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False Confessions In West Of Memphis

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The aspect of psychology and law research from this week is correlated to the week four-course material is most relevant to the topic of interrogations and false confession techniques that are used by the detectives. In the case that was presented in the documentary West of Memphis is an investigation of a failure of justice in Arkansas.
The interrogation methods from the detectives lead to a false confession. A false confession is an admission to a criminal act that the confessor did not commit (Greene & Heilbrun, 2014, p. 165). Interrogation induces false confessions to tend to occur in more serious cases like homicides and other high stakes felonies when the police are under pressure to solve the crime and that use more psychologically coercive …show more content…

As a result, in the case of the West Memphis Three law enforcement and the legal system seem so hurried about placing these three teenage boys behind bars even though they didn’t have the right people in prison. They had a created a messy investigation without any evidence leading to the defendants. Also when there is a confession that is false when there is scientific evidence most commonly DNA that definitively establishes the defendant’s innocence (Greene & Heilbrun, 2014, p. 166). The West Memphis Three in 1993 is about the bodies of three young eight-year-old boys - Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers – were found bound, mutilated and drowned in a drainage canal in the Robin Hood Hills neighborhood of West Memphis. The detectives used coercive interrogation that was demonstrated in the documentary. For that reason, the West Memphis Three were local teenagers Jessie Misskelley, Jr., 17; Jason Baldwin, 16, and Damien Echols, 18 were linked to the crime after Misskelley confessed and the prosecution claimed it was a satanic cult murder. The most compelling evidence yet was introduced in open court Misskelley’s tape confession made to police (West of Memphis, 2012). In 1994 the jury found the defendants guilty of the murders Echols was sentenced to death row and to die by lethal injection. His co-defendants Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley received a life sentence. In 2007, DNA evidence proved that none of the genetic material found at the crime scene matched any of the defendants. The attorneys and the West Memphis Three continued to fight for full exoneration putting their freedom in the hand of the justice system or agree to enter the Alford Plea. Alford Plea is a guilty plea in criminal court whereby a defendant does

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