but any neurotypical person would understand that to be a request for a pen. That is how these minimization tactics work. Tomorrow we're going to get you a fresh start. Tomorrow everything is going to be better. Right?

[00:27:17]That's not an explicit, hey, if you confess, we're going to make sure that you get a lower sentence. But that is the meaning that he was extracting from that tactic. It's a tactic. Police are trained to do this. This is not a sincere offer. Um, >> and it works.

[00:27:35]>> And it works.

[00:27:37]>> You got the pen >> and it's legal.

[00:27:41]Um, >> thank you.

[00:27:43]>> So, we just watched Hugh confess at 16.

[00:27:47]He's now in his 50s. And I I think it's important just to hear a little bit about um how Hugh describes the experience today looking back. So, this is um this is a bit of what Hugh um told me about the experience when we spoke last year.

[00:28:02]>> The more I told them I didn't, the more they told me um you did. and you know this is the only way that this is going to work for you. We know that uh you know you didn't mean to do this. We knew this this was an accident but you need to tell us the truth. Um I'm still telling them no I I didn't commit this crime. I didn't commit this crime. I you know I didn't do anything to my mom.

[00:28:26]They then began to tell me that look just tell us that you committed this crime because again we know this was an accident. Um, and if you do, we'll take you to family court where your dad can come and pick you up and you can put all of this behind you. So, when they started to suggest that this is the only way that this is going to work because um you you're going to go to jail for this one way or not, when they started talking that language, now your your mind says, "Okay, well, you have to trust them."

[00:29:03]It's interesting when you you the people that you look at as authority figures, you know, you're taught to respect them and you you get to a point where you want you're almost trying to do the best that you can to make sure that you appease them and and that it's done right. Even with my confession, after we're going over it and over and over, in my mind, I'm saying I have to do it right. If I want to just go to family court and see my dad, that's the only way that I'm going to be released is by doing this thing that they're asking me to do properly.

[00:29:36]>> I mean, you can the you know, hearing you describe it in advance. It's so obvious in there the maximization tactics, you know, deni cutting off his his denials, the minimization that we just saw a bit. The thing that really interests me about that is this idea that he had as a kid that he needed to um perform well for them. He wanted to do a good a good job for them. I mean, do do you think that is specifically connected to his age and his adolescence or is this I don't know is it does that apply more broadly with these with these tactics?

[00:30:09]>> I think it's absolutely related to his age. Um but I think it's also part of the implication, right?

[00:30:17]I need something that I can take to my prosecutor. That's how I can make this bargain for you. And if you do that, right, then we'll see how it goes from there. Maybe that is the explicit language, but what you take to mean from that is I will I will be released.

[00:30:32]Right? And the number one reason that minors give when minors give a false confession and then they're exonerated, uh the number one reason, well, why why did you do that? Why did you confess to something you didn't do? I thought I was gonna get to go home. That is the number one thing in their mind that they're thinking, well, if I do this right, this person has my best interest in mind.

[00:30:55]They're threatening me with this, but they're also saying that they're going to help me. I thought I was going to get to go home.

[00:31:01]>> Really short-term interest.

[00:31:03]>> Short-term, very myopic, short-sighted decision-making.

[00:31:07]>> Yeah.

[00:31:08]>> Yeah.

[00:31:09]>> Um, Hugh Hugh Burton was exonerated in 2019, as you know. Um, and one of the reasons that um, I wanted to include Hugh's story in Bear Brook season 2 was because of how he was exonerated. Um, it was on the one hand the cumulative weight of of a few things. There was prosecutorial misconduct in his case uh, withheld evidence, a Brady violation.

[00:31:33]Um, the same detectives who had interrogated Hugh had also extracted a false confession in another case. But there was this third thing that really interested me about the way Hugh was exonerated and that was um an argument that made it into the the legal briefs and and um was was endorsed by the judge which was basically that our new understanding bas you know everything we've learned on on on our side of that red line is in itself new evidence in a confession case like this. And according to the the clinic at Northwestern that worked on use case, that was the first time that argument had been accepted by a judge.

[00:32:15]Um I just wonder like what you make of that. Is that a is that a hopeful sign that courts are beginning to catch up to the research and um we're all, you know, the scales are falling from all of our eyes and and and hope is on the horizon.

[00:32:29]I mean, what do you what do you think?

[00:32:33]>> Um, within the system of how expert testimony works, there are very specific rules as to who is allowed to testify, who is considered an expert and what fields are considered scientific enough to qualify under this kind of expert testimony. Um, confessions experts were generally not a thing for a long time because the field was not considered scientific enough to be scientific evidence that an expert could testify to. Uh, that is now changing. Now we do have experts who can testify. Judges are, you know, parts of they're they're taking part in conviction integrity units. um these law clinics and the innocence project are reaching a wider audience where people like you are now being educated. you can put the pressure on your local uh court to hey you know what this is something that's happening the you know so it's coming from a lot of places but I think the science really being there and it being a rigorous science that follows the scientific method gets published in scientific journals I think that is really one of the things that judges are responding to because it fits with the definition of other science that has been allowed to admit expert testimony.

[00:33:59]>> Well, I I I know it's the kind of um expert testimony and and um evidence that Jason Carroll's um team would love to bring to his case in New Hampshire.

[00:34:09]So, why don't we we'll go back to Jason Carroll's case, um just by way of a brief refresher, Jason was convicted of murder in 1992. Um here he is um when he was arrested at 19. Um, here's what Jason looks like these days.

[00:34:27]He's in the in the state prison. He's 53 years old. Um, he's a very large guy.

[00:34:34]He's spent a lot of those years in prison lifting weights.

[00:34:39]Um, Jason of course was convicted of murdering Sharon Johnson in 1988.

[00:34:46]This is Sharon. Uh this um the photo uh on the left there is from um high school years and this the other photo was actually in the um evidence box at the courthouse.

[00:35:00]Um Sharon was an engineer by training.

[00:35:04]She was a mother. She was pregnant with her second child when she died. And um honestly everyone I spoke to said she was an extraordinary person. um a good friend, a mentor, someone apparently known for cracking dirty jokes that I like really will never repeat, like dirty jokes. Um police u suspected her husband in the murder, Ken Johnson, and they uh that's Ken uh above my head.

[00:35:34]And they eventually developed this theory that Ken hired two teenagers, Tony Puff, that's Tony there, and of course Jason Carol to kill Sharon. Um Jason and Tony were interrogated separately and after long interrogations, they each confessed to the murder. Uh they both recanted their confessions shortly afterwards.

[00:35:57]Tony and Jason were tried separately.

[00:35:59]Tony was found not guilty. Jason was convicted and Ken was never tried.

[00:36:07]So, why does anyone think Jason is innocent if he confessed? Well, um we'll just recap a few of the reasons. His attorneys and others maintain his confession is is not reliable. Um we can start with the murder weapon.

[00:36:21]Um this is the actual alleged murder weapon, Jason's pocketk knife.

[00:36:26]Um it has a blade that measures 2 and 1/8 in. Um, the medical examiner when he performed the autopsy on Sharon's body estimated the length of the blade used to kill her was at least 4 in long.

[00:36:40]Another um problem that uh Jason's team would point to is that Jason could not identify who Ken Johnson was in a photo lineup.

[00:36:50]So Ken Johnson is Sharon's husband who police say paid Jason to commit the murder. Jason says in his confession that Ken was present at the murder, participated in the murder. They ask Jason who is Ken. He tells them it's number five and in fact number two is Ken.

[00:37:09]Uh and then they also they have Jason draw these diagrams of the scene and they're um well we'll show show them to you in a bit, but first these are the this is the act this is the police diagram of the scene and this is a aerial photograph of the scene. um if if it helps the the pond in the upper right hand corner of the photograph and if you find that in the police sketch that can kind of help you get your bearings. This rural construction site with one road going into it and Sharon's body was found is just sort of at the edge of the pond. So that's what it actually looked like after Jason confesses they have him draw these diagrams of the scene.

[00:37:48]And I I don't really know what to say about these other than um they don't really tell you much. Um there's no pond for one thing. Uh he labels a road that's not actually by this the site. Um there's a foundation or there's a box that he labels foundation that is not there. There's no there's no open foundation at the scene.

[00:38:12]So these are the sorts of problems that um that people would point to among others. Um Jason was interrogated for at least 13 and a half hours over a 4-day period. Um only about an hour and a half or 10% of that time was recorded.

[00:38:29]But one of the things the tapes do capture is that detail that usually stops people in their tracks when they first hear about this case. And that is the role that Jason's mother played.

[00:38:41]Jason's mother was a police officer in the town where Sharon's body was discovered. and she actively participated in the interrogation of her son. Um, I actually want to have us listen to a little bit of that and then we'll talk about it. Um, just be aware the audio quality of this tape is not great. So, the the transcript will be on the video. It'll be helpful to follow that along. So, this is Jason Carroll being questioned by state police detective Roland Lambie and his mother, Bedford Police Officer Karen Carroll.

[00:39:12]It's about two and a half minutes. The jury.

[00:39:15]>> The jury is listening.

[00:39:17]>> The jury is listening to you. You sound like a criminal, not a guy that made a terrible mistake.

[00:39:25]Sergeant, it's not that easy. I hope that you understand that.

[00:39:28]>> I understand it. Well, we're not going to It's not going to be just like to spread it out. I can't. I want you so much.

[00:39:35]>> Can't do it. I can't. Why can't you?

[00:39:37]What are you >> Are you freaking freaking scared? These guys are going to help you. We're not going to sit and jump on your ass and shoot you down.

[00:39:46]>> All right. I feel like I'm getting jumped on my ass and shut down now.

[00:39:49]>> We want the truth out of you.

[00:39:51]>> Nobody is going to be able to help you anymore until you come forth with all the information that they need.

[00:39:59]Do you think I'm going to love you anymore? I don't know.

[00:40:03]>> You might not.

[00:40:06]>> I don't know.

[00:40:07]>> And I'm going to stand by you through this.

[00:40:13]You are the link to save me to put Johnson and pops behind freaking >> if you put a knife If you put a knife in that woman.

[00:40:26]>> I want to know.

[00:40:29]>> You stabbed her, didn't you? Yes.

[00:40:32]>> How many times did you stab her?

[00:40:36]>> All right.

[00:40:38]You won't stop.

[00:40:41]Who else?

[00:40:43][Music] >> How many times?

[00:40:49]>> 20 stories.

[00:40:50]>> I don't know.

[00:40:53]>> Do you know if you know or don't you know?

[00:40:55]>> I don't know. Luckily, I don't know. I do not know. I know. I know. In the back, >> don't you?

[00:41:06]>> Who stabbed her in the back? Who stabbed her first? I do.

[00:41:13]>> And you know where that night is good. I know you know that night. I know you know that. If God is my judge, I know you know that.

[00:41:23]>> Did you bring them to our house?

[00:41:26]>> I brought today. You do that for us and I'll believe you. We'll get off here.

[00:41:31]>> Where are they now? Tell me.

[00:41:34]>> He knows where they are.

[00:41:35]>> Where are they, Jason?

[00:41:36]>> He knows.

[00:41:37]>> Tell me where they are. You go back.

[00:41:40]>> Tell me where they at.

[00:41:41]>> They were destroyed by >> No.

[00:41:43]>> Where?

[00:41:45]>> Where?

[00:41:46]>> I don't I put them out. You went out to the pit.

[00:41:50]>> What pit?

[00:41:51]>> The airport. They were destroyed.

[00:41:58]>> Yeah, that never gets easier to listen to. Um um by the way, those beeps that you heard in there, those were put in not by us, but by state police when they released the tape a couple of years ago.

[00:42:09]They were they were trying to redact information that identified anyone other than the defendant per their reading of New Hampshire's public records law, but we have the unredacted transcripts of what was said, so we know what's underneath those beeps. And that was that was in the the transcript that you saw. So, just wanted to point that out.

[00:42:30]I mean, I don't even know where to start uh with with what you just heard, but um what what jumps out at you?

[00:42:38]>> I mean, did you you heard all of you heard everything we've been talking about, right? You heard we're going to you know, we're going to help you. You're the key to solving all of this. I know that, you know, that's that aggressive confrontation, the accusation. Um yeah, not the least of which that a lot of this is coming from his own mother. Um so people have mixed thoughts about her and about her role in this. Um parents are usually not effective advocates for their children during interrogations. That's a little counterintuitive. Um and as a parent it might be easy to think like I'm the person that can advocate for my child the best. But adults, just like teenagers, are not aware of legal processes. They they are also prone to believe at face value the things that the police tell them. Um these tactics of, you know, we're going to be able to help you. I think they offered immunity or something. They said that >> there was the allegation that Yeah. the detective told his mom. Yeah. So she also believed that she also believed just like Jason did that these folks who came in from out of town to do this case, Sergeant Lambie, they were going to act in Jason's best interest and the people that they were really after were someone else, not Jason. And that Jason just had to help and then everything would be resolved. And Jason fell for it and so did his mom. Um, and I think that's >> Do you think you could think of it like that? Like like they were both um, you know, and we can't obviously we can't say if this is a false confession.

[00:44:28]We can't be definitive about this, but if it was, >> do you think it's accurate to say that both Jason and his mother were both falling victim to the same um, pitfalls and tactics in false confession sort of sort of together like simultaneously?

[00:44:42]like they were both being coerced into this confession at the same time.

[00:44:47]>> Well, if we think about it from the perspective of there's a authority figure and there's the person who is being questioned.

[00:44:57]This Sergeant Lambie has rank pulls rank over the mother. So yes, she is also a police officer, but she's not a sergeant. This other person is a sergeant. He's the one that's making all of these promises. So, yeah, I think he duped both of them.

[00:45:14]>> Let's talk a little bit about the um contamination in in Jason's um interrogations and his confessions because it's it's one of the few um uh threads you can follow to try to to to find clues of whether or not this is a a false confession. So, I want to have us look at an excerpt of that same interrogation we were just listening to.

[00:45:37]um because there were multiple with Jason, but this is the same one with his mom yelling at him. This is at the very end of the interrogation.

[00:45:44]Um this is after Jason has admitted to stabbing Sharon. And in this portion, um Lambie is asking him, "Well, what about the rings that were on her hand? You haven't told us about that. Why didn't you tell us about that?" Jason says, "Wait, I didn't know anything about rings being on our hands." And Lambie tells him, "Well, they were on our hands. Who took them off? You were there. Think clearly. Think clearly now.

[00:46:06]They were found on the ground. Who took them off and why were they off? And it's I think it's pretty safe to assume in this next few lines here he's talking to someone else in the room. Do we have a picture of that? Can we show him that?

[00:46:18]Have we got a picture of of the crime scene that we can show Jason to show him the rings that are on the ground?

[00:46:26]Is this the kind of red flag that you would look for in a in a confession case as a as this a clear evidence of of contamination?

[00:46:35]>> Yes. So his first interrogation was not recorded. So there's a bunch of time that the police spent with him saying >> six hours.

[00:46:44]>> Yeah. Saying who knows what. So >> it's possible that he brought up the rings first and that would be a cue that he has guilty knowledge um because he said something spontaneously on his own independently that matched the crime scene. If this is the first time that the rings are being mentioned, then there's no way for us to say whether or not he knew about the rings before they brought up this detail because now that knowledge has been it has either been contaminated or it hasn't and he already knew about them. He just didn't talk about them first. Right? So if it is the case that this is the very first time the rings are being brought up, that's evidence of at least the potential for a contamination. Yes.

[00:47:31]>> And it's sort of I guess it kind of uses up that detail in terms of its um usefulness in determining whether or not he had prior knowledge, >> right? Because once you put it into a question, now it's already out in the room and it now you now you'll never know if it came from the detective or from his from his prior memory.

[00:47:49]>> Exactly.

[00:47:50]>> Yeah. It with a lot of Jason's uh uh interrogation or his confessions, it seems like that's where the mystery lies. You're trying to like trace the the origin of every detail. Where did it come from first? Did it come from Jason?

[00:48:02]Did it come from the from the police?

[00:48:04]With this one, I think you can you can trace a kind of interesting uh lineage just between this interrogation and the next one. So, um let's first let's listen to a bit of his next interrogation. So, two days later, Jason's interrogated again. This interrogation's very different. Jason's calm. His answers are um short and efficient. It actually it it as far as the mood goes, it feels a lot more like that video we watched with Hugh. So, let's let's take a listen to the next interrogation of Jason Carroll.

[00:48:38]>> Right from the top again, Jason, when were you first contacted?

[00:48:45]>> July 27th, 1988.

[00:48:47]>> To do what?

[00:48:49]>> Kill Sharon Johnson.

[00:48:51]>> By whom?

[00:48:52]>> Tony Puff.

[00:48:54]>> What was discussed?

[00:48:56]amount of money I would be getting paid for the place where and how it would be done.

[00:49:03]>> And what were those amounts and places and information?

[00:49:07]>> The place was the pit out here in Bedford amount of $5,000 and she was to be stabbed and choked.

[00:49:17]>> I mean, just take it from the top. I mean, that's >> I don't how strongly can we say it? I mean, is that a sign that it's been rehearsed? Is is that a is that a red flag, I guess, is the way to ask it?

[00:49:31]>> It is a red flag. Yes. So, when do you say, "Let's take it again from the top when you've already taken it from the top, right? You've already we've already been through this. Let's do it one more time." That's the part that gets recorded. Also, this a sum of $5,000.

[00:49:46]Sum of That sounds very That doesn't sound very spontaneous adolescent language, right?

[00:49:52]>> A little preceded northward. Um yes little proceeded northern.

[00:49:55]>> Yeah.

[00:49:56]>> Well um one thing about the second interrogation that is interesting to get back to the rings is that in the second this second recorded interrogation the rings are are now like firmly a part of Jason's story. And we can actually show this with we have some of the the transcripts from both the interrogation with his mom which is on the 25th and then the really calm one which is the 27th.

[00:50:19]And so this is what we looked at before and this is what they're asking when they're asking about the rings this time. And he almost um uses almost the same language that we're lying they were lying on the ground.

[00:50:33]>> But this is the kind of detail where where at this point it's useless, right?

[00:50:36]We can't we can't know if this is this isn't bringing us closer to the truth of the confession or the or the falsy of the confession because of the way they introduce the information in the question. Right.

[00:50:47]>> Right. There's no way for us to say that detail about the rings lying on the ground are coming from Jason's memory from when he committed the crime.

[00:50:55]There's no way for us to say that with any degree of certainty because the rings were brought up and the location of the rings were brought up, not by Jason himself.

[00:51:06]>> Um, this is right why it's so important to record interrogations, right? Yes.

[00:51:12]>> I mean, that's am I right? That's the basically the number one recommendation.

[00:51:17]um by by people in your field, right?

[00:51:20]>> Yes. Apart from now like we are introducing legislation that is getting passed in several states um to disallow the use of course of interrogation tactics like lying about evidence. Uh apart from that kind of thing, the video recording of the full interview and interrogation along with the confession is one of the number one uh recommendations for sure >> because it seems to me without that record of of sort of the the genealogy of each detail, it it it can feel kind of hopeless to know. Well, it actually it makes it makes confessions seem actually not that useful.

[00:51:58]>> Yeah. because um you don't you don't know where all these details are coming from given what we now know about what can occur which is um a very different place from where we started with confession evidence you know say even 30 or 40 years ago where a confession was like the best kind of evidence you could get it was the gold standard you know confession means case closed now it's like a confession without a full documentation is a lot um squishier here >> to you and me >> maybe to a jury maybe not to a judge to prosecutor.

[00:52:38]>> Why not? Why why why does the why do confessions like still hold so much sway?

[00:52:45]>> Because almost nobody believes that they would confess to a crime that they didn't commit.

[00:52:51]So when someone tries to make that argument, oh well no, this is a false confession. People do not buy it and it's because they don't know everything that happened to lead up to that confession. They only know the confession at the end. They don't know what minimization is. They don't know what maximization is. They don't know what contamination is like you do now.

[00:53:12]It's just not common knowledge. So, I'm glad to hear you make the assessment that a confession without all of the parts that we need to scrutinize it the way that we scrutinize other pieces of evidence is not worth very much because I don't think that is the public perception.

[00:53:34]you you once uh uh told me that psychologists had already figured this out in a broader sense of why people don't believe in things like false confessions.

[00:53:45]>> Um the the um I'm forgetting the term >> the fundamental attribution.

[00:53:50]>> Yes, thank you. I knew you would remember.

[00:53:52]>> Say that again. What is it?

[00:53:54]>> It's called the fundamental attribution error.

[00:53:56]>> What is that? This is a theory that comes from social psychology that basically says when you're trying to think of an explanation for another person's behavior. You watch a person do something and you ask yourself why did they do that which is something we are doing all the time every day. You are trying you're coming up with an explanation and that explanation is called an attribution. You're trying to attribute their behavior to something.

[00:54:19]When you do that for other people, you are more likely to attribute the cause of their behavior to be something stable about them, a characteristic or personality trait that is about them.

[00:54:31]When you are trying to attribute a cause of your own behavior, now you are looking outward to the situation and you do take into account all of the circumstances that have acted on your behavior. So, if you have a colleague at work who has shown up late to work three times this week, so lazy, right? They don't have their their stuff together. They're very disorganized.

[00:54:57]Uh, you know, they're they're not responsible. Those are all personal.

[00:55:03]Those are all personal dispositional explanations for the behavior.

[00:55:07]>> The last time you were late to work, why was that? I have a child who doesn't like to get up in the morning and I have to take them to school. Um, there was a traffic jam. The train wasn't working.

[00:55:19]My cat knocked my alarm clock off of my, you know, situations. You never say, "I'm lazy. I'm disorganized." You now are capable of looking at how the circumstances that you are that you are at the mercy of do influence your behavior. But we don't always do that with when when we're trying to attribute causes to other people's behavior. So, tying it back to interrogations, when someone says, "I did this. I took off her rings. I stabbed her." Whatever.

[00:55:51]We're attributing that confession to he's guilty.

[00:55:55]And not to he spent how many hours in an interrogation? He is was subject to all of these different interrogation tactics who have made grown men and women and people of all you know intellectual degrees. It's doesn't have it's not only people who are who have these special vulnerabilities. All of these things could make a regular average person confess but we don't see that. We just see this person is guilty. They're a bad person.

[00:56:27]They're a criminal. And you can even hear in one of the previous ones that we heard, he says, "You sound like a criminal. You don't sound like a person who made a mistake.

[00:56:37]>> You sound like someone who is inherently bad, not someone who was in a bad situation.

[00:56:44]>> Well, I want to leave time for questions." So, I'm just going to have one more question for you, Pab. Um I I think it's really important to point out in these um these situations that most of the time the detectives taking the interrogations do not understand or believe that they are taking a false confession. Right? They are acting in good faith. They think they're getting a a a guilty person, which I think is such an important um aspect to the um this discussion. This is not about like um people with malevolence going out and like haha we tricked that guy into confessing to murder. Like they really think they're doing the right the right thing.

[00:57:27]>> I just does how much harder does that make it to to stop this to change the the the way we teach and train uh interrogation tactics. It's a cultural thing, right?

[00:57:41]>> Yes. It's a deeply rooted cultural thing. And this is another ability there another opportunity for us to practice not engaging in the fundamental attribution error. Right? These are not bad people doing bad things.

[00:57:53]>> These are people who are doing what they have been trained to do.

[00:57:58]>> They're they go to trainings. They get >> that's their that's the detective situation, right? Yeah. Like you said, these are not malev for the most part, these are not malevolent people out to get this 19-year-old. They probably really thought that he had something to do with it. And the way that the that American interrogation techniques train you to carry out an investigation is once you believe that a person is guilty for whatever reason you have come to that conclusion. Now you put them in an interrogation and the goal now is to get a confession. No, it's no longer to solve the crime. You've already solved the crime. Now your goal is to create another piece of evidence that you can hand over to the prosecutor. Right? So it is more difficult when you're dealing with when you're trying to change the minds of folks who truly believe in what they are doing. It's not well let's just identify the people who are doing this badly and get rid of them. It's the entire system and the entire culture is shaped around false premises >> that psychology has disproven over and over again.

[00:59:13]>> Oh, that's depressing.

[00:59:16]>> We're working on it. We're we're all working on it. We're all here. We're all doing something about it. So, that's what that's what helps me cope with that. Um well uh before we go to questions, I I think it's important to just give a quick update on where things are with Jason's case. So um uh this is Jason, by the way, coming into a hearing he had last year. Um listeners will remember that there is some DNA testable evidence in Jason's case um that was sort of rediscovered by Jason's attorney, Cynthia Muso, in the courthouse. Uh Jason and Cynthia obviously would like to have that evidence DNA tested in hopes that it would point to a new suspect and possibly exonerate Jason. The state of New Hampshire is currently objecting to that request. They are fighting um the testing of that DNA. There's a hearing scheduled in December uh where the two sides will argue over that in front of a judge and ultimately will be up to the judge whether the DNA is is tested at all. And um you can only expect an update in your feed when that um hearing happens. Um okay, so with that, we'll we'll turn it over to questions. Um uh the way to get your questions to us is to go to slido.com, sli.com, and enter podcast at the top. It's sido.com.

[01:00:47]You can ask about false confessions. you can ask about Barbrook and just that really just those two things. Um um while we're um while we're waiting for the first questions to come in, Fabia, I um one thing I wanted to ask you about was um the idea of um when it's okay to um of detention custody, when it's okay to get up and leave interrogations because that that is a really important like >> hidden dance that's happening in these interrogations where technically technically Hugh and Jason >> were both free to at any time and that and that is used in the in the legal arguments against them.

[01:01:29]They voluntarily gave the confession.

[01:01:30]They they could go any time. What does the psychology have to say about whether or not they really felt that was possible?

[01:01:38]>> This is one of the many areas where psychology has not been introduced properly into the law and legal um like standard legal operating procedure does not take psychology into account. uh when you have been arrested, you are in the custody of the police and you are required to have your Miranda warnings, you have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney, those things. Uh and in some states, in most states now, the video recording of the interrogation, but not everyone who is questioned has been arrested. And without that bright line of arrest, it's a much more ambiguous decision like you've or it's a much more ambiguous situation like you've said. And so the question is is would a reasonable person in the suspect's shoes have felt like they were free to leave given the totality of the circumstances? That is like the legal language that is used.

[01:02:37]Given the circumstances of the questioning, would it's not even would this person feel free to leave. Would a reasonable person in this suspect's shoes feel like they were free to leave?

[01:02:48]What is a reasonable person?

[01:02:52]What are the the objective circumstances that you're looking at? And how do they each contribute to a feeling of custody or freedom?

[01:02:59]No one has answered these questions. In part of my dissertation, I asked police officers and judges, "What is a reasonable person?" And they all gave different answers.

[01:03:09]It's funny now. It wasn't funny back then when I was like, "How do I analyze this?" Um, but see that that's the kind of ambiguity that we're dealing with here. And so, yeah, it's easy to make the case that, well, we didn't need to read them their Miranda warnings. We didn't need to record the interrogation because they were free to leave. They weren't in custody. But when you actually put people in that situation, even in the least custodial objective circumstances that you can imagine, people still do not feel like they are free to leave. And especially when it's a 16-year-old, I imagine that only compounds that that sort of feeling, >> right? Adults don't feel like they're free to leave. Adolescence, there's no way.

[01:03:50]>> You were saying before, like when you're 16, you're in school and you you have to raise the hand to go to the bathroom, >> right?

[01:03:54]>> So, um, and there's no one with a Well, I was going to say there's no one with a gun in the classroom, but that's actually changing now. Let's take some questions.

[01:04:05]Uh, someone asked, "Why would states fight potential scientific DNA testing that could legitimately exonerate a suspect?" I wish I could answer that question.

[01:04:15]Um, this the state of New Hampshire has has argued in in a legal filing that um that DNA testing in Jason Carroll's case is um sort of beside the point that their their position is that it doesn't matter what the results of the DNA test are, it will not exonerate Jason.

[01:04:38]Um, I struggle with that argument as a journalist who is um trying to give both sides the benefit of the doubt and and who who can't say for certain if Jason is guilty or innocent. Um, as a as a a journalist who like a key part of the job is like trying to find out the truth, the obstinence to just like testing the DNA and seeing what's there is um it's um puzzling.

[01:05:11]Um but that's that's where we are.

[01:05:15]Um Bobby, maybe you know you can talk to this one. Um, h how was it legal for someone's mother to interrogate them?

[01:05:25]>> Uh, yeah, this is something that actually came up in the proceedings for this case. Um, despite the fact that Karen Carol was a police offic was was a police officer.

[01:05:37]Um, >> she in the court's eyes, she was not acting as an agent of the state in that moment. She had her mom hat on and not her police hat on. The problem is that that's not how these roles that we each occupy. That's not really how they work, right? They're not like a physical hat. They're that are mutually exclusive. You can only wear one hat at a time. That's not really how they work. Um, but the court decided that in that moment she was not an act an actor of the state. And the legal question is did the state compel Jason to confess?

[01:06:20]>> And they held that it was his mother who compelled him to confess, not the state.

[01:06:25]And so that is why that that is why this confession was not thrown out.

[01:06:30]>> Otherwise, it would have been if it was Lambie or Morreny or anyone else who said the things that Karen had said, it would have been an improperly obtained confession. Yeah. And that's that's still precedent uh in in New Hampshire law. Um um and I know that um from some defense attorneys that they um still run into it in cases today.

[01:06:53]>> You know, Carol v or state v. Carol.

[01:06:56]>> Um this is a good question. Um are there telltale signs of a a real confession versus a false one? We talked about sort of red flags today, but there are green flags, too, right?

[01:07:07]>> Yeah. So, uh, a green flag in a confession is, uh, is there spontaneous guilty knowledge, independently brought up spontaneous knowledge of the crime?

[01:07:19]Um, does the confession lead the police to new evidence that they have not discovered? Has anyone ever heard of the Kitty Genevies case in New York? Oh, wow. A lot of psych majors or a lot of people taking psych 101. Uh, so the that case actually has a false confession in it. that is it's known for the bystander effect which is not important right now but uh that case actually a person falsely confessed to the murder of Kitty Genevies the person that actually did it who confessed later on whose name was uh Winston Mosley he act in his confession he led the police to her belongings that he had actually taken and thrown um when he committed this crime. So, in his confession, he actually led the police to find her bag and her keys and a bunch of stuff that they didn't actually have before. Um, >> pretty good sign.

[01:08:08]>> Pretty pretty good sign that this is a person with actual guilty knowledge of the crime.

[01:08:13]>> Yeah.

[01:08:15]Yeah. Um, you'll enjoy this one. How does what is allowed in American interrogations differ from uh say our European cousins?

[01:08:25]>> Yeah, you may have not. I've been saying American interrogations a lot. Um, yeah.

[01:08:29]So, in the UK, a lot of the stuff that we do here is not permissible. Um, police are here, police are allowed to lie about evidence. So, they're allowed to say things like, "We have your fingerprints on the murder weapon. We have an eyewitness in the other room who said that you did it. We have CCTV TV footage of you committing this crime."

[01:08:45]Um, even if that is not true, even if there is no such evidence and that evidence actually does not exist and never existed, uh, they are allowed to say that. And in most states, they are allowed to do that with children as well. Um but not in Indiana. I testified and they said get it out of here. Yeah.

[01:09:03]Uh so uh that is not legal in the UK. Um here we have a very adversarial system.

[01:09:12]Um and in the UK they have more of like an open-ended information gathering interrogation strategy. Uh, so it's a lot less of this accusatory kind of uh, situation and more of like tell me everything that you can remember.

[01:09:32]Sounds very different from what we just heard.

[01:09:35]>> Different than I know, you know, >> I know that you did this and I Yes.

[01:09:39]>> God is my witness. I know you know.

[01:09:41]>> Exactly. Right.

[01:09:42]>> Um, yeah. They use things called uh like the cognitive interview. it just a lot of different things that there that are actually psychologically tested and shown to not lead to false confessions as much as these other techniques that we do use here. Um, so I think what bugs me the most is it's not we have no idea what to do other than this and this is the only thing that exists right now.

[01:10:08]That is simply not true. There are alternatives. We are just not using them here.

[01:10:13]Um here's a question about um the influence of true crime media um which I really appreciate. Um it seems like these techniques are dramatized all the time in on television.

[01:10:28]How does that influence our juries?

[01:10:33]>> I'll tell you that it influences judges and prosecutors. So, in cases where people wave their Miranda rights and then later try to claim that they their defense attorney tries to claim that they did not comprehend what they were waving. They didn't know what they were signing away. Um, judges will say, "Well, this is all over TV.

[01:11:00]There's no way that you didn't know what your Miranda rights were and that you didn't comprehend them because if you've ever turned on a television in this country, you've heard you have the right to remain silent, etc. Um, so that's I think that's one negative.

[01:11:13]>> Yeah. Wow.

[01:11:14]>> Um, I think a positive is well, I'll say I'll I'll stick to like dramatizations because that was part of the question. Um, in, you know, Law and Order, Criminal Minds, whatever, interrogations are portrayed as exceedingly hostile. A little similar to like what we what we heard in Jason's case where police are banging their fists on the table, they're flipping chairs over, >> the light on their face, >> the light on the face, the, you know, I know you, you know, uh, cursing. That's not really what interrogations look like today. It's a lot of this minimization of like I understand you're not a bad person. It's a lot of like hand on the shoulder. Uh that kind of thing. And that doesn't look coercive. Um it looks like the police are being really understanding and nice. And so I think that's another negative of, you know, we expect that interrogations are really physically coercive when in fact they're more psychologically coercive and that can be really difficult to identify.

[01:12:25]>> Um, how much would you say detectives capitalize on the amount of stress or duress a suspect is under when they're being interrogated?

[01:12:37]Interrogation trainings teach them to capitalize on that stress, create a stressful situation that the person wants to escape from. That is part of it. That that's not like a a side effect. That is indeed the entire thing. There's instructions about how to furnish the room. You don't want them to have a rolly chair because you want to restrict their movement. um you don't want them to have anything that they can make themselves feel comfortable on. So yeah, like that's part of it that that's part of the technique.

[01:13:12]>> Yeah, >> I guess. Yeah, maximization is sort of like maximize the stress >> of the situation, right? Make this end >> and leave the only escape hatch as being >> confession, >> right?

[01:13:24]>> Yeah.

[01:13:26]>> Um uh there's a question here that asks um if I stay in touch with Jason. Um yeah, we've we've u spoken a few times um since the podcast has been released. Um obviously not as much as when we were working on the story, but um yeah, it's it's definitely a story that we're um following. And you know, when something when something big happens, um, like the discovery of that that evidence box at the courthouse, you know, Jason is one of the people I try to get on the phone with. It's a little hard. Obviously, he's in prison. you can't just call him up um as easily. But um um yeah, he's he's um he as I think you have to be in his situation is is um cautiously optimistic about what's going on. Um but he understands patience, I think, is the way to put it.

[01:14:26]Um, he's excited. He's nervous. Um, and he, as I think we put it in the in the series, you know, he's excited to, um, I think he has a certain level of pride around being trying to be the first um, uh, murder exonery in New Hampshire. I think he connects to that.

[01:14:51]And um yeah, I think maybe next time I see him, I'll tell him that you asked about that.

[01:14:59]Um okay, I think with that um I'll say thank you. Thanks for coming out. Thanks to Bobby for coming all this way.