A 15-year-old boy worn down by interrogators falsely confesses to killing his little sister after detectives tell him they have the evidence to prove it.
A 12-year-old Creswell boy falsely confesses to shooting his neighbor’s dog after a Lane County deputy and school officials repeatedly refuse his denials.
A 13-year-old Hillsboro boy is prosecuted on sex-crime charges as the detective admits in court that she deceived him to get a confession.
Oregon Sen. Chris Gorsek (D-Troutdale) said it’s time for law enforcement to stop lying to kids.
Gorsek, a former Portland police officer, is the chief sponsor of Senate Bill 418, which would ban law enforcement from using deception when investigating juvenile suspects. Gorsek said the bill is clear: Using deceit and trickery during the interrogation of a minor just isn’t right.
“If you have good data on a suspect, why do you need to lie to get them to confess?” Gorsek asked.
Gorsek said his bill is one of three recent pieces of legislation to address the laws surrounding the interrogation of minors in Oregon. The previous two laws required electronic recording of certain juvenile interrogations.
Senate Bill 418 reads: “A peace officer conducting an interview of a youth in connection with an investigation of an act that, if committed by an adult, would constitute a crime may not use deceit, trickery or artifice, or any other misleading interrogation technique, during the interview.”
Gorsek said the bill’s text is brief and to the point, but opponents argue it’s vague and confusing. Amanda Dalton with the Oregon District Attorneys Association submitted public testimony saying the association finds the bill’s language overly broad and not adequately defined. She stated the imprecise language will cause time-consuming litigation.
She also argued the bill will hamstring law enforcement’s ability to adequately investigate juvenile crime. Dalton said it is legal for law enforcement to make inaccurate statements to youths who are being investigated for a crime. For example, she said officers can tell a young suspect they found their DNA on the victim or discovered the suspect’s fingerprints on a window.
An Oregon family found that to be true when their teenage son was falsely accused of stabbing to death his 12-year-old sister when the family lived in Southern California in 1998. During an interrogation, police lied to 14-year-old Michael Crowe, claiming they had blood evidence linking him to his sister’s killing.
His family didn’t even know Crowe had been brought in for questioning.
“Our lives have been forever changed,” said Cheryl Crowe, Michael’s mother, more than 20 years after her daughter Stephanie’s murder. Crowe said the family’s sense of truth and knowing “who the good guys are” is not as clear.
“In today’s world, no one tells the truth or cares about right and wrong,” she said. “I miss being naïve and thinking the police and justice system cared about protecting all of us.”
Michael Crowe and his two friends, 15-year-old Aaron Houser and 14-year-old Joshua Treadway, were accused by Escondido and Oceanside detectives of conspiring to kill Stephanie Crowe. The detectives took turns interrogating the boys. The teens were interrogated one after another for several hours at a time. Houser’s attorney said the detectives pushed different story lines of how the crime “might” have happened, suggesting there was a “good Michael” and an “evil Michael.” The detectives turned the boys’ words against each other.
Treadway’s father, who was familiar with the police, even advised his son to cooperate with the detectives – believing it would help his son’s situation. It didn’t. The questioning became too much for the teens. Crowe and Treadway both ended-up making false confessions.
It would take another 14 years for a judge to finally declare the boys “factually innocent” beyond a reasonable doubt, but their childhood was gone.
A transient man spotted near the Crowe’s house the night of the killing was arrested after tests identified Stephanie’s blood on the shirt he had been wearing that night. Richard Tuite was tried twice for the crime and acquitted. The case remains unsolved.
Houser’s former attorney, Don McInnis, has written two books on the case, stressing the importance of finding new ways to protect the constitutional rights of young people.
STREET ROOTS NEWS: After false murder confession by teens, attorney seeks to clarify rights of young suspects
Based on his research, he said, many young people don’t have the mental capacity to be able to offer a free and willing confession. He believes even juveniles who have been in the system before are ill-equipped, neurologically and sociologically, to make that decision.
“They tend to say what police want them to say for three reasons,” said McInnis. “One, because they’re hungry; two, because they’re tired; or three, they just want to go home.”
Juvenile brain vs. adult brain
Medical experts say young people are particularly susceptible to manipulation because their executive function isn’t fully formed until about their mid-20s. Executive function is the ability of the brain to think things through in a reasonable way for rational decision-making.
“We need to recognize their unique vulnerabilities, unique needs and unique differences to ensure the system can be truly equitable and doesn’t take advantage of people based on their age, upbringing or racial and ethnic background.”
— Benjamin Hoffman, OHSU pediatrician
Dr. Benjamin Hoffman, a pediatrician with Oregon Health & Science University, argues you cannot treat a 17-year-old as you would a 30-year-old in terms of them being able to understand the consequences of their actions or being able to consent to things that may impact them significantly.
“It makes them extremely vulnerable to manipulation,” Hoffman said. “They are going to view things, especially threats, in a different way.”
Hoffman testified on behalf of OHSU in support of Senate Bill 418. He said that even though some teenagers may appear mature, the first law of pediatrics is children are not little adults.
Hoffman said certain adults also may be especially vulnerable to tactics used by police during interrogations, but at a certain point, he said, it needs to be accepted that most people over 25 are going to have some semblance of understanding during a criminal interrogation.
He said that biologically, that’s not the case for most children.
“We need to recognize their unique vulnerabilities, unique needs and unique differences to ensure the system can be truly equitable and doesn’t take advantage of people based on their age, upbringing or racial and ethnic background,” he said.
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry issued a policy statement in 2013 to address the issue of children and adolescent interrogation by peace officers. It called for attorneys to be present for all questioning of minors, saying parental presence alone may not be enough. The group recognized parents also are at risk of being persuaded to cooperate with police, in hopes of gaining leniency for their child.
The policy statement recommended police use terms and concepts appropriate to the minor’s development and grade level and offer simplified Miranda warnings developed specifically for juveniles. Ideally, an attorney would be present when those Miranda warnings are administered.
False confessions
“They often tell me they said what they said just to get out of there — true or not.”
— Tyler Neish, attorney with Youth Rights & Justice
Attorney Tyler Neish with the nonprofit firm Youth Rights & Justice said many of the clients he’s appointed to represent are young, vulnerable and living in poverty — and tend to go into an interrogation focused on what they can get now, as opposed to thinking about the long-term consequences.
“They often tell me they said what they said just to get out of there — true or not,” he said. “They just say it was because they wanted to be out of that room.”
Neish said that when investigators question young crime victims, “people are really careful not to put words in their mouths. They let young people tell their story.” But when investigators interrogate child suspects and witnesses, officers often use leading questions or even feed them answers.
Neish said relying on those types of tactics can lead to false confessions. “Instead, we should want all our investigations to lead us to the truth,” he said.
The goal is to keep young people out of the system, especially people who don’t need to be there in the first place. He said that once a juvenile is charged with a crime, even if it turns out to be a false confession, “they are now in a juvenile system which may have significant consequences for their life.”
Finding a job could become a problem. If a crime requires the juvenile to register as a sex offender, that also could affect long-term housing or employment.
“Even a single charge can come up on certain background checks,” Neish said, at least until it gets expunged from the youth’s record.
Attorneys from Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, testifying in support of Senate Bill 418, cited an Oregon case involving a 12-year-old from Creswell.
They say Levi Dunn was accused in 2008 of shooting and killing a neighbor’s dog with a pellet gun. Dunn was interrogated at school by a Lane County deputy and school officials and repeatedly denied shooting the dog. When investigators wouldn’t accept his denials, he falsely confessed to the crime.
Dunn was later proved innocent through ballistics testing, and his family won a federal lawsuit filed against Oregon authorities. But Dunn’s father said his son faced ridicule and harassment after being paraded around by authorities. The boy moved out of state to live with his mother.
“I don’t recall ever having a case where a police officer admitted under oath she lied to a suspect to get a confession. I’ve never seen anything quite so blatant in 38 years of practice.”
— Mark Cogan, Portland attorney
Portland attorney Mark Cogan had his own experience with a young client who was talked into confessing by a detective at the boy’s school.
Cogan said the 13-year-old Evergreen Middle School student was interrogated by a Hillsboro detective in 2006 after being accused of touching the breasts, buttocks and genitalia of multiple female students. The child’s mother and the principal were present for the interrogation.
Cogan said what happened next has bothered him for 15 years: He said the detective lied to his client.
“She told him that it would be to his benefit if he spoke to her, which was an absolute lie,” Cogan said.
The 13-year-old boy confessed to the crimes and was prosecuted on 24 misdemeanor counts of sexual abuse and harassment. Cogan filed a motion to exclude the confession, but even after the detective admitted on the stand that she had lied to Cogan’s young client, the motion was denied.
“I don’t recall ever having a case where a police officer admitted under oath she lied to a suspect to get a confession,” Cogan said. “I’ve never seen anything quite so blatant in 38 years of practice. I was thoroughly disgusted by the detective’s conduct.”
Cogan said the detective was deceitful and dishonest but didn’t break any laws. He pointed to the irony of police being allowed to lie to suspects without consequences, while suspects are severely penalized for doing the same thing.
“I find that troubling,” Cogan said, “especially when it involves a 13-year-old child.”
Cogan said his best advice for minors and their parents is to know their rights and avoid speaking to police without a lawyer present.
He receives several calls a week on this topic, and he even has a flier ready to send out to those needing more information.
Cogan said it’s important people value their right to remain silent, even if police suggest remaining silent will be taken as an indication of guilt.
He added, your home is your castle, and police need a warrant to search your house, computer and cellphone without consent.
Meanwhile, the Oregon Coalition of Police and Sheriffs, or ORCOPS, is speaking against Senate Bill 418. In public testimony on behalf of ORCOPS, lobbyist Michael Selvaggio said, “While ‘deceit, trickery or artifice’ may have negative connotations, these tools nevertheless sometimes serve as important investigatory tools.”
Michael Crowe’s mother, Cheryl, doesn’t agree. “The truth shouldn’t require lies,” she said. “Evidence over incompetence. If police have to use lies and deceit, maybe they should look for another line of work.”
Selvaggio indicated ORCOPS was willing to work with supporters on the core premise of the legislation but recommended lowering the age threshold of what is defined as “youth” and limiting the use of the police interrogation tools to just the sole target of the investigation.
Gorsek pushed back. The senator said all youths, including witnesses, should be told the truth during questioning, and even older teens need their rights protected.
“Having dealt with a lot of kids when I was a police officer, I’m fully aware of how uninformed teenagers can be,” he said. “They may be 17 and look like adults, but they’re certainly not thinking like adults.”
Gorsek said amendments are in the works to help “tighten up” the bill’s language and to incorporate other suggestions. The bill is in Senate committee.
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