Seeking Justice, Compromising Truth? Criminal Admissions and the Prisoner's Dilemma
2013; Albany Law School; Volume: 77; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0002-4678
AutoresRobert J. Norris, Allison D. Redlich,
Tópico(s)Education Discipline and Inequality
ResumoI. INTRODUCTION When the body of twenty-eight-year-old Trisha Meili was found in Central Park in the early morning hours of April 20, 1989, a firestorm began. (1) At the time, New York City was rife with social problems: fear of terrorist attacks, the growing AIDS epidemic, homelessness, failing school systems, and increasing levels of crime had captivated residents' attention. (2) So when a successful white female was brutally attacked on the same night that a large group of black and Latino youths were wilding (3) in the park, a frenzy of media buzz and public outcry ensued. (4) Although dozens of youths had been involved in the activities in the park that night, (5) five were eventually targeted as the prime suspects in the rape and assault: Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson were fourteen years old; Yusef Salaam and Antron McCray were fifteen; and Korey Wise was sixteen, legally an adult in the state of New York. (6) The boys were surely frightened and confused, but, being young and innocent, certainly could not fathom the horror that was to come. (7) The five teens were all detained and interrogated over prolonged periods of time, some more than twenty hours. (8) All five youths eventually admitted to taking part in the rape and assault, and, despite the fact that no other meaningful evidence linked them to the crime, were convicted. (9) They all served between five and nearly twelve years. (10) It was not until 2002, when another inmate named Matias Reyes confessed to the crime and DNA testing showed him to be the perpetrator, that the Central Park Five were exonerated. (11) The Central Park Jogger case stands as an infamous stain on the fabric of American criminal justice, displaying the fragility and vulnerability of the system to error. Overtones of race, class, and politics color the case in ways reminiscent of pre-Civil Rights-Era cases, such as that of the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930s. (12) But in terms of the investigatory process, perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from the Central Park Jogger case relates to interrogations and false confessions. The NYPD detectives used a variety of techniques in their attempts to elicit confessions from the suspects, including basic intimidation and the good cop-bad cop routine. (13) Detectives also used a take on the classic Prisoner's Dilemma, meaning that each suspect was informed that the others were talking and implicating him in the crime. As Raymond Santana describes it, [Detective] Hardigan sat down and he said, 'Look, Ray, I know you didn't do anything wrong, but the other guys, right now, they're in other precincts and they're saying that you did it.' (14) A similar approach was used with Kevin Richardson: And they're telling me, 'Well, you're not saying nothing, but these guys put your name in it.' (15) Basically, the detectives were using a version of the Prisoner's Dilemma paradigm by playing the juvenile suspects against one another, a tactic that would prove to be quite effective. But why would seasoned law enforcement officers, so early into a major investigation and without physical evidence, press so diligently to secure confessions from a group of teenagers? Were the false confessions of these five youths knowingly coerced by rogue officers, or was this just a byproduct of a faulty, though well-intentioned, criminal investigation process? We do not assert to provide complete answers to these questions in this article. We do, however, step back and contend that the difficulty in assessing many criminal admissions lies, to some degree, in the fundamental nature of attempting to do so. Specifically, many situations in which an admission of guilt is sought--whether by the police through interrogation or by the prosecutor through plea bargaining--call into question the core purpose of these processes. In seeking to obtain an admission of guilt from a suspect or defendant, is the system seeking both truth and justice? …
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