A: There is research that shows teens are more vulnerable to false confessions than adults.
Cook County, Ill., is home to more documented proven false confessions than any place else in the United States.
All of this is why the young are much more likely than adults to give false confessions.
Of the three hundred and eleven people exonerated through post-conviction DNA testing, more than a quarter had given false confessions — including those convicted in such notorious cases as the Central Park Five.
The Innocence Project, the watchdog group that helped to defend Mr. Tankleff, has long argued that false confessions are far more frequent than is commonly believed.
Some interrogation methods are more likely than others to produce false confessions, yet there are no national standards; fewer than half of states require interrogations to be videotaped, and all of them allow interrogators to lie to suspects.
A wave of mysterious killings of opposition-minded figures has further clouded the saga and triggered accusations against the CPP of "dirty tricks", while the woeful police investigation of the recent murder of Chea Vichea, a union leader, suggests that more energy is spent on extracting false confessions than in finding the real killers.
Younger children also lack the capacity to properly engage in the criminal justice system, are more likely to accept a plea bargain, give false confessions or fail to keep track of court proceedings.
On The Justice NewsLadder, you'll find information about the problems of unreliable witness identification, false confessions, junk forensic science and more.
We called Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University and author of Age of Opportunity: Lessons From the New Science of Adolescence, to learn more about why teens are particularly vulnerable to false confessions.
