They say there are three sides to every story: there’s his side, her side, and then there’s the truth. Everyday, the American justice system is relied upon to search for answers and make decisions. The American people trust that our justice system is fair and responsible in their dealings. What happens when our authority figures are then disgraced, and shown to be unjust in their actions?
Every so often, we hear about cases of wrongdoing by authority figures. Would you believe it if you were told that a 14-year-old boy confessed to murdering his 12-year-old sister? Maybe. Now, would you believe that same scenario if you had found out that boy was not allowed to eat or sleep for many hours while being heavily interrogated without the presence of a lawyer or a parent, and while the investigators told him that he murdered her? You may think that it is not possible for police and investigators to be able to make a boy confess to something he did not do. However, in the case of Michael Crowe, this is very much possible.
In January 1998, 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe was found stabbed to death in her bedroom. When police were called, they found no signs of forced entry. Naturally, the investigators assumed someone in the house had killed her. They focused on Stephanie’s dad, but then noticed the reactions of her brother, Michael. When police arrived to the house, they had the rest of the family sit in the living room. Everyone was crying and grieving, but Michael was playing a video game. This sent up a red flag, and motivated the police to name Michael as the prime suspect. For the following weeks, Michael and his friends were subjected to intensive interrogations, eventually caving-in to the pressure to falsely admit they committed the crime.
Coercion and a false confession led to the arrest of Michael Crowe, as well as two of his friends, Aaron Houser and Joshua Treadway. It is especially important to have all interrogations video recorded. It is true that typical video confessions only focus on the suspect, with very little, to no environmental cues. Juries and other audience members fall victim to the fundamental attribution error when they see someone’s taped confession, and attribute the confession to the person, instead of external forces that may be instigating the person to say something they do not mean (The Pennsylvania State University).
Additionally, video recorded interrogations pose as a form of protection of the accused. The recorded interviews showed that Michael, Joshua, and Aaron were victims of the misinformation effect. The police actively tell the boys what had happened, and that they had committed the crime, even though they had no recollection of it. The boys created stories of what happened based upon facts that were presented to them. Michael, in fact, states he must lie and make the story up in order to tell them what happened. His “confession” never provided one correct piece of information about the crime itself. Their stories never matched any of the forensic evidence.
In addition, one of the main goals during an interrogation is to gain a confession (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). Young age, mental illness, drug use, bias, self-fulfilling prophecies, investigators pre-determined guilt or innocence, and various other factors can elicit false and incriminating statements and confessions during interviews (Schneider et al., 2012). In Michael’s case, he was forced to believe that he killed his sister, and eventually fell to the self-fulfilling prophecy (which is how beliefs of others or yourself result in certain beliefs or actions that make it true), thus leading to a false confession.
In society today, understanding how interrogations and interviews are conducted behind closed doors is important. Not only can this decrease the number of suspected wrongdoing in the justice system, but it also helps protect against false confessions and self-incrimination, as seen in the Crowe case.
–Orlena Riner
>>PS- There is a fictional movie called The Interrogation of Michael Crowe. At one point, Michael’s lawyer states, “What these police officers wanted to get out was their version of the truth, not the truth itself. Michael’s confession, ‘so called,’ has been seen for what it is. Now this trial will have to be about the facts!” A few years after their trial, Michael, Joshua, and Aaron were exonerated, and were found “factually innocent” (Sauer, 2012).
>Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJcqjPxtIXc
>Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USxjvOt9kBI
>Additional: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k51mYJE2Mos
References
Sauer, M. (2012, May 22). Michael Crowe Found ‘Factually Innocent’ in Sister’s Murder. Retrieved March 2015, from KPBS: http://www.kpbs.org/news/2012/may/22/michael-crowe-found-factually-innocent-sisters-mur/
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.). Los Angeles, CA, USA: Sage.
The Pennsylvania State University. (n.d.). Lesson 8: The Legal System. Retrieved March 2015, from Psych490: Senior Seminar in Psychology: https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp15/psych424/001/content/09_lesson/less08_01.html
While reading about how Michael was coerced into a confession it reminded me of something I read once on the correct way to question children. When you ask them a question, and they answer you, you are not supposed to repeat the question. The reason you should not repeat the question is because it sends them the signal that their first answer was wrong, or not what you wanted to hear, so they change their answer (Perry & Szalavitz, 2006). Children are programmed to please and appease adults and do not have the cognitive discernment always to understand the importance of staying true.
After watching the linked video I am convinced I have never seen a stronger example of self-fulfilling prophecy. For those of you who have not studied social psychology, I will explain what this ominous sounding term means. A self-fulfilling prophecy is when “people have an expectation of what another person is like, which influences how they act toward that person, which causes that person to behave consistently with people’s original expectations, making the expectations come true” (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2013). Self-fulfilling prophecy has enormously far-reaching implications regarding how our behavior toward a person can change the way that a person behaves. With the young man in this video he knew he did not kill his sister, yet the police, an authority figure he was brought to respect, said he did, well, then his own perception of his behavior must be wrong. The police introduced elements that this fourteen-year-old did not have the intelligence, maturity or cognitive ability to fight. The police told him he must have blacked out; well if the police told him this is a possibility then it must be correct.
This incident happened back in 1998, yet it was impossible to watch this young man and not feel tremendous empathy for his very visible and palpable pain. Another heart-wrenching factor is that he had just lost his little sister hours earlier, so much for allowing him to grieve. So, I looked for a follow-up to Michael’s life to see how he has survived his earlier traumatic experience. He is now 32 years old and has two children. He, his family and the other two accused boys accused received 7.25 million in a lawsuit related to the police’s wrongful accusation because of the way it was extracted. It was impossible to tell from the outside at what Michael was feeling on the inside, or if much residual damage remained. There was one thing though Michael made very clear; he wanted to move on and who could blame him (Settlement reached, 2011).
Resources:
Aronson, E., Wilson, T., & Akert, R. (2013). Social psychology (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Perry, B., & Szalavitz, M. (2006). The boy who was raised as a dog: And other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook : What traumatized children can teach us about loss, love, and healing. New York: Basic Books.
$7.25 Million Settlement Reached In Stephanie Crowe Murder Case. (2011). Retrieved March 17, 2015, from http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/oct/21/7-million-settlement-reached-stephanie-crowe-murde/