Why people confess to crimes they didn’t commit

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/psychologist-explains-why-people-confess-crimes-they-didn-t-commit

334 205 7 years ago

More than a quarter of the 365 people exonerated in recent decades by the nonprofit Innocence Project had confessed to their alleged crime.

Using guessimation, x would be the numer of people that confessed that were innocent, so 91.25 < x < 182.5, and that, alone, was the principally driving force (assumptive, I'm aware) to convict them - and these are the numbers that we're aware of because of the overturned convictions.

Whilst I can understand the reprieve it must give police and the district attorneys in the efforts of building a case, it almost seems as if they just kind of give up applying any further scrutiny, once any confession is had - whether the person actually committed the crime or not.

I'm not sure why this breakdown, for lack of a better vernacular at present, occurs though.

Is it antipathy? Is it because numbers are more important than anything else (e.g.: for elected positions such as Sheriffs)? Is it because we ply the path of least of resistance to the investigating demeanor?

I'm sure a lot of the convictions in the past are biased for varying other degrees but this seems to infer that even without those other degrees of influence, we have a high margin of error for putting innocent people away.

Add those varying degrees referenced above into the equation and I'm not so sure that the deflection, "It's not a perfect system but it works," is really applicable, anymore.

tedmcory77• 7 years ago

It’s my understanding they are metric’d on wins....

stevenwoo2• 7 years ago

Serial's third season podcast series covered this a bit, since the 1980's or so in the USA, we've decreased funding for the judicial system, and not increased prosecutors funding and staff to commensurate with increased crimes due to larger population (if crime rate stayed the same or even decreased.) This puts a lot of pressure on prosecutors to get plea bargains, the logical gaming of the system by prosecutors is to layer on as many of the hardest charges possible, then offer a plea bargain that has a fraction of the penalty of the initial charges. We do not have enough courthouses to actually let every defendent get judged by a jury of their peers. Even if one is innocent, rational people will choose to plea guilty given that prosecutors have something like a 95% conviction rate in the USA and all the resources of their local/state/federal government behind the prosecution. Someone facetiously but based on my viewing of The Wire and The Shield, large city police departments are judged on finding someone to charge with reported crimes and having a lot of open unsolved crimes is seen as a terrible statistic, there's no extra reward in finding the actual person who did each crime so some might find a perverse incentive to clear crimes no matter what.

pmfgpmfg• 7 years ago

"under US law, police are allowed to lie"

in consideration of this fact, anyone taken into US police custody, for any reason, ever, should refuse to open their mouth, or help police in any way.

jopsen3• 7 years ago

The sad thing is that if your neighbor was burgled and the police comes knocking on your door to ask questions, you also have an interest in getting the culprit caught.

Yet, you can't trust the police to not entrap you.

sysbin• 7 years ago

I'm guessing mental abuse of being accused and repetitively in a room for hours. The constant demand upon a person to confess with no end in sight for the person. The experience being unique by the variables of the alleged crime and with whoever is hired to question play into the equation. I think the best situation for an accused person is refusing to talk and until an attorney tells them what to say. Since, mentally I doubt my health (at my best state) could even take anything else in a situation of such importance.

Ntrails• 7 years ago

I think the best situation for an accused person is refusing to talk [to the police]

Simple advice, and easy to follow. Even if you are innocent, understand the police have a job to do and that is to make a case against you. Do Not Help Them.

chrisseaton7• 7 years ago

In some cases not speaking to the Police can damage your defence later, though.

S_A_P• 7 years ago

IANAL, but in the USA, even if the charge is jaywalking and you are arrested ASK FOR AN ATTORNEY. DO NOT ANSWER QUESTIONS without an attorney present. They may try and delay you from retaining an attorney, but when asked a question the only response should be "I want an attorney".

Anecdotally, I am someone who is prone to feeling claustrophobic when I'm in an enclosed space or feeling pressured by people. I could see how 8-12 hours of intense questioning and not knowing my rights could easily turn into "I will say whatever you want, just get me out of this space."

est31• 7 years ago

Obligatory lecture on this topic (must watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

moosey2• 7 years ago

Eye witness testimony is crap too. Even if you could answer pointed questions about your whereabouts in any given evening using Google maps, human recollection of events and their details is not great.

There are questions I am capable of answering with the police but I must accept that most questions I answer could be wrong, or another witness could be wrong and now the police can use my evidence to accuse me off being a liar... Which happens to innocent people in the US because our prison system isn't about Justice, it's about maximizing the slave count in the private prison system.

DanBC4• 7 years ago

police have a job to do and that is to make a case against you

...in the US.

If you're in England and you didn't do it then it's normally a good idea to clear things up. You can have a solicitor with you. Of course, if you've been arrested then you should make use of the solicitor and follow their advice - which will usually be "explain what happened and where you were at the time", unless you did in fact do it where their advice might be "explain in these terms what happened", or "just say 'no comment' to every question".

DenisM3• 7 years ago

There is nuance to that - simply remaining silent is not the same thing as asserting silence, and is not as effective.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/when-how-invoke-your...

CUViper• 7 years ago

Where do you draw the line on answering questions as a witness, versus refusing to answer as a potential accused person?

grkvlt4• 7 years ago

Simple advice, yes. I would disagree on the 'easy to follow' part - it's very difficult to stand your ground against someone with the authority and powers of a police officer, especially in a tense or confusing situation. Alternatively, perhaps the officer is presenting things as a completely innocuous situation, where only someone like a sociopathic, unhelpful criminal with something to hide would refuse to respond, and so on. It makes it very psychologically demanding and emotionally draining to keep saying 'no comment' and yet still remember that you are doing the right thing and absolutely have the right to keep doing so.

jellicle2• 7 years ago

Wrongly confess: you'll be released today, albeit with a criminal conviction and a fine.

Maintain innocence: spend the next 3-18 months in jail, then have a trial without effective counsel, probably lose, be sentenced to time served and a fine. You'll have lost your job, your kids will be in foster care, and your family will have been evicted.

It's not complicated. (For more serious crimes, the police still generally promise "you'll be released today", they just don't deliver on that promise. "Just tell us what happened and we can put all this behind us, we just have a few questions." So even though the accused is facing serious punishment for wrongly confessing, the decision still appears similar to the above.)

abofh• 7 years ago

It also helps to remember, the police are not there to find the truth or find your innocence.

Their job is to gather evidence sufficient for the DA to charge you and convict you. Once you've been arrested or detained, you're not talking your way out of it, you're just giving them information to pass on to the DA.

jopsen3• 7 years ago

In other countries the police is tasked with doing an impartial investigation.

They not allowed to lie, or even interrupt an explanation to attempt to tweak the wording.

Using American tactics in other countries could get a police officer fired or worse.

vinceguidry2• 7 years ago

I couldn't read the article in-depth, it's too depressing. What makes it depressing is that it ultimately resolves to income inequality, which in America is only really a problem because of racism. So everywhere you look there's a travesty of justice with no escape other than total upending of society, i.e. telling everyone to not be racist.

False confessions wouldn't be a problem if there were a true presumption of innocence. Our justice system doesn't presume innocence in areas where caseloads are high, it takes shortcuts. When people take shortcuts, the costs of that externalization fall the hardest on those with the fewest resources to defend themselves. You're way less inclined to think charitably about someone who looks like all the other people you lock up every single day.

With these as the table stakes, that this kind of article is even needed, that if you lock an emotionally-vulnerable person in a room and yell at them for hours, eventually they're going to crack, is just more depressing.

If you want a concrete vision of Hell, real Hell, you can't get a more compelling one than that of how America treats its underclass.

50656E69733• 7 years ago

ultimately resolves to income inequality, which in America is only really a problem because of racism.

Income inequality is not restricted to minorities.

There are more white people living in poverty/prison than any other racial group.

vinceguidry2• 7 years ago

Then let's talk privilege. America's underclass is created not just by income inequality, but also by the collective belief by those not in the underclass that the underclass is worthless. If this were not the case, then they wouldn't continually create policies to keep them down.

whack• 7 years ago

One factor worth considering from the study the article references, which it really should have acknowledged. Tactics such as minimization, are extremely effective in increasing the rate of true-confessions as well, which significantly outnumber the number of false-confessions.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7798075_Investigati...

"Results indicated that guilty persons were more likely to confess than innocent persons, and that the use of minimization and the offer of a deal increased the rate of both true and false confessions"

Condition, True confessions, False confessions

No tactic 46% 6%

Minimization 81% 18%

F_r_k• 7 years ago

I'm not sure I prefer to have more true confessions of that implies more wrong confessions (even if one might outweigh the other)..

hammock• 7 years ago

If you look at the stats, the ratios are getting worse

_drimzy• 7 years ago

Given that people who know the law, can plead the fifth and avoid being interrogated at all, why doesn't the law just ban interrogation of the accused altogether? It creates a divide between people who have access to good lawyers vs those who don't and fall prey to such coercion.

giancarlostoro• 7 years ago

It really should ban interrogation without a lawyer but also if someone waives their rights they should have a mandatory discussion with a lawyer. If they waived their rights before a lawyer even showed up thats a whole lot of sketchiness going on.

lostmyoldone• 7 years ago

Swedish criminal law implement something that could be considered a partial application of that idea, but instead of outlawing interrogation, any admission of guilt is only to be considered as part of evidence in a case.

Thus when the courts do their work correctly, it's almost impossible to be convicted on your admissions alone, especially for more serious crimes.

There are however instances where this has still happened, indicating that maybe confeso of guilt should not be admissible as evidence at all, though material evidence found through interrogation probably should.

maxxxxx2• 7 years ago

" any admission of guilt is only to be considered as part of evidence in a case."

This makes sense to me. Someone confessing to a crime is certainly a strong indicator they did it but it's not 100%.

soulofmischief• 7 years ago

Have there been any cases of someone being exonerated for lack of evidence despite pleading to be arrested for their bloody cannibalistic rape spree?

rayiner• 7 years ago

That’s true in the US too.

jopsen3• 7 years ago

Can the police lie in Sweden?

Afaik they aren't allowed to in Denmark... Sure, you can tell a man ready to jump off a ledge anything.

But in an interrogation, the police can't lie, or try to extract a confession.

There are so many differences.

dahfizz3• 7 years ago

I assume swedish courts use juries?

Regardless of the technical rules about how confessions should be treated, a jury will always overvalue a confession. The same applies to eyewitness testimony, which is basically useless but juries accept it as undeniable truth.

The game of prosecution is not "prove the accused is guilty". The game is "convince these random people that the accused is guilty". The later is a decent approximation of the former but I wish we had something better.

techbio• 7 years ago

plead the fifth and avoid being interrogated at all, why doesn't the law just ban interrogation of the accused altogether?

A lot of these interrogations are of "persons of interest" who haven't (yet) been accused or charged, perhaps having been alarmed by the police telling them that their silence is evidence of guilt?

simonh2• 7 years ago

Such interrogations can often occur before someone is accused. At that point, they're just a potential witness and may not be in custody and therefore might not even have been 'Mirandized'.

As I understand it anyway, I'm a furriner. We don't have anything like Miranda in the UK, but of course the same ethical issues apply.

jon-wood• 7 years ago

We don't have anything like Miranda in the UK, but of course the same ethical issues apply.

We definitely do, the wording is just a bit different to the US version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence#England_and_W...

mirimir6• 7 years ago

In the US, the mantra is "Am I under arrest?" and if not, "May I leave?" If you're not under arrest, I don't believe that you need to answer questions. Politely, of course. And if you are under arrest, you have the right to counsel during interrogation.

pdkl95• 7 years ago

How accustomed to (ab-)using the coercieve power of interrogation do you have to be to think arresting a public defender when they insisted on representing their client during questioning was a good idea?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qhzdxYnwhg

jeremyjh• 7 years ago

I'm not sure how police would do their jobs if they could never ask anyone questions without a lawyer present. This would mean for example, that before giving a statement as a witness to a traffic accident resulting in minor injury, that I would need to obtain representation. Of course this is not the kind of interrogation you are talking about, but what would be the bright line rule that separates adversarial interrogation (even for someone not yet arrested or charged) versus just "asking a few questions" ?

mrguyorama5• 7 years ago

You could always go with "Nothing you say can be used against you without declaration of intent (ie 'we are arresting you for ___') and representation"

08-15• 7 years ago

John Kogut, a Long Island man who after an 18-hour interrogation falsely confessed

How is this not considered torture? How is the confession of a sleep deprived and hence mentally impaired man even valid? Why are the feral cops who interrogated him not in jail for crimes against humanity?

On the other hand, why don't they go a step further? Sharp tools, electricity, hallucinogenic drugs, etc. would go a long way towards getting a confession sooner.

maxheadroom3• 7 years ago

On the other hand, why don't they go a step further? Sharp tools, electricity, hallucinogenic drugs, etc. would go a long way towards getting a confession sooner.

Chicago[0] beat you to that idea, my friend.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/homan-square

pravda• 7 years ago

In that specific case, the police did not consider the confession by itself to be enough to falsely convict Mr Kogut and his two friends.

So the police took a hair from the victim, put it in an evidence bag, and testified under oath that the hair had been found in the defendants' van.

It looks like the innocent men were released in 2003, and have had to wait 15+ years for compensation.

https://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/fusco-restivo-hal...

But hey, it shows that the criminal justice system works!

ummonk• 7 years ago

The ancient Artha Shastra had an interesting take on this. Thanks to its time period, it advocated torturing suspects during interrogations (of limited duration). However, due to the near certainty of false confessions in such an interrogation, it instructed the interrogator to attempt to obtain knowledge through the torture that only the guilty could have, such as the location of stolen property or murder weapons.

Steve442• 7 years ago

This is basically the 'ticking bomb' scenario isn’t it. If the question was to keep torturing until “was Mr Bloggs a part of the meeting” is a yes then that is pretty much not valid as the subject will likely say anything to stop it. To find the location of bomb going off in 30 minutes is a very different matter as it’s a clear true or false question with a very direct answer.

sorokod• 7 years ago

No it isn't. It is information that may be difficult to obtain but trivial to verify.

maxxxxx2• 7 years ago

I have read that good interrogators will do that without torture. They will check the information they are getting against facts that can be checked. From what I have read about innocent people that got convicted most of these convictions relied on “evidence” where nobody made the effort to sanity check the information and see if it really makes sense.

simonh2• 7 years ago

Also check for the consistency of the person's story. Lying is stressful and you have to remember details you have invented and that don't match your own memory. This is difficult to keep straight, especially over an extended period.

jasonhansel• 7 years ago

I wonder if this is part of why police officers (on podcasts etc.) often decline to discuss details of, say, unsolved crime scenes. They need to make sure that some arbitrary details aren't made public, so that they can later prove a confession is real.

pryce• 7 years ago

Besides the ethical implications of using torture at all (especially those who do not the criteria for being convicted),

I am deeply skeptical that any organization could simultaneously:

* use torture of prisoners to obtain confessions (true or otherwise)

* still respect the rights of those prisoners enough to refrain from planting evidence in line with those confessions

naniwaduni• 7 years ago

It doesn't have to be about respecting the rights of the prisoners if you think it's bad enough to have the real culprit run free because you got the wrong person and thought you were done.

stordoff• 7 years ago

it instructed the interrogator to attempt to obtain knowledge through the torture that only the guilty could have

This (AIUI) is currently used in Japan (without the torture). It's not a cast-iron guarantee against false confessions:

Article 38 of Japan's Constitution categorically requires that "no person shall be convicted or punished in cases where the only proof against suspect is his/her own confession," In practice, this constitutional requirement take a form of safeguard known as "revelation of secret" (Himitsu no Bakuro, lit "outing of secret"). Because suspects are put through continuous interrogation which could last up to 23 days as well as isolation from the outside world, including access to lawyers, both the Japanese judiciary and the public are well aware that confession of guilt can easily be forced. Consequently, the court (and the public) take the view that mere confession of guilt alone is never any sufficient ground for conviction.
However, most miscarriage of justice cases in Japan are, indeed, the results of conviction solely based on the confession of the accused. In these case, (1) the record of sequence and timing of the police discoveries of evidence and the timing of confession is unclear (or even faked by the police) (2) the contents of the revelation of secret has only weak relevance to the crime itself or that (3) the revelation of secret to be actually vague enough that it is apply only loosely to the elements of crime (Prosecutor's fallacy). Serious miscarriage of justice cases in Japan involve police deliberately faking the police evidence (and insufficient supervision by the prosecutor to spot such rogue behaviour) such as where the police already knew (or suspected) the location of the body or the murder weapon but they fake the police record to make it appear that it is the suspect who revealed the location. During the 1970s, a series of reversals of death penalty cases brought attention to the fact that some accused, after intensive interrogation signed as-yet unwritten confessions, which were later filled in by investigating police officers. Moreover, in some cases, the police falsified the record so that it appear that the accused confessed to the location where the body was buried, yet the truth was that the police had written in the location in the confession after the body was discovered by other means. These coerced confessions, together with other circumstantial evidence, often convinced judges to (falsely) convict.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Jap...

AnthonyMouse• 7 years ago

Serious miscarriage of justice cases in Japan involve police deliberately faking the police evidence (and insufficient supervision by the prosecutor to spot such rogue behaviour) such as where the police already knew (or suspected) the location of the body or the murder weapon but they fake the police record to make it appear that it is the suspect who revealed the location.

It's also not difficult for police to do this purposely or even by accident when they don't know the information yet, but there are only a small number of plausible answers to the question. So they ask you two dozen questions that each have five plausible answers, investigate the answers you give and five of them turn out to be correct by random chance. Then the wrong answers are forgotten or written off as a guilty person casting misdirection while the probability of each correct answer is incorrectly multiplied by the others to produce a strikingly inaccurate probability result.

kazinator• 7 years ago

Though sometimes people confess due to interrogation pressure tactics, there is still this phenomenon that the article doesn't touch on: attention-seekers who voluntarily call in and turn themselves in, claiming to be the perpetrator of some widely publicized crime, like a serial killing or whatever.

Steve442• 7 years ago

There is a fair amount of press in the UK at the moment related to a Westminster VIP paedophile ring where it looks like the "victim", a Carl Beech, may have been making it up.

nhumrich• 7 years ago

I've had a polygraph before while interviewing for a security clearance position. The questions they asked were pretty standard such as "are you a terrorist" and things. I could unequivocally answer the questions without a thought. But my polygraph took a couple hours and after a while in that room, being asked the same questions over and over, I honestly started to wonder if I was, somehow, a terrorist and they knew it but I didn't.

noob_slayer2• 7 years ago

Do you think terrorists identify with that word?

sieabahlpark• 7 years ago

When you take a polygraph you sign a document saying not to spread the actual questions asked. Specifically he's talking about the counter intelligence portion which is 4 questions centralized around things terrorists would do.

beenBoutIT• 7 years ago

No, not unless they're insane. It looks more like they deliberately worded it to appeal to mentally retarded individuals suffering from persecutory delusions and the like. 'Terrorist Foiled' sounds better than 'Delusional Idiot Entrapped', especially when taxpayers are footing the bill.

keiru• 7 years ago

"identify" is a tricky word, because you might not think of yourself as an X, but you might see how someone might call you an X.

Also, some terrorists likely do, some maybe not.

dheera2• 7 years ago

What if one answered with "I answered that question already" -- would they be forced to come up with new questions?

wolf550e• 7 years ago

They tell you that you must answer yes or no only.

pessimizer• 7 years ago

My guess is that they fail you.

dodobirdlord• 7 years ago

One aspect of a polygraph test is to hammer the same questions over and over at staggered intervals and see if the signal response differs.

neilv• 7 years ago

I've heard some stories about polygraph exercises being used very aggressively in that way. For example, here's a claim I happened to bookmark (which sounds like it might be an extreme case, if even true): https://antipolygraph.org/statements/statement-038.shtml

(Personally, I avoid any jobs requiring security clearance, despite respect for a lot of those jobs, and respect for the people who take on that extra burden on their freedom out of a sense of duty. One reason I don't think it's for me is that my earlier youthful privacy&security advocacy had me talking on topics that I don't think I could've, were there any perception that I might've been exposed to privileged information. Apparently, I like talking, and occasionally I've managed to randomly think and say something that needed to be said, and I figure that's one way I'm useful.)

sundvor• 7 years ago

Wow, what a disturbing read; that's so messed up. Thanks for sharing.

dls2016• 7 years ago

Really? Perhaps previous run-ins with police have made me immune to “cop logic”, but my polygraph experience was an over-the-top good cop/bad cop routine. You’re being filmed and “the supervisor” supposedly watching kept making demands to review certain items. For some reason we spent half an hour on a tangent of them trying to get me to admit I was having an affair. From what evidence, who the hell knows? Completely ridiculous.

0/10 never again, very happy to be out of that world

(I’m also convinced that the good cop/bad cop routine is WAY more effective than whatever pseudoscience the polygraph machine possesses.)

dragonwriter2• 7 years ago

But my polygraph took a couple hours and after a while in that room, being asked the same questions over and over, I honestly started to wonder if I was, somehow, a terrorist and they knew it but I didn't.

That's essentially the purpose of polygraph "testing". Its reliability as a test is no better than coin flipping, the only reason it is used is to create pressure and thereby lead to confessions.

mrguyorama5• 7 years ago

I think it's worse than coin flipping. Flipping a coin cannot be interpreted however you want

stephen_g• 7 years ago

The polygraph machine is, of course, mostly just a prop. Although I think perhaps some operators believe in it, there's actually no evidence to show that of the things it measures can with any reliability determine whether a person is telling the truth or lying.

It's not a 'test', it's an interrogation. They are trying to convince you that they know more than they actually do to try and stress you and push you into making a confession.

derefr• 7 years ago

I’ve heard it suggested that the point of the polygraph isn’t to serve as a prop or to discern truth from falsehood, but rather to direct the interrogation toward topics that seem to cause the interviewee the most stress.

sohkamyung• 7 years ago

Sadly, some people believe that the polygraph and other 'lie-detector' tests are infallible. Here's a recent article about the British "Jeremy Kyle Show" (a reality show, I believe) being axed after one of its guest committed suicide after 'failing' a lie-detector test. [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-48279613

smurv• 7 years ago

It's disgusting that polygraphs are still in use and their results taken seriously, especially in modern and developed countries like Canada and the US ... Call me next time and I'll flip a coin for you instead

Nasrudith• 7 years ago

The polygraph is a security blanket for spooks. If they fail to notice one of their agents betraying them they can justify their trust with their security blankets and pinky swears.

netwanderer3• 7 years ago

If we keep pushing bogus information with enough frequency, slowly it will build up the intended belief and eventually it will be perceived as true. I think your situation was a perfect example of that though it hadn't materialized to the last stage.

grahamburger• 7 years ago

American Vandal (Netflix original) season 2 deals with this theme and is pretty amazing all around!

rolltiide• 7 years ago

Judge Steven Barrett of the Bronx Supreme Court vacated Burton's 3-decade-old conviction, citing such work as the basis of his decision.

This worked in a subdivision of a single city, but may never work in rural Wisconsin or the other 30,000+ municipalities in this country which operate under 55 sovereign districts with completely different legal hierarchies.

We don't even have total transparency about who is even in most of these municipal prisons and under what circumstances.

The work in New York City - "the center of the free world" - is probably the most advanced, and the world's news organizations have barely scratched the surface about whats going on in Riker's Islands and its other prisons.

How can we really address this?

blizkreeg• 7 years ago

In India, confessions in lock-up or to the police are not admissible in court in a criminal proceeding. I've always found that as the way to prevent innocent people from being convicted based on their confession.

sickcodebruh3• 7 years ago

Years ago, my band was harassed aggressively by border crossing guards while entering Canada. They insisted we had drugs with us and wanted us to confess. We knew we had nothing. Separated from my friends, threatened with what would happen when they found things, being told they were calling the dogs to search the car, seeing them going through our stuff, I had moments where I wondered if I had forgotten anything and if it might be better to confess just in case.

mbrameld2• 7 years ago

I had a nearly identical experience crossing into Canada back in 2012. It was bizarre. They kept telling me they knew they were going to find someone in my car, which made me think they might actually PUT something in my car to find. Several hours later I was able to continue on into Canada after I repacked everything they had spread out everywhere.

sickcodebruh3• 7 years ago

I’m sorry you went through that, too. Were you also traveling with a band?

We had similar tactics applied by Border Agents in Arizona just past the California-Arizona state border last September. This time, I was driving and I knew they were full of shit when they surrounded us, talked about bringing dogs (they always threaten with dogs?), and claimed they smelled drugs in the vehicle. It didn’t go on for as long, they didn’t make us get out or go through our stuff, and copping to something we didn’t do didn’t enter my head, but it felt too familiar.

The stakes in these situations were low, we knew this was par for the course when crossing these borders and it was STILL stressful and frightening. I can so easily see how people in more serious situations break when under more intense pressure.

lostjohnny3• 7 years ago

It happened to me few times while crossing border to Switzerland.

We usually smoke everything we have a couple of kms before the border, just to be sure we have nothing when they are going to check on us, after all that's their job, they're gonna check anyway.

It also happened on the border to Slovenia, with my girlfriend, they separated us and told me they had a new test that detected every known drug and could charge me on the account of using.

I laughed so hard that they let us go.

SketchySeaBeast• 7 years ago

We usually smoke everything we have a couple of kms before the border

So you coming rolling up smelling heavily of weed, and for some reason they insist on searching you for weed? How weird. I feel like there's a way to avoid that.

devonkim• 7 years ago

I was “pulled over” by a police officer when I was driving into Chicago from Washington state. He had followed me off the highway where I had pulled over to make a phone call, and he came up to me asking for registration and wanted to know who I was calling. All of this was justified because he suspected drugs in my car because a lot of drugs come from Canada through WA into Chicago. He said he had a dog with him in the car as well. I said I didn’t care because I don’t have any drugs and that I’m just traveling through the state and needed to phone a friend for a place to stay. He never ran my registration after I handed it to him, nor did he go back to his car for any information or dog, then he said I was clear to go. When he pulled away it was clear there was no dog in the back seat. I know to say as little as possible to cops even if I know I’m not guilty of anything but this was outright so stupid I couldn’t invoke “I want a lawyer” either.

Cops and other forms of law enforcement seem to have a history of lying to suspects to try to uncover criminal behaviors and I’m really not sure if this practice is even constitutional let alone effective. I don’t know what’s reasonable anymore in our police state.

hvo• 7 years ago

Well, I am not surprised at all. In US police,not all of them, often lie under oath.It is called ‘Testilying.’[0]

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/nyregion/police-lying-new...

michelpp• 7 years ago

Perhaps one of the best videos on YouTube "Don't talk to the Police":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

apatheticonion• 7 years ago

Scene from the Wire relating to lie detector machines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN7pkFNEg5c

Tsubasachan• 7 years ago

Its really unfortunate. Your lawyer will tell you not to take the polygraph. Your lawyer will tell you not to sign a damn thing. Your lawyer will tell you to STFU. Your lawyer will tell you about all the little mindgames and brainwashing that you are going to experience.

But if you're poor you don't have a lawyer to save you from the bad people. And its not in the government interest to provide you with one.

ajscanlan• 7 years ago

Can you not be provided a lawyer even if you're poor? I thought that was a right.

twoquestions• 7 years ago

You have a lawyer you meet at trial and don't get privacy with, and that's provided they're not incentivized (with money or otherwise) to deliberately fail to defend you.

Why people confess to crimes they didn’t commit

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