Professor Timothy O’Neill Addresses the Use of Juvenile Confessions

Feb. 8 – Chicago Daily Law Bulletin

The problems with police interrogations of juveniles were graphically illustrated in Amy Berg’s recent documentary “West of Memphis.”

This is the fourth film that has been made about the “West Memphis 3″—three teenagers convicted of killing three children in West Memphis, Ark., in 1993.

During the long interrogation, police fed Damien Echols’ friend, Jessie Misskelley, many of the lurid details that he eventually claimed to remember. Even so, the mentally slow Misskelley kept changing the times of the murders from anywhere between noon and 8 p.m. Although photographic evidence supported the alibis of Echols and Baldwin, all three were convicted.

Read more: Prof. Timothy O’Neill Addresses the Use of Juvenile Confessions

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