3 Detectives Obtained a False Murder Confession. Was It One of Dozens?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/15/nyregion/3-detectives-obtained-a-false-murder-confession-was-it-one-of-dozens.html

Huwe Burton.

By Jan Ransom

For Huwe Burton, the breaking point came late on the night of Jan. 5, 1989, as he sat with detectives in a cramped, windowless room on the second floor of a Bronx police precinct. He had not eaten or slept much in 48 hours. A detective leaned in and said, “Tell us again about what happened that day.”

Mr. Burton, who was 16 then, repeated his story. He had come home two days earlier after spending the day at school and then at his girlfriend’s house, to find his mother, Keziah Burton, facedown on her bed, stabbed to death. Her nightgown was pulled up to her waist. A blue telephone cord was wrapped around her wrist.

What happened next in the interrogation room would reverberate in powerful ways over the coming decades. A false confession. An innocent man imprisoned for nearly 20 years. Serious questions about the tactics used by the three detectives involved in the investigation into Ms. Burton’s killing — and many others.

And now, a wide-ranging inquiry by the Bronx district attorney into whether the detectives’ tactics had tainted guilty verdicts in 31 homicide cases that relied on confessions.

[VMA131Marine]

1. So they tortured the guy to get a confession...

How have we not evolved from the days of the Spanish Inquisition? How are we any better than dictatorial governments all over the world.

A simple solution would be to make a confession inadmissible unless the person making it has first been able to consult with an attorney and that attorney is present during it. False confessions don’t serve justice they ensure it is delayed or denied.

[malaise]

2. these fuckers don't care whose lives are destroyed

We are dispensable people to these racists

[gratuitous]

3. And for every false confession coerced

The actual killer walked free.

[Lochloosa]

4. This.

[secondwind]

5. They should get the same treatment.... 20 YEARS

I hope there will be restitutions.......

[Wounded Bear]

6. Every time they find a bad cop, all of his cases have to be re-examined...

you see on the television shows all the time, though they just tend to use it as a dramatic tool. Just like in the article: he did it once, who's to say he didn't do it more times?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

7. Kick.