It Takes More Than Taping Confessions to Stop Wrongful Convictions

The New York Times' Jim Dwyer makes the point that confessions, but not entire interrogiations, are recorded in New York. But it's documenting entire interrogations that could stop people being wrongfully convicted after they give false confessions. Dwyer writes: "They’ve been recording confessions for years — true confessions, false confessions, they pretty much all look the same. But after so many people who confessed were proven innocent with DNA tests, we now know that it’s not the confession part that tells you whether to believe someone — it’s that first 12 hours in custody, or whatever it was before the camera went on, that tells you how he or she got to 'I did it.'" Cops can feed details to innocent suspects that only the murderer would know. Then the innocent suspects feed it back to them.