The aspect of psychology and law research from this week’s course material is most relevant to the topic of interrogations and false confessions techniques that are used by law enforcement when evaluating criminal suspects. In the case that was presented about the Central Park Five documentary, it demonstrates how the legal system can fail, innocent suspect when it comes to interrogation methods, which leads to false confessions. An interrogation is to ask questions to a suspect. Therefore, some of the strategies of interrogations are first …show more content…
Miranda rights is a right to remain silence warning given by police in the United States to criminal suspects in police custody or in a custodial interrogation. In fact, one study that involves a review of recorded interrogations showed that 90% of juvenile suspect waived their Miranda rights (Cleary et al., 2011). I believe many of our young youth don’t even understand what the Miranda rights mean they are simply too young to understand the law. The Central Park Five case in 1989 is about a 28- year-old white, female jogger that was brutally raped and beaten. The woman was discovered lying near death in the bushes, NYPD found several black and brown youth near the park and detained them for questioning. The detectives used coercive interrogation that was demonstrated in the documentary. The prosecutors charged the five teenage boys for a false confession. The jurors only focused on the confession and didn’t see how the coercive interrogation really took place prior to the confession. They were sentenced to 5 to 15 years to prison. According to a social psychologist, Saul Kassin “The goal is to break the suspect down to helplessness and despair explaining the interrogation process in the documentary. “Once the confession is taken, it trumps everything else. It trumps DNA evidence. Its effects cannot be reversed. Then in 2002, the convicted rapist came forward, which was Mathias Reyes, admitted to the rape of the Jogger. The DNA evidence confirmed that he committed the rape and the convictions of the Central Park Five were