When Teresa Halbach went missing and was presumed dead, the police targeted Steven Avery for the crime. But Avery’s 16-year-old nephew Brendan Dassey told the police that he saw Halbach driving away from Avery’s property the day she supposedly was murdered. This version of events would be devastating to the state’s case if it ever reached Avery’s jury. The police decided to interrogate young Dassey again. For their next go-around they questioned him four times in 48 hours—each time without an adult present and often without reading him his Miranda rights. During this process, the interrogators not only coerced the learning-disabled child into changing his story, but they also got him to confess to participating in the murder! Even though Dassey’s so-called confession was contradicted by all of the physical evidence, the jury believed it and found him guilty. Now, more than a decade after the trial, the saga lives on. Although a federal district court reversed Dassey’s conviction, a flip-flopping federal appeals court eventually reversed the reversal. Dassey remains convicted and incarcerated; the Supreme Court of the United States is his last hope. Anatomy of a False Confession: The Interrogation and Conviction of Brendan Dassey answers several questions, including: Why did Dassey agree to talk to his interrogators in the first place? Why weren’t they required to read him his Miranda rights? Most significantly, how did the interrogators get Dassey to confess to a crime he did not commit? If Dassey was innocent, where did he get the details for his so-called confession? Why did the jury ignore the physical evidence and convict Dassey of murder? And why did the federal courts reverse Dassey’s conviction, only to reverse their own reversal? Anatomy of a False Confession takes the reader inside the interrogation room and inside the courtroom to expose the interrogators’ tricks, the prosecutors’ ploys, and the judicial sleight of hand that conspired to put Dassey behind bars—probably for the rest of his life. The book also discusses several ways that the law should be reformed to avoid future injustices.

Some criminals become household names, while others--even those who seek recognition through their crimes--are forgotten. The criminal's actions are only a part of every famous true crime story. Other factors, such as the setting and circumstances of the crimes and the ways in which others take control of the narrative, ultimately drive their notoriety. Through a comparison of the tellings and retellings of two famous cases more than a century apart--the Jack the Ripper killings in 1888, and the murder trials of Steven Avery as documented in Making a Murderer--this book examines the complicated dynamics of criminal celebrity.

Provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of the development of the science behind the psychology of false confessions Four decades ago, little was known or understood about false confessions and the reasons behind them. So much has changed since then due in part to the diligent work done by Gisli H. Gudjonsson. This eye-opening book by the Icelandic/British clinical forensic psychologist, who in the mid 1970s had worked as detective in Reykjavik, offers a complete and current analysis of how the study of the psychology of false confessions came about, including the relevant theories and empirical/experimental evidence base. It also provides a reflective review of the gradual development of the science and how it can be applied to real life cases. Based on Gudjonsson’s personal account of the biggest murder investigations in Iceland’s history, as well as other landmark cases, The Psychology of False Confessions: Forty Years of Science and Practice takes readers inside the minds of those who sit on both sides of the interrogation table to examine why confessions to crimes occur even when the confessor is innocent. Presented in three parts, the book covers how the science of studying false confessions emerged and grew to become a regular field of practice. It then goes deep into the investigation of the mid-1970s assumed murders of two men in Iceland and the people held responsible for them. It finishes with an in-depth psychological analysis of the confessions of the six people convicted. Written by an expert extensively involved in the development of the science and its application to real life cases Covers the most sensational murder cases in Iceland’s history Deep analysis of the ‘Reykjavik Confessions’ adds crucial evidence to understanding how and why coerced-internalized false confessions occur, and their detrimental and lasting effects on memory The Psychology of False Confessions: Forty Years of Science and Practice is an important source book for students, academics, criminologists, and clinical, forensic, and social psychologists and psychiatrists.

This volume provides descriptive and interpretive insights into the ‘living’ usage of language and other semiotic modes in building and performing the law across academic, professional and institutional contexts, where issues arise from the meaning and function of legal texts, discourse and genre in constituting and enabling conventions, albeit dynamically, and account for the socially and (inter)culturally influenced forms of discursive actions and practices. The twenty contributions included here weave significant contexts and situations for legal discourse and practice into a tight thread, and justify selected topic areas through a variety of approaches, frameworks, methodologies, and procedures. As such, this publication is multidimensional and multiperspectival in its design and implementation of key issues confronting discursive actions and practices of the law, and provides an invaluable resource for academics in a wider range of disciplines, including linguistics, applied linguistics and communication studies. It will also be of interest to students of interdisciplinary discourse analysis.

Wrongful convictions are the result of faulty or false scientific evidence in 50% of the cases. Defense counsel is often at a great disadvantage in defending against evidence based on science. Illusory Evidence: The Psychology and Sociology of Wrongful Convictions is written for the non-scientist, to make complicated scientific information clear and concise enough for attorneys and judges to master. This is obtained by providing case studies to simplify issues in forensic psychology for the legal professional. - Increases the courts' knowledge about areas of psychology that have been debunked, have advanced, or have been refined by the scientific community - Covers issues in psychological forensics, namely: Profiling, Psychological Defenses, Mitigation, Eyewitness Testimony/Identification, Child Testimony, Repressed Memories, False Confessions and Moral Panic - Trains prosecuting attorneys about the present state of the forensic psychology, to avoid relying only on legal precedent and will not present flawed science to the court - Provides defense attorneys the knowledge necessary to competently defend where forensic psychology plays a part in a prosecution - Arms innocence projects and appellate attorneys with the latest information to challenge convictions - Uses case studies to simplify issues in forensic psychology for the legal professional

In this 1979 book, Professor John Holloway presents a series of essays on classic authors as well as more recent English novelists.

With global commitments and combat duty, our armed forces face life-threatening challenges on a daily basis. However, less visible threats also impact the mental health of our military men and women. Experts examine challenges on the battlefield, such as women coming to terms with life after being prisoners of war, or soldiers dealing with mistakenly killing civilians. But life in the armed forces presents less dramatic, daily challenges. Away from the front lines, soldiers have to raise their families, sometimes as single parents. Children have to learn what it's like to be in a military family, and to make sense of war. Gay or lesbian officers cope with a don't ask, don't tell policy. An unprecedented range of contributors—military officers, medical doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and professors—take us onto the bases and the battlefields and inside the minds of military personnel who face far greater challenges than most of us ever see in the headlines. These volumes also highlight factors that make members of the military resilient and stable, as well as programs and practices that can ease the psychological burdens of military personnel, families, and children. Readers can better understand how society views our military and military operations, and how each one of us can play a role in supporting our armed forces.

This three-volume work offers a comprehensive review of the pivotal concepts, measures, theories, and practices that comprise criminology and criminal justice. No longer just a subtopic of sociology, criminology has become an independent academic field of study that incorporates scholarship from numerous disciplines including psychology, political science, behavioral science, law, economics, public health, family studies, social work, and many others. The three-volume Encyclopedia of Criminology presents the latest research as well as the traditional topics which reflect the field's multidisciplinary nature in a single, authoritative reference work. More than 525 alphabetically arranged entries by the leading authorities in the discipline comprise this definitive, international resource. The pivotal concepts, measures, theories, and practices of the field are addressed with an emphasis on comparative criminology and criminal justice. While the primary focus of the work is on American criminology and contemporary criminal justice in the United States, extensive global coverage of other nations' justice systems is included, and the increasing international nature of crime is explored thoroughly. Providing the most up-to-date scholarship in addition to the traditional theories on criminology, the Encyclopedia of Criminology is the essential one-stop reference for students and scholars alike to explore the broad expanse of this multidisciplinary field.

The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics offers a comprehensive survey of the subdiscipline of Forensic Linguistics, with this new edition providing both updated overviews from leading figures in the field and exciting new contributions from the next generation of forensic linguists. The Handbook is a unique work of reference to the leading ideas, debates, topics, approaches and methodologies in forensic linguistics and language and the law. It comprises 43 chapters, including entirely new contributions from many international experts, in the areas of Aboriginal claimants, appraisal and stance, author identities online, biased language in capital trials, corpus approaches, false confessions, forensic phonetics, forensic transcription, the historical courtroom, legal interpretation, multilingual law, police crisis negotiation, speaker profiling, and trolling. The chapters include a wealth of examples and case studies so the reader can see forensic linguistics applied and in action. Edited and authored by the world’s leading academics and practitioners, The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics is a vital resource for advanced students, researchers and scholars, and will also be of interest to legal, law enforcement and security professionals.

The book presents a discourse analysis of police interrogations involving U.S. Hispanic suspects accused of crimes. The study is unique in that it concentrates on interrogations involving suspects whose first language is not English and police officers who have a rudimentary knowledge of Spanish. It examines the pitfalls of using police officers as interpreters at custodial interrogations. Using an interactional sociolinguistic discourse analytical approach, the book offers a microlinguistic examination of interrogations involving persons accused of murder, child molestation, and kidnapping. Communication difficulties are shown to arise from suspects' limited proficiency in English and police officers' equally limited proficiency in Spanish, coupled with the unwillingness of these officers to remain in interpreter footing. The volume demonstrates how pidginization and asymmetrical communicative accommodation can emerge in such situations of highly unequal power relations. It also demonstrates how cultural factors such as acquiescence to interlocutors of greater authority and higher socioeconomic status can lead persons of certain Latin American backgrounds to engage in "gratuitous concurrence", answering "yes" to police questions even when it is clear that that these yes-tokens are not truly affirmative responses to those questions. In addition, the book provides evidence of the kinds of abuse that can result from police interrogations that are not electronically recorded. Coerced Confessions reviews appellate cases involving police interpreters spanning a thirty-four-year period, and concludes that the Miranda rights are placed in jeopardy when a police officer is assigned the role of interpreter at a custodial interrogation.