The Science Behind Brendan Dassey’s Agonizing Confession in Making a Murderer
After 18 years, Avery was freed by DNA evidence, but in a bizarre twist, he was accused in 2005 of another brutal crime, the murder of a young photographer whose cremains were found on his family’s sprawling auto-salvage lot. Again, he was convicted, and this time around, his nephew, the then-teenage Brendan Dassey, was also sent to prison for his role. As much of the internet commentariat has pointed out, while there are major holes in Avery’s case, some of them pointing to dark theories involving police misconduct — Vulture has your details — there just is no case against Dassey when it comes to credible evidence or the timeline presented by prosecutors.
Well, except for the fact that he confessed. Without a lawyer present, the quiet Dassey, whose IQ puts him near the range for intellectual disability, was pretty clearly kowtowed by investigators into a fabricated story, in which he helped his uncle first sexually assault Halbach and then murder her (there is no forensic evidence supporting the gruesome story spun by the prosecutors who convinced jurors to convict Dassey). In the parts of the recording included by the filmmakers, it’s pretty clear that it’s the investigators, not Dassey, who are providing the vast majority of the “details” of the murder, and that they simply keep wearing him down until he tells them what they want to hear.
It’s infuriating to watch. It’s also an example of a really weird quirk of human nature: It’s not particularly difficult to get people to confess to stuff they didn’t do. If you want to better understand why, there’s a 2013 New Yorker article on this very subject that’s an absolute must-read, especially now that the full four-hour Dassey interrogation is online. (Though if you’re mad about young Brendan, be forewarned that this article will likely only make you madder.)
In the article, Douglas Starr lays out the history and methodology of the so-called Reid Technique, an interrogation style centered around reading suspects’ nonverbal cues for signs of lying and wearing down their psychological resistance. For a variety of reasons, researchers now know, the Reid Technique is quite likely to induce false confessions at an alarming rate, and it's premised on the supported notion that nonverbal cues are true indicators of dishonesty rather than nervousness. Unfortunately, it’s caught on in a big way, both in the U.S. and around the world.
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/01/science-behind-brendan-dasseys-confession.html#http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/01/science-behind-brendan-dasseys-confession.html#
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