Fake Confessions
With the recent twists and turns of the Central Park jogger case as a backdrop, The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting piece about why people would confess to something they hadn't done. From the story:
"It's a reaction to a feeling of utter hopelessness and despair that virtually anything I say about my innocence is going to be ignored, and my only way out of this interrogation room is to accede to the interrogators' demands," says Steven Drizin, a professor at Chicago's Northwestern University School of Law and an expert on false confessions. "The whole purpose of police interrogation tactics is to convince a suspect that it is in his best interest to confess to a crime."