Veteran Detective Points to the Possibility of Wrongful Convictions

Jim Trainum, a police officer of over 25 years, recently discussed how shocked he was to discover how he and other officers were able to obtain a confession to murder from an innocent woman. Trainum explained, “Reviewing the tapes years later, I saw that we had fallen into a classic trap. We ignored evidence that our suspect might not have been guilty, and during the interrogation we inadvertently fed her details of the crime that she repeated back to us in her confession.”

Detective Trainum recently wrote about this danger and adocated a possible reform in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, arguing for the videotaping of police interrogations. Trainum said he never understood why someone would admit to a crime he or she didn’t commit until he secured such a false confession in the murder case.

Trainum indicated this experience was a turning point for him personally and professionally. He acknowledged that without the discovery and verification of the woman’s solid alibi, she probably would have been convicted and imprisoned for first-degree murder. He admits that the true murderer was never found partly because of an investigation derailed by focus on an innocent person. “I've learned that this is a nationwide problem. Of the 220 wrongful convictions in the U.S. that have been overturned based on DNA evidence, nearly 25% involved a false confession or false incriminating statements, according to the Innocence Project. In each of those cases, DNA proved that the confession was false.”

Officer Trainum’s full article may be found here.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center