In the news by Karen Franklin PhD: Groundbreaking research: One out of every 10 rape convictions wrong?
As a young man, Michael Jones pleaded guilty to back-to-back attempted molestations of two girl strangers. However, he adamantly maintained his innocence while in prison and on parole. He said his lawyer had coerced him into pleading guilty by threatening him with life in prison if he went to trial. Michael was one of a handful of Black people in a rural white community; both of the little girls were white. He was identified when police brought him to the station and showed him to the girls. There was no lineup procedure with foils; he was the only choice the girls were given. On the basis of his two convictions, government evaluators diagnosed Michael with pedophilia and recommended civil commitment.
As a teenager, Paul Smith tried to molest a younger boy. He was arrested at the scene and confessed. He disputed only one point in the victim’s statement: that he had threatened the younger boy with a gun. Police searched his home and found no gun. Pre-conviction polygraph testing indicated he was being truthful when he denied having a gun. Over the ensuing years, however, clinicians in sex offender treatment programs hammered at him to admit that he had used a gun. Government evaluators said Paul’s “denial” and “minimization” of his gun use influenced their recommendation for civil commitment.
In cases such as these, I am consistently struck by the naïveté of clinicians and forensic evaluators alike, who accept police reports and especially victim accounts as the gospel truth. From my former career as a criminal investigator, I can attest to the fact that even impartial observers with no conscious motivation to distort are never 100 percent accurate in describing events they have witnessed. As Daniel Schachter so clearly articulates in Seven Sins of Memory, distortion is the nature of the human animal. It is even more likely to occur in situations involving high levels of stress, fear and emotionality.
So I was happy to see that the issue of false convictions for sex offenses is getting some much-needed and long-overdue attention. Or, let me qualify that: Happy about the empirical research, but less than thrilled with a theoretical article on the psychological dynamics underlying false accusations. Let me take those up one at a time.
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In the news by Karen Franklin PhD: Groundbreaking research: One out of every 10 rape convictions wrong?
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