The Nation, February 8, 1999
CHILDREN TRY TO PLEASE ADULTS. THAT'S A DANGER WHEN POLICE ARE UNSCRUPULOUS.
TRUE CRIME, FALSE CONFESSION
By Amy Bach
Steven Drizin, a professor at Northwestern University's legal clinic, had a nightmare
case: an innocent boy who had confessed. In 1994, "A.M.," then 11 years old, was convicted of
first-degree murder for slitting his elderly neighbor's throat. To Drizin, a longtime juvenile
advocate, it seemed clear that the police had coerced the boy's confession. However, the state's
highest court had rejected Drizin's best arguments, and he thought it unlikely that Chicago's
overwhelmed federal district court would pay attention to a last-ditch appeal.
But then, on August 30 of last year, Drizin saw an article in the Chicago Tribune about
another juvenile case he had been following. Earlier that month, the police had declared that two
boys, ages 7 and 8, were the city's youngest-ever murder suspects in the sexual assault and
killing of an 11-year old girl named Ryan Harris. The charges, which had attracted national
attention, were soon dropped after a lab report revealed that the girl's clothing contained
ejaculate, which pre-adolescent boys could not have produced. Yet the boys had
confessedfalsely it now seemed during police interrogation by one Officer James Cassidy.
Bells went off for Drizin. Wasn't it the same Officer Cassidy who'd solved A.M.'s case
four years earlierand then wrote a letter to the Tribune urging legislators to toughen up on
juveniles? "The connection was like a gift from God," Drizin said. "It gave us new hope of
clearing his name."
The similarities between the cases of A.M. and the 7- and 8- year-olds are chilling. All
three children are African-American boys whose parents were told by police their children were
witnesses, not suspects. The boys spontaneously confessed without the presence of parents or a
youth officer (strongly suggested by police department policy) but immediately retracted when
allowed to consult with parents. "I told them I murdered her but I didn't do it, "A.M. told his
mother as she walked into the interrogation room and saw her child sobbing, according to her
trial testimony. "I was scared . . . They were hollering at me, they were cursing at me, they kept
slapping their knees . . . " All three confessions, moreover, are the sole sources of evidence
linking the children to the crimes.
Richard Leo, an expert in child witnesses and a professor of criminology at the
University of California, Irvine, says police tactics can be dangerously persuasive to adults and
even more so to children. Children will take the heat for crimes they didn't commit just to make
the interrogation cease. "A false confession is the natural consequence of police toughness on
young adults," Leo says. " If interrogated like adults, children are more susceptible, and will
confess to adult crimes".
It is standard police practice to make a suspect believe that there is an overwhelming
amount of evidence that he or she is guilty. The message is always the same: bad outcome if
you remain silent, good outcome if you talk. Children want to feed adults correct answers,
especially authority figures like police officers, and are less likely to consider consequences like
going to jail. A.M. was anxious to stop the four-hour interrogation because he was missing a
birthday party. He was told by police that they would forgive him "like God would forgive him"
and that he could go home if he told the truth. A.M. changed his story five times. Similarly, the
7-year-old was given candy and a McDonald's Happy Meal and was asked to hold Officer
Cassidy's hands because "we're all friends," according to police. The boy reached out his left
hand to one officer and his right to Officer Cassidy and, "without further questioning," gave the
statement that led to his arrest. In the words of Eileen O'Neill, Assistant State's Attorney for
Cook County and a Cassidy supporter, "Officer Cassidy is the nicest, slightest man. That's why
they have him interview kids."
Children have no protection against police tactics; Miranda warnings are useless since
children almost never understand their rights. "A child might understand 'I can have an attorney
right now,' says Thomas Grisso, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical
School who specializes in this area, "but might not understand the difference it makes." Not
until ages 12-15 is a child able to think abstractly. "Kids don't set out to lie," Grisso says.
"They merely try to cooperate."
What is most disturbing about the Chicago cases is the police ignored the telltale sign of
a forced confession: the suspect's narrative not matching known facts of the case. A.M.
confessed to tying up 83-year-old Anna Gilvis with a rope from a hanging plant; in fact a
telephone cord had been ripped from the wall and tightly wound around Gilvis's arms, neck and
hands. And Gilvis's apartment did not have any hanging plants. A.M. confessed to sneaking
into the woman's house through an open door, but the defense argues that physical evidence
shows the door had been forced. Fingerprints and a bloody footprint found at the crime scene
were all adult sized and didn't match A.M.'s. Similarly, the 7- and 8-year old were charged
before the results from the crime lab exonerated them.
Police never ascribed a motive to the 7- and 8-year olds. A.M., according to the state,
was a violent predator reacting to being called "nigger" too many times by the elderly Gilvis,
who used to see him playing in the neighborhood. "I hated her, I hated her, and I killed her,"
A.M. blurted to Officer Cassidy. Court-appointed psychologists found no evidence that A.M.
was capable of murder, and in fact were so skeptical of his guilt that they recommended he not
be placed in a locked, out-of-state residential treatment facilityan unheard-of recommendation
for a child convicted of murder. (One of the doctors even remarked that the boy would have had
little need for any psychiatric treatment if it weren't for the grueling proceedings around the
murder investigation.) In addition, prior to the confession the police were sure the motive was
property, not hate, as Gilvis's home was ransacked and a diamond ring and gold watch were
reported missing. The items were never recovered.
How could the DA and Officer Cassidy, a twenty-five-year police department veteran,
have charged A.M. in the face of such contrary evidence? "This kid was different," Officer
Cassidy wrote about A.M. in his letter to the Tribune. "He wasn't like any of the other killers I
had dealt with in the past . . . men and women with hard looks and working minds. . .The
murderer was just a kid, a . . . baby-faced boy who could be living next door to anyone,
anywhere." Police claim all three boys knew details no one except the perpetrator would have
known, though it is not clear how they learned these detailsthrough leading questions, their own
experiences as witnesses or otherwise. Even the 7-year-old's lawyer, public defender Elizabeth
Tarzia, admits, "The child may have seen something but it was lost through improper
questioning."
"The cops and the DA think they are supposed to just do their jobs and not look at the
larger picture," says Richard Ofshe, a social psychologist who is an expert in police interrogation
tactics. "They have forgotten their job is about justice, so all the false confessions have the same
quality: that any reasonable person would say, 'How could this cop have been so stupid?'"
A recent study of cases in which the only piece of evidence was a confession flying in the
face of contrary physical evidence found that juries will convict 73 percent of the time.
"Everybody believes a confession," Ofshe says. "People think false confessions do not happen
unless the person is physically tortured. In truth, they happen all the time." (There are no
statistics regarding the frequency of false confessions.)
As a juvenile, A.M. was convicted not by a jury but by a judge, who now may have
doubts. Judge Stuart Lubin declined to speak about specifics because A.M.'s case is still in
litigation, but he did say, "My opinion is I think this is the kid who did it. But I agree that the
kid's confession should have been challenged, and without his confession he wouldn't have been
convicted. It was the major piece of evidence in this case." For this reason Drizin, who did not
represent A.M. at trial, has raised claims in a federal habeas corpus petition that A.M.'s trial
counsel was ineffective. Judge Lubin told the Tribune, "I always think about my cases and
whether I've made the right decision. There were some inconsistencies, but I didn't feel that
they established reasonable doubt." But then Lubin added, "I just don't know."
Ironically, A.M.'s conviction didn't lead to imprisonment because, under Illinois law at
that time, children under 13 couldn't be imprisoned. So Judge Lubin sentenced him to five
years' probation in the custody of the state's child welfare agency, which placed him in the care
of his grandmothera sentence victim advocates attacked because they thought Judge Lubin was
too lenient.
Drizin suggests that the political climate was perfect for the system's failure. Both cases
went unsolved for prolonged periods and the confessions were obtained on the heels of
nationally hyped juvenile crime events. A.M.'s confession came only days after an 11-year-old
Chicago murder suspect, Robert "Yummy" Sandifer, was shot in the head, executed by members
of his own gang because they feared he might surrender to the police. In Ryan Harris's case,
unsolved for three weeks, a long period for a violent murder, the boys were charged in the midst
of the Jonesboro, Arkansas, sentencing of two boys who opened fire on kids and teachers in their
schoolyard. Eugene Pincham, a retired judge from the Illinois Court of Appeals who is
representing the 8-year-old in the Harris case, argues that "(Officer Cassidy) is a racist. His
motive is to get accolades for himself. These boys were frameda pure fabrication."
Once a child is charged with committing a crime, it seems the public's sympathies
disappear, a trend that can be partially attributed to the nature of media coverage of child
violence. On August 14 the Washington Post featured a story about "sibling abuse" focusing on
three 14- and 15-year-old white boys charged with murdering one boy's sister, Stephanie Crowe,
in Escondido, California. Judge Laura Palmer Hammes was forced to send the case to adult
court because of the seriousness of the charges, but before she did so she said for the record, "If
this were a trial court, these boys would be found not guilty." Judge Hammes said she found the
boys' confessions "troublesome" in light of the lack of evidence. Her extraordinary statement,
made the day before publication, was missing from the Post article, which mentioned in the last
paragraph that the defense lawyers were arguing that the confessions were coerced.
Criminologist Leo points out that protocols for properly questioning children do exist in
child abuse cases. Every state has rules that mandate videotaping, having a mental health
professional present and questioning in ways that don't lead. Much of this awareness about
questioning kids arose around high-profile caseslike the California McMartin preschool casein
which children made false accusations. Yet any protection granted to children is ancillary to the
regulations' primary purpose, which is in large part to protect the rights of the alleged child
abusers.
In the wake of the Ryan Harris case, the Chicago police and prosecutors have unveiled
plans to videotape confessions in all homicide cases, both adult and juvenile. The problem is
that they plan on videotaping only the resulting confession, not the entire interrogation, a reform
critics say will result in white-washing. A coerced confession could not be given undeserving
weight. "If there was nothing to hide why wouldn't they agree to videotape the entire
interrogation?' Ofshe asks. "They would rather spend $100,000 litigating than spend $2 on
tape?" And the Cook County State's Attorneys Office has set up a Commission on Juvenile
Competency to investigate the ability of juveniles to stand trial and understand Miranda
warningsbut only for children under 10.
A few states have instituted regulations for questioning children in criminal
investigations. New Mexico has simply deemed all oral confessions from children under 13
inadmissible. But while most experts believe the problem would be solved by videotaping the
entire interrogation, only two states, Minnesota and Alaska, have adopted laws requiring that
practice. Instead, as youth violence continues to make the front pages, since 1992 forty states
have passed laws making it easier for juveniles to be tried as adults. In the last session of
Congress, Republicans pushed for the Juvenile Crime Control Act, a bill that would have given
states financial incentives to treat as adults children accused of certain crimes. Because of
opposition from children's rights groups the bill was finally tabled, and it is still unclear whether
the 106th Congress will take it up.
As for A.M., he has spent the past five years on probation. While details of the Ryan
Harris case may or may not be legally admissible, the involvement of the now-notorious Officer
Cassidy is red-flagged in a footnote to A.M.'s petition for federal habeas corpus relief. The
court has asked the state to respond to the petitiona rarity in habeas petitions. Judge Rebecca
Pallmeyer has decided to hear oral arguments at a date not yet set.
During his probation A.M. has committed one new offense. He got into a fight at school, and though no one was injured, he was charged with aggravated battery for assaulting a police officer who tried to break it up. Before his 1994 arrest he had no history of delinquency.
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Amy Bach, a journalist who recently graduated from Stanford Law School, is a clerk for the Hon. Rosemary Barkett
on the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Miami.