In the state legislature, there is a bill being proposed aimed at limiting the number of false confessions of a youth suspect. The bill aims to curb deceptive and coercive tactics during an interrogation.
The ACLU of Connecticut was joined by Judiciary Co-Chair Gary Winfield on Wednesday to discuss the bill, calling for an end using undue pressure and misleading statements by investigators, while interrogating youth suspects.
“No child should be imprisoned because police coerced them into a false confession,” said ACLU of Connecticut Public Policy and Advocacy Director Claudine Constant.
ACLU members are backing SB1071 - “as act concerning deceptive or coercive interrogation tactics” - which would outlaw coercive and deceptive interrogation tactics. Those include using false information about evidence, using misrepresentations of the law or making false promises of leniency, to elicit confessions.
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William Carbone is a University of New Haven juvenile justice professor and says these practices are unacceptable.
“Any effort to be less than fully honest and transparent with them would be completely unethical,” said Carbone, adding that he doesn’t believe these are common in Connecticut.
Carbone says youth suspects should be treated with more care than adults, largely because the brains of people under 18 are not yet fully developed. In particular, Carbone referenced the part of the brain that controls impulsivity and decision-making.
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Included in the bill is a clause calling for any confession made by a person during a custodial interrogation to be presumed involuntary and inadmissible if coercive or deceptive tactics were used.
Marty Tankleff knows first-hand how this can lead to false imprisonment.
“I woke up on September 7, 1988, to discover that my mother had been murdered and my father was clinging to life,” Tankleff recalled.
Tankleff was made the primary suspect. During interrogation, he says he was lied to by police in New York and intimidated into confessing.
“That interrogation led to me being charged and convicted and in prison for 6,338 days,” Tankleff said.
Nearly 18 years later, new evidence exonerated Tankleff.
Terrill Swift experienced something similar in Chicago in 1994.
“I was held, confined in a room, and told that I was going to die in jail,” Swift said.
Scared, Swift confessed after being told he’d receive leniency if he cooperated. He was convicted of murder and rape in 1998 and sentenced to 36 years before DNA evidence cleared him in 2012.
“I was a kid at 17, I worked with them, and it cost me 15 and a half years in prison,” said Swift, who helped get a similar bill passed in Illinois and California.
The next step for this bill is a Judiciary Committee public hearing on the morning of March 13.
“We do not need to lie to children,” said Winfield. “We do not need to scare children into saying things that aren’t true.”
