Detroit sued over false confession

A man who was falsely accused of — and falsely confessed to — a murder he did not commit is suing the Detroit Police Department, arguing that officers manipulated him into making the false confession.

Damon Nathaniel initially confessed to the murder during a long interrogation session at which, he claims, the police told him that he would be allowed to go free if he just confessed to killing Michael Ray in self-defense. Instead, he spent nine months in jail pending trial until DNA evidence proved his innocence and the charges were dropped.

“He basically played me,” Nathaniel testified Friday about Todd. Nathaniel said he was scared and confused and just wanted to leave.

“He said if I made it look like I killed him in self-defense, I’d go home that night,” Nathaniel testified.

Nathaniel also alleges that he was not allowed to call an attorney.

This case points up the importance of videotaping all police interrogations, as some state and local governments are beginning to require. In the more than 250 cases where DNA evidence has exonerated someone found guilty over the last few years, a full 25 percent of them involved false confessions.

Experts point to a number of ways that police interrogations elicit false confessions, particularly from suspects who are young or have even mild mental problems. Over the course of very long interrogations, sometimes stretching into days at a time as interrogators switch in and out, a suspect is often broken down and made to feel that even if they are innocent the only way to get any leniency is to confess to a crime they didn’t commit.

Videotaping such interrogations can prevent coercion and the subconscious feeding of information to the suspect and allow defense attorneys to challenge confessions made under duress.