In June, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant certiorari in the case of Dassey v. Dittmann. As shown in the recent Netflix documentary series "Making a Murderer," Brendan Dassey was convicted in 2007 for the heinous sexual assault and murder of Teresa Halbach. Following several coercive interrogations, Dassey confessed to committing these crimes with his uncle. Although he retracted his confession immediately, his attempts to have it excluded from evidence were unsuccessful. Dassey's appeal for a retrial was denied in 2010, a decision that the Wisconsin Court of Appeals affirmed in 2013. Dassey continued to assert his innocence and three years later, a U.S. magistrate in the federal circuit overturned his conviction. The state of Wisconsin then appealed the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. Dassey's release was supported by a three-judge panel, but a full seven-judge panel ultimately upheld his conviction. Unless paroled or pardoned, Dassey will spend the rest of his life in prison.
The primary issue the Supreme Court was asked to consider involved the voluntariness of Dassey's confession. He was 16 years old when he confessed; he is also intellectually disabled. The claim was that if the Wisconsin Court of Appeals had applied the voluntariness standard properly, it would have recognized that Dassey had been manipulated to produce a confession that was neither voluntary nor true. Review of Dassey's multiple interrogations reveals that detectives told him at least 24 times they already knew how Halbach had been murdered. This is a form of maximization, whereby detectives represent evidence against the suspect as stronger than it really is to communicate that denial is futile. The detectives also repeatedly implied they believed Dassey had been acting under his uncle's influence. This is known as minimization—detectives offer excuses and sympathy to reduce the perceived seriousness of the situation. Research has shown that such coercive questioning techniques can generate unreliable confessions. Juveniles are particularly ill-equipped to resist the techniques because they cannot yet make mature decisions and are more suggestible to pressure. Intellectually disabled individuals are further limited because they are unlikely to fully understand their legal rights. These vulnerabilities were illustrated by Dassey's inability to grasp the gravity of his situation: After confessing to the brutal crimes, he expressed an expectation that he would return to school that day. He also told his mother, "They got to my head." Unfortunately, the latter statement was not seen by the jury that convicted him.
Over half a century ago, the Supreme Court recognized the vulnerability of juveniles and intellectually disabled individuals in the context of police interrogations (In re Gault, 1967; Reck v. Pate, 1961). Since that time, a wealth of psychological science has supported this point. APA summarized this literature in an amicus brief it submitted to encourage the Supreme Court to hear Dassey's case. Similar APA briefs discussing developmental psychology findings have influenced several decisions regarding the treatment of juvenile and disabled defendants, leading to the abolition of the death penalty for juveniles (Roper v. Simmons, 2005) and those with intellectual disabilities (Atkins v. Virginia, 2002), for instance. By declining to hear Dassey v. Dittmann, the court missed an important opportunity to apply psychological science to the standard for evaluating the voluntariness of confession evidence and therefore reinforce the precedent of taking special care when vulnerable populations interact with the criminal justice system.
"Judicial Notebook" is a project of APA Div. 9 (Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues).
