The Richmond Times Dispatch ran an article on September 14 discussing questionable police interrogation methods that led a mentally impaired man to give a false confession.

In 1975, Curtis Jasper Moore was questioned about, and subsequently convicted of, the rape and murder of Eva King Jones, an 88-year-old woman. Steven A. Drizin, a professor at Northwestern University Law School and an expert on false confessions, believes that the police "broke every rule in the book" during the interrogation, leading Moore to confess to a crime he did not commit.

Despite knowing Moore had recently been discharged from a mental hospital, Greensville County Sheriff Earl D. Sasser questioned Moore for seven consecutive hours.  Moore began to sing and his focus wandered. Transcripts of the interrogation tapes revealed that Moore was not advised of his rights, and was repeatedly told that he could go home if he would confess.  Promises of leniency should have rendered his confession unreliable.

Equally alarming was the police's decision to bring Moore to the crime scene, presenting him with information that only the perpetrator would have known.  Despite these unconventional and leading tactics, Moore still got the facts of the case wrong.

Moore was convicted in 1978 and served five years before his convictions were thrown out.  Two years after Moore’s death, DNA evidence discovered by Virginia’s Old Case Testing Project implicated an Emporia sex offender in the rape and murder of Jones.

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