aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Friday, March 31, 2006

Innocent people confess to crimes they did not do

All interrogations should be videotaped. All of them!

Last night Primetime had a story on Roberto Rocha, an innocent man who confessed to murder:

Rocha went to the police voluntarily to be questioned. After all, he had an airtight alibi: He’s been out of the country, in Brazil, the day Hamlin was killed.[...]

After more than two hours, Rocha said he became confused and exhausted. He and his attorney said that police told Rocha if he went along with them, he could go home.

“Roberto Rocha just cracked and said, fine, I’ll tell you what you want to know,” said Steel.

But from the start, Rocha had trouble with key details of the case, such as where Hamlin’s body was found. But the police “helped” him with that. One officer drew a map and said: “There’s the bridge. You were there. … Here’s where you were parked.” “OK, I parked there,” Rocha said on the videotape.

“The best alibi that I could ever imagine a person having” was reduced by police to “equivocal.” Without that videotape Rocha would still be in jail. Innocent people in jail mean guilty people on the streets. It’s in our best interest to have videotaped interrogations.

There was an important Washington Post series on false confessions; unfortunately, the links to the individual articles are dead right now. I have a request in to the Post to find out how to access them.