Thread by @ScottHech

“This is a case where, under the threat of death, a woman who had no prior experience with the criminal justice system pled guilty to a crime she didn’t commit. In fact, she pled guilty when no crime occurred at all.” The anatomy of a false confession: theappeal.org/coerced-confes…

On July 19, 2005, at 4:15 p.m., Wilkerson entered a room at the Sheriff’s office & sat across from Sgt. Ricky Jones. "If, for whatever reason, you feel like you don’t want to talk to us just—I don’t want to talk to you. You ready to talk to an attorney, talk to an attorney.”

In response to his questions, Wilkerson told him she went to wake Tristan to feed him. She picked him up. The baby gasped and then collapsed. She called 911 and began CPR.

“That’s what I didn’t understand is why he just stopped breathing,” she told Sgt. Jones.

“He’s showing every symptom, Amy, of a woman shaking, trying to get him to quit crying,” Jones told her.

“Amy,” he continued, “did he just upset you when he was crying that morning?”

“No,” she told him.

The only way it happened, Jones said, was if she shook the baby.

“No, I would never do that,” she said.

The detective raised his voice: “Stop crying, Tristan! What happened? Stop it, Tristan!” The doctor said Tristan’s brain looked like it was in a car accident, he said.

Throughout interrogation, she sobbed. Continuously denied.

“There’s no outside damage,” he told her. “It’s only consistent w/ shaken babies.”

Again & again, he pressed to tell the truth. “You have to help yourself,” he said. “We have to know that you’re not just some monster.”

“A jury is going to find you guilty w/ just what doctor’s saying. You need somebody to believe that you’re a nice lady this bad thing happened to.” As she sat crying, he gently rubbed her arm. She told Jones, “I stand by my word. I want a lawyer. That’s all I can do.”

“Amy’s asked for an attorney,” the sgt said.“ We’re gonna end this conversation.” He turned off the audio recorder. A hidden camera was still running. Over the next 30 minutes, Wilkerson told him 2 more times she wanted a lawyer. She sobbed frequently. “I want to die,” she said.

But the police didn't honor her request for an attorney. They upped the ante. More:

If she didn’t want to “go any further,” Jones said, he would leave the room, but then, “I’ll be really not happy. I’ll do whatever I have to do, because then I’ll realize that you weren’t prepared to do the right thing which means you have no soul and I don’t see that in you.”

How did she know, Wilkerson asked, he wouldn’t end up “screwing me in the end?”

“You don’t have a choice,” he replied. “As I told you earlier, it’s just me and you in this little small world right now.”

Wilkerson relented & agreed to let him turn on the audio recorder. He asked how she tried to wake Tristan.

“At first, I tried just talking to him, and he wouldn’t wake up,” she answered. “Until I picked him up.”

“You shook him to wake him up, is that right?” Jones replied.

“Just a little,” she said, crying.

“It was an accident,” Jones told Wilkerson. “But you shook him too hard.”

Sobbing, Wilkerson replied, “I didn’t mean to.”

False confessions expert Richard Leo, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law watched the interrogation video. “He terrorized her here through the use of promises and threats and inducing hopelessness in her.

Most people think of coerced confessions as “yelling, pounding the table, threats. The vast majority of false confessions were brought about by subtle, gentle forms of trickery and deceit.” -- Saul Kassin, a psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Steven Drizin, co-director of Center on Wrongful Convictions: Continuing the interrogation after Wilkerson invoked her right to counsel “contributed to her sense of powerlessness & hopelessness. Sent her a clear message resistance was futile & her only way out was to confess."

The following year, Amy Wilkerson pled guilty to depraved-heart murder. Sentenced to life. Eligible for parole at 65. She was 31. She did not let her family come to her plea hearing: “I didn’t want them to watch me get up on the stand & swear on a bible, & then lie,” she said.

"The Mississippi legal system was quick to accuse, charge, convict, & sentence Wilkerson. But overturning her conviction: '“You’ve got to have so much luck in these cases. People get out because they’re innocent AND they’re lucky. Shouldn’t have to depend on that.”