LABELING THEORY |
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WHITES RARELY EXECUTED FOR KILLING BLACKS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - Thursday's [Central Park jogger] court hearing is the culmination of a high-stakes drama that calls into question the tactics of the New York police investigators as well as the city's legendary prosecutor's office, at a time when the nation's entire justice system is under increased scrutiny for racial disparities. But it also raises the more baffling question as to why people would willingly confess to crimes they did not commit. Experts say it's far more common than one would expect. During lengthy interrogations, police often lead suspects to believe they have no other options but to confess. The most vulnerable to such tactics are the young and those with very low IQs. "It's a reaction to a feeling of utter hopelessness and despair that virtually anything I say about my innocence is going to be ignored, and my only way out of this interrogation room is to accede to the interrogators' demands," says Steven Drizin, a professor at Chicago's Northwestern University School of Law and an expert on false confessions. "The whole purpose of police interrogation tactics is to convince a suspect that it is in his best interest to confess to a crime." Since 1992, the Innocence Project has helped win exonerations in 116 cases based on DNA evidence. In 27 of those cases, the defendant had confessed. Professor Drizin himself has a databank with more than 100 cases in which confessions were proved false in the past 10 years. He believes that's the "tip of the iceberg" because his data was gathered from press reports, and many coerced confessions are proved false before trial. . . In the Central Park case, the defense argued that the teens' confessions were coerced. The youngsters and their parents testified that they were led to believe they would be allowed to go home if they confessed. Drizin says that's just one indication that the case offers a textbook example of how well-intentioned officers can end up producing false confessions. From the start, the police had a number of suspects who were vulnerable. They were all young, ages 14 to 16, and several of them had little experience dealing with police. Two of them had IQs below 90. They were part of a pack of kids who were roaming the park that cool spring night randomly assaulting bikers, joggers, and a homeless person. (In addition to the jogger, the teens were convicted of assaulting eight other people that night.). . . By the time the teenagers had confessed, they been in custody for more than 28 hours, during which they were subjected to a full battery of police tactics. Most of the questioning was done without their parents' presence. A PRIVATE MATTER FOR THE BUSHES; PUBLIC TRIAL AND JAIL FOR EVERYONE ELSE PEDRO RUZ GUTIERREZ, ORLANDO SENTINEL - Gov. Jeb Bush's 25-year-old daughter was found with cocaine at an Orlando drug-rehabilitation center, police reported on Tuesday. Bush was not arrested because police could not obtain sworn statements signed by the center's staff. A worker who found the suspected cocaine on Noelle Bush tore up a sworn statement she had written at the suggestion of one of her bosses, police said. . . The governor, asked about his daughter before going into a Florida Cabinet meeting in Tallahassee, said he wouldn't discuss her with the media. "This is a private issue as it relates to my daughter and myself and my wife," he said. . . In a release, the governor said: "My family loves Noelle very much and continues to pray for her continued progress. We again ask the public and media to respect our privacy during this difficult time for our family." http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-noelle091002.story?coll=orl%2Dhome%2Dheadlines "Klansman guilty of 38-year-old murder" ("ITN News," May 2, 2001) "I guess the good Lord will settle on Judgment Day." - Thomas Blanton Jr A former member of the Ku Klux Klan has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the bombing 38 years ago of a church that killed four black girls in one of the worst crimes of the civil rights era. Thomas Blanton Jr, 62, was immediately sentenced to life in prison after a jury of eight whites and four blacks found him guilty on four counts of murder in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, before Sunday services on September 15, 1963. "I guess the good Lord will settle on Judgment Day," Blanton, who had denied any involvement in the bombing, said after the verdict was read and the judge prepared to hand down the sentence in a Birmingham courtroom. Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins, all aged 14, and Denise McNair, 11, died in the blast, which galvanised the civil rights movement in the South. Prosecutors had alleged Blanton helped a small group of Klansmen plant dynamite that exploded under a stairwell of the church, a meeting place for black civil rights protesters in then-segregated Birmingham. During closing arguments on Tuesday, prosecutors again played the jury secretly taped FBI recordings of conversations Blanton had with his wife in 1964 in which he allegedly admitted to planting the bomb. Prosecutors also reminded jurors that Blanton had boasted about bombing the church to a Klansman-turned-FBI-informant, and bragged that he would never be caught. "We felt that if the jury pieced the puzzle together, they would come back with the correct verdict. We believe this is the correct verdict," said US Attorney Doug Jones, who tried the case under a special agreement with local authorities. Appeal Defence attorney John Robbins said he planned to appeal. "Somebody may have another opinion, but I feel this was an emotional vote," said Robbins, who had urged jurors not to be swayed by emotion in their deliberations. Robbins, who had unsuccessfully tried to block prosecutors from playing the FBI tapes at the trial, had argued that the prosecutors misinterpreted the meaning of the taped conversations, which proved only that Blanton was "a racist, a segregationist and a bad man." During closing arguments, Robbins also said there was no evidence directly linking Blanton to the bombing, and questioned the credibility of several prosecution witnesses. The verdict was hailed as a victory for the civil rights movement in the South, despite the fact that it was handed down nearly four decades after the bombing. "This city and this nation are better today because of this verdict. We see these (civil rights) cases being taken up all over Alabama and Mississippi," said Danny Ransom, 49, a former classmate of Denise McNair, the youngest bombing victim. "I am very happy with this verdict, but I believe that there are other people who participated in this crime. But at least one has been convicted, and that's something," said 73-year old Estelle Boyd, a member of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. An alleged accomplice, Bobby Frank Cherry, 71, had been set to stand trial as a co-defendant with Blanton, but his case was postponed indefinitely due to his failing health. Prosecutors have not ruled out bringing Cherry to trial, pending results of a psychological evaluation. Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss, was convicted of the crime in 1977, and died in prison in 1985 while serving a life sentence for murder. Another suspect, Herman Cash, died several years later without being charged. Blanton was not put on trial earlier because authorities, including former FBI director J Edgar Hoover, apparently did not believe convictions could be obtained with circumstantial evidence and a racially polarised Birmingham jury. |
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