PSYCHOLOGY
Introducing
duped
Duped: Why Innocent People Confess – and Why
“Professor Kassin, I’m a producer for ABC News.
to interpret. “It’s the Central Park jogger,” she
We Believe Their Confessions (Prometheus, July
We’re working on a story about an old case
said.
2022) reveals how innocent men, women, and
and wonder if you’d be willing to look at some
Seldom in life am I rendered speechless. This
children, intensely stressed and befuddled by
videotaped confessions for us.” Intrigued, I
was one of those times. I was disoriented. Taking
lawful weapons of psychological interrogation,
asked what case they were investigating. “I can’t
stock, I said nothing. I just kept hearing the echo
are induced into confession, no matter how
tell you,” she said.
in my head: Central Park jogger.
horrific the crime. Starting in the 1980s, author
Scrambling to transition from summer to fall,
On the night of April 19, 1989, a twenty-eight
Dr. Saul Kassin pioneered the scientific study
and too busy to play games, I explained that I
year-old investment banker named Trisha Meili,
of interrogations and confessions. Since then,
had no time to make a blank-check commitment
a Wellesley graduate with two master’s degrees
he has been on the forefront of research and
to a new project. I repeated my question: “What’s
who worked on Wall Street, was intercepted
advocacy for those wrongfully convicted by
the case?”
while jogging, violently beaten, dragged through
police-induced false confessions.
Pushing back, she explained that they were
grass into a ravine, raped, tied up with her own
_____________________________
working on an exclusive story about a highly
shirt, and left for dead in a puddle of mud inside
visible crime from the past and did not want
Central Park, Manhattan’s rambling green
It was a September morning in 2002. I was
word of it to get out. “Can you keep this
wilderness. Her skull was fractured; her brain
preparing for a new semester of psych classes
confidential?” she asked.
was swollen; her left eye was crushed; she had
at Williams College, in western Massachusetts,
Sure, I said, no problem. “What case?” The
lost several pints of blood. When she emerged
when the phone on my desk rang.
producer paused—the kind of pause that’s hard
from a coma one week later, she had no memory
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