Confessing to Crime, but Innocent

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: September 13, 2010

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Eddie Lowery lost 10 years of his life for a crime he did not commit. There was no physical evidence at his trial for rape, but one

overwhelming factor put him away: he confessed.At trial, the jury heard details that prosecutors insisted only the rapist could have known, including

the fact that the rapist hit the 75-year-old victim in the head with the handle of a silver table knife he found in the house. DNA evidence would later

show that another man committed the crime. But that vindication would come only years after Mr. Lowery had served his sentence and was paroled in

1991.“I beat myself up a lot” about having confessed, Mr. Lowery said in a recent interview. “I thought I was the only dummy who did that.”But more

than 40 others have given confessions since 1976 that DNA evidence later showed were false, according torecords compiled by Brandon L. Garrett, a

professor at theUniversity of Virginia School of Law. Experts have long known that some kinds of people — including the mentally impaired, the

mentally ill, the young and the easily led — are the likeliest to be induced to confess. There are also people like Mr. Lowery, who says he was just

pressed beyond endurance by persistent interrogators.New research shows how people who were apparently uninvolved in a crime could provide such a

detailed account of what occurred, allowing prosecutors to claim that only the defendant could have committed the crime.An article by Professor

Garrett draws on trial transcripts, recorded confessions and other background materials to show how incriminating facts got into those confessions —

by police introducing important facts about the case, whether intentionally or unintentionally, during the interrogation.To defense lawyers, the new

research is eye opening. “In the past, if somebody confessed, that was the end,” said Peter J. Neufeld, a founder of the Innocence Project, an

organization based in Manhattan. “You couldn’t imagine going forward.”The notion that such detailed confessions might be deemed voluntary because

the defendants were not beaten or coerced suggests that courts should not simply look at whether confessions are voluntary, Mr. Neufeld said. “They

should look at whether they are reliable.”Professor Garrett said he was surprised by the complexity of the confessions he studied. “I expected, and think

people intuitively think, that a false confession would look flimsy,” like someone saying simply, “I did it,” he said.Instead, he said, “almost all of these

confessions looked uncannily reliable,” rich in telling detail that almost inevitably had to come from the police. “I had known that in a couple of these

cases, contamination could have occurred,” he said, using a term in police circles for introducing facts into the interrogation process. “I didn’t expect to

see that almost all of them had been contaminated.”Of the exonerated defendants in the Garrett study, 26 — more than half — were “mentally

disabled,” under 18 at the time or both. Most were subjected to lengthy, high-pressure interrogations, and none had a lawyer present. Thirteen of them

were taken to the crime scene.Mr. Lowery’s case shows how contamination occurs. He had come under suspicion, he now believes, because he had been

partying and ran his car into a parked car the night of the rape, generating a police report. Officers grilled him for more than seven hours, insisting from

the start that he had committed the crime.Mr. Lowery took a lie detector test to prove he was innocent, but the officers told him that he had failed it.“I

didn’t know any way out of that, except to tell them what they wanted to hear,” he recalled. “And then get a lawyer to prove my innocence.”Proving

innocence after a confession, however, is rare. Eight of the defendants in Professor Garrett’s study had actually been cleared by DNA evidence before

trial, but the courts convicted them anyway.In one such case involving Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16 years in prison for a murder in Poughkeepsie,

prosecutors argued that the victim may have been sexually active and so the DNA evidence may have come from another liaison she had. The

prosecutors asked the jury to focus on Mr. Deskovic’s highly detailed confession and convict him.While Professor Garrett suggests that leaking facts

during interrogations is sometimes unintentional, Mr. Lowery said that the contamination of his questioning was clearly intentional.
Racial Disparity in School Suspensions
By SAM DILLON

Published: September 13, 2010

In many of the nation’s middle schools, black boys were nearly three times as likely to be suspended as white boys, according to a new study, which also

found that black girls were suspended at four times the rate of white girls.School authorities also suspended Hispanic and American Indian middle

school students at higher rates than white students, though not at such disproportionate rates as for black children, the study found. Asian students

were less likely to be suspended than whites.The study analyzed four decades of federal Department of Education data on suspensions, with a special

focus on figures from 2002 and 2006, that were drawn from 9,220 of the nation’s 16,000 public middle schools.The study, “Suspended Education:

Urban Middle Schools in Crisis,” was published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization.The co-authors, Daniel J.

Losen, a senior associate at the Civil Rights Project at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles, and Russell Skiba, a professor at Indiana University, said

they focused on suspensions from middle schools because recent research had shown that students’ middle school experience was crucial for

determining future academic success.One recent study of 400 incarcerated high school freshmen in Baltimore found that two-thirds had been

suspended at least once in middle school.Federal law requires schools to expel students for weapons possession and incidents involving the most

serious safety issues. The authors said they focused on suspensions, which often result from fighting, abusive language and classroom disruptions,

because they were a measure that school administrators can apply at their discretion.Throughout America’s public schools, in kindergarten through

high school, the percent of students suspended each year nearly doubled from the early 1970s through 2006, the authors said, an increase that they

associate, in part, with the rise of so-called zero-tolerance school discipline policies.In 1973, on average, 3.7 percent of public school students of all races

were suspended at least once. By 2006, that percentage had risen to 6.9 percent.Both in 1973 and in 2006, black students were suspended at higher

rates than whites, but over that period, the gap increased. In 1973, 6 percent of all black students were suspended. In 2006, 15 percent of all blacks were

suspended. Among the students attending one of the 9,220 middle schools in the study sample, 28 percent of black boys and 18 percent of black girls,

compared with 10 percent of white boys and 4 percent of white girls, were suspended in 2006, the study found. The researchers found wide disparities

in suspension rates among different city school systems and even among middle schools in the same district. Using the federal data, they calculated

suspension rates for middle school students, broken down by race, in 18 large urban districts.Two districts showed especially high rates. In Palm Beach

County, Fla., and Milwaukee, more than 50 percent of black male middle school students were suspended at least once in 2006, the study

showed.Jennie Dorsey, director of family services in the Milwaukee district, said the district had recognized that its suspension rate was too high and

had begun a program aimed at changing students’ behavior without suspensions.The program has brought only modest reductions in the suspension

rate so far, but Ms. Dorsey predicted sharper reductions over several years.Nat Harrington, a spokesman for the Palm Beach County district, disputed

the study’s statistics, but acknowledged that “all the data show an unacceptably high number of black students being suspended.” He said the district

was using several strategies to reduce suspensions.

Published: September 13, 2010

But there’s long been some fine print suggesting that a mother’s and father’s genes do not play exactly equal roles. Research published last month now

suggests the asymmetry could be far more substantial than supposed. The asymmetry, based on a genetic mechanism called imprinting, could account

for some of the differences between male and female brains and for differences in a mother’s and father’s contributions to social behavior.

A person gets one set of genes from each parent. Apart from the sex chromosomes, the two sets are equivalent, and in principle it should not matter if a

gene comes from mother or father. The first sign that this is not always true came from experiments in which mouse embryos were engineered to carry

two male genomes, or two female genomes. The double male and double female mice all died in the womb. Nature evidently requires one genome from

each parent.Biologists then made the embryos viable by mixing in some normal cells. The surprising outcome was that mice with two male genomes

had large bodies and small brains. With the double female genome mice, it was the other way around. Evidently the maternal and paternal genomes

have opposite effects on the size of the brain.The root of the asymmetry is a procedure called imprinting in which either the mother’s or the father’s

copy of a particular gene is inactivated. The best worked out example concerns a gene called insulinlike growth factor-2, which promotes the growth of

the fetus. The IGF-2 gene is active in the paternal genome but imprinted or inactivated in the genome the fetus receives from its mother.The leading

explanation for imprinting is a theory that invokes conflict between relatives. Developed by David Haig, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, the theory

holds that there is a clash of interests between the fetus, whose purpose is to extract as much nutrition as possible, and the mother, whose interests lie

in allocating her resources evenly to all the other children she may bear in the future.Over the course of evolution this conflict has come to be mediated

at a genetic level, Dr. Haig’s explanation goes, because the mother and the father have different interests. Speaking of mammals in general, the conflict

is driven by female promiscuity. The mother wants to share her resources among progeny who may have different fathers, whereas the father is

interested in the survival of only his own child. So the father always confers the IGF-2 gene in active form and the mother always bequeaths it in

imprinted or silent form. The gene is imprinted in mice, humans and many other mammals.It may seem strange to have a genetic tug of war within the

fetus, with the paternal copy of the IGF-2 gene always asking for more, and the maternal copy refusing to ask at all, but presumably over the course of

evolution the individuals who carried these two warring copies of the gene left more offspring than those with the gene in any other form.Until last

month only a hundred imprinted genes were known, and the mechanism seemed just an interesting deviation from Mendelian genetics. Research led

by Christopher Gregg and Catherine Dulac of Harvard has shown that imprinting is far more common and more intricate than supposed.Working in

mice, the Harvard team showed that around 1,300 genes are imprinted. Dr. Dulac said that she expects a substantial, though lesser, proportion to be

imprinted in people — maybe some 1 percent of the genome — because humans are more monogamous than mice and so the parents’ interests are more

closely aligned.Dr. Dulac was able to detect so many new imprinted genes by taking advantage of the ease with which genes can now be decoded. She

cross-bred two very different strains of mice, thus ensuring that the maternal and paternal versions of each gene would have recognizably different

sequences of DNA.When a gene is activated, the cell transcribes it into RNA, DNA’s close chemical cousin. By decoding all the RNA transcripts in the

mouse’s cells, Dr. Dulac could pick out those genes in which the paternal version was being transcribed much more than maternal version, and vice

versa.
 Floods Stunt Pakistani Fight Against Insurgents
Published: September 13, 2010

KALAM, Pakistan — The destruction caused by the recent floods and the huge relief effort undertaken since by the Pakistani Army have forced it to
alter plans to combat Taliban and Qaeda militants, Pakistani military officials here said.
Troops who have been fighting Islamist militants in the Swat Valleyfor the last two years will have to stay here for six months longer than planned,
army officers here said. Elsewhere, some planned offensive actions have been converted to defensive actions to consolidate gains already made, Maj.
Gen. Athar Abbas, spokesman for the military, said in a telephone call.While the changes do not appear to involve any major retrenchment in the
nation’s counterinsurgency strategy, they are the first sign of the strain the countrywide flooding has put on Pakistan’s armed forces, which are
overstretched in dealing with a virulent insurgency. The Pakistani military has already delayed operations against North Waziristan, the central hub of
militancy and Al Qaeda, because it says its forces are overextended.The armed forces had to divert 72,000 men at the peak, including army and navy
commandos of its Special Services Group, to do the heavy lifting of the flood rescue and relief effort, as well as provide security for United States
helicopters that have joined the relief effort.The Pakistani military insists that not many of the 147,000 troops deployed in the northwestern region
have been diverted by the floods and that continuing operations against militants in the border region with Afghanistan have not been affected. Troops
are continuing to conduct offensive operations in several places, like the Orakzai and Khyber regions, General Abbas said.Yet the floods have disrupted
communications and supply lines for the army as well as the civilian population in places like the Swat Valley, and have forced the army to divert
helicopters to relief efforts, the general conceded.“It has drawn the army’s attention for different reasons,” he said.The army has moved to safeguard
gains made in recent months against militant networks in South Waziristan, Bajaur and Orakzai and will continue to deny the insurgents space to
maneuver, he said. “In some places where the army was on offensive operations, they have taken defensive positions,” he said.General Abbas said he
was unaware of any specific plans for deployments in the Swat region, except that the army was building four permanent military garrisons in the Swat
Valley. But during a recent visit to Kalam, a small mountain resort at the northern end of the Swat Valley, Pakistani officers said they would be delaying
plans to withdraw.The army had been planning to scale down military operations and hand over policing to a strengthened police force by October, said
Col. Nadeem Anwar, deputy commander of the army brigade deployed in the Swat Valley. That plan has now been postponed at least six months until
next spring or summer, he and other security officials said.The valley has been largely cleared of militants after two years of a sometimes brutal military
campaign, yet militants keep seeking to slip back into the valley and make a show of their presence. In the days immediately after New York Times
journalists visited Kalam, catching a ride on a United States Marine helicopter that was ferrying aid up the valley, militants attacked two schools in the
district, bombing one and setting another on fire.The Pakistani Army unit based in the town of Kalam is continuing counterinsurgency operations,
including night patrols in the surrounding mountains, to watch for any return of militants. “We know their favorite places,” one commando said.Yet at
the same time the unit is managing a large-scale relief effort, with a constant daily flow of helicopters bringing in humanitarian assistance and ferrying
townspeople out. The army is also running a tented camp and providing for nearly 4,000 homeless people, registering and dispensing humanitarian
parcels to many more who are affected by the floods, and organizing 300 workers to start clearing more than two miles of road covered by
landslides.Colonel Nadeem was sent in from the brigade’s base in Mardan to oversee relief work in Kalam, so that counterinsurgency operations would
not be interrupted. A corps of army engineers has also been sent lower in the valley to work on restoring communications, building temporary bridges
and reopening roads.The Swat Valley was one of the first regions in Pakistan to be hit by flooding and was among the worst hit. Though there seems to
be little local enthusiasm for the army presence — residents said they were afraid to speak to a reporter in the presence of the military — many people
here owe their lives to the presence of the army.After four days of torrential monsoon rains, it was army officers who first noticed the danger signs when
they encountered two unusually big landslides that cut the main road below Kalam around dusk on July 28.As the river visibly rose, the army ordered
the evacuation of some 6,000 Pakistani tourists from hotels along the riverbank, as well as townspeople from the houses and shops on the other side.
By 9 p.m. the river had turned into a raging torrent that swept away the town’s bridge, a four-story riverside hotel, and houses and shops. Such was the
force of the water that it permanently altered the course of the river.A month later an army engineer was organizing the construction of a temporary
metal bridge, inching it across the river with the combined muscle power of several dozen civilian workers. On the other side of the river, men worked
feverishly to mix cement and prepare a strong base for the bridge. Nearby villagers carrying donated sacks of flour crossed a footbridge made of freshly
hewn tree trunks on the start of a long trek to their homes further up the valley.“No food is reaching here. All the bridges are down,” said a farmer, Afsal
Khan, 25. “There are no facilities; everyone is trying to get down the valley.” He was lined up with hundreds of other men hoping to catch a ride down
the valley on a United States Navy helicopter to buy supplies for his family. It would be a 24-hour hike — for some a two-day trek — to carry them back
up the mountain to their homes, he said.Army engineers have already set up temporary bridges lower in the valley and hope to open a rough road,
passable by light jeeps, within a month. But Colonel Nadeem estimated it would take months, or longer, to reopen the valley to normal freight trucks.
That will not only hamper the military operation but also leave thousands of farmers — who cannot move their produce down the valley to market or
bring up basic staples and agricultural necessities — dependent on aid, he said.Taliban insurgents, meanwhile, are intent on continuing their campaign
of violence, yet they seem to be aiming at soft targets, using sleeper cells to set off car bombs and suicide attacks rather than instigating direct military
clashes with the army, General Abbas said. There have been several serious suicide bomb attacks in the cities, he said, but no significant ground action
by militants since the onset of the floods.
Rape: Rights Group Calls Test to Determine Sexual Activity a ‘Second Assault’ in India

Fayaz Kabli/Reuters

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Published: September 13, 2010

An international human rights group urged India last week to ban a “degrading and unscientific” test commonly performed on rape victims to see if

they have previous sexual experience. In the test, a doctor inserts fingers into the victim during the forensic examination to test for “vaginal laxity” and

is expected to deliver a medical opinion as to whether she appears to be “habituated to sexual intercourse.” The group, Human Rights Watch, argued

that the test constituted a second assault on a traumatized woman. The test is required by courts in some Indian states — including those of Delhi and

Mumbai, the national and financial capitals — and, according to local reports, is in the forensic examination still endorsed by the Indian Medical

Association. In most democracies, whether or not a woman has ever had sex before is considered irrelevant in deciding whether she consented to the

act under consideration. In 2003, India’s Supreme Court ruled that victims could not be cross-examined on their general moral character, Human

Rights Watch said. But it has not ensured that its decision is enforced, and references to those who allege rape as “dissolute” or “of doubtful character”

still appear in court rulings. World Health Organization guidelines calls for victims of sexual violence to get health care at the same time as the forensic

examination and from the same person, and for minimally invasive examinations.