[robowombat]

I saw a documentary on this. They confessed in detail, but the DNA evidence said otherwise, and the guy who later took responsibility knew of at least two details no one else but the cops knew.

That is my understanding. This case set off a media frenzy and the victim, as I recall, was a virtual candidate for canonization. The NYPD was under the hammer big time to find some likely suspects and shake a confession out of them. They did. These people were not Sunday school scholars but they were rail roaded. One does wonder how many got this treatment before DNA was around. Police and big city police especially often do believe what the magistrate told Steve McQueen in Papilion . ‘It is irrelevant whether you are guilty of these charges. You have committed many crimes you were not prosecuted for and if you remain in France will go on committing crimes. France is rid of you.’

[Leaning Right]

> One does wonder how many got this treatment before DNA was around. <

Kind of a side point, but the Reader’s Digest had a disturbing article about DNA recently. The science has advanced so far that every a very small DNA sample can now be analyzed.

And that’s not always a good thing. In that article, a drunk guy was treated by paramedics. A very small amount of his DNA (flaking skin cells, I think) got on the paramedics.

Later, the paramedics responded to a murder. The drunk guy’s skin cell DNA accidentally got scattered on the victim by the paramedics.

The drunk guy was arrested for murder (he was later cleared by other evidence).

[Alberta's Child]

They weren't railroaded. They were arrested at the scene of a crime spree and they started pointing fingers at each other. Four of the five defendants gave statements to the police with their parents present.

The most logical explanation in this case is that were involved in so many crimes that night, they confessed to one they didn’t commit because they thought the police were interrogating them about a different one.