The first was the case of Justin Mello, accused of the execution style murder of an acquaintance. But Justin and his friend were at a party the night of the murder, nowhere near the pizza parlor where the crime was committed.  As they were questioned, both consistently stated they had not committed the crime. Justin was interrogated for hours with the police repeatedly insisting that he was guilty. They suggested to him over and over that he had been drugged and then committed the act, thus explaining why he didn’t remember having done it. When Justin’s mother called to find out why he was in the police station, she was told he was assisting the police and was fine. When Justin requested to speak to his mother, he was told that she knew what he had done and didn’t want to see him. After more than eight hours of interrogation, alone, unable to speak to anyone for support, he finally came to believe what he was being told.  He confessed, ending the interrogations and his isolation. Justin spent 178 days in jail, convicted of this murder, until the real killers were found. Justin was freed but still faces public ostracism. The general public believe that he must somehow have been involved in the murder. He has had difficulty finding a job and his family is constantly faced with judgmental citizens. Family members of the victim hold him responsible for the delay in finding the real criminals and publicly speak out against him.  He has been victimized twice, first by the system that elicited the false confession and now by his community, unwilling to forgive or forget.

Marty Tankleff was 17 when he was convicted of murdering his parents, based on his confession.  But was the confession coerced? Marty, at 17, had no one at his side during hours of interrogation. In spite of his continuous denial, the police persisited in accusing him of the crime during. Marty finally confessed when he was told his father had briefly come out of his coma and named Marty as the murderer.  Knowing that his father never lied and believing that the police never lied, he confessed.  But the police did lie. The story about his father was concocted as a means to an end — that end being his confession. The confession that was entered into evidence at the trial was not written or signed by Marty.  In fact, his statement is that he had never seen or read the confession until it came out in the trial. And Marty’s surviving family members, an aunt and a cousin, attended the trial and reported that the facts in the confession are not consistent with the evidence presented.  Regardless, Marty has spent 18 years in jail for a crime he did not commit.  Recent developments in this case indicate that there is strong evidence, apart from Marty's word, that Marty did not commit the crime.  There is even evidence pointing to the true murderers.  Nevertheless, the detective who interrogated Marty stands firm that he arrested the right man, regardless of the new evidence.  Marty’s family is pursuing this evidence, hoping to finally free Marty.

As Dr. Phil points out, there is no law in the states in which these crimes were committed to keep the police from lying, stretching the truth, or creating false evidence in order to elicit a confession. Typically, detectives doing an interrogation believe that they have the guilty person, and their job is to work until that person confesses.  They thus feel justified in doing whatever is necessary to get a confession. But what happens when the police have the wrong person?  Eliciting a false confession stops the process of finding the true criminals.

Dr. Phil talked with Steven Drizin, the Director of the Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University in Chicago.  As Drizin pointed out, a big concern of Innocent Projects nationwide is that the interrogation process is often not recorded for presentation in court. The only people who can describe the experience are the interrogating police officers and the accused.  When questioned, the police have a strong motivation to sanitize the process, so that no one is aware of what the accused was subjected to prior to confessing. While the confessor may describe the conditions of interrogation, that person's description is discredited by the very fact that he was accused and, especially, that he confessed to the crime.  There are currently bills being considered in several states, including Maryland, to require police to record interrogations in some cases.  To learn more about the Maryland bill and how you can support it, please visit our "Take Action" page.    

For more information on false confessions, including descriptions of cases in our region in which false confessions have led to wrongful convictions, please refer to the "Facts" and "Case Profiles" section of our web site. 

To visit Dr. Phil's web site, which contains a more detailed description of this show and links to other sites discussing false confessions and wrongful convictions in general, click here.