Hi Max I thought you find this document interesting. It is written by the Dr Richard Leo. He testified at Brendan's trial or appeal about false confessions. It very interesting to read and gives you some ideas of what he had to say. It not from Brendan's trial but it based on the same precepts.
https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/...fidavit_concering_soffars_falseconfession.pdf
very interesting document, and this is part seems to be the test for a false confession :
" If the suspect cannot provide police with the actual details of the crime, fails to accurately describe the crime scene facts, 8 cannot lead the police to new or derivative crime evidence, and/or provides an account that is full of gross errors and disconfirmed by the independent case evidence, then the suspect's post-admission narrative demonstrates that he fails to possess the actual knowledge that would be known only by the true perpetrator. This lack of knowledge is therefore strongly consistent with a judgment of innocence."
Still reading, but I am assuming that since so much of the crime scene details had been known for months, things like bone fragments/body parts on the fire and shackles/cuffs etc are not things that could factor into this equation unless he didn't mention them and as the suspect he should know about them. But the fact that he mentioned bones/body parts on the fire wouldn't affect the test for false confession because it's not something that he would only know if guilty.
So what we should be looking for is what exactly he says that only someone there could know or to exclude him we should be looking for something he incorrectly reports that can be proved otherwise. Which I think is common sense to some degree and what we are all looking for.
What if there is a mix ? I'll have to read on about that. There is also a section on the cognitively slow, and I will agree that he fit the description as I have noted that he was trying to please the investigators during the 2/27 second interview :
"The mentally handicapped and cognitively impaired also tend to be highly submissive (especially eager to please authority figures), compliant, suggestible, and responsive to stress and pressure. "
I get this as well, and I also think that was why we felt so outraged watching the documentary. However it's particularly about midway through the 3/1 interview that I started to sense a swing from a "your my buddy and you need to get this out and everyone will be proud of you" to a more of a "If you aren't going to be honest with us, we aren't going to be able to protect you from the consequences any longer".
That kind of gets detailed in this document as a specific tactic.
Depending on whether you believe the police planted the bullet or not, he played a part in leading them to that bullet by specifying a shooting occurred in the garage. -- But I kind of don't believe that.
I will go through the transcripts a bit more with that in mind, but the issue is that because of a lack of investigation we aren't really sure if much of what he said early on is true or not. There is no way to prove it one way or the other. For example, if there was a way to prove she had rope around her upper body, that would indicate the truth. We just don't know that and likely never will. How could he even prove that ? since it would have burned in the fire ?
Another example is that she was stabbed. His statements on the 2/2 7 suggested he first saw her and she was stabbed in the stomach. There is no way to verify this. It could be true.
Another example is that he got the cut from teresa. How would that be proven right or wrong ? We do know he got that cut on the night of the supposed murder and probably everyone knew so assumed the same as he did. However if it was confirmed somehow that it happened in a struggle for her to escape, that would make it a true confession.
so, the absent of evidence that is impossible to recover , isn't evidence that he wasn't correct.
Which is why I go back to what Barb Janda said happend the night of the murder in regards to his pants being bleached from helping steve clean his garage floor, because I do believe it was true. He didn't even include that in his original 2/27 story. Yet, it was true imo. It's not something he told the police, he told his mom. Was she coercing him into a false confession ?
So during the 1st interview on 3/1 interview at the police department, now he brings it up. As I noted , it seemed as if he now trusted that this was the right thing to do. But he gave that piece of evidence that matched what his mom had said. Can I prove that they cleaned the floor ? haha, nope. But if he didnt, his mom lied for no reason and so did he.
The fact that everything including the victim was in the fire, would seem to most anything of that nature tough to prove. I notice they asked about her pubic hair, I should go back to that. But I'm not even sure we know if she shaved down there or not. sorry for being so crude, but it's in that doc. Maybe we can assume he was wrong because they didn't note he guessed right ? But if I remember correctly he was maybe unsure, which is reasonable that he might not want to look at her, as he portrayed it as he was being forced.
I'm going to go over these transcripts a bit more with all this in mind and focus in on things that can be proven that he was wrong about.
thanks again for this doc. I am still reading it by the way, it's a very interesting subject.
Edit - I am tired but I might have misstated when he admitted that he had been cleaning the garage with Steve. It might have been the 3/1 interview early on, I will check