False confessions in the spotlight

Thanks to Sentencing Law & Policy:

PBS Frontline has been giving lots of attention to criminal justice systems this fall. . . . This week Frontline will broadcast a new documentary “The Confessions,” which examines the case of the “Norfolk Four” involving a quartet of Navy men who were wrongfully convicted after being coerced into giving false confessions.

A preview is at this link.

All four sailors are now out of prison — one served his sentence, and the other three were granted conditional pardons last summer, after some 11 years in prison. But the men were not exonerated as felons or sex offenders. “I basically built myself a new cell, my bedroom, … because that’s where I’m safe,” Derek Tice, another of the “Norfolk Four,” tells FRONTLINE. “All I did was trade one cell for another.”

In the press release for the show they mention the detective who got these confessions to be Glenn Ford. SL&P has this rather interesting piece.

Earlier this summer, Detective Glenn Ford was indicted for extorting money from defendants in exchange for getting them a favorable treatment. He was tried in U.S. District Court in Norfolk and took the stand in his own defense. On Oct. 27, Ford was found guilty on two of four extortion charges and one charge of lying to the FBI. Sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 25, 2011.

Here are some media reports on the Glenn Ford prosecution: here, here, and here. One notes that,

In the Lafayette Grill case in 1990, he coerced confessions from three teenagers who later had the charges dropped against them when it was determined they could not possibly have been at the crime scene.