Juveniles who’ve been wrongly convicted of crimes lose more than just their freedom.
Every time we post an article about wrongful convictions, like yesterday’s story about Ledura Watkins, it reopens the discussion among our readers about how easily a miscarriage of justice can occur. According to current research, approximately 10,000 people are wrongfully convicted every year in the United States. What is even more troubling is the fact that a terrifying number of them are juveniles.
According to Steven A. Drizin, a clinical professor of law at Northwestern University, false confessions make up 16% of all known wrongful convictions. Interestingly enough, juvenile’s represent a larger percentage of that, with an average of 13% of adult wrongful convictions stemming from false confessions, while for juveniles the number was a much higher 42%.
A separate study conducted by Gross and others entitled “Rate of false conviction of criminal defendants who are sentenced to death” also showed that the younger the accused, the more likely they are to falsely confess. Specifically, 25% of juveniles aged 16 and 17 who were wrongly convicted, were due to false confessions. But for juveniles aged 12 to 15, the false confessions rate was much higher, coming in at 69%.
This is supported by research done by the Innocence Project. According to their data, 10% of the 329 people exonerated by DNA were arrested as minors. Of those juvenile arrests, 94% of them were youths of color. In addition, every one of them was tried as an adult, even though many of them were as young as 14 at the time of their arrest.
The Innocence Project believes that there are some very important facts here that cannot be overlooked.
Especially with regard to this particular demographic. First, 75% of exonerees who were arrested as minors were implicated by other children. Secondly, many of them were accused of committing crimes in large groups. And finally, 84% of the people of color who were arrested as juveniles and later exonerated, were arrested due to false confessions and guilt confessions.
The facts of the matter are clear. Children accused of crimes should be handled very carefully, and only by trained professionals. Specifically, trained professionals who do not benefit in any way from their confession. While police training is comprehensive, and the law allows an officer a lot of latitude for using coercive methods in order to gain a confession, this doesn’t work with children.
Children are considerably more vulnerable to false confessions due to a host of reasons. Their inability to fully comprehend the implications of a false confession, their lack of developed coping skills for handling stressful situations (like an interrogation), and their youthful suggestibility all make them easy targets for false confession.
Many suggestions have been made over the years for how this can be avoided in future. While recent developments in crime solving techniques, like DNA sampling and forensic chemistry, have advanced in leaps and bounds in the last decade or so, we are not out of the woods yet. Detailed recordings made of every interaction between officers and suspects would also help as well, by eliminating issues like accidental contamination of the interview. Criminal defense lawyers all over Michigan see tainted interviews daily. Another possible solution is juvenile interviews being conducted by forensic interviewers who are not affiliated with police or prosecutors.
Either way, something needs to change, and it needs to change soon. Children are our greatest resource, and we cannot continue to incarcerate them for crimes they didn’t commit. If your son or daughter has been accused of a crime they didn’t commit, contact The Kronzek Firm immediately at 866 766 5245. We have decades of experience defending the wrongfully convicted. We can help your young loved ones too.