Psychology -- Central Park Jogger Matthew Johnson's The Central Park Jogger Case - Police coercion and secrecy in interrogation (Johnson, 2003), posits the reasonable theory that police interrogation is "ripe for abusive treatment" and the equally reasonable position that custodial questioning should be entirely recorded and preserved. While Johnson was wise to focus on the Central Park Jogger case and place it in historical/cultural context, he focused so intently on race considerations that he made some logically weak assertions about the race factor and omitted or glossed over equally effective supporting points about legal principles and the impact of adolescence on false confessions. The results of Johnson's approach are a reasonable theory and a tenable position that could be supported by far stronger arguments.

Introduction

The problem of false confessions remains a significant problem in the American criminal justice system, particularly when the Defendant is a nonwhite adolescent. As the Central Park Jogger case illustrates, a terrible injustice can occur without safeguards to ensure the integrity of the interrogation process and the rights of the accused. Reason dictates that additional measures must be taken to significantly improve an interrogation process that is currently ripe for abuse. Matthew Johnson's article gives a reasonable yet flawed support for some of those measures.

Body:

Johnson's theory is that police...

Based on that theory, Johnson takes the position that custodial questioning should be entirely recorded and preserved "so that there is an objective record of the interrogation methods that lead to 'confession' statements" (Johnson, 2003). Though Johnson discusses Illinois Governor Ryan's commutation of 167 death sentences and moratorium on imposition of the death sentence due to police coercion and secrecy in interrogation, Johnson's primary method for supporting his theory and position is an in-depth discussion of the "Central Park Jogger" (CJP) case.
Johnson gives a brief description of the case, in which 5 14-16-year-old Black and Latino youths were convicted for the 1989 gang-rape and brutalization of a white female investment banker who was jogging in Central Park. The convictions were heavily based on videotaped confessions of all 5 suspects, despite the victim's complete amnesia about the incident and the lack of any forensic evidence tying any of the defendants to the crime scene (Johnson, 2003). In addition, the confessions "differed from one another on the specific details of virtually every major aspect of the crime" (Johnson, 2003). Johnson also notes that the prosecution used the theory that the defendants "acted in concert," a legal theory that allows successful prosecution without proving that each defendant…