The Central Park Jogger Case: Factors Behind the Confessions Alina Rizvi College of Arts and Science, University of Saskatchewan PSY 121: Social Clinical Cultural and Developmental Bases of Psychology Dr. Jan Gelech May 22, 2024 The Central Park Jogger Case happened in 1989 in New York City, as shown in the Netflix television show When They See Us and told in the book 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology by Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, John Ruscio and Barry L. Beyerstein. The case relates to how a female jogger went out in the evening and was brutally raped in the central park. At the same time as the horrific act, a bunch of young African American teenagers were hanging out and causing minor disturbances. Statements from …show more content…
To understand the results of the confessions, it’s important to look at the beginning of each interrogation. The television show, When They See Us, shows that none of these boys raped the jogger, but they were at the park at the time it happened. This lines up with what the boys all said at the beginning of the interrogation. However, despite every boy stating this, the detectives showed aggressive and abusive behaviour towards them. In the book 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology, it’s stated how legally the detectives can play the role of “bad cop” and confront the defendant with false information, change alibis, undermine their confidence and falsely state the result of a lie detector test. Some of the detectives used physical and verbal acts and appeared as “bad cops”. While yelling, they did state they falsely accused each boy by saying the other boys pointed fingers at them despite them not knowing each other. After the boys were distraught after being assaulted, another detective came into the room playing the “good cop”. The cop uses positive affirmations, states multiple times that he wanted the best interest of the boys and wanted them to
A woman was raped at Central Park and was found unconscious. She recovered quickly after the incident but could not recall what happened on that day. On the same day that woman was raped all five teenagers were there but were at the opposite direction of where the rape incident happened. They were brought in by the police to be questioned and were asked about the incident. The police were interrogating the teenagers and yelled at their faces because they were getting frustrated that they were not getting the answers that they wanted to hear from them. The teenagers were getting tired from being questioned for about two days on something they knew nothing about and wanted to just get out of the place. The police told them to say certain things and told them things that they wanted to hear, which led to the teenagers believing that if they said what the police told them to say then they could leave. They ended up confessing to raping the woman on video and paper and that led to their arrest. Though there were no actual evidence proving they were there at the scene, it did not matter because the police just wanted the confessions, which was their goal from the
Omar Abdul Ballard had admitted to the rape and murder of Michelle Bosko; his was the only semen found. Furthermore, Ballard tried to tell police that he alone had committed the crimes. Yet despite the physical evidence and Ballard’s statements, the courts decided to continue their cases against the other four men. Even the lawyers that should have been trying to defend the Norfolk Four did little to actually defend them against the charges and instead opted to try to get them a lighter sentence. Their own lawyers seemed unable to get over the fact that the men had confessed to the crime. Even with explanations of long interrogations, threats, and lies by the police these lawyers were unwilling to believe that innocent men would confess to such a heinous crime. Instead, they were urged to “cooperate” with the police and tell the “truth”. With this type of advice the men went up to the witness stand and committed perjury lying under oath and relaying their false confessions to the jury. The problem it seems is that the police and the courts were not interested in the truth or justice, they are looking for an easy way to close a case. They were looking for someone to blame and they were unwilling to admit that they were wrong when evidence seemed to show they had a made a
The World of Psychology. (2002). A Pearson Education Company. Boston, MA: Samuel Wood & Ellen Green Wood p. 593
The Central Park Jogger case is one of false confessions to a crime, with a little help from police, which the defendants did not commit. Evidence taken at the crime scene did exclude the defendants, however, because of videotaped confessions they were sentenced to prison for a crime they admitted to committing even though they did not. It was not until many years later did the original perpetrator step forward from prison to admit he was the one who committed the crime with evidence (DNA) and firsthand knowledge of the scene. The five original defendants were released from prison but until serving a lengthy term. There are cues that can be noticed when investigators are conducting preliminary interviews that have a very high rate of success in determining the guilt or innocence of an individual. Some of these cues may be verbal such as a rehearsed response (Kassin, 2005). Other types of cues may be nonverbal body language such as a slouching (Kassin, 2005).
Even those who should have a clear sense of the an interrogation, fail to see the coercion brought upon the suspect that might lead to a false confession, and once a confession has been made, false or true, detectives or police terminates their investigation that could have found potential evidence to exonerate them. Once a confession is obtained, police tend to ‘‘close’’ cases as solved and refuse to investigate other sources of evidence (Leo and Liu) which is why such a high number of innocent people still remain behind bars. Across samples, police-induced false confessions were evident in between 15 and 25% in cases, making it one of the likely leading causes of wrongful conviction (Leo and Liu), but still juries disregard this evidence! Unfortunately, more cases like Rivers are out there. According to the Washington Post, the National Registry ha logged 1,733 exonerating cases of false confession. In one case, a man by the name of Ricky Jackson spent four decades for a crime he did not commit, only to be exonerated by DNA evidence after 40 years. To emphasize, few states, if any at all, courts provides information to the jury regarding how to assess voluntariness, nor do
Bibliography 3rd edition Psychology (Bernstein-Stewart, Roy, Srull, & Wickens) Houghton Mifflin Company Boston, Massachusetts 1994
Investigators who reviewed the case were careful not to suggest wrongdoing or coercion on the part of the police”(Tyre). The police did their job, but “the teens were simply telling the police what the cops wanted to hear” (Tyre). In these situations, some people would prefer not spending hours and hours being interrogated and would rather just have the case settled, even if it is not the truth. "A third of people who confess to crimes didn't do it and incriminated themselves without physical coercion by police"(Slobodzian). This also means the majority of those who produce false confessions did not think up the idea on their own.
Crisp, R, J. Turner, R, N. (2007). Essential Social Psychology. Sage Publications Limited. London. (UK). First Edition.
...onson, E., Wilson, T.D., & Akert, R.M. (2013). Social Psychology (8th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.
Waiten,W., (2007) Seventh Edition Psychology Themes and Variations. University of Nevada, Las Vegas: Thomson Wadsworth.
Shiraev, E., & Levy, D. (2007, 2004). Cross-Cultural Psychology (3th ed.) United States of America.
Westen, D., Burton, L., & Kowalski, R. (2006). Psychology: Australian and New Zealand edition. Milton, Australia: John Wiley & Sons.
Psychology is one of the newest sciences. Because it is the science of the mind and behavior, it is also less concrete than some of the other sciences. Over the years, social scientists have developed theories or perspectives based off of their observations, research, and the perspectives of other scientists. Although there is some overlap, each of the major perspectives of psychology is unique. As a result, they each have strengths and weaknesses and explain psychology in a different way. One theory, the sociocultural perspective, is exactly what its name suggests. It’s the idea that the society and groups that an individual belongs to are what influences development, thoughts, and behavior. The sociocultural perspective was pioneered by a Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, in the 1920’s (John-Steiner, 1998). Vygotsky stressed the idea that children learn through what he called guided participation (Sigelman, 2009). His theory was that children develop through interactions with parents, teachers, and other knowledgeable members of the culture and are given tools to adopt the group’s way of thinking.
Maianu, C. (2011, Spring semester). Child Development, Psychology 212, [Lecture notes]. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Harrisburg Area Community College.
Humans’ behaviors are often guided by their culture because culture can influence their psychological processes.