How Stressful Interrogations Lead to False Convictions

By Didi Pathak

When I was a kid, I used to worry about getting in trouble. To comfort me, my parents used to frequently tell me the phrase, “if you haven’t done anything wrong, you won’t have anything to worry about,” but as I got older and realized how many false convictions there are in America I realized this wasn’t true. Because sometimes, people can be characterized as monsters, with no way to explain themselves. This is the current reality of a woman named Melissa Lucio. In 2007, Melissa’s two year old daughter, Mariah, fell down the stairs and died shortly after. Authorities neglected the fact that her daughter had a physical ailment that made her prone to falling, and blamed the mother. In the shock of losing her daughter, Melissa didn’t even realize that she could be the one suspected. She did not realize that she was being taken advantage of until it was too late.

Melissa quickly realized that for all intents and purposes, she was considered a murderer of her daughter whether she was or not. In 2008, Melissa Lucio was sentenced to death. She is still on death row today, fighting for her innocence.

Clearly, these false convictions aren’t just a thing of the past. They are still happening right here, on American soil. In 2022, 238 people were wrongfully convicted and exonerated in the United States. That’s over 5 people every week, with the average time behind bars being 12 years. It’s insane that we can’t even figure out exactly how many people are falsely convicted because new stories are being unearthed every second. Simply put, society becomes so focused on finding an answer, rather than finding the right answer. Currently, some law officials partake in interrogation tactics in order to determine innocence or guilt. However, recent information and evidentiary stories have revealed that these tactics aren’t a valid basis to gauge whether or not someone is being truthful.Interrogations are supposed to separate the guilty from the innocent. They are supposed to induce people into admitting things that will solve a crime and grant the victim justice. But, what if interrogation tactics are so stressful that they affect what the person can actually remember? What if they end up making the person admit to something that they didn’t actually do?

You might not even believe that it’s possible for someone to admit that they did something when they know that they didn’t. However, the innocence project, a non-profit organization that works to help the falsely accused, reveals that in around 25 percent of wrongful convictions, defendants make false confessions. This is absolutely terrifying. Due to factors such as mental exhaustion and increased stress, an innocent person can be frequently driven to a false confession. What’s more, these people are sometimes unaware of what they are saying, because the evidence that is revealed in the interrogation is made up!

I was perusing the Innocence Project’s website the other day when I came across the story of Marty Tankleff, who was a teenager living in New York when his entire life changed. On Marty's first day of his senior year of high school, he awoke to find his mother dead and his father unconscious. The obvious suspect was Marty’s fathers bagel-store partner, who violently threatened his parents and owed his father half a million dollars. Instead, to his surprise, the lead detective interrogated Marty. The detective who handled Marty’s case told him that his father regained consciousness and identified Marty as the killer. In reality, Marty’s father had died a couple weeks later, and hadn’t regained consciousness. This vicious lie implored Marty to thinking that perhaps he blacked out and murdered his father without realizing it

According to the innocence project, “lying about evidence increases a suspect’s likelihood of falsely confessing. This effect is even stronger for the innocent, who may confess with the expectation that once this evidence is tested, they will be freed. Unfortunately they don’t know that a confession is all the court needs.” After Marty confessed, he was sentenced to 50 years, to life in prison. So finally, is there any way for us to lessen wrongful convictions, and help the people who are facing them?

Well first off, there are certain things that society can vote on which will decrease the possibility of deception in criminal proceedings. For instance, house Bill 1062 intends to prevent the deception that people endure when they are making a false confession. The bill ensures that statements obtained through immoral measures are inadmissible as evidence, meaning they cannot be used against someone in court. The innocence project is also advocating for mandatory recordings in interrogations that relate to criminal proceedings. They believe that doing this, “improves transparency and creates a truthful record of what led up to a confession”

In doing so, society will hopefully no longer have to read headlines about innocent people who lost years of their lives serving time for a crime they did not commit. Instead, hopefully the innocence of people like Maria Lucio will be revealed, and she will be set free.

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