SYSTEM FAILURE
By eliminating coerced confessions, we can protect our most vulnerable citizens instead of exploiting them
Our criminal justice system continues to fail people living with mental health conditions. Just last week, Time profiled Michael Ledford, an autistic man who was accused of setting fire to his own home in October 1999, which resulted in the death of his 1-year-old son and the severe burning of his then-wife. He confessed to the crime during a lengthy interrogation in which police employed manipulative tactics to compel him to say what they needed to hear. Years later, it was proven through forensic evidence that the scenario he described in his “confession” scientifically couldn’t be true; yet it’s still sufficient to deprive him of his freedom.
We need not look beyond Connecticut’s borders to find individuals with mental health conditions who have been taken advantage of by law enforcement in a similar manner. The lives of Connecticut exonerees Richard Lapointe and Bobby Johnson were turned upside down after law enforcement decided they were guilty and sought to extract a confession by any means necessary — employing intimidating and deceptive interrogation tactics to trick them into making false confessions. Both men trusted law enforcement, who in turn took advantage of them. Our state should protect our most vulnerable citizens, not exploit them.
And yet, members of our communities — like Richard and Bobby — continue to be subjected to outdated methods of interrogation that assume guilt, block attempts to claim innocence, and frequently elicit false confessions from even the most sternly willed people. These outdated interrogation tactics risk false confessions that result in wasted time pursuing the wrong suspect while the actual guilty party remains free, and further risk tainting other evidence if, for example, forensics investigators hear of the confession while examining ambiguous evidence. They breed cynicism among those who understand that the police can, and will, lie to them in interrogations, and make honest people afraid to cooperate with law enforcement because they fear being lied to and bullied into a confession. And, they force innocent people into taking pleas because they’re afraid of what happens if they try the case and lose. An individual convicted on the basis of a false confession often needs a team of dedicated lawyers paired with mountains of new evidence to overcome even a clearly false confession. This is an affront to a system that’s purported to consider people innocent until proven guilty.
The negative impact of these coerced confessions are even more profound when they are used against children and adults living with mental health conditions. Law enforcement should not be lying to anyone, but especially not to those most vulnerable. While deception may be a tactic frequently used in the past, we should not let bad habits stand in the way of change. Law enforcement experts have made it clear that this is not evidence-based policing, and that there are other ways to interact with suspects that do not rely on falsehoods, threats, or depriving people of their basic human needs like food and water, sleep, or use of a restroom.
We now know better; we must do better. Connecticut has that chance with SB 1071, legislation that would prevent wrongful convictions in Connecticut by ensuring reliable confessions. It is based on legislation that has already been enacted in California, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Oregon and Utah, and is endorsed by a large coalition of advocates here in Connecticut.
Connecticut has already paid millions of dollars to people who have been wrongfully incarcerated and later exonerated. These dollars cannot make up for the priceless years that falsely convicted individuals lost with their spouses and children. They cannot compensate for the loss of justice for the victims when they find out that they were failed by the investigators. Convictions based on false confessions do not represent anything remotely resembling justice for the wrongfully convicted individual, the victim of the crime, and frankly all of us in society who want a fair and just criminal legal system. We have joined together, with many throughout our state, to call on the Connecticut Legislature to pass SB 1071 and prevent further lives from being torn apart.
Kathy Flaherty is the executive director of Connecticut Legal Rights Project, Inc., which provides legal services to low-income individuals with mental health conditions on matters related to their treatment, recovery and civil rights. Lisa Steele has been an appellate attorney representing indigent defendants in Massachusetts and Connecticut since 1994.