{"id":310,"date":"2019-04-09T11:32:02","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T15:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/in-print\/volume-56\/the-fundamental-right-to-sexual-autonomy-in-prison-2\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:09:39","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:09:39","slug":"confess-or-die-why-threatening-a-suspect-with-the-death-penalty-should-render-confessions-involuntary","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/in-print\/volume-56\/confess-or-die-why-threatening-a-suspect-with-the-death-penalty-should-render-confessions-involuntary\/","title":{"rendered":"Confess or Die: Why Threatening a Suspect with the Death Penalty Should Render Confessions Involuntary"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In July 1997, the rape and murder of a Navy sailor\u2019s wife shocked the town of Norfolk, Virginia. Even more shocking was the fact that four Navy sailors, Danial Williams, Joseph Dick, Derick Tice, and Eric Wilson, falsely confessed to the crime. These men became known as the \u201cNorfolk Four.\u201d A Norfolk detective, with a history of eliciting false confessions, interrogated the four sailors. Each confessed to the crime, \u201calter[ing] their confessions to accommodate details fed to them by the police.\u201d Nearly twenty years later, a federal judge vacated two of the convictions. Less than a year later, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe pardoned the four men.<\/p>\n

The Norfolk Four case reveals that the police sometimes obtain false confessions from innocent suspects during interrogations. In the case of the Norfolk Four, the police used a number of tactics to elicit the false confessions. Danial Williams explained that the lead detective \u201ctreated him like a criminal from the outset, poking him in the chest, yelling in his face, calling him a liar and telling him, falsely, that he\u2019d failed a polygraph test and that a witness saw him go into the [victim\u2019s] apartment.\u201d Eric Wilson said that the lead detective \u201chit him several times and showed him photos of the crime scene and the victim and gave him details about the crime to include in his confession.\u201d The police employed one additional tactic. Because the crime at issue involved the rape and murder of a young woman, all four men faced the death penalty under Virginia law if convicted. The police used this to their advantage and threatened the men with the death penalty during the interrogations. The police told them that the only way to avoid the death penalty was to confess. Under the threat of the death penalty, the Norfolk Four falsely confessed to a crime they did not commit. When the police interrogated the true killer over one year later, they told him he could \u201cescape the death penalty\u201d if he implicated the Norfolk Four in his confession. The killer did so in exchange for two life sentences, rather than the death penalty.<\/p>\n

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This Note will analyze the problem of false confessions and the inadequacy of the test that courts employ to assess the voluntariness and unreliability of confessions made after the police threaten suspects with the death penalty during inter- rogations. Section I of this paper will provide background on police practices contributing to false confessions. Section II details the inquiry that courts make into the voluntariness of confessions. Section III examines the use of the threat of the death penalty by police to elicit confessions. Section III argues that because the threat of the death penalty during an interrogation drastically undermines the reliability of a subsequent confession, these confessions should be considered per se involuntary and inadmissible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In July 1997, the rape and murder of a Navy sailor\u2019s wife shocked the town of Norfolk, Virginia. Even more shocking was the fact that four Navy sailors, Danial Williams, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2928,"featured_media":0,"parent":282,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-310","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2928"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2282,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/310\/revisions\/2282"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}